The Daily Signal - Michael Knowles on How Political Correctness Has Upended American Culture

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

What is political correctness? When did it start of seep its way into mainstream culture? How is political correctness destroying American society? Michael Knowles, host of "The Michael Knowles Show" at The Daily Wire, joins me on The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss. We also chat about his new book, “Speechless.” "This whole culture has been upended," Knowles says. "Actually, notably, by the 70s feminists, who said the personal is the political. They made every single private interaction open to public scrutiny. Now you're seeing everything settle down again on the left's terms. So you're seeing a new set of standards. You're seeing a new kind of censorship. You're seeing a new kind of speech code. It just happens to be the inverse in many ways of the old standards that we had." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. I'm Richard Del Judas. What is political correctness? When did it seep its way into mainstream culture? How is political correctness destroying American society? Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Null show at the Dealey Wire, joins me today on the DailySignal podcast to discuss. We also chat about his new book, Speechless. Today's interview was recorded at Turning Point USA's Student Action Summit, so please excuse background music and noise. We're joined today on The Daily Signal by Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire. Michael, thank you so much for being with us on The Daily Signal.

Thank you for having me. It's always great to be with you. It's always great to have you on. You have a book coming out called Speechless. Can you tell us about the book? Yes. Speechless is a 100-year history of political correctness. People usually trace PC back about 30 years to the 80s, maybe the 90s.

Some people go back further to the 60s. I think it really begins in the 1920s. It's gone by different names over the years, which makes sense, because political correctness redefines all the words. So now we call it wokeness or cancel culture. But I think it's the same old scourge. And it offers a little bit of a novel take on it because there's this strange phenomenon

that we've been fighting against political correctness as conservatives for 30 years now. Trump launched his campaign on it, and a lot of people have it as well. And the harder we fight, the more ground we seem to lose. So I think the reason for this is that we've fallen for a trap.

I think that political correctness aims to destroy traditional standards. That's what it's after. That's all it's after. And so, if you react to that by going squishy, by giving into the new standards, obviously that will advance the purpose of PC. But likewise, even these stalwart conservatives who say, I'm a free speech absolutist, I'm not going to give into your new standard. In so doing, they abandoned standards entirely,

which actually advances the purpose of political correctness, which is the destruction of the old standards. So I think either way, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. And the way we need to think about in my estimation is that PC, wokeness, cancel culture is not a battle between pure free speech on the one hand and pure censorship on the other. I think it's a battle between two competing sets of standards. I think all societies have standards and taboos.

This is truth right, all of history, and especially in the United States. And the difference is this. In the 1950s, if you were a communist, you would be canceled. Today, if you are not a communist, you will be canceled. canceled. The fact of being canceled has not changed, but the standard by which you can be canceled has changed. And so I think we need to embrace a set of standards and lose all the shallow rhetoric. Well, in the book, you talk about how political correctness had its genesis in the early 20th century to the president. It's gotten more and more escalated. Can you talk about some examples of where

this started in the early 20th century up until now, what we're seeing, what it started as versus what we've come to? Yes, one of the worst things that Benito Mussolini ever did was he jailed. the communist party leader in Italy, Antonio Gramsci. Not because Gromshi didn't deserve it. He did, that guy could have rot it in prison. But the problem was he gave Gramsci a pen and paper and allowed him to write his most influential works, the prison notebooks.

And this was a beginning, I suppose you would say, of cultural Marxism. I know that's a loaded term now. But he was a Marxist thinker, and he's applying Marxist principles to the culture. And he said that the reason that the Marxian Revolution didn't work is because the conservatives had cultural hegemony. So the oppressed masses, they were still oppressed, they just didn't know it. They happened to like their traditions and their communities.

And so what he advocated was that radicals wage a war of position, not a war of maneuver where you advance and retreat, but a war of position whereby you infiltrate the prevailing institutions and then you wield the political power to your advantage. This guy has been very, very influential. Actually, the noted Gramsci scholar, the guy who translated, his prison notebooks in New English, is a man by the name of Joseph Buttigieg. Now, if that name rings a bell, it's because his son Pete ran for president as a Democrat,

and now he's the Transportation Secretary. What's amazing to me about this is Pete Buttigieg might be the most milk-toast Democrat who ran for president, and even the most milk-toast Democrat has this radical intellectual pedigree. So from Gramsci, you get movements like the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, critical race theory is no very much in the news, from the critical theorists, to notably Herbert Marcoza, you get the new left. He becomes the father of the new left in the 1960s. The new left gives you the second-wave feminists,

who I think significantly advanced the purpose of political correctness. From there, you get the campus takeovers in the 80s and the 90s. From there, you get the battle of the sexes, you know, not just feminism, but then the redefinition in marriage. From there, you get the transgender moment. And I think you're getting, after this whole culture has been upended, actually notably by the 70s feminists who said the personal is the political, They made every single private interaction open to public scrutiny.

Now you're seeing everything settle down again on the left's terms. So you're seeing a new set of standards. You're seeing a new kind of censorship. You're seeing a new kind of speech code. It just happens to be the inverse in many ways of the old standards that we had. And conservatives are left dithering and twiddling their thumbs and prattling on about how we should be able to say and do whatever we want whenever we want. There's nothing particularly conservative about that.

It's actually cost us the whole culture. Well, in the book, you talk about how some Americans have become callous to this issue of political correctness. And, you know, conversations that people have in today were used to not saying all these phrases and kind of using our conversations in certain ways when we avoid things. Can you talk about how we got here and how you would encourage Americans to maybe move beyond that and be, I know, more critical when we're thinking and talking and not, I guess, waking up from this callousness. How does that happen? The reason we got here is because free speech in the abstract doesn't mean anything to people who have nothing to say. And for far too long, conservatives have had nothing to say.

The only thing that they can agree on is that we ought to cut the marginal tax rate a little bit when we're in power before it goes back up again. Beyond that, what do we have to say on immigration? The Republican Party is basically divided on that issue. What do we have to say about marriage? The Republican Party went completely squish on that issue. What do we have to say about even transgenderism?

And for goodness sakes, we're running a transvestite to be governor of California. And I don't say this to be rude to Bruce Jenner. I don't blame him for his own problems. I blame the Republican Party that hasn't even managed to conserve the fundamental distinction in human nature between a man and a woman. The conservatives haven't managed to conserve the ladies' bathroom. And this is because they will not advance a substantive vision of the good. All governments pursue some vision of the good. All governments have some religious principles.

You know, Andrew Breitbart, the patron saint of Hollywood, conservatives famously said politics is downstream of culture and well fair enough though it's more complicated than that but culture certainly is downstream of religion cardinal manning says at bottom all human conflict is theological this sometimes you'll hear squishes say you cannot legislate morality and say well then what are you doing because as far as I can tell all that legislation legislates morality whether you're talking about the death penalty or whether you're talking about parking tickets you are making moral arguments, you are referring to the moral order. And conservatives have just given up on that.

It's a unilateral surrender and disengagement. So I think we need to be able to say, some things are good, some things are bad, some things are true, and some things are false. There was a, I think, former conservative writer now, I think he's pretty firmly on the center left, who infamously said that a drag queen story hour is, quote, one of the blessings of liberty. And that sound that you're hearing, Rachel, is James Madison rolling over in his grave, is actually the very thought.

And his argument, to be charitable to his argument, there were many people who went along with him, he said, if we tell perverts that they can't jiggle for kids at the library, why they might tell the rest of us that we can't go to church on Sunday, to which I would respond, they were already telling us we can't go to church on Sunday. They told us that for the better part of the year. And furthermore, even beyond that practical issue,

if you are telling me that we actually do not possess the moral judgment and the faculties of reason to discern between a, pervert twerking for a toddler and a pastor preaching the gospel. If we really think there's no way to tell the difference between those things, then we have surrendered our capacity for self-government, which relies on moral judgment and reason. And I think, you know, when John Adams says the country's built for a moral and religious people, he's not being superstitious, he's not being a Bible thumper, far from it. He's observing a fact of politics that if you want to govern yourself, you need to have a reliable vision of the good and the bad and the right and the wrong

the true and the false, and the right has surrendered that, and it's allowed the left to take over the culture. On that note, what would your advice be to Republicans and some conservatives who really have walked away from promoting the good and have invited transgenderism and questions on marriage, all these different issues, who've walked away from that? How would you say we should steer the party and the movement back to promoting the good? Put down the Einrand, put down the silly platitudes of the last 15 years, conservatives used to understand this thing. I mean, you don't even need to go all the way back to the founding fathers who wrote at length about the difference between liberty and licentiousness,

the difference between tamping down, actually limiting what you want to do in your appetites in order to have a higher freedom, which is what they understood liberty to be, instead of licentiousness, which is just pursuing whatever appetites you want. The heroin addict shoots up, gosh, isn't he free? No, he's a slave, and our founders knew that. But even more recently, I think William F. Buckley, Jr., as urbane, as mainstream a conservative as ever there was.

In his first book that launched the post-war conservative movement, everyone remembers the title, God and Man at Yale. Very few people remember the subtype, which was the superstitions of, quote-unquote, academic freedom. He called academic freedom, as the left used it, a hoax. He said, it's ridiculous. Yale wouldn't hire a Nazi to teach sociology. We wouldn't tolerate these things.

It's not cancel culture. When a guy shows up in a swastika to the water cooler, and starts yelling Zieg Heil at work. If he loses his job, it's not cancel culture. It's just called having standards. Bill Buckley, actually, his next book was a defense of Joe McCarthy, wonderful little read. But a dozen years after that, on his program firing line,

he was having a debate with a neo-conservative author. And this guy, Leo Churn, said to Bill, Bill, surely you believe that the open society is fundamental to everything we hold dear. Open society, by the way, it's the name of George Soros' Foundation. It's a very left-wing kind of idea. And William F. Buckley Jr. said, no, I don't want society to be more open. He said in this very Buckley way, I'm an epistemological optimist,

meaning I think we can know things. I think we can settle some things. And I think we need to embrace that as conservatives, despite whatever shallow slogans we've been reciting the past few years about free speech absolutism or whatever. I think we need to recognize that the difference between a man and a woman is settled. We can know it. We don't need a free marketplace.

of ideas to debate it. We don't have one anyway because three oligarchs in Silicon Valley working at the behest of the liberal Leviathan are actually controlling the flow of information around our public square. We can know things. We do have things in common. We do live in society. And there is nothing unjust about wielding the political power that the people occasionally give us. Actually, that's the point of politics. Well, I think part of this whole discussion is the question of absolute truth. And I think some people, to the detriment of the movement, they'll say, well, we don't. don't want to define something as being true, so we're just going to leave that open, but in ways

that we can see the party because people then don't know what is true. And so I think some of this definitely is a battle a hearts and minds issue, but some of it is just speaking of absolute truth. So what would your advice and what are your thoughts on finding that sweet spot? So the easiest way into this, I know people are going to accuse me of being an authoritarian and an illiberal, though, as I point out in my book, speechless, my views are far more liberal than say, John Locke, the founder of liberalism. So, you know, if I'm an authoritarian, I guess he's a fascist, I think my views are far more liberal than John Milton,

who wrote Aereo Pagitica's most famous defense of free speech in the English language. He wanted to censor Catholics, which would be very bad news for me, by the way. So I think one way in here would be enforcing our obscenity laws again. We've had obscenity laws since the beginning of the country. As recently as the 1990s, we had Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate and the White House signing anti-indecency laws.

Actually, we always talk about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. We always forget that's part of the Communications Decency Act, the central provision of which, unfortunately, struck down. The Child Online Protection Act was the one that came after that. This had broad bipartisan support. As recently as a dozen years ago,

prosecutors threw a pornographer in federal prison for almost four years just for obscenity, and nobody batted an eye. Nobody believed that hardcore porn is somehow protected by the First Amendment. So if we can assert that, if we can say rightly, I know it when I see it, if we can actually use our moral judgment, then hopefully that will be the case. But unfortunately, the people who make these arguments are drowned out just as much as we are right now by the music in the background. They're drowned out by the voices of a radical skepticism that says that we can't really know anything at all.

Well, going back to speech in the book, what is the long-term danger of political correctness if we continue in this vein? Political correctness will be the regime. All political correctness is is an attack to topple those traditional standards, as I mentioned earlier. So on the one hand, we're going to have some people in the PC wordsmiths of speech policing

insisting that a man, to use the earlier example, that a man can be a woman. This is an ancient heresy called Gnostic dualism. It says that our bodies have nothing to do with who we really are. I've got a deep voice, I've got an Adam's apple, but if I say I'm a woman, then I just am a woman, right? Now, on the other hand, the left will give us the opposite. They'll say, actually, your body is all that you are.

You're just a bag of flesh. You're just a meat puppet, and all of your hopes and dreams and joys are actually just an illusion of misfiring synapses in your brain. Well, that is the exact opposite view of the transgender community, and they will simultaneously push both to destroy the traditional understanding of human nature, namely the hyalomorphic one, thanks to good old Uncle Aristotle, that mankind is body, soul, and spirit brought together. So it's a purely destructive campaign,

and it will knock down every statue, it will hollow out every institution, and it will utterly whip the spirit out of our civilization, as it largely has. Well, in the book you also talk about the power-hungry language architects behind the ever-going control of this movement. How would you encourage people today

who maybe aren't following the rise of political correctness to be aware of this? when they're living their daily lives and when maybe they're having a conversation and a word is mentioned where they can kind of have their ear to the ground and be like, oh, this is politically correct and I need to be aware of this and maybe communicate differently or think about this in a different way. Well, I think we've got to recognize that everybody uses euphemisms. You know, when I see a woman, a woman of a certain age, I don't call her an old hag. I call her a woman of a certain age, which is a word and a phrase to soften this harsh concept. But it doesn't deny

the reality of that. She really is a woman of a certain age. When I say so-and-so passed away, it's kind of weak language, but it describes the spiritual fact of death. PC is a little different than that. PC doesn't just soften reality. It actually inverts it. So there's a phrase that's very popular now in legal circles and then academia. The phrase is, justice-involved person. A justice-involved person. Now, you would imagine a justice-involved person, it could be a judge or a lawyer, or maybe it would just be a really good guy who is pursuing justice. No, it's a euphemism for a criminal. So, I think, wait a second, I could describe a criminal a number of ways.

The one way I cannot describe them as being justice involved. But the reason for this, of course, is that it totally shapes and colors the way that we treat our criminal justice system. If he's a justice-involved person, it would be very wrong to punish him, wouldn't it? The same thing goes with, notably on the transgender issue, trans woman, or, or, you know, even just woman to describe a man. If Bruce Jenner is a trans woman or just a woman, then he has a, and she, sorry, has every right to use the ladies' room. But if he is just a man, a very confused man,

or a man who's pursuing some appetite of his, then he has no right to go into the women's room. And our language is going to frame that debate. Again, the example I use on this is same-sex marriage. When I think of the same-sex marriage debate, I'm reminded there never was any debate. A debate about same-sex marriage would involve a discussion of what marriage is. For all of human history everywhere on earth, people thought sexual difference had something to do with marriage.

It was kind of at the heart of it. Then about five minutes ago, radicals said, no, no, sexual difference does not have anything to do with marriage. So, okay, we could have had that debate. But we did. Instead, the leftist wordsmiths assumed their own conclusion. They begged the question. They said, look, we already know that sexual difference has. has no interest in marriage. So we're just going to ask, who has the right to get married?

Well, if it's a question of who has the... Everyone has the right to get married. That was never the real issue at stake. So even just by using a phrase, such as same-sex marriage, they managed to rig the debate before it even began, and we need to be very aware of this. It might be socially awkward, but we cannot use their words. When I hear conservatives say, who cares about the pronouns?

It's not a big deal. Who cares? The left cares. The left is spending. a lot of time and money and energy trying to get us all to use ridiculous words to deny reality. They're doing that. These words smuggled in whole premises and entire political regime. Well, Michael, before we wrap up, I want to ask you about critical race theory. This is something that's become so prevalent, especially during COVID when students were at home and doing their classes online. Parents heard what they were hearing and being taught, and now a lot have questions about what's being said in their classroom is now that they're back in school, so many of them.

What is your perspective on CRT and how do parents go about addressing their concerns if they have them? Well, I've been reliably informed by the public teacher unions and the mainstream media and the Democrats, but I repeat myself. I've been informed that critical race theory is not real, it doesn't exist, it's not being taught to our students, and also it's wonderful, and it's very important that we teach it to our students. And I'm being told that at the very same time. The left is running away on this issue. And by the way, critical race theory is a well-known intellectual movement. It's got a long pedigree.

It's a derivation of critical theory, which goes back about 100 years. It is, for those who do not want to follow the pretentious jargon, it's a simple theory. The theory is to criticize everything about the United States and to center it, as the 1619 project does, essentially around this issue of racial injustice and slavery. It's a dreadful movement in no small part because it very often denies objective reality.

And I think this shows us how we need to react. Because a lot of conservatives, they say, well, let's expand the curriculum. Let's teach everything, and the kids can make up their own mind. First of all, a third-right classroom is not a free marketplace of ideas, okay? Second of all, critical race theory in denying objective reality, in critical theory broadly, in denying objective reality,

and you can add a lot of other intellectual movements to this, post-structuralism, post-modernism, deconstructionism. That actually undermines. a student's education by denying their faculties of reason and objective truth that they can know, which is the entire point of education. So I think it's very important to kick this stuff out of the schools. The hope that I have here, though, is that even though you've got dithering conservative leaders and you've got very effective leftist radicals,

you've also got a lot of ordinary people. I'm thinking of the mothers of all ages and races, showing up to their school boards saying, hey, you're preening, elitist jerks. Get this out of the classroom. And the more that those elites sneer, and they say, you don't even understand critical. You haven't even read Kimberly Crenshaw. The more they sneer, the more they call them deplorable and irredeemable

and Bible-thumping, bitter-clinging idiot ruse, I think you're going to see an even further alienation of the majority of the American people from our desiccated, a ruling class. And that's a true cause for hope. Well, Michael, that is the best note to end on. Thank you so much for joining us once again on the Daily Signal. It's always great having you with us. Thank you, Rachel.

I'll graduate you with you. And don't go away. Caleb Hanna, one of the country's youngest state lawmakers, joins me to talk about being a young lawmaker in the West Virginia legislature. Today's interview was recorded at Turning Point USA's Student Action Summit, so please excuse background music and noise. Today on the Daily Signal podcast by Caleb Hanna, one of the country's youngest state legislators. Caleb, thank you for being with us on the daily signal podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me.

So let's talk about your journey a little bit before you ran. Were you always a conservative? What was your story like when it came to what you believed? That's actually a really interesting story. So I first got interested in politics back in 2008 when I was in third grade. I saw this charismatic black man running for president. I thought if he can do it, I can do it. And turned out our policies didn't align very much at all. And that's kind of when I knew I was a conservative. And of course, in 2012, my father lost this job due to some of Obama's policies. So your dad lost his job as a coal miner. Can you tell me about what your thoughts were as that was happening and how that come through contrast for you in what you believed? Yeah, definitely.

So like I said, he lost his job in 2012, but I'll never forget in 2010 when my father looked at me and said, the American dream is getting harder to find. Opportunity is tougher to come by. And that simple idea by working hard and doing the right thing you can provide for your family, just want to be. wasn't so simple anymore. And that's kind of what really hit home with me. But yeah, it was the Clean Air Act and a few things that really just put a real big curtain on the coal industry in West Virginia. Well, can you tell us about practically what it was like to run for state legislature

at sunny, such a young age? What kind of things did you do? What was that the practical part of that race like? Well, it was intimidating for sure. We fought an uphill battle because one thing I think you have, not just as a young person, but as a first-time candidate, is you have a hard time raising money. And the only way you can combat raising money is they're playing a strong grassridge game. So we knock thousands and thousands of doors and try to meet as many voters as we can

because that's one thing that money can't buy is those face-to-face contacts. Well, something that we've talked about a little bit, but you are young, and what was your experience with people that said maybe you were too young to run or didn't have the experience, how did you address that and move on from that?

I will admit that's one thing that I was really scared about when I first decided to run is how receptive people would be to my age. But at the end of the day, I would honestly say it benefited me more than it hurt me. I think a lot of people are looking for those fresh, new, young ideas. We've seen so many people at the table for so long who just want to do the same thing. And people realize that we can't go with the status quo anymore. If we want different results, we need different people. Were there ever people that were drawn to you by your age? especially younger people and saw someone that was their age doing something that they thought was amazing.

Oh, without a doubt. That's what I've had a lot of people come to me and say, hey, I would love to run for office. I see what you did, and I think it would be something that I would be interested in doing. And I always tell them, you know, as a young person, it's easy to do. The first time I ran, my opponent was more than four times my age. So when I was knocking doors and running through parades, that was something my opponent couldn't do. So we have an advantage as young people. We were talking before we got started about all the traveling you've been doing. You haven't been home.

I think you won't be home for about a month. Can you tell us about some of the places you go and what you do and you're on the month? Definitely. So I actually helped start a nonprofit called Run Gen Z. And our whole goal is to mentor young conservative candidates to step up and run for office. So I travel all across the country and go to different countries. country and go to different conferences, different cities, and try to train and recruit candidates. So I've been good gracious, probably 13 different cities in the past months.

That's amazing. Going back to your experience in being a young lawmaker now, I have a friend in Ohio, Jenna Powell, she's a state rep. She's also young. I think she's my age or maybe a year older. But she faced a lot of, and I think young people just in general face oppositions of people who have been in places of authority for a while. and they get a lot of opposition and people kind of trying to strong on them in some cases.

Have you experienced that in the State House in West Virginia? And I guess how do you handle that? Yes, I was very nervous coming in as people. I thought maybe my colleagues wouldn't take me very seriously. But I kind of came to realize that you get the amount of respect that you demand. As long as you don't let people disrespect you and you demand respect, they'll give you that respect. And I kind of came out as a leader in education in West Virginia. One thing that I kind of had an advantage on is I just came through the K-12 system.

I was in higher education at the time, and my colleagues really respected my opinion when it came to education policy. When it comes to education policy, let's talk about that for a minute because that's something that we talk a lot. Where do you see opportunities for improvement and where are places that you're working in education policy right now? Definitely. So my big push this last session was creating school choice. We implemented charter schools in West Virginia. That's something we never had before.

And we also implemented Hope Scholarships, which are educational savings accounts, that gives a portion of state aid formula to students to go to private school or homeschool or tutoring, whatever they need. And I think school choice is an important issue in just about every state across the country, because if you have choice, that says regardless of your zip code or regardless of your income level,

you can pick the education that best fits to the country. that best fits you best. And I mean, I went to public school. I graduated from public school, and I would not be where I'm at today without the public school system. But let's be honest, that's not the right system for everybody.

When it comes to charter schools, a lot of people love them and then some people feel threatened by them. Can you talk a little bit about why you see them as a really advantageous way for students to learn? Definitely, and that's one thing when we implemented charter schools in West Virginia. I wanted to make sure I had a deeper understanding of exactly what charter schools were.

So I went to a few different states and toward their charter schools. And when you say charter schools, there's quite a few different ways you could go that. There's private charters and there's public charters. What we implemented in West Virginia was public charters. So, you know, they can't charge a tuition fee. They have to admit the students that apply. But the only thing is, is they have a lot more flexibility in curriculum because of the federal government. And that's what a lot of people will say, well, if charter schools have the flexibility, why can't you make our public schools that flexible?

When it comes to federal guidelines, there's certain things that charter schools don't have to do that public schools do. So there's just a lot more flexibility to let teachers teach what they want to teach. So we've talked a little bit about what you're doing with education and legislative in West Virginia. Can you talk about some of the other focuses that you have there? Definitely. So one of our big pushes right now is to eliminate or reduce the personal income tax. I think everybody agrees that, you know, when you make money, that's your money. So when we want to try to get rid of that or reduce it in some way,

so at the end of the day, the taxpayers are really deciding where their money goes and not the government. What are some other issues in West Virginia that you see as really needing to be front and center, but maybe are getting overlooked right now? Oh, that's a really good question. I'd say our front and center issue right now that's not getting. getting a lot of attention is probably the tourism side of things in West Virginia. We are a very beautiful state. We have a lot to offer.

Like I said, I travel a lot, but at the end of the day, I'm so proud to call West Virginia home just because it's a different way of life there. It truly is, you know, the Mountain Mama, just a beautiful place to hike, bike, fish, hunt, whitewater rafting. And I think that as West Virginians, we don't do a great job of promoting our state. So I think tourism is something that West Virginia really needs to put front and center. So we talked about schools in education briefly earlier. I wanted to ask you about your perspective on critical race theory.

We've seen this become very prevalent in schools recently, especially since COVID happened and students were learning from their homes with their school and their laptops and their kitchens and parents were hearing what students were learning. And this has become something that's been very prevalent. What's your perspective on this? Yeah, definitely. And I think you hit the nail on the head there when you said, you know, people learning from home. I think that was one of the best parts of the pandemic, if we had anything to gain from the pandemic,

is that parents were finally opened up to some of the things that their children were learning while they were at school. And in West Virginia, while critical race theory isn't a huge issue right now, I want to make sure it's not. So we serve a 60-day legislature in West Virginia in January and March. So it's an issue that we didn't get to address this past 60-day session, but next year it's going to be front and center to hopefully ban CRG. Well, speaking of race and those issues, I want to ask you to about Black Lives Matter. That's been something else has been in the news a lot. We've seen a lot of different unrest and just a lot of intense political environment when it comes to Black Lives Matter recently. With the situation of Cuba, they blame the United States for saying basically the responsible party for the situation that is material for being against.

What's your perspective of this and what do you think should be, I guess, the way Black Lives Matter should be addressed? Yeah, Black Lives Matter. So agree with the statement, disagree with the organization. I think that's the easiest way to put it. Everything that that organization puts forth from the traditional family household side of things and not supporting a traditional family, all the way to the defund the police movement. It's just some of the craziest stuff I've ever heard. I mean, defund the police, really?

How is that even a thing? It's just crazy. Well, that's time to be alive. That's the statement that I just have really home. on this year, just given how crazy everything has been. I wanted to end on just getting some advice for you from four young conservatives who might be interested in running for office or maybe aren't interested in running for office and just want to be more involved, don't know where to start.

What advice do you have to done? Definitely. So I go to schools all over my state and I talk to kids all the time about how important it is to register to vote. And I always like to share this story. I had one little girl come to me and say, you know, nothing in ponds. politics affects me. Why should I register to vote? And I said, what's one thing you care about? And she said her cat. And I said, well, in the state of West Virginia, did you know that we have a dog tax and not a cat tax? Because dogs are considered property and cats are not. And that just floored her. And I think that's the problem with a lot of young people across the country is we don't grasp how much politics has an effect on us. From the air we breathe to the food we eat, there's a law, a rule, or regulation in some way that affects that. So if I had advice, I would say, to make sure you're involved, you may not have to run for office.

But pick your favorite candidate and go stump for them and knock on doors. Or even if you don't want to go that far, I would say just be an educated voter when you go to the ballot box. Well, that's awesome. It's a great note to end on. Caleb, thank you so much for joining us on the Daily Signal podcast. It's great having you with us. Thank you. Appreciate it.

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