mark: hello america i'm mark levin this is "life, liberty & levin" saturday we're going to be doing two shows on the weekend sunday 8 p.m. eastern same format completely different guests. this is our inaugural show for saturday and we have one of my great heros the great thomas saul most know who he is he's written columns and fantastic book been a leader in the liberty movement for at least half a century as far as i'm concerned. and he's been warning the american people of tyranny, what tyranny looks like creeping tyranny aggressive tyranny, and from my perspective we're sitting dab in the middle of it. and he's got this fantastic new book out social justice fallacies by thomas saul get amazon.com or any major book stores. it is a fantastic book, and i want to welcome you doctor saul and let me just say this to you. ives been following you since i was a little kid not to date both of us and you had an enormous impact on my life, in fact, you've had an enormous impact on the way i do this program i remember you with firing line, and beau buckley and debater unbelievable let me start this way. social justice fallacies -- you started out like as a marxist as many do and it didn't take long for you to realize wait a minute, this is not all it's up to be -- was this social justice stuff and the inequality stuff these terms these amoeba -- have an impact on you being a marxist and then realizing this is all bs? >> it did and a simple explanation that as at the time i became a mark marxist i didn't know and observing things and going on. and as facts carrying a lot of weight with me and when the facts kept going in the wrong way i realized that this was not -- going to do what it claimed it was going to do. one of the big problems about the social justice field is that what they say sounds so good. it's only after you study history that you find out how bad, how horribly it actually turned out. >> well phrases are very -- nebulous, social justice -- what does that mean basically if you agree with the marxist and leftist -- then you support social justice but on the other hand if you support individuality and capitalism and private property rights, obviously, you're anti-depressant social justice what does all of this mean? >> that's how they look at it. they seem to assume a world in which things don't turn out the same for everybody. that means that somebody is done somebody wrong. and that's an incredible assumption that human beings have such enormous control all over their own faiths individually or collectively. i mean, when i think back over my life and i'm sure other people can do the same in their lives. there are times that the particular person appeared on scene and changed whole trajectory of my life and it's happened more than once and i'm sure it's happened in lives of many people. there's nobody -- nobody out there who has all of the incredible amount of knowledge required to take over making other people's decisions for them. mark: do you find that these radicals these -- autocrats baskly term social justice do they really mean centralized government redistribution of wealth, a permanent government that undermines representative government? is this really the for that? >> it is. if you realize what high opinions many of the intellectually elites have of themselves -- you can see that -- what it boils down to is -- very -- intellectual people like themselves just preempghts decisions of other people and aspect of their lives. one of the things that astonishing to me is we're having a big debate about sex education in the schools and to me -- the question is -- what qualifies the people who are pushing this stuff to take over the roles of parents? this -- what's also very troubling is that this all came out during the covid pandemic when students were studying at home and parents got to see what was being taught in the schools. now it still happens that 30 years ago, i wrote a book called inside american education. and in which all of this was laid out just exactly as it's happening now. the i can't imagine how many young people in the elementary schools especially are saying that they are boy but they wanting to a be a girl and boy and i can't think about in my lifetime saying things like that and if you follow the sort of institutional way these things are done, they're groups outside school system and inside the school system who want to do this. and who know that parents don't want them to do it and they do it anyway and they pretend that they're responsible responding to what the students want. they're not. one side was that a meeting of educators -- and while i was there, there was a man who was going around the country selling a particular brainwashing program and he showed me his schedule and he was scheduled my gosh -- every two or three days or months to be pushing stuff on all of the schools an he mistook me as if he thought i was a school official and he was showing this. it is clear this is not a spontaneous thing but organized and the -- tactickings used are tactics that were developed for brainwashing and communist countries. mark: book is social justice fallacies by dr. thomas sowell. in fact, dr. sowell critical race theory the 1619 project, these are really anti-knowledge really they're really -- propaganda devices for the hard left. that are being, you know, pushed in our classrooms, pushed in our society and so forth. these attacks on the american system do they promote equality? do they promote unity? do they promote a melting pot society or are they intended to destroy this culture? >> clearly it's latter when you said it is not just propaganda but propaganda that overtly prevents other views from being heard. this they were just propagandizing different ways of looking at life that's one thing. but anyone who -- for example, there are people who have taught academic courses on racial and ethnic issues at harvard and other places who just simply stop teaching their courses because they're saying anything it was different from what prop propaganda was saying violence on campus and so on and university administrators would not protect their classes so they just stop doing one of the great scholars late steven simply stopped teaching his course because -- you had ignorance silencing knowledge. mark: ignorance silencing knowledge, and you write entire section on knowledge. you break it down into different subsections, let me ask you this i don't know if you're watching news these days but you're talking about what goes on in the classroom. are we really a nation that's about knowledge now or are we a nation that's about -- substituting language of the hard left for real words substituting a front process of people who really seek to find quote un, quote, the truth with ideology -- what have we become on the whole? when i watch the news all i hear is propaganda surface level bs. >> yes. that's the norm unfortunately and academic institutions even the most prestigious with the entire ivy league is in that same, same mode. that people who -- it's scares me because you have people like say heather mcdonnell charles murray come on a campus and they do so at physical risk to themselves. and again, the authorities do nothing. i've been -- because i don't normally go to those things anyway but eve been on some of them where they have to police around doors doors all locked people outside banging on windows and door just to enter to interrupt the talk that's going on inside. i remember back in 1969 this has been going on a long time and it's -- it's so sad that it's taken us so long to become aware of it. 1969 students at harvard went into the administration building ceased it, went into the personnel records and were passing out all of the personal information for the faculty and other things to the media and so on. the president of harvard called in the police. the harvard faculty gave a vote of no confidence to the president. he resigned. and i think after that other presidents decided that the way is to get along is have pre-empt i had surrender that's developed into an art. mark: you've been studying our country for a very long time, history, economics, philosophy covered -- the whole horizon. 40 years ago, 50 years ago -- today was the country in a better position today than it was half a century ago? or is it in a worse position today? >> much worse. much worse. the silencing of the other side has now been -- become much more prominent and real danger is not in the silly idea that's promoted but the fact that nobody else is allowed to reply to them without some danger to themselves. mark: do you see this country a growing police state? i don't necessarily mean a police state like you'll see in the aggressive fascist or regimes but -- sort of slowly but surely like you're talking about controlling the language which controls thought and activity this massive censorship that judges have now ruled on this administration, you can see the politicization of the department of justice and so forth. but let me put it to you this way more fine point. are we a free country today i remember macy's saying americans talk like marxist are we a free country today but on the precipice of losing our freedom? >> i think the latter it is hard for me to see just how we're going come out of this. especially when -- people who -- so willing to increase the powers of government. don't seem to understand that it doesn't matter for what purpose you gave them that power. which may have been good purposes once they have that power they can use it for whatever they want. but you know, the federal reserve system was set up, for example, to prevent run away inflation or run away deflation or bank failures. and -- the intellectuals were 100% behind that but the cold fact is there's been more deflation as in during great depression and more inflation for decades on end and more bank failures than ever occurred prior to setting up of the federal reserve system. but the federal reserve system, for example, can force people to do things they don't want to do. just because they have the power to hold up -- what their decisions are. and so the power created for one -- for one purpose then used for some different purpose. when fdr took the united states off the gold standard, he used a law passed during the first world war to prevent trading with enemy nations. but once power was there, you can use it anything you wanted to. mark: that's so true. when we return i want to get into this issue of race. i feel like we can never get away from it and get into it because it seems to me the more colorblind people want to be, the more the elites and ruling class insist that we not be. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ he hits his mark —center stage—and is crushed by a baby grand piano. you're replacing me? customize and save with liberty bibberty. he doesn't even have a mustache. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ hey, you should try new robitussin honey medi-soothers for long-lasting cough and sore throat relief. try new robitussin lozenges with real medicine and find your voice. you know? we really need to work on your people skills. i was on a work trip when the pulmonary embolism happened. but because i have 23andme, i was aware of that gene. that saved my life. dear moms and dads, what you have achieved here today is going to help us and our futures. it is why we're coming up on stage to collect your diplomas. mom, love you always. vo: when you graduate, they graduate. visit finishyourdiploma.org to find free and supportive adult education centers near you. >> welcome back america we're here with dr. thomas sowell. the book is social justice fallacies i want to encourage you to go toamazon.com and grab a copy any major bookstores have a copy and it is readable and it is worth reading. particularly now during these times. dr. sowell, when we talk about equality immediately race pops into mind. it's always about race. racial discrimination, about the founding of the nation, white dominance society, so forth and so on and you make the case and made this case throughout your life but poignant in your book which is wait a minute, of course, this has some impact. but it's not the only thing that has an impact, but why, first of all what other things have an impact. probably an infinite list of things and secondly why only focus on race on the left? >> i guess it's because of that's proven to be a politically popular thing to do. but in point of fact that one of the -- things that's mentioned in the book is a study that was done by "new york times" of all people some years ago. where they tried to show the ten poorest counties in the united states, and they mentioned which ones they were. and so on -- and turns out the six of those ten counties had a population that was from 90% to 100% white. now, in "the new york times" they didn't mention race of the people but once they told me counties i looked it up, in fact, i followed average income and those six counties over a span of 50 years and in all -- those 50 years, all six of those kngts had a income lower than black americans. and so those people in those counties face zero racism because they were white and from all other white they didn't have a legacy of slavery and yet there they were. and it -- you have to ask then, clearly there must be other things that cause poverty. we can't just assume that because people are given race or have more poverty than some other people that race must be the reason. but this is becoming automatic kind of thing, and i think most people would be quite surprised. one other thing that happens is that behavior matters. and you see that in so many different ways, for example, i think most people would be surprised to learn that despite the fact that blackings as a whole have a higher poverty rate than whites as a whole. black married couple families have a -- have more than a quarter of a century every single year at a poverty rate under 10%. and most of those years, the national poverty rate was not as low as 10%. so it's not a -- and you say this is institutional racism in that case, does that mean that racist make an exception for blacks that are married and racist care whether blacks or married. none of these live by explanations stands up to the slightest empirical study. mark: let's talk about this when it comes to minorities generally asian population of this country that achieves a lot as a group. intellectually, education wise they're discriminated against by these ivy league colleges harvard a supreme court decision and so forth the way jews were 100 years earlier by harvard, princeton and people who push this race issue -- is it that they really care about black people or asian people or jewish people or that it is just another wedge issue to try to destroy this culture and destroy this society? >> there are some people qhor both. some really believe it and i feel sorry for them. but there's some who really don't care if it gets them elected, that's what matters. and this is one of the tragedies of trying to politicize race. there's so many fallacies it is hard to know which one to take up and for example the great narrative is that blacks are in poverty, got into professional occupations as a result of the 1960 social welfare programs. and that this is a big benefit. one of the problems with this way of looking at things is that everything depends on when you pick at the start of this trend if you go back to 1940s that is 20 years before the wonderful things supposed to have happened in the 1960s and you discover that the breed of which blacks were in poverty declined from 87% in 1940 to 47% in 1960. so it went down by 40 points in those 20 years. now you look at the 20 years following 1960. they went down 18 points. and so the trend did not begin in the 1960s the trend was there before then, and the trend did not even accelerate after 1960. many people think this it would began with a civil rights act of 19 74 that was fiend to get rid of the segregation laws in the south. but the cold fact is that the percentage of blacks who have professional occupations doubled from 1954 to 1964. that is in the decade ending of the team when the civil rights act of 1964 was passed. if you look at the things that are negative like for example, black children being raised in single parent households. and 1940 just under 17% of black kids were raised in one parent families. but after 19 60s before end of the century four times that many, 68% of black kids were raised in one-parent families and that does not depend on racism or any other things they talk about. it depends upon things that happen -- due to the policies of the 1960s which are still going forward. mark: encourage disillusion of the families unbelievable. dr. sowell we return, my big question for you is -- is -- as a nation where do we go from here and how do we start down that road? we'll be right back. 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