The Eric Metaxas Show - David Berlinski

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

David Berlinski, noted polymath and author of several potent books, including "Human Nature," is in the studio to continue his conversation begun several weeks back at Socrates in the City.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metaxos. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's LegacyPm Investments.com. Eric Mattaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey, Alba. Hey, Eric. This is weird. This is my second, uh, this is, this is the second segment of the week that I'm doing from an airport. I'm flying, as you know, to, well, I'm in, let's see, today I'm flying to Denver. I'm right now in the Charlotte Airport to record this segment of Ask Mataxis. It's that time in the week.

There's no other word for us to do it. I'll do it from the airport. I mean, if Michelle Bachman can opine on the election from the Dallas airport, if somebody as amazing as Michelle Bachman can do it, I should be able to do ask them taxes from an airport, right? Yeah, I mean, why not? I love the background players you got there, the extras. They look great in the background.

Yes, they look very realistic. Yeah, you're going to watch us on Rumble, folks, and you'll see what we're talking about. A release. So, okay, so what are the questions? Read them loudly and a little noisy here. Okay, this sounds like it's a little early, but here's question number one. What do you like most about the Christmas season? What moves you the most about Christian traditions?

Christmas, isn't it a little early to talk about Christmas? First of all, let me say this. One of the things I love about Christmas is that traditionally it's held at Christmas. So when people start celebrating, now can you hear me because there's somebody talking behind me? Is this okay? Yeah, yeah. When people celebrate Christmas too early, it annoys me. I just want to be very clear.

I think starting Christmas before Thanksgiving is blasphemous. And because it just makes it less special. kind of dribbles out. It's kind of like having a, you know, it's like selling, writing your, your anniversary over six months. Like at some point, it just becomes regular life. So my favorite Christmas tradition is celebrating Christmas at Christmas, and I have very formed, uh, rigid opinions on that. So I'm willing to do it after Thanksgiving, but it, to me, once it bleeds before Thanksgiving, it just becomes like a sloppy marketing trend, which most people are happy to go along with, but they're wrong. So I want to say that that's the most

important thing. The second thing I wanted to say about Christmas tradition is watching the Albert Finney Scrooge musical. I just have to say, I saw it when I was seven years old. I write about this as I do most of my life in my book, Fish Out of Water, which is coming out in paperback in March. Oh my gosh. Anyway, in that book, I tell how when I was seven years old, my grandmother took us to Radio City Musical. We lived in Queens, of course, Jackson Heights. She took us on the terrain to Radio City Musical to see the 1970 Scrooge musical with, I'm titled Scrooge with Albert Finney. And I love that. And every year I watch that.

That's one tradition. But it's interesting, Suzanne and Anna Rose have instituted, it's mainly Suzanne, but have instituted other traditions into our family. One is that we always have Christmas breakfast. We have a special breakfast where Suzanne makes the. and I think they make these blueberry cranberry muffins, and we have a really special breakfast and open our presents together. But this Christmas breakfast of like, you know, scrambled eggs and bacon and these incredible muffins, it's just, it's a beautiful thing.

So I'll leave it at that since we have so many other questions. Yes, sounds terrific. I heard you were at Mar-Lago for President Trump's big announcement on Tuesday, day. What are your thoughts? What are your thoughts, especially who do you think he will or should pick for his VP running mate this time around? Well, I have to say, watching him yesterday only confirmed to me that this nomination is his. And anyone, including Rick DeSantis, foolish enough, did I say Rick DeSantis? Am I? Ron. Yeah. I can't believe I said that. Ron DeSantis. is anybody foolish enough to challenge him, I think we'll get crushed, we'll get bruised and

could end their political career. I don't say that as a threat. I think that's a reality. I think if you have wisdom, you know that so many people in this country aren't just behind Trump, but love Trump for where he brought us as a nation. I mean, to have three Supreme Court justices confirmed, who overest, overest, turned Rovi-Wade, to have us energy independent, to have the economy booming. I mean, of course, he made mistakes, but generally speaking, it was, he really is owed, I think, our, our fidelity for this,

for this season in the GOP. So I think if DeSantis is smart, he would make a deal before anything to be the VP nomination or at least try to get that. But I think loyalty to Trump is going to be very big. And I think it's easy to talk, but I honestly think that at the end of the day, anybody who goes up against him would be sorry in a sense. I think that they have to be very careful because I just think so many people are so loyal to him and rightfully. So at Marilago, I was reminded as he spoke of just in a sense of how he gave so many people hope at a time with it, there was little hope. And I really think to be able to get out of the ditch in which we'd find ourselves and to go back to what things were like before COVID. But I honestly think

he's the guy. And, you know, maybe DeSantis, maybe Kerry Lake, but it'll be very interesting. Yeah, here's another Trump 2024 question. So seeing as Donald Trump has just announced, do you admit that the path towards a Republican nomination will be more difficult this time around? and if DeSantis gets the nomination, will you, Eric Metaxes, vote for DeSantis? I would vote for anybody on the GOP ticket. There is zero doubt about that. I mean, even the idea that anybody wouldn't do that to me is crazy.

It's just crazy. But I don't think the nomination process should be so tough for Trump because he's shown us what he can do. and the dramatic contrast with the nightmare under Biden. And as Trump said at Mar-a-Lago, it's probably going to get worse. It's going to get worse. We've only seen two years. It's horrifying to me.

But if that's what it takes to wake people up, you know, in God's mercy, I really just, I don't know what it's going to take to wake some people up to understand what we need to do and whether we need to get serious about keeping. the republic. But I think Trump is the man to save the country from effective annihilation. I don't mean nuclear annihilation, although that's, of course, now on the table, thanks to Biden, but I think from actual annihilation. Okay. Now, this one came in a couple days ago. The news might be different now, but it says, or they're asking Russia hit Poland. We think it might be Ukraine at this point, potentially accidentally with a bomb or two. Do you, do we have to step in,

through NATO, is this our problem? I think it's all ridiculous. I think the level of corruption now, that's the real issue is the level of corruption in the Biden administration, what we saw with this FTX thing. I mean, it is so grotesque. And most of the American people have been played

with regard to Ukraine. And I think that the idea of kickbacks to Democratic candidates, it just doesn't get bigger than that in terms of corruption. and cynicism, and it's a moral issue. I'm going to say this over and over. It's a moral issue. If you're any kind of a person of faith, you need to understand this is, this is wicked. This is absolutely as cynical and dirty as anything I've ever seen in my life. That's to me, that's the main issue with regard to Ukraine at present. Okay. Before I get to the last question here,

real quick, don't forget folks to go to Salem now.com, watch border battle. If you want the question answered about what's going on on our border with the fentanyl coming in, with all the people pouring across. Charlie Kirk has put through together a six-part series that you must see border battle at SalemNow.com. Last question, is there another Socrates event this fall? And if so, how do I sign up? December 6th, Socrates in the city will have

as my very special guest, Oz Guinness, in New York City. We're going to have a lot of special guests there. I have to say, I'm so, excited about this. I know I've mentioned this before, but if you can come to New York for December 6th for the Socrates event, you don't want to miss this one. Socrates wouldn't even exist if it weren't for Oz Guinness. So go to Socratescity.com, sign up. We're out of time. I can't believe I'm doing this at an airport. This is hilarity. Folks, thanks for listening. Bye. Bye, Eric. 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.

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And I get to continue my conversation with David Berlinski. Many of you listening, you heard the first part of this conversation some days ago. But we continue. David, you know, I think I want to ask you a little bit about yourself and your life. I can't help myself. I do this instinctively. People think it's some interviewer's hat that I wear, but I did this long before I ever had any kind of show or something.

I just want to know where people come from, where did they get? So you grew up in New York. Oh, I was born in New York in 1942, February in 1942, just a couple of months after my parents arrived in the United States. And I don't think I went to kindergarten. I don't think there were kindergartens when I was growing up. But I went to elementary school, and then I went to Bronx Science,

then I went to Columbia, and then I went to Princeton, entirely a New York experience. First time in my life I left New York, it was to go to Stanford in California as an assistant professor. Okay, so you were in college in the early 60s? Well, late 50s, early 60s. Late 50s, early 60s. When did you know, and I don't know if you can answer this question, but I'll ask it, when did you know that you were intellectually remarkable? Was this something that you knew already in grade school or that your parents knew? I mean, to go to Bronx science? No, I was a terrible student.

I was lazy. I was indifferent. I was completely occupied with anything but the curriculum. And that went through Bronx science. It went through most of Columbia. It was only when I got to graduate school that I said, you know, there's something interesting here. It was very delayed. Yeah, but you don't get into Colombia by being a dunderhead. So at some point, you clearly cared enough to go to college and to go to an IBD school.

Oh, sure. That was expected. What was your major as an undergraduate? It was history. History. History. Especially medieval history. Did you have, or I should say, did you have a sense at that very young age of what you might want to do with yourself?

I mean, if somebody said to you at age 18 or 19, what do you want to do when you grow up? Well, you have to remember how different the academic environment was in the late 50s, early part of the 60s. And academic career seemed just terrific to me. You could do very interesting work. You were protected. You were in an academic environment. You had interesting colleagues, and you could teach. That just seemed to me like a very good deal.

But even as an undergrad, you know... Well, at that transition point, when I entered graduate school, in 1963, I went to Princeton as a graduate student. To get a Ph.D. in what? It was in philosophy. Okay, so your undergrad was history. But then at some point... See, this is... It's interesting to me.

because to pivot to philosophy from history. History, you know, I'm a humanities guy. I love history. I was an English major, but I love history. Philosophy feels to me like a movement toward mathematics. That was exactly my situation. I felt that very strongly. But the pivot to philosophy occurred

because in the 50s, I happened to watch an omnibus. You remember omnibus? disappeared entirely. It was kind of an interesting show of the 1950s with a lot of intellectual pretensions. They would recreate the Socratic dialogues. I think Alistair Cook might have been the moderator

or the host. I'm astonished that I have not heard of that, because it sounds like something right up my alley. Was Bennett Surf involved in any way? I wish I could answer. Okay, so this was a TV program? Yeah, we got a TV in 1955 or 56, very late. I saw this show, and I was just fascinated because they did

a dramatization of Plato's The Apology. And I was just mesmerized by it, just riveted by it, all through Columbia. I didn't take any philosophy, because I was busy with history causes. I had the nagging sense that my real interests were philosophical. And then when I got to Princeton, I had the additional sense that my real interests were much more closely aligned with mathematical logic and mathematics than philosophy itself. And that was the beginning of what I like to think of as first steps in intellectual maturity, recognizing both where my interests and whatever talents I might possess happen to lie. So you get a PhD in philosophy?

Yeah, yeah. From Princeton. What do you do after that? Well, you've got to remember what a racket the academic world really was. I mean, there I was, 1964, the world about to explode, the Vietnam War, commencing race riots in the streets, and yet the graduate students at Princeton had one job offer after the other. And one day somebody says, hey, we got a job offer from Stanford. Want to go live in Stanford?

I had no idea where California was on the map. What Stanford represented. But when he told me that the weather was great and the living was easy, I said, sure. I mean, that is the way one proceeded in the late 50s and early 60s in the academic world, as if through a grease tunnel. And I got out to Stanford, and I have to say, I loved the place. I loved California. I thought it was overwhelmingly exotic and strange and very beautiful. There was no Silicon Valley. Were there orange groves nearby? A valley of fruit trees and bloom. It was just wonderful. And Stanford was a slow-paced, lazy institution. Nobody really thought. thought very highly of work. All the professors that I knew outside of mathematical logic were

busy building bungalows in the hills or pursuing real estate ventures or anything but teaching or doing active intellectual work. It was perfect. And there were very many interesting people around. So I had to teach, I think, at three hours a semester or something like that. So you were teaching philosophy? Both. Logic and philosophy. Logic and philosophy. So when did you squirt into the world of mathematics? At Stanford, I became very close friends with a mathematician, Daniel Gallen, who took his PhD at Berkeley under Alfred Tarski. And we started talking together, and I said, I'm interested in definition of logical truth, things like that. And he happened to be interested in model theory. So we collaborated for a couple of years, and we published a paper on it.

We developed a very intense friendship based on the work we had done together. And I realized at that point I was very much more interested in these kinds of technical developments. Did you get any degree in math, or is there something that you were doing work in math? I was doing work in math. I did go to, I entered the degree program at Columbia, the Department of Mathematics, but I was already a professor at Rutgers, and I had two children at home. busy on any number of fronts. I couldn't continue to a PhD in mathematics. Probably for the best. I wasn't really interested in acquiring a PhD in mathematics.

And that's an interest we share in not acquiring a PhD in mathematics. It worked out okay. Yeah. But you, really one of the things that I love about you is your ability to be, you know, what's called, interdisciplinary, and to help those outside of a discipline to understand that discipline or to appreciate something about that. I mean, it's like when you were writing about Newton, but to write a book on calculus

or on the algorithm, to talk about it in a way that reasonably interested people could understand. I mean, that's very rare, as you know, most mathematicians don't write about math. So when did you feel that you wanted to write about these things for a wider audience? I was teaching calculus and other sort of linear algebra calculus, up and down the California coast, half a dozen different schools.

Out of the back of a wagon? Just about. Commuting on the Bayshore freeway. I went down to San Jose, taught there. I went to San Francisco State, taught there, University of Santa Clara, and some dismal institution in Napa Valley, whose name I've obliterated from my memory, where I taught art history of all things.

Really? Yeah, don't ask me about that. Any particular period? Don't ask me about that. They said, do you want to teach art history? And they offered me a salary. I said, sure. Who wouldn't?

Yeah. But the point is, I wrote that book, a tour of the calculus, as a love letter to the subject, because I found it thrilling to teach, thrilling to study. And I think nobody should be studying the calculus who doesn't have, nobody should be studying mathematics,

who doesn't have that deep feeling of enrapturement. Because that's what the subject really provokes, enraptrement, doesn't it? Well, it should, and it could, but in many of us it didn't. And that's why I look forward to reading the book. It didn't in me either. I mean, I remember Bronx science being tormented by elementary algebra. Teacher was very dedicated, but absolutely no ability to tell me the answers to the questions I really had. I was just baffled by the simplest things, 5x equals 25.

What is X? And I raised my hand. What do you mean? What in the world do you mean that you were baffled by that? No, the bafflement was very, very immature. I said, how can you multiply a letter by a number? And she couldn't answer. How can you multiply X by something?

What do I mean 5x is, or X, X, X, X, X, X. That question is so elementary that. But it really makes me think you must be either an idiot or a genius. I know it's not the former, but it's kind of funny in a way that it could. Well, always can be both. But the point is, Eric, I didn't answer it until I hit graduate school. I couldn't answer it. I think you were looking for a deeper answer than the teacher was willing to give.

When we come back, we're going to let you see if you can explain what you came up with on that score. We'll be right back. How long you're going to stay here, Joe? Some people say, this town don't look good. Tell me, Eric, why is relief factor so successful at lowering or eliminating pain? I'm often asked that question. 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.

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ordered more. Go to Relieffactor.com or call 800 for relief to find out about this offer. Feel the difference. Ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about algebra, about the concept of variables as expressed by letters. And I just find it funny, David, maybe you can explain, maybe. What was the deeper answer you were looking for when you said you're baffled by, you know, 5x equals 25? How can you multiply a letter by a number? What was the answer? I feel like you're looking for some deep...

Look, Eric, if somebody had told me when I was in the ninth grade and very, very immature intellectually, look, you're familiar with this. You just don't recognize the point of familiarity. You use pronouns all the time. He, it, she. It's exactly the same thing. We're just using a pronoun. I got a much better answer when I learned mathematical logic

and formal languages and exactly what a variable. was, as you just pointed out. But in the ninth grade, I was baffled by lots of things in mathematics. The only course that made perfect sense was Euclidean geometry, and that's a very common, common experience. I didn't understand percentages. I couldn't quite figure out percentages. What is per cent? I didn't know. And nobody could explain it to me. I had difficulties with fractions. I mean, what does it mean to say one over two? You know, I got myself. self-faffled over two, part of two. It was only when I got together with Dan Gallen,

the friend I mentioned, he gave me the formal definition of division from the mathematical logic point of view. This is, ah, now I understand it. Boy, oh boy. Most people don't have these problems. You have to really, you have to be saddled with a pretty whopping IQ to be asking these questions. I find it hilarious. I'm sorry.

We were referring earlier to the program Omnibus, and Albin, my producer hopefully said that it was on from 1952 to 1961, and Alistair Cook was the host, and I'm really amazed I haven't heard of that. I mean, I know Steve Allen in the 60s and 70s would do Meeting of the Minds. I think it was a little later. Well, no, Steve Allen was later. Yeah. So I've heard of that, but I think I've heard of the show Omnibus, but I didn't.

We all watched it. My whole family made a tremendous impression, not every episode, but it made a tremendous impression. Well, can you imagine that the hope TV was going to be it was going to introduce these kinds of ideas to the world?

There was something in the intellectual climate, the cultural climate, in the 50s that people were doing book clubs and self-improvement and that kind of thing. Of course, that all was burned in a fire in 1968 at Columbia

and Europe. Oh, for sure. For sure, it was burned. It was completely destroyed. I mean, it's an interesting point you raise. I think it's generally forgotten how rich a period the late 40s and 50s really were, from every point of view, musical, artistic, scientific. I mean, this was a great flowering of American literature. You had Updike, you had Roth, but you also had Vladimir Nabokov in the 1950s. These were tremendously interesting figures. You had important critics like Lionel Trilling and Jacques It was very overwhelmingly rich, and omnibus was the way I got introduced to that. It's interesting because you realize Woody Allen got a whole career out of, you know, making fun of those things or referencing those things. And that was still alive into the 70s.

But I mean, it's a world in which some of us still at least partially live, but the world has moved on. and it's kind of amazing how far we've come from that. You know, Edmund Wilson has a wonderful passion. He's got a diary from the 60s, and he begins the diary by saying, I've always considered myself a man of the 20s. And when I look back, I can say to myself, I always consider myself someone of the late 40s and the 50s. The 50s were a generation where I felt completely at home,

understood everything about the culture in which I was embedded. And since then, I've never. felt that way about any subsequent period. Wow. I'd go back. What's that? I'd go back. You'd go back. Well, sure. But it's interesting. This gets back a little bit to what we were talking about

at the Socrates and the city event. The utopianist tendencies that many people have. And I think that that's expressed a little bit, even in what we were just talking about, that there's this idea that we're going to a golden age.

We now have the technology of television, and the whole world will be interested in the big ideas, and we're going to do programs like omnibus and meeting of the minds. That's absolutely true. And these kinds of things. A similar thing happened with the advent of the Internet, a really, although it was really a little bit less noble, but there were people who thought, now everyone will have access to truth, and it'll be magical. And it's a Tower of Babel.

I mean, the idea that through technology now we're going to solve all our problems is ridiculous. At least people should at least think it might be ridiculous. But a lot of people naively think this is it. No, this is it. That's absolutely right. Look, the promise of the 50s did not materialize. The 50s ended in disappointment, and they ended in the catastrophe of the 60s. I think the Internet is exactly the same phenomenon being repeated.

Tremendous excitement about the Internet. Except Q. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's, well, that's another story. But yeah, that idea that we're now, now everyone will have access to that. Because what does it do? And again, you talk about this in your book Human Nature, but it presupposes that everyone will naturally be attracted to these noble ideas and things.

But, Eric, they were in the 50s. Well, many were. Those programs were a success in the 50s, and something happened. And again, I keep insisting on what is obviously a trivial point. Something happened for which we don't have a good analysis or explanation. The 60s intervened. Actually, we're going to a break. This is called a cliffhanger in show business, folks.

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Eric. Talking to David Berlinski, David, you were just saying about the 60s. Well, I lived through the 60s. I wasn't a baby boomer. I was a little older. So I had a slightly better perspective than what was happening. I wasn't immersed into the 60s, but I was a part of that experience, that cultural experience. And I was always baffled by kind of a very simple question. Why did the 60s put an end? to the ascending trajectory of American culture in the 1950s. The only thing that it propelled was rock music. But all of the high artistic aspirations fell by the wayside. And they fell very quickly. You can mark the 60s, for example,

as the decade in which classical music underwent a convulsion. It's very mysterious to me why these things happen. I mean, they're partial answers. There was an enormous baby boomer generation. And those kind of cohorts in history always mean trouble. There was also, no, it's true. It's true.

It's not intended to be an ironic or fascism. When you have a tremendous number of young people, there's a great deal of trouble. Well, it's also the horishness of the free market. Let's go after those young people and give them what they want and to heck with their parents. But there was the accident of the Vietnam War. Who knows what the 60s would have been like without that? the Vietnam War, an enormous number of young people milling around. But the question that I find fascinating, simultaneously there was a collapse in virtually every system of authority, especially

in the academic world. And that I saw firsthand at Columbia, for example. But that's at the heart of all of this. There was, I mean, the way I process it is that it's, I mean, look, if you read my book on Martin Luther. This is exactly what happened in the 1520s. Of course. It's obviously what happened the French Revolution. It's kind of crazy utopianist, usually disgruntled, angry, emotional young people, usually from the poorer ranks, or at least feigning solidarity with the working poor or something like that. And it's the grievance industry. They decided that all of those uppity adults, you know,

needed to be taken down a peg or two. You know, I think there's a certain amount of truth in what you've just said, and you certainly see that again and again in history. It's not only the generation of 1520 with Martin Luther. You go back 500 years to 1080 or 1060 to 1080, and the papacy of Gregory the 7th. You see exactly the same. Exactly the same.

I'm not familiar with that period of history. They launch a revolution, a papal revolution. And it all came to grief within 10 years. Gregory the 7th was chased into exile. He said, I have loved justice and hated in iniquity. Therefore, I die in exile. And the whole program, the Gregorian program, collapsed. But it was exactly angry, turbulent young men getting together

and deciding that all sources of authority that they had accepted, must now be rejected. And that's what happened in the 60s. And I saw it at Columbia where very, very eminent professors simply caved into the mob. But see, that's the key. It's one thing for immature young people to behave immaturely. It's another thing for adults given positions of authority and responsibility to abdicate to those moms. Oh, I agree. Look, Eric, I was standing there at Columbia when the entire university was convulsed by student mobs. They entered the president's office, put their muddy feet on the desk, and started smoking his cigars.

And things became so turbulent and so tense that the university had no other choice but to call in the New York police. And I was standing there. We saw the police arriving. I was in the company of a professor of philosophy, Sidney Morgan Bessor. Very smart guy. I admired him intensely.

And you know what the New York police used to be, like. They came and there was no mistaking the New York police for a Columbia professor. There were big, heavy squat guys and they were doing this with their trunchants to make it absolutely clear what they intended to do.

And they did it. They went in and cleaned up the University and Sidney Morgan Besser and I were talking. He was absolutely appalled. He could see the third Reich emerging in front of his eyes. He was just beside himself. And I said, Professor Morgan Besser,

would you see the university sacked and pillaged rather than use the New York police in order to do the job for which we're paying them? And I think his answer was yes. And then I knew. I knew something had collapsed. That's the issue. That's what's so extraordinary. You know, when Luther exhorted those and authority to crack down on the peasants, you know, it wasn't that the peasants didn't have a point, but at some point you have to say, excuse me, this is not going to work violence and, you know, anarchy and vandalism and murder, that's not going to fly.

And if the adults in the late 60s had simply said, listen, we can talk, but we're not going to allow you to draw us onto that level. But they didn't. Right. They didn't. And they haven't done so since. I mean, the same system. And why? That's my question.

Okay. Well, part of the answer, I think, has to do with their own, somebody recently, and the reason he was called it, lack of cultural confidence. In other words, that they themselves, when challenged, didn't have the confidence to say, excuse me, you're wrong. You're absolutely right, but why did it collars? I mean, these were men who had won the Second World War, after all. They had persevered throughout the 50s in the face of a serious adversary.

They were cultivated, that was sophisticated, they were well-read. They were in charge of these institutions, and yet at a decisive moment, something happened to cause them to collapse. Isn't it usually, at least partially, guilt? It's so hard to say. You know, to do a serious analysis would require a whole lot more sociology than I'd be able to command right now. All I can do is, I'm reporting anecdotally. this is what I saw. The question that remains is why at a certain moment, throughout the West, this took place in France as well.

It's still taking place in France. Collapse in all forms of institutional authority. And once that authority is gone, it is insanely difficult to recover it. Well, that's right. And to my mind, what's fascinating is that it's like the young people, you know, challenge these older folks. Look, it's what I think happened when Merkel led in a million people. The guilt from the Holocaust made her just supine in the face of the... Yeah, but that, we can understand.

Let's say that's true. What took place at Columbia? What took place in Paris? What took place at Berkeley? Okay, when we come back, we're going to try in the few minutes left to answer that. We'll be right back talking to David Berlinski. answer the question of questions. So we're speculating on what it was that made the adults in the room in 1968, using that somewhat metaphorically, but a cave to the mobs. There is a lot there.

But why would that generation, was it because it was their kids that they thought, well, We love them. They've got something to say. Who are we? Well, there's an additional factor I think should be, which should be recognized. This was not only a very large group of young people, but it was really the first affluent generation in American history. There was a great deal of disposable money available. So you got kids from 1964 all the way to 1980, even to 1990, who did not. face the stringent demands of going out hustling and making a living. There was a lot of leisure time. My friend Marco Schrezenberg in France, he said exactly the

same thing. He said that was the first affluent generation and this point in the 1968 is what they did with the excess money. They ruined the city. It was a perceptive remark and I think there's something to it. If you put all things together, the adventitious occurrence of the Vietnam War, which nobody really expected it. the time. That was a French occupation, not an American occupation, the enormous size of the baby boom generation. The fact that the generation had a lot of disposable income and did not have to face the external world as an employee, they were not forced to work for a living for a very long time. And these factors contributed to the collapse of authority because it gave to that

generation of the 60s an inner sense of defiance, which otherwise would have been crushed. It would have been crushed in the 40s or the 30s. It is just the confluence of those extraordinary circumstances that made the overwhelming outburst possible. It's always, you know, it is our, it's when we get what we wish for, to be able to be unmoored from the realities of the, that are often what ground us. It seems great when you're 19.

Well, sure. But it doesn't seem so great when you're 29 or 39. But it's just interesting to be ideologically, you know, to be unmoored from reality in the academy, you know, you say why are, you know, if you've been a community organizer or you've been on the faculty of some university, you can be effectively unmoored from the reality of most day-to-day American. which is, I guess, what led Buckley to say, I'd rather be governed by the first, however, many names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard College. I mean, that to me is at the heart of it.

I think we're saying almost the same thing. I mean, I find myself as an intellectual problem puzzled by the fact that we have yet to achieve any kind of canonical or definitive understanding of the years. between, say, 1960 and roughly 1975, 1976, the end of the Vietnam expert, the complete end of our expedition into Vietnam. We have yet to understand completely why we failed in Vietnam, or even if we did fail in Vietnam. These are very important and imponderable historical questions,

but we simply do not have a real understanding of the collapse of authority. It's a collapse that began, I would say, roughly in 63-64. And it continues to the present time. Well, that's in America. Of course, it happened after the first war in Europe. How do we continue this conversation?

We have no time left. Maybe I'll have to fly to Paris this time. That sounds like a good plan to me. Well, I'm going to make plans. David, just a joy to have you. Thank you so much. You're so very welcome. The joy was all mine.