All right, welcome back to the D'vory Darken show. And this guest is one that I'm very grateful to have here on the show, Dr. God Sad. Uh, he's the scholar for the Declaration of Independence of Center for the Studies, uh, of American Freedoms at the University of Mississippi. He also will be taking on a new position, but you guys might know him from his recent book called Suicidal Empathy. It is absolutely sweeping the nation. I think the world is such, it's really timely because it's one of the best ways to describe what we are experiencing. And he also lays out what we should do about it. And in particular, uh, and so I just want to say how grateful I am to have, uh, you here on the show. How are you, sir?

I'm great. Thank you so much for having me.

Yes. So there's no question you've been on a lot of podcasts at this point. Uh, obviously, a big, a big congratulations to your book being on Amazon number one. Um, and we'll link everything below this video so people, if they haven't seen it already, uh, but where I want to start first is a video I recently watched on X from you, June 14th. You said, um, uh, tell me how someone reacts to Elon Musk, right? Um, and and give me some room. I think I'm, I, I'm, you know, uh, and that kind of tells you about them. And the reason why I want to start there is because in my own life, I've learned a lesson very young that it's not about life, essentially about what happens. It's about how you respond to life overall that really dictates the outcomes. Could you just expand on what, what your point was, uh, in that video and how it relates to the book?

Right. So, but your point about it's not the event, but how you react to the event is the most fundamental Stoic, uh, precept, right? And Stoicism. Uh, the reason why I was talking about this regarding Elon is because some people will look at Elon and the incredible success that he has had in his life, and it's not as though he started from any place of privilege, right? So it's not as though he was handed a, you know, a spoon in his mouth. There are two ways you could respond to him. You could, you could look at his success and say, "My God, that is inspirational. What is the secret sauce of how he lives his life? So I can try in some way to emulate it. And boy, is he deserving of all of his accolades." Or you could look at Elon and say, "What is it that allows him to have so much more money than someone else who has so much less money? Let me be the empathetic overlord." Hence, that's how it's related to suicidal empathy. Let me take all of his wealth and I decide how I should redistribute it to all worthy other people. And so in one case, Elon is someone that I should emulate, and he's fully deserving of what he has. In the other case, if I am someone who is infected with parasitic socialism, I should take what he has and I decide to whom that should be distributed.

Yeah. Could you explain that term you just used? You said something, socialism. What is that term?

Parasitic socialism.

Okay. Explain that for us.

So, just for you to kind of get a general sense of when, how I use the term, uh, parasitic. One of my earlier books, uh, in 2020, I released a book called The Parasitic Mind. And then the book that we're talking about today is Suicidal Empathy. It's a one-two punch, and that's where you'll understand the term parasitic. In order for me to fully hijack your capacity to engage in critical reason, I have to do two things. I have to hijack your cognitive system, your thought processes. That's what I did in The Parasitic Mind. But I also have to parasitize your affective system, your emotional system. That's what I explained in Suicidal Empathy. But why the term parasitic? In, in nature, there are different interactions between animals. One of which is the field of parasitology, where you study the interaction between a host and its parasite. So, for example, a tapeworm could be a parasite, but it parasitizes your intestinal tract. But a neuroparasite is a parasite that needs to get to the brain of the host, altering its circuitry in order to suit its reproductive interests. So, for example, a wood cricket, the actual insect, the wood cricket abhors water. It wants nothing to do with water. But when it is parasitized by a hairworm, the hairworm needs the wood cricket to merrily jump into water, commit suicide. Hence, suicidal empathy. Because the hairworm needs the wood cricket to be in water in order for it to complete its reproductive cycle. So a parasitic relationship is one where it's a one-way flow of benefits, right? A reciprocal relationship is one where I give you something and you give me something else in return. By definition, a parasitic one is not that. So how do I apply that to socialism? Parasitic socialism is literally a form of parasitism because it basically targets the people who are the doers, the makers of society and says, "I will constantly take whatever you create, and I will decide who should be the fruits of that labor, and I'll never give you anything in return." Hence, it's a form of parasitic relationship.

Is a perfect example because I was like, man, that, that is an interesting, uh, term. And obviously right now, what we're having in real time is, uh, New York City's Morani, who just announced rent freezes. Uh, we know he wants to, you know, uh, jack up property taxes. We know he wants to go after the rich. We have Roana hopping on that too, targeting Elon Musk. What do you think it says about them that these are the ideas they want to essentially sell people on, knowing history has said otherwise?

Right. So the reason why socialism, as an alluring idea, never goes away with every new generation of imbeciles that are born, there are new people who then decide that they like this idea. Although it is very much rooted in a kindergarten infantile logic, it's because it caters to some of our most basic, dark sentiments. Envy, covetousness, right? Why is it that that guy over there has more than what I have? Right? So imagine if I could now package that sentiment again in an appeal to empathy, in a wonderful utopian society called Unicornia. I will come along and I will get rid of this mean reality called income inequality, and I will create a world where we all can have equal access to education, equal access to healthcare, equal access to women, equal access to everything. We will live in a beautifully utopian, egalitarian society. Well, when I'm five years old, that sentiment makes perfect sense because I learn when I'm in kindergarten that it's not nice for me to hoard all of the toys while Johnny doesn't have any toys. That's why we learn sharing is caring. But then as I grow out of being five years old, there is this thing called reality that slaps me in the face whereby I learn that it's probably not a good way to organize society whereby the government can take 50, 60, 70% of what I earn so that they can decide how to best spend it.

Yeah. You know, uh, my, uh, team sent me this information that you recently made an announcement about leaving Canada because of that very idea. Could you explain to people, uh, why, when the government decides to go down that road and tax people more money, especially the people who I argue are contributing to society, you don't get the money unless you exchange it for some level of value. Uh, could, could you explain to people how damaging that is to a society and why you're leaving Canada?

So, before I explain the answer to your question, let me root it in sort of a more professorial, academic, uh, answer. E.O. Wilson was a famous Harvard biologist who died a few years ago. He studied social ants, and you'll see in a second why I'm saying all this. Social ants have a very unique, uh, community structure. There's a reproductive queen, and then there is a completely indistinguishable cast of worker ants and an indistinguishable cast of soldier ants. So they are literally a communistic society. There's one big queen, and everybody else is just a cog in the wheel. When E.O. Wilson was asked, "Professor Wilson, what are your views on communism?" He paused and gave arguably one of the best, pithy answers that I've ever heard. He said to the question, "What do you think about communism?" He said, "Great idea, wrong species." Because he recognized that the phylogenetic history of human beings, meaning the evolutionary history of human beings, is not well-suited for forced egalitarianism. Communistic ants love communism. Human beings are a hierarchical species. Some of us are taller, shorter, better, better looking, less better working, more hardworking, less hardworking, more creative, less creative. So by definition, we assort on a hierarchy using a particular currency. So when you then come along and say, "No, I'm going to erase your evolved human nature and impose a sociopolitical economic system on you that is incongruent with human nature, we can predict that it's going to fail. It's been failed everywhere that it's been tried." But rest assured, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will usher the real communism, and it will work when they become the reproductive queens. Okay, so that's the theoretical answer. Let me explain it now for my Canadian context. In, in Canada, there are two income taxes. There is a provincial tax. Our provinces are akin to your states. So, we have a provincial tax. In my case, it's in Quebec. And then there is a federal tax. Okay. The highest rate that you can pay federally is 33% of your income. The highest rate that you can pay provincially is 25.75%. So, once you pass a certain income level, you're now in the 58% range of what's taken from you. Okay, let's suppose now we say, "Okay, that sounds reasonable. The government takes 58% of my income. I'm left with 42%." Now, you're going to leave me alone now, right? Because you took most of my money. No. If I now go out and spend money, I have to pay two sales taxes. So, two consumption taxes, a provincial tax and a federal tax combined, they add up to about 15%. So, I started with 42%. Now, you've taken 15% off that. Now, if we add carbon tax and fuel tax and property tax and, uh, school, whatever it is, all the other ones, I'm lucky if I'm left with about 30 cents to the dollar. So, now let's put it another way. If I start working on January 1st, I work for free for the government until the end of August, right? If I were a full slave, right? People are very upset about American slavery. If I were a full slave, I would work from January 1st to December 31st as a full slave, right? None of my labor is my own as a slave. Well, in Canada, I'm almost a full slave because I start being allowed to keep my money in September. Do you now understand why I'm leaving?

Yeah, I do. And you're making me sick with the word taxes. Yeah, that, that is just, it's beyond this world that they think that is the effective way to govern a country. Um, I guess the pushback I've heard quite some time is, well, China is communism. They seem to have figured it out. Their inflation rate is somewhere around 1 to 2%. So how do you explain that? Clearly, they, they found a way. What is your, your reaction to that when people, uh, say that?

Uh, just to draw an analogy of how idiotic that position is. Uh, in many Arab countries, there is not much theft because if you steal, we will cut off your hands. Should we organize society along those lines? So obviously, there are many things that could be achieved in an authoritarian regime, as is the case in China, that, by the way, Justin Trudeau, who was the former prime minister of Canada, said, you know, longingly, that he, he looks at China with great admiration because they don't have to worry about this little thing called, oh, what is it called? Oh, democracy. Uh, then we can very quickly institute whatever we want without having to worry about the pushback from the plebs and the rubes. So I wouldn't use China as a model by which we organize society.

Yeah, I, I wouldn't either. Now, some of the numbers my, uh, team gave me, they said Venezuela, their inflation peaked at 2 million percent. I don't even know if that's truly accurate, but that's what they told me. Cuba, somewhere between 20 and 30%. Uh, Vietnam, was between two and 5%. These are some countries known to use socialism as a policy. Uh, and so when writing the book, um, just from a policy standpoint, what do you think the current administration's getting right? And then what do you think they might be getting wrong?

Sure. It might be, it's your show, but it might be helpful for me to explain first what is suicidal empathy versus regular,

Yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah. Well, modulated empathy, and then I can answer the question that you just asked. So, I'm hardly arguing in the book that empathy is a bad thing, as many people have written already hit pieces about my book without having, of course, read it. Empathy is a perfectly rational, evolutionarily selected trait. We are a social species. So it makes perfect evolutionary sense that we would have evolved the capacity to empathize with the other. For you and I to have a meaningful conversation on your show, I need to put myself in your mind, and you vice versa. That's called cognitive empathy or theory of mind. So nobody is questioning the fact that empathy, when expressed within well-modulated zones, makes perfect adaptive sense. We want our spouse to be empathetic. We want our best friend to be empathetic, our veterinarian, our therapist, our physician. So again, well-calibrated empathy is wonderful. But like Aristotle explained to us several thousand years ago via his theory of the golden mean, too little of something is not good. Too much of something is not good. And much of life is about finding that sweet spot. That exact principle applies to empathy. If I have no empathy, I'm likely to be a psychopath. If I have too much empathy, if it hyperfires in the wrong situations, toward the wrong targets, I get suicidal empathy. So, it's the disregulation of empathy that I'm talking about. Okay. So, now I can answer your question about policy. Uh, almost every single domestic and foreign policy that is leading the West down the abyss of infinite darkness stems from this disregulated empathy. So, what I do throughout the book is offer endless such examples across many domains. Soft on crime policies, suicidal empathy. How you handle the homelessness crisis, suicidal empathy. Open border immigration policies, suicidal empathy. Transgender activism, suicidal empathy. Be very kind to Mother Earth. So, please don't have any more children to protect Mother Earth. Suicidal empathy. And by the way, I recently found out that you just had a baby. Congratulations. May your child live a long, healthy, and happy life.

So, all of those positions are stemming from disregulated empathy.

What is the, what is the current, uh, administration doing that's good?

Many things. Uh, for example, the fact that Donald Trump came along on day one, or whichever day it was, and he signed an executive order saying, "We're done with the transgender nonsense when it comes to men playing in women's sports." Uh, obviously, that's a good thing because, and let me again put this in context for your listeners and viewers. Until 15 minutes ago, the 117 billion people that had lived on Earth, that's an actual real estimate, 117 billion people. Those 117 billion people seem to be able to navigate the very difficult conundrum of identifying who's male or female very easily. That's why you and I are sitting here because our ancestors seem to be able to understand with whom they should mate without having to read it, what your pronouns are in your Twitter handle. But 15 minutes ago, when we were parasitized by a bunch of degenerate leftist ideas, we no longer were able to identify what's male or female. That's why the latest addition to the US Supreme Court, the most powerful, enlightened country in the history of the world, has a person on the Supreme Court that when she was asked by a senator during her confirmation hearing, "Could you define what is a woman?" And by the way, that wasn't just some flippant, you know, I got you moment because you want to know that if the justice that's going to serve on SCOTUS is going to adjudicate issues dealing with biological sex, then she should be able to identify what constitutes a woman. Well, that justice said, "Well, I'm sorry, but I don't have the expertise to answer that because I'm not a biologist." So to have gotten so far down the abyss of lunacy that a justice doesn't feel epistemologically confident to say, "Are you a?" "Of course I know what a woman is, and this is what the definition is," demonstrates how nefarious these ideas can become eventually.

Yeah. Uh, a couple of things. One is, um, we would hope that she would have answered the question because what they're doing all day long is interpretation, right? Their perception of the Constitution. I mean, they should be able to to, um, um, explain that. Uh, secondly, it's funny. So, on my show, uh, I know you have the book, it's titled Suicidal Empathy, but on the show, I've actually been calling what's been happening with sanctuary cities fatal empathy. Because what ends up happening is the, the empathy leads to, uh, choices and policies that lead to fatal outcomes, like needless murders and and things of that nature. Um, I, I thought you might get a, a kick out of that, but, um, I know in the book you said that, uh, empathy is not the, um, villain here, and I agree with you. I just think that the left, they weaponize, uh, empathy in the wrong way. They apply it in the wrong way. Where do you think that's coming from ultimately? Like, where along the line of our history, um, did it go wrong, essentially?

Yeah, great question. So, before I answer specifically as related to empathy, let me give a 30,000-foot answer to this. Early in the book, I, uh, reference an eminent British historian by the name of Arnold Toynbee, who had done a mammoth study of why civilizations died. And it was a 12-volume set. And the final maxim that explains sort of like the mic drop conclusion of all his study is the following: Societies do not die by murder. They die by suicide.

And what I'm doing in my book is I'm agreeing with him, but I'm now offering what is the weaponry that we're using to commit suicide. So instead. So, and let me draw another analogy from Japan. Uh, there's a practice in Japanese culture called seppuku, which, in, in many cultures where you have what's called the culture of honor and shame, where it becomes really detrimental if you lose face. Well, then the only way that is available to you on occasions if you've committed an action that is so shameful as would happen with the samurai class, who are very much driven by this very stringent honor code. Well, you'd have to commit seppuku, meaning you take this blade and you engage in self-disembowelment because that serves as an honest signal of how sorry you are for having committed this shameful act or whatever it is that you're guilty of. Well, I argue that the West is committing civilizational seppuku via suicidal empathy. But now I come to answering your question. But, but why? How did this happen? Well, imagine that we've been infected with a set of parasitic ideas, which, if you'd like, we can get into eventually, that basically argue that all societies and all cultures are equal, which they're not. But, but like Orwell said, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." If you are a true progressive, you know that the West is uniquely evil and diabolical. We are sitting on stolen land after the fact of a genocide of indigenous people. We are built on the backs of American slavery. We're a transphobic, Islamophobic, patriarchal, misogynistic, heteronormative society. All of these words all stem from academia because it takes academics to uniquely come up with some of the dumbest ideas. And therefore, how can I redress this shameful, existential sin? Well, why don't I commit civilizational seppuku so I can be accepted into the great heaven? And therefore, we will destroy our societies to demonstrate that we are truly progressive, enlightened people.

Wow. You know, I, I would argue that's happened within the black culture in America. Um, because some, every time there seems to be some big leader, some big celebrity, they end up making some statement that literally highlights what you just said because they're walking contradiction of what they're saying. I mean, when you, in America today, you can say, you can go, you can do whatever you want. There's infinite ways to make money today. I mean, this is, I, I think in some cases, one of the best times to be alive, um, given what our history of, of our country that is. Um, but they don't see it that way. They come out and they say the opposite. And I think that's a form of, of, of what you're getting at. So, I appreciate you laying all of that out for, for everyone. Okay. So, when writing the book, um, did you have any epiphanies, if, if that's the best way to put it? Did you have any like, wow, I really didn't see that in, in the moment, you know? And, and I know you, you have other books and, and you've done, you've done a lot of work, but anything new for you?

Well, that's a great question. Uh, I think the, the not so much the epiphanies, but sort of the wonderment of how pernicious suicidal empathy can be is what led me to say, "Holy damn, I can't believe that I, I was able to come up with this story." I, I'll give you a few. Uh, but I mean, literally, my entire book, wall-to-wall, is filled with these examples. A Norwegian man is sodomized by a Somali immigrant. After which, because the Scandinavians are very kind and empathetic and they don't believe in long-term prison sentences, we should rehabilitate those who sodomize us and so on. After he serves, he, meaning the Somali guy, serves a pretty light sentence. I think it was maybe three years. I mean, that's not bad to sodomize someone forcibly, and you only get three years. That sounds pretty like a pretty good deal. So anyway, so after he finishes, he's then going to be deported back to Somalia. Well, the, the victim of the sodomy had a terrible existential angst that was weighing him down because he felt so guilty that Ahmed was no longer going to be able to maximally flourish if he sent back to Mogadishu. Well, I'm here to tell your audience, as your resident evolutionary psychologist, that our emotional system did not evolve to empathize with those who sodomize us by force. So, that's story one. Are you ready for more stories?

Absolutely. Bring it.

All right. All right. Here we go. Here's story two. You're going to like this one. Uh, a very, very progressive white woman who's much more enlightened than either of us here wanted to go to Haiti. I don't know why she chose Haiti, but she wanted to go to Haiti to demonstrate that this narrative that black men are ever violent or commit any violence because there really is no evidence anywhere that I can find that any black man has ever committed violence. I just can't find them. But, but because of the white supremacist society that we live in, she wanted to go to Haiti and demonstrate that in the natural habitat of the black man, in this case Haiti, uh, you know, they all just kind of sing songs and John Lennon and imagine and, you know, peace through reggae and all that stuff. Okay. Well, then there's this thing called reality that caught up to her where this Haitian man who didn't support her enlightened view of the black man took her to a rooftop and violently raped her all night. Now, she was at first surprised that he continued the rape when she told him, "Are you ready for this?" When she told him that she herself was a Malcolm X fan and a BLM ally, that didn't stop the Haitian man from getting off her and stopping the rape. But that's not the best part of the story. After the rape, when she then returned home, she wrote an essay, which is fully referenced in in my book, where she said that all told, she was very thankful for the experiment, the experience because it demonstrated to her that he was so filled with rage at the white supremacy that he faced in Haiti, where there are no white people, that he took it out on her body, and for that she was thankful because she was an ally fighting against the rage he felt against white supremacy. So, to answer your question, because, you know, we are human beings, understand best when you tell them anecdotes. These two anecdotes are not what I should have expected a sane human being to experience.

Right. Yeah. No, no doubt. And you have to tell these stories because it puts the visuals to what you're trying to explain. Um, and, uh, it seems like every day I'm having to essentially explain to my audience about the dangers of sanctuary city policies, the dangers of soft on crime policies, and, um, you know, a city like Chicago, for an example, um, we see a lot of these things. And why, why do you think, even when these fatal outcomes happen, because this is really what intrigues me every day, when these stories come up, even when the fatal outcomes happen, they still never change. And maybe "never" is a strong word, but in this short period of time, they haven't changed. They don't change their message. They, in some cases, they don't even acknowledge that outcome, right? They act as if it never even happened. And then when you bring it up, they, they get very, it's like they have contempt for the victims. Why, why do you think that that is occurring?

So, couple of factors here. First, about two years ago, I appeared on a show hosted by a British psychiatrist, and the last question on the show, he asked me the following: "In all the years that you've been a professor and a behavioral scientist, what is the single phenomenon that has most surprised you about the human condition?" I mean, I'm paraphrasing his words. I don't, I don't have his exact words in front of me. And so, I had to pause for a second because I had never, uh, been asked that question. And then I, I said, "Well, the inability of people to change their position irrespective of the amount of evidence that you provide them that should cause them to change their position." Like, I don't want to hear it. So, the, so the first answer to your question is, it doesn't matter how much evidence you give me that these sanctuary cities are going to ultimately harm the people that you supposedly care about. I don't care. It doesn't matter how many times you tell me that socialism has been tried in endless ways in endless societies. It always results in the same outcome. I don't care because I can always find some quote justification to explain why the evidence you're sharing is not somehow relevant. But let me give a specific explanation for why they don't adjust their opinions regarding sanctuary cities and so on. And here, in the book, by the way, I talk about blank slate felons. And the reason why I, I use the term blank slate is because a blank slate when you're studying the human mind is, in, in Latin, it's called tabula rasa. You're an empty slate. You're born with nothing in your mind. We all have equal potentiality to be the next Michael Jordan. We all have the equal potentiality to be the next killer. And it's only the vagaries of life, the socialization that will make us go through fork A or fork B in the road. Of course, that's perfectly incorrect because there is a set of biological imperatives that Michael Jordan was born with that would have made him more likely to be the NBA star than I would be because I am the height of Lionel Messi. I'm not 6'6" with his vertical leap. Therefore, there is no amount of hugging by my mother that could have caused me to be able to have the athletic prowess, at least in basketball, that Michael Jordan has. But that feels mean because it's not nice to tell me that my child can't be the next Lionel Messi, the next Michael Jordan, or the next Albert Einstein. I'd rather drown in and you tell me that we all have equal probability to be anything that we want to be. Now, having said that, imagine if I now tell you that all of these blank slate felons don't actually have personal agency, especially, God forbid, if they are felons of color. If they are felons of color, and I use this term very sarcastically because I hate that blank of color, but if they are felons of color, then they are already born into a, a black man born into a white supremacist society where the police is committing a daily genocide on random black men walking in the street. And now you're going to tell me that you're going to hold that felon accountable when he's already been existentially punished for having been born in a white supremacist country. Why don't you be a bit more empathetic and give this guy a second chance? And by second chance, I mean 194th chance because he's only been arrested 193 previous times. Don't you think he's deserving of a second chance? So, once I come with that mindset, no amount of evidence that you're going to provide me is going to cause me to to pivot from my anchored position.

It, it's, it's heartbreaking because it's something that is self-inflicted. Uh, and what I don't like hearing from people is, especially these politicians, when they make it sound as if, and I'm going to use their words, right? People of color or minority groups, like we can't make our own choices. Like we can't rise above our own, you know, situations. Um, it, it's, it's quite interesting. So, I guess

Before you go on, forgive me, forgive me for interrupting you, please. I'm so sorry to interrupt you.

You know who's my favorite intellectual in the world?

Who?

Thomas Sowell.

Okay. Thomas Sowell. Thomas Sowell is the OG. Thomas Sowell was slapping these idiots when I was in diapers or wasn't even born. You know what's the least interesting part of Thomas Sowell?

His skin color.

Right?

I don't give a damn about his skin color. Thomas Sowell, I can put a statue of Thomas Sowell here, and I honor him by the fact that I don't call him an intellectual of color or an economist of color. He's Thomas Sowell, period. So I am the ally of people of color, and all the so-called allies of people of color are the degenerate racists.

Exactly. Um, I often tell people that DEI is an example of what you were saying there because essentially you had, uh, and give me some rope here in case you see it a different way, um, particularly white far-left individuals who are weaponizing the skin color of black people for their own financial or political gain. And then, then in the end, when it blows up, right, and it gets, you know, because of the Trump administration, uh, who's left dealing with the consequences? Not them.

Right. Exactly. Right. You know, one of the lessons I learned from from Thomas Sowell was like how these politicians, they'll make up these great ideas about what they want to change, and then when it doesn't work, uh, they don't have to accept any of the consequences, and they leave the people they say that they cared about dealing with it all. So, do you think that's another area you talked about in, in your book about the consequences of it all?

Yeah. So, one of, so throughout academia, these parasitic ideas is exactly where they were spawned and where they were flourished and where they originally, you know, broke out of the lab, so to speak. But depending on which discipline you're talking about in academia, you're more or less likely to have these parasitic ideas. And the reason for that, speaking of consequences, for example, in the business school or in the engineering school, you're less likely to have these parasitic ideas because, by virtue of those disciplines being applied disciplines, therefore they are tethered to reality. The consequences of your imbecility exists. So, I can't build an economic model of consumer choice using using lesbian dance theory mathematics, right? I can't build a bridge using queer architecture. There's just physics, right? There is no queer physics. There is no queer mathematics.

Oh, until they go to change the definition of the words. Keep, keep going.

Exact, very true. So, so that's exactly the problem that a lot of times people sort of ask me quizzically, but how do you explain that academics could come up with such nonsense? Well, because they're completely decoupled from the consequences of which they pontificate, right? So, I wear a really cute, uh, you know, wool sweater and with a fool, and I go up to my Princeton undergraduate class on in lesbian queer architecture, and I could pontificate all of this stuff, and there are all of these 19-year-old kids with perfectly malleable minds, and I sit there as a divine figure as the professor. I could pontificate all this, and at the end of which I get granted tenure. I get rewarded for pontificating all this nonsense. You can't have that in places where there, but and actually, as I was about to say, you can't have those kinds of bad ideas in places where it matters. I, I stopped myself because that's not even true because DEI has entered aviation, has entered firefighting, has entered surgery. So, there is no place where the cancer of DEI won't go if you, if you let it.

Yeah. And it's interesting because they go out there and they scream, "We're doing this because of racism." But essentially, you're using racism to combat racism. I mean,

Well, how does that work?

Yeah. Go ahead.

You've built a, you, you've built a huge audience. What if I told you that you're never going to know whether the success of your labor comes from any unique talents that you have, but that there's always going to be the cloud of, "It's probably because of the skin, the color of your skin that you probably got there." Wouldn't that be an insult to you? Shouldn't it matter more that you're charismatic, you're well-prepared, you know how to have conversations with a wide range of people, you have a pretty smile? Shouldn't those be the qualities that justify why you've had a successful thing rather than me saying, "It, it's probably because you're black?"

Yeah. Well, let me ask you, because I'm sure you, you've, uh, traveled quite a bit. Is it fair to say that when you go to other countries, and an American shows up, they're not saying, "Oh, that's a black person or that's an Asian person." They're just saying that person is from this country. Is that fair to say? I, I think it's fair to, we just have too many labels in our country. Go ahead.

I, I agree. And, and, and this is going to sound cliché-ish and so on, but I came, I grew up in Lebanon, and I was there till the age of 11. And, and pretty much my entire life in Lebanon, I might have seen 10 black people. And usually they were, uh, African guys who were selling a type of, uh, uh, like a peanut in these little things in the corn in Beirut. So I'd never seen black people. I come to Montreal, and within a year or two, I'm immersed with in black culture because I was a very competitive soccer player. So I was playing soccer with many, many Jamaicans and many, many Haitians, and it, and nobody gave a damn. Like, I, I, the first guy that I ever had a sleepover at when I was 12 years old was a guy from, uh, Barbados, a, a black kid. And actually, his wife, interestingly, about two or three years ago, reached out to me and said, "Do you remember my husband?" I said, "Of course." He's, I'm not going to mention his name.

Right?

We never coded black, white, this, that. But if you keep hammering that in people, as did, uh, Prophet Barack Obama, peace be upon him, then you end up with an incredibly divisive society. And what a shame, because not that America is perfect, but as an immigrant who has sampled from the buffet of societies out there, I can tell you that no society is remotely as great as America. And yet, half of the political, you know, aisle in the United States spends all of its day denigrating that country. It's grotesque.

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I want to get into the behavior of humans. Um, and I want to focus on like childhood because my, and maybe my experience is different than the average or the generalities here of what I'm getting into. But my mother, when she adopted me, she never made any conversation we had about race. So when I grew up and then I went into the military, which is even another area that they don't make anything about race, right? You submit yourself to something bigger than you. Um, I never was exposed to that repeated statement of, "Oh, well, your skin color this or skin color that." Um, and so do you think what the other problem here is the, the parenting and, and the ideas that are being exposed to children from a young age? And because of, you know, iPads and iPhones these days, do, do you find that to also be an issue?

I mean, sure, of course. Look, uh, one of the, in one of the lectures in my consumer psychology course, I'll spend probably about half an hour discussing the ethics, morality, and legality of targeting children with advertising. And, and you're going to see in a second how I'm going to link it to what you're saying. And the argument there is that if a child doesn't have yet the cognitive weaponry to recognize that the advertising message is trying to persuade him or her of something, then it, it's really improper for you to be targeting them with an advertising message. And now we can debate whether that happens when you're seven or eight or nine or 10. But the idea here, the reflex is that a child's mind is so malleable, so easily influenced, that we have to have laws that govern how advertisers can communicate with our children. So, having said that, imagine that you could have a child straight out of the womb that I could teach him my religion, which then promulgates all sorts of hate towards some other group. But that I'm allowed to do because it's under the guise of my religion. So when he comes out of the womb, I'll let you decide which religion that might be. Spend all day brainwashing him about how all of the problems that you will ever face are due to the Jews, Jews, Jews, Jews, Jews. Probably you're going to grow up to be a Jew hater. And then you could sample people from those societies, and you'll get average rates of 95 to 99% of people sampled from those societies have a hatred of the Jew. So, to your point, of course, parenting matters. I grew up in an environment, I mean, I didn't have the most, uh, doting parents in the world, to put it mildly, but they certainly inculcated the idea with me that anything is possible. And I'll tell you a great story to that speaks to that. This is actually, Oh, I guess you can't see it here. It's in The Parasitic Mind. Oh, this book right here. Where is it? How do you point to it? I can't point to it. Anyways, the yellow book. Uh, in The Parasitic Mind, I tell the following story. After I, so I did an undergrad in mathematics and computer science, and then I did an MBA with a thesis in operations research, which is an applied mathematics field. The reason why I'm mentioning this is because it's relevant to the story. So I already had an undergrad and an MBA from a top university, and then I was then visiting various universities for my PhD. But one of the universities that I was visiting was the University of California, Irvine, where my brother lived in Newport Beach. He was a very successful, you know, computer industry guy, and he was trying to convince me to take a break after my MBA before I went on to do my MS and my PhD at at Cornell, which I, that's where I ended up going. And so he said, "Well, why don't you put on the proverbial suit, work with me for a couple years, get some experience, then you could go back and do your PhD?" Well, when my mother found out that my brother was trying to convince me to take a break when I returned home to visit them in Montreal, she takes takes me to a side room and says, "I, I need to talk to you. Come over here." And I'm thinking, "Oh, am I in trouble? What's happening here?" She goes, "I'm hearing that you're thinking of quitting school." And before I could even explain that I wasn't going to not continue with my PhD, she goes, "Do you want people to remember you as somebody who dropped out of school? Do you want to bring such shame?" So, why am I telling this story? Because in a Jewish home, the fact that I already have a very, very fancy undergraduate degree and an MBA, and if I were to stop there without getting a PhD, people would consider me an illiterate buffoon. Now, of course, I didn't do my PhD to please my mother, but that shows you the standard of excellence. Now, can you think of another culture? Forgive me for insinuating which culture that might be, where they promulgate the following idea: "If you sit in class and listen and take notes and get good grades, stop acting white." So, which of those two societies do you think is going to lead to greater excellence? The former one, as told by my mother, or the latter one?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a, I call it a paradigm, right? It's a, it's a, a group of habits and belief systems, uh, within a culture. And I know exactly what, what you're talking about. And it's really troubling because it doesn't need to be that way. Uh, I would argue that if, um, cultures learn from each other, it would be even a better America, right? Because, uh, I, I find it interesting that people from India can come over here, they come as a family, they live as a family, they start a business as a family, they build wealth as a family. Um, like if they can do that, why can't other cultures do the same thing? But I think it goes back to your book. There's a lot of suicidal empathy involved.

Yeah.

You're, you're exactly right. You know, it takes humility to say, it goes back to the earlier point about how people react to Elon Musk. I could look at Elon Musk and say, "What's the secret sauce that has made him so successful?" So I can emulate him, or I can try to trash him. So I could look at some cultural practices of another culture that has led them down the path of success and say, "Hey buddy, can you come over here and teach me? I've got the humility to want to be open to any secret sauce that you could teach me." Rather than arguing that your success must have been begotten at on someone else's back and so on. The victimology culture is such a dead end. By the way, let me mention this. One of the reasons why people have presumed, and maybe I agree with them, that I'm difficult to cancel is because in a true victimology hierarchy, I hold the the top victimology poker cards. Why? Because I don't have to manufacture a fake story of victimology, as Justice Smlette did, or as Elizabeth Warren did. I had to escape execution in Lebanon. My parents were kidnapped and tortured by Fatah. My grandparents escaped Syria because of Jew hatred. My wife's family escaped Lebanon because they were going to be killed. Her ancestors escaped from from the Armenian genocide. My brother-in-law's family, who are Egyptian Jews, escaped Alexandria in the mid-1950s. So, I don't need to construct a fake victimology story or to argue that it's intergenerational trauma. It's within my lifetime that I've experienced victimhood. But what defines me is the fact that notwithstanding that I had to deal with those things, I've overcome them and here I am on your show. So don't wallow in your victimology. Rise above it.

Exactly. I often tell people that people who are, you know, people of color, as they put them, minorities who are, um, have found themselves in a position of success because of hard work and sacrifices and goals and rising above their, uh, you know, however

Okay. So, when writing the book, um, did you have any epiphanies, if, if that's the best way to put it? Did you have any like, wow, I really didn't see that in, in the moment, you know? And, and I know you, you have other books and, and you've done, you've done a lot of work, but anything new for you?

Absolutely. Bring it.

Before you go on, forgive me, forgive me for interrupting you, please. I'm so sorry to interrupt you.

You know who's my favorite intellectual in the world?

Who?

Thomas Sowell.

Okay. Thomas Sowell. Thomas Sowell is the OG. Thomas Sowell was slapping these idiots when I was in diapers or wasn't even born. You know what's the least interesting part of Thomas Sowell?

His skin color.

Right?

Oh, until they go to change the definition of the words. Keep, keep going.

Yeah. And it's interesting because they go out there and they scream, "We're doing this because of racism." But essentially, you're using racism to combat racism. I mean,

Well, how does that work?

Yeah. Go ahead.

Right?

Yeah.

they came up are sometimes walking contradictions of what they want us to believe. Um, and then the push back I often will receive because of my skin color is what you just said. Hey, well, you're just selling out for the white man. You know, you're you're doing his bidding and all this. I'm like, don't you guys want to be successful? Don't you like why do you want to waste so much energy being negative? Like, who does that? Like, doesn't that drain you over time, you know?

>> Unbelievable.

>> Yeah.

>> I mean, I look at you. I look at I don't know if you know him, Officer Tatum.

>> Yes. Exactly. I mean, look at the heights this guy's reached. Why isn't he sitting crying all day that the cops are about to pull him over and kill everybody and lynch the black? By the way, I've been told in in moving to from Montreal to Mississippi, all my super liberal progressive Canadians can't fathom why number one, I would move to the mean, despicable United States, especially under Hitlerian Donald Trump, and especially to Mississippi where as we're speaking, they're all going out into the streets looking for black people and Jews to lynch. So imagine that the same people who from this side of their mouth because they're progressive argue that you shouldn't stereotype people and from this side of the mouth they are the ones who promulgate the worst stereotypes. I said guess what? I've never felt more welcome than in Oxford, Mississippi. I even know that the sheriff in Mississippi with his deputies are all fans of my work and would protect me. So, I'm a lot more worried about Jew haters killing me in Montreal than killing me in Mississippi. But to them, no. Everybody in Mississippi is a toothless hick who sleeps with his uh sister who's a member of the KKK clan. It's unbelievable.

>> Yeah, totally. Uh two things. One is um if Donald Trump was Hitler, that means everything he wants to do would have been done by now. I I would assume, which is it's so interesting they they try to use this stuff. Uh but secondly, what brought you to the University of Mississippi? Um yeah, like what what led you there?

>> Yeah, that's a that's a great question. So I'll answer it first in the in the actual literal mechanics of how it happened, but then the sort of the broader answer. You know, I I've got, you know, a very big following on social media and so on. And so, it's very easy for me to post something and then just leave and never look. But just through the magic of life, I had I had been, you know, venting about something that's pissing me off in Canada or whatever it was. And then someone tweets as a reply, and I just happened to have been there to see the the reply. He goes, "Well, we'd love to have you at Old Miss." And so I could have easily just ignored this and just moved on, right? I so I wrote by I said, 'Well, send me an email. So the next day or maybe two days later, I receive an email. Uh, dear Professor Sad, uh, I'm the one who wrote to you. Do you would you give me permission to connect you with a director of a center at Old Miss. I think he'd be delighted to have a chat with you. I said, "Yeah, let's do it." Couple of days later, I sit down for a one-hour Zoom meeting with the director of the Declaration of Independence, Center for the Study of American Freedom, at the end of which he said, "We'd love to invite you down to visit Mississippi, and hopefully we can convince you to to join our team." And so, at first, my wife is like, "What the hell? Old Miss, you've never mentioned what is Old Miss?" And then after I went down there and saw I mean really the magic in this place I said okay I think this is where we need to be. So that's kind of the mechanics of how it happened but why I was convinced to go there. Number one it's the declaration of independence center for the study of American freedom. Now, I may not be American by by papers, but I internalized and embody all of the values of the American spirit, right? Which shows you that being American is not just a piece of paper. It's an it's an ethos. It's a mindset. Entrepreneurship, meritocracy, personal agency, and so on. And so for me to suddenly now find myself at a university where I don't have to worry about who's going to backstab me in the back, who's going to put arsenic in my coffee, we're all going to be on the same team. We're ideologically aligned. Just seemed like such a breath of fresh air. So it was a no-brainer for me to go down there.

>> Wow. Could you explain to us what is the work that you're doing within um this center? Right. um tell us what's actually happening like what what is your main thing there?

>> So I will be teaching one course a year probably revolving around one or more of my books because uh parasitic ideas are contrary to American freedom. Suicidal empathy is contrary to the defining foundational principles of American freedom. So, I will be using the the the books that I've written to, you know, hopefully train a smart generation of students about what it means to actually internalize American liberties and American freedoms. But more generally, it's to also, you know, elevate the intellectual environment of the place because once you've built, you know, I've been fortunate enough to to build a, you know, a big platform that allows me to have the attention of very interesting and very powerful people. Well, I'd like to now introduce those people to the center, right? And so to to and the last university that I was at last year, I was a visiting professor and global ambassador at a Michigan university. Part of my title was global ambassador. Well, what does that mean? It means that every time I go on a show and you mention the center, I've just gotten earned media equivalents, right? In other words, how much would it have cost for that university or that center to advertise to be on the Joe Rogan show or to be on Jesse Waters? And so part of my responsibilities will also be to expand the visibility of the center and to also replicate what we're doing at the center at other universities. So for example, we have a minor in as part of your undergrad, you can get a minor in freedom studies, which is part political science courses, part economics courses, right? is economic freedom that you would typically have like the Austrian school of economics is rooted in lefair economics little government intervention uh history classes philosophy classes all of which are organized around the guiding principles of American freedom and so we would like to eventually you know export that blueprint to other universities interestingly many of these centers that are sprouting are all happening happening in the American South. So, in my case, it's at Old Miss. University of uh Tennessee at Knoxville has a center. University of Florida has the Hamilton Center. And so, there might be different reasons why there's something uniquely happening in the South. Maybe they're more wedded to these liberties because at this point it might make more sense if you've got a college age kid to send them to Old Miss than to send them to the Ivy Leagues where they're going to learn free free Palestine and women can have penises and the rest of it.

>> Yeah, I I'm totally with you. Is there any chance one's going to be in Texas?

>> That's right.

>> Well, what what that's where is it? Do you do you mind if I ask where you are in Texas?

>> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Austin.

>> You're okay. Well, one of the competing schools that was trying to hire me when Miss was trying to hire me was University of Austin, the the new university that started a couple years ago. Unfortunately, it didn't work out. Let's see if they're able to to do big things. Uh but yes, I wouldn't uh I I wouldn't uh put it be beyond the the the possibility that Austin will become hopefully a hot bed of liberty.

>> Yeah, exactly. I I hope so too. Um let me get to a couple of my final question. So because of your your education level, um you've seen some clips from Charlie Kirk. he'd gone to the universities and he would explain why his perception of part of the education system and I'm kind of speaking for him but you know um is a scam. Now I don't believe all of it is but do you do you find that that um the education system in America is really doing a disservice financially, economically, mentally uh to the younger generation? Um, and what is your advice to younger people?

>> So, the answer is yes and no.

>> Uh, we're not going to eradicate all universities and start a fresh. I mean, it's it's nice that University of Austin is doing its thing and it's starting from fresh and it's getting accreditation and that's wonderful. But you're not going to be able to solve the problem by metaphorically nukebombing all 4,000 colleges and universities. So that's not going to happen. Rather, what we need to do is take out the the cancerous parasitic ideas that have been allowed to flourish. Now, how do you do that? The foundational mission of a university is the pursuit of truth and intellectual enrichment. That should be the mission. It's not a place for activism. It's not a place for uh spreading your favorite ideological position. So fields like sociology and anthropology and all those other disciplines, it's not that they are less scientific epistemologically speaking. It's that they've become less scientific because they have abdicated their pursuit of science within sociology and psychology, anthropology for what they view as greater objective, social justice, activism and so on. No, your job as an intellectual is to train future minds and create new knowledge. That's it. There's somebody else who can be a lobbyist, a politician, an activist. Don't mix those two. So, I'm hardly one who says that you should only send your kids to study, you know, medicine or neuroscience or mathematics. You can get huge intellectual enrichment studying great literature, but it has to be wedded to reason. It can't be let's study Shakespeare through a queer lens. Let's study Shakespeare through a white supremacist lens. Let's study Shakespeare through a Marxist lens. Because then again, it's your activism, your ideological bent that's driving your mission. So if we can return the university to its central mission which is an epistemology of truth rather than an epistemology of care then we will have redressed the ship.

>> Wow. Um I guess the the follow-up question would be then then how how do like how do we get that to happen then? because I understand the southern states, as you pointed out, are leaning into what you're talking about, but I I and forgive me if I'm a little pessimistic here. Um what about the rest of the country? Yeah. I mean, this is why when people ask me, hey, do you think that with Donald Trump's second term will eradicate all of the wokeism? And my answer is an emphatic no. Right? He serves as a doors stop, right? I mean, it it's helpful that he came to power rather than someone who would have doubled and tripled down on the lunacy, but it's a temporary doors stop, right? What you need to do is vanquish and exterminate those parasitic ideas. Now, here is the slightly pessimistic to to go with your pessimism. It took 50 to 100 years for these parasitic ideas to be spawned and then to flourish on university campuses. Some so for example postmodernism started in you know late you know mid60s. Uh cultural relativism who are you to judge other cultures racist that started about a hundred years ago. So, I'm I'm hopeful that it won't take 50 to 100 years to vanquish all those bad ideas, but it's not going to happen overnight because one politician came in and cleaned house. So, we have to be disciplined. We have to all stand up. The last chapter of the parasitic mind, I have a call to action. And probably the one that people most remember is the following. I implore people to activate your inner honey badger. And the reason why I use that expression and that animal is because your viewers may or may not know that the honeybger has been ranked as the most ferocious and fiercest animal in the animal kingdom of all animals. And that's saying a lot. There are a lot of ferocious animals. Why? It's the size of a small dog, but yet it walks like it's 30 feet tall. It walks like don't mess with me. Now when I ask people to activate their inner honey badger, I'm not saying be violent, but I'm saying don't sit idally while nonsense is being promulgated by your school superintendent, by your teacher, by your friend at the pub. You could challenge them politely. In other words, use every opportunity within your sphere of influence to contribute to the battle of ideas. The problem, as you undoubtedly know, is that most people are bathing in a pool of cowardice, right? Everybody has a reason why it shouldn't be them that puts their neck on the chopping blocks because because, you know, I have a job. I can't lose it. Because my kid needs a the prom dress. I can't be fired from my job. So, you always have an excuse for why it shouldn't be you who speaks. But guess what? I have to go to all sorts of events with tons of police to to to protect me because we live in a crazy world where a professor that talks about freedom of speech needs to be protected by police. Well, why is it that I have to bear the burden of that responsibility, but you could sit quietly in your house, never taking any risk? And by the way, you will be the one who sends me the following email. I don't mean literally you, but

>> yeah,

>> but general you.

>> Dear Professor Sad, a bunch of really nice compliments. And guess what the closing line is? If you decide to read this letter on your show, please don't mention my name. So then I write back to them and say, "Dear Mr. So ando, thank you for the very kind words. Don't you think that the last sentence in your email is precisely why we are in this problem?" And usually oftentimes they'll write back to me and say, "Oh my god, you're so right. I'm such a coward." So don't be a coward. Speak out. And if we all do it in unison, we'll solve the problem by next Tuesday.

>> I love that. Final question for you. Speaking of parasitic ideas,

>> social media, I think, have been it has been flooded with them left and right. um the attitude online in regards to Israel, in regards to Jews, in regards to uh even what happened with Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA and the pre I mean, we can go on and on and on and it it seems like it's just getting so toxic and noisy. My question for you here, doctor, is how do people cut through the noise and find the truth of what's out there when that's all they keep getting exposed to? Where do they go?

>> Wow, that's a great question. Uh, first make sure that you are omnivorous in the type of places where you go to collect your information, right? So what I mean by omnivorous right is you is you are sampling from many different places rather than one side of the echo chamber that's really closed in because then that renders you more likely to see a lopsided view of the world. So I make it a habit despite the fact that as a general thing if I'm watching TV to relax I'm more likely to turn to Fox. I said, "No, no. I want to go and check out what CNN is saying. I want to go check out what NBC is saying because I want to get a set because understanding their viewpoints causes me to be better armed in debating some of their positions, right? If if I only speak to people who fully agree with me, how could I develop my argumentation strategies?" So I would simply say have at the very least the courage to be omnivorous in how you sample your information and that will hopefully go to a long way towards making sure that you are not stuck in a biased echo chamber.

>> Thank thank you for that. Uh Dr. God sad and and I don't like the word sad because of the English language but it has been a privilege to have you here on on the show sir. Thank you so much for your work and I wish you all the best with the center at Old Miss and your book.

>> You are delightful. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Absolutely.

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Dr. Gad Saad: Destroying Western Civilization

Transcription