How identity and politics and surviving the land of the free is so important this webber hustings conversation and during this hour will have a lively discussion that includes to the most articulate analysts of American Culture today. Author of this book is Mike Gonzalez and host into the most popular podcast in america. Following the conversation between mike and michael. We will do q a session which i will moderate. Stony point during the program, if you think of something that you would like to ask either of both of them, send the question in the questions box. Be sure to tell us your name and where you are tuning in from. We will answer as any questions as we can in the time the week up. Before we get to the discussion between mike and michael, i want to introduce a special guest to kick off the program. The special guest is Heritage Foundation president missus k james. Missus james, the floor is yours. Good morning. I am so excited to welcome you to the Heritage Foundation and to our virtual book launch of the plot to change america. I want to thank you all but especially i want to thank michael for joining us today. We are so honored to have you with us. We are so proud of Mike Gonzalez in the time in the research he is put into this tremendous book. Mike is not afraid to point out what is happening to our beloved country. It is not afraid to call out those who buy into the destructiveness of identity politics. Mike is often at the tip of the spear and heritage it comes to these issues. Any dozen because he is a true patriot. Because he does not want to see our beloved country go any further down this treacherous road. Ladies and gentlemen, is only an the 1960s when we were struggling to desegregate this country. It encourages bison lacks were working to bring races together and to ensure that america lives up to its promise on liberty and justice and equal treatment for all people. Kay coles james today most americans live in racial harmony. We had our first black president , who had and people of all colors and backgrounds and the highest ranks of american business. And the government. And yes, and yet, our young people are coming out of our colleges and universities believing agreements politics, identity politics, is the road to justice and equality. When in fact, it will bring us right into a place where this nation is looking at a time in our history when we have never been more disrupted. This book cannot be any more timely with the riots and the discretions statues and monuments the rewriting of American History in the classroom. The American People needed to wake up to the insidious this identity politics. They need to understand what has already cost us as a society. And they need to understand how it will poison our children and our grandchildren free to stand by and allow it to continue. We cannot let that happen. We lost let that happen. And so mike thank you for writing this important book. I think you mike for being here, and michael for being here to be with us to talk about it. We are all looking forward to the conversation. Thank you very much missus james the latest an honor to be here at the Heritage Foundation albeit virtually graded not in the building. This is a pleasure to be joined by mike and tollison to talk about this book. A plot to change america. Mike, i dont want to accuse you of anything. But when i look around today, and i see anarchists tearing down statutes of the Founding Fathers of this country, all using the rhetoric of identity politics. Some of whom are selfproclaimed marxists. I cannot help but to wonder if you hired this group of people as a Marketing Tool to promote the thesis in the book because it seems as though we are seeing that thesis played out horrifyingly in real time all around us. Mike michael, thank you very much for that introduction. I think it is very much for being here. He is in very happy my book is sitting well. But not very happy at all the reasons why. I did not hire these people. Everything that you are saying today, you just put your finger on it. Everything from the anarchy in portland to the projects, to the blm organizations, to dangelos, the socalled anti racism Training Sessions. All of this is at the heart of viral my book. Little did i know is i was writing in a year ago, that we were going to have the summer of 2020, when im beginning to call the summer case, is really a consequence of the things we have done to ourselves. Michaelmichael you trace this o the summer of love, the 60s. A lot of people were skeptical of the designation of the time but now i think it is apt for immersing the fruit of those ideologies. Its led to the summer of eight. There is one moment early on in the book that was a little surprising to me. But i think youre absolutely right which is that when people think of identity politics, and all of the affiliated Political Correctness, intersection analogy, use whatever term you like. When we think of it, a lot of people consider that to be just as sort of an eccentricity, a side issue in american politics. We really need to get down to talking about or foreign policy. And the identity politics is on the side but would you say is much more specific and probably more damning. You say that identity politics has become our national hardware. What do you mean by that. Mike it is really the software of our culture. It is everywhere around us. We have become divided, among groups based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation. Gender payment disability status. And anything that goes to a degree of and then be used to claim respect or reward or justice. It is from the moment you went to school when your daughter principal is saying, this is our friend. Into high school when her kids are made to read some books, which does a wonderful job, not a telling history. His very bad history. But in silly grievances rate. Installation of grievances. Need to work that way. And obviously, that the University Campuses have been taken over by this. But has migrated over to the workforce. Hr is telling people to put a sign on the desk that say im an ally. Are we in the time of war. So it is really, it is really come to believe that the jugular issue of our times. Michael but not every group claims the status. Because of even though as you can see i have relatively light skin. It seems that i would not qualify. Any of the people in this country do not qualify. So what is it print how does one get to claim this privilege of being considered depressed. Mike yes, we decided in the 60s to siphon off a group of people and call them minorities. We had not done this before. We had never done this before. We couldve done this in the 20s. When we had a huge number of arminians and syrians or companies or sicilians. In your case or people from eastern europe. People who were typical and can be identified us something different. We couldve siphon them off as minorities we chose not to parties just say, now, lets have all of these immigrants coming in, joined the melting pot and become americans through simulation. In the 1940s, you have scientists who believe to associate essential victimhood. Discrimination the term of monarchy. Then as we know it today, it comes into the first defined in 1961 in the definition that we know of today. Has an association with victimhood. So we divide and all of these people into minority groups rated and they have a sense of grievances, the victimhood. And then they use this to say, while the country is systemically racist. It is institutionally racist. So we must change all of the institutions and all of the structures in the system itself. Michael you mentioned the social scientists. The institutions. I think in the popular imagination, identity politics is something that was developed from the grassroots. People spontaneously taken to the streets and coming towards a kind of consciousness as a group of people and demanding the rights in the face of oppression. That is the official leftwing narrative by the people pushing identity politics. And you say the origins are elisabeth different. You say the origins were much more specific and involve a small group of people and it was highly intentional rated so much as it and who is behind it. Mike it is not in all grassroots efforts. In fact it was driven by elite activists. Groups of people who then formed bureaucracy to create these groups and then and still moved it and promoted it and universities in the 1960s. Before the Foundation Give a great deal of my 600,000 or so to ucla researchers to go into the southwest. They came back with powerful moves for the activists, the mexicanamericans do not feel they were minorities. Or victim group. They did know they were facing discrimination which they did. But they thought they could solve their own problems and an individual level. They could use their own individual agency to overcome the problems. This was very bad news for the ucla researchers. Then it went on to take on a process to create identities. It was already giving money in the late 60s to these identities into groups rated the night create the mexicanamerican trust fund and the foundation begins to really support of this group creation. Behind all of this is the thinking of postmodernists that wanted to rephrase a narrative in the post modernist to use the words from putting this down in the 20s. [inaudible]. , it has obviously not a perfect country by any means. But it could be improved by using our ideals. It is these theories that you see themselves play over again and again and again. And among these people who created these ethnic groups and dependent groups and who created this. Michael you mentioned as someone who was founder of the attend italian communist party, philosopher. He called himself a mark himself. So the very beginning having some of these ideas would you mentioned filter up to the school and out into critical theory in the modern university. Today you have people claiming identity politics who are openly describing themselves as trained marxist specifically the leaders on the blm organizations. As is Common Thread here. It seems to me hollow marks. Seems to be people who are communist yet when you raise that spectrum in the United States, the state thats a crazy Conspiracy Theory. Youre seeing communist. That is this red scare. Is that correct Conspiracy Theory or is it conspiracy read. Mike you mentioned the one who first comes up with the idea. The fascist was sent to prison to stop his brain working. Very bad idea from the example of the apostle st. Paul. A lot of people do a lot of good thinking in prison. So he began to think and they 20s and 30s why havent the revolutions happened. Only they have succeeded is known only one place. About quarter of europe. In russia in 1719. But they failed in 1948. There is no soviet, and the german revolution failed. And he felt in italy. And he begins to say the reason is that the worker has become his own oppressor. And accepted all of the cultural givens of the socalled oppressor class. And religion in the economic system. And so, he has his theory that we need to destroy this in modern america. This is what we are saying today. As you said, we are saying the creator of the 1619 project says this is about replacing the narrative of america. The refinement becomes with the school that is the second president s, pricetobook in 1937. Which pronounces in first comes up with the critical theory. Its an attack and all of the northwest. And they run very good book on the frankfurt school, notes that the almost ignored soviet union and there were no tax on sale and even at the height of the famine. In all of the massacres. Its putting it back on the western norms of the american norms are you and what you have today on campus. Critical theory, and has infiltrated every faculty. If you are in law school, you have to study critical legal theory. And critical race theory. On the ethnic studies departments, to started in the 60s by actually was in the 70s by these activists. About replacing the narrative. Angela davis, the former black panther, member of the party of the usa, started by brandeis in the 60s, another one of these gurus. And she said that ethnic studies of intellectual arm of the revolution. She knows what shes saying it and she saying openly. So i think that we could take it seriously when we see today what is happening, having echoing and repeating the same phrases that is neo marxist, these cultural markets is in the 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s and the 60s. Michael you can trace as you just did this evolution, this intellectual evolution that then overflows into this crazy politics that were sitting around us. One particular interesting point in the book is you did not dedicate a chapter to black identity because of the unique role of black People History of the United States. Obviously legal slavery and jim crow and everything that accompanies those institutions. And what you point out is that identity politics attempts to inflate the experience of other minority groups as they continue to be created by date with black experience in america. So this does not matter of chronology even had of these minority groups develop. Perhaps we can begin with hispanic or latino or think the new term that the identity politics once st uses latin x. I dont know how to pronounce that so i will try but i know, that your last name is gonzales. So what is the hispanic identity and assuming that the people did not buy into it when it came out. Why has it stuck. Mike it is this unique black experience, i think with these issues. They did it on purpose. This National Organization for women, in terms of jane probe the time. To make a Clear Association with jim crow. In the marshall said i think in the decision, think he said look our experiences unique. It brought change to america. And not quite have a chapter on African Americans because they are is a unique experience in adult think its helping to fill the hearts and minds of the africanamericans with hatred but i do think the slavery happened. Jane probe happened in segregation happen to forget it if i so hard because to go back to the era of separate but equal. And we are slowly, nothing is slowly but very rapidly going back to ferguson. With these politics in the hispanic models is a very clear one with the first tried to organize in the late 40s with the election of the Los Angeles City council. Organizing mexican americans. And fred ross who work for them did not think or organized enough into opposing box. And then, this Movement Comes in and has this belief that mexicans should be considered a race. And obviously it is a nationality. There are any mexicans who are european origin. And who are indigenous origin rated mixes thereof. And even mexican african mexicans. They do have the association of mexicans and rice. Then they begin to realize that we want to expand this coasttocoast and bring in humans and immigrations from florida. And that is when they start to come up with the idea of the hispanic. In the activists really begin to almost intimidate but work the bureaucracy into creating and finally it came to foul in 1977, the Office Management and budget comes out with policy directive number 15. And has a hispanic identity. And in three years later, it gets introduced introduced into 1980, first census of this hispanic identity and is also Asian Americans which is another huge group brings together americans of any different origins. People from india or pakistan or china or the philippines. So americans have very different groups and cultural indicators brought in under this umbrella of race in america. Is the same thing as hispanic americans. The thing is that any people listen to this will be surprised year that hispanics were concocted by the bureaucracy and will think that its been around forever. In fact, a professor at the university of california, they write about this the same it would be corrective amnesia. People will forget this is no. They will begin to accept this identity as having existed always. This is what they also wanted to do with northeast africa. And create another group. Mike will the development of nina which i am pleased to say i think we have collected amnesia about it because that was a new Identity Group that the left tried to hoist on us in the obama administration. It just never took off. So i guess when one for the good guys. And not one more Grievance Group that is been concocted because as you point out in the book, the vast majority of our history, the arabs were considered white. You name a number of very wellknown arabs including former governor of indiana, or other people, steve jobs. No one would say was particular oppressed and the basis of his race. That raises this question of White Privilege which we hear about today, the bestselling books are written on the subject rated you can take a job or go to a School Without attending a Training Session where you are talking about the White Privilege and it raises a question. If one receives a special privilege by virtue of being white, then why are activists clambering to remove the designation is white and create a new identity politics group. There seems to be a problem here. Mike yes, that is right. That is why to this idea of White Privilege. You can be, theres about actually they came out for five years ago in which he describes the upbringing. It was scotch irish. We got to yell, he did not know that he was unaware, what was expected of him culturally. I would be tinsel to use or anything like that. This is i think, but the activists who met the Census Bureau including linda, a radical palestinian activist, the very idea that the Census Bureau brought to the office in 2015 to advise on the creation of nina. Tells you everything you want to know about this. I think that the agency captures by the left. They were very clear about when they were discussing what to do. First they wanted to model it on hispanic and then they discussed the back, the arab americans do not like this. Theyre not asking the nina category. Then a professor of African Studies said yes but once they understand, that they will benefit associated with the category in terms of racial preferences, University Admissions or hiring practices for government contracts, they will embrace it. And right away, they showed how this is really one of those things in the book, about using these racial purposes is a gateway drug to identity politics. But it shows also that you could benefit from proving that youre not white. She went right, you might call it depression privilege. Its become totally inverted to. Put linda in the book. As pointing out she began to wear the jaw which he now wears in all appearances. Because without it she was just another white woman. That was that advantageous politically. And the woman question now comes up here as well. Because in addition to these racial categories, or sexual categories for identity politics is trump me that women make up the majority of the population in the makeup in America Today the majority of college students. How is it that the majority could become a minority. Mike yes as i said, in the 60s with a second wave feminism, they identified women are treated and analogized situation of black markets which again is unique. And that use a jane crow analogy. I see actually michael, a new iteration of the spirit of all these iterations. That is the white women have now seen as being used to the oppressor class. New term hearing comes in and people are mocking women us really bizarre. The thing to be happening. I have not read the books, Robin Deangelis book white fertility including white womens peers. So i think that yes there was an women are classified now, you can get certain hiring quotas and all of that for being a woman. But i believe the women in this could be happening. Being moved back into the category of the depressor class, white women that is. Michael on with ukraine have not yet mustered this yet and to read it yet but its become very popular. As has this term, karen. In the term karen, in common use, is a racial slur. Explicitly to white women in the difference is if the socially acceptable floor. You see this evolution, this change and what sort of racial categories are protected, what are protected in the sexual categories and theres an now a disagreement between the new feminist and the old feminists. The old feminist, the second wave very much believe in biological. I am woman, hear me roar. And now, the category of has been completely of la brea did. Theres a major news agency for the other day to individuals with a cervix. Didnt use the term woman. Now you might say, a woman hear me roar as i am an individual with a cervix hearing more. This would also seem to create a contradiction, problem within that particular identity category. Is there not searching for any kind of healthcare that we can recover from this identity politics nightmare. Is there a chance and because of the sort of contradictions, identity politics will collapse in on itself work will require a greater effort to rid ourselves of that. Mike okay, i will tell you that i am hopeful. Melting the reason why. The reason i wrote my book is to shed light on what is happened. Think Americans First need to be aware of what is happened and who did it and how they did it. Why they did it. Before we can start thinking of ways of reversing what is happened. I think at the end of the day, really his heart, quote, these are marxist ideas. The conflict is a feeling the marxist of all of life being nothing but conflict between groups and power dynamics. If you read, if you read the bible, you come across these people like moses and abraham and sarah. They are just like us. These humans, they live thousands of years ago, but they have the same vices and virtues that we have. Human nature is unchangeable. When they fail to change human nature, they have to pull back on coercion, if not violence. That always happens. That is a feature of mark is on. Every system that has ever existed has had to rely on coercion. They are too attached to freedom to really put up with coercion that much longer. I think this is when you see the pushback against, you know, hate speech. These are coercive techniques as being used to silence. I think my purpose with my book is to explain how this was done, how these groups came about and why they came about and change how we talk about this. Change the conversation and get us to think about it differently in a more informed way. I think that that would be the beginning of the process of solution. I really do believe that. I am optimistic that this can be resolved. You sit on the central consolation here. Probably the soul that conservatives have in the Popular Culture of politics. Reality reasserts itself in the end. It may take a long time, at 70 years of the soviet union, may take a long time under any other terrible regime honor. Because you cannot change human nature, ultimately, that will reassert itself. It does appear that people are coming to realize that these identity categories that have been forced on by elites, by specific individual people, individuals that you name in the book, they do not describe them. They do not describe the reality that they see. Just on this one particular issue the gender ideology. The transgender ideology. No matter how many times a professor at a very liberal college insists otherwise, they know that is not the case. Particular, hispanics. No matter how may times they are told you must go by hispanic, you must go by latino, no, i dont think that describes me very much as well. I would like to close before we move onto the q and a. This point that you made at the very beginning. The first chapters of your book. We share now as a constant mantra at every university, every grade school for that matter, it is our strength. What people mean by that is chopping ourselves up into smaller Identity Groups, that will make america smaller. It will make us stronger. Looking around at the statues toppling. That probably is not the case. We have an older idea in america. We come together. Have people woken up to that specific issue yet . The argument that President Trump has made. We are all patriots. We are altogether. There is a common good in america. Even if we can remain hopeful, do we have a ways to go of division and identity politics before reality reasserts itself . I am glad that you brought this up. Not just that people are being herded into groups. You have to represent a group. Congresswoman presley put it very well when she said late last year, if you come to the table as a member of a group, you have to speak for that group. If you are not going to come in and represent that group and represent what is assigned to you, dont come to the table. I have to think and speak and the ideas that are said to me by the hispanic category. You just said to me, a great way to close, what makes this country possible, what makes this country to come together and be americans is there is an american creed and in American Culture that we can adhere to, that we can have loyalty to. You can continue to eat pasta if you want, i can continue to smoke cigars, which i do. This is not something that america is exceptionally unique. I have lived in seven other countries at least a year. Other countries many months. This country is exceptional in that it does take people in from all over the world. Here is what we do. At the end of the day, we have solved all of our problems. We self slavery, segregation, jim crow by going back to the ideals of the revolution. All men are created equal. He said jefferson did not need to put those words into future great spirit somebody like me to come along. We are here to cash a promissory note. That promissory note is the promise that all man is created equal. We have to go back to aspiring to live by those ideals. When we have aspired to that we have sold our problems. By aspiring to this ideal that we will solve this. I think that you are right. Building off of the equality issue, perhaps we should acknowledge a quality of our viewers. Lots of questions out there from the audience. Perhaps we can get into them now you are right. A bunch of questions. Probably will not have time to get to them all. We will definitely do as many as possible. The first one that i will read is from scott in colorado. With the media, professional sports leagues, universities and every other powerful institution on board with identity politics, how does the average person fight against this . I do not want anyone to lose their jobs, but we need to draw inspiration from the people that live behind the iron curtain and in the soviet union that did speak the truth and face the consequences. I think that they are brave for remaining standing when they play the National Anthem. I think that we should hold them off as heroes. They are the ones that have courage. Look how courageous a basketball players left the court when they played the National Anthem. That is not courageous. To be that one man, the picture of people saluting hitler and this one man with his arms folded, that is a courageous one. I think that when they come along until you there will be another struggle session or you have to put something on your desk, gently push back and say what is happening. Why. I think that we have to summon up some courage. Again, please dont lose your jobs. We need to create some space for liberty. Michael, i dont know if you have any ideas. I agree with everything you have said. I am reminded of this irony which the left always tells us there is institutional racism. Institutional oppression. The left controls every Major Institution in the United States the mainstream media, hollywood, big tech, administrative government. The left goes on and on. If there is institutional racism or oppression, whose fault would that be . You bring up the point about the braised basketball player who stood up for the National Anthem when everybody else was taking a need. That guys name who we just saw the other night was jonathan isaac. I am not a big nba fan, but i think a lot of people had never heard his name before. A big consolation here and they were the lesson. Even though this is a relatively unknown player, he is now selling more jerseys than anyone else in his league other than lebron james. A silent majority out there. Not to our conservative, the majority of people who feel bullied who feel censored who feel intimidated by this highly ideology sized institutional environment and they want to push back. They want to reward people who fight against that. Kids ask me should i speak up in class or should i keep my mouth shut and go to a good grade and later on i will tell people my views. It seems to me that integrity is a habit. Honesty is a habit. We dont want anyone to lose their jobs or get kicked out of school. We want people to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. It will not be easy or tomorrow to practice, it will not be easier to tell the truth and have integrity when you are out of college and use only have a job and family to support. It will not be easier 10 years from now or 20 years from now either. Courage is a prerequisite for all the other virtues. One wants to be prudent. If you show a little bit of courage, i think there are a lot of people out there who will reward speaking the truth in an oppressive environment. Michael, this is probably a good one for you since you mentioned talking to college students, interacting with your audiences every day. Talking to average people who are trying to navigate this. For people who study how does the average person to talk about what is going on in laymans terms . So much of what is in mikes book, so much of the plot to change america has been based on the highly technical jargon of a bunch of egghead leftist academics going back 100 years to the point if one is to engage in a conversation, we have no idea what we are talking about. You got your drawing a much easier way to communicate to people. Because you have highly ideology sized leftist culture, the alternative to that is commonsense. Using common language. Speaking plainly. The idea of Political Correctness is to create these euphemisms that say basic obvious things. I would engage on that level. I do not think you need to go through the notebooks. I myself can never get through that. I think that it is true of a lot of people. There are many people in this country that can see that something is off. Somethings not right when the statues are toppling. One thing that i would encourage people to do as well is recognized going back to all of these older things, the left trick has been to pretend that all of their fully untrimmed political philosophy is a science. A science of history they have discovered. They use the term science here so that it is impossible to disagree with them whereas an authentic politics and policy there is debate between question that we have debated since the dawn of civilization and that is legitimate, these topics are open for debate, you dont have to have 15 letters at the end of your last name and credentials from all the schools in order to engage. We the people still have a voice at least for now. That is very good michael. My son going to college, he says when you talk about critical theory, make sure you make the case you are not talking about critical thinking. You are talking about the opposite. They tell you what to do. Critical theories about making a puppet out of you. If anybody wants to really keep up with this, a very good resource can find a great podcast, michael really does explain things very well. I want to give you thanks for that. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. A question from daniel thompson. A question on africanamericans because of their unique history. Why do you think that black leaders have not fought back against all of these inventive groups . You know, that is a very good question i have asked myself all along. It could be, some people have said the foundation when it was creating these groups had the fear that the Civil Rights Movement needed to have a wider constituency. They could not just be africanamericans who are 1213 of the population. These leaders think the constituency is an enlarged when they are speaking on behalf of all colored people. The need of leaders and the need of average people, it is very different, sometimes at odds. Sometimes when you have, you know, somebody speaking on behalf of of all people of color, all minorities, he is really enhancing this. This is not doing any good for africanamericans, i dont believe. Do you have any thoughts on that . I have all of mikes thoughts. [laughter] i actually think that this point that mike makes in the book not to have a chapter on black identity is sort of the key here. The black identity in america is unique and you cannot as mike says analogize other groups experiences. For one simple reason. A huge number of black people in America Today can trace their ancestry back to slave ships. They are brought here against their will. That is a categorically different experience from people whose ancestors chose to come here. I think the idea that your great grandfather decided to come to this country in search of a better life, a free act of will shows you how preposterous it is to now generations later have this grievance at the country that your ancestors sought out in the country that gave ones ancestors a place to build a better life. There are several questions regarding what we do about the insertion of identity politics at all levels of education. Mike, i know you dealt with this in Montgomery County in many different places. What advice would you give for parents from k through phd that have kids in school. Yeah, i mean, look to the meetings of the board of education. Ask the tough questions. My wife does not like to come to me to meetings for board of ed for exactly this reason. Why are you spending money on such things as cultural, zero proof that it works and yet you are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be spent on books for computers and so forth. The policy recommendations with my book, basically getting the government into the category creation business, they have the bureaucrats, they should not be creating categories and the second one which is corollary is to stop giving benefits for people to adhere to these categories. Once we stop this, and i do believe affirmative action which is really racial preferences is unconstitutional and i do believe running out of time since Sandra Day Oconnor in 2003 said we will approve this, but only for 25 more years. That is coming up soon, in eight years. Even before that, because of Asian Americans, Chinese Americans and indian americans, the next time it comes before the court the court will just throw it out and say this is clearly a violation of equality under the law. I, of course agree that parents should be very involved in their childrens schools and go to the School Board Meeting and look at the curricula. One thing that i think is important here is do not underestimate how damaging identity politics can be for Young Children when you find identity politics in the school. There is nothing worse that you can tell a young child and you cannot succeed because of your skin color or your Sexual Identity or, you know, whichever identity category you prefer. In the 1990s when we have the selfesteem, probably went a little too extreme. Told kids they could do whatever they wanted at any given time. Participation trophies and a is on every assignment. Now, exactly the opposite direction. I suppose you will not succeed, more than half the population. You will not succeed. You will not be able to do anything. Give up. Dont even try. That is the opposite of what education should be doing. Particularly, liberal education. To teach us, to grow and to tame our passions and to make of us responsible people who can achieve. When those identity politics creep in, it may seemed like a trivial issue. We can joke about some of the categories, but it can be damaging for your childs life. Any parent that comes across any idea that punctuality or hard work or the use of reason is a function of they should just go back to the teacher and say do not teach this poison to my child. This is racist stuff. We really have to, on this one, you really have to stand up and say this is poison. What separates us is our use of reason. Do not say that it is a white thing. I cannot believe that we are saying this in 2020. Fight against that really hard. There was an argument on twitter yesterday about whether two plus two actually equals four. The people were serious about it, too. Michael, i will throw this on to you. From david from canada. Why do they find this movement . What do they get out of it . What few people actually support it. A great question from our neighbors from the north. Americas hat. The Republican Party and the practical partisan realm in the conservative movement has made a big mistake for several decades. In their zeal to go after the ever expanding size and scope of government, they seem to give Corporate America a pass. They develop a Bad Reputation of being promoters of Corporate America. Corporate america is the problem. Corporate america probably more than any other group with the exception of education is leading this and embracing identity politics and hurdling us off the cliff into nonsense and oblivion. Why are they doing that . They have one goal which is to follow the mighty dollar. It is much easier when you have activist groups at which our wellfunded and highly organized as described in the plot to change america. When you have those highly motivated groups petitioning, threatening boycotts, even making a couple of phone calls, that would push corporate policy because they dont want to deal with it. They will save a little bit of money in the long run. I think we need to hold those corporations to account. There is a debate now at least, you know, since araiza President Trump and over the last four years over globalism. Corporations that dont even see it that much loyalty to the United States. More of a transnational loyalty or in the case of the nba which we mentioned earlier, they seem more loyal to china than the United States. That is a big problem. I dont blame corporations for following the almighty dollar. We have to do much more in this country to hold them to account. Even if somehow we managed to rein in the administrative government, by some miracle we were able to reign in, you would still have this major hour for shaping Public Opinion of Corporate America. So if we dont also get them on the right track, we will not be able to escape this identity politics. I think we have time for one more question. That question will come from john. Lets talk about identity politics. We know we have a shared american identity. How do we restore that. We need to go back to teaching civics. It used to be known, who where the founders, what were their arguments . They often argued against each other. What is natural right, what is natural law . Making america exceptional. The only country to derive our legitimacy from natural law and natural right. It is all over our founding documents. What do these things mean . Pregovernment and that only tyrants can create the way. How does the system of government work . What is the separation of powers how do you become cynically engaged . Civics is taught as participation civics. How to demonstrate. How to go on the street. You can get extra points if you go march in washington, take a bus. Go demonstrate in front of the supreme court. We need to go back to the old traditional understanding of how civic america sees his or her government. We also have to do the hard job of driving politics. We are a country made up of many different people. We really need to go back to rural americans. We do derive pleasure from knowing our background. We enjoy grandmas cooking. We enjoy our familys history. We are also this other thing, which is americans. It is a wonderful thing to be. We are all very lucky that america expenses this right. Somebody like me not born here. This is really the way out. It will not be easy. You have to do it or we lose our freedoms. I believe that very strongly. Michael, final thoughts. My final thought is people should go read the book. Not even just a plug for mike. You are absolutely right. We will lose our freedom as we come to understand our freedom in america. As we have cherished it all of these centuries. We will do that if we lose the sense of natural life, natural law, if we allow grievance to multiply. One of the most important takeaways, this did not happen by accident. This was not just a grassroots campaign. There were specific individuals that we can name going back 100 years who plotted this aunt affected this campaign to dismantle america. Statues of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are falling all around the country. That was intentional. If we want to save our country, save our cherished institutions and freedom, the nation itself, that will not be by accident either. That will be an intentional act. We will have to muster up the courage to do it. You will not be able to do that unless you know how it happened in the first place. Go also to the michael show. [laughter] gentlemen, i cannot think of a better way to have spent the last hour. I want to thank you, Mike Gonzalez and i want to thank kate james for giving us the time and mind and words today. We will be sharing the recording for everybody who has joined us. Look out for that. I want to reiterate two things before we go. First, we purchased a copy of the plot to change america. If you have already purchased one, consider buying another one as a gift. You can go online to do that. Second, subscribe to both of the podcasts. Simple enough. The verdict with ted cruz. Some really good episodes coming out right now. With that, everybody thank you for joining us. Have a wonderful tuesday. We will sign off. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, michael. That is what gives us the confidence to sit here and described the first 10 seconds of the universe like we were there. [laughter] is there a song in there . I would not give a reporter an interview unless they read this first. They had to read a book before i would interview. Book tv and depth hosted the top nonfiction authors for an indepth conversation with cspan to viewers. Tran. Im honored to have this time to discuss your vital work and as we are trying to move into 2020 it can have come for