Welcome to the commentary magazine gaily podcast. This is the last day of April, rather were thirty twenty twenty one. I am John PATH towards the editor of monetary with me as always a source if editor, no Rossman high. Now I got senior writer Christine rose high, Christine. an executive editor, a Green Waldheim Hydra so

just before. We started to take this. I had on the today show, and there was an interview or snippet of parliamentary view with President Biden by Craig Melvin and I came and serve in the middle. But so I don't know what the precipitating question was, but That's all you with masking and by Said Melvin look, look at us we're sitting here we not wearing masks, whereof vaccinate we're not wearing mass by in the camera. back in their sitting. You know like eighty feet apart. Let's say six was way more than six, but we're here we're six feet apart and you know we're doing

less, because it's just a little bit of prudence and come on man. It's a patriotic duty, so presides dates. Yeses indoors, with Craig welcome, he is vaccinated. Craig Melvin is vaccinated according to guidance. They are well with their their thereof. Well, well, more than six feet apart. What does it mean that it's a patriotic duty for him to be shown masculine. but the aids wished to go about your life and everybody else going about their lives living as though they are not vaccinated a guy, actually answered this interview you can, if you do, is gradually, because we need to go into a great example that will be the secondary

sample of what we're sure doctor. We shall will ask you CDC director people Inzana defect in the Atlantic and others now say that it is not a responsibility on the part of the vaccinated to avoid infecting other people because they like you'll get this disease much less transmitted is very low day. The duty, possibility now is to present an example that ensures that other people want than mass so you have no scientific responsible. It is it s your responsible as a citizen. Now is the model. Good behaviour and good behaviour means masking at all times everywhere, all the time outside inside the matter. What you're doing as long as you're on camera or other people can see you, because you have

Be this model of preferred social behaviour in the preferred social behaviour right now is to mask okay. So it's a patriotic duty. Man Abe remind us of another occasion on which, by use the same language when you said that a tax to us, I was reminded that in two thousand and eight when Biden was the democratic President vice presidential

added it only candidate them. He said that hang higher taxes is patriarch, yet was an act of occasion, so he also raising taxes on the rich. So, let's pull back and think about the use of the word patriotic by Biden specifically, but but what what it represents serve rhetorical right. Patriotism is the condition of love of country right, that's into descriptor, describing the condition the emotion of love of country is called patriotism. Patriotism therefore, doesn't really have to have a cause. It doesn't have to have an animated thing,

originating force. It is eight, it is a thing in itself. It is actually quite an entirely natural condition to love the place, your from its serve like hard wired into arm bodies almost, but for for certain people. Patriotism is conditional on the results or on them on whatever is going at a given moment. So you are a patriot. Ev Ex wines is going on that you like, where you're a patriot If you behave in a way that is praiseworthy, and self sacrificing as a citizen. And that is a very controlling definition of patriotism. It seems to me: well, it's also the opposite of being a patriot is someone who hates their country.

One of the great freedoms we actually have in the United States is to express our dislike intensely of our own country in its own policies. That's obviously that's a great freedom that we have, but to use it as a political blood in which is what Biden clearly has a habit of doing has a different effect right, because I can love my country and not agree to wear mask every world as a kind of religious symbol is, as those on the left have are telling us. We need you. I can love my country and look at what you know. Something like sixty nineteen project says about its origins and completely disagree with that and still be a patriot, and I dont like I didn't like this stirring up, nine eleven. It was much more on the right that you saw patriotism being used as a bludgeoned and anyone who raise objections to you through civil liberties violations that might be going on and that the government might be doing first towards citizens was often deemed

Hey traffic. It was bad when that happened in its bad now and binds using it. This way it is not appropriate for the present the United States to deem his policy disagreements, a patriotic you and I get really upset by that makes me really angry, because I think that that's actually something is one of the few ideas that we have? That really should be free of partisanship, because you can be on the After the right, you can lover hate your country, that's part of what this country is about him, but for the president to say something like that. That's that's not. I don't think that's just a little offhand remark. I think that should be. He should be criticised thoroughly for for using it. In that way, look good did not go back a google a little bit in time cause? I was just looking this up as you were talking, and this is something that Bill Clinton dead in February. Ninety ninety three, when he made his announcement of the of the of his economic problem,

and he said I'm not going to quote a piece by Tom Friedman at the time quote in telling Americans that it is their patriotic duty to support his economic programme. President Clinton is trying to redefine patriotism from going together, face of worlds red abroad to pay higher taxes to face in economics rat at home. So This is yet another example of a Democrat trying to we define patriotism as a as the quality that is necessary if you are to be a good citizen by supporting his specific program and also strikes me aside from being a perversion of the idea of patriotism

If you're trying to argue about the merits of a policy or behaviour or whatever it's kind of a conversation under, will you do it because it's patriotic without ok, I guess what is it? You know what I want. You know not be periodic I mean so so, let's so, generally speaking, you would say that flag waving amusing patriotism is a political symbol. Is this area this is why what did it certainly is. The cliche is something that is endemic on the right. Now on the left right, where's, your flag pen, you're, not wearing your flag. Pin now, what's the December, why are you wearing a flag? Pin that you know after nine eleven or trouble Our rhetoric over the last three or four years, which is interesting, as of course he came into office, saying this country stinks and everything's terrible, and we ve done everything badly and worse.

Do, but our leaders are still better than you they're, mistreating you and all of that, and then he walked around saying those other people. They hate America right now. the way I am not, but he did leave thing he did leave saying America snakes till right, but I, by the way, it's not that I want to get into the ways in which you know its rich for Biden to be throwing around terms like patriotism when he is also buying into ideas about the United States, that are by definition, unpatriotic, which we can get to in a minute, but you'd say that patriotism out the last refuge of a conservative scoundrel right. That's what not not a liberal scoundrel. That's not, but that's where maybe that idea is, is wrong that love of country

which, I think George Orwell said. Love of country is very nearly the only pure emotion. I possess that. Love love of country is something to be used as a weapon against people. It's a way of getting people who might not agree with you to say what you love your country you now is coming. If you love your country, you'll, wear seat belt now, There are good reasons for a seat belt and it's really good to us about, because, Don't wanna, be you don't want to die? You dont want other people in your car to die, you don't wanna like burden the healthcare system with your accident and all of that, but That is the kind of thing that you could very easily here here. People say

now and then there was some of this rhetoric during them at the worst moments of the pandemic, where it was like its patriotic is serve a version of what Biden said to Craig Melvin. Not to see your mother, You're doing that not only for her but for the country, you're you're, not seeing your mother, even though she is aged and alone, because you don't want to spread the virus and sprang the virus is a collective act and Oh you know it you if it doesn't matter. If your mother is, you know dying of loneliness you're, doing something noble by refusing to see her, but that's that's. I should quite right date that there's a way that the left is very skilled at redefining turn. and using phrases that are that are difficult to argue against us. Maybe this when, when aid, you said you who did who doesn't want who'd, who would claim not be patriotic like the violence against women act, so if you were opposed

provisions, they acted like so your for violence against women in its clever right. The Republicans do it with the dead tax rate. Is that their ways of branding that this upset is is more exciting, because what it is doing is two things: it's establishing a threat trying to kind of exploit the risk or threat of some in order to tap into a deeply rooted, as you said earlier, on a deeply rooted feeling good healthy feeling. People should have about the place they come from and and how they feel about their country and exploiting it for political gain. Spits its craven and the reason is upsetting- is that I think it shifts buying. I dont think set it to two to think took prompt half the country too. He'll unpatriotic. I think you just can't like the word just doesn't really have a meaning anymore, but it should, in this respect, thing. Where, when we talk about, you know how we

declining faith in institutions, cynicism about political leaders, this kind of language actually matters, in my opinion, in terms of how our leaders talk to us about our country, because we do you have a history in this country of rooting out unamerican activities. We had an entire commission in committee in the House of Representatives in the twentieth century that did just that. There is a history of taking this kind of idea too far, and I just don't- I don't like it being used as a kind of policy tool on the left it especially because, as you say, John, it's incredibly hypocritical, given some of their position, but so she'll grow this out. If you serve again backdated than further back from Bill Clinton. One. Ninety, ninety three I guess you have to serve the animated document, would be John F K are you saying at his inaugural, ask not what your country can do for you ask. Rather what you can do for your country.

Now, if you think about that, that is something that no politician would say today. It's kind of a shocking thing to say, in fact, if you parcelled out, which is. What does it even mean to say you ordinary Joe listening to your president, give his inaugural address having one of your razor thin victory by stealing Folsom Cook County. What is it? What does it mean that this guy who's, the rich son of a bootlegger gangster lover of Nazi Germany is telling you that you should do things sacrifice yourself for your country, but it was a different time. It was a different moment. We were fifteen years out of World WAR Ii. The greatest collective effort of the United States has ever made to

save the world. We were still in the groups and nowhere near the depths of the cold war as yet, where we were in a kind of titanic moral, radiological struggle, with a genuinely evil counterforce, and so the notion that there was a kind of collective responsibility because of these Agnes, these existential threats that America had face over the over the previous two decades. It wasn't a shocking thing to say. Of course it's become a famous piece of rhetoric, because liberals just loved because once that was no longer the case or you could take that and then you could say well, maybe it's about the second World war. Maybe it's not about ethical or maybe there's about Medicare. Maybe it is about. You know: heads dart- maybe it is about like this, is what you can do for your country, if you're ordinary Joe person his pay, a lot of taxes, what

Also you supposed to do for your country coming the away when less than the military in nineteen sixty one is to join up as a kid. Right when you're at an e mail and your eighteen. What are you supposed to do for your country? You know what you're supposed to do for your country and self governing democracy is be a self governing person. Take care of your family. Take care of you be part of your community vote. You know, Abby civically minded and participate in the economic and spiritual and you know and serve community area in life of the country, but you're not supposed to do for your country. That is that that is a total, misapprehension and misunderstanding of America, but it was like TED Sorenson pouring rhetoric, so so so everybody loved it. So now, here we are sixty years later and Biden is telling everybody that that

unnecessary wearing of a facial covering for the purposes of virtue signalling to people who clearly don't care about being virtuous, particularly if it is your obligation as a city, as a person who loves their country. I mean it would be absurd. It is kind of like we ve gone from fighting fascism in the twentieth century too, like Michael Scott on the office is threat. Level midnight with I can telling us we have to unnecessarily where mass, but it is, it did. There's there's a mission, Crete problem here to re. If that message resonates, be used for other things. We ve already seen it used for economic policy. Now it's masking what me I mean: what's that's what what's the next patriotic do and it was- I wonder- interest,

actually exact infrastructure is patriotism than you redefine? Infrastructure is being whatever it is. Whatever big government program you want rights are therefore, you know, I do think, a large part of the story of what why were as divided as we are in the country and have been increasingly so now over the course of several presidencies. To do with the fact that, with the global by polarity of the cold war over that kind of dynamic turned the inward in in countries and is instead of playing out across the globe there. They did this split happened here I am- and I think that's true and also the m. The failure of the country to come to a consensus on up in the

and though at the beginning it look like there was one serve posts, nine, eleven consensus about the threat faced from you know: Islam Old Fashioned. when they saw as terrorism that that we were served together on it and then we shall and then we pulled apart unshattered on it. That gather always has to be a force, an account or for some people's heads like it's very hard for people to live. Otherwise I guess, but we should probably get to the question of what it means for a democrat and twenty twenty one to claim patriotic duty. When, when the- key messages of their parties. Cultural flank are too, you know, pull out the America, the good grounds for american patriotism, At the road, but before we do that, I want to talk to you guys about these.

the numbers were seeing no six point: four percent growth annually, six percent unemployment everything gone serve like Gang Busters even oh Joe Biden, said, that he He inherited a country with a house on fire, guess what not only did the fire go out, but apparently we have six percent growth solely because of Joe Biden do we Know- and you would know that if you were reading the internet materials provided by the people at the bottom, group that two point: eight billion dollar financial management services, firm, ah headed by David Martin, who produces at the decency, data com and dividend, cafe dot com, the clearest explications of how politics policy the FED the tree three, the investment community and and the kind of the International World

Financial bubbles all interact and both the lead us to understand, What we should do with our money and what maybe, what the governments, who don't with its mummy and law as two critical, understandings of the ways in which we are maybe going down the wrong road toward you know inflation and decay, and not toward them we're on our way to a boom and how what what what the booms effects are are really very unclear, and we need to move in a watch them day by day and that's what David Bonds and does at the DC today, common weekly, a dividend cafe that council, please look em up. Take a look with them. the most profit and that's the bond, some group, your antidote to the intellectual, spaghetti of the financial services industry. So this morning I noticed and play book, which is produced by

political, something about how Mitch Mcconnell is going to double down on the culture war by asking the department of educated, Bind Department of Education either. I do it to remove from its guidance to school something involving the sixteen nineteen project or two zone. You don't have a background. Yes, so sixteen nineteen project, our audience noses and media product than your times produced Self styled to refrain or historical narrative. It was a piece of narrative. It was historically challenged. Historians have challenged it that has not prevented schools from

adopting the teachers, resources that were provided by the New York Times to schools to added to the curriculum. It's been a part of her historical curricula and schools across his country now for the better part of a year and a half years, and this within two weeks ago, a week ago, something like that, the Education Department produced some guidance to believe institutions of higher education, but I could be wrong, can be broader than that. Nevertheless, it tethered grants grant applications to the adoption of and dim demonstrated adoption of some of the theses, both in the sixteen nineteen project and by critical raced theorists, most notably the worker, Abrams Ex Candy and conservatives. The only part that they played in this is that they ve noticed it so much Mcconnell and thirty. urban centres on the european side of the Isle, are calling on the education department to block this sir proposed rule and according to political,

Mitch, Mcconnell is leaning into the culture wars. It's the latest turn in the culture wars he's throwing read me to his base. They have pounced is a trifecta of trite, cliched, partisan hack journalism, on display in what is essentially the budget, which is a thesis that were that all of us who think of adopted now is that it's not culture warring until Republicans notice when it comes in your ear. The earlier your pouncing on playbook you're, Rossman Pounces, here is why it this is at Noah's absolutely right, because there was a way and actually a much savvy. Your way, if you want to get this stuff into doing, to get this money funneled to critical race theory, consultants and get you know the one thousand six hundred and nineteen project at the hands of kindergarteners everywhere. You would

directly side it. So by citing it in the rule, they called it a landmark. Sixteen ninety project, a landmark work, landmark work. They cite interim candy, they site that, as I think, a gauntlet thrown down like look. This is the direction we're gonna. Take this in right. Now, it's just a small amount of funding right there. There basically saying we want british Social studies places to spend money on this kind of curriculum, but its that's the foot in the door, because the idea down the line is to transform the way that we teach civics and the history of this country from K through twelve, so this suit. This is a kind of it is form of indoctrination in the same way that you know, radicals for long time have claimed that teaching that that this country is a good the place where you are lucky to have one life's lottery to be born in is also a kind of you know. I d illogical conditioning, but this they put that in there for a very specific reason, it's part of the binding ministrations, broader approach to

Is they ve talked about it? A lot, and every time I know is right. Every time someone notices it than they act shot shot. What are you talking about Are there any right at the beginning of a larger projects? It's not a huge amount of money that their that that would initially get spent, but they want to get that put the door okay. So so around about my you know when I was growing up I was a teenager in the nineteen. Seventeen patriotism was not in good order; it wasn't bad odor, culturally, you were not supposed to be a patriot. America was a terrible place. According to its elites for oh sparse it was. It had been savage toward the peace, loving hippies it had the now it was in. ass, the gaping FBI was you're, doing terrible things through its common. Tell pro programme investigating leftist groups. The Euro will cops. Interestingly enough were also considered bad.

we were mean to Cuba. We were mean to North Vietnam, and you know growth growing up in a knife in seventies. It was much more prevalent that people would say the american dream has turned into a nightmare. There is no american dream, America's terrible which one of the reasons that people were so shocked that the power of the Reagan coalition and the size of Reagan's victory in nineteen eighty, has it was actually the bubbles? People seem to think that you know we're only in our silos now and all that, but, of course, international transmission of local trends, and things like that was much more difficult them because there was no internet. You couldn't you know you, you could only read the SALT Lake City Paper

got it in your hands. You didn't know was going on elsewhere. People in the cat, you known some America's capitals, write a New York, Washington, Boston places like that had no idea what was going on in the heart of the country and worst absolutely staggered to discover that enormous numbers of people were not happy that we lost the Vietnam WAR because they thought We should have won the Vietnam WAR, for example, and that we tied our hands behind our backs, sent almost sixty thousand people to die there with out, allowing them the victory that they should have one, which was an attitude that came as a total, blazing shock to people. So I'm only bring this up as a as it is predicated to what to what's going and now, but this is this is a really important point that people can understand, because what this effort is a is one example of many that I think we're going to see what this administration is.

the attempt to codify and mainstream that position, and so I, just a red really briefly, some of the language of the rules. does that the rule would allocate federal funding for education contractors who work to improve cave. You told education so that the improvement comes quote to teach about systemic marginalization, biases inequities, discriminatory policies and practices in american history to promote racially likely, culturally and linguistically responsive teaching and learning practices. everyone knows that we felt very specifically that it's not even a little bit vague, tells applicants to demonstrate how they propose to teach what you just cited. The system marginalization Ices inequalities along the lines of the examples cited and the examples cited, were candies work and the sixteen nineteen project, none of it.

vague wherein it ought not controversial? Why not defend the premise but, as I was to mountain this full courtship stroking assault on the obsessive cranks he just read the thing. My point, the larger point here is that This is not patriotic what for it is any you if you will support its foundations and believed the truth of the sixteen nineteen project. Patriotism is either an evil or up it's either an evil or a day or a delusion. But is America, is a terrible thing according to this, but but but the more radical redefinition of patriotism that that the left engage it is not about masks or taxes, it is when they say things like calling capper neck by

kneeling or by denouncing the fourth of July or whatever else, this is the This is a good example of true patriotism. This is how you shall love of country, but it doesn't make sense in their own time, because ok, so this was said during the protest of the of the Iraq war and stuff like that, which is descent patriotic. This is the United States. We get to say what we think you know four, without without worrying that the governments have come down on Us Using our free speech is an example

makes Amerika great. This is not something that the critical race theorist and the systemic racism believers believe. They believe that this is an unfriendly country that is governed by a series of of ideas and unconscious bias, ease that make it systemically not only unfair but murderous toward a certain population of people. Why should anybody be patriotic about such a horrible monstrous place that was evil the year before it? It announced that it found itself in sixteen twenty right. It's the go ahead as it is at an end project is the. What I think Abe is describing- and we know this because read the children's books- that these folks put out there's a new one coming out that the Nikole Hannah Jones is is coming out with this part of the one thousand. Six hundred and nineteen project extended product line

from candies written anti racism for babies. Book. Look at those what I've read that I've looked at the ones that are available because I'm interested in how their teaching it. That is exactly the message and I think the argument a while this is obviously a long march to power for the people who believe it. They won't feel that this country is something they can be proud of until they ve cap. for the institutions, rewritten the history than all the things that we know, especially as a laid out in his wonderful piece about revolutions. The things Articles revolutionaries demand in order to meet the bar they ve set for themselves and that's what this is a very small part of a broader project, but they still won't because the project does not admit of the possibility of positive change, in other words, if you're gonna, if you're going to look at the american experiment and you're gonna say the whole point about it. Is that it's it's it shot through with sin and evil

Slavery, the treatment of the native Americans, the treatment of the Chinese was they were Reno was they were, laying the railroad track. You know whatever what. However, you want to slice it right that shot through with bad behaviour and all that and every corrective to that, every corrected to the evil is contained within the documents that founded the country. So the the cognitive events of slavery in the United States was eventually met with it with it. The boy the highest war that we ve ever fought in our brother against brother state against state in order to increase solidify the union an end this you know unspeakable evil of slavery. And everything else that has come through over time is the result of the fact that in that that the key

Susan, the declaration, all that was written, as you know, The instruction manual that could be used to forty years later, to correct injustices present a press, all of that, they don't believe that no, but this is very important that an important thing to dwell on and it's something I wrote about for the blood because the for the whole of the civil rights movement, Basically, this fundamental premise is underlined all of its activism, which is that, yes, these qualities were baked into our founding documents, The same founding documents provide the tools by which we can liberate ourselves in extirpate those evils from society. Nut nigh wrote this in New York Times and I said yeah what happened. Where did this idea go and your times opinion contributor

general boy came out and said, you're even stumble across this idea. This is this is boilerplate civil rights that, as I now where did go, I'm not the one who abandoned this idea. You guys abandoned this idea. Why did why have you given up on this central premise of civil rights, basic civil rights organization and civil rights? Activism, because they don't that's the Audrey Lord quote with that which, which a lot of people like to say right, you can build. We can rebuild the masters House with a mass. Tools in other than the idea that, if ever, if you accept the idea that those documents, although founded at a time where of imperfection in terms of applying their principles, are nevertheless valuable in the way that John just laid out, then you keep working. That's within this and this is another eight. I think the answer is certain raw, The answer is that the movement has been corrupted by marxist premises. Yes, exactly exactly

as opposed to a different sets of everyone, needs to be dismantled. Yes, exactly review. It's interesting as I just something occurs to me. Let me just play that little because it so it's a weird idea, but the civil rights movement was an effort to say we want America to apply to us equally, so we want the same rights. We want. The same pro obligation, whatever we

this has been its unequally, enforced power and citizenship and all that our any unequally distributed just give us our do as Americans. You know a desegregate schools, you know, don't create two separate everything you know, and then we we will. We will be judged not on the basis of the color of their skin, but the content of our character right. So that was thee that was almost in arguable. Part of the problem in the resistance to the civil rights woman is that there was no intel in our intelligible response. This among segregationist and people like that accept that's not the way we live. Now, it's no fair, you know where we don't on which we have our own ways of doing things here, that's not an answer to the thing: it's like,

we're Americans, your Americans, you have these rights, we don't really have all of them and, let's, like everybody, have the same thing right You got no design, I miss quoted Adria lordy, think it I said, rebuild its actually. She had you can't dismantle the masters House and masters tool so which actually speaks in IRAN. Marxist might be going. Ok, then, the civil rights Movement in Europe, with the voice of Martin Luther King and all that gets you know this then becomes. You know that the most important cultural or force of I didn't sixties, enneads, fifties and sixtys in creating not revolutionary change, but evolutionary change exactly in the manner that you would wish it to happen, even though it may be. It happens all too slowly at which point having achieved this,

Zen for reasons that are way too complicated to go into here. Either they lost heart civil rights activist, or they found the results. Unsatisfying or you know what they wanted were. There was a wanted to see the results you know serve like they wanted. They wanted it to be okay. this has happened and now why results are gonna happen. Another isn't there IFOR, it isn't there a foreign? What's that idea here, which is one, that's probably extremely controversial, to say that the movement is at its, it has become a victim of its own successes right, but so coarse. So if you, if you're, if you're, actually, if you actually achieve what you will to achieve a man just just to be a little solve sixty solve says to carry it out of my mouth. I read an organization called the committee for the free world she started

fifteen eighty Uribe, wanted the high, though, that you not the height of the cold war but as reg visible starting and then it was, you know, was basically anti communist Umbrella group and and the Soviet Union fell and she closed down because there is also being union any more well in view of the Civil Rights Movement Oak is granted. There's a lot of clean up to me. Things keep going on, people do screw around with voting rights. Get out, or do whatever they want to do, and so there needs to be their needs. We watch dogs and stuff like that, but the way to look at their would be gonna like there there was one mission for the Anti defamation League and nineteen fifteen when LEO Frank was lynched, and has an entirely different mention in twenty him, twenty twenty one. But here's what I was thinking.

So as a result, since they have nowhere to go, they then start doubling down and getting more and more and more radical in reverse. Let's talk just for a little bit about the gay rights movement, so the gay rights movement which which or which arose Lee there were. There was a serve gay rights woven around the Madison society in the forties and fifty's, which suggest you now stop arresting stop beating us up in our work not doing anything so terrible. What's the matter with you and to decrease lies in the law right to decriminalizing the law. Ok, so, but then in the nineteen sixties as the sort of the Cultural Revolution and the American called not the Chinese Cultural Revolution tat. place, free love you! all of that serve anti boy yah values in the idea that you now you need to do things and transcended fashion, gay rights activists, the earliest gay rights.

Activists actually advocated for revolutionary behaviour? They wanted to destroy the family. They wanted to you up in civilised society. They they port, they praised up. You know what you call it: promiscuity. They this was an anomaly alternate lifestyle, but a superior lifestyle and all of that right an end with the exception of the of the of the movement stuff surrounding, Aids, whatever movement that was kind of hit a wall in the nineteen eighties, after after certain types of laws were relaxed or were attracted or new, ones. Affirming basic civil rights were before for gay people were passed.

Andrew saw than in others, then reached into their bag of you now and said. Let's move right what we want as what we were For gay rights is the same rights every, but we want to be married. We want to have children or before adoption adoption rights actually came before marriage and in some ways But do you know for people who oppose them seemed where radical, but actually was. It was a very positive conservative institutionalizing force were gay couples, write books so might might my point here is that you here you have at exactly now. What I think is is arguably, and I'm not thou talking about Transit for what happens after gay marriage on I'm saying that this giant step forward was taken in the in the realm of of gay rights by the embrace of relatively traditional american social structures and what we have

here in the civil rights movement in twenty twenty one is the embrace of ever more radical anti american. Philosophically, philosophically politically aunt American ideas that say that America is bad. You can't redefine patriotism as a force. That believes that the country- that it's a is bad. That is, you know, pieces war. You know freedom of slavery. Whatever That is all that is literally orwellian. But the what had happened. I mean the way it happens. Usually it it's not necessarily be the people who are talking about tearing the country down who defend their own ideas as patriotic? It's it's the cover that their given by sympathy.

You know, media types then say this is patriotic rotten. That's that's an important point because there's an Achilles heel for these four, these radicals and that this concept of whiteness they use whiteness and white supremacy all the time. We You know if you follow the stuff, that's that's it just all the way out there I mean. I see it on. You know: threads the parents. When parents are discussing school, stop it pops up people deploy it. The problem, of course, is that the way P Americans actually live their lives. That concept is becoming us. Unless potent because interracial intermarriages booming, you know people, don't let that we everybody lots of people, have friends from all kinds of backgrounds and raises we love our friends regardless of their skin color. That is continued that in practice the pragmatic approach,

I think of just the lived experience. Another phrase that radicals like to use the live. Experience of most american doesn't comport with this no idea of unit because of the color of your skin. You are guilty of sins committed hundreds of years ago and are somehow still an oppressor guys. Are you still going to the post office? Are you still paying full price for postage, it's the stamps, how come you don't have to any more male and ship anytime anywhere right from your computer? Some letters for packages and pay less lot less with discount rates from the? U S, postal service, you PS and more stamps dotcom saves businesses, thousands of ours and tons of money. the year stance that come brings the services of the Eu S Postal Service and gps right to your computer. It's a must have for any, this, whether you are small office sitting in voices aside, Hustler Etsy Shop Shipping I suggest navigating our hybrid work, life stamps outcome I can handle it all with ease no matter over one million businesses, no wonder over one million businesses to stamps

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go to stamp start come. Instead, there is no risk and, with my promo code commentary, you get a special offer that includes afore. We trial, plus three postage and a digital scale, no long term commitments or contracts just go to stamp. Stockholm click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in commentary that stamps dot com, promo code commentary, stamps outcome, never go to the post office again so can I can, I says, we're talking about Romena racial prejudice. Now that I want to take the privilege appoint a privileged talk about something that really affects almost no one in the country. Twenty three thousand kids in New York City schools. Yesterday, ah there are eight selective public high schools in the New York City, public school system, where there about a million kids are in the nursery school system. There ain't selective, high schools, they have, I think

nine thousand places per class across these eight schools, so they're about thirty six thousand two, forty thousand kids in these eight schools of the whole system and since nineteen seventy one these schools, admission to these schools has been as Actually, at state level has been the province of a test of the S age S. Eighty. Nobody can take it grades, don't count teacher recommendations, don't count, nothing counts, just the result of this tax And that is how it has been since students and scientists, everyone, somebody schools, are very famous Stuyvesant Bronx science Brooklyn TAT, you might have heard those fifty years,

is. Ah, this this system came into being so last couple of years there has been a lot of hard sickness from people who have noticed that that almost no black kids in particular are getting into these schools, and that, for example, the stuff Stuyvesant High school admitted nine kids to its to its incoming freshman class next year. and so this is then viewed as a kind of as the terrible failure of the system. It's terrible. The test is bad, it's not fair. It needs to be replaced it so unfair. So I did some digging into the what happened digging. I just looked at the time evolve. That's that's the kind of digging I do cause, I'm so determined as a dog researcher that actually can manage to look at at at at at a chart.

So let me just go through as all that right. Ah, twenty eight percent of the kids admitted her white four percent black in New York City. It's kind of amazing twenty six percent of the population of the city is why twenty six percent as black twenty six percent is latino and then the other thirty seven through percent are a mix of a lot of other things. Asians make up. Twelve percent of the seats population. twenty three thousand kids applied of whom eighteen point one percent were admitted forty two hundred word minute. Ok, I'm sorry, so its forty two hundreds, not not nine thousand. I got these numbers one! Ok! So if you add a white, blacks and latino together, they will consular and thirty seven percent of the kids at these eight schools.

Guess how many kids are asian, who pass the test and got to placements? Fifty three point: seven percent remember Asians, make up twelve percent the same population, but such as that thirty, five percent of the applicants for these positions- Asian compared to eighteen percent white and eighteen percent black. So not only since get admitted at disliked, insanely higher rate. They were twice ass, likely as other ethnic groups to attempt to place themselves in these eight schools. Ok,. Asians, are a minority population smaller than African Americans and said Or them Latinos in this

the New York. They make up twelve percent and certain populations of them are poorer or among the poorest people in the city. The New York Times is now saying: there's something diseased here, because Blackbirds Duncan into Stuyvesant this test is by definition, color.

we now know its color blind as it is by definition right. No one no one's color is there, so you have to fill out a form, but it's a test. Every bay takes the same test and asian kids, who are often children of immigrants who don't speak, particularly good English, whose parents are working class at best and all this just blow through this test, the way jewish kids, three or four generations ago, blue through the near city, public schools. You have two ways of looking about this. Looking at this thing about this, the test works, because you know what white people aren't privilege by it: they're not privilege by it asian

kids, are poorly aims. Asian kids, outdo white kids. You know at a double the rate and their their minorities, but I guess we dont think that a minority is anything but a black person oral attain a person and the other thing and John orders said the sun on Twitter is. Why are these. Why are these numbers so calamitous? Well, you know in the sixties, these, ladies in New York City into media and middle schools. There were there were tracks. There were the more you know, intellectually minded kids or the kids who look like they were profiting more readily from academic instruction, were taught better and had you know it's classic education system where there was, You know a kids were tracked him in and to each according to his mean, got got the kind of edges.

so they might have wanted, and that was all dismantled in the name of racial equity. This we're talking about thirty years ago, twenty three zero, because that made people feel bad may kids feel bad, that their work, that there were levels and tracking and all that, so that was ended, which essentially meant that kids from a poor backgrounds, african American with Yoke and some poor backgrounds, whose families did not have for whom education was not as a central concern of their lives and and were themselves and educate them all. that. I did not have teachers who showed them how to read and did not have teachers who show them how to take a task that did not have teachers who made it their mission, as was as my father's tells interests in his book making it. You know it's teachers who grab this little kid by the hand who only spoke yet ashen said here. We're gonna teach you how to speak. Proper English here, we're gonna teach you how to

have a gate. The educational system like he would not have made it. You know he ended up going to Colombia, scholar, His sister went to Brooklyn College because she didn't have anybody like that. She graduated fourteen. She was very smart, but the whole point of making is that without a system that allows people to Learn and cares about them learning or has parents want them to learn or something like that? What did you? What do you expect from these kids? So what you're gonna do in having having destroy the capacity for them to learn a middle?

you are now gonna destroy high school. I mean that as the desire, the designer autumn here is to say, the test is bad, because the results are bad, but the results are only bad if your presumption is that the results was to precisely mirror the ethnic make up of the city, the fact that is disproportionately a benefit to minority kids doesn't matter, and that's the end of my luck. Anybody might react. Will there that the dismantling of gifted programmes in these schools is hugely Britain, because that's one of the arguments that the Anti Racist brigade makes is that in a week it it's not fair, to try to have any testing or any sort of ranking, because you know those are inherently races, because the outcome is a racist right. This is the equity models. Gotta have an equal outcome for us to accept that it actually equal process, but that was a way of identifying talented kids from all backgrounds and did it did it favours

one race over the other depending on the school urine, probably mean Tina? Maybe a white teacher would be more likely to see potential in a white student, but that's not how it played out in practice and actually Jamak orders. A servile twitter thread on this was really interesting. Disease like gifted and talented programmes, which start very young, are much more valuable than all this arguments that that a lot of critics of testing on the left make that it's not fair, because african american students in their families can't afford the test. Prep that's required to get to this as well. Neither to your point on. Neither can the many these asian american families, but they do they find a way to do it. There's a culture about education in that community. That is not there. It is in the wider community and his family, the black immunity, so part of this is cultures of what what culturally people value and nobody likes to talk about culture, because that starts to get into oh, your judging one is superior to there, I'm not because I actually think the outcome of these tests show, as you said,

they are fairly raise blind so, but equity will not allow for that kind of ranking and it that's happening across gifted and talented and an admissions only schools, all across it, recent Francisco Dc Virginia? All of these schools are facing this and it'll be interesting to see if a lot of them that took the test away for the pandemic, your will reinstate them next year, five very frightening. I mean obviously it's frightening. If you get up to you, follow our barb are logical thinking on on these subjects, but I mean. not to get sentimental, but like these are kids. These are kids their thirteen years old like this is the difference. Between whether they're going to live a life, that is, you know, Where are they are rewarded for the fact that they put their nose? The grindstone, as

was her tongue. But yesterday, like deferred gratification, had parents who said work work work work, please their parents did what they were supposed to do often go. go to schools in their own in their own languages after school, it's a very. Stressful life, it's a difficult life that they live. They deserve the reward of getting as as good in education as possible and they do not deserve to be penalized because, because basically Liberals are sad that the results of these tests don't conform with what they would want. a nice United States of Benetton School to look like you know what too bad and again, I can't say this enough: this is exactly what happened to Jews in the first half of the twentieth century.

There are too many of them there, too good at school. Who knows why nobody really understands it, but you know we ve got to create all of these rules, admissions rules and colleges of vague principles and doctrines and ideas about character. Miranda in community and all of that to give us the power to design. In our school so that these this weird alien hoard doesn't take over listen, so before it was called equity. It was called social justice and social justice. Maxims have abandoned that sort of roles in notion that the only way to have a true, equitable distribution of goods is to be blind to the recipients of their outcomes. To can't be blind, a morally appropriate outcome has to be aware of the groups that your advantage and, more importantly, aware of the group's your disadvantaging groups, need to have collect

justice associated with their retributions than the people who have advantages honouring those results of their accidents of birth, to be robbed of those advantages. This is the theory. That's operative here, far be it from me to be optimistic, but there's opportunity fur opponents of this sort of thing to go back to the politico playbook culture, mooring thing. It ends with a sort of curious observation that can't be ignored. Quote the sickly anti. Sixteen nineteen sentiment is uniting one of the oddest coalitions in politics, the colonel conservatives, centrists like them and link or whose democratic has been critical of this sort of thing and anti woke socialists serve a stroking moment there right hate, you There is no obligation for this among polite circles, and yet it is uniting this call. That has otherwise no ideological affinities that they share curious but Noah you essentially just

listed John Rawls in the conservative project? That's how crazy This has got the central murmurs of my book. My Brian stirred social justice is the reimbursement theorist behind Social Justice City Ology, and he has become an obstacle to the sort of programmes that social justice active itself sales self styled social justice best seek. He created this idea. His theory was that to have these perfect enlightened institutions that redistribute social you goods as adults, are thought. Experiment you needed to have something called, they all of ignorance which they operate behind in order so that they couldn't possibly advantage We are otherwise at groups are individuals that they might want to advantage, just by virtue of the fact that the human being this all has to be blind and blindness is morally abhorrent to the modern social justice activist, because how can you have an equitable distribution of soap

You gonna goods, if you don't know what you're helping and, more importantly, we are hurting written that gets the conditionality point at the beginning, I was saying about about patriotism. Right in that sense, one of the most pregnant thing said on the subject was when Michelle Obama, in two thousand eight said her husband success in primaries marked the first time in her life than she had ever been proud of her country Right That was a very remarkable thing for say not by the way that she couldn't think it ain't that she felt free to say it, but even more important Michelle. Obama grew up in Chicago with a very determine dub, father, intact, family. Ah brother became a basketball star in a coach. She went to Princeton and then went to law school and then became a lawyer and then became a singer

official at at at at at hospitals corporation. This country was very, very, very, very, very good to her and the fact that in two thousand eight Michelle Obama thought that it wasn't was itself a very telling indication of what what it is. What is it that she wants? What is it that they want from America? He. So what do you want that? Your getting and that's that's, that's it a very hard to answer a question, but I gotta run here to say this trust and well dot com. Everybody has many you just dark now buying home, having babies, building wealth, be sure to add securing your family's future to do list

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I'm seeing on saying. Oh my set fellow vaccinated friends. and we're not going to wear masks to be patriotic has we're all safely vaccinated. So, yes yeah, I've a similarly unpatriotic. We can plan yes, but was no. No, I don't know it's a devil he like Everybody else that has already been doing this for a year, so he doesn't, he doesn't get to take credit for God, rammed unasked. but down. I have three yards of mulch coming. That's my weekend. Three yards bulge I couldn't make more knowledge about one on our advertisers, but I will believe that cause. It's probably had probably probably a terrible mistake. I have no idea what I'm doing take. We may drive out to the beach walk round on a beach cassettes, woman, be nice to see the ocean. I hope everybody has a wonderful time this week, and not just the by colleagues here, but every

Who is listening. We will be back in May, which is Say Monday, which will be, which will be the third May, and so thanks for joining us ever for aid received. No I'm John purports keeps a camel.