Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the show today is

Seth Barron. Seth is a New York City-based reporter and editor who covers local and national

politics. He serves on the editorial board of the New York Post, and he's been an associate editor at

City Journal and a regular contributor.

It's actually written well over 200 pieces for City Journal over the years.

He's the author of The Last Days of New York, a reporter's true tale, and has a brand new book called Weaponize, the Left's Capture and Destruction of America's Sacred Institutions, which he's here to discuss today.

So, Seth, always good to talk with you, and thanks for coming on, 10 blocks again.

Oh, thanks for having me on, Brian.

200 articles. That's amazing.

Yeah, I just looked today. It's quite a, quite a track record, most recent of which was a

excellent review of, an excellent review

of Lionel Schreiber's new or recent novel. So this new book, the subtitle, refers to the capture or

destruction of America's sacred institutions. One of those would have to be education, I think.

And it may be where the institutional capture you're describing the book may be most obvious. You write that the left has unionized

education and teaching and used its kind of centralized power over the system not only to accrue

money to itself through union dues, but also to exert a kind of monopoly

control on public school curricula. I wonder if you could describe this and just how much damage

it's doing to education in America. Sure, Brian. The way I see it is that the left views children, and by the left I mean the

teacher's union, but the left generally, the same way they view money, which is that all of it

belongs to the state, and they let you keep some of it. In the same way, children belong to the state.

You know, you're familiar with the phrase,

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