The Central Contradiction of the Modern Left with Glenn Ellmers

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Plato, Foucault, political philosophy, and more. Great conversation. As always, you can email us, freedom at charliekirk.com. Please give us a five-star review on the Apple Podcast app. And I encourage all of you to get involved with Turning Point USA. That is tpusa.com. We have some very exciting campus tour stops coming up this fall. We have Amfest coming at amfest.com, America Fest in Phoenix, Arizona. Start a high school or college chapter to join our nationwide educational movement at tpusa.com. Turning Point USA is making hope happen on the front lines, tpusa.com.

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That's why we are here. Brought to you by the loan experts I trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandtodd.com. Very important guest, someone that has taught me a lot the last six months. I'm taking several classes enough to make your head spin with the amazing Claremont Institute.

They have these online evening courses that push you intellectually, and they're just amazing. And right now I'm doing with Michael Anton on Machiavelli, if you can get a word in edgewise. But the guest is the man behind all of that with a very, very important book called The Narrow Passage, Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy by Glenn Elmers. Glenn, thank you for taking time. Welcome to the program. Thank you, Charlie. Great to be here. You're one of my favorite students. Well, thank you. I actually do the reading.

And so and I have a lot to catch up for because I didn't go to college. Tell us about your book, Glenn. Excited to talk about this.

Sure. The elevator pitch is I'm trying to understand some of the philosophical background behind what we could call the woke regime crisis. So, you know, the country's in bad shape. We're under a lot of stress.

There's tremendous tension. We seem to be under the rule of a kind of strange, deranged ideology. So I'm trying to make sense of both the left and the right. Some contradictions and internal incoherence on the left.

Why? Why does woke ideology seem so strange and bizarre and angry? And so I'm trying to think through some of the ideas, the deeper issues that brought us to where we are. So let's start with the first, Plato, you know, an elementary understanding of Plato. You know, you contrast with Aristotle kind of more into abstractions, more into the ideals. The famous I think was Raphael's School of Athens pointing to the sky, kind of talking about that in the clouds. Aristotle, you know, focusing more on what we can materially see or empirically see. So Plato, obviously being prolific, not something that I consider myself an expert in nor any of our audience. How would Plato connect with the modern woke? What did he the first ever philosopher start the modern project of woke liberalism?

He did sort of. And I don't want to make this sound too simplistic and it would be too simplistic to say all this can be traced directly to Plato's feet. But in a way, he is the original source, both of our problems and I would say our solutions.

OK, what do I mean by that? The problem is, in a way, Plato, following his great teacher, Socrates, introduced the idea of bringing reason into political life. And in a way, that's perfectly sensible. Right. We don't want to be governed by superstition and, you know, mindless barbaric traditions. We want to be able to make intelligent distinctions. We don't want to live, you know, according to deranged, you know, disgusting, primitive religious idolatries.

Right. And so we want to think reasonably and rationally about how we should conduct ourselves and organize our politics. And Plato is, in a way, the first to do that, to think about bringing reason and rational thought into politics. But in a way, that's also the source of our problems, because in a way, that's now become deranged, especially in the course of modern philosophy, introducing the idea that experts should rule us without our consent, that you can have people who are so wise, so smart, so well trained, that they can become philosopher kings and we no longer need the consent of government. We can get rid of limits on the government and the wise expert class will simply rule us for our own good. That's obviously a real problem. So Plato, in a way, is the source of the problems. But in a way, I would also say, points us to the solution, which is to get back to taking political philosophy seriously. So let's focus on the philosopher king aspect of this.

There has been this repeated incantation in the media. Trust the experts. Trust the experts.

Trust the experts. I can't help but think that this is, in some ways, an extension of the administrative state. And I do want to get into that, because I think that is what happens when you have this group of people that almost could be, say, they have the secret gnosis, the secret mind, the secret society, that they know better than us.

So can you help build this out? There's a fair amount of pride or hubris. But also, Plato said this is how politics should be formed, that you have people that know better because they've been trained and because they went to the right schools. And in some ways, Glenn, the problem with the American project, as it is today, we're living under the tyranny of experts living in the clouds who call themselves philosopher kings. Right. Now, it's important to remember when Plato wrote this famous book, The Republic, where he talks about the philosopher kings, he makes it so extreme, so radical, so outrageous and unreasonable that, you know, a lot of intelligent scholars say he was being ironic. He was trying to show you just how crazy it would be to live under this regime of philosopher kings in order to point to the limits of politics, precisely to show you the limits of trying to make all political life rational.

Right. And in a way, then, to show we have to be more moderate in our expectations from politics. We have to be sensible about what we can actually achieve in political life. And so it's a lesson in moderation. If you understand, the philosopher king is sort of an ironic, outrageous idea, which points to something then more sensible.

But in modern philosophy, the idea of the philosopher king is taken seriously. And why that happened. Yeah. And why that happens is an interesting story. Partly has to do with this idea of the end of history.

Yeah. You know, Charlie, Fukuyama and this German thinker, Hegel. And the idea is history is unfolding in a process, right?

There's an element of that that leads to Marx. And we now are much wiser than the people in the past. We figured things out. We have all the answers. And since we have all the answers and we figured everything out, let's just go ahead and implement all the all the solutions. And that's the presumption of the left, which is we figured everything out. We're so smart and wise and we don't need any limits. We don't need your consent. We're just going to go ahead and do what we think is best.

Yeah. As Wilson said, we don't want to muddy up the business of government with politics, a.k.a. We don't want elections to get in the way because we figured it out.

Hilariously, Glenn, as a side note, this has been a theme we've talked about is that we're told by our leaders they figured it all out. Yet we can't fight fires anymore. We can't manage our border.

We can't do the very basic stuff. I think this would be a time for mass humility, not massive narcissistic pride. Right. No, that's an that's an excellent point. The crisis of expertise is that the bigger their ambitions, the bigger their goals, the less competent they are in doing it.

The ordinary basic stuff like making your bed. Yeah, exactly. You know, people people complain about the corrupt city machines of the 19th century, you know, Mayor Curley and and the big city. But, you know, they built bridges and libraries and roads and things worked and they actually got a lot done during this so-called era of corruption. Oh, I mean, I'm a child of the Chicago suburbs. I've always said that I would rather have the corrupt politician than the ideological one.

And our audience attacks me for saying that. I would rather have Mayor Daley who sells out for a buck with the unions. But there was low crime. The trains ran on time.

It was a beautiful city. And yeah, he was obviously on the dole. He was obviously cutting deals, but he didn't have some sort of abstract revolution that he was trying to bring forth to Chicago.

He just wanted to get paid. That's the idea, right? So this petty corruption in a way, you know, is the idea that if you can make politics perfect and get rid of all the corruption, you make matters worse. This utopian idea that we can achieve perfection, we can achieve heaven here on earth, it doesn't solve the problem of of corruption because people are still self-interested.

What it does, though, is introduce these vast, unrealistic schemes that leave ordinary day to day function behind. And so we can't our bridges and our roads and our schools don't work anymore while we're trying to achieve, you know, diversity and economic justice and all of these ridiculous things. And basic infrastructure falls by the wayside. Yeah, I mean, our military, unfortunately, is falling apart and basic infrastructure, basic things like getting your kids to read. Having your young people not kill themselves at record rates, like really kind of basic indicators that your society is healthy. Almost every single one of those is going in the wrong direction. And yet the the lecturing we receive is about viva la revolution.

We will bring forth diversity and equity. There's this amazing clip, which is Hegel. It's Al Sharpton and Kamala Harris. And I don't know if you saw this was MSNBC.

You have to have a trained ear to catch it. And Obama said something similar where they talk about this arc of justice. Right. How history folds itself out. And meanwhile, you know, the the observer that is walking around the cities these people govern is like the people are defecating. They're doing drugs.

The kids aren't in school. But they're like, hey, no, but the revolution is what matters. There's a lot there that I want to unpack the book. I want you guys to read it. The narrow passage, Plato, Foucault and the possibility of political philosophy.

And oh, boy, we are going to get to Michel Foucault because that he was a trickster. I'll tell you what. Do you get the feeling that something bad is going to happen soon? Well, I do.

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Preparewithkirk.com. OK, Glenn Elmer continues with us. Let's play this tape here, Glenn. The book is The Narrow Passage, Plato, Foucault and the Possibility of Political Philosophy. Let's listen carefully.

Play cut 133. You know, I think so much about I talk about, you know, we talk about the arc. I think about it is also like a relay race and those who carry the baton and were measured by what they did when they had it. And then they passed it to us.

Yeah. And the point will be, what do we do while we're carrying the baton before we before we pass it? Understanding that the race will never be over.

But the question is, what do you do in the time when you're carrying the baton? Exactly right. You know, I think so much about I talk about, you know, Glenn, what are they really saying here? Well, first of all, I think we should respect some of the two great intellectuals of our time having that colloquy there.

Very high level stuff. But so they're in a way very watered down version of what this philosopher, German philosopher Hegel was talking about that history has a process. Right. And this is what the left has believed for a long time. This is where the idea progressive comes from. That history is a progressive unfolding, becoming more and more advanced.

Right. So what that means is we're so much smarter than everyone in the past. We don't have anything to learn from the founding fathers.

We don't have anything to learn from Plato and Aristotle. We're so much smarter. And since now we figured things out, we can just have the experts treat politics as a kind of a technical problem.

Just use their expertise to solve various administrative issues. Since we already know that all the basic questions of life are answered. So just, you know, get rid of consent and allow the experts to administer things. That's that's the implication of that idea of history. And you hear them talk about I mean, Obama says this to the the arc of history. And so tie this in then with your book and the argument you're making, the narrow passage. And so the byline Foucault, I want to spend a fair amount of time on him now or whenever you want. But now is appropriate.

It's fine. How does how does Foucault get on the front page of the title of a book by Glenn Elmer is I mean, he's not exactly my favorite. Right. So listen, if you were my age, you'd remember, in fact, in the 80s and 90s, when people on the right like me, we all made fun of Foucault and Derrida and these other French postmodernists with their ridiculous jargon and their opaque language. But I think he's relevant. But to say that, I have to step back for a minute and mention another guy who I'm sure you know, Nietzsche.

Yes. So one of the things that makes the left so crazy now is on the one hand, they believe in the end of history, which means the rational state, the rule of the experts, science. Since we've got everything figured out, we can just administer politics as a form of social science.

And so you get people like Fauci saying I represent science. You get the whole bureaucratic apparatus, Environmental Protection Agency and the FBI. So we have the labs. We have the expertise. We have the technology. Just let us take care of things.

We don't need your consent. Right. So that's the idea of the rational state. But then you have this other idea, which comes from Nietzsche, which says, you know what? Progress turned out to be a lie. Marx and the others promised us the final utopia, the workers' paradise, the solution of all human problems. And yet World War One, World War Two, the nuclear bomb, for all these things, the left said, well, wait a minute, progress turns out, you know, where is it?

Why have we solved all these problems? And so there's been a disillusionment by the left that has led to this postmodernism that you get from Nietzsche, which says, you know what? Progress is a lie. And it turns out there is really nothing to believe in. We live in a meaningless universe since history doesn't lead to anything. And since they reject God and since they reject the idea of objective morality and since they reject the idea of transcendent truth, they're left with literally nothingness.

This idea of nihilism, that human human beings just live in a world empty of all meaning. And so this postmodernism, which says, you know, truth is a construct, it comes from the power narrative. Mathematics is just white hegemony.

There is no such thing as objective chemistry that, you know, you have European chemistry and African chemistry. And who's to say what's right and wrong, right? But this idea of postmodernism obviously conflicts with the idea of the role of the experts and science. And this conflict is part of what makes the left so crazy now. And part of the reason I wrote the book is to point out that there's this internal contradiction on the left which wants to say science and the role of the experts, also postmodernism and all truth is just the power structure, the power narrative. And the conflict between those two things is one part of the craziness of our politics today. In some ways, they're embracing those contradictions because at least they can say we agree that we need to oppose the neo-fascist right or whatever nonsense that they have.

They actually don't actually have to have those contradictions face themselves and iron them out. Glenn Elmers, author of The Narrow Passage, Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy. You probably wonder, Charlie, where did the woke come from?

What drives the left? This book can teach you a lot. Very smart. Well put together. Glenn Elmers is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. Great organization.

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Use promo code Kirk, my pillow dot com promo code Kirk. Who was Michel Foucault? I mean, and we can go as deep as you want, but he had a very weird personal life.

We'll put that aside. But what did he believe? What is his contribution to modern political philosophy?

Yeah, he was kind of an odd guy. He and some other thinkers, mostly from France, Derrida, Jacques Derrida and Lacan and others. They were these they were called postmodernists.

And Michel Foucault was one of the smarter ones among them. Why am I interested in them? Why am I interested in these weird French postmodernists? They show what society is like after the death of God or the rejection of God, the rejection of the Bible, the rejection of objective truth, the rejection that there's any ground for determining right and wrong, the rejection of nature as a standard, all of these things that come out of modern philosophy and especially Nietzsche, which define the way the ruling class, the way the left thinks.

Now, the left is in charge of all of our major institutions, from the government bureaucracy to popular culture and the media, certainly academia, more and more corporations, even the military. And so since they reject God, since they reject objective morality, since they reject the idea that there's permanent truth, since they reject nature or they believe it. They believe in this phrase that you used a moment ago, Nietzsche's will to power. Power just exists for us to get whatever we want, to impose our wishes, to manipulate nature. If we want to turn little boys into little girls, who's to stop us, right? The world just exists to satisfy our wants and desires and our needs.

Well, that's kind of crazy. And what does that actually mean for how the institutions of society function? And Foucault and the other French postmodernists were very insightful in this.

They said, OK, what happens in a world like that, where you reject truth, where you reject God, where you reject morality? How does the will to power actually function in the institutions? And Foucault was very good at showing how the structures of power, how the idea of truth is manipulated to become a weapon or a tool for the power structure, how our identities are co-opted into the institutions of power.

He was very good at exposing that. And the reason that's relevant now, and the reason I'm bringing this up to try to show to people on the right why this is relevant, is because when Foucault wrote, it was the left that was the anti-establishment. And it was the left that saw itself as opposing the structures of power, opposing capitalism and free enterprise and liberal democracy and constitutionalism. But now the tables have turned in half a century, right?

And it's the right. And one of the things I'm always emphasizing to people on the right is we have to get our minds around the idea that we're the counter-establishment, we're the anti-establishment, we're the dissenters, we're the counter-revolutionaries, right? We can't think of ourselves as normal supporters of the establishment because the establishment is now in control of fanatics, who don't believe in natural rights or limited government or consent or the rule of law or any of that.

And Foucault, because he was this weird counter-revolutionary in the 70s, understood some things that I think are very useful that we need to understand today about how to battle these anonymous oppressive structures of power that the left now manipulates and uses. That's such a deep point. And it also runs against who we are as conservatives, because naturally we want to just say no and defend. And, oh, you know, also built into the word conservative is almost this idea that you're in charge, that you control the institutions, right? What you're saying is, no, we have to recapture. We have to think like dissidents in our own country.

It's very difficult to try. Let's just take the word conservative side. Just on people on the normal side that believe in natural law and believe in physics not being something of white supremacy. So then what can we learn, Glenn?

What can we glean from these? I mean, do we have to go as far as what Marx would say, the ruthless criticism of all that exists? I mean, is it time to pick up our Alinsky and to find the target, freeze it, polarize it, isolate it, keep the pressure on and do a tactic that your people enjoy doing? Walk us through it. Well, you know, that's a very tricky question, what exactly we should do. And it's, you know, you have to be careful nowadays. The left now, since they no longer believe in due process and the rule of law and they believe in weaponizing the FBI and the Justice Department, means people like you and me have to be careful about what we say and emphasize.

I'm not encouraging anyone to do anything outside the bounds of the law. But these thinkers of the left are useful just to think about how things work, you know, how to oppose these power structures, but to also just think through the problem. Once you see the problem, the solutions, you start to think for yourself what the solutions might be. And so, for instance, Foucault talks about how power structures co-opt your identity. Now, I have a lot of friends who went to Ivy League schools and I don't want to bash them. But I'll mention one little point is Foucault is very good at showing if you have high status, if you're invested in the society because of your degree from an Ivy League university, because you work at a prestige law firm or a prestige corporation, your identity is invested in the stability of the regime.

Right. You don't want to overturn the status quo because your status, your credentials, you know, I've got a Harvard degree and I work at this prestigious law firm. And so you're invested in maintaining the status quo. And Foucault is very good at showing the subtle ways that the power structure co-ops people and prevents you from opposing the power structure because your status and your identity are tied up in it. So things like that, I think, are very useful for people on the right to understand. So one of the things you mentioned is this forced marriage, this contradiction in the woke regime between the ruling class philosopher kings and let's just say the infantry.

Right. The shock troops of of people that they believe in egalitarianism or just I think it's just weaponized complaining. And yet they're kind of in this left wing coalition because they hate the right so much. Is that something that is going to eventually manifest in a schism in the woke coalition? Yeah, I know it's on the one hand, you'd say, well, it can't last forever, right? On the other hand, you know, people on the right have been saying, oh, the left, they went over their skis now, they've gone too far. You know, once we started doing, you know, gender reassignment surgery on little kids, you'd think, oh, well, they've definitely gone too far.

Now there's going to be a reaction. Yet the big reaction from middle America never seems to come, which shows you in a way, again, that these power structures operate in very insidious, indirect ways. And they in a way, they sap the energy out of people. They make it seem like it's impossible to oppose the power structure.

So, you know, it's very unclear exactly what we should do in these circumstances, but certainly understanding the problem is the first step. What largely keeps, I mean, I alluded to it earlier, what keeps it together? If there are philosophical contradictions building a political community, what does keep these two together if there are these inherent contradictions? Yeah, so for right now, they're on the top, right?

And so for the time being, it's just basically a marriage of convenience. You know, the Silicon Valley people believe in a sort of global oligarchy. They obviously don't have the same agenda as the radical anarchists in Antifa, who also seem to have a separate agenda from, you know, the racial grievance mongering faction. All of these now have an uneasy alliance and because they're in control, you know, they're working together. Certainly, as you say, simply a hatred of traditional old fashioned American constitutionalism.

But it's unclear how long this can last. One of the things I say is, again, none of us want violence. None of us want a crisis.

But, you know, global events, a financial crash, some other catastrophe could really break apart this coalition. One of the things I try to do in my book is encourage people on the right, look at the fundamental questions, go back to the essentials. Think about what is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of politics? Because if there is going to be a crisis or some kind of catastrophe that comes and things fall apart, it will be very useful to have thought about these basic questions of, OK, how do we come together as people? What are we living for? What are we trying to accomplish here?

Yeah, I mean, these are these are basic fundamental questions. So let's talk about this kind of will to power, which I think some people find hard to believe. Is it fair to say that one of the animating forces of the political philosophy on what we would call the left is really a disregard for any sort of objective truth?

You know, let's just say understanding of their place in the logos or the cosmos. All there really is for power, for power's sake, is that a summation of a large faction of what we consider the political community on the left? Sure, because what happens when you reject God, when you reject the idea of nature as a standard and a limit on what we can do in life, when you reject the idea of transcendent truth, what's left, right? There is literally nothing to limit the fulfillment of your desires. And so you use science and technology to simply manipulate the world to satisfy whatever you might want, whether it's changing your gender or economic redistribution or whatever.

And so you simply use power to exert your will. That's literally what Nietzsche meant by that. And I think that does characterize the left because they don't believe in any higher standards that would limit their exercise of power. What limits the exercise of power for people on the left? Nothing except their own desires. And the major issue is post-German historicism. They actually think they can remake nature itself.

Riff on that a little bit. This is a creepy undercurrent of some of the medieval witch doctors that call themselves pediatricians, where they think they can actually reconfigure the raw material of nature, change man to woman or even change the species. Right, so for most of human history, human beings respected nature. And I don't mean environmentalism or going out for a hike, but in the sense that there's something outside of human will, right? There's, even if you don't necessarily believe in the God of the Bible, the idea that we're born into a world we don't create. And so the natural world imposes limits on what we can do.

And it actually provides some guidance. Our human nature tells us what it means to have a fulfilling life, right? We're built in a way that leads us in a certain direction to find our happiness. The modern left, in the pursuit of radical, unlimited freedom, rejected the idea of nature, rejected that it imposes any limits on it, rejected the idea that human nature is any kind of standard. And so they want to use science and technology to manipulate nature, including human nature, to just make us into whatever we want to be.

An absolutely uncontrolled, radical freedom to transcend human nature and use science and technology to fulfill our wildest fantasies, our most utopian longings. And that's in a way what we're seeing in the most egregious case, as we mentioned, is, you know, gender reassignment and surgery. But you see it all, transhumanism, the pursuit of immortality, all of these things. Well, and even going back, this is one of the issues that is not always talked about in the 20th century, right?

So the way that the academics or the media talks about the Holocaust or Stalin as they say it was just racism or whatever, that's part of it, is the racial part. But it also was man's willingness to try to control nature. It was this idea of a small group of man scientists that wanted to exert their will. And I just hope everyone understands, we're not talking about like the forest and the trees and the rivers. We're talking about this like Latin phrase, natura or whatever. It's the order that is outside of man, right? The Aquinas would call it the natural law and they reject that. They say, well, why can't we just do what we want?

Exactly. The idea that there is an objective order to the universe, a moral order to the universe that is independent of our will, the left rejects that. And that means they reject any limits on their power and their wants and their desires.

And that's very dangerous. And that's the society we're living in now. And so the way back is what we're trying to do in our evening classes, understand how we got here, right? Understand that there is a natural law. And I hate to oversimplify things, but that's part of what we do here is that if you think that there is a logos or in harmony to the cosmos or a natural law, you do get a little bit of humility and maybe awe or wonder. And I believe what Aristotle said, wonder is the beginning of philosophy. Or, you know, you get you get some understanding of that. But if there's if you don't think there's any design and I don't mean that even in a metaphysical way, just there's anything here, then you get awfully cocky rather quickly, especially in your own ability to change the natural world.

That's absolutely right. You'll remember, of course, the famous phrase from the Declaration of Independence, the laws of nature and nature's God. It imposes both a direction, a framework and a limit on what we can do in our own lives and what the government should do. But when you reject that, when you reject the laws of nature, when you reject the idea of there's an independent order outside of our will, then there's literally no limits. And this unlimited pursuit of absolute, unfettered freedom is the very is the root of the very dangerous fanaticism that now rules our intellectual class. In some ways, it will be reality that saves us because it's reality they're declaring a war on. And that's the question, right, is how far can they push this? And all indications are pretty far.

Please, Glenn, final thought. The Soviet Union, which also was premised on a complete rejection of human nature, lasted seven years and caused a lot of misery. And a lot of insanity.

I mean, the one example I'll use, which will make people chuckle, is that you have the CDC saying that men can take lactating inducing drugs to breastfeed young children the same ways that women can. That's an all out war on reality. And eventually, yeah, it's riff on that, Glenn, and we'll close it up. And that's a perfect illustration also of what Foucault is talking about in this postmodern world, in this Nietzschean world, the world that Foucault described and tried to help us understand words lose all their meaning because there is no objective ground of reality. We impose our own our own will on the world and truth and language and power just become what we declare them to be. And that radical rejection of nature is is the very dangerous fanaticism that's on the verge of destroying this country. That's an amazingly deep point. But if you understand that words represent things and they are not what you want them to be, then all of a sudden you start to think that's the war on speech, the war on reason.

All of these. Oh, wow. OK, Glenn Elmer's great conversation. Come back soon. The Narrow Passage is the book and look forward to our course on the Bible and Nietzsche.

That's going to be a fun one. So thank you, Glenn. Talk to you soon. Thanks, Charlie. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us your thoughts. As always, freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

Thank you so much for listening and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com. I think identity theft won't happen to you.

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