The Daily Signal - Sebastian Gorka on Fighting Back Against Radical Left

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

"The left is weak. It may not feel like that when you're being censored on Facebook... but those actions actually evince weakness. When you have to censor people, it means they're afraid," says Seb Gorka, host of "America First" on the Salem Radio Network and the author of "The War for America's Soul." "We have a republic to save. And guess what? With you, we can do it." Gorka joins the Daily Signal podcast to discuss how the radical left is trying to destroy the country, and how conservatives can effectively fight back. We are also joined by Morgan Zegers, founder and CEO of Young Americans Against Socialism. She discuss why socialism is so popular amongst young people, and what can be done to push back against its rising popularity. We also discuss these stories: The US Capitol Police have been ordered to arrest visitors and Congressional staff who refuse to wear a mask on Capitol grounds. The Biden Administration will not renew a federal moratorium on evicting people who have fallen behind on their rent payments due to COVID-19, but is asking Congress to extend the moratorium. The Senate votes Wednesday evening to move forward with a trillion dollar infrastructure deal. Over two hundred Republican lawmakers are asking the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daly Signal podcast for Friday, July 30th. I'm Rachel Dahl Judis. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, Doug Blair talks with Sebastian Gorka, former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and host of America First on the Salem Radio Network. He is also the author of The War for America's Soul. They discuss how the radical left is trying to destroy the country and how conservatives can effectively fight back.

Now, today's interview was recorded at Turning Point USA's Student Action Summit, so please excuse background music and noise. And don't forget, if you enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. And now on to our top news. The U.S. Capitol Police have been ordered to arrest visitors and congressional staff who refused to wear a mask on Capitol grounds. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manager issued an order Thursday, directing police to report but not arrest senators and representatives who refuse to abide by the mass mandate. Some GOP House members are criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the police chief's order. Earlier this week, Pelosi issued a new indoor mass mandate for all House members and their staff, regardless of vaccination status. Florida Republican Representative Kat Kamik wrote on Twitter,

in today's edition of Pelosi's abuse of power, Capitol Police have been directed to arrest staff and visitors to comply with her mass mandate for vaccinated individuals. Pelosi's spokesperson, Drew Hamill, told Fox News that Pelosi was not aware of the police order before it was reported by the press. The Biden administration will not renew a federal moratorium on evicting people who have fallen behind on their rent payments due to COVID-19, but is asking Congress to extend the moratorium. The Wall Street Journal reported that Congress probably won't be able to extend the eviction moratorium before this weekend when it expires. As of July 5th, approximately 8.2 million adults were behind on their rent or mortgage, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Senate voted Wednesday evening to move forward with a trillion-dollar infrastructure deal. All 50 Democrats and 17 Republicans voted for the bill. Senator is Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and Mitt Romney of Utah are a few of the Republicans who chose to back the infrastructure bill. The bill includes billions of dollars for hard infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, clean water, public transportation, and broadband internet. The bill is separate from the Democrats' $3.5 trillion spending package that they also hope to pass. The larger package includes money for Biden administration priorities such as free community

college. Over 200 Republican lawmakers are asking the Supreme Court. court to overrule Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States on January 22nd, 19793. The 44 senators and 184 House members asked the High Court in an amicus brief to review the Roe v. Wade decision when justices review a Mississippi law that bans almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In a statement, the lawmakers wrote via the Hill that Congress and the states have shown that they are ready and able to address the issue in ways that reflect Americans' varying viewpoints and are grounded in the science of fetal development

and maternal health. Signatories include Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, and other members in Republican leadership. The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced Thursday that the U.S. economy grew by 6.5 percent in the second quarter of the year, falling short of economists' expectations. Economists predicted that the economy would grow by 8.4% in the second quarter. President and CEO of the Job Creators Network, Alfredo Ortiz, said in a statement, the GDP should be surging because of the vaccine-induced recovery, but inflation as a result of irresponsible government spending has caused us to miss the mark.

Consumer spending, however, exceeded economist's expectations. Personal consumption rose by 11.8% more than a full. full percentage above economists' expectations. Now stay tuned for Doug Blair's conversation with Sebastian Gorka. Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues? Sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. In the agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking, and links to our in-depth research. The agenda also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage, that you can watch online, as well as media interviews from our experts.

Sign up for the agenda on heritage.org today. We are joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Dr. Sebastian Gorka, the host of America First on the Salem Radio Network, and the author of numerous books, the newest being The War for America's Old. Dr. Gorka, thank you so much for being with us today. My pleasure. Always fun to be with anyone from Heritage. Well, we appreciate you being here.

So I wanted to start out first by talking a little bit about your radio show, America First. I'm curious to kind of get an impression of what is your goal with the show? What is the audience you're trying to reach? And sort of what do you want them to take from your program? That's a fabulous question. And it's one of the first things I sat down with my production team. And I asked them, and we just kind of brainstormed about it when we launched two and a half years ago. Our mission is tied to what Mike Flynn called the peaceful revolution in politics that occurred in 20.

The fact that for the first time in the history of our republic, the American people chose a non-politician, not a retired general, but a complete outsider to become the president of the United States, a man who I had the honor of working for in the White House. People forget it, and I find it amusing that an immigrant to America like myself has to remind my fellow Americans that from George Washington to Barack Obama, every single president we've ever had has either been a. former senator, congressman, governor, or a retired general like Eisenhower. For the first time ever, the American people said no. The system is broken on both left and right, and we need somebody who's not tarnished, who's not burdened by the special interests of the swamp to come in and try and fix things.

And that for me is why, you know, you'll notice my radio show, my new TV show on Newsmax, I haven't gone the traditional route and called them, The Sebastian Gawker show. It's not about me. It's about a mission. My radio show is called America First. My new Newsmax TV show is called the Gawker Reality Check.

And our mission really is to try and ride that wave of political renewal, peaceful reform, whereby we said America First is the way forward. Politics as a way of life has to change, and that's our mission. And to bring us back really to what that beautiful line from the Bible that Ronald Reagan leveraged for us almost 40 years ago to become once more that shining city on a hill. Absolutely. And I think that that's so fascinating that you mentioned, it's to bring us back to those values. Now, one of the things that you mentioned in your book a lot is that there's this war on the soul of America, right, from the left. And there's this, we need warriors to do it.

And you've described yourself multiple times as a warrior, specifically a culture warrior. What to you is the importance of fighting for our culture? And then secondly, what does a good culture warrior look like to you? Well, I never described myself as a warrior, but I have called for the warrior's spirit because we are in a spiritual battle for the survival of the republic as our founding fathers envisioned it. So let me be very clear. If you want, I travel the world. I travel the world I've traveled the United States.

I give speeches to various audiences. Here we're going to have thousands of kids from across America, but it could be military audiences, could be more senior audiences. And I always, sooner or later, somebody asks me the same question. How did we get here? How did we get here to a point where the recent UGov poll found that 60% of millennials would prefer to live in a socialist or communist America? How do we get to a point where schools are,

teaching critical race theory and ideology which states that certain skin colors are always going to be oppressors, other skin colors are always going to be victims. And whenever I'm asked that question, I always answer the same way. You don't want to know the answer to that question because the real answer is lying in the mirror. The conservative movement writ large allowed a small minority of radicals to take over the Democrat Party and also to radicalize every aspect of our culture

except one. The only thing that belongs to conservatives today is talk radio, everything else. Hollywood, the media, the schools, academe has been radicalized. So what I'm calling for is truly an understanding that this is a cultural

project. It's been going for at least 80 years. If you want to understand how the left achieved what they achieved, you can read my books, but a life-changing book that I recommend to everyone is Andrew Breitbart's righteous indignation. His

Chapter 6 is the best explication in just a few pages of the long march through the institutions, Antonio Gramsci, the relevance of Saul Olinsky, how the Democrat Party, which was a reasonable party at one point in our history. I mean, JFK was a great patriot. He was a national

security hawk. JFK wouldn't be allowed in the Democrat Party today. So Andrew Breitbart's book explains how the left was radicalized. And it really is that that clarion call for how we need to take back the culture and understand that every single person listening to this podcast, every single member of heritage, everybody who votes, I don't care whether you live in California, or Massachusetts, you have a role to play in that culture war. And you don't have to be aggressive. You don't have to be, you know, beating a drum. You just have to cleave to the truth.

You know, when you have this radical transgender agenda, you just have to say, sorry, guys, a man is a man and a woman is a woman, because chromosomes are non-negotiable. And if you deny that, you're the science deniers. So we are in a culture war, and everybody has a role to play. I think that's a fantastic point. And I'm really glad that you mentioned Andrew Breitbart's book because that was actually one of the most influential books

when I was kind of going into my political philosophy. So one of the quotes that I remember very specifically from that is I was a liberal of convenience. Yes. I mean, this is the amazing. So to be honest, I don't have time or patience for biographies. You know, these massive 900-page books on what Eisenhower had for breakfast on February the 12th, 90. I'm not interested.

But I've read two that changed my life on the recommendations of people I trust. One was Andrew Breitbart and the second was Hillbilly Ellogy by J.D. Vance, who's been a regular guest on my Radio Show America first. But to your point, Bright Bart's book is so, and God rest is so, he left us far too soon. Bright Bart's story is so powerful because he's utterly candid in the beginnings of the book where he says, I went to Tulane University. I was a drunk alcoholic liberal, and I thought what the mainstream media told me was the truth. And then there's that damascene moment where the scales fall from his eyes. As, you know, in a hungover stupor, he's watching the Clans Thomas Hearings.

And he sees this righteous black conservative judge who's been nominated to the Supreme Court, who looks absolutely perfect for the nomination, being lambasted in this quote-unquote high-tech lynching with fabricated accusations of sexual impropriety. And that's when Andrew realized, if they're lying to me about this, a Supreme Court justice nomination, what else could they be lying to me about?

And that's where his rebirth began. And he became a crusader for the truth and a man who fought the bullies and the propaganda. So, guys, J.D. Vance, Hilbert L.E.G. and Andrew Breitbart's Righteous Indignation, those are life-changing books. Totally agree with you. And it actually leads me to my next question of, we are here at a youth-directed conference. If the vast majority of Americans who are young are maybe just liberals of convenience, what is it up to us then to sort of pass this message along? Wow, that's fabulous. So every single one of us has a specific role to play.

Mine with my radio show, America First, with my TV show, The Gawker Reality Tricker. I think I've arrived at a place where I'm at peace with my mission, which is not to try and convince the indoctrinated. I think our side, those who already understand the import of the values upon which are Republic were founded, need to have their spirits lifted, need to have somebody help maintain their momentum. That's my job. But for others, let me put it thusly. My amazing colleague, I call him my rabbi, even though I'm a Catholic, Dennis Prager on Salem Radio. He has this line. He has many fabulous lines. There's this one line where he says, the world is made up of three types of individual. There are the fighters, there are those who help the fighters, and there are those who do nothing and just stand by.

All you need to do is to make sure you're not in the third category. Lord knows we need more fighters, and if you have the wherewithal, if you have the spiritual fortitude, become one of those cultural warriors. But at the very least, if you don't run for office or local school board, member, then help somebody who is become someone who supports those who pick up the banner of America first and fight to make America great again. And the best thing you can do, how about this? How about if you permit me a personal request to all of your listeners? Sure.

Never ever allow yourself to be in a position where you censor your beliefs. self-s, in today's rabid, vocupative cancel culture, one of the most soul-destroying things an American can do is to acquiesce to political correctness, which is really just another word for censorship, by censoring yourself. Can I give you one story to illustrate this?

Please. So recently, my wife and I, Katie, who also works at Heritage, we were invited to address a fabulous group of conservatives in Virginia. And the event was at the beautiful Trump golf course there, which I'd never been into it. If you haven't, check it out. What a golfer, but a beautiful, beautiful golf course. And I arrived to the ballroom.

The room was filled with people in tuxedos and ball gowns. And as soon as I walked in, this woman came up to me. And she said, Dr. Gorka, Dr. Gorker, I'm a big fan. Can I take a selfie? And, you know, of course. Of course, he's down. What does it cost me? So we stopped.

She took a selfie. And I said to her what I always say. And don't forget to tag me when you post it on Facebook or Instagram or whatever. And then suddenly her face just froze. And she said, oh, I can't do that. I mean things are so politicized where I live and my husband is self-employed and he has a company. And when she said that, something inside me died and I thought to myself, and actually, without using her name, I brought her up in the speech I gave 40 minutes later to the assembled hundreds of people. And I said, if you're not prepared to put your name and your face to the values you believe,

even. Well, what is your relationship to those values? And this phrase just burst in my mind. If you're not prepared to fight, you don't deserve to win. That's an example of self-censorship. She's excited about what I represent. She's excited about the values she thinks she shares with me, but she's not prepared to publicly embrace those values on social media. Well, then, what's her future? What's her children's future? What's the future of her grandchildren? Live your values is perhaps the greatest thing any American patriot can do right now. Well, Dr. Gorka, that was a phenomenal story. And unfortunately, we are running a little low on time. Well, you've got a lot of people to interview here. It's a target-rich environment. This is a fantastic place to be. But my last question

for you would be, I always like to leave the last note to the speaker to sort of discuss what they think is the most important thing for our listeners to take from this interview. So what do you believe if our listeners took one thing from this, what should they take away and why? Well, very clearly, America remains the greatest nation the world has ever seen. It is up to us to maintain it as such. And I would just say the following. We are living in exciting times for two reasons.

Number one, the left is weak. It may not feel like that. When you're being censored on Facebook, when a man with, what was it, 91 million followers is being deleted on Twitter as sitting president. It may not feel like it. But those actions actually evince weakness. When you have to censor people, it means they're afraid.

So number one, the left has built this facade, this Petiamkin village on sand. And secondly, America is waking up. I cannot tell you every single day. There's another video. There's another viral post of not just parents, but teachers pushing back on critical race theory, on the bigotry of school board members. So, guys, now more than ever take a stand, be loyal to the truth, get engaged, join the Heritage Foundation,

because we have a republic to save. And guess what? With you, we can do it. Dr. Gorka, fantastic. Thank you so much. That was Dr. Sebastian Gorka for the Daily Signal podcast. Check us out. Seb Gawker.com.

All the information, that's S-E-B-G-R-K-K-A-Sab-Gawker.com. Don't go away because up next, Doug talks with Morgan Zegger's founder and CEO of Young Americans Against Socialism. They discuss why socialism is so popular amongst young people and what can be done to push back against this rising popularity. Hi, I'm Virginia Allen. I want to tell you all about an awesome Heritage Foundation resource called the Index of Economic Freedom. The Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom ranks nearly every nation in the world according to its level of economic freedom. Whether for personal, professional use, or for school research, the index is a wealth of information. You can learn why it's easier to start a business in Switzerland than it is in France and where America falls on the ranking.

So go ahead and visit heritage.org slash index to explore the newly released 2021 Index of Economic Freedom, which features interactive maps, country rankings, graphs of data, and much, much more. We are joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Morgan Zegger's founder and CEO of Young Americans Again Socialism, as well as part, owner of Zegger's Freedom Flags. Morgan, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for giving the Zegger's Freedom Flag shout out. Not a lot of people know that about me. Oh, for sure. No, we're definitely going to talk about that later because I think it's so great. But I would love to start out with some socialism. Fun topic, I know.

I don't know anything about it. So in terms of your organization, a lot of young people are a little more pro-socialists, but, you know, we're obviously not. So what encouraged you and what inspired you to start your organization? Yeah. For me, I had a weird story, and you know, you guys are, I'm sure you're located in D.C. Yes. I went to American University in D.C. for college, and it's 90% liberal. It's the number one most politically active campus in the country.

And so it was quite an experience. many things that I went through with professors, and I remember they tried to get a segregated cafe on campus one time. But the biggest story for me and what led to me doing this today and being involved in politics was I had a roommate that had a poster of Mousaedong, Lenin, Stalin, Karl Marx, and Fidel Castro. And I remember the first day meeting her and then looking on the wall and seeing these mass murderers and dictators,

and they were holding these fruity cocktail umbrella drinks, and they had party hats on, and I said, welcome to the party on the poster. And she said, oh, I'm a communist. And I was like, oh, I've never met a communist before, but like I was a little Miss Americana. You know what I mean? Like my dad's in the military. He's a colonel.

He served on the scene of 9-11. He was in Operation Iraqi Freedom. My parents deeply care about history and wanted me to understand it. And that's, I think, why I'm conservative. But you would think that I would know what to say when I met a communist, or at least I thought I would, but I didn't. And so I spent that year hearing from her as she had mass murderers and dictators on her wall, that her ideas would bring progress and support the working class and eliminate poverty and all these wonderful things, and I truly didn't know what to say, and it was embarrassing.

I was so disappointed in myself for not knowing what to say. And so I moved on into my career after college, and I started a nonprofit called Young Americans Against Socialism, and it was just to use the element of peer rationale, peer-to-peer communication, to reach people on social media with basic information about history, economics, policy, current events, and, again, in a very casual way. And it's because there's a study for Michigan State University that's the most effective way to reach a young person with an opposing viewpoint or with a hard-to-understand topic is actually be a peer. It's called peer rationale.

And so I wanted to champion that. And really, can you think of a greater example of a hard-to-understand topic than socialism? So I really enjoy what I do, and I'm just fulfilled every day in my work. That's such a fantastic thing to hear, and I do think that that's so interesting to hear that the best way to reach a person is to have a peer that's going to talk to them about it, which is great. I'm curious, seeing as you've been working with all these people that are so, pro-socialist and pro-communist. What is it about socialism that draws people in? We see these,

you know, horrible dictators like, you know, Stalin and Mao and Pouppat and all these terrible, terrible people throughout history. But yet socialism is this concept that won't die. AOC is in Congress, and she's talking about all these socialist ideas. Bernie Sanders was a legitimate presidential candidate. Why is there so much popular support for socialism? Yeah, well, I mean, we're seeing it today in America, right? You look at what's happening. We've experienced amazing levels of luxury over the last 100 years in our country and just massive progress and by progress, I mean, true progress, not leftist progress that is actually regress. And you still, you see a majority of young Americans, according to like every Gallup poll over the last few years, a majority of

young Americans would choose socialism over capitalism. What I think back too often is victims of communism, you know, related to the Heritage Foundation. They did a poll and found out that 70% of young Americans would vote for a socialist. What's interesting, though, and what I always think about in the work that I do is that that same poll asked the same. young people that said they would want socialism, do you trust the government? And only five to six percent of that same population said they trust the government. To me, that really explains the situation we're up against. And I talk about this all the time. The conservative movement loves to talk about socialism using very cheap shots. They may be fundraise off of it. We see a lot of people

fundraising off of Cuba, sending out petitions, but really they're just trying to go up an email list. Let's be honest. It's pathetic. And for me, I get frustrated. I'm seeing socialism trend on Twitter, and I'm like, wow, all of these people are communicating about socialism in a very ineffective way in a way that's been tried and tried again, but has led to now a majority of being Americans wanting it. We have two different groups that deserve two different approaches of communication. One is the leftists. They are true ideologues. They've read Marx. They consider themselves Marxists and true socialist. They don't call themselves democratic socialists. You know what I mean? Maybe they do it in public. But at the end of the day, they understand their socialists.

They're true believers. And to me, I believe they're the flatterer of economics. When we try and communicate to them, I'm not trying to change their mind. I know I'm not going to change their mind. But what I'm focused on is the fact that they're trying to reach the very naive and unfortunately ignorant. And I don't mean that insulting in any way, but just the ignorance in terms of lacking basic education and knowledge. We have a lot of people in America that went through the education system, went through the American classroom, and didn't get the proper education on these issues. And now they have no idea about the red flags that come when you hear these utopian promises. And so we're seeing that same pattern play out in America where you have all these very well-intentioned people that want to solve the college deck.

crisis, the rising cost of college. They want to fix the health care system because people are going into debt for ages and committing suicide after they get one surgery or once they get into an accident. It's horrible. It's horrible, and I want to fix that too. They see poverty and they want to fix it. They're worried about climate change. They're worried about the environment. And unfortunately, the radical left is

exploiting their desires and their feelings of insecurity on these issues to get them to support these radical ideas. And so the confused and lied to young people and older that are being misled, they deserve a different communication approach than the radical leftists that want to seize the means of production. You know what I mean? And so making sure that we

understand that and we don't just look at every young person that says, I'm a socialist and I have no idea what that means. We should not be looking at them and saying, get the heck out of here, go to Cuba, you're not welcome here. You're an idiot. You're put in the country at risk. We need to be different about that. And then with the leftists, we can deal with them in a different way. So it seems like what you're trying to say is that there's sort of these two groups that we need to be targeting. There's the people who are the true believers who say, you know, I have read marks, I've read all the theory, this is what we're going to do. And then there's the people who are sort of like, hey, free college, free health care. That sounds pretty

good. And so what it seems like you're saying is that the way to reach those people is through education, sort of those peer relationships. Exactly, exactly. No, I think that's a fantastic point to make. So in terms of like positive solutions that we can do, you've mentioned peer relations, is there any sort of like resource that we can point people to to sort of, hey, if you want to understand socialism, you should look in this direction. Yeah, and I've been trying to build out that resource. That's the thing. I'm kind of a very small team. We're a nonprofit a 501c3 and so

I've been fundraising and really trying my best to build the team because I just basically produce into everything myself. But the biggest thing that we first did was focus on firsthand testimony. And I think I'm not like, oh, I must protect this concept. I'm the only one that can do it. And so I tell people all the time, this was really successful for me.

I had a 9 to 5 job in advertising when I started and I understood the concept of peer rationale. I saw that study. And I wanted to be the most effective communicator possible. And when we look at what young Americans think of socialism, they have no idea, right? And a lot of people say we support socialism at record levels because we haven't personally lived through that. I would argue that with the CCP's treatment of COVID-19 and the lying to the world that they did, we have been impacted by a communist regime at this point.

And so we should connect those dots for them. But the best way to paint a very vivid picture of what it's like because we truly haven't lived through the Red Scare before is to interview survivors. And so the first thing that we did back in 2019 when I launched the organization was a series of tests. testimony videos about five or seven of them. And they were only five to seven minutes as well. And they went viral. I was not expecting it. And so they got millions of views, one million views in the first 24 hours.

And from there, I was like, okay, we're on to something. And so obviously I can't just keep producing, like, mass amounts of these videos because it's very hard to keep it going. But we did little series of them. And now we do a Survivors of Socialism podcast. We are doing a live stream of current events every week where we bring in guests to kind to talk about their firsthand experience in socialism. And I will say it's very powerful to hear.

And the one story that always sticks to me, whenever I talk to survivors, they talk about the Chavistas and the Collectiveos a lot in Venezuela, and there was also a similar group in Cuba. It was basically like the Antifa of America today. And once the left actually started to gain political power in those countries, they started transitioning the collectivos and Chavistas into becoming a paid police force, to terrorize communities. And when I talked to the survivors in America,

they tell me that they get PTSD from seeing Antifa today on the TV because it reminds them so much of what happened there. So hearing those connections is just so powerful to me. It's powerful to so many out there. And first-hand testimony has really been such a successful way. So I encourage everyone else to consider that for their work as well. I think that's a fantastic idea to sort of, you know, these people have experienced it.

They're not in favor of it. So, you know, why should you? Most importantly, they've experienced the promises. Right. They've experienced the full promise of what they say and then what happens when they implement the policies and then the implications of what happens to society after they've been implemented. Absolutely.

Now, on a more positive topic than socialism, I know, I think it pretty dark. As much as I love talking about socialism all day long, I would love to talk to you a little bit about your small business. Thank you so much. Of course, no, I think it's wonderful. So if I'm not mistaken, Zegra's Freedom Flag is the business that you and your father started together. Is that right?

Yeah, so I went to American and I knew I could not afford four years there. And so first of all, I worked to graduate three years early, and I took night classes, weekend classes, anything I could. And, of course, the school gave me such a hard time. They wanted me to stay and pay for four years. Of course. But, oh, no, thank you. So I did that.

And then I graduated with a hefty amount of debt, and my dad and I had seen a YouTube tutorial on how to make a wooden American flag. And we started making them in the workshop just for fun to kind of see how it was. And then we looked at it, and it was just so dang beautiful. We looked at it and we said, we should do something with it. We donated it to a VFW. They were having a fundraiser for a man who had cancer from Agent Orange in Vietnam when he was serving there. We donated it, and then we got people asking to buy them. And so that month, I was still in college at the time.

we had said we should make a little LLC. We just started a little something, started selling them, and now it paid off all my student loans at this point. When I was still in college, I graduated, paid off all my student loans, and now it's a full family business where my dad works there. I worked there, and my mom just retired from her PT job as a physical therapist, and she is working at the wood shop. It's so fun.

Wow, so this is like a real family affair. And now it is, right? I love it. It's funny with all of us in the workshop now. I think it's fantastic, too, that this is something that you all bonded over, and it's a symbol of the country, right? This is something that you can give to people and people are willing to buy. I guess on that sort of topic, what do you think of the importance of having these common symbols?

I know socialism, one of the things that they always do is they attack common symbols of the country. The flag, the National Anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance. These are things that they view as sort of obstacles. How do you view the importance of symbols and how should we be protecting those? No, it's so important that you said that. And I might have mentioned it earlier for you where when I do news hits these days, I go on and I feel like every time something crazy happens, we're literally just checking off a box of the checklist of what happens

when the left it rises to power in a country throughout history. It happens every single time. It's pretty much the same checklist. And now it's just a little bit different because we have technology and we have a more modern society. But when we look at erasing culture, I really do consider that we are going through a cultural revolution in America. And under Mao, they were getting rid of the four olds.

I don't know if you remember that. It's like the old customs, old. ideas, old, I can't even remember them right now. But it was the concepts like symbols. And so you weren't allowed to worship things that used to bring a society together, that used to bring China together. And what we're doing in America today, not only, you know, they had to get rid of, started with the monuments. Remember it? They got rid of the Confederate statues, the monuments of the Confederate soldiers. And that's one thing. But we had warned that something worse was going to come because you're setting a precedent of erasing history. And there's a way to

not honor Confederate soldiers that fought against the union, while all, well, all, respecting that that's history and we've come so far as a country. And so when you're erasing history, it's quite damaging. But then it transitioned to statues of our founders. It transitioned into statues of Abraham Lincoln, of all people. It went to removing their names from schools, founders' names from high schools and middle schools across the country. And when you do this, what kind of impact are you having on children saying that this man's name needs to be removed because he's a horrible person? But now we're at this phase where it's the American flag. It's apple pie. I kid you not, I read an article recently on my podcast.

about how apple pie is racist because Asians are the originators of apples. Because 4,000 years ago, apple trees were brought to this region of the world, and they used to start in Asian areas. Who knows? But then the sugar on the crust of the apple pie is from Guatemala, or whatever it was, but it was like the sugar on the crust of apple pie is not from America, and so now it's racist to eat apple pie. That was the article.

But the point is that these are all. all American customs. Most recently, I live above San Antonio right now, the Alamo. That's a classic American story. The Wild Wild West, right, baby? It's like that is classic America, the Cowboys, the Wild West, going westward for westward expansion. Now they're trying to cancel the Alamo,

and the leftists in Texas are trying to remove teachings of the Alamo from the Texas curriculum, because right now they teach the Alamo people that were killed as heroic. And the Democrats do not want them to be taught as heroic in schools. And so Abbott stood up against it. But it's just examples of these used to be very uniting images for us. And what's happening is this cultural revolution of removing what used to unite us. Absolutely.

And I'm so glad that you mentioned things like the statues and all of that stuff. My hometown saw statues of Jefferson, saw statues of Washington, statues of Lincoln, and it was so heartbreaking to watch those things. Morgan, we are running a little low on time, so I wanted to give you the last word, though. If somebody was to only take one thing, the kernel of truth from this conversation, what would you want them to take from it? For me, I'm biased on this. Of course, I know that there's plenty of problems in the country, right? But at the end of the day, my passion is making sure every American understands that for centuries,

our country has stood together on a basis of capitalism and classical liberalism. And I know that there's bad words around capitalism these days, but it's really just about people like you and me, average Americans, having economic and financial freedom. And so we used to unite on that foundation of classical liberalism and capitalism, and now the radical left doesn't believe in those things. And they are trying to rip that foundation away. And so we need to come together as conservatives, liberals, Republicans, Democrats, back onto that foundation, and we'll bicker it out.

You know, like an election season, we will fight it out, and I know we will. But that's American to do so. The radical left hates us all. They don't believe in the same ideas we believe in. They don't believe in the First Amendment. They don't believe in disagreeing politically and having the next person still continue to live. We're going against people that truly just don't like our way of life. and we've got to get back under that foundation

and understand there's so much at risk here. So reaching people, bringing them together on those core values is so important to me and I hope people can see that. But if you ever want to reach out, fightsocialism.org is the non-profits website and I'm building it out all the time. I'm always adding things to have it be a resource

to parents and students. And then if you want to get a flag, Zegers Freedomflags. Shop is ready to get a flag made by my family and I. Wonderful. Well, that was Morgan Zegers. She is the founder and CEO of Young Americans Against Socialism, as well as part owner of Zegger's Freedom Flags. Morgan, thank you so much again.

Thank you so 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 Podcast, Spotify, and IHeart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you all on Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than how.

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