The Daily Signal - Your Guidebook to Combating the Climate-Crazed Left

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

You’ve no doubt heard of the Green New Deal, the far left’s favorite piece of legislation. But do you know where it originated? How it became the centerpiece of the left’s agenda? Or that many of its provisions have nothing to do with climate change? Marc Morano, publisher of ClimateDepot.com, has a new book out Tuesday that answers these questions and more. “Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal Is Even Worse Than You Think” provides Americans with the information they need to refute climate alarmism, think critically about climate change, and counter the indoctrination of young people. Morano joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to issue a warning about the Green New Deal’s far-reaching implications and what freedom-loving Americans can do about it. Also on today's show, we read your letters to the editor and share a "good news story" about the history of Passover and how we all can celebrate. 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 Monday, March 22nd. I'm Robert Louis. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, Rob talks with author Mark Morano about his new book, Green Fraud, why the Green New Deal is even worse than you think. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about the history of Passover and how we can all celebrate it. But before we get to today's show, Rob and I want to tell you about our favorite way to get the news every morning. It's called the Morning Bell. And each weekday, the Daily Signal delivers the top news and commentary directly to your inbox for free.

You will be able to read about the policy debate shaping the agenda, analysis from Heritage Foundation experts, and commentary from leading conservatives like Ben Shapiro, Cal Thomas, and even former vice president, Mike Pence. It's easy to sign up. Just visit DailySignal.com and click on the connect button in the top right. corner of the page. We'll start sending you the morning bell tomorrow. Now stay tuned for today's show coming up next. We are joined on the Daily Signal podcast today by Mark Marano, author of the new book Green Fraud, Why the Green New Deal is even worse than you think. Mark, thank you for writing this book, and it's great to have you back on the show. Thank you, Rob. Good to talk to you again. I'm looking

forward to this. We, of course, used to work together back at the old media research, Cybercast News service. That's good to see you again. We certainly did, Mark, and it's great to have you back on the show. You know, one of the things that I wanted to begin with, because I think it's so important, is to explain to our listeners, why we should be worried about this Green New Deal. Well, in a very short answer, this is not about climate, energy, or the environment. The Green New Deal is about a takeover of our economy using a climate scare to achieve their ends. And the architects of this Green New Deal are very open about that. This is basically a backdoor way of central planning, socialism, progressivism in America using a climate emergency, climate crisis as their way. So the reason

you should be scared is they're not being honest or straight with you about the science and about the so-called solution, even if we did face a climate crisis. Well, thank you for mentioning that because there's a lot in this Green New Deal that has nothing to do with the issue of climate change. Can you go through some of the examples and in some ways the absurdity of what makes up this massive piece of legislation? Well, yeah, in fact, one of the architects' famous quote was it's a change the whole economy thing. So we have everything in here from affecting everything we eat to we drive to our homes to public transportation. to tearing down buildings and rebuilding them green, to going after everything that you,

everything we've become used to in America, everything even from plastics on down, they're trying to literally strip away. And it also includes environmental justice, health care, racism. I have a whole chapter about the identity politics invading the climate debate. So the entire premise is just a gigantic, left-wing progressive wishless.

but it's all thrown into a Green New Deal, and they're trying to scare particularly children into acting because we need all of this, you know, a radical climate, you know, radical progressive agenda in order to solve the climate crisis. In other words, they actually say in the book, capitalism is incompatible with a livable planet. Capitalism is incompatible with a climate, a healthy climate.

So it's straight after the system. and then, of course, you have all the identity politics and all the wokeism and all of the, just all of the wackiness of today's modern left. And if they threw everything and the kitchen sink into the Green New Deal. Mark, I'm glad you brought up young people. I want to get back to that in a few moments. But first, I wonder if you can take us back and explain who created the Green New Deal and how it became the centerpiece of the left's agenda.

Great question. I have a whole chapter devoted to the origins. And I start out, by the way, talking about Roosevelt's New Deal. And oddly enough, the architects of the Green New Deal fondly recall FDR's New Deal. Well, in the book, I go back and show that it was actually considered, even by modern historians, there was a lot of issues with Roosevelt's New Deal when it comes to minorities. They thought it was just a entitlement for the white middle class, and it excluded minorities. In fact, it actually started modern segregation in our cities.

And there's a lot of criticism. So it's interesting that the woke authors and proponents of the Green New Deal like to harken back to FDR, which by today's standards, they should be toppling his statues of FDR based on all the other statues and all the criteria that there's toppling statues of George Washington, et cetera. So what happens is in the book, I go back and I show you the 1970s Club of Rome, the whole anti-growth agenda is really a key origin. But the real origin of this is direct descendant, if you want, will, is the United Nations Sustainable Agenda 21, Sustainable Development Agenda 21, Sustainable

Development Agenda that came out of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. I pull exact quotes out of the Rio Earth Summit's Sustainable Development Agenda, which was signed by George H.W. Bush and was ratified by the Democratic Senate in 1993. This is right when Bill Clinton was elected. And that is really their model is. And it's basically the UN Agenda 21, which is basically the UN's idea that every aspect of modern society has to be regulated and controlled by bureaucrats in order to save the planet and to make most efficient use of resources, that's the origin of the Green New Deal. And it's laid out very compelling. I mean, that's where they got it from. And of course, there's more recent origins. If you go back to around 2007, 10, people like Michael Schellemberger,

before he converted to an apocalyptic climate skeptic, he was actually all in on the original Green New Deal of the late 2000s and a couple other people claim authorship of it as well. One of President Biden's first actions in the White House was to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. So we obviously know he's focused on some of these issues. Where does he stand on the Green New Deal? That's a great question. The book, my deadline for writing this was right before, you know, a couple weeks before Biden was sworn in.

So I was able to see how he's doing his cabinet. But if you watch him, you know, over throughout the last campaign, for president, that's a great question because Joe Biden was sort of all over the place, but he generally tried to portray himself as more of a centrist. He had one of the more less ambitious Green New Deal plans out there. But at some point, he had to make peace with his Democratic Party base. So I show in there that he brings up Bernie Sanders and AOC and Sunrise Youth Movement climate activists. And they all basically come in and they take over and they essentially wrote his climate agenda. So the question is,

Joe Biden himself may not be as radical as people associate with a lot of the proponents, the Green New Deal, but Joe Biden is now going to be essentially the frontman for all this stuff happening behind the scenes. I don't think Joe Biden's going to be that actively involved in shaping this at this point. I think it's a done deal. They are waiting. And right now it's interesting as we talk here. It's late March 2021.

Still no Green New Deal. Still nothing introduced in Congress. Still no House or Senate bill. no press conferences on it, nothing. They've just been being very, very quiet. I think what they're doing is they're giving the Biden administration a chance to implement the other parts of his climate agenda, which is obviously the executive orders going after pipelines and drillings

on federal lands. But also he's going to have every department, every department agency have climate as one of their foremost issues. And we're talking whether it's Treasury or EPA or State Department, climate's going to be first and foremost. Every agency is a climate agency is their motto. So in the words of Nome Chomsky to answer your question, Rob, Biden is probably the furthest left of any president we've ever had

or any Democratic nominee on climate, even though he himself has never really made it a big priority. But the point is he is now surrounded himself with people who would make President Obama's climate agenda seem rather timid at this point. Well, and a couple of those people would certainly be his vice president, Kamala Harris, who I believe was very vocal in support of the Green New Deal prior to joining his administration. And of course, John Kerry, who is serving as his climate czar. So certainly there are two people who have significant influence, I would suspect, over the president and some of his actions.

So there are people to watch. But it is interesting, as you point out, Mark, that they've been disciplined, perhaps, in a way not to get out ahead of the administration on this, as they focus on other troubling priorities, whether it be HR1 or the Equality Act or some of the other things that have come down the pike early in his administration. And that's what they're doing.

I think a lot of this is COVID, the lockdowns, vaccine distribution. So I think they're just waiting. And at this point, if I were to project, I'd be surprised if May, middle of May comes around and they haven't introduced it, but it's possible.

You know, they may wait until June, but they're going to wait until some other stuff is sort of settled because they know pretty much all hell's going to break loose when the Green New Deal comes back up. Because once they introduce this and once it's there, and they're going to have to do it, I can't imagine,

they're going to have to do it within a few months or less. But once they do it, we are talking congressional hearings. We are talking essentially the national attention is going to shift now to the Green New Deal. And I think one of their focus is going to be is, you know, they don't pay any attention to what happened. The last time we introduced the Green New Deal in 2019. They're going to pretend none of that happened and they're going to try again and they're going to be much savvier this time and make it just look just kind of like a, as reasonable a possible as an incremental bill as they can come up with. Because they were truly, and I go through this in the book, they ended up having to pull stuff down off websites.

They were truly embarrassed by the original Green No Deal release, the ones mentioning farting cows and other phrases and, you know, people don't need to work if they don't have to work and all sorts. of things that they put in there that was just bonkers. And I think in the words of one analyst, it was like a gift to any critic of the Green New Deal. So I think they're going to be much savvier this time around. And I think Joe Biden, in a way, is the perfect face because he is just sort of, you know, whether you want to argue he's out of it or not. He's just this is not his issue. And I think he's going to just make some broad statements and let all this happen behind the scenes.

So I think they're well poised to make something happen. And of course, it's going to come down to people like Senator Joe Manchin who may ultimately hold the veto power of this. It certainly seems that way. We are talking to Mark Morano, author of Green Fraud, why the Green New Deal is even worse than you think. Mark is also the publisher of Climate Depot. Mark, the Earth's climate has been changing for 650,000 years. That's not in dispute. It's the past 100 to 200 years that we're really talking about.

And, well, clearly humans are playing some role. you argue that we're not facing a man-made climate disaster in the book. Can you tell us why? Yeah, we're not the control knob of the climate. Yes, carbon dioxide can warm the climate, but you can't distinguish its effect from other factors. There's hundreds of factors that influence climate. So the key is, you mentioned 650,000 years.

I actually, quote geologists who talk about the geologic history of the earth, billions of years. We are in the 10% coldest period of Earth's history, and we're in the 10% lowest CO2 in Earth's history. We've had ice ages with many higher times CO2. CO2 levels. So I go through, I spend a whole chapter detailing everything from floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, sea level.

None of it's unprecedented. Many of it is actually either on no trend or declining trend, all these extreme storms you hear about. And the only way they can scare people about climate is to say, yeah, it's worse than we thought. You say how? Sea level's not accelerating. There's more polar bears than we've ever had. you know, tornadoes are at or near record lows.

Hurricanes were much worse 50, 60 years ago and they're cyclical. And they say, well, our predictions of the future are much worse. So, and I get into that a little bit because what they do is it's a misdirection. When current reality fails to alarm, make scarier and scarier predictions. And I also show how polar bears actually are disappearing, Rob. They're disappearing from Al Gore's books in movies because now we're counting more polar bears than we've ever counted. Just in the last 15 years, oddly, since Al Gore's, Gore's film originally came out. And that's why Al Gore, in a sequel, both movie and book,

just conveniently omitted mention of the polar bear because all of his predictions on the polar bear went the opposite direction. Wow. What an inconvenient truth. Mark, you just mentioned something that I was hoping to raise anyways, and that's that there seems to be no weather event, be it a hurricane or a blizzard that isn't blamed in some way on climate change. So what are the, What advice do you have for people as they may be just engaging in conversation with family or friends to push back on this assertion? I mean, it just every day you really can't go beyond the media to see where they attribute it in some way to climate change. Yeah. In fact, it's an opposite prediction.

And one of the things I point out is they predict more floods, less floods, more snow, less snow, more malaria, less malaria, more fog, less fog, shorter days, long days. They're on the opposite side of almost every climate predict. So therefore, no matter, if you have the Super Bowl and you say you bet on it, you bet on both teams to win, guess what? Next week of the office, you can tell everyone, hey, I was right. I picked a winner. And that's what they do. Many of these climate models and the people who claim that they've been correct on climate. They come up with dozens, hundreds of different scenarios. One of them is going to be correct. Sometimes they're exact opposite and then they pat themselves in the back. But people are inundated with this. But what it is is, it's short-term statistics. trickery. So yes, California, if you pick certain years of, you know, an eight-year trend, even sometimes at 20-year droughts are much worse in California, if this continues. And the problem is, if you go back either 50 years, 100 years, you find wildfires and droughts. There's no trend, or they're actually radically higher in the past. The problem is it's all, you know, you have an environmental group that's working with the TV weatherman who's picked 1970 as their

baseline in every major city. 1970 is one of the coldest times. in U.S. history because we had the coming ice age global cooling scare. So what they do is they pick a warm period baseline. And of course we've warmed since them. They've got the maximum warming. This continues and climate scientists saying this will. This is how they scare you. So every event becomes weaponized in the words the meteorologist Joe Bastardi, you're weaponizing the weather, climate ambulance chasing. There's another phrase. And this is how they do it. And it's very deadly effective. So that's why I devote a whole chapter. And I actually wrote the chapter up in a sort of talking points format that it would have citing experts and studies,

and it's very easy to read. So that one chapter can just serve as your talking point, not just to the science, but also to some of the claims. Like recently John Kerry came out and said, we need an insurance policy in case the climate skeptics are wrong. And I go through and I explain UN-Paris agreement, any EPA regulations, the Green New Deal, would have no impact on U.S. emissions measurable, let alone global emissions, let alone. climate in any way, shape, or form. So there is no insurance policy. This is paying a huge upfront premium for no payout on your home if your home would have burned down. That's what they're selling us here. And the reason it's called green fraud is because, A, they're hyping a non-existent

climate emergency, which is their new phrase. And B, they're telling us, the facts are, even if we faced a climate crisis emergency, nothing they proposed would have any impact on the climate and be able to save us. Mark, thank you for again writing the book and providing that information. It's incredibly valuable, as is your website, climate depot.com. Following up on that, I'm glad to hear that you pointed out the skepticism, why we should be skeptical of the climate modeling that we see. But what about the alarmism that we hear about? For example, that we may only have 12 years to save the planet. What do you have to say about things like that? Well, that I treat as comic relief. And actually, I show in the book that you go back to 1864 was the first climate to tipping point.

We were warned by a naturalist, I believe, who said that we had a warrant of climatic excess, in quotes. And since that time, we go through, and I show from the 1970s, the global cooling scare all the way through the 80s, my favorite is Prince Charles, who had the 100-month tipping point, and actually gave speeches counting down those 100 months. And then when the 100 months expired, he ended up extending it into the 2040s when he would be in his late 90s, which he still might make it to that age. So AOC, of course, famous 12-year tipping point. John Kerry came out again with another tipping point recently. I think it was 10 years. They're trying to count down from that original 12 years, two years ago.

And this is just so, you know, it's so comical on its face that it's ridiculous. And it's also a misreading of what even the United Nations claimed. They came up with a couple different, you know, omission scenarios and said, you know, if we're within 12 years, if we don't start working, they never said the world was going to end. So even they can't even quote their own allies correctly on this. But it's just base, lowbrow propaganda. And it works for a general media and public and for school children trying to skip school to get them motivated. They actually have kids, and I have a whole chapter on this.

They actually have kids believing that they have no future now unless the government and acts to safeguard their climate. Well, I'm glad you brought us back to the future generations because that's where I want to go next. There seems to be no issue of more importance to many on the left than climate change. It's become a religion for many of them. In fact, they're talking about ending the filibuster to pass things like the Green New Deal. How do you explain this obsession and what are some of the ways that we can counter it, particularly among young people and future generations?

Great question. I think the simplest way of explaining their focus and obsession with schoolchildren, they've literally failed to convince adults of a climate emergency. And so what's happened is they're trying to shame adults by using children who are frankly more gullible on this. And what's happened here, if you go back and look at Gallup polling, even the 1980s, people can say, I believe in global warming or has the climate changed. All nonsense.

Gallup polling and Pew and even, I think it was Harris Polling CEO, came out. The level of concern, and the key is, are people afraid? Are they concerned about climate? That's what doesn't really change. People can believe in climate or think that there's, you know, there's a man's, you know, changing it or the climate is changing these generic, meaningless phrases. So what happened is they went after kids. Kids as a age group are the highest believing, most committed and most afraid. They're the most concerned about climate. So I go through, I have a whole chapter devoted to this. I go through the whole school scheme. Syngupping syndrome with Greta Thunberg, where she came from, how her parents were heavily

involved in the environmental movement, heavily involved with even the Swedish government. And that whole movement of hers was essentially not some organically sprung movement that just happened. In fact, she wasn't even regularly going to school. She was at almost like a homeschool scenario in which she did that. But she became the face of the youth movement. And then, of course, you have groups like sunrise movement. And I go in great detail of how these kids testify. on Capitol Hill, and it's become an intergenerational. It's kind of like mom and dad trash the planet. Thanks, mom and dad. It's up to us to save it. And they have all these lawsuits with former NASA scientists, James Hansen and others, basically suing the U.S. government in order to impose a

Green New Deal on us to save their future from bad climate. So the way to do this is to go, we need to educate parents first and then get kids to be more critical thinkers on this. And also, these are fads. I think it's eventually going to pass. I think these kids will be much like the flower children of the 60s. I think within 10 years or so, they'll look back and probably be embarrassed that they held these views and went to these rallies and said such inane things about the climate. Well, critical thinking is an important aspect. And I would certainly encourage all the parents and grandparents who are listening today to use the information that you provide in green fraud to share with their kids.

kids and make sure that they're aware of all that is going on. You know, Mark, in the book, you also read about fossil fuels. They obviously get a bad rap from many in the media and on the left, yet we seem to take for granted just how much they've helped people and companies thrive, including some of those who regularly use oil and gas. And one recent example in which I know you played a role was the hypocrisy involving the clothing company North Face. I was wondering if you could speak to that and why.

you think that some of these these big players are able to get away with the hypocrisy, and you've done some tremendous reporting on this yourself. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. And in case, the North Face, this was a company that all of their products essentially are made, derived from fossil fuels, all their fleece jackets made of polyester, anything else. I mean, it's just an amazing thing. So what they did is they did not want to be involved with any oil company,

so they wouldn't put the company's logo on their jackets because they thought, oh, my gosh, We're climate friendly. We're not going to put this oil company on our jackets. And so what happened was the oil company fought back. And it was an amazing thing. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association had some fun with this recently. And they literally pointed out that the North Face is made up of fossil fuels. And they pointed out the absurdity.

And this is one of the things. At what point are you going to carry this virtue signaling? Is anyone who drove to the store in a fossil-fueled car, are they going to be able to buy a North Face product? If you, you know, if anyone benefits, are you going to allow an oil worker to come in and buy your products? Where does this kind of virtue signaling end on this? But you mentioned the larger picture on this. You have people like Bill Gates, who is pro-climate, pro-lockdown, very pro-lockdown, telling people that they should stay at home.

But meanwhile, he's bidding on the world's largest private jet transport company. And I think of the last count is electric bills or something in the neighborhood of like $30,000 a month on his home, which is so massive. And this is the guy who flies private jets exclusively. And he doesn't want anyone else. He wants everyone else staying at home right now. And yet people like John Kerry, very similar situation. John Kerry actually said he's so important that he has to fly private jets. But they don't see any irony in the fact that they themselves don't follow the rules that they're claiming everyone needs to fly private jets.

And of course, President Obama has a house at sea level and Martha's Vineyard after spending years warning of the climate change disaster. And this is just one of the things that I think the general public resonates with them. They realize that they find out that the leaders of this movement, when they act this way, they don't actually believe we face a climate emergency because they themselves don't act like it and don't live that way. At some point, you know, you would not be living at a home at sea level if you actually. thought it was going to be swallowed up by sea levels in short order. Mark, you've been working on these issues for dating back to the time that you and I were

together at CNS News, which is almost a couple decades ago. You've done phenomenal work in terms of writing books on the topic, running Climate Depot. What is your passion? What motivates you to stay involved and engage and make sure that Americans get the truth? Well, I've always considered myself a Republican-accepting. when it came to environmental issues. And that's the way, even under Ronald Reagan, I remember thinking James Watt

when he was putting in roads and forest areas. I always was like, I was always thought Republicans were wrong on that. And my eyes were open because I got involved originally in the Amazon Rainforest scare. But then after I ended up doing a documentary on it, made several trips down there, talked to environmentalists on the ground there

who would throw the guidebooks down and call them crap. It's because I'd been had on that. Scientifically, it turned out rainforests are the least, the Amazon was a least endangered forest for every acre cut, 50 were regenerating. I mean, so it was an amazing story, and it was all about public fear. So I felt I had been dup. So by the time climate came around, I was skeptical. So I've always had a passion because there's very few reporters in media focusing on non-historical

environment and energy and climate information. So I've found, I feel like that's my calling right now because there's very few people out there willing to do it other than, you know, other than delving into it on short stints. But this is a full-time job. I mean, it's just an endless machine of hype, fear, all designed for political reasons behind the scene. Everything that comes out of the United Nations is all designed to lobby and support their next treaty, policy, committee, or whatever goal that they have in mind.

It's all science in service of public policy. And sadly, we're seeing a little bit of this now with. COVID. In fact, I have a whole chapter on the COVID climate connection in the book where people are so excited. The activist, environmental activists from John Kerry to Greta Thunberg, Al Gore, they're all quoting the lockdowns and saying this is exactly what we've needed for climate. This is a fantastic for the earth was one of the quotes from climate activists. Well, it's certainly something to watch. I think that there is an agenda at play there and people will try to use the current situation that we find ourselves in to advance other priorities.

I mean, that's so true with just the $1.9 trillion bill that made its way through Congress and to the president's desk. So, Mark, one final question for you. What's your advice to conservatives or others who get labeled as climate change deniers, find themselves censored on social media or shut out of debates or even shunned by maybe their own family when it comes to this issue? You've been in situations like that yourself, I'm sure. What advice do you have for people? It's a great question. I think people just need, you know, get my book, Green Fraud, and read particularly chapter

three, where I go through the basics of the talking point. If you start like a Thanksgiving dinner, if you have people, not that you'd ever want to spend Thanksgiving dinner doing this, but if you actually ask them why we face an emergency and what the solution is and get them to admit and get them to realize that they're talking utter nonsense, I mean, from both a geologic perspective of the earth, which is very simple to understand, and also from even if we face the crisis, their solutions would not only have no impact, it's the exact opposite way to go.

So the last chapter in my book, I actually go through and explain that if we did face the climate crisis, what we would want is more free markets, more innovation, more technological advancements, not some top-down central planning, you know, bureaucratic crushing of American entrepreneurship. You would want the exact opposite.

And that's what's so weird about this. Luckily, we don't face the climate, emergency. But if we did and we relied on the UN or the Green New Deal, we would all be doomed. And I think once people understand that this is just essentially a Trojan horse for the Green New Deal, the Trojan horse for another agenda, which is attack on capitalism is really what that's the heart of it. I have a whole chapter just on the history of that in the last 40, 50 years, how back in the 1960s, just the entire movement has been planning and plotting and using the environmental scares. It's always been a different scare before climate. You know, originally it was overpopulation,

resource scarcity, running out of oil. I have a whole chapter up on global cooling. Who would have thought the man-made ice age scare in 1970s, they thought our fossil fuels were causing the earth to emit aerosols, which were blocking the sun, causing global dimming, creating a new ice age. Who would have thought the solution to that was exactly red like the Green New Deal? So I literally go through point by point. They wanted central planning, wealth re-distribution, more controls, less capitalism, all to solve the man-made global cooling problem in the 70s. It's always the same solutions changing the environmental scare as needed. And right now, we're stuck with the climate scare as the latest one since the 1960s.

It's amazing, Mark. Well, the book is called Green Fraud, Why the Green New Deal is even worse than you think. Pick up a copy. Mark Morano, thank you so much for joining us on the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you, Rob. Appreciate it. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share? Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205 or email us at Letters at DailySignal.com. Yours could be featured on the Daily Signal podcast. Thanks for sending

us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show. Virginia, who's up first? In response to Victor Davis-Hansson's commentary piece, The World Goes On While America Sleeps. writes, Victor Davis-Hanson is correct in his commentary. Political correctness is killing us. Somehow, there has to be a concerted effort to reclaim free speech. I think it starts with conservative and free-minded individuals in Congress standing up for the truth and free speech. It's going to be very difficult to do with closed-minded liberals running the White House and Congress. And in response to Congressman Ted Bud's commentary, the right to pass down America's founding values is worth fighting for. Ed Davis writes to us, as a 35-year teacher of American history in

high school, I have stood appalled by the woke doctrine of the New York Times 1619 project and wholeheartedly endorsed Congressman Budd's battle for the 1776 Commission's philosophy. I find it amazingly ironic that almost in the same breath that President Joe Biden talked of the need to unite our nation, and then, with the stroke of his authoritarian pen, struck down President Donald Trump's 1776 Commission Project. Can anyone doubt the impact of teaching our youngest students that their nation is unalterably flawed? I believe we are already seeing the impact in the streets of our nation today. We must return to a belief in the truly historic principles of our founding documents and the founder's work, or we will be lost as a nation and descend into chaos.

Your letter could be featured on next week's show, so send us an email at letters at daily signal.com. 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. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us today. you. Thanks so much, Rob. This is a very special time of year. The very first day of spring was this past Saturday, and this coming Saturday, March 27th, begins Passover. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with author and Jewish philanthropist Mark Gerson to chat a bit about the history of Passover and how Christians can celebrate the holiday. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Mr. Gerson, it's great to have you with us today. Thanks so much for being here. so delighted to be with you today, Virginia. So today we are talking about Passover. And Passover is one of

those holidays that, you know, so many of us we see on our calendars every year. But depending upon our faith background, some people know a lot about Passover and they celebrate it every year. And others, well, they don't know so much. So could you share just a little bit of the history of Passover? Absolutely. So Passover originates in the Bible itself. So when we're celebrating Passover, we are reliving and we are retelling the story of the Exodus in a reenactment of the last meal in Egypt exactly as it is stated in Exodus 12 and 13, making Passover the longest running religious ritual in the world. So what is Passover exactly? And again, everything in Passover derives directly. from the Bible. Passover is two things that go together beautifully. It's first, it's the biblically

ordained and authentic Jewish New Year. Second, it's the Jewish Spring Festival. Now, seemingly every culture has a spring festival. The American Spring Festival, it's opening day. So how do we feel in the spring? Why does every culture have a spring festival? Well, it's the spring when we literally go outside again, when we feel renewed, when we feel rejuvenated, when the spirit of newness and of opportunities in the air, and in the Jewish imagination, we say, this is the perfect time to celebrate a new year, because what are we supposed to do to a new year? We're supposed to take inventory of ourselves. Who am I now? And we're supposed to consider who do I want to be in the coming year, personally, communally, nationally, and make commitments to become that person. And that's

what we do at the Seder with the guidance of the Hagada, which means the telling. This is what I read as the greatest hits of Jewish thought condensed into a short book to help us ask and answer all these great questions. That's such a beautiful history. So today, how does the average Jewish family celebrate Passover today? So Jews around the world all throughout history and all around the world today will celebrate at a ritual meal called the Seder, which interestingly means order, and it's at the Seder where we have the same kinds of foods all around the world,

and both vertically as we share this experience with our ancestors, and horizontally as we share this experience with Jews and our Gentile friends all throughout the world, we're telling the same stories, we're asking the same questions, we're eating the same foods, and we're dreaming the same Exodus dreams, in unison, going back thousands of years and across thousands of miles. So what are those foods that you're eating?

What are those questions you're asking? And what are those stories that you're telling? So the foods we're eating are we have an egg on the sater plate. We have herosate, which is this really delicious concoction of nuts and fruits and all kinds of other things. And then the fundamental food is matzah, which we call in the beginning of the haggadah, are bread of affliction. And matzah, to my mind, represents permanence because when you put lots of salt on yeast, the yeast does not rise. And thus, the matzah can last for a very long time, leading us to begin the Pesak celebration as we eat the matzah by thinking, what in my life do I want to preserve,

what do I want to last in the coming year, and what do I want to last forever? So we have all these foods, and these foods are familiar to everybody who's attended satyrs anywhere in the world at any time in history. And the story we tell is the story of the Exodus. It is the great story of freedom. It originates in the Jewish Bible, of course, in the book of Exodus, and it has become the world's story of freedom. As people have yearned to go from a bad place to a better place, as people have yearned to go from slavery to freedom, the dreams that they have dreamed, the stories that they have told are Exodus dreams and Exodus stories. And this is the case from Exodus 12 and 13 in the Bible itself all the way through Martin Luther King and onto the present day. And in fact, the Seder, what the Seder really is is the reliving and retelling of the Exodus story.

And it is the American story. It was great Americans like Benjamin Franklin and Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King, who are all dreaming Exodus dreams. And in fact, if we go to the Capitol building on the House of Representatives side, we'll see the reliefs of 23 lawmakers. From all throughout history, 11 are facing one way, 11 are facing the other way, and Moses is in the middle.

That's so beautiful. Well, you know, I know personally as a Christian, I am very guilty of every year seeing Passover in my calendar and thinking, I should do something to celebrate, but then not really being sure, okay, how do I actually, how do I celebrate this holiday well? So as a Christian, how can Christians and people who aren't Jewish celebrate Passover? What a terrific question. First, I think it is wonderful that as a Christian you want to celebrate Passover.

And next year, God willing, we're going to have a big Passover. So I would love for you to come, come to our family, Seder in New York City. We love it. So very practically, please come to our family. family Seder. Oh, I would love that. Thank you. Oh, terrific. My wife's a rabbi. We'll have a great Seder next year. It'll be a big Seder like it like Sater should be like they were, like the original last meal in Egypt was in the Bible. So the Seder is the great meal of Jewish hospitality. In fact, Jews came together as a people around the last meal in Egypt upon which the Seder is modeled.

It says in the biblical text that if one household is too small to consume a lamb, it had to invite another household. Now, we know from the ancient historian Josephus and from modern science that it took 15 to 20 people to consume a lamb, meaning that no one household could consume a lamb. So on this first and fundamental night of Jewish peoplehood, we come together as a people through the acts of giving and sharing in the spirit of hospitality. Everyone comes together. In the Bible, it's the Jews and the mixed multitudes, the Gentiles. Today, it's Jews and Gentiles. We come together to share in and tell each other this great story of liberation from the Exodus.

And when Gentiles go to Sators, they are invariably the people who infuse it with the spirit of newness, with the spirit of enthusiasm. They ask questions. They make comments. They bring insights. They bring the wealth of their own experience. and the beauty of their own faith traditions to this Jewish celebration of freedom

and enhanced the evening for everybody. I love that. It's really a celebration of community in such a beautiful way. That's so wonderful. Mr. Gerson, we so appreciate your time today and you sharing this history with us. Really, really appreciate it.

Well, thank you. What a great conversation. I really appreciate it as well. Thank you. Well, we're going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rikishay Audio Network, All of our shows can be found at DailySignal.com slash podcasts.

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