Anti-Whiteness During the Trump Administration

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Welcome once again to the conversation that matter podcast. I am your host, John Harris, and we have an interview today.

00:36

I think you're going to really appreciate someone who I think has their, they just have an understanding of what's going on in society.

00:44

They have their fingers on the pulse. We've had a mom before. His name is Jeremy Carl, and he is a senior fellow with the

00:50

Claremont Institute. He wrote a book that I interviewed him for last year called The Unprotected Class.

00:56

We're going to talk about the one -year anniversary of that book, what's happened, what the Trump administration is doing, and then what needs to happen.

01:03

Without further ado, welcome, Jeremy Carl. Thanks so much, John. It's a pleasure to be on. Yeah. Well, you're a very gracious man, especially as I've rescheduled you all over this week twice.

01:15

I really appreciate your time and attention. I know you're a busy guy, but you have so many good things to say.

01:21

I know my audience loves to hear them. I think they're worthwhile. I want to just give you the floor to talk about one year since the publication of your book,

01:29

The Unprotected Class, and how it's been received. I think history's vindicated you quite a bit, and the

01:36

Trump administration seems to be taking cues from you. I don't know if that's true, but that'd be cool if they were. I definitely think to some degree.

01:43

Again, I don't want to overstate that, but of the six core recommendations that I had in the book, within the first week of the

01:51

Trump administration, they had done all of them in whole or in part. I know that there were some, without betraying any confidences, there were some people who were senior officials in the

02:02

Trump administration who did read it, who were making these decisions. Again, there are a lot of other people.

02:07

Victory has many fathers. Defeat is an orphan. I'm not in any way suggesting that the book was solely or even primarily responsible for those decisions, but it's been great.

02:17

In fact, when I did something on the one -year anniversary of the book, I heard from a reader who is a senior official,

02:24

I didn't know about this person, in a Trump administration civil rights related group saying, yeah, this is really influential.

02:32

We're trying to do our thing. I clerked for an appeals court judge, and he had all the clerks read it.

02:38

That's been great, that it's really, that message has gotten out there. You write a book for readers, and that's why I wrote it.

02:44

Yeah. Oh, that's so great. Well, why don't you just briefly go over those recommendations so people can remember what you said a year ago, and then maybe look at their newspaper and see what's happening now.

02:54

Yeah. I'm not even sure I can do all of them, but one of them was getting control of the border. I should say,

03:00

I think you mentioned The Unprotected Class. It's a book on the rise of anti -white racism in the United States. That's right. What we should do about it.

03:07

I talked about getting rid of disparate impact, which we just had the, and we can talk about what that doctrine is.

03:14

We just had the Trump administration do something aggressive there. I talked about rooting out DEI in government.

03:20

I talked about getting rid of affirmative action. Those were some of the really key highlights.

03:28

And again, this administration has just been terrific. So much so that when the paperback version of this book comes out early next year,

03:37

I'm going to write a new introduction, not because the book is invalid in any way. There's a ton of stuff still going on, but the

03:45

Trump administration has really made tremendous progress on some of the bigger issues here. Yeah.

03:50

It seems like the anti -DEI stuff is maybe the most major. I'd let you talk about, what do you think is the biggest thing they've done that you are positive about?

03:59

Yeah. I mean, the DEI stuff is great. I think it's also a little bit low hanging fruit at this point.

04:06

It's pushing on an open door. Now, I mean, again, credit to them for pushing on, and it didn't just become an open door by accident.

04:13

There are guys like Chris Rufo and others who've really set the stage, I think, to get there.

04:19

But I think one of the things I would try to leave your listeners with is institutions matter a lot.

04:26

And so, personnel is policy. You've got to go change out people. We are escorting people out the door, and that is how you make real policy change.

04:38

Because if you still have the same people in there, you're not going to get the sorts of real change that you want.

04:44

I'll give an example of where I'm just very optimistic. My friend, Harmeet Dhillon, who Trump appointed as the

04:49

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in that division, like 70 % of the attorneys have left.

05:00

Now, you could say, oh, that's horrible. No, I mean, Harmeet is really hardcore, and she said, look, we're going to enforce the law without fear or favor.

05:07

And of course, most of those attorneys just want to be left -wing activists, and so they've left. And so that's going to have long -term ramifications far beyond the

05:18

Trump administration, because you're now working with just much better personnel who are more aligned with a nonpartisan mission for that institution.

05:28

And so, again, I think it's really just been win after win as far as the administration goes in this area.

05:36

Yeah, and I'm excited to see it. I know, not to quote every leftist activist, but we have so much farther to go, right?

05:44

Every time they get a victory, it's always so much farther to go. But in this situation, I do sense that.

05:50

What are some things that you think need to still happen and maybe things audience members can put their efforts toward?

05:57

Yeah, well, I think the border is still really key because a lot of the anti -white racism in the

06:03

United States is enabled by the vastly changing demographics of the country. And I think even if you are pro -immigration at baseline, and I'm not, but I think you can be, we need a pause to reconsolidate whatever

06:21

American identity is going to look like in the 21st century. And so I think that's really a key area where we need to continue to push there's going to be a lot of loud noises when we start.

06:37

I mean, the funny thing is, right, we're just deporting MS -13 gang members right now, and the

06:44

Democrats are still screeching. When we start doing the actual hard cases, people who've lived here for a long time, and they're not criminals, and in my view, they still need to go if you're going to have immigration law, then the

06:58

Democrats are going to scream, I think relevant to us, the church is going to scream in some cases, particularly where the church intersects with some of these, frankly, pretty corrupt resettlement agencies that we've had, that various churches have been involved with that have been integral to the invasion of our border.

07:16

So I think things like that are still going on. So that's the immigration piece. I would say a lot of it is also now at this point, it's okay, so you've changed the statute and you've changed some personnel, but you've got to actually follow through.

07:32

So I'm actually, I mean, I don't want to be too pessimistic or a black pillar, but I'm not incredibly optimistic, not because of anything that the

07:44

Trump administration is doing wrong, they're doing a great job, that some of these really good changes on paper will actually happen in reality.

07:51

That's based on, for example, I've been following California banned affirmative action 25 years ago in university admissions in the state and then they reaffirmed it.

08:00

Now this is California, a really conservative, a really liberal state. They reaffirmed it at the ballot box again in 2020, despite being horribly outspent.

08:10

If you look at the actual admission statistics in California in universities, the universities have just ignored it.

08:19

They've just ignored the ban, they've continued to do what they want to do and nobody's really stopping them.

08:25

You've had the same thing at the national level. So you had the Supreme Court strike down affirmative action in universities nationally.

08:32

And if you look at what happened with the next class of admitted students, as best

08:38

I can tell, the universities just ignored it. So I think we need to really focus on enforcement.

08:44

That's going to be the kind of next frontier. You've got the right things on paper, now you've got to get the right things in reality.

08:51

Obviously there's local communities, individuals, then there's the state and obviously then there's things that the national or general government can do.

09:00

I want to talk about maybe the local and the state real quick. This is a quote from your book. You say corporations can be the greatest threat to America.

09:10

And one of the proof, you say white supremacy no longer holds great sway in America at all and hasn't for quite some time.

09:17

I'm going to skip ahead here. It says, it is not a coincidence that the term white privilege originated in Peggy McIntosh's 1988 paper, but it's become clear that whiteness was now a legal and social disability in much of American life.

09:32

So there's a sort of this gradual anti -white sentiment that you track and you say, this becomes over the last,

09:40

I don't know, 50, 60 years, just part of the established narrative. And that's in corporations, that's in universities, that's in local, it's not just on the national level, which

09:52

I think is a mistake of thinking that, oh, Obama or Biden, they got in and then it was bad, but now things are going to go back.

09:59

You're saying, well, it can't just go back because it's ingrained. And so just a big one example here, and this is a state thing that I'm really curious about, about the border.

10:09

We had this great show of force with Governor Greg Abbott during Biden administration that they're going to do the deportations even if the federal government doesn't.

10:18

And now it's like the courts are stopping Trump. The states could do it and the administration wouldn't have anything to say.

10:26

They could just do it. Texas could literally do it right now. My brother's a public school teacher in a deep red state.

10:33

He goes, they're not getting rid of anyone. We hear all these big things that Tom Homan says, and that was these criminal cases, but he goes, nothing's changed on the ground.

10:42

They could do something. So anyway, that's my frustration. Maybe speak to that because we do have people in the listening audience who are in local and state elected capacities.

10:54

What can they do? Yeah. And it's tricky, right? Because I'll tell you,

11:00

I mean, there's just little procedural things. I live in Montana. We had the Montana attorney general at a lunch recently, and he was saying that basically this is just one of a million examples like this.

11:11

They raised in various ways on their way out the standard for the type of holding facility that you could keep illegal immigrants on ICE detainers so that it had to do this and this and this.

11:25

It basically made it impossible for any county jail in Montana to hold these folks.

11:31

We don't have the right facilities under the new rules. So there's all sorts of gamesmanship like that going on.

11:38

I think for your listeners, for folks in elected office or near folks who are elected also, you just need to make noise about what's going on in your community and make sure that you're keeping the pressure on in the right way to the administration, because the administration does have voices in their ear from the business community who are saying, ah, you know, don't enforce it against these guys who are working at my restaurant.

12:03

We need to see a lot more worksite enforcement, for example. Now, again, I am giving the administration a huge benefit of the doubt.

12:13

I think everything they're doing has been great. They've obviously gotten control of the border. I think they're pursuing a very deliberate legal strategy in terms of, you know, they're not defying court orders yet.

12:26

I think they're going to get there if they get too ridiculous, but they're giving the Supreme Court the chance to do the right thing.

12:32

They're kind of slowly moving the goalpost forward in what I think is a deliberate strategy.

12:38

But we do need to kind of look at not just going after the immigrants, but going after the employers who are legally employing these guys.

12:46

That's how you're going to begin to make a real difference on that sort of an issue. Yeah. Did you see in Colorado, there was a bill that was just defeated, but it would have allowed churches to build dwellings, whether it was apartment complex or whatever, regardless of local zoning laws.

13:03

And I was like, that's a curious thing. Why in the world would they want that? But my first thought was, oh, yeah, churches can be places where illegal migrants can go to be protected essentially.

13:15

And I'm seeing in blue states, there's a, I don't know, a bullishness perhaps against the administration, but red states seem to be coasting.

13:23

I don't know if you've noticed that, but it seems like what we need is a bunch of guys on the local and state level to start pushing in the same direction the administration's pushing.

13:34

I don't know why that is, why that dynamic is there. I don't know if you've thought about that, but - You're correct.

13:39

And it's tremendously frustrating to watch it. And here in Montana, we literally had, without exaggeration, this is a state that Trump took 60 % in without even trying.

13:49

We had the Republican legislature in the Senate literally hand control to the

13:54

Democrats. We had all these Republicans essentially vote with the Democrats on organization. We had nothing done.

14:03

It's a combination of lack of professionalism, lack of accountability. But the problem is the

14:11

Republican party is still a huge problem. I wish that weren't the case. I'm not saying with everybody, I'm not going to sit here and say, every local official, every official except for Trump is horrible.

14:20

No. We do have a lot of good guys, but we've probably got more people who would still love to go back to the days of George W.

14:27

Bush. And that's not where our voters are, thankfully, but that's still where we've got a lot of electeds.

14:33

And so it's a real problem. And to come back to, you mentioned churches and I don't need to tell you, but churches, we still have huge problems on this issue as well.

14:43

I mean, I talk about the church in my book, but even among conservative evangelicals, we have issues where they are reifying anti -white narratives within their church.

14:56

They're letting CRT, critical race theory, kind of pop into the church. Votie Bauckham wrote a really good book on this that I'd recommend to any of your listeners who want to learn more.

15:06

I mentioned a lot in my own book, but our local institutions are still operating under the old rules, unfortunately, in many cases.

15:18

I got a text message the other day, speaking of that, Wheaton College. Wheaton College is of course a big, supposedly conservative.

15:25

I don't think so anymore. They're doing a documentary right now called Black Plus Evangelical.

15:32

And apparently a lot of big names are in this. But the whole point is that basically the white church has been way off.

15:41

And we didn't let MLK type guys in because of their theology, but this was a big mistake.

15:48

And this is going to be marketed to all kinds of students and influential people in the

15:54

Christian evangelical world. And I think it's coming out this summer or maybe next fall, but this stuff is still there and people don't realize it.

16:03

Like Trump got elected. It didn't change everything. They're still the same forces. So anyway, to get to a question for you, my audience is mostly keyed into the

16:12

Christian institutions. What do you recommend moving forward? Obviously you recommend Votie's book, but is there any practical thing that people can do in their churches and in their

16:23

Christian institutions that you don't see happening? Yeah, I think it's almost on a church by church basis.

16:30

I mean, you can get involved, obviously, for those of you involved in denominational politics, you can obviously do that and that can be useful.

16:37

I'm in the PCA, but I'm just a layperson. I go to church and I care about what's in my local church.

16:42

And that's the extent of my... I have enough political involvements outside the church. But if you are involved in governance issues, that's where a lot of the worst things happen.

16:52

In fact, I talk in my book that if you look at the mainline church, I mean, there's absolutely insane leftism there.

16:59

But yet to be fair, like if you go to a lot of these actual mainline churches, even though theologically we would have some very significant disagreements with them, they're not nearly so crazy as the statements that are coming out of their denomination.

17:12

And that's because the liberals run unchecked. So I would say that if you are concerned and this is a really central issue in your life, do get involved at the denominational level.

17:23

Do make sure that your folks are reading good things. And you talk about Wheaton. I mean, Wheaton is a classic example.

17:28

I mean, this was allegedly the Harvard of evangelicalism. It's totally fallen. Admissions rates are soaring up to 80 % now,

17:37

I think, of applicants were admitted up from a much, much smaller number.

17:42

Not that many years ago, because honestly, evangelical parents or just concerned

17:49

Christian parents are not looking to go send their kids to a woke school. So you have places like Hillsdale or you have places that are like Grove City that are kind of doing well because they're differentiating themselves.

18:03

Although Grove City even hasn't been perfect to a degree. And then the evangelical schools that are falling prey to liberalism are just not going to be attractive.

18:13

But we do need to... Look, I know there's some alumni trying to save Wheaton and they should. There's great resources there.

18:20

They have a distinguished history and we shouldn't just let these institutions go, but it's going to require some hand -to -hand fighting, metaphorically speaking.

18:29

Of course. Yeah. That is the question, not just for Christian schools, but for all educational institutions where people have a stake and their grandfather, their father went there.

18:38

They love him. And it's like, what do you do? When is it beyond return? Let's fast forward.

18:44

I've talked to some, or I've noticed, I should say, some guys who are accelerationists too, even in some cases voted for Kamala Harris, which

18:53

I don't get, but they think that, hey, we just, we're going to come to a race war. Okay. Guys like Jeremy Carl, guys like John Harris, those are bad guys because they're just preventing this from happening.

19:06

They're trying to put up efforts that they're not going to work. And we just need to get to this point of normally it's like white people versus everyone else.

19:16

They think white people will triumph. And I think this is kind of bonkers, but I'm sure you've navigated this.

19:23

I mean, what do you see the future holding? Well, look, whatever in God's providence is going to happen is going to happen.

19:29

And we don't control that. I think we're acknowledgement of the fact that we're not in control.

19:35

My view is I attempted to use my best discernment to find the best way that I can be active in this issue, relying on kind of my own prayer, my own thought.

19:49

I think that in general, if we ever err, period, we should always err on the side of attempting to reconcile, attempting to unify.

19:58

There may become a point where conflict of some sort just becomes inevitable.

20:03

I certainly hope we don't get to that point. But if it does, I think that'll be apparent to a lot more folks than just kind of doomers on Twitter or Reddit or wherever they are.

20:16

I also would point out for those, even let's leave aside the kind of moral and theological discomfort

20:24

I kind of have with that type of thinking. I just think that practically, even if, and again, they could be right, we'll see how things go.

20:32

You look at a case like South Africa and people are like, oh, well, people will wake up or what happened in Zimbabwe, people wake up.

20:41

No, actually things can just get worse and worse. And in fact, that's generally the way that people operate in the world and things can get worse and worse.

20:51

And they just normalize in their mind the new normal. And so I think it's very dangerous to assume, ah, it's just going to get really, really bad and we're going to, and then everybody will see.

21:05

And then they'll leap up and do something. I operate under the assumption that the best way to win is by winning.

21:15

And so that's why I'm thrilled with what Trump is doing. And I think even if perhaps the system is not salvageable, and I think it is, but even if I'm wrong in that assertion, we're getting to know like -minded people.

21:31

We're building communities. We're building communities in our churches and where we live. Those things in any political system will prove valuable over the long run.

21:42

And so my bet doesn't necessarily have to assume that things are just going to kind of go the way they've been going.

21:50

I think there are lots of different scenarios in which working in a faithful and serious way on these issues will pay long -term dividends.

22:00

Now you live in Montana. You did, you went to, was it Harvard or Yale? I'm sorry. Both. I went to Yale for undergrad.

22:07

Oh, okay. Well, so I was right. So you obviously have lived in the Northeast. I live in New York, but I'm very,

22:14

I'm probably maybe 35 minutes from the Connecticut border if I needed to get there. So I know New England a little bit.

22:20

Anyway, one of the things, I know you're going to be writing about this in your upcoming book. And by the way, do you have a date for that yet?

22:26

I don't. There's some interesting uncertainties because it's possible that I'll be going into the administration in some capacity.

22:35

And so I have publishers who are more than happy to publish it, but I'm not sort of going and signing contracts yet because I don't want to sign a contract and then like disappear and not be able to work on the book for a while.

22:50

So I'm just waiting for a little more clarity on what I'm going to do. Well, hold the phone. Whatever I was saying, it doesn't matter anymore.

22:56

You're going into the administration? Maybe. I mean, it's a possibility. It exists in the possibility set.

23:03

They're interested in having me in some capacity and I'm interested in joining in some capacity.

23:08

But there are family and other considerations that come into play. And so maybe we'll be able to match that up and maybe we won't.

23:17

Okay. Well, hopefully everyone who's hearing this can pray for you and that there will be prudent decision making going on.

23:23

I'd love to see you in the administration. I would hate to see you out of Montana. Montana is a beautiful place though.

23:28

Well, if I did, I would be commuting. And that's one of the reasons why you know, it really has to be the perfect sort of setup because it will be,

23:37

I've got five kids at home and it's just, you know, it's a lot of time on the road. So that's there.

23:43

But assuming that, so right now I'm sort of in a more unusual mode. Normally I would have shopped the book already and have a really firm date.

23:51

But what I've been doing is I know that there are publishers out there who because of the success of my last book would be happy to publish this one.

23:57

And so I've just been kind of writing and holding on for a little bit more clarity before I kind of formally shop it.

24:05

Well, one of the things that I know you're going to be writing about, and this is one of the dynamics that I've noticed living in this area is of course there are white people, quote unquote, even original stock settler descendants kind of people who seem to really hate white people.

24:21

And they seem to control the levers of power in most of the Northeastern states. And of course, even in the

24:27

Pacific Northwest, we see a similar dynamic. And, um, and this, I think causes some confusion.

24:34

It caused, well, not confused, but it caught it. It's a problem for the guys who are like pure white supremacist or nationalist types who want to see the

24:43

DNA test. And that's the basis for cooperation because these guys would all pass it. And of course, there's different settlers that are different groups from Europe that have been fighting each other in recent past in Europe.

24:55

It's not like white people can just bind everyone together. But the left of course, is going after any European descendants.

25:00

So that's the, so all that to say, um, I know you're going to be talking about this in your book moving forward, maybe help us navigate that dynamic where it's like people who, it wouldn't seem like it's in their best interest to go anti -white because they're so white.

25:17

Is it that they just protect themselves from their own policies? Well, well, that's really what

25:22

I'm trying to understand for myself almost in writing the book. And I have ideas. The working title of the book, uh, is what's the matter with Minnesota.

25:29

Although I thought about also using what's the matter with Massachusetts. I like that one better. Two slightly different dynamics, but kind of similar where you have these very, very liberal whites.

25:39

And it's basically a book on the kind of pernicious influence of liberal whites in America, uh, which there are a variety of different factions.

25:49

And I kind of talk about those, uh, in the book as I'm developing it. Um, but it's not totally clear and I, and I sort of,

25:56

I'm actually trying to write this it's, and I make this clear from the first words, I'm sort of trying to write this in love and hopes to kind of bring them back into the fold.

26:05

It's not just, I mean, there's an inevitable amount of anger, but I do think that ultimately the democratic party is so dedicated to anti -whiteness that I think some of these people can be roused to their senses, a lot of them ultimately, and kind of come back and join the full, not because I'm trying to have some ethno -nationalist party, but just because why would you support a party that actively hates you and, uh, attacks your family and attacks your culture and attacks your tradition?

26:34

So I'm trying to sort of understand. I mean, I do think in some cases, as you know, they are able to, particularly these affluent ones sort of exempt themselves from the rule.

26:44

If you're really, really wealthy and really affluent, I mean, it's a very powerful virtue signal and a very powerful flex of your own power to say, oh, well,

26:52

I don't care about, you know, you can do all these things that hurt other white people because frankly, my family is still going to be fine.

26:59

Right? Like that's, that's the ultimate underlying thing. But I think also some of it is, and you see this a lot with liberal white women who are usually unmarried women, and this is like a lot of it really comes from deep unhappiness and unhappiness with themselves that is manifesting unfortunately in our politics.

27:19

And so I'm trying to, I think there's different things, different motivations for different of these groups. And again, just like with the book that I just wrote,

27:27

I'm not kind of just trying to write for the true believer, for the person who's already just so angry and shaking their fist, but to really, you know, be fair to these people, but still, you know, say the truth, but in a loving way.

27:42

And hopefully we'll catch more flies with honey than we will with vinegar in this case, and that we can bring some of these folks to a more productive place in the political debate, because these liberal whites are really just, they're causing a tremendous, tremendous amount of damage in society.

28:02

And as you point out, it kind of belies a lot of the hopes of these white supremacist nationalists that, you know, some of the most toxic people in this debate are in fact, you know, part of their group.

28:15

So. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's interesting to me to see those who would vote against the future of their children.

28:24

That's what it, and I think that's what you're, and I appreciate so much the posture you take that is measured, that is calm and is loving.

28:32

We need more of that. It seems like we've come to similar conclusions on even the localism and building in your local community.

28:40

I don't know if you're originally from Montana. Where are you from? Okay. I grew up in North Carolina. So. But you're in Montana and I'm assuming you're, you're finding your community.

28:50

You're trying to find a place. Absolutely. And I've done that particularly around my church. I mean, those are my closest friends here.

28:56

And I say that, you know, and we're not a political church, right? Like, in fact, our pastors, I mean, they're very Orthodox, but they, they're probably they're unhappy that we're not a little bit more political from the pulpit, but it's still, it's just a solid group of Christians, of folks who are like -minded and folks who are trying to build community in a really useful way.

29:17

And I think that that's just a great starting point for whatever happens down the road.

29:23

Yeah. I told guys, I think the best thing, if you're concerned about this issue is have babies and take power wherever you can stay out of the fight and you can't just not get married and have children.

29:35

You have to keep building. And that's what I think the left seems to understand is that as they take over institutions that can thumb their nose at even policies against them.

29:46

So the Trump administration is in right now. I want to sort of get to the positive vision here where you're positive about a lot of the things that they're doing moving forward.

29:57

We're so like, this has only been a few months, right? So we still have three and a half years.

30:03

And then hopefully with Vance, we get, it would be great to have seven and a half years of this.

30:09

The possibilities seem pretty endless. Like we have so many things we can do if we actually have that much momentum.

30:18

This is a political question from the executive branch. Now this is courts, maybe going against Trump, leaving state legislatures, not wanting to inform, but what can the executive do if we have the executive, which is what we have now?

30:33

What kinds of things do you see either happening in a predictive way, or would you love to see happening since you may co -work for the administration that would really give us some optimism here?

30:47

Yeah, well, we've seen tremendous amount of energy from the executive, tremendous numbers of executive orders really pushing executive power.

30:54

And I don't mean that in a critical way. I think that so much of executive power has been illegally usurped.

31:01

This has actually been a big hobby horse of the Claremont Institute where I work for decades.

31:06

We've talked about the administrative state far before it's been fashionable. Essentially what you see

31:12

Trump trying to do is that for the first time, probably arguably since FDR, you actually have somebody trying to be president.

31:22

In other words, he's saying, I am in control of the executive branch. There is no power in these bureaucrats other than what

31:33

I invest in them. They are here to work for me. And this is the correct way to think about how the government should run, but it's not how it historically has run.

31:44

And this has been going on for a long time. I'll give you an anecdote along this. So I was at the Hoover Institution at Stanford for a decade.

31:50

I worked very, very closely there with the late Secretary of State, George Shultz, who was Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State.

31:56

And he had a wonderful anecdote that he told me on a few occasions of when he was

32:01

Secretary of State, he went down to Latin America and the diplomats there were very unhappy about something that we were doing where we were,

32:10

I guess, undermining the Sandinistas or who knows what. They were unhappy about something. And Shultz listened to them for a while.

32:17

He was a very good listener, quite sympathetically. And he said, I agree with you.

32:22

I think you're right. And I think what you should do is, and he meant that quite sincerely, is that you should quit your job and go back to America and run for president.

32:31

And when you get elected, you can put in this policy. And what he was really saying by that is like, that's fine.

32:38

I'm listening to you. But we have a president. The president is the person who sets the policy, and it's our job to enact the president's policy.

32:46

And we can share our expertise. President is not a dictator. We have a right to let him know if we don't agree.

32:52

But at the end of the day, he has to give an order and then we salute when we get that order.

32:58

And in fact, I was much more conservative than Secretary Shultz. He kept me around working with him for a decade,

33:04

I think, because he appreciated that element of my own personality that I would argue with him. A lot of people were too scared to argue with him because of his high status.

33:12

I would get in arguments with him about stuff. But at the end of the day, sometimes he would just say, Jeremy, we're going to do it this way.

33:17

And then I would go and I would execute his plan as if it were my idea. Right.

33:22

And I just think that that's really, really important. That's the sort of attitude we need to have in our executive branch.

33:28

Trump is trying to bring this in a variety of ways. He's trying to preserve the executive's power to do things like he just he has power over through the

33:37

Secretary of State on immigration in all sorts of ways that the courts really don't have say over it.

33:42

And I think he's trying to claw back a lot of power from the judiciary, which has not been gained.

33:50

And so I think that there's a tremendous opportunity there. And then to build on what you just said with Vice President Vance, I never engage in that.

33:58

This was the most important election of our lifetimes. But I do think it would be incredibly important to get Vance or whoever it is, but Vance being the most likely and certainly the most appealing right now, because I think he can there there's an element of the kind of deep state that's like,

34:16

OK, well, I can wait out Trump for three and a half more years. If Vance gets in, especially the guys who are already out the door, they're going to go do something else like they can't they could wait three and a half years, but they can't wait seven and a half years or eleven and a half years.

34:29

So it's tremendously important that we do retain that executive control. And, you know,

34:35

I'm very optimistic. You know, it could be somebody like Rubio, who's done a great job at state. Those are the two people that that the president has has mentioned in particular.

34:43

But regardless, if the GOP can maintain control of the White House, I think it's it's going to it'll have a nonlinear effect on the benefits that we're already getting from Trump.

34:54

You write about in your book, The Unprotected Class, how the founding stock is feeling more and more like strangers in their own country.

35:02

And it seems like we're at this tipping point, which is why your books are popular and others are engaging this issue are rising to prominence, because it seems like the very identity of what it means to be an

35:15

American is now in question. And this is bad for for whites and nonwhites.

35:21

It doesn't really matter, you know, whatever the framing of that is. It's bad for guys, you know,

35:27

Rubio and his family. It would be bad for them if we have unrestricted immigration and we keep going with the same policies that we have.

35:36

Right. So I'm glad to hear of your optimism. I let a bullet miss his head by two inches.

35:46

He he's a very articulate vice president who has a very strong chance of getting in there after Trump.

35:53

And I don't think he's done with us. It just seems like, you know. So, you know, with that, one of the things that you talk about that has been such an enemy to American identity identity is not just the border, but the civil rights regime.

36:06

Trump has started to take some wax at this, like disparate impact and saying, no longer a factor.

36:12

But you went where no one has wanted to go for a while by talking about that. And I'm sure it was a little scary to just start saying, you know,

36:19

I don't know that the civil rights stuff was the best. Maybe talk about that a little bit. Where do you see?

36:26

Do you see this being dismantled? Yeah. Well, I like to say that we just need fundamental reforms and Trump has gotten that kick started.

36:35

But, you know, again, the devil's going to be in the details. The devil is going to be in the execution. Again, I mentioned my friend

36:42

Harmeet Dhillon earlier in the podcast and how effective she's been.

36:49

And by the way, this is just this is an aside because this is more extreme folks who said it. But there were some folks who were like, well, Harmeet, she was she's a

36:55

Sikh and she gave a prayer to a demon at the Republican. I mean. Theological views aside, we are in political coalitions.

37:06

We're not the government is not a church. There are plenty of people who would go to church with me in theory, and then they would sell me out left and right when they got into office.

37:17

So I have religious views that are different than Harmeet Dhillon's. But she has protected

37:22

Christians right to worship, even when she was an attorney in private practice. She's getting wins for Christians and she's doing a terrific job just throughout all civil rights right now of really pursuing aggressively to try to weed out the rot.

37:38

So that's the sort of thing that we need to do when we think about coalition politics. And I think she's she's been terrific.

37:45

But yeah, we need to to challenge this in some very fundamental ways. And I think one of the main things is just to kind of fundamentally restore freedom of association in the private sphere.

37:55

Right. In all of that's manifestations. And there's a there's a public sphere in which we have to serve every group and every sort of person in as equal a way as we can.

38:07

And that's totally appropriate, by the way. That's what we should do. But there are even people if we were to go back to the philosopher

38:13

Leo Strauss, who's been very influential on folks like Claremont and a number of folks on the right, he talked about the danger and he himself was

38:22

Jewish, but he talked about the danger of kind of not allowing private antisemitism, not in a sort of toxic way, but in a sort of club type way, because he said, when you do that, you destroy the private sphere, like you destroy any sort of separation of public and private.

38:38

And then that ultimately leads to totalitarianism, even though it sounds like it's a really good thing, like who wants to discriminate personally, right?

38:46

Like, I don't want to discriminate personally. But when you get the government in the private sphere in that way, I kind of feel like that'll be the next battles to really restore that type of freedom of association in private businesses, in clubs, in whatever else, so that people are not looking over their head to make sure that they've got the right number of people from the right groups, so that they won't be threatened with a discrimination lawsuit.

39:10

So I think that's kind of where we'll head next. And we can absolutely have a government that in all public facets, preserves equal rights for everybody while understanding that in private interactions, you either allow people to associate in ways that they want to associate, or you lose freedom entirely.

39:31

And that's true of Christians, it can be true with race, it can be true with gender. And you're seeing in things like, for example, the

39:37

Ridge Runner community in Tennessee, that my friends over at New Founding have been involved with.

39:47

That's an attempt to kind of create a Christian community, right? A conservative Christian community that's going to be bound by a certain sort of views that they're going to have.

39:57

And I think that we'll see hopefully more experimentation like that from a variety of things.

40:03

And some of them are going to be self associating groups that I'm not going to want to associate with, right? Because they don't agree with me.

40:09

But that's, to me, what it means to be American is to be able to make those choices. Yeah.

40:15

Yeah. Have you been there out of curiosity to Ridge Runner? I haven't. I mean, I know the guys who are involved with it.

40:22

I was just at a reformed Christian retreat with Josh Abatoy, who's been very involved in that community.

40:31

I have not personally been out there, but I'm sure I'll check it out at some point once they're maybe a little more developed.

40:36

I think they're still there. They've got the land for the church, but the church has not gone in yet.

40:41

So that's the reason I had to reschedule with you at the beginning of the week first was I was down there.

40:47

I actually bought a house down there for a rental, basically. I'm investing in what they're doing. And it just took me an extra day.

40:55

It took me longer to get everything together. But anyway, what they're doing is, I think, outside the box, which is why

41:02

I respect it, because a lot of people can sit there and complain about the way things are, but to actually go do something about it, and they have people coming, and there's a vision.

41:11

I mean, that's what we need in a local community. So yeah, I'm glad to hear that localist kind of vision that you share with those guys.

41:20

They're great guys. So is that how we take back, take back is a word often used, but is that how we take back the

41:27

United States? Is it get the political wins, get the executive branch to start dismantling the policies that are against freedom of association, and then just start associating in healthy, thick, high -trust groups, take back

41:46

Main Street? I mean, that's kind of what I'm thinking you're saying. No, I am absolutely.

41:52

Although I do say, and this is almost a little bit of a self -criticism, but I do think it's important that we don't say completely abandoned cities.

42:01

I mean, we have places there we may retreat to for more, you know, like, again,

42:06

I'm living, I live 10 minutes outside a small city here in Montana, so I'm pretty, like, it's pretty isolated.

42:12

A city in Montana? Really? No. But there's a wonderful sort of quote from Cicero that he talks about in the late

42:21

Roman Republic, where he expresses kind of annoyance that, he says, all these, there was so much corruption in the capital that, he says, all the kind of people who could fix

42:31

Rome are instead, they're often, they're kind of rural villas mining their fish ponds, right, because they don't want to get in the fight.

42:41

And so I think it's important that while we want to develop our own spaces and our own communities, that we not retreat, that we not cede the public square entirely to the left.

42:50

Again, I think Trump, because he's such a powerful media figure, is really great for us in getting ourselves into the public square in that way.

42:59

I think both Vance and Rubio actually also have, I mean, they don't have, like, that unique Trump ability, but they're both very well -spoken guys, and I think they have that charisma and that ability to make arguments publicly.

43:12

But I do think it's important that we build our own institutions, that we also, as much as possible, take back some institutions that have been threatened.

43:21

I mean, the Ivy League right now, we're really turning the screws to them. We're not going to be able to take that back for the right, but I think that we can cause, we can inflict enough pain, perhaps, that we could get it to a point where it might look more ideologically like it did 50, 60 years ago, where at least conservative voices could get a hearing and mentorship, and that would certainly be a big improvement of where we are now.

43:45

And those institutions, I can tell you, having been a part of them for 20 years, they matter a lot. It's where we train the people who end up running things, for better or for worse, so we can't just cede them.

43:56

These are fights that are worth having, as well as, obviously, building our own Hillsdales and our own private communities, our own clubs, whatever else it's going to take.

44:06

It seems to me a good way to approach it, and it sounds like this is what you're doing. You have five kids, you're in Montana.

44:11

When you raise kids, you have a whole different set of questions. I know I'm going through this because I have a young daughter. We want to have more.

44:18

And it's like, hey, is New York the best place? But you go to a place that's got a good, thick community, and you try to instill that foundation.

44:26

And then, when they're old enough, they're ready to go to war and take back the Ivy Leagues, go to the city, all that kind of thing.

44:33

That seems like it's the best strategy, in my mind, if you have kids. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And there's my second son.

44:40

I've got my three oldest boys. I kind of have to hold him back a little bit. I'm like, well, sit down. A, you're 16, and therefore, you don't know anything about anything.

44:49

But B, I think you want to be deliberate about it. I don't want to be the left and bring out the kiddie human shields for our own policy things.

45:00

But at the same time, I think they see what's going on, particularly if they're young white guys in America right now.

45:05

And they're sort of on fire to change the system in positive ways.

45:11

And so I think that you can build that. It starts with your family, and then it moves to the community, and then it moves to the nation.

45:19

Yeah. Well, Jeremy, I really appreciate your time. I said we go about 45 minutes. I want to plug whatever you have going on.

45:25

Obviously, the book. If you don't have the book, The Unprotected Class, please go check it out, pick it up.

45:30

It's on Audible now. It's everywhere, so you can get it. What other places can people go to check out your work?

45:37

Yeah, I'd say the simplest thing is to check out my feed on X, where I'm pretty active.

45:43

And that's real Jeremy Carl. That's one good place to go. And then I have a substat called

45:48

The Course of Empire. And I point to almost all my long form stuff I do there.

45:54

And it's a great way to just kind of keep up to date. I don't spam you two or three times a week.

45:59

It's usually every couple of weeks, if not a little less frequently with what I'm up to and the things that I'm thinking about.

46:07

So if folks want to go to jeremycarl .substack .com, they can sign up there. And then

46:12

I publish in a lot of different forums. But if you just follow those two accounts, you'll pretty much see most of the stuff

46:19

I'm doing. Yeah, I want to encourage the audience to do that. I really respect Jeremy. He's been a great voice on these matters.

46:25

He's been wise, prudent. He's a Christian. And so check that out. And I have to ask you, Jeremy, The Course of Empire, is that after the

46:32

Thomas Cole series? It is. It very much is, which is in New York. As you may notice, those paintings.

46:38

I'm a huge Thomas Cole fan. They've turned his house, by the way, into a feminist art gallery.

46:44

Have you been there? No, I've seen the original paintings in New York City. But I've not been to his house.

46:50

I've always wanted to go. I did not know that it had been turned into a feminist art gallery. I'm exaggerating a little bit. It's in Catskill, New York.

46:57

Let me know, by the way, if you're ever in this area. We would love to show you around.

47:02

My wife and I run an Airbnb. It's right on the Hudson River. The Course of Empire, though,

47:08

I love that series. The one on life, the four paintings. Yeah, The Voyage of Life, which is in the

47:14

Smithsonian. Yeah, but he's got so many good ones. Anyway, this reinforces everything you're talking about in your book.

47:21

I went to his house, and they would have America, KKKA, with an upside -down

47:27

America. It looks like an eight -year -old did it, but it's this feminist piece from 2015, next to one of his paintings in his bedroom.

47:34

The whole house was like that. We're trying to recenter women. I'm like, oh my goodness, it's everywhere.

47:44

If you come out - We're going to take back the Cole House for America. That is the priority number one.

47:49

We got to take that back. I admire also your maps. I'm a big maps guy, too. I can't see fully what they are.

47:56

I'm assuming local area stuff. Yeah, just everything from places I've lived. I've got a 16th -century map of ancient

48:04

Israel, according, broken up to the tribes. I've got 15th -century maps of Innsbruck, all sorts of stuff.

48:10

Behind me is a Soviet military map of where I live in Montana. It's a variety of maps that -

48:18

That's some Red Dawn stuff right there. Very cool. God bless, Jeremy.

48:23

Thank you for your time. Best of success to you in whatever endeavors, whether the administration or your next book.