Episode 981: The Right Divide And The Wrong Alliances
Air Date: September 9, 2026 | Host: Bob Metz
Just Right — broadcasting on WBCQ and Channel 292 shortwave
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this program are those of the participants.
Clip (Jason and the Argonauts, 2000):
I see you wear the fleece, Uncle. Has it brought you your heart's desire? Has its power revived you?
Do I look like an immortal?
The fleece has no power. Except that imagined by those who seek it. We make our own destiny by our own actions.
This is trickery.
The only trickery lies within your imagination. How many have died so that you may gain the fleece? And what has it brought you? My sword at your throat. And your people baying for your blood.
Bob Metz:
Welcome everyone. It is Wednesday, September the 9th, 2026. I'm Bob Metz, and this is Just Right, broadcasting around the world and online. Join us for an hour of discussion that's not right wing. It's just right.
We make our own destiny by our own actions, says Jason in our opener from the mythologically accurate 2000 miniseries, Jason and the Argonauts. As far back as ancient Greek mythology and legend, the principle of individualism was emerging. Individualism is the philosophy of the right. Collectivism is the ideology of the left. Everyone knows there's a right wing civil war going on, we'll hear Nick Freitas declare later on, while Michael Knowles, for his part, calls it the big divide on the right. So why is it that what we call the broader right, quote unquote, seems incapable of understanding either of these polarities, let alone advocate for individualism?
Just two of the many questions we'll be tackling right after our reminder that you can write us at feedback@justrightmedia.org. Hear us on WBCQ and on Channel 292 Shortwave. Follow and like us on your favorite podcast platform, and visit us at justrightmedia.org, where you can access all of our social media links, archive broadcasts, and the support button that makes it easy for you to support the show. Because as always, your financial support is appreciated and is what makes this show possible.
In response to our August 5th show on Anthony Fauci, longtime listener and supporter of our show, Murray T. wrote the following compelling comment on the broader social political media environment, and I quote:
"You know, I've been reluctantly saying to friends in the past year that I think the COVID-19 thing might have been staged in large part to get rid of Trump. I'm hearing this theory more and more from other sources. That said, I'm really burning out on politics. I'm feeling stressed even just listening to podcasts. I still make sure I listen to Just Right, and when I need a pickup, X22. But I'm increasingly finding that I start some of my old standards and just fast forward to the end. It might be a temporary thing, I don't know. I just need some peace for a while."
End quote.
Well, you are not alone in expressing those feelings, Murray. Even podcasters themselves are beginning to express this sentiment. Take for example what Glenn Beck said to Michael Knowles shortly after we received your own thoughts on the subject.
Clip (The Michael Knowles Show, August 15, 2026):
Michael Knowles: What is your just 30,000-foot view of the state of conservatism looking ahead into 2028?
Glenn Beck: There's a couple of things. First of all, the state of podcasting. And the state of the media. I think it's all gonna change again. I think it is—it's my feeling is, you know, ass and elbows and opinions. Everybody has 'em. And I think that that's over. I mean, I'm tired of the clickbait. I'm tired of all of the opinions. I'm looking more for facts and depth.
You provide a lot of that when you're going much deeper than what everybody else is doing. I don't need anybody's hot take anymore. I don't care about anybody's hot—
Michael Knowles: Reactions or yeah, I totally agree.
Glenn Beck: Correct.
Bob Metz:
And what makes the sentiment even more interesting is how we will continue to hear it expressed in the lineup of voices on the right that we'll be hearing throughout today's show. And like Murray, I too have found myself fast forwarding or skimming to the end of my usual podcast sources. Although I don't know if burnout is the exact term I would use for me. As you might recall, I expressed my own complete loss of interest in politics and social media when I was hospitalized for a month back in November 2023.
The good news is that my interest returned when I got out of the hospital, that what I attributed it to was not burnout, but more something like frustration. Frustration caused by my inability to act or respond to what was being said. And what's making today's politics of the right so frustrating for me is the utter confusion and misunderstandings that have dominated the right's broader discussions and debates about itself, the right and what that might mean.
Most people who see themselves on the right actually have no clue how to express or define what that means, and have complicated the recognition of their own identity to the point of absurdity. You have to hear it for yourself to believe it. It's an absolute train wreck. And I think it accounts for many people feeling exactly like our listener Murray does.
So to kick off the right wing's own identity crisis from the August 29th Michael Knowles podcast featuring three of his guests on the right, Kai Schwemmer, Shabbos Kestenbaum, and Jake Munro talking about, among other political labels, one that we have thoroughly refuted many times on past broadcasts, namely, yikes here we go again, the woke right.
Clip (The Michael Knowles Show: Edgy Right Wing Debate Gets Heated, August 29, 2026):
Michael Knowles: Back in the middle of the 20th century, the big divide on the American right was between the conservatives and the liberal Rockefeller Republicans. Then you had the divide between the Reaganites and the Bushies. You had the divide between the business Republicans and the more social conservative types. In the Tea Party, you saw this come to a head with a divide between the neocons and the paleocon libertarian types. Then Trump comes in, brings in this new era of populism. And with the rise of the internet, there seem to be a billion different versions of conservatism. You've got everything from classical liberalism to the traditionalists to working class populism all the way when you get all the way to the fringes, you basically get to boxcars.
So what is the online right really about? I bring in people from all over the spectrum, variations from the mainstream to a little more eccentric. I'm very pleased to welcome Shabbos Kestenbaum, who you know from PragerU and also for suing Harvard, one of one of my very favorite things that anyone can do. We also have Kai Schwemmer, the political director of the College Republicans of America. And we welcome to the show for the first time Jake Monroe, who describes himself on YouTube as quote, an alt-right nationalist goth YouTuber from the UK fighting the woke matriarchy in alternative subcultures. What a log line. Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming on the show.
Chorus: Thanks for having us.
Michael Knowles: I want to jump right in on where the divides really stand. But you do see very, very extreme kind of increasingly ethnic and religious tensions on the super online right. The way that that lands, I think, most reasonably in politics is in a divide over foreign policy.
But to put it really bluntly, when I was a kid, the Christians generally viewed the Jews as people we generally liked, and the Muslims as people we generally were not like—the not that into because they kept doing, you know, we've been fighting them for like 1400 years. Now, on the online right, it seems to have flipped a little bit. And I don't know, I'm seeing an increasingly kind of Islamophilic move on the right. A lot of that is centered around foreign policy and the Gaza war. But you get all the way down to not just people who are skeptical of America's relationship with Israel, which that's been around for a long time. You even get conservatives who are like pro-Palestine, which that actually kind of blew my mind.
So let's start out in order. Kai, you're the political director of the College Republicans of America. Am I imagining that?
Kai Schwemmer: It exists, certainly, but I actually don't think it really exists in the more authentic parts of the right wing. It's certainly not in the College Republicans. I mean, the big thing that I see is you have people who kind of co-opt and hijack some things that maybe historically appear right wing, but they end up not having any kind of ideological actual consistencies. And this is where you get people who really just are motivated by the Israel issue, who begin adopting this kind of ridiculous view of the world. So I think we're going to see a big filtering out of those kind of characters who don't have any kind of conservative ideological alignment. But I do think that that question is a legitimate one and certainly is increasing in its importance within sectors of the young right who are asking the question, well, what is America? And then to whom does it owe its allegiance and how is it demonstrating that allegiance first to the American people and especially the young people?
But I mean, those voices are very real. They are very large. I don't think they're intellectual powerhouses. And I think that, like I said, that filtering is going to occur and people are going to start to grow tired with the people who are truly just secret progressives, willing to ally with whoever as long as they're opposed to Israel.
I, you know, I'm optimistic that we end up with a lot more people on our side who are willing to say, hey, you know, we don't like maybe the foreign influence, but it's not as if we're going to adopt the terminology of the left in order to make a stand on this issue.
Michael Knowles: Shabbos, do we need to worry about free Palestine conservatives? Like is that—it seems to me opposition to Islam was always a pretty stable rallying cry for the right, going back to old Charles the Hammer at the Battle of Tours. Is that now being up-ended?
Shabbos Kestenbaum: Yeah, people forget that 200 years before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the first war we ever fought as the United States was against Muslims off the coast of Tripoli because they kept kidnapping white Christian sailors. And of course, Thomas Jefferson dispatches ambassadors saying, Why are you doing this to us? We have no quarrels with you. And of course, they say, Well, you are the infidel, and we're commanded by the Quran.
So this bizarre left-green alliance, it's not just left-green anymore. To a certain extent, it's the right-green alliance. It's just so bizarre. I mean, you can hate Israel as much as you want, hate AIPAC, hate Bibi. It doesn't really concern me. What does concern me is this bizarre welcoming of Islamist ideals in Islamist countries, particularly by the likes of Tucker Carlson, kind of normalizing it amongst the American populace.
But I do agree in general that the Israel question, it's really boring at this point. I mean, I speak on college campuses and I want to talk about tariffs and immigration and gun violence and Trump. And of course, all they want to talk about, especially because I'm an observant Jew. I don't know what gave that away, the fact that my name is Shabbos, or I wear the funny hat, but they just want to talk about AIPAC and the Epstein stuff in Gaza, and it's just so boring.
So yeah, the Israel stuff, it's a distraction. It's really boring. And yeah, I'm very concerned that we're seeing the normalization of Islam as both a political movement and a religious philosophy. It's totally incompatible with Western civilization.
Michael Knowles: So then my question, even if you say it's boring, who cares? It's not a big deal. Why do they all care about it? Five years ago, they all they wanted to talk about was trannies. Ten years ago, all they wanted to talk about was free speech. Today, in my experience, the modal issue is Israel. Why is that?
Shabbos Kestenbaum: I think the right is kind of falling for a mass hypnosis that the left did with BLM, even though statistically the idea that unarmed young black men were just being gunned down by these white racist cops was just never true. I mean, the data just never supported that. Nevertheless, you had cities being burnt down by the left because they really did believe this thing. So too, you're seeing young people being totally brainwashed and politically indoctrinated to believe that really all of our politics is controlled by a country of nine million people, a quarter of whom are Muslim Arabs. And that clip will probably be taken on AF post right now saying that, you know, the Zionist Jew, of course, says that there is no Zionist Jewish control, but that's kind of the problem.
But so many young people that I'm interacting with, and I'm young myself, we all are, they come from the perspective of feelings over facts. So I'm actually not interested in the arguments that you have in the data, in the logic in the statistics or the numbers. I'm interested, and it just feels like a genocide. I'm interested that data centers just feel wrong. I'm just interested that there must be this global cabal of pedophiles that Trump is covering up. Even though I don't have evidence to support that thing, nevertheless, I'm going to posit a theory. And that's really dangerous.
It's really dangerous when you have increasing numbers of young people who are actually not in the interest of being swayed by the arguments, but rather are judging, I'll talk about myself, judging me based on immutable external characteristics that I literally have no control over. The fact that my name is Shabbos, I'm an Orthodox Jew and I'm white. And that's why we oftentimes we'll call them the woke right, because they've adopted the worst tactics of the woke left.
Michael Knowles: But I do want to get the global perspective for a second from our pal over in the UK, because I feel like what's going on with the right is not simply limited to the United States. I think it definitely bleeds over to the old motherland. Your name is not Mohammed, your name is Jake Munro.
Jake Munro: Well, whenever it comes to the right over here, it's kind of a splintered mess at the moment. I don't know if you guys have heard about the splintering from the conservative, the traditional conservative part of the Tories with Reform. And then Reform also then split to Restore. And you've got Rupert Lowe that's sort of spearheading the Restore movement at the moment. Both Reform and Restore both have this sort of anti-Muslim re-migration ideology that's going on. And it seems to be reaching a lot of young people, a lot of young people seem to be engaging with this.
Foreign policy so much, so far as it affects young conservatives here in the UK, primarily seems to be around they need to leave. Muslims specifically need to leave. And I would say that from my perspective here in the UK, this sort of pro-Palestine or free Palestine that's sort of echoed in certain woke right circles in the US doesn't seem to be as loud here. It's primarily just complete total country nation reclamation.
Michael Knowles: But you brought up a word, as did Shabbos, that drives me a little bit crazy, and I want to explore it a little bit, which is this idea of the woke right. Because I say I have friends of mine promote this terminology. They think this is a helpful distinction on the right.
I think it's useless, basically. There are bad elements that have cropped up on the right that are anti-Semitic and anti-American downright and racist and whatever. The reason I find it so unhelpful is it seems to me that the people who wield the slogan are accusing anyone who isn't like a 90s Bill Clinton moderate Democrat liberal of being the woke right.
And that so it doesn't just take out the hateful people and the radicals, it takes out like traditionalists and classical conservatives and I don't know. So it's—do you, Kai, you're nodding in agreement.
Kai Schwemmer: Yeah, totally. I mean, I see a lot of people who, frankly, were conservative as of yesterday who are talking about this term of the woke right. And I ask myself, kind of who gave you the authority to police what it means to be conservative, what it means to be a Republican. And increasingly what it is that makes them feel they have this authority is that when they joined the conservative movement, they were told that it was a much larger umbrella than maybe the term conservative truly is denotative of. And I think this is actually one of the big problems that we've run into.
It is the fact that this umbrella has expanded in such a way that begins to tell people or gives people the impression that it includes things that honestly it shouldn't. So I think that idea of the woke right, and I'll be honest, I see a lot of people who maybe are more ideologically libertarian, who are maybe more aligned with free markets than they are with larger conservative philosophy. Those are the kind of people who I see making, or using this term, especially as this like negative label to throw on to people, aligning them, by the way, with Hitler. I mean, Bibi Netanyahu said, you know, he compared it to the woke Reich. And I'm like, what are we doing, dude?
Michael Knowles: I'm a sucker for a good pun. But I, so Shabbos, what is—the guy who's been promoting this the most, who I like, I actually like personally, even though he drives everyone crazy on Twitter, is James Lindsay. James is an atheist Democrat until like 37 seconds ago. You know, he's a Democrat until like 2020. He is liberal, like a left liberal by most definitions. And so I say, look, I appreciate his contributions to this broad Republican coalition, but you're not the arbiter of conservatism. This is crazy.
Okay, Kai, you don't like the label. I'm uncomfortable with the label woke right. Shabbos, you used it as did Jake. What how would you define? Like, what is a good definition of the woke right?
Shabbos Kestenbaum: Whether it's woke right, the retard right, RINOs, it's individuals who subscribe to, at least on paper, conservative philosophy or conservative politics, but very much advance and advocate for things that are very much not in the interest of the conservative movement and very much not in the interest of the Trump MAGA agenda.
I'll give you specific examples. The idea that Donald Trump has been protecting a pedophile sex trafficking ring and then parroting that for more than two years, that is an example of an individual who's presenting feelings over facts, who is trying to sully the conservative movement. The idea that Donald Trump or the MAGA movement is being bought or influenced by foreign influence, whether it was Russia in 2016, whether it's an Israel in 2024, that's an example of individuals who aren't presenting an argument, who aren't presenting facts or evidence, but are again engaging in feelings over facts.
And so whether you want to call them liberal or retards or woke right, whatever the terminology is, yeah, we can say that those people are not part of the mainstream conservative movement.
Kai Schwemmer: And what's funny is first before three different terms. You use liberal, retard right, which I think is a funnier term, and then the woke right. But those are different terms. Those three terms mean something different. They have different meanings.
And then on top of that, right? When you go and dive in actually to what some of these criticisms are, they're coming from the RINOs. They are coming, the like the woke right, the people who say that rather, people who use the term, these are people who oppose Donald Trump in 2016. These are people who would rather have a challenging candidate in 2020. These are people who have not been along for the ride.
I really think that a lot of the problems we're seeing now are truly just when the right wing has not lived up to what we should have been living up, which is free speech. It is conservative values. When we get questions about foreign influence, the reason it's become such a big problem. If we had been open, if we had had more open discourse, more open dialogue, would we be in the same place we are now? I don't think so.
Michael Knowles: Hold on, I want to get the international perspective here also, because we're like honing in a little bit on what the woke right thing means, which is like to your point. I love the practicality of your point, Shabbos, which is yeah, the guys who are working against the team, I kind of want them to be excluded. Though that's it, it seems to me a more practical political point than an ideological point. And I agree with you, Kai, that those terms woke right, retard right, whatever, they're all these different liberal right RINOs. Though those do refer to different things, and I don't think we should conflate them. Like the what's called the retard right is just this like conspiracy-minded insanity that you get on TikTok and some podcasts and stuff.
Whereas the woke right, but you know, it's always the two factions of the right-wing coalition is just accusing the other one of being insufficiently authentic, and then the RINOs are just the squishes. We actually I can't identify them, though often, yes, I agree with you. They are some of them are the ones wielding this term woke right, but not exclusively.
So you've also brought it up, Jake. And in the UK perspective, what does that mean to you? Are we—are you—can you bring us to a closer definition of what the woke right is?
Jake Munro: I would say honestly, it's almost entirely lacking in the UK to be practical to be perfectly honest with you. The primary concern of almost every single major political party here, even from the Greens all the way over to Restore is just Muslims. One wants more, one wants way less.
And as far as the Israel situation is concerned, no one seems to want to touch that. The only people still hopping on about Israel and their hatred of it is the left. And that's only because Israel is attacking Palestine and all that kind of stuff.
Michael Knowles: But the term woke right, it seems to me is used to encompass more things. It seemed to encompass economic populism, developmental economic policies, the greater use of the state, not just in economic policies, but even in social policy, this fear that there's an authoritarian emergence on the right. Do you see any of those divisions in the UK? Or is that—it's basically you have a common enemy among ordinary UK people, and it's mass Muslim migration, and good for you, because at least you can rally around something, even though you're probably gonna lose the fight because of the way sovereignty works. Is it any more complicated?
Kai Schwemmer: Do not draw Mohammed. Do not draw Mohammed, whatever you do.
Jake Munro: The primary concern is this Muslim issue that seems to be happening. But whenever it comes to this authoritarian regime, this threat of an authoritarian regime that's rising up, there seems to be no one on the right that is suspicious of themselves or each other or any splinter of a faction of the conservative parties. It very primarily is focused on Labour, which is Keir Starmer and all the things that he's been involved with, all of the things that he has created policies to allow happen.
The overwhelming amount of migration that is coming into the UK is quite clearly to bolster their vote numbers in order to still masquerade as if we're living in a democracy, but actually, because of the amount of fabricated voter numbers, it's actually just it's a dynasty. They're just gonna keep going.
Bob Metz:
Consider the tragic irony of what we've been listening to. Voices on the ostensible right, wondering why the right is suffering a so-called big divide. Making it clear from the outset, Michael Knowles acknowledges that there must be a billion different versions of conservatism. That admission alone suggests that the great divide on the right is nothing new, and that it exists within the confines of conservatism, whatever that is. Because conservatives themselves certainly don't seem to know.
Business Republicans versus social conservatives, neocons versus the paleocon libertarians, classical liberals versus the traditionalists, populists, the online right, the Christian right, the pro-Palestinian conservatives, ideological conservatives, the right wing, secret progressives, College Republicans, authentic conservatives, right-green alliance, the retarded right, the MAGA right, the modern conservative, the pre-liberal, and the alt-right nationalist goth, the far right, the moderate right, and of course the woke right. And also tossed into the conversation are terms being applied to the right that I would normally associate with the left, such as individualist liberal, post-liberal, atheist Democrat.
I would certainly lump all of these variants of conservatism, liberalism, libertarianism, etc. as being part of the broader right wing. And that is why at the beginning of every broadcast of this show, we distinguish ourselves as being not right wing, but just right.
One of the first things I notice is that right wingers talk about people and collectives, not ideas. Conservatives versus liberal Rockefeller Republicans, Reaganites versus the Bushies. These are utterly useless labels and categories that reduce any discussion of principles and ideas to dare I say it, another form of identity politics. Above all, if the conversation context is left or right, then directly identifying what ideas, values, and philosophies are associated with each is critical and fundamental to such a discussion.
And we'll be doing just that, but not before hearing two more right wing voices add even more confusion and labels to the conservative split. Co-host Nick Freitas and Christian Heiens on their August 27 posting of Making the Argument had their own take on quote unquote, the real reason the right is fighting itself.
Clip (Making the Argument: The Real Reason the Right is Fighting Itself, August 27, 2026):
Nick Freitas: All right, everybody knows that there is something of a right wing civil war going on and has been going on fairly intensely. There's always been disagreements on the right, but at a time where I think most of us thought that there was going to be significant unity, both politically and I would argue religiously, after Charlie Kirk's funeral, all of a sudden things just went off the rails. And now we're watching some of the biggest divisions on the right I've ever experienced in my lifetime.
And the divisions even hit home on this podcast. Christian and I don't agree on everything. We have disagreements, sometimes passionate disagreements about things.
And why is that? Well, it's because I look at the sort of world that Christian would like to live in, the sort of country that Christian would like to preserve and protect. And I see something that I can 100% live in and thrive in. I see the sort of country that my family would be safe in, that my values would be protected in.
And yet we still have disagreements. And sometimes those disagreements are substantive. But because I know where he's coming from, and because I know what he would like to achieve, we have good, robust debates about these things. We have good robust debates about whether or not the things that we want or the remedies that we are considering are likely to produce the results that we want. And yet you go online and I watch people who I know personally, who I've discussed these issues with, who I know that if those two people sat down and actually talked to one another across the table, would discover that what they want is not as drastically different as you might expect when you look at the way they treat each other in public. And this is becoming incredibly common, widespread. I feel like I am just watching friends of mine fight one another online. And sometimes I wonder, is this for clicks? And other times I wonder, are we just about to careen off the side of a cliff, fighting each other over substantive but not existential questions at the same time that there's another political element within this country that would create the sort of environment I don't want to live in that I couldn't live in, that my family would not be safe in.
And so this is not me and Christian coming together today to talk about these issues from the perspective of, you know, everyone just forget it, we got a bigger enemy. Yes, we do have a bigger enemy. We also need to discuss these things on the right, because the bottom line is that if we cannot properly diagnose the problem and figure out what a cure looks like, and by a cure, I mean an end-state that we can all actually live with and then peaceably debate the little details that we want to either disagree on or come to some conclusions on. If we can't do that, then yeah, we're gonna be in a mess. But for those of us that do actually want to live in something that resembles the America that we've read about, that we've experienced on some level, if we want to actually embrace the ideas that the founders talked about, well then yes, we will have to have serious discussions because one of the biggest questions that we're gonna discuss today has to do with this idea. Does the Constitution actually afford the necessary mechanisms to deal with the internal threats we're currently facing? And the answer from a lot of people is no, it doesn't. And if that is correct, well, then we're gonna have to ask a very important question. What do we wish to preserve? And what exceptions have to be made in order to save the country?
Now, if you don't accept that, if you think the Constitution does provide the mechanisms, that's wonderful too. Great, let's have that discussion on what that looks like. But the first thing that we have to understand is not everybody that are bringing up these important questions are woke right or want to overthrow everything or create a monarchy in the United States.
And by the way, not everybody on the classical liberal position accepts the fact that the Constitution is adequately equipped in its current state to deal with the problems that it currently faces. And these issues deserve to be discussed with a degree of mutual respect. And that's what Christian and I are gonna do today.
So today, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a conversation that I hope the rest of the right can actually start to have a conversation on as we discuss these issues as we discuss what's going on on the right as we discuss what's going on in our country. So without any further ado, let's go ahead and jump into it.
Christian, how are you doing, buddy?
Christian Heiens: Well, man, that was one heck of an introduction, wasn't it? I really appreciate it, Nick. You might have two people that if you ask them policy questions, not necessarily metaphysical questions, because they might heavily disagree on the metaphysics, but policy questions. They might agree on 80% of the policy, maybe even 90% of the policy. But because they're approaching the overarching political dynamic from a different set of metaphysics, they might view each other as enemies, even though they share actually the same enemies. That's at least the kind of perspective that I'm coming from on this.
There still seems to be this divide about things like ideology, what the post-liberals just call liberalism. And the more modern conservative or classical liberal types for a long time, I think were kind of pushing back on it because the immediate assumption was, oh, what? So you want to get rid of liberty.
No, I mean, if you read the founders, and if you go further back and you read the guys that the founders were influenced by, right, which are the gospels and Greco-Roman philosophers. Those are the two things, primarily, overwhelmingly.
Nick Freitas: You would also, you would also, just to be fair, you would also have to say Montesquieu, Locke, Blackstone, because when you look at their correspondence and who they quoted, it goes the Bible first, then Montesquieu, then Blackstone, then Locke. So I don't disagree with what you're saying. I just think that's—
Christian Heiens: I mean, I would put Polybius and Plato and Aristotle on that list for sure. I mean, the founders looked at ancient history and were like, how do we avoid Athens and how do we become Rome without becoming Rome?
Nick Freitas: And how do we become a Roman Republic without becoming a Roman—
Christian Heiens: Without Caesar, right? You know, on the 4th of July, I went to DC and I had an opportunity to go to the National Archives where it was really cool. I got to see the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July on the 250th anniversary of our country's founding. That was I will remember that for the rest of my life.
One of the things outside the building were these statues of George Washington. They would never be able to build this type of stuff today. Because the statue was George Washington sitting on a chair and he had the like fasces, right? The bundle of sticks with the axe sticking out. And I was like, you know, we now think that that's a fascist symbol. But the thing is is that there's a reason for it in the American tradition. That bundle of sticks with the axe sticking out is an ancient Roman symbol that again has now been expropriated and condemned to history because of the events of the 20th century. But what that meant was is that one stick can easily be broken, right? But you know, the concept of e pluribus unum, if you take all of the sticks and you tie them together, one man can't break them anymore.
The whole concept was is that that's what makes a people a people and a nation a nation is that they come together for a common purpose and cause. And so the Americans actually leaned into that in our early founding, and we appropriated a lot of Roman symbols. That was an ancient Roman symbol. The thing is that Mussolini did the same thing, hundreds of years later for obvious reasons.
If you're trying to understand where the founders were coming from, it's not this post-60s progressive vision for society. And if you bring it up in its context, you immediately get called fascist or post-liberal, although I'm not afraid of that, that second term, or woke right, which I think is a ridiculous term, or whatever slander is thrown your way in order to discredit you. Sometimes there are things that are accused of being fascist or woke right or whatever, that no, it's actually just pre-liberal. It's pre-20th century, it's pre-modern.
Nick Freitas: I think that's totally fair. I think that's totally—
Christian Heiens: Everybody who was part of a successful civilization or nation believed in certain core fundamental principles for building a government for hundreds, if not thousands of years of human civilization. And we quite frankly chucked some of these things out during the second half of the 20th century because of the horrors of two back-to-back world wars. And we concluded, therefore, well, we need to be like Karl Popper in The Open Society, and so you can't have a nation anymore because of Hitler, and you can't have a national identity anymore because of nationalism leading to two world wars.
Nick Freitas: Okay. Let me back up there a little bit, because what I think Karl Popper was trying to do, it's not like nations went away when Karl Popper wrote Open Society. And Karl Popper was trying to address more of an open and tolerant society. Well, if you want an open and tolerant society, you start to ask the question, okay, what causes division within society? And I think Karl Popper came to a lot of really bad conclusions about what needed to essentially be degraded in society, because things like religion, things like a commitment to objective truth, things like nationalism or national identity, all these things were things that Karl Popper identified as contributing to wars, contributing to conflicts, contributing to disagreements. That asking questions about truth will lead to conflict. Why? Because we disagree about truth. Oh, well, then let's get rid of truth. You can't do that.
You know, I've had this problem before with the deconstructionists when we were reading it, a deconstructionist author who was talking about like, well, all words are the attempt for the people that speak so the right the words in order to manipulate and control other people, and really it's the people that control what they interpret. So the language is nothing but an attempt to manipulate, and if the hearer is the one that gets to interpret it however they want, is if words have no objective meaning, then this is either highly manipulative or it's nonsense.
So the point that I'm trying to make here is that these ideas came about at a time where people really were trying to figure out how do we prevent this sort of mass bloodshed and literally an extinction level event due to conflict. But I know this, regardless of what you think of Karl Popper, the people that use Karl Popper absolutely came to a bad conclusion. Because George Soros, Karl Popper is George Soros' hero. And obviously, that guy believes in divisive things. He just wants his divisive things to be supreme.
This idea of eradicating the things which divide people, that doesn't happen. To suggest that it can happen is simply to create a new ideology which will inevitably create division. I'm a Christian. You are not going to convince me out of that. If you're going to tell me that my commitment to Christ is therefore a part of the problem, guess what's just been created? Division.
Bob Metz:
You're listening to Just Right, broadcasting around the world and online. Now, ever since I entered the political field of discussion and action, I have never heard any consistent idea or principles that clearly define the philosophy or ideology of what people are calling conservatism. And as I learned the hard way, that's because there is no such thing.
Conservatism is an attitude, not a philosophy. So while I was pleased to hear some mention of the Greco-Roman philosophers and Plato and Aristotle, we still heard the observation that there still seems to be this divide about things like ideology. Well, this is true, but the ideological divide is not within the legitimate right. It is defined by the polarities of left and right.
And that polarity, which we have described in great detail during our past broadcasts, can most briefly be described thusly. The left represents collectivism, the right, individualism.
The left operates on the primacy of consciousness, the right on the primacy of existence.
The left is represented by Plato, the right by Aristotle, the left by Karl Marx, the right by Ayn Rand.
And by the way, what is being called woke was originally defined by James Lindsay himself as Marxism, which is why the term woke left is a redundancy and woke right is a contradiction.
And of course, the left represents fictional group rights, the right, individual rights, which are the only kind of rights that actually exist.
And as one dictionary generically defines what is right, it reads, "done in accordance with or conformable to moral law or to some standard of rightness, equitable, just, righteous, conformable to truth or fact, conformable to a standard of propriety or conditions of the case, holding one direction as a line, straight, direct."
And as there's no corresponding generic definition of left in standard dictionaries, a simple way to objectively describe the political left would be to use the exact opposite of the right principles just described. And you'll see it applies perfectly.
And as if to illustrate the philosophical vacuum within the right wing, Kai earlier on observed that some people steal what may appear to be right wing, but have no ideological consistencies. Many of our problems are due to the fact that the right wing has not lived up to what we should have been living up to. Free speech, conservative values.
And may I respectfully suggest that the cause of this lack of ideological consistency within the right wing is because of the lack of a consistent definition of what the right wing is. And to vaguely suggest that the right wing represents free speech and conservative values, I have to wonder why free speech was mentioned separately from conservative values.
I'll leave that thought for you to ponder, while up next for a final round of their discussions on this side of the bumper, Nick and Christian, and on the return side, Michael Knowles and his three guests.
Clip (Making the Argument: The Real Reason the Right is Fighting Itself, August 27, 2026):
Christian Heiens: The Greek philosopher, a noted woke right post-liberal Aristotle, opens his book Politics, arguably the most famous book Aristotle ever wrote, with the following line "every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with some view or with a view of some good." Oh, you're telling me the common good is not a modern fascist post-liberal concept. Maybe it's an ancient concept that it has 2,000 years worth of history.
Literally, the essence he's basically saying the essence of politics is to secure the common good for a community. That views itself as a community, aka a polis, right? That's politics.
If I said this today, you would have James Lindsay breathing down my neck, being like the woke right post liberals are trying to impose their view of the common good on society. No, duh, that's what politics is. That's the essence of politics. You won't impose your view of the common good. Your view of the common good is the abstract sovereign will of the individual imposing himself on society. And because you have no standard by which you can say no to two differing opinions of what the sovereign will wants, eventually you might disagree, but eventually down the road, you're gonna end up getting San Francisco, where you're gonna have nudists walking down the street and heroin addicts shooting up on the corner, and you can't tell them no because you've applied an individualist liberal framework on society, San Francisco is applying that to its logical end.
James Lindsay might disagree with the state of San Francisco, I hope most classical liberals do, but it doesn't change the fact that the state of San Francisco today is a product of their worldview, taking itself to its logical conclusions. And some random guy said, That's nice, but I take the founding fathers as our guide to the nation. First off, the founding fathers read Aristotle. He had a very big impact on the formation of the worldview.
So I just had enough of this. Modern conservatives will utter these corny talking points and pretend like it's a refutation of the broader point that post-liberals are making. As if the founding fathers would have ever agreed with the 20th century progressive worldview that conservatives see to conserve today.
I'll tell you what the founding fathers actually believed using their own words. Turns out they believed that maybe two percent of the population should have a say in them in matters of government. You needed to be a male landowning, taxpaying, ancestral American. Like wait until you get to the quotes about like we shouldn't let immigrants into the United States because they might be a Trojan horse.
And that that's not just it doesn't just stop there. I mean, look at what John Adams had to say about whether or not women should have a say in voting in government. He did not think that was a right thing, that that was a good thing.
Look at what James Madison said about who should have his say in government. He said the only people who should have a vote are landowners, and that the existence of government is to secure property and make sure that those who are not landowners don't stage basically in his time he's writing before Marx, of course, but you know, a communist revolution before Marx comes along.
Like, read what the founders had to say about democracy and the constitutional convention. They were warning about it. They said that there is no greater tyranny than the tyranny of the mob, that it is actually preferential to have a tyranny of a king, because at least you have one tyrant that you know who to resist against. But the tyranny of the mob, how can you possibly how can one man resist the tyranny of 10,000?
And so, like, you go down the list, and I think that this is probably one of the biggest divides here is that you will see these people who call themselves classical liberals or conservatives today, and they will invoke the founding fathers. The founding fathers would be mortified at the type of world that we live in today, this egalitarian universal suffrage, endless rights that multiply whenever you have a critically large mass of numbers of people who demand a right to X. Now you're getting a right to mutilating my body and calling myself a woman, a right to, well, I want to walk down the streets of San Francisco naked, or I want to shoot up heroin on the street corner, and that should be my right.
The pre-liberals, not the post-liberals, the pre-liberals, which in many respects include some of the founders, to say nothing about like the Greek philosophers of 2000 years ago, they would say, no, you're actually a slave to heroin. You're not free, you're not a sovereign individual. Will the heroin addict on the street corner is a slave to his vices. The nudist walking down the street, because he's getting a thrill of it, is a slave to his vices. And the question is, who's the master that you're serving? Because you will serve somebody.
Aristotle talked about how there's a, you know, that some men are natural slaves. In some way, all men are slaves. There's a question of who their master is. Nobody has a purely sovereign will. Somebody who claims that, well, I start with the individual, and my goal is to just make the individual as free as possible. Is the guy addicted to heroin free?
Nick Freitas: Well, okay, let's stop here and let's also be fair. When I say freedom, they don't mean free from the consequences of their actions. You know, again, the left does, right? The left advocates for that in a way where it's like you can't be truly free unless the state is controlling your health care, right? Like that's nonsensical to the classical liberal. The classical liberal says no. We want you to be free essentially from government oppression.
Clip (The Michael Knowles Show: Edgy Right Wing Debate Gets Heated, August 29, 2026):
Michael Knowles: But on so on the economic point, like beyond foreign policy, I have seen this term woke right bandied about for people who support tariffs or for people who think that we ought to have an industrial policy, or for people who think that we ought to curtail certain kinds of speech, you know, ban porn or whatever.
Shabbos, does that fall into the woke right criterion?
Shabbos Kestenbaum: Obviously not, which is what I was saying earlier. The application is probably poorly managed, but the general concept that there are those that exist outside the space of conservatism is so obviously true.
No one is saying you can't ask questions. What many people are saying though is you're not really asking questions. You're trying to sow dissent and try to create demoralization, particularly amongst young people who are new to the conservative movement. And that's not in the interest of the MAGA agenda. That's not in the interest of conservatism, and ultimately it's not in the interest of the American people, which is why I think Gen Z is the most likely, it's not, I think, is what the statistics bear out. Gen Z is the most likely to be medicated, the most likely to report feelings of suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, and the most likely to engage with acts of political violence on both sides of the aisle. And I believe a large part of that is because of their being demoralized by individuals with large platforms who tell them the reason you have economic anxieties, however justified they are, is because of this like shadowy undefined cabal of like elites or pedophiles or Jews or whomever. And that's a really bad message to be telling young people.
Kai Schwemmer: To hone in on this actual definition, because Shabbos, I don't know if you've come up with a great one. One of the things that I see attributed to the woke right is any kind of use of identity or any kind of allegiance or at least alignment with it. And I think identity is actually something that is relevant. Certainly the left have engaged in identity politics in a harmful way in a way that has targeted the founding stock of America that has demonized the people who built this country. When you look at the people who say the term woke right, they apply it to anybody who is willing to say that the founding stock of the American nation was white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
It seems that you can't even talk about the identity of the country without being labeled woke right.
Michael Knowles: This is a really good point because to me, the fairest claim that comes from the people who use the accusation of woke right is that this faction of the right is wielding identity politics, and that's bad because we don't like identity politics on the left, and therefore we shouldn't like identity politics on the right. And identity politics is another term that we could debate for like three hours.
But it yeah, obviously the ID politics we saw from the left was truly horrific, but it doesn't mean obviously it doesn't mean that in politics there's no role for identity. I mean, what is politics? Politics is refers to the political community. So what are the limits of this?
Shabbos, do you think that's a fair definition?
Shabbos Kestenbaum: I can't really talk about other individuals who you're not naming because I just don't know. What I can do is defend the things that I believe in and things that I have said. So when I talk about the woke right, I'm referring to guys like Thomas Massie who voted with the Democrats repeatedly to defund the DHS and to open the borders. I'm referring to people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who again voted with the Democrats and believed that Donald Trump is sex trafficking young girls. I'm referring to people like that.
Michael Knowles: So hold on, I want to hone in on the—it seems like a lot of what you're getting from the woke right, conspiracy right, whatever, a lot of it is even beyond ideology, it's just like getting facts wrong and being generally psychotic, if not sociopathic. And the apotheosis of this, all the conspiracies and all the everything, with these women showing up to the Lindsay Clancy trial with their children supporting the murderer of her own children, bringing their kids there.
And it does, it does seem like I love debate the paleo-neocon debate and debating foreign policy. Do we have—but it does seem like some basically all of the internet debates or most of them are just nonsense, like conspiratorial, fever-minded, stupid nonsense that ultimately comes up to this Lindsay Clancy stuff.
Just on the political psychology of where the young right is and where the, I don't know, the political order is generally, are we totally cooked? Are we all just living in like Lindsay Clancy land? Debates are useless, the free marketplace of ideas is dead, the left shot it up and the right ain't gonna rebuild it. How late is the hour?
Jake Munro: So the UK, sure. Okay, well, the new wave of young right wingers here in the UK is neo-Nazism for the total re-migration of Islamists as a whole, as long as they're gone, problems go away with them.
Michael Knowles: On the psychology point, is that—is it all cooked? I mean, that's I basically want to know should I keep holding debates, or is that all pointless and I should just do monologues from now on because debate is dead and no one cares, and the left mostly killed it, but the right let it die too.
Jake Munro: I think it's a good idea not to platform infighting, I guess. I mean, it's all of this infighting, I guess, is especially if it's going to be sensationalized for content, I guess it does damage.
Michael Knowles: But is there sensationalized infighting is bad. Is there sober infighting like actual debates, is that good? Is that conducive to like growing and strengthening the right or not?
Jake Munro: As long as they show up to the polls, if you're an influencer, as long as you're telling the people that follow you that listen to you to vote in the correct direction, which is always the preservation of your nation, then it doesn't really matter.
Michael Knowles: Shabbos, are we totally cooked?
Shabbos Kestenbaum: We're not totally cooked. I think debate is very healthy. Yeah, there's some infighting, and I think we spent way too much time on like terminologies, which I don't think is particularly helpful.
Michael Knowles: But are we wasting our breath? I don't I know like the nice answer at the end of a debate is no, it's actually really helpful, and we just gotta get out there and keep debating ideas. I don't know. I actually don't know the answer to that, and I feel like debate has lost some of its verve a little bit.
Kai Schwemmer: Yeah, well, I'll say, Michael, we can take some comfort in the fact that this is a consequence and a product of success. Republicans and conservatives have succeeded, we have taken the majority of the cultural capital. So I think some of this comes from the fact that the right wing has succeeded in taking control of popular culture, especially over social media.
I think debates are incredibly useful. I think the fact that we have not had enough, or rather that we've been resorting to podcasting rather than debating, has been our downfall.
And if we are now to filter out some of the elements that exist currently in the right wing, which are not intelligent, are willing to align themselves with any conspiracy theory, we are going to do it by doing exactly, for instance, what Andrew Wilson did with Stew Peters. Asking any amount of questions and showing that these people have no idea what they believe, they have no way of substantiating it. This is the way forward. This is how you find the elite human capital on the right. So absolutely, Michael, we do have to keep debating, never black pill.
Bob Metz:
I almost fell off my chair when I heard Jake Munro suggest that I think it's a good idea not to platform infighting. If you're an influencer, and as long as you're telling the people who follow you to vote in the correct direction, which is always a preservation of your nation, then it doesn't really matter.
Well, well, not only could that have been taken as a slight against Michael Knowles platforming this infighting, but in advising podcasters to encourage their listeners to quote, vote in the correct direction, end quote. It bears noting that the word correct is synonymous with the word right. And in the context of political directions, of which there are only two polarities, left and right, he was recommending any moves in the right direction, a phrase very familiar to listeners to this show.
And most tragically telling was the comment by Shabbos in saying that I think we spent way too much time on terminology, which is not particularly helpful. Well, given the myriad of undefinable labels they were using, that's an understatement. Labels matter when they are applied to the correct product.
Clip (One Hour of Comedians Roasting Liberals, May 22, 2026):
Alex Assoune: I recently discovered that I'm not a liberal.
What?
Yeah, I thought I was liberal my whole life, and then I looked up the definition and realized I need to check definitions first.
Anybody here identify as a liberal? Okay, a couple of people after knowing you're walking into this joke. This blew my mind. A liberal is somebody who accepts and respects behavior and points of view different from yours. Do you know anybody like that?
Bob Metz:
All this being said, please do not equate any of my criticism to a philosophically fragmented right wing with the impossibility of an emergence of a political option that, to borrow from Jake Munro, moves the political zeitgeist in the correct direction. Every step in the correct direction is a step in the right direction.
Clip (Jason and the Argonauts, 2000):
I am sick of my bloodshed. And move to mercy.
Take the fleece and do with it what you will. But have mercy on me before you meet your destiny.
My destiny. Is to rule.
I've sworn to your queen my loyalty and faith. And I swear also to you that we shall serve our people and our state to bring you such harmony here on earth as there is in heaven.
Bob Metz:
But it was a bit disappointing to hear someone mentioned earlier that there's no mechanism in a supposedly free society that would prevent people from taking drugs, going nude, or otherwise doing whatever they want in public, since that principle has long been defined and established. A principle on the right. Property. And public property is a fiction. Whatever is so designated is actually owned by a government in some form, such as in my own city of London, Ontario, where property taxes are made payable to the corporation of the city of London, which is the corporation that has the exclusive right to designate the use of land under its jurisdiction. So the mechanism is there. It's just that the left is in power.
And finally, I had to laugh a bit when I heard the suggestion that they have to filter out the conspiracy theory guys by doing what Andrew Wilson did with Stew Peters. We'll talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Having just devoted our entire broadcast two weeks ago to the Andrew Wilson Candace Owens debate, in which we judged Owens to be the winner, I couldn't resist the temptation to see Andrew Wilson actually win a similar debate against Stew Peters, who clearly supported Candace. But what I saw instead was a duplicate of Wilson's dismal performance against Owens. So if this is how anyone on the right thinks that the right can filter out the conspiracy theorists, the woke joke will continue to be told, and the joke is on the right.
So small wonder that more folks like our listener Murray T. are beginning to burn out on politics. But do not despair. Like Murray, you too can still make sure you listen to Just Right by joining us again next week as we continue our journey in the right direction. And until then, be right, stay right, do right, act right, think right, and be right back here. We'll see you then.
Clip (Josh Johnson Comedy, August 11, 2026):
Don't you remember when it was just Bigfoot? What an innocent time that was. When it was just Bigfoot. That's the most you had to worry about. Like conspiracy theories didn't even have like a political lean to them. Now, like most of the conspiracy theories out there have like some sort of political bend on top of it. Bigfoot didn't have that. There were people across the aisle from each other. It didn't matter your party. You could find someone in every party that was like, well, it is a—the picture's blurry, but like.
You used to go to a party, and like there be for every big party you went to, there was like one Bigfoot guy there. But he never but he never brought it up unless you did. He was a gentleman. He wasn't forcing it on everybody. It would only be if somebody was like, Yeah, that's like believing in Bigfoot. Then he would pipe up. Then he'd have to say something to defend himself. It's like that's like believing it in Bigfoot like, well, there's actually some pretty conclusive evidence.
Like oh, such a sweet time. It's beautiful. I miss it. Now it's like everything. Like it also used to just be things that they were questionable. But now it's everything. Everything has like a scam underneath it, or they're trying to get you. It's too much.
But they are trying to get you. So it's like it's like. That's what makes it tough. That's why you can't throw everything out. Because this is my thing. The craziest conspiracy theory back in the day, some of the wildest ones would just be someone going on and on and on about like the elites are planning to destroy us. They're doing all this stuff to destroy the population. They don't care about us. They're building bunkers. And now today we're like, yeah. You gotta recognize how wild that is. Like 2005's talking reckless is like today's, of course. Have you not been paying attention?