Best of the Program with Helen Pluckrose | 10/11/18

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Hey, welcome to the podcast.

It's Thursday,

which on Friday's podcast, we have something very, very exciting that we're going to share with you.

Also, don't forget, we're coming to town.

Yeah, right?

Remember, if you're my age, you and the circus came to town, you would go out and you'd watch the parade with all the animals.

Well, this is like the elephant coming to town without the parade.

Yeah, Yeah, it's going to be great too.

You're going to be able to throw peanuts at Glenn.

It's going to be a lot of really good fun things that we have going on.

It's going to be a lot of laughs.

And we are going to help the

radical left, otherwise known as the Democratic Party, with their 2020 campaigns.

So you don't want to miss that.

Grab your tickets.

You can find out all about it at Glennbeck.com slash tour.

But get your tickets.

Yep.

Today on the podcast, we had a lot of really interesting stuff, I thought.

You know, we talked to Stephen Moore about the stock market, what's going on with that.

You know, this is a guy who talks to the Trump administration all the time.

He helped write the tax plan.

He understands, I think, the behind-the-scenes stuff going on here.

He had a lot of interesting things to say about what happened in the stock market, what is going on, what they don't know is happening.

And to continue, we go to continue the trend of Stevens.

We went from Stephen Moore also to Stephen Kent, who has an amazing piece of information for you about how the Russians are not, they don't care about Donald Trump.

They didn't care about Hillary Clinton.

They care about chaos.

And

he's bringing a story about how they even were involved in debasing our conversations and getting us at each other's throats with the latest Star Wars movie.

Yeah, bizarre.

Helen Pluckrose also joined us.

To continue our trend of Stevens and people named Helen.

Yeah, we have a big trend going on.

Right.

Helen, I'm a big fan of Helen.

She is

an academic in hiding, I think is what she called it.

She has been part of the group of

academics that went and tried to get things published

in peer-reviewed publications.

They didn't think that they could get, you know, they'd be thrilled if they could get one into

a peer-reviewed publication.

These were crazy, crazy ideas about how

dog parks lead to the rape culture, you know, because dogs are humping each other in dog parks.

It's crazy.

And we have our first of the election season here, full, like, deep dive into the Senate and the polls and what they're showing.

Get into that as well, all to on today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

it's Thursday October 11th Glenn Beck

well you can take this to the bank

Obamacare will eventually get repealed but it will not be the GOP leading the charge it is going to be the Democrats at this point I don't think the left ever really intended for the Affordable Care Act to actually live up to his name.

That's what we said at the beginning.

This is destined to fail in catastrophic, uh, in catastrophic form.

Ten years ago, Americans with employer-provided health care had an average deductible of about three hundred dollars.

Oh, how far we have fallen because of Obamacare.

The average deductible now is four

times what they were before Obama.

A decade ago

to today,

it's now $1,400

in deductibles.

$300 to $1,400.

That's a 212%

increase.

Deductibles are growing at a rate eight times faster than wage growth, 12 times faster than inflation.

And these are not my numbers.

They didn't come from the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute.

This is from the annual report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

And by the way, did I mention their base, you know, behind the Progressive Iron Curtain of California?

Did I also mention that Kaiser helped spin the left's talking points when the Democrats were trying to pass the Affordable Care Act and tell us that, oh, no, this is going to be fantastic for everybody?

Yesterday, President Trump wrote an op-ed in USA Today titled, Democrats Medicare for All Plan will Demolish Promises to Seniors.

He goes on to explain how the plan would cost an insane $32.6 trillion during the first 10 years.

The president continued by slamming the left's open border policies and calling out their socialist policies.

USA Today's tweet pointing out the Trump op-ed read, quote, Democrats want to outlaw private health care plans, taking away freedom to choose plans while letting anyone cross the border.

We must win this, end quote.

Well, apparently, shockingly, Jim Acosta from CNN took major beef with this.

He fired back, both at the president and USA Today, with a little tweet of his own, quote, this column may break the record for the number of falsehoods from a president ever published in a newspaper op-ed.

Just this tweet alone is false.

Outlaw private health care plans, letting anyone cross our border, huh?

Fact check.

False and false.

Come on, USA Today.

Now,

I know I shouldn't expect journalists these days to

do any kind of actual journalism.

I mean, that's so old-timey.

Remember when they actually didn't lie to us?

It's kind of funny, actually, it's really sad, that it's painfully obvious that journalists like Acosta haven't even read the left's proposal on Medicare for all.

It's H.R.

676.

It has 123 Democratic co-sponsors.

That's more than half of the House Democrats.

And it reads, and I quote,

it shall be unlawful for a private health insurer to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided under this act.

End quote.

CNN,

how is the president lying?

You see, you didn't point out that the president was lying when the president said, You're going to be able to keep your doctor, you're going to be able to get a refund.

In fact, you're going to save all all kinds of money.

You wouldn't do the math on that.

It was simple math, but it required you to tell the truth about the bill.

Now,

now

you are denying that the Democrats want to stop all private health care.

It's in their

bill.

How low can you guys go?

How much water can you carry before it snaps your back?

How much can you ignore?

The replacement for Obamacare is coming, and it is so radical that the left-leaning media can't even see it anymore.

The Affordable Care Act was a setup.

We told you it was.

If the left takes full control in 2020, you will finally see america the new america that we have been progressing toward the entire time let me let me let me let me give you some good news may i give you some good news you sure can there is a new study out they spoke to 8 000 people

They also did 31-hour interviews, six focus groups, and it was conducted between December

2017 and September 2018.

And

here's what they were looking for.

Want to find out about how Americans feel about white privilege, sexual harassment,

you know, all of the PC stuff.

The Me Too witch hunt.

They say there are seven distinct clusters now in America.

Progressive activists.

traditional liberals, passive liberals, politically disengaged, moderates, traditional conservatives, and devoted conservatives.

Now, according to the report, twenty-five percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives.

Twenty-five percent.

Whoa, wow, that's really low.

Well, only eight percent of Americans are progressive activists.

Excuse me,

their views are even more out of the mainstream and are less typical.

Two-thirds of Americans do not belong in either

extreme progressivism as progressive activists or as traditional devoted conservatives.

The vast majority is now considered something called the exhausted majority.

The members of this two-thirds of our society share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and

have a lack of voice in the national conversation.

Most members of the exhausted majority dislike political correctness.

Among the general population, 80%

believe that political correctness is a problem in our country.

Even young people are uncomfortable with it.

74%

ages 24 to 29 and 79%

under the age of 24 think this is a problem.

The woke

are in the extreme minority in this country.

Youth

not supporting political correctness.

And

they're not supporting the race thing either.

Whites are ever so slightly less than average to believe political correctness is a problem in the country.

Whites.

79% share this sentiment.

Instead, Asians,

82%.

Hispanics, 87%.

Native Americans, 88%.

One of the focus group members, an American Indian, said, It seems like every day you wake up and something's changed.

Do I say Jew or Jewish?

Is it a black guy, an African American?

You're on your toes because you never know what to say.

Political correctness in this country is becoming frightening.

Hmm.

That was a Native American.

You know, as those whites,

which are the least offended,

as those whites are standing up to protect the helpless Native American.

I think that's the thing that gets me the most.

Are the people who are not, it's almost like, how did you get into this conversation?

How are you a part of this conversation?

You're not the one that is the Redskin.

How are you standing up and telling Native Americans how they're supposed to feel when they don't feel that way in poll after poll after poll?

One part of the standard narrative of the data, partially affirmed, is that African Americans are most likely to support political correctness, but the difference between them and other groups is much smaller than generally supposed.

Three-quarters of African Americans oppose political correctness.

Three quarters.

This means there are only four percentage points less likely than whites and only five percentage points less likely than the average to believe that political correctness is a real problem in America.

While 83% of respondents

who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness, 70% of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical.

You want to know why Trump won?

You want to know why Corey Booker and all of this nonsense is not going to win?

You know,

yesterday we had a call from a

listener, and

I was not my best self, and I jumped down his throat.

And I should have said, what is making you feel this this way?

I know what's making him feel this way.

Portland is making him feel this way.

The guy who yesterday we found out is building a 200 or built a 200-pound bomb and was going to detonate it on the national mall on Election Day.

That's what's making him feel this way.

The news reports where they are saying, mobs, no, this is just petitioning your government is making you feel this way.

Getting up every morning and saying, okay, do I say Jew or Jewish today?

Which do I say?

Can I say transgendered

or what exactly do I say?

When they are trampling RuPaul for not being politically correct on transgender issues, you got problems.

That is why Corey Booker and Heidi Heidkamp and all of the others are not going to win.

It is why they are wildly out of step.

It is why you're winning.

It's why Kavanaugh is a Supreme Court justice today.

And I want to just keep hammering this home every day.

The left is not going crazy because they're winning.

The left, did you see what

Attorney General, what's his name?

Eric Holder.

Eric Holder said yesterday.

Yeah.

We have the audio, I think of that.

Can we play the audio if we have that?

Listen to what Eric Holder is now saying.

It is time for us as Democrats to be as tough as they are, to be as dedicated as they are, to be as committed as they are.

Michelle always says, Michelle Obama, I love her, you know, she and my wife like really tight, which always scares me and Barack.

But Michelle says that, you know, when they go low, we go high.

No.

No.

When they go low, we kick them.

Stop.

This is what happens to a country that has lost its underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian world.

When they go low, we kick them.

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton was all in the news for saying what?

We can't live in a country like this.

We can't live.

We cannot.

The time for civility is

past, basically.

After we win elections, then we can be civil.

We can't be civil with these people.

What was the other quote that he went on to say yesterday because it involved these people?

Where he said, I want to see if I can find...

Ah, shoot, I don't have it.

The Eric Holder thing?

Yeah, the Eric Holder, where he said, these people.

He said, use rage to vote to be rid of these people.

Yeah, use rage

to be rid of these people.

Well, let me flip this around.

What do you mean by these people, Mr.

Holder?

Because these people, we've learned, is, of course, racist.

We know what you...

That's a dog whistle.

That's an Eric Holder dog whistle.

And everybody knows what they're saying.

Look,

I understand why we're angry because I'm angry.

I'm angry every day.

I look at the news and I'm like, they're going to get people killed.

They're going to get people killed.

And when people, as I said in 2009, at some point,

they're going to drag people out of their chairs in their studios and beat them to death in the streets.

When these people

who are dismissing and encouraging these people to be violent, when that is happening,

a lot of people are are going to say, well, they deserve it.

No.

No.

We cannot become

what they are.

We have to hold on to what we've always been.

But boy, it is tough.

But I will tell you, if we lose our minds, we'll lose.

Because as I showed you in that poll, 80%

of people are on our side.

Now, that doesn't mean politically, that means they're tired of this.

They're tired of the political correctness.

They're tired of being told what to think, what to say, what to do, who to reject,

what to post, what not to post.

They're tired of it.

80%.

Keep your cool, and you win.

This is the best of the Glenbeck program.

We're going to take you to a story I thought was a joke.

I thought was a joke.

Where have the Russians gone?

How deeply

are they into

our consciousness?

What will they actually do?

Is it all about politics?

Stephen Kent, friend of the

program, and quite honestly,

I mean, probably the biggest Star Wars geek on the planet.

Welcome to the program.

Stephen, how are you?

Doing well, Glenn.

Good morning.

Tell me this is a joke.

It's not a joke.

There is a study out from Morton Bay at the University of Southern California that looks at the role that online bots, particularly the Russian persuasion, might have played in the discourse on social media surrounding The Last Jedi.

Now, that may be.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Yeah.

So you just kind of ran by.

Surrounding The Last Jedi.

The movie.

The Last Jedi.

Nice, low-hanging target being a Star Wars movie.

What do people care about more than politics?

I would say that it's probably the light side versus the dark side and the eternal struggle in a galaxy far, far away.

You know, you've mentioned, Glenn, like they prey on these very emotional and personal issues on social media.

It's not just about politics and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

It can be about kneeling, the national anthem.

It can be about something that a celebrity might have said, and then it's amplified and sort of turned up to 11 so that people get really heated about it.

Star Wars is in that category, too, and there might be some evidence to show that this is actually happening every day.

Give me the evidence.

This is incredible.

Yeah, so it's circumstantial in many ways, but that's by nature of what we're dealing with here.

When you're talking about foreign influence and particularly malicious activity coming from Russian bots or trolls or sock puppet accounts, you are talking about a moving target, people who are deleting their accounts, changing their information, making new accounts, staying active so that they can't actually be tracked to a given location.

And if Morton Bay, the researcher at USC, could prove definitively that these are Russian agents, then he should be working at the CIA.

But he's not.

He's just a researcher at USC.

And what you look at is you look at the characteristics of social media accounts online.

Kind of

what I just mentioned is what behaviors do they engage in?

Do they speak in all caps?

What words do they use?

And then is their account there the next week when you look them up again?

These are sort of things that you look for when you're talking about foreign influence online.

And it might be Russians, it might be the Chinese, it might be Iranians, or it might be some Floridian with a bone to pick with the rest of the country.

So what did they plant?

live in.

What did they plant into our society?

Well, in this case, what they planted, there was evidence that there were 16 accounts that could specifically be Russian-linked, 105 that sort of had a question mark as to where they could be originating from, that are jumping online when The Last Jedi comes out and people are starting to debate about the movie.

And then they start throwing in the tweets about the feminazi

Admiral Holdo.

And then they start throwing in tweets about how masculinity is under assault because Poe Dameron wasn't able to lead the ship.

And then they start throwing in tweets about SJW droids and the fact that there was a droid in the hospital.

I remember those.

Yeah.

And so, but the important thing, Glenn, is that that comes from real people too.

And you can't really distinguish what comes first, like the chicken or the egg.

Did the Russian bot or troll online plant the thought in a conservative or activist or Star Wars fan online and then they sort of echo it?

Or did it go the other way around?

Because it is reasonable to look at Star Wars and see some sort of like you know progressive fingers in the pot.

But there's also this discourse online that happens where you sort of amplify other opinions that you see.

You see someone upset about the feminazis now taking over Star Wars, Kathleen Kennedy, or

the Asian girl in the new Star Wars movie.

And if you get amplified about that and feel like, oh, well, someone else is angry about that too.

I can now feel a little bit more angry.

Then the discourse just rapidly gets more radical.

And it's pretty reasonable to think that there are foreign actors who engage in this malicious activity.

Stephen, it's interesting, I think, and this is part of the crime against journalism that's happened, making every effort of what Russia has tried to do in America about Donald Trump.

You know, it's like,

look at the scope of this.

The fact that that they are trying to go in there and stir people up over not just politics, but culture and Star Wars and all of these kind of separate things, Kaepernick, all of this stuff.

And not just separating us, Stu, I think also

pushing us into a place.

I hear this all the time.

I know I am, like this.

When did everything become political?

They're pushing everything, all pop culture, everything into politics.

Yeah, there's a great book out right now called Addicted Addicted to Outrage by Glenn Beck.

Towards the end of part one, and at least in the audio book, it's chapter 19.

They're talking a lot about the role that foreign actors and particularly Russians might play in trying to sow discord.

And what we do know about Russians that were able to do in the 2016 election, we don't know if they actually were able to impact the results and how people voted, but we are able to determine that they get their fingers into the way that we talk.

And what's most important, I think, about American politics and culture is not that we are able to agree on everything political, but that we're actually able to go to a movie theater and sit next to our neighbors in the dark and smile at a Star Wars movie.

But then when you go in and you've sort of been reading these things online and you've had people tell you that now it's like liberal propaganda and that it's not the Star Wars you grew up with, then you can't even do that.

And think about what that does to a culture, not in the course of one year, but in the course of 10 years.

We'll have nothing in common if we allow people to manipulate us like this and get us hooked on outrage on a constant basis about anything, whether it's politics or media.

Stephen, thank you for writing about this.

This is in the Washington Examiner.

Thank you for

writing about this.

Is it because it was Star Wars that this popped up on your radar?

Or why is it that no one else is catching this, step

well i would say that there was a pretty good deal of writing done about this and for me i did catch this because i've got google alerts set up for star wars and i care a lot about it but you know i i live in star wars twitter as well as conservative and libertarian twitter you know these are kind of the different ecosystems and the dialogue in star wars twitter is is toxic it was so mean when these movies came out particularly around solo and the last jedi the last jedi really sort of agitated right-wing Twitter, and Solo really agitated left-wing Twitter.

Everybody was arguing about these different things and just using language that you just don't see or you didn't see a couple of years ago in Star Wars.

And then you turn on your favorite conservative podcast, right?

And I have a couple.

And they're sort of then echoing those sentiments.

And then their actual fans are going out and engaging in Star Wars discourse.

But it's not really clear like who is genuine and who is not, and who's coming to it as a really interested fan, and who's coming to it as a political activist who just really wants to make people angry.

And that's what we have to remember when we get online, is there is no guarantee that the person, even if they have a real name and a photo associated with their account, is a genuine human being who wants you to leave this conversation happy.

I don't know if you've ever won an argument on Twitter.

I have not.

But

it's the equivalent of a foreign city.

You need to be getting off the airplane in this new city and and just assume that you're not safe anywhere you go and you should just talk to people that you know and that you trust.

Stephen, thank you very much.

Always good to talk to you.

Yeah, Glenn, real pleasure.

May the force be with you both.

Thanks, Glenn.

Stephen Kent.

He's got a great sense of humor.

He has a he's really a smart guy.

You listen to his podcast,

follow him at Twitter.

What's his Twitter handle?

It's got to be like Yoda Kick's ass.

I think it is Yoda's mouth.

Here we go.

It's at

Stephen underscore Kent89.

Yeah.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hi, it's Glenn.

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Thanks.

Glenn back.

I am thrilled to have and introduce you to Helen Pluckrose.

She is the editor-in-chief of Arrow magazine.

She has written an article that I want to go through with her, but I also want to point out that if you follow the news a couple of weeks ago, I think it was, of these three scientists that came out and tried to publish papers that were complete nonsense of the dog, I think it was the rape culture in dog parks on dogs.

And one of the responses before they published it was they, did they get permission from the dogs?

They were afraid that maybe they were violated a little bit.

I mean, it's crazy what happened.

They published one article that was, they just took a chapter of Mein Kampf and I think changed it.

What did they change it to, Stu, do you remember?

White people are feminine.

I don't remember.

Helen will remember.

It's pretty remarkable.

We'll hopefully chat with her about that just a little bit.

Helen Pluckrose joins the program now.

Hello, Helen.

How are you?

Hello, I'm very well.

Thank you for inviting me.

You bet.

Now, you're in London now?

I am.

Okay.

First of all, thanks for coming on the program.

I want to talk to you about your essay, How French Intellectuals Ruined the West, Postmodernism and Its Impact Explained.

I read the article, and

let's just say, my audience is very smart.

I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

So pretend you're talking to somebody that

doesn't really know much about this,

because you are talking to that person.

And I'm trying to understand it, but postmodernism itself just doesn't make sense at all to me.

And so I want to make sure that

I have it right and the audience understands it because I think it is the disease that is

the cancer for the Western world, is it not?

Well, I don't think it's the only cancer.

I think it's certainly a problem that's coming up in how we understand knowledge and how um we on on the left are looking at ethics.

And I think that's feeding into a a rise on the other side of um an increase in in nationalism and um anti-intellectualism and a a kind of reversion to some uh utopian uh past which never existed.

But uh yes, it it is it is a significant um problem which has affected affected how we do how we decide what is true and how we evaluate rights and people's standing in society.

Right, and so this is the source of gender fluidity and

really intersectionality and all of this stuff that we're hearing that most people wake up every day and they're like, okay, what new term do I have to learn today?

What can I say?

What can I not say?

This is the source of that.

Would you agree with that?

I would, yes.

Intersectionality is very explicitly defined by its founder as contemporary politics applied to postmodern theory.

Okay.

So let's start at the beginning of postmodernism.

Is it related at all to the Dadaist movement that grew out of the First World War where

they were trying to make a point of nothing really has any meaning,

and then that kind of just went awry?

Is any of the roots in that movement at all?

Yes, I mean postmodernism, its antecedents, which I don't actually go into in huge detail because they're just so varied, but it comes out of a lot of counter-enlightenment philosophy, it comes out of absurdist art.

It's a kind of coming together of an artistic and a philosophical movement.

And the artistic side of it is actually really fun.

We don't have to worry at all about

postmodernism in art.

It's when it starts being applied to society and we're starting to understand society as um completely constructed in systems of power and knowledge is a construct of this power, that it comes from language, that language is dangerous because it constructs reality.

That's um that's that's sort of the key ideas which are underlying the the problem that we're that we're seeing now.

Now you say that it doesn't have a that it's not anything worrisome in art, but I would consider literature art as well.

And this is, this is now how we are being taught that we have to read literature, that we read it through the lens of oppression, white, male, European oppression.

Even if the author is saying, no, no, that's not what this story is about.

That's not.

The author is not even the last word on this.

It is the postmodernists they can take and read that text any way they want, correct?

Absolutely, yes.

I mean I think there there's a slight confusion because that approach to literature is part of the cultural philosophical problem.

But a postmodern um book, for example, w would be a very different thing.

It would be something that had no clear plot, that didn't have um an ending.

There there's one which which is just the beginning of a lot of stories which which doesn't add up.

So so that is a style, That is almost completely separate from the moralistic thing.

All right, so you're saying as an artist you could create something that has no meaning, but it is only when it's used as a critique that it starts to get into trouble?

Yes, yes.

Okay.

Exactly.

I mean, some wonderful, some very fun TVs, those apparently are postmodern, but they're not political, so they're not the same problem.

Great, okay.

So tell me how it,

where it grew and how it grabbed us by the throat or our university systems.

The original postmodernists, they were just a small group of very, very prolific writers in the late 60s, including Jean-François Léotard, Jacques Derrida,

Baudrillard,

and particularly Michel Foucault.

And they came together all from different disciplines and all seemingly at the same time with the the same message that they were disillusioned with the modern period, they were disillusioned with Marxism and they were disillusioned with religion and institutions and they they thought that these were all metanarratives.

They were big comfortable understandings of things that had just fallen apart.

This comes after the World Wars, the fall of empire.

all these sort of certainties were crumbling and

there was a shift in society to try to understand whether the things that we thought were true actually true.

The postmodernists are those who took this to a new philosophical level and simply said, No, this reality is not something we find, it's something that we make, and we make it in the service of power.

So, it is powerful groups which have decided for us what is true, and these are understood to be white, heterosexual, rich men.

And this should be overturned, it should be unpicked.

But the first postmodernists were not

partic they they didn't have a particular

political goal.

They were certainly leftist but they weren't, they were generally quite aimless.

They wanted to sort of pull things apart, show problems with it.

It wasn't until the late 80s and early 90s when a lot of feminists and critical race theorists, queer theorists, etc., said, well, taking everything apart is all good and well.

Yes, we need to deconstruct things.

Yes, we need to see that everything is socially constructed, but we have to have some kind of reality if we're going to address anything.

We cannot, for example, address

sexism against women unless we agree that women are a certain thing that experience certain things in certain times and places.

So there was a change here to bring back some kind of objective reality and that was systems of privilege and power that could then be analyzed but very subjectively from the perspective of experience and with the assumption that we are always looking at a power imbalance in any interaction between different groups.

Okay, so

let me go back and because I think people might be thinking, why

are we talking about postmodernism?

How does it relate to my life?

This, I believe, is critical

to if you don't understand this, or at least have a basic handle on it, you don't know what you're fighting.

You don't know what's really happening.

You don't know who's behind a lot of this or what the theories are behind it.

So, let me first say: postmodernism, the modern world is the world that

was created, that chased out the Dark Ages.

It's the world created by the Enlightenment of science and reason and

empirical evidence.

And even, I mean, when you hear people say mathematics is racist,

this is because we're they're trying to deconstruct anything that holds the modern world together.

Is that correct?

Yes, uh they they they think that it it has been constructed unfairly, that a lot of voices have been left out and this relates somehow to a lot of knowledges.

I I particularly have a problem with the idea that um irrational and unempirical um knowledge is is the the property of women or um uh just of non-white people.

So, yeah, that that is that is how it works.

Okay.

I want to take you um before we move forward, uh I want to take you back one more uh step.

Um uh I'm gonna take a break and then we come back.

Th i I'd like you to help me on this because

it's my understanding that uh Derrida and Foucault uh came over to the United States, that this was really kind of shaped in frustration from the 1968 Paris riots, and in frustration that they're not going to be able to take this whole thing down unless they take it all down.

They got to take all the systems down.

They're not going to win through culture.

And that

it was actually

much more strategic in its

planting of a virus, if you will.

And I'd love to hear your take on that, if that's true or not, when we come back, despite all the evidence that racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia are at an all-time low in Western societies, leftist academics and social justice activists display fatalistic pessimism.

This is coming from the postmodernist

take.

Now, Helen, I've tried to find good purposes for this, and the way it is being enacted now, it just seems like a total

um

uh

I don't know an embrace of total chaos and destruction

I can understand why a lot of um people who are not understanding how this has worked and particularly uh conservatives can see this as completely um destructive but there there there was a good purpose to it there was there are good aims to it.

I mean, I am a liberal, so you and I will probably not agree entirely on w on what good aims are.

But when

postmodernism

postmodernism arose and the second wave of it, it's very important to sort of focus on the second wave, which diversified into critical race theory, intersectionality, core quality, et cetera.

That's what we're seeing now, much more than these earlier very obscure ideas about knowledge.

But they came at the time following the end of the civil rights movements.

They claimed to be the heirs of Martin Luther King, a second wave liberal feminism, of gay pride.

They came and they hit the US and the UK

particularly because we were in a position of a sort of of culturally of of picking stock of what what had happened recently for the Brits Empire had just collapsed and we were there was an enormous amount of post-colonial guilt

in the US seeing the end of the Jim Crow era and sort of reckoning with a history of slavery.

So society was largely geared towards continuing this very positive sort of civil rights movement and making society freer, more equal for everyone.

So Helen, you know, you're an approach is different very different to that.

So you said a minute ago, and maybe we just have a different

definition.

I'm a classic liberal,

as we would know here in America.

I'm a libertarian.

I think that anything that makes man more free is good.

Anything that builds the individual up and is

empowering for the individual, I think is a good thing.

And I support it.

And I think that many Americans feel this way, you know, with political correctness.

You know, I go back to the handy capable.

You know, nobody wanted to say, if that really hurts somebody's feelings, that, that, you know, nobody wants to do that, or very few people want to do that.

You know, it does kind of say, well, the next generation is going to just assume, you know, just going to attach the same meanings behind handy capable as handicapped, but, you know, so it's a little worthless over the long period of time.

But I don't think anybody I think generally speaking people are fair what this has turned into

is

oppression

yes I mean I I think that's something that we have to hold on to because when if we accept that yeah everybody is generally trying to be fair is try generally trying to be good

and and to do good for their societies and they actually care about their fellow human beings then yes we have this situation where the vast majority of us are still very much in line with modern principles

of equal opportunity, freedom, rights.

And we have to understand that a lot of the people who have taken on and internalized a lot of the postmodern ideas are also trying to do good and trying to be fair.

But what we have to look at is how this is working in practice.

We are seeing a rising authoritarianism, a

totalitarianism from

the activists who are drawing on these ideas which have come out of these series.

I believe that this is a small part of the population, but it is drawing in more of the left because

they want who are kind of internalising some of these ideas because the ideals are good.

The ideals that women, people of colour,

LGBT should have the same rights as everybody else is what is underlying this and

these aims are good.

A lot of less liberals who really should know better are thinking, well, well, how bad can this be if they have these aims?

It is a problem because it is supremely irrational, it is supremely illiberal, it is taking us away from the progress that we made in the universal liberal

advance of the civil rights movements and equal pay for women, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, et cetera.

It's not continuing that.

It's really doing something quite different now.

This

is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

So I don't know if you noticed this, but yesterday,

it was a little scary if you had money in the stock market.

What is it?

The third largest

point fall, I think, in history, American history, something like that.

But, you know, when you look at it

historically, it's kind of unfair because the stock market is up so high, down again today.

Bonds are down.

Debt is up.

Where is money going?

What is happening?

Is this the beginning of something or is this just a bump in the road?

We go to Stephen Moore,

economist at the Heritage Foundation.

Hello, Stephen.

How are you?

Hi, glad.

No, I've been better.

This has been a rough couple of three or four days we've had in the stock market.

You're right about that.

And so, look, but I remain pretty bullish.

Look, the Dallant is down now to 25,400.

It was up well over 1,200 points higher than that a week ago.

I like to buy these dips.

But

you look at the fundamentals of the U.S.

economy with the tax cuts, the deregulations, the high employment.

I'm still really high on the U.S.

economy.

I'm still high on the stock market, especially at these low prices right now.

So what happened yesterday?

What spooked it?

Well, good question.

We're all scratching our head wondering what it was.

I mean, Donald Trump seems to think it was the Fed, and there's no question that the Fed interest rate hike and their announcement that they're going to continue to raise interest rates certainly moved people out of stocks into bonds because when interest rates rise, then bonds are more attractive relatively than stocks.

Usually those effects of

Fed changes are short-term.

So I don't think you're going to see a long-term effect from that.

Although I tend to agree with Donald Trump that here we've got this booming economy, we don't see real signs of inflation, although energy prices are rising, but other commodities are pretty stable or actually falling in price.

So I don't see a big inflation gain and

pick up.

And what Trump is saying, and I think there's some truth to this, is...

to the Fed and

Jerome Powell, why are you taking a punch bowl away from this priority just when it's getting going?

And

I tend to think that he's right about that.

You know, look, I don't want inflation, but just because the economy is picking up doesn't mean you're going to have more inflation.

I don't think that the Fed's job is to squash a stock market rally and a pickup in employment, as we've seen in record numbers.

Yeah,

I would tell you, Stephen, you know, I'm an inflation watcher and hyperinflation, inflation watcher.

I was really concerned with all the repatriated money that was coming in and the tax breaks, and we haven't seen it.

Show me the inflation.

I mean, look,

I have to admit, you know, I admit when I'm wrong, I'm a conservative who admits when I'm wrong.

I'm not wrong all that often, but I did predict we'd see higher inflation as a result of all the money creation by the Fed.

And the truth is, we haven't seen it.

And by the way, one of the reasons for that is we have international trade.

You know, we have all sorts of technological change that makes goods and services cheaper over time.

And trade and technology are two things that really keep prices down and affordable.

And so my only point is I just think the Fed acted preemptively and prematurely in raising rates

in a way that wasn't necessary.

I am a little concerned, by the way, Glenn, about the increase in the price of oil.

It's gone up to $80 a barrel.

That's like equivalent of $4 a gallon gas.

Why?

Why is it gone?

Why is it gone up?

It sounds like a tax on the economy.

Why has it gone up?

You there, Stephen?

Stephen, are you there?

Yeah, maybe I'm getting near what you just said.

Okay,

why is oil going up?

Well, that's a good question, too.

It looks like because there's been disruptions in

the Middle East with respect to Iraq.

And so you're seeing

a big sell-off as a result.

I mean, a big rise in the price because people are really concerned about the

price

in the global reduction in supply as a result of the price.

Bring Texas back online.

Bring Texas back up.

Bring Texas back online.

Well, that's the point.

You know, look, I think oil prices are going to fall.

I just was out in Midland, Texas, in the middle of the Permian Basin.

I've never seen anything like it, Glenn.

I mean, everywhere you go, all they're doing is drilling, drilling, drilling, drilling.

And, you know, it's anywhere you can stick a stick in the ground, they're drilling for oil and natural gas.

So

I don't think we're going to see a continuation, you know, over the next year or so of these higher prices.

In fact, I think they're going to dwindle back down again.

So, you know, I think that the big problem right now is just fear.

You know, this stock market is driven by fear and greed.

That's a truism for 150 years, and people are afraid right now that, and by the way, there was a lot of profit taking.

I did this myself.

When the Dow hit 26,500, I said to my wife, finally, let's take some of these profits and get out of the market.

And I think a lot of people did that.

Stephen,

let me ask you this.

I don't know if this is true or this is an an old wives' tale, but the last president that I heard really take on the Fed

was Ronald Reagan.

And we had 19% interest rates shortly after that until he stopped talking about the Fed.

And the Fed has a lot of control.

I mean, and

a lot of people say it's

somehow some kind of violation for the president to question the Fed.

And I wrote a column on this last week.

I know, why?

The president is this chief executive officer of the country, right?

He is the one who is supposed to help manage our economy.

If he doesn't think the Fed is doing the right thing, why shouldn't he speak out?

Now, look, I don't want to see a politicization of the Fed,

but I think there's a lot of, look, one of the lessons we've learned, Glenn, you and I have talked about this over the years.

These are not some kind of oracles on high at the Fed.

They act as if they're the temple with all of the knowledge and all of the intelligence.

But they've made so many mistakes over the years.

You mentioned, I remember the 70s, as you do, when we had had literally 20% mortgage interest rates.

That was all because of Fed mistakes.

You know, I would make the same case that the Fed, you know, was the one that built up this bubble that led to the housing crisis in 2007 and 8.

Why do we keep thinking these people are somehow like godlike?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Let me ask you

about the

NAFTA replacement

and

also

the trade war that we have going on with China.

I fear that Donald Trump really likes trade wars

and we're not that this isn't a negotiation tactic.

If it is, you know, great.

But do you think, is it, Stephen?

Or is this what he really fundamentally believes, that tariffs are good?

Here's my view.

And I've talked to Donald Trump many times about this, you know, and he said this at the Rose Garden.

I was at his Rose Garden ceremony last week when he announced the new trade agreement.

And he basically said, look,

I am using these tariffs as a tool, as a negotiating tactic to get better trade agreements.

Now, I'm a free trade guy.

I think you are too, Glenn.

So I used to tell Donald Trump, I don't agree with you on your trade strategy, but I got to say, so far, you know, the...

the kind of apocalyptic view has not happened.

Trump is getting some good deals.

He got a deal with Mexico.

He played Canada like a fiddle here, where he basically said, you know, we're just going to go ahead without you with Mexico.

And Canada at the 11th hour, literally 11 o'clock on the night before the deal had to be sealed, Canada came and said, okay, we agree to the deal.

He's going to get a good deal, I think, with Europe.

And then that leads to Canada, I mean, to China.

And this is where I think Trump is going to take a very hard line.

And I happen to agree with, I don't know, you and I haven't talked about this, Brian, but I am a hard liner when it comes to China.

I'm a free trade guy, but China, we don't have free trade with China.

China's cheating.

They're stealing.

They're, you $300 billion of Euro intellectual property.

They're building up their military.

They're like

the old Soviet Union in terms of a lot of the tactics they're using.

And so I do think Trump should get tough with China.

What do you think?

I think so, too.

I just want to make sure that we understand the symbiotic relationship of mutually assured economic destruction when it comes to China.

Let me challenge you on that one.

You know, I'm going to, of course, a trade war would hurt us.

But I think the way Trump looks at it, and I think he's right about this, look, if we can't trade with China, we sneeze.

If they can't trade with us, they catch pneumonia.

And I think there's a lot of truth to that.

I mean, they can't,

their economy depends on access to America's $15 trillion consumer market.

I mean, damn near everything you buy in Walmart

is made in China.

And so Trump is playing that card and saying, look, we're not going to give you unfettered access to our markets if you're not going to play by the rules.

I talk to company CEOs all the time in Flanders who basically say it's almost impossible to penetrate the China market.

You've got to give up ownership of your company.

You have to give up your trade secrets, your patents.

I mean, we can't live with that.

And Trump is right, I think, when he says, look, I didn't start this trade deal, this trade war.

They started it 10 years ago.

I would feel better if

they also weren't our bank at the same time.

I would feel better about it.

Hey, Stephen, quickly, one quick question for you.

I know you probably have a real insight on this.

We were kind of talked about the steel tariffs and these things going on allies

like Canada as a way of negotiating and bringing these countries to the table for what was kind of like a NAFTA 2.0 type of situation.

Well, that happened, but the steel tariffs are still on Canada.

Do you have any idea why, or is this going to change at any point?

Well, this is one of the issues that I find my, you know, as you know, I'm a big fan of Donald Trump.

I hope to write the tax plan with my buddy Larry Kudlow.

But I just disagree with this policy.

I don't see the wisdom in steel and auto and aluminum tariffs or auto tariffs, but especially not steel and aluminum, because we have something like 100,000 Americans who are employed in steel and auto, but we've got 6 million other manufacturers who use steel and aluminum in what they produce.

I was over at Anheuser-Busch a couple of weeks ago.

When they make

Budweisers, they're using a lot of aluminum for those cans, and they say their prices are going up, and that's going on around the country.

Our auto producers, our autos are more expensive because of the steel tariffs.

So my point to Trump is this isn't even creating factory jobs.

We're going to lose factory jobs as a result of this.

So, I disagree very strongly with the steel and aluminum tariffs.

I think they do more harm than good.

Does he look like he's softening?

No.

Do you think I don't see it?

I don't see it either.

An evergreen response to that question, isn't it?

No, he's not.

Yeah, no, and I think at the Rose Garden last week, he said how he was boasting about how all the steel jobs we're creating.

It's true, we are creating steel jobs, Mr.

President, but we're losing auto jobs.

We're losing, you know, jobs in other areas that manufacture equipment, trucks,

those kinds of things that use steel and aluminum.

So it's a dumb policy.

I wish we would reverse it.

And by the way, the auto-terrorists, same thing.

Even the U.S.

auto industry doesn't want the auto-terrorists because

so many of their supplies come from

countries abroad.

The steel might have come from

Canada.

The assembly might have come from Mexico.

The parts might have come from Taiwan.

I mean, this is the modern American and global economy at work, and we put our ourselves at risk here.

But at the end of the day, I think Trump is going to prevail on China.

I think I'll make a prediction within six months.

I think China is going to come hat in hand and make some real concessions to

Trump.

And ultimately, if that happens, you're going to see the biggest stock market boom you ever saw.

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