The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 214. Fortitude: American Resilience | Dan Crenshaw

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

This episode was recorded on September 30, 2021.Congressman Dan Crenshaw and I discuss the fallout of withdrawing from Afghanistan and the details of the 20-plus-year conflict. We talk about life as a US congressman and his experience as a US Navy SEAL. About social media and politics–especially in relation to modern conservatism. And about climate change. On that note, we also examined Dan’s recently-published ”Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage.”Dan is a retired Navy SEAL with five deployments overseas during the Afghan and Iraq wars. While in Afghanistan, an IED blast led to Dan losing his right eye. Crenshaw was elected to Congress in 2018, where he serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee (broadest jurisdiction out of all legislative committees). Dan also serves on the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Find more Dan Crenshaw: @DanCrenshawTXhttps://twitter.com/DanCrenshawTXOr on his website: https://crenshaw.house.gov/Check out "Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage":https://www.amazon.com/Fortitude-American-Resilience-Era-Outrage/dp/1538733307

Welcome to the Jordan B Peterson podcast season four episode 71. I'm Michaela Peterson. This was a great episode. Congressman Dan Crenshaw and my dad discussed the fallout of withdrawing from Afghanistan and the details of a conflict that kept us there for over 20 years. They also get into topics like what life is like as a U.S. congressman, the relationship between social media and politics, modern conservatism, Dan's experience as a Navy SEAL and more. I don't want to spoil the rest. Dan Crenshaw is a Republican congressman in Texas

and former Navy SEAL officer. In one of his deployments to Afghanistan, an IED improvised explosive device blast led Dan to losing his right eye. If there was any one I would want to be an eventual president, it would be him. In 2018, he was elected to Congress, and he serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has the broadest jurisdiction of any legislative committee. Dan recently published his book Fortitudeitude, American Resilience, in an era of outrage. I hope you enjoy this episode. Be sure to subscribe if you like this kind of content.

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of paying claims. AM best rated them A and A plus. And one more thing, life insurance does cost more as you get older. Go to ladderlife.com slash JBP today to see if you're instantly approved. That's L-A-D-D-E-R, life.com slash JBP. Ladderlife.com slash JBP. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello everybody, I'm very pleased today to have with me Congressman Dan Crenshaw, Dan Crenshaw, and I'm very pleased to have with me today. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Hello everybody, I'm very pleased today to have with me Congressman Dan Crenshaw, Dan Crenshaw, and I'm very pleased today to have with me today. Hello everybody, I'm very pleased today to have with me Congressman Dan Crenshaw, Dan and I have talked before, but here we are talking again. Originally from the Houston area, Dan Crenshaw is a proud sixth-generation Texan from an early age he knew that he wanted to serve his country with the most elite fighting force in history, the U.S. Navy SEALs. His father's career in the Texas oil and gas industry moved his family all over the world, including Ecuador and Colombia, where he attended high school, as a result, Dan

is fluent in Spanish. In06, Dan graduated from Tufts University, where he earned his Naval Officer Commission through Navy ROTC. Following graduation, he immediately reported to seal training. That's something very difficult to do, by the way, in Coronado, California, where he met his future wife, Tara. After graduating seal training, he deployed to Fallujah, Iraq, to join SEAL Team 3,

his first of five deployments overseas. On his third deployment in 2012, after six months of combat operations, he was hit by an improvised explosive device blast during a mission, Helmland. So in Helmland Province, Afghanistan, he was evacuated and awoke from a medically induced coma, learning that his right eye had been destroyed in the blast and that his left eye was badly damaged

He was medically retired in September of 16 as a left-tenant commander lieutenant commander in the US after serving ten years in the seal Teams he left with two bronze stars one with valor the purple heart and the Navy Commendation medal with valor among others soon after he completed master's in public administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. In November of 18, Dan was elected to serve the people of Texas, second congressional district in Congress. He serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has the broadest jurisdiction

of any legislative committee in Congress. He also serves on the House Select Committee on the climate crisis, long others. Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today. Thank you for having me. It's an honor. As I've noted too many times, one of our intellectuals here. I appreciate it. It's something, yeah, well that's really something to, to hear from someone like you. I can tell you that. So we just had an election in Canada and one of the things that wasn't discussed

was what happened in Afghanistan because Canadians served there as well. And I've been putting together this idea that I'd like to put four or five people who served there together on a podcast and get a grounds eye view of the situation. And but I've got you right now. And so what in the world were we doing there?

And what happened? And was it any use? And what's your opinion about that? Because I just don't know, so anything you can tell me would be real helpful. Yeah, it's a complicated one. But at the same time, it's not that complicated. You know, let's start with some of the first questions. I mean, why do we go in there in the first place?

But they're in the first place because of 9-11 and then United States invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which is how Canada gets involved, because you're our friends. And if we get attacked, we ask you to come help, you say sure. And Americans have a long history of working with Canadians, special operations, and actually where I was stationed in Canda, at least for a while, that was a purely Canadian-based, that's why there was a hockey rink, for instance.

And it's a long time partners, but why were we there? Well, because of 9-11 and we decided that and I think rightfully decided that there needed to be a response to the attacks of 9-11 because they originated from al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda was being harbored by the Taliban and Afghanistan. And so we decided that the Taliban no longer should be in control of Afghanistan. That was day one. And basically everybody agreed with what we should do on day one. Now day two, and I'm speaking in a kind of general terms, but let's call it day two. The question becomes, now that we kick some butt, do we leave? And this was always a difficult question. And this kind of gets to the rest of the questions as far as what we're doing there, why? And there's a question people have been wrestling with for 20 years. And there's been dispute about it.

And it's not exactly a simple question or a simple answer because your alternatives are basically come away with the win. You know, call it a win. I don't know if it's a win, but it's certainly retribution. Call it revenge. But the next question is, okay, do we have an interest in prevention? Do we have an interest in future prevention, a future attacks? And the answer to that question became, yes, we do,

which is why the global war on terror became the buzzword for 20 years. And the difficult question was always, do we let Afghanistan just fall back into the hands of the Taliban, or do we stay and try to at least create some semblance of a government that will be our partner that we can align with and that we can conduct counter-terror operations with and prevent another 9-11. And that became the choice for 20 years and that's what we chose to do. And we can argue, and people like to sort of take easy swipes at that and say, well, look, they were never really prepared. It seemed like an endless war, we're just sort of institutionalized endless war, or just institutionalized the war, or just doing the same things over and over again. But they forget what the alternative

is, and life is always about assessing what the alternatives are. It's easy to be disenjanted with the present or the current choice. It's a little bit harder to actually think about it and assess what the alternative is. And it turns out there isn't really good alternatives in a situation like this. So you can stay at war, or you can say that you ended it and refuse to acknowledge that there's actually an entire ideology out there that has no interest in ending that war with you.

And what I tell people is, and you can kind of get what side of the debate die on. Call it an anus war, call it what you want. The fact is, as you said kind of get what side of the debate die on. You know, call it in a swore, call it what you want. The fact is, as you said, guys like me over there is an insurance policy that's so that there's no more 9-11s. And, you know, what did we get for 20 years of war in Afghanistan? Well, we got no more 9-11s. And that's certainly not nothing.

It's actually pretty significant. And- And do you think that's a reasonable causal link? I mean, you did get some of them, or we did, I suppose, is another way of looking at it, not that I'm taking any credit for that. But so that did happen. And as you said, there hasn't been another major attack. And the incidence of terrorism worldwide or that sort of terrorism does seem to have declined. It's always a trick to attribute the cause of that correctly.

So it's hard. I mean, it's, but the, I'll kind of, kind of an organization that exists primarily to externalize their operations. And they exist to attack homeland, whether that's Europe or the US or Canada. ISIS, for instance, is an organization

that exists to build an Islamic caliphate. Now, they're all kind of under the same umbrella. I mean, in Taliban, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, to the extent that they fight with each other, it's mostly about power structures as opposed to ideological differences. They're all on the same team there. They just might have different strategies. And so we decimated Al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda tried to move to Iraq, tried to try to try to move to Yemen, and we just go after them. And what that does, is it an endless war? Yes, because these people are in an endless war with us. We weren't at war in September 10th 2001. We weren't at war in the year 2000 when the USS Cole was hit. We weren't

at war when our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were hit in 1997 and we weren't at war in 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed. But somebody was at war with us and this is what I have to remind people and we can say we ended a war a couple months ago but we didn't end any war and the intel suggests that al-Qaeda is rapidly reforming and is now they have the space in the time because somebody like me is not going after them anymore. And that's the key ingredient there. Are they on the run or are they kicked back and planning the next big operation?

The next really glamorous operation, the really dramatic attack that they like to do. That's better than just an underwear bomber going on an airplane. And so do you think they have that space now in Afghanistan? And so I got to tell you a brief story. There was a Canadian federal election just not too long ago and maybe a month before that or so. One of the cabinet members of our prime minister's government, he was reelected with the minority government just in Trudeau. She referred to the Taliban, the new government in Afghanistan under the Taliban as our brothers.

And that wasn't so different in some sense from some of the missives that have been coming from the US State Department, but many people weren't too thrilled with that description. And the feeling of more hard-headed people, and maybe they're wrong, is that it's the same old characters now that have obtained power and we better watch the hell out. And so is that over suspicious? Should they be offered in all of branch? It's like, what's your sense about the right way forward with that new government?

Well, I don't think it's overly suspicious at all. These are certainly the same people that took my eye. These are the same people. Now granted, I get it to where cool eye patch is a result of it. So, you know, I'm not complaining too much. Yeah, you do look cool. You look cool. It's no doubt about that. I read a comedian's comment about you. I think he apologized for it with something like, uh, look like what was it? The private eye and a porno flick or something like that, which is a good joke. But it made a portal. That was that that part was the good joke. That was that part was the good joke. It actually was pretty funny. Uh, that that kind of sparks the history of my the birth of my political career, I guess we can talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's finish off with the Taliban and And then let's finish. So Taliban are finished. Yeah. Taliban are terrible. And

they haven't changed one bit. If anything, they're emboldened and ruthless. Look, the Connie network again, a ruthless, ruthless terrorist organization and drug running operation. The head of that, I think, is the second and command for Taliban right now. the head of that, I think is the second in command for Taliban right now. The people in charge, you know, there's groups that we have in Taliban groups in charge of security around the Kabul airport, Taliban groups, were suicide bombing experts. I mean, these people all come, they're all cut from the same cloth. I think it's changed. We're seeing plenty of videos of them hanging people, murdering people, executing people, rounding up women, selling them off. Women are under attack in Afghanistan in a very serious way.

So unfortunately, yeah, and yet the State Department is calling on them to be diverse, inclusive, and equitable. And it's in, it's in, it's in a very, I'm treating something nasty about that. I think I've, it's just's just it's look, I mean, I'm not opposed to working with, you know, questionable characters around the world. I mean, I come from the special operations community.

I also come from the intelligence community. This is this is what you have to do sometimes. But this isn't necessarily one of those cases. This was this was a time to put your foot down and refuse to let this happen. Now, when you let it happen and the question is, what do you do after the fact? Because we're not going to go back in and invade. And so you do have to work with them to an extent and it was the sort of deal with the devil. And I do understand that.

But but you don't have to speak so favorably about them either. I mean, come on. I mean, there's there's there's at least some. There's at least some dignity that we might preserve. I would hope but our state Well, you also maybe might not You might also not say things that would lead them to overtly mock you like yeah diversity inclusivity and equity missives. That's a bit on the let's call it naive side to say the absolute least Yeah That's a bit on the, let's call it naive side to say the absolute least. Yeah, it's, it's how wakism is infected serious people. I mean, to say the least, it's,

it's, it's infuriating and it's, it's, it's caused, you know, quite a bit, quite a bit of angst in the United States. People on both sides of the debates and both sides of the aisle are deeply unhappy about it. And feel deeply embarrassed and as we should, especially because it was so preventable. One of the key takeaways from the hearings this week were general millies, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and secretary of defense were testifying before the Senate and the House in front of the Armed Services committees. I'm not on those committees. I didn't get to and get to ask them questions. But one thing that really came out and that I hoped would come out was, you know, our defense department told them very clearly, you need to leave at least a few thousand troops there.

There's a very, it's almost guaranteed that if we go down to zero, because you know, slogans, right, this is where I get very upset with the debate about all this, because I feel like the push to remove troops is effectively based on a slogan, an emotional slogan. Hey, two. Do you know what slogan means? The derivation of that word? It's very interesting. It's from slew egg, garam. It's well slew egg, Garam. It means battle cry of the dead. Well, that's interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, perfectly. And if it's perfectly with how I'm using the word slogan now, because it, I think it caused these, I think these emotional slogans were effectively political battle cries that caused death. And when you say, you know, this emotional cries to bring the troops on, as if I need your help, right? As if I, as if I am not a smart individual that volunteer to go

and defend America, as if I need somebody's sympathy, I don't. And the other slogan, no more endless wars, you know, and it just, it just, it just reduces a very complex and important topic into a very complex and important topic into a very foolish debate. And I think that's how we ended up in this place where the number had to be zero. It couldn't be 2500, it couldn't be 5000.

Couldn't be something reasonable, right? Because I'm not saying we have 100,000 troops there. Like when I was deployed in Afghanistan, it might have been 120,000 troops there. And you know, it has a surge. It's debatable whether that's necessary or not, but it's certainly not sustainable forever. And I think what people became unable to do

is distinguish between this enormous resources being expended on nation building, let's call it. I think that, again, I think that's an overly simplistic term, but they don't like hundreds of thousands of troops there and definitely fair enough. I mean, why would you? I totally get that. And I don't think we should do it either.

And I also don't think that we should be trying to export democracy, but that's been a bit of a straw man argument or a red herring really, obviously related terms. But it's, you know, this whole idea that we're trying to export democracy, that was never the point. You know, it's an unfair criticism of the Bush administration. Their goal was not to export democracy. Now, you might make a different argument on Iraq. I think they've got to over their skis on that one, but let's set that debate aside.

Well, in Afghanistan, it was never the point. It was just that on day two, like I said, you have a question, do you try to build some semblance of a government that you can work with. Or do you just let the Taliban take it over and then, and then you're right back to where you were right before September 11, 2001. And what have you gained? Um, so what do you think would have happened if you would left five or 10,000 troops there? Uh, we'd be in a very good situation right now.

The Afghan government would still be up and up and running. And there'd be little skirmishes, little combat operations for a while. They're just wood. And that's that small number of troops. Sorry, we have a bit of a leg. So I'm a bit being a bit rude here. But why are you convinced that a number, 5,000, 10,000, something like that?

Why are you convinced that that would have been sufficient? Well, because it's sufficient enough to hold certain air fields, commit certain air power to our Afghan partners, and honestly give them the morale boost that they need to go fight it on their own. It also provides logistical support to them. I mean, a truly, truly modern army is, you know, 5% combat, 95% logistics.

That's what makes the American military so unbelievable, is that we can deploy anywhere in the world and our logistics are second to none. And, you know, that's something that's not quite realized. And we're also not all the experience. I watched an extensive series on World War II that concentrated, and it was narrated by Eisenhower, and it was, it concentrated a lot on logistics, which I found absolutely

fascinating. And it stunned me as well. Just the sheer difficulty of supplying tanks and men with gasoline once the English Channel was crossed. That was amazing operation. They built these huge spools out of, with as much steel in them as battleships and unrolled pipelines across the English Channel. It's like, and that was like one of them. Amazing. It's absolutely beyond comprehension, and that it was possible and that it worked, so that logistics, the supply of the army, all of that, that is really something.

And people don't know how complex that is. So so you figure five to ten thousand and and that was killed by slogans. It was killed by slogans. It was killed by emotional slogans because I mean, like you say, you can't overstate the importance of logistics. And if you, you know, and people say, well, we've been there for 20 years. I mean, why can't they handle it? I mean, you you handle it being a new country after 20 years. That's not exactly a longstanding, long, long time. You know, it's difficult. You know, give these guys some slack. I mean, they've been trying to build a plane while it's falling through the air for years. And it's not easy. And you've got an insurgency that's ruthless and doesn't play by the same rules. You know, they've got IEDs set up everywhere.

You know, this stuff is hard and it takes time. You got to remind people we're in South Korea since the 50s. They didn't have an election until the 80s. You know, it takes a while. And would anybody say at this point that it wasn't worth it that we should have just left and let that fall to communist China control the way North Korea is? I don't think so. I mean South Korea is like a pretty good part.

No, so Korea is a quite a place, man. Yeah, absolutely. Look at it thrive away, man. Hooray. And that would have never happened without our presence there. Just never. And it's not like they ever stopped the war either. They're technically still at war.

So I just think the art now look, are we losing Americans there? No, but we also haven't lost an American, an Afghanistan for a year and a half until these Marines were killed just a few weeks ago. So, you know, and before that, and people are like, well, that's because of the treaty with the Taliban.

It possibly, possibly got, you know, they have time on their hands, they're strategic thinkers. But before that, when we didn't have a treaty, we had an average of six to seven deaths in Afghanistan every year. I'll tell you what, the US military loses a hell of a lot more than that, suicide and random accidents.

So, you know, it wasn't, I wouldn't call this a war in the traditional sense. It was not like what I was dealing with. And even what I was dealing with in 2012 was certainly not like 2010. It was, you know, it's, it war is relative. And I don't see what was going on since about 2014 as a full blown war by any stretch.

It's a, Okay, so let me summarize what you said and see if I got it right. So you think that 20 years of involvement kept terrorism at bay pretty effectively. Now that's done with and whatever was there before is mounting again and has been emboldened that was your word and emboldened by what exactly? Well, by the fact that they took over the government of Afghanistan instantly and are back in control. And then I have some parallel questions along with that.

If I got that right. What is this endless war that we're in apparently about and who's underneath it? Because I have been watching American foreign policy for a long time and I keep wondering about Pakistan and I keep wondering about Saudi Arabia, which has all this immense wealth and has the proclivity to fund rather radical ideas all around the world continually. And so I know those are terrible things to ask you about, or even to talk about. Well, and I'm not like an expert on this, but I know enough. You know, what we're dealing with is Islamic extremism that really originated from Saudi Arabia,

the madrasas of Saudi Arabia and Wahabi Islam, which is a very extreme form of Islam, and that materialized over time. And I think what's interesting is, and I'm going to get the year wrong and the exact attack wrong. But there was a major Islamic extremist attack in Saudi Arabia decades ago. And ever since that moment, the Saudi Arabian government sort of had this deal with the devil with them, leave us the hell alone. And we'll at least harbor you. Right. So that's why people kind of look to Saudi Arabia as this culprit, even though at a governmental level, they're an ally. And again, it steals with the devil.

Yes, it's very strange. It's in it's, you know, why are we allies with Saudi Arabia? Well, because they're, because they're the only geostrategic deterrence to be wrong and they're worse. This is life. You know, this is, this is, this is realism, as opposed to who we wish people were. But that's sort of where it came from. And this has been around for a while and they hate us because they hate us.

And Westerners are always looking for this logical reasoning. Why do they not like us? It must have been something we've done. Let's be our foreign policy. And so I ask, I'm like, okay, well, let's take, let's take our biggest example. Let's take Osama bin Laden. What exactly did we do to this guy? I mean, was it us aligning with him and the Majahadin and Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 80s? And we helped him.

And was it, or was it when we defended his homeland of Saudi Arabia from invasion from Iraq, from Saddam Hussein, in the first Gulf War, we stopped Saddam Hussein from invading Saudi Arabia. And that was actually, so he claimed that our mere presence there was enough to radicalize him and start al-Qaeda. This is, that doesn't make any logical sense, right? Because we're always looking for this sort of transactional relationship, so to help help us understand as Westerners, but they're not Westerners.

They don't operate off the same logic. They think we're infidels and they hate us because of who we are and you need to accept that. And that's why it's an endless war. They will always be a war with us. And it will never snuff it out. It's a reality that we have to live in. And do you think about it as a religious struggle

or as a criminal enterprise that's essentially organized against the West US in particular? I mean, it certainly seems to me like a religious struggle. At least that's how they paint it. And I can only go off of how they operate and how they, how that's an interesting question. I mean, I don't know that I distinguish too much. I mean, in a sense, it operates like an organized crime

enterprise for sure. I mean, that's how we track them. We track them through financing. We track them in all the traditional ways that you might hunt down an organized crime unit. So in practical purposes, we kind of see it the same. And you know, the religious side gets into it because it goes back to the old adage, you know, winning hearts and minds and, you know, turns out that ain't that ain't that easy.

And we're never going to win over Muslims in this sense. So we're just not going to happen when we're over there. I mean, the alliances that we get when we're in a place like Iraq or Afghanistan, they're based on practicality and look, the vast majority of Muslims there are just not that extreme. So they don't, they're fine aligning with us. They don't necessarily subscribe to this idea that you can't even speak to a Christian. So it's complicated. It's life is complicated.

So tell me about life as a congressman. You've been a congressman now for three years and I spent some time in Washington and I was surprised by many things and overwhelmed by many things and impressed by many things. But what's your day-to-day life like? And so I guess maybe what we first should do

is describe the difference between a congressman and a senator for everybody that's listening. And then I'd like to know what you do day-to-day and what your fellow congressman do. Mostly senators are just much older. Look, the American system, and I guess I'm just, you know, I'm speaking to the whole audience, because you know, there's probably not a lot of Americans that quite understand the origins of our system, but it's not a parliament, you know, and the reason being our founders and creating

a republic, they wanted it to move slowly. They didn't like this idea, this notion, that the decisions over an entire country could be made very easily. So they created sort of these national structures and federal structures. And the House is a national structure, the Senate's a federal structure. And we've kind of changed that over time. And we've sort of destroyed that by changing the constitution.

But it was originally intended where in the house really represents the people. It's the people's house. Your election is every two years. It's very emotional. The majority rules, absolutely. I mean, Nancy Pelosi only has four votes, majority and she just kicks our butt.

We can't do, we have no power in the house because it's majoritarian and it's emotional and it's just, it's the people. It really is the people. Senate was supposed to be this sort of, it's like the House of Lords sort of in the Great Britain, the UK. And it's supposed to be this sort of slower

or methodical decision-making process. And the Constitution was actually written where there is no popular vote to elect your senators, where your state legislatures actually choose your senators, because the entire point of the senator, you get two per per state. And this is important too when I say federal and national, right? Because national implies that you're representing the people. So you represent just based on numbers of people, but the Senate isn't like that. You know, there's two senators per state. And the reason it's like that is to is to well give more power to states that are less populated. So they don't just get run over by everybody else because the foundation of our country, the United States of America because the foundation of our country, the United States of

America, the foundation of our country is this idea that we can all kind of live together peacefully, if we leave each other the hell alone for the most part and let states do what states do. I kind of like that idea. I think it would have, it's out of a lot of our problems. But the idea was then that states have representation and then they choose that. Now that got changed nearly 1900s in an amendment, so now it's a popular vote. So the Senate got a little bit more populist, it got a little bit more nationalized, but still a federal entity,

still two votes per state, that matters. The other big difference in the Senate, a senator has more power, individual senator has more power to block legislation than say I do in the House. And with that power comes more responsibility. So you hope that senators believe in that responsibility. One of the worries I have is that we're getting a little bit more of a kind of a wild west type of Senator getting elected to Congress and a little bit more radicalized, the kind of people you'd see in the House. Because it's easy to be a purist. It's easy to be a

little crazy when you just have no responsibility. And it's easy to kind of, the fusion of responsibility is quite significant in the House. There's 435 members, but in the Senate, there's only 100. So your status actually matters there a little bit more and you'd act like an adult. And for the most part, that's how it's operated. You also, that's a four year term. Six years, six year term in the Senate. Sorry. How are you? It's a lot of people don't know this. It just allows you to kind of escape the political ramifications, you know, the emotions of the people for a while and just kind of make adult decisions. And that's maybe that's a good thing. And I think the House should probably be a little bit more. You know,

if I were to change something, I'd say the House should be three years because we're running for election constantly, it seems like. Yeah, well, that is something I wanted, that's something I really did want to ask you, but I just, when I went to Washington and met a number of congressmen, congressmen, both Democrat and Republican, the first thing I thought was there is no way I would want to have this job. And there part of it was, well, when are you not running for office? And that's really hard and it's really expensive and it's really demanding. And then then but you're also supposed to be working but then also you have to fund raise constantly. And that was really shocking to me. My sense of it was that congressman were spending like 25 hours in an office that wasn't their primary office on the phone raising funds for their party. And so that's like 20 hours a week, and then you have to campaign for like,

who knows, 10, and then you have to fly, because you know, you don't live in Washington necessarily. And well, then there's your job. So that's going to take up a few hours as well. So I have no idea how you do it. And can people do it? This episode is brought to you by Aliceum Health. Aliceum was founded by MIT's Dr. Leonard Guarante, one of the first specialists in aging science with over 30

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Because I don't enjoy it the way I enjoy the seal teams. I mean, I got blown up in the seal teams and I still rather enjoy it quite a bit. This is not enjoyable in the same way. Now I personally, people who follow me, they know I do a lot of fun things associated with my campaign that make it enjoyable. Like we throw big parties, we have big fourth of July celebration, we do a youth summit which of course you are, you're guessing. I do fun things to make it enjoyable.

And the reason I say it's not quite as bad as people realize, you are correct that a lot of folks would say it's about 20 hours a week and I spend on the phone fundraising. Now, for me, it's not correct. I don't do that at all. I might spend an hour. And how do you get away without? And why do other people do it?

If you can get away with not doing it, why does anyone do it? Because I put so much effort into trying to be somebody that somebody just wants to donate to. Does that make sense? So I put a lot more effort. Yeah, it makes sense if it works. And if it works, it works. I was under the understanding that Congress people were under congressmen, were under tremendous pressure from their party brass to do that sort of work. And you can understand why,

because it's so expensive to run it. Maybe it doesn't have to be, you know, that is a question. But, and that gets into a whole other set of questions. So, to answer your, it does work. Now, I'm very, it works for me. It's hard for, it's hard to replicate it, to be perfectly honest. It works for me because,

well, I don't know. I know how to use social media pretty well. I do things like this, right? Like I have my own podcast. I know, well, that's I want to ask you about that too, because you wrote a book, and just a couple of years ago, well, you were doing all this,

and then you have this podcast as well. And so you are using this new media to speak directly to people. And so that begs one question, which is how in the world you have the time to do all that as well. And, but I would like to ask you about your experiences with social media.

It's like, how is that working for you politically? And what do you think it signifies, let's say, for the future of politics, because who needs the legacy media in 32nd soundbites? politically. And what do you think it signifies, let's say, for the future of politics, because who needs the legacy media in 32nd soundbites? It doesn't have to be like anyone does. Yeah. And look, the entire point of being a representative is to, well, there's a couple of points to it. Craft legislation, vote on that legislation. So I'm in the minority, which means I'm not really crafting any legislation. I mean, I have a

legislation I'd like to craft, but I have no power. So my duty is effectively just to vote on it. That doesn't take up a whole lot of time. And I think a lot of members, going to mislead the public a little bit when they say, I don't have any time to read anything. Look, a little bit when they say, I don't have any time to read anything. Like, look, there's ways that we digest these massive bills. We're following their development over time. Staff is combing through it. It, you know, the reason they're so long, too,

they're filled with legal jargon, you know, and then you have to break apart the substantive part of it. But there's ways to absorb it. So I never use that as an excuse for why I'm voting against something because you basically know what's in it. Anyway, that's sort of a side point, but anyway, it's a relief though. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, I don't like using that as an excuse. So it could be an excuse, I just don't like using it. But another big part of your job is simply to communicate with people.

And because you're representing them, so you need to communicate both up and down, right? You need to communicate their voices, what you said you would run on. So obviously, you don't perfectly represent everybody. There's lots of Democrats in my district. You don't feel that I represent them. That's fine. But I. There's lots of Democrats in my district. You don't feel that I represent them. That's fine. But I represent a majority of the people in my district. And so, and I represent them based on what I ran on.

A set of values. A set of conservative limiting principal values. And my job is to explain things better than they can themselves, which is sort of why they all like. They're like, they kind of want you to be like them, but just explain it better. And I knew, and I knew that's what I wanted, because I wasn't, I was never political. The first moment I got involved in politics was the moment I declared running for office. And I always knew, so I was a normal guy, is my point. Like I think being involved in politics

and being an activist can kind of change the change the way you think about politics. And I think gets you detached from regular people who are just aren't thinking about it all the time. But I was just one of these regular people not really thinking about it all the time. I was very interested in policy, which is slightly related, but different than politics. And so, so when I, so the point is, it was kind of regular guy. And I knew what I wanted. I just wanted people to explain why the hell they were doing what they were doing, and don't talk to me in talking points.

So, and to do that, you do need long form discussion, and then you got to communicate with people where they're at. So why do the podcast? Well, so I can dive deep into issues and be willing and no, no things well enough so that you can have a long-form conversation. A lot of people will struggle with that. And so that's number one, but not everybody listens to podcasts and not everybody wants to listen

to anything for an hour. And so you also have to be able to communicate your points on Twitter. And that's not great, but it is something. And that's what some people follow you on. So communicate something there. Instagram is probably one of my favorites because I can kind of do everything on Instagram.

And it's the biggest following there. And you know, you put out videos, I put out explainer videos and I'm not giving you a 20 minute, you know, information on episode on, on issue X, but I'm trying to do it in a couple of minutes and go a little deeper than just Democrats are bad, you know, and they want to kill jobs. Well, why do they want to kill jobs? You know, let's just explain it a few layers deep, just a few more layers, and that's what people are looking

for. And it's been very successful. And so I can spend my time doing that, which is also my job, because my job is to communicate. I can spend my time doing that, which is also my job, because my job is to communicate. I can spend my time doing that and being creative with that and being good at that. And that takes away all those hours of fundraising that I have to do. It's not like I don't do any. And I'm like, and I'm like,

and I'm like one of the number one fundraisers in the house. Oh, so that's part of the reason you even get away with it. Because what you're doing is very effective. Right, right. So tell me about this youth summit, more about the youth summit, how that got started and why you do it and what you saw there. I know I did this Q&A, but my staff give me things and I do it and I don't know the context as much as I would like to, especially with something like that. I wish you could have been there. Me too. Love to get you there next time. We'll do it every year. And it's a very cool thing.

If you're a conservative, you know that one of the biggest electoral problems you have is young people. And that isn't all that surprising. I think the promises of the utopian left are very dearing to a young person. And to a certain extent, you'll never escape that. But my goal is to give them the tools of conservatism.

There's a lot of youth groups out there. You're probably familiar with, you've spoken to a turning point event and maybe you've dealt with Yaf too, so Young America Foundation, both good organizations, but this isn't what I'm doing. I'm not doing either one of those things. I'm trying to do a young America foundation, both good organizations, but this isn't what I'm doing. I'm not doing either one of those things. I'm trying to do a mix of both because what Yaf does is, is a very intellectual, you

know, it's been, Ben Shapiro's pretty much their main headliner. Of course, you know, Ben Well. And so it's a bit more intellectual. There's not a lot of fanfare to it. It's just somebody on a stage and let's give a speech and let's answer some questions. And then you got something like turning point, which is a very higher production. It's like a kind of a concert like very much a rally. And what I try to do is a mix of both. So I want to give you that experience. And I'm also 100% only focused on high school and college kids. So that's

I you have to have an age limit. And so mine was 24. And I want to give them both intellectual tools that they can come away with, which is why I invite somebody like you to speak. And I want to also give them a good time because I know I need to grab their attention. I need them to have fun.

I need them to come away with an experience that they're not going to forget. And so we just, I mean, it's, it's a high production fun event. And there's like, there's even a concert in the middle of it. You know, yeah, I don't know what's going on with the, with you conservative types because you've got comedians now and you've got entertainment and know you're talking to young people. It's like, this is very strange. So, hey, I've got a question about this issue of young people, because I've been talking to lots of conservative folks in Canada, because we have a conservative party, and they're

about as popular as our government, but not quite. And I've mentioned that I believe that their fundamental problem is that they can't figure out what they have to offer to young people, but it seems to me that what they have to offer is this notion, it's something like encouragement, something like paternal encouragement. It's like we really think you could be something if you behave properly in some essential sense,

and we really believe in you as an individual in alignment with your traditions more than we believe, let's say, in the utopian promises of government, per se, as a problem-solving enterprise. And I think one of the things I've really noticed, and I get a lot of letters from people, is that, and this just about killed me when I was on my tour, because I'm offering people words of encouragement as individuals. And I had no idea how much starvation there was for that. And that was particularly true of young men, but not only true of them. And that is something conservatives can say is like, look, you know, we really believe

in you. And we, we, we are skeptical of the claims that big organizations per se, especially government, can do what they promise. Whereas you as an individual, especially if you get your act together, man, you're really something deadly. So in the best possible sense, and that's a, that's a really attractive message, especially the young people now, because they don't really hear that. You know, they hear that they're just spoilers of the environment or some guy wrote me. I just told his letter today. He'd been in prison. He'd been suicidal.

He wasn't a good guy. And he, he sorted his life out when he was 30, about he said he encountered my lectures and he stopped regarding himself as intrinsically, you know, like an intrinsically bad dispoiler of the planet, something like that. I'm not exaggerating. And he had no idea that maybe there was something

to the idea that he had intrinsic value. And he quit all his idiocy, stop drinking and stop taking drugs and he got married, he had a kid and he's got a job. But you know, conservatives have something to offer young people and they just don't know how to get it across. There's something about what you're doing that does that. It's partly why I'm so interested in talking to you.

And why do you think the turning point thing is working? Exactly. Well, you know, it's different than what I do. I mean, what turning point thing is working? Exactly. It's different than what I do. I mean, what turning point does, which Harley does, is they just, they just were the first ones to give conservative kids a place to go hang out with each other, frankly, which is pretty meaningful. I guess people are just looking for,

especially in a university setting. People are desperate to find like-minded individuals who feel the way they do. They give them that. You know, the Republican clubs were just kind of outdated. You know, young people don't go joining these clubs anymore. So we sort of just look for different ways to do it. And I think that's that's what it gives them. I mean, I don't think it's much more complicated than that. But to jump off of what you were saying about what conservatives deliver, well, somebody asked a question like that always,

it kind of depends on my audience on how I want to answer it. But jumping off of what you said, because you've said, you used the phrase paternalistic encouragement. Encouragement. Yeah, and of course, yeah, which is different, of course, than paternalism, which is I think a leftist attribute, but what we do and what I want to jump off of there is what I often say and actually it was a speech I gave to that you summit was because I'm always trying to explain to kids, like, how, how, how can, I'm giving you a tool, I'm giving you a way of explaining something simply so that when you're confronted by your classmate,

you can have this tool. Now you've got a tool in your toolkit that you can use. So I'm like, here's a way to think about the difference to be conservatives and liberals. And like, it goes something like this. The conservative ideology is like, it's about love, okay? And it's about the kind of love that your parents give you. And that's a little different than say the kind of love that you're like, your crazy aunt gives you. She loves you, but she kind of wants to just spoil you, right? She just wants you to love her. It's really important to her.

She doesn't really have a lot of responsibility over you either. So your parents create rules around you and they tell you that your actions matter, they tell you that you're accountable, they tell you that you better work hard if you want to succeed. And they're not always that nice about it. You know, it doesn't feel like love, but it is in a very profound way. That's love. And then your crazy aunt's like, you're perfect the way you are. You know, you don't have to change. So, you know, you're fine. And it's not your fault that you got a bad grade. And I want to do things for you. So, you know, you're fine. And it's not your fault that you got a bad grade. And I want to do things for you. Like, let me take you to the shopping mall. It doesn't mean she's a bad person.

It just means that that's not... There's nothing worse that you can tell young people, especially around 16 or 17, that they're fine the way they are. It's like, well, they might as well just die right there and then then because they've hit perfection. It's like, no, you've got lots more to learn. There's way more to you than you've explored. And it's really necessary that you find that out and develop it. And that's way more encouraging than you're okay the way you are. But I get it in some sense because it's associated with the idea

that people have intrinsic value. And if you have children in some way, they are just perfect the way they are. But in some way, they're not because they're not everything they could yet be. So yeah, so the message is to get the message mixed. Yeah, and it's like there's a difference between not being perfect and being bad, you know, and we shouldn't tell kids that they're just bad. But you also have to give them some room to grow and something to aspire to. And that, yeah, well, that's the thing right there. That, that, that issue of something to aspire to, you know, and part of the woke,

what would you call it, pathology that we're all engrossed in at the moment is the idea that, you know, that there's something wrong with judgment per se, and that's such a preposterous idea because to do it, and I could speak about that psychologically, because to do something like look at a room, you have to make judgments about what you're looking at and why. You can't do anything without judgment. There's a hierarchy of values. It's tied to our perception,

and there has to be something at the top in some sense that unites us and we should strive for that. And that is the sort of thing that conservatives can along with warnings about the overreach of government because people who are conservative tend to be more concerned about that. And so I think the two things that I like to say are foundations of conservatism. One, we just hit on, which is effectively personal responsibility, extensive accountability. It's a very, I think that's important, it's an important betarock for any civilization. I would also say that it's the precursor to freedom. I don't think you can be a free society if you don't at least have this sort of sense of personal

responsibility and grain in it. I don't see how it's possible, right? Because for the for the simple reason that freedom requires a sense of responsibility. Otherwise, you're just asking other people to be taking care of you. And if you're asking other people to be taking care of you, a definition you're infringing on their freedoms. We're asking a politician to infringe on their freedoms. So these are necessary foundations. And this is what conservatives at the authors, this freedom, and we can't. You're also depriving. You're also depriving yourself of the adventure of your life. Because one of the things that's been so successful for me in some sense is to draw a connection between responsibility and meaning.

It's like you want some meaning to set against the suffering. Well, where are you going to find that? Well, reliably one place to find it is in responsibility because that means you're shouldering something worth shouldering and it's a burden that's actually somewhat significant and you can you know, you can comfort yourself with some sense of your own utility in the face of all your sins and stupidity. And that's, you can't, how can you live without that? It's not possible. Yeah, the struggles I have is how that's not more persuasive. Because there's just a lot of people who just I think fundamentally disagree with what we're saying right now. They would disagree that freedom as a virtue in and of itself is even a virtue in and of

itself. They would also define freedom very differently. They would say, well, it can't be free unless unless you have housing, unless you have health free healthcare, unless you have at least, you know, some living wage, then you can't go be free. So we're like defining the word freedom completely differently, right? Because I would define it. It's troublesome on edges too, because, you know, you can certainly see that there are levels of absolute privation that are so severe that your freedom is restricted in, in many ways, not in all ways. And maybe not in the most important ethical ways. I mean, I, I read a lot of literature written by concentration camp survivors

who were in pretty damn rough situation and still insisted on their own, what would you say ethical responsibility? Certainly, Solzhenitsyn's conclusion. In some sense, he thought that was all you really had when everything was stripped away from you. And Victor Frankel, who I wouldn't regard particularly as a conservative,

he pretty much came to the same conclusion. And those are pretty powerful books. It's hard to read through them without being, you know, somewhat convinced. So. And I think that one of our challenges is convincing people that freedom is actually a good thing. And I know it may be not just not liberty in freedom.

I mean, like ordered liberty freedom, you know, freedom within a moral framework, which is what makes me a conservative and not a libertarian. And it's just difficult. It's more difficult than you might think to convince people, well, I don't know, I think you, I think you understand it. I think it's a conversation you have pretty often, but it's convincing people that freedom is indeed, even though it's risky and even though it's messy, and even though it can allow you to fall on your face sometimes. even though it can allow you to fall on your face sometimes, and even in suffering, and even in suffering that you might think is unjust,

it's still, and the aggregate improves things. It improves everything. And it's harder to see that at the moment. And so what people are swept up by is the sort of false promises of immediate action, immediate action to save something. So it's a fixed something. And to take that paternalistic government view,

that status view of something. But the thing is, if we actually took a step back and saw the forest for the trees and looked at the long span of history, it is always true that more freedom leads to more prosperity over time unless of it leads to less. If not, if not complete another decay, in fact.

Well, I think the diversity argument is actually a weird, what would you call it? A weird warped version of that in some sense, because speaking as a scientist, I hope, part of the reason that freedom works is that we don't actually know what problems are going to come up next, Because things actually change, and they change in an unpredictable way. And so we have our traditions to guide us, and thank God for that, because we'd be making endless decisions all the time, otherwise, and we wouldn't be in complete disunion.

But we still, that's not a perfect structure for moving ahead into unknown territory. Okay, and so you don't know what the problems are, and you don't know what the damn solutions are, because you're not that smart. So what do you do about that? Well, biologically, what has happened is that human beings are possessed of very diverse individual temperaments, and that's the diversity argument. That's why diversity is necessary, but it's temperamental. So there are creative and non-creative people. There are extroverted and non-extroverted people. There are compassionate people, and there are tough-minded people.

There are conscientious people, and there are people who aren't burdened down by duty. And sometimes that frees them up to be artists, let's say. Who's right? Well, the answer is, it depends on when. And so, okay, so how do you cope with that structurally? Well, you let these diverse people be free so that they can think up ideas that might be appropriate for the next problem,

and then you let them talk, which is why free speech is so important. It's like, without that, we do not have a problem-solving mechanism. We can't capitalize. And this is biological diversity. This is the manner in which organisms themselves have adapted to the entire structure of reality. You don't mess with that. You certainly don't do it politically, and you need free speech. You know, and it's part of that is also opponent processing. You know, if I want to move my hand as smoothly as possible this way, I put this hand up to stop it and push,

and then I can do it. And a lot of the processes that occur biologically are like that, opponent processes. They make for precision and control. And a lot of our political structures in the West, because we allow for free discussion, our opponent process, their opponent processes. And so we have a problem.

We get a diverse range of opinions, God only knows which is right, and then we can talk them through. And then maybe we don't implement something, you know, catastrophically stupid. And so- And I think the other point to extract from what you said is it's diversity, it's also the decentralization principle. Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is a key, key elements of conservatism is this, first of all, a sense of humility. Conservatism is about a sense of humility. A sense of humility about what you can really know

and what you can control. And in my experience, dealing with my colleagues, Democrats, they have no such humility. They do believe that they can solve every problem. And sometimes I think that's well-intentioned, and sometimes it's not. I think it's just important to kind of extract what they want, but then let us figure out how to get there. Yeah, well, that actually works out temperamentally. That's exactly how things should work, because liberal people, all inso know, in so far as psychologists

have been able to determine this. And it's not exactly accurate because psychology as a field is prejudice against conservatives. So some of the scientific measures are biased. Yeah, it's terrible, especially in social psychology. But, but none of that, well, let, so, so the, the people who tend towards those more liberal utopian and grand scheme views are, they tend to be high in openness and that's creativity, divergent thinking, and low in conscientiousness, and not very detail-oriented. Whereas the conservatives are the opposite types, and so what you see happening in businesses is the open liberal types tend to be entrepreneurial, at least in their vision,

and the conservative types implement. And if you don't get that right in your business, then it doesn't work. Because the open people, they're everywhere. They can't settle down. They can't even catalyze and identity easily because they're interested in everything. And they're full of wild schemes and great because, hey, some ideas.

But if you want implementation, and then the other problem with the grand scheme thing is and conservatives always say this, and it's really hard to teach young people about this, but it's really important, and that's the law of unintended consequences. It's like, why are you so sure that your stupid idea will only do what you think it will do,

and not 100 weird things that you don't predict at all that are worse than the original problem. And this could lead us into a discussion of climate change politics, for example, I've been watching the spot price of oil and natural gas as well. And what's happening in China, which is just cut power to millions of people because coal prices have gone through the roof and they're trying to meet their carbon targets. So it's like, yeah, well, that's a solution, is it? Well, let's talk about that a bit, maybe you don't mind because I see you're on that committee You just talk to your in Longburg

Yeah, we just found a podcast. It's it's a subject I primarily deal with most people probably think I'm on arm services committee and Primarily deal with national security issues, but my two issues are healthcare and environment Mostly I don't know I've always tended to have a to gravitate towards weaknesses. And I feel like those are the two subjects that conservatives are weakest on in our messaging, even if I think we're correct about our assessments of them. Can I say one more thing about the decentralization?

Our conservatism and then let's move into climate change. We've got a lot of say about climate change. But one of the reasons I think this is so important, this sense of humility, it also helps people understand. I'm always trying to help people understand what the philosophical underpinnings are, why you're conservative,

because I think there's a really rich tradition there. I don't think there is one on the left. I think the left is about what you want right now, And I don't see it guided by any kind of principle or especially, and there's no governing principles in there either, no limiting principles. And so the decentralization argument is important and it gets to the diversity argument because it's really why we come, it's why we end up supporting the free market. All right, it's why we think that is important because it's why we end up supporting the free market. All right, it's why we think that is important because, look, while it will never be perfect,

and while you can always imagine a utopia where the centralized thinking just makes things better, it never works, and there's good reason it never works. And the entire point of that diversity and then the free market that underpins it is the ability to do something and then test out whether it's creating value or not. Because yeah, you can be that whimsical artist

if you want, but if nobody cares about it, then it's a good indication that you're not creating any real value. But of course, some people do and they find a way to do that. And I just think that's the important. It's as good an indication as you can get. And that's the thing that makes it so tough is that

we produce these decentralized processes and they're actually cognitive computational devices. The environment's unbelievably complex. It's impossible to keep up with it. So you distribute decision-making, and that is a fundamental conservative principle, in the most diverse possible manner, right, right down to the level of the individual, because you're too damn stupid to know what's coming. And so you need to build a computational machine and that's really perhaps how conservative you should talk about it, because that link is very seldomly made.

How do you keep up with an infinitely complex environment with an infinitely complex, mobile economy that's so diverse that you can't predict what it's going to do. It's so diverse that you can't predict what it's going to do. You certainly can't control it and you shouldn't. And maybe someone somewhere will keep up a bit. And then you can copy them. That's a deal, man. And I think it's a good one. And it's actually good. It's a good segue into the climate change debate.

So because what the left will say is, okay, well, there's market failures. Free market seems nice, but there's market failures. You have to admit that. And I would say, yeah, I can admit that. It can happen. And that's where environmentalism comes from, right? There's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there say, okay, again, a primary tentative conservatism is assessing trade-offs, because I would say conservatism is a governing philosophy. It's a process-oriented philosophy that seeks to solve problems within a set of limiting

principles. Limiting principles means we ask questions like, what are the second, third-order consequences? What's the cost benefit? And that's really what the climate change debate should be about. Unfortunately, it's not about that. It's about your a denier and a killer or you want to save the planet like a good person, which one do you want to be? You know, they moralize over us on it. But it really is fundamentally about trade-offs. And so, you know, the Republican

mainstream position on this isn't denying climate change, right? It's just assessing the facts and saying, okay, there's certainly some warming going on. There's certainly some loop warming, I would say. I'm just going to use the same data that everybody else is using. Let's use the UN data. Let's use the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And let's see what they're saying or the costs are going to be. And so their cost is the simplest way to put this is, yeah, there's a cost. And how do we quantify that cost? Well, we can look at it this way. According to the UN, again, the scientific consensus, we're going to increase global GDP by 450% in 100 years.

Well, by 2100. With climate change costs, it's going to look more like an increase of only 434%. So it's a cost, but it ate that much. Okay. And so we're not denying it, but we are saying, look, whatever actions we take need to be somewhat proportional to that cost. actions we take need to be somewhat proportional to that cost. And that would be a good place to start. Not like Lamberg so much is he was the only, I'm really interested in environmental issues. I studied them for a long time and tried to figure out, you know, what bothered me about most of the environmentalist discussion was there was no rank ordering of priorities and that was a real problem if you want to implement some solutions. And I came across Lomburg and I thought, hey, look, this guy, he's got a, he's got a sensible way of actually generating policy out of this, right?

He put his teams of economists to work and does cost benefit analysis and tries to build something approximating what would be a policy generating machine. He takes projections of precisely the sort that you just made into account. And that market failure idea, we could talk about that a little bit. It's like, well, of course, the market fails, because even a decentralized cognitive machine

made up of all these millions or billions of human brains isn't going to be perfect. But that's not the issue. The issue is, what makes you think that you can jump into that gap with your theory and fix it. If the bloody market can't do it, why in the world do you think you can?

Well, because I have an ideology. It's like, oh yeah, you and everyone else. And dealing with market failures is essentially what politicians are supposed to do. It's why we create a government to deal with market. So deal with poverty. I mean, you could argue that poverty, excessive poverty might be a market failure.

Like it's just not getting fixed. Now, you really think about it. There's always going to be somebody at the bottom, but you don't want it to be too far at the bottom. And so this is where you have a value-based judgment and you have a political argument about it, and you kind of figure out what to do. But, you know, the problem with what the left does is say,

this is an indication that the entire system is bad, and we need to throw out the foundations. The conservative says, right, it's an indication we might need to take some action, and we should be very careful about how we take that action And we should do so within a set of limiting principles and it's that's a difficult cell because and it gets back to the climate change to Be it because it's a difficult cell because because the liberal will say what do we want action? What do we want it now? What does it consider? What do we want?

Incremental change. What do we want it in due time? Yes, exactly It's not that exciting especially to young people So you know, there's that principle in science, Occam's razor, right? Do not multiply explanatory hypotheses beyond necessity, which is the simplest solution is by default, the most appropriate. Now, the same thing might apply with regards to problems, and that's another conservative advantage in some sense. It's like, no, no, the smallest possible change that will produce the end result. Because you don't know what the change is going to do. And that uncertainty, that's part of that humility

of conservatism that you describe. That is something that's communicable to young people. It's like, it's not like we don't think we don't think there are problems, but we're also quite skeptical of grandiose solutions and even more skeptical of the people who put them forward. And that's not foolish at all. I'm much more afraid of the people dealing with climate change than I am of climate change. As you should be, because what we're, I mean, well, so this week we're debating this reconciliation bill and reconciliation just means that you can pass it debating. And within that big 3.5 trillion, which is actually closer to 4.5 trillion, depending on how you estimate it, there's a lot of, you know, let's call it, green new deal provisions. And what would have green new deal basically is, is massive

subsidies for solar and wind, massive incentive structures for only solar and wind and renewables, but renewables, they really just define a solar and wind. Okay. They don't like hydro, they don't like nuclear. And we'll get to that. So it's that and also a full on attack against the oil and gas industry, which should also trouble Canadians. Hey, we're, we're plenty troubled by it. That's for sure. Yeah. I mean, what even true though is like, hey, why did you guys cancel the ex-alpha, the Keystone pipeline? Yeah, but he's secretly happy about it. Yeah, that's true.

So this simultaneous attack is unbelievably dangerous for the well-being of people across the globe. It's going to, so right away, you're going to see increases in energy prices. How much? How much? What are we going to see in two years? What do you think? 300 bucks a barrel?

Oh, oil. Geez. No, no, I don't, the data I see doesn't see that, but you could get up to 90. I just read a Wall Street Journal article today that some estimates are at 90 by the end of the year. Just pretty damn high. I don't know about 300. I mean, but, but I don't know if they passed this bill and it was implemented their natural gas tax, which would put a lot of our medium-sized

producers at a business. Yeah, just exactly. And also take away, take away the one thing that has decreased carbon emissions facts. I know, is that funny? 90 levels. That's fracking. Haha. Fracking. Now, which Democrat would have predicted that? Zero.

Nobody. Nobody predicted that, man. And it just, you know, have it. Nobody. Nobody. That's right. No, because it just kind of happens. It's a free market.

It just, it just kind of happened. And it happened because of a government action, but the government action was just liberalizing it. It was just, it was just removing a barrier to it. And the export ban, they didn't even know bomb assigned. When we removed the oil export ban of the United States, what did you just create?

Well, you created a powerhouse of energy in the United States. And why is that a good thing? Does that make climate change worse or better? Well, the question is, and that's the wrong question really, because the question is, what is demand for energy around the world? And so it turns out demand for energy in the next 20 years is going to go up almost 30%. That's a guarantee. So who's going to provide energy? It's not gonna be solar and wind. All estimates show it's gonna have about its same proportion of the energy mix. And so it's either gonna be the United States and Canada

that actually care about environmental regulations and put all these restrictions and, you know, on a per unit basis, and this is a scientific estimate, it's not the EPA that did it. It was one of our national labs that did the assessment. A unit of natural gas is 42 percent less emissions than a Russian unit of natural gas. So we're cleaner. We're objectively cleaner when we're giving you oil and gas. And yet this administration counterintuitively in an effort to reduce gas prices

wants OPEC to increase production. So we're attacking US oil and gas and trying to get OPEC to increase their production. This is, if you're trying to solve the problem of reduction of emissions, this is the opposite of... They're not exactly our friends always. No. And they want to put we see this way out Canada madly. Yeah. And so it's just it's just it's just a thing happening Canada with regards. Sorry, sorry. We're just saying if we're trying to solve a problem, you know,

of reducing emissions and then fine, let's solve the problem. And the other thing I we as Republicans were always wondering is, they say, and if you really think this is an existential threat, and we're done and like we're cooks in 12 years, the world is on fire as they always say. Well, then why not just instead of the trillions of dollars towards a bunch of nonsense, why not just build a bunch of nuclear plants?

Really, why not just build a bunch of nuclear plants? Why don't you have just government funds? So what's the answer to that? Yeah, why not? Like a bunch of nuclear plants? Why don't you have just government funds? So what's the answer to that? Yeah, why not? Like, like France did it? Their answer is, well, there's the truthful answer, there's the public answer, and there's the real answer that I think is true, but so the public and their answer is, well, it's expensive, there's safety issues. I'm like, yeah, but on a per-unit basis, it's still a better deal. Again, if you think, I thought no cost was too high,

because we're in an existential crisis. And so I would assume that you think it's priority to have reliable energy and you don't get reliable energy from solar and wind and you never will. It is impossible. And I don't care how far along the battery technology comes, it'll never meet where we need it to meet. It just won't. It's physically not going to happen. And so you need nuclear and you need gas, but they're against it. They're shutting down gas, nuclear plants in California and New York. And it's just, it's really mind-blowing. So it leads me to believe that they don't actually, one, they don't actually think it's a crisis. And two, that they're mostly driven by special interests in the solar and wind

industries that have really captured them. And again, I'm not against solar and wind. I just think, I just think they should fit in where they fit in. I don't think they should be over subsidized at this point. I think there should be technology neutral subsidies for carbon reduction that involve nuclear and also involve carbon capture for oil and gas. I mean, if the entire point is reducing carbon emissions and let's make that the technology goal, as opposed to just renewables because it makes us feel nice. And it really is about feelings. I mean, I don't think there's any other reasoning behind it. Oh, there is another reason I think is that

the ideological morass out of which such ideas emerge is extraordinarily confused. And it's, you know, 30% anti-capitalism and 20%, what would you say, a resentment about the nature of humanity itself and then 40% concern about the environment and our depredations. And so you have that mix. You can't think clearly.

It's like, well, are we saving the environment? Yeah, but what about capitalism? Because it's actually the problem to begin with. And so then you get these sorts of solutions emerging. And a lot of them are tainted with this terrible, destructive anti-capitalism, which seems to be often more, a more important crisis than the environmental crisis itself. Yeah, I mean, you look at the Green New Deal,

and what AOC wrote up in this sort of like Children's Science project. It was very little about the environment and much more so about the substantive change in healthcare and the economy. And it was kind of saying that quiet part out loud, which we all suspected that this was mostly about the sort of great reset that people talk about. It's more about that than in his climate change. But for you to get you to agree to these really substantive reforms,

to the revolution and thinking, you need to scare the hell out of you, which is why they use terminology like the world is on fire. And that's why they point to every hurricane and wildfire. Like, this is what climate change looks like. I mean, you hear that all the time. But it's really, as if we've never had hurricanes, as if we'd never had wildfires. And as if there's not actually a much better explanation

for California wildfires, which is porphoris management, which every study shows. Right. And it's like, let me get this straight. If we all drive electric vehicles today, if the United States stops producing carbon today, are you telling me there's no more wildfires? Are you telling me all of our weather starts to look like San Diego or you're telling me Houston's not going to have hurricanes anymore? That's

nonsense. I mean, that's complete nonsense. And it's not data driven. It's not fact-driven. And truthfully, again, go back to UN, Intergovernmental panel and climate change data. If the Western world will leave all developed countries with a stopped emitting carbon right now for good, you might get a reduction in temperature of, I think it's like 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. All right, right. And that's what, that's actually within the error bounds.

So one of the problems with these climate projections is that if you go out 50 years, you can't even tell if what you did 50 years ago had worked because the error bars are so big at that point. And that's actually a huge problem because what it means is there's no way of testing whether you're damn solution, your large scale solution had any effect whatsoever. So how in the world are you supposed to solve a problem like that? It's the cans. And that, that, that, it might be the, it's like, we don't want to do anything, right? And I listed some things that Republicans are in favor of. And, uh, primarily nuclear energy and gas. I think, I think that's a healthy, that puts us on a healthy glide path towards reduction in emissions. And, and look, the other truth is, is the more a country develops, the more

you industrialize it, the more concerned they become about the environment. That's another truth. So maybe focus on... Yes, definitely. Well, also, you know, with the lefty types, you think, well, they're concerned with poverty reduction. Okay, well, how to do that?

Well, how about you make energy real cheap? How about that? Because energy is what does work. And so if you give that to poor people as close to nothing as possible, then they can do almost everything free. How would that be? So are you so sure you're concerned

about those poverty-stricken people? If you look historically, can you really imagine anything that has done more for them than cheap energy? And how would that even be possible? Even metaphysically, energy runs everything. So cheap energy means wealth directly, virtually no intermediation.

So now you're gonna make every energy all more expensive to produce these trivial changes in climate that you won't even build a measure. It's like, what's up with you exactly? Yeah, it's true. It's such a frustrating conversation. I do think we're winning the debate on this because it's not a winning argument to say there's no such thing as climate change. The environment doesn't need our help. That's just, people don't wanna hear that. But they would just wanna hear something.

And so, and that's, I think that's what we're offering at this point. And so I think we're on a healthy track as Republicans. I am still very worried about this bill that has the potential to pass, but, you know. Hey, let me ask you about that infrastructure bill, okay? Because I mean, I've thought and talked to many people about this that, you know, if the Democrats need something to do, because they need something to do and they're in power.

And well, maybe infrastructure isn't such a bad preoccupation. There's something real about it. Hopefully, at least maybe 30% of it, which might not be bad, given large projects waste a lot always. And so pros and cons of the infrastructure project, as far as you're concerned. Yeah, so there's two things for people's understanding. There's this reconciliation package. You hear the number 3.5 trillion associated with that. So that's one thing. Then there's the infrastructure, the bipartisan infrastructure deal, which is like 1.2 trillion. So a lot of money. The bipartisan infrastructure deal, substantively is not bad. It has a lot of good things, right? Like what? Like what? Why do you see that it's good?

It's, it's just your typical boring infrastructure stuff. Like, you're like highway funding, like port funding, sewage treatment, this kind of stuff, okay? It's boring when it works. It's legitimately, yes, exactly. It's legitimately decent infrastructure. Our opposition to it, again, it's not everybody's opposed to it,

but my personal opposition to it is, it's about four times, three to four times too much money. Yeah, that's about what you'd expect though. Yeah, and it's just, if it was cut in half, at least you could get me scratching my head like maybe, but it is important for people to know the substance of it is not bad. It's the price tag is just too much

considering we spent six trillion on getting our economy back on track after COVID, which frankly was mostly money well spent. It's probably some of the best work government has done in crisis, to be honest, especially with the small business loan program that we instituted here in the US. But in any case, it's not the time to just be throwing money out the door, you know, with hyperinflation coming about it. You just need to be more careful. Is really our only opposition to the infrastructure bill.

So that's what about the three. So now you separated out the 1.2 trillion, which you're speaking reasonably positively about for, you know, a suspicious conservative type. And then there's the 3.5 trillion. So let's talk about that. And, and, you know, because the fear was that everything would be put into that basket. Right? Of course, that's going to happen. So detail detail, detail out that. Yeah. So the reconciliation package is a series of tax hikes, about two over $2 trillion in tax increases, recorders of which will indeed, despite what the Democrats say they're lying about this, because we have liberal think tanks that have done assessments, and it will increase taxes on at least three quarters of lower to middle income people. It will increase your taxes, because there's so many different types of tax increases.

And it'll just going to hitch you somehow. And if it doesn't hitch you there, it's probably going to reduce your wages. So we've already seen how much how much are people looking at about about one percent, which is it's not a ton, but it's something. But I think I think what's worse about the way Democrats do economic policy, it's not like it's going to make your wages noticeably decrease immediately. But I'll tell you what, they're not going to increase. And I have proof of this. And if we look at the last 15 years of data post,

so let's look at two major recessions, one COVID and one's 2008 financial crisis and two different types of economies, two different types of governing philosophies. And the first time was under Obama, we need more tech, we need tax the rich, we need to spend money on infrastructure that is nearly trillion dollar infrastructure package back. Then turned everybody agrees now that turned out to be a waste did not contribute to the economy the way we'd hoped it was the shovel ready myth.

Okay, that's that's widespread agreement on that and hindsight. At the time I can understand why you might think that stimulus is important but an hindsight didn't work out. Okay, but you're also increasing taxes. You're a threat to businesses because you like to regulate them. And you tend to see businesses as more of a bad actor than a good actor that creates investment in jobs. Okay, and so fast. And so what did that create? Well, it created plenty of wealth for the top. Everybody's mad about inequality.

Under that system, the top still get richer because they could figure it out. The bottom quintile of earners was stagnant. So that's not a myth. Under that system, the top still get richer because they could figure it out. But the bottom quintile of earners was stagnant. So that's not a myth, that was true. Now after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, since Trump's major accomplishment, obviously. Anyway, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. So what do we do?

We cut corporate tax rates, cut everybody's taxes everywhere, right? Tax cuts for everybody. And what happens to wages? Well, if you look at wage growth, the bottom quintile of earners skyrocketed. Now, it doesn't mean that it like drastically reduced inequality, okay? But as far as the proportion goes, the percentage goes, the bottom people were growing much, much faster than the top. That's an absolute term, obviously not. And that's what everybody looks at. They want to take the data that they care about, and it makes their arguments stronger. So they'll say, yeah, but they made $100 million more. Well, okay, well, they had $50 billion. So

percentage wise, they didn't make that much more, but the lowest quintile, doing this particular job, which I don't know what a universe you could imagine where that particular job is making that much more, but they were growing. Why? Because well, pro-growth economic policies create a tight labor market, right?

Where businesses have to compete to higher people. We're at a very tight labor market now. Wages are, no thanks to the Biden, but mostly because of the pandemic and a few other things, but wages are pretty high. I mean, it is still hard to hire people. You know, this bill could reverse that because like the reality is is that Biden economics has not really hit the United States because they haven't done any. They haven't passed anything. All right. they're they've created this sort of they've what the what their general view on business that it's bad and and the increase in regulations has I think decreased investment

but that's hard to measure. I think it's intuitive and obvious but other than that there hasn't been a major shock to the system. A lot of the a lot of the shocks are maybe too much spending and also supply chains problems which are more related to the pandemic and maybe it may be a lot of the, a lot of the shocks are maybe too much spending and also supply chains problems, which are more related to the pandemic and maybe, it may be a refusal of this administration to do anything about it and loosen certain restrictions. So it's a long, long, anyway, point is this pro growth works and it actually helps increase wages for the lowest quintile of burgers. That's just a decade. That's a data driven factor that we can look at over the past decade or so. So getting back to this reconciliation package is just doing the opposite.

It's just doing the opposite. So you're going to reduce wages more importantly, reduce their potential growth because you're also creating an environment because you're raising corporate tax rates. So businesses are just going to hire less. Right. It's never the CEO that gets hurt because of a corporate tax hike. It's absurd notion that you're just like taking it to the, taking it to these mean corporations.

Yeah, what, these corporations that employ hundreds of thousands of people. What is it, you know, it doesn't mean they should just do whatever they want. No, what is it, is the inequality in some sense that bothers people, but one of the things I have trouble with with regards to leftist policies is that they actually underestimate the severity of the problem of inequality and they assume that restructuring capitalism would remove inequality and there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that that has ever worked in any way other than the opposite because inequality is not a consequence of capitalism.

It looks like it's almost like a physical property of the of reality itself. I mean, there are physicists who model the unequal distribution of money using the same equations they use to describe the dispersion of gas into a new environment. Like, it's a really something fundamental. It can't be overstated. And it's a real problem, right? Because who the hell wants terribly poor people? Like, that's such a catastrophe.

But it's not like, it's a consequence of capitalism. It's like, come on, guys. The other thing about inequality, it's just, it's like, let's look at the following math problem. If there's, if you and I are the sole citizens of country X, you make $50,000 a year and I make $100,000 a year, well, there's a delta between us, $50,000. Now, let's both double our income.

So now you make $100,000 and I make $200,000. Well, holy crap, inequality just doubled because now there's the $100,000 delta. So it's not always what people think. I mean, the question isn't necessarily about it because I don't care that there's a lot of people who are way, way wealthier than me. It doesn't necessarily bother me. What would bother me is if I have no

chance of ever being them, if I was the most talented smartest person on the planet, it would bother me if I had no chance of ever being that person. And I'm sorry, but that's just not the world we live in. There's, if we look at what keeps you out of poverty and the thing is from the Brookings Institute, there's like three things. It's like finish high school, have a job, any job, and don't have kids before you're married. And you've got like a 97% chance of not being in poverty. So it turns out we do live in a society where choices matter and the value that you provide matters.

And that's the society we want to live in. Is it perfect? No. Is it the best we can do? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is. And should we have a safety net for those who just can't make it? Yeah, there should be a safety net. But, you know, we should argue about how much of a safety net and the fundamental and about the negative consequences of that potentially as well. Right. Because, you know, the safety net doesn't make things worse. It makes you dependent and makes you unable or on wanting to find more work and be productive, right? That would be the fundamental question of a safety net.

And I think their Democrat policy is just generally don't care about that. So can I dig in, can I dig into the weeds on the three? I still don't understand the differentiation between the 1.2 trillion and the 3.5 trillion. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I got a long way to go on the way here. So let me do it more generally instead of getting too much into the weeds on the taxation stuff. So okay, so a lot of increase in taxes, a lot of increase in spending, a lot of that

increase in spending is on things like expanding Medicaid, right? Expanding Medicare, like making Medicare benefits more generous, even though like 96% of the Medicare population already gets the dental envision and whatever. So it's just, it's a lot of, to me, it's a lot of bribery, okay? So we're giving you stuff. We're going to fund like the pre-K. We're going to fund all of these things to the government. We're just going to do so many things.

Any wish list they've ever had, they're sticking in this bill. Again, the subsidies, subsidies for solar and wind, it's just a new climate bank, whatever the hell that means. I mean, with tens of billions of dollars ahead of it, it's stuff like that that is, you know, some of it is extremely threatening, I think, because of what policy perspective. Some of it's just incredibly wasteful. So that's where you see the over-inclusiveness of the infrastructure development project. That's where everything is being shoveled into. Yeah, yeah. So again, it is separate from the infrastructure bill.

Well, we call the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package. Remember, if people remember when the Democrats were talking about human infrastructure, like everything is infrastructure. Right, right. They put all the human infrastructure into the reconciliation package and we kept the real infrastructure in the infrastructure package. So again, substantively speaking, I think the infrastructure package is good. I just think it's too expensive.

And substantively speaking, I think the reconciliation package is complete insanity. Okay, well, let's close that off there because we're going to run out of time here. I there's some other things. If you don't mind, I wanted to ask you about will pop out of the political domain to some degree to to begin with, you have a book, you wrote a book, not too long ago. And so maybe you could well, tell everybody what what the book is and then talk about that a bit if you'd like to. Sure.

Appreciate it. Fortitude, American resilience and the era of outrage. And I came out with this book in April of 2020. Interesting time to come out with a book, as you can imagine, because that was the start of the pandemic. I've never really done a book tour. But it's done pretty well, and I think it's done pretty well, because it's sort of, you know, I'll be honest. I kind of describe it as like a Jordan Peterson 12 rules for life, but like the JV version. Okay. It's like the, it's like if you're the, if you're the post grad level, like I'm trying to give people a bit more of a high school level of the similar thing.

And I'm very specifically trying to guide people through how to build more fortitude, more mental fortitude. And I use a combination. So every chapter is a different lesson, sort of a different concept that I'm trying to ingrain. And it's those lessons and concepts are parted to the reader through a series of stories from the SEAL teams, through some philosophy, through some Bible verses, and seal teams, through some philosophy, through some Bible verses, and through some pop culture. It's a mix of everything. I think it's multidisciplinary.

And I think it's interesting. I think it's unique, and I think that's why it's sold pretty well. So where did you learn to be resilient? I mean, after you were terribly injured, you went back and continued in your military operations. I mean, that seems to be, I mean, some resilience, you know, it's your healthy and your tough, and that's part of what's built into you.

It's a gift in some sense, but then there's the role that attitude plays and education and all of that. And I was fortunate enough to meet a number of Navy SEALs in California and got to know some of them quite well. And they're very respectable characters, and they go through hell to become Navy SEALs. That's quite interesting.

They told me some pretty hair-raising stories. And where did you learn to be resilient to the degree that you learned it? Was that mostly military? Was that mostly a military consequence? Of course, I can't develop it. I think it's a consequence of a lot of experiences. that you learned, was that mostly military? Was that mostly a military consequence? Of course, I can't develop it. I think it's a consequence of a lot of experiences.

But what I write about in the book, my first experience, and this experience is laid out in a chapter called Perspectives from Darkness. And I'm available to that chapter because one of the first Foundations of fortitude being you know if we define fortitude as resilience to it the ability to overcome adversity and Perspectives a pretty good place to start because if you think everything is worse than it is you're gonna have a hard time mentally coping with it

If you have a sense of perspective, you're able to, you know what, this isn't that bad. Like one of the things, one of the things instructors and buds, this is seal training, repeat to students constantly is, look, there's 10,000 men who have done this before you, so stop your complaining. You can do this.

And that's like a quick gut check. Like, I don't want to be one of those who just quit. I mean, there's 10,000 that have done it before. It's probably more than that to be perfectly honest. But, and so, but, but what I write about is, is my mother, because, you know, I think that was my first real interaction with some kind of fortitude. She, she, she lost her when you were 10.

Yeah, right. Yeah. And I also, you know, I watched her deal with breast cancer for five years. And I had trouble recalling real suffering on her part, mostly because she hid it from me. And I have trouble recalling her complain. I have trouble recalling her have a bad attitude.

I have lots of other recollections of her being funny, of her being nice, of her being a good mother. Wow. And it sort of begs the question, like how on earth can someone do that? It's extremely difficult and not show that kind of resentment and bitterness and just raise your kids.

And so that's my first hero. First hero to look up to, I also have a whole chapter on heroism. And frankly, I got some of that philosophy from you on how to build hero archetypes and the proper way to look up to people as a way to develop yourself in a better way. Right. And I say, like, don't take an individual, like, you don't want to just be like Jordan Peterson. You want to see what makes him successful, see how he's done well in his life and maybe copy some things from him. Like how does he talk to people? How does he think through things?

What's the thought process is he used? And how does that apply to the hierarchy you want to be better at? Because it might be different. Like, you know, you might be an academic, you might be in media, might be in sports. So it's different. So you got to look up to people within your own genre, really. And the SEAL teams is no different because you're what am I up to people within your own genre really. And the seal teams is no different because you're what am I trying to be a better seal, a better leader. What makes somebody something that I want to follow? So that's like that's chapter two, for instance, one of my favorite chapters, because I think it's a good way to start like how because you got to know what you want to, if you want to be somebody

who lives with fortitude, you got to know what that looks like first. Right. You got to know what you're aspiring to. It's a really important. Oh, and you can look at, you can look at what you admire spontaneously. Like, obviously, you admired your mother spontaneously. And so that's an instinct. That's not, that's not rational exactly, although it might be hyper rational. You know, and we all have that instinct to admire.

And that does point us in the direction of what is better. Yeah, exactly. And it's just in a practical way and kind of a materialistic way. It's like, well, just what works. Like one of the outcomes that actually work for people and what don't. And one of the problems with postmodernism is trying to make the things that don't work, make them work. Socialism hasn't been tried. You know, it's like that kind of thing, right? Because it feels good. And, and so, you know, then my second real interaction, I suppose, of fortitude, yeah, would be the military. I mean, buds is a trial by fire. You come out a different person than you went in. How, how were you different? How were you to begin with? That's the first question. And then how are you different? Well, I just, I think you come, I mean, look, I just I think maybe I'll maybe I'll take that back a little bit.

I guess I'll say because one of the things we say in the sales teams is, you were sealed before you got here. We just made you prove it. And then we trained you. But that mental capacity, it had to be there because you wouldn't make it through how weak otherwise. So you had it, but you hadn't proven it to anybody and you hadn't proven it to yourself. And once you prove it to yourself, that's something.

I mean, you become something a little different, not too different, but it's a little different. Some people can become cocky, right? You don't want to be too cocky. You want to be confidence. So you definitely become more confident. I don't think you've met many seals or are very confident in themselves. And so that's it, but that's a good thing. They were cocky. They were most of them were unbelievably funny. They're unbelievably humorous. And I think I'm very funny. So, you know, and I'm not being overly confident. I think I'm very

funny. I'm just, you know, humility is not an attribute that we have very much of. She millies not an attribute that we have very much. So yeah, it changes you. I mean, there's a culture like I can identify a teen guy really easily. And first of all, there's definitely a look, right? And it's, but there's a way, there's something in their eyes, like I can just tell, like you can just tell.

And I don't know how to describe it to be honest with you. And because we all kind of come from the same place where we wanted to do this particular job. And we wanted to go through the hardest training we could find and be in this elite team. And so that that, I don't know, it just makes you similar in some way, even though there's, I think, a decent amount of diversity in the teams. As far as backgrounds go, as far as backgrounds and wealth come from, makes you similar in some way, even though there's, I think, a decent amount of diversity in the teams. As far as backgrounds go, as far as backgrounds and wealth come from, I mean, it's, it's very, very difficult to, it's not so very difficult to see who's going to make it through it.

This gets to another chapter, which I call no plan B. And you can't get through buds unless you have, unless you've decided that you would die before you quit. You have to, you have to have given yourself no choice in the matter. That's the only way you make it through. If you're like, you know what, I'm going to do my marriage. Yeah. Well, okay, that's a funny story because one of the things in the sales teams is the only easy day was yesterday. And that motto is plastered on the Buds grinder. And so what me and my wife did knowing, understanding that there's so many good parallels between steel trade and marriage, we went and took some of our wedding photos right in front of that side. The only easy day was yesterday. And it's sort of this no quit attitude.

And this understanding that look, it's only, things get harder, so what, deal with it. And embrace it, embrace the suck. I'm just kind of using slogans from the seal teams at this point, but they have a quite a bit of meaning associated with them, embrace the suck. And what does that mean, fundamentally? Well, they have meaning because people are actually acting them out, right?

They're not empty slogans. So they might be comical, over-simplified representations, but there's something actually happening. And I like that particular one, I'm very sorry because it actually gets to another chapter in the book, which is simply called do something hard. And the whole point of of this discussion is embrace suffering. I'm not saying embrace like swimming with sharks because you can suffer swimming with sharks and getting bitten like that would suck.

But I've been self-imposed suffering, right? And so like buds and how we can everything we do and see what's right, it all is self-imposed. Like you do have it in the back of your mind. Like I'm not gonna die. I'm not actually gonna die. It feels like I'm gonna die. Feels like they're trying to kill me. But I know that they're going to save me if I start

drowning and people do drown. But we save them. It's funny, but it's it's it's it's it's it's horrible, but it's funny. But there's but there's a but there's a real value to seeking out challenge and suffering. This is why people do Spartan races. This is why people come together. They love group suffering too. This is why people go, go organize themselves across fit gyms and do these crazy things. Why do you go climb a mountain, right? Like, is it for the view? Did you climb the mountain for the view? No, no, no, you did it. The means were the entire point. Like the path that you took was the entire point because it's hard. And I think that's pretty normal and intuitive. And I think that's been

really fundamental tenant of Americanism for a very long time. And I think we're losing it, which is why I felt I had to write about it more and just kind of remind people of why these things are important. I don't think there's anything novel in my book at all. But you are conservative. Yeah, yeah. Right, I just think it's a, I just think what I did was take all the best ideas from history and try to lay them out for people because, you know, if you're trying to come up with something novel these days, it's a good chance that

you're probably just wrong about it because it hasn't stood the test of time. I think it's very rare that there's gonna be really new insights in today's world. And I think the new insights are really just the old ones, like personal responsibility and doing hard things and challenging yourself and just, and feeling good about a challenge, even if it sucks, even if it's an injustice.

I dive into that quite a bit in that, because that's people's next question. It's like, well, how can you say all suffering is good? Like, even injustice, even things that happened to you, like, what if you lose your eye and go blind? I mean, like, what, you know, well, you then just look at the silver lining. I mean, it's, I'm oversimplifying it quite a bit.

I think there's a much deeper discussion in the book, but it really does just simplify to look at the silver lining, just because there's an injustice done against you, doesn't mean you have to tell yourself that story. Does it mean you have to tell yourself a story of being a victim? You can be a victor, even if it's false, even if you really are a victim. Now, I think people over victimize themselves these days

to an extraordinary degree. I think they either lie about their victimhood or they associate victimhood with bad luck. And then there's a difference, right? And in either case, though, it doesn't actually change how you should react to it. And you can react like a person with fortitude and tell yourself a story of being better for it and being a victory. Or you can tell yourself a story of being a victim.

See where that leads you. And I promise you won't lead you anywhere good. I think that's a perfect place to stop. There's a bunch more things I would like to talk to you about, but you know, we we traversed a lot of ground and you can have me back anytime, you know. Good. Good. Thanks. You thanks me for coming on, but I'm pretty sure I was like, can I come onto your podcast, Jordan? That's actually what happened. So I appreciate it. I'm I'm really pleased to have you on it. I really appreciate it talking to you. And there are other things I'd like to talk to you about in the future. I didn't talk to you, but, you know, potential political ambitions and many other things, but that's this was good. So

potential political ambitions and many other things. But this was good. So and that ended well. So look, thanks a lot, eh? And I really appreciate it. Yeah. And thanks for your service. You know, oh, thank you. Yeah, really. I know us academics were protected by a ring of people who put themselves on the line to make sure we have the freedom to complain. Well, you know, I, uh, I never really the SEAL teams of service because it was this adventure for us. If you look at, if you know Matt Best, he was actually the part of Black Rifle Coffee, familiar with them. And he wrote a book called Thank You for My Service. And I think that actually gets really to the how a lot of veterans feel about their service. They're like, I got to go jump out of airplanes and go, you know, blow things up with my best

friends. I don't understand how this is surface. This is great. And yeah, sometimes you lose an eye, but you signed up for it. I will say politics feels a lot more like service. I will say that. That's zero glory at it. But it's important. And you know, that's, that's, it's fulfilling. That's why glory at it, but it's important.

And you know, that's, that's, it's fulfilling. That's why I do it. Hey, man, thanks a lot. And for the invitation to the youth summit. Yeah, we're going to keep when we get dates for next year, we're going to keep bugging you about it. So I'd love to, we'd love to see you there. Hopefully, how's your health?

Are you feeling better? Yeah, I'm still like running about 70% but that's better than two. It's a hell of a lot better than two. Yeah, it is. Yes. So thanks for using a lot more than most people. Well, we need you.

The world needs you. Please, please take care of yourself. Well, good, good, good luck with your political duties and hopefully we'll talk soon. All right, I need it. Thanks, Jordan. you