After Party with Emily Jashinsky - "Happy Hour": The Great Reset and Open Borders, Dolly Parton’s “Victor” Mentality, and the Problem with Algorithmic Social Media: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

On this week’s edition of “Happy Hour,” Emily Jashinsky reflects on Dolly Parton’s approach to empowerment and why her refusal to see herself as a victim offers a lesson for modern culture. That leads into a discussion about pessimism in America, the danger of becoming consumed by it, and how recognizing problems can be productive when it motivates people to act. Emily continues the debate over her support for a flat tax, including questions about write-offs and whether everyone should have the same “skin in the game.” She also explores the Great Reset, open borders, and global elites while explaining why she remains deeply skeptical of corporate welfare. Emily discusses assimilation, the importance of a shared culture, and her concerns about American companies becoming dependent on foreign labor. She responds to a listener’s challenge about independent media by detailing her own background in journalism, breaking news, and training younger reporters. Emily also explains why she tries to understand people with wildly different political positions. She discusses the desensitizing effects of violence, particularly when graphic images are constantly delivered through social media, and argues that future generations would be better off growing up without algorithmic social media. Emily also gets personal about what she enjoys doing in her free time, some of her favorite television shows, and whether listeners should send her gifts (don’t). She rounds out the show with conversations about abortion, Islam, what the future of Christianity could look like in an increasingly secular Western society, and more… Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to Happy Hour. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is our Friday edition of After Party where I answer all the emails you send in to Emily at devil makecaremedia.com. Thanks so much for all your emails. I appreciate it. And this is always a highlight of my week. You know, I think I said this on the show earlier this week. I love being able to correspond with you between emails and then just reading them live on the show. We do this live to tape. So that way I'm kind of of coming to all the emails fresh. And I just flag them in my inbox and go through them every single week in real time. So let's start here with one from Nats who says, what does your view on the U.S. government's decision to ban Palestine action as a terrorist group? I haven't heard much outrage about this, even though this will not only silence most conversation and critical thinking about the Middle East, but it will also set a dangerous precedent for any administration to ban any position slash organization that it deems inconvenient, most importantly, the term, quote, terrorist, is being used so very loosely, now it will soon

lose all meaning. Okay, I have to say, I don't know a lot about the specifics here. I can say broadly, I do agree that especially starting in the Biden administration, there was an effort to, well, I shouldn't even say starting in the Biden administration because some of this happened with entrapment schemes after 9-11, but during the Biden administration, there was absolutely an effort to expand the definition of domestic terrorist in a way that would allow them to surveil conservative groups broadly. And so I wouldn't, it wouldn't put it, it wouldn't surprise me. I'll put it that way. It wouldn't surprise me to see something similar had happened here. I think I'm always on guard about that happening, especially, for example, with the way that

the administration defined things like Ramesa Oz Turks op-ed in the tough student newspaper. calling for BDS, boycott divest sanction against Israel as calling for the school to enact a version of that as being a threat to national security. One of the reasons I actually thought the secretary, the secretary had the authority to do what the secretary did. Courts disagreed. I think it's a bad law. But I think in terms of the statute, Rubio had the ability to do that. But what bothered me is that broadening that definition then creates a precedent to say you're a threat to national security if you engage in that speech as a citizen. Because if you're saying that speech is a threat, why does it matter if it's coming from a non-citizen or a citizen? So I'm always on guard about those types of things. And it wouldn't surprise me if that's what's happened here.

I just can't say because I don't know much about Palestine action. I will also say, though, I don't know that it will sign. most conversation and critical thinking about the Middle East. That might be a little bit overstated. I might disagree. And I think that's a little bit overstated, Nats, respectfully. Because since this has happened, I think I did hear something about this happening a couple weeks ago. And it seems to me that it hasn't yet silenced even a little bit of the conversation and critical thinking about the Middle East. If anything, all of these efforts have backfired to quash criticisms of the U.S. government's policies in the Middle East or the Israeli government's policies in the Middle East,

they've all backfired. We've all seen the polling start going in the other direction. So I don't know that I'm worried that right now it's going to silence most conversation in critical thinking, but I'm open to the idea because, or I'm open to the idea that this was wrong. I would just have to know more about Palestine action. So something to look into. Thanks so much for the email. This is from Z, who passes along a link to some discussion about the history of Diego Garcia, the island where the U.S. bases its bombers. It says, I know this is really not, Z says, I know this is really not your thing. But if you're someone you know, may have interest solely as background material the next time all this heats up, your episodes this week were really great. Well, thank you, Z.

This is actually kind of my thing. I'm pretty interested in it. I'll take a look at this link. Yeah, the Diego Garcia and Chago stuff has been a complete, what's the best way to put it, a complete mess since the Iran war started. And actually, part of what was interesting is that when Iran launched missiles that got as far as Diego Garcia, people were saying, I covered it here at the time. People were saying, wow, this means Iran's long-range missile capacity can reach most of Europe. Like, that was further than a lot of people thought around had the capability to launch missiles. And so does North Korea, by the way.

North Korea basically has global long-range missile capacity. It can reach us right now. And so there's just like a way too little discussion about that probably in general. So let's go on. This is from Glendon, who says, as for Dobby, oh, this is something we covered not long ago. What resonates is his manumission from chattel slavery and the subsequent celebration of liberty, woven with masterful quill work through this children's series given space to breathe without the pacing constraints inherent to film, his heroic character arc.

So it makes his exit so tragic to the reader, but conspicuously not too naive viewers. Yes. Then Glendon writes, fantasy sci-fi as best investigating norley topics at a safe distance. That, I think, is really well said, Glendon. I was making fun of people, and I think appropriately, so, who were... becoming activists on behalf of Dobby's fake grave to prevent a pipeline. I think it was a pipeline, some piece of infrastructure from disrupting the beach where Harry Potter adults had been mourning the loss of Dobby. And I was mocking it and covering it just as an example of kind of the

arrested development among millennials and zoomers, which I think is a perfectly fair position. But that's not to say they don't have good reasons for the Dobby character resonating as a kind of really powerful Western plot point in one of the most powerful Western pieces of literature. Hate it or love it? And I happen to love it. I love Terry Potter as a kid. I know my mom read it with me as a kid, so I absolutely know that it's appropriate to resonate with adults. It's just obsessing to the point where you are agitating on behalf of Dobby's fake grave is a little much. but Glendon, I should have acknowledged, as you do here, the kind of beauty in the story in that segment,

because I think that's absolutely appropriate. Let's see. This one is a bit long. It is from Den, who suggests someone, me or someone on the staff, investigates the Christ Child Society, passes along a link. I just clicked on the link.

I'll take a look at it later. I don't know anything about that. this is from thank you for the email done appreciate it this is from fritz who says your exchange with morin calahan yesterday was like a healing balm for the many of us out there who are still discovering what it is remorning and what we've lost beyond the woman herself in the wake of dolly's passing morin's insight into that phenomenon still taking shape is one reason i love the balance of politics and cultural commentary your show maintains i actually can stop right there quickly fritz and just say i really appreciate that because one of the editorial conundrums of doing a show like after

party is how much daily politics to cover and how much deeper cultural commentary to cover. I gravitate more towards cultural commentary, but it's kind of abstract. And I also really like doing daily politics coverage. I lean towards some of these deeper cultural stories because I sense that's what a lot of the audience is interested in and almost uses the show sometimes as an escape from the rigorous daily news cycle that is bombarding us with serious stories constantly at such a rapid clip. So I try to have a mix because I'm interested in both things and both things are, you know, tied together.

But I actually really appreciate that comment and open to feedback on it too. Fritz goes on to say some of the best content I've come across have been the rhinestone gems. Oh, the rhinestone gems of wisdom, Dolly drops, and her many interviews. Now that's just literary email writing. Appreciate that, Fritz, with, quote, hard-hitting journalists. And this is a transcript of a conversation Di Parton had with Dan Rather. Let's see. This is about, I'm trying to figure out what this is about.

Rather asks about how there weren't many opportunities for women when she started out in Nashville, how she kind of kept the men off. And I'm reading through Parton's answer here. It looks like she says, I would, I just looked at it like a business and I was always proud to be a woman. I never took their flirt in as an insult. I thought it was a compliment, but I knew how to handle that. Fritz says, I have to say at that point in the interview, I had to hit pause and just got this thousand yard stare and a little lump in my throat. There was no mention of power imbalance or toxic masculinity or world weirdness over when will men learn. Somebody please prove to me the locus of power in this worldview isn't dire herself.

Amen, Fritz. This is beautiful and so well written. Thank you for the email. There is a trend right now to adopt the victim complex rather than adopt the victor complex, the complex of somebody who has happily, cheerfully overcome odds. We're always going to have odds. We're always going to have challenges and roadblocks. And especially in the dynamic between men and women, these are going to be enduring division. that no amount of liberal feminism is going to iron out of our dynamics. And so Parton's response to kind of laugh it off, refused to take the victim bait from Rather and sort of cheerfully talk about confronting the odds in a way where she saw herself as the agent. And I like how you say this, Fritz, the locus of power. It's so true. It's way more empowering to see yourself as a free agent capable of overcoming the odds, especially enduring odds, like sex divide, the sex divide between men and women. So really well said, and I have to say the late career of Dan Rather has been even more insufferable than the mid career of Dan Rather,

which I'm a bit young for that to be really sticky in my memory. Some of it is. But the shows that he does with musicians, I've watched a few. They, he is so pretentious and insufferable, and if you haven't caught them, you are missing absolutely nothing. Great, great comment here, Fritz, on thank you for flagging this, and thank you for your comments. That's sort of, I think, what Marine and I were trying to bring out, and you put it really well. Natalie said, I just wanted to say thank you for your conversation about pessimism on the right. I tend toward pessimism myself, and I'm a huge fan of Tucker and other enthusiastic truth-tellers. I sometimes struggle with criticism on this point from friends. It's hard to find a middle-grim

between recognizing evil and maintaining hope for the future. The danger of black pilling is real. I know people who share my pessimism but seem to be drowning in it, especially older generations. Also just going to pause there, Natalie. We have Tucker scheduled to come on the show soon. I'm going to think about perhaps just reading him. This email, because I'd be curious to get his take on it. I've also seen that.

And this is a distinction that I think you described well, between feeling pessimistic and drowning in your pessimism. and it gets exactly back to what we were just talking about in regard to Dolly Parton, there will always be reasons to be pessimistic. I think there are more reasons to be pessimistic in America right now than there were 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, just because we've seen the negative trajectory people picked up on 20 or 30 years ago, a lot of conservatives or people like leftists, Christopher Lash, were picking up on at the time. But we've seen the trajectory accelerate.

And I've heard that from a lot of older conservatives too. And even if we think it's fair to be drowning in it, it's not necessarily healthy. And so Natalie says, I think you're correct that Tucker doesn't really fit in this group of the black pillars. He proposes solutions while conveying genuine discouragement about the events he is witnessing. I also appreciate a description of truth tellers and holding power to account in journalism, which seems to be a very accurate reflection of Tucker's goals. On the subject of immigration, regardless of any one specific claim made by Bovino, I think both he and Tucker are right to raise the issue.

The number of deportations is only the tiniest fraction of the massive influx we saw under Biden and Mark Wayne Mullins' recent statements do fly in the face of Trump's campaign promises. We should, in fact, be pressuring this administration to do more regarding information. I believe this is immigration. I believe this is the positive end of pessimism, being moved to action because of the wrongs you recognize, even if you don't have much hope for success. And ultimately, as you mentioned, Christians can hold this earthly pessimism in balance with our eternal optimism.

our hope is in the eternal kingdom to come. Another beautiful email so well put, Natalie, I appreciate that. I think I'm halfway through the Tucker Bovino episode. And I agree with one of you who wrote in last week, and I think this is what Natalie is referring to, and said, you know, there were 50,000 deportations in July, like a hugely increased number. I think it's fair to mention that if you're Tucker and Greg Bovino. know I don't know if that had, if those numbers had come out when they recorded the podcast, because I know he's been recording podcasts and releasing them like, I think probably a couple weeks later. He doesn't always do that, but sometimes he does. So I don't know if that information was out there yet. But if it is, I think it's, it's always fair for people who are holding power to account to try as hard as they can to describe the big picture forest for the trees. And I think that's part of it. If deportations are increasing, yes,

it's still a drop in the bucket. It could be a sign that Mark Wayne Mullen, despite his public statements, is going in a better direction. And then you can have Bovino, who I do not particularly like, come in and add some perspective from having been on the inside that might balance it out for people if they believe what he's saying. So great email, Natalie. I really appreciate it. Eddie says, I really enjoyed your discussion about Dolly. Interestingly, you mentioned Dolly Parton's America. I can tell you as a Tennessee and many of us were ready to riot when it aired, especially the final two episodes. Number seven was about Southern identity, shame, and whether Parton helps her hurt's perceptions of Appalachia. But number eight was truly discussing. Disgusting,

it quote, grappled with inclusion, southern symbols, and whether Dolly Parton's America can truly encompass everyone. Imagine public radio posing that question about, say, Collin, Kappernick, or Jennifer Lopez. Finally, my old spiteless and left, right and center took their tribute straight from that source, praising the courage of the podcast more than they did Dolly in her passing. Oh my gosh. That is insufferable. I didn't hear it. But that would. drive me bananas. All of the revisitations of that podcast in the wake of Dolly Parton's passing actually were kind of

inseparable because it was a relatable source to these coastal liberal journalists who could find another coastal liberal journalist who I believe actually grew up around the Nashville area. And I think did a decent job with the podcast from the vantage point he came from. I think Jada Bumrod is his name. trying to understand Dali Parton, kind of grappling with, from the perspective of a coastal liberal, the complicated legacy of Dali Parton in a way that made her look good and made her look

like she was defying, cheerfully, lovingly, some of these stereotypes. And we talked about on last week's show how he was prepared to be very disappointed in Dali Parton for refusing to speak out against Trump. It came to see it not just as a cynical business decision, but as a spiritual decision. So I think there were some positive things to come out of that podcast, but it was as though it gave these coastal liberals permission to like Dolly Parton. And some of it felt like I needed the stamp of approval from another affluent liberal to feel comfortable praising Dolly Parton. It was like the stamp of approval that made it socially acceptable. It was an easy thing to pull on. I think the New York Times printed an op-ed from

the podcaster. I saw it charting on iTunes afterwards. It is a good listen because you get some perspectives from people who have known her, a lot of personal history in it. So if you're interested in Deli Parton, go ahead, give it a listen. But it's tough in some places because the lens that it's applying to Deli Parton is one that, you know, I just kind of fundamentally reject. And so it has some moments that are just grading. But I think that's a great point about Colin Kaepernick. That's a good point, Eddie. Let's see here. This is Hank pushing back on a flat tax. He says I'm not sure flat tax is all that workable or really that moral. I think I said that's my preferred rate. Hank says there's no way flat tax could ever get approved at a 3% rate. Second, a flat tax would

definitely hurt the working poor. Many don't pay anything at all after exemptions such as the child tax credit, the earned income credit, and the personal exemptions, maybe you think that's immoral, that they should have some skin in the game. Many will argue that increasing the working poor is tax burden is immoral. Again, I'll just pause right there. I think that's very moral. Everyone should have the exact same amount of skin in the game. And if it hurts the working poor, hopefully what it does is make the system, and the word hurt there, I just don't agree with. I know that, Hank, you mean it narrowly in terms of their pocketbooks. I think it is good for the soul of everybody to have a stake in the government that is returning our taxpayer dollars in services.

I think that is good for the soul of the working poor. I think it is good for the soul of the wealthy not to be able to skirt out of income taxes because they're taking out loans against capital gains and whatever else. Hank says, I live on Social Security and what I can scrape together as a freelancer. I'd be seriously heard if you took away the few office write-offs I have in the standard personal exemption. and would you make us small business owners pay double for the self-employment tax? That's the tax reality freelance writers and a lot of us in the gig economy face. The self-employment tax alone puts me higher than the 30% you suggested. I'm also a small business owner.

I'm also organized on a freelance basis. And yeah, I actually think, no, I don't believe that you would pay double for the self-employment tax in a flat tax environment. And I do think you should get rid of write-off. frankly, because I think write-offs have wildly complicated the tax system. That is part of what ends up hurting people. If you follow Rod Dreher, he's been writing about his own complicated tax situation where the IRS flagged something incorrectly. And even just to get the IRS's mistake corrected, assuming he wins, it's going to cost him like $20,000 plus dollars for attorneys and accountants and that sort of thing. And so getting rid of a write-off system correct some of those

problems, which are very real for a lot of people in the middle class who suddenly find themselves needing to battle against the IRS. And frankly, I still think it is the much more moral system to have the skin in the game across the board. Hopefully then you can design a system that is based on much more parity when it comes to the programs that do give back appropriately, of course, do give back to the middle class. And but again, closes loopholes. and complicated write-off systems that benefit disproportionately benefit wealthy. I'm not, I wouldn't deny for a second, again, as a small business owner and a freelance writer, that some of those write-offs do benefit the middle class.

I absolutely don't deny that. I just think it is a much more moral and fair system. Technocratic details, I'm completely open to discussion on. But in terms of the morality, I think we should all have the same skin in the game. This is another one from Tom. who says, oh, so Tom and I had been, on last week's episode, we were talking about architecture. And, oh, boy, this is, this is kind of a long email. So let me try to get it all here. Let's see here. Mental health between the left and the right. Tom found that comparison we did last

week, intriguing. I was pulling on some studies that Musa al-Garba had, the academic had pulled together in a substack. So Tom says, my origins and instincts are up the left, beginning in elementary school, I've struggled with depression for decades, only really getting on top of things the last 10 years. Hallelujah. Extremely complex origins, of course, in the shadow is not entirely ill-limited, eliminated, only though healthily suppressed. So I'm sympathetic to the claims of what you presented. I'm not surprised. The interesting question for me is how these findings are interpreted.

Setting the question of medication abuse aside, I'd be very interested to hear Brett and Heather, Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying, I'm assuming, discuss the evolutionary origins of this. from an evolutionary biologist's point of view, why does depression exist? Does it provide survival value? Does it actually have a social function that increases under certain circumstances? Just how far does an individual have direction over this through choice? They wrote a great book, which you're probably aware of, Tom. It's called 100 Gatherers Guide to the 21st century. It's one of my favorite books that I've read in the last 10 years. I had Heather on to talk about it back on Federalist Radio Hour. And that book changed the way I thought about a lot of It's one of those rare books that really shaped my thinking in a significant way.

My understanding is the theory about anxiety. I don't know about depression, but that it exists in some people because it's a natural reaction to danger. And for genetic reasons, some people are more predisposed to those triggers. And right now, we live in environments that trigger that intentionally. So red as a color was used by Silicon Valley, as Tristan Harris has explained from the inside because it triggers evolutionary instincts in us, the color itself does. And so we live in an environment that is just constantly doing violence to our nervous system, basically, to be a little bit

tongue and cheek there. But it's constantly kind of praying on that. So yeah, it's, yeah, it's a, it's a, that's a good question. I wonder if they address it in the book. I don't, I don't remember, but I would be really interesting to hear that. Here's more on architecture from Tom. I'll take a look at this and on immigration. From the voices on the right, this is what I'm piecing together is the problem. In the West, there's an oligarchate class pulling the strings of the political class to transform class structure to serve as a form of non-democratic neo-feudalism. Hence the purpose behind, say, Biden's opening of the borders to have this right. I don't know a lot about socialism, but I do know that part of the doctrine is worldwide open borders so workers can

freely move to their best geographical self-interest. That is certainly not what oligarchs in the last time of mind. Or maybe they do. I don't know. This question hits on, I think, one of the deepest questions about the Great Reset Program, not a conspiracy theory, set aloud by Kyle Schwab. is it fundamentally a leftist socialist doctrine intentionally? I think the answer is no. My friends on the left would laugh at the idea that the Marxist at the World Economic Forum were trying to take over the world. On the other hand, it is seen as, or it is used by like the AOCs of the world

who do genuinely consider themselves democratic socially. whether they can count as leftists as a question the left is in heated debate about right now. But it's sort of convenient that the technocratic oligarchic elites have a program that would ascribe so much control to the state and to global institutions. So Open Borders, for example, is a moral position of many leftists, anarchists, libertarians because they do not believe any state. should impose borders on a free human. Now, we don't have to have that entire debate, but that's not how Klaus Schwab sees it, clearly. That's not how the elites, all of them at least,

or maybe the oligarchs, I should say, the ultra-wealthy oligarchs over at the EU and the UN, it's not really how they see the question. They see it as one of GDP. That you can, you can, enrich certain countries and liberate. You can feel good about kind of liberating oppressed populations by allowing them to come to Western societies

and just send the GDP skyrocketing. And what they don't appreciate is that leads to often abject misery because the natural human condition means they will be trafficked. If you have a system like that, we've seen time and again it results in trafficking it results in misery and it results in them as being seen as GDP widgets basically that can you know labor for virtually nothing and undercut the wages of low wage workers in the country where this mass immigration is taking place so it's actually i think it's a really good question because it's difficult to disentangle these different strains of center left thought The leftists are overly sympathetic to the neoliberal oligarchs as they try to create a system of global control. And that's because they share some fundamental moral beliefs, but then they should at least, if you're a true leftist, right, depart when it comes to things like mass surveillance based on biometrics or, you know, workers. being undermined and this gets really heated on trade, right?

It's the problem the unions have with the Democratic Party right now, which is full of a lot of global thinking neoliberals. And they say, well, our members, UAW are being screwed by your globalist trade system. But again, because that overlap, the middle of the Venn diagram is often pretty robust, it's It's a really hard question for the left. And a hard question, by the way, for the right-leaning oligarchs who believe that there should be, like, quote-unquote, law and order. But then also believe that open borders are good for GDP. So how do you do it?

It looks like the Biden system, where the border is sort of de facto open because you can go there and claim asylum without detention on the other side. and that creates this really awful, messy, inhumane system. Great questions. This is David, who says, Mega, Mega, Mega Dittoes from SETA California. Had to adjust for inflation. Should the president proclaim a special day to commemorate the departure of the Sessexes? If so, it might be called temporary spare day.

I'll take my answer off the air. Well, David, you'll get your answer off the air or on the air. You know, he actually finally said in the last 48 hours, just as I'm recording this Thursday, he came out and said, you know, he thought they were, they treated the, the royal family horribly. Trump said that about Megan and Harry. But it's actually looking like we might be saddled with Megan for many years to come. If you buy the reporting that Marine Callahan is doing and some of her sources and the journalist that she talks to are doing, which suggests that this may actually be a setup for a divorce. that will find Megan back in the U.S. It's why they kept them on a Cito house

and are just describing this as an extended return. So that might be premature. Howard says, I thought last Friday's happy hour was a particularly good one. I disagree. It's a long email. I'm trying to figure out here where to go. Disagree with your position on abortion,

but certainly respect your principled approach. You said it comes down to two questions. This life begin at conception, and is it always wrong to take a human life? Okay, so I think it, Let me just say, I think it comes down to two questions, yes. The first is, is a fertilized embryo alive and is it human? Those are the two questions.

If the answer is yes to both, then your position on abortion is clear. Howard goes on to say, it is a very simple formula and there's always an elegance to simplicity. I don't happen to believe life begins at conception, but regardless of when it begins, my abortion position is not based on that, but on the primacy of the woman. I was surprised to find out that over 90% of scientists agree that life begins at conception, so you're in the majority there. Of course, the answer to the first question matters because of the second question. Yeah, and Howard, I think this is really fair pushback, actually. And my answer would be the, obviously, I think, even if a woman is carrying a human life,

it is constitutionally protected if something is alive. If something is human and alive, it's constitutionally protected because the 14th Amendment protects the right to life. I think that is a good constitutional amendment. I think if you are alive, you have a right to continue living no matter whether or not the vessel that is keeping you alive, be it a woman or a ventilator in a Terry Shivo tragic situation, you have a right to continue living. And that's, of course, why we have, you know, the DNR orders built into the legal system, which I think is perfectly fine. But so that's, that's my answer to that one. Hank passes along a substack, JD Vance, as a modern-day Huey-Long. It looks like Hank just got onto Substack. So let me see here,

clicking on it. Hank Beckman is where you can follow Hank on Substack. You've heard a lot of his emails here. So you can go ahead, check out that article on J.D. Vance. And as a modern-day Huey-Long, over on that substack. Let's see. Donald says, hey, Emily, just finished listening to Monday's episode and want to give my thoughts on the John Galliano discourse that I'm almost certain you won't agree with. It's apparent to me that if you say something negative about blacks, that Hollywood and online mob will attack you, but they'll eventually move on. But if you have the audacity to say something even mildly unsavory about Jews, they'll absolutely destroy you. They'll ruin your life and make sure you can never have a career afterwards even more so than they will with blacks.

You see it all the time on the right as well, just like at Candace Owens and Megan Kelly. Candace tweeted two years ago, quote unquote, Christ is king and genocide is always wrong. And the Zionist attacked her. She lost her job. And the daily wire sued her. And with Megan, she started criticizing the Israel-Palestine war and was attacked, which is why I've come to the opinion that Jews are coddled. No other group has speech as being passed to control what you're able to stand under the guise of stopping anti-Semitism, which in my opinion is a ridiculous, meaningless word. The world bends over backwards to protect these people for no reason. I don't expect you to agree with me, but I'd like to hear your feedback nonetheless. Yeah, Donald, I'll say I definitely don't agree.

I think actually, Megan was criticizing Israel, specifically was criticizing Israel. And as the Israeli government often points out, there are Arabs in the Knesset. It is a Jewish state, but it's not all comprised. It's not totally comprised of Jews. And I think, Donald, what you would respond to that is by saying, okay, so make it Israel. And people who support Israel, are coddled. That's probably a better way to put it than saying Jews are coddled, but I would also just push back and say, you know, if you look at the, I mean, Candace Owen's entire career started because she was basically willing to say things about black Americans that do get people canceled because there's enormous amount. And it was baked into before the second Trump administration.

A lot of this was baked into, well, there were these speech codes, basically, that newspapers and major corporations like DEI, for example, equity itself. If you were criticizing equity, even if you were black, you were subject to an enormous amount of criticism. And so I don't think this is particularly about supporters of Israel or Jews. I think it's actually just anybody who runs afoul of, you. the, let's say, what's the best way to put this? It's probably fair to say there are a lot of Americans who see disagreement or have been inclined to see disagreement as bigotry. And that is my biggest problem. And I think we've seen it with some people on the right with criticism of Israel being taken as necessarily bigotry. I just saw that argument from Alan Dershowitz,

who I would not say is really a man of the right, that he's defended Trump and whatever. He was in a zero hedge debate with Dave Smith just last night, so Wednesday night. And he said people who say their anti-Zionists are anti-Semites, that there is no distinction. And that's something that is in the IRA, IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, that has been adopted.

So I think that's a, a problem and some people on the right support that. Some people on the left support speech codes that criminalize. I mean, look at what happens in the EU or in the UK. Critics of mass immigration. You find yourself of the wrong side of that. I think one of the big problems is this is why John Haidt and Greg Lukianov's first book, The Coddling of the American Mind, really was about as postmodern fragility politics, that everybody has individual truths and speech codes can be adopted to cater to that. So I think it's really an across-the-board problem,

though I think there are certainly problems with the way that we approach either equity, racial equity, quote-unquote equity, or the state of Israel. I think that we're just too primed in general to support speech codes because a lot of special interests have spent a lot of money

to convince us disagreement as bigotry because there's so much political power, and being able to do that. You can squash speech. You can really do a lot to suppress silence and undermine your political opponents by doing it. So I think it's a sort of bigger problem than that. This is Matt who says, I wanted to ask your opinion on public funding for sports stadiums. I recently watched a Netflix documentary, Who Killed the Montreal Expos and learned the team moved to D.C. after Quebec, refused to use public funding for a new stadium, saying that the money ought to go to schools and hospitals instead. Even I was a sports fan, I had to agree. However, if I were moving to an

American city that didn't have any major sports teams, I would view it as a red flag. To me, it indicates not just a dull nightlife or an unsafe downtown, but a dysfunctional government. It doesn't surprise me that Oakland lost both the Raiders, the athletics, that Chicago is half of away from losing the bears. What, if anything, do you think cities and states should do to keep sports teams from moving or to draw new sports teams to their city? Am I wrong to use the presence of sports teams in the city as a bellwether? The bellwether point is one I haven't considered. I just have a reflex to hate all corporate welfare. And I think sometimes that reflex is misplaced. It just makes me so angry

when corporations that don't need to get benefits to build Foxcon in Wisconsin or to keep the bears in Chicago. That's a little bit of a different situation, I guess. But it drives me crazy because they don't often need these handouts. If you want to be in a city, don't take from the taxpayers to be in the city. When you have the money to be in the city, take it a little bit out of your own pocket. Like it just, I think we've developed a system,

uh, where it's become entitlement. Like you're entitled to corporate welfare. And that pisses me off. On the other hand, the practical implications of it can be losing the expos and losing business. And here in DC, for example,

the city didn't really turn around until the, uh, arena we have in the middle of the city for the wizards and, well, really the caps, more importantly, in terms of quality sports teams here. And a lot of concerts happen at the Capital One Arena. It wasn't until a lot of those businesses, and I think it was the arena itself, threatened to maybe leave that Mariel Bowser, our Democratic mayor, had a shock to the system and decided to go all in on keeping them there, cleaning up the, it's in this neighborhood called Chinatown here. It's not much of a Chinatown, but it is an important like center place in the city.

And so when there's bad stuff happening in that center place in the city, first of all, it creates this awful dangerous situation in the middle of the city. And then that bleeds into the neighborhoods around it as well, around it as well. And it wasn't really until they had a financial threat that they freaked out. So I think you always do have to take into account the practical ramifications. And I'm just going to shout out a substack that I recently subscribed. to. Let's see. Where is it? Subscriptions. I just went to subsec and searched my subscriptions. It's called boondoggle by Pat Garofalo. And he's written about this before. He's actually written about the specific question. And I'm trying to find the article so I can

shout it out. Oh yeah, this one recently, why politicians love corporate subsidies. And it says there are real realms of reams of evidence, whole books even, showing that these quote unquote incentives provided in the name of economic development don't meaningfully increase GDP, create jobs, reduce poverty, or fulfill any of their other promises. And he talked about a study that showed mayors and politicians will get vote boosts even if the project ultimately goes somewhere else. So long as, quote, the governor in question tried to make it happen. I guess this one was particularly about governors. In a separate study, Garofalo writes, the researchers found that directly elected mayors offered larger incentives and engaged in weaker oversight of corporate subsidies than did appointed city managers furthering the notion that it's political benefits rather than economic

ones driving these decisions. So I suppose I really recommend people go check out the subsec. It's super interesting. But I suppose the correct answer there then is maybe it's good to have reflexive skepticism of these projects, but that you have to consider the practical ramifications that could in the net with proper oversight and design benefit taxpayers. It's kind of how I feel about the proposed film credits that, I mean, Trump is basically proposing right now an industrial policy for film credits. He says this was delivered to him as an idea by John Voight. Chris

Fenton on our show described a program like this. And I think there's a way to do it that actually could be good for the United States, so it's not getting outsourced to Canada and the UK, which has been happening a lot recently. And Hollywood facing, you know, these real constraints of globalism and outsourcing could remain a bastion of American soft power and just generally economic strength. So there's probably something to think about there, even though I hated the Georgia film credits, hated the way that they were done. They brought in so many people from out of state. So many jobs went to people from out of state. You talked to people who were involved in the Atlanta area.

That's what was happening. And they've kind of pulled back on it, is my understanding. This is from Mary, who says, I think the influx of H-1B visa immigrants is correlated to the rise in socialism. I've worked in management consulting for the last 15 years. And almost every project I'm on is 90% people on visa, something I have to manage around because they have travel and other restrictions. They're not connected to the country the way immigrants from the same origin country were a generation ago.

They spent three weeks in India in December. They travel with their kids to Europe or other exotic locations for Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. These are our cultural events. They and their U.S. citizen children don't participate in. I think their attitude stems from the fact that they enter this country at the top of the income brackets and live in power centers of the country, then produce children like Lena Khan, whose commitment is to the broader international community, not their country of citizenship. I actually don't know if that's true. Well, I'm a conservative. I've said it before, so I'm very defensive of Lena Khan.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that maybe there was some truth to that. I haven't seen that. I feel like Lena Khan is a patriot who supports the strength of the American economy by fighting consolidation. But anyway, that's a topic for another time. Mary says, there's no reason for a management consulting company to hire H-1B visa holders. I myself work in IT, but to not study it, I learned on the job. Love that. And Mary says, I know this is long already, so I want to add one other things.

I have family and friends I grew up with from India and their attitudes different. Again, I believe they did not start on top and probably because the mainstream Democratic Party didn't hate the country in the 80s. Yeah, you know, it does seem like recent waves of immigrants, well, actually part of it, but this would be maybe part of my theory, sick with me here, which is that it's happened so quickly and that's such a high volume in recent years that recent waves of immigrants who have, come from places that don't speak English, for example, have been able to establish enclaves. And when you can get by in the enclave, I mean, I'm always amazed when I hear about somebody who's lived in the country on a visa or something for a long time that speaks really bad English,

you know, 10 years and barely speaks English. That amazes me. But I think what that speaks to is that when you have an enclave, you can really get by without interacting with Native Americans, lowercase and Native Americans. You know, whether it's the black community in the city that you're a part of or maybe your neighbors, multicultural neighbors in the suburbs, if there's like the suburbs of Minneapolis

or Minneapolis itself, if there's a strong Somali community, you can kind of just interact with other people who speak your language because there are so many restaurants and businesses. This is something I feel like happened in Europe because it was just happening so quickly. And in such a high volume that there wasn't this assimilation process

where you had to learn English to get by. You had to assimilate to live a fairly normal middle class life in your new home country. And I do think assimilation is important for social harmony. It has absolutely nothing to do with race and everything to do with wanting to be part of the country and its culture and speak the language that are founding documents were written. I think all that stuff is really important.

So anyway, all that is to say, sort of a different question from the H-1B question, but I totally agree. I mean, I think there should be very, very, very limited exceptions for high-skilled immigration and asylum. I believe in both of immigration for both of those reasons, but just very, very, very limited levels of immigration for both of those reasons. So it's always going to, if you're an American company, if you're here, you should be able to get by with American workers and not develop this crutch that, first of all, undercuts American wages, but then also creates a system where Americans lose the incentive to go into these careers. And so you're always going to be dependent on foreign labor, probably increasingly higher levels,

because Americans never learned because there were just fewer jobs in those fields for Americans because you don't have to pay others quite as much money. George says, for all the talk about independent journalists growing influence, I wonder if the legacy media actually has more power than ever. I don't see many independent journalists breaking any news. Rather, I usually only see them commenting on articles from, say, the New York Times. So as the number of newspapers has dwindled, so have the sources of news news. They deride, what balance should independent journalists strike between breaking news and really commenting on it? I doubt very many independent journalists have the wherewithal to break a story that drives a news cycle. Unlike much of the media, they deride, what balance should independent journalists strike between breaking news and really commenting on it? If it's not too personal, can I ask what you consider the most significant story you've broken? And am I wrong to think that stories from legacy media have more of a ripple effect than ever? I think that's a good question. I think it's fair pushback. Let's see. Story that I've broken. One problem with this is there's often not big incentives for independent journalists to break news because it gets ignored by power centers

because it's just coming from a quote unquote independent news outlet. So that's part of what's tough about like breaking news. One of the bigger stories that I've broken back at the Federalist was

about Hollywood's film credits in China. I'd have to pull it up, but it was a really well-placed sourced. basically just talking about inside of the industry, the sellout level that happens across the board. I try to like do some stories that break news and move the ball forward once every few months. Honestly, I think it's, I actually do think it's a fair criticism.

It's why I ran the National Journalism Center for about five years, which was to teach. And I come at this from always having been on the commentary side, but my first editor was Tim Carney, amazing journalist who said, I don't care that you're an opinion journalist, you're going to learn how to break news and how to rigorously report out FEC records and those sorts of things. And so as my career became more and more podcasty, I did less and less of that. And I've always, frankly, been one of the people who gets into journalism because I was more interested in writing than reporting. there are some people. The rare person is one that's interested in both and is good at both. But I've never considered myself to be like really a reporter. I have just tried to push myself to do reporting as much as possible. And then to train younger journalists to do reporting as much as possible,

whether they're opinion journalists or not. But certainly the way that I've tried to deal with this problem is by helping younger journalists do their reporting. I may remember last year, broke a story about Punch Bull News selling their coverage to corporate. donors. That was a good one. You know, like I said, I try to do it like every few months, like a story that kind of moves the ball forward. You know, we went through the primary source document and verified it on the air a couple of months ago on the Smithsonian, like the Trump administration's audit of the Smithsonian. That was kind of fun. But yeah, I mean, it's not really my thing. So I try to deal

with that because I do feel guilty doing so much commentary by training up younger journalists to do it. And a lot of them do it. One of my interns, former interns, was Gabe Kaminsky. It was now at CBS News doing some of the best investigative reporting in the business. And it's really gratifying to see Gabe thriving. And Ryan Grimm and I try to do it on breaking points when there's a story that we can work together on. So in the Epstein stuff, I broke some of the, emails between, you know, they were there for everybody to see. But was one of the first people to find some of the emails about Bill Gates, the NSA, and Epstein's interest in those sorts of like gene hacking schemes. And I wrote a piece for DropSite. And we're a small part of a piece

that Ryan and Mertaza Hussein did a great job on for DropSight about some of that. But the point about how so much independent journalism is commenting on quote-unquote mainstream journalism, it's fair. That is what a lot of it is. I don't think that means mainstream journalism is more powerful than ever because they have a chorus of people poking holes in their journalism constantly. And a lot of times, for example, what I'll do is go to a source. Just recently I did this with Darlene Graham on breaking points. I had a couple of sources who told me that K Street was all over Darling Graham because basically she was a cutout for her brother who there are all these lobbyists who kind of depended on Lindsay Graham

because he was so willing to negotiate with lobbyists and to kind of engage in the give and take with lobbyists. And so a lot of times you see a report and then I'll go and verify it with sources or I'll go and poke holes in it with sources. People telling me, no, that's absolutely not what's happening. So when the idea that 30 to 40 percent of GOP staffers were GROPers, was going around, which has since been repeated in the mainstream media. It came from my friend Rogerair, who I've had good faith debates with on this. What I did was go to 10 sources, which is now even more than that, because I've collected more perspectives over time, and they all poked holes in it and continued to poke holes in

the narrative as it spread in the media. So I don't think it's given the corporate press more power. I think actually it's very much that they have less power because the credibility of their reporting. And also my big interest, again, I'm not trying to. defend myself necessarily, but since the question was asked, is often media reporting. That's like, you probably tell by listing the show. My favorite beat is media, which is like the laziest beat in journalism, but it's just always been my fascination. So that's what I'm interested in.

And a lot of good media reporting is finding ways to debunk what has been reported, going to public databases or asking sources if this is true. And so that's part of kind of poking holes. in the corporate press. So if indie journalists are elevating corporate media narratives, a lot of it is to punch them down, right, to punch the narrative down or to poke holes in it. So I definitely don't think it gives them more power because more and more people are listening to their critics. And even if their critics are using that reporting, it's for the benefit often of poking holes in it, which is fantastic, I think. Now, another important point in all of this is I don't think independent media is really ever going to compete with these large corporate

institutions when it comes to foreign reporting. Foreign reporting is extremely expensive and it's very high risk. And so to have people in war zones, Dropside does it, but that's, they have a lot of freelancers. And that's a hard thing to do, but it's really high risk. You have to vet the journalists. You have to have legal protections. You have to have physical protections, fixers, all of that sort of thing. and that's a that's tough um that's a really tough thing to do so yeah it's it's not in is it's not not a problem i'll say that i do disagree that it makes them more powerful though it's an interesting point agree um matthew says did you ever read ns lyons january 22 i say no the revolution is it over on why i quote woke hasn't receded much at all as you probably know he stopped

writing to go work in the second trump admin but i would certainly pay to read his take now yes I did read that essay. I had actually forgotten about it, and I would be very curious to hear the NS lines take now. Very, very curious to hear from NS lines if he leaves the government. So, yeah, I agree. Dunn says, episode 121 proves that Emily Neat is excellent for consumption without a mixer or garnish. Quality mixers are always welcome, but not essential. The vintage gets better as it ages and joy. Well, thank you, Dunn. I appreciate that. I like doing the solo episodes because it kind of gives. gives me more space to break stories down. So it was fun to be able to do that on Wednesday.

I am going to try to do more of it in the future. But as always, I'm totally open to your feedback. You know, I want to have guests that I really like and I really want to talk to. When you're in the business of podcasting and journalism in general, you get pitches all of the time with people promoting new books or new studies, research papers, those sorts of things. And sometimes they're interesting, but sometimes it's just, you know, you know, a new author or someone trying to get an interview for the sake of exposure, which is fine for some shows. But we only do a couple shows a week, not including the show

where we just go through emails. We don't have guests. And so I really, like, it's hard to say no sometimes because people do have really interesting work, but I want it to be an engaging, important guest that's really going to serve a purpose and not just be kind of a warm body. So I, and sometimes I want a little flexibility to break a story down. or something like that. So yeah, appreciate it. This is from Nate that says I've been frustrated at the data center discourse. So I wrote an article. I thought you might find useful. I just hadn't seen anything really look at the issue in the way that helps us move forward. It's from Nate's officially neutral substack. Just clicked on the link so you can check that out.

If you are interested, lots of interesting stuff about that. Nate also says, I listened to your most recent interview with Sean Davis. I know you have affection for him from your time at the federalist and I'm not questioning that, but I have a beef. Part of it comes from not knowing his full biography, so maybe you can fill that in to provide context. TLDR, pushing back on Sean Davis's forced rural posturing, his overly forgiving defense of Trump's decline and his dismissive tough guy stance on the Lindsay Clancy trial that ignores the critical need for an open conversation on postpartum mental health and psychiatric reform. It's a, Nate says his diatribe on heifer management made him sound like someone who just

wants to sound like he has credentials. It's completely unnecessary. It would have been funny if he wasn't being serious, trying too hard to flex his rural credentials in a way that someone who was actually an expert wouldn't do. No, so Sean, Sean has rural credentials. I can't say where Sean lives. He doesn't like to talk about that. But Sean does have real credentials. He's actually one of the only people I've ever met from New Mexico. He doesn't live there now. But I will say he got the hell out of DC a long time ago and has credentials on this. And actually the genius, I think, of the federal is that it's based on a contributor system. And so you should submit stuff to info at thefederalist.com if you have pieces that you'd

like to find a national audience for because that means actually most of the staff is not based in DC-R Washington, which is really rare, like politics editor in Indianapolis area, or I'm sorry, Fort Wayne area, for a long time, the Austin area, you know, John Daniel Davidson's based in Alaska. He's a senior editor. Almost everybody is outside of D.C. And most of the pieces come from non-professional writers historically. So those are people who are like, you know, small town attorneys or stay-at-home moms who have a point to make about something. And, you know, they're not professional writers, which one of the biggest biases in media is that everyone in media works in media. So the federalists, I think, and Sean has a lot of

credibility on that point. I certainly can't speak with any credibility on the beef discourse, but I've tried to follow it and understand it as best I can. Glenn Beck even said last week in an interview with President Trump that he thinks a lot of it is consolidation. So we'll see where the administration goes on this, but Sean wrote a really good piece for the federalist breaking it down that I would commend to anybody curious about the written version of his argument. And listen, I would, I think that Sean is often too harsh. I think we were joking about that on the show. I think it's just, you know, I was sort of seen sometimes at the Federalist as like the bleeding heart. It's kind of funny. Like it was a fun part of our back and forth. And I think you all can tell that my tone is different than Sean's tone. But, you know, sometimes I think I should probably be even, I don't mean less nuanced in a bad way, but I think there's probably moral clarity that. that sometimes I'm like, and I don't know, maybe you guys think differently from me on this, but I'm constantly bending over backwards because I have so many friends from different political

positions. And I really believe they're good people and they're coming at these issues for good reasons. And I think there are probably a lot of good people, honestly, outside of the Lindsay Clancy courtroom. And so I'm constantly trying to sort of, give people the benefit of the doubt, just as I would if I was arguing, you know, against my own mother, for example, I would want her to be treated as a good faith actor. And even when I disagree with her, right? I don't think most people see themselves as the villains of their own story. Some people genuinely do. They're sociopath. But, you know, sometimes I'm probably too forgiving of different positions because I really understand where people are coming from with them.

So I'm always open to the idea Sean is being too harsh. And Sean and I have talked about that before. And he's probably right that sometimes I'm not harsh enough. So I go back and forth on that one. This is from Rachel, who says, I was endlessly entertained by her discussion with Sean Davis. Although I already had my thoughts in the Clancy case,

his commentary inspired me to do a bit more digging into the evidence presented at trial. I started reading about the autopsy report and the injuries, those poor babies face that made me both nauseous and sad. To think those little kids' last few minutes on Earth were filled with nothing but utter terror all at the hands of their mother is too horrific to think about. Yeah, I agree. It's a long email. So Rachel goes on to say there's no justification for what she did, no matter how bad her mental illness. Sean had two really good points.

Let's assume everything her defense lawyer says is true. If she didn't understand that killing her own three children one by one was wrong, then how will she ever be rehabilitated into society? And for every woman standing outside supporting her, how many of them have killed their own children in their womb? questions tell a sad story about the soul of our country. Let's see. Oh, points out that the mother who was murdered in Times Square has a GoFundMe that is apparently very successful. And Rachel writes, praise God that we can still grieve for a fellow man despite not even knowing her and we can still be touched by and mourn for someone who we do not know but see in ourselves. Prayers for Aaron, Pissente's family and her sweet baby girl.

May Aaron rest in peace along with Callan, Dawson, and Cora Clancy. That's well said, Rachel. Thank you for the note. And I do generally think we have been desensitized to violence for a lot of reasons. I, of course, think abortion is part of that. It's stunning to me that late-term abortion is practiced by people who can be profiled, for example, in the Atlantic. And, you know, there can be a political tolerance. for that there can be a legal tolerance for that in certain states and that it doesn't shock our conscience so much that there's immediate movements on the ground in places like Colorado to ban it. But I think probably even the bigger problem is social media. So let's see. This is, thank you for the note, Rachel. Ryan says since you talk politics weekly, I want to ask a non-political question. What is your favorite activity for a date night with your boyfriend? Well, both of us are journalists, so we work a lot of nights.

But he's a motorcycle obsessive. So we get a chance to, you know, if it's not too oppressively hot here in D.C. Or rainy here in D.C. Like to take a little motorcycle ride to dinner. That can always be fun. We binge watch a lot of shows. We're on a soprano's binge watch post having Drea de Mateo on the show right now. So that's always fun.

I'm just a, I'm a TV person through and through. I was having a debate at lunch with someone today. He says they love movies. They love the finality of movies and can't stand the kind of profit incentive that creeps into serialized TV. And I said, well, this is an argument against some of our great novels, which were published in serialized papers. The profit incentive in the case of serialization has made some really gripping literature

and television over time. But right now, there's just so much IP being recycled and drawn out that I agree. I understand the exhaustion with a lot of it now. I get it. But I'm a TV person. I love TV. I love it. I watch so much less of it than I used to just because there's a lot of work to be done these days.

And I have talked about this before, but I have a hard time kind of getting out of work mode because the news is so high stakes. and high rate. It's one way to put it since about 2016. But when you can get drawn into a really good show and a good narrative, man, I feel like there's nothing better. This time last year, we were for the first time encountering Downton Abbey. And the way that show sucks you into the world of Downton Abbey, it just puts you in such a kind of cozy.

and interesting perspective. Or as a viewer, what you're watching, I think is, I don't know, I'm not describing it well, but I think it does create an aura that's generally transportational. It takes you into the world. And that's great. And it's not necessarily escapist because you're also mulling

some of the changes of World War I. and technology that's hitting the world of Doughton Abbey. But on the other hand, you're thinking about these things while you're in someone else's world. And man, that was a great binge. We talked about our best binges. The Americans, that was a good one. Slow horses is about to come back out. I'm really excited for that.

We watched all of that until I think the latest season we'd caught up. So now we're watching them as they come out. But yeah, Americans, you know what I? couldn't get into this year. I tried really hard to binge homeland. Couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. I think that show may have aged poorly. I don't know. Ryan also says, do you accept gifts from fans wondering if you get your fix of Wisconsin cheese. Don't send me anything. It's happened before. And when it's happened, someone sent me the best beer last year. And I shouted it on the show. That was amazing. But only under very, very, very, very circumstances. Someone sent me some spotty

cow recently a gift card because you can't ship spot a cow an amazing part of it um can't have it outside wisconsin but um i very rarely you really don't have to please don't once you open up the door to that you just start the floodgates open and i just you really please you don't need to do it it's totally fine um i i i feel terrible accepting anything i will i accept beer that's basically the one thing. But no, even that, no. I have to close the floodgates because I don't think it's right. Like, I'm just, I'm doing it to do it. And the fact that anybody, like one person enjoys it means the world to me. So there's no greater gift than you all listening and interacting. That is the best gift. And it means so much more to me than cheese or beer ever good. So I'm just enormously

grateful. Let's see. This is from Tony, who says, listening to the latest pod about the murder of the Bank of America employee and agree with you wholeheartedly about social media and the constant videos of violence during our dulling our senses and ultimately subduing our repulsion to it. I have young children and get the feeling they think of death as some sort of temporary state. Maybe it's because of video games or videos where you die and just get an extra life, trying to instill in them that the finality of death without scaring the absolute shit out of them is a difficult line to walk. I grew up in Northern Ireland, Tony says, which I'm sure you know had decades of political violence on the street. Bombings and murders were a regular occurrence, so I too have had my

senses doled. I was in London on the 7th July bombings coming home from staying with friends in America and couldn't understand why people were huddled around TV crying, when in my reality this is a normal thing that have places and people blown up. I don't know how to fix it. I toy with the idea of deleting social media so I can avoid the onslaught of violent videos, but worry I'll be totally reliant on the curated news from mainstream media, which is an ideal. either. Anyway, just rambling, love the show. Even the driest toast solo episodes joking, they're great too. Yeah, thanks, Tony. I think what you're making me consider here is, on the one hand, Western democracies don't have the, death doesn't loom over high-tech Western democracies in the same way that it did in the pre-industrial period where childbirth was often deadly at a higher rate, where disease was less treatable.

And yes, of course, we also had, you know, less heart disease because we weren't as sedentary and we weren't cramming our faces with processed food constantly. We weren't exposed to potential high-tech carcinogens and plastic, PFAS, all of those sorts of things. So yes, but we know that premature death rates were higher. And so maybe there's an argument we just treat ourselves and live longer, but live maybe like more miserable long lives. I don't think that's the case. I suppose someone could make that argument. But on the one hand, this is true that we're less exposed to the immediate reality of death all around us, but we're more exposed to the distant reality of death and violence because we're inundated with it either from

fictional depictions or the very real depictions. There's always going to be violence in every corner of the globe, but when it's delivered all into one timeline on X or TikTok or Instagram, it is a constant. And so when you're really young and you're seeing dead bodies on social media, that I think does clearly have a desensitizing effect. I mean, when I was young, it wasn't nearly like what it is now. But I still saw beheading videos. I mean, social media wasn't really even a thing. I think I might have seen one of those on pre-alorithmic timeline X

and chose to click on it because I was a teenager. Maybe it was even YouTube. But now that's like you, you know, we all saw the video of the, it was Scotland of the man sawing off, attempting to saw off another person's head. If you're on X, almost, I think almost anybody who interacts on politics on X saw that video. It's much more common. And yes, sometimes it gets blurred by the social media, but sometimes it happens. Like the Perez Hilton video, a lot of people. that before TikTok took it down. And it was still on the internet. And even blurred images of it,

which were so violent, were still on the internet. You could see the face of a man, even if the carnage was blurred, who was cutting himself on live camera. And, you know, seeing the George Floyd video. You know, we see George Floyd type videos on X all of the time, where in the past it was, you know, a Rodney King video, for example, was something you saw if you sat down and watched the news, and then it was treated very carefully. And you could probably still argue then it was already having a desensitizing act, because you could go through your entire life without seeing violence like that. So, yeah, I think the right answer is for everybody that's like younger than people who grew up on social, on social media, no social media as you're growing up,

and probably no social media. Like just don't ever let the next generation become accustomed to algorithmic social media. You know, if people are older and want to make a choice to get on it, it will suck you in. But I think if you're raising children, do it with the expectation that they will be liberated from really the mental psychological chains of social media.

I don't have any hope of ever being liberated from that. Maybe my career takes a turn at some point where I don't need to be on it. But even if I didn't need to be on it, I probably would still be on it because I want to have that connection to the world. But there are other ways to do it. And if I'm being honest, it's just easier than putting the work in to find those different ways to do it, to have it all on that feed. But it's so addictive.

The short form video scrolling is affecting cognition. There's a lot of research on this. There was a good diary of a CEO with some researchers who've done work in that space, which I recommend to everybody. So I would say liberate future generations from social media as best you can. This is from Christine, who says, I've been following you since I first heard you on the Federalist. I consider you then to be one of the top two interviewers on air. The other is Jan Ykeliak, who I think is with the Epic Times.

The Federalist hasn't been the same since, although I love Molly and David. I appreciate your thoughtful perspective on current events as a 73-year-old who went from being a radical, I mean, radical feminist in the 70s to a Christian conservative today. Your youthful and Christian perspective is well worth considering. Thank you. Well, thank you, Christine. That's very, very kind. Christine says, in your recent show with Sean, he drew a parallel between the women

supporting Lindsay Clancy, murdering her three children, and the woman behind Governor Morah Healy, celebrating as she signed the radical abortion law in effect here in Massachusetts, I too saw that parallel. As the brilliant Mary Harrington once said, just again pausing, I love Mary Harrington. She is brilliant. We have gone from the feminism of care to the feminism of autonomy. That is poignant. Christine goes on to say, these two examples are the grotesque outworking of that. My choice now rules over anything else, including the welfare of children. This extends to women postponing childbearing until they have established their career, the right to abort at any stage of a pregnancy, or giving up child bearing altogether. It cramps their style. It's all me first, my choice.

I love Katie Faust's radical child advocacy in them before us, but I used to think she was way too radical. And now I think she's on the cutting edge of reigning in this infanticide and reawakening the instinct to care for children first. I love Katie. Katie's a friend. And then before us is absolutely radical, even for the right. But I agree with you, Christine, it's on the cutting edge. I don't agree with Katie on everything, but I think she is on the cutting edge. I think Katie represents the direction that more and more people are going to be looking to, and I don't think the political establishment quite understands that. I think people are either going to be looking to closer in the direction of people like Katie or then the complete

total opposite of autonomy as freedom. Total autonomy as fulfillment is probably a better word than freedom. So yeah, I think she is on the cutting edge of the political future for the right, but also for the left because somebody like Mary Harrington now has more in common with Katie. I don't know if Mary would say this herself. This is just she's also, I love Mary. I've talked to her before, but I don't know if she would say this. But from my perspective, she has more in common with Katie than she does with the liberal feminists that she used to affiliate with. And so, yeah, I think that's a really interesting point. I will say, again, part of what gives me some, or part of the reason I have some empathy with the supporters of abortion that I know.

And, you know, I think everyone listening to this knows I'm about as hardcore on abortion as it gets. I'm more of an incrementalist than some of my friends, but not really. So my position on abortion is politically unpopular, unpopular in polling. But even so, I just think a lot of people don't agree that it involves taking a human life. I think some people do and try to either tell themselves they don't believe that in their hearts or just acknowledge that it's worth it for the autonomy of the woman, as Christine is getting at here. And as we talked about earlier in the episode, autonomy is not. not the highest good in a well-ordered society. Michael Nose talks about this. He's very good on this

point, as are people like Matthew Meehan, who's been on the show before, but autonomy is not, you know, politically it's a different question than morally. It's not the highest good. And I do think that a lot of, it's interesting because a lot of people who see themselves as collectivists actually are radical autonomatons. If that's a, I don't even know if that's a, a phrase. But it's an interesting contradiction. I think that some folks have on the left. And I think the abortion position does bring that out.

And I do think feminism as Mary Wollstonecraft or I worked on a, helped Christina Hoffsimmers as an intern work on a book called Freedom Feminism. It was a little book that AEI put out. You can probably still buy it, but it goes through the history. It's like a primary on a primer on the history. of first wave feminism and the second way of feminism. And it gets to how a lot of early advocates for women's equality, not equity, women's equality, basically wanted lives that were allowed them to find fulfillment in nurturing and

caring, as is the kind of biological want of most women, not all women, but most women. And that's freedom, right? Is it literally freedom, if it doesn't involve third term abortion? Is that freedom in a literal sense, if we're defining freedom as autonomy? Yes. But is it kind of a moral freedom to pursue a more fulfilling lifestyle? Yes. That's why some debates over the word freedom are frustrating at times. But anyway, thank you, Christine. I really do appreciate it. This is Corey, who says, I'm writing to ask if you could reflect on something that often comes up tangentially on the show, assimilation. You addressed this Monday with Sean Davis in regard to Ankeke Glupta's comment, it's giving flyover country, which suggests that Gipta doesn't see himself as having any sort of bond with anyone not on the coast. Ooh, that's a very good point, Corey. And on your August 14th, Happy Hour show, you talked about how Islam lends itself more

than Christianity to violent interpretations and more broadly gives forth a very different mindset. I ask this as someone who lives in Minnesota, which, as you know, has a very high Somali population. Often it seems to me that Somalis are very comfortable forming a cultural community that is separate from others and doesn't seek to assimilate it. all. So here are my questions. What do you see as the limits to assimilation? Does Islam pose particular problems where this is concerned? And if so, should the country actively seek to limit Muslim immigration?

You often bring up Raymond Ibrahim, and I'm guessing the answer from him would be a hard yes, probably. And finally, what about the counter argument, namely that America has become so globalized, and shorn itself so much of its traditional Christian culture, there's nothing left to assimilate into? Yeah. Roderre wrote the book, The Benedict option, expecting a Clinton president, I think the book maybe came out in 2016, but yeah, it was written expecting a Clinton presidency about how the best way for conservatives or for Christians to live Christian lives in Clinton's America or in a more and more secular America would be to focus locally on building up robust communities that allow them to live Christian lives locally when it's. it's being made difficult legally at a national level. And you could definitely have a very interesting conversation about whether that's the sort of Somali or dearborn Islamic attitude toward living out your faith in a country that, for example, is hostile to the dictates that you can't depict the prophet, for example. So you kind of ensconce yourself in a community where that's not a problem.

And so I think you're raising an interesting point, Corey. I think my answer would be that the Western liberal system is built on Judeo-Christianity in a way that means it's more sensible for people who, whether they're kind of cultural Christians, like Richard Dawkins type or even secular humanist Christopher Hitchens types to say there should be more room

for lower case O Orthodox Christians to live out their religion faithfully in our system than a religion like Islam which if it is if Sharia, as it's generally accepted, and they're obviously very different iterations and it's a debate in and of itself, but, you know, you actually aren't supposed to depict the prophet. Like, that's not compatible with Western liberalism. And so it would make sense to me that there's more room for lowercase of Orthodox Christians to live out their faiths within the system. But, of course,

you know, what does that mean for people? Is Western liberalism? This is an interesting debate in Patrick Deneens, why liberalism failed, and then his follow-up to the book. You know, what does that mean for people who live, you know, who are, let's say, faithful practicing Catholics and now live in a country where same-sex marriage is legalized and there's, you know, really no future where that's going to change.

Nobody really thought Dobbs would happen or that row would be, would be overturned. So for a long time, you know, there's a fight over taxpayer money, going to abortion or sex transitions, those sorts of things. Like, what does that mean? Well, Christians have rendered unto Caesar what is Caesar's in our theology, in our gospel? So I think that's kind of an answer in and of itself. You can, you know, fight against things that you think should be differently one way or the other, but I generally think Christians had this expectation. I like the Aaron Wren formulation that there's the, what does he call it, the negative world, the positive world, the neutral world, and that the neutral world for Christians, you know,

the country was broadly culturally Christian, a lot of practicing Christians, and you could generally live out your faith without a lot of conflict or anything like that. And that when we entered the negative world, that's really what changed. And that was abnormal, right, for Christians throughout history. Early Christianity, at least, was, of course, seen as subversive and was practiced despite unjust governing, unjust governance, let's put it that way, that sought to suppress it. It's unjust by our standards in Western classically liberal republics or democracies, but perfectly normal throughout the course of human history that a powerful government would suppress other religions, you know, as Rome did. So I think part of it is just you expect tension.

You have to be the salt and be in the world, but not of the world. That's always a kind of Christian expectation or should be at least. But in terms of the assimilation question, I just, it seems to me at least, that classical liberalism should always, like this is, actually Tom Holland talks about this too, in Dominion, at the end of Dominion, is, quote, wokeness in extension of Christianity itself, this idea that we must venerate the week. And we've had conversations here with some of you about that on Happy Hour. Does it venerate the week at the expense of everyone, at the expensive strength. And is, is wokeness just a veneration of the week at the expense of the strong in an almost

Christian way? Of course, I don't think that's true. But it's a question about, you know, does liberalism eat itself? And that's what Deneen grappled with and why liberalism failed, which is a super interesting book. And it's a fairly quick read. So I definitely recommend it. But to me, it's not a question we have an answer to.

Does liberalism eat itself? I think we have some indications. It's been interesting to see since Trump gets back in office, you have some seesawing. Like something's DEI, for example. We've really had a rollback. Genuinely, I've had a rollback politically and legally of a lot of that. And I think it's been the downstream consequences. There's been a rollback culturally.

I still, as I've said many times, think you're going to have people who support that in some small number that will grow at times with us for many, many generations to come. but is that a kind of argument against the inevitable failure of liberalism to become something that's very illiberal is the trajectory is the moral arc of liberalism long and bends towards illiberalism like I don't know that we actually have the answer to that but it's one of the things that I think you have to stay optimistic about again to kind of go back to one of the earlier comments as a Christian you don't have any expectation that life in the second of heaven is going to be going to be easy. So if, you know, liberalism does ultimately fail and it becomes even harder to live a Christian life, I'm straying so far from the question now, by the way,

but if that happens, you know, it's not necessarily on it's not necessarily extraordinary from that perspective. This is from Jay who says, may I suggest that rather than using term social media, you adopt the more accurate term anti-social media? Yeah, I, I, I, I was going to say funny point, but I think Jay is totally serious about it. I don't like linguistic gimmicks, and I don't mean the downplay what Jay said as a gimmick. I'm not trying to be like that. I like to use the terms that people understand. We had this debate.

I think this was here and Happy Hour a couple of weeks ago because some people take great issue when you say progressive or liberal. And I actually was defending using both of those terms. Some people on the right really don't like it when conservatives refer to, quote, progressives rather than leftists or something like that. But a lot of progressives are not leftists as we identify leftists, sort of being of the materialist tradition. Now, I think a lot of leftists are cultural progressives. That's a debate that's happening internally. But while I will say, I don't believe in saying biological men and women, biological men, biological women, because we all know, damn well what we're talking about when we say man or woman. Most of the country still has a

consensus definition of man or woman, which is why I've said I'm not saying biological, like I'm going to try very hard not to say biological man or biological woman anymore. On this point, I think most people know what we mean when we say social media. So it's an easy, your consensus description. If we say anti-social media, will people still know what I'm talking about or will they think I'm talking about something different? I like clarity and precision in language, and you all know that I jealously guard definitions as like a hobby. Like a hobby horse. So I don't mean to downplay or say gimmick pejoratively, but I mean in terms of sort of playing games with linguistics.

When I refuse to say biological men or women, I feel like I'm refusing to play the game of the people who tried to change those terms. And when I will continue to refer to social media, social media, it's not. not it's because that's the consensus definition, just like the consensus definition of man or woman is what it is. Now, they should have named it anti-social media from the start. I agree with that. But it is still social in the respect, of course, that it facilitates social engagement. It facilitates social interaction. It just facilitates a really unhealthy form of social interaction. and it facilitates antisocial interaction to the extent that all of it is online. Now, literally, interacting with another human on the internet is still social,

but it's also antisocial because it is often a replacement for in-person interaction. So when I hear stories about how often people in high school or middle school now are choosing to talk with each other over Snapchat rather than just hanging out in person, so obvious that that's antisocial. So I see you're coming from Jay. Politely disagree. I think that is the last question we have this week. Thank you all so much.

Monday's episode, I teased. It's with Kathy Lee Gifford and Hassan Piker. I'm going to predict there's going to be so much disagreement with the Hassan Piker segment. It's going to be controversial. But I will say that's on Monday's edition of the show, the Labor Day edition of the show. God bless you all. I hope you have safe, a wonderful Labor Day weekend. It's fall, by the way.

I'm not going to say as we end summer. because September 1 comes around. I consider it fall, full stop. So enjoy your fall weekend, even though it's the end of summer holiday. Enjoy it. I hope you all have a wonderful time. We'll see you back here with more after-party soon. Thanks, everyone.