The Charlie Kirk Show - Gov. Spencer Cox—A Case Study in Electing a Republican Scam Artist with Pedro Gonzalez
Aired: 2022-04-09
Duration: 31:26


=== Woke Capital vs Red States (11:26) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, everybody, a bonus episode today on the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:00:02]  Pedro Gonzalez, why are Republicans so weak?
[00:00:05]  Spencer Cox, Mitt Romney, we talk about liberalism within the Republican Party.
[00:00:09]  What drives and motivates them?
[00:00:11]  How DeSantis is so different.
[00:00:12]  At the end of this conversation, it's worthy of taking notes.
[00:00:15]  Pedro goes in in like a five-minute summary of why liberalism almost always ends in totalitarianism.
[00:00:21]  It's very interesting, compelling.
[00:00:23]  I know I learned a lot.
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[00:00:49]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
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[00:00:56]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
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[00:01:34]  Why is it that we get such crummy Republicans?
[00:01:38]  Utah is one of the most beautiful places in the country.
[00:01:42]  Utah has some phenomenal people.
[00:01:44]  I grew up going to Utah.
[00:01:45]  I love Utah.
[00:01:47]  Utah is one of the most conservative states in America, period.
[00:01:50]  And yet, Utah is governed by people that wouldn't even pass as Democrats in certain states.
[00:01:58]  Mitt Romney, obviously being one of them, and this governor that I didn't even know the name of before.
[00:02:04]  I'm trying to find an article here that reinforces this.
[00:02:07]  Spencer Cox.
[00:02:10]  Spencer Cox is someone I haven't done a lot of research on, but he just really irritates me and he should irritate you for his recent positions of stating his pronouns on a Zoom call, of vetoing a bill that would protect female sports, of outwardly pandering to the alphabet cartel.
[00:02:31]  And it's not just in Utah, but it's across the country.
[00:02:34]  And it really does beg the question, are Democrats running as Republicans just to try to win in Republican states?
[00:02:40]  All of this is worthy of examination.
[00:02:42]  To help us unpack this is Pedro Gonzalez, who had a great segment with Tucker Carlson about this.
[00:02:47]  And we're going to talk about it for the entire hour and really dive deep.
[00:02:50]  Pedro, welcome back.
[00:02:51]  Hey, thanks for having me back, Charlie.
[00:02:53]  So Pedro, who's Spencer Cox and why does he support grooming?
[00:03:02]  So Spencer Cox is the governor of Utah, as you noted.
[00:03:06]  And like you, I never really cared a whole lot about him.
[00:03:10]  I didn't know a whole lot about him.
[00:03:13]  I just kind of wrote him off as just another goofy, squishy Republican.
[00:03:18]  But, you know, obviously he's revealed himself to be much, much worse than your typical squish.
[00:03:23]  He's actively moving to the left.
[00:03:26]  He's actively punching to the right.
[00:03:29]  After my segment on Tucker Carlson, if you look at Spencer Cox's Twitter and you go to his liked tweets, you'll see that Cox was quietly liking people calling Tucker Putin's apologist or Putin's favorite white nationalist, although he didn't retweet any of those things and he didn't actually say anything about the segment itself and the claims that were laid out before him.
[00:03:54]  He was just kind of passive aggressively liking these people calling Tucker all these names.
[00:04:01]  So, I mean, this is the governor of a state, right?
[00:04:03]  And he's just imagine him like with the kind of the blue light of the screen on his face.
[00:04:09]  He's in a dark room liking these mean tweets aimed at Tucker.
[00:04:13]  Because, I mean, that really just defines him, this impotent, effeminate man-child who just somehow actually wound up in the governor's office.
[00:04:26]  It's just totally.
[00:04:26]  No, I mean, I want to play a tape here.
[00:04:28]  And I mean, look, I'm not really big into like the whole attacking of personal thing, but if you're going to call yourself a Republican, a father, and a man, like this is just unacceptable, right?
[00:04:37]  So he's on this Zoom call.
[00:04:39]  Okay, Cut68.
[00:04:41]  Pedro, I want your reaction to this.
[00:04:44]  Play Cut 68.
[00:04:46]  Okay.
[00:04:48]  Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
[00:04:50]  I am Governor Spencer Cox, and I have the pleasure today of hosting the first one Utah student town hall.
[00:04:58]  And my preferred pronouns are he, him, and his.
[00:05:01]  Thank you for sharing yours with me.
[00:05:03]  Is this a guy that you want to lead you into battle?
[00:05:06]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:05:08]  And look, I also don't typically like to hurl insults beyond what I think is necessary, but that's what people, I mean, this is the ridiculous thing, right?
[00:05:19]  People like Cox will say that like, no, now there's no need for name-calling and all that.
[00:05:23]  But then they are actually the worst purveyors of name-calling.
[00:05:26]  They write off all their critics as extremists, as Trumpists, as Putinists, as racists, as white nationalists.
[00:05:33]  So I think it's called for to actually reply in kind sometimes.
[00:05:37]  But to be clear, I think Cox certainly does believe a lot of these things that he's saying.
[00:05:42]  Like it's very clear that if he didn't believe them before, he has certainly talked himself into believing these things.
[00:05:50]  But I recently wrote about this at my substack, contra.substack.com, about basically how the driving force or a tremendous driving force behind people like Cox, because there is a massive incentive structure in terms of just donations and things like that and influence.
[00:06:14]  There's a massive incentive structure to move left on issues.
[00:06:18]  What I looked at was the effect of woke capital in Utah.
[00:06:25]  We'll just start with that.
[00:06:26]  So if you look at his financial disclosures, and I talked about this on Tucker's segments, you'll see that for 2021, his biggest corporate donor was Zion's Band Corporation.
[00:06:35]  Zion's is well plugged into the whole Utah LGBT scene.
[00:06:40]  They have a good relationship.
[00:06:42]  It's not that big of a scene in Utah.
[00:06:43]  Like, I didn't know that.
[00:06:45]  I don't mean to interrupt.
[00:06:46]  I didn't know the Mormon state had like a big day scene.
[00:06:48]  I mean, that's kind of new to me.
[00:06:50]  Basically, this stuff is incubated in the big cities.
[00:06:53]  Like, this is true everywhere.
[00:06:55]  Like, this is, we, this is Austin in Texas, right?
[00:06:58]  Basically, you have these colonies that get that basically kind of become the hub of the rot.
[00:07:08]  We'll call it that.
[00:07:09]  And then from there, it spreads to the rest of the state.
[00:07:12]  This happens in red states.
[00:07:14]  Let me interrupt.
[00:07:14]  How much of this has been Utah's like pathological obsession with trying to recruit Silicon Valley tech companies to come to Salt Lake City?
[00:07:22]  Tech has been a huge part of it.
[00:07:24]  Woke capital, generally speaking, but tech specifically has been a huge part of it, which of course Cox has welcomed.
[00:07:30]  And they have massive data centers all throughout Utah.
[00:07:32]  So I've been going to Utah my whole life and it's unrecognizable.
[00:07:35]  I mean, you feel like you're flying into San Jose where you kind of have these mid-high-rise buildings, top-class architecture, aesthetically, I think, unpleasing, but for people that hate architecture, they build these, you know, these tech things.
[00:07:49]  And it's just one after the other.
[00:07:50]  And there's these kind of these satellite places.
[00:07:53]  And it's important to understand why Utah, why Utah?
[00:07:55]  Tax rate, it's okay.
[00:07:58]  They preyed upon the Mormon working force, which was low drama, family focused, and was they're really good employees.
[00:08:07]  So these tech companies were able to go like outsource some labor there.
[00:08:11]  And then they started to implement their values, their recent grads, and they've changed the fabric of Utah.
[00:08:17]  Why?
[00:08:18]  I'm going to name some other Republicans beyond Spencer Cox.
[00:08:20]  We're talking about Mitt Romney, but I'm just interested of how did this happen because they're so disconnected from their voters and disconnected from what's popular.
[00:08:28]  Pedro, you're telling us about Utah.
[00:08:30]  Yeah.
[00:08:31]  So where we left off was talking about Troy Williams and Equality Utah.
[00:08:36]  So Williams is an LGBT activist who thinks that the tech industry can help push Utah to the left on LGBT issues just as a matter of course with the amount of influence and money that tech companies coming to Utah have.
[00:08:53]  And of course, the governor, Spencer Cox, has welcomed their influence in the state.
[00:08:58]  But there's actually another problem to this.
[00:09:01]  In 2015, the LDS church and LGBT activists established the Utah Compromise.
[00:09:08]  Basically, there'll be no discrimination against LGBT people, but the church has religious exemptions that are afforded to it.
[00:09:17]  So basically, it was a kind of ceasefire, right, in the culture war.
[00:09:20]  But Williams no longer looks at it as a ceasefire for LGBT activists.
[00:09:25]  He thinks that with the help of the tech industry, his side can basically kind of override that ceasefire in a kind of organic way.
[00:09:35]  Like, look, we're just keeping up with the times.
[00:09:39]  Like, Utah is becoming an increasingly progressive state, and that's just fair play, right?
[00:09:45]  But the other aspect of this is the fact that LDS church leadership seems to be also moving left on the issue.
[00:09:52]  Dallin Oakes, who's the next in line to lead the LDS church, gave a speech last year where he suggested that he wants to move, basically pour the oil of concession over troubled waters with LGBT activists and kind of move the Mormon church into a closer friendship with LGBT activists and the state.
[00:10:14]  And he favorably quoted Williams in that speech as a kind of nod to this very key LGBT activist in Utah.
[00:10:24]  And last year, he now lives in California.
[00:10:30]  His name is Jeff Green.
[00:10:31]  This is formerly the richest man in Utah.
[00:10:34]  He's a tech billionaire.
[00:10:35]  And last year on the anniversary of Mormonism, he did two things.
[00:10:39]  He resigned from the LDS church, citing its treatment of LGBT people.
[00:10:45]  Right.
[00:10:46]  And then he announced a $600,000 pledge.
[00:10:49]  And Williams calls this tithing.
[00:10:51]  But it seems like the influence that guys like Green have, I think just because they have so much money and they have such a big platform, it seems to actually be working on the church leadership themselves.
[00:11:07]  Now, that doesn't mean that Mormonism as a whole has this problem.
[00:11:11]  Obviously, there are a lot of socially conservative Mormons out there who do not agree with the movement of the church.
[00:11:17]  But I think that just shows how powerful the influence is of woke capital, of the tech industry, and how it doesn't matter if you're living in a red state.

=== The Centrist Balancing Act (03:23) ===

[00:11:27]  If you have Republicans like Spencer Cox or Mitt Romney, this stuff is going to happen.
[00:11:32]  Like in states where you, you know, supposedly you can't elect Democrats because it's too red.
[00:11:36]  You don't actually need to elect Democrats.
[00:11:38]  You just need the right kind of Republicans or the wrong kind.
[00:11:42]  And they play the voters totally.
[00:11:45]  They take advantage of them.
[00:11:47]  And so talk more about how in Utah, though, because they have had a they've had a huge business development push over the last decade.
[00:11:55]  And this is something Republicans need to be careful with because here in Arizona, we're going through the same thing.
[00:12:01]  Like, we're open for business.
[00:12:02]  We steal all these California businesses away.
[00:12:05]  But that could change your state dramatically politically.
[00:12:09]  Yeah.
[00:12:09]  Yeah, I think it's, I mean, it's a balancing act, right?
[00:12:11]  There's no easy answer for this because obviously growth and things like that, those, those can be a good thing, but then there, there are strings attached here.
[00:12:21]  And so I think one state where you actually see a remarkable pushback is in Florida, actually, with Governor DeSantis, you know, locking horns with Disney and basically putting the interests of his state and his constituents and the things that his that people who live in Florida and people who like myself might someday move to Florida, the things that we actually love about that state, right, that makes it different.
[00:12:46]  But most Republican governors are not that courageous.
[00:12:50]  I think DeSantis is truly unique in that he has a pro-growth mentality and policy and approach to things, but at the same time, he's not going to allow himself as the elected leader of Floridians to get pushed around by Disney, by woke corporations that are pushing CRT and frankly, these things that I think are accurately described as grooming.
[00:13:14]  I want to ask you about what do these people want?
[00:13:16]  What do the Spencer Cox, Mitt Romney types want?
[00:13:19]  Like, what is what is their vision for America?
[00:13:21]  I want to try to see it through their lens.
[00:13:23]  I think our audience would really benefit from that to understand, you know, what is their calculus?
[00:13:29]  Is it just pure corruption?
[00:13:31]  Or is there an ideological vein to this that really has created the modern, moderate Republican, like the governor of Indiana who vetoed the transgender deal or the governor of North Dakota, Doug Burnham, who vetoed.
[00:13:44]  This is a very interesting theme that I want to explore with you that I can't quite understand.
[00:13:49]  And then you have DeSantis.
[00:13:50]  And I just want to think this through.
[00:13:52]  What makes him different?
[00:13:56]  Pedro, quick unrelated detour.
[00:13:59]  The two men were found not guilty of the attempted kidnapping of Governor Whitmer.
[00:14:03]  What's the significance of this?
[00:14:05]  There's a deeper story here, isn't there?
[00:14:07]  Two men.
[00:14:08]  Wasn't there something like a dozen FBI informants?
[00:14:12]  You don't say.
[00:14:14]  But it actually gives me faith in the system that trials like that can fall apart.
[00:14:18]  And then the judge announced the mistrial for all the others.
[00:14:21]  Incredible.
[00:14:22]  Yeah.
[00:14:23]  Incredible only because that was such a flashpoint for a while, you know, that this was, this was, that kidnapping was our fault.
[00:14:32]  It was because of our race.
[00:14:33]  They tried to loop me into it because one of the guys there like took a selfie with somebody at some point.
[00:14:38]  And it was this whole, it was everyone tangent like within the Midwest was looped into this thing.
[00:14:43]  Yeah.
[00:14:44]  Well, I guess the FBI is not what it used to be.
[00:14:47]  And, you know, otherwise this, this maybe would have gone a different way.

=== Liberalism's Revolutionary Tendency (14:54) ===

[00:14:50]  Well, I think this is a benefit.
[00:14:51]  There's not a lot of social media.
[00:14:53]  I think it gave the defense, thanks to Darren Beattie's work, a better defense.
[00:14:57]  I really do.
[00:14:58]  Okay, going back to Utah.
[00:14:59]  So let me ask you.
[00:15:00]  So what does the Spencer Cox, Mitt Romney people, what do they want?
[00:15:04]  Is it really, are they all just nakedly corrupt, Pedro?
[00:15:08]  Or is there some vision for the world that they have that I can't quite resonate with?
[00:15:15]  What is it?
[00:15:16]  Well, that's good.
[00:15:17]  It's good that you can't resonate with it.
[00:15:19]  People shouldn't.
[00:15:20]  But I mean, it helps to understand it.
[00:15:22]  So yeah, setting aside the obvious cynicism because Mitt Romney, I don't think has any actual principles.
[00:15:28]  But Spencer Cox, on the other hand, I wouldn't call them principles, but I think he has things that he believes in.
[00:15:33]  And I mean, ultimately, these people call themselves centrists.
[00:15:36]  That's what you'll hear, right, from guys like Evan McMullen.
[00:15:39]  I'm a centrist.
[00:15:41]  But the thing about the center is that it's always on the left.
[00:15:46]  And maybe we can actually look the center is always right in the heart of the Democrat Party.
[00:15:51]  Yes, that's where the center is.
[00:15:53]  And the left is always moving further left.
[00:15:55]  So the center is always moving further left as well.
[00:15:57]  I mean, it's bizarre, but it's that's actually right.
[00:16:00]  That's right.
[00:16:01]  And I think maybe Chesterton, although I, you know, I really don't use the term conservative for myself, but I think this kind of helps.
[00:16:09]  So Chesterton had this great little saying that the world is divided between conservatives and progressives.
[00:16:14]  The role of progressives is to rush into ruin.
[00:16:17]  The role of conservatives is to admire the ruins.
[00:16:20]  And that even when the revolutionist might repent of the revolution that they helped bring about, the traditionalist, that is the conservative, has already enshrined the revolution as part of their great traditions.
[00:16:34]  And I think that is basically the way that I understand people like Cox, McMullen, whatever, when they say I'm a centrist, I'm a principled centrist.
[00:16:43]  What they're saying is we just want to preserve the part of the revolution that we're at right now, most of it.
[00:16:50]  We quibble with parts of it, but not the whole.
[00:16:53]  And therefore, that is what it means to be a centrist.
[00:16:56]  You just want to preserve.
[00:16:59]  And this is, I mean, in some ways, this is actually the most the wrong kind of conservatism, but in a messed up way, the epitome of conservatism, in that you're literally preserving the status quo.
[00:17:10]  And when you look around you, that's nothing good.
[00:17:12]  Yeah, look, they want a first-class ticket on the Hindenburg, right?
[00:17:15]  So like they, they want to be, they want to make sure they got a good view when it all falls apart.
[00:17:19]  That's right.
[00:17:20]  And I think, and I think that's actually a huge part of it, talking about this idea of like having a nice view.
[00:17:26]  I think they do actually really like the pats on the head that they get from people to their left.
[00:17:31]  They really do like that.
[00:17:32]  It makes them feel good about themselves.
[00:17:34]  And, but that's also why they don't really care what people like you and I have to say.
[00:17:39]  It just bounces off their heads.
[00:17:41]  This, this is true for actually a lot of mainstream conservatives.
[00:17:44]  I mean, this is why people like David French never react, who I think has a very similar soul to guys like Spencer Cox.
[00:17:53]  They never really react or care for the opinions of people to their right because you're not their audience.
[00:17:58]  Like Spencer Cox, when I'm bashing him on TV, I'm not his audience.
[00:18:03]  So it might kind of make him, you know, it might embarrass him because he's been put on the spot.
[00:18:07]  But ultimately, I'm not the one that he cares about.
[00:18:11]  And like he doesn't care if I approve of him or not.
[00:18:13]  And that's really confusing if you're a Republican because you're thinking like, well, wait, you're supposed to be responding to basically the wants and needs of Republicans, not Democrats and these frauds like Evan McMullen and Mitt Romney, right?
[00:18:27]  But yeah, it is really disorienting because they have an R in front of their name and they talk about family values, but obviously, I mean, all those things are like bizarro versions of themselves.
[00:18:39]  Yeah, and I could go governor after governor, North Dakota, Indiana, Utah.
[00:18:44]  But let me ask you, though.
[00:18:45]  So, you know, this Cox types or the Holcomb types in Indiana, you know, they want the first class ticket on the Hindenburg.
[00:18:53]  They want to see the whole thing go down.
[00:18:54]  They want to make sure they're involved.
[00:18:56]  You know, they want to see it at the dance before it all falls apart.
[00:18:58]  And I agree.
[00:18:59]  I think there's a lot that we don't recognize that they like the title.
[00:19:02]  They like the office.
[00:19:03]  They like the staff.
[00:19:04]  They like the pictures.
[00:19:05]  They like the newspaper stuff.
[00:19:07]  There's all this kind of like weird, and I'm going to use a word that might not be sociopathic, like I like to be the most important person thing.
[00:19:15]  It's really weird, narcissistic at the very least.
[00:19:18]  But then explain DeSantis what drives him because he had every reason to be like all these others, right?
[00:19:25]  Like what is in the operating system of a DeSantis in a much less conservative state versus Cox?
[00:19:32]  I think when I think of guys like DeSantis, I think of like Thumos, this classic idea of like spiritedness.
[00:19:40]  I think that's not something that you can really teach people.
[00:19:43]  Like you can't teach someone to be courageous.
[00:19:44]  You can't teach someone to be spirited and have fight in them.
[00:19:48]  And I think that that is just something that is part of DeSantis' character.
[00:19:53]  And even if you disagree with him on some policy issues, like I think I could quibble with him on like foreign policy.
[00:20:00]  But nevertheless, there's no denying that DeSantis has a lot of spirit.
[00:20:05]  And I think that that's a huge part of it.
[00:20:08]  But on the other hand, he really does react and understand his base.
[00:20:14]  He reacts to them and he knows who his base is.
[00:20:17]  And so when you combine those two things, basically a kind of populist in the very literal sense, like he responds to what is popular in his base and also has the spirit to back it up, to like to stand up to a huge corporation like Disney, to take them on.
[00:20:35]  I think that's really what it comes down to.
[00:20:37]  And maybe it's crazy that something like spiritedness is a rare quality in political leaders, but it is.
[00:20:47]  And I think that's why it's so unusual to see that because you think about it, apart from, you know, people would say somebody like Trump or something like that.
[00:20:55]  Who else can you say that about when we're talking about Republicans, political leaders?
[00:21:00]  Who else can you say?
[00:21:00]  Like that person has a lot of spirit, has a lot of fight in them.
[00:21:03]  Who?
[00:21:04]  Adam Kinzinger cries in public?
[00:21:07]  Spencer Cox, pronouns to little girls?
[00:21:10]  Like it's just, it actually is really when you take a step back and you think about it, you're like, wow, that is actually what sets DeSantis apart.
[00:21:17]  He's spirited.
[00:21:19]  So you said something I think that is going to anger a lot of people.
[00:21:23]  And I'm going to ask you, how do we go about solving it?
[00:21:25]  You're right.
[00:21:26]  Spencer Cox doesn't care what his voters think.
[00:21:28]  So then how do we get through to these people then, Pedro?
[00:21:31]  How do we get more Ron DeSantis type leaders?
[00:21:35]  I mean, that's really where we're at because we now have an example where DeSantis can, if someone can do something, then what are voters supposed to do?
[00:21:44]  Yeah, it is difficult because this is like a structural problem in the sense that there are very few ways to vet people.
[00:21:55]  And it like if you're running for office as a Republican and you have a lot of support, it's usually not because you're the kind of person that we're talking about and we're looking for and we need.
[00:22:06]  It's usually the exact opposite, right?
[00:22:08]  Like the more, sorry, go ahead.
[00:22:09]  You mean donor support?
[00:22:12]  Donor support, institutional support, right?
[00:22:14]  Like the GOP will identify people that will basically, you know, go along with the program.
[00:22:20]  So we actually, I think we need to really develop ways to vet people and to promote them who are actually kind of insurgents, like people that resemble DeSantis that we're talking about.
[00:22:32]  It's difficult.
[00:22:33]  But I think the first step to all of this is accepting that the GOP is not your buddy.
[00:22:42]  You cannot look at the R next to someone's name or hear the slogans like family values and like God and country.
[00:22:49]  Like obviously those things are good.
[00:22:52]  But the slogans are meaningless if they're not backed up by action.
[00:22:55]  And that is true for the vast majority of Republican leadership.
[00:23:00]  A lot of slogans, a lot of talk about things that are important, but zero fight and sincerity behind them.
[00:23:08]  And I think that's really the first step to all of this is understanding that like these people are not your friends.
[00:23:14]  They will turn on you at pivotal moments.
[00:23:16]  We just talked about all the vetoes and things like that.
[00:23:19]  They won't do anything unless you hold their feet to the fire.
[00:23:23]  And we need to find ways to replace them.
[00:23:26]  We can't just keep talking about getting rid of the rhinos, going rhino hunt, like draining the swamp.
[00:23:30]  We talk about that.
[00:23:32]  It actually can make you crazy if you think about how often we've used these slogans like, you know, going rhino hunting, but we never actually do it.
[00:23:39]  We never do it.
[00:23:41]  And I think part of that is actually a structural issue.
[00:23:44]  Like I said, you know, who is vetting like actual America first candidates?
[00:23:48]  Who's doing that in a way that is truly consistent with what the grassroots wants?
[00:23:54]  I can't really think of any huge organizations that are doing that.
[00:23:58]  There's a lack and there's also a need there.
[00:24:00]  So I think that's part of it.
[00:24:01]  So the first thing is seeing clearly, like Republicans are actually in many ways your worst enemies than Democrats.
[00:24:07]  I completely agree.
[00:24:09]  And then second is this institutional problem.
[00:24:12]  How do we find these people?
[00:24:14]  How do we vet them?
[00:24:15]  And how do we promote them, despite the fact that they will not have the support of like legacy GOP donors and institutions?
[00:24:22]  Yeah.
[00:24:22]  So I want to ask you a more philosophical question.
[00:24:25]  And you can only about a minute, and then we'll have a whole segment to go through it, which is the lie of liberalism.
[00:24:29]  I know this is a topic you really care about and how some Republicans are actually, you know, very sympathetic to the liberal idea.
[00:24:36]  And we talk about it on the show.
[00:24:38]  So it started with, okay, let homosexuals marry in 2015.
[00:24:41]  And then the promise was, and I'll be very honest, I believe the promise.
[00:24:45]  I was young and naive that we'd stop talking about all the gay issues, right?
[00:24:48]  Like, okay, gay marriage would make the gay issue de-emphasized.
[00:24:51]  But instead, it's the opposite, Pedro.
[00:24:52]  We're talking about this issue more than ever, and it's actually more prevalent in our society.
[00:24:57]  Yeah, it sounds like we're talking about the slippery slope.
[00:25:00]  And I think that's just true.
[00:25:01]  There's a kind of tendency in liberalism that is revolutionary.
[00:25:06]  And I think it's just really difficult for, I mean, even if you're a liberal who thought that this would stop, you know, with that, you might be shocked that it didn't.
[00:25:17]  But I think that's actually just the kind of the course of things when it comes to liberalism, precisely because it has this revolutionary tendency in it that it needs to constantly find things to liberate.
[00:25:29]  That's right.
[00:25:30]  And I mean, Caldwell articulated that better than I think anybody else, where he talks about, you know, the arc of history.
[00:25:36]  It's like, wait, what really was in the Civil Rights Act?
[00:25:38]  What were we getting?
[00:25:39]  What was in the kind of gay liberation movement?
[00:25:42]  And I want to talk, I mean, a lot of Republicans are liberal at heart, not voters, but Republican politicians where they kind of play into this.
[00:25:52]  And I think it's waking up a lot of people, Pedro.
[00:25:54]  I think that this like grooming thing is radicalizing people in a good way, like meaning bringing them to the root, bringing like, wait, hold on a second.
[00:26:00]  I thought we were done with this gay issue.
[00:26:02]  Like, no, actually, it's now more prevalent than ever before.
[00:26:05]  So, Pedro, I want to ask you about the phases of liberalism, right?
[00:26:09]  So, Caldwell talked about this, where it starts with identifying a grievance group, trying to liberate them from the alleged oppressors.
[00:26:16]  And there might be some legitimate critiques around the edges where laws could be calibrated in a prudent, minor way, but it doesn't stop there.
[00:26:22]  The next phase of liberalism, though, is then implementing by force almost a revenge campaign on the people that were wrongly labeled as being the oppressors.
[00:26:31]  What are your thoughts?
[00:26:32]  Yeah.
[00:26:33]  So I think the book that I cannot recommend enough and hugely influential on me is a book called Suicide of the West by James Burnham.
[00:26:42]  I see it right.
[00:26:42]  There's another book out there called Suicide of the West by Jonah Goldberg.
[00:26:47]  Don't read it.
[00:26:48]  It's terrible.
[00:26:48]  He just copied the name of a much better book.
[00:26:51]  Did he really do that?
[00:26:54]  Jonah Goldberg's book is literally called Suicide of the West.
[00:26:57]  And he kind of nodded.
[00:26:57]  I've never read it because I'm not going to pay for it.
[00:26:59]  He kind of nodded at James Burnham in it.
[00:27:02]  But it's like, from what I know about the book, it's like an upside down cheat version of it.
[00:27:07]  Read Suicide of the West by James Burnham, not Jonah Goldberg, James Burnham.
[00:27:11]  And in it, he talks about the problem of modern liberalism.
[00:27:14]  I think maybe this is where Caldwell is drawing it from, but I'm sure Caldwell could come up with it on his own.
[00:27:20]  But Burnham says the problem with modern liberalism is that there's a tension between individual freedoms on the one hand and egalitarian social justice on the other.
[00:27:29]  So basically, between, we'll say, individual freedoms again, and then regimentation, we'll put it that way.
[00:27:38]  So part of this means liberating people from stigma, right?
[00:27:42]  Whatever that is.
[00:27:43]  Maybe the most obvious example of this in our time is like transgenderism and stuff like that, right?
[00:27:48]  Liberating people from the stigma of pronouns, of gender bending and all that.
[00:27:54]  However, that's not enough.
[00:27:55]  It's not enough for you to be able to just use pronouns and to identify as a woman.
[00:28:00]  It needs to be, if you're a man, it needs to be affirmed in you by society.
[00:28:05]  That's exactly.
[00:28:06]  What that means is for egalitarian social justice to happen, there has to also be a kind of regimentation of society so that society affirms your new individuality as a trans person or whatever.
[00:28:23]  And so what that means is hate speech laws.
[00:28:26]  That means rules and regulations with regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
[00:28:32]  So this is the kind of tension and paradox of modern liberalism is that every time we emancipate so-called an oppressed group, there's also a whole new regime that is created to enforce the liberation of that group on the rest of us.
[00:28:52]  And Burnham says that in this conflict between individualism and regimentation, regimentation will ultimately win out every single time.
[00:29:02]  Because it's never enough to simply emancipate.
[00:29:06]  Find a synonym for regimentation.
[00:29:07]  That's not a word people use.
[00:29:09]  So what's the synonym?
[00:29:10]  Well, that's actually the term he uses for egalitarian social justice.
[00:29:14]  So like, what do you mean like the more tyrannical, the more despotic, the more regimentation?
[00:29:19]  He means like the regulation of society.
[00:29:21]  Okay, fine.
[00:29:22]  With regards to like, you know, like I said, hate speech laws.
[00:29:25]  I mean, in California, if you're a healthcare worker.
[00:29:27]  That's what it comes down to is that force will defeat liberalism.
[00:29:31]  Yeah.
[00:29:32]  Yeah.
[00:29:32]  And I mean, again, California, if you're a healthcare worker and you use the wrong pronouns for somebody, I think it's actually an offense.
[00:29:42]  There's prison time and fines involved.

=== Society Must Play Along (01:42) ===

[00:29:44]  That's a great example of it, right?
[00:29:46]  So we've liberated the oppressed people of this one particular group, but then the rest of society has to play along, even if it violates your conscience, right?
[00:29:54]  Like you're forcing people to do things that they just don't agree with or that they know is just not true.
[00:30:00]  Like this person in front of me is identifying as a woman, although I know that it's a biological male.
[00:30:05]  But if I don't play along, I could go to prison or get fined or something like that.
[00:30:09]  I mean, does that sound like a freer society where everyone can live their own life?
[00:30:15]  No, obviously not.
[00:30:16]  I mean, that is the lie of liberalism, is that liberalism is this kind of objective thing, right?
[00:30:24]  That we all benefit from equally.
[00:30:26]  That's just obviously not true.
[00:30:28]  There has to be an enemy for these liberation, for this crusade of liberation to happen.
[00:30:35]  There has to be an other.
[00:30:37]  That's another lie of liberalism, that liberalism eliminates the other, right?
[00:30:40]  We're all the same, man.
[00:30:41]  We're all equal.
[00:30:43]  There's really no differences between groups.
[00:30:45]  That's obviously not true.
[00:30:47]  I mean, the exponents of modern liberalism are the ones that are quickest to call you a racist, a sexist, a bigot.
[00:30:53]  They actually cannot exist.
[00:30:55]  I mean, no one can.
[00:30:56]  I mean, this is true for every situation.
[00:31:00]  They need an other.
[00:31:01]  And in this case, it just so happens to be us.
[00:31:04]  Pedro, that was amazing.
[00:31:05]  Contra and Substack, right?
[00:31:07]  Yeah.
[00:31:07]  Contra.substack.com.
[00:31:09]  It's a terrific.
[00:31:10]  I get the emails.
[00:31:10]  It's really, really smart.
[00:31:11]  We've got to have you back on.
[00:31:12]  Thank you so much, Pedro, and keep up the great work.
[00:31:14]  Appreciate it.
[00:31:15]  Thank you.
[00:31:16]  Thanks so much for listening.
[00:31:17]  Everybody, email us your thoughts.
[00:31:18]  Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
[00:31:19]  God bless.
[00:31:22]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.