March 11, 2024 • 39 mins
In this episode, Karol interviews Inez Stepman about her experience living in New York City and the challenges the city is facing. They discuss the decline of New York and other cities, the role of the NYPD and the New York Post, and Inez's work at the Independent Women's Forum. They also explore the problem of loneliness in society and whether these societal problems are solvable. Karol and Inez discuss the impact of social media on society, the role of technology in isolation, and the importance of real-life interactions. They explore how social media platforms have changed the way people communicate and connect, often leading to feelings of loneliness and isolation. They also discuss the addictive nature of technology and the need for balance in our digital lives. 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 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
This clip came across my feed the other day on Twitter, actually,
and I have to say something about it.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Okay, So boyfriend I have been together eight years, and
that's because we met really young. I was twenty when
we met, having got married simply because like neither of
us have wanted to yet. And I guess now, I
know a lot of people wouldn't date someone for eight
years without a ring, and that's totally fine, Like that's
your prerogative, but it works for us. Next thing is
that I pay my boyfriend rent. In the past, when
we've rented properties together, we've split the rent. Now my
(00:39):
boyfriend has purchased a house. I'm still an adult that
needs a place to live and pays for the place
she lives. I just happened to pay that money to
my boyfriend. People are upset that I'm doing this work
for freed and I'm not gaining equity in this house
way that I look at it. And he was able
to buy this house because that has been a.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Goal of hit.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I didn't have the ability to take on that risk.
I don't see it as my place to like reap
those gains to me, it would be weird to not help,
just like a friend helping out. People are gonna have
a problem with the fact that I just referred to
myself as a friend, but I am my boyfriend's friend. Well,
if my boyfriend dumped me tomorrow, like, yes, the gains
in the house.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Would be his, But I can live with that.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
The other like little nuance is that, like, my rent
is pretty low. It's definitely low for the size of
house we live in and the location that we are so, like,
if it makes you feel better, you could kind of
look at it as like my rent is subsidized by
the work that I do. I'm doing this work because
it's fun and it improves the home that I live in.
I will now stop talking about our relationship and get
back to removing paint from old things. Please give us
(01:36):
a follow if you want to see how my vision
for this house comes to life, whether it's for me
or my boyfriend's future wife.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Now, this girl is twenty eight years old and she's
contributing toward the mortgage of her boyfriend, who she has
been dating for eight years. She says that they were
too young to get married but they live together and
now they're in their late twenties. I know I push
marriage on here, and this is a great example of
why what is this woman doing. I'd be so upset
(02:05):
if this was my daughter dating a guy for nearly
a decade, not on the path to marriage, and helping
him pay for the home he owns. But she does not.
You know, she says things like people are going to
get upset, or this upsets people. I'm not upset for her.
I'd be upset if it was my kid. You know,
she could do whatever she wants. She's a stranger on
the internet. I think this is particularly crazy to do,
(02:27):
but I, you know, don't really care what strangers do.
So for me, i'd be upset if it were my
kid doing this, even without marriage. I'd point out that
this guy is not interested in taking care of her.
I know women can do it for themselves. They don't
need no man. She mentions she's an adult whatever, But
that's ridiculous. We need each other. We take care of
(02:50):
each other. It's not a one way thing. She's taking
care of him, he's not taking care of her. To me,
this video is a public service announcement for our to
not fool themselves into believing that living like this is
somehow a win, somehow this is feminism. She apparently made
this video responding to a comment that said she's getting
(03:11):
the home ready for him and his future wife to
live in. But that's how I see this ending too.
You're dating for eight years. Where is this going? Why
wouldn't you be married yet? This makes no sense to me.
I mean, just the fact that she's financially helping him,
like build up his equity in a home that is
not hers is wild to me. You're not into marriage, fine,
(03:32):
but I'll be telling my kids to not do this
pretend marriage thing where one person gets all the benefits either.
Coming up next, an interview with Inez Stepman. Welcome back
to the Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today
is Inez Stepman, senior policy analyst for Independent Women's Forum
(03:54):
and host of the show high Noon. Hy Inez.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Hey, Carol, it's great to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It's so nice to have you on and to see you.
We used to hang out a lot in New York,
and you know what, one of us had to move away.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Well I moved in, so I was I was the
newcomer in New York and then everyone I knew left,
including you. So right, because you did.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
The rare pandemic move to New York. What made me
do that?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
My party trike is telling people. You know, imagine one
of those horror shows where everybody's locked up trying to
get out of the city after an apocalypse, and there's
one car going in. That was me and my husband.
We came to New York December of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So what made you do a part of the it
just seems really fun to be locked in a smaller apartment.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Well, actually, because of the pandemic prices, were probably the
first people in history who went from DC to New
York and got a bigger apartment and then you know,
booted out of that apartment based on the price increase.
In any case, No, we had been planning to move
to New York actually roughly in May of twenty twenty,
(05:04):
and then as those plans were taking place, the pandemic
hit and so we delayed it for a while. But
given the low prices and stuff, it seemed to make sense.
My husband had just gone remote so my husband, Jared Stepman,
he works for the Daily Signal, but he had gone
remote before the pandemic, and so we were sort of
free to move to New York and that was our plan.
(05:26):
So it wasn't We just kind of delayed our plan
by a little bit, but it was our plan to
move here. I just I like this, in all honesty,
my husband was, you know, doing me a favor by
moving here that Yeah, yeah, I just loved New York.
I've always loved New York. I've wanted to move here
for a decade and a half, but it never like
(05:46):
sort of practically made sense. And so so have you
enjoyed it?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
I have. I mean, obviously it's facing a lot of problems,
as virtually every city is. I'm a city person. To
be able as particularly to walk, I need o architecture
is really important to me. A certain attention to aesthetics
is really important to me that you don't find, I think,
in a lot of American cities outside of New York.
(06:14):
So just for that daily beauty, which I realize a
lot of people look at New York and they're like, oh,
look at the garbage. What are you talking about in
the daily beauty? But I really think there is an
enormous daily beauty in New York. There's a rhythm to it.
There are beautiful buildings that you can look at walking around.
It's enjoyable. It's energizing to walk around in New York.
(06:34):
So despite all of the problems, and then of course
there's just the enormous amount of things you have access
to your culturally, artistically, just to me, day to day
life here is exciting and is beautiful. And so I've
always I've always had a romantic feeling about New York,
(06:55):
which my actual New Yorker friends always help me is
is cheesy and lame.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
No, not at all. I think New York is a
beautiful city. I used to I mean, you know, I
was the biggest New York evangelist, New York supremacist, and
I used to like take pictures of the city and
of the bridges as I went over them or things
like that, and I would, you know, tweet, I'm sure
your city's nice too, but like, this is my city
(07:22):
and look at it. So I totally get that. I
don't like not liking New York. Like I'm you know,
I'm still deeply a New York lover overall. It's like
the child that you have to like let go of
and let them do their own thing because you've like
gotten tired of fighting for them. Maybe that's a bad
(07:43):
analogy because I actually, what would not stop fighting for my children,
but for my you know, for my children, I had
to leave New York. So that was kind of the
sad truth of it. But I love how you love
New York and that reminds me very much of the
way I felt about it, and I I love to
see it through your eyes. I love to watch you,
you know, become a New Yorker and really live there.
(08:06):
And it's been it's been great. I loved, I've been
loved to watch you.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, I mean, I think there are certain policy consequences
that you can't escape with children. Part of the reason
I think it's easy for us to stay here is
because we don't have kids. They're really I understand perfectly
why why you left.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I mean, in my schools and crime thousand words on it.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
So yeah, it's schools and crime. Although I will say this,
crime in New York is much worse than crime in
New York in twenty nineteen. It's palpable, it's visible, you
see you know, you see it a lot more you
even just walking around, there are definitely more like high
people wandering around. There's definitely I can see my citizen
(08:48):
app taking up day by day. That being said, the
focus from our own team, Carol the right on New
York is sort of the disaster zone of the country,
I think is really not accurate in terms of the
big cities in America, all of which are basically except
for Miami maybe Dallas are making the same policy mistakes,
(09:11):
and they started not nearly as safe as New York.
So people seem from outside the city sometimes to think like, oh,
it's dangerous to walk down the street in Manhattan. It isn't.
It's fine. I mean, it's more unpleasant than it used
to be. You definitely have to be a little more
alert than it used to be. But comparatively to DC,
I mean, when I lived in DC in twenty eighteen,
(09:33):
before any of this happened, there were twelve murders within
half a mile in one summer of where I lived,
and I lived in a nice part of DC. Yeah,
so like, comparatively to that, there hasn't even been one
murder in my vicinity since I moved here.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So that's a wind, you know. I know, I fully.
The depressing part to me is that New York solved
like the mystery of ken a big city be governable?
Can it be livable? And then threw it all away
and then just decided that that's you know, that didn't
actually happen, or that didn't work the way we wanted
(10:09):
it to or whatever. And that's like the depressing part
to me. It's not the you know, cities will have challenges.
I always say this, but I grew up in a
much worse New York than exists now, and yet I
couldn't live in this New York because this New York
didn't take seriously the threats that nineteen eighties New York
took seriously. So crime was far worse in the eighties
(10:32):
when I was growing up, But it wasn't a debate.
It wasn't like, what are you talking about? What crime?
What crime? It's a crime, you know, And that's what
I felt was going on. Especially in the neighborhood that
I lived in Park Slope. It was like, literally, if
you said, you know, oh, the crime's going up and
I'm a little nervous about that, or can my kids
walk around alone the way that they could you know
(10:52):
six months ago you were racist? And how dare you
bring this up? And that's the part that I like
could not live with. And you know, also talking about
like beauty of New York, like I one of the
things I miss, and it's funny, but like the way
people really try they like dress up, and I mean
it's people in Florida look good, do not get me wrong,
(11:13):
Like way better than like let's say, Parkslope, Brooklyn, like
where I felt like nobody tried it at all. But
you know, so there are things about New York that
I think are beautiful and amazing and that I you know,
miss about them. I just hate that they threw away
decades of good government and good policies to you know,
(11:35):
the ideology of the moment which turned out to be
you know, fools gold.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Yeah, I mean it is a tragedy. And coming from
California originally and from the San Francisco area, I mean
I had a front seat to the tragedy that is
San Francisco. Am I view much worse than New York,
even though they start out with a baseline of like
San Francisco is has a very very small black population
for example, which does core relate with the crime rate.
(12:01):
San Francisco is incredibly wealthy. It's much smaller than New York.
Like all the demographics of San Francisco would point to
the fact that it should be as it was, which
was like an incredibly safe city when I was growing up.
I mean I used to go when I was fourteen,
fifteen years old. I used to walk around and then
Tenorline District by myself as a teenager. There was no
(12:23):
question that that was fine. I mean, yeah, there were
there were some people doing drugs at San Francisco, very
you know, there were some homeless people. It was San Francisco.
But the there was a really real tipping point, and
it was entirely as you say, it's like entirely the
choice of people who live there to throw away all
of the natural beauty of San Francisco, natural safety of
(12:46):
San Francisco, everything that's wonderful about San Francisco to just
like put it in the trash can and in San
Francisco at actually the tipping point, I don't imagine how
bad it's gotten, although I've seen plenty of the reporting
and stuff, but the tipping point really was twenty five
ten twenty sixteen where the actual experience of the city.
And again, I'm a city person. I'm not somebody who
(13:08):
is shocked by seeing a homeless person on the corner
or all fighting or whatever. But in twenty sixteen it
became San Francisco. The actual enjoyment of being in the city,
the walking around, the sitting in the cafe, all of
that started to very aggressively be impacted by the fact
(13:30):
that the city basically threw open the doors to every
drug drug addict in America and said, hey, shoot up here,
why would you do that? You know, you know, look,
they have their their idiot rationales. But it very very
clearly fell off a cliff at that point. So I
share your sense of tragedy. I do think there's a
(13:51):
couple institutions in New York that are keeping it from
going completely nuts, at least for now, because obviously the
City Council is insane and they all have to go
down the same path as DC, as Seattle, San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Right, And it's funny because there are more Republicans now
on the New York City Council than like in decades.
It's just the leftist on the city Council. The Democrats
have become far left, is really what happened. So you
have actually more quantity of Republicans. I think this five now,
which was unheard of in you know, the last number
of years. But the Democrats have just become insane.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Crazy, I mean yeah, and it's They do have two institutions,
like I said that I think help balance a little bit.
One is that the NYPD is the best force in
the world. I really believe that. I mean, it's remarkable
what they're able to do when they're allowed to do it.
And they're very large force, like per capita comparatively to
(14:52):
a lot of these other cities. So there are the
cops to put on corners and they're very well organized.
And then they we have clout apparently behind the scenes, right,
I mean, the police union is still a big deal
in New York politically in the way that it's completely
non existent, and I can demonstrate very easily how that
(15:12):
works between DC and New York. I cannot imagine. And Carol,
you've spent plenty of time in DC. Can you imagine
the kind of parade that was put on for the
fallen officers maybe two years ago, where you have just
like hundreds, maybe thousands of cops marching down the street
in New York. For that would never happen in San Francisco.
(15:33):
It would just never happen in DC because there's such
a hostility to the cops. There still is like a
pride in the police force here among average people, and
I think that's really important, and it gives them the
clout I assume a little bit behind the scenes, although
I'm sure that their lives are much worse than they
used to be. Don't get me wrong again, I'm not
down comparatively to these other cities.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That's really interesting. I've really never thought of that, but yeah,
they're absolutely.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
You should think about the second one, which is that
they have the New York Post. Yeah, wow, which there's
no major daily newspaper with a actual city readership. There
are conservative journals and so on.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, no, everybody needs the Post. Yeah, like everybody across
the political spectrum in New York has always read the Post.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
They will just post reports on crime, and the Post
hosts conservative opinion. And the fact that that's a daily
newspaper in New York that's in everybody's padega like that, people,
ordinary people a political people not like you and me
read I think is an enormous asset for the city
and keeping it going completely insane. Now, maybe all those
(16:41):
things will be overcome and the left will steamroll or
all of those things.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
But let's root for New York, like you know, I hope,
I hope they don't. I hope that the voices of
sanity within and you get to live in a beautiful,
safe New York the way that I remember that it
should be right now, But you know, isn't for a
lot of reasons. So what do you mostly work on
at IWF? I mean, I obviously read a lot of
(17:06):
your stuff, but what would my listeners want to know
about what you do?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
So I have a kind of funny hodgepodge of issues.
I did do more than a decade as an education
policy analyst, so I still do some education stuff some
I mean school choice K twelve policy stuff. I also
have been working a lot on higher ed recently. So
I have a proposal out to tax the university sector
(17:32):
for a loan forgiveness, and I think this is going
to be I think this has the potential to be
a huge win for the right. There is an enormous
pressure to forgive student loans, and I think we often
talk about it as a matter of individual responsibility, which
it is. I'm not saying that the EIGHTEENEP signing on
(17:53):
the dotted line, you know, didn't legally incur that debt,
but the entire system since the nineteen sixties really has
been structured to push as many people prepared or not
into college as possible. And I think it's a little
too much to assume that the average eighteen year old
(18:14):
is more financially savvy than the US Congress that put
these these loans government loans in front of basically every
every high school graduate in America. The universities get their
money upfront, so they're you know, they're rolling in. They've
created enor miss wealth from this policy that is directly
directly financed by the US taxpayer, and you know, everyone
(18:37):
else is kind of screwed, right, The taxpayer is screwed
because by the way we hold all these loans. So
if a large proportion, as is predicted, default on the
student loans, and it could be anywhere from fifty to
sixty percent, that those are like reasonable estimates of how
much like what default rate we're likely to see. We
already own all those loans that Department of Education owns
(18:59):
ninety three or some of those loans. You know, there's
those companies like Moela or Mohela whatever it's called, or
Naviant before it. They're just managers of their hired guns
to manage the loans and collect payments. But the US
government owns that debt, so we're already on the hook
for it. I think we will have a default bailout,
whether we like it or not, by default. So to
(19:22):
my mind, the fair way to do this is to
take some of that enormous wealth that's been amassed on
the basis of the backs of the US taxpayer by
institutions that are overtly hostile, and I don't think anyone
can argue that point in twenty twenty four, overtly hostile
to everything that's good about this country and about America.
(19:42):
To take the money from those institutions and use it
to essentially settle up with those who were preyed upon,
frankly by this system, by this promise that if you
take on this debt and go to a four year school,
oftentimes a four year school, you're totally academically unprepared for
because the graduation rates only sixty percent. These schools were
(20:03):
admitting people because everybody comes with the government check that
they get up FROMT So a lot of those defaults
are people who are admitted to schools that had no
chance of ever graduating from for the money for two
or three years and they are stuck with the debt
and they have no degree and anyway, Like, I could
talk forever about this, but I think that there is
a lot of merit to taxing universities for this. For
(20:25):
the right, I see it as a twofer. We hit
our institutional enemies because that's what they are, and we
justly make the people who have made money off of
this system pay for the fallout of it instead of
the US taxpayer and the majority of Americans without a
four year degree, you know, redistributing their wealth towards paying
off loans for people who did go to college, who
(20:46):
did go to for example, law school, which seems blatantly regressive.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, so who is opposed to this politically? Like, obviously
the colleges are against it, but who I conceive the
argument from both the Republican and the Democrat side of
why this is a great idea.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Democrats don't see it that way, because I think they
know better than Republicans who their friends are. The real
political question is why have Republicans been willing to fund
universities at such an extreme rate and give them such
a special little deal from the federal government for so
many years when university has always been overtly hostile to
everything Republicans believe in. That's the question. It's a matter
(21:25):
of political will on the right. If Republicans prioritize this,
I think that we could very well drive a wedge
between Democratic politicians who know that the universities aren't incredibly
valuable in doctor nation resource to them, and Democratic voters
because you know, look the kids with these loans, they
(21:46):
don't care if it comes from Harvard, right, They're happy
to have them bailed out. Right. So I was on
Doctor phil Weirdly enough, he did a series at the end,
he did a series of like policy chats, we're on
various political issues. And I think I convinced a fair
number because everyone came on there saying I need my
student loans bailed out, and I think I got a
fair number of them convinced. You know, yeah, it's right
(22:09):
that the university should pay for this and not, you know,
people who didn't go to college. That's not fair. So
I think it would be a very politically smart argument
for the Republicans to make. I think it would put
a lot of pressure on Democrats, and I think more
than anything, it would politically cut off the knees from
a strategy that Biden used in the midterms. I'm pretty
(22:29):
sure he will use going forward in this twenty four election,
which is to promise a bailout he knows is going
to get knocked down by the court to get young
people out to vote. It worked for them in the midterms,
and Republicans can destroy that political talking point. They can
provide a real solution for people who are legitimately struggling
(22:51):
with what in any other context we would call predatory loans. Yeah,
and they can hit their institutional enemies and make it
a wedge issue on the line. I just I don't
see a downside to the right pushing this jd Vance
has introduced something real similar to my proposal. It wouldn't
be very difficult for Republicans to tax at university endowments.
(23:12):
For example, there already is a very, very very tiny
tax and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Well, that
would be required would be to expand that tax and
treat them like the hedge funds that they are.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. So what would you
be doing as a career if you weren't doing this,
if you weren't doing policy, if you weren't writing What
would be then? As plan B, do I.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Get booted off as a tradwife if I say I'd
rather just like arrange flowers at home and paint my
apartment different colors?
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Wait, who's booting you? This is like, this is a
safe space.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
I don't know, Like in terms of professional work, I
think i'd make a pretty good architect. Actually was a
good at math. It was pretty good at sketching, and
I really enjoy looking at buildings. I don't have any
extent of knowledge and architecture other than what I like.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
But that's okay, this is fantasy, you know a series of.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
My skills, like the sort of design and aesthetic element
with the mathematical uh and an analytical kind of that's
more what I'm good at. I'm not like, I'm not
an artiste, but I think the combination of aesthetic and
mathematics would it appeal to me? There was no I
looked for courses in it, but there weren't any of
my university.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
I think i'd be a DJ. I think that would
be make me see it, you know, I feel like
I need I know how to get the party going.
I also enjoyed planning travel, so maybe a travel agent.
I like those two, like you know fields, but I,
you know, trad wife was the original plan for me.
I don't know how I got off that track. And
(24:53):
my husband sometimes says, you know, he signed up for
a stay at home mom, stayed at home wife, and
I decided to go have a career, which is like
a crazy thing to do. So you know, anything is possible, really,
is what I'm saying here. Do you feel like you've
made it?
Speaker 3 (25:12):
You sent me this question in advance, and I still
don't know how to answer it. I think I don't
think I've made it. I would say that there are
things that I'm more grateful about in my career as
the years go on, especially in this environment. The fact
that I have the freedom, enormous freedom, even within our profession.
(25:33):
I'm so grateful for to IWF for providing this. I mean,
they don't have a one voice policy. They really do hire,
you know, a variety of smart women with a variety
of views from you know, moderate independent all the way
to conservative, like I'm clearly conservative. But they really do
(25:53):
an enormous job of supporting women who want to make
an argument about X, Y and z. That kind of
freedom is when I think about, oh, like, would I
rather be an architect or something like that. You know,
there are ways in which I'd rather do that. But
on the other hand, there is no escape from politics now.
(26:14):
Right when I think about what the corporate office politics
is like now, when I think about the things that
are allegedly offensive or like a problem for HR, I'm
incredibly grateful that I don't have that kind of job.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
I would be able to tolerate it for HR.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yeah, I've never talked to HR, I've never used HR.
I don't anyway, I'm enormously grateful for that, and I
feel like it's a rare, a rare thing now to
be able to work in our current environment, which maybe
(26:54):
you agree or don't, I think it is pretty close
to not like Stalinism, you know, not like being thrown
in the Gulag. But by the time you get to
the Soviet Union in like the seventies right where yer structure. Yeah,
very different structure, and there's lots of there's a long
discussion we had about like the similarities and differences. But
in terms of the feeling of wait, you know, you
(27:18):
just don't share your opinions unless you really know the
people you know, like who you're talking to. Uh, there's
just all these like trip wires. You can't really you
can't really just do your business and have your friends
and live your life. Like the political system is intruding
into that private sphere in a very direct way. And
(27:42):
I'm yeah, I think in that context all the more
grateful to to have a position I do, because I don't.
I don't think I deal very well with, you know,
being told that something that I'm saying is offensive and
therefore like I'm gonna lose my job and having to
balance those two things. I have the utmost sympathy for
people who feel they have to have to do that. Like,
(28:05):
I'm not naive about it at all. I don't think
everybody needs to be so John Needson, right, I'm not
and I don't mean just in talent. I mean that
I'm not directly threatened that way. And I don't know
what I would do if saying what I say meant
that I couldn't make rent absolutely.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
You know, I found an essay that I wrote in college,
where I was already an open conservative, but I wrote
about how the traditional family was outdated, and of course,
you see, I got an a on it, and I remember,
I mean, I don't remember this, but I don't remember
particularly writing this essay actually, but I remember having to
kind of adjust my opinions to what I knew the
(28:43):
professor wanted to hear. Because what was the point, really,
I was there to get the good grades?
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Men?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Who cared what my professor thought about what? You know,
what I thought? Why would I need to debate him
or argue out my point? You want to hear that
the modern families, you know, the traditional families outdated like
here you go, hey, yeah, my dad.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Like like you as you know, but for your audience,
my family comes from communist Poland, so sort of similar
Warsaw packed style background, and my dad even in my
high school in Palo Alto and the like mid two thousands,
I mean, he had that feeling about, oh, like you're
(29:23):
getting assignments that you know what you're supposed to write. Yeah,
and he was like, this is like being in the
This is like being in communist Poland, like the you know,
the proletariator always oppressed, they always rise up, like you
know what you're supposed to write, and it's the same
same stuff. And that was like, I think the early
wave of that, but it was already there in the
in the two thousands and in public school, right, it
(29:45):
was already the vision that America had. America's sins are
so much greater than her triumphs that course are unique,
and her triumphs are irrelevant, right, and yeah, and it
is like it it again. I don't want to.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Over no, I get I never plugged my book on
my show. But like in Stolen Youth book that we
published my co author Bethany Mandel and I in March,
it opens with a history chapter which compares a lot
of what's going on right now to what has happened
into talitarian societies in the past. And we're not saying
that anybody gets thrown in a gulag right now or
(30:22):
you know, like that, but there's definitely some threads that
of connection that are obvious. And I think that if people,
you know, don't see them, then maybe they're saying what
they're supposed to be saying, and maybe that's why.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, a friend of mine told me a story. He's
a professor and I won't use the names or whatever,
but told me a story about a graduate student of
his from Belarus. And for people who have not followed it,
there were huge uprisings in Belarus and twenty twenty and
after basically a very obviously faked election, and it's known
(31:01):
Lukashenko there is known as eelast dictator in Europe obviously
like stealing everybody all the money, like blind stealing from
his people. And in any case, there were a lot
of protests there and unrest. And the Spelarusian student was
talking to her professor and she said, you know, when
I first came to America, I had the idea that
(31:22):
it was like a free country, you know, And I
was amazed by this fact and I thought, it's, oh,
it's how incredible, Like everyone can say whatever they think
about politics without this kind of fear. And then she
literally physically leaned forward, looked behind her and said, I've
learned you just have different trip wires, Like there are
different things you're not supposed to say here, and like
(31:44):
the physical act of like leaning forward and checking behind
you before you say what you're going to say, Like
this itself is so emblematic to me of how we've
lost the freedom that America is known for or was
known for around the world.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, I fully agree with you, And look, I do
it myself. I could think of times in the past
where I looked around before I said something in a restaurant,
and you know, I had to be careful about who
could hear what or not to have an altercation or something.
So it's sad, and I hope we are climbing out
of it because I do feel like wokeness and this
(32:18):
whole you know, insane culture is coming to an end
because it just can't last. You know, eventually you run
out of victims because it's a circular firing squad and
everybody's getting hit. What would you say is our largest
cultural or societal problem and do you think that it's solvable.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
I think the largest problem is probably a loneliness. I
think it's a small, ill liberal problem. Some people would
call it atomization. I think we're discovering that the unchosen relationships,
the things that are not entered into as a matter
of contract and benefit and detriment, are very, very very
(33:00):
difficult to maintain in a civilization as prosperous as ours.
And you see it a lot in the sex wars
right where if you look at in almost every country,
you have single women politically pulling way, way, way away
from single men. All these single women are left leaning,
the men are actually they're leaning right and turning a
(33:20):
little more right, but like it's not a comparable turn.
But if you look at the numbers and a long
term look at the numbers in the United States of
women voting Republican, married women vote Republican married men vote Republican.
Single men vote, Republican single women vote, you know, buy
a margin or thirty or more points vote Democrat. I
(33:43):
think those politics are a reflection of not and even
the extremes of the sex war on the right and
the left. Now where you see like the manosphere, which
I think originally had a lot of good points and
I consider myself sort of adjacent to it, now it
really does seems sort of at least some portion of it.
I don't want to broaden out. It really does seem
(34:03):
like hate women for being women, which I find is
ludicrous as hating men for being men. But I think
those sexual politics burn real hot because we don't have
in real life ties. I mean, the average American is
now born into a family that's either never you know,
their parents either never married or to their parents are
(34:25):
divorced before they're eighteen. Right, we have fewer siblings on average,
smaller family size, all of those things, I think, And
then you enter the dating market, and there's just an
endless number of hours of podcasting tape quote unquote on
the just general screwed uppitness of the dating scene. Right,
(34:47):
So it's very easy in our society now to never
to go. Oh. And the final point, friendship is totally collapsed.
Right if you look even since the nineties, the percentage
of people who say they have say more than five
friends completely collapsing in the toilet. So it's very possible
that you can now it's very common to grow up
(35:10):
in a broken home without any you know, close relationships
with siblings of the opposite sex, without a good relationship
with your parent of the opposite sex, and then without
any real good friends of the opposite sex, and then
your only interaction with the opposite sex is like messages
on dating apps, right, And I can see why that
(35:32):
would make somebody form a very negative opinion that the
opposite sex.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Great point.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I think it's it's not
just about sexual relationships, but about friendship, about family relationships,
we just have fewer of those thick ties. And and
the problem with liberalism and prosperity large which I'm I'm
a fan of both to some degree, right, is that
(36:00):
the short term preference of people, you know, having those
kinds of thick community ties. And I think your own,
like very public, beautiful writings about your relationship with Judaism
and the Jewish community demonstrate this very well. Those thick
ties are not easy or pleasant a lot of the time, right,
Like there's a lot of conflict in small towns between
(36:22):
church ladies and right, those things are not necessarily pleasant.
Family relationships are not always pleasant, They're in difficult, and
so the short term interest of a lot of people
is to basically say, well, I'm going to do me right,
I'm going to do me and I'm not going to
be constricted by those relationships, those deeper, unchosen relationships, because
(36:44):
any serious relationship constricts what you can do obviously like marriage,
what you can do sexually, right, But any deep relationship
is exclusionary by nature. It means that two people are
going to have to make room for each other in
what they want to do and what they want to
say and what they want to you know, there's a
negociation there. That negotiation is not always pleasant, especially short term,
(37:04):
and I think what we're seeing is the short term
incentive is to dump those relationships, and in the long
term that's killing us.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
So do you think that's solvable.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I don't know. I don't know if we'll be able
to come up with something to replace the fear of destitution,
right because you didn't keep with your family because it
was always pleasant. You kept with your family because you
might be out on the street and starving, right, And
that's all you know, same reason that divorce was much lower.
(37:39):
It's yes, it's social convention, but that social convention also
comes from, you know, the very real fear of losing
your children, of being cast out. I don't know, Like
I don't want to return to a uh to destitution
that's not that's not solution. So I don't know if
(38:02):
we'll be able to come up with something that. I mean,
maybe we are smart enough as a species to start
considering these long term interests, but maybe not. But I
will say that the direction we're currently going forget about
politics on this question. The direction we're curling going is
all downhill. The therapeutic language of how to speak to
(38:23):
people is actually deeply horrifying to me in a pre
political way. It bothers me if it places distance, all
the time, distance between people to talk to them in
this like, well, you're intruding on my boundaries. So that's
what friendship is. You know, if you have everybody outside
(38:43):
your boundaries, you have no friends.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Right, that's absolutely right. I'm reading Abigail Schreyer's Bad Therapy
right now.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
I can't wait to cry that.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Oh it's amazing. It's so good. I can't put it down.
It's really a great book. It's coming out soon and
Bad Therapy by Abigail Schreier highly highly recommend it. So
I love talking to you. This has been awesome. And
here with your best tip for my listeners on how
they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
Through dinner parties. Talk to people in real life. I
think that parties might save us.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I feel like that's probably true. All right, throw parties.
Thank you so much, Anez, thank you for coming on,
love talking to you.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Thanks so much, Carol, it's been great.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
This clip came across my feed the other day on Twitter, actually,
and I have to say something about it.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Okay, So boyfriend I have been together eight years, and
that's because we met really young. I was twenty when
we met, having got married simply because like neither of
us have wanted to yet. And I guess now, I
know a lot of people wouldn't date someone for eight
years without a ring, and that's totally fine, Like that's
your prerogative, but it works for us. Next thing is
that I pay my boyfriend rent. In the past, when
we've rented properties together, we've split the rent. Now my
(00:39):
boyfriend has purchased a house. I'm still an adult that
needs a place to live and pays for the place
she lives. I just happened to pay that money to
my boyfriend. People are upset that I'm doing this work
for freed and I'm not gaining equity in this house
way that I look at it. And he was able
to buy this house because that has been a.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Goal of hit.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I didn't have the ability to take on that risk.
I don't see it as my place to like reap
those gains to me, it would be weird to not help,
just like a friend helping out. People are gonna have
a problem with the fact that I just referred to
myself as a friend, but I am my boyfriend's friend. Well,
if my boyfriend dumped me tomorrow, like, yes, the gains
in the house.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Would be his, But I can live with that.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
The other like little nuance is that, like, my rent
is pretty low. It's definitely low for the size of
house we live in and the location that we are so, like,
if it makes you feel better, you could kind of
look at it as like my rent is subsidized by
the work that I do. I'm doing this work because
it's fun and it improves the home that I live in.
I will now stop talking about our relationship and get
back to removing paint from old things. Please give us
(01:36):
a follow if you want to see how my vision
for this house comes to life, whether it's for me
or my boyfriend's future wife.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Now, this girl is twenty eight years old and she's
contributing toward the mortgage of her boyfriend, who she has
been dating for eight years. She says that they were
too young to get married but they live together and
now they're in their late twenties. I know I push
marriage on here, and this is a great example of
why what is this woman doing. I'd be so upset
(02:05):
if this was my daughter dating a guy for nearly
a decade, not on the path to marriage, and helping
him pay for the home he owns. But she does not.
You know, she says things like people are going to
get upset, or this upsets people. I'm not upset for her.
I'd be upset if it was my kid. You know,
she could do whatever she wants. She's a stranger on
the internet. I think this is particularly crazy to do,
(02:27):
but I, you know, don't really care what strangers do.
So for me, i'd be upset if it were my
kid doing this, even without marriage. I'd point out that
this guy is not interested in taking care of her.
I know women can do it for themselves. They don't
need no man. She mentions she's an adult whatever, But
that's ridiculous. We need each other. We take care of
(02:50):
each other. It's not a one way thing. She's taking
care of him, he's not taking care of her. To me,
this video is a public service announcement for our to
not fool themselves into believing that living like this is
somehow a win, somehow this is feminism. She apparently made
this video responding to a comment that said she's getting
(03:11):
the home ready for him and his future wife to
live in. But that's how I see this ending too.
You're dating for eight years. Where is this going? Why
wouldn't you be married yet? This makes no sense to me.
I mean, just the fact that she's financially helping him,
like build up his equity in a home that is
not hers is wild to me. You're not into marriage, fine,
(03:32):
but I'll be telling my kids to not do this
pretend marriage thing where one person gets all the benefits either.
Coming up next, an interview with Inez Stepman. Welcome back
to the Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today
is Inez Stepman, senior policy analyst for Independent Women's Forum
(03:54):
and host of the show high Noon. Hy Inez.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Hey, Carol, it's great to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It's so nice to have you on and to see you.
We used to hang out a lot in New York,
and you know what, one of us had to move away.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Well I moved in, so I was I was the
newcomer in New York and then everyone I knew left,
including you. So right, because you did.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
The rare pandemic move to New York. What made me
do that?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
My party trike is telling people. You know, imagine one
of those horror shows where everybody's locked up trying to
get out of the city after an apocalypse, and there's
one car going in. That was me and my husband.
We came to New York December of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So what made you do a part of the it
just seems really fun to be locked in a smaller apartment.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Well, actually, because of the pandemic prices, were probably the
first people in history who went from DC to New
York and got a bigger apartment and then you know,
booted out of that apartment based on the price increase.
In any case, No, we had been planning to move
to New York actually roughly in May of twenty twenty,
(05:04):
and then as those plans were taking place, the pandemic
hit and so we delayed it for a while. But
given the low prices and stuff, it seemed to make sense.
My husband had just gone remote so my husband, Jared Stepman,
he works for the Daily Signal, but he had gone
remote before the pandemic, and so we were sort of
free to move to New York and that was our plan.
(05:26):
So it wasn't We just kind of delayed our plan
by a little bit, but it was our plan to
move here. I just I like this, in all honesty,
my husband was, you know, doing me a favor by
moving here that Yeah, yeah, I just loved New York.
I've always loved New York. I've wanted to move here
for a decade and a half, but it never like
(05:46):
sort of practically made sense. And so so have you
enjoyed it?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
I have. I mean, obviously it's facing a lot of problems,
as virtually every city is. I'm a city person. To
be able as particularly to walk, I need o architecture
is really important to me. A certain attention to aesthetics
is really important to me that you don't find, I think,
in a lot of American cities outside of New York.
(06:14):
So just for that daily beauty, which I realize a
lot of people look at New York and they're like, oh,
look at the garbage. What are you talking about in
the daily beauty? But I really think there is an
enormous daily beauty in New York. There's a rhythm to it.
There are beautiful buildings that you can look at walking around.
It's enjoyable. It's energizing to walk around in New York.
(06:34):
So despite all of the problems, and then of course
there's just the enormous amount of things you have access
to your culturally, artistically, just to me, day to day
life here is exciting and is beautiful. And so I've
always I've always had a romantic feeling about New York,
(06:55):
which my actual New Yorker friends always help me is
is cheesy and lame.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
No, not at all. I think New York is a
beautiful city. I used to I mean, you know, I
was the biggest New York evangelist, New York supremacist, and
I used to like take pictures of the city and
of the bridges as I went over them or things
like that, and I would, you know, tweet, I'm sure
your city's nice too, but like, this is my city
(07:22):
and look at it. So I totally get that. I
don't like not liking New York. Like I'm you know,
I'm still deeply a New York lover overall. It's like
the child that you have to like let go of
and let them do their own thing because you've like
gotten tired of fighting for them. Maybe that's a bad
(07:43):
analogy because I actually, what would not stop fighting for my children,
but for my you know, for my children, I had
to leave New York. So that was kind of the
sad truth of it. But I love how you love
New York and that reminds me very much of the
way I felt about it, and I I love to
see it through your eyes. I love to watch you,
you know, become a New Yorker and really live there.
(08:06):
And it's been it's been great. I loved, I've been
loved to watch you.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, I mean, I think there are certain policy consequences
that you can't escape with children. Part of the reason
I think it's easy for us to stay here is
because we don't have kids. They're really I understand perfectly
why why you left.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I mean, in my schools and crime thousand words on it.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
So yeah, it's schools and crime. Although I will say this,
crime in New York is much worse than crime in
New York in twenty nineteen. It's palpable, it's visible, you
see you know, you see it a lot more you
even just walking around, there are definitely more like high
people wandering around. There's definitely I can see my citizen
(08:48):
app taking up day by day. That being said, the
focus from our own team, Carol the right on New
York is sort of the disaster zone of the country,
I think is really not accurate in terms of the
big cities in America, all of which are basically except
for Miami maybe Dallas are making the same policy mistakes,
(09:11):
and they started not nearly as safe as New York.
So people seem from outside the city sometimes to think like, oh,
it's dangerous to walk down the street in Manhattan. It isn't.
It's fine. I mean, it's more unpleasant than it used
to be. You definitely have to be a little more
alert than it used to be. But comparatively to DC,
I mean, when I lived in DC in twenty eighteen,
(09:33):
before any of this happened, there were twelve murders within
half a mile in one summer of where I lived,
and I lived in a nice part of DC. Yeah,
so like, comparatively to that, there hasn't even been one
murder in my vicinity since I moved here.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So that's a wind, you know. I know, I fully.
The depressing part to me is that New York solved
like the mystery of ken a big city be governable?
Can it be livable? And then threw it all away
and then just decided that that's you know, that didn't
actually happen, or that didn't work the way we wanted
(10:09):
it to or whatever. And that's like the depressing part
to me. It's not the you know, cities will have challenges.
I always say this, but I grew up in a
much worse New York than exists now, and yet I
couldn't live in this New York because this New York
didn't take seriously the threats that nineteen eighties New York
took seriously. So crime was far worse in the eighties
(10:32):
when I was growing up, But it wasn't a debate.
It wasn't like, what are you talking about? What crime?
What crime? It's a crime, you know, And that's what
I felt was going on. Especially in the neighborhood that
I lived in Park Slope. It was like, literally, if
you said, you know, oh, the crime's going up and
I'm a little nervous about that, or can my kids
walk around alone the way that they could you know
(10:52):
six months ago you were racist? And how dare you
bring this up? And that's the part that I like
could not live with. And you know, also talking about
like beauty of New York, like I one of the
things I miss, and it's funny, but like the way
people really try they like dress up, and I mean
it's people in Florida look good, do not get me wrong,
(11:13):
Like way better than like let's say, Parkslope, Brooklyn, like
where I felt like nobody tried it at all. But
you know, so there are things about New York that
I think are beautiful and amazing and that I you know,
miss about them. I just hate that they threw away
decades of good government and good policies to you know,
(11:35):
the ideology of the moment which turned out to be
you know, fools gold.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Yeah, I mean it is a tragedy. And coming from
California originally and from the San Francisco area, I mean
I had a front seat to the tragedy that is
San Francisco. Am I view much worse than New York,
even though they start out with a baseline of like
San Francisco is has a very very small black population
for example, which does core relate with the crime rate.
(12:01):
San Francisco is incredibly wealthy. It's much smaller than New York.
Like all the demographics of San Francisco would point to
the fact that it should be as it was, which
was like an incredibly safe city when I was growing up.
I mean I used to go when I was fourteen,
fifteen years old. I used to walk around and then
Tenorline District by myself as a teenager. There was no
(12:23):
question that that was fine. I mean, yeah, there were
there were some people doing drugs at San Francisco, very
you know, there were some homeless people. It was San Francisco.
But the there was a really real tipping point, and
it was entirely as you say, it's like entirely the
choice of people who live there to throw away all
of the natural beauty of San Francisco, natural safety of
(12:46):
San Francisco, everything that's wonderful about San Francisco to just
like put it in the trash can and in San
Francisco at actually the tipping point, I don't imagine how
bad it's gotten, although I've seen plenty of the reporting
and stuff, but the tipping point really was twenty five
ten twenty sixteen where the actual experience of the city.
And again, I'm a city person. I'm not somebody who
(13:08):
is shocked by seeing a homeless person on the corner
or all fighting or whatever. But in twenty sixteen it
became San Francisco. The actual enjoyment of being in the city,
the walking around, the sitting in the cafe, all of
that started to very aggressively be impacted by the fact
(13:30):
that the city basically threw open the doors to every
drug drug addict in America and said, hey, shoot up here,
why would you do that? You know, you know, look,
they have their their idiot rationales. But it very very
clearly fell off a cliff at that point. So I
share your sense of tragedy. I do think there's a
(13:51):
couple institutions in New York that are keeping it from
going completely nuts, at least for now, because obviously the
City Council is insane and they all have to go
down the same path as DC, as Seattle, San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Right, And it's funny because there are more Republicans now
on the New York City Council than like in decades.
It's just the leftist on the city Council. The Democrats
have become far left, is really what happened. So you
have actually more quantity of Republicans. I think this five now,
which was unheard of in you know, the last number
of years. But the Democrats have just become insane.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Crazy, I mean yeah, and it's They do have two institutions,
like I said that I think help balance a little bit.
One is that the NYPD is the best force in
the world. I really believe that. I mean, it's remarkable
what they're able to do when they're allowed to do it.
And they're very large force, like per capita comparatively to
(14:52):
a lot of these other cities. So there are the
cops to put on corners and they're very well organized.
And then they we have clout apparently behind the scenes, right,
I mean, the police union is still a big deal
in New York politically in the way that it's completely
non existent, and I can demonstrate very easily how that
(15:12):
works between DC and New York. I cannot imagine. And Carol,
you've spent plenty of time in DC. Can you imagine
the kind of parade that was put on for the
fallen officers maybe two years ago, where you have just
like hundreds, maybe thousands of cops marching down the street
in New York. For that would never happen in San Francisco.
(15:33):
It would just never happen in DC because there's such
a hostility to the cops. There still is like a
pride in the police force here among average people, and
I think that's really important, and it gives them the
clout I assume a little bit behind the scenes, although
I'm sure that their lives are much worse than they
used to be. Don't get me wrong again, I'm not
down comparatively to these other cities.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That's really interesting. I've really never thought of that, but yeah,
they're absolutely.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
You should think about the second one, which is that
they have the New York Post. Yeah, wow, which there's
no major daily newspaper with a actual city readership. There
are conservative journals and so on.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, no, everybody needs the Post. Yeah, like everybody across
the political spectrum in New York has always read the Post.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
They will just post reports on crime, and the Post
hosts conservative opinion. And the fact that that's a daily
newspaper in New York that's in everybody's padega like that, people,
ordinary people a political people not like you and me
read I think is an enormous asset for the city
and keeping it going completely insane. Now, maybe all those
(16:41):
things will be overcome and the left will steamroll or
all of those things.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
But let's root for New York, like you know, I hope,
I hope they don't. I hope that the voices of
sanity within and you get to live in a beautiful,
safe New York the way that I remember that it
should be right now, But you know, isn't for a
lot of reasons. So what do you mostly work on
at IWF? I mean, I obviously read a lot of
(17:06):
your stuff, but what would my listeners want to know
about what you do?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
So I have a kind of funny hodgepodge of issues.
I did do more than a decade as an education
policy analyst, so I still do some education stuff some
I mean school choice K twelve policy stuff. I also
have been working a lot on higher ed recently. So
I have a proposal out to tax the university sector
(17:32):
for a loan forgiveness, and I think this is going
to be I think this has the potential to be
a huge win for the right. There is an enormous
pressure to forgive student loans, and I think we often
talk about it as a matter of individual responsibility, which
it is. I'm not saying that the EIGHTEENEP signing on
(17:53):
the dotted line, you know, didn't legally incur that debt,
but the entire system since the nineteen sixties really has
been structured to push as many people prepared or not
into college as possible. And I think it's a little
too much to assume that the average eighteen year old
(18:14):
is more financially savvy than the US Congress that put
these these loans government loans in front of basically every
every high school graduate in America. The universities get their
money upfront, so they're you know, they're rolling in. They've
created enor miss wealth from this policy that is directly
directly financed by the US taxpayer, and you know, everyone
(18:37):
else is kind of screwed, right, The taxpayer is screwed
because by the way we hold all these loans. So
if a large proportion, as is predicted, default on the
student loans, and it could be anywhere from fifty to
sixty percent, that those are like reasonable estimates of how
much like what default rate we're likely to see. We
already own all those loans that Department of Education owns
(18:59):
ninety three or some of those loans. You know, there's
those companies like Moela or Mohela whatever it's called, or
Naviant before it. They're just managers of their hired guns
to manage the loans and collect payments. But the US
government owns that debt, so we're already on the hook
for it. I think we will have a default bailout,
whether we like it or not, by default. So to
(19:22):
my mind, the fair way to do this is to
take some of that enormous wealth that's been amassed on
the basis of the backs of the US taxpayer by
institutions that are overtly hostile, and I don't think anyone
can argue that point in twenty twenty four, overtly hostile
to everything that's good about this country and about America.
(19:42):
To take the money from those institutions and use it
to essentially settle up with those who were preyed upon,
frankly by this system, by this promise that if you
take on this debt and go to a four year school,
oftentimes a four year school, you're totally academically unprepared for
because the graduation rates only sixty percent. These schools were
(20:03):
admitting people because everybody comes with the government check that
they get up FROMT So a lot of those defaults
are people who are admitted to schools that had no
chance of ever graduating from for the money for two
or three years and they are stuck with the debt
and they have no degree and anyway, Like, I could
talk forever about this, but I think that there is
a lot of merit to taxing universities for this. For
(20:25):
the right, I see it as a twofer. We hit
our institutional enemies because that's what they are, and we
justly make the people who have made money off of
this system pay for the fallout of it instead of
the US taxpayer and the majority of Americans without a
four year degree, you know, redistributing their wealth towards paying
off loans for people who did go to college, who
(20:46):
did go to for example, law school, which seems blatantly regressive.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, so who is opposed to this politically? Like, obviously
the colleges are against it, but who I conceive the
argument from both the Republican and the Democrat side of
why this is a great idea.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Democrats don't see it that way, because I think they
know better than Republicans who their friends are. The real
political question is why have Republicans been willing to fund
universities at such an extreme rate and give them such
a special little deal from the federal government for so
many years when university has always been overtly hostile to
everything Republicans believe in. That's the question. It's a matter
(21:25):
of political will on the right. If Republicans prioritize this,
I think that we could very well drive a wedge
between Democratic politicians who know that the universities aren't incredibly
valuable in doctor nation resource to them, and Democratic voters
because you know, look the kids with these loans, they
(21:46):
don't care if it comes from Harvard, right, They're happy
to have them bailed out. Right. So I was on
Doctor phil Weirdly enough, he did a series at the end,
he did a series of like policy chats, we're on
various political issues. And I think I convinced a fair
number because everyone came on there saying I need my
student loans bailed out, and I think I got a
fair number of them convinced. You know, yeah, it's right
(22:09):
that the university should pay for this and not, you know,
people who didn't go to college. That's not fair. So
I think it would be a very politically smart argument
for the Republicans to make. I think it would put
a lot of pressure on Democrats, and I think more
than anything, it would politically cut off the knees from
a strategy that Biden used in the midterms. I'm pretty
(22:29):
sure he will use going forward in this twenty four election,
which is to promise a bailout he knows is going
to get knocked down by the court to get young
people out to vote. It worked for them in the midterms,
and Republicans can destroy that political talking point. They can
provide a real solution for people who are legitimately struggling
(22:51):
with what in any other context we would call predatory loans. Yeah,
and they can hit their institutional enemies and make it
a wedge issue on the line. I just I don't
see a downside to the right pushing this jd Vance
has introduced something real similar to my proposal. It wouldn't
be very difficult for Republicans to tax at university endowments.
(23:12):
For example, there already is a very, very very tiny
tax and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Well, that
would be required would be to expand that tax and
treat them like the hedge funds that they are.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. So what would you
be doing as a career if you weren't doing this,
if you weren't doing policy, if you weren't writing What
would be then? As plan B, do I.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Get booted off as a tradwife if I say I'd
rather just like arrange flowers at home and paint my
apartment different colors?
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Wait, who's booting you? This is like, this is a
safe space.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
I don't know, Like in terms of professional work, I
think i'd make a pretty good architect. Actually was a
good at math. It was pretty good at sketching, and
I really enjoy looking at buildings. I don't have any
extent of knowledge and architecture other than what I like.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
But that's okay, this is fantasy, you know a series of.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
My skills, like the sort of design and aesthetic element
with the mathematical uh and an analytical kind of that's
more what I'm good at. I'm not like, I'm not
an artiste, but I think the combination of aesthetic and
mathematics would it appeal to me? There was no I
looked for courses in it, but there weren't any of
my university.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
I think i'd be a DJ. I think that would
be make me see it, you know, I feel like
I need I know how to get the party going.
I also enjoyed planning travel, so maybe a travel agent.
I like those two, like you know fields, but I,
you know, trad wife was the original plan for me.
I don't know how I got off that track. And
(24:53):
my husband sometimes says, you know, he signed up for
a stay at home mom, stayed at home wife, and
I decided to go have a career, which is like
a crazy thing to do. So you know, anything is possible, really,
is what I'm saying here. Do you feel like you've
made it?
Speaker 3 (25:12):
You sent me this question in advance, and I still
don't know how to answer it. I think I don't
think I've made it. I would say that there are
things that I'm more grateful about in my career as
the years go on, especially in this environment. The fact
that I have the freedom, enormous freedom, even within our profession.
(25:33):
I'm so grateful for to IWF for providing this. I mean,
they don't have a one voice policy. They really do hire,
you know, a variety of smart women with a variety
of views from you know, moderate independent all the way
to conservative, like I'm clearly conservative. But they really do
(25:53):
an enormous job of supporting women who want to make
an argument about X, Y and z. That kind of
freedom is when I think about, oh, like, would I
rather be an architect or something like that. You know,
there are ways in which I'd rather do that. But
on the other hand, there is no escape from politics now.
(26:14):
Right when I think about what the corporate office politics
is like now, when I think about the things that
are allegedly offensive or like a problem for HR, I'm
incredibly grateful that I don't have that kind of job.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
I would be able to tolerate it for HR.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yeah, I've never talked to HR, I've never used HR.
I don't anyway, I'm enormously grateful for that, and I
feel like it's a rare, a rare thing now to
be able to work in our current environment, which maybe
(26:54):
you agree or don't, I think it is pretty close
to not like Stalinism, you know, not like being thrown
in the Gulag. But by the time you get to
the Soviet Union in like the seventies right where yer structure. Yeah,
very different structure, and there's lots of there's a long
discussion we had about like the similarities and differences. But
in terms of the feeling of wait, you know, you
(27:18):
just don't share your opinions unless you really know the
people you know, like who you're talking to. Uh, there's
just all these like trip wires. You can't really you
can't really just do your business and have your friends
and live your life. Like the political system is intruding
into that private sphere in a very direct way. And
(27:42):
I'm yeah, I think in that context all the more
grateful to to have a position I do, because I don't.
I don't think I deal very well with, you know,
being told that something that I'm saying is offensive and
therefore like I'm gonna lose my job and having to
balance those two things. I have the utmost sympathy for
people who feel they have to have to do that. Like,
(28:05):
I'm not naive about it at all. I don't think
everybody needs to be so John Needson, right, I'm not
and I don't mean just in talent. I mean that
I'm not directly threatened that way. And I don't know
what I would do if saying what I say meant
that I couldn't make rent absolutely.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
You know, I found an essay that I wrote in college,
where I was already an open conservative, but I wrote
about how the traditional family was outdated, and of course,
you see, I got an a on it, and I remember,
I mean, I don't remember this, but I don't remember
particularly writing this essay actually, but I remember having to
kind of adjust my opinions to what I knew the
(28:43):
professor wanted to hear. Because what was the point, really,
I was there to get the good grades?
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Men?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Who cared what my professor thought about what? You know,
what I thought? Why would I need to debate him
or argue out my point? You want to hear that
the modern families, you know, the traditional families outdated like
here you go, hey, yeah, my dad.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Like like you as you know, but for your audience,
my family comes from communist Poland, so sort of similar
Warsaw packed style background, and my dad even in my
high school in Palo Alto and the like mid two thousands,
I mean, he had that feeling about, oh, like you're
(29:23):
getting assignments that you know what you're supposed to write. Yeah,
and he was like, this is like being in the
This is like being in communist Poland, like the you know,
the proletariator always oppressed, they always rise up, like you
know what you're supposed to write, and it's the same
same stuff. And that was like, I think the early
wave of that, but it was already there in the
in the two thousands and in public school, right, it
(29:45):
was already the vision that America had. America's sins are
so much greater than her triumphs that course are unique,
and her triumphs are irrelevant, right, and yeah, and it
is like it it again. I don't want to.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Over no, I get I never plugged my book on
my show. But like in Stolen Youth book that we
published my co author Bethany Mandel and I in March,
it opens with a history chapter which compares a lot
of what's going on right now to what has happened
into talitarian societies in the past. And we're not saying
that anybody gets thrown in a gulag right now or
(30:22):
you know, like that, but there's definitely some threads that
of connection that are obvious. And I think that if people,
you know, don't see them, then maybe they're saying what
they're supposed to be saying, and maybe that's why.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, a friend of mine told me a story. He's
a professor and I won't use the names or whatever,
but told me a story about a graduate student of
his from Belarus. And for people who have not followed it,
there were huge uprisings in Belarus and twenty twenty and
after basically a very obviously faked election, and it's known
(31:01):
Lukashenko there is known as eelast dictator in Europe obviously
like stealing everybody all the money, like blind stealing from
his people. And in any case, there were a lot
of protests there and unrest. And the Spelarusian student was
talking to her professor and she said, you know, when
I first came to America, I had the idea that
(31:22):
it was like a free country, you know, And I
was amazed by this fact and I thought, it's, oh,
it's how incredible, Like everyone can say whatever they think
about politics without this kind of fear. And then she
literally physically leaned forward, looked behind her and said, I've
learned you just have different trip wires, Like there are
different things you're not supposed to say here, and like
(31:44):
the physical act of like leaning forward and checking behind
you before you say what you're going to say, Like
this itself is so emblematic to me of how we've
lost the freedom that America is known for or was
known for around the world.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, I fully agree with you, And look, I do
it myself. I could think of times in the past
where I looked around before I said something in a restaurant,
and you know, I had to be careful about who
could hear what or not to have an altercation or something.
So it's sad, and I hope we are climbing out
of it because I do feel like wokeness and this
(32:18):
whole you know, insane culture is coming to an end
because it just can't last. You know, eventually you run
out of victims because it's a circular firing squad and
everybody's getting hit. What would you say is our largest
cultural or societal problem and do you think that it's solvable.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
I think the largest problem is probably a loneliness. I
think it's a small, ill liberal problem. Some people would
call it atomization. I think we're discovering that the unchosen relationships,
the things that are not entered into as a matter
of contract and benefit and detriment, are very, very very
(33:00):
difficult to maintain in a civilization as prosperous as ours.
And you see it a lot in the sex wars
right where if you look at in almost every country,
you have single women politically pulling way, way, way away
from single men. All these single women are left leaning,
the men are actually they're leaning right and turning a
(33:20):
little more right, but like it's not a comparable turn.
But if you look at the numbers and a long
term look at the numbers in the United States of
women voting Republican, married women vote Republican married men vote Republican.
Single men vote, Republican single women vote, you know, buy
a margin or thirty or more points vote Democrat. I
(33:43):
think those politics are a reflection of not and even
the extremes of the sex war on the right and
the left. Now where you see like the manosphere, which
I think originally had a lot of good points and
I consider myself sort of adjacent to it, now it
really does seems sort of at least some portion of it.
I don't want to broaden out. It really does seem
(34:03):
like hate women for being women, which I find is
ludicrous as hating men for being men. But I think
those sexual politics burn real hot because we don't have
in real life ties. I mean, the average American is
now born into a family that's either never you know,
their parents either never married or to their parents are
(34:25):
divorced before they're eighteen. Right, we have fewer siblings on average,
smaller family size, all of those things, I think, And
then you enter the dating market, and there's just an
endless number of hours of podcasting tape quote unquote on
the just general screwed uppitness of the dating scene. Right,
(34:47):
So it's very easy in our society now to never
to go. Oh. And the final point, friendship is totally collapsed.
Right if you look even since the nineties, the percentage
of people who say they have say more than five
friends completely collapsing in the toilet. So it's very possible
that you can now it's very common to grow up
(35:10):
in a broken home without any you know, close relationships
with siblings of the opposite sex, without a good relationship
with your parent of the opposite sex, and then without
any real good friends of the opposite sex, and then
your only interaction with the opposite sex is like messages
on dating apps, right, And I can see why that
(35:32):
would make somebody form a very negative opinion that the
opposite sex.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Great point.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I think it's it's not
just about sexual relationships, but about friendship, about family relationships,
we just have fewer of those thick ties. And and
the problem with liberalism and prosperity large which I'm I'm
a fan of both to some degree, right, is that
(36:00):
the short term preference of people, you know, having those
kinds of thick community ties. And I think your own,
like very public, beautiful writings about your relationship with Judaism
and the Jewish community demonstrate this very well. Those thick
ties are not easy or pleasant a lot of the time, right,
Like there's a lot of conflict in small towns between
(36:22):
church ladies and right, those things are not necessarily pleasant.
Family relationships are not always pleasant, They're in difficult, and
so the short term interest of a lot of people
is to basically say, well, I'm going to do me right,
I'm going to do me and I'm not going to
be constricted by those relationships, those deeper, unchosen relationships, because
(36:44):
any serious relationship constricts what you can do obviously like marriage,
what you can do sexually, right, But any deep relationship
is exclusionary by nature. It means that two people are
going to have to make room for each other in
what they want to do and what they want to
say and what they want to you know, there's a
negociation there. That negotiation is not always pleasant, especially short term,
(37:04):
and I think what we're seeing is the short term
incentive is to dump those relationships, and in the long
term that's killing us.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
So do you think that's solvable.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I don't know. I don't know if we'll be able
to come up with something to replace the fear of destitution,
right because you didn't keep with your family because it
was always pleasant. You kept with your family because you
might be out on the street and starving, right, And
that's all you know, same reason that divorce was much lower.
(37:39):
It's yes, it's social convention, but that social convention also
comes from, you know, the very real fear of losing
your children, of being cast out. I don't know, Like
I don't want to return to a uh to destitution
that's not that's not solution. So I don't know if
(38:02):
we'll be able to come up with something that. I mean,
maybe we are smart enough as a species to start
considering these long term interests, but maybe not. But I
will say that the direction we're currently going forget about
politics on this question. The direction we're curling going is
all downhill. The therapeutic language of how to speak to
(38:23):
people is actually deeply horrifying to me in a pre
political way. It bothers me if it places distance, all
the time, distance between people to talk to them in
this like, well, you're intruding on my boundaries. So that's
what friendship is. You know, if you have everybody outside
(38:43):
your boundaries, you have no friends.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Right, that's absolutely right. I'm reading Abigail Schreyer's Bad Therapy
right now.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
I can't wait to cry that.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Oh it's amazing. It's so good. I can't put it down.
It's really a great book. It's coming out soon and
Bad Therapy by Abigail Schreier highly highly recommend it. So
I love talking to you. This has been awesome. And
here with your best tip for my listeners on how
they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
Through dinner parties. Talk to people in real life. I
think that parties might save us.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I feel like that's probably true. All right, throw parties.
Thank you so much, Anez, thank you for coming on,
love talking to you.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Thanks so much, Carol, it's been great.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Karol Markowicz
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