STU: Roger Scruton.
GLENN: Yeah. Roger Scruton. Okay. So Roger Scruton is a professor that says, you know, we've got a problem.
Now, he's speaking in Australia.
And he's saying, we have a problem. And I want to talk to you about it. But I can talk to you about it here, kind of, if everybody will stay rational. But I definitely can't have this conversation in America. So let's play cut one.
VOICE: One of the first things that happens when a totalitarian government takes over, is that the universities are cleaned up. That's to say, people who are doing that kind of thing, get thrown out. This is what happened when the Nazis took over the German universities and when the Soviets took over -- the communists took over the Russian universities.
And it was the case in eastern Europe in my day, with the sole exception of Poland, which had universities, which were the only universities where every professor was on the right. That was because the communists were everywhere.
But on the whole, this is the first move that the totalitarian mentality makes, to stop that kind of free-minded open scholarship in pursuit of truth. And it may be there has to be something like that.
You know, maybe after all in the Middle Ages, maybe theology was like that.
But the interesting thing about medieval theology is that it encouraged the intellectual method, despite its requirement of orthodoxy.
GLENN: So it's really interesting what he's saying is, whenever there's a totalitarian regime anywhere in the world, the first thing they do is take the universities. And the universities are meant to question, hold to the facts, and use scientific standards to be able to decide. And he is saying that we have rejected that, just the way they did in Europe, just the way they did in Russia, just the way they do in China, rejected those scientific standards. And we're entering a new dark age.
And, you know, that might sound like hyperbole, to those who might be listening on the left. But it's -- can you honestly say that scientific standards have been adhered to -- boy, this is controversial -- for -- for climate change.
I mean, I'm willing to look at the thermometer and say, okay. The thermometer is going up. The thermometer is going down. I'm not willing to project a weather pattern out over 100 years.
I'm not willing to look at weather or climate over 100 years because you've already been wrong.
STU: Well, you can look at it, you just to have apply the appropriate level of skepticism and uncertainty, which is not allowed.
GLENN: Correct. Correct. Then also you cannot shun those who have a different opinion. Scientific standards rely on you to say, okay. Wait a minute. Question. Question. Question. Is there any new data? Is there anything that's changing? Question. Question. Question.
We're not questioning anymore. And that should scare everyone. We need to question these things.
Now, I'm willing to -- I'm willing to say, okay. Global warming is happening. It makes sense to me that maybe man is playing a role in that. I don't think man is insignificant.
But I also don't think that the planet is -- the planet will destroy us before we can destroy it. And I don't want that to happen. I want to do the things that we can do.
I'm willing to do those things. If you -- without even proving. It's good to take care of the planet. But if you prove to me that we are doing things, okay. So then, what's the next step?
What's the most effective thing we can do?
Well, stop eating meat. Get rid of farms. Okay. How come I'm not hearing that.
STU: Yeah. You very rarely do. And that's the same source, the UN, that gives us all the rest of it.
GLENN: So it doesn't happen because it doesn't entail $14 trillion of wealth being redistributed. That's why. There's no wealth redistribution when it comes to the farms. None.
STU: You don't need laws. You don't need more control. You just do it, right?
GLENN: Just stop. Just stop eating meat.
STU: And, of course, they won't. I mean, very rarely. It took Al Gore, what? Five or six -- it was longer than that. Ten years before he supposedly converted.
GLENN: Right.
STU: It would be interesting to know if that's actually true. But instead of being in a place where you can question things like that, we are in a place where the Australian government has provided a 19,000-dollar grant, to a playwright, who has written a play, entitled Kill Climate Deniers.
GLENN: Oh, my gosh.
STU: The plot, a classic rock band takes the stage in parliament's house main hall. And 96 armed eco terrorists stormed the building and take the entire government hostage, threatening to execute everyone, unless Australia ends global warming.
GLENN: Is that more akin to the Dark Ages or to the Enlightenment?
STU: Of course, the Dark Ages.
GLENN: Of course. Of course it is. And that's exactly what we're being dragged back into.
We fought hard as man. We fought hard to get out of the Dark Ages, where somebody said, I know the answer, and you don't.
And I'm basing it on what was then known as something that you didn't use any of your senses, you couldn't see it, taste it, feel it, hear it. It was called nonsense.
And so we rejected all things that were nonsense. We fought hard to get out of the Dark Ages. And we are going back into it. And we are being led to slaughter.
And we -- we got to turn this around. Now, listen to what he says about women's studies, et cetera, et cetera.
VOICE: So we have been lucky in inheriting universities of that kind. But is it the case that we still have them? We have seen the growth of an extraordinary number of new subjects in the university, in which the pursuit of truth seems to be secondary to something else. The other thing being the pursuit of some kind of political conformity.
If you take a subject like women's studies -- now, I know this is a controversial issue. But perhaps it can be talked about freely in this room. You can't talk about it freely in America on the whole.
Anyway, there is a subject, it's very difficult to imagine, that you would succeed in that subject, if you didn't have either at the outset or certainly in the conclusion, feminist opinions.
Now, there is -- it's a subject constructed around an ideology. It might be that this ideology is grounded in truth. Who knows? But to question it is something which is essentially made impossible, both by the curriculum and by the way of teaching it. And I think you'll find that there are quite a lot of subjects like that, growing in our universities, in which conformity to an orthodoxy takes precedence over intellectual method.
GLENN: He talks about, so what is the solution, that you replace the male hierarchy with female hierarchy? You replace the white hierarchy with the black hierarchy?
That's not -- that's not scientific. That's not thoughtful. That's nothing. That's truly nothing.
STU: It just makes you feel good.
GLENN: For a little while, until you realize that people are people.
There was an interesting article -- I'm trying to get into it tomorrow, that was written on Winston Churchill. And it was an op-ed in the Washington Post. And it came out I think yesterday. And it was talking about what an evil SOB Winston Churchill was.
And in some regards, yeah. When it comes to India, yep. Yep. Really bad. He made some really bad decisions.
And was pretty racist. Okay.
So does that make him evil? Do we reject all of the things that he did to save freedom because he was so wrong in his time on India?
No. We have to know all of the really bad things about Winston Churchill, and we need to know all of the really good things about Winston Churchill. Because it makes him human.
All of us -- all of us have a really bad side and a really good side.
Which one is in control of your life?
And are you getting better? You know, what the author left out is, by the time the 1940s were in, Winston Churchill was already regretting the things he said and did in India. He was already saying, I shouldn't have done that. I wish I would have done this. He learned.
What are we learning now? What are we really teaching? We're teaching that -- in this case, Winston Churchill is really, really bad. No. He wasn't.
He was really bad here. He was really good here. Now let's have the discussion.
So what does that mean? And what does that tell us about us? And then, what should that tell us about power?
What should that tell us about how to make sure that we're careful with power and who we give power to and how we restrain power?
But if we're only being indoctrinated that Winston Churchill, as one, as an example, is just a horrible human being, that's just an overcorrection, and it takes us nowhere. It takes us to nihilism.
