Keisha Toni Russell on Merit, Fairness, and Ensuring Equality Under the Law

The 64th episode of Bald Ambition asks a question most people are too afraid or confused to ask out loud: why would a Black female constitutional attorney publicly oppose the nomination of the first Black female Supreme Court justice—and why does that matter? 

Short answer: standards. Longer answer: life is unfair, yet basing those standards on race, gender, or other factors does a disservice to those ostensibly meant to be protected and empowered. 

Mookie is excited to explore this and other politically, legally, and culturally radioactive topics with Keisha Russell, who’s spent her career navigating civil rights, free speech, and the limits of government power. Her testimony against the SCOTUS nomination was rooted in merit, constitutional fidelity, and intellectual independence.

Keisha lays out a blunt reality. When race becomes a shield against criticism—or worse, a qualification in itself—it creates doubt and undermines. Heightened sensitivity invites the implicit, corrosive question: Did you earn it? 

The conversation expands into a broader cultural diagnosis: What started as a righteous fight for equal access has often mutated into a demand for equal outcomes that are enforced by the government, justified by history, and defended through emotional appeal rather than constitutional principle. Russell argues that this shift is unsound in the courts and destructive to the individual.

Keisha's key points

• You can’t cure discrimination by institutionalizing it in reverse
• You can’t build confidence by lowering the bar
• You can’t claim equality while insisting certain groups need different rules to compete

These principles are also understood within the context that racism and inequality exist. Yes, life is uneven and unfair, often brutally so. But Keisha draws a hard line between acknowledging those truths and building an entire worldview around them. The conversation finds balance between empathy and accountability, fairness and freedom, historical awareness and present-day agency. Mookie pushes on that tension, and asks if a purely merit-based system de facto ignores real-world disadvantages? Keisha acknowledges the asymmetry of life, but refuses to let it become destiny.

Together, Keisha and Mookie resist the reflex to sort people into tribes, treat disagreement as betrayal, and outsource personal responsibility to institutions. Keisha makes the case that equality under the law only works if it applies equally, without exception, even when uncomfortable. She argues that once merit becomes negotiable, everything else is too.

The Guest

Keisha Toni Russell is a constitutional lawyer with First Liberty Institute in Texas, a non-profit law firm that specializes in religious liberty litigation. Keisha is a sought-after speaker who writes op-eds in various national news outlets and delivers commentary on CBS, Fox News, CBN, the Victory Channel and others. Keisha graduated from Emory University School of Law and was a 2017 Emory University Graduating Woman of Excellence. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Keisha was a special education teacher in an elementary school in Atlanta, Georgia. Keisha grew up in Palm Beach County, Florida and currently lives in Dallas, Texas.

Learn More

https://keishatonirussell.com/

Read Her Book

https://keishatonirussell.com/uncommon-courage/

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:03

Hello, and welcome to the Bald Ambition Podcast. I'm your very bald host, Pookie Spitz, and the one with all the ambition today is Keisha Russell on board. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:18

I'm good. Thanks for having me. So good to be here.

SPEAKER_04 0:21

Thanks for making time. I'm honored to have a constitutional attorney on board. And I can't wait to talk about constitutional attorney stuff with you.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Yeah, I think I can do a little bit of that. I can do a little bit of that.

SPEAKER_04 0:37

I got the right the right woman for the right the right podcast, sounds like. I can do that. Top of the news. I think a great way to open up the conversation is Charles vs. Salazar in Colorado originally, bubbled all the way up to SCOTUS. And it's a highly sensitive topic and an amazing 8-1 decision. When do you see that in this divided court? Almost never. Katanji Jackson was the only holdout for the dissent. So how do you frame it? And how does this fit into what I've come to understand? Some of your advocacy and interest in civil rights, legality, and the whole shebang.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Yeah, so the thing about this case is that, you know, obviously it is a sense of issue to a lot of people. And this was about sort of prohibiting what they call convergent therapy for minors who identifies LGBTQ in some respects. And this particular counselor is religious, right? So she provides religious counseling to anyone, including minors who want to come to her to talk about not embracing those feelings. And Colorado said she could not do that. So I think one of the most important things is because sometimes you hear the term conversion therapy and you think like electro shop therapy of like, you know, gay kids in the back or something, but she only does talk therapy. It's not anything physical or crazy. Um so I think that's important because when I hear the term conversion therapy, sometimes I get images in my head that don't quite fit this case. But overall, I think this case really fits into the larger sort of cultural conversation about where civil rights begin and the constitution begins and how and how you're able to sort of protect certain things without infringing on constitutional rights. So for example, Colorado says they want to protect minors from um what they call a therapy that isn't uh scientifically proven or anything like that. And they have a lot of other uh arguments, one of those being, oh, we're we're not regulating speech, we're just we're just regulating the content of a of a of a professional. We're we're allowed to do that. Um and you know, the Supreme Court, uh eight of them at least, said, No, you're regulating her speech. And and here's the kicker, right? If she was saying to these children, yes, you should be trans, yes, you should be gay, and let me help you, let me talk you through that, then she could do what she's doing. The problem is that she's helping them perhaps deny those feelings or resist those feelings. And because she's coming at it from that angle, the Supreme Court said, no, this is called viewpoint discrimination, meaning you can talk about a topic, but only from a certain viewpoint. And that is completely against the f the free speech clause. You are not allowed to regulate viewpoint. Um, it's like the most egregious form of uh speech regulation that that a government can can do. Um and so I think that's what this is really about is the the other problem here is the minor or the family, they're choosing the counselor, right? So they're choosing to participate in this kind of counseling, and so Colorado's really interfering with that choice as well for someone who wants that. They want someone who's religious and who's going to talk them into these things. So that's sort of the baseline.

SPEAKER_04 4:20

There are a lot of emotional issues here, and uh, that's why this case is so interesting. From from what I read of the verdict, it had almost nothing to do with conversion therapy per se, because there's some very left-leaning judges, obviously, who no doubt don't take much sympathy to the practice and might even find it reprehensible in principle. But it really was expressed as a First Amendment kind of case, which is a trend that's been activated, if you will, regarding what ostensibly would be considered civil rights cases. So, where does an individual's protection stop, boundaries begin, and can we characterize what might have been considered a civil rights issue as a First Amendment speech kind of ruling? You got masterpiece cake is similar to, where denying a business's right to serve a particular person is violative, but not in the old school civil rights kind of way, but in this kind of newer formulation of focusing on speech rather than action. Am I characterizing that correctly?

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Well, there's there's a couple things. So I think sometimes people classify things that civil rights very broadly now. Um, and and I don't know if I necessarily agree with all of those of the things that people want to put under that category because you having a free speech violated is a form of a civil rights violation. Um so and you you did bring up masterpiece, but what what's interesting about masterpiece, and even this case, is that the justices and masterpiece never really they never really talk about whether Jack Phillips was allowed to deny to to say he's not making this cake. He's the the the court in that case really just says the government didn't give him a fair shake, they didn't evaluate this neutrally, and that's why he won. So there there are a lot of conservatives that will uh criticize that decision and say you need to say whether he can do this or not. And they never do. Um I think here what they're saying is, well, this particular law, you can't tell this woman that she can talk about any of these sort of gay or transgender issues in one way, but not another. That's viewpoint discrimination, and they leave it at that. They don't really even go into how any of them feel about conversion therapy, much like the Masterpiece Cake Shop ruling, you know?

SPEAKER_04 7:12

So there are those key differences, but the overall trend though is is slicing and dicing these cases, often with that First Amendment focus and kind of making that separation away from some of the precedent that might have been set earlier. So, for example, initial civil rights legislation, as I understand it, had a lot to do with cross-border trade between states, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:41

The commerce clause, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:43

See, you're the lawyer, you know the yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

So the civil rights, okay. I see, I think I I see what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_04 7:49

I'm low enough to be dangerous.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah, no, go ahead because I don't want to interrupt, but I I think I I see where you're going.

SPEAKER_04 7:55

The commerce clause, as you identify, the commerce clause was invoked to give African American people ultimately the same rights at a diner, frankly, for sitting, because the meat in the hamburgers was coming from another state. I mean, that that's essentially what the case was about. You have that right that that since the hamburgers served at the counter came from the other state, it was a federal situation. And then they did their magic to bring equal rights for African Americans to dine at the restaurant.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Well, so there's a couple of layers, right? So the the core, the I think the core focus of the civil rights laws was to make sure that black people have the same rights as everyone else, including whites. That means access to hotels, access to food, access to whatever it is. The commerce clause comes in because usually the state would decide what happens in a lot of these situations. In order to get control and for the federal government to say everyone must follow this, they invoke the commerce clause, which in their view, it says if you're presenting, you're you're preventing me as a as a black person from staying in a hotel, you are in you are impacting interstate commerce because I can't buy anything, I can't, you know, I can't eat, I can't, you know, stay at a certain hotel. I might have to go somewhere else to do that if you're not letting me. So that impacts commerce, that impacts the money, and that's all of that. And so the commerce clause was really used for the federal government to get control. But when you look sort of more granularly at the statutes or the civil rights, they it really is controlling conduct.

SPEAKER_04 9:50

Like, yeah, saying that it's getting to that, and I think that's what I'm trying to get at my own awkward, amateur-ish way. I'm obviously not an attorney, but you can see I kind of get it. No, definitely there's mechanisms that the law uses from both sides to win, and those mechanisms have changed based on the changing times. And the trend that I see now, at least from the headline news and reading and trying to analyze this from my own amateur point of view, is that the trend is moving more towards speech and trying to translate behavior to speech, and and it's getting the results that it's getting. And my next question is if you more or less agree with that, how do you look at this trend and your own advocacy and work? How does it tie in within this historical context of where the law is going, where civil rights stand, and how we really define protections under that law?

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Well, I I'm gonna say that um I'm gonna be careful with how I sort of phrase this, but I think, especially since then, this civil rights period, um, the culture has become increasingly more obsessed with feelings and desire and getting what you want. And that's not exactly what the law is here to do. Um the idea of making sure that people have equal opportunity and can go to a hotel and get a room is not the same thing as saying, you know, you can't hurt my feelings and you can't do anything that I don't like, and you can't say anything that I don't like, and you can't um, you know, offend me. And I think in a lot of ways, that's why a lot of the cases that you're seeing right now are about speech, because a lot of these topics do implicate speech, because a lot of people see and view um speech that they don't like as violating their civil rights. And that's not the case. You know, we live in America, you have to hear speech you don't like sometimes. If you don't like it, you can turn it off. You don't have to talk to that person, you don't have to go to that place. But it's not necessarily the same as saying um you're black and you can't come in here. One of the things that I think is important about the Jack Phillips case is that he did sell this particular couple for years anything in the store. The one thing he said no to was I cannot create this custom cake for your wedding because I don't believe in same-sex weddings. He never told them, You can't come in here, I don't like gay people. There was none of that. It was you can buy anything out of here, I'll even recommend someone to actually create this for you, but I cannot create this particular custom cake. And then the next step is, okay, well, if that offends the same-sex couple, is that offense a civil rights violation? Are you able to say you have to create this? And depending upon how you feel about the creation of a cake, the Supreme Court saw that as speech. Can you force someone to say something to not hurt your feelings or to appease you in order to vindicate your civil rights? So it it I I think it's different. I think it's very different. And I think that's why. So there are a number of cases like this too, right? Where someone says, Well, this is a violation of my civil rights. But once you start talking about your civil rights as an expression of what someone else has to say, that's where I think the rook comes.

SPEAKER_04 13:26

Yeah, and that's the fuzzy boundary, too, between protecting the rights of an individual and then allowing people to just speak their mind. And the other boundary between speaking one's mind and taking action. And this gets blurred in people's mind. And I agree with you, there's this heightened sense of sensitivity that translates into college safe spaces and everyone just being unable to handle reality, if I could be so bold. I'm a Gen X Zoomer kind of guy. I grew up with lead paint, and uh, and my my parents didn't know where I was at half the time, and we didn't have cell phones and GPS. Uh, and I made it. And uh everything, frankly, from the she, he, him signature lines to all of these tropes that are ostensibly designed to make society a better place, to protect the disenfranchise, to me seems an overextension of this kind of moralistic vanity almost, which is which is forced imposition of behaviors ostensibly to protect and defend those who've been disenfranchised, that backfires on the very people who these protections are meant to empower. That's how I sense it. And I try to stay in the middle. Um, I have sensitivities to gay rights. I think you're born a certain way and you gotta do what you gotta do. But I'm also highly sensitized to your point to the role of government. There seems to be a feeling, especially on the left, where government needs to everybody needs to be everybody's big daddy and big mommy. And that that is the subtext to a lot of this, too, which is the government's gotta protect me. And if I don't like it, and if somebody's being mean to me, there needs to be a law about it. And I know that that sounds banal and trivial, but that is the underlying emotional sentiment, I think.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

No, I think you're right about that. Um there's definitely a lot of that happening, and I think if you a lot of people will look at the civil rights movement or you know what it what happened to black people during that time and say and use that in order to sort of craft this, I think a Frankenstein version of the civil rights movement to say, you have to do what I say because your way upsets me or offends me. You know, we didn't get you know, black people didn't get civil rights because it offended us. We didn't get freedom because it hurt our feelings. We got it because the Constitution demanded it. And that's it. Right? So I don't I don't know if um this whole focus on feelings is really the direction to go in because the law doesn't respond to that. I mean, you'll see some states like Colorado, for example, that will enact these laws in order to I I I guess acknowledge these kinds of issues, but they're getting struck down because the constitutional principles are not correct. And I think if you are looking at this very like shall in a shallow way, you'll think, oh, well, the so the court is willing to protect some people but not others. And that's that's not really what's happening. And that's I think is one of the fundamental reasons why I think it's so important for people to have these kinds of conversations. Yeah, yeah. So you can see that this is not this is not necessarily a civil rights type issue. Um, although all those issues you can put under the umbrella of civil rights, it's not the same as what we're as as what was being dealt with then.

SPEAKER_04 17:25

You know, this is what I think again it's one of boundaries and perceptions. And there's also a sense, I believe, and I'm curious about your point of compensation for past wrong. So the history of America is combative, it's violative, and and oftentimes brutal. And there's a feeling, I believe, among a certain segment, especially on the left, that we need to compensate for this. And the only entity capable of really doing that kind of correction is the government. And the only way to initiate that kind of correction is through programs like affirmative action, is through civil rights protections, having to do with many of these cases that are being ruled in a way that they don't like. Colorado seems to be this hotbed of the state trying to ostensibly protect disenfranchised minorities and it backfiring in this legal sense because it does smack of unconstitutional dictate, right? It's it's very schizophrenic and it's very, very confusing.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Well, if you look at, so for example, when you're talking about sort of the idea of repairing the system or whatever it is, and you get these issues like DEI that really just end up being racism, you know, towards different people, right? So this is your students for fair admissions case, right? Oh, we've got too many Asians. And so we're gonna invoke these policies that are preferential, racially preferential to blacks or Hispanics or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 19:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Um and that disfavor whites or Asians. Okay, that's racism. We don't do that here. Um, and you can't repair racism by implementing it. That's just not how it works. You have to get rid of it altogether.

SPEAKER_04 19:32

And you can't assume that it's an unfair playing field, and therefore the government has to come in and mandate these changes to institutions and businesses to somehow compensate for that unfair backdrop.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 19:50

It it seems to be like treating the problem with a poison worse than the ailment itself. Absolutely. Not only that, it's ineffective, it backfires politically, and it's ineffective in practice, to your point.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Yeah, and it it ends up eroding constitutional principles altogether. So everything you did during the civil rights movement is going to be completely undermined when you say, okay, you can't discriminate against blacks, but you can discriminate against whites, you can discriminate against Asians. That is not going to work. You know, that that kind of system is going to completely break down all constitutional foundation and all freedom, really. Because as soon as you get someone who wants to correct things in the other direction, where are we? So you know, you have a lot of problems. It's particularly because I used to be a teacher, right? And I've heard a lot of people say that we should um lower the standards uh for certain groups if they're not able to meet it. No, that's not what we do. We address why they're not meeting it and make sure that they can meet it. We don't lower the standards for anyone that doesn't help anybody, won't ever help anybody. And as a teacher, I can tell you you've gotta, you, you've gotta give kids something to jump to. You cannot lower the standards, they've got to be stretched and challenged. And a lot of these standards are completely neutral. A certain SAT score or certain, you know, as it relates to the sort of Harvard situation, right? Um the issue is not the neutral criteria, the issue is why only certain people are meeting it. And that's what we should focus on. I mean, American education is problematic. I won't even go into it because I'll talk about it forever.

SPEAKER_04 21:41

Oh, it's a mess. It's not just problematic, it's a problem.

unknown 21:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

So it's it's um, I think important that we keep that in mind. If we want civil rights, if we want no racism, that means we never allow the government to do it, no matter what. What no matter what. And that's that's what it is. You know, I think people think, well, we we have to do this. No, we don't. No, we don't. We don't have to do it. We need to address the underlying issues. Um, we can't manipulate the outcomes to make people feel better.

SPEAKER_04 22:18

And if you base it on merit, you have a baseline standard through which you can heighten excellence regardless of origin and opportunity. And if you destroy a merit-based system, then you become rotten in a sense from within because there are no more standards. And it's arbitrary. And to your point, if you're picking arbitrary standards, usually it's not going to be fair and you're going to be violative of another group. So it begs the question of what you're trying to accomplish in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Right. Um, you know, I I don't I don't know why people subscribe to this. I never have, and I can tell you I grew up in South Florida, which is more like an island than the South. Lots of diversity. And it wasn't until I moved to Atlanta, to be honest with you, that I realized that my views on these subjects really clash clashed with a lot of people, um, including a lot of black people. And at the time I didn't really identify it as being a political issue. I really just thought it was cultural. Because growing up, my my parents are Jamaican. They never talked about race. They never talked about, well, you have to work harder because you know, all the things that I I hear black people say sometimes to their children, my parents never said that to me. And so I never had in my mind these sort of restrictions that would come up in my life because I was black or a woman or whatever million, you know, characteristics you can assign. Um I I really think it's important that people are empowered to accept their own fate, to to to take control of the wheel and not assume that the government is going to either help you or you know, destroy you based on your race or gender, whatever. You've you've got to do now. We're all gonna face things, right? We're all gonna have these issues, and you know, you and I talked a little bit about some of that before we started. That life is gonna come for you. Um, and you you have to be resilient. And that might happen with because you're black, it might happen because you're a woman, it might happen because you're white, it might happen because you're poor, it might happen for all kinds of reasons. But we all have to be willing to rise and get out of that stuff. And if you don't, you're gonna be destroyed, no matter what race you are or what gender you are. You have to be willing, you know, to keep going. And you can't expect people to hand you things. Um, because it's not gonna help you either. The other thing is, you know, as a lawyer, one of the things I really like is the fact that I passed the same bar exam as everyone else, and it's blind grading, and no one can say that I passed the bar because I'm black. I pass because I passed.

SPEAKER_04 25:04

100%. That's part that's part of the whiplash effect that that undercuts this kind of reverse discrimination from within. Because if you destroy merit, then they're always gonna say that you got a free ride.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Yeah. I mean, Katanji Brown Jackson will never live it down.

SPEAKER_04 25:26

It's and in ways it's it's self-imposed because you're setting standards outside that meritorious uh foundation.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Yeah, and you're embracing it, you know, maybe even bragging about it. I heard Jasmine Crockett bragging that she told someone they should hire her because she's black. That embarrasses me. Like I'm cringing, thinking about telling someone they have to hire me because of a characteristic I can't even control. No, you should hire me because I'm capable, you should hire me because I'm brilliant, you should hire me because I'm a leader, you should hire me because I'm a great lawyer, you should hire all one million things. And never in my mind would I say you need to hire me because I'm black. Because I don't have anything to do with that. And that has nothing to do with my character.

SPEAKER_04 26:08

I am very curious about your take on this, which is a whiplash to the whiplash. And by that I mean, let's say tacitly, someone is in 100% agreement with both of us, everything we've said before. Now, an ancillary effect of that is to make this erroneous conclusion that there's no more racism in America. And the reason that you get that, and I I can tell you know where I'm going with this, is that all right, it's based on merit. Can you just shut the hell up and work hard like everybody else? And if you work hard, whether you're black, female, trans, whatever, you have an equal opportunity because we have no racism in this country, and the whole thing is absurd. So it's the typical polarization problem that we have, which is everything is binary in this country. Either you're you're a progressive humanist embracing everybody, or you're a fascist, and there's nothing in between. So, how do you how do you address that kind of whiplash? I know a lot of white dudes, you know, who are like all that is bullshit because there's no racism. And whenever an African-American person complains in any way that they're being discriminated against, it's invalid. How do you address some of that?

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Well, I think it has to do sometimes with the way with sort of your view on like your values and even spiritually sometimes the way you look at human beings. Do you think human beings are able to be perfect and they can, you know, fix their minds in a way where they never see rays? That's no, no, or they never judge somebody by the way that they look, or that's not possible because we are all fallen people. I'm Christian, I believe that people are really grimy to the core in a lot of ways, and we need Christ to be saved and to kind of live a proper life.

SPEAKER_04 28:22

I'm not Christian, but I'll agree with you about that.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Okay, but even besides, even if I'm not a Christian, I think the point is every we're all capable of these horrible things, and trying to convince people that oh, those bad things just don't happen, that's crazy. Of course, people can be racist, but I know plenty of racist black people, plenty. So it's not just on one side or the other. We all have the ability to be that way, and attaching it to one group or another is just a form of prejudice. It's it's something that we're all capable of. And yes, it absolutely exists in the hearts of men, and it's up to us every day to make sure that we're treating people correctly and kindly and all of that. Um, you know, but it it doesn't mean that it's outcome determinative for any of us.

SPEAKER_04 29:17

Um is it kind of is it a little bit so you mean racism? No. Uh advantage and disadvantage, opportunity and lack of it. If you look at the demographics, if you check out the charts on Pew, it's a chicken or egg kind of problem. But opportunity in America, income in America, education America, slice and dice differently by gender, by race, by age. So there's causality, right? And there's correlation, and there's historical precedent, and there's opportunity and lack of it. So, and this goes back to the heart of nature versus nurture as well. So I think because of that complexity, there is that tendency to be empowering of the individual, regardless of circumstance, and there is empathy that somebody born under disadvantaged circumstances might not even have a chance. So, how do you reconcile that with this view of self-actualization, empowerment, level playing field, and meritorious-based hierarchy? Because there's a lot, there's a lot going on there, which is There is.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

No, you're totally right. Um there's a couple things. I and I think it is I I taught uh special education to children who were picked out of the general education classroom because of their behavior, that had behavioral disorders, um, fourth and fifth grade in Atlanta, um in the worst section of Atlanta. And I didn't grow up like that. The only th the only commonality I had with the students that I taught was the fact that we were black, and that's it, because we didn't grow up the same way. I wasn't rich or anything. I was I guess kind of standard middle class, lower middle class. Um but I was on free lunch and stuff like that, so I didn't have a lot of money.

SPEAKER_04 31:36

Um, but I was always values from your parents.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Yeah, I was just always taught like you have to figure it out. Now I recognize that some people have a harder road to do that. Um some of us don't get the you know extra tutoring for the SATs or whatever because it costs money and you know, maybe the rich parents can afford it and our parents can't, you know. So there there are those things. But I will say that it's like I was saying before, you know, resilience will get you pretty far. I you know I can't say that I didn't have struggles growing up and even getting to this place. But I'm black, I didn't have that much money, my parents were divorced. I mean, by all measures, what am I doing being a constitutional lawyer and having litigated at the Supreme Court before? The odds are very much against me, right?

SPEAKER_04 32:40

100%. I I agree completely. I'm just wondering if if some kind of viable middle ground can be had between this belief in the individual and the need for that kind of self-actualization and some of the inevitabilities of life just punching people in the face to the point that they can't do it, and is part of that uh not so much a lack of empathy, but imagination when it comes to bringing these two forces together. How can we create a just society which is by the law ensuring freedom? And that's part of your work too, and at the same time create not so much a safety net because we know you know I'm from the government and I'm here to help. That that that always works, right?

SPEAKER_03 33:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:34

So so how how can we kind of maintain our humanity, our empathy, our feelings for people who just can't get their shit together? And you bring up your faith as well, which is you know, turning the other cheek, uh, you know, the Sermon on the Mount. It it's uh it's a philosophy and it's a belief and it's a spirituality that's founded in humanism and caring and giving. How do we reconcile these two, which seem sometimes at odds to each other?

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Well, I think because they can exist, they can coexist, and sometimes we act like they can't. So we can acknowledge. So, for example, me talking about my students, I think my next step would be recognizing the limitations of where they live and what they're around, you know, the fourth graders that I had, one of them, you know, um people there was rumors that, you know, her mom was selling herself out of the house. I mean, how what how do you what do you do with that, right? How do you fix that situation for a child um who are very young but have very adult problems? And there's no way around that. The the kids who are living in north and north Atlanta are I can guarantee you are not dealing with it.

SPEAKER_04 34:58

Um so not only am I I'm from Chicago, the west side of Chicago.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

Yeah, so you know, right? Um I'm feeding this these children, I'm not just teaching them, I'm I'm trying to grow their values, their character, their confidence, because they need all that to get out of where they are. I think the problem is that we so succumb to those realities and we teach these kids, well, you're black, so that's it. We don't tell them to pull up their bootstraps because we don't like that phrase. That's kind of what they need to hear in some ways. We can acknowledge what's going on with them. We don't have to be um callous to that. And I and I don't think I am about recognizing it because I've I'm face to face with that quite a bit. But I think um I think dwelling in it only makes it worse. It's it's just kind of like um it's like with anything, you know, in life. If you dwell on the bad, that's what's going to sort of amplify. So I think we really have to we have to recognize these things, and I totally do uh that some people have it worse than others. Absolutely, there's no question about that. Um, I think even acknowledging that, looking for ways to to kind of solve some of those problems, solving the violence in, you know, Chicago or solving the poverty in some of these places, trying to kind of get to the root of these issues without saying, okay, let's just succumb to the way things are. Or, well, they can figure it out. You know, like you're saying they're somewhere right here. And I think to do that, you have to acknowledge that both of those things are true. Um that people sometimes have a better advantage than others. But I also don't think so. You've seen this sort of thing about equality and equity, and equity being giving that person who was born two steps below the government giving them those two steps so that they're equal to this other kid who had those two steps. But it doesn't work that way. You know, because there's there's all these, you know, other things that have that have uh propelled this person to this step without the help of the government, and those things don't exist even if you give them. Right. So it's just like the when I was talking about the college, the colleges, you can't just stick a child who you know got an eight ten on the SATs at Harvard because they're black. You can't do that, you know. So you you have to find a way to bridge that gap without um sort of treating the merits as if they don't matter and if they're as if they're not going to matter. You have to find a way to sort of instill the merits in that system as well, even those who are disadvantaged.

SPEAKER_04 37:47

It's got to be brought up a great point, and I'm just gonna repeat it to make sure it got in into my bald head, which is you acknowledge that life is unfair, and you acknowledge that some people have considerable, sometimes formidable, maybe even possible hurdles. They just do. But if you focus their issues on the color of their skin or their gender, then you're begging the question of what racism really does in terms of the damage you're ostensibly trying to mitigate. So we know that you have you're disenfranchised and that you have these all these disadvantages. But if I focus on your race as being the causal element of that, I'm doing everyone a disservice, especially you, because you can't change the color of your skin and it's actually immaterial to your success if you take the attitude that it's immaterial to your success. Get out of it, overcome your problems, do what it takes to succeed in your own way, and everyone's better off for it.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Yeah, and not everyone's gonna end up in the same spot. I mean, the other thing is if I'm black and I grew up rich and you're white and you grew up poor, which one of us has a better advantage? A lot of people will say, Well, oh, you're you're you're the white person, obviously. That is not true. That's not true. It isn't. Okay. Yeah. So I think you can say maybe the per that person might run into, you know, races and things like that. But overall, the person who has more money is probably gonna end up, you know, in a a cushier situation um than even the white person who's poor. So you you have to understand that the race is just one component of somebody's life. Um it's not the whole thing. Um, you can be you can be white, you can be rich, and then you can be in an abusive house and it can destroy you. So there are there are so many different things that happen to people, and we should not assume that just because someone's black and poor, that there's no hope for them, and just because someone's white and rich, that they're gonna get everything. I know plenty of white, I grew up in Palm Beach, I know plenty of white rich people, and they are not all successful, they are not all happy.

SPEAKER_04 40:12

And I grew up with a lot of poor white people, and I can say the converse. So it's like I'm I'm with you. Uh you remind me a lot of Coleman Hughes, uh, if you're a fan of Coleman Hughes, and uh and just seeing him even on the view being eviscerated was was really a demonstration of this conflict. I grew up in Chicago as well, and I'm just gonna come right out and pick on Jesse Jackson. He died recently. And uh even when I was young, I felt that that a lot of what he did was fabulous, no doubt about it. He was there right when MLK got shot, etc. He's uh an icon of the community. But even when I was growing up in Chicago, I felt that Jesse Jackson was doing a disservice to himself. And I don't mean to just pick on him. The reason I'm bringing up is because he epitomizes, I think, a trend that you're highlighting, which is obsession with race, obsession with compensation, obsession with forced fairness. And as a white guy, when I say that, people are gonna react. But per our conversation, who gives a shit what the melanin content of my skin is? What am I saying, and what are you saying? And what I think we're both saying is a lot of the civil rights movement that came post ML ML, you know, MLK did a demonstrable disservice to the people they were ostensibly trying to represent. And I'm saying that as a white guy, but I'm just saying it as a human being.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

And well, I don't I don't share, you know, Jesse Jackson's sentiment. You know, a lot of conservatives think he was a race fader. I agree, particularly in the last sort of couple decades of his life. Um, I don't personally, I think that a lot of people put race on this pedestal that it doesn't deserve to be on.

SPEAKER_03 42:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

Um I think a lot of black people uh hold their race as an idol, and it becomes more important than character, it becomes more important than God, it becomes more important than everything. And that puts you in a position where you're unable to see the truth when the only thing that matters to you is race. So one of the things that I've done because I was a Republican witness against the nomination of Katanji Brown Jackson to the US Supreme Board.

SPEAKER_04 42:46

I was gonna ask you about that. I want I wanted to warm up our listeners.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

Um so I I I received a lot of backlash for it, but I didn't I I I never criticized her publicly or uh personally. Um I said this woman does not hold the kind of views that uh a judge should have in order to be a justice on the US Supreme Court. She believes in critical theory, which is extremely detrimental. You cannot uphold the law properly if you believe in that nonsense. She wouldn't define a woman. Why not? Well, because she's beholden the people who don't want her to, not because she can't, because I can guarantee you a woman who has as much education as she does can come up with a definition. She's not that stupid, you know. I don't think she's stupid at all. I just think she's a liberal. And she's got these allegiances that force her to avoid certain things. And that's why you can't have a justice like that on the court because they will choose that allegiance over everything. And so when she's sitting in her hearing and someone asks her to define that term, and she won't do it. She is showing you where her lit her allegiance is.

SPEAKER_04 43:58

You mean define.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Define a woman. So when she says she won't do that, well, that means you have allegiances to people who don't want you to do it, and you're willing to do that because you absolutely should be able to define that term. You should have no problem defining that term. And I don't want anybody like that on the US Supreme Court because that means you're biased. Like extremely. And I'm not going to be able to get a neutral answer out of you. Anyway, that was my position. So a number of people were very upset about that and talking about because she's black, I shouldn't criticize her. And I'm I'm just like, I don't know what you guys think this is, but I do not worship anybody who's black. I don't care what color she is. And you shouldn't either. But, you know, people do. I've I've actually told people, you better hope the Antichrist isn't black because you're I don't think you're gonna be able to see it. Because you're willing to adopt anything, you know, like anything somebody says or does because they're black, you're willing to go in line with it.

SPEAKER_04 44:55

And I'm glad we got to your role in that after we set it up in terms of worldview. Because if you come right out and say that I was there going against Katanji, then it's kind of like, all right, come on.

SPEAKER_03 45:10

Who's this girl?

SPEAKER_04 45:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think I think your point of view gives context to that, which is it's a lens. And we began with a case where she was the sole presenting justice. Why? See what see what I did there?

SPEAKER_01 45:26

I like that. Yeah. Um, and a number of her cases, I mean, if you read her dissent and students for fair admissions, I'm like, what constitution is this woman reading? Because this is not how the law works at all. And so, but it's because that's her that's the lens in which she views everything, including the law. And so um it's a problem, you know. They're there, like I said, she's the low dissenter in this issue. Even Soda Mayor said, No, you can't tell this counts counselor that she can talk about these issues from one viewer and not the other. That is textbook viewpoint discrimination. There's no question about what's going on here.

SPEAKER_04 46:04

I think Soda Mayor played the role on the left that Gorsuch played on the right for the tariffs. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 46:11

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_04 46:11

Yeah, which is like, come on, guys. It's like you might love the Donald.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_04 46:19

It's it's Congress, okay? It's it's commerce and taxes, which is tariffs, and it's similar here, which is you know, it's it's like you're the government is telling a therapist what to say. And even if you find conversion therapy revolting, even if just in audible form, again, so to my yours point of view, that's not what this case is about.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Exactly. But she will not rule against this group, right? So, I mean, I'm not gonna say that's gonna happen in every single situation, but this is a pretty heavily LGBTQ situation. And just like she did in her hearing, even though it's very easy to come up with a definition for women, that group does not want a definition for that term. How do we know that? Well, because the oral arguments a couple weeks ago, where you know, we were talking about the sort of the the the uh prohibiting my surgeries for minors um who want to change their gender, um they would not define sex. You know, you can't claim sex discrimination and not define the freaking term, otherwise, it doesn't exist. The discrimination doesn't exist if you can't define the category, but they wouldn't. Why? Because they don't want to define a woman. Why? Because then it shows that a man can't be a woman, and so that that's the issue, you know. That's the core problem, the basic facts they do, you know, they don't want to acknowledge that because it cuts against their viewpoint, their argument, their mission, and that's totally fine, but it's not fine from a justice.

SPEAKER_04 48:08

And I had a transgender guest on the podcast, and many of her views mirror what we're talking about, which is uh, you know, this kind of affirmative action for a certain type of people that backfires on that person, on that group. And to get the point of view of someone who is trans and is equally upset about this stuff as you're articulating is interesting because it's a point of view that we don't hear, especially not in not in the press. So I just I just find it interesting, and I find that our media channels and conduits are so filtered and implicitly biased, and especially with social media, we're all hearing what we want to hear based on a few ad choices that we're siloed, we're not talking to each other, and that common sense is thrown out the window, and tribal politics and culture wars get in the way of just a country where we can all just get along. So it's it's very frustrating.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

It is, and it's it's scary because we have to have this kind of open dialogue. Um otherwise we're we dehumanize each other, and then you have situations like what happened with Charlie Kirk. Like you, if you disagree with someone, they're not inhuman, they're not all of a sudden not worthy of life or what they you just disagree. But we've been training, you know, an entire generation that they don't have to hear anything they don't want to hear if it hurts their feelings or if they disagree with it. And so when they're forced to interact with speech they don't like, they get angry, they think it's worthy of violence, and they haven't learned to regulate their own emotions yet. And so they act out and they behave violently. And and so I think that's why we're kind of in this situation. But if we're if we are able to teach particularly the younger direct generation, because I think they're they're very guilty of this, um, that it's America needs different viewpoints. That's how we've been able to be this most successful country in history. And if we continue to either dehumanize each other, um censor each other, um, try to marginalize each other, we're we're gonna lose the freedom that we have in this country and it will it'll be completely unrecognizable. And I think people take it for granted. I mean, I it's pretty obvious. I think people take the freedom in America for granted because they don't really understand what it looks like not to be under such a regime, right? Um and they think somebody telling you something you don't like is tyranny. You know, so it's it's it's it's just it's problematic. And I think the more we get out there and talk about this, it's one of the reasons why I feel like it's important for me to do this, is because I do feel like I have a lot of the legal, constitutional, and policy experience, but I also have, you know, life experience to sort of share with people that you know we we're we're much closer together than we are apart. And if we can find those commonalities, I think we'll be okay. But the way we do that is by talking, um, and and not by isolating each other and deciding you're not gonna speak to your friends or your family anymore because they're not the same political party as you.

SPEAKER_04 51:55

I like it to building up your immune system against intolerance and bullshit. And the only way to do that is through exposure. So, like any organization, you know, the boy in the bubble, how there's no there's no contagions. And if you break that seal, that mofo is dead because they haven't built resistance. And young people who are inured to any kind of feedback, who are terrified of anything that that's perceived as being violative of their norms, create this ecosystem where they're even more vulnerable and everything becomes a safe space, and there's no longer any belief in things just kind of fighting themselves out. You can't rely on the government to protect your feelings.

SPEAKER_02 52:48

Well, you can, but you're gonna end up oppressed. You're gonna end up oppressed if you do that.

SPEAKER_04 52:55

I grew up in Skokie, Illinois. In 1977, the Nazis wanted to march. Now they you can say they weren't real Nazis, because you know who's a real Nazi? It's just kind of a bunch of hooligans and a fool got into the outfits and wanted to march in front of the synagogue. There was a big debate. Can't let them march. I I was young at the time, maybe 12 years old. And I said, let them march. We could protest, we could throw shit at them, right?

SPEAKER_01 53:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:27

Why are we so vulnerable to other people's opinions? Is the question.

SPEAKER_01 53:35

Yeah, I mean, I think like you said, it's weakness, but also I I don't think people really understand like what wickedness, true evil is. You know, if if you talk about Nazis, for example, I always tell people you're you're not different than they were. As a matter of fact, those people were probably a whole lot stronger than every American because they went through a whole lot. Um, the people who were in Germany at that point in time, they're not weak people. So they're in a certain state, state of mind, frame of mind after the first war and the conditions that are going on at the time, they're very unhappy. And somebody rises up that says, I can fix all this for you. And let me tell you whose fault it is. These people, these Jews. If we get rid of them, all our problems will be solved. And if you're not careful and you're not um level-headed about what evil is, about what supremacy actually looks like, right, then you're gonna fall for that. If there are a lot of people, I think, right now, and the only reason why I pick on the left a little bit is because they are, I think they're they tend to be more shielded from criticism and opinions they don't like than conservatives, because for many years all we were hearing were the leftist point of view, right? Like if you were conservative and you had a point of view, you really kind of ended up on the fringes, which is how a lot of these independent podcasters popped up, these you know, conservative ones, because they weren't allowed to say it on mainstream media. CNN wasn't putting it on, the View wasn't putting it on, nobody was inviting the conservative to come and speak, right? So so I'll say that, you know, the I think the left sometimes doesn't quite understand that everyone is susceptible to this. And if you don't get control of your mind and you don't start dehumanizing people, that you could be, you could very well be someone who ends up being a Nazi and saying, Oh, these people aren't really worded worthy of life. It's I bring it back to Charlie Kirk. You may not like everything he said, but he died because people didn't like someone didn't like what he was saying, they didn't like his speech. That's very scary.

SPEAKER_04 55:44

Very scary. Oh, it's very scary. It was awful, awful. And you know what? Agree with them, disagree with them, love them, hate them. He had he had the balls to go up there in front of people and just bring it on.

SPEAKER_01 55:59

But he was teaching these young people the exact thing that we're talking about, which is come over here and let's talk. What's your problem? Let's talk it out. And they hadn't seen that before, you know. I think that's why it became so popular, is because we've got to go to the source, these college campuses, and show these people this is how you handle people when you disagree with them. You have a conversation and you move on with your life. Um, so I I say all that to say that I think we think too highly of ourselves at times, you know, and we we think we're better than these people who were white supremacists or Nazis. And we're really not that much better than these people. We are susceptible to the exact same thing if we let our emotions get the best of us, and we start looking at the other side as the enemy.

SPEAKER_04 56:47

Most Holocaust scholarship agrees with you completely. There have been various books and analyses, which is it's just um, you know, ordinary men, ordinary women, it's circumstance, and you just have to be careful. And here's the thing: it's like believe in yourself, have strong opinions and values, don't let just the whims of society sweep over you, yeah, or your own party, send you into that tribe. It's awesome talking to you. I I don't want you to go until you tell me a little bit more about you and your work.

SPEAKER_01 57:25

Yeah, so I um for I graduated from law school in 2017. I told you I was a teacher before, went to Emory Law Atlanta, um, started working in this field. While I was there, I studied under a rabbi and I was introduced to this field called religious liberty. Um, and so when I left Emory, I started working for a great organization called First Liberty Institute. First Liberty just won its 11th case at the U.S. Supreme Court last week. Um, so very successful organization, very small, but um definitely punch above their weight loss. So did that for a long time, a lot of high-powered federal litigation all over the country, a lot of speaking, a lot of um interviews, including uh in you know, national TV, a lot of Fox, I did ABC, I've done Dr. Phil. Um, and now I work for Governor DeSantis. I I run the Florida Commission on Human Relations. It's the um discrimination office. So it's basically like your civil rights division and your equal opportun or equal employment opportunity office. So that it would be like the one office that houses all of that in Florida. And so I handle all those complaints for of discrimination, whether it be for employment or housing, um, public accommodations, and we also handle whistleblower complaints. So I manage that office. Um, it's great, the people are great, they're very dedicated, so I'm very blessed in that respect. So I'm getting a lot more leadership, experience, and no litigation right now. So that's actually kind of good because litigation can be pretty stressful. So my stress level is much lower than it was when I was litigating.

SPEAKER_04 59:10

Well, that's uh an illustrious trajectory, you know.

SPEAKER_02 59:14

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 59:15

In your few short years, right? Out of yeah, uh, out of the crib and and doing this stuff. That that is terrific. So you're you're you're you're a go-getter and you're and you're getting it, which is great. I do want to bring up though, again, this whiplash effect because you're talking about discrimination and you work in an office that handles that. I am hearing stories, and again, I don't have the stats. And the difference between an apocryphal story that's meant to reinforce an agenda versus a true statistical fact that isn't an anomaly, is that this recalibration is having impact too, that you have actual instances of race-based discrimination that are being tossed under the rug because of this renormalization, where there's a focus more on fairness, taking race out of the equation. But there are instances where race is part of the equation, where someone is demonstrably discriminated against because of the melanin content in their skin. And what I've been reading and hearing about, and again, I I don't have the stats, but I'm just relating this as a potential impact of some of this recalibration, is that some some black folks, frankly, with cases that have been pending, might have their cases thrown out. Um, it's much harder to litigate based on race, race discrimination. Do you how do you address concerns about that?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:03

Well, there's a couple reasons for that. To generally speaking, to prove discrimination, like race discrimination, you have to prove like intent that somebody intended to discriminate you based on race. So when we go back to the civil rights movement, the school lunch counters were very unequivocal. You cannot come in here because you're black. Goodbye. A lot of the the the discrimination claims now um are some of them can show intent, right? If somebody says a racial slur to you, that's racial discrimination, right? In the workplace or something like that. Um and and you know, discriminates based on those characteristics. But a lot of times people will file claims about race discrimination and they can't prove that the person was actually treating them that way because they were black or whatever, right? They didn't get along with the person or the person, you know, maybe the person was kind of not nice, you know. They were kind of and they say, Well, they did that because I was black. And then you talk to the employer and they're like, Yeah, but half of my staff is black. It's not because it's because this person doesn't know what they're doing, you know. So there's the there's this um sort of vetting that you have to do with these cases because intentional discrimination is necessary. Um, you have you you can't just assume someone is discriminating against you based on race just because you don't like what they said or how they treated you. You have to have evidence that they did that. Is that difficult? Sometimes it is um to actually prove. Now that person could be right, maybe they are discriminating against you because you're black, but you can't prove it. Um and that sometimes is the rub, right? Um, there's another issue, right, where you you look at what's called disparate impact liability, which is basically what happened at students for fair admissions. All right, what is that? It just means that there's a disproportionate outcome, and in order to address that outcome, the employer or whoever the official is changes the admissions policies or the procedures in order to favor another race because of the outcomes, right? They're trying to level the playing field, and in order to do that, they have to, you know, do some things to make it easier for this side. Um, and that's also its own problem, right? Because that's not uh the outcomes of a neutral policy are not an intent to discriminate, nor the evidence of it. Well, it could be. You could say oh, these people definitely mean to discriminate against blacks, for example, because there's no blacks on their team, right? Um, so that's the first level you can use it as evidence, but then you have to have other things to back it up. So you you can't just assume. And I think a lot of I can't say the claims we get. I'm not gonna, you know, opine on what I see all the time, but outside of the space that I'm in now, even in just general cases that I read um and federal court, many of those cases fail to actually prove that the person is discriminating or the employer or whatever. Sometimes you can prove it. Um, and many people have been successful at it. It's just, I think um, that's probably why people feel sort of that tension, is because I think for a long time, if you look at some of the cases Jesse Jackson filed, um, a lot of those ended up in settlements where somebody said, Well, we didn't do anything, but we don't we don't want these people or races attached to our name, right? Like uh so to prevent that, they settle. And a lot of people are at the place now where they are not gonna do that. You're gonna have to go through the whole thing if you want to prove that they're racist because they will not settle with you and make other people think that they are. Um, and so there's a bit of that happening now too, where people are kind of fighting back against it. Um, but the law is still the same, is all I'm really saying, you know. Um, intent to discriminate is necessary. And the only thing that's sort of kind of back and forth right now is a disparate impact issue. Like, is a government allowed or any official allowed to sort of uh equalize these disparate outcomes that are the result of neutral policies. And a lot of people on um sort of the ACLU side of things say, yeah, disparate impact is something that we should fix. Um, and obviously we talked about what that what that results in. So that's sort of the only sort of difference that's kind of taken place in the law. Um, people fight back a lot more, they're not as afraid as of being called a racist as they used to be. Um and so they're willing to just kind of go through the whole thing when if you just mention it to them before, maybe in the eighties, nineties, and early two thousands, they would have just settled with you, and people are just aren't doing that anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:57

The human pageant is just oh. A circus, not always a circus, but you're always gonna have uh uh abuses and compromise and things going off the rails, so so perfection is is impossible, and I think the overall attitude of moving forward in a way where we can maximize fairness in a meritocritous kind of way can't go wrong, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:27

Yeah, and there's we also have to kind of accept that things just aren't fair sometimes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:34

I think that's the heart of it, it's fueling the engine of this point of view, which is just grow up. At the end of the day, there's an infantilism.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:46

I'm not going to completely you know, uh discount the view that it does happen, like racial discrimination happens, discrimination against people in all sorts of categories happens. Yes, absolutely. I'm not gonna say it doesn't. I'm not the person who says, Oh, I'm colorblind, I never see colorblind. No. Um but you know, there's the idea that we kind of have to accept that there are people who are like that, and we we've we've gotta kind of move on sometimes. We don't wanna sit there and dwell on it all day and let it completely derail your life, or worse, you teach yourself and your children that this is how life is and they can never do anything more because of their immutable characteristics.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:29

Absolutely. Yeah, I've enjoyed this conversation a lot, and I especially enjoy it because it's so reasonable, grown up, rational, and and in a sense proves its own point where we're just two people talking about this, and frankly, I think we're aligned on most of this in the sense that let's just apply common sense and decency and a good value system, and I think we'll get 90% of the way there.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:01

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Um I don't think we're as far apart as we think. I think there's always the fringe on both sides, right? But when you look at polling on a lot of these issues, most Americans are not really that extreme. They're kind of right here. Um, I would I call them the silent majority because they're not saying anything. It's the loud fringe people that are always on the microphone.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:26

So And that's one reason we end up being so polarized, because you know it's like uh I have crazy. Yeah, I was working for a researcher as a medical writer, and he was referring to me with this comment that the empty cart makes the most noise. You know, because it's going up the cobblestone street and it's jumping up and down because there's nothing in it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:51

Yeah, well, I mean, the the I think that's true for a lot of things. Uh a lot of the people I know who in class they have the the loudest opinions or in a discussion, they're they're typically the least informed people in the room. Um, and they just start screaming and yelling, and you're like, I actually that's not even what happened. Like you don't even have the facts, right? So look, what are you talking about?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:18

The more you know, the more you realize that you don't know much of anything, and the dumber you are or the more ignorant you want to be, the smarter you think you are because you know you're not playing with a full deck, and you think you know, pocket twos are gonna win the game for you.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:32

Yeah, and you're surrounded by people who are just as uninformed as you, typically.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:37

And then you surround yourself with like-minded souls to um just perpetuate your own bloviation. So anyway, I'd love to have you back talk about spirituality and um and relationships and personal growth because um I know you've got that angle to your your life and personality, and I've really enjoyed this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:58

Yeah, me too. I'd love to come back, talk about some of that stuff, including how to get through depression, which so many people experience. And I feel like I've come out of that pretty victoriously, and I would love to share it with people to save their you know emotions, their lives in some cases, and really touch people who are in that space.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:19

I'm gonna bring you back on the No Hair All Heart podcast. I've had acupuncturists and doctors and music therapists, and uh it'd be great to drill into that. I've had my own challenges with depression, especially in my youth. And uh, I would love to compare notes with you, and I'm sure many of our viewers and listeners can uh can relate to that kind of journey. And I'd love to hear what it took to overcome some of that and uh and become all you can be.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:49

Well, one of one of the easiest ones is movement. Get out there and do something, move your body, exercise, walk. That's the first step. If if you're like, what do I do? That's the first thing I would tell you. Move, get up off that couch, get out of that bed, go take a walk, go for a run, go for a swing, push your do something to get those endorphins going. That's the first step is you gotta get moving.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:12

That that's been demonstrated, I think, clinically, that uh you know, going for a three-mile run is like popping three pros act it's it's the same thing for your brain. It'll it'll it'll do that same thing for you. All right, to be continued, definitely, ladies and gentlemen. Keisha Russell, constitutional attorney. It's been awesome talking to you. Follow the links below to follow Keisha. We'll put we'll put reference in there, and I'll put more information about where to find you and your background in my book. And your book. We didn't even talk about your book.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:50

We talked about so many things, and I forgot to talk about my book.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:53

It's uncommon courage, folks.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:55

Yeah, so this is this is about how people faith.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:58

Now when hold on, let's dial back one second. When did you publish?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:02

Uh, last year. So it's not been out a year. Um and it's produced by Harvest House, published by Harvest House. And it's it's about a lot of the things that I've encountered and really kind of intersecting faith and culture and policy. I talked about media and the deception there and how you can identify it and how as a person you can keep your conscience um knowing who you are, knowing how who God says you are, and using sort of those things to always have a measurement about what you believe and not allowing the culture to shift you in one direction or the other. And I use a lot of law and policy for that, but I break it all down. Um I've heard it's very accessible, and there's an audio book because I know a lot of people prefer an audio.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:45

You can cook in your kitchen, drive into work, you can listen to listen to Keisha.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:50

And uh you're so demure, you didn't bring up the book really till well you've asked, you know, we have a great conversation, great questions, and I completely but this is why I'm I'm horrible at uh promoting myself, but I'm working on it.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:03

I'm I'm an author too. This is a classic unbranded kind of pitch. I work in uh marketing mostly for healthcare. When you give it a lot of education, you do the song and dance, and then when they're all ripe and excited that's when you said you want to know more, here it is. There, move it in the middle so they can see it. I will also, for the video, I'll put an overlay of the book on there. Uncommon courage, nice, and your middle name Tony. Your middle name Tony.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:33

Yeah, it's my dad. My dad's name is Tion Y. And uh he and my mom didn't get an ultrasound to see whether I was boy or girl, and they were both sure that I was a boy. I was Tony Jr. until I was born.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:49

That's a good story. I'm I'm mooky because it's Hungarian for those sheep herding dogs that run around barking at people and biting them in the ankles. And I guess my father thought that I was loud and annoying and small.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:03

So this is your nickname.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:04

So I became yeah, and it it still fits in my adult age. So here you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:08

It's perfect for a podcast, though. Like a podcast, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:11

The Mookie, the the Mookie barking. So anyway, we'll follow up again. Uh I'll put the link below to your book. And thanks so much for making time. We really, really appreciate it. Like, comment, share, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:25

That's right. See you soon.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:26

Uh see you soon. Take care.