June 13, 2024 • 29 mins
In this episode, Noah Pollack discusses his perspective on living in Los Angeles, the influence of unions in California politics, and the challenges of staying and fighting in a blue state. He emphasizes the importance of leaving for a red state for a better quality of life and education for children. Noah also delves into the rise of the left and the need for conservatives to protect and build institutions. He highlights secularism as a major cultural problem and advocates for gratitude and a conservative mindset. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Listeners of this show know I ask three questions of
all my guests. I ask what they think the largest
cultural issue is, and sometimes I side ask whether they
think it's solvable. I ask whether they think they've made
it whatever that means to them, and I ask them
(00:30):
to suggest a tip for better living. I'm planning to
switch up these three questions when I hit the one
year anniversary of this podcast in October, and I'm taking
listener suggestions for what the new questions might be. Email
me at Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com, k
A r O L M A r KO WI c
(00:51):
AS and Charlie Zas and Zebra Show at gmail dot com.
In the meantime, I've been thinking that it's graduation season,
and so to combine two of my questions on making
it and on better living, I would give this piece
of advice to graduates help everyone who asks. A lot
(01:11):
of people whoard resources or think that helping other people
career rise will somehow hurt them. Anytime anyone asks me
for an editor contact or a producer contact, or just
asking for advice on how to pitch something or who
to send an article to, I help them. It doesn't
(01:31):
matter who. I really believe doing this is good for everyone.
You never know who will have potential to help you
along the way. But don't do it just for that.
Do it because helping other people in their careers is
the right thing to do. We're supposed to help each other,
especially for those just starting out. But I have to
say that so many people who I have helped along
(01:53):
the way have also helped me. I have a lot
of flaws, but the one I don't have is jealous
I just don't consider that when someone else has something
that means I can't have it. Don't get me wrong.
I can be very petty when someone messages me, for example,
to share their work, and then I see that they
don't follow me. That's basically always a delete. Like I said,
(02:17):
I'm not perfect. But helping other writers who do follow
me get their work published or get on TV, or
giving them advice, I'm very into all of it. If
you're just getting into your field, try to help as
many people as possible along the way. It always comes
back to you. Coming up next an interview with Noah Pollock.
(02:37):
Join us after the break. Welcome back to the Carol
Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Noah Pollock.
Noah has written for Freebeacon, Commentary, National Review, Wall Street Journal,
and many others. He appears occasionally on Fox News, Megan
Kelly and other fine programs like this one. He's an
(03:00):
active and fun Twitter follow at Noah Pollock. He lives,
for some reason, in Los Angeles with his wife and children.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Hi, Noah, Hey there, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
So nice to have you on. And why do you
live in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
It's a woman took me out here. My wife grew
up here and and so this was this was you know,
with little kids, her family's here, and we have little kids,
and so it became it was just much easier to
be out here. And it turned out that I'm largely
able to do my job from here. And so, yeah,
we live in West l A. And not for not
(03:39):
for necessarily too much longer, but but we're going to
be part of the exodus of people leaving California for
Red State. Awesome, partly partly due to your influence, good good,
and but yeah, we're so for the past several years,
you know, I don't know, seven years we've been out
here and it's fine. The weather's nice.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I'll say that the weather is nice. And the food.
I like the food in la I think it's very
fresh and innovative. So there's definitely pluses to being there.
I had Alicia Krauss on the show, and she really
doesn't like that I convince people to leave places like
California and move to Red states because she thinks, you know,
you need to stay and fight, which you know, a
(04:24):
perspective I totally understand, but life is short, and you
got to.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Get the problem with California is that, you know, the
Democratic Party doesn't actually run the state. The Democratic Party
is a facade for the people who do run the state,
which is the unions. California has an incredibly dominant public
sector unions here and they really own the Democrats and
pretty much, you know, most of what you see the
Democrats doing in California are is at the behest of
(04:51):
the unions, and it's like not a fair fight. And
the other problem with this idea of like staying in
and fighting is that today there's so much internal migration
in the United States that you're not like the good
people who would be your allies in that fight are
they've left. And so the actual numbers, like the people
leaving California to move to Texas and Florida and Tennessee
(05:14):
and places like that, they're not progressives, they're Republicans. So
you have like this ever kind of you. You're in
this like death spiral demographically, and so I have zero
interest in staying and fighting. California will be a state
that is run like New York is by the unions
and the left, and the good people and the kind
of reasonable people will leave and it's going to be
(05:36):
one of those things where like, well, the last person
who leaves California turn the lights off. You know it's
going to be right. I love political fights, That's what
I do for a living, But I have zero interest
in staying and fighting in a place like California.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Right, especially again, when you have kids, like there's only
so much time to give them the kind of childhood
that you want them to have, and you you kind
of want to get them to a place of sanity.
I speak from experience on this, and things really do improve.
And you know, I'm glad to hear that you're moving
in that direction.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
It's also it's also with the kids. It's like it's
the expense. I mean you can LAUSD is the second
biggest school district in the country. They have an eight
billion dollar a year budget. It's more than most states,
and the quality of the public schools in Los Angeles
County is abysmal. Your kids do not get an education here.
(06:27):
I mean, forget all the woke stuff. They just don't
get an education. So unless you really don't care that
your kids are going to basically be illiterate when they
graduate high.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
School, I care. I kind of care about that.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Which I care about. You have to send your kids
to a private school. Private school in West la is
like forty five grande a year, right, that's post tax
that is not deductible money, Like if you have more
than one kid or any kids. It's also just enormously expensive.
I mean, if you're putting three kids through like private school,
it's one hundred and fifty grade a year. Like it's untenable.
(06:58):
This is what they believe.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, it's funny because I think people are from New
York are listening to this and like being like only
forty five thousand, it's like sixty five I.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Think there's seventy, there's a few more.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
You know, so what kind of stuff do you enjoy covering?
Like what do you what do you most like to
write about and talk about.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I sort of what I'm fascinated by is the the
kind of the way that the left has managed, incredibly successfully,
especially over the last thirty years, to take over the
most important institutions of our society and to kind of
(07:39):
turn those institutions into entities that advance leftist political power.
I sort of find the left fascinating, like on a
psychological level of you know, why do you want to
destroy something that's so that works so well, that's so
rare in the history, that's so such a a little
(08:01):
garden of paradise that we have here called the United
States of America, where you can live a life that
ninety nine point nine percent of people throughout human history
could never have even imagined how beautiful this could be.
And they really do want to come in. And basically
I think there's like a weird like impulse of destruction
(08:24):
alone progresses today and it's like a cult of destruction.
And so I, you know, the work that I do
is trying to come up with creative policy ideas to
stop that, to turn back the tide, to figure out
ways that conservatives can protect these institutions or build new institutions.
(08:45):
There's this like one of the things that's difficult is
the kind of ongoing basic imbalance and mentality. But in
this fight between the left and the right, where on
the right conservatives generally just want to be left alone,
Like we don't actually want to be having like revolutionary
political battles of live for this. This is like what
(09:07):
they get up in the morning. This is what they
want to do. And so like for the schools, you know,
to take like K through twelve education is a perfect
example of this. The reason why the left is able
to take over the schools while the rest of us
are kind of sleeping. It's not because conservatives are lazy
or dumb or anything like that. It's the conservatives are normal,
(09:31):
and we don't actually live our lives waking up in
the morning thinking like, oh, we need to like we
want to we need to teach fourth graders about you know,
systemic racism. So let's take over the school board, let's
take over the curriculum, let's take over the So like
there's this there's this inherent imbalance we have, and that's
(09:51):
that's a that's a very hard baked in problem. They
want to change everything, we don't.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, and the people who want to change everything in
our mo to do that are obviously on this march
through our institutions where we're mostly like stop, please, no, right,
it's tough.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Now, you get this, you really. I think we're witnessing
like this phenomenon where the people who want to change
things actually have a huge kind of built in advantage
for sure over the people who don't want to change things,
because the people who don't want to change things generally
don't catch on to what's happening until it's too late.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
And so many normal like I'm not even you know,
I'm saying normal as a not very political people don't
know that it's happening at all. Like, right, I think
a lot of people woke up during the pandemic, but
I think a lot of other people just still don't know,
still don't know what's going on, And there was such
a difference in the pandemic. I think, like you know,
it's partly the migration thing. I think that people conservative
(10:54):
or moderate people are leaving these Blue states because they
saw something during the pandemic. But in Red states, for example,
where schools did reopen, parents didn't quite see what was
going on in their schools. And even in Red states,
the left has managed to take over the school boards
and take over the curriculums and all of that. And
so when I speak to audiences, I find it much
(11:17):
harder to convince Red state audiences that this is happening
because they kind of still feel safe in their local
schools and et cetera.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
This is like the Jesse Kelly point about the normy norms,
and no, it's totally true. And it's funny because you know,
you always hear like, you know, I talked to a
lot of people who were either leaving Blue states or
you know, people friends in Red states, and the concern
is always, you know, don't California, my Texas, and I like,
(11:48):
I view the Red state Republicans as being soft complacent,
like when I show up, when me and my family
show up wherever we're going to show up, like we're
coming in guns blazing from the right, right, Yeah, we're
coming in hot, Like this is weird, like the I'm
shocked at. For example, Texas has been a trifecta Republican state,
(12:14):
meaning the Republicans have the governor at the House and
the Senate. In Texas since two thousand and three, twenty
one years, it has been a trifecta Republican state. You
would think that Texas would be like, you know, Nirvana
for conservatives, and it's actually surprising that in twenty one years,
how little in the realm of conservative policy reform has
(12:35):
gotten done. No choice, and it's probably done more in
a few years than Texas has in twenty state Republican
goops are complacent and they should not be. They should
be like the Florida like your home state, right.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
You know, I like that a lot, but yeah, you're
absolutely right. I think Texas is a great example of that.
Obviously they're a conservative state. They've done a lot, but
like they don't have school choice, Like how is that possible?
And I know Corey the Angels talks about this a lot.
It has to be, but how come its take it
so long? You have a top to bottom conservative government.
It should be there already, It's such an obvious thing.
(13:13):
But there's there's things that need to be kind of
overcome in order for these states to feel threatened, and
I should hope that they get there. But you know,
I've seen firsthand that it's it's tough to talk to
Red state audiences. They think like, oh, yeah, obviously it's
happening in New York and San Francisco, but not my school,
not my kids' school. And I'm like, your kids teacher
(13:35):
went to the same teacher's college that teaches Marxist textbooks.
Then my teachers, my kids school teacher went to in Brooklyn.
So you know, it's not you You're not safe here.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah, exactly, Like a part of it is. You know,
I've in my work, I've gotten to know some of
the governors and the It's interesting, you know, there's kind
of among a lot of Republican governors is like two
different mentalities. There's, on the one hand, the more like
desantist mentality of someone who is really has the foot
(14:09):
on the gas, has a very clear worldview, has like
firm ideological commitments toward you know, all of these these issues.
And then you have a lot of governors of Red
states who they're they're more a classic kind of politician
of the squeaky wheel, gets the de grease. They're not
(14:30):
there to shake things up. They're there to kind of
they're they're there for their biggest concern to the Yah, Yeah,
they're happy to be there, and their typical concerns are
just like, can I get through the legislative session without
too much craziness? Is the state economy? Good? Am I
bringing businesses in, which are all like very important things,
And I know I integrate, like the economy obviously is
super important. But you know, there are governors where you
(14:52):
kind of look at them and say, like, God, there's
so much you could be doing in your state, and
there's just not like energy there for it. And I
think part of it is because the people, to your
point and to many people's point of like red state
residents are like their states generally work pretty well and
they're pretty happy, and so no one's clamoring for change,
(15:13):
and so the governors don't do anything because no one's
no one's kind of pushing them. And it takes a
guy I like to stand this who really has that
sense of wanting to do something great and wanting to
reform the state, and it's just it's it's sadly candidates
like him are too rare. There really aren't enough of them.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What do you say
is our largest cultural problem?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I think kind of indisputably as secularism. I think everything
flows from that. If you go upstream of any issue
that most any issue, that problem that we have, within
a level or two, you get to the issue of secularism.
And by this, I don't mean you know, whether or
(16:06):
not someone goes to church a few times a year.
I mean, like on a deeper kind of cultural level,
and just the way that you see yourself in your
community in history, the basic where you get your values,
like what fills up the sort of internal void that
(16:27):
everyone has of how do I want to live my life?
What values do want? Do I want to impart to
my children? Where do I where do I find authority
in my life to help guide me? You know? And
and we have a across Western countries we have this
incredible growth of of of of secularism. And I think
(16:51):
it is that the lack of people placing themselves in
a religious context is what leads to the kind of
out aage season that we see now. There is now
like a regular feature of American life is these spasms
of like street protest. And in twenty twenty it was
BLM and it was George Floyd and then it was
COVID and you had people screaming at each other about masks.
(17:14):
Now it's Israel and you have all the people in
the streets about you know, Palestine and Gaza, and like
it's never the actual thing that they're they're they're doing that.
These are like quasi the protests that sort of the
cult of protest has become.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
And the climate change in between all of this, right,
every climate quality, climate change.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, it's like this is people who need to go
to church or who need to go to shol, but
they don't do that because they've convinced themselves that they're
ways too smart to do something as silly and old
fashioned as that. But they go to church and they
have all sorts of religious deserve. They have cash root, right,
they have a dietary laws, which is you know, locally
(17:55):
sourced organic farm to a table age free. You know
that's cush root, right, It's just secular cush roots. So
like you have these people where this void is filled
up with social media and phones and like wacky political
causes and anger, and it's having an incredibly terrible effect
(18:18):
on society. And that's just kind of I would say,
more in like the upper classes, but secularism also you know,
crime and education problems and all of these things like fatherlessness.
Another enormous, profound, profound problem that is upstream of so
many things is driven by secularism and by just the
(18:41):
collapse of people having basic, basic values. And I'm not
saying this is like a holy role or like we
go to show on Saturdays, and it's not about that
you have to become if you're Jewish you have to
become like black hat or something, or if you're Catholic
you have to go to Mass every day. But it's
more of like where you look to for values and authority.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Right, Yeah, they've replaced it. I mean it's still religion.
It's just a slightly different religion. But you could see
it they do. It's all the same custom kind of things.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Right. And if the other problem is like if you
have nothing to conserve, you will not be a conservative, right,
it shouldn't be a shock that people who don't have children,
that people who I don't you know, it's hard for
me to kind of wrap my head around it. But
(19:32):
but if you're not part of the kind of part
of society that has kids or who sees yourself one
day having kids, being married, having a family like kind
of being part of things, why why would you really
care about about conserving anything, the idea of changing the
(19:53):
fundamental nature of our society, our culture, our institutions. Okay, fine,
what does it matter. You don't have kids who are
going to be dealing with the consequences. So if we don't,
if people don't have something to conserve, they're not going
to be They're not going to have the mindset required
to be a conservative someone who respects, you know, being
careful about changing things.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Did you always want to be in politics? I?
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, I that's a good question. I briefly dabbled in
the idea of being an archaeologist.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
My follow up question was going to be like, well,
when you were talve, okay, but like, what would be
as plan be Like, if you weren't doing this, what
would you be doing?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
I would probably be do something with cars. I worked
as a car mechanic and through college, and that's like
my big hobby. I really like cars, and it's like
a but it's not. I've never found it enough that
I could really make it a career in terms of
my interest. But no, I basically, yeah, I basically have
always been a bit of a political junkie. More I
(21:00):
would say I started more in the ideas realm of
In college, I mainly studied constitutional law, and I just
thought I was going to go to law school and
made kind of areas like con law and UH and
political theory. Not that I'm any have any depth in
either of these things, but it's what I It's what
(21:22):
I mainly studied, and I really love the ideas and
I love the you know, understanding of the kind of
history of ideas and why do people in different eras
believe different things? And that kind of turned into you know,
the kind of work work I do now. But yeah,
I I always had a political and kind of justice
oriented mindset.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yes? And no. No, in the sense that you know,
the economic concept that you know, human wants are unlimited
is true, and you always want to make more money
and want to have more influence and have more achievements,
and you know, one of the frustrations of my line
of work and It's a very minor frustration. Really is like,
(22:09):
I work behind the scenes on a lot of different stuff,
and so I don't. There's things that happen, you know,
in the news that I had a you know, some
role in and you know, only a few people know,
so I don't, you know.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
But but does that feel satisfying? I feel like i'd
be so like, oh, I'm so powerful.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
I'm not powerful. But no, yeah, no I don't. Some
people like really want to be front and center and
they want to you know, I don't actually have much
of that kind of mindset, so I don't. But but no,
like you always want more enough, I have other things
I'd like to achieve. But the truth is that I
do feel that I've made it. I came from a
(22:53):
rural part of Romanic, grew up on a farm. Our
closest neighbors were half a mile away. My parents were
not in any way plugged into They left New York
City in the late sixties and kind of because they
wanted to not be in society. I think we're off
d early. Yeah, they just kind of wanted to be
(23:15):
like out like on their farm, you know. And so I,
you know, I operate now among some really amazing people.
And I when I was twenty or sixteen, like I
didn't even know the world that I work in now
even existed. I mean, I was a real Haye seed.
I didn't grow up with you know, jackets and ties.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
And any of this either.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, I mean I think you and I are kind
of similar in that. And you know, I didn't have
any family connections to any of this, and I kind
of stumbled my way into it. And I feel like
one of the luckiest guys on earth. I mean, the
people I get to work with are some of the best, smartest,
most effective people. I love my colleagues, I love the
(24:02):
work that I do, and I you know, I'm a
I'm a very I think one of the keys to
happiness is being having gratitude. And typically what you see
of people who especially in this political context, where like
the protesters, the angry people, like they all clearly have
(24:23):
zero love or gratitude for really anything. They you can
see that they're they're very angry people. And I love
the work that I do, and so I'm yeah, I
in that sense, like I totally feel that I've made it,
like I couldn't. There's nothing else I really want to
want to do and so that to me, it's my
(24:45):
work is very satisfying to me. And so yeah, in
that sense, like I feel like I've got something incredible,
I've lucked out in a huge way.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I like that. Yeah, that's that's what we're supposed to be.
We're supposed to be grateful and happy about all of it. Fact,
you know, we never even heard of this field growing up.
I think that's something to that. Like ending up here
and feeling grateful to be here is a good feeling
to me.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
You know, politicians and you know, getting thoughts.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Get it, I know, but I don't know about getting
to meet politicians like they get to meet us.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Right, But you know what I mean, Like I never
would have thought when I was twenty at the University
of Vermont, you know, going to house parties that it
didn't it didn't occur to me that I could be
doing the kind of stuff i'm doing now, or that
I was capable of it, you know, or that they
had really even had the ability, and so you know,
(25:45):
it's it's it's it's exciting to me.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
So well. I love that. End here with your best
tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
This is a hard one, you know. I already mentioned
that I think having a a perspective on the world
of gratitude is the key to being not it's not
almost being happy. It's not an instrument. It's like it's
it's it's a truthful thing. It's a matter of being
actually like realistic about where you are in the world
(26:18):
and and the blessings that you have. I mean, if
you were in the Warsaw ghetto, one would not say, like, well,
the important thing is to be grateful, right, because people
have every reason yeah, not to if you were dying
of like the plague in the you know, Middle Ages
or something like that would be different. But like, thankfully,
that's not the world we live in. I think I
(26:39):
think that's very important. I think that there's too much,
especially among young people there there there there's too much
of an infatuation with new stuff, and new stuff is
almost always bad. New stuff is not cool, old stuff
(27:00):
is cool, and old stuff is typically best because if
something new was actually better, they would have thought of
it before, and they didn't think of it before, which
pretty much tells you that it's bad. And so just
the ways of living that you know, developed in little
increments over thousands of years of human history.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
You mean like ideas and not like dishwashers, because yeah,
but yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It's technology, Like you know, you don't need a I
don't know, like some device in your house that you
talk to that's like a computer that to turn the
lights on. Like I just think that that stuff is bad.
But yeah, I generally mean like ideas. You know, there
are so many like trendy ideas and fashionable causes and
latest things and new like hysterias. I mean, clout you
(27:52):
mentioned climate change. That's like a great one of like
you should basically feel that your life is doomed and
we're all going to die because some goof ball keep
saying it over and over again. That's an example of
like you should have an aversion to trendy new ideas.
They should be guilty until proven innocent in your eyes.
(28:13):
The old ways are typically the best ways, and the
old advice of like, you know, get married, have children,
have some religious involvement in a community. That's like a
good way of feeling that your life is happy and
actually genuinely being happy. That's that's like boring advice. It
happens to be great as it works, and the idea
(28:37):
that like you should in some way allow your thinking
or your life to be influenced by like the raving
lunatic twenty eight year old purple haired PhD in gender
studies who has decided five minutes ago that there's like
a you know, a gender spectrum, you know, and maybe
you're the wrong gender and that's what you should be
telling your kids or like this type of stuff. It's
(29:00):
like new things are generally bad and stupid, and I,
you know, other than all the normal things about you know,
ways to improve your life. But you know, that's my
only kind of that that that could be a good
way of looking at things. And I just look at
it that way because I'm commergingly and I just enjoy
(29:21):
hating new things because I'm like middle aged now and
and that's just part of.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
The fund on new things are bad. He is Noah Pollock.
Thank you so much, Noah, this has been really really great.
Thank you for having 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.
Listeners of this show know I ask three questions of
all my guests. I ask what they think the largest
cultural issue is, and sometimes I side ask whether they
think it's solvable. I ask whether they think they've made
it whatever that means to them, and I ask them
(00:30):
to suggest a tip for better living. I'm planning to
switch up these three questions when I hit the one
year anniversary of this podcast in October, and I'm taking
listener suggestions for what the new questions might be. Email
me at Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com, k
A r O L M A r KO WI c
(00:51):
AS and Charlie Zas and Zebra Show at gmail dot com.
In the meantime, I've been thinking that it's graduation season,
and so to combine two of my questions on making
it and on better living, I would give this piece
of advice to graduates help everyone who asks. A lot
(01:11):
of people whoard resources or think that helping other people
career rise will somehow hurt them. Anytime anyone asks me
for an editor contact or a producer contact, or just
asking for advice on how to pitch something or who
to send an article to, I help them. It doesn't
(01:31):
matter who. I really believe doing this is good for everyone.
You never know who will have potential to help you
along the way. But don't do it just for that.
Do it because helping other people in their careers is
the right thing to do. We're supposed to help each other,
especially for those just starting out. But I have to
say that so many people who I have helped along
(01:53):
the way have also helped me. I have a lot
of flaws, but the one I don't have is jealous
I just don't consider that when someone else has something
that means I can't have it. Don't get me wrong.
I can be very petty when someone messages me, for example,
to share their work, and then I see that they
don't follow me. That's basically always a delete. Like I said,
(02:17):
I'm not perfect. But helping other writers who do follow
me get their work published or get on TV, or
giving them advice, I'm very into all of it. If
you're just getting into your field, try to help as
many people as possible along the way. It always comes
back to you. Coming up next an interview with Noah Pollock.
(02:37):
Join us after the break. Welcome back to the Carol
Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Noah Pollock.
Noah has written for Freebeacon, Commentary, National Review, Wall Street Journal,
and many others. He appears occasionally on Fox News, Megan
Kelly and other fine programs like this one. He's an
(03:00):
active and fun Twitter follow at Noah Pollock. He lives,
for some reason, in Los Angeles with his wife and children.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Hi, Noah, Hey there, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
So nice to have you on. And why do you
live in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
It's a woman took me out here. My wife grew
up here and and so this was this was you know,
with little kids, her family's here, and we have little kids,
and so it became it was just much easier to
be out here. And it turned out that I'm largely
able to do my job from here. And so, yeah,
we live in West l A. And not for not
(03:39):
for necessarily too much longer, but but we're going to
be part of the exodus of people leaving California for
Red State. Awesome, partly partly due to your influence, good good,
and but yeah, we're so for the past several years,
you know, I don't know, seven years we've been out
here and it's fine. The weather's nice.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I'll say that the weather is nice. And the food.
I like the food in la I think it's very
fresh and innovative. So there's definitely pluses to being there.
I had Alicia Krauss on the show, and she really
doesn't like that I convince people to leave places like
California and move to Red states because she thinks, you know,
you need to stay and fight, which you know, a
(04:24):
perspective I totally understand, but life is short, and you
got to.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Get the problem with California is that, you know, the
Democratic Party doesn't actually run the state. The Democratic Party
is a facade for the people who do run the state,
which is the unions. California has an incredibly dominant public
sector unions here and they really own the Democrats and
pretty much, you know, most of what you see the
Democrats doing in California are is at the behest of
(04:51):
the unions, and it's like not a fair fight. And
the other problem with this idea of like staying in
and fighting is that today there's so much internal migration
in the United States that you're not like the good
people who would be your allies in that fight are
they've left. And so the actual numbers, like the people
leaving California to move to Texas and Florida and Tennessee
(05:14):
and places like that, they're not progressives, they're Republicans. So
you have like this ever kind of you. You're in
this like death spiral demographically, and so I have zero
interest in staying and fighting. California will be a state
that is run like New York is by the unions
and the left, and the good people and the kind
of reasonable people will leave and it's going to be
(05:36):
one of those things where like, well, the last person
who leaves California turn the lights off. You know it's
going to be right. I love political fights, That's what
I do for a living, But I have zero interest
in staying and fighting in a place like California.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Right, especially again, when you have kids, like there's only
so much time to give them the kind of childhood
that you want them to have, and you you kind
of want to get them to a place of sanity.
I speak from experience on this, and things really do improve.
And you know, I'm glad to hear that you're moving
in that direction.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
It's also it's also with the kids. It's like it's
the expense. I mean you can LAUSD is the second
biggest school district in the country. They have an eight
billion dollar a year budget. It's more than most states,
and the quality of the public schools in Los Angeles
County is abysmal. Your kids do not get an education here.
(06:27):
I mean, forget all the woke stuff. They just don't
get an education. So unless you really don't care that
your kids are going to basically be illiterate when they
graduate high.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
School, I care. I kind of care about that.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Which I care about. You have to send your kids
to a private school. Private school in West la is
like forty five grande a year, right, that's post tax
that is not deductible money, Like if you have more
than one kid or any kids. It's also just enormously expensive.
I mean, if you're putting three kids through like private school,
it's one hundred and fifty grade a year. Like it's untenable.
(06:58):
This is what they believe.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, it's funny because I think people are from New
York are listening to this and like being like only
forty five thousand, it's like sixty five I.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Think there's seventy, there's a few more.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
You know, so what kind of stuff do you enjoy covering?
Like what do you what do you most like to
write about and talk about.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I sort of what I'm fascinated by is the the
kind of the way that the left has managed, incredibly successfully,
especially over the last thirty years, to take over the
most important institutions of our society and to kind of
(07:39):
turn those institutions into entities that advance leftist political power.
I sort of find the left fascinating, like on a
psychological level of you know, why do you want to
destroy something that's so that works so well, that's so
rare in the history, that's so such a a little
(08:01):
garden of paradise that we have here called the United
States of America, where you can live a life that
ninety nine point nine percent of people throughout human history
could never have even imagined how beautiful this could be.
And they really do want to come in. And basically
I think there's like a weird like impulse of destruction
(08:24):
alone progresses today and it's like a cult of destruction.
And so I, you know, the work that I do
is trying to come up with creative policy ideas to
stop that, to turn back the tide, to figure out
ways that conservatives can protect these institutions or build new institutions.
(08:45):
There's this like one of the things that's difficult is
the kind of ongoing basic imbalance and mentality. But in
this fight between the left and the right, where on
the right conservatives generally just want to be left alone,
Like we don't actually want to be having like revolutionary
political battles of live for this. This is like what
(09:07):
they get up in the morning. This is what they
want to do. And so like for the schools, you know,
to take like K through twelve education is a perfect
example of this. The reason why the left is able
to take over the schools while the rest of us
are kind of sleeping. It's not because conservatives are lazy
or dumb or anything like that. It's the conservatives are normal,
(09:31):
and we don't actually live our lives waking up in
the morning thinking like, oh, we need to like we
want to we need to teach fourth graders about you know,
systemic racism. So let's take over the school board, let's
take over the curriculum, let's take over the So like
there's this there's this inherent imbalance we have, and that's
(09:51):
that's a that's a very hard baked in problem. They
want to change everything, we don't.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, and the people who want to change everything in
our mo to do that are obviously on this march
through our institutions where we're mostly like stop, please, no, right,
it's tough.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Now, you get this, you really. I think we're witnessing
like this phenomenon where the people who want to change
things actually have a huge kind of built in advantage
for sure over the people who don't want to change things,
because the people who don't want to change things generally
don't catch on to what's happening until it's too late.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
And so many normal like I'm not even you know,
I'm saying normal as a not very political people don't
know that it's happening at all. Like, right, I think
a lot of people woke up during the pandemic, but
I think a lot of other people just still don't know,
still don't know what's going on, And there was such
a difference in the pandemic. I think, like you know,
it's partly the migration thing. I think that people conservative
(10:54):
or moderate people are leaving these Blue states because they
saw something during the pandemic. But in Red states, for example,
where schools did reopen, parents didn't quite see what was
going on in their schools. And even in Red states,
the left has managed to take over the school boards
and take over the curriculums and all of that. And
so when I speak to audiences, I find it much
(11:17):
harder to convince Red state audiences that this is happening
because they kind of still feel safe in their local
schools and et cetera.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
This is like the Jesse Kelly point about the normy norms,
and no, it's totally true. And it's funny because you know,
you always hear like, you know, I talked to a
lot of people who were either leaving Blue states or
you know, people friends in Red states, and the concern
is always, you know, don't California, my Texas, and I like,
(11:48):
I view the Red state Republicans as being soft complacent,
like when I show up, when me and my family
show up wherever we're going to show up, like we're
coming in guns blazing from the right, right, Yeah, we're
coming in hot, Like this is weird, like the I'm
shocked at. For example, Texas has been a trifecta Republican state,
(12:14):
meaning the Republicans have the governor at the House and
the Senate. In Texas since two thousand and three, twenty
one years, it has been a trifecta Republican state. You
would think that Texas would be like, you know, Nirvana
for conservatives, and it's actually surprising that in twenty one years,
how little in the realm of conservative policy reform has
(12:35):
gotten done. No choice, and it's probably done more in
a few years than Texas has in twenty state Republican
goops are complacent and they should not be. They should
be like the Florida like your home state, right.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
You know, I like that a lot, but yeah, you're
absolutely right. I think Texas is a great example of that.
Obviously they're a conservative state. They've done a lot, but
like they don't have school choice, Like how is that possible?
And I know Corey the Angels talks about this a lot.
It has to be, but how come its take it
so long? You have a top to bottom conservative government.
It should be there already, It's such an obvious thing.
(13:13):
But there's there's things that need to be kind of
overcome in order for these states to feel threatened, and
I should hope that they get there. But you know,
I've seen firsthand that it's it's tough to talk to
Red state audiences. They think like, oh, yeah, obviously it's
happening in New York and San Francisco, but not my school,
not my kids' school. And I'm like, your kids teacher
(13:35):
went to the same teacher's college that teaches Marxist textbooks.
Then my teachers, my kids school teacher went to in Brooklyn.
So you know, it's not you You're not safe here.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah, exactly, Like a part of it is. You know,
I've in my work, I've gotten to know some of
the governors and the It's interesting, you know, there's kind
of among a lot of Republican governors is like two
different mentalities. There's, on the one hand, the more like
desantist mentality of someone who is really has the foot
(14:09):
on the gas, has a very clear worldview, has like
firm ideological commitments toward you know, all of these these issues.
And then you have a lot of governors of Red
states who they're they're more a classic kind of politician
of the squeaky wheel, gets the de grease. They're not
(14:30):
there to shake things up. They're there to kind of
they're they're there for their biggest concern to the Yah, Yeah,
they're happy to be there, and their typical concerns are
just like, can I get through the legislative session without
too much craziness? Is the state economy? Good? Am I
bringing businesses in, which are all like very important things,
And I know I integrate, like the economy obviously is
super important. But you know, there are governors where you
(14:52):
kind of look at them and say, like, God, there's
so much you could be doing in your state, and
there's just not like energy there for it. And I
think part of it is because the people, to your
point and to many people's point of like red state
residents are like their states generally work pretty well and
they're pretty happy, and so no one's clamoring for change,
(15:13):
and so the governors don't do anything because no one's
no one's kind of pushing them. And it takes a
guy I like to stand this who really has that
sense of wanting to do something great and wanting to
reform the state, and it's just it's it's sadly candidates
like him are too rare. There really aren't enough of them.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What do you say
is our largest cultural problem?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I think kind of indisputably as secularism. I think everything
flows from that. If you go upstream of any issue
that most any issue, that problem that we have, within
a level or two, you get to the issue of secularism.
And by this, I don't mean you know, whether or
(16:06):
not someone goes to church a few times a year.
I mean, like on a deeper kind of cultural level,
and just the way that you see yourself in your
community in history, the basic where you get your values,
like what fills up the sort of internal void that
(16:27):
everyone has of how do I want to live my life?
What values do want? Do I want to impart to
my children? Where do I where do I find authority
in my life to help guide me? You know? And
and we have a across Western countries we have this
incredible growth of of of of secularism. And I think
(16:51):
it is that the lack of people placing themselves in
a religious context is what leads to the kind of
out aage season that we see now. There is now
like a regular feature of American life is these spasms
of like street protest. And in twenty twenty it was
BLM and it was George Floyd and then it was
COVID and you had people screaming at each other about masks.
(17:14):
Now it's Israel and you have all the people in
the streets about you know, Palestine and Gaza, and like
it's never the actual thing that they're they're they're doing that.
These are like quasi the protests that sort of the
cult of protest has become.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
And the climate change in between all of this, right,
every climate quality, climate change.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, it's like this is people who need to go
to church or who need to go to shol, but
they don't do that because they've convinced themselves that they're
ways too smart to do something as silly and old
fashioned as that. But they go to church and they
have all sorts of religious deserve. They have cash root, right,
they have a dietary laws, which is you know, locally
(17:55):
sourced organic farm to a table age free. You know
that's cush root, right, It's just secular cush roots. So
like you have these people where this void is filled
up with social media and phones and like wacky political
causes and anger, and it's having an incredibly terrible effect
(18:18):
on society. And that's just kind of I would say,
more in like the upper classes, but secularism also you know,
crime and education problems and all of these things like fatherlessness.
Another enormous, profound, profound problem that is upstream of so
many things is driven by secularism and by just the
(18:41):
collapse of people having basic, basic values. And I'm not
saying this is like a holy role or like we
go to show on Saturdays, and it's not about that
you have to become if you're Jewish you have to
become like black hat or something, or if you're Catholic
you have to go to Mass every day. But it's
more of like where you look to for values and authority.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Right, Yeah, they've replaced it. I mean it's still religion.
It's just a slightly different religion. But you could see
it they do. It's all the same custom kind of things.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Right. And if the other problem is like if you
have nothing to conserve, you will not be a conservative, right,
it shouldn't be a shock that people who don't have children,
that people who I don't you know, it's hard for
me to kind of wrap my head around it. But
(19:32):
but if you're not part of the kind of part
of society that has kids or who sees yourself one
day having kids, being married, having a family like kind
of being part of things, why why would you really
care about about conserving anything, the idea of changing the
(19:53):
fundamental nature of our society, our culture, our institutions. Okay, fine,
what does it matter. You don't have kids who are
going to be dealing with the consequences. So if we don't,
if people don't have something to conserve, they're not going
to be They're not going to have the mindset required
to be a conservative someone who respects, you know, being
careful about changing things.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Did you always want to be in politics? I?
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, I that's a good question. I briefly dabbled in
the idea of being an archaeologist.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
My follow up question was going to be like, well,
when you were talve, okay, but like, what would be
as plan be Like, if you weren't doing this, what
would you be doing?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
I would probably be do something with cars. I worked
as a car mechanic and through college, and that's like
my big hobby. I really like cars, and it's like
a but it's not. I've never found it enough that
I could really make it a career in terms of
my interest. But no, I basically, yeah, I basically have
always been a bit of a political junkie. More I
(21:00):
would say I started more in the ideas realm of
In college, I mainly studied constitutional law, and I just
thought I was going to go to law school and
made kind of areas like con law and UH and
political theory. Not that I'm any have any depth in
either of these things, but it's what I It's what
(21:22):
I mainly studied, and I really love the ideas and
I love the you know, understanding of the kind of
history of ideas and why do people in different eras
believe different things? And that kind of turned into you know,
the kind of work work I do now. But yeah,
I I always had a political and kind of justice
oriented mindset.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yes? And no. No, in the sense that you know,
the economic concept that you know, human wants are unlimited
is true, and you always want to make more money
and want to have more influence and have more achievements,
and you know, one of the frustrations of my line
of work and It's a very minor frustration. Really is like,
(22:09):
I work behind the scenes on a lot of different stuff,
and so I don't. There's things that happen, you know,
in the news that I had a you know, some
role in and you know, only a few people know,
so I don't, you know.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
But but does that feel satisfying? I feel like i'd
be so like, oh, I'm so powerful.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
I'm not powerful. But no, yeah, no I don't. Some
people like really want to be front and center and
they want to you know, I don't actually have much
of that kind of mindset, so I don't. But but no,
like you always want more enough, I have other things
I'd like to achieve. But the truth is that I
do feel that I've made it. I came from a
(22:53):
rural part of Romanic, grew up on a farm. Our
closest neighbors were half a mile away. My parents were
not in any way plugged into They left New York
City in the late sixties and kind of because they
wanted to not be in society. I think we're off
d early. Yeah, they just kind of wanted to be
(23:15):
like out like on their farm, you know. And so I,
you know, I operate now among some really amazing people.
And I when I was twenty or sixteen, like I
didn't even know the world that I work in now
even existed. I mean, I was a real Haye seed.
I didn't grow up with you know, jackets and ties.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
And any of this either.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, I mean I think you and I are kind
of similar in that. And you know, I didn't have
any family connections to any of this, and I kind
of stumbled my way into it. And I feel like
one of the luckiest guys on earth. I mean, the
people I get to work with are some of the best, smartest,
most effective people. I love my colleagues, I love the
(24:02):
work that I do, and I you know, I'm a
I'm a very I think one of the keys to
happiness is being having gratitude. And typically what you see
of people who especially in this political context, where like
the protesters, the angry people, like they all clearly have
(24:23):
zero love or gratitude for really anything. They you can
see that they're they're very angry people. And I love
the work that I do, and so I'm yeah, I
in that sense, like I totally feel that I've made it,
like I couldn't. There's nothing else I really want to
want to do and so that to me, it's my
(24:45):
work is very satisfying to me. And so yeah, in
that sense, like I feel like I've got something incredible,
I've lucked out in a huge way.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I like that. Yeah, that's that's what we're supposed to be.
We're supposed to be grateful and happy about all of it. Fact,
you know, we never even heard of this field growing up.
I think that's something to that. Like ending up here
and feeling grateful to be here is a good feeling
to me.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
You know, politicians and you know, getting thoughts.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Get it, I know, but I don't know about getting
to meet politicians like they get to meet us.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Right, But you know what I mean, Like I never
would have thought when I was twenty at the University
of Vermont, you know, going to house parties that it
didn't it didn't occur to me that I could be
doing the kind of stuff i'm doing now, or that
I was capable of it, you know, or that they
had really even had the ability, and so you know,
(25:45):
it's it's it's it's exciting to me.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
So well. I love that. End here with your best
tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
This is a hard one, you know. I already mentioned
that I think having a a perspective on the world
of gratitude is the key to being not it's not
almost being happy. It's not an instrument. It's like it's
it's it's a truthful thing. It's a matter of being
actually like realistic about where you are in the world
(26:18):
and and the blessings that you have. I mean, if
you were in the Warsaw ghetto, one would not say, like, well,
the important thing is to be grateful, right, because people
have every reason yeah, not to if you were dying
of like the plague in the you know, Middle Ages
or something like that would be different. But like, thankfully,
that's not the world we live in. I think I
(26:39):
think that's very important. I think that there's too much,
especially among young people there there there there's too much
of an infatuation with new stuff, and new stuff is
almost always bad. New stuff is not cool, old stuff
(27:00):
is cool, and old stuff is typically best because if
something new was actually better, they would have thought of
it before, and they didn't think of it before, which
pretty much tells you that it's bad. And so just
the ways of living that you know, developed in little
increments over thousands of years of human history.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
You mean like ideas and not like dishwashers, because yeah,
but yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It's technology, Like you know, you don't need a I
don't know, like some device in your house that you
talk to that's like a computer that to turn the
lights on. Like I just think that that stuff is bad.
But yeah, I generally mean like ideas. You know, there
are so many like trendy ideas and fashionable causes and
latest things and new like hysterias. I mean, clout you
(27:52):
mentioned climate change. That's like a great one of like
you should basically feel that your life is doomed and
we're all going to die because some goof ball keep
saying it over and over again. That's an example of
like you should have an aversion to trendy new ideas.
They should be guilty until proven innocent in your eyes.
(28:13):
The old ways are typically the best ways, and the
old advice of like, you know, get married, have children,
have some religious involvement in a community. That's like a
good way of feeling that your life is happy and
actually genuinely being happy. That's that's like boring advice. It
happens to be great as it works, and the idea
(28:37):
that like you should in some way allow your thinking
or your life to be influenced by like the raving
lunatic twenty eight year old purple haired PhD in gender
studies who has decided five minutes ago that there's like
a you know, a gender spectrum, you know, and maybe
you're the wrong gender and that's what you should be
telling your kids or like this type of stuff. It's
(29:00):
like new things are generally bad and stupid, and I,
you know, other than all the normal things about you know,
ways to improve your life. But you know, that's my
only kind of that that that could be a good
way of looking at things. And I just look at
it that way because I'm commergingly and I just enjoy
(29:21):
hating new things because I'm like middle aged now and
and that's just part of.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
The fund on new things are bad. He is Noah Pollock.
Thank you so much, Noah, this has been really really great.
Thank you for having Thank you, thanks so much for
joining us on the Carol Marcowitz Show. Subscribe wherever you
get your podcasts.
Host
Karol Markowicz
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.