The Daily Signal - Douglas Murray Explains How We Can Win the War on the West

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

A fight is raging for the soul of the West. Great civilizations basking in the legacy of the Enlightenment and heroic men such as George Washington and Winston Churchill find themselves faced with an internal enemy. Some citizens of America and Europe, furious about perceived failures of the past, have decided the best way forward is to tear it all down. But to British writer and commentator Douglas Murray, author of the new book "The War on the West: How to Prevail in an Age of Unreason," the "games" of self-loathing have only one outcome: utter destruction. "If we play those games, then yes, of course, it's over, and others will take our place, as they inevitably would if a civilization turns self-loathing," Murray says. Thankfully, a solution is at hand. "The deepest well we need to draw upon is to try to change around the culture of ingratitude," Murray says. "We in the West need to transform our societies from societies of resentment into societies of gratitude, to recognize that what we have is highly unusual, and to have some gratitude for that, to feel grateful to that. And if we feel grateful for that, then to add to that inheritance as well." Murray joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss his book and offer specifics on winning the war on the West. We also cover these stories: Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, is found not guilty on charges of lying to the FBI. President Biden says he has a plan to flight inflation. Supreme Court clerks soon may be required to turn over private phone records as well as sign affidavits, sources say, as part of a probe into the leaked opinion in a landmark abortion case. Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who has dominated in women's events, speaks with ABC's "Good Morning America."  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, June 1st. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Doug Blair. There is a fight raging for the soul of the West. Great civilizations basking in the legacy of the Enlightenment, and heroic men like George Washington or Winston Churchill are finding themselves faced with an internal enemy. Douglas Murray, author of the new book, The War on the West,

How to Prevail in an Age of Unreason, joins the show today to discuss his new book and offer solutions on how we can. push back against the tide of anti-Western sentiment. But before we get to Doug's conversation with Douglas Murray, let's hit our top news stories of the day. On Tuesday, Michael Sussman, an attorney connected with the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, was found not guilty on charges of lying to the FBI.

Sussman had been indicted by special counsel John Durham on one count of lying to the FBI. Sussman claimed that he had acted on his own and not for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign when he met with the FBI and attempted to connect the 2016 Trump presidential campaign with Russia. Sussman's lawyers argued that FBI agents were aware that Sussman was connected to the Clinton campaign, while lawyers representing Durham's investigation argued that Sussman lied about not representing Clinton when he approached the FBI. After the verdict, Sussman said, I told the truth to the FBI, and the jury clearly recognized this in their unanimous verdict today. Despite being falsely accused, I believe that justice ultimately prevailed in my case. Durham also reacted to the verdict.

He said, while we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury's decision and thank them for their service. I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case. There are still two more people Durham indicted during his investigation, Igor Denchenko and Kevin Kleinsmith. Kleinsmith has already pled guilty while Danchenko's trial is set for this October. President Biden says he has a plan to fight inflation. The president laid out a three-part strategy to lower the prices of consumer goods in a Wall Street Journal commentary piece published on Memorial Day. Step one, according to Biden, is to allow the Federal Reserve to do its job.

Biden promised he won't demean the Federal Reserve, saying I have appointed highly qualified people from both people, parties to lead that institution. I agree with their assessment that fighting inflation is our top economic challenge right now. The president said step two includes Congress passing a congressional clean energy tax credit. And Biden said inflation costs in everyday goods can be lowered by fixing broken supply chains, improving infrastructure, and cracking down on the exorbitant fees that foreign ocean fright companies charge to move products. Biden also called on Congress to act to lower the cost of things like child care and elder care.

And then step three, Biden said the government has to keep reducing the federal deficit. The president said his plan would reduce the deficit even more by making common sense reforms to the tax code. But the question everyone is asking is, will this plan work to reduce inflation? Joel Griffith is a research fellow in financial regulations at the Heritage Foundation. He joins us now to answer that question. Joel, thanks so much for being here. Hey, thanks for having me today. So Biden's plan to reduce inflation that he just laid out in the Wall Street Journal,

the big question, will it work? No, it will not work. And that's because the president, number one, he misdiagnoses the actual problem, but his solution will actually make matters worse. And how is that? How will his solutions, what he says are solutions, make things worse? Well, let's just talk about the supply chain issue. Well, he actually, at least, recognizes that we do have a problem with the supply chain. But his solution is actually price control on international shippers. Well, if you go ahead and try to cap what those shippers can charge to get an item across the ocean, that's going to result in fewer ships, not more ships. Sadly, the president actually left out one big thing.

That could actually make it easier to actually ship items from Port A to Port B. And that would be to repeal the Jones Act, which pretty much is a cronious measure that eliminates 99.8% of the ships worldwide from actually being allowed to go from one port United States to another port. That can drive up shipping costs by close to 300%. And the president also failed to point out that his allies in Congress, his Democrat allies, are trying to replicate a measure in California that would make it very difficult for independent truck drivers to operate. That's a handout really to a lot of big labor union bosses. He didn't even mention that. And lastly, another issue when it comes to shipping is he didn't even acknowledge the fact that fuel costs, particularly diesel costs,

are a big driver behind these shipping costs. He didn't even mention that. And that's something, too, that the federal government, that Congress could actually partially remedy by eliminating a number of these environmental regulations that are needlessly driving up fuel costs. And what about his comments on the deficit?

The president says that the deficit is predicted to fall by $1.7 trillion this year. He talked about the deficit and lowering the deficit in his third step. Is that accurate that under the president's policies that the deficit is falling and will fall by as much as $1.7 trillion this year? Well, the president is really cherry-picking data here. I think most people perhaps are not aware that federal spending skyrocketed at the tune of trillions of dollars per year in order supposedly to combat the negative economic effects from COVID. So he's using a baseline number that is far higher than any of the year,

and he's claiming credit for that reduction. Well, he wasn't president when we had that initial cert in spending, and to use that as a baseline is just inaccurate. We're still borrowing close to a trillion dollars per year. And in fact, if you look at the president's own budget proposal, he tried to push through trillions of dollars of additional deficit spending, and the Senate shot him down and refused to permit it. So oddly enough, the president is claiming credit for a reduction in the amount of money that we would have borrowed, a reduction that largely would not have occurred had he gotten his way earlier in the year. So, Joel, the big question then is, how do we lower inflation? How can we stop spending so much at the gas pump and on groceries?

Well, inflation at the gas pump, that is going to require a longer term our government to stop its war on fossil fuels. We have our economy is basically producing where it was producing about two years ago, but our oil extraction numbers are about 8 to 10 percent less, and that is a big part of the reason why we see oil prices now close to $120 per barrels. It's a big part of the reason why gas is $6 per gallon. We have an administration that has a number of officials that are very publicly calling on regulations that would put natural gas and oil companies out of business in the next 10 to 20 years. And that sounds like a long time. But if you're a company, you're looking to invest money in due exploration, due drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, or when you invest that money, you expect that those facilities are going to last 10, 20, or 30 years. So when you've got an administration that is saying our goal is to put you out of business in the next 10 to 20 years,

well, that deters those companies from actually investing their profits in more exploration and more drilling. And we see that right now. We see companies that now these natural gas, fossil companies, are distributing the resources to shareholders rather than investing or drilling because the government's saying that they want to put them out of business. And if you look at the president's op-ed today, he didn't even mention more exploration. and more drilling. He talked about giving billions of dollars away to green energy companies. He is sending all the wrong signals. And in fact, on the very day that we have gas prices in an all-time high, the president announced that out. They're putting another million acres

of federal land off limits. So the way to long term to get these energy prices down is to unleash our energy sector. We've got the reserves. They're in the ground. We just have to unleash it. But inflation overall in all the other sectors, that's going to require Congress, number one, to stop spending the millions of dollars that we don't have. When they passed all that legislation back in 2020 and in 2021, and even this year, nearly all of that increase in federal spending was basically borrowed. And by borrowed, really that meant the Federal Reserve just pricking up the money to buy the government debt. And now we're paying the consequences of that.

And you have politicians blaming the Fed when, in fact, it was the politicians that passed the legislation, and it was the Fed that financed it. They're both responsible for the disaster. that win right now. Joel Griffith, research fellow in financial regulations at the Heritage Foundation. You can read his work at heritage.org or you can also find him on Twitter at Joel Griffith. Joel, thank you so much for time today. We appreciate it.

Oh, thank you. As part of an ongoing probe into who leaked a draft opinion indicating the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, unnamed sources are reporting that court clerks may soon be required to turn over their private phone records, as well as sign athletes. If the clerks lie on a sworn affidavit, they can be prosecuted and jailed. CNN initially reported Tuesday that the investigation into finding the leaker is heating up, and some clerks are looking into hiring legal representation over the request for their personal data. It is currently unclear how far back or in-depth the requested phone records will go,

nor what the exact language of the affidavits will be. Also unclear is whether other court staffers other than the clerks at the Supreme Court will be told to turn over their phone records or to sign affidavits. Transgender swimmer Leah Thomas just recently sat down with Good Morning America to talk about his controversial swimming career at the University of Pennsylvania. Thomas is a male who identifies as a female. After competing on the boys' team in college, Thomas took a year of cross-sex hormones before joining the women's team.

Earlier this year, Thomas took home a Division I national title. Now, the swimmer says he would love to go on to compete at the Olympics. It's been a goal of mine to swim at Olympic trials for a very long time, and I would love to see that through. A group of anonymous members of the Penn Women's Swimming Team wrote a letter saying they support Thomas's transition, but find it unfair for Thomas to compete against the women. Thomas says he disagrees. Trans women are not a threat to women's sports. Thomas also said trans people don't transition for athletics. We transition to be happy and authentic and our true selves.

Transitioning to get an advantage is not something that ever factors into our decisions. Now stay tuned for my conversation with author Douglas Murray as we discuss his new book on how to win the war on the West. For over 35 years, the Heritage Foundation, Job Bank has been helping conservatives at all professional levels, find employment in key positions in Washington, D.C., and across the country. We can help connect you with positions in the administration, on Capitol Hill, in public policy organizations, and in the private sector. To learn more about the Heritage Foundation Job Bank, go to heritage.org slash job dash bank.

My guest today is Douglas Murray, author of the new book, The War on the West, How to Prevail in the age of unreason, available now, wherever books are sold. Douglas, welcome to the show. Great to be with you. Let's start with the obvious question here. Your book asks, how do we prevail in the age of unreason? So how do we do it? Well, one thing is not getting absolutely everything in our past,

not destroying everything that we've inherited, and imagining that we can start from year zero, like cultural revolution, It was in Maoist, China, Pol Potts, Cambodia. In America, in the West, in recent decades, we've deliberately deracinate our histories. We've cleared the public square of all of our history, all of our heroes, our idols, and much more.

We've destroyed our religious inheritance and our secular protections. We've made our culture this bonfire of accusations, accusations of racism, connections with slavery, colonialism, and much more. It said that unless everything in our history conforms with our specific desires in the present and our ambitions in the presence and our beliefs in the present, then there are no use to us. And if you do all of these things, and imagine that you're wiser than all of our predecessors, and you know better than them and much more, then you will go mad and many people in our age are going mad.

If, however, you believe that the past is a very good guide to us. It's not perfect. Of course, it isn't perfect. It's unsupprising that things from 200 years ago don't conform completely with everything we currently believe and hold in 2022, just as things we believe in 2022 might seem mad to our success is 200 years from now. Nevertheless, if you recognize that we have an extraordinary inheritance gift in countries like America and you hold onto that gift and try to improve on it rather than burning it down, you've got the start of a way to prevent.

So when I think of this, sort of this decline of the West, and I imagine when we've had a historical decline before, I looked to Rome where they sort of had this vision of what they were in the past and then they kind of ignored it at their own peril and then the decline. Is that sort of similar to what we're seeing here, where we're seeing a hegemanic power like the West decline as it becomes a little bit more obsessed with immaterial thing? Well, it's not inevitable, of course. And as everyone always reminds us, and quite rightly, so the fall of Rome took a good 400 years. So there's a lot of wreckage in it if you want wreck it. And that means that there's a significant amount of time in which you could turn it.

around if you want to turn it around and I submit at any rate that we should try to turn it around and we do have time to save ourselves but as I say in the war the West the problem is that we are currently deciding to look at everything in our past and present through this same accusatory lens everything is to do with racism everything to do with colonialism everything to do with slavery in the mistaken belief that only we wherever guilty of these things, whereas of course what really made the West remarkable was that we were the first civilisations to throw these things off. But if we continue down this road of talking about

ourselves in this way, looking at ourselves in this unforgiving, unforgivable light, then it's inevitable that others will take over. And I give examples in the book of times in recent years, when that's actually, you can actually glimpse that happening. You know, America's ambassador to the United Nations last year speaking at the floor of the United Nations about how racist America is, how from its founding it's been evil and had this inherited guilt. Of course, if people said that about any other society, we would have something to say about them. But, you know, the American ambassador to the UN does that on the floor of the UN and the next person up is a Chinese Communist Party's ambassador who says, you have no right to lecture China and

ever again on anything because America's ambassador has come to the UN today and done something unequaled in our history and confessed her nation's guilt. So yes, if we play the self-indulgent self-destructive games, it's not it's way past self-criticism at this point, it's self-destruction. If we play those games, and yes, we caught it over and others will take place as they as inevitably would if a civilization turns self-loathing. Is there any historical precedent where, I guess, I guess I'm curious as to how this happens, because I don't see any particular way that a country can survive

or a nation can survive if its own citizen reviews it as irredeemably, as you said, racist or sexist or bigoted. Is there any historical precedent for how this kind of happens? Well, there are little glimpses of it. And I give some examples of that. There are no direct to focal power parallels because there's none quite so large of this. It's the West's contemporary virus that we've decided to destroy ourselves in this way. And as I say, it's not by any means inevitable that that destruction continues indefinitely.

I think it's quite likely that a counter movement will occur or is already occurring to try to correct it. But the problem is, among other things, an enormous context collapse, which is unique in the modern West. The context collapse is the mistake by very large numbers of citizenry. I prove this through the polls and others. Very large numbers of the citizenry in the West who seem to believe that what we have is the norm. And that therefore you can war on it and weight war against everything in it. and that this can be done merely to improve. And that if the improvements didn't work,

you would return to the status quo ante of the society as it was. Well, that's not the case because representative democracies which regard human rights of being of significance only today exist in what we call the West and only exist today in the form that we recognize compared to that in previous centuries. So what we have in America and in the West today is incredibly uncommon historically and uncommon in the world today.

I mean, one point I make in the book is that there are 40 million, 40 million slaves in the world today. That's more than there were in the 19th century. So we regard slavery quite rightly as an abomination, but it's not an abnormality. Not at all. It's going on now. So I really, I urge Americans and others in particular to try to get themselves into a proper perspective. And one final thing about, you know, we do know that absolutely anything can happen once civilization turns this self-loathing.

There was a poll out when Russia invaded Ukraine in February. There was a poll asking Americans, I'm sure you saw it, whether they would stay and fight for their country if something similar happened to this, happened to the Ukrainians. And about a half of Americans said that no, they would hot foot and flee if their country was invaded. Well, of course, I add the caveat that people act differently in theory to how they would act to pollsters. By the way, normally people say to pulsars things they think that will make them look better, so actually the figure might be hard. higher than the one that the Pulitzer came back with. But it seems that a large number of Americans now think there's nothing in their country worth fighting for defending.

And that's because they've been told this for more than a generation. As I show in the book, they've been told that their founding fathers are appalling. They've been told that America was founded in sin. They've been told that America is a story of appalling racism and bigotly. Why would you stay around and risk your life for a country which was like that? So to the topic of your book, it's titled The War on the West. And the West obviously encompasses more than just America. It encompasses sort of this idea of European-derived countries like, you know,

obviously France and the UK, but also their derivatives like America, Australia, and New Zealand. Is this something that's mostly explicitly an American phenomenon? Or are we seeing this across the continent in Europe as well? Well, that's a very interesting question. The answer is that we see it, we just see it less in the non-English-speaking countries. As I describe in the war in the West, America has been, for most of my lifetime, even with your life, it's been a net importer of bad ideas. In recent years, it has managed to turn this around, and America is now an net exporter

of bad ideas, so that things like the BLM movement move to countries like the UK, in no seconds flat. Britain doesn't need the BLM movement. America doesn't need it either. And it turns out to have been a shakedown racket. If only it was the movement actually dedicated to the things it claimed it was dedicated to. But Britain certainly doesn't need it. We don't have any of the same police issues that America has.

And again, even that, it's highly debatable and arguable, and I explain that in the book as well. But, you know, the BLM movement is immediately exported to the UK. Whenever we get these moments of iconoclasm, iconoclastic fury like the kind that broke out in America in 2020, you get them in the English-speaking countries as well. Statues of Winston Churchill get attacked in London and in Canada. Canada starts to do church burning. You know, it's Australia, New Zealand that start to ransack their history as well. their history as well and say maybe there are people in our past who don't conform to 2020's ideas. So this definitely all spreads from America out. And there is a recognition

in some countries, most notably France, that it is deadly to import these American viruses. The French president himself, Manuel Macron, and a number of French academics have actually said we mustn't import this American ideology. Macron himself, of course, has said in the past, said in 2020, not one statue will come down, not one monument will be erased. We need all of our history. By the way, that hasn't quite worked. Voltaire's statue has been torn down in Paris,

and no one quite knows where it is at the moment, but leave that aside for the moment. Broadly speaking, it is English-speaking countries in the West, but get the American virus. Sometimes people call this woke. Woke doesn't even start to describe the seriousness of the world. what I'm describing. The Western anti-Westernism is the American virus that has been exported from America to the rest of the English-speaking West, and other parts of the West is certainly

vulnerable, but not as vulnerable as the English-speaking countries. As you mentioned, we are seeing the degradation of all of these cultural institutions and sort of like historical institutions as well. Winston Churchill, obviously a great hero. His statues are being torn down. You mentioned the founding fathers, having this. their statues torn down and their kind of memories defamed. As these institutions are being degraded, are we seeing them replaced with anything? Or is it more just iconoclasm for the sake of iconoclasm? Well, a very interesting exercise is to see who this doesn't get done to.

And I have a section in the War on the West, as you know, where I say, well, look at the way in which every single philosopher of the West has now been lambasted by this so-called social justice movement. Look at the way in which everyone from Aristotle described in the Washington Post a couple of years ago as the granddaddy of scientific racism, criticized among other things by the Washington Post because the writer Charles Murray has said that Aristotle is his favorite philosopher. So you can cancel Aristotle based on one book recommendation two and a half thousand years after he lived, it seems. But every philosopher from Aristotle to the philosophy of the Enlightenment and the present, has now been lambasted and pulled down by the social revolutionaries of our time. David Hume's name, taken off buildings in his native Scotland. As I mentioned, Voltaire disappearing in Paris,

endless attacks on the Enlightenment philosophers for their alleged racism or connections to slavery. So I say at one point in the book, Whose is not done to? Interestingly enough, Karl Marx, a new statue was put up to Karl Marx only a couple of years ago in his native Germany, paid for by the munificent and generous benefactors of the Communist Party of China. The statue of Karl Marx that went up is normal because people don't apply the same standards to Karl Marx. I explain in the war in the West, I go through his private correspondence, Marx's private correspondence, and his public writings at the time, including in the American press in the 1850s,

Karl Marx's correspondence is littered with racial epithets. He uses the N-word repeatedly, quite often hyphenated with the word Jew, because he's also very anti-smitted. Karl Marx had horrible views on slavery, on colonialism, referred to people of color as guerrillas and much more. He was a racist by the standards of his own time, as well as the standards of ours. Yet I hear no left-wing philosopher

calling for the cancellation of Karl Marx. And indeed, since the war on the West came out, and since these facts about Karl Marx have been given greater airing by me, a number of Marxists have come out of the woodwork. And what have they said? They've said, he was a man of his time. Ah, like everyone, you mean.

So why haven't they done it, Karl Marx? Well, one explanation, as I say, is that they want to destroy everything in our past and leave us with only one explanation of what we should do in the future. And it's the old thing they've been trying to make us follow for the better part of two centuries now. So it's mostly a political idea. It doesn't really seem there's any genuine sort of...

It doesn't seem like it's coming from anywhere real. It seems like it's coming more from a place of pure politics. Oh, well, it's both. I mean, some people, it's very real. Some people really do think that their meaning in life will be found by tearing down everything that they've inherited and starting again. Some people find profound meaning in this narcissism of thinking that they can recreate the world in you to fit around them and their specific. I won't say half-baked thoughts, but they're not half-baked even. Very, very raw and ill-formed.

and there are definitely people who find significant meaning in that, the people who have been told from the academy down, or the academy up, that meaning in life is to be found by deconstructing, you know, by pulling everything apart, literally the point in academia, to deconstruct. Well, there is a certain fun in deconstructing things and taking things apart. Children discover it early on with things like bicycles. They take them apart and take great glee in that.

But of course they can't put them back together again. And there's a greater joy in putting things back together. There's a greater joy in creation in the end. But unfortunately, in order to explain this fact, in order to explain that the high octane thrill of destruction isn't the only desire you should have in your life. In order to explain that, you'd have to have adults in the room again. and our societies in the West have an extraordinary deficit when it comes to adults,

willing to say to the young, they're wrong, that they've got this wrong, they've got it out of order. And that includes young people, by the way. There are many very wise and intelligent and perceptive young people who realize that they are being sold a croc by their elders, because it is also revolutionary elders, leading people to this mistaken,

ideology, this anti-Western strain of thought of our time. There are also young people who can do this, who can say to their professors they're wrong, who can correct the lies they're being told, to add context where there is none. And this is a very, very important task. We have been through a period of deconstruction in the West, and we need to turn that round and go back to the back to the method of construction again, of being literally a constructive society. Right. I guess to sort of wrap this up and to sort of kind of bring this all together, you've mentioned that we should go back to that. Is that even possible? Is there a way to reverse this process? What would that take? There certainly is, and I lay it out in some

specifics in the War on the West, but I also lay it out in the deep wells you need to pull upon. The deepest well you need to draw upon, and I'll have to do this quickly because I know we've not got much time, and this is a very important point. The deepest well you need to draw upon is to try to change around the culture of ingratitude. The ingratitude in our era, which I also refer to as the culture of resentment, the world has not given me everything I want. My society is not giving me everything I believe I need. Therefore, I will pull it down and attack it all until such a time as I have everything I want. I write a chapter in the book on resentment, but crucially, also on the answer. The answer to resentment, the

answer to turning around resentment is gratitude. And I've had a wonderful feedback from readers already about this because they recognize this in their own lives. As I point out, we all, I suspect, know people who have very little in their lives materially, but who lead very rich lives, lives of gratitude, of charity, of much more, of grace. And I think we've probably all met people, hopefully don't know them well, who may have a lot of great-a-you-you-have-a-muched. seemingly many material attributes, but who live lives with deep resentment. So resentment and gratitude are important because, among other things, they transgress all class lines, all socioeconomic lines, or race lines, sex and gender lines.

It's a human thing in all of us, and we all have the opportunity to fall into being people of resentment or people of gratitude. And I say that at the deepest level, we in the West need to transform our societies. And I try to explain some of the ways in which we can do this, from societies of resentment into societies of gratitude, to recognize that what we have is highly unusual, and to have some gratitude for that, to feel grateful to that. And if we feel grateful for that, then to add to that inheritance as well,

not to try to pull it down, but to try to build more upon it. That was Douglas Murray, author of the new book, The War on the West, How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, available now, wherever books are sold. Douglas, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. It's a great pleasure. Thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. And if you have not done so already, be sure to subscribe to the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, or IHeartRadio. And please take a moment to leave us a review in a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we're back

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