Progressing Through Difficult Conversation | Congressman Adam Smith | EP 395

And it just kills me that on the one hand we've got all, oh gosh, no, if you criticize somebody, you know, that makes them feel bad, so we have to make sure that we don't do that. This is harm reduction, okay, which we talk about, which is a major impediment to efficiently running organizations, by the way.

If you get to that level, and then you got the people on the other side who just say, you know, that they ought to be able to yell and abuse whoever they want because they're in charge.

Why is it so hard to just go, okay, let's just balance that reasonably and responsibly help people get better instead of trying to tear them down?

[Music]

Hello everyone watching and listening. Today, I'm speaking with lawyer, former Washington state senator, and now Federal congressman Adam Smith. We discussed the difficulties and promise of genuine political dialogue: practical and psychological, the dangers of a too-narrow definition of Merit and accomplishment, the difference between negotiating and winning, and topics related to mental health and political action outlined in his new book, Lost and Broken: My Journey Back from Chronic Pain and Crippling Anxiety.

I've been attempting to bring Democrats on my podcast for several years. Congressman Smith is the first sitting House member or senator, for that matter, willing to take the risk and to combat, in that manner, the dangerous polarization that presently confronts us.

Alright, well, Congressman Smith, thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me and to everyone watching and listening today. You and I have met a couple of times before in Washington in preparation for this. I've met a lot of Democrats in Washington, congressmen and senators. Many of them were willing, if not pleased, to speak with me. They're often pleased too, I suppose.

It's been somewhat tricky getting Democrats to talk to me on my podcast for a variety of reasons, and so I think that's unfortunate, but I'm pleased that you have decided to do that. I guess I'm probably curious to begin with why you agreed to do this and what you're hoping to accomplish.

Then we'll dive into the political mess a bit.

Sure. I mean, it has been my sort of approach to politics from the very start, and I've been doing this a long time. I got elected to the state senate when I was 25 years old, and heck, I started that campaign two years before it ended. So, at the age of 23, I decided I want to run. I wanted to run for office.

One of the things I sort of learned as I campaigned back then, door-belling, basically I knocked on every door in my district. Well, every door of a registered voter, to be perfectly honest about it. The best thing we can do is be open in our conversations.

And as a general rule, I'll listen to anybody. You know, I represent 750,000 people, and I represent every single one of them, not just the ones who voted for me. And I have found that I learn a lot if I'm open to listening to people, particularly people that I disagree with.

And then also, just from a messaging standpoint, I developed a campaign philosophy which is never let the other side occupy the space. Um, so way back when, when, you know, conservative radio started in the 90s, they wanted me on. I went on, let's talk. I mean, I'm not afraid of the conversation.

By coming on someone's show, I am not endorsing everything that they've ever said. Um, I believe that that is the most effective way to represent the district and the most effective way to be a successful politician in general.

I'm regular on Fox News. I did Matt Gaetz's podcast just a couple of weeks ago. Um, I've been on Tucker Carlson's show and back in the day, Sean Hannity. I just believe that's the right way to engage in general, and in this particular moment when our country is becoming more and more divided, it seems to me like more and more people are simply deciding, you know, part of their decision is who am I not going to listen to, who am I not going to engage with.

And I think in a representative democracy, that is an incredibly dangerous thing to get that divided. So, I definitely want to engage, and I, you know, certainly I know a number of people who are big fans of yours. You have a very wide following. You are an influential person when it comes to culture and politics, and for any side of the debate to say we're just going to try to block that, I think it's incredibly counterproductive.

As for what I'm hoping to get out of it, um, is just hopefully an informative discussion. Whenever I go into these things, for the most part, I hope to learn something, and I hope to offer something that the other person can learn as well.

You know, and one final point on this is I think too often now when we’re getting engaged in debates, the goal is to force the other person to agree with you. And don't get me wrong. There are moments in politics and in life when you're trying to do that. You know, if a bill is finally on the floor of the house and I'm trying to pass it, I'm trying to win an argument, and in that moment, I'm going to try to get as many people as possible to agree with me.

But for the most part, when you're engaging with someone, your mission shouldn't be to bludgeon the other side into absolutely agreeing with you on everything. It should be to learn. It should be grow in your understanding; maybe you're missing something, first of all. Second of all, maybe if you listen to the other side, you will better understand how to make your own argument. So, I always find the most interesting discussions to be with people who I don't agree with on everything, so to me, it's a logical thing.

So, there's two things there. I mean, the first is part of the reason to talk to people with whom you disagree is that you're going to run into disagreements with what you think in the world from nature and from culture, from other people, from yourself. And if you set yourself up so that you're optimally challenged by resistance in the abstract realm through discussion, then at least in principle, your ideas are going to be a lot more battle-hardened and tested.

So, there's no real difference between that and thinking. So, given that, I'm curious also, given the self-evidence of that and the necessity of that even in terms of getting your own idea straight, what do you think it is that's produced these increasingly insuperable barriers to communication? And also, more specifically, why have you gotten away with talking to the opposition, let's say, when so many other people appear increasingly unwilling to do so?

I mean, you said you’ve talked to all sorts of reprehensible people on the right-wing side. You didn't say reprehensible; I did not say reprehensible, and I don't believe, I said that. Yes, I don't believe it’s reprehensible. Yes, I said that, definitely. And you know, the walls haven't come tumbling down on you.

Now, people are afraid of cancel culture, and they're afraid of being mobbed and alienated, and they're often afraid of that if they step across whatever the divide happens to be at the moment. But you know, by your own testimony, you've been talking to people across the aisle, and the walls haven’t fallen down on you. So why is that? And why, if that's the case and it can be done, do you think so many people are loathed to do it?

Well, I think the biggest reason... I'm trying to figure out how to put this, um, because it's hard. Okay, it is difficult, and I will tell you right up front, you know, and it's got... And also, I've been doing this for a long time, I think it's one of the benefits. If you take me back to in my 20s and everything, I developed strong opinions about things. I'm a very passionate person; I believe strongly in a number of different things, and I believe in advocating for them.

And I would build up to a good belief, and then I'd run into someone who would say a bunch of things that I hadn't thought of, and it's an incredibly unsettling experience. Alright? Because, first of all, you're like, oh my goodness, I just I put my self out there, and am I wrong? Okay, am I missing some huge thing? And I sort of run back in my mind; I was just at this event and I just told these people this is the way it is, this is the way it has to be. And oh my gosh, I've spread this message, and I'm wrong.

Yeah, um, you know, so it's difficult in that regard. And then whenever that happens, there's, I think, um, off the top of my head, two possibilities. One, you are in fact wrong; you missed something, something that is crucial to what your position is. Or, two, the argument has come at you that you haven't had the chance to think your way through it.

Okay? Because I frequently will get hit with things, and this happens a lot when we're debating an issue in the Armed Services Committee. I prepare for a lot of it, but a lot of it, it's happening. Okay? And it's always a joke after the debate; you're like, oh, I should have made that point. You know, that would, that would, you know, so. So, and, but that's hard. Okay? It's really hard to go back and, okay, how do I counter that argument? I know what I believe; I believe it. If I can just go out there and say it, but now I gotta counter this.

So, I think a lot of people are drawn to the easier thing, and the easier thing is, oh, all these people preach into the choir. I mean, pick your favorite cliché at this point, and that's one of the big things. One of the reasons, actually, why, I mean, and certainly, there are things you and I disagree on but from what I've seen of your speeches and from our conversations, you are a believer in doing things that are difficult and the inherent benefit that comes to us as human beings from doing that. And so am I.

But, by definition, it's not easy. Okay? And as human beings, we are, as I said, I think before we started this, we're incredibly adaptable, and that's what I learned from my own personal experience when I went through my mental health and my, um, you know, um, physical health problems, is human beings are incredibly capable of getting better. Alright? If you work at it, that's number one.

But number two, it is rarely our first inclination to do something that's uncomfortable. We are going to look for the more comfortable option, just instinctively. So, you have to fight that instinct; it's not easy. It's not easy to do the thing that's uncomfortable that's going to make you better. Um, and I think a lot of people struggle with that.

And, of course, modern technology makes it very easy to never have to encounter things that you don't agree with. You can filter every aspect of your life to make sure it stays in the lane you want to stay in. Final point on this; I don't want to give a long-winded answer to the second question here. But is, you know, I think it's the reason people say, wow, we never talk about politics and religion. Okay? What's the fun in that? Okay? You know, how do we learn and grow if we don’t talk about the things that make us un a little bit uncomfortable so that we can better understand each other and not be off in our own little Corners thinking all kinds of awful terrible things about each other and then never, never trying to bridge that divide.

So, by temperament, I am a very agreeable person, which is a rather feminine trait because women tend to be more agreeable than men. And agreeable people don't like conflict, and I've been embroiled in a lot of conflict, and there's a very specific reason for that. And the reason is, is that I've learned mostly through clinical experience, although that wasn't all of it, that conflict delayed is conflict multiplied. And you know, you pointed out that it's challenging to be shown to be wrong.

And the reason for that, I've looked at this technically. The reason for that is that our beliefs orient us like a person is oriented with a map. And if you find out that your map is wrong, then you don't know where you are, and you don't know where you're going, and that produces anxiety and hopelessness. And the bigger the akake, the more of the map is invalidated, and that's very disorienting, profoundly disorienting.

We don't like to be lost, and so then you might say, well, why would you ever bother challenging your beliefs or engaging in conflict with someone? And the answer to that, this is a bit of a reiteration, but the answer to that is quite clear: It's a lot better to have your ideas tested in the abstract than it is to have your convictions demolished by reality itself. And so you need to...

This is partly what I think has gone wrong, for example, in the education system. Lucenoff has written a fair bit about this along with Jonathan Haidt, is that we believe that students, because of the fragility of their mental health, should be shielded from uncomfortable conversations, let's say, or uncomfortable conversations. And the clinical reality is very, very clear.

It's very clear; this is one thing that all reliable clinicians have agreed upon over a 50-year period, which is that voluntary encounter with what you're afraid of and even potentially disgusted by is clearly salutary and curative. And so you want to give people a hair of the dog that bit them constantly, right, to fortify them against Challenge.

And the best way to do that is to engage voluntarily in the exchange of ideas of representations. So, and the reason I'm dwelling on this in part is because people might be listening and thinking, why in the hell should I ever have a difficult conversation? Why should I ever talk to someone who disagrees with me? And the answer is, well, if you're 100% right about everything and you're currently living in Paradise itself and everything in your life is as good as it can possibly be, then you don't ever have to encounter a negative opinion because you've got everything right.

But if there's some unfurrowed corner of your soul that still isn't in the order that it could be and you're feeling that as a consequence of your own suffering, then you should be out there testing your ideas against everything you possibly can on the off chance that you might be fortunate enough to learn how you're stupid and wrong so you can stop being both of those. And of course, that's painful, but it's not as painful as being stupid and wrong.

So, well, I mean, a couple of things about me. First of all, I'm with you. I, you know, as I document, I grew up a very anxious person. I did not like conflict either because I had massive insecurities, psychological issues that became significant problems later in life. So, yeah, right there with you because I think it's worth pointing out that there are some people who like conflict and seek it out, and that's not a good thing.

And that sort of brings me to my third point. And dealing with what you're talking about, to me, it's all about balance, and that's something that we've sort of lost. Again, I think part of the problem is balance is difficult. You tell me that in every situation, this is the way it is. Alright, I'm good; I know what to do. You tell me in every situation that it's great. But if you tell me, well, it depends, okay? You know, what did the person say? What are the circumstances? Well, then you're back into a situation where you got to work pretty hard to figure out what the right way to be is.

And that's hard. But that's life. We need to teach people how to balance that. And I'm completely with you on the fact that in our education system and in many aspects of our life right now, we do not teach resilience. Okay? We teach people to be protected. Now the one caveat I'll throw out there is a lot of these people who like conflict, you know, get to the point where they take a certain amount of joy in putting people in difficult circumstances, which is not for any clinically beneficial person.

It's just because they're being jerks. So you can empower a lot of people acting like jerks by saying, well, of course, we have to test them. So you always have to try to have a balance here. The purpose of conflict is to help people get better. And you have to understand that the purpose of conflict is not so that you can attack somebody. All right? I see this, frankly, a lot of times in parenting.

Um, it's really important. I have a 23 and a 20-year-old child. So, my wife and I have raised two children now and have experienced this, and we're human; we're trying to educate our children along the way, teach them how to be better, but then also we got our own stuff going on here, okay? So, when you're getting angry at a child, is it because you're trying to make them better, or is it because you're trying to score a point? And you really need to try to figure out how to balance that, and I think a lot of people don't.

So, if you can balance those two things, it's fine. I mean, I'm completely with you on the resilience thing. Um, but you also have to guard against resilience being just an excuse to abuse somebody. So, with regard to scoring a point, so you imagine that there are two ways of establishing a modum of psychological and possibly social stability.

And one would be to negotiate a settlement voluntarily so that you and I could exchange our opinions and come to a negotiated agreement about the nature of the present and about the nature of the desirable future, right? Now, the advantage to that is that if it's voluntarily negotiated, you can go off on your own and I can go off on my own; we'll walk down the same path without a lot of mutual supervision. So, that's very helpful.

Another alternative, though, is to attain a certain degree of comparative status. And so it turns out that the serotonin system monitors comparative status, and so if I score a point on you - in principle, that elevates my status above you. And then you might ask, well, what's the advantage to that?

And the advantage to status acquisition is a raise in central serotonergic function, and that dampens negative emotion. And so, you can imagine there's two deep places; there are two deep sources of the conflict between two different approaches to problem-solving, right? If I can attain comparative status... This is, people are trying to obtain comparative status very constantly in our culture, often without doing the requisite effort.

But the advantage to that is that the status boost does produce a quelling of negative emotion. Now it's not as good a solution as a negotiated peace. The problem with a negotiated peace is that you have to wander through the bloody disagreement and sort out all the intervening conflicts in order to establish the peace.

If I could try to put it a little bit more simply, when you're having a discussion with somebody, are you trying to solve a problem? Are you trying to get to a fair result, or are you trying to win? Okay? And there's a big difference. And I think in a lot of the disagreements out there in the world, too often now, people are trying to win.

Okay? They're trying to own the other side. Me, temperamentally, I don't know why, but I'm a peacemaker. Well, I think it's partially because I grew up anxious, and there were, you know, things in my family that were a little disruptive, and I just want peace and stability. And I learned early on - and it's not that it's not that I'm not selfish and not passionate and don't have things that I personally want - but as I grew, I realized that above all of those things is I wanted a peaceful environment around me.

And if I'm going to achieve a peaceful environment around me, I have to care about what other people want and what other people think too, and you have to work at that. And that's where I think the conflict goes. I think you're right; you do get that initial high, "I was right! You know, now I'm going to win the argument; now everybody has to do what I say from here on out because I've proven that I am the superior intellect in this place."

It's like, yeah, that doesn't work too well past a certain point. We all have our ups and downs.

And again, I really want to emphasize this point. You know, I've negotiated a lot of things over what is it now 33 years that I've been an elected official. And it's so crucial if you've gone to negotiate something. Actually, I'll quote something that a good friend of mine, who's a very successful businessman told me.

If he's involved in a business deal and when it's all over said and done with he got everything he wanted, he knows he did it wrong. Okay? Right? Because it's got to be about how we keep everybody on board. And I worry that as we become more dogmatic in our politics, in our business, in our my gosh, in Little League, for crying out loud, you know, it's like no, we have to win, we have to be the one on top, we have to.

It's like, okay, but you're in for a whole lot of conflict if you don't care at least a little bit about whether or not the community as a whole was getting to a fair place.

Okay, so that's a great segue, as far as I'm concerned, into a political issue that I've been longing to hash out with the Democrats, for example, who will talk to me. And I'd like to explain momentarily why I'm not a fan of identity politics, and I think it's relevant to the concerns that you just laid out.

It's incredibly relevant, yes.

Okay, so, what I see happening in the broad culture, and this is part of the culture war, is this increasing insistence that I can define myself in precisely the terms that I want to define myself. Now that tends to devolve into something like sexual identification or ethnic identification or some other group identification, which is also something I think is incredibly dangerous.

But here's the problem with this. And I've been trying to think it through from the perspective of a psychotherapist. On the one hand, I could claim that one of my clients, for example, has the perfect right to define themselves subjectively, but that runs into a number of problems, and the problems are, for example, that sometimes people's subjective self-identification is clearly counterproductive. So, anorexics, for example, think they're too fat when, in fact, they're generally on the verge of absolute starvation.

And people who are manic get a very expanded sense of self-confidence and believe that they can do all sorts of things that they can't and that they have resources that they don't and so forth. Almost everything about psychotherapy is actually about identity, and so it's clearly the case that you cannot merely identify yourself subjectively and proceed appropriately in the world on that basis.

And here's why I believe, and this is partly I think what's tilted me more towards conservatism, insofar as I am tilted in that direction. So, psychotherapists who are inheritors of a kind of a Protestant and humanistic tradition have presumed that mental health is something that you – that characterizes the structure of your psyche. It's something internal.

And I think that that's incorrect. I think that what mental health is is the net benefit of experiencing a harmonious nested relationship with the broader community. So, it's very difficult to be sane if you're not getting along with your wife, and you and your wife can't be sane if you're not getting along with your children.

Children and your family can't be sane if you're having a scrap with your local community, and the local community can't be sane if it's not well integrated into the town and the state and the nation and then whatever might happen to be above that.

And then, the right manner of conceptualizing mental health is that it's the manifestation of the harmony that comes from having the hierarchy of being put in its proper place. Now, when we turn to subjective self-identification on the sexual or ethnic front, for example, the insistence that I am whoever I say I am, the problem with that is, well, what the hell are the other people supposed to do?

I mean, you've been married for decades, you have kids, you know, you know 30 years, congratulations. I just had my 34th this week. You know perfectly well that, and this is germane also to your point about conflict, is that you have to establish a negotiated peace in order for stability to maintain itself, and negotiation, what you're negotiating constantly, as far as I can tell, is your identity.

Right? And so I think, I’m very concerned about, okay, so what? So first of all, do you think that those observations are relevant to the culture war that's raging now, not least over subjective self-identification? And what's your opinion about how the political landscape has laid itself out around those issues?

Sure. I think it's very relevant. Let me make a couple quick points to walk through this. First of all, yeah, and we haven't talked about it, but I keep making references to physical and mental pain. I went through a severe anxiety problem, severe chronic. I wrote a book about it which sort of outlined how I got through that.

When you started talking about psychotherapy, I went through three and a half years of psychotherapy. That was enormously helpful, and I think you're right. Your internal mental health is going to be dictated a lot by your relationships.

I would say in defense of the psychotherapists out there in the world, your ability to have those positive relationships has a lot to do with your own internal mind and whether or not you are a psychologically stable person, whether or not you've dealt with the issues in your life.

So, just that little quick shout out to the psychotherapists, I think there is an important component of that. Second, I think you're working your way around the broader culture issue that we have, and I think it is incredibly important.

I tell you, I read Christopher Rufo's book, along the lines of me being engaged in that, and I spoke to Chris just last week and walked through some of this. And you're getting down sort of into the granular level of, okay, what has happened as an outgrowth of our concern about racism, bigotry, and discrimination and the conversations that people have had about how identity factors into that.

But, I think the big problem, and the thing that I hope and I can try to convince folks on the conservative side of this, that when it comes to the fight and the battle that we have, and certainly I think Christopher Rufo did a pretty good job of outlining some of the more extreme elements of the left approach to this.

But what motivates people like me is the fact that racism, bigotry, and discrimination are problems in American society. They are. Okay? You can't fairly look at the history of the United States and conclude otherwise. Now, I also think you can't fairly look at the history of the United States and conclude that that's all we've ever been about. Okay, is racism, bigotry, and discrimination.

I think, as with most things, it's a balance, and there's a lot of things going on. I think the problem I have with the conservative movement, I had this conversation with Mr. Rufo, is yes, what the left is doing is problematic, but the right, conservatives, Republicans, they don't offer a reasonable alternative because their alternative is racism and bigotry aren't really a problem; let's just stop worrying about it and move on.

Okay? And logically, I have all kinds of problems with that approach. So then we get trapped between the far-right in terms of how they want to approach that and the far left and their very specific way of approaching it. And to answer one of your earlier questions that I skipped over as to why I can be successful doing this, I think the overwhelming majority of people are in fact looking for what I'm talking about: an open and engaging approach.

They're just not offered it altogether that often. And that's where we're trapped in identity politics is these two extremes. Okay? You know, racism, bigotry, and discrimination is everything; every single decision, every single thought you've ever had has to be focused on identity.

And then the other side is “not a problem. Not worth thinking about.” There's a lot in between there that I think we could work on to build a better Society.

It's time to take your fall style to the next level. Dressing for success can help you look better and be more confident. So whether you're attending an important meeting or networking event, or simply want to impress your colleagues, Mizen and Main has everything you need. Their clothing is comfortable, breathable, packable, and machine washable.

Their dress shirts are designed to help you close out the year in style. Whether you're shopping for a special someone this holiday season or giving yourself the gift you really want, Mizen and Main is the perfect gift for any guy who works, travels, plays golf, or wants to look and feel great. And let's be honest, that's every guy.

So what are you waiting for? Spruce up your fall style with Mizen and Main. Go to Mizen and Main dot com and use code Jordan to get 25% off any purchase of $130 or more. That's MizenandMain.com promo code Jordan for 25% off [Music] today.

So, when I've gone to Washington and spoken, in this case primarily to Democrats, I've also worked with the Democrats a lot. I worked with a group of people in California, my friend and former student Greg Herwitz, on Democrat messaging for about five years, and I've had a lot of conversation with Democrats.

One of the things I've often asked them, this is a very complicated problem, is when does the left go too far? And it's a complicated problem for a variety of reasons. I would say the first reason is that most of the excesses on the progressive left make themselves camouflage themselves in the guise of compassion.

Now, I know there are bad actors on both sides of the political spectrum; there are bad actors in the religious domain, there are bad actors in the scientific domain, and these are always people. They have a very identifiable set of personality characteristics generally bordering on the psychopathic that will use a moral stance to put forward their own agenda instrumentally or to torment other people, and there's a very well-developed psychological literature indicating this.

And the problem there is that boundaries have to be drawn to stop those actors, the psychopathic types from invading the general culture and taking it out, and a small proportion of people like that can do that.

Um, psychopaths in general, by the way, run about 3% of the population; that's about as successful as they ever get. But they're an omnipresent threat to cultural stability.

Well, I guess that's a little lower than I thought, so I'll take that as good news, but yeah.

Yeah, it is good news because it means that 95% of people aren't like that. It's very good news. Now, the bad news is that it doesn't take very many people like that to cause an awful lot of trouble.

Now, the other thing that happens on the left – and this is different than the right – is that people on the left do have more difficulty temperamentally drawing boundaries. And you can see this in the rhetoric that right and left use.

Well, this isn't a criticism exactly.

No, no, I’m just thinking. A boundary can keep good things out just as much as it can keep bad things out. And so the liberal bet, especially the leftist bet, is the more information that flows freely, the better off everyone is.

And the conservative rejoinder is yeah, but not all information because some things are so toxic they can't be digested. And then the discussion is, well, what should we allow in and what's too toxic to be digested?

And that's con... that has to be constantly discussed because it shifts and changes. That's part of the reason why free speech is necessary. But what I've observed, like I've asked, for example, virtually every Democrat I've ever come in contact with, when does the left go too far?

I'm going to decorate that with one other observation. So one of the disciplines I studied – social psychology. The social psychologists insisted for 70 years that there was no such thing as left-wing authoritarianism. That didn't crack until 2016.

Yeah. Well, right, that's utterly insane.

But, but it is actually troublesome because it is harder to point to an excesses on the left and to say, well, there's a policy that purports to be put forward in a compassionate manner that's actually not that at all and that's highly toxic.

And so you've been involved in the scrum of Washington politics for a long time. I asked Robert Kennedy this question, and he said, before bloody YouTube took our conversation with him down, um, he said, I don't, he said essentially that he didn't want to answer that because he wasn't trying to run a campaign of divisiveness.

And you know, fair enough, but it, it doesn’t get to the heart of it. We have a culture war going on; there's excesses on both sides. A fair bit of it's driven by psychopathy. It isn't obvious to me that the Democrats have done a good job of drawing a dividing line between them and the people who are, you know, the moderate Democrats who I know are most of them and the small minority of extreme radicals who have a disproportionate influence. And so, well, I'm curious about what you think about that.

And well, so you went in a whole bunch of different directions here, and let me try to make sure I can sift through it. I mean, first of all, you know, on your point about there's no such thing as left-wing authoritarianism, I've stayed in regular contact with some pretty hardcore conservative people over the years. And a number of them have argued with me that there's no such thing as right-wing violence.

Okay? So when it comes to that ability to try to like, I don't know, twist the world to fit your ideology, I haven't noticed any particular difference between the left and the right on that. They both are capable of it.

Second, you raise a really interesting point, which I will just mention briefly and not go down that rabbit hole; I won't go down that discussion because I want to get back into that, you know, when does the left go too far question.

But yeah, I went to Forum University, which is a fascinating place to go to. I'm not Catholic. I'm Episcopalian; I thought about becoming a Catholic after leaving Forum, and the primary reason that I didn't is because it's too much work, okay? I was 23 years old. They said, well, you got to go to classes for six months, and I'm like, I went to classes for like a month, and I was like, I don't want to do that.

Anyway, minor point. But anyway, I took a class. The thing is interesting about Forum, particularly Forum in the 80s, I don't know about now, is you know Jesuit schools have both some really, really left-leaning professors and then some hardcore conservative professors as well. And I had this professor I took a class with about Edmund Burke, um, and sort of studying the importance of tradition.

And this was a very conservative professor who was pro-life, and at one point during our discussion, he said, you know, the worst thing our country ever did was to allow people to debate abortion. And at the time, I was 21 years old. I had a very liberal mind. My parents had raised me that, you know, we have open debate; we do all this other stuff.

And, you know, it just struck me as like just who is this guy, you know, saying that we shouldn't even talk about it? But when you stop and think about it from a logical standpoint, he was right; he didn't want any abortion to be legal at all. It was illegal. So if we didn't talk about it, he was going to stay up top.

So that's, that's an interesting little debate about how much Freedom of Information, you know, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. Personally, I'm with you; the more we talk about it, the more we get to the right answers is what I believe on that front.

But on your question, you know, when does the left go too far, and when does the right go too far? One of the things I've discovered is it's best not to engage in that type of conversation. I take a vastly more practical approach to it, and I will specifically explain what you mean and then I will answer that question.

So when I look around the Seattle King County area that I represent, my district is now entirely within King County. It's changed over the course of my 27 years of representing it. We have a significant problem with some very specific issues. We have a problem with homelessness, we have a problem with drug abuse, we have a problem with crime, and we have a problem with affordable housing.

Alright, so when I dive into this, I don't dive into it going, okay, who's the who let this happen? I dive into it like, okay, what are we going to do about it? Alright, what's working? What's not working? How do we actually get to the point where we better address those issues?

And within that context, um, the specific answer to your question as to what's problematic is that the left has moved too far in the direction of let's look at the broader societal causes of these things, which, by the way, is important; it is, okay? You know, if you have more economic opportunity, if you have better access to healthcare, if you have better access to education, all of those things that I just mentioned with the possible exception of the affordable housing problem which is complicated, get better. That is true.

But if you take individual responsibility completely out of the equation and say, we're just going to look at greater societal problems, that's where you get into trouble. We need to get a balance. And I've had this conversation with a number of different folks, community-based organizations, county government, city government as I'm trying to sort of work through this, and I asked the question, you know, well, okay, broader societal stuff, I get, but what role does individual choice play in a decision to abuse drugs, in a decision to commit crime?

And frequently the answer I get back is, well, it really doesn't, which is, which is wrong, okay? I mean, you know, I'm not getting into some broader ideological, oh my gosh, you've gone too far. I don't care about that; you're adopting a policy that is going to make it more difficult to actually help people.

And I'm progressive on this; I believe in alternatives to incarceration, okay? I believe in, you know, getting people into treatment. So you've got, that's issue one: Is there any individual responsibility here? Do we set expectations for people? Do we hold them accountable for their actions?

And out of level, okay? You don't take a homeless drug addict with a mental problem and say, okay, you got to go to work 40 hours a week starting right now. No, okay, I get that, but you could be a little something, okay? Let's do a little something today; we'll do a little more tomorrow, and we'll do a little more the next day.

They're rejecting that.

And then the second problem is individual agency, okay? And I also, that's point I, I believe in that, okay? You know, you can't just again grab somebody, pull them off the street, throw them in a mental hospital and tell them to get better, okay? You want to work with them to get to the point where they're making individual choices, but they're making the right choices.

And I think we've gone too far in the other direction of, look, we can't tell this person what they should do, okay? When they're ready, they’ll seek treatment, when they’re ready, they’ll move on. This is a lot more of a balance, okay? And I think in our approach looking at the broader system societal issues, also looking at some of the authoritarian problems.

I mean, look, we incarcerated too many people in this country over the course of 60 years; it became the easy button for public policy, and it ruined a lot of lives. It absolutely did, and we should fix that. But you don't have to go all the way over to the other side where, okay, we can abolish the whole criminal justice system, and everything will be fine.

The problem we run into in our community is so we've got a lot of people pushing that further out agenda on those two issues. And then, as I keep saying, what's the conservative alternative? The conservative alternative is, well, let's just keep locking them up and let's pretend that racism doesn't exist.

Well, my community isn't going to go for that. I'm not going to go for that. You know, I think we need a more balanced approach, but that fundamentally, to answer your question of it'd be wrong to say, and when we spoke once, you put the question, is what is the Democratic party doing wrong? The Democratic part is a big amorphous thing.

You put the question a little differently today, what is the left doing wrong? I would say those are the two issues; we need a better balance that takes into account personal responsibility, individual choice, and the need to help people get to a better place.

I've taken to summing it up from a meeting I had a week ago, you know, the phrase “meet people where they are.” I completely agree with that; it's long been my philosophy when I'm trying to pass a bill or get a vote. I got to understand that person before I’m not going to come in and tell them to be something different.

So meet people where they are! I amend that to say, yes, but don't leave them there, okay? You know, yes, a person homeless, they got all these difficulties. Now, what are we going to do to help them get to a better place? That is the way I would describe that challenge.

So, I agree with you in relationship to the dir of, let's say, conservative alternative Vision. I think that's a real weakness on the conservative side, and maybe even more specifically on the Republican side. So we can return to that later.

I wanted to embellish your comments about agency and responsibility a bit. So, technically there's not much difference between agency and hope. They run on the same neurological circuit. So if you believe you can do something, well, that's a hopeful vision. And hope is positive emotion, broadly speaking; it's mediated by the systems that produce positive emotion, and it indicates the probability of successful movement forward.

And so by attributing all problems to society, you risk removing individual agency, and the consequence of removing individual agency is you destroy hope, and that's not a positive thing.

And then there's another element that plays into that that I'd be interested. I want your opinions on all of this, but one of the things I've noticed as I've traveled around the world speaking to my audiences, let's say the people who come to listen and to consider, is that if I draw a relationship between responsibility and meaning, the crowd always falls silent.

And the reason for that, as far as I can tell, is that the meaning that sustains us in life is actually a consequence not so much of having the right to do whatever we want – so that would be on the hedonic side, which can lead to a very short-term and impulsive orientation, a self-centered orientation.

Instead, it's the res – the meaning emerges as a consequence of bearing the responsibility for yourself and for your partner and for your family and for your community.

I mean, literally, that's where the meaning comes from. And if that's demolished, and that's on the personal responsibility side, if that's demolished, you leave people devoid of meaning.

And that is one of the dangers of abstracting the diagnosis of societal problems all the way up to the highest level of social organization, you know, the pathology of the patriarchy is that you demolish the domain of useful attention and action on the individual side.

And I also think that that's one of the cardinal sins, let's say, of the radical left is that it’s that combination of excessive abstraction and also the – now the leftists, their point fundamentally is, well, how do you discriminate assigning responsibility from laying blame, right?

I mean, well, and that's it's really a good question. And you always wrestle with that in psychotherapy. You know, if I have a client, I personally don't think it's that hard. I'm with you; everyone I run into says it is.

But having been a parent, the way you do that is it's almost a matter of cone, okay? You know, you can have a conversation with your child when you've done something wrong, and I had when I try not to drag my children too much into this, but I can think of some specific conversations.

When you calmly walk through an explanation of here's what you did, here's the choice you made, here's why it was a problem, or you just scream at them for being terrible, awful, horrible human beings. Okay? To me, that's how you differentiate. Okay?

Blame is an affirmative, you're, you know? Responsibility is just, okay, we're all flawed; we're all humans. You know, we're all going to screw things up. I'm not saying, because you did that wrong, okay, that that means you're a terrible, awful, horrible human being and I can't stand to look at you.

Okay? But you did something wrong, so let's not pretend that that didn't happen. Just because you, it's going to make you feel bad to realize that you did something wrong, let's have a professional, grown-up, kind, caring, helpful conversation about how you can do it better.

And it just kills me that on the one hand we've got all, oh gosh, no. If you criticize somebody, you know, that makes them feel bad. So we have to make sure that we don't do that. This is harm reduction, okay? Which we talk about, which is a major impediment to efficiently running organizations, by the way.

Um, if you get to that level, and then you got the people on the other side who just say, you know, that they ought to be able to yell and abuse whoever they want because they're in charge. Why is it so hard you delve into the mind a lot more than I do?

Why is it so hard to just go, okay, let's just balance that and reasonably and responsibly help people get better instead of trying to tear them down?

According to a recent report, Planned Parenthood continues to rake in billions despite dwindling client scales. The biggest takeaway here is that Planned Parenthood is generating vast profits, including millions in taxpayer funding with the help of pre-born. You and me, we are stealing their clientele, meaning the babies they are trying to kill.

Pre-born operates on a very slim budget as they rescue over 200 babies' lives every day, and they receive no government funding. Pre-born network of clinics are situated in the darkest corners, competing head-to-head with the abortion giants. They need our help now more than ever.

When you donate $28 to Pre-born, you will offer a free ultrasound to an expectant mother caught in crisis. Once she hears that heartbeat and sees that precious life, her baby's chance at life doubles. If you would like to sponsor a precious baby's life, your gift will be tax-deductible and will go directly towards saving babies' lives.

Dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby, or visit Pre-born dot com. All gifts are tax-deductible. You will never regret saving a child's life. That's pound 250, baby, or visit Pre-born dot com.

Well, it's part of the problem that you point to in your book. And your book, I thought, I'd just point this out to everyone. The book is called, let me, I've got it written down here; I want to get it exactly right. Lost and Broken: My Journey Back from Chronic Pain and Crippling Anxiety.

One of the things you discuss in that book is the difficulty of diagnosis, and this is relevant with regard to the judicious decisions and conversations that are necessary in assigning responsibility. And you might ask, well, why bother calling your kids out on something they've done wrong if it hurts their feelings?

And certainly, parents will avoid doing that, especially if they're the kind of parents that foster dependence. But the answer is, well, if your child did something stupid that hurt them and other people in a manner that's counterproductive if continued, the price they have to pay to realize that flaw is offset by the advantage of not doing the stupid thing again.

Now the diagnostic complexity is tool, right? One is, first of all, things are complex, and deciding how someone went to hell in a hand basket, parsing that up; with regard to social contribution, familial contribution, and individual responsibility, I mean, that can take hundreds of hours of dialogue. It's very, very complicated.

So complexity is part of it, and then the conflict that might come along with mediating responsibility and blame; that's difficult. You know, if you're talking to your kids, they might say, well, you know, if you weren't such a son of a... I wouldn't be so rebellious. And that's, you know, that's a perfectly reasonable potential proposition, but there's no shortage of conflict that has to be had in sorting that out.

And of course, one other layer on that I just want to throw in is, so I have two children, and I'm married. And when you're negotiating between, okay, an argument between, like my son and my wife or my son and my daughter, then it's like, okay, well what about what they did?

Alright? And then that throws in a little bit more complexity as well. Personally, I think it's all navigable. Like, guess you can work your way through it, let's put it that way. It's not easy for the reasons you describe, but I think it is more doable than most people give it credit for.

That's all I'm saying.

Well, the alternative is to put your head in the sand and continue to get kicked as a consequence or to degenerate into outright conflict. I mean, it's either negotiation, slavery, or tyranny. Those are the fundamental options. And so, well, on that front, one of the things I've also viewed, and you can help me with this if you would, is I'm watching you guys in the US tear yourselves apart.

We're doing it to some degree in Canada with regard to the idea of systemic racism, let's say. Now you pointed out quite rightly that the proclivity to alienate and manifest prejudice because of innate group differences is pervasive, and I think the anthropological literature suggests that most tribal groups around the world describe their people as human and everyone else as non-human.

It's an extraordinarily common linguistic categorization proclivity, and so I think you can make a strong case that although people are cooperative and will reach across the aisle, that generally we tend to think of the people like us as human and the people who aren't like us as not human.

And so, out of that comes... Just to be clear, I don't bias and racism. I don't know that I would go quite that far. I would say we tend to be tribal; we tend to think of the group that we belong to as being somehow better than other groups.

I don't know that we necessarily decide that other groups aren't human, just that there's the tendency to think that you're better, and that will vary, obviously, situation to situation. But it is a human tendency.

Yeah, you see it. It's complex because, obviously, tribal groups can trade and intermingle, and so there is a countervailing tendency. But the linguistic tendency is literally to define the non-tribal members as not human. Now, I'm not saying that we necessarily do that fully, but we can easily be tempted in that direction.

Now, the radical leftist critique of American society is that the society itself is systemically racist, and this actually really bothers me as an outside observer and an admirer of the American system. Now, the Canadian system is quite similar, although we're doing everything we can to muck it up at the moment.

But you see, my sense is exactly the opposite, which is that the proclivity for systemic bias and racism is deeply rooted in the human soul, and it's a bloody miracle that there was any progress; there's ever been any progress made in that direction at all.

And I would say that your society, grounded as it is in a broader UK tradition, is the stellar example of the countervailing tendency, which is to attribute to all human souls something approximating divine value, regardless of the particulars of their group identity.

And so then when I see these radical critiques of American society accusing it of systemic racism and being even founded on those principles, I think this is very counterproductive because not only is it not the case, it's actually the case that the UK-American tradition that has made slavery, let's say, an absolute moral evil is rare and most pronounced in the case of the Anglo-American tradition.

And so, what I see happening with the radical left, for example, is they're actually throwing out the very thing that they purport to support because, well, and you can tell me what you think about this, the idea that might makes right and that if I can force you into servitude, I have the right to do that, that's pretty damn self-evident.

The notion that you have some intrinsic worth, even if you're weak and easily manipulated and forced, that you still have some worth, that's a very difficult proposition to put forward.

And yet, both the UK and the US managed it. And whatever degree of true interracial harmony and freedom has prevailed, particularly in the West, particularly in the US, is actually a consequence of that countervailing tendency.

And I think that's the fundamental forward thrust of the American enterprise. So when I see the leftists go after that, and they, and that's something that's become increasingly dogmatically taught in universities, I think, God, you guys, you know, you're killing the very thing that in principle has been the closest thing to bringing about what you want that's ever made itself manifest in history.

Yeah, I mean, I think you've hit upon what is one of the principal divisive issues in American politics that is making things more difficult to get things done because people are locked into that debate.

Which side is going to win that debate? And as I've said a couple of times and will likely say more frequently as this interview progresses, I take a more practical problem-solving approach to things.

And it's, you know, what do we need to do to build a better society? Now, when it comes, you know, what is America founded on? It's no one thing. And it's no one thing to one group of people.

I tend to agree with you that the principal idea is equality; is the idea that we are not going to be as tribal. That's certainly what the documents said. But I think the thing to remember, you know, for conservatives is this approach to dealing with racism, bigotry, and discrimination didn't come from nowhere, okay?

It came from, in addition to all those traditions that you rightly just described, we've had a pretty rich history of also some pretty thorough discrimination. Now, that's changed, um, gotten better, I confidently assert, over the course of the last 60 years.

But for much of American history, I mean, let’s start with, you know, the founding principles of everyone should have a say in how they are governed; democracy, which was one of the big ideas that we tried to introduce. Well, at the time we introduced it, everyone knows, I mean, it applied to white male property owners, and that was it.

Now, my personal take on this is at the time we did that, democracy, in its true sense, really didn't exist anywhere on the globe, so to take that step was a significant step, and ever since then, we've been expanding on that, okay? We've been trying to get better at it, but also along the way, an incredible history of, you know, white supremacy, white supremacy, patriarchy, um, all manner of discrimination that have in fact been more locked in to how we've governed ourselves than most people realize.

And I'll give you just one example, and then expand out on how I think we should handle this. And I agree with you; the way the far-left is handling it I don’t agree with. Okay?

I also don't agree with the way the right is handling it. But you know, we have this debate, and this is something that I led the fight on in Congress to rename military bases in our country. We have a lot of military bases and installations and other things, ships that were named after Civil War Southern generals and Southern leaders.

And so we've pushed this effort to say we should change those names, and we get into this debate about you can't; it's our history, it's, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And as I've debated this, and I found out what a lot of people don't realize about that stuff, this stuff was not named in 1870 or 1880. The names came about in the early 20th century after Reconstruction failed. There was a concerted effort in many parts of this country to reestablish white supremacy.

You go back and you listen to some of the speeches, I think I forget the name of it - this A Stone Mountain Georgia - which is this etching of, I think, four Confederate generals. Go back to, I think, like 1910 when it opened.

And you listen to the speeches to the people commemorating that. It's a lot of white supremacy. Alright? It's the same time that the Klux Klan rose up at the same time that Jim Crow got put in place.

There’s actually a pretty interesting book I forget the name of it, I think it’s a fever in the Heartland by Tim Egan, about how the Klan took over Indiana. Okay? Not talking Alabama, I'm talking Indiana. Early 20th century in the fight that had to go to move that back.

So that history exists, alright? And we have to wrestle with that history and figure what does it mean? How do we better treat people equal and not fall back into that?

Now, I have participated in some DEI trainings; not that many. Um, but the two parts of it that I really like and then I think there's an incredible missed opportunity.

The part that I like is we talk about this history because a lot of people don't understand this history. I mean, they don’t know it’s like well okay the Civil War happened; the North won and there was, you know, discrimination in the South and then everything sort of sorted itself out. Well, well no actually it didn't.

Well into the 70s, 80s, 90s, okay, there were significant problems in all these areas, and if we educate ourselves about that history, we will better understand our own country. And frankly, I think we'll better understand how difficult it is to achieve the ideals that you talked about.

This is what we're trying to do, but it doesn't necessarily come easily. So understand that history.

And then the second piece of what they try to do is - and the individual that you're working with, what's their story? Who are they? Okay? You know, if you are a black person growing up in America, you had a different experience than if you were a white person growing up in America.

And if you're going to work with somebody, whether it's in an office or a school or wherever, having a conversation and understanding your colleagues, I think is a very positive thing.

Now, where it goes off the beam in my estimation is it then sort of talks about how discrimination and bigotry is unique to white Western culture.

Okay? Yeah, that's pretty, that's uh, right now to call that wrong is to barely scrape the surface. It's a universal human proclivity. It is.

But understanding that under the circumstances, and there's a lot of different reasons, but white European culture emerged as the dominant culture, I don't know, 19th century, thereabouts.

Actually, I'm reading a book called When China Rules the World. It's written in 2009; it's an assumption about how China's coming and what's it going to be like. And it sort of walks through this history of, you know, how. And it, to some degree, was an accident of history. You know, Guns Germs and Steel, right? You know, what, whatever played out, this particular group of people became dominant.

It was white men, so therefore that discrimination was the discrimination that dominated a significant chunk of the globe.

It's not irrelevant all right to point out that that came to pass. I think it is more helpful, and going all the way back, and I'll close with this to your identity comment. What I find most useful is when we talk about things that talk about our shared humanity as opposed to the things that make us different.

And of course, we're different. Of course, men are different from women. Of course, whatever your cultural background is, it's going to make you a little bit different from somebody else.

It's so much better when we talk about the things that we have in common, and I think one of the things we have in common, no matter who you are, is a feeling that other people don't understand you.

Okay? I mean, that's a pretty universal thing, in my experience. So if you want to get together and talk about, well, here's my experience, but we shouldn't segregate it based on race or anything like that; we should put humans together and say discrimination, bigotry, bias, these can be problems; you know, let's talk about how we have things in common instead of how we're different.

So I think we could do a lot better, but again, the problem is, and I, we had this debate in the House Armed Services Committee on this year's defense bill. Now that the Republicans have retaken the House. Um, I was the chairman of the committee for four years when Democrats were in charge. Now I'm the ranking member.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion was a huge part of the debate, and the debate on the right was we've got to get rid of it, lock, stock, and barrel; we just got to get rid of it.

Um, I just think there’s got to be a better answer. I don't necessarily not like the way the far left does diversity, equity, and inclusion, but the idea that we can just say it's all good; no racism here, no bigotry, let's just move forward and not talk about it, I am at least equally troubled by.

Yeah, well, what seems to have happened to me on the DEI front especially is that – and this has been partly abetted by psychologists who put forward the implicit association test, for example, which reports to indicate that the standard psyche is wired up rife with implicit biases of sufficient magnitude to warp the entire social enterprise.

These are very weak tests, by the way; they're not very valid. They're nowhere near valid enough to be used for clinical diagnosis because there are very stringent criteria established to allow a test to be used for clinical diagnosis, and the accusation of racism is a kind of diagnosis, and you cannot do that with implicit association tests, period.

Two of the people who made the test – there are three – have already disavowed their use for such purposes. And so what I see happening with the DEI movement, at least in some not small part, is that people who are advancing a particular view of their own moral virtue and who are misusing the science in what would be an unforgivable manner are elevating their status in the public domain by purporting to be compassionate when in fact all they're doing most of what they're doing is feathering their own nests at the expense of broader social harmony.

I see very little good in the DEI movement, and I hear that, and certainly, you know, people will always try to, you know, push the debates, you know, in their favor, and I'm, as I said, I go to great lengths to avoid those sorts of traps and get back to sort of just practically what are we trying to accomplish here.

I'm thinking, as we're talking about this, about the question that was popular; you know, and I may still will be, you know, do you think healthcare is a privilege or a right? They'll ask that question as if the answer has some sort of significant impact on the quality of your healthcare system.

You know, I mean, call it what you want to call it; it's a public good that we need to figure out how to deliver in the most efficient and effective way possible; let's work on that.

But people are always trying to position themselves. If I can get people to use the right language, I win. Okay? And the thing is that that's not entirely wrong, okay? But it also distracts from the practical problem-solving of how do we actually improve things.

So more so than just about anybody you're ever going to come across, I will fight against that. I will not answer those sort of, well do you believe it's like? Let's talk about what we want to do with the policy. I'll talk about that. I'm not going to pick your word or her word or his word. Let's just work on solving the problem.

But I’ll give you one of the examples that I give a lot of times about why I think DEI is important, and in my district, it’s kind of fascinating.

I graduated from Tai High School, which is right by C.A.C. Airport. My father was a baggage handler for United at SeaTac; that’s why I grew up there. And when I graduated, South King County, which is south of Seattle, was a white blue-collar suburb.

It's what it was. Um, it has diversified massively in the 40 years since I graduated from high school. And one of the things that I've noticed in the community, I’ll talk about me first of all, is I don't know, I was like 10-15 years into my career in Congress when I looked around and noticed that most of the people who were working in my office were white.

Um, you know, there was no problem between men and women but... and the reason for that, most of the time, the first job that you're going to get is going to be because you know somebody.

I mean, it does happen that someone just answers a want ad and they get a job, but for the most part, it's connections that help move you forward. I grew up in an entirely white community. I came from an entirely white family.

The people I knew, by and large, were white. The people who I knew knew were, by and large, white. You know, I wasn't biased against anybody. I just, well, I was biased in the sense that I wanted to hire people who I knew.

And I looked at this and I said, okay, this is a problem. Now, I think a lot of people would say, well, no, it's not a problem. Do you think you're hiring bad people? No, I don't think I'm hiring bad people. Are you not having a rigor? You know? No, I think we're doing a decent job.

It's still a problem because you're not reaching out to a broader community. So what my office did is, well, let's work with some community groups. And there's a variety of different, you know, there's a thing called Taber 100 that tries to help African-American business people, and I'd worked with them a lot.

There's the Black Collective in Tacoma; there’s El Centra de laza that works with the Hispanic community, a variety of different groups.

And I said, when we have a job opening now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to reach out to them. I'm going to say, I got this position; who you got? And it diversified my workforce.

It ebbs and flows for a whole bunch of different reasons. Um, I think it's really important that you – and I'm going to go ahead and use a left-wing word here; it's about the only one that I like.

Um, you have to be intentional, and I believe in that. You know, if you’re trying to get something done, it doesn’t happen by accident. So you have to affirmatively reach out in that way, and I think we need to have those types of programs.

And a lot of times people will say, yeah, well your...

I would say just on technical grounds, your argument is correct in relationship to confidence because the case you're laying out essentially is that because of the ethnocentric structure of your connection network, there were potentially qualified candidates that you were unlikely to come into contact with.

And so by diversifying your outreach in relationship to candidate selection, you are able to, in principle, find more qualified people because it's a broader pool.

And with a subsidiary benefit of potentially providing a workforce that was more representative of the community. But it seems to me that all of that can be accomplished by the mere observation that a broader and more differentiated candidate pool, all things considered, is technically preferable rather than concentrating particularly on equity issues.

And equity, this is another thing that I've talked to Democrats across the country about, and most particularly in Washington, equity is a word that really disturbs me because equity fundamentally means equality of outcome. And equality of outcome is a very bad idea because there's no difference between inequality of outcome and ownership.

Like, if you own something, that means that you have an unequal access to it in relationship to someone else, and there's no way of eradicating inequality without eradicating ownership per se.

And the notion that we can calculate the fairness of our society by, dividing people, subdividing people into their group identities, and checking every single enterprise to make sure that proportionality exists, which would be impossible in any case, definitely puts the cart before the horse.

And I also see, in the term equity, and of course, Christopher Rufo has concentrated on this too, that’s the place that I see the most radical form of quasi-Marxist ideology invading the Democratic discussion.

So that's a concern.

And so I both agree with you and disagree with you on this point. I think if you, well, the way I disagree with you is equity and equality, they mean a lot of different things, okay?

Back to my whenever, well, ask me, are you a socialist? I don't, what do you mean?

Okay? You know equity and equality are kind of the same way – they can mean a lot of different things. If you just say I'm for equity or I'm against equity, you haven't added anything to the conversation whatsoever.

Now, where it is true is what you said, there is a certain segment of the left-wing political world that is defined equity in a very specific way that has sort of got them wrapped up in a lot of confusion.

Because when you get past the point where it's okay, you can certainly focus. I mean, okay, I’m going to get myself in trouble here, but the two most discriminated groups in America broadly speaking are black people and Native Americans.

Okay? You know, if you want to start somewhere in terms of where America has treated poorly, that's a pretty good place to start.

But it goes beyond that.

Okay? What about, you know, recent immigrants? What? Yeah, how do you salami slice it? Past a certain point, let’s say, okay, you've improved equity; you have more people of color in your office, but you don't have any Asian-Americans.

Okay? Or you could go right down further. Okay? You've got a bunch of people from India, but you don't have many people from Southeast. I mean, you can go down that road to the point where it's impossible to achieve that, and I think that has, in many instances, happened, and that is, is a challenge.

However, I don't think equity and equality are well irrelevant for.

I think equity and equality are things that we need to work towards, okay? Not in the sense that you just described, where equity means absolutely everybody, regardless of anything, has everything the same. That's ridiculous.

Okay? But if you simply go the equality of outcome route, then you're leaving out a whole bunch of stuff that comes before you get a chance to have that outcome.

Yeah, well, that's for sure.

So, we need to think about that, and we need to think about, in that case, historical racism, historic discrimination, redlining, okay? A whole bunch of different things do factor into what the outcome is today.

This is very difficult because there's no simple way to do this.

There's no formula that you're going to come up with; in fact, one of the big things that I frequently say, the problem we have in the world, if you are after perfect justice, then you are going to be in a permanent state of war.

I have this vivid image in my mind of Mosovich back in 1988 when, you know, on what I think was the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Koso, where long story short, the, um, uh, the Serbs got their asses kicked by somebody when they were going to write that wrong 600 years later.

And a number of people got slaughtered over the course of the years because of that fight.

Alright? If you're constantly focused on everything has to be equitable, then you're in a bad place. If, on the other hand, just sort of shrug and go, well, you know, there's not anything we need to worry about, you're also going to be in trouble.

And I just think that the human mind is, in fact, capable of striking that balance without having to choose one side or the other, okay?

We can work and say, okay, here’s a group of people that don't seem to be achieving. Is it the case that they're somehow just inferior? No, okay?

So let's think creatively. How can we be more inclusive? How can we help them get to a better outcome? Knowing that it's never going to be perfectly equal.

It seems to me, certainly in American politics, I don't know anything about Canadian politics, so I will not speak to that, that we've just set up this false choice. You know, either you have to be a full-on equity, identity politics far-left person, or you have to be on the right and not care about it at all.

And you know, that dynamic is something that I'm trying to fight, is to get to people to say no, we can find a more reasonable place in between here. Um, it doesn't have to be this death match between two extreme ideologies.

Yeah, well, you make a constant case in your conversation with me today for differentiation and diagnosis. I mean, one of the problems is, is that it's easy for us – for everyone to abstract a problem way too far up the abstraction hierarchy and to talk about such things, for example, as healthcare, when in fact there's no such thing as healthcare.

There's 10,000 different variants of caring for people. Each of which is a complex problem on its own. And you can understand why people would rather have a one-size-fits-all solution because, yeah, well, if you could have that, it would be wonderful, and it certainly decreases the cognitive complexity.

But it is necessary and challenging to differentiate. I wanted to turn to something, can I question before we move off because I'm interested in your cognitive take on this? Because, you know, my schism to all of this, you know, it's a quote that I quote in my book.

Um, I always misquote it because I prefer it this way, but Sue Grafton, who was a mystery writer, she wrote the A to Z, uh, the Kinsey Milhone Mysteries. She, one of her books, she said, thinking's hard work; that's why most people don't do it.

Um, you know, I'm sort of torn between that and also a passionate belief that if we engage and take on difficult problems, we get more joy out of it.

Okay? That we don't have to accept the fact, well, let's dumb everything down because nobody wants to work hard.

Um, I just don't really believe that. And actually, there’s a professor at Yale University, I think it's Dr. Santos, who teaches a class on happiness. Um, it's the most highly subscribed class apparently in the history of Yale.

And her big point is, what makes us happy is to be productive, but our Basic instinct is to not be productive. So we have to work through that.

And just from someone like yourself, who, you know, has much more medical background than I do, why can't we get the human brain to embrace that a little bit more? Well, take on