- 8 months ago
Tonight on The Cameron Journal Newshour, we're talking about the Iran/Israel situation with Israel and Iran trading missiles and the US attacking its nuclear facilities over the weekend. Then, we're exploring how MAGA is an extinction burst of old American narratives, and then we wrap things up talking about how a White Nationalist won a small academic award for his paper on why only White people should be protected by the Constitution and then really wrap things up with some discourse on dating.
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NewsTranscript
00:00:00Thank you very much.
00:13:59So, it's good.
00:31:29Thank you,
00:32:29close track of them, is different as well. Those are real things that we have to handle in our
00:32:34modern age. But the reality is, this sort of low-level violence around the planet is actually
00:32:40incredibly normal, weirdly enough. And I know that sounds strange, but weirdly enough, that is the
00:32:44way it is. Now, the other thing I want to turn to, and perhaps this is the story to transition into
00:32:53about it, is kind of how MAGA is, you know, taking all of this. So, one of the aspects of
00:33:11this present conflict, and whether the U.S. was going to join Israel or not, which was last week's
00:33:17discussion, and whether we were going to bomb nuclear sites, which we did, and all this type of
00:33:22thing, was the number of MAGA people who said, I voted for Trump for no new wars, and now we're
00:33:26starting another war. We're getting involved again. And that, he ran on a certain amount of
00:33:32American isolationism. And it's hard to see a much isolationism these days, especially when it comes
00:33:39to the Israel-Iran conflict. And it even, you know, people would be shocked to find out, we haven't
00:33:45really necessarily really pulled back on supporting Ukraine either. They're still in it to win it, and
00:33:50they're producing results, and, you know, really, you know, their last drone attack was
00:33:55devastating. And so, I think a lot of MAGA people are waking up to the fact that, you know,
00:34:00running on isolationism and actually implementing isolationism are two very different things.
00:34:10Um, they are, uh, they're very, isolationism is not an easy thing to do. And we did this a hundred
00:34:20years ago. After World War I, people were like, no more crazy European wars. We are done. No thank
00:34:27you. And it's one of the reasons we didn't join the League of Nations. There was too much political
00:34:32pushback. And through the 20s into the 30s, we were very isolationist, high trade barriers, all this
00:34:36type of thing. Does any of this sound familiar? Um, and, uh, even in the lead-up to World War II, when
00:34:43Hitler invades Poland in 1939, people immediately began protesting. Like, do not get involved. Like, we do not
00:34:49want to do this again. And the only reason that that shifted was because of Japan's attack on Pearl
00:34:55Harbor. Um, and even then, um, it was, uh, still people were protesting. And one of the things we never
00:35:04talk about in World War II were conscientious objectives. And the amount of people that
00:35:08refused to be drafted, refused to go in, were not in, were not in the mood for another protracted
00:35:13foreign conflict. Fast forward another 90 years, and we're back to that same isolationist place.
00:35:19And MAGA is kind of melting down, um, about that and feeling they're being drugged into yet another
00:35:25protracted Middle East conflict when they voted for isolationism. And they voted for this to not be,
00:35:30be a problem. Um, and also people, you know, feeling like, uh, you know, when Israel calls the
00:35:37U.S. answers kind of no matter what. And I think for a lot of younger people, I've noticed both on
00:35:42the left and on the right are unhappy about that in the kind of the dialogue that has been going on,
00:35:48the discourse that's been happening. Um, and I will write more about that. But I want to transition
00:35:53to this post from James Kirkpatrick to talk, talking about MAGA and how they're taking this whole
00:35:57involvement in Iran, which a lot of them vehemently go against. And I thought it was
00:36:03interesting that, um, I mean, obviously one never has to look that far, um, to find, uh,
00:36:14I would say politically unsavory opinions on Twitter, especially these days. But I thought
00:36:18this, this one was rather interesting because it ties into, I think, the frustration MAGA feels
00:36:23over Israel and Iran right now. And it says here, if MAGA fails, we basically end up back where the
00:36:27white right was in 2013. Post-Americanism, white identitarianism, and a million different
00:36:32harebrained political schemes as demographics make national electoral politics pointless.
00:36:37Except now, we won't have free speech either. Um, and then he says, if that's what it is,
00:36:43that's what it is. But let's not kid ourselves, it'll be easy. Um, and I, I think this, I,
00:36:49the idea of the MAGA movement as the big, um, I would say the big kind of overarching, uh,
00:37:01way to save the country. This was a, a quote tweet of a tweet about American identity that says,
00:37:08uh, American identity has been almost completely destroyed in the last 25 years, and I don't have
00:37:12a clue how to bring it back. It's been done through a combination of mass immigration and
00:37:15doctrine people into hating their own. We could address so much. Let's focus on MAGA. And this
00:37:25idea that the only way to save the country, the only way to stop what is happening, has happened,
00:37:32all this sort of thing, is to, to take over everything. Those people talk about, oh, we need,
00:37:37you know, Republican, you know, super majorities in both houses. We've got to lock the Democrats out
00:37:42of power. I was reading a tweet earlier today about, you know, a Jewish man who didn't feel,
00:37:49um, safe because of what he sees as rising anti-Semitism, particularly the Democratic Party,
00:37:55which I would caution to look at what's happening on the right, which I think is far worse, but
00:38:00whatever. Um, I mean, Democrats are saying, oh, we don't like Israel doing a genocide and that
00:38:04somehow makes them anti-Semitic, which is not the thing. And I've said that many times before,
00:38:09criticizing the government of Israel for its policies does not make one anti-Semitic. Jews
00:38:12are lovely people. Jews happen to be in the government of Israel. It's the government of
00:38:16Israel I have issue with. There are also non-Jews in the government of Israel. So, that too. Anyway,
00:38:22um, this whole narrative, it's the, and the thing about this Jewish man is people were inviting him
00:38:28to join the Republican Party. And I, I find it interesting that we've come to such a fractious
00:38:32place in this country. MAGA complaints about America have little to do with policy. They have
00:38:39a lot to do with culture, national mood, like this one, American identity. Um, and, and, and the,
00:38:47in their zeal to save the country, they're looking at what they view are the problems, which are
00:38:55immigrants, one could argue poor people, um, one could argue, you know, it's DEI, it's woke,
00:39:01it's all of these things. It's, you know, P, I think a lot of the MAGA movement is, and I've
00:39:07written, I wrote about this 10 years ago, are looking at the way the country's changing demographically.
00:39:12We're becoming browner and less white. We're more multicultural than we were before. Um, and we're,
00:39:17you know, transitioning into more of a multicultural democracy, um, are looking at the world outside
00:39:22and saying, all of, we, in order to save the country we want to live in, we have to, you know,
00:39:28get rid of all these sort of people. And this ties into my essay, The Death of the White,
00:39:33Heteronormative Christian Narrative. Before something ends, there's usually an extinction
00:39:39burst. MAGA is that extinction burst. The movement's bigger than Trump now. It will last longer than
00:39:45Trump. And the reality of that movement is they are trying to hang on to a country that,
00:39:50quite honestly, no longer exists. Now, there were a lot of things about that country that I think
00:39:54were quite laudable. I think there were a lot of things about that country that were quite good.
00:39:57One of the things we did in the 2010s was we took the Ameri- we did something very dangerous
00:40:03to do to a population of people. And we took the American narrative, the American mythology,
00:40:11that it, quite frankly, was mostly written by the CIA in the 1950s to counter-communism,
00:40:15but whatever. Um, and we started to take it apart. We exposed it for what maybe wasn't quite true,
00:40:23didn't really exist, wasn't quite there. Um, the, the lies and things that we told ourselves
00:40:29underneath, um, underneath, uh, everything that we thought we knew about this country
00:40:37to talk about its racist systems, to talk about how it's disadvantaged people of color, women,
00:40:43all that for so long, and how the promise of America went unfulfilled for so many for so long,
00:40:49and was the past really that great? And great for who? Not if you were poor, not if you were a woman,
00:40:56not if you were of color, all, I mean, all these things kind of, you know, pile up. And we had a big
00:41:01discussion about that from about 2012, 2013, even one could argue 2010, forward to, one could argue,
00:41:102024. And I think that MAGA looks at that, and the, the, the sort of highly filtered, what kind of
00:41:22made it down to the popular consciousness of what those discussions were, um, like the 1619 project
00:41:27and all this sort of thing, on all these, and all these, you know, new policies and new ideas and every,
00:41:32you know, and how, you know, people of color is seeping into the culture and people are seeping
00:41:36into the culture and all of a sudden the Democratic Party is staking its claim on the rights of, you
00:41:41know, minorities and people who are a small percentage of the population. And, and, and this
00:41:45is where this political conflict begins, is you have one party that wants to move forward into that
00:41:51multiracial democracy and one party who says, we're not going to have a country. And, and the thing
00:41:58about MAGA is they're not wrong. That's, that's the funny part. Well, not necessarily funny, true.
00:42:07What they are, feel like they're losing is that myth, that mythology, the country they thought they
00:42:15had. And they would like to, as best as they can, run back inside the cave with the mythology,
00:42:23with the story, with the idea, and never have to confront and deal with the unsavory parts of it.
00:42:32The parts of it that are difficult. The parts of it that are hard. The parts of it that were, you know,
00:42:43that are not necessarily so great or so laudable decisions that were made. You know, the, you know,
00:42:50genocide of Native Americans and throughout our country, the, you know, transatlantic slave trade,
00:42:55the disadvantage of women, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the way we've treated immigrants off and on,
00:43:00depending on how many of them there were at any given moment. Irish need not applied.
00:43:03All of these things are part of the American story. But in the fifties, the CIA wrote an American
00:43:08story that was simple, it was palatable, and it was made to counter communism. And unfortunately,
00:43:13it became part of the fabric. It became part of the entire conversation. And to some degree,
00:43:19it became the entire conversation. And unfortunately, now we have a movement that
00:43:24seeks to hang on to something that never actually existed. But they're trying to hang on to the,
00:43:31the world and the point of view that sprang from that with, and basically saying,
00:43:39we're not going to be critical of ourselves. We're not going to introspect. We're going to keep
00:43:43with our mythology, because it was good, and it worked, and we liked it.
00:43:50And that's a really hard place to be in as a country. Because much like the American Civil War,
00:43:59not that I think we're headed towards a violent civil war, although weirdly, one of my new Gen Z
00:44:05employees from South America asked me that last week. He's a wonderful new contractor with us.
00:44:10Um, I asked if it was going to be a civil war. Um, because last week we were talking about National
00:44:16Guard troops in Los Angeles and all that sort of thing. That's how fast the news moves around here.
00:44:19Um, I'm not thinking we're headed for a civil war. But I do think we are having,
00:44:26to quote former President Biden, a war for the soul of America. We are trying to find what it means
00:44:33to be an American. What is the new identity? What, how can, you know, I think one side of the country
00:44:40is trying to embrace all of America in the mess and the people who've been advantaged,
00:44:46disadvantaged, all this type of thing. And I think one side of the country is saying, no, we don't need
00:44:50that. Our America doesn't include that. We don't have any desire to deal with any of that stuff.
00:44:57And if you do, you're wrong, you're bad, you're woke, you're DEI, you're destroying the country.
00:45:03I don't know what the outcome of this will be. Time will tell. Um, but it's a very interesting place
00:45:11to be in this country. And that kind of brings us all the way back around to this tweet. And then
00:45:15we're going to move on. That, um, one, I think it's interesting he defines right as particularly
00:45:22white, but also this idea that if MAGA does not kind of purge, you know, any idea of multiculturalism
00:45:31from this country that we're going to end up in this terrible different, you know, this terrible
00:45:37place with, you know, post-Americanism and, you know, and having, you know, whites with their own
00:45:43identity, white identitarianism and all this type of thing. And, you know, and we're even going to lack
00:45:48free speech because of, you know, social media and Palantir and all this type of thing. And it's,
00:45:52I think it's a very interesting thing of, they see the outcome as if they do not win
00:45:59this, they're going to be stuck in a country full of brown people. And for people like James
00:46:05Kilpatrick or whoever runs this account, that's a fate worse than death. And I think that's
00:46:12where we truly are as a country, politically. It's, you know, who gets to stay? Who's going
00:46:17to go? Who, how, how is, how is this all going to work? And I think it's endlessly fascinating
00:46:23and frightening at moments to be in, in a time in a country where we're trying to deal with
00:46:32these issues. In November, when the election went through and I was very frightened and
00:46:37some people think, I think some people, nothing, I'm maybe not necessarily frightened enough.
00:46:40And some people think it's time to leave. And I've had friends ask me if I was planning
00:46:43on leaving and all this type of thing. And I'm like, well, no, I can't afford to, and
00:46:48don't know how I'd, you know, make money there, whatever have you. But, um, this is the type
00:46:54of thing where things could get very difficult very quickly and, and could get violent very
00:47:03quickly. Um, as we've seen recently with some of the political assassinations. Um, and like
00:47:10we were talking about last week with the Minnesota, uh, house representatives that were, you know,
00:47:14shot and one of them died and her husband and one of them have still survived and all
00:47:18that sort of thing. Um, it can get very dangerous. And this sort of dynamic was what we were all
00:47:24afraid of was that, you know, with this sort of, you know, in 2020, we felt like we'd escaped
00:47:29the Trump situation. And in 2024, a lot of us felt like we were being drug back in, you
00:47:34know, to all of this. And, uh, and that, and really the reality is that the, the tough political
00:47:47stuff we're dealing with. And I think this is also kind of why Democrats are struggling
00:47:50is Democrats are looking at this from a policy angle. That's what the Biden administration
00:47:55did. Oh, we'll start getting more union jobs going. We'll build the economy. We'll add
00:48:00200,000 manufacturing jobs. That's not the mood right now. The mood is cultural. Who's
00:48:06outside, how we're living, who gets to live here. What does it mean to be an American?
00:48:11That's the stuff, right? That's where MAGA is. And the unfortunate reality is it's very easy
00:48:16to get people afraid of a changing country and a changing world. It is frightening and people
00:48:22complain to that and Trump has done. And MAGA feels like if they don't win, if they don't
00:48:26successfully route us all and drive us as many people out as they can and lock the Democrats
00:48:32out of power forever, then, then, then it's going to be over for, you know, white people
00:48:37or the white, right? Or it's, you know, it's, it's going to be all, all over. And that's,
00:48:42I, that's, I think the mood where this tweet comes from. And that's a very dangerous place
00:48:47to be as a country. Because then the next question is how far are they willing to go?
00:48:54And how many of us will be arrested, deported, for speaking out? How many of us will be, um,
00:49:08imprisoned to preserve the country that they're trying to rebuild? To get back to a place where
00:49:15white is right, it's the white people that live here, and the rest of us, if we're allowed
00:49:19to live here, are merely honored guests in their home, but not fully American, not fully
00:49:26a part of the society. And we certainly should demand nothing from the society that we are
00:49:33not kindly given. And nothing strikes me as old-fashioned paternalism than that idea. And
00:49:44I think the voices from it are growing louder. And it's a little bit frightening when there's
00:49:49people in government who are online a part of these discussions and start spreading the
00:49:53talking points all the time. It is very frightening. I don't blame anyone for leaving. Um, I may
00:49:58look back on this time and a year from now and be like, oh my god, I should have just found
00:50:02the money and, you know, sold my car and gotten the hell out, you know, and whatever have
00:50:07you. And it's just like, yeah, but it's very unfortunate. Anyway, that went on longer than I
00:50:15was planning on, but I, this tweet just grabbed me so hard. And I realized, oh yeah, this is the hub
00:50:20on which it's all turning. And so, and it was also a good time to mention the death of the white
00:50:25heteronormative Christian narrative again. Because I actually wrote that in 2014. I saw this coming
00:50:30a while ago. And lo and behold, it's here. I think the scariest part for me is I thought
00:50:36this would happen a few decades later. And it's happening now. Um, ahead of the schedule
00:50:44I had in my head. And that, that's an interest, and a very interesting place to be in. Um, speaking
00:50:51of deport them all, which, you know, right now everyone's like, let's get back to the
00:50:55deportations. Uh, this story streamed in, uh, the Trump administration, uh, live updates.
00:51:00The Supreme Court allows Trump to deport migrants to third countries. It says here, the Supreme
00:51:05Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries other than
00:51:08their own, pausing a federal judge's ruling that they must first be given a chance to
00:51:12show they would face a risk of torture there. The pause allows the administration to send
00:51:16men held at an American military base in Djibouti onto South Sudan while their court case
00:51:21plays out. The court's three liberal members dissented. Florida is turning an abandoned
00:51:25airport into the Everglades, in the Everglades into the newest and scariest sounding local
00:51:29prison to detain migrants. The remote facility nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz will cost the
00:51:33state around $450 million a year to run, but Florida can request some reimbursement from
00:51:37the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which if we remember last week, Trump is shutting
00:51:42down.
00:51:43It says here that the order was the latest in a series of rulings related to immigration
00:51:53decided by the justices in summary fashion on what critics call the court's shadow docket.
00:51:57Two allowed the administration to lift protections for hundreds of thousands of people who've been
00:52:01granted temporary protective status or humanitarian parole. That'd be the Haitians. But others, and
00:52:06many Venezuelans too. But others insisted on due process, notice, and an opportunity to be heard
00:52:12for migrants before they are deported. Monday's ruling moved in a different direction, refusing
00:52:16to allow migrants to make the case that they would face torture if sent to places with which
00:52:19they have no connection. The absence of any reasoning made it impossible to understand the majority's
00:52:23thinking. But in dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji
00:52:28Brown-Jackson, said the majority had ignored a federal law that requires due process.
00:52:32Quote, Congress expressly provided non-citizens with the right not to be removed to a country where
00:52:36they are likely to be tortured or killed, Justice Sotomayor wrote, adding that the Supreme Court
00:52:41has long held that people must be given a chance to explain why they should not face grievous
00:52:45loss. Quote, being deprived of the right to not be deported to a country likely to torture
00:52:49or kill you plainly counts, quote, unquote, such as a loss, she added. Thus, plaintiffs
00:52:53have a right to be heard. Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority had endorsed lawlessness.
00:52:57Quote, the government has made clear in word and in deed that it feels itself unconstrained
00:53:00by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard, unquote,
00:53:04she wrote. Leah Kang, a lawyer with the Northwest Immigration Rights Project, which represents
00:53:08migrants in the case, said the court's order would have devastating consequences. Quote,
00:53:11the Supreme Court's ruling leaves thousands of people vulnerable to deportation to third
00:53:15countries where they face torture or death, even if the deportations are clearly unlawful,
00:53:19she said. This case arose from a trial judge's order that applies to migrants cleared for removal
00:53:23from the United States when the administration seeks to deport to third countries, ones where
00:53:27they do not alter citizenship and where they may have no connection. The judge said such migrants
00:53:30were entitled to due process, meaning notice of where they were going and the chance to argue
00:53:34that they were at risk of harm if sent there. Though the judge's order applied to many migrants,
00:53:39it captured public attention in May when the government loaded eight men onto a plane
00:53:42said to be headed to South Sudan, a violence-plagued African country that most of them had never set
00:53:46foot in. Their flight landed instead in the East African nation of Djibouti, where there is an
00:53:50American military base, and they have been held there ever since. The judge, Brian E. Murphy,
00:53:56of the U.S. District Court in Boston, ruled that the men must be given access to lawyers
00:53:59and a chance to challenge the government's plan to send them to South Sudan. There were eight deportees aboard
00:54:04the flight to Djibouti, one is South Sudanese, and the government has said that another will be sent
00:54:08to Myanmar, his home country, leaving the six others in limbo. All eight have been convicted
00:54:12of violent crimes. And then it goes on about the men and everything, and we know about their case.
00:54:18So, um, I thought that was rather interesting and fascinating, um, that now, if you are migrant
00:54:24and they deport you, we can just send you any old ware, which also means they can send more people
00:54:28to El Salvador as well. Um, they can send you anywhere. Anywhere, you know, oh, a plane's going
00:54:33to, you know, Nepal. Oh, there you go. Bye. You know, it's, it's like the, yeah, they'll love you
00:54:39in Nepal, you know, sort of thing. Um, and the, the, I have no problem with deporting illegal immigrants.
00:54:47I have no problem with deporting migrants who have committed crimes. All fine and well. There should be a
00:54:53due process for it, and they should at least be sent to their proper country of origin.
00:54:57This is ridiculous. Like, it's, to just be able to send people any old ware, you know, you could be
00:55:03sentencing people to something quite terrible and not know, you know, and then you wouldn't care,
00:55:07and it's whatever. And so, um, that's a real, um, yeah, that's a, that's a step backwards.
00:55:16The other story I want to do, um, so this is good. Um, a white nationalist wrote a law school paper
00:55:27about promoting racist views. It won him an award. The University of Florida student won an academic
00:55:32honor after he argued in a paper that the Constitution only applies to white people.
00:55:36From there, the situation spiraled. Preston Dembski is a law student at the University of Florida.
00:55:41He is also a white nationalist and anti-Semite. Last fall, he took a seminar taught by a federal
00:55:45judge on originalism, the legal theory favored by many conservatives that seeks to interpret the
00:55:49Constitution based on its meaning when it was adopted. In his capstone paper for the class,
00:55:54Mr. Dembski argued that the framers had intended for the phrase, we the people, in the Constitution's
00:55:58preamble, to refer exclusively to white people. From there, he argued for the removal of voting
00:56:03rights protections for non-whites, and for the issuance of shoot-to-kill orders against, quote,
00:56:07criminal infiltrators at the border, unquote. Turning over the country to a, quote,
00:56:10non-white majority, unquote, Mr. Dembski wrote would constitute a, quote, terrible crime, unquote.
00:56:14White people, he warned, quote, cannot be expected to meekly swallow this demographic
00:56:18assault on their sovereignty, unquote. What was I just saying, like, ten minutes ago?
00:56:22At the end of the semester, Mr. Dembski, 29, was given the, quote, book award, unquote,
00:56:26which designated him as the best student in the class. According to the syllabus,
00:56:29the capstone counted the most toward final grades. The Trump-nominated judge, who taught the
00:56:35class, John L. Bandelemente, declined to comment for this article and does not appear to have
00:56:39publicly discussed why he chose Mr. Dembski for the award. That left some students and faculty
00:56:43members at the law school considered Florida's most prestigious to wonder and to worry.
00:56:46What merit could the judge have seen in it? The granting of the award set off months of
00:56:49turmoil on the law school campus. Its interim dean, Merrick McAllister, defended the decision
00:56:54earlier this year, setting Mr. Dembski's free speech rights and arguing that the professors
00:56:57must not engage in viewpoint discrimination. Ms. McAllister, in an email to the law school
00:57:02community, also invoked, quote, institutional neutrality, unquote, and increasingly popular
00:57:06policy among college administrators. It instructs schools not to take public positions on hot-button
00:57:09issues. But the question of how officials should respond to Mr. Dembski, who in an interview
00:57:14said that referring to him as a Nazi, quote, would not be manifestly wrong, unquote, is
00:57:18not merely academic. Well beyond the classroom, bigoted and extremist views are on the rise
00:57:22and vying for mainstream acceptance, raising questions about whether principles of neutrality
00:57:26and free speech rights are proper and adequate responses to the threats. X, the social media
00:57:30platform owned by Elon Musk, recently allowed millions of people to view Kanye West's new song
00:57:34Saluting Hitler when other platforms removed it. Vice President J.D. Vance criticized European
00:57:38government's efforts to ostracize far-right political parties on the grounds that doing
00:57:41so violates the principles of free speech. At the University of Florida, the story of the
00:57:44book award took a dramatic turn soon after Ms. McAllister defended the decision to honor
00:57:48Mr. Dembski with it. It was then in February that Mr. Dembski opened an account on X and began
00:57:52posting racist and anti-Semitic messages. After he wrote in late March that Jews must, quote,
00:57:56be abolished by any means necessary, unquote, again, and it's the Democrats who are anti-Semitic.
00:58:01The university suspended him, barred him from campus, and stepped up police patrols around
00:58:05the law school. He is now challenging the punishment which could result in his expulsion.
00:58:09Mr. Dembski's hateful post drew shock and fear in some quarters of the university.
00:58:12According to the Hillel International, the university has the largest number of Jewish
00:58:15undergraduate students in the country. His student body is 48% white, 22% Hispanic,
00:58:2010% Asian, 5% black, according to school data. A spokesman for the university declined to answer
00:58:25questions related to this article or to make any administrators available for interviews,
00:58:28but in emails to Mr. Dembski obtained by the New York Times, university officials wrote
00:58:32that his post had made numerous students fear for their safety. The officials also said
00:58:35another student's claim that Mr. Dembski had described his paper as concluding, quote,
00:58:39on a call for extra-legal violence, unquote, which Mr. Dembski denies.
00:58:45And then it goes into reactions and arguing people arguing against the award and why it should
00:58:54never be given out, and it emboldened him to make those posts and why, you know, if it's a good
00:58:59paper on the merits and the arguments are made well, should it not, you know, win an award
00:59:03if it's the best one sort of thing. And, um, yeah, that's, uh, um, yeah, that's, that, that's,
00:59:11if you want to get more into it, please go read the article. Um, but it, when I saw that, I was,
00:59:17as someone who's spent a lot of time studying white nationalism, and as someone who's written
00:59:21about some of the most racist people in the country, um, and as someone who spent a lot of
00:59:25time in that world, studying that world, looking at that world, all that type of thing, um,
00:59:31I, uh, I really, um, I was really beguiled by it. And for me, it's really hard, because I'm a firm
00:59:42believer in universities must be open places for all types of thought, even thought we don't like.
00:59:46And I am very close to a free speech absolutist. And, and this presents a very interesting conundrum
00:59:53for your friend Cameron. Because on the one hand,
00:59:57he should have the right to write this, and to argue it well, and cite his sources, and all that
01:00:05type of thing. And on the other hand, I do think, you know, we, we hit the tolerance paradox in terms of
01:00:11you lose the tolerant society if you tolerate intolerance. And, you know, the reality of this
01:00:21situation is that, I mean, he probably was emboldened a little bit by this to open an X account
01:00:26and join in on the racist posting. Um, and he probably did, you know, feel that it was, you know,
01:00:32a certain amount of, uh, of, you know, sort of an endorsement of it. Not necessarily his ideas,
01:00:39but his ability to argue them. And I think it's interesting. Um, you know, I mean, I, I kind of
01:00:48wish I could read the paper. Um, but it, I also, I mean, I also understand, you know, how it, not just,
01:00:57it's okay to feel uncomfortable, it's even okay to be offended. But when it comes to personal safety,
01:01:02I understand that argument too. And that's, you know, I think that's part of, you know,
01:01:10typically in years past, even when I was in college, that was a long time ago. Um, there
01:01:17were certain topics that were kind of no go zones. There were certain lines of inquiry that you did
01:01:21not go down and your professors and your faculty and your administration would not support you in,
01:01:27in doing it. And it was kind of for the reason we're talking about the story. And I kind of laugh
01:01:33because a lot of the stuff he talks about is stuff that I was talking about, about our discussion about
01:01:37MAGA and everything else. Um, and, and this is where, you know, I think having certain standards
01:01:45on certain issues is important. I think, you know, I think if he hadn't been given the award for best
01:01:52paper, this probably wouldn't be a story. Um, but the reality is when you give students awards for
01:01:58papers, it's a tacit endorsement of something, you know, sort of thing. And, and again, as it kind
01:02:05of expanded and became a scandal and, and, you know, and he, you know, gets barred and banned from
01:02:10campus and all this sort of thing, it, it, this is, you know, this is something where if you're going
01:02:15to do this and you're going to go there, you have to be extremely careful with how you do it,
01:02:20extremely polite with how you do it. And you should not expect what amounts to an endorsement
01:02:25from your professor about it, especially when it is a very contentious issue and you're talking
01:02:30about real people, you know, and notice again, they always talk about the Democrats anti-Semitic,
01:02:35but then there's this guy, you know, originalists and getting rid of Jews and all that type of
01:02:40thing. It's like, I, I wouldn't be afraid of Democrats winning. I'd be much more afraid of
01:02:45people like this winning. And, and as we spoke before, this is becoming a mainstream thing.
01:02:54Like this is, you know, even those comments on that tweet was, you know, oh yeah, if we,
01:02:59you know, we have to have Nazism to counter Bolshevism and all this. I mean, this is, it's,
01:03:04I've watched this sort of thing go from extremely fringe to borderline mainstream. And that's very
01:03:17frightening if, I guess, unless you're white. Um, and so, uh, that, um, yeah, it's at a very
01:03:27interesting intersection of free speech, free thought, and protecting a tolerant society.
01:03:34And there's no easy answer. Um, I, I guess my only answer would be, yeah, you can write your paper.
01:03:41It better be argued very well, but I'm not giving you any awards for it. Um, and actually towards
01:03:48the bottom, they actually kind of address that. Um, and the, uh, the, actually talks about, uh, some of
01:03:55the law school agree with her stance in an interview. John F. Stineford, a professor of
01:03:58the university said, it would be academic misconduct for a law professor who opposed abortion to give
01:04:03a lower grade to a well-argued paper advocating for abortion rights. If it were a good paper,
01:04:07he said, you should put aside your moral qualms and give it an A. A number of students disagree,
01:04:10but several declined to be interviewed on the record for fear of criticizing the school or a
01:04:14sitting federal judge would harm their future job prospects. One former student who graduated in
01:04:18May had his post-graduation job offer rescinded by a large law firm when he told them he'd spoken to
01:04:22the New York Times for this article, criticizing Mr. Damski's paper, and Judge Bunda Lamenti,
01:04:25for granting him the award. The student asked not to be identified for fear of
01:04:28jeopardizing other job offers. Before his suspension, Mr. Damski had been offered a
01:04:32summer internship in the local prosecutor's office, but in early April, the prosecutor,
01:04:35Brian Kramer, and the state attorney for the 8th Judicial Circuit of Florida rescinded the
01:04:39offer. You could imagine, Mr. Kramer said in an interview, that, quote, having someone in
01:04:42your office who exposes those kinds of beliefs would cause significant mistrust in
01:04:45the fairness of prosecutions, unquote. And for our final story, um,
01:04:55we're gonna dive into dating for a little bit. So, over the weekend, the New York Times, uh, posted
01:05:02this news story, men, where have you gone? Please come back. Um, and, uh, this cover photo was used,
01:05:10dating is the only thing you can put 10,000 hours into and end up right where you started.
01:05:14Um, and it was a quote from this woman, Katie Kerr, she was 30 and runs a leadership coaching
01:05:20startup out of New York City, rammed down, ramped down her search for a husband after many of the
01:05:24men she dated either seemed turned off by her ambition or weren't career-oriented enough for her.
01:05:28And, obviously, Twitter loves to shit on dating, who's dating, who's not dating, who should be
01:05:36dating, why aren't people getting married, why aren't they having babies, oh my god, population
01:05:40decline, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And in America's Lost Generation,
01:05:44my upcoming book, pre-orders are available now, um, I talk about how broken the dating market has
01:05:50gotten, and we're now in a situation where, economically speaking, women and men are playing
01:05:54on an equal playing field, and this has really complicated dating. And, um, and this post from,
01:06:03this quote reply from Claire Lehman was arranged, and she said, to be honest, I don't really understand
01:06:08why. Is it because there are now more educated women than men, and so there aren't enough eligible
01:06:12matches, according to women's standards, to go around? Um, and it's, you know, yeah. Um, it, we're,
01:06:20we're in, we're in a juxtaposition of many situations with this where, yeah, highly accomplished
01:06:28women also want to be with a highly accomplished man. There are very few of those. And fewer
01:06:33now because, you know, women are, um, you know, are taking up, you know, more, they're getting
01:06:41more degrees, they're taking more jobs, they're taking up more space in society, and the number
01:06:47of men who are also doing that is, was always small, and shrinking, which means those women,
01:06:52those women, in order to get, you know, a good man, would really need to date down. Not a read,
01:06:58but women tend not to date down. I've seen many examples of it, many of them quite successful,
01:07:04and quite happy, wonderful people. But by and large, a highly driven, career-focused woman
01:07:10is going to want a man who is also that way. Exactly, either seemed turned off by her ambition
01:07:17or weren't a career or enough hurt. This is an example. Not every woman all in it, but this is
01:07:21an example. And, um, and so that leaves the, the dating pool very, very small. Um, there are also,
01:07:29you know, a lot of people who are not very career-oriented or very ambitious. I've been in
01:07:33that situation myself. I obviously, I run two businesses. I have worked for myself most of my adult
01:07:38life. I'm a very driven person. I get a lot of stuff done. If anything, that's hard for me to
01:07:43slow down. Um, but, uh, you know, this is a, you know, a very difficult, difficult thing. And the
01:07:49article, I'm not going to get into it. You can go read it if you want to. But the, the article
01:07:54basically goes on to say, like, we feel like men have, you know, left the dating pool. There, you
01:07:59know, there's nothing left. There's, you know, no good men left sort of thing. And, you know, and men
01:08:03are fleeing away from intimacy and relationships because they just can't hack it with, um,
01:08:08you know, with women who are, you know, on an equal footing, who have their own money,
01:08:13have their own car, have their own place, and don't, quote unquote, need a man to do anything.
01:08:17Um, and I, there's, there's an interesting thing with, um, with dating I find where when,
01:08:33what women, what women are looking for in a man and what men are looking for in women
01:08:37are very, very different things. And I think one of the struggles a really accomplished woman
01:08:42has is that for her, she looks at her accomplishments and says, doesn't this make me attractive?
01:08:48And the, the reality is a woman being highly accomplished usually isn't a huge mover for a
01:08:53man. He's looking for other things. He's looking for, do you have your life together? Are you a
01:09:00clean person? Will you be a good mother for children? Do you want to stay home and raise
01:09:03children? Can I start a family with you? All this sort of thing. That's the stuff men tend
01:09:08to look for a lot more. Physical attractiveness is obviously a big mover. Um, you know, good
01:09:13personality, you know, do I feel, you know, do you annoy me too much? You know, all of those
01:09:18things are a huge factor in, um, in the, uh, in what men are looking for in, you know, in, in women.
01:09:29And that, I think that divergence of who's looking for what, because women, conversely, women are
01:09:36oftentimes looking for a man who, you know, is safe, is good, not a creeper. Let's her, you know,
01:09:41be her self and express herself without being, you know, threatened by this, all these different
01:09:45things. These end up being kind of very divergent things. And then on the other side, you also get
01:09:51the situation where men really don't do well alone and single. Women tend to thrive more in those
01:09:58environments, mostly due to women having better and deeper social networks than men do. Um, and so
01:10:03you have this kind of really big divergence. There's also political divergence, that's another story.
01:10:07Um, there's these big divergence in what is being looked for. And I think the, I think part of the
01:10:12problem is women think, women have an idea of what they think men will find attractive and they
01:10:17don't necessarily understand what actually is a mover for, for a man. I also think the taxi
01:10:23analogy applies. One of the best, um, uh, one of the best, uh, um, analogies that I ever heard about
01:10:35dating was that, how do I get him to marry me? And she's like, you don't. When a man's ready to get
01:10:41married, he puts his little taxi light on looking for a wife looking to get married. Until he puts
01:10:45the light on, there's no point. He's not ready yet. So really don't look for just any man. Look for a
01:10:51man with his light on who's looking to get married. Like that is, um, that's, you know, the, that
01:10:57tax analogy of wait till he puts on his light and pulls out from the taxi and starts driving around.
01:11:00Then you flag him down and you'll find a man who's ready to get married and start a family, all this
01:11:03sort of thing. And I think there's, that also applies in terms of, you know, there's this economic
01:11:09changes, which makes it hard for men to feel like they can, you know, attract a woman who is, you
01:11:12know, making more money, whatever have you. But I also feel like, especially for the one who's 30,
01:11:17she's probably not the same for the man ready to get married yet, which is also a problem and a
01:11:21factor, especially if you want to have, you know, kids younger and all this sort of thing. Um,
01:11:26and so I think, I think we have these, you know, again, really divergent standards in what people
01:11:31are looking for and what they think, you know, will work in a dating market. And it makes things
01:11:36incredibly, incredibly difficult, but I think the, um, the, the headline has all, in all the stuff I've
01:11:42read about this over the weekend, the headline always stands out to me. Men, where have you gone?
01:11:47Please come back. I don't think men ever went anywhere. I think there's a lot of guys who've
01:11:55been left behind. And I guarantee you, if these women looked around and were willing to date the
01:12:02plumber, the drywaller, the trash man, um, they'd find great quality, wonderful men, decent fathers,
01:12:12and all this type of thing, but his job's probably not going to be terribly glamorous. He'll probably
01:12:16make as much money as you do, especially the trash man. Um, he'll, might make a nice salary, but you'll,
01:12:20you might make more money than him, but the reality is how much money you make and how much you accomplish
01:12:26in your career is not going to be what he finds attractive about you. And that, I think, is the
01:12:31factor. So I, I would encourage women to embrace their wonderful femininity. I think one of the
01:12:36things broken with society is we do not have healthy expressions of masculinity and femininity going
01:12:40on. Um, never getting very philosophical. Um, but I, I, I would encourage to embrace femininity,
01:12:46to, um, to express that in your fullness, loudest roar, because being in that space is incredibly
01:12:56beguiling. And so, I just wanted to get in on this discourse a little bit, because it's been going
01:13:01around, and I talk about dating in America's Lost Generation a lot, and how the dating apps, you know,
01:13:07and changes in the economy have changed datings for millennials and Gen Z, and so I thought it was kind of
01:13:12worth talking about. And also to remind you, pre-orders for America's Lost Generation are out
01:13:16now at CameronJournal.com. Click on Shop Cameron's Books, and you can pre-order. It'll be out by the
01:13:22end of the summer, if not sooner, because the typesetting is already done. So, um, that's it for
01:13:29me. Um, thank you so much for stopping by, um, to the Cameron Journal News Hour. Don't forget on
01:13:36Wednesday, we're doing our very special event. Um, and, uh, with the, uh, Living, the Living Joke, uh,
01:13:43podcast pilot. Um, don't forget to sign up for the newsletter and for Cameron Journal Plus. Feel
01:13:49free to follow me on social media. I post exciting threads covering day-to-day news topics, um, on all
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01:13:58at CameronJournal.com. It's at CameronJournal on Twitter and Instagram. It's at CameronJournal
01:14:03on TikTok and Cameron L. Cowan on Facebook. So make sure to follow me there. I will see you on
01:14:09Wednesday for our special Morning Zoo-style podcast. Um, sign up for the newsletter so you get the
01:14:14Saturday version, and I will see you all next Wednesday first and next Monday for the Cameron
01:14:20Journal News Hour. Thank you so much. Have a great night. Bye-bye.
01:14:33Bye-bye.
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