David Barnhizer | Conformity Colleges, Education Infiltration, & Weaponized Compassion

00:16 Bad puppet masters, almost surely have a plan There's clearly maybe something there beyond the room So you've thoroughly tested every last constructed view You know that let us really do Without THC We know they're lying to us Just don't hold too much agreed Without THC The hearts are gentle

00:59 Here we go, Hiresight Chatters. From the Sunshine State I'm Greg Carlwood and these days it's easy to feel like ulterior motives and secret agendas are behind pretty much everything. Motivations are complex and less obvious and so many forces seem to be trying to control how we think speak and act all while gaslighting us about how it's in our own best interest You might not know exactly what they're up to, but they're up to something. And one of the best examples of such things and one of the major footholds in what seems almost like a slow moving coup is the American university system and the fertile ground it's provided for woke ideology critical race theory DEI initiatives then ESG scores and the common criticism of anyone who challenges this apparent sacred doctrine

01:51 is to shame them, label them a racist and bury them in a cancellation avalanche. We've all gotten a whiff of this in the air but it's sometimes hard to measure just how big a problem it really is so often it can feel like an exaggerated concern of the right about the progressive left But today we have David Barnheiser with us, who has been a committed civil rights and social justice lawyer throughout a long and successful career. He is currently professor of law emeritus at Cleveland State University. He received law degrees from Ohio State University where he graduated summa cum laude and from Harvard University where he was a Ford Foundation Urban Law Fellow and a Clefver Clinical Teaching Fellow and earned a master's of law degree

02:39 He's worked all over the world, from being a visiting professor at the Westminster University of Law in London to a special international consultant with the Mongolian government's Ministry of Sustainable Development. And if that wasn't enough he is also the author of books like The Artificial Intelligence Contagion Can Democracy Withstand the Eminent Transformation of Work Wealth and the Social Order? The Uncanceling of America and his most recent Conformity Colleges – The Destruction of intellectual creativity and dissent in America's universities. Well, let's get into it! The infectious ideology diagnoser educational infiltration identifier and weaponized equality informer David welcome to the higher side thanks very much of course thanks for doing it so I have a good relationship with Skyhorse Publishing and when they first told me about your book my initial reaction was that

03:35 This topic is very well trodden ground in the podcast world and I didn't know if we needed to dedicate a full show to it. But then, I listened to one of your previous interviews and not only did I learn a lot of things that I didn't know but you're someone who has been a lifelong liberal, a civil rights lawyer, a person who has used their expertise to serve underprivileged communities And you're saying that this woke stuff is a massive problem, even saying a war of attrition is being waged on us. And so I thought well this is interesting this is not your typical left versus right alarmist kind of argument

04:13 And that's probably a great place to start. How do you compare and contrast the principles that you've been dedicated to for most of your life with what you're calling out in the book? Because, to some people it can be hard to separate the two. I'll try! One book that you didn't mention. Can you see that, Greg? I can defending K through 12 education against the new racism. Right. That is part of what I'm talking about. I'll expand on that. There's another one. No more excuses parents defending K through 12 education and the thing that you mentioned 600 pages

04:58 cutting across with 600 examples of in journalism, universities business government regular education social activism people who are Lying about what they're doing and you already touched on a lot of this. They're lying about what they're doing They hide it they take pride in hiding that what they're doing, and if they get called on it they use projection psychological projection and they push it. And you're the bad guy! How dare you do that? I've dedicated as you said much of my life to social justice issues against racism. I hate racism. I consider it a mental disease well the people who are suffering from the mental disease right now are the left and the progressives

05:51 And that's really what it is. They are using racism, but then they'll say well we can't be racist it's all the problem and the doing of white people in white supremacy and so we're just victims of this So you come up with victimhood You come up with shaming We come up with accusations of bigotry and racism and sexism They're just inventing these things as they go along It's really I know you've heard of George Orwell, but the idea at the core of what is going on is the seizure of language. There are a number... Noam Chomsky and Daphne Petit, a number people, Ruth Anshan, people from 40-50 years ago if they're writing, they saw what was going on but people didn't want to listen to them. But what their thesis is, if they seize the language

06:48 and then they shame you into using their language. Well, we see the world and we create the world or visualize the world through our language. Ruth Anshan who's a famous linguist analyst said what people don't understand is that we are the language we use we become the language that we use. And so what you see going on in a lot of these movements is to force you to use their language because that affects your conceptual interpretation of the world, So they either shut you down or they convert you because you no longer use language that you fairly think describes reality They're trying to reconstruct reality for you

07:34 And that was one of the bases, historically when the progressives and the European deconstructionists came in. They said well there is no truth. Truth is a social construct and you know there's a little bit of truth in that but the reality is we have to choose a truth But the thing about the university and education, education in the universities are vehicles and mechanisms and methodologies by which we help people understand the range of consequences, good or bad kinds of truths that we choose. Now I grew up at a time in school even grade school when everything was said the Pledge

08:18 We studied the Declaration of Independence. We quoted the idea of the fundamental ideals, this is something that in grades in our grade at the beginning of the day we would do that and you hear the idea liberty and justice for all right? Well I believe in it! I always have and that has driven me to that because I hate people getting denied opportunity that they're capable of achieving if they're just treated with dignity as a legitimate person, a legitimate human being. The skin thing makes me sick you know? I have a very good friend who's former president of Texas Southern University

09:03 And he's black, and I even hate using that word because until this stuff, I don't define myself as white. I define myself as a person you know? And I define other people as person but guess what in the activist community that now exists if you say what i just said your racist You're not allowed to say I hate racism Yeah, it's a very weird place that we're in. Obviously if you go into some of the esoteric type of stuff that other episodes of this show go into like were primarily consciousness, you come into this world, you can't control the meat suit that you're in but yet you don't want to be colorblind because it's pretty clear that the meat suit urine and the color of it does affect how you navigate through our society and the situations that we're in but

09:55 With a lot of this stuff, I feel as if there's a lot of useful idiots. There are a lot of well-intentioned good meaning naive people that are kind of being co-opted and those feelings are being weaponized, and they're almost like destroying their own opportunities. Their own heritage? I mean it's just a little weird when i see so many... And not to even make it all about race but I see a lot of white girls, young girls and even white men that are like no we do have to destroy this white society. I'm like you're white! You're in a college right now which is a privilege that a lot of people don't get. I had to drop out of college because i saw the ballooning costs and didn't really see how I was going to get to the end of the road and be better off for it but it's just weird that a lot of people in what I consider somewhat privileged situation

10:53 in a society that is not that bad for them are saying, burn it all down. It's like have you been around the world? Do you know what that means? Like are you naive about how bad it can actually be because I don't think you really want what you're asking for and someone's manipulating you to advocate for those things. People need to believe in something religion for many people. I have my own faith of my own type but People need to believe in something. The religious impulse which had created an ethical structure and a sense of accountability, if you did something wrong you sinned right? Well the idea of sin anymore basically doesn't even exist for many people then it's disappearing fast so as we lose... And remember what I just said they don't teach

11:46 the patriotism, loyalty just the basic concepts of our constitutional democratic republic. They don't teach them in schools anymore I mean there are exceptions very few exceptions But they don't teach it and so the kids are never into that kind of a frame of reference So they get to a certain point and they are seeking answers They're seeking purpose their seeking meaning And nobody gives it to him so if somebody gives it to him It's like after the First World War, Germany was falling apart. So it became vulnerable to history's worst monsters and demagogues Adolf Hitler because he gave people even though there wasn't truth in the basis of it He gave people hope and the reason to believe in something

12:36 And that's the kind of thing partly that's going on right now and it can, you know... The next year or so we'll figure out whether is gonna get worse to the point of disaster. There are indications there is some pushback now. Absolutely! I see those indications. Yeah and what you're doing with people who you get any message out too That is vital because there has to be. There has to be push back Because the intentions of the people who are doing this, they don't know what their goal... what they would do if they were in total control. They just want the power to be in total control. It's all about power for them! Power and a sense of purpose and then it makes him feel big okay? Makes him feel part of something

13:22 And then for a lot of the urban kids, the flip from the 1960s when three quarters of what we'll call black families in our cities were intact. They were intact! They had the nuclear family structure whether it was full marriage or something else it was a family with fathers with that in it after the Great Society, which I thought was great because well it was a legal services civil rights lawyer and they announced it. And you listen to the rhetoric that's how you as a young man...I was vulnerable in that sense..you listened to the rhetoric and he thought you had a vehicle to make life better for so many people who had that opportunity. The war on poverty and Great Society well that was something which

14:08 terribly ended up undermining the black family. It is now flipped to the point where instead of 75%-80% nuclear in the 1960s, it is now the same percentage essentially reversed where you basically have no nuclear family and you have a bunch of young females who should never have had those children at the time they had it, but they get fed by The Great Society and The War on Poverty. So it's an incentive to actually do something. And people know any study that has ever been done in the United States shows that the economic

14:53 Good of a nuclear family is very important thing for young people to develop. Absolutely, you know the upper crust they treat marriage almost like a business arrangement we are combining two prominent families our resources will now be joined and We're gonna dominate and we're gonna help each other And yes, you need a little bit of a team to get ahead. I know people who are in their mid thirties that are single and live alone and it's devastating to them compared to just people who make less money but at least married to someone else who also makes a little bit of money It's really wild and i definitely don't want to make this all like about left vs right ideologies but there are some

15:36 conservative black commentators that are pretty well known online now, that will say things like it's actually the Democrats. The liberal policies that have held back Black America and they're the true racists because they have the white savior complex. They think we need to be coddled and not cuddling keeps people down. The welfare thing like you better not make too much money or this check goes away so that keeps people below this poverty wage. And also you have the whole hip-hop archetype, the whole genre which has made it cool to be promiscuous and don't raise your kids just knock up a bunch of chicks and just move on I mean that's living the good life! These things do have an effect

16:24 You also kind of have to sometimes realize that there's a lot of people trying to manipulate you, but without some kinda guidance when you're young, you're not gonna learn that. And then you make the mistakes that change your life forever and then you can't really go back. So yeah I have a lotta empathy for people stuck in situations without good guidance. That kinda brings me to one of the issues in the book that I think is really interesting. There's a part where you talk about how this does actually filter down in the K through 12 ages, the really much more impressionable ages. A lot like you know the book titles you held up well there's a quote here where you're talking about uncanceling America and some of your other work and all the examples that you digested in this research and you say that there is a perception that it's almost like a little

17:17 thing with teachers and kids, and the kids are getting this thrill at being able to put one over on their own parents. Like here's this little truth that we share about how the world works and like who screwed it up? And your parents are kind of part of the problem. Let's not tell them about what we're doing here at school." That really creeps me out because it's like the state or states sponsored teachers, agents of the state turning kids against their own parents. That's messed up." Talk to us a little bit about the degree to which that's occurring in uncanceling America but all even there are examples of that and it's not just the kids, the teachers and even some of the school boards and the administrators they're the ones that tell each other well don't show them what you're doing

18:12 We'll say we're doing this, but just keep doing what you were doing. And what they were supposedly doing... There's a quote in Uncanceling somewhere for a Philadelphia teacher who admitted I'm trying to transform, I'm trying to undermine and try and destroy the values here so that we open them up to our values And our values, not my values but the values they're talking about is undermining the entire system because they don't want the nuclear family. You go to Soviet communism you go to the Red Guard in China They destroyed...they targeted the parents They targeted not only that but the teachers They targeted them because they wanted to break the bond The familial bond

19:04 and they wanted to make the party, the family. And now you have a situation where a major part of what's going on in major urban areas if you don't have a father then your mother is just some uneducated young girl who is out her depth and didn't even want to deal with the child often something like that. And the grandmothers who had provided 15 20 30 years of moral strength to those lingering family structures, they've died off. So the support mechanisms, the people who will give... They will model the right way to do things are dying. They're either dead or they've gone and now you're- The gangs are the new family. Now how you fix that? Because you're not even allowed to talk about what I just said

20:01 because then you're criticizing the people who are running the politicians were running those cities and not only the schools but the cities themselves, because it means they failed and so many people self-censor because they're afraid of the hammer coming down so. Like you say, you can't talk about it. And then even if you could, you're like, well maybe I just shouldn't and so the problem just keeps carrying on and the reason I brought up those black commentators that are conservative is because they just made me think about things a lot differently because I grew up liberal in Missouri really just cause it was the counter reaction to everyone else. I was around. I was like, you know, if you're all like this, I'm going to be like that. And you're young. So you just kind of

20:45 I think when you're young, as they say if you're not liberal when you're young. You have no heart if you're not conservative when you're older, you have no brain. I think there's a little truth to that but also things have morphed and changed so much but it was interesting you brought up religion and morals because someone expressed to me the symbol of Saint Michael holding the flaming sword like I grew up Catholic and these symbols are around and I rejected a lot of that That is a symbol of like creating a barrier. The flaming sword says, no this is where the line is of permissiveness and self-discipline and these sorts of things. And we don't go beyond this line because then it just turns into a bunch of drug fueled orgies in society collapses. It made me think about the dark side of what I always have claimed to be liberalism progressive

21:36 There should be a line somewhere, or the system does fall apart. The nuclear family does have value. The things conservatives said in my small rural town do make sense in the end." Yeah Greg there is a line they do have a line. The problem is the line has drawn anyone who wants to stop them or condemn what they're doing that's the line Because their line is we get to do anything we want and you better not interfere or you're a bad person Mm-hmm. And in terms of this movement You write about some colleagues that actually tried to recruit you into the critical legal studies movement for this overall mission We're talking about back in 1972 and they told you point blank that this was all about

22:28 Marxism and socialism so this idea that people say that today another people like oh no you're exaggerating. No i mean they told you this point blank is a thought that you are gonna be on their side but talk to us about that and just how far back this goes cuz it's not anything Well, the organized. You know people talk about how it might go back to John Dewey and even some others in the early 1900s but as an organized thing remember we had two world wars that disrupted a whole lot of stuff? We had the civil rights movement come in which actually drove a lot of the impetus for some of this but the real thing that did come out... The reason I put the critical legal studies

23:14 aspect in there is that really then over a period of 5-10 years, it started at Harvard Law School. Duncan Kennedy, Derrick Bell they're nice people! That's crazy but they're nice people but they got in their mind that and there are problems of racism. There were a lot back then, absolutely and so they were legitimately talking about doing it but the only alternative they apparently had as a structure of ideas that would draw people was to go to European deconstructionism and that had been in the post-World War II and really had moved into there are a lot of really good thinkers but they took number of those ideas

24:03 such as there is no real proof on things, so you have to choose. And the idea that this what has been called the men of words, the way men of words use those words to undermine systems that they're attacking, to try and transform them and weaken their fundamental ideals – that's what happened to us or is happening to us. But anyway, CLS, critical legal studies still remains to some extent in some law schools, but it became spread throughout the universities and became critical race theory. And at the same time in the women's movement took off in 1968-1969 and if you look at the...and I've done a comparison, I think its in the book..if you look at

24:55 mission statements that stated by the women's movement in 1968-69 when it started getting foothold in universities. And the universities were discriminatory, racially and gender-wise. They were so I'm not going to deny that there were justifications for creating strong movements and the question is was it the right movement? It was certainly the right issues but was it the right movement and did it have the right tactics and techniques and strategies? So the ideals were valid of what they wanted to do how they did it was invalid

25:33 It was a takeover of universities and moved into the rest of the universities, into other disciplines. And it became they invented new kinds of courses that then allowed them to hire under affirmative action policies women who would then go in and teach new gender-based courses in social studies that they invented themselves almost all of which because those standards I'm mentioning explicitly say there's a serious issue with white men just as the DEI's mission statements say the same thing. So they began with an assertion of white men were the problem, and to a significant extent there was... As I said a moment ago, there is a lot of blame to put on white men not now

26:24 but white men who comfortably dominated those systems at that time. And they absolutely no longer dominate those systems, in fact they're lucky they get a job in those systems. That's how far it has flipped because it's hard for a white male to-no matter how brilliant you might be-to get hired at this point. You had a major influx of historically marginalized people, whoever falls into that category of gender and race and ethnicity or sexual preference or the like. You have that and they moved over it took 20-25 years

27:04 since the 70s. And they moved into the faculty positions, they created new kinds of courses having to do with why they were victimized and done badly and then they became not only the faculty but the administrators of the universities. Then you see the massive expansion it was gradual but the massive expansion of the DEI and affirmative kinds of departments University of Florida just under state law, just had to stop funding DEI. And they admitted that they were spending $5 million a year in terms of the people they had hired and salaries and the like. That's very common amongst all the major universities

27:50 We are talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars going into DEI programs that were, and are the vehicle for control in universities. And that's at the same time that universities around the country it's their reducing the amount of tenure track faculty, you know one was security lifetime security if you prove yourself early on that reducing number of faculty that are in on the tenure track saving money that way but also being able to hire adjuncts.

28:26 who are temporary and also hire term contract faculty teachers who can turn over fairly in terms of replacement if they do not do what they, and they know that even though their belief says they know if they want to stay in the system. They have to comply with the dominant ideology and the language. Yes, and so much of what you're saying it makes a lot of sense this is a great overview and assessment of the problem So many things we talk about on this show boil down to problem reaction solution in this template where yes there is a problem here but then you rile people up

29:06 to get a reaction and then you know the system comes in with its own solution which makes the problem worse or helps them accomplish your goal they already had in mind before they made people aware of the problem. So I do think there's a lot of that in this and yes, there was an imbalance for a lot of history. I know someone it makes me roll my eyes every time i see them but this girl has a bumper sticker that says Lord give me the confidence of a mediocre white man And im like yeah yeah theres a little truth to that but also In this culture, get that off your car. Who are you married to? You're married to a mediocre white man so let's just calm down with targeting people that are in our lives so intimately but again another thing I say sometimes is what some people call conspiracy is oftentimes just good business like he mentioned with the tenure track of teachers and dismantling that an instead

30:05 before people reach tenure, just getting rid of them and then hiring these termed contract teachers. It's like wow this is really bad because you would think that you would want the most educated the most experienced people the wisest wisdom of our elders right? You would want this to be imparted on the youth but instead your getting these people who are just temporarily there regurgitate the message teach from the book don't go off script you know i mean that kind of thing like do not go off script And yeah, on one hand you can say well this is a money making operation. Same with what you said about the liberal arts gender studies women's studies sorts of degrees it's a business so they're there to churn out like hey do you want to go down this path? It'll be great! You'll give us $80 000 and at the end of it you'll be an expert in women's studies I don't know what career you'll get but sure So yeah there's a lot of this stuff that

31:03 If you wanted to stay in denial and keep your head in the sand, you could just be like well this is just business run amok. But I wanted to drill down on who is really driving this at the apex because we've kind of talked about it as a mind virus like there's people and kids impressionable people that are captured by this ideology almost like they're in a cult But who is the cult master? Where is the money coming from? You mentioned a war of attrition. Well, who's really waging the war? Who are the generals in this war at the real top of this pyramid because that's sometimes hard to really pin down, because even the administrators sometimes seem like they're just captured by a bad idea. So who is in the lab manipulating this idea? This mind virus and setting it forth on our good-hearted people? I mean their group of people let me put it this way over a century ago you had a major

32:08 civil rights, black man, civil rights leader Booker T. Washington who described what he called the grifters in the black political community and he said no matter what you do they don't want to heal racial divisions because that stirring them up is how they make money They get a leadership sense of themselves but they make a lot of money I mean, if you take Ibram X. Kendi originally might think was Henry Rogers but it's much more street cred if you're in that community if you sound African so he can point to that he gets automatic benefits from that

32:54 You have the woman from Hannah Jones, Nicole Hannah Jones 1619 project that The New York Times did and is being used throughout our K-12 system in many classes as a teaching vehicle. The issue is there are individual figures You have Lloyd Austin, who's somehow managed to come up with 20 extremists in the entire US military after spending millions of dollars trying to identify who and get rid of the extremists in the US military. Well I think Lloyd Austin is... To me he's an extremist and a bigot And number those people are you have Salazar or Cardona Who's the Secretary of Education

33:43 He prided himself before he came there. He was the Secretary of Education in Connecticut, and he prided himself on creating that state's first DEI system. He is very proud of it. So the point is there are leaders You can point to a number of them. Many of them are making good money from it, there are leaders in terms of the DEI administrators and the women's power administrators in universities because they get very significant salaries and perks, and they continue to drive this process but you will find that almost any area you will find people who are doing that and their names have a number of men, The Uncanceling Book

34:32 I'll put it in terms of how deep it goes. Probably 35 years ago, I decided at the law schools, the national law schools they have an annual conference just for fun. I went to a session of the women's studies group there were about 80-100 women in the meeting and I was sitting in the back part of the way through they're starting to make statements and a female teacher I knew and nice She's going in and she just stops what she is saying, and said to the group. Now let me get straight we're all leftist aren't we? And everybody in the room start nodding I didn't nod my head but 80-100 women were saying yes! We are leftists

35:26 But this is what is going on in most of America's academia. And the thing that you're talking about, it has reached a point where it is occult and it's almost not necessary. You can have a few voices but it is so deeply penetrated the systems I use plural in that the K through 12 systems, the teachers who are now in there many of them, the older ones are retiring because they can't take this The newer ones, last two decades. The newer ones were trained and educated in the university and their teaching degrees by the people we're talking about it's like a self-reinforcing system they now teach that K through 12 sometimes sneakily sometimes overtly they teach the kids

36:21 before they even get to college. A lot of them are sort of half brainwashed by the time they get to college and then they can finish it off there, and some of them go back in for their mission, they go back into the teaching system or they go into the corporate system where they go into a non-governmental organization that purports to be trying to do good and sometimes is What I'm saying, it's sort of a revolving system. And Victor Davis Hanson you probably know who he is with the Hoover Institute. Okay? He's brilliant guy but he said when he's asked how this occurred and why didn't anybody know about well, he said it came in gradually slowly Build up and just like a tsunami It comes along it doesn't seem like much and then all of a sudden its overwhelming

37:14 and that's really where we are right now. The good part is this, the only good part... remember COVID? Barely yeah I think i remember a little thing called COVID Yeah that little thing called COVID We wouldn't even be having this debate if COVID hadn't happened government overreach hadn't been exposed ultimately eventually and how it's being used but the key thing the remote learning, when they shut the schools and broadcast Zoom classes into people's homes so they could see what their grades K through 12 kids were in fact hearing. And the distortions of what they thought was happening in education and finding out that their kids are being deliberately radicalized

38:07 And they're saying, what the hell is going on here? Because we took our universities and our schools and our teachers as credible legitimate trustworthy human beings. And then all of a sudden, we found they were running a game on us. Yeah two operations kind of got in the way of each other and bumped heads and exposed each other Well, I wanted to ask you this. So we talked about who's driving it and who are some of the generals and the fact that it is just kind of such a pervasive ideology that once it gets in the heads of some of these people like they get this

38:47 nobility complex and they're like, I'm doing a good thing and there's no way I'm wrong. And they just go forth and carry out the mission. It does suck because a lot of people who seem most susceptible to that are young liberal females who become teachers. Young liberal females! So i don't know if we're going to get this influx of conservative white men grade school teachers but somehow there has gotta be a correction But I wanted to ask you about real goals There are the surface level things that we're talking about and seeing, but there are deeper agendas and goals underneath some of this stuff. And you have a section titled The Woke & Critical Race Theorists Want to Do Away With

39:31 the white oppressors tools like rationalism, the rule of law and private property ownership. And therein lies some of the end goals and we do see it with young people thinking their truth is the truth people stealing in mass because they feel entitled and they feel like they'll never get ahead so why shouldn't they just go get theirs? Then you have the authority figures, the prosecutors who are soft on crime that are justifying and basically giving them every reason and every incentive to just steal $999 worth of stuff from any store everyday. And

40:12 There is this old phrase that I think about a lot. The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth, and I think that applies here. There's so much economic hopelessness that young people are willing to and being encouraged to torch at all. And you mentioned COVID biggest transfer of wealth ever, I think You gotta look at that stuff. It's like the billionaire class, the politicians every corrupt person in power they have

40:48 some responsibility here. It's kind of like the chickens coming home to roost, you have created a situation where a young person looks up and says I don't know how i'm ever going to navigate this homeownership is out of reach every job pays a low wage college costs are insurmountable so fuck it let's just burn it all down let's go with our road roving gang and go steal from the CVS and sell it out of the back of the truck. Let's take drugs, let's sell drugs, let's do whatever! Let's get an OnlyFans account going!" People are so desperate that its hard to look at the system as you've seen when you were my age

41:31 and say, no if I just work hard and get a good degree and get a good job. I'll rise to the top and make six figures a year in my family of four will have a good upper middle class life so it's like I almost empathize with some of these people who want to destroy it all because where is the hope? Where is the opportunity? I don't think it works the same way for a 15-year old today looking at the next 30 years of their life versus you know when you were fifteen Like you could see the path. I don't know if they can see the path today, you know what i'm saying? I don't know in terms of our leadership that there is a path. I mean that's how dismal it is. You mentioned at the beginning book I wrote with my son Daniel who teaches at Michigan State, The Artificial Intelligence.

42:30 In that, and I still do. The publisher wants me to write a sequel or new edition but I don't know that I'm going to. I do a lot of work on what's happening with AI robotics and jobs. And the reality is that people are just... There are massive projections by the International Monetary Fund and a number of other organizations in private researches about how enormous the job loss, future job loss to AI and robotics will be. We are not getting an honest analysis from our leaders on that if you go to the Biden administration that is the single worst stupid collection of people who think they know what they're doing but don't know

43:28 I mean, they can't lead anything. They can't focus on the fact of how we regenerate there are multi aspects in this how we regenerate as you say How do we create a sense of hope in our young people? And You have to have people like you and I could sit down and I know a number of other people We could sit down and say give us the ability and power To design some systems that at least may not solve everything but can make inroads you know, because you can talk to each other. The thing I didn't send you...I went about three weeks ago Jeffrey Tucker who is president of the Brownstone Institute and i would place him along with Victor Davis Hanson. I'll send you the report I just did off the top of my head on this he did a retreat where 35 people were invited up in Connecticut

44:22 under the brownstone auspices and The goal was you had doctors lawyers teachers business people Reporters whole thing people who had a demonstrated ability and willingness to talk about these issues Across boundaries. And so you identify them what happens as you said earlier on People don't they keep down this program this retreat was operating under what they call the Chatham House rules where you can write about what happened there, but you can't mention anybody's name in terms of who said what because there is this constant problem of suppression point-of-view or fear that the wrong people are going to misinterpret their deliberately or inaccurately negligently Misinterpret what you said and then you have to deal with all the other thing in terms of that Anyway I wrote up a little report on it which I could send you. It's on their website

45:23 But that's the kind of thing we need. We don't have that right now, we have lockstep, we have cultism, we want power and you guys are bad and so we don't want to even share it with you too much but now so we need policies take it away from I used to work for Natural Resources Defense Council off and on, did a lot of work with them in DC in the international program. Worked on climate change which was called global warming back then in the early days and it became so obvious that the computer models back then and still are in many ways invalid

46:07 They're covering so many things up about it and that they're not really looking at the solar cycles, the solar cycles that changes the geologic like the Iceland volcano that now blew up. That happens periodically there deliberately they've locked into this mantra of human cause climate change I'm not saying we didn't contribute a little bit to it. And pollution, pollution is the thing! Yeah, pollution absolutely. I try to focus on pollution and the fact that that needs to be changed less plastic everywhere less bullshit spewing into the air that's one thing... and in does yeah but yeah you made me nervous there for a second you brought up climate change i'm like oh no he's we had all this goodwill and now the audience is going to be upset but no you're right

46:56 a minority opinion for people to actually say, you know those models are flawed just like COVID the models. They are very flawed and they have been I mean that's how we started you brought up the AI book it's these computer models that become the new gods that give us like Here's the trajectory. You better do something and no, it's just not true but it's created to facilitate... It's the problem reaction solution thing all over again. It's like- It's a religion? Yeah! The cabals or whatever, the real movers and shakers are saying where do we want to take society and then how do we give them the computer model to make them think that's where we're going and then we just go right along. It is a long game

47:41 And there's been a lot of corruption over time in the way they play with the data. The people doing this have no understanding, as you now see with the EV car debacle that's taking place where people just aren't buying it. They just don't understand economic dynamics They don't understand geopolitical aspects with China, particularly buying up resources all over the world and then forcing. And themselves if climate change is fundamentally human they're forgetting the fact that China is expanding fossil fuel use massively and so is Russia and so as most of Eastern Europe with brown coal kinds of things

48:25 So that's the whole thesis of what we're being fed on climate change. Remember, I started out working on this totally thinking you know my god and then as more I got into it it became very obvious that people again running a game and it locked in and the kids they're feeding the kids in K through 12 They're feeding them the steady diet of you need the social justice warrior to fight against the capitalist system that has destroyed wealth in a country. That's why everybody wants to come here, right? The system that gave you a pretty decent childhood... You know if you're talking to people who are 15 years old 18 years old it's like

49:12 What was so bad for most of you? What was so bad. It wasn't, yeah that's what's so weird to me but I just wanted to say on the electric cars there is also the thing we talked about your section that these people want to remove the white oppressors tools like rationalism rule-of-law and private property ownership there is that world economic forum thing You will own nothing and you'll never be happier The electric car is also a controller's wet dream because you can only go so far, the range is limited. You got this talk about 15 minute cities? Oh you're never gonna need to leave the city!

49:50 passports and like more controls about being able to travel and that kind of stuff. And it's like, yeah the electric car helps that I have friends who have electric cars we all at the time lived in Southern California and grew up in Missouri so there is a notion of going back home for the holidays my buddy has to map out how he's gonna get there He's gotta sit at a Hardee's for 45 minutes and I'm just like you just drive home But you know, you buy into it especially in Southern California. You buy into the whole vision and end up in that situation with a car that can be shut off remotely steered It's largely a computer. You can't take it to any auto body shop. It must go right to the Tesla

50:33 Factory to be repaired and that's backed up for six months so you can't it's a nightmare sold as a dream let's say but i want to fit this into the first hour which is really just the ideas themselves we often hear this movement described as marxism socialism in a few times in your book It's Maoist. Well, talk to us about why these ideas can seem appealing? Why some people get swept up in them but what they really represent under the hood? Why do these ideas sound good yet always fail? Just a quick anecdote I remember when i was like eight years old

51:08 I said to my dad, you know everybody should just share everything. And he's like that's called socialism and i thought i was the smartest person in the world that like oh if we just shared everything it'd all be good so i understand why naive young people get swept up in these ideas but elaborate on the ideas beyond just what they're called and what they really represent where do they lead? I believe in community The idea of community sort of an Aristotelian part But I am an individualist, you know in terms of... but it isn't. I did something with the Ayn Rand Society last week and we had this discussion but I believe in community strengthened by the quality of the people in that community which means well go Aristotelian and say he said

52:03 our responsibility is to become the best through our minds, through our hearts, through the caring. You know the things that you're talking about rational thought which was that idea of merit, the idea growth, the idea becoming the best person we can become as an individual and then most people who do that it makes overall community much richer and better because you're now working with people who are doing things to help, but also for themselves and in doing that helping. Now you take the ultra collectivists and when I talk about socialism when i talk about Marxism we talk about Maoism they promise fair power sharing participation and the like but as I said on a week ago to somebody

53:00 because I used to sit in teaching in Westminster, near the library that Marx would go and write Das Kapital. So you'd go in and I always envisioned that... And then I read it a long time ago, the reality is Marx had the French Enlightenment ideal of the human which was fundamentally good Well guess what? We're not! We are various things just like you mentioned hip-hop before and that driving people to be bad, to be stupid, to be vicious, to be greedy. And that element of us the dark side of our nature

53:42 The dark side of our nature is there and we have to have things within our culture that resist that dark side because we all have it. Yeah, the shadow! We all have a little bad thing inside us that is trying to get us to do that I'm not trying to philosophize. I'm just talking from experience okay? And anybody wants be honest you know, they have to. Well they thought they could overcome that the Maoist Marxists and then like I don't know if they actually thought that because The reality is in each of those systems They say they're going to create a wonderful system which everybody is equal and doing things together and sharing but they always never give up power the core group never give up power And always stay in power and always dominate and always become powerful and rich and everybody else's

54:34 below them. They're a complete contradiction in what they promise. I mean, even if you had the right people in place, a system like that only works with extreme centralization and I think that is like the core issue. I've been told by many people, like, If you want to fix things decentralize everything. A buddy of mine who's been on this show many times says, If you decentralize everything then when when corrupt people get into a position of power, maybe they'll just corrupt the regional school board instead of the largest military empire the world has ever known like the American government. The more you can decentralize, the more safety mechanisms you have in place for when little things get corrupted they don't become giant things that are insurmountable to unravel. Well James Madison

55:24 In the Federalist Papers, he talked about the inevitability of factions and how they always grew and they always fought with each other. The Constitution, our constitution is a device committed to the diffusion of power amongst different groups, amongst different kinds of institutions that no single... And that's why they didn't have a state religion or anything organization, federal or state or local had all the power or had the ability to have all that power. These guys are trying to grab all the power you know there's somebody who oughta talk too it'd be very interesting named Aaron Day D-A-Y he was at The Retreat He wrote this book... The Final Countdown Final Countdown he is worth talking to we talked a fair amount because he is talking about

56:25 He's not talking about the comet hitting us. He's talking about central bank digital currencies, where they then take control of our currency and can stop it hold it back know everything every transaction we do which is a major talk about diffusion of power, a major attempt to centralize power But he's very good and he's well worth you talking to. I appreciate that, i will look him up as well as some of the other people you've mentioned Jeffrey Tucker and Victor Davis Hanson so I mean, i've said this to a buddy the other day like America was a pretty strong place and if you had to break it You really had to try really super hard. And if you look around at what's going on? I mean people are trying to break it How can he look at it any other way and most others are being blind to it

57:18 Right. It's such a big empire, it's such a big force you can't really be subtle about trying to break it anyone who is even halfway paying attention should see it and its like yeah its off the rails at this point I know I gotta let ya go here soon in a minute I wanted slide into little more about AI cause you wrote this book 2019 and now AI also really caught up in the wokeness I just find it kind of interesting overlap given that 2019 It probably wasn't quite as obvious, but now you have plenty of examples of people asking chat GTP. Hey make me a joke about white people and it has no problem doing that they say make me a joke about any minority and it's like then you get a lecture about how that's wrong to do and you're not allowed to do it And then you have recently Google's AI art program would not generate pictures of white people even if you asked it to generate Vikings or America's founders They're all dark-skinned and it's like

58:13 This is weird. So clearly there's some overlap between the AI stuff and also look at Silicon Valley, I mean they're all the progressive liberals there too so you put the tools of Silicon Valley in the classroom you got a real recipe for disaster here it's going to be woke on steroids. So i'm just curious if you have any thoughts about that overlap between a book you wrote in 2019 about AI and this book you're writing now about wokism and how these two things are really synonymous. They're really tangled up together now. Yeah, the five books I've done over that period starting with AI and then unequaling and then the two on K through 12 and this on universities they're really a progression if you saw the book The Artificial Intelligence Book you'd see that a number of these issues are covered. The publisher says she was amazed at how prescient it has proved to be

59:12 You know, the government overreach. The loss of jobs. The effects of the internet. It describes big tech as a quasi-government because that's really what it is and working too closely... What it does show about Big Tech and Google and all the others is that the staffing and leadership are woke and they know what they're doing. They design things, censorship programs, what will allow Even then they were already designing it. There's admission in there by them, quotes that you can see from the people who were in those programs that wrote distorted algorithmic programs and so It's all part of the same thing And unfortunately one another thing that it says is and I hate to say it but You mentioned a hundred years or something The way we're going

1:00:08 The species could well, and I'm not doing conspiracy. But I'm saying it lays out in that book the way we're going is we're gonna destroy ourselves and AI is gonna help because in the hands of bad people which is really where it is. And again you have to understand how aggressive the Chinese, the Iranians, the Russians, and even the North Koreans are doing with their AI programs and targeting us more than anything, and the destruction of jobs. Think about the expense stuff we were just talking about in national government if there is 60 to 80% job loss that has recently been predicted for the US as a side effect of AI and robotics what the hell

1:01:01 are we going to do? And we have a population. One thing, we said that the world is experiencing lower birth rate okay they're also experiencing higher aging rate Pope Francis called what's going on the age curse and so people are aging medical care is keeping us alive longer but we need more support help and like so were more expensive unless you take them out like in an old Indian movie that Dustin Hoffman was on. In the Plains Indians, they take him out put him on a platform and let him die. Unless you do that, are going to keep them gone? We're already overburdened with resources. I mean what we face is something that I think is unprecedented.

1:01:50 I agree. And we have a system that benefits from people being sick and weak and dumb, and that's really hard to overcome obviously discernment in critical thinking are our best tools for even addressing the problems of today but even the problems of tomorrow We aren't aware of, we need these things and the only way to get them i guess is to instill them in our own inner circles friends family children because The system Is not giving us those things And we really nailed down a bunch of the problems, but you know we're talking to tens of thousands of people. Let's say we made the case to them is there anything individuals can do besides trying to just fine tune that discernment and critical thinking? Is there any way to take what we've been talking about and perform some sort of helpful action

1:02:42 I would go back to an example of what i described about the creation of a university pool, of Midwestern universities. If that occurred it can make a difference but also uh the reality is you have to use the internet for the purpose of getting just like the woke is doing getting enough people The problem with conservatives Is they feel their values they're not particularly good at working in activist groups. They can on a specific issue, but what we're talking about is a pretty comprehensive set of things you have to have... You can use the internet to create networks of people who will strategize think decide what the most effective way there is to act in a certain location

1:03:41 fund the political campaigns of good people on the local government level particularly, because a lot of the problem is there in the schools. Certainly in the school boards these administrators and some of those state representatives and legislators... There's so much to do! It's so weird because i sometimes think the only thing worse than a two party system is one party system and clearly it looks like we're going away of a big mono, thank monoparty and now i never thought i'd find myself strategizing how do we help the conservatives gain some ground but it is about balance like i would like to restore balance to the force you know so. Man

1:04:23 i have really enjoyed this i had a fun time talking about some kind of difficult things to talk about but it was enjoyable you wrote a great book and i think you are the right sort of person to deliver the message the messenger does matter and in this case, it's not some conservative person raising the alarm doing that chicken little thing about how bad progressives are. It's someone who has been a lifelong liberal, worked in civil rights who is saying this is not what I was doing. This is something else and it's been weaponized. And I appreciate that because i still try to hold the liberal ground, but I basically just am giving up at this point and it's like, ehh...I'm probably libertarian or something and that's fine. Well my son Dan is libertarian! You know? I guess I learned the lesson that the definitions of the labels can change so don't use labels. I'm just a guy. I don't answer for labels you said I was a liberal and I'm not. I'm somebody who believes in freedom

1:05:25 equality, opportunity. The whole thing that I was raised on that's neither liberal nor conservative it just is a set of values that I apply to specific situations. That's true, and that's wordy but it's how you have to get it across the people to chisel it down to where no one can interpret it the wrong way and it just can't be manipulated beyond what you've said so yeah, I'm right there with you and I appreciate you being here in the work you've done tell the people anything more you'd like to about your books website links future work you have planned The plug stuff

1:06:05 I don't know. I'm thinking of with my friend who was from Texas Southern, the former president we're talking about writing a book called Beneath The Skin which is you talked about the meat sack before he's black we were actually born the same day the same year where at the same age He's 10 hours older but i have it half written but i'm thinking of finishing that up with him. That's one of the projects I'm doing." Well, I think you should lean into that synchronicity for sure! The similarities there...that's a wink from the universe saying yeah do this! Synchronicity yes and reciprocity There you go

1:06:50 But synchronicity is good. Well, obviously you can get the books we've talked about on Amazon... Do you have a website or any sub stack you want to let people know about? No but Amazon has the pictures of them and everything Of course, I'd recommend the new one but my price this massive thing at $13. And it's like 600 pages? Yeah and i did it because you talked about this a lot...I designed it to show the totality in the cancelling aspect to show the totality of what is occurring and the specifics. It contains absolute specifics about what is going on and who is doing it." Yeah, and that's really smart strategically because we hear about these over-the-top examples and it's just like well how many school kids are really being separated into blacks and whites and slaves and slave masters and made to act out their role? How many kindergarten drag shows are there really

1:07:51 these things that it's like, you don't know. You hear about one example and the only way to figure out how bad it is to hear multiple examples so a book of 600 examples I think that's right on the money. I agree even if I wrote it. Well yes! You're doing great work in all of the amount of output that you have been able to do and I'm paralyzed by fear for the future but thanks for educating us and take care I'm paralyzed too, but i'll be gone before. Oh lucky you! Lucky you yeah and I hate to say that but yeah I understand all right well it has been a pleasure thank you i've really enjoyed it All right there we go good stuff and I thank David for his time and dedication to the issues he finds to be of the utmost importance And like I said in the intro this topic does make its way onto a lot of podcasts

1:08:49 I consider myself quite the connoisseur of comedy podcasts in particular. And it seems like from Joe Rogan on down, every other episode is talking about DEI ESG wokeism and cancel culture. And that is a good thing because it needs to be talked about and we need to make a major cultural course correction A lot of people think Shane Gillis hosting SNL was a shot across the bow of all this stuff and something that signaled a potential turning to the page. I hope that's true, but I kind of think that was just a classic case of a television network trying to capitalize on someone's popularity

1:09:36 But anyway, like I'll listen to Rogan and then Tim Dillon. And then even Theo Vaughn had Jordan Peterson on the other day and he ran through the whole thing from social credit scores to being locked out of banking to 15 minute cities. Yeah it's great to hear that sort of conversation make it onto one of the biggest podcasts in the comedy sphere but thats pretty deep conspiracy stuff as a podcaster myself I think Okay, well I want to be doing something different. Yeah doing conspiracy itself used to be different But now it's certainly bleeding over into these other kinds of shows and so i've been spending a lot of time Trying to bring you other things Dr.. Jack Cruz Patrick Harper Walter Bosley Matthew LaCroix These sorts of things and listeners seem to be happy It's all good but this woke dei

1:10:34 topic in particular is just getting a lot of airtime. That's all I'm saying and Coleman Hughes, who I do like is doing just a ton of guest spots pretty much everywhere, a podcast media blitz and these subjects are his bread and butter too but still I like David's tone and his career of fighting for civil rights it really makes for an interesting perspective to then be also sounding the alarm on this stuff There's no racist right-wing dog whistle or any of those kind of things that people tend to throw out as criticisms when people talk like this. And I thought we had a good time, we laughed, we cried and i appreciate his time." I mentioned this in the show but you really do need the system and reality to appear hopeless for this sort of ideology to take hold

1:11:31 If going to college, getting a good job and raising a family with an upper middle class life was still a clear vision? I don't think this ideological capture would work. So it really is a symptom of a larger problem that people want to chop the economic ladder down to firewood because they can't see how they could possibly climb it There is truth in it being more difficult to climb. And there is also truth in the fact that the youth seems to have a much more brittle spirit and weak will than previous generations might've had, but I should just shut up. I know that nobody wants to hear the podcaster that got super lucky pontificate about how nobody wants to work hard. Maybe all those Joe Rogan episodes are seeping into my brain

1:12:25 I've seen the Reddit comments. It's complicated, and we do often rage against the American empire here and the corruption in the fiat money system, military industrial complex, regulatory capture, runaway corporations... And it is very tough to see a solve when problems are this bad There is a lot that I don't like about RFK Jr.'s positions especially lately But he does spend many, many hours talking about the priority of fixing the regulatory capture problem and that would go so far in fixing a lot of things that I think THC fans would want to see fixed. Almost no one else in the political sphere even mentions that! All this is just to say we can have criticisms and want to improve this place where we live?

1:13:16 without considering it fundamentally evil or bad like a lot of these kids say it is. We can acknowledge the problems and also acknowledge the very impoverished state of many other places around the world that lack any sort of infrastructure at all! If you really think you want to tear down our infrastructure, visit a place that doesn't have one just watch some MrBeast philanthropy videos if you need to get a taste of it So when people want to burn the whole system down, but they don't even know how to build a birdhouse. I don't think they're equipped to rebuild society which is a point David made They want power for power's sake and they don't even know what they'd do with it when they get it We got to make sure this sort of thinking doesn't get out of control Many might say it's already out of control It's why we're having a conversation like this But we also have to consider who really benefits from sowing this sort of disdain

1:14:14 for their own society in a people, in a generation. It is more than a generation I mean there's plenty of people older than me captured by the same sort of thinking it's a liberal problem I guess we can just say that it's a big contingency of progressives and that shouldn't be controversial to say but I do think there's a problem with writing off one of the two parties Entirely because the only thing worse than a two-party system is a one party system. So we got to fix the liberals, We gotta find a way To walk a lot of this back Another example there's been a lot of snickering about groups like Gays for Palestine Because people will say well they would stone you in the street if they could and I'm sure some Palestinians would

1:15:09 But I'm also sure that like all religions, a lot of people are more tolerant than the scripture their faith is based on. It's also a powerful thing to show compassion and support for people who would not return that favor! But i bring it up because you can watch a lot of YouTube videos of these woke college kids being challenged and they fall apart over the simplest questions about their ideology They're so convinced they're living and breathing this stuff But they're truly in a bubble because you ask them some simple questions and they just stare blankly. Like it's a very paper thin ideology, and they're standing there on a very expensive well manicured college quad ranting that almost anywhere in the world is better than America yet they've never gone anywhere. And they don't realize that many places would never allow you to be as outspoken as you can be here

1:16:08 And in many places people are too worried about finding enough nourishment or clean water for the next day to hold up some sign about some perceived injustice. But great work from David and while I'm probably not going to revisit this anytime soon, I'm glad we really focused on it and added a damn good show to the archive i would say In the second hour, The Plus Show got into a lot of related threads. The major decline in STEM program graduates because they're too hard for Gen Z students. We talked about the best ideas for fixing these problems and this ideological capture the financial wall universities are facing that things David is actually involved in doing and a little about David's AI book and his other work

1:17:00 Sign up for the Hireside Chats Plus if you want to get the full episodes. The link is right there at the top of the show notes, throw me a bone for having one of the last remaining sponsorship free zero ad time podcasts out there and get more show for yourself but that's it and as we like to do let's talk about how the last episode was received by plus people and it looks like Dr Jack Cruz got a 4.5 which is lower than I would give him, but we had some sound difficulties and some people think his personality is a bit abrasive. So I'm sure those are the things keeping it shy of the top shelf material wise though. I really loved it and was really glad I got him on the THC record And now that I've drawn more attention to the voting system there have been a lot more questions about it

1:17:56 Yes, voting is only on the website. There is no way to get it into the podcasting apps that people are using and I recently also altered the colors because some people found it hard to tell if their vote was actually being logged On a computer with a mouse It's easy to scroll over the stars and see them change but on mobile you can't really scroll like that But just click on the number of stars you want to give a show and they will turn green. And then, you know your logged really shouldn't be too hard but 4.5 for the last one I'll take it We shall see how this one goes I hope most people appreciate where David is coming from even if they've heard a lot about this topic and i'd hate to see some people write him off as a right winger because They can't deal with the actual argument

1:18:48 It happens, but I hope it doesn't happen much with our audience. And finally let's do the meetup calendar thing! Today April 6th we got the Tallahassee Florida Meet-Up April 8th Huntington Indiana also April 8th Carbondale Illinois Those both look to be Eclipse meetups. And then April 12th, we have Golden Colorado. April 13th Philadelphia Pennsylvania. April 20th 420 at 420 London at the Monkey Puzzle and then wow May 12th We have a Salem Virginia Meetup at Parkway Brewing Company with The Plate Scrapers That is one I wish I could attend because I like The Plate Scrapers a lot

1:19:35 They did an original THC song and they also did my favorite version of the intro song. It's the bluegrass version, they kill it very talented musicians I am lucky that they like what i do because i like what they do May 12th Salem Virginia if you're anywhere in the area go see The Plate Scrapers And that's it! Very cool meet some new people put yourself out there community is where it all starts And I'll see you next time. Thanks again to David, I've done my part your move education infiltrators compassion co-opters and ignorant youth under ideological capture your fucking move