Does the Right Have a Woman Problem?

Welcome everyone once again to the round table, your editors and publishers podcast here at the American mind. I am your host this week, president of the Claremont Institute, Ryan Williams and publisher of the American mind and the Claremont Review of Books. I'm joined by Spencer Clavin, associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books and director of publishing for American mind and CRB, our crossover title where he keeps all of us rowing in the same direction for our two publications, both pixel and print. And of course, Mike Sabo managing editor of the American mind. Happy to be back. Happy to be hosting. Uh, I had, uh, nine days without the flying, uh, in Japan, which I will talk with Spencer about on our paid section. So for those of you who are fascinated to learn more about that and don't subscribe a small teaser, um, it should be, it should be fun to talk about. I will just say this for our entire audience. If you have not been to Japan and you have the means and opportunity to go, I would encourage it. It, uh, I was there about 13 years ago. And it's my first time back, uh, mostly in Tokyo this time and then just a couple of nights in Okinawa. Uh, it's an endlessly fascinating and fun place, uh, especially if you like food, raw fish, obviously, uh, they're very warm and friendly. The Japanese, uh, their cities are beautiful and clean if a pretty modern and a densely packed, especially Tokyo. And, uh, it's just a marvel of a place to visit, especially if you have not been to the far East at all, it's a good introduction and a very safe one. And, uh, I think you'll enjoy it. So go check it out. And I shouldn't add that if you have not yet subscribed to Claremont digital plus at claremontinstitute.substack.com, you bring dishonor upon yourself and your family and your ancestors, and probably are going to have to commit ritual suicide unless you go and sign up as soon as possible. Preferably before we record this commentary about the Ryan's trip to Japan. That might be a little too far Spencer, but sorry. Yes. I'm quite right. This is why Ryan is, is the president that I, you didn't have to remind me not to instruct our listeners to, uh, to off themselves in gruesome medieval ways. Yeah. One, one big cultural difference between Japan and the U S although it's not that prevalent these days anymore in Japan, a little bit as the, uh, the art Christian and, uh, Western civilization in general, admonition against suicide, even, even when experiencing great shame and dishonor. Um, uh, my only lament really is that the exchange, also another reason to go now, the exchange rate is awesome for the United States. Much true. Unlike 13 years ago for me, it was like 30%. Cheaper now this time. Uh, so if you want to go and do some shopping, including it, just one anecdotal example, Western, you know, they have all the normal Western stores. So I needed like a, um, just a tan windbreaker. I've wanted one for a while. And, uh, you know, unique little has some pretty neutral brand stuff. That's actually pretty well made. The jacket I got in Japan costs 79 99 U S if you order it online in the U S in Japan, it was $43. You go slaps big time. It goes really hard. And the stores that they have here are great, but yeah, it sounds, it sounds awesome. My experience while you were in Japan, Ryan, was that I went to the demon slayer movie, which was in theaters. And I thought I was going to the demon slayer movie that came out in between seasons one and two, and I've seen season one. So I was very excited to go and see the in theaters version of the next installment turned out. I was going to the one that comes out at the very end of all the seasons. So I had skipped ahead to like four seasons worth of plot. And I was like halfway through the movie before I was like, I don't know what's going on. I have no idea what's happening in this movie at all. Uh, so that was my Japan experience while you were gallivanting about Shibuya, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. I took my 20 year old daughter with me. Um, so I had a bunch of meetings and stuff with, uh, various Japanese government officials and academics and, and, uh, uh, very interesting and smart bureaucrats, all of which we'll get into on the paint episode. So my daughter was happy to like wander around Tokyo while I was at boring meetings. We had some time for cultural stuff too. So it was a good mix, but she, uh, I will, I will, uh, I will be riding high off this dad trip experience forever because she, she was in Shibuya our first full day in Japan. And for those of you, those of you who don't know Tokyo neighborhoods, Shibuya is probably the one place you've seen. If you've seen that giant crossing four-way crosswalk, it's like Times Square of Japan of Tokyo. And she was wandering around one of their little sub neighborhoods near Shibuya Harajuku. And she ran into Timothy Chalamet, her favorite actor and got a picture with him. So no, just out of sheer, dumb luck. Uh, we were off to a great start. Not content with having dunked on ballet and opera. He had to go like trash, no theater or something. Some, some like great classical Japanese art form. No, I don't know if he caused instant controversy by saying, you know, it's not really good anymore. If I were a Japanese guy, I'd be going into like video games. Yeah, exactly. He, he did have, still have his Marty Supreme mustache, which was a little bushier. So, uh, uh, you know, fresh off not winning any Oscars. Well, we saw him before the Oscars, but yeah. Still hopeful that gleam in his eyes, perhaps now he's been chastened, having indulged in hubris and spoken ill of ballet and opera. The funny thing about that clip I'm referring to for our audience, if they don't know this interview in which Chalamet said, basically, I don't want to go into a dead art form like ballet or opera. I have ambitions to be great. So I'm going to do movies. The funny thing about that is he's completely correct. And I say this as a deep lover of classical art, obviously, but this is a famous tragic paradox of the arts that certain forms live and die and then become preserved. And they're very beautiful. But if you're a kind of lusty ambitious young person, like he's, Timothee Chalamet is absolutely right about that, but everyone gave him hate. Cause they thought he was being that mean about the arts. Yeah. I mean, what is the collective live audience of ballet annually in the United States? It has to be under a half a million people. I mean, he could have framed it, I guess, to say, isn't it sad that this is true or something? And it is, but it's also just a basic reality that he was acknowledging. Like, you know, if what you want is to make a name for yourself and establish greatness, like you're probably not going to go into a shrinking art form. My dad and I talk all the time about like, what if you were born today, but you had the tap dancing skills of a Fred Astaire or a Gene Kelly, like what would that be like? Cause you really, you know, you would have a world-class talent, but nowhere to put it. And, uh, this is, this is the Chalamet paradox. We will now call it. Yeah. I will say I'll bracket my comments by you can carve out the nutcracker, which is still beloved every year at Christmas time. But sure. I mean, plenty of these calls for artifacts are totally worthwhile. Even I would argue better than what we are capable of producing now. And we should maintain the tradition of producing them and keeping them alive. And they may even gain in cultural and economic cachet as AI blitzes out all the other digital art forms and like human made human performed live art suddenly gains in currency again. Like all of that is possible. It's not like it's dead forever. Uh, but we could say all of that and still be like, yeah, you want to, you know, telemachus in the odyssey says that in music, men always praise what is new. And this is, so this is obviously not some problem of the modern age, some like pathological innovation. It's just part of how the arts develop. They are always responding to kind of the latest, uh, transformations in the human spirit. And that's like, you've got to take that as it comes. Maybe you all knew this, but my last Japan for the unpaid, my last Japan anecdote is that I, I only, you're really getting it away here. This is this private sample, the free sample Kabuki theater, of course, is all men. And I never really looked into why it's because of it's, I mean, obvious once I mentioned it, but it's because, uh, uh, they were worried about the nexus between like artsy districts, theater and prostitution. So they banned women from Kabuki. Uh, it was a fairly patriarchal society, although with some exceptions, um, some prominent women, uh, at the kind of noble level and around had some influence in Japan, uh, going back to like the 17th century. I have so many comments and questions about this observation, but I am going to exercise restraint and not ask you my questions until we do our paid episode, which you have to sign up to get. I genuinely am like, I'm fascinated by it. I guess we give a taste to our general audience. Uh, go ahead. Uh, which is, so I had fun. I have fun in Japan, especially meeting with like military and foreign minister types because office with a foreign office. What is it? Sorry. Ministry of foreign affairs. Because I say to them, well, you know, they'll talk about, uh, I was, it doesn't matter where I was, but they'll talk about stuff. And they always bring up, or a lot of them bring up Commodore Perry, but my middle name is Perry. So I say, well, I have a distant, distantly related to Commodore Perry. And they, they were all very impressed by that. Wait, is that true? Or it's just, it is true. Wow. Nice things. You learn on podcasts. I was going to say, this is a, we are way deep into what should be paid territory here that people can't just get this. We can't just hand this information out for free, right? My mother's side. Uh, nice. He has a vague resemblance of my uncle, Phil, my mother's brother. Oh, okay. So is this connection to Japan that, I mean, cause we've been talking before on this show about how I make fun of Japanese culture, uh, out of bonafide love. And I'm a well-established gaijin or even perhaps weeb on this, on this podcast. Uh, and, but I think you kind of are too, Ryan, is this, does this come from your family connection or is it just sort of, no, it was, it was more than I am. Uh, I always liked the aesthetics of like Japanese gardening and I've always liked sushi. So there was like this vague and I, you know, consume some anime and enjoyed it when I was in my, my teens and stuff, including Dragon Ball Z, of course. And, um, middle school and teens. So I always had this distant fascination with Japan, but then I went in 2013 and, uh, it delivered. And then some, so I was very happy to be back. Can I just say, I was on a flight yesterday from Nashville, Austin, and I've taken the flight a lot now and I fly first class, not bragging, just bragging because it's really not that much more expensive on Delta and so much better. I mean, actually it's not that much better, but it's bearable relative to flying normal. So I'm up in the front of the plane, two big bucket seats, and I sit down. And again, not trying to, not trying to brag, genuinely not trying to show off, had to do something to get ready for my Republic, uh, Plato's Republic final that I'm giving tomorrow. And so I pull out Plato's Republic and I'm like typing me on my laptop. And this guy sits down next to me with intense seriousness, like as if here we are two businessmen flying first and he sits down and he pulls out his tablet and he like opens it up and clears his throat and starts typing away. And halfway through the flight, I look over and he's just watching one episode of anime after another, like is it with the seriousness, the same level of intensity that I have brought to like the work that I have to do on this flight. And I genuinely wanted to turn to him and be like, what? Always this is going on, but then I feared that I would never, uh, never get out of that conversation. Okay. Enough blabber. Uh, we wanted to talk about a couple of things on this episode. The first of which is this piece that came out five days ago, maybe. We always are all usually recording this on Tuesdays. You, you all will see this on Wednesday. Um, this piece by Sam Adler Bell who's a frequent writer at the New York magazine, which is where this piece came out. Um, Sam is the co-host of the Know Your Enemy podcast. Some of you may know this, this is a sort of left-wing progressive podcast, um, to, to host Sam being one of them where they try to understand right wingery and, and, uh, have sometimes caricature it sometimes do it half justice. Uh, and we've been a subject of that podcast though, not in a few years, but anyway, that's the author is a man on the left, uh, a social, you know, a kind of Bernie social Democrat, uh, at the very least, if not a kind of an American socialist of some sort. He wrote this piece, the, the women leaving the new right. And, um, I would just want to give everyone a flavor for it. And, uh, in prominent, in this article are a couple, one anonymous and one not anonymous. That is the non-anonymous is Alex Kushida. There's some of you may know from her subversive podcast and she's become disillusioned with the right. Uh, she's a resident of Romania, but had a brief, um, couple of years, maybe even longer, four years, maybe of prominence on the kind of nationalist to trans, uh, Atlantic writer. And, uh, and then, uh, and an anonymous woman on the right, uh, who goes by Anna in this piece. So I wanted to, uh, this has been making the rounds and, uh, and I think is, uh, at least the sentiment and expressed in it as a problem in public opinion and a problem with the new right is, uh, I think one that's going to have some staying power. And it's certainly part of the left's narrative about the various evil parts of the new right, or one of the parts of the evil hole of the new right. So it's worth, worth discussing. I'm going to read some from it because it's behind a paywall. A lot of you may not want to subscribe to New York mag to read it. I'll give you a flavor. So this is the women leaving the new, right? Uh, I'm going to just a few paragraphs in here and then some commentary and we can open it up. Uh, Anna, the anonymous one is not alone in this revelation in the Trump era. Many young women were attracted to the new right because it felt less constrained, stuffy and dogmatic than the left. Perhaps it was a little sexism was a small price to pay for entry to a party without woke scolds, policing the playlist. For women, especially contempt for feminist pieties, if definitely channeled could be one's ticket to stardom. And what had feminism done for them recently except tell them to work harder and feel bad for wanting to be skinny or worse trick them into waiting too long to have babies. Now a growing group of right wing women, both prominent personalities and loyal foot soldiers are waking up to find their inclusion in the MAGA movement was contingent. Sexism wasn't merely the price of entry. It was the theme of the party. This gives you a flavor of the, um, uh, overcooked nature of this article. I mean, it's high on feelings and a few disillusioned people, um, men and women who are getting out of this movement allegedly, um, or the reasons they're getting out or alleged, I should say. And it's kind of chock full of this vague anecdota, uh, on the rest of this phenomenon. And so one of my, my first complaint really is Sam Adler Bell is a talented writer on the left. Um, but this just isn't rigorous in many ways. Another paragraph, some women in MAGA and the broader conservative movement have publicly distanced themselves, but others are keeping their heads down. They vent and seek counsel in private group chats and among trusted friends and fret about whether to leave their red pilled boyfriends. Many of those with large followings are hesitant to antagonize their fans or jeopardize their income by going public. So they carry on. Others, without as much skin in the game are simply drifting away and doing something else. Again, we just have to trust Mr. Adler Bell here. Uh, I will concede that I've heard some from some, uh, intelligent and very right wing and, um, mature. That is to say not new to the movement or, you know, just came to MAGA and 24 or whatever, who say that this phenomenon, they're seeing it and they, they at least want to raise it as a problem amongst other women they're talking to who haven't jumped ship. But, uh, so we should concede that, um, which is part of what I meant at the beginning of the importance of talking about this, but like an addition to this piece or a nice addition, would have been some rigorous polling to identify how widespread this kind of sentiment is. Uh, I've, uh, I've asked a trusted friend who's neck deep in all sorts of this kind of polling, uh, whether he could point me to a place to find this out. So maybe we'll report back in coming, uh, coming weeks. Another paragraph since late last year, the conservative movement has pulsed with debate over how to draw acceptable moral lines for its febrile coalition. How much antisemitism is too much? How racist is too racist and our limits even feasible without transgressing a central MAGA shibboleth that the first amendment protects first and foremost, one's right to be a loathsome. Um, I would just add to this. Uh, it's easy to flip this script on a Sam Adler Bell and his own coalition. Political coalitions are big, messy things. Uh, I would put it something like this. If we had to do this to the left, uh, cause we can all play this game since October 7th, 2023, the non-crazy section of the progressive movement has shown a steady realization that it needs to figure out how to draw moral lines for its febrile coalition. How much antisemitism is too much. And especially since the great racial awakening of 2020 and its apogee with the George Floyd business, the added question I would, I would put is how much anti-white racism is too much. Another paragraph, the most powerful people in Washington are embracing policy ideas that would have scandalized previous generations of conservatives. Reopening arguments that were settled a half century ago or more. In August, Pete Hex has shared a video in which Christian nationalist pastor Doug Douglas Wilson advocates repealing women's suffrage over the past two years. Conservative lawmakers in Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas have considered restrictions on no fault divorce, entertaining the idea of forcibly keeping women in unwanted marriages. Trump's white house has proposed dismantling the department of labor's women's bureau, rescinded Biden era guidance for employers about workplace harassment and eliminated a 60 year old measure designed to ensure federal contractors abide by anti-discrimination laws, all enabling a return to more hostile workplaces for women. So this is, um, this is the, this is the paragraph that gets me the most annoyed at the author and also at the people who landed their credibility as former right-wingers to this sort of business. Uh, I mean, this is some pretty subtle guilt by association and obfuscation. Um, I mean the sources for this story to the extent that they remain conservative. And I think the anonymous, anonymous Anna seems the most likely to be in that camp that is still conservative. It really shouldn't be signing onto this caricature of the right by Adler Bell. Um, just like leave it, leaving aside, Doug Wilson, who likes to provoke and um, if he's really advocating repealing the 19th amendment, which, uh, uh, it's easy to conclude from some of his statements, uh, people need not be worried about this. I mean, there's no really meaningful political co coalition or constituency for a policy let alone a constitutional change on women voting. So that's kind of a non non-starter, but the rest of this paragraph, let's just run through it. Uh, the framing of it should be rejected out of hand by any thoughtful person on the right. Um, no fault divorce certainly could use some moderate reform. Has it been an unmitigated good for marriages and the social fabric and for children? Uh, it's hard to argue that that's true, especially on the right. Uh, the department of labor's women's Bureau, these are all sort of euphemistic. They sound nice, but I mean, it's a hot bed. It has always been as a lot of these civil rights, allegedly civil rights segments of the bureaucracy have been for decades, a hotbed of radical feminist activism, uh, binary guidance for employers about workplace harassment. Uh, well, what did they do? Well, they continued the ascent that's been going on for a long time of a kind of believe all women anti-male and pro trans, et cetera, abusive reason in common sense, dressed up as quote unquote anti-discrimination law. And then finally, what's Albert bill identifies as the 60 year old measure designed to ensure federal contractors abide by anti anti-discrimination laws. Yeah. That's just affirmative action that's been in place since the Kennedy administration. So I, I feel the need to admonish anyone, including some of the people in this article, however disgruntled you are with MAGA, uh, don't sign on to these caricatures by the left. These premises should not be accepted that basically all of the changes to our, uh, civil rights policies and really de facto constitutional changes that, that, uh, Chris Caldwell and others have written about. Um, basically the premise is that any anti-discrimination change in law or protections since 1964 to the present day, uh, that long history with its twisted paths, uh, are somehow wholly writ and unassailable. That's the, the background behind all of this. Okay. Almost done. I promise. Um, I'll just skip. I mean, our colleague, Scott Yenor, um, comes in for some criticism here as does Helen Andrews as sort of, uh, um, uh, part, you know, Scott and Helen articulate defenders of, of, um, the problems of modern second and third wave feminism, if not even some problems with first wave, uh, are lumped in with Nick Fuentes and this is discussed as a pincer movement of the rad trads, uh, female and male, and then also just the, the, the nasty kind of misogynistic, uh, online right of, of, um, Nick Fuentes. Um, it's a, it's a dishonest framing and I think it overlooks, uh, something we've discussed before, which is the extent to which even the people who are watching Nick Fuentes on the new right, uh, and that there is a decent amount of evidence that he's fairly, um, I don't popular is not the right word, but he certainly is watched by a lot of under 35 folks on the right. The extent to which they sign on to the whole program, they watch it for, uh, it's transgressions, uh, whether they sign up for his sort of repeated antisemitism or not. I think these questions are all open questions. And, uh, I would just point everyone, Eric Kaufman did a pretty good, uh, I forget what it was for. Um, it might've been for city journal. Uh, but if you just look, look up Eric Kaufman, Nick Fuentes, I bet you'll find it. And he's shown the extent to which this, there's not too much evidence that the new right that's being denounced in this piece is, uh, are, are all full on, uh, uh, advocates of the antisemitism preached by Nick Fuentes. So I'll just leave all that there. I'll wrap up with this. Uh, Anna, the anonymous person source here foresees a bigger political problem for the right. If it continues on this path, they see women as subhuman. She tells me for the second time in our conversations and they expect women to behave as if they are subhuman. It's a deeply human desire to let your light shine as cheesy as the sounds. I'm sorry, but I think God gives everybody a spark, a political movement that promises first and foremost to extinguish that spark in half the population. She says it's not built to last. The project is going to fail because it does not bear any relation to reality. They'll drive themselves into the ground. I wish, I wish I could be so sure. That's Adler Bell's parenthetical. And then Kishida, who I mentioned, Kishida tells me, Sam Adler Bell writes, the idea was that we were responding as a movement to the excesses of this blunt cult of egalitarianism where women and men had to be equal. And if they weren't, weren't, it was just because men were deviating from the moral norm. She still thinks that's the wrong way to look at things. But the way we compensated for it, the way I compensated for it was to pile onto the list of what I perceived as typically female sins for that she takes responsibility. I am just as much of a producer of this environment as anyone else. So Kishida kind of hedges a little bit there and doesn't give Sam Adler Bell everything he wants. Uh, but I would just end by saying this, uh, you know, but men and women are different. Kishida sort of concedes it here. Uh, men and women have different dominant personality traits on average. Uh, the author of this piece wants everyone to accept as does most of the left, a kind of blank slate, uh, approach to the sexes and this kind of egalitarian utopia where everyone can do anything as, as good as anyone else. And we should, any bringing up of group differences, including the group psychological traits of men and women on a, again, on average is somehow, you know, a slippery slope down to some sort of, uh, uh, patriarchal fascism, which we should reject that framing of this whole thing. Um, and the women participating in this article should know better. Really. I know they don't want that. I think they don't want that. Uh, Alex Kishida, Anna and others. And so they are once again getting used to parrot the framing of this piece, uh, about their alleged treatment, uh, by the new ride. So I think they're getting used here by Sam Adler Bell. And I just would tell everyone, um, you know, it's happy or it's a good thing. And necessary to bring up, uh, private disagreements within your coalition, but don't provide ammunition to the left because they're not your friends and they're not, they don't have your best interest at heart, no matter your disillusionment with a political movement. Okay. Rant over. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I would characterize this as another instance of a real problem that exists in MAGA or more broadly sort of the current right-wing coalition, um, being disingenuously used to tar and delegitimize a wide variety of people, many of whom have done nothing wrong. And I think this is a genre of think piece we've encountered before. And I think we should expect to encounter it. I think ultimately, like we have problems within our coalition as Ryan rightly put every right-wing, every political coalition has, has problems. Uh, the new right has them certainly. And I have expressed concerns about them before on this podcast. Um, and also we should therefore expect that those on the other side of our politics are gonna take that and try to use it as a way of just saying, these guys are all about garbage, right? The problems are the movement. The problems are not bugs, their features, whatever. Um, I think Ryan, you pointed out the ways in which that's really not backed up by this article, like the way I would describe the situation, the underlying situation here, just from my own anecdotal experience, which is probably distinct from that of like, you know, the women that you're talking to Ryan and whatever, everybody's, everybody's lived experience is different. But like mine is that, you know, there was a rigorous and insane gender orthodoxy that I grew up with that got louder and louder over the course of like the twenties, the 2000s and the 2010s. And it was unsustainable and based on lies about just the interchangeability of humans, especially when it came to sex. And then a movement emerged increasingly of young people, increasingly of angry young people who felt that they'd been had that this was a lie that they were sold and that it damaged them and it made their lives worse, which was all true, which then created a genuine space for an alternative point of view into that space. Mostly there entered a kind of vigorous complementarianism. And in the political context that we're in, that in itself was radical because of the civil rights problems that you've alluded to Ryan, because of the excesses of the civil rights movement, just saying men and women are different. And that's going to have consequences led to advancing some really out there political ideas, right? Like led to contemplating problems with our current post-war arrangement that don't have obvious or easy solutions and that require difficult conversations about what sorts of policy we should be pursuing. And I think every part of that is and was and remains legitimate. And the fact that that's gaining momentum and creating conversations that are uncomfortable in right-wing spaces about what we're going to do, what we should want for a fair arrangement, a fair political, economic, social arrangement between the sexes. But it doesn't just have to be the kind of post-civil rights consensus, or at least the, let's say, post-post-civil rights consensus, after all the court cases have made it like just a complete dogma that everyone is interchangeable all the time, right? There are good men and women on the right who want to upend that, who have disagreements about how precisely to do it, about where the limits of our kind of gendered personhood begin and end, like all of that is completely acceptable. And because of the new energy that exists in this movement, there are inevitably have been people who are attracted to it exclusively because they actually just want to be set free to be, what was it? Loathsome a**, I think was the phrase that Sam Adler Bell used. And so there are people currently hanging out on the fringes of the right who are not gentlemanly about this, right? And who have lost sight of the other major conservative point of view, which is that although there are natural differences that kind of mediate our God-given equality and have to be taken into account in a just society, right? The way to respond to those differences is with decorum, politeness, generosity of spirit, right? Charity of soul, magnanimity, all of these virtues that are also part of the classical tradition. And so, yeah, there are people acting like total jerks out of an emotion led response to something that was genuinely infuriating, namely the old consensus, made people mad, made them crazy, especially makes young people crazy because it makes it hard for them to date and have happy sex and love lives. And whenever you interfere with that dimension of people's lives, they go insane and become grotesque caricatures of themselves, which people have done, women have done and men have done on the left and on the right. And it is true that in on the right, that sometimes takes the form of dudes being jerks and boars in the supposed name of being edgy or exploring kind of radical right-wing ideas. And I think that stuff internally has to get kind of cleaned out when older guys on the right see younger guys kind of veering into this. I think we have to like genuinely not, you know, scold young guys, but just set a different kind of example, an example of sort of upright, confident, but also genteel masculinity. All of that is true. None of that is what this piece is trying to accomplish. And that's the other thing I think that is really crucial to keep in mind is that this sort of internal discussion, which again is needs having, right, is not helped by this piece. That's not the purpose of this piece. The purpose of this piece is to take the pathologies of the kind of ungentlemanly, radical young right and associate with those pathologies, every kind of legitimate critique that we may have of like total gender parity in all dimensions and at all times and in all places. And so then when you get guys, you know, lumped in among the frothing mouthed incel misogynists that are sort of lurking in the background of this piece, that's how you know that the point of this piece is not to make the right better. The point of this piece is to frustrate and destroy all of the rights aims, legitimate and illegitimate. And I think we can and should hold all of those thoughts kind of in our heads at once. Yeah. I think that's, I mean, that's a lot of wisdom there. Certainly. I mean, I obviously had tons of thoughts about this piece too, since it kind of centers on obviously the world we're all in. You know, I would say, you know, there are certainly fringes, there's Nick Fuentes, there's a lot of people who I think are not out for, you know, to help people to drive people in the right direction, certainly. And I think that also comes to be seen as, you know, we need good mentors. We need people to guide the young. I think those things are absolutely true in that, you know, certain movements, I think, you know, certain bad elements attach themselves and this is unfortunately inevitably what's going to happen. How we answer that, I think is the question, but I think you're right, Spencer, this, this piece is not interested in those very important discussions. It's interested in weaponizing this and using this against the right to absolutely obliterate the right in any sense. I mean, you can just, you know, read the totalizing rhetoric in this piece. You know, I'm quoting from Anna here, every single women in conservative politics knows exactly what I'm talking about. And if she says she doesn't, she's lying. I mean, that's, that's quite a claim. You know, again, they see women as subhuman, she tells me for the second time in our conversations and they expect women to behave as if they are subhuman. And part of this too, is me thinking of, you know, Anna's talked about in the beginning, kind of driven to the right because of, you know, aesthetic appeal, um, interested in transgression, those kinds of things, which makes me just believe, you know, if you're not ultimately interested in politics, if you're not ultimately interested in, you know, what we need to do to say tame the administrative state to do this, to do that and say informed policy, whatever, that's okay. If you're not interested in partisan politics, electioneering, all those things, that's totally fine. Um, you can be a homemaker, you can raise your kids, you can do a million other things. You can back away from politics. You don't have to vote that that's okay. Um, and I would say for some people, maybe that's just where you're at right now. And that's okay. Maybe somewhere down the road, you'll, you'll be interested in again, but that's fine. I mean, especially just with the insanity, it's kind of been going on even in right-wing circles, uh, on X just over the past three, four or five days. I can kind of understand that sentiment. I really can, uh, just with everything going on in Iran and you know, news about Tucker Carlson seeming breaking every day. And you've got Anons fighting back and forth. I can get it. I can understand why people would not want to be a part of that. But the problem is just because you don't want to be a part of that, why are you then going to the left and trying to be a part of their political project? I mean, what you're doing is it's a mirror image. You're just on the other side now. So, I mean, that's kind of the fatal conceit of this entire piece is that, uh, you want to back away from politics, I guess, you know, the right, the bad what you're backing into is just the left and then they're going to use you and then they're going to throw you away and move on. And they're not going to trust you either. And that's the other problem. I mean, these people are not going to trust you. They're not going to, um, boost you. They're not going to help you in any other way, um, apart from how you help them. Um, so I think that, that, that's the fundamental problem here. Um, you know, I mean, and just a couple of things just to kind of wrap up, I mean, uh, you know, the killing of Megan good in, uh, Minneapolis, I mean, they chalk it up to misogyny. It wasn't, she was driving an SUV right at the ice agent. She was, she was killed because this guy hated women. I mean, that is, I found that just absolutely preposterous and an insane thing. And I, I am stunned that people, you know, on the, on the right, supposedly even believe something like that. And I would say too, I mean, you know, these people are not kind of immune to the, their own issues. I mean, Hannah Cox, who is, I guess, president of something called base politics, which as far as I understand is just kind of corporate libertarianism repackaged. Um, she tweeted over the weekend, something about, you know, calling into question, Oh, what if president Trump the assassination attempt in Butler Pennsylvania was actually a false flag and that was set up. So this is the same person, you know, who wants to take the moral high ground and have us believe, you know, what she's saying on this subject. Well, that's a problem in my mind. Um, so I would say, you know, this piece is unfortunate. Um, it doesn't mean that there aren't some real issues here and there, but that this is certainly not the way to go about talking about them. Yeah. It should be, uh, a more widespread principle on the right. Uh, you know, no enemies to the right is maybe slightly too far, but to always try and raise privately these internecine disagreements, uh, before you go public, uh, we have just a few minutes left. So I'll bring up one example that's in the headlines right now, because it touches a little bit on, on Iran, which was the counterterrorism center chief, Joe Kent, who ran unsuccessfully for the house. I think a couple of times out of Washington state, whose wife was, uh, he's a gold star husband because his wife died actually in Syria in 2019 fighting ISIS. And Kent has now resigned saying he can in good conscious agree, uh, with the president's conduct of the Iran war. Uh, this is, you know, quickly dividing the two camps on the right with some interesting crossovers. That is the pro war camp in the anti war camp. Um, but, uh, but I think, you know, Kent's Kent's example is maybe a one that I would admonish as well, which is to say, you know, why make a public thing about it, especially now as we're 10 days into the war and that's just not a criticism original to me, it's being raised on the internet. Um, you know, you, you make your arguments vehemently in private. And then when the commander in chief decides you either salute and go do it in your own capacity and area of responsibility, or you resign quietly, uh, you don't, you don't make a public spectacle of it on, uh, on social media. And then you're, I mean, you could write your resignation letter and whatever strong terms you want, but this kind of, um, factional inter right, factional, um, uh, I was going to say spatology as in spats, the science of spats, uh, is, uh, it's easy to forget the stakes of our current, uh, rolling constitutional crisis, which I've argued in this podcast over the years is still with us and has been going on for quite a long time. Uh, the stakes are still the same, uh, at least the leading edge of the left, which I would consider Adler Bell on kind of the moderate edge of the leading edge of the left. There are certainly much worse actors, uh, in left-wing journalism and activism, uh, than, than him. Uh, you know, that the future America that they want for you will be bad for you, bad for your children will be destructive of your Liberty and it will, uh, continue to slide into an increasingly oppressive tyrannical situation, especially for those of us on the right, who would like to return to the principles of the founding principles of the American founding natural rights and all the rest reapplied to our circumstances today to some return to a semblance of a more robust constitutionalism, all the reforms we've talked about on this podcast, that, that the leading edge of the left wants to destroy all that in the name of some, you know, uh, endless, uh, racially, uh, an identity adjusted technocracy. And that's no good. They still want that. So don't help them get there by lending your credibility, even anonymous, anonymously to their, uh, large multifaceted, not coordinated, but kind of emergently, uh, uh, synchronous, political and rhetorical op against you and your progeny. Well, we were going to say more about Iran, maybe a little bit about Cuba, but it will have to wait because we are now out of time and Ryan Gannon production master engineer extraordinaire will not let us go over 40 minutes. So thank you all once again for listening to the round table. If you want to learn more about our work at the Claremont Institute, go to Claremont.org. If you want to support it, Claremont.org slash donate, go to the American mind at American mind.org for our latest, uh, from the digital publication, all flag one. Uh, for those of us, I know our listeners are interested in this topic. We've had a long plan piece from Mark Hemingway, uh, the great Mark Hemingway, who's a Mr. Hemingway to the Mrs. Molly Hemingway, who many of you know, Mark does a lot of great of investigative journalism for real clear politics, but he wrote a piece for the American mind called what the hell happened to Doge. And, uh, it's not all bad news. So, uh, go, go check that out. And, uh, as always, we're putting a new issue of the CRB to bed. I think it went to the printer yesterday. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We'll have blue lines soon. Uh, and, um, so, uh, go to Claremont review book, Claremont review books.com. It will be up on the internet probably within the week or 10 days, lots of good stuff in there. And for our latest from DC, you go to dc.claremont.org and rate review, spread the word about the podcast, sign up for digital plus. If you want Spencer, what's that website again? Claremont institute.substack.com. Uh, where we have some added content, not just the extra 20 minutes of the round table, but other stuff from CRB world and, uh, writings and, and, uh, and more video and audio offering. I get to hear me read CRB articles aloud into the microphone. What more do you people want? I'm at the, I'm, I'm literally chained to this chair at this. I never leave Brian Gannon. 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