Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 411 | Understanding Biden's Foreign Policy | Guest: Rebeccah Heinrichs

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Today we are interviewing Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson institute, about foreign policy, specifically regarding China. We'll compare and contrast how Presidents Trump and Biden differ on their attitudes and policy toward China, and Ms. Heinrichs has some advice for what individuals can do to ensure that American values make it to the next generation. Today's Sponsor: Freedom Project Academy: Unlike public schools, FPA has perfected live online learning for more than a decade. Built on Judeo-Christian values and classical curriculum, Freedom Project Academy is dedicated to providing mastery of subject matter, not leftist propaganda. Go to FreedomForSchool.com for your free information packet! --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today, I am talking to Rebecca Heinrichs about foreign policy, and in particular foreign policy as it relates to China, what we need to be thinking about, what we need to know, what we need to be concerned about. And we're going to kind of look at the strategy of the Trump administration versus the projected strategy of the Biden administration, kind of compare and contrast those two things, why we have reason for up. why we also have some reasons for concern. And then she also gives some practical advice of what we can be doing is people and his families to protect ourselves and to ensure that American values, which we believe are good, are perpetuated and are propelled into the next generation. So

really excited for you to listen to this very informative conversation with Rebecca. Here she is. Rebecca, thank you so much for joining me. Can you tell everyone who may not know who you are and what you do? Sure. My name is Rebecca Heinrichs. I'm a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, which is a think tank in Washington, D.C. And I specialize in international relations, national security. And so I do all kinds of research and writing on those subjects. And I'm a mom and a wife, and I have five children. Yes. And I love following you on Instagram. You're literally one of my favorite people to follow on Instagram because your family is so precious. Each of your each of your children is just beautiful.

And I just love following along in your life and all of the adventures that you guys are on. Can you tell us how you got into what you do now and how you balance that your work plus being a mom of five awesome kids? Sure. Well, you know, I studied history and political science at the Ashbrook Center. It's a political science program at Ashland University in Ohio from a small town in Ohio. And I'd always been interested in politics generally and started to gravitate towards national security issues. But then I was a freshman in college when 9-11 happened. And like a lot of people, my age at that time, it was formative.

And, you know, I was studying, grew up in a patriotic home, parents, very interested in current events. And but I think it was, you know, at Ashbrook, whenever I was really learning about the meaning of America and what, the American founding meant what our country really is and why it is so worthy of our love and affection. And then at the same time September 11th happened, it was those two things that were especially formative for me. And I decided to pursue a career in, rather, I don't even like the word career, but just decided to just continue to work in the field of national security. And, you know, one thing led to another. I didn't really plan on being exactly here then. I just took one opportunity as they came before me. Met my husband working on California.

Capitol Hill. He works in national security policy too. And then had our first child in 2009. And then it was at that time that I decided, you know, I was working for a congressman on Capitol Hill and decided it was taking too much of my time and away from my new baby who crazy about. And so decided to file at LLC and then see if I can continue writing and researching from my home and from different think tanks and continue my scholarly work while having more control over my schedule and my calendar. And so had my first little baby, little girl, and then five babies later, we've got three daughters and two sons.

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. Well, I really appreciate the work that you do. Even just following you on Twitter, you always add clarity to the conversation of what can be a very confusing and overwhelming conversation for a lot of people. I think we all wish that we knew more about foreign policy and national security for obvious reasons, very big subjects and important subjects. But a lot of us just don't. And so I'm wondering if you can break down for us, if you can compare and contrast in just, you know, simple terms, the foreign policy goals and actual accomplishments from the Trump administration versus what

you think that we can probably expect from the foreign policy and national security goals of the Biden administration. Great question. So I, first of all, I think that one of the reasons people have a hard time staying, you know, up to speed and everything going on in foreign policy, international relations is because they're, we're consumed with all the things that directly impact us on a day to day. And so, you know, that's why moms and dads are busy. You know, they turn on the evening news. It's kind of, you know, they try to try to keep track of what the biggest threats are and then they have to go along with, you know, the things that are impacting their kids and what's going on with work and all that kind of stuff. So it's understandable.

But we should know that, you know, the Trump administration, I would say one of their best accomplishments, biggest accomplishments, was shepherding the United States through this major change, seismic change in our relationship with China, which is governed by the Chinese Communist Party. Xi Jinping is their leader and establishing that they are an adversary of the United States. They're not just this economic partner even where we just conduct trade with that they actually pose the greatest threat to Americans in the American way of. life over all the different adversaries. And the reason for that is really twofold. And this is how you rack and stack. What are the biggest and most important threats facing the United States

is their ability to do harm and their willingness to do harm? So you can have a country that's really doggedly willing to do harm, but they might not have the Korea, maybe. Exactly. Or even just the terrorist threat. Really bad stuff, but can they do the, can they propose a existential threat, you know, threat to the United States and our way of life. And the country that stands out above all the other countries, even Russia, which Russia is another very serious threat to the United States and can do great harm. But even above the Russian Federation is the Chinese Communist Party. It's because of their enormous economy and then how they've used that economy to pour into their military. And then all the other bad, nefarious stuff that they're doing across multiple fronts to undermine

Americans in our security. Yeah. And can you talk about why is that? What some of those threats are? I mean, we know that they're a very large economic power, and we know that America has really kind of aided and abetted their economic growth for at least a couple, I mean, a few decades now. Yeah. But can you talk about, you know, tangibly what some of those threats are just for people who don't know? So, yes, and this has been really the fault of or who deserves the blame for how we got to this mess. from the American side, it's really a bipartisan problem of government and private sector that have sleepily kind of allowed China's rise over the last multiple decades,

ever since Bill Clinton kind of ushered in China's ability to join the WTO, to normalize economic relations. And this idea was, the idea at the time was, and both Republicans and Democrats thought this, and obviously big business thought this too, that as China became richer, that China would liberalize politically, their human rights, their business practices,

and they wouldn't be, you know, communist. They wouldn't be communists. Yeah. And for a while, they kind of hid what they were doing. They hid their hand. They bid their time is what they say. And as they became stronger, I think it was like every eight years or so,

they like doubled their economy since 1979 or something just enormous. And so now what they're doing across multiple fronts, they just have all kinds of spies in our academic institutions. I think FBI Director Ray said that I think it was trying to get the fact exactly right. Every 10 hours, there's a new China-related counterintelligence case that's being opened by the FBI. So right now, I mean, it's just constantly by that that's our biggest espionage economic. What are they doing?

Like, what is this spying the tail? So they do it in a variety of ways. One of the things that they do is they get buried into these academic institutions or labs and they just they pretend as though and because of our generosity and openness, you know, we don't we don't look sideways at people who are of Chinese ethnicity and think that there's some sort of dual loyalty at all. And so they come here and they work. But the hard truth of the matter is many of these Chinese nationalists have ties to the Chinese Communist Party. So they're taking scientific research, medical research. and then they just business they just take it right back over to the Chinese Communist Party and it's not even just that kind of stuff too it's businesses our poor businesses

they come in and they do these work with you know those who still have ties to the Chinese Communist Party and then those spies go back to China and then they patent the manufacturing ability over there and then they just steal all of this intellectual property that are that belongs

to the hard work, bled, sweat, and tears, you know, poured into by American companies. And they've done this for years. And it's really just the Trump administration that's just kind of ripped the top off of this to expose all the different ways they're spying and stealing through our technology and, and direct espionage like that. Yeah. Exactly. How did the Trump administration do that?

Does that have anything to do with the so-called trade war or the tariffs? I mean, that was a huge point of discussion, even just between conservatives, whether or not it was the right thing to do to engage in that kind of adversarial behavior, some would say, with China. So I think that the best way to answer this, too, because I got pressed on this all the time whenever I would say, look, look what Donald Trump is doing these great things. I mean, rapid change towards China. And it's stuff that Democrats, Republicans didn't want to do because of all the money lost and all of the access to. the Chinese economy that American businesses still wanted. But what it was about Donald Trump that made all of his national security people across, I mean, Secretary Pompeo, his different secretaries of defense, national security advisors, FBI directors,

they were all able to make serious changes on all these fronts because of President Trump's kind of populist nationalist, team USA jersey that he wore. And so there, it just, it didn't, it was the trade war. That's, that's kind of the tip of the spear. That's what started saying, you know, started pushing this and saying, I don't believe that the United States should continue to take it on the chin for some sort of greater ideal for globalism or, or, you know, we're all just, yeah, it's going to harm American businesses. But in the end, it's going to help the Chinese people and it's going to help all these other companies and tech companies that benefit from cheap labor in China and all the other disadvantages that the United States has. is China. So it was that brash personality of Donald Trump pushing back and really saying, this isn't good for America on trade. And that kind of broke all these other barriers on all these other issues. And then once the coronavirus pandemic happened, I mean, and Trump realized how much China was to blame for this, they tabled the trade stuff. And then it was game on. I mean, it was sanctions and constant rebukes on all these different fronts and arresting spies much more publicly.

And so the rapid fire changes really happened in the last year, building up to the last year. And then it was just a crash of all this good stuff, I think. That makes it very difficult for the Biden administration to completely undo. Well, that's a good thing. Secretary Pompeo was always very clear about the threat of China and the Chinese Communist Party. I think just the other day, we're recording this in January, but just the other day called him like a fearmongering clown or something exaggerating about, or he said that he was exaggerating about the Uighur Muslim treatment that's happening in China. That's something that Secretary Pompeo has talked a lot about that unfortunately it seems like some people in Washington and just the large swaths of Americans kind of look away from. Of course, I think every decent person would say, yeah, we're against internment camps.

We're against slavery. We're against torture. But even so, some people are very slow to criticize the CCP and their practices, either because of money reasons, like you said, we want access to the Chinese economy or even just, I think, some political correctness is at play there with people thinking that if you criticize the Chinese Communist Party and any practices of the regime, then you're being racist or something like that. And all of that, both of those mentalities inhibit us from Taylor's,

proper action to kind of to remove our dependence on such a hostile regime and their economy, correct? I think that's exactly right. I think that the more Republicans, and there's some Democrats that are willing to do it to talk about the underlying ideology that motivates the Chinese Communist Party, this communism, Marxist Leninism. This is something that Secretary Pompeo, as you said, was very eloquent about trying to explain because all countries, there is no amoral void that exists.

You know, we all have ideas about what is right and good and in our interest, and it is what animates us. It's what motivates us. Countries are the same way and regimes. And so the ideology that motivates, animates the regime matters. And that's why these internment camps are, it's so important for us to understand and know what's going on, not just because these poor people. We want to make sure that we're using our, any ability that we have.

to not exasperate the problem and to help, but also because it tells us about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party. And it should not surprise us then when a country that has such disregard for human dignity and the way they treat their own people, of course they're going to have terribly unfair trade practices. Of course they're going to steal intellectual property. Of course they're going to do all of these things. They're going to have social credit scores for them. They don't have some kind of limiting principle. There's no limiting principle. and it's exactly right. And then the world that they want to shape,

they want to take the leadership brains from the United States, and then they want to shape the world according to what they believe is right and good. And all of that is to empower Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. It's not for all of the reasons

that the United States and the other allies and partners that we have in the free world believe that are right and good. And so that's the difference. And so the Democrats, many of them do not like to talk about the ideology. And then as soon as you start talking

about those Uyghur camps, those internment camps, And the next question is, well, then why are these American companies investing in the Chinese economy? And if there's no separation between the private sector, if there is no private sector, and there's no separation between civilian work and military work, there's civil-mil fusion doctrine, you know, we really need to have a gut check about how much we are actually responsible and culpable, these American companies, for these massive internment camps. And it's really stunning how quickly some of these corporations and sports organizations are willing to sell out their own fellow Americans in order to work with China, even through some of the political messaging of these organizations, they are more than willing to take a knee literally and figuratively to social justice causes here and say that people who voted for Donald Trump are terrible.

And, you know, they believe they're on the right side of history for being on the side of Black Lives Matter and things like. that here. At the same time, actively profiting off of a regime whose economy is built on slave labor in large part. And they can say, you know, I don't have a right to criticize that country. I don't live there. I have to criticize my own country because I live in America. But if you're purposely and actively partnering with that regime, well, that becomes part of your moral jurisdiction now. And you are responsible for it. And I think most Americans, they don't know, they don't care. We see it as something that is far off, not really a threat to us.

And I think that's, I think that's a mistake, don't you? It's definitely a mistake. And I think it's even more than a mistake in terms of the moral problems that you just raised, which are Legion. I mean, you do not have the moral authority to talk about, you know, certain issues of social injustice when you are blatantly flagrantly willing to choose not to, for instance, condemn the Uyghur internment camps. You know, anytime there is like somebody who works for one of these big professional sports teams makes a comment about that and they're immediately asked to apologize or to no longer discuss that you think of LeBron James or whoever the high profile person is and they're

willing to look away. I mean, they're doing that because the Chinese Communist Party has directed that and then the company then puts pressure on those Americans. And so or even like a censorship in higher education where they take all of this money from the Chinese Communist Party with only, you know, they're, they're, they're on the condition that they're not allowed talking about Tiananmen Square. They're not allowed talking about the Tibetans. They're not allowed to talk about all these other horrible crimes. Yeah. They're not allowed to talk about Hong Kong and how the Chinese Communist Party is just overrunning these freedom-loving people in Hong Kong. And, and so, So it really kind of strikes to the heart of what China is up to.

And then they're not satisfied with merely oppressing their own people. They really are trying to shape the world in ways that are conducive to helping them gain prestige and influence. And so if Americans are willing to be censored, I mean, that's why I get worried even just on small things. somebody on Facebook or Twitter or some other social media thing, you know, says something. We should all be a very pro-free speech and freedom of expression because I called our soft middle. The more tolerant we are of censorship at home, the more susceptible we are to the kinds of censorship that the Chinese Communist Party wants to enforce on the United States to harm us and to help them. Yep. and especially when it's done in the name of public safety.

I mean, we believe that Twitter and Facebook should have enforceable rules, but we want them to be fair. We don't want them to be politically biased. We want them to be non-arbitrarily applied. And we also want there to be a narrow definition of what incitement of violence looks like and the things that they are actually able to enforce. Because when we see so much bias and, the censorship process on social media, that's when things get really scary for a lot of people.

But you see people, in particular on the left, defending it by saying, well, this is for public safety. This is, you know, that was fascist propaganda that that conservative was spreading. So it was good that it was taken down. It just reminds me and the cancel culture that's also involved in all of that. It reminds me very much of the cultural revolution in China several decades ago of these, of these shaming or what was it call it? Shaming or struggle sessions is what it was called.

Where publicly they would bring someone into the public arena, into the street, publicly shame them, torture them, murder them or just yell at them. There's pictures of, you know, their fellow countrymen pointing in their face and yelling at them. And this was all under the guise of public safety. This was all under the guise of making sure

that they got rid of this person committing wrong think in Orwellian terms. And you see the same kind of, of thing happening here. And for those people who say, well, you know, the First Amendment is still intact, you know, politically you're still free. But all of these communist regimes rose to power, not on political revolutions first, but on cultural revolutions. So to your point, if people are able to, just in our private lives, call for the cancellation and the life ruining of people and the censorship of people that we just disagree with, you are creating an environment here that is

ripe for the same kind of totalitarian takeover that we've seen, not just in China, but around the world. Do you agree with that? Or am I being dramatic? No, I think that that's right. And again, it's a takeover. It allows for greater control. And it doesn't have to be government control. This is something that conservatives have been talking about now for the last several years during the Trump administration. It can be big tech. Who has the ability to control information, the flow of information. And then with that information, control what people are seeing, what they're not seeing, and then shaming people or stigmatizing people who have, as you said, wrong think. Right now, we're seeing it with conservatives. How quickly we went from, you know, some of these, the rioters

on January 6th, who went from protesters to rioters, to insurrectionists, to terrorists. And now it's people who voted for Donald Trump might also have terrorist sympathies or extremist sympathies. And so you can see that this is a very, very slippery slope. Well, this is how you stigmatize people. And then the people who are able to harm those people doesn't have to be the government. Again, like I said, it can be big tech. And if big tech is actually working with and sympathetic towards or wants that access to the Chinese market, you know, how much is the Chinese Communist Party the one that is influencing the flow of information in the United States? Totally. And the second point, I think, is really critical, especially for the,

for your young listeners too, is China also, you think about all these apps that we use, you know, TikTok became something that was really talked about a lot during the Trump administration because they were really looking at ending TikTok in the United States. And it's because China will also, if we don't care about our own, you know,

information being stolen, our day-to-day life, you know, Americans used to care about that stuff. It would just kind of, just even the don't tread on me and me or, you know, would just say, I don't want my data stolen. I don't want my information about where I go and all my facial recognition taken by our government, but certainly not by an enemy government by the Chinese Communist Party. But that's what they do.

The Chinese Communist Party will take all of that data. It goes directly into their algorithms and they use it for artificial intelligence. And they can compile dossiers. You might be 19 years old and think that what you're doing isn't going to affect you or embarrass you in 10, 15, 20 years when you're looking for a job. But just think about that the Chinese Communist Party can have all that and is keeping a dossier on you, just like what they do for their own people and how that can impact other things in the future. So it is very troubling. And we need to have not just Republicans, but Democrats too over many, many years talking about this because it's going to require changes on the part of the American people, not just the government to do what we need to do to protect the United States and our way of life against China in particular. I think one thing that's going to make that difficult is that when you kind of hear some of the things coming from academia and then repeated by, in particular, I would say, some leftists in America, it sounds so similar to the propaganda that we've heard really from the past 100 years in Soviet Russia about America, an American imperialist and the selfishness of capitalism and the evils of the United States.

I read a book about North Korea about a year ago now where it's you read the propaganda that these young children were learning in school about America and about Japan too. The evil imperialist, the selfishness of capitalism, really saying that all oppression and all poverty, not just in North Korea, but in the world, is because of the selfishness of Americans. And these eventual dissidents realized after they left North Korea that America had been sending foreign aid to North Korea for a very long time and it never got to the people. So these are lies. This is propaganda that I don't know if it's directly through the Chinese Communist Party, but has absolutely infiltrated our public school system, as infiltrated academia, has infiltrated

diversity and inclusion trainings, corporate trainings, has infiltrated just our public dialogue. And if China and our, you know, these foreign regimes can make us hate ourselves as so many, seem to in America, then that means we're right for the taking, right? It does. Well, the other, you know, it doesn't even have to come from China in terms of influencing this. It can just be, you know, these liberal intellectuals who have gotten to the point where they're teaching, you know, you've talked a lot about on your show, the 1619 project, that really the American founding wasn't 76, the, you know, where the meaning and the ideology, the underpinnings of the American regime is the belief that we're all created.

equal before God and that we all have inherent dignity. And it's in and that, you know, we give government, our rights come from God and we give government the ability to protect us and they're supposed to defend those rights. And that's how Americans think. And that's how we used to teach it in schools. And now it's this new thinking pushed by this, you know, the intellectuals from the left from higher education that actually our founding was inherently flawed. It was inherently racist, and it was terrible.

And so really, the United States doesn't really have any moral standing. We need to completely remake ourselves because the founding was flawed, and it was terrible and bad. And if you have enough Americans who believe that and who don't understand all of these things that make America unique and exceptional, then whenever I go to them or people go to them and they say, listen, you know, the Chinese Communist Party wants to replace all these great things about America with this, these things that communism values. But then you have all of these college students are like, but I like those things that the communist value. Yeah, communism is great.

What's wrong with that? We don't have any antibodies. We don't have any national antibodies to push this stuff back. And so that's why, you know, I spend a lot of time talking about the external threat coming from China, but then the internal threat where we need to make sure that we have a revival of truly good American patriotism that is a, is a, is a, bullwork against racism. And it's a bulwark against the kinds of things that the left accuses many conservatives of. And you need to have that in order to withstand kind of the onslaught that that's

going to happen. And that doesn't mean looking, you know, looking back over history and pretending like everything's been perfect or that at our founding, America was perfect. But I think that, you know, the mistake the 1619 project makes and a lot of the critical race theory makes is this idea that America has always been endymically racist. And it just, it is just as much today as it was in 1619. We've just gotten better at hiding it. And therefore, something like the founding and this idea of liberty and justice for all and everyone being equal in the eyes of God, because we still had racism then. And there were some founders that owned slaves, while it's all just moot. But really, it's not either the Constitution was moot or our country

was perfect at our founding, it's, okay, that seed of liberty and justice for all, it was a seed, and it's grown. I mean, Frederick Douglass thought that the Constitution was a glorious liberty document because that idea of liberty and justice for all, of everyone being equal in the eyes of God, has grown over time. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't at, it wasn't flourishing in 1776, but it's gotten better and better. We've righted our wrongs and we've extended that promise that the founders, I think, were inspired to write then. And so I think we can have a very accurate view of the injustices in America and still be patriotic and say, wow, the ideas and ideals upon which we were founded are really good. And when we let those flourish, America is really good. But

unfortunately, like you said, we've got a lot of people who just want to throw out those ideals. And I think that just allows fertile soil for someone like the CCP to come in and say, yeah, we've got new values now. Well, they do. And actually, a lot of those on the left will look back, though, and they'll actually look at the history of the United States, and they'll disagree with your conclusion. And my conclusion is that on the whole, though, the United States on net has done so much good, has done so much good because of those founding principles in our own country, but has done so much good since the end of World War II. And then after George H.W. Bush, George H.W. Bush was the last president to kind of sit at the top of the American apex of military power and economic power

where the American-led world really, that's what we're thinking about when there really wasn't any other power that could come near touching us at the close of the Cold War. And he handed that baton over to Bill Clinton. And then that's whenever you saw China, China's rise. And then American preeminence getting chipped away, chipped away, chipped away to the point where now we're much closer to peers than we were preeminent power, where the United States was a preeminent power. But that, because of the United States having so much military strength, economic strength, and a greater sense of cultural confidence in what America was and the good that we were doing. Yes, always bad, because we're made up of human beings and human beings because of the fall.

We do do bad things, but we also do great good. But these American principles allowed us to do great good. And as the United States was and has been the leader of the free world, more good has been done. Many liberals look back and they say, actually, no. If you look at everything that we do, everything the United States touches, it goes bad. And the United States actually does more bad than good. And they really believe that. I would just point out, the New York Times wrote this ridiculous article recently about how, you know, just how confused so many liberals are,

trying to urge readers to look at how China during the coronavirus pandemic actually was showing us their new version of freedom. that even though they don't have civil liberties in China. Oh, I remember with this article. I mean, and even though they don't, even though they had to literally weld their citizens or, you know, into their homes. Until they died of starvation, yeah. Diet of starvation or, I mean,

there is all kinds of horrible things that I have not corroborated, so I won't repeat them here, but terrible, terrible, inhumane things that, to me, highlight how the Chinese Communist Party does not value the intrinsic dignity of their people. But they say, yes, but now, because of the way they crack down, people can walk around and go to school and go to work.

And so they have their new version of freedom, which is trading all of these liberties that Americans value for the sake of whatever there exists, you know, their ability to move around today, even though they're in this massive surveillance state. And so it's a confusion about what freedom is and about the purpose of government and what is actually good for human beings and what actually gives us the most ability to have maximum human flourishing. Okay, last question that I have for you. What do you anticipate from the Biden administration? You talked about how the Trump administration was really strong against China and how it will be hard for the Biden administration to undo some of those things. But I mean, we saw at the Biden inauguration, state affiliated media in China was celebrating the exit of Trump, the entrance of Biden. That really worries me. That really worries me. And I just, it seems like Democrats aren't quite as strong. in taking a stance against China. Do you think those concerns are valid, or do you have some hope for this administration

and continuing to take a strong stance against the CCP? So I always try to have a realistic picture, not a rosy picture of what I think is going to happen with just a little bit of constant Midwestern American hope. Yeah. Thrown in there. Yeah, please. So I think that there are some individuals who have been nominated by the Biden administration who do see the China threat more clearly.

You saw Anthony Blinken. I've debated him on PBS before on China's handling of the coronavirus, and I definitely was taking a much stronger stance at blaming and putting the onus for the pandemic on the Chinese government where they're hiding it. They're lying about it, which they constantly do today, about the origins of the virus and what they knew and when. And he really didn't, though he thought that the Chinese government messed up,

he still put much more of the blame, I think, on the handling of the United States government. So you see some kind of soft peddling rhetoric over the course of the many months whenever they were attacking Donald Trump, the Trump administration. But during the nomination hearing, some of the rhetoric changed and it was a little bit tougher. I mean, he did condemn, he did agree with the designation of the what was the official designation of the human rights violations of China against the Uyghurs, et cetera. And he agreed with that. All of that is good. So we're seeing some good signaling from some of the senior officials coming out. But let's be realistic. Joe Biden has been in government for decades, decades. And so he has a trail of evidence of what he will do. And he has never stuck his neck out in any serious way to lead or to push back on China. And in fact, whenever he was asked about China all through leading up to the election, he did not, he downplayed the threat. And he said it wasn't a threat. So we know. They're not.

folks, folks. They're not bad folks and all kinds of business dealings with individuals in the administration who continue to, who worked with China. And so I don't know if we, you know, I'm not confident that they fully understand the ideological motivation of the Chinese Communist Party and why it's a threat. And so, you know, my hope is they get in there and get all these intel briefings and see how bad it is and see what the Trump administration did. But a lot of these policies that the Trump administration put in place. We can thank Pompeo for that. We can thank the National Security Council for that. Really great stuff. It's going to be almost impossible to overturn some of it. And some of that, I think, does the Biden administration a lot of good. You know, Joe Biden can go in there and be

the congenial Joe Biden and not this, you know, really tough guy like Donald Trump was. And he can still build on the progress that the Trump administration already established. But I do think that they will undo quite a bit of it. They're always looking for a conciliatory relationship with countries like that. They do that with other adversaries. So I am concerned, but I think our biggest threat is going to, but they're going to do good stuff on the military. I think that they're still going to try to work with our partners and allies in the Pacific to deter China. That's all going to be good with Australia and Japan. There's good statements about defending Taiwan. All of that's critical. Where the weakest part is going to be the Biden administration is all the stuff you and I just talked about

domestically. If they continue pushing this critical race theory stuff, they continue this identity politics that pits Americans against one another, that goes back to that soft middle. And we need to have a much harder middle as a people and as diverse as we are as a people, which is wonderful, this great, you know, just different ethnicities and different religions and all these things that make Americans great. We have to have some kind of unifying cord that keeps us all together that acts again as that, you know, that bulwark against what the Chinese Communist Party is going to continue to try to do over the next many decades on multiple fronts. Yeah. And critical race theory, identity politics, which we talked a lot about on this podcast, it works directly against that because it purposely categorizes people, it splits people apart by their race, by their sexuality, by their religion, and not just splits people apart, but pits people against each other based on an aspect. allocation of oppression point. So when Biden and his inauguration talked about unity, there were a lot

of beautiful words that I agreed with, but you can't peddle identity politics and talk about unity because the purpose of all of that is disintegration. The purpose of all of that is splitting Americans apart. And at one point, I think, you know, we at least had, okay, yes, we're different in a variety of ways, but we all believe in liberty and justice for all. But he's even greater than that, we all believe in some kind of great moral lawgiver that gives us our rights. The less we believe that, that we're all human beings made in the image of God and therefore have inherent value, which is what is supposed to set America apart from someone like China, then it gets tougher and tougher, I think, to make the case for personal liberty,

personal privacy, personal autonomy. Because human beings are just viewed as these material objects. why can't they be controlled by a tyrannical state? So it really does start at the heart. And I think it starts at the home. And I think it starts in schools. These values, that's really the enemy, I think, of the CCP is an ideological enemy, a philosophical, a religious enemy, not as much of, you know, a military power, although

that's important, too. Do you think that's correct? I think it's both. I think that Americans can wrap their mind around, okay, what is the Chinese Communist Party going to do militarily? You know, can they close us off from the Indo-Pacific region? Yes, I think that they would try to do that. They're going to try to do to Taiwan or they would like to do to Taiwan what they did to Hong Kong.

And then if they did that, then they could close out the United States from being able to, you know, maintain free and open seas, you know, to make good on our security commitments, those great democratic countries that we, not only we help, but they help us in Japan and Australia and South Korea and these other countries. That is definitely a threat because if China is able to close us out of that region, then that is effectively the end of the American-led order. That means that it's now a Sino-led, it's Chinese-led. That's a problem. But on the point that you just made, I think it's just absolutely fundamental and critical.

So whenever people, you know, just everyday Americans say, well, what can I do? One of the best things you can do is bone up on what it means to be an American and make sure that you're instilling those things in your children. make sure that they understand why it shouldn't be acceptable to censor speech and why that's so critical, why religious liberty is so important at home, and why we're not going to accept some of these overbearing restrictions that are irrational because of the coronavirus from some of these politicians. These things are dear to Americans. They're very dear to Americans. And we have to have this sense of, again, what it means to be an American regardless of, you know, ethnicity or race, something that the Democrats are always trying to blame on Republicans for not caring about,

but conservatives do care about those things. And you have to have enough Americans that have great deep patriotism and appreciation for our rights. And also, you know, strong desires to freely worship and care for our families and not having the government, the state, come in and tell you how to raise your children, what to do and how you can and cannot worship. All of that is going to be critical if we are going to remain, you know, the greatest, most exceptional nation on earth and be the leader of the free world, which I think is certainly a noble purpose worth pursuing. And it's important that we are. And don't let anyone tell you that patriotism is wrong or bigoted or that America seeking to be the world power is somehow wrong because

there's always going to, I think people forget, there's always going to be a world power. There will be. China's not okay with just being equal, like on equal playing field. and everyone's just getting along, they want power. And if the country who believes in liberty and justice for all and has upheld that in so many ways for so long is not the preeminent power, the country who believes in putting people in internment camps for believing something different will be the preeminent power. And that has an effect on the entire world.

So like you said, it is a noble and worthy endeavor to make sure that the United States stays in the place that we should be as the leader. of the free world. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Can you tell everyone where they can find you, where they can follow your work? Sure. You can follow me on Twitter. My handle is R-L-H-H-R-L-H-R-E-N-R-C-H-S. Or you can go to Hudson Institute, and all of my work is posted there, my articles and essays. And one of the things that I've been tracking to, which, you just mentioned a few minutes ago, too, about how we can be sort of deceived on whether or not, you know, things are true, whether or not it's Chinese communist propaganda.

One of the things that I've been tracking and I've been written several articles about, too, is how American media, if it doesn't, if these journalists don't have sort of a pro-America bent, but they don't, and they don't know how to tell the difference between Chinese communist propaganda and what isn't. They've been just repeating what comes out of the CCP. And we've seen, I have been tracking a lot of that, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. And so we need to make sure that we understand, you know, what it, what is just Chinese communist propaganda being perpetuated by even American media company, you know, reporters, et cetera, and what is actually true.

We need to be very discerning, very, very careful. And also just, you know, the other thing I would just encourage your viewers to, this is not anything to be panicked about or being, you know, something that we should have great anxiety over. We can have confidence in knowing that, as you mentioned, too, that we have this great creator who is just and good. and we can move forward though and just pray for our leaders and for greater discernment and not just have great anxiety over it but we need to do our part in all the small little ways that we can

and our various vocations to uphold these principles that we know are right and good yes amen thank you so much rebecca i really appreciate you coming on thanks sally