The War on Sex Discrimination / Scott Yenor

On this episode of The Right Stuff, Pastor Jared Longshore is joined by Scott Yenor to discuss how the end of sex segregated schools like VMI (Virginia Military Institute) disrupted the gender roles.

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Every publicly funded single-sex school has to show that it serves gender neutral goals like this. So you have to be able to say separating the sacks is important for a gender neutral goal. The standards are horrible. Yeah, the horrible standards. Welcome to the right stuff everyone. Today I have the privilege of speaking with my friend Scott Yinner. Scott, we've had several discussions before but for folks that are tuning in just to this interview that don't know about you yet. Scott Yinner is the director of the Kenneth B Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation. A Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institutes Center for the American Way of Life and a professor of political science at Boise State. And so thanks for joining me today. Thanks. I hope to have fewer titles someday. You know, when you're president in the United States, they just say you're president in the United States. They don't list all of your subordinate titles. There you go. Going from the generalist all the way to, you know, eventually president. So you're here in Moscow to do several things. You just did the Hale Institute event last night. You have Disputati at New St. Andrews College later on this afternoon. How did the Hale Institute event go? Yeah, I talked about my VMI report at the Hale Institute last night. Just gave a history of how VMI was changed from a male only school to a sexually integrated school and what effects that had on the school. And I think it went well. I tried to entertain and inform and it seemed to be well received. Nice. Well, that's the topic I wanted to get into today. I think you introduced me to the Virginia Military Institute issue in your piece from a good while back compulsory feminism, which I've used in class to kind of demonstrate this new constitution idea and the problem with the way that we're thinking of sex in our law and our policy and education. So I was really glad to see that you did a deeper dive. And you have recently, say, published pieces in several different places. One was the American Mind. But then the full report came out here, the Claremont Institute, which is called Provocations. It's like little books that Claremont does. Okay. All right. So Provocations number eight, this one, not enough good men, gender integration and the collapse of the Virginia Military Institute. So for those who are unfamiliar, can you just set it in context? What was the Virginia Military Institute? I mean, no, it's still around now. But what was it back in the day and what happened to it? Yeah. I mean, it was established in 1839 and it was a male only military institute that was preparing people to serve in the United States military and the Virginia militia then. And it had almost immediately a very distinctive approach, kind of like late Marines. It was called the Adversative Method. So you'd come and you'd face adversity, imposed adversity, getting up really early, sleeping at odd times, being challenged, having your manhood challenged by upper classmen who really led the drills and created a kind of ethos of both fraternity and self-government. Because the kids really were in charge, the cadets, I should say, were really in charge of the ethos of the place. They had rigorous physical standards when stopwatches came into being, you had to be able to run miles under a certain time and lift a certain amount of weight in order to continue. And it also had governing document that was written by the cadets and enforced by the cadets called the Code of a Gentlemen, where they put forward a moral code of what people were supposed to act like while cadets and to shape them as men that explicitly put what Virginia military institute was doing in the context of Western civilization. So in the footsteps of the crusaders and the knights is what the cadet of VMI was, serving the weak, protecting the weak and serving the public. And so it was just an old, old-fashioned school. But it was really preparing men to live lives of manly honor, martial valor, public service, and leadership. And I'm not going to say it existed without change, initially, and probably for the first 100 years, the only, more than that, the only people who would teach at VMI were graduates of VMI. They weren't looking for PhDs from Harvard or anything like that to teach there. Eventually, they loosened it up and hired people who were only graduates of West Point and things like that. But it existed, the Code of the Gentlemen existed, the Adversative Method existed, the self-government of the students existed until 1996. Now, before 1996, did you say Stonewall Jackson? Stonewall Jackson was a faculty member at VMI and went from VMI into the Confederate military. I'm a Yankee, so I got on consider as much of a hero as others. But I do understand a certain greatness of Stonewall Jackson. George Marshall was a graduate at the turn of the century, I think 1901. George Schultz, Ronald Reagan Secretary of State, was a graduate. There's lots of famous like Marines. There was a huge pipeline from VMI into the United States military for the World Wars. And before that, like into the Confederate military during the Civil War. So it was like, we couldn't find the exact numbers for this, but just about everyone graduated became some sort of officer in the United States military in one of the branches. So it was very successful at producing the kind of leaders that you want in a democratic society. And given the way the place was run, it wasn't run by bureaucrats or managers, it was the ethos of the place was run by the students. So it's very unique and very unlike anything that would happen today. And that culture was destroyed by the integration of the place, actually after the United States versus Virginia case in 1996. Okay, so let's go to that case. 1996. Before that time, it was clearly only for men. It was training men to, for Marshall Valor, all of that kind of stuff. What events led to this particular case? Yeah, so the Supreme Court case is in 1996, but the case begins in 1990. So some female asked for admission to the schools. She was denied, took it to the United States attorney general who took the case. It was George H. W. Bush's attorney general, Richard Thornberg, agreed to take the case and started pursuing hounding really of the MI. And the claim was that it was practicing sex discrimination, which it was, I mean, it wasn't admitting women, that's a form of discrimination. And therefore that it runs up against, in this case, they said the equal protection clause, but they had other claims that they could have made. But the hope of the Bush administration was to put this in terms of the constitutional law, instead of just the civil rights law. So it would be less changeable. So like they went for the whole enchilada. And since the claim was sex discrimination, VMI or in Virginia was forced to prove that there's discrimination, but the discrimination is substantially related to an important government objective. This is from the civil rights legislation. Yes. Yeah, that's from equal protection, you know, jurisprudence. So they'd asked the same question under civil rights legislation. It could, as I say, could have been brought up under Title 9. It could have been brought up under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but it was brought up to, it was making, they made a bigger claim that it was an equal protection violation. And VMI did very well. So it had to prove once again, substantially related to an important government objective. And VMI did well in the lower courts they won. And the lower courts just basically said, look, not letting women in is necessary to maintain the adversity of method. And the physical standards and the code of manly honor that runs the place. If you admit them, you'll ruin that. And it's all right to have a school dedicated to that because it fosters educational diversity in the state of Virginia. That was the argument of VMI. That was the argument of Virginia. Yeah. And so VMI was like the Attorney General of Virginia was kind of in charge of defending. Was there any sense that we have to keep the University of Method because we're training warriors. And that's a government, our governmental interests would be to like be have a strong military. No, they would not be allowed to say that because that would imply that women can't be warriors. It's part of like we need to talk about that eventually just laying out the history. So if you think about it, let's just talk about it now. Virginia is in the situation where they can't really make the argument for why the school exists. The argument for why the school exists is we want an institution dedicated to manly honor martial valor and manly leadership in the society. You want a military that can kill people well? Yeah. And but they're really not allowed to say that because the goal of the school then would be sacked suggesting that men and women have somewhat different destinies. And like the way that the court interprets equal protection, the civil rights ideology is that you can't say men and women have different destinies that would be a stereotype. So Virginia has to argue in different boxes. They have to say, oh, separating the sexes will promote educational excellence or separating the sexes will lead to higher test scores or separating the sexes will foster educational diversity. And they can kind of prove that but like that's not why the school exists. The school exists for actually sexed reasons. So there's a kind of fighting with one hand tied behind your back or shadow boxing that is involved in the legal argument. You're not really allowed to make the moral argument that it's all right for government institutions or institutions generally to say that men and women could have somewhat at least different destinies from one another and institutions should prepare them for those different destinies. So VMI was always fighting on this kind of fake turf in order to defend itself. But they were winning in the lower courts and some of the lower courts suggested you know you'd have a stronger case, Virginia, you'd have a stronger case if you had a female school that was substantially similar to VMI. And so Virginia like they were on the horns of a dilemma because if they made a whole new institution for women, they knew that they wouldn't have enough to staff it and make it profitable. So it couldn't be substantially similar. But if they if they like made a program for women warriors and they could house it at a different university, but that wouldn't be its own university and therefore also wouldn't be substantially similar. So how do you like make something substantial to some of this, but they did. They made something called the Virginia Women's Leadership Institute. That's not exactly what it was, but it was but it was something like that. And it had a Rotsie program. It was on Mary Baldwin College, which was a kind of nearby female only school. And they said, look, this is substantially similar. And once again, like they weren't allowed to say that men it would be all right for men and women to have different destinies, at least some want and to have public institutions point them to those destinies or embody those destinies. Rather they have to have we have to have substantially similar things because men and women have to have the same destinies. And so when the case goes to the Supreme Court, both of these issues, the issue of the important government objectives being served by the discrimination and whether the women's institute that was established was substantially similar to VMI are like the main issues. But in reality, the main issue is is it all right for institutions to have different objectives for men and women like different outcomes? And so there's this sense in the case that the main thing is never the main thing. So they go to the Supreme Court in 1996, the case is argued and on a 7-1 decision, the Supreme Court holds that it's not legitimate. And they say that there is no government objective that is served by this important government objective and that the women's institute is not substantially similar. And I think there's a kind of real logic to what the court argues. They say because you cannot say that men and women have different objectives in life or somewhat different destinies, at least, all of your science that shows that men and women like should be separated for the purposes of achieving gender neutral goals, that just might be a remnant of an old society that thought men and women were different fundamentally and should have fundamentally different like approaches. So the idea that there's different goals for men and women as a stereotype and the idea that men and women have different capabilities, that might be a stereotype too. So what Ruth Bader Ginsburg argues in her majority opinion is that VMI is not going to change if you integrate women. It's going to be the same school and it's just your benigned misogyny that prevents you from seeing that women aren't going to change the place fundamentally. And she wins out, seven justices go with her, and the next year VMI has a choice. Do we integrate? Do we close down or do we go private? And on a 9-8 decision, the Board of Visitors, the governing body of VMI decides to integrate. And so you get a new VMI. 96 or 91? 96 is when the case was, but the whole case started in 90. So, well, let's just go to what happened. So what happened to VMI since it integrated back in 96? Yeah. So I look at this as like a perfect experiment. Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a claim as to what would happen if they integrated the place sexually and it wouldn't change. And so we can look at it. There's a like a beginning point. And then there's the experience of 30 years. We have some time. And maybe 30 years enough to determine whether it changed. And then if she's wrong, well, doesn't that mean that the case is wrong? And if the case is wrong, doesn't that mean it could be revisited? So this is the logic for why I wanted to approach this case. And it's not going to surprise anyone that the place has changed fundamentally. It very quickly changed the physical standards for like what it takes to be an acceptable cadet when it comes to running times and lifting times because if you have a rule and the women can't pass the rule, you have to change the rule. You know, initially everyone got crew cuts shared. Everyone got a crew cut. And because all people are supposed to be the same treated like dogs. But eventually like the lady cadets like didn't like the crew cuts. And you know what it means, you know, so they asked for like Bobby hair. And then I'm told that now you can have hair down shoulder length hair like below the shoulder blade length hair at VMI. And of course, when there's only a few women there, the women are not very happy like there's not a gaggle around. So you need to maybe change admission standards or start targeting admissions to recruit more in. The police was known for not having privacy a very spartan existence because the men were surveilling one another. Of course, when you add women, now you have to add privacy. And the place existed from 1839 to 1996. No doors would be locked after soon after the door started to be locked in order to protect people. And the code of a gentleman that you know, situated the school in the line with the crusaders and the knights. Well, the code of a gentleman that's kind of sexist, don't you think? So that was changed not by the students, but by the administration. I've actually got that here. So a little taste of it. You write about that in your piece. I won't read the whole thing because it's kind of long, but a gentleman is what it used to be. It does not discuss his family affairs in public or with acquaintances. Does not speak more than casually about his girlfriend. Does not go to a lady's house if he is affected by alcohol. He is temperate in the use of alcohol. Does not lose his temper nor exhibit anger, fear, hate, embarrassment, ardor or hilarity in public. And he goes on and on. Does not hail a lady from a club window. A gentleman never discusses the merits or demerits of a lady. It doesn't lick the boots of those above nor kick the face of those below him on the social ladder. So that's a little taste of what it used to be. And then you say it got dumbed down. It went into the hands of the administration. You write the newest code grammatically incorrect, but politically correct in the extreme ends with vague platitudes about ill-defined trendy terms. Here it is. A VMI could is what it is now. VMI cadet is a well-mannered respectful and properly presented individual who holds themselves and others accountable for their actions and words as a valued member of the core. VMI standards are high for a meaningful purpose to produce leaders of character, etc. It never defines what character is. It never defines what the goals of leadership are. There's lots of inclusive language in the thing. And it's remarkably boring. I would point out here one of the reasons we need to recover these sext. These sext purposes is, again, any kind of feminist person that listens, thinks this is like anti-woman. Now it's called, we actually care about particular things. God made particular things. And when you lean into the particularity, you have something of interest. You have culture. You have nations. You have homes. And when you decide to destroy those and you abstract everything, you get oatmeal, boring. No one's interested. Yeah. I mean, I agree with that. The old code was aimed at producing a stoical man. And the new code is aimed at producing a sensitive man. And those are very different goals. And a desensitized woman, I would say. And a what? And a desensitized woman. Yeah. Like what? Yeah, she's supposed to be sensitive. And even if she is in this vanilla somewhat privatized, she's still in like a military institute, which means she is being desensitized. So yeah. So that fundamentally changed. But it also was put in the hands of the administration to implement it. So it used to be that the cadets could demand that another cadet say the code of the gentleman recite it. And if not, like you're going to be doing some sort of mustering on the quad overnight. And now it's in the hand of basically the title line office or the DEI office or the dean of students who wrote it and who enforce it. So the whole self-government project that the place used to represent has been fundamentally undermined and replaced with kind of managerial aspect. Of course, immediately after this, the place went woke. You know, a DEI office was established. They hired the first black leader of the place. Right after the Floyd riots, they had a Me Too episode. They did like the hired a law firm to come and study the place. And Shazam, they found all the things that law firms find when they want to find the things that law firms are going to find. And they found races and they found sexes and they found homophobia all over the place. And even the numbers really weren't that impressive. VMI ended up not being that much different from any other school or worse than any other school. And so like the place has been fundamentally altered in the wake of US versus Virginia. And we just drew on publicly available stuff. Public records requests, as I understand it, were submitted to VMI. And we didn't get good answers. We were interested in how much of the student body ended up going onto the military. Our guess is that the number is way down from what it was historically and certainly what it was before 1996, where it was like a fruitful source of military leaders. And but we, like, so I think subsequent, like if there's any ever any litigation again on the case, they could uncover that in ways that just, you know, mere records or quests couldn't, couldn't do. Okay. Now given the setup, let's go back and talk a little bit about the case. What kind of questions did VMI have to answer? And what were the real questions? Yeah, I mean, let's go back to that because I think this is one of the more interesting things. In these legal cases, you end up like conducting the case in the shadow land, where VMI was trying to show that the discrimination of its admissions policies were substantially related to an important government objective. And those objectives could be anything, like, but they had to be gender neutral objectives. It couldn't be best military possible. Maybe it could be the best. It's so ridiculous to me that that wouldn't be it could be the best military possible. But it would that wouldn't be a reason to exclude women. You'd have to be able to show that the discrimination, I mean, I'm just like giving you the logic of it. All right. The important government objectives served by a college are things like higher test scores, better professional entry into medical schools and law schools, higher graduation rates, those standards were horrible. Yeah, those are horrible standards. That's I mean, that's an interesting line. So every single sex publicly funded single sex school has to show that it serves gender neutral goals like this. So the idea that you're promoting fraternity or manly honor is ruled out of bounds initially in the legal framework. So like we think men need friends and they'll learn how to do it when they're around other guys. But when you add women to the mix, it actually complicates the ability to form friendships. And we think that for women. And why can't we think that for men? That cannot be a goal because it's not gender neutral. So VMI and every single sex school that has public money has to argue for gender neutral goals. So you have to be able to say separating the sex is important for a gender neutral goal. How many standards are upholding that? How many legal standards are upholding that principle that we have to dismantle? You mean like how many cases or how many laws have to be changed around the field in order to get out of that scenario? Any law that bans discrimination? So the 64 civil rights legislation? Yeah, the title nine I think is the big one on sex discrimination. But then you also have the equal protection problem because of US versus Virginia. So a lot of like a new and old like a return to the old idea of equal protection instead of the new one that is infused with civil rights ideology. And you know title nine stuff would have to be revised in order to in order to like reestablish single sex schools. So this my practical question is where do you recommend we shoot first? Yeah, I mean what what happens now? Well, I think US versus Virginia is the place to shoot first. The strongest legal argument is at the higher education level for state funded single sex schools because because there's so many options in higher education that you really can't say people are being indirectly forced into single sex higher ed like you have to choose to choose it. And so it so I think the and we have US versus Virginia which has been factually refuted. So my belief is that if another state and I think this will happen is happening, establishes a male only military institute that they're going to run into US versus Virginia. And what their case should look like is the factual basis of US versus Virginia shows that it was wrongly decided. Instead it wasn't going to have to change it changed almost immediately and it's a totally different place. So she was wrong. But we should go further like that's the first part that it's legitimate to have institutions have sex objectives like goals. And we can use the boy crisis and the man crisis to prove this like we've been trying co-ed for a long time and the condition of man has continually deteriorated. So having a male only publicly supported space where people are held to high standards and there's rigorous education to where there's both fraternity and self-government is possible more possible in a single sex environment. And so that we can move those objectives into the legal discussion. So I do think that like a direct assault on US versus Virginia is like should be in the cards. It's the best place to start because you've isolated precisely a problematic set of facts for those who would defend the old regime of the civil rights ideology when it comes to sex discrimination. So that's why I wrote it. That's why we went after US versus Virginia because it looks like one of these cases where you can basically show that they were wrong. And since they're wrong there should be a legal campaign to go after. Absolutely. That's a man that's so good. It's not only do you have the history to prove that Ginsburg was just wrong. And it's ongoing. So you still can see the weakness of that institution. It is also the central place somewhat related to a bergophile. The military is the easiest place to see the different purposes of male and female. That the Telos of man, yes there's a general Telos for all humans and then there's particular for the male species and the female species. In the military it's very hard to deny that. I remember seeing the, what was it five years ago? There was this congressional committee that went around considering the viability of drafting women into the military. And there was a lady marine on the panel. And my friend Mark Coppinger philosophy and ethics prof actually taught here at New State Ninjas College. And before that at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, he is on the panel with this at this town hall and the committee is peppering them with questions. And he did a wonderful job showing that basically no nations of the earth, including the atheistic revolutionaries in France and Muslims. No one does this. And then the lady next to him who is the marine said this is actually a very bad idea. I'm assuming she was a non-combat kind of situation. And she said we've run all these tests, mixed sex platoons consistently perform at a lower rate. Women get injured more frequently than men do when they get injured. It takes them longer to recover than it takes men to recover. This is just a very bad idea. And one of the other, I believe it was a trans person of some so I don't know male female, said man, thank you very much. It seems like some people might hear what you've said and they would they would understand you to be saying that men are stronger than women. And everyone just paused. This is like that's exactly what she say. This indeed is the case generally speaking. The nature of these two these two image bearers. So it's so it's so self-evident. In the realm of military that you have the history and the martial function. I think it's a great practical place to push. Yeah and I and I like I agree with everything you said but in a way I want to go beyond it as well because I mean education is about like we'll say constructing identity or like pointing people toward different destinies is how I talk about it in the report. And it's also good like for our institutions to prepare people not just for kind of taking the raw material what they are and making sure that they're that we're harnessing that well enough but also it's just it's good for them to have objectives in mind like this is what we want you to be with that strength and with that speed and with your ability to heal yourself in a different way. So also talking about I mean you mentioned at the T-lose like what the what the end product is going to be from an education institute is is important and so I want to like just emphasize like both of those parts I think should be an element of the legal analysis. Very good. What are the lessons come to mind as you consider this case? So you have it's interesting to game out why VMI played along and this shadow world. So I would I would mention here a lot of what we're doing at New St. Andrews. We actually have a law and politics class that they'll be kind of steep in the tradition but running through basically for me dealing with Burke as opposed to Locke and even Hobbes with the way they're thinking about law itself and dealing some with the coitus' natural law versus this Hugo Grosius the natural law would exist even if God didn't so he's like 1600s takes this natural law tradition to a whole another place and when you said well operating in the legal realm is like working in the shadow world that I hear all Grosius post-grosius I we have to recover what things are and how law should work which means I'm going to be pushing on lawyers I understand I'm very happy for you to go in an argue natural law and know when you're arguing in the courtroom that some people are hearing you speaking in a modern sense as I'm just talking about the opinion pieces that came before the legislation whatever but we actually have to move the over to in such that our lawyers our judges actually do recover this older tradition and say no we're not going to do things that are contrary to nature and if we have made decisions like we did with the VMI case that our contrary to nature we are not going to pretend that that is actually in keeping with order and natural law we have to aim for a day in which lawyers can enter back into the courtroom and argue sensibly reasonably based upon not only previous court cases but also something about the very created order itself yeah no it's it's a huge challenge we talked about this a bit last night um because on the one hand lawyers are to argue zealously on behalf of their clients and that means within the existing legal framework so you have to try to show that the sex discrimination is substantially related to an important government objective well what's an important government objective well we have a list of those and those include higher test scores and higher graduation rates are all gender neutral and while the world is not gender neutral but the legal environment insists that everything be gender neutral and so in order to kind of be viable when you're in front of the court you have to like accept the legal categories that they are foisting upon you and so that's like one part of the perspective and another part which is what I push is that I'd rather have losses worth having than accept the framework and if I'm Virginia I would insist that the list of important government objectives that they have is an incomplete list that needs to include like things that aren't gender neutral and uh and that blows up the the framework and that's where nature speaks and uh both the nature as the raw material of the beings and nature is understood as the tea loaths of each of the beings and uh and but you only like can have access to that argument if you understand that the legal frameworks are laying on top of and masking like the moral order and the natural order and that's where education toward that is important for lawyers but it's nowhere in law schools and uh law schools are all positive law the state of the law now and uh so like so where do you get nature and the moral order if you're a lawyer you don't so it has to be gotten outside of normally operating law schools okay let's talk more about that you uh and explain for folks if they go okay you're talking about this natural order in positive law so when you say the whole the whole law school situation throughout the nation wherever you go you're not getting any understanding of what Augustin uh meant with some of his kind of foundational principles of um similar reasons baked into creation and then a a coiness everyone would talk probably more about a coiness with natural law like they're not getting any of that any of those categories what are what do you mean by positive law what's that experience like yeah so when you know I'm not a lawyer I have been been through law school all of this is kind of based on understanding of what happens at law school some of my best friends or attorneys can I say that and I think people often say things like that so I can um and uh and so what you learn in law school is the state of the law so what you learn in law school if you do civil rights law or equal protection law is all of the cases related to what substantially related to an important government objective you learn the origin of where those important government objectives come from so you learn the case that says educational diversity is an important government objective that can be served by an institution and you kind of understand what elements make up diversity so you're studying the shadows you're taught the shadows and because you're being prepared to zealously advocate for your clients so you're taught the frameworks within which you operate and within which you can zealously advocate for your clients just like if you're an obscenity lawyer if like you're a porn lawyer you learn obscenity law which means you learn the decisions that are made and the standards that are put forward in those decisions and then how those standards are applied to every particular case that you can discover so that you you learn the method that's what I call the positive method you learn what positive law is the laws that have been passed by the legislature the uh and as interpreted by judges and members of the judiciary the reality though is well what is an important government objective what is the purpose of education no one asks that question in a legal environment they are a legal training environment they are asked to what is the state of the law on that question so no one says well is preparation for a life of martial valour and manly honor an important objective for education is the cultivation of fraternity an important objective is mastering domesticity an important objective like that's like outside of the contemporary legal understanding or superstructure that exists so legal preparation is very conservative in the sense that it asks what is the category situation right now in this area of law and uh and it's not revolutionary like is it reflective of a Christian moral order a moral order it's not allowed to do that of course all of that stuff is subtly smuggled in so that the important government objectives all end up reflecting some idea of justice or some idea of the advantageous in the good and but you know it masks it and then forces everyone to fight on those on those supposedly neutral grounds okay final question for you as you assess the state of the nation assume your gen XE gen X I am I'm 55 born in 1970 right in the middle right in the middle millennial here I look at Gen Z and I think I like I like the I like the get up you know I like the I like the zeal zoomer seems to be like a good word you know a good description the trump vance thing peat hexf secretary of war um do you think that things are moving in a good direction do you think that we actually could say in our lifetime what do we have however many we have left that we could see not only some real practical wins like I think I'd like to get those quickly personally the ones you're talking about Virginia military institute let's get another military institute but I'm wondering about could we shake off the secular order in the shadows like do you think we could in 10 20 years actually see there's lots of talk about Christian nationalism Hillary Rotten Clinton just wrote a piece in the Atlantic very concerned about some extremist pastors out here in Moscow citing different works I mean this is I think we're dealing with a national conversation do you think in that whole at least legal world not not lawyers necessarily but in that realm that we could actually see arguments being employed that were not grounded solely in the shadows do you see that kind of future or do you go man the system is so thick and heavy that you're gonna have to stretch it out the 50 60 yeah that's a great question I mean I'd look at it in two different ways on on the one hand there is increasing dissatisfaction with the supposedly neutral liberal order that we have there's an increasing recognition that it's propped up by propaganda and that the willful blinders of the legal categories within which we operate are like not allowing anything allowing nature the moral order common sense to express themselves so this came up I think very vividly just recently in the Supreme Court where the trend the transgender case the women the men and women sports case was argued by Idaho solicitor general among others because Idaho is kind of a leader in this and and like they had to deny that there was discrimination involved in this because they were operating within the current legal categories I mean it's just really difficult to make the argument but it's becoming more and more implausible that these categories are an adequate account of any moral order that is that is sustainable and civilized so there are more and more programs on the right not law schools but programs that are extra law school that arise that are there to provide remedial natural law training James Wilson Institute blackstone fellowship within the Alliance to Fetting Freedom NSA's programs in the Hale Institute are three of them that I can name off the top my head but there are others and so I think there's an increasing recognition of the problem of positivism and then another thing that is I think hopeful but complicated is that you know the the Gen Z guys I think more and more of them are kind of woke to these problems and are are at least in a situation where they might do something about it I haven't seen that translate over much into a willingness to enter the legal profession I think but I think the raw material is there for it to happen and they are needs to be more encouragement to be ambitious instead of retreating so I'd like to see more people like who go to Hillsdale or maybe NSA leave the fields where they were kind of prepared Hillsdale and Moscow and try to enter the halls of power by going to elite law schools and taking what they know from their education and having it changed the legal framework haven't seen as much of that as I was like I think we could hope but maybe this is just the beginning okay very good Scott thanks again for joining me for this conversation yeah it was pleasure to be here