The disparity between the Omicron variant’s apparent severity and the public health response to it suggests that the pandemic isn’t really about the pandemic anymore. What we’re witnessing is a competition between incompatible visions of societal organization. Also, Christine Rosen on her cover article in the new issue of COMMENTARY: “The New Misogyny.”
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome to the commentary magazine barely pod, yesterday's Monday December thirteen, twenty twenty one, I'm John Upwards, the editor of commentary. We are eighteen gaze from new year,
and I want to once again ass that you consider
commentary as part of your annual giving commentary a non profit fibre, Wednesday, three organization that were lies-
I'm depends upon in his very grateful for the chair-
credible generosity of our listeners, in our readers to help close and control are deficit. So, if you would go to W W W that commentary, dot, Org slashed donate a, we would be very grateful. It is very important for us to have
your support in order for us to continue doing what we're doing here five days a week to produce the daily website to produce the monthly
magazine, which we are going to talk about extensively on the show today, so that is W W w about commentary. Dot Org slashed donate a quick shout,
two commentary- podcast, stands Yakov and three Wolf whom I,
at last night and who are just stir it very important that I do this because
they can't decide whether they, like our podcast, better or Ben, appears podcast
and so in Vienna, in direct assault on bends popularity. I am
calling them by name in order to win this
small skirmish and another wise unwinnable war with our with our good friend Ben Shapiro, with
He has always executive editor, a Ringwald hire a jump, senior rudder, Christine rose and high Christine hygiene
Souci had editor nor Rossman? I know so. We want to talk today at some length, but I think maybe we'll tribe just talk about whatever is in the political ferment first, but we want to talk about.
steams I'll, lead article in the January commentary, which should be up online now. What about huh? Are you listening to this called the new massage me a very important, very original peace and very provocative about the way
in which Trans Trans ideology is now sort of becoming something that early early,
best early supporters of equal rights for women and egalitarian standards between women and men, who would never conceivably recognise the kind of abolition of female illness as as up as a joke.
You wouldn't stark human category, so we will we'll go into that Tibet. Ah, once again, I think we find us
in the alma Kron situation, where the entire world
going bananas. Britain is like walking down Bourse Johnson
and apparently a heap of trouble because of the discovery that at that time he threw em
masked Party at Christmas time last year when they basically cancelled Christmas, like Alan Redman and Robin Hood, prince of thieves, the sheriff of Nottingham cancelling Christmas, and yet he decides
the universe didn't apply to him. I
I don't know what is and what is not survivable in a country like that, that's pretty pretty bad and the idea that he would attempt to respond to this. By cracking-
down on human interaction in England because of alma crime
I don't know, I'm a very amused by Boris, say get out. I've MA am. I think I've told this anecdote once that I, when I met him, he's five years younger than I am, and I met him. He said, oh, my God
I've been reading you, since I was a child which really made me feel both. I was both pleased and horrified and kind of
Secondly, all at the same time, which seems to be a lot of the reactions, Boris Johnson, but so there's that reaction there is,
who travel bans and this man and the way the news is covering this, which is its highly contagious cases, are doubling every four or five days and all
and we still as far as I can tell there was a there- was.
kind of controversy over the weekend, because israeli Prime Minister Enough Tally Bennett announced in our food
to bolster shot or something like that in response to our second, where you call that a second, both your shot, a fourth shot in reaction to honour crimes and some people went way,
this is quite like what are you doing and he was like there were: two kids died in in Britain over the weekend, and apparently this may there was a new story that said two kids
I am they were in the hospital and they died and then name. They then also tested positive for alma chronically may have died for other causes. Aside from that, we don't seem to have a confirmed death from this variant, an ape how many openings, how many weeks should
we wait now. These are you guys how many we will know better and how many weeks since forever too,
it's two weeks for forever two weeks, while its now, I think we're now six to seven weeks into alma,
there's literally not a confirmed death am, I am. I
Am I bought underscores Boris Yeltsin did
I did say that someone died in Britain, but I only have one
Leonard wanna? Ok, so once so, he said one Bennet said to the fact that it has this quality of rumour to it I mean,
Yeah I mean, as we approach eight hundred thousand deaths from covered in the United States.
Not a single one of them is from the COMECON variant which has dominated the news. I is it it's this December thirteenth, so has about a month.
let me highlight three well, but it, but it's been the two weeks. Ok, ok, I was just was just banks wavering skimming.
Or was it, was neither thanksgiving that a broken when it was frightened,
The markets collapsed in the universe, closed up! Ok! So it's three weeks! So, ok, you know if there's a if there's a highly contagious, varied it's getting a lot of people say:
there are some anecdotal evidence to suggest that it is getting kids sick, not that their dying not of their being hospitalized, but that their testing positive in greater numbers like little kids? But we are I this is we're we're getting into some
science fictional areas here, where we are making
as it moves planet
planetary, moves against something that has yet to prove that it is deadly or control. I.
We're controllable and there were no longer talking about bad outcomes in hospitals or even death. We're talking about case rates.
just transmission alone, and if that's the goal to control transmission, we have every indication that that's not possible and words,
a lot of very harmful self they're doing self harm in the process of trying to achieve an outcome that cannot be achieved. It is man
and at the longer about health and public health is absolutely answerer ancillary. It is time to admit that this is a contest between competing
psychological dispositions and theories of social organisation that will be decided at the ballot box, not in the CDC. She had become a total convert to Noah's argument from that he's made over the last few weeks about had it it's it's gotta, be a political argument there making, because we should be looking at hospitalizations and death rates for this barrier. That's the only thing that matters post acceleration is how many breaks your cases are getting through and how many of those cases turn out to be deadly and what we know from the it. This was true of Dell
as well even the break your cases we're not dilute instead we're looking at transmission incase rates. I agree, that's crazy. I would also say I would give a shoutout turf friend, Josh crush our at National Journal, who had an excellent column over the weekend, which talked about some of the political balancing act and what the Bite administration in particular needs to do now to get a handle on where they're going with dealing with cove it. And he does point to the Governor Jerry, Polis of of Colorado as being an example of one of the few Democrats, whose actually trying to weigh real risks and talking about things like well before vaccines. We had to have strict social distancing in mass mandates, but now we have vaccine. So those are the kinds of things that we don't need to be as draconian about reasonable stuff that we all obviously have been. We share in that view, but it's been
section on the left still always said by now, we got to say that if you get it, it's your own dang fault. He literally said that that obviously isn't true of kids under five, but it's now pretty much true of every american five
Oh over it could, I just add, on backdated children. Zero to five are at lower risk, then vaccinated adults of having severe complications unless they are an extremely small minority who has its pre existing conditions right, but I'm just saying that in in policies, defence or whatever do make poses Armand even stronger. We now have coverage by vaccine of everyone in the country
I've and over the Kaiser Family Foundation. I believe that a study that suggests
I mean, and you know I didn't really go into the innerds, but it's a makes. Logical sense suggests that this year this year that now the covered deaf number out ranks last year there were a hundred.
Sixty two thousand preventable deaths due to lack of vaccination
and sixty two thousand preventable does. That is horrifying,
beyond belief. I mean I don't you know. I don't know how people are gonna, be able to stay up at night thinking that they might have contributed to an atmosphere in which.
more than a hundred and fifty thousand people found got emotional and and and support.
Worked for the decision to not protect themselves and died from the disease. It's not that it's the fault of anybody who get up said now. The vaccine should wait or whatever they said
sites that an astounding factoid- and we are now at the point where, if you know about that, you know about the vaccines, you know what it's like enough already all the only argument that you can possibly make for these lockdown and restrictions is to save kids, who cannot be
protected from disease, and now everybody over five has a methodology by which they can be protected from disease and kid.
Before are really not at risk, so I so add. No, I interrupted you so I want to go back to work.
We're gonna say about again just briefly that on justice column, which I agree with because he is speaking to me, but he's
speaking to to work the democratic audience who the president speaking to and who I think that
It has every reason to believe that they have. In our view,
drug a middle way that they are a balancing
he's competing interests in a way that is striving for the sweet spot because they hear a little bit from us two things all of this is is excessive and unjustified at this point, but there also hearing from the public health apparatus and from April a political
political persuasion on the left that is amenable to any and all onerous for colony and restrictions on social and economic activity, their hearing from those people to and they're not going maximal list on them. They're not trying to stop interstate commerce, for example like Leanna. When wants another
going forward when implementing trying to trying to persuade businesses to pursue.
the national Mass mandate, while pursuing any online
back, see mandate which voices on their side of the I'll walk so in there in their view, they
doing their best to not be crazy, because a lot of
I want them to be crazy. Now we don't think they're striking the best balance, but they certainly probably due in part because pulling still suggests that the public wants. This sort of.
There- is an ABC newspaper yesterday, terrible pull for Joe Biden all across the board and including his handling of covert, which is now approaching underwater these almost into one another. Quite it's it's a pretty even split, but then I pull it showed that most Americans want mass mandates everywhere they go there.
The majority one that Spain is everywhere, that majority support vaccine mandates now, did it do their behaviors?
just that they really believe that no, not at all, in fact, but they're, telling pollsters that
it's the socially desirable thing to say, and that's what this White House years. I believe,
The people want man vexing mandates. Eighty four percent of Americans over the age of eight
in Europe is only the people being pulled, have had at least one shot. Eighty four percent,
I see something ass man what struck out at me. I think it was something like seven in Tenerife were promised mandates now right are seventy percent of people wearing masks everywhere they go. Do you know that right, but I'm, but both mean if we try to separate out he's out some of these strains right,
but the by menstruation is hearing this from this appalling. It has reason to think that vaccination is wildly popular eighty five percent. Eighty four percent of Americans have had at least one shot day
That's an astounding number. If research over the age of eighteen- that's a pretty astounding number, you can, you can argue with it, it's their hard and fast, and so the the opposition to mask it it to vaccine mandates is, is interesting because it then becomes
we philosophical it is. Should the government control your behavior and a lot of people think that it really shouldn't which means that the poorest
Cohesion campaign that we ve heard isn't working and we need to redouble, and now we need people to get posters and maybe get more boosters and all that has actually been successful. But but with one caveat- and I think
is where you could see those numbers going down about mandates. You have people in its administration of Anthony fast. She signalling every few weeks. Well, maybe we'll have to change the definition. What's fully Baxter
we're going to move we're going to move those goalpost again, and I think at this point, if they keep saying you're going to need, you know you have to be fully vaccinated, is two shots plus a booster. That's the new standard for for any sort of requirement. People will rebelled against that and then, furthermore, I think one of the things that pull is sediment in the piece that
Josh Road which really struck me, especially because it came from a libertarian leaning Democrat was when he said public health officials. Don't have the right to tell you what to wear what to do and it will or what to wear in particular when he was speaking to mass mandates and that something
you ve, been saying for a long time, but to see someone on the other side of the aisle acknowledge that people were chafing against that it wasn't just the government, it specifically public health officials and that the credibility of those officials right now is still under attack. I dont see from buttons perspective how he can come out and say: okay, this is it. This is as good as gets. Let's return to normal, he set himself a different goal and he was very vocal about it.
And as it turns out, it looks like it was an impossible goal. There is no shutting down the virus from the White House, and that is what he said. He would do. How can you come out now and say actually we're gonna, let it rage not really raging, but that but but it we ve, given a certain way of looking at the data we have. Let it go, and this is it go back to normal
Well, that's the problem: isn't it right when they're just incapable of that level of humility in an aspect of governance and there's no humility on name on the progressive left, but certainly not when it comes to this, which they Jenny
we believed. I think that a judge, a certain level of bureaucratic competence that was absent in the truck
administration, apply that any right, your hands,
I think I think they're really thought that they could do. That turned policy is a very interesting political case here. He is in a state that was read to Purple elected a Republican, senator abide by a large margin in twenty four team. Corey gardener basically has shifted to the left. Has all this liberty
It has a weird political cross. Currents like big evangelical community around Colorado Springs very libertarian. You know first state too
the criminalize marijuana. All that I think he is.
Fascinating bellwether of the political atmosphere,
the United States as we go into twenty twenty two. We look at this polling. Few look at what the polling says about the that
Eric Valley between Republicans and Democrats, and binds pulling collapsing and inflation
there's a man. The other thing you know you
Are these numbers are now being brooded about you now sixty seats in the house- and you know seven, if that's the case, many seats in the Senate, whatever I I
no, what the numbers will be, but I think there is reason to
Think that there is a political cataclysm coming for Democrats that we dont really
understand the nature of yet because you have almost every major issue,
some issues that have been invented and basically created over the last two years that are going right for their juggler,
We have the covered reaction which triggers libertarian- and you know
don't tread on me feelings. You have
schooling, stuff, none of which is now positive for Democrats or is very close to not being a positive for Democrats
it's an issue. The Democrats were twenty points ahead on routinely over the last two generations. You haven't
you shouldn't. You have the supply chain problems. You have a mare
standing in the world and the and the aggressive behaviour of people abroad. I dont know what issue sat is going to be favourable to them and the cake is being baked right now. Add woke this add: can
situation at the stuff that I know everyone just sites, Virginian Virginian Virginia because Young and was there in the sun trumpet which I love of law. But that was
Chrysalis chaired policies
spawning to something real estate in which there are interesting. Ideological cross currents
rather more than a libertarian either. I would challenge because right he's very famous
during the you know. We were talking about the timeline changes in the incredible unjust treatment of people who were accused of any sort of private
you start chambers on college campuses, famously turned William Black stones ratio on its head and talked about? How would be much better to took convicts ten people if one was guilty of this union? Also that he's it to the extent that that demonstrates that he be knows whether the wind is blowing so to speak within his party, then that's an and, I guess evidence of it damages
he's responsive to the libertarian aspects of his electoral, that's always was called in Colorado. At no point was the draconian lockdown state, even twenty twenty one, but here's my here's. My point Colorado is a democratic state, but it's not that democratic
and it wasn't too long ago, like Virginia, that it was very mixed and yet, and I had no idea
which way these races we're gonna, go right: democratic governors, republican Senator
It is crazy, right wing House members good
so like non crazy house members who could be convinced to do
things. Otherwise, all kinds of stuff like that and it's all changed because you know
Democrats, one two elections, Paulus one, you know I don't know what the what the bite margin was, but it was pretty high. Hilary margin was pretty high. Everything is moving very fast and the idea that we have this whip crack back to the centre right in Virginia.
That could be paralleled all over the place in places like New Jersey, where you know we saw this thirteen point shift towards the republican gubernatorial candidate, Minero states all over
country in which a thirteen point shift is a political earthquake. You know I mean it's in the New York isn't going to probably go republican, then you know California isn't going to go republican or whatever, but.
I see it. This he's got them five or six seats in the delegation term Republican and once more right, I'm existed
Creation is what's thirty eight. I think there are thirty eight congressmen from California, but yeah I mean you know, I'm just waiting to see
happy hopeful that new, the newly installed you now governor of New York after Andrew Comas resignation herself went draconian right with, with with Sir
nor mask mandate all over the state unless you have a vaccination requirement and you'll get find thousands of dollars if, by by the state, if your business doesn't have a vaccine requirement again like
Hey, that's actually like vaccine mandates and stay state like New York. Make I mean I think people sort of like them, but cancelling elective surgeries. In anticipation.
now, a wave of hospitalizations that will never materialised. Based on what we know already and party
with political supporters masculine indoors. The say like a few like a week after she makes this mandate right, like I'm good order at arms and rode the Boar M M m. Let me be frank, like this epidemic
of depression, suicidal aviation. Fifty one percent of
rolls reporting, suicidal teenage girls of boarding, suicidal thoughts like this is all they are the party in power. It's it's a there is that there is an apocalypse coming for them
and apocalypse is I don't follow a straight line? It's like well, you know, I mean candidate selection, Herschel Walker could really. That could really be the kind of choice that could really were flake. If people are going into the poles to say what you ve done over the last two years is unconscious.
Full Donald Duck can win. Elections like that, you know mean we saw this in nineteen eighty by the way weird people got elected by
than by Reagan. In the Reagan landslide, when the Senate went tense,
we're hobbling as one twelve seats in the Senate and there were kind of like gimme candidates. Have we not even unimpressive people are getting chick hacked in Nevada, there would Nevada excuse me. There was some
there was german, then than Alabama I mean who was a who was a not, but what kind of a nice guy
and had been had been an annoying Helen resident and stuff like no one thought that anything like this could happen, and this just a huge wave of people just came in all at once, because the public was re, they say we gave you would
with you and we don't like where the country is, and we do have these airy parallels right: inflation, world instability, weird lunatic incompetence, I don't serve and world again. Amidst it's eleven months till the election.
But if you could take is halfway baked now and you take it out. The oven now, it'll, still bake on the stove top without being in the oven. It'll keep cooking there. There is also another sort of woke social justice stuff that where I think the Democrats thought the fate that the country was with them on all the stuff, because I think the country was, I think, the american people or are fickle enough said the public's, already rejected this this programme and end. You know that the party, a sort of a guy
is is still has to play catch up to that. That's why I think the appalling is is misleading them and giving them every indication that the public loves draconian measures.
Whereas mask mandates taxi mandates? What have you, I think? That's the right thing to say. I dont think that reflects public public attitudes. I really doubt cower unless you there's outside. I was just going to say tat to AIDS point that there is also a young mentioned, no mention the lack of humility, bite administration there
panes, a huge amount of hubris and a lack of humility among the social activists class that that's that has been pushing all of this no recognition of any universe.
HANS by the public that might be negative effect, the more the public's as I not so sure this might be going too far. Far more, there called bigots and you do see his- I mean you saw this imperfect encapsulation. We talked about the Jesse smaller case unless we cooperate, but the black lives matter statement in defence of justly Smollett or as the wonderful day, Chapelle Cousin juices Mullay. That defends encapsulates what a lot of us world long saying about black lives matter in its affiliated judo activists groups, which is they do not embrace a reality that the rest of this country sees as it, and this is not to say that
obvious racial justice issues like this kind of Unita. Take out the weird thing I just the Jesse small verdict right. This is now three verdict in a row in which highly charged racial cases, juries came, took entirely
sensible verdicts based on the evidence right. We have the Aubrey killing
in Alabama? We have coward Nelson in Wisconsin. We now have justly Smollett in Illinois in Chicago one of the things about this is
question of what it is that Americans, in the form, juries think, is a crime, and I think that there is a grave offence that people again aren't getting to the bottom of
in the notion of a city, a washing crime like Chicago that finds itself on the in the grip of a fake crime, in which nothing happened
somebody was using the fact of fear of crime and fear of racism and this as a negotiating tool,
for his multi million dollar acting contract. While people were being shot for miles south of the Wall Greens where he was supposedly out buying egg
at two o clock in the morning when it was twenty degrees below zero and the credulous nestled which he was greeted
there's a pretty amazing story in the New York Times today, about about LOS Angeles and about the crisis of governance, in LOS Angeles, that
those two not only crime, and we know these flash these flash, burglary, mobs and stuff but homeless, encampments that have opened up all over the city.
and if you read the story, which is about how people, in LOS Angeles
can't stand it anymore. They live in totally
conventional middle to upper middle class. Neighborhoods, like Fairfax and their homeless, encampments in Fairfax and the whole question is: oh dear this home it. So the homeless problem is just it's out. So sad, look at these told us. It's like their formerly people in LOS Angeles. They don't want to live with people living on on the streets in front of them and the entire
public conversation on the part of liberals in the left says you are not allowed to say that, because you will seem an uncompetitive and fine, they won't say it, but they're gonna say it somewhere, where they don't get to go somewhere anonymous and private and cast a ballot, and there
guy on the ballot for mayor of LOS Angeles, it turns out they re Caruso, who runs this small, called the growth of variable to allay you probably been to the grove. It's gotta
true to train that runs through at a movie theater added to those big, that's right next to the farmers market and all of that and there have been flash small burglaries at the grove and he basically
is apparently seriously concerning a run from air which Mitchell say I'm a businessman, and if we don't do something, I'm gonna go,
it was my mall, everybody is gonna, move out of the city and we're gonna turn into Detroit. You think that message might not resonate next November in us.
did he that probably you know in a weird city, with weird political dynamics in which, of course, I'm sure republican. I mean I know, they're there been republican, witty people. I will answer
to say that their unarmed by the crime. Now I mean that, in terms of pulling that registers, you can write, you can see that registering I've, it's different for covered a little bit because there is theirs
still psychological and desirability biases at that work, that people actually do really dislike covert and want to get rid of
will do and we are willing to make sacrifices. To that extent, by the pulling his misrule mislead
in so far as the people who are energized to get out of this political condition that the number of public health aspect of an army
energize to go to the polls and vote against it than the people who supported him are motivated to go before it, and that was the case
in my twenty twenty one lectures, essentially afterwards the analysis.
It's ok, we'll everybody's actually fed up with schools being closed, and I don't appreciate schools being closed and the revolting against schools being closed or partially closer harmonised whenever when everything was but it
What if you looked at the pulling data before the election, you saw that allow
from adults, a majority of adults weapon
we have to have cool schools closed or partially open, or what have you for the duration of the pandemic? It was what was necessary if you looked at the polls, you saw ok we're on the right side of the public here, but the public doesn't boat.
The data constituencies do and the people who were vote of motivated to vote against this way more motivated than the people who subordinate that's. What's gonna happen in a major we're coming up on a mid term. It's not a general election. It's gonna be a small
motivated energized electorate, most of them energized by voting against the party in power.
This is the traditional dynamic and then you feel that fire with all these other negative conditions that you're talking about some of which one registering the poles ahead of election there. So the savage irony here
that the person, the people that Biden the person that Biden should be listening to his TED crews Biden than the Democrats were smart. They be listening to TED crews. They would
field and listen to Republicans and sceptics and try somehow to pull their chests months out of the fire.
That is unimaginable to them. You know anatomy,
I'm not gonna, come here at TED Crystal Winston Churchill. God knows I'm not comparing tat grist or anybody to Winston Churchill, but you go back and you look at the debates in the thirties and
virtual. You know is there as the back venture saying? Don't do this? Don't do this? Don't do this this? You do acts theirs.
Why consequence this is the way the world works and the entire.
ire body of public opinion in England is like Mona now repeat, you know we will be moving. Do you know it's like this guy? Who is effectively like a gadfly back Ben sure? You know
Concerning general weirdo, you know ends up being the only person in the car.
Who was saying who predicted who sought
Coming said the right thing and basically ended up running the country during the
second, world war. No, there is no republican like that. We don't have the same dynamic, but every message that Biden is getting is the wrong message: every single message, including continuing to push bill back better, which is stupid because we are on the heels of you know this. Like seven percent inflation rate and he
once. A giant government spending programme and people are economically illiterate, but that doesn't mean they're not gonna, go eyes wide. I dont really can
I don't understand how this isn't. Gonna cost me more and also its probably gonna cost more than they say it's going to cost and even there, the polling, which supposedly supports all the policies and build that better is now. You know ten points.
Seven to ten points underwater, but he can't hear that they can't hear it it's fascinating, like they don't have somebody in their ears.
Caesar Thou art mortal, they don't seem to have a pollster who says we are heading for the get out we're heading for the cliff wall. They won't listen.
listening to that, isn't there and listening to the people around them. Who are saying the only thing that will save us next November is to pass this massive spending Darwin. I know her entire agenda and that we have sought to talk about. That's all they say they say. Listen
We might otherwise we're gonna, get slack, look it's the holidays and you deserve a gift card, but to give the keeps them
giving you join comfort, everyday, all your long, a gift. It looks as good as it fails to give that will actually pay for itself in terms of how much more productive you'll be at work.
What I'm talkin about it's the ex chair by far the most comfortable and urgent?
which are ever use and honestly, it's also probably the coolest. Looking piece of furniture I own not only is the extra the world's greatest office
trouble with its patented Elam Ex technology. It doubles as a massage chair and can either cool
One we're back in your office chair do that. I don't think so. So now is the perfect time to purchase of exchequer by
By now and hears Exchequer holiday gift to you save a hundred dollars off your extra just by purchasing of the exchequer comment.
Radar come now. That's a letter. Acts that were chair commentary, dotcom Exchequer has that thirty, a guarantee of complete comfort- and you know you ve heard me say you could find it. Your purchase, frivolous thirty dollars a month, gotta Exchequer commentary, dotcom now and save Ex chair commentary. Dot com Christine rose it. Let us
discuss the new massage any your lead article in the January issue of commentary, its
They nervy its. It speaks uncomfortable truths to
to tell it Harry and power structures give us a sense of what it is that you save the peace and well. First of all, I want to know that it did
again as a conversation with you, John, so you will share in the in the eye, and I made that up you I'm sorry. I've met all one
HU. I dont know. If I want, I have no plausible go. I built this sister will actually did start as a as a conversation about the different ways of seven as a right first way, feminism. Secondly, feminism third way feminism. We are now in the midst of what a lot of people said is the fourth wave offend feminism, which is pursuing not just greater rights for women, but the expansion of the definition of gender and done. What I think is is a very pernicious trend, which is the region,
mission of biological sex as part of a choice or an identity and the denial of the reality of biological Saxon. I want to make very clear there is a real distinction here between anyone who wants to about gender expression, which is someone who is born male or female, who wants to live their lives as some one of the other gender? I have no problem with that. I know some of my conservative friends have problems with that. I don't I've. That's fine with me what I, what I
I'm taking on here, and what I think is actually a new form of massaging is the denial of biological realities of male and female. That is a fact. That's not a fact. We can wish away that's on a fact. We should argue away or allow others to argue away.
And I think a lot of us first became aware of this when we saw a kind of bureaucracy, nation of massage any in the use of language to describe women. So if you're born female, it's now considered bigoted. If used call yourself a woman, if you say I'm a pregnant woman, no you're supposed to say you're pregnant person. If you say I breastfed my child, no you're supposed to call yourself a chest. Feeder airspace call yourself a person with
Cervix. All of these are ways of leaching the idea of biological female reality out of our culture, and they are very dangerous for a couple of reasons. One is that there is an ex incredibly motivated of small but active particular social media group of transgender,
activists who are very keen on seeing the elimination of womanhood. In this way they argue that biology is not real. It's it's a performance, it's something you can choose to do, and anyone who argues otherwise is a big it. They argue that because of this, this claim that they make that women only Space-
these are our discriminatory. So a women's prison, for example, is it is a discriminatory space if it doesn't allow Trans women into it, even though, as in the state of car,
For now we now have California prison inmates suing the state, because they're getting raped by a Trans female prisoner who has put put into their prison. It says that rape, shelters, domestic violence, shelters. These are,
at places where you can only allow biological women. That is bigoted. So it's it's and we have definitely seen this play out among children in schools with regard to bathrooms and locker room. So that is that, for me, was, is the focus of of the massaging, because what you see active is doing is actually picketing women's rights organizations who, for example, try to combat domestic violence they'll pick
them with signs. That say words that I'm not going to repeat here on the air, but that are in the peace. If you ve done to read it, calling these women transphobia calling them horrible terms that used to only be used by the worst and most virulent massage Agnes in our culture. Now these are the folks who are being champion as the most the ones who are pursuing genuine equality. I reject that thoroughly. I reject the harassment that people like as famous J K, rallying who's, been harassed, constantly fervour standing up to this argument and the total average every day, for example, lesbians, who are harassed and
that they are transfer back because they are only sexually attracted to people who were born female. This is happening. It's happening a lotta, we're not. We have so far been wonderful folks. I call him
eight Abigail Schreyer, others here in the: U S, who really been at the forefront of combating this and they should be commended. But this is a fight that a more every day Americans are gonna, find themselves having to have cause. It's it's it's getting into the culture without any sort of push back, and I think we need to start
back. One of the best things in your pieces identifies the incentives to engage in a professional incentives to pursue this this lifestyle, because it's not just be about fulfilment
visual fulfilment, which I and I agree. I share your general apathy towards help. Other people want to live. Their lives doesn't affect me at all, but it does affect me when it's used to ladder climb. Everybody knows about transport leads
men, biological men become women enter into a field of sport and an excel, but you had one of these really interesting and it goes
I heard before about a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who transition
and then all of a sudden quote was experiencing marginalization and vulnerability and shot right to the top of her field
all of a sudden having done nothing other than assume an identity that wasn't. There is and then bring reap the social rewards them again. Profound commercial success associated with their new identity.
this was that this was a fastening story. The Tec Bro failed tech broke. This is her own description of herself before she transition a failed tech broke, couldn't get businesses that were successful transition and then became the dark.
a kind of a kind of Progressive Silicon Valley, Elite and its end, its handmaidens in the media to be suddenly O. Suddenly, this person has a unique insight into the women's experience in the workplace. Now I have no problem with someone.
Listening and saying, while this is what I learned now that I'm living as a woman, fine, but she is now take,
First of all, she's she's lived as a woman, for you know in a very small portion of her life, most of her life and and very crucial moments of her life, such as puberty and young adulthood, were spent as a male sophie
heard then say under the now tell you all about what it's like to be a woman. I find that offensive. That's offensive to me as a woman, because she doesn't actually understand that there was no humility in that statement and she was professional rewarded for it. The athletic Sufis is kind of horrifying to me, as I have sons who were athletes. The idea that, if I had a daughter, I myself was an athlete and
go if I was facing. This is as a female athletes right now, particularly the elite college athletes that we see in things like swimming there. I said a case about a summer. The universe you Pennsylvania he has swamp. He see was a swimmer for the men's team for three years transition to female and is now bake. Breaking every female swimming world record world record. We're not talking college regard he's faster than cable a decade when they lent limping sees faster than any woman in the pool.
To every single born female woman who stands on that block ready to swim. No, she hasn't zero chance of winning. She cannot be the guy who lived most of his life and went through male puberty with all of its physiological advantages. That is unfair and that puts women at a disadvantage. That is unfair that feminism spent centuries fighting. Can cats? Will it's it's also it's it's such a dismissal of everything that it has meant to be of a female biologically, and that's that's a lot to dismiss, because the physical reality of female nest,
has been the very thing that has been exploited to abuse women right, I mean from the stone age on it is it is you know they did that the the differential and physical strength is
is kind of the you know, it's the it's it's the tube. Why would you you can?
you can subjugated. Will a woman well- and this is a really important point, because what I think that a radical transgender activists have done is very clever.
have seized upon what has long been and continues to be? An ongoing debate among women about biological essential is right, you're, absolutely right, a women's biological differences and supposed weaknesses. You know there and the fact that they go through that they can have children. Men can't the fact that all of these physical physiological differences were used for centuries to keep women down to give to to prevent them from having opportunities and feminism fought that successfully making it and this time.
About. Should we ignore the biological realities or should we embrace them and say actually makes women stronger and better and better leaders? That debate is ongoing, but the transgender activists have done is basically sake, biology, doesn't matter at all. We can. We are women too, and it's not just where women too and want to live as women. It's the category of woman can no longer exists because now we inhabit it and we're not biologically female. So it's bigoted to say that you you're only woman. If you have a cervix you're only what
If you get birth, I should say at least men. You know in the by the light of a certain type of activists. Men are toxic, but they can keep their identity. It's it's a bad one, but they're not denied it entirely. Well, I mean we live in a moment in which we are
cold, that if you are a white person who wants to write a novel from the perspective of a latina or a blackboard,
if you're, William siren today, writing the confessions of not Turner in that book would not be published. If you, if you want to imagine, if you
doing, the imaginative work of writing or considering art in different ways
about people that are not you that you are a group that you are not a member of your work is, can you are accused of cultural appropriation, of cultural negation, of cultural genocide
and here we have a situation in which people say I can go
I can have surgery and take hormones, I can cut pieces off. My body add elements to my body and
hormones that will suppress certain types of things in my body
and I will then we d find myself
As entirely the equal of every but everybody who was born this way, that is the ultimate appropriation that is the ultimate negation. There can be nothing even remotely comparable. I mean. How is it not like taking you know,
in some kind of drug you know like wearing putting bronze or on your skin and then saying your black in a whole like John Howard, Griffin did or or Rachel dollars all it's exactly the same thing, except that it requires a level of
deranged commitment. Let's say I mean it requires a level of horrifying commitment to actually, if you go the whole way do this
These surgical interventions and get up screw around with your body chemistry. All of that simply to claim this different identity, but we are in no other aspect of contemporary life.
In the service radical view of the way the societies was to be organised in no other place. Are you permit it to appropriate the identity of any one else, except in the realm of gender, which is, of course that's it? That's that
that's the big too, like there's mail and there's female than there's this incredibly tiny number of people who are both the IRA is that race is mutable raised
success along a spectrum. Some people they then apply, is something one of one day, though it interferes something else the next. This is documented, it's not something that you can debate and right and it's it's its wits messy. Its nuanced genders completely
Mary, what they want, can you have a surgery that will give you female reproductive organs? You will not be able to to bring in a child to bear ever right, but in the reason I focus on missile.
In particular, in on Trans women, is that they are there far more trends. Woman then transmitted, not enough people, but that I looked at the statistics that that's the direction of of movement from one sex to the other. In terms of you know what people want embrace, and it is, I don't think this could have happened accepted this cultural moment, because its driven by what I think is a really good thing, which is people wanting
to be tolerant and tolerance is important, and I you know, I feel I train with people who work who are trans. I have shared locker rooms, a bathroom. I have no problem with that. I will say this, though there are differences when it comes to really vulnerable female populations. Women who are the victims of rape and domestic abuse or women who are in prison, there's a difference when we're talking about children and about what children, their comfort level and their desire for privacy, which must be protected by the adults in their lives. Those that's a different calculation, but I do think this all genuinely sprang from tolerance. There are plenty of trans women, for example, who are horrified by what the activists are doing, but they don't
like. They can speak out because, if you speak out about this, you suffer the fate of someone like J K rallying who literally had activists doktor online. They showed up in her house and took pictures of himself to show her street addressed to encourage people to come and threaten her, and she received death threats. Many of the active many the lesbian activists in the UK, in particular, who I spend a lot of time, reading about the work there doing. They many them had to form breakaway groups because they were no longer welcome in the elderly Bt Q. I trans heavy groups that had had form they receive regular death threats. They're called Hitler for saying they want to date. Biological limit, I mean it's horrifying. Its bullying
Is the absolute opposite of tolerance, its intolerance, but its intolerance argue. It very are well into her all these trains activists talk about. We need more tolerance, so we have to stop trans genocide. Meanwhile, there physically threatening women who say I don't agree with it. I think I mean yes, I think there is obviously a contingent out there who are supportive of transcribes because they genuinely believe intolerance, but I figured withal such issues on the left. The the animated force behind this and behind others are, as are the people who are in it to tell other people what they have to do, what they.
To accept what they are not allowed to say and how they are supposed to think. And then there are the people who say: work go along and within safe will. I'm just it, but because I
I don't want to hurt anybody. I believe everyone should it, so it always takes both both parts, but I think that the ones who have to shape the crusade or not in it, for tolerance- and, I think,
we ve getting back to the theme of massage any. What we have here is a form of woman hatred, not just in the attempt to expropriate what is female
for people who are male or to normative in a win swimming, you know swimming trophies, and things like that
It is the idea that being a woman is not
mission unto the day is not a miracle is not over you. One of the miracles of existence is not something to be in all celebrate it to be
to have girls, young girls, I've, two daughters. You know brought up to believe that you know: not only are they equal to man and all of that, but that, but that they they possess, say they possess aim, but there they are creatures of biological wonderment. Who, who you know? Who can you know, essentially insect and help? And you know an inert
an incubator, create life and all that, and now we're just in a world in which it's like I mean not to be too like with Dickie dismay
I want to wear a dress. I wonder where make up I dont like competing with all these guys. I don't like it I've or if you want to go to the rich
psychological. Then you have the of course, as my friend public he would put it in this is this. Is this can be viewed as an offence
extreme form of body this morphia disorder or gender. Dismay.
yet disorder and what you look at his people, who are an existential pain, agonizing existential pain, with a with a sigh,
the logical disability that makes them believe that they should be our are something that they are not in their essence and what you're supposed to do is treat the paying your spouse to treat the pain, to help them find integrate themselves into
what they really are and who they are at root, instead of surrendering to their pain and trying to alleviate it by
validating it in the most extreme way, and this is a very complicated issue and again nobody wants to be intolerant of anybody. But just like you know
sad and want to be intolerant- I wanna be nice or something like that. It's the question,
the overall effect of this.
Society wide on hundreds of millions of girls as they grow up like is, is: is there
Is there a world in which they believe that they are not valued and what they are at root and, in essence, is not valued, and the answer is yes, I know goes. Both ways are
An Abigail Schreyer has written a book about about girls who now are very much pursuing keynote, a tree
and options or the transit ideology over the last really serve epidemic over the last five or six years. So that's a whole other subject, but it goes to the point that there seems
to be some real difficulty in valuing what it means to be to be female and to say that what we are wrote down to our chromosomes right, I'm X Y Christine as aspects. That is what we are that with that defines us before we have a brain stem and that that
mutable right, but that I don't know what like that you that you don't want to eat a cow was not mutable. I mean it is an end in that,
Hence it is a it is it is. I mean this is the now to get really pretentious
like the most radical form of cartesian ISM, which is the worst philosophical tendency in all mankind right, which is all I am with my thoughts
My thoughts make me who I, who am am at the world of everything in it should conform to my thought process. That is what an
and so you know radical mind body dualism. Radical refusal to accept reality for itself into work from that upward and,
You know, I mean there's a reason. Our society is in crisis and its in crisis because it no longer it. It now believes its fallen prey to the seduction that you know that we get to choose
whatever we are and like all choices like a like, a like a soviet dissident leaves,
Russia left rush in the nineteen AIDS and comes the United States and goes to a supermarket for the first time and sees five hundred by
says the cereal and has
anxiety, attack and
has to leave, and you know, and and and and do depress, because the idea that you can choose from this endless menu, we are not meant to be able to choose to every aspect of our lives. I admit that I am sorry to interrupt you, but that is exactly why,
one. Other aspect of this, which does not get enough play, is so important and you ve had upon it really well here. It is a philosophy of privilege at its root, because only the privilege can actually have the pat both the wherewithal, though the funds, the resources it to change themselves in this way to insist everyone around them conform to it. It's the women prisoners born biological, female prisoners who don't they they have. It then imposed on them, because if the elite and the powerful and the privilege insist that this is the way must be it's. The
our less who suffer it similar to the kind of progressive crime. The reactionary and Anti AIDS point about it being a sort of overarching philosophy of totalitarian insistence on something that the average person knows to be untrue. It still has victims, it has victims and the victims that we talk about when it comes to. Trans rights are always the trans people which I understand, and there have been, that the mental health crisis
is worrisome that the challenges, particularly for young people, who are going through these issues. There are serious and real and we should not downplay those. But what,
talking about, is a way for the society in general to conform to this extreme, and you see it not just with language, and it is here where the massage when it comes to the fore. The lancet is writing about pregnant people and people with services, but they have no problem writing about men with prostitutes. That's unfair,
Unequal. That's granting two men a biological identity in reality that they are denying women that's wrong or friendly, would bond. Since book there is no free lunch. Two hundred and fifty km truce gets.
some of these ideas, though it is a book about economics, because it's a book about face and it's a book about human flourishing and it's a book about how those are expressed in our public activity, much of which goes under the terms of economic exchange. But in a world in which we are desperate, desperately need human flourishing and ideas like the ones we want exploring here, really challenge the possibility of human flourishing
a book like David's which you can get as a stocking suffer or a Christmas present or well? What have you do today? Thirteen December got twelve days till Christmas is really a first rate way to explore two hundred and fifty ideas, page by page, with great quotes from leading philosophers and thinkers that will bring these connections together. That's there's no free lunch, two hundred and four
the economic truce by David bonds and be H m s in from the bonds and group the antidote to the intellectual, spaghetti of the financial services and management industry. And let me also talk to you about
I expressly p m because using the internet without expressly pianos like leaving your keys in your car, will you run into the gas station for a smack most of the time? You're? Probably fine. But what, if you come back to see, someone drive him off with your car? Well, look! Every time you connect to an unencrypted network
cafes, hotels, airports, any hack, run the same network and gain access to your personal data and run away with it doesn't take much technical knowledge to hack someone just like turning a key in a car, lock
just some cheap hardware is neither smart twelve year old can do it in your data is valuable. Hackers can make a thousand dollars per person selling personal info on the dark. Wept, so what expressly pm does it created encrypted tunnel between your device in the internet? So hackers can still your sensitive data. It would take a happier with a superior over a billion years to get past expressway peons encryption, you fire up the app click one button to get protected, it so easy to use and phones, laptops tablets and more it works on all of them. So you can stay secure on the go secure your online data today by visiting expressly paean dot com slashed commentary. That's your ex Pierre S, VP end dot com, slashed commentary, and you can get an extra three months three x,
ass. We pay about com slashed commentary before we go. I just wanted to make one point about. We have another piece in the in the in the January issue by Eli Lake, which we call the Russia Gates bitter cling,
and it's about how the exposure by the John Durham Investigation and others about the utter factitious ness and
at the simulations in the in the M steel dossier. I have none
less inclined a whole bunch of people who bet there who, by their careers,
and and end there and their whole invested all their hopes in the idea that it would come to pass that the world would see. The Donald Trump was an agent of the Kremlin that got him elected and that he was just basically Vladimir Putin's cats paw and that there was gonna. Be proof of this have basically said that that none of these revelations matters does he wasn't
he was, and he was in you if you don't know that he was then you really should- and there is a deranged peace by David Ignatius in the Washington Post, deranged
de range, peace, David Ignatius Rights, lousy, spy, novels and was a lousy, rushing correspondent and is a seventy five year old, blather Skype and he wrote a peace in which he says that the reason that bloody murder Putin is challenging Ukraine and as the massacres
send you the Ukraine border in order to invade Ukraine, its trumps fault. It's all trumps fault, because you see tromp was his cat paw, and so he threw the magic of not being
president anymore, so that there was maybe a pause for four years. How? How if you wanted Ukraine and Trump has CAT's paw, he could have been invaded Ukraine during the Trump Administration and Trump has said. That's fine with me that didn't happen,
Biden pulls out of Afghanistan and three months later, Putin is like amassing two hundred thousand troops on the Ukraine border, and this is trumps fault. I don't want to call this trumped arrangements syndrome, how about you're an idiot David, Ignatius Syndrome, how about shot up already and retire
syndrome. Who could were? How could you write such a piece? How I mean there are many
things to blame Trump for including is the assault on our election processes and all that. But you can't blame him for Biden, pull
out of Afghanistan and then and then thing saying I guess this is my main chance. Now I mean who could
can somebody I known. None of you actually want to defend David Ignatius. Am I being very hominem, but I can't help it now- anomaly,
there's some centres, nothing to defend. I brought that it that peace everyone's attention, because I was flabbergasted by the thesis that you can't we can't relate the thesis in any way that would read to a neutral observer like a fair assessment of the peace, because the thesis is crazy. It's just manic, which is what one of the reasons why I think your criticisms are:
Please justified. I certainly wouldn't go so far. As the sisters say, something should be drummed out the business. Nevertheless, they said we should really desire. I dont think anyone should ever be drum dive. Any theory was something along the lines that Ukraine call for which the president was impeached. The first time, which had to do with trains seeking the influence of the ukrainian government to advance a political objective domestically and that sort of in its multiple degrees of separation in and filtered through a mind that is consumed with interpreting for Donald Trump got, get used to the idea that well, the great Britain has incentive structure negative to pursue his territory
no ambitions uneasy and can do so without disregarding the whenever I don't even know it's impossible to say it's silly, stupid peace, but its reflective of the and the real crisis on the part of me back to the crisis on the part of Democrats upper facing a reckoning for at the ballot box. Next next November talk a lot about domestic policy, but we haven't talked about
foreign policy very much the very same people who presided over the last invasion of Ukraine are back in power now, and the window of opportunity is evident to all revamp just powers, not just in Moscow but in Beijing. How Donald Trump explains Chinese Sabre rattling, I quite understand, but there they can't reckon with the real fact of the matter, which is that your Joe Biden has been a terrible foreign pile of mines, term terrible foreign policy mine and is a terrible foreign policy. President nothing's going right now anywhere nothing's going right in
and so they have to change the subject of conversation up to and including how media criticism works. Now everybody goes in the business of media. Criticism is now pounding. The drum telling everybody reports for a living that you can't be objective because to be objective, is to give licence to a political party that isn't that is a threat to democracy and if they succeed at the ballot boxes,
November America's doomed there having this conversation very openly in under there.
I guess it we're not listening were listening, but you know, but you, I guess, we're all in the Roman, the thrall, the pay of the Putin. Does that simple, we're just raw workin for boatmen eager for there to be an invasion of Ukraine, because you know left to their own devices left at Jake Sullivan
what really really rather prudent not invade Ukraine and other concessions that were given to down Durham Vladimir Putin over the course of the term presidency. None of them- and there are few very few, but none of them even approach blinking over the Nord Stream pipeline, which severed the Eastern Europe's access to russian gas and makes them subservient to Moscow and am Berlin by the way, which has never had anything
if you are at the time for confronting Moscow, but certainly doesn't now, and they were given the green light by virus and Joe Biden saying- oh I'm gonna leverage, this thing already gave you a free economic concept.
So if you in vain, if you invite, as though that's basically saying well, listen ling Regular, do anything up to an until you do invade, which has not deterrence.
So that's Eli legs a Russia gets better cleaners which does not deal with David Ignatius, his head, stopping more
Braun, the idiot factitious and by the way, if he's not a moron, then he is corrupt, slimy and end.
And demagogic, so I don't know he gave pick one or the other basically, but he doesn't go
To that I did. But this piece is a fascinating examination of how to look at how to look at the door and revelations,
its added its on our website commentary, God
along with pristine space on the new massaging, we give you a few remain free reads: we ask it to subscribe missions, scribe commentary, fury
that's subscribing already it's the best radio ever happen. We need you to help support us as we need
were element, no imaginary generosity in your end of year, giving and we'll be back tomorrow for a pristine, unknown jump upwards, keep the calibre.
Transcript generated on 2021-12-13.