Men and the Conservative Vision | Senator Josh Hawley | EP 300

There are things that can be done in the world, things that should be done in the world that only you can do, and that if you don't do them, they won't happen. That's a high vision; that's a high calling. By the way, that's true of our country. Our country will be less if you don't take on the obligations of citizenship. This country can be greater; it can be more with you as part of it, and it won't be what it could be without you. We need you.

Yeah, well, and I think that's true. To the degree that each person is unique—and each person is unique to a great degree—then each person has something to bring into the world that only they could bring into it. That's a heavy load for each person to bear too, because it turns out that it isn't true that nothing you do matters. What's true is that everything you do matters a lot more than you think, and you should get the hell out of it now.

When people do abdicate their responsibility en masse, which is what you saw in Nazi Germany, what you saw in totalitarian Soviet Union and in Mao's China, that things turn into hell very, very rapidly.

[Music]

Thank you. Hello everyone and thanks for tuning in to everyone who's watching and listening. I have the privilege today of speaking with Senator Joshua Hawley. Republican Joshua Hawley is a lawyer who has served as the junior United States senator from Missouri since 2019. From 2017 to 2019, Senator Hawley was the 42nd Attorney General of Missouri. He graduated from Stanford in 2002, completed a postgraduate internship at St. Paul's School in London from 2002 to 2003, and then attended law school at Yale, graduating in '06. He was a law clerk to 10th Circuit Judge Michael W. McConnell and Chief Justice John Roberts from '06 to '08 and worked as a lawyer in private practice from '08 to '11. Senator Hawley also served as an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, where he taught constitutional law, and he served as a faculty member of the conservative Blackstone Legal Fellowship. He's known as a powerful and upcoming voice on the social conservative front.

Welcome, Senator Hawley. Thanks very much for agreeing to speak with me today.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure. I think we might as well dive right into the political role that we're going to get into, the philosophical, and perhaps the theological, arguably as the conversation progresses.

And so, we're recording this mid-October; the midterms are coming up in the U.S. This is a crucial election in many ways. What do you see happening on the midterm front?

Well, I think that the Republicans are going to retake the House. I think we're going to retake the Senate as well. We're at a 50/50 balance right now in the United States Senate. It's actually, Jordan, the longest 50/50 split in the United States Senate in history, American history. I think that's going to come to an end here in a few weeks. I predict Republicans will take back majorities in both houses.

And then, in many ways, the really difficult work for Republicans and conservatives is going to begin, which is to stop this deeply unpopular and, I would argue, deeply destructive agenda of the radical left, which has taken over the Biden administration. But then, also, we're going to have to start to put forward an alternative agenda, and that's something I think conservatives need to give a lot of thought to. I'm not sure that we've given it enough thought as a party, as a group, and it's going to be very pressing, I think.

Yeah, well, the conservatives are always pilloried by the left as reactionary. And I think the reason for that is, well, first of all, the right and the conservatives do react to the excesses of the left constantly, as the left nibbles away like piranhas at the entire structure of society. But I think conservatives are often set back on their heels on the vision front too, because it's not that easy to articulate a defense of, let's say, axiomatic presumptions.

I've often thought if you approach someone who's conservative and you say something like "justify marriage," it's easy to render the person so assaulted, let's say inarticulate, because while we've basically agreed that marriage is a good thing for some tens of thousands of years, it's not that easy to formulate a visionary defense of institutions that, in some sense, you might think that everybody takes for granted in terms of their value.

And so, I see this on the conservative front; it's not easy at all. And I've talked to conservatives all over Europe and Canada and the U.S.; it's not easy at all for them to formulate a vision, particularly one that's attractive to young people. So what do you think beckons on that front for conservatives?

Well, I think that what we're seeing right now, what's at play in this election, really is the sort of fundamental foundations of American culture. Jordan, I think what's driving American politics is culture and its society. If you look at what the left is doing in our country— in the United States, the left is attacking the foundations of American culture and the foundations of American society. It's really a campaign of political nihilism, and what they're saying is that America is systemically unjust, systemically oppressive, systemically evil.

And their whole effort is—and by the way, so is our free-market system—it's systemically warped. And so, their entire campaign, really, and their message to the American people and to young people is that we need to bulldoze it and start all over. They want to reconstruct our society in their image, really.

There's a very French Revolutionary aspect to this; I mean, it really sounds a lot like the Liberals, the so-called liberals, the so-called left of the French Revolution, which was a very similar project. I think today's liberals have embraced that big time, and I think what conservatives need to say is actually the foundations of American society are very strong. The dignity of the common person, that's what our country is built on. The dignity of the ordinary working man and woman, that still is the foundation of this country.

The individual liberty, the idea that work has dignity, has worth, has value, that a family is something that is a great and noble pursuit in life, that as a man, you can contribute to your society and make the world a better place, that as a man and woman together you can build a haven and a home. These very fundamental foundational things, I really think, is what our politics is about today. The left has no longer believes those things, and I think that for conservatives, it's not just about we need to improve the economy, although we do, because the left is destroying the American economy, especially for working people, but it's really more fundamentally that we've got to preserve the foundations of our culture that allows people to thrive and flourish and find liberty.

[Music]

Government continues to spend borrowed money; inflation continues to swell, dragging down our economy, and the stock market has entered bear territory. So what's your plan? Are your assets diversified?

I'm Phillip Patrick, precious metal specialist for the Birch Gold Group. For nearly 20 years, we've helped Americans diversify into gold, and we can help you too. Did you know you can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered account? We can help you transfer an IRA or 401K tied to stocks into an IRA in gold.

If you're skeptical about the trajectory of the economy and the U.S. dollar, then text Jordan to 989898, and Birch Gold Group will send you a free info kit on securing your savings with gold. With thousands of satisfied customers, five-star reviews, and an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, we take Precious Metals seriously. Text Jordan to 989898 for your free info kit.

Well, you know, the idea that the U.S. is somehow systemically racist in its essence is an accusation that's really troublesome to me because I don't just think that it's merely a lie; I think it's an anti-truth. Like most lies are lies, that sort of like truth but a little bit—they're modified here and there so that people can get away with whatever they're lying about.

But now and then you hear a lie so egregious that it couldn't be farther from the truth. And so, what I find mysterious about all this is the credibility of the claim. So we could give the devil his due, and we could say every institutional structure ever generated by human beings has a corrupt element, and it's corrupted by, let's say, the desire for narcissistic power on behalf of the people who occupy the structure.

Since time immemorial, it's been necessary for human beings to keep an eye on their institutions so they don't become entirely corrupt. But to point out that institutions contend towards corruption, let's say, as a consequence of the inappropriate expression of power is a very different thing than to say that the institutions themselves are built on something approximating exploitation.

And then, when I look at the Anglo-American tradition—let's say, which the U.S. firmly sits in the middle of—obviously, what I see is the manifestation of the only great society in human history that's being essentially anti-slavery. And so the spirit that produced, well, both Great Britain in its Democratic manifestation and then out of that the United States, the spirit that's produced that and the autonomy that's part and parcel of that is exactly the spirit that's fought against the status quo of slavery, which is something approximating human universal.

And so I find it so utterly preposterous that this insistence has been put forward that in its essence, the American enterprise is somehow racist and oppressive, even though it might be contaminated with that, as all systems are. So I don't understand why this has become so acceptable to people. Maybe you can expand on that.

Well, you know, I think that a couple of things—I mean, the first is that there's a big difference, and you're getting at it, between thinking of the founding of the United States, let's say, in 1776, which is indeed when the country was founded with the Declaration of Independence, and 1619, which is what the American left now says with their infamous 1619 project.

Why did they pick that day? Because that's the date that the slave trade began to be practiced at scale on the North American continent. So now if you think that 1619 was the true founding of the United States, what you're saying is the country is founded on the principle of oppression; the country is founded on the idea of exploiting some people so that other people can get ahead. And that's what America is now.

If you think that's what America is most fundamentally, then you probably think that America needs to be fundamentally changed and reformed and overhauled from top to bottom, and that would explain the left's program, because that's what they're arguing for today.

Well, if that is America in its fundament, then why isn't there still slavery? Because, look, this is the crucial issue here. Because, look, slavery isn't a mystery; the idea that might makes right and that if I can compel you to do things that you wouldn't otherwise do using force, that's been a governing principle of many societies as far back as we can look in the past.

Then, recently, there are some societies that have more or less managed to escape from that temptation, and certainly the Western democracies are first and foremost among those countries, and maybe the U.S. and Great Britain first and foremost among those. If it's the case that the U.S. was founded on the principle of enslavement, then why did slavery disappear? What's the explanation coming from the left for that?

Yes, and I think, Jordan, that you've laid the finger on the problem with that worldview. I think that what they would probably say is that, well, you had a farsighted vanguard that realized that the fundamental tenets of American society were terribly mistaken, and so in order to correct— in order to end the oppression, you have to then introduce something that is, in many ways, fundamentally anti-American.

This is the point: if you think that America was founded in 1619, founded on oppression, then the only way to get rid of the oppression is to do something that is contrary to America's traditions. I would argue, by contrast, if you believe that the country was founded truly in 1776 upon the principle that all men and women are endowed with unalienable rights in Jefferson's phrase from their creator, well then you have something quite different.

Then we get to what you were just saying a moment ago: then the story of American history becomes the story to realize that principle, and of course, you know, in the face of injustice, certainly in the face of backsliding, if you like, but it's always pushing forward towards that principle, and that is in fact the truth.

Which is why, why did America eliminate slavery? That's okay. Okay, so let's take that particular tack. So if slavery is wrong, which I think we can all agree is true, then we might have to ask ourselves, well, on what grounds do you make the claim that slavery is wrong? And your point with regards to the founding document, the Declaration of Independence, is that there is an axiom being put forth there that all human beings, men and women alike, regardless of race, have some intrinsic inviolable worth that's associated with the fact that they're an image of the creative principle itself, the image of the Creator itself.

And so that's what's self-evident. And so it's the consequence of that self-evidence that the moral claim that slavery is in fact wrong can be put forth. And so that's where the impetus comes from. So if you're opposing that idea and you say, well, no, the U.S. is based on an alternative anti-slavery principle and that's generated by this vanguard, what's the basis for the derivation of the anti-slavery principle that hypothetically motivates the vanguard? Where did that come from?

Because I think that's completely historically inaccurate. If you look carefully at the manner in which opposition to slavery made itself manifest, it appears to me that it's part and parcel of a much older biblical than British tradition, and that is the flowering of this idea, this strange idea, that despite surface appearances, that might be differences in wealth and status—the difference between the aristocracy, even, and the commoners—human beings have an intrinsic dignity that's not to be trifled with, certainly not economically.

And that's the spirit that manifested the rise of democracy in Great Britain and also the spirit that animated the formation of the U.S. Now, I don't understand how you can lay out an alternative to that. So how do you think this is being managed on the left? Who are these—who is this vanguard? Is this Enlightenment rationalists or some damn thing? Because that's not going to fly.

Yeah, no, I think that is what they believe. I think they think that they have true, listen, I think just to take a step back, you mentioned the Bible, and I'm glad since you did, because I would make this a strong claim that I know is controversial in many quarters of the elite today, in many quarters of the educational establishment in America and elsewhere—that actually the American tradition of individual liberty, the American tradition of self-government, of individual dignity, really runs back to what I would call the revolution of the Bible.

It goes all the way back to the tradition that comes to us through Jerusalem and Athens that says that, in fact, we are created in the image of a Creator. Every person has inherent dignity and worth. That was a revolutionary concept, as you know, in the ancient world— incredibly disruptive, incredibly disruptive.

And I would argue, as a historical matter and as a philosophical matter, that great disruption of the ancient status quo, which was built on power, which was built on status, that disruption begins with the revolution of the Bible, and it ripples through, as you said, through English history, British history, through American history, and it's really the philosophical foundation of the United States.

Now, the left, I think, is fundamentally opposed to that tradition. They view that tradition as oppressive. They think it's not a source of liberation; they think it's a source of oppression. And so I think, much like the French revolutionaries of the 1700s, or for that matter, Marx a century later, they think that to end the oppressive nature of that tradition, you've got to, in fact, reinvent it, that you have to depart from the Bible.

But on what principles? But on what principles are you going to reinvent it? We know how the French Revolution turned out; that wasn't so good. But I mean, you make these new principles out of whole cloth, and you start with the axiomatic presupposition, for example, that slavery is wrong. And that just floats in the air, somehow; there's no ground underneath that. I don't understand.

This is what I don't understand: if the radicals on the left are so opposed to the imposition of arbitrary power, let's say, and its ultimate form about being slavery, then they are standing for something like the intrinsic dignity of the individual. And that principle, as far as I can tell, as you just laid out, is a biblical principle; that's where it came from. And I don't see how you could even—I don't understand how that can be disputed.

I mean, you see that, for example, in the book of Exodus, with the insistence that there's something intrinsically wrong with the slavery of people who should be free, even if they don't want to be free, because the Israelites aren't necessarily that happy about being freed. There's something intrinsically wrong with slavery itself.

And I think the intrinsic wrong of slavery is something like violation of the principle of the intrinsic divine worth of each individual, and that is a biblical presupposition, obviously. So I don't understand—I still can't get a grip on why that would be opposed. If the opposition that's being generated is, in fact, opposition to slavery itself, why would you go after the spirit that freed the slaves? I don't get that.

I think it's a good question, and I don't know that I have the answer since I don't hold to that worldview. But I think, Jordan, I think what it really comes down to is the left—whether we're talking about the left of the French Revolution or the left of today—and I do think that they share a fundamental animating spirit. I think the left sees any sort of authority higher than their own desires and their own will as fundamentally oppressive.

So as soon as you mention the word God, that becomes a source of oppression. "Oh, wait a minute; there's some higher standard than what I want to do with my life. There's some higher standard than my whims or passions. No, no, no, no, no. I'm being oppressed." And so they almost see the individual as a self-sustaining, self-generating, self-originating entity. The problem with that is that if that's true, then on what basis are you going to claim that all individuals have equal dignity, that no one individual should oppress another, and that we should work together in a form of self-government and common liberty?

I mean, it gets to the problem that you've been talking about; but I think it's the idea really of God, if we're coming right down to it.

Oh, well, I was just thinking about the argument that could be laid forth on the conservative front with regards to a vision that might be attractive, let's say, to young people. Because one of the things that I've noticed on my tours in particular, talking to young people about the meaning that can be derived from life that can sustain you through tragedy is that that's not found in an atomistic, subjectively defined liberalism.

And there's an interesting clinical element to this. So we know that thoughts that are associated with self-consciousness are statistically indistinguishable from experiences of negative emotion. So it's literally the case that the more you think about yourself, the more unhappy you are—unhappy, anxious, grief-stricken, frustrated, disappointed, hurt. And then you think, "Well, where did people find the meaning that helps them abide through tragedy?"

And the answer is, well, we don't even have to introduce God into the picture at the moment; you find a fair bit of that sustaining meaning through reciprocal relationships. You want to have an intimate relationship of some duration or it's just a series of short-term, psychopathically narcissistic pit stops, which don't seem to do anyone any good.

So you want to have an intimate relationship of some duration; you probably want to have a family, at least to have some contact with your parents and your siblings, and perhaps even children if you dare to do that. Likely, you need some friends; you probably need something approximating a job or a career. You have to be nested inside a series of superordinate social structures in order to be a functioning individual at all.

And so I think conservatives can offer a rejoinder to the liberals and say, "You are assuming that individual autonomy is a higher good only because for centuries the individual was so ensconced in superordinate social community by default that you could just ignore that that existed."

And now we can't do that anymore because people are so fractionated that they're abandoning, well, marriage—they're abandoning family, they're abandoning friendship, I suppose, in favor of its virtual alternative, and that's catastrophic. And I think young people know this.

I agree with that, and I think that there's a message that young people want to hear, Jordan, which is that their lives can matter and that their sacrifices can matter, and that you find meaning in life not so much by what you gain but by what you give up. It's not so much by what you accrue to yourself, but it's what you give away to other people.

It's who you choose to serve, what you choose to spend your life on. And I think what modern liberalism tells people is demand your rights, demand entitlements, demand the fulfillment of your desires. What conservatives should be saying is go and find somebody to serve. Go and find something greater than yourself to be part of. Go and give your life to something. And as you do, you'll find that you are able to make the world around you a better place.

And you don't do that by accruing things to yourself. You don't do that by piling up more rights. You do that by giving yourself away in a sense, which is I think a very fundamental truth that every husband knows, every father knows. And I think that that's something that young people want to hear. They want to be called to something greater than themselves.

And liberalism just doesn't offer that. Liberalism is, at the end of the day, it's a cult of satisfying your own desire, whatever it may be today, and it leaves people fundamentally alone, adrift, and isolated.

Well, that satisfies the liberal ethos; it satisfies what you want today or what you want at this moment, and that also makes it shallow in a non-sustainable way. Because I think that if you treat yourself properly—which might be part of a more mature liberal ethos, let's say—then you're not a prisoner of each momentary whim.

And the reason for that is that all that happens, if you are that, is that you betray yourself. And so we know, for example, that psychopaths, who are motivated by power and very manipulative, and who are in it for the gratification of their own whims, do very badly across any reasonable length of time. They're completely incapable of learning from experience, technically.

And what that means is they constantly betray themselves. And so if you're pursuing an impulse of hedonism, then to hell with you tomorrow fundamentally, and next week and next year, you continue to do things that are pleasurable or escapist in the moment, but all it does is drive you downhill across time.

Because you should treat yourself as a community that extends across time. And I do think that young people are cluing onto this in a major way. And it is something that conservatives can lay out in great detail. And this idea about giving, you know, even if you do want the best for yourself in some higher sense, let's say yourself across time, it's clearly the case that the most effective way to achieve that is to be unbelievably useful and generous to other people, because there are a lot of other people.

And so if you're interacting with them in a manner that is, let's say, self-sacrificing in a reciprocal manner and generous, then they're going to want to interact with you. And so if you interact with a thousand people in your life and you're generous to all them and they reciprocate, then you're the beneficiary of a thousand acts of generosity—a thousand continual sets of acts of generosity. How can that not be a better approach than trying to maximize your momentary whim, let's say?

I think that's exactly right, and I think that today in our contemporary culture—United States at least, Jordan—today, because of the rise of technology, big tech, social media, the problem is not that young people feel that they're too enmeshed in community, that there are too many people who care about them. It's not that they feel smothered; it's that they feel totally isolated because they're losing face-to-face contact with friends; they're losing meaningful relationships.

I mean, they feel isolated; they feel alone; they feel alienated. And we know this is true because if you look at the statistics where people tell pollsters in terms of the feeling of isolation, what we see from treatment of depression, what we see from suicide in the United States—suicide rates in the United States among, unfortunately, all demographics, but particularly young people, particularly young men, are rising to levels that we haven't seen in the country really ever.

And this should tell us that there's something that is fundamentally amiss with the sort of culture of self-gratification that liberalism has on offer, that people want more than that. They sense that there is more to life than that. They want to be connected with something greater than themselves.

Well, you talked about young men there and their despair. I mean, if your culture is telling you constantly that all of your ambition is either part of the patriarchal process of oppression and corruption, and that even if you manage something despite that particular cost to criticism, then everything ambitious you ever do is only contributing to the despoiling of the planet, then you have a story about social interaction that is predicated on the assumption that every single kind of social structure—marriage, friendship, all of that, certainly employment, civic engagement, political endeavor—that's nothing but the manifestation of the brute will to power.

It's no wonder that would make you cynical, especially if you're actually ethical, because you might think, well, I don't want to be corrupt, and I don't want to be a corrupted spoiler, so I just won't do anything. And then, well then, of course, you don't do anything, and all you do under those circumstances is suffer. And it's so corrosive and acidic, that critique.

Again, you could say, well, when relationships deteriorate, they deteriorate in the direction of narcissistic expression of power, but that doesn't mean at all ever that the basis for any relationship is power. I don't think there's any evidence for that at all; I think it's a completely preposterous claim.

And my worry is that what the left, with the modern left, leaves us with, Jordan, is really nothing more than the narcissistic expression of power. My worry is that as the left's program has come to take root, as they've attacked these cultural institutions—like the family, like the church, like even the local neighborhood—as they have attacked the very idea of finding your life in sacrifice and service to others, what are we left with? We're left with whoever has the most options and the most power is the most free.

What are we left with? We're left with a new hierarchy in the United States, which is if you have an advanced degree and can earn a lot of money, then you are the best, and you have the most choices in life, and you are the most valuable member of society. If you are not—if you are not somebody who wants to go get a four-year college degree, if you don't earn a lot of money, then you're somehow less than; you're lesser.

So what we end up with is a hierarchy of elitism, a hierarchy of educational attainment, a hierarchy of status. And this, I would argue, is what happens when you take away the idea that every individual has fundamental worth and dignity, that every individual is created in the image of God, and that every individual finds his or her ultimate purpose and meaning in serving others.

And so my concern is that even as the left attacks American tradition and cultural institutions as being oppressive, what they actually give us through their campaign of cultural nihilism is a form of hierarchy and elitism, and of course also expanding government, government control, government supervision, government surveillance.

You know, as people abandon their subsidiary social organizations, so you abandon your long-term marital commitment, you abandon your decision to have children, you abandon your willingness to engage in reciprocal friendships, you don't shoulder your civic duty, you isolate yourself in your job, in your career. All of that responsibility that you undertake is then vacuumed up by people who will use it for the purposes of their own power.

That's definitely the case! I mean, you see this with the emerging tyranny, let's say, and pathology at levels of civic organization, like the school boards, where ordinary people who share a common vision have abdicated their responsibility for these mid-level bureaucracies and they're instantly invaded by people who are ideologically possessed and power mad.

And so another useful message for young people is that if you don't take on the responsibility that's commensurate with a properly integrated life, then tyrants will take all that responsibility from you and use it to, in the name of the maintenance of oppressive power. You have atomized individuals in a centralized state; that's all they'll be left with.

Exactly! And by the way, that's a historical pattern. We saw that pattern with the French Revolution, right? I mean, in the name of liberty, fraternity, equality, what do we end up with? You ended up with the terror, which was managed by just a very few people, and then you ended up ultimately with Napoleon. I mean, you talk about an oppressive dictatorship.

That happens when you take away those institutions that actually gather together individuals, that pool, if you like, individual sovereignty and that act as a way in which the individual expresses himself or herself.

You know, the other thing I would say about modern America, Jordan, is this: if you believe, like the left says, that modern American society is systemically corrupt and oppressive and all the rest, the question becomes, well, who's going to remake it? And the left's answer is the government. The government's going to remake it! You know, the government is going to use the power of the state, which is the power of coercion, to fundamentally change this society.

And I just argue to you that's what Joe Biden has been doing. If you want to know why the Biden Administration is putting their diversity, inclusion, and equity agenda into every nook and cranny of the federal government, that's why. If you want to know why they're turning the FBI loose on parents who complain at school board meetings, that's why—they are willing to use and eager to use the power of the state to try and change what they believe is the oppressive nature of American society.

And I think the danger of that—the coerciveness of that—I think is hugely, hugely alarming. Why do you think that a remedial vision has been lacking so intensely on the conservative side?

And then, so that's question number one. And question number two: do you see a reactionary danger emerging on the side of the reactionary right?

Yeah, I think that yes, on the second question, yes. I mean, I think that what we have to be careful of is you've got the left that wants to really, in a sense, burn it all down metaphorically speaking—although for some of the riots that we saw in, for instance, 2020, it's not metaphorical at all. I mean, they really are willing to torch buildings and storm government centers and assault cops and so on. But you've got this spirit of nihilism on the left, and I think the danger on the right is we mustn't react with a concomitant spirit of nihilism ourselves.

Where we say, "Yeah, that's right; it's all corrupt; it's all destroyed; it's all worthless; we've got to completely start over." No! No, no, no, no, no. What we want to say is, no, America actually—the foundations of this country is fundamentally good; it's fundamentally sound.

Does there need to be reform? Yeah, of course there does! I mean, it's the Burkean point, right? A society without the means of change is a society without the means of its conservation and its preservation. So yeah, there's corruption that needs to be addressed; there are reforms that need to be made.

There's, I would argue, we're seeing in the Biden Administration deep corruption at many levels of our government. But the foundations of our system, our Constitution, our philosophical beliefs going back to the foundations of the biblical tradition—those are not only sound; those are the things that make America America.

And I think for conservatives, our vision has to be centered around preserving those and returning those to their rightful place. And so it's not—it’s not a campaign of nihilism; it's a campaign of building up; it's a campaign of saying that, listen, we Americans are proud of thinking that we're the greatest country in the history of the world. I think that!

And if you believe that, you've got to put forward an agenda that's about returning and strengthening the foundations of America's strength, and I think that's what conservatives should be for. We've got to resist the siren song of saying, yeah, we'll join the left and just burn it all down; that, I think, is dangerous.

This is one of the things that has been perturbing me about the—and we could talk again about the midterms and maybe about the 2024 presidential election. What I see happening on the right, on the Trump side in particular, and it's quite shocking to me in some sense, is that the narrative seems to be that the institutions are so corrupt that even the democratic process itself can no longer be trusted.

And the problem I see on that front is that it does, first of all, it plays against the Trump brand, as far as I can tell, because Trump was the guy who didn't have things stolen from him and who came out victorious. Even if he was confronted by tyranny itself, he can deal with people like Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin—no problem.

So for him to claim that the country was pulled out from underneath him seems to me to be off-brand, but even more dangerous is that it leads to this kind of corrosive cynicism about the fundamental utility of institutions in the United States. And that does play into the hands of the radicals, whether they are right or left-wing.

And so, I would like you to comment about that, because it seems to me the Republican party in some sense is tearing itself apart over the election issue. And then I would also like your opinion about why there is a swing towards the Republicans in this midterm and who is at the forefront of that swing.

Yeah, let me start with the first. I think that as I talk to conservative voters— I represent the state of Missouri, as you said at the beginning— and as I talk to folks at home, the thing that concerns me most, and where I think the spirit we have to guard against is when people say, "You know, I am so upset and I am so distraught over what's happening in our country; I just don't think it's worth it anymore. I don't think that what I do anymore matters; I don't think my vote matters anymore; I just don't think it matters."

And so I just—it just—I'm just willing to give up. That I think is a very alarming and ultimately, of course, self-fulfilling attitude, and one I think we've got to combat against. And what I always say is, listen, this is a democracy. I mean, at the end of the day, let me put it to you this way: Theodore Roosevelt, who is one of my boyhood heroes, Theodore Roosevelt once said that in America, we're not ruled over by other people.

In America, every man and woman is a sovereign, and so we have the responsibilities that a sovereign would have. There is something that is extremely dignifying about that and also very true—and I think that in this moment of turmoil in the United States, what we have to say in conservatives, especially, has to say is this is a time for we, the American people, to stand up and to take seriously our responsibilities as the sovereigns of this nation.

We've got to make decisions and act and engage in a way that is going to be for the benefit of the country, that's going to work toward a future that we want to see. So it's got to be pro-engagement, not disengagement. It's got to be toward reforming our institutions, not destroying them.

And by the way, I don't think conservative voters—I mean, I listen to my voters at home, you don't hear that. They're not the ones who are saying, "Oh, this country is corrupt." They don't believe that; they think the country is good! They think the country's badly led, and they're right about that.

But the solution to that is not to say we give up; we withdraw. The solution to that is to press in and say we're going to make change; we're going to engage in the democratic process; we're going to go forward. And I think that that's key.

The second thing about the midterms, I was struck, Jordan, recently I read something by a democratic pollster, a guy who's a really sharp guy, and his name is David Shore, and I’m sure he would not like me praising him because that’s probably terrible for his reputation. But he’s a liberal, let’s be very clear about this, a political liberal, but he’s a very smart analyst.

He worked for President Obama, former President Obama. And something that he said recently really caught my attention because I think it's right. He says that everywhere around the industrialized world, the so-called developed world, in every country in which the left party has emphasized cultural and social change, cultural and social critique—much as the left in America has in fact—and everywhere where they've elevated this idea that the foundations of Western society are fundamentally oppressive and illegitimate, in every single instance, the working people of the country have moved towards the right.

Why is that? Because the working people of the country don't believe that the working people of the country want to preserve their culture and their liberties. They don't want it taken from them in reform. So what does that have to do with the midterms?

I think Republicans—why are Republicans benefiting from the swing away from Biden? It's because Joe Biden is out there saying, in word and deed, that American society needs to be overhauled. And I think that the people of this country—and I keep saying "working people" in contrast to the more educated elite—because, you know, the educated elite, the products of our elite educational system, they increasingly are part of—they take the left-liberal view. But I think the working people in this country, they say, "No, this is my culture, my family. I believe in family, church, synagogue. I believe in those things. I want my neighborhood to be safe. I want my kids to be taught in school to love America, not to hate America. I want them to be taught that individual liberty is good, not fundamentally oppressive."

And they see these things; they say, "I'm going to vote for somebody who will keep my family safe, who will preserve these institutions, and who will give me a shot to make something of myself in life." And I think if the Republicans in this country can open their eyes and understand that's why voters are coming to them, then we can begin to craft an agenda that responds to that. If they think that voters are coming to them for just about any other reason, I think that they're not paying attention.

Yeah, well, you're seeing this swing to a more conservative ethos in all sorts of places, all at the same time. It's happened in Italy; it looks like it's going to happen in France; it happened in Sweden of all places; and so—and now with the flip in the midterms, it looks like it's happening in the U.S.

And so this is an opportunity for conservatives to put forward an alternative vision, and one that seems to be focused on responsibility strikes me as the right rejoinder to the left's constant clamoring about rights. The thing is, rights are always obtained at the expense of someone else in some sense if you only concentrate on rights because every person's right is the collective's responsibility, let's say, or each individual's responsibility.

And the other issue that you brought up is something like the dignity of work and service. And if it's all about your rights and not about your responsibility, and the meaning in your life is actually attendant on your responsibility, then all that clamoring for rights just makes your life devoid of any purposeful meaning.

And that strikes me as highly probable, given that most purpose is equivalent in some sense to self-sacrifice. To have a purpose is to go do something, right? Not just to sit around and wait in some sense for some kind of instantaneous trivial gratification, but to strive forward for something worth attaining.

And that is always in the domain of responsibility. And I think that the left and the right, when it comes to the subject of rights, I think the left and the right have a fundamentally different view about rights. The right says that what the Declaration of Independence says is true, that our rights come to us by virtue of the fact that we're made in the image of God. Our rights come to us because they're given by God.

And our rights, by the way, point us toward our responsibilities. We have rights that open up to us fields of action where we're supposed to serve. You know, we have the right to follow our conscience, for example. You know, what is that really? Well, that says that we're obligated to follow the truth. And as we feel, as we understand the truth, you know, what was it Lincoln said? I mean, "I will follow the right as God gives me to see the right."

You know, that is a right, but it is also a responsibility. That's the rights view—our view; conservative view of responsibility of rights. Rather, the left—well, the left view is, well, actually rights are entitlements that come to you from the state, and so, therefore, the state needs to expand its power for you to have more rights.

And the problem with that, Jordan, is that what the real message to individuals is you're weak and in need of help from the state. You know, you're fundamentally weak. The state needs to help you by giving you all of these things, by taking care of you, by giving you these rights.

The conservative message needs to be, you're not weak; you are strong! You have the capacity in yourself to do something, to change the world, to contribute to society, and let's get up and do it. Let's go do something together. Let's go, let's get up there and actually give ourselves to a cause greater than ourselves.

I think you look at that difference, that's a very fundamental one, and it results in a very different program for America. Do you want to strengthen people to go dive into their responsibilities, to shoulder more responsibility, to be able to do more on their own, or do you want government to take care of them while government, by the way, fundamentally reforms society?

Yeah, well, I suppose it depends on whether or not you think that people are victims or citizens. If they're victims, then they have to have their oppression remediated, and it would require a central authority to manage that. And of course, that should be the alarm bell right there. It's, well, why in the world are you going to trust a centralizing authority when you have every reason not to?

And alternatively, you could say, well, life's difficult; there's no doubt about that, and some people are dealt worse hands than others in some ways. But that doesn't mean that you can't put your best foot forward in service and find the meaning in your life in pushing back against that which enshackles you, let's say.

And that strikes me as highly probable and psychologically appropriate, and also a very marketable message, especially to young men. Now, you're also writing a book at the moment on manhood.

That's right; we've talked about that briefly. Well, so tell me about that, and tell me why you're doing that.

Well, I'm writing it because, as I look out at the problem of—the plight of men in America, you know, it's just—what you see, Jordan, in the numbers is you see that men are increasingly turning away from work; they're increasingly turning away from education.

Let's take some numbers. I mean, since 1965 in the United States, there are 500 percent more men who are out of—able-bodied men, I should stipulate—able-bodied men of working age who are out of the labor force. That means not even trying to look for a job—500 percent more now than there were in 1965. That is an astounding number.

You look at the number of men who are pursuing education, both high school education and higher education; it's collapsing right now in the United States. It is 60/40 female to male enrollment in colleges.

That's great! That's great for women! But for men, well, it's great for women unless they're looking for a man, in which case it's not so great either—a partner. I've heard recent statistics suggesting that when the ratio of men to women goes lower than 65/35—sorry, women to men—lower than 65/35, the women stop going to college too.

Wow! Well, so we may soon find out, because male participation is down. You look at male suicide rates; you look at male drug abuse—all of these things would suggest that there is a pathology or series of pathologies that is afflicting men in the United States, and maybe particularly young men in the United States.

And I think this is one of the biggest challenges that we face as a society. So I wanted to think about that; I wanted to do my part to try and say something constructive about it. And I think, Jordan, one of the big things is that I think men don't often have a vision anymore for their lives as to what their lives could be.

And they're told—and you referenced it a minute ago—they're told incessantly from the time that they are in grade school that they are part of the problem and that if they try to go out and be a contributor to society, if they go out and try to exert any kind of leadership in any field or endeavor, that they contribute to the patriarchy, that they contribute to the climate disaster, as the so-called climate disaster; as you said earlier, that they contribute to the systemic injustices of America.

This is the constant message to men, and I think that that's fundamentally untrue. And we should be saying something to men that's very different. We should be saying to them that this country needs you, that your families need you, that your neighborhoods need you, that you can make the world a better place—and you were born to do that!

And so what I try to do in the book is I try to go back all the way back to the very beginning, back to the Bible, back to Genesis, and say, "What does that begin to open up for us—this very foundational story? What does it open up for us about what a man is supposed to be?"

And if you look at the book of Genesis and what God calls Adam to do, he calls Adam to work with him to help finish the world, to help perfect the world and bring it into perfection. You know, and not to get too deep into the details here, but you know, if you look at Genesis 1 and 2, what the Garden of Eden really is in many ways is a temple.

It's a temple where God dwells, and Adam is there, and Eve too, cooperating, working with God; that's the symbolism of it. What is supposed to happen? Adam is supposed to work with God to make the rest of the world a temple—to expand the garden, if you like, to make the world beautiful, to make the world what it could be, to bring the world further into perfection and to work with God to do that.

Now, that I would suggest to you, that's a pretty high calling! That suggests that, wow, a man can really make a difference in life; that a man has a high calling in life—that's a vision you could give yourself to and sacrifice for.

When I've been going around the world doing these talks— I think I've done 60 since January, something like that—in different cities all around the United States and Canada and Europe, I meet about 150 people after each lecture or each question-and-answer period, and they're very, very positive events.

And the fundamental reason that they're positive is because, first of all, most of the people who come are dressed up; it’s kind of like a wedding reception. So lots of the young men who come and young women too, because more and more the young men who are coming have partners with them who look quite happy to be with them, they're dressed quite formally.

And so they all look like adults, and they're all standing up straight, which is really lovely to see. And you know, they're kind of a well-put-together bunch. And they talk to me—not for very long because it takes a while to meet 150 people, but I get a few fractions of a minute with each person.

And it's very moving because they tell me variants of the same story, which is something like, "You know, I've been listening to your lectures for five or six years, and I wasn't doing very well back then. I was pretty nihilistic; I didn't think there was much point to my life. I wasn't really pursuing my education or working; I didn't have a partner. Things looked pretty bleak for me, and then I decided I was going to put some effort into it, you know, and straighten up a bit and stop lying—that's a big one.

I was going to start telling the truth, and I was going to start shouldering my responsibility, and I was going to try to get a partner and be someone for that partner and start a family and so forth, and you know what? It's really working! Things are so much better for me that I can hardly believe it."

And then, you know, if their partner's there, she's usually pretty happy with the whole situation too, and often they're getting engaged or they've just got married or they have their first child because now they've decided to have children. I can meet all these people who are getting a life!

And it's so heartening that it's—well, that's why my wife and I continue to do it. I travel around the world, and what's so sad about this, as far as I'm concerned, is that these young men didn't need that much encouragement to get out there and get at it. They just needed some encouragement or at least maybe they needed at least one person who wasn't actively telling them every second that every single shred of ambition they might manifest is nothing but the pathology that drives tyranny and the raping force that destroys the planet.

Yeah, so I—I just—the point, really, like, enough of that, man! Really, enough of that!

Agreed, agreed. I think we need to send a fundamentally different message, which is that their lives—look, the world will not be what it could be without them. I think that's the message. By the way, I think that's the message of the Bible. I think that's the message of our American history. It's that the world—there are things that can be done in the world, things that should be done in the world that only you can do, and that if you don't do them, they won't happen.

And the world and the people around it—your family, your spouse, your children—they will be impoverished if you don't shoulder the responsibility that you could shoulder. That's a high vision; that's a high calling. By the way, that's true of our country. Our country will be less if you don't take on the obligations of citizenship. This country can be greater; it can be more with you as part of it, and it won't be what it could be without you. We need you.

And I think that is the message Mindy to hear.

Yeah, well, and I think that's true, is that to the degree that each person is unique—and their—each person is unique to a great degree—then each person has something to bring into the world that only they could bring into it. And that's literally the case.

And I do believe that that's part and parcel of the idea that human beings are made in the image of God; God is presented in the biblical corpus as the fundamental creative force of reality itself, and that's echoed inside of us. And so if we don't bring forth what is within us, then there's a lack in the structure of reality, and that lack produces undue pain and misery and suffering.

And so it is the case that each person needs to shoulder the responsibility for improving the garden, you might say, as you pointed out earlier, or working towards the perfectibility of existence itself. And that's a heavy load for each person to bear too, because it turns out that it isn't true that nothing you do matters. What's true is that everything you do matters a lot more than you think.

And you should get the hell out of it now because—or else, in some sense—you know, the other thing we know as a consequence of having blundered our way through the entire 20th century is that when people do abdicate their responsibility en masse, which is what you saw in Nazi Germany, what you saw in totalitarian Soviet Union and in Mao's China—that things turn into hell very, very rapidly.

Yeah, that's right, and this goes back to a point that you've made, Jordan, that I think is exactly right and I think is just deeply true: is that we can either be moving the world to be more like what it should be, we can make it a little bit more like heaven, or we can make it more like hell. And we're going to do one or the other. And so if we abdicate our response, if men abdicate their responsibilities, if they create a vacuum, then you've got to expect that malign forces will come into that vacuum and will do terrible things, which is what we saw in the 20th century.

On the other hand, if men will shoulder their responsibility and be faithful fathers, faithful husbands, faithful fathers, strong workers—oh, and by the way, these don't have to be dramatic things. I mean, I think that our world is so ordered that even small things, even small acts of faithfulness, small acts of sacrifice, small acts of constructive work have huge effects over time in our own lives and the lives of people around.

So it's not as if you don't have to go cure cancer in order to make a difference. There are only small—if you're blind, all those—there's not—nothing that's done right is small!

So really, and I really believe that's the case. In the therapeutic process, when you're working with someone as a behavioral therapist, you almost always help them initiate small transformations. But first of all, that small transformation often means a reversal of direction, and a reversal of direction isn't small! It couldn't be more different to go 180 degrees in the opposite direction; that's a big change.

And just because you start small doesn't mean you end up going slow, especially if the consequence is that with each victory you accrue in the new direction, the next step is likely to more likely to occur and in a larger manner. You get that power loss starting to kick in, so that you don't improve linearly; you improve exponentially once you start moving forward.

And so I think the smallness of right action is only a consequence of a kind of inappropriate perspective that assumes that the local and daily is minimally important when there's no evidence for that at all.

I mean, you can think about this this way: to some degree the most intense relationships that you're going to have in your life are local. The relationship you have with your wife and with your child—you might think, "Well, that's only my child; it's not every child in the world."

It's only my wife; it's not every woman in the world. But that local focus has an intensity that is truly indicative of its significance, I would say. And so that's another reason why conservatives can help people put the local back in a superordinate position. It's like it isn't only that your family matters; it matters more than anything else, and that's appropriate.

It's not that you're abdicating your social responsibility that way; as you're manifesting your true social responsibility through your intense engagement with the local. That might mean you're a dishwasher, so you get the hell out of bed and you show up to work 15 minutes early so the restaurant can run properly. And that's not trivial.

And if you think it's trivial, it's because there's something wrong with your attitude, not because it's trivial in and of itself. And I think that presenting men with a vision—again, young men in particular—with a vision that says that, yeah, even those things—getting to work early, doing something kind for somebody, being faithful to your partner—those things can literally change the fabric of the universe.

You're working on the fabric of the world and doing these things and you are making the world more of what it could be. That's a high calling; it's a noble calling. And I just think that that kind of vision—the leftist rhetoric, I think, suppresses and destroys that sort of vision, and it therefore suppresses and destroys a healthy ambition.

And instead, what it substitutes is a desire just to fulfill momentary pleasure, to indulge momentary whims. And I think that's what you see a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of young men doing.

And there's one other aspect of this, Jordan, that gets to a more of a policy issue that I think conservatives in a political sense need to address in this country. In the United States, a lot of men who don't have an advanced college degree or a four-year college degree, their economic prospects in terms of the kind of job that they can get, in terms of their ability to support a family, are severely diminished and have been getting worse over decades.

Conservatives, if they're going to call men to responsibility, and we should, if they're going to say that you can—we need you, we've also at the same time got to say we need to have a society and an economy that provides you with productive work on which you can sustain a family, that there is a legitimate shot for you to go out there, get a job, get married, have a family, and sustain them if you will work hard and apply yourself.

And conservatives need to be about crafting that kind of an economy. And I worry, Jordan, that part of what's happened in the last 30 and 40 years is we've increasingly had an economy that, in the United States, has become hyper-globalized.

That works for a small set of people; it's the people who have advanced degrees in certain sectors, and it does not work for the vast majority of the rest of the population. It does not work for a lot of working-class men. And that's tied up with this, and I think conservatives have got to open their eyes and say we need a society and an economy that is going to be able to support work—support a family—and you can't be pro-family unless you're pro-an economy where you can actually support a family.

Yeah, well, it's a form of regulatory capture by the intellectual elite.

That's right! And also, you know, this globalist agenda, which is really an elite project, you know, it's a project to people who don't believe in nations, who don't believe in the local community, who don't believe in local traditions. What they believe is they think that their values, which they share with other educated elite around the country, that around the world rather, that those ought to be what structures the world—those ought to be what structures the economy.

They pursued this agenda of hyper-globalism that has, in the United States, resulted in shipping working-class jobs overseas, shutting down jobs that were good paying jobs in small towns like the one that I grew up in. And it has really decimated not just the economic fortunes of many, many men and women too, but it has also badly damaged the fabric—the social fabric—of this country.

And so part of what I think conservatives in America need to do is we need to say, listen, we're going to be for an agenda that is unapologetically pro-American worker, unapologetically pro-work, and unapologetically toward for the kind of work that you can support a family on. And we've got to make some changes in order to do that.

And what do you think—what kind of changes? What kind of changes do you think might need to be made at the political level in order, let's say, that the goal was to foster a working man's commitment to his family and to his job and to the advancement of his career, let's say, through that job? What sort of transformations of policy do you think might be helpful at the level of detail to facilitate that kind of vision?

Yeah, I think the first thing is we've got to be able to give that man some prospect that if he actually will get a good—if he'll get a job, if he'll commit himself to work, if he'll show up, as you said, and he'll invest himself, that he'll be able to support himself and to advance.

In order to do that, Jordan, we've got to get jobs back into the United States of America where we actually produce things and make things, where a guy who does not have a college degree—and listen, only 35 percent of Americans have a four-year college degree or more, right? And a decreasing percentage of men are going to have that as well; that is correct.

And so you know you're looking at almost 70 percent—let's say of men, I think it's more than 70 percent of the workforce—does not have a four-year college degree. We have to have an economy where a man can get a good-paying job. So how do we do that? We have to bring production back to the United States, Jordan.

We've got to bring—we've got to produce things here; we've got to grow things here. Let me give you an example: the average salary of a manufacturing-type job in the United States of a production-type job a year or two ago was 20—I think it was 22.50—was the average hourly wage.

22.50! In retail, the average hourly wage is like 13 bucks. In services, it's slightly higher, but not much. The point is is that manufacturing jobs, production jobs historically pay better; you could support a family on those. They drive research and development, by the way; they drive the services industry.

And what's happened in this country is I think we've had—conservatives, unfortunately, Republicans have been part of this problem a big part of it—we've had a stupid economic policy that for 30 and 40 years or longer has said, "We're willing to see jobs go overseas to places like China. We are willing to trade away our manufacturing and our production of all kinds, whether we're talking about precision tooling or whether we're talking about advanced farming.

We're willing to see those things go away in order to get more cheap stuff from overseas and in order to build up a services-and-Wall Street-driven economy." I think that has been a fundamental mistake, and conservatives need to change it.

And you asked about Paul—how do we do it? One of the things we've got to do is we have got to set a tariff policy and a trade policy that actually works for America and I think that—that works for American workers and is geared, Jordan, towards bringing back and fostering good-paying production jobs in this country.

So that is a different way of thinking than most Republicans in the United States have thought for the last 30 or 40 years, where they've been very pro-globalization. And I think that it's hard to be pro-globalization and pro-family and pro-worker at the same time.

Tell me more about the book that you're writing and what you're hoping to accomplish with regards to your communication to man, and why are you writing a book and in addition to concentrating on the political issues?

Well, I think it's a matter of both. And I mean, I think that—it's imperative to talk about the kind of policy issues that we were just talking about just now to go out there and to advance legislation and to advance a policy agenda, and I'm certainly going to do that!

But I do think that it's important right now in American culture to put forward an alternative vision of what a man can be and what good a man can contribute. And I think the real need is here is when men are beat over the head, as we talked about, from the time they're in grade school.

And listen, I say this because I've got three kids; I've got two little boys, a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old, and then I've got a baby daughter. And, you know, as a father of school-aged kids—school-aged boys—I pay a lot of attention now to what my kids are taught in school and to what other kids are taught in school. Of course, I hear it from parents who I represent all the time.

So I think, in this cultural milieu where you have the left in control of many of the cultural institutions— the media, much of the entertainment industry, increasingly the corporate suites, the head offices— the relentless message to men is that you're a problem; male ambition is bad.

And I think that we need to present—conservatives need to present an alternative vision. And I think that we need to show men what a different kind of a vision for manhood could look like. And that's really what the book is about, is trying to do that.

So, okay, on the Republican front, back again to the midterms. There is a swing in the Republican direction. Who's at the forefront of the swing? Whose votes are moving at the moment, and why?

Well, who's really moving are working-class folks, both men and women, but particularly working-class men, and across, by the way, different racial demographics, which you see is working-class Hispanic men, working-class African-American men—particularly younger working-class African-American men—and then a working class of white men are moving in a big way towards the Republican Party.

This actually really started with Donald Trump in 2016. You saw an acceleration of it in 2020 with Trump among voters who were Hispanic working-class voters and African-American working-class voters, and especially men, and you see the same thing continuing and maybe even accelerating in the midterm.

So there's a big switch, and Jordan, it's a huge change for the Republican Party in my lifetime. I'm 42. It's a big change in my lifetime where right now increasingly the base of the Republican Party in the United States is working-class voters—blue-collar voters we often say in America. And that hasn't been the case for most of my lifetime.

And I think right now what you're seeing is Republican leaders are having a hard time wrapping their heads around that.

Right. You see this to a certain extent in Britain too, in Canada as well.

That's interesting!

Yeah, well, a lot of the groundswell of support for the new conservative leader here, Pierre Pauliev, who's likely to be the new next prime minister, God willing, is that there's been a big swing by younger working-class people to the conservative party. And that's certainly something that's always been a big business party in Canada. This is definitely a new thing.

And so, yeah, as you said, it's happening in the U.K. and the U.S. as well. So it's interesting, eh? Because hypothetically, the left stands for the oppressed and the voiceless, and yet you see a migration of working-class people to the Republican Party, especially young men.

Which sort of belies the idea that the left— I mean, the left historically, at least insofar as it had its roots in the labor movement, I think was sporadically at least a genuine voice for the labor movement. But the fact that all the working-class people are stampeding over to the conservative side seems to indicate in some fundamental sense that the left has lost the plot.

I think in the United States, certainly, the left, Jordan, if you just look at their voting returns, the Democrat Party today is increasingly the party of the extremely well-educated and the upper class in this country. I mean, it's just a fact; you could just go look at the exit polls and you see that increasingly the base of that party are folks who have at least four-year degrees or advanced degrees, folks who make above working-class wages, upper-middle-class—really upper-middle class. That is the base now of the Democrat Party.

And this gets back to the cultural stuff that segment, and it's an increasingly narrow segment of American society. They tend to buy into all of the leftist stuff about how systemically unjust America is. What you have is the vast swath of the American public that says that's not true; and particularly working people say no, no, no, no, no, that is not true.

And by the way, if you destroy the family and if you destroy the community and you destroy the local church, the local synagogue—you’re going to destroy all of my opportunities in life. And if you keep shipping my jobs overseas, you're going to destroy my economic opportunity in life.

And I think that is the new sort of center of the Republican Party. The real challenge for us, Jordan, is wrapping our heads around that and getting a set of policies that respond to the reality of where voters are.

You mentioned big business a second ago; my own view is that the Republican Party, particularly the last 20 years, has been too enthralled to big business. You know, big business is in many ways an increasingly maligned force in America.

Listen, I'm a free-market guy; I'm a capitalist. I believe in robust competition. But I don't really believe in monopoly; in fact, I don't believe in monopoly at all! And I believe increasingly, many of these businesses in the United States—huge multinational corporations—they have monopoly status. They're also woke, and so they're pushing an agenda of economic control and an agenda of social control at the same time. Republicans, I think, need to go out and say no to both of those things.

Yeah, well, that's a very fascist combination: economic control and social political control at the same time. And so what do you—what do you think's driven the emergence of these larger-scale collusionary monopolies?

Well, I think a couple of things. Part of it is the program—the economic program of hyper-globalism. I mean, I think that these companies—let's take just the social media companies in the United States, for example, companies like Facebook—or now, I guess they want us to call them Meta, I think is an absurd name—but you know, they feel the need—they're truly—they're based in the United States, but they're multinational corporations. They say that they've got to become absolutely gargantuan and huge in order to compete on a global scale, so the globalization helps drive massive scale!

I mean, just gigantic! So they get to be huge; they get to be multinational in size. And then many of these companies in the United States have had special deals with the United States government. And when it comes to the social media companies, the social media companies benefit from special exemptions under American law that no other company does.

And so we treat them differently. They've been given special exemptions that are worth billions to them, Jordan, a year since the 1990s. So this combination of government favoritism along with globalization I think has led to increasing monopolization, and that's not been good for anybody.

It's been bad for competition; it’s been bad for innovation; it’s been bad for Americans as consumers; but maybe worst of all, it’s been bad for them as producers.

So that's an interesting platform for conservatives, and revolutionary in some sense—to concentrate on the local again, to concentrate on the working class, to be concerned about the development of fascistic monopolies at the higher end. But it's an interesting—when I talked to Pauliev or watched Pauliev's campaigning in Canada, it's so interesting watching his rallies because they look to me like working class rallies that were characteristic of the labor movement in the 1970s.

It's the same people attending! And I think it is this concentration on the local that is driving that rather than concentration on big business, let's say. And so that is an opportunity for conservatives in the U.S. to capture that massive base of 70 percent you said who are fundamentally working class in orientation by actually serving their needs properly.

And since the entire infrastructure of Western culture depends in some ways on the integrity of the working class in some fundamental manner, then that seems to be good policy all around. That, I think you've—I think what you just said is absolutely critical, which is that in the United States, the kind of—the culture that we've been talking about, the culture of work, the culture of family, the culture of faith, that has been and still is a fundamentally middle class, working class culture.

And so what you've seen is that as the middle class and working class in this country has become economically weaker in these last few decades, as they have become culturally weaker, they've also become, in some sense, politically weaker. And the left has capitalized on that.

And I think part of what Republicans and conservatives need to be saying is we want to make all Americans, but especially working Americans, stronger. We want to make their voices stronger; we want to make their life prospects stronger; we want to make their institutions stronger, their family stronger, their neighborhoods stronger.

We need to be a party in a movement that says we are for the strength of the working people of this country. We're for—because this is—their foundation of this country, and we are for strengthening the fundamentals of America.

I think that is a hopeful, forward-looking, affirmative agenda that can be built out and should be built out in a number of different ways. And that’s my view.

What are your hopes for the Republican Party as we move out of 2022 in the midterms, towards the 2024 presidential election? If you had a best-case scenario for what the Republican Party does in the next two years, what would that look like?

Well, I hope that what we'll do is, in Congress at least, which is where I’ll be serving, I hope that we will be putting forward an alternative agenda that will be along the lines that we've just discussed. I hope that we'll come forward and we'll say we want to give you more control over your kids' education. You ought to be able, for instance, to know what your kids are being taught.

You ought to be able to have a say in that; you ought to be able to have control over your kids' curriculum. We want to give you more control and more opportunity economically. We want to bring back good paying jobs to this country. We want to strengthen the family. We want to reward you for having kids, not punish you for having kids.

I propose, Jordan, legislation that would give parents, working parents, a massive tax cut if they stay together and have kids. And I think what we ought to be saying is it's not just that we shouldn't be penalizing you for being married; we ought to be rewarding you.

If you get married and have a family, you are contributing to society. You ought to get the benefit of that. We should be explicitly rewarding that and strengthening families, strengthening marriage, strengthening—getting kids; so I hope that we'll put forward an agenda that's focused on that as an alternative.

Joe Biden, of course, is going to be president for the next two years. We need to not just be stopping what he's doing—although, in my view, that's very important—but we need to be putting forward an alternative that fundamentally contrasts with the campaign of nihilism that he and the left are attempting to foster.

So I hope that's what we'll do, and I think if we do that, we'll go into 2024 and we'll be able to offer the country two fundamentally different visions.

What do you think is going to happen on the leadership front?

I don't know the answer to that. Listen, if I had to predict, I would say Donald Trump is giving every indication that he will run again, and I think that he'll be the nominee. I mean, I just—I haven't asked him directly if he's going to run, but I think he is, Jordan.

I mean, he's said it publicly. I'd be very surprised at this point if he didn't. So I think that he will be the nominee. And I hope that if he is the nominee, that he will put forward an agenda that will be