Office Hours: Jason Whitlock about Americans & their expectation of government | Interviews

Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Georgia Howe with The Daily Wire. Today, we sit down with sports journalist and commentator Jason Whitlock. His new PragerU video is titled America's Promise, where he talks about what America promises and what it does not. Specifically, America promises freedom, but it doesn't promise love. According to Jason, that's a good thing. Let's jump right in. Jason, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. So I've seen several of your videos, although not going to lie, none of your sports videos. But I mean, you've had some of the most brutal takedowns of BLM this past summer, and I salute you for it. I sent those around to people. Oh, I really appreciate that. I'm glad it connected with you. Yeah, absolutely. So I want to jump right in, and I'm excited to do this topic with you. So in your video, you talk about how America promises freedom, and that's about it. It doesn't promise love. And I was interested why you chose the word love as opposed to equity or security. So what was your reasoning behind that? It's a good question. And my reasoning was that Black Lives Matter is a promotion in their minds of we need white people to love us. We need white people to care about us. We need all of America to care about us. And as if that's an expectation that America is built or any country is built to be able to deliver. And there's like a fundamental misunderstanding of what America has to offer. The conversation has been twisted in a way where the left has convinced Black people through Black Lives Matter that America owes us love. And America has never offered that people through Black Lives Matter. And the countries that have tried, the government, the state, it's going to love you. The state is a horrible lover. It's going to abuse you. It's going to take advantage of you. It's going to be a very poor provider. What America has to offer, and it's why people beat down the doors to get into America, is freedom. And what you do with that freedom is on you. But freedom is in short supply around the world. And where the most freedom has been has been right here in the United States. And somehow everybody's like freedom's not enough, or we don't care about freedom even. We want to be loved, universally loved. NBA players wore Love Us on the back of their jerseys during that bubble season down in Florida. And I just thought that was crazy. You're asking random people, love is something God has to offer. And we should be looking there rather than to the government. So I noticed that you brought up God a couple of times in your video. And you seem to suggest that we had turned away from God with this BLM movement. So is you're feeling that this movement is fundamentally spiritual in nature? I think BLM is satanic in nature. And it is in direct opposition to love from a higher power. And it puts man on a pedestal that is meant for God. And our society, American society, has become way too secular. And my position overall is, anybody that looks at America and the success of America, the United States of America, would have to say that our Judeo-Christian values are what made us great. And now we have no respect for those Judeo-Christian values. And we think that secularism somehow, and man is going to be able to replace faith and things that man is supposed to do for himself. So our society has turned very secular. And that's why we have so much chaos and division and discord in this country. So over the past decade or so, and I would say especially in 2020, we've seen almost the demonization of freedom. So freedom is reckless. Freedom is dangerous. It's selfish. It's a barrier to sort of this futuristic socialist society that we should be moving towards. So what is your feeling about where that trend is coming from? Is that something you're also seeing? My take on freedom is it's just not value. People don't think it matters whether we're free. There's a segment of society that wants government to make decisions for them. How much money should I earn? How much money should someone else earn? When should my child be vaccinated? When should I wear a mask or not wear a mask? There are people that wanna throw all that responsibility on the state, and they don't understand that America has always been about throwing the responsibility on the individual. And you do with the freedom whatever you wanna do with it. And it's been masterful what the far left and what I believe China primarily has been able to pull off here in America through their propaganda campaign of demonizing America and saying that America's inherently racist and evil. When anybody that has any global perspective knows, compared to China, America's racist? Are you kidding me? America's human rights violations in comparison to China? Are you kidding me? And then I always go back to faith. To me, freedom without faith, without belief in a higher power, without setting some standards of behavior that we all try to live up to, that freedom is very reckless. And so we're all human beings, we're all flawed. And those of us that practice some religious faith, we're very aware of our flaws. That's why we practice a religious faith, to try to discipline ourselves and to try to move us in a better direction. I understand there's a lot of people, they don't need that, they can do it themselves. Well, just as we continue to move this direction, just look at the discord and division that we have in America. And I think it's because, again, we're a society now that has no respect for a higher power in a faith-based society. Well, that reminds me of the founding fathers said that this form of government would only work with a virtuous people. And a lot of people kind of take for granted the freedom that they have and those bedrock values that were built on. And they kind of think that we can do it on our own sort of free floating without that foundation underneath. I wanna actually bring up something you talked about in the video. You brought up Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass. So what did they understand about freedom that people today either don't understand or were never taught or have forgotten? Well, you gotta remember, the era that they lived in, particularly for Frederick Douglass, but also for Booker T. Washington, as black people, they were not free. And again, during early parts of Frederick Douglass' life, he was an actual slave. During Booker T. Washington's life, Jim Crow and our freedom was limited. Voting privileges, where we can live, where we can eat, where we can get educated, all that stuff. So they had a great thirst for freedom because it was in short supply. Frederick Douglass, for a time, had none, and Booker T.'s was very limited. And so they valued freedom the most. Since 1964, the Civil Rights Act, all the laws that had been on the book enforcing Jim Crow and limiting our freedom got removed. And so now there's a group of us in the black community 60 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it's like we're taking freedom for granted. I just think Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington and people from earlier generations would never take freedom for granted because they actually experienced life without it. And a lot of young people today have never really dealt with state-sanctioned bigotry. They haven't dealt with systemic racism. They like to talk about it and pretend that they have, but they really haven't. Because if they had, they would be in love with freedom and do anything in their power to protect freedom. They're not doing that. They have no respect for freedom. About a week ago, we saw the hashtag Uncle Tim trend on Twitter. That was after Tim Scott gave his rebuttal to Biden's address, where he spoke about systemic racism in America. And I noticed it's almost like there's this extra viciousness towards black Americans who speak out against the dominant narrative about race. Is that something you've experienced? And if so, what do you make of it? Of course, it's something I've experienced personally. And look, the left, white liberals treat black people like they're pet dogs, love them to death as long as they obey. And if they don't obey, if they take a dump inside the house, pee inside the house, they rub your nose in it and try to embarrass you and try to be inhumane to you. And so Tim Scott, Jason Whitlock, Candace Owens, Larry Elder, anybody black who says, hey man, maybe there's a different approach. Maybe there's a different ideology, political ideology that we should pursue. And no matter how well intentioned these people are, the left, which controls the media, which controls social media, which is in bed with big tech, they've legalized a form of abuse, call it waterboarding or racial boarding that you can do to black people, Kanye West, whoever suggests that, you know what, that liberal stuff may not be the best solution. It's legal to call them any name in the book. Black or white people can do it. No one bats an eye. It's a form of racism that's been legalized. It's a tool of the left to keep people from thinking that there may be a different way to get up the hill. So Trump in 2020 gained with black voters compared to his previous run. And I think he did better than many previous Republicans in his race. Do you think that was a blip on the radar? Or do you think that's part of a actual movement? And it was especially prominent with young African American voters that went more heavily for Trump. So what do you think is going on? I think that if Donald Trump had been able to behave properly, he would have maybe even tripled those numbers. I think there are a lot of black people who are awakening to the fact like this left wing stuff, liberal stuff maybe isn't the best deal. But because Trump chose to continue to behave the way he did over social media, wanted to be combative with the mainstream media, he just acted in a way that made a lot of African Americans uncomfortable jumping on board with it. And so if someone from the right or from a conservative or more traditional point of view would just behave, I think you'll see those numbers continue to increase. I think the record here, even the Black Lives Matter argument and all the narrative and all the pushing of institutional racism that they're doing, I think at the end of the day, what people are starting to realize is that the left's policies for the last six years that black people, we have followed obediently, massive failure, massive failure. I don't think anyone disputes that. And so the left doesn't even dispute it. And that's why they've come up with systemic racism that explains, it's not our policies, it's some right wing, it's the Proud Boys are the reason why 80% of your kids are coming up in a single parent home. The Proud Boys did that, they did. And it's a brilliant excuse by the left when the reality is the left did this. And we follow along, we have agency over our behavior. And so I just can't simply blame it on all white liberals. They wrote a prescription that we follow to the T the last 60 years and we're paying the price for it. And now they're saying, well, what not? It was the Proud Boys, it was the KKK. And again-. Or it was Trump voters. Trump voters, yeah, Trump voters, that's exactly it. They came and did everything to you. They're getting away with it. It's amazing, their relationship with big tech and social media and that brainwashing reprogramming they're doing to people is working brilliantly. But I do think some people are just, I think a lot of us are starting to wise up. All right, well, thank you so much for joining me, Jason. Where can people find you online? They can find me on Twitter at WhitlockJason. I think they can find me on Instagram at JasonWhitlockOK. Jason, thank you so much. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. That's the end of today's Office Hours. Make sure to tune in next week for our conversation with a new Prager U presenter. I'm Georgia Howe. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for watching this episode of Office Hours. If you'd like to watch more interviews with Prager U presenters, head over to dailywire.com slash subscribe and become a member today.