The Gandhi Republican: Legalizing Cannabis and the Zen of Economic Development

0:00 More Than One of Me

Ernest Chapman0:15 The Honorable Glenn Anderson, thank you for being with us today. With me. There's, I shouldn't say us, because there's only one of me. There's more than one of me, that would be a whole other conversation. Maybe we could have that conversation more, do they? Yeah, if I start drinking the Mountain Dew, there might be more than one of me. You've had an amazing career. You still have an amazing career. You've been an inspiring person to get to know. Over the years, we've done some really great work together, and we've had some recent conversations that have kind of jumped in front in my mind as I go to publish this book that I'm going to describe a little bit. But it's aligned to the divine design. It's the idea that there's an alignment between layers of reality. There's God at the top. Call it whatever you want, civilization, work, layer, family, and then me, Little old me down at the bottom. And something that you told me about recently just made a huge impression on me. I want to hear your take on this just right off the top. When you're building an economic zone, it actually has to be a place people really want to live. It can't just be like a bunch of businesses with a bunch of cool ideas and maybe government business partnerships, and then you just snap your fingers and it's like, you know, magic, right? How does that work? And then we can get into some other stories, and, you know, deeper sort of backstory, but just right off the top, what's that about? And what has your experience been with that?

0:40 The Five Layers and the Economic Zone

Glenn Anderson1:41 Well, one of the things about any sense of community is that it applies to your point on multiple layers. And my background, my degree, is in economics. Then I had one career in corporate banking, and that's, you know, statistical, it's math, it's numbers, and people you need that to justify. Well, you know, I need your money so we can do this. But building a culture where people want to participate is more than just those numbers. People, business guys, will come in with a vision, and my vision is for you so I can make money. And all good capitalism been doing that ever since coming out of the cave and looking for food. But one of the things is in today's world, when you want people to educate themselves, you want them to be timely to work, you want them to take pride in that outcome, then you have to have a culture that's more than just about numbers. It's about the quality of life and quality of life for our community, tends to get shallowed out. It's sort of a branding communications model that people use to try to motivate people to do all those good things, to come together and create an outcome, building widgets or something like that. And the reality is, is there has to be an authenticity about the value to who you're communicating, to which goes to all communications. But in particular, it's just a larger scale of doing it. And people are, I mean, there, God knows how many stories and cliches about the traveling salesman coming through town. This is good for you. Buy and economic development cannot be that. It has to be. I'm coming here. We're creating value for us, and that value has a benefit to you, and I want you to participate, and you can't be selling snake oil to do that. People are smart. I mean, it sometimes takes a while. It's a good sales job. But if you want real dynamics, productivity. People have to have a sense of ownership about their participation and authenticity to it, versus your sell

1:20 Culture Is More Than Numbers

Ernest Chapman4:33 about it. So it's not enough to just say, Hey, you're gonna make some money here doing this job in this place that you have no family roots in no connection to so in other words, it's more than just money that's going to motivate people. You told me a story about the way that this breaks down a few months ago with offshore windmills. Can you break that down? I just want to hear it again. There was. Like a breakdown that kind of blew my mind about how do you get people to do that? And there's this combination of factors.

3:20 No Snake Oil in Economic Development

Glenn Anderson5:07 Okay, well, offshore wind is is a technology where you have very tall towers with propellers on them, and you run cables to shore, and that generates electricity, and you've got a situation where that's on the coast, that's on the beach, and most of these towers are over the horizon, you don't see them in some areas, you do, but for the most part, you don't. But of course, what happens is people with high value real estate, the bees that they pay for immediately have a fear factor that this is going to diminish the value of their property, as opposed to the fact that we're all going to have cheaper electricity. They're not willing to sacrifice the value of their property for the fact that there's a greater collective good in clean renewable energy, that that's a matter, you know, that's basically the setup on some of this. And what happens is, is to put those up. They're great jobs. Well, you need welders to go do those jobs. This is another pathway to that. And, okay, the community college comes to you, yeah, we can produce all the welders you need. Well, welders need to know trigonometry. If your local schools do not teach trigonometry, then they don't know it. Now, if you go to a training classes community college, they don't call it trigonometry, but you still have to know it. And then you go to the next thing. Okay, you can now weld. Well, can you ride a boat? Do you not get seasick?

4:40 The Offshore Wind Welder Problem

Ernest Chapman6:52 Okay, so you could be a welder, but you have issues with being in the ocean, and all of a sudden you're disqualified.

Glenn Anderson6:58 Well, it's even more so you've got to ride the boat out to the construction site, and then one can you go up 100 feet and

Ernest Chapman7:10 weld? Oh, so you have to not be afraid of heights.

Glenn Anderson7:13 You got to not be afraid of heights. And what's more, for the Super specialized you have to go down underwater and weld.

Ernest Chapman7:20 So also you have to be a scuba diver, yeah.

Glenn Anderson7:24 So you had cannot be afraid of heights. You need to be comfortable with being underwater scuba. And you've got to be able to make the boat ride to the site. And you know trigonometry, right? And when you put all of that together, initially, your pool of welders really shrinks,

7:40 You Have to Want to Live There

Ernest Chapman7:43 so only James Bond can work on offshare wind turbines.

Glenn Anderson7:49 Well, it offshore. It takes time to find the people, yeah, because the money is exceptional for people. I mean, you're talking about six secure but

Ernest Chapman7:59 there's your Valerie. But there's another layer to this, right? So not only do you have to have all those things, but then you actually have to want to live there.

Glenn Anderson8:09 And this is a situation where these jobs usually apply to young males, you know, anywhere from 18 to 35 ish and mostly single. Now experienced welders were married, have kids, so they are journeymen and will come to the site. And so you have to deal with that. And then you've got young guys that just show, I'm going to get a job. I can do this. And one of the most interesting experiences I had when I was in the Washington State Legislature, one of my focus areas was workforce, workforce development, training. And when the North Dakota oil fields opened up, all of a sudden, all these young men showed up thinking they were going to get, you know, kind of jobs, without thinking about what that job would be, whether you're going to be sort of a roughneck or a journeyman or trade skills. So the folks in North Dakota, their entire education system had to adapt to sort of a a new Wild West scenario, all these young testosterone, young men, some with skills, some not all showed up on their doorstep looking for oil jobs. And so how do you manage that? And you had to go find those experienced welders to leave their family. You said, we're going to put you up in a dormitory for six nine months. We're going to pay an absorbent amount of money, and we're going to train all these young guys. Those people are scarce to find, and they can call their tune. You. You know, this is not something where, oh, we're going to pay you a lot of money. Well, somebody else is going to pay me a lot of money too, yeah, unless I find that this is, for some reason, more interesting to me.

8:20 North Dakota's Wild West

Ernest Chapman10:13 So that sounds like a really complex problem that you would really need a lot of smart people to work together to solve, and would probably cost a lot of money to build the solution for it

10:00 Problem Solving Is Never Cheap

Glenn Anderson10:26 always costs more money than to build the solution if you're looking for a solution, problem solving is never cheap. It is cheaper if you do all your homework up front, like understanding the community, understanding the pool of people and their expectations and what's available, you can show up with how many trucks or how much, how many instructors, but if you haven't done your homework about the culture of where you're going to do your project, and you Haven't thought about, okay, what is we have a timeline. You know money. Time is money. If you haven't really thought about how you're going to organize, incentivize, emotionalize people to participate, to your schedule, then it gets a lot more expensive for economic development, or for any project for that matter.

Ernest Chapman11:23 So getting the culture piece right sounds like a huge cost savings down the road. Yes, obvious seems just patently obvious, and something a lot of people miss. I got kind of have a two part question. One part, you know, your background in banking and in I guess, was it consulting, right? As well as banking, like advising CEOs and in business, combined with your background in Washington State Legislature in particular, but knowing how to get things done in government, but being infused with the knowledge of how things really work, those are not always the same thing, right?

11:40 A Legislator's Day and Transactional Trust

Glenn Anderson12:03 They are very different environments. And one of the things about being in a political position in a legislature, a lot of people come to you, you're dealing with multiple problem solving sets at once, okay? And you have a limited amount of time that you can allocate, so you do have to prioritize, okay, out of 100 things, I'm going to focus on these five things, and to understand the culture of change and the ability to negotiate change, you have to learn how in the morning, you'll be in a room with five people who have the same amount of power as you do. You need their votes. They need your vote to get something through a committee or a vote on the floor, convince the governor. Well, in that moment, with those five people on that issue, you have transactional trust. We all agree. We want this. Okay? And then at noon, you go out and you talk to the sixth grade school classes come doing a tour of the state capitol, and you're asked to say a few words. And of course, you're always selling this is the American way, and this is the constitutional process of working together. And then in the afternoon, you're with another group of five people on another issue in another room. Now you've actually got two people from your morning group in this new group, and you have transactional trust around that issue you're trying to fix. But the reality is is in fixing this second issue, part of that reality is you have to fuck over three of the people you were working with in the morning in another group and be fine with it, and they have to be accepting of it, and that's not a normal mindset. Yeah, I was gonna ask for people,

14:00 Power Reveals Character

Ernest Chapman14:08 how do you survive that and keep your sense of self intact? What does it feel like to be in that role, in that chair, in that office? You're sitting there, and it's in the present moment. How do you what? How do you navigate that as a human?

Glenn Anderson14:26 One of the things that my mentor, when I first got elected, told me, and it has stuck with me to this day, is you're enthused you've been elected to office. The constituency at that time was 150,000 people in my district, and you've run around, you talked about it, you've sent a mail, you've been radio and TV, whatever. You know they now have a brand image of who they think you are. And. And then you get in and they're saying, oh, representative, this, Senator, that, and everybody's bowing and scraping and saying yes, and that's pretty potent, potentially toxic stuff. And what happens is, is you always have to remember that it's you. It's not the perception of other people have of you, and it's not what all the staffers and lobbyists who are fawning to make sure you're happy to get you what you want, because you have a position of power. But the lesson my mentor told me right up front is say, you know, having a little bit of power is something where that does not build character. This is not you building your character through your identity and all this. The truth is, is it reveals character. It reveals who you always were before you got there. And you see that, and what you learn is, is about 60% of people in elective office are still wondering how they got there. They won the election, and then really not quite sure how that happened, but they're good with it. And then you get to another, oh, 25% and they're smart people, but they they're always got their finger in there that you know, that they're watching which way the drift is going. And then you've got about 10% that are super smart, don't care, will push ahead. They try to figure out the problem, and are willing to walk through walls, take some risks, and then you got 5% that are assholes who are in it for themselves, and the press focuses on them, which taints everybody else, which creates that layer, and it is their abuse of their identity with power that taints everybody else with it. And you just have to remind yourself, and I used to when I was driving home, I'd play tunes to work myself up, or, you know, dial myself down is and I never. A lot of people take calls in their cars when they're isolated. Oh, I need to talk to Bob. Bob needs to talk to you. And I'd never do that. That was my window of time in my music zone, where my brain could sort out and maintain its anchor.

17:40 How Do You Define God

Ernest Chapman17:42 Well, I mean, it sounds like you have very particular practices to shift into the state you need to be in at any given moment. Would that be an accurate assessment?

Glenn Anderson17:54 More so than not? Yeah,

Ernest Chapman17:56 because we've talked about faith before, we've talked about God. How do you define God? I'm curious about how that informs the way you show up in the world, especially through all these layers, because you've operated on all these layers, civilizational work, layer, family, layer, identity, layer, talking about people have an identity. What's the word imposter syndrome? And then other people are just predators, and then there's everything in between, and then you're navigating this. But do you connect back to a divine source of strength? Like, how do you approach divinity, sacred things?

Glenn Anderson18:35 Well, okay, so on the top end, when I was growing up as a young child, my mother and my grandmother, when we were in that age of, you know, five to eight, nine, made a point every summer we get down to visit my grandmother in Birmingham, Alabama, which is, you know, right, Exactly. And we went, they made a point to take I and my three younger brothers to various religious, you know, different denominations and you know, so we had exposure and then answer questions. And as it turned out, by the time I got to college, I was like, Okay, there's a lot of dogma rules and rituals that these people keep bowing and scraping for. And I'm not sure how I see that connects to God. All these other all these people connect to each other by following these dogmas and rules and rituals. But I'm not sure that I see that connecting to God. Well, anyway, long story cut short, I'm a Buddhist. I believe in energy. I believe in following feeling. And you know that sense of intuition about the energy you are part of it? Just so turn on your radar and listen to it. And the logic behind that is is the universe is 1 trillion light years in diameter. The potential for life in that energy space is 100% the chance of a cognitive, self aware life in that space is 100% and your physical sense of self awareness, energy, identity, is less than a sub atomic particle on that scheme. So the idea that you've got the great insight is a form of mental health, illness, mental illness, mental illness. But it is what it is all that other cognitive life. In the event they've got their gods too. That's my bet. Okay, and so if you're one of an almost infinite spectrum of we have our God that's really sort of a chase that goes nowhere to me so being attuned to the energy, and I'm a conservative, and I'm a Buddhist conservative, and while I was in office, I used to say I was a Gandhi Republican, which really fucked with people's heads, the Democrats and my fellow Republicans. Oh, man, that's good, but it was true, yeah. And the point was is once you learn to be honest with yourself about your energy, then the reality of other people's energy that you to your point, navigate through to accomplish things and remain honest with your energy identity. Once you learn to do that, it's really pretty simple. If people want to challenge you on it, you don't have to engage. You can. You don't have to and it when you bring that mindset together, when you watch around people using their god to judge other people, when you consider that scale I mentioned, you realize that perhaps they want to rethink that and look in the mirror.

19:20 The Buddhist Gandhi Republican

Ernest Chapman22:23 I've always felt like God is bigger than anyone's religion. And you know, to say, to say that we've got the drop on exactly what that is, and then this is, it's contained within our little world, kind of feels like a form of blasphemy to me.

22:23 God Has No Religion

Glenn Anderson22:36 I would agree with that statement, God has no religion. My death. All the major religions say God is greater than religion.

Ernest Chapman22:44 Have to say that God is greater than us and be it

Glenn Anderson22:47 really does all void down to don't be an asshole. The Golden Rule, do as you would be done by follow, recognize the flow of your energy within the larger energy package, and don't judge people for the choices they make with their energy, because it doesn't align with yours. They are on their own path, and just because they're not on mine doesn't make them good, bad

23:17 Educating Your Energy

Ernest Chapman23:17 or indifferent. One of my mentors told me recently, uh, never interfere, never step in between a man and his lesson. I would agree with that. Well, so was there a time in your life when you didn't know this? When was there a moment where you crossed a Rubicon of self awareness that you that you weren't going to cross back because you learned that lesson?

Glenn Anderson23:42 Um, when you're young and without education, that's a that's a real ping pong ball fight that may never happen, but when you educate, your energy, which is why I'm such a zealot about getting folks getting educated, because it allows them to be self aware. It allows them context for their life, for whether it's 10,000 years ago or 10,000 years yet to come. The bottom line is, unless you have context for your life, then by definition, you will always be simple and ignorant. And when you're young as a male and pull a testosterone, you don't give a shit about that. But once you get over 30 and you know, oh, we're gonna have a house and we're married,

Ernest Chapman24:39 we can't trust people over 30, though, remember, not supposed to trust anyone over 30. Well, that's

Glenn Anderson24:43 the thing about getting old, because I'm now 68 and counting, is one of the most frustrating things about, I won't say frustrating enlightening, actually, is that no matter how much you learn in the arc of your life. Life, communicating it to the next generation is tough. Yeah, is tough.

Ernest Chapman25:06 What's tough about that? What's what's I mean, well, we're generation apart, but I feel like we're communing pretty well. I'm maybe I'm just a weirdo. I mean, I know I'm a weirdo, but like, what? What is tough about that for you,

Glenn Anderson25:19 everybody has to experience it for themselves, for the legitimacy I know is my nieces and nephews. Sometimes, there's times where I can sit there and say, and they're in the, you know, 32 to 35 range. They're now parent, but you know, all that stuff, mortgages. What do we do? What world? Who should I vote for?

Ernest Chapman25:38 How do magnets work? What are rainbows? Yeah, why? What are rainbows, really

Glenn Anderson25:43 but the point is, is you really can, if you have done your self evaluation of your arc of life, you really can say, I can save you 10 years. Trust me on this one. But unless people in their phase of life experience it, they can't internalize it. It's just advice

26:06 Recruiting Silicon Valley to Oak Ridge

Ernest Chapman26:06 that's tough, though. So because all the things you're talking about with economic development and the culture layer, and all the complex problems with solutions that require non linear thinking in some cases, right, I'm thinking of those things as gifts to the world that you have that are that are part of your sort of library of real experience and knowledge from all these war stories that you have, all the stuff you've done, and you want to be able to package that up and give it to people who can take the relay race and run with it right at a certain point. How could we put how could we turn east Tennessee into the Silicon Valley of Tennessee. Could we do something here that people don't see the opportunity, that maybe there is an opportunity.

Glenn Anderson26:53 The key thing in any circumstance is that people want to, as opposed to the powers that be. Want to limit that so they can maintain being the powers that be. And education is that if you educate people to a bigger world, expose them to a bigger world, then they can accept a bigger world, or they accept it more quickly. It never happened

Ernest Chapman27:23 was that the entry point, I mean, we've got, we've got a National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, that's that's got groundbreaking science happening every day. Why don't we have a Silicon Valley built around Oak Ridge and in Knoxville and that whole area, or do we? And it's just kind of like a hidden secret that we just need to tap into more, like there's some potential here. How do we activate there's

Glenn Anderson27:49 enormous potential in it, actually, because my career, in my banking career, I was helped build Silicon Valley financially in the early days, late 80s, and then spend another 20 years working on building the Seattle

Ernest Chapman28:05 Wait, that's not an analogy. You're saying you actually were a part of the group of people

Glenn Anderson28:10 that did that. So you learn how organically things mature and metastasize. So things come, and it's one of those things where Oak Ridge, Knoxville, with the sort of new nuclear renaissance, has the best opportunity to become a San Jose, Seattle, Raleigh, Research Triangle hub anywhere in the country right now, and a lot of people want to be silicon something, and they're not. But every there's not a chamber of commerce out there in America. We're silicon something, but unless you have the real puzzle parts and Knoxville Oak Ridge do now that's a lot of things. One we were talking earlier, quality of life and culture, one of the reasons San Jose and Seattle in particular, they have natural beauty, the Cascade Mountains, the Sierra Madre, I mean, and people, it's cool to live there, and they're cool things to do. Knoxville is like that. Now the challenge is, is you've got the national labs, got University of Tennessee, there's another group of universities, Oak Ridge Associated Universities, you've got TVA, you've got the Haslams and their whole thing.

Ernest Chapman29:54 It sounds like there's a lot of pieces here on the chessboard. You have your range.

29:59 Selling Nuclear to an 80/20 World

Glenn Anderson29:59 You have ever. Every puzzle part necessary to genuinely scale up to be a San Jose style hot spot for nuclear Now, having said that 80% of the people in that region have no idea of what about they know Oak Ridge National Labs. So there's a disconnect. There is a disconnect between people understanding that 20% of these people are doing super cool stuff, super cool, but that's not the world that they live in. Okay? So the question is, is, how do you get the 80% to further empower that 20% to be able to do more better? And how do you get that 20% to take the time to explain to the other 80% okay, this is what we're doing. This is how it benefits you. It's not because we're just building, well, there's a new reactor type and we're building it here. It's like, okay, all the puzzle parts here mean these kind of jobs for you, yeah, in it.

Ernest Chapman31:16 Well, there's a communication layer here that thinks important to question, which is, all my life growing up, you're talking about environmental impact and offshore wind, and all my life growing up, I heard ever since I was in grade school and public school, even it was like nuclear equals bad.

Glenn Anderson31:34 The risks at nuclear are environmental natural events, tsunami and in Russia it was engineering, and in Three Mile Island it was partially engineering. But the thing is, is it's the cleanest energy on the planet. It's the most long term safe on the planet. And it's something where, when you're dealing everybody, well, toxic waste, yeah, but now they have the technologies where they can recycle, reprocess and reuse almost 85% of what now is currently waste would be recycled into keeping those reactors fueled

Ernest Chapman32:27 with micronuclear. It's like a whole different animal. It sounds like what you're describing. The tech is way more advanced and it's way safer. But how do we communicate that to people who don't have any idea of any of the stuff that we're talking about. You're a master communicator. You've done this a long time. How do we brand it and communicate it in a way where people can go, Oh, I get it, and not see a flash of light in 150,000 dead when they hear the word nuclear, right?

Glenn Anderson32:55 Exactly. Well, one thing is, is you're never going to get away from that reality, because the reality is, there will always be, now in our world, that one flash of light risk a nuclear reactor meltdown. It is almost impossible to have a nuclear explosion from so the risk is environmental contamination from faulty engineering, right? So that risk, but all these visuals will still see their people, yeah, now the technology is, is there's, you have the large ones with large cooling towers, right? What is it you everybody sees or thinks about when they drive by, or people are on the news, those cooling

33:45 Micro-Nuclear Behind the Kroger

Ernest Chapman33:45 towers, right? Well, the Simpsons right, or far side, right, exactly. Well.

Glenn Anderson33:50 Now the the next level of technology is small modular reactors, which are about they're not really small, but they are a third of the size of the large ones. You see, they don't have cooling towers. There's an entirely different process about keeping the cores cool, and they're using a lot of different materials. It's not just water, molten salt or liquid metals of various kinds. I mean, there are 80 different new nuclear designs in the world right now. That's how much people are doing, and now only two or three of those, just like any entrepreneurial new product will happen. Most of those will just wind up on the shelf, but two or three of them are going to make pass the test, but they don't require the same cooling visual that everybody else does. There's a lot of discussion about. About micro, portable nuclear, you'll have a nuclear generator, like a small power substation behind your industrial park.

Ernest Chapman35:11 That sounds risky,

Glenn Anderson35:13 that, and that is not really going to happen anytime. Now, there are a lot of billionaires out there, not a lot. There are a few billionaires out there pitching that, but I don't see that happening.

Ernest Chapman35:27 Target for countries that don't have nuclear programs to like, snatch one and take it home.

Glenn Anderson35:33 Right now, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not come up with a micro nuclear generator, sort of safety protocol, let alone an incident response. And I would agree with you. I mean, the first thing is, is okay, so the delivery truck backed up into this thing. Now, what do we do? Right? And nobody's answered that question yet. There's a lot of hype, because if you have 200 new, smaller nuclear reactors across the grid providing more distributed, balanced power load, not these huge, $20 billion facilities, there's a lot of economies of scale, good business safety elements to that that really work well, having a small nuclear generator behind the Kroger, Not so much. But there are people out there pitching. So there's an interesting space between the old big facilities, which are like, Okay, if anything happens there, we're doomed, and these small ones where, if anything happens, it's a mess and a very expensive one. And then this middle space where, well, we sort of got it right. You know, there's a lot less risk

37:06 Everything Is Energy: The Ice Storm Lesson

Ernest Chapman37:06 we build out that middle space. Let's say we're successful, and we build out that mental space. What does that get us as a civilization? If you kind of zoom way out and go, what's the impact 100 years later even? What does that get us?

Glenn Anderson37:18 Everything in human life is defined by energy. We just went through the ice storm here in Nashville, and literally, I was going out of my apartment to my car, to sit in my car, to warm up and to charge my phone. And when I came out, there were 20 other people coming out of that complex to do exactly the same thing that's living like a refugee. Everything. There is nothing refrigeration, for instance, pumping gas, ATMs. There is nothing that you touch or use or benefit from in your life that does not require electrical energy and those that's a basic survival element. All the stuff where people talk about AI is that's a luxury. I don't care. I don't need that. I need heat. I need refrigeration. Yeah. And so where you can come to a distributive grid that's environmentally safe, that is renewable, recyclable fuel source, that's stable, we're not damming up rivers. You know, we're not run use natural gas, power everything you have created a network web that empowers the most basic elements of what we consider survival in a human society.

Ernest Chapman39:08 That sounds like a good idea.

39:09 Mayflower Roots and the Ethic of Participation

Glenn Anderson39:09 It is a good idea. Yeah, really good idea. Your family has

Ernest Chapman39:13 a long history in this area, and I want to, I want to go into that a little bit of, sort of like, what where your roots go, because you've talked a lot about things that really blend the sort of business background and government background and those experiences into a set of strategies and sort of philosopher king stuff, right? Like, hey, here's some first principles. We can turn these principles into policies and get everyone behind it and actually get something done. But there's roots here that go back way deep in Tennessee. What did you guys have counties named after you? Like, what's there?

Glenn Anderson39:49 There were two branches of the family, and I am more. Again, I'm not bragging, but I can say my my people came over on both. First boats the way, I thought that was just the Mayflower. And if you're not on that one, you're, well, there's my flower, and then there's Roanoke, there's North Carolina and South Carolina.

Ernest Chapman40:08 Yeah, I know there's more than one, but you got Mayflower people?

Glenn Anderson40:11 Yes, I do have Mayflower people. And the interesting thing for me was that, but when I got elected to the legislature, was that I was the second person in that family history. The first person was an original member of the Massachusetts assembly. The first one, wow. Now there were lots of, you know, county commissioners and mayors and, you know, all those, those kind of things. But there has been a trend in the family of participate, you know, you're lucky you have the ability. So try to help build sort of coming full circle, build community around it, because that's just a characteristic. But for Tennessee, there was a Branson family that came through South Carolina, landed on the boat on that end and went through the Cumberland Gap, all that kind of stuff, and over, I believe, in Putnam County, or whatever the county is next to there, I forgot and but yeah, helped establish that the family branch there was Ward, I believe, yes, Ward. And then in addition to that, there was an additional migration from that branch of the family that wound up founding another one two counties in Northwest Alabama, and then another group that came actually through Massachusetts, then New York, wound up in Kansas City, And from there, I had family go across the Oregon Trail, and wound up settling in California. It's but actually my brother is the bigger, you know, family genealogist. But going through, yep, we landed on the boat. I am a member of the Mayflower society. How many people can say that, let alone appreciate what it means? And then followed the map of the family branches across the country to the other ocean.

42:32 How to Actually Get Involved

Ernest Chapman42:32 Well, there's an ethos to that, that I'm that I'm kind of tapping into here. There's an ethos of like, participate in this thing that we helped build, rather than just criticizing it and sitting on the sidelines. So how do other people get involved when they feel that welling up within them? How do you recommend somebody get involved in actually solving problems in whatever field they're in? I mean, I think there's probably a lot of people that should not run for office. For office, but then there's probably a lot of people that should run for office that oftentimes the best ones sit back because they are not malignant narcissists. But as you talk, as you talk through all this, I'm thinking, I don't I want to feel like that. Maybe this is selfish, but maybe everyone's selfish in some way. I want to feel like there's more people that think like this, that are in positions of power and influence or leverage, maybe behind the scenes, maybe in front of the world, actually trying to do real stuff. And I don't always feel like that. I feel like a lot of the best people are just sort of like waiting to be activated.

Glenn Anderson43:42 It does take a going back to your sense of personal identity and self awareness is no matter what your opinion is. The first is, Are you truly educated to the founding principles as they are, not as people want them to be, not as you want them to be, but as they actually are. You know, what does the Declaration of Independence say? What does the Constitution actually say? And most, and to me, the most important document is, what does George Washington's Farewell Address actually say? That's the one that sums it all up.

Ernest Chapman44:20 So I got to go reread that one now, yeah, yeah, you do okay.

Glenn Anderson44:24 And so really, know it studied the bit of the history and the people around it. Don't project what you want to see onto that. Just review it objectively. That's so that's either one. The second thing is, is okay, you have an opinion, you have life experiences. Everything about politics is about problem solving. It's not about at its best. It's not about kissing yourself in the mirror. It's. Remember I was telling you, you want to be one of those 10% that are smart, active and courageous, that work the problem, and you're going to have to convince all the other people that have got their finger up in the air, and your has to put up with the 5% that are assholes trying to burn it down for their own benefit. And the third step is, is go listen to people. Just go listen, ask them a question and shut up and see what it is you know you when you have the reference of the intent and structure. Is this, the oath to Office has nothing to do with your opinion, your partisanship. It has to do you are sworn to protect the process of the intent of those documents, and then once you go out there and listen to people about whatever they see problems as. Then you come to the last step, which is you know your perception. You're a symbol to people. You've got to have a tough enough skin to know that whatever you say will be misinterpreted deliberately or not by somebody sounds like being married, no comment.

Ernest Chapman46:36 And wow, married to 150,000 people.

Glenn Anderson46:39 Yeah, you know. And Chris, that's usually as a legislative district. I mean, it can be anywhere from 9800 different states, different thing, let alone larger, okay, you're a US senator or something like that. Is, you've got to have enough self confidence, self awareness versus narcissism to be able to say, I'm going to be honest with the people knowing the shortcut, the difference between the perceptions and the reality of the intent and to be a problem solver, and that means you've got to learn how to communicate both individually. I used to go around on Saturdays, and I have what I called it, my, my, my circuit, and I could just go to Starbucks around my district and make, you know, 20 minute appointments with people where they didn't have to come down the office. And there's all this rigamarole and but I just sit there and, okay, what's going on your community, what's going on with you? What? How do we fix this? And I always encourage people, okay, I understand and be very direct. I understand bitching. How do you fix this? You know what's your solution? And once you get to that top end, honor the fact that you have to be authentic, you have to be truthful, and you have to be willing to lose your job to tell the truth. And once you, like I said, again, coming full circle, once you get used to everybody running around, kissing and fawning and, you know, thank you. Oh, it's so good to see you again, once you learn to ignore that and stay focused on how does this add to the problem with the realities of his business community? Used to come to me and say, well, we've done a white paper, and we need you to be a sponsor to support this bill. And I said, Oh, that's great. I read it, and I need you to give me three things I can emotionalize with my peers on the floor so I can encourage them to vote for it. That's the reality that I have to deal with. So just because you've got a million dollar white paper doesn't help me a explain it to my Why are you supporting this to my voters, or translate it to other people whose vote I will need to get it passed.

Ernest Chapman49:28 How do you teach someone to do all that? Do you teach them? Are there people whose job is to teach people how to have the that Venn diagram of all that stuff you just described. Because I I heard all that, and I thought, Man, that sounds like a tall order.

Glenn Anderson49:47 Intuitively, you know, if you're up for it, but there are actually organizations that provide training classes for all of that. Yeah, now they put it in a little bit more Candy Coat. The language and let you sort of figure out the rough

Ernest Chapman50:03 you're talking about real stuff. I'm I'm thinking more like the core principled. That's why I toasted to philosopher kings at the beginning of this. And kings and queens, if you want to be all inclusive, which I think we should, that there's, there's a level of reality to what you're talking about that's not partisan. You said it's not about your partisanship. And I would imagine there's organizations out there that are trying to get their people to, you know, play a numbers game. But I'm thinking way bigger than that, like we need a healthy civilization for the next 100, 200 500 years, you've identified a key set of things that all need to work together. But I feel, I feel like there's a huge gap in education, like civics isn't even really a thing anymore.

Glenn Anderson50:46 I would agree. And actually I everywhere civics won because he's been partisanized, which is, you on both sides, have partisanized the teaching of civics and just about every other course in K 12 education, it's about learning to think through and identifying that there are different point of views to context, but still, there are some basic things. Yeah, July 4 is the date they signed the document, right? And it's one you it

51:25 when the this the civics test for they've actually done research on this. And you know the civics test for us, naturalization, citizenship, pretty good test, actually. And I know that stuff backwards and forward. And I was there were a couple of questions on there going, hum. And the reality is is most Americans, for all the bitching and whining, would fail that test, like two out of three. And so you're expecting immigrants to have a better understanding of us civics history than most American, Native born Americans. That's the thing you got to get over. You got to sit there and say, whether it's math or civics or fundamental science, you have to pass the class, and we'll spend all the money on summer school, etc, and but you got to pass the class.

52:31 Educating a Civilization

Ernest Chapman52:31 Is that why you focused on education so much?

Glenn Anderson52:34 Yeah, yes, it is. Because, like I said, Unless you educate your energy, you're just sort of a drifting, dissipating force. If you educate your energy, it's immeasurable what can be accomplished. And there are just way too many stories throughout history, not just us, I mean globally, where parents have made just unthinkable, extraordinary sacrifices so their children could get an education and not live their lives. And in America, we've lost that sense of compelling urgency and accountability in parenting to make sure children have that and children are accountable for it, and if they're not living up to that standard, yes, you their parent, are at fault. You need to own this, as opposed to, it's the teacher's fault. It's the parents fault. It's the babysitting service. Oh, I was busy. And yes, we get all the issues with waitress moms doing extraordinary things and low income people and, you know, being compromised on what they could do versus wealthy Brentwood suburban moms and what they can do, none of that matters. They are all equally accountable, and all need to reinforce the ability of the others, those less than them, to be able to do that, taking your child out. Not that I feel strongly about this. Of course, if you take your child out of a school, send them to a private school, you know, okay, I get that you want them to have a better education. The fact that you're not willing to organize a public school to have a better education is on you. You're the problem. The reason that public school is not as good as it should be is because you checked out of it.

54:49 Who Is Accountable When a School Fails

Ernest Chapman54:49 That's another hour at least. I actually want to really dig into that, because I, you know, I've got, I've got kids in both. Situations right now, I got a kid at Meigs Magnet School, which is like a great school. It's a public school, you know. But I also know that there are major, major problems, like billion dollar problems with Metro public schools in this district, and I don't even fully understand why there's those problems, or what the solutions are. And I'm right now trying to educate myself and

Glenn Anderson55:22 talk to people the problem, the problems are there because nobody wants accountability for the outcome, and because that's a value judgment, the school system doesn't work because we don't take ownership of it working. Certain parents do a minority 40% 30% whatever that magic number is at any time period in time, roughly 25% of people have children in K 12.

Ernest Chapman55:53 But how could we expect those parents to even know functionally, what's even happening or what the answer even is, I mean, that's part of the challenge. And look at that feels like there's a there's a catch 22 here, where it's almost like, yeah, we'll show up and take over and fix it. But you don't even know how to function well.

Glenn Anderson56:13 And I agree, and there's a certain element of the education where the experts is that they're fine with that, yeah, because that gives them control. It's their paychecks, it's their jobs. There's structure, there's a system. And can that become corrupted with indifference to the urgency of a good education for all those kids? The answer is yes, and that certainly legitimizes the fact that I'm frustrated. To your point, I can't break through. I need

Ernest Chapman56:46 I don't even know what to do, and there's a school down the street that's not going to screw my kid over, and so boom, we move and then now we're out of the public school system, but we're still paying taxes that fund it. We're just watching our money get wasted by people that don't know what they're doing while we pay double and then go somewhere else at the same time and have no influence. That kind of sucks.

Glenn Anderson57:09 Yeah, it kind of sucks. Too bad to be you, right? You need, I mean, if you're going to pay twice and your kid is not in that public school, show up and bitch louder. Well, school board meeting

Ernest Chapman57:21 and I had this problem when my kid needed gifted testing and they wouldn't give it to him until he failed two semesters in a row, consecutively, and they they basically told us that failure was an option they were willing to accept as a requirement to get gifted testing because he's ADHD twice exceptional. He struggles in certain areas that are that are based on a neurodiverse profile. So when we received that back from them, and not knowing the politics or the complexity or how to fix it, it looked like an impenetrable wall of confusion, correct? And so I did have that experience of pulling my kid out of public school because they failed my family and I went to a private school. Now we're back in a public school because we finally found one that seems to actually have it together. The I don't know how to fix that, okay?

58:07 Individual Good vs Collective Good

Glenn Anderson58:07 And that's a classic case of individual good, collective good, yeah, is the fact that you are driven by the individual good for your child. The reality is, is, if you were successful at that, and public schools fail, they are less likely to be able to apply that better education because using that better education is dependent on everybody else being having some baseline with it.

Ernest Chapman58:39 I want this to be aligned. So if I look back at my five fold thing, you know, maybe we can end on this, because we're, we're this. This is, there's another episode in this, and I want to get Dave Hanson in here talk public education. I think that'd be a lot of fun. So we've got the god level, we've got the civilization level, we've got the work layer, we've got the family layer, we've got the individual layer, and I really want to live in a way that aligns all five so that I can truly be in coherence with the entire universe, all the way down to myself, all the way up to the highest and greatest. And in that middle set of layers is where all the challenges lie, because now I have to deal with other people, and we don't always do the same thing, see the same thing, know the same thing, feel the same thing. We don't always have the same why? I think that's that's the that catch 22 is I want to live in a world that's full of optimized people that have what they need. I don't want to live in a little secure villa with armed guards, with World War Z, right on the other side, because we survived and everyone else collapsed.

Glenn Anderson59:47 And basically with, you know, between in a class warfare situation and for the economic dynamics we very much live in that world today.

59:58 Why the Answer Can't Be Collectivism

Ernest Chapman59:58 But the answer can. Be collectivism, because that's going to tend towards socialism, communism and authoritarianism.

Glenn Anderson1:00:05 So it's all theoretical. That sounded good, 20

Ernest Chapman1:00:09 million dead people. And what's your number for how many people were killed by the horrors of totalitarianism in the 20th century, specifically communist countries. What's the number?

Glenn Anderson1:00:19 Okay, it wasn't theoretical for a little bit different point of view, authoritarianism goes by a lot of like communism,

Ernest Chapman1:00:35 tyranny and repression and all that lives.

Glenn Anderson1:00:39 Yeah, end of the day, you're trading one elite for another elite. And the challenge is, and this is the thing that is such that the extraordinary power of capitalism, when it is well played, versus crony capitalism, oligarchy, right is that it genuinely does empower the greatest number of people on an ongoing basis to elevate their social income class. And one of the challenges throughout recorded history is elite people want to impose their status on people because it benefits them, right? And in every case, eventually, all those poor people that say that sucks, they rise up and they kill the rich people, which is why we have a social safety net. That's why socialism actually works. You may not like it from a profit capitalist point

Ernest Chapman1:01:56 of view. Sound very conservative.

Glenn Anderson1:01:59 It's a realist. You know, you got to be honest. In capitalism, there are inherent inequities, and every system in the world today is capitalism, us, cowboy capitalism, Euro capitalism, then you have Russian gangster capitalism, and then you have Chinese state capitalism, which really is more of a socialist. That's the closest it comes to socialism. But look at the Chinese. Okay, it works for them. Now the government has a very heavy thumb on all that. As a conservative, what you want is people you in Burkean conservatism. You want change to be gradual, so the class differential does not give you the French Revolution, yeah, and they kill all the elites. And that is one thing that gets missed when you use oligarchy, which we're dealing with now, in the US, you can't there's hardly an industry you can go to that is not controlled by three to six mega corpse that's oligarchy, and right now, the most conservative thing is to empower the lower income layer so that that escalator to what is better continues to work, and that's why I'm so focused on education as a conservative, is because a broad, three dimensional education, with all the dysfunction we just got through talking about is the only way You actually protect the freedoms that we say we value.

1:04:04 The Closing Toast: Two Philosopher Kings

Ernest Chapman1:04:04 Well, on that note, I'll propose a second toast. There you go. Two philosopher kings.

Glenn Anderson1:04:11 See, you got me going? Yeah,

Ernest Chapman1:04:13 thank you. We're gonna have to do this again. This was super intriguing. Victory. Victory. All right. Well, thank you, honorable. Glenn Anderson, I appreciate your time.

Glenn Anderson1:04:29 Love it. Thanks. Ben, you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai