The Eric Metaxas Show - John Zmirak and Pete Peterson

Episode Date: September 3, 2020

John Zmirak comes back for a second helping of commentary about the tragedy that is Kenosha, Wisconsin; then, Pete Peterson of Pepperdine University comments on "California's Radical Indoctrination."

Once upon a time in Radio Land, a towering man strode to a silver microphone and announced to the world these words. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am that announcer, and my name is Todd Wilkerson. And this is the show I announce. I'm announcing it right now, in fact. And you have a front-roseech to history. Yeah, and here's Eric. Hey there, folks.

Welcome to Hour 2, The Eric Mataxis show. I hope you didn't miss our one. If you did, you must go back. We were talking to Paul Kangor, who has written a book called Carl Marx and the Devil. It is horrifying and vitally important that we understand that Marxism, so when we're talking about BLM, the organization, or Antifa, they're effectively Marxist and they not only don't believe in God or how. have any values that you would get from the Bible. For example, racism is wrong. They will use anything to further their power, but they couldn't care less about racism or whatever. They're just going to use whatever they can to amass power. And ironically, what I said on Tucker last night, you can, the point is that they, they love to infiltrate churches. So the United Methodist Church is going along with this. And a lot of, uh, really foolish churches and denominations, but also a lot of good people who have been duped

are going along with this, not understanding what is happening. So we posted this on my personal YouTube channel, my Eric Mataxis YouTube channel, and also on the Eric Mataxis show, YouTube channel. Albin, I got to tell you, I find this stuff chilling because it's right out of my Bonhofer book on a level that I've never ever seen where the Nazis tried to take over the churches and succeeded because of the ignorance of the people leading the churches. And folks out there, whatever your church, wherever it is, make sure that they don't get sucked into this. Now, this is only like a three-minute interview. You've got to take this link and you've got to share it with everyone you know who is a Christian. Make sure this does not infiltrate your church.

This could be the end of our country as we know it. I mean, it's hard to say stuff like that, except that's exactly correct. I mean, this in Germany, nobody saw what was coming in 1933 when the Nazis began to do this kind of thing. And the churches went along because they thought, this is a good thing. We believe in this and we believe in, you know, German lives matter. And we, this is good stuff. We believe in this. Of course. You know, we believe Black Lives Matter. Of course. But you realize that they are, it's almost like a hermeneutical lever that that the Marxists are getting in. and once you begin using the Marxist terminology of white privilege or white nationalism, whatever, then you're done because they've got the,

they have the leverage, and eventually the Christian ideas are going to be pushed out. And I mean, I hate to say this. Listen, Christians are afraid they're going to be called a name. Ooh, they're going to call me. I was going to say, here's the good news. The good news is we have John Zmirak on to help us make sense of the world. John, welcome.

Thanks, Eric. And let me second your recommendation. The Devil and Carl Marx by Paul Kangor is one of the most important books anyone could read this year. And I have to say, with the churches being taken over and infiltrated by Marxist functionaries under the label of anti-racism, they have no excuse. Just as the churches in the 1930s in Germany really had no excuse, if they looked at Mn-Kinv, they could see this means the extermination of, tens of millions of people. The evidence was there. They chose not to look at it.

The organization Black Lives Matter is led by people who say they are trained Marxist revolutionaries. That's up on their website. Let's be clear. They say that. So if you get involved with them, what I said on Tucker was that you're riding on the back of a tiger. The tiger will eat you.

This is not fun. You don't seem to understand what you've gotten involved in. And I think that there are many people who've naively gotten involved. and they say, oh, I'm against racism. Well, let me tell you something. Marxists are not against racism. Marxists would kill George Floyd if it helped them get power. They do not believe that George Floyd or you or me or anyone is made in the image of God and therefore sacred.

They don't believe that, but they will use these issues just as the Nazis did. And it's horrifying to compare anything to the Nazis. But these folks are out and out Marxists. We're not comparing, you know, people we don't. like leftists. We're talking about people now who are openly Marxist, using Marxist tactics in the streets and so on and so forth. So it needs to be said that some churches have gotten sucked in. Karl Marx himself was a horrible racist. This guy was a racist. And he wrote, he used the N word, liberally. He would refer to people as kikes. Carl Marx, what Ken Garh shows in his book,

is Karl Marx was a nasty, twisted, dark human being who found the oppression of the working class as a cause he could glom onto to try to get zealots behind him and his desire to rebel against God and destroy the world as it was. And his early writing, you see him over and over again, sympathizing with Satan, sympathizing with Prometheus, as sort of a lucer-fri-figure in Greek mythology, wanting to tear down. and destroy everything, and only having the most fantastical fairy tale storybook idea of what he would build instead. And we see that in American cities with antifah smashing neighborhoods, trying to burn down courthouses, attacking loser liberal mayors like Wheeler, the mayor of Portland. He's besieged in his apartment building by his own supporters. I have a piece at stream.org that I think people would enjoy that kind of brings home, the contrast, the choice we're facing in November.

There are two young men in America, both from the Midwest, who represent very different futures for America. I don't know if you people have heard of this. His name is Matthew Banta. He's age 23. He was arrested in Nina, Wisconsin for having a knapsack full of makeshift grenades and carrying a flame thrower. He was planning to burn down buildings.

He was part of Antifa. The police grabbed him. He threw himself on the ground, curled up in a ball like a fetus, and started sobbing hysterically. And when the police touched him, he started yelling, you're crushing me. I can't breathe. He really felt like a victim because the police were trying to take away his flame thrower. This is Joe Biden's America. This is the kind of American that Joe Biden's.

Biden and his policies will produce that have been produced on campuses when they say, and I can trace this directly. You know the expression, snowflake and microaggression? If you tell kids in school, when you hear an idea that offends you, that makes you feel unsafe. That's a microaggression against you. You have the right to punch the person who does that to you because that makes them a Nazi and you can punch a Nazi.

And so you're telling them that they can. can be spoiled hysterical brats, playing with flamethrowers and grenades, threatening police, destroying people's lifelong businesses, destroying their neighborhoods because they feel an aggression has come upon them. That is the America that the Democrats are offering us this November. By contrast, Kyle Rittenhouse, heroic young man, also from nearby, just over the state line in Illinois. He went to, he went to, uh, Wisconsin. What was the name? It was the city, Kenosha? Kenosha. He went to Kenosha because he had seen on TV store owners having their, their, their life savings destroyed. You saw an old man with a fire extinguisher trying to save

his building getting beaten up by young thuds from Antifa. He showed up there as a trained EMT. He was giving first aid to protesters who'd been injured. He was, he was actually running around with a fire extinguisher putting out dumpster fires that Antifa had set. And that's why they attacked him. They went after him for putting out their fires. He ran away from them, but he had, he had a gun. Thank God he had a gun as an American. He's running away from the arsonists who are angry he put out their fire. He trips and falls. One of them comes at him with a gun and fires. Another tries to club him with a skateboard. He shoots in self-defense, shoots accurately because he'd been training. He'd been doing safety lessons. He shoots accurately, kills two of his assailants and wounds another,

and the Democrats want to send him to prison for the rest of his life for first-degree murder. He's 17 years old. 17 years old. So these are the two Americans. In an Eagle Scout and an EMT. Right. Okay, we're going to go to a break. Folks, I'm talking to John Zimirak. I don't expect you to be going any place. We're going to be right here. Stick around. Folks, I got some embarrassing news to share with you, but you know what?

This is just the kind of a show where I don't care. I'm willing to lay my heart, you know, on the line. Here's the issue. Mike Lindell with my pillow, you may notice that I have a bobble hell of him near me. He's here to remind all of us that when you go to mypillow.com, you get whopping discounts if you use the code. Eric, okay? Now, there are a lot of people who haven't done that and we have your names here. And Chris Heim's Ann Albin pointed out to me that there's like three pages of you whose first name is Eric. You, you're so, I mean, that's humiliating for me that even though your name is Eric, you're still not willing to use the code Eric. I mean, if you don't want to

use it because it's my name, use it because it's your name. The point is that that I see who you are, and I just feel humiliated by this. Please go to go to mypillar.com. It's okay, Mike. It's going to be okay. Go to mypillar.com. Use the code, Eric. You're going to get whopping savings

and really high quality products. Did I mention that? Thank you. Hey, folks, Eric Mattaxas here. The Trump campaign has a special offer just for you. The president really wants to give you a sign 2020 Make America Great Again hat. He wants to make sure the lucky winner is one of his top supporters.

Be sure to enter soon because this is an opportunity you don't want to miss. The offer is only going to a select group of supporters and you're one of them. All you have to do is text Metaxus to 88022 today for your chance to win a piece of history, a 2020 make America great again. Hat. Again, that's M-E-T-A-X-A-S, M-E-T-A-X-S to 88022 to enter to win this contest and join President Trump in the fight to keep America great for four more years. This was paid for by Donald J. Trump for President Inc. Hey there, folks. I'm talking with our friend John Zmirak. John, before we continue the conversation about Kyle Rittenhouse, I want to say that tonight, I posted this to my, we put it, sent out an e-blast to everybody on my email list.

I also put it on Twitter and on Facebook. I'm giving a talk, I guess it's 5 p.m. Central tonight, so 6 p.m. Eastern, about my book, if you can keep it. it's going to be live available to everyone, but you have to register. So if you want to, in a funny way, it's a follow-up to what I said on Tucker Carlson last night. In other words, the link between virtue or faith and ordered liberty, which is what we have in America, and how there's another version, which is when you have no virtue and no faith, which is effectively the Marxist version, there are various versions of that version. But I'll be talking about that tonight.

You can look for my email or you can see it on Twitter or on Facebook. I hope you get it. So, John, you were just running down the details of this Kyle Writtenout situation. He's 17 years old. He killed two people and wounded another. Who were attacking him. He was attacking him. We have this on video.

He was on the ground because he tripped because they were chasing him looking to beat him to death. One of them had a gun and fired at him. And Lear said he wished he'd empty the whole clip in him and killed Kyle. Wait a minute. He was shot at? Yes. That I had not heard. Yeah, the guy fired a gun.

He just was incompetent so it didn't go anywhere near Wittenhouse. So if someone's coming at you with a gun and fires, but they're incompetent and they don't hit you, that doesn't make it not self-defense. Kyle Rittenhouse, we can see him. He's on the ground with his AR-15, having. run away from these people. One of them is swinging a skateboard at him. Another is wielding a gun he's already fired. Kyle shoots all three of them, saves his own life, and now the whole system wants him to put him away. I mean, it's that bad. Twitter took down the account of Lynn Wood,

his attorney. Get that. Lin Wood, who took on his leading his defense, he's a Nick Sandman's lawyer, Twitter disabled Lynn Wood's account for talking about Kyle writtenouts. Apparently Twitter doesn't believe in the presumption of innocence or the right of a defendant to have a trial or a defense attorney. That's how bad it is. It is literally becoming like the Eastern Block where they just grab a dissident off the street and put them in a psychiatric hospital. There is...

In some of these states, obviously in places like Wisconsin... I want to encourage people to go to Fight Back Foundation. The Fight Back Foundation is raising money for Kyle Rittenhouse's legal defense. I gave them $500 yesterday. If every one of your listeners followed suit, we could make sure this young man gets the justice he deserves and walks free. What is the website? Fight Back Foundation. It's Lynn Wood's Foundation for helping people like him and Kyle Rittenhouse like Nick Sandman,

like all the people who are getting targeted for destruction by the leftist issue. I mean, I have to say this as a Christian, right? right? We cannot rejoice in the deaths of the young men that he killed. We weep. And it is a tragedy. But when you do not have law enforcement doing their job, when you allow this kind of madness to spill into the streets where people are deliberately menacing, threatening, cursing, lighting things on. on fire, doing other things. It is the job of the government. We know this is a biblical thing, okay, to wield the sword so that the innocence are protected. It seems to me that those two deaths are indeed tragic. I wish that had never happened. But I think to myself, if the, if the government is not doing its job, as they did not do in Kenosha, as they've not been doing in Portland

and so many other cities, this is what happens. And that ultimately, to me, is the issue, is that how is it that some mayors and some governors have decided that they can just pull back? I mean, that is frightening. That is really the opposite of justice. If the government says we're not going to protect store owners, we're just going to let people loot,

I think it's the right and duty of people to do what Kyle Rittenhouse did. And I think of it during Crystal Mount, when the Nazis were letting people vandalized, destroy, smash synagogues, smash Jewish shops. Would it have been wrong for people to defend those shops? I don't think so. I think it would have been right. And I think it was right for Kyle Rittenhouse,

and it's right for store owners, and it's right for citizens to form militias to protect their neighborhoods if they're not going to be protected by the police. When a left-wing Democrat mayor says, we are not letting the police protect this neighborhood. They are effectively resigning as the government. They're saying Black Lives Matter and Antifa are now the government. They now have a monopoly of violence,

and we're going to let them rule you. And that is what the left-wing death squads did in Central America. That's what they do in Cuba. That's what they do in Venezuela. We as Americans cannot, cannot surrender the streets to these people. You know, it's a funny thing. I guess I think of the two young men that are killed, right? I think to myself, it is the government that did them a disservice.

It's kind of like allowing people to drive 160 miles an hour. Like, if you let that happen, people are going to kill themselves and other people. So it's the job of the government to enforce the laws. When they don't do that, I don't see how it is not they who are to blame for the number of deaths and tragedies and for the loss of businesses and capital. I mean, it's unbelievable. I don't know how this is all going to play out. I do hope that people understand it's your duty to pray, folks. Pray for this country.

Pray for this country every day because we've not seen anything like this. It's absolutely horrifying that we even have to be having these conversations. time we saw something like this was in the 1920s when Democrat mayors in the South would let the Ku Klux Klan burn down black neighborhoods because people resented the blacks. And they would just pull back the police and let the mob run wild. But last time the Democrats did this, the Klu Kluks Klan was their street militia. This time Democrats are doing this with Antifa and Black Lives Matter as their street militia. And you know, in both cases, Back then in the 20s, some black store owners and homeowners defended themselves with their guns.

But the government had tried to disarm them. It had specifically racist gun control laws. The first gun control laws in the South were passed to stop black people from having weapons so that the clan could terrorize them. And now, if you look at Australia, what's going on in Australia, a pregnant woman was arrested by the police and pulled out of her home and all her computers were seized because she was trying to organize

an anti-lockdown demonstration. We have video of her being dragged out of her house, this pregnant woman, and all her computers, everything ripped out by the police because she was on Facebook trying to organize a peaceful demonstration against the lockdown.

Do you know what happened in Australia, why it's not freeing anymore? They let the government take all their guns about 10 years ago. A disarmed population is not a free population. That's why our founders, as you noted, and if you can keep it, our founders intended the Second Amendment as the ultimate backstop against government tyranny. And what is being inflicted on people in Seattle and Portland is government tyranny.

Black Lives Matter and Antifa are the armed militia of the left wing of the Democratic Party. And they are, you can't wear it, try to wear a Trump hat in downtown Seattle and Portland. You'll get beaten up. That's not a free country. That's tyranny. We are being subjected to tyranny now. It's, I mean, you know, John, it sounds like we've gone through the looking glass and we've gone nuts because when I was writing my book on Bonhoeffer,

and you, you know, I'm writing about mobs of brown shirts on the streets in Berlin. I remember thinking that can't happen in America. I don't know what was happening then, but that can't happen in America. And here we are, 10 years after I wrote. the book, and that is what is happening in America. And I think that it is a lesson to us, right? Anytime anybody thinks, like, well, we're better than those Germans. Well, no, we're not better. We are less same. We're less educated. Germany in the 30s had a higher level of education and literacy in every way than we have right now was the most literate society in the history of

the world. But it was a society where the government had disarmed the people, the Weimar Republic took the guns away from all law-abiding people. So the only people who had them were the terrorists, the communists and the Nazis. And if you go to, it's only in blue states, in blue cities. Excuse me, you're not seeing Antifa marching in Dallas. Black Lives Matter is not taking over Atlanta. Why? Because the Second Amendment still applies in those jurisdictions. And go figure, there's no tyranny. We have, we're going to go to another break. Let me remind you if you go to MyPillow.com, don't forget to use the code Eric. Very important. Mypillow.com. Use the code. Eric. We'll be right back with John's Mirack.

As they so, they will reap, turn the other cheek, and don't give in. That old wheel will roll around again. Yes, when love is gone. And the one you thought would stay does, you're wrong. And you're left alone to pay the price is high. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to John Zmirak. John, you want to talk about Jacob Blake's victim. Explain who Jacob Blake is. Jacob Blake is the man who was shot in Kenosha when he was fighting with the cops and wielding a knife. That's what started the madness. That's what started the madness. Okay. Jacob Blake, I guess I saw on social media this morning that he was openly anti-Semitic.

That's his father. That's his father. That's his father. His father who was going to meet with Joe Biden to commiserate about his poor little son, Jacob Blake who said he wouldn't meet the father who said he wouldn't meet with Trump because I have already talked to President Biden. That same guy has all sorts of. of anti-Semitic nut job conspiracy theories all over Facebook. And now the Biden campaign has to decide, hmm, do we already have the Jewish vote in the bag so we can still meet with the Jew baiting psycho? Or do we need the Jew baiting cycle vote more than we need the Jewish vote? The whole Biden campaign is about putting together little splinter groups

that they think don't care about the country as a whole, but care only about the little private interest. But in my piece at stream.org, I said in Kenosha, Trump should have met with the victim. Jacob Blake's victim. All this whining about Jacob Blake, the guy who fought off, tried to fight off the cops and had a large knife

and was resisting arrest. Why was he being arrested? Why are we erasing the victim of the crime? They didn't just grab Jacob Blake off the street for walking while black. A black woman had called 911 on Jacob Blake. Why? Because he was her ex-boyfriend.

He barged into her house, violating a restraining order. Why did he have that restraining order? Because back in May, he had barged into her house. There's no delicate way to put this. You don't have to. Let me try. He digitally raped her,

and it's worse than that. We don't need to go into the details, but it's disgusting. It is rape, sexual, sexual, well, I guess, sexual violence toward the woman, and that is why she called the cops. She called the cops when he came back because he was trying to steal her car.

Okay, do you want black women to be subjected to this? If you say the police should not have arrested Jacob Blake, or when he resisted, they should have just let him go. You are saying black women in all these neighborhoods should be terrorized by their psychotic ex-boyfriends that the women and children and old people and bookish young people, and bookish young people, all the non-thugs in those neighborhoods who are the huge majority,

that the vast majority of residents of poor neighborhoods in America, black and white, should be bullied and sexually violated and terrorized and robbed by the thugs in that neighborhood. And that is exactly what happened in Seattle when they created that Chaz enclave.

It became like a theft and rape camp. There were multiple rapes that, and assaults that could not be resolved because the police couldn't get in there because Black Lives Matter Thugs were running the neighborhood like it was some terrorist camp in Rwanda or some ISIS camp in Syria. Do you want the thugs to terrorize the poor people of America?

That's the question. If you're saying that criminals can resist arrest, if you say that, police will just stand down. They will just stop enforcing the law. They will not show up. If they can't use force to subdue someone wielding a knife who is accused of sexual assault, they're just going to stay home in their own safe neighborhoods. And who's going to suffer?

Black people, brown people, poor people are going to be the victims, as we've seen in all these Democrat cities. This is why, John, this is why I have said and will continue to say, if you really care about the urban poor in America, if you care about minorities in the cities in America, you must vote for Donald Trump. If you really care about them, if you just want to pretend to care about them, then you're going to vote for Biden. But if you actually care about them, at this point, the choice is very, very clear.

I was hoping we could segue to something more cheerful like Nancy Pelosi's hair colorist. Oh, yeah. Nancy Pelosi is now- She put it a statement. She put it a statement, the buck stops with my colorist. Yeah, she is blaming the victim. Here's this woman whose salon has been bankrupted because of the insane lockdown in California. Remember, California, which dumped COVID patients on nursing homes, killing tens of thousands.

But they're closing hair salons. This woman's hair salon is closing because she can't run her business. Nancy Pelosi rents the place out to get herself a spa experience in violation of all the COVID regulations. The woman complains about it. Pellosi says, I was set up. It's her fault. I blame her. What's even odder is that Nancy Pelosi shows up. She's just walking around without a mask. And the people in the salon have masks. So it is interesting, the double standard. People are seeing the double standard.

In a couple of minutes, by the way, I'm talking to Pete Peterson of Pepperdine, picked a peck of pickled peppers. Pete Peterson of Pepperdine. And we're going to be talking about what's going on in California. That's in the next. segment. But John, also we have to mention that Governor Cuomo threatened the President of the United States that if he comes to New York, he better have an army. Well, then I think he needs to go there with the army. I think Donald Trump needs to ride down Fifth Avenue on a tank and show him U.S. government still has sovereignty, even in the smoking rubble of what was once New York City, is still American territory. I'm sorry, Jefferson Davis, government.

of New York, you have not succeeded from the union. There are millions of New Yorkers who don't want you bullying them, who don't want you driving them out of the state. As you once said, pro-lifers, evangelical Christians, people who love gun rights, have no place in New York. If these people take over the country, we'll have no place in America. Can you even imagine, though, that a governor would say something like that? Listen, we're out of time. I wanted to end on a happy note. I failed. John Zmirak, we love you. Thank you for your commentary. Folks, we're going to talk to Pete Peterson of Pepperdine in just the moment. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Pete Peterson of Pepperdine. I love saying that. Pete Peterson of Pepperdine. He's the dean of the graduate policy school at Pepperdine.

Welcome back, Pete Peterson. Great to be back with you, Eric. I want to talk to you about the article that you wrote about what's going on in California. Obviously, you're in California and you had an article in the Wall Street Journal. It's horrific stuff. So please tell my audience about it. Yeah. Just to be clear, I didn't write this specific article, but it's something that is happening here in California that your listeners and viewers really should know about. It's the creation of a new ethnic studies curriculum by the state of California that is going to be mandatory in all of the states, elementary schools, middle schools, and high school.

schools, and it's due to take effect in the next three years. And it's really, this is actually the second pass at this curriculum. The first attempt by the State Board of Education was launched back in May of 2019, and it was actually so left-wing, even Governor Newsom came out against it, as did even the editorial page of the LA Times thinking, saying it was just really a grab bag of left-wing politics. That's astounded. Yeah. So what you're talking about, though, is that it's effectively the 1619 project. In other words, it's basically America is bad. America was founded in evil and badness. America being white is bad. In other words, all of these cliches are being put into a curriculum for little kids in the public schools in the great state of California. Right, and it's going to be mandatory. And so after that first pass failed, they took about a year off and have now come back with this second attempt, which has now been passed by the legislature. This looks like it's going to be now mandatory starting in the next two to three years across the state of California. And even the current version, I'd love to say it was dramatically modified from the first, but it's really not. And so all the things that you mentioned there, very much of a 16-19 project-ish kind of curriculum.

But it also gets into this whole understanding that capitalism is also the root of all evil, that it's essentially this oppressive systemic regime. And so not only are we looking at history, we're looking at economics, and obviously we're looking at the prospects for creating an unum out of our pluribus, but it does exactly the opposite. Well, it really is stunning to me that what we have happening, I mean, let's just go back to the beginning. The whole idea of public school in America,

it was supposed to be in loco parentis, which is the Latin term for in place of the parents, because most parents don't have the time or the ability to educate their kids. So you get together with the neighborhood and you say, you know what, we're going to have a one-room schoolhouse and we'll all pitch in some money for the, teacher and we will educate our kids that way. And that grew into what we call the public school

system. So the idea that parents are being shoved out of that equation now is they say, we'll take your taxes. Yes, we will take your taxes and we will pay for this. But we're really not, we're not going to be troubled if this offends you or if this bothers you. We're not going to give you any options because we have decided that this is what your kids are going to learn. I know that most of the people in California don't think capitalism is evil. Most of the people in California are not on board with the Marxist 1619 project. How does something like this actually happen? I mean, I always wonder how people in places like California or places like New York where I live, elect people that are so radical, like Mayor de Blasio or Gavin Newsom, who are so radical and have,

councils that are so radical, city councils, that this actually does happen, even though many of the voters, you know, are not on board with it. Yeah, I think it all gets back to, in some ways, how our schools are funded here in California. I think you're very familiar with the tax revolt back in the 70s, which resulted in Prop 13, which has been, by and large, a tremendous benefit in holding down property taxes for most Californians, especially our elderly Californians, if there was any downside to that, is it essentially centralized all the funding for the California school districts away from this local school district model

to a state-level funding model. So it's centralized all the funding. And when you, as you know, follow the money. When you centralize all the funding, you centralize all the policymaking. And so what's come out of that are these broad-based, curricula mandates, and I think this is just simply the most glaring. Well, you know, this is, it gives us an opportunity, Pete, to rehearse the basics, right?

The things that we ought to have all been taught in school and that we ought to hear over and over and over again, that big government is bad. You want government to be as local as possible. Self-government means that ultimately we want to each govern ourselves. So we need very little government. And you only want big government or broad government, whether state government or federal government, only when it's necessary. I mean, only for the standing army, only for interstate highways and so on and so forth.

And that basically you want the people of each community to be able to determine things for themselves. You want that. So as soon as things go to federal standards or as soon as things even go, in this case, to state-wide standards. You're pushing out the minorities, and I say minorities, I mean ideological minorities. I mean, you may have people in certain more rural communities

that aren't on board with this. And suddenly you don't, excuse me, shut up, we don't care what you think. That's the problem when you federalize something or when you make something statewide. And I think most Americans, we just don't talk about this anymore, that every community should be able to decide for itself how it wants to live.

And that the federal stuff only comes in as a last ditch effort, right? If some town says, okay, we're voting that racism is a good thing and you can do horrible things. That's when the government, the bigger government comes in and says, no, no, no, you can't do that. Constitution says. Constitution, right? Yep. No, I totally agree. But I think what's so exhausting, Eric, and I know you cover this so well on your.

show is that it seems like this kind of civic engagement has to respond to so many new threats. And obviously we're seeing this now with this new curriculum. It just seems like every time you turn around, the new ideas coming out of centralized government seem to attack the things that we hold so dear. That's exactly right. Speaking of hold, we're going to hold you, Pete Peterson of Pepperdine. You're not going to any place. We're going to speak to you on the other side of the break folks.

this here from tax show, don't go away. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Pete Peterson of Pepperdine. I love saying that Pete Peterson of Pepperdine. And Pete Peterson of Pepperdine, let me tell people how to find you. You're the dean of the graduate school of policy, graduate policy school. People can go to publicpolicy.peperdine. dot edu.

That's public policy. peperdyne. Dot edu. Tell my audience just briefly what the school is, the graduate school, over which you're dean. Yeah, thanks, Eric. We're certainly one of the, the only center-right graduate schools in the country. Our students go off into careers in policy and

politics from Capitol Hill to local government. And we uniquely teach the founding principles and their relevance to today's policy issues. And you're in totally awesome Malibu, California. That's just great. Yeah, that can't be. Public policy.competine.edu. you. So what is happening in California right now that we haven't covered? Well, we just closed a legislative session here for the state. And as is usually the case, most of the major issues facing Californians were not addressed. I mean, we have a significant housing crisis here. We have issues around jobs and economic development. We are certainly seeing residents, especially lower and middle income, Californians leaving the state for other places. And those issues were never taken up. I mean,

they were all shelved for these kinds of issues like we discussed around ethnic studies curricula and other social issues that would really make your head spin. But again, as I'm sure your listeners know, we're dealing with blackouts here as well. So even these kind of fundamental issues. How can the electrical grid be going down in California? What is behind? that. I didn't get that. Yeah. So, I mean, the cause this time that they're saying are lightning strikes, but the reason why this is happening is really twofold. One is because of environmental policy, we are not managing our forests well. So we're not, our forests have by and large become tinner boxes. And at the same time, we are not creating and updating our power grid to such a way that

we can modernize the grid to allow for these shutdowns in particular places that don't spread across a grid. So there's some technology here that we're not investing in because we're investing in a lot of other places that would modernize the grid that would reduce the impact of these fires, but also this forestry management piece is a significant part of this. Is it possible at least to blame the lightning strikes on Donald Trump? That would be helpful, I think, for Newsom. And also, we've got to talk about the most important thing of all, Nancy Pelosi's hair.

I think when we're talking about California, we need to. You got to focus on what's important, Pete. Let me tell you, okay? You want to be dean at the policy school there? You got to focus on what's important Nancy Pelosi's hair. The idea that, you know, she put out a very important statement, and you've got to respect her for this. She said, the buck stops.

with the colorist. Yes. I think that's so Truman-esque. It's extraordinary. It is. It's such a metaphor, right? It's such a metaphor for broader California policymaking and obviously for Speaker Pelosi herself.

It's the problem's never with me. It's someplace else. Well, also the double standard. I mean, my mother always told me about this because she grew up in East Germany and escaped. But she said that, listen, the people in the party, the higher ups, they always have the good stuff. It's everyone else who doesn't have it. So they talk about egalitarianism and it's nonsense.

But it's kind of funny that this is the classic case. I mean, Nancy Pelosi and company are telling everyone you cannot go to a hair salon. And the hair salons are going out of business. All kinds of little people are suffering. But Nancy Pelosi can go to the hair salon. And whatever. I will say this, Eric. Her hair looks great.

What's the most important thing? Pete Peterson of Pepper, I want to thank you and I want to tell people public policy.peperdine.edu if you want to check it out, public policy.peperdine.org.com.com.competon. Thank you so much. Great to be with you, Eric.