Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 29 - Freedom of Speech

Episode Date: February 6, 2018

True Freedom of Speech, at least in my opinion is a knife that cuts both ways. This past week I was inundated with questions about my thoughts on the interaction between a Los Angeles high school teacher, and a student wearing a Marine Corps sweatshirt. This incident made national news quickly, and was the topic of many social media platforms. Many people assumed I would share their outrage, I do not. I reference the recording in the episode, and if you have not listened, here is a link that will take you to the audio: https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/30/us/teacher-under-investigation-ad-trnd/index.html The remainder of the episode is dedicated to additional questions received from listeners to the podcast. Enjoy!

Episode 29, here we go. A podcast episode from the road. I think it's the coolest thing about hosting a podcast is that you can travel and do this anywhere. And I'm not going to lie. I love watching the TSA guys and gals look at the x-ray screen behind their monitors or behind a little x-ray machine

and the faces that they make trying to figure out what is in the Pelican case that I travel with that holds the microphone and the recording device. It's priceless. I love it. There hasn't been a single time that I've gone through security that it doesn't get pulled to the side

where they do the chemical wipes, I guess it would be for the explosive residue. Then they ask me to open it up and then step away. And occasionally, I'll get a cool guy or gal and they'll be a little chatty and we'll play a game of guess what's in the box. They've never guessed a podcast set up with a microphone. and a recording device.

I actually don't know what it looks like, but I can only imagine that it's just a buffet of wires and coils and cables. I don't know. Whatever it is, they definitely want to take a look at it. And it's a little bit of fun

when they're willing to play guess what in the box with me. But that has absolutely nothing to do with today's episode or this week's episode, I should say. So episode 29, might as well call this one playing catch up. I need to,

and I owe some answers, to some questions that I've been getting consistently. I should say I owe an answer to a question that I have gotten consistently over the last week. And I have received this question no less than 25 times, I'm going to say. And it has to do with the school teacher in the Los Angeles area who had an interaction with the young man who was wearing a Marine Corps sweatshirt. And I'm not going to dig into it now because I'm going to dig right into it on episode or not. not on episode. I'm going to dig right into it as soon as I get through with the intro, so I'll just leave it for that. But in the description of this podcast, I put a link to the

shortest and most concise video that I could find that had the audio so you could hear it for yourself if you haven't heard it, and then make up your own mind. Maybe you want to listen to it before you go into the intro, or maybe you want to listen to it afterwards. Regardless, It's there for you as a reference. It is by no means the only video or audio that exists. I just tried to find the one that was the most concise and the shortest. I didn't want to send people away on a 20-minute journey. And most of the videos that I saw were from local news agencies

that added a lot of color commentary to some audio that I think should be able to stand for itself. It's pretty self-explanatory. But do a little bit of research on the issue on your own, I guess is what I'm saying. Don't take me at my word and the things that I say They're my opinion and you might not agree with them and that's awesome I'm very grateful that we live in a place or we don't have to agree And that's it there'll be a couple other questions after that wanted but uh let's stay again Episode 29

I'm looking at danger close now Here we go Like I said over the last week I have received a version of this question no less than 25 times. So I'll attempt to summarize all versions of the question and simply put it as what are my feelings or what are my thoughts about the Los Angeles area high school teacher that was recorded by a student talking down. I don't know what word other people would use, but that is the word that I'm going to use. Talking down to both a student, not only about his choice to want to enlist in the Marine Corps, but about military service members themselves.

For those of you who stopped the intro and went and listened to the audio, you have probably a little bit of a better understanding of what I'm talking about. For those of you that did not, I'm going to lay out the situation for you. to the best of my understanding and what my own personal research on the issue has led me to. So it comes down to last week, a male high school student was wearing a Marine Corps sweatshirt. And if it's the picture that I've seen in all the videos is actually the sweatshirt that he was wearing, it's very innocuous, very general, I guess I would say very bland shirt that just says, Marines on it or Marine on it.

It's nothing crazy. It's no symbols of warfare or fighting or actually anything necessarily military related other than the name of one of the branches of service. So the student wore sweatshirt to class, and it became an issue with the teacher. I'm not sure why it became an issue this day. Maybe he had worn the sweatshirt before. Maybe he hadn't. I have no idea.

but in an interview that I listened to from the student kind of given his side of the story and that interview is available all over the internet you can find it if you want to and listen to it he said that the teacher made him stand up and explain why he had a desire to enlist in the Marine Corps which in his particular family it is a legacy occupation we shall say from my understanding and from what I could find the student articulation his desires to do so and use that family tradition as one of the reasons that he wanted to enlist, which was then thrown into his face by the teacher prior to the recording beginning, saying something along the lines of, if your family tradition was to beat women, would you do that as well?

And we'll get back to that in a minute. Shortly after that exchange, the student, again, and this is on him giving his interview on his side, said he chose to disengage from the teacher at that point, but he started. to record video on his phone. The video itself doesn't actually show the teacher. It just captures the audio of what was being said. And after that initial exchange where the student stopped pushing back or just decided not to voice his opinions anymore,

you can hear the teacher very audibly say something along the lines of, you know, think about the people that are overseas, your stupid Uncle Louis. You know, the military is the lowest of the low. They're not high-level bankers. They're not academic people. and they're not intellectual people.

The video continues in a little bit later, and by that, I mean, I have absolutely no idea how much time transpired because you could tell that the audio was edited for time. The teacher makes a few comments about Vietnam and Asian people. Not sure where he was going with that, but the questions that were coming at me, or the questions that were directed at me,

were all along the lines of how do I feel about this? And I'm going to make the assumption that most of the people who have reached out feel that I either would be angry or even outraged. And that would be the initial reaction that I have seen from at least the majority of people on this topic. Pure anger and outrage. And when people ask me how I feel about this, because I've talked to a few people about this in person prior to addressing the topic right now, the reality is is that I'm not and I think that might be surprising to some people so just bear with me and let me explain so let me start by saying I absolutely do not agree with what that teacher said

because of the fact that it's inaccurate I absolutely do not agree with his tact an educator that is trying to demean a student, which is how I take that exchange, as opposed to doing something or anything constructive with the topic, is not acceptable, in my opinion. And I'm also approaching this question as if the individual who recorded this video was one of my children. What disappoints me about the video is the factual inaccuracy of it. The military, if it's anything, is completely reflective of our society. And it's a bell curve. There are some low achievers, just like every occupation in this country, to include school teachers. In my personal experience, after interacting with every branch of the U.S. military and a variety of occupational specialties inside of the U.S. military,

I would say it is comprised of people who are the opposite of the lowest of the low. For most people, I can't say all of them, but I will say for most people, military service is not a measure of last resort. I personally served with Rhodes Scholars, officers who graduated from Cambridge. I served with enlisted personnel with advanced degrees that ran the gambit from philosophy to mathematics. I also know many guys that served then pursued their high-level academic and intellectual occupations. And they crushed them, and they're thriving. Now, that doesn't hold true for everybody, but if you were to look at the people who have no other choice but to join the military,

maybe they view it as their only option to change their economic situation in their life for themselves and for future generations. generations. So for somebody who would enter the military as a route to pay for higher education or to escape an economic situation like that, that doesn't make you low. It makes you smart. It means you're taking advantage of the tools and resources available to change your life. We are so lucky and incredibly fortunate and privileged to live in a place where we have freedom of speech. and that freedom of speech and that right, it's not boundary to limit by my opinions or anybody else's opinions of what is considered tasteful. But having said that, freedom of speech and freedom from consequences are two very different things. And when you start researching the First Amendment,

the governing document for our freedom of speech and expression, it does not shield you from running your mouth, especially when contractual restrictions exist, both from individuals or from organizations. A perfect example of this is when you actually enlist in the military. When you sign on the dotted line, you surrender some of your rights voluntarily. It's an agreement between you and the government of the United States of America and that agreement and other agreements that individuals enter into, for example, a teacher and a place of learning should be honored. And more importantly, they should be enforced. And if I was in the military and I deviated from the regulations or the rules or the restrictions when it governed my speech

or my wearing of a military uniform at a political gathering, or the manipulation of my military a uniform to pursue a political point. If I deviated, I should have every expectation of punishment. In my opinion, the teacher should be held accountable and responsible to his employment agreement and code of conduct with his employer, which in this case happens to be the school district. I think we're headed to a very dangerous place. If he's held accountable to public opinion, popular opinion, or a mob that is essentially digitally calling for his head. Again, I do not agree with what he said or how he conducted his classroom. If it were my children, which, like I said in the beginning, I am trying to view this situation

from the perspective of being my child, I would address the issue first and primarily with the school leadership and the school board. And I've actually done this with one of my kids. there was an incident at one of their schools with one of their teachers. I will say in this particular incident, it was much more clear cut as to appropriate versus inappropriate, or actually in that particular situation, it probably flirted with the lines of legal versus illegal. And the situation resolved itself in a manner that not only myself and my wife, but many other parents of the students in my son's classroom, felt was, wrong to pick the best word. So we did something about it. We went to the school leadership and didn't get the answer that we wanted. So we went to the school board leadership and it kept pushing back until the situation resolved itself in a manner that protected the children and not the

teacher. It wasn't easy and it wasn't fun, but it was important. So we did it and it can be done. Now with that, in this particular situation, myself personally, what I also would want to do is attempt to have a conversation with that teacher. And by that, I mean a conversation. I don't mean an argument. To me, his comments reek of someone with no knowledge about what they're talking about on that particular topic. So I'd try to give him some via my own personal experiences and hopefully try to remind him. subtly that his job is to educate and not alienate. And if the individual is not receptive or argumentative, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole with him. I'm going to disengage and

go right back to the school leadership and continue up the chain. The more I started thinking about this topic or this situation, the more it started to concern me. Because you could fill in, the topic. In this particular situation, he was making comments about the military. But fill it in with whatever hot button topic that gets your goat. Whatever your hot button may be, just imagine for a second that that was the topic of conversation and that was the content of the video. And it concerns me because if as a parent you're concerned that a teacher is saying something that's unpopular or controversial, perhaps you even consider it to be wrong, is it going to corrupt your child or is a risk to your child, then I need you to be a person. I need you to

push pause right now, or if you're driving your car, I need you to pull over, you need to look in the mirror and remember one very important thing. The person that you see is the person that's responsible for raising your child, not the teachers. The person that you see is responsible for establishing and calibrating the moral compass of your children. The person that you see is responsible for preparing your children for the world outside of your heart. home. The person you see is responsible for setting the example in success and failure, victory and defeat. And I know it sounds like I'm talking at people right now, but I'm talking at myself as much as anybody else. And I don't have enough time or recording capability on this

device to go through my shortcomings. Personally, I can do so much better in everything that I just mentioned. I've had missed opportunities, distracted moments with my kids, moments where I was physically there, but just not mentally tuned in, just completely lost in the bullshit of my own life. And it makes me sick to my stomach. It fires me up to do better. It fires me up to do more because the clock is ticking every day. And I have less and less of an opportunity to be the example that I know I can be. I am responsible to show my kids what it looks like to navigate your way through success and failure and adversity and everything in between. I would like to think, or I would hope that we could all agree that the world really doesn't care about our personal

beliefs, hopes, aspirations, desires fill in the blank. I would hope that we can all agree that life is a full contact sport. Sometimes you get your bell wrong and your helmet gets knocked off. You have to learn how to strap it back on and get into the trenches. Now when I look back at my life, the most influential teachers that I had pushed me. They asked me to explain and articulate my beliefs. They presented me with ideas I did not agree with or even like. And I didn't then, and I don't want my children ever to run from things like that. I would, want them to run at them. So when it comes to a situation like this, an interaction between a student and a teacher, regardless of how much it turns your stomach, I'll give you two choices. Which one

would you prefer? A country where a situation like this can occur, or a country where we raise our children in protected echo chambers, where every topic and word is regulated. Now, I am not the most robust student of history, but I believe it shows a poor tracker record with the latter choice. Bottom line is, freedom of speech is a knife that cuts both ways. In my opinion, I view freedom of speech not in terms of how much I am able to say and vomit out of my own mouth, but how much I'm willing to tolerate from somebody else, whether I agree with them or not. So I got me thinking a little bit more about this particular issue. And in that, where the actual outrage is coming from. I think it's just coming from negative words towards the military and those that have served in it.

That is what I think most likely is causing this emotional reaction. And all I can say about that is, get over it. The military and the veteran community should be more than capable of absorbing some uneducated or biased or mean or hurtful comments. Military service was one of the most humbling and honorable things that I'll ever have the chance to do in my life. And I don't need a single other person to feel that way about my service or the things that I did. The military exists to ensure that the words written on paper that provide the rights for

speech and expression aren't burned to the ground. round. And those words require precisely and exactly no one to agree with you or thank you for it. I'm grateful we live in a country where this could happen, as opposed to us living in a country of rake and file, or are not allowed to think outside of the norm, or at the very least verbalized things outside of the norm. I'll let others argue back and forth as to whether it was right or wrong. But in my mind, what this situation actually highlights is an amazing opportunity to have a meaningful conversation with your son or daughter. It's an opportunity to earn your title of parent. Take it. Seize it. So the last thing I'll say about this topic, and this comment is

directed at the veteran community and I suppose the active duty military community as well. I've seen a lot of threats against this individual, all based around physical violence from people claiming to either be active duty or a veteran. If you don't agree with the things that this individual was saying about the military being the lowest of the low, don't help him make his point. Nothing is easier than violence. do the hard thing and educate your family, those around you, and this person if you had the chance. If you don't want to be considered low, don't do low stuff. Now for a change of topic and hopefully a little bit of gravity, I'm going to dive into some other questions I got.

I've received quite a few questions about hunting as well. most of them are around my thoughts on bow hunting versus rifle hunting and essentially the most recent question I got said that if I don't have the time or inclination to take up bow hunting do I meaning me consider rifle hunting as being less honorable or is it so easy that it's not worth taking up and I think this question probably stems from me not articulating my point clear enough and using imprecise language, I have no issue whatsoever with anybody who decides or wants to rifle hunt or does rifle hunt. When I said or when I have said that for me, it's either bow hunting or nothing, that is a

personal choice based off of my own experience and my own background. It's not meant as a knock or a comparison or a competition between anybody else and any type of hunting that you may want to do. I think the act of getting outside and getting involved in the harvesting process of your food at a hands-on level is an amazing thing. And I also understand that it's not for all people. So even between bow and rifle, I don't care.

Between hunting and not hunting, like I covered on the podcast where I discussed ethics, it doesn't matter to me. All I ask is that people be educated about the choices that they make. So, yeah, rifle hunting, in my opinion, is just as honorable as bow hunting. It's just not for me personally the route that I want to go. The next question I got is one that I'm trying to wrap my head around the best way to answer. So I'll read the question first. It says, how can a service member's wife and family best support him during training,

deployments and transitioning out of the military. I think the real question is, how can everyone best support each other? I really do feel, especially looking back now, that that's the truly important question. And I can only speak to it from the military service members side. And I could answer that question right now, but I'm not going to. Because what I hope to do in the very near future is I want to sit down with my wife and record. an episode with her. And I think it might take a few times for us to attempt it and to make it into something that she would allow me to post for the world to hear because it's going to be difficult. There are challenges to military relationships that I don't necessarily know are

present in most relationships. Perhaps they're very similar in the fire or first responder or law enforcement world, but I don't know because I don't come from those worlds. But I do know that my wife is very passionate about her experiences, and the best person to speak about that from a family's perspective would be her, because I have almost no insight and experience into that. I do believe that the easiest job in the military relationship is that of the active duty service member. And I'm going to leave it at that.

and hopefully I can get the podcast recorded with my wife. And if I'm able to do it, I think it might be a pretty amazing listen. Because she's got some things she believes in very deeply. And I think she's earned them. And I think a lot of people might benefit from hearing them. Next question is about starting over. Do I have any advice for starting over at the bottom? Switching jobs where I had respect and leadership to being the lowest on the ladder.

And then something that goes along with this was tips to maintaining a motivated team and how to weed out unmotivated members. So for the person that asked this, you partially answered your own question just in how you phrased it. If you previously had respect and leadership, and by that, I'm going to assume that you had a leadership position, you already know what to do. your position shouldn't have any bearing on your conduct. Previously, you had positional authority, and hopefully there was much more to go with it than that. Currently, you don't have that option because you're starting at the bottom, but everybody has the chance to lead every single day, whether by position or in your case, you're going to start off by leading by example.

What I would say is, if you've been at the top, you already know what it took to get there, and huge emphasis on the end how long it took to get there. So I would accept the process for what it is and just start dragging people up the ladder with you. All of the characteristics of a great leader. Humility, accountability, integrity, dedication, decision making, control of your emotions, clarity of communication and intention, clarity of communication and intent. They all make for a great follower too. And if you really want to be a great leader, you have to be able to follow. So I would say take your time and enjoy the process on the way back up.

And I think I've covered this on a previous podcast, but even if I have, I'm going to go over it again. I firmly believe that there are two main ways that people can leave. One of them is by position. And what I have seen in the business world, there are so many people who wait until they have the office that they want, or the title on a business card, or the title on a business card, or the title. title on the door leading into their office. They wait until they have a position that they associate with responsibility, and then they start acting like the leader that they think they should be. And in my opinion, that is a recipe for absolute failure. In the same sense that

a young person learning how to drive, attempting a driving test without ever spending the requisite amount of time learning, studying, and most importantly, practicing, practically practicing driving a vehicle, you'll have no chance of success. If you've never driven a car, how are you going to pass a driving test? You can't. Well, how do you learn to drive a car? You find a mentor and somebody who can explain to you what the vehicle is, and they tell you how to get into it and what the knobs do and how to turn it on, and then you start driving in a parking lot, a controlled and contained environment where you can get a little bit of skill. Then you go out onto a country road.

And while you're on that road or even while you're in the parking lot to begin with, if you get into a position that you're at the limit of your experience, you have somebody right next to you that you can draft off of. They can bound you to stay inside of your experience level and you can pull from theirs if you need it. And if anybody's driving experience or learning to drive experience was similar to mine, the person teaching you says quite a bit to begin with. And then as you gain some experience, they taper that off a little bit

until you're having a conversation about stuff that has nothing to do with driving. And eventually you go from that parking lot to the country road to the streets to the highway and you're at the DMB and you're taking your driver's test and you're prepared to do so. That is the only strategy that makes sense when it comes to gaining the experience needed to drive a car. And when I ask audiences, if that seems to be a responsible approach, everybody says yes, because it is. So my question to them after that is, why don't we apply the same principles to leadership? If you wait until you get to that position or office or parking space or title to gain the experience required to be a good leader, you're going to fail.

And when you fail, you're going to hurt your people, probably yourself as well, but who cares? It's about your people. And that's not fair to them. It's also not fair to the organization. So if you don't have a positional leadership role right now, good. Focus on yourself. Lead by example and work on all of the things that I listed that I consider to be characteristics

of good leader. And again, this is not by any means a complete. list of characteristics, but these are ones that definitely stick out to me. The humility, accountability, integrity, dedication, your ability to make objective decisions, not emotional ones, clarity in your communication and your intent, control of your emotions. All of those things can be practiced regardless of your station in life. And if you practice them now and you think of yourself right now as a leader, when you get to a leadership position, you're going to knock it out of the park.

All right, last question, then I'm going to bed. I'm tired of hearing myself talk. I don't imagine. So are you. So here we go. Are the Afghans that good of soldiers that they wind up defeating every invader since Alexander the Great? Well, in my personal experience, no.

The Taliban were not that impressive. And the native Afghan soldiers were not either. Foreign fighters, you could definitely tell a difference when they had. had set foot on the battlefield. They were better, but they still couldn't do it alone. Now, the combination of those fighters and the country itself, the geography and topography of that country itself, and then the neighboring countries,

specifically the tribal areas that allow for fighters to train, then mobilize, come across the border, fight, then flee, and live in a safe haven that is largely untouchable, and that doesn't exist for the U.S. forces, it creates a very daunting challenge. I can't think of a statement that encapsulates the environment better than one that I just recently read online, and it was credited to a captured Taliban fighter, and he was talking about the United States, I believe. He said, we, meaning the U.S. have all the watches. They, the Afghans, have all the time.

And I think it just says it perfectly. I can't think of a single tactical loss or defeat, even though there may be some. So we're winning the battles, but I think we're going to lose the war. I think history is going to judge our intent and our efforts favorably and the results poorly. In my opinion, which again, I can speak only for myself. We are like the country's before us. We're bleeding a death of a thousand paper cuts. The loss of life has definitely been reduced over the years, but I don't think the strain on the personnel and the infrastructure has been at all.

It might actually be increased. You know, when you go from war fighting to occupying to nation building to a stability force, and I don't know if those are accurate terms, and I don't know if those are necessarily listed in the appropriate order, but all of those things have a cost associated with them other than loss of life. I don't know what analogy fits better. You're standing in front of a dam that's sprouting leaks, and you're pushing your finger into the leaks, but you have no plan to replace the dam, or a better analogy would be you're trying to keep a torch alive and a rainstorm. I wish I had a clean and concise solution, and I don't.

But all I know is, if you see a dam leaking, you need to stick your finger into it to stop the flow of water. That may not make the dam more structurally safe, but what it does is it allows other people time so they can get the hell out of the way in case it's going to break. I truly hope that smarter minds than my own can figure out a long-term solution to the problem. And that's all I got for this week.

As always, thank you to everybody who is listening and providing me feedback. Thank you to everybody who is telling others about the podcast, and helping it organically grow. Thank you to everybody that is buying the hats and the shirts and the sweatshirts. My plan with any money that I make is to throw it right back into the podcast and hopefully continue to make it something that is impactful and hopefully rewarding for the people that are listening to it.

So if you got any suggestions, reach out. I can't answer your question unless you ask it. That's it. Talk to you guys next week. Later.