Weapon systems run by artificial intelligence could become tools that humans can’t compete with. The process of analyzing a target, identifying it as a possible threat, and pulling the trigger to kill would be faster than any human. They would be weapons that don’t need to sleep, don’t daydream, don’t need to take breaks or eat. They raise massive ethical issues. And there’s now a debate on whether the Pentagon should allow them, especially as other countries begin to push them. In this episode of Crossroads, we’ll discuss this topic and others, and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/419WcQR Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

The wealthy elites pushing the climate agenda are facing rounds of criticism online, after a video emerged showing their private jets frozen on a runway in Munich allegedly as some were heading to a climate change summit currently being held in Dubai. This happens as new data suggest the richest one percent in the world generate as much carbon emissions as the poorest two-thirds of the world’s population combined. And this is sparking a broader debate on why it seems the people ironically most responsible for climate change (if we believe the hypothesis) are also the ones lecturing us the most. The views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE👇 https://ept.ms/3RefxM9 Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

A plan to use federal lands in the United States to build migrant camps has been blocked by Congress, after six Democrats joined with Republicans to vote against the policy. In other news, the BLM and leftist campaign to defund the police, while pushing light-on-crime policies, is backfiring. Now, Democrat-led cities are trying to pull back the policies. They’re dropping support for BLM and facing lawsuits over the lack of law enforcement. In other places, businesses are simply folding due to rampant crime and theft. In this episode of Crossroads, we’ll discuss this topic and others, and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE👇 https://ept.ms/3TfLrdY Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

Establishment news outlets and political figures are warning of a new threat to America: Donald J. Trump. Well, it’s a new warning at least. This time they’re saying that a second Trump presidency now seems to be inevitable, and that he could potentially overturn term limits. In this episode of Crossroads we’ll discuss this topic and others, and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE👇  https://ept.ms/3Tfd2vK Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

Xi Jinping, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), recently traveled to the United States where he attempted to lure business back into China. It appears, however, that the charm offensive has failed. China is facing a credit crash, its manufacturing and real estate economies are crumbling, and investors are deeming China too risky to put their money in. This could have serious implications for the CCP, especially as Xi is allegedly debating bringing back lockdown policies. In this episode of Crossroads, we’ll discuss these topics and others, and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE👇 https://ept.ms/3RyrRrY Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

The House of Representatives is investigating some of the leading firms behind the ESG agenda. ESG stands for Environmental and Social Governance, one of the main agendas forcing companies to follow the standards of investment that align with leftist politics. And these firms are now being probed in possible antitrust violations. In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp, we’ll discuss this topic and others, and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/3t79Rff Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

With new voter data showing President Joe Biden falling further behind in the polls, and with former President Donald Trump forging ahead, the Democrats are turning to outside help for Biden. And part of that help is pulling back to the 2016 race, with Hillary Clinton now coming back onto the scene. She recently helped Biden with a fundraiser, and questions are now being asked about how involved she’ll be in the Biden 2024 campaign going forward. In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp, we’ll discuss this topic and others, and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/41pXbg3 Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

Texas is leading a challenge to the federal government on its response to mass illegal immigration. This includes a plan to complete the construction of former President Donald Trump’s border wall, as well as a new policy that could allow the state to deport illegal immigrants, while also charging them with state crimes. The policy will likely run into legal challenges but could also set a new standard for border security across the United States. In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp, we’ll discuss this topic and others, and answer questions from the audience. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/4aoDMjD Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

Former President Donald Trump is being removed from the 2024 presidential ballot in Colorado. The state’s supreme court gave the go-ahead on the controversial move, which has already failed to pass in several other states. The case will now likely make its way to the nation’s Supreme Court, where a ruling could decide whether or not he is qualified to run again as president. In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp, we’ll discuss this topic and others, and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/3RycZsp Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

"They have these torture facilities, sometimes right next to school. The kids can hear the people being tortured in Gaza. These kinds of guys are screaming out because Hamas is torturing them. Where's BLM? Where are they when these types of human rights abuses happen on a daily basis?" In this episode, I sit down with Pastor Dumisani Washington, founder and CEO of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel and the author of “Zionism and the Black Church.” "These rallies are just slogans, hashtags, and a complete demonization of Israel, which is why we're seeing attacks on Jewish people—on Jewish neighborhoods," says Pastor Washington. How did Black Lives Matter become anti-Israel? What is the origin of the terms “Palestine” and “Palestinian”? And how was the Soviet Union involved in creating the Palestinian national movement? "The PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] is a creation of the KGB," says Pastor Washington. "One of the KGB agents that defected explained that the liberation movements—many of them were crafted there, not for the help of people who may even have been legitimately struggling, but for the purpose of exploiting those people." Pastor Washington believes that anti-Israel protesters are, knowingly or not, doing PR for terrorists, promoting a version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is not only false, but a cover for Hamas. Watch the clip: "You're not concerned about the honor killings. You're not concerned about the fact that gays get thrown off the rooftops in Gaza. You're not concerned that the people of Gaza have regularly protested Hamas to their peril," says Pastor Washington. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (36 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1130DumisaniWashington FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Dumisani Washington, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Dumisani Washington: Thank you, Jan. Thanks for having me. Great to be with you today. Mr. Jekielek: We've been talking for some time about these mass protests and rallies that have been happening on university campuses. Today as we're filming, there's a pro-Israel rally happening here in Washington DC which you're here for. I appreciate you taking a moment to speak with me. Mr. Washington: Sure, thanks for having me. Mr. Jekielek: You are not surprised at this whole thing that's happening on our campuses right now, but a lot of people are. This is something you've been following for some time. What's going on? Mr. Washington: There's so much to unpack, Jan. Again, I appreciate you reaching out and having the conversation. Yes, I would imagine it would be surprising, especially now for people who don't know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are not familiar with what's going on in the region, but they see this explosion of activity here in the States, on the campuses, and on the streets. As a matter of fact, the street protests have unfortunately become very violent. There was a Jewish gentleman who was killed a few days ago in the LA area. Those protests are an extension of what has been going on on the campuses for years, for a very long time. Those protests are done under the guise of justice and under the guise of Palestinian human rights, but it's not really advocating for human rights. It is a hatred for Israel and a hatred for the Jewish people. For those who don't understand it, they're caught up with it as some sort of social justice thing. Somehow, if you are on the side of right, if you're against police brutality, if you're against racism, and any of these things that any thinking person would be against, then you are necessarily anti-Israel. Because Israel has been demonized for decades as a totalitarian police state and apartheid state—any pejorative you could think of has been affixed to Israel. For many different reasons that propaganda goes back decades as well, but by now it has so fomented that you are seeing the culmination of a lot of work and a lot of disinformation where Israel is concerned. Mr. Jekielek: As you said, there's a lot to unpack here. Before we go there, I'd love to understand your background. You're with The Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel. You've been doing this for a while, but how did that all come about? Mr. Washington: I am a pastor and I'm also a professional musician by trade. I came up in the church with a strong, spiritual Zionist ethos. I wrote a book called Zionism in the Black Church, where I explained my background. I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in the late sixties during the segregated south, and grew up in California because my family moved to San Francisco in around 1968. I didn't grow up in the segregated south. I grew up in California, but very much in this Black church tradition. There's a great deal of spiritual Zionism within a traditional black church, meaning songs and sermons. There are a lot of parallels between the children of Israel and African-Americans. Harriet Tubman, one of the most notable abolitionists, was called Moses. The Negro spirituals from centuries back were almost always set in this whole redemption narrative, for example, “Go down Moses,” and “Joshua at the Battle of Jericho.” This was nothing new. Even the literary voice, Booker T. Washington, wrote a piece that was dubbed, The Black National Anthem. Even though it has been politicized today, it was very much of a cultural heritage thing for black Americans. That's how I was raised and this was my reality. Mr. Jekielek: What does spiritual Zionism mean exactly? Mr. Washington: Spiritual Zionism means identifying with Israel and the Jewish people based on the scriptures, everything from the Abrahamic Covenant, when God says in Genesis 12:3 to Abraham, "I'll bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you,” to identifying the children of Israel as the people who are almost always these underdogs who are having to fight because of the Amalekites and the Egyptians. There was always that ethos in the traditional black church. That is why Dr. King, a day before he was killed, said in his speech in Mississippi, "I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we as a people will get to the Promised Land." Why are there all these allusions to Israel and these allusions to the Bible? This was a black church thing, and it was not even just in terms of church, but also in terms of culture. This was always known. Spiritual Zionism, aside from the Jewish state of Israel, was not so much a political thing as much as it was as identifying spiritually and scripturally. For many in the black church tradition, the support for the state of Israel goes much further than that. The geopolitical reality is about Israel and its struggle against Palestinian terrorism. That fight was brought to the door of the black community in the late sixties in the embodiment of Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The reason why it so particularly impacts the black community isn't because, as I tell people often in our lectures, the black community chose the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It showed up for us, and it came for us. When Dr. King was defending Israel's right to exist up until the time of his death, he wasn't doing it because he didn't have anything else to do. His plate was pretty full. He had already said that the Jewish community, more than any other ethnic group, had distinguished itself in the Negro struggle for justice. Those were his words. That was true, but that wasn't the only reason why he supported Israel. He didn’t say, “The Jewish people are my friends, and therefore I blindly support Israel.” For him, it was about justice as well. I talk about this in my book. Anybody watching this program can also go to the website, rabbinicalassembly.org, and find a meeting transcript of when Dr. King was the honored guest at the Rabbinical Assembly 10 days before he was killed. What I'm saying now, he said in that meeting. The meeting wasn't just about Israel, it was about a lot of different things. But this was almost a year after the 1967 six-day war. Israel was being demonized as a settler colony. They had the audacity to win the war against five Arab powers. Israel kept defending itself. When Israel would win, it would get demonized in the media. Israel was one of the only nations in modern history, or if ever, that would give up land for peace even after winning the war. Dr. King spoke soberly. He spoke in terms of morality and justice. He spoke for the vast majority of the black civil rights community when he was saying those words and defending Israel, but also sharing much concern for what we now call the Arab Palestinian people. I say that because they didn't use the word Palestinian in the late sixties. Palestine is the name of the region that the Romans gave to Judea around 135 BC. Just for context, I'm going back almost 2000 years. In the modern era, a Palestinian was known as a Jew who lived in the region, and the Arabs were called Arabs. Yasser Arafat began to coin the term Palestinian as a weapon against Israel to say, "The Palestinians are the indigenous people who own this land, and these Jews are interlopers who came and stole it." All of that is false, but it works if you're trying to sell a social justice narrative. When you're telling the history of any nation, and let's just keep this about America for a moment, as great as a nation is, there are warts and there are flaws. Bob Woodson was the one who said that slavery was America's original birth defect, but it's still the freest nation in the world, even with these imperfections. Unfortunately, as we know, kids on campus have been told that America is the most evil nation and the most racist nation in the world. Those things aren't true. Who is America's closest ally? Israel. By default, Israel gets demonized in that same way. It is the only viable democracy in the Middle East, a nation of 9 million people that includes Jews and Christians and Muslims, and they all serve in the military. It is the most multi-ethnic and pluralistic society that exists outside of the United States, yet it's demonized as the one that's always oppressing and committing genocide. None of those things are true, but that's the current perception. Hence, kids on college campuses are saying, "Free Palestine," not knowing what that means. They are saying "From the river to the sea," not understanding that that is a call for genocide against the Jewish people. Those things have been popularized, and this is the tragedy of where we are right now. Mr. Jekielek: I keep thinking about this idea of projection. One of the guests on this show, James Lindsay, coined this term, the Iron Law of Woke Projection. We have a real sense of genocidal intent, when you look at what happened on October 7th, which is not even debatable. Yet, Israel is being portrayed as genocidal. Mr. Washington: In the context of a far-Left mentality that is more Marxist in its leaning, that is anti-American in its leaning, and that is anti-democratic in its leaning, one of the first things that happens is that truth is suspended. Words don't mean anything anymore. Bayard Rustin was one of the founding members of BASIC, Black Americans to Support Israel Committee. It was founded by him along with Philip Randolph. Members included Coretta Scott King. The who's who of the black community formed this pro-Israel organization, because of the demonization that was happening about the Jewish state and the Jewish people, just like what is happening now. One of the articles he wrote was called, “The PLO; Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?” In the opening sentences of that piece, he talks about how language has been completely distorted, how terrorists are called freedom fighters, and how a liberal democracy is called some sort of oppressive regime. The reason I mentioned this is because that was 1975, a long time ago. You've had this indoctrination that he's addressing that was already a problem then, that has now saturated everywhere. To answer your question, why can Hamas launch a genocidal attack killing women, children, babies, and all the horrific things that people are aware of, just like ISIS does. Why can it do that, but then be hailed as freedom fighters who are fighting oppression? Because language has been turned on its head. This has been the goal of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO, for those who don't know, is a creation of the Soviet KGB. I'm not saying that the Palestinians are not a people now, I'm just saying that the PLO was an organization formed by the KGB. We know this because one of the KGB agents that defected explained that many of the liberation movements were crafted there, not to help people who may be legitimately struggling, but for the purpose of exploiting those people. Yasser Arafat became the chairman of the PLO in 1969, ironically, a year after Dr. King's death, which was in 1968. One of the first things that he does, Jan, is reach out to the younger members of the black civil rights movement, people like Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers. Why does he do that? He is from a conflict that is so far away from Oakland and Chicago, especially in terms of black civil rights. If you're talking about police brutality and those types of things that are going on in those cities, why is a "Palestinian leader,” that was actually born and raised in Egypt, concerning himself with black leaders in America and South Africa as well. He was close friends with Nelson Mandela who never condemned Israel's right to exist, none of those things. Why did he single out the black American community leaders ? Why? It was to sell his genocidal goals as a freedom movement. Again, it was going to be difficult for him to get press coverage saying, "I want to destroy Israel from the river to the sea." But if he says, "We want liberation,” if he says, "these white Jews are oppressing us the way that white people are oppressing black people in the United States,” then that resonates with people, even if they don't know the truth of what he's talking about, and even if they don't know who the Jewish people are. They are not people of color. They're a group of ethnic people, and they come in all different colors. They're not aware of that, it just sounds familiar. Kids are saying, “Israel is an apartheid state.” They don't know what apartheid means. If you asked them where it originated, they don't know anything about South Africa. It just sounds bad to them. But they have had enough word association, "Israel bad, Israel genocide." You know how disinformation works if you keep saying it over and over again. That's been going on for a long time, and that's what it's based on. They say, “I'm on the side of justice. I'm on the side of right.” Just after these attacks the climate person, Greta Thunberg, comes out with, “Free Palestine.” What? We didn't know you knew anything about the Middle East conflict. Do you know what you're even talking about? No. It became part of her social justice grab bag. She pulls out her Palestinian flag and then boom. Some people were shocked. We weren't shocked because we knew she's part of that same Leftist stream. In order for you to keep your Leftist bonafides, you better come out as pro-Palestinian, even if you don't know what you're talking about. Mr. Jekielek: Parts of these rallies are very clearly pro-Hamas, not just free Palestine. Mr. Washington: There have been ISIS flags. What you are seeing on the streets has been going on at the campuses for years with the calls for genocide against the Jews that say, “Intifada, intifada, globalize the intifada.” Intifada is a violent uprising. Intifada means the buses that have been blown up in Israel. It is the type of terrorism that has been visited on the Israelis for decades. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is a call for genocide. Once again, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is the entire nation of Israel, so it's not about land. It's not. Hamas doesn't care about settlements in the “West Bank.” Hamas slaughtered babies to send a message to Israel. In Hamas' own charter, in their own words, they are committed to two main things. Number one, the total destruction of Israel. Number two, the worldwide destruction of all Jews. How do we have a two-state solution conversation with Hamas? They just slaughtered nearly 1,500 people. They still have another 240-plus who are held hostage, and Israel is being told by people of supposedly goodwill to cease fire. Hamas wasn't told to cease fire, but Israel was. While they're saying ceasefire, Hamas is still sending rockets from Gaza into Israel, attacking its civilian population. Any logical thinking person would say, "Okay, Hamas is a bad actor. Even if I thought they had some grievances, this is not a way to address any of those things.” But you can see these nuanced conversations are not happening in these rallies. These rallies are just slogans, hashtags, and a complete demonization of Israel, which is why we're seeing attacks on Jewish people and neighborhoods. This has been going on for a while as well. Black Lives Matter, which is supposed to be concerned with the black community, almost immediately took up the Palestinian cause, which has nothing to do with Mike Brown, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, none of those things. BLM of Los Angeles, during the George Floyd protest, goes to the Fairfax area of Los Angeles, which has been a Jewish enclave for a long time, and defaces five synagogues, three Yeshivas, and Jewish schools. What does that have to do with police brutality? What does that have to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? But this is what has been accepted. For years those of us in this space, not just me, but long before me, have said that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Those who held the opposite position always would push back on that. People are now seeing that it's true. Why are people supposedly supporting the Palestinians in the street threatening the lives of Jews? Why is the Jewish community here in the United States seeing the type of hatred for them as a people, regardless of their politics, regardless of how they even feel about Israel itself as a nation? Why are they being threatened? Why are their Jewish kids barricaded in the library while Palestinian supporters are outside kicking in the door? There was something like that in 1950, Selma, Alabama. This type of mindset has been present on the campuses for a long time, but now it's everywhere. Mr. Jekielek: It has been tolerated, obviously. Mr. Washington: It's tolerated, and I have to go political here, because it's considered progressive in some circles. It has become a staple. To deny that is to deny reality, and I'll give an example. Picture these protests on these campuses and on these streets with them being neo-Nazis and white supremacists. You know how fast the FBI would've shut that down. Why is their violence and this type of bloodthirsty rhetoric okay? Black Lives Matter of Chicago tweets a picture of a paraglider who slaughtered the kids at this festival that was there. Why does that get a wink and a nod? When Hamas was sending 4,000 rockets to Israel in 2021, Black Lives Matter posted its support for Hamas, but it didn't get media coverage then. But now, it's seen as progressive, because it's seen as pushing against totalitarianism or imperialism or western encroachment. Dr. King called Israel an outpost of democracy. It's surrounded by despotism. Fast-forward to now. Now, it is seen as some sort of bad thing, that outpost of democracy means a manipulative puppet of the United States that's doing its bidding. That has actually been accepted. It is not true, but that is what has been accepted. This is not happening on conservative Christian campuses. Nobody is calling for the death of Jews at Oral Roberts University, because if they were, this would be on the front page of the newspaper and they would be shut down. Picture a white supremacist group setting up on a campus saying, "All these Negroes should die. The south shall rise again." They wouldn't last five minutes and rightly so, you would shut them down. I'd be the first person shutting them down with you. But why is it okay to say this to the Jews, or why can I say from the river to the sea? Why is that okay? Because it is considered progressive. For people who are now seeing the level of vitriol for Jews and for Israel, one of the reasons it's taking them aback is because it's new to them. Addressing the anti-Zionism on campus now is very much like closing the barn door after all the horses are gone. They've gone to the next county. We're addressing it now, and it’s way, way too late in the game. Mr. Jekielek: You've tried to tell people before though. Mr. Washington: That's just me, and there were many people long before me. But yes, we have. I did an event with our Jewish friends out in South Jersey last spring. We were talking about antisemitism in the black community. We talked about things like Louis Farrakhan and Black Lives Matter, and a few other things. I made the point that the greatest source of this type of Jew hatred is actually the college campus, where this indoctrination has been happening for a long time. As much as we were talking about antisemitism in the black community, which is a worthy conversation, it's not the black community that controls Stanford, Harvard, UC Irvine, and Michigan. Some of the most lethal types of activities where Jews are concerned are happening on progressive college campuses controlled largely by white progressives. That doesn't mean there's no antisemitism in the black community. But this systemic problem and much of what's happening in the streets right now didn't come from Howard University or Spelman College. That came from Harvard and Yale, where such anti-Zionism has been for a long time. Mr. Jekielek: There are people threatening to quit at the White House. There's congressional staffers walking out from work. Mr. Washington: Do you mean because of what they feel is a lack of support for the Palestinian cause? Mr. Jekielek: Correct. Mr. Washington: Absolutely. This is what we call the oppression Olympics. Once you put a team together, based on how much each person is oppressed, at some point that team is going to start to crumble, because that team is going to turn on itself, meaning those who consider themselves concerned about Palestinian human rights. They have now fixed their gaze on demonizing Israel, not on Hamas, who've been the brutal rulers of Gaza since 2007. Israel removed every Jewish man, woman, and child from Gaza in 2005. By 2007, Hamas, which is a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the destruction of worldwide Jewry, has been in charge of launching rockets, terrorist attacks, and building tunnels. If someone calls themselves concerned about the Palestinians, but has nothing to say about how Hamas has been brutalizing those people, they're not pro-Palestine, they're anti-Israel. It’s one thing to be against police brutality. It's another thing to just be against the police because they represent oppression, that whole thing. Those who consider themselves pro-Palestine but are actually anti-Israel, and who don't want this current administration to do anything that looks like siding with or helping Israel, that's where some of those protests are coming. What's amazing is that this Biden administration, a continuation of the Obama administration, has given billions of dollars of funding for terrorism in the region, and it is the reason why we are here today. The Taylor Force Act was made law in 2018, which stated that no administration could knowingly fund Palestinian terrorism. From everything that we can see, it seems as though that law is not being honored. Billions of dollars have gone to the Palestinian Authority. Money has gone to UNRWA, which is the United Nations Relief Works Agency for the Palestinian refugees, which for those who know, is a coffer for Hamas which runs Gaza. Not to mention the money that has been released in terms of sanctions relief for Iran, which is the main actor. Iran funds Hamas and funds Islamic Jihad. It works with other destabilizing forces within the region. It's the number one state sponsor of terrorism. This administration has totally empowered all of those bad actors. When we see something like October 7th, we feel very strongly that the administration is very much involved in what happened because of the funding that goes to this terrorism. You have those who are angry with the Biden administration and feel that they've been too much of an ally of Israel. Our organization feels that the funding of the terrorism is a lot of the reason why we are in this situation today. Mr. Jekielek: I don't know how it's going to play out, but apparently another $10 billion of sanction relief is being considered. Mr. Washington: Yes, I saw that. Since Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism, to be considering releasing another $10 billion to Iran should give anybody pause, especially while there are still 240-plus hostages in Gaza. The people of Gaza are under the oppressive rule of Hamas, and so they are severely impacted by what's going on now, even as Israel is in Gaza attempting to eliminate Hamas. Hamas uses civilians as human shields. Israel is in a no-win situation, but they have no choice but to go after and eliminate Hamas. The humanitarian aid that is to go in is supposed to be for the people. But here's the further complication—Hamas rules with an iron fist for every portion of food and all the materials. I'm not in any way suggesting that the people don't get what they need. Our organization has felt for a long time that there needs to be more of a systematic way of keeping Hamas from taking all of that, whether it's fuel or any of those things. Because Hamas is firmly and totally in control, there is no way to make sure that the people of Gaza get any of those goods unless you remove Hamas. Then we're right back in this quagmire. This has been what Israel has been dealing with for a long time. Iran is the main actor. Just the other day in Sudan there was another slaughtering of Sudanese Christians by this Islamist group that seems to have connections to Hamas. Hamas is not just this group that runs Gaza. It is a part of a network that is funded by Iran. Just like our Israeli brothers and sisters were slaughtered on October 7th, for years Christians have been slaughtered in different parts of Africa and the Middle East by Islamist groups, some of them connected to Iran. With the fight that many people were introduced to on October 7th, they may not realize there has been a religious war against non-Islamists, because many Muslims are also being killed in those parts of the world if they don't have the same ideology as ISIS and all the others. Mr. Jekielek: For Martin Luther King, it was obvious for him to support Israel. Similarly, you mentioned how for Angela Davis and the Black Panthers it was just the opposite. I want to dig into that because you also talked about how BLM seems to be the lineage of Angela Davis and the Black Panthers. Mr. Washington: What illustrates that best is the story of Eldridge Cleaver. We've done articles on it, and we've done a video on it. There's a video entitled; “Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver became a Zionist.” He was one of the original red pills back in the 1970s. What happened? I mentioned before that Yasser Arafat quickly reached out to the younger members of the civil rights movement, the younger lions with more of the Malcolm X mindset, which meant by any means necessary. They were really frustrated with the older guard and the whole non-violence method. Theirs was more of a radical, “Let's change this now and let's change it by force.” Eldridge Cleaver met Yasser Arafat around 1969 in Algiers, Algeria. Why was he there? He fled the United States because of a shootout that had happened in Oakland. He was accused of killing an Oakland police officer. He was incarcerated for a little while, then was released on technicality. He connected with Fidel Castro's people at the United Nations in New York, and then went down to Cuba because Castro promised him weapons and training. "We're going to help you overthrow the American government." He goes down there and Castro sells him a bill of goods. They were using those young black people to demonize America. They didn't care about what was going on with them anymore. They cared about what was going on with the Palestinians. When Eldridge Cleaver saw this, he got disillusioned, and then he headed off to the other communist regimes. In our video, we have him talking about his own journey. Eldridge Cleaver: About what was going on in these communist countries, the more I understood that it wasn't just in Cuba that things had gone wrong, but things were wrong in every one of those countries. Mr. Washington: He went to Algeria. He went to both Arabic and European communist or despotic nations, all of which were enemies of the United States and Israel, because he thought that these people were his friends. One of the many things that he experienced, Jan, was slavery. In Algeria he saw for the first time ever with his own eyes, black African slaves, and then he saw them in other countries as well. He said, "Wait, wait, wait. How could you be our friends when you have enslaved people who look like me? What's going on here?" Slowly, but surely, he saw that as imperfect as the criminal justice system was in America, in these different nations there was no criminal justice system. They would just line people up against the wall and shoot them. If they accused them of something, they would just knock down somebody's house. He said, "I started to miss the Oakland police." People started laughing in the audience. He said, "Don't get me wrong. I'm still against police brutality, but now I'm understanding a little bit more of what happens in the world in these communist regimes that I thought were my friends. I thought they were concerned about human rights, and what they were concerned about was demonizing the United States.” From Yasser Arafat he also learned the whole PLO thing, which is, “This struggle is parallel. Just like you're struggling here in the United States, this is again what the Jews are doing to us in our land.” So, he started talking against the Zionists, saying, “Zionists are our enemies. We stand against the watchdogs of imperialism,” that whole thing. But as he got red-pilled, not only did he see that what was being told to him was wrong, he understood even further the very close relationship between the Jewish and black community, with Israel being a democracy that is doing great good. He came back after seven years of this odyssey as a staunch Zionist. He was writing articles. He was condemning the UN for condemning Israel. It was a complete change. He started reaching out to his former colleagues on the far-Left. He didn't die until the 1980s and he spent much of that time telling the people what he had learned. Many people didn't get to experience it the way he did, to be on one side and then completely go to the other side. Eldridge Cleaver was that kind of person. You would try to show him the city, and he would leave your tour group and go off down the highways and the byways and talk to the people himself. That was just the kind of person that he was. While in Cuba, he talked to Cubans and he stopped talking to Fidel Castro's minions. He talked to people who said, "It's terrible here. If I could leave, I would." He started seeing that everywhere. In every communist country that he went to, he saw the same oppression. He said, "This is not what people are making it out to be." This is what's going on today. These young people are being sold this thing, which includes anti-Zionism, because they're being deceived. Elridge Cleaver is an example of what happens when someone sees the truth. One of the things our organization does is to give the full story. Here's what is really going on. Who is Hamas? Who is the Palestinian authority? Who is Fatah? Who is Mahmoud Abbas? Who was Yasser Arafat? Why is Khaled Mashal, the leader of Hamas, worth $6 billion at last count? What is actually going on? We talked about BLM. BLM was formed with the mindset of the pre-red-pilled Eldridge Cleaver. They are giving a version of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that is not only false, but is also simply a cover for Hamas. It is a cover. You are doing PR for terrorists because you're not concerned about honor killings. You're not concerned about the fact that gays get thrown off rooftops in Gaza. You're not concerned. The people of Gaza have regularly protested Hamas to their peril. Jan, as you know, this is a totalitarian regime. You don't get to make signs and march and say, “We want peace. We want justice.” No. They do it knowing they're going to be incarcerated, tortured, or killed. That's the level of bravery that is there. People in Gaza get on rickety boats and sail on the Mediterranean, trying to get somewhere in Europe so that they can be free. Where was BLM when these people were being arrested and tortured? They have these torture facilities sometimes right next to a school. The kids can hear the people being tortured in Gaza. These guys are screaming out because Hamas is torturing them. Where is BLM? Where are they when these types of human rights abuses are happening on a daily basis? They have that mindset like Eldridge Cleaver had, until he got red-pilled and realized that the PLO is not the friend of black people. Maybe they're not the friends of the Palestinian people. Maybe they are just terrorists. Maybe they're just trying to destroy Israel and they're using us as pawns in this game. Mr. Jekielek: This has been an absolutely fascinating discussion Dumisani. Thank you. Any final thoughts as we finish? Mr. Washington: Again, thank you for having the conversation. It is important and timely. Those of us in this Israel space also do Africa work. We are aware of these issues, but we recognize that the vast majority of people aren't. People have busy lives. It's important for them to have access to information that's beyond the boilerplate, beyond the hashtag, so that they can actually do a deeper dive. Thank you for giving us this opportunity, and hopefully people will go further and find out more for themselves. Mr. Jekielek: Dumisani Washington, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show. Mr. Washington: Thank you, Jan. Thank you for having me. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Dumisani Washington and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (36 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1130DumisaniWashington Epoch Original DVD collection:

What will be the impact of the European Union’s sweeping new rules for Big Tech, not just on Europe, but also on America? “The issue with this legislation is that there are extremely vague categories such as misinformation and hate speech that are very, very difficult to define in law … so this opens the door to a form of arbitrary bureaucratic power over the platforms,” says David Thunder. He’s a political philosopher and a research fellow at the Institute for Culture & Society at the University of Navarra. “They can also declare an emergency. And in the event of declaring an emergency, require the platforms to take special measures to counteract the emergency,” says Mr. Thunder. “So it can become part of a war machine, in a sense.” Watch the clip: Mr. Thunder is the author of “Citizenship and the Pursuit of the Worthy Life.” 🔴 WATCH the full episode (48 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1128DavidThunder FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: David Thunder, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. David Thunder: Thank you. It's great to be here, Jan. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s jump right into it. What is the Digital Services Act? Mr. Thunder: The Digital Services Act is a piece of legislation that just went through the European Parliament recently. It is concerned with the regulation of online platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok. It covers a broad range of issues including child pornography, transparency of terms and conditions, and the standardization of the regulations across the European Union that affect these platforms. But from my point of view, this legislation is troubling. It has introduced a form of censorship of these platforms by the European Commission specifically through issues such as hate speech and disinformation. It gives the European Commission oversight over these platforms and they can actually undertake a review of the platform's policies and regulations over the previous year. If the platform has not been in compliance with their requirements, these platforms can be fined a massive amount—billions and billions of dollars. Mr. Jekielek: That is obviously of great concern to those platforms, but also to people who use those platforms. These platforms have become a kind of infrastructure for people the world over. Mr. Thunder: Exactly. They have become a global, digital town square, where much of the news and commentary that happens in the world gets filtered through these platforms. Even though they are private platforms, they act as public forums. That's a very important point to make—they do have a public function in our democracies. Any form of oversight of these platforms by the European Commission is something that people who care about democracy should be concerned about. Of course, nobody would object to them taking down child pornography. That's not the issue. The issue with this legislation is that there are extremely vague categories such as misinformation and hate speech that are very, very difficult to define in law. The auditors of Twitter or other platforms, the people who are auditing them on a regular basis, have to take these categories into account and decide whether the platforms have sufficiently enforced rules against disinformation and hate speech. If they haven't, they could be heavily fined and could even be suspended from operating in the European Union. But nowhere are these categories defined in law in a clear way. This opens the door to a form of arbitrary bureaucratic power over the platforms. Mr. Jekielek: One of the features is that the system employs the equivalent of fact-checkers and fact-checker organizations. Mr. Thunder: Yes. They will end up employing a small army of what they call trusted flaggers, and the trusted flaggers are not exactly fact-checkers. They're supposed to identify illegal content on the platforms. These trusted flaggers and trusted flagging organizations are nominated by the digital coordinators of each member state. There is some outsourcing of the work to the member states, but fundamentally the oversight is going to come from the central power, which would be the European Commission and whoever it nominates to do this work of oversight. That's really when we're going to see the full impact. But not just then, but also before that, because these platforms have to anticipate that they're going to be reviewed. When these trusted flaggers flag certain content, platforms like Twitter or YouTube can either take down the content, or they can decide to keep it up and give some reason for keeping it up. If they're consistently ignoring the advice or the recommendations of the trusted flaggers, that will come up in the annual review by the Commission. Then the Commission will probably say to them, “Why are you ignoring our recommendations?” There will be that kind of conversation. It is a mechanism for pressuring the social media companies to comply with the policies of the European Commission. Again, I would emphasize that in European law there is no clear definition of disinformation, nor is there any clear definition of hate speech. These two categories are inherently expansive and inherently vague. Put in the hands of the European Commission, they can be used to advance whatever their political opinions are about these matters. Mr. Jekielek: These trusted flaggers have the ability to take down content assuming that the platform is reciprocating. You can imagine a situation, given the extreme nature of the fines that one of these platforms could get, they may err on the side of self-censorship, in the sense that they will just agree with those flaggers. Effectively, they're working like one of these fact-checkers. If they don't comply, then they'll get audited and they might get this massive fine. Do I understand this correctly? Mr. Thunder: Yes, I agree with that. That's the most likely outcome, because it really is a massive fine that they would be facing, up to 6 or 7 percent of their annual turnover. I found it shocking the amount that they could be fined. Yes, they will anticipate that and take defensive measures. That's just good business strategy, otherwise they could be sunk in massive fines at the end of that review period. Mr. Jekielek: What is the impact beyond Europe? Mr. Thunder: That's a good question. I don't know if it's practical for a social media company to completely separate the visibility of tweets or posts in one region vs. another region, and whether, for example, the Twitter experience would be completely different if you're living in Europe than if you're living in the United States. I'm not a legal expert, but I would imagine that one of the obvious impacts is just the sheer cost for the social media companies of having to put in place an infrastructure to be constantly responding to these trusted flaggers. It would be a kind of regulatory infrastructure. It's going to be a burden on the platforms, not to mention that they would be paying fees to the European Union for this service. Certainly, there would be an extra cost for the platforms. For the end user, it's hard to say. It would be up to the companies to decide whether they're going to standardize their policies across the world, or whether they could have a Twitter experience or TikTok experience for the United States and another one for Europe. Europe would be a more censored experience in this case. I'm speculating because I'm not sure exactly how the social media companies will respond to these regulations. Mr. Jekielek: You're arguing that it does do certain valuable things that are highly defined, like restricting child pornography, which just about everybody would agree is a really good thing. But that is something that's very finely defined. It also incorporates these other very broad areas. Mr. Thunder: One example was the use of algorithms that potentially could be manipulative. Part of the legislation requires social media companies to be more transparent about how they use people's personal data in designing their feed and their experience of the particular platform. That's a pretty good idea. It's actually a pretty neat idea to bring in more transparency and more respect for privacy. With the example you gave of child pornography, who would be in favor of child pornography? I'm sure there are lots of innocuous parts of the legislation, because it's a very long piece of legislation, as I discovered when I waded through it. But there are key points that are pressure points like the disinformation issue and the hate speech issue which are inherently expansionist. They can also declare an emergency and require the platforms to take special measures to counteract the emergency. Now, what could that mean? We can only imagine what it would mean. They're not very specific, but presumably it means if they think that there's an emergency because of a pandemic or a war like the Russia-Ukraine war, they could decide they’ve got to start censoring propaganda coming from the other side. It can become part of a war machine in a sense. But again, it's about the vagueness and the open-endedness of these emergency powers. It's just not clear exactly how they will use them and what power they will have over these platforms. Any lawyer should be aghast at a piece of legislation like this, because it gives very vague powers to an unelected organ of governance, namely the European Commission. Mr. Jekielek: You're one of the folks who was a voice of reason and thoughtfulness during the pandemic. What happened when you first saw that something was wrong with the pandemic response? Please give me some background on how you came to this awareness. Mr. Thunder: I had been living in Spain for over 10 years, and I was one of the first cases of Covid myself, actually, because it was late February 2020 when I came down with Covid. I never really tested for it, but I lost my sense of smell and I had all the classic symptoms of Covid and it was dreadful. I was out of action for about a month and had a cough for about six months. I wasn't hospitalized, thank God, and I got over it. But in the course of those months, the Spanish government ordered people to not only stay at home, but to not even go out for a walk, not even go to the park, and not even walk their kids outdoors. People were allowed to walk their dogs, but not their kids. Crazy stuff was happening. When they said you couldn't take a walk and you could only go to the supermarket but not take a walk for any other reason, I knew that this stuff was just made up. It was just made up on the hoof by people who were panicking and wanted to make a power grab and make people feel like they were doing something. As I saw these Draconian measures being applied all over the world, I knew from an early stage that this was going to lead to chaos and that it was going to cause far more harm than good. As a student of the social sciences, I was aware that any dramatic large-scale social intervention is going to have inherently unpredictable and chaotic consequences that are very difficult to control. The experience of the pandemic has proven this principle to be true because of all the secondary effects of paralyzing people's lives and isolating people and shutting down businesses. From early on in the pandemic, I was aware that this was going to happen. Mr. Jekielek: I keep coming across this theme as I speak to people who became aware very early in the pandemic that something was really amiss. Is this a principle that every social scientist would know, or is this something that was more focused in your particular area of discourse? Mr. Thunder: Any attentive social scientist who is aware of very large social experiments like Russian communism, or Stalinism, or national socialism in Germany, or even the city planning movement to the United States in the '50s and '60s, should be aware that these interventions historically have been disastrous. Mr. Jekielek: What happened? Mr. Thunder: What essentially happened is that fear and panic kicked in on one side. There was genuine fear in the population. There were people who were well-placed in government circles who could begin to understand the problem, who actually reinforced that fear and perpetuated that fear. It became a kind of a self-reinforcing cycle of fear with more aggressive interventions, and then more fear. Because every time you lock down the population, people think this must be Armageddon. When a public authority locks people down, they receive the signal that there is a really dramatic problem here that they need to respond to. It turned out that the authorities were mistaken. It was a serious problem, but it was not a problem on the scale that would justify locking people in their homes. Countries that did not do that, like Sweden, came out much better than many of their neighbors that did lock down. There really is no evidence the lockdowns worked in the medium to long-term to stem the spread of disease. It was not realistic. Human beings are not like that. They have to get on with their lives, they have to make a living, they have to go to work, and they have to eat, and they have to socialize at some point. Mr. Jekielek: This is exactly what I was thinking about when you were talking about these emergency powers for extra censorship that are granted by this new DSA law. Mr. Thunder: In a way it's a kind of a rationalization that they offer for these powers. Their idea is that somehow controlling the flow of information on the internet is vital to managing public emergencies. That in itself is a very questionable premise for a government, and it's a very self-serving premise as well. Whenever a government wants to make the case for having more power, we should be very suspicious. In fact, you would think that during an emergency you would want a more open internet and a more open flow of information so that vital information that is concealed or that is not easy to access can actually come to the fore. You would not think the opposite, that shutting down information is the best thing you can do to manage an emergency. Mr. Jekielek: Please share a little of your background. Then let's bring it up to what you're currently studying, which is highly relevant to this discussion. Mr. Thunder: I'm a political philosopher. I've studied issues connected with the ethics of citizenship, what it means to be a good citizen, some of the obstacles to being a good citizen, and some of the corrupting influences of political institutions and practices. In my later career, I've turned towards the institutions of democracy. I've focused on the conditions under which democratic political institutions can contribute towards the flourishing of their participants, so that citizens can live more satisfying and well rounded lives under these political institutions. That's where my research is at the moment. I'm particularly interested in the decentralization of political institutions and the principle of federalism, which is a very, very cherished and familiar principle in the United States. Mr. Jekielek: It's federalism in the United States that actually allowed for different approaches to the pandemic. The state of Florida ended the lockdowns very early on, basically within a month. There are other states that stayed locked down for a very long time. There were completely different approaches to various types of mandates, including mask mandates and vaccine mandates, and even messaging around the pandemic. It provided this laboratory of democracy scenario, where we can look back and ask, “Which approaches were better? Which ones worked and which ones didn't? I deeply appreciate this approach. This is very different from my home country of Canada where everything is much more centralized. Mr. Thunder: This point about experimentation and about a laboratory of democracy is fundamental, because if you centralize a political system too much, then you deprive yourself of invaluable knowledge and understanding of public policy. Because if you only impose one policy across a region, then you'll never really know for sure whether that was the best policy or the optimal policy because you don't have a control group. You don't have a parallel universe where a different policy was applied. The federal system allows for these kinds of experiments in democracy and in public policy to run in different directions so that observers can then understand their outcome better. I am not American, but I lived in America for at least 10 years. I'm very attached to the federal principle, and it is extremely important to preserve it so that power remains as dispersed as possible. I would further say that the federal principle should be applied within states, so that municipalities and counties can have as much autonomy as they can over their own affairs. That's really fundamental for democracy to work well. Mr. Jekielek: We live in a world where we're told that we need experts to mediate our understanding of the world because the world has become so complex. With this pandemic response, one of the silver linings has been to show us that this approach doesn't work very well, given that a lot of poor decision making was made by people who were experts, and then the doubling down on failed policy. This has been a feature of the pandemic. We discussed earlier the very idea that a small group of people could have the level of understanding to decide what is true and what is false. That itself is a serious question. We've been conditioned to believe this might be appropriate, but you argue differently. Please tell me about that. Mr. Thunder: This has to do with how scientific, political, and moral knowledge actually works. We have to understand that in order to get to the truth, and in order to understand what's going on in the world, we actually have to engage in a back and forth argument with other people. We have to be able to examine the evidence openly. The evidence that's presented has to be contestable by other people in a court of law in an adversarial way. You have to think, “I'm held accountable by other people for what I say because they can challenge me.” But if we set aside an anointed group of people and we say, “Those people have the truth. We'll protect what they say. It cannot be challenged,” then we're undermining the very basis for rational discourse, which is the ability to be challenged by others. The notion that there is an anointed class of people is like something out of a sci-fi novel. It's absolutely, utterly implausible, and it has made its way into popular ideology. The reason it has such an appeal is because it makes the world very tidy. Instead of having to grapple with complexity and contradiction, I can just be fed the truth by an expert and that makes me feel comfortable. Personally, it doesn't make me feel comfortable. It makes me feel uncomfortable to be constantly fed ideas by an expert class. But I can understand how that could be psychologically reassuring to think that these people like the NIH and the CDC have the truth. It's kind of crazy to think that a doctor who's outside the CDC should not have standing to criticize the CDC or challenge its ideas. It doesn't make any sense from a scientific or rational point of view. Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely. I'm thinking back to Hannah Arendt's writings right now. Are we in a moment where we're poised to accept some kind of technocratic rule? It's not just a matter of there being a push for that kind of power structure, but maybe we're more accepting of it than we have been in the past. Mr. Thunder: There was a very famous thinker, Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote his famous, wonderful volume called, Democracy in America. He was very prescient and predicted that modern governments, in promising people security and comfort, could effectively become what he called soft despots. They could be softly despotic, meaning that instead of relying on the police coming to your home and knocking your door and rounding you up, they would just get compliance by regulating the hell out of people's lives, so that people's initiative and creativity would be destroyed by having to go through bureaucratic hurdles for everything they did. Hyper-regulation of people's lives by the state can really enervate them. It can really reduce their energy and creativity. It can infantilize them. Technocracy can feed on itself by creating habits of compliance with minute and complicated rules. I agree that people seem to be more open to technocratic control of their lives. But there are other people who are resisting and pushing back, and we shouldn't forget that. There are pretty strong resistance movements in places like the United Kingdom. There are peaceful resistance movements and populist movements as well that are anti-establishment and anti-technocracy. It's not all doom and gloom. There are some signs of resistance to these kinds of tendencies in democracy. Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely, I wholly agree with you. One of the things that this whole pandemic has exposed is that some of us are easily propagandized and we can come to believe things which are wrong. Yet, we can pick it up from it being in the popular culture and being pushed out through social media. We can come to believe things, which upon reflection, don't really make a lot of sense. We live in a society where some portion of us believe in things which another portion of the population doesn't. The idea is you want people to have a common set of knowledge and a common set of facts. You can't have alternative facts. Facts are facts, but that's not where we are today. Mr. Thunder: All of that is inherently anti-philosophical. It's anti reflection, it's anti-thinking, and it's anti-freedom to present people with a very rigid worldview that they should accept on faith, essentially. Somehow, because it's unchallenged and it's authoritative, we should accept it. What you're talking about also points to the fact that our societies are quite polarized and divided. There is disagreement over fundamental issues that affect how we live together, that affect how we run our society, and how we regulate our society. The prospects of creating a feasible political system that we can all inhabit together seem pretty poor. Here, decentralization plays a really critical role, and not only territorial decentralization, but also things like school vouchers so that people can select the kind of school they want their children to attend and to have some control over their social world. I would argue that precisely because our society is so diverse, and because there is so much disagreement and conflict; moral, cultural, and religious, precisely for those reasons, we should try to facilitate people to organize and to join communities that can agree on fundamental issues concerned with how they live together. Yes, of course, you need an overarching constitution and some kind of a regulatory framework. But I would argue that the umbrella regulatory framework within which all these communities can exist should be minimalist. It should go to the bare minimum of non-aggression with some kind of rules against criminal conduct and some rules about public order, so that communities can then develop their own life in their own way. They don't all have to be celebrating a gay way of life, and they don't all have to be against a gay way of life. In a way, we have to understand that it's a practical issue and it's a practical problem. It's not about deciding what the best and most ideal society is going to be. It's about getting these people, as they are, to be able to interact with each other, engage in a common market, and pass each other in the street. That's not going to happen if we think that all of the important moral and cultural issues have to be settled for everyone in a state. It's just not going to happen. It will only polarize the population and it'll accelerate the demise of that society. Mr. Jekielek: Some people would be forced to take on a set of values in this type of context. Mr. Thunder: It would end up being that either a majority or a powerful political faction, which may be just a strong minority or powerful minority, would end up dictating the terms of our common life in a way that goes completely against the will and the interests and the opinions of the rest of the society, and they would feel trapped. When people feel trapped, they become resentful, bitter, and angry, and it is a recipe for an unstable society. It would be inherently unstable and explosive. People get complacent about Western democracy. They think, “Oh, well, we don't see bombings in the street,” but that's a mistaken attitude. Because ultimately, underneath the veneer of peace and respect, there can be a lot of tension and resentment. If you allow it to bubble and develop over time, there will come a time when it explodes. Democracy relies on mutual respect and on recognition of the legitimacy of our shared institutions. If those institutions become polarized or only are perceived to represent the ideological or economic interests of a special class of people, then many citizens will just switch off and will defect. They will reluctantly go along with what they're told to do until they see an opportunity to overturn those institutions. It sounds dramatic to say it that way. I would say the United States is on course for a form of dismemberment. If people attempt to resolve these issues at the federal level, it's a recipe for dismembering the United States. Mr. Jekielek: What do you see as a solution here? Mr. Thunder: There is no completely satisfactory solution because politics is very messy. Living and sharing public spaces is inherently a messy process when people have different opinions. But having said that, there are ways to mitigate the pathological effects of political partisanship, division, and polarization. One of those ways that has been recognized by scholars is called polycentricity. It basically means decentralized governance is to decentralize power and allow communities to run their own affairs in their own way. They need to have a very strongly protected right of exit and right of mobility, so that essentially citizens can vote with their feet, so to speak, and they can move to communities that are more amenable to their outlook on life. Maybe that's an example that's been discussed or cited by a lot of people. Apparently, a lot of people have moved to Florida during and after the pandemic. You can bring that down to a smaller scale, and you can even bring it down to the level of municipalities and counties to some extent. You can actually have different rules for different regions and different governments. I know people think this sounds very radical, but honestly, we're up against fairly radical problems now. We need to start to open our minds to radical solutions such as decentralization. Mr. Jekielek: Roger Simon, an editor-at-large at Epoch Times, has a new book out called, American Refugees, which is precisely about this phenomenon of people migrating from blue states to red states, and the phenomena associated with that. Mr. Thunder: Yes, in terms of people finding their life meaningful and worth living, it's very important how their social environment is structured. The people you hang out with, the people you cross paths with, and the kinds of activities you engage in, and your social activities are fundamentally important for your self-development, for how you view yourself, how you move in the world, and how you navigate the world. It's not just geographic decentralization, it's also allowing civil society organizations such as educational institutions to have maximum autonomy, to be able to cultivate a shared way of life without being constantly micromanaged and constantly hyper-regulated by overseeing powers. I'm not an anarchist. I'm not saying that universities should have zero regulation by the state. But I'm saying that in terms of ideology, in terms of philosophy, universities should have a lot of freedom to develop their own research programs and their own educational programs. Then citizens should be free to go there or not go there as the case may be, so that there will be a market effect as well, where people can choose what kind of education they want for themselves and their children. This can be applied to many different sectors of social life. Yes, the freedom of civil society is a fundamental part of federalism. Mr. Jekielek: Here in America, a lot of people will say that the educational system, especially higher education, is irrevocably lost and has been caught up in this woke Marxist ideology and it's very difficult to get an education. There is this whole parallel set of institutions that are forming in this process. A lot of people don't think that the existing institutions can even be reformed, because they're so ideologically saturated with this view of the world. Mr. Thunder: If you were to look at it positively, then people should see this as an opportunity, because if those institutions were not quite so saturated, then there would be less of an incentive to set up new, vibrant, fresh, alternative institutions. Starting from scratch, even though it's very difficult, can give rise to great projects and do an awful lot of good in society. Just getting by and just more or less surviving in old worn out institutions may not be a satisfactory response. Whereas, trying to set up independent institutions that are not stuck in these patterns of wokeness can be a huge service to society and can open a new path of discovery and a new path of development for many citizens. I like to see this in a positive light and think if we see pathologies in our institutions, then maybe it means we need to bring up fresh shoots and fresh life. We need to grow that from small to big by starting small, obviously, but it can be very exciting as well to start up new ventures. Mr. Jekielek: David, you've written a book about the meaning and importance of citizenship. Here in the U.S., one of the regulars on this show is Victor Davis Hanson, whose book, The Dying Citizen, is chronicling how that role in society is actually dying out. Mr. Thunder: We are living in a time when there is a retreat by many people into the private sphere into the sphere of family and entertainment. There is a retreat away from the public sphere, the sphere of politics and public engagement, whether it be at the local level or at the national level. Taking an interest in public affairs and engaging with a public spirit in public affairs is fundamentally important for the future of democracy. But I also argue in my book that caring about the common good, caring about the good of my neighborhood and city is actually something that makes me a better person as well. It actually helps me develop virtues like justice and magnanimity. It also helps me become someone who looks outward towards my society and helps it become better. Mr. Jekielek: On the one hand, we see a lot of people that are very disillusioned and wondering whether there's any point in participating in the political process. On the other hand, there's been a huge increased interest in school boards, very much a local political office and political role. This actually has had some profound impact on school districts across the United States recently. Mr. Thunder: It's so important that people do not have contempt. They should not have contempt for citizenship at a very local level and not to underestimate the importance of engagement with the school board, or engagement with the governance of your university or of any civil society organization, or even good governance in a business. These are all ways in which, in my view, we can practice good citizenship to the benefit of everyone. Mr. Jekielek:Any final thoughts as we finish? Mr. Thunder: Sometimes people can become discouraged and disheartened because it seems like so many things are going in the wrong direction. I like to say that, and I say this for myself as well, that we only get one life to live. Even if you live under a very problematic government, there are so many good things that we can do with our life for the people around us, including building institutions, but also just in our neighborhood and in our family and among our friends. The meaning of our life does not turn on our success at changing the whole world. That's just a fundamental, very important point. The meaning of our lives comes from the way we live our day-to-day life and touch the lives of those around us, not whether we change the whole world. I almost have to say that to myself as a mantra, because the ideological atmosphere tends to encourage us to think we have to change everything or we've failed. Whereas, maybe just making small changes can be very meaningful in itself. Mr. Jekielek: David Thunder, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show. Mr. Thunder: Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining David Thunder and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (48 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1128DavidThunder Epoch Original DVD collection:

“Time and time again, after talking with septic tank workers and bridge builders and skull cleaners, and just this endless variety of odd jobs, I found people who didn't follow their passion into that career, but rather followed opportunity,” says Mike Rowe, an Emmy award-winning TV host and producer who is best-known for hosting the TV series “Dirty Jobs.” In this episode, he breaks down the biggest lessons from his career. “Right now we have 7.2 million men, able-bodied men, in the prime of their working life, who are not only not working, but affirmatively not looking. What they're looking at are screens,” Mr. Rowe says. In the post-COVID era, why are so many jobs seemingly impossible to fill? Watch the clip: What has gone wrong with our society? And how do we turn things around? 🔴 WATCH the full episode (1h 1 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1123MikeRowe FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Mike Rowe, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Mike Rowe: Nice to be here. Mr. Jekielek: Mike, you said something that a lot of people would find very controversial. I want to start with this. You said that you shouldn't follow your passion. Mr. Rowe: Yes, people hated that. I didn't say they shouldn't be passionate, I just said that passion is so important that you should take it wherever you go and not just follow it around like a dream. This was one of the big lessons from Dirty Jobs. There were many lessons from that show, but the first one and the big one was the day that I realized that so many of the people we profiled on that show were passionate. They were very happy. These people were having a weirdly good time and that confused people. We featured 350 dirty jobs and at least 350 dirty jobbers, and probably 40 or 50 of them were multi-millionaires. Nobody knew it because they were covered in filth or something disgusting, and because we never made a big deal about it. People didn't equate success with that, nor did they equate it with joy or fun or lightheartedness or passion. Time and time again, after talking with septic tank workers, bridge builders, skull cleaners, and this endless variety of odd jobbers, I found people who didn't follow their passion into that career, but rather followed opportunity. Once they got the opportunity, they figured out how to be really good at it. Then after they figured out how to be good at it, at some point they figured out how to love it and how to be passionate about it. It's a small thing unless you really step back and look at it. We've told a whole generation of kids that if you want to be happy in your work, if you want job satisfaction, the first thing you have to do is identify in your mind the thing that's going to satisfy you and then you embark on this plan of satisfaction pursuits. You borrow lots of money and you take lots of tests and you do whatever you have to do in pursuit of this thing you believe is going to make you happy, as opposed to just looking around and seeing where everybody's going and then going in the opposite direction and following opportunity instead of passion. I started to say, "Look, we all want to be passionate, but rather than follow it, let's just take it with us and figure out how to be passionate regardless of what we're doing." That was a message I gave in a commencement speech at PragerU. Yes, YouTube restricted it. They wouldn't let anybody over 18 watch it. Mr. Jekielek: That is so interesting, isn't it? That is such a bad message. Mr. Rowe: It's a threat. I hadn't thought of this before, but why restrict it? There was no profanity in my message and there was no obscenity. I kept my clothes on for most of it. There was nothing that would make you say, "That's inappropriate," except that the point of the speech was to pivot and say, "Look, there are a lot of great jobs out there that are open, and that don't require a four-year degree.” “If somebody told you that your passion is going to require you to borrow $250,000, and that you're going to have a hard time paying back in order to pursue this thing that may or may not make you happy, then you should possibly think a little differently about what your educational path should be." That, I believe, was seen as a threat. Mr. Jekielek: We're here in California. I was just interviewing someone that's leaving the state. She’s a serial entrepreneur and owns multiple farm-to-table restaurants. She built a beautiful farm, a little paradise just north of LA, which services those restaurants. It’s an incredible thing. But at this point, she just can't make it work and the business doesn't work anymore. She had her best quarter ever prior to the pandemic. She took in more than $1 million herself, nevermind paying everybody well. Now, she has to leave and she's heading out to Texas. One of the elements of this perfect storm is that people are not working as well since the pandemic. Is this something that resonates with you? Have you heard about this? Mr. Rowe: Anecdotally, yes. In my own organization, I haven't noticed it. But my own organization is very unique and everybody subscribes to a thing called ROWE [Results Oriented Work Environment]. Mr. Jekielek: I feel like your ethos and your organization is very similar to The Epoch Times. We have ROWE principles, we just never called it that. Mr. Rowe: It's difficult because I'm very suspicious of any cookie cutter advice. I'm very suspicious of painting with too broad a brush, regardless of what the topic is. I know we're going to talk about a lot of different things here, but I think you're alluding to working from home. You're alluding to a kind of work ethic or a certain set of expectations that might dictate an employee's behavior or an employer's behavior. Your work experience may vary. There are a lot of different ways to work and there's a lot of different ways to think about work. There are unions, there is the right to work, there's work from home, there's flex time, and there's the gig economy, which tragically is under assault here in California and in other places. I don't know how much you've read about AB5, Assembly Bill Five. There are real interests that don't want people to freelance. They don't want people to drive the Uber that brought me to you here today unless they can become employees. These are big complicated conversations that are happening all over the place. I don't know how it impacted the person you're interviewing, but I do believe that we're in a time right now where an employer's expectations and an employee's expectations, and I'm speaking broadly, are wildly out of whack. There's a real disconnect going on. I've never ever seen recruitment be this challenging for so many. It's not just the skilled trades, it's also in the restaurants. Everybody watching this program has been to a restaurant in the last year-and-a-half and seen a certain sign on the door. It’s not the sign that says, "Help wanted." But it’s the sign that says, "We're sorry. You're going to have to wait longer than we want you to wait, because we can't hire enough people to be fully staffed. The ones we do have, they came in on their day off to pick up the slack. Thanks for your patience." I've seen that or a version of that everywhere, and I've read books on this. Nick Eberstadt wrote a book called Men Without Work, and you would love this conversation. He wrote it in 2015 because he was very concerned with what was happening in the male population regarding employment. He had a lot of theories on it. The data went crazy during the lockdowns, so he republished it. Among other things, right now we have 7.2 million able-bodied men in the prime of their working life who are not only not working, but affirmatively not looking. What they're looking at are their screens. They are home 2000 hours a year looking at screens. That's new, and certainly in peacetime we've never seen anything like that before. Your friend is not alone. Something is afoot and something is amiss in the wide world of work. As people grapple to define or maybe redefine what a good job is, a lot of businesses are just grasping at straws and clutching their pearls and very uncertain about what's going to happen next vis-a-vis the workforce. Mr. Jekielek: I don't want to rag on the service industry too much, but there seems to be less enthusiasm around providing service. Does that make sense? Again, this is anecdotal and something I have personally observed. Mr. Rowe: It doesn't make sense that there would be a lack of enthusiasm, but I agree with you, there is a lack of enthusiasm. I can hypothesize, but you would probably need a social anthropologist to really dig in to try and explain all of the effects, not just of the lockdowns, but of so many other things. I don't even know what generation we're in now. What is it called? Alpha is coming, and Z is here. We have millennials, X, and boomers. They're all treated as if they're a different species. Maybe they are, I don't know. A lot of people my age are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to motivate, how to inspire, and how to encourage. Again, I don't want to paint with a broad brush, because I still think people are unique and individual and different. But yes, there is this sense that people think, “Here I am, I'm alive, I'm walking around, I went to school, and I got my degree. Now, that dream job we were talking about, where is it? I've been waiting now for six months and I don't really want to do this other stuff.” We've lost our patience with the lower rungs of the ladder. A ladder without lower rungs is not a thing you can climb. I don't know what it is, Jan. Maybe it's social media, maybe it's the rise of the influencer, or maybe we're just surrounded by so many examples of instant gratification that we've forgotten about the virtue of delaying such things. I don't know. In my own organization, and in my own foundation, we talk a lot about this. Our scholarship program is called a Work Ethic Scholarship program. What is work ethic? It's a mix of things like the enthusiasm you just mentioned that is so conspicuously absent. It's delayed gratification. It's a positive attitude. It's all of those things that a lot of kids today look at with suspicion. They're suspicious when they are told they have to pay their dues. If they are told they have to start at the bottom, that rankles them and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because it sounds like a lecture. Maybe it's because somebody like me is shaking their finger. Maybe it sounds like a sermon. Lectures and sermons aren't persuasive, that much I know for sure. If you want to understand the lack of enthusiasm in the younger generation, then I don't think you and I are in a position to do it, to be frank. Mr. Jekielek: The Smithsonian had this infamous graphic that they created that was also on their social media. They described whiteness as a pejorative. It listed these white traits that we should be suspicious of, which included hard work, being on time, and other things related to a good work ethic. Mr. Rowe: Right, soft skills. If you tell somebody, "You ought to tuck your shirt in," somehow that becomes an insult. If you tell somebody, "Maybe you shouldn't look at your cell phone during the interview." They reply, "Why? What do you mean? You're infringing on my rights. I've got a lot going on and I can multitask." They might not see multitasking as a sign of rudeness. It's part of the current disconnect. Mr. Jekielek: Someone is actually teaching that these traits are bad and you shouldn't have them, because then you would be white, or white-adjacent as they call it. Mr. Rowe: It's worse than terrible. It's stupid and it's self-defeating. Ultimately, when you tell somebody those things, you risk persuading them that you're correct. If they believe that you're correct in that assessment, then you've just handed them a victim card, and those things are fun to collect. We shouldn't be turning the language upside down, but that's what is happening. It's not just the Smithsonian putting out this thing, every major company in the country has been pulled into ESG [Environmental, Social and Governance] and DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion], all of these things. I'll give them every benefit of the doubt and assume it's all as well intended as it could be. But it's also just another couple of entrants into the army of angry acronyms. It's just two more things to worry about and one more way to virtue signal in a lot of ways by saying, "Look what we've done. Look at our commitment to this, this and this," and the language gets pulled into that too. If you really want to be inclusive, then you have to be open to the idea that affirming a positive work ethic is some sort of artifact from the patriarchy. I don't know. But companies where I would have never expected to see this kind of thing, they're all doing it in some way, shape, or form. I have a buddy who works for a big recruiter, the biggest one. He's way up the food chain, and he's placing people in multimillion dollar positions. The qualifications for those positions now all begin with gender, race, age, ethnicity, and sexual preference. They're looking to check boxes affirmatively. Further on down the list, they are still going to look at education and experience, but chronology matters. A lot of things are happening in the language that are informing the way companies hire, which is going to alter the way they advertise for opportunities, and it's going to impact everything and everyone. Mr. Jekielek: You were talking earlier about cookie cutter. This woke ideology very much works that way. It assumes that everyone in a particular group is the same. Let’s switch gears for a moment. You've come out as a big supporter of Walmart. Please tell me about Walmart and why I should be supporting Walmart? Mr. Rowe: I don't care much if you support them or not. I don't work for them. Eight years ago I reached out to them. I had read an article that said they were going to commit to spend $250 billion over the next 10 years on the U.S. supply chain and U.S. manufacturers—the small guys, the people who are trying to make something in this country. Walmart was going to invest in the factories and the infrastructure that those endeavors need. I thought that was great. I knew somebody who knew somebody over there. I just said, "For what it's worth, the Dirty Jobs guy is pulling for you." Because really, if we have any hope of reshoring and truly reinvigorating manufacturing in this country, how are we going to do it without the biggest retailer in the world firmly behind it? There's all sorts of stuff about Walmart that I might quibble with. Obviously, it's the third rail of retail for a lot of reasons. Anyhow, I did the voiceover for a commercial called The Factory, and it aired during the Olympics. It was an inspiring commercial about a factory that had been closed for years. The lights were coming back on and the people were coming back to work. It was really beautiful, and I won some awards as well. The commercial airs and I go over to Facebook and start looking at the comments, and there are a lot of them. Most of them were good, but a couple of people said, "Hey, what's up Dirty Jobs guy? Don't you know that's an anti-Union shop? Don't you know that big, giant business is killing small businesses?" I said, "Oh, okay." I wasn't even in the commercial, I just narrated it. I was just minding my own business. It was late at night, I'd had some wine, and the Olympics were on. I was going to bed, but first I sat down at my computer and responded to a couple of people who were the most upset with me. I said to them what I just said to you. I said, "Look, it is not about how you feel about Walmart. How do you feel about the country? How do you feel about a big retailer setting the bar? Maybe Costco or Best Buy or Home Depot or Lowe's or somebody you don't hate will follow suit. Don't you want all of them to invest in the infrastructure that would allow more entrepreneurship and more made in the USA stuff to happen?" I put that out there and then I went to bed. The next morning I looked at this post and 7 million people were having this giant knife fight in a phone booth. They were so angry at me, because organized labor had a dog in the fight. They were very upset with Walmart because Walmart is not a union shop. They saw me as a guy who should be on their side of that argument. I run a foundation and we don't get political. I don't get involved in labor and management disputes, and I don't think I did here. All I said was, “It's Walmart. It's $250 billion. I'm pulling for them. You're not?” Long story short, it got weirder and louder, faster and faster. That night on CNN, there was my picture on Erin Burnett's show. Under it is a caption that says, "Working man hero? Walmart shill?" All this stuff. I got on a plane, went to New York, and booked myself on all these shows, without Walmart's permission, by the way. Now Walmart is freaking out because the Dirty Jobs guy is on Hannity and Tucker and CNN and all these different shows defending them. Actually, I was really defending myself because these issues are important to me. Whatever you think about Walmart vs. the little guy or union vs. non-union, I still believe that we don't have any hope of turning the ship around without big blue chip companies betting on this country. By the way, I was in Bentonville again just a couple of weeks ago, because Walmart is doing this thing called Open Call where they invite hundreds of small U.S. manufacturers, it's exclusively U.S., to come and pitch to them. Hundreds of them get deals, and they get their product on the shelf. They've spent all of the $250 billion that they promised to spend, earlier than they promised to spend it, and have pledged another $350 billion. Everybody talks about this issue, Jan. Everybody says, "We've got to bring manufacturing back. We've got to get China under control. We've got to do this. We've got to do that." This is a step in that direction. Mr. Jekielek: Are you sure you're not getting paid by Walmart here? Mr. Rowe: If I am, I don't know about it. Mr. Jekielek: I am being facetious, because you are very convincing. Mr. Rowe: Honestly, that's what I mean by cookie cutter advice. I am not out in the world saying, "I need to make everybody think differently about Walmart." I understand that the people at the top of that food chain are very wealthy, but they employ over a hundred thousand people. There's just no way you can sum up the totality of their existence in a binary conversation. Mr. Jekielek: We were talking about the work ethic earlier. You're offering scholarships under your Work Ethic Scholarship program. Please tell me about this. What are you doing? Mr. Rowe: Dirty Jobs has been on the air every day for the last 20 years. It is the reason I'm sitting here with you now. Whether you know it or not, that's the thing that gave me permission to mouth off and weigh in on a lot of different things. Back in 2008, the show was everywhere. It was the number one show on cable. Then the country went into a recession. Everywhere I looked, I saw headlines talking about massive numbers of unemployed people, but everywhere we went on Dirty Jobs, we saw help wanted signs. It seemed odd. How can so many people be out of work as the country's going into a recession and yet, there are so many opportunities? Mr. Jekielek: That's mirrored in our current situation in a lot of ways, as you alluded to earlier. Mr. Rowe: Mirrored and amplified, unfortunately. In 2008, there were 2.3 million open jobs, most of which didn't require a four-year degree. That's what the skills gap looked like. Today, it's close to 11 million open positions, most of which don't require a four-year degree. There was $900 million in student debt. It's now at $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loans. Today, we're still doing the same thing we were doing then. We're still stubbornly arguing for a four-year degree for everyone. We're still warning parents that if their kid doesn't go in this direction, they're going to wind up turning a wrench as some sort of vocational consolation prize. Look, I get it. There are always going to be social stigmas, but this is different. These stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions that are keeping kids out of the trades are not rooted in social climbing. Some of them might be, but the Varsity Blues stuff was another story. These are just straight up misconceptions that people don't understand. People don't understand that you can make six figures welding with no college debt, within a couple of years of getting your certification. I know that because we've trained about 1700 of those people. In 2008, I started a foundation to shine a light on those 2.3 million open positions that didn't require a four-year degree, but required a skilled trade. That's what started mikeroweWORKS Foundation, it was just a PR campaign for opportunity. Then the fans of Dirty Jobs helped me build a trade resource center online. Now, I've got this big resource center with thousands of job openings all over the place. They are good jobs; electricians, steamfitters, pipefitters, mechanics, heating, and air conditioning. That freaked people out because all we were hearing was that opportunity was dead. The average person, when they see 11 million unemployed people, they figure, “What we have to do to fix that is to just create more jobs.” We already had the jobs, but we didn't have the skills. Then it turns out we also didn't have the will. The skill gap gets a lot of press, but the will gap is also there. It just brought me back to the PR challenge. A big reason we have so many opportunities open today is because the companies in charge of those opportunities, to be candid, have done a poor job of promoting them. There was a time when we did need more kids going through the Ivy League or higher education. We needed more engineers, doctors, and scientists in the '60s and '70s, so college got a big PR campaign. It was a pretty good one. But like all PR, the push for college went too far. We weren't content to simply make the case for higher ed. We had to do it at the expense of all other forms of education. We had to turn all those dirty jobbers that I had worked with for all those years into cautionary tales that said, “If you don't get the four-year degree- Mr. Jekielek: You'll end up like this. Mr. Rowe: Exactly, but no one even understood what this meant. Because the big lesson from Dirty Jobs was that these people are happy and living balanced lives. Not everybody is a millionaire, obviously. Some people work their 40-hour weeks, they come home, they coach little league, they go to the PTA, and they go to their church. They live a life that looks a lot like prosperity because they have mastered a skill that was in demand, not because they went to college. Maybe some of them did, but most of them didn't. We award Work Ethic Scholarships today because that PR campaign called mikeroweWORKS was effective, to the point where it moved the needle enough so that a lot of big companies noticed. They came to me and said, "How can you help us make a more persuasive case for the opportunities in our company?" I said, "I'm not an expert, but I'll tell you what I've learned and I'll tell you what I know." For me, it started as work, and then people started to give me a fair amount of money, really. I've never hosted a fundraiser or done a chicken dinner or a celebrity golf dinner—I don't do that. I let people know what we're doing and I'll take their money. If you want to contribute to mikeroweWORKS.org, I appreciate it. I then award it in the form of a Work Ethic Scholarship. Why? Because there's a scholarship for everything else. We have academic scholarships, we have athletic scholarships, we have artistic scholarships, we've got all that. This scholarship is for the young man or woman who says, "You're right, I'm not going to follow my passion, I'm going to take it along with me. I'm going to get up every morning. I'm going to show up early. I'm going to stay late.” “I'm going to cheerfully lift with enthusiasm. I'm going to make myself indispensable. I'm going to volunteer for every crappy task at hand. I'm going to make my boss love me." You show me that person and I will train them. That caught on and we started the foundation on Labor Day, 2008. Today, we've given away close to $8 million and assisted nearly 2000 people in learning a skill that's in demand. Mr. Jekielek: What you're describing is music to my ears. Mr. Rowe: You just said music, and that always makes me smile. The handy gene for me is recessive, tragically. I just didn't get it. We're sitting here today because my granddad was a tradesman in the '40s, '50s and '60s. He was an electrician by trade, but he could do anything. He could take your watch apart and put it back together blindfolded. He had that chip. He only went to the seventh grade, but the guy could build a house without a blueprint. I was so sure I'd follow in his footsteps, but my passion didn't match up with my skills. When I was 16, he was the guy who told me, "Look, you can be a tradesman, just get a different toolbox." That gets me into entertainment, which gets me into Dirty Jobs. All these years later, the foundation is an homage to him. He was happy in his work, but he would be invisible today. People would look straight through him. A big part of what we do in the foundation are the Work Ethic Scholarships, but the other part is to challenge people like me who are addicted to smooth roads and affordable electricity and indoor plumbing, and the rest of us, the 300 million people in this country who are addicted to chewing and swallowing things. When I can, I like to point out that one-and-a-half percent of our population are farmers who are feeding 330 million of us three times a day and a big chunk of the world to boot. That's impressive. I like to point out that our skilled workforce is relatively small and we entirely depend upon them. Mr. Jekielek: Some of us, especially the laptop class, almost forgot about those people during the pandemic. There was the 15 days to slow the spread and you just isolated yourself. Mr. Rowe: Two weeks to flatten the curve, I believe it was. Mr. Jekielek: Right. But what about the people that are bringing you the food and the people that keep things running? Mr. Rowe: No two weeks for them. Mr. Jekielek: Exactly. It's almost like we forgot those people even existed. Mr. Rowe: Can I tell you a story about that? Mr. Jekielek: Sure. Mr. Rowe: I don't tell this story a lot because it's embarrassing. I became very disconnected from the most fundamental things I had been very connected to as a kid; where my food came from and where my energy came from. I had a great appreciation for that. 20 years in Hollywood will round those edges off, but Dirty Jobs got me honest again. That's really where my education started. But years later, we locked down. To your point, I was stunned when it happened, like everybody else. I was trying to get my head around it and said, “Okay, two weeks to flatten the curve. Got it.” I was asked by the network to participate in a public service announcement. I basically sat in front of a camera and said, "We're all in this together.” For two weeks, let's all do this, let's all do that." Actually, the expression I said was, "We're all in the same boat." Which I thought was really clever because I was doing this PSA with crab boat fishermen from the show, Deadliest Catch. It was, "We're all in the same boat. We're going to come together for two weeks." Then two weeks comes, two weeks goes, and you know the whole story. At some point, I realized that we're not all in the same boat. We're all in the same storm, but your boat might be a hell of a lot different than mine or his or hers. This idea that somehow, for a while, we were all in this together was sort of a merry, cheery, weird kind of silver lining that brought people together. In my community, every evening at eight o'clock, people would walk out on their balconies in their yards and they would howl. They would all howl together as an expression of solidarity for the healthcare workers. Mr. Jekielek: Yes, I witnessed that as well. Mr. Rowe: There was this moment where people of goodwill on both sides of the divide were galvanized in a moment of being okay. Obviously, that didn't last. But while it was happening, we were figuring out Zoom, which is entirely held together by fiber optics and wires that live in pipes underground, which are maintained by people whose names you don't know, but who were out there working. At the same time people were working to keep the lights on. This whole army of essential workers got back in the headlines. That's why I rebooted Dirty Jobs. As soon as that two week period was up and I realized we weren't coming out of this, I called the network and got my old crew together and we started filming that show again, because we had to. But there was a moment where I realized, "Yes, I was wrong. I got it wrong." Mr. Jekielek: The pandemic policies resulted in what many people describe as the largest upward transfer of wealth in history. Mr. Rowe: If we were divided before, we're now certainly entering into what feels like a dual economy. I'm not sure exactly what's dividing the economy, maybe it's politics. But yes, that didn't help it. That was a lot of money going in one direction for a long time. Look, if I'm being honest, I prospered. I didn't prosper because I stayed home, but I was very fortunate to have a crew that was willing to work with me. Mr. Jekielek: To be honest, The Epoch Times grew during that time, because of people seeking honest information which was very difficult to find. You started talking about manufacturing. We gave away our manufacturing for all sorts of reasons, some perhaps well-intentioned, and some of them were definitely not well-intentioned. The point is that we've turned into much more of a service economy. In order for these countries to have a future, they actually have to bring back manufacturing. Let's talk about that. How do you view bringing back manufacturing in a serious way to America? Mr. Rowe: I don't think there's a switch we can flip. I wish there was. Bringing manufacturing back is going to require us to do half a dozen other things really well and all at the same time. We have to rethink education. We have to rethink the definition of a good job. We have to confront the stigmas and the stereotypes and the myths and the misperceptions that are keeping people from pursuing these careers that don't require a four-year degree. All of that is part of it. We have to elevate the dignity of the job itself. I'm not talking about cello music and looking for the union label and all that stuff. It's more than that. It's guidance counselors, it's parents, and it's honest conversations around the kitchen table. We talked about shop class being gone from high school. That just means a whole generation of kids didn't even get a look at what those kinds of jobs are like. What more persuasive thing could you do to tell a kid that a job doesn't matter than removing wood shop, metal shop, and auto shop from sight and not talking about it? We're still reeling from all that. It's not a coincidence that the push to offshore coincided with the death of shop class and the rise of the service economy and Walmart to some degree. Mr. Jekielek: Do you remember the phrase, learn to code? I thought this was so insulting back in the day. Mr. Rowe: Yes. Sure, I'll do that tonight. I'll learn to code. Look, it's all oversimplified, including the conversation we're having right now, honestly. We know in our gut that it doesn't make sense to depend on China so completely for our medical supplies. We know that. All I can think of is the frog in the boiling water. It wasn't so bad when we hopped in, but the temperature went up a little bit more, and then a little bit more, and now we really have forgotten how to make a great many things. It's not just a matter of the economy, there is something else baked into this. It's our identity. It's feeling self-reliant. We want to feel independent. Yes, we want to be partners in the global community, but we want to do it on our terms. We don't want to do it because we have to. We want to do it because it makes sense for us to do it. That starts with being able to create whatever we need internally. Honestly, it starts with energy independence. We can talk about all the things in this room that matter to us; the rug, the chairs we're sitting on, my smartphone over there. They all come from different parts of the globe and we all need them to different degrees. But if you distill it down to what really matters, this country is going to be fine, unless gas goes up to $15 a gallon, which it could. If that happens, every single thing is going to change. The trucks aren't going to run, and the food is not going to get onto the shelves. So many things are going to be impacted by that. It doesn't even have to go up to $15. It could go up to $10 a gallon in six months. Then who knows what's going to happen? What I do know is that we're sitting on about 100 years of oil and natural gas. We're sitting on it. We can have this whole conversation about alternatives, fine. I want alternatives too. I don't want to get stuck in the present any more than I want to get stuck in the past. But who are we kidding? If we're going to import oil and gas when we're sitting on it, that's not just bad economics, that's a kind of hypocrisy that I don't know how to respond to, except to say, “Shame on us.” Yes, the energy conversation is a sticky wicket, but I don't think we can have it until we first acknowledge that there are 3 billion people on the planet right now who are relying on wood and dung as their primary sources of energy, and that's having a huge impact on the environment. Those people need to prosper, Jan. They need to be shown a way forward, and they need their own industrial revolution. If we're going to tell them no coal, no oil and no gas, what do we expect them to do? Mr. Jekielek: We're consigning them to not developing and not flourishing, basically. That is what you're saying. Mr. Rowe: I'm saying that. At the same time, we're also pointing at the one thing that I know of, with the possible exception of cold fusion. We're pointing to nuclear energy and saying, "No, we don't do it. We learned our lesson from Three Mile Island." What? Do you know how many people died at Three Mile Island? What about Fukushima? Yes, people died at Fukushima. Most of them drowned as a result of the tsunami. During Chernobyl, I remember looking at a map of Europe, and a quarter of it was just dark, gone. They said, “This is what could happen. All these people could be gone.” A couple of dozen people died, I believe, many fighting the fire at the reactor. My point is, we've got it in our head that nuclear power is nothing but certain death. Mr. Jekielek: Based on the numbers, it's by far the safest. Mr. Rowe: By far. Mr. Jekielek: It is by far the safest form of energy. The energy independence discussion is very important to me. I want to touch on the supply chains. You said there's a kind of hypocrisy where we don't want to do some of the dirty jobs. You were also pointing out examples of dependency on China in the supply chains, and medical precursors are a big problem. The way you make some of those medical precursors is very dirty. It's much easier and cheaper to make them in a place where regulation doesn't exist. This is a reality we also have to confront. Mr. Rowe: It's a bargain and it's a deal that we make. Honestly, I'm not sure it's such a great deal, in general. It's like we put our gifted and talented kid into a really troubled school in the inner city and said, "At least everybody's all together." Now we're in the global economy, we're dependent on all sorts of other things, and we're no longer relying on ourselves. What's happening to our kid? This metaphorical kid is our manufacturing base. It's our national identity. We've decided that we want to be an active participant in the global economy. We did it in a really general way, because there are more people in this country who are consumers than workers. Everybody's a consumer, but half the country is working. We put our thumb on the scale in a way that gives us the lowest possible price every day. What would that iPad cost? Even if we had the ability to make it here in its entirety, what would it cost? Just factor in all of the pensions and all of the union stipulations. Mr. Jekielek: It would cost more. Mr. Rowe: You would still have it, but you would pay more. Look, we all have skin in this game and it's not just our elected officials. It's how much do you want to pay for your sweatshirt, your socks, this rug, this chair, and that iPad? That's the question that's been put to all of us, and I've been down this road a lot. Years ago I worked with a jean manufacturing company and they didn't make their jeans here. It was a big national brand, one of the biggest. I said, "Can't we just do one little vertical of purely American-made, just so we could put it out there and say that we're trying?" They said, "We have tried." I said, "What happened?" They showed me the research and it's hard to believe. If you put this pair of jeans that's 100 percent made in the USA next to the others, and you charge $2 more for it, you'll sell zero. If you charge $1 more, you'll sell zero. If you charge 50 cents more, you'll sell zero. This big, giant textile manufacturer, one of the biggest in the country, showed me the data. It went all the way down to a penny. If you charge one penny more, that's when they started to see some people buying the U.S. version. Only when it was dead equal did you see people- Mr. Jekielek: Choosing the American product? Mr. Rowe: Correct. Mr. Jekielek: Fascinating. Mr. Rowe: And apocryphal and powerful. There is a lot of pontificating and proselytizing and saying, "Yes, we've got to make it here. Why can't we make it here?" Back to Walmart, why do you think they're Walmart? One, they're everywhere. They're in the small towns, and they're big, and it's low prices every day. We can hate them and we can look at them and we can shake our heads at them, but we are them. We are all consumers. Whether we abdicated consciously or subconsciously, we sat back and gave it all away, we put it all out there. Now, we're dependent and we don't want to do the dirty jobs. To your point, we don't want that part of the supply chain, and we don't want to see it. So, we're going to have to rethink some things. Mr. Jekielek: Maybe we've lost faith in ourselves as Americans. Mr. Rowe: Nevermind your nationality. When you feel competent, feel like you can fix the busted toilet, correct the electricity problem, and feel like you can fix your own garage door, that's a different kind of existence than knowing I got a guy for that and he's in this phone that I don't even know how to barely operate. If you're reliant in 1000 little micro ways, then of course you're going to be reliant in just as many macro ways. We expect the food to be on the shelf, we expect the light to come on when we flip that switch, and we expect the mess to go away when we flush the toilet. When it doesn't happen, then we're laid bare. We have no choice but to come face-to-face with the depth of our own incompetence. That makes us crazy because nobody wants to feel that way, so we start resenting the very people who we should be celebrating. I saw this just a few miles from here where I live. A couple of years ago, we lost power for five days. In three days, people were shaking their fists at the linemen who were working on the power lines trying to get the power back on. They are so freaked out and frustrated that they take it out on the worker. Think about it. You've done it. You've been in traffic when you're late. There's road construction. How can there be road construction? Don't they know I'm a very important person and I have to be somewhere? Now, they're working on the road at two in the afternoon. You look at these guys and you shake your head. It all gets filed under some sort of inconvenience. We can't help it, it's in our stars. We don't look at the cause of our delay and go, "Man, those guys are busting their butt. I'm so glad they're out there working on the asphalt in the heat." As you alluded to before, we are as disconnected about all of it. Mr. Jekielek: But alongside this change in education, there has been this very overt disdain for the American spirit, where it came from, the Founding Fathers, and civics as a whole. Mr. Rowe: It's of a piece, Jan. There's a force that pushes us to resent that upon which we rely. Instead of gratitude, we have resentment. Instead of curiosity for what the Founding Fathers did, risked and sacrificed, we're angry with them because they didn't comport with our current belief and understanding of what a virtuous person, an enlightened person, or an awakened person today would do. We're cherry-picking the past. In many cases, we're being motivated by a guilty conscience, which is brought on by the uncomfortable realization that we operate a great many machines and servo mechanisms that we don't ourselves understand. We know it. We know we've slowly arbitraged our own involvement out of the daily routines of polite society. We know that we're becoming increasingly dependent on something that isn't us. We're relying more and more on things beyond our own control. We're doing it in our own zip codes, we’re doing it in our own states, we're doing it in our country, and we're doing it around the world. We're doing it in a thousand ways and in a million decisions. We're abdicating more and more and the heat is going up a little higher and the water's bubbling and the frog is us and we're still in there. Mr. Jekielek: That's an incredibly interesting view. I hadn't thought about it that way. Mr. Rowe: That's why I'm a thought leader, Jan. That's why I've been invited on this program, I guess. Mr. Jekielek: As we finish up, let's talk about the work that you are doing at mikeroweWORKS, which is trying to push back against this reality that you just described. Please tell me more about what you're doing and how you're turning the tide. Mr. Rowe: I hope so. Look, I'm trying to be super mindful. Humility played a big role in the success of Dirty Jobs. I didn't have it when I started, but I got it along the way. The temptation is to get big, bigger, and the biggest all the time, macro versus micro. I'm micro. I've learned that there's real happiness and real pride and real accomplishment in helping one person learn a skill that's in demand, and then help them get out into the world and work. I am surrounded by well-intended people who believe that the more of that I can do, the happier I'll be, and the more successful the foundation will become. If one is good, two would be double good, right? Then four would become eight, and so forth. We're up to 1800 people and we've given away $7 or $8 million. That's still very modest by foundation standards, but the pressure to do more is fascinating to me, and I guess it's better to help more. But the real goal of the foundation is not to impact as many people as possible with money so they can be trained, and so they can go work and live a productive life. That's not actually our big goal. The big goal is to get them out into the world, and then to share their stories with the world. Because I'm only as persuasive as a 60-year-old white dude can be who has prospered in his chosen field. Some people will listen to me, but most won't. They'll listen to the 25-year-old Mexican kid who's making $140,000 a year in his chosen trade. They'll listen to the 27-year-old female welder who's making the same. These are people that affirmatively challenged their own expectations. My job is to tell the stories of the people who applied for and received a Work Ethic Scholarship, because those stories, with the help of that device, will reach guidance counselors, many of whom are currently being compensated based on the number of kids they get into a four-year institution. That's happening all over the place, and it shouldn't be happening. In a good-natured way, without a lecture or a sermon or any finger wagging, I would like for the foundation to continue to give me the opportunity to talk to people like you about challenging some of these stigmas and stereotypes that are still in the way. I know lots of proud people doing lots of jobs that don't seem to have a lot of outward dignity. I also know movie stars who are bitter and broken and feel empty. Success doesn't look like what we've been led to believe, it looks like something else. One version of that is a skilled trade. Mr. Jekielek: Mike Rowe, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show. Mr. Rowe: Thanks for having me here. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Mike and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (1h 1 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1123MikeRowe Epoch Original DVD collection: