The Eric Metaxas Show - Chris Buskirk (Encore)

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

Chris Buskirk of American Greatness covers an important and intriguing subject, "America and the Art of the Possible: Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay." (Encore Presentation)

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. They say it's a thin line between love and hate, but we're working every day to thicken that line, or at least to make it a double or triple line. But now here's your line jumping host, Eric Mattaxas. Folks, welcome to hour two, or at least I call it hour two, because it follows hour one, and I'm a traditionalist. Okay, we're talking to our friend, Sean Spicer.

He's on Newsmax every night at 5 p.m. Whether they like it or not, he's there. Sean, am I right? With your co-host. Some days they lock. They try to lock the door. I do know a back way in. That's the secret.

Always have a back-way in. So Newsmax every night, you were a press secretary. that is the term, right? Press Secretary? I was as press secretary and acting communications. That's why I get confused for President Trump. And what we're talking about is the news of the day, which I want to follow up with you. Before we do that, folks, just a bit of business.

If you haven't yet given to food for the poor, I mentioned earlier that we want as many of you to participate as possible. It really doesn't matter what you give. But I actually have the numbers of how many people have given. And most of you have not. So we want to just encourage you. You can text my name Eric to 911-99-write-on-your-phone. Eric, text my name Eric to 911-99-9-9-9. You can give $5, you can give $10.

Whatever you can give. We are feeding hungry kids in Central America. It doesn't get more basic than this. This is an unmitigated good when you do this. Food for the Poor has been vetted very thoroughly by Salem Radio, where it's across our platforms. We work with them over and over and over because we trust them because they're actually doing what we say we want to do.

We want to help those who can't help themselves. We want to bless those who are suffering. So you can text the keyword, Eric, to 911-99. Or you can just go to metaxis talk.com. Metaxistalk.com, and you will see the banner right at the top. But our goal is to get every single one of you to give something. It really doesn't matter what you give. But we are a little bit desperate here to get everybody to participate, not just a few people.

And I want to say, God bless you and thank you. Sean Spicer, we were talking about the rule of law in America and where we are. You've partnered with Brave Books. People can go to BraveBooks.com and get your brand new books. the parrots go bananas for a dollar this month. Ladies and gentlemen, oh my gosh, Bravebooks.com. So, Sean, you know, you've been in the middle of all this, and you were in the middle of it when Trump was being treated so poorly.

I mean, when someone, even if somebody's wrong, if the opponents treat them the way he's been treated, something inside me says, that's not right. They're lying about him. They're doing it's not anything goes. We're a country of laws. What is your sense of how this is going to go forward? I mean, today is Monday.

The theory was tomorrow that they were going to try to arrest him, to try to humiliate him. When they humiliate him, they humiliate themselves. But what is your sense of where things might go with it? So, you know, as I think I mentioned a little while ago, I'm not a lawyer. I've talked to a lot of lawyers. And so I think it goes two ways. It'll probably happen later in the week.

There's a guy meeting with the grand jury today. So even if they were to indict later today, the logistics of getting him from Florida and New York to do the fingerprinting and everything would probably take a little bit longer than people are anticipating. So let's call it middle end of the week. I think that from what I gather,

look, John Edwards was tried on campaign finance violations. The FEC dismissed them. As I mentioned before, they haven't looked at the steel dossier. If you really want to talk about a violation, of bookkeeping and campaign violations. The Steele dossier is both of those wrapped into one. It is the antithesis of it.

You're basically taking money from a campaign in the Democratic National Committee, putting it to a law firm to go after a political, weaponizing it to go after a political campaign. That is the nut of what Alan Bragg, the DA, is going after. So if that's your real goal, I got a better exhibit for you there. I think that Trump walks away with this

because it is impossible. You cannot charge a local DA cannot charge somebody with a federal crime that the feds have already walked away from. That being said, I think that as long as Trump doesn't overplay his hand, I think he becomes much stronger politically. And I think that you've seen everybody so far, but DeSantis come out and support him, even the folks that are talking about running against him, coming out and saying, this is unbelievable miscarriage of justice. This is the weaponization of our justice system. So I think Trump comes out much stronger. I do think that like I said, the danger in my opinion is that he has got to be careful how he encourages or doesn't his supporters to react because the media will turn this into Trump creating January 6.2.0. And I'm not in any way, shape, or form accusing people of that.

What I am saying is what will happen, how the media will try to create a narrative. This is a trap. Ladies and gentlemen, let's be clear. This is a trap. This is a trap. Do not be foolish. Do not be taken in by it. And for those of you who know the God of the Bible, pray for this nation. Pray and see what the Lord your God will do for you this day. Don't take actions into your own hands at this time. There's a time to protest, but this is a trap. And we want to be very clear. Sean, so you don't know whether they will go through with this. In other words, this is being played out and you don't know how it's going to go, or do you think that they will, in fact, do this within the week? Well, the DA has put out a memo to his folks sort of indicating or intimating that it is likely.

I mean, just saying be prepared, we won't be intimidated. You generally wouldn't do that, in my opinion, if there was nothing that was going to happen. But I think that logistically, Trump said Tuesday, his own team is basically saying we don't have any indication that Tuesday would happen. As I said earlier, there is somebody that's testifying in front of the grand jury on Monday. Therefore, logistically, the grand jury would still have to vote. Then you would have to file the paperwork. Then you'd have to get him to come up to New York to go through the process. I just have a hard time seeing how any of that can happen in, you know, what ostensibly would be a 12-hour period.

So my guess is Wednesday, Thursday, something like that. But I guess so then you think it could happen Wednesday or Thursday. They could arrest the President of the United States. Yeah. Now let me ask you a question. Some people whom I follow on Twitter have said this is about making it impossible for Trump to raise enough money to mount a successful 2024 campaign. Would that be why somebody like Ron DeSantis, whom I love, would have been silent about this? So I think, I don't know.

I mean, my guess is that he's being silent because he just doesn't want to weigh in and give any, you know, that Trump has called him names and he doesn't want to be seen as being helpful. I don't know. But I will say this. As I said, I think if Trump gets charged under the current scenario, you're going to see an outpouring of support financial and otherwise. He's not going to have a problem. I actually think that there are, that he is, this is a huge political boost to winning the primary for him. Oh, listen, he's going to win the primary. He's going to be the next president. Folks, I'm telling you, this only dramatizes how bad things are and why we need a fighter like Donald Trump now.

And, you know, the fact that you have rhinos who are coming out against this, CNN, which is, I can never remember if they're in league with the communist Chinese or something. Satan or both. I get it confused. All right. I'm not a detail guy. But the bottom line is CNN has made it clear that this is legally preposterous. CNN. They don't do that unless, but it's interesting that they're willing to weigh in and Ronda Santis was not. I think for his own political career, he should weigh in because I wish him well. But not in 2024. But it's very interesting, Sean, that we are living through this time together, try to process this together. I want to help my audience to process this together. Folks, when we come back, I'm talking to Chris, Chris Buzzkirk, our friend, Chris Buzzkirk about America. But, Sean, I want to congratulate you on everything you've done. You've

stood tall in the saddle for this country. You've taken a lot of hits. I want to congratulate you on the book. Folks, you can go to bravebooks.com. The title of the book is The Parrots. Go. bananas. And I just, I'm not going to tell you who's in the book, but the book is The Perrits. Go Bananas by Sean Spicer BraveBooks.com. Sean, God bless you. Thank you very much. Always a pleasure. Thank you for having me, sir. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed. And when oil prices go up, the cost of transportation and shipping spikes, leading the prices of goods to rise. And when we're already seeing record inflation,

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Their 100% U.S.-based customer service team make switching easy. Just go to patriotmobile.com slash Eric or call them at 878 Patriot. Get free activation today with the offer code Eric. Folks, welcome back. As promised, Christopher Buzzkirk. He is the author of a new book, America and the Art of the Pop. Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay. What do you know about this, Christopher Buzzkirk person?

Did you know, for example, that he is the publisher and editor of American greatness that John Zmirak is always raving about on this program? You've heard of American greatness, Julie Kelly, blah, blah, blah, Christopher Buzzkirk. He didn't just write this book and do all kinds of other stuff. He's the publisher and editor of American greatness. Christopher Buzzkirk, wonderful to have you on. the program. Thanks for coming on.

Oh, thank you for having me. Well, listen, we could talk about a million things, and maybe in the future we will. Today, I want to focus on your book. You have Encomia from no less than J.D. Vance and Victor Davis Hansen, a couple of anti-intellectual bums, if I've ever. I mean, geez, why would you put their blurbs on here? I don't understand. No, really, for folks like that to praise the book, um,

is a big deal. Congratulations. And congratulations on the book because it's a happy, it's a happy thesis, America and the art of the possible restoring national vitality in an age of decay. So what do you say? In other words, what makes you believe it's possible to restore national vitality in an age of decay? We certainly could use a little vitality and a little less decay. So where do you get the idea that that's possible? That is the way human beings are created, Eric. As you know, we have agency. We have the ability to make things better.

And we also have the ability to make things worse. And we do a lot of the latter. But that's not the only thing we're capable of. We're capable of all kinds of good things. And one of the frustrations that I have both sort of politically and culturally is that sort of what I think of is like, learned helplessness in our society. And I offer what I hope is, in general, what I hope is a constructive critique of people on the right,

because I think we are often guilty of learned helplessness, where we spend a lot of time thinking about how bad things are, about entropy in society. And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if you let it go too far. You don't know me well enough to know that I say this all the time. I hear people complaining. And look, you get this a lot on Fox News or whatever. They kind of, they get into the details of how horrible everything is. And I think at some point, that's unhelpful

because it leads us to believe like, there's nothing we can do. America's under judgment. It's all going to hell. That's not helpful. And if you buy into that, you yourself become part of the problem. And so I want to say thank you for expressing what I think is true is that we ought to be very, very careful about focusing on the negative to that point where we cease to think we can do anything about it? Yes. I mean, it kills all, like, it's demotivating, right? When you think that way, and it is extremely seductive to think that way.

Like, I think that the negativity that people dwell upon is pornographic. Like, it has a lot of the same. It has a lot of the same. No, no, no, I totally agree. It's almost sick that people can watch hours of this stuff. And you think, what is this doing to you? Is this good for you? It stops people from action.

And this book is really about action. And I, you know, I'm smiling because you said the book has a happy thesis. A friend of mine texted me a couple days ago. He's halfway through the book. He says, I hope it gets happier. And that's because the first half of the book is really diagnostic. But it is the second half of the book where the, where the happy thesis really takes full form because that's where that's where the prescriptive

element is because what I thought about when I was writing the book and I will admit to you and your audience, I was extremely tempted to write a negative book. In fact, I had several hundred pages of a negative book sketched out and I realized it was so unsatisfying and ultimately really I thought was unhelpful to people because complaining just, doesn't get you anywhere. Maybe it gets you more book sales. I'm not sure that thesis will not be tested with this book. And I got to, I wrote all this out and I sort of did what everybody always does, which I did the, you know, Ain't It Awful game. And I thought, I just can't do this because we are capable of so much more, both as, both as humans created in God's image, right? We're able to

partake in creation in a way that sort of mimics what God does de novo, but also as Americans. Our heritage as Americans is that of doers, of builders. And I say to people quite often, if I'm sort of out speaking on the book or really on just about any subject, I'll find a way to work it in, which is that, you know, the founders of this country did not simply complain about the problems they had with the crown, with the English government. They built a better country. And you think about the people who came before the founders of the republic, the settlers of this country, their viewpoint wasn't, I mean, think about the sort of the pilgrims, the Scrooby congregation. They went from place to place. You know, they were in the

Netherlands before they came to form the Massachusetts colony. They, and that was sort of iterative, but they ultimately became people who wanted to use their faith and their agency to build a society that they found conducive to building better lives for their families. And we need to understand that that is possible even now, even as big and complex as our society is that like human agency and human action really matters. Well, and listen, we should put our cards on the table. We're both Christians. And if you're any kind of a Christian, you have to believe that God,

commands us to do the right thing and to be positive and hopeful, even when things, or particularly when things are bleak. But there are so many people, not just conservatives, but Christians who buy into this negative view, they think they have some theological reason. Like, we're under judgment. Like, they know that there's no point in doing anything. And I, you know, I want to be the first to say, that's sinful folks. You're giving in a temptation that that's not the voice of God. That's the voice of the devil. And we've seen in the history of America this extraordinary entrepreneurial spirit. We have done things in this country. No country can begin to compare to what we have done in this country. You know, we didn't just invent the light bulb and put a man on the moon and invent flying machines and on and on and on.

But I would argue, and I would guess that you do at least to some extent, that that comes. whether it's a Protestant work ethic, or it's fundamentally biblical to have hope and to act in a hopeful way rather than to just complain and to point at how everything's going to hell in a handbasket. And I think that, you know, as a Christian, I can say it that way.

I can say that if you claim to be a Christian, you really have no business just wringing your hands or doing nothing, which, again, you said it before. It's a strong temptation, but it's wrong. And by the way, if you give into it, you become part of the problem. The title of the book, America and the Art of the Possible, Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay, do you talk a little bit about the crisis of cultural confidence also? Because that seems to me to come into it.

Yeah, I think that's a very big deal. And this is, it's easy to diagnose. You can see it all around you. It is, I think, not easy to fix, but possible, as I say. But the crisis that you see is something that you can also see in a lot of human history in civilizations. You know, some of them don't recover. Some of them do. But when you have, I guess, let me actually back up a step and say that, you know, before there can be a crisis of cultural confidence,

you have to have a culture that is confident. Like that culture developed in a certain way because it believed something. And there was something that unified the culture. And one of the things I talk about quite a bit in the book as the hallmark or one of the markers of a healthy, sustainable, successful civilization is the ability to do big tasks together as a society. And you can see this throughout human history. And by the way, the biggest things that humans often have done, regardless of what the specific religion is, revolve around, have revolved around their faiths. Religion, as I note in the book, is something that unifies civilizations. It's been true of Christian civilization, but it was also true of many pagan civilizations throughout history.

You think about the monuments that have been constructed that are some of the things that we think of as achievements in. in human history. And I, you know, there's obviously the, you know, the, the, the pyramids in Egypt or you have sort of the great Buddhas that were built throughout Asia and that have lasted for a long time. The example I love for, for Christians, which I think is, is really instructive, is the cathedral in Milan. And I use this example in the book because the, the cathedral in Milan was begun construction

in 1385. And they concluded construction in 19-19. You know why? It's because the unions got involved and they screwed it all up. We'll be right back talking to Christopher. Buzz Kirk. The book is America and the art of the possible. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night. I was asked that question. Well, the owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal. That's right, designed to heal. And I agree with them. And the doctors who formulated relief factor for them, selected the four best ingredients, yes, 100% drug-free ingredients, and each one of

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talking to Christopher Buzzkirk, who's the publisher and editor of American greatness. John Zemarck is always bragging about that. Julie Kelly is writing great stuff for that. Our own album, SADAR, has written for American greatness many times. So we're talking to Christopher Buskirk

about his book, America, and the art of the possible restoring national vitality in an age of decay. And Christopher, you were just making the point about the Milan Cathedral. and I cracked a stupid anti-labor joke. But please continue. You said that the Milan Cathedral was begun when in the 14th century?

Yeah, the late 14th century. So about 1385 is when it was, it was the construction was begun. It was concluded in 1963. It took effectively 600 years to build the Milan Cathedral. And this is in the context of the question you asked about like about a loss of cultural confidence. And this is an example. I think of extreme, a positive extreme cultural confidence. For 600 years, the people of Milan believed that they should continue building this cathedral,

which if you've been there, it's beautiful, there's all kinds of good things that we can say about it, the sculpture, the stained glass, like everything about it is really, there are any number of remarkable feats of craftsmanship, which are done in the name of glorified. God, and I'm sure probably at some point glorifying people, too. But it was something that showed that there was a capacity for collective action there that showed a cultural confidence that and a continuity that lasted over a very long period of time. And by the way, one of my favorite factoid about that is, you know, what they started doing

in 1964, the year after they concluded construction, is they began the restoration of the cathedral. So this is like, this is, the construction in a sense continues on because there is a fundamental belief throughout all kinds of different ages of history, pre-modern, modern, post-modern, that this is something that is worth doing. The unifying thing there is religion. There are other, I think, themes there, beauty is a theme that helps to unite people in the construction of that particular cathedral. but the confidence that we're thinking about that is required to do that, I think, is not present in in, in 2023 America. There's still remnants of it. And what we need to try and figure out how we can do it is to reinvigorate that confidence. Because in order to build a cathedral like that, you have to agree before you even break around that that's something that's worth doing, let alone be able to do it for 600 years.

Well, it's one thing to talk about religion. But really what you're talking about is the transcendent. People want, I mean, we all know, or at least if we think about it, we know that we are not the products of random naturalistic processes. There's something beyond. And we want to express that. We express that in art. We express that in some of the things you've been describing. We expressed it in putting a man on the moon.

These are extraordinary things that we're willing to do because we're we're willing to do because we're, we believe in something larger than ourselves. And you're right. I mean, in the last years, we have lost that. I don't think most Americans have lost that, but I think the cultural elites have lost that. And I think the cultural elites are part of this neelistic acid that has eaten away and that has told us that, you know, you don't even know if you're a man or a woman, much less what the purpose of life is. And I think that we have to push against that with all our might and main, first of all, because it's a lie. But secondly, because it's hard. harmful. It hurts people. And I think there is something beautiful when people unite. I mean,

when I think of the story of Prague, rebuilding Prague after the Second War, how everybody got involved in that. And so I don't know what those things will be for us today, but it's important for us to understand that that's been at the heart of America from the beginning, that we're going to do the impossible. And probably we're going to need to lean on God in the middle of, you know, of that. When you talk about in your chapter, America in the World, what do you have to say on that subject? I think, so this is set, when I talk about America in the world, this is set in the context of understanding America's first few hundred years of existence. And the way, the very simple framing of that is that, you know, this country is settled slash founded beginning in the early 17th century. You know, you've got Jamestown in 1607, and then you've got the Mayflower in 1620.

And you've got these, you know, small, pretty tenuous, but also weirdly optimistic colonies, you know, clinging to like just the bare edge of the Atlantic coast. They develop over time. There's a war for independence. There's a lot of optimism around this new republic that everybody is engaged in this. big project to build something new, something better. You've got, you've got this land that seems to provide endless possibilities for doing interesting and good things and making human life better. That happens in, you know, between 1776 and 1789, but then the national project becomes building the country and it's settling the frontier. So it's how do we get

from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And that happens, obviously. And it is the massive project of all Americans in one way, shape, or form over the next, you know, 150 or so years. But the, you know, but we get as a people, we get to the Pacific Coast. You know, we go from, we go from Massachusetts to Santa Monica, effectively. And the frontier basically closes. And then I think there's a question, well, what is the national project now? like we won, like we got to the Pacific, you know, and there's some fill-in work to be done.

You know, the Sun Belt states get built after, you know, in the early 20th century. You know, we add Alaska and Hawaii, but that's basically in a way. And I live in Arizona, sunbelt states, so, but we're a little bit of, we're a little bit of a footnote. And so the America in the world now becomes, well, America uses all this restless dynamic, sometimes creative and sometimes destructive energy to go to war. Actually, hang on one second. We're going to go to a break, and we will let Christopher complete that in other sentences. Don't go away.

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how somehow we deal with our energy once we've conquered, you know, once we've gotten across all the way across the continent, war becomes a thing. Talk about that. Yeah, so basically with the frontier effectively closes, like we win the battle of the frontier and we conquer the continent in the early 20th century. So, you know, I live in Arizona. We were the 48th state. We came into the union in 1912. And the question is, what do we do with all of this, like, restless creative energy as Americans? And Woodrow Wilson answers that question, Will, like, we did everything so great here.

Obviously, now we just turn that energy outwards and we go to war in Europe. And he leads Americans to war by saying we're fighting this war for democracy. And the United States has been at war ever since. Like there has been almost no period where we have not been at war for the past a little bit more than a century now. And one of the arguments that I make in the book is that that has not been good for America. that being a constant war for a century in other people's countries has actually hurt our country because we have spent a lot of our time, talent, and treasure doing that. And what we have seen, especially over the past 40 or 50 years at home, is that, number one,

it is just politically divisive at home. But it has also distracted us from the business of making Americans lives better. You know, the argument that a lot of conservatives have made who have problems with a lot of foreign interventionism is like, why have we spent $100 billion because we're interested in defending Ukraine's borders, but we can't spend any money defending our borders? Because somehow that doesn't seem to be a priority for a lot of American elites of both parties. And so the argument here is that, you know, the middle class over the past 50 years has gotten smaller and it has got. and it has gotten poorer and it has become more precarious than it was before. The last time it was possible in this country

to support a middle-class lifestyle, which I would define as you can own a house, you can have two kids, you can own a car, you can send a kid to college, you can have health care. The last time was possible to afford that on a single median wage, so by definition middle class,

the last time you could do that on one median wage was 1989. And so now it takes two median wages in order to have what we all think of as just basic middle class America. And that is, that is in part because we have not focused on improving the quality of life of Americans. And we've thought, I think, way too much about what we can do in these faraway places. is we send our young men often really the best and the brightest off to fight these wars. A lot of them don't come back. What could they have done at home?

What could those resources have been done at home? And this is a big part of what I think about when I think about revitalizing America. That means rebuilding our middle class. Like if we want to have a successful republic, if we want to maintain self-government here, the predicate to that is having a strong, self-sustaining, and growing prosperous middle class. And for the best 50 years, we've had just the opposite. And we need, you know, if we don't want to sort of degenerate over time into what a lot of

countries on the planet are, which is a very tiny ruling class that is very rich, built on top of effectively a surf class, then we need to focus on rebuilding the middle because that has always been the backbone of this country. Just that that's what makes self-government possible. And again, I think, well, I haven't said it, but it seems to me that was, that's what accounts for the popularity in the past and the present of Donald Trump is that somehow he seemed to get some of these things, which most global elites, including tons in the Republican Party, simply don't get. They've lost touch with the common men and women of the country and with, you know, the quaint idea of, patriotism, love of country. I mean, those basic things, which, you know, we're talking about, the elites over the last decades really have moved us farther and farther from that. And of

course, in some ways, it's all come to a head now. We're kind of seeing it in all of its horror in a way that we really haven't. We're kind of it's, we're seeing it in its nakedness in a way, whereas before a lot of it was underground or it's just easier to look away from. At least that's how it strikes me. I have a question I used to slightly troll people. Eric, what do you think America's number one export has been over the past 30 years? And people, you know, they'll scratch their heads. I'll be like, I don't know, oil?

Is oil and gas? No. Is it agriculture? No. And I always say it's our number one export is, has been the middle class. We've exported it all to Asia, which is, you know, it's the problem with it is it's kind of true. And, you know, when China at our behest, by the way, was admitted to the WTO in 2000, that really harmed our middle class because we started literally shipping jobs. Like there were investment bankers who made a lot of money in the 2000s, because,

their business was literally going to the American heartland, and they would send the entire factory. Like, people think, like, oh, the jobs just went away of kind of a theory. They'd actually pack up the factories and send them and send them to China, and those jobs never came back. Well, look, that's, you talk about patriotism. This is anti-patriotism. This is Craven Greed, which brought about extraordinary harms. to their fellow Americans, and they didn't care. And of course, the political classes,

whether it's the people who think the free market is the answer to, you know, liberty, that if we just do business with the Nazis or the communist Chinese, they'll all become just like us. That's, of course, not quite right. That doesn't work. It didn't work. And then on the left, it was greed combined with naivete

toward the evil of the communist Chinese and what they would do with it. So very, very important that we understand how all of this happened. We have just a few minutes stuff, folks. I'm talking to Christopher Buzzkirk. The book is America and the Art of the Possible, restoring national vitality in an age of decay. Don't go away.

We'll be right back. Folks, welcome back talking to Christopher Buzzkirk. He's the publisher and editor of American greatness, with which you must be familiar. The new book is America and the Art of the Possible. So what is some of the ways? we can restore vitality. What are some of the things that you suggest in the book, Christopher? Yeah, so this is actually my favorite part of the book. There was a visceral enjoyment for a flaw in my character of writing the complaint part of the diagnostic part of what went wrong. But actually, the more fun part is at the end of the book where I offer some concrete solutions. And I always caution folks when they read the book. I said, like, I do not have a silver bullet.

to fix everything. The problems really are, they're too big, they're too systemic. I said, but, you know, also, there are things that we can do. And it's kind of like the old joke, like, how do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time? And so this is the way I approach it. When I was thinking about the things that we can do, my goal was to think of things that were big enough to matter and seem slightly crazy, but actually we're still achievable. And so, you know, I began by thinking, like, what are the concrete problems?

Like we say, well, there's cultural decay. Well, that's hard to quantify, right? So in a way, it's hard to, not impossible, but it's hard to come up with a solution. But one of the things that I came up with that is easy to identify, to quantify, is that American lifespans have been declining, which surprises people, unless they're, unless they follow this subject. but for a little more than 10 years, the median life expectancy in the United States has been declining. The CDC released the number earlier this year for 2022.

It's now down to 75.3 years median life expectancy. And we are conditioned to believe, well, this is like this is modernity. Obviously, we're living a little longer every year. And in America, it's not true. People are living fewer years. and they are sicker later in life than they've been in many, many years. So there's more disease. And at the same time, you look at some of our peer countries.

And an example I use not in the book, but in something I wrote earlier, this year is France. So France, at the same time, our median life expectancy has been declining. Their median life expectancy has been increasing. So they're now at like 80.5 years. They're chronic disease, things like heart disease, diabetes, those sorts of things, also much lower incidence than what we see in the United States. And we think about a civilization that is vital, like literally vital, you know, same root word as life. You should have people living longer and healthier lives. And that seems to me to be a completely uncontroversial but also a very worthwhile goal for us to undertake, which is let's,

let's like a national goal that we should be able to unify around is let's get people let's get Americans to live longer and healthier everybody for step one is people should realize it's not happening now it's actually going the other way and it has been for a while it doesn't have to be this way because there are pure countries that are that are doing way better and so I have a project that I describe how to do it like some ideas about how to do it I say I call it America 100 which is let's have a goal where we say the median life expectancy of Americans 50 years from now is going to be 100 years old. It seems a little crazy, but it doesn't seem that crazy, right? Like it's like it's within spitting distance.

It's not like I'm saying let's all be Methuselow, live to 969, but like could we get it up to or even close to 100? I love the idea of the goal, the idea, and by the way, I'm going to invest in Walker's. But seriously, no, I think that that's a lot. a beautiful goal because you start beginning to think practically. How would we do that? What are the issues? We're out of time. Look, we've got to have you back. There's lots more to talk about. Christopher Buzzkirk, thank you for the book, America and the Art of the Possible. And thanks for your time. We'll talk to you again. Thanks a lot.