The Ricochet Podcast - The Long Arc Forward with Christopher Rufo

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

The fight for our civilization is here, and today's guest is no stranger to the fray. Christopher Rufo is a member of the New College of Florida board and the mastermind of a number of projects devoted to winning the culture war. He's the author of the new bestseller America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything, which covers why the right's been on the losing side, and today he chats with Rob, Peter and James about how we can turn the tide. If you're seeking bold strategies on how to save our country, this is the podcast for you.- Soundbite from the open: Christopher Wray and Kamala Harris

Oh, I'm sorry, you got this meeting room for... Okay. Somebody came into the room. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilacs.

Today we talk about what needs to be done with Christopher Rufo. So let's have ourselves a podcast. We also cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or another foreign terrorist organization may exploit the current conflict to conduct attacks here on our own soil. And so today I am proud to announce the Biden-Harris administration will develop our nation's first national strategy to counter Islamophobia. Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lilex here in Minneapolis, recently graced by Joe Biden. Peter Robinson is in California. Rob Long, I believe, is somewhere in the East Coast. We got the whole country covered here. Gentlemen,

how are you today? Well, I'm fine, is somewhere in the East Coast. We got the whole country covered here. Gentlemen, how are you today? Well, I'm fine, James. Thank you for asking. Well, and Peter? Aside from the disintegration of the entire, of all that we cherish, I'm perfectly well. Lovely sunny day here in California. We're expecting a high of 77. It's amazing how pleasantly life, what this, would it have been like this in about the year 400? Three senators get together in Rome and say, well, shall we stroll – yes, yes, the barbarians are proceeding down the peninsula, but they've crossed the Po.

But let's stroll over to the Baths of Caracol and have a natter, shall we? Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, on a cheerful note, we proceed. I mean, it's a sort of incremental, small, little deconstruction of the world in which we know, which has been going on apace as long as I can recall, with fits and starts and with the spasmodic jerks back to the proper directions.

Hey, who are you calling a spasmodic jerk? I was going to introduce you thusly. So, yes, while I do not share Peter's Roman analogy completely, I understand it. And it would have been, you know, we always think that Rome fell in a day. The whole thing just collapsed. No. No, no. It took an awful long time.

It was a choice. And frankly, it survived for another thousand years over in the eastern part where they still had the reignments of. But there we go again. There we go, bringing the Roman Empire back roman empire back i know what's going on which blinds us sometimes to the uniqueness of our situation and rob wants to burst in so well i just burst yeah sorry oh i see i think you said uh i get it i i don't disagree i can argue that anything that's going on right now is good. But, things are still worldwide

better than they've ever been. It is, the idea that we are, I mean, this is, look, people aren't better. People are still just evil little monsters who will do unspeakable things to each

other if given half a chance and if like they're able to somehow be um coddled and encouraged to do so right but they've always been that way it seems that i just feel before we lapse into the decline of the world end of the world despair things are still pretty good now i'm not saying we should be sanguine about it and complacent but things are still pretty good. Now, I'm not saying we should be sanguine about it and complacent, but things are still pretty good. Go back to the last war in the Middle East in 73, not the last, but go back to that one. Would you rather be back in 1973 with a demoralized domestic political situation, with energy shocks, with the idea that we're going to run out of oil in 10 years, with the Soviet Union looming around the globe you want that no i was there in 73 it was horrible it was it was dreadful and we are in so many better ways today i think we're

then i mean yes there's been a loss of lots of stuff but no i'm i'm with rob and that's one of the things that keeps you moving forward and keeps you optimistic and keeps you fighting because in a way you just lie down and die yeah i'm not saying there's not a fight to be had there's definitely a fight to be had and there will be many many more fights but it feels to me like there's um uh i don't know there's a a lower tolerance for blunder than there ever was um lower tolerance lower tolerance meaning we respond to terrible mistakes and terrible outrages much more quickly um so i i don't know i mean look i'm again i'm not i'm not trying to be a pollyanna here but i think um when you when you face things like this when you there are times when you face disasters like are unfolding in

the world and you think well whatever we've been doing it must be wrong we must change but there are also times when you face disasters like this in the world you think well look people are still the same and maybe we just need to redouble our efforts to um bring certain parts of the world back into civilization to um redouble our efforts to connect people through commerce and trade, to redouble our efforts to make sure that we have a very strong, safe, powerful country that is a beacon to the world. All those things, I don't know. We're called to do those things rather than, I think,

called to sort of dig a hole and jump in it. Possibly, although that hole is looking very appealing. Yeah. How are you listening to this show right now? On the internet, right? Okay, that's packets of data going back and forth, and you say, no, no, it's actually data. I don't care how you describe it.

The fact is, is there's data, and there's data brokers. Ever heard of those? Those are the middlemen who collect and sell all those digital footprints you leave online. They can stitch together detailed profiles, which include your browsing history, your online searches, and your location data or data. They sell your profile off to a company who delivers you a targeted ad. No biggie, right? Well, you might be surprised to learn that the same data or data brokers are also selling your information to the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS. I mean, I don't

want the tax man showing up at my door because of some search I did on my phone. So if you want to mask your digital footprint, protect yourself with ExpressVPN. One of the easiest ways for brokers to aggregate data and tie it back to you is through your device's unique IP address, which also reveals information about your location. When you're connected to ExpressVPN, your IP address is hidden. That makes it much more difficult for the data brokers to identify who you are. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of network traffic to keep your data safe from hackers on public Wi-Fi. You know, when you're sitting in a coffee shop and you're all practically naked. That's why we here have ExpressVPN. We have the app downloaded on all the devices from the phone, the computer, and even the home Wi-Fi router.

All you do is tap one button to turn it on and you are protected. It's that easy. So make sure your online activity and data is protected with the best VPN money can buy. Visit ExpressVPN.com slash ricochet right now do that this moment and you will get three extra months free to this special link all right you can do it an hour from now that's express e x p r e s s vpn.com slash ricochet expressvpn.com slash ricochet to learn more and we thank expressvpn for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast may i i rise to speak on behalf of disaster? Although I can't, I am convinced that I read

it somewhere in Jacques Meritin, the French philosopher and theologian, that because the world is fallen, Rob, listen to this because you can raise this at the Yale Divinity School, because we live in a fallen world, but because the world has been redeemed, and both of these are working their way out in history, things are getting better and worse at the same time all the time. I thought that was just a profound insight, but I have never since been able to find it again. So, I couldn't have made it up. In any event, so 1973, didn't we have the feeling Nixon gets forced out of office in 73? But didn't we have the feel, first of all, the American family was far more intact. Public schools still functioned relatively well. The number of people in the country illegally was surely well below

a million in those days. And I have the, well, you tell me what you think, what it felt like to you, if you can remember it at all. I was, what was I? I guess I was in junior high. But when Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford took over, and Ford gave that speech in the East Room of the White House saying, our long national nightmare is over, it did feel as though the nightmare was over. It felt as though there was a strong, normal country that suddenly awoke from the nightmare. We went back to normal and normal was really pretty solid, stable, reliable, and in all kinds of ways. The things are economically, of course, we're all richer. We're all dramatically richer. Communications, tech, all that has happened. But at the same time, the American family is disintegrated. It feels to me as though the most important things are

weaker today than they were in 1973. Can I argue this in detail? No, I can't. Rebuttal? Oh, wow, you're done. I guess my rebuttal, I don't really have a rebuttal. I mean, all those indexes indices you say are true i mean things are you know getting worse in a lot of ways um overall in the globe people are richer i mean in the sense that they're not um starving to death which is a which is not nothing after all not nothing and um it is it was uh 100 percent It was 100% the cause or the effect of global capitalism without any doubt. And it was 100% the pro-capitalist, pro-growth policies of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, without any doubt, buttressed by a whole bunch

of like smart eggheads but essentially two very powerful political figures who managed to marshal uh political coalitions in a you know wobbly ways they always are and to make these arguments like uh you know we i guess what i would say is the problem with despair is it seems to suggest that this is fate. And I don't think it's fate. Yes, no, no. I'm with you there completely. We did not in 1973 have an example of renewal as we would have in the 80s. What do you call Jimmy Carter?

Oh, no, I get it. We did not. I mean, the decline seemed inevitable. The decline seemed permanent. It seemed manageable. We would just slowly slide down into a state in which we had less and things were less and things were uglier, but we'd muddle along. The idea of triumphalism was out of the question. The idea of beating the Soviet Union was out of the question. And we're often criticized, those of us who look back to the

halcyon days of Reginus Maximus and think that we're always criticized for... Yes, I know, things are different. Ronald Reagan probably was not the perfect God that people are making him out to be, that he wouldn't win today, etc. I get that, I get that. But the example is there, and

the strings that he plucked are still waiting. You can still feel them resonating silently in the culture, getting their own vibrations. You do agree, Rob? I do agree. I also feel that part of what I think we're experiencing, and the more I look at it, and this is my lens,

everybody's got their own, right? But I look at it and I think a lot of these problems that we face as a nation domestically are the product of a kind of a lazy affluence. When you get really, really rich and you have 9,000 channels, like, the schools are fine. They can teach wherever they want. rich and indolent enough to be worried about their exquisite little mental health issues that naturally ends up being people doing some really bizarre things uh to their uh you know hormonal systems and their genitalia i mean i'm not approving of it but it these these seems this

seems like the the the what is the number one the number one health issue in america right now is obesity if you'd gone back to even to as recently as 1960 and said to somebody i just said guess what in the future poor people are gonna be fat well he would have thought my god that's fantastic what an amazing society you must have because poor people are fat and so um i don't know some of this stuff feels like just uh we need to redouble yeah luxury beliefs but also just just decadence and richness and you know we that has to be corrected and i think it's in certain places it's going to be corrected and in certain um i mean i think i think there's going to be a big correction in what we expect from uh our major american venerable institutions, which are really our institutions

of higher learning. I mean, nobody comes to the United States to go to high school, but everybody wants to come to the United States to go to college. And that's a reason for that. And if we want to continue that brand excellence, we're going to have to work harder at it. Ed, we've seen the revelation of a large amount of cultural rot at the universities over the events transpiring in the Middle East. Talked about this last week, but it'd be fun to talk to somebody who really is on this

subject a lot more than us, who makes it a part of his work, and he's with us. Christopher Ruffo. Yeah, we finally got him. Isn't that great? Senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor for City Journal, where he writes some pieces that are just cracking good reads.

Board member for the New College of Florida and author of the New York Times bestseller, America's Cultural Revolution, How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. Chris, thanks for joining us today. Hey, good morning. Good morning. Great to have you on the podcast. Followed you on Twitter for a long time. Read your stuff in City Journal.

And I don't know really where to start before we get all of the media issues, which I'm sure Rob and Peter want to do. A little background on you. You were a documentary filmmaker before you do what you did now. Explain how you made that a little transition and what kind of documentaries you were doing. Yeah, that's right. I spent more than 10 years as a documentary film producer and director. I did three films for PBS. I sold a film to Netflix now about 10 years ago. And so that was the beginning of my career. And kind of looking back, it was a good way to travel around the world, have a wide range of experiences. But when I hit 30, in my kind of mid, early to mid 30s, I was looking for something a bit different and found myself wanting to get into politics. And the skills of a documentary filmmaker are not transferable everywhere, but they are transferable to doing uh writing and reporting and uh especially some kind

of on the ground reporting and that's how i got into my foot in the door in the political world good thing you did that because otherwise you would have ended up like rob long yeah exactly chris you are the first person i have ever encountered who wanted to go from filmmaking to writing i i yeah really dumb i live in a world of writers who constantly dream of Hollywood making movies. I'll explain that. Yeah. I mean, you know, the problem with filmmaking, and I don't know if Rob feels the same way, but for me, it was, I found myself spending so much time worrying about financing distribution marketing business management you know payroll i mean i found myself really functioning more in uh business capacity to the vast majority of my time and less and less in a creative capacity um and then you have a huge

overhead just to get projects off the ground whereas you can send a tweet you can send a substack you can write a piece for city journal quickly. Uh, you don't have to take three years to do it. Uh, and you can get in involved in a very immediate way and see kind of a, a direct cause and effect. Um, and so for me, it was, I got to focus more on the actual substance of the work. Uh, there was an immediate impact. And I also felt less lonely because making a documentary, you dig yourself into a hole for a few years. And it's, I think, psychologically quite challenging for someone like me who's more extroverted by nature. Hey, Chris, everybody wants to talk to you. So I'm talking fast just to jam in my one question here.

The question of questions in education, in higher education, that Rob said just a moment before you came on, nobody comes to this country to go to high school, but even now, all the world wants to come here to go to American universities. So, here are the questions. One, how can the great universities be all that bad if all the world is still trying to get into them? Two, among us conservatives, the debate goes back and forth and back and forth. Smash and destroy and burn and salt the earth with the great institutions and create entirely new ones. Joe Lonsdale is attempting this with the University of Texas at Austin. Or reform the institutions that we already have. And you are right in the middle of a spectacularly interesting story to me, which is taking

place in Florida. And there you are with an established public university, which means, of course, that it has all the pathologies, and you're on the board saying, you, you, you, and you, you're fired. Here's what we're going to do with this place. So, tell us about that and tell us what conclusions, what you've learned about higher education more generally. Sure, yeah. So, yeah, I'll take your questions in order. I mean, look, how is it that the American universities have seemingly gone insane, and yet they maintain their status, their prestige, and their competitiveness globally? Part of that is just because they are established brands. I mean, these universities are three, four hundred years old. They have, especially in the, you know, 19th century,

the 20th century, these enormous reputations. They've accumulated a massive amount of capital and they still serve the basic function of the post-war elite university, which is to give you a calling card that will get you in the door anywhere. And so Harvard can still do that, even if they have a large number of professors who are cheering on Hamas. However, over time, the reputation degrades. And I think we're seeing that slowly. And the other thing is, look, we have the same number of elite East Coast universities as we did 200 years ago, but we have 350 million people in our country now. So in a sense, the supply has stayed more or less the same, while the demand has increased many folds. So they're in a very enviable position.

So the question of, well, what do we do about it? Do we do this, the kind of smash and burn or reform? You know, I hear conservatives say, oh, don't go to college, you know, raise the Ivy Leagues, etc., etc. This is such a fatalistic position. It's a pure cope, as we say now, because you cannot, you know, you cannot get rid of these institutions that have, you know, $100 billion endowments. They're not going anywhere. And so it's pure fantasy to think that you could get rid of them. And it's pure fatalism to say, don't go to college.

The fact is, is that a college degree is more important than ever. You can't have a modern political movement without a high number of lawyers, a high number of humanities experts, a high number of people who are verbally fluent and have the credentials that are required in a modern technological society. So I think the idea that somehow we'll become a nation ruled by electricians and plumbers and pipe fitters might be attractive in the abstract, but it's totally unrealistic. And so what we have, what we're faced with is either to build and compete or to kind of capture and reform. I think we need to do both. I'm involved, of course, in this recapturing effort at University

of Florida. And the basic premise there is public universities and conservative states should not be domains of total lunatic left-wing hegemony. And we should use political power to make sure that public institutions reflect the values of the public. That's the simple rule. It's in total alignment with the founder's vision. It's in total alignment with Jefferson's vision that he established University of Virginia with. And it is unfortunately at odds with even conservatives who, by a libertarian-style delusion, have come to the conclusion that any interference with the government by the people is illegitimate. This inversion of our true principles. And so I'm fighting against the left on this, obviously, because they're very mad

that we've gotten rid of gender studies and we're booting out all of these uh left-wing ideologues but I'm also in a fight with the right with some elements of the right that have bought into these kind of neutral fantasies that don't ever uh materialize in the real world hey Chris thanks for joining us but you're also in a big fight with the marketplace I mean here's my example i walked down fifth avenue along canal street and people are spread out blankets and they're selling fake gucci handbags and fake louis vuitton whatever tote bags and everybody knows they're fake but they look good so you give the guy 20 bucks and you walk down the street with a fancy brand and people like that right and nobody really says let me see that bag.

The stitching isn't right, right? So, isn't your biggest problem not the politics and not the state governments and not even woke culture, but isn't your problem that people, for a good while from now, my prediction, despite what's happening on the campus in response to Hamas attacks in Israel, despite all that, they still want that juicy, juicy brand. They still want to have a Stanford diploma or a Yale diploma or a Harvard diploma or a Princeton diploma or some other prestigious university, and they don't really care, right? I mean, I just won't take

the woke classes, but I still want that Harvard degree. I still want to walk down the street with my Gucci handbag, even though I know it's meaningful. Full disclosure, Rob is speaking to you from New Haven, Connecticut. Yeah, so I'm here, the belly of the beast. But isn't that the biggest mountain for you to climb? How are you going to do that? I think it's an inevitability, though. And I think we have to take it as, at least in the short and medium term, how it's going to be. And so, look, you know, if your child gets into Harvard, even if you're a conservative, you send your child to Harvard, because you know, that's going to be an entryway for his or her life

going forward. You know, I have some of the fancy degrees, you know, certainly it's my milieu as well. And so I think that, look, there's going to be a kind of hierarchy of status and prestige. It's going to be dominated by the oldest, most established brands. And so we have to do one of two things, either, or rather one of two things, or maybe both of two things. You have to steadily put pressure on the brand and threaten the brand and degrade the brand through strategic attacks on these institutions while at the same time you enter those institutions um you you you and then you force changes on those institutions uh from within and so um look that's's Marxism that's a that's a that's a page right out of

Marx it's a page out of Gramsci absolutely um who I think that the right should read I just actually finished uh some some reviewing of notes of Gramsci uh yesterday and uh there's a lot to learn and uh and and how economy and culture work how institutions function how values are transmitted uh could you know kind of kind of orthodox libertarian post-war conservatism uh is not enough and so we have to understand how culture works how status works how rank works how institutions work and uh and i think that uh for better or worse uh and i think actually for better, because look, I mean, you know, the other argument of, well, why can't we just get rid of these universities is because we're conservatives. The universities are the crowning achievements of the West. We've had a thousand years of modern universities in Europe and the United States.

We need to make them, reorient them back towards the true, the good, and the beautiful, reorient them towards producing great citizens and great statesmen. I think it's still too early to abandon hope. Well, I agree. But when you were speaking, it occurred to me that the big academic institutions are like cruise ships in the middle of the ocean with 3 000 people toiling away down in the steerage and in the rest and then the the elites up at the top driving the whole thing and changing the direction of that cruise ship consists of infiltrating it somehow like in the middle of the pacific ocean getting our people into the positions to be able to turn it into the opposite direction which is impossible without some sort of armed paratrooper thing.

How do you get into the levels of institutions and make the change? Because they seem to be staffed with people who are institutionally and intellectually and dispositionally disinclined to do anything but push a particular viewpoint of Western civilization. I mean, it's incremental. It has to be. But I mean, are we talking a 50-year project, a long march through the institutions as they had? It seems that that's the only way to do it. And it doesn't seem like we have 50 years. Yeah, I mean, look, it's very difficult.

Yes, it's a long-term project. I think in the short term, what we want to do is put extreme pressure on these institutions. And so I think we can do that reputationally. Certainly, they're self-immolating right now in that regard with the support for Hamas. I think you can also put political pressure. You restrict the flow of government-backed dollars and student loans to universities, put them into a financial crisis where they have to start making decisions that are in conformity with reality. I think you also have a conservative Department of Justice in a future administration launch an investigation

on violation of civil rights for affirmative action in every Ivy League university, embarrass them, shame them, put pressure on them, fine them, exert massive amounts of reputational damage as necessary and as possible. And then at the same time, we actually retreat back to institutions that we can control. And so this means the great private colleges like Hillsdale College, with which I'm affiliated, but it also means having state legislatures recapture small state universities and red states, and turn them into a recruiting ground to do two things, which will eventually feed into, you know, kind of the Harvard, Yale's and Princeton's of the world, is get great conservative professors. So conservatives want to go into academia and

have a job at the end of it, and have those professors recruit conservative graduate students who can produce academic work and who can be prepared to enter academia at a higher level over time. You know, my own personal goal is to create the conditions where we can hire 100 tenure-track conservative professors in state universities around the country. I think a thousand of these professors will make an enormous difference. And it's certainly something that is achievable in the next 10 years. If I can just interrupt here for a second and tell you how tired I am. Really, neighbor was doing yard work at 730 in the morning. I meant gas blowers, putting the leaves around. It was extraordinary. I had a bad night's sleep.

I don't like that because you know what poor sleep does? It gives you weight gain and mood issues and poor mental health, lower productivity. It's all linked to poor sleep. And sleeping less to six or seven hours per night is linked to reduced white blood cell count as well. White blood cells protect our body against illness and disease, fighting viruses and bacteria and more. So the guy out there blowing the yard and waking me up is reducing my white blood cell count. Sleep, we need it. It's the foundation of our mental and our physical health and performance in our days. Having a consistent nighttime routine is non-negotiable. Now, I can't do anything about the guys who wake me up in the morning, but I can do something about getting to bed and sleeping well the night before. That's because I know about Beam Dream.

Dream. It contains a powerful all-natural blend of things that you've heard of, like magnesium and melatonin, and all the good stuff you might not have heard of, like reishi and L-theanine, along with nano-CDB. Combined, they'll help you fall asleep and stay asleep and wake up refreshed. A recent clinical study revealed the Dream helped 93% of users wake up feeling more refreshed, and 93% reported the Dream helped them get a more restful night's sleep. Just mix Beam Dream into hot water or milk, stir or froth, and enjoy before bedtime. And might I add, it comes to get at this wonderful little agitating device. It's just great.

Battery-operated. Put it in there and zzzz, and it's perfectly mixed, so you don't have, you know, that glass with a bunch of crystals at the bottom. Anyway, I just like that part. And I also like the taste. Oh, the taste. There are so many. Today, you, the listener, can get a special discount on Beam's Dream Powder, the best-selling

healthy hot cocoa for sleep with no added sugar in the world. Flavors? Oh, delicious, like sea salt caramel, cinnamon cocoa, and chocolate peanut butter. Oh, better sleep has never tasted better, frankly. So find out why Forbes and New York Times are all talking about Beam

and why it's trusted by the world's top athletes and business professionals. If you, and you do, want to try Beam's best-selling dream powder, take advantage of their biggest sale of the year and get up to 50% off for a limited time when you go to shopbeam.com slash ricochet and use the code cyber at checkout.

That's C-Y-B-E-R. That's shopbeam.com slash ricochet and use the code cyber for up to 50% off. And we thank beam for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast um i uh chris i just told the guys i had one question on our slack chat but i really have three but the two ones are small um i just want to say about hillsdale hills is a really good example um every every student we've ever talked to from Hillsdale, either be an intern, help us out here at Ricochet, they're all, to a person, incredibly bright, but also incredibly worldly and sophisticated. So the idea that a conservative place is sort of like a kind of a backwater Bible college where the kids don't know anything and are in a protest against Beatles lyrics, it's just not, it's just a kind of a caricature of the left media.

It has never been our experience. And I would just say, if anybody's looking to hire somebody in media and a Hill Steel student is in front of you, hire that person because uniformly they're great. The second thing I would just say is, I ask you a question. Ten years from now, what do you

think is going to be, what do you think we'll look back on and think this was the most damaging thing that happened to the brand prestige of these fancy places was it the slow creeping outrage from out minority groups against affirmative action and their legal their slow legal battles or was it this white hot insanity we've seen for the past two or three weeks? Which one do you think is going to end up? I mean, we're not looking for the headshot. It won't be one.

But which one do you think is really going to hurt? You know, I think that what we've seen the last few weeks is a new cycle that may or may not sustain over the long term. I think that the kind of racial discrimination, affirmative action questions is a huge problem that has a kind of structural power. It has legs that will be a burden for them over the long term. And I think that, you know, look, I think that the Ivies in the mid-century, or even the James Burnhams, who was, of course, a professor at NYU. I mean, I think that it provides us, though, an opportunity to take the greatest minds of

rising generations and train them in alternative institutions and then try to create mechanisms of legitimation and prestige for those individuals because look a an open conservative is unlikely to get a spot at in the graduate program at yale or well that's not actually true uh yale is slightly different we've had some we've had some folks there but um you know we're not going to get yeah we're going to get not going to get big numbers in many programs um but that actually provides a market opportunity for these other institutions um because there are a lot of a lot of young people who um are are academically inclined are brilliant have high potential that don't see a pathway.

And so, to the extent that we can create an alternative pathway, and then we can see things that actually, that these individuals actually exceed the scholars at their peer institutions, or rather their superior institutions, I think that's a good thing. Chris, Chris, you're talking about pathways and culture and academic excellence. Nonsense. Here's what it comes down to. Money. Money!

During the Cold War, the federal government began funding research at universities. Look at any major university, including those with gigantic endowments of five to forty billion dollars federal money is a major part of their budget every single one of them the cold war is long gone universities are at odds with well at least they're at odds with what republicans what with what half the country, with the values and interests and aims and ideals of half of the country. Dude, you need to get a Republican administration elected with backing in the House and Senate and change this game. They no longer get to rely on vast outlays of research money automatically, right? Oh, 100%. Actually, in fact, I just tweeted yesterday that one goal for the right must be to severely reduce the flow of government-backed money to these universities, whether they're

through direct expenditures, whether they're through research grants, or whether they're through direct expenditures, whether they're through research grants, or whether they're through federally guaranteed student loans, and put them into an economic crisis where they actually have to make these decisions and retrench on some of the ideological programs in the interest of more substantive programs. And, you know, none other than Elon Musk jumped in the comments agreeing with this idea. And so I think that's exactly right. And, you know, in many ways, Peter, in at least one important way, America lost the Cold War. And I know people don't like to hear that, but we adopted some of the kind of other side of the coin of the kind of materialist conception of society as our Marxist enemies with this kind of purely economic libertarian theory on our side. But both are reducible to a kind of crude materialistic view

of the world. And so, yes, I think you're right. We cannot merely just keep funneling money into institutions that are against the kind of common enterprise in the united states but i think it also is going to require some change in thinking on the right where we have to um uh kind of rebalance our our philosophical portfolio our our categories of ideas to say that actually you know what culture matters and uh we we cannot uh just rely on you know austrian economics as the solution to cultural problems. I have one agenda item for you for the next administration. First, put Rob Long in charge of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Yes. And that will instantly cause such outrage that the administration will be able to abolish the whole damn thing. I give you that one for free chris that is one senate hearing i would like to i guess i would like to attend i'd like to watch i don't know how i'd watch it um can i can i i just have a little because we're talking about the right and what the right strategy should be and you sort of you mapped out a strategy that seemed extremely extremely um marxist to me which is which is not by the way a criticism of it um uh i remember when obama was president the people would like sneer people on the right would sneer and say oh yeah community organizer in chief like that like he didn't win 53 of the

popular vote and a smashing popular vote victory and wasn't a popular president. Didn't have, I mean, he squandered it, but he, thank God, but he didn't, the guy was a successful politician. He won two terms, right? And so the idea of like sneering at him is like, well, why don't you actually pay attention to what he did and see if there's something that we can do on our side to follow that playbook, right? I mean, everybody's playing the same game um the the right seems to have adopted the worst aspects and the most um futile and infantile aspects of the left you know the victimhood crying victimhood all the time all the whining and the nutty elaborate conspiracy theories that unify the world against us,

all that nonsense that people on the left have been pumping directly into their veins for 30, 40, 50 years. Instead of the more disciplined, slow-march, bit-by-bit-by-bit movement. I mean, if you look at the culture in america and political culture in america since lyndon johnson's victory in 64 it has moved steadily right now you know reagan slowed it down but it was i'm sorry steadily left i mean reagan slowed it down but it kept kind of moving left um whatever plan they were marching under was a very effective plan and our side seems to be obsessed with twitter and um uh trolling and trivial the worst most trivial and least effective uh and efficient uh aspects of the left i mean am i just being mean no it's it's a huge problem and i think that there are a number of dead ends

on the right that I'm seeing more and more. You have a kind of right-wing racialism, which is a kind of inverse of the left-wing identity politics that is gaining some traction. You have a right-wing conspiratorialism. This is kind of the Alex Jones, Fantasyland, QAnon, that draws a kind of actually significant amount of energy. And then you have this kind of general inferiority complex on the right, which is, you know, don't go to college, don't do X, Y, and Z, it's totally hopeless, the deck is stacked against us. And all of it, the common denominator is a sense of inferiority, a lack of a sense of agency, and then really an abdication of

responsibility. And so the right that I would like to see is an elite right. It's a highly educated right. It's a professional managerial right, a right-wing political movement that can actually get into offices of power and responsibly wield power to advance the overall philosophical project. And, you know, I've worked with Governor DeSantis over the last few years on a number of initiatives in Florida. And, you know, I've worked with Governor DeSantis over the last few years on a number of initiatives in Florida. And it's like, we have we have the guy, you know, it's like, this guy is, I mean, I'll tell you, you know, I was on the plane with him the first time I met met him. And I was trying to make small talk with him. And I was just getting no response.

Like, you know, you talk to people, you try to Oh, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and it's like, Oh, man, I got to change tack here. This guy is not interested in the small talk. And so we started talking about policy and he lit up, started talking a mile a minute about this is how we change the institutions, the laws, the appointment procedures. This is the kind of programs we need. This is the law that has to change. We've got to talk to these legislators. I mean, he had the entire playbook in his mind, and he knew how to ruthlessly pursue it. He knew how to change laws and institutions. He knew what the goal was. He efficiently got it done. And so I think he, you know, for me, for whatever limitations he has, we are all human, we have limitations. He's a model of a ruthlessly effective operator who knows the goal, who knows the means, who knows how to get it done. And so the question is really for Republican primary voters. Do you want that or do you want the guy, the other guy? And unfortunately, I kind of I struggle with this. I try not to get too involved in the partisan politics, but it looks like they don't want that.

And I think that it's a huge problem that we're facing. And so, you know, I don't know. You guys tell me you have more kind of a longer arc of observation, but this to me is... That's a polite way of putting it. That's a very polite way of putting it that's a very polite you missed it at the top of my arc yeah at the top of the podcast you missed the fact that we were we on balance we said yes the world is crumbling but it's still got another thousand years

so uh we do take the long view that's for sure so the question is in getting it all back i mean i agree with what peter was saying earlier about defunding these things and if i was a politician i would make a point of point without that i am defunding the social services social i'm sorry the social sciences which are neither and that we're not going to spend an awful lot of money crafting and conjuring ridiculous theories of intersectional behavior in order to explain humanity that did that you know you want to pay for that go right ahead but i would also find that it was not just necessary to restore the university. It was necessary to restore the cities. And that

would seem to be a big part of a substantial Republican agenda. And it's hard to sell to some people because they don't live there. They live in the burbs. They never go into the cities. They don't like the cities. They don't like the people who are there. So why should they care? But we all should care because the health and strength of our core cities is one of those things that carries the country forward. And we all remember that we reclaimed them. We you guys, you made your problem, you lie in your burning, feces-soaked, needle-strewn bed? the kind of collapse of urban life is kind of rhetorically effective for motivating suburban voters along the axis of fear. But I think ultimately the responsible kind of governing strategy has to be to present an opportunity to restore our great cities. Because, as you say, you know, the great cities are, it's our country, it's our shared enterprise. And so, look, I think we need to reopen and dramatically expand the asylums, or what were once called the asylums, kind of psychiatric inpatient lockdown facilities. We reduced the capacity by about 95% since the mid-1950s. We need to increase the capacity by an order of magnitude. You can't have people suffering from broken windows theory that, of course, was essential in bringing back New York.

And so I think to the extent that, you know, local policymakers have a tougher time, but federal policymakers even there is intersection here. And so, yeah, I think, you know, nobody likes to see this. It's demoralizing. They used to run Soviet propaganda about the nasty inner cities and the homeless and the think we really need to do is actually have the kind of restoration of authority, meaning kind of the restoration of the archetypal father figure. That's what seems to me to be lacking in public life at all levels. It will be done. It has to be done. We know what needs to be done. It's just that we lack the will to do it. Or, in an addition, we have an ideological cohort that is determined not to do anything, either because they like the example of failed capitalism hellscape, or because they have a financial stake in the institutions that supposedly serve these people, or both. But it can't go on forever. Anything that can't go on

forever won't, as they say. So it will happen. The question is whether it's a draconian purge, or whether it's a compassionate one. But the last thing i want to ask you is when you're talking before about coming up with the institutions producing voices intellectual spirits that can animate the age do we still have the position of the public and intellectual anymore or has that been just distributed to twitter and or or worse yet eclipsed by tiktok which uses ingenious chinese algorithms to shape the American mind. Is that where the public intellectual eventually ends up? Because, I mean, your work on Twitter, and I don't mean to demean it, but it's great.

And I think you accomplish more there than you would showing up on a Sunday chat show or the dreaded Saturday afternoon local access show where somebody tells us what needs to be done, as happened with television back in the 50s and 60s. Is that the new intellectual battlefield then? Yeah, it absolutely is. I think that in my experience, having done, you know, prestige shows, having been, you know, profiled in all the, you know, big glossy magazines, having been profiled in all the big, glossy magazines, having done cable news, having done social media, having done YouTube. I mean, I have kind of experimented with all the different media. I think Twitter is right now the most important in shaping the narrative of kind of public life and proposing ideas and persuading people and especially people in

media, politics, people in positions of power i found it to be an extraordinarily powerful tool um but i i wouldn't despair about that i mean i think it is the reality so we deal with it but i actually think it's a it's a net benefit for the right and in my experience the the left dominates high cost of production, high prestige media. But the right has an enormous advantage in low cost of production media. So, you know, the radio was dominated by the right. And similarly, I think social media, it actually favors the right. And it distributes the means of communication to a wider base. And I think it also, of course, allows a demagogic kind of element, right? I mean, Trump was the great tweeter in a very demagogic

kind of ancient Greek kind of way. But that's not necessarily bad, because the political rights only advantage institutionally is that we have political power. We don't have cultural power. We don't have institutional power. We don't have academic power. But what do we have? Well, we have the chance at political power in states and occasionally in the federal government. And so I think that it is a way to directly translate public sentiment where we can actually mobilize 70% majorities on an issue by issue basis, and then turn that into an actual concrete political program. That's how I try to use it. And it's been successful, you know, very successful. It's like, you know, even the beginning of the year in January, I said,

I'm going to try to abolish DEI bureaucracies in the public universities in Florida and Texas. OK, then I met with the leaders in those states. Then I released a series of investigative reports showing the public what the problem was, starting on Twitter, going to Fox News. And then by the summertime, both states had abolished all their DEI bureaucracies in every public university. And so I think that there is a playbook that we can use that does not go into the rabbit hole of the fever swamp, QAnon kind of trash that you see, unfortunately, but that appeals to an elite audience and uses Twitter's power to achieve actual tangible outcomes. Hey, Chris, in the Slack channel, I've been told to ask you a closer. Good luck. I'm going to ask you a big one. First of all, a compliment.

First of all, a compliment. You're good on Twitter and you're good on Fox News, but I wasn't sure you knew enough or were articulate or poised enough to speak at length. Was I ever mistaken? You're good at length, too. And I can tell, speaking of long arcs, Rob and I have known each other a long time. I can tell that you've impressed Rob as much as you've impressed me. That actually is not a good sign. No. No.

So, somehow, you may want to go back. Yeah, you got to go back. You got to figure this out. That's a mistake. Here's my attempt at a closer. Speaking of long arcs, Ross Dow that uses the term zombie Reaganism. Kevin Roberts at AEI said, what was it? AEI, something about we need to know what time it is in America.

This is now a new catchphrase. Vivek said in one of the debates to, I think it was to Mike Pence, he said, in effect, you're too old. Fair enough. That's a line of attack. But he also said it's not morning again in America. So, you've got this kind of attack on Reagan and on the 80s on our side. And to me, it could be one of two things, maybe some combination. But I remember back when I was close to your age, young Democrats were sick of hearing about FDR. And it was just generational. It was, come on, it's our turn now.

It's that we need new heroes. Let's move on to the next gen. So, that could be what's happening, just that Ross, Dallet, you, Vivelle, it's just time for a new generation to take its place and talking about Reagan doesn't help. That I can get under completely. But the notion that somehow Reagan was mistaken or adapting the ideals and principles of limited government, a strong America would not fit, would not do that we need new policies. We need to begin with an industrial policy. Free markets are no longer adequate. We need to take the government and use it for our side, just the way the Democrats use it for their side. So, can you explain this to me? At your generation, among your friends, the bright guys with whom you move,

does Reagan need to be recaptured or forgotten? Well, that's a great question. It's quite interesting. You know, I'm an admirer of Ronald Reagan's. One of my most important mentors is George Gilder, the great writer who was, of course, influential during Reagan's presidency. But there's two things happening. One is that,

you know, Reagan was an outsider. Reagan was very much a disruptor within the conservative movement. And so I think that as Reaganism has become an ossified ideology that I think actually is not representative of actual Reagan's spirit, which was very much in line with what I believe. I think that's part of it. But I think the biggest dynamic that can explain this for me, and I take a slightly different view. I don't trash Reagan. I think Reagan was the perfect man for the job, perfect man for the time, and an inspiration to this day. But what's happened is that conservatives for about 100 years have promised to reduce the size of government, so small that it could be drowned in a bathtub, in the words of Grover Norquist.

But in fact, today, we have a larger state sector on a percentage of GDP basis than communist China. And so that promise has failed for now a full century. And so my interpretation is, it is naive to say, we need to get back to, you know, a tiny state, night watchman state, and any meddling with the apparatus of government is leftist, is Marxist, is socialist. We don't do that. And so to me, it is an actual abdication of responsibility because we have a massive state. We have public K-12 schools, 90% market dominance. We have public universities, 75% market dominance. We have an actual, you know, government sector that is about, you know, 40% of our economy. And so the question is, not do we agree that we should reduce the size of government? I agree with that. I would love to see it in half, in quarter. I mean, I'd love to see it reduced

significantly. But until we do that, I think we have a responsibility to govern. And so we cannot merely say, you know, we're giving up governing public schools, public universities, the institutions of culture and knowledge formation. And so limited government is in a way a cop-out argument at this point. It doesn't actually address the real status quo and the real crisis right now. And so I think we have, and I think it's consistent with the founders. The founders, you know, said very, very, very clearly that the state has a role in shaping the manners and morals of society. And I think that we need to do it prudently. We need to do it with an eye towards, of course, reducing the size of government. But we actually have to take ownership of our institutions. And it is totally well within the constitutional tradition, as well as the conservative tradition, to say that if we're going to have public schools, public universities and public sector, we should have them represent, reflect, and promote our values.

I don't think that's a transgression of Reaganism. I don't think that's a transgression of our culture more broadly. No, it's very pragmatic, and in the sense of the universities and those elements where the government intersects with people in a formative fashion, I would say yes. But also part of me wants to say, hold on a second here. It's like saying, well, we built this vast and intrusive tentacular state. The problem is that the wrong people are running it. I think it's possible to do both. been uplifting and pro-American and the rest of it but in the areas where the government is constantly peaking and peering and inserting itself and fixing and regulating and funding or not funding that we should still be saying this needs to be less of i mean it's the augustine thing i know make me pure but not yet but we can say both we can pitch both messages i think without losing a new audience and we tell people yeah i i agree. I believe in both. But I think that, look, the status quo right now is a tragic one. We are inheriting a state and society that is not ideal, that we don't know how to fix. And, you know,

James Burnham has been writing about this, or not anymore. But James had been writing about this many, many years ago, the problem has not changed. And so we live in this tragic condition where we're inheriting a system of government that is a vast departure from our founding, a vast departure from our ideals. And yet I think we are required, we're summoned to what Max Weber called an ethic of responsibility. We have to choose among these, all these, you know, kind of terrible, these kind of terrible choices and use a kind of prudent calculation based on what is the best outcome given an imperfect set of means available. That's kind of the best that I think we can do. I hope my microphone is picking up the sirens that wailed past my building as you said that, because it adds a note of urgency.

Chris, it's been great to talk to you. Good luck, good hunting, good victories to come. And, you know, we'd like to talk to you again a little further down the road. Anytime. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thanks for showing up. All right.

Bye. As I mentioned before, you are on the internet. What does that mean? Well, that means that if you're trying to do business on the internet, you are constantly pulling your hair out because the digital world is full of hurdles. But with Persist SEO, you've got a season to guide. Are you feeling overshadowed online? Shine brighter with their digital marketing expertise. Are you competing with the big players? Well, let Persist SEO be your secret weapon. If leads are trickling in or they're nonexistent, let their optimization strategies open the floodgates.

Say yes to digital marketing and let your website do the heavy lifting. Are you lost in the vastness of search engines? Well, Persist SEO will put you on the map. Navigating Google feels like a chore? Well, hand over the reins to Persist SEO. And if costs are spiraling, their Google Ads management, it's the remedy you need. Your digital success story is just around the corner. Reach out at pen and paper because I'm going to give you a number here. 770-580-3736. No need

to rewind. I'll give it to you again. 770-580-37, or drop by ineedseo.help to get help for a complimentary website audit and consultation. With Persist SEO, every challenge meets its match. And we thank Persist SEO for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, that was grand. Do you guys feel revived? Do you feel hopeful looking at hearing voices and perspectives such as that coming from somebody who's not from our generation or my generation um yeah look i he's in the fight

yes that's exactly you know in a way we don't have to you don't have to accept everyone's um global strategy to accept their choice their on the ground tactics right as if you start i mean because you can never really if this if you start a school or reform a school in florida um and it works you may not have to worry about the larger issue those other people will also get in the boat and row with you um you know small change small successes sort of lead people to sort of copycat which i think is always a good thing so i mean um being in the fight though i think is important and i think what i like about what he said is you have to be in the pool in order to

you can't just stand outside of it and cavil and point um you have to be in the pool in order to fight. You can't just stand outside of it and cavil and point. You have to actually do some heavy lifting. Yep. Yeah. And that's why we're here every week, talking. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's how I feel. The phrase you're not allowed to say is that there's too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

There's too many pundits and commentators and there are not enough people starting schools. That's true. Well, before we go, and we are going to go because we have things to do, one last exit question. Ron DeSantis has banned pro-Hamas groups from Florida campuses.

Do you think that this is an overreach? Do you think this is a sign of First Amendment violations of being... First Amendment violations of being, First Amendment rights being violated, of freedom of association being put on the trash heap of history, etc., etc.? Or is this a reminder that perhaps this is going to come whether we like it or not? I don't know what I meant by that. I'm just throwing it out to you. I just have, I haven't read that story, so I don't know i meant by that i'm just throwing it out to you i i just have i haven't read that story so i don't know i mean clearly he's not saying you're not allowed to express certain points of views on florida campuses because that would be a direct violation of the first amendment

but what i have noticed it's not going reported particularly but i've noticed it in part here at stanford that the pro-homas groups tend to attract a lot of people from outside the campus. People are showing up from outside. Now, again, I don't know what the law is in Florida, but if what he's saying is under certain circumstances, outsiders are not permitted on the University of Florida. You can't send money. You can't fundraise for Hamas, which I think is probably a reasonable thing to do. I'm not a lawyer,

but it would seem to me that being able to fundraise for a group that has been designated as a terrorist organization is probably not something you ought to be doing when you're in college. Just me that way. But when it comes to fundraising for a good organization, we are all about that,

and that's why Ricochet.com is here to serve you. By fundraising, I mean, yeah, if you want to read the front page, it's free. Listen, the podcast is free. But if you want to comment, I guess a little bit, a little bit every month, and it's not very much, but it's enough to make sure that we have a sane, civil community that is bounded by a code of conduct so that the conversations are fascinating and civil amongst people who know what's going on, as opposed to the usual pots and pans and bricks and bats thrown at each other's heads on Facebook and the rest of it. Join Ricochet.com, won't you? You'll love it. And you'll be wondering, where was this all the time I was on the Internet? We would also like to advise you that ExpressVPN, Beam, that delicious stuff that puts you to

sleep, and Persist SEO are here to help you as well. They have sponsored this podcast, and you can thank them for that by availing yourselves of their fine services. And of course, do they even have five-star reviews on Apple anymore? Of course they do. And you should go there, and you should give us five stars so more people discover the podcast and find out why exactly Peter and Rob were so smart 665

podcasts ago. 665 years ago, it feels like. Gentlemen, have a great week and we'll convene here next with more. I have no idea what we'll be talking about, only that I'm going to enjoy listening to what you guys and our guests

have to say. Next week. Next week. Next week, fellas. Ricochet. Join the conversation.