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Dec. 31, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
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LEGALS AND ILLEGALS Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep991
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Thank you.
Thank you.
Coming up, is there a way to find common ground and reconcile this clash between the pro-Trump tech community on the one hand and some of the MAGA critics on the other?
I believe there is, and I'll tell you what that solution can be.
And Raheem Kassam, who's editor of the National Pulse, joins me.
We're going to talk about, well, we're going to have him weigh in with his perspective on this topic.
If you're watching on YouTube or Rumble, listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
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I want to continue the discussion I began yesterday about H-1B visas and the Horde of Indians who have come to America under that program.
Not me, by the way.
But nevertheless, I do have the same background and skin color as those Indians.
It's a debate that gets to reform that needs to take place not just with regard to illegal immigration, but also legal immigration.
Our legal system is a mess.
And quite honestly, it's been a mess for a long time.
It was a mess when I applied in the 80s.
So that's 40 years ago.
The immigration departments are notoriously incompetent.
You call them, they don't answer the phone.
They never call you back.
And by and large, when you show up there, nobody seems to know what's going on.
The whole thing seems to be nothing more than a processing facility where holding things up and blocking things from moving forward.
This is, by the way, in sharp contrast with the system of processing illegals, by the way, which is prompt, swift, jumps over rules.
You want to go to the airport?
You don't have an ID? No problem.
Just give us your name and there you go.
So we've been in this very strange and surreal landscape.
Between legal and illegal immigration.
I think Elon Musk is a little startled and shocked that the legal debate has come to the forefront.
Here's Elon Musk.
America rose to greatness over the past 150 years because it was a meritocracy more than anywhere else on earth.
I will fight to my last drop of blood to ensure it remains that land of freedom and So you can see that Musk is indignant here, and he's indignant because he sees a wing of the MAGA right,
from his point of view, as assaulting the idea of merit, as being against excellence, as basically being, you could almost call it a sort of right-wing version of DEI, Diversity, equity, and inclusion.
He's almost accusing these MAGA activists of taking the position that our people are less competent, they're less intelligent, they don't work as hard, but guess what?
They should be given first preference for the job because they are, after all, red-blooded Americans.
And that is Elon Musk's fear that America will then subside to being a backward country.
Why?
Because other countries are emphasizing excellence and merit and we who used to do that are not doing it anymore.
Now, it's not hard to see why Elon Musk looks at it this way.
I mean, think about it.
Here's a guy who was born...
in South Africa came to America by and large on perhaps not the h1b program but came in the process of drawing talent from other parts of the world here he has had a massive impact on innovation on technology he started what five multi-billion dollar corporations So I can see how he sees it that way.
And yet I think he is perhaps wrong in seeing the immigration issue generally as being a multiplication of the Elon Musk situation, which is almost unique.
I mean, it is very hard to compare Elon Musk to almost anyone, not just alive, but anyone dead or alive.
I think of analogies.
Is he like Newton?
Probably not quite.
He's not a theoretical physicist the way Newton was.
Is he more like Edison?
I think probably yes.
But this is such an unusual figure that I think that this is not the norm for the people who come to America on H-1B visas.
Now, there was, I think, a pushback against Elon that got rather unseemly and insulting.
In some ways, also insulted a bunch of other Indians who also got their hackles up over it.
Now, this is not to say that we shouldn't have a debate, we shouldn't have criticism.
And quite frankly, if it were up to me, I have a long list of Indians who I personally would like to see deported.
And these are, by the way, legal.
These are people who are here legally.
I would start with Preet Bharara, who, well, I guess I should point out, happened to be my prosecutor.
But I would send him to a remote village in India and have him enroll in farming.
And then I would put at the top of my list Vijaya Gade.
She was the chief censor at Twitter.
And so was this other guy, Parag Agarwal.
So these are the completely useless Indians.
And not only useless, they're malevolent.
They're forces of evil.
They are perfectly happy to be henchmen for tyranny.
So put them on the first plane out.
Get rid of them.
Now, the effect of this debate over H-1Bs has caused even Elon Musk and some others on the tech side to back up a little bit.
And to admit upon examination that there is a lot of abuse in these programs.
And so what I want to do today is to dive into the H-1B a little bit and try to identify what really is the key problem here.
Are we dealing with these?
Is it a problem that we're bringing in these super intellects who are at the cutting edge of modern chemistry and physics and astronomy and technology?
Or is it the case that companies are bringing in people who are relatively mediocre?
Sure, they could hire an American, but they don't really want to because, after all, the foreign hires are more pliant, more obliging, more willing to stay late and do a 12-hour day as opposed to an 8-hour day.
Not to mention the fact that when someone comes on an H-1B visa, they're obliged to stay.
They have to stay within the visa with that particular employer.
They can't really go anywhere else.
So is this a problem of the top 1%?
Or is this the case where it is just more convenient for these tech companies to be able to pull in people who end up being, in a sense, easier for them to control?
Now, there's a very interesting article here, which is written by Mark Krikorian, who is a strong immigration restrictionist.
And he offers two, I think, very valuable suggestions for how we can get started on all this.
And he makes the point that when we award these H-1B visas, there is a statutory cap that Congress has put, $85,000 per year.
And Congress, by the way, has been reluctant to increase that number.
They've kept it fairly stable, even though in reality, more people come in, which is a way of saying that the administration, the Biden administration, has not been following the law, which not new.
They In many areas, the Biden administration has been wayward.
They just do whatever they want, and then they claim that this is interpretive latitude.
And so what happens is a lot of people come on H-1B visas not because they are highly capable people who can perform a unique task for which there are not...
A sufficient number of willing and employable Americans.
If that were the standard, it's a fairly high standard to meet.
And yet, it is not met.
And very often what these companies do is they just go, we need somebody to do this, and ultimately these visas are offered by lottery.
Now, whenever you have a lottery system, how is it even possible to get the best and the brightest?
The answer is no.
You're getting people who are relatively random.
You're getting people who...
And this doesn't even get into the whole way in which these people are recruited abroad.
In countries like India and China, and by the way, India and China are the two dominant countries sending people here on H-1B visas, you've got these recruiting companies and they get applicants.
And again, these applicants are not screened for being the smartest of the Indians.
These are not the top performers in the Indian Institutes of Technology, the so-called Indian IITs, of which there are seven or eight scattered throughout the country.
No, they find people who are willing to pay a fee Who want to be part of this program.
And then what they do is they inundate American companies with multiple applications.
So the idea is that when you pay a fee, they'll send in 12 applications to 12 different companies.
They know it's a lottery, but they're just hoping that by buying more, quote, lottery tickets, you're going to hit and score here or if not there.
You may not win with this company, but you may win with that company.
You're just playing the odds.
So this is...
The actual practical implementation of the program is really a far cry from what its real goals and motives are.
By the way, this is not entirely new.
There are so many areas in American policy where a policy is implemented to do X and it ends up doing something completely different.
Even if you take something like affirmative action, it was originally limited to blacks.
Not for other groups.
Due to a specific history of blacks, it was supposed to be very temporary.
It's a kind of leg up.
And it's a leg up for people who are roughly equally qualified.
Two people who are sort of, basically have the same credentials for their job, are performing just as well in interviews, and have the same kind of extracurricular preparation.
And guess what?
We give the nod to the black guy.
So this was the idea of it.
And then look at where that is.
It metastasized into something totally and completely different.
You're taking massively unqualified people.
You're taking people who are in no way comparable.
You're taking people of manifestly lesser qualifications and turning away other people who have much stronger qualifications.
So in the same way, I guess what I'm saying, the H-1B program has been rife with abuse.
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The H-1B program, as I mentioned at the end of the last segment, rife with abuse and really in need of a remaking, a fixing, a reform.
How to do that?
Well, coming back to this article by Mark Krikorian, he says, look, the answer is actually pretty simple.
You want to get rid of this lottery system because no lottery by definition can pick out the best and the brightest.
You want to pick out the best and the brightest?
Well, there's actually a way to do that and that is To take the H-1B program, he says, first of all, it doesn't have to be 85,000 people or the larger numbers that are admitted now.
Set a lower cap.
Set a cap of, let's say, 25,000 people.
And that way, you're saying, all right, we acknowledge there is a...
A point that Elon Musk and Vivek and others have been making, that is true.
And that is there is quite possible that there are going to be industries where you need skilled people.
And you don't have good applicants coming from the United States.
And so this is the original purpose of the H-1B. This is, by the way, I think what Trump is also saying.
Trump has kind of come out and said, look, I'm not talking about getting rid of H-1B. I am talking about fixing that program.
So I think where Trump is coming out on this is the meeting point between what Vivek and Elon are saying on the one side and Bannon and others are saying on the other.
And the article I'm referring to says, by setting a lower cap, And also raising the salary requirement.
Because here's the point.
One of the allegations against the tech companies is that they're getting a lot of people to come in on H-1B programs and paying them $40,000 or $50,000 a year.
Obviously, these are not jobs of high skill.
If they were, they would command a salary of $150,000, $200,000 a year.
So in a way, the amount of money that the tech company is paying...
Is in fact a reflection of how much they value that job.
So let's say you were to say, alright, we want to let 25,000 people come in under the H-1B program and they need to be paid upwards of $150,000 a year.
Now, what this means is that the actual salary will vary depending on the job they're doing.
The market sets the price of what an aeronautical engineer is worth versus, let's just say, a Tesla engineer versus, let's say, somebody else who's working in biotechnology.
So there's no attempt here to sort of control prices, but there is an attempt here to say that if these tech companies genuinely feel that these guys are so valuable, then, you know what?
Pay them salaries commensurate with that.
And don't bring in people who are competing at the mid-level with all kinds of Americans who are perfectly willing to take jobs for 50, 60, 70, even $90,000 a year and perform those jobs.
And the reason the tech companies are bringing in the outsider is simply because they are more manipulable and they're not going to go somewhere else if they get a better offer.
There's a second aspect to this article that I think has gone largely neglected in the legal immigration debate, and I want to turn to that, and that is the issue of chain migration.
Now the issue of chain migration is somewhat tied in with H-1B, but not exactly.
The H-1B program by itself is not a citizenship program.
It is a work permit.
It's the ability to come here and work.
And the controversy over H-1B has been not so much a controversy over U.S. citizenship, although some of those issues have come into play.
You know, do Indians act in a very tribal way?
Do they only hire other Indians?
Are they loyal to America in any sense?
Or is this purely transactional from their point of view?
But by and large, the focus has been on jobs.
And that is to say we have a lot of battered communities in this country.
They have taken a real hit over the past several decades.
A lot of their cultural problems, drug problems, even family problems are somewhat connected to the fact that you don't have well-paying incomes.
I mean, if a guy can't make an income where he can support a family, then you've got a problem.
And that's going to drive men more and more toward destructive or just a sense of hopelessness, maybe a turning to alcohol or to drugs.
So there's a connection between a healthy community and a community which is offering jobs at decent wages where people can support families.
And so all of this is at stake in the H-1B debate.
However, the issue of chain migration is a complete and total abuse of this system.
As I've mentioned a couple of times before on the podcast, over time, the H-1B program was intended as a spousal unification program.
Obviously, I think it makes sense to extend the family unification program.
Obviously, I think it makes sense for somebody who's in America, and let's just say marry someone who's not an American, to bring that person to America.
Obviously, if you have children, those children are included in that program.
But I think it should really stop there.
And by that, I mean the mechanism for the chain migration is Is through the parents, the other siblings, their wives, the wives' parents, and on and on and on.
That is the way in which the program is abused.
And that is the fix that needs to be done.
In fact, it's hard for me to see how anybody would even oppose this because it's so obvious that this is a system that is...
Look, and in some ways I don't even blame the people who take advantage of the program, right?
Because if something is legal, people are going to take advantage of it.
It's kind of like saying that if there's a tax loophole and you can get away with not paying any taxes or paying less taxes because of this loophole, you're going to take it, I'm going to take it.
Why?
Because it's permitted in the law.
The law is allowing you to do it that way.
And so the blame here doesn't really fall.
Well, it falls a little bit, but not primarily on people who are taking advantage of laws as they exist and as they are enforced.
We need to fix those laws.
We need to fix the issue of chain migration.
I think that this is a debate that's been, on the balance, just quite healthy.
At times, as I say, it's gotten a little acerbic, which is to say, sharp.
A few too many insults, a little too much use of the F-word back and forth, and calls for, you know, Trump to throw Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy off the Doge, off the Department on Government Efficiency.
This would be horrible.
And this would be a massive overreaction and a tactical mistake.
And I don't think Trump is not only going to do it, I don't even think he's thinking about it.
I think that this is a case where it is healthy.
These are debates that have not occurred in this country for a long time.
In fact, it's hard for me to even think back when there has been a real public debate on legal immigration.
Admittedly, there's a consensus on illegal immigration.
And I would like to see as an absolute first order of business, not only the sealing of the border.
If there's one issue that put Trump over the top, the defining issue of 2024, in some ways the defining issue even of 2016, it is seal the border and epitomized in the slogan, build the wall.
You can seal the border in more ways than building a wall, but you've got to seal the border one way or the other.
The other thing is that there have been millions of illegals who have already come here and they've come here through a malevolent and willful program administered by Mayorkas but devised by the people around Biden.
This has got to be undone, which is to say there has to be some form of mass deportation.
Debbie and I sometimes discuss how is it going to happen?
Is it going to be in stages?
Are the criminals going first and then the gang members second and then And I'm not sure.
But one thing I will say is I think having watched now several interviews by Tom Holman, I think this guy is not only knows what he's doing and knows how to do it, but he seems to completely have the implacable resolve to get it done.
In other words, he's a professional.
He's like, I know how to get it done.
And whenever the media tries to trap him by saying, well, are you suggesting you might use the military?
He's like, yeah, I'm not just suggesting it.
I think I will need the support of the military.
Are you suggesting that you might punish employers?
I'm not implying that or suggesting it.
I will.
I'm going to demand that employers...
And what about these sanctuary cities and these mayors who say that they will personally block you?
He's like, well, I hope that doesn't happen because they have no right to block federal policy from being carried out.
There is plenty of court precedent that the federal government sets policy on these issues.
The Biden administration was very insistent that that is the case.
And guess what?
We're going to be using that precedent to make sure that no one gets to stand in the way.
So this is a very interesting and exciting time to see.
How Trump is going to come out the gate from the very day of his inauguration.
But I think it's going to be a sight to behold and the whole year is going to be, I think, end up being a very important one in this country's history.
Guys, I'm delighted to welcome back to the podcast my friend Raheem Kassam, editor-in-chief at The National Pulse, former editor-in-chief of Breitbart News London Bureau, also former chief advisor to the British politician Nigel Farage.
You can follow him on x at Raheem, R-A-H-E-E-M, Kassam, K-A-S-S-A-M, and the website thenationalpulse.com.
Raheem, I thought you would be a perfect person to have on To weigh in on this somewhat acrimonious debate over H-1B visas, but I look at that debate as only the sort of tip of the iceberg because I think underneath it is a much broader issue of what it means to be a nation,
who are the type of people that we should bring here and for what reason, what impact does that have on the people who live here?
So I know you've been a strong sort of partisan, if you will, on one side of this debate.
How would you frame the debate and lay out what is at stake here?
Yeah, and thank you for having me.
Certainly a topic that I'm very animated and have been very animated about over the last week or so, but especially because, you know, we at The National Pulse have been talking about this and the underlying precepts of it since our founding nearly five years ago, which is at its core What is it to be a nation?
At its core, what does MAGA mean?
What does America First mean?
And at its core, what are we doing?
What are we actually going to achieve when it comes to taking care of immigration, both legal and illegal, as it pertains to both my home country, the United Kingdom, And indeed, my current host country, the United States.
And the way I look at this, you have to kind of go a little bit deeper.
You're right to say that it's actually just the tip of a spear of a much broader argument.
You have to go to the...
Motivations behind, I guess, what I'm going to call for want of a better term right now, the tech right.
The Silicon Valley people who have thrown their lot in with MAGA over the recent months, who have certainly helped get us over the line in certain places, plowed money in to the campaigns.
We're very happy to have them on board as brothers in arms in the cause, the noble cause of defeating both Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris.
But now, of course, as it was always going to happen, and I don't want people to get too down and too depressed about it, there are certain things that we need figuring out between those two groups now as well.
What I will start by saying is that nobody invited these people in to talk about immigration policy.
And I'm sorry if that sounds a little bit kikish, and I'm sorry if that sounds a little bit jealous of keeping that area to the long-suffering people who have been part of this movement for so many years now.
I remember I was getting Nigel Farage and Stephen K. Bannon on board with the Trump stuff, with the MAGA stuff, back in 2015. So I was there right at the beginning.
I was also there when he announced that he was running for president again in 2024 when frankly not a lot of people wanted to show up and certainly the tech right didn't want to show up at Mar-a-Lago for that event.
So here you've got two competing ideas of what an immigration system should look like.
One of these ideas is predicated on the profit motive, is predicated on squashing wages down, is saving money as far as these big corporates in Silicon Valley are concerned.
And the other side is focused on the dignity of the American worker, giving Americans a chance first at these jobs, and making sure that if they aren't skilled enough to do these jobs, that they so-called are bringing in these geniuses, From all over the world to do, how do we actually get the American student and the American worker to that position where this no longer has to happen?
So those are the two big things.
Underwriting all of that, of course, though, is where we're going as a Western civilization.
Elon Musk himself is not shy of talking about the singularity.
He's not shy of talking about Mars.
He's not shy of talking about how he thinks that the founder's idea of a representative government isn't the best idea for, you know, if we Have a settlement on Mars and all this stuff.
And so you have to sort of wrap your head around all of this stuff.
And it goes into such great detail about, you know, what is the dark enlightenment?
Who have been pushing these ideas?
And there's basically just a lot of background reading for people to do.
And I urge them to do it because this is a conversation that isn't going away anytime soon.
We at the National Pulse have gotten into the data on the H-1B stuff to bring it back to the specificity of this.
And what we found is like, while this has been going on for decades now, the so-called caps that Congress put into place, 85,000 in total a year, are actually being blown through quite routinely.
It is a mechanism by which chain migration is happening as well.
And it is, by all the data that you could possibly get on this subject, whether it's Department of Labor data, it's USCIS data, it's think tank studies going into this, it is suppressing the wages of the ordinary American worker and it is creating an indentured servitude class of people that they are importing in a lot of cases from the third world to work for these big American corporates.
There are only a handful Of big companies in the United States that use the H1B system at massive scale.
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla.
And these are the ones that are saving millions, if not more, tens of millions on salaries by abusing this system.
So, you know, there's a lot to unpack there.
I'm sure you have a lot of follow-up questions.
But that really lays the groundwork for how this argument started.
Let me pitch a question to you that is somewhat strategic as opposed to philosophical, and that is this.
We just had an election in which we made the case that there is this massive problem in the country of illegals.
Not just the problem of more illegals coming, but millions that are already here.
And so project number one is, hey, not only do we seal the border, let's get the illegals out of here.
As I understand it, there hasn't been an equivalent debate, at least not in the public sphere, about legals.
People coming in, you know, and I couldn't agree with you more that there is a lot of corruption.
The legal system needs to be fixed.
Chain migration, H-1B, there are probably some other elements of it as well.
But tactically, my question is, isn't it wiser to sort of deal with the illegal issue front and center and first?
Because that's the unifying point of our coalition.
And so it's kind of like saying if you want to reduce abortion, don't start fighting about rape and incest or IVF. Let's start by hitting Roe vs.
Wade, which is our common point of agreement, rather than divide our coalition before the battle even begins.
And so my question is, do you think on the balance that it has been healthy to focus on the legal issue, even if you're right on the merits?
Yeah, I'm one of those people who thinks if you're going to do it, do it properly.
If you're going to approach an issue, approach it holistically.
I think, you know, we have a very finite amount of time in the second administration to actually get things done.
So I think you need to take care of as much as possible up front as possible.
Look, I'll say this.
If Elon Musk or any of the tech bros want to fall out with us and divide with us over H-1B visas, then I think it says more about them than it does us.
I don't think that we have to be divided over this issue, but I do think we have to find a consensus on this issue, like we have found a consensus on illegal immigration.
There's a lot of people out there right now who think, actually, what America perhaps needs is a year, maybe two years of net zero migration so that we can wrap our heads around, actually, oh, What does the labor market really demand?
And then why does it demand it?
And what does it actually require?
What skill sets are there already out there that are underutilized?
And what skill sets do we need to be encouraging secondary schools, high schools, colleges to prepare the American worker for in the next generation of the labor environment?
And I don't think we've reached a consensus on those questions yet.
You're absolutely right.
There's consensus on the illegal migration issue.
We're even getting consensus on the illegal migration issue from the political left right now.
So now is actually, I would say, is actually the time to try and force this issue and get everyone to the table.
And look, you're already seeing, there's been less than a week, I think, of this argument that's taking place.
You're already seeing Elon Musk and some of these other guys coming out and going, well, actually, yes, there is a lot of H-1B abuse out there and the system does need reform.
Well, okay, so now we're making progress.
Now we're not just fighting about this thing.
So if we can get to a point of consensus before President Trump is even inaugurated, then it actually allows us to hit the ground running in what, as I say, is a very finite period of executive action that can happen on this topic.
More on this in a minute, guys.
I'll be right back with Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief at The National Pulse.
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I'm back, guys, with Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief at The National Pulse.
Follow him on X at Raheem Kassam, the website, thenationalpulse.com.
Raheem, I wonder if maybe a point of convergence or compromise, I'm not quite sure what the right term is, what if Elon Musk were to say to you, listen, the frontiers of our economy, the things that keep America at the cutting edge of the world, Are going to be things like AI, biotechnology, certain forms of sophisticated engineering.
Why don't you give us the best and the brightest?
We're not talking about bringing in H-1Bs to man the airline phone lines or do clerical work or teach English or do other kinds of things.
Obviously, there are going to be plenty of Americans who are either qualified or qualifiable to do those jobs.
But at the frontier, America is a kind of...
Superstar team.
And those are the people that create new innovations, drive the whole society forward.
If we want to be numero uno in the world, we need to be able to bring on, just like the Houston Astros might say, hey, listen, we're going to bring in this seven-foot Korean guy because he's going to take our team to the World Series and beyond.
So the point of compromise becomes yes on the sort of superstar foreigners who have a lot to benefit our team over here, but we're going to shut down the mass importation of Asian Indian mediocrities who can easily be replaced with plenty of American mediocrities.
Yeah, look, I don't want to denigrate any of the people who have come to America.
I've come to America, right, and tried to make a better life and get a better lot for themselves.
The problem with the system is that it's not actually pulling the best and the brightest from around the world right now.
If you go through the H-1B data, what you actually see is it being used for quite medium or low-skilled jobs rather than these high-skilled jobs that they talk about.
If you want to talk about high-skilled jobs, About academia, about achievement, about, you know, all of that stuff.
That's actually the O-1B visa that we should be talking about.
And that's a completely separate thing that I think there already is consensus around that actually America does attract and should continue to attract some of the best and brightest talent from all around the world.
But that is a far more, believe me, because I've been through it myself, that is a far more rigorous process to prove that you are worth that and to prove Prove that America should invest in you by allowing you on their shorts.
I'll get into some more detail about that.
When you go through, we've been through, we did an analysis of the H-1Bs that came over in 2023. And what it shows is actually the vast majority of the H-1Bs that are being applied, you know, for these high-skill jobs have perhaps a bachelor's degree.
A far smaller number of them have a master's degree.
And I think only about 9% of them had a PhD to their name and so look, if you are making the case that H1B is for highly skilled, highly trained individuals who are going to be doing jobs that Americans can't do, well those numbers aren't actually stacking up.
We also have to bear in mind here as well as the chain migration argument.
We've seen about 250,000 I think people coming via chain migration through the H1B system.
You have to raise a question mark and say, is that what this is really for?
Should we really be allowing for that to happen?
And of course, then there is the moral argument, which is that if you are on an H-1B visa, you are effectively handcuffed to the company, the corporation, that sponsored your visa.
That is a measure, and it's a phrase that gets thrown out a lot, but I need people to internalize this.
It is a form of indentured servitude.
It is a form of corporate modern-day slavery that ties these people to them and says, you may not go out there and offer your labor somewhere else.
You may not go out there and try and get more bang for your buck that you're putting in in exchange for your salary.
So I think there is absolutely a conversation to be had over the O1 system and how you attract more talent through that.
There's also another question here that arises off the back of it, which is to say, if we truly believe in the nation-state, and all nation-states, by the way, allowing themselves to better themselves, to get more out of their labour market...
Then why are we creating a brain drain away from these other societies, especially third world countries or developing countries that actually need those talented people to help their economies get better, to help their civil society improve?
And that's just not a moral conversation that we have today and I think it's well worth having.
Let me ask you, Rahim, about something that Vivek said that has gotten a lot of pushback, and yet I want to press on it a little bit.
He says a key part of it, he's talking now about the reasons why A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the Math Olympiad champ.
He talks about, you know, there's less math tutoring and we need more of that and fewer sleepovers, more weekend science competitions, fewer cartoons, more books, less TV. And he is, I think, almost evoking a debate that you might remember from a decade ago when a woman who was a Yale law professor wrote a book about the tiger moms.
And she said things like, I make my kids study eight hours a day.
I don't let them go to sleepovers.
They're not going to some friend's house to waste time.
This is the sort of almost stereotypical Asian ethic of the super achiever.
And it seems to me that Vivek is saying that if you want to play in the global...
The Olympics, if you will.
Our society has to become more like that.
What do you think?
How do you weigh this argument?
I've got to say I'm a little ambivalent about it, even looking at my own life.
I think I was more like some of those tiger mom kids when I first came to America.
I think I've subsequently realized that there is a lot more to life than just rigorous academic study.
On the other hand, I also think that Vivek may have a point because, I mean, we've been writing and talking about the deterioration of American culture, the negative impact of all the policies of the left from DEI to the way that they've ruined the public school system.
So I think Vivek is not totally out of line here, and yet I can kind of also see why some people took offense at what he said and maybe also the way he said it.
Yeah, that's right.
I'd probably land somewhere around where you are as well, but I'll add this, right?
If I could speak to Vivek about it directly, if he sees this clip, I will say this.
People are more than a unit of economic measurement.
People are more than the sum total of the rote learning that you can force into their brains.
Life and society and a nation should have beauty and aesthetics As one of its cores, as much as it has economic prosperity and individual liberty at its cores.
And what he seems to be talking about there is this kind of rule by nerd class almost, which is, we know that that's how the Silicon Valley and the tech pros think.
They are...
I don't want to say this in a derogatory manner, but they've kind of got blinders on when it comes to living life to the fullest, right?
They are workhorses, and they've opted into being that way.
But that doesn't mean that everybody has to have that same mentality and that same framework.
We would struggle without some of our greatest creatives.
We would struggle without some of our greatest builders and artists.
And of course, human civilization, human history has proved to us that actually some of the greatest civilizations are the ones that express themselves in the grandest and most beautiful ways.
And really, You know, try to reflect the glory of God in some of the most beautiful and artistic ways.
So you have to look at it through that lens as well.
But also, I think, to kind of boil it down to its most basic thing, right?
Does the ordinary American, especially young American, have a vision of what they want to go into the labour market and do?
The answer to that is no.
And if you presented that argument, I would be a lot more sympathetic to it, because it doesn't lump the responsibility at the feet Of the young person or the worker.
It actually is the institutions and the rock within the institutions that we are well within our capabilities of figuring out and fixing.
And that is really what MAGA is about.
That is really what America First is about.
It's like, hey, hold on a minute.
Whether it's the Department of Education, whether it's your Department of State promoting all sorts of...
Disgusting things overseas.
If you manage to get into the institutions and remove them of these demonic values that have been inculcated within them from the political left, then you will have a situation where people will be leaving schools with better ideas.
They will be entering the workforce with America in their hearts, right?
And that's the argument that I wish Vivek had made, because if that were the argument, I think everybody would agree with it.
Yeah, I think it is an argument he was sort of groping toward.
I mean, I think Vivek...
He was clumsy.
He was just clumsy.
Yeah, he's focused so much on...
I think rightly so.
You know, we're in an academic environment where people think that the purpose of studying of the English department is diversity.
And the purpose of the chemistry department is also diversity.
And the purpose of the astrophysics department is also diversity.
So...
I think removing that rot is at the key to fixing these institutions because then you can get students thinking about, how do I want to spend my life?
Do I want to pursue excellence over here or do I want to pursue excellence over there?
So I think in this area we're on common ground with Vivek.
Raheem, this has been a great conversation, and thank you for joining me, guys.
I've been talking to Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief at The National Pulse, thenationalpulse.com, and follow him on X at Raheem Kassam.
Raheem, we'll have to do it again.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
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