May 2, 2024 • 27 mins
In this episode, Naomi Schaefer Riley discusses her book 'No Way to Treat a Child' and the issues within the foster care system and family courts. She also talks about the challenges of writing and the importance of being a parent. The conversation touches on the cultural problems of drug addiction and the decline of American cities. Riley introduces her upcoming project on child maltreatment fatalities and the need for transparency in child welfare agencies. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on
iHeartRadio It's Funny. On Monday, I talked about bystanderism and
how I think it's among our really biggest cultural problems.
People stand by and don't do anything when something bad
is happening. Worse, they now stand around and film it.
(00:30):
And the example I gave was San Antonio Mayer. His
security guy was attacked while he was on camera. A
bunch of men stood around, didn't do anything. Again, they
called the police, but like they all could have taken
down the crazy guy, and they didn't do anything. They
just stood around and looked at it. I was thinking
(00:50):
about this and on Tuesday morning at UNC Chapel Hill,
these you know, pro Hamas protesters replace the American flag
with a Palestinian one on campus. I mean, it goes
without saying that I find this absolutely disgusting. It doesn't
matter how you feel about the Israel Palestinian conflict, it's
(01:13):
not about that. Replacing our country's flag with any other
flag is just sickening and worse. The American flag had
actually been flying at half mast because four Charlotte officers
who were killed in the line of duty. The day before,
so it was just extra extra gross to me. So
(01:34):
the Chancellor of UNC actually did the right thing. He
called in law enforcement officers to return the American flag
to its place, but the activist babies tried to remove
it again, and a group of frat guys stepped in
and protected the flag. Student Guillermo Estrata tweeted out, quote,
today was a sad yet empowering day at Chapel Hill.
(01:56):
When I walked to class, I saw the Palestinian flag
raised on our quad flag pole and was immediately upset
at the act that these protesters had made. I cannot
say I am fully educated on the Israel Palestinian conflict,
but it upset me that my country's flag was disrespected
in order to advocate for another end quote. I mean,
that's exactly it. You don't have to even comment on
(02:18):
the conflict to say no other flag should be flying
above your college campus. Guermo and some other boys stepped in,
and people were screaming at them and throwing things at
them and generally were harassing them, but they wouldn't stop
until the American flag was up. It became a giant story.
I mean, all over the country, all these news outlets
(02:40):
picked it up. I think America really needed to see
someone defend the flag, defend our country, openly love our country.
And there has been just such an outpouring of support
for these boys. Someone started to gofund me and it
was kind of jokey. It was you to throw a party,
and last I checked, the goalfundme was at two hundred
(03:03):
and seventeen thousand dollars. I mean, that's going to be
a wild rager. I just love seeing the country so
invested in this story. And I do think it's because
we've gotten so used to people not stepping in, and
it's just so nice to see heroes like this. I
really hope it spurs more people to take action when
(03:26):
they see something bad being done, be a hero step in.
Coming up next, an interview with Naomi Shaeffer Riley. Join
us after the break. Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz
Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Naomi Riley, Senior
Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Independent Women's Forum.
(03:49):
Her latest book is called No Way to Treat a Child.
How the foster care system, family courts, and racial activists
are wrecking Young Lives. The book is sold anywhere you
buy your books. Check it out. Hi, Naomi, So nice
to have you on.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Hey, Carol, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
You know, I see you as like this very sunny
person and I know you cover you know, some really
dark topics. Like whenever I see you, you know, you're
very smiling and we're always like I'm always happy to
see you. I don't know, I don't know if the
feeling is a mutual, but I always see you and
like you're like, you know, this like little ray of sunshine,
(04:26):
but you really do get into some deep dark stuff.
How do you manage that?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
So probably the first thing that I did that was
kind of really down this rabbit hole was a book
I wrote about American Indians a few years ago, and
I traveled to a lot of reservations, like really depressed
areas and just shocking things about child abuse and violence.
And I have to say it was like very disconcerting
(04:53):
to just sort of come back to my nice New
York suburb and like go to pta meetings and like
pretend that the problems that we have or anywhere close
to these. But you know, I think, like, you know,
I don't you know, for bedtime reading, like I read
very you know, silly, cheesy beach novels, like I can't
(05:13):
do this stuff after a certain hour of the day.
But it's hard sometimes, like I think it really is depressing.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
What did you find most interesting about writing your last book?
Is there anything surprising in it that you didn't expect
to find?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
So, I mean the child welfare stuff I actually got
into because I wrote this book about American Indians, they
have some of the worst outcomes in the country in
terms of child abuse and neglect. I think what I
was most surprised by and what led me to write
this book, No Way to Treat a Child, was that
our child welfare system really isn't oriented around the needs
of children. It's really oriented around the needs and desires
(05:52):
of adults. And maybe that's not surprising because obviously adults
are much better at talking and explaining themselves than children are.
But we have this whole system and systems in each
one of the states, and it seems like what we've
decided is that, you know, we care much more about
kind of you know, if parents are addicted to drugs
or have severe mental illness, like, we care much more about,
(06:14):
you know, rehabilitating them, even at the cost of kind
of leaving children in some fairly dangerous situations. So I
think that was that was just shocking to me, Like
as an ordinary citizen who didn't really think a lot
about the child welfare system before this, I thought, well,
you know, these are people who you know care most
about kids and are centering needs of kids, and they're not.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Interesting because yeah, I think I definitely think like, oh,
they're doing their best, and you know, I'm sure I yes,
I would absolutely think that they're centering the needs of kids,
Like what else is.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
The point of their work.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
It's also, you know, I find myself saying the title
of your book before this one, be the parent whenever
somebody's like, you know, how do I get my kids
to not be on their phone so much? And I'm like,
be the parent, parent and say no. And I you know,
a lot of times like people will be like, you know,
it's like heroin addiction these phones, I'm like, it's really not.
(07:07):
It's really not like heroin addiction because heroin you sell
everything you own to get the drug, and hear you
just cancel their phone and that's the end of that.
So not not exactly like Heroin Addiction.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, but be the Parent.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
I thought was a really clear, great title for a
book and really what parents should be aiming for. You're
not their friend, you're not their buddy. Yes, you can
have a friendly relationship, but be the parent. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And I do compare it to other things in the book,
not Heroin actually, but things like cake. Like I tell parents,
you know, your kids would really like to eat chocolate
cake for breakfast every morning, like, and if you let them,
well you know, I mean, let's say you let them
like once every couple of weeks, they're going to badger
you endlessly to do it every single day. And so
(07:58):
you have to ask yourself, like, what am I doing
differently here, Like I'm giving in on the technology all
the time, or enough that my kids think it's reasonable
for them to badger me. And so the question is like, well,
maybe if I treated this like chocolate cake and we
never have it for breakfast, nobody ever expects that you're
going to have a phone constantly. So I think it's
just getting parents to kind of they are the parent
(08:21):
in many contexts and just sort of getting them to
apply it a little bit more in other context especially technology.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, I feel like here's parents say so often like
butt all their friends do it or all their friends
have it like I, and I just is mind boggling
to me, because I you know, obviously, I think our
generation we were raised with the idea of like, well,
if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you
jump off a bridge?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
But now the Brooklyn Bridge, particularly.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
The parents making that argument on their own, like not
even like the kid being like all my friends have it,
but the parent saying I don't want my kids to
be different from their friends. Look, Mike, kids are fourteen, eleven,
and eight, and they my older well, they all have
iPads that they play like games, but just not very often.
I mean we you know, we curtail it, but social
(09:10):
media and stuff, like my older daughter has it in
very limited quantities, and my sons don't have it at all.
And I don't care what your friends have. I don't
care if your friends are eight years old and on TikTok.
That's not happening in our house. And it's weird that
other parents find that difficult to say.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Well, I think you're right that a lot of parents
are even preempting their kids saying, you know, all my
friends have it like our generation is so determined that
our kids should never have to experience like being left
out or being hurt or anything like that, that we're
just going so far out of our way to even
make sure that that possibility is never there. And I think, yeah,
I mean it's just as part of growing up. Sometimes
(09:50):
you have things that other people have and don't have,
and sometimes they have things you don't have, and understanding
that like families are different, and you know, these are
all important lessons that I think or just failing to
pass on.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, and it's to the parents in particular, which is
what the weird part for me is. Yeah, I you know,
what would you think, Well, what would you say is
kind of the challenge of parenting today? Or is there
an overarching theme that you find in your work?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
So I think I sort of actually have to divide
America into kind of two different I think kids in
America have kind of two different kinds of kids with
two very different kinds of problems. So the stuff when
I write about child welfare, I'm really writing about a
group of kids who don't have parents, who are not parents,
who are helicoptering or anything like that. They are out
to lunch, they're you know, experiencing drug abuse or mental illness,
(10:41):
or they're just you know, not paying attention to parenting
in any way. And then there are a group of
parent kids into America who are clearly overparented and helicopter
parented and are prevented from you know, stunted in a
way that they don't grow up. The first group of
kids are growing up much too fast, and they you know,
eight year olds who have to behave like adults because
(11:02):
they're facing all of the pressures and the horrors of
adulthood early. And the other group of kids are sort
of infantilized. And so I think it's in that way,
it's kind of like hard to find a common theme
here because you know, obviously we all want some happy medium,
but these two groups of kids are facing really different challenges.
(11:24):
What would you.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Say is our largest cultural problem overall, not specifically relating
to children, Like, is there is there something societally that
you feel is our biggest issue. So increasingly I've come
to the view, I mean, let's take this or I mean,
a lot of people I think that I very much respect,
would say, like the breakdown of the family and I
think that's definitely true, probably just because of my work
(11:48):
and my perspective these days, I actually think it's drugs,
Like I think, you know, one hundred thousand overdoses a year,
Like we are increasingly seeing cases of like not only
rising prenatal exposure, but you know, children dying pediatric.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Poisonings of exposure to fentanyl. I just think it is
destroying relationships, destroying family relationships, certainly destroying just people's ability
to work, to operate, to find a purpose in life.
And I just I don't think we're taking it seriously enough.
And if anything, I think our culture has just become
(12:25):
far too accepting of this. I mean, it's some of
it is the legalization efforts, but some of it is
it's all just a big joke and it's really not
Is it solvable?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Do you think there's anything we can do? Is there
policy changes that can be made, or is it really
just cultural?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
There are definitely policy changes that should be made. I mean,
I think, you know, obviously, I spent some time in Portland,
Oregon last summer, and it was apocalyptic, I mean just
seeing people there. And the reason I went by the
way is that there are kids living in homeless encampments there.
So it's not just you know, adults who or like,
I'm making my own choices and I do whatever I want.
(13:03):
Just you know, people urinating, defecating on sidewalks, like not
being able to enforce any you know, any kind of
basic civility. You know on the streets. You know, people
just overdosing left and right and by the way, like
you know, there are empty shelter beds everywhere, and you
know courts that were sort of drug courts that were
(13:25):
supposed to sort of be non punitive avenues for people
to get help. Those have closed down too, because once
you sort of take away any kind of accountability, if
you can't arrest people or can't you know, do anything
to sort of force them into treatment, a drug addict
very rarely sort of says, ah, yes, I realized I
have this problem. I am going to hold myself accountable
(13:46):
and I am going to march myself into a rehab facility,
and I am going to state that just doesn't happen enough.
And so I think we need to reinsert accountability into this.
And also I think, you know, culturally, we need to
have some some different ideas about destruction that drugs are doing.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Is there something unique to Portland that makes that? Is
it policy? Is it?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Oh? Definitely, definitely policy, like made it absolutely you know,
kind of the horror show that it is now. I mean,
I think a lot of the people who voted for
Measure one ten, which you know, sort of did most
of the legalization there. And by the way, you know,
everything was legalized, you know, cocaine, heroin, whatever, it wasn't
just pot, you know, I think a lot of the
(14:27):
people who voted for that, you know, really sort of
took in this idea that you know, we want to
be non punitive and we don't want to like, you know,
just put these people in prison for having you know,
a little bit of cocaine on them. And the result was,
you know, we can't do anything. We can't we can't
even help them because you have to push people to
get help and they're not doing that anymore.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, that's depressing. I just feel like giving up our
you know, the cities in America, and I'm guilty of
it because I think of things like, oh, you know, Portland,
like they did it to themselves, Like I'm not going
to go visit I'm you know who cares about them.
But it's depressing that we do write off these American
cities because they've messed up so badly and they've done
(15:09):
such damage to themselves that we kind of don't see
a way out for them anymore. I don't know what
these cities can do to turn it around. I don't
think that they have the will to turn it around.
And you know, I often worry about New York. Obviously,
that's my kind of my only priority city wise. I
want New York to turn itself around. But places like Portland,
I just think like that's it for them. Do you
(15:31):
feel that way?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I think because I have hope for.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
New York, you know, I want. I feel like I
feel like New York can do it still. I feel
like New York could still find its path back to sanity.
We were there not that long ago.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I think the problem is it doesn't Yeah, it does
doesn't take very long to descend into a really bad
place with these cities, and it takes a long time
to pull them back up. And so you know, twenty
years ago, lots of people wanted to go to Portland
and it was a great place and you know, sure
(16:07):
and had its problems. It was a little crazy, but
it wasn't a place where you would as I you know,
found when I was there, Like I literally opened the
door to my hotel and there's a naked man, you know,
in a wheelchair riding by, Like, and you didn't want
to that, right, you know? Like what happened to get
us to that point? It didn't take that long for
the city to go that far down, but it is
(16:29):
going to take a long time. And part of the
problem is, of course, there are lots of people living
there who are like, I can't take this anymore. Then
you have the exodus of the same people, and you
know who was left to push for the changes that
you want.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, that's really the issue. I think in so many
of these places that people are saying I've had enough
and they're getting out, and who's there to fix it?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
It's not anybody who wants It's really hard.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
And yeah, so how many books have you written? I'm
trying to figure this out today? I am on because
quite a few.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
You're on seven or eight? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Do love it is it. I've written one, as you know,
and I don't know that I'm ever going to do another. One.
I find them so difficult.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I really love the research part and for all the
just about all the books I've written, I've done traveling.
I've you know, gotten to interview all sorts of interesting people,
and I've seen fascinating things, and I I love writing
sort of the short pieces along the way during my research.
You know, sitting down in a morning to like write
a seven thousand word chapter like definitely is not my
(17:33):
favorite thing. So and it's an easy part.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
That's like what I when I've come to realize that's
the easy part of writing a book. Like the writing
part is like is like is the fun part, which
seems like crazy at the time, But you know, the
editing and the touring and all of that, I just
don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I find probably the hardest part is just the organizing,
like figuring out what is the organizing principle of the book.
Once I sort of have that down, I feel like
it becomes much easier. But sitting down with just enormous
amounts of you know, of transcripts and recordings and recollections
and notes, it's just really hard to sort of figure out,
(18:12):
you know, where's this book going to start and where
is it going to end, and so that's yeah, what
I find the most taxing and the part where I
really feel like I need just you know, hours on
end to devote to this. Like I can't just sit down,
you know, I could sit down and write an op
ed in an hour, but you know, sitting down and
thinking about organizing a book is like, Okay, I need
(18:34):
to find a five hour chunk of time to start
thinking about this.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Do you feel like you've made it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I have a great life. I mean, I you know,
I get to write about all sorts of different topics
that interest me, and I've gone from topic to topic,
you know, I've managed to publish, you know, in lots
of papers and magazines that I really like. I've worked
with some amazing editors. I have you know, gotten philanthropic
support for the work that I've done, you know, and
(19:04):
I have a job that allows me to you know,
be home with my kids a lot too. So it's yeah,
absolutely awesome.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I had your husband on this show, Jason Riley, he's
heard journal. Yeah. Do you guys disagree on things? Is
there a political strife ever in the Riley household?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Oh, we definitely disagree on things, But I wouldn't say
it's like it's a sort of ideological disagreement. I mean,
I think there are sort of you know, particular issues,
like you know, we'll sit around talking about articles in
the paper, things like that, and yeah, I mean, you know,
talk about kind of the upsides and downsides of doing things.
I think a lot of the most you know, interesting
disagreements people have are sometimes you know, when they're starting
(19:48):
from kind of the same set of principles, and it's,
you know, something I found when I was in college.
I worked for a conservative paper, but the paper actually
included social conservatives, libertarians kind of like more traditional Republicans,
and you know, just listening to people sort of have
(20:10):
these interesting disagreements where they didn't start from kind of
different planets, I thought were some of the most productive
discussions that I heard.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
I love that, and I feel like we do it
a lot less on the right now. It's very personality driven.
I don't even know what a lot of people believe anymore.
I just know who they don't like and who they
don't talk to, and the factions.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
And yeah, I mean I think we need to sort
of ask ourselves, like, you know, if do we have
the same first principles. I mean, maybe people on the
right don't have the same first principles anymore, and that's
a that's a concern too. But you know, let's say
you start from the perspective of limited government. You know,
what does that mean for your opinion about any number
of issues? Like you know, do you do you what
(20:54):
does that even mean for your you know, for your
position on on marriage or abortion or you know, any
number of other things, right, you know, And for me,
I'm kind of always in this interesting position writing about
child welfare because I think, you know, for the most part,
a lot of conservatives start from the perspective of the
government is going to screw this up, and so you know,
but then I sort of say to people, well, you know,
(21:16):
in an ideal world, child welfare is acting much more
like law enforcement, which most conservatives think that we need
in some form or another. And so, yes, you're right, like, ideally,
you know, the government is not intervening in the day
to day workings of families. But you know, when when
children are being abused or severely neglected, someone has to
do something. And so how do you best, you know,
(21:39):
make that work? I mean, one of the earliest questions
that I asked about child welfare when I just started
thinking about it when I was much younger, was what
is the what is the broken windows theory of child welfare?
Because I want to understand, like we take it for granted,
like you know, law enforcement, police, that's a bureaucracy too,
Like how can we make this work better? Because it
(22:01):
has to be there.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. So you have a
project coming up with a AEI to help this along, right,
Can you tell us about it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
So I do a bunch of different things at AI,
do you know, events with people I do you know,
I have a working group there that's devoted to child welfare.
And on May second, we are going to be launching
a project on child maltreatment fatalities. So around two thousand
children each year and maybe many more are dying because
(22:37):
of the abuse or neglect at the hands of their caregivers.
So that's you know, if you're counting more than the
number of kids who are drowning every year, more than
the number of kids who are you know, caught in
you know, mass school shootings or any of these other
things that seem to be at the top of the
media priorities. And one thing that I think people really
(22:58):
don't understand is that the vast majority of those cases,
the families are already known to child welfare or to
law enforcement. Like we had a chance to do something,
and often we made some pretty poor decisions. But the
project itself is really devoted to counting these kids and
giving names and faces to these children who are often
(23:19):
forgotten about, and really trying to force states to be
more transparent about what is happening in these cases, you know,
and eventually try to understand the policies that have led
to some of these I think bad decisions on the
part of child welfare agencies.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Does the database have a name is does it have
any Yes?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yes, Well it's going to be at a website called
Livescutshort dot org, and so the database will be housed
within that.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Wow, it sounds like a really major project. It's interesting,
of course that there's you know, no such thing on
the government side already, which would have been you know,
the obvious thing, I think, to catalog and to count
all these kids so they don't get lost.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
So there is like I should say that. You know,
some some states count they count in all different ways.
They often count in ways that are a little bit lazy,
like they're not you know, uh, they're not taking account
of you know, they're they're classifying things that as accidents
that any reasonable person would say, we're not fully accidents.
(24:24):
States are doing it differently, and so the federal government,
you know, doesn't have a unified way of counting. And
and I just I think we're we're we seem to
be seriously undercounting. So there is some you know, government
attempt at this. I just don't think it's very good,
and I think people will be surprised at how bad
it is.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Wow. Well, I look forward to seeing it. I'm sure
it's going to do good because I think that something
something like that seems like an obvious thing that you know,
is necessary and I could see it, you know, leading
to good places for you.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
So, and here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can be like sunny Naomi, but you know,
doing the serious work at the same time, a tip
on how to best.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Improve their lives. So I tell my kids this is
my my my Okay, thanks Philosophy. So I often get
angry emails or emails that make me angry, or you know,
people who come up to me, but especially like a
lot of you get a lot of hate mail because
(25:30):
of who I am or just you know, comments or
things like that. And you know, sometimes it's because of
something I've written or because of something I said. Sometimes
it's just you know, typical sort of interpersonal conflicts that
you have with friends, extended family, whatever. And I started
quite a number of years ago deciding that I can
(25:51):
either write like my five paragraph angry response responding to
every single point here, or I can write back okay,
and I must drive them bananas.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It does.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
It absolutely does, and that's sort of an added benefit
for me that it drives them a little bit bananas.
But it sort of allows me to kind of put
a little on things and not waste a lot of
time having these back and forth with people who clearly,
you know, need to have the last word, and you know,
we'll just you know, I've taken it means I've taken
(26:29):
in what you've said, you know, and in many cases
I have, and I'm willing to sort of leave it there.
So anyway, that's my advice.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
I love that Okay, thanks, yeah, thanks so much for
coming on. Naomi. Check out her many books on sale
wherever you buy your book. The last one is called
No Way to Treat a Child and we're looking forward
to seeing your project at AEI. Thanks so much for
coming on. Thank you, thanks so much for joining us
on The Carol Marcowitz Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on
iHeartRadio It's Funny. On Monday, I talked about bystanderism and
how I think it's among our really biggest cultural problems.
People stand by and don't do anything when something bad
is happening. Worse, they now stand around and film it.
(00:30):
And the example I gave was San Antonio Mayer. His
security guy was attacked while he was on camera. A
bunch of men stood around, didn't do anything. Again, they
called the police, but like they all could have taken
down the crazy guy, and they didn't do anything. They
just stood around and looked at it. I was thinking
(00:50):
about this and on Tuesday morning at UNC Chapel Hill,
these you know, pro Hamas protesters replace the American flag
with a Palestinian one on campus. I mean, it goes
without saying that I find this absolutely disgusting. It doesn't
matter how you feel about the Israel Palestinian conflict, it's
(01:13):
not about that. Replacing our country's flag with any other
flag is just sickening and worse. The American flag had
actually been flying at half mast because four Charlotte officers
who were killed in the line of duty. The day before,
so it was just extra extra gross to me. So
(01:34):
the Chancellor of UNC actually did the right thing. He
called in law enforcement officers to return the American flag
to its place, but the activist babies tried to remove
it again, and a group of frat guys stepped in
and protected the flag. Student Guillermo Estrata tweeted out, quote,
today was a sad yet empowering day at Chapel Hill.
(01:56):
When I walked to class, I saw the Palestinian flag
raised on our quad flag pole and was immediately upset
at the act that these protesters had made. I cannot
say I am fully educated on the Israel Palestinian conflict,
but it upset me that my country's flag was disrespected
in order to advocate for another end quote. I mean,
that's exactly it. You don't have to even comment on
(02:18):
the conflict to say no other flag should be flying
above your college campus. Guermo and some other boys stepped in,
and people were screaming at them and throwing things at
them and generally were harassing them, but they wouldn't stop
until the American flag was up. It became a giant story.
I mean, all over the country, all these news outlets
(02:40):
picked it up. I think America really needed to see
someone defend the flag, defend our country, openly love our country.
And there has been just such an outpouring of support
for these boys. Someone started to gofund me and it
was kind of jokey. It was you to throw a party,
and last I checked, the goalfundme was at two hundred
(03:03):
and seventeen thousand dollars. I mean, that's going to be
a wild rager. I just love seeing the country so
invested in this story. And I do think it's because
we've gotten so used to people not stepping in, and
it's just so nice to see heroes like this. I
really hope it spurs more people to take action when
(03:26):
they see something bad being done, be a hero step in.
Coming up next, an interview with Naomi Shaeffer Riley. Join
us after the break. Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz
Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Naomi Riley, Senior
Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Independent Women's Forum.
(03:49):
Her latest book is called No Way to Treat a Child.
How the foster care system, family courts, and racial activists
are wrecking Young Lives. The book is sold anywhere you
buy your books. Check it out. Hi, Naomi, So nice
to have you on.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Hey, Carol, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
You know, I see you as like this very sunny
person and I know you cover you know, some really
dark topics. Like whenever I see you, you know, you're
very smiling and we're always like I'm always happy to
see you. I don't know, I don't know if the
feeling is a mutual, but I always see you and
like you're like, you know, this like little ray of sunshine,
(04:26):
but you really do get into some deep dark stuff.
How do you manage that?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
So probably the first thing that I did that was
kind of really down this rabbit hole was a book
I wrote about American Indians a few years ago, and
I traveled to a lot of reservations, like really depressed
areas and just shocking things about child abuse and violence.
And I have to say it was like very disconcerting
(04:53):
to just sort of come back to my nice New
York suburb and like go to pta meetings and like
pretend that the problems that we have or anywhere close
to these. But you know, I think, like, you know,
I don't you know, for bedtime reading, like I read
very you know, silly, cheesy beach novels, like I can't
(05:13):
do this stuff after a certain hour of the day.
But it's hard sometimes, like I think it really is depressing.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
What did you find most interesting about writing your last book?
Is there anything surprising in it that you didn't expect
to find?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
So, I mean the child welfare stuff I actually got
into because I wrote this book about American Indians, they
have some of the worst outcomes in the country in
terms of child abuse and neglect. I think what I
was most surprised by and what led me to write
this book, No Way to Treat a Child, was that
our child welfare system really isn't oriented around the needs
of children. It's really oriented around the needs and desires
(05:52):
of adults. And maybe that's not surprising because obviously adults
are much better at talking and explaining themselves than children are.
But we have this whole system and systems in each
one of the states, and it seems like what we've
decided is that, you know, we care much more about
kind of you know, if parents are addicted to drugs
or have severe mental illness, like, we care much more about,
(06:14):
you know, rehabilitating them, even at the cost of kind
of leaving children in some fairly dangerous situations. So I
think that was that was just shocking to me, Like
as an ordinary citizen who didn't really think a lot
about the child welfare system before this, I thought, well,
you know, these are people who you know care most
about kids and are centering needs of kids, and they're not.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Interesting because yeah, I think I definitely think like, oh,
they're doing their best, and you know, I'm sure I yes,
I would absolutely think that they're centering the needs of kids,
Like what else is.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
The point of their work.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
It's also, you know, I find myself saying the title
of your book before this one, be the parent whenever
somebody's like, you know, how do I get my kids
to not be on their phone so much? And I'm like,
be the parent, parent and say no. And I you know,
a lot of times like people will be like, you know,
it's like heroin addiction these phones, I'm like, it's really not.
(07:07):
It's really not like heroin addiction because heroin you sell
everything you own to get the drug, and hear you
just cancel their phone and that's the end of that.
So not not exactly like Heroin Addiction.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, but be the Parent.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
I thought was a really clear, great title for a
book and really what parents should be aiming for. You're
not their friend, you're not their buddy. Yes, you can
have a friendly relationship, but be the parent. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And I do compare it to other things in the book,
not Heroin actually, but things like cake. Like I tell parents,
you know, your kids would really like to eat chocolate
cake for breakfast every morning, like, and if you let them,
well you know, I mean, let's say you let them
like once every couple of weeks, they're going to badger
you endlessly to do it every single day. And so
(07:58):
you have to ask yourself, like, what am I doing
differently here, Like I'm giving in on the technology all
the time, or enough that my kids think it's reasonable
for them to badger me. And so the question is like, well,
maybe if I treated this like chocolate cake and we
never have it for breakfast, nobody ever expects that you're
going to have a phone constantly. So I think it's
just getting parents to kind of they are the parent
(08:21):
in many contexts and just sort of getting them to
apply it a little bit more in other context especially technology.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, I feel like here's parents say so often like
butt all their friends do it or all their friends
have it like I, and I just is mind boggling
to me, because I you know, obviously, I think our
generation we were raised with the idea of like, well,
if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you
jump off a bridge?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
But now the Brooklyn Bridge, particularly.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
The parents making that argument on their own, like not
even like the kid being like all my friends have it,
but the parent saying I don't want my kids to
be different from their friends. Look, Mike, kids are fourteen, eleven,
and eight, and they my older well, they all have
iPads that they play like games, but just not very often.
I mean we you know, we curtail it, but social
(09:10):
media and stuff, like my older daughter has it in
very limited quantities, and my sons don't have it at all.
And I don't care what your friends have. I don't
care if your friends are eight years old and on TikTok.
That's not happening in our house. And it's weird that
other parents find that difficult to say.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Well, I think you're right that a lot of parents
are even preempting their kids saying, you know, all my
friends have it like our generation is so determined that
our kids should never have to experience like being left
out or being hurt or anything like that, that we're
just going so far out of our way to even
make sure that that possibility is never there. And I think, yeah,
I mean it's just as part of growing up. Sometimes
(09:50):
you have things that other people have and don't have,
and sometimes they have things you don't have, and understanding
that like families are different, and you know, these are
all important lessons that I think or just failing to
pass on.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, and it's to the parents in particular, which is
what the weird part for me is. Yeah, I you know,
what would you think, Well, what would you say is
kind of the challenge of parenting today? Or is there
an overarching theme that you find in your work?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
So I think I sort of actually have to divide
America into kind of two different I think kids in
America have kind of two different kinds of kids with
two very different kinds of problems. So the stuff when
I write about child welfare, I'm really writing about a
group of kids who don't have parents, who are not parents,
who are helicoptering or anything like that. They are out
to lunch, they're you know, experiencing drug abuse or mental illness,
(10:41):
or they're just you know, not paying attention to parenting
in any way. And then there are a group of
parent kids into America who are clearly overparented and helicopter
parented and are prevented from you know, stunted in a
way that they don't grow up. The first group of
kids are growing up much too fast, and they you know,
eight year olds who have to behave like adults because
(11:02):
they're facing all of the pressures and the horrors of
adulthood early. And the other group of kids are sort
of infantilized. And so I think it's in that way,
it's kind of like hard to find a common theme
here because you know, obviously we all want some happy medium,
but these two groups of kids are facing really different challenges.
(11:24):
What would you.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Say is our largest cultural problem overall, not specifically relating
to children, Like, is there is there something societally that
you feel is our biggest issue. So increasingly I've come
to the view, I mean, let's take this or I mean,
a lot of people I think that I very much respect,
would say, like the breakdown of the family and I
think that's definitely true, probably just because of my work
(11:48):
and my perspective these days, I actually think it's drugs,
Like I think, you know, one hundred thousand overdoses a year,
Like we are increasingly seeing cases of like not only
rising prenatal exposure, but you know, children dying pediatric.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Poisonings of exposure to fentanyl. I just think it is
destroying relationships, destroying family relationships, certainly destroying just people's ability
to work, to operate, to find a purpose in life.
And I just I don't think we're taking it seriously enough.
And if anything, I think our culture has just become
(12:25):
far too accepting of this. I mean, it's some of
it is the legalization efforts, but some of it is
it's all just a big joke and it's really not
Is it solvable?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Do you think there's anything we can do? Is there
policy changes that can be made, or is it really
just cultural?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
There are definitely policy changes that should be made. I mean,
I think, you know, obviously, I spent some time in Portland,
Oregon last summer, and it was apocalyptic, I mean just
seeing people there. And the reason I went by the
way is that there are kids living in homeless encampments there.
So it's not just you know, adults who or like,
I'm making my own choices and I do whatever I want.
(13:03):
Just you know, people urinating, defecating on sidewalks, like not
being able to enforce any you know, any kind of
basic civility. You know on the streets. You know, people
just overdosing left and right and by the way, like
you know, there are empty shelter beds everywhere, and you
know courts that were sort of drug courts that were
(13:25):
supposed to sort of be non punitive avenues for people
to get help. Those have closed down too, because once
you sort of take away any kind of accountability, if
you can't arrest people or can't you know, do anything
to sort of force them into treatment, a drug addict
very rarely sort of says, ah, yes, I realized I
have this problem. I am going to hold myself accountable
(13:46):
and I am going to march myself into a rehab facility,
and I am going to state that just doesn't happen enough.
And so I think we need to reinsert accountability into this.
And also I think, you know, culturally, we need to
have some some different ideas about destruction that drugs are doing.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Is there something unique to Portland that makes that? Is
it policy? Is it?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Oh? Definitely, definitely policy, like made it absolutely you know,
kind of the horror show that it is now. I mean,
I think a lot of the people who voted for
Measure one ten, which you know, sort of did most
of the legalization there. And by the way, you know,
everything was legalized, you know, cocaine, heroin, whatever, it wasn't
just pot, you know, I think a lot of the
(14:27):
people who voted for that, you know, really sort of
took in this idea that you know, we want to
be non punitive and we don't want to like, you know,
just put these people in prison for having you know,
a little bit of cocaine on them. And the result was,
you know, we can't do anything. We can't we can't
even help them because you have to push people to
get help and they're not doing that anymore.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, that's depressing. I just feel like giving up our
you know, the cities in America, and I'm guilty of
it because I think of things like, oh, you know, Portland,
like they did it to themselves, Like I'm not going
to go visit I'm you know who cares about them.
But it's depressing that we do write off these American
cities because they've messed up so badly and they've done
(15:09):
such damage to themselves that we kind of don't see
a way out for them anymore. I don't know what
these cities can do to turn it around. I don't
think that they have the will to turn it around.
And you know, I often worry about New York. Obviously,
that's my kind of my only priority city wise. I
want New York to turn itself around. But places like Portland,
I just think like that's it for them. Do you
(15:31):
feel that way?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I think because I have hope for.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
New York, you know, I want. I feel like I
feel like New York can do it still. I feel
like New York could still find its path back to sanity.
We were there not that long ago.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I think the problem is it doesn't Yeah, it does
doesn't take very long to descend into a really bad
place with these cities, and it takes a long time
to pull them back up. And so you know, twenty
years ago, lots of people wanted to go to Portland
and it was a great place and you know, sure
(16:07):
and had its problems. It was a little crazy, but
it wasn't a place where you would as I you know,
found when I was there, Like I literally opened the
door to my hotel and there's a naked man, you know,
in a wheelchair riding by, Like, and you didn't want
to that, right, you know? Like what happened to get
us to that point? It didn't take that long for
the city to go that far down, but it is
(16:29):
going to take a long time. And part of the
problem is, of course, there are lots of people living
there who are like, I can't take this anymore. Then
you have the exodus of the same people, and you
know who was left to push for the changes that
you want.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, that's really the issue. I think in so many
of these places that people are saying I've had enough
and they're getting out, and who's there to fix it?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
It's not anybody who wants It's really hard.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
And yeah, so how many books have you written? I'm
trying to figure this out today? I am on because
quite a few.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
You're on seven or eight? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Do love it is it. I've written one, as you know,
and I don't know that I'm ever going to do another. One.
I find them so difficult.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I really love the research part and for all the
just about all the books I've written, I've done traveling.
I've you know, gotten to interview all sorts of interesting people,
and I've seen fascinating things, and I I love writing
sort of the short pieces along the way during my research.
You know, sitting down in a morning to like write
a seven thousand word chapter like definitely is not my
(17:33):
favorite thing. So and it's an easy part.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
That's like what I when I've come to realize that's
the easy part of writing a book. Like the writing
part is like is like is the fun part, which
seems like crazy at the time, But you know, the
editing and the touring and all of that, I just
don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I find probably the hardest part is just the organizing,
like figuring out what is the organizing principle of the book.
Once I sort of have that down, I feel like
it becomes much easier. But sitting down with just enormous
amounts of you know, of transcripts and recordings and recollections
and notes, it's just really hard to sort of figure out,
(18:12):
you know, where's this book going to start and where
is it going to end, and so that's yeah, what
I find the most taxing and the part where I
really feel like I need just you know, hours on
end to devote to this. Like I can't just sit down,
you know, I could sit down and write an op
ed in an hour, but you know, sitting down and
thinking about organizing a book is like, Okay, I need
(18:34):
to find a five hour chunk of time to start
thinking about this.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Do you feel like you've made it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I have a great life. I mean, I you know,
I get to write about all sorts of different topics
that interest me, and I've gone from topic to topic,
you know, I've managed to publish, you know, in lots
of papers and magazines that I really like. I've worked
with some amazing editors. I have you know, gotten philanthropic
support for the work that I've done, you know, and
(19:04):
I have a job that allows me to you know,
be home with my kids a lot too. So it's yeah,
absolutely awesome.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I had your husband on this show, Jason Riley, he's
heard journal. Yeah. Do you guys disagree on things? Is
there a political strife ever in the Riley household?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Oh, we definitely disagree on things, But I wouldn't say
it's like it's a sort of ideological disagreement. I mean,
I think there are sort of you know, particular issues,
like you know, we'll sit around talking about articles in
the paper, things like that, and yeah, I mean, you know,
talk about kind of the upsides and downsides of doing things.
I think a lot of the most you know, interesting
disagreements people have are sometimes you know, when they're starting
(19:48):
from kind of the same set of principles, and it's,
you know, something I found when I was in college.
I worked for a conservative paper, but the paper actually
included social conservatives, libertarians kind of like more traditional Republicans,
and you know, just listening to people sort of have
(20:10):
these interesting disagreements where they didn't start from kind of
different planets, I thought were some of the most productive
discussions that I heard.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
I love that, and I feel like we do it
a lot less on the right now. It's very personality driven.
I don't even know what a lot of people believe anymore.
I just know who they don't like and who they
don't talk to, and the factions.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
And yeah, I mean I think we need to sort
of ask ourselves, like, you know, if do we have
the same first principles. I mean, maybe people on the
right don't have the same first principles anymore, and that's
a that's a concern too. But you know, let's say
you start from the perspective of limited government. You know,
what does that mean for your opinion about any number
of issues? Like you know, do you do you what
(20:54):
does that even mean for your you know, for your
position on on marriage or abortion or you know, any
number of other things, right, you know, And for me,
I'm kind of always in this interesting position writing about
child welfare because I think, you know, for the most part,
a lot of conservatives start from the perspective of the
government is going to screw this up, and so you know,
but then I sort of say to people, well, you know,
(21:16):
in an ideal world, child welfare is acting much more
like law enforcement, which most conservatives think that we need
in some form or another. And so, yes, you're right, like, ideally,
you know, the government is not intervening in the day
to day workings of families. But you know, when when
children are being abused or severely neglected, someone has to
do something. And so how do you best, you know,
(21:39):
make that work? I mean, one of the earliest questions
that I asked about child welfare when I just started
thinking about it when I was much younger, was what
is the what is the broken windows theory of child welfare?
Because I want to understand, like we take it for granted,
like you know, law enforcement, police, that's a bureaucracy too,
Like how can we make this work better? Because it
(22:01):
has to be there.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. So you have a
project coming up with a AEI to help this along, right,
Can you tell us about it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
So I do a bunch of different things at AI,
do you know, events with people I do you know,
I have a working group there that's devoted to child welfare.
And on May second, we are going to be launching
a project on child maltreatment fatalities. So around two thousand
children each year and maybe many more are dying because
(22:37):
of the abuse or neglect at the hands of their caregivers.
So that's you know, if you're counting more than the
number of kids who are drowning every year, more than
the number of kids who are you know, caught in
you know, mass school shootings or any of these other
things that seem to be at the top of the
media priorities. And one thing that I think people really
(22:58):
don't understand is that the vast majority of those cases,
the families are already known to child welfare or to
law enforcement. Like we had a chance to do something,
and often we made some pretty poor decisions. But the
project itself is really devoted to counting these kids and
giving names and faces to these children who are often
(23:19):
forgotten about, and really trying to force states to be
more transparent about what is happening in these cases, you know,
and eventually try to understand the policies that have led
to some of these I think bad decisions on the
part of child welfare agencies.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Does the database have a name is does it have
any Yes?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yes, Well it's going to be at a website called
Livescutshort dot org, and so the database will be housed
within that.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Wow, it sounds like a really major project. It's interesting,
of course that there's you know, no such thing on
the government side already, which would have been you know,
the obvious thing, I think, to catalog and to count
all these kids so they don't get lost.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
So there is like I should say that. You know,
some some states count they count in all different ways.
They often count in ways that are a little bit lazy,
like they're not you know, uh, they're not taking account
of you know, they're they're classifying things that as accidents
that any reasonable person would say, we're not fully accidents.
(24:24):
States are doing it differently, and so the federal government,
you know, doesn't have a unified way of counting. And
and I just I think we're we're we seem to
be seriously undercounting. So there is some you know, government
attempt at this. I just don't think it's very good,
and I think people will be surprised at how bad
it is.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Wow. Well, I look forward to seeing it. I'm sure
it's going to do good because I think that something
something like that seems like an obvious thing that you know,
is necessary and I could see it, you know, leading
to good places for you.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
So, and here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can be like sunny Naomi, but you know,
doing the serious work at the same time, a tip
on how to best.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Improve their lives. So I tell my kids this is
my my my Okay, thanks Philosophy. So I often get
angry emails or emails that make me angry, or you know,
people who come up to me, but especially like a
lot of you get a lot of hate mail because
(25:30):
of who I am or just you know, comments or
things like that. And you know, sometimes it's because of
something I've written or because of something I said. Sometimes
it's just you know, typical sort of interpersonal conflicts that
you have with friends, extended family, whatever. And I started
quite a number of years ago deciding that I can
(25:51):
either write like my five paragraph angry response responding to
every single point here, or I can write back okay,
and I must drive them bananas.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It does.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
It absolutely does, and that's sort of an added benefit
for me that it drives them a little bit bananas.
But it sort of allows me to kind of put
a little on things and not waste a lot of
time having these back and forth with people who clearly,
you know, need to have the last word, and you know,
we'll just you know, I've taken it means I've taken
(26:29):
in what you've said, you know, and in many cases
I have, and I'm willing to sort of leave it there.
So anyway, that's my advice.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
I love that Okay, thanks, yeah, thanks so much for
coming on. Naomi. Check out her many books on sale
wherever you buy your book. The last one is called
No Way to Treat a Child and we're looking forward
to seeing your project at AEI. Thanks so much for
coming on. Thank you, thanks so much for joining us
on The Carol Marcowitz Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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