The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program with Mona Charen | 9/26/18

Episode Date: September 26, 2018

Ep #189- The Daily Best of GB Podcast: 9/26/18  -Courage is a Muscle? -'What makes somebody great?' -'Anti-PC Professor's Revenge' (w/ Michael Rectenwald) -Kavanaugh in the #MeToo Era (w/ Mona Charen) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Blaze Radio Network. On Demand. Welcome to the Glenn Beck podcast. This is Jeff Fisher, Jeffie, and Pat Gray and I did the last little bit of the broadcast because Glenn started us out today after taking yesterday off thinking he'd come back, thought he was ready to get in the ring. He only made it about halfway. The voice gave out on him.

He's still feeling kind of crappy, so we took over for him. But the show itself, he started out with, courage is a muscle. He talked about how you have to work to be courageous. It doesn't just happen. He talked again for a few minutes to clinical professor NYU Michael Rectinwald. And we also, Pat and I talked to Mona Sharon, Outrage Culture, about her new book, Sex Matters. And we covered a little bit of the Kavanaugh case throughout the entire broadcast. Because no one knows for sure if Ford is going to show up to testify. So we'll get your thoughts and our thoughts on that on this podcast, the Glenn Beck program.

Thanks for listening. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. It's Wednesday, September 26th. We believe survivors. We believe survivors. We believe survivors. We believe survivors. We believe survivors.

That sounds peaceful and nice, doesn't it? That was Washington, D.C. Antifa. harassing Ted Cruz and his wife as they tried to have just a date night in an upscale D.C. restaurant. The group followed Cruz into the building, surrounded them, yelled in their faces, and even surrounded their table. Antifa filmed the entire thing, as one of their members badgered Senator Cruz with a barrage of ridiculous questions about Brett Kavanaugh. The couple eventually had to flee the restaurant. What are we turning into America? Antifaaafah was very proud of themselves.

They, of course, took to Twitter, claiming the entire operation in a long tweet thread, which included the video of the entire event. It concluded with this, quote, this is a message to Ted Cruz, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, and the rest of the racist, sexist, transphobic, and homophobic right-wing scum.

You are not safe. We will find you. So now let me recap here for a minute. Antifa, tracked down a public figure in a public place, harassed him, yelled at both Cruz and his wife, then used the Twitter platform to make it go viral and added a threat to boot. Now, we've been asking Twitter to show us some sort of standard that users can look to so we know what is or isn't suspendable or banable offense on their platform. It appeared we finally got that when they banned Alex Jones. Now, if you remember right, why was Alex Jones banned? Twitter had claimed that he had engaged and targeted and harassed CNN reporter Oliver Darcy.

They stated, and I quote, tweets designed to threaten, belittle, demean, and silence individuals have no place on this platform. So here is a serious question for the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. How is what Antifa did to Senator Cruz and his wife any different at all to what you banned Alex Jones for? In fact, Alex Jones seems tame in comparison. They targeted two people at a public space. They harassed them, belittled, demeaned, and tried to silence them. They even went a step further and added an actual threat.

this is miles worse than what Alex Jones did to Oliver Darcy. As of this morning, the Washington, D.C. Antifa Twitter account at Smash Racism, D.C. is still active. Here's another question. But this one is to Silicon Valley, or maybe to that young dreamer who's starting a tech company out of their garage. The free market is ripe to completely dethrone the social media landscape. Found a company on the basis of actual freedom and actual free speech. It is way past time for Twitter and Facebook to be pushed off of their pedestal. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

I did a podcast with Lewis House. He does the number one podcast, The School of Greatness. Fascinating, fascinating conversation with this guy, really open and honest. I really, really like him. but towards the end he asked me what is greatness what makes greatness and to me it is courage

and I want to play just a little bit of it this podcast just came out Lewis Howes and School of Greatness here's how I answered that question my son was probably 10 he was taking karate taekwondo

corrects me and he didn't realize that when he was going to get his first belt that there were going to be parents there that they're going to be crowd here's my son who's grown up around me he's terrified of crowds okay right probably for a good reason yeah he's terrified of crowds at this time and uh we start walking in and he sees people he's like i i'm not doing this dad i can't do this i can't do this and it's the first time i saw my son like that and um i said son it's no big deal it's no big deal

it's just parents he's like i can't do this i said okay let's get in the car so we get in the car we're back and I'm thinking how am I going to teach him? He said, are you mad? I said, no, I'm not. I'm not. I'm just trying to figure out how I can help you. Get back to the house. I take him into my office and in my office I have, you have to come to my house sometimes. All over my walls in the office, it's kind of, it's layered. The pictures and the things are all just layered on top of each other. Okay. And they're all people from history and moments and, you know, anywhere from one of the guys who was the guy in Vietnam that was in the Hanoi Hilton who blinked his eyes to say,

I've got the stuff he wrote all framed in there, next to Winston Churchill, next to Gandhi and Rosa Parks and all of them. And I sat there and I'm trying to think, what do I say to my son? And I look up at all these people and I said, why do I have all of these pictures and all of these items from history on my walls in my office? And he said, because they're all heroes. And I said, yeah, they are, but that's now why I have them. And he said, because they weren't afraid.

And I said, oh, son. and I started with Wallenberg, Raul Wolle Wollberg, who is one of the greatest heroes in history. And I said, I'm guessing he was terrified. I'm guessing, and I know enough because I've read his own words, I know that Winston Churchill was terrified. I know that George Washington was terrified. I know the guy who was having his arms pulled out of his sockets

in a Vietnamese prison camp was terrified. But they did it. That's a great man. Exercise, exercise, and become great. Little steps of courage will make you a great man

or a great woman. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Hi, it's Glenn. If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do a favor and rate us on iTunes? If you're not a subscriber, become one today. and listen on your own time.

You can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks. Our Blaze sponsor for making this broadcast and this televised broadcast possible. Yeah, it's, if you've ever heard of home mortgage theft, you know just how bad that can be. These new thieves, this is a new process that's fast growing. They can find your mortgage and your title and steal it in 15 minutes.

So these people came in, to show me exactly how fast. I can't believe the things that I've done to protect myself, they said, actually makes it worse, Glenn. Yeah. Makes it worse. And if you don't find out about it early, you're screwed for a very long time.

Go to home tidalock.com, and they'll put a barrier around your title and your mortgage. It's home tidalock.com. Right now, you can get your $100 search for free when you sign up at home tidalock.com. So a few weeks ago, I started reading a book called Springtime for snowflakes. And I stopped about halfway through because I really, really liked it. But I wanted to

make sure I knew who this author really was. Because if you look at his resume, how's it looked, Pat? It looks like he's an atheist, perhaps, extremely liberal. Communist. Communist. Yeah, not extremely liberal, communist. He was a professor at NYU. Another sign of communism? I mean, it's quite amazing. He described himself in the past as a libertarian communist, which I asked him about in the podcast. But I want to show you the results of this podcast. It came out last Saturday,

and I've been seeing a ton of these letters have come in. Glenn, while listening to Saturday's podcast, I wept. I knew what your guest said was happening, but I didn't know how to put it into words and who to tell. I didn't know what to do. I was too busy working three jobs, raising my daughters, going through a divorce to research it all, let alone, and I just let it control my life. This podcast, all capital letters, must be heard by everyone in the United States. Please don't downplay it or mention it only in passing.

This is important. It must be heard. I couldn't agree more. I listened to it twice myself this weekend because I learned so much. Michael Reckinwald is with us now. How are you, sir? Very good, Glenn. How are you doing? I'm great. I really enjoyed meeting you and talking to you.

Tell me quickly for those who don't know your journey. Tell quickly that story. Okay, yes. You know, as you said, Glenn, I was a left or libertarian communist, published widely in communist circles, read very widely, looks up to as a kind of an example for, you know, what Marxism or communism could be. And then I came out against the social justice movement back in 2016 in October, and I was roundly attacked by thousands of people on the internet and hundreds of people inside of my university put on paid leave, quickly damned by a group calling themselves the diversity, equity,

and inclusion group. And the scales just fell from my eyes, Glenn. Basically what happened. I started it's seeing the left for what it really is, and it's just scratched the veneer, the thin veneer of egalitarianism and so forth. What you come up with is a totalitarian left. You told me in the podcast, and I'm paraphrasing here, so let me get your words.

But you told me that at one point, when you saw what was being done, you know, libertarian communism was more of a theory that it was like, next time we'll do it right. That's right. And you realized,

at one point, these people will kill people. What we're doing is we're going to do it wrong again, and these people, it'll end up in gulags and mass slaughter. That's right. I mean, I saw, you know, firsthand what communists say to each other in joking and passing, and they relish the idea, Glenn. They relish the idea of putting a gun to somebody's head that they don't agree with. They talk about it in joking all the time,

And I was actually threatened with the same. If I had my way, quote unquote, I would put a gun to your head in things like that. So the minute I crossed these people, I saw what they were made of, and it scared the living, damn, living hell out of me, Glenn. I mean, it was very terrifying. And it just turned my eyes and turned me around entirely. Tell me about the thing that I laughed at, and you said was the beginning of this journey. you know, genders that you had to be called.

And you posted, you posted on your Twitter without comment, and this is what started the ball rolling. Yes. You know, back in September of 2016, which I called the debuting of social justice ideology in the university,

for a number of reasons. A student at the University of Michigan, when asked what his pronoun choice would be, and given the option to post it, inside of his profile in the Wolverine system there, chose, quote, unquote, his majesty. And I thought it was hilarious a send-up of the craziness and the attempt of these institutions to keep pace with the pronoun and proliferation, as I call it, pronoun and gender proliferation. And so I posted the article without a comment to Facebook, and I went on to teach a couple

classes back to back and by the time I got done with those classes there were thousands and thousands of subthread started condemning me calling me a transphobe and accusing me of having committed discursive violence and being a traitor and so on and so forth and these discursive violence makes me laugh every time sorry about that I know you have a cold yeah discursive violence which is a crazy term, but it's probably too much to get into now, but, and hundreds of direct messages from former friends telling me that I better recant or else and so forth, and I refused. I said, this is completely out of hand. We're talking about a piece of, this is a group of totalitarians dictating everything I can say and do, and I just would have nothing further to do with it. I started

that Twitter handle, anti-P-C-NYU prof. that very night and started tweeting. So, Michael, your life has completely changed. You have, you know, all of your friends who you thought were friends are no longer your friends. What do you do for a living now? I'm still an NYU professor. As a matter of fact, instead of getting fired, I think because I stood my ground

and I didn't back down and I didn't apologize because I'd done nothing wrong, I was actually promoted two full ranks. Wow. Yes, from assistant to full professor. Now, my career here is probably limited. I'm at NYU and I have four years left on a five-year contract and I see no way of it getting renewed because the same people that would be sitting on a committee to renew me are the people that shun me 100%. Now, I mean, these are people that won't get on an elevator with me. How are you, how are you, um,

being viewed by the students, because you were very popular. I'm still very popular with students, and one of the main reasons is, is they can tell, and they know that I'm not there to indoctrinate them into some left-wing ideology, which is so prevalent, it's unspeakable. I mean, it's just the way things are. Everybody, for the most part, in the humanities and social sciences, is subtly but ever so clearly indoctrinating students to become leftists of some stripe or another feminist, Marxist, you name it.

But for me, I don't do it, and the students love me. Michael, this is Pat Gray. What do you recommend to parents who are considering sending their kids out to universities like NYU and Ivy League schools? He addresses this in the podcast. Wait for the answer. This is great. I'd say I would start thinking about this at kindergarten, actually.

Don't wait until they're ready to go to university. The indoctrination is happening at K-Dak for. through 12. And this may even be taking place at pre-K for all we know. But there are cases in which students in kindergarten are being set up for transitioning to another gender. And there are parties for these transitions going on in kindergarten. There was a case of this in August in California, where a student came home and told their mother or father that one of their friends had a transition party, which is a party to celebrate the transitioning from one gender to another. I have nothing against trans people, but what I'm trying to say here is that transgenderism

is an ideology that's being foisted on us. It's being actively promoted, and it's starting at the very youngest ages. And so, you know, university level is far too late. We have to start at pre-K, probably. So, Michael, you're a guy who you believed in Marxism, communist. but you, it was the, the heart part that you connected to. That's right. Is that right?

Yes, I mean, I was, you know, I had ideals about, you know, helping the downtrodden and helping those who have less and, you know, ameliorating the suffering of millions of people. And I thought this was the best way to go about it because it would equalize, you know, access to resources and so forth. But I realized that, as a matter of fact, it never does. and any attempt to promote a sort of de facto equality ends in horror every single time, as we've seen historically. And for some reason, I couldn't see this when I was under this ideology.

I couldn't see it. And it took this turn, you know, and these scales falling off my eyes for me to be able to see what was so evident to other people, you know, particularly on the other side. And once I saw it, I started to research it, and I got. into the history of communism and I read the black book of communism and it makes it very clear that 94 million people have been killed in communist regimes people have been killed by every single communist leader that's ever existed so I mean I just don't know how I can explain how you know you get indoctrinated through the university system and how difficult it is to break that indoctrination but I did break it it was broken for me I should say and everything has changed

Michael, the name of the book, Springtime for Snowflakes, obviously the tip of the hat to Mel Brooks. Why did you choose that name? It just came to me one day, Glenn. I don't know really when or how, but all of a sudden it just popped into my mind, and I said, well, springtime for snowflakes. And it just occurred to me. I have no idea when, how, or, you know, this took place, but it did.

It just jumped into my mind, springtime for snowflakes. and I told other people and they said that's a great title. That is a great title. Some people tried to dissuade me from using it saying it was insulting our students, but I don't think so because I'm not really insulting students here. I'm talking about the indoctrinators, not the students as such. Michael, the transition that you have made, Pat just said, what was the book that you just did brought up off air that he wrote?

something about atheists or agnostics? 19th century British secularism. Yes, that's what we're. So you were a guy that was agnostic or atheist? Agnostic. What happened? I would never. Well, I know I would, first of all, just about agnosticism.

It just means I don't know. And I would never have been so conceited and so, you know, arrogant as to suggest there's no God without, you know, proof. because, I mean, you have to be God to say there's no God. I mean, really, that's what it comes down to. Yeah. And therefore, therefore, you know, it's impossible. So I was always agnostic. I was kind of an agnostic who prayed, though.

I didn't know more yet, but I still prayed. And, you know, that's entirely changed. I have, with this whole, you know, say this whole conversion, I really put it in, there's no better term for it. I've really come to see that that, you know, I'm not, I'm not an agnostic who prays. I'm a believer who prays at this point. And I think that'll continue to grow. Hang on just a second longer, because I'd like to turn our conversations, Michael, to what people do.

We just had a call from somebody who said, I can't talk to any of my friends. I can't talk to my family, even about this, this Kavanaugh thing, because they're just angry and they just yell. And we talked a little bit about this, the principles and addictive. to outrage. And I'd like to hear your view of what we talked about on how to approach people and who to approach to be able to start to have a better dialogue. There's two books that I want to assign, if I may. One is Michael Recktonwald, Springtime for Snowflakes. It is an in-depth look at exactly what we're talking about. The first step into understanding how this is all connected is addicted to outrage. My new book that came out by both of them online now, wherever books are

sold, and I promise you you will not be disappointed, and you will understand the world that you're dealing with a little better, and it will change your course of action. Michael, welcome back to the program. Thanks, Glenn. Okay. So let's talk about how do we deal with, how do we deal with people that are not seeing this? And I think there's two groups. One, the people who know exactly what it is, and they're knowingly engaging in postmodernism, and as you say, which has now become social justice. And then there's those who just are kind of going along and don't really understand.

Yes, I mean, I think that you put it in a footpoint. terms, using a football metaphor. We're standing, let's say, at the 50-yard line, and we're looking at people along a spectrum left and right, and we see that, you know, all the way down at the three-yard line is standing, you know, on the left side is Antifa, and we certainly aren't going to be approaching them. You know, and on the far right, there might be some unsavory characters like the alt-right that we certainly won't be trying to include in our quorum. But we need to try to build some consensus here by addressing these issues straightforwardly and also to try to educate ourselves and enoculate ourselves against this postmodern virus, I say. It's really what it is. It's a virus

that has transmuted into social justice that is affecting all of us. It's infiltrated almost every institution from Facebook to Twitter to Google to YouTube to, you know, most of corporate America and most of the mainstream media and a lot of other areas. So we're talking about a very virulent strain of postmodernism that is really broadly infecting the entire population. So how do we deal with it? We have to first recognize it. We have to find out where it's coming from and what their principles are.

Then we can rationally oppose them. We have to do that with rational thinking, but also with faith knowing that we're right because this is not a happy circumstance. we're talking about. They want to destabilize the family. They want to destabilize all the ontology society. That is all the structures that keep us intact, that keep some adherence, some adhesion, some sort of, you know, order instead of utter chaos. So this is really what we're up against. I think we need to start talking about it. We need to educate ourselves. We need to inoculate

ourselves. We need to also take very close attention to what's happening to our children and our grandchildren in school. You know, watch out for the language. Look at the books, look at our two books and see the kind of terminology that these students are going to be coming home with. Do you agree with... Go ahead, Michael. No, yeah, that's fine. Pay close attention to their utterances. Do you agree with my thesis that if we don't understand what we're fighting against and we fight it with outrage and anger, that we're actually only making the problem worse? Absolutely. We're just fanning the flame. That's all we're actually throwing alcohol or we're throwing gasoline on the flames really is what we're doing.

It's just fanning the flames and building the other side's outrage as well. So we just have two outrage groups and it's just a matter of who's, you know, going to carry the day, but that's not the way to go about it at all. We'd fan the flames by feeding into it. It's kind of like a reciprocal process by which one side's outrage feeds the others. it's a kind of back and forth, you know, sort of a dialectic, as I would put it, between these two groups. And that's not what we want to do. We want to understand and articulate.

We need to ask questions of the other side, those who are rational enough to actually listen to us. We need to sort of defuse the situation, first and foremost. And how do we deal with being shouted down all the time, being called racist, being called homophobes, transphobes, all of the things that we have to deal? deal with being called when we when we try to educate people on what's going on try to answer that in 30 seconds michael yeah that's a tough one and we really need to keep talking we need to point out this this left this illiberal left is what i call them they are shutting down are you know they're shutting down speech but they're also shutting down thought they're shutting down different perspectives and they're making it impossible for people from other perspectives to voice anything

it then their ideas, however outlandish they are, succeed regardless. So we need to stop that. Michael, thank you so much. The best of the Glenn Beck program. Are excited to have Mona Sharon, syndicated columnist and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center joining us. Mona, welcome to the Glenn Beck program. Thanks. So glad to be here.

You, just to refresh people's memory, you were the first. the person who kind of challenged everybody at the CPAC meeting. Was that just this year? Just this last CPAC, wasn't it? It was in February, that's right. It's really easy to go into a scene like that and say everything they want to hear. We love Trump.

This is great. The Republicans are fun and fantastic and doing a wonderful job. You went a different direction and told them they were hypocrites in part. among other things. And they didn't seem to appreciate that, did they? What kind of feedback did you get after during and after CPAC?

Right. So look, it's always easy, as we're now seeing in the Kavanaugh situation, to tell your own side exactly what it wants to hear. And so I chose that moment to say, look, you know, we can't be hypocrites about these issues of, you know, respecting women and so forth. And so I was, you know, it was at that, it was at that moment that the Roy Moore controversy was that it's full boil. And I mentioned that the Republican Party had endorsed Roy Moore following the president's lead had endorsed Roy Moore. Here was a credibly

accused teenager, a man who dated teenagers and arguably molested young teenagers when he was in his 30s. That's just not acceptable. And People on our side chose not to believe it or chose to overlook it or chose to just, you know, just bat it away. But you can't do that, was what I was saying. And I was also critical of other aspects of our side. But, you know, it's just so rare in America today for anybody to be able to say, I have an open mind about accusations against somebody, and I will wait for the evidence. I mean, this week has just been such a nervous breakdown. What the left has done regarding Kavanaugh is just assume that he's guilty based on allegations alone without evidence.

I mean, without more evidence, let's put it that way. Yeah, and they seem to be rationalizing it in that this is not a criminal trial. So there's no presumption of innocence. Well, I don't buy into that because you can't just. change every rule because it's not a criminal hearing? No, in fact, you know, let's bear in mind that what we're saying then, if you say, well, you know, it's not a criminal trial, it's just a job interview, and therefore, you know, you can engage in full-for-character assassination and pay no price for it, is that the kind of

society we want to live in where a mere accusation unsupported by convincing evidence will be enough to completely destroy a person's reputation. I mean, you know, people used to fight duels over their reputations. Reputation is still an incredibly important thing. I mean, imagine if you've spent a lifetime, you know, trying to live an upright life and people regard you with respect. In the Kavanaugh's case, you're a federal judge, and suddenly the whole world thinks of you as a would-be rapist. Yeah. It will destroy his life. It's despicable.

And the sad fact of this Me Too hysteria, and nobody wants women to be abused or harassed or mistreated in any way. But on the other hand, you can't just start destroying everybody in their career just on an allegation, right? And we're into dangerous territory here. Correct. And, you know, first of all, so what a lot of the feminists and the Democrats are saying is we have to believe women because in the past, women were not believed. Well, it's a little more complicated than that. I mean, yes, it is true that in the past, sometimes women perhaps were not believed.

But first of all, we do know that false accusations of rape have been made by women. Women do sometimes lie about rape and with terrible consequences, right? I mean, if you remember the Tijuana Brawley episode a few years back, which brought Reverend Al Sharpton to fame, what did he do? He presented this teenage girl who claimed that she had been raped and abused by four New York City cops. and that turned out not to be true. There have been many, many cases where women have alleged things that haven't been true. The other instance that comes to mind more recently was a rape on campus, the Rolling Stone story, in which a student alleged that she had been gangraped at a fraternity

at the University of Virginia. And, you know, everybody's stereotypes were rolled out. They said, oh, these frat boys, you know, that's just the kids. kind of thing one would expect from them. The same sort of thing happened at Duke where an exotic dancer or a stripper or whatever claimed that the lacrosse team had had raped her. So it's not unheard of for women to make false accusations. That's the first thing we have to understand. And the consequence of a rape conviction or a sexual assault conviction or even a belief that somebody committed that crime are so severe that, of course, we should guard against, you know,

flimsy or unproven accusations because the consequences are so dire for the person who is accused. But the other thing we have to realize as grownups is, look, in most instances of sexual assault, there are only two witnesses. It does not happen, for the most part, in a public place. And because of that, of course, it is hard to parse what really happened. It is he said, she said. And so we do look for other forms of corroboration. And those include whether the woman sought medical care right away, did she tell other people at the time, you know, did anybody see them together and so on.

And then also you look for patterns of behavior. So in the Me Too movement, which I think broadly supportive of, you know, I think that men who abuse women, should be held to account and they should be shamed and punished. But what's notable in the most high-profile cases that we've seen over the past year or so is that there are patterns of behavior. That these men, when they behave this way toward women, it's not just one woman, it's a whole bunch of women who come forward and say, yes, me too. And so now this movement,

And unfortunately, which was really, I think, a beneficial thing for our society is being transformed into a partisan cudgel to go after Kavanaugh. And these, you know, these supportive statements are just they don't pass the minimal standards of evidentiary trustworthiness. So, for example, the story that the New Yorker ran, which I think is a disgrace to journalism, the woman in question there was remembering something that happened more than 30 years ago and was saying that she herself, the person making this accusation, was so unsure of whether it had been Kavanaugh or not, that she had to wait six days and consult her memories and consult her lawyer before she could come forward and say, New Yorker, yeah, I think it was him. Yeah, the last 35 years weren't sufficient to consult her memories.

But then the six days were, those were really helpful. So as we get, as we're on the, just the Eve, I guess, of the testimony of this woman before the Senate tomorrow, if you had to guess, what will be the outcome of this? Do you see Brett Kavanaugh being confirmed? Well, first of all, it's still apparently up in the air as to whether the first, whether Christine Lazy Ford will even show up. People are not sure. Diane Feinstein recently said she wasn't sure.

So I think if she fails to testify, then there's absolutely no question that he'll be swiftly confirmed. Or I shouldn't say no question, but very little doubt. in my mind. If she does testify and is extremely persuasive, then the balance might shift. It's incredibly high stakes. But we will see. By the way, for the sake of our listeners, let's clarify that this accusation is not the one the New Yorker wrote about.

This is the one that supposedly happened in high school. And she, she, too, you know, has said that she, that she did not want to come forward. She made the accusation in an anonymous fashion. And then when her name was outed, she said, yes, she would come forward. But when the committee approached her and said, fine, we will hear your testimony in open session, in closed session. We can send a group to California to hear your testimony there.

She said no to all these things. She said she didn't want to fly. I mean, she seemed to be very squirrely about this. I don't know. I mean, it's, it doesn't sound like she even now is really so sure. We're speaking. Go ahead. No, and therefore, her case, you know, I think she should be heard.

I think people should make an independent evaluation. But it does seem odd the way she has behaved. And of course, we can get into this later. The Democrats have been appalling in the way they've handled all of this. We're speaking with syndicated columnist Mona Sharon about the outrage culture. Last hour, Mona, we were talking with Michael Reckinwald, who also has seen his share of vitriol from the left. And we were talking about how we can come together in this country and kind of heal the wounds and move. forward as a civilization.

And I just, we're trying to find our way to getting back to some unity because we're so divided in this country. And there's probably groups of people, at least two groups. The Antifa people are never going to join hands with us. And on the other side of the spectrum, the alt-right neo-Nazis aren't going to join hands with us anyway, and we don't want to, frankly. So how do we find a common ground where we can all come together? And is it possible to get there and agree on things like capitalism, like the Bill of Rights, like the U.S. Constitution?

Is that doable from where we are now? Well, we have to pray. I mean, one of the things that Twitter has done, I think, is amplify and provide an echo chamber for all of our worst impulses and our most divisive voices. and, you know, people who are on Twitter a lot are the ones who think that we're on the verge of a civil war in this country. It is incredibly, you know, it's incredibly poisonous. At the same time, you're so right to raise the question of whether there are any things that unite us now. Glenn Thrush of the New York Times posted recently, you know, is there any institution or thing about the United States? that we all agree on.

And somebody said, well, maybe the military, but there has to be more than that. That, as you say, the Bill of Rights, our history of religious tolerance, you know, the Constitution, the love of liberty, love of human rights, individual dignity, all those things that we have always prided ourselves on. And look, one of the reasons that I did what I did at CPAC, And some of the other things that I do is in an effort to say, look, I'm willing to criticize my own side. Please step up on the other side. Be willing to be critical of your own side because it has to start there. And once people then give you credit for a certain amount of fair-mindedness, that can be the beginning of a conversation.

And some of the conversations that I've had with people who are sort of on the center left have been very productive. in that sense. But I have to say that this week it's been really tough. I would love to see, and I haven't, I would love to see some people on the left saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, let's not railroad, Judge Kavanaugh, and all men, you know, or men who went to prep school or so on and so forth, because we feel so passionately about, you know, abortion. Let's face it, those are the stakes.

That's why this thing has become so rancorous. because the stakes are Roeby Wade being overturned. And the idea on the left seems to be all means fair or foul. All means have to be employed. If it means destroying someone's reputation, then that's all right. And, you know, some of the people on the left don't even realize that people like us are fair-minded and are just trying to evaluate the evidence dispassionately. they think how could you possibly believe Brett Kavanaugh? It's really difficult to bridge that divide.

Yeah, we are definitely in a tough place right now. So if people want to have access to your books, your articles, where would you send them? So I have a website, Mona charon.com. They can also find me at the Ethics and Public Policy site. My work is published in National Review online. It's available lots of other newspapers. Recently, I'm a syndicated columnist, and one of my, unfortunately, within the past few weeks, one of my, one of Pat Buchanan's columns was put out under my name.

So I'm getting a lot of mail from people. Oh, wow. Whoa, whoa. Yeah, so that was funny. But, yes, and people should go to Amazon.com and check out my new book because it's, called sex matters, and it describes how modern feminism got us into a lot of the difficulties we're facing with sexual behavior and sexuality in general and differences between men and women, which they were very keen to deny, and I think that will shed some light on where we are.

It's called sex matters, how modern feminism lost touch with science, love, and common sense. Sounds great. All right. Mona, thank you. Appreciate it. pleasure. The Blaze Radio Network on demand.