Chuck’s Commentary - A Deeply Fractured & Dangerous Moment For America + Why George Washington’s Farewell Address Resonates Today

Even his comments today were sort of demoralizing. Understandably so, because I don't disagree with anything he has said at this point, and in fact believe he is the leader at the moment. But when trying to figure out in some ways, it's easy to understand how we got here,

there's so many forces against unity in this country. Right, there's so many forces for division. Right, there's there's you know, it's almost like the system is rigged towards division. Right. Our system is not rigged for unity. It is right now, rigged towards division in how it works. And I think that's why it feels as if boy, there's I mean, it's clear that we don't have the president we need in the moment to meet this moment. I've been trying to.

I've been hopeful, right, I think you give as much grace as you can. Maybe more people will get to him, maybe he will see that this is something that he cannot just use to exploit politically. But let's be honest. That hope is fading. And you can call me naive, but I would have done it and said it the same way before, because only we only have one president at a time, and you know, hope springs eternal that that he'll see the light, but he is. He is

clearly blind on this one. Let me give you a quick little rundown of how I'm going to attack the episode today. We're going to talk a little bit more about where I think this is going short term versus long term, how and what to watch for in the two political parties here and how they handle this moment. I've got my It's Monday. We do every week. I'm going to give you sort of a history lesson based

on something that happened in history. This week. It is between September fifteenth and September twenty first, So I'll give you just a clue. It'll be I will tell you what our moment in history, and then the dive we're going to do. But as I said, are this day, this week in history moment? I'll just give you a small clue. We're going to go back to September nineteenth,

seventeen ninety six. The real history junkies in my feed here probably have an idea of what event I will be doing a deep dive on, but I want to keep a little bit of suspense until we'll do it after the interview. For those of you that listen to the entire the entire episode in one download, of course, we do split it up into a couple of downloads if you want to have the interview on its own and all of my work separately on its own. I'll also do a little bit of what I learned this

week in my obsession of college football. In short, I'm trying to figure out how is it that both my football teams seem to be playing so well, so methodically well that it is, and just out physically, just physically better than every team that they play right now. It is. It is both exciting me and scaring me. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop on one of my teams if not both. But let me just say I

am enjoying this moment. It's great to be a Miami Hurricane and it's great to be a Green Bay Packer

fan in this current in this current time. But as much as I would love to continue compartmentalizing as I did yesterday and Saturday with football to try to not think about our current state of politics, I can't help but keep coming back to that and when thinking about where to begin, you know, I had my new Sphere show last night, and for that episode and I talked to an expert on political violence and an expert on sort of how do you you know is there such

thing as is prevention in the political violence space? You know, can interventions work? And the professor from American University is someone that believes it. Believes that it can, and that there's data to back it up, that there is ways to mitigate the risk of violence down the road. But it does take It takes will, right, and that's ultimately I think the question I have is do we have the will? Do we have the guts to do what it takes to bring ourselves together when we're attacked by

outsiders like we were in nine to eleven. But we unified pretty quickly, and we stayed fairly united for good twelve to eighteen months. And even when we started dividing, we didn't divide about the attack. We divided about the response, right. We thought about the wars. But we did it politically, right, We did it the way you're supposed to do it.

But every time we had a chance to remember nine to eleven, even in the harshest presidential election years, the two candidates at least in sixteen attended the same event, right, So we have we have tempted to sort of grasp at that unifying moment. And the fact is, anytime we've been attacked from the outside, it has unified us as a country. Our most you know, unifying period of American history was during the Cold War because we had an

existential threat. And I think you've heard some of you have heard my thesis quite a bit that I am somewhat concerned that actually the only thing that unites us are existential threats from the outside. We have threats from the inside, and they only divide us. And that's what it feels like today that all these threats that we're dealing with right now are dividing us. Look, there is some data here to back this up. In just the

first six months of this year, Okay, according to the there's some folks at the University of Maryland who tracked this very well, very methodically, in a healthy academic setting. America has endured nearly a one hundred and fifty politically motivated attacks in the first six months of this year. It's almost double. So it doesn't count the Charlie Cook Charlie Kirk murder. It's almost double the number in the same period last year. We've had twenty one people killed. Okay,

since January. That included what happened in New Year's Eve in New Orleans when you had that radical radical extremists attack Bourbon Street. We had a pro Palestinian activists killed two Israeli embassy employees in Washington. We had eleven armed militant storm Texas immigration ice facility. Earlier this year, we

had a gunman obsessed with COVID conspiracies spring gunfire at CDC's headquarters in Atlanta, killed a police officer. Minnesota. Christian nationalists went door to door trying to murder Democratic lawmakers and successfully did one and her husband wounding another. And of course now we've had the killing of Charlie Kirk in broad daylight on a college campus and a place that as a parent of two college kids that you know,

we want college to be in a place. I know what I to not put words in other people's mouths. I'm going to tell you what I want college to be and what college has been for me. It's about exposing yourself to different people, different ideas, different ideologies, different experiences, different everything. And it's about learning, right. But the only way to learn is you need to be exposed to good ideas and bad ideas. But the exposure is important.

Trying to hide from ideas, even ones that you don't agree with, doesn't do anything to help a situation. Hiding ideas only can make things worse. But the fact is where we are living in a tinder box right now. So we're at a fork in the row. And I said that the other day, and you know, the hope is that is, you know, when are we going to have enough is enough? Moment? We've been We've had ten years of this intense political division where it is where

awful rhetoric has turned into physical violence. I want to quote Spencer Cox, who said on an appearance at NBC

on Sunday, he said, and I think he's right. Social media has played a direct role in every single assassination and assassination attempt that we have seen over the last five or six years. I don't think I disagree with that. And that's been you know, another thing that's been a bit frustrating in what we've watched so far in the reaction is that, again, outside of the govern or of Utah, outside of Governor Cox, nobody's tried to meet this moment.

Nobody's tried to look at this as an American first. There are way too many people responding as a partisan first, doing some yah butts. What do I mean by a yabbot? Well, there was an example of one, and it was by a reporter and it was Charlie Gasparino, and I want to quote him, and he said, because he's proud of

his point, he retweeted his point. He said, what he said on Fox is what he believes that there are violent loons on the right and the left, but a certain type of violent rhetoric is totally accepted as morally

righteous on the left and the cultural institution that dominates. So this is where I want to and that would include the university as well as most of the mainstream Meredia, and that's where I want to stop right there. I believe he believes this. I don't believe he's making up this mindset. I can tell you. I don't believe what

he says is true. That's not from my observation and this idea, and I've seen it, you know where no, no, no, Yes, we have some loans on our side, but they're they don't They're not representative of us, but your loon, the loons on the other side are representative of everybody out there. And this is the problem. You know. I would say, give yourself a test on this, because I've been doing it with myself all weekend. Like you know, I'm I'm

pretty convinced. I know how we got here, and I know that my definitive belief is not going to be shared by everybody, but I'm sure that so a piece

of what I believe would be shared by a lot of people. And that's sort of how you become I mean, this is what politics is about. Politics isn't about I'm right and you're wrong. Politics is about here are my ideas, here's your ideas. Are they compatible? And if they're at all compatible, is there a middle ground? And elections decide, Hey, does the middle ground? Fifty to fifty is the middle ground? Sixty forty is the middle ground? Seventy thirty right? Right?

Elections are a tug of war in some ways about where the middle is. But it's still supposed to be somewhere in the middle on this stuff. And so I think that is the the problem that we have is

that we're stuck. When you believe you're you're when you when your beliefs are righteous in your head, then no counter factual is going to convince you of you can't compromise on sort of righteous beliefs, right, And so it becomes where there's just almost no You can't even put yourself in the shoes of somebody who disagrees with you. I imagine today that there are some on the left who now understand a little bit better what folks on

the right have called said about cancel culture. That expressing one's opinion, as vile as it may be to you, is simply that person's opinion. And is it enough if it's nothing that is illegal and it hasn't incited anybody to do anything violent or illegal, should it cost them their livelihoods. And so, you know, we so badly want a virtue signal during any given moment, right whatever the

moment is. Whether it was virtue signaling right after George Floyd and what happened to him, you saw a lot of it virtue signaling right after we've seen with Charlie Kirk, rather than sort of figuring out, how do I take my idea in solving this problem? And I broaden the appeal of that argument that I can persuade somebody who mostly disagrees with my point of view to at least

not just acknowledge that my point of view's fair, rational, but maybe there's something to it, rather than being so convinced that you're right and your political opponent is wrong that there's nothing to be learned from them on this one iota. And I know that anybody here can practice what about is that the minute somebody? I mean, you know, we're going through it now, right and and I've got

to catch myself. I mean, I see so many one sided conversations about violence right right now on the right not acknowledging what happened at the CDC, or what happened to those Minnesota lawmakers, or or somehow marginalizing those events that they have nothing to do with this, when frankly, they all have to do with this. It's all we have. We have we have we have created this information ecosystem. Uh. And I'm going to quote Mike Johnson on this, who

I thought said something that was worth quoting here. Uh when he said this, people have to stop framing simple policy disagreements in terms of existential threats to our democracy. You can't call the other side fascists or enemies of the state and not understand that there are some deranged people in our society who will take that as cues

to act. I know some of you are going to be like Mike Johnson practices both ciderisms by using fascists and enemies of the state, right, the language that each side is using these days to try to dehumanize and de americanize somebody who has an opposing political view. But good for him, because he's exactly right. We have gotten it. And the thing is is that when we're in person,

we don't speak or behave this way. It's why so many of the elected officials I talk to will say, oh, no, it's not that bad up here, when you know, there are a couple of people who are bad actors who go out there to just be grifters. Right, they're just

playing to the algorithms, playing to the to the to the influenced peddlers. Who are you know, these these folks that that obsess with how much traffic that they get, and all of this play to the algorithms. For the most part, when these elected ds and elected ours get together, they they don't speak in vile language to each other, with the very rare exception of a couple. For the most part, they interact with each other the way you enact with average people at the grocery store, at the

post office. Right, you don't behave like an asshole. Well ninety five percent of us don't want to behave like an asshole in public. So I don't know why we do this online. And then of course we have the entire I mean, what's of all the frustrating aspects of

the political response to the last five days, the lack of focus and accountability on the on, on the UH, on, the information warpers of our time, the big tech companies and their algorithms who systematically surface information that gets you angry so that you stand on a platform and you keep, you know, giving them the ability to sell ads based on your rage. They're the problem. They're destroying the information ecosystem.

They're the issue. I mean, what Elon Musk has done to ask, Mark Zuckerberg's done to Facebook, with the Chinese Communist Party has done with TikTok or who the hell else runs it. It's amazing on certain days what it emphasizes and what it doesn't. So we know, I don't know if we do know. Actually I sit there. We know that we're better in person than we are online, but you know, it's hard to I think we all know.

When we're not online, we're a little bit better, and when we're too much online, we're a little bit worse.

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already seen some. I mean it looks to me like President Trump and Stephen Miller in particular, view this as a moment to exploit for political gain. That is dangerous

and that risks. You know, each side justifies their radicalization based on the other side. I mean Donald Trump did it the other day when he was asked directly on Fox and Friends. Hey, we got there's some fringe people, extremists on the right, and he said yeah. But he yeah, butted it right, He said, but our extremists care about law and or they're upset because of crime issues. He

just sort of manufactured some rationale. But again, he was looking for a reason not to accept any piece of this that somehow he has any responsibility here whatsoever or has been a contributor to the violent climate that we

all live right now in America. And when you don't have a leader who even if he doesn't believe he's as big of a contributor as others believe he is, but if he doesn't have the ability to sort of I don't know. He claims to be a Christian, so at least admitgift send because he has on this issue he's not tried to bring people together, and he doesn't and he's never pretended he was planning on doing it. You know, he says unity would be nice, by right,

He doesn't know any other way. The politics of division have been extraordinarily successful. And this is what is very frustrating is that those that have power right now may believe they've got political power because of the politics of division,

that the politics of division has been good politics for them, even if it's been unhealthy for the country. And that's where we have to get. We have to change the incentive structures. It's been fun to look up all sorts of new quotes that people have been throwing out there, and there's a Milton Friedman quote that I wanted to share that sort of fits. I think that fits this moment right now, and that is this issue of incentives. Right, do you know our elected officials? Does it matter whether

they're good or bad? Or does it matter more if the incentives are good or bad. Here's how Milton Friedman argued. He says, what is important is not the particular person who is elected president or the party he belongs to. I have often said we shall not correct the state of affairs by electing the right people. We've tried that the right people before they're elected become the wrong people after they're elected. We've all seen that. Right, the important

thing is to make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. If it is not politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing ever or either excuse me. Look, I think our own experiences prove this our incentive structure. If there was a reward structure in our politics that punished dividers and rewarded uniters, we would have two parties fighting to say, no, we

represent we are the better unifying vision for America. We do not have two parties competing for a unifying vision of America. We have two parties competing that says their vision is wrong, their vision is wrong, any part of it is un American. Sort of, we do two things to each other. We dehumanize and we de americanize, and they're kind of the same thing. But in our political debate, if you can make somebody seem on American, it gives

you makes you look. I have used the phrase, hey, that's you know, and I will say that's on American, and I mean it from a defense of the constitution of what I believe the American way is. But I acknowledge that maybe the person I'm criticizing believes what they're doing is in the what they think is in the best interests of America. But the fact is we do have a we do have this issue of a messed up incentive system, and in fact, we don't have you know,

we we have sort of a couple of problems. One is we have two parties who are not comfortable policing their own sides. And the thing is is that we are. We never want the other side policing our side. Who the hell do you think you are? You don't get you know, it's like you don't get to criticize a

family member if you're not a member of my family. I get to criticize a family member that is a member of my family, right you know, we know that. You know, Hey, that's you don't do that. We're a united front as a family. If we've got disagreements, we're going to express them ourselves. But that also means policing your side, and we don't police right now. There is a fear of policing your own side because it quote gives the other side of victory. Don't do that, then

you're acknowledging that the criticism was correct. So you've got a lot of muted Democrats and muted Republicans about the excesses of their political basis. Because there's fear right, the

information ecosystem rewards the extremes. The extremes are controlling the political narratives of both parties more so than ever, because if you at all try to strike a moderate tone, you know, you're enabling the other side, you're enabling corporate interests, or you're enabling the other side in some form or another. And it has led a lot of what I think

it goes to the Milton Friedman quote. There's a lot of good people who are not doing the right thing in this moment because there is no incentive to do the right thing. And if the right thing is to speak out, the right thing is to vote against a

certain cabinet official here or there. The right thing is to say, you know, not endorse somebody, not vote for somebody, make it clear why. But there's this fear right, the incentive is not there, and so we have to change. We have to change these incentive structures. And it probably

doesn't happen without new leadership. So what I would say here, and before I get to them going to I'm going to do something here that's really a Hopefully we'll chap chap, the ass of hard left and hard right equally, and that is going to be a defense of both siderisms. I'll get to that in a minute on this front. But look, I do think that you're gonna I do think you're gonna see both parties divide loosely between the

peacemakers and the agitators on the right. I think the agitators are in charge, right, that's President Trump and Stephen Miller. I think many there are many in his orbit that want revenge retribution in some form, and do view this

as some sort of ideological movement to be destroyed or eliminated, which is not American right, and which is only going to serve to radicalize radically. You know, each side keeps using something the other side does to radical to defend their radicalism. I promise you, behaving that way is not

going to bring peace. If anything, it is going to bring more division, and it's going to only divide and and and I think frankly, there are political actors who are going to see this as a feature, not a bug.

It's going to divide the left and divide the middle in ways that should just allow the right to keep power because I think the Democrats are also going to be split between what I would call essentially your peacemakers and your agitators, and it is I don't see, you know, the correct end of this story is Spencer Cox becomes president in the moment that we need in this moment, But I I don't know if where we are in

three years. I certainly don't think the party that he belongs to wouldver nominate him, and I'm not sure the part of the Democratic Party whatever nominate him. He's quite he's pretty conservative ideologically, but he's moderate in temperament, right,

and that's something that we've been missing, his moderate temperament in our political leadership. I think Joe Biden was elected because many people thought he was going to be moderate and temperament and he was. We don't know what he was because he never really was an active president, right. That was the problem. He wasn't really out there and

he governed. He didn't governed. He didn't govern as if the country was a divided nation that needed to heal, which is what he said he was going to govern.

He instead governed pretty pretty progressively. He governed basically, he governed for his base, just like Donald Trump is doing governing for his base, making the middle uncomfortable, making the moderates in his party uncomfortable. But there's you know, that's our politics is controlled right now by the two political bases, and they have a lion's share of the media mouthpieces, and they will use use the algorithms to punish anybody that's daring to preach some form of moderation of any form,

whether temperamental moderation or policy moderation. So I do expect that, and it's likely that you'll see I mean, you know, I'm I'm not sure this is the correct, the perfect this is not the perfect analogy, but I do think, you know, after the death of George Floyd, there was a bit of a sort of collective breath we all took together, and then it quickly quickly polarized. Right, things quickly divided. This the division we didn't even really have

a moment of coming together on this. After Kirk, we've sort of divided pretty fast. I don't think it should matter what more we learn about the gunman, right, I think we know enough. We know enough that it's pretty clear to me that anybody that chooses to shoot somebody

has been radicalized, and it's pretty clear where all the radicalization comes from. It comes from our online discourse, does not come from our face to face discourse, but it comes from us. It comes from our political discourse. So our political discourse radicalized this person, and that's what happened. I know others are going to be looking, you know, to scapegoat the trans community here. That's only going to make things worse to try to go down that road.

But I think we all know that's where that's where many might be headed on the right, and that's likely to be met with its own set of resistance and its own in a in a way that that is, you know, likely that we will spiral downward further. Rather than trying to figure out how we how we can stitch this back together. I think the place to start is obvious. It's big tech. It's the algorithms. It's how

we share information. It's not just how politicians talk, it's how the language is shared, it's how it's what's surfaced, it's what's it's it's the whole thing, and it's pretty it's pretty hard to fix. I've been thinking about this all weekend, and it's much as I feel pretty convinced

that I know this is the core problem that this really is. It's this good luck fixing it, especially when there are people who have gotten political power based on it. And that's why I think this is a you know, until the voters. Ultimately, it's us that have to decide

we want a different path. We have to decide that we want that we're going to take the politics of unity over that we're we're going to We're going to take a breath from our own ideology for a two year or four year period simply to bring peace and to try to to try to you know, I've said we America needs a pastor for patriotism twenty twenty four. I thought that person might be Bill mcgraven. Twenty twenty five. It looks like the pastor for patriotism might be Spencer Cox.

But he can only succeed if we want to listen. One of the ways to solve our information ecosystem issue is that we've got to we've actually got a We do need to have a media that finds a way two makes room for multiple ideologies and multiple sides of

a conversation. You know, we we've we've gotten this shorthand that the left and the right likes to use both siderisms. Right, it's a little bit more of a criticism from the left than it is from the right. But what it really is it's when when you know, nobody from the middle ever uses both siderisms, it's usually an ideologue and a and a hard partisan on the left or right

that does because they want to disavow an argument. No, that's right, that's wrong, And they've accused people in mainstream journalism or in what some of us call it independent journalism, however you want to describe it, that somehow it you're equating it, and it's like, no, what you're trying to do is bring everybody into the same room so that

everybody faces similar accountability tests. And I happen to be somebody who believes that if you present here's what one side is saying, here's what the other side is saying, I'm not going to treat you like an idiot. I'm going to do my best to test both theories of the case and let you come to your conclusion of which path might be better. And so if you don't

take a competing perspective seriously in your news coverage. If you claim that you were doing journalism, you're not going to be seen as an independent referee number one, and you're going to be missing out on interesting arguments and better ways perhaps to defend your beliefs. Journalism's credibility, doesn't,

you know, come from pleasing one side. It comes from proving fairness, proving that you will give every actor every chance to be heard, even when their arguments are weak, because in some ways that's the best way to expose a weak argument. How often you, oh, they have nothing to say. But if you don't give them a chance, then people retreat to their corners and retreat to their corners,

and everybody retreats to their corners. And when they think they're not getting a fair shot in either way, then everybody says, forget it, And I'm just going to to preach to the my choir, and I don't even want to tune in to listen to your other choir. But here's why presenting, if you can be a place that can get people from all sides to participate, it actually

forces more accountability, and it forces more collective accountability. If you have politicians, corporations, activists, and institutions all having to go to the same places to talk and to make their case. Then we'll have shared reality, we'll have shared debate.

This lack of a shared reality, this lack of shared debate, and you know what, a both sides framing actually ensures that no one escapes scrutiny, even those aligned with what you may personally believe. True accountability means discomfort, and that means you should be a little uncomfortable having to defend yourself. But if your ideas are sound, then you'll get more comfortable doing And in a pluralistic democracy, which is what we claim to be, multiple perspectives have to be able

to coexist. And if we try to create a situation where we're going to get rid of an ideology because we don't like it, you this radical ideology over here, radical ideology over there. Do you think you can just get rid of it, You'll end up perhaps giving more attention to it and having it untested at the same time. I mean, there's no better way to showcase America than when you have people who disagree with each other appearing together. That's something we don't see as often as we used to.

It was a staple of political talk shows of the eighties and nineties, and for about eighteen months after nine eleven that has completely and utterly disappeared. And do realize that if you hate our information ecosystem, it's because we don't have any both sides vehicles anymore in the mainstream. We have outrage media, and outrage media thrives on one sided coverage because it deepens audience loyalty, pure and simple, right, Megan Kelly podsave America. They have a loyal audience. They

cannot ever veer from that too often. Every once in

a while they can tell their audience what an uncomfortable truth, But if they do it too often, they'd lose their audience. If you're an activist and you're you're and you're organizing for a policeitical party, maybe you can rationalize that, but it's not journalism. And if you're doing both ciderisms right, it means you're listening to all sides and then you test the claims against actual evidence. Now, look, there's lazy both sides isms right when reporters just lazily equate facts

with opinion. Sciences say climate change is real, critics disagree. That's that's stupid. Both ciderisms. What you do is you lay out the arguments. Here's what climate scientists are saying. Here's are those who think that this is they're making an argument that says that climate science is overreacting. And here's why. The question is what are we going to

do about it? But I'll tell you this, it's and moments of this huge political division that I missed the times when we had where both were people that regardless of the side of the aye you're on, you felt like you were welcome pretty much in any political talk show, in any political green room. And I don't think anybody thinks that right now. I promise you this. I'd like to think. I am we are trying here to make this a home for that. I'm not going to sit

here and round the edges for you. You know, I'm gonna speak truth to power in my own head, meaning what I believe. But I also I'm a I'm a stubborn incrementalist,

and I'm fully aware that we're three hundred and fifty million people with three hundred and fifty million different opinions, and you've got or if you want everybody rowing in the same direction, you've got to do baby, steps, and you've got to be talking to each other, not past each other. All right, I lecture over. I know I

went long. I didn't think I had more to say, but yes, I just defended what some of you call both siders journalism, and what I call is is creating a vehicle so that everybody is in the same room trying to make their case, and a good journalist is there simply to test the premise of the cases that

they are making. And when we come back my history lesson from seventeen ninety six, well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with my friend Frank lavin See and I even threw in a question about last week's history lesson

about Ford's pardon, and it actually, you know, his answer about that about now Jimmy Carter was a cleansing that country wanted, regardless of whether Ford had shown less contrition towards nexton, which I thought was interesting because it did make me think about the moment we're in, right and if we're looking to cleanse ourselves right from this toxic political debate that is just dragging our country down from its pedestal. Is sort of you know, if there were

ap college football rankings about countries. I think we'd still be the number one country in the world, but my goodness, we wouldn't have as many first place votes as we used to have. And it's because of our internal strife. Right that is our biggest impediment in this country from us doing better things, greater things, helping us advance this planet is literally our division is our political division on this front. So September nineteenth, seventeen ninety six, the Philadelphia

Daily American Advertisers printed George Washington's farewell address. So, yes,

that is the history lesson today. It's the George Washington farewell address, arguably one of are technically our only non partisan president. Right, He was not a member of any political party. In fact, he used this farewell address to warn against political parties. I guess I would argue that

if the closest thing we had to an independent president, since George Washington is probably Dwight Eisenhower, and they both shared a title before they became an't didn't they essentially general of our armed forces? Right? So perhaps perhaps there's a pattern here, right' It's you know, these are two men who ultimately only had to see everybody as Americans first, not as Democrats or Republicans than Americans. Right, Democratic Americans,

Republican Americans, no Americans. So a few things about his farewell address, a few little history nuggets. By the way, the US Senate on Washington's birthday, it still has a senator read Washington's farewell address, and it's written in some older English, meaning doesn't necessarily translate as easily today. So while I will give you a few quotes, I will give you a more modern interpretation of said quote. So there's a few themes you should know about his farewell address. Right.

One of the number one thing he was preaching was

unity above all else. In fact, it was the central warning that Washington made in his address is that America's strength depends on national unity. He feared factions, especially factions built on geography. At the time, it was North versus South, or identity. We were having new Americans come over with part of Europe where you from, etc. He feared that was going to tear the Republic apart. This is in

seventeen ninety six, today's culture war politics. Our red blue state divides right, our regional polarization, the kind of echo that concern and then some right. His prescription was, Americans must see themselves as Americans first, not America first, but as Americans first, not as members of warring camps. So he wrote, the unity of government, which constitutes you one people,

is also now dear to you. It is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. Indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country, from the rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts. Please don't fragment the country. Please

don't factionalize us. You see where he was going. He also gave a warning he had issued on the dangers of partisanship. He called the spirit of party democracy's worst enemy, predicting that it would lead to cycles of revenge, government paralysis, foreign manipulation, and eventually despotism. Is this familiar the dysfunction of modern US politics, The weaponization of investigations, tit for tat, impeachments, shut down brinksmanship. Once again, our founding father pretty prescient

on this one. His advice was to discourage and restrain partisanship. Talk about a warning that was unheeded. Let me read you a quote here. I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations, i e. North versus South. Let me now warn you, in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party. Generally, the alternate domination of one faction over another,

sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, is itself a frightful despotism, And essentially the end state of partisanship gets you further, much closer to authoritarianism than your realize it. I mean, he continues, It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, and opens

the door to foreign influence and corruption. He didn't even know about the algorithms yet in seventeen ninety six, and he knew that foreign actors would be using bots or TikTok or something else to stir a vision in this country to weaken us. Washington knew then. He also called for respecting our institutions. Washington insisted that respect for the constitution, laws, and the separation of powers was the bedrock of liberty.

Here's what he wrote. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution, which at any time exists, is sacredly obligatory upon all follow the Constitution. And when you're doing something unconstitutional, that

is un American, and it is against the rest of us. By the way, he also called for fiscal responsibility. He stressed that public credit was a national treasure, urging Americans to avoid excessive debt, to accept the taxes are necessary, and to think of posterity in an era of ballooning deficits of polarized tax debates. Wow, Washington's sober call for balancing prudence with preparation is a reminder of the stakes. Here's what he wrote as a very important source of

strength and security. Chairish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding, likewise the accumulation of debt, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen with which ourselves ought to bear. Don't pass the debt down to me or to my kids or to their group kids. Is also some hat tips to

morality and knowledge. He said, of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. Now, some people will say this that this means it has to be a specific religious or a specific set of morals. We are a country that was founded on a freedom of religion,

which also means a freedom not to be religious. But it didn't mean we didn't want to have moral men and women serving in this country, and that morality and I do fear that we have lost some way. I mean, we have got to figure out how to how to And again this gets it to my quote from Milton Friedman in the first part of my monologue today, which is we need better incentives if you want people to behave with some sense of good morality when they're in office.

On foreign policy, many of you know this one. He warned against entangling alliances. This is probably the biggest takeaway he said. Washington's most famous foreign policy warning was to avoid permanent alliances. Here's what he wrote. Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Nothing is more essential than that permanent inveterate antipathies against

particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded. Don't get fall in love with one nation, Don't let hatred of another lead you down a stupid policy path. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. Well, we've gone back

and forth right on this one. I think that there's we had a pretty good eighty year run when we had a like minded view with other democracy loving nations. Forming NATO. So I wonder what Washington would think of NATO and whether he would still disagree with it. So that's an interesting I think that's a that's an interesting thing that we would love to find out. What would

Washington have thought of NATO? Now he would have to then know that washing that America was the most powerful country on earth, and of course when he died, it was still the country. The most powerful country was not US at that time. It was the country that we revolted against. But anyway, there's your history lesson today. I think the Washington Farewell address, his warning about parties, his concern about factionalism, his concern about what happens when unity

is lost. Boy, I found it to be an elixir when I was doing it again. This is you know, in case you're wondering, I look up, I go through all sorts of different there's all these different history websites that have put together this day in history, this week in history, and all this stuff. So I do it for this specific window. And let's just say. You know, when you see it, you're like, aha, the timing is perfect.

All right. Let me squeeze in a few questions here, because I know I've gone long today and then right

at the end, I'll give you my few quick thoughts on college football. But here we go, ask Chuck. This one comes from j R. Khondur It Kundert from South Carolina.

He says, he's originally from Iowa. Go Hawks. We don't need to talk about it. Oh interesting, he says. Hi, Chuck, big fan of the podcast, and I appreciate how you continue to champion thoughtful, fact based journalism. I'd love to hear your take on a potential James tollerik Jeff Jackson ticket for president in twenty twenty eight. I know where you're going there. James tallerco's Jeff Jackson's the ag now in North Carolina. James Tyler Rico is running for the

US Senate. I'll get to that in a minute. And Jr. Continues to me, both of these guys are explainers in the vein of Clinton and Obama, Smart, clear communicators who connect with people. You often mentioned how Democrats have largely abandoned Texas, but wouldn't this be a unique opportunity to rebuild grassroots momentum there? And with Jackson coming from North Carolina, a state you've identified as critical to reaching two seventy.

It seems like a strategically interesting pairing. Thanks for all you do. Look, it's an interesting thought there. I know that Jeff Jackson built quite the following on TikTok when he was a member of Congress. I think he's cut that back a little bit now that he's a law enforcement officer, the chief law enforcement officer in North Carolina. Look, Tall, Rico's fascinating to me in particular, And I don't disagree

with you on Jeff Jackson. And in fact, I I admire that he's I admire that Jeff Jackson isn't in a hurry that you know, he he definitely seems to be a pretty gifted communicator, and he is, you know, one step at a time. There was he didn't want to get into a big primary fight with Roy Cooper or you know, okay, you run for the Senate, I'll run for a G. He didn't want to get in a big primary fight for governor. The ag ran for governor.

He ran for a G. So I admire that he is sort of like you know, sees it as a I'm not just going to race to try to you know, everybody's got ambition In politics, ambition is a good thing mostly, not a bad thing. You have too much ambition to the point of where you don't do your job right,

that's when ambition becomes a bad thing. So I definitely think that that Jeff Jackson is is definitely in the in the a star pitch if this were baseball, a star pitcher in double and triple that you're very interested to see what happens when they come up to majors. Question is what do you view as the majors running for president, running for governor, etc. Ezra tell Errico, I would be a bit more intrigued with his candidacy in Texas if you were running for governor in that Senate.

And I'm of a couple of minds here on this look. I do think it goes to what I said earlier, right, I think we need a pastor for patriotism. In fact, I think if we had, you know, i'd like I can tell you that you know, the meet the Press I would have done the day would have been James Langford and Ralphael Warnock, two pastors in the Senate, a

Republican pastor and a Democratic pastor. But we kind of sort of need that mindset, right, who doesn't Immediately A pastor's instinct is to look for good in anybody that disagrees with them, right, is to look for good there. You know, it is sort of at least did good pastors do this? Right? You know, no pastor wants to shrink their flock. They want to expand their flock. And how do you expand your flock? You have an open mind,

you have opened arms, et cetera. So I do think the mindset of a pastor in particular is something that are unhealthy. Culture could use a little bit of. I'm just don't know if he can win a center race in a red state, and I think it's easier to win a governor's race in a red state. One two. I think if you're looking to build a larger movement,

you have more success. And if you're trying to speak to people in the middle, speak to independence and speak to moderates on the other side, you know, it is easier to talk to those moderates as a governor candidate than as a Senate candidate. We have so the Senate

is so broken. It is as much as I wish senators could go there and all behave like Lisa Murkowski, you know, who's kind of a free agent, but she sort of has the political luxury of doing that because the right tried to get rid of her and they couldn't. So she's she's got this, She's she has her incentive structure, which is the center and center right of Alaska politics. But at the end of the day, the Senate is turned into the House. I mean, in fact, I've been

think about the following right as we're doing these redistricting wars. Now, originally the House was elected by the people, and the Senate, the US Senate was senators were elected by state legislators. Well what if I told you that now our state legislatures are essentially electing the House, and it's the people that are left electing the Senate. It is sort of bass ackwards right from what the founders wanted on this front.

But I do think because the Senate has become such a partisan body, and because they've the filibuster has been neutered already, right, sixty votes only now matters in a handful of cases, but the votes to confirm people and fifty votes to you know, you can sort of get out of the sixty vote trap by doing a budget reconciliation. You can now do that a couple times a year.

And so the Senate itself doesn't lend itself to a to be persuasive anymore, doesn't lend itself to be a convener of to try to sort of be the cooling saucer of American politics. If anything, it is now the

opposite of that. So I and I fear for Tallarico's sake if his goal is to become more viable as a national candidate, that the partisan nature of the Senate, partisan nature of Senate races, now partisan nature of Senate campaigns, will make that extraordinarily difficult, and that his he might have a hard time keeping the brand that he is so well established, we're running for governor might seem harder.

Greg Abbott's got a boatload of money, but he's been there a long time, and he he just got what's Tallerico became national for fighting the governor, for going so partisan. So anyway, you gave me a chance to sort of I do I think he is. You know, when I look around, I put him in my top five of potential presidential candidates right now because he has that Jimmy Carter Pete Bootage's quality too, that both of him had Carter in the moment back then in seventy five and

seventy six. Hey, I've not heard of this guy, but man, I just feel better listening to him than any of the other usual suspects that were running back then. That's how Pete Botage felt to many a Democratic voter in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, You're like, Oh, that's refreshing younger, not sort of stuck in Washington speak and all this stuff. I think he's now got a harder time.

It's it's tough to do that twice, right, you can't do it a second time when you've served four years in Washington as a cabinet secretary. But that's why I'm I'm constantly looking at these new voices. And the point is is that I think you picked two really interesting ones, and if either one of them ever became the standard better for the party, it would tell me that the peacemakers were winning the not the dividers. Next question comes from Bryaness. Hey, I'm an avid listener and have a

question about your time hosting meet the press. I get frustrated when gets dodged tough questions and hosts let them

pivots talking points. Both parties are skilled at avoiding direct answers, leaving viewers without the clarity they need. How can interviewers keep the focus on critical questions like deploying US troops and cities or accepting foreign gifts without losing control of the segment. So I think there's a simple way to do it, which is one guest for the hour or one guest for twenty minutes. I think when you, I think the flaw in all of the shows right now,

and this was a look. This was something I went back and forth with. I wanted I want guests for thirty minutes and forty minutes. Most guests won't do it. Okay, you know you can get the president and the vice president to stick for twenty to thirty. You can get them to sit for thirty to forty. They accept that,

especially if you have traveled to do the interview. But outside of them, you start to talk yourself, Well, does anybody really want to hear thirty minutes with Chris van Holland or does anybody want to hear thirty minutes with James Langford. Well, the problem is is that when you go down this road and everybody knows it's eight to ten minutes. What you just described is why I prefer this medium right now then than had what has developed these days as for interview segments on what's left of

traditional media, because everybody's figured it out. I've equated it to baseball analytics. Everybody's got the same data. You know, the interviewer knows that they only have eight to ten minutes, so and they and you know, and maybe you want to get that guest back. So then you did where am I going to ask the tough question? Do I do the beginning? Do I do at the end? And

then I got to ask these three questions. Maybe you promised in order to book them that you would ask about this one issue that they care about, and you're like, okay, I want to do that. Well, if you agree to thirty minutes, then then everybody's happy. So I just think

the short interview it's advantage interview e, not interviewer. And if you want to get control of interviews back, you got to limit the number of guests you have during your hour and and do as you know, give each interview segment as long as you possibly can, because the longer you have somebody it is easy to bullshit you for five minutes, it gets harder and harder every minute

after that. And so ultimately I think that the house the glory days of the Sunday shows, they all had one guest for twenty to thirty minutes, or you might have two guests on at the same time for thirty minutes, one D and one R. That was sort of kind of standard in the nineties, you know, and you can say attention span. And by the way, I'd have producers

tell me, hey, look that interview went too long. Viewers started to get tired and leave, right, So I have met the problem, and it is us, but it is if that's that's the ultimately the issue. Everybody's figured out that they can fill either they're not going to be up there more than eight to ten minutes, so you can kind of fill a buster and kind of avoid it. And you know, the few times you know, when I have when i'd have you know, i'd go down the

rabbit hole. I'd blow up a panel segment and it would, you know, and it would screw up the timing of the show, and you know, a lot of producers work really hard on these other segments, you know, So it is it is the tyranny of time. But you know, and you're trying to to put on a show that you're getting as many people as you as you can

to watch it. But in this day and age where you can you know, I think I kind of I kind of think now I would do if I in a perfect world, you do four long interviews and then you may present the best ten minutes in a summary episode on that Sunday. But say, guess what, there are longer versions of these interviews available for everybody. I'm not saying that that's a viable way to do it, but that would be the ideal way to do it, all right,

Last question, because it gets me into college football. This comes from Chase c from Little Rock, Arkansas. Chuck is a lifelong arc Kans and Croud razorback fan here in Little Rock. I've always felt our state punches above its weight politically. From Bill Clinton and Mikakabi to our current governor Sarah Sanders, Arkansas keeps producing leaders who shaped national conversations. Yes,

that is true, whether it's on education, agricultural cultural issues. From your perspective, what is it about Arkansas political culture that gives it such outsized influence and how do you see that playing out nationally in the years ahead? And for your sports page, with all the changes in college football from nil deals to conference realignment, is a time for Congress to step in and help reform the sport.

Go Hogs love the show best regards. Well, look, I think that I think the the both Mike Huckabee and Sarah Huckaby Sanders in some ways. Oh Bill Clinton right there, thanks for making them national figures. Right he put Bill Clinton put Arkansas on the national map, and I think it didn't allow But but the fact is, even you know, before Bill Clinton, you did have it win Rockefeller. You know Rockefeller who was an elected official, Winthrop Rockefeller, I

believe from from Arkansas, David Pryor and Mark Pryor. David Pryor was considered one of those Southern lions of the Senate sort of in that post Civil Rights era after the Civil Rights Actors passed on that. And then of course there's the Fulbright Program for J. William Fulbright and Arkansas senator who created the legislation that was about an international exchange program. So the fact is Arkansas has elected

some pretty impressive senators over the years. But there's no doubt I think the Huckabee family has Bill Clinton to thank for making it a little more of a national state. As for the look, Congress is going to have to come in in some form or another, even if it's just to create an anti trust exemption, because I do

think you're going to get collective bargaining. I do think that you're going to have the athletes in each conference, especially if the conferences can continue to cut their own media deals on their own, Well, how are the quote players going to get a piece of that media deal. Well, they're going to do it with collective bargaining. So then we're also going to have like the SEC Athletic Union, the ACC Athletic Union, right Player or Players Association, the

Big Ten Players Association. You see where this is going. It's I still think this would all be better if it were done more collectively. Maybe you know there's a the big booster for Texas Tech Athletics has actually been paying for his own advertising. It's been popping up on

some college football games. I've noticed where he wants to essentially update the nineteen sixty one Broadcasting Act, which is right now, is what prevents, for instance, the NFL from ever airing an AD after September, airing football games on

Friday nights after September tenth. I think it is because from a period of time they cannot compete against high school football, and there's a bunch of windows where they cannot hold games on Saturdays until a certain date in December, and there's some other ways, and maybe updating that gives some creates a way, you know, I personally think that they ought to be negotiating their TV contracted collectively the

entire FBS as one. I think everybody would make more money. Right, you could certainly stagger it and you know, get more money based on you know, size of budget or something like that. But I definitely think Congress is going to come in because where there's where I where I think you're going to see the most, you know, it's it's when the football programs in your Dakota's right that don't have any football teams in one of the two or three big conferences, those politicians are going to be, hey,

we've got to save ours program. We've got to save our our our football around here, and I think that that's they end up being the trigger to sort of getting getting something happened. It can't really be done on the presidential level. There's not much. There's not much he can do. But for your hogs, you've got in the

world of nil between Tyson's Chicken and Walmart. If your friends in Fayetteville can't find the cash to build some big time college athletics over there, it's on them, because I've seen all that Tyson and Walton money that floats around the northwest Arkansas these days. It is created and developed a wonderful, huge new metro area. So it's a pretty my guess, it's a pretty easy source of cash

for Arkansas athletics. I think that's why our friend mister Calipari decided to go to Arkansas before he was kicked to the curb by our friends in Kentucky. All Right, what we learned this week in college football, Well, I was glad to see Miami as focused. I think Miami. Here's what I don't I don't know if South you know, this is always one of these tyranny. Here's a rhetorical question because I don't have the answer. If you beat a ranked team but that team isn't ranked at the

end of the year, did you beat a ranked team? The point I'm making is, so South Florida beat Boise when they were ranked, and they beat Florida when they were ranked. Neither team is ranked now. Well, Florida may not ever be ranked unless they beat Miami next week. I'm going to that game. I sure as he hope they don't beat Miami next week, but they may not be ranked again. So did South Florida beat two ranked

teams in a row or not? Right? And so this is I know it's a small thing, but we think we know who the good teams are, but we usually don't know until the end of the year. Is you know it's South Carolina a good football team or not? They were ranked in the top ten. They just got wiped out by Vanderbilt. And you could say, well, they lost their quarterback. They were losing that game with their quarterback.

And what Vanderbilt did the Virginia Tech versus what South Carolina did to Virginia Tech on it's nine and day and Vanderbilt was unranked. Now that I don't ranked anymore. So, you know, I am mindful that we still don't know. You know, we think we know who's good. I'm impressed with the ap pole that they kept Notre Dame ranked. Now, if it were any other school, the Notre Dame bias may have kicked in, which allowed them to be the first zero to two team in like thirty years to

be ranked still in the top twenty five. But if you believe the polls, the two games they've lost, they've lost two games by total of four points to one team ranked fourth and another team ranked ninth. I believe is where Texas A and M ended up, So, you know, or maybe it's ten but either way, but are we sure right now? It looks like Miami's legit. It looks like Notre Dame in Texas A and M are certainly

not bad teams. They're pretty good teams. I don't know if Georgia and Tennessee are good or if those are two terrible defenses, because I also saw ten See give up a boatload of points up against a Syracuse team that I don't think is that good this year. So is it possible that both Tennessee and Georgia have great offenses and not so good defenses. By the way, it is striking to me that Kirby Smart doesn't have a great defense. I guess we're going to get another test

in two weeks when he plays Alabama. So look, there wasn't other than exposing. I think what we learned this week is who's not who doesn't belong right. I think we know Clemson doesn't belong in the top tier this year. There's a lot of Clemson doubters that are that are feeling their oats right now. Those of us that enjoy

Dabbo are enjoying this moment a little bit. Maybe I'm not gonna lie, but Dabo's on a warm seat, not a hot seat, but he's on a warm seat because he continues to sort of try to He believes his way is going to still be able to win, and this is a big bad start for him. As for Georgia Tech, we know they're good. The question is are they are top ten good? That we don't know yet.

Let's just say, considering the Miami's had problems with Georgia Tech, I'm glad george Tech is not on our schedule this year. Although I have this vision Miami's twelve and zero going into the ACC title game and has to play Georgia Tech. Of course, if that's the case, maybe they rest their starters and claim they aren't really trying that hard. But we know Clemson's not there, we know South Carolina doesn't belong.

I don't know where I'm at on Michigan yet. Oklahoma I expected to play a bit of a letdown game against Temple in Philadelphia, had a weird time start time, and they didn't show any letdown that impressed me. Let me see what they do against all But I'm starting to think that Oklahoma Texas is going to be is going to be extraordinarily meaningful, Like not since both teams were in the Big twelve has this game been that important?

Perhaps onto where things go? I mean, put it this way, I don't think Texas could afford a second loss at this point. And let me just do a little bias commentary here. What's with the lack of interest in Carson beck is a Heisman candidate. It's interesting to me that people are still insisting Arch Manning is just look at the just do a blind taste test on that one. Do your blind test, and Carson Beck, arch Manning, do your blind test on Frankly, Carson Beck and anybody you

want to put in there. He's not being talked about. He's sort of like in the he gets written up as others receiving votes, you know, like you know, we're not ignoring him. But anyway, I think the guy deserves a little more. But hey, in some ways, I don't want Miami's heads to get too big. I can't believe Game Day is going to Miami. It shows you how kind of weak the college football slate is. Next week, I'm trying to remember the last time Game Day went to a game where one of the two teams had

a losing record. Because Florida's one and two playing Miami, but they're coming down to the U. Let's just say that there's a certain senior at the University of Miami that's related to me that is ecstatic. She's been hoping Game Day would come and out of for four years. She was bummed last year when they decided to go to.

The only Miami game Day there was was the one in Berkeley when they went there for cal I was starting to think it was going to be Tallahassee, though, I think because of the way ESPN treated Florida State, I'm not sure they would be very welcome they went to Tallahassee, considering how ESPN was arguably the reason why Florida State got left out of the College Football Playoff despite being undefeated at the time of the selection process, So maybe they wouldn't be quite welcome for the Florida

State Miami game, which is going to be in the first week of October, a natural potential place for game day to go if both teams are unfeeded. The only other game that would have competed with Miami in Florida is probably Indiana and Illinois, which just as a derivative of family from the Midwest. I love that Illinois and Indiana is a meaningful game. I've googled it. I'm sticking with signetti anyway. So there's my two or three cents

in college football this week. I'm just relieved Miami has survived and advanced, because that's the beauty of college football. Every week. You don't get eliminated after one loss anymore, but every week there are some teams that are eliminated. And I do want to be careful saying Clemson's been eliminated. They can always backdoor their way in because they always

figure out how to back door. They weigh in. But this doesn't look like uh, it just looks like a team that feels like they're going to continue to come up short. All right, with that, I will take a forty eight hour break. We will upload on Wednesday. With that, just remember you don't have to be angry. Being angry is a choice. Choose grace. See you in a couple days