The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3547 The Rise Of The New Right And Maga W Laura K Field

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

It's Hump Day on the Majority Report: On today's program: At a House Rules Committee hearing, Rep Jim McGovern (D-MA) highlights how many times Donald Trump has promised to unveil a health care plan going back 2015. At the same hearing, Rep Chip Roy (R-TX) has a melt down over the Republican's inability to draft a realistic health care proposal Political theorist, Laura K. Field joins Sam and Emma to discuss her new book, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right. In the Fun Half: Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) stumbles through his health care talking points on CNN Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says that they will not be releasing the full video of their double tap on a boat in the Caribbean. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) says that after leaving a briefing with Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio that he is confident that the U.S. had no legal or national security justification for the boat strikes. ProPublica and the New Yorker have reported that potentially hundreds of thousands of people have died since Elon Musk dismantled USAID which makes Jillian Michaels statement that the starving children is a "red herring" look pretty bad. All that and more. The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Check out IceRRT.com to find an ICE rapid response team nearest to you. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: SHOPIFY: Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/majority BLUELAND: Go to Blueland.com/majority and save up to 30% during Blueland's holiday sale!  AURA FRAMES: Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/MAJORITY. Promo Code MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE: Head on over to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use the code WINTER25 to save 35% on their full lineup of CBD Tinctures for people and pets. This sale ends December 21st at 11:59 ᴾᴹ eastern. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

It is Wednesday. December 17th, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Laura K. Field, political theorist, author of Fureaucer, a furor minds, the making of the Maga New Rights. Also on the program today, Trump announces a blockade of Venezuela in his quest for war,

or just all of Venezuela's oil. Also on the program today, four Republicans defect in the House and sign a discharge petition to bring the ACA extensions bill to the floor. Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth decides Americans are not allowed to see the second strike of the video of the boat in the Caribbean on September 2nd. The most transparent administration in history is what we've been told, huh? You're just, you wouldn't understand it. Australian Bondi Beach Hanukkah Celebration killers of 15 tied to ISIS charged with terrorism. One died.

Trump regime to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research because it so-called promotes, I should say, they say it promoted climate alarmism. It's now only studying chemtrails, I guess. Was it justified climate alarmism? Nope, sorry. I'm going to be dead in five years. I don't care.

To offset the Trump's lump, Trump now contemplating stimulus checks for Americans, and Trump's chief of stats, Susie Wiles in hot water for slamming just about everyone in the White House. Former special counsel Jack Smith and closed door

deposition with the House Judiciary Committee. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is a hump day. I can't win. I can't win. I'm not

enthusiastic enough. Okay. Oh, are you sad to I put some gumption behind it. Emma, you hadn't lost until you said that. Yeah, you were doing great. I just, you just did it with a dramatic flare, and I was just letting you have the stage, and then... You know what you're doing.

You know what you're doing. I think that was a good time to say your haircut looks very nice. Thank you so much for noticing. Oh, did. Good job. Brian wins. That's what it was. Literally the first person, I think.

First time. I just noticed. you had a haircut and I was like trying to assess that out but I didn't I wasn't sure okay well it's hump day and um I think there's a certain giddiness it is this is the last

Wednesday of 2025 yes that we'll be doing live RIP hump day 2025 yeah um reincarnated as hump day 2026 um let's get into this

we got a lot to get to that it was just recently, I mean, literally in the past hour, it appears that the discharge petition, they got enough votes. And to be clear, the way that the House works is that generally, I mean, I feel like I can count on one hand the number of discharge petitions that I've even talked about over the course of the past 15 years. I wrote this down, that the bulwark had a write up about this, that there have only been two, just, they've succeeded just twice in the 21st century. And then, and in terms of success rate since 1935, less than four percent have gotten

enough signatures. And now you have like a handful of- It's almost happened on a daily basis. Exactly. And to be clear, what a discharge petition is, is that the way that the House of Representatives set up, the Speaker of the House basically dictates what bills are going to get to the floor of the House. And that is generally maintained because the members of the party of the speakers of the house of the speaker of the house they don't uh they go along what the speaker says because they feel like well i mean not just because they agree with them but i imagine also you mess with the speaker you're going to lose your position on a committee you're going to uh you're just not uh providing party unity and the crack up is so great

amongst the right right now and this will be something good to talk about with uh laura k field at least from an intellectual standpoint to the extent that there is intellect going on there, and there is some in some quarters. But the crack up ranges from, you know, down to their like podcasters, into their lawmakers, into the executive branch in the White House with Susie Wiles. I mean, it's all coming at them very quickly right now. And this is the second instance in as many, weeks, I feel like, that there's been a discharge petition. The Epstein files, of course,

was a discharge petition. That is where you have the majority of members of the House. And if it's all the Democrats voting, that means that there has to be defectors from the Republican side. And that's the case with this one as well, vote to bring a bill to the floor. Now, that doesn't mean that the bill is going to pass automatically. Some people will say, like, I just think this needs a hearing, et cetera, et cetera, but more often than not, if you're going to buck your leadership, you're doing it for a reason, and that is because you feel the political pressure. And the four Republicans who defected, three of them are in purple districts in Pennsylvania. And one, Mike Lawler, in a blue district in New York State.

And so they're worried about what's going to happen in a week. And to be clear, it's going to be. to happen in a week regardless. The discard petition says you need 30 days. The bill must be brought up within 30 days. Now Mike Johnson could bring the bill to the floor today or

tomorrow or any day in between if he wanted to. He may because they're not going to get much credit for their vote to extend the ACA subsidies a month after it's clear that they're not there anymore. The Senate is very

unlikely to pick up this bill. although it's possible, but unlikely. So this is part of the Republican crackup that's happening. But first let's go to Jim McGovern from Congressman from which district, Brian? Doesn't say a number here. I'll get right on that bus. Sorry. He's from Massachusetts.

Oh, yeah. I know he's from Massachusetts, but he's from the heart of the Commonwealth, the Worcester County area. and Worcester. Second Congress. In the second. It really should be the first. How do you not know your own congressional district? Yeah.

There you go. I'm just giving you shit for not putting it on the sheet. Here is Jim McGovern. But the truth is they've always said they have a plan, but they've never had a plan. Let me just go through a list of things here. In February of 2016, then presidential candidate Donald Trump said, we're going to replace Obamacare with something so much better. Nothing followed. On February 27th of 2017, the president said, we have a really terrific, I believe, health care plan coming out. Never did. May 10th, 2018, Donald Trump said, but wait to you see the plans that we have coming out literally over the next four weeks. We have a great health care plan coming out. Nothing happened. And a press gaggle near Air Force One in May of 2019, he said, we're coming up with a great health care plan. We're going to have a fantastic health care plans coming out in the next four weeks.

Nothing ever materialized. June 16th, 2019, the president said, we're going to produce a phenomenal health care plan, and we already have the concept of a plan, and it will be so much better at health care. Yeah, well, we'll be announcing it in about two months, maybe less. Nothing happened. Fox News interview, the president said,

we're signing in a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan. Nothing happened. July 2020, the president said, well, we're going to be doing a health care plan. we're going to be doing a very inclusive health care plan. I'll be signing it sometime very soon. It might be Sunday, but very, very soon.

Nothing happened. August 3rd, 2020, the president says we're going to be introducing a tremendous health care plan sometime prior, hopefully prior to the end of the month. It's just about completed. Nothing. September 15th, 2020, you know, you're going to, the president says you're going to have a new health care. We have a whole bunch of alternatives to Obamacare that are 50%. less expensive and are actually better. Nothing. It never happened. September 10th,

2024, ABC News Presidential Debate. He says, I have concepts of a plan. You'll be hearing about it in the not too distant future. Nothing happened. December 8th, 2024. He said, you know, we have concepts of a plan that will be much better. You'll see it very soon. Concept. Produce nothing. In May of 2025 at a White House event, he says, So we're going to be maybe coming up with something. I think this gives the Republicans a chance to actually do a health care that's much better than Obama care. Nothing. People are sick and tired of the empty rhetoric.

They're sick and tired of you saying you have a plan. People get the gist of that. There is no plan. They've been saying for years. And remember, by the time Donald Trump came in, the Republicans had already tried to overthrow overturn Obamacare, I don't know, a dozen times? Right.

Wait, maybe they had voted 50 times. We looked that up. I think it was 50 times now. That is in 2016. And famously, the closest that they got was the moment where John McCain, soon before his passing, ended up being the deciding vote that kept it. So.

I mean, they've been, and. Let alone, like, the, the way that they challenged it and had success. with the mandate at the Supreme Court weakening it as well. This has been an all-out assault from the Republican apparatus on the Affordable Care Act with zero plan to replace it with anything. At least 70 Republican letters to appeal modify. There was 70 votes that took place in the last like four years of the Obama administration following 2014. So it must have been just like those two years, they had 70 votes. They did nothing but vote against it.

And they still never came up with an alternative plan. In fact, like, let's put it this way. When Chip Roy becomes the voice of reason on anything, you know you have a problem. Here he is talking about the Republican bill to bar state Medicaid programs from providing. This is supposedly the House Rules Committee on barring Medicaid from providing gender affirming care, but he's talking more broadly about the Republican's lack of a health care plan. And now we're sitting here and we're listening to nonsense about health care or my college other side of the aisle sit here saying, well, you guys aren't doing anything about the

massive expensive cost of health care. Why do you think it's expensive? Because you literally cut a deal with insurance companies to run health care. You think that's going to run wild? Yeah. That's why they have 2,000 percent profit increases and the American people can't afford to go to the doctor of their choice while we enrich insurance companies. And yet Republicans will complain about it. And then they'll offer milk toast garbage like we're offering this week. And then go home at Christmas and say, look at what we're doing. We're campaigning on reducing health care.

Well, congratulations. At some point, people will look at this body and say, maybe we should get rid of all 435 members of the House and all 100 members of the Senate and start over because Congress is literally failing the American people. I yield back. Now, it sounds to me that what he's calling for is a single payer system.

Yeah. Like, because, listen, either you're going to enrich insurance companies. Let's put it this way. Insurance companies exist. Therefore, they will be enriched.

They serve no purpose in our health care delivery system other than to enrich themselves. They serve no other purpose. We have one third of the country is already dealing with no private insurers. They get it through Medicaid or they get it through Medicare. You do not need private health insurance, CEOs, board of directors, shareholders. They do not need to exist to deliver health care.

And the only reason why they do exist is because and two, enrich themselves. The breathless cynicism, though, of the Republican Party to actually try to gesture towards some sort of like anti-corporatist, anti-insurance company posture, the only way that they are able to get away with this kind of crap is when you have a party that, an opposition party that is this week and is focused on defending the Affordable Care Act instead of saying we should build towards something like what you're saying. You could wash away this completely empty rhetoric, this posturing like they're populace if the party got behind an actual solution because it's right there in front of them. The Republicans already have a

credibility problem on the issue of health care. Poll after poll for the past two decades or so show that people trust broadly Democrats more on the issue of health care than they do with Republicans. But the fact that they can get away with cheap points like this is because you have way too many members of the party that's still in bed with the insurance industry and is the Medicare for All caucus is growing. Hopefully we can add three senators, Peggy Flanagan, Plattner, and Abdul Al-Sayed, who would be behind Medicare for All. But this is the time to draw a distinction because that is just a lie.

They're lying about what their position is. Their position is still maintain the entire infrastructure for private health insurance, but get rid of the subsidies that make it cheaper for people to buy it. That's the Republican plan. We'll be talking more about this, I think, as the months and years go on, it's going to be a conversation. It's going to be an increasing conversation in 2026 because the Democrats are going to take the House back at the least. And then there's going to be an expectation that you do something. It's not going to be enough to say, like, we still have, we got the subsidies.

Save Obamacare. It's like it's not 2016 anymore. Right. Do you, we got a couple of words from our sponsors, Laura K. Field, political, theorist and author Furious Minds of the making of the Maga New Right will be joining us in a bit. And we got to talk about Chip Roy as a secret socialist with her. But before we do, do you have an idea you cannot shake? I feel like, Brian, you have a bunch of ideas of what you want to sell.

Maybe it's craft that everybody tells you to sell. I know it is. Craft? Oh, craft. Oh. Well, listen, I don't want to, we don't need to go that explicit. with what you've been doing. But I know you got that cookbook.

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Here, your first, this new year with Shopify by your side. Also sponsoring the program today, 2026 is going to go like 2025 for me in terms of de-plasticifying my house. I just saw a report on what happens with all the plastic jugs that we recycle. They basically go to, I think it's like Thailand or Vietnam, people have to go through it. They end up getting sick from the way that it's recycled. The bottom line is less plastic use, less plastic microplastics in our water, less huge jugs of plastic, take it home from the supermarket. And this is the way you do it. Switch to blue land like I have across all my cleaning products now.

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So you can send it to them and you can load it up on the app. We'll put all this info in the podcast and YouTube descriptions. Quick break. When we come back, Laura Field, political theorist and author

of Furious Minds, the making of the MAGA New Right. We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Viglin, on the majority report. It is a pleasure to welcome to the program. I'm Laura K. Field, political theorist, an author of Furious Minds, The Making of the Maga New Right.

Laura, thanks so much for joining us. This is a sort of an intellectual history, I guess, book you could call it, or a almost like an autopsy. Or maybe. I wish it was an autopsy. Maybe not so much a vivisection. Is that what it is? It's a vivisection of the. intellectual undergirding of what we know is the MAGA movement today. Let's start with just,

and I want to get to the sort of the four different sort of elements that you talk about that make up what we know as MAGA, the Claremontors, the post-liberals, the national conservatives or NACONs, and the hard right underbelly, as you call it. But before we get there, let's start with Leo Strauss. I first, really sort of dug into this. I guess it was 20 years ago when I interviewed a guy James Mann, I think it was, who wrote The Rise of the Vulcans when he was talking about the Straussians in the Bush White House. But tell us about Leo Strauss and where we'll follow through where Leo Strauss takes us into at least one of those four groups.

Sure thing. Yeah. Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. So Leo Strauss was a German emma gray Jewish German emigre from from Germany who left Germany in interwar period he was a wonderful political philosopher who sort of studied the great tradition of great books and my connection is I studied with a bunch of Straussian sort of these conservative intellectuals many of them are conservatives he didn't identify as a

conservative and and he's known for sort of different things but mainly sort of recovering the what is called the esoteric tradition in political philosophy which is this idea that many of these older books, these canonical texts were written in this multi-layered way to either avoid persecution on the part of the writer or to sort of include some hidden messages, right, or talk to different types of readers in different ways,

or just to prevent sort of dogmatism. So it was a pedagogical practice. So, but he was very influential. He had some very famous students, including like Alan Bloom, and many neo-conservatives had some connection to Leo Strauss. He's also had a lot of liberal students. So I think some of that stuff got a little conspiratorial, just because he's a person who had an immense influence,

and then his students went in all kinds of directions. But there's a kind of tidy connection between Leo Strauss and then one of his most famous students, Harry Jaffa, who was a Lincoln scholar, who sort of took the Straussian method then that applied it to American history in an interesting way. And he's quite well respected. But several

students of Harry Jaffa, excuse me, founded the Claremont Institute in Claremont California, which is not affiliated with the Claremont schools. And these students of Jaffa, Jaffa idolized Abraham Lincoln and the founders.

And these students of Jaffa, I think, went even further than Harry Jaffa did in this kind of dogmatic, jingoistic understanding of the founding that sort of allows for no historical change away from their ideal of the founding principles and have been critiquing the administrative state for decades now and sort of has just stood opposed to any kind of critique of the founding. So they lost their minds over the 1619 project, for example.

So these students have been at the real forefront of a defense of Trumpism intellectually. And so my book starts with what I call the Claremontors. That's this one section because they sort of led the Trump. charge in defending Trumpism from an intellectual perspective. My book is very squarely focused on one slice of matter. Okay. And the idealogs. One of the things that I recall about the Straussians was just this notion of there was something that was what I perceived as anti-democratic in the sense that there was a, I don't know, an aristocratic or impulse or just a notion of like, you know, which we've seen in a lot of other traditions, too, like even the, the, the progressives of the early 20th century had the same sort of like, we understand things that you plebs don't really understand.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so how much of that, like, that certainly was there with the neocons. I mean, as far as I remember, like, the sort of the Rumsfeld and the, but how much of that went into, because that sort of like, everybody seems to have. taking that gene and just gone with it in a different way. Yeah. Yeah, that's, I think, a very fair critique, not just of the Straussians, though I think you're right. There's a kind of sensibility to it or a flavor to it that's super elitist. And so that's partly how this sort of esotericism takes off in these groups of young people studying Strauss and political philosophy. I mean, I kind of experienced some of that, too, where you feel like you're being initiated into the

secret teachings, and that's really seductive, right? And so that there's something anti-democratic, in it. There's a lot that's anti-democratic in it. And then there's anti-democratic threads just throughout the right and throughout, you know, right-wing intellectualism as well that sort of get layered on. But the people I'm writing about, so there's some of them would consider themselves Straussians, others don't, but I think the elitism and this kind of idea that they have this super insight, that they, they know what the people know, what the people need better than the rest of us. I mean, the best example of this is Patrick DeNine's who's got this theory that he calls now Aristopopopulism, right? So it's like, yeah, well, let's, I want to get to that because I don't

want to jump too far ahead. I want to go through this development because. And Sam, before you ask this, bring your mic a little closer, Laura, just so, because I know some, if you talk directly into that one, it should be a little easier. Just want to make sure we can hear you. You sound good otherwise, but go on. Okay. So, okay. So, um, you can take the, uh, the, uh, the, the, uh, the And it'll take you into Claremont and via Jaffa, who, who, I guess, the Jaffa was the one who, I believe it was, gave Goldwater's that line about in defensive, their extremism is no vice in defense of liberty. So essentially like, you know, as long as you think you're right. I mean, this is what this is like always, this is the Strassian part in my mind. It's like they're all convinced.

If you come from that tradition, you're convinced that you are right. And that takes multiple, can take multiple different forms, you know, whether it's a certain, like, race essentialism or whether it's like a religious nationalism. As long as you feel like you're the one who understands things and you have the secret, it could take many flavors. And so Goldwater famously says this. there is no such thing as being too extreme if you're in pursuit of liberty but of course you know everyone thinks they know the right yeah everybody thinks they know what the liberty is in that situation okay so let's go to uh we've talked about the the just tell us about the clermontors you know just in and of itself and then we'll go to the post liberals and the nat cons uh and i guess we get to

the dean and in in the post liberals okay got it yeah so the so today the clear monitors They're still obsessed with the American founding, as they understand it. And the irony here is that Jaffa was quite an egalitarian and sort of a declarationist, so, you know, always wanting the Declaration of Independence and especially the principle of equality, especially relative to his conservative sort of followers or his conservative enemies on the right. So they still have this mission, but I think it's kind of been corrupted by, first, the kind of dogmatic attachment to those principles such that they can't. stand the administrative state. They can't stand the New Deal. They can't stand the civil

rights movement in effect because all of those changes they see as these alarming departures from that original model. So everything's this alarming transformation. And it's also been corrupted by, I think, a kind of nativism and insularity. So this, and sometimes they're explicit about how they've turned their back on the Jaffa-esque commitment to equality in the Declaration of Independence and are attached to a, and are attached to a, kind of nativism and sort of so but the the the main person here to look to for this is a fellow named michael anton who wrote this first defense of trump the flight 93 election the premise of which was that if you were to elect hillary clinton this was in 2016 it would be certain death to the

american republic so what you needed to do is just like the pat the brave passengers on the flight 93 on on uh september 11th you needed to charge the cockpit and And that's what it meant to vote for Trump, to elect Trump, because at least then you had some chance of sort of redirecting things and saving America. So that's the kind of alarmist catastrophizing outlook that he articulated. It's partly, and that sort of, that energy has continued on the new right. And he's been a real leader. I mean, he wrote the new national security strategy report or he was one of the main authors. So you have this kind of devastating catastrophism, right?

And this idea that it's always just we're just on the brink of total destruction. And it's also his understanding is that conservatism was never enough and that the old conservative establishment was not able to conserve anything. And so now counter-revolutionary measures are necessary. And that's basically the moon at the current. Claremont Institute. So in the parlance of someone who is not an academic, I would say, like, they're about as bad crap crazy as it gets in terms of like, you know, calling themselves an institute. And the, their fervor is super, super intense. Like, whenever, you know, I have come across,

like the Claremont Institute, I'm like, oh, my God, like, what is going on there? And it, it, it, it's so it's super intense in a more sort of like uh colloquial yeah that's exactly right it's kind of there there's a kind of masculinist for a retuit it it's not sort of in the depth you know it's not the worst of these people and there's like that i think the sad thing is that they've got this inheritance from harry jaffa that was kind of serious and they've got this they've got this publication called the claremont review of books that publishes some serious um some serious articles for the last few decades. I mean, I've got friends who have published in there. There's a lot of interesting stuff. But then that, and that's, and they still publish some interesting stuff.

Even though, I mean, but the institution has also lost a lot of its reputation. And then they publish this other online magazine called The American Mind that's just like absolute filth as far as I'm concerned, crazy. And so there's this kind of dance they're doing where there's still kind of a veneer of respectability. And yet there's this, there's some really awful stuff happening. All right, well, let's move over to the post-liberals. And I have to say, like, you can see throughout all of these, there's, like, strands of each within each other. These are not so discreet. Like, this is, the Venn diagram would have a lot of, like, sort of, like, crossover here.

Because I think you could argue in many respects, like, there, the Claremont Institute is post-liberal in the sense that they're like, we got to throw over this existing order. of, and we should say, we're not talking liberal in the capital L version. We're talking in the small L version, I guess, where we're talking more like the idea of, well, explain, you know. Well, I mean, let's let me say a little bit about that, because I think you're right in general that there's a kind of, the Claremontors would say that they are counter-revolutionary and they want to bring us back probably to something like a Republican small government tradition, but they probably would also be okay. with some, they would say they're okay with some small liberal principles. All right. Well, explain people to people like when we're talking about in terms of liberal principles.

We're talking about like, uh, just like liberal democracy writ large. So rule of, individual, yes, individual rights and liberties, um, checks and balances, right. And they would allow for some of that. They would allow, well, they might even, they'd say that the constitutional order was organized with those things in mind. They are, they, this is what they're sort of different tiers, right? there's the upper echelons of the place and then there's the gutter stuff. And so they'd say upper echelons would be like, we're the true defenders of those things.

And then the people on the bottom are like, actually we're not, they get pretty racist. So it's mixed bag. But with the post-liberals, which is this other group, which is mainly made up of socially conservative Catholics. And they self-identify as post-liberals. And their critique of the current sort of regime or are the. current situation in America reaches back to the American founding. Many of them say the American founding was kind of a mistake because it was liberal. So their critique is more radical. They see liberalism with, again, small L. So we're not talking about partisanship in the, you know,

in like liberals versus conservatives. Not quite. Though there's, you know, there's some crossover there too. Yeah, sure. But they would see most sort of small C conservatives as as liberals in the classical sense, right? So their critique is very radical of the whole establishment and of the American founding because someone like Patrick Deneen, who wrote this book, Why Liberalism Failed in 2018, which was sort of Obama put on his reading list, he says, you know, liberal democracy is flawed from the beginning and it's got this sort of rancid individualism that means that the more it succeeds, the more it fails because liberal individualism eats away at the ties that bind. It has a disintegrative effect on our social bonds, on community, on family. And so, and what,

what happens then is because the, because, and we can see there's some truth to this, right? We do have, you know, people struggle with loneliness. There's individual, you know, individualism has its problems. But, but then he says, so what you kind of can expect with liberalism is that eventually a strong man is going to be brought in to fix these problems. Liberals can't tell, you know, there's all these problems with liberalism. And so the post-liberals, that's their starting point. Isn't the liberalism that they're talking about? Because when I think of this, I think of Peter Thiel, who like, I don't know, a year ago famously said like, you know, or had the idea that, you know, the problem with liberalism is that you end up giving women the vote and then

you end up getting socialism or that we are tired of the liberal order. And he's looking, you know, we're in 1921 right now or 1931. I can't remember which date he said, but basically arguing like, we're tired of liberalism. We were ready for that strong man. I mean, it seems to me when they're talking about that individualism, what they're talking about is the emancipatory movements of women, of black people, of brown people, anybody who's been marginalized in society up until, I don't know, the 1930s, 40s or 50s or 60s, and starting to get their individual rights. Yeah. Without being, because when they're talking about the collective,

what they're really talking about is a hierarchy that is either a racial or a patriarchy, right? Yeah, I know. I'm in total agreement. I mean, I think that someone like Patrick Deneen would, you know, very, would deny that completely and say he would say, of course there have been some good things about liberalism. But historically, his critique tracks very well

to what you're describing as the emancipatory, you know, transformation of our society and this, you know, a pretty wonderful, you know, shifts in who has some status in our society. And so I think he's in a real bind there. I will say he's also the post-liberals, I mean, if we're to do the do them the most justice we can. I think they, they do, they for them, and it's not just Danine, it's people like Sorabamari, um, Adrian Vermeul at Harvard. Some of, there are some, some pretty serious people in this camp and some important policy people who, they care about the economics of liberalism. And part of their criticism is of sort of what we would call neoliberal economics. And so I think that

that's an important kind of distinction between them and the Claremontors. And they're sort of the most serious in terms of putting forward some policy proposals that I think sometimes people in the left might really appreciate. The trouble is they also want to conjoin this with like the abandonment of the separation of church and state. And they've got this sort of a rest of populist ideas that say what we are seeking is the common good and we get to define that and we then get to use the levers of power once we take over the state to impose those moral principles on the rest of society. Well, there is a growing. I just think it's important to say liberalism too and neoliberalism liberal economics failing, right? The Trump came on the scene

in part critiquing free trade, critiquing Hillary Clinton and NAFTA. And then even Biden, despite not being like a radical leftist, understood that there had to be like direct intervention in the market, particularly in the wake of COVID, to kind of get the economy moving. Both of these visions are recognizing the failures of liberal economics and are both advocating for a more direct, more direct state intervention in the economy and in society and a stronger state. The one on the left is a more collectivist vision, hopefully, and there should be, I wish there were more Democrats that subscribed to it. But on the right, as you're saying, they'll say collectivist, but it's about the hierarchy of the group that they're advocating for. And instead of a vision of like

democracy, which can be compatible with a left wing vision, it's the strong man, the autocrat that does that. Yeah. Yeah, that's, I think that's quite, that's exactly how. I think about it as well. I did a thing on CNN a week or two ago with a some type of Christian conservative. As we were walking off, we were talking about, I was talking about Mom Donnie. And he was saying like, yeah, I really want, I said, you know, I don't understand. I can't remember how we got onto this conversation. But I was saying, yeah, Mom Donnie, like the universal child care is going to be amazing because he was saying, I really want

families to be able to not feel the pressure and have more kids. That's what it was. He was saying we have more kids. And I said, well, then you must really like the free child care. And he's like, well, I want to see wages go up so that we don't have to have both parents working. And it took

like two minutes to realize like he didn't want free child care which would take the stress off of people because that would mean that mom could go and work. And he doesn't that's exactly what you have to keep an eye on. I mean, I think some of these people are pretty sincere. And I mean, I was at an event of... Oh, he's seen sincere. No, no, but let me just say. Some of these guys are sincere in the sense that I was at a conference a few weeks ago.

And the editor of Compact Magazine, Matthew Schmitz, was asked, who's the most post-liberal president we've seen or politician? He said Joe Biden. And that's because of the infrastructure bill, right? And some of these things. And some of these people are for a child tax credit. But I think most of them are much more for like the Victor Orban model, right? Where it's like exactly what you're describing. They want women at home. And I think women should have the choice and so should father. So, you know, there is some overlap there.

But they, they don't want, I don't think they are accepting of gay marriage. And so, you know, the people getting these benefits in their world will be traditional families, right? And maybe not even single mothers. I mean, it's very conservative in that, in that old, you know, social conservative sense. And they want to empower the state perhaps to do some of these social programs that I would be all for, but they also want to use it to do things like, you know, flawback, marriage, equality, and do all kinds of other incentives to kind of shift back the demographic.

Is J.D. Vance of that ilk? Like, I mean, like, it seems like the Opus Day people, like the Peter Teal, like the hardcore, like, there's a, there's a new strain of like, trad wife and like are all, like seem to be in that sort of like a hardcore Catholic. I mean, you know, like I'm trying to like, it's, it's pretty messy.

Yes. I think J.D. Vance has identified with the post-liberal groups. He was, I saw him at the book launch for Patrick Deneen's next book called regime change. But he's kind of got his fingerprints all over the new right. I mean, all of these different categories that I talk about.

He's spoken. The Claremont people love him. Teals connected to the Claremont people. well as the NACONs, as well as J.D. Vance, clearly. And he's spoken at the National Conservative conferences. I think I see it as a real coup for the new right that they have elevated J.D. Vance so high. I think he's really their boy and they're thrilled by everything he does. Let's, so let's talk about the NAC cons. Like, where are the NAC cons in this? Are they sort of the, I mean, they're, I think of them as like they're the organizers and sort of

They're this sort of big, tent, messy, they'll welcome everybody. Sometimes the post-liberals don't go to those organ. There's some schisms there. There's a few disagreements, partly about economics, partly about foreign affairs. But they basically are like. Is Kevin Roberts, the sort of like besieged head of the Heritage Foundation? Is he a NatCon? He has definitely spoken at NatCon.

And he gave a very telling, I mean, the story I tell in the book is that the group sort of emerged under the first Trump administration, but then they really consolidated power in the second administration, excuse me, under Biden. And there was this moment, I think it was in 2022, when Kevin Roberts had been made president of the Heritage Foundation the year prior. And then he went to the NACCON conference and he said to them, I'm here as a representative basically of like conservatism, Inc. This, you know, wanted organization. And I'm here to say, we are joining you. you are not we're not here to support you. We're here to join you and recognize that you have led the way. And so it was kind of this moment where the right just got on board with the radical agenda of these intellectuals and signaled that we are sort of departing from our old model.

And the NAC cons, I mean, the NACONs in general are driven by nationalism. And that means sort of old-fashioned capital and nationalism, not just not just patriotism. It's a sort of turn against the kind of creedal Americanism that says we are united by ideas and principles, not by the color of our skin. So the NACON leader, Yoram Hazzoni, is this Israeli-American scholar who defends nationalism saying what you need in politics is a relatively homogenous nation, homogenous in terms of culture, language, history, religion. He doesn't say ethnicity, but you can easily. see how that tips into a kind of ethno-nationalism. And certainly they've been, that's, that's been the big question with the NAC-Con since the found, since the beginnings of their movement. And I do track in my book how they started off saying, we don't want any racists here at our conference. And then gradually the doors kind of opened to some pretty unscating.

You realize like, actually, well, it turns out where you're okay. I mean, maybe not you, but Darren Beattie, yeah, you come and give us a speech. And there's a few people like that. Amy Wax, there's a long list. And they're also like Christian nationalists too have fallen here, right? For the most part. Many of them are. And Hosoni, despite being Jewish, has said Christian nationalism is the only way to defeat woke neo, the religion of woke neo-mars.

Well, Christian nationalism for the United States. Israel gets, yeah, Jewish nationalism for Israel. Absolutely. And that's, I mean, part of the funny thing here is they talk, Yoram Hazoni quotes John Stuart Mill when he talks about the diversity of nation states. So he says, I'm not opposed to diversity. I just don't want any diversity internally. Right.

Well, that's also Nick Fuentes' argument about, you know, races. It's like I don't hate them. I just don't want them near me. It's why Richard Spencer, despite being a white nationalist Nazi, supports the state of Israel because they believe that these demographics should have their own enclaves. Once again, the rejection of liberalism or like, you know, about conservative rejection of liberalism being about imposing a hierarchy is really important to point out. And I wonder how you feel this new kind of intellectual movement on the right fits into the idea of migration.

And the more that we're going to be seeing, do the climate change, potentially billions of people, but millions and millions and millions of people being displaced due to the conditions that are being created by climate change. and how liberalism as a concept that also includes potentially more liberal border policies and things like that have influenced this movement's like rejection of multiculturalism. Well, it's their big boogeyman, right, is immigration. And it's been a big sort of linchpin of their policy ideas from the very beginning. Michael Anton defined Trumpism as economic nationalism, secure borders, and America First Foreign Policy. And he's really been at the foreground of trying to shut down the borders and end birthright citizenship and all of this. And I mean, I think it's so tricky because obviously some of the American people are right there with Michael Anton. And they're able to fearmonger on this issue and kind of override, I think the facts on the

ground about the contributions that people make to our country and the, and just the importance of these norms of liberal internationalism that allow asylum seekers and refugees to, to move around the world. And so, and a lot of it is like, our politics have failed over the last 20 years to give people a decent life and have a path to citizenship. And I don't blame the, I don't blame the Democrats for that as much as the Republicans, because I think that there hasn't, but my, I don't, I don't study this carefully. I think there have been some really good faith efforts to do that. And some of the old Republicans used to also at least give pay lip service to that. So, I mean, the country has failed on that issue. And so, and I don't know. I mean, it is hard because

things have gone, things are so vicious right now, right? And so heartbreaking and cruel that it's hard to want to pay, it's hard to want to talk reasonably about the issue. Right. And to, I think, for liberals because it's hard to even acknowledge that there might be an immigration issue because it's because of what they're doing. I mean, so I think it's really a mess. And I mean, to me, it's just. So what you're saying is it's hard to talk me somewhere else. It's hard.

What's hard to talk about it in the context of a policy prescription when you're fighting against like fascistic forces. Yeah. And the last thing you want to do is give any credence. that they're bigotry and just the absolute horror show of what's unfolding. I mean, and I think that's the case with frankly a lot of things in this context. All right.

Well, let's talk about the hard right underbelly because this is like you write about it as an intellectual movement. And we see it in the context of, we sort of see all. of this in the context of like our YouTube world and podcast world frankly. But this is the most sort of like YouTubeian I think of the

four. Oh, YouTubeian, huh? Well, I mean, you write about the Bronze Age pervert. I mean, so it's like a, that's the guy's moniker. I mean, that's, you know, you're not going to get into the Claremont

Institute calling you that at least for another couple of years, I would say, probably. But tell us about that. But he's not unconnected, right? I mean, they wrote this big article. Yeah. I think more and more, they're, they're really congealing. Well, that's the point, right?

That's MAGA. Yeah. Yeah, that's what, and I do sort of, I mean, I didn't expect to be ever in my life writing about people like Bronze Age Pervert and raw egg nationalist. And there are others, Michael Millerman, um, Darren Beattie. all of whom have PhDs, right? And some of whom have PhDs in Straussian political philosophy. They've written dissertations on Nietzsche and Liam Strauss.

And that's a world I'm very familiar with. And so I couldn't not include them, and partly because they've gained a ton of traction and influence not just on YouTube, but on Twitter, and they're selling a lot of books. And they're writing sort of semi-serious, semi-grotesque books that are fascist, that are extremely massacized. And it's kind of, they're kind of taking off, you know, in these, these sort of dark places.

Well, are they, I mean, I want to explain them, but, but I, in terms of like a chicken and egg, in 2016, 2015, one of our former producers here, Matt Bender was like, when he was filling in on, on Mondays from me, he's like, I want to do this stuff about Gamergate and men's rights activists and I'm like oh dude that's not politics and but I'm like well but go ahead and you know then like six months later they're all at the white house podium giving the white power sign so uh yeah did they come first did the intellectuals who uh that you're writing about these these guys who are the PhDs who are still like sort of like a fascistic and misogynist and and whatnot did they just simply follow like where the gamer

gate people were and the men's rights activists and the Sernovich's and the Fuentes and the spencers and whatnot some of it is that i mean i was surprised the more the more i did the research the more i discovered that the that some of these guys and the best example is michael anton who again he's not necessarily on the he's not necessarily in the gutter with these guys but he's friends with many of them is my impression and he was involved in the the pickup artist community at least to the extent where he was constantly posting about it or writing about it. He'd published an academic paper called Socrates as pickup artist. And so they were kind of immersed in that some of these guys in that world.

I mean, you wouldn't, you can't make this stuff up, right? So he's got this, I mean, it's crazy. So you have that and you have someone like Bronze Age Pervert or Costan LaMarieu is his name who was, you know, studying at Yale and had this kind of dual life where he was also writing this book, Bronze Age mindset while he was trying to continue his academic career. I mean, the academic career ended before that stuff really exploded. And so, you know, I think they were just immersed in that stuff and obviously very sympathetic to a lot of it. And some of it, I mean, if you think about Duke, a lot of that, it was Gamergate that

started it. There was also this lacrosse case where the Duke LaCross team was accused of rape. And that was really important to someone like Stephen Miller. And I think in that case, you know, these guys were right. They were on to something. And so they've got these kind of half-baked. Some of it's totally half-baked. A lot of it's really vicious.

But they've got this sort of way of framing things that's really catchy. They've got these phrases like gynocracy, the longhouse, the cathedral. Right. Curtis Jarvin is another one of these guys. And so, and they're funny, you know, you cannot. I don't think you can deny that Bronze Age mindset is in some ways a funny book and a smart book, even though, I mean, it's also just like rancid. like I think but but there's so there's this strange melange right which is very typical of fascists

thinking also right there's this kind of high great man stuff like we got to build the new man the mensch the there's this really high flute and stuff and like i mean i i i've written my dissertation was about nietzsche like i love that stuff i can get into it and part of what i was trying to do if the book was show how you could be drawn to some of this why it's appealing you know and and And I think it doesn't take much to see that once you're kind of, once you, I mean, I don't recommend this, right? But you start reading this stuff. You can at least see the humor there.

And it does say something about our sort of humorless society sometimes, right? When that these guys are really, I think, thirsting for some of it. I mean, I'm not justifying it. I'm just saying, you got to understand it. And this is where why you see like sort of on the perimeter of this stuff and maybe not even so much on the perimeter of it, but like, you know, Gavin McGinn. menace and and folks like that. And then even as far as like, you know, sort of like the,

well, and the sort of like mothership comedians are all sort of like on the sort of perimeter of this stuff and some are a little bit more. And so this is like a milieu that all these things sort of come together. But is part of it like, you know, when I was reading about like the dime square stuff, which I, you know, was aware of.

a prior and uh you know red scare i don't think is quite was ever really quite as left as they they sort of like uh uh postured i think it was just they were riding a podcast wave that was more about like you know what was happening but the the thing that has always occurred to me about that ilk of people was um losers who uh with you know with all due respect to everybody but uh who but as defined, but as defined by their own sense of, of, of a grievment. Like, not necessarily, you know, like, a sense of feeling like, I'm, I'm not, I'm not part of the cool kids. And this is an opportunity for me to be a cool kid.

Like, when I see, like, whether it's Curtis Jarvin, you know, like, he's wearing the leather coat. And it's almost like, dude, this is a stage that you're supposed to go through when you thought you were a motorcycle guy back, like, when you were 17. but he couldn't probably in in high school. And I'm not speaking to someone who was like that. I was not surprise, surprise. Also wearing a leather coat or being one of the cool kids.

I wore a sweater vest in high school. That was pretty cool. But but but there is there is this quality it seems to me that all of this Uber mensch stuff all of this sort of like reasserting relying on. on a hierarchy that is given from God or from, you know, some higher power or just the sense of the way that things should be makes it much easier for me as a guy who is uncomfortable within the world to sort of like know my place, get my place, have it there. I'm just sliding into this. I don't have to, you know, there is a, that to me seems like, because if you know,

you look from whether it's like Mike Lindell and Steve Bannon and all the Breitbart thing. I mean, Andrew Breitbart, the sense of being aggrieved by Hollywood was his fundamental building block for everything. And Ben Shapiro, I mean, all of these people have been rejected in some manner by what they thought was cool. And this is the way they'd struck back. And they built all these things. I mean, Gamer Gate came out of Breitbart and Bannon. Milo Yaninopoulos and now like, you know, Fuente, I mean, you see all the lineage there. At its heart, there's this sense of like aggrievement and a sense that like I should be in a better position than I am.

And now I've created a theoretical, a theoretical framework where it's going to be much easier for me to step into. Yeah. I mean, I, I am pro describing these people as losers. But, and I do, and I think partly what we need to do is, like, point that out and mock them. But I also, I guess, to be a little, maybe, I don't think this is controversial, but I think that we've got to address. And I don't mean that across the board, right? I mean, because I'm trying to be careful in the book and generous, right? I think we have to also be generous.

And I guess it's fine to say that about the people, you know, many of the people who are doing some of the worst work, right? like Christopher Rufo and like go off. But I think we have to be careful because there's something happening here where a lot of people are being drawn to it who I don't think are losers, right? And I think deserve some generosity. And we're not being, and I think as a culture and as liberals, we're not very good at talking. And part of what I try to articulate, I mean, I'm a political theorist by training. But I'm not, I'm not like a liberal theorist in so far as like I haven't studied John Rawls very

carefully and I haven't done. I mean, I wrote about Rousseau and Nietzsche. And I love Plato, right? So I love a lot of this sort of old stuff. And but one of the problems with liberalism and I'm a good liberal, right? Like I love liberal democracy. But one of the problems with a liberal from like a social cultural perspective is that it doesn't tell us how to live our lives. It's also one of the great things about liberal. Right. We get we get choice. We get our right to choose. We get to decide what sort of culture we want to be part of when we're adults, right? We get to kind of, you know, design our own, our own life. And, and that's the whole point of liberal democracy. It's not going to kind of hand down one religion, one sort of comprehensive doctrine by which to live. The problem, though, is that there's a kind of, it leaves a kind of vacuum, right, where liberals don't often know how to talk about the good, right? And, and one of the strange things happening on the right, part of it's just this fascism, like great man talk. But part of it,

if it's that they're using this language of moral values, of ends and purposes. Christopher Rufo constantly talks about the good, the true, and the beautiful. Right. And they're providing answers to young people about how to live. They're saying liberalism is not going to tell you, but we sure is hell care, right? We've got, we've got a gym for you to join. We've got, you know, podcasts for you to listen to. A lot of these people have very popular YouTube channels where they do book clubs about, you know, Homer and Leo Strauss. And so, you know, that, that stuff is captivating. I can see how a lot of young men are drawn to that, especially because, and I love there, I love universities. I think there's tons of great work being done. I am not anti-Woke. I'm not anti-C-R-T.

But the universities don't often provide or don't, I don't think provide enough opportunity for young people to read these great books to study the traditions of America, to study American history. and I mean woke and anti-woke history, right? There's just not that kind of liberal arts education. And conservatives have been griping about this for decades. There is a lot of going on in higher ed, right? And I don't need to, I don't want to sort of beat that horse to death. But there are some real problems here.

And they are exploiting them, right, to these very nefarious. The elephant in the room here, in my view, is capitalism. And where we're at right now with incoming wealth and equal. when you have a, we can talk about young men and then have empathy for them in this way, where we as women are taught a lot of things about how we should behave socially. But men are taught things like you're there to be a provider, you are there to make money, you're there to build out your family, the American dream, etc. And increasingly, due to the levels of income and wealth inequality that we have in this country,

that is impossible for people. So they're going to look for a sense of purpose or community or self-actualization outside of that. And liberals, I don't think really are capable of providing that right now because you need more of like a left-wing clearer vision. The right is providing that. And you see this throughout fascist movements in history, especially when the economy is poor. You have like answers of communities that focus on masculinity and tying masculinity. to economic empowerment and social empowerment. And defining what that masculinity is in a very specific and usually,

eventually harmful context. And that's like what this is doing here. And we shouldn't, to your point, turn our nose at it without having an alternative. Yeah. Turn up. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, there's a kind of thwarted, I think that the economic struggles and the inequality or a massive part of it. And I think the Democratic Party often doesn't seem able to

even, like, admit that, right? It seems like with Biden, I mean, I think that the prices and stuff, they didn't seem to even admit that that was a problem. And so you get with these young men, I think you get not only the economic struggle and like there's not really a, or at least they feel like there's nowhere for them to go, even though I think it's a little overstated on their part. And I do get tired of the grievances. But, but, you know, they don't have that opportunity. And they certainly feel like they don't have that any kind of honorable way forward in their life. And so they feel forwarded. And I think that's a real thing. I think young women feel that way too. I mean, there's a lot of anger to go around. But, but it's a real thing. And it's being, yeah. So I think it's a, it's a,

it's a problem that, you know, people on the left and the right and the center need to, and independence need to really confront and just be honest about it. In my, view. And yeah, well, I think, I mean, I think the idea is that, I think, you know, at least from our perspective in this corner, that it's the, you need at least some iteration of a leftist ideology to address these things. Because, because of the crisis we're in now and the rolling one, there is both from an economic standpoint, but also from like a social cachet, Yeah. The experience of white men, boys, whatnot, is there is a real loss of social cachet, regardless of where they are on, where they are relative to class, because it's, there's a certain zero-sum quality about this.

It's like, you know, if you've been sitting atop of a hierarchy where everybody else is tied for second place, and you're in first place in the way that society reflects you. When people start moving in and everybody's more, you know, trying to be tied for first place, you're going to feel a loss because really what's happening is you're going down to second place with everybody else or however you want to describe it. And so there is a sense of loss. And we as a society have not. provided a we've provided a justification for why that's the case but we haven't provided a solution as to how to like make this a soft landing and to the extent that it's necessary to provide that

it's to prevent other people are say like you know you got to go back up to the top because there is no soft landing that's what we're competing against yeah and just on a kind of like cultural level. We have to, I think, find better ways to talk about this so that it's not a zero. So that people don't see it as zero some game. I mean, there's got to be a way to think about our culture and think about different ways to flourish,

different ways for people to get ahead that don't, I mean, there's just so many things to do in life, right? It's not just a constant competition to be in one place or another. I mean, finances are a different thing, right? And economics is kind of a zero-something, but I don't I don't pretend to be an economist. But I mean,

and just in terms of like all the life paths that are available to people. We have to find a, I think, an economic system and a, just, I think partly just a way to articulate possibilities, right, that are pluralist and that don't, don't just involve some people winning, other people losing, and that doesn't have so much to do with identity. Yeah, I agree. I'm not, I'm a little bit zero summy on this. Yeah, and I, I think it's, I think that's, I think that's probably right. in terms of economics.

I think about so much about higher education because that's the world I'm familiar with. I'm not even talking about economics, though. I'm just, you know, like I've used this example many times. But when I was growing up, every TV show, every commercial,

I was centered in it in some form or another. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's either about my mom or it's about my future wife or. Yeah.

And now I'm looking at Seattle's commercials and it's a black guy. Yeah. And there's only so much bandwidth. And that's, and we got a, but yeah, and that's where I'm like, but I think we have to,

talk to young white men and say, you know, their win is not your loss. It's actually good for you, right? I mean, it's good for you that more people are celebrated. Our country is stronger because of that. Right. I mean, it's hard to not sound cliche, but it's true. I mean, my young, I've got two white kids, little boys, and they're not harmed by these new, you know, different ads with black kids. Well, that's what's important is making the case for multiculturalism. And again, I know that you're in the theory space, but we're critical of the Democratic Party for this very reason. Like ceding the terror, multiculturalism should be a part.

And this country being a nation of immigrants and all of that should be at the center of people's civic minds once again. But we have a vacuum that isn't being filled. And when you talk about higher education, that, like the hollowing out that you're talking about, so they only have YouTube alternatives with reading groups that have essentially misogynists that are telling you what your diet should be, that's on purpose right i mean the the the the the the the the the disbelief the issuing of liberal education or like even liberal arts where you would get a variety of different perspectives

that rufeo to bring him back into the conversation is so aggressive on that point because when you choke off those alternatives it's also financial for people's access to higher education yeah but but and then you wage war on uh the liberal arts that that that that that that that benefits them disproportionately. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I think that's, in a way, I don't, I think that the universities have been hollowed out because of, I mean, capitalism in a lot of ways, right? They've lost their capacity to sort of govern themselves and to protect the liberal arts

and humanities. And someone like Rufo comes along and says, this is the, and this is again, since Alan Bloom, this is, this goes, and like William Muff Buckley, this goes back a long ways. They're saying they're not, that the universities have been overtaken by these, these minorities, these critical perspectives. and they would say they've been hollowed out by and taken over by Identitarian Indctrination and I just want to say I don't think that's right I don't think his historical account of how this happened or why it happened I celebrate you know the critical studies feminine gender studies all this stuff is and like yeah you got to understand black history that all I think this stuff is great it's been good for most you know for many people

but I do think that the I think the Academy has failed to unite to kind of square the circle or at least like allow there to also be to protect things like history, right? To just, and including the history of the American founders who were white. The great books when I was studying them and was drawn to them, so many of my professors did just think of that as a dead white male tradition. And that's, it's extremely, it's anti-intellectual. It's, it's turning your back on an amazing history of literature. And so there's been no, I mean, there are some institutions that do a great job protecting the humanities, having a kind of core education that's not, you know, that's not against critical theory, but that embraces, you know,

that brings really genuinely diverse perspectives, but also allows there to be a kind of formative, positive dimension to education and allows young people to ask big meaning of life questions. So I can, I could go on about this, but I think there's something that's really important here about higher education that liberals have failed. Do you think that, I want to go back to Rufo a little bit in just a second, but just to address what you said, do you think that it is the absence of that of that type of education you're talking about or the rolling back of that type of education you're talking about is substantively problematic or, like rhetorically problematic in the sense that it gives weapons to those who want to

enhance the grievance. I mean, in my actual opinion, I think it's both because it's robbing young people of an opportunity. And I mean, I know that a great books program isn't not going to save the world, right? But it's robbing young people of these moments and when you're young to explore the meaning of life, to study great literature,

actually understand history in its complexity, not the like President Trump version of it, not the Claremont Institute version of it, but the 1619 project in conversation with more sort of orthodox versions of American history. And I don't mean orthodox. I mean, right? Like there's, there's so much there to learn and grapple with. And I, I don't think our young people really are invited to do that as much as they should be. And it, and it opens this huge opportunity and vacuum. I I mean, you think my go-to person here is Jordan Peterson, right? This crazy Canadian guy who wrote a book called 12 Rules for Life that seems to have actually helped young men figure themselves out.

I mean, he's totally crazy now. I don't recommend the book. I think it's like almost as bad as some, you know, some of the worst. I think it's, but it's amazing. What an incredible phenomenon, right? And it's a real shame that it's that guy writing that book instead of a whole bunch of young people flocking to serious programs in the classics

in American history, in comparative literature. And I think we've failed as a society to not to fund those public universities where those things could happen. And I just want to say one more thing because I know I sound like I'm a little nuts. But, you know, the right wing, the red state, the Republicans have taken some action here.

They've started these civic centers in all these red states, which are basically conservative, of, you know, institutions trying to, like, balance things out. And, and I've got a, I've got friends who have been hired by these places. I'm not fully against them. But, you know, it's not, it's kind of a shame that you've got these hyperpartisan initiatives that, and that, that I don't think blue, I don't, you know, liberals, it's all

very dispersed, but I don't see any blue state response to these issues. Right. And these guys, meanwhile, it's like a Prager, you, Claremont project together, or something like that. We should say you mentioned Chris Rufo. Rufo is the one who he is a product of Claremont. He's now, I think, at the Manhattan Institute. He's from Claremont and Heritage. I mean, he sort of like hits all the hits, as it were. And he was the one who said, who famously was on Twitter saying, like, when we say CRT, we're going to basically make everybody, we're going to make our people believe that anything, that's everything bad.

They don't need to know what it stands for. We're going to just be propagandists. He basically admitted. And we're going to distort the truth to make, to score political points to change policy. And, and, you know, very sadly, that worked, right? I mean, he was testing the limits of what you, I talk sometimes in the book about what I call ideas first politics, right, where it's kind of like field of dreams. Like, if you build it, they will come model of politics. And, you know, and Christopher Rufa was pretty effective at that, just building this huge movement out of a lie. Yep.

All right. Let me just lastly, it's sort of overarching. And where does these, the combined, was there a version of MAGA? Maybe this was the first, you know, iteration of it that was, or maybe you disagree? that this version of maga all these things together is fascistic i don't know but where where is that like where does it bump up against fascism well i mean i think in the streets every day when you have masked men stealing our neighbors um hardworking innocent people some americans into you know vehicles violently and then deporting them um i think you're in fascist terrain pretty obviously

So, I mean, I don't go on about it in the book, and that was partly a rhetorical decision. I'm sorry? That was a rhetorical decision, right? I don't think it's very effective messaging, but that doesn't mean from an academic perspective that it's not true. And so, and I'm comfortable saying that at this point. And so what do we do? I mean, I still think the country is extremely diverse, regionally. I think those country is very vibrant.

I think this stuff is very unpopular. popular. I don't, part of what I wanted to do in the book was, yeah, show why it's alluring, you know, track the history, but also to sort of sound an alarm and say this stuff is a lot crazier than you would have expected. And it's a lot more radical than your Republican neighbors tend to be, you know. And so again, that spirit of generosity towards your neighbors and towards Trump voters included. I mean, there's a lot to be angry about, but, but this, it doesn't have to go on this way. I don't think this movement necessarily is the future. of the Republican Party. Well, it might be the future of the Republican Party, but they might not be

the future of the country. And so I think one thing Trump has shown us is just how dynamic things are in politics. And so I think that I do, you know, I think I'm very worried about it. They keep surprising me by how far they're willing to go and the, you know, the measures that they're taking. And I mean, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really upset about it and sad, you know, so I, you know, There's fissures now. To the extent that we're starting to see fissures now. Yeah. Are those fissures in any way like ideological or intellectual?

I mean, definitely we're seeing the polling that suggests that people, that your average, you know, American is turned off by how aggressive, you know, the Nazis in the streets with the bandanas and stealing people. Yeah. But in terms of within the context of the Republican Party as a. and it's, you know, sort of the intellectual foundations. We're seeing it a little bit at Heritage Foundation, right? Where they drew, where some people, you know, two new people left the Helleridge Foundation because of Fuentes and,

yeah, and Tucker Carlson over anti-Semitism, presumably. But is there really any fissures amongst those groups that you have outlined that make up Maga? Or is it really more just like, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green is mad because she's no longer going to to be running, she thought she was going to run for governor or, you know, Laura Lueber breaks off or Candace Owens breaks off because this is just her business model. I mean, there are important fissures in the intellectual side, especially around economics, some foreign policy stuff where some people are more, you know, more willing to go along with the old, some support Ukraine and some don't, for example. But I think more important are the other

fissures, right, which we're seeing are just like everyday political fissures. The people I write about seeing pretty pragmatic. The Claremonsters are willing to get along with the post-liberals. Some of them will destroy the regime. The rest of them are like they'll seize what's left and reorganize it. So I mean, they get along. There's the tech, I think the tech versus MAGA, Silicon Valley thing is interesting. I don't think that Silicon Valley is presumable, I don't think they're quite so captured by the ideological strains. Some of them clearly are, Teal, Musk, maybe Andresen, Curtis Yarven maybe has had his moment. I think people see through that. And so they'll go where the winds blow politically is my assumption, though. I mean, that's not something I can follow super closely or have been able to. So I think the fissures are real, but far more. And with the Heritage Foundation, Robbie George left the board of the Heritage Foundation. That was a very big moment. I think he's sort of leading the way. It's way too little too late. In my opinion, I think it's just a joke. But, but I, but I, but I, I'm not a Republican.

So I think that meant a lot to some Republicans who still hold out hope that this thing can be turned around. So that's really important. But more important are just like the messy fissures, the disgust with the anti-Semitism. The Marjorie Taylor, the green thing is important. The Epstein files are important. So I think those things really do matter. Trump's very volatile. And I think it all makes, I mean, my own view is that it all makes J.D. Vance look pretty bad because he looks so weak.

not able to say anything against any of it because he needs to just play nice with all the different ugly factions. Well, Laura, it would be, it's, hopefully we can check back with in, with you over the next six to six to 12 months to sort of determine who won out, you know, who's still standing, you know, I don't know, if that'll be the end or the midway point or just the beginning of whatever's going on. It's crazy. Laura K. Field, the book is Furious Minds, the making of the Maga New Right. We'll put a link to that.

Thanks so much today. Really, really appreciate you're coming on. Thank you so much. What a fun conversation. Thank you. All right, folks. That's it for us. We're going to head into the fun half.

I should just say, I just saw an I am where somebody on people are saying like on Twitch, people are making the, um, I have confused liberal as we were talking about it with liberal as in like the center left, Democratic parties squish or, you know, neoliberal economics. When she is talking about liberal here, she's talking about the individual freedoms, being open-minded. The rights of man. Yes. favoring reform. I mean, it's

it's lowercase L as opposed to uppercase L. But there's, yeah, and you can talk about liberal economics and liberalism and then also talk about liberalism in the more positive elements of it, like the more open-minded and peace. But the problem is

that those contradictions are becoming impossible to ignore. Well, but these are two different things in the same way that like you can be in favor of like, I am a Democrat, capital D Democrat, or I am a Democrat lowercase D, which means that I believe in democracy versus being a member of the Democratic Party. I thought that was clear.

What confusion did it cause for the? Yeah. I just saw it. Do people think she was too anti-liberal or pro-liberal? She thought they was like too like a Clinton-esque or like that kind of liberal. Okay. So I was just making it clear because not everybody's like familiar with these terms in the way that they're used. you'll you know a lot of people you misuse neoliberalism for a very very long time and then people

just stop talking about it in the same way but um i mean i'll say i i agree with the uh take on critical theory i think it's bad for the left generally to uh and i'll just say like like george orwell as someone there are strikes against orwell uh the list uh of uh communists uh that he gave uh that he made like these are things to note but i I also think people don't contextualize them properly and really miss out on our actual intellectual history and give it over to the right wing. I think it is important to that we don't leave it to Jordan Peterson to be selling out arena tours. You can put me up, right? Because of how like, because people are starved of intellectual content.

And it can't just be like all that stuff is bad. Like there's a yearning for people to engage with sort of intellectual history. more classical. Exactly. I agree with her statement about, like, when I was going through college, there was a sort of idea that, like, you don't know you to engage with, like, um, uh, like the works of like Thomas Payne or even like Thomas Jefferson. And I think that is a problem.

I think you need to understand them as slave owners and even like the, the sort of personal things. But I don't think you stop there. And I think it's a real problem that a lot of people on our side of thing do stop there. It's a censoriousness. I mean, we've spoken about this within the context of, of like even the Platner thing and how off-putting that is for people. You have to have the problem I think sometimes is that Democrats or liberals in this instance are, what do you say?

They think you're stupid. Republicans think you're lazy Democrats think you're stupid. Because they think that like this can't, that people can't work out this context themselves. And it results in like both narrowing the coalition and narrowing the conversation in a way that's immensely off-putting. to people and that makes a guy like Jordan Peterson or whatever sound transgressive when that's not the case. And he's the he's the one like like democratizing knowledge and you have these university systems increasingly privatizing it or making there a giant cost barrier to it. It's hard for me to relate because when I went to college, literally it was still the Dunning School. Like I mean, like I'm that old where that none of what you're talking about happened.

Right. Yeah, yeah. Those guys were your professors. Exactly. Like, I mean, that's what Chuck knew. There was,

I mean, when I went to law school, even, um, I took, um, the critical, uh,

legal study, there was critical legal studies, which not, uh, which was part of the, um, in part, probably predates many,

in many respects, the, um, uh, CRT or, um, uh, critical race theories.

But it was like, you only get two credits for this. You get four if you take the other class. It's like, well, wait a second. It's the same class. Like I'm putting in the same amount of time. They literally devalued it in that way. And there, it seems to me what we probably overshot, which I think, you know, happens with any type of social movements. like, you know, not to use a Taekwondo analogy, but you've got to punch through the board.

And your punch lands a couple of inches past the board when you break it. And then, you know, there's maybe needs to be a little bit of a course correction once you have broken that board. Now, the board, I think there's, it's hard to argue that the board is shattered. The board's still there. But it's, it's creakier. and how do you prevent the reaction to this to re-glu the board? I mean, I'm not too far with the board.

But the reaction is because the soil is so fertile for that kind of reaction because of the systemic income inequality problems. And the fact that higher education is there is this barrier to entry. If you can go on YouTube and listen to 12 rules or whatever that's going to help impact your life, Or him talk about Plato. Yeah. Like people just Googling Plato or Socrates. Exactly. And these fucking jokers come up.

It's because, you know, if you search it. And I mean, I looked at. He was a real man. There was an early moment in my, like I would go to Open Yale. They would have a bunch of courses. They stopped doing that. They haven't posted like free courses online for people for like a decade or so. That was a big thing in the early internet.

But it goes against the business model. So, you know, you don't do it. You don't. Right. And even in some of like the the censoriousness that, you know, I'm critiquing, like, it's also a function of all this where peoples feel like they're the best way that they can perform activism in this way is like via consumptive choices or kind of shaming of others individual choices because we just don't have enough collectivists. The cultural boycott infrastructure on the left. Consumption and boycott.

The lesson to all this is joined DSA. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. Because, like, I mean, the right wing version of, like, Thomas Jefferson's, like, he was such a great guy because it was genetics and stuff like that. Like, the understanding of any of these people, to the extent their thought is worth, you know, engaging with is there are certain individual moments of insight, but also, like, Thomas Jefferson was so smart. And the extent that stuff good came out of him because he was able to ride around on horseback all day because he had slaves making his wealth. But it's not, it's not, you have to grab. It also helps, yeah, not to have to worry about the day to day.

Exactly. Because I've got a bunch of free workers. I don't have any work to do. I can think all day. That's why he came up with good intellectual production. Whenever we, I don't want to get conspiratorial. Right before I want to plug my car. But right when we are about to make the plug for members, we have been taken off of our streaming platform on both on Twitch, on YouTube, on Rumble,

And I don't want to get alarmist here. We just have questions. Why would this happen? Who is doing this? What are they afraid of? It's very... Shabbat Shalom. I'm saying that for no reason at all.

It's very, very strange. That's a reference to for everybody who didn't... Who's not as online. Candice Owens... No sound on YouTube, it's saying. Oh. Well, I don't know. It's very difficult. The jury report's been fine.

The EU. What? Yeah, just refresh. All right, refresh if you have no audio. Refresh, if you can't hear me. I love big tech. I love big tech. These guys do so much good stuff.

Let's make sure we bail them out. Let's make sure the government builds data centers for them. They are doing a great job. Refresh. If you can't hear us. Okay. Oh, Nicola, you guys have been having these problems every day. Cut Matt off from the weed.

It's not Matt. I mean, something's been consistent every day is me being on weed for 12 years. That's the way that we had things working. The real question is, is he not on weed? Exactly. That's the consistent variable. If there's out of the two producers to blame for tech issues, start with... None of this stuff is...

Poor Brian got here. here I'm no my immediate reaction is to push my chair back and put Matt right where I did to work on it

this is this is what this is what we see Brian injects like a we see Brian and Maca whoa whoa whoa

it's like a fighter jet in the air show I see a cloud I hit eject I oh my God It's never Matt's fault. I hope it's consistent for the rest of the show here.

But let me just plug big show left reckoning today coming up right after the show today this afternoon. Grant Platner, he gave us 45 minutes. We talk a lot about that. And we also talk about the Texas Senate primary. Again, get a little bit into Jasmine Crocket, who feels misrepresented. We do point out that we would. support either against John Corning because some people think

if you're criticizing these folks, you're not being a good Democrat. So check that out right after the show today. Why are you wearing that John Cornyn for re-election shirt? Cornyn just bought me to Parker. That Cornyn was sending a message when he brought the stream down. Just behave yourself, Matt.

That's how he's sending a message. Shot across the top. These tech issues stop. I'll vote for whoever. Folks, see you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now.

And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second. The majority.

Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. Fun hack. Matt. Who? Fun. What is up, everyone? Fun hack.

No, me, Keene. You did it. Fun hack. Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint. Everyone, I'm just a random guy.

It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Women's... Stop talking. for a second. And let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude?

But dude, you want to smoke his... Seven, eight? Yes. Yes? Is you. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound.

Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to go to life. Libertarians. They're so stupid though. Common sense says, of course.

Gobbled e-gook. We fucking nailed him. So, we're... What's 79 plus 21? Challenge met. I'm positively quivering. I believe 96, I want to say. 857.

210. 35. 501. One half. 3-8s. 9-11, for instance. $3,400, $1,900. $6.5,4, $3 trillion sold.

It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making me think less. But let me say this. Poop. You can call it satire. Sam goes to satire. On top of it all, my favorite part about you is just a lot. You is just like every day, all day, like everything you do.

Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we see you. Folks. Just the week being weeded out, obviously. Yeah, sundown guns out. I don't know. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore.

I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled folks. Wow. I love it. I do love that. Look, got to jump. I got to be quick. I get a jump.

I'm losing it, bro. Two o'clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulaw? Courageous. What is wrong with you? Love you, bye. Love you.

Bye-bye.