Welcome to the Buck Saxon Show. Everybody with me now, my friend David Reeboy. He is a fellow at the Claremont Institute. He also has a great substack, Late Republic Nonsense, but you can all subscribe to and if you want to know how to get gains in the gym, he's also an expert on that one. For those of you who are only listening and not seeing. If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see exactly why. But mister Reeboy honored to have you on the program. Sir, what is
it tell me about Late Republic nonsense? That's an interesting title for a substacker. Are we the Late Republic? And what kind of nonsense is going on?
We are indeed the Late Republic? Thanks for having me on. It was a name that came to me because nothing else seemed even remotely as appropriate. I think, I mean, I thought for years that we're in the kind of late Republic period, and you know, when I started saying it, people thought I was crazy. But at this point I
don't think there were be all that much pushback. And the nonsense part is like, these are the things that that happen when you start talking, you know, when when it seems like the form of government and uh and and the the the things that we used to take for granted, really about about our union, and about uh, you know, comedy and civility and and and the things that we all thought we agreed on or maybe haven't
in in quite a long time. I mean, at some point it's going to reach it's you know, it's at some point it's it's going to reach the end. And I think that talking about it and talking about why these problems are are you know, maybe seem insurmountable is the only way that we can really face them and and and uh and do something about it.
How did we get to this point? What happened? Because I do often talk to friends of mine, my peers about how it didn't seem like maybe everyone has nostalgia for the era of their youth, but it felt like in the nineties we were arguing over things, but we were arguing over things from roughly the same side of
the world viewpoint. I can't really explain it better than it felt like we used to be arguing more over, you know, the tax code and things that didn't necessarily go to the heart of the republic itself and maybe undermine it, maybe kick at the load bearing walls of civilization. What happened?
Right, well, I mean, that's that's that's a question that has about a million different possible answers going back as far as as you know you'd like to go back. There are people who say that the problem is ingrained in liberalism and the enlightenment itself. You know, it's it's uh, there is a there's a propensity for this stuff. Let's say, this openness to self destruct given enough time and and and you know, the passage of enough uh, you know,
enough generations. I mean, I think trying to figure out where the problem started is almost pointless because we're not going to rewind, and we're not going to go back, and there's no time machine to go back into, uh and to necessarily fix it. But what we're dealing with is the fact that we have two completely different conceptions
of justice. I mean, that's the that's the kind of the basis, is that we understand justice differently between left and right, and and that kind of has its expression in every possible conceivable issue.
And I don't how do we conceive of justice and how do they conceive of justice, David Well, I.
Mean, they conceive of justice as as as group justice, and we see it as a kind of individual thing. You know, if you or I did something, then you or I did something. We believe in the fact that justice is blind and you're judged on the things that you do, not necessarily on the things that you are, which is how Which is the other view of justice that the left has, which is you know, you know, we we call it collectivist, but you can call it
anything you want. I mean, at the end of the day, it really matters to them if a perpetrator is black, or if he's white, or if he's this, or if he's that. You know, that is the thing that defined you know, the characteristics is the thing that defines, you know, the way justice necessarily is served. And that translates too
to politics, you know. I mean you see, like you know, you've got you've got juries that in Washington, d C. Or in Chicago or in you York City that would convict a republic you know, that would put a Republican to death for jaywalking. Because it's such a kind of us versus them, you know, conception when it comes to when it comes to justice and that's something that's really significant. Now, that's not just something that you that you paper over. And here we are.
When you talk about collectivists their collective sense of justice, why does somebody want to be a collectivist or where does this come from? Is it rooted in a sense of one's own insufficiency, weakness and the paranoia that comes from that, and therefore the desire to achieve stability and even power through attachment to a group identity instead of an individual identity. What it just seems to me, like, why would anyone want to be a collectivist?
Yeah? I mean Thomas soul has about this in in kind of a very beautiful persuasive way. In in uh, I think it's the quest for cosmic justice where he basically splits up human nature into two different types of uh, you know, or let's say two where he splits people into two different types of you know, the way they deal with human nature. You know, one is fixed and one is non fixed. So we who are who are
on the right, we say human nature is fixed. You know, people are going to be people from one civilization to the next. They're going to prioritize different things, but they're going to be essentially people, They're going to be motivated by the things that always motivate people, you know, whether it's you know, religion or honor or the fact that you know, we we we have a love of one's own, which goes back, you know, to the beginning of time.
The the unfixed position on the other hand, which just you know, commonly we think of as left, they say, no, you know, it's actually humanity is a blank slate which comes from Rousseau, and we think that hey, we can you know, we can socialize people out of all of these horrible, bigoted, terrible ideas by getting them to you know, by doing whatever, and you know, raising them differently, educating them differently, you know, And you see this every day,
and then you see see the left going crazy, for example, in Florida, where they can no longer necessarily have access to kids to talk to kids about you know, about sexual issues. They're going crazy because they know that that's their whole game.
Yeah, well, what is that? I mean, the the ferocity with which the institutional left and the activists of the progressives and these are just all different words for democrats, right,
These are all different flavors of a democrat. But the anger with which they approach the issue of stopping clearly inappropriate and pornographic books from being assigned or handed to grade school children, or even this this decision or this idea that somehow allowing a you know, forty year old man with a hairy chest to put on a wig, a bunch of makeup, fishnet stockings, and shake his butt in front of a room full of in many cases
parents with their children, which is also a whole other component. When you say this is bad, they don't try to persuade you, right, David. They don't say no, no, this is a good thing, because they become ferociously angry, almost like a demonic rage surges. What's that way?
In a way they have to be because oh, I'm forgetting who said it, but somebody made an observation years ago that was was excellent, which is that since the Civil rights struggle in America, or let's say, since the the left was victorious in the Civil rights struggle in America,
everything became a civil rights struggle. And so now every issue is framed in terms of you know, in terms of uh, you know, self expression and liberties and and uh and you know, we talked about the next frontier of groups that are you know, that are marginalized, that are finally coming out of the shadows and and and you know getting you know, getting full and equal uh you know rights. And now we've gotten to the point where we're talking about pedophiles coming out of the shadows.
We're talking about all kinds of weird, deviant, you know, kind of crazy sexual stuff. I think they get angry when. I think they get angry because at the end of the day, they kind of have to be you know, they there's a part of them that is human that says this is totally wrong, and they're trying to convince themselves with their furiosity that that they're on the side of the good and the and the you know, the good and the wholesome and and you know sort of
on the side of of the angels and the right. Yeah, and so that's that's that's part of it. I mean. The other thing is that a lot of people have been shocked at how how comprehensively the left has folded on the issue, for example, of of you know, minor children being gender transitioned.
You know, there is not I always say about this, David not interrupt you. But there is no such thing as a gender transition. I have to remind every I know, that's the terminology we're all supposed to use. There is no gender transition. There is gender destruction. You can destroy your genitalia, you can destroy your ability to have a normal you know, endocrine function and reproductive system. I'm sure you can destroy it. You cannot change it, though that doesn't actually work.
Right, Yeah, but you know they will argue that there is biology, and then there is sort of the ineffable way you feel about your gender, which is your gender identity, and your gender idem has absolutely nothing to do with, you know, with with biological reality. And to say that it does is you know, some kind of terrible, horrible thing.
I think they're amazing how the argument is is completely incoherent because they say that gender, the gender reality, has nothing to do with your sexual reality. Well, then why do we have to match the sexual reality of children to their gender identity? Right? They the connection, they disassociate it. They can create these additional categories. But then they also in insists that there is a connection that has to
be changed. Right, what's the why not if we're just if we're just letting people be who they are, and it's about psychological affirmation, then why do you have to do the physical stuff and the other part of it. I always talk to people about it. With this stuff too, is no one actually thinks that these are women. Everybody who goes along with this, and we're talking generally here at about men, you know, biological men or boys who
try to transition to female. They're not fooling anybody. And eventually, and even if they're able to fool some people in some situations, you know, from a distance or with makeup or with AI or whatever, eventually it becomes clear this is not actually a woman. So why do we go through this? But there's really something deeply corrupt in the soul of the left and the Democrat Party these days that I think this really exposed that. David. I want to come back to this in a second. I actually
want to ask you speak of party politics. I know you're you're very you have a lot of ideas about the twenty twenty four election and where things should be and where things are right now. So I want to get into this. But first coming out this Tuesday, May twenty third, in the morning, please join me online for an exclusive interview with an extraordinary market analyst, my dad, Mason Sexton. That's right, my dad's going to be talking
about the great Disruption of twenty twenty three. Dad's a Harvard Business School grad and he translated fifty years of Wall Street experience into this presentation that you were going to be able to see on Tuesday. Dad called the nineteen eighty seven stock market crash on TV and then went on to make other incredibly accurate and timely market calls. New York posts back in the day said he makes
uncanny predictions of market turns. The economist said he could be the next market group called the nineteen eighty seven market crash practically down to the minutes of the Chicago Tribune. Now Mason's coming forward with his first major prediction in thirty years. Dad has something big to say, and he says it's going to be set in motion over the next eight weeks. If you want the details, you just have to go to Disruption twenty twenty three dot com.
That's Disruption twenty twenty three dot com. All right, David, what do we have to know about how things are looking for the GOP in this now beginning of the twenty twenty four election cycle.
Well, it's I mean, the basics are unchanged really for the last several months, which is that it's a race between Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ronda Santis. It's no secret that I support the governor. I was. I was a big Trump supporter for eight years, for four years during his during his term, and in twenty nineteen, when after I moved to Florida, I was shocked and very impressed with the way my Governor Ronda Santis was handling not only COVID but other issues that were important to
the right as well. And I think he's a once in a generation or more leader because at the end of the day I talk about this thing, I say, you have to know what time it is, And that's kind of shorthand for understanding the moment that we're in, understanding that the fight necessarily cannot be won by simply
being a Republican of yesteryear. I think the most important characteristic that we need to find, let's say, those of us on the right need to find in a leader is someone who's willing to aggressively and competently use state power against some of the institutions on the left and to try to rebalance, to try to rebalance the power relationships and to protect the American citizens. DeSantis is the only guy out there, frankly, that recognizes that the threats
are not only coming from the government. They're coming from large corporations. They're coming from academia. They're coming from you know, from big tech, They're coming from medical boards, They're coming from all of these let's say, non governmental associations that nevertheless are wielding tremendous ideological power over us, and and that balance needs to be reshifted or else we all lose.
I mean, what's the point here if if if Amazon can force us or you know, another big company can force us too to feel a certain way about politics, you know, and and and take on the left view, you know, I mean, who cares. Who's sitting in the oval office?
They just great note, I think your I think your cord is touching your mic a little bit because we're getting some interference. And just watch your uh, watch your ear quard of that a little bit or it might just be the connection, but just watch the cord there. And I look on on onto the the reality of
institutions platforms and and leveraging leveraging power. I've been shouting to everybody who will listen that the idea of the neutral space that the right had been obsessed with the Conservatism that I became familiar with in high school, college and afterwards, that we want a marketplace of ideas, but there are also areas where we want things to be non political. I think the right has woken up to
a reality. And it's not just now, it's been about the last six or seven years in the making that if the other side thinks that they don't have to respect this so called neutral space because they can run the table on you, that's what they're going to do, right, So you have to have enough power to say, hey, are we're gonna be We're gonna be fair and neutral in this area or not, and if you're not, we
can do something about it. If you're just appealing to the left sense of fair play, they'll just stomp your face in the mud and laugh at you. And I think the conservatives have finally gotten the memo on that a little bit.
I think maybe I think we have out in you know, out out in the public, but uh, we have not had a champion like Rohn de Santis, who was sitting in power and actually has the ability to do some to do something about these things. I mean, it's one thing for us to say, you know, yes, we need to fight back against these uh, these these institutions. But it's another thing to have someone who also understands this and has the power to do so, and the inclination
and frankly, the fearlessness with which to do it. He understands that value neutrality is nonsense in this day and age, you know, you can have which is you know, exactly kind of going to your point, there's that space in society that we kind of assumed was, you know, let's say, empty of political content. But now the left has filled that space with political content. There's nowhere you can go from advertising to uh, you know, to to anywhere else where.
It's where like these left ideology has not kind of seeped in. And this is moral propaganda from every possible avenue. And at the end of the day, it's like it needs to be it needs to be stopped. And Governor DeSantis understands that, and he's willing to, uh, and he's willing to He's willing to fight it. Not only that, I mean what he did, for example with a new college up in Sarasota.
Can I pause you with the college in Sarasoda. I want to come back to in a second, because this is the wielding of institutional power, the understanding of how to shift and shape institutions like universities and colleges. DeSantis, I think is somebody who will David Reboy is going to tell us in a second just how he was able to do that, and maybe that's a model for
a lot of other places. But you need to have the right biochemistry to feel good day in and day out, and a lot of us as we get older, we have testosterone level. Especially you know you get up in your year. Later years forties fifties, testosterone levels start to
decline pretty rapidly. That's why the patriots at Chalk spend years formulating their daily supplements, all natural ingredients, and the leading ingredient in Chalk's mail, Vitality Stack, has been proven to replenish twenty percent of difficient amounts of testosterone in three months time. The Biden campaign would benefit from I'm sure getting a little extra testosterone, but they're not gonna
check it out because they don't trust me. Everything Chalk makes is lab tested twice for purity to ensure the potency is there. If you're looking for more energy in your day, more focus, Chalk's mail Vitality Stack is the answer. Find it online at Chalk dot com. That's cchoq dot com. Get thirty five percent off the Chalk subscription of your choice for life when you use my name Buck in
your purchase process. That's Chalk cchoq dot com thirty five percent off when you use promo code Buck, which is my name. All right, David, what happened in Sarasota? What a governor of santists do to the university there or the college there?
So there was a there was there is a university there. There was a small liberal arts school that the state was paying for. And rather than close it, you know, you had kind of, let's say, the old Republican point of view was, hey, this stuff costs money, and you know, maybe there are leftists there. Let's just close it down and walk away. But Desanta's was a lot smarter than that. He realized that, hey, why can't we use it for
our purposes? And it sounds like such a little thing, but it's actually a revolution in terms of the way the right sees itself, the way the right sees its ability to exert power, and and really it's the way
the right sees itself as being legitimate. And Desanta said, as a matter of fact, no, we're going to keep it open, but we're going to make sure that it becomes, you know it, that it stops teaching leftist insane dogma and goes and becomes let's say, the premier state run school for liberal arts and true education in kind of the old way, as opposed to NonStop leftist propaganda. And he went and he replaced you know, he replaced the director or whoever I mean on the staff that that
put up some resistance to this. And now he's getting teachers who are coming in from all over the country and kind of wanting to do something like Hillsdale College in Florida, And this is going to be a thriving, wonderful school at some point when when when it really gets off the ground and they start doing this, And of course the left is going completely bonkers about this because they you know, DeSantis knows, and they know that DeSantis knows how important not just academia is to them.
But the the the fact that for up until now, nobody's even been on the field when it comes to this stuff. So they're going crazy. They're freaking out because one school is not hard left and and we kind of we need more of that. And that's just I mean, that's one, you know, little tiny example. Disney is the big one that everyone talks about, but they're really a lot. And I think here in Florida, he has redefined what it means to have conservative governance. And he has done things.
He's passed laws you know, I mean in this session alone that folks on the right have been wanting for, you know, for for ages we didn't need. We wrote them off as if we would never get them. And and what that does is it attracts more people on who are on the right to move to Florida. Number one. Number two is it's created such a kind of thrilling happiness. It's very hard to describe if you don't live here, and you know, everyone that you run into is kind
of is happy to be here. Couldn't couldn't be more happy, and couldn't be more happy with the governor. Of course, there are some you know, discontents, but you have that malcontents, but you have that everywhere, and hopefully the campaign kind of getting back to that. Hopefully the campaign will will show everybody Florida and will show that you know that the Republicans all around the country want a piece of this, and I think they do.
I ask you in a second, David, just about the I feel like there's a I don't know if you call a war on aesthetics, beauty and aspiration in this country. But if you've seen recently, it's not just recent. I mean it's been going on for years now. All the stuff about whether it's fat shaming or now Adidas has guys with hairy chests wearing women's bathing suits to try to sell. Like just it feels like something weird is happening.
Where as a society, we're no longer allowed to have anything that is aspirational and beautiful, and you know it's everything is being torn down. I just kind of I wanted your sense of that philosophically. But first stuff for everyone at home, I want to make sure they don't lose their really important documents, photos and other things. Here's how it happens. Your computer crashes, something gets stolen. Feel like me. You're working on a book, or you've got
really important stuff on your laptop. What happens when when it's all taken from you? Well, my friends, you have to get yourself an I drive. I drive is the backup of all backups. I drive lets you back up your PCs, max servers, mobile devices, all of it into one account for one cost. Not to mention, I drive is a PC mag winner eight years in a row, the best cloud backup solution for everyone, consumers and businesses. I drive is the easiest, most secure cloud backup solution.
Plants start at less than seven dollars a month. Get ninety percent off the first year when you use my name Buck as the promo code at checkout. Ninety percent off your first year and you get peace of mind with iedrive dot com. Make sure you use my name Buck. You'll get ninety percent off that first year with iedrive dot com. It's not that you need to have, and if you don't, you're gonna really regret it. So just get it set up today. Iedrive dot Com promo code Buck.
All right, David, you know what I mean. The War on aesthetics, the elevation of the ugly, the unhealthy, and the grotesque in our society, in our culture. What's that all about.
Well, it's about dispiriting us, you know, at the end of the day. And I don't I don't necessarily think that this is a that this is an organized effort, that there's somebody in the back in a control room saying, you know what, let's give these people terribly ugly things.
But I think they're has been a long war on on beauty kind of traditionally understood and and it's very let's say, it's very easy to hop on board that bandwagon and uh and and go for the destruction of beauty, you know, when you are yourself not beautiful or or you know, terribly ugly. I mean, it's a horrible thing to say, but I don't think, you know, I think we've all noticed how Antipha looks when they are arrested.
I think we we all have an idea of of of the types of you know, the way that the folks look who show up on lips of TikTok videos, and you know, then these these folks are not happy. So so the question is do they try to destroy beauty because they are not happy, or are they not happy because they are not beautiful and they want to destroy beauty. I mean, it's it's it's kind of chicken and an egg thing. But I think you're right to notice that it's absolutely going on. We see it kind
of in in every place. I mean, from music to cinema to art to everything that that is all around us. I mean, even the way even the way you see colors you know, put together in in ads or things like that. It's not the way things you know, it's it's it's kind of meant to unsettle in a way. And and the kind of weird biolininist psycho sexual gender thing kind of you know, feeds into that. And I think most people who are normal kind of you know, turn around and they look at this and they think
this is awful weird. One of the nice things is I have a I have a nephew who's who's fifteen, and he is kind of thankfully immune to a lot of the woke stuff, and he just tells me about his experiences in high school surrounded by this insanity. And his parents are not very political, and so he kind of came to realize that these things were insane on his own, which gives me a lot of hope, you know.
I mean, here's a here's a young kid who just looks around and said, you know, these people are obviously insane. And I said to him, why do you think that you kind of had the antibodies to fight off this disease? And he's like, oh, it's simple because I play football, because you know, for a couple hours every day, I put the phone down and I do something real and I do something physical, and you know, and I can't talk my way out of it. I can't not show up,
you know. If it's the same thing with the gym, I mean, and it's you know, folks who folks who lift are almost always right wing. Why because you know, you can't talk your way out of it. Either you did the thing or you didn't do the thing. And and that world of the real is really important. It's really important to maintain because what a lot of people want and the way things are going. If you look at you know, you look at AI, you look at
social media. I think a lot of folks out there are desirous of a world that exists, you know, electronically and that's it, and we're and we're not you know, we're no longer interacting in the real world. We're just you know, we're sending messages to one another. We're no longer talking on the phone. Instead, we're just texting each other all day.
The mat is feeling very real these days, right, So, so.
The most important thing now is to have at least one or two or maybe more real things that you have in your life that connect you with reality.
I was going to a point of optimism to close on, David, but we can leave it with that one, which is that doing real stuff and operating in the real world and setting aside time in your day every day to think about whether it's at the gym or just you know, reading good and real books and going for walks outside in the sunshine or in the snow or wherever you are.
That can affect the way you view the world and also puts the as you put it, the antibody's in place to fight against the woke mind virus that is out there. David reboy, everybody go check out his substack Late Republic nonsense. David, my friend, always appreciate you hanging out. Thanks so much, it's my pleasure.
See us soon.