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moving. Find out more at well mata dot

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com slash doing our part. How

0:30

do terrible ideas get taken

0:32

so seriously on college campuses?

0:34

So I'm Strong and Getty extra large because

0:37

four hours simply usn't enough.

0:40

This is Armstrong and Getty extra

0:43

Large.

0:46

So freaking interesting.

0:49

We've been fans of these people ever since

0:51

the grievance studies thing hit last

0:54

January. Yeah, the fake papers

0:56

that they got into various journals. Peter Bogo

0:58

and James Lindsay and how and pluck Rose.

1:01

They made up just ridiculous

1:03

crap. I mean ridiculous, no,

1:05

as you say, nobody but an academic could

1:07

believe it, but fall down funny

1:10

crap and actually got them accepted into

1:12

various peer review reviewed

1:15

journals. And the fancy universities across

1:17

the country. Peter Bogan

1:19

wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal recently,

1:21

idea laundering an academia. Peter

1:23

as an assistant professor of philosophy right

1:25

in the belly of the Beast Portland State University.

1:28

He's also the co author of a book, How to

1:31

Have Impossible Conversations that we

1:33

need to talk about at some point down the road, but probably

1:35

not today. Peter Bagoan joins

1:38

us, Peter, this is a real pleasure. We've

1:40

been looking forward to talking to you for some time.

1:42

I love talking to you, guys, I really do, and

1:45

I sincerely appreciate your

1:47

support because I can't do what

1:49

what I do without without you. So thanks.

1:51

Yeah, when the whole grievance studies story

1:54

hit and we were just so taken with

1:56

it and it's so exciting for everyone.

1:58

And I've watched a ton of YouTube is with you

2:00

and James Lindsay and that over the last year.

2:02

So, but has any progress been made our universities

2:06

better off than they were before you did

2:08

this or that's a good

2:10

question. No, no, no progress has been

2:12

made. In fact, um, they've they've

2:14

doubled down on their nonsense and there

2:16

you go take scholarship and attempts

2:19

to successful attempts to self

2:21

credential. So the situation as

2:23

I see it, has actually gotten worse inside

2:25

the academy, But outside the academy

2:28

with the Dave Chappelle comedy show or Bill

2:30

Burr or certain cultural now

2:32

they want to know a gender Santa

2:35

claus Um. I think outside

2:37

the academy you're seeing pushback, but withinside

2:39

the academy that absolutely it's absolutely

2:41

gotten worse. Well, and I'm

2:44

sorry to hear that given the number

2:46

of dollars American families are throwing it educating

2:49

their young ones. Are you surprised to hear that? I'm not surprised

2:51

at least. I mean, this is the same dynamic of power you

2:53

seeing government and anywhere else where power and money

2:56

are at stakes. Self policing rarely works.

2:58

But I do love the idea, idea

3:00

that more and more people are

3:02

feeling um. I hate to use the

3:04

term empowered because it's trade out of grieving studies,

3:07

but they're they're they're feeling

3:09

more empowered to call bullshit on this stuff

3:11

and they realize, wait a minute, I'm not a bad

3:13

person because I think this is goofy

3:16

um this is goofy right. And

3:18

not only that you're not a bad person because you're

3:20

a male, you're also not a rapist because you're a

3:22

male. You're not a bad person because

3:24

you're white. You

3:27

your your ancestral line has absolutely

3:29

nothing to do with your decency

3:31

and dignity as a person. So I

3:33

think it was the Wall Street Journal that ran your

3:35

piece about idea laundering where we explained that

3:38

whole thing, And that's why we wanted to have you on today because

3:40

I found it's fascinating because I've wondered

3:43

all along, where do the stuff comes from? How

3:45

did this stuff catch on? Can you explain

3:47

idea laundering to us? Yeah,

3:49

So think about it this way. This

3:52

is how they get away with it. This

3:54

is how they do it, and here's how they do it.

3:57

To an example, let's say that you let's say the three

3:59

of us have some kind of

4:02

moral idea, like, let's just give

4:04

me a moral idea like you know, um,

4:07

I don't know, like yeah,

4:11

it's wrong to steal or I was thinking

4:13

like something contemporary political

4:15

issues like you know, uh, you know,

4:17

impeach Trump for moral senses. Okay,

4:20

so we have an idea, you know, build

4:22

a wall. Let's just use that one. We

4:24

need to build a wall, or we build a wall, doesn't

4:26

matter what it is. Okay, you

4:29

have this strong moral urge,

4:32

you feel something really

4:34

strong in your heart. I

4:37

have this strong moral urge.

4:40

I'm in the academy. I'm

4:42

a professor at university. We

4:44

both know, we both hang out. Maybe we know each

4:46

other from Twitter, or maybe we know each other. We a

4:48

life for Facebook? What have you? So we

4:51

we all you need a couple

4:53

of other people have these strong moral urges.

4:57

What we do is a result of that. Is I

5:00

a could journal, and in that I

5:02

call it the journal of you know, um

5:05

some some fancy academic name. I

5:08

take papers into my journal

5:11

that pushed the narrative, whatever

5:14

moral narrative I want to push. Stealing is wrong,

5:16

stealing is right. We want to build a wall. Everybody

5:18

should be polyamorous. Note it doesn't matter what it

5:21

is. Am I clear? So far? Okay?

5:24

Cool? We then published

5:27

in this journal, my journal

5:30

that I create. I

5:33

we take those articles and I start

5:36

teaching them to my students.

5:38

So the idea, it's called ideal

5:40

anders is Brett Wae and my friend Brett Weinstein's idea.

5:43

He was the professor who was hunted

5:45

at Evergreen. It

5:48

comes in as an idea and it

5:50

goes out as knowledge. So when you ask

5:52

these people, well, how do you know that obesity

5:55

is just a narrative? How do you know that there's

5:57

white fragility and then all whites are racist?

6:00

How do you know that whatever insane

6:03

idea they want to put forth, how do you know there's

6:05

no such a thing as biological sex. Well,

6:07

it's in this journal, but the journal

6:09

itself is bogus. So the whole

6:12

journal is it's been fabricated.

6:14

Whole clause. You have a bunch of

6:16

ideologues who get together, who

6:19

have a moral idea, make

6:22

a journal, publishing the journal,

6:24

and it comes out to the other end is knowledge,

6:27

And I imagine it's chuck full of highly questionable

6:29

research, generally not even

6:31

questionable, totally fabricated. The whole

6:33

thing is fact, the whole it's fabricated,

6:35

whole cloth. It's no relationship

6:38

to reality whatsoever. That's

6:40

no scientific method, there's no control

6:43

groups, there's no testing, there's literally

6:45

nothing. So it's so it's purposeful.

6:47

Then they make this stuff up

6:50

because they're so certain of

6:52

their moral belief that

6:54

they're they're willing to make this up so that they

6:56

can teach it. Well, I'm teaching straight out of this journal,

6:59

right, this review journal,

7:01

right, and but your pearents are all whack jobs like

7:04

you, And

7:06

it's it's even worse listening to you guys.

7:08

You're just you really are such nice

7:10

people, and we're talking about

7:12

some really vile id logs here. So it's

7:14

far worse than that characterization. So it's

7:17

not only that. So the way that this

7:20

game works, if you get seven papers

7:22

in seven years, if you're on a tenor track, you

7:24

you you received tenure. When you receive

7:26

tenure, that's a job for life. So

7:29

you have now fabricated

7:31

a journal. It's totally

7:33

until the to reality. You're teaching these

7:36

things to students' knowledge. Those

7:38

students are getting out and going to

7:40

the workplace. They're going to Google, like what they did to

7:42

the Google engineer James more famous

7:45

from the now Google memo. They're going to

7:47

Twitter and the ship shadow banning. They're going to

7:49

YouTube and institute of trutionalizing them

7:51

monetization. But even within the

7:53

academy itself, they institute

7:56

mechanisms to restrict speech

7:58

right biased response teams.

8:00

A student can anonymously be reported

8:03

to over two hundred universities

8:05

have biased response teams, divert

8:07

offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

8:10

And these words don't mean what you think they mean. So

8:12

they institutionalize these deranged

8:14

ideas that they themselves have manufactured

8:17

in journals which are completely unscientific.

8:20

These are the ramblings of ideologues,

8:23

and they point to all of this stuff as knowledge,

8:26

and anybody who questions it is

8:28

a racist or a bad person, or a homophobe

8:30

or bigot. Well, and I'd

8:32

imagine that each iteration of

8:34

it, each layer of or

8:37

every semester it's taught, adds to the

8:39

credibility, right. And one of the things you mentioned

8:41

in your article is building up over time, over decades

8:43

or whatever, some of these whack job ideas.

8:46

You know, you get more and more articles from multi

8:48

generations that sign onto this crap that

8:51

is absolutely correct, And that's how they manufacture

8:54

a canon of knowledge. This

8:56

is a completely pretend canon

8:58

of knowledge. Well, and

9:01

and honestly, what makes it so terrible

9:03

and makes me so worried about it is that these

9:05

ideologies, as you mentioned, are utterly

9:07

repugnant. If you're a student of

9:10

of global politics of history or

9:12

whatever. You understand that inter

9:15

ethnic, interracial, inter religious

9:17

strife is the source of most

9:20

of the horrors um, you know,

9:23

putting aside communism, um of

9:25

of the last several centuries.

9:27

If you can whip up people to believe

9:29

that the other is evil, which

9:31

is what these people are doing all the time, I mean, the results

9:34

are truly horrific. Right, and

9:37

again you got your very

9:39

nice people. It's not only

9:41

that they're evil. Privilege

9:43

is their original sin. But unlike original

9:46

sin from which you can find redemption through

9:48

the savior Jesus Christ, there is no redemption

9:51

for these people. If you were born white

9:53

and male and cists in hetero I

9:56

would use a word or on the air

9:58

beginning with f We can believe you are

10:01

fucked. There's no redemption.

10:04

That's it. Yeah, you're you're you're irrevocably

10:07

stained, indelibly stained by your

10:09

whiteness, your maleness, your privilege,

10:11

your heterosexuality, and your sister genderness.

10:14

That doesn't sound at all Nazi.

10:16

So somebody, So somebody could start decades

10:19

ago, you know, some something about white privilege

10:21

and and start a

10:23

journal and by now

10:25

they're they're a senior member on

10:28

whatever campus, and they're looked at the here's somebody for

10:30

twenty five years has been doing research

10:32

into this completely made up. It's been

10:34

made up the entire time. And

10:37

they're an expert. They're a quote unquote expert,

10:39

and the media contact them and they teach

10:41

students, and their students didn't go on at twenty

10:43

five years. They go on to leadership positions

10:46

and they sway the academy and they

10:48

they're the ones that you hear what they're consulted.

10:51

They're consulted for jury cases. I'm

10:53

telling you this is a massive problem.

10:57

And and the question becomes for the university

10:59

system is my friend for Oisin said, if

11:02

you're if you have a dog and

11:04

your dog has rabies, that's not

11:06

your dog anymore. If your dog

11:09

has cancer, then you get the dog

11:11

treated. Does the university

11:13

system have rabies or does that have

11:15

cancer? Interesting?

11:17

And I think it at this point, the university

11:20

system has rabies. It's irredeemable

11:22

and nothing can be done about it. Are we're going to

11:24

get worse? Am I correct

11:27

that? And I'm thinking of um

11:30

the recent move in the University

11:33

California system that you must submit

11:35

a statement of diversity, is

11:37

that what it's called to get hired. I

11:40

imagine hiring practices are highly

11:42

tilted toward recruiting people

11:44

who are going to tow the party line. Well

11:47

yeah, okay, so this isn't another conversation.

11:49

But you're absolutely correct diversity,

11:52

equity and inclusion, and we should probably spell

11:54

those words out at some point, but you have to

11:56

hire a diversity statement moreover,

11:59

and I published a using the Philosopher's magazine

12:01

about this called deluded Departments.

12:04

Here's how it works. One of the single

12:06

greatest insights in all of critical thinking

12:08

comes from the a man by the name

12:10

of Dr Michael Shermer. Why

12:13

does smart people believe weird things?

12:16

Well, we've answered that question. Here's the answer

12:18

to it. Because smart people are

12:20

better at rationalizing bad ideas.

12:23

In other words, the smarter you are,

12:25

the better you are at justifying a bad conclusion,

12:28

and then you convince yourself that it's true. Okay.

12:31

That same mechanism operates

12:34

when you have more people involved. So

12:36

if you have ten people involved,

12:38

they're better at rationalizing a bad idea.

12:41

What we have now in the university system

12:44

is we have entire university departments

12:47

that are pumping out justifications

12:50

complete nonsense. And those

12:52

justifications are themselves based

12:54

upon the literature that these people have fabricated.

12:58

Well, and if it were merely

13:01

that they were claiming dinosaurs were

13:03

ancient giant people, I

13:05

mean that would be idiotic and and and

13:07

you know, uh, not temptable

13:09

from an intellectual point of view. But

13:12

the fact that they're pitching the most horrific sort

13:14

of ideologies is Yeah, you talk about

13:17

being fucked trum. I was watching

13:19

a YouTube video with I think you and James

13:21

Lindsay, or maybe it was just James talking about the whole critical

13:23

race thing and how it's a no win situation and

13:26

I worry about this raising I got a couple of

13:28

young white boys, um where

13:30

either you're you're a racist or you're

13:33

anti racist in the in the new theory

13:35

of things, either you're actively working either

13:37

you admit your racist and you actively

13:39

work toward being anti racist, which is defined

13:42

it's undefined herble and defined by others.

13:44

They will tell you what it means exactly.

13:46

You can't ever win and

13:48

that stuff. It makes my

13:50

head want to explode, but it seems to actually

13:52

be happening. Right. It's called

13:54

a costa trap, and that is so

13:58

this is the This is the way they view the world. We

14:00

already know you're a racist, so you should

14:02

just admit it and work toward it. And if you say no, I'm

14:04

not a racist, they point to the fact

14:06

that you said no, I'm not a racist as evidence

14:08

that you're a racist. So there's literally

14:11

nothing that you can do if you start with

14:13

the idea that someone is a racist, no matter

14:15

what they say has taken as evidence of their racism.

14:20

You know, there's there's there's no redens. Let me

14:22

just let me just go on some My daughter was

14:24

adopted from China. We got her as a waiting child,

14:26

which means she's disabled, and I'm not

14:28

using that as a weapon or touting that around.

14:31

That's not evidence that

14:33

you're not a racist. If my wife

14:36

were African Americans, she's not.

14:38

But if you were, that would also not be evidence

14:40

that you're not. There is no evidence

14:43

that you can provide somebody that you're not a

14:45

racist. These starting given is

14:47

that you're a racist. How

14:49

many people think like you on college

14:52

campuses as opposed to the whack jobs.

14:54

Who's winning this battle in terms of numbers? Yeah,

14:57

that is a fantastic question. The

15:00

part of the problem is We don't know. So

15:03

we don't know because people are afraid

15:05

to voice their actual opinions because if

15:07

they voice their actual opinions, then the mob

15:09

will come for them. And we have seen over and

15:11

over and over again. You know, Laura Kitness

15:14

writes some great stuff about how Title nine has

15:16

been used. We don't really know

15:18

how many people hate this.

15:21

I mean people will come up to me and they'll whisper something,

15:23

or I'll get emails. Think about this, just really

15:26

think about this. I'll get emails anti

15:28

Trump emails on p

15:30

s U s UH University

15:33

server. Now I should say I'm a liberal

15:35

and I'm an atheist and I don't like Trump to

15:37

say the least, But that is so inappropriate.

15:40

It's beyond inappropriate to use university

15:42

mechanisms to give political

15:44

opinions. Here's the other

15:46

thing these people

15:49

have managed. And I know this is

15:51

going to sound utterly crazy,

15:53

but it's true and the evidence bears

15:55

this out. First, they came to

15:57

the conservatives. There's only one

16:00

person at the entire unipruence a university

16:02

who I know of who's a conservative. Now there may be

16:04

others, but they're probably too terrified to speak

16:06

out. There's one moderate

16:09

and they've come for him. You should look Bruce

16:11

Gilly up. He wrote the paper The Case for Colonialism,

16:14

and they have been greefing him. He this

16:16

is fascinating. He wanted to have a court.

16:18

Now again, this is not a conservative, he's

16:21

a centrist moderate. But for these

16:23

people Stephen Pinker calls at the left pole

16:26

if you're on the left, everybody the

16:28

far left, everybody looks like they're on the right.

16:30

So I, as a liberal atheist, look like I'm

16:32

on the right. They think I'm on the far right. So

16:35

this guy, Bruce gilly wanted a course in

16:37

conservative political thought. The university

16:40

denied it because they said there wasn't

16:42

enough diversity in the course. So

16:46

so they've come for him. The course

16:48

on irony there at Portland State right

16:51

now, they're coming for the liberals, right, So

16:53

now they're coming for people like me because

16:56

I am a show whatever they want

16:58

to say. But the but here's the problem

17:01

with this. Part of the problem is

17:03

they have created this insane ecosystem

17:06

where any time you want to voice, any

17:09

time you even ask somebody for evidence,

17:11

Hey, what's your evidence for that, that's construed

17:13

as racist. Think about that.

17:15

That's a micro asking someone for evidence as

17:17

a microaggression. This is the

17:20

exact opposite of what we should be doing in

17:22

the university, because evidence

17:24

and appealing to logic is white

17:27

paternalism based traditional

17:29

right, we're screaming away from the Enlightenment back

17:32

towards somebody at the top gets to

17:34

decide what's true and what's not exactly,

17:36

and the idea is you can't disable

17:39

the master's house with the master's tools.

17:41

Reason, evidence, the scientific method.

17:44

Those are all from white system, heterosexual

17:46

males. Therefore they're tainted as evil.

17:48

You know, that's why Hitler hated communism

17:51

because Marx was a Jew. Right, this is

17:53

the kind of the same thing that's employed, the same way

17:55

of thinking that's in place. Wow,

17:58

it's just it's so true bling.

18:01

I mean, the idea, the ideology itself

18:03

is incredibly troubling. The idea that young people

18:05

at their most vulnerable, vulnerable are

18:07

being indoctrinated into this is truly

18:10

disgusting. I don't you

18:13

know, I'm glad we have a voice and

18:15

a and a reasonably you know, significant

18:18

one. This is incredibly disturbing.

18:20

Yeah, and I really this is the message I

18:22

really want to get to people, and I hope

18:25

that I articulate this to do you guys know what

18:27

phrenology is? Yeah? I

18:29

think so reading the lumps on people's heads is

18:31

that what that is? Yeah? Okay, So let's

18:34

say that these lunatics were had

18:36

journals of phrenology. That's ideal

18:38

laundering, right. They write about phrenology and they know it's

18:41

true. They say, how do you know it's true? They point

18:43

to all these articles in the Journal of Chronology,

18:46

and then they start, you

18:48

know, not only testing people's skulls,

18:51

but they start assigning scholarships on the

18:53

basis of the protrubances in your head, like, oh, this

18:55

guy is a bump at L seven or whatever, you know, put

18:58

him in engineering. Okay. So, if

19:01

the people in power who

19:03

are advocating phrenology

19:06

are liberals, and I

19:08

call out phrenology as not having enough

19:10

evidence, that does not make me a

19:12

conservative. That just makes

19:14

me someone who doesn't think there's enough evidence

19:17

to institutionalize and insane idea.

19:20

If the people in power are conservatives

19:23

and I call it out, it doesn't matter their political

19:26

orientation. They're peddling bad

19:28

ideas. And

19:30

this is not a matter of right or left

19:32

or liberal or atheist. Or believer. It's

19:34

none of that. This stuff is pure

19:36

unadulterated bullshit, and

19:39

their teaching as to kids as knowledge,

19:41

and it's got to stop. To

19:44

what extent does this

19:46

sort of thing resemble a religious

19:49

cult and it's norms

19:51

and its enforcement mechanisms and the rest, it's

19:54

a complete religious cult in James

19:56

Lindsay and Helen clock Rose and I have written about that

19:58

extensively. You know, they have the

20:01

same mechanisms. Blasphemy is

20:03

big in the religious space. They

20:05

have the same mechanisms with political correctness.

20:08

This case, however, they can actually enforce

20:10

those mechanisms, enforce

20:12

blasphemy or political correctness with the university

20:15

mechanisms, and at some point,

20:17

let's do let's do this. Let's okay.

20:20

There are two things going on we haven't talked

20:22

about, but I think are very important. One

20:25

is, if you just think about this

20:27

issue as a free speech issue, you're

20:30

not understanding the whole thing. These

20:32

people do not just want to take away your

20:34

freedom of speech. This is an issue

20:37

of cognitive liberty. They

20:39

want you to think a very certain way,

20:41

and if you don't do that, they will punish

20:43

you. And when you understand

20:45

the problem like that, you

20:47

understand how unbelievably serious

20:50

it is and why these ideologues

20:52

have to be stopped. That's

20:55

some damn interesting stuff. Man. Okay, what

20:57

what was the second point you said? He had to Well,

21:01

okay, yeah, I have to so you

21:04

know, Okay, it's very complicated.

21:06

What they've managed to do. Why this

21:08

is so difficult is if

21:11

I say the word to you social justice

21:15

mostly of course on for sociive.

21:18

Who isn't for social justice. It's like

21:20

the word affirmative action. Of

21:22

course I'm for affirmative action. Of

21:24

course I'm for positive action. But

21:27

the words don't mean what people think

21:29

they mean. So when you

21:31

say do you want you know, the big

21:33

push on universities now is to have inclusion,

21:36

right, And if you just look at the word

21:38

inclusion, like, well, inclusion, who

21:40

what kind of every same person should want

21:42

inclusion? Well, yeah, every same person should

21:44

want inclusion. If someone is a minority or sexual

21:47

minority or transfer, of course they should

21:49

be included in the conversation. Of course they should

21:51

feel welcomed. But that's not what inclusion

21:54

is. Okay, So inclusion

21:57

means welcoming, all right, Just the

21:59

definition of what does what does to include?

22:01

Someone needs to make them feel welcome. But

22:03

if somebody says something that

22:06

could make someone feel unwelcome, then

22:08

this space isn't inclusive

22:10

anymore. So what we need to do is to

22:12

restrict speech so that people won't

22:15

say anything that makes other people feel

22:17

unwelcome. So when you hear the word

22:19

inclusion, what that should

22:21

translate that in your head is restricted

22:24

speech. That's what the word

22:26

inclusion means. And that's

22:28

another way to rob people of their

22:30

cognitive liberty. Wow,

22:34

wow, good stuff. Um,

22:36

you know, I think the best thing we can do is

22:38

to recommend folks, uh follow

22:40

you and and James and

22:42

Helen on the Twitter and read

22:44

the stuff. You're right, and we'll certainly bring it to people's

22:47

attention as it comes out. Keep fighting the

22:49

good fighting. We'll stay in touch. I love watching the videos,

22:51

I love reading your stuff. You know, well,

22:53

thank you. We we appreciate your support. And what I said

22:55

the beginning of the hours true, We're just we

22:57

can't do that. I'm trying to fight a whole university

23:00

system, and I'm trying to take on

23:02

a system of indoctrination. And

23:04

you know, most people they don't even know what a peer of you

23:06

paper is and when I

23:08

call out this nonsense, they come for me.

23:11

So when I have the support of you

23:13

guys, that's a huge deal. That

23:15

that that makes it possible for

23:17

me to fight keep fighting this fight. So I am

23:19

incredibly grateful. We'll use us like garden

23:22

tools, Peter, because we we believe

23:24

that stuff and we're with you. Well,

23:27

thank you. I sincerely appreciate that. It's always

23:29

great to talk. Thanks a million extra

23:32

large. When

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