The Glenn Show

This week we’ve got something special for you here at The Glenn Show. In late October, I convened in person in New York City with the economist Richard Wolff for an extended debate on the comparative merits of capitalism and socialism. Some of you may have seen Rick’s previous appearance on TGS, where he joined John McWhorter and me for a similar debate. Rick and I both felt that we had more to say than that format allowed, so we agreed to meet face to face. Both of us are passionate defenders of our positions—capitalism for me and socialism for Rick—so we knew we needed a moderator to keep things on track. Luckily, I knew just the person: my lovely wife, LaJuan Loury. If you’re a regular viewer, you’ll know that LaJuan and I have some stark political differences; her views have more in common with Rick’s than with mine. (And if you’re a regular podcast listener, you’ll recognize her voice from the introduction to every episode.) Rick and I agreed that LaJuan would set the agenda, formulate the questions that we would debate, and moderate the conversation. I think you’ll agree that she more than rose to the challenge. As you might expect, this is a lively exchange. Rick and I have real differences in the ways we think about economics and politics. One thing on which we do agree is the necessity of having serious debates like this one in a civil and open manner. As TGS continues to grow, you can look forward to more content like this. You can also look forward, if all goes according to plan, to more LaJuan. And if you find yourself wishing for even more pushback on Rick’s positions than I offered, stay tuned. This Sunday’s edition of the newsletter will feature a bonus episode with the economist Gene Epstein, who offers a forceful rebuttal to Rick’s previous appearance on the show. This post is free and available to the public. To receive early access to TGS episodes, an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below.Featured Content from the Manhattan Institute“Prejudice must be measured rigorously. Statistically. Disparity doesn’t necessarily imply racism. It may feel omnipresent, but it isn’t all-powerful. Skills matter most,” writes Roland Fryer.  0:00 Is capitalism a “winner take all” system? 12:54 Why does the word “socialism” make so many Americans afraid? 24:55 Has neoliberalism been beneficial for the US? 33:25 Capitalism’s role in rising living standards around the world 40:59 Are higher interest rates the only solution to inflation? 52:36 Can the market eradicate employment discrimination? 1:02:12 Why is the rent too damn high? 1:13;20 Can there be a kinder, gentler form of capitalism? 1:18:58 Closing statementsRecorded October 26, 2022Links and Readings Rick’s previous appearance on The Glenn ShowGary Becker’s book, The Economics of Discrimination Matthew Desmond’s book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

0:00 How the pandemic affected diversity in the theater10:24 James gets drawn into an “antiracist” meltdown during rehearsal21:08 James’s story of ostracism and Loving v. Virginia26:58 Juilliard students revolt39:19 A plea for mutual understanding in the theater47:57 A preview of things to come on The Glenn Show50:32 Glenn’s problem with “racial inequity”59:18 Getting through to “Donna”1:03:58 To speak your mind or to speak strategically?Recorded November 27, 2022Links and ReadingsJames’s homepageGlenn and John’s conversation with Don BatonJohn’s NYT piece, “‘Racism’ Without Racists”Ronald Ferguson’s speech from Glenn’s festschrift This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

0:00 What does “black identity” mean?4:53 Why Bob left the Civil Rights Movement8:04 Shelby: Our problem today is freedom, not racism15:36 Glenn: We can’t afford to give up on black collective goals21:30 Why Shelby wouldn’t sign a letter of support for Clarence Thomas30:13 Would freeing ourselves from race mean sacrificing collective action?39:10 The tactical efficacy of racial identification44:32 The struggle for human freedom50:46 Can we take pride in group achievements past?1:02:22 Kmele: We have a too-narrow sense of diversity1:07:20 Glenn: “The future is assimilation”1:13:03 Concluding statementsLinks and ReadingsKmele’s podcast, The Fifth ColumnThe Woodson CenterGlenn and Bob’s letter of support for Clarence ThomasThomas Chatterton Williams’s book, Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

0:00 Glenn’s culinary dilemma3:31 Why the Republican Party depresses John8:14 What’s the difference between Herschel Walker and John Fetterman?13:12 Glenn’s argument for voting Republican30:01 Woke theater’s “melodramatic agitprop”43:10 Kanye, Kyrie, and the Jews54:00 What’s “systemic,” “structural,” or “institutional” about racism?Recorded on November 13, 2022Links and ReadingsJohn’s NYT column, “Racism and Theater, Then and Now”Glenn and John’s conversation with orchestra conductor Don BatonWilson Jeremiah Moses’s book, Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

My guest this week, filmmaker Rob Montz, is an unlikely figure: a libertarian-leaning Brown University graduate who loves ‘90s rap and produces politically inflected documentaries that push back against the orthodoxies of the mainstream media. Rob has featured me in several of his works, and so I thought it was time to return the favor and have him on TGS.I begin by asking Rob how someone with a Brown pedigree ends up interested in such un-Brown-like figures as Charles Murray, Roy Beck, and Scott Atlas. Rob traces out his path from Brown to the Cato Institute to starting his own company, Good Kid Productions. He talks about some of his work, including a forthcoming doc about James Blake and Kyle Rittenhouse and one defending Roland Fryer from Harvard’s spurious sexual harassment charges. We then discuss the niches we’ve created for ourselves outside of the mainstream. Rob asks whether there’s a place for younger figures who can follow in my footsteps by achieving legitimacy both within academia and as a critic of the pieties that govern academic and political life in the US. We then move on to what’s shaping up to be one of the most crucial questions of the next two years: Trump or DeSantis? And finally, I ask Rob about his abiding affection for rap.Rob is doing important work as a filmmaker, and I recommend that everyone check out his YouTube channel. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on it to see what comes next. (Note: This conversation took place on September 20, 2022, before the latest set of controversies around Kanye West emerged.)This post is free and available to the public. To receive early access to TGS episodes, an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below.Featured Content from City JournalRoland G. Fryer discusses affirmative action, why the current system doesn’t work, and suggests alternatives to the status quo.0:00 The appeals of immigration restrictionism 16:52 The 2013 Ray Kelly incident at Brown University 24:39 Rob’s forthcoming documentary about Jacob Blake and Kyle Rittenhouse 36:29 The response to Rob’s Roland Fryer doc 41:41 Why Rob and Glenn aren’t seeking the mainstream spotlight 47:20 Is there a “next Glenn Loury”? 55:10 Glenn’s course on race and policing be required? 1:02:19 Rob’s position on Trump 1:09:11 DeSantis vs. Trump 1:15:22 Rob’s love of ‘90s rapLinks and ReadingsGood Kid Productions on YouTubeRob’s interview with Roy BeckRay Kelly getting heckled at Brown in 2013Rob’s interview with Jay BhattacharyaRob’s mini-doc about Roland FryerRoland Fryer’s education company, ReconstructionRoland Fryer’s other company, Equal Opportunity Ventures Dexter Filkins’s New Yorker piece on Ron DeSantis This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

I’m back with John McWhorter for the latest installment of our ongoing conversation. John hit some technical snags in the first ten minutes of the recording, so apologies if the beginning sounds a little jumpy. After that, things smooth out. On to the conversation.We begin by talking about my memoir, which is now, after years of false starts, humming along nicely. But the process has forced me to confront some very dark episodes from my past, and they don’t always cast me in the most flattering light. As I explain, I think that presenting this unvarnished account of my own actions is necessary, both in the service of truth and in building credibility. John says he’ll probably never write a memoir, but I believe that if he sat down to do it, people would be more receptive than he thinks they would. After a rant about the “lightweights” against whom John and I often find ourselves pitted in the public square, we consider that we and people like us are finally making some headway in the conversation about race. Our views are no longer so marginal, and we may even be in, as John says, a “golden age of black heterodoxy.” And speaking of heterodoxy, I recount my recent debate with Shelby Steele, Robert Woodson, and Kmele Foster on “the ethics of racial identity” (watch this space for more soon). We finish the episode with accounts of the strange case of Jessica Krug’s racial masquerade and Darrell Brooks’s pathetic defense in his murder trial. We get deep in this one. As always, I’m looking forward to your comments. This post is free and available to the public. To receive early access to TGS episodes, an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below.Featured Content from the Manhattan InstituteReihan Salam argues Congress should fund innovative public–private partnerships now to prepare for a future pandemic. 0:00 Walking through the valley of the shadow of death 5:20 Earning credibility through self-discrediting disclosure 16:29 The lionization of the lightweights  21:09 The golden age of black heterodoxy 26:01 The mainstreaming of Glenn and John 37:36 Glenn’s debate with Shelby Steele, Robert Woodson, and Kmele Foster 45:45 Are we ready to “get past race”? 56:03 The strange case of Jessica Krug 1:03:46 Darrell Brooks’s courtroom performanceLinks and ReadingsThe announcement for 2022 Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts EducationKmele Foster’s podcast, The Fifth Column Darrell Brooks’ closing statement at his trial This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

As I mentioned at the start of our latest subscriber-only Q&A episode, John McWhorter recently received the 2022 Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education, bestowed by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. According to the ACTA, the award honors “individuals who have made an extraordinary contribution to liberal arts education, core curricula, and the teaching of Western Civilization and American history.” Perhaps I’m biased, but I can think of no one who more richly deserves such recognition, and so I was proud to be asked to deliver some remarks in tribute to John at a ceremony, which I offer below. (I’ve also recorded an audio and video version for those who prefer to listen and watch. The audio is available now, video will uploaded tomorrow.)Next month will mark the fifteenth anniversary of my first recorded dialogue with John. Since that first episode, the two of us have experienced much. The beginnings and ends of marriages, the loss of loved ones, the birth of children and grandchildren, not to mention changes in political orientation and new career paths. Through all of that, John and I have kept talking to each other. I think those conversations are important for the reasons I state below. But equally important to me is the friendship that has allowed us, despite our differences, to keep the dialogue going. Without that bond, we may have been able to continue the conversation, but it would not have meant nearly as much to me as it does. This post is free and available to the public. To receive early access to TGS episodes, an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below.There are things that don’t—or can’t—get said when we talk about race in most venues in America. Those who have followed the 15-year-long conversation on this topic that I have been undertaking with John at The Glenn Show know what I’m talking about, whether it’s crime in black communities or out-of-wedlock birthrates, academic underperformance or the unbearable intellectual lightness of anti-racism agitation. In academia, in mainstream publications and media outlets, and increasingly in K-12 classrooms, what I’ve called “the bias narrative” holds sway. Negative aspects of black life are attributed almost entirely to the nation’s history of racial oppression, which is said to begin in the early seventeenth century and to continue unabated to this day. We are said to be a bandit society built on genocidal plundering undertaken by unrepentant racists.That’s one story you could tell. And if that story were just one of many circulating through our national discourse, it wouldn’t be the worst thing. But this “bias narrative” has become not just one of many stories. It’s now the only story on newspaper opinion pages, in scholarly journals, and in educational materials disseminated throughout our schools. It’s the story told by the White House. It’s the story that ramifies out from the most elite precincts of our country and shapes ordinary conversations and relations between individuals. Its grip on so many areas of the public imagination has become so tight that anyone challenging it is viewed with suspicion and, often enough, outright contempt. If an alternate explanation for black underperformance is proffered, it’s not the explanation that gets challenged but the individual making it. For to challenge this narrative, ipso facto, proves that one is a racist, or a deplorable or, if the challenger is a black man, an Uncle Tom.This situation is intellectually infantile and morally bankrupt. How we talk and think about race has consequences that can be measured not just in dollars and cents but in stagnant lives and dead bodies. So, responding with ad hominem attacks to any account of our current predicament that is not rooted in bias isn’t merely unfortunate, it is actively damaging. The stakes are enormously high here and the hour is late. Candor, integrity and courage are in short supply. Name-calling and character assassination have largely replaced open debate, while naked emperors, pseudo-academics, and bombastic demagogues command the public square.Enter John and Glenn. Or as I sometimes like to refer to our duo, enter the WokeBusters!!In Hans Christian Anderson’s story “The Emperor's New Clothes,” two swindlers promise to provide an emperor with magnificent new clothes that will be invisible to those who are too stupid or incompetent to see them. Officials see plainly see that no clothes are being produced on the swindler’s looms, but none of them will say anything to avoid being thought of as a fool. So when the emperor walks through the city in his new “clothes,” everyone can see that he is naked, but no one will be the first to say it. But then comes along an innocent child who, in his naïveté, is willing to defy this false consensus and speak out.The thing about the child in that story is not that he’s saying it. It’s not even that other people hear him say it. It’s that everybody knows that everybody else has heard him say it. The child has created a situation in which it becomes common, shared knowledge that the emperor has no clothes. Everyone now knows that everyone knows the truth.German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann coined a term that describes this phenomenon: the “Spiral of Silence.” In a spiral of silence, when holding a certain view entails a stigma then people stay silent for fear of being seen as having that view. Thus the masses believe they are alone or in a small minority of people with the stigmatized view, when in fact they are indeed one of the masses.In progressive-controlled areas of our society today, we are suffering from a spiral of silence when it comes to the topic of racial justice. A great many Americans don’t like it when Colin Kaepernick takes a knee at a football game and says, “I’m not going to stand for this national anthem,” or when a Black Lives Matter activist rises with his balled fist and says, “Burn this city down.” But they are afraid to be the only one in their community saying it, to be perceived either as racist or as a supporter of racism, for holding mild views that, arguably, most of America holds, views such as the obvious fact that “White lives matter, too!”There is a deeper point here. Though overt censorship is often spoken of as the leading threat to open discourse, the more subtle threat arises from the voluntary limitation of one’s own speech that create a spiral of silence. As John Stuart Mill recognized in his masterwork On Liberty, it is not the iron fist of state repression but rather the velvet glove of society’s seduction that constitutes the real problem.Who, we must ask, will speak for compromise and common sense, when to speak in this way is seen to signal a weak commitment to “the struggle”? Who will insist that we speak plainly and tell the truth about delicate and difficult matters (such as, the despicable black-on-black violence now ravaging many of our cities), matters that we would all prefer to cover-up or ignore? Who will declare “the emperor” to be naked? How can a nation sustain an elevated political discourse, when the social forces of conformity which promote silence threaten to usher in a dark age? In truth, it cannot. But, with a simple choice, with just a little bit of bravery, you and I can choose to be like that child who spoke truth to the empire. We can put an end to the gaslighting, the lying, and the willful blindness to reality on issues of race and social justice that are so characteristic of our time.My friend and longtime conversation partner, Professor John Hamilton McWhorter, IV, with his books, opinion pieces, and via his public ministry at The Glenn Show has, for nearly a quarter-century, been pointing the way. It is now up to those of us who are committed to an honest engagement with this age-old American dilemma of race and social justice to follow his lead, if only we dare do!Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

0:00 How Rafael came to the Manhattan Institute7:33 Rafael’s new book, Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most15:35 Is prison the right response to violent crime?26:20 Why Rafael believes in three-strikes-type sentencing guidelines31:42 Incarceration may lower crime, but is it just? 41:54 Rafael: Defunding the police is an indefensible idea49:34 Should we worry about racial disparities in the non-deadly use of force by police?1:00:08 Why Rafael’s father didn’t want him to become a copLinks and ReadingsRafael’s new book, Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts MostRafael’s conversation with former NYPD and LAPD police commissioner William BrattonRoland Fryer and Rafael’s appearance on Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge podcast This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

0:00 Is racist heckling at sporting events a real problem?15:13 John: “If you can’t be made fun of, you’re not part of the group”26:42 The LA County Federation of Labor racism scandal34:10 Why is there no Latino Michael Brown?41:22 Exalting (and exaggerating) the victim role47:47 Glenn’s daughter’s upcoming appearance on The Glenn Show49:48 Elite discrimination against AsiansLinks and ReadingsJohn’s NYT piece, “What a Report of Extreme Racism Teaches Us”Wilfred Reilly’s book, Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left Is Selling a Fake Race WarJohn’s NYT piece, “Stop Making Asian Americans Pay the Price for Campus Diversity” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

0:00 Matt’s profile of the artist Rahmaan Statik11:26 Chicago’s “Great Unraveling” 20:41 Is Chicago slouching toward dystopia? 29:50 How will the near-end of cash bail affect crime in Chicago?33:24 The responsibilities of teachers, parents, and the police46:59 A snapshot of crime in Chicago52:26 Matt runs the numbers on Illinois’s out-of-wedlock births1:02:44 Lori Lightfoot’s prospects for reelectionLinks and ReadingsMatt’s book, What Next, Chicago?: Notes of a Pissed-Off Native SonWirepointsMatt’s profile with artist Rahmaan BarnesRahmaan Barnes’s artUniversity of Chicago Crime Lab’s Becoming a Man program This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe