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June 1, 2023 - Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy
36:03
Glenn Beck & Vivek Ramaswamy Unpack Eternal Values | The TRUTH Podcast #30
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I'm joined today by one of my heroes, actually,
Someone who has been listening to since I was a kid, on and off.
Mostly via my parents and others who pointed me to him.
And now I've had a chance to meet him and befriend him.
And one of the things I love about him is that he's...
It's two things about him that I think are...
True.
Man, if we could use that as an example for our kids, I think where would we be heading as a country?
He's honest.
He always says what he actually thinks, not what somebody wants to hear.
And he's also open to changing his mind.
He's honest and has convictions and an open heart at the same time.
And man, is that a blend of quality that we could use in our country right now.
My friend, Glenn Beck.
Thanks for joining me, Glenn.
Thank you.
You and I had a chat off air, and I know you're, like many Americans, like all of us in some ways, going through struggle.
It's part of our experience.
I appreciate you joining.
Thank you.
We are living in interesting times and we have divorced ourselves from truth.
I don't know if you've ever read Rudyard Kipling, The Gods of the Copybook Headings.
But you should.
I have not.
He wrote that in, I think, 1919 after World War I, and it was all about building a new world, a very utopia.
And you just start disconnecting from eternal truths, and you pay for it in the end.
But...
You know, as he says, the last line is, with terror and slaughter, the copybook headings return.
And the copybook headings were, you know, what you used to, when I was a kid at least, you'd have, you know, it'd say, water is wet.
And it would be in a cursive handwriting and you would have to just keep writing water is wet until you got it right.
And those were all truisms that no one could argue with.
And we're just, we've completely detached from them.
Uh, and we have, uh, entered a world of social media that has captivated our children, uh, and taken them down a road along with our schools that is just, I wouldn't want to be a 16 year old kid right now.
What is true?
Where do you go to find truth?
Um, and, uh, and it's happening in all of our society, but, uh, You know, the truth will win eventually.
We're just in one of those time periods the world goes through once in a while.
Why do you think that is?
I don't know why it starts, but I'm a faith guy and I do believe there is evil.
And I think we are in a very dangerous position on so many levels and a battle against good and evil.
You know, there's there's something for compassion.
We have to be compassionate people.
There is something about being open and and and accepting of other people.
And there are different choices.
We are all, I believe, sent here to Earth to try to better ourselves and to wield the power that we all have.
I mean, the thought, all thought is created.
And so we have amazing creator powers within us.
And to be able to wield that and still be compassionate, not ego-centered, and to really balance yourself as a human being, I think that's why we're here, to try to master that.
And there are those that just...
Want their own power or believe their own bullcrap and think that they're the ones to make all the decisions for everybody else.
And it becomes twisted and evil and then it just spirals out of control.
I've been reading about the Weimar Republic lately and learning some things that I just never knew.
Do you know what the first books were that they burned in Germany and everybody cheered?
I don't.
This will blow your mind.
1925, the very first transsexual surgery happened at the University of Sexology.
I don't know what its German name was.
Okay.
By a doctor that really was kind of the center of the LGBTQ movement back then.
Weimar became a very, very...
You know, if you saw the movie Cabaret, that's what this was about.
It became a very vile society.
The churches had already died and society went downhill.
And at the end of the Weimar Republic, who comes in Hitler and he says, I can restore the glory of.
And the churches were so dead inside, they no longer had compassion for people.
Instead, what they had was, make it stop.
And the first books that were burned were all the books on transgender and LGBTQ. And all the churches and everybody cheered and We're good to
go.
Night and day, I can think that you're doing evil, but you're not an evil person.
God wants all of us to be happy and whole.
If we close our heart to that love thy neighbor, do unto others kind of philosophy, we don't make it.
We don't make it.
We'll end up exactly like they were in the Weimar Republic or in Nazi Germany.
We'll just start killing each other.
And Glenn, I think that, I mean, that is coming from your vantage point, right?
And your voice in this.
That is powerful.
Because it is easy to preach to someone else's tribe, but much harder to preach to our own.
And I think that One of the things I think, you know, frankly, you and I may share in common here is that I think our people who share the views you and I do understand that we see the problem, that you see the problem as it exists,
and yet recognize that compassion is still the solution, and that that is actually practicing what we preach is the best way to actually lead out of our current It's the only way to lead.
And I'm just as afraid of the extremes on my side or somebody else's side.
People are people.
These are human conditions.
And if we don't guard our heart, I mean, I really studied Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
I don't know if you know who he is.
I do.
I do.
Yeah.
So I really studied and he kept saying, I've got to get together with Gandhi.
I have to talk to Mr. Gandhi.
He's doing something in India that I'm missing something.
He didn't miss anything.
His timing was wrong.
His timing, the society had gone dead inside and the Judeo-Christian values We're gone and they were just going through the motions.
I'm very concerned that our preachers are not standing up and leading the way, not on politics, but on truth.
Look, there are certain things that are true and you can't violate those things.
You can live that way if you want, but as a society, We cannot accept things and deny eternal truths.
Otherwise, we'll close our hearts and it all becomes meaningless.
What does church mean if it's not about church?
If it's not about God and what God wants for His children, which is to love one another.
And you can't do that if you're lying to yourself and to others.
And so, let's just take the harder case now.
Let's go back to your 1925, you know, post-Hitler example.
I think that...
So, I agree with everything you said.
Of course, I think I'm...
I couldn't have said it better myself.
But how do you deal with the assault on truth...
But to do it in a way that harnesses compassion in a way that nonetheless, you know, doesn't recreate the enemy.
That was the point you were making with the Weimar Republic and the first books they were burning and banning and where that led.
And yet, you know, I think it is, I don't know where you are this, but it is true that there are two genders.
There's an assault on truth there.
How do you How do you cut through the assault on truth with compassion?
Boy, if I knew that, we could solve all kinds of problems.
But I will tell you, the harder you struggle, the...
Perhaps the more important it is that you embrace the compassion.
I also believe what's being taught in all media, and I include myself in the media, I'm not pointing to people, I'm pointing to conditions.
The fact that there is no truth.
Our kids are so confused right now.
And they just don't know what to do.
They're not interacting with each other.
There's not personal contact with one another.
It's just a different world.
And I'm not saying, we got to go back to the way it was when I was a kid.
That's not the answer.
But we do have to return to certain fundamental truths.
And it could be very easy for me To point to The villains that, you know, people point to.
But this isn't about that.
This is about a universal condition that is happening all over the world.
And Martin Luther King made it very clear, you cannot defeat hatred with hatred.
It must be love.
It is, you know, I was in Alaska one time.
And I was feeling quite humble at the time.
When I'm not humble, I don't necessarily react the right way.
And I was feeling quite humble.
And this woman was across the street and she saw me.
I'm in, I don't even know, Anchorage.
And she sees me across the street.
And I'm with my children.
And she just starts screaming at me.
Hater!
Hatemonger!
Racist!
And she came across the street.
My security took my kids away.
And she just started screaming at me.
And I didn't know what to say.
And so I just said, sincerely...
I love you.
Because I was humble enough at that time to see, this is my sister that doesn't know me.
And I don't know her.
And I'm sure there are things that she's heard, read, and things that I have said that maybe taken out of context has created something in her.
And she got even more angry.
And I responded again, I love you.
That eventually doesn't have a happy ending to the story other than it didn't escalate.
She got frustrated and turned around and walked away quietly.
If we throw logs on the fire or strike out, even if we're in the right, we lose.
We lose everything.
It won't end well.
We're in the midst now of dehumanizing.
All sides.
You're either with me or you are an enemy to everything I hold dear.
That's not true.
People are not.
The ideas and things that are being spewed are either true or untrue.
And we're at the dangerous level.
We must fight ideas, not people.
And keep our soul.
I don't want to turn in to everything that I have always despised.
I mean, my family is German, and the only German Beck that I know was one of the guys who tried to kill Hitler in the end.
Is that right?
Yeah.
But I don't know if we're related.
And I've often wondered, what did my line do?
We were over here in the 1800s, but I know I have relatives over there.
What did they do?
And authoritarianism, fascism, communism, it's just evil.
And the worst thing that can happen is that you get so...
Your back is so against the wall and you've been wronged so many times and called so many names and they're destroying everything that you love that you become them.
And I've got to stop you and you have got to be eliminated.
We can't do that.
We can't do that or we all lose.
We all lose in the end.
I think that that's the...
That is the difficulty.
How do you, you know, when you are, you could say, you know, fight a terrorist without adopting the methods of a terrorist.
I don't know if that's the right analogy to use for your sidewalk incident in Alaska.
I think it is.
Yeah, the fight is the same thing.
And And it is terrorism.
The things with ESG. What is that if it's not economic terrorism?
You either do this or I will blow up your whole life.
I will destroy you and your family and your ability to do anything forever.
That is terrorism.
And the worst thing we can do, that's my problem that I've had with the way we fight foreign wars in the past.
Yes.
Look, if we are against terrorism, then we don't ghost, I'm sorry, torture.
We don't ghost plane people to Egypt who will torture for us.
We're either against it or we're not.
And I think the American people...
Have been clear on where they stood and where they thought the nation stood, but it doesn't turn out that we were on the same page.
Does that make sense to you?
Oh, it does make sense to me.
I mean, that is the struggle of our moment is what means are we willing to use to fight that which we view on the same plane as terrorism.
You could talk about financial terrorism.
You could talk about actual terrorism.
I mean, we don't adopt the methods of the people who will strike 2,000 people and innocent civilians in a plane.
plane.
But once you start adopting the method, which might seem like it's required to win, you lose the very thing that you were fighting for.
That's why when when the left is afraid, for instance, if you knew and I'm sure the the leaders of LGBTQ and everything else, I'm sure when they say you're a turnout, just like the Nazis, they know what I didn't I'm sure when they say you're a turnout, just like the Nazis, they They know that story.
But I can be an ally on that.
You're exactly right.
That could happen.
But when they say, you know, the right, they're terrorists, they're whatever.
No, I think that's sometimes projecting on the things that you do.
And we cannot go and do a January 6th.
That's what Antifa does, not what Americans do.
Look, Glenn, I think that we live in a moment where this is just a last five to ten years point here.
Yeah.
Where people who have encountered unrecognized struggles and injustices...
Including conservatives in this country.
Yeah.
Needed to have the space to be heard, to vent and to do it in an uninhibited way.
Yep.
We've done that now.
So it's not about blaming whether that was a good idea or done in the right way or not.
We did it.
You know, I think when...
Now it's time.
Yeah.
To move forward.
Yes.
There was...
I really, truly believe that when you have something really horrible...
I mean, look at most guys when they're in war.
They go over, they do things that they never thought they could do or should do.
They did it in the name of their country, but they come back wounded and But they don't want to talk about it.
That's the worst thing that could happen.
I think in the 1960s, this country looked at racism, looked at Jim Crow, looked at all these things, and it was ugly.
And so a lot of people thought, well, we dealt with it.
And we didn't want to talk about it anymore because it ended in assassination and everything else.
But we're moving on.
We're getting better.
We dealt with it.
Well, no, we didn't.
We didn't lance the boil and let the pus completely come out.
Now, unfortunately, there have been people that want to take that and use that for their own nefarious purposes.
But if we could come together and say, you know what?
I was wrong about big corporations not being a threat.
I always thought you could trust corporations.
Wrong!
You and I might have been wrong on thinking that we were beyond the racism problem.
We weren't.
There were some things that had to be said and done, but we're not having that conversation.
There is a good, healthy family comes together and says, guys...
We need to talk about this.
When I was 15, my mom committed suicide.
My dad to his dying day would not admit that she had killed herself.
But when I was 30, because we never talked about it.
When I was 30 and I'm trying to sober up from my alcoholism, I brought my sisters together and I said, we need to talk.
And they said, what about?
And we're all in the same room.
And I said, Well, I think we should start with mom's suicide.
And my sister, who was two years older than me, stood up and said, I did not kill her!
And I was like, what?
What are you saying?
And I said, where is that coming from?
And she said, that's what you said to me because my sister had an argument with my mom the night before.
And she said, that's what you said to me that next morning when mom was dead.
It's your fault.
She had been carrying that around forever.
We hugged it out.
I talked to her about it.
I apologize.
We're good friends now.
That's what good families, healthy families do, not what the American family is doing now.
It doesn't have to be that way, Glenn.
No, it doesn't.
I think American family took, how long did it take?
For you and your sister to have that conversation?
15 years.
20 years.
But you did it.
Yeah, I did it.
And we are healthier for it.
If we can make this turn, we are going to be an amazing country.
Unfortunately, as you know, the odds are stacked against us.
We have all these elites that are putting in things that are really authoritarian in nature.
ESG, the World Economic Forum, what's happening with AI should yes, should terrify people because we are at the place.
If we don't make the right decision now, I do believe we will either be slaves of an authoritarian state that controls it all until it loses control of AI, you know, or we're all wiped out from it.
But we are really, truly at a point humanity has never been at.
The test is, can we rise above it?
I think we're at the, what is it, Fermi's dilemma, where he said the reason why we can't find extraterrestrial life is because they blow themselves up once they come up with nuclear, they split the atom.
I think actually it is AI. I think this is the point where we're going to prove we are worthy to survive.
Or it's all going to have to start over again.
You know, in some ways, the conversation about social media earlier is, I think, the way in which, I mean, one of the chief dangers of AI is that you're saying we're not having that conversation anymore, the conversation equivalent of what you and your sister had after 15 years.
AI might be the reason we're not having that conversation, actually.
It's in a sense that's far more present right now where we created spaces that were supposed to imitate the conversations we have in life.
And instead, the conversations we have in life started imitating the conversations we have on Twitter.
And I think that that is, you don't have to look to the future to see the danger of that AI. It's picking at algorithms, picking at our own insecurities that cause us to change the way we once behaved even in the so-called real world.
The real world is that.
I think we're 18 months away from a turning point that when people will really start to understand the real dangers.
We're at a place, I've called it for a while, the implosion of trust.
Where you don't trust anything.
Reality is about to collapse on itself because of AI and the digital world that we're now entering.
And when you have a reality collapse, how are you going to trust anybody?
I think this election you're running in what Tristan Harris calls the last human election.
2024 will be the last, and I could make an argument that we've already passed this, but the one that will be obvious will be 2028, where AI is so good and it has become personal.
This is the next step.
The social media went for engagement, but AI is actually going for intimacy.
So it wants to develop a relationship so your engagement never ends.
And it will become your friend, your spouse.
Mark my words, we will have the argument very soon that, why are you judging me?
Because you're saying that my spouse is not alive?
It's AI. She's as important to me as your wife is.
And that will slowly can be manipulated to slowly manipulate you to move one way or the other, to vote one way or the other.
We lose the idea or the real meaning behind free will.
Did I decide that or was I manipulated to do that?
And I think that is coming as soon as 2024. How do you inoculate yourself against that?
Because you could point to the AI, but it only works insofar as it's able to pick on insecurities or uncertainties grounded in truth.
That you were open to being manipulated in the first place.
And I think there's two sides to the coin, so I'm not denying what you said, but I'm wondering whether it's also just an occasion to look in the mirror and say, yeah, I mean, how did Mark Zuckerberg, he found it hot or not before he founded Facebook?
That was the predecessor, sort of picking at human impulses, human insecurities.
That's what gets us to Instagram, you know, affects now teen girls' body image issues.
Part of the blame could rest at the feet of Instagram and the algorithms that it uses to create projections of images that cause teen girls to feel that way, but there's a second half to the coin.
The other side of the coin is how do we address the insecurities within that leave us full enough of purpose that would leave us immunized?
That's the vaccine, if you will, against the virus, if you will, and maybe we can think about that Version of the problem, and we have something more within our own power to address.
When you introduced me, you gave me far too much credit.
But you said, he's honest.
And I try to be.
I try really hard to say what I mean and mean what I say because I've already lost my soul once through my alcoholism and I don't want to lose it a second time.
But the thing that I think you might be picking up on is vulnerability.
I know what's true.
I know who I am with God.
I know who God is.
I know what's true and what I'm willing to do and not do because of eternal principles.
And when you know that, you're secure enough in yourself where you can be vulnerable and say things like I'm an alcoholic or say things like I told you.
Most people, I'm talking to Stu, who you know is my producer on the show.
He said to me today when I came in and I talked about it on the air, he said, I would have never said any of that stuff.
He said, I would have just hidden it.
And I said, that's what makes us weak.
We hide things.
Maybe it's because we don't want to stick out or we're ashamed or whatever.
But when people are truly vulnerable and honest...
Other people learn, oh wow, you're just like me.
I'm struggling with something like that, or I've had something like that, or I know somebody.
And all of a sudden we see ourselves in other people, even people we don't like.
And that's what social media has killed.
It's killed vulnerability because everyone's invincible on social media.
Everybody's perfect.
Mm-hmm.
It's a projection, and it's literally a projection of artifice covering up what is true, which is actually true vulnerability.
It leaves no space for that.
You know, the thing I'm saying, Glenn, is as long as, and I'm reflecting on, is for as long as we have a boundary between the online world and the offline world, in the offline world, we better darn well figure out How we fortify that hole inside, because that's the last best chance.
What you described is not, I mean, that's a future that's coming.
But I think fortification of the actual soul and the purpose and meaning that we starve for, that might be our last best chance to protect ourselves.
And maybe I'm in a mood, I came from a room full of pastors here in Iowa, where we spent the last two hours talking about, you know, faith and the loss of it in our country.
But Boy, it makes me think that we don't...
It's like the analogy was when the Israelites are lost in the desert, right?
They go back and bend the knee to the Pharaoh.
Maybe we don't just complain about the Pharaoh.
Maybe we ask us what it is that makes us want to bend the knee.
And that might actually be our closest path out because we're not going to change whether the Pharaoh's there or not.
I think we're both in the same maybe headspace kind of today.
You coming out of that and me coming out of what I am.
But I think this is...
The most important thing.
I really like your candidacy, Vivek, because you're talking about the real issues, not the bullcrap Republican-Democrat issues, but the things that we all know are wrong and the common sense things to fix them.
We've entered this world of experts and And this has been by design.
It started, you know, back around the turn of the century and Woodrow Wilson.
He wanted experts to run everything because we're scientific.
And we have gotten to the place where it's follow the science.
There's no such thing as the science.
Science is constantly changing and learning, and it's dependent on people questioning science and the answers.
And we have done this in every shape and form.
We've done it with parents.
I don't know.
I should go talk to a doctor.
I should talk to a psychiatrist on what...
I mean, there's places for that.
But books from so-called experts are giving us all of the advice, and we take it as absolute gospel...
While dismissing the actual gospel and dismissing those things that are inside ourselves.
We keep belittling ourselves and giving it to the experts.
And I would ask Vivek, and this is what I like about you, is...
You know, there's a reason to talk to experts, but you talk to experts and you take the best of what they have to say and the things that make sense, challenge those things that you don't understand, and maybe they clear up that, and you leave behind the stuff that you don't think they have right.
And you make the decision.
You, the individual, makes the decision.
Instead of saying, well, the experts tell us that inflation is not real, that it's just transitory, and they now tell us, the people who created this transitory situation, they now tell us we should do X, Y, and Z to make sure it doesn't get worse.
Tell me the last time an expert was held up by the government or mainstream media that has been right.
Because I can't think of one.
That's right.
And what does right even mean if that's maybe correct, even if it wasn't the correct methodology for settling a question that was actually normative?
And they always say, do you have a degree in that?
No, that doesn't mean I'm a moron that I don't.
That's right.
And it's like our founding fathers.
It's the same thing.
Franklin stove, lightning rod.
Correct.
Swivel chair of Thomas Jefferson.
And that's kind of what we need to revive.
Do you know what George Washington's Achilles heel was?
No, I don't.
He never went to a university.
And he always felt inferior.
He always felt like, I don't really know because I didn't go to a university.
That guy was indispensable.
Without him, we don't have a country.
He had no reason to feel that way.
Read his farewell address.
It's like at the 26th grade level.
Of course.
Yeah.
So, he was fine.
Yeah, and so was Thomas Jefferson, and so was everybody else that invented the things that they weren't supposed to invent.
Glenn, you give me inspiration every time we talk.
And I am so grateful that you took some time even knowing what you're going through.
But I think it is actually helpful to everyone who you will touch for you to be as open as you have been, because you're not the only one going through what you're going through.
And it is a service to the country to be able to at least actually be willing to share it, because so few people are.
Thank you.
There's something...
Thank you.
There's good in everything, depending on how we react to it.
And there's got to be some good that comes out of this.
And right now, the only good I can think of is telling people, you're not alone.
You're not the only one going through it.
It happens to everyone.
And money doesn't make it better.
Fame doesn't make it better.
We are all the same.
And you're not alone.
Thank you, Glenn.
I appreciate it.
I'm Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for president, and I approve this message.
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