February 12, 2025 • 38 mins
In this episode, Tudor Dixon directs a profound conversation with Cornel West and Robert P. George about their book 'Truth Matters.' They explore the importance of dialogue in an age of political division, the nature of friendship across ideological lines, and the necessity of truth-seeking in education. The discussion also touches on the impact of technology on learning, the dangers of narcissism in society, and the lessons we can learn from historical figures. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I am so excited about today because we're going to
be talking about a book that was written between Cornell
West and Robert P.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
George. This is right now.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
This is at a time when sixty five percent of
Americans say political divisions pose a major threat to democracy.
And I think that they think because of that, we
really can't have conversations. But here you have two of
America's most influential thought leaders who one is a progressive champion,
Cornell West. The other is a prominent conservative, and that's
(00:34):
Robert P. George. And they write this book together called
Truth Matters, A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in the aid
in an Age of Division. And I'm reading through this
at the beginning and I'm thinking, man, they're talking about
how they met and how they decided to do a
class together and how this friendship kind of bloomed, and
I thought I'd love to have been in that first conversation.
(00:56):
And then I realized that this book is actually their conversation.
And I'm so pleased today we have Cornell West and
Robert P. George with us. Thank you so much for
joining me on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Well, thank you, tutor. It's such pleasure to be back
with you, and always such a joy to be with
my dear brother Cornell.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
No, indeed, indeed, indeed thank you for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
So I was reading through and I see that this
all started with the university really saying, hey, we want it. Actually,
I think it was students who were doing a new
student magazine to say we want one professor to interview another,
and that was how this friendship blossomed.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Is that right, that's correct. We knew each other and
we've been in some faculty seminars for about a decade
really before a student showed up at my door one
day saying that he and his friends were starting a
new magazine and they wanted to have a feature of
the magazine beginning with the inaugural issue, an interview with
one faculty member by another. And they reported to me,
(01:54):
I was very flattered by this, that they'd asked Cornell
West to be the interviewer, and he had asked to
have me as his interview subject. So we went from
a friendly acquaintance relationship to a genuine friendship, beginning really
with that interview and then going on to teach classes together.
Several years before Cornell abandoned me and went to Harvard.
(02:16):
I still can't figure out why he did that. That
off he went to Harvard. He came back one time
when he had a sabbatical leave, and we taught our
course again. But then since we weren't teaching regularly together,
we started taking our show on the road and having
public discussions at universities and at other institutions all over
the country and indeed the world. We've been in Rome
(02:37):
together and in other places, and it's just been such
a blessing.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well, but the friendship has definitely stayed intact, and more
than intact, I would say as I read through this book,
and here I'm reading through your conversation, because for people
who are interested in the book, it really is a
dialogue between the two of you, and I think for
those of us who are looking in on a university
(03:02):
like yours. And I'm listening why I'm reading, and I
feel like I'm listening because I'm reading through the book
and I'm hearing you talk about these great philosophers, and
I'm thinking this is way above my head. But I'm
just so pleased to be able to be able to
join this even if I'm just reading it, and I
think that's the beauty of this book. But we think
of you as major opposites. However, when I read this book,
(03:25):
I don't see you as opposites. And maybe, Robert, we
talked about the fact that you have a foundation in
faith and that is probably the foundation of how you
see the world. So potentially your ideas bloom from that.
But you do have very different views on the world.
So how does this keep continuing to work?
Speaker 5 (03:45):
But one is that we're able to revel on each
other's humanity because we take time and get a sense
of who we are, so that we spent this time
out twenty years so deeper in front. Really, brothers are
families are so intertwine robbing.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Somebody says what he means, it means what he says.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
And therefore, when we get the political and di alloted
for disagreements, we've already grounded our connection human to human,
I to thou, and of course, as Christians, it does
make a difference each of us made in the image
of a loving and an almighty God, and therefore open
(04:23):
to whatever kinds of disagreements we have, we wrestle with
each other. We engage each other, but in the end
we recognize that we're human beings and.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
You've learned from each other.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
And I think that's something that that was the biggest
thing I took away from this book. I mean, at
one point you talk about you have a whole chapter
dedicated to truth seekers, and really it's about truth in general,
and you talk about how one another are truth seekers,
which I find very fascinating because I think we've become
a society that wants to block well, yeah, I think
(04:58):
you even talk about this being the age of feeling,
and feeling is different than seeking truth because oftentimes our
feelings make us.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Not want to seek any further.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
We don't have the courage to go find truth because
our feelings.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
We hide behind our feelings. So how do you go into.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Universities today and teach this next generation to not hide
behind your feelings but to genuinely seek truth.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Well. The best way to teach young people, and every
parent knows this, of course, certainly every teacher knows it
is by example. You model the behavior that you would
like to see your students or your children emulate. And
what Cornella and I try to model is respectful truth
seeking dialogue. Now, there are some conditions for that happening.
(05:48):
First of all, the interlocutors, the partners who are in
the discussion, have to be willing to trust each other.
They have to be willing to trust each other to
be genuine truth sye. So that my goal is not
to defeat or humiliate Cornell. I know that his goal
is not to defeat or humiliate me. We have differences
(06:08):
about political things, but we're on the same wavelength when
it comes to the goal of the conversation. What is
that truth? To get at the truth of things? Now,
I'll tell you something about these two guys. Cornell and
I are getting up there in years. You're still a
young tutor, but at a certain point you become very
highly cognizant of the fact that we frail, fall infallible
(06:31):
human break beings can be wrong about stuff, and all
of us are wrong about some things. Every single human
being on the face of the earth right now has
some false beliefs in his or her head. Now, the
only way we're going to move from some of those
false beliefs out and replace them with true beliefs. We're
never going to get it perfectly, but the only way
we're going to make any progress is to allow ourselves
(06:53):
to be challenged, allow our views to be criticized, and
not take it as a personal assault or a personal
attack or an attack on my feelings if somebody disagrees
with me, Rather listen and a truth a truth seeking spirit,
and try to learn. Yes, respond, defend your views, see
how well they can hold up under rigorous intellectual scrutiny.
(07:13):
But don't try to shut the other guy down. Have
the basic intellectual humility to recognize that you really are fallible,
and you can be wrong about them some things. And
we also have to be aware that we can be wrong,
not simply about the minors, trivial, superficial things and life.
We can be wrong about big, important things. If we
(07:35):
look at human history, some of the greatest figures in
all of history, that people we greatly admire, have nevertheless
been wrong and wrong on some very important things. Now,
do we think we're better than them? Do we think
we're made out of something other than the same flesh
and blood that they're made out of. Do we think
we're immune from mistakes? Come on, we're not. And once
(07:56):
you take that on board, Tutor, as Cornell and I do.
You're going to be open to criticism and challenge, and
you're not going to treat that as a personal assault.
When Cornell criticizes my views, that's not an attack on me.
He's trying to get at the truth of things. I'm
trying to get through things if I criticize something he believes,
and we understand that. So we can have a beautiful friendship,
(08:17):
we have a beautiful relation, we can have a brotherhood,
and it's all rooted in that common desire more fundamental
than anything that we disagree about, and that is the
desire to get at the truth.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Well in the book, So Cornell, in the book, I
noticed that you said in Looking for Truth, you don't
have to have one authority that pushes out all others,
which is essentially it seems like what you're saying right now.
And I think that that's kind of how society has
changed in the past twenty years. We were talking about
how you've really had this strong friendship for twenty years now,
(08:51):
But in the past twenty years, I mean from the
time I.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Was in school to today.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
I see the way my kids see things through totally
different lens than how we were taught, and it is
kind of like, well if this is if this is
one answer, then there can be no other answers. But
especially in politics, and that's something that I learned. I
think the hard way is that there is no sitting
down and discussing with one another when you are running
(09:19):
a race. I think that that then because politics, when
it comes to running the campaign part of politics becomes
so nasty, and there are ads that say there is
only one truth and this is this is nothing else
can be. You know, it's got to be black and white.
There's no gray area. It's got to be this or that.
It creates this division in society and those those parts,
(09:44):
those campaigns have become such a part of our life
that I think that once people get into government, those barriers,
those walls, that black and white decision is still up
and that's preventing society from moving forward in a good
way because these discussions don't happen between one party and
the other once you're elected, or they're not happening enough.
(10:05):
What did you find that same thing when you were
running for office? Cornell?
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Very much so, very much so.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
And I think, my dear sister, that that's part of
the spiritual decay and moral decatence. That is to say
that anytime people think that they have all the truth
on their side and the other side has nothing but
lives and evil, then you're pitting You're pitting people against
(10:36):
each other. And usually in the background it's just organized
greed and weaponized hatred. I mean, the history of the
species is organized greed and weaponized hatred and institutionalizing difference
towards the vulnerable. But Robbie and I we say no,
we come out of the socratic legacy of Athens. What
does that mean? Must dream the courage to think critically. Now,
(10:57):
an examined life is not worth living. We come out
of the prophetic legacy of Jerusalem, which is the courage
to love unapologetically, and it shatters all tribalism, all chauvinism,
even nationalism. We can love folk in Asia, in Europe
and Africa, in Detroit and Legos and wherever because they're
(11:19):
human beings. And it made the image of a great
and loving God, so that in that sense we're already
against the great And you're absolutely right. In America these
days we have to have more examples of people who
have the courage to think critically and the courage to love.
Speaker 6 (11:35):
This is what Martin Luther, King Junior, Fanny louhim On
Dorothy Day, and Rabbi Heschel and others have tried to
teach us, and it's something that has to be exemplified.
Socrates exemplified critique by willing to die Jesus, my God.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Don't get us started on Jesus on the cross, with.
Speaker 6 (11:52):
That blood at the bottom of that coross that could
change your life and turn you upside.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Down into a new creature.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
That's what brought me and I are talking about stick
around for more with Cornell West and Robert P.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
George.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
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Speaker 1 (13:15):
Now stick around. We've got more after this.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
You talk about narcissism actually in the book as well,
and the fact that there has become this narcissism can
take over society and people, and so when you talk
about love, sometimes love is hard to give if you
can't get away from yourself in that and I think
we've we've created kind of this, I guess, manufactured narcissism
(13:46):
amongst groups.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
That maybe they don't even realize it's happened.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Over the weekend, I was actually in Hamtranmick, Michigan with
some of our Arab American communities and folks from our
air American community, and they said to me, you know,
after nine to eleven, we just didn't talk to Republicans,
and Republicans didn't talk to us. And that was a
moment where I thought, Man, how upsetting is this that
(14:14):
we couldn't find a way over twenty years to come
back together and sit down and talk. But that black
and white. You're on one side, we're on the other side.
It prevented conversation, and that becomes narcissism.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I mean what I heard you saying.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Of like, I have to look at this side and
say I can't reach out, I can't open up because
that side I believe is inherently wrong. How do you
know if you haven't sat down together.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah, that's exactly right. One of the things about we
human beings, it's just human nature. It's the human condition.
We tend to wrap our emotions more or less tightly
around our convictions, around our beliefs. Now that in itself,
tutor is not a bad thing. We need some emotional
(15:06):
investment in what if we're to get up and get
anything done and not just working for great causes, even
the ordinary day to day things. Getting the children up
and fed and dressed and off to school. It's one
thing to have the bare belief it would be a
good thing to get the children up and dressed and
off to school. It's another thing to have the emotional
investment to actually get the job done and aforesioria. That's
(15:29):
the same with working for a cause that could require courage,
speaking up when the cause is unpopular, actually exerting yourself,
and so forth. So I'm not against having an emotional
investment in our convictions. But but if we find ourselves
wrapping our emotions too tightly around our convictions, so we're
(15:49):
not open to being challenged, open to being criticized, open
to the possibility that we're wrong, having some intellectual humility,
we will quickly find ourselves degenerating into dogmatists and idiologs,
and the next step from there is tribalism. Will only
associate with people who think like us, will end up
(16:09):
in the silo, one side only watching Fox News, only
reading the editorial page of the New York Times, the
other side only watching MSNBC or CNN, only reading the
editorial page of the New York Times, And pretty soon
we're thinking of our fellow citizens who happen to disagree
with us, not as fellow citizens and civic friends who
(16:33):
happen to disagree, but rather as enemies people to be
defeated and indeed destroyed. And that's the real danger of
this moment of polarization. And that's why we've got to
be talking to each other and the grown ups. The
grown ups, whether your parents or your teachers, or your pastors,
or your coaches or ordinary people, have to be modeling
(16:56):
for the younger generation that willingness to engage in open
truth seeking.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
How do you show that on the national level, though,
I mean, Cornell, you ran.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
For office, you saw how ugly it can be.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
And actually, before we got on, Robert and I were
talking about how for me, it started out with my
own side being so hard to sit down with because
everybody has there, they're all in their corner, and they've
decided that they're going to label you as this or
that because they're trying to keep you from getting to
a place they don't think you deserve to be. And
(17:31):
you battle your own side, and then you get to
the next side, and you're battling that side, and ultimately
you come out bloody and damage, and you haven't had
the effect that you expected to have because you never
got to the point where you could sit down and
have those conversations. So how do when you look at
that being how our leadership structure is built, how do
(17:51):
we get back to where the founding fathers were, Where
it was a great discussion. Everything was deeply thought out.
I mean it was just who can I throw this
bill out to and get some a big press release
on it. It was genuinely what's best for community and society.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Yeah, that's that's a powerful question.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
But we have to keep in mind that even when
we go back, going back to the seventeen seventies and eighties,
you still have Micavelian politics taking places.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
If we don't want to be romantic about the past,
that's a.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
Name calling and finger pointing and undermining going on in politics,
because that is the nature of a spear that puts
power at the center power political power, economic power.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I believe in spiritual power.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
I believe in a moral power, and therefore we hold
on to the moral and spiritual power in those fears,
which means it's crucifim you know you're gonna get crucified,
you're gonna get trashed, you're gonna rebuke, you're gonna get scorn,
But you got something bigger than what's coming at you,
and that's what's important. And you're falling back on the
(19:01):
joy that the world didn't give it. In the world
can't take away you, falling back on the love that
the world didn't give you. In the world can't take away. Now,
if you don't have that, you completelyss to come to
the chicanery of Machavelian politics. But if you do have
that spiritual and moral power, it can never be crushed.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Are there people from the past though, that you do
think that there are benefits from that you can learn from,
because I think you put that in the book as well,
that there are you have to go through and learn
from the past, and there are good parts of people,
and then there's obviously things that you have to teach.
But today I think oftentimes we're like, oh, we're going
to throw the baby out with the bathwater because there's
(19:41):
something that we don't like. They don't fit the mold
of present time, so we can't learn about them, but
we have to learn about them correct well.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Absolutely, and there are models. I mean, nobody's perfect obviously,
and we shouldn't glamorize the past or figures from the past,
but we should recognize that there are genuine heroes and
people we can learn from and people we can emulate.
Let me talk about a couple one George Washington. Now,
(20:10):
when Cornell was just talking about Machiavellian politics going all
the way back to the founding, I immediately thought, Cornell,
you'll recognize this of the election of eighteen hundred. It was.
It was, if anything, worse than what we have today.
I think the only polarization more extreme than what we
have today is that at the time of the Civil War.
(20:31):
But if you'd ask in American history, what's the second
most polarized point, I wouldn't say twenty twenty five. As
bad as the situation is today, it's very bad and
worth worrying about. It was eighteen hundred we almost lost
the country. The Federalists were in power John Adams, the
Democratic Republicans under Jefferson, also known as the Jeffersonians, they
were challenging the Federalists for power. When the Jeffersonians won,
(20:54):
Thomas Jefferson elected president. It was an open question Tutor
whether the Federalists would allow peaceful transfer of power for
the first time in a democracy, actually very new way.
They called it republican government. They preferred that word to
the word democracy, which had some negative connotations to them.
That the first time power really peacefully transferring in virtue
of a genuine election, and the bitterness of the campaign,
(21:17):
the dreadful things they said a bit about each other,
the slander and label going forth in both directions, and
beyond even what we are seeing today. But Washington stood
above that kind of thing. He somehow managed to win
the respect of people across the spectrum, and for as
long as we had him, he was able to hold
(21:40):
the country together, hold the warring factions together. Now famously
he warned against political parties because he knew that that
polarization would come. But I think the truth of the
matter is that political parties and polarization are inevitable. So
even the Great Washington couldn't stand up against it. But nevertheless,
he was the model, and he was the indispensable man.
Had he not been there at that time, this whole
(22:03):
thing would not have worked. We never would have gotten
the American founding. Second figure like Frederick Douglas, Frederick Flood,
born into slavery, became one of the great thinkers, in
one of the great orators, and a person who had
to wrestle with the question, what should my posture as
a black man, as a slave be toward this experiment,
this democratic so called democratic experiment. Is it really a democracy?
(22:26):
Douglas is asking himself a republic to use that again,
the language preferred by the founding generation, given that we've
got this horrible practice of slavery. And there was a
time in Douglas's life when he thought that the Constitution
was what William Lloyd Garrison said, it was a pact
with Hell and a covenant with death, the work and
(22:47):
the devil. And yet he came around to seeing that
our constitutional system, although it's conceived without our abolition of
slavery at the beginning, is the road for it will
pave the way to the full blessings of liberty for all,
(23:07):
not two classes based on race or anything like that,
Liberty for all. And then other people who I'm thinking,
people who stand above the ideological divide that we see today.
I'm thinking of Fanny lou Hamer. Cornell mentioned her early.
It's a great figure, towering figure in the civil rights moment.
Now Fanny lou Haber was at the same time. She
(23:29):
would be considered a progressive today because of her views
on civil rights, and she would be considered a conservative
today because of her profound pro life witness. She doesn't
fit into a category where we think, well, we got
to think this way because this is what our tribe
believes about this issue. In that issue, you got a
woman like Fanny Louhimer who thinks for herself and she
(23:50):
doesn't come down based on where her partisan ideological camp
is supposed to place her. She thinks through these issues
and she comes down where she comes down based on
her own best judgment. So I think these are models
that are young people should know about.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Cornell, Do you have anything you want to add to that.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
I would say that one of the signs of the
declining empire is when the precious younger generation don't have
access to the best of their own history, the best
of their own heritage. If what is available to them,
it's simply truncated options that do not put a premium
(24:26):
on integrity, honesty, decency, courage, and love. You can rest
assured that the society is sliding down the slope to
chaos when you have a collapse of civic courage. And
this is what you get in politics, right, a collapse
of civic courage. Well, what takes the place of it? Well,
we human beings, and human beings anytime as a vacuum
(24:47):
you're going to, it's going to be feeled by something
that is less than mediocre. The benchmark of spiritual maturity
is always humility and unstopped will joy, and tied to
that is tenacity, moral spiritual witness regardless in the world,
(25:09):
but not of the world, and nothing can stop you.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
But it's interesting because I look at young people today
and I think they're so connected to their phones and
their iPads and everything else, and they get their information there.
And here I listen to you talking about all of
these great philosophers and writers of the past that have.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Shaped how we think today.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
And I said something to my girls about, well, don't
you have to go to a library to research that?
Speaker 1 (25:38):
And they're like, a library, mom, We're just going to
look it up on the internet.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
And I'm like, but you have no idea if what
you're looking up on the internet is actually true. How
do you know what you're researching for your research paper.
So how do we get people back into that mindset
or how do we I guess we're always today looking
at ways to re create the way we grew up,
and I hear parents all the time saying we've got
(26:03):
to take cell phones away. They can't have cell phones
until they get into their senior year of high school.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
And I think, but that's not.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Realistic either, because society has just changed, and this is
how society is now. So how do we look at
what we have today and still make sure that we're
getting the education that we should without saying we can
stop technology and we can stop what's actually happening in
life today, Because you can't.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I think we have to imbue our children all really
beginning quite early, you know, as soon as they can
be aware that there are differences of opinion and so forth.
We have to imbue our children with the truth seeking spirit,
in other words, with an understanding that we can be
wrong about things, and we therefore have to listen to
(26:51):
the best arguments on the competing sides before we make
up our minds about things. Young people today are brought
up to suppose here's our trotbe and here's our tribe's
position on something, and so this is the position that
we will go to the mat defending and the other
side of the bad guys, and we're going to defeat them.
I preached the message to my students that while you
(27:14):
have the right to your views, there's a certain sense
in which you have to earn that right. What do
I mean by that? You have to think your way
to your views. If you just pick up your views
because they are tribal, then you haven't earned your right
to those views. I'm not sure why I should exercise
great deal of respect for that. You just pick them up,
they haven't thought your way through to them. If you've
(27:37):
thought your way to your views, and your views happen
to be diametrically opposed to mine, nevertheless, you are entitled
to those views because you have earned them, you've thought
your way to them. It's not a question of whether
you agree or disagree with me. That's not what wins
my respect is whether you've thought about it. And that
really does mean considering the best that's been said on
(27:58):
the competing sides. Really, we have to warn our children
against we don't have to use the fancy term, but
warn our children against confirmation bias. That is, using resources
like internet resources, google searches, and so forth, simply to
find evidence to confirm what they already think. They need
to use the resources available, whether they're in an old
fashioned library or on the World Wide Web, used the
(28:22):
resources to engage the best evidence, the best arguments, the
best that has been thought and said on the competing sides,
so that they can reason their way to judgments that
are truly thereon That is, they're learning to think more deeply,
more critically, which always includes self critically and for themselves.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon podcast.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
It's interesting we had a similar conversation to this in
our house last night because one of the members of
my household came to me, oh, Trump is doing this
and it's going to have this effect. And I said,
I haven't even heard about can't remember what it was,
but I said, I haven't even.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Heard about what you're talking about. Show me what you're seeing.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
And they pulled up one website and said, look, this
website says that doing this is going to have this effect.
And I said, okay, well, are there any other people
who have talked about this?
Speaker 1 (29:16):
At all. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I just read it here, and I said, but this
is where I think we need to look and see
is there another thought? Is there someone else that thinks
something different about how this policy will affect the country,
Because I'm not saying there, And this was the exact
kind of conversation he said, I'm not saying they're wrong.
I just want to see how other people have thought
about it. And I feel like you should want to
(29:38):
see how other people have thought about it too.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
No, you're absolutely right about that.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
You know you don't want to accept just one version
of what has been said, and you need a variety
of different versions.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Shakespeare says, ripeness is all And what does it mean
by that? King? Here?
Speaker 5 (29:54):
He means a wise judgment and a loving soul is
a result of a process of maturation, of growing up.
If you're twenty five years old, you still reading Doctor
Seus's Time to break through.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
Time to make a breakthrough.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
But once you have that, you can go to the
internet and find a whole host of fascinating things competing views.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
So critique Jesus.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
Martin, Luther King, Junior, Tony Morrison, Herbert Melville. There's a
lot of good stuff on the Internet, but you have
to approach the Internet as a wise and loving soul.
If you're bringing a narcissistic self to the Internet, you're
gonna end up with narcissistic information. It's that shaping of
the soul that Plato talks about with such wisdom in
(30:42):
the Republic. That's at the core of what it is
to be a person of character, let alone a person
of civic courage in the democracy and trouble.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
That's so true, and I think it's important, Tutor, that
we learned from our mistakes. I'll give you an example
from my own life. I'm embarrassed to say, but it's
true where I made a terrible mistake. A few years ago.
I saw on the internet that video that was viral
about the boys from Covenant School in Kentucky who appeared
(31:16):
to be harassing an American Indian man on the I
believe it was on the steps of the Supreme Court
or something like that. Well, I saw that, and to
my eyes, it looked like they were disrespecting that man,
they were being abusive toward him, and so I fired off.
I didn't think I didn't check. I fired off a
(31:36):
tweet it went on my social media accounts and said
something condemnatory about those Covenant kids, and of course, within
a day or two, we got the whole tape and
we could see that those young men, as it turned out,
were completely innocent, that they had not harassed or in
(31:57):
any way abused that man. And so what I had
to do? Who was with my tail between my legs?
Post again, saying I've now seen the full tape. I
made a mistake. I jumped the gun. I condemned those kids.
I actually wrote a letter down to the school apologizing
(32:18):
to the students, asking the principal to share this because
I'd been one of the people who on the internet
had condemned those young men. But I learned a lesson
from that, you know, check, don't just take a first impression.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
No, I mean, and that's the point of making sure
that you are leading by example. It's interesting because my
nephew was a classmate of that boy, and we happened
that day to be at my husband's grandmother's funeral, and
that story just started spreading.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
You could see through.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
The cell phones because we were in northern Kentucky and
everybody was a student at that school, and my nephew
looked at his phone and I said, oh my god,
do you.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Know this kid? And he was like, this is shockingly yes,
and this is not who he is. Because at that
point we were like, you know, we thought, well did it.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
But everybody's instant reaction in the room was this kid,
this is not.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Who he is.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
But we're so quick now to immediately make a conclusion,
and then it is I think so often the influencers
or the people who have authority on the internet are
quick to go out there and immediately say this is
what this is I and I want you to be
mad about it, because you know what, when it's something happy,
(33:37):
when it's something joyful, when you're spreading the word that's today,
that doesn't travel as fast on the internet as when
you're angry about something as.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Sad as that is. But that's the beauty of this book.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
And so I mean, honestly, when I read this book,
I'm like, yes, truth matters. It is so important for
us to be constantly seeking truth. And that's what I
want my girls to understand.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
My girls.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I have twins that are eleven, and then I have
a thirteen year old and a fifteen year old and
they are right at those ages where they are drawn
to the video, to this, to that.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
But I read through this book and I was like, wow.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
This is it's beyond a lot of their understanding right now,
but not really as because it's a conversation, and that's
when you are seeking to engage in any type of
dialogue in society. I would urge people to get the book.
It's Truth Matters, a dialogue on fruitful disagreement in an
age of division, and you are really it really is
(34:40):
a conversation back and forth. But it's not just that
we are learning how you two communicate. You wrote this
in a way that we are learning how to communicate
with people we may not always agree with, but we
should love.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Well. Yes, that was our goal, and I hope we
are corent at least made some progress toward a It's
just such a pleasure and blessing to work with brother
Cornell on something like this because it's just an illuminating
dialogue I learned from the process. On the question of
young people reading it, please do make it available to
teenagers who are in your home. Our editor, Adam Bellow,
(35:18):
did a very good service. He required us to when
we introduced a fancy concept or a literary or philosophical
figure from history. He made us explain what we were
talking about, who this person was, what this concept means.
So I hope that made it more readable. I think
it is readable.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
It is very readable.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yes, sixteen year old kids. And this really should be
our target audience, the kids who need to learn the
lesson that truth matters, and we have to love truth
and seek truth even above opinion, where we have to
be willing to have the courage to face the truth,
even where it contradicts an opinion that we have come
to hold and cherish. This is a lesson they need
(36:01):
to learn above all. So if you ask me, what's
the main audience, Honestly, I don't know what Partnell would say.
I would say younger people. I'd love this book to
be in the hands of younger people. I don't think
that the older folks like us are beyond hope. I'm
not saying that, but I really think that we can
reach younger people here with this message.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
No, that's so true. That's true.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
We're calling for a spiritual awakening and a moral renaissance.
It has to do with Mitchie manity of each and
every one of us. And of course it's zeros in
on the least of these coming out of twenty fifth
chapter of Matthew, but it embraces humanity of ever re
one and we intend to go down swing in no
(36:45):
matter how unpopular it is.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well, I love it. I think it's fantastic. I think
everybody should go out and get it. And that is
what I did think as I was reading it. This
would be great for my girls because they're right at
that moment where and we talked about this at church
over the weekend. Somebody was talking about I'm sending my
daughter off to school, and I said, the problem is
I don't want to send her off to school and
then lose her to this society of.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Not being able to engage anymore.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
But this is my It's not that I will lose
her to a different ideal or a different value set.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
It's that I'll lose her to discussion.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
And that's the beauty of this book is that don't
don't step away from the discussion. That's the lesson here,
and I want her to have that lesson. I want
my other girls to have that lesson. So I just
want you to know that I appreciate that you are
putting this out there for all of us to see,
and thank you so much for coming on today.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
It is Cornell West and Robert P. George. Thank you
so much for being with me.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Thank you, Tutor, thank you, God bless you and your
bridgious family.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Thank you so much, and thank you all for joining
us on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. For this episode and others,
go to Tutor dixonpodcast dot com, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts and join us us
next time, have a blessed day,
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I am so excited about today because we're going to
be talking about a book that was written between Cornell
West and Robert P.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
George. This is right now.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
This is at a time when sixty five percent of
Americans say political divisions pose a major threat to democracy.
And I think that they think because of that, we
really can't have conversations. But here you have two of
America's most influential thought leaders who one is a progressive champion,
Cornell West. The other is a prominent conservative, and that's
(00:34):
Robert P. George. And they write this book together called
Truth Matters, A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in the aid
in an Age of Division. And I'm reading through this
at the beginning and I'm thinking, man, they're talking about
how they met and how they decided to do a
class together and how this friendship kind of bloomed, and
I thought I'd love to have been in that first conversation.
(00:56):
And then I realized that this book is actually their conversation.
And I'm so pleased today we have Cornell West and
Robert P. George with us. Thank you so much for
joining me on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Well, thank you, tutor. It's such pleasure to be back
with you, and always such a joy to be with
my dear brother Cornell.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
No, indeed, indeed, indeed thank you for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
So I was reading through and I see that this
all started with the university really saying, hey, we want it. Actually,
I think it was students who were doing a new
student magazine to say we want one professor to interview another,
and that was how this friendship blossomed.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Is that right, that's correct. We knew each other and
we've been in some faculty seminars for about a decade
really before a student showed up at my door one
day saying that he and his friends were starting a
new magazine and they wanted to have a feature of
the magazine beginning with the inaugural issue, an interview with
one faculty member by another. And they reported to me,
(01:54):
I was very flattered by this, that they'd asked Cornell
West to be the interviewer, and he had asked to
have me as his interview subject. So we went from
a friendly acquaintance relationship to a genuine friendship, beginning really
with that interview and then going on to teach classes together.
Several years before Cornell abandoned me and went to Harvard.
(02:16):
I still can't figure out why he did that. That
off he went to Harvard. He came back one time
when he had a sabbatical leave, and we taught our
course again. But then since we weren't teaching regularly together,
we started taking our show on the road and having
public discussions at universities and at other institutions all over
the country and indeed the world. We've been in Rome
(02:37):
together and in other places, and it's just been such
a blessing.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well, but the friendship has definitely stayed intact, and more
than intact, I would say as I read through this book,
and here I'm reading through your conversation, because for people
who are interested in the book, it really is a
dialogue between the two of you, and I think for
those of us who are looking in on a university
(03:02):
like yours. And I'm listening why I'm reading, and I
feel like I'm listening because I'm reading through the book
and I'm hearing you talk about these great philosophers, and
I'm thinking this is way above my head. But I'm
just so pleased to be able to be able to
join this even if I'm just reading it, and I
think that's the beauty of this book. But we think
of you as major opposites. However, when I read this book,
(03:25):
I don't see you as opposites. And maybe, Robert, we
talked about the fact that you have a foundation in
faith and that is probably the foundation of how you
see the world. So potentially your ideas bloom from that.
But you do have very different views on the world.
So how does this keep continuing to work?
Speaker 5 (03:45):
But one is that we're able to revel on each
other's humanity because we take time and get a sense
of who we are, so that we spent this time
out twenty years so deeper in front. Really, brothers are
families are so intertwine robbing.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Somebody says what he means, it means what he says.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
And therefore, when we get the political and di alloted
for disagreements, we've already grounded our connection human to human,
I to thou, and of course, as Christians, it does
make a difference each of us made in the image
of a loving and an almighty God, and therefore open
(04:23):
to whatever kinds of disagreements we have, we wrestle with
each other. We engage each other, but in the end
we recognize that we're human beings and.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
You've learned from each other.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
And I think that's something that that was the biggest
thing I took away from this book. I mean, at
one point you talk about you have a whole chapter
dedicated to truth seekers, and really it's about truth in general,
and you talk about how one another are truth seekers,
which I find very fascinating because I think we've become
a society that wants to block well, yeah, I think
(04:58):
you even talk about this being the age of feeling,
and feeling is different than seeking truth because oftentimes our
feelings make us.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Not want to seek any further.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
We don't have the courage to go find truth because
our feelings.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
We hide behind our feelings. So how do you go into.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Universities today and teach this next generation to not hide
behind your feelings but to genuinely seek truth.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Well. The best way to teach young people, and every
parent knows this, of course, certainly every teacher knows it
is by example. You model the behavior that you would
like to see your students or your children emulate. And
what Cornella and I try to model is respectful truth
seeking dialogue. Now, there are some conditions for that happening.
(05:48):
First of all, the interlocutors, the partners who are in
the discussion, have to be willing to trust each other.
They have to be willing to trust each other to
be genuine truth sye. So that my goal is not
to defeat or humiliate Cornell. I know that his goal
is not to defeat or humiliate me. We have differences
(06:08):
about political things, but we're on the same wavelength when
it comes to the goal of the conversation. What is
that truth? To get at the truth of things? Now,
I'll tell you something about these two guys. Cornell and
I are getting up there in years. You're still a
young tutor, but at a certain point you become very
highly cognizant of the fact that we frail, fall infallible
(06:31):
human break beings can be wrong about stuff, and all
of us are wrong about some things. Every single human
being on the face of the earth right now has
some false beliefs in his or her head. Now, the
only way we're going to move from some of those
false beliefs out and replace them with true beliefs. We're
never going to get it perfectly, but the only way
we're going to make any progress is to allow ourselves
(06:53):
to be challenged, allow our views to be criticized, and
not take it as a personal assault or a personal
attack or an attack on my feelings if somebody disagrees
with me, Rather listen and a truth a truth seeking spirit,
and try to learn. Yes, respond, defend your views, see
how well they can hold up under rigorous intellectual scrutiny.
(07:13):
But don't try to shut the other guy down. Have
the basic intellectual humility to recognize that you really are fallible,
and you can be wrong about them some things. And
we also have to be aware that we can be wrong,
not simply about the minors, trivial, superficial things and life.
We can be wrong about big, important things. If we
(07:35):
look at human history, some of the greatest figures in
all of history, that people we greatly admire, have nevertheless
been wrong and wrong on some very important things. Now,
do we think we're better than them? Do we think
we're made out of something other than the same flesh
and blood that they're made out of. Do we think
we're immune from mistakes? Come on, we're not. And once
(07:56):
you take that on board, Tutor, as Cornell and I do.
You're going to be open to criticism and challenge, and
you're not going to treat that as a personal assault.
When Cornell criticizes my views, that's not an attack on me.
He's trying to get at the truth of things. I'm
trying to get through things if I criticize something he believes,
and we understand that. So we can have a beautiful friendship,
(08:17):
we have a beautiful relation, we can have a brotherhood,
and it's all rooted in that common desire more fundamental
than anything that we disagree about, and that is the
desire to get at the truth.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Well in the book, So Cornell, in the book, I
noticed that you said in Looking for Truth, you don't
have to have one authority that pushes out all others,
which is essentially it seems like what you're saying right now.
And I think that that's kind of how society has
changed in the past twenty years. We were talking about
how you've really had this strong friendship for twenty years now,
(08:51):
But in the past twenty years, I mean from the
time I.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Was in school to today.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
I see the way my kids see things through totally
different lens than how we were taught, and it is
kind of like, well if this is if this is
one answer, then there can be no other answers. But
especially in politics, and that's something that I learned. I
think the hard way is that there is no sitting
down and discussing with one another when you are running
(09:19):
a race. I think that that then because politics, when
it comes to running the campaign part of politics becomes
so nasty, and there are ads that say there is
only one truth and this is this is nothing else
can be. You know, it's got to be black and white.
There's no gray area. It's got to be this or that.
It creates this division in society and those those parts,
(09:44):
those campaigns have become such a part of our life
that I think that once people get into government, those barriers,
those walls, that black and white decision is still up
and that's preventing society from moving forward in a good
way because these discussions don't happen between one party and
the other once you're elected, or they're not happening enough.
(10:05):
What did you find that same thing when you were
running for office? Cornell?
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Very much so, very much so.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
And I think, my dear sister, that that's part of
the spiritual decay and moral decatence. That is to say
that anytime people think that they have all the truth
on their side and the other side has nothing but
lives and evil, then you're pitting You're pitting people against
(10:36):
each other. And usually in the background it's just organized
greed and weaponized hatred. I mean, the history of the
species is organized greed and weaponized hatred and institutionalizing difference
towards the vulnerable. But Robbie and I we say no,
we come out of the socratic legacy of Athens. What
does that mean? Must dream the courage to think critically. Now,
(10:57):
an examined life is not worth living. We come out
of the prophetic legacy of Jerusalem, which is the courage
to love unapologetically, and it shatters all tribalism, all chauvinism,
even nationalism. We can love folk in Asia, in Europe
and Africa, in Detroit and Legos and wherever because they're
(11:19):
human beings. And it made the image of a great
and loving God, so that in that sense we're already
against the great And you're absolutely right. In America these
days we have to have more examples of people who
have the courage to think critically and the courage to love.
Speaker 6 (11:35):
This is what Martin Luther, King Junior, Fanny louhim On
Dorothy Day, and Rabbi Heschel and others have tried to
teach us, and it's something that has to be exemplified.
Socrates exemplified critique by willing to die Jesus, my God.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Don't get us started on Jesus on the cross, with.
Speaker 6 (11:52):
That blood at the bottom of that coross that could
change your life and turn you upside.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Down into a new creature.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
That's what brought me and I are talking about stick
around for more with Cornell West and Robert P.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
George.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
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Speaker 1 (13:15):
Now stick around. We've got more after this.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
You talk about narcissism actually in the book as well,
and the fact that there has become this narcissism can
take over society and people, and so when you talk
about love, sometimes love is hard to give if you
can't get away from yourself in that and I think
we've we've created kind of this, I guess, manufactured narcissism
(13:46):
amongst groups.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
That maybe they don't even realize it's happened.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Over the weekend, I was actually in Hamtranmick, Michigan with
some of our Arab American communities and folks from our
air American community, and they said to me, you know,
after nine to eleven, we just didn't talk to Republicans,
and Republicans didn't talk to us. And that was a
moment where I thought, Man, how upsetting is this that
(14:14):
we couldn't find a way over twenty years to come
back together and sit down and talk. But that black
and white. You're on one side, we're on the other side.
It prevented conversation, and that becomes narcissism.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I mean what I heard you saying.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Of like, I have to look at this side and
say I can't reach out, I can't open up because
that side I believe is inherently wrong. How do you
know if you haven't sat down together.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah, that's exactly right. One of the things about we
human beings, it's just human nature. It's the human condition.
We tend to wrap our emotions more or less tightly
around our convictions, around our beliefs. Now that in itself,
tutor is not a bad thing. We need some emotional
(15:06):
investment in what if we're to get up and get
anything done and not just working for great causes, even
the ordinary day to day things. Getting the children up
and fed and dressed and off to school. It's one
thing to have the bare belief it would be a
good thing to get the children up and dressed and
off to school. It's another thing to have the emotional
investment to actually get the job done and aforesioria. That's
(15:29):
the same with working for a cause that could require courage,
speaking up when the cause is unpopular, actually exerting yourself,
and so forth. So I'm not against having an emotional
investment in our convictions. But but if we find ourselves
wrapping our emotions too tightly around our convictions, so we're
(15:49):
not open to being challenged, open to being criticized, open
to the possibility that we're wrong, having some intellectual humility,
we will quickly find ourselves degenerating into dogmatists and idiologs,
and the next step from there is tribalism. Will only
associate with people who think like us, will end up
(16:09):
in the silo, one side only watching Fox News, only
reading the editorial page of the New York Times, the
other side only watching MSNBC or CNN, only reading the
editorial page of the New York Times, And pretty soon
we're thinking of our fellow citizens who happen to disagree
with us, not as fellow citizens and civic friends who
(16:33):
happen to disagree, but rather as enemies people to be
defeated and indeed destroyed. And that's the real danger of
this moment of polarization. And that's why we've got to
be talking to each other and the grown ups. The
grown ups, whether your parents or your teachers, or your pastors,
or your coaches or ordinary people, have to be modeling
(16:56):
for the younger generation that willingness to engage in open
truth seeking.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
How do you show that on the national level, though,
I mean, Cornell, you ran.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
For office, you saw how ugly it can be.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
And actually, before we got on, Robert and I were
talking about how for me, it started out with my
own side being so hard to sit down with because
everybody has there, they're all in their corner, and they've
decided that they're going to label you as this or
that because they're trying to keep you from getting to
a place they don't think you deserve to be. And
(17:31):
you battle your own side, and then you get to
the next side, and you're battling that side, and ultimately
you come out bloody and damage, and you haven't had
the effect that you expected to have because you never
got to the point where you could sit down and
have those conversations. So how do when you look at
that being how our leadership structure is built, how do
(17:51):
we get back to where the founding fathers were, Where
it was a great discussion. Everything was deeply thought out.
I mean it was just who can I throw this
bill out to and get some a big press release
on it. It was genuinely what's best for community and society.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Yeah, that's that's a powerful question.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
But we have to keep in mind that even when
we go back, going back to the seventeen seventies and eighties,
you still have Micavelian politics taking places.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
If we don't want to be romantic about the past,
that's a.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
Name calling and finger pointing and undermining going on in politics,
because that is the nature of a spear that puts
power at the center power political power, economic power.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I believe in spiritual power.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
I believe in a moral power, and therefore we hold
on to the moral and spiritual power in those fears,
which means it's crucifim you know you're gonna get crucified,
you're gonna get trashed, you're gonna rebuke, you're gonna get scorn,
But you got something bigger than what's coming at you,
and that's what's important. And you're falling back on the
(19:01):
joy that the world didn't give it. In the world
can't take away you, falling back on the love that
the world didn't give you. In the world can't take away. Now,
if you don't have that, you completelyss to come to
the chicanery of Machavelian politics. But if you do have
that spiritual and moral power, it can never be crushed.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Are there people from the past though, that you do
think that there are benefits from that you can learn from,
because I think you put that in the book as well,
that there are you have to go through and learn
from the past, and there are good parts of people,
and then there's obviously things that you have to teach.
But today I think oftentimes we're like, oh, we're going
to throw the baby out with the bathwater because there's
(19:41):
something that we don't like. They don't fit the mold
of present time, so we can't learn about them, but
we have to learn about them correct well.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Absolutely, and there are models. I mean, nobody's perfect obviously,
and we shouldn't glamorize the past or figures from the past,
but we should recognize that there are genuine heroes and
people we can learn from and people we can emulate.
Let me talk about a couple one George Washington. Now,
(20:10):
when Cornell was just talking about Machiavellian politics going all
the way back to the founding, I immediately thought, Cornell,
you'll recognize this of the election of eighteen hundred. It was.
It was, if anything, worse than what we have today.
I think the only polarization more extreme than what we
have today is that at the time of the Civil War.
(20:31):
But if you'd ask in American history, what's the second
most polarized point, I wouldn't say twenty twenty five. As
bad as the situation is today, it's very bad and
worth worrying about. It was eighteen hundred we almost lost
the country. The Federalists were in power John Adams, the
Democratic Republicans under Jefferson, also known as the Jeffersonians, they
were challenging the Federalists for power. When the Jeffersonians won,
(20:54):
Thomas Jefferson elected president. It was an open question Tutor
whether the Federalists would allow peaceful transfer of power for
the first time in a democracy, actually very new way.
They called it republican government. They preferred that word to
the word democracy, which had some negative connotations to them.
That the first time power really peacefully transferring in virtue
of a genuine election, and the bitterness of the campaign,
(21:17):
the dreadful things they said a bit about each other,
the slander and label going forth in both directions, and
beyond even what we are seeing today. But Washington stood
above that kind of thing. He somehow managed to win
the respect of people across the spectrum, and for as
long as we had him, he was able to hold
(21:40):
the country together, hold the warring factions together. Now famously
he warned against political parties because he knew that that
polarization would come. But I think the truth of the
matter is that political parties and polarization are inevitable. So
even the Great Washington couldn't stand up against it. But nevertheless,
he was the model, and he was the indispensable man.
Had he not been there at that time, this whole
(22:03):
thing would not have worked. We never would have gotten
the American founding. Second figure like Frederick Douglas, Frederick Flood,
born into slavery, became one of the great thinkers, in
one of the great orators, and a person who had
to wrestle with the question, what should my posture as
a black man, as a slave be toward this experiment,
this democratic so called democratic experiment. Is it really a democracy?
(22:26):
Douglas is asking himself a republic to use that again,
the language preferred by the founding generation, given that we've
got this horrible practice of slavery. And there was a
time in Douglas's life when he thought that the Constitution
was what William Lloyd Garrison said, it was a pact
with Hell and a covenant with death, the work and
(22:47):
the devil. And yet he came around to seeing that
our constitutional system, although it's conceived without our abolition of
slavery at the beginning, is the road for it will
pave the way to the full blessings of liberty for all,
(23:07):
not two classes based on race or anything like that,
Liberty for all. And then other people who I'm thinking,
people who stand above the ideological divide that we see today.
I'm thinking of Fanny lou Hamer. Cornell mentioned her early.
It's a great figure, towering figure in the civil rights moment.
Now Fanny lou Haber was at the same time. She
(23:29):
would be considered a progressive today because of her views
on civil rights, and she would be considered a conservative
today because of her profound pro life witness. She doesn't
fit into a category where we think, well, we got
to think this way because this is what our tribe
believes about this issue. In that issue, you got a
woman like Fanny Louhimer who thinks for herself and she
(23:50):
doesn't come down based on where her partisan ideological camp
is supposed to place her. She thinks through these issues
and she comes down where she comes down based on
her own best judgment. So I think these are models
that are young people should know about.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Cornell, Do you have anything you want to add to that.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
I would say that one of the signs of the
declining empire is when the precious younger generation don't have
access to the best of their own history, the best
of their own heritage. If what is available to them,
it's simply truncated options that do not put a premium
(24:26):
on integrity, honesty, decency, courage, and love. You can rest
assured that the society is sliding down the slope to
chaos when you have a collapse of civic courage. And
this is what you get in politics, right, a collapse
of civic courage. Well, what takes the place of it? Well,
we human beings, and human beings anytime as a vacuum
(24:47):
you're going to, it's going to be feeled by something
that is less than mediocre. The benchmark of spiritual maturity
is always humility and unstopped will joy, and tied to
that is tenacity, moral spiritual witness regardless in the world,
(25:09):
but not of the world, and nothing can stop you.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
But it's interesting because I look at young people today
and I think they're so connected to their phones and
their iPads and everything else, and they get their information there.
And here I listen to you talking about all of
these great philosophers and writers of the past that have.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Shaped how we think today.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
And I said something to my girls about, well, don't
you have to go to a library to research that?
Speaker 1 (25:38):
And they're like, a library, mom, We're just going to
look it up on the internet.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
And I'm like, but you have no idea if what
you're looking up on the internet is actually true. How
do you know what you're researching for your research paper.
So how do we get people back into that mindset
or how do we I guess we're always today looking
at ways to re create the way we grew up,
and I hear parents all the time saying we've got
(26:03):
to take cell phones away. They can't have cell phones
until they get into their senior year of high school.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
And I think, but that's not.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Realistic either, because society has just changed, and this is
how society is now. So how do we look at
what we have today and still make sure that we're
getting the education that we should without saying we can
stop technology and we can stop what's actually happening in
life today, Because you can't.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I think we have to imbue our children all really
beginning quite early, you know, as soon as they can
be aware that there are differences of opinion and so forth.
We have to imbue our children with the truth seeking spirit,
in other words, with an understanding that we can be
wrong about things, and we therefore have to listen to
(26:51):
the best arguments on the competing sides before we make
up our minds about things. Young people today are brought
up to suppose here's our trotbe and here's our tribe's
position on something, and so this is the position that
we will go to the mat defending and the other
side of the bad guys, and we're going to defeat them.
I preached the message to my students that while you
(27:14):
have the right to your views, there's a certain sense
in which you have to earn that right. What do
I mean by that? You have to think your way
to your views. If you just pick up your views
because they are tribal, then you haven't earned your right
to those views. I'm not sure why I should exercise
great deal of respect for that. You just pick them up,
they haven't thought your way through to them. If you've
(27:37):
thought your way to your views, and your views happen
to be diametrically opposed to mine, nevertheless, you are entitled
to those views because you have earned them, you've thought
your way to them. It's not a question of whether
you agree or disagree with me. That's not what wins
my respect is whether you've thought about it. And that
really does mean considering the best that's been said on
(27:58):
the competing sides. Really, we have to warn our children
against we don't have to use the fancy term, but
warn our children against confirmation bias. That is, using resources
like internet resources, google searches, and so forth, simply to
find evidence to confirm what they already think. They need
to use the resources available, whether they're in an old
fashioned library or on the World Wide Web, used the
(28:22):
resources to engage the best evidence, the best arguments, the
best that has been thought and said on the competing sides,
so that they can reason their way to judgments that
are truly thereon That is, they're learning to think more deeply,
more critically, which always includes self critically and for themselves.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon podcast.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
It's interesting we had a similar conversation to this in
our house last night because one of the members of
my household came to me, oh, Trump is doing this
and it's going to have this effect. And I said,
I haven't even heard about can't remember what it was,
but I said, I haven't even.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Heard about what you're talking about. Show me what you're seeing.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
And they pulled up one website and said, look, this
website says that doing this is going to have this effect.
And I said, okay, well, are there any other people
who have talked about this?
Speaker 1 (29:16):
At all. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I just read it here, and I said, but this
is where I think we need to look and see
is there another thought? Is there someone else that thinks
something different about how this policy will affect the country,
Because I'm not saying there, And this was the exact
kind of conversation he said, I'm not saying they're wrong.
I just want to see how other people have thought
about it. And I feel like you should want to
(29:38):
see how other people have thought about it too.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
No, you're absolutely right about that.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
You know you don't want to accept just one version
of what has been said, and you need a variety
of different versions.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Shakespeare says, ripeness is all And what does it mean
by that? King? Here?
Speaker 5 (29:54):
He means a wise judgment and a loving soul is
a result of a process of maturation, of growing up.
If you're twenty five years old, you still reading Doctor
Seus's Time to break through.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
Time to make a breakthrough.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
But once you have that, you can go to the
internet and find a whole host of fascinating things competing views.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
So critique Jesus.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
Martin, Luther King, Junior, Tony Morrison, Herbert Melville. There's a
lot of good stuff on the Internet, but you have
to approach the Internet as a wise and loving soul.
If you're bringing a narcissistic self to the Internet, you're
gonna end up with narcissistic information. It's that shaping of
the soul that Plato talks about with such wisdom in
(30:42):
the Republic. That's at the core of what it is
to be a person of character, let alone a person
of civic courage in the democracy and trouble.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
That's so true, and I think it's important, Tutor, that
we learned from our mistakes. I'll give you an example
from my own life. I'm embarrassed to say, but it's
true where I made a terrible mistake. A few years ago.
I saw on the internet that video that was viral
about the boys from Covenant School in Kentucky who appeared
(31:16):
to be harassing an American Indian man on the I
believe it was on the steps of the Supreme Court
or something like that. Well, I saw that, and to
my eyes, it looked like they were disrespecting that man,
they were being abusive toward him, and so I fired off.
I didn't think I didn't check. I fired off a
(31:36):
tweet it went on my social media accounts and said
something condemnatory about those Covenant kids, and of course, within
a day or two, we got the whole tape and
we could see that those young men, as it turned out,
were completely innocent, that they had not harassed or in
(31:57):
any way abused that man. And so what I had
to do? Who was with my tail between my legs?
Post again, saying I've now seen the full tape. I
made a mistake. I jumped the gun. I condemned those kids.
I actually wrote a letter down to the school apologizing
(32:18):
to the students, asking the principal to share this because
I'd been one of the people who on the internet
had condemned those young men. But I learned a lesson
from that, you know, check, don't just take a first impression.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
No, I mean, and that's the point of making sure
that you are leading by example. It's interesting because my
nephew was a classmate of that boy, and we happened
that day to be at my husband's grandmother's funeral, and
that story just started spreading.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
You could see through.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
The cell phones because we were in northern Kentucky and
everybody was a student at that school, and my nephew
looked at his phone and I said, oh my god,
do you.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Know this kid? And he was like, this is shockingly yes,
and this is not who he is. Because at that
point we were like, you know, we thought, well did it.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
But everybody's instant reaction in the room was this kid,
this is not.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Who he is.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
But we're so quick now to immediately make a conclusion,
and then it is I think so often the influencers
or the people who have authority on the internet are
quick to go out there and immediately say this is
what this is I and I want you to be
mad about it, because you know what, when it's something happy,
(33:37):
when it's something joyful, when you're spreading the word that's today,
that doesn't travel as fast on the internet as when
you're angry about something as.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Sad as that is. But that's the beauty of this book.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
And so I mean, honestly, when I read this book,
I'm like, yes, truth matters. It is so important for
us to be constantly seeking truth. And that's what I
want my girls to understand.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
My girls.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I have twins that are eleven, and then I have
a thirteen year old and a fifteen year old and
they are right at those ages where they are drawn
to the video, to this, to that.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
But I read through this book and I was like, wow.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
This is it's beyond a lot of their understanding right now,
but not really as because it's a conversation, and that's
when you are seeking to engage in any type of
dialogue in society. I would urge people to get the book.
It's Truth Matters, a dialogue on fruitful disagreement in an
age of division, and you are really it really is
(34:40):
a conversation back and forth. But it's not just that
we are learning how you two communicate. You wrote this
in a way that we are learning how to communicate
with people we may not always agree with, but we
should love.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Well. Yes, that was our goal, and I hope we
are corent at least made some progress toward a It's
just such a pleasure and blessing to work with brother
Cornell on something like this because it's just an illuminating
dialogue I learned from the process. On the question of
young people reading it, please do make it available to
teenagers who are in your home. Our editor, Adam Bellow,
(35:18):
did a very good service. He required us to when
we introduced a fancy concept or a literary or philosophical
figure from history. He made us explain what we were
talking about, who this person was, what this concept means.
So I hope that made it more readable. I think
it is readable.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
It is very readable.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yes, sixteen year old kids. And this really should be
our target audience, the kids who need to learn the
lesson that truth matters, and we have to love truth
and seek truth even above opinion, where we have to
be willing to have the courage to face the truth,
even where it contradicts an opinion that we have come
to hold and cherish. This is a lesson they need
(36:01):
to learn above all. So if you ask me, what's
the main audience, Honestly, I don't know what Partnell would say.
I would say younger people. I'd love this book to
be in the hands of younger people. I don't think
that the older folks like us are beyond hope. I'm
not saying that, but I really think that we can
reach younger people here with this message.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
No, that's so true. That's true.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
We're calling for a spiritual awakening and a moral renaissance.
It has to do with Mitchie manity of each and
every one of us. And of course it's zeros in
on the least of these coming out of twenty fifth
chapter of Matthew, but it embraces humanity of ever re
one and we intend to go down swing in no
(36:45):
matter how unpopular it is.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well, I love it. I think it's fantastic. I think
everybody should go out and get it. And that is
what I did think as I was reading it. This
would be great for my girls because they're right at
that moment where and we talked about this at church
over the weekend. Somebody was talking about I'm sending my
daughter off to school, and I said, the problem is
I don't want to send her off to school and
then lose her to this society of.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Not being able to engage anymore.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
But this is my It's not that I will lose
her to a different ideal or a different value set.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
It's that I'll lose her to discussion.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
And that's the beauty of this book is that don't
don't step away from the discussion. That's the lesson here,
and I want her to have that lesson. I want
my other girls to have that lesson. So I just
want you to know that I appreciate that you are
putting this out there for all of us to see,
and thank you so much for coming on today.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
It is Cornell West and Robert P. George. Thank you
so much for being with me.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Thank you, Tutor, thank you, God bless you and your
bridgious family.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Thank you so much, and thank you all for joining
us on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. For this episode and others,
go to Tutor dixonpodcast dot com, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts and join us us
next time, have a blessed day,
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