From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Why Families, Not Politicians Will Save America

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame Patrick Deneen joins Rachel and Sean to discuss his new book, Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future. In his book, Professor Deneen proposes a plan for eliminating the liberal elite and bringing back the culture, values, and politics of Republicans and the working class. He details how Democrat and Republican politics have changed through the years, where those values fall now, and what he sees for the future of politics across America. Follow Sean and Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk business. 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. Hey, everyone. Welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. It's great to be back at the kitchen table, Sean, and today we have a great guest. He came to us through Pete Hegseth. I think he was Pete's thesis director, maybe? And he came on the show. that correct professor that is correct yeah

yep i was and he came highly recommended he was amazing on the show um he's a professor at the university of notre dame and he is the author of a book you're gonna love this title regime change towards a post-liberal future pat Patrick Deneen, Professor Deneen, thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me in your kitchen. Appreciate it. Yes.

So you share the same concern that Sean and I have of the world we're living in and specifically the way the politics and the values and the culture have gone in our country. You have been writing a lot about this new liberal regime that we live under. Why don't you explain that? And then we'll get to what you see for the future, how we can come out from under this. I'm going to jump on that question to make a more pointed.

I spent nine years in Congress, Professor, and we see this evolution of politics and the left has gone further left. It's more woke. I mean, I think pushing ideas and agendas that I think most Americans don't agree with. But then the Republican Party has changed, too, with Donald Trump's entry to the political scene where it has become far more nationalistic, far more America first. And these homes are not traditional homes of the parties. And it's been evolving. And frankly, I think you'd agree it's not actually working. So what's happened in American politics? Where have we been? Where are we at right now? Well, I guess the first thing to say is that we can talk about this sort of specific political moment, which is everyone's trying to figure that out. But what we should really notice is that if

we're talking about family or even, you know, we could talk about a whole series of associated topics, which might broadly call relationality. What's the status or how relational are people in the United States today? And how relational have they been in the past? And one of the more fascinating findings and consistent findings in the social sciences, which is at least notionally the area where I teach. I'm a political philosopher, but I teach in political science. The data consistently shows a decline of relationality across a whole series of ways that you could measure this. And maybe the one we want to talk most about today is family. So just to start with marriage, marriage rates have dropped, let's just say the last 50 years, marriage rates have dropped 50% over the course of 50 years.

Divorce rates over that time have doubled. The rate of single parents, so people who are not married but having children, has increased threefold in that 50 years. So from 9% in 1960 approximately to about 27% about nine years ago in 2014. And just if we just take this measure, we can look at a whole bunch of other measurements as well, what we see is this has tremendously negative impacts on people, on families, children, but especially on the poor, especially on those who are most impoverished. So you would think that if what we were concerned about, and we can say this in a bipartisan way, what we're concerned about is the kind of helping people out, helping people out of poverty, helping people out

of the likelihood of being arrested for crimes or entering life in crime, the likelihood of being incarcerated, having generational poverty, you would think that there would be massive agreement across the left and the right about the question of family. And yet, it seems to me that one of the areas where the left and the right have really moved further and further apart is a kind of stated commitment to family being the center and the core of what, in some ways, a kind of good and healthy and, you know, in some ways a kind of fulfilled and flourishing human life looks like, is to be in a committed, loving, and long-term family situation.

Yeah, I mean, that's so interesting. You can distill, I've often said, we can look at all the social ills in America right now, from crime to poverty to, you know, you name it, mental health issues, and everything really comes down to the family. And so why is it that liberalism doesn't seem to care that much about protecting that unit, which we've kind of known over centuries is the bedrock of any society, not just American society. So I think, I mean, we could look at a whole lot of reasons, and it's always difficult to sort of get the noise out of these kinds of studies. But at a kind of, I would say that the deepest bedrock level of where we are philosophically today in the world. We could say that the nature

of the, we could say broadly a political order that prizes above all the freedom of the individual. And this is something that, you know, I think we could say is true across the left and the right in different degrees. But the freedom of the individual is the thing that we prize, is the thing that we shout off the rooftops of being the essence of what it is to be an American. And I think at a very deep level, that becomes sort of what one sees and envisions of what kind of life one should be living. So to be free is, among other things, to be free of any arbitrary kinds of relationships one might happen to find oneself in, whether it's where we're born, whether it's the family we're born to, whether it's the tradition that we're born into, our religious tradition,

our kind of ethnic traditions, and so forth. But kind of longstanding American story has been to free ourselves from those kinds of relationships and those kinds of situations. One of the most interesting findings that just came out this past March is that of the five commitments that have been centrally important to Americans over the last 50 years or so, we have seen radical declines in four of those commitments and increase in one of the commitments. The commitments that have declined over the course of roughly from 20... This study was done in Wall Street Journal, it was published in March. From 1998, when this study was first done, Americans rated patriotism as among their highest at 70 percent. In 2023, last March, it fell to 38 percent.

Wow. Religion was held at a value, a kind of very important value at 62 percent. That's fallen to 39 percent. 62%, that's fallen to 39%. Having children, once ranked at 59%, nearly 60% of Americans said that was an extremely important commitment. That's fallen to 30%, fallen in half. Being involved with one's community, ranked at 47% in 1998, and that's fallen now to 27%. And that's fallen now to 27%. And having money, this is the fifth important value that people state, was at 31%, at the lowest in 1998, the lowest of these five. It's the only one that rose from 31% to 43%.

But I think if we look at these in some ways as a kind of, we see not just family, which is represented by having children, but if you think about what patriotism is, what religion is, what community is, of course, having children. These all have to do with seeing ourselves as people who are committed to something larger to ourselves, as committed to something beyond ourselves, and often lifelong commitments, things that really require the essence of that word commitment. do really require that that the essence of that word commitment and what's replaced that strikingly is a commitment to money which is something that in some ways allows us to be free right it allows us to be sort of do what we want and not to have to really you know kind of float above any commitments uh and to be and to be these people who are free so in some ways i mean so it seems that we have become in an odd way we've become i don't in some ways, it seems that we have become, in an odd way, we've become, it's odd to say this, but we've become too committed to freedom without the

corresponding and necessary commitments to things like, of course, commitment and loyalty and solidarity and obligation to other people. And it seems to me that this is one of the areas where we begin to see the two parties really beginning to become quite distinct. So it's interesting because obviously money doesn't make you happy and people are pursuing money. And the other things that you mentioned that have gone down, whether it's religion or children or community, those are the things that do actually build happiness.

When you mentioned freedom, I actually understand. I don't necessarily agree with it. But when you go, I want the freedom to have sex. I want the freedom to not be bound by getting married, to have a baby or an abortion. I want the freedom to make those choices. We talked about this, you know, about a month ago about the, I don't remember when Barack Obama put out the video of the life of Julia, a woman's life from birth to death that basically doesn't involve any part of a family

or any part of a man in her life, but it involved her and her relationship with the government, which again is this more democratic push for the individual as opposed to the family. And I would just look at what's happening in the politics as well. And when we talk about freedom, it seems like, yeah, there might be freedom for the individual, but I don't feel like the left is offering me a lot of freedom when it comes to Pride Month. Either I have to buy in or I have to be excluded. I don't think they're leaving me a lot of freedom in regard to the vehicles that I choose or the stove that I buy or the dishwasher or washing machine.

Or the vaccine. It seems like there's a lot of push from government to take away my freedom that i used to have um and mask it in this other kind of freedom of you know make your choices have no commitments have no family and it does come back to you know if when you look at your studies and what makes societies work but also also what makes the human happy. It is from giving and being generous and having a family and having kids. Those are the things that fill us up. And it seems like the other side is pushing a set of ideas that have never made anybody happy and or fulfilled. Yeah, I mean, so actually, in my last book, which was called Why Liberalism Failed, I actually talk about that Life of Julia commercial, which it seems has gone into the memory hole. It's almost impossible to find.

Oh, I watched it the other day. I did not memory hole the life of disappeared. But it really is a kind of beautiful, really encapsulates, I think, one of the ethos, one of the core aspects of what we might think of as the ethos of freedom, or a certain kind of freedom, the freedom from commitments, the freedom from other human beings. And what that commercial, the set of slides about the life of Julia portrayed, commercial, the set of slides about the life of Julia portrayed, was an individual, in this case, Julia, this woman, who leads a life who, at least from the perspective of how she's presented, never has to have any obligations to any particular human being. Everything that she receives is in some ways the result of some kind of government benefit or government program.

And so she's completely freed from other human beings. But as a result, she is in some ways, you could say, the perfect subject of and the result of the creation of a set of government programs. And in that part of the book, I actually evoke some of the arguments from Alexis de Tocqueville. I don't know if you talk about Tocqueville much at all, but Tocqueville feared the rise of a kind of what he called democratic despotism, a large centralized state that would kind of absorb a lot of the freedom of people. But that freedom result, sorry, the kind of the growth of the state arose because people wanted to be free. They wanted to be independent of each other.

They wanted to be no longer tied or bound to each other. And so the growth of the centralized state seems to arise precisely from these conditions that we're talking about in these statistics. Precisely from the conditions of an increasingly isolated, atomized, you know, kind of in some senses independent, but also very deeply dependent human beings. And if you have money in that situation, you can kind of make your way through the world. You can kind of rely on the money to get you through. But if you don't have the money, then you're going to rely more and more on those kinds of government programs. And so the way in which these two things that we sometimes,

I think in the conservative world, we tend to think freedom, the independence of individuals, and small government go together. But I think it actually turns out that the more bounded we are with other people in our families, in our communities, through our religious communities, the more likely it is we are to be a self-governing people. The more likely it is we are to have a limited government, not because it's because of the Constitution or because of the Supreme Court. It's just that people actually have a thick set of relationships that allows them to be relatively less cognizant of the role that the government plays in their lives. Or dependent. Yeah, I mean, what Tocqueville actually saw and loved about America was how civic-minded they were,

that they were volunteering and helping each other out, and they were really connected. And so this idea of freedom and community and strong family bonds didn't seem to be separated from each other back then. So where did we go wrong? Well, where did we go wrong? Well, a lot of these, you know, a lot of these phenomena that we begin to see come about as part of the, you know, part of the sexual revolution in the late 1960s. We could say the revolution of mores that begins around that time. Again, some of the statistics I was quoting begin around that time, going back to the late 60s, early 70s.

We become a much wealthier country, and I think many people begin to think that they no longer have to be bound by the limitations, again, of the kind of lives they once grew up in or their parents grew up in. I think that's played a big role in this as well. But here, I guess I would just say, since I know your audience is probably largely conservative, unless the people who want to listen in and throw bombs. We have those. But I do think, yeah, I do too. I do think conservatives need to begin to expand their vocabulary somewhat because I think as a consequence of having,

especially arisen in the 19, you know, from the 1960s to the 1980s, you know, beginning with William F. Buckley and then with the candidacy of Barry Goldwater, and the presidency of Ronald Reagan. And in the backdrop of all of this, the Cold War, and the kind of a threat posed by the totalitarian government that sought to eviscerate human liberty in the name of equality. It was completely understandable that conservatives adopted the language of freedom, of independence. Many of its institutions become kind of stamped by the theme and the ethos of freedom.

But it seems to me that one of the things that conservatives are actually really, as if not more committed to, are the ideals of loyalty and obligation and fidelity and solidarity. was describing, a society that's thick with solidarity and fidelity and loyalty and obligation is one in which we are more likely to be free because we have those kinds of structures and institutions that we can rely upon and then we have to rely less on the government. And so I think at the same time, we need to understand that freedom is, of course, a central human good. A human being that is deprived of freedom is a human being that's not happy. We also recognize, I think as Sean was saying, that people who are involved in family life and community life and religious life, who have a kind of thick sense of who they are and the kind of bonds they're part of, this is actually one of the highest forms in which people self-report their happiness. It's because of those forms of association of belonging that seems to have a direct connection to the idea of human happiness.

I think conservatives now in the year 2023 and going forward should be much more forthright about emphasizing these kinds of words and these kinds of goals precisely because it is an avenue. And it is a kind of, you could say, the foundation of a genuine kind of freedom. I think it's interesting. So again, I was in the Republican House and we talk a lot about limited government, right? We want to reduce the size and scope of government. One, it costs too much money. It has too much influence in our lives. And I think you make a really good point. If you want limited government, that's the end result. But if you want it to be limited, you have to build out these other things in your family or in your community or in your relationships. So you have this broader support system that doesn't make you then reliant on a

big fat bloated government. and that's one comes before the other and i think that's a great point but but also professor and again i don't want to get too conspiratorial here with you but if that's true what you guys are describing i have believed there are people who are purposely trying to break down those bonds Because if they can break them down, then we need them, right? If the mom has the baby without the dad, the baby daddy becomes the government. And if you need more little Marxist activists, young people, disaffected, what they're doing in the school system right now, what they're doing with gender ideology, all of that is going to break down those family bonds, break down those community values that hold people together. That's right. So this is, again, where we see this interesting paradox arising.

And I think Sean was saying earlier, it feels right now like the government is, and particularly the way that the left is using the government, is seeking to force us and force conservatives to think and to act and to speak in certain ways. But it's interesting how much of that emphasis today is really focused on just the areas of life that we're talking about. Family life, human sexuality, who, you know, how children are to be raised, who is to raise the children, you know, is it to be the parents, is it to be the community, is it to be the government and so forth, is it to be the public schools. And so how much of the efforts today on the left seem to be especially focused on kind of enforcing an ethos of extreme liberty, of extreme detachment,

the liberation of the individual to do as they wish in the realm of sexuality in order to break down what we might think of as the last mores, the last limitations, the last restrictions on human liberty in the kind of most abstract and expansive form, which are the kind of the oldest taboos on how one is to act in the realm of relationships with the opposite sex and how one is to raise children and how one is to form a family. So it seems that it's in these areas where we see some of the most ferocious efforts today on the part of the left. And of course, it's not just government, as we should point out. It's, of course, also corporations. It's so-called private entities. Nonprofits.

Nonprofits. I mean, my state of Indiana saw this just a few years ago with, you know, Apple Corporation and Eli Lilly really working hard to overturn a religious freedom restoration act. It was the corporations that worked against what was the effort of the Indiana legislature to protect religious liberty. So here, I think, in a kind of paradoxical way, you see the use of government power and also private power to do what, in some ways, is the effort to extend an ever more radical idea of human liberty. The liberation from our own nature, what it is to be a man and a woman, whether one is, in some ways, has obligations to one's parents or whether children should be raised by teachers and so forth. So in a paradoxical way, I think increasingly the use of government authority, as we're seeing it unfold, is being advanced kind of in the name of a kind of highly youth form of extreme liberty. Is this Marxism, though?

Is this cultural Marxism? I know you're a political philosopher. I use that term a lot. I don't know how to explain what I'm seeing happening. What do you make of people like me who see what's happening as cultural Marxism? So I think I'm trying to figure out exactly what's meant by cultural Marxism. Now, Marx believed that in the communist, in the flourishing of the communist after the

communist revolution, human beings would overcome all of the old institutions. They would no longer be in some ways limited in their commitments to particular people. Rather, they would see every human being as, in a sense, a member of their family. So Marxism was very much directed against the family, the church, the churches, local forms of life, traditional forms of life. This is why the church was oppressed. This is why families church was oppressed. This is why families were often broken up. That in order to make people in a way become communists,

to see that they were no longer individuals, they were part of the species being, to use Marx's language. First, you had to have some ways to shatter all of the existing institutions and orders of society so that they could be liberated from these. In this sense, you know, you could see a kind of a Marxist underpinnings to this to this project. But it's also interesting because it it kind of maps onto an extreme form of the idea of the radical individual, according to according to you know a kind of radical libertarian idea yes of the yes uh you know that that um you know we are defined by our extreme freedom from anyone else so it's very odd how this kind of cultural marxism and this extreme form of libertarianism which is why i think you see some corporations getting involved in this kind of become wet in this weird way to have this what we now call woke capitalism you know and some republicans like some extreme you know free market

radical republicans are also on board with some of this corporate stuff yeah well i mean i think you know sean can certainly speak to this but this is part of the i think a legacy of the conservative movement going back to the 80s and the Republican Party. You know, there was an interesting article that appeared, it was maybe yesterday's or possibly today's Wall Street Journal, I think it might have been yesterday's, about how the funding base of the Republican Party is changing. And the Republican Party is moving away from funding from corporations, particularly large corporations, and more to small donors.

And I think this might, you know, this might signal a real shift in the Republican Party away from what I would think of as it's kind of, let's say more what I think of as it's more libertarian, perhaps extreme libertarianism that at least at one level defined part of its coalition in the 1980s, and really beginning to move much more in sync with the idea that it's to protect the kinds of the needs of the working class. Those who want to work, they want to have good jobs, they want to be able to make good livings, they want to be able to form families. And it's to protect those people, to give them the kind of atmosphere, the kind of possibilities of life that allow you to flourish without necessarily having to be wealthy, right? To be able to build a family, to be able to have some degree of security about the

kind of work you're going to have. And I think maybe we could say that Donald Trump represented himself a bad direction or he was dubious or he had his problems. But I think he exposed something with that it turns out the working class has a kind of conservative disposition that aligns pretty closely with this ideal of commitment, obligation, and the needs of flourishing communities and families. We'll have more of this conversation after this. The Scorebet app here with trusted stats and real-time sports news. Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game? Well, statistically speaking.

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Ontario only. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to connexontario.ca. With regard to the issue of freedom, I don't find the left in these ideas to be espousing individual freedom. They're taking their set of ideas, and it's one thing for them to say, listen, I want to be an environmentalist. I want to be a vaxxer. I want to be a pro-trans child transitioner. That's one thing. The problem is they're forcing this ideology on me and they're forcing it on

my kids through my school system by using my tax dollars and that's where i think the rub of of freedom um and authoritarianism are are crossing paths but you make a good point in regard to what's happening with corporations and you know you, you're right, banks were, Wall Street were big contributors to the Republican Party. Now, they might have been Democrats at heart, but they saw that, you know, Republicans probably were more ideologically aligned with freedom and more limited regulation, which is what they wanted. But today we, again, see corporations becoming greater activists. They're willing to sell out our homeland, America, and go over to China, make more money.

They're going to get fat payouts. We're losing jobs back at home. We're bringing our technology to China. We know they're going to be, if not an economic threat, they're a military threat to our country. They don't give a damn about the neighborhoods in which they were raised, the people that helped them build their companies. They've left them behind, which is why I think when Donald Trump was talking about America first, I'm going to have policies that are going to help impact your family. I'm going to have policies

that are going to bring jobs back home. I'm about my community, which is the greater American community, before I'm concerned about anybody else. That doesn't mean I have to put blinders on to the rest of the world. But if we're not strong, we're not looking out for ourselves, who's going to look out for us? And I think that was a real distinction that we hadn't heard before in Republican politics or on the American stage. And again, now you see this gulf of a divide between the elite globalists and the working man who wants policies that are going to benefit their freedom, their paycheck, their faith, their family. And I wonder, how do we get from the place we are today to a place where our country can maybe be aligned again to see

things as one people as opposed to these diametrically opposed views? Well, obviously, you know, what we are really seeing is a division of the country. And I think you described it really well. It's an elite that's no longer recognizably left or right per se in the following sense. It is globalist, which makes it, you know, which makes it more economically globalist, which used to be the orthodoxy on the right. I think that has changed with Donald Trump. And it is, its left form is kind of, again, radically individualist in the way you just described, which is in some ways forcing and wanting to force our kids to be introduced to the idea of trans and transitioning and so forth.

But this is in the belief that no child should be raised to believe that somehow they're born a boy or a girl. You should be completely free to decide what you are, who you are. And if your parents are telling you you're a boy or a girl, well, they're oppressing you and they have to be free. So notice, it is oppressive, right? What you are, who you are. And if your parents are telling you you're a boy or a girl, well, they're oppressing you and they have to be free. So notice it is oppressive, right? It is a form of saying we are going to tell you a certain way you have to think, but it's done in the name of saying you are completely free to create whatever identity you wish. And anyone who prevents you from doing that, you need to be liberated from. And this is the kind of extreme form of a kind of radical liberationist ethos takes. So in a weird way, there's a kind of

continuity between the libertarian ethos economically and the libertarian ethos, we could say, in the sexual, familial, communal domain. And what's really changed is it seems to me that the Republican Party has become less libertarian economically, which is not it's not in favor of a market economy and trade and obviously prosperity. But it recognizes and Sean, you were just saying this, it recognizes the centrality of the nation, that a nation is a place that has to be economically strong. There are certain industries it should have. It should not simply just export them all overseas, outsource all of those forms of work. There are certain kinds of products

that we need to have created domestically. We certainly discovered that during the pandemic with the supply chain routes and pharmaceuticals and so forth. But at the same time, the conservative party, the Republican Party, and conservatives in particular, it seems to me, are really beginning to push back on these ideological, particularly in the realm of sexual ideology,

in a way that it seemed like 10 years ago, the party was not as forthright, was not as willing to stand up. I think in the fear of being called a bigot and the fear of being denounced in the public square or losing one's reputation. But things have gone as, I think we'd all recognize, things have gone to such an extreme now that you have to take a stand. You absolutely have to take a stand, especially for your kids, where this is now getting down to the kind of lowest, most elementary level, literally elementary level. You know, Professor, there was a time when I was younger when I thought, you know, libertarians and Republicans were really similar. And I can

even remember being young enough to go, am I a libertarian? Am I a Republican? I always kind of leaned Republican, but I, it was so close. I thought at the time that it was sort of a choice I needed to make. Right. And then I went to go work for a nonprofit that was very heavily populated by libertarians. And I figured out really quick, I'm a conservative. I could not relate to, you know, they were pushing, you know, no limits on drug use. They were secularists, abortion. They had no morals on. I just felt like libertarians are immoral. And, you know, even in our own channel, you see that divide where you see some people who are libertarians. And I have to say, nice people. I don't relate to them. I'm a conservative. And I really think

it's interesting that you made that distinction here, because that's that's also some of the division in our own party with regard to Donald Trump. These libertarians who the only thing that mattered to them is money. The thing that you said was growing in those polls that you opened this podcast with. That seems to be what they care about. They're not interested in these familial bonds. They don't think it's the role of government to help do that. And the transformation for me with Donald Trump and with what we're seeing in the culture is I now don't. I mean, I majored in economics. I care about economics. I understand that economics impacts our lives.

But I am so distressed by the breakdown of the family and the results of it that I have decided to link arms with anyone who wants to build up the family. I'm for any policy that builds up the family and supports that, because I recognize that that's what the left is trying to tear down. And this is the source of what ails America. And so for me, that's been a total transformation. So who, as you look at the candidates, the economic leaders that you see out there, who is out there to be the hero to do this change that you talk about in your book? You say it's not going to come from the grassroots, if I understand correctly, Professor. You say this is going to be a different elite class who challenges this liberal and libertarian elite class. So let me just go back to that poll I started talking about, about what we value as Americans.

We have patriotism, religion, children, community and money. And if we break down this poll, according to party, a remarkable divide appears. So on patriotism, 23% of Democrats say it's a central value, an important value. 59% of Republicans say that it's an important value. So twice the number, about 60% of Republicans. On religion, Democrats, 27% say religion is important to them. 53% of Republicans say that religion is important to them. The last one I'll mention is children. Children, Democrats,

26%. Having children, 22% of Democrats say that having children is important to them. Here, I was actually a bit shocked. More Republicans say that having children is important to them, but only 38%. So it's 10% more. 10% more Republicans say that having children is important and valid to them. But only 38%, so less than 50% of the people who were polled, who identified as Republicans said that having children was important to them. And yet, when we think about where is the real, where is the kind of pushback right now among conservatives, the ideologies, the enforced orthodoxies that you're supposed to hold against the right think in the schools and the right think

of the corporations. And I think what was really instructive was the election of 2021 in Virginia and a number of other local elections that we've seen, in which it was the parents, in which was the parents' children who got up and they said, no more. We're not going to have this in our schools. We're not going to have radical gender ideology being taught in our schools. We're not going to have CRT taught in our schools. We don't want our schools to be locked down anymore. We don't want teachers to take advantage of the situation and just sit at home and leave our children in our basements. It was the parents who stood up. Now, if only 38% of self-declared Republicans think that having children is important, what's the trajectory of this party?

What's the trajectory? So this is just by way of saying, I actually think it should become much more a central part of the conservative movement and perhaps the Republican Party, which are not always the same thing, but the conservative movement to make about policies that could encourage people to be able to form families, not to just say it's enough for us to be free to form families, but to recognize, especially in the modern world, it's harder and harder, especially for the less well-off to form families. And it seems that the Democratic Party have kind of owned this topic, but in a very bad way, which is to say, we want to be able to give people the ability to leave home and work. We want both parents to be able to work out of the home. And Republicans have said, no, we don't want that. It really seems to me that what Republicans really need to be thinking about are there policies we could adopt that would allow parents to raise their

children, to have children, to be able to form families, regardless of your income level, regardless of your status in life. And what can we do to be able to form families, regardless of your income level, regardless of your status in life. And what can we do to make it easier for families, which we all know, we all know it's hard. You guys know that probably more than just about anyone having a big family. So what can we do if we're really do care if this topic is as important to us as we say it is, shouldn't we be as committed to this as we are to, you know, sending billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine? Maybe even more committed to this. Yes. And so why aren't we focusing as much energy, as much of our policy focus, as much creativity on this topic as anything else Republicans have talked about for the last 20,

30, 40, 50 years? I mean, I think you make a really good point. And I just would tell you from my perspective, if I put my house hat on, and I think it's right. I mean, sometimes it takes both parents to work. It's wonderful if only one parent has to work and one can stay home with the children. That's the best scenario. But as you mentioned, in this economy, sometimes both parents do have to work. And so what do we do with helping family formation by helping parents deal with kids? And one of the pushbacks that Republicans have had is like, we're going to create a whole other union of, you know, workers who, you know, take care of kids from six months to pre-K. And it's another funding source for Democrats, number one. And number two, they're concerned about the ideology that we now see in schools, that ideology brought to their children at an even younger age. And are those things that conservatives can't think through and fix?

Of course they can. There's a way around the problems or roadblocks that they see with a little bit of thought and creativity. But I think that is the backdrop. And then also it's like we're $32 trillion in debt. We want more government responsibility for more things. And I think the point is make your priorities. Get your priorities right. And if you do, and more family information might mean more economic growth, more creativity.

But I think what the professor is saying is that the left says, so we're for families because we're giving you free or subsidized child care. And what the professor is saying is maybe we should go, how do we, if you need to work, how do we create, I don't know, regulations or even cultural changes so that one parent can work from home or work from home part time? Or how do we make sure wages are high enough for you so I can decide whether I want to stay home or not with the kids? I think that's well, I know. I think that's a good point. And I get that was just one example of a debate that's had with Republicans on why this has been there.

But there's been some resistance to this conversation. I know Marco Rubio and a few others have come out with plans to say we do want to support families, and what do we do to make sure that we can have family formation? And economics aren't the road block for two people to get married and have kids. I want to bring up something else to you, Professor. And again, I'm sorry that I'm bringing this back, but you're talking about ultimate freedom and the freedom to not have a child restrained at birth into a sex that we might not know what it is yet. I don't know if you're a boy or a girl. I know you have a penis, but I'm not going to say you're a boy, right? And it makes me come back to this point of truth and honesty, right?

I'm sorry, God made you with a penis. You're going to be a boy. At birth, I can say that. And if you have a vagina, you are a girl. And I can say that. And even with climate change, I feel like there is, is it really about the climate? Is it really about the climate is it really about the environment when we move to gas we move away from gas into electric cars when you look at the the environmental impact

of the batteries and the critical minerals that go into the electric cars or the grid that we don't have that can power those vehicles it makes me think it think it's about power and control. There's a power and control mechanism that they might wrap around your freedom. They might say you're going to be more free if we do this for you. But whenever they do it, it seems like they get more power and I get less power. Right. And again, it's a great sales pitch to the masses. But I lose my freedom and they get more power and control over me. Does that make sense? Am I wrong on that? It does. I guess, you know, and maybe this is just repeating something I said earlier, which is I think one of the reasons why the appeal to freedom, the appeal to liberty is so fundamental is because human beings, we desire to be free because only through being free can we develop our natural gifts, can we develop our capacities, can we act and we can know whether we're virtuous. If you're just doing something that seems virtuous at the point of a gun, you're not actually acting virtuous.

They're just being forced to do it. So the condition of freedom is, of course, it's central. It's a central, important good. I think, of course, like anything, this can be taken to an extreme. And I think what we're seeing, in a way, is the ideology of freedom taken to an extreme, which you see it, for example, in this idea that our sexuality is simply a matter of choice, that the genuine, the only condition of genuine freedom is one in which the thing that seems most fundamental, most elemental, most unchangeable, is really the subject of my own, it's the subject of my own choice. It's the kind of most radical form of this idea and ideology of freedom and individualism. And this is where I think the conservative understanding really has to become much, much richer and robust,

which is that genuine human freedom is achieved in the context of recognizing our nature as human beings, of recognizing our nature as human beings, the truth that you mentioned, the nature of human beings as men and women, as people who are oriented to marriage and to having children and bringing children into the world, of having the experience of having children and having the experience, among other things, of having siblings, which is disappearing in the world, right? Imagine not knowing what it is like to grow up, you know, having to negotiate with other people in your house about whether or not you're going to play with that toy now. And I think this is an important point for conservatives as well. Conservatism is, at its core, a belief that there's continuity between generations,

that somehow we learn something from the past, and we carry that knowledge in the present, and we pass it on to the future. And you're both parents, and I'm a parent, and I'm probably not telling you anything you don't know. But when you become a parent, you learn something that you didn't know before, which is what you learn is what your parents did for you. And you will never know that in the deepest way until you start doing what they did for you before you could even know what they were doing. And you have no memory of it. And suddenly, as you have that encounter of raising your own children, you begin to think, I can't believe my parents did all this for me. I cannot believe it. And it gives you a new sense of gratitude and a new sense of having been given a gift

and having an obligation to future generations and to your own children. So a conservative, it seems to me, is someone who is deeply embedded in this experience of generations, in this experience of inheriting something and passing something along. And this is the, in some ways, if you use the biblical phrase,

this is one of those truths that sets us free because it helps us to realize that we're not self-making and self-fashioning beings. We're the subjects of so many gifts. Now, what is transgenderism but the idea that we are gods? Yes. What is this radical ideology but the idea that we are gods yes what is what is this radical ideology but the idea that we can just make ourselves we can just our body is just like clay that we can make it into whatever we want you can actually be a furry professor you don't even have

to be a human you can be a furry right whatever that is so true yeah yeah so but i do think this is this is kind of this is the essence of freedom, right? The essence of freedom is the acknowledgement and capacity of recognizing what it is to be a human within the limits of the created world. from that reality, that we get these kind of horrific ideologies that we see unfolding in the world today. That's really just horribly punishing to so many young people today. And so this is where, again, I think that conservatives need to develop a richer vocabulary that I think reflects some of those numbers that I just told you. Conservatives care more about things like patriotism and religion and having children and community. And that's something we should celebrate and develop kind of simultaneous language for proposing and promoting as well as, you know, policies that help us. And happiness. We'll be back with much more after this.

Shop Cyber Monday deals now on Amazon with up to 35% off home goods to deck their halls, toys to stuff their stocking and electronics like noise canceling headphones to silent their night. Shop Amazon Cyber Monday deals now. family and sort of those bonds and the transmission of traditions and our family history and our national history and drawing from the past. All those things, by the way, are why Sean and I love classical education, because it is drawing the best from the past and helping us to form our children's lives in that way. But let's just talk about happiness, because the liberals who have bought into this, and the libertarians who have bought into this idea of maximum freedom, no responsibility, I can be whatever I want, I'm God, don't seem very happy. And you and I talked a little bit on the

show about how liberalism is actually killing romance. It's killing love. It's killing marriage. Yeah, so in fact, there's some, sorry to keep throwing statistics at you, but there was a study done. That's not very romantic, Professor. All these stats. No, I know.

No, there was some really interesting statistics done which showed that the lowest levels of self-reported happiness were among liberals and especially liberal women. Yes, I've seen that. Fifteen percent of liberal women, at least according to the study, reported satisfaction, whereas 32 percent of conservative men reported to being extremely highly happy and completely satisfied in their lives. That's just one data point. I think more than that, what I see, I teach at a university, I teach at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic university. Even at Notre Dame, it's extremely difficult for young people

It's extremely difficult for young people to develop romantic lives precisely because I think they are in a world like the one we've been describing, seen as limitations or can be often regarded as being too limiting on the life that I want to lead and the life that I want to develop, rather than is in some ways the source of happiness. So many end up putting off those commitments for a long period of time, often well into their 30s, sometimes their 40s, when it becomes more and more difficult to have children. And we know some of the results of that. And this is, again, where I think conservatives really need to be much more forthright about praising. Praising the way in which being involved in committed relationships is the deepest source of human contentment. My dissertation, not that you should know what my dissertation was on,

my dissertation was written on, talk about classical tradition, was written on the Odyssey, Homer's Odyssey. And it's fascinating because that text, which is one of the oldest books we have in Western civilization, along with the Bible, what that text is about is whether there's anything that can make human beings more happy than being with your spouse, ultimately finding your way home. And Odysseus is offered immortal life. He's undying to become like a god, to become immortal. He's offered

knowledge of everything in the world. He's offered, you know, to live among the lotus eaters, basically to be high for the rest of his life. He's offered marriage to various beautiful goddesses. And he retains a commitment to returning home to Penelope, to returning home to his spouse who has waited for him for 20 years. And I think that is a story, you know, when you read that story as a young person, and, you know, if you're in the right kind of a context, that's a story that hits the human heart. And it's one of the most deeply instructive stories in the Western tradition, which is that human happiness is really about ultimately the people that we love and the places where they are. Yeah, unless they're in a classical school, they're not getting that story.

Right, they're not. Sadly. So, Professor, we've kept you for a while here. I'm a pessimist right now, right? I really am. Poor Rachel has to deal with me because I'm so distraught about what's happened to the country. I look at this woke, radical ideology

that's taken over our school system, K-12, the universities all over the country that professors like you, probably not as good as you, work at, the military, Hollywood, the media, the deep state, technology. I mean, they've taken over everything. And this cancer is growing so fast and so quickly. And I'm afraid. I'm not heightening my point here. He's genuinely afraid. I'm concerned about my own freedom. I'm concerned about the freedom for my wife, the freedom for my children.

About my own freedom. I'm concerned about the freedom for my wife, the freedom for my children. What does this country look like and what kind of freedom do I have to live my life and what freedom do my kids have to live their lives the way we see fit if this continues to grow and doesn't at some point crumble? And so I know you have a crystal ball. Look into that professorial crystal ball. What happens in America? Where are we going? And if we want to change course, what do we have to do? And I know we've talked about that a lot through the podcast, but does this ever end? Or are there leaders?

Does this end in tyranny? Does this end in communism? Where are we going? Or what could break the spell? Well, it's interesting you would mention communism, right? So communism in 1988 and early 1989 seemed like it would always be with us. The Soviet Union is deemed eternal. My field of political science, no one was saying the Soviet Union was about to fall. No one was predicting that. And, you know, why did it fall? We can, again, we can look at a lot of reasons. But I think it goes back to something we were talking

about earlier. You can't build an entire society or an entire political order based on a falsehood. society or entire political order based on a falsehood. It can exist for a while, and it can exist through power for a while, through the exercise of power. And in some ways, that's the only way it can exist. Because if you're contradicting truth, if you're contradicting human nature, you're contradicting the fundamental truth of the created order, the only way you can, in some ways, keep that political social order going is by forcing people to say falsehood. But that can't go on indefinitely, I think. And so my hope lies in the fact that, like 1989 seemed to come out of the blue, falsehood eventually fell. It eventually could not sustain itself any longer. And I don't know when, I don't know how, but I truly do believe, and I'm a Christian, I'm a Catholic, I truly believe that falsehood will not prevail because the world was created by a God who declared that he is the truth and the way and the life.

He is the truth and the way and the life. And so I think that, you know, I don't know the day. I don't know the hour. And I don't know exactly how, but it's something I'll fight for. I know you're fighting for it. And I think it will not persist. It will not be eternal. But we're seeing that happen.

You know, we saw the Twitter files come out. We saw, you know, the Russia hoax eventually was exposed. I mean, we are seeing some of these rumblings for sure. But, you know, I think what I am, I think what worries Sean is actually something you could speak to, which is he's concerned that he's not worried about people our age and up. He's worried about the kids you're teaching. Right. Like the lucky ones that get you. Great. Right. He's worried about the kids you're teaching, right? Like the lucky ones that get you, great, right? But the vast majority of kids, K through university level, are getting indoctrinated. Most of them are, even just through osmosis, through social media, through whatever.

He's afraid we've lost these generations. These kids will grow up to be the little tyrants that rule over us. They tell you that they're taught that speech is violence, that we have to get rid of gun rights because they kill kids, that the global warming is killing the planet, it's going to end in 12 years, that sex is discretionary. I mean, they're taught and believe all of these things. How do you win unless you send all your kids to classical Catholic Christian schools. Well, look, I think any political system you have, to use the old Soviet phrase, you have your nomenklatura,

you have your ruling class that are the true believers, or at least they say they are the true believers, the revolutionary class who are absolutely firmly, deeply committed to these orthodoxies. And then you just have an awful lot of people that go along to get them. They just, they see, at least they perceive where they think the power lies, where the influence lies. And I actually think what you see as kind of an indoctrinated generation are more of them, I think, are likely, I think they are people who are getting along because they see this is where the fashion is. This is where the media, the corporations,

the kind of, you know, the constant advertising. And so they're not going to rock the boat. But a different, a different ruling ethos comes in. And this is part of the argument. Maybe they'll go with that. A different ruling ethos comes in, which is families matter, having commitments matter, patriotism and religion and family and community matter. I think an awful lot of them would find, well, okay, if that's where the prevailing wind goes. And so in some ways, I think it's just the case that most societies are not formed of sort of the deepest, most passionate revolutionaries. They just want to kind of get along and not be necessarily bothered.

Now, the irony now is that they have joined a revolutionary class in order not to be bothered. This is the problem. I still think they're bothering us. Yes, absolutely. I think you're leaving us with a really important message, which is that truth will prevail. I believe that. And I believe it can't. No, but I don't even mean like final days. I get that. I get that. But I do believe that these lies, you know, eventually crumble. And I think the key to maybe hastening that, I think that the title of your book, let me make sure I get it right.

You know, this post liberal future that we all want to live in, right, is that we we should speak up while we can write that we should not tell the lies, not let the lies go through us and be strong. And it's hard for some people because they think they're going to lose their job. You're in a good spot at Notre Dame, but boy, there's a lot of professors censoring themselves at the university level. We are lucky we get to say what we think, but it's hard for other people. And I think the more people that we can give courage to, to stand up and speak the truth, the quicker the lies will crumble. That's right.

And what we also need to remember is that there are a lot of people who see the lies, they recognize the lies, and they're timid and afraid to call them out. But when they see others and hear others who are willing to stand up, they can be emboldened. So for those of us who might be in somewhat better positions, I think you might be overranking how good my position is at Notre Dame. It's comparatively better than a lot of schools today. But I think it's just very important to bear witness, to be someone who speaks out, especially if one's able to do so. And even if one is rightly afraid, but nevertheless, I think that's what we're called to do. Yeah, we saw a Christian,

we did a story on a Christian farmer, duck farmer who stood up and just said, I recognize June as the month of humility and the sacred heart of Jesus and not pride. And his family suffered terrible hardships. But the story has gone viral. And I believe that he has spawned courage that he will never know, maybe until he passes into the next life.

For other people, he's become quite a symbol for just those who are quietly dissenting and those who are doing so at great cost to themselves and their family. And those people helped bring down the Soviet Union. Well, Professor, keep up the great work. Keep writing. The name of the professor's book, again.

Again, it's Regime Change Towards a Post- Liberal Future, which we all pray for to come soon, Professor. Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was really wonderful to speak with you both. It was great. Thank you. God, it's great having that professor on. It's so interesting to see it. We kind of come to the same conclusion, but he has a different way, his sort of political philosophy

way of getting there. Listen, he opened my eyes. When he talks about freedom, I do think that is what people are striving for, but it's freedom in the face of truth. And those two things don't meld together. And I think our founders knew that only freedom and democracy would work if you had a moral, faithful, religious people administering that freedom and democracy. And when you have an immoral, godless people in a free society, you get the trans movement. You get elites looking out for their bottom line, their pocketbooks, going over to China and not caring about their own community. The kids in the school that go to school with their kids and the parents of those children, they don't care. They don't care about that community in that neighborhood as a whole or the security of our own country, the freedom of our own country.

because they don't have a mooring and a footing in patriotism and in probably faith and in community and in their family, which all belongs here in the U.S. Yeah, I asked him several times to give me the name of the person or the people that he thought might bring us because he said it needs to be this elite class. He didn't think in his book, his premise of his book is that these changes that you and I want to see happen. We're always so hopeful the grassroots, of course, we need the grassroots, but the forces are so powerful on the other side, that it would need an equally powerful elite class to bring about this, these cultural changes. And as he said, if the ethos changes, there's a lot of people that just go along to get along, who might get on board, and we might see some of the cultural changes. And as he said, if the ethos changes, there's a lot of people that just

go along to get along who might get on board and we might see some of the cultural changes that we need. But again, marriage, love, family bonds, traditions, taking what's great from the past and what's always worked and what's been true and bringing that forward to help inform our life and our decisions. All of those things are so important. But I think, Sean, what he says is that there's this siren song, right? There's this promise of freedom from all of it, from all the responsibilities, from the past, from the traditions. And you can do anything you want.

And that is the promise of the left. You can, as you said, be your own God. You can be a furry. You can be a God. You can be anything you want. And that is the promise of the left. You can, as you said, be your own God. You can be a furry. You can be a God. You can be anything you want. So two things you said. But it ultimately enslaves you. It does enslave you. And we see that. And the progression of enslavement begins, you know, with all of these rules and regulations and the pressure that's put on that we have to do all these things that we may not believe in. But you said this is a spell that's been cast over the country. I would agree with you that people have been blinded by the elite ruling class or the social

pushers that are out there. But he said something else that was interesting. He said, you know, the Soviet Union, we thought it would last forever. It's true. And it crumbled. And the old adage is, I mean, you can only hold a gun to someone's head for so long until your arm gets tired. Yeah. And eventually it falls. And when the gun of the Soviet Union fell, so too did the Iron Curtain. And the wall came down and... And all the lies were exposed, right? And the rot that was underneath it all. They had a shiny paint on it, shiny red paint, but underneath everything was crumbling.

And I would just note, it is a different time because of what's happening in the school system. There's more kids that are being indoctrinated. I hope he's right in regard to the kids that are just going along to get along. But I do think social media, imagine if social media had been around and the power of that during the Soviet Union, social media had been around and the power of that during the soviet union the ability say for china to control people is much greater than the soviet union ever could have dreamed of it helps perpetuate the lie as well as a way to get the the lie out to reach further and to craft the message more beautifully and more and suppress opposition um and the the difference now, too, is that this spell has taken over the world. This globalism, this elitism, which, again, I believe doesn't leave me more freedom.

I think it leaves me with less freedom. As they get more power, I have less freedom. And I think this is a harder fight. It's going to take time. It might be generations. Hopefully we'll see this end in our lifetime, but I think it's going to be longer than that because the sickness, the cancer is so deep and so powerful. The late man, I'm shining it for a while. But truth and beauty do prevail. And that is sort of what he talked about,

that there's something intrinsic. I mean, they can show us, you know, what is it? Is it Rachel Levine? Was that the name of the? That's his name. That's his name. The man of the year. The woman of the year, Rachel Levine. She's the health secretary, the trans.

I mean, they can put that person up and tell me that's a beautiful woman. And I don't believe it. I don't care how many times you tell me that's a beautiful woman and I I don't believe it I don't care how many times you tell me that's a woman and then on top of it he's beautiful I don't buy it and so there and there's a reason why we're sort of wired for truth and for beauty we're drawn to I mean they've done studies on classical architecture for for example, and these ugly, brutal, postmodern, you know, buildings. And people are naturally drawn to things that are beautiful. to make it the preferred government style of architecture as we make more buildings. Because people want those things.

They are drawn to beauty. They're drawn to truth. And so I have to believe that, you know, that will prevail, that they can only keep these lies up so long. And so the other important thing he said, Sean, was this is why it's so important for people who are in marriages and families to share that, to share the beauty of it.

And people will be drawn to it. People are wired that way. No matter how much they want you to believe that Rachel Levine is beautiful, you're made to know what beauty is. And that is not, and there's something really false and repulsive about Rachel Levine. Let's be fact, let's be factual about that. And so that I think is, is where we're at. And I think that's what he was trying to say is like, you can do all these things in government, but how do you lift up what's true and beautiful and just, you know, do that. And that's part of the transformation. I think it's important when we talk about

supporting families and the role that government might have with regard to messages or even support that it gives for family information. I think conservatives get caught in the trap and the guardrails that have been set up by Democrats. And you've got to take all of those guardrails away. And you've got to think through new sets of policies that are going to help families. And helping families doesn't mean you just give them things. It's like saying, I want to help the homeless,

so I'm going to give them phones, food, health care. Needles. That hasn't helped the homeless. Now you have more homeless. So I'm going to give them phones, food, health care. Well, that hasn't helped the homeless. Now you have more homeless. So giving people things isn't necessarily the best way to help them out. And giving families things may not be the best way to help families out. But to be strategic, to go, how do I support? How do I help? How do I facilitate family formation? How do I support? How do I help? How do I with the primary understanding that families are the foundation of the country. And everything we should be doing should be about bolstering the family, helping family formation, and protecting children. A hundred percent. Listen.

It's a new prism to look through things it's not about tax rates and i i love having podcasts like this because i kind of my my view of the world was a little bit shattered in my little republicans and a little dim it was a little i'm still i'm still a little bit i was a lot more hopeful that i was that that's soviet union analysis a little light was shining into my dim world right now with this conversation. But again, when he brought things back to freedom or the pursuit of freedom, I don't think it's actually leading to more freedom. But I think if that was the thought process, it makes a lot more sense to me what's happening. And again, I don't have to agree with people, but I do like to see where are they coming from? Why do they think the way that they think and this is going a long way and helping me go? Oh

That might be why they're doing what they're doing again I completely disagree with it But a new way to think of a problem that we talked about all the time around our kitchen table So yeah interesting and I got to share with him that how I learned I'm not a libertarian Interesting. And I got to share with him how I learned I'm not a libertarian. You did. It was interesting to see young Pete do his thesis. Yeah, he said it was very influential for him. And Pete did not want us to talk about his thesis. But great professors like that, young adults are blessed to have someone like that in their life as a professor that can, who knows what impact he had that led Pete

to where he is now and his worldview that he has now. You don't know as a professor or teacher how you can touch someone in a positive way. Yeah. The book again is Regime Change Toward a Post-Liberal Future by Patrick Deneen,

professor of Notre Dame. What a great guest and great get. Happy you joined us. Listen, thank you all for joining us on our podcast from the kitchen table. We appreciate it. If you like our podcast, you can rate, review, subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can go to foxnewspodcast.com. You can get us there.

You can get us on Apple. And above all things, we want people to do what, Rachel? Subscribe. Subscribe. Why? Because if you subscribe, you get an alert and you know exactly when the next podcast comes out. You don't want to miss us. No. So listen, thanks for joining us again. Have a great day. And by the way, if you're listening on Thursday, when this actually drops tomorrow, we're doing Q&A on Father's Day. so tune in for that we're gonna do a special episode yeah special episode of q a with sean duffy and now well me too but it's your day it's my it's all it's all dad questions i take the week father's day is a father's week for me anyway have a good

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