Jonah Goldberg - "Suicide of the West" and Preserving the American Experiment

done that. We should have done a little handshake into a kiss, into like a little moment into a thing. Yeah. I could have like whispered, I like your musk, which is the way I think he was saying to him at one point. It felt like it. It felt like a Trump. Trump's really into him, which is something that is good for America. Yes, yeah, maybe, you know, if it's good for merit for us to get along with

our two year old allies, that's good. But if he's only doing it because somebody's sucking up to him, less good, right, I mean, it should be they're getting along because we have mutual interests, we have mutual values and they reflect that it shouldn't be because the leader of France says, not only are you a handsome man, you're a powerful man. Right. I mean it shouldn't just be sucking up, it should

be something more. I feel like it should just be there, welcome to the show, great to be here, like, thank you for coming through. And you have written quite a book here, Suicide of the West. If there's a title that would catch you, is that why the title of the book, um, Well, in part because I didn't say the death of the West or the decline of the West, as grim as the title sounds, and it actually doesn't

end as grim as it sounds. Uh. Suicide is a choice you choose to do, um, to make these decisions that you're making. And um, I think that one of the things that people don't appreciate is that if you you can, you can choose not to do them as l And then a lot of the things that are are are plaguing this country are within our own power

to fix. Right. It's interesting because you talk about nationalism, tribalism, populism, all of these things that you you believe are leading to the decline of America, when when you talk about the decline of America, you specifically referring to capitalism and the way it's made America thrive over the past three years. In part, I mean, I call this thing of the miracle,

right and but the miracle isn't just capitalism. It's also uh natural rights, um, civil rights, uh um, free speech, all of the things that we associate with the Bill of Rights um, the idea that the individual sovereign, that we are captains of ourselves, that we are citizens not subjects, that the government works for us, we don't work for a government. These are all unbelievably new ideas in the

history of humanity. Humanity split off from the Neanderthals like three thousand years ago, and for most of humanities existence, we were poor, ignorant, bloody, violent creatures, right and um. And our human nature hasn't changed. We are still the same creatures we worked ten thousand years. What has changed are our values are norms, are institutions, And if you don't have gratitude for them, and if you don't try

to protect them, they'll go away. And it's interesting, as you say that, though, you go if we if we don't have gratitude for them, if you don't try to protect them, because that seems like an argument many people in America will use for one group or another. What's interesting in this book is you refer to both sides of the political spectrum doing similar damage or an idea that that may cause damage to that idea in the

same way. So, for instance, you right for a National Review as a conservative writer, but at the same time you are not a fan of Trump. I think that's fair. Right, So you are saying that populism both on Trump side and on the left. Uh, there's a danger of that hurting Americans. That there's nothing wrong with a little populism, right, Um, there's nothing wrong with a little nationalism. It's like a pinch of salt brings out the flavor and the meal.

Too much ruins the meal, and way too much is literally poisonous, right, And so all poisons are determined by

the dosage. Um. You know, my favorite New Yorker cartoon, which my wife got blown up for me a few years ago and framed, has two dogs drinking martinis at a bar, and one dog says to the other, you know it's not good enough that dogs succeed, cats must also fail, right, And that's sort of where we are as a culture right now, where it's not, you know, and this drives me crazy about my own side these days, where I talked to young conservative activist college students and

I say, look, by all means, fight political correctness if that's what you want to do. But just because being rude is politically incorrect doesn't mean being rude is good. And so much of what's happening I think on both sides of the political aisle is this this idea that you can do almost any horrible thing if it annoys the right people. And that a huge part of the defense of Donald Trump, which I just find intellectually bankrupt, which is, well, he's got the right enemies or um,

he's making the right people upset. Well, you have to look at what is actually upsetting them right and some of the things that upset you know, liberals and left is I can agree with, and I you know, I'll support, But some of the other things are just sort of craftness rudeness for its own sake, And I don't see why I should defend that just because he's on my team. As it were. It's interesting that you bring up teams because it does feel like America is drifting into a

space where politics is solely about teams. You pick your team. Whatever your team does, you defend. So the other team, whatever they do, you pick the opposite. You know, the ref is biased, this is against us. Those are not facts because they don't work in our favor. Does this, in your opinion, lead to a place where the experiments of America begins to decline? Is is that the only

thing that's kept it moving? Or has it just been an illusion that's lost it for three years because there were people who were previously oppressed and that wasn't something that America ever was. No. Look, I mean, look, are there bad things in American history that we need to atone for that you need to fix. Are that we have problems today that we need to still work on. Absolutely? My point is is that um again, human nature has no history. Human nature is a constant. We have this.

If you took a kid from uh New Rochelle and you sent them back to a Viking village to be raised by vikings a thousand years ago, he would end up going pillaging the English countryside. You take a Viking baby and you bring it to New Rochelle, he's gonna grow up to be an orthodontist, right and a very big and so uh. These challenges exist in every generation. Um, it is human nature to want to be part of your tribe. We are hard wired to be part of a group. That's how we evolved is to say I

will do everything to help. In Darwin writes about this, well, I would do everything to help my team, my friends, my kid, my family, my allies, my coalition, and the stranger is the enemy. And what you know and some people you know, there's a common cliche that says people have to be taught to hate. Um, no, they actually have to be taught not to hate. That's what civilizations do is teach people to see. And it starts with Christianity or Judas me, you're way back in the religion apartment.

But the fundamental insight is that you need to teach people that strangers have human dignity, that strangers are decent people, and just because you don't know them doesn't mean or or don't agree with them, It doesn't make them the enemy. And I think we're falling down on that in our politics and our education, and instead we're telling people just go with your feelings, your rage is more important than facts or argument, and that's where you get populism. That's

where you get a lot of nationalism too. But if you if you have somebody who is trying to end you, how do you then work on responding to that? Because that's something that I that I'm always trying to figure out in my head is it's it's one thing for people to say, let's keep politics, uh civil, let's not have an argument, let's not points each about as enemies, et cetera. But there are times when, let's say Charlottesville is a good example, there are people who are literally

saying we are Nazis. These people are wishing for the end of other human beings. It's a bit difficult at that point to say, yes, yes, but let us uh, let us sit with them and engage as they drive over us. It's a very difficult space to be. And I agree with you. And look, look, my last name is Goldberg. I'm not really a turn the other cheek guy. I'm more of a smiting and wrath guy. So I

get what you're talking about. But but my point is, and I agree with you, and tyling about the Nazis one of the things that infuriates me about what Steve Bannon and some of the people around Trump did um was claimed that somehow, a bunch of freaking Nazis were part of our coalition. And I would keep trying to explain to these people, no, you don't. They literally say that they want to get rid of people like me,

people like you. Why why should I form a common you know, group of them just to get this guy elected or just for political purpose or whatever. Some things are ex sinential questions. And I'm not saying that we should have gone into Charlottesville and shot a bunch of Nazis, right, But the idea that somehow, um, they have something important to say that I need to find common ground with them, I think is ridiculous. I also think it's ridiculous to call people who aren't Nazis Nazis as a way to

demonize them. And I think there's a lot of that that's going on too. And so it's a prudential question and you have to sort of figure it out as you go. It doesn't mean you can't have big arguments. I've always believed the democracy is about disagreement, not about agreement.

It's about having arguments. What I don't like about our politics right now is how people don't think arguments matter at all, that facts don't matter that um, you know, the whole point of the Enlightenment was this idea that you could persuade people. And part of the reason I wrote this book is it's much a cautionary tale to my allies on the right, is that a lot of people are just giving up on persuasion and instead it's just hammer and tongs. Cats must fail, It's all about power.

The arguments in defense of Donald Trump and the we're all about winning and strength. Winning and strength are not They're absolutely amoral concepts. Winning for what, strength for what, Unity for what? It has to be the ideas that underlie it, and we're in a moment where a lot of people just don't care about ideas anymore. One of the big ideas that you share in the book is that America needs to focus on less identity politics on both sides and more on merits, because merits is how

capitalism thrives. Merits is what moves the society forward. When you say that, though, do you think sometimes a statement like that ignores the fact that some people's merits is overlooked because of identity politics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Look look, you know it's funny Like most of the liberals I talked to, they like the words. They agree with me on the populism and nationalism, and they don't like the and the tribalism. They don't like the identity politics. Right.

I am not saying that you can't. I'm not saying that there isn't discrimination out there. Obviously there is. What I'm saying is that one of the great and glorious things. And Barack Obama was very eloquent about this. Um about this country is not that America were the Founding fathers were hypocrites when they started this country. They were you know, the slavery was a big you know, it's a big you know, hey what about that? Right? Um description, what

about that? But you know what I'm getting a right. So, So what happens is then Abraham Lincoln comes along with the Gettysburg Address, and he redefines what this country is about about, you know, equality, and then Martin Luther King says, hey, wait a second. A hundred years later it is his wait a second. The Founding Fathers were a promisory note to the American people that all men, including black men, are comin to equal. It's the unfolding of that story,

so that that is what matters. And so one of the core values that all of civilization is is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. And one of the reasons why Martin Luther King was so persuasive is he was appealing to the best ideals of white America and saying, you should take people as you find them. One of the great things about the American founding, which doesn't get taught anymore, is that we got rid of titles of nobility.

We got rid of the notion that simply by an accident of birth, one person is better than another person. And so a little identity politics, just like a little nationalism in terms of ethnic pride and solidarity, all of that is fine. When you start reducing whole categories of people to an abstraction and say all I need to know about you is the color of your skin, that's when you get into a problem. And this idea that all white people are racist is is first of all

not true. You know, intermarriage rates between white and blacks are going through the roof. They can't all be racist. Right, Um, But I but I think the argument is less all white people are racist and the system has been created by white people to oppress people of color. So I think when when people say white people are racist, I

think that's disingenuous. But most of the time the argument people are saying is, hey, we can admit that this system, from the founding fathers through to redlining through the segregation was written in such a way that it would benefit one race over another. Would it would hemp but the cats and allow the dogs to succeed? And I look, and I think there's obviously a lot of truth to that. Um. At the same time, the definition of who counts as

white changed over time. You want the Benjamin Frankly changed for everyone except black people. That's that's true. That and that's true too, And that's my That's part of my point is that it is an outrage that this country took so long to include everybody in this idea of of universal equality. That is not an argument for getting rid of the value of universal equality, right, It is. It is to say that we need to be more consistent in applying these ideals, rather than saying these ideals

themselves are bankrupt. Because it is these ideals that for for all of human history, the average human being everywhere on Earth lived on average with three dollars a day Africa, Asia, Europe, everywhere, and then once it only once in all of human history, it starts to go like this. And it's because these ideas start getting put into action. I think we should be you know, we live in this moment of the greatest alleviation of material poverty in all of human history.

Hundreds of millions of people in Asian Africa are coming out of poverty. And it's not because of UN programs they help, it's because of these ideas starting to germinate lifting people up. Maybe I just a little gratitude for them, and maybe have a little room to say, maybe the entire story of this three hundred year miracle isn't a story purely of oppression and tyranny. Were we bad the bad things happen in the past. Yes, have things been getting better? Yes, you can say both things. You can

say both things nuanced. The way I like to think of it as this, I go, uh, Capitalism in many ways should be like software on a phone. It constantly needs to be updated, and at some points it feels like the updating has stopped and people allow its to you know, stagnates in the way that it is. And

to your point of gratitude. Before I let you go, I think the one thing and I wonder if you can maybe understand this is when people say you should be grateful for for what you have, do you not think that gratitude is always relative to the bottom versus the top in where you are, Because to say to somebody, and you hear this all the time, and I'm not saying you're saying. Politicians will say, oh, black people, you complain about America, go live in Afghanistan. See what that's like.

I said, But you're not living in Afghanistan. If I'm an a Michelin Star restaurant and the food is not great, you can't tell me to go to Arby's because I complain. I'm saying to you, the food is not what it was promised in this restaurant. So is it not difficult to say to people who have gratitude when they are not living in the promise of what the country is meant to be. Yeah, no, I think that that's fair.

I think at the same time, well, I don't say that to people, right, you know, and really not, honestly, I'm not saying so and so I one of the one of the good ones, one of the things. I for one of the things. And look, I mean I've I've taken slings and arrows from lots of different directions, including from a lot of friends and former friends taking um.

One of the thing is I would say to people who make that argument is stop making that argument, right, you know, that's not how you should frame this kind of thing. What I would say is that you know, the pursuit of happiness is is it's not a guarantee if you have the right to pursue it. And one of the great things about freedom, the miracle liberal democratic capitalism, whatever you want to call it, is it gives more

people the opportunity to pursue it. Could that get better? Yeah, But you can't look at any of the systems we had prior to three hundred years ago, and I'm not sure you can look at to most of the sort of nationalist or socialist systems and say they're better at it. Um. And so when people say we fall short of ideals, I said, well, of course, that's why they call them ideals.

You're not supposed to be able to like live. They're supposed to be a north star, you know, they're the thing that you're your true north that you march towards, and you can always get better at them. My point is that we shouldn't throw them away because this is the only game in town in terms of of what has actually taken humanity out of the muck of its

natural environment. Capitalism is unnatural, democracy is unnatural. If they were natural, you would think they would show up a little earlier in the evolutionary record than about two thousand years into our existence here. And so maybe these are things that we should be a little more protective of.

If the goose, the golden goose, came into your house out of nowhere and started, you know, golden eggs don't sound modern anymore, started squeezing out winning lottery tickets, but yeah, but you would your response to it should be gratitude, not like, give me more, you know, more lottery tickets than you can produce. But that's what the story is about, is it's it's not really so much about greed, it's about ingratitude. It says, I think, I think fundamentally understand

what you're saying. And that's what I appreciate about the book is it makes me think. It engages in ideas and fundamentally, what the book is saying is don't throw the baby out with the buff. That's right. That's right. And we can we can disagree about the size of government all these kinds of things, but there's some fundamental things that we should all be able to agree, have merit and are worth keeping. You stop the conversation. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you

very much. Suicide Off the West. It is available now The Daily Show with governoah Ears Edition. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at eleven ten Central on Comedy Central and the Comedy Central Act. Watch full episodes and videos at the Daily Show dot com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and subscribe to The Daily Show on YouTube for exclusive content and more. This has been a Comedy Central podcast