mark: hello america i'm mark levin this is "life, liberty & levin" saturday we're going to be doing two shows on the weekend sunday 8 p.m. eastern same format completely different guests. this is our inaugural show for saturday and we have one of my great heros the great thomas saul most know who he is he's written columns and fantastic book been a leader in the liberty movement for at least half a century as far as i'm concerned. and he's been warning the american people of tyranny, what tyranny looks like creeping tyranny aggressive tyranny, and from my perspective we're sitting dab in the middle of it. and he's got this fantastic new book out social justice fallacies by thomas saul get amazon.com or any major book stores. it is a fantastic book, and i want to welcome you doctor saul and let me just say this to you. ives been following you since i was a little kid not to date both of us and you had an enormous impact on my life, in fact, you've had an enormous impact on the way i do this program i remember you with firing line, and beau buckley and debater unbelievable let me start this way. social justice fallacies -- you started out like as a marxist as many do and it didn't take long for you to realize wait a minute, this is not all it's up to be -- was this social justice stuff and the inequality stuff these terms these amoeba -- have an impact on you being a marxist and then realizing this is all bs? >> it did and a simple explanation that as at the time i became a mark marxist i didn't know and observing things and going on. and as facts carrying a lot of weight with me and when the facts kept going in the wrong way i realized that this was not -- going to do what it claimed it was going to do. one of the big problems about the social justice field is that what they say sounds so good. it's only after you study history that you find out how bad, how horribly it actually turned out. >> well phrases are very -- nebulous, social justice -- what does that mean basically if you agree with the marxist and leftist -- then you support social justice but on the other hand if you support individuality and capitalism and private property rights, obviously, you're anti-depressant social justice what does all of this mean? >> that's how they look at it. they seem to assume a world in which things don't turn out the same for everybody. that means that somebody is done somebody wrong. and that's an incredible assumption that human beings have such enormous control all over their own faiths individually or collectively. i mean, when i think back over my life and i'm sure other people can do the same in their lives. there are times that the particular person appeared on scene and changed whole trajectory of my life and it's happened more than once and i'm sure it's happened in lives of many people. there's nobody -- nobody out there who has all of the incredible amount of knowledge required to take over making other people's decisions for them. mark: do you find that these radicals these -- autocrats baskly term social justice do they really mean centralized government redistribution of wealth, a permanent government that undermines representative government? is this really the for that? >> it is. if you realize what high opinions many of the intellectually elites have of themselves -- you can see that -- what it boils down to is -- very -- intellectual people like themselves just preempghts decisions of other people and aspect of their lives. one of the things that astonishing to me is we're having a big debate about sex education in the schools and to me -- the question is -- what qualifies the people who are pushing this stuff to take over the roles of parents? this -- what's also very troubling is that this all came out during the covid pandemic when students were studying at home and parents got to see what was being taught in the schools. now it still happens that 30 years ago, i wrote a book called inside american education. and in which all of this was laid out just exactly as it's happening now. the i can't imagine how many young people in the elementary schools especially are saying that they are boy but they wanting to a be a girl and boy and i can't think about in my lifetime saying things like that and if you follow the sort of institutional way these things are done, they're groups outside school system and inside the school system who want to do this. and who know that parents don't want them to do it and they do it anyway and they pretend that they're responsible responding to what the students want. they're not. one side was that a meeting of educators -- and while i was there, there was a man who was going around the country selling a particular brainwashing program and he showed me his schedule and he was scheduled my gosh -- every two or three days or months to be pushing stuff on all of the schools an he mistook me as if he thought i was a school official and he was showing this. it is clear this is not a spontaneous thing but organized and the -- tactickings used are tactics that were developed for brainwashing and communist countries. mark: book is social justice fallacies by dr. thomas sowell. in fact, dr. sowell critical race theory the 1619 project, these are really anti-knowledge really they're really -- propaganda devices for the hard left. that are being, you know, pushed in our classrooms, pushed in our society and so forth. these attacks on the american system do they promote equality? do they promote unity? do they promote a melting pot society or are they intended to destroy this culture? >> clearly it's latter when you said it is not just propaganda but propaganda that overtly prevents other views from being heard. this they were just propagandizing different ways of looking at life that's one thing. but anyone who -- for example, there are people who have taught academic courses on racial and ethnic issues at harvard and other places who just simply stop teaching their courses because they're saying anything it was different from what prop propaganda was saying violence on campus and so on and university administrators would not protect their classes so they just stop doing one of the great scholars late steven simply stopped teaching his course because -- you had ignorance silencing knowledge. mark: ignorance silencing knowledge, and you write entire section on knowledge. you break it down into different subsections, let me ask you this i don't know if you're watching news these days but you're talking about what goes on in the classroom. are we really a nation that's about knowledge now or are we a nation that's about -- substituting language of the hard left for real words substituting a front process of people who really seek to find quote un, quote, the truth with ideology -- what have we become on the whole? when i watch the news all i hear is propaganda surface level bs. >> yes. that's the norm unfortunately and academic institutions even the most prestigious with the entire ivy league is in that same, same mode. that people who -- it's scares me because you have people like say heather mcdonnell charles murray come on a campus and they do so at physical risk to themselves. and again, the authorities do nothing. i've been -- because i don't normally go to those things anyway but eve been on some of them where they have to police around doors doors all locked people outside banging on windows and door just to enter to interrupt the talk that's going on inside. i remember back in 1969 this has been going on a long time and it's -- it's so sad that it's taken us so long to become aware of it. 1969 students at harvard went into the administration building ceased it, went into the personnel records and were passing out all of the personal information for the faculty and other things to the media and so on. the president of harvard called in the police. the harvard faculty gave a vote of no confidence to the president. he resigned. and i think after that other presidents decided that the way is to get along is have pre-empt i had surrender that's developed into an art. mark: you've been studying our country for a very long time, history, economics, philosophy covered -- the whole horizon. 40 years ago, 50 years ago -- today was the country in a better position today than it was half a century ago? or is it in a worse position today? >> much worse. much worse. the silencing of the other side has now been -- become much more prominent and real danger is not in the silly idea that's promoted but the fact that nobody else is allowed to reply to them without some danger to themselves. mark: do you see this country a growing police state? i don't necessarily mean a police state like you'll see in the aggressive fascist or regimes but -- sort of slowly but surely like you're talking about controlling the language which controls thought and activity this massive censorship that judges have now ruled on this administration, you can see the politicization of the department of justice and so forth. but let me put it to you this way more fine point. are we a free country today i remember macy's saying americans talk like marxist are we a free country today but on the precipice of losing our freedom? >> i think the latter it is hard for me to see just how we're going come out of this. especially when -- people who -- so willing to increase the powers of government. don't seem to understand that it doesn't matter for what purpose you gave them that power. which may have been good purposes once they have that power they can use it for whatever they want. but you know, the federal reserve system was set up, for example, to prevent run away inflation or run away deflation or bank failures. and -- the intellectuals were 100% behind that but the cold fact is there's been more deflation as in during great depression and more inflation for decades on end and more bank failures than ever occurred prior to setting up of the federal reserve system. but the federal reserve system, for example, can force people to do things they don't want to do. just because they have the power to hold up -- what their decisions are. and so the power created for one -- for one purpose then used for some different purpose. when fdr took the united states off the gold standard, he used a law passed during the first world war to prevent trading with enemy nations. but once power was there, you can use it anything you wanted to. mark: that's so true. when we return i want to get into this issue of race. i feel like we can never get away from it and get into it because it seems to me the more colorblind people want to be, the more the elites and ruling class insist that we not be. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ he hits his mark —center stage—and is crushed by a baby grand piano. you're replacing me? customize and save with liberty bibberty. he doesn't even have a mustache. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ hey, you should try new robitussin honey medi-soothers for long-lasting cough and sore throat relief. try new robitussin lozenges with real medicine and find your voice. you know? we really need to work on your people skills. i was on a work trip when the pulmonary embolism happened. but because i have 23andme, i was aware of that gene. that saved my life. dear moms and dads, what you have achieved here today is going to help us and our futures. it is why we're coming up on stage to collect your diplomas. mom, love you always. vo: when you graduate, they graduate. visit finishyourdiploma.org to find free and supportive adult education centers near you. >> welcome back america we're here with dr. thomas sowell. the book is social justice fallacies i want to encourage you to go toamazon.com and grab a copy any major bookstores have a copy and it is readable and it is worth reading. particularly now during these times. dr. sowell, when we talk about equality immediately race pops into mind. it's always about race. racial discrimination, about the founding of the nation, white dominance society, so forth and so on and you make the case and made this case throughout your life but poignant in your book which is wait a minute, of course, this has some impact. but it's not the only thing that has an impact, but why, first of all what other things have an impact. probably an infinite list of things and secondly why only focus on race on the left? >> i guess it's because of that's proven to be a politically popular thing to do. but in point of fact that one of the -- things that's mentioned in the book is a study that was done by "new york times" of all people some years ago. where they tried to show the ten poorest counties in the united states, and they mentioned which ones they were. and so on -- and turns out the six of those ten counties had a population that was from 90% to 100% white. now, in "the new york times" they didn't mention race of the people but once they told me counties i looked it up, in fact, i followed average income and those six counties over a span of 50 years and in all -- those 50 years, all six of those kngts had a income lower than black americans. and so those people in those counties face zero racism because they were white and from all other white they didn't have a legacy of slavery and yet there they were. and it -- you have to ask then, clearly there must be other things that cause poverty. we can't just assume that because people are given race or have more poverty than some other people that race must be the reason. but this is becoming automatic kind of thing, and i think most people would be quite surprised. one other thing that happens is that behavior matters. and you see that in so many different ways, for example, i think most people would be surprised to learn that despite the fact that blackings as a whole have a higher poverty rate than whites as a whole. black married couple families have a -- have more than a quarter of a century every single year at a poverty rate under 10%. and most of those years, the national poverty rate was not as low as 10%. so it's not a -- and you say this is institutional racism in that case, does that mean that racist make an exception for blacks that are married and racist care whether blacks or married. none of these live by explanations stands up to the slightest empirical study. mark: let's talk about this when it comes to minorities generally asian population of this country that achieves a lot as a group. intellectually, education wise they're discriminated against by these ivy league colleges harvard a supreme court decision and so forth the way jews were 100 years earlier by harvard, princeton and people who push this race issue -- is it that they really care about black people or asian people or jewish people or that it is just another wedge issue to try to destroy this culture and destroy this society? >> there are some people qhor both. some really believe it and i feel sorry for them. but there's some who really don't care if it gets them elected, that's what matters. and this is one of the tragedies of trying to politicize race. there's so many fallacies it is hard to know which one to take up and for example the great narrative is that blacks are in poverty, got into professional occupations as a result of the 1960 social welfare programs. and that this is a big benefit. one of the problems with this way of looking at things is that everything depends on when you pick at the start of this trend if you go back to 1940s that is 20 years before the wonderful things supposed to have happened in the 1960s and you discover that the breed of which blacks were in poverty declined from 87% in 1940 to 47% in 1960. so it went down by 40 points in those 20 years. now you look at the 20 years following 1960. they went down 18 points. and so the trend did not begin in the 1960s the trend was there before then, and the trend did not even accelerate after 1960. many people think this it would began with a civil rights act of 19 74 that was fiend to get rid of the segregation laws in the south. but the cold fact is that the percentage of blacks who have professional occupations doubled from 1954 to 1964. that is in the decade ending of the team when the civil rights act of 1964 was passed. if you look at the things that are negative like for example, black children being raised in single parent households. and 1940 just under 17% of black kids were raised in one parent families. but after 19 60s before end of the century four times that many, 68% of black kids were raised in one-parent families and that does not depend on racism or any other things they talk about. it depends upon things that happen -- due to the policies of the 1960s which are still going forward. mark: encourage disillusion of the families unbelievable. dr. sowell we return, my big question for you is -- is -- as a nation where do we go from here and how do we start down that road? we'll be right back. (door bell) yo camping buddy. boom. you guys ready? dude, i thought you were driving. i thought you were driving. oh, i never said i was driving. i-i definitely can't drive. ok. narrator: if you're high just don't drive. it's illegal everywhere. if you feel different, you drive different. ♪ if it hurts when you poop sometimes like pinching off ♪ ♪ a porcupine and you're sweatin' your ♪ ♪ next trip to the loo ♪ ♪ colace is the brand you need ♪ ♪ to soften stools we're all agreed ♪ ♪ #2 should be easy to do ♪ trust colace to soften stools, with no stimulants, for comfortable relief. air i'm jon scott. ♪ ♪ mark: welcome back america here's the great book, the social justice fallacies, social justice fallacies you can get it amazon.com right now, you can get it my major bookstore, it comes out on tuesday. the release date, september 19th. doctor sowell i want to read for the audience, obviously, you wrote it so you'll know the very end of your book in relation to the question i ended last and follow on if you don't mind. were those of us who were not followers of the social justice vision and agenda to do at a minimum we can turn our attention from rhetoric to realities of life as great supreme court justice oliver holmes said think things instead of words today it is especially important to get facts rather than catch words. these include not only current facts but also vast array of facts about what others have done in the past both the successes and failures. i take that to mean dr. sowell you got to really work hard to cut out all of the static all of the propaganda all of what academia for the most part is trying to indoctrinate you with and think for yourself begin to educate yourself as a citizen who loves this country and wants it to remain free and that's a good starting place. do i have that about right? >> absolutely. and above all you have to concentrate on facts which -- which again things that are suppressed rhetoric just rules roost and too many places it's really pitiful the way people are sacrificing so much money to sepgd their money to expensive school to get very cheap propaganda one of the sad things i encountered for this was how many people on the left do not answer arguments with counterarguments but with -- attributing bad, bad things to peel who disagree with them and never answering what they have to say. this whole thing about the what is the white supremacy thing one of the things i bring out in the book is that there are any number of asian groups peel from china or india, japan, whatever. who have higher -- incomes than the white population of the united states. if you get to people full time male workers in the united states from india in the united states, in income is 39,000 dollars more than annual income of whites exactly same prescription yet people go around talking about white supremacy my gosh apparently people from india haven't heard of that yet so many other -- other things that are just blindly attributed to race you find if you go into it that there are other things. it's one thing to be against racist, it is another thing to xaj exaggerate what they can and might think about what they cannot do they cannot stop 9 million black people from high or income than average income of qhiet people. and to not stop thousands of black people from having assets of a million dollars or more and, in fact, they cannot stop blacks from becoming billionaires as tiger woods, oprah winfrey and other people have been -- they can't stop blacks from becoming generals in the merle or becoming president of the united states. we go on as if we're living in a world of 100 years ago. we're worried about racist i think racist at this point cannot do one-half of the damage teachers unions are doing by making the schools places for teachers to have ironclad job security and for turning them into propaganda centers that don't teach kids math and english. black kid who graduates from high school with a mastery of math mathics and english language nothing that can stop him except propaganda he's been fed in the schools all of these years. mark: the book is fantastic social justice fallacies it comes out tuesday but get your copy on amazon.com every major bookstore will have it as well. do we have incompetent ruling class of elites dr. sowell or ideologically driven ruling class of elites or both? >> both. what primarily -- people enormously are impressed with themselves because they have high i.q. and ph.d.es after their name and some of the great tragedies of the 20th century promoted by those very kinds of people. the holocaust clearly would qualify in that category. progressive era people were promoting genocide, and one of the books that was written by one of them was translated into german and hitler called it his bible most don't realize this was an idea that was predominant among intellectuals around time of world war i and later years the fact when when they finallye out undermine all things they had said and by that time it was too late. mark: entire movement really grew out of the left as you point out that whole progressive era and i guess thinking was if we're going to perfect society we have to perfect human beings and i feel in many ways -- a part from eugenics it is messy first amendment it is messy to have a competition of ideas and so they seek to crush it. i'll leave you with a final word. >> i think that is one of many things that cause me to say as i did in the book that you know, stupid people can create problems. but it often takes a brilliant people to create a real catastrophe and that's -- history of the 20th century i think will bare that out. mark: you're definitely an exception to that social justice fallacies, that's the book. comes out tuesday september 19th. you can order your copies on amazon.com, what a fantastic pleasure and honor to have you with us dr. sowell i can't thank you enough. god bless you my friend. >> and you -- mark: we'll be right back. the chase ink business premier card is made for people like sam, who make- everyday products, designed smarter. like a smart coffee grinder, that orders fresh beans for you. oh, genius! for more breakthroughs like that- i need a breakthrough card. like ours! with 2.5% cash back on purchases of $5,000 or more. plus unlimited 2% cash back on all other purchases. and with greater spending potential, sam can keep making smart ideas- a brilliant reality! the ink business premier card from chase for business. make more of what's yours. as a way to say thank you this holiday season, bass pro shops and cabela's club members save even more while supporting conservation during club member mondays. for the first time ever, club members receive up to an additional 15% off our best deals of the year, in-store, online, and even on sale items. every monday through christmas. plus, purchases over $500 receive 0% interest for 12 months on qualifying purchases. not a club member? join today and start earning free gear for your next adventure. welcome back america this is incredibly smart show no thanks to me but thanks to tom sowell and now victor davis hanson come to greatly admire as one of the great outstanding minds in america today. victor davis hanson you heard friend and former colleague thomas sowell he paint a very concerning picture about this nation. what is your general take on what he had to say? >> i think he's reviewed his whole body of work for 50 years applied it to this woke movement and come up with a pretty explanation of the jam that we're in. he's saying that attraction or seduction of equality by result is an age old plague but in this particular moment we've given into it and kind of channeling as he's quoted before alex that most people unfortunately would rather be equal and poor than better off and have some people better off than them. and that politicians cater to that desire and exploit it and he's spent his entire life trying to show us that inequality is not -- is a very complex issue and sometimes it's important and sometimes it is less important sometimes it is due to race, geography but there's so many multiples and factors that the idea that a government would need the power to make us equal on the backside always results in tyranny, death disruption, and he's devoted his life to trying to explain that to us again and again. mark: as have you you know victor davis hanson i don't think anybody has done more to explain the damage of an open border and unchecked immigration than you. and as a matter of fact you predicted a lot of things that are going on in this country today. you're really an expert on the athens, greece, the pal war and in context is america certain to survive forever or literally taking steps to destroy ourselves? >> no country gets that pass from history and in other words each generation has to believe mark, they're better than the alternative. they don't have to believe, they have to be perfect to be good but better than the alternative when you fail collectively to believe that history steps in and says there's no reason for you to continue when someone else would like your power or your prestige or influence. and there's certain things throughout time and space that are essential to a country i think that's why you and tom sowell and others are worried you have to have a sovereign border you can't replicate around world it is beyond ability to do so but in a confine space you have power to create a culture and a country and a politics and economy we're nots doing that. in fact, what's really with this new effort not to allow illegal immigrants to go northward into sanctuary cities where you think they would be welcome but, in fact, they're not welcome. but they're being forced to go back to texas, we've resigned u.s. border in a way, mark, as north of texas. and said it is okay if you come across border as long as you stay in a red state it is almost like we've seated sovereignty into new mexico but all things that tom and you and donald trump and ron desantis republican candidates are talking about a systemic collapse whether it's crime or energy -- or the economy or the border that the left finally got their moment and now we've witnessed something we haven't seen since 1932 and power progressive hard left free to do what they want and the results are in and they've destroyed most of the big cities in the united states that cause largest migrations in american history out of blue states into red states and destroyed criminal justice code and humiliated with afghanistan and called all of that disastrous success and we're watching in real time. displark when we come back victor davis hanson are we in the middle of a revolution in you certainly suggested so but even more than that. what kind of revolution is this? that we're in the middle of if you agree with that which i think you do. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ mark: welcome back america victor davis hanson what kind of revolution is this that we're experiencing right now and are we? >> it is not like the american political revolution not a political revolution alone but more like french revolution a 360, 24/7 cultural economic social revolution. so we're attacking fundamentalling as a society we don't agree anymore apparently on foundational date of july 4th, 1776 back to 1916 and create a new gender we have new names for buildings we wake up one morning in a place, a building a street completely the name is changed. but we try to find some commonality mark i think that the constant theme is, that this group of revolutionaries wants to be given absolute power to make us all equal as equality of result they call that equity. and to do that, because that's contrary to human nature they need extraordinary amount of power and to achieve that goal they have weaponize the fbi, doj irs, cia, and they created these new protocols whether it is fbi paying social media, to suppress the news -- or it's -- joe biden trying to forgive student loans by empty petroleum reserve on the edge of the midterm elections so they -- they're achieving a level of controlling and influence that they feel is necessary to perpetuate we're all equal on back end revolution and that is scary and they're not done yet. they feel that they're only in mid-stride. mark: amazing to me victor davis hanson there's a columnist named david who outside of a 50-mile square area, americans never heard of this guy. he writes for "the washington post" and he writes a piece and the emphasis is he's telling biden to get out. but they missed completely the beginning of his piece. where he's praising biden for all of the authoritarian and i would argue -- autocratic steps this man biden and his regime have taken so the criticism at a surface level is while he's giving signal of a all of the democrats and it's okay to pose biden no story is not that. the story is he's praising biden for all the tyranny that biden has imposed on the nation. don't you think that's part of the problem it's politics every day rather than looking at what's actually going on? >> absolutely. but he know he's lying he's not telling the truth imperially he knows the code he's the disaster in afghanistan he understands that but that's to get to the real problem and in his mind it is -- they have a president that's cognitively challenged and is also corrupt and he's one e-mail disclosure or one fall off a stef from oblivion and david mind that means kamala harris will finish his term and then she will be an incumbent he thinks that will be a disaster for the progressive project he's probably right about that so in his rhetorical way praise biden as a way of damming him saying you've done a great job but now get out and don't get out until the your term is over. and we're going reward you and praise you we're going say you're a great president but you have to get out you have to get out you cannot run again. and we're going to cross our fingers at somehow you're going to be alive enough or you're not aer in so she's not the vice president because henry wallace versus a problem all over again of 1944, '45 but they want to get they will out because they want to continue their revolution correct? >> not until his term over or she'll be incumbent so they'll do anything to deny he's corrupt you can have a ball face testimony that he's corrupt or that he said something on a phone call or fall down and roll over three times and they'll say he's hail and he's honest as the day is long. but not after his tenure ends after that they will be candid that he should not be the presidential candidate for the democratic party. >> will he be? >> i think it's a 50/50 chance i don't to be -- but i think it is 50/50 chance he'll have trouble finishing but a 90% certainty he woapght be the democratic nominee in 2024. mark: i think you're probably right victor davis hanson i want to thank you not just for tonight saturday night, all of the brilliance you put out in your columns they're important. >> thank you for having me, mark. mark: we'l (light acoustic music plays) (eagle screeches) (energetic music plays) there he is! it's right there! ♪ oh, he's straight ahead. he's straight ahead. straight ahead. go go go. ♪ cover more ground in the kia sportage turbo-hybrid. kia. movement that inspires. ♪ welcome back, a great and program. to types of liberty. two great intellectuals it was great to see from michigan as well as victor davis hanson. we have a sunday show tomorrow night 8:00 p.m. eastern. same format but different best including me because we are going to be launching my book the democrat party hates america and i'll tell you what's amazing, all the talk we see on tv, radio, politics, even among intellectuals, this is the one thing they won't say. the democrat party hates america and i can tell you, it's going to be interesting when the book is released on tuesday how many storefronts albion, how many interviews will be done and so forth. this is considered provocative. i consider it essential to understand why we are losing our country and what we need to do to get back. i'll see you next time tomorrow night on life, liberty and lev levin. ♪