MO: I think we need some public witness from you right now saying, I like what Donald Trump’s doing on X, and I think it’s utterly loathsome how he talks about women, his body, et cetera. Can you co-sign that? We cosign that. He speaks in utterly loads some ways. Co-sign he speaks in utterly loaths some ways about his own anatomy, about women, being on his third marriage is regrettable. He should not have cheated on prior spouses.

JC: You can list the basket of deplorables, the parade of horribles.

MO: And you agree that they’re deplorable?

JC: What I have said, again, because I’ve engaged in a political project here, Mark, is substantively, this has been the best president of my lifetime about the things I care about. That’s what I’m most concerned about. And stylistically, there are things that Donald Trump says, that I would not say it in that way, that I don’t like saying it in that way, that is not how I would choose to represent myself. But to me, those are much less important things.

MO: I’m Mark Oppenheimer, and this is Arc: The Podcast. It is the audio companion to the web magazine, Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera. And both the podcast and the magazine are productions of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. This week on the podcast, I interview Jeremy Carl. Now, Jeremy Carl had a moment of microfame about a month ago when he was grilled by a Senate subcommittee over his nomination to be Assistant Secretary of State for international organizations. This was a really, really controversial nomination. So controversial, in fact, that even a Republican senator or two turned against the nomination, said that they would not vote to confirm. And ultimately, Carl withdrew his nomination. So it’s the very, very rare Republican nominee who can’t get through the confirmation process at this point because the Republicans have control of the Senate. And normally they greenlight anybody whom the Trump administration puts forward.

But Jeremy Carl was so controversial for what were said to be his white nationalist views that he didn’t actually make it through. And if you go back and look on YouTube or various other video channels, you can find the grilling that he got. You can find clips of him being interviewed by Senator Chris Murphy, by Senator Corey Booker. And you can see the outrage that they felt at some of the comments that Carl had made in the past. A lot of them were in tweets that had since been deleted, tweets in opposition to the Juneteenth federal holiday, comments he made about the Black Lives Matter protests, and so forth. Jeremy Carl is somebody I’ve known for a very long time. I actually went to college with him. He was a year ahead of me at Yale, where he was in the class of 1995.

We were both involved in the super geeky, super wonky political union. That’s involvement that I now regret just because I think I could have found better stuff to do with those hours. But Jeremy rose up to be, I can’t remember if he was president of the union or speaker of the union. I think we get to this in the interview. And I knew him as what you might call a radical centrist. He was the most normy of normal guys. He was a member of the political union’s independent party and their brand was we’re not on the right, we’re not on the left. We just really like discussion and argument and we keep it really, really civil. We’re a big tent. That was very much who Jeremy Carl was. I liked him a lot. I also connected with him over the fact that we both were Jews at this institution that historically, of course, was quite Protestant and quite waspy.

I mean, there were a lot of Jews there, but we had more in common than that. We both came from Jewish families that had been assimilated in the United States for a very long time, came over before the Civil War. I don’t remember how we figured that out about each other. And we both had some Southern Jewish roots as well. His family had been in the South, certain parts of it for generations. My grandmother was from Lake Charles, Louisiana. And as it happened, my grandmother and his grandmother, we discovered, ended up living in the same retirement community in North Carolina, which is where Jeremy was from. He was from, I think, Raleigh or Durham, one of those towns. I, of course, wasn’t from there. I grew up in New England, but my grandma was down south and somehow discovered that she was friendly with or played cards with or something, Jeremy, Carl’s grandma, and they both had grandsons at Yale and so forth and so on. So we had stuff that we connected over. We both liked preppy clothing. We get to this a little bit in the interview. So I saw him as a little bit of a kindred spirit in ways that were both superficial, but in some ways also went kind of deep because they reflected a certain temperament, a certain outlook on the world.

So I was very surprised when maybe fifteen years later, after having fallen out of touch with Jeremy, he emerged on Twitter and in op-eds that he wrote as somebody identified with the far right. And we then got back in touch a little bit. We exchanged some very long emails that discussed issues of ethnicity and race and so forth. And I began to understand his views, which were not remotely my own. And then I think we saw each other one time when he came back to Connecticut to give a talk on energy policy, which became his professional bailiwick.

He worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and then moved to the farther right Claremont Institute in Southern California. And his primary field was energy policy, which is something that he had studied both in his travels and in his readings, but also in getting a master’s degree at the Kennedy School at Harvard after college. And he wasn’t particularly far right on energy policy as it happened, but on matters of race and ethnicity and immigration, he had moved into what we see as the right wing anti-immigrant space well before Donald Trump was on anyone’s radar. More recently, he has written explicitly about those issues in a book that came out two years ago called The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism is Tearing America Apart. I read the book, and I actually think if you go read the book, it certainly is a conservative case for restricted immigration, but it is not the farthest right tract that you will find on immigration.

He does not take views that there’s something inherently supreme or supremacist about whiteness, which is not even a term he really uses very much. It’s basically a sort of what’s now become a standard Republican or conservative view that immigration should be restricted, at least for the time being, to promote higher levels of assimilation and then reopened to more people, but again, with more controls on it and a stronger emphasis on building an American civic culture. Unquestionably, Jeremy Carl has said things in the past, again, especially on Twitter, often in tweets that have since been archived or deleted, that is pretty combative and pretty offensive, and I take him to task for that.

But I wanted to have him on the show for a couple reasons. Number one, he’s clearly in the public dialogue now. In fact, before I got him on the podcast, New York Times podcaster and columnist Ross Douthat swooped in and got the scoop, got him on his podcast first. So he’s very much in the mainstream of media right now. He’s also influential. He did serve in the first Trump administration in the Department of Interior and surely could serve in the future. He almost made it into the Department of State for this administration.

But also Jeremy converted to the Presbyterian Church in America a few years back, having been raised a semi-secular Jew, I think maybe with some religious education, but not much. He ended up marrying a Christian woman, but really, I think on his own, took a journey into Calvinist Protestantism. And I’m going to maybe write something about this on my Substack pretty soon, but it was interesting for me because again, Jeremy and I were both raised without a lot of Jewish religion, but I think with a fairly strong Jewish identity, and whereas I became more curious about Jewishness and Judaism over time, Jeremy really felt this pull toward being a Protestant and considered it, debated it, studied it, talked with pastors, and finally ended up in a conservative Protestant denomination, which is a really interesting choice. And that was honestly why I wanted him on the show. We get to it fairly late in the interview, but I hope that the road is worth traveling with us. So here is my interview with Claremont Institute senior fellow Jeremy Carl.

My narrative, which I’m sure is incorrect, is you graduate from college, you had a rough couple years, you went through some stuff, maybe you started grad school at Harvard, or maybe that was after you got back. And then what I’ve told people, and I’ll just be perfectly candid, and this is probably brutally untrue, but it’s like a nice story, is I think he went on walkabout around the world. I think he traveled the world for two years with a satchel of books and came back with new politics.

JC: That is actually not at all unfair. And it’s interesting because I never have these conversations with people who, at least in a public forum, with people who’ve known me back since I was 18. But yes, definitely it was travel that I would say really began to push me to the right because I spent a lot of time in the developing world. I spent a lot of time in some pretty unpleasant places. I mean, they’re actually pleasant for me. I really enjoyed them. I learned a lot by doing them, but kind of in the public parlance, many of them would maybe be seen as not entirely pleasant places. And I think it sort of radicalized me toward a sense that there were some fairly unique things about America, and my wife will yell at me for having modified a unique-

MO: Because unique means one of a kind, so you can’t say very unique. I got you. My grandmother’s looking over our shoulders, but we’ll forgive and forget.

JC: Right. But there’s some unique and wonderful things about America and that in fact, the world can be a very nasty, brutish and short in terms of how it deals with people in a very harsh place. And it gave me a sort of more appreciation of what we had and a sort of sense after I got back that maybe we were losing a lot of that. And that was something that I looked at with a great deal of dismay. And that was maybe the start of an evolution that continues, right?

MO: So I think that casts us forward a bit to an issue that’s mattered a lot too, which is immigration and group differences, assimilation, and we’re going to get to that. But I want to take a detour for a little bit here just because what you said made me think of this, which is, okay, you can have all of those, go through all those changes. And I think travel does change people in that way. And I should say, if I’m not quite an American exceptionalist, I think I’m second to very few people in my sort of affective patriotism. I think we are alike in that way. And yet, because I’m a sort of policy person, I’m not a policy wonk, but what I look for in politicians is not their geist or their spirit, but what bills do you want to pass? How does that travel and all that change necessarily make one feel differently about single payer healthcare or labor unions or whatever?

I understand how it sort of casts a shadow onto how you’ll feel about immigration. That makes sense, but my sense is you’ve moved right in everything. When I read your book, and this is true of everyone I know, I keep waiting for the person who’s like, “Yeah, I’m super right when all these things, but I look at the climate science and I’m a lefty on that.” It never happens. People move right or left on everything. And I want you to explain that.

JC: Well, it’s actually fascinating you would mention that because I was literally about to say that of course, before I started becoming a controversialist, for lack of a better term, I worked, and the vast majority of my work at Stanford as a graduate student and then at the Hoover Institution as a fellow was on environment and energy. And I actually was kind of resolutely centrist. And I actually remain resolutely centrist on a lot of those issues. I mean, I’d certainly say center right, but it was interesting because my Senate confirmation hearing, which I expect will kind of get to perhaps at some point, although we don’t have to, there were so many actual substantive things that they could have asked me about differences that I had based on my writings with perhaps administration policy in some key areas that would have impacted my work, but they were so wrapped around the axle about these things that were frankly fairly orthogonal to most of the work that I would have been doing in this role that we never got to that.

It never even came up in private meetings I had with Democratic staff where they were yelling at me about 15 other things.

MO: I saw the sort of super cut of your hearing. How long was the hearing?

JC: It was almost two hours and it basically, 90% of it was me being the designated victim. I mean, there were three other people who were there technically, but I was subject of the vast-

MO: I have to say, I don’t feel like our senators, Booker, was Murphy one? My Senator Chris Murphy was one of them, right?

JC: Yes.

MO: I don’t feel they acquitted themselves well. I think they were looking for hits on the news. I mean, they didn’t ask you about the stuff you would be doing at state.

JC: No, no, of course. No, I got one or two questions about that and the rest. And I mean, Murphy, look, I’m not going to give him too much of a pass because the main little viral hit that he had on me was that I talked a lot about white culture and why didn’t I have a great answer, but of course, as I’ve said many times afterwards, but should have contradicted him at the hearing and didn’t because we were told not to contradict the senators. This is something I’ve mentioned once or twice. I mean, it’s not a term I prefer. It’s not really a term I use. It actually led to a kind of interesting discussion online, but it’s not a way that I really talk about these issues.

But that’s all a long way of saying, to get back to your initial question, I haven’t moved far far to the right on everything by any stretch, but on the other hand, let me back up. I’m a very serious … I’m a practitioner of politics. I am not a political philosopher. I’m not a theoretician. It’s not that I’m not interested in those things, but that means that I’m very acutely aware that I am on a team. And sometimes that means that I’m going to support the team in X, whether or not it’s like my personal preference because that’s the sort of activity that I’m engaged in. Now, when I’m sitting here talking to you, I’m maybe going to be a little bit more free with all of my views, but I haven’t removed far to the right on every issue by any stretch.

MO: But you’re not going to tell us the things where you’re farthest to the left or you think Trump is most excited.

JC: Well, I just gave you a principled one.

MO: I mean,

JC: It’s not that I’m a lefty on that, by the way. I want to stress.

MO: No, I understand. I feel like you’ve given me 70% of an answer. I still, I mean, it’s not so far from the answer Leah Libresco’s Sargeant gave me when I sort of asked her. I mean, she actually won’t tell me who she voted for and she won’t … What she says is I have to work with both sides. And so my hunt for the sort of independent minded person who just says what they think about everything continues, right? It’s not Rusty Reno. It’s not Arielle Angel from Jewish Currents. Everyone I talk to seems to be looking around and saying, “I have to make sure I’m okay for the team.”

JC: No, and I’m not apologizing for that, right?

MO: Yeah, I know.

JC: No. That is the project that I’m engaged in. I mean, maybe at some point-

MO: But wait, you’re at a think tank, you’re at Claremont Institute, but you don’t see that as a sort of Orwellian, whatever the truth is, I’ll follow it anywhere. I’m on no team, but the truth, you are part of a Trump team. Even though your salary is paid, presumably they’re not going to fire you for going off the reservation, you feel that you have to think of yourself as on a team. Because I would say the job of an intellectual is to not be on a team.

JC: So I mean, this is interesting, right? And it’s funny that I as the ex member of the independent party I’m having this discussion, right? I would say of the things that I write about, those are my views basically. I mean, I’m not going to say it to the nth degree that I’ve probably never written an article in which I hedged my view 20 percent based on a partisan exigency, but the things that I’m choosing to write about, certainly like writing this book, these are my views, but there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that might come up in casual conversation or that I might not choose to opine on, but I have a difference with the party that I just don’t get into, right? And that’s the part that is part of being in a political practice.

MO: And why not?

JC: Because I don’t think it would be practically useful. I mean, if I think it would be practically useful to advance the priorities that I have, then I would do it. And there are times, I mean, there’ve been plenty of times that I have to go back and think about specific instances where I’ve certainly been, it’s not that I’m afraid to be critical of Republicans, right? It’s just that there’s always a context that I’m a political context that I’m trying to advance.

MO: So what would you say, and then I promise we’ll move back towards you and your views, because I really am interested. I know my own views well enough, but I mean, what would you say about this sort of low level melancholy/depression that I have that everybody sees everything as a fight and they’re all on a team? And I feel this about, I mean, tenured professors as well, I’ve talked to so many professors at places where I’ve taught who have said like, “Yeah, that thing that so-and-so did, that particular DEI project or that particular hire or whatever was totally just a sop to the far left.” And I would say, “Great, can I quote you on that? Or can I say that you’re my ally in that?” And they’ll say, “No, no, no.” And they literally will say, “Because I have this other project I’m working on” and they have a sincere, this good thing I want to do would be hampered if I were caught up in the … Everybody is always saying, and that includes people like you and like tenured professors whose income isn’t dependent on, who aren’t about to be fired for saying the truth. Wouldn’t this have be much better if everyone just said what they thought?

JC: Well, look, I mean, there’s a couple things, right? One, I’m not a tenured professor. Okay. I’m an at-will employee and that’s-

MO: I mean, me too.

JC: I would love to be, and never would be at any place for a million different reasons, a tenured professor. And then would I feel more free to speak? I also think a tenured professor has a totally different set of obligations than somebody who is at a validly partisan think tank. Okay. I mean, that’s what we are, right? And again, I don’t-

MO: Is your think tank, they don’t hire you to follow the truth wherever it may lead?

JC: They hire me because of alignment of views, which we do have. I have never gotten … There was one time at Hoover when I was a little too hardcore on immigration and never at Claremont, that I can recall, has any leadership ever called me and said, “Hey, this thing that you’ve written is off message.” And that does happen at certain places. At old Heritage, at least I know that, for example, would happen. At the better think tanks, that doesn’t happen. On the other hand, a) I have a high degree of alignment, b) I am kind of engaged in a political project unapologetically, okay?

MO: So Trump matters, like Trump winning things matters to you guys?

JC: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, personally. I’m not speaking for other people at the think tank. Other people have different views on-

MO: So you’re not above politics, you’re not out there searching for sort of platonic truth, you’re out there like to win stuff.

JC: Platonic truth.

MO: So who is? Where do I find them?

JC: Well, you should find them at universities, but you don’t. And I’ve said-

MO: But not think tanks. Think tanks are about winning elections.

JC: I mean, well, partisan think tanks certainly are. And again, it doesn’t mean … I would struggle to think of a single thing that I’ve written that I don’t fundamentally believe, but it’s sort of what issues am I choosing to work on? I’m choosing to work on issues that I have aligned with.

MO: So let me ask you this. You and I don’t agree on immigration and nationalism in certain ways, but I could imagine a Democrat who is there on those things. And if that person were there on those things and they were to the left of Claremont on healthcare, whom they’d apoint to the national labor relationships, could you possibly vote for such a person? Or are you so far to the right on so many things that actually … I want to know where you are on the other stuff.

JC: I mean, I’m a genuine right winger, right?

MO: So why did you move right on this … You weren’t a genuine right winger on these other policies.

JC: It would be impossible for me to imagine a Democrat in the modern context that I would have enough agreement with that I would vote for them. But I mean, contrarily, there’d be plenty of Democrats that I could work with if I were in Congress on an issue.

MO: Okay. So back to my original question, I’m trying to understand the process by which people move right on everything or move left on everything. Why do you move … I understand why travel made you think more deeply about American exceptionalism in a particularly conservative way, but it sounds like you’re a righty on lots of things that you weren’t a righty on before. So why did that happen?

JC: Yeah.

MO: My answer, I’ll tell you my supposition is because certain kinds of people need friends and families and dads and parties, and being alone would be too psychologically difficult. And so they find themselves pulled right and it has to align for them psychologically.

JC: Well, I think there’s complicated things at play, right? But I think if you observe the kind of hornet’s nest that I was willing to go poke and some of the abuse I’ve taken in the media, it’s not that I am averse to kind of really angering some people or really having some enemies or even frankly alienating a fair number of people in my own party. But I do, again, I just will stress. I mean, I am engaged unapologetically in a political project. I want to move policy. Doesn’t mean that I will never agree with Democrats on everything, doesn’t mean I don’t … I mean, I publicly criticize Republicans all the time, but usually for being insufficiently conservative. But again, I’m trying to do things to advance the policies that I would like to see advanced.

MO: Right. But do you have positions … Are you a kind of beautiful mess on … If I were inside your brain and I looked at, say, abortion and death penalty and church-state separation and immigration and affirmative action and healthcare policy and climate policy, would you be kind of to the left on some and kind of to the right on others?

JC: So I’d say I’m more centrist on environmental policy and energy policies we’ve talked about. I’m more centrist on healthcare policy, although I never write about it because it’s just not my area. But there’d be a few areas where for sure I would be more centrist than the Average Republican, but they’re not areas that I work on. And that’s probably by choice, right? I work at a conservative think tank, so I’m not going to work on issues in which I’m not sort of aligned with the conservative movement.

MO: All right. So last attempt at this. Do you have a theory on why people seem to move right or left on all their views when they move?

JC: Well, I think people are tribal, but I’m not really sure that’s the right diagnosis for me in lots of ways.

MO: Okay.

JC: I mean, and I think I’d also would really urge you not to conflate. I mean, again, I sat another podcast with a friend of mine, Auron MacIntyre, who’s pretty well to the right. I said, “If the left had not gone insane, I would happily be a professor of history at Iowa State University and you would’ve never heard of me. And I would be teaching about some obscure thing happily because that’s what I love to do with no regard or fear or favor for truth, et cetera.” But I wasn’t given that option. And I think the people who really do deserve condemnation are the people who are in universities who do have that obligation, and in my view, have abandoned that obligation.

MO: Look, I don’t disagree. I mean, I spend a lot of my time talk to any of my colleagues at any of the universities where I’ve worked. And when I left Yale, nobody was begging me to stay because I was sort of the constant thorn in the side of certain people, or maybe that’s narcissism, maybe they didn’t notice when I was gone. But I’m always the person in the room who is taking what, by academic community standards, would be seen as the conservative position. And then I reach out to conservatives and I say, “Now will you travel with me and be the lefty in your space?” And they never will. They never will. I realize it’s a fools game to try to look for a sort of coalition of the eccentric and individuated that I’m … I mean, this sounds self-congratulatory, but I’m always the guy. I always am willing to sort of take that stand with a community against the other side. And then I say, “Now, will you join with me and say some negative things about your side?” And they won’t. And then I feel like a schmuck.

JC: Yeah. Well, I mean, again, without knowing, this would be a really interesting longer term conversation. I am certainly more of an ideologue than a partisan, but at the end of the day, and I mean that an ideologue in a favorable way, but I am engaged in a partisan activity and I’m not apologetic for that, nor am I branding myself as anything different than that in my view.

MO: Right. No, no, no. I don’t think you’re being a hypocrite about that. I mean, it’s interesting that you say to me that Claremont, they want to win more than they want their employees to actually say the thing they think is truest all the time. I think that’s a fair-

JC: Well, I wouldn’t necessarily want to cast that on-

MO: You didn’t say that, but that’s clearly the inference to take is that they’re not hiring you to be smart wherever that leads you. If you move to the left, they’d fire you.

JC: I think Claremont is a think tank with a certain view. If I were contradicting that fundamental view of say what the Constitution looks like, they would fire me and they would be totally appropriate to do so. I mean, that’s the project they’re engaged in.

MO: Yeah. Okay.

JC: Yeah.

MO: I’ve read your book, but rather than me spell out its central arguments, why don’t you tell me?

JC: Yeah, no. So it’s The Unprotected Class is the title, How Anti-White Racism is Tearing America Apart. That’s the juicy subtitle. It is a book that kind of looks at anti-white racism and discrimination as it manifests throughout a variety of different areas in society. It was a fairly non-friend getting book when I wrote it, and it’s less so today. I mean, but it was a very tough thesis at the time.

MO: It’s 2024, right?

JC: That I’ve been most gratified about, probably one of the two things about the book, the first being that it actually did move policy. It did move people in the administration. I’m not going to name names in people, but it really did have an effect on the policy debate, which as I said, I’m a practical person. That’s number one. Number two is, as I’ve said elsewhere, if you’re to look at the Google engram, we don’t have the updated things, but the phrase anti-white racism and anti-white discrimination went from being this marginal thing that you couldn’t even really say when I wrote the book to now we have very mainstream politicians who will say the book or who will say this. Elon Musk, who follows me on X, of course, talks about it a lot. And so I’m very gratified-

MO: Do you admire Elon Musk, by the way?

JC: Broadly, absolutely, yes. That doesn’t mean I don’t have disagreements with him, but I overall find him a sort of incredible sort of world historical figure almost.

MO: I own a Tesla and it’s a really good car. I don’t think he has wisdom about other things. I think people have wisdom about the things they have wisdom about. So I think- I think Polutocrats should keep their politics to themselves, but on the left and the right. I think he and George Soros to go to an island and drive a Tesla.

JC: Another interesting discussion. He certainly, I do not agree with all of his political takes, but some of them I do. And he’s out there and he has a voice. He has a right to use it.

MO: We all do. Okay. So the argument is … Well, you started, but you want to say anything more about the argument of the book?

JC: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the kind of basics of it. And some of it, I guess to just expand a little bit, I look at sort of literal formal structures of discrimination and racism that I kind of document. One of the things I’m proud of is that the paperback comes out after two years in May. I didn’t have to do a single correction of anything in the book. I’m not saying that maybe as more leftists look at it, they’ll find something that I got wrong, but I’m proud that I really did take the facts and seriously and report it on them as such. And then some of them are sort of more informal cultural things going on, say in the entertainment business or something like that. And that’s essentially the thesis. And then the final thing is the book does kind of end on an optimistic note.

It’s saying, “Well, how can we get beyond that and get to the sort of better angels of our nature in a way that Mark, I think you seem to be wanting to be to really push toward.”

MO: Yes. You’ve decided, I mean, I forget where you’ve written this or said this at various points that like, oh, that you want to get to post racism, but first we have to be race conscious and that white people have to be more race conscious.

JC: Yeah. No, this is interesting. I mean, it’s a harsh way of putting it, but it’s not an unfair way of pushing it. Again, this is the value to me of being more political and unapologetic about that, which is if I were just a theoretician, I would just say, “Oh, well, we should get beyond this.” And you’d ignore the fact that if one side is really using a tool and you’re saying, “Well, we’re too good to use it,” the political equilibrium you end up at is not a good political equilibrium. And what I am suggesting rather, and you can dispute that this is the right way to get to X, but at least it’s my conscious way to get to X, which is that we need to get, I literally say this in the book to a mutually assured destruction type mode here, which means that we need to extract some pain at a low level from people who’ve been engaged in these behaviors.
And then at that point, once there’s pain on both sides, you sort of step back and say, “Hey, isn’t there a better way we could all do this?”

MO: Let me summarize some of the arguments. It’s like ten chapters or so, and let me summarize some of the arguments and you can tell me if I’ve gotten it right. So some of it is what I would call, and I mean this descriptively, not as a put down or praise, just sort of standard issue conservative critiques of affirmative action in higher ed points out sort of how much of a penalty white and particularly Asian American applicants pay for being their race as opposed to black or Hispanic. You did make a very good point that I’ve made that when white applicants do get in And it’s often because they are athletes or legacies or super wealthy. And that middle class kids get … I mean, I can tell you, you had the experience being near and around Stanford that I’ve had being near and around Yale, which is children of faculty all get it.

I mean, it’s crazy.

And athletes, if you look at … I mean, some sports have … The basketball team is probably majority black, although has some white kids. The football team, I think is quite majority white. Certainly some teams are all white or mostly white crew, tennis, the upper class, the wealthy squash. And they’re all white athletes who on the strength of their SATs and grades probably wouldn’t get in. So you’ve made the point that actually it’s also a class thing where the middle class white kid is very disadvantaged. These are standard issue conservative critiques of affirmative action. You talk about the effect that the disparate impact policy has had on say government contracts, hiring, or about employment and hiring practices generally. And that’s something that I’ve seen litigated here in New Haven where the fire department was sued because they had a test that non-whites did more poorly on than whites.

And this stuff has been, in some ways, as you point out, even the majority of Democrats often agree on this stuff. When you have plebiscites like in California, most Democrats don’t want affirmative action at the state university. I think your analysis of Hollywood and media is interesting. I think it’s less … I wasn’t as troubled by Hamilton as you were, which I see as a sort of more patriotic gesture than we do.

JC: Well, I have a very mixed view on Hamilton, which I say.

MO: You do.

JC: Yeah, I like it. And again, I say this in the book. I never actually try to suck up too much with people interviewing me. I liked it artistically. I think that there are some political messages in it are good, but I think there are some racial messages that, as leftists would put, it need to be interrogated.

MO: Yeah. I mean, all my kids did was memorize it and I don’t think they see it as ideological one way or the other.

JC: But that’s why it’s good ideology.

MO: Well, but that’s unfalsifiable then, right? If something’s truly not ideological, you wouldn’t see it as ideological.

JC: Okay. I mean, fair. I mean, again, I give my very specific critiques of Hamilton in the book, and if people want to pick it up, they can decide whether those are good or not.

MO: And I would say that the area where you seem to come across as sort of the most what we might think of as sort of hard right is immigration. And by the way, I learned a lot about how few immigrants we had for most of our history. I think that was really instructive. Ross Douthat pushed you on his podcast for what I think he took to be your extraordinary pessimism around immigration, around the idea that people can be assimilable. I’m mindful of a guy we went to college with, whom you know, who is a Hispanic ancestry who said, the hilarious thing about the sort of English only people is that everyone in the Latin community is despairing about how the grandkids don’t speak Spanish. And I know that that’s less true along the Texas border, but certainly in Florida, Arizona and any city of the north, there are no grandchildren walking around speaking Spanish.

I think that a less polemical book, one that was more interested in giving equal time to the other side, or even just if only to knock it down, would have made the point that we are not England when it comes to the way that community or Germany, that the way that immigrant communities persist in a sort of nomic, hermetic way over three generations. We’re kind of radically different from that.

JC: No, I think that’s absolutely right. I don’t have a problem with that. I mean, I still have all my same critiques, but yes, and I would acknowledge another way that’s very important that we’re different than England and Germany is. I am not just a credible American. I do think that there is an actual American people as well, and then that’s important to talk about and they have in general certain backgrounds, at least historically, but we are certainly not ethno states in the way that Europeans would have traditionally been and therefore immigration from a variety of different countries is not inherently contradictory to the project in a way that I think it really kind of is in Europe. I think you can sell a vision of America that is certainly much friendlier to relatively unconstrained immigration, even if I have a lot of critiques of that vision.

MO: Fair enough. And I do want to say just for the record that I think you’re … I’m not a historian of the native or indigenous encounter with white people. I think you were quite blase about the amount of violence and displacement that native people suffered at the hands of white people. The idea that it’s sort of six of one half, that they killed us, we killed them, they were killing each other. It’s kind of all … And all of which is true. And I’ve made the point to people who see them who see Native Americans as this kind of, “Oh, it was so peaceful before we got here.” And I think land acknowledgements are stupid. And I think that the sort of torturous ignominy that so many native people were forced into by the American military is very real and I think you’re blase about that.

JC: Okay. Well, we could have a lively discussion about that.

MO: But having said that, what triggered, to use a nice lefty term, some of the congressmen, some of the senators and others on the internet, which I’m seldom on, but which you love, has been-to your detriment, among other things, your talk of whiteness. And you have said things, and I don’t have my fingertips and it’s not important. I don’t want to play gotcha, but you’ve said things about sort of white culture and whiteness and whiteness. And the argument of your book is like almost that there has to be a political community of whiteness. And for understandable reasons, some people say, look, when whiteness has been deployed, it’s been desployed often in violent and supremacist ways. And that’s true. It’s not necessarily true, but it happens to be true. And one of the senators said, “Well, what is this whiteness that … ” And it was probably your worst moment when you said something like, “I don’t know the way white people do church.”

JC: Well, I couldn’t really give a real argument because I was told not to argue with these guys, right? And then secondly, reach back slightly. And I think that turned out to be not good advice for me for a variety of reasons.

MO: As Claudine Gay knows, or the president of Penn or whoever, never listen to the people who prep you, they’re always wrong.

JC: Again, I sort of learned that the hard way. But I do actually just want to clarify though, because I haven’t actually talked a lot about whiteness. It was a couple of stray comments that I’ve made. And of course, the Democrats sort of seized on that as, ah, we’re going to do that. But you’ve read the book. There’s the only mentions I made. I literally went through ChatGPT and Grok and I said, and then I did word searches in the book and the only kind of mentions I had of white identity were to criticize white identity politics and say, it’s really better to have a universal sort of view that’s a much better place for America to be. So, I’ve talked about a common American culture a lot and I did it in the hearing and absolutely that is rooted in a European American experience at its core in my view. I don’t apologize for that, but I also don’t think it’s racially exclusivist. And if I thought it were purely racially exclusivist, I would have much more radical views on immigration than I do.

MO: Okay. I take you at your word, but you do … It’s funny here, I don’t like people who go reading things for like dog whistles and I try to take people at face value. You do that thing JD Vance also does where it’s like, well, what about the Scots-Irish? Yeah. Nobody for six generations in America has called themselves Scots-Irish. It’s deployed to talk about how great a certain kind of rural white person is. And it’s oh, the common Scots-Irish culture. It’s like, there does seem to be in some of your writing, and this was in two or three places in the book, a kind of like affection for this echt or err white immigration. I mean, so for example, you talk about the white people whose answer, you talk a lot about contemporary white people who of course are the descendants of those who built the country, but most contemporary white people are not.
They’re descendants, if anything, of later German immigrants and sometimes Scots Irish, et cetera. They’re not descendants of founding fathers or Puritans or whatever, but you kind of assimilate and you never say heritage Americans. I don’t want to tar you. I don’t care. I don’t know if you like that term or not. It’s used as a term of-

JC: Yeah, no, I’m familiar with it.

MO: It’s not a term that I- It’s a cultural war term. But you do seem to feel like there is this kind of there, there. Albion seed is way back there in a kind of Scott’s Irish authenticity of farmers, tradespeople, whatever. Am I wrong to sense that you have that? Because I’ve been to Appalachia and I have Southern relatives who’ve lived amongst these people and they’re doing what the rest of us do, which is online gambling and video games, but there’s a little more NASCAR in some parts of the country, but it’s not like they have what the Germans … There’s still people in Milwaukee doing German Americanness in a very thick way. There’s nobody doing Scott’s Irish culture or white culture in that way.

JC: Yeah. Well, I mean, I didn’t write Born Fighting or I didn’t even write Albion Seed, although I think it’s a really good book. David Hackett Fisher, for those of you who are kind of interested in the sort of British origins in different ways of America. And that’s a very scholarly book, not a polemical book like mine. But yeah, no, look, I mean, there is a kind of base Euro American culture, a British culture even more that I do think we’re descended from. Certainly our laws are descended from that. And I think like everything else, it is elastic, but it is not infinitely elastic. And I’m kind of not making apologies for that. And so it gets to something like, are we going to let hundreds of thousands of Somalis immigrate here? I think that’s a bad idea for like a million different reasons. And one of them is they’re just coming from a radically, radically different background, right?

So yeah, I mean, I think it’s-

MO: But I guess I still want to know what is there there when you’re talking about this base American culture? Because I would say it has, at this point, it’s as Jewish and Italian as it is British. Well, that’s interesting. Even though understand Jews and Italians are actually tiny minorities come down to the number of, say, people of British, Scottish, and German, let’s say ancestry, but I think you don’t agree with me on that and I want to know why.

JC: It’s interesting because I have-

MO: Tell me why.

JC: … this type of discussion, I think so much of the inherent Britishness from the language on down is so much a part of America that we don’t even think about it, right? Including the fact, by the way, and this is one of the real challenges of organizing white Americans around anything, Northwest European culture, and you can get into a variety of ways, whether you think this is inherent or whether it’s just cultural or whatever, has not traditionally been particularly tribal. It is one of the things that has made America uniquely successful is that there was a lot more trust of strangers than there have been in other cultures. And I think this is pretty well documented. This is not some weird right-wing political point. So I look at things like that and I say, those things actually have origin in a certain British or at least Northwest European culture, certainly our religious beginnings do.

And even the way that we do say kind of new, this is kind of getting well into your world, but the sort of new reformed Christianity that is kind of taking place on the right, I mean, really does have a lot of British and Dutch or Calvinist origins that go back to that. So I do think they’re meaningful things. And at the same time, I don’t in any way discount much to my frustration that we’ve got a lot of guys who are effectively just sort of totally detached from that X hundred years later, right?

MO: I mean, I would say most, but I would also say another thing, which is, and this is partly what I think what troubles me about your overall positioning of all this, because again, if we read through your book, it’s a kind of like what we Jews would say, parv, right? Like bland in a good way. It’s neither meat nor milk. It’s like you’re kind of making arguments that feel like nothing that I haven’t heard from Republicans and many Democrats over the years. So what I find interesting just to sort of heighten the contradictions between us is that I look at current day, I regret that there’s less wasp culture around. I regret what I see. Well, what I see is Donald Trump-

JC: Metropolitan is no more.

MO: No, metropolitan is no more. You and I are like wearing the last two button down Oxford cloth blue shirts that there are. And what I see is like your party, Pete Hagseth, Donald Trump, Matt Gates, et cetera, utterly fucking trashing any notion of restraint, modesty, humility, decency, right? Would you agree?

JC: I would not put it in that particular vein. I would say that-

MO: Why do we have a Bryce Mary president?

JC: In being very publicly combative, including using terms, language, and tone that I would not personally choose to use.

MO: Barack Obama and Joe Biden would never have talked about the size of their male member. The person who’s taken us off the cliff of just sort of indecency is Donald Trump. And that, I mean, I’m always looking for someone to say like public virtue matters. We have the least publicly virtuous president we’ve ever … I mean, I don’t know, Harding had a mistress, whatever, and we used to not know what presidents did. I understand that. But it’s interesting because I share your concerns. I want more public decorum. I want segues where people aren’t playing their music loudly. I think that small crimes lead to big crimes. And what I see, and so you can lay some of that at the feet of people who move to a culture where they don’t know the norms yet, for sure.

JC: Yeah.

MO: Do you really think is white culture …

JC: Well, again, there’s a reason I don’t use that really as a term. I mean, again, I used it once or twice and people really seized on it. But let me get back to your point on public virtue, because I think the reason why our voters chose Donald Trump, and I think they were correct to do so, by the way.

MO: You weren’t pro-Trump the first time around.

JC: I was not pro-Trump the first time around.

MO: You said horrible things to me about Donald Trump.

JC: Yeah, no, no, no. And some of those things are on record, right? Despite having written right beforehand that we need a guy, literally, I mean, these same articles, they’re all public. I haven’t tried to hide them.

MO: Yeah, I know.

JC: I said, “We need somebody who does exactly the sorts of things that Trump is saying in terms of his issues, his concerns that he’s raising.” I just not convinced that Trump is the package. I think where I’ve come around is even though of course I don’t love everything that Donald Trump says or how he says it, is that Trump was the necessary package. And let me get back because I want to get back to your comment on public decorum because I think it really gets into it.

MO: Thank you.

JC: Thank you. We had Mitt Romney as the previous guy and everything that you want that to me in terms of his public affect, his public restraint, that’s who he was and he was portrayed as Hitler and we literally. And we had several. We had George W. Bush, again, a guy who, despite my political disagreements with him, I think is just fundamentally, certainly by the standards of politicians, a decent and publicly decent and genuinely Christian person, HW the same way. We had all these people who I do think modeled that and the result was we got our asses kicked, if you’ll pardon my French. And I think what was decided is actually we need a brawler right now. And if we’re going to get back to this thing, it’s the mutual leadership destruction, we need somebody who is going to inflict a lot of pain. And that doesn’t mean that I’m signing up for every utterance that Donald Trump has ever made.

MO: So when you saw DOGE, you’re too smart a person to think Doge was well considered. You’re too smarter person to think RFK Jr. Is the right man, but you feel like it’s part of the package, like just go in with the hammer.

JC: Well, and this maybe gets into our … I mean, I actually may be more positive on Doge than you would like, but this gets into our initial discussion again, which is I am engaged in a political project unapologetically, like 0% apologetically, and politics is a package, right? It is. So yes, there are things that I like more that I get in that package, things that I don’t like more. And on balance, I have gotten more wins about the things I care about under this administration than in any administration in my lifetime, despite something cringe and want to tear out my hair.

MO: But here’s the contradiction with you that I don’t have, for example, with some other conservatives who have other issues, right?

JC: Right.

MO: Which is a lot of your concern about immigration, which I think is the issue, the chapter in your book you care most about-

JC: Yeah, I think that’s

MO: Fair. … I think is about the sort of common public culture.

And that’s actually something I care much more about than I care about. And that’s maybe a sign of my … I’m actually happy to talk, lefty talk and say it’s a sign of my privilege. I don’t need Obamacare, but I kind of need my buses. I want my library to not be a site of addicts sometimes injecting, right? Yeah, of course. And I think that for the common public culture, this brawl we’re in that you’ve bought into and said as a necessary evil, may actually be more harmful to the common public culture than unchecked immigration, which I also think was a problem because I think there should be checked immigration.

JC: Be check immigration. I’m just pointing out we tried the non-brawl to the nth degree, right? I mean, Mitt Romney, and you get a fascinating point again, because I know you’re a bit just historian, I mean about how Mormons became like the Uber Wasps when they started out as sort of these scandals, right?

MO: Right.

JC: I mean, maybe H.W. Bush was more WASPY than Mitt Romney. I’m not sure, right? I think he was-

MO: Well, I hear what you’re saying. This is partly why I say, wouldn’t it be nice if you could tell me what you really think of Donald Trump? Because what I’d like to see my Republican friends saying is, “I understand why you’re taking these wins on that Harmit Dylan is doing it justice at DOJ. I understand why your wins aren’t my wins on ice, which I think has become a shit show, but I understand where taking those wins.” But meanwhile, given that you think we have to get back to a public decency in presidents who don’t talk about their penis eyes, I think we need some public witness from you right now saying, “I like what Donald Trump’s doing on X, and I think it’s utterly loathed somehow he talks about women, his body, et cetera.” Can you co-sign that? Cosign that. He speaks in utterly loath some ways. Co-sign, he speaks in utterly loath some ways about anatomy, his own anatomy about women, being on his third marriage is regrettable. He should not have cheated on prior spouses.

JC: You could list the basket of deplorables, the parade of horribles.

MO: And you agree that they’re deplorable.

JC: What I have said, again, because I’ve engaged in a political project here, Mark, is substantively, this has been the best president of my lifetime about the things I care about. That’s what I’m most concerned about. And stylistically, there are things that Donald Trump says, that I would not say it in that way, that I don’t like saying it in that way, that it’s not how I would choose to represent myself, but to me, those are much less important things than the substance.

MO: That’s the first part of my interview with Claremont Institute, senior fellow and failed Trump State Department nominee, Jeremy Carl. Coming up on the podcast, we have a lot more terrific stuff. I have interviews with Damon Linker, the University of Pennsylvania political scientist and frequent substacker with theologian Miroslav Wolf with Christian poet, Christian Wyman, that’s Christian Poet, first name Christian Wyman. Let’s call him Chris Wyman. With Chris Wyman, who is a poet who often writes on Christian themes, with Paul Eli, author of a recent book about art and religion in the 1980s with Duke Divinity School theologian, Amy Laura Hall, who has a new book coming out about muscular Christianity with the Notre Dame philosopher, Megan Sullivan, with Rabbi Shi Held. I’m having him back on to talk with recent guest Christopher Baya about religion and love because they’ve both written books that deal with questions of religion and love, one from a Catholic point of view and one from a Jewish point of view.

So lots of great stuff coming up on the podcast. I would also urge you to go over to our web magazine, archmag.org. That’s A- R-C-M-A-G.org. We have recent pieces about the religiosity of the romantic literary genre, a genre that I have not read at all, but I kind of want to a little bit after having read Louise McCray’s essay for Arc about romanticy. Also, a great piece by Matthew Smith, the president of Hildegard College about the recent surge of alternative micro colleges. Many of them Christian, but at least one of them Buddhist, one Muslim, many of them secular. These are like tiny startup colleges that are making little tiny waves. Also, Harvard poetry professor Stephanie Burt has a piece up about the fiction of Rachel Hartman. I interview Teesa Wenger about her recent book about the settler colonial roots of American religion and gosh, so much more great stuff.

Go over to arcmag.org. And now back to my interview with Claremont Institute, senior fellow and Presbyterian, Jeremy Carl. Do you worry about the antisemitism on the right? Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens. I do. Which by the way, you and Rusty Reno, Claremont, none of you is calling it out as loudly as I think you should.

JC: Yeah. Well, so I mean, this is an interesting discussion. And of course, I actually, ironically, got accused of being an anti-semit, which is a whole different by the …

MO: Yeah, we’ll get to your journey. We’ll get to your religious journey.

JC: Yeah. But I think there are two different, and I will be very candid about this because this is something where I am a little bit homeless within the party and I think it matters because I think we do need to be in this medium. I think we have a small but loud group, and I do think it is small. I mean, if you look at survey data, it is small of anti-Semites on the right. Some of them have big microphones. I think that some of them are being conflated with each other. And for example, Tucker Carlson is not Nick Fuentes, even if he did have Nick Fuentes on his show. Candace Owens is not Tucker Carlson either. And then there are other people that are even sort of more to the mainstream of Tucker Carlson who are nonetheless being sort of put in that same bucket.

So I think that’s wrong. And at the same time, what I think is partially driving that is that there are some other people who have a extreme agenda on the other side where people say, “Hey, you know what? Is America really being put first here?” And so I think that is the concern. I think the party will ultimately move through that. I think the Democrats are in a much more precarious situation, but like right now we’re having some bumpiness with it. I mean, there’s no question.

MO: So I would like to see JD Vance say there’s absolutely no home in the party for anyone who has any antisemitic views. He doesn’t say that. He always says something about big 10th this or that.

JC: Yeah. I’m not-

MO: Shouldn’t he be more explicit? A lot of these people look to him.

JC: Yeah, I do hear you. I mean, first of all, I’m not sure that he hasn’t said that. Okay. I think he probably has, but maybe he’s not said it enough for your comfort. I have no question that if he is a presidential candidate, he is going to say that vociferously and very clearly. I would point out that his chief of staff, Jacob Reesis, who I’ve known for a long time and Claremont alum is, I think, a fairly observant Jew and a Zionist, et cetera. And so kind of like this notion and is somebody who even by chief of staff standards is very close to JD.

MO: I have no reason to think JD’s personally an anti-Semite. I think he thinks that anti-Semites could end up forming an important part of his coalition and he has to. Yeah.

JC: I’m less convinced. I think, again, there’s a lot of people who have an interest in … There are some people who are absolutely critics of Israel on the right who are also anti-Semites. And I also think that there’s some people sadly in our coalition who would love to kind of mix in people who do not have a maximalist position on the Israel question and say, “Ah, well, you’re just anti-Semites if you believe that. ” I said again, I am at baseline, and I said this in the interviews that I got in trouble with, I’m much more pro- Israel than I am pro- Palestinian. I don’t have any inherent problems with Israel. I think they can potentially be a strategic and useful, but I can tell you, having gone through a confirmation process, that is not enough for someminar party. And that is to me, those people have a lot more institutional power than the anti-Semites who a few of them have large microphones, but are politically pretty on the fringes of the party, in my view.

MO: If you had gotten this state department job, which you didn’t get, you would’ve been traveling all the time. You have five kids.

JC: Yeah.

MO: Are you sure this would’ve been the right job for you? I wouldn’t want it. I would want to leave my five kids.

JC: I had a lot of misgivings about it, right? I mean, I had expressed some interest broadly. When the government comes to you, when the White House comes to you, when the State Department comes to you, you take that seriously. It would’ve been an imposition on my family, for sure. And it was something I thought about, and maybe I wouldn’t have done it for an infinite period of time, but I do take public service seriously. And again, I’m engaged in a political project, so you want to actually be able to have your hands on those levers that move. And so I was willing to at least try it. And I also was willing to try it knowing nothing about that happened in my hearing was a surprise to me, and none of it upset me. I mean, it was a pretty toxic and horrible hearing. It was very upsetting for a lot of friends of mine to watch, but it wasn’t upsetting to me.

I’d been preparing for it for months and months that it was going to be just as bad as it ended up being, because that’s where our politics are, unfortunately.

MO: If you had gotten the job, what’s the number one thing you would’ve wanted to do or make happen?

JC: Well, there would’ve been a few things. I mean, one is I wanted to check China’s influence in the UN, which I think is really growing rampant, and that’s a lot of what I would’ve been overseeing. I think I would’ve loved to have … We’ve moved very aggressively against the International Criminal Court. This is definitely a very right-wing view of mine. I would love to see us be even more aggressive. I think not only should we not tolerate it, this is by the way, a nice hobby horse of a lot of the very pro- Israel folks that I just happen to align with for nationalist reasons. I view it as having no legitimacy and not only should we not tolerate it, we shouldn’t tolerate anybody who tolerates it because this is

MO: Not- I don’t know much about the ICC. I don’t like supernational governments or- Well, that’s my point. So I’m probably against it if I knew anything about it.

JC: It’s like anything that really tries to … I would’ve been trying most broadly to reassert our sovereignty within that system and that the UN ultimately is a coordinating body for sovereign states. It is not a supernational government, although it attempts to try to become one. And so a lot of what I would’ve pushed for is to really assert that former view of the UN.

MO: Your tweets have caused you some trouble.

JC: Yes.

MO: I have two questions. Number one, you said on Ross Althit’s podcast that you didn’t delete all your tweets, they auto delete, but CNN reported that you actually went to archive.org or Wayback Machine and asked for some to be … Was that incorrect? So it’s very simple. Unusual measures to disappear them, to memory hole them.

JC: So I mean, I think a couple things. One, none of it had anything to do … I was doing all this before being nominated for anything was sliver of anything in my eye. Going to the Wayback Machine is like a two minute process where you just say, “Please do not archive this URL. That’s it. Auto-deleting my tweets currently.” And frankly, unfortunately, we saw this in my hearing, which is the reason I do it is that if you have them out there, now it turned out unfortunately to be kind of a Streisand effect, where it ended up having, once they dug the tweets up and then, “Oh, he’s hiding something,” which I wasn’t, but they can be taken totally in bad faith and totally out of context. And then this is your view. And I’ll give you an example of this, which was one of the more outrageous examples that I did not have a chance to clear my name of in the hearing, which is there was a tweet I gave that said, “Any white person celebrating Juneteenth, they’ve already surrendered.” Well, I mean, that sounds like a horribly awful and racist thing to say. So this is in the context of a much broader conversation. I’ve written an entire article. It’s one of my favorite articles I’ve ever written on Juneteenth, in which I say all sorts of nice things about how we should celebrate the end of slavery and how Juneteenth is wonderful and beautiful in theory. And then I get into the kind of metapolitical narrative around Juneteenth, which is my reason for doing the tweet.

MO: But if we’re just focused on random tweets that somebody tweeted two years ago- Okay, fair enough. I don’t tweet. Hey, look, man, you’re the shmo who tweets. I mean, you make your bed, you lie in it, right? No, of course. No crying in the casino. Why would you say that Randy Weingarten should get the death penalty? Why would you say that Joe Biden should be imprisoned and Nancy Pelosi should be prosecuted for military couples? Grownups don’t say these things. They don’t talk about their penis and they don’t say the these things.

JC: Yeah. Okay. Well, we’ll have to respectfully disagree. I mean, first of all, as I said, there are certainly some tweets, and this is the nature of tweeting, and just maybe you shouldn’t do it, but on balance-

MO: Is it good for us? Is it good for you? Is it good for America?
JC: Shouldn’t we? It’s certainly been really great for me in terms of the people I’ve been able to meet through X and some of the ways I’ve been able to affect the dialogue. It had a negative effect on me being able to get a Senate confirmed position, for sure. I think Randy Weingarten is a loathsome person who has caused incredible amounts of damage. My hyperbolic tweet, which was clearly totally hypothetical.

MO: Right. I understand.

JC: So I don’t view that as-

MO: I guess I’m trying to square Mr. Civic society, civic culture, Jeremy Carl, with the person who’s like, “Hey, X is a great thing. It’s allowed me to meet people. ” I’m so much to your right on this stuff in terms of I want to go with Paul King’s North off to his farm and raise feral pigs or something. And you want to be on Twitter. And I suppose at Davos with Elon Musk, there’s all these people who are breaking down society in bad ways, the media that are breaking down society, you’re kind of sanctuared about it and you participate. It’s interesting to me. I’m trying to put it all together.

JC: Yeah. I mean, again, I don’t share maybe your … Twitter is a space in which a lot of negative things happen, but that does not mean that Twitter is a negative space. There’s all sorts of useful things that happen on Twitter. There’s all sorts of useful things that I do on Twitter. There’s all sorts of things. If you were to look at my Twitter feed over the last week, you would see all sorts of things that-

MO: I’d have to join Twitter to do that.

JC: But of people saying heartwarming things, of people saying, “We should get along and be more civil.” So the bad stuff, of course, in the context of a political war is going to get blown up to a hundred X. There’s no question.

MO: So 100X, so to speak. 100X, parentheses, X. Okay. Let’s end with your religious journey. So at some point you joined the PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America. Yeah. I know it well. Some of my favorite uncles are PCA members. Actually, I think my Uncle Bill goes to PCUSA Church, but it’s in Mobile, Alabama and I think it’s a big concern. But I think they’re functionally PCA-ish. How did a nice Jewish boy like you become a Presbyterian?

JC: Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s a long, long journey. Started at Yale. Started actually maybe really in high school reading The Power and the Glory by Graham Green, not a Presbyterian, a Catholic.

MO: I read that in high school. Didn’t want to make me become a Catholic, but okay. Well,

JC: That’s fine. It didn’t make me want to become a Catholic either, but it did make me start thinking about Christianity. And it was a long, long journey that I’m not going to be able to summarize in a few minutes here. But I ultimately decided that I believed that this was true, that I believe that it was good. And that for that reason, obviously there’s some negative consequences and I think a lot more negative practical consequences than positive ones. Maybe contrary to how it would have been certainly several generations ago, but even a generation ago, it might have been different.

MO: What are the negative consequences?

JC: I think, and this won’t shock you, but definitely a lot of the Jewish people in my life, not my family, thankfully, but a lot of friends and whatever, it’s created a degree of separation or worse. I’m definitely out of the club in certain ways.

MO: Like what? I mean, how does that make- I don’t know. I’ve never become a Presbyterian, so I

JC: Don’t know. Yeah. Like lots of forms of guess who’s coming to dinner or whatever. I don’t want to sort of out anybody, first of all. And secondly, it’s not so much that things people say, it’s stuff that you observe going on in the background at which I know I’m not just making it up. You just see it. Or there’s certain places that I’m not invited to anymore. And also, frankly, some of the critiques of the Jewish community, which I made that got me in trouble, probably more trouble on the right than anything I said about race, were things that were fairly commonplace among Jews. And in fact, I had a lot of Jewish friends come to me and say, “You shouldn’t apologize for this at all. ” There’s nothing you said that’s wrong, and I will be self-critical here. I think I underestimated, I sort of was feeling like, especially one of them, I was talking to a fellow Jewish convert to Presbyterianism, we’re kind of like, “Well, we’re still in the club and so we can say this.” And it was like, “No, actually you’re not in the club anymore and therefore you’re not allowed to make that type of critique.” Or at least if I should, I should have made it in a little bit of a different context, but been more aware of the context in which I was making it. So that’s the sorts of things in which I see it as sort of been a negative thing for me socially. Although of course,

I have more eternal concerns that I felt trumped those.

MO: Well, I mean, you saved your soul, so that’s a plus. On the balance sheet, that’s a plus. Yes.

Though I don’t think Jesus wants you tweeting like that. Seriously, I think your best Christian self is not that guy. It’s funny because Rod Dreer says this, he’ll talk about like, well, you’ll point out some of the unbelievably cruel things he says on Twitter. My brother did this interview with him and he’s like, “Well, Jesus didn’t say to be nice.” He really has this wall up between you can still be kind of a jerk publicly if it’s in service of the cause. I mean, the question I always say is like, “Would my kids be proud of me if they saw me do X, Y, or Z?” And I-

JC: Well, I mean, I think that they’re all different. We’re not going to solve a public Christianity or any other religion in two minutes, but Jesus both said some sort of radically peacemaking things and he also threw money changers out of the temple, right? So I think that there’s different views. You should condemn sin and that’s a good thing. And you should also be, particularly if somebody asked for forgiveness as Christians, you should be very generous in giving that forgiveness in a way that Erica Kirk was, for example, and which I praised publicly on Twitter said, “This radical Christian forgiveness of Erica Kirk is exactly what we should be doing.”

MO: I want to end with a question that I hope you don’t think it’s mean. I always felt like, and this is probably based on two or three conversations we had in college or the couple years thereafter. I always felt like we were both Jewish kids from old American Jewish families. Our families both came in the 1840s. There’s a lot of self-loathing in those communities, a lot of generations of wishing, especially if there’s Southern roots. I have Southern roots. Well, actually, you just got to the South. My family’s like- My

JC: My grandmother was born and raised in Norfolk.

MO: But you also taught family in Cleveland and Chicago.

JC: Yeah, of course.

MO: Wrote about your book.

JC: Not mostly New York, I think, kind of being the key difference, right?

MO: Okay. Well, that helps make my point. But I always felt like there was a kind of discomfort with your Judaism, and this certainly at Yale in the 90s, which was a Waspier place than it is now, and that we probably had a kind of shared reverence for what we saw as WASP aesthetics. And I always thought he’ll opt out at some point, or he might opt out at some point. And I don’t want to say that you’re not actually convicted of the truth of the resurrection. I trust that you are.

JC: Which I am.

MO: I trust that you are. Yeah. But to what extent do you feel like this also helped align a cultural discomfort you felt with fellow Jews and put you in happily in the camp of a lot of Gentiles who you felt were kind of admirable in ways that the average Jew you knew maybe wasn’t?

JC: Well, this is the delight, Mark, which I have not had of sitting down for a formal interview with somebody who’s known me for a long time since I was a very different person in college. And what I would say is this was something I thought a lot about. And one of the reasons why I didn’t convert until much later in life is that I was acutely and actively aware that it is not the same thing to be discomforted with certain aspects of Jewish culture or the Jewish community and to believe in the resurrection. Those two things are totally different things. And so I had a long time where I sort of felt one, but I certainly didn’t necessarily feel the other. And I wasn’t going to just sort of say, I wasn’t going to become a social Christian. I had to really be convicted of that. And it just, again, life takes long journeys and there just came a time in my life where I really believed the truth of this and then I kind of acted accordingly. But I really, I’m conscious of the dynamic that you said.

It was one of the reasons that even though I was probably uncomfortable in the Jewish community for a long time, I didn’t just say, “Oh, well, that must mean I’m a Christian.” Those two things are not the same thing.

MO: Three final questions, but first, so what was it … I mean, I’m not asking you, maybe this is too uncomfortable, but what were you so uncomfortable about? I could tell you what I was uncomfortable about, but what were you uncomfortable? What didn’t you like about the Jewish community?

JC: Well, I mean, first of all, I should back up and say, and again, this is like, because I got in trouble for interviews, there’s many, many wonderful things about the Jewish community, including the wonderful intellectual life, which is so core to my existence outside of politics and even within politics to a degree and the communal nature actually. I mean, there are people who really stick up for each other in the broadest sense, although of course there’s tons of fighting within the community. But I think my critiques would be maybe if I had to locate them toward one, it would be a broad sense of materialism in the broadest sense and a real focus on just the here and now, just earthly things that … And again, I’m over … Particularly if you get to very Orthodox Jews, I’m oversimplifying to a gross extent, but you’ve asked me the question, I’m answering it honestly.

That was unappealing to me. Some of the moors and manners were unappealing to me as an old stock 1840s arrival. I mean, you can read everything from Our Crowd by Stephen Birmingham to the Ordeal of Civility by John Murray Cudahy, a kind of lost classic of sociology to sort of read a little bit about that. But I would say those were things that I were uncomfortable with. But again, I want to really stress those were very different things than what ultimately led me to become a Christian.

MO: In our last two minutes, what really led you? Was it a book or two? Was it like you finally read whatever or it was a particular pastor?

JC: It was books. It was direct spiritual experience. It was just sort of that feeling. It was also a lot of it … It was interesting. I just went to a funeral a few months ago. I had a Yale friend who was actually from Teaneck, New Jersey, half Jewish ethnically, but became a really, really strong Christian at Yale, which was kind of an unusual thing as you know. And that remained so throughout his life. I mean, he was just an incredibly convicted, passionate, evangelical Christian. And I saw, and I had that happen to another one of my freshman roommates who I remained close to both of them. He died of cancer, this first friend, and I went to his funeral, which huge testimonies to his Christian life were given. He was a physician, a cancer physician, ironically, died of cancer. And I would say the fruits, you’d know things by their fruits.

And when I saw the really convicted Christians, at least in my world, the fruits made a huge impression on me. And that started at Yale and it continued on path that I said, “Those are the people that I want to be like. ” And again, that itself does not convince you of, but it’s a thing that draws you in if you see it. Because when I looked at the very, very few people at Yale who I felt like had what I would consider the proper perspective on this crazy elite environment that we were in, it was the Christians, at least to my mind. And so that made a huge impression. And as it went on to life, it continued to make an impression on me.

MO: That’s interesting. That’s probably not wrong because it was such a countercultural thing to be. There are probably Christians who didn’t have an interesting perspective on it, but to the extent that anyone stuck out for having a kind of critique or a kind of cognition about what we were all doing, it would have been people who had some external source of meaning.

JC: Yeah.

MO: Yeah. I’ll think about that. Okay. Last question in 20 seconds, what’s your next book about?

JC: So my next book is tentatively titled What’s the Matter With Minnesota? It’s about liberal whites. You’ll recognize that as an illusion to What’s Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank. I titled this What’s the Matter with Minnesota long before the latest riots. And I’m kind of departing from Minnesota because I think so much of what I view as truly the intellectual and moral pathologies of modern kind of white elites are encapsulated in what goes on in Minnesota. And I think ultimately to get to the sort of public happiness and comedy and respect for public virtue that you and I both want, I think we need to beat that crew. And then the rest of us are going to negotiate among ourselves about what the future America looks like.

MO: I’m just a poor Catholic virtue ethicist who thinks that if we had Tim Waltz as president, at least we’d have a role model. So you and I will have to agree to disagree. We will. Jeremy Carl, thanks for coming on. I appreciate it.

JC: Thanks so much, Mark. I really appreciate it.

MO: That was my interview with Claremont Institute senior fellow, Jeremy Carl. If you have thoughts or comments, please write to me at mark.o@wustl.edu. That’s w-stl.edu. That’s for Washington University, St. Louis. Mark.o@wustl.edu.

Celebrity birthdays, April 18 is the birthday of Conan O’Brien. Also the birthday of actor James Woods. Also coming up, Ashley Judd on April 19. George Takai on April 20, Jack Nicholson on April 22. I had a moment where I thought, is Jack Nicholson still alive? April 24, Barbara Streisand. I’ve been hearing a lot about Barbara Streisand because people have said that my recent biography of Judy Bloom has benefited from the Streisand effect. If you don’t know what the Streisand effect is, I didn’t either, but you could go Google it and then perhaps it will all snap into place and make sense. April 25th is the birthday of both Al Pacino and Renee Zellweger.

Renee Elweger, I don’t think my kids know who she is. She was once so famous, so important to the culture. And I don’t know. In April 29, I kind of love this one. I want to have a dinner party in which I honor both Jerry Seinfeld and Uma Thurman on their birthdays of April 29. Now that Passover and Easter and Ramadan are all behind us, we can look forward to the Feast of St. George, St. George’s Day on April 23, which is significant, particularly in the Orthodox tradition. And in May, the Jewish holiday of Lagba Omere comes up on May 4 and May 5. May 11th is Buddha Day in some Buddhist traditions. Later in May is Shavuot. AIDS comes up in late May and well, so many Saints days all the time, always a religious holiday somewhere on planet Earth. I’m Mark Oppenheimer, and this is Arc: The Podcast.

We’re a production of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. None of this would be possible. Well, it would be possible, but it wouldn’t be as good without the hard work of my Danforth Center colleagues, Debra Kennard, Sheri Pena, Abram Van Engen, Hannah Pierce, and more. Also, we cherish our interns, Sadie Davis-Suskind, Ezra Ellenbogan, Caroline Coffey, and Ben Esther. And I cherish first among equals my producer and editor, David Sugarman. Please make sure you’ve subscribed to the podcast. It really does help. Go on and rate us, give us a just crackerjack review because that too helps people find us in their algorithms. I’m Mark Oppenheimer. This is Arc: The Podcast. Till next time. Thank you for listening.