What Drives Protest Culture? - City Journal Audio

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[00:09]
A
Hello and welcome to another episode of the City Journal podcast. My name is Ralph Manual. I will be your host for the day, and I am joined by my brilliant and well fit Manhattan Institute colleagues, Tao forkang and Daniel DiMartino. Welcome to the show, boys.
[00:25]
B
Thanks for having us.
[00:26]
C
First time in person for me.
[00:27]
A
Oh, wow, I didn't know that.
[00:29]
B
Yeah, well, it's nice.
[00:30]
A
Nice to, you know, not see you guys in two dimensions and be in the same room. So weekend had some pretty interesting news. We had the no Kings protest, the what people are calling the largest protest in modern history, which, you know, interesting, I guess, but it got me thinking just about, you know, protest culture and, you know, what the kind of grievances were. And I'm just looking at, you know, photos and coverage and, you know, the signs and some of the interviews, and it's like, like, it seems like the main issues that people were upset about were the war in Gaza, the ice, immigration raids, the lawfare allegations. I'm thinking here of the cases against James Comey and Letitia James and John Bolton. Of course, these people were not very concerned with the lawfare against Donald Trump and his allies. It seemed like trans activism was one of the big kind of issues and, you know, the use of the National Guard being deployed to cities to keep order. And it just got me thinking because one of the things that a lot of people have been talking about with this protest, so you didn't see a ton of young people there. It seemed like the median age was like, AARP membership eligible. And it just made me, you know, sort of think back about, you know, when I was in, you know, that peak protest age range. I was never a protest guy. I am sad to say that I've never been to a single protest, but a lot of people in my circles back when I was in college were very into that. And I just wanted to start by asking you guys, I mean, how would you have reacted to some of these things, say, 10, 15 years ago when you were young bucks?
[02:08]
B
Well, the underlying political scandals here, such as they are, I mean, scandal might be too strong a word. Just events, things going on in the world. An election that doesn't go your way. I never thought of that as a particularly great injustice. You know, that that seemed. Everything seemed to be like within the realm of. Of normal politics. I think when I was in college and a lot of my friends were out protesting a lot, maybe you had a similar experience, I would think, you know, am I living through a civil rights revolution now? Am I not joining in with the Martin Luther King juniors of my era, no, there's no great injustice. They're just, you know, there are things I'm not so happy about. And when it comes to regular politics, you move the ball through arguments and persuasion. And protest has always seemed like a kind of a shortcut in the best of times. Show the world our strength in numbers. How many of us there are. When you don't have access to the democratic process like the civil rights protesters did, not because of Jim Crow. That's when you have to show your majoritarian status by other means. But otherwise, it just. It never really appealed to me.
[03:33]
C
Have you been to a protest?
[03:35]
B
I went to. I wrote about this a little bit, actually. I went to a demonstration shortly after October 7th. I was living in Washington, D.C. and there was kind of a pro Israel rally where the politicians got up and said their nice things and the people waved their American flags and their Israeli flags. And I was like, okay. You know, I kind of. I basically agree with you on the substance of all of this, but I still do not understand why we're doing this. I don't get it. It doesn't speak to me. And that's the. I think the only protest I've ever been to.
[04:06]
C
I think it's good that you went in part because it's a counter protest, because there were protests in favor of Hamas. So you want to kind of show numbers that the whole country. You don't want to create the perception that the other view is a majoritarian view. I have been to many protests when I was a teenager because I lived in Venezuela, of course, so it's like no access to the democratic process. So we, of course, protest against the regime. So I absolutely agree. In the US Though, I think the closest I've been to protest is like, prayers in front of abortion clinics. That's like my. You get arrested for that? No, it's always in Indiana. It was in the uk, thank God. It was in Indiana and in Kentucky, but especially in Indiana, Mike Pence was governor, so, you know, religious freedom. Thank God.
[04:49]
A
When I was in college, a lot of my friends were protesting. It seemed like every other week there was a new cause. I mean, I remember one of my first days on campus at Baruch College here in the City University of New York, and a bunch of the, you know, other Latino kids that I hung out with were protesting in the main quad. And the beef was that they were insisting that the administration change the word Hispanic throughout all of the official documents and the websites of the schools and Used the word Latino instead. Oh, and I just remember looking around.
[05:23]
C
Pre Latin.
[05:23]
A
Yeah, this is pre Latinx. I don't think Latinx caught on even with that crap.
[05:28]
C
People took time out of their day to do that.
[05:30]
A
Well, this was exactly. My reaction was like, I don't understand what you guys are upset about.
[05:35]
C
Right.
[05:35]
A
You know, life is really good. We're all in college. Many of you are going to kind of go on to graduate school and enter the economic elite in some form or fashion. What is it that you know that you don't have that you feel this sense of outrage for?
[05:51]
C
It's virtual signaling. It's what Rob Henderson talks about. It is part of the expression, which is why we see it among young people very often. But what I think is different with the no Kings is what you mentioned is old people.
[06:02]
A
Yeah.
[06:04]
C
What's the difference there? Because for them, I doubt it is to gain social points.
[06:09]
B
Well, there are some elements of the no Kings substantive elements of the no Kings protest that I think have some evidentiary quality to them, which is that all of the materials that get passed out are like, we're patriotic, we're constitutional. Wave your American flags. Even if you don't really believe in that stuff so much, that's the image we're looking to project. And I think that that appeals to a kind maybe older, whiter, more boomer type protester. Whereas the younger people who have been rabble rousing in various demonstrations on college campuses and city streets for the last few years especially, they're not interested in that stuff at all. Right. They're outflanking the no Kings people by a good margin.
[06:58]
A
No, I think that's right. I mean, when I think about just protest culture in general, I can never see myself in it. And the thing that I always picked up on was the incongruity between the rage of the people participating and the quality of their lives. Right. I mean, like, life is good. Generally speaking, if you are living in the United States of America, even if you're poor.
[07:20]
C
You're right. Right.
[07:22]
A
I mean, I just think about, like the first time that I went with my family to the Dominican Republic and was actually exposed to real abject poverty and corruption. And. And I, you know, it broke my heart even, you know, my. My earliest memories of that country were, you know, of. Associated with just witnessing that level of abject poverty. Maybe that's why I kind of appreciated where I was able to live and grow up so much.
[07:46]
B
But.
[07:46]
A
Yeah, I mean, there's just such an incongruity Which I think is kind of at the root of why I always felt like an outsider in my social circles. Right? I mean, like, born in New York City, raised in Brooklyn, I should. Child of immigrant parents. I should be a lefty. And I.
[08:06]
C
Well, no, that's the thing. The incongruity is the lefties being the children of immigrants or being people who are doing well, protests against the country that give them that opportunity. You should be like, the way you think, should be the normal way.
[08:19]
A
But it wasn't. It wasn't in my social circles. Right. And it just gets me thinking, like, I mean, maybe there's something strange about me. All right? And maybe there's something strange about you guys. Right? Cause I feel like all of us have kind of ended up going down this path. I mean, here we are, you know, working for the Manhattan Institute, you know, writing about conservative ideas in a city where we are very much in the minority. Right. And so, you know, for me, it was just there were a couple of issues that really pushed me outside of that, you know, kind of mainstream culture. But, you know, Tal, I remember your freshman year at Princeton, not because we knew each other back then, but because you actually made News as an 18 year old. And I just. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about, like, how you ended up on this track.
[09:10]
B
Yeah, well, the piece that you're alluding to was something I wrote for the conservative magazine at Princeton when I was a freshman.
[09:18]
A
What was the title again?
[09:19]
B
I didn't come up with the title. So let's.
[09:23]
C
But did you like it?
[09:24]
B
Did I like it? It worked. It had a viral effect. Why I'll never apologize for my white male privilege. When I did this, the language of apology was actually in the body of piece. Like, I actually did write about, like, I won't apologize. I meant it in, like, the. The Socratic sense of. Like, I don't need to explain why I have what I have. I don't owe anyone an explanation for.
[09:50]
C
Like, Heather McDonald got into your mind and possessed the writing.
[09:55]
B
I mean, she's on my. I was like reading Heather MacDonald at the time. Of course, you know, I sometimes have to pinch myself that we. We get to call her colleague.
[10:04]
C
Yes.
[10:04]
B
But, yeah, I wrote a piece about the notion of privilege, which we can get into. How much the term has shifted in its meaning and its implications over the last decade plus. But that was a buzzword at the time. People talking about white privilege, male privilege, how you're, you know, you're born on third base. If you have Certain identity markers. And I said, look, what's beneath the surface here. I'm not a child of immigrants, but I am a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, and my grandparents came here with absolutely nothing and worked and, you know, the same boring, classic immigrant formula. You know, get an education, work hard, follow the rules, try to be a good person, help others, and what goes around will come around. And sent my dad to college and business school, and he was able to move out to the suburbs and raise a family. And we've just been on an upward trajectory ever since. And I think probably what distinguished me from my classmates who felt resentment towards this notion that some people had gotten ahead thanks in large part to people other than themselves, thanks to the sacrifices of others, is that I view that as something to be grateful for. Sure, right. Like, sure. I mean, life is certainly not perfectly fair, and there's a large measure of luck involved in making it here and anywhere. But I just look back at all those people who sacrificed for me and I say thank you. I'm so glad you put me first, even though you did not even. You didn't know me. I was barely a concept. I think a lot of.
[11:57]
C
How did those stories of your grandparents. Did you get to talk to them a lot about the Holocaust and all that?
[12:03]
B
No, my grandfather died about 13 years before I was born, and my grandmother died when I was 4.
[12:12]
C
Oh, I see.
[12:13]
B
So I really have very. I've no memories of my grandfather. Very few of my grandmother. My grandmother did write her story down in a kind of prose that's striking and just how matter of fact it is when she talks about her experience. No, but it was certainly transmitted through my parents and through the community to which I belonged. Right. You would hear Holocaust survivors speak on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and sometimes you just find yourself at dinner with my friend's grandparents, and I just think about what a blessing it is that I'm here in America. My life is so easy. We have it so good. That's not to say it's perfect, of course, but fundamentally, when I wake up every morning, the first word out of my mouth is thank you.
[12:59]
A
Thank you. Right. I had a very similar experience. I mean, the sort of concept of white privilege was very pronounced when I was in college as well. And, you know, I rejected it for, you know, a couple of reasons. One of them was just I felt automatically like it was requiring me to admit some kind of inferiority, which I just could not abide by. Maybe I'm just way too full of myself, but the idea that I Needed special assistance was just anathema to me. I could not. I could not get behind it. And so, you know, from a very, very early age, I kind of myself pushing back on the sort of dominant narratives about race. And, you know, one of the issues where that narrative was most pronounced more than, you know, likely any other issue, was the issue of policing. And that was actually sort of the start of my path here. I actually remember the moment was my first year of sociology class. We had a guest speaker. We would have a guest speaker once a week. We had two sessions a week, and we. They would talk for half an hour, and then we would have a class discussion that, you know, related the talk to the reading. And one of the guest speakers was a guy who had just gotten out of prison, and he came and he gave basically a diatribe against the NYPD and the criminal justice system and how it was racist. And, you know, at the time, you know, when I was in high school, which was not long before I heard this talk, I hung out with a lot of kids who ended up going to jail, going to prison. So that world was somewhat familiar to me. And I just remember looking around at my classmates, all of whom were captivated, and nodding their heads, and you could see the anger forming on their face. And I just remember thinking, like, this guy's full of it, you know, Right. Like, we all agree.
[14:42]
C
Did you ask him why he went to prison?
[14:44]
A
No, we didn't get to ask the speaker any questions.
[14:46]
C
It seems like the most important question.
[14:48]
A
Is why he went to prison for dealing crack. And his. Most of his ire was aimed at the Rockefeller drug laws, which are the mandatory minimums.
[14:58]
C
And how long did he spend in prison?
[14:59]
A
I think he said something like 18 years or something like that. A significant amount of time was the.
[15:04]
B
Message fundamentally, like, this could easily be you. It's just like, one mistake, one slip.
[15:09]
C
You become a professional crack dealer. Yeah, clearly you just make that mistake.
[15:13]
A
A lot of crap. You don't get 18 years for, you know, a couple of rocks, right? I mean, so this guy was obviously involved in a significant operation. But, no, the basic, you know, thing was like, well, you know, opportunities were denied to me, and I was clearly smart, and had other doors been open, I could have gone down this road. And I just remember thinking, nonsense, right? Every criminal that I knew in my life had made a choice, a very conscious choice to do that. And that was kind of the start. But, you know, the thing that really kind of set me off down this track was that at the time I didn't have the vocabulary with which to push back on any of these ideas. I know it's strange for some of the people listening to, but I was not a nerd most of my life. I was a dumb jock, did not study a lot. This was actually the issue that sent me down an intellectual rabbit hole. That was how I discovered the work of the Manhattan Institute and of Heather McDonald and started subscribing to City Journal and you. That was kind of the path. I had some kind of conservative inklings before that, but not a ton. And sometimes I read some of these news stories that are coming out and just think about how would I have reacted back then. It's just a nice reminder that for as long as I can remember, I've kind of been going against the grain and thankfully have been comfortable with it. But I was actually thinking of you, Daniel, because there was another new story from last week, which was the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize, which went to. I want to make sure I get her name right. Maria Corina Machado, who is an activist in Venezuela pushing back on the regime there. And you mentioned being part of protests pushing back on the regime when you were a kid. And I'm just interested in your kind of.
[16:57]
C
I met Maria Carina when I was 17 year olds. Yeah, yeah, I know her. Mara Carina is a great woman. The reason I was attracted to her ideas was that she was the only person, even within the opposition, who was openly very pro free market and antisocialist. And I was always. Since, you know, I was kind of like the opposite of like what you were saying. I was a nerd. And, you know, yeah, it's okay.
[17:23]
B
It's no shame.
[17:24]
C
Yeah, you know, I did moral United Nations.
[17:26]
A
I was a nerd. I screwed up.
[17:27]
C
I screwed up. No, you became a nerd eventually.
[17:30]
A
That's fine. I found my way.
[17:32]
C
So I was reading Milton Friedman since I was 12. I was watching Ronald Reagan videos. You know, I was this kid in Venezuela who thought, you know, these people are gonna starve to death because of socialism, so let's get the hell out. And I was right. And people did get the heck out. So I met Mario Corina. She was back then not as popular as she is now. In fact, the rest of the opposition really disliked her because she was the only one who was not a lefty. And now, obviously she was redeemed as being right because everybody else turned out to be corrupt and all these other things. And so she's doing a great, great work in Venezuela. And I really hope that the regime falls. I would encourage the audience to read my article that just got published today, by the way, on Acton, with Acton. I think it's liberty, Religion of liberty, which is specifically about this Nobel Prize. I call it the Nobel Prize goes against Socialism. Like, when did you ever hear of a Nobel Peace Prize going to somebody who is opposed to a socialist regime? It's usually like, like lefty cosmopolitan lefties who like did some humanitarian work or nothing at all.
[18:45]
A
Right? No, no, I think that's interesting. In fact, actually, if I, if I had to characterize your. Your come up with a headline, it would be like the actual no Kings.
[18:57]
C
Did you see that? The no Kings. The. The democrats abroad renamed it no Tyrants. I saw because they didn't want to offend the monarchs. You know, in the real country.
[19:07]
B
Number of kings.
[19:09]
A
Exactly, exactly.
[19:10]
C
Some king, others cannot essentially what their argument is. But you know, I always thought about economics and I was always prefer free markets. And then I started thinking about social issues when I came to America, you know, you guys both mentioned like the race issue and privilege being important for you. That was not important for me until I came to the US and one of the first things they tried to make us do in student orientation was a walk of privilege.
[19:35]
A
When did you come to the US 2016.
[19:36]
C
I was 17 years old. I finished high school in Venezuela.
[19:39]
A
Got it.
[19:40]
C
And so we did. I was 17. And they're like, now, if you are a man, take a step ahead. If you're a woman, take a step back. And I'm like, wait, what is going on here? And I refuse to participate.
[19:51]
A
Good for you.
[19:53]
C
And so that was my first exposition to those ideas. And I was already predisposed against it. I'm like, I already came to America. What are people talking about? People don't have less opportunities because of their race or their sexual. Yeah, people grow up with different opportunities. Some people are rich, some people are poor. That's the reality of life. Welcome to humanity, to earth.
[20:13]
A
Right. It reminds me of a great line that Thomas Sowell wrote, and I'm going to butcher it. But inequality is the rule, not the exception. We tend to talk about inequality as if it's some corruption of the proper order. But the natural order actually is inequality. As he says, we're all born naked and poor and through the use of our own faculties are able to build wealth and survive and join in community. And, you know, we should be seeking to figure out and mimic the behaviors that create wealth as opposed to trying to redistribute the wealth that's already been created. That always resonated with me as a.
[20:55]
B
Kid when I took flack for the writing that I put out in.
[20:59]
A
Yeah. What was that response?
[21:00]
B
Like, it was crazy. This was in 2014. This was the spring.
[21:07]
C
Okay, you're getting to peak woke.
[21:10]
B
Yeah. I think this was right at its initial height.
[21:15]
C
Right. There was a second point, it kept going up.
[21:18]
B
But yeah, no, people were really not examining this stuff closely. There was just a bit of a mob mentality sweeping campuses and privilege. I think it's kind of faded as a concept with good reason. But it was popular then. And people would say things like, oh, you, you know, you're just lording the fact that your family made it over others and like, you're so blind to the ways in which you were assisted and, you know, that stuff isn't available to others. And the way I looked at it was like, we, our natural condition, forget Jewish history and all of human history is to be like poor and downtrodden and life is generally terrible, but like, we crack the code. It's this combination of the rule of law and capitalism and like good bourgeois behaviors. I'm not trying to lord anything over anyone. I want to share this gift with you.
[22:13]
C
That's right.
[22:14]
B
We did it. And you can do it too. I truly believe you can do it too. So there's some people who are fatalists, who are like, Ralph is Dominican. They'll just never have access to that. Right. That is not my approach. And I think, I think statistically this is borne out that Hispanics, other minorities.
[22:32]
C
I mean, look at Miami. Miami is the most foreign born city in America. Majority foreign born, mostly Cuban.
[22:37]
A
Incredible.
[22:38]
C
I mean, what do you think Cuba would look like if it had the system of government of Florida? It would look like, honestly, like Miami.
[22:43]
B
Yeah.
[22:44]
C
Like there's really no. No different.
[22:46]
A
No, you. You said something just now that, that actually made me think about the no Kings protests and some of the coverage, which was that, you know, a lot of the people who were pushing back on you back then clearly hadn't fully thought things through. And I don't know if you guys have been watching some interview footage from people who have been on the ground at the no Kings protest over the weekend, just asking pretty basic questions about some of the concepts that people saw. One clip, you know, it was like one woman was asked about, you know, her sign about Citizens United, about overturning Citizens United. She couldn't say a single thing about the Citizens United king. I mean, just folded, you know, immediately and it just. It gave me a little sense of relief that, like, actually a lot of this is just pure emotion. No one's really, actually thought a lot of this stuff through.
[23:29]
C
Okay, you have to hear this one. This one is. Is really funny. Nick Shirley, this, like, journalist, independent young kid. He interviews this couple. I think they were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they had a sign about immigrants. Immigrants built America. And then he goes and asks the guy in front of his girl, do you think illegal immigrants should be deported?
[23:49]
A
Oh, I saw that.
[23:49]
B
He said yes.
[23:50]
C
And then he says yes. And then she's like, what? And then he's like, I think I broke up a relationship. He, like, had no idea. He had a conversation, someone's answer, like, yes, actually, if they cross the border illegally, we should return them. And she was outraged, like, no, nobody's illegal.
[24:06]
A
She was white and he wasn't.
[24:07]
B
Right?
[24:08]
A
That was like. That was the icing on the cake.
[24:09]
C
I think he was like, South Asian and then she was white.
[24:12]
A
This is the icing on the cake. Did not. Like, I was like, yeah, obviously. No, no, I mean, it does. It does give me a little bit of a sense of relief, right? That, like, actually there are a lot of people who claim to be activists and who pose as activists, but haven't actually thought a lot of it through. Now, the sad part is that given the median age at the no Kings rally, clearly they're never going to get it. And that's just one of the downsides of living in a society that's structured the way that ours is. But I still wouldn't change it for the world.
[24:49]
B
I'd be more concerned about, again, the dog that didn't bark at these rallies. The people who we know harbor similar tastes and attitudes, but. But we're not there.
[25:01]
C
Well, also, like, we didn't even notice there were mass protests. I didn't notice.
[25:05]
A
People live on Long island now, so it was nice and quiet.
[25:08]
C
Well, I didn't notice. And I thought, you know, people have a right, you know, if they're not bothering others, let them do their thing. I mean, if they're happy saying no Kings and whatever, what do we make.
[25:17]
B
Of the seemingly concerted media effort to make this seem like some kind of. Of epochal event, right? Like generational protest.
[25:30]
A
Well, this is the second time it's happened, right? I mean, so I don't know. Did the first one really change the world?
[25:35]
B
No, I don't think so. Getting elected, I think the best way to understand this is, you know, voter mobilization, maybe donor mobilization. Just omni cause, well, it'll make for.
[25:47]
A
Some great photos that they can repurpose in, you know, campaign mailers and, you know, social media content. But outside of that, I don't really see.
[25:57]
B
I just don't know why anyone should care. This, this is not bringing to the forefront a political position or a package of political positions that we didn't know existed before.
[26:07]
C
Well, and it's also the, it's the anti Trump. It's like instead of being for something, the only thing they have been able to do since Trump got nominated is stop Trump. So no kings. It's really about no Trump for sure.
[26:21]
A
Well, what's also like, strange to me is that one of the chief complaints is this idea that Trump has been sort of consolidating executive power when the left actually, if you know anything about the history of the law, the left is actually very famous for doing exactly that. I mean, just thinking about like the FDR court, which absolutely expanded the authority of the executive through everything from allowing more delegation by Congress to the executive to creating out of whole cloth these ideas of judicial deference to executive interpretations of statutes, overreading the Constitution to create all kinds of regulatory authority that gets exercised almost exclusively by the executive branch.
[27:04]
C
But not Trump is able to use. Right.
[27:07]
A
But rather than abusing it, actually, I mean, his solicitor generals have pushed back on things like Chevron deference, for example, which for the people who know this, is a legal concept where the court have traditionally deferred to executive agency interpretations of congressional statutes that grant them rulemaking authority, even when the court's job is to actually do the work of interpreting the statute. Right. That's why the judicial branch exists. And yet this is something that's been defended by the left for years.
[27:40]
C
I'll say if something great could come out of the Trump presidency, it's the left saying, actually we need to limit presidential and executive authority.
[27:48]
A
Do you think they'll do that?
[27:49]
C
Well, I don't know if you saw Elisa Slotkin, the Michigan, she's now coming out in favor of a constitutional amendment to limit pardon power to a number of people or even eliminate it. I think that's good. Joe Biden pardoned thousands of people and mass pardons. It wasn't as it was intended to be, which is, I know this specific person and I want to give clemency or pardon to this specific person. Everybody who committed this crime. You're pardoned.
[28:14]
B
Right. Or be it from the Manhattan Institute to oppose a policy that would keep more people incarcerated.
[28:20]
C
Of course I wanted to keep Murray, I mean, these are people who are guilty of their crimes.
[28:26]
B
Right.
[28:26]
C
We're not talking about unjust incarceration generation.
[28:30]
B
I'm not sure that's the part of executive power that I would target first.
[28:35]
C
It's not, but I think it's an indication. And I think they should also go ahead and say, hey, we want to limit the presidential power in regulation. We want to limit the presidential power in all these things. Let's limit spending. Let's do a constitutional amendment.
[28:49]
A
I actually like the idea of the pardon.
[28:52]
C
Unlimited pardon.
[28:53]
A
Yeah.
[28:53]
B
Yeah.
[28:53]
C
Okay.
[28:54]
A
And the main reason for that is that, you know, there. It is not unlikely that there will be a regime one day that abuses its authority and imprisons its political opponents. Right. We already saw hints of that with the lawfare engaged in against Donald Trump and his inner circle. I think the President should be able to sort of retain that power. Right. Because to the extent that there's a popular political movement that pushes back on an abusive regime, we're basically adopting a rule that doesn't allow us to correct the harms done by that regime.
[29:29]
C
Well, at least not by the President. It could be by Congress, but.
[29:32]
A
Yeah, yeah, but Congress wouldn't be able to retroactively pardon everyone.
[29:37]
C
They could passing a law.
[29:39]
A
Yeah, maybe.
[29:40]
C
I mean, that was the First Step act, essentially.
[29:42]
A
Well, yeah, but the First Step act kind of retroactively made people eligible for judicial review.
[29:48]
C
But, I mean, they could just pass a law releasing.
[29:50]
A
Sure, yeah. I guess they'd have to do it by name, but I don't see that happening.
[29:55]
C
Right.
[29:55]
B
Let's see when we get a bipartisan consensus on rolling back the substantive regulatory authority of the Alphabet soup agencies. Yeah.
[30:04]
C
I mean, the RAIN Act. I like the RAIN Act.
[30:06]
A
The RAIN act is great.
[30:07]
C
Yeah. To limit regulatory authority of important regulations. I mean, this is the kind of thing that could actually limit presidential authority.
[30:14]
A
Well, people don't actually know is when I first started at the Manhattan Institute, I came on as a legal policy person doing criminal justice reform work. Now, it was in the regulatory space. And, you know, my main issue was regulatory over criminalization. And what people don't know is that we actually have no idea how many criminal laws exist in America. I try to tell people this, like, they don't believe me. The ABA in the early 90s, actually, the American Bar association, actually tried to count how many crimes are on the books in the United States. They spent like a million dollars and spent a year on this project, only to scrap it because they actually could not keep up with the number of new crimes being created. And then the worst part about it is, is that the vast majority of the new crimes being created are not voted on by Congress.
[31:02]
C
Of course this blows the states.
[31:04]
A
Everyone has this sort of, I'm just a bill, you know, idea of how the federal government is supposed to work.
[31:09]
B
Right.
[31:09]
A
I'm dating myself now. But like the reality is, is that the way most crimes are created is that Congress will pass a broad bill granting some regulatory agencies, you know, authority. And then there'll be like a regulatory catch all provision where they say any violation of any rule promulgated pursuant to this act is going to be punishable as a misdemeanor or as a felony. And then the Alphabet soup agency in question starts making rules, not realizing that every single rule that they make is technically a criminal offense if it's violated. And that should change. Right. We shouldn't live in a country. You want to talk about no kings how we live in a country in which 98%, give or take of the criminal law at the federal level.
[31:49]
B
Right.
[31:49]
A
Like is not even voted on by Congress. That shouldn't be the case. We live in a country in which we don't even know how many criminal laws are on the books.
[31:57]
C
We want to put people in prison for murder, for death, for rape, for all the actual crimes.
[32:02]
B
Catching the wrong kind of fish.
[32:04]
A
That's right, exactly.
[32:05]
C
Not for that or it wasn't for.
[32:07]
A
Catching the wrong kind of fish. It was for throwing it back in the. There's a fate. There's a Supreme Court case where is based on a guy who was fishing and his boat was inspected by was the Coast Guard or one of these agencies that was looking at, you know, the catch and they suspected that some of the fish that he caught were undersized, which is illegal, and he could get fined. So they made him go back to shore to, you know, to weigh the fish and measure the fish. And so at the allegation is that on the way back he dumped some of the fish back into the ocean and they charged him with a crime under, get this, the Sarbanes Oxley act, which was passed in the wake of the Enron scandal to punish like the shredding of documentary evidence. And they claim that he had to. First off, I don't know.
[33:01]
C
So they should have fined him. Like that should not be something where people gonna. Yeah.
[33:06]
A
Of a felony.
[33:07]
C
Wow. And.
[33:09]
A
And so the Supreme Court eventually overturned his conviction on somewhat dubious ground. Yeah, well, I actually thought they got the textual analysis wrong because I would have. I would have decided the case on the word destroy. Like, he didn't destroy the fish. He put them back in their home.
[33:27]
C
That's clever. That's kind of clever way to say that.
[33:29]
A
I don't, you know, I don't. I don't think that was, you know, I understand he didn't destroy the fish.
[33:34]
C
But he didn't destroy the evidence.
[33:35]
A
Well, he didn't destroy the evidence. The evidence exists as far as he.
[33:38]
C
Got rid of it. Yeah.
[33:40]
A
Which is. Which is slightly different. But.
[33:43]
B
But yeah, I, I.
[33:44]
A
All that to say is that I'm not sure I ever really took these no Kings folks seriously. They seem to have quite a high degree of tolerance.
[33:50]
B
You know, the things I don't like about kings is the arbitrary authoritarian authority and the lack of accountability to the people.
[34:04]
A
Yeah.
[34:05]
B
Regulators and bureaucrats and the federal government. Check both of those in very large proportions also.
[34:12]
C
Wait a minute. I do like some kings. What do you mean? Like, there are some countries for which. Not the United States.
[34:18]
A
Sure.
[34:19]
C
But there are some countries in which the monarchies work. Yeah. And it's actually better for democracy. People forget Spain. Spain, Thailand. Those wouldn't be democratic countries today if they weren't monarchies.
[34:30]
A
Interesting.
[34:32]
C
Like, the king saved the monarchy. The democracy in Spain after Franco in Thailand. I mean, how do you think they remain democratic and all that? It was because of the influence of the monarchy. So, I mean, it's a bad name in general.
[34:47]
A
We're still not gonna have anything outside of the three gentlemen at this table.
[34:50]
C
On the authoritarianism part.
[34:52]
B
Short king.
[34:56]
C
Yeah, exactly. This is like an anti Short King project. But no, the, the authoritarian parties also came from the left during the pandemic. People Forget what the US government, the state governments did to us during 2020. During 2021.
[35:11]
A
Own a business, Shut it down. Right. No due process. Want to go outside? Nope. No due process. Want to be with your family. Nope. Be subject to arrest. I mean, there was this very famous photo of a man coming in from surfing by himself in the ocean, and there are like, three police officers waiting to arrest him.
[35:30]
B
It's like, you know, where were all.
[35:31]
A
The no Kings protesters then? Right. I mean, this is. These were the ideas that were kind of in my head when I was coming up. It was like, I just. I cannot take you all seriously because you don't actually have any real principles here. And like, you know, I think ultimately that's, that's the. Probably the most.
[35:49]
C
By the way, these are the same people who would support doing in America what they're doing in the UK social media. Yeah. Where if you post something that they consider racist in Facebook, the police is going to. We are going to arrest you for a hate crime.
[36:04]
B
Yeah.
[36:04]
A
I watched a video of police in the UK arresting a woman because they alleged that she was praying silently. She was just standing.
[36:13]
C
She admitted it. She admitted it. I think it was good.
[36:15]
A
Admitted that she was praying silently.
[36:18]
C
Yes.
[36:18]
A
In her.
[36:18]
C
Exactly. Yeah.
[36:20]
A
Not only is is it will we criminalize speech, I would have gone to.
[36:24]
C
Prison for that one.
[36:25]
A
We will criminalize thought, literally. Which is, you know, which is crazy. So all that to say is, like, if you guys are out there at the no Kings protest, please, like, have at it, do your little march, whatever, but be consistent.
[36:39]
B
Right.
[36:39]
A
Like, take the time to actually investigate the degree to which your government oversteps its bounds. Understands that it happens on your side, too, and maybe do something about it I respect. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe then it'll land better.
[36:53]
B
So.
[36:53]
A
All right, well, thank you, 2 Kings, for joining me for this great discussion. For those of you out there who are watching, please do, like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, do all the things. Thanks again to our panelists. Thank you to our producer, Isabella Rajai. And until next time, you have been watching the City Journal podcast.
[37:18]
B
It.

Summary7 min read

Podcast Summary: City Journal Audio – “What Drives Protest Culture?”
Host: Ralph Manual
Guests: Tal Forkang, Daniel DiMartino
Date: October 21, 2025

Overview

This episode of City Journal Audio dives deep into "protest culture" in America, using the recent “No Kings” protest—dubbed the largest in modern history—as a launchpad for a lively discussion. The panel explores what motivates participants (and nonparticipants), the generational divide at protests, the disconnect between grievance and actual hardship, and reflects on the U.S. tradition of public demonstration. The conversation weaves personal anecdotes with cultural analysis, shedding light on issues like privilege, protest efficacy, immigration, the expansion of executive power, and partisan narratives—while questioning if today's Americans have truly serious grievances or just performative outrage.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. "No Kings" Protest and Its Grievances

Main Issues Cited: War in Gaza, ICE raids, lawfare against political figures (e.g., Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton—though not Trump/allies), trans activism, National Guard deployments ([00:29]).
Observation: The median protestor age was surprisingly old, with few young people present—a reversal of historical norms ([00:43], [06:01]).
Reflection: The hosts note protest participants often enjoy relatively privileged lives, raising the question: “What is it that you feel this sense of outrage for?” ([05:35]-[07:21]).

2. The Meaning and Efficacy of Protest

Historical Context: Traditionally, protest is potent when the democratic process is inaccessible (e.g., Civil Rights Movement). In modern America, is protest just “a shortcut…to show strength in numbers” rather than effecting real change? ([02:08]-[03:32]).
Counterprotest Example: One host describes attending a pro-Israel rally as a rare exception, seeing it as useful in countering an opposing narrative ([03:34]-[04:48]).

3. Privilege, Identity, and Upward Mobility

Personal Stories:
- Ralph Manual discusses being a child of immigrants in NYC, perplexed by peers' protest motivations ([07:46]-[08:18]).
- Tal Forkang recounts writing the viral piece “Why I'll Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege,” viewing family advancement as something to be grateful for rather than resented ([09:19]-[12:58]).
- Daniel DiMartino shares his experience growing up in Venezuela, where protest was a necessity due to lack of democracy, contrasting it with what he sees as performative protest in America ([04:06], [16:56]-[17:31]).
Changing Meaning of Privilege: The loaded term has shifted, but the discussion emphasizes “the natural order is actually inequality” ([20:13]).

4. Personal Turning Points: Rejecting Dominant Narratives

Ralph’s Experience:
- A formative moment was hearing a guest speaker/former inmate blame the system for his imprisonment. “I just remember thinking: nonsense. Every criminal that I knew…had made a choice.” ([14:42]-[15:12])
- Lacking vocabulary to push back at first, this led Ralph to discover conservative writing and City Journal ([15:12]-[16:56]).
Daniel’s U.S. Arrival:
- His first exposure in American college orientation: the “walk of privilege” exercise. He refused to participate, already skeptical of the narrative ([19:34]-[19:53]).

5. Generational & Cultural Divides

Motivations Differ by Age:
- Younger activists may seek social clout (“virtue signaling”), but at the “No Kings” protest, older participants might be motivated by patriotic branding and constitutional ideals ([06:08]-[06:58]).
Disconnect Between Grievance and Reality:
- The panel agrees life in America, even for the poor, is objectively good compared to many countries. Experiencing real poverty abroad brings American protests into perspective ([07:21]-[08:18]).

6. Media Narratives and Substance of Modern Protests

Media Hype: The media “manufactures” epochal significance for marches ([25:17]); participants are often unable to articulate the issues they protest (“Did you see the interview about Citizens United? She couldn’t say a single thing about the case.” – A, [23:29]).
Activist Consistency: There’s widespread ignorance or contradictory stances among “activists,” and the panel finds this both amusing and concerning ([23:49]-[24:48]).

7. Executive Power & The Real “Kings”

Ironies in Anti-Trump Rhetoric:
- Critics allege Trump is centralizing presidential power, yet the left historically expanded executive authority (e.g., FDR era, regulatory agencies).
- “You want to talk about no kings—how do we live in a country in which 98% of the federal criminal law…is not even voted on by Congress?” – A, [31:48]
The Pardon Power: Should presidential pardon power be limited? Pros and cons debated, with the hosts generally favoring its necessity as a check against abuse ([27:49]-[29:54]).
Regulatory Overreach: Proliferation of criminal laws and arbitrary enforcement—e.g., the fisherman charged under Sarbanes-Oxley—shows the bureaucratic threats to freedom ([33:01]-[33:39]).

8. Pandemic Authoritarianism & Selective Outrage

COVID Restrictions: The panel highlights the lack of protest against state overreach during 2020–2021, terming pandemic rule enforcement as authentically “kingly” abuse ([34:55]-[35:49]).
Social Media Censorship: Contrast U.S. free speech protections with U.K. police arresting individuals for “hate crimes” or even silent prayer ([36:03]-[36:19]).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Protest Motivation & Legitimacy

B ([02:08]): “An election that doesn’t go your way…everything seemed…within the realm of normal politics.”
B ([03:32]): “Protest has always seemed like a shortcut…when you don’t have access to the democratic process…”
A ([05:35]): “Life is really good…What is it that you feel this sense of outrage for?”

On Privilege and Gratitude

B ([09:50]): “I’m not a child of immigrants, but I am a grandchild of Holocaust survivors…[who] came here with absolutely nothing…We’ve just been on an upward trajectory ever since…what distinguished me from my classmates…is that I view that as something to be grateful for.”
A ([12:58]): “The sort of concept of white privilege was very pronounced when I was in college…I rejected it…I felt like it was requiring me to admit some kind of inferiority, which I just could not abide by.”

On Performative Activism

B ([20:54]): “The way I looked at it…our natural condition…is to be poor and downtrodden and life is generally terrible, but like, we crack the code…rule of law and capitalism and good bourgeois behaviors…I want to share this gift with you.”
B ([23:29]): “People who were pushing back on you back then clearly hadn’t fully thought things through.”

On Protest Irony & Media

A ([26:07]): “I just don’t know why anyone should care. This is not bringing to the forefront a political position…that we didn’t know existed before.”

On Incoherence of “No Kings”

A ([31:48]): “How do we live in a country in which 98%…of the criminal law at the federal level…is not even voted on by Congress? That shouldn’t be the case.”

On Selective Outrage and Hypocrisy

A ([35:31]): “Where were all the no Kings protesters then?…I cannot take you all seriously because you don’t actually have any real principles here.”
A ([36:38]): “Be consistent. Take the time to actually investigate the degree to which your government oversteps its bounds…maybe do something about it.”

Important Timestamps

00:29: Introduction of “No Kings” protest and host’s initial reflections
02:08: Discussion on protest efficacy and purpose
03:34: Personal stories about attending (or avoiding) protests
05:35: Disconnection between protesters’ lives and level of outrage
09:19: Forkang’s viral article on privilege
14:42: Ralph’s turning-point story in college
16:56: Daniel meeting Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Carina Machado
19:34: Daniel’s criticism of “walk of privilege” in U.S. college orientation
23:29: Anecdote of protestors’ lack of policy knowledge, e.g., Citizens United
27:49: Debate over limiting presidential pardon power
31:48: Regulatory over-criminalization and loss of congressional oversight
33:01: Fisherman prosecuted under Sarbanes-Oxley
34:55: Panel critiques lack of protest over pandemic authoritarianism
36:03: Social media censorship and UK vs US parallels
36:38: Final plea for activist consistency and true principle

Tone & Style

The discussion is sharp, skeptical, and often wry, blending personal stories with cultural commentary. The participants, all right-leaning policy analysts, are reflective but unflinching in their critiques of modern protest culture, performative outrage, the progressive left’s shifting standards, and the dangers of unchecked bureaucracy—while showing some nostalgia (and affection) for the uniquely American dissent tradition.

Summary by Segment

| Topic/Segment | Timestamps | |---------------------------------------|----------------------| | Introduction, No Kings Overview | 00:09–02:08 | | Efficacy and meaning of protest | 02:08–04:48 | | Privilege, immigrant experience | 04:48–12:58 | | Rejecting “white privilege” narrative | 12:58–16:56 | | Venezuela, activism, free market | 16:56–19:34 | | Encountering American identity politics | 19:34–20:54 | | Woke critique, privilege backlash | 20:54–23:29 | | Ignorance of policy among protestors | 23:29–26:07 | | Protest as mobilization theater | 26:07–27:49 | | Executive power, pardon debate | 27:49–31:48 | | Regulatory overreach, legal anecdotes | 31:48–33:39 | | Pandemic and hypocrisy on “kings” | 34:55–36:03 | | Social media, UK “thought police” | 36:03–36:38 | | Closing advice: Be consistent | 36:38–end |

For Listeners Who Missed the Episode:
This installment critiques the shifting sands of protest culture, the incoherence and inconsistency of modern activism, and the far graver threat posed by unelected regulators—a “kingly” problem mostly ignored by current protesters. Drawing from rich personal stories, academic skepticism, and current events, the episode is both a sociological case study and a call for both humility and integrity in the face of legitimate and performative grievance alike.

Loading summary

Transcript190 lines

[00:09]
A
Hello and welcome to another episode of the City Journal podcast. My name is Ralph Manual. I will be your host for the day, and I am joined by my brilliant and well fit Manhattan Institute colleagues, Tao forkang and Daniel DiMartino. Welcome to the show, boys.
[00:25]
B
Thanks for having us.
[00:26]
C
First time in person for me.
[00:27]
A
Oh, wow, I didn't know that.
[00:29]
B
Yeah, well, it's nice.
[00:30]
A
Nice to, you know, not see you guys in two dimensions and be in the same room. So weekend had some pretty interesting news. We had the no Kings protest, the what people are calling the largest protest in modern history, which, you know, interesting, I guess, but it got me thinking just about, you know, protest culture and, you know, what the kind of grievances were. And I'm just looking at, you know, photos and coverage and, you know, the signs and some of the interviews, and it's like, like, it seems like the main issues that people were upset about were the war in Gaza, the ice, immigration raids, the lawfare allegations. I'm thinking here of the cases against James Comey and Letitia James and John Bolton. Of course, these people were not very concerned with the lawfare against Donald Trump and his allies. It seemed like trans activism was one of the big kind of issues and, you know, the use of the National Guard being deployed to cities to keep order. And it just got me thinking because one of the things that a lot of people have been talking about with this protest, so you didn't see a ton of young people there. It seemed like the median age was like, AARP membership eligible. And it just made me, you know, sort of think back about, you know, when I was in, you know, that peak protest age range. I was never a protest guy. I am sad to say that I've never been to a single protest, but a lot of people in my circles back when I was in college were very into that. And I just wanted to start by asking you guys, I mean, how would you have reacted to some of these things, say, 10, 15 years ago when you were young bucks?
[02:08]
B
Well, the underlying political scandals here, such as they are, I mean, scandal might be too strong a word. Just events, things going on in the world. An election that doesn't go your way. I never thought of that as a particularly great injustice. You know, that that seemed. Everything seemed to be like within the realm of. Of normal politics. I think when I was in college and a lot of my friends were out protesting a lot, maybe you had a similar experience, I would think, you know, am I living through a civil rights revolution now? Am I not joining in with the Martin Luther King juniors of my era, no, there's no great injustice. They're just, you know, there are things I'm not so happy about. And when it comes to regular politics, you move the ball through arguments and persuasion. And protest has always seemed like a kind of a shortcut in the best of times. Show the world our strength in numbers. How many of us there are. When you don't have access to the democratic process like the civil rights protesters did, not because of Jim Crow. That's when you have to show your majoritarian status by other means. But otherwise, it just. It never really appealed to me.
[03:33]
C
Have you been to a protest?
[03:35]
B
I went to. I wrote about this a little bit, actually. I went to a demonstration shortly after October 7th. I was living in Washington, D.C. and there was kind of a pro Israel rally where the politicians got up and said their nice things and the people waved their American flags and their Israeli flags. And I was like, okay. You know, I kind of. I basically agree with you on the substance of all of this, but I still do not understand why we're doing this. I don't get it. It doesn't speak to me. And that's the. I think the only protest I've ever been to.
[04:06]
C
I think it's good that you went in part because it's a counter protest, because there were protests in favor of Hamas. So you want to kind of show numbers that the whole country. You don't want to create the perception that the other view is a majoritarian view. I have been to many protests when I was a teenager because I lived in Venezuela, of course, so it's like no access to the democratic process. So we, of course, protest against the regime. So I absolutely agree. In the US Though, I think the closest I've been to protest is like, prayers in front of abortion clinics. That's like my. You get arrested for that? No, it's always in Indiana. It was in the uk, thank God. It was in Indiana and in Kentucky, but especially in Indiana, Mike Pence was governor, so, you know, religious freedom. Thank God.
[04:49]
A
When I was in college, a lot of my friends were protesting. It seemed like every other week there was a new cause. I mean, I remember one of my first days on campus at Baruch College here in the City University of New York, and a bunch of the, you know, other Latino kids that I hung out with were protesting in the main quad. And the beef was that they were insisting that the administration change the word Hispanic throughout all of the official documents and the websites of the schools and Used the word Latino instead. Oh, and I just remember looking around.
[05:23]
C
Pre Latin.
[05:23]
A
Yeah, this is pre Latinx. I don't think Latinx caught on even with that crap.
[05:28]
C
People took time out of their day to do that.
[05:30]
A
Well, this was exactly. My reaction was like, I don't understand what you guys are upset about.
[05:35]
C
Right.
[05:35]
A
You know, life is really good. We're all in college. Many of you are going to kind of go on to graduate school and enter the economic elite in some form or fashion. What is it that you know that you don't have that you feel this sense of outrage for?
[05:51]
C
It's virtual signaling. It's what Rob Henderson talks about. It is part of the expression, which is why we see it among young people very often. But what I think is different with the no Kings is what you mentioned is old people.
[06:02]
A
Yeah.
[06:04]
C
What's the difference there? Because for them, I doubt it is to gain social points.
[06:09]
B
Well, there are some elements of the no Kings substantive elements of the no Kings protest that I think have some evidentiary quality to them, which is that all of the materials that get passed out are like, we're patriotic, we're constitutional. Wave your American flags. Even if you don't really believe in that stuff so much, that's the image we're looking to project. And I think that that appeals to a kind maybe older, whiter, more boomer type protester. Whereas the younger people who have been rabble rousing in various demonstrations on college campuses and city streets for the last few years especially, they're not interested in that stuff at all. Right. They're outflanking the no Kings people by a good margin.
[06:58]
A
No, I think that's right. I mean, when I think about just protest culture in general, I can never see myself in it. And the thing that I always picked up on was the incongruity between the rage of the people participating and the quality of their lives. Right. I mean, like, life is good. Generally speaking, if you are living in the United States of America, even if you're poor.
[07:20]
C
You're right. Right.
[07:22]
A
I mean, I just think about, like the first time that I went with my family to the Dominican Republic and was actually exposed to real abject poverty and corruption. And. And I, you know, it broke my heart even, you know, my. My earliest memories of that country were, you know, of. Associated with just witnessing that level of abject poverty. Maybe that's why I kind of appreciated where I was able to live and grow up so much.
[07:46]
B
But.
[07:46]
A
Yeah, I mean, there's just such an incongruity Which I think is kind of at the root of why I always felt like an outsider in my social circles. Right? I mean, like, born in New York City, raised in Brooklyn, I should. Child of immigrant parents. I should be a lefty. And I.
[08:06]
C
Well, no, that's the thing. The incongruity is the lefties being the children of immigrants or being people who are doing well, protests against the country that give them that opportunity. You should be like, the way you think, should be the normal way.
[08:19]
A
But it wasn't. It wasn't in my social circles. Right. And it just gets me thinking, like, I mean, maybe there's something strange about me. All right? And maybe there's something strange about you guys. Right? Cause I feel like all of us have kind of ended up going down this path. I mean, here we are, you know, working for the Manhattan Institute, you know, writing about conservative ideas in a city where we are very much in the minority. Right. And so, you know, for me, it was just there were a couple of issues that really pushed me outside of that, you know, kind of mainstream culture. But, you know, Tal, I remember your freshman year at Princeton, not because we knew each other back then, but because you actually made News as an 18 year old. And I just. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about, like, how you ended up on this track.
[09:10]
B
Yeah, well, the piece that you're alluding to was something I wrote for the conservative magazine at Princeton when I was a freshman.
[09:18]
A
What was the title again?
[09:19]
B
I didn't come up with the title. So let's.
[09:23]
C
But did you like it?
[09:24]
B
Did I like it? It worked. It had a viral effect. Why I'll never apologize for my white male privilege. When I did this, the language of apology was actually in the body of piece. Like, I actually did write about, like, I won't apologize. I meant it in, like, the. The Socratic sense of. Like, I don't need to explain why I have what I have. I don't owe anyone an explanation for.
[09:50]
C
Like, Heather McDonald got into your mind and possessed the writing.
[09:55]
B
I mean, she's on my. I was like reading Heather MacDonald at the time. Of course, you know, I sometimes have to pinch myself that we. We get to call her colleague.
[10:04]
C
Yes.
[10:04]
B
But, yeah, I wrote a piece about the notion of privilege, which we can get into. How much the term has shifted in its meaning and its implications over the last decade plus. But that was a buzzword at the time. People talking about white privilege, male privilege, how you're, you know, you're born on third base. If you have Certain identity markers. And I said, look, what's beneath the surface here. I'm not a child of immigrants, but I am a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, and my grandparents came here with absolutely nothing and worked and, you know, the same boring, classic immigrant formula. You know, get an education, work hard, follow the rules, try to be a good person, help others, and what goes around will come around. And sent my dad to college and business school, and he was able to move out to the suburbs and raise a family. And we've just been on an upward trajectory ever since. And I think probably what distinguished me from my classmates who felt resentment towards this notion that some people had gotten ahead thanks in large part to people other than themselves, thanks to the sacrifices of others, is that I view that as something to be grateful for. Sure, right. Like, sure. I mean, life is certainly not perfectly fair, and there's a large measure of luck involved in making it here and anywhere. But I just look back at all those people who sacrificed for me and I say thank you. I'm so glad you put me first, even though you did not even. You didn't know me. I was barely a concept. I think a lot of.
[11:57]
C
How did those stories of your grandparents. Did you get to talk to them a lot about the Holocaust and all that?
[12:03]
B
No, my grandfather died about 13 years before I was born, and my grandmother died when I was 4.
[12:12]
C
Oh, I see.
[12:13]
B
So I really have very. I've no memories of my grandfather. Very few of my grandmother. My grandmother did write her story down in a kind of prose that's striking and just how matter of fact it is when she talks about her experience. No, but it was certainly transmitted through my parents and through the community to which I belonged. Right. You would hear Holocaust survivors speak on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and sometimes you just find yourself at dinner with my friend's grandparents, and I just think about what a blessing it is that I'm here in America. My life is so easy. We have it so good. That's not to say it's perfect, of course, but fundamentally, when I wake up every morning, the first word out of my mouth is thank you.
[12:59]
A
Thank you. Right. I had a very similar experience. I mean, the sort of concept of white privilege was very pronounced when I was in college as well. And, you know, I rejected it for, you know, a couple of reasons. One of them was just I felt automatically like it was requiring me to admit some kind of inferiority, which I just could not abide by. Maybe I'm just way too full of myself, but the idea that I Needed special assistance was just anathema to me. I could not. I could not get behind it. And so, you know, from a very, very early age, I kind of myself pushing back on the sort of dominant narratives about race. And, you know, one of the issues where that narrative was most pronounced more than, you know, likely any other issue, was the issue of policing. And that was actually sort of the start of my path here. I actually remember the moment was my first year of sociology class. We had a guest speaker. We would have a guest speaker once a week. We had two sessions a week, and we. They would talk for half an hour, and then we would have a class discussion that, you know, related the talk to the reading. And one of the guest speakers was a guy who had just gotten out of prison, and he came and he gave basically a diatribe against the NYPD and the criminal justice system and how it was racist. And, you know, at the time, you know, when I was in high school, which was not long before I heard this talk, I hung out with a lot of kids who ended up going to jail, going to prison. So that world was somewhat familiar to me. And I just remember looking around at my classmates, all of whom were captivated, and nodding their heads, and you could see the anger forming on their face. And I just remember thinking, like, this guy's full of it, you know, Right. Like, we all agree.
[14:42]
C
Did you ask him why he went to prison?
[14:44]
A
No, we didn't get to ask the speaker any questions.
[14:46]
C
It seems like the most important question.
[14:48]
A
Is why he went to prison for dealing crack. And his. Most of his ire was aimed at the Rockefeller drug laws, which are the mandatory minimums.
[14:58]
C
And how long did he spend in prison?
[14:59]
A
I think he said something like 18 years or something like that. A significant amount of time was the.
[15:04]
B
Message fundamentally, like, this could easily be you. It's just like, one mistake, one slip.
[15:09]
C
You become a professional crack dealer. Yeah, clearly you just make that mistake.
[15:13]
A
A lot of crap. You don't get 18 years for, you know, a couple of rocks, right? I mean, so this guy was obviously involved in a significant operation. But, no, the basic, you know, thing was like, well, you know, opportunities were denied to me, and I was clearly smart, and had other doors been open, I could have gone down this road. And I just remember thinking, nonsense, right? Every criminal that I knew in my life had made a choice, a very conscious choice to do that. And that was kind of the start. But, you know, the thing that really kind of set me off down this track was that at the time I didn't have the vocabulary with which to push back on any of these ideas. I know it's strange for some of the people listening to, but I was not a nerd most of my life. I was a dumb jock, did not study a lot. This was actually the issue that sent me down an intellectual rabbit hole. That was how I discovered the work of the Manhattan Institute and of Heather McDonald and started subscribing to City Journal and you. That was kind of the path. I had some kind of conservative inklings before that, but not a ton. And sometimes I read some of these news stories that are coming out and just think about how would I have reacted back then. It's just a nice reminder that for as long as I can remember, I've kind of been going against the grain and thankfully have been comfortable with it. But I was actually thinking of you, Daniel, because there was another new story from last week, which was the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize, which went to. I want to make sure I get her name right. Maria Corina Machado, who is an activist in Venezuela pushing back on the regime there. And you mentioned being part of protests pushing back on the regime when you were a kid. And I'm just interested in your kind of.
[16:57]
C
I met Maria Carina when I was 17 year olds. Yeah, yeah, I know her. Mara Carina is a great woman. The reason I was attracted to her ideas was that she was the only person, even within the opposition, who was openly very pro free market and antisocialist. And I was always. Since, you know, I was kind of like the opposite of like what you were saying. I was a nerd. And, you know, yeah, it's okay.
[17:23]
B
It's no shame.
[17:24]
C
Yeah, you know, I did moral United Nations.
[17:26]
A
I was a nerd. I screwed up.
[17:27]
C
I screwed up. No, you became a nerd eventually.
[17:30]
A
That's fine. I found my way.
[17:32]
C
So I was reading Milton Friedman since I was 12. I was watching Ronald Reagan videos. You know, I was this kid in Venezuela who thought, you know, these people are gonna starve to death because of socialism, so let's get the hell out. And I was right. And people did get the heck out. So I met Mario Corina. She was back then not as popular as she is now. In fact, the rest of the opposition really disliked her because she was the only one who was not a lefty. And now, obviously she was redeemed as being right because everybody else turned out to be corrupt and all these other things. And so she's doing a great, great work in Venezuela. And I really hope that the regime falls. I would encourage the audience to read my article that just got published today, by the way, on Acton, with Acton. I think it's liberty, Religion of liberty, which is specifically about this Nobel Prize. I call it the Nobel Prize goes against Socialism. Like, when did you ever hear of a Nobel Peace Prize going to somebody who is opposed to a socialist regime? It's usually like, like lefty cosmopolitan lefties who like did some humanitarian work or nothing at all.
[18:45]
A
Right? No, no, I think that's interesting. In fact, actually, if I, if I had to characterize your. Your come up with a headline, it would be like the actual no Kings.
[18:57]
C
Did you see that? The no Kings. The. The democrats abroad renamed it no Tyrants. I saw because they didn't want to offend the monarchs. You know, in the real country.
[19:07]
B
Number of kings.
[19:09]
A
Exactly, exactly.
[19:10]
C
Some king, others cannot essentially what their argument is. But you know, I always thought about economics and I was always prefer free markets. And then I started thinking about social issues when I came to America, you know, you guys both mentioned like the race issue and privilege being important for you. That was not important for me until I came to the US and one of the first things they tried to make us do in student orientation was a walk of privilege.
[19:35]
A
When did you come to the US 2016.
[19:36]
C
I was 17 years old. I finished high school in Venezuela.
[19:39]
A
Got it.
[19:40]
C
And so we did. I was 17. And they're like, now, if you are a man, take a step ahead. If you're a woman, take a step back. And I'm like, wait, what is going on here? And I refuse to participate.
[19:51]
A
Good for you.
[19:53]
C
And so that was my first exposition to those ideas. And I was already predisposed against it. I'm like, I already came to America. What are people talking about? People don't have less opportunities because of their race or their sexual. Yeah, people grow up with different opportunities. Some people are rich, some people are poor. That's the reality of life. Welcome to humanity, to earth.
[20:13]
A
Right. It reminds me of a great line that Thomas Sowell wrote, and I'm going to butcher it. But inequality is the rule, not the exception. We tend to talk about inequality as if it's some corruption of the proper order. But the natural order actually is inequality. As he says, we're all born naked and poor and through the use of our own faculties are able to build wealth and survive and join in community. And, you know, we should be seeking to figure out and mimic the behaviors that create wealth as opposed to trying to redistribute the wealth that's already been created. That always resonated with me as a.
[20:55]
B
Kid when I took flack for the writing that I put out in.
[20:59]
A
Yeah. What was that response?
[21:00]
B
Like, it was crazy. This was in 2014. This was the spring.
[21:07]
C
Okay, you're getting to peak woke.
[21:10]
B
Yeah. I think this was right at its initial height.
[21:15]
C
Right. There was a second point, it kept going up.
[21:18]
B
But yeah, no, people were really not examining this stuff closely. There was just a bit of a mob mentality sweeping campuses and privilege. I think it's kind of faded as a concept with good reason. But it was popular then. And people would say things like, oh, you, you know, you're just lording the fact that your family made it over others and like, you're so blind to the ways in which you were assisted and, you know, that stuff isn't available to others. And the way I looked at it was like, we, our natural condition, forget Jewish history and all of human history is to be like poor and downtrodden and life is generally terrible, but like, we crack the code. It's this combination of the rule of law and capitalism and like good bourgeois behaviors. I'm not trying to lord anything over anyone. I want to share this gift with you.
[22:13]
C
That's right.
[22:14]
B
We did it. And you can do it too. I truly believe you can do it too. So there's some people who are fatalists, who are like, Ralph is Dominican. They'll just never have access to that. Right. That is not my approach. And I think, I think statistically this is borne out that Hispanics, other minorities.
[22:32]
C
I mean, look at Miami. Miami is the most foreign born city in America. Majority foreign born, mostly Cuban.
[22:37]
A
Incredible.
[22:38]
C
I mean, what do you think Cuba would look like if it had the system of government of Florida? It would look like, honestly, like Miami.
[22:43]
B
Yeah.
[22:44]
C
Like there's really no. No different.
[22:46]
A
No, you. You said something just now that, that actually made me think about the no Kings protests and some of the coverage, which was that, you know, a lot of the people who were pushing back on you back then clearly hadn't fully thought things through. And I don't know if you guys have been watching some interview footage from people who have been on the ground at the no Kings protest over the weekend, just asking pretty basic questions about some of the concepts that people saw. One clip, you know, it was like one woman was asked about, you know, her sign about Citizens United, about overturning Citizens United. She couldn't say a single thing about the Citizens United king. I mean, just folded, you know, immediately and it just. It gave me a little sense of relief that, like, actually a lot of this is just pure emotion. No one's really, actually thought a lot of this stuff through.
[23:29]
C
Okay, you have to hear this one. This one is. Is really funny. Nick Shirley, this, like, journalist, independent young kid. He interviews this couple. I think they were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they had a sign about immigrants. Immigrants built America. And then he goes and asks the guy in front of his girl, do you think illegal immigrants should be deported?
[23:49]
A
Oh, I saw that.
[23:49]
B
He said yes.
[23:50]
C
And then he says yes. And then she's like, what? And then he's like, I think I broke up a relationship. He, like, had no idea. He had a conversation, someone's answer, like, yes, actually, if they cross the border illegally, we should return them. And she was outraged, like, no, nobody's illegal.
[24:06]
A
She was white and he wasn't.
[24:07]
B
Right?
[24:08]
A
That was like. That was the icing on the cake.
[24:09]
C
I think he was like, South Asian and then she was white.
[24:12]
A
This is the icing on the cake. Did not. Like, I was like, yeah, obviously. No, no, I mean, it does. It does give me a little bit of a sense of relief, right? That, like, actually there are a lot of people who claim to be activists and who pose as activists, but haven't actually thought a lot of it through. Now, the sad part is that given the median age at the no Kings rally, clearly they're never going to get it. And that's just one of the downsides of living in a society that's structured the way that ours is. But I still wouldn't change it for the world.
[24:49]
B
I'd be more concerned about, again, the dog that didn't bark at these rallies. The people who we know harbor similar tastes and attitudes, but. But we're not there.
[25:01]
C
Well, also, like, we didn't even notice there were mass protests. I didn't notice.
[25:05]
A
People live on Long island now, so it was nice and quiet.
[25:08]
C
Well, I didn't notice. And I thought, you know, people have a right, you know, if they're not bothering others, let them do their thing. I mean, if they're happy saying no Kings and whatever, what do we make.
[25:17]
B
Of the seemingly concerted media effort to make this seem like some kind of. Of epochal event, right? Like generational protest.
[25:30]
A
Well, this is the second time it's happened, right? I mean, so I don't know. Did the first one really change the world?
[25:35]
B
No, I don't think so. Getting elected, I think the best way to understand this is, you know, voter mobilization, maybe donor mobilization. Just omni cause, well, it'll make for.
[25:47]
A
Some great photos that they can repurpose in, you know, campaign mailers and, you know, social media content. But outside of that, I don't really see.
[25:57]
B
I just don't know why anyone should care. This, this is not bringing to the forefront a political position or a package of political positions that we didn't know existed before.
[26:07]
C
Well, and it's also the, it's the anti Trump. It's like instead of being for something, the only thing they have been able to do since Trump got nominated is stop Trump. So no kings. It's really about no Trump for sure.
[26:21]
A
Well, what's also like, strange to me is that one of the chief complaints is this idea that Trump has been sort of consolidating executive power when the left actually, if you know anything about the history of the law, the left is actually very famous for doing exactly that. I mean, just thinking about like the FDR court, which absolutely expanded the authority of the executive through everything from allowing more delegation by Congress to the executive to creating out of whole cloth these ideas of judicial deference to executive interpretations of statutes, overreading the Constitution to create all kinds of regulatory authority that gets exercised almost exclusively by the executive branch.
[27:04]
C
But not Trump is able to use. Right.
[27:07]
A
But rather than abusing it, actually, I mean, his solicitor generals have pushed back on things like Chevron deference, for example, which for the people who know this, is a legal concept where the court have traditionally deferred to executive agency interpretations of congressional statutes that grant them rulemaking authority, even when the court's job is to actually do the work of interpreting the statute. Right. That's why the judicial branch exists. And yet this is something that's been defended by the left for years.
[27:40]
C
I'll say if something great could come out of the Trump presidency, it's the left saying, actually we need to limit presidential and executive authority.
[27:48]
A
Do you think they'll do that?
[27:49]
C
Well, I don't know if you saw Elisa Slotkin, the Michigan, she's now coming out in favor of a constitutional amendment to limit pardon power to a number of people or even eliminate it. I think that's good. Joe Biden pardoned thousands of people and mass pardons. It wasn't as it was intended to be, which is, I know this specific person and I want to give clemency or pardon to this specific person. Everybody who committed this crime. You're pardoned.
[28:14]
B
Right. Or be it from the Manhattan Institute to oppose a policy that would keep more people incarcerated.
[28:20]
C
Of course I wanted to keep Murray, I mean, these are people who are guilty of their crimes.
[28:26]
B
Right.
[28:26]
C
We're not talking about unjust incarceration generation.
[28:30]
B
I'm not sure that's the part of executive power that I would target first.
[28:35]
C
It's not, but I think it's an indication. And I think they should also go ahead and say, hey, we want to limit the presidential power in regulation. We want to limit the presidential power in all these things. Let's limit spending. Let's do a constitutional amendment.
[28:49]
A
I actually like the idea of the pardon.
[28:52]
C
Unlimited pardon.
[28:53]
A
Yeah.
[28:53]
B
Yeah.
[28:53]
C
Okay.
[28:54]
A
And the main reason for that is that, you know, there. It is not unlikely that there will be a regime one day that abuses its authority and imprisons its political opponents. Right. We already saw hints of that with the lawfare engaged in against Donald Trump and his inner circle. I think the President should be able to sort of retain that power. Right. Because to the extent that there's a popular political movement that pushes back on an abusive regime, we're basically adopting a rule that doesn't allow us to correct the harms done by that regime.
[29:29]
C
Well, at least not by the President. It could be by Congress, but.
[29:32]
A
Yeah, yeah, but Congress wouldn't be able to retroactively pardon everyone.
[29:37]
C
They could passing a law.
[29:39]
A
Yeah, maybe.
[29:40]
C
I mean, that was the First Step act, essentially.
[29:42]
A
Well, yeah, but the First Step act kind of retroactively made people eligible for judicial review.
[29:48]
C
But, I mean, they could just pass a law releasing.
[29:50]
A
Sure, yeah. I guess they'd have to do it by name, but I don't see that happening.
[29:55]
C
Right.
[29:55]
B
Let's see when we get a bipartisan consensus on rolling back the substantive regulatory authority of the Alphabet soup agencies. Yeah.
[30:04]
C
I mean, the RAIN Act. I like the RAIN Act.
[30:06]
A
The RAIN act is great.
[30:07]
C
Yeah. To limit regulatory authority of important regulations. I mean, this is the kind of thing that could actually limit presidential authority.
[30:14]
A
Well, people don't actually know is when I first started at the Manhattan Institute, I came on as a legal policy person doing criminal justice reform work. Now, it was in the regulatory space. And, you know, my main issue was regulatory over criminalization. And what people don't know is that we actually have no idea how many criminal laws exist in America. I try to tell people this, like, they don't believe me. The ABA in the early 90s, actually, the American Bar association, actually tried to count how many crimes are on the books in the United States. They spent like a million dollars and spent a year on this project, only to scrap it because they actually could not keep up with the number of new crimes being created. And then the worst part about it is, is that the vast majority of the new crimes being created are not voted on by Congress.
[31:02]
C
Of course this blows the states.
[31:04]
A
Everyone has this sort of, I'm just a bill, you know, idea of how the federal government is supposed to work.
[31:09]
B
Right.
[31:09]
A
I'm dating myself now. But like the reality is, is that the way most crimes are created is that Congress will pass a broad bill granting some regulatory agencies, you know, authority. And then there'll be like a regulatory catch all provision where they say any violation of any rule promulgated pursuant to this act is going to be punishable as a misdemeanor or as a felony. And then the Alphabet soup agency in question starts making rules, not realizing that every single rule that they make is technically a criminal offense if it's violated. And that should change. Right. We shouldn't live in a country. You want to talk about no kings how we live in a country in which 98%, give or take of the criminal law at the federal level.
[31:49]
B
Right.
[31:49]
A
Like is not even voted on by Congress. That shouldn't be the case. We live in a country in which we don't even know how many criminal laws are on the books.
[31:57]
C
We want to put people in prison for murder, for death, for rape, for all the actual crimes.
[32:02]
B
Catching the wrong kind of fish.
[32:04]
A
That's right, exactly.
[32:05]
C
Not for that or it wasn't for.
[32:07]
A
Catching the wrong kind of fish. It was for throwing it back in the. There's a fate. There's a Supreme Court case where is based on a guy who was fishing and his boat was inspected by was the Coast Guard or one of these agencies that was looking at, you know, the catch and they suspected that some of the fish that he caught were undersized, which is illegal, and he could get fined. So they made him go back to shore to, you know, to weigh the fish and measure the fish. And so at the allegation is that on the way back he dumped some of the fish back into the ocean and they charged him with a crime under, get this, the Sarbanes Oxley act, which was passed in the wake of the Enron scandal to punish like the shredding of documentary evidence. And they claim that he had to. First off, I don't know.
[33:01]
C
So they should have fined him. Like that should not be something where people gonna. Yeah.
[33:06]
A
Of a felony.
[33:07]
C
Wow. And.
[33:09]
A
And so the Supreme Court eventually overturned his conviction on somewhat dubious ground. Yeah, well, I actually thought they got the textual analysis wrong because I would have. I would have decided the case on the word destroy. Like, he didn't destroy the fish. He put them back in their home.
[33:27]
C
That's clever. That's kind of clever way to say that.
[33:29]
A
I don't, you know, I don't. I don't think that was, you know, I understand he didn't destroy the fish.
[33:34]
C
But he didn't destroy the evidence.
[33:35]
A
Well, he didn't destroy the evidence. The evidence exists as far as he.
[33:38]
C
Got rid of it. Yeah.
[33:40]
A
Which is. Which is slightly different. But.
[33:43]
B
But yeah, I, I.
[33:44]
A
All that to say is that I'm not sure I ever really took these no Kings folks seriously. They seem to have quite a high degree of tolerance.
[33:50]
B
You know, the things I don't like about kings is the arbitrary authoritarian authority and the lack of accountability to the people.
[34:04]
A
Yeah.
[34:05]
B
Regulators and bureaucrats and the federal government. Check both of those in very large proportions also.
[34:12]
C
Wait a minute. I do like some kings. What do you mean? Like, there are some countries for which. Not the United States.
[34:18]
A
Sure.
[34:19]
C
But there are some countries in which the monarchies work. Yeah. And it's actually better for democracy. People forget Spain. Spain, Thailand. Those wouldn't be democratic countries today if they weren't monarchies.
[34:30]
A
Interesting.
[34:32]
C
Like, the king saved the monarchy. The democracy in Spain after Franco in Thailand. I mean, how do you think they remain democratic and all that? It was because of the influence of the monarchy. So, I mean, it's a bad name in general.
[34:47]
A
We're still not gonna have anything outside of the three gentlemen at this table.
[34:50]
C
On the authoritarianism part.
[34:52]
B
Short king.
[34:56]
C
Yeah, exactly. This is like an anti Short King project. But no, the, the authoritarian parties also came from the left during the pandemic. People Forget what the US government, the state governments did to us during 2020. During 2021.
[35:11]
A
Own a business, Shut it down. Right. No due process. Want to go outside? Nope. No due process. Want to be with your family. Nope. Be subject to arrest. I mean, there was this very famous photo of a man coming in from surfing by himself in the ocean, and there are like, three police officers waiting to arrest him.
[35:30]
B
It's like, you know, where were all.
[35:31]
A
The no Kings protesters then? Right. I mean, this is. These were the ideas that were kind of in my head when I was coming up. It was like, I just. I cannot take you all seriously because you don't actually have any real principles here. And like, you know, I think ultimately that's, that's the. Probably the most.
[35:49]
C
By the way, these are the same people who would support doing in America what they're doing in the UK social media. Yeah. Where if you post something that they consider racist in Facebook, the police is going to. We are going to arrest you for a hate crime.
[36:04]
B
Yeah.
[36:04]
A
I watched a video of police in the UK arresting a woman because they alleged that she was praying silently. She was just standing.
[36:13]
C
She admitted it. She admitted it. I think it was good.
[36:15]
A
Admitted that she was praying silently.
[36:18]
C
Yes.
[36:18]
A
In her.
[36:18]
C
Exactly. Yeah.
[36:20]
A
Not only is is it will we criminalize speech, I would have gone to.
[36:24]
C
Prison for that one.
[36:25]
A
We will criminalize thought, literally. Which is, you know, which is crazy. So all that to say is, like, if you guys are out there at the no Kings protest, please, like, have at it, do your little march, whatever, but be consistent.
[36:39]
B
Right.
[36:39]
A
Like, take the time to actually investigate the degree to which your government oversteps its bounds. Understands that it happens on your side, too, and maybe do something about it I respect. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe then it'll land better.
[36:53]
B
So.
[36:53]
A
All right, well, thank you, 2 Kings, for joining me for this great discussion. For those of you out there who are watching, please do, like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, do all the things. Thanks again to our panelists. Thank you to our producer, Isabella Rajai. And until next time, you have been watching the City Journal podcast.
[37:18]
B
It.