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Zero Hour with James Poulos
Ep 98 | How Teachers' Unions Are Protecting Predators, Not Students | Ryan Walters
01:00:43
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From Trump Bibles to partnering with Lee Greenwood, Ryan Walters joins us in studio today. I'm James Polis. This is Zero Hour.
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La la la la.
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Ryan Walters is Oklahoma State Superintendent and is leading the fight against woke indoctrination. Yes, that's still going on. And liberal agendas in schools. Welcome, Ryan.
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Thank you for having me on, James. It's an honor.
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All right, well, you know, we love to have our stars on the show, but we also like to make stars on the show. You've been called the biggest culture warrior in Oklahoma. And as we all know, Oklahoma is probably the reddest state in the union, which would by mathematical equation, make you the biggest culture warrior in the entire United States of America. That seems like a pretty big deal. So we're gonna walk through all this stuff. I wanna start with the teasers. Trump Bibles. What's going on?
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Hey, look, you know, one of the things that we took on in education in Oklahoma was, you know, you continue to see the left drive religion out of our school. They hate the fact that the Bible played a role in American history. And so we said, we're bringing the Bible back. You know, we look back in the 1960s, you begin to see this war on religion in our schools. They took prayer out of school, they took the Bible out of school. And by the way, look what's happened to society ever since, right? You see, I mean, teenage drug use going rampant, you have teenage suicide. You see this hopelessness in young people. So we said, listen, our young people are going to understand the role the Bible played in American history. We're putting the Bible, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence back in every classroom. Of course, the left is losing their mind over it. Of course, they've sued us over it. But here's the reality. They can be offended by it, they cannot like it. But our kids have to know our history. And it is undoubtedly a tremendous impact that the Bible has had in Western civilization and American history.
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Yeah. You teach them the whole Bible?
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Yeah. Yes, sir. So what we do is we've got standards and we're Creating curriculum around that, working with a lot of folks on that. But what we do is, especially in Western civilization, you get the full history of the Bible. But in American history, we really start. You look at the Pilgrims, you look at kind of why they came here, which again, you just see the absurdity of. If you take the Bible and Christianity and say, as the teachers unions want us to, don't mention any of that in a history classroom, then why did the Pilgrims come here? How do you explain that to a kid? So we start there. We walk through the mentions in presidential speeches. We walk through the first great awakening, second great awakening, all the way up. Martin Luther King Jr. Is another one. We emphasize of his Letter From a Birmingham Jail. He talks about civil disobedience in the eyes of him looking at Christianity, says, look, if. If federal law were to violate Christian beliefs, he felt morally justified in standing against it. We emphasize that concept as well. So. Yeah, but we have it all throughout our history curriculum there.
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Yeah, I mean, it's so essential. It's the. The somehow we all let ourselves sort of entertain the. The belief that religion is just kind of some opinions that you hold in your head. It's just conscience. And one, when you reduce religion down to conscience, it disappears. It disappears from public life. But then it makes the past confusing. It makes it inaccessible, because you can't understand that. No, it's not just some opinions that exist in your head or things that you tell yourself in your head, but it's part of the experience, the motivator of why our ancestors. But of course people around the world do the things that they do.
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That's exactly right. And when you look at what the left's done in education, the gaslighting they've done to this next generation is incredible. And a big part of it is they want to remove any concept that people in our past look to the Bible, look to their Christian beliefs to guide them. They want it to just be the secular history of. Everyone was just in it to make money. Everyone was just manipulating their fellow men. Because again, when you look back in American history, if you don't view the founders of having any kind of understanding of history or any kind of Judeo Christian values, well, look, why study them? I mean, these are just evil people that we're all racist, just terrible. So just forget it. Just listen to us on the way. We should move forward. Forward. When the reality is so much of wisdom comes from studying history. And when young people do that and they see that the Bible played a major role. Well, look Some of them might choose the path to study the Bible more deeply. Some of them may just look at it intellectually and say, I want to understand it. I may not be a Christian, but I want to understand why did it play such a role in their lives. But regardless, we know that the way that you're going to make good policy decisions, the way that you're going to figure out who should lead the country or who should lead your local city council or whatnot, it starts with understanding how we got here and our history. And so, you know, I'm a history teacher, so you've kind of got me on a topic I love to talk about. But to me, you find so many of the answers of the problems we face today. When you go back and study history.
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Yeah. Okay, you're a history teacher. How often per day do you spend thinking about the Roman Empire?
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I spend a lot of time. My wife gives me some eye rolls at home. You know, I mean, it's one of those sayings that. I love the question. I love that that's gone viral. But look, I love that we're getting back into these conversations about, okay, Western civilization. Let's talk about that. Love watching your show that we get to do these deep conversations about what are the lessons to be taken away. Again, human nature hasn't changed. The details change. But human nature is how it is. And that was such a foundational piece for our founders as they studied ancient Rome, they studied ancient Greece, they tried to build a system of government that took into account human nature and the lessons from history. And again, I love it. I frankly think if you teach history the right way, young people love it, too. I loved watching our students in my class come alive as they study this and form their own opinions. And we've got to get back to that.
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Yeah, well, I mean, it's such a crazy time for whether you want to call it sort of public history or that kind of public conversation about what our history is and how it affects our identity. I mean, I promise this isn't a gotcha question. It's a basic question. I mean, this is a time when a lot of people are going, well, wait a minute. What is the West? What are we even talking about here? If the west is who we are, if Western civilization is what we're trying to defend, as opposed to, you know, putting America first in that slot or putting Christendom first in that slot or whatever, there's a menu of choices. We're in this kind of revolutionary moment where we're sort of all reassessing in a major way. You know, okay, you know, what are our priorities? How do we know who we are? Technology is changing so fast post World War II. Order is kind of not here anymore. Are we going to sort of pretend that it's still it? What is it? You know, all this sort of questions, so big, so open. How do you approach those questions? You know, how do you. Do you think answering the question of what is the west is even the right question to be asking?
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Look, I do. I think it is one of the questions that we should be asking. And you're seeing it, to your point, play out in so many stages right now. You know, you look at foreign policy, right? And we're having this discussion of how do we deal with Ukraine, how do we deal with Russia. All of this starts with, what are our values as the West? What are we looking to achieve? What is important to us and to me? You start with going back. And you start with going, okay, traditionally, what have those been? What has kept our society together? What has kept us in such close proximity to our European neighbors? What are those things? What are those values? And if those values aren't still there in some of our allies, we need to let them know that. I mean, I appreciated JD Vance going to Europe and going, hey, what's going on with free speech over here, guys? Remember, I mean, this is, you know, hey, we're in this together. You're our allies. Let's go back, let's talk about World War I, World War II. I've appreciated President Trump bringing that historical perspective in as well. But I think, you know, America has always brought moral clarity on our positions, whether it be foreign policy, domestic policy. And I think that if you don't know how the west, how we got here, you don't know what separated the west from some others, but also what separated America and our dealings with some of our European neighbors. All of these are very important concepts that our kids need to know, they need to understand. And again, frankly, it is unifying, right? I mean, history can be unifying. That doesn't mean there's not disagreements. That doesn't mean there's not disagreements on how to move forward. But you start from a similar place of, this is our country, these are the values that we can agree upon. And now we may disagree on the practicality of how to implement them. But if you don't get back to that, you just see this where, how do you ever come together? And you see the left that has just lost their ever loving mind and you Go, okay, what part of American values are you still representing there on the radical left? And the reality is they don't. And I think that's just a reset that has to occur.
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You know, I try to be at least a little generous from time to time and say, like, you know, why have they lost their minds in this way? One potential answer is, well, they keep trying things that don't work. And yeah, you know, you can make some headway and you can try to force certain things on people and you can try to enforce these ideologies and reprogram the kids and chop people's genitals off or whatever, but they had a good, you know, four to 12 year span, depending on how you want to do the math, to sort of impose this new kind of system. And the graft did not take, you know, like the host body rejected the implant. And then I look over at Europe and, you know, gosh, they've tried many different approaches to kind of get either to break away from the past or to return to the past, and they still haven't cracked it. I don't think in America we got all kinds of our own problems, for sure, but one of those problems that has seemed to be devil Europe for so long, being sort of stuck paralyzed between this yearning for the revolutionary future and for the re enchanted past and never being able to really find a home. That's not the American problem, thank God. Do you think that Europe is going to crack this at some point soon? How optimistic or hopeful are you about our European friends?
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I just actually had a conversation on the way down of a CEO that just came back from London from a conference and was saying, I'm amazed at some of the conversations at this conference. I said, well, tell me about them. He said, well, we really heard a lot about the understanding of Judeo Christian values in their societies. I heard a lot of meritocracy is how we got here and DEI is racist and we need to call it out as such. We need to look back to our history of what brought us to this point and make sure that people are proud to be. He was speaking about some British individuals and French individuals, but be proud of what we've accomplished, be proud of what we've done as a people. And you can assimilate people as long as you're assimilating them to a culture, to something. And he was very impressed by. He was saying it was very trumpesque. But it's even bigger than that. It is an understanding that if we don't get back to this, there's no direction here. We don't have a rudder. And look, I'm cautiously optimistic. I think it's one of the things that Americans, we get right. You look back and you look at instances like the American Revolution, you had a situation where obviously there's a war, but we didn't lose sight of what the war was about. Then you go across the pond and the French Revolution, well, they lost track of what that was about and it got lost in the war there. And so we've always done a great job here domestically of being able to keep our eye on that and having reset moments like that. Europe has struggled with that. And I do think that we do have an opportunity under President Trump and Vice President J.D. vance of that moral clarity and the way that they speak so decisively on it. Europe, as you pointed out, just the ups and downs that they've experienced. And it's like, I think there is an incredible opportunity right now that they know that they've got a friend in America that, hey, fueling into these ideals. If you go back to that, you're going to have a steady ally here that again, our enemies will fear us and our friends will very much appreciate the alliance there. And so I'm cautiously optimistic on that front.
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Well, this conference that you described sounds suspiciously like a conference in London that I myself recently attended. And I will tell you, it's tricky right now in the UK because you've got this reform versus Tory thing, specifically on the issue of immigration. And I found a lot of value in that conference. I found cause for hope in that conference. I did also find that a lot of Americans walked in there and they're like, all right, let's talk about immigration. And it was sort of like, no, we can't do that here, because even on the right of center, there's this divide and it's very sharp. And Americans are used to having this very large geographical area in which to live. You know, 75 million or 80 million, whatever, the, the, the real number of, of illegal immigrants is since the 80s. It's a big number. It's too big. But this is an enormous land and 300 plus million people, there's room for them. And that's not the way it is in Europe. And to see, you know, our closest, closest allies, closest friends in Europe, the British, just really just kind of tying themselves in knots trying to figure out how to get everyone on the same page while at the same time not even really trying not to even mention the I word. Man, that was Painful.
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And look, you know, President Trump has busted through so many of these kind of popular beliefs that us as conservatives, you always get hit with this from rhinos. You can't do that. We know it's the right thing to do, to fire a bunch of people from government and talk about really honing in on government spending. You talk about it, but you don't do it. Because when you do it, you upset the apple cart too much.
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You talk about it because you can't do it.
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Yes, exactly. Yes. You campaign on it. I'm gonna tell you, I've heard this a lot. Hey, you're supposed to campaign on those things. You don't do them because then, you know, then you get. And I'm going, well, that's honestly a big part of the problem with the Republican Party is we said we were gonna do a lot of things and we didn't do them, so we've gotta do them. And President Trump has shown this of, I'm gonna be very blunt, I'm gonna be very direct, and I'm gonna do those things. And the reality is the British, if they don't tackle those issues and they continue to play those games, it is going to just get worse and worse. And eventually you're gonna have a population that's gonna go, we are so tired of a political class that tell us one thing and a wink and nod and do something else, won't tackle the tough issues. And this is where you become irrelevant. I mean, frankly, that's where political parties, historically, when you have these major issues that bubble up, you can look at American history, you can look at history of the west, eventually it will be dealt with. And the longer that you put it off and the longer you don't address it, the options of it being dealt with in a way best for the population become much more difficult to make sure that that's the way it's handled. And so our European friends would be wise to look at President Trump, frankly. And again, I've just been so impressed to see the approval rating where it is going up when he's doing the things that, again, they always warned us, we can't go in there and cut all those jobs, because they're going to blame you for every kind of disruption, every kind of issue. And he's going in there going, no, we're going to keep going. Going to keep moving with it. And same way with foreign policy. I think that the clarity that President Trump has provided our other world leaders would be wise to take heed to it.
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Yeah. I mean, that story of political party irrelevance, we saw it happen with the gop, this is how we got Trump. And even folks I know on the left who are sort of like, very wary, they're like, okay, I guess we're stuck with them. But it never should have come to this. And how is it that.
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Whether you.
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Want to run the clock from 1991 or 2001 or whenever, year after year, administration after administration, the sort of uni party control has led us to a point where the only way out of the box is for a guy like Trump, a guy like Elon, to just kind of say, like, all right, we're just going to sweep the desk clear.
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Yeah. I mean, President Trump said, I saved the Republican Party. And I'm looking at him going, yeah, you're right, because you're the first politician we've had in a long time, went and got elected and then did it. So now you got a population that again, they're very loyal to him and they should be, cuz they're going, you're the first guy that looked me dead in the eyes, said the things that everybody said, you can't say. And then you went in and did them, and then you faced all these repercussions for it, and then you're doing it again. And I was actually with Eric Trump yesterday, and he made the comment too, of, you know, he said Republican Party and stopped himself. He says, well, if we're going to continue to be conservative, common sense party, we've got to continue to do these things. And it was just a, hey, look, Republican Party, you better make sure that you're on board of fulfilling your promises, because here's my fear right now. And you're seeing it. You're seeing it, of course, in blue states, but we're beginning to see this emerge in red states as well, where governors, attorney generals are not fully supporting the Trump agenda. They're already getting weak knee. They're already making excuses. Well, can we slow it down? I mean, I'm gonna tell you something. If President Trump, who was very clear and again, I love towards the end of the campaign when he was doing all the longer forum podcasts from going, guys, you can't act like he's not telling you what he's gonna do. He's sitting on here for an hour walking through in very great detail his policy agenda, what he's gonna do, I mean, he couldn't have had a more clear candidate of, yeah, I'll answer your questions, I'll tell you why? We're gonna do the things we're gonna do, win every swing state and then have Republicans, I mean, less than 100 days going. Okay, I know, I know you said all that. I know it's the right thing to do, but we've got to slow down these DOGE efforts. We've got to slow down all the. Boy, I'm telling you, Republicans better get on board to what the American people want, or again, they risk themselves becoming irrelevant.
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Well, and again, you know, I understand there are always going to be ideological disagreements, sure, shades of disagreement. But we have had a political culture of riding it out, slowing it down, pocket, veto. It just put it in the closet until it dies, and then, oh, sadly, it died. We've had that for generations, and that's why we are where we are.
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That's right. Yeah. And look, we have always, let's have the political discussions if there's a disagreement on policy, and let's talk through that. But the answers of, let's slow down because you're making too many waves, frankly, I see it as rinos sit there and look at, well, special interests. They've talked to me a little bit, and here's a way to kind of split the baby. If we would kind of talk about it, then let's move away from it. You've seen this with illegal immigration. You've got, folks, there was an article came out just a couple weeks ago of a lot of CEOs getting in the president's ear, going, okay, enough is enough. You proved your point. Let's stop. Let's just leave it alone now. And I'm going, guys, he's ran on this. American people are crystal clear. Illegal immigration has to stop and has to get under control. And again, Republicans gotta hold the line on this. Support the president. Let's get this done.
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And, you know, I look for the motivation beyond sort of the ideological, you know, shades of whatever or who's whispering in your ear. I think a lot of our guys over on that side of things, you know, they have. They have had pretty comfortable lives, all things considered.
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That's right.
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And when you grow up in that kind of culture, your attitude is not going to reflect the reality that when it comes to making waves, like they're going to be waves, and either you're making them or someone else is. And if you're not going looking for trouble, trouble is going to find you anyway.
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You know, if the status quo isn't rattled by what you're doing, are you really making much change? You know, and that's one thing I tell my team is guys, they're going to be, the teachers unions are going to be mad at us. They're not going to go away. Your status quo special interest, this kind of bureaucratic class, they're not going to like it because again, things have gone very well for them. The system has been created the way that they want it to so that they continue to make money off of it and they continue to be in power. So when you upset that apple cart, especially when you do it, of putting power back in the hands of the people through giving parents parent rights, school choice, things like that, oh boy, they come unglued. And again, to me that points to the efforts that we're making are correct. We're on the right spot. I had protesters, I did a big event last night, had dozens of protesters that follow me around wherever I go in Oklahoma. And again, why, why are they so upset? They are upset because we're over the target. Because there's a dramatic power shift to putting parents back in charge of their kids education. And you have to realize that again, the left isn't going to go away quietly into the night when you take away their power structure.
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All right, so let's, let's dig into Oklahoma. You said in the pre show that if it's happening in Oklahoma, it's happening everywhere. And this goes across, you know, everything from the immigration to education stuff to, you know, drug trafficking, cartel things, sort of economic dislocation, you know, the works. And I think that's important for people to bear in mind because you know, I think even a lot of, a lot of Trump voters, you know, they're scattered across the country, 3 million plus of them in California. They think of Oklahoma and they think like, well, you know, every county's red and there's just kind of a lot of, you know, ranchers and tornadoes and it's kind of off in its own world. What goes on there isn't similar to what goes on wherever I'm living. And that's not the case. So I want to look at what your experience is on the ground there. Makes sense. The history teacher to superintendent pipeline. Not a lot of kids are like, when I grow up, I want to be a superintendent. But I can see that for you this is a move that isn't just about getting comfortable in that position, making sure that the teachers unions are sort of well fed, just riding it out, pushing kids out into a future that you don't understand. That's obviously not your game plan. So just Walk us through sort of like how it is that you wound up in this position, what you were selecting for and what, you know, what are those immediate problems that you set out to solve?
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Sure. You know, I started out, you know, I wanted to be a history teacher. I was one of those kids. I was 15, and I was sitting in this history teacher's classroom and he's taught. We're going through the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, we're reading some letters from Thomas Jefferson. And I'm just, I mean, I'm geeking out. I mean, every day I'm going home, I'm wearing my parents out, my grandparents out. I'm going, you know, anybody wants to talk history with me? And I mean, I just was like, I've got to do this. You know, if I can do that for kids and get them as excited as my teachers did for me, that's what I want to do. And I had grandparents and parents were very supportive of doing that. And so, so I became a history teacher. Loved it. Absolutely loved it. Loved teaching kids about America, Loved teaching kids about American exceptionalism. Won some teaching awards. And then after that, people kind of wanted to know what I thought on policy, things like that. We were always in the bottom of our educational outcomes in Oklahoma. So I began to speak out, began to speak about, look, we need to change the system. I talked a lot about school choice. Honestly, at the beginning, I was pretty naive. I didn't know why so many teachers were mad at me by saying, yeah, I think if a kid wants to go to a private school or be homeschooled, that's great, right? Don't you want the parent to decide that? Well, a lot of teachers union folks did not like that. So I began to kind of look into this, of why. Why is there such opposition in education to school choice, to merit pay for teachers, to innovation, to really kind of breaking down a siloed education system and really trying to think more outside the box. Where do these things come from? And that kind of led me down this road of, of fighting with your establishment, status quo folks, trying to engage them in more of a public discussion of, okay, why can't it be different? Why can't this look different? I would even get detractors and get into a debate with them and go, so is this the system? If we had to design this from scratch, this is what you would design. You would run kids through the system. Looks like this. Even your detractors go, well, I mean, no, it's like, okay, well, then why are we Defending it. Why are you out here defending it? And so that ultimately got me into a role where I began proposing changes. We had a Democrat superintendent that was blocking all these reforms. So eventually, as a parent of four young kids and getting to talk to parents all over the state, I eventually decided to run for the office. So I was elected by the people of Oklahoma to go in. And my goal always was to aggressively institute these changes that I heard from everybody at the diners, at the libraries, everywhere I'd go. It was, hey, why don't our kids love this country anymore? Why don't our kids understand just the basics? Why can't they read? Why can't they do math? Why is it that every time we're turning around, we're hearing a story about a book about transgenderism in our local school? Why are they reading that? Why aren't they reading the Federalist papers? Why aren't they reading these things, these items? And so again, I went in to have a very aggressive agenda to get our state back on track so that parents would actually be hopeful about the education their kids were getting instead of so frustrated by it.
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B
Yeah, just a story that's replicated across so many states. And you know, to me, a microcosm of the way that more folks who are trying to understand how to get America back in the zone are facing or sort of assessing these two pathways. Right. Pathway number one is parallel economy. Create your own ghetto. You drop out of the system, retreat to the Highlands for several presidential terms. Out of power. That became very attractive to a lot of folks on the right. Now the situation has changed. And the thought of, well, hey, homeschooling, awesome. Private school, great school choice, fabulous. But you don't just need to retreat anymore. And the thought of, like, we can actually go into the center of power and actually do something there. And how's that going to have effects? System wide effects. That's a new turn. And some people can be hesitant about that. You know, oh, we don't want to just have big government, but we're in charge. That kind of attitude. I understand that attitude. But at the same time, you know, structurally there is kind of no substitute for just going and doing the thing at the highest level with the greatest degree of excellence and seeing how that radiates through.
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A
James, I couldn't agree with your point more. You're not going to find anybody who's more pro school choice than me. I want parents. You want to homeschool your kids, spend more time with your kids. We should absolutely be encouraged in that. So I encourage a lot of homeschooling. We love it. Love having a lot of homeschoolers in our state. Love kids being able to go to Christian private schools. We launched the first Christian charter school in the country in Oklahoma. We're going to the Supreme Court on that case here in the next month. So love school choice, want parents to have that school choice. But I'm going to tell you, if we don't get our public schools on Track, we're allowing 80, 85% of our kids to be indoctrinated to hate this country, to not believe in the family unit, to not believe that religion plays a major role in society and has shaped so many lives of individuals throughout history and civilizations. And look, you know, I mean, kind of an adage of a lesson of history is, hey, it doesn't take two to decide to go to war sometimes, right? It just takes one, right? And then you don't really have much of a choice. I'm going to tell you, the left is at war, has started a culture war. They have attacked the family, they have attacked Judeo Christian values, and they have used the school system to do that. If we don't engage on that front and we don't win, this country is going to be unrecognizable. And we've already seen signs of how close we are to that. And luckily we haven't reached that point where it's flipped. You know, the presidential election was just a great sign of, hey, we're not there yet. But I'm going to tell you, what you see in our schools and the undermining of society is truly incredible. And that's why I believe it's twofold. You have to stop all the nonsense. I mean, we were the first state. We banned critical race theory, dei, all this transgenderism nonsense. We don't do the pronoun woke Olympic game. We stopped all that. But what are you doing? So you stop it. That's absolutely crucial. What are the kids learning? What are they reading about? What is their understanding of society? What is their understanding of America? And that's why I felt it was so crucial to put the Bible back in the classroom, embed character development around figures from American history in every grade level. I mean, if you go into a kindergarten class, they're going to be talking about Abraham Lincoln. They're going to be sharing a story from the Bible and its historical context and that role, character, values, what made America. And if we don't get involved and engage on that front and say, listen One of the main reasons of a public school, and you hear people talk about why do we have public schools? Well, there's a few things, right? Absolutely. We have to have kids that are able to read. Absolutely. We have to have kids that can go get a job. Those are absolutely important. But one of the most essential is also if we're going to be a constitutional republic that relies on our citizens to be actively involved in the future of this country by making decisions on who leads the country, what the policies are, both locally, statewide and nationally, they have to understand, first of all, how does our government work. Second of all, our history, what do Americans believe? What is the American dream? What are American values? And if we don't do that, I mean, as Benjamin Franklin said, it's a republic, if you can keep it. We're not going to keep it. We aren't going to continue to have a country that's based on those values if our young people don't know those things.
- [31:28]
B
Yeah. And you know, here's the rub for me is there is out there on the right, there's a strain of like very pessimistic, sort of classically influenced, you know, it's a black pilled thinking, if you know what that term means, that says, look, you know, Franklin was right, it's a republic if you can keep it. Polybius was right, you have the cycle of regimes. The founders were right that if you lose that sort of religious and moral foundation, then the whole entire experiment of a large republic is just going to sink into the morass. And unfortunately we crossed that bridge. The American people as a whole are no longer fit for a republican form of government. It is constitutionally guaranteed. But sadly, you know, if you go back and, and read the history of the west, the inescapable conclusion is that we need to recognize that democracy, representative government, is broken and we need a stronger hand. And that's the only way that we're going to sort of hold everyone together. It's sort of like declining empire. You just, you gotta get someone in charge who can just hold all this stuff together and slowly work on one day getting to a better place where once again, people can function as citizens. You know, that's, that's a mindset. And from that standpoint there's, there's a certain kind of sense in thinking about what the left was trying to do. Oh shucks, you know, we can't be a republic anymore. How are we going to unite all of these disparate kinds of people? We got all these immigrants flowing in we need the immigrants because we're deindustrializing. You know, everything's changing. How are we going to sort of reconstitute an American identity that is going to be encompassing enough but sort of low enough to the ground that we can scoop everyone in, sort of rebuild our elite, rebuild our institutions. So we're gonna have this new flag and it's gonna have rainbow stripes on it. It's gonna be amazing. It's gonna include everyone except for a few people who we're not gonna talk about. You know, we're gonna, it's capitalism isn't enough anymore. We're gonna create esg sort of this new standard because we over educated the people and we don't have enough jobs for them and they don't actually know what they learned in college. They forgot everything. So we're going to create this new, new thing and we're sort of train them up in that, you know, there's a sort of, kind of like, you know, if you look at it in the right way, there's this regime level analysis where you're like, okay, okay. You know, for, for so much of the Bush years we had our, our, our generals and all those guys saying look, you know, we're ringing the alarm bell. We need national service. If we don't mandate national service risk average a selfish complainers who are out of shape and just consumers and don't, you know. And a lot of that kind of ended up coming true and we kind of never did get the national service. And in a sense, if you want to be charitable toward, toward the elite left, they're trying to concoct some form of national service that could really just sort of reconstitute this body politic that was no longer fit for representative government. But guess what, at what cost, right? They started to make that apparatus happen. And okay, you know, you got these pipelines and NGOs and we're just kind of building this new regime. But at what cost? Physical wellness, mental wellness, spiritual wellness. Look at these people. You haven't made them better, you haven't relieved them of the burden of, of self governance to sort. Well at least we can scrape them back together as sort of human beings so that they get to a point where the baseline of health and fitness and then they can rediscover the art. No, we went in the opposite direction. Made them maybe even, even less fit to be citizens. Obesity, perversity, insanity, schizophrenia, you'd hooked on pills for us, their lives, all that stuff that Maha arose in response to all that stuff that, you know, you got hippie women in, you know, in Topanga Canyon and Berkeley, across California, all saying, like, this is psychotic. You know, Democrats have turned against spiritual wellness, hippie, new age people. You know, they were some of the first sort of ground zero during COVID where they said, no, you know, I'm drawing a line. This is anti human, anti woman, anti health. That whole phenomena just goes to show, I think that, you know, even if you try to ascribe kind of the most, the most reasonableness or the best intentions to this experiment with that kind of rainbow flag regime that we went through, it not only did it not work as a substitute for Republican government, but it set us back even further.
- [36:03]
A
No, I agree. You know, what was it Churchill said once about America? You know, they always make the right decision. They just, after they've exhausted all the.
- [36:11]
B
Others, it's the last one in the box.
- [36:13]
A
But, you know, look, obviously, you know, you've seen this great divergence from who we are as a people. But then like Americans do, it's, you know, almost they get jolted back to, hold on a second, what are we doing? And you know, and you saw that as, look, as much as I hated that we had to deal with four years of Joe Biden, it's almost like, boy, it woke people up. I mean, do we get RFK as a health secretary without four years of Joe Biden? And it's just like people going, okay, hold on a second. These are questions that need answers. And I've always loved RFK jr's approach of like, these are questions. I mean, the fact that you get so mad that I ask these questions that make me want to ask these questions even more. And I mean, you're starting to see things that again, just, I mean, years ago were taboo to talk about or ask. You've now got people in power that, no, I'm actually, we're going to find an answer to these questions. We're going to make sure that we get this back on track. And so look, I think that you're seeing Americans that have looked at that, have seen that, have said, look, this has gone way too far. And I think that for a while you had a lot of Americans that, oh, you know, if they want to do that, you know, is it really that big of a deal? And this is one of the things that it's kind of putting the frog in the slow boiling pot, right? It's like, well, is it really that bad? And then you go, well, if you study history, you know, it Is that bad? I mean, once you start going down that road, it's just going to get worse. It's going to get further adrift. You know, one of the poems that I always look to and identify with a lot is look at Rudyard Kiplings, the Gods of the Copybook headings. And he goes in there and goes, you know, in our schools, we used to have you write it was a Bible verse or a moral truth or saying, and we'd make you copy it 20 or 30 times. Well, why did we do that? Well, yes, we want you to have good penmanship, yes, we want you to learn your letters. But we also understood there was true value to emphasizing truth, emphasizing morality on a daily basis. And then they walk through. And again, the poem uses some absurd examples of, well, now in society, people believe this to be true. How crazy is that? And we've got to return to these things, and I think we will, but we'll return to them after probably some real difficulties. And I see that play out again throughout history, and I think you're seeing that now of we went through some times where unfortunately, Americans suffered greatly because of allowing policies that go into place that are just anti truth, anti historical, anti our values. And now I do think, though, the momentum that is there, I am optimistic. And we've got to be very cognizant of the fact of the left doesn't go away, the left doesn't go, okay, I guess we'll give President Trump two years till midterms or four years to just do his thing. They will sue, they will protest, they will blockade, they will threaten, they will do anything in their power to stop it. And so we've got to stay vigilant on that.
- [39:11]
B
Yeah, I mean, you could go all the way back to democracy in America on this, where Tocqueville is sort of just bemused watching this culture in America of like, we got this, we got this, we got this all the way down to rock bottom. And then you hit rock bottom and it's like, we don't got this and you build again. He was talking about this with, you know, bankruptcy law was a big one for him, where he was like, this is insane. You know, in Europe, these people would be languishing in debtors prisons. In America, there is like a. There is an acceptance of failure. And sometimes it's a long way down to that point where you hit the bottom and you say, like, all right, I got to start over. But that's something that, you know, is it's tolerated, which can be, you know, if the wrong people are in charge, you can go through a lot of undue suffering, but it's. It's rewarded when you do make that decision that, you know, that it's time to turn the ship around.
- [40:00]
A
And look, you know, I thought, you know, I'm trying to remember the, you know, I don't remember the whole. Whole guy's name and everything else, but I remember when Elon Musk and J.D. vance went out there and went to bat for that young person that was working for him that, you know, they tried to dox. And I'm going, right. That was a great example of, you know what, guys, we're done with this cancel culture of you know what. But in America, we have all. To your point, we've always been, hey, we love the rags for riches story, don't we? We love the comeback story. We love the whole they made it happen redemption culture. Absolutely. And I've always. I'm going to be honest with you, as a teacher, somebody works with young people, that's always been something that has greatly troubled me, that we're in a culture now that one mistake and you're done. And I'm gonna tell you, that's not a society I want to live in. You want to live in a society where it's like, especially you're talking about young people. I'm going, so we're going to hold over somebody's head for when they're not even 20 years old, something they did or something they said, and now they're just rejected from society. That's not the values our country was founded on. That's not. You look at Judeo Christian values, that's not there. But also just, is that really what you want for your kids? Is that really what you want for the next generation? And so, look, I think that we've always been a country that says, hey, we love that comeback story. We love the redemption story. And I love that we're back into a place of. We're not going to allow this radical left movement to sit here and tear down individuals for one mistake. And I think that's very helpful for society, for us to get that problem fixed as well.
- [41:34]
B
It is scary to see generationally how young people are kind of indoctrinated, whether explicitly or implicitly, and this idea that, you know, one. One mistake and you're done. I've spent, you know, a lot of years in la, and over the years, you know, you kind of get. You get attuned to the cultural weirdness of of that city. And. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that, you know, there are obviously a lot of actors, or at least. At least there were a lot more than there are now. But there's still. Still that attitude. And. And the neurosis of the actor, the insecurity of the actor, comes from knowing that if you fall into the slightest bit of disfavor, you're out. Because there are hundreds of people right behind you who look just like you, who talk just like you, who will be obedient just like you. It starts from that first audition, or you go into that audition room, and you're waiting to be called in, and you're used to being a star in your hometown or whatever. The funny one, the charismatic one, the beautiful one, the one who stands out in a crowd. You open that door, and you walk in, and guess what? It's 50 people who look just like you. Same height as you, same charisma as you, same accent as you. And you realize you're not so special. The Internet has sort of done this to everyone. Now, the upshot of the Internet is, no matter how big of a freak you are, whatever your identity is, you can find people just like you on the Internet. You can spend all your time with them, you can hang out with them, have your own language, have your own, like, weird little things you talk about, and that could be your entire life. Well, the flip side of that is there's an entire Internet worth of people out there who are basically just like you. And if you mess up one time, you're disposable, and you can be instantly replaced. And I think a lot of kids just growing up with the Internet, not knowing anything different. They know that there is a slush fund. There's a pit of people who are basically just like them, waiting to replace them if, you know, they step out of line one way or the other, give the powers that be the slightest excuse, and you're out. That's tough.
- [43:29]
A
There's one thing I would always make sure I told all my students, and I think it's important for young people to hear. It was kind of twofold. First of all, you're unique. You're uniquely created. There's nobody like you. Right? You are truly a special person. Never in the history of the world was there anybody just like you. You are truly unique. And then the other one is, things can always get better. No matter where you are in life. There's nothing that's too hopeless that you can't come out of. It because one of the toughest things I've ever dealt with is having students that would commit suicide. And you reflect and go, did we let that person know that you're special? But also, I mean, things can be dark, but it can always get better. Don't think it can never. There's darkness so deep you can't come out of it. And you look at some of the spheres on the Internet and some of the social media and the piling on of people and you go, boy, that again, there's some troubling aspects of the online culture. And again, look, I love that Elon Musk has given us the ability of like, hey, the media can't control the narrative anymore. You can't keep this box in. You get to ask questions publicly. Now, frankly, I do love that you've got corporate media now that they have to respond to X if this discussion is raging. They got to. They kind of have to cover it now because you got millions of people engaged in it. I think that's tremendous for the media aspect of it. I do worry about young people. I worry about young people that can get so isolated in the groups that they're in online and believe that that's real life. Because there is nothing like being in a room with another individual and having a sincere conversation. And we want to continue to have a society that values that and values the human interaction and caring for your fellow man, looking out for your fellow man in that sense of that on that one, on one level. And again, online. There are some places online that it's just like you worry that folks that need that aren't getting it.
- [45:33]
B
All right, we talked about immigration, talked about citizenship. You're behind the push in Oklahoma to ensure that public education is going to citizens only. How's that working out?
- [45:46]
A
Look, I mean, when you look at our education system and you look at the amount of illegal immigrants that have come into our schools and to our states, we estimated the cost at $474 million under Joe Biden. And by the way, this was just information that was willingly given over to us. We didn't ask. It was just willingly given over. And so look, I know the numbers are obviously a lot higher than that. And we're looking at it saying, we need to get a handle of this. How much money are we spending on individuals that are in the country illegally? What is this entitlement bill budget looking like? You look at everything across the board. I know Texas has looked at this when it comes to hospitals and things like that. And look we're going to get it under control. We need to get these numbers. We need to have transparency for taxpayers to understand how much this has cost them to educate these students. And I'm going to tell you, frankly, it's created a lot of chaos in our education system. We launched the largest tutoring program in our state's history, the largest literacy program in our state's history. And about a month after we did that, we began getting calls from districts that said, we love the tutors, we love the new reading specialists, but we want to flag some things for you. We had a caravan of migrants came in this weekend. There's 70 of them. We're a district of 400 students, so that's significant. They don't speak English and they don't all speak Spanish. I mean, there's a lot of other languages here. So we are going to have to take a lot of those folks out of the classroom, work with these students. Our class sizes are going to double, and we're going to have to shift resources here to meet these needs. And that's something that, I don't know, that a lot of Americans realized, and they see what it's doing to their towns and their cities. But just a real specific example of what that does inside a school system. Again, look, school districts grow and shrink. That's natural. But they grow and shrink in accordance with the town's growth. Right. You know, the town gets bigger, school gets bigger, town gets smaller, but all of a sudden, over a weekend, have hundreds of migrant students come in. It has created chaos, a lot of pressure in our schools. And that's one of the. I think the first step is just getting a sense of how many illegal immigrant students are we working with inside our school system? I think that's the first step.
- [47:59]
B
Yeah. Are you assessing? Are the numbers rolling in?
- [48:02]
A
Yeah. So right now we have a rule in place that has to go through our legislature that would require when a parent enrolls their student, they have to provide their id, their birth certificate, and if they're not from the country legally, they would tell us where they came from, what country, what language they speak. So right now we're working on getting that through. We are facing some resistance from some Republicans on that, but I still am very optimistic we will get it through. So right now we just have those numbers that came from the information that's available to us, but we would be the first state in the country to require that to be given over to us.
- [48:35]
B
Are you guys polling on this?
- [48:36]
A
How are the numbers polling on oh, yeah. Oh. I'm telling you, people want to know how much illegal immigration is costing their state. I mean, look, we look at everything just like every state does. I want to have less of a tax burden. I want to have less money coming into government. I want to have smaller government footprint. So what do you do with the resources that you're allocated? And listen, a big part of that is, well, how much are we allocating towards illegal immigrants? And what are we doing to ensure that we aren't becoming a state that is welcoming in more illegal immigrants, to utilize more of these services that, again, are services that are being taken away from citizens in our state?
- [49:15]
B
Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about the students who are our citizens. They're in there. They're being educated. You know, I think a lot of Americans have the general impression that, oh, well, it's Oklahoma, so they're just. Just reading the Bible, reading about farming, and, you know, that's. That's all. Nothing. No weirdness. Not true. Right. So you're having to deal with, like, various, like, perverse texts and materials being distributed to students. How are you confronting that? And how bad's the problem?
- [49:42]
A
It's. It's unreal how bad the problem is. When I first got into office, we banned pornographic material from the classrooms. We banned transgender ideology from the classrooms. I was sued by our own administrators. Superintendent sued me to keep genderqueer and flamer in grade school classrooms.
- [50:02]
B
Was there an argument there? Were they trying to present this as something that was essential to.
- [50:07]
A
I mean, and this is where, hey, it's under inclusivity. You've got to include all kind of sexuality. You've got to include all of this in the classroom. And by the way, that argument really shifted once. Well, inclusivity. You want genderqueer, flamer in the classroom. You guys are the same ones that then turned around and sued me to keep the Bible out of the classroom. So it was inclusivity, except for when it came to the most read book in American history. They didn't want that one in there, but they wanted the other ones in just to show you their hypocrisy on that. But no, their argument was under the guise of inclusivity, we should be allowed to have these texts in our libraries as required readings. And so we've been able to fight back against that. We've also now, I mean, within the week, I had two school districts. One of them sent out a handout to a classroom of high school kids asking them about their favorite sexual preferences in graphic Detail about which of these sexual preferences do they have. Now, again, that is completely inappropriate in the classroom. We have pulled over 100 teacher certificates from sending sexually explicit text messages or committing sex acts with kids in the state of Oklahoma. And we have tightened our rules on, hey, you can't text kids anymore. Okay. If you want to text a kid, text their parent. Right. Don't be texting a minor in a private text messaging chat. But we've had to pass all these rules, all these requirements because of, again, people that have crossed the line, people that have indoctrinated kids, and then people who have taken even a step further to engage sexually with kids. And that's what we have got to protect our young people. We've got to make sure that it's the best and brightest in the classroom. And listen, if we're dealing with it in Oklahoma, I'm telling you, it's happening in every state. And we get those emails and those phone calls all the time of, thank you for what you're doing. I'm from this state or that state. We're seeing the same things here.
- [51:50]
B
Yeah. Are other superintendents hitting you up and saying, how are you dealing with this kind of stuff?
- [51:53]
A
Yes. Now, we are working with quite a few states around the country of some of the measures we've put in place of how we're able to deal with that. Again, you can't turn on the national news every week and not see an issue of a teacher doing something inappropriate with a kid. And again, one of the things that I think we have to stop is we allow folks to resign in the middle of an investigation across the country, and then they go teach somewhere else. And so some of these teacher certificates we've pulled, well, they were in four districts in three years, and you began asking questions and going, okay, look, that's pretty odd, right? Why were you in four? Well, you start looking, well, they got accusations and the district just let them quit. And I'm going, so a district didn't hold you accountable for breaking. Breaking that sacred trust that a parent has when they send that kid to school? I've got four little ones. When I stick them on the bus and send them to school, I assume they're going to be safe, they're going to get education, they're going to come back safe.
- [52:49]
B
Yeah. You're not sending them to Epstein island here.
- [52:50]
A
That's right. That's right. And so when that happens, instead of not only firing them, not only sending that information to the state department, sending that to law enforcement to Move, you just let them resign so they can go do that somewhere else. We've ended that practice in Oklahoma and we've said, look, hey districts, if you do that, we will hold you responsible. So administrator that allows that to happen, we will hold you just as responsible as that perpetrator in that situation. We'll pull your certificate also. And so we've been rooting out those problems, but again, we have got to get that under control. And I'm going to tell you one of our biggest barriers and that is teachers unions. They fight any teacher being fired. They try to create these processes that don't allow you to pull them out of the classroom. We have them in Oklahoma right now. They're pushing for, well, you need to give them at least 10 days notice before you pull them out of the classroom. And I went to them and said, so someone molests a kid, we need to give them a 10 day notice for you pull them out of the classroom? I don't think so. Well, we're not going to do that. We're going to pull them out of the classroom immediately. We're going to refer that to law enforcement. But they protect your worst actors. And so again, teachers unions, I'm telling you right now, I mean, you gotta drive them out of your school system. We're doing that in Oklahoma, but every state should be doing that.
- [54:01]
B
All right, we got about five minutes left. Looking forward. Walk us through this lawsuit going up to the Supreme Court. Why does it have to go all the way up?
- [54:09]
A
So look, we're incredibly excited to be leading on this, you know, so the first religious charter school in the country is in Oklahoma. Our own attorney general has, is fighting it and is taking it all the way to the U.S. supreme Court. But here's the reality. This charter school met every qualification they needed to be a charter school. We've got folks on the left that have said, well, I know, but they can't do it because they're Christian, they're Catholics. Okay, well that kind of flies in the face of your right to freely express your religious beliefs, doesn't it? They met every criteria, but because they are a Christian organization that they can't start a charter school. And the reality is they had a great argument too, the Catholic Church did. They pointed to, we've got some of the most successful schools in the state and in the country. We want to make that model more accessible and put into a charter school. So of course we supported that. We were able to launch that initiative. And so now we're going to the U.S. supreme Court to make sure that religious liberty is protected, and two, to make sure that we are providing school choice options for all of our parents. And so we're very excited about that. That's in April. And so we look forward to that. Look, President Trump's put originalists on that court. If you look back to the Constitution, obviously there's no separation of church and state. That's in the Constitution or in the Declaration of Independence. There's an establishment clause, there's a free exercise clause, and there's absolutely no issues there, if that's what you look at. And so we feel very confident about our chances.
- [55:29]
B
You like your odds in the court?
- [55:30]
A
I do. Look, I do. I think that we now have a majority of originalists. Now, look, sometimes you see some rulings that leave you scratching your head, but I think we've got a great opportunity here, and I do, I feel confident about it.
- [55:43]
B
If you win, let's say you do, how fast do you expect that model to spread through the rest of the country?
- [55:49]
A
I think very quickly. I think you'll see it pop nationally incredibly fast. I think you'll see this fall. I think you've seen them opening up in states all across the country. And again, I think it would be a huge win for parents. I think it would be a huge win for our states and for our country to say, look, parents, you got more options now than ever. We want you to be involved in your kids education. If you choose this option, we absolutely want it to be available to you no matter what your background is, no matter what your income level is. We want you to have these options. I think it's huge.
- [56:18]
B
All right, so stepping back, big picture, looking at what an ideal sort of US Education system looks like. So you'd be saying teachers unions out, religious charters in. How much is public education left with at the end of that day?
- [56:32]
A
Yeah, look, and then you abolish the Department of Education, which at Linda McMahon, she's rocking and rolling on that. President Trump has been, I mean, laser focused on that. So you eliminate the federal Department of Education. You send education back to the states states, you send it back to parents. You have religious charters, you have full school choice, you have homeschooling options that are available. In that scenario, you get your public schools back on track again. Let's look at this. The competitive aspect of having religious charters, regular charters, private school options, homeschool options. Those free market pressures on the public schools will force the public schools to dramatically improve. We've seen it in Oklahoma we had a record amount of schools get off of the national F list in the first year we had school choice. That's not a coincidence. They knew if we don't get off this list. And I told them, I said, I'm going to send a letter to every parent in your school district and tell them you're an F school. Here's all these private schools in the area. If you want to send your kid there, boom, we had over 119 of them get off that list. And so you see that response of, well, if they're going to all leave, we better get going. And I think that you see a dramatic improvement and a education across the country under that model. I think President Trump and Linda McMahon are spot on with that. And I frankly think it would happen a lot faster than people think. Look, people are paying attention. Parents are watching. You also have folks that truly care about the future of the country that are watching, that are going, hey, if we have the opportunity to start schools like this, we're going to do it.
- [57:54]
B
Yeah, I think you're right. We've tried the wait and see, the slow walk. It. A lot of people have come to a point, mentally, where it's like something's got to give across education, across, you know, the, the economy, across government, across whole of society, whole of government, as they like to say in D.C. so I think there is, you know, I think there's a decent likelihood that this stuff is sort of the dam's gonna break. If it does, you're in sort of K through 12 land. But then, of course, you know, there's. There's college and graduate school where the real fun begins. Do you think that if you do kind of break the dam on the K through 12 stuff, that we're then going to be looking at these kinds of changes at the college and grad level have to.
- [58:37]
A
Higher ed is so broken. It is so fundamentally broken. We have to have major reforms in our higher ed space. I mean, they have become rampant with that anti Americanism and anti Semitism that's got to be rooted out. But there needs to be a fundamental shift. What are we doing in higher ed? What is the end goal? Because right now you're going to see a lot of higher ed institutions that their end goal is to indoctrinate kids. That is, I mean, if you really want to point back to where all this started in education, it started in higher ed. It started in our higher ed institutions being taken over in the 60s. And remember, we funneled nearly half of the population through these institutions. And so then you get this woke ideology that's rampant all over the country. And so in Oklahoma, we've tried to create every pathway for teachers to become teachers outside or around higher ed. And look, we've got to take on that issue of we cannot continue to allow higher ed to take taxpayer dollars and continue to turn kids against this country, continue to not equip them in any way. They don't utilize their God given talents to go become somebody that can go get a job with those talents. They just force an ideology on them. And so that's a big one to tackle. And I think it's got to be very, very aggressive.
- [59:52]
B
All right, well, in the meantime, I have this funny feeling that this is not going to be the last office that you will be voted in for. So we're going to be watching Oklahoma and we'll be watching YouTube.
- [60:01]
A
Really appreciate you having me, James.
- [60:03]
B
Absolutely. Thanks again. All right, that's all the time we got today. So if you're on YouTube, give us that, like, give us that. Subscribe, you know, we love them. Subscribe to BlazeTV. And until next time, this is Zero Hour. I am James Paulus and may God have mercy on us all.
- [60:22]
A
La.