Reaction & Commentary
Heroin with all of the stuff he just stole from walgreens now a progressive would tell me that we’re not supposed to say homeless anymore it’s too insensitive so i apologize acceptable alternatives include unhoused residents people experiencing homelessness individuals who are unhomed those struggling with homelessness and my personal fave neighbors in need
That’s great which makes it sound like all progressive neighborhoods you know are shared with homeless people not probably good for their retail sales today’s guest knows progressives he knows their game he not too long ago worked side by side with him during his environmental work he was so good at it
In 2008 time magazine named him hero of the environment in the 90s he played a role in important policy change and in 2018 he actually ran for governor of california as a democrat he’s not a democrat anymore in fact he’s a villain to the left and why well because he still says homeless
Instead of unhoused resident mostly the left doesn’t like that he disagrees with their excess and their hypocrisy meanwhile his contributions to policy have done more for the environment than any of their climate changes real bumper stickers ever could as a journalist and as an author he has mostly covered environmental issues but
The events of 2020 motivated motivated him to write his latest book called san francisco why progressives ruin cities now he’s a guy who lived in san francisco for over 30 years he lately says i don’t even i barely recognize it we’ve all seen the sprawling homeless encampments the sidewalks covered in
Feces and syringes but it’s more than just san francisco it’s a problem now all over our country and the common denominator is not lack of funding it’s not capitalism it’s not housing prices it’s not racism it’s not the police the common denominator is progressive leftist leadership leftist radicals who promote glamorous
Solutions instead of dealing with actual problems just last week another five walgreen locations closed in san francisco they closed in response to a constant state condoned looting how do progressives respond it was walgreen’s fault please welcome michael schellenberger the leading cause of death in the united states and around the world is abortion
Since roe versus wade over 62 million babies have been aborted in the us alone nearly one in four pregnancies end in abortion i want to talk to you about uh preborn this ministry is partnering with blaise media to help rescue 10 000 babies in 2021 and you can be a part of it
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With clinics in the highest abortion rate cities and regions and they have a passion to save babies and to see these women come to christ over the past 15 years they’ve counseled over 340 000 women considering abortion these women changed their mind 169 000 babies have been saved 51 000 women have
Turned over a new leaf and changed their life and gave it over to christ will you help rescue 10 000 babies i want you to donate pound 250 and say the keyword baby that’s pound 250 keyword baby or you can go to preborn.com glenn So michael for for those on the right who may not um be so familiar with you you are a fascinating guy um because you seem to be somebody who just searches for the truth and let the chips fall where they may which is very rare today
Well thank you very much yeah i um i definitely come from the left i came from the radical left but i’m also always been evidence based and so both in apocalypse never which came out last year and san francisco i wanted to take a close look at
Kind of where the left has gone wrong and and what are the reasons for that not just how it goes wrong so i just want to spend just a couple of minutes going into your past you were noam chomsky reading would you have been one of the black flag
Guys because i know you got involved with the environmental movement and you were on the radical side of that how would you describe yourself family radical left i mean i went and uh worked with the san anistas when i was still a teenager in high school i worked on radical political movements
In latin america for many years i was always pretty committed to non-violent political action so i was in seattle when the black bloc started breaking windows at mcdonald’s but i wasn’t one of the people breaking windows you know i was raised christian uh congregationalist um and so i’ve never i
Never held the really anti-human malthusian values of many in the radical environmental movement and i always thought that there was something a bit odd about celebrating homelessness which is something i discovered when i moved to san francisco but i worked for george soros funded think tanks and organizations i advocated for drug decriminalization
And needle exchange which is the passing of clean needles to drug addicts you know some of that work i still support other parts of it i am skeptical of my understanding was always that we were going to help addicts to get drug treatment and what’s happened instead is that we
Basically just allowed open-air drug use uh right open-air drug scenes which we use we euphemistically call homeless encampments and really the breakdown of public order public safety in big progressive cities it’s it’s amazing to me because i’m actually for drug legalization the way portugal did it um portugal did a great
Study on it and found the more they spend the worse it gets if they legalize all of it and spend that money really i think it was even a fraction of that money on um on drug rehabilitation their problem was virtually solved and we’re just approaching it the wrong way
But i don’t think anyone in this country and i mean this on left and right i don’t know how many people are actually serious about solving a problem and compared to those who are just wanting power and keep us all divided yeah i mean one of the um in san
Francisco i describe going to amsterdam which is a very liberal city marijuana is decriminalized um uh prostitution is decriminalized i also interviewed the head of portugal’s drug program these are cities that do not have open air drug scenes they do not have homeless people living on the streets i
Asked the head of portugal’s drug program if if you’re using heroin in public in lisbon what would happen to you and he said you would be arrested you can’t shoot heroin in public in lisbon you can’t camp in a tent in downtown amsterdam so yes it’s decriminalized in the sense
That if you get caught with um a certain amount of drugs they don’t send you to prison however if you have an addiction and you’re displaying but you’re engaged in behaviors that are clearly self-destructive or destructive to the people around you you get brought before something called a commission for the dissuasion of
Addiction which is just as terrifying as it sounds in part because it includes you know both uh prosecutor defense attorney judges social workers but it also includes members of your family so the portuguese put pressure on addicts to quit to get their lives together they understand that that’s the
Alternative to prison the alternative to prison should not be what we’ve done in san francisco and other progressive cities which is just to let people use drugs wherever and basically enter into really severe states of psychosis related to intense meth use unabated meth and heroin use
So really it’s just gone we just went too far it just became too radical to you know you would call it somewhere a progressive libertarianism where the idea is that once you’re declared a victim simply for being african-american or homeless or addicted to drugs or even mentally ill
Then nothing is required of you and everything is given and we know that that’s a terrible way to treat people suffering from what is basically a mental illness yeah um uh you know it always gets slammed and conservatives always get slammed uh for this kind of idea but ben franklin after spending
Time in london uh wrote to one of his friends and said you know you are growing the system the best thing you can do is care for them but make them uncomfortable in that situation so they want to get out they want to do something themselves and
We we do just the opposite it’s it’s more uncomfortable in america today to start your own business and and go your own way than it is to sit at home do nothing collect from the government or maybe do drugs in san francisco while you’re crapping in the streets
Well yeah i mean i document in san francisco that we basically give cash welfare still in san francisco in san francisco to people suffering drug addiction which even the most progressive drug treatment advocates say is a terrible idea we give away free housing without any conditions this is completely bonkers
And republicans honestly went along with this under george w bush we created something called a housing first policy which is the federal policy and the idea is to just give people housing it was a very alluring simplistic idea but like a lot of simplistic ideas turned out to have terrible consequences
That’s not what they do in civilized developed nations whether in europe or asia or japan in amsterdam if you want to get your own apartment you have to pass a sobriety test you have to make or you have to make progress on your personal plan if you’re suffering from
Mental illness you need to take your psychiatric medications you know if you i watched social workers interact with a man with autism and he wasn’t going to his work he wanted his own apartment and they were like you got to show up for your job so there has to
Be this thing of reciprocity it’s a very basic idea which is that you don’t get something for nothing there’s carrots as a reward but there’s sticks that are consequences so what we need to do is move from a housing first policy to a shelter first policy everybody should be sheltered and
Required to stay in shelters you can’t sleep on the street it’s not safe it’s not hygienic and then if you want to get your own housing you have to earn it there has to be some reward for it but the goal is independence for people it should not be
Constant dependence on the government we also just need to treat people uh treatment first it’s just not if you’re breaking the law and i stress this part because people get confused about what i’m saying my view and this is consistent with i think a more libertarian view if you
Want to kill yourself using hard drugs in the privacy of your own apartment and you’re not hurting anybody i don’t think that should be a priority for law enforcement to go hunt you down i think it’s nuts i think it’s bonkers that you would one one would use meth or fentanyl
Or heroin in your in your own home but that’s not a height that’s not a priority for the public by contrast if your addiction is leading you to live in a tent on the street and shoot heroin and smoke fentanyl in public and defecate in public spaces you’re
Breaking the law and we should enforce the law and require that you stay in a shelter get treatment and if you don’t want to do that then you can go to jail but we have to enforce the laws in this country we have to enforce them including in progressive cities but
Here’s the problem um there doesn’t seem to be any actual law anymore that people abide by or they you’ll pay a penalty if you don’t have the right friends we are no longer a nation of laws we are a nation of men and that’s really really dangerous how do we get that
Back in place first well that’s a great question and part of the reason i wrote san francisco is i wanted to get to the bottom of how did we go from trying to redress some of the the sins of the past you know we’ve had a terrible obviously history of racial discrimination
Um you know people have been uh oppressed and victimized in the past but we went to this really bizarre extreme which is this idea that whole groups of people can be categorized as victims that that in itself has been racist the idea that all african americans are
Victims it’s a terrible idea but even for people but then you then they start putting people in that category including the mentally ill uh the homeless people suffering from drug addiction you know and in some cases people are victims but then you have to ask the
Question is that the end of the story victimization is a moment towards heroism and the heroes of san francisco are actually recovering drug addicts they’re totally inspiring people they’ve gone through 12-step they’ve gone through recovery they’re the most honest people i’ve ever met they’re funny and interesting and so i tell their stories
Of recovery because i think that’s such a inspiration for us but that’s how we have to view people stop viewing people as objects or as victims they’re on a road to recovery and we need to help them on that road so you know one that one question i had is
Is this victim ideology or victimology is it as stupid as it seems is it really that dumb and the the the the sad truth is it really is so my hope is to answer your question how do we solve this i think we have to drag this ideology into the sunlight i
Think when people see it for what it is including liberals they will say this is just bizarre so we we so where did it go not treat anybody that way where did it go wrong because there are many of us that you know you can still be compassionate
And want to have people you know i i grew up in abusive family i’m an alcoholic my mother was an alcoholic her bottom was suicide i could claim i was a victim but it doesn’t matter when i’m at the bottom of the barrel and i’m i have
A choice i’m either going to live or die and it is the moment of heroism when you say i want to live and i want to live differently and you find the way to do that but we don’t celebrate that and in fact many americans feel like we’ve been
Discouraged so let me just let me play devil’s advocate here michael you’ve been on this for a long time uh we feel like we’ve been on this for a long time uh and i don’t talk about our politicians because they suck on the right but
Where did it go wrong where did you wake up and why should we why should we listen to you now and why should the people on the left listen to you because you have this new revelation yeah i mean um and first of all no one
Should take my word for anything i mean just as with apocalypse never san francisco includes over 1200 footnotes from the best available science it’s it’s basically this book more than apocalypse never consists of many many interviews with people that self-identify as liberals and progressives and they’re the ones that offer the most devastating
Indictment of the mentality and the system i mean glenn what your work has been so important in doing is drawing attention to this importance of mentality and of faith and those are two things that i feel like i got some clarity about which is that you know for
A lot of liberals who embrace self-help we love you know i talk about one particular self-help uh really a founder of cognitive behavioral therapy victor frankel man search for me he survived the concentration camps under the nazis because he got his mentality right he knew that he had to have a purpose a
Goal which was to be reunited with his wife and his parents and to write a book and to be an inspiration to the world yes liberals love this book so my question was why is it that liberals embrace self-help in their private lives but then declare self-help to be blaming
The victim that’s what they call it when it comes to political life so you won’t be surprised that terrible idea that that asking people for some responsibility and accountability is the same as blaming the victim it comes out of the late 60s it’s really a backlash to
All the success that had been made in the united states by the radical left it’s a completely toxic idea accountability reciprocity responsibility these are pillars of our civilization and so what’s occurred is the radical left has basically been attacking the pillars of western civilization i mean you see
It every institution is under attack they started with psychiatric hospitals after world war ii it also started it also now is obviously including our universities our police departments i described the attacks on the police which if you really care about black lives 30 times more african americans are killed by
Civilians than by police in this country if you care about homicide about saving black lives or all lives you should be pro-police if you’re worried about police violence the worst way the worst thing to do if you care about police violence is to cut the police force because you need police
You need sufficient police forces so they’re not stressed and under strain so i think there’s um what gives me hope is the response to this book has been incredibly positive not just from conservatives but also from liberals good the radical left as usual it goes too far and so
You know it’s it’s hard to find progressives in san francisco san francisco who think that things are fine who think it’s okay to have people with schizophrenia people you know that are attacking other people i mean there’s a lot of violence against women that is occurring in the interest
In not just an inner city but in the downtowns of our greatest cities so i do think things have reached a tipping point but i think that there’s something that the progressives do need to deal with which is that you do need some kind of faith you need some sort of belief and
Some higher power otherwise it descends into this really dogmatic religion that they think is they think it’s not a religion at all but it really is a kind of saffron sickness which is basically the idea that love is all you need that compassion is all you need and we know
That we also people also need discipline hard work structures and some sense of personal responsibility you are i mean you are singing the gospel to a lot of people that watch me um i’m thrilled to hear that there are a lot of people that have followed you
That they are starting to feel this way because it it we’re in a place now where we’re completely detached from reality completely detached and we’re being told to ignore what we actually see with our own eyes or what we experience at the supermarket or on the streets in a on a
City you know like this none of this makes sense you know this uh this last weekend the the white house saying inflation is good because it shows people are buying stuff and the economy is good no we don’t no no that’s no no it’s not um but when it comes to let’s say
California california just re-elected gavin newsom and that seems to me and maybe i’m reading it wrong as let the status quo go because he starts doubling down on things now that he wasn’t removed from office how do you see that yeah well and just to agree with you i
Mean we have seen you know california decriminalized three grams of hard drugs including fentanyl and we in the same legislation in 2014 we also decriminalized shoplifting 950 dollars worth of goods so the walgreens our biggest drugstore chain or one of our base research chain has been shutting down stores in san
Francisco in san francisco and the radical left has been claiming that this is not a problem they’ve been saying oh there’s no real problem at the walgreens basically denying this incredible reality well the reason is is because you know for because one paradox or a parent paradox is that progressives
Are concerned about victims but then they’re not concerned about the victims of of theft they’re not concerned about the african-americans being killed um by other african-americans they’re only concerned about african-americans killed by police so why is that and the reason that i got out in san francisco is that progressives are only concerned
With victims of the quote-unquote system they’re only concerned with victims of capitalism they’re not concerned with victims of other people so that’s the heart of the problem i think that is not a mainstream view however most p most democrats reject that mentality that’s a radical left view
As for the last elections you know my my understanding if you look at the polling data is that most voters were still voting on kovid we have a much we have a very affluent um pretty wealthy population in california now because of home prices went up so much people tend to be very
You know it’s funny to use the word conservative on kovid they they really are in favor of very restrictive measures and that was the main thing they were voting on you know when we tested we did many polls but so have many other groups testing the broad agenda that we’re
Proposing which is a shelter first agenda a shelter requirement treatment first housing earned as well as universal psychiatry which we’re calling cal psych we find support for that agenda around 70 to 80 percent among registered voters in california so i think there is a real opportunity for some fresh candidate
Next year to run against gavin newsom and win i don’t know if it’s a republican because you know we have an open electoral system in california so it could be two democrats it could be an independent but i do think the people of california are ready for for something
That is that is an alternative to the radical left you know the the interesting thing is when i explain what san francisco is doing to people to a lot of just ordinary democrats that i know they absolutely reject it they say i’m not in favor of defunding the police i’m
Not in favor of gain giving money to drug addicts and i’m not in favor of letting drug addicts sleep on the streets shoot drugs in on the street and defecate in public so i don’t think that that that that reigning in those excesses is um is in any way a fringe
Idea i think it’s actually quite popular but it seems as though it is uh i mean it feels as though that what’s happening in california is now the uh national stance uh and you know it i i hate to see the rest of the country go down that road but we’re
We’re enacting the same kinds of policies all over the country now yeah that’s true i mean i was just in new york city you know new york traditionally had done a pretty good job of actually requiring people to be in shelters but i saw people you know on sixth avenue on a mattress
With their salt with their cell phones sleeping out on the sidewalk two police officers one block away staring at their at their phones like so many of us do when really you need to you need to do what i saw social workers that i shadowed in amsterdam netherlands do which is when
We discovered someone trying to sleep on a park bench you’d say look we have a bed for you in a shelter you can’t sleep on the park bench it’s not safe for you it’s not safe for you it’s not safe for anybody else new york used to do that i
Mean they’re there they did have they knew who all the homeless were this what was told to me we know who they are and we know who refuses to go in uh and who doesn’t but we have a bed for for everybody but now apparently we don’t that’s right
Yeah that’s right i mean you know and i i really get at the people in particular responsible for this and by the way i’m a lifelong aclu supporter but unfortunately and i support a lot of what aclu has done in the past but unfortunately aclu has been a terrible
Bad actor in this situation i asked them you know when one of our one of our grandparents when they suffer from dementia whether from alzheimer’s or some other cause when they suffer from dementia we don’t let them wander around in the seed where they’re in the city where they’re at risk to themselves
Or something bad could happen to them so why do we do that with people suffering from other forms of mental illness why do we let people suffering from psychosis whether from schizophrenia or extensive methods why do we let them wander around the city it’s immoral it’s
It’s not safe for them and in amsterdam and in other civilized cities they say to folks that with psychosis they say you have to go stay in a shelter you will be able to see a psychiatrist this is for me fundamental to the operation of of cities and a civilization we’re glenn
Honestly um well after i wrote san francisco i declared myself no longer a progressive i changed my party registration from democrat to independent because i feel like i’m living in an immoral society and i i don’t mean for that to sound the way that i think it may sound to a lot of
People but i feel like i’m living under like apartheid in south africa or in some some system where i’m like i i feel wrong paying taxes to basically allow hundreds of people to die every year on the street i i for for different reasons i feel the same way i think the
Government is so disconnected now from morality on multiple subjects that i don’t i don’t know what i pay my taxes for anymore i don’t i don’t recognize you know the one thing that i have always felt is that the system is it will correct itself when the people correct
Itself you know what i mean when the people are all going down one way somebody like martin luther king appears and we do correct it and we start to move in a better way i don’t i don’t see that now i don’t see well i don’t see a lot of people
Standing up but i also don’t see the self-correction on anything policies that are clearly not working what we’re doing down at the border is the most immoral thing i’ve ever seen remember i’m the guy who got in trouble with the right because i brought food and things down to the
People who had crossed the border under obama and i said look you can disagree but you have to see people as people you have to see the plight that they’re in right now no one seems to be talking about the kids we lost 40 000 miners well do you think they’re in healthy
Situations now we lost 40 000 of them in the last six months that is immoral it’s immoral what’s going on but it doesn’t seem like it matters to people why what happened yeah you’re absolutely i totally i totally agree we’re losing our humanity glenn and that’s the most
Severe thing that you could say about a people or a civilization or a culture that’s what you know 17 that’s what happened in germany with dietrich bonhoeffer it’s why he failed the germans had lost their humanity and no matter what he said to appeal to the humanity that door was already closed
We can’t let that happen here or we’re going to make them look like rookies i mean glenn to give you some numbers here 93 000 people died last year from drug deaths or poisonings or overdoses that’s a five-fold increase from the 17 000 people that died from drugs in the
Year 2000 that’s almost that’s almost three times as many people died of drugs last year as car accidents almost five times as many as that of homicides during a normal year this is out of control i do have one quote at the end of san francisco because even though the
Book is focused on why progressives ruined cities i do offer a critique in fact what i do is i quote conservatives making a critique of the right and why the right hasn’t been able to offer a powerful alternative politically in progressive cities and i quote the late patrick moynihan who is a very
Interesting figure someone i really identify with in a lot of ways he was a light he was a democrat but he worked for nixon as you know and raised concerns about the disintegration of the family and moynih had said something really important he said the central conservative truth is that
Culture determines the political life of a nation but the central liberal truth is that politics can intervene in the cultural life and and change the direction so i do think that what you’re pointing out is correct i mean i see voices like yours voices like joe rogan whose podcast i did last week
Um jordan peterson i do see it having a very courageous liberals like barry weiss who used to be at the new york times yes i do see um are people coming moving from left to right a little bit more glenn glenn greenwald for example matt tybee these are voices that i see
Really making a difference in the culture but i agree with you we need some sort of new political formation some sort of new political leadership that i think transcends a lot of those old left-right boundaries because you know what i’m proposing is something that you know is
Called we call it cal psych it’s basically saying you know shocking idea that you need to treat people with mental illness you need to treat people with addiction that really that’s a moral issue that this is not just a kind of technical question that should be something that appeals to both reasonable uh
Conservatives and reasonable liberals so let me let let me take it to um to this question because i think we agree on most of what you said i mean you know you pull up the hood we’re gonna have disagreements on things but i mean the direction i think we agree on um
What i the conservative uh has been wildly wrong because we didn’t fear the corporation and that’s because we never i think we never saw the corporation as getting that out of control who should have listened to eisenhower it’s been out of control for a long time but now
It’s more powerful than all nations on earth combined um and we failed that the the conservatives have been warning about an out-of-control government and i don’t understand how um how the left doesn’t fear that it’s still power and and that one is even harder to stop because
They’re the police who do you call when the government has gone bad you got nobody to call um so why why is there this trust of the government you were saying uh cal psych the first thing that went through my mind was good heavens do you remember
All of the horrible things that used to happen in psychiatric hospitals back in the 50s and 60s and it stopped thank god that was where my mind went um and i don’t understand how we can bridge that gap how come we many conservatives are going holy cow were we wrong on corporations
How come the left doesn’t see that on the government yeah well that is such a great point and and and frankly why doesn’t the left see it on the power of corporations too right we’re seeing critical race theory take over corporations you know i after i um last year when my
Book apocalypse never came out i was censored by facebook now facebook is censoring my friend bjorn lomborg and others who for telling true facts about climate change and the environment so i share your concern you know in san francisco i do describe the horrible treatment of mentally ill
People i mean before they were mistreated in hospitals you know people were chained into basements and in barns and in horrible experiences after we we de-institutionalized and really the progressives shut down psychiatric hospitals with the uh consent of many conservatives um mentally ill people were literally
Dumped on the street i mean they were literally taken from hospitals and put on the street many of them ended up in jails and prison the institution that has the most mentally ill people in the united states is the los angeles county jail i don’t even want to describe the
Horrors that occur inside there but literally it was trans institutionalization we put we took people out of hospitals and put them in jails and prisons so that was terrible in terms of the corporate influence you’re absolutely right many people know that gavin newsom our governor in california was caught without a mask at
A very expensive most expensive fancy restaurants in the world french laundry but few people know that he was there with lobbyists for the california medical association and for some of our biggest health care companies my view is that there is a role for obviously private sector companies but
You have to have a system that is accountable and so what cal psych would do is it would say there has to be somebody in charge nothing gets done in our society without a hierarchy it’s why our military we still rely on it even with all the various problems that it’s been having
It still is a hierarchy and you can count on things to be done so we need some accountability in the system we need the head of calcite to report directly to the governor and the cal psych would then oversee private contracts certainly but it would be transparent there would be
Accountability right now it’s completely opaque it’s a byzantine system there’s both there’s two problems there’s both overlapping services sometimes people have two or three social workers and then there’s fragmentation so people will get out of drug treatment go back on the street overdose and die from drugs because there’s no connectivity in
The system so that’s something fixing this system is something that is going to require i think a consensus between like i said i think forward thinking conservatives forward thinking progressives because it’s a it’ll be a mixed model it’s going to have to involve the government it’s going to
Have to involve the private sector and simply doing what i think a lot of republicans have done understandably but also a fair number of liberals which is to kind of point to this or that charity and imagining that they can deal with people in meth induced psychosis or that
They can deal with these big homeless encampments i think those days are long past and so the real opportunity for us in progressive cities and states like california and the san francisco bay area is that it’s just become chaos there’s just too much violence on the street people are leaving people are
People are being made unsafe we’re having public health disasters so it’s in those crises that i think creates an opportunity for new political leadership and why do you say that um private charities i mean i have a charity that basically for the most part
What we do is we go find the best people on the ground closest to the problem and we just help fund them um and uh and it’s all just based on who’s getting given us the biggest bang for the buck why do you say private charities couldn’t do that
Well there’s a several reasons that i go through in some detail in san francisco but in short um you know that’s the model that we’ve had for the last 50 years as private charities that receive contracts from cities and counties and the first reason it hasn’t worked is
That we’re dealing when you’re dealing with drug addicts and the mentally ill you’re dealing with a highly transient population often they’re moving around the state and if you’re if you’re someone who is arrested multiple times and finally sentenced or given the choice between prison and drug treatment your drug treatment should probably not
Be anywhere close to where you were doing drugs because the drugs are a trigger we know that getting out of the open drug scene is necessary you may you may be familiar with a major study that was done of vietnam of american soldiers who became addicted to heroin in vietnam
When they came back to the united states most of them were able to kick their addictions simply because there wasn’t any heroin near them you go back to kansas city or something from vietnam it’s not easy to go find heroin at least not in the 60s or early 70s
Today we don’t we have that problem where so much of our rehab is right there in the middle of the open drug scene so the open drug market hits it’s way too triggering for people what we need is a statewide solution so that you can actually do drug rehab or adult foster care
Or psychiatric help in cities outside of those big open drug scenes so that you may go to if you’re arrested in san francisco or los angeles you may end up getting drug treatment in places like bakersfield or fresno where the rent is cheaper and you’re not in the middle of so much chaos
Can you you because you mentioned in the book uh michael kyle uh an awful lot um i think i’m pronouncing that right uh focal focus michelle foucault yeah thank you uh sorry yeah i i know it’s fine i know who he is on the surface i know enough um
Not a not a likable guy not a guy that you would want to hold up and say hey he’s he’s our man but you returned to this over and over in the book um and saying he’s it’s his influence all the way through can you explain that
Yeah sure so this is a french historian his name is yeah it would be in english would be michael foucault but it’s michelle because it’s french michelle and foucault is maybe the most influential intellectual of the last 50 years he’s taught in every major university in
The united states he’s a hero to most many people on the left he was a anarchist meaning that marxism and socialism were not radical enough for him um he wanted even more libertarian form of of marxism and the foucault’s big idea is that really mental illness is a myth
That’s just a way of stigmatizing people that are different um that’s a completely crazy idea we know mental illness is a thing my aunts suffer from schizophrenia it often manifests that particular mental illness manifests when people are often in college it’s a clear genetic environment interaction so the denial of it is
Really itself crazy he also was he also condemned rehabilitation he condemned where we had godwardman going with prisons which is to try to rehabilitate prisoners he viewed prisons and the criminal justice system in general like many radical left people do as basically a way that capitalism enforces its oppressive system on the people
So he was a really toxic influence um on the way people think the way the radical left thinks uh his ideas help to lead to basically emptying people out of mental hospitals without any support system for them whatsoever so so again help me understand the thinking because it i i don’t
You have a hard time let me put it this way kennedy said in like 1961 an error only becomes a mistake when you refuse to correct it so there’s all kinds of errors being made but they’re all being made into mistakes because you have the evidence this does not work and
Then you have to say okay now it’s intentional now you are intending to do these things what is the attraction to these guys and and to this philosophy and the attraction to to just let it go on and on and on with data piling up saying it doesn’t work
That’s what they so yeah you have to the conclusion is that that’s what they want they want it not to work so you know the motivation for foucault and the radical left is that they hate the system they think the system is the capitalist democratic system that we
Have and frankly even though france is more socialistic than we are even the french system was too capitalist for them so they hate the system they think the system is responsible for creating victims they have in their minds this romantic utopia and this really goes back to jean-jacques rousseau in the 18th century
So these are all marks in the 19th century so these are this radical tradition there’s a utopia in the back of people’s minds where there’s a world that exists without any suffering or um any inequality and the current system is viewed as as evil because there is inequality it’s a
Part of of our societies and so they’re it’s coming from a really it’s coming from hatred you know that’s the emotion um that that it comes from i will say how does it come from hatred hatred of the system hatred of inequality hatred of what
Yes so it would start i think i could i get into some of this at the end of san francisco because i draw on some of the work of the psychologist jonathan height but basically you know it starts with um sadness at the cruelty of the world
It then becomes a kind of anger and a kind of you know dumb ideology that blames all the inequality and suffering of the world on something that we imagine to be a system it’s based on a really dumb idea that there’s some utopian alternative where under which
There would be none of the suffering or oppression and then it and then it builds from there and so that you just get a kind of what i call victim ideology which is a much broader ideology than marxism which was really focused on workers it gets to
Basically the idea that there you can categorize people in the world real people you can categorize them as victims or oppressors and victims should be given everything with no accountability or responsibility and oppressors should be punished and things should be taken from them and so you end up with basically a
Denial of things in the real world i just got the most the best email i’ve received so far after writing san francisco was from a psychologist who worked with the mentally ill in san francisco for many decades and he said the so-called homeless advocates again this is just radical left
Activists who put themselves forward as defenders of the homeless he he said they they get up and they would basically defend the right of mentally ill drug addicted people to destroy themselves and destroy the system around them because they viewed it as a as an fu to the system they
Viewed it as a way to stick the middle finger to the system which they hated but in that sense glenn it’s so sinister because what the radical left is doing so-called progressives are doing is that they’re actually using people they’re using people as means to an end and the
End is the destruction of western civilization that’s why they keep attacking institutions that you need to have a civilization whether it’s mental hospitals or police stations or jails and prisons or universities these are things that you need to have a functioning civilization or or quite honestly just the basic
Understanding of mankind you is so destructive to say you’re a victim and you can only grow when i or my people take care of these people and get them out of your way that is the most uh evil thing you can teach you have to teach people you can do anything
And if you’re just you have to take the first step i can’t take it for you you have to take it but i’ll be there and you got to stop blaming other people and just why why are you in this situation maybe it’s bad luck maybe you’ve done some bad choices
But that’s empowering and i i look at the way the left talks about african americans and talks about um homeless people of color the people on the border hispanics and i think my gosh it i mean who do you think you are mr white politician telling all of these people
What they need to do and what they need to do is for you to keep all of the bad guys away from them because you know what their life is like it it’s it’s awful people the people in in in chicago that have lost their children from gunfire
I i honestly i would feel like the father who was they they tried to arrest and suck sick the fbi on um into the um uh the the school board where his daughter was arrested and to cover what they had done when he speaks out at the school board
Meeting they make him into the villain and at some point you just say you know what i can’t i can’t do it anymore i can’t do it they’re they are actually injuring while they’re saying they’re trying to help and they’re doing it intentionally yeah
Yeah you got it i i think look i think most liberals most progressives are they they don’t understand they’re they’re not sociopathic they’re in the grip of a religion they’re in the grip of believing themselves to be compassionate people but i do think there is a hardcore uh leadership here that is uh
Sociopathic in its view of people as objects it’s a dehumanizing ideology it’s disempowering as you point out it’s absolutely power hungry because it’s looking to use people as objects in a power game is looking to make people dependent on them and on the system that they that they otherwise would condemn
So i do i did find many times in this work i there were moments that were i found them chilling when i would be speaking to the architects of these policies and getting a sense of the ways in which they were really committed to the ideology
And really didn’t seem to care very much about the actual human lives that were being sacrificed the example but you’re absolutely right what’s that example oh well the biggest one i mean obviously this book is is very concerned with uh drug addicts who are basically being
Enabled to die on the streets but i think you point to the other one i have three chapters in the book on homicides and we know that you can prevent homicides with police it’s just not that complicated and we know also by the way
We now have seen it in 2015 and in 2020 this thing where when you demonize the police when you demand when you cut the police it has two effects the first effect is on the police themselves they withdrawal from policing you know policiness is one of the things i interview the best
Criminologists in america delightful people totally clear about this police police know criminals like the criminals in the police it’s just like in the hollywood movies you know they have a relationship they know who the likely killers are and they get up in their face they talk to them they interact with them they
Spend time with them and we know that that that works to actually prevent it doesn’t seem rational but it prevents potential killers from killing people so when the police pull back that results in homicides and also we know that when criminals are emboldened when they are told that the system is against
Them the system is racist system is out to get them that the system is evil they’re more likely to commit homicide so this is something that’s called the ferguson effect because after the ferguson uh shooting and protests that led to black lives matter protests in 2015 we
Saw an increase in homicides that was spectacularly confirmed in 2020 tragically confirmed in 2020 we’ve now seen homicides rise 30 percent in the united states as a whole rose almost rose 50 or more 60 it rose in portland or was 30 percent in oakland so we’re sacrificing african
Americans and it’s not just young men it’s also kids getting shot it’s people there’s bystanders being killed and so the radical left is sacrificing african americans on the altar of a radical anti-police anti-civilization agenda it’s absolutely depraved it’s despicable i can’t use strong enough words to denounce the anti-policing movement there’s
Nothing progressive or liberal about it in the best senses of those terms it’s totally radical everybody i came away from doing the research for san francisco being like everybody should be pro-police like police are just good the more police you have the evidence is overwhelming the more police you have
Less crime you have and the less crime it’s not just that that’s good and of itself but if you’re worried about mass incarceration as i am i don’t want a lot of other person that shouldn’t go to prison but if you’re worried about mass incarceration then you should be pro-police
Because police are what prevent crimes from occurring in the first place so let’s talk about the end of the book you talk a little bit about the conservatives and what they can do and and also like to know what we’ve done wrong what is turning people
Like you off that we’ve got to stop doing well i think the first thing and by the way i interviewed the best conservative minds on this issue i interviewed christopher rufo who’s now a celebrity because he’s almost single-handedly taken down critical race theory uh before chris uh went after critical
Race theory he was a brilliant um journalist documenting the drug addiction crisis the open drug scenes that we mislabel homelessness which is a propaganda word um i interviewed uh i interviewed chris ruffo i interviewed scholars with the manhattan institute which is a very um thoughtful and important center right think tank in new
York the first thing is just that i think republicans and conservatives need to have an urban agenda um you know giuliani is the major figure here so whatever you think of giuliani today giuliani obviously as mayor of new york really clean you know cleaned it up shut
Down the open drug scenes allowed for the redevelopment of of bat you know bad neighborhoods or bad areas um so there is a tradition here but i think a lot of conservatives have kind of withdrawn um you know and even moderates people just leave they just check out they kind
Of look down on cities and i get it i live in the suburbs and i love the suburbs um but we need cities because cities are places of innovation it’s often where people go in their 20s before they have a family or kids to do business they work really hard it’s a
Social environment it’s very important for entrepreneurialism and innovation so the first thing is just to care about cities and have an agenda for cities i think the second thing is we’ve got to get beyond this liberty this dumb libertarianism i’m a big advocate as you know glenn of free markets and
Apocalypse never i defend markets as important for sending the price signal for resource scarcity they promote innovation so i think markets are huge importance but there’s some things for which there’s no market there’s no market for treating people with schizophrenia you just have to treat them you know my aunt had schizophrenia
And she had she had a pretty darn good life for somebody with that particular mental illness which is a pretty devastating mental illness there’s just not this is not so a person with schizophrenia is not the same thing as somebody who’s a 25 year old who just got addicted to heroin they
Need two separate things but so i think we have to get beyond the idea that there’s a libertarian or a free market solution to some of these mental illnesses it’s they’re going to be covered by at least the hard the severe mental illnesses are going to be covered
By taxpayers that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t require things of people because even people with pretty serious mental illnesses can can do things in fact they want to do things they want to they want to be they want their lives to have purpose and meaning and value right
But again that’s not something that is obviously is going to be a market provision and it’s good there’s going to be a role for government there so it means that the role for government should be smart it shouldn’t just be what we’re doing now what we’re doing
Now in progressive cities is as i’ve been describing just giving people things with no obligation and so i think the main thing conservatives can do is come in here and focus back on the basics you need carrots and sticks when i asked the main character in my book who’s a social
Worker in the netherlands who was responsible for helping to shut down the open drug scenes the open drug markets he says you need carrots and sticks the social workers and the police should work together you know if you if um one of the things that the progressives have done uh that
They went too far on is they wouldn’t send social workers by themselves without a police officer to respond to to calls around somebody with mental illness in a state of psychosis often but often those 90 percent of the situations are potentially dangerous so you really need police with social
Workers together it seems obvious but that is a radical idea for progressives and i think in the past um conservatives just haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it so i think we need to get back to basics uh carrots and sticks police and social workers break up the open air drug
Scenes shelter first treatment first housing earned that’s the that’s the success sequence that we need for for the cities i have to tell you um i think if i think a lot of conservatives would be for that if you included workfare that there there was you have absolutely to take responsibility
If you know if you need a place to stay great the minute you start running it down you’re out you know that you’ve got to take care of thing you have to earn your way and yes if that was part of i mean because how many people um
How many kids have become suicidal because they’ve been at home for the last two years they haven’t had anything to do and you know you sit around and do nothing it destroys there is something about hard work you know even yes even for me i go out and i
Work on a fence or i i actually do physical labor it’s invigorating compared to even just mental behavior but when you are labor but when you have neither mental labor or physical labor you just waste away you waste away there’s no self-esteem absolutely 100 agree 100 agree we all need physical labor
I mean this is where this is obvious i mean and so yes um um pete it’s bad for people it’s bad for self-esteem to be given things that you did not earn we know this it’s also true for raising children children should be involved in keeping
The classroom clean you know one of the things that i noticed in japan is that the kids were heavily involved in maintaining the classrooms and doing physical labor same thing for homeless shelters same thing for the you know i saw mentally ill people um they want to have a purpose
Too everybody everybody does maybe they can’t they can’t you know not everybody has to be a computer programmer but everybody should be involved in keeping where they live clean everybody should be involved in keeping where they live clean and orderly you know one of the most beautiful books ever written on
Homelessness was written about guys that maintained their drug habit they were all addicts but they did it by collecting aluminum cans and bottles they would describe how it gave them a high that was much more lasting and much deeper than the high they got from drugs
There’s no reason that the we should not be doing that for everybody who is getting care um at the taxpayer dime and glenn i would even go further i think maybe you’ve introduced this idea into the culture which is this idea of national service i just i see what happens in israel i
Think one of the reasons israelis get such good training is that they do they are required to do some kind of national service glenn in california we have a lot of forests that have been badly managed and maintained no we should have some kind of service for yeah
Of course all blamed on climate change the real issue is that we haven’t maintained our forest there’s plenty of work for young people to do right but getting the getting the ability to go into those forests and just clean the underbrush only take things that are dead you’d
Never get the permission to do that you’d never get the permission to do that well i i well let’s disagree on that part of it i have i’m a bit more um i keep some of my idealism i like to think myself as a practical idealist
Um or as an idealistic pragmatist i do think that the public wants it um including not and and yes the radical left doesn’t want it so but we’re still talking about 70 70 to 80 of the public that support all of these things including some kind of work requirement
Including an abstinence requirement if you’re going to get your own apartment at the taxpayer subsidy you should have to earn it through abstinence through making progress on your personal plan which in every case has to include work this is something that the dutch and the portuguese are very clear about
Work is essential to building up our character and our self-esteem and a big part of recovery from addiction well music to my ears michael thank you so much um we’ll talk again the name of the book is san francisco uh i i know that uh
I’ve learned a ton i can’t wait to read it myself thank you so much michael thanks for having me glenn
