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so I have a confession to make I'm a
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member of the educated
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Elite my parents were historians of
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Victorian England our Turtles when I was
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growing up were named Israeli and
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Gladstone the culture in our home was
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think yish act
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British very stiff upper lip we showed
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no
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emotion and then when I was seven I read
00:00:21
a book called paddings in the bear and
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decided I want to become a writer and
00:00:26
that was Central to my identity ever
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since in high school um uh what you call
00:00:31
like fourth form or something like that
00:00:33
um I wanted to date a woman named
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Bernice and she didn't want to date me
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she dated some other guy and I remember
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thinking what is she thinking I write
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way better than that guy and so those
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were my
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values H and then when I was 18 the
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admissions officers at Columbia Wesley
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and brown universities decided I should
00:00:53
go to the University of
00:00:55
Chicago and some of you may know the
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saying about Chicago it's where fun goes
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to
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die my favorite saying about Chicago
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it's a Baptist school where atheist
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professors teach Jewish students St
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Thomas
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aquinus so it's very educated
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Elite uh and I fit right in I had a
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double major at Chicago in history and
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celibacy while I was
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there
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um and then after school I got a job
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where an educated Elite person should
00:01:23
get a job I was hired to be the
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conservative columnist of the New York
00:01:27
Times a job I likened to being the Chief
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Rabbi at Mecca uh not not a lot of
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company
00:01:38
there and then I got a job on PBS which
00:01:41
is our PBS NewsHour which is our version
00:01:43
of news night and again educated Elite
00:01:47
uh we have a wonderful audience somewhat
00:01:50
seasoned and so if a 93y old lady comes
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up from me the airport I know what she's
00:01:55
going to say I don't want your program
00:01:57
but my mother loves it uh and
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so so we members of the educated Elite
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did some good things we created the
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internet brunch and
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mocktails you're welcome we did some bad
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things we designed a meritocracy design
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designed around the skills we ourselves
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possess and rigged the game so we
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succeeded and everybody else failed by
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age 12 children American children of
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affluent kids are four grade levels
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above everybody else by University the
00:02:30
age rich kids are 77 times more likely
00:02:32
to go to university or to ivy league
00:02:34
university than kids from poor schools
00:02:36
in adulthood 54% of the people at Elite
00:02:40
workplaces went to the same 34 Elite
00:02:43
colleges so we ended up creating a cast
00:02:46
system people with high school degrees
00:02:49
die nine years sooner than people with
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college degrees people with high school
00:02:52
degrees are five times more likely to
00:02:54
have kids out of wedlock people with
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high school degrees are 2.4 times more
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likely to say they have no friends so we
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created a cast system even though we
00:03:02
pretend to be
00:03:03
egalitarian but the worst things we did
00:03:05
were not Material America has a very
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strong economy the worst things we did
00:03:10
were spiritual we privatized morality
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and destroyed the moral
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order uh George Marsen is a great
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historian who said what gave Martin
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Luther King's rhetoric its power was the
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sense there's a moral order built built
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into the universe that if slavery is not
00:03:26
wrong nothing is wrong if segregation is
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not wrong nothing is wrong
00:03:30
we took that essential moral order that
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holds people together and we decided
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it's up to you to find your own truth
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find your own
00:03:38
values back in 1955 a great American
00:03:41
journalist named Walter Litman
00:03:42
understood this was going to be a b big
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problem he said if what is right and
00:03:46
wrong depends on what each individual
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feels then we are outside the bounds of
00:03:54
civilization
00:03:56
um and
00:03:58
so without a strong moral order it's
00:04:00
hard to have
00:04:01
trust it's hard to find your your
00:04:04
meaning in life and so America and I
00:04:07
think Britain too has become a sadder
00:04:08
Society rise in mental health rise in
00:04:11
suicide 45% of high school students say
00:04:14
they are persistently hopeless and
00:04:16
despondent four since 2000 the number of
00:04:19
Americans without close personal friends
00:04:21
is up by fourfold since 2000 the number
00:04:24
of people who say they have no who say
00:04:26
they are in the lowest happiness
00:04:27
category is up by 50% we've just become
00:04:31
sadder the third thing the educated lead
00:04:34
has done and this may not please you is
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we produced Donald
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Trump uh some people think Donald Trump
00:04:41
is a populist Donald Trump and Elon Musk
00:04:44
went to the University of Pennsylvania
00:04:45
and IV League school and became
00:04:46
billionaires JD Vance went to Yale Pete
00:04:49
hexi went to the Princeton Yale Steven
00:04:51
Miller went to Duke Fox News typ like
00:04:53
Laur Ingram went to
00:04:55
Dartmouth and they represent the
00:04:57
educated Elite and the key factor of the
00:05:00
educated
00:05:01
Elite is that they're not
00:05:03
pro-conservative they're
00:05:06
anti-left they don't have a positive
00:05:08
Vision conservative vision for society
00:05:10
they just want to destroy the
00:05:11
institutions that the left now
00:05:14
dominates and this means in the first
00:05:16
place they're astoundingly
00:05:19
incompetent I have a lot of sympathy
00:05:21
with what drove people to vote for Trump
00:05:24
but I I'm telling you as someone who's
00:05:25
on the front row to what's happening do
00:05:27
not hit your wagon to that star
00:05:31
thank you you're supposed to
00:05:33
boo P heith gave away our bargaining
00:05:37
chips with Putin before we even had
00:05:39
negotiations Elon Musk has 25y olds
00:05:43
firing people who were controlling our
00:05:45
nuclear
00:05:46
codes it's like Sam bankman freed got
00:05:49
control of our Nu nuclear
00:05:52
Arsenal second Elite narcissism causes
00:05:56
them to eviscerate every belief system
00:05:59
they touch
00:06:00
conservatives believe in healthy
00:06:01
societies are built on healthy
00:06:03
institutions they're an
00:06:04
anti-institutional
00:06:06
conservatives believe in steady and
00:06:08
gradual change Edmond Burke their
00:06:10
disruption conservatives believe in
00:06:12
constitutional government Donald Trump
00:06:15
says I alone can fix this conservatives
00:06:18
believe in moral
00:06:19
Norms they're destroying moral Norms
00:06:22
conser the other belief system that they
00:06:24
are destroying us judeo-christian
00:06:27
Faith judeo Christ faith is based
00:06:31
on service to the poor service to the
00:06:34
Immigrant service to the stranger I went
00:06:37
to numibia South Africa throughout the
00:06:39
1990s and 2000s and I watched people die
00:06:42
of AIDS then I went back with my friend
00:06:45
Mike
00:06:45
Gerson and I saw those 25 million lives
00:06:48
saved I saw people living lives of
00:06:50
dignity and so what's the first thing
00:06:52
Donald Trump did he eviscerated that
00:06:55
program my friends in America are
00:06:58
conservative evangelicals in government
00:07:01
who want to fight sex trafficking
00:07:04
poverty they want to preserve National
00:07:06
Security Donald Trump is declaring war
00:07:08
on those
00:07:10
Christians so
00:07:13
don't so I've describ three
00:07:16
different things we educated Elites
00:07:19
brought
00:07:20
you we destroy the social fabric through
00:07:24
inequality we destroyed the moral fabric
00:07:27
through privatizing morality and we
00:07:30
destroyed the institutional fabric
00:07:32
what's happening right now how can we
00:07:34
come back well we already
00:07:37
are I often ask people tell me about a
00:07:39
time that made you who you are as a
00:07:41
human
00:07:42
being and they never say I want a
00:07:45
fantastic vacation in Hawaii they never
00:07:46
say that they say I went through a
00:07:49
really hard time the death of someone
00:07:51
the loss of someone moving away from
00:07:53
home entering a new
00:07:55
vocation Paul tiik the Theologian said
00:07:57
those moments of suffering interrupt
00:08:00
your life and they remind you you're not
00:08:01
the person you thought they were they
00:08:03
carve through the floor of your basement
00:08:05
of your soul and they reveal a cavity
00:08:07
below and they carve through that floor
00:08:09
and they reveal a cavity Below in
00:08:11
moments of suffering you see yourself in
00:08:13
a more Deep Way than you ever did before
00:08:16
and in those moments of suffering you
00:08:18
can either be broken or you can be
00:08:20
broken open and people who are
00:08:23
transformed decide I'm going to be
00:08:24
broken open and Nations that are going
00:08:27
to be transformed by moments of
00:08:28
suffering say we're going to be broken
00:08:31
open we've been through periods of
00:08:34
national crisis
00:08:35
before across the world Nations have
00:08:38
constantly hit a spiritual and cultural
00:08:41
crisis and then revived this country
00:08:44
between 1820 and 1848 I was here in the
00:08:47
1980s Britain recovered in the 1980s
00:08:50
Australia in the 1970s Germany and Japan
00:08:53
after World War II South Korea in the
00:08:55
1980s Rwanda after 1994 Chile in the
00:08:58
1990s
00:09:00
my own country we've done this again and
00:09:02
again we've grown not through a happy
00:09:04
merry ride we've grown through a process
00:09:07
of rupture and repair when society and
00:09:10
culture is in crisis and we figure it
00:09:14
out 1770s the Old Colonial order had to
00:09:17
go sorry
00:09:20
1830s the East Coast Elite had too much
00:09:22
power Andrew Jackson brought an era of
00:09:24
populism 1860s the slavery order had to
00:09:26
go Abraham Lincoln brought forth
00:09:28
National Redemption
00:09:30
1890s we had failed at industrialization
00:09:33
we had a Civic Renaissance of all these
00:09:35
Civic organizations that filled in the
00:09:37
whole and created a sane Society 1960s
00:09:40
the conformist culture of the 1950s had
00:09:42
to
00:09:43
go and we had the changes that came
00:09:45
there the temptation of those who don't
00:09:47
read history is to think this time is
00:09:49
different we're in another period of
00:09:51
rupture and
00:09:52
repair we have spiritual resources I'm a
00:09:55
conservative I believe the that we are
00:09:58
inheritors of a great spiritual Legacy
00:10:00
what Michael Oak called the great
00:10:02
conversation we have the voice of
00:10:04
Genesis that we're all made in God's
00:10:06
image that's the foundation of democracy
00:10:09
we have the voice of Exodus that we
00:10:11
wander through the Wilderness and we
00:10:13
eventually get to the promised land we
00:10:15
have the voice of Jesus even if you're
00:10:16
not Christian blessed are the meek
00:10:18
blessed are the poor in spirit that's a
00:10:20
source of great strength in my country
00:10:23
we have the voice of Alexander Hamilton
00:10:25
poor boys and girls should rise and
00:10:26
succeed we have the voice of Edmund
00:10:28
Burke that we should be modest about
00:10:30
what we can know because culture is
00:10:32
really complicated and we should operate
00:10:34
on society the way we would operate on
00:10:35
our father gradually and carefully we
00:10:39
have the joy voice of John Stewart Mill
00:10:42
we value diversity and pluralism because
00:10:44
it leads to what he called adventures in
00:10:48
living when you have a spiritual moral
00:10:50
and relational crisis the job is to
00:10:52
shift the
00:10:54
culture and we are moving I think from a
00:10:57
hyper individualistic culture the last
00:10:59
years toward a communal culture I didn't
00:11:02
like the social justice movement but it
00:11:04
was an attempt to find Community I'm not
00:11:06
particularly a big fan of Maga but it's
00:11:08
an attempt to find Community cultur
00:11:11
change is about a shifting of the heart
00:11:14
it's a Prov providing new answers to the
00:11:16
question how should I live my life it's
00:11:19
about soulcraft and it isn't done the
00:11:22
way you do political
00:11:24
change culture change Works differently
00:11:26
it's done as Walter batet put it if you
00:11:29
want to Wi people over enjoy the things
00:11:32
that conservatives
00:11:34
enjoy culture changes when a creative
00:11:37
minority find a beautiful way to live
00:11:40
culture changes when a small group of
00:11:41
people find a better way to live and the
00:11:44
rest of us copy that's the story of the
00:11:47
early
00:11:51
church it's the story of the clam sect
00:11:54
they weren't my cup of tea but it's a
00:11:56
story of
00:11:56
Bloomsbury I was mentored by William F
00:11:59
Buckley it's a story of the conservative
00:12:00
movement in America culture changes on a
00:12:03
personal
00:12:04
level when we relate to each
00:12:07
other with attentive and generous gaze
00:12:10
Simone VY said attention is the purest
00:12:13
form of
00:12:14
generosity culture changes on a
00:12:16
spiritual level tselot said you can't
00:12:19
create a system so perfect that the
00:12:21
people in it don't have to be good it's
00:12:23
when you put moral formation at the
00:12:25
center of your society and finally it
00:12:27
happens at the Civic level
00:12:29
when a thousand voices and a thousand
00:12:31
different organizations create Civic
00:12:36
institutions that provide healing and
00:12:38
relationship in society that's how
00:12:41
culture changes I was at a bar about two
00:12:43
months after October 7th and if you had
00:12:47
seen me there you would have thought sad
00:12:50
Guy drinking
00:12:51
alone I call it
00:12:55
reporting so I'm scrolling through
00:12:57
Twitter and it has all these brutal
00:12:59
images from the Middle East but I come
00:13:01
across a video of James
00:13:04
Baldwin and he says you know there isn't
00:13:08
as much Humanity as one would like but
00:13:11
there's
00:13:12
enough and what you've got to remember
00:13:15
is that when you walk down the street
00:13:16
every person you meet you could be that
00:13:18
person that could be you you could be
00:13:20
that monster you could be that Saint you
00:13:23
could and you have to decide who you're
00:13:24
going to be now James Baldwin was
00:13:27
treated shabbily by my Society
00:13:29
because of his race and other things but
00:13:32
he had a right to be
00:13:34
bitter but even in that
00:13:36
circumstance he uttered the ultimate
00:13:38
humanist statement you could be that
00:13:40
person that person could be you and the
00:13:43
phrase that rang in my head when I heard
00:13:44
that was defiant
00:13:47
humanism that even in harsh and brutal
00:13:49
times were called upon to see each other
00:13:53
in the fullest deepest and most
00:13:55
respectful way that God imagined that
00:13:58
they would be seen thank you very much
