← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
Conservatism, The MAGA Mission & Reigniting The American Spirit | feat. Wade Stotts | Ep. 19
00:47:59
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This is an iHeart podcast.
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Are you drowning in a sea of conservative ideas? Well, today I welcome Wade Stotz, who summarizes what conservatism means in a common sense approach. This is the David Rutherford show. Every so often within the social consciousness, someone emerges that delivers such a profound sense of common sense that it makes people stop and pay attention to what they're thinking in their own minds. And they necessarily have an opportunity through this explosion of. It's not righteousness, but it's more along the lines of just critical thinking in a way that gives strength to people's thoughts. Wade Stotts is this guy. I found him last year and his videos really kind of summarized the way I wanted to be able to express myself. And so the opportunity, when it presented itself, I reached out to him on X and I said, hey man, I love what you do. Would you please come on? He decided he would join us, so. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Wade Stotts.
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Thank you so much. Really appreciate you having me on, David. Thanks.
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Thank you. You know, as, as, as I went through all of your videos, I began to kind of come up with an idea that I wanted to focus on today and that was really centralized around conservative movements and to get your impression of, of where we exist right now and how diversified have those movements become. We've, we've seen lately there's a battle between woke right and right. There's a battle between the MAGA movement and neocons. There's about. So just in your opinion, where, what is the conservative overall movement and what are all the little tributaries that are taking place?
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Yeah, I think it is a fascinating time to be non left. I think that's where we are. And a lot of the non left coalition is, is seeing a common enemy and recognizing, hey, we have to team up with people we may not have thought we would be teaming up with. And I think that that's a good development mainly because the left needs to be defeated. But I also, it's, it's, it takes on something that I think is, is a good development, which is that it's a kind of conservatism or reaction that's not ideological. So it's not hard. It's not bound to any particular. Like everybody involved, I think has high moral beliefs, but it's not the same thing as having an ideology which I think Russell Kirk characterized as kind of a counterfeit religion, sort of this set of principles that you hold on to, excuse me, no matter what, and no matter what facts come at you or whether you think that it's working out or something. So in a similar way, I think that a lot of people voted for Trump that weren't expecting to do so. And I think that, that if anything, Trump has reorganized our politics to be, yes, personal, which I think is a normal, good development. More personal, less ideological, I think is a good development. And also moving away from, again, this kind of pseudo religion of I've got my list of the non aggression principle or whatever kind of thing I want to put in the center of my world and then organize all of my strategy and thinking around. Again, I'm a Christian, so I don't think that it's bad to have universal beliefs that can't be touched, but that's not the same thing as having political strategy beliefs or prudential concerns. And if you look at most of the what conservatism or I know again, I quoted Russell Kirk and then used the word conservatism. But like the ism part of that, I think can be a problem. But if you look at the past, if you look at the traditional way that people have thought before, they were okay with multiple kinds of solutions to things. They were okay with saying, well, this worked for a while and we needed to change over here just because the circumstances changed. Again, somebody like Edmund Burke, somebody like Russell Kirk, Russell Kirk would be okay with talking that way, whereas an ideological vision of it or ideological conservatism trademark wouldn't be quite as comfortable with different kinds of solutions.
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I love that answer. And you did this really well. Two of my favorites that you came up with was you did one show about the French Revolution and that Rousseau belief system that we can generate, you know, our, our morality based on, you know, these principles of our own, our own sovereignty, if you will. Let's get rid of the, the confines of the church and the confines of imperial rule, and let's just figure it out as we go. And then there was the other one that really I thought kind of loosely affiliated with that was the evolution of our constitutional republic. And I thought that was fascinating. Right. And as I was watching one that led into the other, it was like, oh, I think that kind of postmodernistic belief system is what's actually kind of morphing our one ideals. And you describe it as the 1950s or the 1990s, right into that now our fifth level of the constitutional republic. Can you explain what you meant a little bit to the listeners by, by those statements that you made?
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Yeah. On the. I'll start with the Rousseau point because I think that's. That leads us well into this. Rousseau was this guy who essentially thought that. And he was part of a movement that thought that if you sat around in a chair long enough, then everybody would basically come to the same political beliefs or come to the same ideas about what the rights of man are or what. What good is and. And what people should be doing, which is insane. So basically he was sitting and going, well, I know I can cut off all of the supernatural elements. I can cut off every kind of obligation that I might have to a personal creator, and I can basically think long enough and then I'll be right. Everybody, if they thought long enough, would be right exactly like I am. Which turns out that those people tend to treat their enemies pretty poorly because, oh, I'd say you're not thinking very well.
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The guillotine was on overdrive.
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Absolutely. And so it's a different kind of way of thinking about politics, way of thinking about man, than the kind of thing that gave birth to America. America was an Anglo Protestant project initially and is still, at its core, an Anglo Protestant thing. And I think. I mean, Pat Buchanan talked about this. Again, this is not just me coming up with this stuff, Samuel Huntington, others. But when you look at that, what's happening is that this is a development of English Protestantism. And so it has particular roots. And recognizing the particular roots of something, where the ideas come from, where the habits come from, the way of thinking, the way of operating, all comes from somewhere. And it's not, again, just people sitting around trying to come up with the best ideology, trying to come up with ideas in the sky that they can then impose on reality. It was people who, again, Anglo Protestant, you believe in particular people, there are particular values that come from their religion. And so they believed in universals. But the political universals, the political things weren't the same kind of universal. They could be more flexible. And so seeing the American Constitution as being something, the result of a particular people who were shaped by a particular religion helps us to recognize what we've lost in the course of all of this time. So it's not just that, hey, we need to get closer to that document. It's that the people who formed that document and the people for whom that document was formed have gone away at some level, or at least have retreated. And again, I still think that Anglo Protestantism is the core of America. And I think that there are a lot of people who basically, you know, think reality is real, you know, but they've been sort of bullied at Some level into not being able to say what's true. So again, there's, there's a vision of politics that's just principles divorced from people. And you could, there's a certain kind of constitutionalism that is a similar sort of way. We can, we can treat the Constitution as an expression again of these sort of ideas in the sky that floated down that everybody should be governed by. But you can, you can see places where we've tried to export that Constitution to a place that doesn't have our history and doesn't have the people who've been shaped in that particular way. And it always fails every single time. We've tried the nation build, we've tried.
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I know that one well.
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Yes. So you can pass out pocket constitutions all over, across the world and it isn't going to be embraced by the people in the same way that it was by our original, by our founders, because it's just again, those people were shaped in a particular way. And so as we look back on it now and as we, as we see. I love the American constitutional order. I love the, the people that produce the Constitution. I love the Constitution itself. And I think that again, I, I made a video that had a pretty provocative title which was the Constitution is Dead.
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Yeah, that was one of my favorite ones, man. I, I watched that like three times.
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But, but at some level it's, it's just recognizing, hey, we've, we've done a lot of damage, not only to the written Constitution, but also to the unwritten Constitution, the habits and the forms of the people who made this thing and the reason that we're so far away from this. You mentioned this, I think in a different context, but John Adams saying that the Constitution is made for moral and religious people. It is not suitable for the government of any other. I believe that's the quote.
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It is.
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And so at some level, if we're not moral and religious people, then the Constitution doesn't make sense to us anymore. No wonder we're having such trouble obeying the Constitution. It's that the people we are is not the people who made this. And I see that as a tragedy. I'd love to get back to something like that. But again, it's a way of recognizing that there's a constitutionalism that can become an ideological vision that is separated from the people, the values, the culture where we all the baseline assumptions that everybody has. And I think that that's, that's undervalued to our, to our peril. Excuse me.
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Oh, I couldn't agree more with you. I, you know, I think as, as, as I've spent, you know, a pretty significant amount of my time trying to understand culture over the course of my years. Right. It's like, you know, because I remember everybody was always, when I started, you know, teaching and training people is like, oh, we want to have the culture of the Navy seals. And, and I'm like, all right, well, here, come in here and I'm going to have this boat filled with ice water and I'm going to beat you down before you go to your computer terminal and I'm going to scream at you. And you know this. And they're like, oh, wait, that's not what we want. Right, right. We, we, we want it. We want to extrapolate the gains from, you know, the long term impacts of, of that forging process without the pain of the forging process itself. And, and I think that's where we're at. And, and, and you always are so eloquent by the way you describe it. And I love, by the way, I love the way you put humor into it too. It, it really makes it so much more palatable for people if to have a, a little satirical aspect of it. And I just think it's brilliant the way you do that. As you begin to look at the movement, let's call, let's take the Magnum MAGA movement, for instance. Do you think that's kind of what you're talking about emerging? Like it's, it's this core I, these the foundational principles of what we all still think is the representation of America, right? As we, as we teach our kids and we go to ball games and we, you know, we go to PTA conferences and, you know, we, we do community things like. That's still relevant. It's still this amorphous energy that kind of trick, you know, is always just lurking in the corners of our municipalities. But now this MAGA movement has emerged. Do you believe, like, that's that those original ideas from our founders trying to break through the suppression or the, what is it? The forced separation between the ideology and the culture itself. Sorry for the interruption. I hope you're enjoying, Wade, but I just want to let you know about the Embrace Fear curriculum that we have available on davidrutherford.com this curriculum. I spent two years researching fear as well as experience in fear for the last 30 years, in particular while I was a Navy SEAL as well as working at the CIA. This course will not only help you understand it, but accept the reality of it teach you to live with it, test you in your fear, and then embed courage in your soul in order to live with that fear. Right. So please go check out davidrutherford.com and sign up for the Embrace Fear curriculum. If you want to embrace that fear, this is the spot for you. Booyah.
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Yeah, I think that back to the ideological point, at some level, the Trump mantra of making deals, you know, being the guy who makes deals and solves problems, that's an attractive proposition, which is, again, a way that people aren't used to thinking or talking about politics. And that means that Trump is okay with appealing to things that came before the 20th century. So when Trump has somebody like Andrew Jackson on his wall, people don't even know what that means. But at some level, he's also appealing to Andrew Jackson's actions in office. And so people who are not familiar with him or I think that the 20th century at some level functions as this sort of brick wall that some people have to even being able to think about what politics is. So that if somebody can't go before that or even to the early 20th century, then I think, yeah, our politics have basically been locked into the dialogue of the 20th century, which was the century of ideological conflict. I mean, it was the century of conflict between basically liberal democracy and fascism and communism, and these isms kind of characterize that century. But again, Trump, I think, is okay with, again, pulling things from the alien enemies act, which is way older than the 20th century. And, again, talking about Andrew Jackson, talking about these are the people who he sees as his forebears and as his sort of ancestors in the office. But that's not seen as accessible most of the time. And so it's refreshing at some level for people who are American history fanatics to have somebody who appeals to something, laws that are older, laws and habits that we've lost at some level. And I think that at some level, the people who are most concerned, sometimes you see this with some Supreme Court decisions, people who are obsessed most of the time with doing something constitutionally or that sort of thing can't get past, again, that wall of the 20th century to be able to see what came before, what were the intentions. And so as much as the make America great again slogan is a. It can be sort of this thing that you fill your own meaning into, which is fine. You know, that's how political slogans work. But recognizing, hey, this is not just rewind to the 1980s, and that's okay. And that would be impossible any way we Tried it. As much as I love the 1980s and I love the 1990s and the 1950s for what they were. But yeah, the solutions that are on the table, the way we're talking about things is as a country that has interests. And so I think that this, forgive me if I'm going too long, but no, it's wonderful. The sort of post World War II way of thinking about the world is that, well, World War II happened because of, because Hitler thought that there was such a thing as national interests. And so anybody who talks about national interests must be a bad guy. That's kind of a silly way of thinking about World War II, but that was the way that it's been interpreted now. And so now we are comfortable at least moving past that way of thinking and saying, no, we are a nation and we do have interests. And we understood that for a long time before I think the 20th century perverted that way of thinking. And so now it's okay to reclaim and say, hey, our trade should reflect the fact that we have national interests. Our defense policy should have, should reflect that, should reflect that we're a country. So when we have somebody like, one of the reasons I loved the Zelensky Trump meeting is that so good, such a great moment. And the reason, one of the reasons it was so great is that Zelenskyy had never talked to somebody, an American leader, who thought that America was a particular place with particular interests and that those superseded in the American leader's mind the interests of another country. And so we're okay with making deals. Hey, I'm happy to make a deal, but the deal has to work out for us, has to look good for us. And so again, it's refreshing. It's why people look at Trump and say, hey, he represents us at some level, it's because he's okay with saying, hey, we've had bad deals, I'm gonna make a better deal. And you see that non ideological function with bringing on people who don't have people like rfk, who again, it's just, it's a problem solving move. I, I see a problem, I want to solve that problem. And so it's, it's coalition building. It's, there's practical political reasons for it, but it's also the same spirit of, I see a big problem, I want to fix it. And then if you, if somebody comes along and says, actually the Constitution says that we have to have poisonous food and we have to have infinity number of immigrants, then like, I'm not interested in really arguing the constitutional point there, because at some level, it's just a matter of, okay, that whatever the legal argument you have, I don't want us to be overrun by, you know, tens of millions of immigrants, and I also don't want our food to be poisonous. So let's solve some problems. And I think that's, That's a good move.
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Oh, I think it's, it's reinvigorated. If not, I mean, the conservative movement, but it's in reinvigorated American pride, right? It's. It's like that the essence of what drove Andrew Jackson, right, Is. Is. Is that sensation. No. You know, we're. We're gonna, we're gonna head west and we're gonna, you know, that manifest destiny of, of. Of yesteryear. Right? We're gonna reclaim our position of, of greatness. Yeah, I, that, that meeting, I must have watched that interview 50 times. It was so rewarding to me that finally, you know, somebody would, Would stand up for what we, we believe, including, you know, the E4E5 mafia with, with J.D. vance, which is even more refreshing, right? If obviously, I think when you evaluate. And as I go back to the 20th century, when I was going to school and growing up in the 70s, 80s and 90s, there was a much different focus on the educational system. There was a much greater focus. And I just had this conversation recently dealing with, trying to get my children to feel the intensity of my teammates who've died in combat or to feel the intensity of my, my brothers who've killed themselves. Right? And. And it's like, hey, listen, there's something more to just their name on a tombstone in Arlington. Right? There's something more to it. And, and that. Something more, I think, as I evaluate day in and day out, their education when they come home and I say, let me see what you're studying. Let me. Tell me what you're studying. What are you doing? We have these conversations. I think a lot of that is missing. How do you. How do we get back to. Or what are some. What are some options for us to get back towards that Gen Z right now? Because there, There, there seems to be kind of a, not an initiative, but a revival in that sensation of American Pride and that original core ideology. What are some core things that you would recommend for young men, young women or teachers or parents to introduce their kids to or themselves to. To reclaim that?
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Yeah, I think that a lot of it is going to be the power of storytelling. So the, the kind of people who C.S. lewis talked about this. And in Goodness, I think it was the Abolition of Man, where he talked about how an argument, a syllogism is not going to be the thing that. That sustains a soldier in the third hour of a bombardment. Right? A syllogism is not the thing that's going to hold him there, but the sort of. The most shallow sentimentalism for something like a nation or a flag. That's what's going to do it. So the people who fight the most are not motivated, again, by arguments, principles and sort of ideas in the sky. Again, they're motivated by sentiment and love. For they look up at a flag and they look at the guy next to him and they go, this is why I'm doing it. I mean, I really like the Black Hawk down, so I'm a big fan of Black Hawk down and what a great movie. But the end of that is, why do you do it? You do it for the guy next to you. And so you can watch that movie. I think that what that movie gets right is. And I didn't serve. And so I'm watching these guys and learning from what they did. But. Or at least what's represented to me and what it shows is, hey, there's a certain level of you can talk about the conflict that they were in, right? And say, hey, this was misguided or this project was going to fail in that kind of way. You can look at it and Monday morning quarterback it. But at some level, there's real American love for America and love for the American next to you that motivates those people. So I think storytelling is going to be a big part of that. Part of it's going to be historical and reading history. But I think also the watching movies that. That will show value for of America. I think, again, I talked bad about the 20th century earlier, so I want to maybe talk. Maybe talk a little bit positively about it. There is plenty of really good storytelling that happened in the 20th century that did motivate the people who we see as heroes. So the people who have given all for the country were motivated at some level not just by the symbolism of a flag, but what that symbolism, what had fed into that. And so some of that's gonna come from the movies that they watched. Some of that's gonna come from, again, the stories that they were told. So what we have to do is at some level reinvigorate the national memory and the national imagination so that those things travel at some level together. So I think that's a piece of it. Because, again, Lewis served in combat. Louis knows. C.S. lewis knows, hey, I wasn't sitting there on, like, I couldn't draw on the chalkboard why I was still there or why I stayed where I was supposed to be, but I was there. And it was loyalty and it was, again, a sentimentality at some level, which you can, you know, you can say, hey, that's not real. That's not rational, but everybody knows that that's not true. What are the things that motivate you most? It's not the things, again, that you can sketch out on a blackboard. It's your family relationships. It's. It's the things that really drive you. So that's, that's the, the baseline familial aspect. The. And then the storytelling of, hey, we. We love our country. And that's not just, not just principles, it's the stories that we tell. And again, I love watching old war movies. I love watching old westerns and things like that. And I think that really has those. Those things have motivated a generation to do greater things than I'm capable of doing. And so what I want to do is feed that to my kids and also feed that to myself and recognize that's. That's the thing that, that gives you affection. And, you know, you can, you can, at some level, you have to be the guy who goes to a Fourth of July parade and, like, gets wells up with pride, even if it is just the local bank, you know, somebody from the local bank holding an American flag. You know, there's. There's some. Something that. And, and you can't really. There's no, like, there's no medical prescription that you can give that turns that on, right? And like, if, if at some level, you have to be the kind of person. And this goes into the American identity thing that I think we're going to talk about. If you can look at a statue of George Washington and say, that's my people, that's who I come from, and be proud of coming from that kind of person and being a part of the nation that he founded, that's identity stuff. I'm going to fight stuff. And that's the kind of thing that matters and creates camaraderie. If we're bound together, not necessarily even by the same stories, but by the same kinds of stories, then I think we're going to last a little bit longer. This is why I'm encouraged by things like the Top Gun, Maverick. You know, like, it sounds silly, but it sounds silly. But at some level, like, in 2022. Everybody kind of needed a little bit of that. It was a nostalgia trip, not just for this old movie that we all liked when we were growing up, but it was also a vision of, hey, these are good people working hard to do the right thing. They have a mission. They focus on the mission, and they care about how it goes because they care about each other. And again, that's a popcorn movie. But like that. That. There's still something. There's still nerve endings in the American body that light up when they hit something like that. And I think that's good that, that. And that that's the kind of thing that I think will help us. Celebrations like the, you know, the anniversary coming up. Yeah. 250th celebration. That's going to be huge, I think. But yeah, it's going to be encouraging and encouraging at some level. The sentiment, the sentimental part of identity, that. That will make a big difference.
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I agree, man. And I love how you always as. I mean, you're obviously a phenomenal storyteller. And I think that's another thing. I'm. I'm a sucker for great storytelling too, man. I just. I. I just get trapped. And I was a movie kid my whole life, right. And just the other day I watched the Big Red One again with Lee Marvin, and he was one of my heroes as a kid. And. And it's such a beautiful movie about this small team that goes from Northern Africa to Sicily to. To. To France all the way through. And. And it's just beautiful story of this old sergeant who was in World War I and finishes in World War II. And, you know, and I was. I was just thinking to myself, my God, that's what we need more of. We need. You know, because I. I believe that the cultural foundations of America are rooted in stories. It's the stories of escaping persecution from England or from the church or, you know, it's escaping persecution, you know, famine from. From Ireland. It's the Scottish leaving and coming to the Appalachians and founding there. And, you know, and I think those stories are profound, as you've. You've said and that. And I loved how you described the wiring in us, like those tentacles that are just waiting for that emotion to hit us and to light us up in particular, young people, what as. As AI emerges. And do you think that, you know, in a greater capacity to tell stories by using AI, the latest versions of all the different video software are insane. What? Someone just put one out the other day that it showed what the collapse of, like, the Apocalypse and they, they created all the influencers online and how they would be filming themselves in the, in the, in the apocalypse. And, and it was brilliant. It was just so beautifully done and you know, as satirically done. How do you think, like, do you foresee a real emergence of those kind of stories of past coming out to really penetrate through the consciousness of our young people? I apologize for the interruption, but I just have to give you a little shout out from our sponsor, Firecracker Farm. Do you like spicy food? Well then ditch your hot sauces and go check out Firecracker Farms spice infused salt shakers. Now when I tell you this stuff is going to put a little kick in your food, I'm telling you it's going to give you a little kick. This farm is run by my buddy Alex and his beautiful family. They grow all the peppers, they do all the work, they send all the packaging, they make the videos. It is a real incredible family organization. Go visit their website at Firecracker Doc farm. Punch in rut 15. That's Romeo uniform tango one five and you will get your 15 discount. So don't wait any longer. Spice up your food@firecracker.com.
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A
It'S, it's tough mainly because obviously it's tough to predict anything. But what we've seen with the so AI at some level is kind of a, is, is marketing. The marketing around AI is that it is a democratizing force. It's a thing that allows anybody to do the, to fulfill their dreams and make something. The, the, the problem that I see with that is that every time a, an industry has become democratized, that industry at some level. Diesel. And I don't take any joy in saying that. I mean it's what happened with music as soon as around the same time that everybody said, hey, I can make a record in my bedroom is around the time that yes, a few people jumped up to the top of the charts and people got popular through YouTube and that sort of thing. But it was about the same time that the music industry stopped being able to make money. So Spotify came around around the same time that home recording software became easy to buy. And you see that with movies too, cameras. And so yes, it's become democratized at some level. But the, the difference. Conan o' Brien has talked about how when he said when there were three channels or four channels, there was maybe one thing on, right? And then when they expanded to 300 channels there was still maybe one thing on. So adding the amount of options that people have doesn't increase the amount of talent in the world. But what it does do is it allows the talented people who are there to find a path. And I think that's a good thing. So will this technology. Again, artificial intelligence I see as a similar sort of technology to cheap digital cameras and the video stuff. But what ends up happening, I think, is the, I don't say problem, but one element of AI that is one element of AI I think needs to be talked about more is that the only thing that it can go on is representations of reality. So if I take a picture of a tree and then that gets fed into an algorithm, the algorithm has access to that picture of that tree, but it's one step removed from the tree. And so in the same way that if I'm talking to you in a private conversation, I can write down something you said and say, hey, David said this great thing, and that can get fed into an algorithm, but it can't get the vibe it doesn't know who you are. It knows something you said. And so it only has access to representations of reality. But people who are way more have way more connections than any algorithm has, have access to reality. So you've got a, if you have a person and you have a real tree, then that's a stronger creative connection that can be made there than all of the computers that could ever exist. And so there's more computing power in your brain than you can imagine. And that's, again, a crude way of talking about what the brain is, but there's more power in your brain and there's more power in a thing itself and a relationship with a real person than there is in the computer, again, trying to fool you into thinking that it knows what people are like. And so my hesitance is not in the technology of AI. My hesitance is about the marketing and the way it's being sold. So what I hope is that, yes, whatever creative things come out now, whatever happens next is going to have to have a human connection, has to be able to represent reality. And people can represent reality better if they're trained well, if they're talented, if they're good, they can do it better because they've experienced it, they know what reality is like. And you can, you can have a person drive a big machine that's trying to, you know, approximate that, but it's always going to be, again, a few steps removed from the, the real tangible things. And, and I think that's, I think that's recognizing the limits of AI and loving or of any kind of technology and loving the thing that it can't have access to. Even a camera. A camera can't have access to a thing or to your kids or to your friends, but you do, and that's more valuable. And that's. Any kind of creative person should be working their hardest to solidify their connections to the real stuff in order to bring it into their creations and push things forward. So whatever happens, and again, whatever technology anybody ends up using, my hope is that the humanity shines through because that's what makes things work.
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B
Well, I think it. I you, by the way, that was very beautifully put, man. Thank you for surmising a complicated future for us. But. But it really is tangential to, like you said, that vibe, that energy, that anima that exists between the human and their connection to reality itself. I, I think that was wonderful. If that's the case. And, and that's, I think, another reason what attracted me to your stuff as much as it does. How do you. What do you do moving forward? Do you. Do you come out of the basement and start making, you know, documentaries like Matt Walsh does, or do you. Do you continue growing the podcasts and interviews or what. What does Wade do to make that. That tangible connection to the. The constitutional energy that is that a result from our. Who we are as a people, our culture, and then, you know, moving forward, the. The unique construct of, of where politics are going, where the world is going, where do you go? And how do you continue to develop your ability to tell stories?
- [38:01]
A
Yeah, that's. That is a huge question. And what my hope is is that whatever I do, I mean, I've always seen this. Any videos I make as at some level, an entertainment product, which I think is okay. And I know that there's. It is amazing what. I mean, everybody talked about this when Jon Stewart was on the air, how the entertainment. He was an entertainer. He was a comedian. He had opinions, and those opinions were really what drove the show. But he was an entertainer first. But that was the way that people learned how to think about politics. They didn't watch the news. They sort of watched Jon Stewart watch the news and felt like that was enough. And again, we're in a different era where Jon Stewart has all day. Like, by the time Jon Stewart came on at 11pm Eastern, a lot had happened. A lot has happened in commentary world. So essentially what would happen is commentary all day on television and then jokes with commentary at the end of the day. But what happens on X is jokes and commentary are happening at the same time. And so you've got this entertainment and commentary thing that's existing already. So we're in a different era where we're not waiting around for the jokes. We're not waiting around for Norm MacDonald on Weekend Update to tell us a joke about what happened on Tuesday because we're already telling each other jokes and hopefully the professional comedy writers can do better, but we've found out that sometimes they can't.
- [39:37]
B
They can't.
- [39:38]
A
Yeah, sadly. But, yeah, I think that's a fun. I'm glad to be doing what I'm doing now, mainly because I think that the paths, the old paths were always going to implode. Mainly because it was. And again, I just talked about, like, I talked bad about the democratizing process, so I'll talk good about it. The way that people have access to a microphone, that does mean that talent is going to out itself. And the way I think about it is that Indy Wilson, Nate Wilson, who's an author, talks about how God made a world where cream rises. That's just the way the world works. And so whether there's a studio system or a, or a label system for music or television world that you've got to get into and start as a PA and work your way up, or there's the Internet, both of those, whatever the mechanics the outward systems are, Cream will rise. And my hope is that. And so I trust that that's the world that I live in and that no matter what the systems look like, the good stuff is going to get out there. And we've seen that happen. I think there's, you know, cream is not the only thing that rises. I want to be clear about that. But there is, hopefully, if you make a good enough thing, then people will listen. And I think that's, I'm seeing that happen with people that I'm a big fan of and people. And I love being an audience member to a lot of success for my friends. So it's good.
- [41:20]
B
Can you just give us a quick list of some of those people? Because I really want to, if I really want people to discover there is these, these, these other networks, these are these other. Because like you said, there's so many people doing it and there is so much talent rising to the top like yourself. Who are some of the people that are really influencing you right now?
- [41:42]
A
Yeah, well, I live in Moscow, Idaho, and I. My pastor's name is Doug Wilson and he, he's a guy who I've learned a ton from through books, but also through pastoring and sitting under his teaching. And so most of the actual influences that I have are going to be closer to home. So Pastor Doug Wilson is a huge influence on me, and I'd recommend everybody check out his stuff. But Joe Rigney is another pastor on the staff there. Jared Longshore has written several books. Joe Rigney, specifically his book on the sin of empathy is something that I think at some level, started a national conversation. He started. He started talking about the way that empathy could be weaponized back in 2019, and now we see this as, again, a huge national conversation is happening everywhere. But I think his work on it at least started that conversation. But it's something that somebody needed to say, and he said it before anybody did and kind of took a lot of arrows early, and so he was able to push through there. But I love Joe. He's got a book called center of Empathy and another book called Leadership and Emotional Sabotage, both of which are really, really good. So, yeah, there are pastors here. I work for a company called Canon Press, and so a huge amount of my influence is just immediate. And I see them walking through the office, you know, so that's great. But I also see. Yeah, I mean, and I got to see. Speaking of Pastor Wilson, he went on Tucker, I think, last year.
- [43:15]
B
Yeah. And it's one of my favorite shows the last year that he did.
- [43:18]
A
So good. So good. And. And, you know, he's. He's a guy who's been working away as a pastor for decades and has been saying a lot of the same st that he's been saying, but doing it in a way that, again, he has a pretty consistent record. And so when he gets a bunch of opportunities, he's going to just be the same guy. But when people. I think we saw this also around the unpleasantness of 2020, where a lot of people recognized, hey, I wish somebody would have started building something decades ago because they realized, hey, my schools are failing my kids, my churches are failing me at some level. And that's not a universal thing. There are plenty of good churches, plenty of good schools. But I mean, the school that my kids go to got started in the 80s, and it's a private Christian school that started the association of Classical Christian Schools across the country. So, again, people have been building for a long time. And so when somebody like Pastor Wilson shows up on Tucker, he's coming with a lot of ethos. You know, he's coming not just with the right arguments and the right things to say, but, hey, I've been working on it for a while. And people are now recognizing the value of that which, which was encouraging to me. But I also mean that with friends like Arin McIntyre is a friend of mine. He does stuff over at Blaze. Love his stuff. And in a similar way, I think that as people will are going back to the great thinkers of the past centuries, I've recognized how great their insights were. So I talk about GK Chesterton all the time. I talk about CS Lewis I have in this conversation. But also people like Russell Kirk and people like Edmund. I did a video recently where I just quoted Edmund Burke for a long time.
- [45:03]
B
I love that one.
- [45:05]
A
And my long quotes about Edmund Burke got called the worst names in the world. The worst things you can possibly be is a guy quoting a guy from the 1700s. So that's been fun. It's recognizing, hey, the value is there if we look for it. And so my influences are all over the place and my, my friends are all over the place. But like I said, it's good to see, I think the world recognizing that there's value in reality again, people who've seen reality for a long time. And then when you hear I said this about the first time I started reading Pastor Wilson's books and some books that were coming out of canon, I just realized that the insights per page ratio was way higher than I was used to. Like padded out business books, you know, where it's like they've got leadership books. Yes. So you know exactly what I mean. So like there are like five insights and they're spread throughout the whole book with a bunch of stories connecting them all. And I, you know, and I, I've learned a lot from those. So I don't want to talk bad about those. But like, again, like Joe Rigney's book Leadership and Emotional Sabotage, you read that book and you go every sentence you go, oh man, I know 10 instances where this happened. And you're like, yeah, it's a. So that's fun. And I think people are ready for that kind of talk where it doesn't have to just be a fill a word count kind of talk or it doesn't have to be fill time kind of talk. The places where the insights are packed in. I think people are ready for that and they recognize the value. So like I said, I'm really glad to be living in this kind of world where I see good work from past decades bearing good fruit and I just get to again, be a happy audience member at some level.
- [46:54]
B
Well, I think you're so much more than that, man. I think you're taking all of those. You're revitalizing them. They're giving them a new. A new energy to them, and you're really making a. Just a huge positive impact I know you have on me over the last year, and I know you will continue to do that in all of the things that you do. And I can't thank you enough, Wade, for coming on. I appreciate you. I appreciate what you're doing. And could you just tell everybody where they can find your show and where they can follow you?
- [47:23]
A
Yeah. I'm on X at Wade Stots W A D E S T O T T S and the Wade show with Wade is the show that I do, and that's on YouTube. I also do a podcast every week on canon, so canonplus.com and there's a ton of stuff there. I wish I could go into how much cool stuff is on Canon plus, but I do have a promo code for 99cent for your first month. It is WADE99. So check out Canon plus, promo code WADE99. But, yeah, I'm everywhere. I try to be everywhere.
- [47:52]
B
Anyway, you are. Thank you, brother. Keep doing what you're doing. God bless you, man.
- [47:56]
A
Well, thank you, David. Appreciate it. This is an iHeart podcast.