[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Brendan Malone, and you're listening to the dispatchers, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you. Professor George, thank you so much for agreeing to having this conversation. Nation. Let me start by saying that this is a real privilege for me because I run a life issues leadership training week around New Zealand and Australia. And every year when we get to the end of that week, one of the things I always do is give a list of recommended reading. And the book that you co authored with Christopher Tollfson, Embryo A Defensive Life, is at the top of that list is one of the recommended books for one of the best natural law arguments for embryonic personhood. So it's a bit of a privilege for me to be able to have this conversation with you today.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Well, thank you. It's very kind of you to say that, and it's an honor to be on your show. There's an interesting story to that book.
It came to mind as something to do when I was serving on the US President's Council on Bioethics in 2002 under the administration of President George W. Bush. And of course, the great bioethical issue at that moment was embryonic stem cell research.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: So the president wanted to know, well, what is a human embryo?
Is it a potential human being? Is it a cluster of undifferentiated cells that may some, if everything goes, serve as the, for creating a human being? Is it a human being?
What is it the president needed to know in order to make crucial decisions about the funding of embryonic stem cell research, which of course involves the destruction of embryos. And so it seemed pretty clear to me, just from my own research in the science, that what we have here is an embryonic human being. A human being at the embryonic stage, the earliest stage of his or her natural development? I say his or her because sex is of course, determined in the human from the very beginning, from the early assembly stage. So I was doing this work really by way of advising the president, and it became clear that there was just a tremendous need for public education. So some of the speeches and other things that I was doing became the ingredients for that book. And Chris Tolliffson, who's a wonderful philosopher with whom I'd worked before, decided to join me in the project. And we ended up producing that book, which is now in its second edition with an appendix and an updating of the Science. And there's also a little debate in the end. In the second edition of the book, we publish a critical review together with our answer of the Critical review that had appeared in the New York Times.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Well, there you go. And as I always say to people, it's the go to book. So if you haven't read it, you should have read it by now. Tell me, let's talk a little bit about America to start with here in little old New Zealand. If you just watch the mainstream media, you would think that sort of, ever since 2016, Americans have been perhaps living under some sort of dystopian nightmare. But in your opinion, how do you think the Trump presidency is actually experienced and viewed by perhaps those outside the Beltway, outside the chattering classes? How do you think the ordinary American.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Experiences that in the United States is very deeply divided? And there's an interesting question of to what extent the Trump phenomenon is a symptom of a deeper divide, or to what extent it's the source of the division. I'm inclined to think the former. There's a deep divide in American culture along moral and religious lines, and the Trump phenomenon is really a product of that polarization. But there are responsible people who see it differently and think that we were basically a unified people until Trump came along. And somehow or another, he got himself elected president of the United States. Nobody expected such a thing to happen. And then he has driven the division.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Tell me. There's a lot of talk about Supreme Court nominations, and it seems that both sides are a lot of scrutiny on that aspect of things. Do you think that perhaps that could actually turn out to be one of the most important impacts of this presidency, for good or for ill?
[00:04:18] Speaker B: No question, the margin of victory for Trump came as a result of his pledge to appoint first rate constitutionalist judges.
The country for much too long, has been run essentially by the courts.
Legislative decisions, or what should be legislative decisions. What would be legislative decisions in a lot of other places are made by the courts here, and that's unjustifiable. It's really a usurpation of legislative authority by the courts. Whether you like the decisions that they make or not, they're just overstepping their authority. They're veering out of their lane. And so there was a lot of pent up demand, as it were, for reform of the judiciary. And by proposing to appoint constitutionalist judges who would stay in their lane and would not usurp legislative authority, Trump managed to get himself elected. And he has been very careful not to deviate from that promise, not to disappoint the core constituency that maybe held their nose because they don't like his personal character or his history or his background, but were willing to hold their nose and vote for him because he promised a reformed judiciary. The issue is on the table again. And he is again saying, you need to reelect me because look at the great judges I've given you, and I'm going to give you more great judges. And if you allow Joe Biden to be elected, he's going to go back to the old ways with the Democratic Party and the progressive left and give you judges who will usurp the authority of the people and impose in the name of the Constitution all sorts of left wing foolishness.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: One of the things that we've heard about, or that academics have talked about is this idea of private preference and public preference. Tamir Kuran, the great Czechoslovakian statesman, Vashlav Harvl, used to tell the story about the Green grocer who had the sign in his store under communism about supporting the party, but didn't really believe it personally. Do you think that that sort of private preference, public preference, is going to play out in the upcoming election, where people will say one thing publicly, then they get into the polling booth and they do something else privately that they don't express in public?
[00:06:40] Speaker B: There's absolutely no reason to think that won't happen this time. Because it did happen last time. Yes, the polling did not show that Trump was going to win the presidency, that he was going to defeat Hillary Clinton, but sure enough, he did Trump under polls, because people, in many cases, are unwilling to reveal to those taking the polls that they're supporting Trump. And they're worried about that for many reasons, including the fact that the divide we have in the United States of America, this cultural divide, is an elite popular divide. Trump appeals to ordinary people, to working class people.
That's his base.
He is very unpopular, wildly unpopular among elites. And of course, elites control the institutions of culture. That's what they do. If you look at journalism, entertainment, education, business, you'll find that obviously, elites control those things, and they are very anti Trump. The big corporations are very anti Trump.
So people, ordinary people who worry about their jobs and their futures, are unwilling to let their preferences be known, lest they suffer personal or professional retaliation or their children suffer retaliation. It's the green grocer phenomenon in Hobble's story.
And so they don't tell poll takers that they're going to vote for Trump, and then they vote for Trump. Trump may very well be re elected, even if the polling seems to indicate that he set it for defeat.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Beyond the Trump presidency, it does seem that there is a moment of crisis right now in the United States. Now, if people are aware of their American history, they'll probably know that it's not unusual for these types of cultural crisis moments to overflow in the American life. The War of Independence, the Civil war, the civil rights movement, which obviously goes back several decades before even the failed weather underground revolution. And then we had, what, about 40 years or so of stability through the 80s onwards? But now we're in one of these moments again. Do you think this is one of those pressure valve moments that the American Republic sort of regularly has and then recovers from? Or is this more like, I don't know, a Mount Vesuvius moment, where it erupts and Pompeii comes to an end and life has changed as we know it?
[00:09:04] Speaker B: I wish I knew the answer to that question, but I don't, and I don't know that there is an answer to that question. Human affairs are highly contingent. There is no Hegelian dialectic of history. History is not determined. There aren't facts out there that if only we knew them, we could predict the future. We'll know pretty well whenever we get a result in the presidential election, which might not be the night of the election, given the COVID impact on voting and so forth. But whenever we find out whether Donald Trump has been re elected, we'll get some indication of whether this is Mount Vesuvius. I would expect that there would be a very big reaction, including a lot of activity in the streets that I hope won't be violent. We're getting violence now in our cities. Of course I hope it won't be violent. But if it is, and if it becomes very violent, well, Vesuvius will have erupted.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: Yes.
Let's talk about now ethics, because this is one of your specialty areas. It seems to me, when I look around the world, that there is perhaps an increasing, particularly through the courts, probably what you might call a bastardization of human rights. And what I mean by that is we're seeing things like, for example, for several decades now, there's been a fight to claim abortion as a human right. There was the court case in Canada about four or five years ago, which legalized euthanasia, where they successfully argued that assisted suicide was part of the right to life. And being denied that was a violation of your right to life. Do you think this kind of what we're seeing now, even in the public square, around misinterpreting what human rights are and what they're not, is it representative of a loss of moral philosophy as opposed to just a disagreement about what is moral or not? Is there something deeper missing here now?
[00:10:58] Speaker B: How Orwellian it is to say that the right to assisted suicide is part of the right to life, or I should say, the so called right to assisted suicide. Of course we know what actually happens. People come under all sorts of pressure from relatives, from governments who are worried about spending, from the health care system, healthcare professionals. Every manner of ghoul people come under all sorts of pressure to exercise this precious right of theirs to death with dignity or whatever euphemism or characterization they want to use. But it is positively Orwellian.
My dear friend, the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, Rabi Lord Jonathan Sachs, makes a terribly important point about anti Semitism that I think is relevant more.
Says, you know, if you look at the history of anti Semitism, you find the following.
It will always be justified in whatever the dominant discourse of the day happens to be. So in the medieval period, when theological discourse was dominant, hatred of Jews was justified in the language of theology.
During the Enlightenment, when science was glorified in so called Age of reason, Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment terms and science and so forth, was the justification for anti Semitism of various sorts. Jews could be citizens, but so long as they stopped being Jews, they could be equal citizens, but as long as they left their Jewish identities behind.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, with the rise of the nation states and nationalism, of course, antisemitism is expressed in the language of nationalism, culminating in the horrible nightmare of Hitler and the Holocaust. What Jonathan says of anti Semitism is true of just about every other evil you can think of as well.
People will justify that evil and the evil doing in the dominant discourse of the day. So now let's ask ourselves, what is the dominant discourse today?
Well, it is, as it happens, the discourse in which we now find, yes, you guessed it, anti Semitism being defended, the language of human rights.
But it's also the discourse in which we find abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and every other manner of evil being defended. We shouldn't be surprised by this. The dominant discourse will always be the discourse in which we justify whatever evils we human beings want to do. And therefore, it's important not to allow ourselves to be intimidated by the hijacking of the discourse by those who do hijack the discourse. In order to advance policies, whether it's antisemitism or abortion, that are incompatible with the fundamental principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family, we need to keep our eyes on the prize. We need to keep our eyes on the true principle, that is, the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family. What's wrong with antisemitism? What's wrong with abortion? They violate that principle. Same for assisted suicide, same for euthanasia. The true human right is the right of every member of the human family, irrespective of race or sex or ethnicity, to be sure, but also equally irrespective of age or size or stage of development or condition of dependency or location or anything else, to be treated under the law with dignity, and indeed, equal dignity. So let's not be intimidated here. Let's not be tricked. Let's not be fooled. They can hijack the discourse, but we're on to them. We know there is no human right to kill an unborn baby anymore. There's a human right to kill a newborn baby or a human right to kill a 14 year old. It is rather a violation of human rights.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Tell me, one thing that does seem to be under attack a lot more these days is the right to freedom of conscience. It seems that there is certainly, at best, you'd say, a narrowing or an attempt to narrow that very, very narrowly in a lot of cases now, a complete removal of the right to freedom of conscience. Why do you think that is going on?
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Well, it's because there is a competing religion, and that religion might be called expressive individualism, which was the term favored by the sociologist, famous sociologist Robert Bella, the late Robert Bella. It might be called secular progressivism. There are various labels for it, but it functions like a religion. It's a source of meaning. It's got a set of dogmas, indeed, it's got a lot of the other indicia of, of religions, saints and demons and holy days and sacraments and so forth. And it's a militant religion. Not all religions are militant, at least in the normal sense of that term. It's a fundamentalist religion. Not all religions are fundamentalists or not all traditions of all religions are fundamentalists. Most religions have their fundamentalist traditions within them, but usually not the mainstream. Well, this religion, so dominant among Western elites, is militant. And for many people, it's a fundamentalist faith. And four militants and fundamentalists, whether they're Christian or Muslim or Jewish or secular, progressive or utilitarian or Marxist, whatever their ideology or quasi religion is, when they are militant and fundamentalist, they brook no dissent. They cannot allow for people's conscience or freedom of speech or any other basic civil liberties. They want conformity, they want groupthink, they want people to denounce anybody who steps out of line.
They want to lower the hammer on anybody who challenges the sacred orthodoxies, the sacred teachings. They want to make you not only be silent about what you do believe, they want to force you to say things you don't believe.
This is where this ideology, this pseudo religion, veers from merely being authoritarian, which is bad enough in the direction now of being totalitarian. Ordinary authoritarians are content to stop people from saying what they believe to be true. Totalitarians can't stop there. They've got to force people to say things they believe to be false.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: It seems to me that perhaps this is aided a little bit too, by the state of perhaps what goes on in the public square, where it feels to me a little bit like in the minds of a lot of ordinary, everyday folk, that freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, it seems to be falling victim to an ideology that wants to narrow it down to being just about freedom of worship. So you go somewhere on a Sunday morning, keep it to yourself, or freedom of thought, you can think these ideas in your head, but you can't act on them. So if you're a doctor who says, well, my religious beliefs, my conscience beliefs say I cannot participate in the act of abortion or even refer for that, all of a sudden people are now screaming at you, well, you shouldn't be a doctor. You shouldn't allowed to be licensed for that. Do you think that's a fair assessment?
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Oh, it's a completely fair assessment. Here's the thing about this particular militant fundamentalist pseudo religion, this Ideology, one of its dogmas, is not only that it should have hegemony in the public square, but that competing comprehensive views, if I can borrow a phrase from the late, great political philosopher at Harvard, John Rawls, competing comprehensive views, be they secular or religious, certainly religious ones like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, that competing comprehensive views must be restricted to the private precincts of the home or house of worship. So freedom of religion on this account is restricted to saying your prayers with a family around the dinner table, or on your knees at bedtime, or in the mosque, or in the Synagogue, or in the Church. But it's not allowed to enter the public square and compete with the hegemonic governing ideology of secular progressivism or expressive individualism or whatever you want to call it. Now, why should anybody of any competing faith, again, secular or religious, accept those terms? There's absolutely no reason to accept those terms. And certainly religious folk in the traditional sense, Muslims and Christians and Jews should say, no, we're not buying that set of rules. Who made those rules? I mean, who made you dictator of the world? That you get to make the rule? You think you're God. Those aren't the rules. We compete fairly in the public square with you. You have every right to be there. We don't have any authority to shut you down because your teachings are contrary to our religion, but you have no authority to shut us down. Fair fight in the public square for the allegiance of our citizens. You make your arguments, we'll make our arguments, and then we're going to use the processes of deliberative democracy to resolve the questions until they get opened back up in the ordinary institutions of democratic governance for reconsideration, if indeed they do.
This idea that secular progressive ideology counts as neutrality is deeply foolish.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Let's talk about that for a moment. You wrote a book, Making Men Moral, where you made the case that we need to defend morals laws, if you like to want to call them something. And it seems to me that that's something that is very consistent with the Berkeley and tradition of conservatism. But one of the things that worries me of late is it seems that more and more it feels like conservatism has been hijacked by perhaps libertarianism or more libertine approach to moral questions.
And perhaps we're no longer bringing that great tradition of ethics and the intellectual heft that was once there to these debates, if we're even turning up at all. Do you think that that's something concerning?
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Well, there are different schools of conservatism, and then there are different political philosophies, some of which, though not conservative, share certain conservative principles, at least to some extent.
I don't think libertarianism is just plain wrong. As criticalized I have been, as you know, beginning with that first book of mine, making men moral civil liberties and public morality, I've been about as critical of libertarianism as anybody could be. And yet I'm a respectful and even admiring critic of libertarianism because I think that it is a tradition that teaches some very important truths. What happens is it neglects some very important additional truths. It's right as far as in what it affirms. It's wrong in not affirming more important truths additional, I should say not in the sense of more important than the ones it does affirm. I mean additional truths. So let me be a little more specific and clear. Freedom is a very important value. The libertarians are 100% right about that. It's a terribly important value.
And in the face of the challenges we have from Marxist and fascist and utilitarian and other ideologies that tend to undervalue freedom, it's really important to wave the flag of freedom, and I'll stand alongside, shoulder to shoulder with my libertarian brothers and sisters and stand up for freedom. But freedom is not the whole picture. There are other principles as well. There's got to be a place for the right place for equality, not equality of outcomes, but certainly equality under the law. Libertarians, I think, ordinarily do agree with that, but also the principle of equal human dignity, which means we have to take seriously the dignity of each and every member of the human family, including the child in the womb.
Many libertarians go off the rails there. They opt for, they go for supporting abortion, and they should not all, but many do.
So I think that libertarianism is not something that should just be straightforwardly rejected. And I think the libertarian voice in the public square is a very important and valuable voice, and they have every right to be there, and I certainly don't want to shut them down. I think they belong there every bit as much as I and other traditional conservatives voices belong there. They're not Berkians. I tend more toward the Berkian side, but nevertheless, they're cousins, if not brothers, so I'm happy to have them there. Same in some respects for folks on the social democratic side, yes, or even the socialist side. That principle that they appeal to of equality, that's true too. There is a very important principle, the equal dignity of human being. I wish they were more resolute and consistent in affirming it. People who believe in equality should not be backing abortion or assisted suicide or euthanasia or eugenics. Quite the contrary. And of course, when they move from equality of opportunity to equality of result, well, then we're on the road to the abolition of liberty. And that's when the libertarian voice really does need to be heard and integrated into a sound conservative point of view. So I like to think that we traditional conservatives represent something of the golden mean between the extremes of social democracy on the one side, or even socialism and libertarianism on the other side. We don't think that they're just straightforwardly wrong in every respect. We think they're right about some things, but we want to draw on some of the truths that they assert in each case and highlight some that they neglect.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Tell me, a few years ago, there was, I think it was the Journal of Medical Ethics dedicated an entire edition to the debate, should infanticide be, is it moral? And I believe you wrote a paper in that staunchly opposing that view and saying, it's not moral. And I remember at the time you posted on social media about this, and your comment, I think, was very enlightening where you said, is anyone else concerned about the fact we're even having this debate in public? Do you think that this radical individualism is the driving cause of such a nonchalant public discussion of such a grave and obvious evil?
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Well, what I like about the work, for example, of Peter Singer or Michael Tooley, other defenders have been fantasized, is its honesty and its integrity. Certainly, I think the position that they advocate, the moral correctness or moral rightness in some cases of killing unborn, I'm sorry, killing newborn infants, not just unborn babies, but newborn babies. I think it's a hideous position from a moral point of view, and I'll oppose it and fight it in a public square with every breath in my body, every amount of energy I've got. And yet, at least they are consistent and they're not science deniers. Singer is right, and I agree with him when he says that the very considerations and principles that justify abortion, if any, do equally justify infanticide. He's 100% right about that. The difference between us is that he thinks that abortion and infanticide are justified, and I think both are unjustified. But we both got consistent positions as against the vast majority of people who call themselves pro choice, who want to have it both ways, who want to be against abortion, I'm sorry, against infanticide, but in favor of abortion. Well, when I tell them that's inconsistent, they won't listen to me, but maybe they'll listen to Peter Singer, who's a fellow supporter of abortion, because he's telling them the truth. The other thing is someone like Peter, who's my colleague here at Princeton and I know well, or Michael Tulley or the others who defended abortion in that issue of, I'm sorry, defended infanticide in that issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics that you're talking about, the other good thing about them is they're not science deniers. They don't falsely claim, as so many pro abortion people do, that we don't know when life begins or we don't know when the life of a new human being begins or there's some great mystery of science or metaphysics about whether a human fetus is, in fact a human being.
All of these people, beginning with Peter Singer, will tell you we certainly do know that the developing human fetus is a human being as much a human being as a two year old or a 19 year old or a 90 year old. The only question is, does that human being have dignity and a right to life? Either all human beings do. That's my position. That's your position. Which means that we should be making sure we have the mantle of legal protection around every single member of the human family from conception to death. Or some human beings have dignity and others don't. That's Peter's position. Now, what could give some human beings dignity and others not? Well, Peter has the argument that some are persons and some are not yet persons or are no longer persons or aren't, never will be, never were persons. The congenitally severely cognitively disabled, for example.
He does not believe in the principle of equal dignity or the principle of human rights. He'd be the first to tell you that. I do. But as profound as our disagreement is on that, we agree on the science. We agree on the point that so many pro choice people want to hide or deny. And that is, as a matter of fact, every child from the very earliest developmental stage, beginning in the earliest embryonic stage, is a living member of the species. Homo sapiens is a human being. There is no mystery here about what it is that is developing in Mom's womb. That is a human child, a member.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: Of the human family, is radical individualism, you think, becoming more and more like the naked emperor. And what I mean by that is, it seems there are so many inconsistencies now when we think about lawmaking. So, for example, during the recent marriage debate, which swept the west and the redefinition of marriage, we were told that arguments around the well being of children were invalid. We were told that, no, the future wasn't relevant. Don't think about the impact of this on future generations. But when it comes to environmentalism, perhaps the secular spirituality of the day, it's all about children. In fact, they have currently a child as the very representative spokesperson for that. And it's all about your obligation to future generations. Suddenly, they've become very Berkey in their thought. Do you think it's starting to become the Naked emperor, where we're starting to set up individual beliefs against individual beliefs, and we're giving special rights and powers to some over the others for no real good reason.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: It's another interesting feature of modern secular progressive ideology.
It's both radically individualistic in a way that I think undermines its credibility, and statist in a way that undermines its credibility.
It incorporates some of the worst features of libertarianism and some of the worst features of collectivism, Marxist or other forms of collectivism. So it can be almost totalitarian when it comes to something like climate. Suddenly we're going to control people's lives in very detailed and minute ways because we need to save the planet. This is a sort of eschatological element of this new religion. On the other hand, people need to be able to be free of any of the traditional norms that protected the institutions of marriage and the family. The German Ethics Council, the National Ethics Council in Germany has even overwhelmingly voted, just a few dissenters, to urge the German legislature to abolish adult incest laws, laws that prohibit sexual relations between parents and their adult children or between adult siblings. So we have the radical individualism on the one hand, and the collectivism on the other hand, and both are erroneous. Both are wildly wrong.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: Let's talk now about the current state of academic life and public debate in general.
As someone who is in this space, how toxic do you think is campus culture right now, particularly in regard to open and free dialogue?
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Well, we've obviously got a problem in the United States, and my understanding is that we're not alone here.
I talked about that divide between elite and popular culture earlier, and of course, education is one of the most important institutions of culture, and it's pretty much in the control of elites. And elites aren't actually divided amongst themselves much on ideology on the whole. They've bought right into and fully bought into secular progressive ideology to expressive individualism. And they're quite intolerant of dissent, and that certainly extends to campuses as well. So people are terrified about expressing their minds, expressing their views, speaking their minds when their beliefs put them at odds with any of the dogmas of the new pseudo religion. Some people have been punished, in some cases severely, even losing their positions in universities because they've expressed public dissent from these dogmas and orthodoxies. The pressure is there not only to keep your mouth shut, but increasingly there's pressure to say the right words. You have to not only be silent, that's not good enough. You have to make sure that you affirm in a very public way these dogmas of secular progressivism. If you are to be admitted to the university as a student, or if you are to get a job as a faculty member or have any sort of a career in the university, sometimes on job applications. Now, in the United States, at universities, you're supposed to fill in a section of a form that says, tell us how you will contribute to diversity and inclusion. Now, diversity and inclusion sound very nice. Who's against diversity and inclusion? Of course, I'll tell you who's against diversity. Secular progressives. They don't want any diversity of opinion. You have to agree with them 100% or you're out. And that is the very point of this exercise. It's meant to weed out anybody who does dissent from their particular version or vision of equity and inclusion, or diversity and inclusion. So this is a bad thing. It's toxic for the cause of education.
Its unfairness is really secondary in my mind, although that's very important. It is unfair. It's unfair to conservatives, it's unfair to traditional religious believers, it's unfair to a lot of people. But I say it's secondary in my mind, because primary in my mind is as an academic myself, as someone who's committed to the scholarly vocation and to the institutions of truth seeking colleges and universities, what's primary in my mind is the toxicity of this kind of groupthink to the truth seeking process, to the process of educating people, young people in particular, to be true truth seekers themselves and to be lifelong learners. Indoctrination is not teaching. Indeed, it's the very opposite of teaching.
And too much of what's going on in colleges and universities in my own country, and my understanding, again, alas, is that we're not alone in this, too much of what goes on really is indoctrination. And too often people are deterred from pursuing lines of inquiry because they're frightened that the results that they would publish would get them in trouble and jeopardize their own professional futures. You cannot run colleges and universities as authentic, truth seeking, knowledge seeking institutions in that kind of atmosphere of intolerance and intimidation. You just cannot do it any more than you can run a democratic regime or a democratic republic where people feel afraid or are being bullied and intimidated into not speaking their minds.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: One of the things that I'm a little bit concerned by is the fact that a lot of people, I think, initially thought when this started to evolve, well, it's just an on campus problem. But I get a sense that this is starting to perhaps move beyond campus life now. And I almost see a perfect storm in the sense that it's not unusual to have ideological firebrands around a campus. But then you'd probably leave campus life was a little bit harder, or you'd get married and have a few kids, and it would sort of temper those worst excesses. But I see now in wider society, there's less marriage and family life. We've got social media, which allows you to be a firebrand anytime, anywhere you like. And also we're nurturing a culture of fragility in people. Does that concern you? Do you think this is ever going to seep off campus?
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Oh, there's no question. It already has.
I warned people 20 years ago about this. I would often hear parents and others say, well, it doesn't matter so much that kids are being indoctrinated and their heads filled with nonsense and ideology, or that they're falling into groupthink on university campuses, it's not anything to worry about, because they're just going through a stage. It's a four year college in the US is four years. I'm not sure what it is in New Zealand, but they're going through this four year period when they'll get this out of their bloodstreams, and then they'll become adults, and they'll have jobs and responsibilities, and they'll have to pay taxes, and they'll have families, and they'll have children to bring up, and that will moderate them, and it'll even move them in a more kind of sort of conservative direction. It will make them more responsible. I warn people that's just not the way it works. Once their heads are stuffed, filled with this ideology, they will take it out into the world and transform the businesses at which they work. It will inform their political decisions. It'll transform other institutions they're associated with, including the institutions of religion. You see how profound an impact secular progressivism has had, even on what we in the United States called mainline denominations. I knew this was going to happen, and sure enough, it has. And I take no joy in saying I told you so or pointing out that I was right about this.
I'd give my left arm to be wrong about it. I wish I would have been wrong about it.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Dr. Cornell west is someone who, clearly, you and him have, I think, quite a special relationship. And it's one thing I've really appreciated is there's just such authentic dialogue between the two of you, some very clear differences and views on all sorts of issues.
Do you think perhaps we are missing a few more of those elder statesmen, the intellectual giants, which I consider both of you part of that tradition, to sort of show the way for what a robust and reasoned dialogue can look like, and how do we kind of protect that?
[00:38:54] Speaker B: Oh, we're missing them. Yeah. Now, I love my brother, Cornell West. He is as dear a friend as I have ever had in my life. Really is like a brother to me.
No two twins were ever closer than Cornell and myself. Despite our disagree, he's the honorary chairman of Democratic Socialists of America. As you pointed out, I'm a sort of old fashioned Aristotelian, Berkeley and conservative. So obviously we differ profoundly on policy and political questions. And yet he's got integrity and honesty.
He says what he means. He means what he says. He's not playing a game. He's not just performing.
And he's really interested in the truth. And he wants to be corrected where he's in error, just as I want to be corrected when I'm in error. He cares more for truth than he does for his own opinions. He hasn't fallen so deeply in love with his own opinions that he'd prefer to hold them rather than be proven wrong and get to the truth of things. I would like to be the same way myself. I hope I am. I look to him as an example of that. And we deeply share some values. He believes in the inherent dignity of each and every member of the human family. He's very worried about the abortion issue. He had just fallen into line with the left on that, but he's not sure that the left is right about that. He's willing to talk about it, argue with me about it, think about it. I mean, I think he's badly shaken on that issue because he does believe in the principle of the inherent dignity of each and every member of the human family.
He's worried about the poor and the vulnerable, and we all should be. I certainly am. We might have different approaches to how we lift people up out of poverty. I think markets have done more to lift people out of poverty than any other economic mechanisms. And so I'm broadly in favor of the free market, properly regulated. I'm not a laissez fair libertarian, but I'm more in favor of the free market. He's more skeptical of the free market. He thinks government has a bigger role to play. I'm more skeptical of the role of government in lifting people out of poverty. But we're agreed that we want to lift people out of poverty even if we disagree about the means. And we can argue and debate and try to get nearer to the truth about what the best means of doing it would be. And of course, we're both Christians. We both share a deep Christian faith. We both believe every human being was fashioned in the very image and likeness of the divine ruler and creator of the universe. So that's a profound point of agreement. And then finally, he is a true civil libertarian. He would never for a moment think of shutting down anybody as a speaker or a writer or a thinker or advocate in the public square because they disagreed with him. He wants to hear them just as I do. He's as committed to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, the other basic civil liberties as I am. So we are united in this. And if you've seen the statement that the two of us put out together in 2017 called Truth Seeking democracy and freedom of speech and discussion, you'll see just how deeply we are united in those civil libertarian principles.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: Do you think that perhaps we have too much politics then, and not enough personhood? What I mean by that is I saw just a couple of days ago you posted a video clip of yourself in Cornell west singing, he's got the whole world in his hands. I know you'd love to play the banjo. I myself am a bit of a guitar player from an Irish tradition. I've got a friend who plays the fiddle. We get together, have a few whiskeys, a bit of goodness, truth and beauty and things beyond just politics, a life well lived outside of politics. Do you think that's missing now from it's just politics is everything now it's a problem.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: There's no question about it. Cornell makes the point that if you're going to enter into a political dialogue, you first need to get to know each other as human beings, because friendship is not reducible to politics. He says this at every possible opportunity.
The first question is not, are you labor or Tory, or are you Democrat or Republican, or even are you socialist or libertarian, or are you progressive or conservative? The first question is, where do you come from?
Tell me about your mom and dad. You have brothers and sisters.
What traditions did you grow up with? Or what traditions did you grow up in? What's important to you?
What do you think about when it's just you and you're all alone? What's in your head? What's on your mind? What are your hopes and fears for yourself, for your family, for your country, for the world?
When we start out that way, we get to know each other, and we'll find that we're fellow human beings and we've got common ground and common concerns. You obviously have read a lot of my work, was very flattering. And I thank you for it. You then are familiar with what I say to so many of my Christian and Jewish friends. With respect to our Muslim neighbors. We now have many more Muslims in the United States than we did when I was young. And I urge Christian and Jewish families to reach out to your Muslim neighbors. Ask them about themselves. Ask them about their hopes and concerns and fears and ideas about the future and what they aspire to and what they want for their children. What you find is they're not wanting to blow up buildings and kill people.
They have the same desires for their children that you have. They want their kids to be good people. They want their kids to have moral character. They want their kids to carry on the faith, their religion. They want their kids to have good careers and live in safe neighborhoods and be kind to each other, just like Christians and Jews do. Well, the same is true across the political divide. You're going to find if we just sit down and treat each other as human beings, we've got some common ground. That's what Cornell and I do. And then we can take it from there and we can start to explore the differences. But when we explore the differences, we won't be thinking of each other as Hitler and Stalin.
We'll be thinking of each other as Tom and Jill and Sally and Janet.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: Tell me just a couple of quick questions to finish with.
We've spent several decades where we've actively pushed faith out of the public square, it seems to me. And one thing that faith gives you is an eternal perspective. It helps you to put the big issues into perspective. But without that, are we now stuck in a space where it's all about the temporal, so it literally becomes a fight to the death because that's all we've got. Do you think faith and the loss of it in the public square has actually contributed to a worsening of the dialogue?
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Well, there's plenty of faith in the public square, but the question is, what sort of faith is it? Secular progressivism is a faith. You have to understand that. And it's a militant and fundamentalist faith. The problem is not that we don't have faith in the public square. It's the kind of faith that there's there, and the tendency of that faith to be intolerant and exclusionary when it comes to competing worldviews or competing comprehensive views, including those of traditional religions. But you are right that if you look at secular progressive ideology, the horizon is a this worldly horizon, which means what's ultimate is the here and now. There's not something beyond the here and now. That's the truly ultimate. And that can make everything at the end a life and death struggle. If there's nothing beyond this world and nothing in a world beyond that provides the criteria for judgment of the affairs of this world, then when you lose, it's an eternal and permanent loss, and it can't be redeemed. So you can't lose. And if that means you've got to destroy the other guy, if that means you have to resort to this terrible phrase, any means necessary, then you do it. And you find this with all the terrible secular ideologies. Communism, fascism, Nazism, this was the ideology of Polpot and Hitler and Stalin. Which is not to say that contemporary secular progressives are just like Hitler and Stalin and Paul pot. But why were those crimes committed and justified? Because there was no transcendent standard to look to. Because in this world, you needed to win. Because there was nothing beyond this World, you need to make this heaven on earth, because there's no heaven anywhere else. And as Mao Zedang is said to have said, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. So it's 20 million or 30 million or 40 million people. Those are the eggs who've got to be broken, who've got to be killed in order to create heaven on earth. Well, you've just got to do it. That's the by any means necessary part.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: So perhaps the million dollar question, then, to wrap this up, is, how do people of goodwill nurture and promote civility in discourse and in public life? I guess Aristotle would say, you can't do it without virtue. And the Queen of the virtues is humility. It seems lacking these days. What else, practically, do you think we can do to actually nurture that courage?
[00:47:51] Speaker B: Courage is what we need. That's the absent virtue. That's what we need. People need to be willing to take risks and bear burdens for the sake of goods greater than themselves.
This is what the great prophets, the great saints, the great heroes of history have exemplified for us, the virtue of courage.
And that's what we're missing now. This battle for civility, for decency, for our common humanity, for the sanctity of human life, for the dignity of marriage and the family. This battle may not be winnable. In the end, that's up to God.
But I myself think it is winnable. But it can't be won without courage.
And it's not a battle that will be won without casualties. Like any great struggle, any great war, there will be casualties. Which means that anybody worth his or her salts got to be willing, has to have the courage to risk being one of those casualties. So we need courage, and we need to stand courageously for each other when we come under attack. Not only do I need the courage to speak out, you need to have the courage to speak out on my behalf when my speaking out has brought me into the line of fire. And too often we're like zebras. When the lion pride creeps in and creeps in and creeps in and crouches and then attacks the zebra, it looks for the Young one or the one with a broken leg, the vulnerable one. What do the other zebras do? As the lions attack, they all flee, and the poor little zebra is destroyed. Or the one with the broken leg is destroyed and devoured. Let's stop being like zebras. Let's be like elephants. The same lion pride attacks an elephant herd. What do the elephants do? They circle around the little elephant or the wounded or injured elephant. They protect the one who's vulnerable. We need to have the same attitude. We need courage to speak our minds, and we need the courage to stand up for people who do when they're under attack.
[00:49:54] Speaker A: Professor Robert George, thank you so much for giving of your time, and I've really, really enjoyed this conversation. I'm sure those who are watching are going to get a lot out of it. So thank you very much for being here today.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
[00:50:12] Speaker A: The Dispatchers podcast is a production of Left Foot media. If you enjoyed this show, then please help us to ensure that more of this great content keeps getting made by becoming a patron of our
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