On this week’s episode, we explore the idea of the American Dream. Is it still possible? Will your children and grandchildren have the same opportunities as you? Well, Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks and co-author of the new book America in Perspective, joins us to say, without hesitation, that America’s best days are ahead. He lays out the challenges we face and why our system of government which allows us to self-correct and self-heal is uniquely able to pave the way forward for the next generation of Americans.
Adam Brandon is the President of FreedomWorks, a grassroots service center to millions of activists who support smaller government, lower taxes, free markets, personal liberty, and rule of law. Adam joined FreedomWorks in 2005, starting in the press department and gradually moving into a management role. Adam is responsible for setting the priorities of the entire family of FreedomWorks entities, including a 501(c)(3) foundation, 501(c)(4) issue activism effort, and two political action committees.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg. And on today’s episode, we explore the idea of the American dream. Is it still possible? Will your children and grandchildren have the same opportunities as you? Well, Adam Brandon, co-author of the new book “America in Perspective,” joins us to say without hesitation that America’s best days are ahead. He’ll lay out the challenges we face and why our system of government that allows us to self-correct and self-heal is uniquely able to pave the way forward for the next generation. Adam Brandon is the president of FreedomWorks, a grassroots service centered to millions of activists who support smaller government, lower taxes, free markets, personal liberty, and rule of law. Adam joined FreedomWorks in 2005 and is responsible for setting the priorities of the entire family of FreedomWorks entities. Thank you so much for joining us, Adam.
Adam Brandon:
Well, thank you so much for having me. When I see a podcast called She Thinks, I’m thinking, man, a 44-year-old, bald, pudgy guy is the perfect guest for you.
Beverly Hallberg:
You are the perfect guest because you’re bringing all of us great news today. And that is that you say America’s best days are ahead. You lay that out in this new book “America in Perspective.” I think a lot of people are discouraged by the state of the country and are concerned that our worst days are ahead. What good news do you have for us today?
Adam Brandon:
That’s why it’s in perspective. Because when you stop and you look at all the news that’s happening, it’s easy to get down. It really is. But if you go back through the totality of our history, you see we go through periods like this. This isn’t so unusual. It’s not that it’s easy, but we have an incredible system and an incredible people that, if you stay true to these basic principles of meritocracy, the golden rule, treat everyone the way you want to be treated, you don’t screw around with our systems, you leave the Supreme Court as it is, you leave the filibuster as it is… Throughout history, that system has self-corrected and brought us a tremendous amount of liberty and freedom. I’m hoping your next question is about the sub thing, about the subtitle, “Defending the American Dream,” because I got a lot to say on the American dream.
Beverly Hallberg:
Yeah, let’s get into that a little bit. The American dream is this idea and, obviously, a practice that we have seen in our country for decades. And it’s an important one. It’s that ability for anyone regardless of where they come from to be able to make a life for themselves. To choose what that life looks like. You say it’s still possible. You talk about our system. We can talk about whether or not that system is going to be changed by progressives and progressive ideology, but what is it about our system that allows for the American dream to exist?
Adam Brandon:
You kind of just stole some of my thunder there. Because the problem with when people talk about the American dream is that I think back on, when I was a little kid, stories my mother would me about our family, which is a bunch of Eastern European immigrants that came to Cleveland and worked in steel mills and factories and my father ended up going to dental school. Every generation is improved materially. But I think, too often, we just tie the American dream into the material goals. If the American dream is about simply material goals, well, that’s a bad path to go down because then it’s about, well, how do I get more free stuff and how do I get more things and, if my stuff is nicer, then the American dream is good. That’s closer, I think, to what the Chinese dream is right now. Stuff.
I think the American dream to me, what I think people get in rafts and perish crossing seas to come here, is not for stuff. It is for this… You breathe the air here and you have the opportunity to chase whatever your dream is. Is your dream having a large family? Is your dream being able to create art? Is your dream starting a restaurant? Is your dream trying to solve a problem and become a billionaire? Whatever your dream is. To me, that is the American dream, is whatever you want to do, you do have that opportunity.
When you start talking… You mentioned the progressives earlier. When you have this idea that the whole country is fundamentally flawed and racist… In our book, “America in Perspective,” we take a look at, say, Nigerian Americans, which is possibly, by many statistics, the most successful sub-demographic group in the country are Nigerian immigrants. Well, they’re obviously Black and they obviously… But when you look at the numbers, they’re highly motivated. They’re highly educated. They have very strong families. They are chasing the American dream and they are right at the top of economics. What that shows is that, hey, this dream is alive and well.
Beverly Hallberg:
What do you say to the critics that look at our history and say that we have a system that is inherently racist? That it is systemic and that it’s something that needs to be corrected in order for people to achieve the dream. Now, you mentioned a great example there. Nigerian Americans. But what about this whole push by those who think that we have to tear down the founders, tear down statues, change the Constitution, change all these things in order for us to correct the mistakes of the past?
Adam Brandon:
If you go back to the American Revolution, you’ve got men like Crispus Attucks, who was one of the first people killed… Black man… killed fighting for liberty in the American Revolution. The most decorated veteran on the field of Bunker Hill was Black. You have these incredible contributions of Black Americans. You have slavery. Slavery is possibly… I have a young child at home. The other day, I did think about like, my god, can you imagine living in a society where potentially that kid would be taken from me and sold? That is real. That happened. No one is trying to cover any of that up. But history is so incredibly complex. You have beautiful stories. You have evil stories. But that’s history. That’s, again, why you have to take a step back and see, look, you put it all together… You got to understand the past.
But if you focus on one side… Potentially in the past, we focused too much on just selling the good side of America and covered up the past. Now, it seems to be going the other way. We’ve over-corrected and we’re spending all the time talking about the negatives and none of the good. You have to teach both sides. What I mean is the good stuff in our history and the bad stuff in our history. But when you do that, what you’re seeing is, when we have the society that we are committed to a meritocracy, we’re committed to if you want to dream it and you want to do it, we’re not going to stand in your way, and then you have a basic system of rule of law, which is we all understand the ground work for everything we’re working on, people improve their lots in life. Overall, that system is… That’s what you need to preserve in our system.
Beverly Hallberg:
I want to focus on that term that you said, meritocracy. You highlight this quite a bit in the book, saying that this is a fundamental aspect to success in this country. Why do you focus on merit, especially when so much of the narrative these days is focusing on the word equity?
Adam Brandon:
Because when you look back in… You look at history and you look at other societies. Because that’s the other thing you have to put in perspective. It’s not just we’re comparing America to America. We’re comparing America to the whole totality of human history. When you do that, what you realize is this country is the most successful multi-ethnic country in global history. That is stunning when you realize that. For all of our warts and flaws, this is still the most successful. Where else in the world do you have a multi-ethnic society as strong and prosperous as ours? Brazil? No. Cuba? No. Look at the Chinese. They’re doing their best to stomp out any minority group in that country to conform everyone to Han Chinese.
So, when I look at that history of where we are and put it in that place, the thing I think about is, if you do away with our tradition of meritocracy which has brought so much forward and we start breaking ourselves down into sub-ethnic groups, this is the same stuff that brought on World War II. That is a very dangerous lesson for history. If we get this wrong and we get this wrong because we’re putting… you start picking groups here and there, in 100 years, 200 years, people will look back at this country if it… because it won’t be America at that point… and the lesson for history is that meritocracies… really, the lesson is that multi-ethnic nations don’t work. And that is a terrifying thought for what the implications would be for war and politics. If the United States recommits to its meritocracy and everyone is treated like Martin Luther King Jr said, by the contents of their character, that right there is why I think you’re going to have this opportunity for the future to have this incredible nation.
Beverly Hallberg:
I think when we think back to our founding and we think about when immigrants were coming over here, there was a lot of focus on the melting pot, where people wanted to assimilate. They wanted to refer to themselves as being an American. What is that balance with celebrating somebody’s culture but still seeing themselves as a very patriotic American? It seems that we have lost a lot of that these days.
Adam Brandon:
My heritage is… My dad changed his last name from Bushta to Brandon. Kind of the old story is, when he went to dental school, they said, “Hey, we have enough ethnics. Can you Anglify all your name?” And so Bushta became Brandon. But I still love… When I go home to Cleveland, I love going to the old ethnic neighborhoods. They all have big, thick necks like I do. I feel at home. There’s a pride to that. But the melting pot is… I think what you’re seeing… A lot of political class here in Washington is just astounded because, all of a sudden, all these Hispanic Americans… Well, they turn out to be a little bit more conservative and they’re not following in this people of color going to right into the Democratic Party narrative that a lot of people bought into. And it’s because so many of those folks are very proud to come from Mexico. They are so proud to be Cuban. They are so proud to be fill in the blank. But they came here for a reason.
The great thing about the United States… My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. It doesn’t matter where you came from. You can take part in this holiday. July 4th. It doesn’t matter what race, color, creed you are. That is amazing. Most other countries… You look at their holidays. Their holidays are based on some kind of ethnonationalist tradition. Again, in America, that doesn’t exist. That is our hope.
Beverly Hallberg:
Even looking at… You were talking about the Hispanic community. You’re the president of FreedomWorks. You deal with grassroots politics all across this country. What are you hearing from people on the ground on the way they view America? I think if we only listen to mainstream media, we would think that most Americans don’t love America, hate the direction it’s going. What do you hear from people on a day-to-day basis?
Adam Brandon:
I did some research. I wish I would’ve done this research for this book, but it’s something I’m working on right now. There’s a couple numbers that are bumping in my head when you ask that question. The first. 11% of Americans view television as being credible. 11. 16% view newspapers as being credible. Then, I look at some other numbers. Here’s a great one. 1983. 51% of Americans in the country today were born after 1983. A lot of people talk about Reagan era and they talk about… My wife does not remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. She was way after 1983. That’s just not a cultural reference point for her. Other numbers that I look at. When I talk to people across America, these numbers are bearing… I see this. You’ve got less than a third of Americans are proud to be Americans right now. What’s stunning about that is as recently as 2015… and this is according to Gallup… 55% of Americans were extremely proud to be Americans. And now, less than a third are just positive on the country.
I hear this, but what’s interesting is most of the people who are down on the country right now… They’re down because they don’t like the direction. When we talk about… When I sit down and get a chance to talk to them… Look, we’ve been through… I mean, the ’60s were very difficult. The ’30s were very difficult. We went through a civil war. Right after our nation’s founding, there was tremendously difficult periods. There’s always been difficult periods. But it’s those basic first principles that get you through. I think of people… If they see more of that… They see more civility in society. I love football and I love going to a football game. Because when you go to a football game, to me, that is where America is at its best right now. Because you have young and old, thick and thin, Black and white. Everyone there is enjoying the game together. I think people want to see more of that… what I experience at a football game…. more of that just in our general everyday experiences. Honestly, I think people probably need to start putting their phones down. I think they need to stop watching as much news as they do. Because it can be depressing, but you just walk out your door and you meet your neighbors… We have some fantastic people in this country.
Beverly Hallberg:
What then about the concern that we’re more polarized than ever before? Is that true?
Adam Brandon:
I think it’s definitely true, but I think it’s definitely false at the same time. It’s one of those strange things where, if you look at every measure of polarization, America seems to have gotten a little bit more tribal and everyone is very quick… I think with social media because it’s 240 characters, it’s not 240 pages, people get defined into little groups so fast. I think when you’re trying to break everyone down into its constituent part, you forget this general overall larger trend. That we’re Americans. That’s the first thing. Before you get to all these other… whatever categories you want to start putting people into. So, I think we need to… as what we’re in the process of doing and it may be messy in the next few years… is coming to a point where we start to realize again, okay, we are in this great adventure together. This is an incredible tradition that we’re carrying on. It is time to… You just look at the war in Ukraine. You look at the challenge from China. It is time for us to start rediscovering what binds us together and not focusing on what drives us apart.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, I want to take a brief moment to ask you, our listeners, a question. Are you a conservative woman? Do you feel problematic just for existing in today’s political landscape? Well, I have some information to share with you. Every Thursday morning on Problematic Women, Laura Evans and Virginia Allen sort through the news to bring stories and interviews that are of particular interest to you, a problematic woman. That is, a woman whose opinions are often excluded or even mocked by those on the so-called pro-woman left. Laura and Virginia break down the news you care about in an upbeat and sharp-witted way, so search for Problematic Women wherever you get your podcasts.
Adam, I want to talk to you about another area you do cover in the book, America in Perspective, and that is the seeping in of politics into corporate America. We’re seeing this quite a bit. We saw, most recently, businesses talking about Supreme Court decisions, but they talk about political decisions. First of all, why are we seeing this? And what does that mean for the future of business and corporations? Something that is the backbone of America, especially small businesses. How concerning is this?
Adam Brandon:
Well, I’m glad you mentioned small business because I’m going to start off by talking about big business. The problem that you start to have with big business… We talk about this in the book. This bureaucratization of everything. I think there’s this desire… To me, what a business should be is it should be about creating value… And what do I mean by value? I’m not just talking about money value. Value is solving problems. That’s what a business should do and should be about. I think that when you start to politicize what chewing gum you use, what coffee you drink, what airline you fly, it’s exhausting! I would rather that the business focusing on solving my problems and gives me some space to not have to be political. I’m not looking for a safe space. I’m just looking for a depoliticized space, where you can have a conversation that doesn’t have to be charged with an emotion.
Then, when I think about big business, these are the folks that have to end up competing with companies that are merging out of China. They have to compete with companies all over the world. Coming from Japan and Europe. If you devote resources to trying to solve general society goals that are outside of the size and scope of your industry, at the end of the day, that company is not going to be able to compete. When that company is not able to compete, that’s going to put us at a disadvantage as people who want to employed by some of these companies. And people whose 401Ks… My kid’s college account. That stuff suffers if you take your eyes off the focus of that institution.
Then, in small business, I think this gets very, very hard because small businesses are very intimate organizations. You need to have a certain amount of cohesion. And so if you start bringing in what divides us and daily politics into the work… I mean, who wants to go into a dental office where there was just a fight amongst the hygienists over politics? Do you really want those people picking around in your mouth? If you bring politics into the workplace, it’s going to degrade across all of society.
Beverly Hallberg:
Let me jump in here and ask you, then, why are we seeing so many CEOs make this type of decision? Is it that they watch too much news and think that that is the pervasive opinion? That everyone wants woke ideology? Are they just looking at the raw metrics? Because at the end of the day, I would assume they’re doing it because they think it’s going to benefit their bottom line, not hurt it.
Adam Brandon:
I think they are doing it because they think it benefits their bottom line. What I’ve realized in my career here in Washington… I first noticed it with politicians. And that is politicians are inconvenience minimizers. If it’s going to drive phone calls or cause any kind of grief, they don’t want to do it. I think one of the scary things in big business is that line between business and politics is getting closer and closer and closer and closer. As the size of government grows, you start having business needing to be closer to the government. I mean, it was very scary for me last week or a couple weeks ago when I saw the Boeing airplane moved its headquarters here to Washington, DC. Well, why is that? They want to be closer to the regulators and their big customer. They’re going to start behaving in ways that they think the politicians and the regulators are going to respond to. There’s that problem.
And then I also think that they think, if they address these issues, the stuff will go away. I got to give a lot of credit to the guy that I wrote this book with, David Sokol. David Sokol was one of Warren Buffet’s top lieutenants. This is the guy who used to run NetJets and all. He was telling me that he remembers how business used to be. There was politics and then there was business. And that they could do business without having to worry about what the politics were. Now, he’s watching that politics is starting the pressure. He’s one of these CEOs who’s stepping up and pushing back. He’s not trying to say Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. He’s just like, let business be business! I believe that you’re beginning… I think you’re going to see more and more CEOs starting to step up. I think, again, some of these things that have almost pushed too far and now there’s kind of this realization that, whoa, okay, we’re… It’s pretty insane when you have some of these Wall Street companies that are starting to advocate things that are anti-capitalism. Hey, at the end of the day, Goldman-Sachs, you’re a bank. That’s what you’re supposed to do. If you start pushing for policies and with people who are against banking and changing your industry, you might not exist. I think at some point people realize this isn’t cute. This is actually a threat.
Beverly Hallberg:
I’m hoping that they self-correct as they see where the market is on this issue. Just to round out our conversation, I want to talk about the concerns that people do have when it comes to the attacks on free speech, on Second Amendment, the push to pack courts, executive orders that are running rampant. How vital is it for us to protect these fundamentals in order to protect the American dream for future generations?
Adam Brandon:
In our book, “America in Perspective,” there was a chapter, some things we worked on that I always dreamed of talking about, and that is the story of Argentina. If you go back to, say, 1900, Argentina was a peer of the United States. The demographics were about the same. They had water. They had fertile land. They had vibrant industries. They had a growing, booming economy. Today, Argentina should easily be a top seven, top 10 word economy. When you have these G7 and you have Canada and Japan and Germany and the United States sitting down, Argentina should be there. There is no reason they shouldn’t.
Well, what happened was is they had a very stable government. It was, in some respects, pretty similar to ours. They passed an election reform law… We talk about this in the book… They pushed this version of mass democracy, meaning a lot more referendums. They made very easy to vote. And then what ended up happening was the political system shifted from a system of stability to a system of free stuff. A system of what can you give to this demographic to move this demographic into your voting camp? Now, Argentina very quickly is a has-been. I mean, they were a world power just as late as the second world war. They emerged from the second world war rich. They emerged from the second world war stable. They weren’t bombed. By the 1960s, they literally threw it all away in 20 years.
That is the warning. You look at our prosperity. You look at all of this. Ask any one of your listeners who’s flying right now and they could tell you, just trying to get through the airport experience in the last several years, the system is breaking down. I have had multiple flights canceled for a variety of reasons. Some of them lack of baggage handlers. Lack of pilots. Lack of this. When that system starts to corrode and collapse, it happens rather quickly. I would hate to be, in the next 20 years, we look back and be like, man, that was an opportunity. We went the wrong way and we wiped out pretty fast. It’s hard to build back. That’s why when you start looking at… You just mentioned all these basic rights. You start doing away with those, you put yourself on the fast track to Argentina.
Beverly Hallberg:
Final question for you. For those who are listening and agree and they want to know, can I even give this to my child, my grandchild? Age range. Is this is a very intellectual deep dive or more of an easy read for anybody to pick up?
Adam Brandon:
Well, of course, it’s an intellectual deep dive! I wrote it! In all honesty, the goal target audience is exactly what you just said there. There’s plenty of books out there that are going to tell you why you’re right. If you’re a conservative, this is why you’re right. I wanted to write… and this guy David that I met… We wanted to write a book that we could give people who are kind of complaining about politics or have got a bad feeling about things. May be down about the state of affairs. We wanted to give them something… And I’ll tell you. The best feedback I got on this book was one of my employees gave it to his grandmother. His grandmother just watches CNN all day. She called him up and said, “I’m literally crying after reading this book or I’m halfway through it because it’s touching me. Because I’m reading a lot of this stuff and I’m like, this guy I know is conservative but everything he’s saying is stuff I believe in and now I’m getting confused and it’s hard to watch CNN because of that.” That’s the person.
I want my nephews to read this. I think that some of this information is being lacked in school. We’re not running away from slavery. We’re not whitewashing history. We’re going to put it all out there. All of our warts. All of our problems. And then what we did as a country to get through it, to improve, and what those values are. We have a lot of great, little vignettes. Little cliffhanger here. There’s an incredible American who should be on the $20 bill. Robert Smalls. A Civil War hero that you’ve never heard of. We started highlighting some of these American stories. Things that your heart just wants to explode out of your chest you’re so proud to be in the same country as these people. We’re trying to not to politicize it in the sense of we’re just trying to lay out these stories. And so yeah. Give it to your kids. Give it to your sister who you don’t agree with on politics all the time. Maybe this is a book that people can read and start talking about and be like, you know what? We agree with a lot more than we disagree about.
Beverly Hallberg:
Yeah. And it’s a book that’s coming out at the right time with so much going on in our country, especially with polarization. A way to find that common ground about what makes America great. Adam Brandon, co-author of the new book, America in Perspective. Thank you so much for joining us on She Thinks today.
Adam Brandon:
Why is it a half-hour conversation goes so fast but a half hour of exercise and I’m like laying on the floor?
Beverly Hallberg:
Exactly. It’s because this is fun. This is fun.
Adam Brandon:
This is fun.
Beverly Hallberg:
And we appreciate it.
Adam Brandon:
Exercise is fun too, everyone! Everyone should get out and do pushups today.
Beverly Hallberg:
And thank you all for joining us for this conversation today. I wanted to let you know before you go. The Independent Women’s Forum does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you. An investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity, and wellbeing for all Americans, so please consider making a small donation by going to iwf.org/donate. That’s iwf.org/donate. Last, if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, do leave us a rating or a review. It does help. And we’d love it if you shared this episode so your friends know where they can find more She Thinks. From all of us here at Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for watching.
