Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss illiberalism, which, you know, you look at in opposition to the idea of liberalism that forms the philosophical basis for the american system and the American Constitution and some recent articles that suggest that homegrown illiberalism actually is something that has always been here and always been sitting there in opposition to liberalism that we know and not just some periodic diversion that pops up from time to time in american culture. And later on, we'll take a brief look at recent studies on fluoride consumption, particularly in tap water and the protests in New Caledonia.
Hello.
Welcome to the call it like I see it podcast. I'm James Keyes, and riding shotgun with me is a man who, unlike some podcasters, always keeps it a hunted when he's doing his podcast thing. Tunday Yoga and Lana Tunde, you ready to show the people how these other podcasters are not like us?
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah, man, do I keep it 100 while I'm sleeping?
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Hey, man, that's for you to say, man. I can't speak on that.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: I don't think so, but I'll just check it.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: There we go.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: So.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: All right, well, now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and like the show on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out.
Now we're recording on May 21, 2024. And, Tunde, I want to just first kind of lay out ill liberalism and what we mean when we're saying that. And then I want to kick it to you for just your thoughts on just how prevalent this ideology is or may be in America. So according to Cambridge dictionary, ill liberalism is about limiting freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of behavior. So it's about either the ideology that's about trying to limit people in that way or a kind of mental framework where you are trying to impose limits on people's ability to express themselves or to do certain things and so forth. And that's, again, in contrast to liberalism, which is about liberty and about freedom and so forth. But freedom that's applied to everyone in a society, illiberalism might be trying to restrict that stuff to only one segment or section in society. So, tunde, what do you make of the idea that american history, you know, that over the course of american history, illiberalism is not some marginal part of the nation's political identity, but rather it has been a central feature that has stood in opposition to liberalism in many respects.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: It's a very interesting observation and concept. And I think, yeah, by the way.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Just real quick we'll have some in the show notes. We'll have some, some recent articles that have discussed this, you know, and then discussing just kind of taking a really deep dive into to this that, you know, some of the stuff we used as source here.
Sorry.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: And no, so it's, you know, just, I just think it's one of those things that to hear it said like that doesn't feel good because we have been taught as Americans to believe in things like liberty and the pursuit of happiness and our freedoms and that we are, you know, the shining city on the Hill. So to think of an America with a past that was illiberal in that sense is not something we're really taught. And I think it's important to, let's say, for the audience here to really make a distinction between the terms liberal and illiberal in the sense of what we're discussing. Because I think as I was even preparing for today's discussion, I'm indoctrinated with the modern american political culture where I, you know, the word liberal was always a pejorative during most of my life. You know, I was born in the late seventies. So the liberals were the people that my parents and grandparents used to talk about were the hippies, you know, in their sixties and smoking grass at Woodstock. And so this idea of liberalism is something that I had to learn actually over, you know, just as an adult, which is really the idea of liberal ideal ideals are a founding part of the american system and our documents, the founding fathers really had a liberal view of America. And I think even to hear myself say that right now in the backdrop of our modern political and cultural discourse, it doesn't sound like it jives. And I think that's kind of the interesting part of me to having this conversation with you today is really unpacking.
What does it mean, the idea of liberalism versus illiberalism? So, yeah, I think that I've been indoctrinated with american history to not believe that we've had a majority of the history being illiberal, you know, in different pockets of our culture and our society. So it's, you know, an interesting discussion.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Well, no, I mean, and you mentioned, you know, like the making the word out liberal to be a pejorative. And you know how that is something, a recent phenomenon over the last 40 years or so when prior to that, you know, Americans of all political, political parties or whatever would consider that, would recognize and understand themselves to be part of a liberal democracy. Whereas now if you say that to some people, a lot of people they probably wouldn't recognize. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This whole system is set up a foundation of liberals, liberal ideas. And that, to me, is telling. But actually, to me, this, this idea isn't, isn't that, like, it didn't strike me as particularly odd or something that came out of nowhere? I mean, I, when I read american history, you know, and this, the stuff that we did is taught there's illiberalism all throughout it. You know, like, I look at, when I look at the ideals of the founding documents, whether it be the Declaration of Independence, the things that are espoused, or even the constitution and so forth, you know, the First Amendment is an exercise in liberalism. And, you know, like, so, but it's all throughout the documents. The, what I see is that stuff was really aspirational. I don't know that the country's ever lived up to its liberal ideals. The point was to put that stuff down on paper and then try to work towards it, which I'd say over the long arc of history, the United States has worked towards its liberal ideals and gotten closer and closer to them over the backlash and reactionary like behaviors and mentalities that have popped up as it's made that, as it's gone on that journey. So it seems more like this was an aspirational thing that the founding father set up. Like, hey, we want to try to create a liberal democracy. Understanding that by saying only white male landowners could vote at the time or that people of the negro race were only three fifths counted as three fifths of a person from a representation standpoint, was not, they weren't living up to it. They knew they weren't living up to it. But then if you track it throughout, you know, like, even the more recent history, you know, I learned about, you know, when I'm a kid, I learned about the civil rights movement. Well, what were the civil rights movement trying to overcome? Well, they're trying to overcome Jim Crow, you know, the Jim Crow system, and, you know, they're subjected to lynchings and all that. All that stuff is illiberal Jim Crow lynchings. Like, it's so, again, to me, like, it depends on what you want to focus on in terms of, you know, the, the, when you look back at american history, it's like, oh, well, roses and everything like that. Or it's like, well, no, hold on. This has been a struggle for the whole time. And like I said, what it really, to me, what it means is that the, the target was set initially, but we haven't, we're not sitting at that. We're not sitting at the finish line. We weren't born into that. Neither were the people who were before us. And so we're just continuing for people who believe in the ideals espoused in the constitution and the Declaration of Independence and all that, we are trying to work towards that. And then there has been, and there will be resistance to that from homegrown illiberal forces.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, because it's interesting, part of this is, like, the human stuff.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: That we know that there's all the human stuff. Illiberalism is an exception to humans. Or. Excuse me, let me. Let me restate that. It's all the exception. Most societies throughout history have been illiberal. Liberalism is the exception. They're trying to say, okay, all of the stuff that's really hard for us to do, humans, from a human nature standpoint, let's try to do that stuff and create a more just society, a more fair society. Let's see if we can pull it off. You know, so it is. It's an exception, 100%. It was set up.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Well, I think, and it's fascinating, if you think about, was it 8500 years ago? Was Hammurabi's code, which is kind of considered the first, at least found and known documents of hierarchies in the society and the United States law.
Yeah. And the United States is roughly 250 years old, and it's the longest liberal experiment in human history. So, you know, you're right. That's my point of just making that historic time contrast, is that, you know, this is. This is a short lived experiment, and it. And it has, like you said, continued to evolve. And I think that's what I'm saying, is that this. This tension, because in America, the illiberal forces have played out historically. And, like, you're saying the fault lines have been fault lines of race, patriarchy, with the feminist movement and women's suffrage. You know, in our lifetime, maybe it was the lgbt crowd that really began to get its own freedom. And justices starting in the late seventies into the eighties, if you go further.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: It'S the Protestants, you know, were, like, very, very much saying, hey, it's protestant. It's how we do it. Catholics, y'all can get out of here, too, type of thing.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: No, and that's a great point, that the country was founded, in a sense, of people looking to break away from the illiberal monarchies and the Catholic Church's dominance in Europe. And that's the amazing tension in the United States in our history, which is the country, is founded by people who wanted to get away from someone else with their foot on their back and, you know, on their neck and kind of getting King George off their back, getting the catholic church off their back, all these other cultural things that were going on at the time, during that time, they also oppressed other people. And, you know, whether Native Americans, african slaves, the whole thing. Right?
[00:10:31] Speaker A: And that's the human element you speak.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Of, you know, like that human element. And. And that's what I'm saying. And within those after even like, the civil war and all that, you make a good point. There was the ostracism of Catholics, and then of, you know, in the early 20th century, was the eastern Europeans, you know, the Italians, the Russians, the Greeks. They were considered on the same part of the caste system as blacks back then. And so it's interesting that it always.
Illiberalism does require an us versus them mentality and a certain level of playing on people's fear. And I think for you and I personally, and people our age and younger, this last, you know, decade or so is the first time we've seen this play out in the open in american politics and culture, where in most of our lifetime, it was an energy that was kind of put to the side, in a sense, or at least there was a lid kept on it. And I think, to your point, that's why to guys like me and you, this is a little bit like, whoa, what's going on? But I think when you look at the history of the 250 plus years and even back to the colonies, this is not abnormal at all.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Yeah, well, one thing I'll say, but I do want to keep us moving in the conversation, but the, you say, you know, countries founded by people, you know, that were, like, escaping, you know, the systems in Europe where they may have been subject to oppression or illiberal forces, where they were the target, I would, I would reframe that a little bit. It was settled by those types of people, but it was founded, I mean, this is interesting about the United States. It was founded by intellectuals, you know, like, and they putting together all this again, this high minded stuff, like, hey, maybe we can design something, do something that's never been done before, and we can create this society that is governed by rule of law. You know, everybody is subject to the same laws whether you're in government or whether, you know, everybody likes you or whether everybody hates you. You all got to be subjected to the same law and things like that. And in voting and, like, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Like, all that kind of stuff. This is intellectuals coming up with this stuff, you know, and so, and again, it wasn't a guarantee that we'd be able to pull it off. And so trying to put, but that doesn't mean that all the people immediately were just like, yeah, let's do it, you know, like, we're on for this. You know, the people are still human beings. And so you have to aspire to these liberal ideals in order to try to live that stuff. If the easy thing to do is when someone's different, to try to ostracize them or minimize them and, and, you know, be tribal, like, that's the kind of, and I say easy in the sense that that's our natural inclination as human beings. It always takes more effort to go beyond. But that was the, the system that was set up by the, the founding fathers, United States. So there's a level of, and we'll get into this later, but a level of patriotism that is required to take a second and try to allow the illiberal kind of impulse that may be in all human beings to try to settle that and then say, okay, well, what are my principles, though? What am I? You know, what are the things that I hold dear about what I believe about my country and so forth and so, and, yeah, that's just not an exercise for everyone, you know, that everyone's going to be able to do. Like, so the idea that, it seems to me that seeing, when people see the illiberalism play out in ways that they expect, they don't see it, you know, like people would. If you go to the 1950s and you start talking about, oh, this is a very illiberal country because of Jim Crow, people would look at you like you were crazy. Like, oh, but that's just the way it is, so to speak. But when we see it play out in January 6 and people are like, oh, we're gonna by force rush the government and prevent them from, the government from, from operating. Cause we don't like the way it's gonna go, people say, and they're like, oh, my God, you know, like, oh, that's. How could that happen here? You know, like, and it's like, well, but that's kind of the same, you know, that's the same kind of ideology at play there where you're gonna by force, make something happen that is against kind of the idea of liberty and freedom and so forth and voting and all that kind of stuff. And so I think our expectations in terms of what, you know, like, what in society play a role to whether we even see the illiberalism that may be around us at a given point. And so I do want to ask you that specifically, though. And then I kind of got to it a little bit, but I have some more on it. But just why do you think so many Americans, you know, tend to, like, believe or at least express when, like, I guess the January 6 was the most recent example we can look at where people like, that's just not America. This whole rushing, you know, the Capitol and, you know, like, saying that, you know, the voting, we're not going to follow the voting and whatever, like, that's just not America. Or making up that it's not, you know, that, or you saying that it's not that the voting is not legit without being able to prove it, you know, which I could call that making that up. But nonetheless, the, you know, like, kind of that. Looking at that, so many people express so much surprise, like, oh, how this just isn't America. How could that be? Why do you think that is?
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Because we don't teach ourselves our own history, that's why. And you know what? It's interesting. And even just preparing for today, I used to think that the lost cause and these other types of, you know, really myths in american culture and our society in general, you know, the idea of heritage, not hate for people that fly the confederate flag, when we know if you just read the writings of the founders of the Confederacy, they. Exactly. It was about hate us all. It was all about hate.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: You know, and it was all about keeping people in slavery and all this stuff that for whatever reason, Americans just don't want to talk about. So I think. And what I was going to say is the lost cause, I used to think, just affected people who wanted to believe in the Confederacy not being what it was. But what I realized just as I was thinking about that question is, no, it's actually the lost cause was successful in indoctrinating all Americans, both people who support the Confederacy and people who didn't. Because by the time you and I are born, maybe not 100 years before, when there was still a living memory of the civil war, but by the time you and I are born, everybody believed that the nation had never had certain behaviors. Right. Or at least, I mean, you and I grew up in a living memory of certain things that did happen, you know, the 1960s and prior. But, you know, I think people just want to believe and have a certain romanticized view of our history. And I don't think that's abnormal. I think every society is prone to that. But I do think that because I want to you say something profound that I don't think is really mentioned and also boasted about with pride, is that this country was founded by intellectuals. That's a very unique position to be in, because most nations are founded through war, and then the warlords and the strongest people end up winning, took power. That's why it's interesting to what you're saying, because, number one, the reason I bring it up is because what they saw was the effects of tribalism in Europe, which we've discussed at various different points in our, in our show's history.
And what we just discussed earlier about the religious tribalism, the cultural tribalism, so.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: On partisanship, which can be a form of tribalism as well.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: And then you have a country made up of all these Europeans that need to figure out how we gonna, you know, their descendants that are here on the american side and trying to figure out how we all gonna coexist. So you're right. It took an intellectual way of developing a system that forced debate. So number one was getting back to the specifics of the liberal and the liberalism of the system. Number one, just the setup of separation of powers so that you try and avoid a dictatorial or monarchical style of rule where the judiciary, the executive and the legislative branch share coequal power in running the nation.
The second thing I would say is, during that time, and this is a very interesting conversation where it's going, because as you're talking, it makes me think about the idea of conservatism and the original conservatives, like John Locke and a lot of the intellectual conservatives of the Enlightenment into the American Revolution.
The reason of conservative thought was to try and keep at bay the tribalism and the people that just wanted to rule and have people rule them with passions only. And it's kind of no coincidence to me that during this time, books like the wealth of nations by Adam Smith, which is an intellectual way to look at trade and capital, right? And people like John Hamilton trying to figure out from an intellectual way how we're going to set up this economy, because it really is liberal government with the ability to express ideas through intellectual thought, also bode well with open economies. And I think that, you know, the United States benefited from kind of this, this melding of both at the time. And, you know, it's going back to interesting that all was on the backdrop of still illiberal practices within the country?
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Well, they, yeah, they operated at the same time, like, going back just to the idea of the, you know, like why Americans always express surprise. Like I said before, some of it's the kind of expectations, you know, when whatever is going on at the moment, it seems like people associate that with their country and associate that with what's, quote unquote normal. And so it's only, it's only can be revealed as illiberal when it's, you know, something that's different. But building on that, I think you raised a good point when you first started with that, which is the idea of not knowing the history. And not knowing the history ends up resulting in, like, for example, January 6 is actually a mild example of kind of an illiberal approach to. To trying to take power in government. There have been others in America, I mean, the civil war, obviously, where, you know, the certain states didn't like the way the election turned out. And so they said, hey, we're out. We're seceding, you know, we're declaring war on you guys, you know, or, you know, we're. We're gonna fight you guys over this. And so that that's, that January 6 is not as bad as that. You know, clearly the Wilmington massacre, 1898, January 6 isn't as bad as that. You know, like, they actually did kill the people who had been elected or, you know, killed enough of them that the other people that were elected were like, all right, I'm out. And took over the government in this, in the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, you know, like. And so that's, that was much more extreme. So if you look at it from that standpoint, if you don't. Aren't aware, you know, if you don't look at the civil War, is that if you look at this over states rights and not like, hey, we didn't want Lincoln to be elected, so we're out, you know, and, you know, so to speak, even though, you know, we were a part of it before that. Or if you don't know about Wilmington, you know, like, and again, that that was much more obscure in terms of historical aspect. Or if you just don't connect it to, you know, the. The idea of when black people would try to vote, you know, after the 13th Amendment was passed, you know, 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment, 15th Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. After all that was passed, bad people were trying to try to vote. They were hung, you know, in certain parts of the country. Or, you know, like, if you don't, you know, connect all those things from a historical standpoint, then, yeah, if you see people talking about, you know, like, hey, let's just take power. Let's just have one party rule for forever, you know, type of thing, then that stuff is like, man, that's, that. What happened to liberalism? What happened to, you know, that's a very illiberal approach. Where did that come from? And it's like, well, to me, if you look at the history, you can see it constantly there. And that's, we've talked about this in other shows, and I think this is really where you go with that. Is that what this reveals, like having this kind of, in your mind, rose colored glass? Oh, well, everybody here is on this same idea of liberty for all.
You aren't prepared for the fact that there's an ongoing fight and there's no finish line. There's always going to be forces trying to move to, you know, like to move us to a system of a more hierarchical system that it has more illiberal principles. Not liberty, not, not, not liberty for all, but liberty for some and others have to live under a hierarchy. And so being aware of the constant tug of war that's going on can help you better prepare for that and understand when you see it, you can recognize it and say, oh, okay, that's these forces working at bay, trying to, or working, trying to move the country in this direction. And so teaching history like there is a, like there are two sides to the idea of two sides of good faith. I will say, you know, because there can be two sides. But what sometimes one of the sides may not be operating in good faith. The idea of, you know, do you teach a history that sugarcoats things in order to try to build morale? You know, like, hey, you know, we're all good guys. You know, we can, you know, we can pull through because, you know, everything we've done before, we've succeeded. You know, we, like, we're the good guys. We're not. So you build morale in the country. There's a, you know, that, that's a reasonable kind of approach. You know, like it may be short sighted, it may be misguided. You know, you could disagree, but, and then there's also the approach of kind of telling it like it is. And, you know, so what do you think, you know, between those two? Like trying to tell a history that builds morale with people or to try to tell, tell the history as it was? Where do you kind of lean towards in terms of kind of the best approach when you're trying to maintain a nation and a system.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, there's probably a combination of both somewhere. You know, do you need a little bit of both? You need. You need the facts and the real reality of history so that, you know, the whole terminology of, you know, if you don't know your history, you're doomed to repeat it. So that that's clear. And then the second thing is, yeah, you do need some sort of propaganda. I hate to use the word, but, you know, to make a nation feel good about itself, we all need to have some sort of shared, cohesive thing that we're all feel good about. Now, for guys like me and you, that might be the system of America, right? Like, I feel great about the liberal democracy that we're talking about and this idea of being able to solve problems through debate the way the system was created with an upper and lower chamber of Congress and, you know, the Senate and the Congress, ratifying laws, so on and so forth. And so in that sense, you know, that's what I would find as ideals to have a shared values of. And I think that's what the tension we're seeing now is other Americans. Some Americans coalesce around the idea that this might be a christian nation, for example, before they look at what we're looking, talking about here, the secular liberal ideals and laws that are put in place, other people have other things that they believe. So I think part of those people.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Might, you know, I think you're on to something with that. Like, what makes you feel part.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Yeah, but part of it is, like, if you look at the other times this has happened in our history, like the 1930s or maybe even the fifties under McCarthyism, or then maybe the sixties with the civil rights movement. It's usually when the country is faced with this kind of internal question of who are we? Right? Like, who are? And the majority group feeling threatened to a certain extent about their own station in american culture and american life. So in the twenties, you know, that led up to the 1924 immigration laws that were very strict back then. It was a certain group of Americans whose descendants maybe immigrated here in the 16 and 17, early 18 hundreds that came from western Europe, like England and Scandinavia.
They looked, you know, very.
They had a lot of hostility, let me put it that way, towards other european immigrants, like Italians and Spanish and, you know, others today, we don't see that type of hostility towards european immigrants. Today. It's just hostility towards immigrants from South America.
That hostility wasn't around, let's say, in the fifties, people weren't worried about Mexicans and people coming from Venezuela back then. So it seems like this, the targets of the illiberal forces and those who wish to seek power based on this tribalism, those targets change over time. Whenever kind of the majority of Americans start wondering, okay, what's going on here? We don't like some of these changes, all that. And I think to the beauty of the system of the founders, America has seemed to survive all the attacks, including the big one, which was in the 1860s, which has led to the civil war. And I guess maybe the question we're asking here is, are we going to survive the current attacks?
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Well, it's been ongoing attacks. And see, that's the thing. That's why you have to look at it as a progression. And you can't look at it as what was founded was the kind of the end, you know, like, that was the beginning of the journey. Yeah, because that was the beginning, and then there is no finish line. You know, you're just going to continue. Like, it's about trying to become, you know, a more perfect union, you know, like, and that doesn't mean that it was better. I mean, this, you know, a lot of times people do like to look back and say, oh, it was better. Like, you know, we're trying to become a more perfect union, meaning we got to continue to move forward and not backwards, at least from, you know, from my personal view of it. I think with the history piece, it's difficult because there's different audiences. Like you said, like you pointed out, some people can feel good about the, the intellectual part of it. Like, hey, we are the only, or one. We're the first country in the world and one of the longest running country in the world to run itself by these sets of ideals, you know, and like, that, that's something that makes us clearly exceptional, you know? And other people would say, well, no, I feel special because we have a nation with a lot of christians. Or somebody might say, I feel special because of white people. You know, like, oh, and that's what. And so for those people, how do you. They won't necessarily walk around feeling pride about their country necessarily, if it's all about, hey, freedom of speech and, you know, all of that kind of stuff, freedom of religion, you know, they're looking at freedom of religion, like, no, that doesn't make me feel good. You know, so it's difficult from that standpoint. There is a need amongst society to propaganda, but this is where you get into the idea of nationalism versus patriotism. And so what patriotism, when you're feeling good about what the nation stands for versus nationalism, is kind of that blood and soil thing. We're trying to protect what's actually here right now and not the higher kind of what is my nation about.
So I don't think there is a answer. I think there's a way that you have to, for leadership, they have to learn to speak to everyone, and that doesn't necessarily mean that you're out here promoting white supremacy, but maybe you talk to people in ways that will connect with them. Everybody's not going to connect, be connected with, feel connected with their country in the same way that you might, you know, or I might, but there are other ways other than you don't necessarily have to promote division in order to make, to reach everyone and to reach some of those people. And I think the biggest problem we have will be when people aren't creative, when leadership isn't creative in terms of how to reach different types of Americans. And they're just, they want to have one message for everyone and they don't recognize that. So you need other messages for people beyond just what might work. What might work for a message for some group of people may not work with others. So, and you have to find creative ways to do it, because on the other side, there are going to be actors who try to, to reach those same people with very divisive and destructive messages. And so you have to give them some kind of competing narrative beyond the decide, divisive and destructive. Destructive one that may have, you know, some appeal to them or may have an appeal to them. And so you have to give them something else. Otherwise, you just succeed. You just seed that person, that group, that mindset to the forces that have, again, who've always been here, that have always been pushing for illiberal types of approaches. So I want to get out of this topic, but you said you had one more thing.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: No, no. Yeah. So, I mean, you say some good things there because I think it's very important for people who are fans of the liberal side of the american story and history in terms of the way the system works and operates.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: And when you say that, you're not talking about current political rhetoric, you're talking about freedom of speech, freedom of religion. Yeah, exactly.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: Talking about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson stuff. Yeah. No, but it's just about reminding everyone about this because I do think that one of the advantages of the illiberal crowd is that they behave in ways that if they can force those of us who don't want to behave that way. To behave that way, and then we're all kind of in the mud together. So, for example, you know, we've talked about it before, that you and I have grown up in a country that has organizations that are allowed to speak freely, like the Ku Klux Klan.
I accept that they have a right to speak that way, but if I ever wanted to shut them down, then I am also violating the idea of freedom of speech. So I have to figure out how to counter their message, for example, without treating them the way they would treat me. And that does to take creativity. It takes other things. Right. So I think.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: Well, and your point being that as long as what they're doing is speech, like, obviously, once they start crossing into violence and stuff like that, then it's a.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Well, that was going to be kind of where I was going. So thank you. And that's why one of the hallmarks of illiberalism, at least since the industrial age, you know, in the last kind of 200 years, seems to be the use of violence to solve political means.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: And I think, and political intimidation, by the way, violence.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: And I think we don't have time on this show, go through all of it. Right. But I think people should really take a look at the 1930s historically, and especially in Europe. I mean, this is Mussolini's black shirts, the brown shirts in Germany under the Nazis and the Gestapo, these were all. And in the United States, I mean, this is what, I didn't used to see these connections, and now I do that. I'm older, and I better read the Ku Klux Klan.
Hitler got some of his ideas from America, and the brown shirts and the Gestapo were akin to the Klan to kind of be an extra judicial force to keep the subordinate group in their place through violence. And so when you think about that and you think about today, whether it was we had the former speaker of the House's husband attacked by an assailant with a hammer, but then that person was praised by an entire political establishment and their leaders, and it wasn't seen as it would have been maybe when you and I were little kids in the 1980s, if the speaker of the House under Ronald Reagan, who was of a different party, his wife got bashed in the head by somebody with a hammer, I think Ronald Reagan would have taken it dead serious and he would have been like, you know, that's not cool. And this is not, you know, who are. So I think leadership is important in these days. And what we're seeing is a leadership that is embracing illiberal strategies as a way to try and maintain and ascend the power. And it's, I think that's what really we're faced with today, is one choice, which is maybe not perfect, but it still represents the trajectory of american, the liberal, established order that was founded in the 1790s and nineties, and another that is saying, no, we want to just try something totally different, something akin to what we see maybe in Europe or China with the chinese communist party. So I think it's an interesting thing to live through. Yeah.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I think it's less that it's, it's not try something new. I mean, because the tide, political violence has been in the United States, you know, as a, as I mentioned earlier, in terms of the, the countless people that were.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: What I mean is it's new to us, but people, let's say 50 and under.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it's new to us in the sense that it's, it's ascendant at this point right now. I mean, and that's really what we're dealing with. So, but, yeah, I mean, it's, as Americans, we, that's, we still maintain the right to choose, and that's kind of the, you know, that, that's part of this. You know, as you pointed out, you know, even if you don't agree with what somebody says, you, you defend their right to say it, provided, you know, it's about words and not, not about violence or intimidation and so forth. And right now, you know, there is, there isn't, it's ascendant. The idea of, hey, well, maybe if we don't like what you say or where you're from, you know, what, what political party you're in, maybe we can, you know, use violence or intimidation against you to try to silence you. And so we'll see, you know, like this is that, this is why there's no finish line, is that, you know, from time to time, this kind of mindset becomes more ascendant, becomes stronger, because again, we're still not at the point of states just saying we're out. We haven't got to the point of, you know, like a Wilmington massacre. So hopefully we don't have to go there in order to kind of get more Americans on the same page from the standpoint of the founding principles and not this kind of tug that's been pulling at it the whole time away from those principles. But that may offer many a more satisfying and emotionally satisfying kind of, hey, you know, tribalism, you know, like, let's, let's exert our wrap.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: So I do think, I say this to finish off. As long as we live in states that ban history books, it'll be harder to rid ourselves of this.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's one thing for sure. So, but I think we can wrap from there. Thank you for joining us on part one of our discussion. We'll have some more coming up for you shortly, so please check that out as well.
All right. We're going to have a couple call outs this week. First, we want to discuss, there have been some recent studies, and this is, there's a recently published study we're looking at now. But then there's also just looking over the last maybe ten years or so, more information coming out. It's about fluoride consumption and particularly the idea that in a lot of the country and different parts of the world, there is fluoride added to drinking water, you know, to tap water, and then people consume that and so forth. And so there's been some red flags raised about whether or not this for when pregnant women consume this, whether it affects brain development and so forth. So what were your reaction further? I guess we can talk more mainly about the study that they are talking about, you know, like, but I, obviously there, there's, we'll have in the show notes the actual article where they reference more materials. But, you know, just kind of. What was your reaction to seeing this?
[00:36:07] Speaker B: I thought it was interesting.
One of the things I took notice with is a small sample size. So I kind of get to question a little bit. You had 229 women studied out of obviously hundreds of millions of women out.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: There in one county, too.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Just in one county.
And the methods for it, but not to jump on it negatively just for that part of the reason I felt that is I don't know if they were able to use enough to weed out other chemicals that may just be in our environment that could affect these things with pregnancy as well. But I think the bigger thing to me was it's another sign that we have so many artificial chemicals that we have created just as humanity in the last hundred years or so that are just out there. And I know that fluoride is one.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: That was perfectly here longer than us.
[00:37:06] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. No, but I mean, by the way, we manipulate these things to be more concentrated and all that. And the idea that we're learning now about the amount of side effects, you know, that these things have on us, you know, people getting cancer younger, the issues like this of how do fetuses develop around these things, so on and so forth.
[00:37:24] Speaker A: It's a good point, in the sense that we do so much that everything is so tangled up that it's like, well, hold up. How do we know what anything is from?
[00:37:31] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. Could it be? And a good example this made me think of, and I'll pass it back, is my youngest kid has type one diabetes. And apparently the rate of type one diabetes is growing at a certain exponential rate. And they did all the DNA tests on my wife and I, and neither of us have any history of this in our genetic history. And so the doctors were telling us at the time that they believed that this, his version of type one diabetes, is an autoimmune concern, which they don't know what it's caused by, but they think it could be something as kind of benign as a chemical in a fragrance. They're just saying there's that much stuff out there that can throw certain people's bodies off. And this autoimmune issue, what it does is it causes the body to attack the pancreas and not produce insulin.
You know, that that was kind of my twin.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Like, they just don't know.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Like, oh, they don't know.
Like you're saying, which chemical? And I learned recently that they discovered the enzyme within certain people, that if this enzyme is off in a certain way, I mean, I'm gonna botch this explanation.
Pollution from motor vehicles can cause lung cancer.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: And they believe that this is the explanation of why certain people that don't smoke cigarettes and all that do get lung cancer. So, again, I think that it's kind of scary when you really think about it, because probably everything out there is killing us. We don't realize how artificial we live compared to hunter gatherers and the way that we evolved in nature.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: Yeah, basically, we create some other difficulty. Because you live in nature, you could go drink from a stream that is contaminated with. It doesn't have to be something unnatural. It can be contaminated with a large number of biometals, and then there's heavy metals in the soil, and they get pulled up into plants. And, again, that's not all our doing. The fluoride one is our doing. I mean, there's a couple of things that come into this. One is the whole idea of forced medication. Like, this isn't like, people get all arms about vaccines, you know, but that's like, actually for some type of disease, you know, some type. Some type of thing that could harm you, you know, like a contagion. This is like, oh, hey, you know, we don't want people to get cavities. So let's add fluoride to the tap water. And I think there's a couple things that stayed out to me about that, though. One being that whenever I go to the dentist, they always tell me not to swallow the fluoride. Like, hey, the fluoride is bad for you. Look on your toothpaste, too. Don't swallow this fluoride toothpaste. And so it's, it's just bizarre to me that the decision or that it was like, hey, let's put it in the tap water, which we're drinking lots of. And obviously, it's not the same concentration as what you might swish with the dentist or that you put on your teeth with the toothpaste. But it's just conceptually, I think that is something we should probably look at a little bit more, especially because, as you pointed out, with personal susceptibility, individuals like, let's say that from a healthy person, or for most people, the low levels of fluoride that you get won't accumulate. Your body is good at excreting, you know, but for some people, maybe their bodies aren't good at excreting. That just like, for some people, you know, they, this enzyme or whatever might affect their ability for their lungs to detox from air pollution, you know, so it's, to me, it's like there could be individual susceptibilities which aren't not individual from a, like, only this person, but just certain types of body types or whatever, that, you know, that there are genome types that are more susceptible. So the other piece is, it's like, well, hold on. If, if the dentist tells me to switch it around in my mouth and that's, that does the job. Then again, why, why is the whole idea to drink it and actually to swallow it and so forth? So I don't know. Like, it's. I recognize that. I think some people out there, like, oh, yeah, the government's doing that to make people stupider. And there are other studies that show that the more fluoride you consume might be working. Yeah, I was gonna say there are studies that show that consuming more fluoride may lower iq, but to me, I mean, I filter my water, you know, like, and then made sure to do so, you know, like with my kids and stuff like that. But it's just interesting to me how this is one of those scenarios where I don't think this is some kind of sinister conspiracy, but, you know, it's like the path of least resistance to solving some problem. Hey, let's put fluoride in the water. Not much different than when you buy salt. You see iodized salt. That means there's iodine in your salt, and that may be good for you. But it's just interesting, these path release resistance. Like, hey, let's just add this to this. And then we solve two problems with one. And it's like, well, hold up. Does this even. Is this the right way to go about it?
[00:42:01] Speaker B: I think this is one of those where, you know, this type of infrastructure plays in the country were put in place, like middle 20th century. So, for example, you had a lot of poverty in this country prior to the 1960s and seventies and a lot of. A lot of. Yeah, that's what I'm like. A lot of deep poverty. You had a lot of people in the Midwest and the south. And what happens is, I'm sure people weren't brushing their teeth every day, especially as you know, and having their kids brush their teeth regularly. So I think this was one of those things back in the forties and when all this stuff was kind of, remember the infrastructure of the country being built out with the new Deal plumbing.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: You know, plumbing and all that. And, you know, like, you know, it's.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: Probably a decision, like, all right, if, you know, to have enough people not walking around with teeth falling out and having other cascading problems from that and having dentists officers filled up unnecessarily.
Maybe. Maybe we just put enough fluoride in the water that it doesn't cause additional harm, at least from what they knew at the time, what they could study.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: They think they're outsmarting the system.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And the dental hygiene will get better in the country. And, you know, that's just something, by the way, relatively.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Like, again, we don't know if we're causing other problems, but the. The fluoridation of tap water was seen, has been seen as a success in terms of limiting and reducing tooth decay.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: You know, but here, I just want to say this, too, because it's similar to vaccines, in my opinion.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Well, but. But this is. Vaccines are.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Let me just finish my point. Well, let me. Let me just finish that. Vaccines, I'm talking about normal ones, like tetanus, rabies. I'm not talking about COVID I'm just saying the vaccines we've grown up taking, generally the. The mass population doesn't have a negative reaction to it. We know that there's a small percentages of people, unfortunately, that do, like you said, maybe their body doesn't break certain things down. But a decision has been made, you know, by society that, you know, if the, if the rate of people is 1% or less less that are getting hurt, that's unfortunate. But to keep everybody from, because we've seen the effects of measles and polio and these diseases spreading on mass. So to stop that, then we got to put up with this small portion of people getting hurt, unfortunately, and I think probably the same thing with fluoride, that, yeah, there could be some of those negative effects, but at the time for the better effects, it was done. And maybe this is something to your point that as a society we should look at again.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: Yeah, we probably should continue to look at all of these types of things.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: Because with most people brushing teeth.
Yeah. Do we need it?
[00:44:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, in our ability to measure gets better, you know, that's type of thing. Like really? Maybe again with you kind of insinuated it wasn't something that we could see the adverse effects before. But if we start seeing the adverse effects now, we can actually measure it, then we probably should reconsider or, you know, because then the cost benefit changes. And so, like, but this is where you see the power of inertia. You know, it's like, oh, well, we've been doing it like this as long as anybody can remember. And it's like, well, I'm not gonna. That we got enough stuff, we got enough new stuff to deal with it. I'm not going in and trying to open up old stuff. And so people will a lot of times disregard it just because of that. And again, this stuff isn't easy. This is where kind of the idea of individual liberty runs up against collective society. And it's like, you know, how do you make that decision on anything? And I think you made a good point as far as how the vaccines, like, you know, might be effective for 90, 99%, but 1% are going to have a problem. And it's like, okay, well, what do we do then? And that individual bodies sometimes just process things differently. So, you know, but I do think it always that question when it comes to risk reward, you know, is tooth decay enough of a risk to subject potentially that 1% or whatever the percent is 5% of the population to adverse effects for a forced medication, for something that's not even contagious, more or less. So it's an interesting question, but ultimately it's shocking to see. I mean, you see these headlines like, oh, pregnant people shouldn't drink tap water. It's like, oh my God, where are we going with this? But. And that's probably an overreaction, but it definitely. I mean, my takeaway is just, please keep studying all this stuff. Don't just say, because we've been doing it, you know, like, we can just keep doing things indefinitely, because that's just never a good reason to keep doing something is because you've always done it. But now I think we can wrap it from there. We appreciate for joining us on this. This call out. Check out the next call out as well.
All right. Call out number two. Today, we wanted to take a look at what's happening in New Caledonia, particularly the protests that are happening. Happening over the mining of nickel, which I know you pointed out and when we talked about this offline, just like, hey, this is important for Ev's and batteries and all that kind of stuff. And so what's the balance here of, hey, we got to try to move our society a certain direction versus respecting the rights and the land of people who, I guess in New Caledonia, the people are not on board with you guys pulling out nickel for the greater good. So what are your thoughts?
[00:46:56] Speaker B: Yeah, who would have thought Nickel would be the metal that everyone's fighting over?
[00:47:01] Speaker A: Well, not everybody, but these people that do Caledonia.
[00:47:04] Speaker B: No, I know, but it's becoming. I mean, I wouldn't call it a precious metal yet, but, I mean, the fact if they start sucking on it for all these electric vehicle batteries, it may become one. But no, on a serious note, this is interesting story, because I feel like it covers just a lot of things that we kind of know of from history and colonization and all that, and things that come up today in our modern discourse. So, you know, New Caledonia is an island chain in the south Pacific region, and it's been a french territory for a long time, but clearly, it's not french people there. And so you have the whole issue of that, you know, traditional colonialism, where a european nation has a territory somewhere and is looking to extract resources, and that whole tension. Right. How does that. The people that are there have one feeling about it.
The rest of the world, like you said, this may be necessary for electric vehicles and the continued production of getting the world off fossil fuels. So the rest of the world may feel like, hey, we need that stuff that's on that land. And then what I found interesting was the traditional trade war stuff between economies. The article alluded to one of the big things, the french president saying, like, we need to get in here and mine this stuff, because we got to block China from being the world's like, largest producer of electric vehicles.
[00:48:28] Speaker A: So. Yeah, so we can up our production.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: Yeah, we can up our product. Exactly. So the kind of classic fighting of nation states over economic stuff and the resources. So, you know, that's why I found this one interesting, because it smacks of some of the old. Like, I was reading that the non indigenous new caledonian residents were given additional voting power over the indigenous people because it's kind of seen as the people that aren't indigenous will vote to help France.
Just saying, like, the manipulation of the system. Like, a three fifth clause here.
Yeah, that's, to me why it was kind of interesting that just.
[00:49:09] Speaker A: No, I mean, actually, I look at this and see it. Oh, yeah, my bad. But, no, the interesting thing to me about this is really that we're talking, like, this issue is one that I think many people would. If you take out what they're talking about, like, what particular thing they're trying to mine up out the ground, then most. A lot of people would come down very decisively on the side of the new Caledonians saying, hey, you know, like, you can't just go up in there and just start wrecking shop. Now, this all. There's two things, though. One is that the other is the government, so to speak, which probably has closer ties to the. Or which have closer ties to the french state.
This is one of those things where the government may not necessarily be of the people, by the people, for the people. Or it's like, yeah, the government's cool with it. They cash their check, and then the people are like, yo, what's happening here? But the idea that this is something that's related to production of Ev's and getting all fossil fuels and so forth, I think, for some, may cloud the issue a little bit. But to me, it's that part of the issue isn't that important. Like, I look at it, it's like, hey, you know, like, you should be very. I don't see this as much different than the pipelines that we see, the protests and stuff. We have pipelines here, the granting of leases for offshore oil, you know, here in Florida, you know, when I was talking about the pipelines, it's more so here in the United States, you know, in the northern part of the United States, and where it's just this.
[00:50:36] Speaker B: This.
[00:50:37] Speaker A: There's attention, you know, people that live there and commercial interests, you know, like, and that's really what we're dealing with here in society. There oftentimes isn't a clean answer, because a lot of times, it's there, like, commercially, you may be able to go buy the land, you know, and say, okay. And then say, okay, I bought the land fair and square. Now, sometimes people, you know, they, they're twisting government arms to buy it, but nonetheless. And then it's like, well, but you're destroying the habitat, you know, and so, well, who, you know, like, you, you doing this on this piece of land might destroy the. The next piece of land. And so. And then what happens? And we know businesses love to internalize profits and externalize costs. So it's something. I don't think there's an easy answer here. Basically, I'm happy that if the people are. That if the people aren't upset about this, I'm happy that they're able to protest. That they are protesting. And hopefully, at minimum, there can be most of the things, you know, when you got a lot of people, most of the things have to end in compromise. And so I'm hoping that this can lead to some type of compromise that people can live with. I wouldn't want the people to be able to just say, hey, we don't like it arbitrarily and then shut down all idea of quote unquote progress. But I also wouldn't want a company to be able to just do whatever it wants to do or an imperial power to do whatever it wants to do without any accountability to the people. So I just hope this is the first step to some way for people to come together and figure out a compromise. And the protests create the pressure for that.
[00:52:00] Speaker B: Yeah. To me, it's interesting that the way that our technologies move all these resources have been under the earth for millions of years, and people have lived just randomly over different sections of it. Right? So the Middle east was just a desert until the industrial age and the early 20th century when it was discovered there's all this oil down there. And then all of a sudden, the house of Saud, you know, gets their power, and it kind of. It creates all these geopolitical outcomes. What happened after the second world War with the British and Americans and the French cutting up the Middle east and creating the conditions that we're still dealing with today, now, it's because of the technology of electric vehicles and push away from fossil fuels into this cleaner energy, maybe an asset like nickel, a resource like that, that wasn't, you know, when you and I were born, that would, you know, $0.05 was a nickel. Right. Called a nickel. It wasn't seen. There's something of value that that could be the next thing that causes wars and geopolitical conflict and where humans migrate and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, it reminds me of everything from, you know, the way that the British had a naval blockade of China because they weren't happy that China wasn't. Let them run in there and get resources to, like you're saying about in our lifetime and a little prior, like what the oil companies were doing in South America and West Africa, of destroying the land and all that kind of stuff. And who's responsible, the indigenous people there versus the corporations. So now it's about trying to solve another issue that humanity is creating, which is we need to find resources to fund clean energy. And so it's funny because nothing's really clean once you're dealing with it in that way from a commercial aspect. So, yeah, it's just interesting to watch this play out, I guess, like the part one of this, of the way democracies and societies play out that it's never ending. So as long as we need resources, this is going to be an issue.
[00:54:08] Speaker A: Yeah, and then I think that's a good point. As the resources we need may change, then different areas may become ground zero for this kind of dispute. And, you know, and then we. But again, it's an old dispute. It's an old dispute.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: I'm gonna reverse engineer it. I'm gonna hire geologists to look under my house. We're gonna figure out what's under there. Like real deep, like 100ft deep. And whatever resources are there, I'm gonna reverse engineer and create. I'm gonna invent something that needs those resources. So I can just stay here.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:54:38] Speaker B: Just print money, you know? You don't think that'll work?
[00:54:41] Speaker A: Hey, man, that's foresight, man. That's foresight that might get you where you're trying to go. So. But no, I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody, for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I said, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:54:55] Speaker B: I'm Tunde one. Lana.
[00:54:57] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
