Faith, Family, & Remembering Charlie Kirk | KMP Ep.54

17:38Katie Miller:Do you still do public speaking events? I do. I do. And I won't stop doing it. But I won't pretend that I wasn't a little bit worried doing that first event for TPSA that I was supposed to do with Charlie days after he was killed. I did have a thought, which was, I don't think anything will happen. But it could. It certainly could. Do you think that's responsible as a dad of young children? Yeah. You have to be responsible, but you can't be a coward. I guess that's a balancing act. The line between courage and recklessness is a little bit blurry. But yeah, you don't want to go run off a mountain for no reason and leave your kids without a dad.

18:15But likewise, you don't want your kids to have some weakling as a father. I mean, that would be deeply scandalous. That would be very harmful to your kids as well. And so you have to know the stakes. I mean, this is, as everyone kind of reels and debates after Charlie was killed on the left and the right recognized. The left said they wanted to do this for years. They tried to do it multiple times for years, attacking people like Ian Coulter and Ben Shapiro, setting off bombs, explosives at my event at Pittsburgh. It happened to a lot of us. And then one of these guys succeeded at murdering the most important one of us, the one who had the most political effect of all of us.

18:56And then afterward, 28 % of young leftists celebrated his death. And a lot of other people in media, on TV, on politicians, the lady who sits next to you at work, a lot of the, I'm not saying the majority, but a lot of leftists celebrated that. And so the idea that it wouldn't happen again.

19:13Katie Miller:But don't you think this comes from years of conservatives not pressuring these universities and their administration to put real protections in place and to levy real penalties against students who make it impossible for a conservative to come onto campus. I remember Sean Spicer not being able to walk onto a college campus without armed security. Why is it that a conservative can't walk onto a college campus without armed security, but a Democrat or a liberal could do the same? It's years of this culture that's built up on college campuses where conservatives didn't have, I don't want to say a safe space, but like an actual security safe space where they could go onto a college campus and have a debate with one another.

19:51This is an existential problem for the right. The reason that that happens is because the left has a political vision of substantive goods and the right has a political vision of procedural norms. That's actually why it happened. So the left has all sorts of its own problems. It can't walk away from the woke stuff now. All of the candidates, even if they say woke one is crazy, they can't tell you how because they're beholden to these radical ideologies that are very unpopular. But they have substantive ideas. For the right, we have some of those too. We could be here all day talking about substantive goods.

20:23But what the right has unfortunately done is imprisoned itself in the straitjacket of procedural norms such that we insist on neutrality. Notice the conservatives on college campuses are not coming out and saying we need to fire the socialist teachers, we need to fire the atheist teachers, we need to route these radicals and these violent people off of the campus and we need to deport them if we can. They don't say that. They say, we just need viewpoint neutrality. We just need to be fair. We just need to have endless open dialogue. Now, what's crazy about this is when I go out there and I say, fire the socialist teachers, fire the atheist teachers, we need to wield the power of the trustees and the corporations and the government to shape a positive vision of the good.

21:04They'll call me Mussolini for saying that. They'll say that that's authoritarian and fascist. I would point out the entire post-war conservative movement began because a man called William F. Buckley Jr. wrote a book called God and Man at Yale that called precisely for those things that I just said. And somehow that has morphed over the last 70 years into this weak, effeminate kind of neutrality, which says when we win power, we don't want to wield power. When we find ourselves in positions of authority, we don't want to advance a vision of the good. And so when you have a debate between people who want to wield power and know what they want to do with it, and people who just kind of want to be left alone, guess who's going to get their way?

21:44Katie Miller:What do you think of Turning Point's legacy a year after Charlie? Turning Point has done a magnificent job. I mean, Erica Kirk is a national hero. The grace that she has shown under the worst circumstances one can imagine is just amazing. And it's not just Erica. All the people at Turning Point have done an amazing job. I went up to guest host Charlie's radio show. But will it fulfill Charlie's mission? I hope it will. I think it is doing that right now. I don't know if it will in 10 years. You know, I mean, that is in some ways up to the populace. That's in some ways up to the kids who are on the campuses right now.

22:20That's in some ways up to the conservative movement. But TPSA is doing a great job. When I went up to guest host his show, because they still, they had to fill the show, you know, so the vice president showed up for the first one. I showed up for the second one. A bunch of other people filled in. And they turned to me and they said, hey, are you still doing that event that you and Charlie are supposed to do? And I said, well, it's really up to you. It's not my cold. If you want me to do it, I'll do it. If you don't want me to do it, I won't do it. Just let me know. And they said, no, no, no. We have to do it.

22:52And a lot of people stepped in on that tour, including the vice president and other people, to fill that out. So they're doing a very good job of it. But the mission of Turning Point USA, people sometimes misunderstood what Charlie was doing because it involved two things that were in tension. It involved a lot of open debate. Charlie would talk to anybody. He was the most gracious, perhaps, of the campus debaters. A lot of debate and advancing a real conservative vision for the country. So it was not debate for debate's sake. It was debate in order to move the ball down the field politically because it had a vision of what America should look like.

23:32And that's got to be the key here. You know, when Charlie was killed and people started talking about doubling down on the open marketplace of ideas, I had the opposite reaction. You know, I'm all for the open exchange of ideas. But you can't have a marketplace of ideas or of anything else if bandits keep coming in and shooting up the marketplace. You need first to restore order and standards and propriety. You've got to get the bad people out and ideally in prison. Then you can have that exchange again to be conducive to the good.

24:00Katie Miller:We have record low birth rates, not only in this country but worldwide. trending in a very terrible, terrible direction. But yet you're the dad of three young kids, soon to be four. Three and a half, I say. Okay, that's fair. Because I always say when I was pregnant, I could ride in the HOV lane because the baby, if it was born, it would count as a baby. So therefore, we counted as two people in the car. Yeah. Do you believe that having children has changed you? Do you think babies belong in society? What would be your message to young men and women about having children? We wouldn't have much of a society if people stopped having babies.

24:33It's a society that needs more people.

24:36Katie Miller:But the Romans and others believe that you could late-stage Rome and some parts of the world now believe you can just import your way to society. That's true. Marriage declined. I think the first same-sex marriage in history was Nero with his castrated slave boy. But that is not to be recommended. We want men and women to get married and have a lot of kids. But it's not happening. We've had a below-replacement birth rate since the 1970s. There have been some attempts throughout the West to change that. None of them have worked. Hungary had a very hardcore family policy, ticked it up a little bit, but not enough.

25:10So this is a widespread problem. You can't just blame it on some aspect of the American political system. There are subsidies you can give. There are tax credits you can give. That's all important. You can discourage feminism, which has been a big cause of it, sure. ultimately the only thing that adequately and accurately predicts high births is religiosity among religions. Judaism, Christianity, especially the Catholics do a good job, Mormonism. So that's the only thing that's going to do it ultimately, which brings us right back to this.

25:48Katie Miller:But don't you think it's more common culture? I would argue for a second that many think pieces have been written. Many people have opined on this exact subject, right? And they come to different conclusions. One is, you know, economic pressures. Some is, you know, government. Some is religion. But I would argue that it's more common culture, which goes to religion. Sure. We have a common culture in a certain sense. We're all talking about Lindsay Clancy and, you know, whatever inanity Kim Kardashian said the other day. I mean, it's not the common culture of 20 or 30 years ago. But this problem goes back to the 70s when we certainly did have a monoculture.

26:24So yes, that's part of it. You need social solidarity. Mass migration has been a big part of that because when you have the highest foreign-born percentage of the population in American history, you just don't trust people as well. The displacement of globalization has done that when you move away from your family. It's a, trust me, I can tell you, it's a lot harder to raise kids. It's more expensive to raise kids. But from my perusing the literature, it does seem to me the the most rock solid reliable predictor is religiosity. I can speak as a macro snapping papist. I am obligated to have kids.

26:59It is a sin for me to avoid having kids in most circumstances. Now I would have kids anyway, and the more kids I have, the more of them I want. I would have 15 of them if I could. I don't interview my wife about this, but she might cut it off at about 12. But I guess one way to think about it is that in our modern culture, we think of how desire works as like a steam engine following Freud. We think that we have all these desires and we blow off a little steam and then we return to stasis. That is not actually how desire works. Aristotle is right and Freud is wrong. Desire works by cultivating behaviors.

27:37So if you, and René Girard, who's very popular among a lot of conservative thinkers, who has a theory of mimetic desire, that we get our desires. from other people. We don't just copy their behavior and their speech. We actually copy what they want because we admire them, because we're in competition with them for whatever. So that view of things says the way to have more kids is to get people to have more kids. It's not just that you're going to blow off a little steam, have exactly 2.1 children, and then everybody's good, and they're going to go back to working in the widget factory. The more you cultivate that culture, the more of it you're going to get.

28:12But this brings us back to the procedural norms question, which is, if we say that the only reliable ways to have a society with a bunch of kids is monoculture, that means mass deportations. That means some regulation of the media. That means that part of the breakdown of the monoculture was that everyone's just scrolling endlessly on their personalized algorithm rather than going to see the movies or watching three networks.

28:35Katie Miller:Plus, because entertainment stopped being entertaining. Well, yes. I mean, Hollywood ceded a lot of that power. But what that also means is the government has to encourage certain kinds of religious practice, perhaps not kick the Bible out of schools as they did in the mid-20th century, perhaps not kick prayer out of schools, perhaps allow religious displays in the public square. These are things that a lot of conservatives will not feel comfortable with because their political views have been inflected with libertarianism and a sort of laissez-faire ideology that says that we can never know anything about the good.

29:04The founding fathers and the framers would have thought that that view is totally nuts. The founding fathers and the framers thought self-government requires is that you have a view of the good and you deliberate and you pass laws. But this is what I keep coming back to is the kind of potentially moral wound for the American right is they don't have the clarity or at least the courage of their convictions to actually say what we believe and enforce it in society.

29:28Katie Miller:Do you believe in IVF? No. Well, I believe it exists, but I oppose it. What happens when you come in contact with a friend or somebody who did IVF? Do you openly tell them that you disagree with how they had their child? Well, one of the upsides or downsides to having a podcast is everyone knows what I think about everything if they tune in. And I have a lot of friends who've done IBF, surrogacy, all sorts of stuff. Heterosexual, homosexual, variously sexual. So they know my views. I mean, my views are, being a Catholic, it's helpful because I can say, look, man, for me, it's not just private judgment.

30:03I defer to the authority of the church. But I would have arrived at this view on my own, I think, too. The problems with IVF are manifold. And most people who do it don't think about it. So it's not that you're a horrible person if you do IVF. It's not that you want...

30:20Katie Miller:But I'm going to push you a second on this. If you and your wife weren't able to conceive naturally, would you just say, okay, we're good not having children? Yeah. And I have experience in this because it took us two years to have our first kid and to get pregnant the first time. So we were technically within infertility. We go to the fertility doctors, they try to sell you IVF within three seconds. It's like an IVF sales factory. We told them no, we oppose it. And a lot of people don't know why we would even oppose it. One aspect of it is that IVF usually entails creating a lot of embryos, and then they're frozen indefinitely or they're destroyed.

30:55So that's the easiest way that someone could object to IVF, because they'll say, well, it massively increases the abortion rate, and that's not... Sure, but you could end up implanting.

31:04Katie Miller:I have friends who have implanted every single one of the embryos they've created. You could, yeah. It's much more expensive to do it that way because you have to have many fewer embryos. I have a friend who has nine kids because she created nine embryos and implanted everyone and every single one took. That is like the long way to a big Catholic or LDS family or something like that. Right, but I'm going to keep going through these different arguments. So that is one way to resolve that ethical problem. Sure. Statistically, 100 % of the time in IVF, that doesn't really happen. No, of course not.

31:34But that's one way that you could address that issue. So then the deeper issue goes beyond just the babies get frozen forever or killed. The deeper issue, two deeper issues. One, IVF establishes the domination of science and technology over the origin and destiny of human life. You can see examples of how this can go wrong litigated right now in Texas.

31:54Katie Miller:But isn't that the same thing as chemo treatment or immunotherapy or something to save somebody's life? No, because we're talking about the origin and the destiny of human life. So medical interventions to repair problems are one thing. But when we're talking about establishing scientists with the power to create and to direct human life... But isn't the power to destroy human life equal to that of the ability to create human life? Well, there are different things. If I have a 9mm pistol, I can destroy human life. That's very different from creating human life. If you look down in Texas, I think there's a case being litigated right now.

32:29You have these IVF doctors who not only...I mean, there are actually many examples of this version. They mix up...they put together the sperm and the egg. They mix up the embryos. They put the Chinese baby and the black mother and, you know, the black baby and the white mother and the baby comes out. And this could be litigated for months. And sometimes they give the babies back to the biological parents or...it's very nasty, very traumatic for the kids. Creates a lot of ethical problems.

32:55Katie Miller:Sure. It can get even worse than that though, which is that sometimes they mix up the sperm and the egg. And so they'll create a child whose parents very likely have never even met each other. And you say, okay, well, that's too bad. It happens a small number of times. But look, isn't the good of having a child, doesn't that outweigh the bad of what will occur to some small number? And I would say, okay, that's one way of thinking called consequentialism. Those are consequentialist ethics, like utilitarianism, which says that good ends justify immoral means. Plenty of people hold those views, mostly on the left.

33:31Katie Miller:But couldn't you say, though, that we just had this conversation about increasing the birth rate. I myself seem not a purist about how we get there because, in my opinion, more babies is better for society. Therefore, more babies equals more babies because then they're at restaurants, they're on planes, people are exposed to them. I've brought my newborn around and given him to young women to hold who have said they've never held a baby in their life. And now they're like, oh, I need to have one sooner. Yeah. Right? I think babies should be on college campuses where you bring a baby to the sorority chapter.

33:59Katie Miller:Yeah. And that would increase the birth rate. George W. Bush, I think, was born on Yale's campus, wasn't he? But I'm just saying I'm not a purist about how we get there. So if you're going to be a purist. But you think some things are immoral. There are some ways to make a baby that are obviously immoral, like rape. So you wouldn't say that there being more babies in the world would justify rape. Nobody would say that. No. So, therefore, we've established that there is some way to make a baby, at least in principle, that is unethical, that is not worth doing. The baby born as a consequence of rape is a good in himself and is just as human as anybody else and has all the rights of persons.

34:33But we would not, therefore, justify rape. And so people get very upset when you make this analogy, but it's an analogy to establish the principle that knocks down the talking point that a lot of people have, which is, Well, look, more babies is always good. You say, well, babies are always good, but not always the way to get there. So then the question becomes, is the good of potentially producing more children worth the cost of all those frozen eggs, worth the cost of establishing the domination? But in your case, okay, I'm going to keep pushing on this.

35:05Katie Miller:In your case, if you did IVF with your wife and you said, okay, we're going to implant all the embryos. Yep. does that negate the bad in your mind? Well, it would involve other intrinsically evil acts, in my opinion. In order to do that, you would, one, you would have to give the scientists the keys to life. Two, not to be too lurid, this is a family show, you know, but in order to get the goods for the IVF, you'd have to do certain gravely disordered intrinsically evil actions that guys often do for free, but you shouldn't do. And then on top of that, you would be commoditizing human life. And this is, I think, the bigger issue.

35:50You would be going to the baby store to select your baby. And you can have all the best of intentions in doing that. I have many friends who have done that thing. And especially when you're suffering from infertility, you really want a kid. I mean, you are looking down the barrel at this. but the actions that it would require to do that it seems to me are unacceptable.

36:14Katie Miller:Then wouldn't your life's mission be to solve infertility? Yeah I mean we should do that and you're never going to perfectly solve that but there are great fertility treatments. I mean no but I'm more talking about like the pesticides, the PFAS, the you know what causes this in the first place? Why are we why are women more infertile and why Are couples more infertile now more than ever? Yeah, I mean, part of that, yes, part of it is environmental factors. For my wife, not to be TMI, but the way it worked for my wife when we said no to IVF was they had her stick herself with a shot for a week.

36:46And it was like AOC, but she didn't live stream it. And so she's sticking herself with that shot. And then a week later, a little bit of the right timing, it worked. And there are ways that, again, not everybody's Catholic, so there are different kind of, there are different criteria that people are looking at. But there are good technologies like NAPRO technology, Creighton technology that help this. And you say, OK, there are all these chemicals in the water. Girls are on birth control from age 12 onward, all this kind of stuff. There is also the fact that women are just trying to have kids later.

37:16So there are also behavioral factors here. And by the way, it's not totally their fault. Society has told them since they were like five that they need to put off getting married, put off having kids, go get the job, go have the career. So I feel for them. A lot of these women are personal friends of mine, and they realize that they were largely lied to by feminism. And then they look down the barrel and they say, okay, well, I can freeze my eggs, which often doesn't work anyway, and it's very expensive and very invasive. Or I can do something like IVF, or I can, or what? But it's a sort of desperate realization that has shaped a lot of their lives.

37:54Katie Miller:We're going to play a game of would you rather. Okay. Would you rather have to sit through a three-hour college lecture on gender theory where you can't interject or let Hassan Piker co-host your show with you for a week?

38:09I would let Hassan Piker co-host my show. I think he should be deported and silenced and censored in public life. However, I would get a lot of really good content out of it. And then if I could convince—

38:21Katie Miller:We're always here for the views. Yeah, no, we'll get good content. And then if through that content, I could get someone in the government to deport him, I'd consider that a win-win. Would you rather your boys join the DSA when they grow up or become full-time stay-at-home boyfriends? Oh, full-time stay-at-home boyfriends. Without question. I mean, DSA, this is like deeply evil and destructive. And I'm probably not getting grandkids that way, by the way. But stay-at-home boyfriend, you know, they could just rebrand and call themselves aristocrats. That sounds great. With the butler. Would you rather always wear Crocs to Sunday Mass or always wear cargo shorts to the White House?

38:58Crocs to Sunday Mass, because it would be very traditional. You know, the apostles wore sandals. So, Crocs at the White House, or cargo shorts at the White House. I don't, I, it ain't the 2000s anymore, you know, and I can't.

39:10Katie Miller:Would you rather send all of your kids to Ivy League schools or move your family to California permanently? Oh, the Ivy League schools. because at least there's a handful of reactionaries there who will probably make my kids to the right of Genghis Khan, whereas California, lost cause, especially for my money. And then we're going to ask you to do a live performance, but would you rather sing Imagine at the Republican convention or play fight song on the ukulele at CPAC? Or play what song? Or play fight song on the ukulele at CPAC. I don't think I know fight song, but I would take any song over Imagine.

39:44So that's my answer.

39:45Katie Miller:So you really not like Imagine? It's maybe the worst song ever written. It's a vision of hell. If you actually listen to the lyrics, it's just like, imagine nothing matters and you're gonna turn to worm food and God doesn't exist, wouldn't, and we could all be communists. That's the, that's the. What do you think Republicans are doing wrong right now? How much time do you have? A lot.

40:11They're, they're fighting symmetrically. They're not fighting asymmetrically. So they're letting the Dems set the agenda. They're talking about affordability in a way that is helpful to the Democrats.

40:23Katie Miller:Do you actually think affordability wins elections, or do you think it's more of the issues that, say, Charlie talked about, which was immigration, birthright, like the things that get people to polls? The parts, the constituent parts of affordability do matter in elections. Young people have a hard time getting houses. Haitian migrants who were supposed to be kicked out 14 years ago have houses and mortgages. Young people do not. That's a big problem. The cost of goods is expensive. Now, most of that is because of inflation during the Biden era, because prices don't come down. It's just that the rate of growth ends up slowing.

40:56But that's soft consolation to people who are going to vote. Healthcare is expensive. The entire American healthcare system was devised by leftists, going back to Franklin Roosevelt, all the way up to Barack Obama. Nevertheless, it's an issue that the left has a substantive vision on, the right doesn't really offer much of one. So those are real issues and we neglect them to our peril. But to your point, the way to talk about it is to say your housing is expensive because of immigration. The cost of housing in California and New York, 100 % of that over the last five years is due to mass migration, 60 % nationwide.

41:30Your food is up because Democrats wanted to print money and because Joe Biden mismanaged the economy. People want to point to the Iran war as being the cause of gas going up. Criticize the Iran war all you want. The fact is, the way that they have managed Brent crude and the oil prices, actually it's been pretty impressive that they haven't gone up much higher than they have. So, you know, you focus on that. And then the other thing we have to focus on are those culture war issues. People think it's like beating a dead horse to talk about transing the kids. That would be the case if the Democrats weren't doubling down on it right now.

42:03But they are. Guys like Abdul Al-Sahid, really the entire left is doubling down on that. When AOC says Woke One is crazy, the obvious next question has to be, what was crazy about it? How was it crazy? They won't disavow any part of it. So you say, okay, if you're not going to disavow it, that means it's a live issue. I'm going to double down on that. That is the kind of issue that shows voters that the GOP has the common sense.

42:24Katie Miller:What's the strongest issue the left makes right now? The strongest issue is affordability. I actually do think that matters. But what is affordability? Affordability is like every economic issue plus health care. So yeah, I guess those are big issues for sure. And they can complain about the party in power and that's effective. Do you think the Trump coalition survives without Trump on the ballot? Yes, it could. It could survive without Trump on the ballot. But it will survive in two ways. One, the successor has to make a plausible claim to Trumpism. And I think most people's money would be on the vice president inheriting that mantle.

43:03And I think he's got a very good claim to that. I think that is part of why he was selected as the running mate for a non-consecutive second term. It's kind of part of the deal. His working class background, his deep thought on political philosophy, on religion, on what has ailed, especially the working class, lower middle class. You know, I think he's got a lot of cred on those issues. Now, whoever it is, though, I think is probably going to be selected with the blessing of Trump. I think this is, you know, Trump is still the grand poobah of the party. So in that way, he won't be on the ballot, but he probably still will be running the party.

43:39And that's going to be very important because what he brings is 40 years of, well, he brings the thought and the coalition and the policies and the record, but he also brings 40 years of pizzazz and celebrity.

43:48Katie Miller:Do you think Mamdani or AOC could ever be on a presidential ballot and win? Yeah, yeah. Not Mamdani. Mamdani is Ugandan, isn't he? Yeah, he could have actually. He's out for now. But AOC, yeah, she could. I guess as of now, she probably is the front runner, strange as it is to say. And this is very perilous because the Dems will have an advantage going into 2028 because we're the party in power. So, and we've been in power for two of the last three terms and President Trump has won at least two elections. So, you know, there will be an impetus to swing back the other way. And none of the other Dem candidates really have much mojo going on.

44:29Katie Miller:What's the conspiracy theory that you believe in? I don't believe in very many at all. I've gone down the moon rabbit hole, but we landed on the moon. I'm pretty convinced of that. I think Muslims did 9-11. I think Lee Harvey Oswald, this is controversial, I guess he says, I think Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. So a lot of the modern ones I don't think that much about. I guess a hideous cabal of like Freemasons helped the French Revolution. Did President Trump win the 2020 election? He literally didn't win in the sense that it's done by electors. But in terms of, was that election fraudulent?

45:06Yes, obviously. Obviously it was.

45:08Katie Miller:But it's so funny you ask. It didn't even occur to me that that would be like a conspiracy theory. The left obviously rigged the election. They changed all the rules in the weeks and months beforehand. In some cases in violation of state constitutions like you saw in Pennsylvania. They obviously stole the election. There's no question about it. We have a system that's a little bit separated from the DEMOS, so they could get away with it. What's your most liberal take? My most liberal take is that capitalism is pretty good. I'm with Irving Kristol and with Edmund Burke on this point. Two cheers for capitalism.

45:43Katie Miller:What's your most cancelable opinion?

45:49Well, I had one today that will probably get me canceled. Did you see this Target Halloween costume?

45:54Katie Miller:And did you say that it wasn't actually like should have canceled it because it like looked like this image and it wasn't actually meant to be a pumpkin? Well, I said that, but I went a little further. The argument, they said that it was like a minstrel show. And I said, it's not. It's just a pumpkin. And the only reason they're comparing it to a minstrel show is because the poor kid was black. The model was black. It's a bad choice, though. Is it? It's a bad choice. Is it? It's a bad choice. The costume? Like they couldn't have put a white kid in it? But then they put a white kid in it. You say, why aren't you hiring black models?

46:23So they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. And I don't know. I thought the kid looked fine in the costume.

46:27Katie Miller:The best take I saw, though, on the internet today was like, how would Target even know? Because they've outsourced all of the costumes and decision-making overseas. So they have no concept of what is American culture because they've just exported it. That is true. I would go further, though, on the minstrel thing. One, it's not a minstrel costume. It's not offensive. It's totally ridiculous. But I would go further than that. People always talk about these minstrel shows and all that. But maybe my most controversial opinion that pertains to Target is minstrelsy is an actual important aspect of the American theatrical tradition.

46:58It was advanced by very talented black artists like Billy Kersands, who was the inventor of the Aunt Jemima character, another character that was canceled. And minstrelsy not only should not be erased from theatrical history, along with the black artists who are part of it. But it is alive and well today, as Spike Lee has observed in Tyler Perry movies. So the whole thing is just completely contrived.

47:22Katie Miller:Who's the most overrated politician in America? Probably Newsom. Who's most underrated? Probably Vance. Probably Vance would be the most underrated. Because the guy came from nothing. He winds up at the very height of American politics. And the left and some of Vance's opponents in the GOP. They keep advancing this idea that he doesn't know anything or he's weird or he doesn't relate to voters. I think like, I don't know, the guy went from like nothing, nothing like kind of lib, kind of not religious guy to being a bestselling author, movie star, a movie made about him, successful in his private career, US senator, running mate for a guy that he harshly criticized the first time around and air apparent for the presidential nomination.

48:16Like, I don't care if you hate J.D. Vance. I don't care if you love J.D. Vance. That is super impressive. We haven't seen something like that in a long time.

48:24Katie Miller:Barack Obama would be very similar. Obama would be similar. Yeah, I would say he would. But even Obama, here's a conspiracy theory, that what was that race he ran? Was it the congressional or was it the state senate race where all of his opponents kept having these terrible scandals and being taken out one by one? I don't know. I'm a little curious about the rise of Barack Obama. His family was kind of connected to the government. I don't know. He, I think he was, I'm not saying he was like built in a laboratory at Langley, but the guy. It's close. Yeah, he had his way paved for him, I think. All right, what's your favorite song to plan the ukulele?

48:59Georgia on my mind is good.

49:01Katie Miller:Does it drive your wife nuts? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I love the ukulele. I play it all the time. I played it since I was 13. It's the easiest instrument. and anyone can pick it up. I walk around the house all day playing whatever song she wants to throw me out the window. It's so, I recommend it. It is more relaxing. It's better for mental health, even than a good cigar. It's like so, it's just a delightful experience. What's your daily routine? I wake up, I play the ukulele. No, I wake up, I... I was thinking in my head, you wouldn't wake the kids up. Yeah, yeah, I should. That is how I should wake them up.

49:37I wake up, I go down to my office, at home. I do work. Then my wife calls me in for a sumptuous, magnificent breakfast that she makes for me and the kids. Then I take the kids. I drop them off at school. Then I go to work. I do my show.

49:51Katie Miller:You don't homeschool? I do not. We did homeschool a little early on, but no, it's no knock on homeschooling, but I actually, this is another kind of Catholic distinction. The Catholic view usually goes more toward Catholic schools, like doing it all in common. Plenty of people have been homeschooled, going back to Alexander the Great. But we also lost our gumption a little bit after the third kid. One mother, do you homeschool? All of them. That's crazy. How do you do that? You do that in the podcast and you have an extremely busy family life. I understand your husband has some obligations. You just homeschool.

50:33Katie Miller:I'm tired. That's crazy. I'm sorry. And you're not worried about like, what if the kid can't read that well or something? She can read. She's reading at a second grade level. She reads to her brother. She's good. This is, I noticed this in college. Some of the best educated kids in my entire class, or really my whole cohort, were homeschooled. But there is a little selection bias. Because then I know other kids who are homeschooled, like adults now, who can't do like three plus two. So it does seem like there's a much wider range for homeschooling. My kids are very busy. Yeah. My kids live a very busy life.

51:10Katie Miller:They are like, they have tennis, they have golf, they have, we have religious school for them once a week. We do, oh gosh, what else are they in? They have piano once a week. That's great. That's great. And no ukulele. No ukulele. The dream piano. Yeah, you know, this is... But I would say that this is like... It's funny because Stephen and I actually had this conversation last night because my son is very particular. My middle son is very, very particular, just like his father is. Yeah. And he looks identical to his father. And so he, for a while, protested a lot of his lessons. Would cry, kick and scream, not want to sit down.

51:50Katie Miller:Tried to deport the teacher. Yeah, exactly. And we were at this for like four months straight of him crying, before every single lesson. And I held firm. And I said, no, sir, we do this. This is where you sit. If you don't participate, you can go to your room. Your choices are to do this or you go to timeout. There's no playing. There's no nothing that comes instead of sitting right here. Guess what he loves to do now? Loves to play the piano. Is this like an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? Is that the kind of, you know what? And I'll finish a story where Stephen says to me last night, he said, I knew he would like it.

52:21Katie Miller:He's my son. Kids don't get to pick their hobbies. And I was like, amazing. Yes. I had this. I was like, amazing. He's like, I know what my kids like because it's what I like. Yes. And I was like, and so now my son is so happy. He bounced down the stairs. He loves to play the piano. And he is damn good at it. By the way, that's a crucial insight. I had this conversation with my wife. Because we were talking about, I like baseball. It's the only sport I like. I'm also terrible at it, but I really like it. I like baseball. I like playing musical instruments. I like whatever. And I said, oh, yeah, the boy, he can't be playing soccer.

52:48He's got to play baseball. And she goes, well, what if he doesn't like baseball? What if he prefers soccer? I said, that's not how it works. I mean, there's a little wiggle room, like people are individuals, but they like what you cultivated in them to like. That is actually what education is.

53:06Katie Miller:Also, soccer is not an American sport, so therefore we don't play soccer. We play baseball in America. Yeah, thank you. People are weakening on this. It is repulsive. The soccer thing is actually repellent to me. Yes. The funny thing on all these activities, you say, okay, well, if we homeschool, is the kid not going to be good at piano? or math or English. And it's like, no, no, they actually could be excellent at all of those things. But then the line they always say is, well, but how is your kid going to be socialized? I say, well, if I look at public schools - This is the kicker. I get this all the time from everybody.

53:39I for sure don't want my kids socialized into whatever is going on in the public. In fact, the last thing I want for my kid is for him to get socialized into that. Also, kids know how to say hello and like shake your hand and you can you can do that in ways that don't involve like

53:55Katie Miller:gender theory in kindergarten right mike i would i would argue this point is to say my kids have each other they act as a herd they're very social amongst each other yeah they're they're really good i promise um but also they have the ability to go interact with adults and in settings where other kids maybe wouldn't thrive they can be proper they can sit quietly they have manners yes we work very hard at this my kids are very socialized just not with other kids who could get them sick potentially every day of the week. Yes, of course. Like they tend to be a little more mature. Because if I do one more kid illness, I'm just done.

54:28Katie Miller:Yeah. Yeah. I don't, you don't have that, the mom gene yet where they, you know, they always say this, the moms have this gene where they just don't ever get sick. No, I get every illness 20 times worse. Yeah. Every illness. Yes. Yeah. No, you're kind of, you're making me second guess, not homeschool. Maybe I need to go back to homeschooling. I just can't, the kids are not meant to be in a classroom or an institutionalized setting where they're indoors for that many hours in a day. Kids are meant to be in nature and be among their siblings. They weren't meant to be separated throughout the day.

54:56Yeah, yeah.

54:57Katie Miller:I'm a one-room schoolhouse type of proponent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, there's some of the Montessori stuff, which I'm a little skeptical of. But they will have multiple ages in the classroom. I think that's probably a good idea. But then they're also spraying down all the toys with this heavy-duty chemical cleaner, and I can't do that either. So my wife is really into all the natural cleaners and all that. I'm like a vinegar type of girl. I would spread bleach over my entire world. Well, I guess it would all turn white. But I would spray it over everything. I'm all about the chemicals. No. I smell bleach a mile away.

55:28Katie Miller:I go run and find and put the bleach out. Okay. This is the... We'll pause. Can you bring your ukulele out? Yeah, yeah. Now, the last question of the podcast, while we have your ukulele. Yeah. If you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, Who's sitting at the table and what are you eating? I would have, you know this is the first time I've ever been asked to play ukulele on a podcast. So amazing. Most people ask me not to. The three, I would say Dante for sure. Okay. Chesterton. Okay. For sure. Or Belloc, but Chesterton would be more fun probably. And Chester Allen Arthur, the 21st president of the United States.

56:10Katie Miller:Chester Allen Arthur. Yes. Why? Chester Arthur, one of the very, you want to talk about underrated politicians, very underrated politician, vice president, then becomes president when his president was killed. The reason I want to have dinner with him is he told his kid, he got sick and died shortly after he left the White House, he told his kid not to go into politics. This is a very successful politician, a guy who started out kind of corrupt. He reformed. He reformed in this really interesting way because of this invalid woman in New York. but he told his kid not to go into politics and I want to find out why.

56:45Because I'm in politics and I want to know if that's a bad idea.

56:50Katie Miller:I was more thinking about it because each of my kids' middle names have a politician name, not on purpose but by accident. I was like, is that an interesting name for me for next one? Yeah, just for Alan Arthur. Yeah, if the baby comes out with nice mutton chops, it's a guarantee. Yes, yes. All right, so what song are we playing for the outro? What would you like me to play? I don't think I can play Imagine. Can you do any rap songs on this thing? Let's see. WAP? How do you play WAP on here?

57:19What would you like? What would you like to hear? I think that's pretty good.

57:22Katie Miller:Can we play WAP on here? This is a clip.

57:32How does WAP start? Someone call Shapiro.

57:50Katie Miller:thanks so much for watching this episode of the katie miller podcast we're live everywhere you get your podcast 6 p.m on tuesday evenings thanks so much for doing this thank you for having me