good evening. if i can have your attention, please. i'm delighted to welcome you all to tonight's conservative book

of the year award ceremony. and my colleague dan mccarthy has the run of show and will be taking lead for us. so before i kick it over to him, i'm going to introduce him he is is ise a vice president for the collegiate network as well as the editor of acs journal modern, which you all have your seats and they just modern age just introduced and launched a new website which you should go look at at modern age journal dot com and with that i will turn it over to dan thank you for being here. thank you, tom. and thank you for joining us this evening. isi has been educating liberty on america's troubled campuses since 1953. our founder shorter of believed it was not enough complain about socialism and anti-u.s. southern ideology. we have to teach the alternative the roots of our civilization,

the isi henry and an apology book award honors writers who excelled in defining the crisis of our times and instructing indeed reminding us of the solutions the award has possible by the generous gifts of henry and an apology to remarkable individuals who together became an extraordinary force. and paolucci was at barnard college and columbia. she taught at city college, new york, and became the first university research professor at saint john's university in new york. she was a scholar. the renaissance of the theater of esthetics. she was an author, and she was the founder and president of. the council on natural national literatures. she also established the school and at henry palatucci international conference center in new york, her husband and, kindred spirit, henry pollard, she was a graduate of city college of new york. he served in the nascent u.s.

force in the second world war and later earned his ph.d. from columbia university, a man of action as well as scholarship professor carlucci was instrumental in the growth of the conservative party of new. as a scholar, he taught iona college, brooklyn college city college, columbia university and st john's university in new york. we are grateful to the memory of the policies and for the presence of their friends and family. tonight, senator seraphim, multisite clarissa, rocio. michael, michael. michelle and azar arturo. we're also very grateful for the support of athos, a powerhouse literary and publicity agency, and its co-founder, jonathan brzezinski. now, let me tell you, our honoree, a man, whose ideas and reporting are at the vanguard, a counterrevolution against the radicals who have hijacked our nation's institutions. christopher rufo is a senior fellow and the director of the initiative critical race theory at the manhattan. he is a contributing editor at

city journal and the author of the new york times bestseller for which we recognize him tonight america's cultural revolution how the left and the radical how the radical left conquered everything, his research and exposing critical race theory have inspired a presidential executive order and legislation in more than 20 states. as a filmmaker, he has directed for pbs's netflix international television. he holds degrees from georgetown university and harvard, although in the latter case they resent him for it. and he lives in the pacific northwest with his wife and three sons. tonight joins us here in the heart of the swamp in washington, dc. please welcome chris rufo. thank you. it's great to. be here. let's not drop the award shatter it. and i'd be a little embarrassing. it's great to be here, to be

honored for a book. this is my first book. i've directed films, which is a much more active enterprise. you go into some forgotten territory you spent a year of your life observing something in the wild and then spend time huddled in a dark room editing something into shape. by contrast, the book is actually much easier. and then so. so it's been kind of a fun thing to to write this book, but what i think i'd like to talk about tonight is that, you know, a book either be dead or alive. there are many books that are kind of spiritually or politically dead, even if they have some content to them. but what i tried to do with this book is to make sure that it was not oriented towards the good prose, solid research, a good line of argument, some historical, but it was actually oriented towards active political life. and so the subject of the book

is political. it's one story, i think a very important story of the last half century of american political life. looking at how a radical wing political movement that never achieved popularity, that never achieved an electoral majority, was able to conquer public and private institutions through extrapolate mentary measures and what impact that's had on us. and so the story is a historical telling. the history of this movement, telling the progression of ideas through institutions. it's biographical story. i tell the biographical history four of the leading intellectuals of this period. let's see if i remember too having written this book in a while. herbert marcuse, paolo ferreira, angela davis and derrick bell. for those of you who are not familiar them herbert marcuse. i was a critical theorist.

one of the founders of the discipline of critical. he was also the godfather, the new left in the late 1960s in the united, as well as in european capitals for, a brief blaze of glory were student radicals, were carrying banners that said, you know, marx, mao, marxism. those were the, you know, the it'd be the the philosopher for that the pen the sword and the prophet. that's how he was conceptualized for a period. and if you read his work, you study his life, you realize that the conceptual framework that he established in a relatively brief period mid 1960s to the mid 1970s, about ten years, is still the dominant intellectual framework that the left operates on today. whether they know it or not, many people don't. paolo freire was a brazilian. marx ist pedagogy just happens to also be the third most cited author in all of the social

sciences in the united states. actually quite influential, if you think about it and, you know he he for example to give you a sense of his politics called the chinese cultural revolution quote the most genial solution the century. to give you an idea of who his inspirations were. angela davis, of course, is black panther party communist party, usa, kind of ethno marxist radical of the 1960s who establish a kind of specifically ethnic, radical, political movement that was the precursor or inspiration and carbon template for the black lives movement that emerged a half century later under tutelage not only intellectually, but actually directly. and if you read angela davis work, or if you read it, digested through my book, you'll find all of the phrasing, all of the concepts, all of the

rhetorical lines, all of the political tactics, even all of the esthetic references of the black lives matter movement that crested in 2020, was established by angela davis. by 1969. in the last, you know person on the list of infamy was derrick bell, who was the founder, rather the godfather of critical race. so if you look at this as a progression, you could see it starting with critical theory. then there's kind a can race radicalism merged together on the harvard campus with professor derrick bell, who became an influential figure of taking many of these ideas from fringes into the centers of power. and he was also a campus activist. many of the techniques that bureaucrats have used to gain power within for universities or government agencies. we now it affectionately as d.i. diversity, equity and inclusion. derrick bell developed a lot of techniques in the eighties

nineties and created this kind of pessimistic pseudo radical movement that occupied positions then of power and prestige over time. but what i think is actually interesting about all of these figures is not intellectual work. if you look at purely abstractly what exception of mark, who's a who actually is a heavyweight. there's some some real even if you disagree with it, cannot deny that he has a certain depth of thought. a serious scholar. the other ones there intellectual work is is lacking. it's shallow by comparison. but what's interesting about them is that their intellectual work was oriented towards practical power? it was an intellectual enterprise that had political praxis embedded it, and they were actually willing to do the political work of getting those ideas into positions of

authority, to take hegemony over institution. and lo and behold there were two phases to this revolution. the first not so successful. second, quite successful. the first was a explore licit marxist leninist guerilla warfare revolution. the black panther party, when that became not radical enough, it splintered into black liberation army. you had the weather underground and this other network of movements. and for those of you i know, everyone here is is is under 50. but for those of us who are a little younger might not remember it. i was actually shocked to understand and the research, the level of intensity of that period. there were something like more than 12 and politically motivated bombings in the united states each year. in the beginning the 1970s, dozens of airlines were being hijacked. every year, many of which were for kind of political causes or political agitation. and some of these groups were

assassinating police officers in new york and georgia and san francisco. they were bombing the us capital, bombing the pentagon bombing, police stations and, you know, murdering judges in extremely period. and the theory was we can take from mao's cultural revolution, we can take from the marxist leninist guerillas of central america, we can adopt these tactics and have revolution again in the united states. it was delusional, but for a bit. they had some hope and then maybe give us hope. you go from property bombings, assassination, guns, kind of guerrilla warfare to the richard nixon 49 state landslide in about two years. the political culture shifted dramatically against this movement. but what happened then? the second phase of this campaign, which was more successful, was one that was more insidious. it was a not a long that chairman mao executed to the

highlands central china, where he regrouped and then destroyed the nationalists through physical violence. it was, they call, what the german marxist student radical rudi dutschke, called the long march through the institutions. this was a peaceful but subversive march. they knew very clearly we will never get an electoral majority in the west especially in the united states. karl marx's protégé laureate, the factory workers detroit or the, you know, people in the tire factories down in tennessee or any of industrial workers were uninsured stood in revolution. herbert marcuse actually said the in the united states is explicitly. they're with us and rather than maybe reconsider his politics he said oh well we need a revolution of the intellect, a revolution elites at the top

level, and then a revolution the lumpenproletariat in marxist terminology, the people at the margins of society can be motivated towards physical and physical pressure. what do we see today? what's critical race theory? it's an academic discipline that has captured elite institutions with public funding, even though in many cases public never voted for these ideas to installed. it's not just in california and new york. it's actually, you know, almost everywhere. it's in florida. it's in texas. well we're taking care of that a little bit. but. but but the point being is that these ideas proliferate it and propagate it through the institutions. the real question is how? that's the question i sought to answer in the book. that's driving question that i think is important when you see, your opponent, your enemy in a certain language, successful in

the same game that you're playing. the worst answer is to say, well, there, they're there, they're bad, they're stupid. don't know what they're doing. it doesn't work. the better question is to ask, well, did they do it? and what you learn from it? and then how you adjust your own politics to respond. and so if you read the book, there are two. i tried to put two layers into it. some people caught. i was like really excited about that. but the explicit is this history. but the embedded text is a process of learning and teaching assimilating. ideas, tactics, strategies. because we're fighting in a different environment. if you watch a movie like mr. smith to washington, anyone know that movie? yeah. it's like we're so far beyond that, you know.

i mean, great movie. very sweet. very touching. but we are in a gramscian style trench by trench in, which mr. smith would be decapitate hated instantly. you know, the poor -- wouldn't stand a chance. and so rather than harking with a sense of nostalgia. of how things ought to be or lamenting that those are, that is not way that it is today. we have to fight in a better way. and so much of my time, the last few years for the year that i had to write this book and jonathan negotiated a great contract for me, he got you got me a whole year to write the book. they wanted to turn it around in like three months. you. i originally like publishers. i ask how much time some of the books of some of these books turn around in three months. it's like, i can't do this in three months. that seems impossible. get it as much time you can, you know. but a lot of the time that i

spent was writing this book. i think probably my habit, i guess, was get in the at eight jumble around on for like 90 minutes, take a phone call, maybe write the book and then do other stuff. and at the end of the afternoon. but as i was writing this book, thinking about these ideas looking at these tactics, i was also adapting some of them in some of these very public that i've been engaged in the previous few years, first, starting every year, there's like a theme kind of how i've stumbled into it the first year, 20, 21 was the fight against end of 2020, but really 2021 was the fight against critical race theory. if believe the new yorker magazine, i am the what did say the conservative activists who invented the conflict over critical race theory and. some of my friends said, oh, that's awful. that's, you know, you didn't invent the conflict because it

was you know, it's it's a real thing but in another sense, it's not wrong either. there's a phenomenon that exists in the world. but until you it until you bring it to public consciousness, until you polarize it and until you turn it into a real political fight, that's a process of invention in some ways. right. you have a conception of how the world is. a conception how you want the world to be. but that actually doesn't matter. you get it off the page and into the political. the next year i was doing some reporting on gender theory, schools, gender theory in hospitals, some of the i mean, kind of aztec level human sacrifice that's happening in children's hospitals in a very dark i did a story, for example, about a doctor in portland, oregon, who has has as invented deployed a child castration robot. like if we like you think it's dystopian, you don't know the half of it. it actually it gets much worse.

and then last year, my big campaign was against the dea bureaucracy. and so i'd like to tell a little bit about that campaign in more detail, because it's the most recent. and i think that it is relevant to this book talking about a book because, again, getting off the page. i wrote the book two years ago about, the creation of this dea bureaucracy, the threat of this dea bureaucracy. and in the past year after the book was done, published, i got about destroying. that was my explicit goal. and so in january of last year, i laid out a policy paper with manhattan institute abolish the dea bureaucracy, restore colorblind equality in america's institutions. i made a announced mint with very special person governor ron desantis of the state of florida. we held an event together where we laid the campaign abolish destroy and assault over the dea

bureaucracy in every state university in the state of florida. start there. start with the most courageous leaders, as they were always a good place to start and then go state by state, just wiping this thing out, restricting it, stopping preventing it from from further entrenching itself. because you have this problem of hegemony, you have a political kind of ostensible political hegemony in florida. supermajority, texas, majority. god forbid you, go to like the south dakota, you know, massive. you know, it's not even a superman short it's whatever is, it's a hyper majority. let's say say. but why are your state universities by dea bureaucracies and pushing and gender theory. you have political control but your opponents have political hegemony right. it's a different different different thing. when we announced this campaign it was denounced by everybody. you know, actually, like many

people, is a right wing evil plot, you know, to to to do whatever. i don't i don't pay too much attention to it, but, you know, it was seen as a fringe right wing idea. by summertime the new york times. invited me to publish op ed making the case for abolishing the bureaucracy, conquering some and by the of the year we had effectively begun the process of abolition. and i don't know or six states taken territory changing institutions moving the shifting incentives creating space our ideas to replace their ideas and. i think that one final point is important and. this is actually the floor of the critical theories and the place where i think we can actually have a chance to overcome them, to transcend them to to truly replace them as the

guiding philosophy, the guiding ideology. let's let's not give it too much credit, not a philosophy, but. the critical theory is operate on the principle of negation, deconstruction dismantling whatever they have these great latinate words, you know, some academics spend bunch of time thinking, you know, how can i say something very simple. let's grab this osiris. let's figure out a way to sound smart when we're saying this thing. but it all really leads to the thing. they think america is evil. they think our institutions are evil they think our principles are evil. they think the economic system is evil. they want to destroy. dot, dot, dot. and then a utopia will emerge spontaneously. that. that's kind of the marcuse whose litmus this is. i don't know what it'll look like after, but after we. destroy it. i think something great is going to happen. and he was that after it was well known what happened in the communist regimes of the 20 century making it a totally

responsible position. okay, conservatives, you might not like this, but early 20th century 1910, you can almost forgive people radical unions, you know let's say you're living in russia in 1910. it's not like exactly a great to be serf you know and you could say well maybe ideology has a chance, maybe will be better. you can't that by the 1970s, 1980s, god forbid, by the 2000, i mean, let's get real with this. but what we have to offer is something that goes beyond negation. it's a concrete principle of principles that we can we can govern ourselves by. we can borrow from our founding, the principles that i think still work still offer us a kind of more political, moral foundation. we can rebuild. and really what i think that how i think of my is as dan mentioned, it's the work of

counterrevolution. and i was recently reading thomas paine. you know, thomas paine was a conservative, but he had this beautiful line in a letter that he wrote, a french minister, he said the american revolution was not really a revolution. it was a counter-revolution, recover lost rights and liberties. does that sound familiar to our situation today the colonists who were revolting over the taxation right is like a heavy tax. what do you think tax rate was that they were to the to the to the king to the parliament was. was 1 to 2%. you know, they're like, we're going to fight you to death over 1% tax, which comes that we become so complacent. i'm from california. they're like 50% we can

compromise there, but not a penny more than 50%. but i think we have to get aggressive. i think we'd have to learn from our enemies and then encourage friends and what i try to wake up and do every day, i live in a small town in washington state. i don't live in i would say i live in washington. they say, oh, what neighborhood? you know, georgetown or whatever. it's like, no, no, no, washington state. and then i get very puzzled stares like you live where but what i try to wake up and do every day is to put victories on the board because of the mind that even a small victory opens new possibilities. you learn something by the process of trying, maybe failing, but actually i think people say you learn most from your failures no. you learn most from your victories and victories. create other opportunities they have this beautiful effect where new veins of possibility open up new contacts, new information, new resources, new people and we

need to increase the tempo of. our victories. you know, we don't need five year strategic plans. we need like 50 day strategic plans, victory after victory after show people that it's passive so we have a demoralized political movement. and i think that one of the most important things we can do is to demoralize it. i mean, we moralize it in the sense of like, you know, no queens in kindergarten. that's one way to do it. but i really mean more of us in the sense of motivating people, reminding them why we're fighting, reminding them what the problems are, naming the enemy, and then calling them to defeat it. i think it's very possible. i think that it is. we are in a situation that is more perilous than it's ever been. but in some ways we have enough a base and enough of a possibility of success that it's absolutely worth fighting. so thanks the award. thank you for coming.

and we love to have the discussion and get some questions after the conversation. thank you. thank you, chris. those were wonderful remarks. and i actually want to begin where you left off about victories. have we reached a turning point, the campaign to expose those and defeat die critical race theory and other such because we've seen these victories in florida and a number of other states is the enemy now somewhat in retreat? are they is their advance at least arrested or are they perhaps gathering for a counter offensive at some point? so the in the ideal of our republic is supposed to be governed by the majority with some, you know, institutional constraints, checks and balances and so forth. but the founders actually quite clear on this. you know, a republic, a democracy is, essentially the

rule of public. machiavelli even said before that. but we're in a very strange where you see this locally in, let's say, blue cities, and you see this more broadly and red states. and and in our country, the public is against kind of left wing racialist ideology. the public is against the kind of derangement of the public university system. the public is against, you know, gender, ideology and secret child sexual transitions in. look at any of the polling. these are all 70% 80% issues, but they're not policy. and so to me, the political work is two fold. one, you have to dominate public opinion. you have to create the language. you have to feed it into the

media cycle. and then you to polarize a strong majority of the public in your favor. because politicians are lagging indicators. politicians get when it's a little safer in general, state legislators. so. so you have to create the conditions for to not have courage principles all these beautiful things but actually it's easier to do do the thing to not do the thing. so the public opinion is, i think, the basis of this. but then there's an institutional problem. i think ideologically we've defeated this ideologies in the sense if you look at the public polling we're in a strong position against them. so say, oh, that therefore, you know, woke has. ever heard that people say that like some stupid columnist. the woke as we're peak woke you know post woke. okay yeah measured by public opinion maybe it's crested but

not bureaucratic and administratively when you have people whose you have now tens of thousands hundreds of thousands people whose livelihoods depend on promoting these ideas in institutions, k-through-12 school system, university system, federal bureaucracy. when they have functional control over the institution, the job not done and mobilized public opinion doesn't matter. the next step, which is much more difficult, although we're making there too, we're having fun, is to actually change the composition of the institutions change leadership of the institutions and to replace people of the institutions with different people, with better ideas. that's a lot harder. and so i kind of jokingly kind of not jokingly say we need like a pink slip counterrevolution. we need to have like the pink paper printers at maximum

because ultimately these these victories can only be made real and made meaningful if we have a return almost to a spoils style system when we win control of the government, of the political system, we were in control of the institutions and they advance our principles. that to me is the harder fight. and i think we're slowly trying figure that out, but it's far from over. you know, your remarks brought up a curious paradox, which is that we have many states where, as you said, we perhaps even have a hyper majority of conservative legislators, legislators who consider themselves conservative, who are republicans and we see that the institutions of education and the institutions of character formation, many cases are dominated still by the left. i also think i'm a few years older than you, and i back to the america that i grew up in, which was a much more conservative america we have

today. and yet somehow some complacency or some weakness on the part of that stronger and more virtuous america opened the door. the insanity that we've seen in the last plus years. i'm curious, what do you think has created this sense, complacency or this obliviousness. so many conservative people towards the threat that they're facing, a very radical, revolutionary left? well, i'd to with with somewhat tongue in cheek i'd like to blame two groups of people on the right. i'd like to blame baby boomers and i'd like to blame libertarians. you know. and i won't just launch that out there. i'll explain. baby boomers inherited, a world conservative. baby boomers, let's say, inherited a world in which we had one. the existential struggle with communism. we defeated the soviet union.

we'd relegated it to a kind of forgotten evil period in history that never be resurrected again. and then people did a couple of things. they retreated to, economic life running, businesses making money. they retreated to maybe religious and spiritual life, you know, going to church, taking care of the people around them. good. make money care of your people. these are good things. but i think they abdicated the public square. they didn't feel like they felt like the threat was over and they could relax. angela davis you know, all the people who were still alive, you know, still pushing. they didn't take the the defeat of the soviet union as a defeat. they took it as a temporary setback. but the second group and i can say this because i used to maybe be one, is a libertarian is a libertarians capture the kind of

conservative mind with some damaging ideas institutional. if you think about it. i mean we we just need to make sure the institutions are neutral you know. okay all right. i always ask, you know, libertarians you know, okay, great. that that's a good but help me out here. name one institution in human history has been neutral. it's very hard answer because of course it's impossible. institutions will be governed according to a set of principles and according to really one highest principle. politics is a competition. what is at the top administratively, we like we've got a president, but also morally spiritually even what principle is the guiding principle that orients all the. the left knows this d.i. our institutions are governed.

these this trio of principles. what is it for the right? what do we offer you? ask conservative. even conservative university. you know what's. what's the telos? what's the final cause of the university raising money? uh, building new buildings. we've got a great football team. this, you know, the trustees are very excited about. institutional neutrality gets you there. institute neutrality is, you know, unilateral surrender. that's it amounts to in practice. and so you get conservatives who become the caretakers of their enemies institutions. you know i'll be at the top kind of figurehead but everyone below is operating a different set of principles and so there's a whole series of them. but i think that's the that's the most important one and then i can education two things that

i think are just like, oh my god, it's such a big problem we need to teach kids to think not what to think. and hey, how that even logically possible, how do you teach a kid how to think without any content and then be if you evaporate kind of content decisions, somebody else will fill those. you get howard zinn for your class. you know, he's not teaching kids. and also it's a really irresponsible thing to do. kids don't know anything. you actually have to teach them least for a while, what to think. that's important. this is the value we're trying to transmit from one generation to the next. and the other. and this is kind of a bush administration. and then, you know, and then subsequently is this kind of reduction of education into a material science in which the test score line up. one problem is that the test score line never goes up like 50

years. it's been completely flat. but the bigger problem is not that that's a horrible goal for education to reduce it, to test score line up. what you're essentially is saying we want iq to up you know, which is like kind of a i mean it's an uncomfortable thing for people talk about but it's also like how you do it. that doesn't really make any sense. this like a poor objective. we don't know how to this. the purpose of education. if you go back to aristotle little book eight of the politics, aristotle's great statement on education in a book called the politics which gives you a sense of how it should be embedded. and he says something that is completely true. you should educate children into the political regime, you should form their character, the type of society that you want to maintain. are we educating our children into a kind of republic? an set of virtues and habits and principles?

not at all. you sound like a crazy person if you even say something like that. and so i think we've abdicated on on those fronts. your remarks have put me in mind of a rather dark passage in, alexis, to tocqueville's democracy in america where he predicts that the path towards what he calls democratic despotism, where people will willingly, voluntarily give up their culture, their everything to some centralize is to hillary. power is going to come through what he calls individualism, which sounds like he may be criticizing kind of libertarians of aunt elettra, but fact, what he means is a retreat into the wholesome parts of life that nonetheless leave the public square and politics empty. so you get people concentrating on family, concentrate on religion, which are good things. but to the extent that they withdraw politics, they then leave politics, be colonized by the power of despotism. and i think you're quite right as well that. there's a way in which both the libertarian flaws and also the

flaws of the baby boomers combined, a whole generation of conservatives, not just among the boomers, but perhaps even people of generation x, like my own generation, which is there was this feeling among conservatives once the left was defeated in the cold war, once there were other things that were stopped, you know, in individual battles that the natural course would reassert itself and people return to the sort of the mayberry kind of that had been imagined, you know, in an earlier part of america. and that wasn't the case. that, in fact, you know, simply retreating from the public square and going back to private, although you could have a nice gated community, you could have a nice, you know, your particular parish might be fine. the institutions of higher education, the institutions of politics, the federal bureaucracy, all of that was being corrupted weaponized and used against us. and now we see what's happened. so with that being said, what do you see as the role models or examples that you would look to as exemplars that have succeeded

in changing things the better? resisting revolution airy movements. who do you look to for inspiration? ooh, historically or contemporary. historically and contemporary. well, i think you can. you can look to the founding for some historical exemplars, absolute glee. and one thing that i do wear, or i and this is strikes at the theme that we're talking about, we're talking about ideas and power the relationship between the two tension between the two. there's a tendency, i think among people like me can who write for a living and for a living and you know desk bound people's, um, there's this kind of vision of the founders you get that i see in concert among conservatives that is very they were aloof statesmen above it all. they ruled on by the pen through principle. and then you actually read about

the you read about their lives and it's like, no these were unruly, you know, samuel adams, you know, had a trained mob of of liberty men that were tarring and feathering and and chasing people out of town and and, you know, commandeering ships. these were people that had the spirit of of conflict. they understood politics at most essential. it's a form of conflict. and so i think, you know, we'd like to always have the conflict of persuasion. right. that's the ideal form of conflict in a republic. the first language of the republic is is the language of persuasion. but we're not even really willing to do that. and so i think that that is one certainly inspiration. but then i think for other kind of more practical kind of methods, i look to the left. mm hmm. i think that there's, you know, more practically valuable book than reading antonio gramsci.

and actually, if you read gramsci, what's of amazing is he actually sounds very conservative of you read gramsci talking about the importance family against kind of libertine ism and disillusion. you read gramsci about humanistic education, reduce it, bringing education away, the drudgery of training for a kind of mechanical materialist society and elevating people through the great tradition of of the west and say, my god and gramsci is now a reactionary. you know, if he were to publish this today. and so i think that a you also have to look at the winners, right. you know as examples and so it maybe sound kind of odd maybe sound kind of weird and you have to separate the bad ideas obviously like you, it's a sifting process, but look the last century you have to study

the winners and i think one thing i think about in this question right now is today the united states has a larger government measured as a percentage of gdp than communist china. i lived in china, so i know that it's not an exact comparison to have problems there, but they're much more we have much more freedoms here. but in an important sense, you know, we have a larger state than communist china. you know, that should tell you where we are as a country and kind of raise your thinking to a new level of seriousness. what surprised you most of studying about studying like gramsci or marcuse? what did you find in them that you didn't expect perhaps to encounter? you always, you know, there's, there's a kind of genre. the book that i wrote is not new thing people been talking about the long march for the

institution and people have been talking about a phrase that i don't use in the book purposely called cultural marxism. i didn't use because it's kind of loaded. it's a conflict. i kind of didn't want to, you know, be the tinfoil hat. but then the new republic, this massive piece christopher rufo cultural marxist theory and all about cultural marxism. and then i politely pointed out, oh that's interesting. show me where in the text they call it cultural marxism. i think the lady was pretty mad, but but whatever it's not a new right. i think a deepening i think it's substantiated in a new but you get a certain genre of conservative book that treats these people as one dimensional evil cartoon villains. what was surprising to me and what i really tried to do is is just to actually look at it from the other perspective. what made these people so fascinating? what made them so charismatic?

what made them take people from elite america and. risk it all to fight for their ideals. i think that's a much better way of approaching. and so i had left wing writers, like from very left wing magazines, you know, say like, god, you know, i kind of liked your book, you know, but but i think one thing you can't do is dismiss people also, like you're going to spend a year your time with people's lives and thinking about them and reading about them. it's like you shouldn't hate them. you shouldn't, you know, constantly dismiss them or have a smug sense about. and so you should see them in a three dimensional way. and. i kind of put myself in the shoes, this these milieu right? it's like, well, there's something here that is attractive, something here that's idealistic.

something here that's utopian something queer that is inspiring. and so and of course, they're monsters. they're they're evil. their ideology is responsible for the deaths of many many people. there's too. that's the obvious point. right. but less obvious point is, you know what, was good about them. and i think that's something that i was fascinated with the process. mm hmm. chris will be very amused to hear that recently at modern age journal, we had an interview with the left feminist naomi wolf, who is, you know, somewhat unusual among these days. she's very critical, actually, of the today's far and censorious tendencies. and she actually used the phrase cultural marxism. oh, good for her. the next time you know, new republic wants to come after someone with the phrase they should leave chris rufo alone. they can they can talk about naomi wolf. so it. yeah. and that's a good i think it's like cultural marxism is their phrase. if look at even the academic scholarship in the 1990s,

there's a marcuse, a scholar i think he was at at ucla. great resource he published all of marx's collected works letters correspondence i drew on this work quite a bit. can't remember the fellow's name, but it's in the footnotes somewhere and they're reading his papers and and it's like, son of a --, this guy. and like 1995, he's a lefty. it's like, you know, it was critical theory. cultural marxism. western marxism. those were their categories. and then they became a kind of preposterous, oh, it's a right wing theory. it's an anti-semitic conspiracy there. it's like, are you what? you know, i just spent a whole i'd probably, you know, i'm like the only, like, bestseller author to write about critical race theory. so i kind of know something about it. i've sold more books than the critical race theorist, which is kind of a cool thing. you. but it's like, it's like it's got to do with what? what are you? people are nuts?

you know, this doesn't make any sense, but i think the important thing there is maybe an important for all of us and maybe an important to close on and give some food for thought language. language matters. it's critically how we speak. you know, and it's a kind of character test, not a character test in the test that i kind of virtue, but it's a character type, rather. that's a better way to put it. we need sophisticated people who understand language which that can make sense, that has intellectual force and that has emotional force. there's this idea that we should, you know, the conservative thing like you guys have heard this and this like neutrality all these problems that i have, the one thing that others drives me crazy is you know facts don't care about your feelings. you've heard this. it's like a very smug thing to

say, you know? and i love ben shapiro. he became famous for that. and i saw ben last night. love ben. not a knock on him at he's a great communicator. but but i think that that is actually completely backwards. i think the facts really don't about your you know no yeah. the facts don't care about your feelings much. so what is it not have it backwards. i don't care about their feelings your feelings do not care about the facts. have you ever persuaded your wife a rigorous, logical presentation? yeah. you know. no. has it has a has a car salesman ever sold you a ferrari by nerding out on on the details of the piston or whatever it is. i don't know. no. the ferrari gives you a feeling because it's a beautiful car and when you drive it you feel powerful. and so we have to be contrary. this notion of of of having the

strongest argument and, the greatest logic, we have those things. i think we to have language that moves. language that that inflame people and language that people out of the realm of a kind of pass of existence and into politics, which means conflict, which controversy and which means fighting temperamentally. i like fighting. it's very suitable to me. but we need more people that are willing to get out there and fight things out. and i think that the genesis of all this is is strong and persuasive language. and so that's why it's such an honor to win book award. i put many words into the book they cut about 40,000 of the words out of the manuscript it would have been even bigger but i think this makes it very readable and i'm so honored and grateful to get recognized in this way and some great competitors this year.

and so, you know, really appreciate that thanks, chris. so we have time some question and answer sessions from the audience and there's a lot of questions. let's start down here with the gentleman towards front and we have a mic that's coming down and please identify yourself before you ask a question good evening. william kleinman compass legal group. i'll just get to the point. i think the the principle i think we need to learn from the last few years and the same line with chris's work is we can't fear to use power. but specifically i want to ask one exercise of power very curious chris's opinion, the anti tick-tock bill. to me it's a let's let's take this by the exercise power but it's i think it's splitting the the conservative a bit so i want to get your yeah i didn't read the bill so. i can't comment specifically on the text. i don't if it's well-written, poorly written that stuff does. but as a as, as a general

principle. know this is kind of another free market blind spot. i'm a capitalist you know i like to get paid i don't think anything wrong with that. i like to create value in the world but the idea that you can give a foreign adversary, unlimited access to your country with no terms and conditions, no reciprocity, no restrictions is insane. i lived in china for a year and. 829 and i notice something very interesting interesting. facebook, i don't think twitter was invented yet, but there was like facebook. there were some social media that myspace was all social media platforms were pop in the united states. they were banned china. but what chinese did is they did copycats. i can remember what it was called at the time but you have a website that looks identical to facebook, but it's some chinese website they like, you know, massacre or the intellectual property. i mean, it's rampant ip theft.

if you have an american company that's in china at the time, i believe you have to give a chinese partner. 51% stake. mm. oh, 51%. why would they choose 51 and not 49? oh, because then you have total control over the company. and so i think that even a free market basis, even on look at adam smith, adam smith a protectionist. but even if you say hey, free trade in general is good, you have a parade of principles and you know ricardo ricardian economics. okay fine agree but you to have some kind of reciprocity and if it's an adversary you need to protect your people first and foremost and so you know i say just get rid of it. why not? you know, you go further and further than what the current the current bill does, why did asset transfer into american ownership? i think that's kind of a joke. look, i've spent a year in china. the idea that they own tiktok. and then if you have if the accountants and the lawyers

change, the you know, the domicile of the corporation and the ownership structure that they're not going to have the same access is insane. you have be naive to think that they will have access to that that's baked into it you know and so if if if the argument is the ccp can't have access to a that is in all of our cell phones, you have to just say no more and then maybe say under the conditions that you let all of our social media apps work in china that seems be a prudent middle ground. so i see a question from michael maybank and we'll go to the front after that. so go. thank you. thanks for doing this this evening. so one of the things i think that a lot of us run into, that we're in a presidential year is we have that. mr. biden. mr. trump and i'll be talking to somebody socially and all of a sudden we break into camps are you for or trump or biden and emotions come out either side and i will say.

well what policies you want to talk about it's really hard to talk about policies. is that typical in america or are we are we in situation now where we just can't talk about policy because of personality? yeah. yeah. people don't care about policies. they care about people, personalities, drama. and so that's look, that's that's it. i mean and you know, trump has been media star. what, 50 years i mean guy's a phenomenon in that way and he's very polarizing and for obvious reasons. but i don't know. i i've managed to avoid those conversations. if i'm like on an airplane and people ask me what do i say? i run a private research firm, you know, i made a couple mistakes in the past where like, oh, i'm in politics, know, it's like i will never make that mistake again again, avoid those conversations, don't get in those arguments, and then surround with friends. and that's the best way to do

it. and hi, i'm bill maher, and i'm running for congress in virginia's eighth district, a d plus 23 seat that i'm unlikely to win. i'm fighting the good i to say i'm a little bit closer in age to the generation x group and, not to not to disparage our young, lovely author here, but in my opinion what we need most from the right is to unseat silent the silent majority we need to be as rude to the democrats as, they are to us every day of the week and my question is, you know. thank thank isi for all the good work they do putting, putting good ideas in the hands of in the hands of the next

generation. you know, and thank thank christopher for his his great work. you know, i love the fact that he wants to not just be a warrior and burn the bridge between the left and the right but to run over the bridge first, insult the land on the left side, you know, but you know, the fact of the matter is, we're today and we're today because we're on we are not reagan enough. we're optimistic. we need leaders on on the right. what you do to fix that. yeah i, i disagree. i disagree actually with almost everything that you said said. and i'll explain why. you know. you assume that we're in the majority. i'm not sure that that is the case as it was in nixon's time, nixon had the great speech about

the silent majority than, the non screamers, the non shouters know i'm a nixon. i love nixon. you know. that was undoubtably then. i'm not sure it's true today. and then the idea about, you know, getting in people's faces, stopping so polite, stopping silent. i'm also not persuaded that that's a good thing you be, you know, rude to people. you can attack people you can be vi to live with people. but if they control the institutions, hold the power, you're not actually doing anything so. don't mistake noise for effective political action. i'm almost never mean to people i don't fights. i'm not involved in drama to the extent that i can. i try not to get too personal though sometimes you know i'm tempted and i do it. it's a weakness. but i think that then you can descend into kind of politics. we've seen a lot of lately.

we actually have to be very headed, very smart, very deliberate. i think one of the great things about the right is also standards. you know, maintaining some standards of of to the extent that we can, um, and then i think optimism is also not, not, not necessary, and maybe not even desirable. um, you know. i think if, you know, i think it's misreading of reagan. i mean, reagan was like a flame throwing radical. he wasn't above it all. you know, the great communicator, i mean, you know, even conservatives didn't like him at the time, right. many conservatives thought he was too extreme radical, too too polarizing. so we've kind of look back. but. i think that we have people that are in some sense too optimistic. they become naive optimism taken to, its extremist becomes naive.

and so i think we need a balance of pessimist ism and optimism that is oriented towards towards seriousness of purpose. that, to me seems the thing that's lacking than anything is a sense of and an understanding the true nature of politics and and i think, look, the right and getting in people's faces is always a loser for us the left can burn down city and the media will cover for them. if there's one bad person in a crowd at a conservative rally or something, it tars everybody. and so i think we try to avoid that. take a question from the woman in the back. yeah, you. yep. i'm sorry. i'm more. yeah, yeah, yeah. oh, oh. i cannot wait to tell my folks about this. that's. that's hilarious, right lights, right? lights. long hair, a person. i only see the long and assume so.

so. and what are your pronouns? okay, i'm just going to pretend that didn't happen. so i'm okay. okay, let's get. let's get the giggles out. so anyway it's a pretty big fan of yours. i'm probably the youngest person in the room. i'm only 18. i'm a senior in high school. all right. we go to formally tc across the river in alexandria and it's been completely captured by for lack of a better term, self-absorbed marxists. i remember last year i was walking for the hallways at my school and like one of the teachers put up a poster of one of the philosopher, as you mentioned, actually angela davis on the wall. i'm like, what? you know, i was like, this is america. why? why is this happening? and another instance of this happening was, you know, i was in geometry class and it was june last year. of course, pride month, pride before the fall. and i remember my geometry teacher had put up like all this like this whole milieu of just

just rain. let's, let's call it rainbow content. and i was just thinking to myself, you know, i don't think transgender ism has anything to do with geometry. i don't know. senior. so my is what be your biggest piece of advice to someone like me who is like pretty much trapped the public school system? i have a number six months and then i'm out, but i now know that six months, two and a half months, i keep losing track of time. but anyway, so what would be your biggest piece of advice to someone like? me, who is a public school? what can i to, i guess, reduce the suffering a little bit? yeah, a couple of things. and i think this is a great question and i'm actually very optimistic about young people. i did an event two nights ago at a extremely right wing avant garde art space. new york city, it sounds like like with like hundreds of people, mostly young with pseudonymous twitter account and radical ideas and and it was galvanizing and it was like a

scene in new york, it's like a cool scene, you know. what's really is that there's this phenomenon if you look at the left's organizing principles, primarily along race and gender, you have kind of race, radicalism, racialist ideology, and then you have kind of gender ideology, gender theory, kind of non-binary, trans identities, etc. this is like the first youth subculture history that is not driven by the youth but driven by the adults. i mean, really, truly and i think that there is a rebelliousness and in this country, if you look at especially young men, are extremely with what's happening. they have this this rebellious energy and indulge it. you know, you're young. that's a time for rebellion. and i would say organize a small group of people. you could have two friends, three friends, five friends, ten friends.

god forbid that's enough. create a block b, llc, a kind of ideological block within a small institution like a high school and don't have to put up with any -- anymore. seriously. and if the teacher is spouting off, push him on it and push. ask questions. ask questions. this sounds bad and it's not maybe kind of conservative, but i think it's justified in this case embarrass your teacher front of others. make sure he doesn't do that again. i really believe that. and and and then take the they take the hits. i a lot of people say, oh, well, i should just shut up and write the paper in college that the teacher wants to get an a. i'm much more impressed with the kid that eats the c and doesn't compromise this. yeah so thank you sir that was an excellent question. we are just about out of time,

but the conversation will continue with chris rufo is including his next book and in the pages of modern age in modern age journal dot com and. thank you all for coming tonight i want to thank athos pr for sponsoring tonight's event and also the henry and balaji foundation for all of their sponsorship and support for the conservative book of the year award. thank you chris. thank you. we thank you all coming to bed. there's not a lot of in this book i must love you because i've been up to since two in the morning. i'll be getting up at two tomorrow morning. so those of