Timcast IRL - Timcast IRL #322 - Cenk Uygur Says Conservatives Are LOSING The Culture War w/Charlie Kirk & Will Chamberlain

Episode Date: July 3, 2021

Tim, Ian, and Lydia sit down with founder of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk and lawyer and co-founder of Human Events Will Chamberlain to discuss Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks and his proclamation tha...t Ben Shapiro is 'panicking' because the right is 'losing the culture war', the demolition of a statue of the Queen of England in Canada, Charlie clarifies some of his takes on Twitter, historical points are made in advance of July 4th, Will gives his views on stopping or slowing big tech, and Charlie and Tim nerd out over a shared appreciation of Star Trek. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You may have heard the news that a bunch of crackpots tore down some more statues, this time in Canada and on Canada Day, and it was Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. I talked about this earlier and I said this kind of stuff is alarming because, you know, 10 years ago these people were complaining about video games. 10 years later they're physically present causing violence and destruction and tearing down statues. Eventually when the existing politicians age out or die, these people replace them because these are the people who are politically and physically active. So unless something actually happens, we sit back, they take over. But there are a lot of people that are actually challenging,
Starting point is 00:00:38 you know, younger people to think, to care about things. And there's an interesting tweet from Cenk Uygur. He tweeted that Ben Shapiro was panicking because they, conservatives probably, are losing the culture war. I'm not so convinced. Joining us tonight is Charlie Kirk. You want to introduce yourself? Honored to be here. I run Turning Point USA, and people can check out our podcast, Charlie Kirk Show podcast. Right on. And the whole point of everything I'm saying is that you guys work with high school students and college students, and you're essentially presenting an alternative worldview that they probably won't get from the mainstream media, obviously.
Starting point is 00:01:12 That's correct. Yeah, I mean, we're trying to stem the tide of the manufacturing of revolutionaries, which happens in our high school and colleges. And what you saw in Canada is very predictable, and it won't stop. I mean, there are no limitations on the appetite of someone who wants to up, upheaval of Western society. So that's basically what we're going to be getting into, but we also have Will Chamberlain hanging out. It's good to be here as always.
Starting point is 00:01:33 Not the best. Not the best. Wilt. Will not Wilt. No, not quite as tall. but yeah, Will Chamberlain,
Starting point is 00:01:40 I'm co-publisher of human events and senior council at the internet accountability project, um, where we fight big tech abuses. Lucky enough to have Charlie contributing at Human Events, which is pretty cool. But happy to be here. Right on. What's up, everybody? Ian Crosland over here.
Starting point is 00:01:54 I'm going to rep BlackRock Blackstone tonight. They've been buying up a lot of property, so I got my own. BlackRock is a piece of obsidian, the original scrying glass, I think, where they get their name from. I like that. Let's go deep. Let's look into it. And I'm also here in the corner pushing buttons. I get the impression I will not be getting many words in edgewise tonight.
Starting point is 00:02:12 I'm just going to let the guys have fun. There are a lot of people here. There are. Anyway, before we get started, head over to TimCast.com and become a member, and you will get access to exclusive members-only segments from the TimCast IRL podcast. This one time, I can't actually scroll down. Why? The conversation we had with Dr. Chris Martinson is banned on YouTube. They didn't ban us. If I show you the title, YouTube will remove this live stream, so I'm just not going to scroll down. But you kind of get the point of why we
Starting point is 00:02:39 have the website. There are conversations that need to happen, and YouTube has been censoring us. What can we do? We made a website. When you become a member, you'll get access to these videos, these podcasts, and you'll help support our work. We're hiring more journalists. We're doing more shows. And eventually, I hope to have maybe 30, 40 shows, a massive staff. We'll see how it goes, but it's going pretty well with your support. So don't forget to like this video, subscribe to this channel, and share the show because we're going to be getting deep on what's happening in the culture war and how to win the culture war. And I'm going to start with this here tweet from none other than Cenk Uygur of the Young
Starting point is 00:03:13 Turks. Cenk tweeted, I was watching a random Ben Shapiro clip because of a segment we're going to do today. It's amazing and hilarious how panicked they are that they're losing the culture war. It's true. They how panicked they are that they're losing the culture war. It's true. They are losing. LOL. I'd like to point out, I'm not going to get too deep in on this one, but I'm going to
Starting point is 00:03:33 explain to you what matters to me in terms of the culture war. Now, first, I'll say I don't know that they, if it's referring to conservatives, are losing. It's certainly not just conservatives on one side and just leftists on the other. There's a whole network of different political factions. Obviously, the intellectual dark web is a bunch of typically progressives who are not in line with Cenk Uygur. But I just want to mention that on May 31st, 2019,
Starting point is 00:03:57 Cenk Uygur defended child drag shows where a child dances on stage and gets money thrown at him and said it wasn't child abuse when he's brought into adult venues. I'm sickened by this. And you want to talk about why the culture war matters? Because I don't think 11-year-old boys should be taking off their clothing on stage for a bunch of adult men who are handing dollar bills to him.
Starting point is 00:04:19 That's just one thing we can talk about. But that really bothered me. If Cenk Uygur thinks he's winning that one, then heaven help us. But I digress. That gets me heated. Charlie, you are running an organization that actually is working with young people, so maybe there's some hope, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, the question of whether we're winning the culture war or not is an interesting one. I think there are certain fronts that we're definitely winning on. It's a multi-front war, and there's some things that we're definitely losing on. I's a multi-front war, and there's some things that we're definitely losing on. I mean, we're losing the kind of corporate HR battle
Starting point is 00:04:48 of whether or not the companies that we purchase our products from are actually going to represent their customers or represent the values of their customers. Definitely losing on that front. And until it actually hits the long-term bottom line of some of these companies, that's not going to change. But I think you see from what I think is the closest thing to the Tea Party movement in 2010,
Starting point is 00:05:09 which is the school board kind of uprising, which is organic and exciting and out of nowhere, that these ideas, when actually presented in the public light, are unbelievably unpopular. And wokeism, for lack of a better better term has been able to kind of sneak into these different institutions because it's disguised itself under these sort of banner terms kind of communicated by people that have the trust of the citizenry but the more people learn about it less popular they actually are so i think it's actually if we do our job i think it's inevitable that we're going to be able to push back against some of this. Some of the biggest issues we have, though, is that it seems as if the people with financial and cultural and corporate power are completely indifferent about the needs, wants, or interests of the actual people.
Starting point is 00:05:56 And they're willing to crush you if you disagree with them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For whatever reason, powerful corporate interests, be it because they're infiltrated, I suppose, by ideologues, they're more scared of the left than they are of the right. The right can start a boycott, and it rarely ever has a big impact. But if the left comes out, what did we just have? This is a hilarious tweet. Someone put a sticker that said, I heart JK Rowling on a train. And so some random Twitter account tweeted to the Metro. I can't remember which country.
Starting point is 00:06:26 I think it was the UK and said, it's transphobic. And they were like, we're so sorry. We'll get rid of it immediately. That's how insane it is. So there's that bias. But I will say when it comes to the Loudoun County, the parents there, this is like where the big fight is happening. It's actually we're about a minute from Loudoun County, about 20 minutes from the actual school board but these parents started seeing not just critical race theory they started seeing critical theory in general this marxist view of oppressed versus oppressor it includes
Starting point is 00:06:53 critical gender theory and once they realized what was happening they snapped they were like no way you're teaching me my kids these things now i want to go back just briefly and not not to the exact subject matter of the of the young turks and they were defending. But in that segment, you know, I watched it because I'm thinking like, what is Cenk Uygur actually support in his culture war? In that video clip, Jordan Klepper, I think his name is Comedy Central guy. He's just like, it's so great to see this young child saying he wants to be an advocate. They don't know at all what's going on with that kid and they don't care they are so tribalist tribalistic that their whole their whole thing is just if the right hates it we got to like it
Starting point is 00:07:32 suppose that's where we're at huh that's that was why i brought up earlier that i think that anyone that wants someone to lose this culture war is missing the point i think that if and you were saying well hey this child abuse how can you you, you gotta, you gotta make them lose. And I was like, my thing is, before the show, you mentioned, before the show, if, if, if, if we can make them not do child abuse anymore, then they actually win. They might, it's not, we're not trying to destroy people and make them lose. We want everyone to win by changing these bizarre behaviors and like kind of create a better society, I think, so that everybody wins. Yeah. And the, the And the bottom line of all of this is the death of objectivity, right? So basically the Cenk worldview, which is nihilistic in nature,
Starting point is 00:08:13 is that, well, who's to say that that's a bad thing? It might be somebody's truth that it's a good thing that the child can dance. It all comes back down. And if you really go down to its most basic argument is, can we as human beings use reason and our faculty and our consciousness to come to some agreed upon terms of what is good, what is bad, what is evil, and what is true? And this used to be basically a non-negotiable tenet of Western society, which is that we're going to agree that there is a moral law governing us as human beings. I would go as far to say that we agreed that there was a transcendent order. And almost every single one of these initiatives tries to change the paradigm completely
Starting point is 00:08:51 of how the citizenry or the population views that. And so in its essence, it's deconstructionist, to say the least. Do you, you know, we mentioned that you guys, I don't know what the right word is, but you communicate with younger people, high school students. Well, they're going to grade school, man. They're going younger. They're going to babies. They're going to nurseries and younger.
Starting point is 00:09:11 I mean, and this is all part of a broader project of trying to almost push nihilism with evangelistic fervor. And there's an exciting part of this for us because for the first time in a long time, we're no longer really having these robust discussions on corporate tax rates. That's really boring, actually. We're now actually arguing very basic human philosophy, which is do you think there is meaning to your existence? And if so, do you want to create an order or a civil framework to reflect that meaning? That is the true collision point we're seeing. You know, perhaps it's very, I don't know what the right word is, hyperbolic or it's a straw man to look at Cenk Uygur's, you know, one of the worst things he's defended. But I genuinely think that's a good and important point to bring up when he's talking about why they're winning the
Starting point is 00:10:01 culture war. These are some of the things that they're actively defending. But I will point out, you know, look, I don't consider myself a conservative. But when I look at the right, we mentioned this briefly before the show, Steve, Steve King was his name, right? The rep, he tweeted something about white nationalism. He said, he said something like, why was it a bad thing? And then what happens? He gets primaried. He gets, he first, he gets kicked off all his, all his committees.
Starting point is 00:10:21 They're like, Republicans are like, we're not having it. Then he gets primaried. Someone runs against him. I'm like, no, we're not having it. Then he gets primaried. Someone runs against him. I'm like, no, we're not having it. Now he's out. The Republicans have no problem, in fact, to a fault, going after their own because of ideological purity. We talk about the left and the circular firing squad,
Starting point is 00:10:36 but I mean, look at the Republicans going after Marjorie Taylor Greene. There's pros and there's cons there. I can look to Republicans and be like, see, look, when that guy said a racism, they said goodbye. But when Ilhan Omar comes out and says whatever, they defend it. When you get something that is clearly objectionable to regular parents, they come out and
Starting point is 00:10:51 defend it and call these parents right-wingers. They try to dox them. They call them alt-right whatever. This is regular mom, man. It's a regular mom who lives in the D.C. area who's upset about what's happening. Yeah, I mean, there's this big difference between the kind of moral universes that the left and right inhabit. And the left is much less about principle and much more about the ends that they think are ultimately moral.
Starting point is 00:11:11 And I don't necessarily think it's nihilism, but I think it is ultimately defined by this kind of like, you know, anti-racism, anti-discrimination ethic that that's the only soul. That's basically the only real good anti-discrimination in a certain context. Right. I won't say that the left is good anti-discrimination um in in a certain context right i won't say that the left is purely anti-discriminatory they have well they're fat blind spots i mean that their their their ideology is literally pro-discrimination but anti-discrimination and that they're like hey let this six-year-old dance doesn't matter that he's six don't discriminate sort of equity and liberationist i guess they don't discriminate based on a lot of things that That's a true point, actually. Right.
Starting point is 00:11:45 And so that ends up being this totalizing moral code and it's so totalizing that it justifies basically tolerating any sort of bad behavior from the people advocating for it. Right? Because it's like this,
Starting point is 00:11:58 we are ruthlessly pragmatic in service of this goal that we think is completely the single most important thing in the world. So even if the people we rely on to push it, know our activists or whatever are behaving corruptly doesn't matter who cares this this i got freaked out by a meme on facebook somebody posted this like image and it was like they said i can't remember exactly what it was it was about derek chauvin going to
Starting point is 00:12:17 prison and i was thinking about the idea of derek chauvin going to prison they said something related to the hard work in the press. I remember now they said if it wasn't for that little girl, that young woman who filmed that Chauvin would have gotten away with it. And I thought about that. I said I responded with don't forget the violence and the terror. If it wasn't for Antifa and Black Lives Matter, Chauvin may have actually gotten away with it. It was only because of the violence and the extreme pressure and the men with machine guns forced to come and defend the jurors. The
Starting point is 00:12:49 jurors were scared enough to say, we're going to convict. These people liked that idea. You know, I said something that in fact, I get a like on it. They're like, that's right. If it wasn't for the activists and the people who went out and smashed those windows, they may have let Chauvin go. You got to think about what that means. All of the innocent people that were suffering because the left was angry about one man and the action he took. And it was an egregious action. go you got to think about what that means all of the innocent people that were suffering because the left was angry about one man and the action he took and it was an egregious action regardless like whatever ends up happening the guy got convicted we so we can say look we don't we don't like that people died but that meant the mentality of these people is it is better that
Starting point is 00:13:20 five million innocent people suffer than one guilty person escape it's the opposite of blackstone it's it's otto von bismarck that's he said it was better that 10 innocent people suffer than one guilty person was originally blackstone but yeah for sure it's the opposite blackstone is the good one yeah we believe in freedom he was the one that basically created the common law tradition that our founders embraced benjamin franklin repeated it differently but you're exactly right and i mean that mean, that was the most public hostage situation in American history, which was basically the activists were like,
Starting point is 00:13:51 we're going to take all decent society hostage if you don't give us the verdict we want. And you can say what you want about Derek Chauvin. He did not get a fair trial. He just didn't. One of the jurors was absolutely compromised. If you go to a BLM incorporated rally and you lie on your jury application form, same thing happened to Roger Stone. I don't care if you're a far left-wing
Starting point is 00:14:09 socialist. It says very clearly, and Will would know this better either in the sixth, seventh, or eighth amendment, that you get a fair and quick and speedy process of a jury of your peers, and it must be impartial. And it wasn't. I'll throw it to you in a second, but I'll make one more point. My opinion is that the moment the judge said there is no venue in Minnesota by which we could have a trial removed from the circumstances of George Floyd, my opinion was throw it out. If we believe that it is better that 10 guilty persons go free than one innocent person suffer and you cannot have a fair trial and you know it, charges dropped, case dismissed. Sure. And I just think it's simple. It doesn't relieve the judge of the obligation to try and
Starting point is 00:14:46 make it as fair as possible, right? And so move it to a more remote location that isn't directly next to where it happened. But I think the other really interesting thing is that, you know, the same people who are talking about how a 22 and a half year sentence for an unintentional homicide as being too lenient are called themselves criminal justice reformers and worried about mass incarceration, right? Like if anything, I mean the maximum sentence in Minnesota is only 30 years.
Starting point is 00:15:10 This is not, you know, for, for the second degree murder charge, which is really legally questionable because they use the felony murder statute and the felony in this case was the assault. So it's the same thing that caused the murder, which means that that,
Starting point is 00:15:22 that theory of, of second degree murder would swallow up manslaughter entirely. And the big lie of the whole thing is that race had nothing to do with this. Nothing. And that's the biggest of all lies was that this was all racially motivated. And, I mean, Derek Chauvin interacted with dozens of black people before that encounter. And it was George Floyd that was trading counterfeit bills.
Starting point is 00:15:43 It was George Floyd that was acting out of normal behavior and asked to be on the ground. I'm not Derek Chauvin's defense attorney. What I am, though, is trying to dispel this overarching narrative that dominated us that Derek Chauvin was like the reincarnation of Nathan Bedford Forrest, which there's no evidence to show that. In fact, Keith Ellison came out and said, we have no evidence this is a hate crime. I wonder how many people know who that guy is, though. Nathan Bedford Forrest? Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:08 He's the founder of the KKK. Right, right. They never tried to prove intent, right? That's a key thing to remember. If you listen to that whole trial, you would never have heard them say, Chauvin intended to kill this person. That never happened. And the first medical autopsy from the Hennepin County said that this is a drug overdose. The second one said that this was because of neck asphyxiation.
Starting point is 00:16:27 And it was convicted by a jury of peers. We trust the process. The judge himself, though, himself said, look, based on Maxine Waters' comments, you might have actually, let's say, means or a reason for a retrial. So this was nothing more than a hostage situation by BLM Incorporated. Yeah, yeah, there was the alternate juror who came out and said, I was scared of retaliation. They'd come to my house.
Starting point is 00:16:47 But now, let's talk about these statues, man. So these statues get torn down in Canada. And one of them was Queen Elizabeth II. That threw you for a loop earlier, right? You were like, certainly it's the first, right? And I was like, no, it's the second. Right. What do you think Queen Elizabeth II does?
Starting point is 00:17:01 Is she some vestige of colonialism? I guess. What has the British Empire done under her reign? It's massively contracted, actually, if you think Queen Elizabeth II does? Is she some vestige of colonialism? What has the British Empire done under her reign? It's massively contracted, actually. Did you guys hear about the vandalism of the George Floyd statue? I think it was in New York. They're saying it's a hate crime. It may be a hate crime.
Starting point is 00:17:15 Think about this insane double standard. So I'll pause real quick and just do a throwback to Cenk Uygur's tweet about conservatives or whatever faction the right is losing the culture war. I got to tell you, if these leftists can go down and tear down statues with impunity, and they do, and in Philadelphia, when they tried to tear down Christopher Columbus, a bunch of dudes showed up with bats and crowbars
Starting point is 00:17:36 and fended off this attack. So the city intervened and took the statue down. And then George Floyd gets statues? Look, I get it, man. We don't like the guy died. It's a tragic story for sure. But they're building statues and painting murals of this guy.
Starting point is 00:17:50 And if somebody vandalized it, it's a hate crime? All right, now that's insane. With a lengthy criminal record who went up to a pregnant woman and put a gun on the pregnant woman's stomach, who was trading counterfeit bills and was likely at a lethal amount of methamphetamines at
Starting point is 00:18:06 the time of death this is who they want to act as if should be you know given a saint level platform on the democrat i've got to correct you on that one charlie we don't know if the meth in his system was lethal but we do know the fentanyl likely was i will stand happily corrected of which deadly substance. He was driving. He was behind the wheel of a car, high on fentanyl, had a speedball in his mouth that he spit out in the backseat, and he's got statues. But it makes sense why they give him a statue, though, is because they need to keep the lie going. Is that kind of the current power structure is basically organized around this event and if they ever give an inch and this is one of the reasons why the left is
Starting point is 00:18:51 successful is that they they will never give an inch to us and this is something we can learn so uh going back talking about teaching young people ian who made an amazing point it's a guy who's behind the wheel of a car under the influence influence. He was chewing on a speedball, meth and fentanyl combined. And good reason to stop this guy. I mean, we don't like people that kill kids when you crash into cars and everything. Just imagine 100 years from now, though. That statement, would it persist? We hope so.
Starting point is 00:19:17 We hope that you listening now, 100 years going through the historical archives, are like Ian Crosland made the famous point about how this guy has statues in his honor and this is what led to this moment. However, history is written by the victors. If these people destroying statues win, if the people indoctrinating children win, and
Starting point is 00:19:37 Cenk Uygur is right, then in a hundred years they're not going to say what you said, Ian. Well, I'm changing my name to Victor, dude. There you go. History is written by the victor. Call yourself the victor. The history is going to say what you said, Ian. Well, I'm changing my name to Victor, dude. There you go. History is written by the Victor. Call yourself the Victor. No, they're going to write. The history is going to say that George Floyd was an innocent man who was wrongly targeted. They're going to remove the counterfeit bill.
Starting point is 00:19:56 They're going to slowly, over time, the pictures of Chauvin will incorporate devil horns, and he'll get bigger and bigger, and Floyd will get smaller and smaller. Even though Floyd was huge and Chauvin was small. History is written by the victors. So in a hundred years, they'll say this poor innocent man who was oppressed under a system of white cis heteronormative patriarchy
Starting point is 00:20:14 was brutally beaten and murdered by neo-Nazis. And we honor his memory and the pictures and the images that will come out will show him on the ground like reaching up and people standing around, like gasping. It's like, I understand it was a tragedy, man.
Starting point is 00:20:28 I understand that we don't want this guy to die. I don't want to see anybody hurt. I don't want to see anybody die. But you know, they're going to lie about it as they already are. And the lies will get worse. And it's also, how did he die? The jury decided it died because of Chauvin's actions. And again, this came at a moment that they needed it to happen.
Starting point is 00:20:46 This happened right before an election when everyone was locked down. There was a lot of pent up energy. There were no public sporting events, no gymnasiums, no social settings. People were lacking of purpose and they needed an excuse to try to reinvigorate the racial reckoning of how awful we are right before Donald Trump's election. And so it just so happened that because of a constellation of these events, they got what's election. And so it just so happened that because of a constellation of these events, they got what they needed. And they being the people who capitalize on a single incident for a broader power grab. I wonder if young people are going to recognize, you know, young people who are like maybe 13 year old today, 13 year olds today,
Starting point is 00:21:19 you know, they're not really paying attention to this stuff. Are they going to recognize the sheer insanity of having a pandemic and a national and even global lockdown, but allowing protests? Are they going to in their 20s when they're voting, are they going to be like, it was really strange they did that, or will they completely forget because it will be scrubbed from the narrative? Yeah, I mean, it depends. I mean, it depends on what the world looks like in seven years, which is largely why we're having this conversation. It depends whether or not we're going to be allowed to have these kind of conversations
Starting point is 00:21:47 on these sort of platforms, which remains to be seen. I mean, kind of the last hope we have is the capacity to have dialogue. And that's the only way that people like that are ever going to find out the truth. And that's why shows like this are doing very well. And that's why services like Rumble
Starting point is 00:22:02 are doing as well as they're doing, which is a very serious competitor to YouTube. And I want to talk about big tech because I think it's really interesting. But a 13-year-old would think it's perfectly normal unless presented with the alternative viewpoint. There's a pressure happening with big tech, though. And we were talking about this yesterday. You don't need to ban people. That's the stupid move, right? If you ban someone like
Starting point is 00:22:25 Crowder, you drop a giant stone in the middle of a lake and ripples come out. It would be like dropping a bus and big splash. Everybody sees it. So how do you do it? Well, you put a pressure on content. You stop promoting it. You start suppressing it. You stop giving out notifications. You give a strike here, and then you stop, and then you wait two months and boom, another strike. So now you're stacking them up. My concern is we've heard that YouTube, for instance, is now applying age restrictions on tons of videos. So here's what happens. People who are effective at communicating with the younger generation will start seeing age restrictions. And that won't completely ban the content and smart, savvy young people will find a way around it,
Starting point is 00:23:09 but it will dramatically reduce the reach. That pressure over a long enough period of time means your speech is stamped out. That's exactly right. I mean, we're dealing with this with YouTube right now, where we have a massive decrease in viewers. We were talking about this earlier, viewers in live stream content. But I think it even goes beyond that. I think that there's a demonetization strategy and i also think there's
Starting point is 00:23:28 a shadow ban strategy uh they don't deem you front page worthy they don't even if people have the the bell and subscribe they won't get the push notification on the phone we go through all i mean you go through the same sort of thing all the time yep and i mean we were getting 70 000 live viewers right near the election we're now down like 500 600 a day and so that kind so that kind of, you could say what you want, but that kind of fractional. The election season, I think a lot of that is due to. 70,000 to 500 is, that's a lot. That is, that is, yeah. For us, it was like, we probably lost around half.
Starting point is 00:23:56 We were averaging maybe like 65K live. Now we do, you know, 30, sometimes 40. For you, it sounds definitely like suppression. Well, it's also because the crawlers are seeing how often i'm mentioning their competitor rumble.com which i think actually is going to be a sizable and serious competitor to the youtube death star one thing for sure that people should be worried about and it's also a potential way to camouflage censorship is we had an election year views were through the roof plus everyone was locked down so you're
Starting point is 00:24:23 locked down it's election year naturally views are through the roof now the election year is over a lot of people are feeling like well my views are going to go down right now but some a lot of leftist channels aren't having that so maybe you know check makes a point yeah when you control the cultural institutions and you can cheat and uh you know maybe and suppress information maybe then you'll actually win because you're not letting people be free to choose their own information. But there was a meme from 4chan. They said,
Starting point is 00:24:50 any social media network that is sufficiently free speech will inevitably become right wing or our unmonerated platform will inevitably become right wing because leftist ideas only exist with censorship and suppression. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:25:07 I mean, you know, Twitter thought of itself as a free speech platform. So did, so did Facebook. They all, they all thought they started that way. And then they just felt this inexorable pressure to the combination of
Starting point is 00:25:15 external activists and, and internal employee pressure because of who they were hiring and event and, and have gotten to the censorious place they're in. I think it's just, and also the right wing competitors are relative. I mean, other than rumble, which is doing well, retiring and have gotten to the censorious place they're in. I think it's just – and also the right-wing competitors are relative. I mean, other than Rumble, which is doing well, but I think a lot of the right-wing Twitter competitors so far have failed miserably, I think is a fair description of what's happened. Well, I agree to an extent.
Starting point is 00:25:38 It seems like Parler would have actually taken off. Right. Well, save for the massive collective antitrust action that happened against them you know it's funny i was actually i was doing a panel in in uh florida with like a big tech lobbyist type and uh he was just we we asked him about like this power thing he's just like well it was january 6th and i'm like i'm sorry is there a january 6th exception to the antitrust laws like why are you does this suddenly mean you can collaborate to knock out competitors that wasn't even true yeah yeah parlor was cooperating and and like sending warnings to the fbi and facebook had way more of the content that they were supposedly objecting to they did
Starting point is 00:26:13 that to mines i don't i don't know how public that is i think it was mentioned oh yeah vice wrote about it they they tried making claims that uh mines.com which ian is a co-founder uh that it was somehow harboring the far right when it was like six accounts. Exactly. Because when you go the route of trying not to censor people, people will take advantage of it. And they'll make like 50 accounts and then spam egregious things. And then if you say, I'm not going to censor you, they're like, that's like a green light to say the worst things you can sometimes just for whatever reason. To get a reaction, to make money to to change people's
Starting point is 00:26:47 minds i don't know so censorship is extremely valuable but you just have to be super careful with it but in that instance with minds it was like there were six accounts that had like no posts but posted like a banner image of some far right symbol and then vice is like minds becomes the new haven for the far right and it's like just objectively not true we just need to put all these journalists out of a job right like the simple thing to do here is just like we get we get the laws we need in terms of like non-discrimination like making essentially you have a right to use these accounts florida tried to do it didn't get there um but we do that and all of a sudden i want to make life easier in some sense for jack
Starting point is 00:27:23 dorsey and mark zuckerberg i want them to be able to look at these activists and be like i'm sorry if we did what you want we would get sued and we'd lose so we're not going to do what you want because like you know if you had a racist clientele at a hotel that was like i don't want you to serve black people they'd be like well one you're racist so we're not going to pay attention to you but two even if we did we'd be breaking the law so we're not going to right you can't you can't do you can't do that so that's that's the position I want the social media companies to be in. Yeah, but they don't want to be in those positions. But they're ideologically driven.
Starting point is 00:27:49 I mean you look at Jack Dorsey. He's a huge activist. Putting money – he put a bunch of money into like woke programs. He does a bunch of activism in Africa, which that I don't know a whole lot about. But I'm not saying his activism is bad, but the man is ideologically driven. You heard what he said uh when i when i talked to him this gets brought up a lot but here we go again when i was on the joe rogan podcast and he said you know when it comes to misgendering policy there's there's people that
Starting point is 00:28:14 we're concerned about and they they could take their own lives and so we're very worried and trying to protect them and it's like i understand that for sure but there are a lot of people who are at risk for taking their own lives and you're not protecting them i specifically mentioned body dysmorphia people who want to remove their hands for instance that's not part of their policy it's purely politically ideologically driven now you you mentioned laws will and i want to i want to say this too i think a lot of conservatives need to recognize who was it breitbart who said politics is downstream from culture andrew breitbart yeah brilliant and even with that being known to many conservatives or just it's not even just conservatives there's many disaffected liberals like these these teachers in Loudoun
Starting point is 00:28:53 County people like me for instance it's not about the laws the laws you know I think back to when we had certain social cohesion in some areas it It maybe wasn't, a lot of people might romanticize the past. It was probably bad in a lot of ways for a lot of reasons. Laws, morality laws, for instance, or obscenity laws didn't make people not want to swear. George Carlin decided to swear anyway, and he got arrested for it because he was like, I'm going to do it.
Starting point is 00:29:18 It was that there was social enforcement. So yeah, I mean, I think the way to think about it is there's feedback going both ways. Some laws are really more shaped by culture than vice versa. And some laws make it possible for people to shape culture or prevent them from using it. So the reason I focus so heavily on big tech issues and why it's so central to me is because I see it as kind of a keystone issue for the right. If we lose on big tech, we're going to lose everywhere else because the tech companies are going to shape discourse and culture in such a way that we can't compete and are going to knock out all our best influencers, knock out all
Starting point is 00:29:49 our people who are persuasive young people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So like they're coming after you, bro. Right. On tech. Oh, but the things I see about you are really interesting. I go on Reddit and they have all the memes about you. And there are a lot of them. They're actually they're actually pretty funny.
Starting point is 00:30:05 But that's powerful. They're pretty funny. The Ben Shapiro ones are really funny. And it was impressive because for a while the meme was the left can't mean. And then I think they started to figure out they were losing. And one of the things that helped drive Trump's victory. I went to I went to dozens of Trump rallies in 2015 and 16. I met tons of young people who told me culture war, culture war.
Starting point is 00:30:27 The older guys were like trade, trade, trade. Younger guys were like free speech, culture war, feminism. So then I see these memes popping up on Reddit. It's like you go on Reddit. It's nothing but propaganda. It's insane. And boy, do they not like you. But they have to do it.
Starting point is 00:30:42 You know why? They need to poison the well. When a turning point event shows up, and I'm not saying I've not actually ever been to one of your events or anything. Boy, do they not like you. But they have to do it. You know why? They need to poison the well. When a turning point event shows up, and I'm not saying, I've not actually ever been to one of your events or anything like that. I'm just saying I understand you guys engage in political rhetoric. So the well is poisoned for young people when they see a meme saying Charlie Kirk is dumb or something. Then what you get are these young high school kids will see an event coming to town, and they'll be more easily told not to go because they want to be cool or fit in. Yeah, and I think there's a limitation on that, obviously.
Starting point is 00:31:14 And, I mean, look, no one's above mockery, right? We're not going to take ourselves too seriously. I mean, everyone said really dumb things, including me. I could spend about four and a half hours on that if we had that much time. And so an entire list of things I could say that were dumb. But I think, look, hopefully a wise person wants to be corrected. And the limitation on it, though, is I think that in those kind of Reddit 4chan circles, those people that do those things,
Starting point is 00:31:36 they try to mock the people they see that are actually organizing something substantial. And so, I mean, I take it hopefully as well in stride as one can. And also, I just don't look at that stuff well in stride as one can. And also, I just don't look at that stuff. I've deleted all social media off my phone. I don't have Twitter, no Facebook, don't have any of that. And so people are like, oh, you're trending on Twitter. I'm like, oh, really? It feels the same as when I wasn't trending on Twitter. So I think more clearly I read more books and host radio and do podcasting. But I would say it's not about necessarily your health or anything. No, no, for sure. But like, I just, just one quick side note on the Jack Dorsey thing is that if all of
Starting point is 00:32:07 a sudden the social media companies are existing to be like the therapist of the entire like transgender community, that is an incredibly, that is not what you exist to do at all. Like, well, people are going to hurt themselves. Like, well, you know, that's obviously not what we don't want people to have happen. But under that excuse, you're just going to basically abolish every single meaningful point of criticism. Isn't it true that cops commit suicide at high rates? Of course. We got to have a special rule on Twitter saying you can't disparage police.
Starting point is 00:32:34 Oh. Yeah, it's got to, you know. I mean, if you're taking that much editorial responsibility, then take editorial responsibility and, like, just forgo your Section 230 liability and eat the defamation seat. And it's just pandering to activists, right? And so kind of just going back to this whole idea of kind of where the left-wing activist energy is going, it's been very interesting to track over the last six or seven months of kind of what they're focusing on and what they're doing. And I think that there is a tension point that's brewing of they're not sure really when to draw the line of when they're like, oh, no, no, no, we actually shouldn't cancel every single white person in the world. And they haven't said that out loud yet, but you're starting to see that reflected in some of their opinion articles and in some of the more left-wing podcasting world.
Starting point is 00:33:21 They're all of a sudden starting to retreat a little bit from there because there is a fear that kind of the French Revolution guillotine is going to come for them, too. I mean, Rob Spierre was murdered by his own followers and they applauded for 10 minutes. That dude was nuts. Maximilian Rob Spierre. Yeah. And let me tell you, when I was at Occupy Wall Street, there was a guy down there who told everyone his dream was to be Rob Spierre.
Starting point is 00:33:42 And then when people be like... He wanted to get his head cut off? Yes. His jaw blown off? Yes. They blew his jaw off and let him sit there for like two days and in pain and and there there were people down there and one guy said that was his dream and when people were like he was killed by his own followers he was like man wouldn't that be great like they they're it's these these are people who are actively organizing i'm not gonna say every single one of them's insane. Some of them are just dumb.
Starting point is 00:34:07 Some of them are idealistic and utopian. And some of them are outright sociopathic, thinking like, wow, how cool would that be to have my jaw blown off and then be guillotined by my own followers? Genuinely, people. Well, and so the arc of all these things, the French Revolution is super instructive for a variety of different reasons because the abolition of private property, the destruction of time, right? They got rid of the old agrarian calendar. They put in a 10-day calendar. The deletion. Metric time. Right, exactly.
Starting point is 00:34:31 The deletion of their history, very much inspired by Rousseau. But the arc tells us where this leads. And this is really the desire of the rulers of our country, which is you will get an autocrat. It's just this sort of manufactured chaos, the blood in the streets, the French Revolution types that kill tens of thousands of people is, yeah, then you're going to get a Napoleon. That is what will happen. And Zuckerberg and Bezos, I think they want to be part of that oligarchy that will rule in the next chapter. So we're kind of in this revolutionary period. So we're ever going to go to Republican small R style government or towards autocracy?
Starting point is 00:35:11 I think it's autocracy. But the night is always darkest before the dawn. And just because these people, I think we're currently in some form of, maybe not autocracy is the right word, maybe oligopoly. Yeah, I agree completely. I think there was a document. It's been a while. But during Occupy Wall Street, there was a document circulated from Citigroup that said that the United States is not a democracy. It is an oligopoly or something like that. Or, yeah. That effectively, the U.S. government laws are written by the wealthy. That public opinion has very little impact at all.
Starting point is 00:35:41 And there were other studies saying basically the same thing. Can I say one thing about Occupy? So I went to Zuccotti Park too, and I was told, because I was a conservative in high school, to hate those people. And now I go back to some of your footage and the footage that's there, and I find very little I disagree with out of the main components of the criticism of Occupy Wall Street, such as you have a small group of rather reckless people in financial institutions that made highly levered risk. They got bailed out by taxpayers. Meanwhile, middle class incomes go down and we're, you know,
Starting point is 00:36:11 redomiciling all of our meaningful manufacturing overseas. And I think that there's a game being played here. And identity politics is the piece on the table where there could be a bipartisan reckoning against Bezos. The only thing we can't agree with the other side on is this racist stuff. It's like, everyone's a racist. That's the only thing that's preventing a 90% type revolution against Bezos. After we wrapped up our show with Steve Bannon, he's standing up and getting ready to walk out, and I was like, Steve, I mean it.
Starting point is 00:36:39 If you went down there to occupy Wall Street on day one, it would have been an entirely different timeline. There were no prominent right-wing personalities coming down to guide that massive anger at the corrupt financial institutions in the government. So what happened was there were conservatives, there were libertarians, there were leftists, there was regular people. I met Luke Ridkowski of We Are Change, who is like an anarcho-capitalist. He's all about that right-wing libertarianism. I met him down there, and we agreed on basically everything. We weren't concerned about tax policy when we're looking at corrupt government,
Starting point is 00:37:15 but there were no strong, prominent right-wing personalities. In fact, when it came to Fox News, it was disparaging. The only disagreement I'll give you on that is that the movement was not ready for this nine years ago, the conservative movement. We had a muscle memory and we had a configuration to defend massive financial institutions no matter what. We were on team corporate, right? So like Team Right was team corporate. That was the conservative movement I grew up in, right? We were the party of saying, you know what?
Starting point is 00:37:41 It's a good thing that Mitt Romney has a car elevator and he says the the trees are the right height, and he puts a dog on his car, and we like it, and Bain Capital is awesome, and we love China, and plastic from China and from Wuhan is the greatest thing ever, and if you disagree with me, you're a socialist. That was how we were trained to debate in 2012, 13, and 14. And Trump was awesome at all of a sudden challenging all these orthodoxies. So the only disagreement I have, and you might be right, Bannon could have changed some of that. I don't disagree with you on that, though. I just don't think the movement was ready for it.
Starting point is 00:38:08 I think we're ready for it now. I think that we're ready for it more than ever. Like, we want to crush these corporations now. So here's the issue, man. You know, when we have someone like Vosh on the show, who's this prominent socialist YouTuber, when I mention Occupy Wall Street and things like that, he goes, I was a teenager.
Starting point is 00:38:24 I don't remember that. I don't know what happened. And I don't blame him. This is one of the biggest challenges with talking to young people and getting them active. If dude's 16 years old and Occupy Wall Street's happening, of course he's not paying attention to the financial collapse. That was three years prior, so he's a little kid. And he doesn't know about what Joe Biden is doing. Now you get a bunch of people who are 18 years old and 20 years old and they're going to vote and they're being told by the clowns on TV to vote for Joe Biden. And you go to them and say his brother's deals with in Iraq, Occupy Wall Street, the financial collapse, their defense of big capital. And I don't remember any of that. I have no idea. That's what they say.
Starting point is 00:39:02 Yeah. I mean, I guess part of it is attributable to age right um but i will say though and i just want to reinforce this point the the masters of the universe for lack of a better term the ruling class as angela cotovia would call them which is a perfect term they know that race is the perfect distraction issue there would be a legitimate economic revolution if we could put crt to bet And it would be a good thing for our country. And I'm not saying we need to nationalize the airlines or confiscate Goldman Sachs' offices. What I am saying, though, is that there is a legitimate, there's a cartel that exists that makes normal people's livelihood more difficult to thrive and to flourish. The family is harder than ever to create and to have lots of children.
Starting point is 00:39:45 And there's a bipartisan agreement on that. I want to ask you about some tweets that people were highlighting of yours last year, the Juneteenth one, which I'm sure I'm happy to go through this. Yeah. You're acting as if I defend like I was ever calling for it to be a national holiday. So I never have. You had a tweet where you said Republicans are now going to be making Juneteenth a holiday. Why didn't Obama do this? I never said that. No, I said that.
Starting point is 00:40:10 I'm paraphrasing my own wording. I never said, and you can pull it up, I never said that I'm happy they're making it a federal holiday. I was simply saying that the idea of the emancipation of the slaves was thanks to the Republican Party. Now, let me also say this, though. I think we have learned a lot about what the true motivations of BLM Incorporated in the last year are. And so when Juneteenth came up as this kind of idea that it needs to be a national federal holiday, and please do read my tweet because I said that Obama never recognized this or whatever it might be, like Trump did some sort of signing ceremony or something, is that it's so
Starting point is 00:40:42 obvious that the National Independence Day Act, known as Juneteenth, was being drafted by the Democrats and agreed by Republicans as a direct summertime competitor to July 4th, to try to erase and remove Independence Day from the 4th of July, which was a direct and total eternal connection that Abraham Lincoln put from the Gettysburg Address to commemorate the day after the Battle of Gettysburg, which happened July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, to this idea that our founding actually happened with this peaceful contract and separation from the British Empire. But anyway, happy to go through that.
Starting point is 00:41:15 I understand that on its face value. It's like, oh, you're being so contradicting. I actually don't think that. I wanted to highlight it and have you make those comments. Oh, thank you. I'm just saying that Justin Amash, whoever that guy is. When I saw the tweets that people were highlighting saying that you know i wanted to highlight it and have you oh thank you yeah i'm just saying that you know justin amash whoever that guy is um well when i saw the tweets that people were highlighting saying that you were hypocritical i'm like the tweet you wrote said senate republicans are introducing legislation to make juneteenth a federal holiday barack obama and joe biden were
Starting point is 00:41:36 in the white house for eight years why didn't they ever do it in nowhere in the tweet where you're like hooray republicans are doing the right thing that's exactly right the over inference is like oh charlie's's praising Republicans for that. But the very simple reading is he's asking a question. Right. And then they highlight that with your current tweet where you said Lincoln knew America's founding was July 4th, 1776. He knew that was the day our amazing nation made a step from ideal to reality.
Starting point is 00:42:01 Juneteenth is an affront to the unity of July 4th. We now have two summer holidays and one of them is based on race. Shame on the GOP for supporting this. My opinion on that, we'll get into the CRT stuff, is I actually don't much mind
Starting point is 00:42:14 having a Juneteenth holiday to celebrate the end of slavery. It was a war fought over it. Many people have mentioned that in terms of the soldiers who lost their lives, Memorial Day was specifically for this,
Starting point is 00:42:23 for the Civil War and everyone who died. I look at this like, you know, if we're going to celebrate freedom, we can recognize that we had slavery and we fought a war over it and we're going to have a holiday for it. However, I can't remember who we were talking to who brought this up. They made a good point saying that their view of it and their presentation of it is all about oppressor versus oppressed. So it's basically instilling critical race theory by saying, this holiday is not to celebrate freedom. It's to point out the evils. Because when the Democrats stood up and said, this is what we want, they didn't say, we're here to celebrate freedom for everyone. They said, this country's evils must be recognized. If Juneteenth was all about that,
Starting point is 00:42:59 then fine. No problem. First of all, then let's just celebrate when slaves were freed because of a wartime order by Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, which I think was November 22, 1861. We get a fact check on that. But it was definitely in November. It was sometime in the fall. And let me just say a couple things on this.
Starting point is 00:43:19 It also, this overemphasis on Juneteenth, though, it doesn't actually tell the full story, which is 9 out of 13 colonies that signed on to the Constitution in 1787 had already independently abolished slavery by the time we had a Constitution. Vermont abolished slavery in 1777 because of the Declaration. The first ever anti-slavery convention that happened in the world was chaired by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1775. And so this idea that we were nothing but slavery apologists, that, no, I know you're not saying that.
Starting point is 00:43:51 Oh, 1619 is trash. No, no, but the Juneteenth holiday is being masterminded by Nicole Hannah-Jones and Robin D'Angelo. Let me just give you an example that kind of affirmed my my rejection of the juneteenth holiday was evanston illinois so evanston illinois they had a lbgt pride parade a juneteenth parade and canceled their july 4th parade yep yep and then they canceled july 4th for covet or something right yeah that's a bunch of garbage so this mayor who i go back and forth i grew up right down the street from you know i know the type right he's the worst type of like upper middle class, double mask wearing while I shower liberal, right? Like get vaccinated five times
Starting point is 00:44:29 or else you're the worst person ever. And so I said, okay, Mr. Mayor, then why don't you demand that there's a July 4th parade? Are you just like all of a sudden be like, oh, I'm not going to take a stance on this. He issues this long statement. Well, because for him, there's no moral difference between an LGBT pride parade and the july 4th and for me personally
Starting point is 00:44:47 july 4th far transcends an lgbt pride parade it's it's a it's a it's the direct line of why we exist as a nation and so anyway if it was it was an ideological revolution as well as a political one totally it was a bunch of people saying divine providence does not a executive make. You do not compete ahead of state simply because religion wills it or God wills it. Totally. And I don't mean to monopolize this, but as we're here this weekend on the Declaration, what's so amazing, when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration, it was kind of a committee and Benjamin Franklin chaired the committee. First of all, the original draft of the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson's own handwriting he blames king george for bringing the sin of slavery to america thomas jefferson in the original draft in his own handwriting now didn't make the final draft because they needed slaveholding states to obviously build a coalition to be able to fight a successful war
Starting point is 00:45:36 against britain the declaration starts super wide when in the course of human events so what does that mean you run human events.com will He's making an argument that this document right here is about human beings' right to govern themselves. That's a big claim. That's not just some sort of like, we think we can do something better. It's like, you know what? The way we've been doing government is wrong.
Starting point is 00:45:58 Then it gets very narrow. King George did this. King George did this. King George did this. Then it gets really, really wide. The widest you can be. We appeal to the supreme power, which is, of course, our creator. And it says earlier, laws of nature and nature's God.
Starting point is 00:46:11 And it ends with, we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. What does that mean? Those 56 signers of the Declaration, they were pledging it to each other. Now, out of the 56 signers, we know at least eight of them were hunted down and killed in the months right after the Declaration. About 12 of them, I'm going to get my numbers wrong. Twelve of them died in the war, and another six had their entire fortunes gone. I don't know if that – there's a meme going around saying those things.
Starting point is 00:46:34 I think they may be a bit exaggerated. So I did a lot of fact-checking on this, and it's like semantically true. Like I think a lot of people were really gung-ho and said they were hunted down and killed. And it was like, they started a war, they got killed in. They weren't hunted down. You could be right. I mean, they signed it in Philadelphia in the middle of a summer. In the summer, which it was a port city against a naval power. So they knew that there was going to be some risk.
Starting point is 00:46:58 It was the greatest military power the world had ever seen. Totally. They knew they were going to lose, actually. This is something Americans need to realize. The Americans were like, we're going to lose this war, you know, and they were like, F it. I refuse to bend the knee. Wow. And then the French were like, we don't like the British either. So we're going to lend support to screw with them. And if it was not for the French intervention, America probably would not have won. Yeah. And I mean, Edmund Burke,
Starting point is 00:47:21 who's kind of like the father of Western conservatism, him and Pitt, they tried to tell Britain not to wage this war because they said, look, we have more military might, but they have something we don't have. They have resilience. And they're going to run to the hills and they're going to run to the rivers and they're going to outlast us. It was kind of the first ever guerrilla war, right? It was kind of why the Viet Cong were able to outlast us. It's why the Taliban was able to outlast us. We were kind of the Taliban-Viet Cong were able to outlast us. It's why the Taliban was able to outlast us. We were kind of the Taliban Viet Cong equivalent. You can't, in my opinion, for the most part, win a war without propaganda and economics. Those are huge components of a war. If you simply go in and start guns a blazing, the people will be resilient in their opposition to you. You will
Starting point is 00:48:02 need massive, massive military might. And that means boots on the ground to occupy street corners. The problem with the British was that they're thousands of miles away. And when they come and they occupy these homes and they ransack, it would make people angry and actually rally the cause in many ways of the revolution. The difficult thing was how you control the hearts and minds of the people. So going back to the point about the signers and what they sacrificed, there are very serious ramifications. There's a meme that goes around where it lists everything that happened. I went through the list and I did some fact-checking.
Starting point is 00:48:36 There was, I think, one guy who directly fought in the war and died. There was a dozen or so who had their homes occupied or ransacked. It wasn't, youacked. These were men who, when they said they were putting their honor, their treasure, their lives, it wasn't just that. It was their families. One guy had his wife kidnapped by the British to be used in a prisoner exchange. So when they capture an officer or something, they're like, I got your wife. That was a serious pledge to make, looking at your wife and being like, and they might kill you.
Starting point is 00:49:08 I think Ben Franklin's son joined the British, never talked to his dad again. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah, I'm going to look that up really quick. One cool thing is I think George Washington said he would never set foot on British soil ever again. So now that we're kind of cool with the UK, they shipped in a bunch of US soil in the UK and put it down and then built a statue of George Washington on it.
Starting point is 00:49:25 Yeah, it's a story I heard. I don't know how true it is, but, you know. Well, I just think going back to the earlier part, you said the Canadians just took down a Queen Elizabeth statue. I'm like, who do you think Canada, where do you think your ancestors were? They were the loyalists. Right. Yep. Yep.
Starting point is 00:49:38 That's why when I saw that happen, I was kind of like, you know, hey, look, I was reading about this. My understanding is that we did petition Quebec to join the revolution. And they said no. So in the Declaration of Independence, there's a sentence that King George made us subjected to foreign powers. They were talking about Quebec. Thomas Jefferson was complaining about the Canadians. I just learned that the other day. You know, we almost got Canada or something.
Starting point is 00:50:03 It was the War of 1812, I think? What? Because the Lake Champlain borders right up against Lake Erie. And so the turning point of the War of 1812 was the anchored ship in Lake Champlain. We were able to do a runaround and change the entire course of the war. But yes, I mean, the French were selling land like it was going out of style. And Thomas Jefferson took full advantage of that. It was a Louisiana purchase, obviously.
Starting point is 00:50:23 No, no, but there was Montreal. I can't remember exactly what happened, but we sent our forces up to Montreal, and then they went and ransacked the White House or whatever. Yeah, we kind of – I don't know if maybe my opinion is wrong on this, Charlie, but my understanding is we kind of got beat up in the War of 1812. No, we were getting rolled. Yeah, that's my read, too. And then all of a sudden, Napoleon's a problem, and the British are like,
Starting point is 00:50:43 okay, we got more important issues, so we'll make a generous more the little man is causing us a lot of problems but there was two miracles that happened the war of 1812 is the miracle of lake champlain and then the miracle of the storm that put out all the fires in washington dc when the british were burning the war yeah two divine points of intervention and i don't mean this sidebar but there was one that involved benedict arnold too on the hudson river but we can get what was that no it was so it's a really interesting story. Benedict Arnold obviously was selling secrets to the British for money, and he was in charge of West Point, which is obviously now the United States Military Academy. And so the person
Starting point is 00:51:16 that was in charge of transmitting Benedict Arnold's orders had him in his sports jacket or sports coat, goes south on the Hudson River down to what is now the Dutch, which was the Dutch New York City, Dutch port of New York City, and an American colonialist cannon shoots at this guy's boat, misses the boat, but skims like a piece of wood on the boat, and it goes up into the captain's nose.
Starting point is 00:51:41 That's carrying the orders from Benedict Arnold, right? Basically in writing that Benedict Arnold sold out the American revolutionary forces. And so he gets really annoyed by this little piece of wood. And he's like, you know what? Screw it. I can't be the captain of the ship. Go to shore and we'll find a new captain. Like basically I need to kind of like go find, go find someone who can extract this. When they do that, they get to shore and some American minute men intercept the ship and take them all prisoner. When they take them prisoner, they find Benedict Arnold's handwriting
Starting point is 00:52:10 and concession orders that were selling out West Point, our most pivotal military base to the Britain. So if it wasn't for this little piece of wood, which I would consider to be basically divine intervention, we never would have found about Benedict Arnold who sold out our troops. And then they go back to George Washington. George Washington has kind of an aha moment. He's like, this is why the British always know what I'm doing before I do it.
Starting point is 00:52:29 And some would say that would be the turning point of the Revolutionary War. Very droll. So I think about July 4th and how I know about these things. And I think about the Civil Rights Movement and how I know about these things. These are things that are deeply important to my family. And I love this line. They probably said the same of you, but they say it of me and it makes me laugh a whole lot.
Starting point is 00:52:50 There was a... I should have pulled it up. On Twitter, this guy posts a photo of the Civil Rights March and he says stop this woke mob and it's 1960s Civil Rights and the sign right in front says end segregation rules in schools.
Starting point is 00:53:06 And I'm like, hey, about that. So I went and I got that famous photo where they race segregated people of color and non-people of color diversity meetings. And I'm like, this is exactly what I'm complaining about and have been complaining about. Somebody responds with, if Tim Pool was a commenter in in the 80s he would have been pro apartheid if tim pool was a commenter during civil rights he would have been pro whites only and i'm like i'm against these things because i come from a mixed race family you morons it is like you talk about identity and you talk about racism and you talk about how people have this perspective based on their on their worldviews and then when i straight up say it like yes these these laws are bad because of exactly what you're saying.
Starting point is 00:53:49 They say, not you. You'd support all the white people. I wouldn't be allowed to. What are you talking about? My family went through hell in those years. These people don't understand anything to do with the historical struggle and how America planted the seed, the founding fathers, to create a great nation where we were able to win civil rights, expand civil rights. Quite honestly, the greatest country on the planet because of the freedoms that we allow people, upward mobility, the American dream, you're not going to find it anywhere else. And let me just say one more thing. Identitarianism, which is the core of what the critical race theorists want and the white nationalists, is the rule of law for the planet, 90-something percent of it, and it has been the rule of law for humanity for every single year of human existence until 1964. We've had, what, 57 years of being like, okay, we're not going to base laws on race anymore, and they're trying to bring us back? Those people.
Starting point is 00:54:41 Yeah. Just to complete the point, identitarianism was not present in the philosophical community of the founders until a man by the name of John C. Calhoun came along who became kind of the philosophical father of American identitarianism. And John C. Calhoun was the vice president for John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. And he made the argument that basically rights must be earned, that they are not unalienable, that you must go through a series of choices and decisions, and he said that blacks cannot earn them.
Starting point is 00:55:13 And then his philosophical line goes straight to Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the KKK, and now the current ambassador is Nicole Hannah-Jones. It's funny how the Democrats are historically just – I love how amazingly, it's such an easy meme for the left where they're like, oh, you're saying that the Democrats are the party of the Klan? Well, the party's switched. And I'm like, I don't know what that means. Never happened.
Starting point is 00:55:35 What does that even mean? It's they're the party of like tribal morality. That's so true. And so one example, I don't know if we've talked about this recently, but you probably talked about it a few months ago. Do you remember that video of, you know, it was a police shooting where the policeman shot the girl who was about to stab the woman? Yes. Do you remember that?
Starting point is 00:55:52 That was in North Carolina. That was in North Carolina, right? And remember that, like, a huge number of Black Lives Matter activists, some of them were out there trying to say that that wasn't a justified shoot, right? As though it were. And I was was like – this blew my mind. And I don't know if – you know, it just was – it was amazing that somebody could advocate that. But, you know, I read a really good book, The Weirdest People in the World, and it talked about kind of how our morality is actually historically very strange, right? The idea of kind of a universal morality as opposed to one that is like is more localized where you write, you know, tribalist tribalist. You value your relationships. Like, for example, you ask the question, like, would you perjure yourself to get your brother off a charge?
Starting point is 00:56:36 And if you ask that in the United States, people like, of course not. We wouldn't do that. But if you ask that, like in other places, people are like, of course I would. How would I be disloyal to my brother? It's a different type of morality. Right, right, right, right. And so like both, you know, the white nationalists are trying to say tribal morality, right? Focus on us, you know, over other people. Black Lives Matter saying like this, you know, children fighting with knives is an internal dispute and you, an outsider, shouldn't even take part in it. Right?
Starting point is 00:57:02 Yeah. That's what this is. It's like a return to tribal morality. I actually, I agree with their message. I mean, look, I think that story was an absolute tragedy. This cop runs in trying to save lives, see someone pull a knife. He does what he tries to stop a violent assault. I mean, that cop must have been, I'm sure he went through some very serious trauma when
Starting point is 00:57:22 he realized like she was the one who called for his help. And he comes in and he doesn't know what's going on. There's a lot of instances where, sure, you have cops who do stupid or bad things. And there are a lot of instances where there was one video recently where a cop shoots a guy and then immediately falls to the ground. This, like, 220-pound thick guy, clearly in his 40s, starts bawling his eyes out that he just shot somebody and he's shaking. Like, he just killed a man. He knows that these they act like these cops are machines but to the point about the tribal morality if there's a community of people saying don't come police then i simply say okay we have a right to self-governance right if a community says we don't want cops in this
Starting point is 00:58:00 neighborhood and we want to solve our disputes with knives the police should respect the community right i mentioned that there was a story out of New York. That's libertarian stuff. We're conservatives. Oh, for sure, for sure. Let's argue. Let's argue for sure. But let me make one more point. There was that story out of New York where the woman ran up to the other woman and put a bullet in her head. Two black women. Where were the
Starting point is 00:58:18 marches of Black Lives Matter? Where were the calls for justice? Where were the vigils? The activists of Black Lives Matter and the high profile individuals didn't care when there was an internal dispute in the black community in New York that resulted in death. And my response is they clearly don't care about this. Why should we impose our will on them? So, right. That's so let me just say a lot of people are starting to say this. And the danger is then, well well was dwight d eisenhower wrong
Starting point is 00:58:46 to mobilize the national guard to desegregate southern schools it's a tough question isn't it because i'm not saying desegregating schools i'm like yeah that was good i mean i literally just said my family went through civil rights i know but how are you to tell the white southerners that they can't govern themselves i know that's You got me. We need to enforce our laws. But I will stress the point. When I'm saying don't send the police in, I'm not principally and literally saying, all right, no, I'm trying to make a point.
Starting point is 00:59:17 Oh, I hear you. A lot of people are saying, like, you hate us, you hate us, the police structure, structure so much then go take care of your own affairs that is a tempting thing to believe but the the extrapolation of that belief ends up into hundreds and thousands of city states where we no longer have a common tie to our fellow countrymen therefore the promise of the constitution of declaration gets invalidated let me let me let me ask you a question so desegregation of schools the national guard countrymen. Therefore, the promise of the Constitution and Declaration gets invalidated. Let me ask you a question. So desegregation of schools, the National Guard comes in,
Starting point is 00:59:53 and you are saying it was a good thing, that it was the right thing? I think it was a moral thing to do for Dwight D. Eisenhower to mobilize the National Guard, and George Wallace backed down. If there is a florist who refuses to provide services to a gay wedding, should the courts get involved and force the florist to do it? It's a great question, and it's a completely separate issue. It's similar, and it feels similar, and it's because religious choice is directly protected in the First Amendment in two different things, the Establishment Clause and the Free Expression Clause. Racial discrimination is not. Now, so the courts have articulated what a religious test is.
Starting point is 01:00:26 So some people say, well, my religion allows me to be racist. The courts have not upheld that ever, right? So for example, the court case that continually comes up is this Colorado baker, right? Who just is getting sued again, by the way, is that he has a business that requires an application process. He has a deliberate action where he has to make a good, and he feels that homosexual marriage is in direct contradiction to his scriptural belief. Does he have the right to say, I don't want to do this. You have to go to another baker. And we say, of course.
Starting point is 01:00:57 I mean, that is a very specifically – go ahead. Just a real quick point. He wasn't denying them service. He was denying to say a certain thing on the cake. That's right. It was speech. It a real quick point. He wasn't denying them service. He was denying to say a certain thing on the cake. That's right. It was it was it was compulsory speech. That's exactly right. That's why he won. I believe he won, but he just lost another appeal. They've sued him six times. I've met him. He's like the sweetest guy. And so this is another important point, though, is that when they can't win in the courts, the process becomes the punishment. So so they're
Starting point is 01:01:23 not going to put this guy in prison ever. Instead, they're going to put him through a 20-year open-year prison of millions of dollars of legal fees, names in the newspaper, his business basically on the verge of bankruptcy. At that point, the process becomes the punishment. But your question's a good one, right? Which is, well, what's the difference between racial discrimination and the reintegration of schools and the bakery? Number one, the bakery is a private establishment, and it's not technically bound by the First Amendment. So that meaning that that baker is allowed to have some form of conscience
Starting point is 01:01:54 and different of opinion, where a public school system has to be somewhat viewpoint neutral and accepting to every single person at local area. With that being said, the courts have added a tremendous amount of nuance of what a religious test actually is. For example, there were some people that were coming out and they're saying like, my interpretation of Christianity says I don't have to serve black people. The courts knew that was not an argument made in good faith and they dismissed that kind of lawsuit. That's why we have prudence, practical judgment, right? Whereas we can see with the Baker in Colorado that this guy had a legitimate religious
Starting point is 01:02:25 tradition of a well-recognized church that was well attended. You see what I'm saying? And the specific issue was he offered up to these men any cake. That's exactly right. That they wanted. So he was making a good faith offering. He would not write a message. So he was trying to provide the service. Of course, I'll tell you something really funny. There was this bill, Ohio Religious Freedom Act, I think it was, when I was working for Fusion. Fusion, of course, was the Disney
Starting point is 01:02:49 Univision company. When I worked there, they said they wanted to be edgy and all that stuff, and they got woke. There was a story that came out where every celebrity, this is like a big red pill moment for me, for sure. Every celebrity was coming out saying this bill was anti-LGBTQ and all this stuff. And so we were like, oh, wow, what a story. And then we get like the editorial meetings and they're like, wow, this story is crazy. Look what they're doing. They're suppressing the rights of these people with this religious freedom bill. And so they were like, Tim, would you want to produce a video on this?
Starting point is 01:03:16 And I'm like, yeah, let's do it. So I get this other young millennial lefty and we're like, all right, let's start doing the research. And we start doing the research and we're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? Like half the things these celebrities are claiming isn't true. We got really confused. So we go back to some of the other journalists who started asking questions like, hey, we have the bill. And they, it just, it didn't make sense to us.
Starting point is 01:03:37 And we were very confused with the activists were claiming what the bill actually did was just functionally not true. Like it was wrong. And so then I'm like i don't think we can do the kind of video you want to like we'll do a video about it we'll talk about it but what you were saying about it is wrong and not the case like what is this yeah i mean well you know with when i talk about you know for example platform access being civil right i often get pushback about the forest right like they say well if you think Twitter has to let you speak, what do you think about the baker in
Starting point is 01:04:06 Colorado? And I think in addition to sort of the freedom of religion wrinkle that you're talking about, there's also a scale issue. Totally. Right? Like there's, you know, in general, I think it's not wrong to think we should impose stricter and be willing to impose stricter regulations on trillion dollar tech monopolies than on individual bakers in Colorado. I think that there's no and the idea that we have to have the same level of civil rights law applied to both is wrong. And I mean, I can simultaneously also think that, you know, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was absolutely righteous to break the regime of private discrimination in the Jim Crow South. That, you know, it's just completely unacceptable that a black person driving from Washington, D.C. to Austin would have to drive 50 miles out of the way
Starting point is 01:04:50 to stay in a motel or go to a restaurant. Absurd and something that we didn't have to tolerate. And also think that it's extraordinarily oppressive for this one single baker in Colorado to be the target of this onslaught of litigation. Just look at the organizational power they've thrown at this man that they don't throw at massive tech monopolies,
Starting point is 01:05:09 even when they censor the left. Right. There is institutional power among very wealthy elites to go after the little guy. You know why? They understand the power of the grassroots. They understand the power of snipping the stem.
Starting point is 01:05:23 You're worried about a plant. They just cut it off at the root. They go for the little guy. They want to send a message. If you oppose us, this is what you get. Now, we have that news. The Supreme Court won't take up the case of the florist. It's the most selective libertarianism in the world.
Starting point is 01:05:35 The left is only libertarian for the big tech monopolies in every other sense they are. I love the leftist person I was on YouTube saying, but they're private companies. It's like, bro, can I go through your 10 year YouTube history of all your anti-corporate messaging and please ask you to be consistent? And also, this is just a great example of when extra abstractions go wrong. Let's just use a little bit of prudence and practical wisdom. You have a combined market capitalization value of six trillion dollars of four companies. We're really going to all of a sudden make a scale and size argument to your point, Will, that the Baker in Colorado has the same sort of impact on humanity that four companies with a $6 trillion market capitalization do that
Starting point is 01:06:16 have entire departments of thousands of employees earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that do nothing but artificial intelligence. And these are information highways. And we have laws about interstate highways. So the Chicago Skyway is a private highway. It goes from South Bend, Indiana to downtown Chicago. On the Chicago Skyway, it's owned by private bondholders. They are not allowed to put a sign that says that Republicans are not allowed to drive on this highway. Open access.
Starting point is 01:06:40 Anyone can drive on that highway. It is exactly the same with these big tech companies. These are information highways. And we have a moral right to be able to speak on them. I agree. We all agree. It's hard for a tech company to censor. I think that you really want to put the control of the censorship in the individual's hands. Like I should be able to put, I don't want to see hashtag dogs in anything on this site when I'm on it.
Starting point is 01:07:03 So I won't. I don't want to see hashtag dogs for 19 days on this site. You make it granularly. You let people kind of censor themselves granularly, and you'll find much, much better ease of access, I think. I agree with that. Yeah. Well, Ian, you have experience with moderating minds and the nightmare reality that is what
Starting point is 01:07:22 people post on these web platforms. Yeah. So to an extent, the ability to moderate is extremely important. I think if we actually saw Pandora's box open up with an unmoderated internet at this scale, people would probably just start throwing up right next to where they sit the kind of things that are posted. A lot of it is that metaphor of like when happens an injury, you notice it. You feel it. You think about it. But when everything's healthy and and happy it doesn't even cross your mind it's normal so it's same thing with like internet content if you see something vicious it it's loud and it's
Starting point is 01:07:55 in your face but if you just see normal stuff it's kind of you just kind of scroll past it what ends up happening is you know we have section 230 which addresses lewd lascivious objectionable and so there's a lot of things on the internet i think if people you know these facebook moderators for instance have like ptsd and we know we often hear about these leftists who you know will have neon plush toy safe spaces at their colleges for when someone says a naughty word or something and we laugh at the idea that they have pts they have PTSD or the journalist who claimed that firing an AR-15 gave him temporary PTSD. We laugh at that. These Facebook moderators, I actually believe it because they're looking at like snuff, murder, stuff with children.
Starting point is 01:08:34 I did it for like five years, man. It was the most. It explains it. It explains. Devastating. You want to know why I'm the way I am, Tim? Because five years, every day I'd get on and I'd look at the boost cue. And if I saw a blown open body, I'd have to say no.
Starting point is 01:08:48 If I saw a swastika, no. Well, that's different, actually. Well, it depends on how it's framed a lot of times. But I mean, there's good reason to moderate content. The problem is the people who have seized the reins of that moderation, they saw that, you know, do regular people want to see a video of a guy being murdered? No. So we need a law protecting the right to moderate.
Starting point is 01:09:12 Then someone went, hey, I could take that claim. Conservatives are objectionable and then ban all of them under the protection of exactly because I felt bad saying no to the swastika. That's like free speech. I know it's like it's like, you could say it's like a dangerous version of free speech, but I always felt weird like saying no to free speech. Well, I'll tell you this.
Starting point is 01:09:33 They love to mention, what's the guy's name? Karl Popper, was that his name? Yeah. The Paradox of Intolerance, where they have this comic where they're like, we must not tolerate intolerance
Starting point is 01:09:40 because if we do, then the intolerant take over and then stifle the rights of everybody else. And I'm like, well, there's some truth to that. Here we have conservatives, libertarians, former, you know, disaffected liberal types, the intellectual dark, whatever you want to call it, constantly being like, we will defend the free speech of, say, right wing watch, or media matters. And we do because we believe on principle, they have a right to say the things they say, They then use that speech to cause economic damage
Starting point is 01:10:07 to their political opponents and it's working. And they're gaining that ground. Culture is downstream of technology. That's for sure. Well, that's where, I mean, we actually need to toughen up defamation laws. That's a separate issue there. Like it's way, the current standard of actual mouse is way too harsh. I think we've talked about this before. We have, we have. And it is very hard to sue for defamation, but that's not necessarily the issue. I mean, think about the amount of money you need. Look at James O'Keefe and the battle he's going through. He's like, we're trying to raise a million dollars to do this.
Starting point is 01:10:36 Even when you have the ability to go to court, the cost is insane for any regular person. So, of course, you know, we talked with James on the show about the People's Defamation Defense Fund or whatever, and then they ended up launching Project Veritas Legal for that purpose. Incredible work those guys are doing. James O'Keefe is amazing. And that's probably the only way we're going to be able to do it. Again, the law is due need before.
Starting point is 01:11:01 And it's still so hard. I mean, on one hand, even if we got the law better, the money would still be a huge issue as a barrier to access to the legal system. But, yeah, I mean, it is, defamation is the most plaintiff unfriendly area of the law in basically out there. I got, I got lucky that the Daily Beast wrote about John McAfee's passing. And they said that it triggered conspiracy theories. And they called me alt-right. And I just, it's laughable that somebody would write that because there's no context for it in any capacity that I have ever said anything or been involved in any of these groups. I sent a DM to the writer and I was like, just want to let you know, like, it's, I'm not.
Starting point is 01:11:41 And he was like, oh, sorry. And he changed it. And I was like, hey, there you go. Look at that. I didn't have to do anything. It's just, he fixed it. It was great. I was like, hey, there you go. Look at that. I didn't have to do anything. It's just he fixed it. It was great. I was like, thank you very much.
Starting point is 01:11:47 I really do appreciate it. I'm thinking about moderation still and like, okay, you see an image. It's easy to say I don't want to see hashtag dogs. But you can't say I don't want to see an image of you need artificial intelligence to say, like, this is a blown open body. You don't know how to how do I say hashtag pictures? I can't. The words don't. So it makes me think, like like these sites have to moderate.
Starting point is 01:12:08 They have to moderate. The individual can't, you can't, technology's not that good. And then I think like, I want to know what you guys think, Will and Charlie, about freeing the software code of big tech companies. Because I don't think breaking these companies up or forcing them to moderate in a certain way is ethical. First of all, I don't think breaking them up is functional. As we saw with Rockefeller Standard Oil at the end of the 1800s, we broke it up into six oil companies.
Starting point is 01:12:31 He had stock in all six, became richer and more influential than before. If we did that to Facebook, we'd have Facebook Prime, we'd have Facebook Messenger, we'd have Instagram. Zuckerberg would own bits of all of them. He'd be just as powerful, if not more. So I think we need to force free the software code and give other people access to the ability to produce that technology
Starting point is 01:12:50 and then everyone can have their own type of moderation methods. Like if you want to say no to a guy, the gay couple that wants to have the writing on their cake, you can do that on your social network. But I have access to that code so I can build my own version of it and allow that. And then the writing on their cake. You can do that on your social network. But I have access to that code, so I can build my own version of it and allow that.
Starting point is 01:13:06 And then the market will decide where people go. Let's translate that into a simple question of what do you think the solution is? I don't think antitrust necessarily makes sense because who wants to use Bing, right? Yeah, antitrust in social media is a difficult one because I think they're natural monopolies, right? Like people
Starting point is 01:13:25 try and say Facebook and Twitter and YouTube are meaningful competitors. Um, YouTube I think is one place where you can actually have a meaningful competition, but Facebook and Twitter, it's very challenging because Twitter, I mean, I remember when Twitter was promoting parlor, like they let parlor trend, they don't let things, they don't want to turn, but they let parlor trend. And I think part of the issue was Twitter knows we have all the influencers. We have all the journalists. We have all the rock stars. We have everybody uses Twitter already. And that's an impermeable impermeable note. That means that competitors are trying to replicate what we're doing. They're not going to be able to, which is why
Starting point is 01:13:57 all the social media companies do something really distinct, all the big ones, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, uh, Snapchat, TikTok, et cetera. And I think because they're so big, okay, then, then we're in regulation world. Then we're in, you know, not, you know, we need some deep platform and protections, not discrimination rules. And I think it is tricky to balance the need to moderate awful content with the fact that we need to make these platforms open to make the first amendment meaningful. And so we want a world where they can moderate the really crappy stuff and
Starting point is 01:14:31 completely and stay out of politics. And it's challenging to draw that up at that up in a way that is first amendment compliant. But I think it can be done because I think it ultimately you, you think from a civil rights perspective, it's like we need to stop discrimination based on politics. But what if it becomes okay for four-year-olds to twerk? I want to talk about the Florida law, and we'll open up into that.
Starting point is 01:14:53 So in Florida, we just saw that Ron DeSantis' legislation to protect people was – what was it? Is there an injunction on it or was struck down by a federal court? It was enjoined. It was enjoined by a federal court? Enjoyed by a federal court, right? So it won't go into effect. And that shows some of the issues, right? One of the things the Florida law did was it would have prohibited Twitter from appending its notices to tweets.
Starting point is 01:15:17 And the problem with that kind of law is that's a prior restraint, right? That's the government saying to someone, you are not allowed to speak. And that's always going to be like strict scrutiny, very hard to get through. But one of the things that that case did do is it said, there's this case called Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robbins, a Supreme Court case. And in that case, you know, there was essentially a California law that allowed people to petition in shopping malls to set up petition booths or whatever. Shopping mall owner was like, whoa, I don't want that. That's a taking of my property. That's also a first amendment violation because it's compelled speech. I don't want to associate myself with these petitioners.
Starting point is 01:15:49 Supreme court said, no, you're not the speaker. You're there's no first amendment violation. If a state wants to grant someone a right to use your property to speak, if no one would associate with you speak and there's no like editorial component to it. Um,
Starting point is 01:16:04 and the court in Florida was like, this is the path to, if you wanted to regulate these companies and allow people to have a component to it um and the the court in florida was like this is the path to if you wanted to regulate these companies and allow people to have a right to speak on them you could that would be compliant you just can't you can't do something that forces twitter to speak or associates them with a speech or uh prohibits them from like appending their own speech and making their own point of view heard. What's the, Texas has a different law. And we heard from Alan Bakari that Texas's law is better. Yes. But yeah, let's get into that. What can be done, I guess?
Starting point is 01:16:33 I mean, what can be done is actually one of the things I've been proposing for a long time. You had a private right of action that says people have a right to be on these platforms. If they're wrongfully censored for lawful speech, they can have their accounts restored. But so then just lawful speech is always allowed? I mean, you could write that law, writing a law that says
Starting point is 01:16:51 you cannot kick people off of a social media platform for lawful speech, that law would be constitutional under the reasoning of this judge. But they have the ability to blacklist people, shadow ban them,
Starting point is 01:17:03 do all these things that aren't kicking them off, but you could essentially set their reach to zero or next to zero. They could say, oh, you're allowed to post, but we will never show your posts in anyone's feed because we're not obligated to. I mean, that's a possible attempt to weasel the way around it, although I think that's where you're still getting into. You're still discriminating a well a well-written law uh i think the florida law itself said any form of suppression that puts someone outside of the normal function of the service so like that's fairly obvious you can't do that but that could be part of the normal function of the service is blacklisting things that are judges are not robots the point as you mentioned of
Starting point is 01:17:39 prudence is that a judge is going to hear and say get out of here with that stupid well you say legal speech right legal speech i mean you can say the things that aren't imminent threats of violence, but are very violent. And that's legal. Social media doesn't like that because it doesn't translate in text the way it translates when you say it to someone a lot of times. Right. There will be legal challenges where judges will say it's an interesting point. This may border on something. But if there's no what criminal indictment for a threat of violence or incit, it's like it again, it's a really difficult challenge to write a law that fits. But I think it's doable. And I think, you know, there's a lot of tech people who are like, you know, loving the fact that I mean, I've read a big tech blog or the show blog and they're like, ha ha.
Starting point is 01:18:37 Ron DeSantis' law got thrown down. I'm like, I read the opinion and it kind of does lay out a path for a new law that would pass constitutional muster. Yeah, and I think the idea of speech is part of the problem. The bigger problem of why they have the ability to censor speech is they have way too much economic power. These companies are too big, and they're too diversified. And your point is a good one that breaking them up can be very tricky. It can have the adverse effect.
Starting point is 01:19:02 There is a way to do it, and Rockefeller is not the best example. The railroads are the best example. With Leland Stanford and how we use the Sherman Antitrust Act to actually be able to democratize the use of railroads, which basically allowed us to have entry into the entire western part of the United States, where Leland Stanford, who Stanford University is named after, built all the railroads and became under huge scrutiny by the trust busters of Teddy Roosevelt's ilk and Howard Taft defended him. But a different point is that there's a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this.
Starting point is 01:19:34 The right way to do this would be closer. The Microsoft case is tricky in the 90s. It slowed down Microsoft Internet Explorer. The bad way to do this would be, I think it's Bell. Is that the right? The one they always met? Yeah, they broke it up. Yeah, and that one actually didn't work.
Starting point is 01:19:52 That one had the opposite effect. But I'm of the opinion that until you restrict, and that's a big word for a conservative to use, but I just don't care because it's bad for our country, the economic domination that these companies have. And so the best offensive move, in my opinion, is Ken Paxton's lawsuit out of Texas, the Google ad lawsuit. It's really, really well written. And it goes to show how these ads are actually disenfranchising certain small businesses and they're giving certain preferential treatment to others. It's what was this like where they banned the pro-life ads? Yes, but it's even beyond that.
Starting point is 01:20:24 It's that how if you know how to word certain Google ad words, Tim's coffee shop is not going to get as high of a preference as Starbucks. That's a really good lawsuit. I mean, that story was crazy. I remember when it was like a pro-life organization tried buying ads and they got told you're violating our rules it's like this this is a scary uh a scary world where people are just where big tech can basically say certain ideas have been removed from society at the whims of mark zuckerberg and only and that's really the problem here though right is that the censorship is one aspect we wouldn't be complaining about this if it was a censor of like, oh, I own a platform in, you know, I don't know, Manhattan, New York, and like, I'm only going to allow transgenders to perform in my theater.
Starting point is 01:21:11 We'd complain about it and write an article and be like, okay, that's just one theater, right? The point is that they have so much power they've been able to create through this kind of new world of being able, in my opinion, to have a very valuable company around not really delivering, in my opinion, a correlated meaningful service with the valuation of their company. And what do I mean by that is that Facebook is selling you. They're a massive data company. That's what they are, is that they figured out how to individually mine you and sell back your data to the same 100 companies over and over and over again. Even if you don't use it.
Starting point is 01:21:46 Yeah, even if you don't use it, right? And so Apple is similar but different. They're actually in the hardware business. And so this is something that I think could go a very dangerous direction. I don't think nationalizing them is the right case. I don't think we need to turn them into public utilities. But the argument that I hear is like, well, Charlie, you want all this innovation to stop from these tech companies? Like, yeah, kind of, actually, I do. I think that they're changing our humanity way too quickly, and I don't think it's a good thing that everyone's going to be wearing Oculus
Starting point is 01:22:09 goggles in five years. In fact, I'd love to slow down their innovation. I want to preserve human beings and not be cyborgs. But you mean like the Oculus VR video games? Or do you mean like Neuralink? I mean, how about eight hours a day in goggles instead of in the real world? It's creepy, man.
Starting point is 01:22:25 People play video games too much too, for sure. I mean, we're using video games right now with these cameras. Let me tell you, I am deeply offended by this story that came out today. I was so offended. I was like flipping tables over and I was throwing things. It said, grilling sucks. Yes. You saw that trending on Twitter.
Starting point is 01:22:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like your grill is filthy. The heating element is below the food, so the fat, yeah, yeah. It was like your grill is filthy. The heating element is below the food, so the fat is dripping into it. It's starting fires. Then you're putting your dirt, your clean food onto the dirty pile. And I was like, my grill has a heating element off to the side that pulls heat down and then brings a smoky flavor from the mesquite chips that I can add to it. And it cooks my food very, very quickly all around the same time
Starting point is 01:23:08 while I'm outside in the sunshine with my friends enjoying a nice day outside because you don't want to sit inside all the time. So my point is when it comes to video games, we need to be outside. We got to get that vitamin D from the sunlight. But it seems like more and more, yeah, they want, it's like that Black Mirror episode where they all live in the cubes, where the walls were TVs. And they had avatars in the
Starting point is 01:23:31 stands at the American Idol karaoke contests. It's, and it's, there's a, it's very Huxleyan in the sense of just trying to pursue immediate pleasure and not virtue. People mention 84, 1984 a lot. Totally true.
Starting point is 01:23:46 I think we're heading towards a brave new world a lot quicker than we are in 1984. And the tech companies are the main drivers of this. They think that they are going to create this culture of pleasure. So you mentioned Brave New World. I have not read it for my sins. What about it makes you think that it's more like Brave New World? So if I can talk a little bit about it. So Aldous Huxley was one of five kind of dystopian thinkers that were contemporaries. Churchill was one of them. Arthur Kessler was one. He wrote Darkness at Noon, which is one of the best dystopian books all about the Soviet show
Starting point is 01:24:20 trials. George Orwell and then C.S. Lewis, who kind of dabbled in this kind of dystopian literature a little bit. I'm a big C.S. Lewis fan. So Aldous Huxley got a formal first from Oxford. He was super smart, and he wrote Brave New World, which is all kind of about this idea of the over-excesses of commercial society. So they measure time as years after Henry Ford. So Aldous Huxley made a provocative argument that the beginning of the assembly line was the death of humanity, right? And so they attributed positive characteristics
Starting point is 01:24:51 as saying you're being very Fordly. They'd call it Fordliness. And so in Brave New World, there's this famous incantation, right, that is repeated over and over again in people's sleep that says everybody belongs to everybody. And so in this dystopian future, you walk around this thing called the SOMA, S-O-M-A, which is a pill that is not addictive but gives you immediate and total gratified pleasure, kind of similar to this. And then the work, you go to work every day, the work is not hard, it's not arduous, it's just enough to make you feel like you did something even though you're doing nothing. And then during a very pre-plplanned hour there is unrestricted group sex that happens every single night and so the whole overarching i'm not going to spoil the end of the book the whole idea is
Starting point is 01:25:34 the death of the individual of monogamy and this idea of the ultimate value in huxley's world is pleasure everything is about how you feel and pursuing a dopamine rush. He may have got some of the details wrong, but it's already happened. Right. And so where I think Huxley was not as clairvoyant as Orwell is I think Huxley underestimated
Starting point is 01:25:56 the role of technology. Orwell, I think, was kind of creepily prophetic about telescreen and this idea of double speak and double think and new speak, double think and new speak and total continual monitorance and the psychology of a tyrant. So if you kind of blend 84 and Brave New World, we're living through this a lot of different ways.
Starting point is 01:26:15 And I think the tech companies need to be crushed because they are destroying our humanity and they're trying to make people pursue pleasure and not virtue. You know, we're talking to Ben Stewart. He was on the show recently and he was saying that it feels like some powerful entity is constructing itself through us. It's an interesting idea that it seems like everything we're doing, as you mentioned, destroys the individual. It's almost like whether it's intentional or not, the actions of humanity today are dominoes being knocked over that will create some kind of artificial intelligence and then ultimately result in us being mindless drones or eventually just
Starting point is 01:26:50 dying out. Yeah. And so this is this idea of the collectivization of society, right? We're already kind of succumbing to this of the three terms I hate the most, which is experts, extremism, and public health, right? So those three things are always used as kind of conversation stoppers. And the biggest one, of course, is public health. Not personal health, right? No, but public health. I was going to say, you know what, though? Come on, man.
Starting point is 01:27:16 Look, we all grew up. We've seen Star Trek. Every kid. Every kid. Here we go. No, no, no. Every single kid just wished as they watched star trek that they could be in the borg so resistance is futile i'm kidding nobody wanted to be the borg the board was the
Starting point is 01:27:35 nightmare that's right so i'm a big star trek fan i own it people make fun of me whatever they already do that so um i'm a big next generation fan. I think Jean-Luc Picard is the ultimate stoic in leadership. I have a whole shtick on this. We can explore it if you want. Jean-Luc Picard was all about duty and responsibility. He never told a lie. He was all about the broader mission. Gene Roddenberry was the creator of the idea of Star Trek.
Starting point is 01:28:03 He always was trying to say that we need to... The ideal is a post-commercial society. You didn't own anything. There was no currency. And basically... In the Federation? Right, in the Federation, right? Well, on the particular mission, right?
Starting point is 01:28:16 So the idea of the Starship Enterprise... Actually, Earth. Let me even correct that. On Earth, in the Star Trek narrative, they had gotten rid of private property. They have gotten rid of commerce. I don't think that's true. Okay, you could correct that. On Earth, in the Star Trek narrative, they had gotten rid of private property. They have gotten rid of commerce. I don't think that's true. Okay.
Starting point is 01:28:28 You could correct me. I think the issue is the writers wanted to create that ideal of a future with no property, but that broke the motive function of humanity. And so what ends up happening is you see depictions of beachfront properties. And you see in Deep Space Nine, for instance, Latinum was heavily traded. I understand Deep Space Nine was working with different civilizations, were coming and going. But even in The Next Generation, Federation credits are used to exchange between the Federation and other civilizations. So currency existed within the Federation. Sure. They had some kind of.
Starting point is 01:29:06 That could be right. The point I'm making though is. Roddenberry created this idea. That you can have what you want when you want it. Food will appear as you want it. You can go in the holodeck. But I think he actually makes the best point. For flawed human nature.
Starting point is 01:29:20 Which is against the anti-commercial thought of Rousseau. Which is that we do bad things because of our society, because we always want things. And that's what gives us our greed. And if that actually was true, there'd be no drama in Star Trek. Instead, they still have romantic relationships. They still lie. They still cheat.
Starting point is 01:29:40 They still steal. The point I'm getting at, which is a contrarian point, is that in Gene Roddenberry to try to create this idea of a futuristic utopia, he actually says even if we get rid of all the needs, wants, and interests of the individual, you're still going to have tension and drama amongst fellow human beings or human beings and other species. I love, too, the left likes to say Star Trek is communism. It's not. It's literally not. It's an idealized post- Technocommunism. Is it technocomm is communism. It's not. It's literally not. It's an idealized post-
Starting point is 01:30:06 Technocommunism. Is it technocommunism? It's not. It's idealized post-scarcity classical liberalism. There are people in charge. There's military hierarchy. Huge hierarchy. Yeah, huge hierarchy.
Starting point is 01:30:17 There's Admiral Picard in the new Picard series. There are choices people can make, places they can go. It's not that everything is necessarily free. It may be because different writers wrote different things and different episodes have different elements, but very much so, it is not communist. There are things of value. There are artifacts. Picard owns a winery. But it's not total post-scarcity because they run the enterprise off of what, dilithium crystals?
Starting point is 01:30:42 Dilithium. But can they 3D print dilithium in their machines? No, they can't. So that's... Right, right. It's post-scarcity in terms of basic human needs, but very much so.
Starting point is 01:30:51 That's right. There are rarities. Picard's an archaeologist. There are rare artifacts that he wants. He's gifted an artifact in one episode and he's like,
Starting point is 01:30:59 I can't believe this is given to me. Wow, you can't get these. You can't make them. It's like an old artifact from an ancient civilization. Very much so and and rarities and value exists so reduce scarcity food scarcity and shelter for for human for human sustenance right all of that scarcity disappeared in that there was no longer a factor the writers in order to make the show
Starting point is 01:31:21 function cross continuity with the other episode, other series, money needed to exist. Because it was post-scarcity. Food and shelter was post-scarcity, but only if you had dilithium. Because if you didn't have the energy... Earth was fine. But Earth must have been running also off of dilithium, I would imagine. Dilithium crystals are for the warp core reactors. For
Starting point is 01:31:39 general purpose, they had renewable energy systems. They're retaining energy from the vacuum. And you make a really good point, though, is that the three words that is most repeated by picard would make him closer marcus aurelius than to you know an egalitarian leader which is make it so yeah i mean that that is the most clear way that you can command anyone not like hey do you think this is a good idea instead of make it so the the idea of whenever you talk to a communist and say, that's not real communism, right? What is real communism? They say it is everyone living
Starting point is 01:32:10 equally in full ownership, blah, blah, blah. Egalitarianism. Yeah, but when you bring up dictatorship, they say that's the deviation. Communism isn't supposed to have the people who control everything and are the wealthy elites. Picard has his own ready room on the bridge.
Starting point is 01:32:26 What gives him this luxury? I think it was Nicolas Gomez de Vila that said every equal society is divided into two parts. There's always got to be somebody making everybody else equal. Yeah, and there was a great episode where
Starting point is 01:32:41 Q, he's this omnipotent entity. Not that Q. I don't think so. Just so everyone knows, Q is like a divine figure in Star Trek. He's part of the continuum of ascended entities. Wow, so it's not the 17th letter? I think it's the same Q. Yes, yes, but anyway.
Starting point is 01:32:59 What if there was a connection? Picard gets the OQ. It's him causing all our problems. Picard gets the opportunity to go back and save his heart because he said, if I was just not brash in my youth, I never would have lost my heart getting stabbed in a bar fight. He has a mechanical heart. And so he goes back, changes history. And then when he returns to the present, he's a lowly science officer, a low-ranking officer of some sort. And when he goes and he talks to Riker, he says,
Starting point is 01:33:26 do I have what it takes to be leadership? Riker says, you've always been scared to take the risk necessary to do what needed to be done. So honestly, no, I don't think you'll ever make it. And then Picard goes, enough Q, send me back. I get it. The point was you had to earn something. You were told if you didn't work hard enough and do what you had to do, you wouldn't earn it and you weren't good enough. And that's what Michael Malice says is the big question that I think Malice says is what determines whether someone is on the right or the left. Have you ever heard him ask this? No. Let me ask you the question.
Starting point is 01:33:56 Do you think that some people are better than others? Of course. Well, do I think they're better at things than others or do they have more inherent worth than others? I just said do you think some people are better than others? Plain and simple. Yeah, there's a couple different ways to interpret this. But yes, generally, I think there's a hierarchy of... It's a broad question.
Starting point is 01:34:14 It could mean a lot of things. Michael mentioned that on the left, the leftists will say, no, of course not. Or they'll hem and haw and say, well, I mean, but people on the new right will just be like, yeah, of course. The only asterisk I would put is that one human being at birth does not have an inherent value over another. Right, right, right, right. But if you were to say, are some people better than others, there's a bunch of reasons why the answer is yes. Some people are better at basketball than others. Of course.
Starting point is 01:34:39 Some people are better at math than others. Yeah, but they could be worse at something as well. Exactly. So like, are they better? Yes. Yes. And are they worse? Yes.
Starting point is 01:34:49 So the point is, it's not an incomplete question. It's just a broad question. I didn't say in every respect. I didn't say, are some people better than others in every single circumstance? But if you're better at basketball than another person but worse at math, then is there like a total of worseness? So you're not better, even though you are at some. You're better than them. You don't need to add qualifiers to the statement that if I say, are some people better than others, we're not getting specific. The fact of the matter is everyone is better than everyone
Starting point is 01:35:16 else for some reason or other reason. The point is, yes, quite simply. Charlie's better taking notes than I am. I don't even take notes. He's great at it. Thank you. And this goes back to the idea what he's really getting at is do you think there's a hierarchy of existence and we as conservatives do we think some things are more beautiful than others objectively more beautiful we think that some things are more desirable and you know better for society um they think that it's all just kind of a subjective exploration who's to say that that's better than that you're making me think of the board like is is the board did human okay in the history of star trek there was a war right world war three happened and then
Starting point is 01:35:55 this great federation came out of that after sort of i mean i mean long after there's a lot that happened there was a big war there was a period where authoritarian governments ruled by drugging their soul their police officers into being high all the time there's a lot to go okay that happened in nazi germany and uh you know so what happens is uh zephyrin zephyrin cochran yes he invented the warp drive uh yeah and it was like a fairly low uh power low like low class operation, basically. And then the Vulcans took notice and then said, oh, we better talk to these, you know, fellas. So we could talk about the Vulcans for a while.
Starting point is 01:36:32 Oh, yeah. Do humans evolve at some point into or build an AI that then becomes the Borg? That's very historicist of you to believe that human beings are always on a pathway to the supermen. Eventually, we will eventually become the Superman. I reject such German philosophy. I haven't seen Picard.
Starting point is 01:36:52 So, spoilers for those that haven't seen Picard. Is this not like a Paramount login or some crazy thing? I reject the premise. I don't want to watch it because I was really worried. I was like, I know what they're going to do. Actually, it was pretty good and it's very different from The Next Generation. But it's basically fan service for the fans of TNG where everybody makes an appearance.
Starting point is 01:37:10 Not everybody. But Brent Spiner's in it. And you're like, how does he do that? He actually plays Data. And I was surprised because he's old and Data is an android. But anyway, I digress. Spoiler alerts for everybody who watched or who hasn't watched. So in the show, in Nemesis, which is one of the –
Starting point is 01:37:25 I think was Nemesis the last movie? I never saw Nemesis. The last TNG movie I think was Nemesis. Data sacrifices himself to save Picard. The storyline of Picard is that someone was able to take the positronic neurons from I think – what was the stupid data called? There was Lore and then there was Bee or whatever. I can't remember the name. Testing my Star Trek trivia.
Starting point is 01:37:47 So they start making new, much, much better synthetic beings. And that's basically the premise that, yes, a superior humanoid with synthetics that eats, drinks, and lives but can calculate like data is created and it's a threat to biological existence.
Starting point is 01:38:05 And that's the Borg? No. no oh it's just a superior synthetic it is it is like a human it's the superpowers right right right the superman like in like in star trek data can calculate and they'll be like what's 57 trillion times you know 47.369 and he's like the answer to that is so these new synthetics are super strong super fast can do all the calculations. Are they carbon-based? Can they give birth? I don't think so, but they easily self-replicate. That's kind of the point, I guess. Self-replication.
Starting point is 01:38:33 And so there is a group of Romulans that are like, this new life form is a threat to the existence of us, the old life forms. And the Borg are different. The Borg are biological, that incorporate mechanical parts into their structure and then eventually connected their brains on what I would consider to be like an advanced form of Twitter where all their thoughts are heard in rapid succession and then it forms a unifying collective mind. This is an interesting question, which is that some would say yes. I mean, if you play out Darwin and Hegel, they would believe that human evolution is ever progressing. That if you look at the historicist view of the world, which is replicated in this narrative that you talked about, they think that human nature will get better and that eventually we will reach that ultimate level of the Superman. I reject that premise obviously yeah it's categorically it's it's it's just wrong i think nature is the norm i think that we we are such minuscule tiny threat pieces of this universe that the idea of humans would ascend to some
Starting point is 01:39:38 you know yeah without resistance you like a tree without wind will fall over and die you need resistance to grow so i would imagine as we evolve and become stronger, we're going to seek new resistance to continue to grow. Evolution is not linear. What pressure is being exerted upon humans to make them smarter, stronger, faster? Nothing. In fact, evolutionary pressure right now is making humans stupider and weaker. It's not even necessarily devolution. It's just evolution.
Starting point is 01:40:05 Mike Judge said it best. Those who procreate the most are being rewarded by nature. But like some, because some people are building critical thinking skills, it seems like. Some people are learning empathy and gaining psychic power, for all I know. To understand evolution, you need to ask who are procreating the most and why. And then you can make predictions about what's going to happen in the next several generations. There is nothing to suggest that we are being forced to be smarter, stronger, and faster. What evolutionary pressure would result in that? Like if a bunch of
Starting point is 01:40:36 aliens came and started hunting and killing humans, the fastest, smartest, and strongest humans would survive the extinction event, have a bunch of babies, and the babies would be much stronger. That would be an evolutionary event. That's not happening right now. We're gorging. Well, I mean, actually, maybe it is a lot of dumb people gorging on fast food and trash and not exercising and decaying in their, you know, in their homes and their lounge chairs or believing that because the earth is melting, they're not going to have kids at all. So the one thing Mike Judge missed is that something we absolutely do see is that conservatives have more kids than liberals.
Starting point is 01:41:07 And today, liberals are even less likely to have kids. So one thing I've brought up in the past, Pew Research shows that Gen Z is slightly more conservative than millennials, but only by a tiny, tiny amount and only in some areas, meaning they're very much like millennials, slightly more conservative. A lot of people on the right seem to think that means the right is winning the culture war. You're not winning the culture war. You're winning the breeding war. In the early 2000s, a report was done, several reports showing that liberals on average were having about 1.7 kids and conservatives were having 2.02 kids, which meant in 20 years or in 18 years from that study, there would be a bunch of voting people and slightly more conservative than liberal.
Starting point is 01:41:47 If that trend continues, the future absolutely will be religious conservative. Maybe not Christian, maybe it'll be Muslim, but... Oh, that's assuming that conservative parents will have conservative children, but as we were talking about with Ben Stewart, technology kind of hijacks and leaps evolution. So like a child of a conservative can go on the internet and have their evolution shifted
Starting point is 01:42:07 and become a new, you know, have not even just the internet. It's also our public schools, you know, go back to the CRT discussion. Just because we win this battle on CRT doesn't mean we aren't sending our children to the schools with run by people who thought CRT was a wonderful idea. So that is, I don't think necessarily changes the equation. Because some conservative children can be indoctrinated and turned to the left, then they're still less likely to have kids after the fact. So it will effectively have a pull factor on conservative children, but the end result is always going to be slightly more
Starting point is 01:42:38 conservatives existing because they're having more kids. So you think it's the state of mind that is resulting in less children? I understand that. Well, I mean, AOC, I think it was, she said, I'm scared to have a kid because of climate change. There was an article that came out recently saying having a child is the most destructive thing you can do. Conservatives are like, I don't care about that.
Starting point is 01:42:58 I'm going to have kids. And they do. You should have lots of kids. Yeah. It's a moral good. And one of my favorite stories in terms of the scientific debates is always about the great horse manure crisis of New York. Are you familiar with this? No.
Starting point is 01:43:14 Before the invention of the automobile, there was a great fear that as New York expanded and horses were used to move goods in and out, the city streets would be just covered in horse crap everywhere because, well, more city means more horses. What would they do about it? They never had an answer. They never needed one. The automobile was invented and the horse was phased out and it didn't occur. So what we need to make sure of, I'm scared of the left for one reason. I love Star Trek. I'd love to have a Star Trek future. The left are Luddites. They may claim to not be, but their worldview is inherently that we will never improve technology. And we must stop what we're doing right now to preserve existence as it is or revert to some lesser state, you know, like more attuned with, I don't want to say attuned with nature
Starting point is 01:44:03 because you will own nothing and you will be happy, right? They're very much like climate change means we don't want to say attuned with nature because you will own nothing and you will be happy, right? They're very much like climate change means we don't have these things. But my worldview is very optimistic in terms of our ability to tap into technologies that have always found ways to help save humanity and adapt. And I don't believe we've reached the apex of technology. You know, the famous patent officer, whatever his name was back in the 1899 he was like everything that can be invented has been invented he said that because he was getting such stupid patents he was like this is insane you can't invent anything and then some dude walks out and goes yo charged electromagnetic spectrum boom what happens if we like in the next five years, break through Eureka? Eureka, some dude at CERN runs out and throws the papers in the air and discovers anti-gravity.
Starting point is 01:44:49 Then all of a sudden we're colonizing every single planet we can find. I mean, think about the fact that they discovered electric... I don't know how long it was between electricity and the atomic bomb, but it really was not that long a period of time. Bro, bro, bro. The discovery of... The invention of flight and going to the moon was a few decades. Yeah. You're more optimistic than I am.
Starting point is 01:45:10 I think the left is divided into two categories. The type of leftist you're describing is not the leftist in charge. The person in charge right now is embracing technological innovation and giving more and more power to a smaller group of scientists that know what they're doing. It's interesting you mentioned the Luddites. This is a hard argument to make, but there's a lot more nuance to the Luddites than actually people realize. They had their livelihood being destroyed,
Starting point is 01:45:33 and they were very worried about technological innovation. We use that as a pejorative, and that's probably right. But to be honest, I could see myself smashing my phone in the next five years. I think that these little smooth screens are doing awful things for humanity. So when I went on my honeymoon really quick with my wife in the next five years. I think that these little smooth screens are doing awful things for humanity. So when I went on my honeymoon really quick with my wife in the Caribbean,
Starting point is 01:45:49 the most beautiful sunsets you could imagine, to my right was a whole family looking down at their screens at the moment of the sunset. To my left was a family looking at their screens. I thought to myself, there's something deeply unhealthy about this. And so you could be right.
Starting point is 01:46:01 We might be entering into this wonderful phase of where technology will improve our life. My fear, to just disagree a little bit, is that I think technology is currently controlling us. I don't see that going to change. How extreme were the Luddites? Did they say no irrigation? That's a good question. I mean, again, I actually read a book about that many years ago.
Starting point is 01:46:24 Tim might actually know it better than me. I wouldn't know. Because the technology controlling is like irrigation is a technology, but without it. It's a methodology, not a technology. Well, it's also a form of tech. It's a methodology. I mean, an ax is a piece of technology. It's a technology.
Starting point is 01:46:37 It is, but that's a physical object. You can't irrigate without it. It's like the evolution of technology. What you do with technology is also technology. Sure. So you need to build tools, which are technology, to carve dirt, which is a technology. I mean, you can patent methods, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:46:52 I think the danger of this new type of technology that we're coming into is I don't think we quite can understand what it does to the human being. We mentioned it with Ben Stewart. It is a bunch of humans who don't realize they're creating some powerful new kind of entity
Starting point is 01:47:08 and we're mindlessly building it. We're teaching it the reCAPTCHA stuff. That's all just programming it to see and think. We're building its components. Skynet will take over and now let's go to Superchats.
Starting point is 01:47:18 Yes. If you haven't already smashed that like button, please subscribe to this channel and go to timcast.com. Become a member. You know, let me just say something. We're going to have members only segments. We do the Monday through Thursday, so there won't be one tonight. But when you're a member, that's what you get access to, right? We're going to be adding a new show very soon, which is our paranormal
Starting point is 01:47:36 mysteries, cults, murders. You will get that as a member. It'll just be there. So we're going to double your value as a member. You're going to get twice as much. And we're going to keep doing that. Every time we get a new member, we're going to keep adding more and more shows, more content, more journalists. That's the goal, baby. So eventually that, that 10 bucks a month, if you get one show for it, eventually it'll be, you'll get like a whole big old Netflix kind of thing.
Starting point is 01:47:57 That's, that's our aim. But let's read some of these super chats. So again, smash that like button. Let's see what we got going on. Have you seen it? Podcast says, Tim, love what you're doing for America and the culture war. Did you guys see America the motion picture? It is easily
Starting point is 01:48:10 the most historically accurate portrayal of American history we've ever seen. Anybody see it? No? Unless it's Dinesh's. I think that may be what they're talking about. I could be wrong. You want to look it up? I think it was Dinesh's from a couple years ago. Maybe so. Alright. somebody just mentioned that sebastian lee says jank defended zoophilia
Starting point is 01:48:31 oh that's uh he did really it's an old video i don't know what his stance now can you can you enlighten me it could be out of context that's why i'm not like that the video on the on the drag kids i watched the full thing and to see what he had to say and what the context was but there's a video where he said something about legalizing acts where you are allowed to pleasure an animal. I don't know the full context. I want to go deep. Let's save it for when we turn the cameras off. I don't want to go deep.
Starting point is 01:48:56 Nope. No, no. Why? No. All right. Let's see. Mike, Mr. Hunt, first name Mike, says, Mr. Kirk, would you consider advocating for a new secessionist movement? It's my personal opinion.
Starting point is 01:49:10 That's the only way to save America. We can't keep complaining. We need action. I get this question a lot. We just did a whole podcast on this if anyone wants to check it out. I think we're already living through a secession movement. I call it slow motion secession where people are already disconnecting themselves from the land or the region that they were in, and they're not looking back. They have smashed the
Starting point is 01:49:30 rearview mirror and they say to New York City, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, you don't represent me anymore. And we haven't seen this level of movement of people, this dramatic, in a very long time. It reminds me of the 1850s, where people feel as if they're not living in the same country as their fellow countrymen. I feel that way when I go to New York City or I go to Los Angeles. Would I advocate for it? No. This is something that, again, a lot of the journalists, they get way too hyper-aggressive when you ever mention the secession word, when in reality, it's the other side, I think, that's seceding from us. They're the ones that are saying that our documents are invalid.
Starting point is 01:50:05 The Constitution has no sort of implication that our flag is terrible and racist. And so, no, I would not advocate for it. There is no good way to pull that off. But I think we're already living through that in almost slow motion. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're not the federal government of 2021 is very different than the federal government of 1860 in terms of its size and its power and its ability. I mean, we forget that the Southern states literally walked into federal armories and just took all the guns.
Starting point is 01:50:31 That's not something that would be able to, yeah, you could do now. Um, that said, yeah, I think, I mean,
Starting point is 01:50:37 you look at something like California decided to stop funding state travel to like 17 states or something like that. They're definitely more inclined to it. I always joke about how we just need to strip california of its electoral votes and that would solve most of our problems there you go all right hondo says blackstone purchased ccg certified collectibles group which included cgc for graded comics first they come for your homes then your comics or maybe they're trying to control culture because comic books have long influenced young men. Superheroes, the morals of the hero,
Starting point is 01:51:08 Batman and Superman, I will not kill no matter what. We were talking, I think, yeah, a couple days ago about Blackstone and how they're taking control of the DNA. They're buying up like 2023, or what was one of the... Is it Blackstone or Blackrock?
Starting point is 01:51:20 This is very confusing to me. It used to be, I think Blackrock was the first company. Then in the 80s or something, one of the guys split off and started Blackstone with some BlackRock's money. They're two different companies. One is run by Steve Schwartzman. The other one is run by, I don't know.
Starting point is 01:51:37 So I just found out Blackstone bought the parent company of Bumble, the dating app. Oh, yeah. Whitney Wolf started that. They got your DNA and they got your dating? Is that what it is? Apparently. Hey, that's great. Eugenics, here we come. The bigger problem here, the libertarians will love this, even though I'm libertarian on almost nothing, is all the cheap dollars floating around.
Starting point is 01:51:52 It only hyper-incentivizes these massive firms to do merger and acquisitions that they otherwise would not be compelled to do. It's almost like they're like fallacious acquisitions because it's like funny money. They're using fake. That's correct. Yeah, because it's like funny money. They're using fake. That's correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Fed money. And so it's because of our relaxed interest rate policies and the creation of dollar bills that have no such backing and value that basically these funds are then entrusted with these pension fund dollars. And they say, well, what do we do with this?
Starting point is 01:52:19 I don't think that they should have the sort of magnanimous type power that they have. You know, I could see as we revolted from the British for taxation without representation, that this mass printing of money could be considered a form of taxation, and that it's not representing the people. It's giving it to Blackstone. Yes. That's exactly what we talk about, like, every night. That's what they do.
Starting point is 01:52:39 Especially when Luke's here. I mean, this is the one thing I would agree with Luke on, which is the monetary policy of our country is rigged specifically for the financial ruling class and to destroy middle-income Americans. Yeah. All right, let's read some more. We got JD. He says, your video about China earlier today was very concerning. My father and I frequently talk about how the CCP is our biggest threat. We both feel it's only a matter of time until war breaks out.
Starting point is 01:53:03 You may have seen the reporting that's come out 119 estimated nuclear missile silos being constructed. Satellite research found China was doing this. And China has begun sending troops to the border with India and India has been responding in kind. So the Chinese state media is saying that the US is provoking India and China into a conflict so that they could be potentially weakened and then war would break out. And yeah, maybe. I don't know. Maybe it's all propaganda.
Starting point is 01:53:28 I don't know. Have you heard the Falun Gong? Aren't they like Northeast Indian and up in the Himalayas and the Chinese were eradicating them or something in the like 20 years they've been doing it? Yeah, they don't. They want to eliminate any ideologies opposed or at odds with the CCP. It's not the Chinese. Yeah, it's the CCP. Right.
Starting point is 01:53:44 Yeah. Yeah. Trent Lomelino says, I want to say I do like Will, but loathe lawyers. Well, I'm glad to be the exception to the rule. There you go.
Starting point is 01:53:53 I agree. I like Will, and I do not like lawyers. There you go. Fair enough. Sweet Lou says, Charlie Kirk, the man that keeps me level-headed
Starting point is 01:54:00 and counter Tim's blackpilling, JK, I've been waiting for this visit to happen. Ian, I love you, but you're crazy man that is true all right wait what is it all right Dr. Chocolate
Starting point is 01:54:15 says my little brother is majoring in journalism at UNC and I'm concerned he might be indoctrinated by Nicole Hannah Jones now that she has tenure he already leans pretty left. How can I help prevent that? Oh, no. Seize North Carolina's endowment.
Starting point is 01:54:29 There you go. Intervention. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm one of the more outspoken critics of the college cartel. I didn't go to college, and I encourage people to do that if they can, meaning not going to college. And so how do you, I mean, why are you studying journalism would be a good place to start. Yeah, that's the biggest scam. Go find stories.
Starting point is 01:54:49 And I mean, journalism in its purest sense, which you know very well, is just challenging powerful people. That's basically what it is. I would say it's most rudimentary is collecting and disseminating information, challenging no one, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, sure.
Starting point is 01:55:03 I guess what's the difference between journalism and communication i true journalism i think is seeking and trying to reveal and trying to go places where other people wouldn't and in its purest form we don't have journalism because the titans that run our country are basically unchallenged by the media and and sorry one thing you said something we need to put these journalists out of business. Well, instead of buying yachts and airplanes, billionaires buy newspapers. And that's the new trend. I would say continue to have empathy for your brother and listen to him, and he'll continue to have respect for you. And then you'll be able to work things out. You'll
Starting point is 01:55:38 be friends in the future. That's true. Don't blow up your family over it. Yeah. Journalism is public intelligence gathering. That's what it's supposed to to be it's supposed to be that a journalist works in the intelligence sector they collect they find secrets they communicate with sources and then they give it to the public so the public can better know what to do with their lives you then have private intelligence which does the same thing but then sells it to the highest bidder there's many private intelligence firms there's also public intelligence firms in the sense that they're like government regulated and secret but journalism is basically like i learn a secret about evil corporations and military actions. I bestow it to the people to do what they will with it.
Starting point is 01:56:11 Private intelligence organizations, I think Stratfor is one of them. They collect information and then sell it to wealthy individuals who can then make moves in the stock market and international investments before anyone realizes what's happening. Do you consider what Snowden did journalism? Nope. Snowden did not review the documents that he was leaking. That's right. He didn't know what a lot of them were. And I'm very critical of that.
Starting point is 01:56:35 There's a difference between a whistleblower and a leaker. So he did whistleblow in a certain sense. He knew that there were some things in the NSA stuff that needed to be released. But he ultimately just took a bunch of random stuff and dumped it. And that's leaking. Kind of.
Starting point is 01:56:47 I mean, but you think like he went to, he didn't just dump it on the internet, like purely like Asante. He went to Greenwald. Still leaking. I mean, but sort of relying on Greenwald's journalism to vet. And then went to The Guardian, The New York Times, and a bunch of outlets. But didn't he leak it outside of that? I could be wrong. I think he went to the story with Greenwald.
Starting point is 01:57:05 Some of it got leaked somehow. I'm not sure. Yeah, I remember that there was like a huge data dump in addition to the story. I think for the most part, all of the documents haven't even been released as of yet. But I will say there was one instance where there was a huge... One of the documents wasn't redacted properly.
Starting point is 01:57:22 And this created serious problems and concerns. And Snowden didn't review the documents. He redacted properly and uh this created serious problems and concerns and snowden didn't review the documents he just trusted that the the journalists would do the right thing i guess and that's leaking not whistleblowing as years have gone by i've grown in admiration for the broader point he made i think he made a lot of mistakes i also in my opinion i'm not a huge fan of being a pretend a permanent asylum seeker. I think that there's a moral claim to say owning up
Starting point is 01:57:50 to the actions you do. I could see it both ways. But the only reason we believe Tucker Carlson's monologue the other night is because Edward Snowden. That's true. It was the only reason Tucker was taken seriously. And James Clapper was never prosecuted for lying under oath about exactly what Snowden revealed. That's exactly right.
Starting point is 01:58:05 I'm not sympathetic to any claim to prosecute Snowden in a world where Clapper walks free. Yeah, absolutely. All right, we got one for you, Charlie. Yuvon says, Charlie seems to have changed his stance on stamping green cards to diplomas since 2019. Why is that? Boy, if people are never allowed to clarify. You know, it's been interesting throughout the last couple of years, really diving deep into Russell Kirk and what it means to be a conservative.
Starting point is 01:58:32 And in the issue of immigration in particular, and I've called for a total moratorium of immigration into the country, the predominant orthodoxy in conservative circles in like 13, 14, 15, and 16 was more people the better, like kind of this neoliberal belief. And obviously in the last 18 months, we've seen the extremes of mass immigration through economic terms and cultural terms. I also think it's a very important thing that we can say that people in public life can grow on certain issues and then say, hey, you know, I've actually dived deeper into certain literature and I've seen the kind of consequences and ramifications of this. And I think that there is this like inflexible, there's the inflexibility amongst some critics where they're like, well, Charlie, you held a belief that was different. Like, well, correct. I'm happy to explain how that happened.
Starting point is 01:59:25 And I will also finally complete the point that look how much the world has changed in the last two years, right? Circumstances have changed beyond anything we could have ever imagined. Also, just one point. How old are you, Charlie? You're like- Right. Okay.
Starting point is 01:59:38 So do you hold the same beliefs? Like, I'm 35. I know the beliefs I held when I was eight years ago are nothing even close to what I hold right now. Bro, like three years ago, I was like, I think there's some reasonable gun control we can act if we have a rational conversation. And then now, two weeks ago, I'm outside with my Barrett M82 firing 50 BMG at a steel target. People change, you know? And you should be able to admit when you say something that was stupid. And I didn't probably think that through as much as I should have.
Starting point is 02:00:02 What was it exactly? You thought green card, if someone gets gets their degree like a foreigner gets their degree in the united states that they should not get a green card no so it was kind of this belief it was an overly idealistic belief that that mass immigration is nothing but a net positive for the country right and it was this idea that we're going to be able to win the argument through American prosperity and economic growth at all costs, right? We're not fully being able to grasp and see the totality of, hey, what about an American college graduate that goes to Caltech and graduates with $60,000 in debt? Why should he be disenfranchised for a person from India who's willing to come do that job for half as much? And again, that quote is not an incorrect quote.
Starting point is 02:00:48 I said it. It's taken a little bit out of context, but I'll own up to it because I think that's important. But in the totality of kind of the idea of immigration, we need to come from this perspective of what is immigration and is it good for your nation, right? And if it doesn't serve the betterment of our fellow countrymen first and foremost, then we should reconsider our immigration policies altogether. I love the old video from Ben Shapiro where he says, if the waters are rising, you can just sell your home or whatever. That's like it was a really long time ago.
Starting point is 02:01:19 It was dumb. But then that H-bomber guy made a really funny video where you see a wall and you hear grunting, and then he breaks through the wall with a sledgehammer, and he's like, just one simple problem, Ben. Sell the houses to who? F-ing Aquaman. Actually, a funny video. I think part of Ben's success especially is that he's able to roll with the memes, and it doesn't affect him. He laughs about it. Ben Shapiro destroys with logic and facts or whatever there's one recently that they're running they're memeing on where he said something about why don't
Starting point is 02:01:48 the left why doesn't the left just ban crime and they're acting like he was stupid for saying it but they're stupid for not understanding his point they're like we're gonna ban guns okay well that doesn't stop the fact that criminals have guns and are committing crimes in the first place how does adding more crimes to the crime the people who are already willing willing to commit crimes change anything anyway let's read some more super chats keith mccracken says hey tim i love when you talk about the comforts of air conditioning i'm sorry of conditioning air i was convinced by a family friend to go to trade school for hvac and it's a trade i'm not seeing millennials in fun fact refrigerant is compound that I able to be condensed and turn into vapor continuously. Is able.
Starting point is 02:02:27 Is able. To be condensed. Well, is a compound that is able to be condensed. We got geothermal heating and cooling in this house. Good stuff. It's extremely cost effective. It's extremely cheaper to use. And you don't run into any situation where during a heat wave, your AC can't handle it and it gets hot in your house no matter what you do.
Starting point is 02:02:44 Nah, it runs that heat straight underground baby it's great it's you know getting rid of that heat all right um let's see what do we got here we'll find some um john s says i'm a full member now because you had candace on but now i'm just throwing money at you because you have charlie on but seriously love all you guys and gals. Love to listen to everyone's opinion. Ian and Lids, even it all out. Awesome. Wonderful. Thank you. Oh, hey, man.
Starting point is 02:03:09 I'm a gorilla. I'm a gorilla, says, oh, snap, Charlie is the man. Keep fighting the good fight, Tim. And you are kind of getting conservative. It's okay. I went the same way. No, I think I've always been fairly moderate. I will say I've been getting more libertarian.
Starting point is 02:03:22 And I love it. The conservatives don't like when I say this, but my political compass is actually further left and libertarian than it's ever been. Yeah. Yeah. It's mostly just more libertarian. Just so you know, in the hero arc of Tim Pool, you will eventually be. Yes, yes, yes.
Starting point is 02:03:40 However, I will predict that, yes, Tim Pool will maybe in 10 years be conservative. You know why? You guys will have become far right, been banned. And then I will be the furthest right. The Overton window will have moved so significantly. Yeah. I mean, look at my opinions on, say, like segregated schools and graduation ceremonies has never changed. In 2014, I made a video. I think it's 2014 on YouTube.
Starting point is 02:04:02 Maybe it's 2015 where I'm like, why are they doing separated graduation ceremonies for people based on race? That's a bad thing. They called me a left. They called me a liberal back then. They called me liberal when I said that. Two years later, I was a centrist. Two years later, the media is calling me right wing. It's interesting.
Starting point is 02:04:16 I'm thinking about the pendulum swinging, the Overton window. If you're on the pendulum as it swings, then everything on the right is going to get further to the right, further to the right. But if you're out of the system watching the pendulum swing back and forth, it becomes much more apparent what's going on. I think we have a libertarian critique here. Brokage's over Hokage's says, Will and Charlie are the reason I can't support conservatives. They support increasing power of the state, which they are ignorant that their enemies will use the law they made on them. You go first, Will.
Starting point is 02:04:43 Sure. Are they not already using the law against us? Right? Like, let's start, there's a, there's a, what we'd call in debate a uniqueness problem here, right? The currently liberals use the power of social media and work with it in a private public partnership to censor us. And then the second answer is there's a sort of nihilism there, which is the idea that one can't draw up a law or one can't rely on courts' interpretations of things to work the way you want to. Like, I always hear this argument with big tech censorship. It's like, well, if you pass a law, then the liberals will just use that law against you.
Starting point is 02:05:13 I'm like, well, no, they won't because there's a First Amendment in play and a pile of First Amendment cases that say the government's not allowed to use force to restrict speech. So if we pass a law that says, no, private companies have to be available for speech, they can't de-platform anyone, that doesn't suddenly reverse 50 years of First Amendment case law that says the government can't censor you. And I also think a couple things on this idea of libertarianism. This is not 1812 or 1814, right?
Starting point is 02:05:44 I mean, we are lacking of a massive citizenry that has the capacity to self-govern with virtue, which is always a characteristic of a small are Republican style libertarian world, which is people's ability to have restraints on themselves. Do I want the state to intervene? Well, what I want and what I'm what I'm calling for are two completely different things. I would love to have to every we have very little government and we have the ability to police ourselves. It's just, it's very, it's way out of what we're actually living through. That's number one. Number two, from this idea of tyranny, right? Well, we're living under corporate tyranny.
Starting point is 02:06:20 So go pick which government you want to live under, the government of Menlo Park or the government of Washington, D.C. And so the government of Menlo Park is really scary. The government of Washington, D.C. is really scary. I'd deal with the government of Washington, D.C. in a second. You know why? At least I have due process. At least I have 10 amendments to the United States Constitution that gives me some form of a fighting chance. When the government of Menlo Park comes after me, again, I mean the parallel government in quotes, I have no rights to redress or grievance due process.
Starting point is 02:06:49 I agree. Yeah. All right. Gemcast says, Tim, you keep saying history is written by the victors, but isn't that no different than there's no truth but power? But is it true with online archives and decentralized clips on phones? The idea that there is no truth but power is kind of this,
Starting point is 02:07:06 I would consider it to be a defeatist statement, but it's an idea where someone recognizes there's no point in trying to be honest if you can just beat someone in a submission. History as written by the victors is very similar. If a war is won, they write the things about their ideology that they prefer. However, objective reality exists. Two plus two does equal four. But if you are, say, a Cardassian gull and you kidnap a Federation starship captain and you show him four lights but insist he say there are five lights, now, perhaps this one captain might eventually break and say there are five lights because he's being beaten in a submission. But you may actually find that a principled individual will stand up to any amount of torture to tell you the objective reality, there are five lights because he's being beaten in a submission. But you may actually find that a principled individual will stand up to any amount of
Starting point is 02:07:46 torture to tell you the objective reality. There are four lights. And so, I mean, look, A is A, right? And so if we can't get back to the very simple law of identity, then we're never going to be able to govern ourselves, which kind of goes back to the point I opened up this conversation with, which truly is the tension point between the two camps that want to dominate America, of whether or not you have objective capacity to have reason and standards and morals,
Starting point is 02:08:13 or is it all just a sliding scale of things that are constantly changing around you and kind of this mixed recipe of subjectivity? That's really what we're living through. All right, Joey says, is that master sword made of metal? It is indeed a metal master sword. It's right behind you. However, the hilt is plastic, unfortunately.
Starting point is 02:08:34 Looks like something out of Kill Bill. I think if you hit a piece of wood with that, the blade would go flying out. I love that I had a sword behind me the whole time. I didn't even know. Yeah, it's plastic. It's like a katana. We need to reforge an actual steel or wooden... You heard him.
Starting point is 02:08:47 If there are any metallurgists out there that want to create the master sword for Tim, now's the time. All right. Hayden says, in John Adams' letter to his wife, Abigail, he mentioned that the odds didn't look good, but that they all believed God was on their side and they will win that July 4th will be commented in pomp and circumstance and parade. Also, Cesar Rodney is the reason it passed. John Adams was a great president, and he had a great son who was our sixth president, and he was an abolitionist. He was terrific.
Starting point is 02:09:17 Very good. All right. Momo McDowell says, Tim, you say you're not a conservative, but you want to conserve things like the Constitution, voter rights, and free speech, also the Second Amendment. you say you're not a conservative, but you want to conserve things like the Constitution, voter rights and free speech. Also, the Second Amendment. So how are you not a conservative? Because liberal and conservative don't mean the literal terms that people come to represent them, use them to represent.
Starting point is 02:09:36 Conservative conservatives today are very, very different from conservatives 10 years ago. So you're conservative, but you're not a conservative. No, I actually think I'm fairly liberal. Just because there are some things you want to conserve doesn't mean you are a conservative. No, I actually think I'm fairly liberal. Just because there are some things you want to conserve doesn't mean you are a conservative. What are you liberal on? I'm curious. Taxes.
Starting point is 02:09:54 I mean, maybe it's more populist because we had this conversation with Bannon. I don't like the idea of taxing to just give to the government. There is an ethical and moral conundrum there. But I do think we need to curtail the power of the ultra elites, the billionaires. I agree with that. Yeah. So I think there's a lot of overlap with conservatives and liberals. However, I think if I were to be considered conservative today, it would only be because conservatives moved left. Again, we're all kind of talking about a different description of the continuum, though.
Starting point is 02:10:20 Right. Like left from what and right from what? Liberal is a better term than left and right. So so I'm just curious what I'm truly like. What else would you consider yourself to be liberal on? Like in terms of like leftist policy, just look, just probably. Sure. Universal health care. OK, that's an easy one.
Starting point is 02:10:40 Higher progressive taxes and higher taxes for for wealthy, wealthy elites. I will. i will absolutely say though one of the biggest challenges is technological advancement which makes a lot of these arguments moot for instance taxing the wealthy makes no sense at all when we have international fiat-based economies and cryptocurrencies where you can't even track their their money anyway so then it just becomes we're not arguing anything taxing the rich doesn't actually solve anything at this point for technological reasons,
Starting point is 02:11:07 not for moral reasons. So in terms of my personal ideology, I don't like the idea of any millionaire or billionaire, left or right, taking over the public space, shoving people out. I agree. I mean, we totally agree.
Starting point is 02:11:20 I think, in general, the right has got a real crash course in the last few years about how corporate power can be oppressive. Absolutely, absolutely. So I guess my main point is my worldview is very, very similar to where it was even 10 years ago, but I think you guys have changed. I'd actually, I mean, I'd agree with that. I think I'm a very different thinker than I was 10 years ago. But you know what?
Starting point is 02:11:40 It's like Kane said, right? When the facts change, do you change your mind? The thing that I think I've got, I've gotten more socially conservative, though, for sure. How so? Well, I think there was a libertarian streak of kind of like, oh, let people do what they want to do, where I think now I'm much more about that if we don't have order and if we do not have some form of an agreed-upon way to proceed as human beings, then you're not just going to have social chaos.
Starting point is 02:12:12 You'll have economic chaos and cultural chaos that will ensue. So I think if we were to break down, and liberal and conservative typically mean left or right or tribal, some kind of tribal signifier. I've always viewed myself as a social liberal where there's a belief that government plays a role in certain, what's the right way to put it? Class-based issues, for instance. I like social programs. I like the idea of welfare to a certain degree.
Starting point is 02:12:40 The problems I have with these are that when these systems are put in place and exploited by, say, the Democrats, they don't ever fix or resolve them or actually create programs that should help and resolve the issue. They create programs that create sustainable power bases for themselves. To put it simply, if your society has an ailment, there's a way the public can come together and implement some kind of collective good or social program. The left, in its current iteration, tends to just slap more and more Band-Aids over the wound so it festers and gets worse. And then you end up with bloated, broken programs
Starting point is 02:13:10 that create more homelessness, more problems. They don't actually solve anything. I see a big part of this problem is that we're not agreeing on definitions. Or not we, but just people in general having a hard time. Like, if you're liberal, are you a liberal? Are you conservative?
Starting point is 02:13:25 Are you a conservative? That you conservative? Are you a conservative with a big team? That's what I just said. And I think like using the government to mandate freeing the software code of large social networks is very liberal because you're taking liberties with the law in a fast, drastic way. But people would be like, well, that's big government. That's conservative. I'm like, what? Ian, that would be like you saying the government should go into someone's house take all their money and give it to people uh no it would be
Starting point is 02:13:47 like if one corporation had all the money it would be like use the government to go to that corporation and take all that money back and yeah that's authoritarian well i i know yeah i think what we're getting at though is the ends right which is that the reason these terms mean less and less is all of us kind of want the same end point, whereas the opposition, they want a different end point. I think everyone around this table would love to see flourishing families and an increased birth rate and less social ailments. And we're willing to explore unique and non-ideological ideas to get there. I just think, and as a point I made in a video earlier, there's an article about young Republicans who are in favor of having a climate change caucus. I read that article.
Starting point is 02:14:28 Yeah. I mean, conservatives 10 years ago were like climate change is is is is bunk nonsense. Ten years ago, the conservatives were saying no gay marriage. So perhaps you could call me conservative today, but it's only because the right is moving left. Yeah. Again, if to take your definitions there's some truth i would say though that the conservative movement though is more pro-life and more firm about their pro-life position than at any other time and is getting less um less indifferent
Starting point is 02:14:59 towards drag queen story hour for example right i i would say one thing too um i consider myself to be centrist for the most part center left a little bit i've got some obviously more conservative positions but um the big challenge my my growing up pro-choice the the definition of pro-choice in my household is only a little bit to the left of the definition of pro-life for most conservatives yeah the left today is pro-abortion. It's dramatically different from where it was when I was growing up. I grew up in Chicago. Democrat stronghold.
Starting point is 02:15:32 Surrounded by Democrats. We always voted Democrat. We always supported Democrats. Safe, legal, rare. My family would always say it's a horrible thing, but sometimes you just don't want the state involved and people have to make hard, difficult choices, so we need to make sure there's some leeway. Today, it's, you know,'s a horrible thing but sometimes you just don't want the state involved and people have to make hard difficult choices so we need to make sure there's some leeway today it's you know lena dunham saying she wished an abortion it's michelle wolf or whatever fox what's her name
Starting point is 02:15:53 coming out and yelling everyone get abortions and i'm like um phil labonte made a great point saying if there's one i'm paraphrasing said this if there's one issue that's gonna make all these like libertarians pro-life it's these leftists and their pro-abortion stance. And so that's the thing, right? The way I've always explained it is where I stand on the political compass, I look to my right and what do I see? I see a Mr. Will Chamberlain sitting right there and we agree on most things with some certain ideological differences that we mostly shrug and say, well, I disagree. I think you're wrong on that one. I look to my left and I squint a little bit and I see the Democrats and they're like burning
Starting point is 02:16:28 down buildings. And I'm like, what are they doing? So who am I supposed to stand next to? This is a big issue that I think resulted in a lot of people supporting Trump, who the Democrats are deplorable. I mean, talk to Jack Murphy about it. You've got a lot of people who are like, they went crazy. Will you guys help me?
Starting point is 02:16:44 So there you go. You get this. You get the disaffected liberals. You get people like, they went crazy. Will you guys help me? So there you go. You get this. You get the disaffected liberals. You get people like the intellectual dark web. Most importantly, though, I think the biggest issues facing us in the culture war are deep, deep questions about authoritarianism and the establishment and the manipulation of currencies and the people and populism versus elitism, which means that you will find tons of people
Starting point is 02:17:05 being either establishment or anti-establishment. So I love watching the establishment left. They're so pro-corporate. They're so pro-government. They're so pro-FBI. Pro-vaccine. They're pro everything the machine does, and then they act like they're the victims
Starting point is 02:17:19 of the conservatives who have no institutional power. Also, they think they're the rebels. It's weird. They're Vader, man. They're so conformist, Also, they think they're the rebels. It's weird. They're Vader, man. They're so conformist, and yet they think they're Luke Skywalker. They're peddling Pfizer and Moderna and Johnson and Johnson. Like, don't you hate those companies? There's a great meme where it's like from Occupy Wall Street where they're like down with big pharma
Starting point is 02:17:38 and they're like reject the pharmaceutical companies, and now they're marching around with tattoos of like which, you know, company they're supporting. Let's read a little bit more of these super chats, however. Oh, Michael Hiller says awesome 4th of July segment. Yes. That is a good point. Talking about the declaration and all that stuff. It would be really, really great.
Starting point is 02:17:58 We got a ton of super chats, but we're running short on time. Thank you all. A Bearded Ape says slavery ended in Texas on June 19th, 1865. Slavery didn't end in Kentucky until December 18th, 1865. Delaware never acknowledged or ratified the 13th until February 12th, 1901.
Starting point is 02:18:14 Juneteenth is not the end of slavery in America. It is only the end of slavery in Texas. That's right. Interesting. It used to be just a Texas holiday. And it wasn't the beginning
Starting point is 02:18:22 of the end either. The first state to do it was Vermont in 1777. Yeah. All right. Black Czar says, this may have been said, but the DNC are running attack ads against Sinema in AZ now. And here is a bold claim.
Starting point is 02:18:39 If she survives this, if she survives that, survives this, expect her to run as a centrist candidate on the d ticket in 2028 a testament to the lurch leftward of the party democrats have just gone nuts that's just it she's really i mean we spend a lot of time in arizona our offices are in arizona she's super popular in arizona and she has my she has my vocal support i mean she's nuttier than a fruitcake but i mean she's really something but the fact she's holding the line on the filibuster, God bless Kyrsten Sinema for that. We're lucky. If a more disciplined Democratic party would have really wrecked us and more unified, rather. That's great. I mean, I would be very happy with some principled, moderate Democrat politicians, but I'll tell you why I
Starting point is 02:19:19 won't vote for him. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. Look what happened in 2018. The Democrats that campaigned on we're going to get you the health care. We're going to get you the kitchen table issues. We're not going to play this culture war garbage. Oh, they won 31 districts. And yet the first thing they did was they got on their knees and kissed Nancy Pelosi's pinky ring and went impeachment all the way. And so all these people who are like, look, not all Democrats have gone crazy. We're here for your health insurance and your union, your job. We got you. And then a bunch of people are like, finally, because the Democrats are going nuts. And they turn around, got on their knee, kiss the pinky
Starting point is 02:19:52 ring and said, no, we're going to do culture war stuff. We don't like Trump. That's why a lot of them ended up losing. The Republicans started storming in and in 2020, smashing defeat in Congress for the Democrats. 2022 is probably going to be I mean, you know what the craziest thing about the congressional victory is in 2020? There were safe blue districts that turned red. That's right. In Miami. Elvira Salazar beat Donna Shalala right in downtown Miami.
Starting point is 02:20:15 That was insane! It's like an urban center. It's a D plus 6 district. And Elvira won by 3 points. That's insane. And it was funny because you looked at the polling, and they were like, these are lean democrat all red and nate silver was wrong about everything yeah yeah and he's so pompous about how he does polling every poll he did was wrong yep oh it was it was the washington post poll two weeks before the election had trump losing florida by 12 he won by 400 000 votes in the age of misinformation that people would still believe
Starting point is 02:20:46 polls like why would what's to stop someone from lying on a pole and these are they are suppression polls is what they are but how do you what is that it's a tactic used by someone who wants to try to get an action out of the population based on what the result they'll say you have no hope see precisely suppression poll yeah all right we'll read a couple more this one seems to be important rex shaffer says tim shout out for my fiance christina saint martin she is in need of I have no hope. Precisely. Suppression pole. Yeah. All right. We'll read a couple more. This one seems to be important. Rex Schaefer says, Tim, shout out for my fiance, Christina St. Martin. She is in need of a kidney type O or B for a direct match or paired match of anyone willing to get tested.
Starting point is 02:21:18 We have a page started on Facebook, Chrissy's kidney. First one at four years old in 1989. Transplant at Mayo Clinic. Sorry to hear, man. I hope you get through this and you guys figure it out. Type O or type B? Type O or type B. Got it, Christina. Let's see what we can do. Alright, let's see. We'll do a couple more
Starting point is 02:21:34 because we're going a little late, but it's Friday and, you know, I don't want to... Justin, Justin says the Triforce on that Master Sword looks wrong. Yeah. What? It's like it's incomplete. Well, it's a Triforce in a hilt. It's got a thing around there's it's got it's got a thing around it it's got a thing okay yeah it looks kind of like the star of david but not complete is that no it doesn't look like a star of david john rand says tim can you stop throwing
Starting point is 02:21:56 around the word punk it's a music lover's genre and you can't name any real bands you're not into it please stop not real damn punks they ruined punk rock thanks groundskeeper willie um i don't know there you go yeah black flag i grew up with my friends playing black flag anti-flag the virus um oh man it's been so long i mean i guess the but there was also like um it's it's yeah but come on like that's where you start getting into the weird poppy stuff with like bad religion um offspring it's been it's been too long for me yeah no i we used to listen to real punk rock i had skin tight black jeans and hung out with a bunch of morons who went around vandalizing and spray painting stupid and then i was like when they were instigating
Starting point is 02:22:40 fights i was like i don't want to be involved with these people they're like violent and crazy and very much those people became antifa for sure. What part of Chicago you grew up in? Midway. Your Midway airport? Yeah. Oh, wow. Right near. Okay, that's real Chicago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where were you? Suburbs of Chicago. Which one? Wheeling, Arlington Heights area. Oh, hey, Wheeling, Arlington Heights. I know a bunch of people up there. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:22:58 Yep, south side, southwest side. All right, let's, we'll do one more here. Sparky says, Eisenhower sent regular army not national guards to little rock arkansas in the 50s george wallace was alabama he was in the 1960s i stand corrected all right uh we'll do one more mick dundee says anyone remember the breaking of the southwestern bell monopoly pepperidge farm does did that make like ameritech or something i remember yeah it was not. There's a lot of nuance
Starting point is 02:23:25 to that, but it didn't happen perfectly. Right on. I lied. We're going to do one more. No ID says free the code! Alright, there it is. Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't already, give us a nice little tap of that like button, subscribe to this channel, share the show with your friends, give us five stars on the podcasts, whatever. Really appreciate you guys hanging out
Starting point is 02:23:41 on this Friday night. You can follow the show on Facebook and Instagram at TimCastIRL, where we seek to leverage the power of these networks to bring people to TimCast.com, where the goal is to make something new. A media company with a newsroom and different shows
Starting point is 02:23:55 and different channels. Imagine if you had like a Netflix, but it also had a newsroom division, which produced articles and content and commentary and written word. And we're even planning out some books already because we're doing these paranormal, mystery, occult,
Starting point is 02:24:09 just like strange occurrence stories. And we're going to make collections of these stories are going to turn into short stories and books. So we are planning everything out. And that's with your help over at TimCast.com. You can follow me personally at TimCast. You want to shout out anything, Charlie? Anyone wants to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you can do that.
Starting point is 02:24:28 Our YouTube page, you also can find it there. And we have a lot of episodes coming up this weekend and a lot of exciting stuff we keep on doing. Charlie Kirk podcast? Charlie Kirk show, especially on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That's where most of our content is posted. Perfect. Right on. You want to go first, Will, or should I? Go to humanevents.com. Putting up a lot of news and a lot of great content is posted. Perfect. Right on. You want to go first, Will? Yeah, go to humanevents.com.
Starting point is 02:24:46 Putting up a lot of news and a lot of great op-eds. I think we've got a July 4th collection coming up shortly. Nice. I have a piece. Yeah, Charlie has a piece coming. So if you guys want to read it,
Starting point is 02:24:54 check that out. Also, Will Chamberlain on Twitter and humanevents on Twitter as well. Very cool. Yeah, yeah. Get me at iancrossland.net and remember that the Black Stone is in your hands.
Starting point is 02:25:04 You too can control the power. Use it wisely. Okay, I don't know about that, but you guys can follow me at Sarah Patchlitz on Twitter. And please do, so you guys all know that I upload the podcast after the show every night, please do go and give us five stars on whatever platform you listen to us on. That really helps. And tell your friends that we are great. And go to TimCast.com.
Starting point is 02:25:25 And thanks for hanging out. Tomorrow over at YouTube.com slash CastCastle, we have an amazing vlog where we invented a new extreme sport called blaking. Oh, you're going to love it. And the first ever grind performed is called the Michael Malice grind. You're going to want to see that tomorrow at YouTube.com slash CastCastle. Thanks for hanging out, and we'll see you all then. Bye, guys.

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