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Oct. 23, 2021 - The Charlie Kirk Show
41:42
How Identity Politics Destroys American Equality with Dr. David Azerrad
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Hillsdale College and Identity Politics 00:11:35
Hey, everybody.
Happy Saturday.
No advertisers on this episode because of our friends at Hillsdale College.
Hillsdale College is the beacon of the north, the last college.
Every single person out there should consider sending their kid to Hillsdale College or take the online courses.
Their online courses have enriched my life and they have strengthened my soul.
You can take the online courses at charlieforhillsdale.com.
I am about to finish Western Heritage from Genesis to John Locke.
I know some of you saying, Charlie, I've been saying that for a while.
I know it's been a busy week traveling the country.
Genesis story, reading biblical narratives.
They have some, the intro to the Constitution course is amazing.
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What can I do?
The number one thing is just take their Constitution 101 course.
Just take the intro to Constitution course.
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They have tests after every single one.
You get a nice certificate when you're done.
It's worth it.
Please check it out.
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They have a course on theology 101.
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Charlie4Hillsdale.com can be your place for that.
My conversation was with David Azerod today.
We talk about identity politics, race, what was wrong with the Civil Rights Act, thought crimes incoming.
This episode is one of my favorites recently and rather provocative.
Email us your thoughts of this episode, freedom at charliekirk.com.
If you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com slash support and make sure you come to AmericaFest, tpusa.com slash A-M-F-E-S T in Phoenix, Arizona, December 18, 19, 2021.
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Buckle up everybody.
Here we go, Charlie.
What you've done is incredible here maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know.
We are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House.
Folks, I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country.
He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
Turning Point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk show.
I've been looking forward to this one ever since our friends at Hillsdale said there was an opportunity to get the legendary professor Azerod on our podcast.
I couldn't wait.
I read a Lot of what he publishes.
And we missed each other actually over the summer at a Lincoln fellowship deal that I did with Claremont Institute.
But everything we're going to be talking about is brought to you by Hillsdale College, the Beacon of the North, the last college.
You guys can check it out at charlie4hillsdale.com, charlieforhillsdale.com.
I have completed six online courses about to be number seven, but I have not yet taken the civil rights course.
But first, David, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
Thanks for having me, Charlie.
Good to be with you.
So there's a lot I want to unpack, but let's start with this idea of identity politics, which you correctly and very wisely frame more as oppression politics or kind of the elevation of certain groups that are deemed to be oppressed.
Let's put it that way.
Why do you put it that way?
I thought that was really smart.
Because identity politics is misleading because it would imply that everyone is entitled to have an identity of which they're proud and that they want to defend.
So you would think, oh, we used to have class-based politics.
And now we're going to have identity politics.
But it turns out that in the realm of identity politics, not all identities are created equal.
They basically come in two varieties.
It's a Manichean framework.
You have the people who claim to have been and to be oppressed.
You know the roster, right?
So-called people of color with blacks always first and foremost, hence the shift to BIPOC, Black and Indigenous people of color to emphasize that Black is the most oppressed ahead of the so-called white adjacent Asians.
You know, they're having problems with the Asians because they do too well in America.
Then, of course, LGBTQ, women, sometimes immigrants, Muslims, but the Holy Trinity is really the first three.
And then you have the bad identities.
You know, I don't know if this is news to you, Charlie, but you seem to fit the bill of people who are a problem in America.
Oh, I am.
I mean, I don't know what you identify as a male.
Yes, I do identify as a male.
I will not, my pronouns are whatever the traditional Western CISO heteronormative patriarchy would say they are.
But I'm the worst.
I'm also a wasp.
Yeah, that's not good.
And then you, you know, you could do something about your sex and transition, but your race, you're not allowed to change.
That's right.
You're part of the accursed white race.
So, you know, even oppression.
I mean, I don't look, I don't exactly know what to call the current dispensation in America.
Identity politics isn't good.
CRT is too abstract.
What the hell is critical race theory?
It's basically anti-white racism with, you know, a couple of footnotes that if you're white, you can partially absolve yourself of your sins if you read the script and claim solidarity with the oppressed and claim to check your privilege.
And however, if you're a so-called person of color and you deviate from the script, they get very angry at you.
So Clarence Thomas may be black, but in their mind, he's closer to the Ku Klux Klan.
That's right.
So it's a very, you know, scripted way to approach politics that based on these characteristics, you need to espouse certain positions.
And if you have the privilege of belonging to a recognized oppressed identity group, and I emphasize recognize, because, you know, if we're going to play oppression Olympics, I think the Mormons have a good claim to maybe being, I don't know, third in the history of America as being most oppressed, and yet they're not recognized as oppressed.
No one cares about them.
No one's tracking how they're faring in life.
So your oppression has to be recognized.
You get a whole bunch of privileges.
You know, standards are lowered to admit you into institutions.
We're expected to believe whatever absurd claims you make about sexism, racism, or homophobia in America.
You have a unique voice of color.
You should not be challenged.
You should not be contradicted.
So it really is a certain caste system that is finding its way in America that thankfully, I put it to you this way, it's firmly ensconced in the minds of the elites, the credentialed people who run America.
It has made serious inroads in our laws, but thankfully it has not fully conquered the American mind.
And I think that there's much more opposition amongst the God and country people, the deplorables, whatever you want to call them, who are maybe afraid to speak out against this, but know that this is nonsense and that it's un-American.
You have this phenomenal line in this lecture.
You guys, everyone can listen to the lecture by enrolling at charlieforhillsdale.com, charlieforhillsdale.com.
You say, let's be honest, no one gets canceled for abandoning their children, betraying their country, or committing any number of indecent, immoral, or criminal acts.
No, today in America, there really is only one unforgivable sin, and that is to deviate from the accepted script when speaking of protected identity groups.
It is to say something, whether intentionally or not, that either offends protected identity groups or that the elites find offensive on their behalf.
And before that paragraph, you wrote something that just like clicked, and it's so true because we did a whole segment with your colleague, Dr. Khalil Habib, on Nietzsche.
And I'm trying to find where it is, but you could just share with the audience, Nietzsche said that every society has something you don't make fun of, a piety that you don't.
Can you explain that, please?
Yeah, at the heart of every society is something at which it is, you're categorically forbidden to laugh.
And so if you think about it, you know, humor comedians at their best are subversive.
Because look, I'd say humor comes in one of two varieties.
Either it's kind of slapstick, you know, absurd, you fall on a banana, or you make fun of things you're not supposed to make fun of.
So look at the recent brouhaha with Dave Chappelle.
You know, he is touching one of the pieties that the trans, the claims of the transgender are sacred and holy.
You know, even in his first show, I mean, you may be too young.
I don't know if you remember the Dave Chappelle show when it was on.
I do.
It was, he did, there was one skit.
I won't say what it was, but it was incredibly politically incorrect.
But it was hilarious.
Yeah, he was, he was quite subversive.
I mean, he made fun of black people, not in a malicious way.
He's black, but we're not allowed to laugh today.
You know, how many women does it take to change a light to screw in a light bulb?
That's not funny.
I mean, that's kind of the view.
And then you could say the same thing for gays, for black people, you name it.
So the central piety in America pertains to the protected aggrieved identity groups.
We're not allowed to laugh.
We're not allowed to contradict them, the claims made on their behalf.
And we need to nod along as the most ludicrous lies are pronounced on their behalf.
Let me give you one of my favorite ones.
Slavery built this country.
I mean, that is nonsense on stilts.
Slavery, yeah, because that's why, you know, the deep south is just booming economically in terms of innovation and putting, I mean, that's ludicrous.
Slavery held this country back because it taught people to devalue labor, that there was something shameful in working.
So why do we do this?
Because, well, we need to redistribute honor in this country and puff up the accomplishments of the oppressed identity groups.
And so in this case, we need to say that all of the great things in America came from slavery, from the contributions of black people or of women or of black women.
One of my buddies told me that there was a movie that was made about the role of black women in the Apollo 11 lunar landing.
Did you hear this?
Yeah, I can't remember the name of it, but I have seen it.
He told me, you know, this was in at the time, they didn't have supercomputers.
They basically needed people to do like eighth-grade level mathematics.
And they, you know, singled out these two women to say that this was key to the mission.
I mean, it's utter nonsense.
So I think one subversive thing we can all do, which I think you do well, is just laugh in their faces.
Betraying the Nation's Piety 00:07:22
And one thing they do not like is people who seem to not be afraid of them.
People who laugh in their cathedral.
This makes them very angry.
And it's still a weapon we have at our disposal.
Subversive humor.
Just laugh in their faces, call out the lies.
I mean, sometimes it's good to get angry, but there's real value in just laughing at the utter nonsense that they're peddling.
Laugh in their cathedral.
I suppose that's what we do when we go and visit college campuses, not Hillsdale, which is terrific.
Yeah, no, that's exactly it.
Laugh at their pieties, laugh in their institutions.
You know, with the caveat that, you know, you ought to be careful.
I mean, you have some prominence and you've established yourself, but for the average American citizen, there are serious consequences to saying impious things.
We don't criminalize hate speech in America, so you won't go to jail or be fined the way you would in Europe or in my native country of Canada.
But, you know, you may get fired, you may get deplatformed, and you may have a piece written up about you on the internet that says that you're a racist or a sexist or a homophobe, and the internet does not forgive.
And then, you know, you, you, I mean, it's a, it's a tricky prop, it's a dangerous proposition for the average citizen to say such things.
But I think people who have more independence, I think the duty is incumbent upon us who have institutions that protect us to speak out against the lies and in defense of America, properly understood.
I totally agree.
So can you talk about how this became the central piety?
And I love your paragraph here because I know plenty of people that have now it's been publicly revealed cheat on their wife.
No, yeah, okay, there's forgiveness for that.
Or, and I'm not saying there shouldn't be, but you'll get where I'm going with this.
People that have laundered money, not exactly friends of mine, but I know of.
People that do the most unspeakable acts you can imagine.
Ray Lewis, who basically murdered somebody when he was a linebacker for the Ravens.
But if you people who betray their country.
Yes, that's right.
I mean, what greater shame can there be than to sell out America?
Either for ideological reasons.
I can think of a couple things.
It's up there.
You're right.
So it's up there.
You're right.
It's in the bucket or the basket of things that are deemed, I think, unconscionable.
But yes, I completely agree.
But that's okay.
Can I turn the tables on you one second and ask you a question?
Because this is something I haven't figured out.
We agree that their piety is untenable.
But to me, the hard question is: what piety should replace it?
I have some thoughts, but I know you're the interviewer, but I'd be curious to ask you: you know, if we ran America, if we took back the universities, the media, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, Hollywood, we still need a piety.
You can't have a society without a piety.
What do you think it should be?
I think the greatest piety should be intentional and flagrant living out of a hypocritical, inconsistent life.
And this at its core is being somebody different in public who you are in private, which we tolerate all the time.
And I think that a functioning society is a society where people are the same with their wife as they are on television or with their friends, not the constantly having to put on a new costume.
And it basically goes back to this idea of, you know, are you who you say you are?
Are you going to tell the truth in all circumstances?
We just kind of put up with this, right?
We just kind of put up with people being completely different in front of the cameras.
And the kind of mask charading of politicians kind of, you know, exposes this.
But I think that's really where a lot of this comes from, isn't it?
And so I think, and Jesus being, you know, having great disdain for hypocrites.
I mean, he was, this was one of the things he believed was one of the worst things a human being could do.
And that's a nice way to put it.
And in this regard, it is, I find, a bit worrisome how, look, I don't know about you, but, you know, when they expose the latest member of the house or senator on either party, who turns out to be a grifter, corrupt, you know, a Fortune 500 CEO, you kind of roll your eyes and like, ah, you know, par for the course at this point.
I feel that I'm running out of outrage for how corrupt, incompetent, and unpatriotic the elites are.
I wish I just, the thing is, I mean, there's only so many hours in a day.
What are you going to spend in a perpetual mode of outrage?
But you're right, that these things should be unforgivable.
But I find we've become somewhat desensitized because my default assumption is, you know, they're all charlatans and then prove me wrong.
Well, they're not.
And in the Bible where the law was self-enforced, where there was no kings, no police, no standing army 400 years, it was because everyone knew the law and they enforced the law themselves, right?
And that's the whole idea.
That was the original citizen government.
And then they said, God, give us a king and basically be careful what you wish for.
And it all kind of went into a cycle of chaos from there.
But at the core is this idea, I think, one of the central pieties amongst many, it should be this idea that you're just not allowed or you shouldn't be tolerated, that, you know, you cheat on your wife.
Like that's, that's one of the things that is ultimately trying to be somebody who you're not.
Like you're some sort of like upstanding, you know, member of the citizenry and you're doing something treachery in the shadows.
And we just kind of say, oh, yeah, that's perfectly fine.
But if you are a racist or if you say something off color in an email like John Gruden 10 years ago, your whole life is just.
Yeah.
Or if you 20 years ago in college, you were drunk at a frat party and you used the N-word because you were quoting a rap song and you've been an upstanding citizen since then, it's the end of you.
But the guy who sits on Michael Jordan's foundation, I think admitted to murdering someone when he was younger, that's okay.
Let me just, though, remind you of one thing.
Look, this is the late republic.
The country's in bad shape.
We may need someone like a Donald Trump at times whose private life has been fallen short of moral perfection, but who has other virtues.
So I do agree with you that I would want there to be more shame to people who betray their family.
But on the other hand, I wouldn't want to create a position right now where we impose impossible standards of moral purity on our leaders and we end up having no one to lead us into battle.
So long term, I'd agree with you, but in the short term, I'm willing to compromise some of these things if someone has on the one hand, a, what's the word I'm looking for?
Unquestionable whole total devotion to this country and utter contempt for the ruling class and opposition to their corruption.
The Corruption of Colorblindness 00:06:23
I totally agree.
And we're long past in the late stage cycle.
And also, I will say, you know, being with Trump, he is the same person in a private meeting than when you put him in a press conference.
There is that is true.
And, but, and as far as the personal stuff, that is a point well taken.
But let me ask you a question, which is always and I'm Caldwell's book, and I, our audience is reading it together.
We get hundreds of emails about age of entitlement.
Whenever I, if I ever meet him, I want commission because we are just talking on his book all the time.
It clarified for me in a way that I never thought a book could do what went wrong after the Civil Rights Act.
And just full transparency, my audience knows this.
I started reading that book thinking there's no way I'd be persuaded that the Civil Rights Act was nothing but the greatest thing ever.
Like literally, that was the bias I had.
And by halfway through the book, I was my mind was blown.
And so, how did race become the central piety?
And talk about how the Civil Rights Act was in some ways this just kind of obliteration of the American way of life.
Well, first of all, let me tell you, you got to meet Caldwell.
I mean, he's even better in person.
He's just such a well-read person, well-traveled.
He knows so many things.
He's pleasant to talk to.
I mean, I think the world of him.
So he's even better in person than he is in print.
You know, look, I used to be like you.
I used to think that basically there was Civil Rights 1.0.
Yes.
You know, the I Have a Dream speech.
We shouldn't discriminate.
And then there's Civil Rights 2.0, racial preferences, affirmative action, disparate impact, quotas, timetables.
That's bad.
And that we should defend the Civil Rights 1.0 and oppose the 2.0.
The more I read, the more it seems to me that you can't hold up that distinction, that 2.0 was almost baked into 1.0, that 1.0 almost immediately, I mean, in essence, let me put you this way: 2.0 precedes 1.0.
We started having racial preferences at elite universities in America in the 1950s.
The EOC, from the moment they had to enforce the 64 Civil Rights Act, started using disparate impact analysis, which basically says that a non-discriminatory standard of employment is problematic if it produces unequal group outcomes.
So as a matter of history, it's very hard to distinguish the two.
Now, someone could say, and I wrote a review of Chris's book, and I said, Chris shows that we immediately went to civil rights 2.0, but he doesn't show that we cannot today have 1.0.
And so this would be my challenge to your audience and to all well-intentioned Americans who would say, look, I don't like racial preferences.
I don't like quotas.
I just want the MLK line.
I think we should judge people based on the content of their character, their CV, their test scores, their accomplishment, not the color of their skin.
I think that sounds wonderful.
Here's the problem: Does America today have the stomach for colorblindness?
Are Americans capable of accepting that if you impose colorblindness in many sectors, at least for the time being, you will have considerably few, if all, if not almost none, African Americans?
In some sectors, you'll have very few, if almost no women.
So we like the idea of colorblindness, but all of us, to some extent, our minds have been corrupted by the morality of identity politics, which basically teaches that you need black people and women to lend moral legitimacy to an institution, to an organization, to a college, to a corporation, to a neighborhood, to a club, to you name it.
So I think that the prerequisite to doing anything is patriotic Americans who don't like discrimination, who don't like racial preferences, need to unshackle their minds from the morality of the left, which makes racism the one unforgivable sin which prompts all others,
and which accepts the idea that we need to have some measure of diversity, come what may of standards.
I put it to you this way, we need to have the courage to enforce standards.
And if that means that some groups are underrepresented, then look, either we say, well, that's the name of the game, or you could say, well, let's try to raise the ability of these groups.
The Army, from what I'm told, I don't know if this is still true.
There's a book that was written by two sociologists in the 90s on race, you know, race relations in the military.
And their basic point was the Army doesn't lower its standards, it elevates its cadets.
So if it turns out that Black cadets are not passing the test to make rank, well, they invest in a training program to get them up to rank.
So you could do that or just say, not our problem.
We're not in the business of rejigging outcomes.
This is America.
We're committed to excellence in all realms, period.
It is, I got to tell you, I hear myself speak and I realize what a stretch it is because you are going to face a lot of heat.
It's not just outside heat.
It weighs on our conscience.
Look, Charlie, I put it to you this way.
What if you set up the Charlie Kirk scholarships and you gave out 100 of them each year and you awarded them?
You didn't even know the names of the students.
You just looked at their resumes and test scores.
What if the first year you ended up with 100 scholarships, not one of them goes to a black kid and not one of them goes to a woman?
Even though you didn't even, you don't even know who the applicants were.
Admit it.
I mean, admit it.
I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but you'd feel uncomfortable.
You would think, man, the optics is not good.
Saving Us Through the Courts 00:03:50
People are going to think that there's something fishy, even if there isn't.
So my challenge to all of this is we need to build the courage to embrace colorblindness, come what may of the outcomes.
And the promise of the Civil Rights Act was colorblindness, and instead we got more color consciousness.
That is a line out of Caldwell's book.
So maybe you disagree with that.
No, I look, the act as written forbids discrimination.
The act, as it was debated on the floor of Congress, you know, I forget who it was in the Senate and the House famously said, I'll eat my shoes if it ends up leading to reverse discrimination.
But less than a year after LBJ signs the act, he gives a speech at Howard University saying equality of opportunity is not enough.
We need equality as a factor as a result.
And then the Supreme Court blesses racial discrimination in all sorts of realms.
So I guess the good news is the law as written can still be used to condemn racial preferences.
You know, if you want to have any kind of originalism, whether it be of intent or public meaning, you'd have to say at the time, people understood that the 64 Act was not going to be applied selectively in favor of people of color against white people.
But, you know, good luck assembling the coalition to enforce it.
Good luck finding the lawmakers will have the or the people to stand up to the courts.
You know, so much of this is the courts either blessing bad interpretations of the law or imposing them, and everyone else going along with it.
I mean, the extent to which the regime has been corrupted, because everyone accepts the idea that the Constitution is whatever the heck the courts say it is.
That's another big problem that needs to be remedied.
The other branches of government need to learn to flex their constitutional muscles and put the judges back in their places.
If a law can be unconstitutional, then a Supreme Court ruling can also be unconstitutional.
But very, very few people think this way today, especially in the Republican Party, which is where you would expect such thinking to exist.
There's been an overinvestment, some would say, in the court strategy, an underinvestment in others.
Although, look, you know, maybe it's about to start paying off a little bit.
You know, I most emphatically don't think that the courts are going to save us.
But look, let's see what's about to happen.
I think it would be foolish to give up on the courts right now when there's the promise that some good things could come out of it.
But the last 40 years, for all of the justices that have been appointed by Republicans, if you look at jurisprudence, where have things decisively shifted to the right?
You know, they're few and far between.
I mean, guns is probably the best example, the partial reinvigoration of the Second Amendment.
And life.
Well, but life, okay, you say and life.
I mean, we're one of only seven countries in the world that allows elective late-term abortions.
Not in all 50 states, but I think in seven states.
Sweden has a more restrictive abortion regimes than we do.
You know, that never makes it into Bernie Sanders speeches.
So, yeah, let's see what they do now on life.
But I'm not expecting the Supreme Court to save us.
No, no, I agree.
I'm saying, though, the public opinion of conservatives are growing even more hardened in some of their life positions.
Even more than 10 years ago, Romney tried to de-emphasize it.
McCain tried.
Bush was pro-choice and never said it out loud because his wife was pro-choice.
The people are actually getting more conservative.
The ruling class is basically unsalvageable at this point.
Hiring Discrimination in Private Sector 00:05:07
So could you explain, though, a little bit further for our audience that might be confused?
What was it about the Civil Rights Act?
And you talk about this in your speech, and also Caldwell writes about it a lot, that was so damaging.
There were some parts that were good, Caldwell admits, or at least he alludes to, but there was a couple elements, a couple titles that basically opened up this entire racial policing regime.
So look, let's, I think the only way to approach this, given the sensitivities and the country's very ugly history on race, is one needs to distinguish the moral question of should you discriminate Charlie Kirk when you're hiring from the constitutional question of should the federal government,
and I'm about to sound like a libertarian, I mean, this is not a libertarian point, but should the federal government have the power to police the private sector to eradicate discrimination?
So you can make a very solid argument, one that I espouse, that it is immoral and actually even counterproductive as a business to discriminate maliciously and arbitrarily on the basis of race.
You're missing out on clients and you're missing out.
You're not hiring good employees.
This was Barry Goldwater's argument in the 60s.
Yeah, it was Goldwater's argument.
Richard Epstein wrote a fantastic book on this called Forbidden Grounds.
Harry Jaffa said that it changed his mind about the 64 Act.
Epstein's point was: let markets take care of it.
You know what?
If at Kirk Industries, you're dumb enough to say we don't serve women and don't hire blacks, people will boycott you.
I mean, can you imagine today in 2021 in America, if there were a single bed and breakfast in the whole country that said, I don't want to serve black customers.
Well, there are ones that say they don't want to serve unvaccinated, but that's a whole different thing.
Okay, that's a separate.
Yeah, that's not a protected class.
No, you're right.
That's not vaccinated.
It's not there.
Race is still higher.
Yeah.
So they would pay a price for it, but the problem with the 64 Act is that it empowers the federal government to police in the Act public accommodation, so restaurants, hotels, inns, theaters, and then employers with more than 15 employees to ensure that they're not discriminating.
And what ends up happening is you may say, okay, well, then it's pretty easy to comply with that law, right?
You just don't put up a sign saying Jews need not apply at Azerat Industries.
But what ends up happening is, on the one hand, the EEOC that is tasked with enforcing the law says, we know that there's discrimination.
How are we going to prove it?
Because no one is going to explicitly discriminate.
And then on the other hand, corporations, which at first initially oppose the act, then realize: look, it's better to just comply with it.
It's a cost of doing business and you're left alone.
But how do we prove to the government that we're not discriminating?
And what they end up settling on is, you know, affirmative action, which would be, you know, would get my vote for a euphemism of this 20th century in America.
They settle on racial preferences, on basically ensuring that you hire a set number of black people.
And really, I think the two main groups, as I told you, are black people and women, the main beneficiaries of affirmative action.
And that way, you get the government off your back.
So it comes from the conviction on the one hand that the government has that there is surely more discrimination than we can catch.
And the fact that the business sector thinks that, you know, this is just, let's absorb it in the cost of doing business.
You do some performative wokeness, some light diversity hiring.
You park the underqualified hires in cost centers like marketing, HR, not in productive centers like engineering or sales, and then you move on with your day.
The other part of the puzzle is the government has the stick of threatening you with lawsuits, but then they've got a big carrot, which is government contracting.
And they use the promise of government contracts to dole them out to contractors that are owned by minorities, by women that hire a set number of all the protected groups.
And this is how the civil rights regime metastasizes from the start and evolves into the anti-racism state, the anti-sexism state we live under today in America.
And I mean, this is the real face of government tyranny today.
It comes in the guise of enforcing, eliminating discrimination in the private sector.
And few people are willing to even talk about this, which is, but I see more and more people starting to kind of turn around to it.
De-escalating Racism's Totem Pole 00:04:21
And so, kind of as we're at this moment, as we conclude this kind of conversation, The central piety that's basically been built is there's nothing worse than being called a racist.
Forget all the laws.
That is a cultural norm.
How do we, yeah, I'm not saying we should excuse racism.
Of course.
That's not what we're saying at all.
That would be a misapplication of an inference.
But how do we break through with this in this in this regard?
It's really unhealthy and it's destroying the republic.
So what the right has been doing, which doesn't work and is doomed to fail, is the Democrats are the real racist line.
So try to outdo the left at displays of anti-racism, at black outreach.
And that's going to fail.
I mean, they invented the game.
You're not going to beat them at it.
Clearly, as you pointed out, the solution is not to embrace racism.
That's silly.
That's as much a violation of the American creed as the current regime is.
I think the solution is a clean conscience on race, i.e., yes, we had slavery.
Yes, we had Jim Crow.
The debt has been discharged.
We're not, we can't forget, but it's not going to be at the forefront of our minds anymore.
If we keep on going down this route, it will destroy the country.
So we need to de-escalate racism in the totem pole of sins.
It's not a virtue.
But you know, if some kid 20 years ago at a Frat Party used the N-word, then he shouldn't have, but that's no reason to cancel him.
Whereas if he, you know, sold out his country to the Chinese for a buck, that's a reason to cancel.
Let me just make sure I'm understanding this.
So, and I've made this mistake before, and I agree with you.
Someone mentioned this at Claremont, I can't remember who.
So instead of saying, no, they're actually the real racists, look at all these things, which might be true, we should just try to dismiss it as even a factor in conversation.
Is that right?
Yeah, that this is, there are much worse things you can do.
Like, let's be honest, the kind of racism that existed in the 19th century or in America prior to the 50s doesn't exist anymore.
Black people are not lynched.
Churches are not burned.
So we don't even need to police that anymore.
You know, the racism that still exists today is someone slips up in the way they speak and they say something slightly off script and everyone crucifies them.
So the left is never going to stop doing that because it's their source of moral power.
To call people racist allows them to continue to claim the upper moral ground in politics and you never seize, you never cede the high ground.
What I think we should do is, here's at least one thing for the right.
We do not shoot our own in the back of the head anymore.
So if it turns out, you know, heaven forbid, Charlie, that some email of yours is leaked from 10 years ago in which you made some off-color remark about immigrants, Muslims, women, Jews, or gays.
But you know what?
We don't applaud you for it and say, oh, say more, Charlie.
Like, okay, it's dumb.
Not a big deal.
Charlie's right about bigger issues.
We don't cancel them.
They can try to cancel us.
We don't cancel our own anymore.
You know, we're done with the Buckley style purges on the right.
We don't purge on the, if we purge on the right, is because you violated a piety of the right, is because you sold out America, because you did something truly disgraceful.
But if you offended them, to hell with them.
Why should we police our own sides?
You know, I almost want to say, padin mi adwat, no enemies to the right.
Obviously, look, with some limits, let's be honest.
If there's a, you know, a neo-Nazi, but this, you know, they always want to push this.
This is not the issue in America today.
No one is defending slavery.
No one is defending, denying the Holocaust.
This is not what we're dealing with.
And what that does, it then disempowers the left from one of their greatest ways to control society.
Yes.
Trust Only Those With Scars 00:03:00
Yeah, because they count on us.
They count on us to be their henchmen with our own.
Yes, that's right.
Like, you know what?
You want to cancel one of our own?
You try and do it.
We're not going to do your dirty work.
And as soon as that happens, everything changes.
A great example of this was the gut instinct of so many with this Covington kids.
And then as soon as the Covington kids were innocent, well, all of a sudden people are like, oh, wait, they're on our team.
Yes.
And it became a popular opinion story.
So let me give you another example related.
When George Floyd happens and America goes through the latest round of racial hysteria, there were, I know of two institutions that faced pressure to jump on the bandwagon that issued principal refusals to indict America and the police, the Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College.
Hillsdale faced pressure.
We faced pressure from our alums.
Larry Arn, God bless him, put out a fantastic letter.
He's amazing.
A fantastic letter.
And this was an instance of courage under fire where they want you to affirm their piety.
And these are two institutions, Ryan Williams, the president of Claremont, and Larry Arn, the president of Hillsdale, said no.
And good for them.
We need more of that.
We went all in and not with the bad thing, but we were part of the Hillsdale Claremont group.
And it was empowering.
And other people then follow.
I know other groups in DC, I won't say any names, that wrote op-eds right after on how America is a systemically racist country.
It was very revealing.
It was very revealing.
You know, Charlie, I'll say one last thing and then I need to run, but, you know, I think we should only trust people on our side who have scars, by which I mean people who have already been called a racist or a sexist or a homophobe in public and have said, what the hell?
I mean, and have shown that they can defend themselves from these baseless accusations.
Because otherwise, you can't trust people to lead you into battle.
Amen.
Because this is how they get you.
This is how they silence you.
This is the most important point.
So true.
I don't get excited about anyone, no matter how great their resume is, how great they're talking about China and trade and the founders and you name it.
I want to see a scar.
I want to see that you went out, staked out a bold position, was excoriated by the New York Times, and you laughed in their face.
I love it.
I think it's terrific.
David Azarat, Hillsdale College.
You got to come back next week or whenever.
Charlie4Hillsdale.com.
Really enjoyed it.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
It was a lot of fun.
Thanks so much for listening.
Make sure you check out CharlieF4Hillsdale.com.
God bless you guys.
Speak to you soon.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.
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