Best of the Program | Guest: Noah Rothman | 8/17/22

Blue sky.

Some people think nature is like this, but actually, it's like this.

Mother nature is not all sunshine and rainbows.

Nature can be hotter than a sauna and colder than an Arctic skinny dip.

That's why Columbia engineers everything we make for anything nature can throw at you.

Columbia engineered for whatever.

Stu, it is just so good to always see you.

It is.

I mean, I just

honored that you would be here a part of this podcast today.

Man.

Man who has, you know, so much other things they could do and for some reason just never does those things and just keeps showing up here.

You know, and I feel about you kind of the way the Wyoming voters feel about Liz Cheney.

That's my dream.

Really?

You want me to be President of the United States?

We got a great podcast that covers all of this and so much more and some great, great guests on today's show.

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You're listening to the best of the Blenbeck program.

So, Stu, I think we have to start with the audio of Lynn Cheney.

Or sorry, Liz Cheney

in

her speech last night.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a victory speech, but she's going to go on.

Listen, here she is.

The great and original champion of our party, Abraham Lincoln, was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of all.

Lincoln ultimately prevailed.

He saved our union.

And he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history.

I think she just compared herself to Abraham Lincoln.

I'm not sure what her point was there, other than, and I'm like Abraham Lincoln, and so I'm launching my presidential campaign.

I mean, I don't know what she was doing.

And, you know, in all honesty, she has a lot in Abraham Lincoln.

Imagine Abraham Lincoln without the beard.

Now, Cheney.

You see it?

You see it?

Not particularly.

No, I can't say that I do.

You're right.

That's mean.

It's just the wart

that is the same.

But anyway,

so I'm kind of sad, Stu.

We don't have

old Liz Cheney to kick around anymore.

Carnet.

Yeah, you know, it was an interesting approach.

And one of the strangest elections, probably of all time.

As we kind of noted a little bit yesterday, you know, Liz Cheney voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

People forget this.

She voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

She was

then obviously turned against him and said the stuff that he did after the election she didn't like, but then survived a Republican leadership vote after all of this.

And then still kept talking about it.

And then eventually was thrown out of leadership and has become the enemy and was

elected, was defeated handily by an opponent who Glenn was so anti-Trump in 2016 that she was among the people organizing the overturning of the primary on the convention floor in 2016 to get Ted Cruz to be the candidate instead of Trump.

And she's come so far the other way that she's now the pro-Trump candidate.

And

Cheney, who voted for Trump in 2020, is now the anti-Trump candidate and lost by 40 points.

It is like all of our beds are on the edge of a wormhole.

Every day we get out of bed, we put our feet on the floor, and we, we just like, it's like a water slide.

Shoom!

We're into another America that is kind of like the one we were in yesterday.

Yeah.

I can't keep track of it.

It's so weird.

And, you know, so the final was 66 to 29, basically, about what I think people expected going into this.

There were some crossover votes from Democrats, but again, not enough of them in Wyoming to make any particular difference.

Wow.

And so

it was a blowout.

Chaney is already on to her next thing.

As we said yesterday, you could tell it was a blowout because the way the media was covering it.

It was talking about how she's got more to her than this.

This is just one bump in the road of a longer journey.

And she leaked this to every single reporter

in the mainstream media to tell that, you know, look, this isn't a big deal.

She doesn't care about this.

It's the next thing that's the big deal.

I did think it was a little much when she started singing My Heart Will Go On.

That's true.

You know, she is trying to make herself into this.

This is a martyr type of period here for her, I suppose.

Yeah.

And

it's a strange one.

You know, I was talking to someone who follows politics, but not like super closely.

And he's just like, look, you know, I don't know anything about Liz Cheney other than she doesn't like Trump.

You know, and it's like, this is her problem here.

It's not that you can't disagree with Trump.

It's not like you can't have your own opinion.

But when you dedicate your entire life to be obsessed with one individual, this is you're going to be defined as to how people in your state feel about that individual.

And when it comes to Donald Trump, people in Wyoming like him quite a bit.

Yeah.

You know,

here's the amazing thing: is

my

problem with her is, like you said,

she was all in

in 2020.

Okay.

She was all in in 2020.

And then he does his thing on January 6th, which he didn't cause.

He didn't do any.

But I didn't like the way he acted on January 6th.

I just saw, I thought, like, hey, Mr.

President, get on TV right now and say stop.

And, and, you know, on the day, I was really, really pissed.

And I'm like, what are you doing?

And

then I kind of got over it.

You know, you know what I mean?

He wasn't responsible.

So I kind of went, I didn't like that, but I'm not going to dedicate my life to destroying him because that's kind of a, I don't know, psychotic break.

It might be a little manic in its approach to life.

It's like going to going someplace where you've had, you know, good meals and you've recommended the place, and then you have one meal that's cold and you set out to destroy it.

I want their license revoked.

I want them out of business.

I want to burn their business down, and I want to piss on their ashes.

That's really what it's like.

Yeah, it's weird.

I mean, look, I think we've certainly asked for this over the years.

Politicians who believe in something that's not popular to stand up for it.

I have no problem embracing that general vibe.

And

a lot of people are saying, you know, I don't know.

I think she genuinely seems to believe this now.

I don't know what,

it's hard to understand that from someone who voted for the guy, right?

Like, you know, it's one thing if you really thought he was a terrible president for four years and then you say, okay, this is the, this is pushing me over the edge.

I have to stop him in any way possible.

You're someone who wanted four more years of this guy, right?

Up until the actual election, right?

I don't think she is.

I think she is someone who held her nose and said all the right things.

And at the first opportunity to kniv him, she did.

I really, you cannot make, it's psychotic, Stu.

That's a psychotic swing.

It really is.

It really is.

I mean, it was a big event, right?

I mean, there's certainly no,

it did change some people's minds, I suppose.

But I mean, I think overall, when you look at it, it's like, I don't think she did this because she thought it was going to help her win this election.

I think she had to have known going into this, this would have made her political life more difficult.

So if she really believes it, let her go out and do this.

But along with that comes the consequences from voters, and voters don't agree with you.

You know, the Republican voters in Wyoming think what you're doing is, you know, completely wrong.

And they sent a massive message.

The turnout was huge yesterday.

But I think, Stu, I mean, think of this strategically.

I think a humiliating and devastating loss puts you right where you need to be to launch a presidential campaign.

Don't you think?

Don't you think?

Let me ask Beto O'Rourke.

Hold on one second.

I'll get him on the phone now.

Betto's like, there's somebody out there who gets it.

Hold on, Stacey Abrams.

She's online, too.

No, it's true.

The bigger thing here is what is the constituency for a Liz Cheney presidency?

She basically runs the state of Wyoming and her family runs the state of Wyoming, and she got 29% of the vote there.

So what is the constituency other than the possibility of her running as an independent candidate to

shave votes from Donald Trump and what, give the presidency to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom or whoever else is running?

I mean, if that's the strategy, which I don't see what the alternative is there, I don't think that there's any

other path for her to make an impact.

That's a strategy that does not support someone who does have a relatively conservative voting record over her career.

She's going to be brave, and she's going to take that stage with Donald Trump.

And he's there.

That's what she is.

She's going to be the one that takes him on, and she will last all of about 45 seconds.

Okay.

He will pummel her.

Oh, that'll be ugly.

He's done it to

every single person.

He'll pummel her.

He'll pummel her.

And then she'll really be set up for a presidential run.

I mean, look, there's no

audience for this is not how you would win a primary.

There's no one that's going to come in to the Republican primary and take a stance like Liz Cheney is taking

and win.

You can take a stance and say, hey, I'm different than Donald Trump in these ways.

I don't like the way he did X, Y, and Z.

But to come in and just say, this man is Satan is not, there's no way to win a primary doing that.

No.

So

here's where I think

I could have tolerated.

I could have tolerated, and maybe the people of Wyoming would have as well.

I don't know.

I don't, you know, I don't live in Wyoming.

But

I think if you had, if you were with Donald Trump and then you, you know, something happened on, you know, January 6th and you're like, okay, that was really bad.

You'd handle it like everybody that I know who was a Donald Trump supporter or is a Donald Donald Trump supporter, they were really angry that day.

And now they're to the point of, I didn't like how he handled January 6th.

I just don't like it.

It really bothered me.

And it still bothers me.

But, you know,

he's, you know, it's Donald Trump and he's going to do what he does.

And, you know, while that bothers me, he either is the candidate or isn't the candidate for me.

And if he, if they would have said, look, if she would have said, look, I was for Donald Trump.

I was with him the whole time, uh-huh.

And, uh, and I love him, just loved him.

But then instead of going psycho over it, I decided just to come out and say, guys, I'm not sure if he is the guy for the next election.

He was great in the time, but he may not be the right guy because, you know, he's, he's, he's,

stirs it up every time.

And we need somebody a little more calm than Donald Trump.

And, you know, he stirs it up.

And I don't know, but it should be left up to the people.

Is this the best way to defeat this

socialist Marxism?

It might be, but I think maybe,

you know, Ron DeSantis would be better.

Okay.

I think those conversations are happening.

But those conversations are not, you know, I really, really liked him.

Now he's got to be destroyed.

Right, right.

Right?

Yeah, no, it's true.

It's interesting because, you know, obviously we do, I have a lot of guests that come on this show on Studios America.

I go on other podcasts all the time.

And one of the I think the most, I'm always interested to ask guests and people who are other hosts, commentators in the conservative world, who do you want?

Who do you want?

And I'm mostly interested to ask people who are Trump supporters, people who love Donald Trump, who are with him the whole time, who would walk through a wall of fire to vote for this guy in 2020.

What do you want in 2024?

Who would you prefer?

Do you want Trump to run again?

Do you want it to be someone like DeSantis?

And all of these people that I've asked have been, if Trump is the nominee, I'm 100% on board, right?

Like there's no, they're totally on that realm.

But I would say the answers have been about 50-50.

About 50% want Trump to run.

He's the guy.

He's the only guy for this time period.

About 50% are just like, look, I love Trump.

He's the best.

If he's the one nominee, great, fine, I'm fine with it.

But, like, honestly, if I had a preference, I'd rather have someone like DeSantis because I don't, there's too much baggage already built into that package.

And so

that's a real debate.

It's not a slide

on Donald Trump.

And I don't know the people like Lynn Cheney.

I do know people.

I mean, I was here in

Utah.

I'm in Salt Lake City.

I did a speech last night on ESG.

I'll tell you about that.

There's some ESG news today.

But I'm here and I talked to some

real heavy Republican heavy hitters, and they all said the same thing.

They were all like, look, I'm all in.

I'd even raise money for Donald Trump, and I have and I will.

But

if he would not run,

I think that might be a better path because the temperature would be lowered.

And

I just wish we could lower the temperature on things.

And

then they always followed it up with, but if he runs, I'm 100% in.

It's this weird thing.

The Lynn Cheney thing doesn't exist.

Liz.

I really don't think it exists.

I mean, it's probably Lynn Chen too.

I think they have the same feelings on the issue, but I think they're talking about Liz.

But you don't think that Dick has the same feelings, do you?

I do believe he got a commercial for her on that

front.

I know.

It's shocking.

It's interesting, too.

You have basically the last two eras of Republican politics on the ballot last night, in a way, right?

With Liz Cheney kind of continuing the Bush-Cheney vibe, and then Sarah Palin, who kind of came up during that Tea Party era and, you know, sort of converted more to

maybe a more MAGA character, if you want to separate those two movements.

But still, an interesting thing last night.

And she, you know, the way the Alaska election works, we're not going to know who wins that for a while, but it's kind of interesting to see what she's going to do.

She is going to be on the ballot.

Yeah.

Well, here's the,

well, you know, most likely.

Here's the last word.

What was at stake last night was, are we going to go back to the Bush kind of Republicans?

Are we going to stick with the, you know, the

tried and true?

Gosh, we're going to compromise and work together on this and we'll always lose every compromise.

Or are we charting a new course?

And I think most voters last night, at least in Wyoming, were like, I don't want this anymore.

I'm tired of the kind of George Bush approach to globalism and America.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

So tonight on the Wednesday night special, I'm going to show you proof that America's heritage is not white Christian nationalism.

And this is so important for you to understand because they are setting a giant trap for a lot of America.

You know, they signed the inflation reduction bill.

In fact, do we have that audio we just played on

the spokesperson at the White House

not really able to

explain why they called it the inflation reduction bill.

Here it is.

But if you passed a bill called the Fill Every Pothole Act, I mean, voters should expect you to fill every pothole.

I mean, so should voters measure the success of this bill on how much you reduce inflation in the next couple of years?

So

this bill spins out over several years.

And so the tax provisions, for example, some of the tax revenue will happen immediately.

Some of the benefits in terms of deficit reduction will materialize over time.

So again, this is really an investment in our economy.

It represents the president's economic vision for transitioning to an economy that works better for American families by generating the kind of growth that's based on stable, steady productivity gains in the language of economists.

So that kind of growth that we know we need to be making in order to ensure that we continue.

continue progressing for the decades to come.

Yeah, and a name is just a name, but there are definitely a lot of other names you you could have named this bill.

We just lied.

It's so funny how you lied to the American people.

You lied and you raped us and you left us for dead.

Oh, that is funny.

Oh, that's so funny.

How you took a problem that's affecting real people and ruining their financials.

And you acted like you were addressing it.

You put a sign on the door that said safe space, and we all went in, and there were killers and rapists in the room.

That is funny that you put safe space on the door.

What a joy you are.

Oh, my gosh, these people are evil.

Anyway,

the CBO came out yesterday, and they were talking about how it's not going to reduce inflation.

It's not going to reduce the deficit.

In fact, it's going to add to the deficit.

It's not going to help the GDP.

In fact, it's going to hurt the GDP.

Oh, and they will raise taxes on the middle class, as they promised they would not do.

Yeah, the whole whole IRS thing.

Yeah, that's

yeah.

That is coming out.

They're going to come after you because they have to.

This is what the CBO said yesterday.

Thank you for the timely update.

And by the way, the CBO is known for making things look better than they actually become.

So that fills me with,

we're in for a hellscape.

I will say, Glenn, I did hear some pretty important things about the IRS, and this is important because they said before, I don't know if you've ever called the IRS before, which I'm sure you have.

Oh, yeah, no, I called them back in 1986.

I'm still on hold.

Okay.

You got to pick up anytime.

Well, that was the big selling point of this bill.

They said because they're hiring 80,000 new employees, someone might answer the phone when you call.

Well, that is fantastic.

And you know what's really great is they're going to be so efficient, you're not even going to have to call them.

They'll call and come visit you.

anyway this is all about the the the the united states government uh has a no i shouldn't say that the united states president the administration includes the department of education agriculture commerce all of it they all have

they all have private armies Let me ask you, why does the Department of Agriculture

have

armed officers?

I mean, sure, sure.

I mean, the

very well-known wars that go between the corn farmers and the Amish,

you know,

when they get their extremist yogurt feud going on with the Amish, there's nothing that will quell that other than a United States Department of Agriculture Army.

They are developing things and they are putting you into the extremist position.

Look at over in Europe,

they're already forcing the farmers to live on these ESG rules, which are, by the way, completely nonsensical.

That is not, that's not even happening.

This is a conspiracy theory.

These aren't the droids you're looking for.

They're already protesting and the farmers are being called the extremists.

Have you forgotten who grows your food?

Grows food?

No, I get my food from the supermarket.

Oh, okay, then don't worry about the farmers.

They are targeting anyone who disagrees with them as an extremist, and this is why the special tonight on the Blaze TV is so important.

You have to understand

what is coming for you as a Christian.

Now,

as somebody who

is in a faith that's not the most popular

i will tell you

you're gonna look you're gonna look at these days

if you were let's say a mormon or a jehovah witness you're gonna look at these times

for those for those people as

those days don't come back

I mean,

it's not going to be easy to be a Christian soon.

And it all starts with white Christian nationalism.

They are making Christians into extremists, and they are lying about our faith.

Christians are the next one

in line, and your faith is now on trial, but it's a kangaroo court.

They're not calling any witnesses on the other side.

They're calling witnesses that agree with them.

It is so misleading and so dangerous.

You need to understand

how they are painting Christianity in America.

That's what we're going to do tonight.

Show you where this all breaks down, give you the rebuttals to these things so you can share them with your friend.

And I did, I didn't say friends.

I did say share it with your friend.

Because if you're actually a Christian today and you're willing to stand up with it, stand up for it, you probably have one friend.

But you need to be able to

answer and tell your friends and have them share with others.

This is an amateur smear campaign, but it is going to be relentless.

CNN came out with an article last week.

We're going to debunk that tonight.

And also, look at this one.

Catholics weaponized the rosary

from the Atlantic.

The AR-15 is a sacred object among Christian nationalists.

Now, you would ask yourself, what is is a Christian nationalist?

Stu, if I asked you this,

I said, what is a Christian nationalist?

What would you say?

A Republican.

Okay, okay.

Wow, the brainwashing has worked even on you.

What would you, honestly, what would you say a Christian nationalist is?

There's a vision of a Christian nationalist that basically is an idea of

an America that is built on Christian principles, but is closer really to a theocracy and is exclusionary toward other faiths.

Other races usually is included in that as well.

The idea of...

Can you give me a country in history that might be labeled a Christian nationalist country?

Not labeled, not actually one, but one labeled that.

An example that was named, I mean, certainly they liked to say that about Hitler back in the day.

Germany, of course, it was completely ridiculous.

We've covered that many times.

We don't need to go back into it.

But Hitler, not a Christian, not a fan of Christianity, wanted to end all of the churches, was literally outspoken throughout his not only

comments, commentary with close advisors, but admitted much of this publicly, that this was a long-term goal of fascism.

To wipe it out.

But let's call it Christian nationalism anyway, I think is the approach

of the meeting.

So, Christian nationalism, they've defined this, and you'll find out all of this tonight at Blaze TV.

If you are not a member, may I ask you to join us?

We are in the fight for our life right now,

and

I would ask that you would join Blaze TV.

I know your money is

tight.

I know, I know, I think and pray about about you all the time.

I

honestly, every time I go to the grocery store or

go fill up a tank,

I wonder, how are you making it?

How is the average person making it?

And so I know it's tight, but we really try to give you much more than your money's worth on Blaze TV.

And even if you just watch our Wednesday night special, you get so much more and so many more talent.

You've got Mark Levin and Stephen Crowder and everybody else.

But we really depend on you.

It is going to get harder and harder for all of us to survive soon.

And if we can stick together, we will

be able to make it.

We'll be able to make it.

But you need to know the truth.

And my staff, I think we do more research on my staff than any other talk show on radio or television.

And we sure would like your support at Blaze TV.

Just sign up now, become a member of the family.

You'll save 10%.

Use the promo code Glennblazetv.com/slash Glenn.

So tonight we're going to be talking about this, and you need to arm yourself with it.

But let me continue with this from the Atlantic.

The AR-15 is a sacred object among Christian nationalists.

Is it?

Now the radical traditional Catholics are bringing a sacrament of their own to the movement.

On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politic and an absolutist gun culture.

You know, I have to tell you,

I can remember Sister Siobhan and Sister Uno and Sister Julie.

As they would be whispering the rosary on their knees, I remember walking in to the church as a kid, and the candles, and the smell of the church, and the incense, and they were there.

You could just barely hear them.

And I'd walk up behind them because I didn't want to disturb them.

But then one of them would hear me, and they were surprised.

And all I heard was,

and they took their ARs out, and they're like, stand down, stand down.

And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, sister.

I'm sorry.

I didn't know.

Oh, they're so radical, those rosary people.

The armed radical traditionals have taken a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil.

Now, this is a new thing.

Because I'm pretty sure, I mean, maybe it's just me.

I was raised Catholic.

I

always thought the rosary and doing things like praying

was a weapon in the fight against evil.

Yes, but now they're taking it literally.

It's a garrot.

That's what it really is.

I've seen him.

I've seen him before.

Jason Bourne, I mean, they've changed it, you know, from reality, but the real Jason Bourne, when he goes and he chokes people out, he uses a rosary.

Now, what do you think the Pope is doing?

When he has to kill people, he uses a rosary.

Anyway, social media pages are saturated with images of rosaries draped over firearms.

How many times have you seen that?

I hate that.

This is the thing they do now to show a movement when they can't find one.

Like the other day, they were saying after the raid on the uh the

Mar-a-Lago residence of Donald Trump, they said the words civil war were being tweeted once a minute.

Now, there are 400 million people on Twitter.

You're getting one tweet every 60 seconds.

This is not a news story, okay?

Any combination of words is being tweeted once a minute on Twitter.

Not

apparently not.

Cheerleader.

No, yeah, you couldn't find that.

Nope.

It's not happening.

It's so ridiculous, but this is what they want to do.

All right.

So

here's something.

And I just want to point this out.

If you are a non-traditional Catholic theologian, so you're for this, you know, this new, more open, progressive, hey, everybody can be whoever they want to be, and we should marry everyone and everything else,

you should not be written about,

and you might want to reconsider your name.

The theologian Massimo Fagoli

has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as the Catholic cyber militia that actively campaigns against LGBTQ and the acceptance of them in the church.

These rad trad, this is a new word, rad-trad, they're radical traditionalists.

These rad trad rosary as a weapon memes represent a social media diffusion of such messaging, and they work to integrate ultra-conservative Catholicism and other aspects of online far-right culture.

The rosary in these hands is anything but holy, says Mr.

Fagoli.

Wow, it's like Dr.

Seuss.

But for millions of believers, the beads which

provide for a sequence of devotional prayers

that have been always traditionally looked at as a source of strength now take on a new meaning.

This is the best of the Glen Beck program.

Noah Rothman, a guy who I think really gets it.

He has

just written the book, The Rise of the New Puritans,

The War on Fun,

really.

Noah, welcome to the program.

How are you, sir?

Very well.

Thank you so much for having me.

I appreciate it.

You bet.

You bet.

So, Stu and I are in the midst of reading your book.

We haven't got it all the way to the end yet, but

I have to ask you,

do progressives know that they're almost embarrassingly unfun right now?

Do they know this?

No, they absolutely don't.

They would reject the premise and they sort of recoil at the assertion that they're pursuing some sort of a moral framework, that they have imposed this moral framework on every aspect of life, especially the apolitical aspects of life.

They don't see themselves as less fun, less chill,

less accommodating than their parents and grandparents, but they most certainly are.

They're having less fun.

They're having less sex.

They're enjoying life less than their elders.

They're having less sex?

Oh, yeah.

You haven't gotten to that chapter?

That's a good one.

No.

So that is my very salacious chapter on sex and booze.

It's titled Temperance.

All the chapters are organized around unimpeachable moral values because they are pursuing a moral ideal about how society should organize itself.

So when you think of progressives, you don't think

they have sexual prescriptions, right?

But if you dig into the literature around the many proliferating sexual identities, it's not about self-gratification or self-fulfillment.

It's about the political program associated with these things.

This has to pursue and advance a political agenda.

You couple that with the labyrinthine

consent requirements now in statute in places like California, but mostly in norms and college campuses.

And you have this unnavigable labyrinth that has been erected around consent, which is absent consent is obviously a crime.

But we've created now real legal and moral and social consequences if a cue is misread or a signal is overlooked or it's just human behavior intervenes in this process, this complicated process.

The result is less sex.

People are reporting, especially young people are reporting, having much less casual intercourse than their parents did.

Okay,

I have to tell you, first of all, it is a religion.

What they're doing is a religion.

So you've got Puritans absolutely right.

And they are imposing it on all of us.

But I look at people who are like this and I think to myself, how could you not

be just miserable?

If you believe all the things that they believe, it's just a life of misery.

Yeah, they don't see themselves as miserable, but they are making their compatriots miserable.

Maybe nine out of the ten people I spoke with are

who would most of them wouldn't go on the record for fear of consequences saying the things that they actually think.

Those who do

that

yeah, well, I mean, there are real social and professional consequences for going against this movement.

It's not a big movement, but it punches way above its weight.

And so these guys are Democrats.

They vote Democratic.

They wouldn't vote Republican with a gun to their head.

But they didn't get into the business of making delicious food and writing screenplays and doing broadcasting sports because they wanted to do politics.

They don't.

They've just been drafted into this movement and it's sapping them of enthusiasm for their life's work and they really, really resent it.

Noah, can you go through some of these?

You have so many great examples in the book of this type of thing.

The hummus place is one.

I'd like to hear about the burrito truck.

Tell them about the burrito truck.

A truck that was in the Pacific Northwest.

These two women

went down to Mexico, fell in love with the food, interviewed chefs, picked up some recipes, brought it back to the Pacific Northwest, and it was a profound success.

They were very commercially successful.

In fact, a lot of the people who are targeted by this movement are successful, and I think that their success engenders quite a bit of resentment.

But they brought it back to the Pacific Northwest, and the media environment down there, which is beholden to this progressive set of ideas, just went about destroying the thing because they had stolen this heritage from

the the hardworking people of Mexico.

They hadn't given them any credit.

They weren't giving them the proper remunerations they were due.

It's a very nebulous idea of what they violated, what prescriptions they ignored.

But this thing was destroyed.

These two women were driven out of business, and their burrito truck, which was fetted, which was loved,

was driven out of business.

In part

also because it was so good, but they had violated some unspoken, unwritten ideal

about whatever cultural

appropriation is.

It's very difficult to define, but it's believed to be some form of theft, as though culture is a zero-sum game and that it has been commodified in some way.

When I read that and I

thought about it, I had just seen the new Elvis movie.

Have you seen the new Elvis movie?

I have and I heard it's good.

It's very, very good.

But it taught me something about Elvis.

I didn't know.

I didn't know that he was so poor after his dad died that he and his mom lived in a black community in Memphis, which never happened.

He was like the only kid in this white kid in this black community.

So he grew up in that culture.

He grew up with the music.

That's why he moved the way he did.

And at the time, the programmers of radio, many of them would have loved to play the black music, but they couldn't put a black man on the air.

And when they heard his music, it was the black culture and black music sung by a white guy.

And, you know, it shows B.B.

King and all of these legends who were friends of his going, man, take it, take it.

I'm glad people are listening to it.

Now you would look at that and it would be cultural appropriation and they would hate, and I think they probably do, hate Elvis and anybody like him because he was just stealing that.

No, he wasn't.

He was popularizing it.

He was breaking a barrier.

Yeah, popularizing it and creating synthesis.

And there is this idea abroad that synthesis in music and culture and cuisine is some sort of form of theft.

There's a racial essentialist element that's put to this that suggests that any creativity in creating works of art and amalgamating and synthesizing various influences into some finished product represents some form of attack on culture.

Even though what you just said is absolutely correct in art and food and in music, you're exposing new audiences to this thing.

You're creating a broader understanding and acceptance of these cultural traits, albeit perhaps amalgamated, not necessarily adulterated.

They confuse the two, probably deliberately.

But the expansion of and broadening of the exposure to these ideas, these cultural traits,

used to be something that we would celebrate and accept as an unadulterated good.

It is not anything.

I know there was a guy who I grew up listening to on the radio.

He was very, very good.

His name was Charlie Brown.

He was originally at KJR in Seattle and then Cube.

And I studied at his feet.

I was lucky enough to work with him when I was very, very young, and I watched him and I talked to him.

When I started doing my own show, I called him up and I asked him, hey, Charlie,

can I steal this and this and this from you?

And he just laughed and he said, and I think this is true with almost everything because it's not, you're not living in a vacuum.

And he said, Glenn, you steal from me, you've stolen twice.

And that's what we don't understand, that it all is just kind of, that's where you get your inspiration and you take it and you make it your own and you move, not stealing things word for word, et cetera, et cetera.

Let me ask you, because I'm watching, I mean, I know

your IQ is a lot higher than mine.

And I don't know if you, if you're,

if you're watching like the marvelous Miss Maisel, which I think is fantastic.

But it centers around this woman in the 1950s, early 1960s who wants to be a comedian.

And one of the running characters is Lenny Bruce.

And Lenny Bruce would absolutely be in progressive jail right now if he lived today.

And you had all of these great comedians that were there to push back on the man, whatever it was, they push back.

These people like Ricky Gervais

make it, I think, because they don't apologize and they don't stop.

Can you talk a little bit about the effect of apology and what's happening in comedy?

Yeah, the very same

sentiments, policing of public morality, that took aim at Lenny Bruce, at George Carlin, at Richard Pryor, are at work today.

The executors of this campaign are not on the right.

They used to be.

The tendency that saw something that would corrupt you and degrade society and innocent cultural fair used to be a tendency native to the right, in part because we are all heirs to this puritanical tradition.

It has found a home in both political coalitions over the years.

When it comes to comedy, one of the things that you see now among this particularly puritanically inclined progressive is to emphasize the pain that someone had to endure in order for you to enjoy something as trite as a punchline.

You know, you see this in the fans of the comedian Hannah Gatsby, who's an anti-comic, and who is funny when she wants to be.

She doesn't always want to be.

Sometimes she will build the same tension that would otherwise lead to a punchline and give you that release and doesn't break the tension, just lets you sit and marinate in it and absorb her pain.

And it may interrogate you about that joke that she told five minutes ago and ask you why you thought that was funny.

Why was my suffering funny?

And that's what they love so much.

They love the anguish.

They love the ardor because it is a sign of your

prudent understanding that suffering exists in this world.

And if you don't dutifully dwell on it every second of your life, you are sacrificing a moral mission to advance the progressive project and make the human experience just a little bit more tolerable.

This is a very puritanical ideal.

Noah, I would love to do a podcast with you and spend at least an hour with you on this topic.

You've really nailed it.

The book is the rise of the new puritans um tell me about the apology

so when we all we are often bombarded with demands that you apologize for your conduct the apology provides you no absolution um and that's where i differ from a lot of the very uh brilliant scholars uh who have called this a purely secular faith i don't see it as entirely a faith because in a faith in the western tradition there is deism that expiates sin.

There can be no absolution for sin in this particular faith because there is no deism.

And because it is such an all-encompassing social code, I liken it more to Puritanism because Puritanism wasn't just a faith.

It wasn't just congregationalism.

It was a way of life.

It was a totalitarian philosophy by definition because it was total.

When it comes to the apology, the apology, as we've all observed,

makes you just a more delicious target and trains more fire on you.

And this isn't just true in comedy.

There's several examples of that in the comedy chapter, but there's a particularly interesting anecdote that I lead off the book with about a grocery, a grocer in

Minnesota that was, again, very popular, very successful.

It was vetted by Keith Ellison on the

floor of the House of Representatives, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.

Guy Fieri featured it.

So it turned out that the owner of this grocer had a daughter who, in her youth, 14 and 18 respectively, made racially insensitive remarks online.

This was picked up by the online community that they attempted to force him to apologize and to make absolution for his sins.

He had to fire his daughter.

That was not good enough.

He pledged that she would devote herself to good works for the community.

That was not good enough.

Eventually, the holder of his lease terminated the lease because

that was the penitence that was deserving of the sin he had committed, the

careless parentage of a willful daughter.

And this is as moral a code as you could find.

It goes back to the founding of the country.

But when you are apologizing in any other tradition, you would find some absolution.

This particularly uncompromising tradition offers no

absolution for offenses against it.

It is, I will tell you, you're right about this as

a completely different kind.

You don't call it a religion I do.

I just think it's an

anti-Christ style religion.

There is no forgiveness.

And without forgiveness, we cease to function normally as a society.

You just can't live in a society where there is no forgiveness, where you're held accountable not only for everything you've ever done, but also anything your ancestors have done.

That's a pretty shallow pool of good people that can be swimming around.

Noah, thank you so much for being on the program today.

I'd love to have you back.

Love to do a podcast with you.

The book is The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Against

Progressives' War on Fun.

Noah Rothman is the author.

No, no, no, no.