Mike Rowe: Make America stand for something again | The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

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this is the reason interview with Nick Gillespie my guest today is Mike Row the podcaster former host of Dirty Jobs and star of something to stand for an unabashedly patriotic film in which he tells unknown stories about legendary figures in American history something to stand for will be in theaters from June 27th through the 4th of July we talk about the decline of patriotism and trust and experts over the past 50 years the necessity of knowing history and your neighbors and how developing gratitude may lead to a social Renaissance in the midst of political polarization here is the reason interview with Mike [Music] Row so you’ve got the movie coming out something to stand for can you describe it what what is something to stand for well I mean in the general sense you get to fill in that blank we get to decide you know when to stand when to kneel when to applaud when to boo so forth and so on um the uh the the personal answer is it’s a it’s a shamelessly patriotic homage um both to the country and to a kind of Storytelling that I know you and I have talked about before um both patriotism and this kind of straightforward tale uh seem to be uh weirdly out of fashion at the moment so really all I did was take the format that worked well on the podcast which was to tell these historical Tales through the lens of a mystery uh while stealing shamelessly from the late great Paul Harvey whose son actually did give me his Blessing so um you know I’ve been doing that I wrote a few hundred of those things over the years and some of those got turned into a book and others got turned into a TV show and as we approached Independence Day we thought well why not do a movie there are nine or 12 of these things that are perfect for Independence Day so we stitched them together with the trip to DC we visited some monuments and some memorials and then every few minutes of that you get another story another mystery something you didn’t know about somebody you do that’s uh you know it’s it’s a very um uh engaging in documentary or if that’s not quite the right word for it but it’s the storytelling um but you know uh there there’s always a reveal um at the end and I don’t want to give any of them away but they’re all fairly uh fascinating and a couple of them I was like okay I know this and then I didn’t I wanted to at one point you do end up and I don’t think this is uh spoiling anything you end up at the National Mall and you’re walking around the world war to Memorial and you talk to a uh uh you you talk to a um Korean warvet um can you tell a little bit about what you know what does he say and you know what what does talking to him you know bring up in you as a as an American it’s so interesting that you would pick all of all the moments in the movie the one that was completely and totally unscripted unplanned um you know my my career such as it is in in TV has been spent around the no second take rule you know everything was a fly on the wall from Dirty Jobs to all the other stuff we were it was a very very honest look at making TV well TV uh movies of course the opposite of that you know everything is the script everything is released everything is signed off for well- in advance and so forth and so on and that’s fine I was happy to enter that world but we were around the National Mall doing a series of standups and to your point there I was in the memorial and you know they’ve got the X on the ground where I’m supposed to land after doing this walk and talk and the lights are just so and everything and of course we’re behind schedule but then this guy rolls in in his wheelchair with you know nine or ten other old men and their families are with them and it’s an honor flight and I’m watching them from a distance and and they’re being wheeled over in front of that wall of stars you’ve been there right you’ve seen I mean it’s just it’s it’s shocking each star is representative I think of like aund or a thousand dead Americans and they there are just so many and um I looked to the director and I said let’s let’s just do this real quick you know and grabb the camera guy and I went over and introduced myself guy’s name was Andy Michael he’s 91 years old he uh he fought in Korea same time as my dad did in fact the two grew up not far apart so like within seconds I’m triangulating an impossible set of coincidences with this old man who’s has tears running down his face as he tries to tell me how grateful he is uh to be there just in the presence of of those stars and all of those men and to have his family with him and then the craziest thing happened Nick within seconds my whole crew migrates over three cameras audio boom I mean even the makeup girl was about to come in and would have if I hadn’t told her to beat it because suddenly there we are actually Forest gumping our way across the the precise moment you know the most authentic moment that I could hope to find that uh you simply couldn’t script the uh you know the curtain is coming down on you know certainly World War II uh you know the the last veterans who are around are you know about a century my father served in uh in Europe uh during World War II you mentioned your father was in Korea um you know what what is the main thing to remember about that generation that you know fought these wars that um you know compared to anything that we’ve seen in in the rest of our lifetimes you know we’re kind of universally acknowledged to be uh uh good Wars uh you know in one phrase or to be Wars not of choice but you know these were existential you know battles that we needed to win what should we be reminding ourselves about as these guys and women pass from the the stage I do think it’s fair to draw that line between a war where we understood while we were fighting at precisely what the stakes were no less than than the world you know I mean real just is it clearly I mean it was clearly laid out good bad you know and from everything I’ve read it just it just seemed like there was a level of certainty and understanding uh not just among the soldiers and Airmen and Marines but among the people at home everybody here was engaged in that war there were rations there were I mean we all the factories had been retooled it was it was a concerted effort and and I I don’t think I don’t think the world has ever seen anything like that since the wars now have obviously taken on not just a a political and a all kinds of controversies and so forth but but they’re long distance they you can fight them from a drone with a drone and but even more than that you know the they’re just they’re an idea for so many uh and a distraction for the vast majority of people here at home so I think I think that’s one lesson you know we fought the second world war together as a country and I I don’t think we’ve we’ve done that since the other thing for me is just the inherent uh wisdom in Reagan’s observation about about Freedom generally being a generation away and I I don’t think it really matters what generation you’re talking about you know it always feels so fresh and new and terribly immediate for us because here we are alive you know the the most recent iteration of the species experiencing things and what feels to us like like something new but of course it’s not you know history is just a wheel and it always turns and it’s turning faster now it seems than it ever has before but here we are again a generation away what do you think are the big uh things to that you know are going to ruin it for us if if something is going to because you know uh during World War II you could say okay well there was the Japanese empire on one side of us you know thankfully buffeted by oceans on both side and the German Empire the Nazi Germany on the march on the other and um you know nowadays it seems like it’s more like uh you know it’s coming from within um what are what are the things that you worry about that will you know kind of take uh Freedom away from us in our in our lifetimes or in our kids’ lifetimes I mean it’s very Roman isn’t it you know I mean I I agree I think the greatest threat we face is is not is not external um and no I don’t think it’s it’s climate and I don’t think it’s a lot of things that occupy you know a lot of space in the headlines I mean they’re all certainly threats maybe even existential ones and ones worth pondering but you know the thing that did did we talk about Faith Popcorn you and me uh you know I think we may have uh at some point the the great Guru of nesting yes yes she was like a futurist and her her her popcorn reports were you know eagerly anticipated and she talked about nesting and she talked about burrowing and then I mean look she she was always a few years ahead of the curve and when she was talking about burrowing she was predicting things like like Netflix she was just looking at all of the reasons not to go out into the world but to but to stay home instead and then the last thing I read from her the term was cocooning so it was going from nesting to burrowing to cocooning and and I think that’s what we’ve done I think we’re really cocooned right now and I think thanks in part to the technology that you and I are enjoying right you there in your bunker me here and my opulent mildly upgraded Suite you know we’re able to do these things that once upon a time would have required us to you know spend money and burn jet fuel and so forth so when I think about that and sort of juxtapose it with the connective tissue that has always played such a big role in in our country and in our understanding of civics when I think of the JC and the and the RO the rotarians and the Lions Club and skills USA and the Boy Scouts and the Future Farmers of America and even Church Nick I mean regardless of what your religion might be the idea that rockafeller used to sit there in the Pew flanked by ppers and it wasn’t a thing you know it was just there were just so many touch points in our culture where people physically came to together and and rub shoulders and smelled each other and and and I worry that that the lack of that the pity of that is I don’t know precisely what the unintended consequence will be but I think there will be a consequence uh you know you mentioned the Boy Scouts uh we are both Eagle Scouts you of course are a distinguished Eagle Scout I have an embarrassment to there’s an APB for me and the the class section The Boys Life Magazine um but you know the the Boy Scouts are are in preparation for this I I was looking up their membership roles they peaked in 1972 and they’re now down to just an absolute terms the Boy Scouts are at the level where they were in 1939 when there were 200 million fewer people in America so you know this is an institution that started in the 1910s and you know clearly peaked uh you know almost 50 years ago now what do you think explains that the decline you know not just of the Boy Scouts but you mentioned the Rotary International and a bunch of what uh uh sociologists Robert putam called the funny hat organizations um you know uh with the Boy Scouts um I don’t think people are camping less you know you know they might be camping more boys you know W to light stuff on fire as much as they ever did they want to carve you know balsawood planes and things like that you know what what explains the decline well the tempting answer is to again go back to the headlines and just look at some some specific cultural things that have happened recently but I think while that might be part of it um I think in general they they stopped shooting with a rifle and started shooting with a shotgun they they became terribly interested uh and maybe they should be in in growing like to your point you know you look at the the membership roles they go up they go down and there’s a tendency I think in most organizations to equate uh success with growth and Effectiveness with robust growth and so you start to see the membersip slide and you start to think to yourself look we we have to be more relevant to more people therefore we have to be more forgive me but inclusive I mean that the broadest most inclusive sense of the word but the more inclusive you become the less specific you have to be by definition and So eventually we just Arbitrage the word boy right out of it and in an attempt to reach more people and long before that happened by the way a lot of other things happen happened in scouting uh because we’re roughly the same age I’m guessing I’m assuming you were wearing the uniform back in the mid ’70s uh a little bit later than that yeah but uh I think uh I I do know this that Jimmy Carter of all people was uh the president when I received my Eagle Scout award Gerald Ford for me I got a letter from so yeah 74 to 79 and this was this was the equivalent of the hollow Army right for the Boy Scouts you know they were we were not they were not sending their best but no but you know what I mean yeah that does kind of make make my point I my experience of the scouts for the first couple of years was limited to troop 16 where there were about 40 boys most of whom were older than me at the time I joined when I was 12 I guess maybe 13 our scoutm was a retired lieutenant colonel named Glendon Huntington and he ran troop 16 precisely like a troop I mean there were squads and there were patrols and there were Patrol leaders and senior patrol leaders and man there was so much uh focus on patriotism and and civic duty and basic understanding of rudimentary politics I I learned more on Wednesday nights going to the Boy Scouts about how the country worked than I learned from any social studies class and and I also learned a great deal about violence and and this idea let me just say Nick it wasn’t a safe space right there was a boxing ring where young Lads could settle their difference under the tutelage of an impartial referee but noses were broken teeth were lost many sprains there were stitches and contusions and cussions there was capture the flag and British Bulldog and I learned to shoot a gun and I learned to shoot bows I arrows I I mean it was a dangerous place for boys and it was terrific for that reason and looking back there’s just no way there’s just no way that there’s another troop in the country today like that one I don’t even know if there was another troop in the country in 1978 like that is that I mean is it partly though um you know because we we don’t want our kids to uh you know to have permanent scars uh you know when you look back at you know Looking Back Now 45 50 years basically um you know we’re wealthier you know RIT large uh we are you know we want our kids to do better than we do um you know you know this is a kind of natural consequence of of being wealthier and more educated and and setting your star a little bit higher on the horizon yeah you have more to lose and so you take less risk look I’m all for safety I’m I’m all for eliminating all of the unnecessary risk that we can but I think you’ve got to draw a really bright line between necessary risk and the kind of risk you absolutely must assume in order to accomplish anything worth accomplishing and um you know coming out of the lockdown of course you know we got a different well we got a fresh look a lot of people for the first time in their life at at what a true Safety First mentality yeah really looks like do you think we’ve uh you know do you think that lesson is sticking so that uh the next time there is a uh you know an actual um you know serious seeming risk uh and the government says hey you know what you’ve got to give us two weeks to uh shut this down and you got to do exactly what we say and we don’t want to hear a lot of lip or Guff from anybody are we going to be sheep or are we going to be uh for I’m sorry to continue this metaphor are we going to be goats that are extremely difficult to uh herd and kind of butting up against things yeah well we’re going to be a herd and there’ll be sheep in the herd and there’ll be goats and there’ll be Rams and there’ll be Shepherds I mean to really take the metaphor out I don’t think we can paint with too broad a brush um you know a lot of things are going a lot of people have taken a lot of lessons from covid for instance I mean I I literally just got off a plane and the guy sitting next to me appeared to be healthy and well and he was wearing two masks two you know and um I don’t know what to think of that exactly but you have to think something of it so because I’m basically charitable I concluded that he was ill and he was taking every caution to protect me um I don’t know if that’s true or not but you know we’re we’re being forced to adapt uh a whole new calculus when we start to think about uh any kind of assumption of risk and I that to me feels feels new and and I think that in a general way because we have more to lose we’re less inclined to take risk and because we’re less inclined to take risk well the any any tragic thing that befalls us feels magnified in its tragedy and and that that can paralyze you yeah I mean um in a in a kind of related way I think um you know the movie uh something to stand for is about patriotism and you know in the best sense there’s a fair amount of military stories involved but it’s it’s it’s much bigger than that and it’s you know uh you had one point you talk about America as a work in progress you talk about it as something that is always under construction uh both literally and figuratively which I find really uh you know simple sounding but it’s actually a really deep Insight but when we talk about patriotism um I Gallup uh in 2003 gallab found that 70% of Americans in 2003 so not that long ago 70% were extremely proud to be American it’s now 39% as of last year which is the most recent year that it was taken uh the um if you are 55 and older you’re 50% likely to be extremely proud to be American um if you’re 18 to 34 years old you’re only 18% likely to be extremely proud of being a an American and I guess my question is how do we explain this especially since it seems to me and I think that my father I won’t speak for your father my father would say this is a much better country than the one that he was born into in 1923 when you know when you think about equality of individuals whether it’s race sex uh you know class where you started out um the wealth of the country Etc like in so many profound Ways work is better than it used to be it is less backbreaking and you know and uh difficult why are we less patriotic um you know in a country that seems to be going generally speaking in the right direction uh I I mean based on the way you framed the question I can only say it’s because we lack the uh the ability to put the past in context we’ve lost our perspective we don’t we’re not as mobile as we used to be you know we don’t travel quite as much as we used to that it’s odd if I may we actually have more people have passports but fewer people move from the county where they were born so it’s a a kind of bizarre Paradox right on some level we’re much more worldly but on a more basic level we’re living in our uh our parents backyards well back to Faith right we’re coning and we’re burrowing and you know and back to the risk thing we’re we’re we’re just less likely to take it we’ve we’ve forgotten seemingly that the you know the car is not meant to stay in the driveway and the boat is not meant to stay in the harbor and and the human is not meant to stay in the basement you know and so you know if if that is under a kind of assault that would explain your question in part but but mostly I think my my theory I I can’t prove it but but with dir jobs I used to talk a lot about this idea of um of being connected to certain uh almost Primal things and I was so lucky to grow up on a small farm where everybody around me sort of reinforced an appreciation for some very basic things uh where our food comes from where our energy comes from and you know my dad was a social studies teacher so I always had a real good look at where where we come from and what our history is and so for me a lot of stuff that I’ve I’ve tried to Grapple with might be too Grand but whether it’s on the foundation level or the TV level or now a movie is to answer the question well what happens when we become disconnected from these basic things and how profoundly are we disconnected from these things and I would say to you that the answer is is really quite a bit because of the erosion of of the grout or the mortar in the brick wall which I liken to those social sort of Civic organizations we were talking about before we’re real disconnected from that we’re certainly disconnected from our history to the point where we’re having conversations about 1619 and all sorts of other things and you know we can’t agree as adults what we ought to be showing kids we’re very disconnected from that and you can see it too in our statuary and you you can see it in The Monuments and memorials I I talked to dozens of Park Rangers whose main job now is to get up and just scrub off the filth scrub off the graffiti clean it up you know okay you you talk in one of section of the movie about graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial which is literally under construction there’s uh going to be a new element to it what was the kind of graffiti what’s showing up on the Lincoln Memorial it’s just all of the normal stuff you know there you go through the you know it was the antifa thing it a fascist thing it’s a BLM thing then it’s the next thing now there’s a Hamas thing and you know there’s a there’s a certain cohort in our country who who want to express their their sentiment uh not just on a highway overpass but they they want to do it on on Jefferson’s Memorial they did you ever uh have you ever uh painted graffiti anywhere mikro yeah I did actually I I hired a graffiti artist for the 200th episode of Dirty Jobs and we went to the dump and created these giant uh murals but um I I think if you’re saying have I ever like taken a can of spray paint and like you know tagged my colors somewhere um no it’s it’s still on the list the most important ideas are those debated on college campuses think about how many different Fringe Concepts initially spawned in the academy that are now prevalent across Society fa hyek noticed this phenomenon the ideas developed in Academia soon spread to the rest of society that’s why students for Liberty support students like me in spreading the ideas of Liberty on campuses as a coordinator with SFL I’ve hosted high-profile speakers to discuss the pressing issues of the day published magazines and articles to spread pro-liberty ideas and helped organize and attend conferences on campuses around the world SFL connected me with partner organizations and thanks to SFL I’ve been accepted to internships at the competitive Enterprise Institute National Review the KO Institute and will start as an assistant editor at reason magazine this summer my name is Jack mccastro and I’m one of the thousands of volunteers from the SFL Network building a Freer future for people across the globe visit spread liberty.org to discover how you can contribute to building a Freer future at school and Beyond you mentioned being on a farm I’m I’m trying to make Segways here um you invoked Paul Harvey Paul Harvey is a radio broadcasting Legend who is not as well known in the kind of coastal red doubts I think as he is in many parts of the Midwest and the South um he was famous for um you know a uh a kind of format called the rest of the story which started during uh right after World War II until his death um where he would explain a story and you wouldn’t know who it was and then comes the reveal and it was you know always something amazing he uh also had a famous vocal essay or auditory essay called H God made a farmer something like that um talk about Paul Harvey and why you find him uh inspiring well in reverse order God made a farmer um sort of reappeared about eight years ago in the Super Bowl and it was by far the most arresting advertisement in the entire game they played his original track you could still hear sort of that Fireside recording you know the am crackle over the over the airwaves and uh artistically uh what the director did was just show pictures in the in almost 3D quality so he’s zooming in and out of these Norman Rockwell type photos of Americana of farm life and it this thing went on for minutes and it was it was just so shockingly good I had a I had started doing my version of these stories about that same time and that that Super Bowl commercial was just proof positive that I was on the right track because there’s this weird combination I I think the word it’s not quite Nostalgia it’s not quite sentimentality I think it’s verts I think the Germans call it verch maltz it’s a kind of a kind of longing for a time that you didn’t actually experience you know and the way Harvey told stories and by the way I put studs tural in there I’d put George Plimpton I’d put uh uh Charles caralt you know they all really made the stories uh their own and and super personal and by the way this is gross Ian I would never suppose or suggest I could fill their shoes but the idea of following in their footsteps was interesting and so I started writing these things I called uh the way I heard it which was my rejoiner to the rest of the story and uh mostly on planes to pass the time just these eight little eight minute Mysteries that format became the podcast and then it became a bunch of other things so but to answer your question it started with a story and it just really started as a not even a it started as a mystery if I can tell you something you don’t know about somebody you do and you have seven or eight minutes to spend in this little exercise then I got you this is a a brief mystery for the Curious mind with a short attention span and that’s what worked for me when I got into the podcast world and U we’ll see if it works in the movie space I like it because we have nine of them grouped up and it gives viewer a a chance to go all right I knew that one I didn’t know that one I don’t love this one I really love that one I think the very first one without uh giving anything away is uh in in the movie is will be a surprise to a lot of people because the best of these things seem extremely contemporary urgently contemporary and then you realize oh you know we’ve been dealing with similar issues for you know decades or centuries even and things like that um how to go back to this question of patriotism and also progress because you know and I’m thinking you know we talk about World War II the troops were segregated by race in World War II the first uh major uh conflict that the US military saw integrated troops was Korea um you know we’re we’re so much better than that now um how do we how do we acknowledge the you know the the failings of the past um and also the failings of the present while also acknowledging you know immense progress has been made or that we are getting better it’s it’s it’s the Fault in Our Stars we we can’t seem maybe it’s the nature of the binary times that we’re in that makes it very very difficult to to applaud one thing without condemning another I think I think we’re Afra afraid to take a Victory lap and maybe we should be maybe that’s just a bit you know premature or arrogant but on the other hand back to the under construction metaphor you know I didn’t set out to kind of make that a light Motif in the movie but but it is and you know I I realized about halfway through everywhere I went Nick Arlington I found my I found my grandfather’s grave at Arlington and I wanted to do this big beautiful thing there but the heavy machinery is 10 feet away and they’re they’re redoing the grounds Lincoln Memorial we had this whole idea but that’s under construction Jefferson Memorial right refurbishments under construction you know the Key Bridge you know at the end we we we feature that and it’s on the bottom of the Patapsco River and and so when you start to look around you know it it did hit me pretty hard it’s like we’re we’re never going to be finished our country is a work in progress it was formed by imperfect people and we’ve done Yan’s work along the way we are by no means done but to your point oh my god look how far we’ve come and if we can’t take a moment to celebrate that then then I then I worry you know that’s why I I do value the Fourth of July I do value Independence Day it’s time it ought to be a time to come back together and and say Hey you know the star spangle Banner you know what that thing really was it a protest song but before that it was a drinking song So What do we why can’t we figure that out is there is there there no symbol left that would allow us to come together as a as Americans has everything become a Talisman from from a mask to a flag to this flag or that flag you know seemingly the answer seems to be yeah it has and and that’s probably a better answer to your earlier question it’s the burrowing that I worry about it’s is there is there a way to kind of Define the American Experience um independent of military exploit um part of you know the movie the different vignettes cover a lot of ground but it is uh you know on on a certain level it’s very seductive and it’s you know these are immense sacrifices you know that were uh you know given by people in the revolution in the Civil War you know World War I World War II Etc but is there a way to tell a national narrative that is not ultimately kind of about blood and guts May maybe you know I I don’t know but I think I think the only way to do that is to get everyone to pass through some sort of filter first some sort of virtuous idea you know it could be persistence could be delayed gratification you know there’s any number of things you can talk about as as virtuous and and therefore uh uniting but I think the big one and the best one is probably gratit ude I think I think the American Experience can start with people who affirmatively say look I get it we’re we’re not all starting from the same place in fact we’re about as divergent as as you could be as a as an individual but gratitude unlike your skin color or your or your hair color or your star sign or your blood type it’s it’s a choice right anybody can choose anybody can choose to be grateful for the fact that they’ve hit the greatest Lottery of all time you know you were born for God’s sakes Miracle you’re walking around in one of the greatest places uh ever you know I I I know it’s probably triggering for some people to hear that but historically I just I just don’t know where else you would rather live or when to your point there’s just no better time to get sick there’s just no better time to face any sort of adversity than than right now in this country so so the idea of at least setting the table first with God help me this sounds like you Tony Robins meets I don’t know whm Hof or something but there there is an attitude of gratitude and it is a conscious thing to do and it gets too Earnest and it gets too exhausting to maintain for too long if you can’t do it on Independence Day I you know I don’t know what to tell you yeah um you’ve talked about you know some of the issues here what you know and the solution to cocooning is to and I I am going to uh mess up this metaphor because I don’t remember how butterflies you know change from caterpillars or whatever but you know you got to come out of the Cocoon right and you gotta you got to fly what are the best ways to do that do you think oh well it’s back to the Boy Scouts for me you know um I slingshots with marbles at you know 30 feet away right air traps pistol maybe uh well we don’t have aerosol cans anymore but aerosol cans and cigarette lighters right sure uh no no although the whole dueling thing you know pistols of dawn broadswords in a pit you know there’re it’s funny it’s a fun thing to ruminate on were we better mannered when we knew that gentlemen could settle their differences uh you know with Mortal Stakes it happened all the time don’t know not recommending it just saying it’s kind of interesting um the answer to your question uh going back to the Boy Scouts I thought for the longest time that the goal was to figure out a way to be willing to be uncomfortable to be willing to get out of your comfort zone away from we didn’t call them safe spaces then but right just to that that willingness to venture out that’s what I thought the real coin of the realm was but but Mr Huntington pulled me aside one day and said it’s not that exactly what you got to do Mike is you got to figure out a way to love it embrace the sock as the seals would say that’s what you need to do you need to figure first you need to identify the thing that makes you uncomfortable then you need to be grateful enough for the life that you have that you’re willing to be uncomfortable and then you have to figure out a way to love it and then something interesting is probably going to happen for you and I think I think most everybody in this film can’t prove it don’t know it’s why the stories all came out of this thing called the way I heard it I wasn’t there Nick you know when the Aman was signed or the Declaration I I don’t know and so we’re you know we take some Liberties for sure but you know when it comes to our history it really is vexing to have so many experts in the same room who can’t agree it’s unnerving I think we’re really unnerved today in general right because whether it’s medicine or or politics or or journalism at every turn we seem to be confronted with experts who are not on the same page maybe that’s why we’re profoundly disconnected maybe that’s why we can’t feel great about the progress we’ve made maybe we’re getting such giant mixed messages from these fire hoses of information in disperate directions we don’t know which one to drink from do you think part of it is that our our leaders uh you know and I’m thinking our political leaders certainly our military leaders you know the the people who ran the Boy Scouts of America they failed us in pretty profound ways I mean the Boy Scouts had a major uh sexual PR Predator uh uh controversy that they really kind of Allied it until they their boots were really held to the fire uh you know when you think about the military adventurism of the 21st century whatever else you can say about it is you know nobody was being honest about what we were trying to do and whether we were achieving it our politicians and I don’t mean this glibly I mean this in a dark and in serious way are liars you know they they cannot tell the truth even if you know they swear in front of judges and things like that um how do we how do we get past that um you know as as a citizen right yeah well I mean all of that stuff feels terribly relevant when when you’re living in it like when you’re looking out at an elected official who’s living in your time and betraying the public trust you know betay spraying your vote breaking your heart misspending your tax money when then when those things happen in real time we have a level of uh righteous indignation that is both warranted explicable and Justified but but today it’s it’s not that it’s it’s that same feeling of outrage over men who made mistakes 260 years ago that weren’t seen his mistakes 260 years ago and there’s something just so so blly Grand about our superciliousness when we just look back and go oh oh no not him he did that 260 years ago I don’t care about all the good things he did we’re gonna look at this and that statue’s got to come down it’s got to come down and if we don’t have the Nuance if if if we don’t have the wherewithal to ask this question namely what’s going to happen 250 years from now how are we going to be remembered Nick what are our great great great great greats gonna look back and say about the Gillespies those meat eaters what the hell were they thinking those pet owners those pet owners what how dare you fill in the blank abortion um given all of this are you uh you know are you optimism or what or what gives you optimism uh other than the occasional upgrades at the Four Seasons or the rits well there yeah there is that um I’m I’m you know I had this conversation earlier today with somebody and I think I made up a a word that I really like I I was teetering back and forth between skepticism and optimism we’re talking about AI and I said ‘you know I think I’m I think I’m skepti mytic and they were likeoh that’s terribly clever I said I don’t know about it’s terribly clever but the more I think about it it’s it’s it’s the answer to your question it’s the it’s the uh it’s the comfort that you get when you know that it has that it’s going to get better but it’s got to get worse first it’s like it’s it’s the Splat sometimes things have to go splat before everybody kind of gets the memo and I don’t I don’t know what that means in this case exactly and I’m afraid there there probably won’t be one universal event that we can all look at and go yep well there you go there’s your Splat now we can all get back to being sane it it it’ll probably happen in dribs and drabs splatters if you will yeah um do you have a do you have a sense of that uh given you know some of the events and timelines that you’ve you’ve uh kind of name checked in this you know there was a sense in the 70s and as old as we might be we’re too young to really remember the 70s I mean if you you know 40 years old or 50 years old in the 70s but there was you know there was a sense of Doom and Gloom uh whe you know environmentalists and Evangelical Christians were both you know professing that the the end was nigh I mean the world was basically over and then sometime in the 80s um you know that shifted and the country went from being kind of in the dold drums to being a little bit ecstatic um do you remember that and you know what you know do you think that kind of vibe shift I guess is the phrase that gets used sometimes you know is that do you feel like that’s in the offing right now are you kidding me with the vibe shift that’s a thing huh well I guess I guess if you can be a skep skep toist you can Vibe shift um I heard something the other day a guy was talking about the the music that matters most and the upshot of the whole thing was it’s almost always the music that you heard between 17 and 24 and that’s true sort of for me God I can’t imagine what people are going to be influenced by you know 17 years from now but whatever um I think the same holds true with with virtually everything you know Heaven’s Gate um the the prognostications for all of the end of days the Armageddon all of that and then today you know it’s it’s different but not really I mean I was told with great certainty by elected officials six years ago that we had 12 years 12 years until the climate poops the bed in one enormous Splat we were told we were told in the early 70s the Ice Age was coming we were told I mean for as long as I’ve been alive and for as much history as as I’ve read the end has always been near and and the the doomsayers have always been awfully certain and they found their experts to confirm the doom and so I I don’t I’m not freaked out personally um I mean I’m not I’m not Blas about it but I don’t think you and I have lived through anything that hasn’t been lived through by virtually everyone and the fact that it feels new to us is great you know I mean it’s it’s it’s part of the fun thing about being alive but but the arrogance that follows when you assume that you you now represent the absolute height of of evolved thinking and understanding and Enlightenment or Awakenings or woke or however you want to call it that’s part of this too you know the there’s gratitude requires a measure of humility and and curiosity requires an even larger dose how in the world can you be genuinely curious The Virtue that I personally think is is right up there with gratitude maybe even supersedes it how can you be curious if you know the answer to a thing you know how can you be a scientist if you’re not first and foremost willing to say I’m standing by to be disproved at all times you know so we need some more of that back somehow or another the Boy Scouts have to stop shooting with a shotgun your your neighbors you know we need to know our neighbors we need to know their names we don’t have to like them but we ought to figure out a way to hang out once in a while because geography matters immensely history matters you know in a colossal way and and patriotism that doesn’t that doesn’t have anything to do with politics but we’ve conflated the two so much that back to the talismans right if you think this if you say that if you sing that song get your hand off your heart what does that mean what exactly are you say why are you repeating those words yeah you know we’ve burrowed ourselves into that that butterfly cocoon thing you were talking about yeah okay well it’s uh time to uh bust out of the Cocoon right and uh be beautiful and fly free uh the movie uh which is in theaters and then it’s going to show up uh on various kinds of uh streaming platforms and the ubiquitous is something to stand for Mike grow thanks for talking to Reza well Nick it’s always a pleasure [Music]

Truly Right View: Advocating for Free Speech in the Age of Political Censorship

Introduction: What is Free Speech Today?

In a world where political discourse is dominated by big tech, cable news, and social media influencers, free speech is constantly under threat. From censorship of conservative viewpoints to the silencing of dissent on controversial issues, we are witnessing an alarming trend of restrictions on the most fundamental rights of any citizen in our Constitutional Republic: the right to speak freely.

But what does free speech truly mean in today’s context? Are we protecting it, or are we allowing authoritarian ideologies like socialism, communism, fascism, and dictatorships to erode it?

The Constitutional Perspective: Why Free Speech is Non-Negotiable

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution is crystal clear: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” The Founding Fathers understood the importance of free speech in preserving a free society. Without it, the ability to challenge government, expose corruption, and advocate for truth would be crushed.

Yet today, under the guise of protecting people from “misinformation” and “hate speech,” powerful institutions are curbing our ability to express ideas that do not conform to their narratives.

Do we not see this as a slippery slope toward authoritarianism?

Shouldn’t we, as citizens, be the ones who decide what we can or cannot hear, not a centralized body or corporation?

Social Media and Cable News: Platforms or Gatekeepers?

Social media was once hailed as the bastion of free speech. It allowed ordinary individuals to share their thoughts, advocate for causes, and hold the powerful accountable. However, over the years, major platforms like Twitter (now X), Facebook, and YouTube have become gatekeepers rather than facilitators of free expression.

Algorithms favor certain ideologies, while alternative viewpoints—especially those with a more conservative or constitutional slant—are shadow-banned, demonetized, or outright censored.

Does this not resemble the tactics of monarchies, communistic or fascist regimes that control what their citizens can see and hear?

Shouldn’t a true democracy allow the free flow of ideas, even if those ideas challenge the status quo?

Social Media Influencers: Fighters for Freedom or Puppets of Censorship?

Many social media influencers, especially those aligned with constitutional values, have become modern-day warriors for free speech. Yet, they face intense backlash, censorship, and de-platforming for voicing opinions that challenge globalist or left-leaning narratives.

How many times have we seen influential voices banned simply for questioning government policies, election results, or health mandates?

Isn’t it concerning that only a select group of elites can decide what is “acceptable” discourse?

While some influencers fall in line with these restrictive policies, others have emerged as champions for free speech, using their platforms to resist censorship and uphold constitutional rights. The question is: Will we support these voices, or will we allow them to be drowned out by corporate and governmental censorship?

The Dangers of Socialism, Communism, and Fascism: A Threat to Free Speech

At the heart of socialism, communism, and fascism lies a common tactic—control over speech. These ideologies have historically sought to suppress dissent, limit expression, and create a monolithic narrative that favors those in power.

Look no further than authoritarian regimes past and present, where dissenters are imprisoned, media is state-controlled, and free speech is criminalized. Can we really ignore the striking similarities between these oppressive ideologies and the current state of political discourse in America?

Is the suppression of speech today not a precursor to more draconian measures tomorrow?

Should we not fight to preserve the right to freely express political, social, and economic ideas?

The Truly Right View: Defending Freedom in the Digital Age

At Truly Right View, we believe in the unwavering defense of free speech as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. We reject the encroaching influences of socialism, communism, fascism, and any form of dictatorship that seeks to undermine this fundamental right.

Our platform is dedicated to bringing you uncensored news, analysis, and commentary from a truly constitutional perspective. We provide a space where voices that have been silenced or marginalized can be heard, and where you—the citizen—can engage in the free exchange of ideas.

Join the Fight: Sign Up for Our Channel and Newsletter

Do you value free speech?

Do you believe that the right to express your thoughts, opinions, and beliefs should never be compromised, no matter how controversial they may be?

If so, we invite you to join the fight for free speech by subscribing to the Truly Right View channel and newsletter. Stay informed on the latest developments in free speech advocacy, political commentary, and constitutional rights. Together, we can stand against the creeping influence of censorship and authoritarianism.

Why wait for others to defend your rights?

Become part of a movement that fights for the truly free society envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

Will You Speak Up or Stay Silent?

In the end, the future of free speech rests in our hands. We can either stand idly by as it is eroded by corporate and governmental overreach, or we can take action to protect and preserve it.

Will you speak up for your rights, or will you allow them to be taken away piece by piece?

The choice is yours.

Subscribe to the channel for Truly Right View today, and support our patriots shop together, let’s ensure that free speech remains the bedrock of our Constitutional Republic.

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Mike Rowe: Make America stand for something again | The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

Truly Right View: Advocating for Free Speech in the Age of Political Censorship

Introduction: What is Free Speech Today?

The Constitutional Perspective: Why Free Speech is Non-Negotiable

Social Media and Cable News: Platforms or Gatekeepers?

Social Media Influencers: Fighters for Freedom or Puppets of Censorship?

The Dangers of Socialism, Communism, and Fascism: A Threat to Free Speech

The Truly Right View: Defending Freedom in the Digital Age

Join the Fight: Sign Up for Our Channel and Newsletter

Will You Speak Up or Stay Silent?

Trump clarifies he meant Cheney wouldn’t have ‘guts’ to fight a war with rifle comment after Dem backlash

An unapologetic libertarian at Fox News | Kat Timpf | The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

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