Welcome to part one of our conversation with Mark Fischler, lawyer, professor and constitutional scholar. This is our third time having Mark on the Deep Transformation podcast and for rather obvious reasons, we need his wisdom, insight, scholarship and deep humanity more than ever. Welcome to Deep Self, Society, Spirit, life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activ. With Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy.

I'm Roger Walsh and our co host is John Dupuy. And with us today is Mark Fishler, who is a professor of criminal justice at Plymouth State University. He's also the co host of a podcast, Integral Justice Warrior, which explores justice perspectives and is also a dedicated contemplative practitioner. So he brings a real heart to legal issues and also a deep perspective, an integrally informed perspective. And he's been a recurrent guest on our program, partly because he's a wonderful human being, but partly because in our troubled times, we really need a legal perspective from someone who is able to provide the legal view but also do it from a big heart. So, Mark, welcome. Thanks so much for being with us again.

Yeah, Mark, great having you back, brother.

And perhaps we could start with a big picture. You know, we're in a very, very troubled global and national time. There's a lot going on in our contemporary political scene, and for some of us, it's deeply troubling. So perhaps we could just start with a big picture perspective and you could just speak to what you see going on in our national politics at the.

Moment and from a constitutional perspective also.

Yeah, thank you. And it's just let me first say what an honor it is to be in both of your presence. Obviously, I've been on the show, but I'm also a big fan of your show and the wonderful contribution that you're making to our world. And so I'm grateful to be a part of that and to be able to listen to that. So to answer your question, you know, I went and been reading a conservative former federal judge named Michael Ludig, and he has provided some really interesting perspectives on some things. And he wrote a long article in the Atlantic magazine about just the end of rule of law in our country. And there's just some profound quotes that I want to kind of share that President Trump has kind of put out there that kind of puts the things into perspective that Roger, you mentioned at the start. So when he was asked a few months ago, President Trump, don't you need to uphold the Constitution in your role as president? And mind you, ladies and gentlemen, that when you swear to. You have to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution when you are announced to be the next President, United States, when the Chief justice of the Supreme Court swears you in. He said, I don't know. He said, I don't know. And then they asked him, well, doesn't every person in the United States deserve due process, which is a foundational principle under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution federally and under the 14th Amendment, to guarantee to all states that you afford due process and equal protection? And he said, I don't know.

Can I add that when I was a soldier and we were sworn in, the first thing in that oath was to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States above, obey the commander in chief or anything else. That was the first thing.

Right? Right. Yeah. So you have this president who the first day in his second term pardoned 1200, who he called patriots, people that many folks would consider did an insurrection against the government of the United States, tried to usurp the 2020 election on January 6, and he just pardoned them. And he's attempted to declare war on the prosecutors and the individuals that actually went after them and tried to hold them to account. And, you know, you go back in our history, you go to the Declaration of Independence, and you look at some of the language where, you know, why did we declare independence? Right. We declared because of despotic king who was unruly and doing what they wanted to do. And we tried to create a constitution. Originally we created the Articles of Confederation, but we tried to create a system that wouldn't give in to that, that didn't have such centralized authority. And so one of the quotes from the Declaration in reference to King George, a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be a ruler of the people. And that there is resonance to what's happening today. We have the FBI who went ahead and arrested a state court judge in Wisconsin under the idea of federal criminal charges, that she was obstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency concealing an individual and presenting them from being discovered or arrest because they walked out of a side door as opposed to the main door. And by all accounts, there is no real evidence that the judge committed a federal crime. But they went ahead and did this. And then the Attorney General for the United States has said that our judges are deranged, that our judges believe that they're above the rule of law and we must hold them to account. So there is this kind of attack on our judiciary in the process. And these are really, really unprecedented acts in our history. And it's just incredible. We can talk about the mass deportations, we can talk about the war on the press. But to really look at this from a wider lens that you asked Roger, these are really the hallmarks of an individual who sees the world from a really zero sum game, sees things from there are winners and losers and wants to be on the side of winners. And however they see that. And it's interesting, I went back to Don Beck and Chris Cowan's book Spiral Dynamics, and I think it's a 1996 book. And I think all of us, at least the three of us, have read this. And I was just reading some things about how Trump looked at the world. And you know, mind you, there's some things that, there are some really important things that he's pointing out. I think there's some things where the left has really gone sideways and that needs to be talked about so that we can understand why he's getting a lot of support. But to bring back home to what Roger said, I thought that this was really interesting. They were describing in spiral dynamics, colors, the color red and the perspective of red. And I think that.

Which is what, Mark?

Red. This perspective that like life is a jungle, that it's kind of us versus them. It's a perspective that there are winners and there are losers. And so, you know, it's really considered a pre Enlightenment perspective of reality.

So, Mark, let's clarify. You're talking about spiral dynamics, which is one map of adult development, and you're pointing to a particular stage within that and the color red. You said the stage map is often associated with colors, but this stage is an early stage, a pre conventional stage. So tell us more.

Yeah, so it's a certainly a pre Enlightenment, pre, you know, science, pre democratic rule, pre rule of law. It's quite a, you know, winners and losers, quite authoritarian. It's quite controlling of the people and accumulating power. Yeah, it's really about power.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can just maybe another clarification, a couple of other maps. It's called self centric.

Yes.

And also opportunistic. So maybe those words help clarify.

No, that's wonderful. So I just wanted to read a little passage from it because I think it brings some clarity, at least to partially how I think President Trump sees things. And I'll read another quote that he said on Memorial Day that I think kind of reflects this. So, you know, this section is called Life is a Jungle. Simply put, Living in red zone is like survival in the jungle. The weak will lose, and they deserve to because they're weak. Each person is an island, though they can draw together for strength when it is mutually useful. When no longer convenient, the red groups fragment and relationships are cast aside. Loyalty is transitory. It's a world of victims and predators, eaters and eaten. And, you know, if you follow President Trump on truth social, there is a great deal of rhetoric that reflects that. And I certainly don't want to say that his worldview just fits that, but it's a strong part of how he sees relationships, he sees enemies and a great deal of what he's doing right now. And he promised this, this wasn't hidden. He promised us that on day one he was going to do retribution and go after those that he felt did him wrong. And he said there will be blood. And he promised that. And so, and we've seen that play out through whether it's going after law firms, universities, the press, we can talk about all those different pieces. But you know, just to kind of bring that quote home, you know, he said that on Memorial Day, he sent out a message, kind of reflects this political tribalism that happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country. And he went on, but, you know, I think that that kind of gives us a glimpse into, into his state of mind and why, you know, he doesn't necessarily honor, but we describe as the rule of law. You know, the rule of law, you know, is this principle that we followed where all individuals and institutions are accountable to the law and that there are equal protections for all of us and we're all accountable to it. That's not how, based on the quote that I shared with you at the start, that's not really how President Trump is choosing to look at the reality of our situation, to honor the rule of law. It's a hard earned process that these are stages of development where we've worked for hundreds of years to develop this, you know, our oldest democracy, where we have institutions that are built to honor the rule of law. And that rule of law, that idea is under attack, direct attack at this time in our country. And that is scary because we need this democratic foundation to move to deeper levels that are post democratic, that are reflective of greater levels of interconnection, greater levels of the allowance of voices to be heard and to participate in a way where it's more inclusive than our democratic process even currently is. And so a lot is at stake And I'll stop there and see where you want to go.

Kind of try to summarize what you're saying here, Mark, because it feels like you've given us so much. And I'd just like to orient. What I hear you doing is putting the current political situation in the Trump administration and the values and beliefs that are operating there and underlie it in a developmental context. You're saying that this, these attitudes, these perspectives, these beliefs and values and the resultant political actions are a reflection of a particular psychological developmental stage. And it's a relatively early, pre conventional stage. We've given it several names, opportunistic, self centric power motives. And that's what, if we look deeply enough, the fundamental psychological structure from which so much of what is disconcerting in the political arena is coming from is a particular developmental stage. Does that feel right?

Yeah, yeah, I think that's great. That's well said. I want to be clear that there are other aspects and other stages that are being implemented in terms of what President Trump is trying to accomplish, but certainly in terms of his worldview, in terms of how he sees others that aren't in relation or don't agree with his point of view. Yeah, it really is this zero sum game of winners and losers, really. That's how he speaks almost every day.

And when you, when he was talking Memorial Day and he referred to the prior administration or people that don't agree with him as scum, that's very redolent of Nazis. The way they talked about Jews. They were less than human, you know, they were cockroaches, they were scum. They need to be done away with. And just to bring that language into the body politic and speak from that level, I mean, it's really, really frightening. And I think we become so used to these like every day some new abomination that we get numb to it. You know, it's just, oh, he's just being himself and haha. Or whatever. I don't. But it's really, really frightening. And it says a lot about what level of consciousness that Donald Trump comes from. And the shocker is it appeals to people.

Yeah, it's really the opposite of the I thou relationship that Martin Buber talked about that Dr. King quoted in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail. This, you know, treating people as it's. And when you do that, you dehumanize someone to the point where you can commit barbarous acts against those human souls. And it is quite scary. And it's, you know, it's A part of us. Right. This, this idea, you know, as you mentioned, Roger, I'm a teacher at a university and I teach ethics part of the time constitutional law and criminal procedure. And. But you know, when we look at criminal justice in terms of punishment, you know, the one that is most reformed, reflexive of kind of like that basic nature is retribution. And that's what Trump talked about from day one, that he was going to commit retribution. And, and there is no rational thinking in relation to Roe. There is no utilitarian act that comes from retribution. It's just you're supposed to get what I think you're supposed to get. It's very eye for an eye kind of idea. And that's really how he sees his so called enemies. And it's really the opposite of a higher level of consciousness that sees the interconnection of all beings and the oneness that we share. The, the idea, as Dr. King talked about, that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And that those notions are obsolete in the current administration. It's about our homeland. It's kind of more of a reflective of older European notion that you take care of your particular people based on the confines of the landmines that were developed and the history of your particular people. And our nation has been built on something very different than that. We're built on ideas on a purpose. And that's what we started with the Declaration of Independence. That's what we moved, we were so moved by the Declaration of Independence and then the Gettysburg Address and then moved to higher purposes with Dr. King's letter from the Birmingham jail, which is an incredible document of the values of what it really truly means to be an American.

Yeah. Lincoln's second inaugural address too should be put in that list. And I want to bring up something that just really shocked the hell out of me. No, it doesn't, doesn't shock me, but it makes me worry. This, this recent trip that he did to the, the oil rich states in the Middle east. And there is this thing in the Constitution called the emolument clause, foreign emolument clause that says it is not legal for you to get titles or gifts from foreign leaders and foreign governments unless it's approved by Congress. You know that that's the one way you can get out. But he went over there with his basket open and said, just put in the cash. By the way, that airplane I saw, I really, really want that. That didn't just come to their minds. Oh, we love you so much. We're going to give you a $400 million airplane? No, that was like, bam.

Oh.

And it's a gift for the American people. And by the way, after I'm done, it'll go to the Trump library. You know, it'll follow me out of office. Seriously. He got 2 billion from, I think it was Qatar. I might be wrong. For his bitcoins company or scheme.

Yeah.

That his family's doing. And then there's other amounts of money where they're building towers, these rich oil rich nations, golf courses and all kind of things. We don't even know how much money that is. But shortly after that, Netanyahu came and visited Donald Trump at the White House. And I'm not a Netanyahu fan, but he completely said, nope. All the things that Netanyahu asked for, he said, I'm not going to do it. You can actually see how it's changed the foreign policy of the United States through all this cash that he's getting and gifts and nobody's really saying much, you know.

Yeah. So let's grab. So you're. We're really talking about corruption. And this is something that our founders were keenly aware of, were tuned into and wrote in Federalist papers and wrote into our Constitution, some different language, some of which you just mentioned, John, to kind of protect us from that. So just a couple of examples. Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution. Article 2 is about executive power. So this is about the President and it said, you know, it made an absolute ban on domestic gifts to the President. You know, it says in section 1, part 1, he shall not receive any other amulets from the US and as you described, John, amulets are mean for profit or gain from station officer employment. And so boom, right there.

And he's using. This is a new precedent for America using the office of President as a platform for personal gain and wealth.

Right. That's right.

That's. That's exactly what the Constitution was trying to protect us from. And not only does he do these things, he doesn't do it like sneakily, you know, he does it blatantly openly defies what the Founding Father said.

Right.

And there it is. I'm above the law.

And so then there's the next Article 1, which is about Congress and congressional power. Which where is Congress in all of this? Is a very important question. But Article 1, Section 9 states, no person holding any office of profit or trust under them shall, without consent of Congress, accept of any present amulet, office or title of any kind from any king, prince or foreign state. And he certainly got that gift without congressional approval. And then about impeachment, this is really interesting. In Article 2, which talks about impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors, they only name two crimes. One of them is treason and then the other one is bribery. And you know, so bribery. So you were like, you know, what's going on? You describe the Qatari jet, we have the cryptocurrency investment. But also this started in 2016. But when President, when people come to visit the United States, they're expected to stay at Trump Tower, excuse me, not just Trump, any of any of Trump's hotels or businesses. And so that's an expectation of doing business with the United States is that you must do business with his private fortune. And so that again, who are we? What is this? What's really going on here? And to your point, John, why aren't we talking about it? There are more examples too that the Department of Justice to be hired now you must answer certain political questions which is unprecedented. These are places that are supposed to be non political for very, very serious good reasons. But for example, it's been reported that you are asked what did you think of January 6th? And basically if you're not answering the question that these weren't great patriots who were trying to fix a rigged election, then you know, you're not going to get into a position that is supposed to be a non political position.

Mark, this brings us into something that seems to underlie so much of what is powering this or orienting this administration. And that's Project 2025. And yeah, it's been in the news and we've probably all heard of it, but it's only quite recently that I dug into this and I pretty it was an eye opener. So maybe you could brilliant. As to what exactly this document is.

Can I bring in just one more example that I think is very powerful? I'm sorry, but during the first Trump administration, his chief of staff for at least a couple of years was General Kelly, a four star Marine general. And I think he's a man of honor and I think he, I always felt good when he was there because there was an adult in the White House, you know, and he tried to keep things organized and keep Trump in check. Well, he recently said, and I think he's a very credible witness, he said that Trump had told him that he wanted generals like Hitler's general. So in other words, he wanted generals that were loyal to him, not to the Constitution, not to the country, not to anything else. But were loyal to him. And that's what he's been doing in all our major, major institutions, whether it's a CIA intelligence, Department of Justice, FBI firing anybody, has any, you know, commitment to the Constitution, the deep state of, you know, loyalty to our Constitution. And it's just, it's so blatant.

Right.

This is. And this is one of the key tenets of Project 2025, that.

That's right.

All branches of the executive shall be loyal. Loyal to the president. But, Mark, why don't you give us an overview?

Yeah, so. So, you know, that's what's called the unitary executive theory that he's put forward. So let me talk about Project 2025. It's a. It's a Heritage foundation, which is a conservative organization that has provided public policy to Republican presidents and Congress. And for a long time, it's become much more shaped in Donald Trump's vision, although he spoke and tried to distance himself from it. But there was $22 million spent by the Heritage foundation to develop the ideas that are the foundation around Project 2025. And so what are some of the hallmark pieces of it? So, one is about government, as Roger just said, it kind of proposes that the federal bureaucracy, including all independent agencies, including the Department of Justice, that are quasi legislative and quasi judicial, that they report directly to the President of the United States, and that those individuals can all be fired and can therefore be hired as political appointees that are loyal to the President of the United States as opposed to being loyal to Congress. And so you saw a threatened example. We're seeing doge, and we're seeing thousands of government employees be fired. But, you know, in this, as an example, Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, had made some comments that were critical of President Trump's tariff policy, which he just, I think, backed out of with China today, back to normal, which is just embarrassing on so many levels, as the promise to all of his followers. And then we're basically back to what we had prior to him. But anyway, Powell gave some criticism, and Trump said, he talks out, I'm going to fire him. And you can't do that. Not legally, no, because there is a Supreme Court decision called Humphrey's executor from 1935, where it ruled that the U.S. constitution allows. And so that was a situation where FDR did not like the rhetoric and the approach of a head of an economic arm of the government, and he tried to fire him. And so we're talking a different political party, different way, but it ruled that the Constitution allows Congress to enact laws. And so there is a law that limits the ability of the President to fire executive officials of independent agencies that are quasi legislative or quasi judicial. And so, you know, this is a direct example of that. And so, you know, we have. Unless the Supreme Court of the United States overrules Humphrey's executor case, he can't do those kinds of things. He can't. This unitary executive theory is really does not have any. It's not an original approach to the Constitution. It's not. Not really the intention, even though we didn't necessarily, at the founding of the Constitution, have all of these agencies under. In the federal government. It certainly would not have been the intention if we read the. Some of the language that I've already shared with you and our approach to three branches of government to check the power of each branch of government. We moved away from being a king. And so, you know, that's been our history. That's what's made us unique. So the idea of a unitary executive theory is just not what our founders were thinking at all. So.

And those laws were to limit the power of the presidency.

Right.

Not to get power. I want to make a point there. When you say the Heritage Foundation. Back in, you know, the last several decades or 30 years, since I've been paying attention to politics, the Heritage foundation was a conservative group of scholars and thinkers, and they were pretty good. I didn't always agree with them, but sometimes I did. They had a lot of integrity presenting the conservative point of view. But the fact that they've moved into this on very all about, you know, upholding the Constitution. Remember when Republican Party, that was important to them. So the fact that they produce this 2025 plan is shocking. What happened to the Heritage Foundation? What happened to what they've been saying for decades now?

Well, from their perspective, they would argue that this will streamline government, that these. We have bloated agencies that do what they want. The Supreme Court theoretically has tried to rein that in with something called the Major questions doctrine, which is the idea that a quasi judicial, quasi legislative agency, or any kind of federal agency that's been created by the government, they have to enact and do things that they were asked to do. And they can't go beyond that. And so it's got to be directly related to them. And so I think they see this as a way of kind of streamlining government, allowing the President to directly implement their policies and ideas and not be kind of stuck in the mud by all these quasi Agencies that are kind of doing their own thing. And so there is, again, like I said at the beginning, there are some issues that it does take a long time for a lot of things to get done. And sometimes that's good for good reason, and sometimes it's not. And we do have, you know, and certainly the size of our federal government in comparison to our founding is quite different, but in actuality, it's not that quite different from, like the 1980s. And so there's this notion that we have so much, much bigger and bigger than we were, but that's actually not totally true. But it is true in relation to who we were a long time ago. But we've evolved.

There are a few more of us now, too.

There's a lot more of us. Yeah, there's 330 million of us, as opposed to when we founded. Philadelphia had like 4,000 people in it. And so it's quite a different republic. We were a rural nation. We weren't a nation that we didn't have a navy. We didn't, you know, we didn't have all those things at the beginning.

We weren't a great industrial power. You know, we, yeah. Traded our natural resources for countries like Britain and France who had the things manufactured things that we didn't have.

So if we go back to Roger's question about Project 2025, there's kind of a couple of different or three or four areas that they covered. So I just talked about government and, you know, so we've seen them try to take a hammer to it. There's also. They have a focus on abortion and family. And so they have a desire. They have a. You know, Trump has been on the record of saying, you know, outlaw an abortion on the federal level. I'm not for. But he has allowed under RFK Jr and they proposed this from the start to look at the abortion pill Mifepriston, that they want to outlaw and say that it's take it from the market using some kind of older federal laws that we haven't used to have it not be mailed. And RFK has promised to look at the safety of it. And it's already been looked at the safety of it. This has been used for a while, and it's been absolutely proven to be safe, as far as I understand. And that, you know, the abortion question is another issue that we can discuss. But they look at that, that they really want to limit the ability for people to have that, and they want to propose to collect greater data on abortions and They've suggested that the Department of Health and Human Services, you know, enforce and reflect a more biblical understanding of what marriage is and when sex should obviously be appropriate. And so this would reflect more of values that are more traditional Christian nationalist. Yeah, yeah. So right wing fashionism, which is different than the kind of authoritarian. And in some circles, this is kind of a next stage beyond the kind of authoritarian stuff that I was sharing that Trump's rhetoric reflects. But this reflects more traditional values, which is still pre Enlightenment, still pre, you know, so kind of mythic based, church based, religious based understanding, which is a strong part of Trump's base. He's a fabulous politician in the sense that of understanding of who, who he speaks to and, and what speaks to them. You know, after he was shot, he spoke that he had a, you know, a prophetic relationship with God, that he was the chosen one, and has shared that kind of language with those people who resonate with that kind of philosophy.

And then it's been characteristics of fascist dictators from the get go, whether it's Mussolini or Adolf Hitler or Stalin, the chosen one, the only one that can lead us in the ways of righteousness. And that's just part of it. And we don't have a. Republicans don't have a political party. They have a cult of the personality. They've moved completely away from what the Republican Party's conservatives when I was growing up, stood for. And it's something else now. And it's about loyalty to one man.

Which reflects the idea of a third term too, which is outlawed.

Like, he's 78 and he's kind of falling apart, but his ego is so big, he thinks he's gonna, you know, after he's 82, considering how he is now, he's gonna continue to be president forever. I mean, it's so blatantly in the open. Just contradicting and disobeying the Constitution mean there's. And they don't even blush. I mean, there's no attempt to say, you know, interpret it in a way that would make it seem constitutional. It just isn't, and they don't care. And that's a step towards dictatorship, authoritarian dictatorship. And I guess one of the questions that I was asking preparing for this program is why should it matter? You know, I mean, dictatorships have their strong points. It's a lot more efficient in some ways. You can just say, do this, do that, do the other. And democracy is really messy. And I think Winston Churchill, and I'm just paraphrasing here, he said, you know, democracy is a terrible form of governance, but it just happens to be better than anything else we've ever tried. You know, so that messiness was built in to the Constitution and they knew it was going to be messy. It was messy when they were writing the Constitution, but it was the process. They wanted to move us into a new level of democracy and freedom that very few humans had ever experienced before. And of course, our democracy grew. You know, women, you know, couldn't vote, slaves couldn't vote. You know, there were a lot of. But as we matured as a nation, it kept expanding to include everybody into the process. And so it wasn't perfect at the beginning and they realized that, but they knew they couldn't go farther than they could go.

So, yeah, what we're experiencing is really a direct attack on the principles of inclusivity. And so we see that with an American first policy, a more isolationist way of relating with the world, A, an approach that really doesn't want to welcome immigrants, doesn't want to welcome people of different colors. I mean, Afrikaners in South Africa, you know, who are the direct descendants of apartheid are welcome. The brown folks and black folks and other folks don't seem to fit the bill. And so it's directly kind of counter to our philosophy of how we try to become more inclusive over time, which is a general direction. It certainly hasn't been perfect and it's. It certainly haven't been fully achieved in terms of our ability of providing equal protection to all beings our country. We need to see that. And, and so it's quite problematic and it does require us to take a look at who we are.

Yeah, I think in line with what you've been been saying, Mark, one of the hallmarks of progress, both in individual maturation and in cultural evolution is what's called the expanding circles of care. As we mature, either as individuals or as nations, who we care for and embrace and include tends to increase, going from a egocentric to ethnocentric my country, my world, my group, to a world centric perspective. And that you've talked about the Enlightenment at several steps. That's one of the hallmarks of the Enlightenment, that it became for the first time in history, a universal or world world concern, a concern for universal human rights, etc. And here we have a value system centered on a smaller group, a nationalist us versus them again. And one thing you. A couple of things you haven't mentioned here. In terms of the inclusivity and care and concern. One of the Key elements of project when you 25, which is seeing now implemented or attempting to be implemented in the current big beautiful bill budget that's in progress at the moment is slashing Medicare and Medicaid, which always. Which I just can't square with the Christian nationalist values. I mean, Jesus couldn't have talked. Went horse talking about the poor and. And the necessity of caring for them, but slashing Medicare and Medicaid, I just don't get it.

Yeah, there's kind of a form of fundamental Christianity that is kind of reflective of the idea of not about mercy, but more about accountability and picking yourself up by your own bootstraps and taking care of yourself and your family, not relying on others. Some of the early Christians that came to the United States, you know, on, you know, to Plymouth Rock and that period really kind of reflected that and you see that as a strong part of it. And so that rhetoric, Roger, that is so beautiful and kind of central to the essential teachings of Jesus. And I think back to your book Essential Spirituality and those sections of Christianity that connect with the other contemplative traditions. That rhetoric is not a part of the Christian fundamental movement. And, you know, there are basic notions. You know, I was having lunch with a colleague yesterday who attended earlier in their life, they attended some Christian universities and they were not allowed to date people of a different race or a different religion. And, you know, so those notions of inclusivity, you know, subjugation of the role of the woman, the responsibility of the man and those relations, those are kind of central to the rhetoric of the Christian movement of today that is foundational to the Republican Party and not the rhetoric of our new Pope Leo or our former Pope Francis, who started his time by washing the feet of the poor and moving out of the palatial papal apartments. Yeah, yeah.

He stayed in a guest house the whole time. He was.

Right. Right. And so you hear the rhetoric of Leo today more in the Jesuit tradition of loving all beings and being inclusive to all being. So there is a fundamental. There is a lot at stake. And when there's a lot on the line in terms of our trajectory and where we're going, because the way I see it is that much of what is reflective of what the current Republican Party is putting out there is somewhat regressing us into values that we've had an opportunity to transcend, that we have to go beyond. And so I'm quite worried about it. But let me be clear. There bears a responsibility of the left and how they've chosen to handle things that has created cannon fodder.

Yeah.

It's made it easy for the far right forces. They just made it easy.

Right. And so people that are kind of vulnerable and have, you know, we have thousands of different ways of hearing things now with all different kinds of media sources and, you know, there's an assault on higher education in terms of, you know, what I think is an assault on critical thinking because it's quite easier when we have individuals. This isn't just about leftist, in my opinion, this isn't just about leftist stuff at universities. And let me tell you, they're right about that. They are quite right about that. You better get in line. And speaking in certain anti racist ways, universities I work at one, I've seen it. I've seen the alienation of my business colleagues. I've seen folks who have challenged some of the anti racist rhetoric. Just again, at lunch yesterday, someone was challenged some of the rhetoric that was put out by kind of someone who did a program on anti racist stuff. And they were challenging it and they were reported to the provost, there was a letter where they were included and it was quite shocking. And I just learned about that yesterday. And so there is that. But I also believe that there is a very strong understanding of these individuals that were educated at elite universities, from J.D. vance to President Trump on down the line, who understand that a certain level of critical thinking, rational thinking, which leads to post rational understanding and spiritual understanding of who we are as a people, that those are direct threats to, you know, having to embrace a mythic, authoritarian might is right approach to reality. That an approach that's based on egoic, you know, drill, baby, drill, based on monetary reward making my life easier as opposed to seeing my relationship to the earth, my relationship to all beings, my obligation to all beings. This is all when we have these conversations in class that require critical rational, to post rational thinking that is directly contradicting what they want to accomplish. And they understand that. And so the assault on universities, I think is more than just about DEI stuff, which is real and problematic. How we go about fixing some of that certainly doesn't have to be about cutting funding for, you know, for health organizations within, you know, John Hopkins, who lost $800 million and some of their research was on breastfeeding in Baltimore and mosquitoes in Mozambique. That kind of can help populations that, you know, there's an attack on knowledge. Yeah, well, and so, but we're really throwing the baby out of the bathwater with that. I'll stop and let you both respond.

Stay tuned for part two of this amazing conversation with Mark Fischler where we don't change names to protect the guilty. Thank you very much for being a part of this conversation. We hope that you were moved as we are moved being part of it ourselves ourselves. We'd also like to say that this is being funded by Roger and myself. It comes out of our pockets so if you would like to help us to mainly to get this podcast out to more people because the bigger audience have which is steadily growing but the more people we can reach and the more marketing we can do the more positive effect we can have on the world. So we've done a couple of ways but we'd like you to buy us a cup of coffee very simple and I do that with podcasts that I support and I found it very satisfying. So thank you for your help thank you for your presence and thank you for all you are and all you do. We love you.

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