Ep 66: My Interview with Thomas Sowell in 2018

Welcome to a special edition of We've Got A Country To Save, brought to you by our friends at Immunage. Immunage is the ultimate anti-aging supplement. Since I've been taking it, I feel energized, at the top of my game, and people keep saying I look younger. So, go to immunage.com and use code Larry for 10% off. Also brought to you by Freedom Chat. Freedom Chat has true end-to-end encryption, no storage of messages on the server, and no commercial use of user data. That way you can speak freely and message privately. Download the app today and subscribe to my Freedom Chat channel at Larry Elder for exclusive posts and never-before-seen content. We also thank Impactful Pictures, O'Glory Bank, Patriot Mobile, MyPillow, and Amphet Coin & Bullion. Be sure to like and subscribe to our podcast. Make sure to follow and subscribe to my channel on whatever platform you are using, whether it's Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, or Rumble, and please patronize our sponsors so we can keep bringing you these incredible videos. And if you don't patronize our sponsors, well, we know where you live. This is the wit and wisdom of Thomas Sowell. The key word among advocates of multiculturalism became diversity. Sweeping claims for the benefits of demographic and cultural diversity have prevailed without a speck of evidence being asked for or given. Name a few institutions in which diversity is championed without evidence. Well, actually, the question would be, name one where that isn't the case. I would say the whole Ivy League, Stanford, Berkeley, corporate America. Yeah. It's really miraculous almost. I mean, I can't think of a word that has gained such widespread use and which is utterly unchallenged without one speck of evidence. If you look at societies that are diverse, they have all they can do to avoid mutual bloodshed. I mean, India, for example, is very diverse. It barely coheres as a nation. That's right. When India was given its freedom by Britain and split into India and Pakistan, I mean, the number of people slaughtered between Hindus and Muslims ran into hundreds of thousands. All right. So this brings us to affirmative action, of course. Let's take a look at the 2003 Supreme Court case, Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the Supreme Court upheld the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School. Writing for the majority, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the Constitution, quote, does not prohibit the tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body, close quote. That's pretty high sounding. What's wrong with that? It would have been nice if she could produce one speck of evidence for it. Doesn't it feel intuitively correct, though? No. That you put students together with other students of different backgrounds? Let's assume for the sake of argument that it is intuitively accepted. That doesn't relieve you from having to look at the evidence to find out if that's true. One of the things that when I was going around, when I was taking my kids around to pick colleges, I would go into the lunchroom at lunchtime and look around. And if I found that all the black kids were at one table and all the white kids were at a different table, I knew what the atmosphere was at that school. I went to school in the 50s. I never saw that. So you say what the benefits are going to be, and then you come along and test it. You don't just say, that sounds so wonderful, there's no need to go any further. And if you look at what has happened in these places, you find that the polarization is far greater after these policies have followed than there were before. For example, there was a period, I'm trying to remember now, I believe it was in the mid-70s, when substandard English began to become viewed as a discipline of its own within linguistic studies and so forth. And for all I know, it was all perfectly legitimate that certain speech patterns would be traced back to various regions in Africa and so forth. And this is a language of its own, it has its own validity. But your argument would be, I don't really care what its validity is, it's holding people back. It's preventing them from participating in the wider society, is that right? Absolutely, and also, none of these things went back to Africa. Oh, is that so? No. Yes, they did not go back to Africa. If you look at, for example, using the word ax for ass and stuff like that, all of that goes back to the South, and it goes back to the parts of Britain from which white Southerners came. Calling hog entrails chitlins, that was a certain section of Britain, the section from which whites moved into the South. And they were known as rednecks and crackers in Britain in centuries past, before they ever set foot in the South. So the whole thing is as phony as the $3 bill. You can't find any fault with any group that is less fortunate. There are no behaviors that they need to change in order to advance. Society needs to accept them as they are. In other words, the causes are to remain the same, but the effects are to change. And if the effects don't change, then it's society's fault. How is wealth created, and why does the United States have the highest per capita GDP of any major country? Wow. How many years do I have to answer this question? It's television. You've got about 90 seconds at the most. Oh, I guess wealth is created when the circumstances are such that people who know how to create it are free to do so. One of the things that pains me in the current crisis is people saying that Congress really needs to do something to make the economy recover. No, they need to let the economy recover. The economy did not get to be the biggest in the world by politicians doing things. All the millions of other people that we don't even know, those are the people who made it the biggest economy in the world. And if politicians will get out of their way and let the economy recover, they can do that. Hey Eldorados, you know I just had my birthday a few days ago. And I just turned, but honestly, I feel more like 43. The other day I was asked, Yo Eldorsky, how do you stay so sharp? I said something about feeling young again, and then it hit me. I really do feel younger, and I'll tell you why. It's this stuff right here. It's called Immunodge. It's a 100% natural anti-aging Japanese supplement made 100% of fermented papaya. I've been using it daily for the past few months, and I've noticed a real difference. My immunity is stronger. Energy's up. Even my skin is looking younger. Now, just pour this packet under your tongue. It's a powder. Let it dissolve. That's it. Tastes great. No pills to swallow. No hassle. If you want to look and feel younger and give your body something it'll thank you for, go to immunodge.com. That's I-M-M-U-N-A-G-E dot com, and use my code Larry at checkout. Immunodge, not too hard to pronounce. Immunodge.com, code Larry at checkout for 10% off. Please welcome to the program the CEO of Freedom Chat, Tanner Haas. My question, Tanner, is assume that instead of using Signal, they had been using Freedom Chat. Would what happened have happened? Well, I think there's a few reasons to suggest that it is likely that it would not have happened. Somebody was inadvertently added to a group chat, not with this phone number, but with a username. I had two friends. One is named Larry Elder. The other, same initials, L-E. I accidentally added the wrong individual. That is really what happened, so let's make the phone number. That should be a verification right there. Number two is in a top secret group chat, you should have an approval process. If you and I are in a group chat, Larry, with a few other people, and I want to add somebody to that group chat, then everybody in the group chat should have to approve that individual that I'm attempting to add. Until that approval process takes place, he should not, or she, should not successfully be added to the group chat. It looks like he took a screenshot of the chat. Doesn't look like he took it with another phone. Freedom chat prevents screenshots and screen recordings entirely, and as you know, if you try to take a screenshot within freedom chat, all you'll get is a blank white screen, and we prevent media from being saved as well. What's occurred on Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, is they allow one account to be on multiple devices. That, to me, opens up the door for security vulnerabilities, phishing, hacking, abuse. So that means that your phone number, Larry, you can log in on your iPhone, your Android, your iPad, iPhone number two, and the more devices you have out there, the greater likelihood that something's going to happen. With freedom chat, we do not allow that, or we put a priority over privacy and security compared to convenience. So your phone number can only be linked to one device. Somebody tried to log in on another device with your phone number, the messages wouldn't even decrypt. Don't watch from the sidelines. Invest in freedom, invest in your privacy, and be a part of history. Speak freely and message privately with freedom chat. Download the app today. I had the privilege of interviewing him several times. Tom, you dedicated your book to Professor Walter E. Williams, who has labored in the same vineyard. I know Professor Williams, and I know how close you guys are, labored in the same vineyard. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, I mean, back in—it was a time back in the early 1970s when you might even say that Walter and I constituted what there was of the black conservative movement. He used to say the two of us should never fly in the same plane. But I think the question is why the two of us, when there must have been many other people who understood the same things that we understood, but we didn't say anything. And I think one clue may be that both Walter and I were indicted for court-martial in the military. Unfortunately, we both beat the rap. In my case, by dumb luck, there was a disputed conversation, and there was a key person who happened to be on the phone with someone in that office at the time of the conversation. He overheard in the background what was said, and so all the lies by the people who were in the office didn't carry any weight because he was in with the colonel. Tom, so you know there's a famous article written by the playwright David Mamet called Why I'm No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal, and he credits you with causing him to rethink his assumptions. What do you think about the fact that so many people have looked at your work, you've written over some 40 books, and you've caused them to rethink their assumptions? How do you feel about that? Well, I think in many cases they had great skepticism about some of the things they had heard, and so what I was saying more or less confirmed or coalesced what they were already suspecting. That would be true of Walter, who people sometimes claim that I converted. Walter came to see me because he had already reached that conclusion, and someone said, you know, there's another guy who said the same thing. In your book you talk about how people should not expect success to be evenly or randomly distributed among individuals, groups, institutions, or even nations, and you talk about a study where somebody followed about 1,400 people with IQs of 140 and above for about a half a century, and it turned out that some of them fared out well, some of them fared out okay, some of them didn't fare out very well at all, and it turned out a bigger factor had to do with family background and whether or not their families were involved in education, whether or not there were books in the home. Those were factors that affected even these people that were extremely bright in terms of having a high IQ. Absolutely, and in my case, I think my whole career would not have been possible without the particular family in which I was raised, which was not composed of educated people. I mean, nobody in that family had ever graduated from high school, and most had not graduated from grade school, but they were interested in education, and they were interested in me. And so I remember one family member, I never saw her with a book in her hand, unless she was bringing that book to me, but she was a live-in maid for a wealthy family that had two kids slightly older than me, and so all the things that those kids outgrew, she would bring them to me, including books and so forth. And so it was my family in New York who met a very highly educated and cultured boy in Harlem, and they made it a point to get him to sort of take me in hand and take me to a public library and things like that. And had I met that boy on my own, given how I was when I was eight years old, he would have meant nothing to me. I mean, they had to think ahead as to what the implications would be if I could meet this kid. And it's true, I mean, had I not met him at that particular time, I don't believe the rest of my life would have been the same. Quote, if you are not prepared to undergo the extended toil and sacrifice that some particular endeavor may require, then despite having all the native potential for great success in that endeavor, and with all the doors of opportunity wide open, you can nevertheless become an utter failure, end of quote. Yes, I often think, you know, had I been born into the world with a body identical to that of Rudolf Nureyev, the great male ballet dancer, it wouldn't have done one bit of good, because nobody in my neighborhood, none of us, you know, ever thought about becoming a ballet dancer. And that's one of the other things that's left out, is people do what they want to do. If they don't want to do it, it doesn't matter how much inborn talent there is. It doesn't matter how much opportunity. One of the other things that people just routinely overlook is age. The average, the median age of Japanese Americans is 50. The median age of Mexican Americans is 26. Now, there's no way they're going to be equally represented in things that require, say, the vitality of youth, such as major league sports, or things that require long years of training and experience like being a surgeon or CEO. I mean, age alone, if they were absolutely identical in every conceivable other thing, there would still be huge income differences between those two groups. Tom, Denzel Washington has a movie that came out a few months ago called Roman J. Israel. It's about a criminal defense attorney. He's on the red carpet, and some reporter comes up to him and asks him a question about why so many black people are behind bars. And I assumed he was going to give some riff about the racist criminal justice system. Instead, Tom, here's what he said. Well, it starts in the home, you know. If the father's not in the home, the boy will find the father in the streets. I saw it in my generation, and every generation before me, and everyone since. It starts in the home, you know. If the streets raise you, then the judge becomes your mother, and, you know, and prison becomes your home. I was shocked to hear him say that. Yes, yes, I mean, well, we're in an age where common sense sounds esoteric. But, you know, this is not limited to the black. In Britain, there was a study done that showed that 27 percent of the men who are behind bars had been rescued by Child Protective Services at some point in their lives. You know, when you raise in that terrible kind of environment, And the studies here show that the offspring of men who have been in prison end up in prison seven times as often as the average person. Your book is about group disparities, whether or not the disparities are because of internal differences or whether they're due to external differences. What do you mean by that? Well, there are two kinds of internal differences, mainly. One are the social circumstances in which people are raised. And then about 100 years ago, the big fashion was genetic determinism. People don't understand that 100 years ago, the progressives were absolutely leading a stampede toward genetic determinism, just as they're leading a stampede towards everything, everything is discrimination today. And I find very little evidence, when you look for evidence, of genetics or discrimination being an automatic explanation. I mean, with genetics, whenever I find some group that is doing very well educationally, and you can get data on how much time they spend on their schoolwork, this is always some group that is spending a huge amount of their time on their schoolwork compared to other groups. Now, someday if I find some race of people who don't pay any attention to their schoolwork and who outperform some other group of people who are, you know, reading and studying all the time, then I'm willing to consider genetic determinism. But I haven't found any examples of that in all these years. What is your reaction when you hear expressions like white privilege or like the school-to-jail pipeline that Hillary kept arguing that black males were victimized by? It's despicable. Because what you're saying is that you're taking the side of the criminals, you're taking the side of the kids who misbehave in school, and the biggest victims of both are other black people. I mean, the thing that Obama has, that you can't have a disproportionate number of black males disciplined in the school, well, that assumes that all groups behave the same, that black males misbehave the same amount of time as Asian females. Now, nobody in his right mind believes that, and yet that argument was used. And again, the people who are the biggest victims are the black kids who go to school to learn and who can't. Incidentally, this is not a problem limited to blacks or even to the United States. The exact same thing happens in England, where in some of the lower-class white neighborhoods, a kid who wants to study can find himself beaten up. A couple of them one year were beaten up so badly that they had to go to the hospital. And what you're doing is destroying their only chance in life, in many cases, in order to either indulge yourself in a fantasy or else to try to keep the black vote paranoid so that they'll turn out on election day for the Democrats. What about this expression, Tom Sowell, white privilege? Well, I have a whole section about words, the redefinition of words. If you judge outcomes, if you judge whether there was privilege about what the outcome was, you get all kinds of silly results. Again, not only in the United States, but, say, in Malaysia, where the Chinese have higher incomes than the Malays. I've seen scholarly studies where the Chinese are said to be privileged. Now, in Malaysia, the government has programs in which Malays have to be preferred in colleges and in both public and private employment. So the Malays are the ones who are privileged. They just don't use their privileges as well as the Chinese use their smaller opportunities. Tom, you talk about the minimum wage, which was the first federal minimum wage was 1938, but you talk about how inflation essentially made it a nonissue until 1948. Quote, what is particularly striking, however, is that there was no significant difference between the unemployment rates of black and white teenagers in 1948. The unemployment rate for black 16- and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent. For their white counterparts, the unemployment rate was higher at 10.2 percent. This was all when there was effectively no minimum wage. Then what happened? Well, then the liberals decided that the minimum wage was outdated. It needed to be increased repeatedly in order to keep up with inflation. And then, so in later decades, I mean, it's been, oh, many decades since the minimum wage, since the unemployment rate was that low for either black or white. And what also happened was that once the minimum wage caught up with inflation, now you began to see a disparity of about two to one in the unemployment rate between that of black teenagers and white teenagers. And so it had two devastating effects on blacks. There's a personal aspect of this. I left home in 1948, 17 years old, no high school diploma, no skills, no work experience. Milton Friedman has called the minimum wage, quote, perhaps the most anti-Negro law on the statute books, end of quote. Yes. I've spent years arguing about that. Unfortunately, economists' words carry relatively little weight in politics. One of the things that annoyed me about Eric Holder is he said that when it comes to matters of race, America has been a nation of cowards. He says that today's pernicious racism is every bit as bad as the racism of old. You write about 19th century Detroit. Quote, in 19th century Detroit, blacks had been denied the right to vote in 1850, but they were voting in the 1880s. And in the 1890s, blacks were being elected to statewide offices in Michigan by a predominantly white electorate. And the 1880 census showed that in Detroit, it was not uncommon for blacks and whites to live next door to each other. The black upper class had regular social interactions with upper class whites, and their children attended high schools and colleges with the children of their white counterparts, close quote. In the 1880s? Yes. Yes. And then you had a great retrogression set in with the mass movement of blacks out of the South, where they had no similar education and so on. The moral of this is not peculiar. The situation is not peculiar to blacks. Of the Irish, the Jews before them suffered from the people who hadn't acculturated, and therefore people turned against the Irish in general and Jews in general. You write about how Chief Justice Warren in 1954 in the Brown v. Board of Education, the unanimous decision, declared that separate schools were inherently unequal. You say that they were not inherently unequal, and you talk in particular about a school called Dunbar High School. Tell us about Dunbar. As of 1954, a higher percentage of Dunbar High School graduates went on to college than that of any white public school in the city of Washington. As far back as 1899, the same tests were given in the four academic high schools in Washington at that time. This school did better than that two out of the three white high schools. So it was not the segregation, it was a whole host of other things. Let's talk about your writing about schools like the charter schools, the Harlem schools, the Success Academy chain. You said it, quote, surpassed all public schools in the state in math, even their counterparts in the whitest and richest suburbs. We're talking about in 2013, fifth grade. Yeah, well, it was not every school, but it was every school district. And in some of these school districts, the average family income ranged from four times that in the Success Academy school to eight times that in the Success Academy school. And nevertheless, the Success Academy school did better than any school district in New York State. And the Success Academy schools are located primarily in places like Harlem and South Bronx, Texas, and so on. And it's a long list of parents willing to get in them, but they're just a short of the spaces. Yeah, the last time I checked, it was 50,000 people on the waiting list. I mean, it's unconscionable that de Blasio, the mayor, is fighting against the expansion of charter schools, which, you know, allow an opportunity that those kids aren't likely to get anywhere else. Let's move on to mortgage rejection rates. And that, in my opinion, is what caused this whole meltdown. But for the assertion that anybody who fogs up a mirror should have a home, we wouldn't be in this position. Canada didn't have this problem. Absolutely. I did a lot of research and wrote a book on the housing boom and bust. And there's no question about the government. The lenders are always blamed. The lenders have no incentives to lend money to people who have put bad credit. But under pressure from the government, and, in fact, threats from the attorney general, that they'd be accused of discrimination if they didn't have proportional representation of people who got mortgages. And, well, they gave mortgages to people they wouldn't have given to voluntarily. And both they and those people were worse off in the end because the people couldn't pay the mortgages and the lenders couldn't collect. And you talk about how it is true that there was a higher rejection rate for black applicants, but the rejection rate for Asian applicants and Native American applicants was even lower than the rejection rate for white applicants. So why is it racism when white applicants are being rejected at a higher rate than are Asian, African, Asian American, and Native American applicants? Well, it's because the media have their preconceptions, and discrimination against whites is not part of their preconceptions. And so it's the same as if it never happened. One of the things you write in your chapter of World on Numbers is you quote a professor of criminology who said this, quote, Good statisticians were throwing up their hands and saying, this is one battle you will never win. I don't want to be called a racist, close quote. So instead of using fact and data to make an argument, they just don't get involved at all because they feel that if they bring forth facts as you've just now done in your book, Discrimination and Disparities, they'll be called racist. There's no question about it. I think the classic case was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was fed back in the 1960s, but he was alarmed because one-third of black kids were being raised without a father present. And what people don't know is that Daniel Patrick Moynihan was raised without a father present, but his father deserted the family when he was 10 years old, and they went through hell. So he knew from personal experience as well as from scholarship that that was bad news. He was denounced as a racist and a fascist. I remember that book. I remember reading it when I was in my freshman year in college. And I think I was only one of two or three blacks in the class. And I argued, based on what I was seeing in my neighborhood, that he was on to something. And the white kids in the class denounced me as being insensitive and out of touch. Oh, God. These are wild times. They are. Now, you talk about Professor John McWhorter, who is a professor of linguistics, and he is one of those educators who said that black English can be used in schools, quote, as an aid to imparting standard English to black kids, close quote. What is that? I have no idea how people arrive at these things. They see language as some kind of symbolic, ideological kind of issue. Language is one of the most practical things in the world. Knowledge is stored in languages. For many centuries, European universities taught in Latin. And it was not some kind of fetish. It was because most of the knowledge in the Western world at that time was stored in Latin. If you wanted the knowledge, you had to learn Latin. Now, in later years, you could see the same thing in French or German or whatever. But at that time, that was the inherent constraint. And we have to live in the world of reality. Now, I've known this Professor John McWhorter for a few years. We're not close friends, but I do know him. And I assumed he was a conservative. I assumed he was a Republican. He told me, Tom, he was going to vote for Obama. I said, why? He said that he thought that Obama would encourage black people to work harder. I said, even if that were true, it is not worth the damage that Obama is going to do to the country. I've not seen any evidence that Obama has inspired kids to work harder. Have you? No. Just the opposite. He has promoted the idea that if you don't have what other people have, it's because they've done you wrong. That is not encouraging people to work harder or to study harder or do anything else other than blame other people. Socialism failing to work as it always does, this time in Venezuela. You talk about giving everybody something free, and all of a sudden, there's no food to eat. And who do you think is the richest person in Venezuela? The daughter of Hugo Chavez. Hello. Anyway. Owen too. Tom, I know you like baseball. I just played you a sound from Vin Scully talking about socialism and made the argument that the richest person in Venezuela was Hugo Chavez, yet everybody else is poor. Ball too. It's just pathetic. I mean, you realize that communism started out to make things equal, and you have a country like North Korea where for all practical purposes, the entire population is displayed. You said the last time we talked, as between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the choice was a disaster versus a risk. You prefer the risk. How do you think the risk is working out so far after about a year and a half in? Better than I thought, but still with some rocky times, so we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves before we see what the future is going to be like. But there's no question about it. This was a lesser risk than Hillary. Hillary was a guaranteed disaster. Tom, as always, thank you so much for taking the time. One more time, the book is called Discrimination and Disparities. It's up on LarryElder.com. As always, Tom Sowell, it was an honor. I enjoyed it greatly, Larry. Now, one of the most flattering things said to me or about me was delivered by Tom Sowell. I did an appearance on Fox News. He thought it was impressive, so he wrote to me and he said, quote, As someone said about Willie Mays, another routine, spectacular play. End of quote. Back at you, Professor Sowell. The playwright David Mamet called Sowell America's greatest contemporary philosopher. End of quote. I have a lot of choices about who I work with in the precious metals industry, and so do you. I really love the fact that for over 45 years, AmFed Coin & Bullion has been serving buyers and sellers of coins and precious metals. 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That's PatriotMobile.com slash Larry or call 972-PATRIOT. Now I wrote this nearly 30 years ago. I call it Personal Pledge 32. The only minor alteration is saying read a newspaper every day. In our digital age, maybe one should sample several news sites each day. Take it away. There is no excuse for lack of effort. Although I may be unhappy with my circumstances and although racism and sexism and other isms exist, I know that things are better now than ever and the future is even brighter. While I may be unhappy with my circumstances, I have the power to change and improve my life. I refuse to be a victim. Others may have been blessed with more money, better connections, a better home environment, even better looks, but I can succeed through hard work, perseverance, and education. I may be a product of a single or no parent household, but I will not hold anyone responsible for my present or allow anyone to interfere with my future. Others succeed under conditions far worse than mine. Some schools and teachers are better than others, but my level of effort, dedication, curiosity, and willingness to grow determine what I learn. Ambition is the key to growth. I will set apart some time each day to think about where I want to go and how I intend to get there. A goal without a plan is just a wish. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. If suitable role models are not nearby, I will seek them out. A role model is someone who, through hard work and a positive outlook, has achieved. A role model may be a parent, a relative, a friend, church member, judge, doctor, attorney, business person, or someone I've read about in the newspaper or seen on the local news. I will contact role models and seek their advice, guidance, and counsel. People remember when they were my age and are eager to help. I will seek out recommended magazines, articles, books, biographies, videos, and motivational and how-to books and use them for education and motivation. The light is always green. You cannot go full speed with one foot on the brake. I am always in school, and I will not waste my summer by failing to read about and speak to people who can inspire me. I will avoid friendship with people who do not share my goals and commitments. Non-supportive relationships waste time and energy. I will not seek immediate results. As I understand, life is a journey and not a destination. I will read a newspaper each day. I will entertain myself in ways that challenge and expand my mind. As someone said, a mind once expanded never returns to its original size. I will pay attention to my diet and overall fitness as they are the keys to a healthy and productive body and an enthusiastic mind. Drugs are stupid. People who believe in drugs don't believe in themselves. I understand that jobs of the future require more preparation and training than ever, and I am determined to obtain the necessary background. A well-rounded, competent student studies math and science. People are not born deficient in mathematical ability. Through hard work and dedication, the subject can be mastered. It is essential that I learn to speak and write standard English. This is not acting white, but acting smart. A strong vocabulary is the key to communication, and I will read books on vocabulary enrichment. I expect sometimes to be teased, even ridiculed. This will not stop me. It will only make me stronger and more determined. I control my body and will not create a child until I am spiritually, psychologically, educationally, and financially capable of assuming this awesome responsibility. Life is difficult. I expect setbacks and will learn from them. Struggle creates strength. Every day is precious, and one without growth is squandered. There's only one me, and I'm it. For whatever reason, my father thought he was going to die at the age of 36. So he wrote this letter to my brother to give him guidance when my brother Kirk was two years old. Here's what my father said. Kirk, my son, you are now starting out in life, a life that Mother and I cannot live for you. So, as you journey through life, remember, it's yours, so make it a good one. Always try to cheer up the other fellow. Learn to think straight, analyze things, and be sure you have all the facts before concluding, and always spend less than you earn. Make friends, work hard, and play hard. And most important of all, remember this, the best of friends wear out if you use them. This may sound silly, son, but no matter where you are on the 29th of September, that's Kirk's birthday, see that Mother gets a little gift, if possible, along with a big kiss and a broad smile. When you're out on your own, listen and take advice, but do your own thinking and concluding. Set up a reasonable goal and then be determined to reach it. You can and will. It's up to you, son, your father, Randolph Elder. And my dad always told my brothers and me this, hard work wins. You get out of life what you put into it. You can't control the outcome because you are 100% in control of the effort. And before you get mad at somebody else for what you think they've done to you, go to the nearest mirror, look into it, and say, what could I do to change the outcome? And he also said, no matter how good you are, no matter how hard you work, sooner or later, bad things are going to happen. And that's me, and that's what I believe, and that's how I've always lived my life. We are honored that you joined us today to recognize the service of one of our own, Staff Sergeant Randolph Elder. It is appropriate that we hold this ceremony here on the hallowed ground in which the fighting 5th Marines memorializes the service and the sacrifice of our brothers in arms. I use the word brothers because that's what we are. The Marine Corps is a family, and our motto of semper fidelis, or always faithful to our God, to our country, and to our Corps, breeds a bond that nothing can sever. So just as we remember those of this fine regiment who fell in battle, we also remember all of those who once wore the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor. Randolph Elder was one of these men. We are honored to be joined this morning by Larry and Kirk Elder, Staff Sergeant Elders' two surviving sons and their families. Randolph Elder was born in Athens, Georgia in 1915, and he grew up during the Great Depression. He would work a number of odd jobs, such as being a bellboy, a shoeshiner, a valet, and a cook, and before becoming a porter on the railroad and getting his first taste of California. Like many Americans at the outbreak of World War II, Randolph Elder chose to serve his country, but he wouldn't settle for any service. He wanted to be one of the best. Although he knew it would be challenging, Randolph enlisted in the Marine Corps and would be sent to Montford Point, where he would earn the title of Marine. Private Elder was trained for combat and was sent overseas to the Pacific Theater to prepare for the expected invasion of Japan. He would spend his time in the Pacific on the island of Guam and perform so well he was promoted four times, attaining the rank of Staff Sergeant. Like many veterans following the end of the war, Randolph Elder was challenged to find work, but the perseverance, work ethic, and commitment to excellence that he learned growing up during the Depression and as a Marine would lead to him eventually opening up his own restaurant in the Pico Union area of Los Angeles. He would faithfully run the Elder's Snack Bar for 30 years. Raising a family in the process instilled many of the values he learned as a Marine into his sons. Having gone through a time of racism and bigotry, Randolph Elder overcame. He would raise his sons to understand that the sky is the limit and they should follow their dreams. But his legacy goes beyond that of his immediate family. The hard work, superior performance, and professionalism of Staff Sergeant Elder and his fellow Montford Point Marines broke down the barriers and opened the doors to future generations of African Americans, resulting in the Marine Corps today in which one is judged on the value they bring to the table and not by their race, color, or gender. And the moral of the story is, everybody's life right now is a series of choices. Big choices, little choices, acts of omission, acts of commission, things you didn't do, things you did do, and ultimately they add up to put you where you are. And before you blame somebody else, you look in the mirror and ask yourself, what could I have done to change the outcome? Now my father and I didn't always get along. He wasn't the warmest, fuzziest guy in the room. World War II crusty old Marine. So I wrote a book about an eight-hour conversation I had with him when I was 25 years old. I thought the conversation might be five or ten minutes long. It ended up being eight hours. So the book is called Dear Father, Dear Son, Two Lives, Eight Hours. The paperback has a different title, A Lot Like Me. Same book, different title. I urge you to consider giving it to whoever you think might benefit from it for Father's Day. Attention active duty military and first responders. Open an account with Old Glory Bank. It takes about eight minutes. And get a free $100,000 line of duty life insurance policy. Every day, they put their lives on the line. In the line of duty. In the line of fire. They're protectors. Police. Firefighters. The military. Border patrol agents. They protect us. So Old Glory Bank is protecting them with Old Glory Protect. It's a $100,000 line of duty death benefit, free, with an Old Glory Bank account and direct deposit. Old Glory Protect from Old Glory Bank. Protecting those who protect us. Again, it will take you about eight minutes to open up an account. OldGloryBank.com. That's OldGloryBank.com. MyPillow is excited to announce that they are extending the mega sale on overstock clearance and brand new products. This is your chance to grab incredible deals on some of MyPillow's most popular and newly released items. For example, save $40 on the new spring MyPillow bed sheets available in any size and color. These luxurious sheets are designed for maximum comfort and breathability, perfect for a great night's sleep. Looking for a meaningful gift? Save 30% on the brand new MyCrosses, inspired by the one Mike has worn every day for over 20 years. These beautifully crafted crosses come in both men's and women's designs and are proudly made right here in the good old U.S. of A. Get the six-piece bath or kitchen towel sets for just $39.98. Initial quantities are extremely limited, so do not wait. And don't forget the best-selling standard MyPillow, now just $17.98. Plus orders over $75 ship free. Go to MyPillow.com and use promo code Larry or call 800-890-1843 to order right now. That's MyPillow.com. Promo code Larry or call 800-890-1843 to order right now. Hope you enjoy this special edition of We've Got a Country to Save. Brought to you by our friends at Iminage. Iminage is the ultimate anti-aging supplement, and since I've been taking it, I feel energized, at the top of my game, and people keep saying I look so much younger. Go to Iminage.com and use code Larry for 10% off. Also brought to you by FreedomChat. FreedomChat is true end-to-end encryption, no storage of messages on the server, and no commercial use of user data. That way you can speak freely and message privately. Download the app today and subscribe to my FreedomChat channel at Larry Elder for exclusive posts and never-before-seen content. We also thank Impactful Pictures, Old Glory Bank, Patriot Mobile, MyPillow, and AmFed Coin & Bullion. And be sure to like and subscribe to our podcast. Make sure to follow and subscribe to my channel on whatever platform you're using, whether X, YouTube, Facebook, or Rumble. Please patronize our sponsors so we can keep bringing you these incredible videos. And remember, we've got a country to save. So thank you all for joining us this evening for this annual Hudson Valley tradition as we celebrate our nation's independence. Tonight is more than a celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It's a celebration of the principles penned in that document, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These immortal words serve as the foundation of what makes our nation what it is today. This year, we're honored to celebrate the 250th birthday of the fighting force that made our independence possible, the United States Army. A year older than the nation it defends and serves, your United States Army has a rich history and legacy of service, sacrifice, and dedication. A legacy by all who have borne the title of American soldier and defended our values and the principles that our founding fathers declared in the assembly room of Independence Hall in Philadelphia in 1776. Tonight, we not only celebrate generations of American soldiers, but all of those who have worn the cloth of our nation throughout its history. The principles captured in the Declaration endure today because of service and sacrifice of all American service members who embody the spirit of the founding fathers and defend freedom at home and around the globe. We are honored to have so many of you here this evening. So first, could I ask our veterans to stand so that we can say thank you for your service and sacrifice. Veterans, please stand. The United States Coast Guard. We raise our trust in Thee, Whose servants, strong and proud, In fight shall our hope rise. Send them throughout the seas of gratitude To fight, to save, or fight to death. The United States Space Force. Heading to our skies, standing tall. The United States Air Force. The United States Navy. The United States Marine Corps. The United States Army.