Ep. 306 – The Art of The Surrender dissects Trump’s GOP betrayals—$0 cuts to Obamacare, Planned Parenthood—while mocking leftist "controversial" dog whistles and media attacks like Colbert’s Trump takedown. Christina Hoff Sommers exposes Oberlin’s backlash for calling feminism’s oppression claims a myth, linking academic bias to male disengagement (e.g., single-mother poverty stats) and Paglia’s warnings on gender politics. The episode then skewers V for Vendetta’s inverted Christian-Muslim persecution narrative and Avatar’s tech-free primitivism fantasy, arguing pop culture weaponizes history to silence dissent—all while framing cultural collapse as the cost of ideological surrender. [Automatically generated summary]
You know, with our country so divided, it's very important that we all try to understand one another.
Leftists need to learn to listen to conservatives without putting on masks and assaulting innocent people with sticks while shrieking meaningless slogans about how oppressive it is to be attending an American university on the public's dime.
Conservatives need to stop laughing so loudly at the left's absurd blithering and really take the time to hear what they're saying before contradicting them with the facts.
To help both sides communicate in the spirit that made this country great before leftists dragged it down, it's important to understand how the different sides use language.
The right uses words in an attempt to describe reality and express cogent approaches to governance that will regulate human behavior with as little curtailment of freedom as possible.
The left uses words as bright, shiny playthings that float like bubbles on the breezes of whimsy and then burst into sprinkling remnants of whining stupidity on the drifting currents of oceanic ignorance.
So, in an attempt to bring our nation together, allow me to explain how the left uses some common phrases to try to lie and steal other people's money.
From time to time, you may have heard feminist left-wingers use the phrase, that's sexist.
So, for instance, if you point out that men may naturally be better at some activities than women, or that there is no gender pay gap once you factor in the different jobs men and women do, a feminist might respond by saying, that's sexist, in a hoarse, screechy voice, while wearing a ridiculous pink hat and endlessly referring to her sexual organs, which, believe me, no one is interested in anyway.
That's sexist is a feminist phrase meaning, yes, that's true, but I don't like it, so please lie to me.
You might respond by adding some lies to your facts, saying things like, men are naturally better at science, but no, that dress doesn't make you look fat.
Another phrase leftists love to use is, that's racist.
This phrase, when used by a leftist, means, what you are saying makes complete sense, and I can't think of an argument to counter it.
For instance, when you say misguided Democrat welfare policies and idiotic leftist sexual immorality have so decimated the black family that they have unleashed a plague of illegitimacy that virtually guarantees generational poverty among the black poor, a leftist may respond by saying that's racist.
They may then add, black lives matter, a leftist phrase which means black lives don't matter, they're only a tool of my leftism.
Finally, the leftist media loves the word controversial, as in controversial waterboarding of jihadists or controversial policy of enforcing immigration laws.
Used by leftist journalists, the word controversial means completely uncontroversial.
Stamps. Com Solutions00:03:01
That one can be a little confusing, I admit.
I hope this brief guide to left-wing language will facilitate greater understanding between conservatives and the socialist dirtbags trying to enslave our populace and destroy our country.
After all, why can't we be friends?
Oh, wait, I see why.
Never mind.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
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Hooray, we have the factual feminist Christina Hoff Summers with us.
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Government Care Debate00:14:37
So I was looking at the budget.
We're all looking at this budget that the GOP approved and Trump says he'll sign.
And I feel like I missed the chapter in the art of the deal in favor of complete capitulation.
Is that another chapter that fell out of my copy of the art of the deal?
Don't have to have to negotiating, then just capitulate.
Just give away everything.
I mean, you know, he didn't get the money for the wall, so he swears this thing is going up.
And I don't even care about that because I think he can perfectly well just enforce the immigration laws and solve the problem as they are without the wall.
But the wall, he's promised it every single day.
So he got no money for that.
The money to fund Obamacare is still there.
Money for the EPA, which is like a dagger in my heart.
Money for sanctuary cities, the whole thing.
They're still funding Planned Parenthood, which gives a new meaning to the Republican program, No Child Left Behind.
It's like literally no child left behind because they're just going to slaughter them all.
Why do we have to pay the slaughterers of the innocent?
You know, the people who sell baby parts.
Why does my tax dollars have to go to that?
Charles Krauthammer said it best, so let him say it.
Here he is.
Trump got rolled.
The Republicans got rolled.
They ended up with nothing, really.
It's sort of embarrassing.
I understand a strategic idea.
We're halfway through the year, only a few months left.
This has all been a good past.
You save your fire for September when you do next year.
That's what they say every time that they save their fire and they don't use it the next time.
Now, Trump has been wonderful, I think, in sort of throwing out a lot of ideas, starting with the gas tax.
The Kim idea wasn't a great idea, but there's no denying the fact that this was not a win.
He was not the winner.
He said he was our negotiator.
This is a total loss.
See, here's the problem.
And you've got to admit, I'm not somebody who heaps blame on Trump.
I don't blame him for every little thing he does.
I don't care when he says something that's untoward and all this stuff.
Congress doesn't want to do anything that he wants to do.
It don't want to cut money.
They don't want to cut programs.
You know, the old joke about Republicans is the Democrats come in and say we're going to burn the country to the ground in 30 days, and Republicans go out and negotiate and then come back and announce they won because we're going to burn the country to the ground in 90 days.
You know, I mean, the Republicans, these are Washington animals.
And the one thing you have to remember about politicians is they're good at being politicians.
There aren't many politics.
Like baseball players, you know, when you go and see a baseball player, you are watching a god of an athlete.
You only have to go one step down into the minor leagues to see the difference between a minor leaguer and a major leaguer.
These are the best athletes in the country, any professional sport, that's true.
Same thing is true of politicians.
These are the best politicians in the country.
There just aren't that many of them at the national level.
But they're good at being politicians, right?
They're not good at getting you what you want.
They're not good at cutting government.
They're not good at following the Constitution.
They're good at being politicians.
And what politicians do is they buy votes and they sell influence and they make themselves powerful.
That's what politicians do.
There's no way in which they are in league with the Trump agenda.
And the Trump agenda is a difficult one to use for leadership, okay, because he's not a conservative.
He's a populist.
So that means that there are some things he wants to do that conservatives like.
He's pro-gun.
He seems to be following up on being anti-abortion.
He's pro-Constitution.
He knows that's a big crowd pleaser for conservatives.
But he also keeps promising that he's not going to get rid of the rule in Obamacare that funds pre-existing conditions.
He really is not going to get rid of Obamacare.
You can't repeal it when the president of the United States is basically saying everybody is going to be taken care of.
So there's not a lot of way for him to gather the Congress in one place and say, you guys are going to get this and you guys are going to get that, because he's kind of all over the place.
He's kind of all over the place.
But you got to say, he is the guy who promised that he was the dealmaker.
He is the guy who promised that he was the great negotiator, and so far he hasn't.
Now, he tweeted out today this morning, he tweeted out, oh, well, you know, what we need is 60 votes, and next time we'll let the government get shut down.
So at least he's learning to speak like a Republican, because that's what Republicans always say.
Next time, and you just haven't given us enough votes.
We needed the Congress.
Oh, now we need the president.
Oh, now we need a supermajority.
So he sounds exactly like a Republican politician now.
But, you know, he did say that this is the kind of thing he could do.
Now, listen, there's a strategy behind this.
The only people who got this right, I thought, were the Wall Street Journal.
They were talking about it.
It's not like, oh, he just capitulated.
It's that he figured he had a big fight coming up with health care, and he hopes it's going to happen this week.
He hopes he's going to revamp, get it through the House, a revamp of the health care of Obamacare this week, and then move on to taxes.
He didn't want to fight this battle.
Remember, most of this budget was negotiated before Obama left.
Most of it was already finished negotiating, so he's figuring, okay, you know, in September when this budget ends, we'll go back and we'll really do the big negotiation.
And, you know, that means, that means being willing to shut down the government.
And the other thing about Republicans is they, you've got to understand that Republicans are so slapped into a days of stupid obedience by decades of a media that just blames them for everything.
They are so scared.
They are so gunshy.
If they're in the majority and they shut down the government, it's their fault.
If they're in the minority and they shut down the government, it's their fault.
If they're just walking by and they're not even elected, it's their fault.
It doesn't matter.
The media will always blame them.
And they're afraid of that.
And what they don't realize is what they haven't taken advantage of because they really don't like Trump, a lot of them, they don't realize that Trump has made that completely irrelevant.
He has completely isolated and marginalized the press.
They could have stood, they could have withstood this to close the government.
They could do it next time.
It's not going to kill them.
They're not going to be voted out of office for that.
They will be voted out of office if they continue to do nothing, if they can't pass health care, if they can't get a tax thing going.
You know, the other thing about this, and I'm going to say this to conservatives because I know you're not going to like hearing this, but we small government types, we need to learn to approach problems that bother the people before the left gets to them.
Because now Obamacare is in place, and whatever they do, there's going to be shreds of Obamacare left in it.
There were good free market solutions to the health care problem, eliminating the fact that insurance companies couldn't compete across state lines and things like that.
They would have brought down the cost of health care, a lot more competition, a lot less regulation, would have done a lot of good things.
But we don't address these problems because the left gets to them first, because we think small government means government does nothing.
But government can facilitate solutions that are free market, that are more libertarian.
You know, the other day, I'm not going to play this because it's just too long, but Jimmy Kimmel went on and his little baby, his wife had a baby, and the baby had a heart problem and needed bypass surgery, this amazing bypass surgery, and he told this thing and he's crying on air and it's all very sympathetic.
And at the end of it, he makes it a pitch for universal health care.
He makes it a pitch for Obamacare.
Oh, before 2014, he would have died because a millionaire like Jimmy Kimmel couldn't have gotten it.
And he makes this pitch for this.
You're never going to win that argument.
You are never going to win against Jimmy Kimmel's heart-troubled baby, that you do nothing.
So conservatives have to learn to act and provide free market solutions and not just clean up after Democrats come in with the simple argument, which is always, we'll give you money.
We'll take care of it.
You have a right.
You have a right.
You have a right to health care.
You have a right to my money.
You have a right to take my money to pay for your health care.
You have a right.
You know, that argument is going to win if you don't solve the problem with small market, with small government solutions first.
Trump so far seems to me to be really, really good at the part of being the president that's like being in business.
He makes good appointments like a businessman.
He is good at delegating authority like a businessman.
He's decisive like a businessman.
He listens to all the opinions.
Then he makes his decision.
He's really been good at this.
He's not so good so far at the parts of being in government that are like being in government, like the cat wrangling, the back scratching, the negotiating.
They say he's not that big a help in these negotiations, and he hasn't learned how to do Congress yet.
As I keep saying about Trump, the remarkable thing about him is as much as he sometimes looks like a dope, he learns.
He really does learn.
He's a smart man.
You do not succeed at businesses as difficult as TV and New York real estate without being a smart guy who learns.
While he's learning, he has got to learn to stop saying stupid stuff.
It really is a problem.
It wasn't a problem when he was a candidate.
I don't mind all the stuff he says.
Like the other day he said, yesterday he said that he gave all these interviews for his 100 days.
And he said, I'd be honored to meet with King Jong-un if the circumstances were right.
Well, Kim Jong-un is like a nut who makes videos about destroying the White House.
You're not honored to meet with him.
I understand it's a small thing.
You're not honored to meet with him.
The other thing, it doesn't even bother me when he says that Kim Jong-un is a smart guy, a smart cookie, he called him.
And everybody says, why are you calling him a smart cookie?
Well, you know, I get that.
I get that.
You can demonize evil people and crazy people.
What he's saying is this guy is a formidable opponent.
He is not just some dope.
He's a young guy, took over, killed his enemies, took over a government.
He's still there.
He's a formidable opponent.
You don't just run over them.
You've got to work this stuff.
And the press tries to make a big deal about this.
That doesn't bother me.
But when he says, when he did this thing about Andrew Jackson yesterday, and he just makes, you know, it just sounds like a bonehead.
You know, play what he said about Andrew Jackson.
Somebody compared him to Andrew Jackson.
Andrew Jackson, populist president, the big Democratic president, because he grew up in absolute poverty.
And by the way, I am not like a Jackson, a guy who beats up on Jackson.
Jackson had problems.
He grew up in absolute dirt poverty.
They score him for being a slave owner.
He was really a slave dealer in his youth, a little bit, not much, but he was.
But that was the world he was living in.
He had some great military victories, obviously the Battle of New Orleans and the Battle of Horseshoe, what was it called?
Horseshoe Bend, I think it was, where he ended the Indian Wars.
He was an accomplished military guy and a scratch, a scrappy guy who won the love of the people.
I'm not a Jackson hater, but this thing, they compared him to Andrew Jackson because he too was kind of the guy who appalled the elites.
And here is Trump talking about this.
I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War.
He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart.
And he was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War.
He said, there's no reason for this.
People don't realize, you know, the Civil War.
Yeah.
When you think about it, why?
People don't ask that question.
But why was there the Civil War?
Why could that one not have been worked out?
Yeah, that was a big heart of the deal.
I mean, you know, I don't think he's, I don't think he's missing the point that obviously Jackson was dead for, I don't know, 15, 16 years at the time of Civil War came along.
But he just sounds like a dope.
Nobody asked the question, why the Civil War?
Has he ever actually been in a library or bookstore anyplace?
And why couldn't we have worked that out?
Yeah, we'll let you keep some slaves.
Just don't whip them so much.
It's like, what kind of deal, what kind of deal do you make to stop the Civil War?
The only thing I got to say, and this is a bad day for Trump, so I'm just being honest about it.
Trump has his good days, and I certainly celebrate them, and this is not a good day for him.
I will say this.
He still has all the right enemies.
Before we go to Christina Hoff Summers, which we're going to do in just a minute, I just have to play this one clip.
Two clips.
Trump went off on the left-wing guy at CBS, John Dickerson.
This guy's a total Democrat toady, okay?
He's not, it doesn't mean a bad journalist, but just a total left-winger.
And Trump went off on him in the Oval Office and walked away from him.
You saw what happened with surveillance, and I think that was inappropriate.
What does that mean?
You can figure that out yourself.
The reason I answered is you said you called him sick and bad.
Look, you can figure it out yourself.
He was very nice to me with words, and when I was with him, but after that, there has been no relationship.
But you stand by that claim about.
I don't stand by anything.
I just, you can take it the way you want.
I think our side's been proven very strongly, and everybody's talking about it.
And frankly, it should be discussed.
I think that is a very big surveillance of our citizens.
I think that's a very big topic, and it's a topic that should be number one.
And we should find out what the hell is going on.
I just wanted to find out, though, you're the president of the United States.
You said he was sick and bad because he attacked yourself.
You can take any way.
You can take it any way you want.
But I'm asking you because you don't want to throw fake news.
I want to hear it from President Trump.
You don't have to ask me.
Why not?
Because I have my own opinions.
You can have your own opinions.
But I want to know your opinions.
You're the president of the United States.
It's enough.
So he walks away on him.
He called his show Deface the Nation and all this stuff.
So here's Colbert, right?
Stephen Colbert goes on and gives a monologue, just absolute Trump hate, bleeding Trump hate, and then he says, basically, I'm going to stand up for our guy, Dickerson, on CBS.
Here he goes.
Donald Trump, John Dickerson, is a fair-minded journalist and one of the most competent people who will ever walk into your office.
And you treat him like that?
Now, John Dickerson has way too much dignity to trade insults with the president of the United States to his face.
But I, sir, am no John Dickerson.
And when you, okay?
All right?
Boys, Reading, and Oppression00:14:39
Let me introduce you.
Let me introduce you to something we call the Tiffany way.
When you insult one member of the CBS family, you insult us all.
Bazenga.
All right?
Here we go.
All right?
Get the gloves off.
Mr. Trump, your presidency, I love your presidency.
I call it disgrace the nation.
You're not the PONUS.
You're the BOTUS.
You're the glutton with the button.
You're a regular Gorge Washington.
You're the president, but you're turning into a real dictator.
Sir, you attract more skinheads than free roguing.
You have more people marching against you than cancer.
You talk like a sign language gorilla who got hit in the head.
In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's holster.
So, aside from the fact that he's being attacked by gay people for that last course remark, that's, you know, there's something serious, aside from the fact that he's not that funny, there's something actually serious about this.
This is the entertainment news complex telling you that they are going to protect each other.
If they don't win in the news media, they're going to win on the entertainment front.
This is why Donald Trump, if it all continues like this, this is why he'll get re-elected no matter what, how bad he does, no matter how many dopey things he says.
These guys are their own worst enemy, and Trump has the right enemies, and he has started to marginalize, and I hope he continues to do it within the bounds of the First Amendment.
Christina Hoffsummers, one of my favorite guests, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where she studies the politics of gender and feminism, free expression, due process, and the preservation of liberty.
She's also a former philosophy professor, as well as the author of several books, including Who Stole Feminism?
If you haven't read it, it is terrific.
The war against boys, if you haven't read it, it is also terrific.
She hosts a video blog on YouTube called The Factual Feminist, and you can find her on Twitter at CH Summers, S-O-M-M-E-R-S.
Christina, is she there?
I'm here.
Hi, how are you doing?
It's good to see you.
So, I have to tell you, I was at Oberlin College, and I said, Do you think there are going to be any protests?
And they said, Well, no matter how bad it gets, it's never going to be as bad as Christine.
It was for Christina Hoff Summers.
What did you do to those poor children?
I spoke common sense.
That was triggering.
I triggered, they came to the lecture hall, but they had a safe room where students could flee.
And I triggered 30 young women and a therapy dog.
Oh, you killed the therapy dog.
I didn't kill him.
I feel bad about that.
All right.
What is it that you say?
I mean, what were you?
I've heard you talk and I've read your books, and you always talk good common sense.
What were you saying that got them so upset?
I think the most upsetting thing I said was that women in America are not oppressed.
We have problems, just like men, but we are not an oppressed class.
This was considered heretical.
They were screaming.
They were, you know, they had posters.
They told me to go home and take my internalized misogyny with me.
It was internalized.
How couldn't that?
How could I not take it?
I don't know.
So you strip them of their victim status, basically.
Yes, which is a microaggression.
Now, why is it, aside from the fact that it's absurd, I mean, anybody who's been to Oberlin is this beautiful college, if you're there, you're one of the most privileged people on the face of the earth.
Why are they incapable?
Why do you think they're incapable of even listening to you?
I mean, you always talk, you always talk a very factual way.
You are the factual feminist.
You always bring the stats and all this stuff.
Why is it impossible for them even to listen to you?
A lot of commenters talk about special snowflakes and that these are this new fragile generation that's grown up with too many trophies and self-esteem programs.
I don't think that explains what's going on.
I think this is the result of some very bad ideas heavily promoted in certain departments, particularly gender studies, ethnic studies, and just some humanities courses called intersectionality.
And it's this idea that the United States, it appears to be a land of freedom and opportunity, but in fact, it's an axis of a, they call it a matrix of oppression.
There are these intersecting axes of domination.
And depending on your race, class, gender, you know, whether you're neurotypical or young or old and so forth, they're all these ways you can be oppressed.
And some people are multiply marginalized in this matrix.
And they teach this to students.
It's a neo-Marxist theory or some kind of post-modern neo-Marxist muddle derivative, but it sanctions a great deal of authoritarianism, intolerance.
It treats language as violence.
Yes, I noticed that too.
When I spoke at Oberlin, one English professor called my talk discursive violence.
So if someone's being violent, that justifies self-defense.
It justifies all sorts of things.
So they have reinterpreted speech because what they would say is that by coming there and denying women's oppression, I was supporting this false narrative.
I was supporting this matrix of oppression.
So they had every right to try to silence me.
You know, it reminds me, you know, the priest theologian Bonhoeffer talked about cheap grace.
And this seems to me like cheap courage.
You know, it means that you're a hero just for being a woman in America.
You're a hero for standing up against somebody speaking.
And you're essentially stripping them of their virtue and their heroism, which I think must be, you know, yesterday we were talking about this film, The Handmaid's Tale, based on the Margaret Atwood novel.
And all these reviews saying this is Trump's America, Trump's America, where women are being enslaved.
When you look at Donald Trump, I mean, I have all kinds of problems with Donald Trump, but when you look at him, do you think he presents any special threat to the women of America?
Not really.
I mean, I think he's, it's, you know, we've elected a nine-year-old boy to the presidency.
Is he a threat?
I don't think he has the attention span to be a threat.
You know, he's on to one thing or another and just confusing everyone with his quips and tweets.
And, you know, I don't, and I think, you know, a lot of women voted for him.
I don't think they particularly liked him.
Right.
They preferred, they thought maybe his policies would be better than those of Hillary Clinton.
So I don't think they were endorsing his past behavior.
Well, that's the other thing.
I mean, just to go off on that for a minute, not just Trump, but this whole thing at Fox News with this culture of chasing women around the desk, basically, like this 1950s culture.
You know, that does seem to me obviously the culture, a culture of slobs.
You know, I mean, it is disgraceful, but it hardly seems to me a danger to the women of America who are perfectly empowered to fight back against it in a million ways.
Or am I missing something?
No, I mean, I think there are still enclaves of misogyny, and Fox may have been one.
And it was men of a certain age and grew up with certain expectations, and finally they were removed.
But if you want to help women who are, you know, sort of victims of assault and harassment, then tell the truth about it.
Get it right.
And don't, I think what we have on campus, for example, is a moral panic around, you know, women's fragility.
And moral panics don't solve problems, but they do breed fanaticism.
That's what we have.
You know, I've been listening to recently Camille Poglio has a new book out about the, she's talking about the assault on masculinity.
And she says, she basically says that this kind of attack on masculinity and interest in androgyny is an end stage of a civilization.
She talks about how the Roman statues became more effeminate, Roman sessions of men became more feminine, just as the German barbarians were massing and now ISIS is massing on our borders and all this.
Do you see that kind of danger?
I mean, certainly you have talked a lot.
You have the book, The War Against Boys.
You've talked a lot about the attack on masculinity.
Let's start with that.
Do you see an attack on masculinity itself?
Definitely.
I see it throughout the popular culture.
More worrisome to me is in the classroom.
A little boy, I mean, any parent of a young boy, be aware that the classroom is a hostile environment for him.
There's very little tolerance for young male, you know, liveliness, obstreperousness.
They're not exactly like girls.
Many of them engage in a lot of rough and tumble play.
That's what they like to do.
That's what they want to do all the time.
Girls do it too, but boys do it a lot more.
And the classroom, even the playground, is not allowing them without punishment.
You're constantly hearing of little boys suspended for playing cops and robbers, that sort of thing.
The reading assignments, it's tailored to the interests of girls.
And boys are way behind in reading and writing.
Across all ethnic groups, the girls are stronger, more likely to go to college, winning the honors.
We're doing very little about it because the education establishment is still captive to this theory of patriarchy.
They're not about to do anything for boys.
That's too bad because the Australians, the Canadians, the English, they are addressing this problem because they see it as a threat to their economy, their future workforce.
And we do have a huge problem with disengaged males, and it starts in the early grades now.
You know, one of the problems I've always felt that men have in this kind of battle between, it's not a battle of the sexes because it's not women, it's feminists, it's a certain group of women, is that for men and young men especially, talking about masculinity is not masculine in and of itself.
You know, defining it, talking about manhood is something that men it's kind of creepy to hear young men, you know, old guys like me can do it because we're sort of like past that point, but I think for young guys, when they talk about, you know, manhood, they just sound like they're strutting around and boasting.
And it's very hard for them to define what it is they are.
Specifically, specifically, what would you like to see happen that would turn this tide around?
Well, first of all, we have a sort of brain trust on gender issues, which is the professors of gender studies, the women in the feminist think tanks.
They create the studies, they give the data, it's used by journalists, it's used by politicians, everyone.
It's unreliable.
And it's all rigged against little boys, for sure, and men.
And you're right, men do not typically organize around their own victimization.
They'll organize to go out and do all sorts of things, but not, you know, because they are the victims.
It doesn't happen very often.
So it's probably going to have to be mothers and fathers and others who defend the boys.
They're not going to do it.
Especially not in this situation.
And then they will be pilloried.
But anyway, the problem is that we have all this misinformation.
We don't have good, reliable research on male and female behavior and on pathologies and who's worse off, who's better off.
It's a complicated mix of benefits and burdens.
What saddens me is that women do have problems.
It's hard to be a single mother.
There is a feminization of poverty.
We need to talk about that.
But if we're not just from a far-left perspective, we need to talk about family breakdown.
We need to talk about ways to stabilize marriage.
We have a dysfunctional culture of single motherhood, which does lead to poverty.
And it has very, apparently very good data on this now coming from think tanks and scholars about what it does to young men with a single, coming from a single parent home, usually a single mother.
It has a disparate impact.
It's harder on the young man.
The young woman, her mother's, she looks up to her, wants to be like her, a role model.
For the young men, not so much.
She hasn't got that yet, yeah.
I'm going to have to, I could talk to you for an hour, but I have to let you go.
But I want to know, do you agree with Paglia that we're looking at something that could be potentially damaging to our civilization itself?
Or do you think she's over the top?
She's my great friend and ally.
And I'm a little more practical and really don't have.
She's so learned and the whole sweep of history.
And so she sees trends that I maybe am not aware of.
I'm more optimistic.
I think Americans, we create huge problems for ourselves, but we're pretty good problem solvers.
So I'm thinking we will meet this challenge.
But it's a big challenge just to bring us back to reality and away from this crazy world of gender politics.
Christina Hoffsommers, the factual feminist, thank you for coming on.
I appreciate it.
I hope you'll come back.
Thank you.
She is the author of Who Stole Feminism, The War Against Boys.
She has a video blog on YouTube called The Factual Feminist Christina Hoff Summers.
You can find her on Twitter at CH Summers, S-O-M-M-E-R-S.
She's really terrific, really a great brain.
I discovered her like 20 years ago.
Primitivism And Gender Equality00:06:18
I read that book.
Is that possible?
I can't remember.
But it was a long time ago.
I discovered it in the back of a bookstore and just started thumbing through it.
And I just read the entire book.
I brought it home.
All right.
Stuff I like.
Let's deal.
So what we're talking about, we're talking about this fantasy world that the left is so good at creating.
And I wanted to pick a couple of movies that, a couple of movies that show how the left makes good movies with truth in them that are also lies.
And they do it by changing the values of real life into the values of the movie.
So we were talking about V for Vendetta, in which the Christians are the oppressors and the Muslims are the oppressed.
Well, yeah, you know, if Christians oppressed people, then it would be courageous to stand up against Christians.
But since they don't, in real life, you know, it's just, and since they are the most persecuted religion on the face of the planet, I think, even including the Jews, you know, I think that they're just, when you change that reality, you can create a world inside the movie in which being a left-wing values actually makes sense.
Fair enough.
So I want to talk about James Cameron, obviously Avatar.
Avatar is one of the most amazing pieces of propaganda ever made.
I mean, that you can get people, this is one of the things, you know, that when you can get people to pay you to propagandize them, it was made during the wars on terror, which of course are still going on, but it was made during their height.
And it's about evil earthlings coming to steal the energy source of these primitive, what are they called?
The Navi, the Navi, that's right, the Navi.
They're the aliens on this other planet, and they're basically a primitive.
It's the same story as Dances with Wolves, as Pocahontas, even as Brigadoon, if you think about the musical, about civilized people who go to a primitive culture and find that it is better than their culture, that they, in fact, are the oppressors.
They think the primitive people are the savages of the evil savages, but no, no, the primitive people are wonderful.
It's paradise and all this stuff.
And it's the civilized people who are the invaders, the cruelty, the imperialists and all this.
So here, he has an avatar, and the hero has an avatar in which he joins the Navi and, of course, ultimately becomes their warrior leader.
Here's the speech where he inspires them to attack his own people.
the sky people have sent us a message that they can take whatever they want and no one can stop it but we will send them a message you ride out as fast as a wing can carry you You tell the other clans to come.
Tell them, Tariq Makto calls to them.
You fly now with me.
So my brothers, my sisters, that they cannot take whatever they want.
And that this, this is our land.
So if primitivism were paradise and primitive people were nonviolent and had what they have in this movie, the basically equality between the sexes, you know, some of this would start to make sense.
I mean, basically, you would have this evil, aggressive, greedy outsiders coming and taking away what is rightfully theirs.
And listen, there's just no question that in situations where new people come into a land and there are natives there, the natives usually get the short end of the stick, and it usually doesn't happen in the nicest possible way.
I mean, Thomas Jefferson wanted the Indians to be brought into American society.
They ended up being virtually wiped out and left on reservations, which is even worse, I think.
But the whole thing is, the Navi are a complete fantasy.
Rousseau talked about the noble savage.
They were a complete fantasy.
Why?
Because they have light that lights up the night.
They have little plants that they can use to light up the night.
They can fly on dragons.
They have equality with men and women, have equality.
You can have all those things, but you need one little thing.
One little thing.
You need oil.
You need oil.
And then you can invent electric lights.
And then you can have planes.
And then you can have the kind of technology that is required before women stop being simply vessels of the tribe, right?
Because when you are in a savage situation, women are birthing the new generation.
They have to be protected.
They have to be owned.
They have to be basically chattel.
And that's what happens.
Most primitive societies are more violent than civilized societies.
I mean, if you think about it, that's true.
You know, in Dances with Wolves, they find the wonderful Lakota tribe.
It's like those guys were killing everybody.
Those tribes were at war, and all that happened was a big, powerful tribe, the Europeans, came and took away their land.
But they were taking away each other's land before.
So all I'm saying, I'm not like, you know, saying, oh, yes, let's go and kill all the primitive people.
But when Avatar came out, the idea that we were taking the oil from the Iraqis, when did that happen?
That never happened.
The idea that the Iraqis were this wonderful little primitive society of equality, you know, it was a torture chamber.
Iraq was a torture chamber when we invaded.
They had rape rooms in Iraq, a phrase that still sticks in my throat when I try to say it, rape rooms, where Saddam Hussein and his kids could bring women for their pleasure.
You know, I mean, these things are just not that clear.
And this is a wonderful piece of propaganda, a tremendously entertaining movie, only because the primitives basically are given technology through magic means.
They are given technology through magic means.
People were, the left were building websites where they got to pretend to live among the Navi because it was so appealing.
It was so appealing because they had electric lights, except they were magic.
They had flight, except it was dragons, and women were not treated like garbage, which they are in many, many primitive societies.
You know, they are treated with violence in many primitive societies.
Why Technology Matters00:01:32
Why?
Because men are stronger.
There's no technology to make that balance out.
You know, I was once talking to a high-level woman in a TV station, and we were talking about stories, and I was saying how much I like Game of Thrones.
And she said, in Game of Thrones, I've told this story before, but it's worth retelling.
She said, in Game of Thrones, it's too much rape.
I said, well, it takes place in a non-technological society.
Women have no defense.
If you don't have guns, you have no defense, you know?
And in primitive societies, women are much more in danger.
She said, well, they shouldn't have put that in.
And she said, it's their story.
They can put in anything they want.
And I said, yes, and then it would be dishonest, and it's not a great story anymore.
It may still be a good story, but it's no longer a great story because it's not honest.
They believe that they can just write the world so that they can W-R-I-T-E the world so that their values make sense and that is how they sell them to you.
But in real life, in real life, does anybody really think that this continent should be run by people who never invented the wheel?
Does anybody think that this world would be a better place for humanity, for women, for men, for everybody, if this continent were still completely run by people who didn't invent the wheel?
They didn't invent the wheel, okay?
I mean, you don't get very far without doing that.
All right, that's the show.
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