The Ricochet Podcast - The Parent Revolution

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

In 2020 ordinary parents learned an important lesson: the so-called public school system felt perfectly free to ignore the public's wishes. This set in motion a backlash that's breathed new life into the school choice cause. Corey DeAngelis has paid close attention, and he joins Rob, Peter and James to explain the political whirlwind as laid out in his new book, The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools.The fellas also cover the peculiar controversy of a Catholic commencement speech delivered at a Catholic university; along with the latest instances of an inept Democratic Party which seems determined to help its top opponent.Opening sound this week: Kansas City Chiefs PK Harrison Butker delivers the commencement address at Benedictine College

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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 Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylex, and today we talk to Corey DeAngelis about school choice. So let's have ourselves a podcast. As men, we set the tone of the culture, and when that is absent, disorder, dysfunction, and chaos set in. Be unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men.

Do hard things. Never settle for what is easy. You might have a talent that you don't necessarily enjoy, but if it glorifies God, maybe you should lean into that over something that you might think suits you better. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number number something or other. I don't know. I don't care. Oh, you're keeping track, are you? Okay. It's number 692. I'm James Lollix in a beautiful spring day in Minneapolis. Rob Long is in a place shrouded in fog and mystery. Apparently, according to the video feed, he is in some sepulcher or some place

of what appears to be austere and magisterial and peter robinson peter robinson who is of course himself austere and magisterial is in california and between the three of us we have the nation straddled and we're here to talk about things uh welcome And yes, Rob, do tell us where you are. I will tell you where I am. I am Peter. Brace yourself. I'm in kind of a refurbished school part of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Brooklyn. Only the Roman Catholics would name a church the Most Holy Trinity. Is there another one? There are lesser trinities. We want to make sure that there's absolutely no confusion about which trinity we're talking about. And so I'm doing a little podcast with a friend of mine after this, so I thought I'd come here early and just kind of, you know. Wait a minute.

Who's your friend? A saint? I don't understand. I'm doing a podcast. It does not lead naturally to i'm sitting in the church of the most holy trinity well you'll have you'll just come to new york and we'll uh you'll have a meeting yeah the great thing the great thing about big cities in his work dense cities is that you will see a church that's built into the fabric of the street in a way that they

aren't out here in the midwest out here a church church stands alone. It's a church, you can know that by looking at it, but in New York, you'll see this sort of religious colonnade facade and a door, and if you step inside, it's a wonderland of iconography and design and architecture and the rest of it. That's what I love about these. Is this one of those places that just... This is one of those. So it's at Brooklyn, so it's got a little bit more going on and a little more space. But what you just suddenly discover is just how enormously vast the Roman Catholic Church's real estate holdings were in New York, such that this church that I'm in, the register's looking around, has a giant, beautiful church inside, right? And it also has a school part of it, and it had another part of a school. It had so much room that they could sell an enormous part of their, I guess, playground

or school or something to a real estate developer to put up, because it's Brooklyn, these really new, nice, luxury apartments. And the story of the Roman Catholic Church in New York is the story of that. You know, there was a beautiful church right where Madison Square, Penn Station was going to be. And so the Penn Central Railroad went to the priest in charge, who apparently, jump in, Peter, and tell me I'm full of it. But from my understanding is that the actual parish priest has an enormous amount of authority over the physical plant of the church. And so they went to him and they said,

look, we're going to take your church away. We're going to tear it down. We're going to build a giant train station here. But we have a place around the corner on 34th Street, almost a full city block. Tell us what you want. And this guy, this priest, went shopping. And he said Penn Central Railroad built everything. so they built a church and a school and a

seminary, and I think there was a convent in there, and there was this giant, giant physical plant. I've been in there, and it looks a little like the same materials as they built Penn Station out of, really, because they just moved the...

They just sent some construction crew, like, you take some of that stuff around the corner and finish building this church, because it's gone through now. I mean, that neighborhood was nothing, was something, and then nothing. And now it's Hudson Yards, which I guess may be its future. I don't know. It's by a famous architect or firm, too, I think. For some reason, I'm thinking it's McKim, Mead & White, or Cass Gilbert, but I could be wrong. Peter,

as long as we're talking about Catholicism, I'm sure that you are apprised of the connection between football and traditional doctrine that was revealed this week, an indication that perhaps the news hasn't been particularly incandescent and kinetic since we're talking about commencement speeches. We're not talking about Ukraine. We're not talking about Gaza. We're not talking about campuses. The big thing in discourse was Harrison Butker. What do you think of what he said and what sort of outrage that it sparked amongst, well, the young. Outrage? What do I think of what he said? I have to confess, I only know snippets of what he said, because I only looked at a few bits and pieces as they moved across my Twitter feed, my X feed. But what he said is 100% consonant with ordinary Catholic teaching, and 50 or 60 years ago would not have surprised

a single mainline Protestant either. And now we have the Episcopal Church in America has broken into two pieces with a traditional group and a progressive group, and the Methodist church just had some sort of formal vote. I don't understand the structures of that church, but they just had some sort of formal vote to permit gay blessings or gay weddings. Again, I don't know the details, but what he said would have been completely uncontroversial i think within my lifetime and almost within rob's lifetime certainly not within yours little jimmy well rob we'll let you respond to this let's let's tell everybody exactly what he said you may want to steal yourself you may want to wad wet cotton into your ears because this is on fire kind of stuff here

quote to the gentleman here today he said part of what plagues our society is this lie that has been told to you that men are not necessary in the home or in our communities. As men, we set the tone for the culture. And when that is absent, disorder, dysfunction, and chaos is set in this absence of men in the home, which is what plays a large role in the violence we see all around the nation. I mean, I mean, the stocks, minimum, right? But we all know that that's true, don't we? Yeah, I think the problem with that statement is that it is absolutely inarguably true. It's not an opinion, really. It is demonstrably the case i mean statistically true i mean if he

said it in slightly different words he would have been daniel patrick moynihan yeah exactly 50 years ago but it's not or even or charles murray now or or yes glenn lowry uh a week ago but no no no go on peter no man is getting angry about this. Yeah, I just want to insert a little story here, which was told to me by Archbishop Cordiglione, the archbishop here in the Diocese of San Francisco. He has a chaplain at San Quentin Prison. I can't remember the chaplain's name. It doesn't matter to this story. And the chaplain had an idea.

And so he sent around a note to all the inmates that if they wanted to send their mother a card for Mother's Day, he, the chaplain, would buy the cards, handle the postage, get the envelopes, make sure they were all properly addressed, and send them to their mothers for Mother's Day. All the inmates had to do was sign the card, include a note if they wanted. If they had trouble writing, he'd write it for them. And there were over 500 inmates who accepted that offer and sent cards to their mothers. Then the chaplain repeated the offer for Father's Day. Zero.

Not one of those inmates imprisoned cared enough about his father, knew who the father was. Not one accepted the offer. I mean, we know this is true, don't we? Yeah. And it's hard to address something when the address is, you know, wherever he laid his hat was a home. Right. So, right. So that's all given.

What he said there was not controversial, but what he did also was to floss his back teeth with the electrified third wire of American culture. Only to a nice image. No, it's a great image. It's fantastic. No, it doesn't work. It doesn't work because I'm using a wire and the third rail is a standard straight metal. James, don't do that. No, I'm going to be worse about my own inadequacies.

He said, quote, let me do that. Quote, I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross the stage and thinking about all the promotions and titles you're going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into the world this yeah led organizations to demand that he be removed from his job um yeah well yeah what i love about his job is he's a kicker yeah yeah he has plenty of time during the game to read which which he's been doing.

And again, here's the problem with the progressive culture or the oppressively progressive culture that we live in now, is that that sentence is also undeniably true. I am a 58-year-old man. I can tell you that, and I really do mean this, and I'm going to get in big trouble for this, but the broken marriages that I have seen in my life from my contemporaries have almost always stemmed. Now, again, I'm a very specific group of people that I went to Yale with, right? So, but they almost always stemmed from this disconnect between what one member of the marriage thought life was going to be like and what life was actually like. And part of that was this idea that they saddled these women smart brilliant women with this notion that to stay home to raise children or to take time out of your career to raise children is a failure and yet the biological imperative i couldn't we will get in trouble and the emotional the emotional truth of womanhood, whether you like it or not, whether you want to argue it away or remove it surgically or with hormones, you can't.

And so it's very hard to convince women that if they, that they're not, that one of the biological imperatives, now, of course,'t have children don't have children that's fine too but yes it's just very hard to do and then eventually those those bills come due and they often come due when the children when the the chaos of child raising is sort of dwindling and women have been told well i went to the women's studies class and i learned all this stuff and the world didn't work out this way. And there's a lot of anger and there's a lot of confusion. And I can, it's a, you know, you shouldn't reason from specific examples, but this has happened in my life. I've seen it happen. it i could only trace it back to these crazy expectations and these this crazy not unreal unrealistic isn't the word um untethered to reality lessons that um a group of young

smart women learned that uh could simply they could simply not argue and debate and read and process away their deep need to have children raise family. I'm going to agree with you 100%. And even I've had experience in our generation, I think this is changing now. And there's Harrison. Harrison is his first name, Butker, giving this speech that shows that at least in some places it is changing. But in our generation in my, you know let the world know, neither of us none of us on this podcast is a woman

but this is the way I think I would tend to phrase it. In our generation at least women going through these fancy institutions, and even honestly a lot of institutions that aren't necessarily so fancy because it rolled out across the culture, were told not just, look, the modern economy, the modern world has created all kinds of wonderful opportunities for women, educational, workforce, all kinds of opportunities for women that didn't exist even for your mothers and

certainly not for your grandmother's generation. That's one thing to say. But the message they were told was, and you may pursue them, is one thing to say to say but message they got was you must pursue them it is your duty to cling to to to grasp these new opportunities that feminists have fought so hard for and motherhood no no no we don't even discuss that here as an option don't you think i think couldn't agree yeah absolutely and the strangest thing is that you find that just economics you can see it in the economics you could see it in a disconnect that a lot of things right um this sort of capital f feminism in many ways a great great advancement in culture right you know there's a lot of great things about women's rights but the chief benefits of feminism were men.

Oh, right. Because they get to do whatever they want, and they get to say, oh, I don't want to be the breadwinner. I don't want to do that. We'll do that together. And I think you're seeing that. I mean, I think he's right. I think what he said was correct. Like you're seeing it's a dereliction of duty for the married men, and the culture kind of encouraged that, and then the poor women are kind of stuck in the middle. even come up with a way uh to deal with it honestly i mean here's the example uh and you can hear this in law students when they're um if you give them two two glasses of wine and ask what

they really think and the men and law schools say you know i um i'm a little i'm a little put out because i didn't get into the law school i really wanted to go to uh because that's it's 51 female and you know that 20 of those women are going to get married and raise children and they're not going to really have a full-time law career so why do they have to go to harvard law school or wherever okay not the most generous way to look at it but i understand the emotions behind it and then you look at you ask the women generous way to look at it, but I understand the emotions behind it. And then you look at, you ask the women, and they say, well, look, I do want to get married and have children. I do want to spend time with them, and I do want to raise them. And I want to be able to leave my job and then come back to a job.

And there's no way to do that. So what am I supposed to do? So we've kind of created a culture where there are no good options simply because we've demanded that both sexes need to be treated exactly the same way. Well, one, slightly better, actually. And we believe the fairy tale we tell ourselves about the way the world should be, that if we just close our eyes and click our heels, it'll suddenly become that way. And there's just a whole lot of damage being done to people because you can't change the truth. Right.

And a lot of the problem depends on who is speaking a truth. A lot of the anger I think of this guy is because it's a man saying it. He's mansplaining to women about their desires and their needs and their hopes and the rest of it, and they're not going to have that from him. But I've always been amused by the people who denigrate the stay-at-home moms i was a stay-at-home dad uh entirely of my wife my daughter's upbringing frankly my wife was home with her when she was uh when very young and then she went back to work and i stayed home because it was important to have somebody there all the time, to not offload her to some strangers where she would sit in some room with the miasma of whatever disease was floating around at the time and then come back

to me having wasted her time watching video games. Who knows what they do with her? I don't care. We spent every day together. And that is formative and essential and necessary, but it's fun. It was wonderful. It was some of the greatest time of my life. And it's hard to tell people when they're very, very young and starting out in a career and eager to make a mark and eager to do all these things and say, listen, you know, you're not in a creative field, you're in business, you're in law and whatever. There is nothing that you are going to do. Finishing the Johnson contract or making that brief or getting a thumbs up from the boss over a draft, none of that can compare to the emotions that you will feel

on an average day when you look out the window at the school bus and you see your child get out and trudge their way home. It doesn't compare. Also, James, to be fair, you got some great content out of it, too. Your blog was fantastic when you were a stay-at-home dad, I've got to say. I didn't even know you when I read it. I was riveted. Somehow you made these trips with your daughter to Target,

which you, for some reason, went to every day, which I still never quite understood. But they were riveting, and I'll tell you, you're a very healthy man, and my i'll tell you um you're a very healthy man um and my wish for you is you live a long life and my second wish for you is that you uh uh is that you are um because i know you love your family so much that you're the first to go yeah uh but my third wish is that you make sure that your daughter has links to those blogs because that is a living testament to fatherhood.

That's very kind of you. And not only do you have links, but everything has been preserved in PDF and text format. So there's no format rot. They're all up in Google Cloud, which has been paid for well in advance, and the passwords are hers so she can access them at any time. Yes, don't worry. You'll get it. Now, there are other parts of it, too. I was glad when my wife would come home, and I could offload the responsibility and say, all right, it's whiskey time. But speaking of whiskey time, here's the thing about that. I'm older now, so maybe whiskey time may be a little bit more deleterious to me in the day after. Whiskey, bourbon, single malt, I love them all.

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And we thank ZBiotics for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Corey DeAngelis, known as the school choice evangelist. Corey is a senior fellow at the American Foundation for Children and the author of the just published book, The Parent Revolution, Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools. Corey, welcome. Hey, thank you so much for having me. You know, oh, where to begin? The education, the lack thereof, the trouble of the public system, the move to homeschooling, the perfidy of the campus administrators and the teachers and the rest of it, you just don't know where to start. But let's start with this.

What fundamental change would you like to see to set the course of American education on a more successful path that actually teaches them what they need to teach? What's the first thing we need to do? Well, it's already starting. We're seeing a universal school choice revolution unfolding right before our very eyes. And what I mean by that is to fund students as opposed to systems. The money that would follow you to the government-run school, in the U.S., we spend about $20,000 per student per year, and that number has increased by about 170% after adjusting for inflation since 1970. We throw more money at the problem, and we expect different results, and they're indoctrinating kids, not focusing on the basics. Families should be able to take some of that money to a school that aligns with their values and that has a better incentive to

do a better job. And now we've had 11 states pass universal school choice, Milton Friedman's vision finally coming to fruition right before our very eyes. And guess what? It's the teachers union's own fault. They overplayed their hand and sparked a parent revolution by fighting to keep the schools closed. They lobbied the CDC to make it difficult as possible to reopen. They were threatening strikes in 2020. They were fear mongering every step of the way with fake body bags outside the D.C. offices to protest going back to work. They were vacationing in Puerto Rico, their board members in Chicago, while saying it was too dangerous to go back to work, although they were traveling thousands of miles away, going on vacations in other locations. But families got to see what was happening in the classroom through Zoom school, what most people called remotely learning, which we really should have just called it remotely learning because not a lot of learning was going on. And that awakened a sleeping giant.

Look, Votie Bauckham said it best. We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans. The good news is they're not surprised anymore. I love that line. You know, what you just said is eminently reasonable to us who believe in choice and having the money follow the students and the rest of it and encouraging homeschooling by diligent parents who want the best for the kids. But so many people hear what you just said and translate it in their brains to, oh, well, there's another Christo white nationalist who wants to ban books and hates teachers. That's what that's what they hear. Which is funny because one of the Wisconsin Teachers Union's executive board member called to burn my book before it even came out. So the same Yahoo is calling us book banners for wanting

age-appropriate content in public school libraries and elementary schools. They're the ones that actually want to burn our ideas because they lose in the battlefield of ideas. Hey, so thanks for joining us, Corey. So you mentioned Milton Friedman. I just want to tell you, you're young, so I'm going to give you a little, you know, a little look back at the past. I was actually sitting, I'm not name dropping just to prepare you. I was sitting with Rose and Milton Friedman a few days after the California ballot initiative, this was years ago, for school choice, died.

Catastrophically. Catastrophic failure. And what was surprising about that for people is that when you polled parents on the idea of school choice, they all said, I'm for it. Makes total sense. Everything you just said makes sense. And then when you said, okay, well, we're going to change your school, they're like, well, I'm not crazy about that because I got my school kind of all worked out, right?

I kind of know. I don't send the kids. The kids can't take classes with these teachers. We know these are the lazy bad ones. They're going to be only with these teachers. And they got the whole thing jury rigged, and they didn't want to mess it up. And after it failed rose was

incredibly depressed she was a lot more pessimistic than milton she just felt like this is the end and milton said no no no no no we just gotta like we just gotta show people instead of the theory we've got to show it working we have to say look, look at all those parents in Arizona or Wisconsin, wherever they are, and look at the test scores. Look, we just have to have a system that works. Is that happening now? Is that what you're saying is happening? So how far are we from there? Yeah, so he was right. He was right. We were able to look at laboratories of democracy that we call states and point to examples in Florida, for example. They were doing horribly on the nation's report card now after they've expanded school choice in florida they now have universal school choice for everybody the public schools have gotten better they're at the top of the list on the nation's report card even after you adjust

for demographic characteristics across states uh to make apples and apples apples comparisons right and so look the latest study out of out of Florida also was from the American Economic Journal, one of the top economics journals, finding that as school choice has expanded, all else equal, the public schools have upped their game in response to competition. x came right yeah absolutely exactly so i so my other question is this because um i think sometimes these things get confused there's a whole bunch of nonsense being taught in public schools stuff that um i'm sure we all have a varying degree of outrage about i tend to be a lot more sort of groovy and liberal than anybody else probably on this podcast but i get it um school choice means choice for parents and it also means that we have to have a kind of a radical tolerance for some of the crazy-ass schools that some parents are going to send their kids to. I mean, there are some parents who are going to send their kids to schools

that say that it's a BLM-inspired curriculum. Yep. That's already happening in the public schools, though. Some parents are going to send their kids to schools that say the earth is 3 000 years old yeah and how do you how do you how do you harness the outrage legitimate outrage to some of the nonsense being taught in schools today um but also yoke it together with the idea that if we have school choice, your neighbors may not send their kids to a school that you approve of, and you're just going to have to suck it up. Yeah, well, look,

you're describing the status quo where the government-run schools already do have BLM type of curriculum in the school. So when the conservatives are pushing for school choice, even if it's not a perfect solution, it's still an incremental reform in the right direction where you're just, you're you're just you're on average you're going to have people less likely to end up into blm curriculum 1619 project schools and so uh they can still embrace freedom still and look the big problem isn't that some other people's kids might grow up in a way that you're not aligned with the main problem here is that parents don't want their own kids being indoctrinated with someone else's values. So you can still support

freedom of choice. And even if someone else disagrees with how they want to raise their kids, as long as they're not able to force your kid into a failing residentially assigned government school, it's been okay. In these red these red states where they've you know some of them have banned crt for example in public schools they haven't applied that regulation to the private school and i think that's good that they haven't done that because these are private institutions they're not government institutions but videos have come out from all these red states including where i live in texas tennessee iowa idaho deep red states where they where I live in Texas, Tennessee, Iowa, Idaho, deep red states where they banned CRT. And then the public school administrators are caught on video admitting that they're still going to teach it anyway. They'll call it something else. They'll move

the goalposts. They'll call it social emotional learning or student mental health services. It's a never-ending game of whack-a-mole trying to fix this one-size-fits-all system from the top down. The better solutions from the bottom up. And look, it's unenall system from the top down, the better solutions from the bottom up. And look, it's unenforceable from the top. It might be a step in the right direction, it might be helpful, but you need that bottom-up accountability foot voting, because that's the only true form of account. We saw how the school board accountability worked a couple of years ago, when the National School Boards Association sent a letter to Biden implying that some parents under the Patriot Act should be investigated for domestic terrorism, for the crime of wanting to have a say in their kids' education, and showing up at the democratic process of a school board meeting, they were bullied or they were attempted to be bullied and silenced into submission. I'm glad that they didn't listen to the school boards.

I'm glad that that only emboldened them to push back even harder. They sparked a parent revolution and showed proof of concept that if parents lock arms, they can hold politicians accountable. Guess what? After the NSBA sent that letter, 26 states have left the school boards association and they basically imploded for disrespecting parents and a whole PR disaster. And that's that shows you that parents can become an interest group of their own, one for the kids as opposed to the employees. And that's why we're seeing change.

Yeah. And also parents, I think, are absolutely legitimate critics of or evaluators of education that your parents doesn't really matter what ethnic group you belong to or what identity you choose um you know what a hard school is and a rigorous school is and you know what a rigorous teacher is and what a a a waste of time is every everybody knows that right um it doesn't you don't need um somebody with a phd from harvard's department of education to tell you what a what a really good math class is like um so okay if you just i know peter wants to jump in here but if you flash forward 20 years from now how important do you think in the story of school choice will covet be look the schools are, but the momentum is still going. And that's because parents are not going to unsee what they saw in 2020. And guess what? Once we reach escape velocity, I think we're

getting there. More states are engaging in friendly competition. The laboratories of democracy are fighting to empower parents. I think something I call in the book is bipartisanship through hyper-partisanship. I think the red states will be the first movers, and they are, because the GOP is picking up the mantle and becoming the parents' party, especially after Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, in a state that went 10 points to Biden the year before. He beat Terry. I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach McAuliffe by six points with education voters. That was the number two issue in the election. And Democrats typically have had a decades-long double-digit advantage on education.

But Glenn Youngkin laid out a blueprint for success for Republicans. And guess what? The more that the GOP leans into parental rights as a political winner, the more it becomes a form of political suicide for Democrats to oppose it. And so you might get bipartisanship in the future. We're already seeing some people read the tea leaves in Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro in 2022, he put education freedom scholarships into his platform for education right before the election. Coincidentally, right after his opponent doug mostriano was calling josh a hypocrite for sending his own kids to private school and

attending private school himself he was able to take away that argument of hypocrisy from doug mostriano by just supporting lifeline scholarships for families to go to private schools he went on fox news reiterating his support a democrat in. He ultimately vetoed his own campaign promise and caved to the unions. It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it works out for him. But the point I make in the book is that you have high-profile Democrats like Josh Shapiro and others that I outline where they're feeling pressure to finally signal support, at least for school choice publicly. That's much better than them saying, oh, no way, I don't support this at all. The political winds are shifting in our favor. And in 2022, there wasn't a red wave. We were all

talking about that. There wasn't a blue wave, but there was a school choice wave. 76% of the candidates supported by AFC, my organization and our state affiliates won their races in 2022. And we didn't just play in the easy ones. We targeted 69 incumbents and took out 40 of them. That's the hardest thing to do in politics. So the politicians are going to come along because the voters are holding them to it. Corey, Corey's book is The Parent Revolution, Rescuing Your Kids from the radicals ruining our schools so we now have 11 states that have enacted how would we describe the school choice or funds follow the kids

legislation what universal school choice universal no more picking winners and losers for decades any blue states some blue states have some form of school choice, like Maryland has a scholarship for some kids, but no universal. The closest we have to having any Democrat control is North Carolina. They have a Democrat governor, but it's not because he went along with it. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency over school choice. I'm not kidding. Talk about an abuse of emergency powers. But there was a Democrat, Tricia Cotham, who switched parties to the GOP, giving the Republicans just enough votes to override a veto from Roy.

Okay. So it's still mainly, still so far, entirely red states. Okay, so let me just stick with the politics of this for a moment because it's interesting in some ways counterintuitive. You live in Texas. Which town are you in, Corey? San Antonio. I grew up there. I live there now, yeah. Okay, so you're 80 miles southwest of Austin, the state capital. Yep. And Republicans have been blocking universal school choice in Texas.

Now, that may change in the next session of the legislature, but can you just very briefly explain what the heck is going on? If this is a red state, white nationalist issue as it is so often characterized, then how can it be that Texas, of all places, doesn't have school choice and that Republicans have been blocking it? Just tell us what's going on there. These guys are rhinos. They're not real Republicans. The Senate has passed our bill even before it was cool to do so. Even before COVID closures, the Texas Senate passed school choice in the form of education savings accounts. The House has always killed it. And so this most

recent session, 21 Republicans, or so-called Republicans, joined all the Democrats to vote against their own party platform issue of school choice. Well, guess what? Five of them saw the writing on the wall, didn't run for re-election, they knew what was coming. Poll after poll after poll was showing that even when you use the loaded term by the union's vouchers, a majority of Texans from all backgrounds supported even the term vouchers from multiple sources, UT Austin, UT Tyler, Dallas Morning News, University of Houston, Morning Council, and so on and so forth. The highest support was actually among black Democrats, but Republican primary voters in particular were telling people on the

University of Houston poll that if you voted against school choice this session, I'm going to be a lot less likely to vote for you. And we targeted 13 of the remaining incumbents who were running for reelection, and we took out six of them outright on election night and forced four more into runoffs, translating to a 77% victory rate. And it's pretty clear that we're going to have the votes for universal school choice next year. But, Peter, I want to lay out the argument that they make. Their excuse. The bad guys. The bad Republicans. That's what interests me.

What their excuse was, was I'm in a rural area and rural voters don't want this. And what they'll say is, and it's crazy, these are the deepest red districts, too. And they have some of the most liberal Republicans representing them. They'll say, on the one hand, we don't need this. My constituents won't use it because we don't have any private schools. The public school is the only option, they'll say. But in the next breath, with a straight face, they'll try to tell you that this will defund and dismantle their fantastic rural public school. But wait, if it's the only option, where are people going to go? They're not going to defund your school at all. It can't be both of those things at the same time. And then also, look, if your school is so fantastic, like you say, if the community really loves your rural school, then again, you should be confident in your product. No one's going to go anywhere else. So, okay, so let's just pause on that argument for a second, because it applies not to Texas, but a lot of states, in my opinion. I mean,

you can correct me if I'm wrong, but somebody comes up from, I don't know, name one of these districts, Brownsville maybe, or up toward Lubbock, and they say, look, it's ranch land, it's thinly populated, the school is the center of our whole community we've got the hispanics go to the catholic church the white people go to the baptist church we don't even see each other on sundays but we see each other on friday nights for football games it's what holds us together it's what gives us a sense of can don't attack that now that's an argument isn't it look and in a way it's almost a conservative argument but okay so tell us why is that wrong if you like your public school you can

keep your public school but for real this time unlike with your doctor you can actually have that fantastic community school the thing is i don't think it's as great as what they're saying the the superintendents will repeat this line that our public schools are so great but they don don't actually believe that because if they did, they wouldn't have anything to fear from a little competition. And guess what? This is just a way for them to try to say the Republicans while still voting against their own party platform. But the nine most rural states in the country, including West Virginia, already have some form of private school choice. West Virginia was the first one to go universal on school choice. So let me go now to California, where I live, where Rob spent much of his life, where James refuses to set foot, essentially. Range of opinions there. Here's the state of play in California. You can correct me if I got these figures wrong, but I think they're correct,

that per pupil, California spends in the top five states in the country. And in test results, California is year after year after year in the bottom 10 at least, if not lower. It depends on what survey. That's item one. Here's item two. If you take out the Hispanic and African American kids, the scores go way up. The problem with California public schools is not the white kids, and it's not the Asian kids. Certainly not the Asian kids. It's that these schools are failing African Americans and Hispanics,

who are the very people the Democratic establishment claims to want to help the most. And yet in California, the teachers unions have, there isn't even a whisper of a breath of a movement towards school choice in California. How do you solve that political problem? Isn't that funny how the same people that call everything they don't like systemic racism, they don't bring that same energy to the government school system. This is why I don't like to call them public schools. They discriminate on the basis of zip code. They are highly segregated. And look, families have gone to jail for lying about their address to get their kids into better so-called public schools. They are more accurately defined as government-run schools. And the thing is, the teachers' unions own the Democratic Party. If you look at Randy Weingarten's union, and I dedicated the book to her for overplaying her hand,

but 99.97% of their campaign contributions from the union, AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, went to Democrats in 2022. It's been like that for decades. It isn't new. It's a money laundering operation, and it ought to be illegal. They're using your own taxpayer dollars to funnel money to Democrat campaign coffers. And that's why the unions, despite all their rhetoric and the Democrats saying that they fight for the least advantage, they step on them when it comes to school choice. And this is why it's a real opportunity for Republicans. Look at Florida. Florida barely won, DeSantis barely won in 2018 by a fraction of a point. And his opponent, Andrew Gillum, a black guy, actually called to get rid of the scholarship

program disproportionately benefiting non-white and low-income families. Over 100,000 families were using it at the time. And according to CNN exit polling, black moms came out in force much higher than expected for DeSantis, although they might have disagreed with him on everything else. They wanted that scholarship for their kid to get a better life than they had in the failing government school system. So this can turn voters into single-issue people. Which leads, which, here's the last question for you, Corey. We've got 11 states now with universal school choice. Is that, am I phrasing it correctly? And how long will it be, one year, five years, a decade, before the results are such that politicians in some blue state or other feel such pressure from parents that they have no choice but to stand up to the teachers' unions and enact it in their state?

So the short question is, how long until a blue state joins that list? Look, I don't have a crystal ball, and it's all going to depend on how many politicians talk about the issue. If you have a lot of Glenn Youngkins talking about parental rights and education, it'll not take as long. But if the Republicans get squishy on the issue and they don't want to talk about it, well, then it's going to take a lot longer time for Democrats to feel pressure to come along as well. Milton and Rose Free, Milton had a good idea about we need to show proof of concept in other states and showing the results. We have tons of studies showing that the public schools get better. 26 to 29 studies find positive effects that school choice is a rising tide that lifts all boats, improving the public schools. The Democrats don't listen to, and politicians in general, don't listen to logic or morality.

Too often, they listen to power and politics. And look, the unions have a stranglehold over the Democrats, but I'm seeing some defections that I talked about earlier. Plus, in Louisiana, their house a couple weeks ago passed universal school choice easily, 72 to 32. They didn't need a single Democrat yet. Despite that, 20% of the Democrats in their Louisiana House caucus voted for full-throated school choice. And if enough Democrats lock arms, like we're seeing with parents right now, if the Democrats in an elected office lock arms and do the right thing, the teachers unions won't be able to control them anymore. Because the unions can pick off a couple Democrats that run off the reservation and vote against their own platform.

But if they all said, hey, let's coordinate, let's represent our constituents as opposed to special interests who currently control us, those special interests won't be able to control them anymore. They will be able to break free from the teachers union stranglehold. parents black American parents that this is empowerment that this is freedom that this is a version of civil rights that they are now currently being denied that rich white people have you know I'm on the board of a thing called the moving pictures Institute and we did a movie in 2019 called Miss Virginia I'm sure you saw it yes Virginia I went to the first screening in DC incredibly moving story about Virginia Walden who like like fought very hard for school choice in dc by single mom um and you know uh we're also trying to ricochet to do sort of longer form podcasts and one of things we want to do is a story about school choice and uh we're just talking about the other day and saying well how do you tell how you can tell a story and all

due respect to the policy makers even the ones who are as articulate as you. The only way to convince parents and people that this is an important and very deep and very effective change, and to get over the fear of it, is to tell them stories that are success success stories tell them stories of people like them who did it and succeeded is that happening is that part of the movement because that's where i'm looking i'm looking i think we need a million miss virginians yeah i wish we had had more that's a great it was on netflix for a while right i showed everybody the movie and i went to multiple screenings and I think it's really important to show the success stories in that way. At AFC, where I'm at, American Federation for Children, we have something called Future Leaders Fellows. So we have recent college graduates tell their stories to state legislatures about how school choice

helped them, and in some cases, even they would say that it saved their life. So this is going down that kind of road of telling the story and pulling at the heartstrings of legislators. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does change a few minds in the legislature. But importantly, it also changes the minds of voters. And when it comes to Democrats coming along and staying with us on the issue and with families making it a priority. It's almost like a chicken and egg problem because once you pass the program, once you get school choice, parents fight really hard to keep it. It's much harder to do what Miss Virginia did in trying to get the first program up and running. But once you can get past that initial stage of just getting something in place, well,

it's going to be hard for the politicians to take that money back from the parents because parents care about their kids more than anybody else. And they had the most information, especially more than bureaucrats sitting in offices hundreds of miles away to make the decisions for their own kids about the school that works best for them. And I would like to hit one more quote from Milton Friedman, which gives me some hope. He's had a lot of good quotes, but he also said one of the best, in my opinion, was, look, the way that we change things is not about getting the quote-unquote right people into office. The way that you truly change things is about creating a climate of public opinion where it becomes politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.

And I think we're starting to get there on the issue of school choice. The winds are shifting in our favor, and it's all going to be up to the parents to lead this parent revolution, to hold politicians accountable, and to fight for the right to educate their own kids as they see fit. I think this revolution is not going to slow down. Yeah. Nobody cares more about their parent, the children than the parents.

I'm sorry. They are a collective commodity to be raised by a village, to be shaped and molded in the best possible way so we can attain utopia any day now, possibly a couple of years from now. I know we need a revolution. We need a parent revolution. And that's the name of Corey's book,

the parent revolution, rescuing your kids from the radicals, we need a revolution. We need a parent revolution, and that's the name of Corey's book. The Parent Revolution, Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools, just published. Give it a read. And Corey, thanks for the energy, thanks for the direction, and thanks for being with us here on the podcast today. Absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity, James, Peter, and Rob. Thanks, Corey.

All right, gentlemen, before we go, a couple of things. One, interesting little schism, or schism, if you wish. I don't know. Which one do you prefer? I'm a schism man myself. Rob, are you schismatic or are you schismatic? Oh, schism, schism.

Okay, good. Right. That seems like an anglophilic thing, the schedule, like your schism, your schedule. Right. No, I err on the side of correctness in this case being schism. The curious schism here in Minnesota comes when the schools decide that they're going to have pride books, they're going to have LBGT books in the middle school library, and the people who are complaining now turn out to be the people that the left

previously wanted to shield from islamophobia it turns out that uh that that muslim parents don't like these things at which and it's fascinating to watch in reddit threads because the same people who would be accusing everybody of islamophobia for pointing out some things about a particular religious doctrine that they of which they disapprove, are all of a sudden calling these people a bunch of religious nutcase medieval maniacs who don't belong to have a voice in our schools. It's just hilarious. They will put them under the bus. And interestingly enough, it's like they'll put them under the bus, but they will tie

a rope to them so they can yank them out when they're needed next to be used as a cudgel against somebody else. So use that image or note. So that will play out here. Trump is coming to Minneapolis on Friday, coming to Minnesota on Friday, gave a speech, didn't give a speech, didn't give an interview to the Star Tribune. Turned it down. Gave an interview to a local news organization said some curious things said he won the state previously in 2020 i think it didn't happen uh said that he was responding that he kept minneapolis from burning to the ground in 2020 which he didn't do uh but you know what the people

who are well it could have been worse it might have been worse i don't know what? The people who are for him. Well, it could have been worse. It might have been worse. I don't know what he did. I mean, he brought in the National Guard too late. They declined the use of water hoses and tear gas on day one to keep them from burning down the city. I know these are controversial things to say, but I'm not in favor of burning down large swaths of the city and letting the people who live in that area be without banks or post offices or targets or grocery stores or liquor stores or the rest. I think they deserve to live in a non-burned community. But I know that puts me squarely on the side.

Coalition for the non-burned. Yes. Yeah. But you know what? Nobody here who is supporting Trump cares about those excess claims at all. What they look at is him looking at some other things. Afghanistan, calling it the worst day pullout ever. Regardless of what Trump's position on it may have been, what he may have tried to do, it doesn't matter.

He says this about Afghanistan, and he's right. They look at him talking about Ilhan Omar as being anti-Semitic and feel, well, you know, he's right. He's right. They look at him talking about Ilhan Omar as being anti-Semitic and feel, well, you know, he's right. They look at him saying that we have to have deportations, and they're not thinking that everybody's going to be rounded up and put on the trains and the camps and the rest of it. They're thinking about the people who are here illegally because they read a story about a couple of guys who were here illegally trying to put a box truck through the gates of a military installation because they pick up their Twitter feed every day and they've got some guy who's not supposed to be here. As a matter of fact, made it back here three times, raped and killed every single time. He's not supposed to be here.

That is becoming outside of the mainstream to discuss. So you wonder why Trump gets friction. It's because saying something like that is now regarded, well, that's instantly disqualifying. I mean, but it's not well in politics you never ever ever want to have a moment where your opponent is making sense that's not how you win how you win we have very little danger of that in this election well but you know i you won it but but you know trump makes you know outlandish and idiotic statements about the 2020 election. He does all that stuff. Right. But he also does say things that people think, oh, it's kind of true.

Well, it's kind of true. That's kind of true. I mean, look, as you know, I'm no Trump fan. But when he says that this thing, this stupid trial in New York City seems like a political put up job, the answer is, yeah, he's right. He's right about that. And when he says we got to get control of the border, you know, he's right he's right about that um and when he says we got to get control of the border you know he's right we do now i quibble i'd say he didn't do it we have he where was he for four years he didn't do any of that i mean you know he didn't build a wall but by the end of the first couple years of the administration it was nothing like no like it is now that seems right um but you didn't you so and then and then I think there are three things happening right now in the in the election that are that are kind of interesting. One is Trump isn't talking as much. Right. So he's stuck in a courtroom and he's kind of shutting up.

Best thing that ever happened. Best thing that ever happened. You know, and I don't think Trump is unusual in this respect. Usually, in fact, it's only been one case in modern political history when we use when the president goes silent. His poll numbers go up. That has happened in every presidency except George W. Bush, who went silent when the Iraq war was going south and people thought he was hiding. But mostly they like it when their president keeps his mouth shut and out of sight and his poll numbers go up and that is what's happening to trump so that's kind of a sort of a secular thing that's happening but i think two other things are happening one is i think there are a lot of people who believe that uh the biden administration's policy in israel

is an extension of the obama policy towards israel which was essentially hostile and um around that they are uh they are behaving in a way that is um at a time of crisis in that country they are only ally in the region they are behaving in a way that is um you know um uh not only crazy not only not only um a bad policy but also vindictive uh and i think the third thing is happening is for a lot of republicans and certainly the donor class they're starting to see that the that the the idea that biden was going to come back from some of this stuff that biden's low poll numbers were just kind of a slow on a slow climb up and that trump was going to slow drop down that that is not happening that even in even my even with good economic news

which we have uh biden is not recovering and so i think there are a lot of people thinking well you know what i didn't think that trump could win this thing but i think he can win this thing and i think it's because we don't have good economic news yes the stock market is at 40 000 that's great i look at that and say that's's the peak down. She goes, hang on for the ride, but it's not Ukraine. It's not Israel much. I think it's the fact that inflation has been ravaging these years. People know it. And they're being told that their wages are going up. Everyone is the message is out there. Well, inflation's up a little bit, but you know, wages are up 25%. And I, everybody looks around and says, who exactly are you talking to? Who's getting more? Whose employers have unstintingly given them more money to compensate for the...

The wonks always do this. The campaign and election wonks do this. They plug numbers into a model and they come out with who's going to win the election. And that's often correct. And if you plug the economic numbers into that model, it looks like Biden should be doing better. And he's not. And the question has always been or the thought has always been among these sort of like agnostic campaign watchers. Well, he's going to have to recover because people do recover. Like that's what's going to happen. And it isn't happening. There's something bigger happening here in the country.

And I think that combined with with Trump's silence, relative silence is is a very, very, very good sign for a Trump victory in November. Do you know who agrees with that? The Biden campaign. Yeah, I think you're right. The only conceivable reason for agreeing to debate Donald Trump in June is because the Biden campaign has decided to save time by acting desperate right now. That's a good way to put it. Everything is moving against them. And there's no way to make Joe Biden younger. There's no way to cause peace to break out in the Middle East or Ukraine between now and election

day. There is no way for him to climb out of this box of longtime Democrats, Jewish supporters who are overwhelmingly Democratic, are now very disconcerted and uncomfortable about the Biden policy, Biden rhetoric toward Israel, while at the same time, younger voters think he's being too pro. There's no way for him to climb. Everything is moving against Joe Biden, and they see it, and they say, oh, my goodness, we have to risk it. We have to put this, our crazy old man up against their crazy old man, knowing full well that their crazy old man retains a certain animal vigor that's undeniable and our guy just doesn't i want to i want to know what exactly they're gonna shoot him up with before the first debate because whoever they get i'd like some we want that him as a sponsor right that is going to be

a guy who makes elvis presley's dr feelgood look like a christian scientist uh but that doesn't mean that there aren't sensible things you can have out there. And of course, one of them is Z Bionics told you all about it. Roll back the whole show and listen to it again and then buy some and support it because by supporting them, you support us. And also, if you could just take a minute or 30 seconds or

an hour and a half, I don't care however long it takes you to give us a five-star, count them, five-star review on Apple Podcasts, those will help surface the show, get us more listeners, and those more listeners, of course, will be so endeared by the whole Ricochet thing that they will be compelled to join. But you know what? If episode number 692 doesn't do it for you,

maybe 693 will be the one that makes you sign up, which is why we will be here next week. But for now, Rob Peter, it's been a pleasure, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Rob, while you're at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, say a prayer for us. Next week, boys. I will do that. Ricochet. Join the conversation.