Latest / The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson / A Rare Conversation with Justice Clarence Thomas

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A Rare Conversation with Justice Clarence Thomas · The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Happy Labor Day and welcome to Verdict with Ted Cruz.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I'm Ted Cruz. Today, we're going to bring you back
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: to a very special interview that we did on Verdict
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: just a couple of weeks ago. Justice Clarence Thomas came
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and sat one-on-one with me for an hour and 20 minutes.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: It's the first and only podcast Justice Thomas has ever done.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I had the chance to talk to him about his life,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: his life journey, his ideological journey from angry left-wing radical
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to one of the most important conservative thinkers ever to live.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: And I had a chance to talk to him about
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: his legacy as soon to be the longest serving Supreme
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Court justice in history. As you guys know, I have
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a brand new book out entitled Going Further, The Incomparable
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas. It tells Justice Thomas's story. Thanks to your support,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the my new book, to number one on the New
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: York Times bestseller list this week. It's the first time
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: in my life I've been to number one. All five
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: of my books have made the list, but we've never
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: made it number one. It's the listeners of Verdict. Y'all
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: took it to number one. If you haven't bought the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: book yet, you can get it at goingfurther.com, goingfurther.com. Let
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: me encourage you to get it. And by the way,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: don't just get one. Get one for your kids. Get
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: one for your grandkids. Get one for your brother or
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: your sister, your mom or your dad. This book tells
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: a story I think every American needs to hear. And
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: it's designed to be inspiring, to lift you up, to
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: remind you just what an incredible life and legacy Clarence
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Thomas has lived, but what an incredible life and legacy
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: you can live too. I now give you the one-on-one
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: interview with the great, the incomparable Justice Clarence Thomas. Today
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: we have a very special podcast. My brand new book
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: is coming out. It's my fifth book, and it is
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: entitled Going Further, The Incomparable Clarence Thomas. And this book
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: does a couple of things. Number one, it tells the
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: story of Justice Thomas, a truly extraordinary human being and
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: extraordinary justice. It tells his life story, a journey that
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: is unlike the journey of any other justice who has
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: served on the Supreme Court. But it also takes up
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: his three decades of jurisprudence and tries to explain it
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: in a way that is accessible, a way that is understandable,
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  Speaker 1: a way that brings home why it matters, why it
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: matters for the court, why it matters for the Constitution,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: why it matters for the country. And today, what makes
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: this podcast very special, and by the way, the book
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  Speaker 1: will be available August 25th. You can pre-order it. There's
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: a special website for that called goingfurther.com, goingfurther.com. I would
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: encourage you, go to the website, pre-order the book. And
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: today's podcast is a very special one because our guest
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  Speaker 1: is none other than then the incomparable Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice, welcome.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you. It's a little embarrassing to say you'd
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: be called incomparable. Let me call lots of things. Well,
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: thank you.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate your joining us. I think this is
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  Speaker 1: the first podcast you've ever done.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: I have no idea. I think so. I don't normally
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: do any sort of, I don't do much media type things.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: So But you're you. I mean, I've known you now, what,
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  Speaker 2: 30 years? Yeah. And seeing you through different phases in
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: your life as a law clerk, hanging out in my
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: chambers as the SG of Texas and now senator. So
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  Speaker 2: it's been a long journey. And also, it's also an
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: opportunity to say you're one of the people who actually
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  Speaker 2: stands up. Thank you. Particularly... at times when others seem
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: to wither. And I appreciate it. And more personally, when
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: my wife and I were under attack for obvious reasons,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: you and Mike Lee and some of the other friends
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: would stand up, Senator Kennedy, et cetera. So I really
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  Speaker 2: appreciate that.
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  Speaker 1: Justice, that is very kind of you and especially for
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  Speaker 1: you to observe that I stand up in the face
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  Speaker 1: of criticism and attacks. That is powerful coming from you
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  Speaker 1: because you're someone who knows what that's like and has
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  Speaker 1: done so in a way that has been world-changing. And
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  Speaker 1: so Justice Thomas decades ago wrote a phenomenal autobiography, My
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Grandfather's Son, and you told your own story. And it's–
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  Speaker 1: It may be the best autobiography I've ever read. I
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  Speaker 1: read it at the time it came out. It inspired me. Actually,
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  Speaker 1: shortly after it came out, I was at home, and
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  Speaker 1: as it so happened, a young African-American boy, he was
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: probably 15, 16 years old, came by the house, and
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  Speaker 1: I think he was selling magazines or something, knocked on
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  Speaker 1: the door, and I struck up a conversation with him.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I went and grabbed the book and gave it to
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  Speaker 1: him and said, look, you should read this. This– you
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  Speaker 1: may not have heard Justice Thomas's story and journey, but
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  Speaker 1: I hope this will inspire you. And I think for
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of the folks who listen to the podcast
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: or watch the podcast, and some people listen to it
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: on their phones, others watch it on YouTube or Facebook,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: they know who you are, but they don't know your
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: actual story. And it is, as I mentioned at the beginning,
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  Speaker 1: it is unlike any other justices on the court. So
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: maybe we can just start with Tell us about growing up.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: You grew up in Pinpoint, Georgia. What was it like
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: growing up?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I was born in Pinpoint, but most of my
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: growing up, I've been fortunate. I think the misfortunes you
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: have can lead to different things. And the house in
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Pinpoint burned down when I was six in the first grade.
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  Speaker 2: Then we lived in a tenement with my mother in
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  Speaker 2: one room in Savannah for about a year. and eventually
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: wound up living with our grandparents, moving there when I
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: was seven. And that was probably, well, actually was the
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: best thing that could have ever happened to me because
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  Speaker 2: that was life-changing.
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  Speaker 1: You describe in your book, and I recount in my book,
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  Speaker 1: when you were in that tenement and that it did
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: not have indoor plumbing, and so you used a chamber pot,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: and you describe walking down the stairs carrying a chamber pot. Oh,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: I fell down. Yeah. It ended up being coated in urine.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, that's, it's a pretty. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it was, you know, it's sort of what I
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  Speaker 2: think of people saying they're having a bad day and
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  Speaker 2: you're seven years old and that happens and you don't
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  Speaker 2: have like a shower or the kind of a bathroom
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  Speaker 2: that people would normally have. You realize, I mean, they're, they're,
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  Speaker 2: To me, it defined a bad day. But then things
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  Speaker 2: that happened after that outweigh that. You know, there's a
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  Speaker 2: wonderful song by a black minister that you hear from
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  Speaker 2: time to time if you go to a funeral with
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  Speaker 2: small southern black churches. And I won't complain. And, you know,
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  Speaker 2: you can have all these bad things, this litany of
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  Speaker 2: bad things happen And you can say, I won't complain
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  Speaker 2: because it's outweighed by all the good things that have happened.
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  Speaker 2: And that's pretty much my life. And those good things
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  Speaker 2: began with my grandparents. And my grandfather was a Catholic convert,
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  Speaker 2: which was an oddity. Catholics were an oddity in Savannah.
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  Speaker 2: Black Catholics were really an oddity. And it was because
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: of that we were educated at parochial schools with my
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  Speaker 2: Irish nuns. And those in combination, my grandparents, the neighborhood
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  Speaker 2: I grew up in, the nuns, Catholicism, forged a foundation
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  Speaker 2: that I've benefited from.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: Hey, it's Ben Ferguson, and I need your attention for
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: just 60 seconds. 25 years ago today, on September the 11th, 2001,
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: America faced a heartbreak of terrorism at home. And three
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: years ago, on October the 7th of 2023, Israel endured
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: that same heartbreak in the Holy Land. Different decades, different attacks,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: the same evil. Each year, the International Fellowship of Christians
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: and Jews hosts Flags of Fellowship. It is a movement
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: where thousands of churches display memorial flags to honor the
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: 1,200 lives lost on October the 7th. It is a
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: way to stand with Israel in faith, prayer, remembrance, and solidarity.
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: Each flag represents a loved one, a family forever changed,
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: and a promise that we will not forget.
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: So today, hatred and violence, they still threaten our world.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: Yet scripture calls us to stand firm, comfort the grieving,
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: honor the lost, and shine a light in the darkness. Together,
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: we remember, honor, and declare that evil will not have
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: the final word.
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: Join thousands of churches.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: Across America in this powerful act of remembrance and support
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: for Israel. Learn how you and your church can participate
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: in Flags of Fellowship at joinfof.org.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: That's joinfof.org, joinfof.org.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Your deep faith is integral to who you are, who
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: you are as a man, I think who you are
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  Speaker 1: as a justice to your journey. Many people don't know
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: you almost became a priest, and for a long time
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  Speaker 1: you thought that's what you wanted to do.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think I would have been a priest had
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  Speaker 2: the bishops at the time or the leadership in the
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  Speaker 2: church been as firm. and had the resolve of the
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  Speaker 2: nuns during segregation and desegregation and civil rights movement, et cetera.
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  Speaker 2: My nuns were immovable as far as their propagation of
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  Speaker 2: the faith, their belief in us. They were the ones
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  Speaker 2: who planted the seed that in God's eyes, and you
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  Speaker 2: heard it at home too, we're all equal. that we
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  Speaker 2: were made in his image and likeness.
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  Speaker 1: So were the nuns more willing to speak out about
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  Speaker 1: civil rights?
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  Speaker 2: They were in their way. Of course, they had a
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: vow of chastity and poverty and obedience. So there's only
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  Speaker 2: so much, but they were adamant. And they were adamant
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  Speaker 2: outwardly to the world and inwardly to us. So we
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: couldn't use... or some of the other things as excuses.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: And it's hard to put it in context, but when
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  Speaker 2: I was in the second and third grade, this is, again, post-Brown,
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  Speaker 2: and the Georgia legislature was in the midst of drafting
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  Speaker 2: legislation that was reasserting segregation.
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  Speaker 1: And for our listeners, Brown is Brown versus Board of Education.
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  Speaker 2: That's right.
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  Speaker 1: It was a seminal Supreme Court decision, 1954, that overturned
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy v. Ferguson, I think, is one
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  Speaker 1: of the most, in fact, almost everyone thinks is one
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  Speaker 1: of the most disgraceful decisions the courts has ever decided,
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  Speaker 1: where it embraced the doctrine of separate but equal. And
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Brown overturned it in order that schools be desegregated. And
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  Speaker 1: you were a student when this, I mean, this impacted
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  Speaker 1: your life.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I started first grade in 1954. Yeah. But still,
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  Speaker 2: schools were still segregated.
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  Speaker 1: Do you remember as a little kid, like being a
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  Speaker 1: first grader, were you aware of Brown at the time?
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  Speaker 2: Well, no. Brown had almost, I mean, you're a kid.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And school meant you got like a new pair of pants.
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  Speaker 2: And it was the first time I'd been to school.
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  Speaker 2: I went with my cousins to a little school called
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Haven Home School. But then when the house burned down,
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: I moved to, there's a big difference between urban poverty
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  Speaker 2: and rural poverty. And rural, we were with relatives. We
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: were always together. You could run around barefooted, and everybody
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  Speaker 2: knew you.
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  Speaker 1: It was sort of an enclave. And you didn't grow
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: up with English as your first language.
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  Speaker 2: Well, there was a version. People know it now. They
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: celebrate it back then. They used to make fun of us.
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  Speaker 2: In Georgia, there's a dialect called Geechee. And in South Carolina,
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  Speaker 2: they call it Gullah.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: But it's just... It's a patois that for people who
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  Speaker 2: did not assimilate in the culture or were not a
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  Speaker 2: part of the culture, we were isolated near the water.
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  Speaker 2: So you kept that language. And that's the way I,
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  Speaker 2: until I moved to Savannah, that was all I knew.
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  Speaker 2: They called us, back then they said we were bad talking.
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  Speaker 2: Today they celebrate it as a cultural thing. But the...
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  Speaker 2: When I moved to Savannah, you were in urban poverty,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: which was quite different. And I'm not going to go
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: into all the details. But then when you go, when
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: I went to live with my grandparents, even though the
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  Speaker 2: schools were segregated, they were parochial schools. And that was
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: different from the public schools because there was quite a
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: bit of order. You wore a uniform. The bell rang
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: a certain time. You said the Pledge of Allegiance. in
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: the schoolyard before you marched in. You had religion, you
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  Speaker 2: had catechism class was the first class. It was every unison,
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  Speaker 2: good morning, sister. There was a lot of order and
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: that's what my grandfather wanted.
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  Speaker 1: Now, I think anyone understanding your life has to start
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: by understanding your grandfather. You were raised by your grandparents
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: principally and your grandfather, Myers Anderson, I think you would
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: say was the most important man in your life. And
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: tell us about your grandfather.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, he was not only the most important,
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  Speaker 2: I think he's the greatest man I've known. And my
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: grandmother is the greatest woman. They were, and that's what
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  Speaker 2: I mean when I say, look, you can look at
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: the negative side of things, but the blessings are enormous.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, to be, just think of the idea of
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: living with those two people. and being raised by them.
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  Speaker 2: And you can, after all these years, say that they
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  Speaker 2: are the two greatest people you've ever known.
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  Speaker 1: Well, and he instilled a lot of discipline in you.
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  Speaker 1: He was, I think, a hard man and a strong man.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you're from Texas. When you live a hard life,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: you have to be hard, or you collapse. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: today we are inundated with fragile people. you are not permitted.
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  Speaker 2: And when you live in poverty and you have to
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: figure things out, and he had a total of nine
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: months of education. My grandmother had six years, and those
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: weren't six full years, six, nine months. They knew how
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: to make do with life. They knew how to make
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: a way in the world without no education. So things
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: that we have today, like education, freedom, etc. They prized,
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  Speaker 2: they dreamt about. They wanted us to have a chance
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: to have those things.
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  Speaker 1: Well, and your grandparents prioritized education with you and reading
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: in particular. That became an outlet for you as a boy.
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  Speaker 2: Well, they were absolute about education. But the other thing
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  Speaker 2: was work. He didn't believe in sports. That was foolishness.
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  Speaker 2: We didn't have time for that. We delivered fuel oil
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  Speaker 2: in the winter and we farmed in the summer.
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  Speaker 1: One story you told that stood out to me is
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: that when you were delivering fuel oil, and there were
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: times when it was really cold, your grandfather wouldn't let
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: you wear gloves.
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  Speaker 2: No. He lost a finger on his right hand working,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: and he never really got too much into the details
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: of it. But it must have involved a glove because
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: he would not, and he got caught in a chain
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: or a winch. It was something that ripped it off
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  Speaker 2: about right above the first knuckle or below the first knuckle.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: And so he would make us work with no gloves.
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  Speaker 2: And for us, cold would be 40 degrees in Georgia.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: You felt like you were freezing. But he believed. It
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: was a way not to be harsh or anything like that.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: It was, he thought, safety. It was safer not to
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: have gloves on.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Now, you tell a story about being in Catholic high
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: school and one of the boys passing you a note
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: about Martin Luther King. Tell us that story and how
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: it impacted you.
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  Speaker 2: Well, that was only one student out of dozens. And
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: there was one bad app. And he wasn't there very long,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: but it was my first year in the seminary, and
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: there were two of us, two blacks in the seminary.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: I was the only one in my class. I was
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: a sophomore. There was a young man behind me in
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: the ninth grade. And the note was, I mean, it
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: was offensive, but it wasn't debilitating. And you say, you
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: consider the sender. And it just said on the outside
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: something like, I like you. Martin Luther King, and then
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: you open it up and it said dead on the inside,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: something like that. And it was, you know, again, this
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: is 1964, 65, a lot going on. And, you know,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: I knew who it was. I know who it is.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to say who it was. But he
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: left after a year or so. And that was that.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: But the rest of my classmates were and have been
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: just phenomenal. You know, I was treated better there in
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: the minor seminary because remember, we're at the beginning of desegregation.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: This is 1964. The next two years after my first year,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: I'd be the only black in that school. And I
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: was treated very well. I was a really good student.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: I was treated fairly. The great thing about it was
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: if you got a 95 in physics, you got a
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: 95 in physics. Right. Latin was the nemesis of most kids.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: I did very, very well at St. John Vianney Minor Seminaries.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: And I have zero complaints. It was, again, one of
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: the benefits that I received in Savannah. I was treated,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: and I like to say this for obvious reasons, I
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: was treated better there than I was at Yale.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Well, and.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Your time at Yale, in fact, you draw an analogy
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: between two kinds of snakes, which I think is revealing.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Well, I think most people who live in rural areas
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: know the difference. My grandfather always used this analogy. And
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: the difference between a rattlesnake and a moccasin, which we
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: had both, and they were pretty big in Georgia, in
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: South Georgia. A rattlesnake always warned you, and if you
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: gave it time, it'll get out of your way. You
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. A moccasin basically
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: wouldn't warn you, and its attitude was, look, I was
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: here first, and you're going to have a bad day,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: and I'm not moving. But his point was about the
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: warning that, You had some people in Georgia who didn't
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: like blacks, and they were bigots, and they were openly so.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: And what you said is the southern racists were like rattlesnakes.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: They were like rattlesnakes.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: You knew who they were. They made noise, and they
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: were visible. But when you went to the north and
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: the northeast, they were like moccasins. They were hidden until
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: they'd strike.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the attitude. That was sort of one of
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: the things that surprised me. we were told basically that
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: the North was the Holy Grail. So it was shocking
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: to see in New England the kind of ethnic divisions,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: the bigotry toward minorities, etc.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Now, what is it that attracted you to being a priest?
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Because that's what you thought you wanted to spend your
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: life doing.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm Catholic. I was an altar boy. I loved
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: being an altar boy. I loved We used to get
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: these magazines of the Mary Noel priests and serving kids
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: who were at disease or were poor or were having difficulties.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: And you begin to feel that that would be a
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: good way to spend your life. And then it becomes
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: an issue when you enter the minor seminary. It's really
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: a time of discernment and to see whether you have
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: the capabilities. And I... I like the idea of being
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: called to serve to do that. When you have a vocation,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: you're asking yourself, what is God calling me to do?
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: And that became actually, again, but for the weakness of
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: the bishops, I think I'd be a priest today. Or
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: not specific bishops, but the church itself. seem to be
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: vacillating on the issue of race. And to me, the big,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: the major wrong in the country, the major contradiction in
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: this country was the race issue that you treat, you
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: can place the importance of equality at the center of
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: your founding document. And then you have this issue of
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: slavery and its offshoots.
• 22:57
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• 24:51
  Speaker 1: One point that I make many times is is you
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: look at Dr. King's letter from a Birmingham jail, and
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: people forget to whom it is addressed. It's addressed to
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the clergy of America. He's writing to the leaders of
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the church saying, wake up and speak up. And my
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: favorite portion of that letter, there's a group of senators,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: bipartisan senators, who regularly read that letter on the floor
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: of the Senate. It's really powerful to read the words
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: out loud. And there's a portion in it where he
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: says the church should be a thermostat and not a thermometer,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: that it should be changing society and not just reacting
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: to what's around. And that's ultimately what led you to
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: leave the seminary and say that you were not going
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: to go down the path.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Of being a priest. I think it was an overreaction.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: I think I was 19 years old.
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: And when Dr. King was assassinated, that was a pivotal moment.
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: That was a pivotal moment. I was in my first
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: year in college in the seminary. I would love to— I
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: loved the Benedictines. I was there in Magna Conception Seminary
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: in Missouri. I loved being there. The people, it was wonderful.
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: But it was not there that things were difficult. It
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: was the world around me. It was the church generally.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I thought that as a sort of a moral beacon,
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: we should talk about the court that we should have
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: taken a leadership role in the church.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Unquestionably. And it's been a long and difficult journey for
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: our country. Now, you went from the seminary to Holy
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Cross and then Yale Law School. A lot of people listening,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, they know you were one of the greatest
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: conservative leaders to have ever lived. But as a young man,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: you were not in any way, shape, or form a conservative.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Tell folks what your worldview was as a 19, 20, 21-year-old.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Well, I think when you're 19 and you're angry, you're
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: confused for the most part. I came from a very
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: traditional background. In fact, as I went through that period
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: when I quit the seminary, and returned home, my grandfather
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: invited me to leave his house immediately. And so I've
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: basically been on my own since then. And of course,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: as you're 19.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: And that was a hard moment for you.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, that was, it was more than hard. Hard is
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: an understatement. And it was in that vein or in
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: that posture that I wound up going to New England
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: in sort of a negative posture. Right. And I think
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: we have... We react to our circumstances in certain ways.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: And I was reacting to the church's sort of not
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: doing what it should be doing. I overreacted. I reacted
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: as a 19-year-old emotionally.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: And you were angry at the time. You were angry
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: at God. You stopped going to Mass.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Well, I left the church completely. And I think if
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: I had to do over, I wouldn't. I would not
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: have left the church. And I think it's a matter of,
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: and this is a point my grandfather was making at
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: the time. He said, you're throwing the baby out with
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: the bathwater. That it is people not living up to
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: what is right. That's the problem, not the underlying principles.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: So the church, the belief, the tenets of the church
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: are not wrong. It's that the people are failing in
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: living up to that. But at any rate, when you're young,
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: you don't make those fine distinctions. So I think an
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: easy way to deal with that or a quick way
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: to sort of respond when you're that age is to
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: find these sort of radical movements you participate in, you protest,
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: you sort of let off steam and you're angry and
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: you feel empowered by that anger. And But then as
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: time goes on, you take a step back and you
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: start thinking about what you're doing. Probably, you know, my
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: grandfather asked me a question and I've said this before.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: I would come return home and he would be upset
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: with me and he would say after all his sacrifices,
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: this is what I've become. And he would challenge me
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: because I'd say the country's racist and we need to
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: destroy it and all that. sort of thing. And he said,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: and when you destroy it, where are you going to go?
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: That was always the unanswerable question. What country is better
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: than this country with all its problems? To which I
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: had no answer. So I think that's planted the seed
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: of doubt from this point. And as I grew older
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: and more mature and thought about things, in fact, about
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: the time I was at Yale and had participated in
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: enough sort of demonstrations.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Well, and you took part in a protest that became
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: a riot in Harvard Square.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: At your alma mater. See, I could have saved you trouble.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: That was sort of.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: I think that was the road to Damascus moment. That's
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: the moment where you look into the abyss and it
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: looks back.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Well, you realize that it could have gone much worse
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: for you. You could have been thrown in jail. You
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: could have been expelled from school.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Well, I couldn't answer why I was doing it. You know, again,
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: it goes back when you're asked a hard question.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Why did I just... do what I just did. To
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: spend all night doing something I don't quite understand. But
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: that return, it was April 16, 1970. So I returned
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: to Holy Cross from Cambridge and walked in front of
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: the chapel because I was exhausted but couldn't sleep. Walked
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: in front of the chapel and Again, I'm not attending
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: or anything, but I'm still deeply Catholic. And I face it,
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: the Blessed Sacrament, and I ask God to take hate
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: out of my heart. And I said, if you take
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: hate out of my heart, I will never hate again.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: And that was the moment when you began to, for me,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: when I began to move in a more positive direction.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: When you begin to offload, it was like lancing a boil.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: And it was long, erratic. There was not a straight line.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: But it was away from the thing that it consumed
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: to me.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Well, and even when you were a left-wing radical, you
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: could see glimmers of the man that Clarence Thomas would become.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: That in many ways, I think, was the wisdom your
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: grandfather and your grandmother had imparted to you. But you
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: could see the individualist. You have never liked to conform.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't like being told what to do. I
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: just think when you.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: The nuns made it clear that when God created us,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: it was mind, soul, and body. And you don't just
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: liberate the body. And that you were responsible. You committed
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: a sin. It wasn't because The devil didn't make you
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: do it. You did it. You gave in. You made
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: the decision. And you were responsible. And you didn't do
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: your homework. You were responsible. Excuses didn't count. And my
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: grandfather was that way. You were accountable. And that's similarly
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: when you made it was my life. And I'm not
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: talking about being a libertine or anything like that. It's
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: more libertarian, that you believe in liberty, and that means
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: you have to take responsibility for it. And I really
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: didn't like people saying, you have to do this, you
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: have to do that. We had this saying that there
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: are only two things I have to do, stay black
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: and die. And that was a retort to people who
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: had these sort of– requirements for us, these mandates for
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: us because of our skin color. And the thing that's
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: really kind of interesting, it wasn't until later on that
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: people began to say that when I came to this town,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: one of the greatest difficulties, if you think about it,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: was that there were those who thought that I should
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: think a certain way. And the difficulty has been that
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: they said, oh, you're confused. Well, I'm not confused. You're confused.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: You confuse me with someone who's been in indentured servitude
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: or something. But at any rate, they think that here's
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: the way you're supposed to think. Again, here's your skin color.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: There's this kind of deterministic view that you're supposed to
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: think this because we say so. And I, of course,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: declined that invitation. And so now that means it's something
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: that I'm a walking contradictions. because I've deviated from their
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: perception of what I should think. Explain to me how
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: that is different. Here's what I've asked people. I said,
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: when I was a kid, the Savannah Public Library was segregated.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I said, do you think it was right that the
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Savannah Public Library was segregated? Oh, no, you should have
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: been able to go in. I said, what if they
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: allowed me in but said I couldn't go to certain floors?
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: That would be wrong. I said, What if they said
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: you couldn't go to certain stacks? Well, that would be wrong.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: What if they had certain books marked that were off
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: limits to me? That would be wrong. Then my question is,
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: why is it then that you have a problem with
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: me embracing certain ideas in certain books? What's the difference?
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Of course, that's unanswerable. In fact, I would prefer not
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: to go in the building to not being able to
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: embrace the ideas that I find that I agree with
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: or that are important.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: All right, I want to take a moment real quick
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: and talk to you about something that's extremely important. Right now,
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: somewhere in the world, there's a child waiting, not waiting
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• 36:47
  Speaker 1: By any measure, one of your greatest legacies in the court,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: and there are many, but has been on race. And
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: you have been a clarion voice in your entire tenure
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: on the court for the principle that the Constitution is
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: does not allow racial distinctions, does not allow racial discrimination.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: The Constitution is colorblind and protects everyone. It's interesting as
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: you tell the story or the analogy of the library
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: and then the stacks and the books that you might
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: not be allowed to read. One story you have told
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: is as a young man, I think in law school,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: somebody gave you a copy of a book by Thomas
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Sowell And you started to read it and threw it
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: in the trash and said, if I remember right, that
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: no black man can think this way.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That was Black Education, Myths and Tragedies, I think,
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: one of his early books. And he laughs about it. Then,
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: of course, he sent me a copy just to make
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: sure I had it. But then in the after law school,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: I was working in Jeff City. It's one of those
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: Hobson's choices. That's how I wound up there. The only
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: job offer I had, but it was the best job
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: I've ever had.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: But all the fancy law firms wouldn't give you an offer.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: You came out of Yale Law School, did really well
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: in law school.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: It didn't matter. And I always tell them now when
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: I see them, they're the reason I'm on the court,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: because but for them, I'd be a tax lawyer someplace.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: And they woke now, but they were fast asleep when
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: I got out of school. So anyway, God works in
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: mysterious ways. I wind up in Jeff City.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: So you're working for Jack Danforth, who was the attorney
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: general in Missouri.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Absolutely wonderful man.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: And your classmates were asking, what are you doing going
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: to work for a Republican?
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: He was the only one who would give you a job.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: He was the only one who gave me a job.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, I had trouble with that. I mean, I
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: was dying. Remember, I just voted for McGovern. Yeah. You know,
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: and I thought he was too conservative. So you can
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: see ideologically where I was. But I go to work
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: for him. Best job I've ever had.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Well, and you said when you came in, you said, look,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: I don't want to work on matters of race. I
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: don't want to be treated differently than anyone else. And
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: you joked that he took you very seriously.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: He ignored all of us. But you loved that job. Oh,
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: I loved it. It was the best job I've ever had.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: $ 11, 000 a year. And he promised, he said, I can
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: give you more work for less money than anybody in
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: the country. And that turned out to be a blessing.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: But at any rate, that office, the way that he
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: ran that office was just wonderful, even-handed. One of the
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: people I met who became a very dear friend was
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: a quadriplegic from West Point, Nebraska. And went to University
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: of Missouri Law School, graduated, ordered the co-wife, but had
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: suffered from polio and was a quadriplegic. Just a very, very,
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: very dear friend. He calls me up one day and
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: he said, Clarence, there's another black guy out here like you.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: And his name is Thomas Sowell. And it was Thomas Sowell.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: And it was a book review in the Wall Street Journal.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: And it was on race and economics. And I obtained
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: copies of that. And it became just sort of the
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: beginning of the long intellectual walk back on of thinking
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: about these things. And I met him at Washington University
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: on a panel with Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she was
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: a professor in the late 70s. And then when I
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: came here in 79, I think I met him again
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: either in 79 or 80 when he was making the
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: rounds with Hill staffers. And we've been friends since the
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: early 1980s.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: By the way, for what it's worth, I'm urging the
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: White House to award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: I hope they do so. I've publicly called for that.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to make that happen because I think that
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: would be very appropriate.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it would be deserved. He is a great,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: great man and one of the great thinkers.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I've never met him, but I've admired him. He's brilliant
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: and courageous.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: Well, he's courageous. He and I met him I met
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Walter Williams back then when I got here.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: I met Walter Williams when I was in high school.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Is that right?
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was inspiring even when I was a kid.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Brash, but he's, and there was another gentleman that you
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: don't know that's also passed away, like Walter, who's done,
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: was also very quiet, but a libertarian and was very,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: very helpful. But anyway, the The whole point is that
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: in Jefferson City, again, I go back to what I
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: said at the very beginning, that things that initially seem
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: like a negative, you know, you can't get a job,
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: so you wind up in Jefferson City, turn out to
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: be a blessing. And what I say in retrospect is
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: that God closed all the doors that I should not
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: have gone through and left one door open, my Hobson's Choice.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: And it turned out to be the best job I've
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: ever had.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Well, and ultimately you're in the AG's office. You go
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: get a job in corporate America at Monsanto, which paid
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: you a good chunk of money but was not rewarding
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: and you were not happy with corporate America. And then
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: Jack Danforth has gone to the Senate and you go
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: work for him in the Senate. And you're Capitol Hill
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: staffer and you go to a conference with Thomas Sowell.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he invited me personally to that. In San Francisco.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: And at the time, you're a Republican staffer, but you're
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: on the journey. One of the things I try to
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: do in the book is chronicle the intellectual journey and
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: awakening from an angry left-wing radical to a principled conservative.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: That's a pretty big shift. And reading was an important
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: part of it. Questioning was an important part of it.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: But you've described how you're sitting at, at a lunch
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: table with, with Juan Williams, the reporter, having what you
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: thought was a conversation. And, and, uh, it was one
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: of your first interactions with, with the press and, and
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: it ended up having a big feature article in the
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Washington Post describing you as the black conservative, which, which
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: was a pretty startling thing for you.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: Well, I'd never called myself conservative. I, I'm, you know, the, um,
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: That was a way of character. They called us black
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: conservatives in order to dispose of us. They called Tom
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: Sowell that, Walter Williams, Jay Parker, who was another dear friend,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: has passed away. But I was shocked. Remember now, I'm
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: 32 years old. I'm a Hill staffer. I've never been
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: in the press. I had just made my first trip
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: to California.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: You got the inkling that there was going to be
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: something on you when they sent a photographer to take
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: a picture.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: I was sharing an office with three other staffers, and
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: this photographer shows up from the post. And December 16, 1980,
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: there's my smiling face on the op-ed page. And then
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: my whole life changed. And the attacks, the negativity.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: And there is a nastiness. As a black conservative that
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: I don't think anyone else experiences. You get some of
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: it as an Hispanic who's a conservative because I'm not
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: supposed to be a conservative, but you're really not supposed
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: to be a conservative. And there's part of the reason
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: I wanted to write the book is the vitriol that
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: has been directed at you is different. Look, Justice Scalia,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: you knew him extremely well. He was brilliant, extraordinarily principled.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: he never had the kind of hate directed to him
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: that you did. And the left, they view you, a
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: black man is not allowed to think that way. You're
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: a traitor. And that, there's an ugliness to that.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, that's, you know, I grew up, again,
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: I've been fortunate to have had misfortunes. And one of
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: the things you learned during segregation is there was this
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: idea that, boy, don't you know your place. And that's
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: the same thing. I mean, These are some of the
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: worst people that you would meet, like the progressives. That's
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: why I mentioned people like Woodrow Wilson, one of the
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: early progressives.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: Who was a vicious racist.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but see, underneath that, and Paul Johnson makes the
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: point that you scratch the surface of things like the
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: Marxists and the socialists. That's what you find because they
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: have to categorize people. So I understand that. But I
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: crossed that bridge in my early 30s that I accepted
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: that this is the way they were going to treat me.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: This is what was going to happen. This is what
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: would happen. And who knew where it would leave, but
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: God would take care of that part. But the fact
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: that they have all this vitriol, to me, is a
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: white flag that they have no argument. Yep. If they
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: think you're wrong, persuade you. Look, I'm open to reason,
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: but I will not be told what to do. No
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: one cajoles me. No one makes me do anything. Slavery
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: is over. But there's this sense that don't you know
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: what you're supposed to think? And that is with me,
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: that is the wrong argument.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: Well, and related to that, one of the things that
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: you have said really powerfully written and spoken about is
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: with affirmative action and racial quotas, it brings with it
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: a stigma. You rather famously put a sticker of 15
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: cents on your Yale law degree from a cigar box because,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: and you talked about coming out of Yale, but not
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: being able to get a job. And look, I went
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: to school at a different time than you did. But
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you, as an Hispanic, I still remember this
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: one supercilious liberal in law school explaining that everyone who
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: wasn't a white man was on the law review because
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: of affirmative action. That was the only reason anyone could
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: possibly do well is because they were giving us this gift.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: And it was infuriating.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: You know, I've heard, I've been, there are many, many
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: slights along the way. Yeah. But it doesn't make you wrong.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: These are little bumps in the road. And what I
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: compare it to, again, I compare it to what my
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: grandparents went through. Like, just take my grandfather. If I'm
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: going to complain, right, I have to look at him,
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: at a man who didn't complain. He never knew his father.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: His mother dies when he's six or seven, maybe eight.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: And then he goes to live with his grandmother, who's
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: a freed slave, who lives on a part of the
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: plantation that they're from. Okay.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Just pause for a second and think about the marvel
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: of America, that your grandfather who raised you was raised
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: by his grandmother, who was a freed slave. And now
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: you are in the second longest serving Supreme Court justice
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: in American history, and in a couple of years will
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: be the longest serving. That is, you know, it's one
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: of the things, look, those who point to the flaws
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: in our nation's history, they're not wrong. Our racial history
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: in particular, it has been a history of injustice and
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: slavery was grotesque. But I agree with Dr. King that
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: the arc of history is long and it bends towards justice.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: And that journey was possible because of the principles America
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: was built on, even if it took us decades and
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: even centuries to begin living up to it.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, he always, my grandfather would talk about
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: don't throw out the Ten Commandments because people don't obey them.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with the Ten Commandments. It's just we
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: have weaknesses or for whatever reasons we don't comply. And
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: I think sometimes when you're angry and you see suffering
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: and difficulties, you are willing to throw everything out, the
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: baby with the bathwater. And as you get older, you
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: can be more discerning. And one of the things I
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: think that's unfortunate is that the people who should know
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: better haven't stood up and defended those principles and asserted
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: them and then tried to live up to them and
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: not be hypocritical and not to sacrifice the principles for
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: a share of the power, for a share of the
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: loot that they're getting from the country or whatever. And
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: so one of the things that I tried to do
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: when I was teasing out the speech at the University
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: of Texas is to make this point. Two things that
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: I wanted to talk about was the fact that here
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: you had uneducated people who believed that God made them equal.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: And you had Irish nuns, immigrants, that believed strongly that
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: in God's eyes, we're all equal. And this was not
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: to be debated. No matter what the laws around us said,
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: this was not debatable. So now that means if there
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: are Irish immigrants and uneducated people who no formal education
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: believed this, my point was simply that it must be self-evident. Otherwise,
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: how else would they know? The other part of it
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: that I was interested in is there are a lot
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: of nice words in the Declaration, for example. But what
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: do they pledge? Their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: And this is after what the king says, I'm going
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: to hang all of you.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: And that was not theoretical.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: No, no, I know it. He was not happy. But
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: at any rate, my point is if you end it
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: by saying, I'm willing to die for this. Now, that
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: gives value to what you just said. In your wedding vows,
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: you say, I do, and you mean it. Right. You
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: said you've been married, what, 29 years?
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: 25.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: 25 years. So that gives content to your wedding vows. Yeah.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: When I said, I do, to my wife, that gives content. Otherwise,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: it's just nice words. And I think one of the things,
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: and this goes back to my point about leaving the seminary,
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: do you really mean it? Do you really believe as
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: a church what you said you believed? And it was
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: the gap between that, what you said, the church said,
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: and what the leadership seemed to a 19-year-old to believe.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: And I think in this country now, think about it.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: When last have you had a leader that made– that
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: said something that is the equivalent of, I pledge my life,
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: my property, my fortune, and my sacred honor.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: So you referenced the speech you gave at University of Texas.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: I want to commend all the listeners here. Go and
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: listen to that speech. It really was an extraordinary speech.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: I'm proud of UT. I spent a couple of years
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: on the faculty as an adjunct law professor there. And look,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Most law schools are so left-wing. I'm proud of UT
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: for inviting you there. The president, Jim Davis, is a
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: good friend, had you there. But it really is an
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: important speech and conversation, and if folks haven't listened to it,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: they should. What I want to do in the interest
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: of time, there are additional chapters in your life from
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: being a Hill staffer to an assistant secretary of the
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Department of Education to the chairman of the EOC and
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: the Reagan administration. to a Court of Appeals judge on
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: the DC Circuit, to going through one of, if not
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: the most brutal confirmation hearing of any justice. You and
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: Brett Kavanaugh can arm wrestle for who had the rougher time,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: but in many ways you're, and I talk about this
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: in the book, how what Justice Kavanaugh went through was
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: a replay of the playbook that you were subjected to.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: I want to skip over all of those periods, although
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: I recount them in detail in the book. And I
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: want to go to after you are confirmed and you're
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: sworn in and you're in your early 40s and suddenly
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: you're a Supreme Court justice. And your autobiography ends with
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: your being a justice. So it tells your life story
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: but then does not cover your jurisprudence. I want to
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: start with just a human thing. What's it like? the
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: first day you're a justice, you walk in, like just
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: what's day one of being a spring court justice?
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Well, uh, you feel a little small and like, what
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: the heck am I doing here? Um, which was still
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: a question. Um, but this is, you know, the, as
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: I said, and just Lord grant me the wisdom to
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: know what's right and the courage to do it. Um,
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: That has been a constant plea of mine. And it
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: is what brought me back to the church, stopping at
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: first St. Nicholas, then sometimes St. Mary's, and sometimes St. Joe,
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: to just ask for the wisdom and to know what
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: is right and the courage to do it. But you know,
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: it is just the, you pledge to I gave President
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: Bush my promise. I took an oath. He said, can
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: you call him as you see him? He asked me
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: that in Kennebunkport, July 1, 1991. I said, I can.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: And that's what I've lived up to. My grandfather, when
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: I asked him when I was being attacked in the
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: early 80s, 1982, I said, what should I do? He said, boy,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: you got to stand up for what you believe in.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: It's pretty simple. And I must say, I'm on the
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: other side of that spectrum now, but I was treated royally, fabulously,
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: by my new colleagues. Your old boss, Chief Justice Rehnquist,
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: Justice Scalia, Stevens, O'Connor, a great woman who doesn't get
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: the credit she deserves, Justice Kennedy. And now I'm on
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: the other side of it where I have newer colleagues,
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: wonderful teachers, And brilliant young people like Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh,
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: you mentioned. We have Amy Barrett. And then Sam Alito
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: and I were at Yale together. Just a wonderful, wonderful group.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: You were classmates at Yale.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: He was a year behind.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: He was a year behind you, but you didn't know
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: each other.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: He's a funny guy. He's brilliant. He was always nerdy.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: Princeton guy like you, right? Yeah. And so.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: I said, Sam, how come we were there two years together?
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Why weren't we friends? Clarence, you were scary. I mean,
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: that's it. It was really, I'm so glad they didn't
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: have these phones where you could take a lot of pictures.
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: I wore bib overalls throughout law school and combat boots
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: and just, it was awful. But, you know, you have just,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: the chief has been a good friend. But my point
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: is simply this, that, you know, I was embraced there.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: It was a different generation. It's the World War II.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: Byron White. They were just wonderful people. They were very
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: kind to me. You know, the courts changed a bit
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: now since the Dobbs League. Back then there was a trust. Yes.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: There was an honor. Even as you disagreed, there were
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: lines you did not cross. And I like that. These
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: people were the age of my mother and older. And
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: so it was a different era. And now it's a
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: different generation now. But the point is that you have
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: equally good people who are there. I mean, I loved,
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: I knew some of them as law clerks. They've become
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: very dear friends. And I hope to be a model
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: to them as the older members of the court who
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: were there when I arrived were to me.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: So of all the justices who have served on the court,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: I think you are the most willing to reconsider precedent
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: and to think of an issue anew, which is in
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: some ways to think about it as it was– in fact,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: in many ways to think of it as it was
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: originally understood And that– your opinion writing is– you write
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: straightforward opinions in ordinary English. You don't tend to use
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: fancy highfalutin words, but your opinions are written so that
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: The regular person can read them and understand what you're saying.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: And I think there's a workmanship quality to your opinions.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: I analogize it to a farmer or someone building a home.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: And you draw that same analogy. Why do you think
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: it is that you are the most willing to reconsider precedent?
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: You know, I start with something you and I, I think,
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: have talked about. over the years, and that is that
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: I start with something that has to make sense.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: The quote from your grandfather, if it don't make no
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: damn sense, it don't make no damn sense.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I keep that in my office. Yeah. Because the,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: you can, he would call some of these professors fast talking. Yeah.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: And you think about it. You know, we have had
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: throughout history court intellectuals who can.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: Make all sorts of justifications for things and theories and
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I've been blessed
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: because I can sort through the theories and I read
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: lots and lots and lots of books. And I've been
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: at it a long time. And I have young people
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: who have that energy and you say, we're going to
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: go find the answer. Now it may not be what
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: we want, but we're going to go look for it.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: And what we find is, in many instances, is it's
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: been a theory. So you can have deductive reasoning. You
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: have a theory and you work down. Or you can
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: have inductive, which any rancher or farmer uses, which is
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: you do something and it's experience and you keep generalizing
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: up to something more general. And that's the world I
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: grew up. The latter is the world I grew up in.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: I cannot explain it to that guy on the ranch. Yep.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: And if he says, boy, that don't make no sense.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: You know, he should be a– when I go out
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: to ordinary people, they should be able to understand their Constitution.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: And by the way, ordinary people, one thing people may
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: not know, you do that a lot. You and Jenny
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: go out in your RV, like in the summertime, you
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: head across the country and are in Walmart parking lots
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: just hanging out with regular people.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: Well, Buc-ee's now. All right, now it's a Texan.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: That makes me happy. Buc-ee's that.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: Hey, Buc-ee's is a destination. But, you know, I love,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: I grew up with, as my granddad said, Poe folks.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: And that's the world I like. I like people who
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: work with their hands. I like people who are regular people.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: That's my preferred world. And, you know, I was, my
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: wife laughs at me because I was, our motor home is,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: motor coach is 35 years old. So I like the
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: old buses. And so you hang out with the guys
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: who do work on old buses. And I got to
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: spend time with one of them in December. And we're like,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: we take all the wheels off and you're up. So
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: I said, that was as happy as I could be.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Because you're under the air. You got all the shocks,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: all the airbags, you know, the lines. He's showing you
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: all these things, the valves. And it was just, I
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: could not, I wish I could spend two weeks there
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: instead of two days. But the point is, it's their constitution.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: It's that truck driver's constitution. It's that school teacher's constitution.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: It's not the preserve of court intellectuals and law professors.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: And we've turned it into that. We've over-intellectualized it. This
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: is a point that Murray Rothbard makes in his book,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: Conceived in Liberty. We've taken something that was passionately achieved
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: and that was believed in passionately, and we turned it
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: into this thing that you need an oracle to explain.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: The Federalist Papers were newspaper editorials.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: And they were only in New York, by the way.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: And those were basically Hamilton and those guys. That's right.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: There's a big difference between Hamilton and some of the
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: more radical guys, like a Sam Adams, which is more
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: than a beer, by the way.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: I will admit there was an amusing exchange of one
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: commentator on the left who was on TV saying, James Madison,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, can you imagine those people overthrowing the government?
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: And I couldn't help but respond, yes, yes, I can.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: It kind of happened. One of the things you have
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: been really eloquent on and I think profoundly influential on is, look,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: the Constitution is the foundational document that created our government.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: But you have focused a great deal on the Declaration
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: of Independence. And why is the Declaration so important? And
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: what is the relevance that people should know about it?
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: Well, the Constitution sets up the government, the form of
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: the government. But what precedes that? What does it mean?
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: What defines you, your rights? How do they view your rights?
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: Where do they come from? And where does the government
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: come from? And it sets the order right. Just take
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: it simple. It says your rights come from God, basically,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: from nature's God. And then from that, you know, you
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: give up some of those God-given natural rights in order
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: to be governed. And what does that lead to? That
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: leads to the Constitution. I was pointing out to my
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: clerks the other day, because you get these Second Amendment cases.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: And I said, you know, why do we keep saying
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: there's a Second Amendment right? The Second Amendment says the
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: right to bear arms shall not be infringed. It assumes
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: a right. It doesn't grant a right. And so you
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: can go First Amendment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: Where does that come from? And that's what I was
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: interested in. That what establishes this whole notion of liberty?
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: What establishes this order of rights? And so it matters
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: if you think the government is the primary giver of,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: grantor of rights and you receive rights and benefits from
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: the government versus you have the rights and the government
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: receives its authority from you. And I think that that order,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: being able to establish that in each case is important.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: And that's, if you go back, and that explains Justice
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: Scalia's writings on the structure of the Constitution being the
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: safeguard of these rights that you have that are antecedent
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: and that are transcended. So... I focus on that to
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: always get the order right. When you farm, every farmer knows,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: when you plant or when you plow, I don't know
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: if you've ever plowed.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: I'm a city boy, so I've watched it on TV.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: So my granddaddy said, boy, he would always say, and
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: he put a little cuss word in there from time
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: to time, he said, and those rows better be straight.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: So you have to take your first row and it
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: has to be absolutely straight. Then you put your tire
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: in the in a groove where the plows, especially if
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: you're using a dish plow and they go different ways,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: you go and you follow that. So now every subsequent
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: row is straight. Well, going back to your point about precedent,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: what if that first row is crooked? Will you keep going,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: pretending that it's straight, or do you go back and
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: make it straight? That's why you say, well, I'm not
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: accepting precedent. If something doesn't make any sense, what am
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: I going to do? Am I a fool for following
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: that or not questioning it? I taught a course on
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: stare decisis just for this point. It makes sense when
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: you have these unwritten laws and when you have traditions
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: and when barons are ruling on cases in these rural
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: areas in England. But when you have positive law, when
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: it's written down and you can see the deviations, Who's
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: the fool you follow something that's absurd? Why would you
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: follow something that's absurd?
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: Well, look at a great example of that in the
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: case I talk about quite a bit in the book
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: is is the kilo case Where kilo involved a city
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: that was condemning a woman's home.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: That they had for a hundred years. Yes, there's tiny
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: house regular person's house. Yeah, not a mansion and the
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: for a public purpose and not a public use. And
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: that started in Southwest D.C., by the way, the precedent
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: for that. And the court was willing to say that
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: the public purpose was the equivalent of public use. Well,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: a public purpose could be to increase your tax base.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: Well, and actually, as I was driving over here to
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: do this, I wanted to, look, I pulled up the
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: language of the Fifth Amendment and the relevant prohibition at
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: the end of it is, nor shall private property be
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: taken for public use without just compensation. So that's the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: actual language. And, and Kelo, unfortunately it was five, four,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: the majority said that, that the city of new London,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: Connecticut could take her home, not for a highway or
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: a road or a city building, but for a parking
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: lot for a planned Pfizer, uh, building, and you dissented,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: and it focused on the words public use versus purpose,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: and explain that distinction to us.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: Well, purpose is a very broad term.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: And the court and its precedent had basically turned use
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: into purpose.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: But there's another thing, principle, that we have followed for years,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: which is you don't take, the government doesn't take, Private
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: property from person A and give it to private person B. Right.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: That's not a public use. But going back to your
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: point that a public use would be a park, it
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: would be a hospital, it would be a highway, et cetera.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: Something that the public uses. A public purpose doesn't necessarily,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: is much, much broader. So just imagine you have a
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: somewhat blighted area. Yep. But suddenly it's attractive to people
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: with lots of money. And a city decides, well, we'd
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: like to increase our tax base. Well, there are all
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: these young people with lots of money who want to
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: build these McMansions. Yep. Or these high-end $ 2 or $ 3
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: million structures. Well, the public purpose would be to increase
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: that tax base. But that's not a public use. Yep.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: And now you've given people who have authority to take
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: your property a much broader way and much more power
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: to take an individual's property. Now, why is the issue?
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: I took quite a bit of property at Yale for
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: this reason. If you go back to Georgia, if you
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: go back to the South, you go to places like
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: South Carolina, there was all this land that blacks owned
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: in the way that my family received land. Over the years,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: it was called heirs' property. Everybody owns it. Nobody's really
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: in charge. Well, a lot of that land, there were
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: aggressive efforts to use that land for developments. It could
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: be for resorts in Hilton Head. It could be for
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: strategic purposes in Harris Neck, Georgia. It could be for conservations.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: in places where blacks were subsistence farmers, like in McIntosh, Georgia.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: So my only point is simply this, that the word,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: if you want to protect the property, you have to
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: stick to the words in the Constitution, or it sort
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: of spreads out to broader powers that were not intended.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: and public purpose allows it. Plus, that word appears in
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: no place in the Constitution.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I will say, even though you were in dissent,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: you did not command the majority in the court, I
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: think over time, the view you articulated has prevailed, and
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: it's persuaded Texas and many other states have enacted laws
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: to prevent the taking of public property for public purposes,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: and it was inspired by inspired by your very, you know,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: Justice O'Connor used an effective analogy in dissent in that
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: case where she said under this reasoning, the government could
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: condemn every Motel 6 and to build a Ritz-Carlton.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And she's right. And she and I, and remember
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: she comes from a rancher.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: I think the, just think about it, hand in hand
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: with liberty. Uh, you had, they, they were traveling companion,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: liberty and property. Okay. Wherever you see it, if you
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: look at the due process clause, what does it protect?
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Life, liberty, and property.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: Okay. Wherever you see it. And that was my grandfather.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: What did he say? These were PO. He said a
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: little bit of land, you get to raise crops, you
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: get to build a little place to live. Uh, you
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: get to raise some animals. Okay. The property was a
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: part of your way to take care of yourself. So
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: liberty and property, it was the fruit of your labor.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: So you worked in the cornfield, you planted it, you
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: took care of it, you harvested it. It's yours. And
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: the land is yours. You earned it. And I think
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: you see throughout the founding, all those things, those were
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: always paired, liberty and property. And we treat it as
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: though it's a benefit from the government rather than a
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: right that transcends the government and is to be protected
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: from the government.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: One thing you did there just a minute ago that
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: is really powerful and that is a consistent theme of
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: your jurisprudence is you understand the rights protected in the
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: Constitution with an understanding of of the context of history.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: So when you're talking about condemning land or property for
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: public purpose rather than use, you quickly brought it to
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: when government power is used, historically it has been used
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: over and over by the rich and powerful against the
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: more vulnerable in society, often against African Americans or Hispanics
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: or people who don't necessarily have the ability to defend
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: themselves against government power. That's something also that you've powerfully
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: done in the Second Amendment context. And one of the
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: things that you've said, you and I, when we were
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: sitting down doing interviews, you talked about the importance of Reconstruction.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: That if you're going to understand American history and the Constitution,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: you've got to understand Reconstruction. Tell us about that.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: Well, it's everything. I mean, it's, you know, the, I think, Reconstruction.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: Why did you have Reconstruction? I mean, because you had
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: the Civil War. You had slaves that were freed. You
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: had the South that was not going to do what
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: it should do. And so you basically had the military
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: in the South. And after Reconstruction, of course, you got
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: the Redeemers. You got the Redeemers. You have the former
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: Confederates who've been disempowered, disenfranchised, and they start forming these
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: vigilante groups. And who are they going after? Are they
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: going after the Republicans in the South, they're going after
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: particularly the freedmen. And what's the argument? If you just
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: take a look at it, you'd see they would maraud.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: They would intimidate. They would lynch. And there was a
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: big difference. But the 14th Amendment is passed. And the
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: whole point is to now make these slave citizens. But
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: there's something further going on. If you look at the
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: debates in the 14th Amendment, the argument is these people
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: have a right to defend themselves. Now, the radical Republicans
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: felt that with these rights, privileges or immunities, also brings
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: the right to bear arms. They have a right to
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: defend themselves from these marauders. And anyone who lives in
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: a rural area, who lives in the South, You could
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: be in Texas, in rural Texas. Everybody is armed for
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: a variety of reasons. To defend themselves, to hunt, etc.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: And if you live in rural Georgia, I didn't know
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: anybody who didn't have at least one weapon. And you
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: could have a mad dog. You could have a big
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: six-foot rattlesnake. You could have a moccasin. You could have
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: all sorts of things. And you could have an opportunity
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: to kill an animal for food. But my point is
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: that the radical Republicans understood that without that right to
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: defend themselves.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: And fundamentally, it's a right to life, a right to
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: protect your life, your kids' life, your family.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: Well, that was the point. That was the Freedmen Bureau.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: If you look at the reports, they're getting killed down here.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: The Knights of Camellia, the Ku Klux Klan, etc., And
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: so you get the 14th Amendment. Right. And defining them,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: of course, answering Taney and responding to his notion that
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: blacks cannot be citizens. But this also brings in the
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: privileges or immunities clause.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: And Taney was the author of Dred Scott, which if
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: there's a decision that is more disgraceful than Plessy versus Ferguson,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: it was Dred Scott.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: Well, it is.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: For a lot of different reasons. I've spent a lot
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: of time on Dred Scott and his around Dred Scott.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: But the whole point is that here's a man who's
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out a way to say that no
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: way blacks could ever be citizens of this country, just
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: by their very nature. And, of course, we revisit that
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: old notion In the birthright case last term, but in
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: a different way and for different reasons. But the 14th
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: Amendment in this country is critical because it's basically the
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: second founding. And so you have to understand that. So
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: what I think I owe my fellow citizens is not
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: just to read the words of the Constitution, but to
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: try to understand not just the 14th Amendment, but the revolution,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: leading up to the revolution, the history of England, the
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: things that influence it. The Civil War, the post-Civil War,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: the Reconstruction era. And you may have to read people
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: you don't necessarily agree with. Sure. For example, I read
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: and reread Eric Foner on Reconstruction. Now, he's a revisionist historian,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: but he's fine. He does a great job of explaining
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: Reconstruction and a lot of these problems. And I admire
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: the work that he's done. And at the same time,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: you know, you may not agree. with the revolutionary period
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: with Murray Rothbard because he's a libertarian. But he's written
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: a couple of thousand pages on this and conceived in liberty.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: And it's worth reading because it gives you that sort
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: of granular understanding of the revolutionary period.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: But you told me a story about Justice Breyer when
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: he was robbed. And if you just share that story.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: Poor Steve Breyer. He's such a good man. So, Steve,
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: this is a joke, and I hope I don't offend Steve.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: He's a very decent man.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: We spent a lot of years sitting next to each other.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: What a fun time. But at any rate, so Steve Breyer,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: he'd been robbed, and he didn't want it to be public.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: He didn't want the attention. And Nevis, where they have
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: little property there. And he said, so he's telling the
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: story to a number of us, a number of others
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: as I walk in the room, that he turns to
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: me because I wasn't there at the beginning. He said, Clarence,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: I had a question for you. You're on your porch.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: You're playing bridge with another couple, you and your wife,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: and a guy walks up with a machete. What would
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: you do? And I said, I don't play bridge. He said, okay, okay,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: you're playing poker. And the guy walks over to the machete,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: and he says he demands money. What would you do?
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: He said, I don't play poker. I don't play cards, Steve.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: He said, what would you be doing on your porch?
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: I said, cleaning my guns. And I said, do you
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: want some ketchup with that? But at any rate, he
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: is such– I hope that doesn't offend him. He is
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: the nicest man. You know, I– And that goes back.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: I just, let me just say a word. You ask about,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: you know, the, the court and the work, et cetera.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: It's a human institution. And I've been blessed because I
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: get along with the members of the court. Uh, we
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: have a different set of colleagues now. Um, but they're wonderful.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: You've got, uh, Neil and Louise Gorsuch, the delightful, just
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: wonderful couple. Um, And, you know, it takes a few
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: years to get your legs, and he's done that. Brett
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: Kavanaugh was just the nicest person. He and his wife, Ashley,
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: she's a Texan. You've got the Alitos, Martha Ann and Sam. Again,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: and the Chief and Jane. I mean, it's a wonderful
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: group of people. And it was when I came on
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: the court. It's different now because I'm the oldest member
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: as opposed to They're the youngest. As the New York
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: Times said, the youngest and the cruelest. But, you know,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: it's just I've just changed perspective. But still, it's a
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: human institution with decent people on board.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: So I saw Brett and Ashley at Lindsey Graham's funeral.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: And they've been friends. I've known them for 30 years.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: Ashley was on the. 2000 George W. Bush campaign with
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: Heidi and me. So we were all young staffers on
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: that campaign. So I saw the two of them at
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Lindsey's funeral. I actually told Brett at the funeral a
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: story during his confirmation hearing when Lindsey Graham went off.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: And I think it's his– Lindsey was a dear friend
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: of mine and it was his finest moment I believe
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: as a senator where he unloaded on the unfairness of
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: what was happening and My mother had not previously been
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: a fan of Lindsey Graham's. And in the hearing, she
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: texts me and she says, OK, I now love Lindsey Graham.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: And she goes online and gives him 40 bucks. And
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: so I walk over to Lindsey, I pull out my
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: phone and I show him the text from my mom.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: And Lindsey is cracking up laughing.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it is really interesting. And that goes
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: to our country. People like people who stand up for
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: what's right.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: Amen.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: And as I said to you from the beginning, I
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: do not understand a lot about this town. I don't
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: know who has the time for all this animus toward
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: other people. I don't spend any of my day on
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: that sort of thing. But the lying that takes place,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: the attacks on financial disclosure, it was laughable in one way,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: but just painful to just the lies. Yeah. But you
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: and Mike Lee and the others who stood up are
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: dearly appreciated because we could not believe the inundation of
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: just misstatements and falsehoods. And we don't have the capacity
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: at the court to defend ourselves. We don't have a
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: bully pulpit or anything like that. Most of us just
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: simply are doing our jobs. And we can disagree. In
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: the old days, I first became aware of the court
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: when they're riding along US 17 between Savannah and the farm.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: There were these impeach Earl Warren signs after Brown v.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: Board of Education. And so I understand that people have
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: different ways of reacting. to the work that we do,
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: but this current environment that we're in is quite, excuse me,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: quite different from signs saying impeach Earl Warren.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: Well, Justice, let me say thank you. Thank you for,
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: you've been incredibly generous with your time. Thank you for
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: joining us on this podcast. Thank you for spending the
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: time in the interviews to write this book. And look,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: I've said this before, but you are a true American hero.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: And I want to say to the folks listening, if
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: you're a young person, there are a lot of young
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: people that listen to this podcast. If you are a
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: young person and you're looking for someone to admire, someone
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: to emulate, someone to walk along a path and be
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: inspired by, you would be very hard pressed to find
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: a better role model than Clarence Thomas. And that's why
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: I wrote this book, because I think you are an
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: incredibly historic significant human being and leader with courage and principle,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: and I am grateful. You can order the book, goingfurther.com,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: pre-order the book, buy it for your family. I think
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: you'll like it. I think you'll learn. I hope in
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: this podcast you've seen why I admire Justice Thomas so
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: much and why I think you should as well. And
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: thank you very much, and we'll see you on the
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: next podcast.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Justice. Thank you.