Cultivating Excellence vs. Crystallizing Mediocrity

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is the Sexton Show. Buck Sexton joins us now we analyst, former NYPD intelligence officer, Now Buck Sexton. Welcome to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexton. Here on an action packed Thursday from the not so free New York City, but the Freedom Hut hidden high a top Lower Manhattan. Again, this has Ben Winegarden in

for Buck Sexton. Been here all week, really had a privilege and it's been an honor and a pleasure to spend this week with you as there are so many things going on in the world of such substance and you know, before we jump in again. I'm a senior contributor at The Federalist, a columnist at Newsweek and The

Epic Times, a fellow at the Claremont Institute. You can find all my work at Winegarden dot substack dot com or ben Winegarden dot com, and I encourage you to follow me on Twitter, where I speak too frequently at b H. Winegarden. And before we jump into today's episode, just a programming note as well. The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show starts at noon next Monday, the twenty first, and then Jesse Kelly will be filling in Buck Sexton's slot from six to nine pm the following Monday, June

twenty eighth. We're going to jump all around the world today and we've got some exceptional guests. We'll be speaking with Congressman Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana on the chair of the Republican Study Committee, this sort of in house think tank of the GOP in the House about all sorts of issues, from the threat of communist China

to January sixth disparate treatment versus sixteen nineteen rioters. We'll be speaking with Christian Witten about Joe Biden's excellent adventure overseas and the misadventure that it really is for America and our national interests. We'll speak with Professor Scott Jenner about taking on critical race theory and what CRT and the cult of diversity, equity, and inclusion are really all about.

And last, but not least, will also speak with my friend Rachel Bovard, who's done some exceptional work and reporting on sort of the conservative case for antitrust and taking on big tech and really concentrated power in all of its forms, and in particular woke concentrated power in all of its forms, public and private. To get into these issues,

I'm going to go an indirect route. But bear with me here because you're listening to someone who listened to sports talk radio since the time he was about five years old. And I'm a huge sports fan, a huge baseball fan, unfortunately, a huge New York Mets fan, and last night I had the pleasure of going to see

Jacob deGrom pitch. And bear with me if you're not a sports fan, but Jacob Degram right now is the dominant pitcher in Major League Baseball, having arguably the best season ever, not just in modern era, but in the history of the game, absolutely dominating to an unprecedented extent. Every single start that he makes health provided is just

a massive spectacle. The turnout has been tremendous at a stadium in New York where it seems that people are still a little bit fearful with the pandemic sadly, and so turnout has not been exceptional all around. But it's a winning ball club and it's the most dominant pitcher in the game, maybe the most dominant player at any position in the game, and having one of the most dominant seasons, if not the most dominant season of all time. Why do I talk about Jacob deGrom Besides the fact

that I love the Mets. Last night was a beautiful night for a ball game. The return to normalcy of going to a ballpark in America is something that we take for granted. I mean, from my perspective, I'd go to about a dozen games a year in a typical year, and it's been over a year since going out to the ballpark and just seeing a scenario of people just generally happy, acting normal. None of this. You know, why aren't you wearing your mask and people dodging you and

running to the other side of the stadium. No, it was as if we were America again, a free and independent people, not governed by bureaucrats and technocrats with their asinine decrees on our necks. So hopefully that's a positive little vignette, and I encourage everyone to get out to the ballpark. It just felt liberating. And I know most of you probably live in free America, but here behind the iron curtain in the Northeast, this was a real

treat at the baseball game. What we saw on display, and unfortunately only for three innings because Jacob deGrom is battling injuries this season, but what we saw in three innings were told strikeouts of eight of nine batters one person all of one batter put the ball in play

against Jacob Degram. We're seeing someone someone who's excellent at what they do, at the absolute pinnacle of their game, with chance of MVP Most Valuable Player raining down from the crowd, and an electric atmosphere from before the first pitch of the game. What does this have to do with all of the issues we're facing as a country right now. Wide contrast Jacob deGrom and athleticism broadly athletics broadly with what we see in our ruling class. Let

me explain, in sports, we still celebrate excellence, achievement. The only thing that matters at the end of the day in sports are wins and losses. It's binary. You can't sugarcoat it. You can say a team made a great effort, a player made a great play, had an exceptional season. But at the end of the day, wins and losses are the only thing that matters. And it does not matter who you are, where you're from, what your limitations are.

All the matters ultimately is performance. In other words, even though wokeism is pervading all of our sports in ways that are maddening, and yes, at the stadium, you know there's a Coca Cola sign that's in rainbow colors for Pride Month. So you can't escape the politicization even at a sporting event, even if it's not Lebron James telling you to bat down to communist China. Nevertheless, the game

is still the game. It's still about results at the end of the day, and excellence and achievement is is something that is loved and cherished and relished at the end of the day. It's also worth noting that excellence can be very fleeting. In the case of a pitcher, pitcher can break down. Jacob Degraham throws one hundred and one miles an hour consistently. No one pretty much in the history of the game has ever done that. He's had some injuries this year. It's incredibly disconcerting as a fan.

No matter what team you're root for, greatness is fleeting. It requires constant tending to nurturing, recognizing threats to greatness and competition, and proactively countering them. Cultivating excellence is what sports are all about. There's no affirmative action in sports. There's no equity in sports. If you cultivate excellence, you bring it excellent. If you cultivate mediocrity, you crystallize mediocrity.

And what we're seeing across pretty much every domain that a ruling class has its hands on again, setting aside athletics, is the cultivation of anything but excellent and a celebration really at the end of the day of failure. Traditional values like hard work, prudence, humility, virtue, Judeo Christian morality, that is morality traditionally understood civic duty, patriotism. If we instill those values and principles in our people. Nothing can

stop America. American greatness will proceed for generations. But American greatness can also be quite fleeting. And we are a very young nation. If you look at world history and our adversaries, be it Communist China or anyone else, they preceded us in some cases by many hundreds of years. They're more patient than we are. In some cases, they've dealt with more hardships than we have. They've experienced tyranny in a way that we haven't, although many of our

ancestors may have fled it. The memory of a nation is short. Achieving and maintaining is not written into the stars. We talked earlier in the week about New York and New York is returning to the bad old days, all after the tenure of a single mayor and a bad governor at the same time, too, it took decades to get New York out of its doldrums. And just like that,

it can all turn quickly. Just like the career of an excellent athlete, it can fade for any number of reasons, just like you can work a lifetime to build a reputation, and it can be tarnished and destroyed with a single bad tweet or misstatement, But with respect to the country, the surest way to ensure America loses its luster, squanders it's greatness, becomes a decadent and decaying rump of a four leader of Western civilization, of the free world, the

last bastion of freedom, the only place in the world where anyone who desires to live in liberty and justice will give anything to immigrate to. The shortest way to mess it all up is to reject, to repudiate, all

of those values and principles I just discussed. And if we're taught to hate our country from the commanding heights of society, from our government itself, from our corporations, from our tech companies, from our schools, from all of our civil society institutions, how could we possibly defend that country? Who would want to defend that country? It would be immoral to defend that country to promulgate the vision and

the policies necessary necessary to maintain it. If we're taught that measures of excellence, any kind of measure of excellence, are racist and bigoted, we will reward people for everything but excellence. Politics will trump merit. What that's a recipe for are not just individuals failing upward. It's a recipe then, for failure across the board. Our ruling class fails again and again to adequately represent us. It doesn't represent us.

It makes us subservient to it. It exists, essentially like all bureaucracies, exist to perpetuate its own power and privilege, to squander the very values and principles that allowed the individuals who can eyes our ruling class to have to rise,

to ascend to such a position in society. Isn't it remarkable that the very ruling class responsible for propagating the America Last Agenda, for embracing critical race theory, for embracing racial division, eskewing excellence, not fighting back when standardized tests are called racist. They've been the greatest beneficiaries of this system and cynically, and I think rightly, if you look at all of their actions at the end of the day,

Yes there's cowardice, Yes there are some true believers. Yes there are people, as we've talked about, who are trying to feed the woke crocodile so it spares them at the end of the day, which will be a recipe of disaster for them, by the way, just so we deserved Ultimately, what are these policies about dividing and conquering

so that they crystallize their positions in society? If you want to keep competition at Bay Pit Americans against each other, stop kids in public schools from being able to take advanced classes that allow them to reach their full potential while your own kids can go to private schools and not have to worry about those issues. Put politics over merit to protect your own position in society. Make politics the number one thing because the incumbents and politics have

the advantage. So how do I take this back to sports. Well, when you have to defend values and principles that we talked about, it makes you hungry. It keeps you hungry, It keeps you committed to a cause, It keeps you debticated to American greatness. When you become weak and fat and decadent, like the leaders on display at the G seven, you become a rump of a society. It's like a bad athlete resting on his laurels or formerly great athlete

resting on its worlds. And oftentimes you see great athletes in retirement completely out of shape, barely a shadow of what they were. A country has to appreciate greatness, cultivate greatness. If it wants to be great, it has to celebrate achievement.

It has to prioritize merit above all else. And in particular when all of the adversaries facing that country care at the end of the day about results, about performance, even if they're hobbled by their own corruption and misdeeds, as we'll talk about with Congressman Jim Banks in just a bit teaching the military Ebramex Kendy racist philosophy, an America loathing worldview. How could you possibly defend a country if you're told it's terrible. It's a recipe for mediocrity.

We have to cultivate excellent instead of crystallizing mediocrity. They's been wandering in for Buck Sexton back after a short break. President is an experienced statesman. Our one on one conversation took almost two hours. It's not every world leader that I guess this amount of attention. I mean, his predecessor was asked the same question. He evaded this. This President decided to respond to the question directly, and in this

he is very different from President Trump. That's wadermer Putin talking about Joe Biden, and I think it's important to note experienced statesmen, experienced statesmen by today's standards, our mediocrities. Experienced statesmen have overseen policies for decades that have put America last and allowed people like Vladimir Putin to run circles around them. All of our adversaries love experienced statesmen.

Think about the position that America has squandered since the end of the Cold War, the blood and treasure we've spilled, while our adversaries have enriched and empowered themselves and threatened us in ways that we haven't been threatened in decades.

If ever, so, when I go back to excellence or mediocrity, experienced statesmen or the definition of those who have been cultivated in mediocrity on the basis of the results for the country, Are we a richer, stronger, more powerful country as a consequence of our political establishment embodied personified by

President Joe Biden. No, we are not. And then the rest of the episode today where we speak with Congressman Jim Banks and Christian Witten and Professor Scott Jenner and Rachel Bovard We're going to touch on national security and foreign policy, domestic policy, big tech, and what's going on

in education. And if you look, the running theme through all of these areas is cultivating mediocrity, crystallizing mediocrity, not pursuing excellence and pursuing American greatness and our national interests first and only. This Ben Wangarten in for Buck sex And on the Buck Sex and Show. And we'll be back with Congressman Jim Banks right after this. You're in the Freedom Hunt. Thanks for listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Get the latest from Buck at buck sexton

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time for Father's Day. On June twentieth that show Allegiance dot Com enter promo code buck for ten percent off. So yes or no Racism in the United States Navy, Admiral, you recommended every sailor in the United States Navy read this book. So yes or no question. I'm not forcing anybody to read the book. It's on a recommended reading list. Admiral, did you read the book? I did, Admiral. Department of Defense undertook the standown because they understand that extremism detracts

from military readiness. So if sailors accept Kennedy's argument that America and the United States Navy are fundamentally racist, as you've encouraged them to do, do you expect that to increase or decrease rall and cohesion or even recruiting into the United States Navy. Our strength is in our diversity, and our sailors understand that race is a very Racism

in the United States is a very complex issue. That was Congressman Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana and chairman of the Republican Study Committee, having a somewhat heated exchange, at least on one side of it, with the Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday regarding the Navy's endorsement of its leaders reading the likes of ibramex Kendy, and I believe Michelle Alexander as well. And here to talk about that and so much more from China to January sixth

and beyond is Congressman Jim Banks. Thanks so much for coming on the program. Hey Ben, good to be with you. Thanks for having Me's my pleasure. And let's start right there with that exchange. What was your takeaway? Are you any more confident in the state of our navy and as a particularly as a naval reservist as well. Are you satisfied with that exchange? Far? Far from it? You

know it. It's not been a several weeks when I first wrote Admiral guild A, drawing attention to him putting this outrageous and Unamerican book on a reading list that he pushes out to every sailor in the United States Navy and encourages them to read. If you know anything about Abrahm X Kendy, you know that it's not his book How to Be an Anti Racist. It's it's his entire body of work that is inherently just that it

is racist. It is Unamerican. And the thought that the most powerful, the highest ranking admiral of the United States Navy would push out a book to every sailor to read that says that America is evil, inherently racist. The United States Navy and other institutions in our country our racist is exactly. It's not just counterproductive, it's completely Unamerican. And in that exchange you can hear that, I mean, my my guess is that some junior officer I thought

this was a good idea. Now he's in a position where he has to defend it. When I asked him at the end of the exchange, I mean, did you actually read it? He said, he did. To give me one redeeming quality of this book that makes it something's appropriate to put on the list. He couldn't answer it. He got defensive instead. And you can hear more of that exchange. I know you played it, but throughout the exchange you get a sense that he knows he can't

defend it. And it's really remarkable. He goes to the diversity is our strength response, and yeah, of course you need a diversity of opinion when you're talking about dealing with our worst adversaries. You need experts in other languages and other cultures, but there can be no diversity when it comes to love of country and patriotism. There have to be certain unifying values and principles to have the biggest, baddest fighting force in the history of mankind and deal

with all these adversaries that we face. Given that, I mean, what are the consequences in terms of moral for future recruitment and for fielding the strongest fighting force given wokeism seemingly pervading not just the military, but also the intelligence

community and beyond. Yeah, I mean, you said it well, But for the United States Military to adopt critical race theory, and for the United States Navy, on top of all of the other branches, to instill CRT into the ranks is exactly the opposite of the stand down on extremism, of the mission of the Biden administration to root out

extremism in the ranks. It's doing exactly the opposite of what the Democrats with the Biden administration, with Admiral Guilday, what the secretary, what others the leaders at the Pentagons say that they're trying to do with the extremism stand down and I would argue even further, Ben, I mean to that point, how do you recruit the next generation of young men and women of the future leaders in our country to raise their right hand, to defend the

constitution and to potentially die for this country out of the next On the other side, on the other hand, or at the other side of your mouth, you're talking about how America endorsing a book. We're talking about how America is racist and evil and inherently um the up the upbringing of our great country is somehow just that evil and racist. I don't I don't think you can do it. I mean this, This affects morale, It affects retention,

it affects recruitment. And I hear every day as a member of Congress and as a as a Navy reservist, having served with with hundreds of sailors along the way who are still in uniform and still serving, they feel very uncomfortable with what the what the Navy and what what overall the military is becoming as they take this uh, this this crash course into crt It's unhealthy. It's an American It's got to stop. But with admirals like guil Day in charge of the Navy. I don't have high hopes.

And as we saw in the meeting between Secretary of State Anthony B. Lincoln and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and their counterparts at Anchor Jawaska, or in the most recent meetings between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden. Of course this is a propaganda coup for our worst adversaries who loved to guaman to this America loathing sort of narrative. So of course there are national security implications that go beyond, again,

just fielding the strongest fighting force. On the subject of China, you've been critical of the US Innovations and Competition Act, which has been framed as a sort of bipartisan anti China, tough on China sort of bill, a layout sort of your critique of it, Well, at the end of the day, this is just a massive spending boondoggle that Democrats are

really good at this. I hate to admit it, but they're good at at taking an issue like China and then writing a bill has nothing to do with it, but saying it's about China, and then getting a couple of Republicans to come along and make it by partisan and that's what this bill has become. I mean, this is a big boost and funding to universities around the country, who, by the way, don't protect their research from being infiltrated

by Chinese espionage their campuses, which happens every day. I wrote a bill about this a few years ago to protect sensitive research that that our taxpayer dollars are funding

for national security purposes at universities. We don't protect intellectual property, but we're gonna go We're gonna go pour billions of dollars into these institutions that the China, that the Chinese Communist Party is already infiltrated, so that it doesn't make any sense there Also, there are also some pretty strong pro life concerns about what type of research we are we are funding, you know, so there are more There are moral angles to this as well, but at the

end of the day, has nothing to do with holding China accountable. As absolutely this bill does nothing to hold China accountable for what they've done to steal our jobs where they've done to at least the COVID nineteen and the pandemic, and not just on the United States of America, but on the rest of the world. It just pours a bunch of money into places um that that we already know where that that that that's not a wise investment of our taxpayer dollars, at least without the kind

of safeguards that we've been advocating for us. There's there's nothing in the bill that does anything to be tough on China or to hold them accountable. And that's why, that's why it's been so easy for most conservative Republicans

on Capital Hell to oppose it. Some of the policy documents put out by the Trump administration cover something approximating at least at least the makings of a grand strategy with respect to taking on the Chinese Communist Party, which I think you agree is the greatest foreign adversary that we face. What do you believe the legislative branch's role ought to be in executing such a strategy, and how do you what do you believe that strategy should consist of. Well,

it's both economic and it's military. And I participated something called the China Task Force last year that Kevin McCarthy set up. It was supposed to be by Parson in the beginning, and then Pelosi pulled the Democrats off of it because it was before election day and they didn't want to appear like they were on the same side of a big issue with Trump because Trump was I continue to argue, I'll always maintain it's the first president that has stood up to China and identified China as

a threat. In fact, the first thing that President Trump did when he came to office was rewrite the National Security the National Defense Strategy, the names China and Russia as as great great power competition that we need to divert away from the Middle East and focus more on great power competition with China and Russia. China being the greatestisential threat that we face economically and militarily. So, but

there's a lot that goes into that. I mean, if we were serious about combating the China threat, we would unwind the massive amount of investments coming from Wall Street, from from pensions, pension dollars from almost every state in the country, and from the federal government that go to fund our greatest adversary, China's military build up of ships and fighter planes, of sophisticated weapons and technologies that are being funded by through through a funnel through through the

Wall Street types I mean, that's one way that we hold China accountable. You won't find that anywhere in the so called Endless Frontier Act or the man subspending boondoggle of the Research Funding Bill. That's that's not designed to

do anything to hold them accountable. So that that's one area that we've been focused on a Republican study Committee in my office for a couple of years, sort of turning off the spicket of money that goes from the United States, from taxpayer dollars from pigeons through Wall Street

to Wall Street's biggest friend in China. If you want to if you want to hold if you want to block China's rise, that's that's the first place to go before we get to sort of the domestic policies that I want to touch on on the other side, I think it's worth stating that, in my view, at least, the living representation of the way that our political class has been compromised with respect to communist China, and it also impacts as you speak about the investment aspect of things.

The living personification of the problem is Diane Feinstein, Senator from California, and I wrote at length several years back and have continued to write about her family's own personal interest with respect to communist China and the soft policies that she's promoted throughout her entire career in Washington There, and of course that it was the alleged spy in

her office. And I believe you were the only member of the House that actually put out questions regarding who this individual in that office was and what the implications were. Did you ever get a substantial response, a response that was satisfactory on that question. Yeah, of course not. And I'm embarrassed that we didn't continue to fight for those types of answers. I mean we did, We kept reaching out and and I don't think that you or any of your listeners would be surprised to know that we

never received any response. In Diane Feinstein's still United States Senator today. So what we do know is that for twenty years she had a high ranking member of her staff who was a Chinese. A spark to counse is this is, this is why the China threat is so realist right in front of us. I mean, I could go on and on with other examples of the Chinese Communist Party's tentacles that are spread all over places like Capitol Hill, Silicon Valley, Wall Street through through their United

Front efforts. But the fact that Diane Feinstein was never how held accountable or forced to answer for for keeping a spy on her staff, a Chinese Communist Party spy, should tell you should make everyone scratch their head at least well more with Congressman Jim Banks right after this quick break, welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexton, and we were talking with Congressman Jim Banks before the break about US China policy,

and now I want to transition to domestic policy. You recently wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland raising what you believe to be or reach, the implication being that there's disparate treatment between the law enforcement's efforts to pursue those associated with the events at the Capitol on January sixth versus those who participated in the sixteen nineteen riots of last summer. What do you hope to achieve from that way? And do you believe there's disparate treatment there? Well,

obviously there is. I mean, as I pointed out in the letter been to Merrick Garland, if you if you just compare the number of charges and the number of charges that were dropped between the Portland Riders and the January six riders. I mean, it sort of tells a pretty significant story. I mean, three hundred times more often that charges were dropped against the Portland Riders then against

the Capitol Writers. So check this out. So Garland charged eighty six Portland Riders and he dropped fifty eight out of the eighty six cases. That's about sixty percent of the cases that he dropped against the Portland Rioters. But if you if you look at the four hundred and sixty five cases that Garland charged against the Capitol Writers, He's only dropped in one case, So that's about point

two percent. So you do the math and you and you realize that there is there really is a different set of rules, a different set of standards in both of these cases. That's not the itemize the rioters on January sixth. I'm not advocating the charges to be dropped for either one of them, but it's pretty clear that the department that Joe Biden's Department of Justice cares not at all about about the rioters from last summer. In the sixteen nineteen riots. But they've they're focusing all of

their resources and attention somewhere else. I think if you if you draw that comparison, it's a pretty powerful statement that the American people deserve to know. January sixth is cited as one of the events that underpins the administration's new Countering Domestic Terror strategy, which I think the Department of Homeland Security has actually called for a whole of society efforts. I'm not sure they've called for a whole of society efforts to counter the Chinese Communist Party, but

that's neither here nor there. There's a really troubling aspect. I mean, there are many troubling aspects of that document, but I want to read part of it and get your take on it. The document reads, in part, tackling the threat posed by domestic terrorism over the long term demand substantial efforts to confront the racism that feeds into aspects of that threat. We are therefore prioritizing efforts to ensure that every component of the government has a role

to play in rooting out racism and advancing equity. So is this just a backdoor Let's impose effectively critical race theory on the country via government under the guise of national security, And why should we be confident that our rights are going to be protected with this administration executing

this strategy. Well, you can't be confident of that. You can't be confident that Joe Biden's Department of Justice can be can be trusted at all to impartially define what domestic terrorism means, because to them, it means that you supported Donald Trump. It means that you that you have that views that are on the right and not on the left. And that's the that's the bottom line here. I mean, this is basically, if you think about it's basically what the Biden administration is rolling out of this

domestic terrorism strategy. It's basically like the Patriot Act, except for instead of targeting foreign terrorists, it targets American citizens. And it's sort of ironic because if you remember, the left was always up in arms about how the Patriot Act would violate foreigners civil liberties, like as if that

was a thing. But they have no issue with violating Americans constitutional rights or civil liberties as they as they've rolled out, which is why this is all targeting Trump supporters, and that That's why the letter that I wrote to Meeric Garland about the I mean clearly, clearly the dropping all those charges for against Portland rioters, for those on the left, but not but the disparity for what for those who were charged on January six. I mean, you

see the difference in their approach. This is all about targeting Trump supporters, and that that's something that I know. I know it is concerning, but it should be concerning to any American on the center right, which is the majority of the country. Conisman Jim Banks, Republican from Indiana and chairman of the Republican Study Committee, Thanks so much for coming on the program today. Really appreciate it. Great to be with you. This is the Fuck Sexton Show Podcast.

Join the conversation and message buck on Facebook, Instagram, or email Team Bucket. iHeartMedia dot com. He may read it on the show. Why are you confidence whole? Change his behavior? Mister president, I'm not change what are you doing? So? I said it was confidence six. That's kind It's great, I said, we will change your behavior. Is the rest of the world reacts to their name adminishes experience of

the world. I'm not confident of anything. I'm just stating the fact forgetting his past behavior has not changed, and is that prest conference After sitting down for several hours, he denied any involvement in cyberd He dail played human rights abuses, even produced to say a lesson of all his name. So how does that account to a constructive meeting as president? I don't understand that it's just someone

with ve who are we come on? Pretty much? I'll take your questions, and as usual, folks, they gave me a list of the people I'm going to call on, so Jonathan associated Press, Well, those were some of the sounds of Joe Biden's excellent adventure over to Europe for the G seven and then as much bandied about meeting

with a Russian president, Vladimir Putin. And someone has been keenly attuned to everything going on overseas and including on issues much bigger than this most recent trip is Christian Witten. He's senior Fellow for Strategy and Trade at the Center for the National Interest, and it served as a senior advisor as well in the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations. Christian joins us, now, thanks so much for coming on the program. Great to be here, Ben. Thanks.

So let's start with this set aside all of the optics of and really, in my opinion, sort of the pathetic questions about who should speak first, and you know, all of the kind of back and forth interplay between Puddin and Biden, which, if America was in a strong position, would be asking about the optics, they'd be talking about

the substance, substantive way. Did anything change with respect to US Russia relations as a consequence of the trip, and what were your takeaways from the G seven as well? I'd say probably not. You know, there are two things that came out of it was a working group on cyber attacks and the agreement to send ambassadors back to each country. John Sullivan, or ambassador, was back in the United States after Putin recalled his ambassador after Biden flippantly

called Putin the killer. So they're sending him back, but it's up to each country to decide whether that's real or not. Will those ambassadors have access to a foreign minister in Russia, the Secretary of State here, or if need be, the head of government, or are they just going to go and preside over irrelevant bureaucracies as they did before? They put the working group on cyber attacks.

I have very low expectations for that. You know, it's a very important issue, but it's one that Biden has already fumbled early in his administration, and he, his National Security advisor others said basically, we were going to retaliate in cyberspace, have a cyber counter attack for the solar winds hack in the United States that has been attributed to Russia. Well that never came. I mean the National Security Advisor Sullivan said there would be seen and unseen consequences.

Well the consequences were so unseen that no discerned them anywhere. So not high expectations. They give some credit for at least trying to restore some relations with Russia after the Democrats spent the last five years trying to tank them successfully. And then on the G seven, I thought that was just a complete joke. The G seven itself is obsolete. It's the economic powers of the world as they appeared

in the mid nineteen seventies. I mean, Italy and Canada are really going to throw their economic weight around and make a difference in the world. And if you just juxtaposed people like Jijin King the strong man in China.

Are Putent, who has been on the job for twenty years, is at the top of this game, knows what he's doing, compared to Boris Johnson fist bumping Trudeau, the sock model turned Prime Minister of Canada, and Bojo up there with President Biden saying that we're going to build back better and greener and more feminine and more gender neutral. It's just a joke that the idea that these people are

in charge of our fate is just very depressing. Yeah, I think it's a perfect representation of the sort of decadent and decaying West that are purported leaders are overseeing. It doesn't have to be that way, but of course ideas have consequences. My take, and I'm curious what you think about this, is that the G seven was in effect and really the whole trip when you look at the NATO communicate as well, that was put out which we talked about on this program on a previous day

this week, which has a couple of lines regarding China. Basically, the G seven was a pep rally for communist China. If we're going to go down the Enviro radicalism agenda, hamstring areomy, of course, outsourced European energy to Russia and beyond. China stands to be one of the greatest beneficiaries of America being back so called that is back to what I would term an America last strategy policy. I wonder

what your take is on that. You're right, you know, the G seven and NATO both padded themselves on the back for including statements about China. You know, when has a statement from a G seven ever made a difference in the real world. It's sort of sad. You have diplomats from all these countries, different ministries who travel around

the world. It's a whole lot of diplo tourism, but they work on changing colons, the semi colons, and words going and words go out of these enormously long statements, and you're called. During the Trump administration, not having one of these statements was seen as some huge transgression, like, you know, will the sun come up tomorrow because we

don't have a statement from the G seven. I think as soon as the ink dry on these things, as soon as the door was closed on Air Force seven, the G seven statement was gone, forgotten, irrelevant, And the same with NATO. NATO it seems basically to have become a mechanism. I mean, it's always a mechanism to keep the Americans in, as it was called, Americans in, the Russians out, the Germans down. That mission became obsolete in nineteen ninety one with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I mean, will this make any difference in the real world. Are we going to see France's aircraft carrier applying the waters of the Western Pacific to give us some relief for it to butcherous American power? It just seems extremely unlikely. In the meanwhile, NATO, what does it do. It seems to continually draw in our power. I mean, we have thirty five thousand, five hundred troops in Germany, Wish armies

between Russia in Germany. It's just this tremendous waste of money, but I think distracts us from the real mission at hand with China. Yeah, and to segue a little bit further into China, I think it's always worth remembering that the Obama Biden ad Ministry had an agreement a sort of no cyber warfare pact with General Secretary she and that pack of course, was not worth the paper it was printed on. So why we would think that Vladimir Putin would be any more respectful of whatever comes out

of a strategic dialogue. I think we should be beyond skeptical of it. And you've been writing and speaking often about the Chinese Communist Party is Malian efforts worldwide, including in Hong Kong. I believe you had a substack post today on what's going on with respect to Apple Daily, a news periodical in Hong Kong, and efforts to persecute and prosecute its owner as well. Tell us a little

bit about that and why it's relevant for everyday Americans. Well, it speaks to the point that you just can't trust China on an agreement, whether it's that twenty fifteen agreement not to attack us in cyberspace, for the agreement they had with the Brits that was enrolled at the United Nations to respect Hong Kong's autonomy and the freedoms that they had under the British, including freedom of the press.

With Apple Daily, which is basically like the New York Post of Hong Kong, very pro democracy, boisterous tabloidy, but also serious news and very starting support from the people of Hong Kong and a very profitable business. Heretofore, that is something that the Chinese wanted to do away with, so they have under this sony national security law charged Jimmy Lay, the publisher. Jimmy has been through this before

with the Chinese. He arrived in Hong Kong as a poor kid, basically was just a shirt on his back. He made it and got rich in men's apparel with Georgiano, sided with the students in Cenim and Square in nineteen eighty nine and was pushed out of his business as a result of that. Then became a huge success and entirely different business media and is now you know, basically being being pushed out of that. And it's not just him.

It's overnight this morning Hong Kong Time, the Chinese rounded up all of the top editorial staff of Apple Daily. So it really is a strong move against the free

press there. And it was just laughing. City Bank upgraded HSBC recently saying they have great prospects for wealth management in Hong Kong, and I think this is City Bank just covering its own decision to go very deep in Hong Kong, hiring thousands of bankers there now, And that's a ludicrous decision because anyone who can move money out of Hong Kong's it's not a torrent, but it's a

steady drip. And as far as wealth management on the mainland, no one on the mainland who's using City Bank or HSBC. But I think there's a naive to tay about how this movement against freedom is somehow going to be just limited to the elected pandemocrats in Hong Kong or the pro democracy media. It's going to be bigger than that. If you're an equity analyst and you write something bad about the state owned enterprise on the mainland, how do you know these guys aren't going to come a knocket.

I think the chances are they probably will. That economic freedom is also deteriorating rapidly in Hong Kong. Got just about a minute and a half before we have to seek a quick break and before we get there. If you could summarize it, what do you make of President Biden's China policy to date and the personnel he's selected to implement and executing. It's a mixed bag so far.

I don't think we really know that China policy. You know, it's sort of described that you have super doves like John Kerry the climates are who eventually is going to want some deal of the century on climate out of China. And will you know, they say ludicrous things like climate change is a national security issue. No, no, no, it isn't. It just isn't. But the idea there is that you will basically subsume all other issues beneath below climate change.

You know, on the flip side, you have Kurt Campbell, who is a long time Democrat but from the Hillary Clinton wing of the party, considered more of a hawk. I think the jury's out on that. Over at USTR, Katherine Tie at Taiwan, he's American who is I think the eyes wide open. And it's very interesting so far, almost all across the Biden administration they want to pretend like twenty sixteen that never happened, the Trump administration didn't occur.

With China policy, they're not quite willing to do that yet. But we haven't really seen sort of the coherent policy on trade in defense, and we certainly haven't seen any defense increase in naval aviation histill nuclear presence in the Pacific. To follow some of the rhetoric from both parties of Arshington, and I do think it's worth noting on that point about maintaining many of the Trump administration's policies that when I interviewed President Trump last week, he noted that Biden

can't take the tariffs off from China. They're too politically popular and they're too effective. So it's interesting how he was boxed in certain of these areas. We're speaking with Christian Witten, Senior Fellow for Strategy and Trade at the Center for the National Interest and wove more with him right after a quick break. You're listening to the Buck Sexton Shoe podcast. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeart Brade Eat or wherever you get your podcasts.

Back with Christian Widden here on the Buck Sexton Show.

Van weine Garden in for Buck Sexton, and before the break, we're talking about US China policy, and obviously something that ought to loom hugely bigly over US China policy are the origins of the coronavirus and ultimately what the response is and really what the response should be, regardless of whether or not it came from a wet market, which I think is pretty clear is becoming less and less legitimate and less and less viable, or it was a lab leak, and whether or not that lab leak, whether

or not it was intentional or unintentional with respect to the leak of the pandemic out of that U Hunt Institute of Virology, one question that I have is how could we possibly find any smoking guns now? And should it really matter either way whether we find those smoking guns given China's acts subsequent to the spread of the virus,

then I think it'll be very difficult. Now we have an intelligence bureau for steed, that costs US eighty billion dollars a year, who you know, really ought to be able to get to the bottom of this, you'd think with their mass combination of signals intelligence and human intelligence, which I'm dubious of as far as the quality of what they may have um So hopefully we can get more information that's available, but you're right, the Chinese aren't going to make it easy likely, as you also I

think implied that is a very strong symbol and signal of guilt. After all, if this really was something that happened naturally, or even if it was just negligence, as opposed to crimes of commission that had leaked, the Chinese would have an interest in making that known, because if it's the alternative, then I mean they're they're they're on

the hook potentially for damages that result from this. But if they were innocent, they would be making the staff available, they would be making the medical records of the people who became sick in late twenty twenty excuse me, in late twenty nineteen available, And they haven't done any of that.

They've done quite the opposite. In fact, one person who filed a patent for a coronavirus vaccine who worked at this lab died under very mysterious circumstances didn't die from COVID nineteen incidentally, so you know the implication he was bumped off by the Chinese. You know. Basically, I think the onus of proof is on China to show where this came from, and the assumption is that it came

from them otherwise. But I think many in the West are just just hesitant because they're frankly afraid to understand and to pursue where that conclusion would go, which is that China owes the world and owes us trillions and trillions of dollars of compensation, and given the ambiguity that the intelligence community typically gives when asked for an assessment on something as major as this, I mean, should we have any confidence that punting to the ICA wasn't anything

but a political decision to take it sort of out of the hands of Joe Biden essentially? Right, Well, it was, and partly it was a political decision by Biden. You're right, because Pompeo, terms Secretary of State, had an investigation. I'm just going you know, State issued a grant from the NIH too, this Wuhan Institute. State had a diplomat go and take a look around. He was not impressed by the security procedures and sent a cable back to main

State in twenty eighteen to that effect. But Biden put the kibosh on that investigation, and the political blowback from that is why he turned it over to the intelligence bureaucracy. You're right, you know, I think Biden even already telegraphed when he announced this that some agencies think one thing. Some agencies searched together with you know, so called moderate confidence, which means they're guessing it's sad that our intelligence gacacy

is is this ineffective on something so important? But it goes back to this deep state, this intelligence garacacy. It's chief virtue, it's chief capability is covering its own But rather than helping the president do his job, and rather than getting the truth out to the American people in thirty seconds. And this is a tough one to do

in that short period of time. But is there any alternative ultimately to decoupling from China, at least in every strategically significant area, if we are to ultimately not become a vassal of communist China or at least continue to be compromised to devastating effect. I think not. I think we need to choke off technology, know how, in capital. This is the chief threats in the world today. You know, Russia dous things we don't like, and certainly Iran is

a very serious throat in the broader Middle East. But China is the big tahuna. It's the chief competitor economic model to ours and in political model, and it's great at political warfare, economic warfare. We don't know about military warfare, but they're sertainly good at buying everything that money can buy, so I think you're right. The implication is that we have to get much more serious about the Christian Thanks so much for coming on the program. Really appreciate it,

my pleasure. Thank you, and well Moore right after this, we're happy to have abandoned in Florida. It's not going to be allowed in Florida classrooms. Spending tax dollars to teach kids that America is a rotten place is absolutely unacceptable. If you'll look at how some of this stuff manifests

itself in classrooms that we have seen examples of. It's not a conspiracy theory, dividing kids based on race, trying to say some are oppressors and some are oppress based on race, attacking law enforcement and saying law enforcement attack people based on race, those things are poison. That is

not what we should be doing. What we should be doing is solid curriculum based on the actual facts of American history and teaching kids what it means to be an American and part of what it means to be an American as we judge people not on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character. That was Governor Ronda Santis, Republican from Florida speaking about critical race theory and its infiltration of classrooms around the country. And you can't really put it much better than that

taxpayer funded anti americanism is intolerable. Should be roundly rejected by everyone, as should the idea that content of character should not trump anything else, including color of skin. And this goes back to my running theme of excellence versus mediocrity. If you want mediocrity, place anything but content of character first.

But really, the racialists, the racial Marxists, the imbibers of critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion, I mean the true believers, the ideoogs here, they fundamentally reject the Martin Luther King ethos of content of character over color of skin. And we could talk about this in the abstract, and with our next guest, we will talk at length about what is going on in our school is what

these ideologies are actually all about. How conservatives, patriots, traditional Americans, anyone who's a gas at what they're witnessing in our schools can go about combatting them practically. There's a story that caught my eye this week on a micro level that just speaks to the effects of the brainwashing that we've seen, and it comes from teachers, and of course the teachers are far more radical than the parents on

the average. So you've got that inbuilt disadvantage in academia of academics being disproportionately leftist, or at least and not only disproportionately leftist, but then having a percentage a minority of those disproportionate leftists who are really radically leftists. There's an article at the Post millennial white Spanish teacher cancels herself because quote unquote white isn't right. Subtitle dismantling white supremacy in society looks like dismantling in my heart. First

it means I'm not going to teach Spanish. Accountability is ongoing because there is not end to the process. So this teacher, during what can only be described as a struggle session there's actually a women in Gender Studies conference for professors. Her name is Jessica Bridges, shared that she stopped teaching Spanish to K through twelve students because it wasn't right for a white woman to teach Spanish. I guess that's cultural appropriation. But stop right there for a second.

What the hell it does it matter? Your skin color, your background, or anything else. If you are a competent teacher, shouldn't our schools be about getting the best education, which means not only learning a non Marxian version of history, but learning how to think. Clearly, the leftist don't believe that they want you to think what they want you to think, and they don't want you to have their

critical reasoning skills to see right through it. This article goes on to say that this teacher had this revelation after taking a course she found on Instagram about how to become a better white ally and anti racist co conspirator. And this is the language that the left speaks. They talk about toxic word and you're allowed to fight toxic if not harmful, actually harmful words with actual violence justifiable. They talk about being an ally. The way to be an ally to a person is to treat them as

a human being, regardless of identity. Explicitly, the left needs to bake identity in everything because they need to pit us against each other because that's part of their political strategy. And at the end of the day, that's what this is really all about. What is CRT. It's not just about brandwashing kids, demoralizing generation, turning kids against their parents and their country, and basically, in effect a revolution of the mind that will lead to a revolution in the country. Ultimately,

it's about tearing us apart at the seams. It's about indoctrination and creating an army of social justice warriors in perpetuity that gets worse every single generation. And it has gotten works every single generation because what was considered incredibly radical forty years ago then becomes, you know, thirty years ago, the norm, and it continues on and on. It's only

accelerating with social media. So our next guest will take this micro example and move to the macro of what is CRT and diversity, equity inclusion all about how do you combat it? And then after that we'll talk about another area of concentrated woke power in big tech with

Rachel Bovard. We're back right after this. When we look at what these laws are doing, you know a lot of people kind of scoffed at them when you read the language of them, they appear very silly, But when you think about what this is actually trying to do, we know that it is narrative that allows us to enact really dangerous policies. It is narrative that allows citizens

to kind of accept these erosions of civil rights. So it's not incidental that the same states that are introducing these anti critical race theory, anti sixteen nineteen project laws are also introducing voter suppression laws. These things are going

hand in hand. Well, you just heard the dulcet tones of Nicole Hannah Jones, creator of the Insidious sixteen nineteen Project, talking with Joy Read and trying to equate the efforts to root outtical race theory in schools across this country and anti American critical race theory with the broader efforts to quote unquote suppress the vote, or as we talked about yesterday, Stacy Abrams saying, voter integrity efforts are part

of the rolling insurrection. So this is the state of rhetoric on the left today, and I'm pleased to be joined by someone who's countering that rhetoric and the policies as well. Professor Scott Jenner. He is the professor of political science at Boise State and a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute, where phot disclosure, I too, am a fellow and do some work as well. He's also the author of the book The Recovery of Family Life, Exposing

the limits of modern ideologies. Scott, thanks so much for coming on the program today. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, pleasure to have you. And let's start right there with the left's recent freak out about and this is in the media and beyond as well academics as well. This freak out over conservatives having the goal to seek to educate, legislate critical race theory out of our public school is. What do you

make of that freak out? Well, I mean, it seems like they're really trying to just make it the official ideology of the country, and any effort to fight against social justice ideology, critical race theory, any kind of critical theory is trying to be labeled as an Americans as a basis for hate speech and canceling those people. So it's all the more important to really fight back against it because they're trying to rule it out as a legitimate position in politics. And it is a legitimate position

in politics, darn't it. I Mean, the idea that all disparities between all groups are traceable to some sort of systematic discrimination is just bunk. And if we can't say that it's bunk and a disgusting line meant to silence us, then we're really in position where we, you know, we can't govern ourselves and we have to submit. So it looks to me like part of a long term strategy to at a new ideology governing the country and everyone

to submit to it. I think the simplest summary of what critical race theory is essentially racial Marxism, not even racialists, or you could call it racist Marxism, racial Marxism, or racialist Marxism. But you come at this from the perspective of an academic. What's your best explanation as to what CRT consists of and what does it am ultimately to achieve. I mean, I think CRT is part of a larger

movement that's been going on for about fifty years. It's a late child of multiculturalism, and it's an attempt to try to explain differences between groups in terms of discrimination, not in terms of group difference. So it began in the late sixties with multicultural education and the attempt to stop assimilation, to stop holding all groups to the same standards of behavior, and to start respecting what it's called

cultural difference. Some groups don't achieve as well in school, we're not supposed to try to raise them to the level of achievement, but rather to respect their difference. And you know that ends up having this kind of paternalistic aspect to it, but it also ends up taking the standard that we have used as a country and undermining

it or making it not a standard. And so I just look at critical race theory as totally in line with this long line of ideological positions that include multiculturalism, affirmative action, set asides as policies, but just the latest flower of it. The difference in critical race theory seems to be that they really don't believe that progress can

be made on any of these avenues. It's just a permanent struggle between groups, and it's not necessary to stigmatize one group in order to so that it will lose its confidence so that a different group can rule and set set the tone. And so critical race here, I think adds to the idea that all discrimination is traced,

all disparities are traceable to discrimination. With this idea that no progress can be made on it, and that different different groups in the case in our case, I think it means blacks and women need the rule, and whites and men need to submit to that rule. And so so I think it's not didn't just come out of nowhere. It's been growing for a long time, but it's just added certain accesses over the course of the last few years.

And it's tactically brilliant to try to cover the agenda that you always wanted with the patna of sort of racial justice and defending those who are perceived to be the underdog or treated as the underdog, but in case a perpetual underdog that can only be helped through the implementation of these sorts of policies. I mean, it's technically very smart. And you've sort of, in your own wife fought fire with fire. What have you been aiming to

do to combat CRT in your home state of Idaho. Well, I'm not acting as a professor at Boise State, but

rather just as a citizen. We've tried to write some reports on how far the ideology of critical theory, or social justice as we call it, has penetrated our universities and here with another group called the Ido Freedom Foundation, I have helped to write a couple of reports, one on Boise State University and another on Idaho University, Idaho, about how the structure of diversity, inclusion and equity is beginning to be built and to infiltrate all of the

policies at the school. We're not as far built out as other schools like Berkeley or Ohio State, but we're still in the earth early stages of the building what we call the adolescence of the of the attempt to build a structure on the university. And this is happening, you know, under the nose of the legislature. No one knows that it's happening. It's it's not really under the purview of the legislature normally to pay attention to these things.

But if we think that this ideology is something that really undermines the ability for us to have a common good and for us to have representative government and for all groups to thrive in the United States, it needs to be you know, it needs to be rooted out or prevented from taking over our public institutions. So here in Idaho, you know, with the help somewhat of our reports, there have been laws that are passed that prevent indoctrination

on the basis of the social justice ideology. And also there's been some defunding of the universities that has absolute cuts in their budgets from the state and all and in the name of this, because this is being built, the legislature has cut the budget. And you know, I think that's one of the only ways that only tools that a legislature has to do something about this, and here in Idaho at least some of the legislators have

found it necessary to start using that tool. And I take it the rationale for developing those reports was to just first get the basic facts of how widespread these efforts are, how deep they go, to sort of quantify and qualify the problem before using whatever remedies necessary to overcome that problem. Yes, I mean that's exactly the rationale. And the places we looked in the university are, for instance, what are the strategic plans in the university say about

their efforts to build diversity, equity and inclusion infrastructure. Who have they hired to build it, What kinds of policies have they adopted as they've attempted to build out the infrastructure, What kinds of policies when it comes to hiring or contracts at the university, grant or free speech policies, for instance, bias response teams and things on campus. How far has it infiltrated the curriculum, the general ed which departments are

really taken over by this social justice ideology? How is it infiltrated into student life and residence halls? Is it the basis for hiring residence hall directors? How does it affect university programming? I mean, who has a chance to

overlook all of those things? So our reports just encapsulated all of those aspects into one tight, little twenty four page document and well sourced here in Idaho, and it's being you know, it's being reproduced in other states as people have seen the importance of having a good factual basis for understanding what is going on in universities. Other states have approached us to write such report. And I think it's a good basis, a factual basis from which

good criticisms of universities can be made. What are the lessons from your experiences thus far for the rest of the country, if you're going to encapsulate them, well, I mean, first of all, it's difficult, I think to root out something, it's easier to stop it from growing. That legislators can affect the behavior of universities if they use the tools that they have at their disposal, the most important of

which are the levers of budget. Not so much, I think the regulation of universities, which universities can get around by just naming things differently or such. You have to make it so that universities don't want to do this or pay a price if they do it, and so I think those are important lessons. Also, I think it's crucial informed legislators do not have tons of time to

do this themselves. Just a concentrated effort to provide a systematic account, well sourced account of what's going on on universities can have an effect on how legislation there's view the public institutions. And I guess the fourth thing I would say is that it's also true that state boards are pretty useless when it comes to overseeing universities because state boards themselves are pretty much captured by the education establishment.

In any particular place, they come from the education establishment and they're there to protect it. So really only political institutions can have an effect, and those political institutions are the executive and the legislature. It's probably best to have executive leadership. This would be a fifth point instead of

legislative leadership. But in the absence of executive leadership, and I don't think we have effective executive leadership here in Idaho, the legislature can you can step in and at least prevent budgets from passing, and that only requires half of a bicameral legislature. They're prevented from going forward. So if there's a conservative House, the Conservative House can stop things from happening. And that's what happened here. Well more with

Professor Scott Yenner. Right after a quick break, Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton, and we're talking with Professor Scott Yenner. He teaches political science at Boise State and he's a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute, where I too am a fellow and the author recently of the book The Recovery of Family Life,

Exposing the limits of modern ideologies. And before that break, we were talking about critical race theory and they're sort of an related area in the sort of cult of wokedom taking over, of course, like every bad idea starts in the schools, but then takes over every other aspect of our culture and society, obviously our corporate boardrooms and beyond.

And that's the notion of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And you've written at some length about what these words actually mean translated into woke speak, what our diversity, equity and inclusion really about. Yeah, I mean, I try to provide just very simple translation of these words. Equity is the idea that each group should be represented in its population population proportion in each institution. So since blacks make up thirteen percent of the population, they should be thirteen percent

of engineering students. Whites are fifty five percent of the population, they should make up fifty five percent of the engineering students. I don't know if that number is right, but I know thirteen percent is right. So equity is proportionality, Diversity is equity is a step forward. Diversity. Diversity is the values of the university. We are made so that underrepresented minorities can succeed and set the tone. And you can never have quite an set the tone and the forms

of rule on the university. And then include the pleas that are necessary in order for diversity to happen. So things like going after what is called unconscious bias, offering training, trying to solicit more community partnerships with left wing groups will help diversify the university. That as make the forms and rule of those underrepresented minorities more and ever more the ruling doctrine of whatever institution you're talking about. So,

equity is proportionality, inclusion. Our policies to be friendly to diversity. Diversity is underrepresented groups set a tone and rules in the institution. So what is your best explanation If a friend or colleague comes to you and says, what's your beef with diversity, equity and inclusion? Are you some kind of racist and bigot? How do you respond to them? Give us some news you can use here? Yeah, I mean I think that I would respond with things like this.

That is, if we're going to rule ourselves as a people, we can't have administrative agencies setting the rules. The people need to speak that there is no way that all of the differences between groups are traceable to discrimination. The groups are different. Men and women have different values, Blacks and whites have different values and customs. So we should

expect there to be differences between the groups. So the whole project of trying to equalize according to group outcomes is a preposterous one given what we know about the differences in groups. That it's impossible to get from critical race theory or social justice ideology to the point where all citizens are welcomed equally in a political community and can be friends with one another. The ideology itself is corrosive to civic friendship. It creates suspicion, it creates anger

and resentment in all of the groups. And when you have a country that is defined by those things, that country will not be able to act. It will not be able to act on the world stage, it will not be able to act internally, and will end up being governed by unaccountable bureaucrats who who are imposing some sort of foreign vision on our society. So I think it's bad for republican government. I think it's bad for

common citizenship and bad for national action. And it's based on a lie about the nature of group outcomes, and of course to execute it, and that's all, you know, not that big a deal, And of course to execute it, and it's implicit in your answer, but you have to impose totalitarianism essentially on the country, leaving aside that the country would collapse by tearing itself apart in the interim, as the totalitarianism is being imposed upon the country a

real quick in thirty seconds or so, can you burn down the strawman argument being raised about how taking on CRT in schools as an attack on academic freedom. Yeah, I mean the purpose of academic freedom is to serve the common good. If there is an ideology that undermines the common good, like CRT, it's crucial to show that

there is a limit to academic freedom. Academic freedom is only valued because it serves the common good, and if we have certain kinds of ideologies that undermine it, academic freedom must at some point give way to a concern that the public has to make sure that its institutions actually serve the common good. We've been speaking with Professor Scott Jenner of Boise State, where he teaches political science. He's also Washington Fellow at the Cremin Institute. Thank you

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Buck dot com to see how it works. Is it done for you Buck dot com? Today? You will not be sorry. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton. And while we've covered a lot this week in the way of the woke takeover of pretty much every aspect of our society, I guess we've gone a little bit soft so far on big tech. We haven't given it its due yet.

And someone who's been keenly focused on the ways in which concentrated private power in the way of big tech, which I've called sort of an auxiliary of the administrative state being used hand in hand with the federal government at times, and also of course federal officials cajoling big tech to do its bidding with respect to speech. It does not like someone who's been keenly focused on these issues, in particular again that concentration of power in the public

and private spheres, is Rachel Bovard. She's senior director of Policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute, formerly served in roles under the likes of Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee. She's a senior tech columnist at the Federalists, and we'll talk about one of her recent articles there in just

a second. And also, I should say a co panelist of mine on the weekly show the nat Con Squad, which is a project of the Edmund Burke Foundation, and I urge everyone to check that out for all the latest and greatest and policy politics and ideas in this sort of new national conservatism movement. Rachel, thanks so much for coming on the program today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Sure. So first let's do some level setting here.

You've been writing at length about antitrust. You had a great peace in the American Conservative which sort of goes into in part practically how antitrust ought to be wielded given the concentrated power in big tech and elsewhere, but also that it really is a conservative policy at core. So what are the conservative underpinnings of antitrust rightly used?

So our antitrust statutes in America are over a century old, and they grew out of this you know, shared concern for concentrated power in the market, you know, born out of this idea that it's you know, to have a free market that works, you know, it has to be vigilantly protected. And that was really a conservative impulse. You know.

John Sherman, the Senator who gave his name actually to the founding anti trust lawsuit or grounding Antstrius Statute, was a Republican signed by Benjamin Harrison, also a Republican president, and it really grew out of this classical liberal traditional conservative tradition which says, look concentrated power wherever it exists, can be a threat to liberty. I went into a recent essay I wrote into sort of the thinking of

Friedrich Hyak around this concept. And you know, we usually think of Hyaks as the great champion of the unfettered marketplace, but even Hyak was very aware that, you know, a concentrated corporate power, particularly when it fused with government power, could be a tremendous threat. And you know, that was the fascism that he fled from, you know, in Europe at the dawn of World War two. So there really is a conservative impulse, I think, to be wary of

concentrated power wherever it resides. And that was initially how conservative's approach to anti trust. You know, that changed over time as progressives began to use antitrust to sort of

impose their own values on the market. The jurisprudence around how anti trust was interpreted began to sort of swing in all kind of ideological directions, and so you had conservatives that said, look, antitrust needs an anchoror it needs something that makes a coherent and so that was the birth of the consumer Welfare Standard, which fuses sort of

economic metrics around how anti trust should be enforced. So it says, you know, enforcers should look at things like our prices changing, how is innovation doing, Is it being harmed, Is you know, quality of goods being harmed? Consumers have adequate choice in the market. So it's a framework that

makes sense. But I think over time, you know, has become so narrowed as to be interpreted as just this exclusive focus on price, and that's really diminished the role of antitrust because it becomes so difficult to even enforce

anti trust in the marketplace as it exists. So I think some conservatives are now waking up to the fact that hey, maybe we should broaden the mandate back to that original aperture that the consumer Welfare Standard had when it was implemented in the eighties and late seventies and go back to that interpretation. But as you might imagine, there's a pretty big establishment consensus built up around the way things that are currently being done. So there's a

lot of debate and dissent around this idea. Yeah, So with respect to that establishment consensus versus growing on the left and right and really generally on the more ideological members of Congress on either side, and beyond Congress, as well, one of the cynic might say, well, are politicians leveraging the big tech issue essentially to extort these companies into giving them paying them more money for their campaigns, increasing

contributions to pay for the protection of the federal government, or do you think that there's been a genuine shift among our legislators. So, of course, you know, there's always a level of cynicism, I think in politics, but I do think, you know, there is a genuine effort among some Republican lawmakers to actually look at this problem as it exists, not even just in the big tech space,

but across the economy at large. It was really fascinating to watch last week when Senator Mike Lee, former boss of mine but also very well known, you know, with the libertarian in the sort of more libertarian leaning legal movement itself, he even acknowledged, you know that across the economy, it's possible that's you know, our anti trust enforcement enforcement isn't working. And again this goes back to this idea.

You know, I think oftentimes people on the right unfairly and perhaps you know, with an agenda, conflate anti trust enforcement with regulation, but the two are very very distinct. And I think Senator Lee makes this distinction well anti trust enforcement his law enforcement right, It's not illegal to be a monopoly, but it's illegal to be predatory. You know,

it's illegal to undercut competition in the marketplace. And if that's not being adequately policed, that's a problem because again, then you don't actually have the free market working as intended. So you know, even he I think, is acknowledging that there's the status quo is not working here, and that's really the debate to be had. You know. Of course, I'm sure there's there's people motivated by cynicism, but I would say, more than any other issue I've seen recently,

there is really a genuine effort to adjust this here. Yeah. And of course, and we've dowed into this on that con squad at length, there's ample legal and historical precedent for this. Justice Thomas has probably written the most succinctly and clearly sort of the reasons leading up towards maybe a potential rolling down the road that would justify treating, for example, big tech like under a common carrier a

sort of regime. And of course there's been a number of bills put up in Congress lately, and you've written about them at length. Tell us a little bit about the substance of the legislative proposals on the table and how it's relevant to the everyday lives of Americans. Yeah, so this is a really interesting development out of House Judiciary Committee run by Democrats, who have over the last year and a half embarked on this legislative investigation into Apple, Amazon, Google,

and Facebook. And they this resulted in like a six hundred page report on all of the areas in which Democrats, you know, found these companies to be acting in non competitive way. Days now, no Republican joined that report, although you did see the Republican ranking member of the Antitrust Subcommittee, Kent Buck, put out his own report saying, you know, I don't really agree with my Democratic callings on what they want to do, but I do think that there

are some issues here. There's definitely some flashing red lights. And as a result of that investigation, the Subcommittee's put out five legislative proposals. And this is a big deal because you know, for a long time, you know, all we saw from people concerned about big tech was sort of these hearings where members would go and yell about things or you know, letters, but no real substantive legislative effort.

And so I want to highlight it in that regard that this is this is a pretty big next step. And so these five different bills deal with different parts of the market that lawmakers feel big tech has been unfairly entrenched, and they really go into how big tech competes. So probably the two biggest proposals would that would really change how things work are One is a straight up

merger band, so specific to these big tech companies. You know, instead of the government having to prove that when they buy up their competitors, the government having to say, no, that's anti competitive, the presumption has flipped. The big tech companies would have to prove to the government that what they're doing is not anti competitive. And then the second big bill that I think would have really long ranging

effects is a structural separation about self preferencing. And this really gets at the idea that you know, Google can promote its own products and in its massive platform and downgrade its competitors. And you know that really is a problem when Google is the only game in town, right when Google filters information for ninety percent of the world. When they downgrade a competitor, it really sort of has

a large impact on their business. So those are the two really big bills that I think, of the five would have the longest ranging effects. You've written at Lance as well. We've got about a couple of minutes and then we'll be up against the commercial break. But you've written as well and certainly spoken about Facebook's oversight board. And you look at the composition of this I guess Supreme Court on Speech or sort of the anti Supreme

Court on speech in some respects. And you look at the composition and a disproportionate percentage of the members of Facebook, supposedly impartial and neutral objective a technocratic board, are not Americans. And of course the rest of the world has a very different standard in terms of free speech and conceptions of what is beyond the pale and what is acceptable in terms of the content of speech. Do you believe that essentially we are being subjected to, and are supposedly

free digital public square foreign conceptions of speech. I think that's exactly what the Facebook Oversight board is. You know, it's made up of largely foreign members, right, people who aren't raised in our speech traditions making decisions about what, how, you know, how speech should be carried out in America.

I think it's entirely inappropriate, particularly when you know Facebook oversight board has placed itself over and above the speech of democratically elected government officials, you know, President Trump being

probably the most famous example of this. I think it's highly inappropriate and really kind of has a chilling effect in our public square when you consider that Facebook, with its two point seven billion global users, really does not only represent a public square for voter engagement for many elected officials, but it's also a market access point for

millions of small businesses in America. So it's much much more than just a speech platform, and I think when it wields its power ideologically, it has a long ranging effect not only on the speech, but on the marketplace the marketplace as well. So we're going to take a a quick commercial break in just a second, but I think it's worth emphasizing a couple of things before you

were talking Rachel about the corporate wealth. The essentially lowest price is all that matters when it comes to anti trust, how it's been interpreted over time. But of course we've paid a substantial price for these falling costs, which is our privacy, our most personal information, and of course we've essentially sacrificed our right to free speech to save the

public square of free speech. And I think that that's something that's worth emphasizing every time that rationale comes up for not using anti trust in a prudent and measured and proper way given what we're facing today. This has been wagering in for Buck sexon well More with Rachel Bovard. Right after this, we're back with Rachel Bovard, senior director of Policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute, senior tech columnists

at the Federalist or I should know it. I'm a senior contributor as well, and someone who's worked under the likes of Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee, which have sort of become at least at the high level you would think kind of strange bedfellows at least Senator Lee with respect to the conversation today, which is using government power against concentrated corporate power, and I think it's worth noting, you know, sort of high level context of that conversation,

of course, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, whether it's in the public or private spheres. It's just human nature. And it's also worth noting that there's a difference between free enterprise and business and free enterprise and corporatism. And businesses start out small and grow as a consequence of an open and free marketplace. But as businesses grow bigger, of course, they always want to halt their competition, buy up their competition if they need to cement their place

as dominant powers. And so I think we always have to keep that in the back of our mind when we talk about how we think about protecting and preserving a true free marketplace versus protecting and preserving corporatist positions. I wonder if you had any thoughts on that sort

of deeper, more philosophical point. Yeah. I think this gets to the you know, intellectual sort of ideological positioning of the right over the last you know, thirty years years, because you know, as I referenced earlier, the conservative tradition and classical liberalism has always acknowledged that threats to liberty can reside in concentrated power wherever it is, right in

the corporate space or in the government. But over time, I think conservatives have come to believe that the only threat to liberty is in the government itself, and they've ignored this the free market, you know, and then they've just assumed everything is fine and then there's nothing to

see here. But I think what we're seeing now is that vigilance is required there as well, because I think, you know, especially when government policies are prioritizing certain things about business, because that's the real reality of the marketplace, right it reflects the policies that we are selves set for it. So when we talk about the tech companies, for instance, they often get, you know, well, why would

you interfere with a private business? These businesses benefit from tremendous government policy across the board, you know, the likes of which of Section two thirty for instance, which is its big carve out a big immunity from liability, which it's tantamount to a huge financial substitute to these companies, you know, their First Amendment actors, but their activity is privileged over and above other First Amendment actors like newspapers

and movies and things that would be subject to lawsuits. So we do really need, I think, to change this binary way of looking at things where it's only the government's the problem, and you know, massive corporate power is never a problem. That's just not true. And I think we're seeing that very very well demonstrated in this moment. If you were drafting up the next contract with America or whatever, that document may or may not end up being called to the extent the party is even thinking

this way, which is of course always questionable. What would your principles look like and your sort of campaign look like for taking on big tech to ensure that the pre am vota section two thirty is actually served by our laws, which is promoting free and open discourse and intellectual inquiry. You know, I think a guiding heuristic here is actually something very Goldwater set a long time ago, which is that, you know, the champions of freedom will

you fight against concentrated power wherever it resides. They will

take on monopolies, corporate and union. And so I think that has to be the guiding heuristic for how we do things in both the government and in the private sector, because one of both of these transact on each other in very powerful ways, and I think it's a mistake to put them into separate spheres when they aren't anymore when, especially with these big tech tech companies, we now see them working hand in glove with, you know, a democratic

ideology to use the levers of power to shut down dissent, to shut down criticism, and to shut down speech in the public square. We are in a situation now where the government does have a role, and it is, like you said, to preserve this open space for ideas, for small business, for all these things that we as republic aikins cherish, but we're so hesitant to say the government

has any role here. But that limited role for the government is now, and so I think that has to be a guiding principle for Republicans going forward in a way that it hasn't really been for the last thirty years. And I think it's worth knowing again that there, of

course national security implications to this as well. We spoke at length on yesterday's episode about the Biden administration countering domestic terrorism strategy, and of course the administration talks about partnering with private sector actors, including and they've intimated this before, big tech, to police their platforms for whatever the thought police of the Biden administration deemed to be legitimate to be policing, and that strategy also talks about combating disinformation

and misinformation, which you can only believe in practice will mean more filtering and bands and censorship of any opinion that is just not above board according to the party line. So it's something that we'll have to be quite vigilant about. We'll have to demand that our lawmakers are vigilant about

it as well. And I know that you, Joe Bovard, will be on top of this and urge everyone to check out all of your writings wherever they're found in federal as USA Today, American Conservative, American conservative and beyond. Thank you so much for coming on the program today and for all your exceptional work. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much, Ben, Thanks and Wolf more on the buxx and show right after this on Sunday, June twentieth, Joe

Biden will have been president for exactly five months. And in these five months, we've seen crisis after crisis after crisis. We've experienced a gas crisis where we had gas lines and skyrocketing energy prices. We're on the verge of an inflation crisis. We're everywhere we look, prices are rising on food,

on housing, on lumber. We've already had a war in the Middle East, and we've got a border crisis that has been raging so intensely that we're on pace to see two million illegal immigrants come through our unsecured border this year. Just last month, one hundred and eighty thousand

and thirty four illegal immigrants crossed the border. To put that in perspective, that number is a six hundred and seventy four percent increase over the number of illegal immigrants that crossed the border last May, a six hundred and seventy four percent increase, and that number is a twenty one year high. The reason for this is simple. The crisis that has unfolded is the direct result of political decisions made by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. That was

Senator Ted Cruz lambasting the Biden administration. And it goes back to the running theme that we open this episode with has run through the substance of the various interviews we've had on big tech, on the schools, on US China policy, dealing with Russia, energy, and on and on Ted Cruz talking about massive money printing and spending in effect in terms of the massive inflation and prices that we've seen, and if you look at a chart of

the money supply, it's absurd. What's happened over the last year, the explosion in the Middle East with respect to I ran back, to proxies attacking Israel, the border crisis. What unifies these policies or these outcomes? Rather, these outcomes are a direct consequence of rejecting basic, fundamental, core American values and principles. If you reject those values and principles, you get these kind of results. You cultivate mediocrity. Massive money

printing and spending. What is that a reflection of, beyond the self imposed economic suicide that we committed over the last year, arguably needlessly not wanting to deal with reality. Money printing is done to paper over problems and to kick the can down the road on dealing with those problems.

The massive spending is about a government that can't live within its means, and it's a reflection of a percentage of the public that believes we shouldn't live within it within our means as a nation that does not, I guess care about the consequences ultimately of massive debt and the interest on that debt and the money printing that's going to be used to try to inflate it away, so that of course prudent people and then of course those who are unfixed income are left with the bill.

It's irresponsibility that's inherent to the massive money renting and spending on a government that can't even do, can't even execute its most basic functions, but it sure as heck weaponizes itself against anyone who dares call the government on those issues. What about the explosion in the Middle East. I've done a big monologue on this, which you can google.

It's on YouTube and elsewhere, I believe as well. On the method to the Biden Administration's Middle East madness, the Biden administration basically reversed the Trump administration policy with respect to the world's greatest state sponsor of jihad, Iran. Biden reverts America's back. Biden reverts the Obama Biden agenda of seeking to make the world's leading state sponsor of jihad, the strong course in the Middle East, the dominant power.

What does Joe Biden do? It basically says, without preconditions, we're going to go back to the so called negotiating table and we want to get back into the Iran nuclear deal, which made that regime flush with well over one hundred billion dollars in cash to fund its malign while it's people suffered. What is it rooted in? What is the policy rooted in of the Biden administration of appeasement, cowardice or self loathing, both traits that, of course result

in mediocrity, in failure the border crisis. What is the border crisis all about? It's not just an unwillingness to defend sovereignty. Again, one of the most basic duties that are purported. Representatives are charged with ensuring, protecting, defending. You know, obviously, as the Vice president Trump said any number of times, if you don't have borders, you don't have a country. So basic, so core should transcend ideology and politics. But

it doesn't. Why Well, of course, the Biden administration advertised open borders well before its election. What is that open borders policy rooted in? Well, the true believers, of course, will say, I guess that sovereignty is racist and bigod and that everyone should be able to come in, and that our laws are essentially optional. And some of them call ice a tyrannical terrorist like entity and want to

abolish it. Think about that those tests with ensuring our sovereignty are the bad guys, not the people whose first act if they step foot in the country is breaking our laws and violating our sovereignty and spitting in the face of our people. The cynical aspect, of course of the border crisis is never let a crisis go to waste. In fact, create a crisis which you can ultimately use

to leverage for political power. And as I've talked about before guest hosting this show, even just having illegal aliens in the country, even if they're not mass amnestied, and thus a major voting voc for the people supporting the amnesty,

namely Democrats. Population numbers matter. Population numbers are counted in the census, even illegal aliens, and that leads to direct increased representation for those areas with large illegal alien populations and billions of dollars being allocated to those areas as well.

So how does this tie into again, cultivating mediocrity or failure? Well, when you reject an American value and principle, when you reject a principle of any nation that wants to survive on this earth of sovereignty and respect for the rule of law, you get failure and disaster. Once again, if you reject, you repudiate American values and principles, you are

actively cultivating not just mediocrity, but failure. Excellent countries, serious countries, are frugal, they're responsible, they treat the laws with respect, and they make the laws respectable. Their leaders don't lord over the people, and they don't hold themselves to a separate standard from everyone else. We're not supposed to have a class system in this country, but the ruling quass shore has created one and seeks to do everything it

can to insulate itself cement its position. And of course, when you cement essentially a monopoly power, of course it becomes deconent and decayed and mediocre and fails. Ultimately, our ruling class is a failure. And again, seventy four million plus people voted against that failed ruling class last time.

And that is why the effort is being pursued right now, as we talked about in this episode and past episodes as well, to target smere chill, censor, and potentially use the full force not just of the government but all of society to try to scare into submission. The population that sees through it, all sees through the gas, understands when they're being propagandized too, and lord it over and cause the failure out for what it is. And that's why they have to go so hard at anyone who

dares break from the narrative. Akin to the Chinese Communist Party, cannot allow dissenting viewpoints, cannot allow alternative narratives, cannot account for facts that would dare threaten the hollow facade of legitimacy that a rolling class has. And earlier in the week, by the way, we talked about just a brief side note, we talked about what was going on in Georgia with this audit on topic you are forbidden to talk about.

And you'll probably find many people being censored on social media as they continue to follow what's going on in Georgia. And wait on Arizona, and we'll actually talk to a legislator from Arizona who's been instrumental in pushing forth the audit that's going on there. We'll talk to him about what's going on there. Just the news reported today Georgia audit document expose significant election failures in state's largest County.

Of course, Fulton County records suggest more than one hundred batches of absentee ballots in Fulton County could be missing. One hundred batches. In each of those batches, I believe may have at least one hundred ballots. Some experts see quote unquote election tabulation malpractice as state officials seek to remove county's top election supervisors, and I'd urge you to

check out this article to see what's going on there. Basically, some of the administrators there argue that you really can't have confidence in the results because what they're auditing itself is an incomplete data set. As this official says, an audit is only good as good as the data that's input. And in this case, Fulton Counties records are so problematic,

I'm not sure a reasonable person can trust them. When you add in the reports of ballots magically appearing under tables or being moved out of the counting center, they're legitimate, outstanding questions. You want to ensure that a country is not only mediocre, but fails erode the consent of the governed, destroy the integrity of elections, make it so that no one can trust that they're adequately represented by their purported leaders.

The running theme ought to be overturning this ruling class or making it live up to the standards that we all love and believe in, and that's how we cultivate excellence instead of mediocrity and failure. There has been Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexon on The Buck Sexton Show, and we'll close out the week tomorrow. Have a great evident. This is the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Follow Buck on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.