TRIGGERnometry - The West’s Struggle With Reality - Doug Stokes

Episode Date: October 22, 2023

Doug Stokes is Senior Advisor to the Legatum Institute and Professor in International Security and Strategy in the Department of Politics at the University of Exeter. He has published a number of books and articles on US foreign policy, grand strategy and world order, the latest of which is 'Against Decolonisation: Campus Culture Wars and the Decline of the West' available here: https://amzn.eu/d/602bJDk Doug Stokes is also among a long list of TRIGGERnometry guests who will be speaking at the forthcoming Battle of Ideas festival - a free speech event taking place in London 28-29th October 2023. Members of the TRIGGERnometry Locals community can get 20% off their tickets! Visit: https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/ SPONSORED BY: EasyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Become a Premium Member to receive exclusive benefits https://triggernometry.supercast.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Those moments of struggle where you're... pushed and steel sharpened steel and pressure creates diamond, those are fundamentally important because those are the moments of real deep personal transformation. They argue that there's no such thing as objectivity and truth and they place a theoretical and philosophical primacy on epistemology, how we know what we know. They move away from an ontology what actually exists. There's no such thing as truth or objectivity of science and therefore everything is about contestation, power. power. What you see is what I call a trauma shield, a trauma bubble. It's now become a weapon in order to shut people up. Yeah. On the campus, you can have these ideas. But when they spill out,

you can begin to see the human costs of some of this stuff. And we're doing this in the context of an increasingly multipolar international system as an influence operation and psychological operation. I'm not saying it's all the rest of the heat of the defeat of Chinese or Russian propagandists, the idea that there's not influence the psychological warfare taking place is for the birds. Trust me. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constance and Kissin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our guest today is a professor of international security at the University of Exeter and a fellow at the Council on Geostrategia and Senior Advisor at the Legatum Institute. He writes about American

and foreign policy, geopolitics, and the culture wars, and his writing has appeared in the Delhi Telegraph, the Times, the Critic, the Spectator, and many other outlets. His latest book is called Against Decolonization, campus culture wars and the decline of the West. Doug Stokes, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much. It's great to have you on the show.

We're going to talk about the decline of the West, a favoured theme on this show, as always, which pleases both of us for different reasons. But before we do, tell us a little bit about who are you, how are you where you are, what has been the journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us? Well, I was born in Britain, in East London, in Hackney, East London, lived there for 24 years.

I then left the UK for about a year. I lived and worked in Bosnia quite close to the, just after the war had finished. I lived in a place called Bridgko, in northern Bosnia. It's still a very contested space. I lived there for about a year. I joined two halves of what was called, what still is, the Republic of Serbska. So I lived there for a year. and then I came back.

I lived in the West Country. I was at Bristol University. My master's in PhD at Bristol University. Then I moved around the UK quite a lot. So that's my kind of, obviously, it's potted history, that's my personal history. And now I'm a professor at University of Exeter. I've been there for 10 years.

And I do various other things, work on lots of different projects, the new book's obviously out. And I'm also a senior advisor to the Lagartim Institute. And one of the things we were keen to talk with you about is Essentially, the question that we like to throw at all of our guests is, what's going on, Doug? What's going on?

What's going on? Yeah, what's going on. Wow, okay. What's going on? Well, what I'll do is I'll link it back to the book. Of course you will. Is you here to promote the book? Well, I'm here to have a conversation with you two.

I mean, that's the important thing for me. Yeah. So the book makes a set of arguments, different sets of arguments. I mean, what motivated me to write that book was, you know, I've always seen universities somewhere where we can have open and rational debate and open inquiry, in an ideal world at least. And universities are sort of the motors of human civilization, you know, contestation, you can have these incredible ideas taking place.

So wonderful cultural centres, really. But what I really, really found was over the last sort of, there's been a period of time, especially over the last five years, and especially after, you know, post-George Floyd, there was a sort of increasingly creeping illiberalism and authoritarianism on the campuses, manifested around various types of issues. And in particular, this kind of idea of de-colonisation

and decolonising the curriculum, which itself is kind of quite a contested ideology. It draws from a specific sets of theories, post-structurism, post-modernism, post-colonialism. but it was increasingly being imposed by university authorities and executive teams. And I thought that that was a grave threat to our universities and to sort of liberal values of pluralism and openness and free inquiry. So the book is really about that process.

It looks at the ways in which there's been this kind of increasingly moral panics within Western politics and the ways in which what I sort of identify as, sort of professional managerial elites, technocratic elites, if you put those in those kind of terms, I've often sort of latched on to this and a sort of a politics of vulnerability, where they're enabled to sort of control the narratives to some extent, but also to lead alleged oppressed minorities, et cetera, to some sort of technocratic solution or salvation and the power ultimately rests with them. So the book looks at that and then the unpleased, some of the theories, some of the philosophical ideas of that,

then relates to it. I'm very keen to a much bigger picture. Well, this is why I asked you what's going on, because everything you've said so far will be a very familiar story to our audience. These are questions we've been looking at for several years now. But what I found interesting about your work in your book is that you talk about the bigger picture, what's going on that these things are more of a symptom of

rather than just being the problem itself. So what is at the core of everything that's happening? In terms of the kind of the broader culture war, well, there's multiple levels that you can analyze it, right? So I think one of the first big things we need to understand is that what takes place in popular culture or our life here in the UK, many of it draws from much deeper philosophical currents. And I think I find it very frustrating people that talk about the culture or a lot. Essentially, I see those discussions about specific issues, you know, diversity managers in the National Health Service or, you know, various cultural issues, I find frustrating because you're ultimately talking about a sort of tactical elements of a much broader cultural and philosophical malaise. Which is what?

Well, so what is it? So essentially, what I would say is the wellspring of a lot of this stuff comes from various theoretical. theoretical elements that we've seen developing in the humanities and social sciences, the Anglophone universities in particular over the last 20 to 30 years. So what you ultimately had is essentially you had a critique of Western civilization and in particular you had post-structuralist and post-modernist philosophers. So Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Edward Said, I'm sure you're familiar with those kind of those thinkers. And the essential critique that they make and they move away and

And it's also a direct attack on Marxism, which is quite interesting because often some of the United States says that the culture wars are kind of a neo-Marxist thing. But in many senses in the book tries to draw this out, it's also a radical critique of Marxism. Marxism minimally, at least, had a teleological view of history. It was kind of an arc of progress. And it was a materialist philosophy. It's rooted in material structures and a notion of the world an ontological realism, i.e. the world exists. And we can come to understand it and therefore transform the world. So the post-structurist ultimately critique that.

They argue that there's no such thing as objectivity and truth, and they place a theoretical and philosophical primacy on epistemology, how we know what we know. They move away from an ontology, what actually exists. So I think on a metaphysical, almost a transcendental level in Western civilization, in the Anglophone world, at least, that has been one of the big cultural shifts we've seen. There's been a conveyor belt process of graduates being educated in these ideas

that have then come out into broader culture. And so the essential argument is a social, it places primacy on social constructivism. Essentially, the real world doesn't exist. Reality doesn't exist. All reality is essentially are sets of contested, discursive or ideological constructs endlessly at war with each other. Okay?

And so there's no way of ultimately adjudicating the truth between these different social constructs. given that there's no such thing as reality. And therefore, all of human life is characterized by this endless philosophical struggle to impose one's truth. In other words, if we're looking at the background, the set of the show,

and I claim that the wall is made of brick, and you claim that it's made of, I don't know, glue, who is right or wrong isn't a matter of the truth. It's a matter of which of us has more power, status, influence in current society. And therefore, that person gets to impose their way. and everybody else. Exactly. And so in the book, what I do is I identify that social constructivism as a fundamental, philosophical, transcendental value that is now at the heart of Western civilized,

in particular Anglophone civilization. And so, and that's exactly what it argues. There's no such thing as truth or objectivity or science, and therefore everything is about contestation. Power. Power. And essentially, so if I, and so the decolonising critique is that you had formal colonialism, extraterritorial acquisition. And what's happened is in Western civilization today, which is fundamentally based upon colonial discourses that construct the world in a kind of, often as a duality, it draws on derridae. It says that there's a, there's a dominant and a subordinate. There's the white, black, male, female, yeah, Western, non-Western.

And there's an inferiority and superiority in the superiority, which again, Derrida, completely contested. All this stuff, by the way, is fundamentally, philosophically contested. It has very little veracity. Interesting, in and of itself, no doubt about that. But anyway. So it argues that. So that social constructivism has really escaped the campus petri dish and now spilled out into broader culture. Okay.

In the book, I argue that we have to hang on to a sense of reality, and I argue for ontological realism, scientific realism. And what I try to do in the book is to sort of unpack that and relate this to some of the bigger issues about geopolitics and decolonising and the broader malaise in Western culture. And essentially what it argues is we have to refocus out philosophical or value primacy on what exists, what is real. Yeah, so Constantine, you may say that that's made of brick and I may say it's made of glue

But because of the mind independence nature of that wall, you're more right than me Because it's on there is such a thing as ontological reality Francis you may believe that you can fly you can you can flap your arms and you'll be a bird And you can jump out of this window right now and every single time you're going to hit the deck Don't be trying specious You're going to hit the deck And you're going to hit the deck because there's an ontological reality of gravity. In other words, there is a world that exists independently of our consciousness.

Okay? And because of that, it creates a boundedness on what is true and what's not true. In other words, there's a rational adjudication. You may believe that, you know, earthquakes are the angers of the gods, or I may believe it. But we know that it's the tectonic movement of the plates of the earth. Do you see what I mean? So because of the primacy is placed on ontology or reality, it's why Kathleen Stocks' book, she's a philosopher,

her subtitle was Why Reality Matters. It's a material reality. So I argue that we must return to basic values, but not in terms of imposition, but we have to ultimately return to the rational adjudication of different claims as to one's truth. Some are more true than others. otherwise we end up in that social constructive eschew of judgmental relativism.

You can't have an opinion. How dare you think that? My truth is as valid as your truth. You say it's brick. It's not brick. That's a mere imposition of your colonial mindset on me. And who are you to say that to me? My truth is my truth.

I can define who I am. I can be whatever I wish to be. There's no such thing as truth. And your desire to put that on me is a me. mere imposition. How dare you? You see what I mean? So you begin to see,

so that's a big part of it, of, the old cliche, politics is downstream of culture. You've heard that hundreds of times no doubt about that. But that captures something. What,

the stew that we stew through, unconsciously, not even knowing it, it's just reproduced unconsciously, often does come from a much deeper philosophical, theoretical base, conceptual base.

So Western civilization now, I wrap up in a couple of seconds, Western civilization that is characterized by a generic judgmental relativism and social constructivism, which is fundamentally antithetical to the values that came before. And I would argue some of the values that really helped to progress all of human civilization.

Doug, there's a lot to unpick there. But firstly, this is really dangerous. And I'll give an explanation as to why. I remember, I think it was Clinton, actually. I saw an interview with that non-problematic figure Bill Clinton. He was talking about peace talks between the Arabs and the Israelis. And he said, the first thing is, what, we disagree on everything here. Can we agree that it's Monday?

And they went, yeah, yeah, we all agree with it, it's Monday. The problem is, if you can't even agree that it's Monday, then you're never going to come to any type of agreement on the more complex or important thing. Exactly. And so what that does is that that's exactly right. That foregrounds a judgmental relativism. It says there's no such thing as truth and human interaction is always therefore characterized as a classic fucco fuccoism. Human interaction therefore is always characterized by a form of discursive struggle. Human interaction. So essentially it's always about the imposition of power and knowledge and truth. I'm imposing my truth onto you. So you can really, once you understand that concept, you can really begin to unpack a lot of what we see in the cultural war. There are other elements to it. Of course, you know, the kind of the weaponization of bureaucracy and technocratic regimes, the complete incapacity of the so-called conservative party to even get ahead of any of this or get its head around it, the generic sort of general philosophical drift that we've seen.

but it's very dangerous. These ideas are quite dangerous because on the campus you can have these ideas. But when they spill out, you can begin to see the human costs of some of this stuff in relation to what it does to social relations. The trans issue is a massive one. You've seen a lot of this take place. It's kind of almost the self-identification. Do you have that?

But then there's also the bigger issue in relation to what this means about the future Western civilization in the context of an increasingly multipolar international system, the rise of China, the rise of other states, you know, and those states aren't characterized by that. If we can agree, you might disagree with me here, if we can agree that one of the big progressors of human civilization has been arriving at a kind of a system that we might call the truth. It's never always going to be the truth, but it's the best explanation that we have at that point in time. It might be a medical breakthrough, right? And what happens and it's not standing on the shoulder of giants from that truth. We can continue our inquiry,

our open, rational inquiry to find a better truth that when technological breakthroughs, for example, happen, we move forward. You see what I mean? If we can never even get to that foundational place in any way, it's everything that's a constant. contestation, everything's a power struggle constantly, we're never going to advance. You see what I mean? We're going to sort of almost collapse into a relativist stew. And again, if you think about the rise of China, related geopolitics, I'm sure we'll come on to talk a bit more about that in a bit.

But if what has really helped instantiate a broadly kind of open economic system, economic advancement, innovation, and increasingly multiracial and more, multicultural societies that are predicated on liberal values of openness and tolerance and pluralism. If you introduce this concept of constant tribal, discursive warfare, that can do great damage to the social contract, but also to politics in general. And you can begin to, and in the context of the rise of highly authoritarian and highly illiberal states, that's a very, very dangerous thing. Because what we have, in the West is not natural. We've had a, in the Europe minimally, essentially, we've lived on the institutional architecture

of the post-war international settlement, the victory of the West, first over Nazi Germany and then over the Communist Soviet Union. Those are contingent things. There's no necessary progressive arc in human history. So the institutional settlements that arose from those forms of victory aren't natural. They have, they've been imposed to some extent and they have to be defended. And within those things are sets of values that I would argue, broadly speaking, are very pro-human values. But those aren't necessarily the values other states share.

And in an increasingly multipolar international system of increased geopolitical competition, and great power competition, interstate war and the end of the end of history, we really should perhaps be slightly more cognizant of the kind of values that hold us together because we're going to need them going to the future. Hey guys, trigonometry needs your help. We took a big risk creating the show and for us to keep doing the incredible work

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The woke argument that I am most sympathetic to out of all of them is lived experience. Because the reality is we all have a different lived experience. If for instance you're a five foot one very attractive woman in her early 20s, your experience of life is going to be very different from me. You're going to be offered and given things and have opportunities that I simply won't have, but also as well, I'm not going to be, you know, intimidated by a bloke in a pub, pestering me and wanting to have sex with me and not listening to know. Do you see what I mean? I do. But so, but I think what you're saying there, basically we all have our own viewpoints based on our history. And that,

that's an entirely fair point, absolutely completely fair point. But what I think, what, again, what a lot, you get, you tend to get this a lot. And often it's like, progress. It's like, members in particular, you get a nice little word like lived experience or equality, and who can, you know, who can disagree. But then it becomes, it's as empty signifier that becomes filled with something much more, often quite illiberal on authoritarian, so lived experience. What you're essentially saying is we all have our own viewpoint depending on where we come from. That's pretty much, yeah. That's, that's kind of a fair point. But what, but what lived experience has become in reality, it's like communism. It's all about equality. Not quite. So what lived experience

has become is a kind of authoritarian power job insofar as when I talk about my lived experience, that's my truth. And how dare you question my truth? And you get that quite a lot in, I've seen that a lot. You know, so essentially what lived experience is as a kind of operative power play concept is really about. It's about saying, this is my lived experience invariably from an historically maligned or oppressed minority. and therefore I have greater truth and greater social power. So therefore, you need to shut up and listen to me and basically do what I want. Now, I'm from a really poor working class family in Hackney.

You know, my demographic in terms of white working class kids in university, if I start going around to people and say, well, I'm from a poor working class family and I want this and you've got to do this because that's my lived experience. So lived experience is all well and good. But again, essentially that you've got to be cognizant of the capacity to instrumentalise these concepts and weaponise these concepts for power.

And a lot of this stuff we see is all about power. It's about institutional power, making money, and that kind of stuff. So lived experience is one of them. You've seen it's now scientists to talk about lived experience. For me, it's one of those kind of very odd flip authoritarian totalitarian concepts where essentially it goes for what you said, entirely fair enough and then completely agree, to being shut up, do what I say, because I'm an oppressed minority,

and that's my lived experience, and what you're saying doesn't count. I've seen that time and time again. It is used, and that's the thing, though, I hate about it, instead of it being a point of discussion where someone can go, look, I understand that, but you need to understand that as a black bloke growing up in 1980s, Brixton, I was targeted, I had, you know,

I was racist, I was denied opportunities. and we need to talk about this and we need to be honest about this. Instead, it's like you said, it's now become a weapon in order to shut people up. Yeah, exactly. And even then, one hopes that if you're talking about the lived experience to ultimately open up the human heart, this is what you're really talking about. You're saying, I had this pain, I had this oppression, and I'm giving you my heart here, I'm lived experience, my personal experience,

then one would hope that that rests on an openness and a human grammar of compassion and empathy. Yeah. Which, yeah, but so often it's not. This is the problem. It becomes weaponized and instrumentalized. And I think I've seen this time and time again, you know. So essentially as a, it's not a cruel point I'm making it,

but as a banal point, which is banal in the nice sense in terms of an obvious point, lived experience, personal experience, of course. But then when that starts to become an operative value at the apex point of institutional cultures, then you're going wrong. Well, what you're talking about really is that some concepts can be misapplied. If you and I are having a conversation about what it was like in 1980s Soviet Union,

I can be, well, I actually grew up there. Here's what my take on it was. But if you and I were talking about, economic statistics about 1980 Soviet Union. And you were saying to me, well, did you know the blah? I was like, well, actually, my lived experience. Well, that doesn't apply in the realm of statistics, observable realities of that kind, et cetera.

So I think sometimes it's just a concept that, as you say, has been expanded way beyond its remit and people will use it to achieve ends that it can't be used to achieve. Yeah, or you ought to stick with your example. You say, I grew up in 1980s Soviet Union, and that was my lived experience, right? And then I make a point,

oh no, I don't want you to speak because that's my live experience. And, you know, so what you, what you see is what I call a trauma shield, a trauma bubble. You know, you sort of talk about it. And again, it speaks to this kind of, this politics of vulnerability

and this sense, the weaponization of trauma we see as well. It's a very common thing and victimhood. And the sad thing about that is genuinely, you know, it may well be true. But when it's when it's weaponized, instrumentalized as essentially a power play for me to say, well, yeah,

I was born in the 1980s Soviet Union and therefore it gives me, I'm on a higher moral perch than you to sort of give you my truth and it trumps your truth. And under that then there's an emotional power play. Okay. So let me chart this in simple terms because I want to get from what you're saying,

which is erosion of the concept of truth, tribalism, accelerated by the very idea that we all have our own unique perspective and mine is more valuable than yours because I have a certain... blah blah, blah, to the concerns you have about geopolitics and geostrategia, etc. Right, and so the idea, correct me on any of this, if I'm incorrect, is because Western societies are increasingly divided along these arbitrary lines between groups that are drawn not by a contestation of what reality actually is,

but simply about who can make the most noise, who can have the greatest claim to victimhood, who can have the biggest complaint, whatever it might be, we actually can't agree about what our values are. And therefore, when we are engaging in the Battle of Civilizations or at least in geopolitical competition, we don't know what it is that we stand for. And so we're living off the fumes of the values that were created in the post-war period

that we no longer as a society actually universally believe. Yeah. I mean, so think about this, right? In terms, if we take this desire for diversity, inclusion and equity, so equity is a concept that obviously conflates, equality of opportunity, which is a completely optimal way of running society in many senses you want the best people to in irrespective of their sexuality their gender their race to get as best chance as possible to then to then move forward and ideally when you aggregate that the societal level you're gonna get great outcomes from that So so that concept has really been conflated and collapsed into equality of outcome

Where essentially you get often technocratic elites who who will essentially engineer and engender and engender and forms of inclusive cultures to make sure everybody gets the same. So that then is obviously, in many senses, that that then is kind of fundamentally antithetical to Western politics. In fact, it's more commensurate, ultimately, the equality of outcome, my argument, to sort of a Soviet system.

This is why my next book, which I'm currently working on, is why the West lost the Cold War. We thought we won it in geopolitical terms, but he lost it in metaphysical terms. So that's fundamentally, and so essentially, so when you aggregate that out to a societal level where you have technocratic elites

that are kind of taking it on their holy mission to uplift people, often people that don't even want it. And if you aggregate that out at a society level, where people are potentially doing jobs, not because they're the best people to do the jobs, or not because they're the most qualified or etc., i.e. diversity is a sub-variable of a much higher apex value, which is one of merit and selection on the basis of merit.

If diversity becomes the apex value in the institutional selection process, when you aggregate that out, i.e., the intersectional characteristic of the individual doing the job, it becomes more important than the capacity to do the job. Well, there was a brilliant article. I think the magazine's online magazine is called Palladium, called Why Complex Systems, won't survive the competence crisis. And it talks all about, I really recommend everybody to read it. It talks all about how basically in America

a lot of very complex systems like aviation safety and the military, et cetera, are actually being very badly affected by these diversity initiatives. So, I mean, so essentially, there's nothing wrong with diversity per se in any way and there's nothing wrong with inclusion in any way. But the thing is, those things must be,

or if you're talking, you know, those things must be ultimately outcomes of a much more important process, which is the selection on the basis of capacity and merit. The problem is with that argument, Doug, is that I don't know that that is possible because not all groups have the same talents, aspirations, skill sets, and that has been true throughout history.

So some diversity will be a natural consequence of selection or competence. But I also think we have to recognize that not all people want the same things or are good at the same things. And so, diverse, I'm increasingly persuaded by the argument that artificially created diversity is not a good thing. But the other, but also, I completely agree with a point.

The other thing about that is often the equity, quality of outcomes thing, again, the underplays or completely erases human agency and therefore human dignity. If you've got a squirrel, I can give a very banal example here, if you've got a squirrel that goes out in the winter or in the summer and gathers all the nuts up

and puts it all the way, you know, and hides it away and works hard. And then another one sits there just sunbathing and smoking a blunt or whatever, a squirrel, whatever, right? How fair is it then if you go along to the squirrel number A that's saved up the nuts and say, well, you know what, our friend over here

has got no nuts now, it's winter now, it's cold and shivery. Give me half your nuts to give to him. I mean, that's not, that's not, something, so in other words, human agency, people's choices, applications, self-discipline and hard work, are really also fundamental values.

So in many senses, this kind of woke dispensation, we'll put it in crude terms, erases the innate dignity of human agency. And it raises the incentive to create, build, strive, achieve, which is what you're talking about when it comes to geopolitics. So when we go back to your original question about geopolitics, if some of the

it's very much about values and metaphysical almost transcendental values and put on those kind of terms if we've had this version of the transcendental or the metaphysical values of Western civilization where new sets of values are replacing the old ones

and that's we then aggregate that at a societal level a civilizational level and we're doing this in the context of an increasingly multipolar international system, the rise of incredibly powerful civilizational states that have extraordinary sense of nationalist purpose, national pride, also feed off a decolonising narrative, and also now spreading around the world and as an influence operation and psychological operation,

I'm not saying it's all the rest of the heat, the defeat of Chinese or Russian propagandists, but the idea that there's not influence of psychological warfare taking place is for the birds. Trust me. Trust me on that. So... Why do you say? Why should people trust you on that then? I've worked in the security, intelligence, military fields, academic fields for many, many years. My PhD was on counterinsensensual warfare, for goodness sake, psychological operations. I'm not, you know, it's not, and it's, and why wouldn't they do that? Of course they do it. And there's nothing wrong with it. If you think about it in terms of this is basically great power

politics this is this is my bread and butter great power great power competition is my bread and butter and states will states will do what states do right in their national interest or national security interests of course china using its incredible economic leverage with the belt and road initiative is running all over the caribbean investing tens of billions of of dollars in the caribbean infrastructure projects and of course they're going to say you need you know reparations against the colonial masters and they're to sort of create this soft power, of course. And you know what?

That's natural and normal. I mean, states will engage in psychological operations and warfare. But coming back to the other, so we can come on, but come back to, if we then think that what we have in the West isn't natural, we didn't just roll out of bed with a peanut cladour and a nice sort of international, no, not much war here is there not been invaded since 1066 because we're in Ireland stopping power of water, etc. But none of this is natural.

right and it rests on an international dispensation and international order underpinned by american power american military power in particular ukraine would be most probably singing from the russian national anthem absent the very early intervention the brits but in particular americans right i mean that's really so america remains the key linchpin power in in the the broader it's called the liberal international order if it keeps being characterized by this process of denigration and being torn apart, you do have these very capable states out there. And human history doesn't just rest some way.

It's a constant process of flux and change. So that comes to the big point of the book. Don't take what we have for granted. I mean, it sounds really trite to say it, but freedom isn't free. Freedom isn't free. It has to be defended and loved and changed. cherished and it just being nice to people being kind is not enough unfortunately you need

people like me and others but sort of to some extent you know or to sort of guard against stuff and that what we have is to some extent under the outer edges of it most people don't see it rests on a hard power basis you have a you know you know you're on you're on you're on you in Ukraine, you see it really brutally there. Great power competition and the fields of Ukraine is very raw and we see it in the flesh there. You see what I mean? So that's a really big thing. And so I try to tie it all together in the book. We have to see this stuff in a much broader civilizational context. But Doug, you made a really good point, which is freedom needs to be defended loved and cherished.

My issue, I don't think there's enough people in this country. There's more in America, but there's not enough in this country you defend love and cherish it. And once that happens, we're in a pretty parlous state, aren't we? That's a great point.

I mean, a depressing point for me was during the pandemic. By the way, Doug, this is what I do in this show. I just make everyone miserable. He killed the vibrant. This is what I used to do in my youth and I do it now. That's great.

So essentially, I think the British, the kind of cultural DNA of the Brit, pugnacious, there's an element to the British culture, doesn't like to be told what to do. There is this kind of almost innate DNA of freedom there. You can trace it back, and people take the Mickey out of it,

but then Magna Carta, and there's that, you know, standing up against an arts, Germany standing up against communism there is that kind of very strong sense in the British people but on the flip side of that there is also that finger wagging and follow the rules and the curtain twitching so i found the pandemic to be really really depressing because it really brought out that element that's that that that part of the British character moral policing and you know dobbing in your neighbor and stuff like that and then we saw

we saw that in British politics you know with the Conservative Party I think the The Conservative Party, I hate to say it, but I think they do bear a large chunk of responsibility because I just don't think they quite get the stakes that are involved in this. And if this rests, if the ultimate meta value of a Conservative Party is the preservation of a specific civilisation dispensation, they've really dropped the ball on that. Well, the only objective of the Conservative Party at the moment is a preservation of the Conservatives. party and they're not even doing that very well. No.

No. It's an endless psychodrama. Go if you want to stick, just a quick point about... Carry on. Sorry, I didn't mean to... No, no, no, not at all. But I mean, this is also the frustration of, is that... People say that the conservative part of sort of weaponizing the cultural war,

and they're using the culture war as a kind of, like, a weapon to divide the working class or... My thing is, it's complete nonsense. the Conservative Party, as far as I can tell, on the culture war, and utterly strategically clueless. I'll give an example of it, right? In the last three months of the Blair government, they passed the Equality Act. Now, the Equality Act is a really innovative piece of legislation, but what it essentially does is it mandates public sector bodies, national health service, any public sector body,

to promote equality of opportunity between people of protected characters. sexuality, gender, so it sounds, it sounds, you know, progressive and, you know, but what that's actually done is is underwritten the massive growth of EDI and bureaucracies across the public sector. So you see today, there's headlines today, you know, or, you know, about the woke civil service, right? So you have that across the British public sector, and it legally mandates public sector bodies to promote equality of opportunity. Now, what's the metric for equality of opportunity, outcome. So you get all these EDI bureaucracies, the commissars in the public sector, the woke

commissiles, if you want to use crude language, who have used the innovations around the Equality Act to push this stuff through. So it's a constant frustration of mine to see these headlines in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, or wherever, constant cultural war, whack-a-mole headlines about the cultural one, Oh, isn't it terrible? Diversity management. Isn't this? And yet these public sector bodies

quite rightly can turn around. So it's our legal duty to do this. So the idea that the Tory's been fighting a culture war when they've left this on the books, left for them like a grandmaster chess board, the last three months of the Blair government and have left it completely unreformed and then the pernicious and authoritarian liberal elements of that act,

you know the unclassious and authoritarian liberal elements of that act, you know, all the unconscious bias, the macroaggressions, all this stuff we see, that all comes from that act too. Why? Because one of the ways in which employers in the public sector could have discharged their duty

under the Equality Act is to say, well, we've run these training programs and all of our employees have gone through these training programs and therefore we've discharged our duty. Do you know what I mean? So it's all the pernicious elements of that act. I've gone off a little bit there from geopolitics,

but it just underlines the point about we have to understand the deeper, tactical and situated terrain upon which a lot of this stuff that we talk about in the culture wars and geopolitics, it rests on a much deeper infrastructure. Do you have a website or do you plan to have a website? Because if you do, then EasyDNS is a company for you. Easy DNS is the perfect domain name registrar provider and web host for you. They have a track record of standing up for their clients, whether it be cancelled culture,

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It's just a complete lack of common sense. If you're not going to get the best person for the job, the job isn't going to be done as well. If you're going to get rid of meritocracy, the whole industry is going to crumble because you are not going to be doing the job, that you're meant to be doing as effectively, nothing's going to work.

I don't understand why this is a particularly difficult point to grasp. Well, I think, again, I think you're absolutely, you've hit the nail on the head. But the dangerous thing about that is by being inclusive and be kind and be empathetic, which is underpinning a lot of the drive for that stuff, which is wonderful. It sounds great. It's a wonderful thing, right?

It's the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Again, if you aggregate that out across a societal level, you're going to have suboptimal outcomes inbuilt into institutional cultures time and time and time again. And when you aggregate that out, that the quality of your life, the functioning of your services, the way your money as taxpayers is spent will constantly be suboptimal. And it goes back to my original point. In the context of great power competition, do you, Do you think for one second that the Chinese, who are an incredible civilization, thousands of years of history?

I mean, what an incredible country. What incredible culture. It's just amazing. But, you know, they, do you really think they are going to be saying, well, little Johnny didn't pass his exam, but we'll give him the job anyway? Or, you know, or we're going to, basically, we want to make our kids feel better. So everybody's going to get a gold star here. It just doesn't work. does it?

So that's not happening. So if we have this kind of broader Western Malays, kind of America, which is the key, the key linchpin state in the Western-led international system, we need America's military power, intelligence powers,

all that kind of stuff, right? If it's fractured along these increasingly tribal lines, and in the context of increasingly economic power shifting a multi-prol international system, the collapse of Western self-confidence, the collapse of Western civilization,

in terms of the values that have made it successful, made it, so strong, and the best place, really, for genuine diversity, for tolerance, for pluralism, for openness, for liberal values, there's a reason why millions of people come to the West. It's the benefits. Well, it's the benefits, basically. No, absolutely, no, but it's the benefits of the deeper range that we have.

An emphasis and a primacy placed on human dignity, the capacity for freedom to allow you to realize your dreams. Yeah, and everything we're going to win a gold star. But broadly speaking, what other part of the world, where else would you want to live? Where else would any minority wish to live in human history? Is it perfect? Of course it's not. But it's not a million miles from, you know, it's pretty good, pretty good. Doug, how much of this is about feelings?

Because you mentioned, you know, the little Johnny in China isn't being praised for getting a D, but here little Johnny is being praised for the effort that he put in to get a D. And, you know, I have a young son and my wife and I sort of argue about this or certainly, we don't argue, but it's a constant ongoing conversation because on the one hand, yes, you want your children to grow up feeling happy and they made death and blah, blah, blah. On the other hand, as we talked about, the wall is either made of brick or it's not,

and you either got an A or you didn't, and your civilization is either successful or it's not, and your militaries are either capable of fighting or it's not. How much of this is about the obsession with our own constant obsession about our well-being and our emotional well-being? Because some of the most meaningful things I've done in my life have been created and done in spite of periods when I've had to suspend my immediate feelings about how I feel in this moment and go and do something as difficult or go and do something. do something that's unpleasant or go and do something that's hard. Yeah, right? Yeah. So how much of it is

about that? Well, I understand the struggle that as a parent you feel. I am a parent as well. And that is you want to nurture and love your children. And it's a fine line between making sure little Johnny's feelings aren't too hurt and you protect their precious self-esteem and you love them so much. but between also exposing them to values that are real independently of where we may be in our civilizational moment. They just are. The values are ultimate. Reality bites in that sense, right?

So, but I think I completely agree with your broad point, and that is, I'm the same. I mean, I feel anxiety a lot. I, you know, feel, I've felt like my periods of most intense growth have come when I've been put under incredible pressure. I won't go too personal, but I mean, but it's, you know, I used to have somebody that was close to me academically seen it to me

that supervised me. I won't go too much into it. And he was brutal, absolutely brutal. He would, he'd tear it down, you know, really brutal, but in, and he sort of tore me down but then, but in that process, I grew as an adult, Do you see what I mean? So there's a, so psychological, a lot of stuff is placed on psychological safety and we need this, right?

But what we're doing ultimately is what ultimately makes you grow, become an adult and really thrive internally, spiritually almost, right? Are those moments of struggle, deep struggle, deep emotional struggle. I say, I was born in Hackney. I went to some schools, inner city schools you couldn't begin to imagine. Maybe you could from a Soviet Union. I don't know. I think yours were a lot worse. I mean, I'm talking about guns.

If you're talking about safety, like the Soviet Union was actually pretty safe. Yeah, well, my schools were characterized by constant violence, knives, CS gas, guns, guns. It was terrible, right? So, and a lot of my peer group are dead or in prison or, you know, whatever, right? So that was that. And so but the way I've tried to deal with it, I don't get too autobiographical here, but those moments of struggle

where you are pushed and steel sharpened steel and pressure creates diamond, those are fundamentally important because those are the moments of real deep personal transformation. Those are the moments where you think you are who you are And that transforms you and it mangles you, but you come out on the other side and you're different, but different often in a good way. Agreed. Yeah. I think that's such an important point.

And it was something that I wanted to talk to you about. And look, we can bemoan these ideas. We can talk about the universities and all of it is relevant. But to me, that's just a symptom. That's just a symptom of the fact that we've become softer as a society. We just have, and therefore we're more prone to these ideas. Because actually, if we had a little bit of backbone, and we said, to put it in colloquial terms, no, I don't believe this. I think it's a load of bollocks piss off.

Yeah, well, absolutely. I mean, at the same time, I'm not arguing. I mean, where I came from was brutal, in the home and outside the home. And I would never ever wish anybody to experience that. So I'm not arguing that for a second. And I'm also not taking saying there's any great shakes in having that level of dysfunction. No way. And as a parent, you know, you'd never wish that upon your children.

So that's categorically not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is I think that we do need to move back to resilience, some degree of personal resilience. And what I think is the broader point we can take from this is what I find very, distressing is when institutions led by adults that should know better, don't then draw the line in the sand of what you've just said or what Constantine has just said. They cowtow, they collapse because they don't want to hurt the feelings of these people. Okay, but see, this is, and I'm exploring this with you, I'm not arguing with you, it's just something I'm thinking about myself because I'm sure you've seen this thing about how hard men create good times, good times,

create weak men, weak men create hard times, and it goes round, round, around, around. And the problem I see the way that we all talk about it is my childhood wasn't easy either, and my wife's childhood wasn't easy either, and neither of us wants to create that childhood for my son, right? But if he's going to have a really comfortable, happy existence where every need is taken care of and he's never upset and he's praised for the effort at school and his mom, all of that, then he's going to become weak. And it's inevitable.

How do you build resilience without being challenged, without having that difficulty? Would be the counter argument? I think you need to challenge your son. And not going to make it post, but one needs to challenge, obviously. It's the constant struggle, though, isn't it? We do live. I mean, the childhood I had, you couldn't, I mean, you wouldn't replicate it now. There's different sets of values.

And I think that is to be celebrated to some extent. I'm not, I think, I'm not saying the hardness. in terms of physical. But that's not what I mean. Francis, what's that quote? You talk about the boxer who says it's hard to... Oh, right. It's the old Jack Dempsey quote,

which is it goes, it's very hard to get up and train at five o'clock in the morning when you're wearing silk boxes. Yeah, when you sleep on silk sheets. Yeah. This is my point is, is it...

I almost start to wonder whether the decline of the West is inevitable because we are so successful, we are so comfortable. Think about, You know, the Ukrainians now, for example, are sending their young men to go and fight and be maimed and die on the front. Yeah. If you live a life where you're going to live to a hundred, you're going to have every material creature comfort taken care of.

You know, the latest polling shows most of the country thinks that the government's job is literally to provide everything for them and wipe their bottom or whatever. Why would I send my son to go and fire in the front line? Why? He can live to 100, have everything he needs, right? Why? Why would any of us do that? Why would we fight for anything? Well, I think a couple of things. I think that first and foremost, I think that whilst I don't wish to denigrate that the love that lays at the heart of that what we're talking about, and it is love, really. I don't wish to denigrate for a second, but to sort of draw it slightly out of the personal realm a bit more and relate it. back to the bigger arguments, what I would say is this, it goes back to my institutional point. And that is, we've swung too far that way. I'm not saying we need less love, but I think what's happened in the West is we've got

too comfortable, but we've got too comfortable in that process, we've forgotten the fundamental values that we need to sustain ourselves, right? You see what I mean? I do, but what I'm saying to you is that I wonder whether it's possible, because, because if we are so successful and so comfortable and so protective of our children and so on, I'm not saying we need less love for our kids at all. Why would they be strong?

Why would they be willing to deal with conflict? Because that's part of what we're talking about, right? Is willing to be able to put something valuable on the line, to risk life and limb to protect what you have. But if you've always had it, if your parents have always had it, you don't even recognize the connection anymore. Yeah.

This is why I think the West is. So my concern is you talked about how those formative experiences are often quite difficult and challenging and traumatic. I don't know that you're going to get young people, people even in our generation, to wake up to that reality without a really big hard slap in the face. Well, I completely agree what you just said. But I think that reality sometimes,

bites. So it's it that's a hard thing you're right. I mean on the one hand we have a very comfortable existence on the one hand even on an absolute level or a relative levels you know in in in the UK so we have that but at the same time you know you want to sort of maintain some degree of these these things so I mean it's a very hard question to answer because on the one on the one hand we we have what we have but then we need to sort of I guess it's kind of like what you'd think

it's kind of not the best metaphor but imagine that we have a shotgun in a cabinet, a dusty old cabinet somewhere and we keep that for our sort of home protection and there's cobwebs all over it but nonetheless we still prize it and we take it out of the cabinet

every now and again we all it down like a very precious thing it's the last line of defense we live in a rough but we keep it there and it's cobwebs and we thank goodness we never ever have to use this this thing but nonetheless we still are cognizant that it's there it's an anchor point for us it's it's it's our final so so i think i think maybe therefore then a greater awareness of those values i think maybe a philosophical reboot of the value of western civilization and some of the

values that have sat at the heart of his success. I would also like to see, you know, at the same time, I'm not against this kind of the parenting that we've discussed. But I would, I would, I think that what's happened goes back to my institutional point. There has been a complete moral failure and the collapse of leaders and adults in our dominant institutions where they have ultimately, in the name of being kind and being inclusive, not held the line, or not even not hold the line, they've literally thrown themselves onto the floor and gone like that.

The Church of England being a classic example, but across the National Trust, all of our institutions seem to wish to genuflect and deconstruct themselves and ultimately repudiate the very nature of Western civilization. And I think this comes to another big point, and that is the kind of potential backlash, that that kind of institutional signaling can create in the UK.

We're seeing it now, there's some polling data recently about sort of issues around trans issues. We're seeing it in the politics of America too. And so whilst these institutions think they're doing God's will, or they're deconstructing on this sort of thing, that I think that they're potentially storing up a great deal of trouble down the line, potentially, for British politics. because it does rest on a script of national repudiation, the undermining of institutions,

the constant belittling of ordinary people. You saw in the Brexit debates, for example, all the time. And so that's another element too that I think we should be aware of. And it's also as well the absence of leadership. It seems that we are completely devoid of leaders. And it's not just in politics if you read about sport, there's people that in sports saying it's more and more difficult to find captains

to find leaders because it doesn't seem that anybody wants to take on that mantle because people collapse, they crumble at the first start of criticism. But this is what I'm saying guys. This is kind of my point is we can blame institutions, we can blame the people at the top of sporting organizations.

But if you have generations of people coming through who've been trained to think, in a particular way who've been trained to think that their feelings matter more than reality, who've been trained to think by the experiences around them. Not because someone, a woke teacher is indoctrinating them, but they've grown up from the age of three with everything that they need catered to. Why would they be resilient? But that's why I think that there has been a failure on multiple levels, not least in the universities. Universities when I first started, for example, were somewhere where still kind of very late teen brain children, 18 years, but still young, would go and would be subject to those kind of very strong critical debate, push, pushing them, pushing them outside the comfort zone, being exposed to a broad sets of ideas, contested.

It was a much more sort of politically heterogeneous as well. 20 odd years ago. And those kind of values that I spoke about were more in the university context. There was a sense that you go to university and you're pushed hard, right?

So I think that there's various reasons why universities have moved from that model to being essentially a sort of continuation of school and therefore the kind of commodification,

but also the diversity inclusion. I mean, that often revolves around issues around self-esteem and make people feel good, right, rather than pushing people outside their comfort zones. So they grow. They grow as people. They grow as adults, which is ultimately truly liberational. Is it not? So I think in the university context, that that has really fallen down. So if we think that there are kind of transmission points in one's maturing journey in terms of what you've said, so your

son is, you know, love and, but then the sets of institutions that he will move through is a process of maturation. That maturation process, I think, has been lost as quite a large extent. And universities have really dropped the ball on that. Doug, have you ever been punched in the face? I've had my nose broken about 11 times. Right. And so have I. I've been, I've been punched in the face. I've been beating up, whatever else. Only someone who has never been punched in the face would use a sentence like words of violence. Yeah. And that comes from someone who has had a completely

modicoddled life. because if you have been punched in the face, you will know that words are not violent. Someone's saying something nasty about you is not the same as having your nose broken. And I think that's at the very crux of what we're talking about here. Absolutely. Because that draws on what we spoke about at the very beginning.

If you believe that there's no such thing as truth and words have the capacity to conjure into being a reality, socially construct reality, If I talk about something and it's subjectively agreed upon, that thing becomes real, right? So for people that are saying words are violence, they are unconsciously, implicitly or explicitly, invariably implicitly, drawing from a deeper philosophical value set that comes from that kind of deconstructivist, post-structuralist, socially constructivist, epistemology theory of truth. words are violence in according to their theoretical perspective

because by saying this you're bringing into being the reality of it you're narrating that into being it's complete garbled nonsense but that's that's their position so for them but I completely agree there's your I mean the realism of actually getting punched in the face getting your nose broken or whatever versus that but then again I guess that speaks to the kind of the dalliance and again it's perhaps an overused metaphor But you often hear this about the late days of Rome, right? Where there'd be cross-dressing and mass orgies and sexual degeneracy and all this stuff taking place.

And essentially the argument is, you know, they're at such a comfortable point. And then the elites, the institutions, and the marital valor and the honor and the integrity was lost. And it became increasingly, they were bored. They had this luxury. The elites had this aristocratic and the elites, the Roman people had this luxury. Decadence. Decadence. And they started, it's a frippery.

And before you know it, the barbarians are through the gate. And people inside Rome, maybe have opened up the gate. They let the barbarians in. Oh, it's all fun. It's a wonderful, joyous occasion. We're being inclusive or whatever. I don't want to extend the metaphor too far. But you see what I mean?

I completely agree. Well, on that happy note, we're going to wrap up this part of the interior, Doug. We're going to move to locals in a second and ask you some questions from our audience and continue the discussion as well Before we do though, we always wrap up this part of the interview with one final question, which is What's the one thing we're not talking about the really should be? Ooh We've covered it to some extent, but the one thing I think that we need to think more about is the contingent and fragile nature of where we are in the West

If there's one takeaway point I try to do in the book and that is to say say that what we have in the West is not natural. It's a it's a it's an institutional outcome. It's a social outcome. It rests on values and and and the will to power to defend it. And it's not too bad. It's really not too bad. So we need to be cognizant. The primary takeaway, we have to be cognizant of what we have and the contingent and fragile and precious nature of it. We throw it away, we let it destroy itself a great, great peril. Doug, it's been an absolute pressure. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Follow us now on locals where we're going to be asking, Doug, more questions and some of your questions as well. See you there, guys. So why are you doing this? Why are you putting your head above the metaphorical parapet?