The Daily Signal - Even a 42-Ton Boulder Isn’t Safe From Woke Cancel Culture

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

Can a rock be racist? It can be, according to student activists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The school in early August moved a giant boulder that had sat prominently on campus for nearly a century to honor geologist and former university President Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin. “This moment is about the students, past and present, that relentlessly advocated for the removal of this racist monument,” said Juliana Bennett, a student and campus representative on the Madison City Council. “Now is a moment for all of us [black, Indigenous, and people of color] students to breathe a sigh of relief, to be proud of our endurance, and to begin healing.” Chamberlin was never accused of racism or anything else inappropriate. Instead, the massive 42-ton boulder was removed because of a single line in a local newspaper nearly 100 years ago in 1925 that referred to the rock using an offensive anachronism. Fred Lucas and Jarrett Stepman join "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss the incident and the broader movement to remove politically incorrect statues and monuments around the country. We also cover these stories: President Joe Biden addresses the nation after all U.S. troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy criticizes the Biden administration for leaving Americans behind in Afghanistan. Several of the parents of the troops killed at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan are speaking out against Biden. Enjoy the show. 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, September 1st. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Kate Trinko. In a bewildering news story highlighting the sheer ridiculousness of identity politics, the University of Wisconsin recently moved a boulder from campus at the request of a small group of students who said that the rock was racist. Today's show features a conversation between the Daily Signals Fred Lucas and Jared Stepman, as they discussed the madness behind the decision,

and the effects of cancel culture and how it takes down monuments. And don't forget, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, please be sure to leave us a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now, onto our top news. President Joe Biden delivered a speech Tuesday afternoon, just about 24 hours after all American troops were pulled from Afghanistan. Here's what the president had to say per the Washington Post.

I refused to continue to war that was no longer in the service of the vital national interest of our people. And most of all, after 800,000 Americans serving Afghanistan, I've traveled that whole country, brave and honorable service, after 20,744 American servicemen and women injured, and the loss of 2,461 American personnel, including 13,000,000, people, lives lost just this week, I refuse to open another decade of warfare in Afghanistan. We've been a nation too long at war. If you're 20 years old today, you've never known an America at peace. So when I hear that we could have, should have continued the so-called low-grade effort

in Afghanistan, at low risk to our service members, at low-cost. cost. I don't think enough people understand how much we've asked of the 1% of this country who put that uniform on, willing to put their lives in the line in defense of our nation. The end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan marks the conclusion of America's longest war. On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy criticized the Biden administration for leaving Americans behind in Afghanistan. Here's what he had to say via C-SPAN. What is the plan to get Americans out? Never in my lifetime would I ever believe America would have an administration knowingly make a decision to leave Americans behind. Whereas just

two weeks ago, the president promised this nation that he would not leave until every single American was out. We're two weeks away of the 20th anniversary of 9-11. We now have Americans stuck in Afghanistan, the Taliban in charge, with more weaponry than they've ever had in the past, and a border that is open. Representative Clay Higgins, flanked by other members of the House Freedom Caucus, called on President Biden, Secretary Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Miley. To resign, via the Hill, here's what the Louisiana Republican had to say. This morning I introduced three resolutions calling for resignation.

One for the President of our United States, another for his Secretary of Defense, and another for his chair. of the Joint Chiefs. America faces a great division coming into this era of unspeakable grief as we look with broken hearts upon the failure of our executive branch to execute a well-planned withdrawal of American forces and allies and assets

from Afghanistan. Several of the parents of the soldiers killed and the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport are speaking out against the president. Some of the parents of the 13 service members have met with the president. Others have turned down that invitation. Mark Schmidt, the father of fallen Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmidt, chose to meet with President Joe Biden and told Fox News Sean Hannity how the interaction went. Well, initially I wasn't going to meet with him, but then I felt I owed it to my son to at least have some words with him about how I felt.

And it didn't go well. He talked a bit more about his own son than he did my son, and that didn't sit well with me. Video and photos of Biden checking his watch during the dignified transfer of the fallen service members has been circulating throughout the news. Darren Hoover, the father of fallen Marine Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover, told Hannity that the president checked his watch multiple times as the caskets were carried from the airplane at Dover Air Force Base. In reference to the checking of his watch, that didn't happen. just once. That happened on every single one that came out of that airplane. It happened on every single one of them. They would release the salute and he looked down on his watch on every last one, all 13, he looked down at his watch. Shana Chappelle is the mother of fallen

Marine Corps, Lance Corporal Kareem M. Nakawi. She also commented. on Biden checking his watch, writing in a message on Facebook to the president, as my son and the rest of our fallen heroes were being taken off the plane yesterday, I watched you disrespect us all five times by checking your watch. Chappelle spoke with Biden earlier this week, and like Mark Schmitz, she said the meeting did not go well. She wrote on Facebook to the president, you then said you just wanted me to know that you know,

know how I feel, and I let you know that you don't know how I feel, and you do not have the right to tell me you know how I feel. Chappelle continued, you turned to walk away, and I let you know my son's blood was on your hands, and you threw your hand up behind you as you walked away from me like you were saying, okay, whatever. The attorneys general of 20 states are suing the Biden administration over guidance related to gender identity. A press release from the Office of Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slattery the Third states, the multi-state coalition challenges federal guidance issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

and the Department of Education concerning issues of enormous importance. The guidance purports to resolve highly controversial and localized issues, such as whether schools must allow biological males, to compete on girls' sports teams, whether employers and schools may maintain sex-separated showers and locker rooms, and whether individuals may be compelled to use another person's preferred pronouns.

Tennessee Attorney General Slattery said in a statement, this case is about two federal agencies changing law, which is Congress's exclusive prerogative. The agencies simply do not have that authority, but that has not stopped them from trying, Even their attempts, as unlawful as they are, did not follow the Administrative Procedures Act. States over and over again have challenged federal agencies on this issue and been successful. These agencies also have misconstrued the Supreme Court's Bostock decision by claiming its prohibition of discrimination applies to locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms under Title IX and Title VII and biological men who identify as women.

competing in women's sports, when the Supreme Court specifically said it was not deciding those issues in Bostock. All of this, together with the threat of withholding educational funding in the midst of a pandemic, warrants this lawsuit. Now stay tuned for Jarrett Stepman and Fred Lucas's discussion on the so-called racist rock and cancel culture taking down monuments. If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices. and bigger and bigger government, it's time to partner with the most impactful

conservative organization in America. We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're committed to solving the issues America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight four conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous. But we can't do it without you.

Please join us at heritage.org. This is Fred Lucas. the Daily Signal and I'm here with my colleague Jared Stepman who wrote a really amazing piece in some ways it's shocking, in some ways it's funny, otherwise it's sad. And if you could tell us about this, Jared, at the University of Wisconsin, they have determined that a rock is racist. Now, to most folks, that doesn't make any sense on the surface. Maybe you can explain it and make some sense of it or not. well i i i'll try to at least explain it making sense of it uh i think you hear the full story

it won't quite do it justice yeah the university of wisconsin madison discovered that they have a two billion year old uh racist rock which i believe is a record for the oldest racist rock uh in america it's it's quite impressive uh so racism has been around for it's quite a date 1619 i think as you pointed out though it does it predates 1619 by a few billion years, which is quite incredible. So how the story began is that a few years ago, I believe it was 2017, somebody at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered a newspaper clipping from a local newspaper explaining the introduction of this rock to campus. Now, the rock is actually a monument to a geologist at the time was quite famous in the early 20th century. His

name was Thomas Chamberlain, who was actually the school's president at one point. So they dedicated this huge boulder, which is, I guess, a special kind of rock. It's very, very old. It was dug up and very impressive. It's like 75 tons. But they put on display, so there's this newspaper clipping that used a word to describe the rock, which is a derogatory term, certainly in modern language. It was basically to describe it that it was a large, dark-colored rock.

But the word they used was, you know, an ugly word, I think certainly in the modern day, but it had a different meaning at the time. And so based on the single usage of this word for what amounts to essentially a wire story, like a little press clip from this inauguration, this rock, various activist groups on campus started to call for the removal of this boulder, started to demand that this legacy of racism be stripped from, campus because it was threatening to students of color on campus that this was a this was a terrible thing a legacy of white supremacy they argued that well not only was

this name used but the Ku Klux Klan existed at the time of the 1920s and that's also bad and they actually were able to with enough pressure and activist sport they were able to get this this rock removed from campus now it wasn't entirely removed it was simply shuttled to another part of the campus, another plot of land the university owns, which I think is almost just as funny the fact that they didn't actually fully remove this thing. Just rolling a boulder, using a construction crew

to roll a boulder from one end of campus to another is now a mark of social justice in the modern world. Real bravery and courage to roll a rock from one side of campus to another. But it really goes to how radical this movement has become. I mean, just a few years ago, and we're talking about the war on history, some of the debate was about Confederate statues or other, you know, controversial figures. But now we've gotten to a point where an old rock that has nothing really to do with racism,

there's no accusations of the geologist or anything about the rock itself, really. Other than this little newspaper clipping from 1925 that the student or somebody discovered just a few years ago. Yeah, what you said, that they just moved the rock, if they have determined that this is a racist rock, I mean, wouldn't it be

morally incumbent on them to destroy this rock? Just simply removing, it doesn't seem quite enough. Well, I think that partially goes to both the seriousness of these attacks, I think, on our history, which are very, very serious.

And yet a lot of these acts are just empty virtue signaling. I mean, there was a great piece written by Mark Hemingway and real clear politics recently, which I was actually interviewed for, talking about, well, you know, if we're going to go through these various small parts of history and accusative racism, you know, why not the Democrat Party,

which, you know, if anything, an actual institution does have a history of supporting, why not go after that? Because a lot of part of this, I think, is simply, it's about power, it's about expressing power. The Democrat Party is the vehicle for the left in modern America. They don't have a reason. They certainly don't want to go after its institutional power. So they often go after this kind of low-hanging fruit,

which is a rock on campus that they can symbolically use to show, oh, look, we live in a systemically racist society. We're fighting racism, and don't we feel good about ourselves, for our incredible courage and standing up to this system? racism and I think that's a large part of what it is. It's a performative act for an ideology that is very much committed and its purpose of being is to give people that kind of feel good like you're doing something, you're doing something to stop racism, you're an anti-racist, and that includes doing things that I think in normal times people would be just simply scratching their heads

and thinking, well, this sounds like something out of a satire website article, not something that's happening in real life, but it is, and it's happening at a rapid pace. Yeah, I was going to ask to make sure you didn't write this for the Babylon B or the onion, but you in fact did write it. It's on DailySignal.com, so please check that out to get the details. But yeah, if you could talk a little bit about the University of Wisconsin, this is where just a couple of years ago, there was this movement to try to get rid of a statue of Lincoln, which just seems kind of shocking and that they were doing it for some of the same reasons. Is this rock just to appease the people who are demanding that Lincoln be removed?

Well, that sort of sounds like it because the activist groups are still asking to have this Lincoln. It's some of the same groups, right? It's the same groups, actually. There are several groups on campus that have been making these calls. They did not remove the Abraham Lincoln statue, but there have been protests now for years saying that Abraham Lincoln, he was a racist,

he acted badly in the Dakota War, which I think is a very unfair attack on Lincoln. And then of course, this amused me that in 2017 at one protest, one of the leaders of the protests actually said that he wanted to get rid of Lincoln because Lincoln had owned slaves, which, I mean, Lincoln did not own slaves.

he's known as the great emancipator, I think, for a reason. It's funny to me that these same groups that, I mean, literally noted their courage and bravery and moving this rock don't find enough in themselves to give credit and honor to Abraham Lincoln, who literally died in the process of freeing millions of slaves. I mean, that's, you know, that goes to show, I mean, these attacks on a history and figures of the past, many of whom are ones with a complicated legacy,

or I did do things that are bad in a modern case, these attacks are coming from people who have nothing to show for themselves, nearly of the level of a Lincoln or any of these other figures. The only thing they have to go on is their incredible wokeness and zealotry, but no accomplishments of their name, other than removing these horrible relics of the past, which I think really, again, it goes to what the ethos of this movement is, I think how it's changing the character,

especially on college campuses, how dominant this is, this idea that the heroes have to be torn down and nothing is left but those who are militant woke zealots in their place. And I think it's very sad. And it's unfortunate, especially given that not only as Lincoln have an incredible legacy for the country, but the school itself, the university, the University of Wisconsin-Madison may not even exist if it wasn't for Lincoln who signed the

Moral Land Grant, which allowed the creation of the larger school there at University of Wisconsin. So they're literally taking down not only those consequential figures in our history, but their school's history, a school that they assuantly attend. They enjoy the fruits of its existence and its creation, and yet they're willing to attack the people who are most responsible for, being there. We talked about the onion Babylon B aspect a minute ago. But when you mentioned, when I first heard you mentioned this, it made me actually think about whether this may have started as someone trolling of some of these lefty groups and just seeing how far this type of thing

might go. And then sure enough, they actually removed the rock. Because I was a little bit, I don't want to digress too much, but I was a little bit reminded, you know, I can remember something back in 2004 where there was this movement about, and it turned out to be this hoax, basically, or prank, of addressing the chemical compound dihydrogen monoxide that can be found in the air. We breathe and all the food that we eat and big corporations are behind it. And it's responsible for thousands of deaths worldwide every year. and we need to ban or regulated. And at one point, a small city in California had it on their city council agenda, resolution of calling for the ban. And then they were notified before the meeting that, oh, let's take this off. That's H-2-0.

And that's responsible for all these bad things. And people were just putting this out as a hoax to see how far maybe the left might go with it. And yeah, I mean, I sort of wondered if this is, did someone put this out to see how far the left might go with it? You know, I really wish that was the case. I guess, you know, the jokes on all of us because this joke seems to be carrying around the country. Many of these, the fervently woke seem to be entirely without humor whatsoever. And are very serious about what they think are these incredible. brave acts of courage to remove a rock or tear down a statue.

It was into the statement that actually one of the students who's on, who's a campus representative in the city council was just incredible. She said this about the rock. This moment is about the students past and present that relentlessly advocated for the removal of this racist monument. Now is a moment for all of us, B-Poc, which means black and indigenous people of color, students to breathe a sigh of relief to be proud of our endurance

and begin healing. Now just think about that for a moment. This thing started with a newspaper clipping from 1925 where somebody used a word that is now very taboo at the time simply meant it was describing

that the color and the size of the rock that this apparently has created such a horrible, awful, terrible environment that this student representative said that the people of color have endured on the call as if they're under a siege as if this is they have just gone through effectively some kind of holocaust or something like that this is the kind of language that's out there for something so small and so minor i think in most people's lives it would go

without note or passing but the smallest transgression is of utmost importance and requires an anti-racist as they may call it response uh it's really an incredible incredible thing. And again, it almost strips the humor out of things because what was, again, you know, 2004, there may have been humor about such things, but now they're coming to life. And it seems like the joke is on American society. The question will be, when do people, especially authorities, simply stop giving into the demands of radicals? I mean, that really is what it comes down to. I think in most serious times, asking to remove a racist rock, will be treated with no seriousness whatsoever.

But now it's of utmost concern. Now it's something that, you know, they remove a rock and they're looking for another rock or, you know, something else that they can blow up or remove. And I think that's the real danger here. I think that's something that needed to have been stopped years ago. More people should have drawn the line and say, you know, we're not going to allow this removal of our history.

We're not going to allow this because we don't really see an end to this. We don't really see an end to what will come under siege and attack from those who think of themselves as revolutionaries. And so, you know, it's a rock today, it's Lincoln tomorrow, and who knows what will be next. My feeling is that we'll have a lot of empty pedestals for the people who will never find perfection in this world. They'll never find utopia. They'll only be misery, and they'll only look for the next symbol of white supremacy that must be brought down for the world to be perfect. And I think that's going to lead us to a very terrible place. Yeah, that and, I mean, when everything is racist, nothing is racist.

And, I mean, that's going to get to this point where if they're when, and if there are real cases of racism, people are going to stop paying attention. I mean. You're right about that, Fred. It's just funny to me, it kind of one last note is, you know, especially when they're going after a statue of Abraham Lincoln, you know, Little, Neo-Confederates may also be with them trying to tear down a statue of Lincoln, too. It's amazing. There's some similarity there.

They can unite behind that. This brings people together. Their hatred for Lincoln, the woke and the neo-Confederates can be in the same team. Finally, we found unity. Finally, unity against these symbols of unity in the American country. A very sad thing, but... Unity against the union, I guess. Unity against union itself.

So yeah, that's a recum. I encourage everybody to read about this on daily signal.com, and Jared, thanks for giving us some info on this. Thank you, Fred, very much. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

Thanks again. for listening and we'll see you tomorrow the daily signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the heritage foundation it is executive produced by virginia allen and kate trinko sound designed by lauren evans mark guiney and john pop for more information please visit daily signal dot com