Auron MacIntyre - The Battle for Conservatism

just based on his very excellent Twitter or in. Thanks for being with us, man, great, great to have you on the program. Yeah, thanks for having me tell me about foxes and lions in the context of politics America and Nicolo Machiavelli's seminal work The Prince, which I know you've recently cited all these things together in a sub stack. Break this one down for me. I thought it was fascinating your most recent analysis on this. Oh thanks, no, absolutely, Yeah.

So Machiavelli had this comparison between foxes and lions, and his advice for rulers is that you should be clever like a fox and be able to avoid traps, but fox as well, clever can't really actually fight, say a pack of wolves, and so you also need to have some of the aspect of the lion, the ability to fight back, you know, just kind of bruce strength out of certain situations. And guys who kind of continued in Machiavelli's political tradition, guys like Alfredo Pardo kind of extended this.

He called them type one and Type two derivations or residues, but it's easier to just go foxes and lions. And basically he said that, you know, each leadership classes has got an ad mixture of kind of your clever people, the people who are looking to kind of manipulate situations, alter things, look around corners, explore new ideas, and then it has your core of people who are strong, paytriotic. They're about keeping institutions rock solid and perpetuating tradition, that

kind of thing. And so your fox type leaders are the ones that are going to get you out of situations where you need cleverness, nimbleness, eth ability to manipulate systems, and your lion type leaders are the ones that are going to get you out of situations where you need kind of that martial strength and that kind of wherewithal to carry through those difficult situations. And at the beginning of most civilizations you have very lion type leaders, but as you kind of go on, you end up with

more fox type leaders. And we're in a situation right now we're almost entirely dominated by foxes and not lions. I would think maybe the animal that comes to mind is jackasses or donkeys, depending on who you're talking about. It certainly also has some political connotations there for which party seems to be doing the craziest stuff these days. I mean, one thing that I know you've written about the notion of using this conpt of the democratic machine

as a way as of actually avoiding accountability. Because one thing that I talked about during COVID was the whole game, the whole time was somehow there were endless orders and you weren't in charge, meaning you, the American citizen person, individual of anything, but nobody was really responsible for making sure that you were subject to constant, endless orders that made no sense whatsoever. How does that work? Well? One of the great things about democracy for people in powers,

it tends to obfuskate who's actually delivering kind of the rulings. Right, if you have a king in charge, you may hate that king. You might be terrible, it might be a tyrant. But at the end of the day, you know who sent the guys who are kicking your door down, right, Like you understand who's in charge. When you have a democracy, well, you know, it's a system. These people are supposed to

be representing you. They're supposed to be popular. Sovereignty means you select your leaders, and that means that really, at the end of the day, even if a leader did something wrong, it's kind of your neighbors job to vote them out. Right. It's the person down the street who's the one who put that person into power. And so

you don't really have a one singular person. You have a distributed network of people who are kind of in theory responsible for the action, but aren't really always able to be held accountable, which is why you know, you might vote a guy out of office, maybe end up getting rid of a Joe Biden or whatever. But Joe Biden's not running the country. I mean, who are we kidding here, right, It's the guys behind Joe Biden. It's the people that you don't really have the ability to

hold accountable. That are the ones who are going to be there once he's gone and still be making decisions in places like the deep state. And I mean this in the most general way, like I just want to know where you go with this. Who does run the country right now? So I think the big thing we have to understand is that really at this moment, our country is run by an oligarchy. I mean, we're run with the distributed system, and that system crosses many different disciplines.

You do have people in the government of or that's the formal hand of power, but much of this power is also spread across what conservatives like to think of as the public private distinction. That public private distinction does a lot of work for people, but actually what really happens is that, as we've seen with things like the Twitter files, these private companies work hand in glove with

government agencies and non government agencies all the time. An attempt to censor and control political opinion and make sure the right people get money, the right people get elected, the right kind of things are disseminated through all of our consistency making apparatus. And when that's happening, really the story is in charge at the end of the day, and so you know, it would be nice if you could point to one person and say, hey, this is

the guy who's actually running things. But we really have is a feeling across a whole class of people in political Washington, the permanent bureaucracy, Corporate America, the media, who all have similar values, they all share similar goals, and they work together constantly to steer the country in a particular direction, even if there's not one guy handing out orders.

Do you think enough of the country learned the appropriate lesson the very I would argue painful lesson about authoritarianism from the whole FAUCII COVID lockdown mass because for me the midterm elections, which I know there's a lot of things that people have been and can point too as to what happened there, I was like a single issue

voter on that. I'm obviously somebody who's votes Republican. I'm a conservative, But even if the Republican Party had done what the Democrats did over the course of COVID, I honestly would have been a single issue voter on that. I felt it was so beyond what you could even ever expect anyone to do in this country, but they

did it. What happened well, I think the vast majority of people, you know, in at least the political commentating sphere, you know, a lot of people, myself included, expected there'd be some kind of you know, backlash when it came to the midterms, and I think the truth is that a lot of people just kind of onboarded this now as part of life. I think, unfortunately, a large amount of the country is now more or less onboard with this level of manipulation. They probably can't do the full

lockdown the way they did last time. They probably have to ease it in a little more next time. But I think you do have a lot of people who are willing to kind of go along with this. There are states like Florida that did, you know, push back against this, and in many ways they prospered because of it. Obviously, you have a large number of people who migrated down to Florida and kind of bolstered to Santis's power in the state due to the stance he took through COVID.

But the downside of that, even though I think there are upsides, is all the people who didn't like what was happening in New York and all those other states. They're gone now there's no one left to push back. I'm one of them. I was a New Yorker born and raised New York City, Manhattan, went to Catholic school there,

the whole thing, right, the whole nine yards. And I can tell you or in that it transitioned at some point from I can't believe how incompetent and outrageously wrong and thuggish the Democrat administration of the city is to ninety percent of my fellow New Yorkers are going along with this and they think it's fine, and they're actually helping. They were kind of the volunteer Stazi for MASK and COVID vaccine and all these other programs. And so I just for me, that was it done. And so I'm

also now a Floridian. I know you were born in Florida. I'm a Floridian like many others that have fled. And I do think that this has resulted in changes that we're just beginning to understand for what this means, not just from the for the electoral map, but also for the country and which states are going to be leaders going forward of the movement. I think New York and California are now on trajectory of almost inevitable catastrophe, particularly California.

But I want to come back to that in a second. I've got a whole bunch more questions we're talking to Orin McIntyre. He's at the Blaze. You check out his podcast. You should also check out my friends at LifeLock, because if you're doing anything online these days, you know, I just found out that there's some fake account out there. Now. They're haven't taken out loans in my name or anything, but there's a fake social media accounts pretending to me

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just call this phone number one eight hundred LifeLock right organ. So, I really appreciate your takes, particularly on Twitter, because you think through these issues, you have original ideas and you bring insight into them. If you could get conservatives forget about the if you get conservatives to focus more on one thing right now in the country, what would it

be and why? Yeah, That's a really tough one because the battle is so multifaceted right now, I guess one of the things I would ask conservatives to understand is kind of where victories come from. Right, we look at so many of these elections, We look at so many promises that people in the GOP and elsewhere make over and over again the same thing, and people, you know, look and they look at the results and they say, how do we keep moving to the left? How do

we keep winning elections in these different areas? But nothing actually gets done? And then you look at something like Elon Musk buying Twitter, right, and you know, he's not perfect. I have my own problems with Elon Musk, but at the end of the day, his purchase of Twitter did way more to destroy parts of the progressive narrative and break the stranglehold and the obvious station. They were all to a bring to what was happening with things like

government and you know, the FBI requesting censorship. That's a much more powerful blow than you know, some piece of legislation that never gets to enforce somewhere. And that's not to say that, of course, laws and elections don't matter.

They do, but understanding that victories don't just come through getting another Republican elected, because if there's not an apparatus to hold these people accountable, and if there's not other avenues on which you're making gains culturally, in the business field, in the law field, all over the place, then you're going to end up losing. It's not just one point of a battle. It's an entire war, and you have

to actually look at the whole field. You can't just focus on well, eventually I'll just get Donald Trump or run to Santa Selected and they'll sweep in and fix everything. That's not how it's going to work. There are there

are no silver bullets. I think conservatives have started to see that a little bit more, and I think a part of that or in would be the recognition that our side seem to think that we could either seed the platforms and institutions of power and influence on the other side entirely, things like academia, or we could just fight for some scrap that will call neutral space. And

increasingly I think there's been an awareness of one. If you give the other side all the institutions and levers of power, you're going to lose irrespective of this is even outside of elections, right, if they have academia, Hollywood, news, media, law these days, by the way, law schools are just churning out, you know, woke activists with jds, all these things,

all these different places. You know, the the dominance that the left has even had in the nonprofit sector, I mean areas, it's think, what, of course there's enormous dominance and nonprofits and you know, different aspects of giving. Do

you think that there's been an awakening? Do you think that there's enough of a sense that we have to compete on many many platforms, battlefields whatever you want to call them, or else, they're just going to keep getting their way one way or the other as the country moves on. I think there is some awareness of that now,

but it's still an uphill battle. Conservatives still have again this idea of really limited government, and you know it's that's the key, as long as you don't get the government, as long as long as you don't try to impose your will and someone live and let live. Right, And this sounds great in theory, it's kind of what we all want. Yeah, the neutral space, yea neutral space, sure, exactly right, right. But but but the key is, like,

there is no value neutral government institution. There's no value neutral institution period And a lot of conservatives or people who have kind of been schufed out of the progressive movement want to believe that we can return to some kind of mythical time in like the nineties, where there

was no influence on these kind of things. But the truth is that someone's values were always being pushed, someone's agenda was always being pushed, And we've got to recognize that has the left gotten crazier in the last five years faster? Obviously it's moved further left, But has the acceleration been something that you feel is noticeably at more

of a breakneck pace? Or are we just waking up to the project that they've been engaged in, say on gender rights and the train gender issue for the last twenty years, But now we're at like that, we're you know, we're defending on our own five yard line, do you know what I mean? Is it have they just gone for it much more aggressively in the last few years, or are we just realizing now this has been pushed and we're basically at the final stages. I think it's both.

I think you're right that we are on the five yard line and all of a sudden people are like, oh man, are we losing this thing? What's going on? Right? I think it has been a very long march for the institutions. I think this battle has been ongoing for a very long time. But it is also accelerating because the left feels like it has this complete hegemony over the institutions and they can just kind of flex. They

don't have to really have ideological justifications anymore. Then it really need to have any kind of you know, lip service to free speech or the neutral battlefield or anything like that. They're in the right. They have the moral power, they have the the you know, functional power. They don't really need to pretend anymore that they're playing this game so they can go faster. But the battle has been

there for a very long time. I do think that we see that what you just mentioned about how they just do stuff that is well, it's obviously true with It was most apparent with the social media companies because I still remember ten years ago when I first got into this game at the Blaze. By the way, we'll come back and talk about him. Did you know that I'm a Blaze alumni. I'm one of the Blaze original gangsters.

Like I go way back to the beginning when Glenn was talking about this thing he's going to create called the Blaze, and anyway, we'll talk about that a little bit, but I remember that the notion that Twitter would take action against people based upon just not liking what was said. I mean that that was it was offensive to Twitter executives.

I mean, we have there're a free speech company. And then it turned into oh, well, we just make mistakes sometimes and we're just trying to keep people safe and this is about safety, and the mistakes seemed to go and get conservatives only, but it's really about safety. And then, as we know, in the ear of trumpet, turned into shut up, what are you going to do about it? And I think that's been actually really clarifying. I think people have seen, oh, that's what they do when they

can get away with it. Yeah, the left never really cared about free speech, right. These people always had an agenda. They had a very specific plan for what society should be in all of those plans were really terrible. I mean, the left is a movement that is built on the destruction of healthy hierarchies and natural boundaries and social order. And so they want to break down things like family. They want to break things down like faith, They want

to break things down like property rights. This is all stuff they want to take down. And they haven't been shy about this for many decades. But you know, even though they had these really dangerous ideas free speech right, you had to hear them out. And so they use that as a tool to enter institutions and work their way in an acquire power. But now that they have that power, they're not dumb enough to leave that on the ground so someone else can pick it up and

wield it against them. They're the ones in the citadel now, and they're definitely going to make sure that you don't have the option to push back. Is already where where you think conservatism is is losing the battle for hearts and minds, where in particular, you just say, how are we not doing better on that one? How is it possible that we're not just trouncing them in the realm of public opinion on this issue because of how it's being presented or how the politicians or the party are

making the case. Yeah, I mean, there's so many cases where the framing from conservatives is just horrible. I mean, for instance, you'll notice that conservatives are always willing to talk about like how the Democrats are the real races, right, Like this is the constant refrain from Oh it's it's really, at the end of the day, it's the left that hate minorities or whatever, and that just plays so poorly because the left owns the public definition of these ideas.

I mean, whether you believe that you know, racism has a very specific definition or not. I think most of us do. But it doesn't really matter. Because all the people who actually cancel people, all the people actually deal out damage to people, get their bank accounts shut down, get people taken off of jobs, that kind of thing, they're on the left. They're the ones that actually control this thing. And so when you try to wield the same weapon of the left back at them, what you

do is you end up reinforcing their frame. And we do this on all kinds of issues. Oh, at the end of the day, it's the left. I really believe this, and it just ends up giving your enemy more powerful weapons to continue to use because they're the ones that actually own the mechanism that punish people about us. I totally agree with that. I would also I would add

into this. I always say it's fine to call out hypocrisy, but it's a little bit like when people tell the guys the thugs that go into a Dwayne Read in San Francisco and fill a bag full of stolen stuff, they're like, hey, you shouldn't take that. They don't care. And when we tell the left they're being hypocritical, it's

fine to call it out. I mean, and we're going to, but I don't think we should confuse the left is hypocritical on a whole range of issues with we're going to shame them by calling out the hippoc Hypocritical is who they are. It's actually about it's about hierarchy, it's

about power structure. The whole point to what you're saying about racism is that they get to say it's not even possible, for example, to be for there to be racism against white people because of power hierarchies, Like they'll actually make that claim, which would seem to undermine the very definition of racism. Yeah, I mean, Sheila and Jackson Lee just introduced a bill basically trying to specifically ban the political speech of white people. You know, I mean,

come on, who are we kidding here? Right, Obviously that's racism by any definition, specifically targeting the speech of one race. But they're left don't care. They don't even blink. In fact, like you said, they've worked this ideology of you know, there is no such thing as racism against white people. And basically, like everything they talk about, they give lectures

on this to multibillion dollar corporations and academia. Right, So this is like a key part of the leftist you know, contradiction. But they don't care because, like you said, it's about the hierarchy. They get to wield the definition, they get to cancel people due to this charge. You don't because you're on the wrong team. That's the end of the issue.

Donald Trump, As you and I are talking right now, there are reports out that he is considering We were just talking about Twitter a minute ago, so I was thinking about this considering coming back to Twitter. As as a Twitter user, I find this to be very entertaining and amusing. As somebody who would like to see a Republican president in twenty twenty four, I'm a little more on edge about it. What do you think, Yeah, I mean, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Right.

So the thing, his tweets are amazing, Like I just that hour conceed right away. Yeah. Yeah, the man is a savant on Twitter. There's just no other way to say it. I mean, here's the thing about Trump. He was never a great governor, right, he was never. But his main power, his superpower, the thing that people really love him for was his ability to take it to the media and take it to the left. Right. He

said the things people wanted said. He went after the people who people wanted to be punished for their ugly lies that they tell about people all the time, and Trump was willing to do it. Maybe because he's a master at this, maybe because he just didn't know where the lines are. But either way, Trump is a heat seeking missile for the left and he drives them absolutely bananas. I don't know if that's enough to get him elected president again, but it does mean he's in the very

effective Twitter user. I think that one thing that Trump There are some areas where I think Trump just doesn't get nearly enough credit, even from supporters or people like me. Voted for him. I may assume you voted for him too, you know, just because it's They're the areas where I think Trump really likes to just take credit. He likes to do the victory laps. And know there are others where I say, hey, big guy, you know you did

an amazing thing here. On China trade policy, for example, the Biden administration has essentially just continued the Trump China trade policy because everybody realized when it was implemented, oh, actually this needed to be done right. The US Mexico Canada Agreement NAFTA was basically negotiated and decided before anybody was even really only internet. I mean, it's been decades. That was the right thing to do. Another area, though, where I think he doesn't get enough credit or enough

specific credit. Maybe this kind of goes to your point about the media. I think Trump broke CNN. I mean CNN is in disarray at you know, they had huge firing. CNN Plus is dead. I think Trump essentially mortally wounded

CNN as a news organization. Yeah, the most valuable thing Trump did was just get the media to rip their masks off, right, Like, there's no way you can go back to some veneer of neutrality, you know, pretend that you're Walter Cronkite delivering you know, straight news when you've seen these guys just shriek at Donald Trump for years and so yeah, I think it's incredibly valuable. And don't

get wrong, he did have government governing accomplishments. I'm not saying he didn't, but yeah, the most powerful thing he did by far was discredit the media. And I just love the fact that when he called them fake news, it seems like such a schoolyard taunt at first, but it really got to them. It really bothered them at a deep, at a visceral level. And I think they to your point about how it exposed them, they couldn't

help themselves. I mean they were making arguments. Washington Post writers are making arguments about I think as an entity honestly made the argument, well, in the era of Trump, the truth is anti Trump. So it's not you know, we're not being opinionated by being anti Trump, that's just what the truth is. I mean, they created these really

orwellian mind loops for themselves. You think you think he's going to be the nominee, what's your take on I would have said yes until a few weeks ago, and honestly, my faith is a little shaken. I think Trump would have been the best option. I loved Santis. I'm a Floridian. I think he's an amazing governor. I think he has

incredible potential in the Republican Party. But I just think that he's more valuable right now showing people how to build a power structure outside of Washington, how to effectively lead outside of Washington, how regional leadership can be far more important than some bill passed in DC. I think

he's incredibly valuable in that role. And I think Trump, in his ability to kind of defeat the media, is kind of the best weapon you can wield in Washington, because I don't think big changes are really coming at the federal level. But which you can do is put someone there who will destroy the media. But it does feel like Trump lost a step. It does feel like he doesn't have the fight in him anymore. I hope I'm wrong. I hope he catches a second wind. I

just age as a factor. With all this, I would say to people the difference I've even seen in family members between their six You know, in my experience, I could say, family members in their sixties, they're still challenging me to push up contests, and you know they're still got a Once you get into your late seventies, it's you know, you got to take care of those people

a little more. There's a little less energy, there's a little I think that's just there, which is why the whole Biden phenomenon is just it's beyond it's beyond irresponsible to have made this guy president. There is this moment now where you have the classified documents that have been strewn around, and I think they're just having a hard time. Even the spin machine, you know, the apparatus of disinformation that the Democrats run, doesn't really know how to play this.

Do you think it goes anywhere? Though? Meaning do you think that this has ramifications for the Biden presidency or is this just a thing that like Hunter Biden, which should have been right, that should have been the big thing that oh the Biden crime family, but it didn't. So what do you think with this one? It's tough.

You know, part of me just wants to say, Okay, well, they dropped this the way they did after the mid terms so they could kind of get it through the news cycle as fast as possible and then move on. But the slightly more conspiratorial part of me says, someone said,

we're done with Joe after this election. I mean, it's very obvious that a lot of these documents probably could have been shown at any time, and when you have this many showing up in so many different places simultaneously, it's either a very bad cleanup operation that's just kind of feeding the stuff and hoping it goes away, or it's just something that was meant to kind of make him disqualified so someone else can step in that role

later on. I want to get into a little bit of or in lore we come into our next topic here to second as in how you got into this game, some of your background on all that, maybe even I don't know if you're if you have any particular hobbies you want to dive into all things or in McIntyre a second, But I want to speak to the pro life community for a moment here, because, as you know, even though there was this big Supreme Court decision, there's

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zero and say the key word baby. Um all right? Or so I like to ask, because I'm gonna I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about some of the blaze stuff. How did you get into this game? Man? What was what was the beginnings of you making these arguments and getting in the fight to help save the country. You know, is very weird. I've someone who went to

school for politics. I've always been interested in politics. I remember listening to political talk radio and I was ten and trying to call in because you know, it was very normal. And uh, when I got out of college, I ended up working at politics a little bit, and then I became a reporter for a few years. Nothing big, just with a local paper doing where politics down in Florida?

Where down in Southwest Florida? Down southwest Florida. Oh nice, that's a that's a nice You know, some people get stuck in like you know, northern North Dakota doing their local reportings. So Southwest Florida is pretty nice. Yeah. Yeah. If he end up on you know, world class beaches,

when you have to do your reporting. It's not the worst thing they ever happened, but yeah, you know, I was doing that, and as I was watching all these elections and things they were going on, I was like, you know what, things aren't working the way that I think they're supposed to. Politics isn't functioning the way that I thought it should. And then when we hit especially COVID, you know, I was like, Okay, this is insane. The Constitution isn't protecting the rights that it's supposed to. Why

are people standing up for this? What's going on? And that's kind of when I fell down a rabbit hole. I started doing a bunch of reading. I started listening to different voices, looking at older political theory and trying to understand kind of how this applied to the world and what was happening around me. And I started writing and recording YouTube videos. And that's kind of how I

got started. What were some of the most in that process that you're talking to, that sort of transition into taking an active hand in the ideological battle here for the soul of the country as a conservative were some of the most important books, Like Because one of the things I always get and I'm sure people would ask if I didn't ask you, is give me some books that will really, you know, give me something to work with, will inspire me, will teach me, you know what, you know,

the whole deal. So what do you What are some of the ones that come to mind for you? Sure? If you want to understand politics right now, I think one of the key books is The Machiavellians by James Burnham. He summarizes what's come to be called Italian elite theory, and it's really the Machiavellian descendant of political analysis. And I think it's pretty important if you kind of want to understand what's happening now. A lot of people forget

James Burnham. He was the guy who helped found the National Review, uh, you know, and along with Buckley and but a lot of people don't read them anymore. But it's actually really powerful analysis. I'd say Christopher Caldwell's book, uh about the entitlement Age, Age of Enlightenment engine Titlement, Right, that's a really powerful book. I think it's it's making the rounds now with a lot of people and kind

of understanding that better. But it's really powerful. It makes a lot of arguments about kind of the civil rights revolution, and even though it is very well meaning and intention the legal for ramifications became extra constitutional and kind of what that's done. That's, for instance, a lot of conservatives when they think they're talking about, you know, kind of this trans kids type stuff debate, they think you're having a debate about biology. I mean, you know, you know,

what is a Woman is a hilarious movie. It's it's very good, but that's not actually the debate you're having. You're actually having a debate about civil rights, which is why courts are now using trans ideology to separate children from their parents. They're using civil rights ideology as the way to kind of cleave their way into the family. Bertrand de Juvenal has a book on power. It's another great one about kind of how political power works. I could kind of do this forever, so you just stop.

Mean when it came. By the way that the people that are listening to this, the people that are watching this, they're taken to this is I get more requests for this. Usually with me, I'll get into history record, history book recommendations. I love reading, you know all. I have a couple of periods I particularly like. It's interesting you're you like Machiavelli so much. I find the sixteenth century Mediterranean world

to be absolutely fascinating. So the Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, the various major Christian Muslim clashes that occurred, things like that. I've done a whole podcasts on them. So I like that stuff a lot. But on the political science side and political theory, which is what you're you're giving us now, you know, I think people need more good recommendations. I'm not taking shots out in particular, but there's a lot of people out there now on

the right. Look, ghostwriters are all over the place. People are having all kinds of stuff ghost written, and there's this industry of churning out these very like oh, this is just a version of what I say on my show Everyday Books. And look, that's fine, and people, you know, it's capitalism, and I get it. But there are books that you read and you actually have an addition to your skill set to think about these issues. And I think that what you're talking about those are books that

fall into that category. I mean, you do you do you know had Lee arcis the political theorist he ever heard of? Hadley Arcis. He was. He's the single It's not famous like people who were talking about the only conservative AMers College where I went, and has written a whole. He wrote a book called First Things. He used to be an associate editor at National Review. I think for a while, or I think First Things magazine. Um, but this is something we would I would always talk about

when we would have these meetings. He had this thing called a Committee for the American Founding. We sit around and just going over what books were we even being assigned in the political science course. If I wanted to learn about you know, fanal obviously marks, you know, go go down the list, go down the list of super unhappy, miserable,

malcontents who wanted to destroy their societies. A lot of that, but anything that was useful in the contemporary context for a conservative, or even just to understand the constitution, natural law, and a sense of philosophy that isn't rooted in nothing matters and you should just you know, you should just

give up. That was hard to find. So I think some of the books that you're giving a favorite history period, since we're all that, actually give me favorite history period, and or you get a couple of book recommendations you're gonna throw to this this group, what would it be. I'm a big fan of Rome, so I really enjoy kind of all things Rome. If I was going to pitch one thing on learning about the Roman Empire in Republic, I'd say the History of Rome podcast is probably the best.

Listen to it. Yeah, he's very good, and he's also written a couple of books about both Roman history, and I think he also did one about the Marquis de Lafayette, so he's got a couple of those as well. So it's very good. I read years ago Gold's Worthies how Rome fell about, you know, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, which I thought was interesting. A big part of it was the dissolution of borders and the growth of bureaucracy beyond that which could be even vaguely

accountable to the people. Start to say, that doesn't that doesn't doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy, mister Oran, when you start to make some of these some of these comparisons, Um, are you optimistic about the future of the country, How would you put yourself on that scale? Well, I think it depends on what you mean by optimistic. I am optimistic that at the end of this there will be an opportunity for America and for Americans to kind of forge a new positive identity that leads, you know,

to a better vision of what's going on. But I think we've got some some rough times ahead. We've got a lot of those bureaucracy are our institutions are sclerotic, they are worthless in many ways. We can't you know, planes can't take off. We don't know how to make antibiotics here anymore, you know, we don't know how to provide energy. I mean, we know how to provide energy,

we just decide not to do it right. Like, there's a lot of huge problems with our institutions right now, and they have to go through massive periods of change, and unfortunately, I think some of those are going to require people to kind of have more difficult times before they're willing to kind of stand up and make those changes. But once those changes get made, I think much better

times could be ahead. Mentioned the energy thing. Just recently there was the Greta Thunberg posing for her arrest photos at I didn't it was like a natural gas field or something. I can't even I don't even know where it was, some fossil fuel thing that allows us to have you know, heat and electricity. And she's like, I hate this. How is it that adults take I think she's eighteen or nineteen now, so she you know, she's considered technically an adult, but obviously she's just basically teenager.

Doesn't know anything. How is it that adults take this individual seriously? Like, you know, did you ever see I mean, you know, Jake Tapper, CNN top top folks over there would sit down and interview Greta Thunberg, and I just I don't understand how any adult, period, whether they're on the news or anywhere else, could sit down, you know, Anderson Cooper had her on all these people. I mean,

I'm just going through the CNN lineup. She doesn't know anything, and she's supposed to reorder trillions of dollars of the global economy because she has like a frownie face. I don't understand. Yeah, I guess the question is, does anyone really think that she has original ideas? Maybe they do. I mean, what she really is as an avatar of the revolution, She's got the people behind her that kind of prop her up. She's artificial through and through, and again,

this is nothing against her. She probably really believes what she believes in. I'm not angry at her, but there's an entire apparatus that's holding her up in geo complex, the kind of stuff you're talking about, and they have a particular agenda. And she's very useful because in our culture we've coded this idea that the revolution is young, right, like young people lead the revolution, they distribute the wisdom to the old fuddy duddies who don't understand what's coming next.

You know, she's fighting for her future because she's the one who's going to have to live in the planet. That kind of stuff, you know. And to be honest,

I'm pretty interested in arguments about conservation. I think the right should be more interest in, you know, honoring the planet, making sure that you know nature are people on the writer or hunters, fishermen, they love this stuff, right, and I think they are kind of naturally people who want the world to be taken care of, but they want it in a way their civilization is going to continue. They don't want, you know, to have rolling blackout throughout

the country. Because you know, someone wanted to make sure that they can go ahead and manufacture electric cars at a profit, right, Like, that's not really what people want when they think of as conservation. Yeah. Well, there's always this game that's played where they'll say, well, don't you want clean water to drink? And it's like, yeah, every everybody wants clean that. I've never met the conservative who says,

oh my gosh. You know when when there's a community like Flint, for example, there's lead in the drinking water, you know, too bad. No, everyone says that we need to have clean drinking water. That's that's a huge failure of of of of governance there, and that's a huge failure of the authorities that are in charge of this.

But they go, don't you want clean water? And then it's so we need to have carbon offsets so that John Kerry and not feel bad about himself for flying on a private jet to Davos to talk about how we can't have gastos Like you know what's it's always they start with these things like, well don't you want the most don't you want to be able to breathe clean air and drink clean water? And say, well, yeah, and then somehow it's what we see going on at

Davos with eat the bugs, ride the bicycle. Shut your mouth, be cold in the winter. Yeah, all the solutions are funneling more money into the pockets of their supporters, right, Like, that's how you can tell that their agenda is just bunk. They don't actually care about this stuff. What they care about is enriching their patrons. And that's something that I think the right needs to understand. The left is very effective because the left is built on rewarding its supporters.

I mean, say what you want about these people. People on the left expect to get paid, right, They expect money to flow into their pockets, either through social programs or through business investments, this kind of thing, right, I think just that's such an important point. I try to get people on understand one of the things. There are things the left just does better. The Democrats do better than Republicans or conservatives. And one of them is they

take care of their soldiers. You know, if people understand, oh, on the left, if someone gets fired or they do something crazy, or they're caught with the plagiarism or whatever, they always resurface somewhere else and if they do something egregious at the FBI, but it helped the Democrat, they get a CNN contributorship, they get a book contract, they

could put on the boards of companies. There's this whole apparatus that takes care of their team, and that means a whole heck of a lot, right, I mean, you go back in history, the armies that win are the armies generally that are getting paid or where there's some sense of benefit to the people who are involved in fighting. And yet on our side, I feel like a lot of the time it's yeah, you know, go bankrupt, let the left destroy you. That's the cost of doing business.

Sometimes I think, I think we need to learn a lesson. Yeah, no, that's that's a huge issue, especially when I talk to conservatives. You know, I've had more of an upportunity to talk to people who are higher up on the food chain here, and I constantly hear like, oh, well, why why doesn't everyone just stand up and speak the truth? Why don't they all just have the courage of their convictions and make their voices heard. And it's like, have you been

out there? Do you understand what happens to people? They don't eat, they can't ever get a job again, They get destroyed on social media. None of the friends will talk to them. And where are you at this moment. You're out there defending some guy like Bill Maher who hates you, instead of standing behind average people who really stand up and really sacrifice something in the fight against this kind of ideology that you say everybody really needs

to stand up against. You're absolutely right. The left takes care of their own. If you fail on the left, you have someone behind you to pick you up, deliver you a check, make sure you've got a job. When you're on the right, they'll burn you in a minute. Yeah, And that's just somehow part of our culture. It's like, yeah, you know, you fought a good fight. Now, you know, go live in penury, you know what I mean, Like you're on your own. You're like, wait a second, look

at all the Russia collusion lunatics. They're all financially better off now because there was a hit against Donald Trump and against Republicans and there they all have contributorships, they get board seats, they get totally taken care of. You know, it's not just ten percent for the big guy. There's ten percent for a lot of people. By the way, word, how how long have you been with the Blaze. I just started here a few months ago, started in November.

Oh nice, Yeah, I mean I remember I started there in twenty eleven. I was at the Blaze for almost six years, and I gotta tell you it's it's such a cool place. I first of all, I would ask you to please pass along to Glenn that I send a hug and I say thank you for starting my media career, because Glenn Beck did that for me. And you know, Glenn created whatever analogy you know people like best, but he created the farm team for the rest of conservative media back I'm talking when he when he just

got it started. I mean, now you got all these big names there and it's become a big company. But he brought people in like I had no media experience and never published anything, and the Blaze hired me and taught me how to how to do this stuff. So I owe a debt of gratitude to all of them. How are things How are things going over there these days? Like what kind of shows you get to do? And just just tell me. I kind of have a little nostalgia here for the Blaze like, what's going on over there?

No wild because you know, I was just doing this at home and my spare time, you know, posting. You know, my face wasn't even out there until you know, six to eight months ago. And so to go from that to being on the blaze has been very wild. You know, you come out and meet Glenn Beck and the super nice guy, but he kind of had to go ahead

and do something. And I'm sitting in a green room and all of a sudden, I guess someone told Glenn that I was a big history guy, and all of a sudden he just comes in and he's like, hey, you want to go see my history museum. Like he's just, you know, super nice about it. Showed me all this wild stuff that he's collected over the years. It's totally amazing. Have you had. The best thing is when you're hanging with Glenn and he'll be you're talking to history with them.

He's like, yeah, it's like you remember, you know, I remember what was going on, and you know it was Breed's Hill. It wasn't really Bunker Hill, even though people think of it as a Battle of Bunker Hill and the whole Paul Revere thing. Glenn'll be like, you want to see the stirrups that Paul Revere had on his horse that night, and he just kind of like whips them out and for you like, oh my god, you know he can do that. It's very real. It noo

that Yeah, that was a very real thing. I was like, you can't let people touch this stuff, like what are you doing? Like this is raceless. He's got quite a quite a personal historical collection. It's it's it's pretty amazing. Do you guys still have the Forrest Gump bench down there? Yep, it's it's in the in the studio down there. Absolutely, it's cool. Well look around a congratulations on that. I mean it's a great place to be, uh, you know, and and it was so it's essential now, but it's

you know, because we need more platforms. I mean, this is uh, this is something that conservatives still haven't really figured out how to do. I mean we're getting a little bit here and there, but it's been you know, talk radio, Fox News and then a lot of places kind of struggling. You know, the Blaze has really built itself into an institution and a place that can you know, has a big role in I think the fight in

the culture ahead. So that's very cool. So give my regards to the folks, the folks from there, and dude, I had I had great memories. I really enjoyed my time at the Blaze. Oh. What I was gonna say though, was it was like Glenn brought together. He was like Charles Xavier and they're all these misfits that he put together that had some skills. But you know, we were we were new and there are people the people know now.

I was there. Will Kine over Fox News was there, Uh, you know, he brought in Tommy larn early in her career. He brought in um oh gosh, I'm trying to I used to see Guy Benson and Jedediah Biela and Pete Hegset like so many of these names ever know now from Fox News got their start back in twenty eleven at the Blaze because there just weren't that many places. I mean, even you've got your podcast now, but you get to go right that you can do um all the I can't even think of all the different shows

over there now. Steve Days, how's he doing? By the way, Steve is really great? No he yeah, he was actually the first guy on the Blaze to have me on, even before you know, I had interacted with anyone else over there. And yeah, I've also gotten to be on Ali Stuckies Show and then Glenn Beck and everything. So yeah, no, it's it's an amazing how he's done a phenomenal job building building her podcast. Um, and you know Steve Day's game respects game. You know, he's a high he's a

high watched guy too. And then just with Glenn, I mean, Glenn is he's you know, they're they're people in our business who are really smart and good at what they do. And then the people who are they're like a talent they have, They're talented in a in a performance. You know, I think it's true politicians to write their politicians who are good at governance. And and then there there's the X factor thing Glen's at. Glen's an X factor guy.

You know, Glenn has an ability, a storytelling and connection ability that I've I mean, I've seen other people that have similar skills, but I've never seen anybody who has it the way Glenn does. Yeah, I mean there's a reason that he still has the following he does, right, it's it's pretty impressive and he draws all kinds of people when in with it. I couldn't believe I was.

I was on my way out of the studio and then just like Research Dreyfus shows up out of nowhere, like he's just doing a show with Glenn that day. You know, it's just it's the kind of things that happened to Oh yeah, he's like random Hollywood actors were like, especially if they're a little stealth conservative, they'd swing by. And you know, Glenn has he's got a lot of friends,

a lot of places. It's pretty funny. Anyway, give them my warm regards the rest of the team there, Man and Oran, where can people go to check out your podcast and uh see see your very excellent analysis. Oh yeah, no thanks. They can go of course to Oran McIntyre's show is on all your major podcast platforms now. I also have the YouTube channel, which is kind of where it all started and everything still goes up there, and now things are on Blaze TV as well. They just

actually got everything started with that today. So you can go to any of those platforms and catch the show or in thanks so much for being on the box. Sex and show Maam. We'll talk to you soon. Absolutely thanks for having Man