Dan Crenshaw – US Representative, Author of Fortitude

Dan Crenshaw – US Representative, Author of Fortitude - We host one of our favorite new congressional members. US Rep from the 2nd dist for Texas joins Pete A Turner and Dr. Wil Reilly on the show. Dan's written a new book called Fortitude which reveals Dan's backstory and laments the rise of the victim mindset vs emulating heroes. 

We LOVE Rep Crenshaw's BOOK and encourage you to get it here

Besides the book, the fellas discuss the US Government's response to the COVID pandemic, areas of bipartisan collaboration and Dan's fantastic podcast. 
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Haiku
Grit and Fortitude
Be Still and Do Something Hard
The Crenshaw Method

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Dale Comstock
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Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A. Turner ​​
Host: Wil Reilly 
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev ​

​​The Break It Down Show is your favorite best, new podcast, featuring 5 episodes a week with great interviews highlighting world-class guests from a wide array of topics. Get in contact with Pete at peteaturner.com ​

Transcription

Pete Turner  0:00  
I'm watching on my phone, everything is ready to go. I want to make sure everybody gets a chance to say hey to will the beast doctor will Riley as you as Professor and as a badass author who recently wrote the book taboo, and also talks about, well, I'll let you introduce yourself in there, man because you're really you do it man. I love what you did.

Pete Turner  0:00  
I'm watching on my phone, everything is ready to go. I want to make sure everybody gets a chance to say hey to will the beast doctor will Riley as you as Professor and as a badass author who recently wrote the book taboo, and also talks about, well, I'll let you introduce yourself in there, man because you're really you do it man. I love what you did.

wil reilly  0:22  
Sure. Thanks for having me back on Pete. Yeah, I'm Will Riley Wilfred Riley, I teach at Kentucky State University. And I've written a couple of books. One is hate crime hoax, which looks at the phenomenon of kind of Jesse Smollett style, fake hate incidents are something I'd be interested in talking to Dan or the rep Crenshaw about. I've written taboo, which looks at this canceled culture phenomenon and things you're not supposed to say. And I also wrote a pretty much scientific or methodological book called The $50 million question, which was my originally my graduate dissertation. So I'm a teacher and writer and do do some other things in my spare time.

Pete Turner  0:56  
Do some other things in your spare time. I like it. Well, questions do you have for Dan? Besides the? We're gonna talk about Corona, I'm assuming, right?

wil reilly  1:06  
Yeah, I do have some Corona questions and those aren't really political. Again, one of the things I teach at KSU is quantitative methods. So there's kind of a numbers emphasis. And something I'd like to see us do with Cova. 19 is randomly test a large number of people. So we can see what the actual infection rate and bluntly death rate are for the bug for the disease. That's something that as I understand, we haven't done so I would be interested in the to the extent he can talk about that talking to representative Crenshaw about that. Most of my other questions don't have anything to do with Corona virus. Honestly, one of the most interesting things I think he said in the book, as someone who identifies as a Roman stoic, is that outrage this condition of being triggered being very angry showing your emotions on your sleeve is an example of weakness. So I'd like to talk to him about that. I agree with And I think that most people who've had any sort of competitive background would agree with that. He says that he wants to assume the best of others. So I'd like to ask him some questions about when bipartisanship has worked. So yeah, I've got a I've got a lineup of about eight or 10 questions. I read most of the book. I read that last night. Pretty good. I'd recommend fortitude.

Pete Turner  2:20  
Yeah, it's good book. I've read it. Also, you guys can buy it. There's links and actually when you click on my links, I get a like a nickel every time someone buys one. So come on, make sure I get a shekel it would be nice, but just in general by Dan's book, and he's doing a lot of pre sales. enticement, so we'll ask him about that when he comes on but the book is strong because he makes just good solid points and you can you can argue about you know, whether or not he's right or wrong, but the point is, is that rock there's a lot of Jordan Peterson what he says a lot of Jocko bunich you know and owning your own stuff and look, everybody's got a struggle but as a stoic if you don't let the external environment dissuade you from what you're doing to be the best you you can be. You're pretty far along the way of the stoic philosophy towards being successful.

wil reilly  3:07  
Yeah. And I think that there's a very non stoic element to modern culture, which is what accounts for my first question. I mean, for thousands of years people said that the best way to deal with fear was not to feel it if you're going into a situation battle, I assume would be the classic for humans but leading a caravan somewhere pepper working on your masterpieces, a Smith, you want to calmly assume victory while taking precautions. The worst possible thing you could do would be to go into that situation thinking what if I fail? What if I collapse? What if I die? What if my family name is dishonored, so on? So I mean, I think we've moved from that to constant introspection thinking about thinking about thinking, and a lot of these books that are targeted, especially at sort of a young middle to upper middle class male audience. Really get back to the basics like unless I'm incorrect. One of the chapters are Jordan Peterson His book is called clean your damn room. And it's true. It's a valid point for young man. I mean, if you come into a filthy space where you have things laying on the ground and half eaten food, not only are women not going to want to come back to that space with you bluntly, but you're going to be miserable, you're gonna be depressed. Like one of the first rules of business is asinine as the sounds to have a clean desk. I mean, have a box for the stuff you have to do do the worst stuff in the morning. It looks like Dan cringe Dan Crenshaw is with us.

Pete Turner  4:31  
Dan is in the house. Yes. While he talks about cleaning up his book. Hey, Dan, this is Dr. Bill Riley. He's a professor at KSU and you definitely will enjoy his his jumping in as a co host, but thanks for coming on the show, man. I appreciate it.

Dan Crenshaw  4:47  
Yeah, great to be with you guys. Thanks for having me.

Pete Turner  4:50  
Hey, we officially start every show off with you saying something like hey, this is Dan Crenshaw and you're listening to the break it down show. Can you give me one of those

Dan Crenshaw  5:01  
This is Congressman Dan Crenshaw and Your're listening to the Break It Down Show

Pete Turner  5:10  
So one of the things we do on the show is we have a lot of operators on and what I like to do, Dan is guys like us like to say, let's take the letterman jacket off, and let's get down to business and talk about who we are where we are now. So we'll acknowledge that you're a CEO, if you want to talk about that, bring it up great. Otherwise, those were the olden times, we're doing other things. Now obviously, you're up to big things. And the first thing I want to do is just from all of us out here in the US, is thank you and all of your peers for what you do. You've got an impossible job you got to manage a constituency, you've got to go deal in Congress, you got to get reelected every two years. I mean, the amount of work you must do every day we had representative Michael waltz from Florida on the other day, he's a longtime member, and just he describing his day and his staff and how hard those guys were. Just all I can say is thank you to all of you, you know all all colors, all stripes, who wherever you are. We're You guys are doing it's a hard job and I'm positive you don't get thanked enough for it

Dan Crenshaw  6:06  
you know what we get think plenty and, and we also get hated on plenty makes synergistic mix. But if you do it because there's a sense of purpose involved and it's definitely a different kind of service I never really viewed the military as service. And because I got to do what a little boy always dreamed of doing, you know a house or you lose an eye every once in a while, but but i i never viewed it that way. It was more of an adventure and the I love them. everybody listening, if they're veterans, they know who Matt best is from black rifle coffee. And I always loved the title of his recent book, which was thank you for my service. That was I thought that was the right way to look at our time in the seal teams. And I would also point out that there are some aspects of the military that do feel A lot more like service like when the when somebody's stuck underwater for 90 days at a time, that feels like service because then that really is in service of strategic needs of the country. And it's hard to wrap your head around that when you're just a sailor in the submarine. You know, hundreds of feet underwater for months on end. But, uh, yeah, so we're happy, but there's a sense of purpose there.

Pete Turner  7:23  
Yeah, well, you're also you know, when you go through that training to you and your peers, there's someone always trying to drown you on purpose, trying to, you know, get to the bottom and make it as hard as you can get to get to the top and just for getting drowned over and over again. I'm gonna thank you for that as a service member as a combat guy.

Dan Crenshaw  7:40  
Yeah, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that much less. I write about that in the book too. and what the there's you know, there's a method behind that bad madness and you're teaching people to problem solve in the worst of situations and, and you learn to learn some perspective. And you learn to what I call in chapter five, which is Be still and to learn to be still in the face of adversity and outrage.

Pete Turner  8:14  
 Go ahead. Wil. 

wil reilly  8:15  
okay. I didn't know if I was going to open it up with questions. So first Representative crinch. I will say, I'm not an operator, I'm a merchant. But thank you for your sir. Thank everyone has a historical title. Thank you for your service. I mean, I think most Americans do feel that way. Moving into the questions. I mean, I read through the book, I've got a got a list of them here. But the the one quote that stuck out to me actually is and I think chapter two from Matt Taibbi who's a bit to the left of Castro but who I enjoy reading. And what he says is this Gonzo journalism is cheap and easy. Even as a journalist. I don't know if we can get through this because it's so much simpler to pull up your computer and pull up a Donald Trump tweet and write 1200 words making fun of it, and then link to him on Twitter. It is to go undercover in a Mexican tequila Dora or do the things that journalists used to do? Do you see a way of getting through kind of this worthless clickbait on left and right, I think that's a major question that could affect whether we win wars or how the economy surges? I mean, how do we deal with that?

Dan Crenshaw  9:18  
Well, what I point out is, and well, first of all, I like that, you know, that I use examples from people who are waiting on the left, I quote Obama a couple times in the book, because I do want this book to be readable to the left. I don't really get too political in the book until maybe towards the very end, and even then, I'm thinking I'm making arguments that that liberals can read and not be offended by and I really try hard to do that. So but and I also like to point out that liberals see this problem as well. And the solution to the problem as I write about it, is we there is an essence of personal responsibility here. I'm glad that writers like Matt, have highlighted the problem. Many other writers have highlighted the problem as well, I spent a lot less time in this book highlighting the problem because I all I need to do is reference others who have done that. We all know what the problem is. The question is, what is the solution? And the solution is you can't reward it, you know, as long as those incentives are there to to, to make that kind of clickbait, that the incentive being people will click on it, they're gonna keep doing it, because there's a profit incentive there. So we this book is written to regular Americans and saying, you have to stop clicking on it. And if you do click on it, it should just be for you know, it should just be that you can laugh about it, right? You don't actually believe it don't become that outraged person who, who get who lets a headline, make them emotional. And that is the purpose of these headlines. They're written in an emotional way. There's a whole science behind it. We can we could Google this right now. What are the top headline clicks and, and actually, the number one by far is is a phrase that says this will make you. And so whether it's this, this will make you feel happy, right? Because it's like a picture of a puppy. This will make you angry, like so people click on that and like, and like, I'm not saying don't use that I'll use that sometimes in my videos, but I like but I also try to put a lot of substance behind my videos, the in content, but but it's just it goes it's not it's not so much that that's the wrong like people shouldn't use that headline. I'm not suggesting that and that would be, frankly, unreasonable and unrealistic. What I'm suggesting to people is that understand what it is they're trying to do to you. And just don't Don't be that person. Okay? Because no, I think the the next chapter is about being or your own hero. And the first step in all of this is to choose to be somebody who lives with or to to choose to be somebody who is an outrage. Choose to be somebody who isn't triggered, and it's kind of like it's kind of like drafting a vision. board and, and once you choose to be that person, then I give you a set of lessons on how to do that.

Pete Turner  12:08  
Right now we're going through a really challenging time. Clearly, there's a lot of uncertainty again, you know, guys like us who've been to conflict zones, we deal with uncertainty a little better than a lot of people because we've just been in it more. But right now, folks day to day, you know, work supplies, just out of their groove. There's so much uncertainty from the point of view of your book. How do how do folks deal with this unknown unknown of what's next two weeks, three months, a year? how long the state it's frightening folks?

Dan Crenshaw  12:40  
It is and it's bewildering for a lot of veterans, you know, because I follow a lot of veterans and and, and they're, you know, there's lots of different ways to think about the coronavirus response and, and how dangerous it really is. There's you see vast different opinions across the board. There's there's plenty of people out there who are way more concerned about the economic devastation understandably so. And I think we're overreacting. And there's some people who who would have us locked out in place forever, if it meant saving some lives. And so you got to find a balance between those two and I definitely know that veterans especially ones who are combat experience, are scratching their heads like, Guys, this is this is a risk just like any other risk, why don't we confront it? Let's mitigate it. Let's figure this out. Frankly, I think that is a healthy response to how to think about this. And so and I guess the chapter in my book that really hits that point is the chapter on perspective. And it's it's one of the first chapters and I tell the story of me getting blown up and, and the kind of perspective that gives me the kind of perspective my mother gave me as she battled cancer and eventually lost that battle when I was 10. There's the point is this. Somebody else has had it worse than you. There's always something hard And and it behooves you to think about it in that term. It doesn't mean you have to go through a hardship yourself. And if you do, think of it as a blessing, tell the right story about that hardship and become stronger for it. But you don't necessarily have to again i don't i don't i don't i don't say that you have to live through some kind of grief. You shouldn't wish that upon yourself. But guess what most of us have? Most of us have. And there's a right way to think about that. And and there's a right perspective gained from that and so the veteran community certainly has that perspective because we have confronted risk head on you know, we've we've we've that this kind of disingenuous question that's asked about the coronavirus, often, which is, which is how many how many lives? Is it worth to save one job? Can you keep hearing that? veterans have heard that question for a long time? And we know it's a dishonest question. We know it's not really a good faith question. Because we could easily say well, it's not really worth our guys lives to go outside the wire and conduct business. You know, I don't care who that bad guy is it's just not worth it's not worth the single life of my American colleagues and and yeah in a very black and white sense that's that's true if there was a choice between bad guy and my buddy obviously I'm gonna choose my buddy but that's but that's not really the right way to think about it you know we we have a mission to do and we have to mitigate risk as we conduct that mission. And this isn't really that different in the coronavirus setting because we are a war and our mission is to continue to live our lives that's our mission fundamentally. Now how we do that requires some mitigation of risks and and perseverance and perspective. And so that's where that chapter comes into play. What have been asked about this, maybe I'll do a version two coronavirus version but there frankly by the time that thing comes out, it would be so sick of hearing about Corona virus that will probably fail and deservedly so.

wil reilly  16:00  
If, if I could ask one sort of practical crash question about Corona virus. From your perspective, I mean, Representative Crenshaw, you're you're a congressman. I mean, are we planning on doing sort of large in random testing for Corona virus in the US population? Is that something you know, or can talk about? And as a bit of intro, when you mention, there are many estimates about how dangerous Corona virus is, as someone coming from the scientific community, that's true to a shocking degree. I mean, we've seen estimates that range from a lethality rate of point oh 6% up to 4%. Stanford University. Some of their top stats guys recently came out the piece I think we've all read in the Wall Street Journal, where they said that there's what they call the denominator issue. So we know all of the deaths from coronavirus. I mean, my understanding is even some probable flu fatalities are now being tested. We know that number that's a high that's a disturbing number. The issue is that we don't know The number of cases. So when they've done randomized large scale tests and other stable countries, I mean, Iceland, they found that 7% of the population had at some point been infected with Corona virus. I believe, Italy, they tested in the vo region 3% at that time had Corona virus. These are well done tests, private industry, very few false positives. Um, is that something we're going to do here? Because when we talk about flattening the curve, when we think about can we go back to work? Can we bring our employees back to work? A big element of that practically seems to be what's the curve we have to flatten? We seem to be assuming a very high death rate. We're looking at that London paper that to some extent shut down the world that was one to 2% I believe. If it turns out that's not correct, then what we're doing might not be ideal. So as a representative, I mean, is that something that's planned? Are we going to look for example at one of these battleships with a fairly high rate of infected and say okay, as horrible as it is to discuss this, this is The number of people that are sick in America 5% or whatever, this is the number that will die. Is that something we're working on?

Dan Crenshaw  18:06  
Yeah, it certainly is. And that is correct. The whole point of temporary social distancing and these lockdowns that we're experiencing is to lead our supply chain catch up to that supply chain meaning number of ventilators testing, mass testing, the ability to contact trace, and the ability to maybe maybe increase the number of hospital hospital beds because there's there's two competing realities here. One is that the death rate might be exceptionally small. But even if it is exceptionally small, it doesn't change the other fact and the other reality, which is that our hospital system can be quickly overrun, because one way this is different from the flu, it would appear is that it's just more contagious. And there's no there's no vaccine and we're we're not exactly sure yet if we build immunity to it. I really hope that's the case. That would be make things a lot easier, because then you can mass test for immunity and, and then basically get these people back to work and on the front lines, you've already had it, you're good to go. So there's that there's a mobilization that needs to occur rapidly. And we need so that so that we can move from risk containment to risk mitigation.

wil reilly  19:19  
You Yeah, if I can add just one more thing there. I personally, it would seem very important that these are two sorts of testing that might be useful. One is what you mentioned, which is testing for antibodies, who's had the disease and is good to go. Now, if we're just looking at rates of infection that needs to be random. That's one of the points that if you go through the sort of methods community online, pretty much everyone is saying these terrifying death tolls that we're seeing right now. 2% 4% those come out of the pool of very symptomatic, mostly senior individuals that have been allowed to go in and take a test. So I mean, for a good buddy of mine, the answer anecdotal evidence is worthless. But one case recently contacted the doctor said, you know, I've got a rasping cough, I'm a blue collar guy, I think it might be this, the doctor just said stay home, we really don't have enough tests for adult male athletes and such to come in and take them. So we're looking at a very narrow pool of the sickest people. And that's where the death rate is 2%. If you take a random sample on, for example, I believe it's the Roosevelt that had an outbreak of infections, you're going to find what the actual rate is. And that's when we can decide what the curve we need to flatten is it would see in terms of number of ICU beds, there's going to be a different number of ICU beds needed if the potential death rate is point 1% versus 1% versus 5%, which a tech entrepreneur named puedo argued in a very influential piece. I don't think that's realistic at all. So hopefully, that's something we'll do.

Dan Crenshaw  20:49  
Yeah, I mean, it's it's really just it's a supply chain issue. It really is the number one goal of federal government is to really mobilize our supply chains to create more testing because The people kind of misinterpret what the purpose is of testing one purpose is to get better data. That that is helpful. But frankly, I think the purpose of testing is more helpful when it's routine and Matt and done in mass, because that specifically allows us to get our economy back up and running. You know, because Think of it this way, if testing was widely available, you can test every restaurant employee, get them working right away. Okay, you can say, everybody in here is tested negative, and then you can do it again the next day. They were just tested yesterday, they're tested negative. That's how you get the economy back up and running. And so it's mobilizing towards that is enormous knowing the data is true. Yeah, you bring up some good points about what is the curve, the curve and and where it sets the curve, but also, we can never prove a counterfactual on the curve. So it's, it's useful to think about If you can only plan so much off of it, we again we do know some certain realities, which is that hospitals get overrun rather quickly. So we do know we have to increase hospital beds by how much that's that's always going to be unclear, but we do know that the number needs to be higher. So that's a good that's a good place to start. And because again, my main goal is getting people back to their, their normal lives and society are we have to balance that out better. And, and it's just an indefinite lockdown or an impossible future to deal with. Yeah.

Pete Turner  22:33  
Yeah. I wanted to bring up one. Robert Owens. I don't know if you know, Robert all Dan. He is the fittest. 66 year old man in the world. He went through Mark Devine's pre buds course and passed it as a 66 year old. He just went through kovat and him and his wife survived it. And obviously they're in their late 60s. I wanted to throw a shout out to rob just because he's such an awesome badass dude. He was a pair of rescue guy. So but the question with all of this is and we'll see A great resource. One of the things I love that he does, he tries to bring some numbers and some data driven, puts PhD hat on, it helps us understand this crisis. And one of the things we've seen in New York is that the death rate, if you're relatively healthy, and below the age of 65, the death rate is not one or 2%, it's 210 thousandth of a percent or whatever. It's very, very small. And granted, these numbers change and everything, but you guys are dealing with a big hairy problem. It seems like day to day the information is changing. You're trying to make tactical decisions and pass laws and legislate and appropriate and all those things that you have to do. But also talk a little bit about the strategic view of how do we how do we balance saving lives and saving lives in a way that allows us not to create our act, you know, not that it can get any more cratered, but without destroying the economy? And then how do you then go into how do we tease the economy back into it was roaring. Now everybody's freaked out like this is 1919 all over again, even though basically no one is alive from back then Talk a little bit about that the link between tactics and strategy and you guys are working on.

Dan Crenshaw  24:06  
Yeah. Well, it's been a summary of what we've just been talking about. So we we passed a bill that that provides capital and fuel for the economy and in the span of about two months. Okay. So there's there's some strategy behind that we want to keep employees attached to their places of business, both small and large, for a period of about eight weeks, that's about what $2 trillion might accomplish might need even more than that. But the reality is, is, is we don't have any more money. Okay, from the public standpoint. Modern monetary theory, theory is not a real thing. We can't just keep spending another $2 trillion. So we have to be getting our economy back up and running and functioning within the next one to two months. And in order to do that, we have to simultaneously mobilize mass production PV production. Testing production, antibody testing production, ventilators and hospital beds. So there's an enormous mobilization that has to happen. We're already doing it. We need to keep doing it and double down on that. And so that's at the federal government's side, helping organize the supply chains, making sure that that gets everywhere. And then on the state and local side, you got to manage that you got to manage the testing. And, and you've got to have reasonable timelines for people. We have to be strong enough leaders to actually say, here's the timeline, we're sticking to it. We're sticking to it. And you know, we're we're repairing on the back end or public health side, which was underprepared before, it always will be for a pandemic, it just, that's just the nature of things we blame everybody want. That's nonsense. It's just, we got hit with a natural disaster. You can't, you can't prepare for that necessarily. But now that we're preparing on the back end, we're giving ourselves some time by social distancing. So we just want our leaders to outline that plan a little bit better, because people are losing their minds not knowing what the timeline is. And you have to have a timeline. It might it might vary from state to state, I get that. The problem is is, was these leaders are putting out timelines like Dallas just said may 20. But people are scratching their head, like may 20. Really? You know, we don't have that many cases. You know, in Houston, our increase in cases is extreme is very small. I mean, we're, it's barely better than the day before. Sometimes it's actually smaller. So the, you know, it seems it's really hard for people to swallow this that in New York that makes more sense and might be on lockdown for 60 more days. I get it, but, but it's got it's got to be it's got to be smart and balanced and each in each location and, you know, domestic travels probably out of the question for a couple months because, again, if Texas is doing just fine with New York isn't well obviously you don't want people flying from New York to Texas that just that seems odd. unless they've been tested, right, and so it must have been tested of antibodies, right? So you can make exceptions and public policy has to be able to be nimble enough to make those exceptions and and work accordingly. You know, maybe we need a better apparatus at each airport so that we can allow domestic travel. So there's ways to adapt to, to make sure that our economy can exist simultaneously, next to the fight against the pandemic.

Pete Turner  27:26  
Can I get you two guys to talk about in Dan, in your book, you talk about cross racial crimes that are hoaxes. And this actually happens to be an area where will is a published author? And so I'd like you guys to discuss that because it's it's integral to the what you're talking about society. And I guess I could say that to the both of you. So please, yeah,

Dan Crenshaw  27:46  
the reason I bring up any of those cases

wasn't so much. I don't really deep dive into the nature of race, race crime hoaxes, but the reason I bring them up as examples is because Because of my discussion about victimhood ideology, and how we've elevated the, the, the archetype of the victim to an exceptional degree in our society to where like, we've changed out Heroes for victims, we look up to these victims, and we elevate them. They're like, wow, that's the person I want to be. I want to be that person who was victimized. That seems very strange to me. And the examples I use, it's kind of the obvious ones. Jesse Smollett, I use Elizabeth Warren as an example, right. She's, she's highlighting these No, these these instances of victimhood, and they turn out to be lies, and that's the worst part, but wire and I analyzed why people lie about this. And the reason why is because our society has begun to elevate victimhood, as opposed to elevate people who overcome things, as opposed to elevating people who live with fortitude and, and say, Hey, they tried to do this to me, but I overcame it and I know I pulled myself up and I made it work. That's the kind of person we used to Elevate as a hero, but we've totally changed our, our hero archetypes that we actually look up to. And that's sort of the premise for that discussion.

wil reilly  29:10  
Yeah, no, I think that's pretty much correct. I as Pete mentioned, I wrote the book hate crime hoax, which looks at a collection of several hundred of these kinds of cases that you're describing. So I mean, jussie Smollett, but also in that same year, you had Covington Catholic, if you want to count that as a hoax. I mean, you had the Congresswoman Eric Thomas that might be at the state level, but who claimed a brutal racial attack in a Publix grocery stores slurs push so on. You had the dreadlock cutting case in DC. I put together a list of about 1000 of these by this point. Wow. I'm concentrated within the past five years. So it's a book of social science. I mean, as you said, it's not it's published by a center right press Regnery. But it's not an extraordinarily political book. The question is why the hell are people doing this? And what I find is something pretty simple. To what you're saying, again, sad the social psychologists calls it collective Munchausen syndrome. We reward people that seem to be unusual, different suffering. So just as when we rewarded, you know, bravery, you're going to see people pursue the thing that produces the reward. Yeah, um, one of the things that was crazy about hoax the book is that a huge number of these cases, almost the majority took place on college campuses. So however you wanted to find that colleges, universities, elite, senior prep schools, that was something like a third of the whole dataset. And what you saw with those cases, wasn't that the college you know, patted someone on the back and then sent them to the police station. It was this massive celebratory reaction. There'd be parades, rallies, so on. So yeah, I mean, as long as you tell people that if they have been hurt or abused, they're going to be not just treated honorably, but rewarded. Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna see some of these cases. I'm not But you

Dan Crenshaw  31:01  
know, it's true and the victim of ideology narrative. It's a theme throughout my book, I could have written a whole book about that, you know, and that's each chapter in my book, I think, maybe not every chapter, but a lot of them you could write a whole book about. And it's, and I tried not to spend too much time on the problem obviously have to because you got to explain the problem to explain the solutions. But the, the, the solution to the victimhood narrative was the hero archetype narrative. And so I try to bring up pretty obvious things. I think people know this stuff. intuitively. I like the study of psychology because it's really a study of things that we already know intuitively, but it's just put into smart people words, and that's true. And no, I' m not a PhD. But

wil reilly  31:52  
there are a lot of dumb as PhDs man, I mean, thoroughly a negative.

Pete Turner  31:57  
Yeah, there is

wil reilly  31:59  
just But there's a hoax recently where a couple of social scientists who I'm casual friends with at the Twitter follow level, wrote a bunch of fake papers and they submitted them to the girls in social science. One of them was just a chapter of mine comp. And it went to a journal specializing in liberal politics. One was a piece about fat bodybuilding. So I mean, you know, having an IQ above 120 doesn't mean you have any practical experience in life. I will say,

Dan Crenshaw  32:25  
yeah, yeah, I heard about that. That was one of the better stories out there. That was great. And those guys weren't really, if I recall, I remember them talking about I don't recall that they were even very conservative. Now. They're, they're just concerned about the the institution of academia. And right rightfully so. And they prove their case pretty well. But yeah, I mean, the the counter to the victimhood hero is the real hero. And it just it behooves us to remind ourselves of what real heroes actually look like and the attributes that they that they possess. And again, a lot of my book is also very practical. And so a large part of that chapter on on on hero ism is is not just the problem with how we view hero archetypes versus victimhood archetypes, but but also just how to improve yourself a long a long a specific societal hierarchy. And I think hierarchies are useful way to think about that there's there's a lot of different hierarchies that we've tried to improve ourselves within. Sometimes it's like, okay, you want to be better at sports? Well, there's, there's a hierarchy there, okay. You have to improve this much to get up to this level in this level. Same with business, maybe you're maybe you're good at social connections, and you're, you know, you're, you're good along the social hierarchy, like everybody has something they have strengths at, or want to have better strengths. And so I tell people to imagine, imagine what imagine the people who do well in the places that you want to do well at and copy them, just copy their attributes like it's really easy. And I note like, examples from my own life where, and we've been doing this since we were in high school, you know, like you see popular kids, and you see the way they act and like that kind of changes how you act because you're like, Wow, well, they're doing something and they're rewarded for it. And people like them, people are attracted to them, what are they doing? Okay, notice, that's how we, that's how that person reacted to this. Well, maybe I should react that way to that is that we do we do this as children. And then we do it as adults, we just do it. And so in the seal teams, I would notice the way certain leaders would would react and how certain seals would act and what kind of respect that garnered them. Well, didn't you just mimic that? Okay, so there's, there's, there's, there's sort of, there's that aspect to it. And then, of course, we get into the conversation about people mimicking the wrong attributes, which which, which is what you were just referring to in this, this sort of this, this reward that is given to the wrong attributes in our society. And so there's there's there's there's very individual ballistic lessons in my book but there's there's much larger cultural takeaways as well as far as like as a culture Who the hell are we actually looking up to? You know, like we shouldn't look up to some of these people. These are not good. But we do it anyway. And we've got to remind ourselves of what the right classical heroic attributes really are.

Pete Turner  35:25  
Yeah, you're talking a little bit about the stoicism that with guys like us seem to all share, you know, and then the outcome of someone like Greta Thornburg, and God bless, you know, it's great that she's, it's, here's a funny note about gretta is if you translate her name, this is a bad translation, but basically, it's pearl from tuna mountain. Okay, makes her name. that's legit. That's what credit numbers means. But you know, she, she's doing things. She's got a voice, but there's the voice is paper thin,

Dan Crenshaw  35:56  
you know, right. Yes. Yeah. Same if I bring this up. Yeah, yeah, I compare her achievements to another young kid named boy on slot who, uh, you know, he actually created something he actually created this big thing that cleans up plastic in the ocean. It's awesome, right? You know, he's gotten all these investors to invest in it and then you just, you know, you can do a you can do an objective comparison here as far as just a Google search and how many how many search results each one gives back. And, you know, at the time of the writing, I can't remember what it was, but it was read ahead in the middle bazillions and he had like, half a million. Okay, not bad. It's not bad to have half a million but still not very many. And even though objectively speaking, he is much more impressive than than gretta who knows nothing, and only hurls angry slogans but but we have become we have come become a society that rewards passion over substance. And that seems backwards, you know, I talked about like the meme culture and again, I'll share memes memes are cool. Just I just think that we shouldn't value them so much over a well written op ed and we shouldn't value an op ed over actual journalism. And we shouldn't even necessarily value journalism over a think tank piece that is that is actually substantively backed up. But nobody reads nobody reads any of those things. You know, people read the memes. And it's great if that meme is is correct. But But we, as a society, we have to take a step back and think, Okay, wait, maybe I shouldn't put all my put all my eggs into that basket. Like, let me Maybe I should use this for entertainment. But for my learning, I should use this you know, that's all I'm saying. I don't want to go like hate on memes. You know, that's not the point because government I have a lot of friends who make some really funny memes so mad at me. But uh, but but you know, it's just it's a matter of reward. And individual Americans are the only one who can control that reward and this book is written for individual Americans.

Pete Turner  38:02  
One you had Well,

wil reilly  38:04  
yeah, one thing that comes up for me when you bring up some of this, like the reliance on quote unquote intelligent figures, people that sound like they have something to say but perhaps not really that much meme culture or comic culture, a bit of decadence. One of the things that I think a lot of political scientists or historians would say is that these are general characteristics of rich societies. stoicism began to fade in later Rome, when the Emperor started throwing orgies in their palaces. The number of centenarians dropped 95% near the end of the site. I mean, these these are actual facts. And that seems to tie into some of the things you mentioned in your book, like you say, when I was in Afghanistan, I never heard anyone mentioned microaggressions you know, people wore the same clothing. Most of the year. I've observed this myself in the third world, and this used to be our standard of wealth in the USA, right? You had one set of clothes to wear One to watch one for Sunday. That was it. You know, family gun and saver by the fireplace. That was your wealth. I guess where I'm going with this is is there a way for a society as wealthy and coddled as ours? To overcome this problem? I mean, I've had I'm kind of soft balling into the book here because you give a couple, but how wealthy societies with no kind of classic initiation rites avoid this.

Dan Crenshaw  39:26  
You read chapter eight, which is the chapter title.

Title do something hard because yes.

Yeah, and you can also read the chapters on perspective because, but really, really what what you're describing is a loss of perspective, that a rich society and a very comfortable society where we've done our best to remove suffering in every aspect of our lives, and it's something we can celebrate also, but but we also have to be honest about the consequences of that and do something hard is it Chapter that is quite literally about doing something hard. Now it's a much deeper discussion than that because I go into the psychology of doing hard things. I go into the religious aspects of doing hard things like there's a much deeper conversation to be had there. And you have to read the book to understand it, but it really is also as simple as pick stuff that is hard and do it. Now not hard for like me. I'm not saying go through buds. I talked about buds. It's like my kind of awakening. I understand that not everybody can do buds. You know, we mentioned Mike wall before that guy can't do buds. Okay, he's in the army. You know, just sorry, Mike. I'm just gonna jab jab at my green beret brother in there a little bit. But uh,

Unknown Speaker  40:44  
but the point

Dan Crenshaw  40:44  
is, is it it? The point is, is that it has to be harder than other stuff you've done. All right, and you and it has to be habitual, and it has to be self imposed suffering. I'm not saying go swim with sharks. That would be hard like that. That would be suffering of some sort, like getting bitten by a shark. Don't do that. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, go swim a mile, right? Because maybe you've never done it before. I'm not saying go do it alone, you should probably have some kind of safety mechanisms. But like, do something that you really didn't think you could do. Okay, take a cold shower in the morning, the stoics talked about this, they talked about this kind of self imposed suffering, and more in a sense of preparedness. Like they would they would, they would say, hey, sleep on the floor, understand what it's like to not have the comforts of your home every once in a while, so that when it happens, it's not mentally devastating to you. So there's there's two aspects to suffering, which is one, it's a preparedness issue in a very practical sense, but in a deeper way, it It builds character, it builds it builds hope. I mean, the Bible talks about this, I quote the Bible in this book, a lot actually. Because the because, because I think I talked about this book is new. Actually, that's why I bring up the Bible. That's why I bring up ancient stoics because it tends to be true that it If ideas have been around for a very long time, it tends to mean that they are true. Yeah. And we should we should simply simply need to remind ourselves of them and then translate them into kind of a more modern conversation.

Pete Turner  42:12  
What are the things we've talked about perspective in chat and I'm so glad you brought up chapter eight making my job easy. But among other things, you're starving you're in buds, you're you know, working out to the point of failure over and over again relying on teammates, we're having the same thing done and then you get served an MRE which in normal fashion, you know, modern times they don't taste all that bad, but like you don't get a heater with it, you know, and it's just one more thing. And it's part of that grinding that you have to go through to do the kind of things that we've done. A real thing I like to add a lot of times when people talk about the 1% the Think about this, you can get tacos anytime of the day anywhere in America like you can always get tacos that's not true in Germany or and I saved tacos, any kind of food you go on a Sunday afternoon, and places are closed. We have we poop in portable Water. I mean, its scope, your camera and then all sudden you realize we're all so wonderfully fortunate, you know some of that reactive, Dan, it's huge. It is. I talked about

Dan Crenshaw  43:13  
the beauty of America as a sense of perspective quite a bit.

Unknown Speaker  43:17  
Yeah.

Pete Turner  43:18  
What I wanted to ask you about your podcast. First off, I wanted to say this too. One of the things I love about what you've done, why I've always wanted to have you on the show is you talk candidly about the day to day like, we just voted on this, here's why I voted the way I voted. That kind of transparency, I think is invaluable, because we just don't know, all we know is that we don't like you guys, you know, and congressional readings are so low as a group, right? But here you are saying, here's my position. Here's what was in the bill. Here's why I didn't like it. Like I think back to 2008. During the last time we had a stimulus package and and a lot of the representatives in Congress folks are saying we don't read these bills who's got time for that? 

wil reilly  43:57  
Yeah, With a lower approval rating than herpes last year, it was like 11 to nine. But yeah, I mean, good good to see individual reps boosting that power.

Dan Crenshaw  44:08  
Yeah. lately it's actually been quite good mostly because we just voted to give everybody money.

Pete Turner  44:15  
But up,

Dan Crenshaw  44:16  
but the media was actually you know, this is a poll that I wrote about recently that the or now we did a podcast on it. That's what the media is at an all time low. deservedly so I think they've been atrocious throughout this entire coronavirus. Many of these so called journalists in the White House press briefings just was just there to ask gotcha questions. There's there's no seeking out of information. And again, they're a big part of the problem. And I talk about them in the book a lot as well. They drive this outrage culture they, they it's they just repeat the other side's talking points as a form of a question. And it's just it's done in bad faith and this is not the time for it. You know, we're Were in a true war against a pandemic. And it's just not the time for it. This is the time for the media to remember who they actually are supposed to be, which is people that inform other people too. It's a very simple. It's a very, very simple goal and mission, and they should adhere to it for once.

Pete Turner  45:21  
Talk a little bit about your podcast in general. I mean, obviously, we're already having the igtv videos, but talk about hold these truths.

Dan Crenshaw  45:28  
Yeah, it's a greatest podcast ever. Everybody should download it and give it five stars. That's true, though. So the way I started that podcast was, you know, I get to have a lot of interesting conversations in Congress, I get access to interesting people, smart people. And so I might as well just have a conversation with them and record it. It really is that simple. We've been putting a lot more effort into it recently, because you know, we're not in session and I've got a little bit more time trying to try to bring some different aspects about how to think about coronavirus. into it. I think yesterday released an episode which just gives a timeline debunking the bad faith arguments against the president that, you know, he's, he's responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. I mean, it's just you can't imagine a worst thing to say about somebody. And so I just pointed out how excruciating detail what everybody was saying throughout January and February and what actions the administration was taking throughout that time. You know, one one really prominent note is that when the Democrats lost their minds, because Trump had the audacity to only ask for two and a half billion dollars is the first package the first time first time any Democrats in Congress that I recall really made a big deal out of it. They were just really just mad because the president didn't ask for enough money. To which he responded Okay, fine. Give me more money like what are you guys doing? But we didn't even vote on it that week. You know, they they went through all of that pearl clutching we didn't even vote on it. What they did put on the floor was a was a bill to ban flavored tobacco. That was there. Big thing so like no more Grizzly winter green and so the two are no more Copenhagen winter green and just taller. Better veterans out there who are listening be really pissed off it is this is so just that that's that's the kind of things you can expect from it. It's a deep dive because there was I was missing the deep dive into policy in my messaging. You know, I can write about it to a certain extent but you but I wanted to be able to interview experts on things because the videos, they they're a few minutes long, I hit the highlights. I moved past the talking points and those which is really why people like them, it's not so much that I'm unveiling what's happening. Everybody can look up what's happening and what we vote on. What they miss is the actual explanation. And I think that's what I try to deliver in those. Here's the truth videos is an actual explanation that is that is not too deep, but it's deeper than the talking points. Okay, and that and that people just want to feel like there's some kind of honesty there.

Unknown Speaker  48:02  
We'll

wil reilly  48:03  
Oh, all right, um, I've got a couple written here. So let's see. All right, um, I guess Actually, I'll go with a positive question. So one of the things you say, throughout the book, and I've heard you say on your podcast as well, is that there's a negative tendency right now to assume that the other man, the person you're debating is an inherently bad individual. People say things like Trump is getting people killed. AOC would get people killed. And you say, I think assume the best of others assume the steel man. Can you give an example, as opposed to some of the things we've been talking about? Can you give an example of Congress really working together along bipartisan lines to do something good, that people can kind of learn from it followers of the political process can take from?

Dan Crenshaw  48:53  
Yeah, it's getting worse and worse, isn't it? I mean,

wil reilly  48:56  
I was gonna say the answer is no. I mean, that's

Dan Crenshaw  49:00  
Examples I made I mean, the you know, the recent bill was was bipartisan. Not a single senator voted against it. The only it's unclear I would have I would have loved to see us actually vote on it. That day, you know it Tom Massey got up there and almost made us do it. We might as well have done it. We had a quorum, because I would have liked to see, frankly, uh, you know, I know Tom Massey might have voted against it, it's fine. It's his prerogative. I wanted to see what democrats would vote against it. But the point is, because AOC was all against it. So would love to see her vote, vote. No. But my point is, though, it was overwhelmingly favored by both sides. So it was negotiated in good faith. There was a there was many days of very bad faith. And I was very outspoken about that. I will never let the American people forget that well, we had millions of jobs. The Democrats, the democrats stalled that bill for no good reason. I mean, and then that is the ultimate truth. There is no good reason. They listed this huge list of crazy things. To add into it, and eventually, it went back basically back to the way it was with a few minor changes that easily could have been agreed to that previous weekend. Millions lost their jobs every single day while that happened, and I'll never let I will never forgive that. And so but but it was still bipartisan in the end. And every Monday, listen, if this was normal times every Monday or Tuesday, whenever we fly, and it's bipartisan legislation day, basically, we suspend the rules. They're called suspension votes. These aren't huge pieces of legislation, but they're they can be meaningful. They're there. They're just things that we agree on. We don't need to debate it just we just get it on the floor and vote on it. So that happens every week.

wil reilly  50:43  
That's that's interesting, actually, and that we obviously and this is true in the law as well, which is part of my background. I mean, what do you think of the Supreme Court you think of these huge contested cases dealing with, for example, abortion, so on the majority of the cases that come before the court and in some ways, the most important cases that come before The court deals with things like use of public lands and their nine oh votes. So it's interesting to hear that that same perspective from someone that's sitting in the house that's interesting and valuable. One thing I will ask, kind of swinging from that to some of the things that the democrats and to a lesser but real extent the republicans tried to put in the rotavirus bill, do you think that there there are people using the corona virus crisis to try to push an agenda or to try to dramatically change the USA? That's something that seems to be almost accepted in internet discussion. I'd be interested in hearing an actual political leaders perspective on it. I mean, do you think that people are going to try to shove through UBI for example, or a temporary nationalization of some sectors to respond to coronavirus, quote unquote?

Dan Crenshaw  51:47  
Well, they will they said they would, and they did. So. Yes. I mean, they, I mean, that was the majority whip kleiber. He was quoted as saying this, you know, this is an opportunity to implement our vision. And then they came out with this list of like 10 or 15, just really crazy progressive items had nothing to do with Corona virus. They continue to say that they continue to talk about green infrastructure as the next fourth package. So yeah, of course, I mean, they're, they're not hiding the ball here. They're just saying it. And Americans have to be cognitive enough to say, Well, wait a second. No, absolutely not. This isn't this isn't responsible. This doesn't have anything to do with our fight against this pandemic. But But democrats are masters of manipulation, just absolute masters of it. And it's it's sad to see, but it's true. As far as the Republicans, let me try and think of some ways republicans might try and do that. I mean, I would think the only the only things we might do is say, hey, maybe these deregulatory measures that we're taking to get things going, why don't we keep those, you know, like, that would probably be something I would push for but I, I would I would argue that's a lot less impactful in a negative way than than some of this some of the actions that Democrats want to take. So, you know, saying the government will do less stuff from now on, is a bit less serious than saying the government should have entirely new infrastructure programs or entitlements for from here on out?

Pete Turner  53:24  
I like to ask this question whenever we have folks from Congress on is we're not a we're not a by modal society as much as the media tries to portray that, you know, or some kind of shitty bell curve. So that means most of us are somewhere in the middle. When you look ahead, and let's take Corona out of this because it's such a distracting thing. But when you look ahead at the big things you think Congress can do, that are truly bipartisan, not like one person votes with you, but like a real like, this is an important thing we're all going to do and this is going to make our nation better. What are some of those things and then who do you respect from the left that you see you're like, you know what, we made a Agree politically, but I'm behind that person because I know that they're working that, you know, they're a good person, they're doing their best.

Dan Crenshaw  54:08  
I can certainly be friends with a lot of my colleagues, there's some good, you know, I like Tulsi, she's a good person. I like Joe Kennedy, a good person, you know, as far as getting behind them politically No, almost never. Because we were just we really are so far apart. But we can have good conversations and we can say, hey, what, you know, what would your people say? If we tried this out? And they would say, well, they wouldn't react this way. And I can give him the same kind of insights into the however conservatives would argue that so that it's useful to have those friendships just to potentially negotiate something out. your other question was basically what what are you guys going to negotiate out? What are some big things you can solve? And to say that I could go down a long list? I mean, I kind of throw that question back at you and like, give me give me an issue that Maybe you want me to comment on maybe some one of one of the big ones? Because they're all different dynamics. That's the thing. Like they're all let me let me generalize it this way. Okay, you can you can compromise if you have the same goals. Okay? You can't compromise if you don't have the same goals you have to win. And so the unfortunate reality is, is that I think we've moved away from having the same goals in many of these big controversial areas like immigration or health care. And the reality is, is that on immigration, we don't have the same goals anymore. I think we used to, but I think every but when every single policy the democrats want to implement results in more illegal immigration, not less, we don't have the same goals anymore. So you can't compromise with somebody who has totally different goal you just have to win. If your goal is to have better health care, more accessible health care for people, but you just want to go about a different ways you can kind of imagine some ways to compromise And there are I can't imagine some ways not maybe not the entire system as long as they don't want to upend the entire system with Medicare for All I think there's ways to compromise. That's but what the problem is, is they keep moving the goalposts and so there's no there's no compromising on Medicare for All. And that's that's a problem. But other things like poverty reduction, you can imagine a lot more compromises and a thing like poverty reduction, again, but the problem here is democrats keep they only want to talk about inequality. So it becomes less about poverty reduction and more about punishing the wealthy. And like, I'm just like, okay, I mean, why can't we just focus on the thing we agree on and poverty reduction like there's, there's good ways to do that. And, and, and, frankly, our current system is a bit of a compromise with poverty reduction, like we have a safety net, but we have some work requirements that we try to put in there. I would argue that's compromising. We would of course, want to keep streamlining that that process and they'll fight back against us for who knows what reason But those are some general ways to think about it.

wil reilly  57:04  
Fair enough. One Actually, I just got a question from Twitter as regarding immigration. Can you ask representative Crenshaw what his immigration policy is, and whether he still supports most immigration as long as it's legal? So I mean, I guess the question from that was, what would your ideal immigration policy look like? I have recent events change that at all. And what do you think a barrier to compromise from the political left would be there?

Dan Crenshaw  57:34  
Well, I put it in simple terms of, you know, zero tolerance on illegal immigration. We truly locked down the border. And in a more and we and then we can have the conversation about in a more streamlined illegal immigration system that is based on merit as opposed to familial connections, which is what people refer to as chain migration. So that's a very general answer. At that point, once you've solved that, Those two things, because I'm willing to have a conversation about a more streamlined version of work visas, for instance, to I mean, I talk a lot of construction companies. Of course, this was back before the economy took an incredible nosedive. So the conversation changed a little bit. But But and then you have to figure out what to do with it, potentially 20 million people who are here undocumented, that's a much harder conversation for conservatives to have. And they can only have it when they think that we've actually plugged the leak. Okay, well, then they can have that conversation. And I think restitution might be an option there for basically Well, here's here's generally what I think if you've committed a crime, a crime other than your visa overstay or crossing the border illegally, there's, I have zero tolerance for that component. You know, you ice shouldn't deport you. If you haven't committed any crimes, if you've just been here working. We can't deport 1520 million people. We just that's not feasible. So we have to we have to conservatives have to like recognize that fact. And then what do we do with it? Well, people want to still feel a sense of justice. They don't want them to have citizenship and vote. And they also feel like they should pay some kind of restitution. And I think that's a perfectly fair way to look at it. For for basically, what wouldn't be a, a non citizen residency. So that's the but that's way down the road once you've actually secured the border and figured out the more pressing problems for so that's that's kind of my general take on immigration. The the the barriers to that compromise are very simple. The Democrats want more illegal immigration. And that didn't always used to be the case. Right. That was not the case just a few years ago. That was not the case under the Obama administration. But it is the case now, and that's just that's just the truth. That's what I see from my colleagues. Every single policy that they wanted to put forth was designed to create more illegal immigrants 100% and so that we just don't know how to compromise with that.

wil reilly  59:57  
Yeah, I will say just very quickly, because I think Pete has a question but I I was surprised by the quick shift of the tenor of that conversation about immigration myself. In my most recent book taboo, I outlined what I thought was a very say non racist immigration policy that some policymakers have asked me about, and I think basically was to enter the United States you have to show that you are saying non criminal. In most cases, what I said healthy you could discuss able bodied but no plague form diseases, and that you're able to get a job and there are a lot of ways to do that from an employer letter to an h1 V to an IQ test. So I basically said sane, non criminal, healthy and employable. And this was the most controversial thing I said in the book. I've been asked to discuss it 20 or 30 times I've been called prejudiced against the mentally ill. People have criticized the policymakers that read the book and suggested that this be done. So what do you think has accounted for this shift toward what, five years ago? 10 years ago, Mr. Obama, Mr. Bush would have thought of as an ending Same immigration policy, why is there What does sometimes seem to be advocacy for illegal entry? What do you think the reason for that is? And that's my last immigration question.

Dan Crenshaw  1:01:10  
Because Because of Trump and me, because the left because the left hates Trump, and the left doesn't have principles. So the left has never had any kind of principled approach to any problem. It's for them, it's about winning, they just need to win. So they're going to manipulate however they need to to win, and they're going to be against whatever their enemy is for. And so because Trump is there, I mean, the biggest enemy they've ever had, they need to win against that. And so that's why they've devolved into those arguments, even though it's unclear whether they believe them themselves. It's, it's unclear what they believed a few years ago, these things have changed. The other aspect of that is what we talked about before the elevation of victimhood, right they would rather they don't want heroes in our society, they want victims because they can control victims and you can tell people that you're a victim. It's part of their identity politics mantra, and that identity politics and victimhood perception obsession has materialized much more recently. So I think it's a combination of both of those things. It's an unprincipled approach to problem solving, because they don't have principles. And if you think they do, tell me what they are, but generally what they say, well, they're fighting for inequality and injustice, okay, well, those aren't. Those are goals, and they're laudable, I'm glad people are out there doing that, but they're not they're not governing principles. They never will be there. There's no limiting principle to that there's no there's no framework with which to approach a problem. And, and so, so that's part of it. And when you don't have those kind of those foundational principles guiding how you think, then it's very easy to switch really rapidly in an opportunistic fashion, in order to win. So that's, that's, that's what I and I can apply that reasoning to basically most most things that they say and do.

Pete Turner  1:02:58  
So I just have one more question for everybody. Everybody needs to get out and buy a Ford or to get it pre sales. The book is fantastic will and I have both read it it is it's a you will definitely appreciate what it is when you buy the book on Amazon here's the key what you what you do you go five stars and just put a simple review in there. You can tell a joke, it don't matter. But that's like that's money for the authors. That's how you get their book to be discoverable and get them over the hump. So rate and review that's it's essential. Hey, so Dan, as as a operator, you're always trying to do your best you're leaning forward on problems I think we would all give you a high mark for your first couple of years here in Congress you know I'll give you an A people were ecstatic that you were coming on the show that that's a hallmark and KPI but you're doing good things. would you evaluate yourself though? Where do you like you know, I've got to improve this or I really want to put effort here. We're How do you critique yourself?

Dan Crenshaw  1:03:55  
Question. Typical seal fashion. We're just like where we're greeted. Everything's so hard to say. But actually we self critique the the worst out of anybody. So I just, frankly, instead of trying to do introspection too often, because that's always biased, I just listen, I make sure that I'm that I'm open, that I allow the people around me to be diverse in the way they think like, you know, for instance, everybody on my team in the district and in DC, who's in a leadership position, is a woman. My wife is also a woman, as it turns out, and she is not shy about telling me her opinion on everything, and so and so you just, I kind of purposely set myself up for combative relationships, so that I hear different perspectives and can act accordingly. And just because you don't always know when you're screwing up, and if you think you do, then well, you I mean, you can't i think i think you're just naturally by Towards thinking that you're doing it right. And so you kind of need to set up the people around you that to help you think through that. And then and try not to be too much of a jerk when they when they confront you about it, I think I think that's the important thing. And so I guess, but on a more practical level, what, uh, what can we do to improve? I mean, I'll just tell you my goals. You know, my goal is to get gene commerce because I, I want to improve our national energy strategy. Right and because, well, my oil and gas industry here in Houston is going through a devastating time. I think our messaging around healthcare and the environment as Republicans can be improved drastically. We've got to work on that. I you know, I've got to work on on getting to the people in the middle who don't like people fighting like they're not really sure what they believe or how to think about certain policies, they just know they don't like people fighting and yelling at each other. Okay, let's let's do a better job reaching them and not just talk to our audience. So there's those are Those are a few things that we can always be improving on. I think,

Pete Turner  1:06:05  
man, I appreciate you coming on. You want to ask the right questions. We've been hammering you for an hour.

Dan Crenshaw  1:06:10  
No, I'm good. I appreciate it. I've got it. I'm late for another 40 minutes late. Okay. This is a fun conversation. And I really appreciate the shout outs for the book.

Pete Turner  1:06:22  
Yeah, everybody get Dan's book. It's called fortitude. He's awesome. And I appreciate you guys for coming on the show today. Hey, thank you so

Dan Crenshaw  1:06:28  
much for having me. Thank you.

wil reilly  1:06:32  
All right. Have a good day, guys.