Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <affirmative>. All right. Well, I'm happy to introduce you, Richard. Um,
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Oh, that's nice. Okay, good. Happy not, not just contented, but happy. Good. All right. I'll take
Speaker 0 00:00:12 That impro impromptu, uh, introduction. Yeah. Okay. Welcome, Richard. He is, uh, one of our senior scholars and the host of Morals and Markets. So welcome.
Speaker 1 00:00:26 Well, thank you. Uh, for, for those who don't know, Anna is our director of development at the Atlas Society. She's fabulous. So give her money, uh, whoever you are, learn, learn about t a s and give her as much money as you can. Uh, that's kind of crude. I know. It's, and, um, I also wanna acknowledge, um, Jay Lapeer, the chairman of the Atlas Society, is here. That's wonderful. He, he always asks me questions I can't answer. So in that regard, I'm glad he is here because he'll stretch my boundaries. And then I,
Speaker 2 00:01:05 I've never, I've never heard of a question you can't answer, Richard. So that'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 1 00:01:11 All right. That's not true. But, and then, okay. Even a bigger treat than me, uh, would be Dr. Kelly. So, David Kelly, Dr. David Kelly founded the Atlas Society more than 30 years ago, and he's here. So that makes me nervous cuz if I say something wrong, he's gonna say, Salzman, what are you saying? What are you talking about? Anyway, never happened. I'm so, oh, I'm so glad you're here. And, okay, first though, some pitches, uh, you know, critical race theory. Uh, we've actually already covered this a couple of times at the Atlas Society, maybe more than a couple, actually. So the first thing I wanted to do was say that if you want more foundational stuff on this, there was a session May 19th with, uh, myself and Dr. Hicks, who's a senior scholar, also at t a s. So we talked about what it was. Now that was kind of a current events panel, and I think it was coupled with the issue of cyber terrorism.
Speaker 1 00:02:24 But half the session was devoted to C R T. What is it? Where did it come from? Who were its major, uh, adherence. And so you can start with that if you haven't heard anything about what we're doing on that regard. Then. And then more recently, this is only five days ago, Dr. Hicks and I revisited it from the standpoint of pushback. Pushback. So if you see in the media coverage, people showing up at school boards, you know, a kind of populist backlash, if you will, against c r T. That was our topic on June 16th. Um, again, a current events panel. So, uh, I'm only plugging those from the standpoint of, if after this event tonight, you wanna go back to the Atlas Society website and just look for those sessions to explore further, uh, I recommend that. Now, the other thing is, if you go to the Atlas Society site and hit now playing, there's a pull down, I'm looking at it right now, now playing.
Speaker 1 00:03:27 So atlas society.org. Now playing, there is a series of Instagram posts that I've been doing for t a s that you might wanna look at. And I think I've done a half, I think I've done a dozen of them or so. They're only 60 seconds long, and I have a hell of a time trying to, uh, restrain myself and only talk about something for 60 seconds. So <laugh>, Lauren, Lauren knows he helps me publish and produce these, right? Lauren Lawrence is here, right? Uh, and I submit the, the first time I submitted them, it was like a, it was like 75 seconds. And he said, too long, too long. Shorten it. I can't, I can't download. And I thought, wow. Alright, so I'm just gonna throw out some of the questions I get. So I get questions, and then I have to go through them, pick the ones that I think I can answer here.
Speaker 1 00:04:23 Here's some of them. This is from recent, is Rational egoism Selfish? Wow. I don't know. It took me like a half an hour to figure out how to answer that in 60 seconds. What do I, what do you think about intersectionality, <laugh>? Should we privatize the military? Oh my gosh. So the Ann Hercus would love that. What did Ayn Rand, uh, what was her view of abortion? Uh, what's my response to the Marx's labor theory of value? I'm a, I'm an economist mainly, so, I mean, that one was easier for me. Uh, should we have open borders or not? What do I think of the Austrian School of Economics? That was June 10th. Uh, which co this is a good one. Which country Most closely Approximated Capitalism in history. I talked there about the Gilded Age, if you know what that, is there any moral argument for taxes?
Speaker 1 00:05:17 That was a, that was a good question. That was from June 10th as well. Uh, to what extent is capitalism imperfect? Another questions, again, what why does socialism remain so popular? Aren't these great questions? The Atlas Society has set this up in such a way that they field questions from people, and then those of us on Instagram look through the questions and try to pick out the ones that might be of a value to a broader audience and try to answer them quickly. I think it's a really great service. It, it's not gonna be a full answer, but it's kind of interesting, I think, and I agreed to do it. I love doing it. Why are guns essential to freedom? That was another question. Here's another one. I'm, I'm almost done. What is the difference between positive rights and negative rights?
Speaker 1 00:06:09 I get that all the time at Duke. What? Here's another one. Why is capitalism more efficient than state controlled industries? Well, I'm, you know, I'm gonna talk about meas and hayek, right? Right. Nik, um, should government have any role in educating its citizens? I think my answer was something, I think I had two answers. No. And the hell no. That's what I remember. How is individual free under capitalism versus enslaved under socialism? Anyway, that's just a taste of, uh, that's a pitch for listening to the Instagram stuff. I think it's really kind of cool. It's under atlas society.org now, playing. All right, now tonight's session. C r t for short. For those of you in the know critical Race theory, what is it? There's a lot of stuff on this, and I, by the way, highly recommend, and I think Dr. Kelly does as well. Chris Rufo, R U F O. If you look at, if you just Google Chris Rufo, um, critical race theory, he's been doing really great stuff. Now, Chris is not an academic. He knows that. I think that's actually a value in this case. He's not so weeds that he can't explain it to the general public. On the other hand, I know for a fact that he's read deeply in this, and as in a, in a journalistic sense, he's also a filmmaker documentarian.
Speaker 1 00:07:46 Um, he's fabulous. So I, I want to just say that right up front because as an economist, I am not a specialist in C R T I I, I've read a dozen c r t journal articles. They are crazy kind of mind numbing going all the way back, by the way, to the nineties, this is not a new thing, but I just wanted to give a shout out to Chris Rufo because he's very good about explaining it to a general audience. And then not just that, here's the key. Chris says, here's how to fight it. He doesn't just complain and document it. Um, he makes suggestions for what to do about it. So anyway, shout out to Chris Rufo. Um, now why did I title my thing tonight? I, by the way, I'm gonna go as I normally do. I'm gonna try to go for, I don't know, 20 minutes or so.
Speaker 1 00:08:43 So, well, I'm gonna stop at 8 30, 8 40. Uh, and then I would love to hear what you guys are thinking about this. Um, why do I call it religious? What did I call it? The religious Marxism of critical Race Theory. Okay, the first thing that should come to your mind, if you know anything about Marx, is why is Salzman calling it religious? Cause Marx Marsy, in theory, generally supposed to be scientific, right? Supposed to be about the inevitable stages of history, where capitalism, where feudalism gives way to capitalism, and then capitalism gives way to socialism. And it, it's this kind of alion march through history. And, uh, that's the old Marxism. I mean, that is the 1850s, sixties, seventies Mars' theory of history and theory of social systems. And here I am, kind of, uh, sticking a thumb in the eye and saying it's religious, religious broadly.
Speaker 1 00:09:45 I'm using the word broadly to mean not substantiated, uh, by the facts of reality. Well, I just want to tell you that, let me just start with critical race theory. What the heck is it? And then back into the history of it. Now, here's a really fundamental, I was thinking of putting this up on, on, um, the pages here, but I don't want to get overly, uh, academic. But let me just quote you a very short excerpt, which I think captures the essence of it. And it's from a major theorist, well, actually two of them of c r t. So it's from the horse's mouth, if you will. This is Richard Delgado and Jean Tek. So Delgado's been doing this for probably 30 years, and his co-authors, Teek, has been a co-author for many decades as well. All right? So my view is go to the original resource, go to the original sources, see what they say. Don't try to make stuff up. Just ask what they're advocating and then try to get to the essence of what they're a So I found this book called Pretty Straightforward, critical Race Theory, an Introduction. And I thought, that's nice. I I would like to get an introduction to this thing, <laugh>, it seems it seems to be permeating every institution in America right now. All right? Now listen to this very closely. I'm gonna, uh, accentuate some of the words. It's a very short excerpts. It is right up front. It's on page three.
Speaker 1 00:11:28 Unlike I'm quoting. Now, unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step by step progress, critical race theory questions, the very foundations of, of what the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, enlightenment, rational, and neutral principles of constitutional law, unquote. Man, that is it. That is, I I gave you the essence of it right up front from the horse's mouth. Think of this, what was the Civil Rights Movement 50, 60 years ago? Martin Luther King described it as we are completing Martin Luther King. Now paraphrasing, we are completing the promise of the founders. They said, all men are created equal. Uh, that's not how it all started. Was it only white property owning men had rights, but then we had a civil war. I mean, we knew this 60 years ago, the Civil War, this is an amazing thing that a largely capitalist abolitionist, north vanquished, a largely feudalistic racist south, that sounds to me like a capitalist victory.
Speaker 1 00:13:11 And still the South held on as long as they could gripping power and keeping after reconstruction in the hundred years up to Martin Luther King, Jim Crow laws, KK lynchings, segregation. I mean, if that isn't systemic racism, I don't know what is it is it's institutional, structural, uh, the origins of the Republican Party, if you know, in the UN United States, it was a one issue. Party progress began as a one issue party. Its only issue was abolished slavery and retain the union, keep the union together. And I, I would say today, most Republicans don't even know that. I would say actually most Democrats don't even know that it was the party of slavery. It was the party of segregation, of Jim Crow, of lynchings, of the K k K, the Democrat Party. If Democrats knew that today, would they, especially if they're interested in history, they seem to be the 1619 project and others, they seem to be interested in the history and the lineage.
Speaker 1 00:14:23 And, and yet don't know that the Democratic Party has been the party of slavery for more than a hundred years. Anyway, Martin Luther King said, you know what, we really need to stop judging people on the basis of skin color and judge them instead on the content of their character. That's the famous line, uh, from the I have a Dream speech I yearn for the day. He said, when we judge people that way, not on characteristics, they have no control over, namely the race they're born into, but chosen things like the philosophy of life, they adopt the content of their character. M l k assumed that that was something that was built up and cultivated. Anyway, critical race theory rejects that rejects it. It basically says today that if you believe in the M l K theory, you're a racist. You're a racist by believing in that theory because they have this view that you are born racist if you're white.
Speaker 1 00:15:37 It's a kind of a original sin view race. So it's like the, instead of the doctrine of original sin, think of it as the, or the, the doctrine of, of original skin. That's what they think of. It's the doctrine of original skin and, and the, the whole white privilege, or white supremacy, or white fragility, the name of a book, by the way, right? White Fragility Robin D'Angelo making millions, by the way, running around advising corporations and having reeducation sessions. She's made a fortune visiting companies and telling the whites in the company that they're inherently racist by the how they were born and having sessions where they apologize for their skin color. So there's a lot of, uh, you've heard of fact shaming. There is skin shaming going on. It's really, really ludicrous. Really terrible stuff. So, so you get this quote, unlike traditional civil rights, unlike which embraces incrementalism in step-by-step progress.
Speaker 1 00:16:49 Now, the word progress to me is very interesting. It's an admission on the part of the critical race theorist that there was progress. Well, there was not only progress in the sense of the Civil War eradicating it, but then reconstruction, the 13th, 14th, 15th amendments to the Constitution certainly were progress. Blacks had the right to vote in America before women did at the federal level, 1870. Um, and certainly those were reinforced in 1964 and five with M l K. So this c r t group is really not interested in the word progress. They don't think of it as progress quote. It questions the very foundations of the liberal order, by the way, by liberal here, they don't mean liberal in the, you know, kind of welfare status. Ted Kennedy sense, they mean liberty. They mean the German, the not German <laugh>. They mean the European. If you know, Europeans use the word liberal to mean liberty to for liberty. So notice A C R T. This quote says, we're not interested in the foundations. We actually question the foundations of the liberal order. We don't want liberty.
Speaker 1 00:18:08 Um, and we don't want equality theory. Okay, this is important too. Equality theory. I teach in my Duke seminars three types of equality. And what does c r t want? Okay, here's the three types of equality. Equality before the law, equality of opportunity, equality of result or outcome. Egalitarianism, that's a big mouth, that's a mouthful, but comes from the French, is the idea that we should be equal in outcome. Equality of the law says, you know what? Human beings are different, but don't treat them differently legally. Meaning, if you commit murder, we don't care whether you're short or tall, a woman or a man, black or white or green or yellow or purple, murder is wrong. You're gonna be treated equally before the law. I see the idea of the equality of application of the law, equal treatment of the law. That's in the US constitution.
Speaker 1 00:19:14 C r t rejects that c r t says, that's not the ideal. The ideal is equality of result. And more deeply, here's the premise. If you find unequal results, now here's their racist focus, especially on race. They assume it's due to racism. Now, let me give you an example which will sound very weird and they never bring up. Suppose I were to say to you, I don't know. I'm guessing 80% of N B A players are black. I think that's roughly true. If you took a C R T approach, you know what they would say that the country is pro, pro-black and anti-white. Now, they don't actually say that because their bias is towards saying everyone is white and hates blacks. But here's an industry where just by looking at the results, if you cared and counting up the skin colors, you'd say it's imbalanced.
Speaker 1 00:20:22 I don't know. It's something like 12 or 13% of the US population is black, and yet 80% of the N B A is black. So it's, it's out of balance. This is how the c r t people look at it. They literally think there should be a one for one correspondence between the share of a race in the population and the share of that race in, in every profession, not just basketball in in brain surgeons, in teachers and in CEOs. And so they take disparate, call it this way, put it this way. They take disparate results, disparate outcomes as ifso facto evidence of racism. Even if you have these very odd cases of, well, is there white privilege racism toward the N B A? If so, the N B A would be 13% black, not 80.
Speaker 1 00:21:25 So there are these, uh, cases like that, that, that make no sense. Now. Now here's another example that's not racist. But suppose cuz this comes up a lot, suppose it's gender bias. Suppose someone said America is patriarchal, anti-women, misogynist, terrible stuff. Disparate effect would say something like, okay, let's look around. Oh, there's not that many women who are CEOs. Oh, women are 50% of the population of 51 or whatever it is, but they're not 51% of the CEOs see how the, see how the analysis goes. And they assume that the disparity is due to, uh, mass sexism. Now, if you said to them, what about, um, elementary school teachers? Elementary, elementary school teachers are about, I don't know, last time I checked 78% women. Is that sexism? There were only 50% of the population, but there's 78% of elementary school teachers. You see, you see how crazy you can get with this. It's not an individualist approach. It's a total grist, collectivist, tribalist approach, whether you're bringing up racism or in this case gender or sexism.
Speaker 1 00:22:47 Um, now one another thing in this legal reasoning and enlightenment rational, those were also in the, in the, in the, uh, quote, they're against the enlightenment, the really counter enlightenment. Professor Steven Hicks, who's a scholar at t a s, has written a book explaining great book, explaining post-modernism. And post-modernism is, is fundamentally anti enlightenment. It's a rejection of the emphasis on reason, logic, the evidence of the senses, the scientific method that characterized frankly a very brief period in the 17 hundreds or so. And the c r t people are against that. What's amazing is that was the era that eradicated slavery, that eradicated racism. That said, it doesn't matter what your skin color is. It doesn't matter what's coursing through your blood or your genes. If you focused on your brain, if you focused on your mind, if you focused on the power of reason. And every human has that, that was the essence of the enlightenment.
Speaker 1 00:24:10 I mean, that is really what gave rise to the abolition movements and other things. Cuz people said, listen, all men have all men and women, all humans have this faculty called reason. And the only reason they may not be exercising it is not any kind of metaphysical genetic reason, but they're enslaved. And so liberate them, liberate them, and let them read and think and grow and prosper and flourish. And that is exactly what happened. I mean, mostly in the Anglo-American countries. So Britain, actually Britain before America, but Britain, America and Australia and Canada and New Zealand, they were the great, if you look at the history, if you know the history, they were the great abolitionists and in racism and slavery had existed at least since the Pharaohs Egypt, 3000 bc. And by the way, it still exists. So if you just Google in, if you just Google, uh, slavery index, poli sai, professors like to index and count things.
Speaker 1 00:25:23 Last time I checked, there's 55 million slaves today. People in slavery, mostly in Africa, in part, some part Middle East and Asia. But, um, we still have it today. So it's been around forever. The question is who eradicated it? What countries did. So why they did it largely from enlightenment principles. So here, how odd to have the c r t people, uh, rejecting the enlightenment and constitutional law. Now, I just wanted to say something else about the Marxism of this. I got maybe five minutes for myself here. Something happened here, which is very similar to what I know much more directly, which is the economics of it. You have understand how disappointed people can be when they have a commitment to some ideology and then it doesn't work out. Elect spent their entire lives devoted to it. So let me give you an example of this.
Speaker 1 00:26:31 Carl. Marks and angles come along in the mid 18 hundreds, and they say in the communist manifesto, capitalism sucks. Capitalism replaced feudalism, but it didn't get rid of slavery, it just adopted wage slavery. And so it's no better than feudalism. It is the capitalist oppressor exploiting the laborer. And here's my predictions, say marks and angles. Uh, after a couple more decades of this, there's going to be violence. There's gonna be militancy, <laugh>, there's gonna be bullets flying, there's gonna be revolution, there's gonna be an exp, appropriation of the exp appropriators and capitalism will fall, and socialism will replace it. And, um, it's a vir, it's gonna be a virtuous thing. And by the way, we're not just advocating it, we're saying it's inevitable. It's, it's inevitable. We're kind of describing what's happened, but it's inevitable. This is the scientific kind of, uh, intellect, not stoppable march of events.
Speaker 1 00:27:47 That was their theory by the way. It took like 50 years for them to sit back and say, oh my God, we're wronged by 50 years. I mean, like, turn to the century 1900, you, if you read their material in 1900, they were literally writing to each other. Oh my God, we were wrong. The worker is not being exploited. The worker is not being alienated. The worker is getting higher and higher wages and seems to be happier and happier and happier. And what are we gonna do about this? Now, a true scientist would say, we need to check our premises. You know, we, we need to revisit this and throw out our silly doctrines, <laugh>. But that's, but that's not what the socialist did. That's not what the Marxist did. They said, uh, we need to change tactics here. We still want to get rid of capitalism.
Speaker 1 00:28:37 They adopted something called Fabian socialism in Britain where they said, well, okay, we're not gonna have violence, but maybe we can convince voters to vote for socialism. So instead of bullets, need ballots will do the job. And that was the, uh, uniquely British contribution. By the way, the British George Bernard Shaw, Cannes and all these others said, let's just convince people to adopt socialism. By the way, we have to increase the suffrage. We have to increase the number of people who can vote, and we'll just use the educational system and we'll use the schools. And John Dewey in America and others were important in this regard. And their view was just change. Just indoctrinate the citizenry in socialism and don't wait around for these laborers to, you know, burn down factories. So you get the idea that they're seeing the success of capitalism and they hate it.
Speaker 1 00:29:39 They don't like, they really don't like it. They get very angry, very nervous and switch their tactics, if you will. Okay? So it went from revolutionary Marxism to what the, even the Brits called evolutionary social, gradual social bloodless revolution. Did you get the idea? Okay, but then even that failed <laugh>, even that failed because we went into the thirties fascism socialism. The fascism was national socialism in Germany, the Soviet Union, the Cold War, a complete and utter disaster including Mao in China. Okay? So disaster number two for the so socialists, oh my gosh, when we have completely imposed our system, mass starvation and mass murder, okay? So by the time the fifties and sixties are coming around, these socialists are like, okay, we've been wrong twice. The first one we thought the laborer would be exploited. They haven't been The next one. We thought, you know, we'll go global and see if we can, you know, condemn multinationals and the spread of capitalism globally that didn't really work out.
Speaker 1 00:31:00 And ultimately, with the revival of neo neoliberalism, the new liberty with people like Hayek and Mees and Rand and Hazlet and noic and others making the case for liberty, the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union ended. So yet another massive defeat for these socialists who were hoping to gain a foothold. Why do I say all this? It seems like a diversion, right? I say all this because that is what motivates the current anti-capitalist. I I think it is fundamentally anti-capitalist c r t movement. It is, how would I put it? It's Marxist shifting the debate yet again now to race. So you, you get the old model and you substitute new players. Okay? So here, here's how it goes. It used to be that the capitalist exploited the laborer. That's not true. And it used to be that the first world exploited the third world.
Speaker 1 00:32:17 That's not true. And they're just scrambling for a yet another version. And now guess what? It is, men versus women or blacks versus whites, race, war. And so they substitute class war, economic class war. They substitute for that, which is not all no longer believable. I wonder if we can foist upon people the idea that there's an inherent structural systemic, see all the words I'm using? That's why they use these words, institutional clash, not between the worker and the capitalist anymore. That's not believable after a hundred years. It's black versus white. It's women versus men. That's the gender angle of it. I hate to oversimplify this, but that's all it is. It is a chapter 4 56 in an anti-capitalist message, taking a different form. And, um, that's what's going on here. Now, one more thing and then I'll stop. There is a religiosity to this that you should be aware of.
Speaker 1 00:33:34 And it isn't obvious from someone who's a socialist or a Marxist to say, what, what's this got to do with religion? If you look really closely, it isn't just the idea of original sin, which comes from Christianity, right? If you're, if you remember, if you're Christian, you know, you're taught, I I was raised Catholic, I'm an atheist now, but I was raised Catholic, and I, and I remember going to catechism and they say, uh, you have original sin. And I'm like, eight years old. And I'm like, well, what did I do? And they said, uh, your pro, your your ancestors left the Garden of Eden. And I said, what, what's the Garden of Eden? I'm a dumb eight year old or something. And they said, well, they, they, they, uh, ate from the tree of knowledge. And I'm like, well, what is this tree? You mean the apple thing?
Speaker 1 00:34:25 Oh, yeah. So I'm like, oh, and what's that gonna do with me? That was my, that was a Richard's. Uh, I was Ricky at the, that was Ricky's, uh, like stupid retort. It was like, what, uh, what's that gonna do with me? Well, well, uh, you are a, a progeny of Adam, and you're, you take part in this guilt. It made no sense to me whatsoever. Why am I respo? And not to mention, Adam and Eve were partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It wasn't just <laugh>, it wasn't just the tree of knowledge. It was knowledge of moral principles. And I'm thinking to myself, wait, well, but yeah, but wouldn't that be the essence of a human being? That they themselves understand what moral principles are? They don't just take them as commandments down from God blindly, but they learn what they are.
Speaker 1 00:35:13 And you know, how to live a good life with a moral code seems like something you would want to explore, you know, with Eve. And, uh, anyway, but that is what c r t counts on. C r t counts on that kind of Christian view, that there's an inherent original sin. Obama himself said, it's in America's d n I mean, he uses the word dna, N a Obama, he said, racism is in America's d n A. Now, the fact that you can find historical systemic racism in slavery, which is obviously in American history, it, it is there. The question is whether it can be modeled as an inherent, original sin, meaning not to be eradicated. And that's what their view is. Again, this idea that we're not interested in progress, we're not interested in the idea that you've amended the Constitution three or four times that you've had your Supreme Court say, you know, plus Ev Ferguson is wrong, and Brown v Board of Education is right and loving versus Virginia 1967, allowing interracial marriages, all these wonderful changes that have made America actually less and less racist, less racist than most countries in the world.
Speaker 1 00:36:39 Ask me that question. So it's a, I think a head scratcher. And let me let Le end on a positive note. There's a lot of religion here. Like, you know, confession, people confessing, oh, I'm a white person. I feel so guilty, let me confess, or, or what do they used to have in medieval times? Uh, you would pay indulgences to priests for your guilt. That's what corporations are doing today, right? That they write these huge checks to b l m. Leave us alone. If we write you a big check, maybe we'll be exonerated of this, uh, undeserved, uh, guilt. A lot of that's going on there. There's kind of, uh, missionaries and converters, these people going into corporations and HR making a fortune, conducting sessions, uh, re indoctrination sessions. There's a lot of, uh, religion there. Uh, let me let, let me leave on a positive note.
Speaker 1 00:37:40 You can look at violence in the street, b l m, Antifa and elsewhere, and say, oh my gosh, this is a kind of like end of days. This is terrible <laugh>. It's good news. I I'm telling you, this is good in the following sense. It is so irrational. It is so ridiculous. It is so over the top, as they like to say. If you're in an argument with someone and it goes on for like 30 minutes or so, and they start swearing at you and yelling, and I don't know, maybe punching you, <laugh>, what is your, what is your first conclusion? It, I it should be, these people have no argument. These people have run out of arguments. And so I just wanna suggest, I'm not entirely sure about this, cuz it could get uglier. It could get uglier before it gets better. But I have a sneaking suspicion that because began in the universities 40 years ago, and I know this cuz I've seen it and I'm in academia, and I can see it takes a while to seep out into the major institutions, corporations, the media, even the Pentagon.
Speaker 1 00:39:02 You see all this, right? You see the examples of this in many ways. This means it's at the end of its tether. It's at the end of its rope. It has permeated out into the culture, and now people see it. Now, when I say people or voters or the general public, unfortunately, they themselves were educated by this bogus theory. And so not all of them are going to get it. Not all of them are going to be courageous enough to oppose it. But, but a fair number will be and should be. And one of the reasons for webinars like this, frankly, is to educate people on the idea that you should not feel guilty for things you did not do. You should, if you're an American, feel proud of what America's actually accomplished in regards to race. And then Sam some glimpse of an idea that says, you know, why this is getting really intense and virulent right now, the racists.
Speaker 1 00:40:05 And that's what they are. The racists in the critical race theory universe are very worried. They're very angry, they're very bothered. Not because America's more racist than it was 60 years ago. They're worried and they're angered and they're bothered that it's less racist. That a black president was elected, that blacks have gotten more prosperous and free over the last five decades. That not to put too fine a point on it, they've got nothing to complain about. And if you have a Marxist driven c r t movement, it is the third major failure for them in terms of prediction. They predicted the laborer would revolt against the capitalist. Didn't happen. They predicted the third world would revolt against the first world. Didn't happen. People love multinationals and globalists, now they're just hoping for a race war. I mean, that is how pathetic it is that now they're hoping for, you know, men, women to hate men.
Speaker 1 00:41:18 It's ridiculous. It's literally on a, it's become not tragedy, but farce. And so I don't, I don't want to over, I don't want to minimize the work that needs to be done, uh, to fight these people, but they're really a pathetic, pathetic, uh, enemy. And they have nothing behind them. And I think they're basically projecting. Now, here, here's, I'm gonna go off the rails a little bit and say there's some projection going on. If someone says, we're all, some white person says, we're all racist, we were born racist. We can't help being racist. The best thing to do when you listen to someone like that is say, speak for yourself. Perhaps you feel that you're a racist. Perhaps you have not, uh, unburdened yourself of this bias, but that doesn't mean I haven't. And I think that's a lot of what's going on today. I think there are, there are remaining racists in America, and ironically enough, they're in the C R T movement. They're the ones saying that everybody has to be, must be like them. A Ashley, like them meaning inveterate, incorrigible, uh, racist. All right, come back at me. Who wants to object to anything I just said? <laugh>? That is Jay.
Speaker 2 00:42:56 Richard, I've got a Jay Jay, go ahead. Question. I've got a question. You, um, you referenced the nba and it, it strikes me as pretty common that people conflate cronyism and the use of regulations to preserve, uh, obstacles. Certainly, you know, direct government problems where, where, uh, discrimination and race were, were in there, right? Then you, you come to the nba and it's a pretty good example of how markets work. And could you elaborate a little bit on how, you know, private property, the rule of law, the right to equal application of the law, the right to run my life markets and capitalism work against anyone who brings racism into decisions in markets?
Speaker 1 00:43:50 That's a really good question. And if you, and if you just begin with sports, uh, which was the NBA example, but this applies to other businesses. There is an expression out there, which I think is somewhat crude, but I think largely true. Capitalism does care about color, green care about green care, about profits, care, care about making money. And I'm from Boston, I'm a, as a kid, I was a big Boston Celtics fan, and Boston itself was known as a racist city. A rare case of a northern city being a bit racist, not the whole city like South Boston was. And Red Harbach, the great Celtics coach said, I don't care whether they're purple, yellow, white, brown or whatever, I'm going to hire the best basketball players I can. And by the way, he did not fill the arena. The Bruins, the hockey team, all white filled the arena every night.
Speaker 1 00:44:52 And Red Arb back was winning championships and couldn't fill the arena. So you had Bill Russell and Sam Jones, any of you know that Now, eventually the Celtics became just this wonderful franchise up there. But, but that is an example to me. And so is Jackie Robinson, if you know, oh, I forget the name of the Dodgers owner. Branch Rickey was it? Branch Rickey was kind of a racist branch. Rickey did not want to integrate baseball. And then he, then he met Jackie Robinson, and he is like, this, this guy's fabulous. What a player. And then he asked his owners and his, uh, others, and they said, no, you don't wanna, you don't wanna, and there was a Negro League, remember they segregated, there was a Negro League and then a white league. And Branch Ricky was a famous, uh, uh, integrator who hired Jackie Robinson.
Speaker 1 00:45:48 There's a great movie about this called 42. And, but if you look at it, same kind of thing. Jay, what's interesting about it is Branch Ricky basically wanted to make money, and that Mandy wanted a better team. And at some point he said, I don't give a damn about the color. I care about green, I care about the color green. And I know the N B A faced the same issue when they went for, if you look at the old, uh, videos, you know, of, you know, 80% white guys running around <laugh>. And, um, then the audience started shifting, the audience started becoming black. And so some of the owners said, okay, maybe we can safely, uh, build the teams up that way and the audience will still come, which is exactly what happened. Um, so if that's what you're getting to, I think in business generally, there's a, by the way I n I didn't mention this, but, um, Ebra Kendi, who's a real guru of C R T these days is famous for saying capitalism is racism and racism is capitalism.
Speaker 1 00:46:55 And there's a phrase actually called racial capitalism, and it's almost like crony capitalism. It's the second most famous hyphen of capitalism, racial capitalism. And the c r t people are saying there's something inherent in capitalism, which perpetuates and profits by racism. But the argument is actually the complete reverse. If, if someone is underpaying someone, uh, relative to their productivity based solely on skin or gender or genital, you know, there's a motivation to hire that person and, you know, take advantage of the fact that they're relatively cheap in the market. But of course, what happens, the ra wages of those people start going up and you get a kind of equivalating equi rating re and, uh, that's exactly what's happened. So capitalism and the profit motive actually work, uh, you know, gradually over time, sometimes quickly to eradicate racism as a standard. And I think especially in sports, it's interesting because it's such a meritocracy, you know, we need the baskets, we need the hockey goals, we need the home runs, you know, and if we don't, we're not gonna fill the seats. And so maybe even more so than in business, the focus is totally on meritocracy. Who can, who can bring in the goods, you know, who can deliver the success and the performance. Um, is that close to what you were thinking about Jay or asking about?
Speaker 2 00:48:33 Yeah, I think, I think what you see is that every business is driven to bring their best and challenge each person to bring their best, uh, in its ideal form. That doesn't mean that every business executes that way, that well, every day. What it does mean is that if the, to the extent they don't, over time, they go out of business. So there's a deep price for discrimination on anything but merit. You pay the price and, and it actually permeates culture in a way that today is much more rapid. If people, uh, tolerate and knowingly make decisions that aren't based on what's best for the business and merit hit pretty fast, you can predict that business ahead for the tubes.
Speaker 1 00:49:24 I agree. I I just wanted to quote from the chat room. I'm looking at the chat room mark. Uh, mark Goodkin says, according to Delgado, and Delgado was the one I quoted from, he's one of the originators, race is a social construct. It says like an arbitrarianists in which the various constructions have been created by white people. And fussy says, the color society would not address the racist nature of the social contracts which exists within people's minds. Yeah, I wanted to quote, that's a really good comment. Um, mark, I wanted to cite this because you should be aware that they do not believe c r t people. They do not believe you can be colorblind. In fact, if you say, I'm colorblind, I don't care about this non-essential feature of people, I care about their individual character, they'll say, you're lying. They, they'll say, you're either lying or you don't know that you have a hidden implicit bias.
Speaker 1 00:50:25 Um, by the way, another approach they might take would be, suppose they were watching this webinar. You know what? They would say that everything I said is wrong, but here's the key. Why would they go into the logic of what I argued? Would they go into the history Marxism, you know, you got that history wrong. They wouldn't, they wouldn't look at me and they would say, you look to be an older white guy, therefore you can't be objective about this topic. So be aware of that. I mean, that is literally how, um, racist they are is how lu they are. They literally will look at you from the standpoint of, you don't fit this category. So you can have no claim to logic, objectivity or anything like that. Um, another feature in C R t you'll see is this has been going on for decades.
Speaker 1 00:51:23 The writings are kind of very loose and subjective, and there is a lot of what they call storytelling. There's a lot of what they call narrative. And in academia narrative used to mean arbitrary used to mean objective, uh, subjective. In other words, you're just kind of recounting your own history. You're not a, you're not appealing to a broader data set, so, so to speak. You know, you're not to, you're not sampling or doing statistics that, and so you're stereotyping whole groups of people based on your own, quote unquote lived experience. And now notice how this is used. They'll say something like, well, what are you gonna do? Question my lived experience? You don't know how I lived. This is how I lived. This is the stuff I faced. You know, this is the, and of course there's this truth to that. This is a certain truth to the idea of this is what happened in my life.
Speaker 1 00:52:23 But the, the issue in science, of course, is whether you can expand a particular example like that into a broader generalization, into a broader principle. And often what's happening with these narratives is someone's really using it not more like as a Trump card, so to speak, as a, what they call the race card, right? Or the j uh, the the gender card. Hey, I'm a woman, so you can't tell me salzman because you're a male. You can't refute me because you're not a woman. You see how it goes. So it, it's not appealing to the mind, it's not appealing to logic or reason. It's literally appealing to genitals and skin color and using that as a basis for saying, I'm authoritative on this and you are not. And that's a real, that's a real problem as well. But on the other hand, you could say that is a reason why this will not last very long. Because once people realize that's what's happening, even in academia, I think even academics would say that just doesn't cut it. You, you cannot, if you're debating with us, you're at some conference, you're on a panel, you cannot be, uh, averting to things that crude like your genitals or your skin color. So, uh, Dr. Kelly, hand up. Yes. Go.
Speaker 3 00:53:50 Um, thanks, Richard. Uh, am I un okay, I'm unmuted. Um, one of the things that interests me and the point you made at the beginning is that the, the way in which the Marxist framework, uh, conceptual framework has been, um, adjusted from the conflict between classes of the, uh, business and the proletariat to classes of gender and define by gender and race. But one of the things that always struck me, uh, reading marks and, and, um, in his early works, uh, like the 1844 manuscripts, which he were, were the prior ethical focus, right? Right. Um, wrote about economics, was that in his discussion of alienation, he said at one point, I've always remembered this, he said, if someone is oppressed, there must be an oppressor. If someone feels oppressed, there must be an oppressor. Yes. It's thing that you, you can't have an someone feeling oppressed without someone oppressing him.
Speaker 3 00:55:06 And I think that gives rise to the entire oppression, um, framework. Uh, and you can apply it to any class, any class divisions, as long as you're thinking collectively. And it's, uh, and it just, it it's kind of, uh, un in, in a way unanswerable because you, you find enough people who are women or black or right Asian for that matter or whatever, so long as they can make a plausible case, they feel oppressed, they feel excluded in some way or other, that it must be that someone is oppressing them. And that is a, I mean, it's a non-sequitur of, as one philosopher said of another, it's a non-sequitur of numbing grossness. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:56:06 Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:56:08 Um, I, I think that, I think that's, that's how struck me as, as an important part of this whole agenda. So,
Speaker 1 00:56:16 But I like the, I like the idea that you're saying, you know, in, in some weird regard, it's unanswerable. Like if I, I said, if I said smoke and, and Kelly said fire, you know, like, aren't you being, can't you be logical here? Of course there's gonna be fire if there's smoke, there's fi if there's smoke, there's fire. If there's a press, there's gonna be a pressor. What are you, what are you against the rules of Aristotelian logic and Right <laugh>. I, I like that. Yeah. But also the premise, Dr. Kelly of capitalism itself generates conflict, struggle, antagonism. And if we can't find it here, we'll find it there. It's like squeezing the balloon, you know? All right. So maybe it's not happening there and the stages of, uh, history have changed and maybe it's happening somewhere else. Um, yeah. Um, that's a good question.
Speaker 1 00:57:13 Another thing that comes up that you reminded me, uh, another thing they came up with when the laborers were not revolting, they said this was linens specifically, but others false consciousness. Yeah. Like, if you look up Marxism false consciousness, it's the idea of, okay, you don't know you're being exploited, but you're actually being exploited. They're fooling around with you, you know, by giving you, you know, products and deodorants and, you know, fast cars and others making you happy, but you're actually miserable. You just don't know it. We marxists know it. And we're, we're seeing through this bluff that's very common today. Oh, you think you're colorblind, but you're not really, you're inherent, you're a racist. And you say, you look around and you're like, I'm not racist, I'm colorblind. No, no, no, you're been fooled. You're a racist. You just don't know it. Let me tell you the ways. Please pay me a thousand dollars an hour and I'll have a session at some corporation to tell you. So, and it's so, the false consciousness stuff that it's, it's, it's uncanny how they just borrowed these things. Uh, let give you a quote,
Speaker 3 00:58:31 Uh, in the, uh, decades ago in the feminist movement, there was, uh, you know, all these workshops on consciousness raising,
Speaker 1 00:58:41 Right?
Speaker 3 00:58:42 Which meant oppression, raising
Speaker 1 00:58:48 A flavor of how much things have changed. This is from 1942, Nora Houston, who was a black feminist anthropologist. Now, if I said to you today, let me give you a quote from a black feminist anthropologist, you'd say, okay, whatever, here comes c r T. But this is a 1942 black feminist anthropologist quote. This is from her book, just tracks quote from what I can learn about slavery. It was sad, certainly, but my ancestors who lived and died in it are dead. The white men who profited by their labor and lives are dead. Also, I have no personal memory of those times and no responsibility for them. Neither has the grandson of the man who held my folks no intention of wasting time beating old graves. It's incredible. Say, I don't belong to the Sobbing School of Negroes who hold that nature somehow has given them a low down, dirty deal, and whose feelings are all hurt by it.
Speaker 1 01:00:12 Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and that is worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it. That is just incredible, especially the word civilization, because a big part of c r t, uh, Dr. Hicks would know this at the Atlas Society joins with what's called post-modernism, and they're like kind of supercharged by that. And so sometimes you'll see the language of post-modernism joined with c r t and post-modernism specifically rejects the enlightenment and civilization and the civilized world that the enlightenment brought us. And concepts like objectivity, logic and things like that, and c r t movement, I'm not saying they're the same as the po postmodern movement, but they often work together. And there's some kind of, um, energy that the c r t people, c r t people will get from post-modernists. And the post-modernists really want to reject the modern world, uh, that we have today and move to a post.
Speaker 1 01:01:27 That's why they call it post-modernism. And so sometimes they're allies, um, in ways you might not expect. Now, a quick quote from, um, Kendi, uh, Abram Kendi quote, to love capitalism is to end up loving racism. And to love racism is to end up loving capitalism. This is from his book, how to Be an Anti-Racist. And he goes On, capitalism is essentially racist and racism is essentially capitalist. They were birthed together from the same unnatural causes, and they shall one day die together. Here's a Marxist forecast again, from unnatural causes. From unnatural causes. Isn't that interesting? And then he says, or racial capitalism will live into another epic of theft and rapacious inequity, especially if activists naively fight the conjoined twins independently. See what he's saying? We're gonna fight racism and capitalism together. We're gonna join them at the hip. We're gonna take 'em on together.
Speaker 1 01:02:54 You see the mar, you see the Marxist lineage here. It's, it, it sounds a lot like, I hate capitalism. Let me pick something that Americans really hate racism and join the two. What's weird about that argument is the second premise Americans hate racism. Yes, actually, they do See how weird this is that on the one hand they're saying Americans are racist, or white Americans are. And on the other hand, they're basically saying, we need to leverage the hatred that Americans have a racism. Join it to capitalism and make them hate both. It's a very weird strategy, but as long as you know what it is, and then it's not. I mean, even the idea of birth together, I, I have a book coming out and one of the chapters is on the lineage of capitalism. It's fairly young. I mean, capitalism is, uh, 300 years old.
Speaker 1 01:03:55 That's it. The, the word itself didn't even, wasn't even invented until 1850. Okay? But even go a hundred years prior to that, call it 1750, call it the British Industrial Revolution, but the word itself, capitalism didn't even come up until 1850. But suppose you go 1750, we're talking about what, 260 years? That's how young, uh, capitalism is. But, but slavery is four, 5,000 years old. Racism, at least 5,000, at least as far back as human beings and recorded history goes. Right? So the, the idea that they were birthed together is so ridiculous. It would mean that capitalism began, you know, 4,000 bc No, it didn't. And it would also have to throw out the history of, well, okay, capitalism comes about during the Enlightenment and Renaissance. And lo and behold, that's roughly when you start hearing arguments for abolition. Lo and behold, that's when you start hearing arguments that, uh, racism is terrible. And so is, uh, slavery during the time of capitalism's rise. So quite the contrary of them being birthed together. When capitalism was birthed, uh, by Locke and Smith and Newton and Hamilton and others, that's when slavery's time on the planet was, uh, about to end. Remarkable. And, and it's kind of sad actually, cuz Kendi like people like Ken, like this will be read and sell, have bestseller books, and it's almost like people have no idea what the history is. So it sounds a plausible to them. It's very dis it's very disturbing.
Speaker 1 01:05:45 Lawrence, go ahead. You have your hand up.
Speaker 4 01:05:48 Yes. I wanted to sort of call back to something you'd said a little bit earlier, sort of about how there's this irrationality when it comes to those who argue for C r t and sort of these policies and sort of the hope that because of the sort of irrationality your day-to-day American is gonna sort of start us really notice it and sort of push back. And I think, yeah, observationally we are seeing this to an extent, especially in the last few years, more so than before. Yeah, but my thought, and I'd be curious to hear what you say is, as you said, this sort of education has sort of been in the universities in education for so long. So it's pretty well entrenched and it is religion, I would argue to an extent of how they adhere to it. And because you even see this in certain tech platforms, certain industries like say comic book industry where they're really trying to push these ideas, these, these things onto the consumers and there is resistance there. A lot of things, like the comics book industry is failing.
Speaker 1 01:06:57 Oh
Speaker 4 01:06:57 No, people aren't buying 'em really. People don't, don't, don't like these, they just want to have good comics, heroic figures. But that's not what's being done. However, what you're seeing is a doubling down or reinforcement. So while capitalism was saying these things will go the way of the dinosaurs, so to speak, because no one is buying them because it is this religious aspect that's only seems to show we need to stick to our guns more so than ever. And that is seems to be my question, is this gonna take longer then? Or how do we deal with the sort of the fervor to continue these beliefs despite what reality is showing?
Speaker 1 01:07:42 It's a really good question, by the way. I had no idea it had invaded comic books, but I it should that one of the themes I've been working with is when you see it invade every institution, you can be sure that it's philosophical. Now, most people don't want to hear about the power of philosophy cuz they think of it as this remote parlor game, you know, in an ivory tower. But philosophy deals with the broadest abstractions and the broadest issues, you know, and morals and thinking methods and things like that. So it is actually quite a testament to the power of philosophy in this particular case, the power of bad philosoph ideas. Um, if it just, you know, if we just looked around and said, wow, it's just in, uh, the comic book industry, it, it wouldn't be philosoph. Oh, it's just in, uh, economics or it's just at the Pentagon or something.
Speaker 1 01:08:31 It would be some kind of fad. But we can see it's everywhere. You see, by the way, by the way, even standup comics, Jerry Seinfeld and others, right? They will not go to universities. There can no, they used to be go to universities all the time. They would have standup comics and so they, it ruined, it has ruined the whole comedy industry even. Uh, but answer your question, Lawrence, I if you go back to medieval times when people broke out against the oppression of that kind of religious, uh, the dark ages ame, you had heretics, you had apostates, you had people like Luther and others, even though they were religious, just standing up against the church and standing up against oppression. So that would be my answer. It's a conditional answer. If you begin to see courageous heritage in effect in today's world, standing up and saying, no, I call BS on that.
Speaker 1 01:09:30 That's not true. That's ridiculous. You don't know the history and I'm calling you out on that. I think it would end sooner rather than later. If there's the, if there's gonna be the continuing cowering and you know, quite understandably concerned for being canceled, having your career ruin, um, then that is gonna take longer. Frankly, it's gonna take a lot longer to object. And I think also, um, it, it is important to make this distinction cuz I've heard this mistake made by people. The the way to counter this is not to deny that in the case, that will take America as an example. I hate that. I hate that Only America is the focus cuz there's slavery still to this day elsewhere in the world and much more racism elsewhere. And no focus on that. But just taking America for a moment, um, I if you just say, listen, um, I admit that America had a racist past and I admit that there was even systemic racism and structural meaning, it's in the laws.
Speaker 1 01:10:35 It, it's in the Constitution, it's in the Jim Crow laws. I mean that was a whole of segregation, the schools and stuff. Like that's what they mean by structural. And so it's okay to say, yeah, we did have that. But then the argument you make is we don't have that anymore. And that's amazing. We got rid of the structural racism, meaning today's racism is just idiosyncratic. It's a bunch of crazy, you know, some crazy people somewhere who are racists or, you know, NeoCon, confederates or whatever, you know, yearning for a return to, uh, 1859. But that's not the bulk of the country. It just isn't. And it's just a lie to say that it is systematically racist. So you could turn that whole thing on its head and say, listen, I am not denying this history. I'm telling you that that was us. It isn't us now.
Speaker 1 01:11:28 And for you to step forward now and say we still have this is just, just factually wrong and philosophically wrong and on every level wrong, but, and turn it into a pride issue. Turn it into an issue of, wow, we should actually be proud of this great progress we've made. And that it wasn't accidental. That was due to arguments. The abolitionists spent decades arguing for it. The Republican party came out of nowhere and and invented. I'm, I'm upset at the Republicans today for not accentuating their history and not ta and not quoting Lincoln all the time. And not reminding people that the Democrat party was the systemic racist party. That they're the ones who, okay, you want reparations, have the Democrats pay reparations? I don't really believe in reparations cuz it's a group oriented restitution project. Right? But if they're gonna go that route, they should put a mirror on themselves and say, oh my gosh, we were actually the racists.
Speaker 1 01:12:35 And so anyone in the Democratic party today should pitch in and spend all their wealth, uh, on reparations if they want. Cuz they're the party that did it. Not to make it partisan, but, well, I just made it partisan. So Mark has a good quote. Mark has a good statement here in the te in the chat, mark says, I believe C R T and Ken do bring up some legitimate concerns. However, their appeal to anti-capitalist solutions is unnecessary to address these concerns. Are you still here, mark? That's a really good comment. You still hear Mark, I'm curious if you wanna elaborate on that. Um, in other words, if they have good points and can do it without the anti capitalist solutions. What are you thinking of? What do you guys Um, I have ln, I have laryngitis, so that's why, that's why I'm a chatty Kathy. Sorry. Ok. Alright. I'll try to put something in the chattier question. Oh, okay, great. Okay. I'm sorry. Put something in the chat. I'll be glad to, uh, recount it. Anyone else? Oh, there's one. Victoria. What are you thinking?
Speaker 5 01:13:46 Hi. So, um, I recently was reading a book by Eric Coffer, I dunno if you've heard of him, the True Believer,
Speaker 1 01:13:53 Right.
Speaker 5 01:13:55 And, um, in it, he says, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1 01:13:56 Have great book, isn't it? Isn't it amazing?
Speaker 5 01:13:58 Yeah. He says, um, we join mass movements to escape individual responsibility, or in other words, to be free from freedom. And so I'm thinking this, um, culture of personal responsibility and accountability. Right. It's really important to capitalism. Right, right. And you discussed how c r t has been like permeating academia for 40 years. So do you think it will take another 40 years to bring back this culture of personal responsibility?
Speaker 1 01:14:28 Oh, good question. Victoria. N no. No. And my, my observation, my observation in academia is, I mean in general, and this is in the social sciences, I don't know the hard sciences as well. My experience has been that it takes about 25 years. That sounds like a long time, but it takes about roughly 25 years for something to germinate in academia and then get into the general culture. And c r t in academia began in the mid eighties, began in the mid eighties. And, um, and add, I don't know, add 25 years to that. And that's roughly where we are. But same thing with socialism and the great society and stuff like that. It's an interesting kind of, uh, transmission belt that occurs. Now, Victoria, if that's true, I can tell you for a fact that c r t and post-modernism is pretty much dead in academia. It's dead. They, they don't respect it. Uh,
Speaker 5 01:15:30 It's on its way out.
Speaker 1 01:15:31 What's that?
Speaker 5 01:15:32 You think it's on its way out?
Speaker 1 01:15:34 It's on its way out of academia. The question is, would it take 25 years to get on, on its way? I don't think it'll take that long to be discredited in the general public. Uh, i, I know economics very well. Here's an example from economics, Keynesian economics, which is heavily government intervention in the economy dominant from like 1935 to 1965. That's 30 years, right? And then it, so in academia, so then it permeated into actual policy in Washington and elsewhere, actually all over the world until about 1980. So that's a 15 or 20 year lag. But then it was discredited in the universities in the sixties and seventies, but it yet had not been discredited yet in the journal on the journalist community on Wall Street and elsewhere. But it took about 15 or 20 years. And that's what gave us Reaganomics supply side economics, tax cuts.
Speaker 1 01:16:35 Uh, it was an anti kasian moment and it lasted for 20 or 25 years or so. So that's another example. So, so in that regard, I'm optimistic that this permeation of c r t and post-modernism in the general culture won't last long. I mean, it might be another five years, maybe 10 years. I think 10 years would be, uh, surprising to me. I think maybe three to five years this will get, it might get a lot worse three to five years. And then it will turn around and there'll be a, an enormous backlash, uh, in the positive direction of people saying, I call BS on that. And I am not guilty for things I did not do. And I was not, I, uh, I'm, I'm making choices over. So I don't know if that addresses your point.
Speaker 5 01:17:27 Yeah, it does. Thank you.
Speaker 1 01:17:29 I think the Hoffer, if you read Hoffer, that Hoffer book, the True Believer, it's a great book, but if you read it, Victoria, wouldn't you think, wouldn't you get pessimistic cuz you'd say, oh my gosh, all these people are true believers in C R T. What's ever gonna dislodge them from that belief system? Is that what you're thinking?
Speaker 5 01:17:50 Well, I'm, I'm not at the very beginning still, but <laugh>
Speaker 1 01:17:52 Oh, okay. I don't wanna no plot spoilers there. Oh, Ashish Ashish is there, Ashish there? Go ahead. Ashish, your hand is up.
Speaker 6 01:18:01 Yes. Hi, Richard. Um, hi. Thank you for the talk. Uh, it's been very, um, I've learned a lot. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 01:18:07 Well, good. But thanks, thanks for coming.
Speaker 6 01:18:10 Yeah, I have a couple questions. Um, I I've read a, a fair bit of history recently, but, uh, one thing I haven't found an answer to is, um, I'm, I'm an immigrant. I've been in this country for about eight, eight and a half years. And, um, I've seen, uh, the aristo Aristotelian logic to be very strong in, in Americans in general Yeah. Compared to the rest of the world. Yeah. Uh, is there a specific reason for that? Uh, like, I haven't found the answer, uh, because all the rest of the world has been indoctrinated and, and, uh, maybe the cities of America have too. But when you go outside the cities, people still believe in reality and coming up with their own conclusions, which is great to, you know, but I haven't found the route to, to them being that way. And the other question is, um, I know the C r t is trying to create differentiation between sexes and races, but the end goal is no differentiation. It, the end goal is to become the same. And I is, is the root of that envy? Or is the, is it something else?
Speaker 1 01:19:20 Wow, those are really good questions. I don't, uh, lemme take the second one first. I don't think the c r t people are fundamentally egalitarians. I think they're fundamentally Marxist who want capitalism to collapse. So they're never going to say, I don't think, they're never going to say we want strict equality of the egalitarian type, where all differences in classes, however, characterized as economic or racial are obliterated. They want to end capitalism. So they would like never, they would never, if you said to them, Hey, there's harmony between the races, uh, there's harmony between men and women. Uh, dear Mark says, there's harmony between labor and capital. They don't want, they don't wanna hear any of that. They will like look away and make up stuff and say, no, no, no. And they're literally trying to ins they're trying to instigate a war, literally. I don't know if you know this, but, um, Charles Manson, who's one of the mass murderers, American history in the late sixties, um, slaughtered a whole bunch of people.
Speaker 1 01:20:29 Manson actually believed that he was starting a race war. He's a totally crazy guy. But the fact that Charles Manson in the, in the late sixties, and people were like, crazy guy. But C r T people are basically like that. C r T people are like Charlie Mansons only, they're not murdering their neighbors. They're trying to murder America. They're trying to murder the constitution. They're trying to kill off, um, capitalism. So I hear what you're saying, and there are egalitarians out there, you know, the, the strict ones who try to say there's no difference between men and women. Um, but these c r t people, you know, if you told them I'm colorblind, meaning there's no difference between black and white. They're like, don't tell me that I see differences. I want you to see differences. I'm not putting up with this, you know, universal humanity premise.
Speaker 1 01:21:21 So, um, now the first one, I'm gonna turn this one over to Dr. Kelly because I think I know why Americans are more Aris Aristotelian, but I, but just for the audience who doesn't know, it is kind of interesting that Aristotle, even though it's called Aristotelian logic, the, the whole point of Aristotle's logic was his view was every human being should use these rules of logic. And so his view was, I have discovered an objective set of rules which everyone can use. And, and, and the Marxists and others said, no, no, no. There's bourgeois logic and there's proletarian logic. And the C r t people would say, today, there's white logic and there's black logic. And you know, if, if you get someone like Clarence Thomas, they'll say, wow, cla I don't know. Clarence Thomas is pro capitalist, loves Zion Rand and loves Constitutionalism. He's thinking white. They literally will say that he's thinking white. See, Aristotle would look at that and say, what are you talking about? There's only one lodger, not many. Dr. Kelly, why are Americans Ashia saying Americans are more Aristotelian? I hadn't thought of that. I hope that's true. But did you ever get that question before?
Speaker 3 01:22:41 Well, I've heard it, and actually Iran said America was the, uh, country founded by Aristotelian ism. Um, and I think what, what she meant, and what you're meaning Richard, in, in response is that ol thought there was, there was an objective world. It is what it is, and we have the mind to understand it. And all humans have the same capacity to apply a common set of standards of reasoning. Right. Uh, but Ashish, I, let me ask you whether you mean, uh, air logic versus symbolic logic or versus Marxist? Um, uh, um,
Speaker 6 01:23:26 I, I, I guess what I'm referring to is, um, treating re uh, basically what Ayn Rand said, Abe, Abe is equal to a and treating reality as it is. And, and using logic to like, uh, looking at their own experiences and, and deciding what is right or wrong.
Speaker 3 01:23:43 Yeah. Okay. And I think that's, that's absolutely right. Um, it is not the truth from an Aristotelian standpoint of the way the world is. And the way we think about it, you start with perception, you observe, and then you draw conclusions and you go by the evidence as opposed to saying, uh, any relativism. Aristotle was absolutely not a relativist. And, you know, quite consciously opposed to a re relativism, but also, um, you know, he was not a mistake in any way that said, well, there's, there's this super faculty we have of defining truths that are not based in reality or not based in observation and logic, but, um, we have to apply. And which is the kind of the platonic and a somewhat religious view. So he tried to establish a philosophy that was based on reason, and it it, the sense in which that is in a distinctively American or America is a distinctively Aristotelian inheritance is that, is the idea that, you know, everyone in America, there's a, there's this attitude.
Speaker 3 01:25:05 It, you think for yourself, you use common sense. Not everyone is aian and Americans, you know, sometimes make all kinds of crazy inferences. But yeah. So it, um, but the fact is that we, you know, those inferences are put out and they can be refuted, and we're not, no one is saying everyone has to operate under some regime of, uh, of, of belief in this or that assumption. You can question any assumption, which is probably the most relevant point to the topic tonight. So the, I I would say that the ity and individualism of Aristotle's epistemology are the things that are most significant in. And or I think actually I have hope for the kinds of goals Rich is talking about.
Speaker 6 01:26:10 Is, is that something that was taught in, in the 19th century to the Americans? Or what was it, something inferred from the freedom given to them by the constitution? I asked these questions because, um, uh, I'm trying to find solutions to problems we have today. And, and I feel like the solutions are already there because you look at Americans and, and they are living it, right? So what, how did they get there? Is maybe we can reverse the cycle again.
Speaker 3 01:26:42 Well, uh, I would say that it, I'd go back to my points. Objectivity and independent judgment are the, as reflected in common sense, the American of Yankee Yankee common sense, um, is the essence now in the 19th century in a, in a, in education, Aris logic, Aristotelian logic, the syllogism, uh, and, and, uh, the categories and everything else have aristo in a, in an academic sense, were taught. That was the only logic that was around. And many people had, were educated in that. Um, at the end of the 19th century, we can't have, uh, having other logics in the 20th century, we had people, um, you know, uh, uh, questioning, airing and logic, questioning whether logic was consistent. It was the, uh, girl serum. Um, I don't into the technicality, but it, all of that contributed to a skepticism about the powers of reason. And in that sense, technical logic has had, um, kind of a, a deleterious effect. But I don't think, I honestly don't think it's affected most, most people all that much unless they get interested in, you know, but, but Jay's still running his business on air logic.
Speaker 1 01:28:15 <laugh>, right? <laugh>, right? Ashish the, uh, Ashish, the other thing is po possibly the last Aristotelian famous logician from the standpoint of induction, not was Js Mill. So John Stewart Mill in the mid 18 hundreds developed mills methods, which are very cool, but that's from the standpoint of induction. And, uh, Dr. Kelly knows this a lot better than I do, and in fact, has written a fabulous text called The Art of Reasoning. And it has a discussion of mill's methods in there. But, uh, as I think of anyone after that, after mill in the mid eight, was it the mid 1860s? Eighties, yeah, something like that. Methods a, uh, probably the last great contribution. But on the induction side, and then, yeah, after that wienstein and nominalism and the whole idea that there are poly, poly lo jism, many logics, uh, unique to identities in groups, which is very much the issue today, right?
Speaker 1 01:29:22 The issue today is there is no universal human nature or method of thinking. Uh, if so, everyone's in their little silos and they're in little, uh, tribes, uh, thinking differently, um, biased in various ways, un unavoidable. And it's gonna lead to clash. It's gonna lead to power plays, right? Because you're not going on the basis of reason. Many of the c r t people will say, if you start telling me about logic, objectivity, the scientific method, some of them even say showing up on time. I mean, is racist <laugh>, they'll, they'll say, only white people show up on time. You know, other cultures don't, you know, they're tardy. And it is such a, uh, disgraceful kind of insult. I mean, it's, it's common today when they'll say, we can't have, you know, photo IDs for voting. Why? I don't know. Cuz this particular group doesn't know how to go get a photo Id.
Speaker 1 01:30:25 In many ways, this kind of stuff is really insulting and, you know, and, um, anyway, um, I'm gone too far there, there. By the way, conceptually talk about logic Kennedy was asked recently, you, this might interest you to define racism. And since Sim Abram Kendi is the major guy now running around saying Americas are inherently racist, he was asked literally a couple weeks ago, could you please define racism? So I took down his answer. Now listen to this quote. I would define racism as a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity, substantiated by racist ideas. So any of you who know Aristotelian Logic will know that that is circular <laugh>, that he's trying to define racism in terms of, uh, racism. Yep. So if you boil down his answer, it would be, I define racism as, um, uh, racism. It's really almost comical.
Speaker 1 01:31:37 Now. I'm not I'm not saying, uh, you know, a first year student in logic wouldn't come up. Yeah, they would. But this guy is the one selling best selling books, and he's out there, um, uh, foremost among all of them. And he's a superstar. He's the rockstar of c r t and he can't even define racism. Yeah. Without a circular reference to the concept itself. Darn it. I wish I had an example for my logic book. Yeah, right. That, that needs to go in the next edition. All right. All right. So we've come to the end. Oh, by the way, our, our, our voice challenged, mark Goodkin has written a great chat. So let's end with this cuz he says, I agree with Delgado and some of the other c r t people that are criminal justice system, uh, has aspe, has aspects are racist and need to be reformed.
Speaker 1 01:32:36 Now, I I know your voice is weak, so I'm gonna speak for you. There is some plausibility to this. So if you say, listen, I'm gonna look at the disparate effects and assume they're racist caused, you could argue that there are a lot of non-whites, I'll just say non-whites in prison, you know, say for minor drug charges. And the theory in criminology, if you know, is that these laws have been put together by racists, by people who want blacks and others jailed in masks, uh, in mass incarceration. And of course, the answer to that would be, let's be a little more libertarian on things like minor drug offenses and the side that's jailing people for that really have to explain themselves. Now, what's interesting is Trump, I think, tried to reverse some of that. I think he started, didn't he start pardoning some people for non-violent crimes? And, and yet he was being described as a racist. So, um, I think there actually is some, I I'm not sure it's racist, motivated, but the disparate effects are quite obvious that the misdemeanors and various other things that are in the law seem to disproportionately incarcerate blacks. Now, if that's, to the extent that's true and it's hard to overcome a criminal record and get out and get a job, that is a problem. But the liber, the more libertarian objectiveness approach would be to stop criminalizing, uh, victimless crimes. What you, Richard, can
Speaker 2 01:34:18 I, Richard, can I join on this? Can I join on this one? Because I think it's, yeah, yeah, go
Speaker 1 01:34:22 Ahead, Jay.
Speaker 2 01:34:24 Uh, post-Katrina in New Orleans, I spent a lot of time, uh, working on criminal justice reform, and I think it's at least as good a case of the bootleggers in Baptist, uh, as the drivers, as race, as the driver, ah, it, independent of who the players are, meaning, you know, it doesn't matter if you have a black DA or white da or black sheriffs or a black police, white police. Yeah, I'm really aware about the money and the paradigm and the special interest, but I didn't want to run us over. I just wanted to make sure that the disparate outcome may be caused by racist motives, but it may also simply be caused by the usual government special interest cronyism that drive.
Speaker 1 01:35:11 Yeah, yeah. And not necessarily racist. I, I see your point. That's interesting. The, uh, the George, I don't know if you guys heard this, but I I myself was quite surprised the George Floyd case, um, when Keith Ellison was interviewed, this is really remarkable when you think about how much violence in 2020 was, uh, justified by some people on the grounds of the, this racist incident. But the DA in Minnesota, Keith Ellison, who was a, who was a black Muslim, a left wing black Muslim, is the AG in Minnesota, where George Floyd was murdered, was interviewed by 60 Minutes. And they asked him, why did you not, uh, prosecute the policeman Derek Chauvin? Why did you not prosecute him, uh, for doing a hate crime? I I'm not really big on hate crimes, but they could have brought a racist hate crime against him as well as the murder charge.
Speaker 1 01:36:15 And now I'm quoting from the 60 Minutes interview, Ellison was quote, was interviewed, and notice how he shifts from the incident to systemic racism. Now listen to this. This is a real problem, and it reminds me actually of the OJ case. Ellison says, uh, Scott Pley asks, the whole world sees this as a white officer killing a black man because he's black. But you're telling me there's no evidence to support that. And Ellison says, quote, this is the ag Now Attorney General of Minnesota. I wouldn't call it a hate crime because hate crimes are crimes where there's an explicit motive and bias. And we don't have any evidence that Derek Chauvin, uh, factored into George Floyd's race as he did what he did. We only charge those crimes. We have evidence that we can put in front of a jury to prove. And if we had a witness showing that Derek Chauvin made a racial reference or was racially motivated in some way, we would've brought that against him.
Speaker 1 01:37:21 I would've needed a witness to say that we didn't have that. So we didn't, unquote. But then he says, he justifies the verdict by saying, but this is c r t now, but in our society, there's a social norm that killing certain kinds of people is more tolerable than killing other kinds of people. And in order for us to stop and pay serious attention to this case and to be outraged by it, it's not necessary that Chauvin had to be a racist unquote. Isn't that incredible? And then he goes, the fact is we know that through housing patterns and employment patterns and wealth patterns through a whole range of other things that people of color, black people end up with harsher treatment by the cops, unquote. You see how that, you see how the ag is basically saying, I don't really care what Chauvin did.
Speaker 1 01:38:37 I don't care this almost like, I don't care whether OJ killed Nicole Brown or not. Uh, these are symbolic figures, right? And they're supposed to, and the justice system is supposed to treat them as symbolic stand-ins for societal problems. And yes, Derek Chauvin may not have been a racist, but we have this kind of racist project to institute. So we'll use him as a kind of clown figure in this whole thing that is really unjust, uh, and really amazing. But remember it, you won't remember you're too young. But if you, in the OJ case, the evidence was overwhelming that he had killed Nicole Brown. But in the testimony, the la cops were seen as racist or portrayed as racist. So the jury exonerated oj and when they were asked later why they did that, they said, oh, we thought he was guilty, but we wanted to punish the cops. We wanted to punish the cops cuz they have this kind of overarching reputation for treating us badly. And, and even though OJ was like a wealthy black guy, he was a black guy and he was our stand in for all the black guys had been mistreated by the cops over the decades. You see how crazy this can get where specific cases and specific trials can be couched in these more collectivist uh, terms. Very odd.
Speaker 1 01:40:11 Uh, anyone else wanna Ashish have your hand up still. Go ahead. Oh, I just forgot to put it down. Sorry. <laugh>. Oh, you forgot to put it down and let, okay, let's end with Dr. Kelly and then we'll quit for the night. Dr. Kelly.
Speaker 3 01:40:29 Uh, just a, a note on what you were just saying that, um, you know, it was after the Floyd killing, um, it was, it was an open question on my mind, whether Showman had any, it was any anti-black attitude or what, it could have been personal, it could have been just that policing, I don't know what, but the entire country exploded.
Speaker 1 01:40:56 Yeah.
Speaker 3 01:40:57 With Black Lives Matter. I mean, I lived on 14th Street in, in Washington, DC for weeks. I saw people marching down the street. Um, and so it, it goes to your point that, you know, Ellison Yeah. Put words to it, but the street put a much bigger presence to it by assuming that this had to be even, I don't think, I don't think any of the thousands of people I watched marching by my, my building could have said, do you could have answered the question, do you have evidence that Derek Chauvin was a racist?
Speaker 1 01:41:37 Right.
Speaker 3 01:41:37 Killed him? Wouldn't,
Speaker 1 01:41:38 They wouldn't have cared, right? They would've said, I don't care.
Speaker 3 01:41:41 Right. It's an issue. So we're going, it's
Speaker 1 01:41:44 An is it's an issue and this is like a test case, let's go with it. Not a task case.
Speaker 3 01:41:49 But I just wanna register that as a, uh, an indication of the degree of the, it's not necessarily all c r t, but it, it's, uh, akin to it and the the pervasive character that it's taken on in our culture. So, but anyway, thanks Richard. Great talk.
Speaker 1 01:42:11 Thank you all for joining and we'll see you next month on Morals and Markets. Thank you all so very much for joining.
