This past February, I had a wonderful opportunity to tag along with fellow writers Luke Rexing and Charlie Eggers from The Minnesota Republic to Washington DC to attend CPAC’s annual convention. CPAC – or best known is the Conservative Political Action Convention, is an annual political conference attended by conservative activists and officials across the United States and world itself. It was a shapeshifting experience, filled with many new conversations, experiences and memories made.
On Friday, February 21st, one of the main speakers was Elon Musk, whom is always entertaining to the audience. Elon is most notably known for his prominent status with purchasing, and changing the popular social media platform “Twitter” into the present “X”. X has shapeshifted the landscape of politics, with political figures of influence and the general public now being able to display a variety of viewpoints with less ridicule than previously seen. Elon is also prominent within many of his entrepreneurial businesses startups, most notably: SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and xAI. Elon has showcased robust freedom of speech and different ways to gain public attraction that has helped him gain a substantial fanbase, most notability within free spirited individuals within the 18-30 age range. Presently, since the inauguration of Donald Trump, Elon has been allocated as the head of Department of Government Efficiency. Within this role, he has responsible for wiping out some of the aged systems within the previous government system, gaining numerous public backlash and support.
Entering CPAC waiving a chainsaw gifted to him by Argentinian President Javier Milei and robust 70’s polarized sunglasses, Elon showed the public that he really does not care what they think, and will use his energy within the office to clean house and operate the government in a smooth and effective manner. With crazy people, take his advice for what you will, because you could say he is a crazy person.
While sitting near the back of the conference room on Friday, a head representative from The Daily Wire came up to Luke, Charlie and I and asked if we would like to all ask a question to the Wire’s panel group. Eager with excitement, Luke and I accepted the invitation, with Charlie holding back as our personal videographer.
With angst, I sat and thought for a moment about what question I would like to ask these high knowledge activists in politics. Thinking about the current reality of my life, I wanted to gain advice and insight as to what The Wire’s crew’s overall thought process was about college education and DEI initiatives.
Below is a transcript of my conversation with The Daily Wire:
Blake Markson:
Hi, my name is Blake Markson. I’m a subscriber and my question here is, I’m a college student and I’ve been questioning DEI and a lot of subjective business measures throughout my education. So what I’m wondering is how you guys would challenge these viewpoints and kind of move throughout my educational process because I’m a sophomore right now and not really liking everything that I’m doing right now.
Jeremy Boering:
One thing I would say is that it can be really easy to be tempted toward some sort of absolute answer on a question like this. Some people will tell you: Just keep your head down, get your degree. You’re paying to be there; the most important thing is not to rock the boat. You need something from them in exchange for your money and your time, go get it, that’s the only reason you’re there. You should just be fighting all the way, defending your rights. Campuses are ground zero for all the worst things that are happening in our culture; be an activist. But the truth is you actually have to live your life and none of the people giving you advice on this topic do. Only you know what you actually want to get out of this experience in college; only you know what kind of career you want to build in your life on the other side of your time in college, some of them much more dependent on getting that degree than perhaps others are. I think the best thing you can do in this regard is live according to your likes. The one thing I’ll say you should not do is live your life out of fear. If you find yourself living your life out of fear, you actually can’t make the cynical calculation of, “I will live my life out of fear, but on the other side of it, I’ll be very, very successful.” That’s a deal with the devil that you can just never walk back. But that doesn’t mean that you always have to be in the fight; it doesn’t mean that you have to be reckless in every situation. I will say in my own life, I’ve made the choice from a young age, probably before I could make it consciously, that I was just going to say what I believed in every situation and come what may. And I’d like to say that it’s worked out well for me. I’ve gone through a lot of real difficulties because of that decision. I don’t necessarily think that that is the most virtuous decision. I think it’s the most Gen X decision, but I don’t know that it’s the most virtuous decision. Although it can contain virtue, sometimes though it can contain hubris and recklessness and all sorts of other things. So I think that rather than looking for an absolute answer to the question, the very best thing that you can do is actually know yourself, know what you’re trying to accomplish, know what fights are worth your time to be in, and go fight those fights. And if you’re like me, it’ll be all of them and you’ll never get a college degree and you won’t make any money until you’re 30 and that’s fine. And if you’re like Ben, you’ll be writing a syndicated column at 17 and now be Ben Shapiro.
Andrew Klavan:
I would like to add just one more thing: don’t lie. You don’t have to get into every fight. You don’t always have to speak up if it’s not important, if it’s not that big a deal. But don’t let them make you lie because some of them will hunt you down until you either have to lie or tell the truth.
Ben Shapiro:
Oh, I totally disagree with this. You should totally lie.
Klavan:
No, wait. Wait, let me finish before you. Whatever he says, because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Every lie takes something out of your soul. Every single one. And the bigger the lie, the bigger the piece of your soul it takes isn’t worth it. Not for a minute.
Shapiro:
He’s very old. You should totally lie. The way this works is that when I was at UCLA, you speak up in class and then they had these things called blue books. The blue books were the anonymous test that you took. You’d write by hand in those days. And I know it’s a long time ago. And you’d write a student number, not an actual name on your blue book. And then you write like a comma and you get the A, obviously, because what difference does it make what you write inside the blue book? So that’s where you lie.
Klavan:
Look at his eyes. Do you want to be like that?
Shapiro:
No, look at my wallet, do you want to be like that?
The conversation I had with the crew at The Daily Wire, and my overall experience at CPAC will have great power and influence on how I will continue to shift throughout my life’s journey. Reflecting on Boering’s advice, I will try to live with the consistent notion of values: “Do not live in fear, Never Lie, and always live according to your lights.” Insightful words of wisdom that will help continue to shift my life. With this all being said, what will you do with this knowledge?
