https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=wESnZPGtqU8
And so I look at these CEOs like the CEO of Disney, and I think, are you actually so daft that you don’t notice that you’re empowering a fifth column within your own organization? Do you actually not understand that equity means in the final analysis that you get to get shot first? Do you not see that the unequal distribution that characterizes the capitalist enterprise, at least in principle, based on more going to those who work harder, although it’s an imperfect system, is exactly the opposite of what the equity agitators are striving for? And why is it that you’re enabling that within your HR departments, within your own corporation? And so, I mean, we can point our fingers at the idiot professors, and we should, but then what the hell’s up with the evil capitalist overlords? Like, are they so clueless that they can’t even, what do they want? They want to not take responsibility for the fruits of their own success? That they want to play both ends against the middle? Or is it just blindness? Like, I don’t understand this. No, it’s guilt. I remember when I worked in newsroom for most of my career, the people who were pushing equity, so-called equity and diversity and hiring, which often meant hiring people who weren’t good enough to do the jobs that they were being given, this was all being pushed by white upper management who were trying, in my view, to atone for their own anxiety or to get ready to discharge their own anxiety about their privilege. And the people who were paying the price for it were those people who were truly capable farther down the chain there, because you would never see these white upper managers resign to make place for a person of color or a gay person or a minority person. No, they were making other people deal with their own, the upper management’s anxieties and sense that they were frauds. And I think it was also a form of indulgences in the medieval Catholic sense of indulgences. If they would use their power to put the oppressed in positions within the company, then they felt that they had somehow gained holiness or gained- Yeah, well, do you think we should be cynical or sympathetic about that or both? So imagine working on the argument that we were developing earlier is that, as you pointed out, if you’ve been given much, much will be asked from you. And let’s say that if you’re a middle-class, upper-middle-class manager of a decent corporation in the United States, a lot has been given to you. And so what that means actually is a lot is being demanded of you, even by your own conscience, right? Because you look around and you see your wealth and you see your opportunity. And you contrast that, say, when you walk down the street and see a homeless person, you contrast that with the privation that still exists around you. And if you’re a vaguely decent person, that sets up an unease and a disquiet in your conscience. And then you might say, well, in order to expiate that unease, you have to live as morally as you are wealthy. And failing that, then you’re going to take maybe the René Girard route and look for scapegoats. You’re going to look for someone else to sacrifice so that you act morally instead of bearing that burden on yourself. But it’s a tricky thing, right? Because on the one hand, you can admire the fact that the pangs of conscience are requiring action on the ethical front. But then you have to be cynical about the fact that while you’re trying to take an easy route out by making someone else pay instead of actually doing the work that would free you from the pangs of your own conscience in the face of your privilege. Yeah. And I think I’m glad you brought up René Girard. I quote him in the book as saying that the proper and morally justifiable concern for victims was turning rather into a permanent inquisition and a system of totalitarian command. Girard saw this 20 years ago, and now we’re living with it. So this was, as you were saying earlier, why communism was more easier to accept than Nazism, because communism really did take the proper concern for victims, but they created hell on earth by taking it too far. And I think, Jordan, that one of the the key missing points here is Christianity. Christianity is a religion that concerns, it stands up for the poor and the victimized, it takes the side of the victimized. But Christianity also has buried deep within it the point that Solzhenitsyn made like this, that the line between good and evil does not pass between social classes or identity groups. It passes right down the middle of every human heart. Any oppressed person can easily become the oppressor tomorrow because human failure, human frailty, original sin is common to human nature. And we saw this in the communist world where those who really did suffer a lot under the regimes they overthrew became even worse oppressors themselves. We’re experiencing a lot of global instability as we plunge into primary season. How are you protecting your family in the midst of all this chaos? The fact is, there is one asset that has withstood famine, wars, and political and economic upheaval dating back to biblical times, and that’s gold. It’s not too late to diversify an old IRA or 401k into gold, and Birch Gold Group can help you with that. Birch Gold can help you create a well-thought-out and balanced investment strategy. They’ll help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into an IRA in gold without paying a penny out of pocket. Diversify into gold today. Just text Jordan to 989898 for a free info kit with an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, countless five-star reviews, and thousands of happy customers. I encourage you to check out Birch Gold today. Text Jordan to 989898. Claim your free info kit and protect your savings with gold. That’s Jordan to 989898. Well, so here’s the moral hazard that goes along with that guilt that you described. So imagine that you’re now, because you have privilege, you’re concerned about those who have been victimized and who have less. And so then you could take the steps necessary to be properly philanthropic, productive, and generous with your time and your resources, or you could take an easy route, and this is the scapegoat route. You could identify the oppressors who have oppressed the victims and who are actually responsible for their existence. And those oppressors are not you. They’re someone else. And then your morality consists in ferreting out the oppressors and damning them and mobbing them and chasing them away, which is essentially what happened, let’s say, with the Kulaks in the Soviet Union. And so the cost of not, it’s the problem of placing Satan, as far as I’m concerned, is that you have to have a place where you localize evil. And it’s convenient to localize it in others, and it’s ethically justifiable to identify oppressors who produce victims and convenient if they’re not you. But the proper locale for Satan, and I think this is part of the whole Judeo-Christian enterprise to specify this properly, is that that is, in fact, inside your own heart, and that what you should do to constrain evil, and that’s really what we’re talking about in this podcast period, is to take on the moral burden that produces atrocity in the world onto yourself. And Solzhenitsyn’s advice was, while you start by not lying, that’s the first thing you do. Let me read out some of his rules for responsible conduct. It’s like a bill of responsibilities. We can think of it that way instead of a bill of rights. I will not say, write, affirm, or distribute anything that distorts the truth. I will not go to a demonstration or participate in a collective action unless I truly believe in the cause. I will not take part in a meeting in which the discussion is forced and no one can speak the truth. I will not vote for a candidate or proposal I consider to be dubious or unworthy. I will walk out of an event as soon as I hear the speaker utter a lie, ideological drivel, or shameless propaganda. Well, that would produce a lot of abandonment to a lot of meetings right now. It would. And it will not support journalism that distorts or hides the underlying facts. And so Solzhenitsyn, this is one of the things I so greatly admired about his work and also about your book. His diagnosis was that it was the willingness to knowingly deceive yourself and other people that generated and supported the totalitarian catastrophe. And that your primary obligation was to cease participating in that. And so when that does place the tempter, the deceiver, and so the prince of all lies, let’s say, Lucifer himself, in your own heart and puts on you the moral weight of engaging in that battle in the psychological or spiritual space. And that also, see, this is one of the reasons I dislike modern universities so much is because what they do instead of helping students develop their moral character, or even talking about such a thing as a moral character, is that they teach the students to identify the perpetrators and then to protest against them. And then that can easily, so easily transform itself into this scapegoating and mob woke culture that we have now all operating under the flag of a moral banner. Right, because they don’t see the capacity for evil within their own hearts. And reason is, it’s sadly, it seems to be impotent against this sort of thing. I think, Jordan, that one of the most important events, cultural events of our time happened on Yale University’s campus in October 2015. You’ll remember this when the students got so angry at undergraduates at Nicholas Christakis and his wife, Erica, simply for saying they thought that the students should be able to make up their own minds about the kind of Halloween costumes to wear. You’ll remember this became a huge blow up on campus and on YouTube, people filmed this confrontation on the quad there at Princeton between Nicholas Christakis, this liberal, distinguished professor with white hair, baby boomer, and these kids. There was Nicholas Christakis trying to use reason to engage these young people in dialogue. They didn’t want anything to do with it. They were screaming and crying and cursing and demanding that he apologize for his lack of care. And it went nowhere. And as you recall, Yale University, the administration sided with the students. That was a collapse of authority right there, but it also signaled the collapse of rationality. And this was repeated many more times in other universities over the subsequent years. But when it happens to the elites like that in the universities where the elites are formed and elite networks are formed, that is when the revolution really takes off. Yeah, well, it was appalling on the part of Yale to side with the students and not with the professor. And that was a that was a sign of a catastrophic collapse and also of the inability of those who hold the reins of tradition, let’s say, to defend themselves against the even the most unsophisticated accusations of group guilt.