Peace vs. Big Government - In The Tank #507

Just because a war is abroad—and between countries other than your own—doesn’t mean it won’t have impacts at home. In the USA, history shows that U.S. intervention in foreign wars increases federal intervention in our everyday lives; constant involvement in wars has led to much of the creeping expansion of our government over time. The whole world seems to be watching as Trump attempts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. We’ll talk about why it’s good for domestic freedom that Trump is resisting getting the U.S. directly into the war.

On UNHINGED, Loudoun County schools are once again in the news—this time for suspending boys who complained about a girl in their locker room. Also, bank executives are beginning to point the finger at the Obama and Biden administrations for debanking conservatives, and some college students have apparently been exaggerating their progressive bona fides to keep attention off themselves in school.

The Heartland Institute’s Linnea Lueken, Jim Lakely, and S.T. Karnick will discuss all of this and more on Episode #507 of the In The Tank Podcast. Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET every Friday on YouTube and Rumble and jump into the live chat!

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Creators and Guests

Host

Jim Lakely

Jim Lakely is the Vice President and Director of Communications of The Heartland Institute.

Host

Linnea Lueken

Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. Before joining Heartland, Linnea was a petroleum engineer on an offshore drilling rig.

What is In The Tank?

The weekly flagship podcast from The Heartland Institute features in-depth policy discussions connected to current news. Host Donald Kendal leads the discussion with the usual crew of Heartland Institute Vice President Jim Lakely, Socialism Research Center “Commissar” Justin Haskins, Editorial Director Chris Talgo, and others at this national free-market think tank. The entertaining and informative discussions often hit topics such as the environment, energy policy, Big Tech censorship, the troubling rise of socialism, globalism, health care, education, that state of freedom in America and around the world, and much more.

This podcast is also available as part of the Heartland Daily Podcast, the “firehose” of all the organization’s podcasts that take deep and entertaining dives into public policy.

Linea Lueken: 00:03

Alright. We are now live. Welcome to the show, everyone. American history has shown that just because a war is foreign doesn't mean it won't have impacts on your life here when our government gets involved over there. Trump seems to understand this, which is why he's trying hard to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia.

Linea Lueken: 00:20

Two boys were suspended from a Loudoun County school, yes, that one, for complaining about a girl in their locker room. And banking executives are now saying that they were pressured to debank conservatives by the Obama Obama and Biden administrations. And it appears that some students at universities feel the need to exaggerate their liberalism on campus in order to avoid being targeted, which is a surprise to nobody. But it's interesting that we're doing studies about it now. We are going to talk about all of this and more in episode 507 of the In the Tank podcast.

Linea Lueken: 01:26

Alright. Welcome to the In the Tank podcast, everyone. I am Lynea Luken, your host. We also have Jim Lakeley, vice president of the Heartland Institute, and we have Sam Karnik, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute. Now, guys, to open up here, we usually do a little chitchat at the top of the video.

Linea Lueken: 01:42

I wanna get your thoughts on this. What do you think about changing In The Tank's name to In The Now since everybody is rebranding at the moment?

S.T. Karnick: 01:54

That's perfect. We'll have to change our ideology, I suppose.

Linea Lueken: 01:58

Yeah. No.

Jim Lakely: 01:59

We are. Oh, for people who are wondering what that what that reference was in Mirth, it was that. You may have seen it this week that MSNBC, they're being they're being sold off by Comcast NBC. In fact, Comcast is selling off a lot of their cable properties. MSNBC is probably the least attractive one.

Jim Lakely: 02:19

So they are going to be cutting all ties to NBC News, including the NBC name, and so they're changing their name to MS Now, which it could be BS Now because that's what it is currently. So I don't know why they don't change it to that, but it's, yeah, quite humorous. And we were kicking this around in the in in chats here at the Harliss this week. And I don't know. I put the over under on the k on the channel as it will now exist.

Jim Lakely: 02:48

And MS now was gonna stand for my source news opinion and the world. So great. That's really, really super clever. I don't even I think AI could definitely come up with something better than that and certainly something better than their logo. But, I give that network at most eighteen months of survival before they finally just pull the plug on the whole thing, once it's once it's separated from NBC.

S.T. Karnick: 03:14

It really is interesting how NBC is trying to get rid of the stink of MSNBC because that's what this amounts to. They're going to get rid of the NBC, connection to a lot of other networks as well, CNBC. And I think they have a few a few others. I I don't I don't think they have bravo, but, you know, something like that, E or Bravo. And they're trying to get rid of these connections and make themselves into a more coherent kind of name brand that will go under as well.

Linea Lueken: 03:51

Yeah. And people are not too happy about Cracker Barrels rebranding either. A lot of jokes to be made about that one. I think I'll leave it to the audience to make those. Let's see.

Linea Lueken: 04:03

Do you guys remember when they changed the spelling of the SciFi channel's name? Yeah. And how stupid and lame that was?

Jim Lakely: 04:09

Yeah. From All

Linea Lueken: 04:10

of this

Jim Lakely: 04:10

is Yeah. From s c I f I to s y f y. Yeah. One of the worst in the history.

Linea Lueken: 04:19

Minimalism is a scourge. Alright. Anyway, before we get started, guys, if you want to support the show, you can go to heartland.org/inthetank and donate there. Please also click the thumbs up to like the video, and remember that sharing it also helps break through some of that suppression that YouTube has on us. Even just leaving a comment helps us too.

Linea Lueken: 04:38

If you're an audio listener, you can help us out by leaving a nice review on whatever platform you're using. Alright. So let's get right into it with unhinged. Jim? Wow.

Linea Lueken: 05:00

Alright. Great job. Thank you very much.

Jim Lakely: 05:03

We finally got to use my drop for for Unhinged this week. I'm so so happy.

Linea Lueken: 05:08

Alright. So there are some boy students who have been suspended over a girl being in their locker room. This is once again at the Loudoun County School District. It's amazing that they keep popping up on the same kind of issue track. If you remember that awful story from a while back, the same district kept the sexual assault of a girl secret in order to protect their transgender bathroom policy.

Linea Lueken: 05:34

Well, here they are at it again. From ABC seven news, Loudoun County Public Schools will suspend two boys who attend Stonebridge High School because their interactions with a female student who identifies as male and chooses to use the boys locker room at school. Earlier this year, seven news reporter Nick Minnick was the first to report that LCPS launched a title nine investigation into the students after they were recorded on video asking why there was a girl in the boys' locker room. It's it's important to note that the person filming in the locker room was the girl who was a girl who identified as a boy, and the boys were not too pleased with her entering the bathroom. So anyway, the boys were hit with sex based harassment and discrimination claims, which are going to go on their permanent school records.

Linea Lueken: 06:28

One of the kids was, you know, his parents went as far as to take him out of school. So this stuff is just crazy. And it's crazy too that the same school district seems to be sticking to this even though they got so much backlash over the previous incident. Jim, will they learn?

Jim Lakely: 06:50

Yeah. I mean, Loudoun kept had this happen in in Northern Virginia of all places after radical school district policies in Loudoun County basically delivering the governorship to a republican in the last election is is quite something. You know, it's it's funny if a you know, not to be well, I will just come out and say it. This would be different, I suppose, or maybe people would perceive it as differently if a female felt uncomfortable with biological males being in their private spaces. But here it is, boys being uncomfortable with girls being in their private spaces, biological girls, and that's a real thing.

Jim Lakely: 07:37

Look. When is this the fact that this is even happening in in schools to adolescents, and this has been going on for years. I mean, that this trend, this mania is fading, but it's as this story shows, it's not completely gone. These are these wacky, radical adults who are put in charge of our children in public schools and in all public spaces, really, Have they forgotten what it's like to be an awkward, you know, adolescent and teenager? How whether you're a boy or a girl, if you're the between the ages of 12 and 17, that you just feel really weird and and your hormones are are are racing and you're very emotional and you have you know, you're not a confident person for the most part.

Jim Lakely: 08:24

Even the even the most popular kid in school, when you were in school, had these same issues and hang ups and did not want all of these things were uncomfortable. The fact that we have to do this now, we have to stop policies like this or that parents have to fight for the rights of their children to not be in the same spaces, you know, either in bathrooms or locker rooms with people of the opposite sex and, you know, not gender, but sex is insane. Donnie and I have talked about this, who who guest hosted for for last week. We talked about this in the office a lot, and it's that, you know, things are going back to normal. The normies are taking back over the world and our politics and our culture.

Jim Lakely: 09:10

And another way to look at it is that nature is healing itself. That the only way these things, these radical policies are sustainable is if these radical leftists remain in power, but more than that, that normies feel feel like they can't fight it because they can't win, because they think they don't have any power. What we're learning over the last just gosh. The election was not even a year ago. What we're learning over just the last several months is that the power of the majority, not to oppress, you know, smaller groups of the minority, but just to enforce traditional social norms that exist for reasons, for really good reasons, That that power exists, and we're finally seeing it exercise.

Jim Lakely: 09:56

And it's a very good thing. Shame on this story even showing up in Loudoun County of all.

Linea Lueken: 10:04

Absolutely. And, Sam, do you have anything that you wanted to throw in on our unhinged segment today? Or it is this subject actually relates to what we're gonna talk about last today. So we will kind of loop back to it. But what you got?

S.T. Karnick: 10:19

Jim did a great job of sort of characterizing the situation. I would just say that one thing that's really important to recognize here is that this is a government organization. These schools are run by the government, and so they feel that they can do whatever they want. And that's the real problem. We've we've definitely have to get school choice in this country, and the Trump administration has made some moves in that direction, but it's basically gotta happen on the state level.

S.T. Karnick: 10:51

We we're having success all across the country in getting more school choice. But the the number of of, the numbers of children that that are being able to take advantage, of the, the options is not as high as it needs to be. Honestly, we really need to get rid of the government schools altogether in my view. All schools should be independently, managed and owned. And, if you if the government is going to put money into them, it should be by giving it to the the parents to bring to a school and then leave it alone.

S.T. Karnick: 11:33

We're going to see in all the issues, today that it's they all seem to empower the government, and it's always used in a corrupt way. So this they're trying to make young men and young women feel powerless. And in the case of these two boys, it's that sent a message to everybody.

Jim Lakely: 12:00

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Jim Lakely: 12:52

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Jim Lakely: 13:21

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Linea Lueken: 13:30

Okay. So the yeah. No. And you're absolutely right there. And you guys, we are going to do something to our audience here.

Linea Lueken: 13:36

We're gonna do something a little bit different this week. We are going to hit the main topic first to see how that goes for a time. So I don't know if you can hear me when I'm not on screen. What we are going to be looking at is how war leads to government overreach. Last week and into this week, most of you guys know, Trump met with Ukraine President Zelenskyy and Russian President Putin to try to begin negotiations to end the war.

Linea Lueken: 14:12

He also met with other European leaders in a way that was very funny, I thought, to solidify his position with all of them. It was pretty amazing all around. Zelensky actually wore a suit this time, and Putin was treated to a vaguely threatening bomber flyby. So that was pretty fun. The epic times put together a good article on takeaways from the meetings, which I definitely recommend.

Linea Lueken: 14:38

I think it's just titled six takeaways from the Trump Putin Zelensky meeting. So the first highlight that that epic looks at is Trump said The United States would help Europe with security guarantees for Ukraine. The exact nature of the security guarantees remains open, but the Trump administration offered some clues that met with a positive perception from Europeans. Article five like protections might have to be achieved alongside a promise to keep Ukraine out of NATO itself. Ukraine's interest in joining the organization is what drove Russian concerns ahead of its invasion by the neighboring country.

Linea Lueken: 15:16

So the meeting was certainly friendlier than the last time Zelensky was in the Oval Office. Epic Times also says that there might not be any prerequisite ceasefire for the peace deal, and that there might be some territory swaps involved. But the Ukraine And Russian War itself is not really the main point of this segment that we're discussing today here. The main point is why for domestic benefit, this thing should end and that The United States should be getting out of it entirely as soon as possible. So Sam, you brought an article to our attention from the Independent, which was really good.

Linea Lueken: 15:54

It was it's called How War Amplified Federal Power in the Twentieth Century. I'm just gonna read a little bit more and then I'll hand it to you, Sam. And that article opens with, after surveying the Western world in the past six centuries, Bruce Porter concluded a government at war is a juggernaut of centralization determined to crush any internal opposition that impedes the mobilization of militarily vital resources. This centralizing tendency of war has made the rise of the state throughout much of history a disaster for human liberty and rights. As a cause of the development of big government in The United States, however, war seldom receives its due.

Linea Lueken: 16:33

So now this being a Heartland Institute podcast, I am absolutely sure that we could all take the entire hour talking about Woodrow Wilson alone. But we don't have time for that. So, Sam, what would your elevator pitch be on this concept here?

S.T. Karnick: 16:52

I love the way you put that question. Well, my elevator pitch would be that it almost seems sometimes that the purpose of war is to expand government. Because the outcomes of wars, especially wars that The United States has been involved in over the past century or so, are always ambiguous at best, if not just basically disastrous. But the real outcome of war that is permanent, that does last, is the expansion of government. And as our viewers will know from history, but also if you take a look at that article at Independent Institute, you'll see that after World War I, well, leading up to World War I, the progressive movement had not actually made that much progress in centralizing government in The United States and and creating an expertocracy.

S.T. Karnick: 17:49

But by in World War one, they they did that, But then they got voted out of office because of all the horrible things that had occurred during that time. And the Republicans came in and the great president Warren G. Harding actually solved a horrific depression that lasted only a few months, by cutting federal spending radically and and, eliminating federal debt. So, what what happened then was that a lot of those things went away. But then we had another, disaster, which was the, stock market crash, which would was would have been easy easy to fix.

S.T. Karnick: 18:31

But instead, what they the the government used this expansive approach again. Same thing during World War two. Same thing during the Cold War. Same thing right up through to the the the Patriot Act in the Iraq War and Afghanistan War. So all this that's been going on, the one thing that you get is the expansion of government.

S.T. Karnick: 18:53

Now did any of these wars really work out the way they were supposed to? The Great War slash World War one ended up bringing on a depression in The United States and and much of the rest of the world and brought on World War II. There's simply no question about that. So that was a catastrophe. World War II went right into the Cold War.

S.T. Karnick: 19:16

The Cold War went right into finally the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But one wonders if that would have happened faster if The United States had been more diligent in building our own economy and building our own, respect for individual rights. So again, now the Patriot Act, what a horrible, horrible thing that was. So you see that war just expands government. That's the one thing it does effectively.

S.T. Karnick: 19:48

The rest of it, all all these wars are supposed to end all wars or at least end, bring peace to a certain region or or or something of the sort. Trump has the right idea in saying, let's just stop these darn wars in the first place.

Linea Lueken: 20:01

Yeah. And I imagine, you know, we don't even kind of the the standard approach to this discussion is to go all the way back to at least World War one, if not earlier. I mean, government expansion happened during the civil war. It happened during the war of eighteen twelve, but those were at least local. But I imagine that you can make the point well enough just looking at the global war on terror.

Linea Lueken: 20:21

Right? I mean, Jim, what you're still muted, but I saw you making I saw you making eyebrow motions.

Jim Lakely: 20:32

Yeah. Yeah. I tend to I tend to wear my my thoughts on my face. Guilty as a guard. Good.

Jim Lakely: 20:41

I also wanna apologize to the to the audience, especially those watching on on YouTube. Andy, our producer, is out on special assignment on for AI purposes and myself, I screwed it up. It's So on it's on me. Julie's back there helping us out and I'm not making it easy on her by screwing things up. So, anyway, putting that aside.

Jim Lakely: 20:59

Sam, as you were talking, I was actually thinking about how war expands government. I mean, that's the thing right there on the sidebar. What was the tax on telephones that Americans were paying a hundred and twenty years after the Mexican was that the Mexican American war? It was supposed to finance?

S.T. Karnick: 21:19

I think it's the Spanish American war.

Jim Lakely: 21:21

Spanish American war. Right. Right. Think we only stopped paying yeah. We only stopped paying a special tax to fund the Spanish American war, like, in 2012 or something like that.

Jim Lakely: 21:32

It was it was absurd. And then yeah. And you rightly point out the, you know, in World War one or or, Lynea, you did, pointed out in World War one that, you know, Woodrow Wilson's disastrous progressive, presidency is where we got some of the worst reforms in the history of this country. Without question, the worst reforms in the history of this country was the earliest early twentieth century progressive movement from which we're still not recovering. There's still so many policies instituted more than one hundred and twenty years ago that were trapped then and are even worse now, including the income tax.

Jim Lakely: 22:12

We had to get that. And I think that might have been related to World War One. Right? So

Linea Lueken: 22:16

Yeah. And the Independent Institute points it out that, you know, prior to Woodrow Wilson, something like ninety nine percent of the American population was not in the, like, population of people who had to pay any income tax. There was some income tax, but it was on people who are making like a half a million dollars a year or something like that. And it was capped at 6% or something. And nobody else had to pay any income tax at all.

Linea Lueken: 22:48

So while that might not be fair, you know, it's not equitable, but it's at least not the behemoth that we have today. Right?

Jim Lakely: 22:57

Yeah. And and for for sure. And it's it's like, look, this is the nature of government. Once you you know, it's the cliche about the nose under the or the camel's nose under the the tent flap. They'll never leave.

Jim Lakely: 23:09

That that's why we at the Harlem Institute fight for smaller government and more individual liberty, and it's a constant battle that will outlive everybody on and listening to this podcast, I'm afraid, because that is the nature of government is to grab power and to suppress and, frankly, enslave the people to serve the state. That is the nature of government no matter and that's why the constitution was written as it was. That is exactly what the founding fathers and the framers of the constitution were doing their best to put off as long as possible. They understood a lot better than modern man does what the nature of government is. Their most of their experience, of course, was through monarchies, tyranny through monarchy, through inherited power.

Jim Lakely: 23:54

But the principle of that doesn't change because we live in so called democracies. You know, what what is the name of North Korea's? What's North Korea's real name? The Democratic Republic Of North Korea. And I believe most of the most tyrannical states across the world have the word democratic in it somewhere.

Jim Lakely: 24:17

So the nature of government power and its abuse and suppression and, you know, tyrannical control of the people is constant and and and always there no matter how free a form of government you may have. Again, that's why the constitution was written as it was. I actually have always long thought that I didn't think, you know, George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, the rest of the founding fathers. I don't think that any of them believe that they were creating a permanent state of liberty, that the that the country they were creating would last as long as the Roman Empire. They were practical and wise men.

Jim Lakely: 24:56

They were just trying to do their best to have liberty last as long as it could. You know, maybe in their dreams that it would it would last forever or last gosh. I would imagine Benton Franklin especially, you know, the one of the older and wisest of all of the founding fathers, you know, that famous quote, it could be apocryphal, but, you know, he walked out of the constitutional convention and an old woman on the street says, you know, well, what kind of government do we have, mister Franklin? He goes, a republic if you can keep it. I would think Ben Franklin would be the most surprised that we've lasted.

Jim Lakely: 25:29

Now it'll be 250 next year. He would probably have been the most surprised. And so but just one last point, you know, we can move on from this. But talking about how war abroad expands government and and expanded government always leads to less individual liberty and less freedom for everybody, economic freedom, personal freedom, and all the rest. As you mentioned, Lynne, the war on terror.

Jim Lakely: 25:57

We have entire departments in the government now because of because two airplanes flew into the World Trade Center and another one into the Pentagon, and then another was taken down in a field in Pennsylvania. The Department of Homeland Security would not exist. I was reading an article. Tulsi Gabbard this week, she's getting she gets black for everything she does. But she's apparently going to lay off and dismiss 40% of the intelligence community under her under her authority as the director of national intelligence.

Jim Lakely: 26:27

People are like, oh my god, 40%. We can't we're just gonna be attacked again or, you know, it's disaster. Most of the people that she's getting rid of are redundant. Like, there are the the number of intelligence agencies we have in this country, who, by the way, are not supposed to be collecting intelligence on you and me, on American citizens, but they do this anyway because they have used their power because, of course, they do. You know, she's a lot of the stuff that these intelligence agencies are investigating and keeping an eye on are done by, like, five different, quote, unquote, intelligence agencies in the federal government.

Jim Lakely: 27:00

And a lot of this expansion has happened since 09/11. So, yes, a war abroad may not seem important to your liberty, but as history shows, a war abroad is can affect your liberty a lot and almost always does and in almost always in a way that takes it away from

Linea Lueken: 27:17

you. Well, it's funny.

S.T. Karnick: 27:18

Wanna add. I just wanna add that those intelligence agencies lied to us repeatedly for the past half dozen years. They actually lied to us repeatedly for a dozen years before that and a dozen years before that. They've been lying to the American people since their inception. And the the only way to stop that is to shrink them and kill them and get rid of them.

S.T. Karnick: 27:44

This is this is this is they're they're used more to keep the American people in line than to do anything to other countries. And it is absolutely disgusting. And Ben Franklin would if he were to see our country today and say, oh, yeah, I see you're still called The United States Of America. That's a good one.

Linea Lueken: 28:05

Right. Well, and it's funny, too, because nowadays it's a good point that you brought up about how people panic when you talk about, like removing some of the things that we didn't have for the first 200 of the country's existence. And we're just fine without. And it's not because some brand new technology just came about or it's not because the threat of jihad is more than ever different. But we were just celebrating.

Linea Lueken: 28:30

What was it? Two weeks ago that we don't have to take our shoes off in the airport anymore. Isn't that just kind of sad? You used to be able to walk right up to the gate without having a ticket and to welcome people off the plane and stuff. I was really little when that was a thing.

Linea Lueken: 28:46

But, you know, that was it's crazy what we get used to. And then when they offer to give some of that freedom back, even if it's something as tiny as leaving your shoes on. People are like, but what about shoe bombs?

S.T. Karnick: 29:03

There's never One been shoe

Jim Lakely: 29:05

guy failed at a shoe bomb and then millions of people for, well, for twenty years have to take their freaking shoes off going through a metal detector. It's absurd. I always I kind of I smile, Riley, and a tear starts to form on my face when I watch a sitcom or a show from the 1990s where people are actually escorting their family members to the gate and wave goodbye because I remember doing that as a kid and now that you can't do that anymore. And so, you know, there's like that meme that goes around, look what they took from us. And one of the things they took from us was traveling like human beings and not like cattle.

Jim Lakely: 29:42

Well, there's A a

S.T. Karnick: 29:44

quick point. Isn't all this sort of S E X freedom that we are supposedly have and like in Loudoun County, for example, isn't that perhaps just a way of redefining freedom so that we can be utterly unfree in every single way, but feel like, well, I can always take drugs and become a transsexual if I want. That's, well, I'm free.

Linea Lueken: 30:11

Well, and I wanted to read another part from this independent article here that says he points out, so authorities resorted to a vast system of controls and market interventions. This is for World War Two to get resources without having to bid them away from competing buyers in free markets. They fixed prices and directly allocated physical and human resources, establishing official priorities, prohibitions and set asides and ration the civilian consumer goods in short supply. The war planners steered raw materials, intermediate goods, and finished products into the uses they valued most. Markets no longer function freely.

Linea Lueken: 30:49

In many areas, they did not function at all. And it and it continues, you know, awful human rights, you know, abuses in The United States, like Japanese internment, the arrest of conscientious objectors, all sorts of stuff. And federal tax revenues went up and stayed up forever and they have continued to climb since then. So, yeah, it's And don't never forget

S.T. Karnick: 31:17

the borrowing. Don't forget the borrowing. That has gone up faster than revenues. It went up by something like 20 times after one of these wars. The borrowing went up 20 times.

S.T. Karnick: 31:32

Revenues went up like four times and borrowing went up 20 times, 2000%.

Linea Lueken: 31:38

Although I will say you sent another like a stubs a substack post too that points out how Europe. I'm sorry to our European viewers, but it's kind of true that Europe is like an American vassal state and has been. And I will say that it was pretty funny to see all of those European leaders sitting there in front of Trump, who they all despise at the resolute desk, like kids called to the principal's office on on this whole issue. And Trump's trying to end this war. You know, all these different European nations have been begging for us to put boots on the ground or to send more money or to send more resources.

Linea Lueken: 32:18

And Trump's like, look, we're sending resources whether we want to or not. But we're not putting boots on the ground. And we are going to try to end this thing however it takes. And a lot of these leaders are just kinda like stomping their feet a little bit over it as they sit in their chairs there.

S.T. Karnick: 32:40

I thought that was a great image. And it showed that America, we're getting back on track as as you both alluded to earlier. We're getting back on track. There's a long way to go. A long, long, long, long, long way to go.

S.T. Karnick: 32:54

But the fact that we have a president who can sit there at his desk and have all the the presidents of other countries and and the EU sitting in front of him and and have to listen to what he says. Well, we're the biggest. We're the best. We should act like it.

Linea Lueken: 33:10

Well, it's it's kind of crazy because this is a very different strategy than any other president has had. I mean, we've had presidents try to, you know, have buy or trilateral, you know, peace brokerages and stuff in the past, but nothing quite like Trump just coming in and saying, you know what? Let's just not have this war anymore. We're just gonna end this thing right now. And we're, you know, without pledging all sorts of stuff to it to the extent that previous wars have.

Linea Lueken: 33:41

Yeah, it's fascinating. As Archie's mom comments there, loved seeing Ursula squirm. Yeah, Diane, they all got called into the principal's office. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Linea Lueken: 33:53

And Chris, again, that could have been Camilla sitting there. Kamala. Kamala. However we want to pronounce your name.

Jim Lakely: 34:01

It's yeah. Well, I mean, people people don't wanna believe it, especially never Trumpers and radical leftists. But Donald Trump hates war. You know, it is indisputable fact that we didn't get into any new wars in in Donald Trump's first term. And I think you may not like it when Donald Trump says it, but Russia invaded Ukraine under Joe Biden's watch because he perceived correctly that Joe Biden and his administration were weak and that they would not do anything to stop him and that it was worth the risk.

Jim Lakely: 34:39

Now you may discount him saying this, but Vladimir Putin said the same thing, I read at least a smidge of. He says, no. I wouldn't have invaded Ukraine if Trump was president. Now that may that has many layers to it. Like, for instance, Trump may have talked to him a little bit and actually tried diplomacy.

Jim Lakely: 35:00

But these the left, which used to be they were the antiwar party. You know, from the nineteen sixties on, it was peace, man, and it was no no war, you know, against Vietnam. When I was in college and we in the first Gulf War, it was all the hippies and leftists out on the out on the green at the University of Pittsburgh, you know, protesting against the war in Iraq, and it was the same thing with George w Bush. The global left all over the streets protesting against George Bush, burning him in effigy, and all this stuff is some kind of war monk. But now they're against Donald Trump because he's for peace, and it it is everything has just turned on its head.

Jim Lakely: 35:42

But Yeah. What if what if that was Kamala in that in the Oval Office Center now? Do you think all those people are gonna show up in forty eight hours because Kamala Harris gets on the horn and says, we gotta end this war in Iraq in in Ukraine right now. And I just met with Putin, and we've got this thing all lined up. It's now or never.

Jim Lakely: 36:00

The contemporary legacy media will not report this accurately. And in fact, it might even take a second generation of historians to look back on this properly without the the taint of Trump derangement syndrome burrowing into their stupid skulls. But Donald Trump will go down as a historic president in many, many ways. I think one of his legacies is going to be, obviously, as the peacemaking president and also the one that finally got Europe to start taking care of itself again instead of depending on American money and might for every single thing that might prop up in their own continent. Again, Donald Trump ripped by the legacy media and the left for what?

Jim Lakely: 36:43

For making NATO adhere to the obligations of the NATO treaty and spending enough on their own defense so that we don't have to pay for everything. Oh my gosh. What a horrible thing. Donald Trump made them do that. Nobody else did, and Biden certainly wasn't going to do it either.

Jim Lakely: 36:59

In the long run, this the reason why all of those leaders I'm sorry, Sam. I keep going on. You'll get your chance in a minute. But the reason why that photograph of all those leaders sitting around in tables like it's an ordinary conference, an impromptu conference, at at any business in America is that, they know, one, who the big dog on the world stage is. That's the man sitting alone at behind the desk.

Jim Lakely: 37:24

And number two, they realize that, with that power, they can either be a friend or they can be an annoyance or they can be a foe. And they all chose the first one. And I would just make one more observation. There was a conspicuously missing world leader in that photograph. Does anyone wanna guess who that leader is and what important ally of The United States he is from?

Jim Lakely: 37:50

Mark Carney of Canada

Linea Lueken: 37:51

was

Jim Lakely: 37:52

absent from that meeting. Canada is a NATO member, And Donald Trump said, you know what? You're such a clown. You're only gonna mess things up. I'll brief you.

Jim Lakely: 38:02

I'll have some of my guys, maybe third level intel guys brief you later. You're irrelevant. So that that's one of the biggest power plays I've seen a president do maybe ever since Reagan and Reykjavik, I think. That was one of the biggest presidential power moves we'll ever see.

Linea Lueken: 38:17

Yeah. Trump is definitely not messing around on this one.

S.T. Karnick: 38:20

The Democrat Party has long characterized itself as as anti war, and you rightly point out that that was the characterization in the nineteen sixties. But it was, Woodrow Wilson who was eager to get us into war. It was, Franklin Roosevelt who possibly manipulated us into getting into the second world war. It was Kennedy who got us into Vietnam and Johnson who expanded it grossly and Nixon who stopped it. Nixon being a republican.

S.T. Karnick: 38:54

Now since, since the the Reagan years, Republicans have been as responsible for, starting wars as Democrats, unfortunately. We have truly had a uni uniparty since then. That said, Trump has gone back to the greater tradition of the American right, which is peace and prosperity and individual rights. And those all go together. And so I think that what we're seeing here is a restoration of, the American way.

S.T. Karnick: 39:30

And Trump is doing this in a multitude of ways. And one of the most important though, and and the the lesson we take from this, is that war is a tool of the state to grow, its power. And Trump is fighting back against that. We we will all benefit greatly from this and history. I don't believe in that being on the right side of history nonsense.

S.T. Karnick: 39:56

What I do believe it's being on the right side of things. And Trump is, I believe. And historians are going to recognize that this was an extraordinary time. We lived in an extraordinary time in 2020 through 2024. This is a good one.

S.T. Karnick: 40:15

That was a bad one. And as I said before, there's a lot of work to do, but at least we have somebody trying to do it. And yes, what he did to Kearney was hilarious.

Linea Lueken: 40:30

Well, I'm glad that we did this first because actually a lot of this stuff kind of transitions into much of what we're also talking about. So we have all this uni party stuff going on for years. We know that during even during Obama's or during Trump's last term, there were kind of rumors about debanking going on of conservatives and banking executives. Banking executives are now blaming Obama and Biden for debanking conservatives. So we have this from Fox Business.

Linea Lueken: 41:10

Bank executives blow the whistle on how Obama and Biden admins pressured them to debank conservatives. Funny how they wait until now when Trump administration is going, you know, kind of hardcore versus last time. Right? In the wake of President Donald Trump's executive order outlawing debanking, major bank executives told Fox News Digital that they were under pressure by the Obama and Biden administrations to deny services to individuals and businesses for political reasons. Those pressures were very, very real.

Linea Lueken: 41:41

When your regulator gives you a suggestion, it's not a suggestion. It's an order, a senior banking executive told Fox News Digital. Fox News spoke with two executives at leading US banks who asked to remain anonymous, fearing reprisals. I still kind of think that that should be this kind of thing for news should be like maybe illegal or something. I don't really know.

Linea Lueken: 42:01

It's getting really annoying. I don't think I've seen a major article come out in years with sources listed. It's getting out of control. Anyway, according to one executive, banks were pressured to deny services to certain industries as part of Operation Chokepoint and Chokepoint two point o. House Oversight Committee report found that Operation Chokepoint was a DOJ task force whose aim was to choke out legal companies disfavored by the Obama administration.

Linea Lueken: 42:31

They worked with bank regulators to label certain industries, including firearm sales as high risk. This is why a lot of FFL holding businesses like firearms businesses have a hard time getting payment processors to work with them. So the first banking executive said that while regulators may have good intentions, their worldviews will inevitably influence their decisions and that there are real reasons to think this would there were political considerations. Rather than get on the wrong side of the regulators, banks would preemptively refuse to take certain clients. So, Jim, do you think that this is all like a 100% just government's fault?

Linea Lueken: 43:14

Or are banks also doing a little CYA as the Trump administration begins to investigate Biden and Obama's administrations?

Jim Lakely: 43:23

I don't wanna be put in a position to be empathizing with global banking executives. However, a part of me and I try to look at things fairly and try to put yourself in their position. What would you do if the federal government, the president of The United States backed up by intel committees and who knows what they have on me says, look, you can play ball with us, which is we're gonna try to do something illegal. We wouldn't be able to do this as the government. But we have these industries and these individuals that we don't like, and we want to destroy them, their industries, and also ruin lives of individual people.

Jim Lakely: 44:10

Now you can debank them, and here's a list of excuses you can use to end their ability to participate in the financial system of The United States and the world. Or I could just pick up the phone to whatever whatever half dozen, at least, regulatory agencies affect your industry and put you out of business. So what is it going be, Guy? Are you going to help us out here and make sure that, you know, firearms companies can't you know, can't get, get financial services? Are you going to help us out here and make sure that John Eastman, a once know, a person who had a lot of respect still has mine as an attorney, but he defended Trump and his his fake, you know, stone election narrative.

Jim Lakely: 45:01

So you're gonna ruin you you you better ruin him or we're gonna ruin you. So, you know, again, I I don't wanna be in the position of defending the honor of bank executives, but put in that position, they really gave them no choice. And that this what it it really, really annoys me. If you listen again to the legacy media, they will tell you to this day that Barack Obama's presidency was scandal free. We had never had a scandal free presidency that went on for two terms until that guy was president underneath me, Barack Obama.

Jim Lakely: 45:39

But with but the of course, the truth of this is that all of this started happening under Barack Obama that the left's the left's routine exercise of their power is to punish their enemies. It's like, Don, one of the top three on the list. What is the use of having all of this power if you can't crush your enemies with it? It's not it it where's the fun in that? So this this is not being reported.

Jim Lakely: 46:07

You might notice that this story was from Fox Business. You will not see this discussed on the Sunday on the network Sunday morning chat shows. But this, along with many other things that we're discovering, finally, a lot of truth is coming out thanks to Donald Trump and his appointment, his appointments to keep positions in government like Tulsi Gabbard, like, like Hosh Patel at FBI, and all of these agencies where their mission now is to expose the abuse of power against you and me, the American people that have been going on since way back in the Barack Obama administration, all of these things are that they thought would be swept under the rug or would never be exposed are now being exposed. And the the fact of the matter is this is an egregious and criminal abuse of power. Criminal abuse of power.

Jim Lakely: 46:56

Now it is great that, maybe people more people are now aware of this. A lot of these stories actually, those of us who don't read and depend on legacy media to keep us informed have known about these things for a very long time. It is really nice to actually see the actual documents and proof of what we'd already what are we we'd already known what was happening. But all of this is great. I don't wanna see a bunch of congressional hearings on this.

Jim Lakely: 47:20

I wanna see indictments, and I wanna see people have to lawyer up, and I wanna see people in jail. Because if you do not jail these criminals who have used their power to punish their political enemies, we will just get more of it in the future.

Linea Lueken: 47:34

Yeah. And you're absolutely right about that, g, but I do wanna be the bad cop for a second on the banks.

Jim Lakely: 47:41

Okay. Go ahead.

Linea Lueken: 47:42

Why now? Why now? Why not during the last Trump administration when certainly his regulators were not going and telling them to cut off firearm companies or to cut off oil and gas companies? They were aggressively pursuing ESG stuff during Trump's last administration. So why now all of a sudden are the banks like, oh, we were victims the whole time and Trump came and saved us?

S.T. Karnick: 48:08

I think this goes back to your first question. And I'll say, I think it was 100% the government. 100% the government. They use their leverage whatever ends they desire. And that's all there is to it.

S.T. Karnick: 48:26

As Jim said, he was very right on this, these businesses, they didn't have any choice. They could pretend that they did, but you know, or we could pretend that they did. Free marketers could say, oh, it's a free market, but it wasn't. And now, yes, they did give into ESG and DEI and the like, and that's contemptible. But the debanking specifically debanking, that was a government scheme brought up under the administration of president Barack Obama, whose administration was scandal free because the press covered up all the scandals and the intelligence agencies likewise.

S.T. Karnick: 49:11

So when we talk about debanking, we also need to look at at Russiagate, which is an absolute it's it's the the the biggest part of it that they would actually destroy try to destroy a presidential candidate in that way and then destroy a subsequent presidency. And so this is this is outrageous. This is way bigger than Watergate. It's absolutely, horrific. But the so let me just get in a little brief, description of how this debanking worked.

S.T. Karnick: 49:41

What they would do is they would say, as Jim alluded to this, that we have reputational risk with you. What that means is it's bad press. You're getting bad press. And so that's a reputational risk. We we run the risk of losing money on you.

S.T. Karnick: 50:00

But the bad press was coming from a a collaboration between the government and the media. So it was a complete government run scam from beginning to end. And since Trump has now, you know, started working against that, it's all gone away. Now the thing is, don't know if in 2017 through 2020, especially early on in the Trump administration, there was an awareness of just how deep all this went and how unnatural and unmarket it really was. That this wasn't businesses deciding things on their own.

S.T. Karnick: 50:43

That this was just a government run scheme from the beginning. So there is that. And then there's also the fact of Russiagate which hamstrung the Trump administration from doing its job in so many areas. So to me, this is a 100% government problem. And it's great to see that it's finally coming out.

S.T. Karnick: 51:07

And what we need though is for all of these scandals to be exposed to the light of day. Now the mainstream press, they're not going to cover it, but it's all out there. It's on Twitter. It's on all kinds of publications. It's on Substack.

S.T. Karnick: 51:22

So the truth is getting out there and the truth will get out there. And so let's just make sure that we all recognize what the truth is and that we stand behind it. And the fact is that probably I would say the most corrupt president of our time is Barack Obama. Barack Obama is the most corrupt. And I would also add that it was Barack Obama and, the European Union who created the mess in Ukraine and started that war.

S.T. Karnick: 51:56

Russia didn't. Obama and the EU and and NATO put all the conditions together to make that war happen. So pretty much everything that's wrong with the world, Obamacare, everything that's wrong. Look at anything that's wrong. Go back to 2009 to 2017, 2017, and you'll find the source there.

Jim Lakely: 52:27

It was Joe Biden who said, you know, I wouldn't be so troubled by a little minor excursion of Russia into Ukraine. You know, people forget that he's made that.

Linea Lueken: 52:37

Excursion. My dog strongly disagrees with this. Okay.

Jim Lakely: 52:44

Your dog is outraged. We have a good doggy rant.

Linea Lueken: 52:48

She cannot believe it. All right. So yeah, I'm sorry about that, you guys. Hopefully it's not too bad. Hang on just

S.T. Karnick: 53:05

Was that just the end of that David Bowie song where he yells shut up?

Linea Lueken: 53:10

Yeah, pretty much.

S.T. Karnick: 53:12

Playing his guitar loudly.

Linea Lueken: 53:13

No, she's ticked off that somebody is daring to deliver mail to the front door. So anyway, so our final segment here, guys, that I just want to get to briefly because I think it's really interesting and it actually ties back into unhinged a bit. College students are faking progressive beliefs to get by. This is not something that's surprising. We've always known this.

Linea Lueken: 53:36

The Hill reports on a study that came out from Northwestern, which asked students a variety of questions. I'm fairly confident that this article written by these college professors got a lot of help from chat GPT. Don't ask me why, but it's got my antennas up and we're going to play a game soon. The audience is going to love what we're going to do in coming weeks here. But anyway, one of the questions asked of students was, have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically?

Linea Lueken: 54:11

88% of respondents said yes. The researchers said that they were shocked by that result. And they argue that this isn't just an annoying thing that students have to put their heads down and commit to for a couple of years to get through their classes so they can get out of there. It actually turns out that doing this over and over again actually changes the way that your brain works. So in public, they say students echoed expected progressive narratives.

Linea Lueken: 54:38

In private, their views were more complex. Eighty seven percent identified as exclusively heterosexual. So this is tying into the gender identity question, which is one of the specific areas that they looked at because it's political, but it's not necessarily explicitly political. So 87% identified as exclusively heterosexual and supported a binary model of gender. Only 9% expressed even partial openness to the gender fluid concept, And just 7% embrace the idea of gender as a broad spectrum.

Linea Lueken: 55:14

Most of those belong to activist organizations on campus. So perhaps the most telling of all 77% said that they disagreed with the idea that gender identity should override biological sex and domains like sports, healthcare or public data. But they said they would never voice that disagreement allowed. The researchers wrote that early or late adolescence and early adulthood representing narrow and non replicable developmental window. During this stage, individuals begin the lifelong work of integrating personal experience with inherited values, forming the foundations of moral reasoning, internal coherence and emotional resilience.

Linea Lueken: 55:54

But when belief is prescriptive, an ideological divergence is treated as a social risk, the integrative process stalls Rather than forging a durable sense of self through trial, error and reflection, students learn to compartmentalize. Publicly, they conform. Privately, they question, but often in isolation. And this split between their outer presentation and inner conviction not only fragments identity, but actually arrests its development. So it's actually this really struck me reading this because it's actually no wonder, you know, totalitarians around the world and across history have known this intuitively without needing a study.

Linea Lueken: 56:39

That's why they make you say stuff that you know, that they know, that you know is false. This is something that's been remarked on for more than a 100 at least, I would say. And so the idea that, well, it's okay. These students are just putting their heads down. They're pretending to be progressives in school.

Linea Lueken: 56:56

But when they get into the real world, they can shed all that nonsense. Of course, that doesn't continue if you go into, you know, the corporate world, you still have to keep your head down. But the idea that it actually impacts the way that you think and perceive yourself later on in life, if you do that, is really recontextualizing to me because I had a lot of well meaning conservatives give the advice to tell the professors what they want to hear and keep your head down and say stuff that you know isn't true. So this is just fascinating. I'd love to get you guys your thoughts on it.

S.T. Karnick: 57:33

Let me go first and then Jim can do a rant. All right. No, I think it's really important here that to understand what's going on. George Orwell's great book, 1984, a central element of it is the the effort of the government, the totalitarian government, to get the, Winston Smith, the the protagonist, to agree that two plus two equals five. And that's what this is.

S.T. Karnick: 57:58

They say the craziest things, the most bizarre things, and say, okay, there's no such thing as a man or a woman. There's no such thing as a boy or a girl. Say it. Say it. Say it.

S.T. Karnick: 58:13

And you say, well, you know, kinda no, kinda yes. And then what they do is they are The whole effort is what one of the researchers said, They are sanctioning self abandonment. The colleges and universities are doing this. I wouldn't say they're sanctioning it. They're forcing it.

S.T. Karnick: 58:34

They're requiring self abandonment because their point is if you are a heterosexual or if you are a Caucasian or if you are an Asian, for example, then you are not as important as other people. You are not as important and you better get used to that. And we saw that with who's that woman who recently was, Joy Reid. She recently went on a crazy rant saying that basically white people are evil and that they that that white people and heterosexuals must be pushed down. And we need and and they they do nothing creative.

S.T. Karnick: 59:18

They've they've accomplished nothing in the world. This is all self abandonment pushed on people so that they won't accomplish things. And so that people who do not accomplish things will feel equal to them because nobody's accomplishing anything. And so this is an intent of making everybody equal, equally degraded by forcing them to say two plus two equals five in a variety of different ways. This is flat out totalitarianism.

S.T. Karnick: 59:53

And one reason it is particularly monstrous as the very fine scholars who put this study together have pointed out that this is being done to young people. This isn't Winston Smith, an adult, who's already had some chance to develop his mind. This is trying to grab people before they can even develop any kind of personal strength. And it is so foul and contemptible. It is absolutely mind blowing.

Jim Lakely: 01:00:31

Yeah. I mean, Lynne, I looked up that, it's a quote famous quote by Alexander Sochelnietzen. We actually have a picture of him at our offices at the Heartland Institute. And here's here's the quote, which is really funny, if not so tragic and apt and true for his time living under the, the tyranny of the Soviet Union. We know that they are lying.

Jim Lakely: 01:00:54

They know that they are lying. They even know that we know they are lying. We also know that they know, we know they are lying too. They, of course, know that we certainly know. They know.

Jim Lakely: 01:01:04

We know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country. I think you can probably say something very similar, if not say it is 100% apt, to the world we have had to endure basically from 2015 or '16 or so until 2020 until the November election of twenty twenty four. So, basically, entire decade in which to to keep your friends, to make it so that, you know, your cousin your cousin Sharon will come to Thanksgiving. We we have to tell ourselves, believe, and mouth lies that we don't believe.

Jim Lakely: 01:01:50

I always think about JK Rowling, who I would disagree with. She's a leftist. I disagree with her on probably 99% of the things that she believes are true and good for society, but she had the gall as a feminist to say, no, actually. Trans women aren't women. They are biological males who wish to present and live their lives as if they were women.

Jim Lakely: 01:02:20

That is 100% true. And it seemed the entire culture, including the actors that she made multigenerational millionaires by cast by having them cast in her Harry Potter movies, The entire culture, not just in The UK, but the world, tried to cancel her. Now she's a multibillionaire, so she has what they call f u money. It doesn't matter what you do to me. I will still be rich.

Jim Lakely: 01:02:48

But to have most people on and her defenders online were conservatives and people on the right. In fact, prominent conservatives. Think she was actually annoyed that arch conservative Matt

S.T. Karnick: 01:03:03

Walsh

Jim Lakely: 01:03:03

was one of her most prominent public defenders. She was not happy with that. But she said, I guess I got to take what I could get. And the point here that these people who did the study make is that, yes, at that age, as a high school student, as a young college student, being forced basically to publicly say what you don't really believe does have an insidious, nefarious negative effect on your brain and the way you may think. I went through college.

Jim Lakely: 01:03:39

I went to the University of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 1992. I might as well have gone to college in the nineteenth century compared to college today and, you know, the way kids think about age and all that stuff. But even then, you know, obviously the campus environment in the 80s and 90s was leftist. You know, it was, I got a B in a public speaking class and I know why I got it. It wasn't that I was bad at public speaking.

Jim Lakely: 01:04:05

It was because I advocated every time for the conservative argument and my professor very much, actually the TA, the young TA didn't like that very much. But I got through my college experience with my wits about me and my values intact because I was able to say what I thought even if I disagreed with the, you know, with the consensus, you know, leftist liberal, we didn't really think about it in as leftist back then, but just the liberal mindset of the of the of academia. I was able to get through because I was able to express myself. I'd never shied away from that. But you're a young person on a college campus today.

Jim Lakely: 01:04:44

If you want to have any social life, you're going to have to mouth, you know, liberal shibboleths. If, you know, if you want to pass your classes, you're going to have to toe the party line. I think I just came across a chart like this the other day. I think it was 99% of the faculty in Harvard's sociology department were registered Democrats. And then they went through the entire Ivy League.

Jim Lakely: 01:05:11

I think the lowest percentage of registered democrats in in liberal arts studies among the top 12 universities, the lowest number was, like, 89%. So, you know, good luck getting through college or getting a date or, you know, whatever if you don't just mouth these lines. Now one last thing I I thought was was interesting was that you said it says here in the hill that the the the dissonance shows up everywhere. You you mentioned this, Linea. Seventy eight percent of students told they self censor on their beliefs surrounding gender identity and even their own gender identity.

Jim Lakely: 01:05:51

I think what's kind of funny is like this idea. You see these charts too, you know, the idea that the Gen Z and, I guess, Gen Alpha, you know, like, 233% identify themselves as not hetero, you know, like, as some sort of, you know, either bi or non nonconforming and all this stuff. I don't know. Do do any of you guys really believe that one third of the rising generation in around this country or just even to say in The United States, not around the world, are actually gender nonconforming that they don't really consider themselves a heterosexual human being? I don't believe that.

Jim Lakely: 01:06:27

I believe actually some of this performative virtue signaling that they talk about here when it comes to identity is that it's cool. And, you know, gosh, maybe your your options are a lot more open if you are not if you are nonbinary and if you, you know, will will do whatever. But, you know, we've incentivized these sorts of things, not just not just, like, the sensitive I should say this the right way. It's not only dangerous to say what you really think. It's actually advantageous to say things you don't believe because you get rewarded by it.

Jim Lakely: 01:06:58

You know, you're not gonna get a fast track to graduate school if you're a white heterosexual man. But if you're a, you know, non binary, non gender conforming one, you got a little better chance to get the goodies that you need in those sorts of circles. So, like Donnie Donnie Kendall and I talked about the other day, nature is healing. I think you're going see a lot fewer of these stories. And and that's to the good because if you don't have freedom of thought, if there are grave career consequences to being a normal human being, then we are in big, big trouble as a country.

Jim Lakely: 01:07:35

But I I really do think nature is healing and the normies are on the ascendancy. Thank god.

S.T. Karnick: 01:07:41

But it is critical to tear down the government initiatives that are doing all this. And one of the things that Trump is doing is sort of undermining the higher education, their money, their their how they get their money. So he's undermining their their security and saying, you know, if you want if you want this money, you better play ball. So we have to that's you have to win on the political side in order for anything good to happen. We always say, oh, we need to fix the culture.

S.T. Karnick: 01:08:15

Well, the way to fix the culture is to fix the political side of things so that, people are free to do things that aren't harming one another. And they're free to say what they want and believe what they want. And then as Thomas Jefferson pointed out, the best ideas will win.

Linea Lueken: 01:08:35

Yeah. And I would add too, I know it's well meaning just get your degree and get out kind of advice because that's the advice that I got. And I did not listen to it because I felt like it was well meaning but misinformed on the problem. And I think that this study and studies like it kind of reconfirm my belief in that. But if you have to our audience, if you have young people in college and they ask you, well, I'm right wing.

Linea Lueken: 01:09:01

I don't know what to do. Don't tell them to lie. Do not instruct them to lie. You don't have to tell them like, you should join College Republicans and be all outspoken and, you know, causing problems on campus or whatever. Like, you don't have to tell them that.

Linea Lueken: 01:09:14

But please, goodness gracious, I wish conservatives would stop telling students to, you know, tell the teachers what they want to hear. You might get a bad couple of bad grades. You might, you know, miss a class or whatever, but someone's gotta you gotta break the cycle. We can't keep doing this. There's a perception on campus that everyone agrees with this stuff because everyone's keeping their head down.

Jim Lakely: 01:09:40

Yeah. You know, this kinda relates to it. I've seen stories this week about how the Democratic Party is in a bit of a panic because Gen z is proven from the last presidential election. Gen z and now rising Gen Alpha, I guess, the one behind them, are not registering as Democrats anymore. And in fact, you know, they're they're they're gonna be called the base generations because they are not gonna put up with this nonsense anymore.

Jim Lakely: 01:10:04

And that's see, that's the thing. See, look. The harmless two, we're a libertarian free market think tank. We believe in individual liberty. We believe in persuasion, not force.

Jim Lakely: 01:10:14

And, you know, it's taken a long time, but I think, you know, the left may, if they have any introspection, are gonna look back at the way they have behaved over the last twenty years, but especially the last decade. And they're going to learn the hard way that force is not as good as persuasion. And in fact, the reason why they are always forcing their values upon every institution that they get control over is because they know persuasion doesn't work. But, you know, frankly, unless you have guns or you run a society like Alexander Soszynitsyn was stuck in, force is not going to last long term. In America, that's still the case.

Jim Lakely: 01:10:54

And because you have not been able to persuade the majority of Amer not even a significant minority of Americans about all the crazy stuff that you believe in, you've had to force it upon them. You've had to force it upon them by by threatening social acceptance, sometimes threatening their very jobs, debanking them if they don't enforce ESG. But that's what makes me so hopeful about the future is because although it has been nothing but force by the left for the last decade especially, it's coming apart because nobody really believes this, because you have not persuaded them. You have tried to force it upon them and that comes from your arrogance and your hubris and frankly your closed mind And it's starting to come apart. And I think as hopefully, if Gen, you know, Gen Z and Gen Alpha really are the base generations, it may it thank pray to God that it will be a very, very long time until the left once again achieves this kind of cultural and political dominance.

Linea Lueken: 01:12:00

Well, I think that's a great way to close out the show. Thank you guys so much. That is all the time we have, unfortunately. Thanks, everyone, for your attention to these matters. We are live every week on Thursdays at noon central on Rumble, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.

Linea Lueken: 01:12:16

Jim, what have you got for us this week?

Jim Lakely: 01:12:19

We are going to be on this very channel tomorrow at the very same time, 1PM eastern with the Climate Realism Show. Lanea and I will be switching chairs and it's going to be a fantastic show. And our guest is going to be Matt Wylicki, who is a fantastic realist and a real scientist who's a climate realist who has escaped academia and is now doing some fantastic work on the climate. And he's gonna be our featured guest tomorrow. I hope you can do that.

Jim Lakely: 01:12:45

Sam?

S.T. Karnick: 01:12:47

Yep. Go to heartland.org for great information and stkarnik.substack.com.

Linea Lueken: 01:12:54

Alrighty. For audio listeners, please rate us well in whatever service you're using and leave a review. Thank you so much to all of our usual panelists, and thank you to all of our viewers. We will see you again next week.