The Eric Metaxas Show - Rich Lowry and Larry Taunton

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

Rich Lowry of the National Review asks -- and answers -- the question, "Are the classics racist?" Plus, Larry Taunton covers "cancel culture," socialism, and the controversy surrounding his friendship with Christopher Hitchens.

Hey folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxos show, Charleston, South Carolina edition. I'm literally outdoors in Charleston, South Carolina. I'm speaking tonight at St. Michael's Church here. Today's Wednesday, February 10th. So that's why I'm in Charleston, South Carolina. The glorious porch behind me is owned by my dear friends, Richard and Pam Scurry. And it's just amazing to be here. but nearly as amazing is that we have an old friend on right now.

My friend, Rich Lowry, Editor-in-Chief National Review, Rich, welcome the program. Hey, thanks, I'm having me, Eric. I feel so inadequate. I'm sitting here in front of my closet somewhere in the Northeast, and you're on a beautiful veranda in Charleston. So I'm jealous. But just today, I was in a hotel room, and it was exactly like where you are now. It doesn't make any difference.

just thought I'd take advantage of that. Was that bad? Was that bad, hire? Exactly like where I'm right now. No, no, no. I mean, it was just like a totally nondescript, you know, like it's just, it's a camera wall, right? But in all seriousness, I, you, look, you do all kinds of writing, but you, you published something in the National Review yesterday, was it, I guess, about rage and the classics, the Roman

and Greek classics. This is something very, very close to my heart. and I'm glad that you, you know, agree to be on here to talk about it, because I think it's a very important subject right now. I can't resist asking you since yesterday. We had the beginnings of this bizarre impeachment thing happening. Any thoughts that you have? Maybe you don't think it's so bizarre. Whatever you think, I'm just curious before we get into the more evergreen subject of the Greeks and the Romans.

Sure. So, well, I think yesterday's confirmation of what. We all know. We all know how this is ending. It's ending with acquittal. Probably about five Republican senators voting to convict, give or take, you know, a cat or dog here or there. And both sides, I think, want to get it over with fairly quickly, probably last about a week. And then it will be done. And we'll move on to what is the main event at the moment, which is the radicalism of the Biden agenda, pushing a lot of stuff out unilaterally and also pushing a massive. stimulus bill that, you know, we all can agree. I think we need some more COVID relief, but it's much, much bigger than that and has a massive national minimum wage increase that would hammer the job market at a time when we should be doing everything to support it. I just can't help but wondering, you know, I've seen this with de Blasio in New York. It is almost as if, and I hesitate to say it because it doesn't sound sane, but it's almost as

if they are trying to destroy the nation or the city or the economy. It's so bizarre. Do you, would you give them enough credit to say that they're not trying to bring some kind of socialism or big government dependence to us via these strange means? Because that's kind of what it looks like to me. Yeah, that is what they're trying to do. I mean, it's based on a misbegotten but sincere view of what the country should be. be in their minds and how the economy works. But if you get closer to where you are in the world than where I am at the moment,

you know, a place like Alabama, the median wage is $15 an hour. That means I'm not a statistics guy, but half of people make less than that. So what's going to happen to their jobs when you mandate that they all have to make $15 an hour? Well, they're either no longer going to have jobs or their hours are going to be cut or the employers are going to a way to automate. So this just makes zero sense. I'm all in favor of a tight labor market. I think that was one of the beauties of the Trump economy when it was really cooking prior to the pandemic was wages were actually increasing because the labor market was tight. Supply and demand works. If you have a tight supply of labor and a lot of demand for labor, you're going to pay more

of the workers. That's good, but you just can't wave a magic wand in the federal government and make that happen if the economic supports aren't there for it. It also strikes me as just fundamentally un-American that the federal government could dare to tell states what they must do with regard to minimum wage. I mean, it seems so out of keeping, out of step with who we've been as a nation since the beginning that it really is. I mean, there's been a lot of federal overreach over the last number of decades. But this almost takes the cake, I would say. I can't get over it. Yeah.

And again, the minimum wage. There's some places $15 an hour. It might make sense. I don't know, in New York City area. I still think it's probably a bad idea, but it makes more sense than it does in states with lower costs of living where people don't need to make as much. So having a national standard makes zero sense,

but their reflex is towards this centralizing tendency that's been inherent to progressivism in the last 100 years. Unfortunately, that's correct. Well, let's move to something. I was going to say it's almost like a more positive thing. The idea that the classics are being done. Your article on it was really important. And I did want to talk about this because I've been, as I think I mentioned to you, you know, I've been particularly interested in the Greeks historically and because of my dad coming from Greece. And so the idea that suddenly we've moved things back to where we would say that the the very foundations of all of Western civilization, the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, that suddenly now, you know, they're part of the problem. So tell us about what you say in your article. Well, the occasion for the article is a big New York Times profile of a Princeton classicist, who is devoted literally to destroying the classics. And this guy himself has an amazing story,

which shows how open the classics are. He came from the Dominican Republic when he was a kid, lived in a homeless shelter in New York City, picked up a book about ancient Greece and Rome, was totally captivated by it. A mentor saw that he had a talent and a great interest in reading, gets him into a prep school and a scholarship in New York City. Then he goes to Princeton and Oxford and ends up as a Princeton professor, classicist.

That's an amazing story, right? That shows the classics are open to everyone and can help everyone learn and elevate themselves. But instead, he's been captured by this woke idea. now that wants to read racism back into Greece and Rome. Now look, these are racist societies. They're exclusionary societies. Every society at the time was racist and exclusionary and had slaves and didn't treat women well. And they're doing to the Greeks and the Romans what they do to Americans.

They look at our founding and they discount all that was exceptional about it and made it different and say, well, oh, there are all these. sins while they they don't take full account of the fact that every other society had the same sins. So what you should really focus on was what was exceptional. The Greeks gave us the notion of democracy. It was an imperfect democracy. It was a limited democracy, but it was an amazing advance in the context of the time. The Romans, obviously, our legal tradition, our political institution still seated with the Roman ideas and with bear the stamp of the Roman imprint. That's why we must know about these places to know who we are, but they want to distort and erase who we are. That's the bottom, bottom line of this agenda.

It's madness. You're probably familiar with the book that Victor Davis Hansen wrote, I guess about 20 years ago now, who killed Homer? And it is amazing how far back these trends go. I mean, you have 20 years ago before the last. level of wokeness was what it is now, was still pretty bad. You know, you, you had people even way before that, Jesse Jackson chanting, you know, hey, hey, ho, Western Siv has got to go. And you think, all right, Jesse, what do you plan to put in its place? What do you have?

But I guess I'm fascinated. We're going to go to a break here, but I want to talk to you for another 10 minutes if you have it. But I'm just fascinated at the roots of the woke culture. and how in a sense they have been biding their time until now. And now they can kind of come out and say very, very dramatic, crazy things. I mean, the idea that we would get rid of Homer or Virgil or Tacitus or any of these folks who have really created the foundation of who we are in the West, the best of the West. We're going to be right back, talks.

I'm talking to my friend Rich Lowry with the National Review. Don't go away. It's knowing that your door is always open and your path is free to walk. That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag rolled up and stashed behind your couch. Folks, I'm talking at Rich Lowry with the National Review. Rich, thanks for being with us. Yesterday, you published an article in the National Review about how a Princeton, or the New York Times wrote a profile of a Princeton Classics professor

who himself seems to work. want to undermine the classics or destroy the classics. Do you remember his name because I don't remember his name? It's Padilla. His professor at Princeton, a classicist who has been on this terror last couple of years. Okay, so Dr. Padilla has issues with Western civilization, with the Greeks and the Romans. I don't know who doesn't have issues with them. I often make fun of, you know, because I'm Greek, Greeks claim to have invented everything. And when I'm talking about American-style self-government, which I do pretty often. I say, look, let's, let's just get it clear. The Greeks invented democracy, okay? Americans didn't invent it. But then I have

to say, but what they had, of course, was tremendously limited. I mean, it lasted for an eye-blank. It was, you know, in small city-states. It wasn't across, you know, 13 colonies. So, you know, we can be realistic about the limits of what they had. But the idea that we would throw it out, So what is his plan, Dr. Padilla? In other words, what is he suggesting that we do? Is he suggesting that we no longer study the classics, or is he simply saying that we have to study them, you know, pick them up with tweezers?

It's unclear. The New York Times piece on this at times says, oh, what critics like Padilla want to do basically is just submerge the classics into other departments at universities. But then at other times, it just seems much more sweeping than that. And certainly doing that, wouldn't be in keeping with the profundity of the critique of the classics, which in his view and the view of other critics are just shot through with white supremacy and have created

support for white domination in the West. That is a poisonous and insane idea. But if that's what you believe, you should throw your Iliad and the Odyssey into the dustbin and not look at them again. And the fact is, even if you want to have a dimmer view of the Greeks and the Romans than you would or I would, the fact is these works are incredibly enduring for in reason because they go so deep. They're so beautiful. They have so much to do with what it is to be human. And whether you're black, you're white, you're Asian, you're Muslim, you're Christian, whatever. And, and And that's why we constantly go back to them. And I think even if every university in the country eliminates their classics departments,

there will still be a remnant who will be deeply engaged with these works because they're about who we are, not just as the West, that's an important aspect, but who we are as people. That's about it, isn't it? You have in these great works, it's almost like the first universal literature. It's why everybody on the planet can, admire Shakespeare, you know, not because they speak in Elizabethan English, but because they see something there that they didn't see in much literature before that time, an ability to appreciate who we are as human beings. You know, I could criticize the Romans and the Greeks all day long.

I mean, let's face it, the Romans in many ways were exceedingly brutal in the way that they treated people, for example, who wouldn't worship the emperor. They threw Christians literally to the lions. It's hard for us to imagine that they really did that and that they became a very bloodthirsty, hedonistic culture. We all know that, but we also know that they did create a civilization that we have been borrowing from. So did the Greeks.

Where do you see this ending? In other words, I fear that all of these ideologies are a snake swallowing its own tail. In other words, they basically destroy, destroy. they don't have the beginning of a clue what they would want to replace it with. Can you, do you intuit anything that they, that they have that they would replace it with other than just, you know, top down oligarchy, Marxism? I really can't imagine what they're, what they're suggesting. What they're suggesting is a woke ideology, of so-called anti-racism, that is a profound misnomer. That's really a profound race consciousness.

And, you know, our institutions and our politics are downstream of culture. And they are destroying our culture one pillar at a time. And an extremely important element of culture throughout all human history is memory. It's knowing who you are as a people, what you're about, what your story is. And when Jesse Jackson 30 years ago had that ridiculous chant, you know, hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has to go. that was really the first battle cry in this fight to make us forget who we are. And it's not just forgetting.

It's also lying about who we are. We see this particularly in the 1619 project and its poisonous view of America that wants to make the American founding about slavery when the American founding was an incredible advance in human civilization and enlightenment and liberty and created in the north a movement against slavery that eventually would eliminate slavery in the entire country in the civil war. But they want to efface all of that and build a new vision of America on the rubble that would be based on this left-wing ideology. Well, yeah, it's interesting.

In other words, you know and I know that it's from the Bible that we get the idea that slavery is wrong, that we're supposed to treat even our defeated enemies with grace. made in the image of God. All those ideas come from the Bible, whether you like the Bible or don't. That's where those ideas come into history. The abolitionist movement was comprised of people who were very serious Christians, whereas the mere churchgoers had no problem with slavery. Wakers and evangelicals. Right. And so they didn't really, so this is what I find so interesting is that there is a lie on the woke left. They're not willing. to grapple with this, they don't, they don't say what they think of a human being. In other words,

we know that the Bible and our constitution and the West generally has agreed with the Bible that we are made in God's image. We are sacred. We have inalienable rights. That kind of stuff comes out of a biblical tradition. When you wipe that away, who determines the value of a human being. Right. Right. So that's the enormous irony here is the left flies under the banner of opposition to racism, but they oppose a vision of society that is race blind, that treats everyone having equal standing, equal status, equal dignity, no matter what the color of their skin is. And that's what we have to just make absolutely clear to everyone. That is our view. That is our view. of people.

And that's the view of America at its best. And that has whatever our sins, that's what has to be preserved and that they ironically want to destroy. This is one of the reasons. I mean, I differed with many of my friends on supporting Trump, but I think it's one of the reasons that he had so much support in the country because there's a kind of a madness that seems to be overtaking our culture.

And people are thinking, is anybody going to stand up to this? It's so strong. It's so radical. It becomes violent in many cases. And you really wonder, do we have the cultural confidence? Who among us has the cultural confidence to stand up against this? And I think of Buckley in his book in the 50s, in the early 50s, writing about the Yale of the 40s. And then in my recent book, I look at the Yale of the 20s.

And you realize these ideas, these bad ideas have been with us. And every now and again, you know, somebody stands in the middle of the road, holds up his hand of thwart history. And I just kind of wonder if there are enough of us willing to hold up our hands at this point, because this has reached a level of madness that we've not seen. Yeah. I mean, and people are scared and literally scared. There is a survey the Cato Institute did, I believe it was last year. Do you feel free to express your opinions?

This is the United States of America, right? especially the freest country in the world. And astonishing a percentage of people are like, no. And there's a reason for that. We saw it last week. Another example at the New York Times, the science writer who's there for 46 years, goes on a trip with students,

uses the N-word innocently in response to a question about a controversy involving the N-word. I assume he was referring to the Joseph Conrad book with the title. And he was saying it, yeah, go ahead. So, and he's reprimanded, which is fine. those kept private. Then it shows up in the press.

New York Times at first says, well, the context was innocent. Context matters in the use of these words, which of course it does. And then, you know, 150 woke staffers at the time says, no, he has to be fired. And so they duly fire him. And sorry, that's my phone. And then the most disturbing aspect of the incident, he gives this groveling apology. Right. Which that's frightening.

And that just goes to an element of coercion and fear that shouldn't exist in the United States of America. It is out of Mao and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It is the dehumanization of people. It is ugly. In any event, we're at a time. Rich Lowry, thank you so much for your time. Hope to talk to you soon. Thank you.

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e-xpr-E-S-V-S-V-P-N dot com slash metaxus, express.com slash metaxus to protect your data today. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. As you can see from my background, which is not virtual. I apologize. This is an actual background. I am in the beautiful city of Charleston, South Carolina. tonight. I'm speaking at St. Michael's Church. I think it's at 6 o'clock or 630. The events start St. Michael's tonight, Wednesday, February 10th, Charleston, South Carolina. But holy cow, my guest, my friend, Larry Taunton, is in Brazil. Larry Taunton, welcome the program. Hey, it's great to be with you, Eric. It's just nuts that we're able to do this. This is the upside of technology, mostly technology.

as downsides, but there are some upsides. This is one of them, that you're in Brazil, and I'm in South Carolina, and we can talk. Now, listen, we've talked about many things on this program together. If people want to find you, then go to your website, Larry Alex Taunton, Larry Alex Taunton. But I want to talk to you about an article that you wrote with regard to Christopher Hitchens. You wrote a beautiful book about Christopher Hitchens, is titled The Faith of Christopher Hitchens. We had you at Socrates in the city. If people want to see a fascinating conversation, they can go to Socrates in the city.com where I interviewed you about that really important book. But you wrote an open letter to the New York Times. Of course, they didn't publish it,

but it's available at larrylex taunton.com. Tell us why you felt the need to write this letter. Yes. Thank you, Eric. First of all, for having me on your show. On the 4th of February, the Times ran a piece by Elizabeth Harris. All in all, it's a good piece, and she's telling the story. She's outlining how Carol Blue Hitchens, and that is Christopher Hitchens, and his former literary agent, Steve Wasserman, are trying to suppress. They're trying to kill a proposed biography of Christopher Hitchens by a new. author, a first-time author by the name of Stephen Phillips. Now, I don't know Stephen Phillips.

I don't know whether or not any book that he would write would be worth reading or not. That remains to be seen. But I was, I was bothered by this article, first of all, because, as I said, it shows that Carol Blue Hitchens and Steve Wasserman are trying to, you know, prevent this book from being written in there using very underhanded means in order to do it. Secondly, because the article made reference to my book, the faith of Christopher Hitchens, and it made reference to it in an inaccurate way. So I wanted to correct the narrative regarding my book. They, you know, Elizabeth Harris, I wasn't the target of the article.

I don't think she was actually trying to do me any arm. I just think she unwittingly, because she hasn't read my book, you know, repeated the smear campaign that Carol Blue Hitchens and Steve Wasserman authored on my book. In other words, what they're trying to do here with this biography is exactly the same thing that they did to my book, though I've never said anything about it. In defending my book on BBC and defending it in a piece with What's First Things, in other conversations, I never made reference to the fact that this was what Carol Blue Hitchens was doing.

And I didn't because Peter Hitchens had private. privately asked me not to return fire on her. So for five years, I've said nothing in regards to this. But seeing that she's doing it again, I decided, no, it's time to call this out. And I was grateful, in fact, that the New York Times actually had outed her for what she was doing here. How, when you say they'd outed her, you mean the article in the Times went into this campaign to crush this imminent biography? That's right. It outlines exactly what they're doing. And it's interesting, Eric, because I've talked to members of media, you know, who were interviewing me back in 2016 when the faith of Christopher Hitchens, my book came out. And they would privately tell you that they were a little fearful of Carol Blue Hitchens. They were fearful of her wrath. They were fearful of her influence with their editors. And so most weren't willing to say anything. So the fact that Elizabeth Harris for the New York Times has been willing to outline what she is doing. I'm pleased by that.

I'm glad that she has because, you know, the reality is, you know, if you're writing a book that I don't like, you know, I can certainly approach you about it and talk to you about it, but I don't think I have the right to try to kill the book. Well, it's interesting because, you know, most people listening or watching this program, you know, are not writers, and they don't understand how these things work. And you start realizing that in some ways, you know, there's some countries that have laws that say, you know, libel, you can't libel someone. In other countries, it's more complicated. In this country, today, it seems to me that the woke mob simply bullies people into doing what they want or

pushing what they don't want. That's really where we are. In other words, if you can get enough people to scream at some advertiser, say, if you don't do this, we're going to... My pillow, maybe. Well, no, but that's right. And there's a role for cultural pressure, but what I find interesting, Larry, is that the left seems very, very effective at this. And those of us more on the traditional side of the spectrum have almost acted like, well, we're too gentlemanly to do a boycott or something.

But I think it's time, and I've been talking about it on this program, that when a corporation, which has tremendous power, behaves in a cowardly way, does something or doesn't do something that really strikes at the heart of who we are as Americans, we need to speak up and we need to say, do not ever buy anything from that corporation because they are using your money and their power to harm the country. We're going to be right back. I'm talking to Larry Taunton. You can go to Larry Alex Taunton.com.

Hey there, folks. I am in Charleston, South Carolina, and I'm sitting on a beautiful porch. Our friends, the scurries, have allowed us to use it as a backdrop while we're here for this show. I just love it. I'm speaking tonight at St. Michael's Church here in Charleston. And I'm talking to my friend Larry Taunton, who is this minute in Brazil. I don't know. know if I've ever spoken over this many time zones. Actually, you're not that far away. I keep forgetting. You're only in South America. No, just two times zones. Yeah, it's wacky. Well, look, we're talking about a number of things, but you're talking about, you wrote this book, the faith of Chris for Hitchens, which I said many times is an extraordinary book because you give some depth to him

as a human being, because he's held up as this icon of the atheists who, and in public, he was very belligerent, nasty, I think, very nasty oftentimes. But privately, there was a slightly softer side that he revealed to you that he might be open to the idea of faith to what the Bible says ever so slightly, but nonetheless, not the hostile Adamantine wall that he pretended to be in public. And you wrote about it. And his widow attacked you just unconscionably. I mean, you didn't write anything that wasn't absolutely true. You wrote in a loving way about him, I have to say. And nonetheless, for some reason, his widow attacked you rather nastily. And that's happening again, as you said, with somebody who's wanting to write a biography of Hitchens,

and she is going after the publisher. Do we know who the publisher is? You probably do. W.W. Norton. And so, one. But, you know, she circulated a letter, you know, telling people not to participate, not to help him, which, again, is her right to do so. But they've also, you know, smeared him as, you know, quote unquote, self-appointed would-be biographer. And this to me is lacking in an astonishing degree of self-awareness. I mean, you know, let's bear in mind that Christopher Hitchens wrote a book about Mother Teresa

called The Missionary Position. I mean, let's be clear of just how vile he was being in his attack on Mother Teresa. And if Mother Teresa isn't, it's fair game, I dare say Christopher Hitchens is too. And part of what you and I really want people to understand in all of this, whether you cared about my book and what Carol Hitchens did regarding my book and allowing her attack dogs and media from David from at the Atlantic to James O'Brien with Newsnight

on BBC, which by the way, you can if you read this article, you can link to that interview, which is hysterical, and you wrote a beautiful piece in the Wall Street Journal about it, called it an SNL parody. I mean, that really is what it is.

But whether you care about those things or not, I wrote this response to the New York Times because I want people to have a glimpse of how censorship works today. And it often takes the form of backroom deals, of calling in favors, to media friends, to orchestrate attacks on corporations or individuals who say anything that they don't like. And interestingly enough, another piece was published yesterday in the New York Times that was talking about how people at the Times are being targeted by the staff.

at the New York Times, you know, to get rid of them, to get them fired, to cancel them. And this is what this looks like today, so that, for instance, my latest book around the world in more than 80 days discovering what makes America great, why we must fight to save it, which I hope all of you will buy and buy in bulk, that book, Amazon suppressed for ideological the reasons because they own audible and they refuse to produce an audible version of the book. Now, they own 95% of the audiobook market. So you can see how devastating that can be to the life of a book. This is what censorship looks like these days. And it's fundamentally un-American. Well, listen, I have said, and I will continue to say,

until we solve this problem or until my dying breath, that if those of us who have traditional American values, who love America, who love freedom, if we do not fight back, we deserve to be crushed under the Marxist, woke heel. We have to fight back. And so when somebody like you comes on and says that my book around the world in more than 80 days,

which, look, I know. know what you write. I read your writing. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that deserves to be glanced at as a candidate for censorship. So to show how far we are, how far things have come that they would come after you, it tells us all we need to know. So I tell my friends, when somebody's being attacked, support them by their book, buy their pillow. And do not do business with these extremely powerful corporations that have no values. Their only value is the almighty dollar or yen or whatever it is. They don't care. Bitcoin, they have no values. They will happily break bread and do business with Nazi Germany or with the Chinese communists. They don't care about the Uyghurs

being tortured. That's immaterial to them. And so that's what we're dealing with. When when folks come after you and your book around the world in more than 80 days, if we don't stand up, if we don't support you, support my program, support Mike Lindell, and a host of people who are being attacked, we will end up living in a country radically different than the one that we've been blessed to grow up. And so I make that point, Larry, because I think that oftentimes conservatives or Christians,

for some reason, they have very bad theology, and they think we shouldn't really fight back too much. It's kind of unseemly. Jesus would have just prayed for them. Yeah, I know you're 100% correct. And I think that unless we begin to wake up to this and unless we begin to, you know, vote, as it were, with our money, stop using those elements of big tech that are into suppression

and stop supporting those various corporations that are trying. trying to ram a very liberal agenda down our throat. I think that we'll find ourselves in an increasingly unfree America. And so that's what really bothered me here. It was one thing, you know, for Carol Blue Hitchens to attack me in my book as dishonestly as she did. I mean, it went so far as to, and of course she didn't say anything publicly. She maintained the air of dignified silence. She just had people like Larry Krauss, you know, write a piece for the New Yorker claiming the high-gatting. Attacking my piece on the fine-tuned universe. I remember that.

We'll talk about this because you're right. It is. It's these back channels. We're talking to Larry Alex Taunton. Go to Larry Alekstaunton.com. Get a copy of that book. If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am. I'm a genuine philanthropist.

Folks, I'm talking to me. my friend Larry Taunton. You can find him at Larry Alekstaunton.com. He's also on Twitter. Larry, you were talking about how censorship works. In other words, the widow of Christopher Hitchens picks up the phone and calls up, you know, her buddies. And next thing you know, Lawrence Krause, who can be very nasty and who can be, frankly,

genuinely untruthful because I read the article he wrote attacking me. Oh, he's a liar. And the piece that I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal talking about the fine-tuned universe. And ironically, it is Christopher Hitchens. A microphone was put in his face and somebody said to him, Christopher, what is the most powerful argument on the other side? In other words, the opposite of the atheist side, on the God's side, what's the most powerful argument?

He says, oh, without any question, the fine-tuned argument. And he goes into it and he says, all of us say that, all of us, meaning all of us prominent, outspoken atheists, we say that is the most, that is the most difficult argument to deal with. Lawrence Prowse, when he wrote about what I had written in the New Yorker magazine, he went on and on saying, this has been dealt with years ago. There's nothing to this silly theory. And I thought, well, Christopher Hitchens says there's everything to this theory. But that's what we're dealing with, isn't it?

In other words, they don't even believe that they have to tell the truth. So when Lawrence Krauss writes in the New Yorker supporting whatever Hitchens' widow says, it really is just kind of pugilistic. It's not about getting to the bottom of things. Oh, absolutely. I mean, these are the self-appointed guardians of all things reasonable, and they are the most unreasonable people. They don't want to have a fair fight.

They don't want to have a fair discussion. the aforementioned interview that I did with James O'Brien on Newsnight. Now, get this, I come on Newsnight, and the guy just immediately begins to fog me as somebody who has written this very disingenuous, dishonest book about Christopher Hitchens. I state during the interview, it's very clear you've not read the book. Now, O'Brien remains silence on that point because he knows that it's true. He then brings Lawrence Krause on, which I was not prepared for. So Krause comes on. My mic, the camera goes off of me, my mic goes off.

I can hear Krause, but I can't respond. I'm not allowed to respond. So Krause is given free reign to say whatever he wants to say about my book, which he also had not read, and I'm given no opportunity to respond. In other words, they stack the deck. It's almost never a fair discussion and a fair fight. Now, I want you to contrast that with the fact that, you know, we became rather well-known for our debates, you know, roughly a decade ago, the God Delusion debate with Richard Dawkins

and John Lennox in 2007, and I debated Christopher Hitchens in 2010, and Peter Singer, another prominent atheist, and Michael Shermer and on and on and on with these atheists. Now, I was moderator for those debates. If I wasn't debating, if I wasn't debating one of these guys myself, I was the moderator for the debates. Now, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and Peter Singer were all quite comfortable with me in that role. And that is because I ruthlessly enforced the rules on both sides. I made sure that you watch these debates online. They are all fair fights.

gave both sides equal opportunity to speak, to rebut, to have closing arguments, these kinds of things. No one got any advantage from me whatsoever. Even though I'm a Christian and I have my own point of view, I nonetheless made sure that the rules were enforced. This is not the way they operate. We are, we're going to go to a break. We're going to drag you over into our two. This is an important conversation. Folks, get a copy of around the world in more than 80 days, if only to support Larry and any of us who care about free speech in America. I also want to ask you, Larry, about what you're doing in Brazil. And I will say this finally. Here's the funny thing. People on the woke left don't believe in fairness. That's a patriarchal construct. We'll be right back.