Finally we got her on it talking about potatoes, and I asked my crinklicut
theory, not what your country can do for you, what you can do
for your country. Mister Garbatscheff, tear down this wall, read my lips.
I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again.
I did not have sexual relations for that woman. It's the Ricochet Podcast
with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lylacs. The day we talked
to our old friend from the National Review, Jack Fower, talking about Buckley
to the other one. So let's have ourselves a podcasting. You also say
that you were invited by a friend, Verry Weisse, my friend Barry Weiss.
So this friend works for Twitter or what is her? She's a journalist.
So you're in. This is a threesome. Welcome everybody. This is
the Ricochet Podcast, and this is episode number six hundred and thirty three.
And I don't know I'm emphasizing those words as I do other than you know.
Here we are, we're having fun, we're together. It's me,
it's Peter, it's Rob and you know it's Ricochet. And if you haven't
been there, you gotta go there ricochet dot com and find your place in
the most stimulating and civil conversations on the right side of the web. Gentlemen,
good day, How are you sorry? I was gone last week,
but not sorry at all. I was luxuriating in the White Sands and oh
knock it off. Okay, sorry, I went White Sands of Mexico though,
yes, and you were not kidnapped, No I was. I was
not down there for some resculations. I was down there to enjoy myself and
while my wife played at tennis. It's our little indulgence of the year.
Where where were you? A ground partodium in the north of Cancoon. You
got to bounce around for about an hour, and the just awful roads to
get there, and when you do, you're astonished that they built this place
where they there's a two lane road coming to it, and how did they
get everything from there to here? It's an enormous thing. You can't figure
out the economics. You can't figure out how much they make your white sands
were on the Pacific or on the Sea of Cortez, on the Atlantic party,
Oh on the Atlantic? Okay, sorry, so I'm happy and I'm
back now in the snow and all that and the rest of it the world
turns on. We had this week some interesting congressional hearings. I think.
Usually I don't say that. Usually it's just for somebody to get up and
blather away and nothing ever happens, and nobody ever gets called for their misinformation.
But there were two of them on Twitter. Is it the most important
thing in the world. No, but it's Jermaine the COVID hearings. I
think that matters. Let me know what you guys think. First of all,
Twitter, Rob, I know, loves Twitter, can't stay off it,
and he was glued I'm sure to every single second at Shellenberger and Matt
Taibe were interrogated by some of the and I shouldn't be at Hominem, but
some of the dumbest box of rocks I've seen exposed lating from a government position
in a long time. That sounds like a question to you, Rob,
Yeah, I did. I'm sorry, was mute? You know? Uh?
I Actually I have a hard time getting too exercised over the Twitter thing,
and whenever I say that, the people to get really mad at me.
But I just like I get it. I just feel like we I
mean I feel the idea that Twitter, Um, I mean, look,
it's bad, but they did, and I'm glad we know, but they
did. And I'm glad that people who's immediate general, Who's the they in
your statement, Um, the people running Twitter at the time, not the
government. Um. Well yeah, I guess so, I just I just
kind of feel like it's a it's it is one more indication that I think
it's fair. Um. That is, um, it seems seems to be
exercising the left a lot. But something that people in the Conservatives I've done
all along, which is that the the news that we are getting is often
shaped by the priorities of the people who are choosing what to put on the
front page or page twenty nine, um, or what to shadow ban and
went not to. I mean, thus it has always been. But this
is a difference of the government. This is a difference of the government talking
to the people who do the disseminating and say thou shalt not amplify this viewpoint.
Well, I mean, I guess, I guess. My argument is
this is that the government didn't coerce them. These were these are these were
Um, that's that's not so clear. I don't know like like I feel
to me like these are these were all already in the tank they're called.
It's as if like the Biden deministration doesn't have to coerce The New York Times
to print its nonsense. They agree, nice little social network you got here,
A shame if anything happened to it. That's right, that's right.
Maybe maybe the people were leaning into this, but at the same time,
who knows what they might have done in a more free flowing exchange of information
when they don't takes over Twitter. He discovered is that his predecessors have indeed
been censoring all kinds of political points of view and scientific points of view.
Jay Botacharia, we now know by Barry Weiss is the one who broke the
story that Jay had been on some blocklist that kept him from Okay, all
that is true. Elon lets us know by releasing files to Barry Weiss and
Matt Taiebee and Michael Schllenberger. I think there may have been one or two
others, but those three for sure, and Matt Taiebe and Michael Schllenberger get
called to testify before the new Committee on It's being called the Committee on the
weaponization of the government. I'm sure it has a more a boring formal name,
all right, And they are submitted to hectoring and the most ignorant,
demeaning kinds of questions you can possibly imagine, or at least I couldn't have
imagined it from the Democrats on the committee, particularly Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who
said, isn't it right that you shouldn't accept spoon fed chair picked information if
it's likely to be incomplete? In other words, you, Matt Taiebe,
and you, Michael Schellenberger, should not have accepted this leak from Elon Musk.
And they both just looked at her and said, no, that's not
the way you're no yes or no yes, or it was unbelievable. And
then this other I can't remember the other one's name. The other there was
another member of Congress who was trying to make us look as though they were
in it for the money, or she said, and who's this Barry Weiss
person? She'd never clearly never heard of Barry Weiss. I looked at it.
I was so astonished. I looked it up. Debbie Wasserman Schultz received
one hundred and twenty nine thousand votes when she was reelected. I am pretty
sure that that is that Barry gets a bigger number of readers on her substack.
Every single day we had more podcast listeners. Yeah, substack. What
is substack is what is looking at like this? This this amusing little,
trifling, meaningless detail that arose in the so the life would So this is
this is what's left on the beach after the Democratic tied, after the years
when they controlled the House. It's over, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz hasn't adjusted.
She doesn't know what a fool, how hectoring, how demeaning the idea
that any citizen, let alone too very bright, extremely skilled journalists, should
be subjected to bullying by some two bit member. It's just anyway, I
thought it was a it was delicious, but be it was kind of shocking
that DeBie, the lack of self knowledge, the feeling that she could go
into these hearings knowing as little as she did, and assuming, just assuming
that the state that you ought to abide by government censorship would would somehow elicit
immediate obedience all that. It was kind of shocking what they've been thinking all
along, and now finally gets exposed. That was my take, James,
Yeah, pretty much. I'm just curious about the fact that a again,
as we go before, they're idiocy. What is this Substeck? What is
Twitter? What are all these things? Because they're they're utterly out of touch
with the information dissemination mechanisms of today, and they don't feel the need to
be in touch with them because they are important, powerful people in the government,
etc. And they the intellectual incuriosity of them is extraordinary. The defense
of the state to ferret out sources, which seems to be a break with
what we assume to be a bipartisan tradition about protecting sources. We tossed out
the window immediately because we have to get to the bottom of this, which
is what exactly what did they think was trying to be accomplished here? That
there were this there was a band of well funded, vociferous idiots who were
determined to make America consume Horse, d Wurmer and Bleach by some devious means
in order to accomplish something. I don't know none of that. I mean,
what they think the other side was trying to do is still a mystery
to me. What we wanted at the time was a full discussion of what
was happening. And every time we started to go in ways that we're not,
you know, officially approved, all of a sudden the guardrail snapped out
of place and we were put back on our in the proper lane. Now
why was this done? One might say that spending too much time and attention
on the Wuhan Veriological Institute, spending too much time looking at the way it
gain a function. Research was offshore from United States to other countries like well,
I don't know, China. That spending too much time looking at eco
health, and too much time looking at the where the money went where and
who do you know? Finding the fingerprints of doctor Faucine here and there was
inconvenient and unnecessary because what we really had to do was to look forward.
And all that stuff doesn't matter. Well, all that stuff mattered a lot,
It mattered then, it mattered now. And the idea somehow that the
left, the institutional left, would throw up all of these barriers to a
free inquiry to finding out these things because of oh, I don't know,
xenophobia, I don't know, because the wrong people might say that it's China's
fault and then go attack somebody in New York on the subway. We were
prevented from having the discussion we needed to have then, which in the hopes
that it would all blow over and that we would continually move forward, there'd
be an intellectual pandemic, amnesty, and nobody would suffer any consequences. That's
what they wanted to do at the time. They wanted us to have as
keep us from having discussion on all manner of things, from the educational impact
of the lockdowns to the economic I mean all of it. We needed to
have a robust discussion. We needed to have a conversation first and foremost about
the Great Barrington Declaration, not because it's some sort of manifesto of wild eyed
bomb throwing maniacs out there, but because it's an alternative to doing what we
did, which was wrong. So the idea that now at this point they
are this angry about somebody coming out and saying this was done, it is
stunning to me and tells you what they will do without ear, without question,
without hesitation, if something else comes along and it's anywhere near in the
ballpark of what COVID was. That's the end I'm done for the day.
Thank you very much. Have the deal. There's one piece of this that
I want. I'd like I want to make sure that Rob saw Rob's busy,
but I happen to know one of the projects Rob is working on involves
a long form treatment of what happened during COVID. All right, So CDC
Director Robert Redfield testified, and he was asked if it was likely that American
tax paper. You remember that they covered up the notion. We weren't even
allowed to ask whether the virus leaked from a lab. Now it seems more
likely than not that it did leak from a lab. What was it doing
in the lab? It was being developed and gain of function research? Who
was funding that? And doctor Redfield was asked if it was we, the
American taxpayers who funded it? And Redfield said, quote, I think we
did, not only from the NAH, but from the State Department and from
the Department of Defense. Closed quote. The sitting director of CDC at the
time of the outbreak is now on record as saying that money from the American
taxpayers was used by doctor Fauci and others to create the virus. Right,
it's staggering and they knew, or they don't. They you can't know the
future, but they anticipated and they were concerned about what every every sentient adult
knows, which is that these things never work, like somebody's gonna walk out
of the lab with the virus and not know it. Right. They knew
that. So they stopped doing it here in the United States, which they
used to, and they said, well, where can we do it where?
Nothing where you know, look a big deal. So it happens where's
the great player. That's exactly right. And that was, by the way,
that but that is an attitude to a human life that is shared um
enthusiastically by the communist government in China. So but but the the in the
age of blunder, which we're in now, they thought, which is something
that every person notes, that there will that they could do this and it
wouldn't escape the lab. And that to me is what's the most sort of
you know, shocking. There's a I wrote a comment this last week.
There was a guy on January eleventh, I think, I mean, they
run this year contractor for the FAA, and they're going through all the horrible
house of cards computer code that kind of runs our aviation system, which everybody
agrees is at least two decades out of dates, two decades out of but
it's it's worse than two decades out of date. It's two decades out of
date with a bunch of patches. You know, it's like, it's horrible,
right, So he's it's one guy, by the way, he's in
a room with a bunch of other people. One guy, by mistake,
deletes some code for the norm something somebody that the I forget what it's called.
But it's the alert system that all the bottles everybody uses, and every
single flight is grounded for two hours in America. Happened this year? Yes,
yes, um had it happens nine to eleven. Now, imagice being
that guy. You know that feeling like we've all we've all had that feeling,
that moment where you think, oh no, what just happened? Didn't
happen? I left a bag with my iPad and my computer and a bunch
of things on the LA subway once and because I was i'd take it for
the first time, and I left the train And just as I realized that
i'd done, I turned and I saw the doors closed and the train go
away, and I had that feeling. It's not the same thing as grounding
every plane, but someone's always going to do something like that. And when
they designed a virus, this is actually what's amazing. They designed a virus
that was perfectly, perfectly created so that you could have it for a week
and not know it and spread it. Um And so somebody had it for
a week and didn't know it and spread it probably in October maybe or some
version of it, because guess what, you know, there's always some reason
you have to run out to the lab and you don't. You don't do
the shower or change your own set. People just make these mistakes and um
and the like. The compounding problem we had was we had sort of a
nervous breakdown, a panic attack among the policymakers and the media, and then
we had a terrified you know, the guy in the fa a reaction from
the people who knew exactly what had happened and how it had happened, and
you had this sort of horrible perfect storm of people lying. And the irony
is is that that everybody in America kind of knew the truth, maybe not
the details of the truth. By June, we knew that you know,
we're all going to get it, and some of us are going to get
it, and it's gonna be bad. But those people we kind of can
anticipate, and some people are gonna get it. It's gonna be fine.
And all America, all people knew the truth. That was what I think
was the weirdest thing is that the dry run of the Orwellian nightmare which we
ran, I think in during COVID, it failed for the authorities. And
so I'm I guess what I want I'm saying about the Twitter. What I'm
just to rephrase what I was saying at the beginning of the Twitter lea.
I am more interested in having a thorough, vicious, merciless, relentless series
of hearings and trials for people who lied. I want to make it so
painful the idea of lying to the American public again, so painful to the
people who did it that they never do it again. The only way to
restore trust in the system is for everybody to admit how bad this system was.
I agree, I agree, And here's if I may. This is
one reason I'm so pleased by what Yes, I know we've got to get
to a spot, but I want to say this. This is one reason
I am so pleased that Rob is doing what he's doing. And before this
podcast is over, he's going to have to tease it to the extent of
a sentence or two. The government failed. People like Fauci told us whoppers,
But the government always fails, and they're always telling us whoppers. What
to my mind was distinctive about this catastrophe was that the press covered up for
them. Yeah, and what you're doing is one step, it's one something,
and because you do this stuff, well, it'll be a big something
toward the recovery of the of the duties of the press. It's it's it
is an after action report that'll tell the truth, and it'll tell the truth
about the press as well. Right, the press covered up for them because
they love this new set of rules, and they loved working from home,
and they loved ordering the door to exactly right, exactly right. They enjoyed
being the people who are the best in following the rules. But hey,
you know, folks, now you know, of course it's done. I'm
sorry, is it? COVID isn't over. According to the people on Reddit,
we're still in the pandemic phase. Now the rest of us are out
and about in the world, which means we're going to restaurants. However,
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Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast our old friend Jack
Follower, Senior director of Strategic Partnerships for American Philanthropic Senior Fellow the Center for
Civil Society, and the co host of the Victor Davis Hanson Show. He's
with us to talk about the great James L. Buckley, who just yesterday
celebrated his one hundredth birthday. Welcome Jack, James, my friend, I
thank you for having me. Can I just say too things before we get
into it? One? No, it has to be two. The first
is, you know, I don't read ads like you just read on Factor
and we have a toenail fungus cure heads slash Victor Victor dot com. So
I'm envious of the kind of advertising you have on this terrific podcast. You
know, I'm a Ricochet subscribe. And the second thing is, of course
being with you, James and Rob and Peter. Even though I'm looking out
the window, I'm seeing my neighbor has a dumpster out there. I have
visions of National Review cruises in my head. I can even smell pina coladas
somehow or other. So it's great to be with you. It's good.
It's been a long time, so we would like to talk about what you've
been doing and all the rest of that stuff. But mister Buckley, Yeah,
let's say somebody said Buckley. I've heard that name before. I was
talking with some Canadians in Mexico last week and I mentioned Buckley, and three
out of the four of them all knew who William F. Buckley wants.
But really, still, that's good. Yeah, it is good. So
the name persists. But tell us about James L. Buckley. Well,
Jim was the older brother of Bill and as Buckley's go well as and I
know Peter knows this because he's interviewed Jim Buckley a few times on uncommon knowledge.
Jim was not a smoker, which is why he's one hundred years old.
He's quiet man, healthy, very dignified in many ways, very different
from Bill. Not that don't don't play off the dignified as if Bill is
undignified. But Bill Buckley was an impish man, a mixer, stirred it
up, he created a movement. And Jim was a very quiet man.
He just wanted to be a He's a Yale graduate, Yale Law School.
He just wanted to be a country lawyer. But the fickle finger of fate
decided in the mid nineteen sixties that Jim had much more in public service to
perform unbeen owns to him. And I can tell that story quickly, James,
if you'd like to hear it, we would, okay. Well,
you know, after the debacle of the nineteen sixty four presidential election where Barry
Goldwater was just devastated, and there's an important Buckley train of events that happens
quickly in nineteen sixty five. A year later, Bill Buckley runs for mayor
of New York and of course he does not win, but he does better.
He does better than might have been expected, right, much much better.
Queens and Staten Island especially, there were people who loved him Trump Territory,
you know, from the outer Barrows. He did remarkably well the following
year. Now there's a Conservative party in New York, an official line.
A man named Paul Adams runs for governor against Nelson Rockefeller, and I forget
who the hell the Democrat was, but he pulls a significant amount of votes.
So the feeling is, Wow, this party. There's some element here
that maybe we can either you know, outpoll the Republicans or really make the
Republicans more conservative. I think that was the larger goal. Sixty eight election,
Jacob Javitt's Liberal Republican is up for reelection and Jim Buckley, at Bill's
instigation, decides to throw his hat in the ring. Already Bill's instigation,
though I think it's recurring. Well, Bill said, you know, I
did my duty. I ran for mayor in sixty five. I think it
literally the phrase was it's your turn to Jim, and Jim said, I
will run as long as I'm not going to win. He understood that this
is to be a symbolic event, and it was symbolic but powerful because when
the votes were counted, and this is the nineteen sixty eight US Senate election,
Conservative Party coundidate Jim Buckley pulls over a million votes, So people are
shocked by this outcome. Nineteen seventy is another election coming up because Bobby Kennedy,
new York Senator, is a assassinated. He's replaced by a Republican Charles
Goodell, who is the father of the current NFL commissioner, by the way,
but he was sort of a conservative ish congressman from from the Buffalo area.
So he's up. Now he's going to run for that seat officially having
been appointed Dick Ottinger, who's a liberal Republican liberal excuse me, Democrat congressman
as a Democrat nominee. So you have two liberals because despite being quote unquote
conservative in the House, Goodell immediately went left. So so the powers that
be thought, you know what, now, Jim, a conservative could win
this race. A conservative could could get a plurality of votes, right,
And that's exactly what happened. Jim Buckley decided he was never going to run
again. One and done. I'm not doing it again, except when when
it was put to him, well you know you could win, they could
win, Yeah, I could, you know what I think I can,
and so he ran. He was such a Jim Buckley is the most dignified
and wonderful man Christian. His brother jim brother Bill called him the sainted junior
Senator at well, that's after he won. But he had such dignity which
was such a counterpoint to the chaos in New York of nineteen seventy. And
Jim is not a glad handler. You know, he will not confuse him
on the campaign trail would say Bill Clinton or anybody. You know, He's
not a backslapper. But he was the man for the moment and the people.
There was a there was any I commit a little bit. I could
add, just a little bit of color because I was a kid in upstate
New York in nineteen seventy. I think I was in ninth grade, as
I recall, and here's the situation in New York State in nineteen seventy.
My father gets home and reads the evening newspaper every day, and he's shaking
his head. And I can't tell whether he's shaking his head at what the
Democrats have just done or what the Republicans have just done. Because the state
was totally dominated by the Rockefellers and the liberal Republicans. There was no room
an upstate we were conservative. There was no room the Albany County who always
voted Democratic Buffalo, but upstate Binghamton, New York. We were conservative,
and there was no place for conservatives to go. Jim Buckley's nineteen seventy campaign
Slogan was a senator for the rest of us, and at upstate New York.
We knew just what he meant. We knew just what he meant,
and he was this extremely He came and campaigned. Actually know this was after
he was in the Senate. He came and did a trip, he went
to It was the only political figure my parents showed any interest in. He
turned up at the Vestal Public Library to answer questions and I remember thinking,
I don't know a United States senator. This is a glorious figure. And
he showed up in a rumpled suit and took off his jacket, and I
remember. All I really remember is how gracious and how quiet spoken he was.
People were constantly straining to hear what he had to say. And also
that his shirt tail was out. This proof proofs that An his wife was
not traveling with an issue. In any event, that was the there was
for if you were a conservative in New York. There had been no place
to go since nineteen fifty six, I believe is when Nelson Rockefeller was first
elected governor. So it was a liberal Republican and then a liberal Democratic establishment.
There was nowhere to go, and then this dignified, well spoken,
sweet charming man becomes our hero. Yeah, Peter. The advertising line was,
isn't it time we had a senator? That's it, that's it.
There was a question and answer all. Let's say. It was very powerful
ad campaign run by Clifton White and I think Roger Ailes was also involved in
the campaign way way back. So well, Jim was you know, quickly.
I mean he was elected. He only served one term because he ran
his re election seventy six, which is tough year for Republicans, of course,
but Daniel Patrick moynihan was the Democrat nominee. But then Jim went on
to serve in the Reagan administration as an Undersecretary of State ambassador to the Mexico
City Conference. And after that he was appointed, nominated, and confirmed as
a US judge, where he is by all accounts, on the US Court
of Appeals with the District of Columbia, which some people could call, you
know, the little Supreme Court. He was regarded us with most distinction there
of all the judges sitting. So I know people have heard this before,
but in American history, they're only forty five people who have ever served in
all three branches of government executive, federal, legislative, and Jim Buckley is
one of them. And he's the only one alive who's done that, and
the only one in modern American history who's done that. And his service to
America has just been so profound and a service to the conservative movement. Not
only is somebody who galvanized the movement politically with his election in nineteen seventy,
but as you stated, Peter, the dignity of this man has so impressed
so many people over the age. So he was just not a one shot
one term got in by luck or by you know, the stars aligned correctly
a political event, which was true, you know, the stars did align.
But he really has had a profound impact on conservatism. And finally,
I will shut up that he hasn't been so active. He's a hundred.
He turned one hundred yesterday. But you know, he was writing books until
the age of ninety, you know, early nineties. He was still giving
public speeches as of two years ago. So, by the way, we
should also at the conservative as he was the sense of dignity and honor.
He was elected on the Conservative Party ticket in New York, but when he
got to the Senate, he caucused with the Republicans, which is why he
is known as the first Republican member of the Senate to call on Richard Nixon
to resign. He did, um, he was he was at at odds
with other conservat There wasn't you know that overwhelming a conservative block of senators.
But you know, Barry Goldwater was a colleague, and yeah, Jim was
the first person to do that, did that at odds with some of the
others. But it took a lot of a lot of nerve to do that.
By the way of them, there's only one member of Congress who was
still serving well, well Jim was in office, and that is Charles Grassley,
who was a member of the House at the time. And Joe Biden.
Of Jim Buckley in the US Senate. Well, with Biden's age,
I'm glad. I'm guessing his telomeres are about it. You know, one
nice of what mister Buckleys would be. Well, you know, you're as
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for sponsoring this for the Ruccochete podcast. Well, I have Rob, Rob,
is there going to be the one who sums this up? What do
you tell you've written for National Review for I don't know how long all of
us have read National Review. I was fortunate enough to know, well,
I think all of us were fortunate enough to know the Buckley's Jack better than
any of us. But I got all right, anybody here, I sit
on the Stanford campus. These twenty, these extremely bright twenty two year olds
have no clue who the Buckleys were or why they mattered. How would you?
How would you say? How would you? What statement would you make?
Rob? That would enable people to understand why they matter to all four
of us? You mean Jack? You know what I mean? You mean?
Oh? No, I Rob, I mean to Rob A question for
me, Peter, Yes it is yes, Oh, I would say,
I mean, I mean, I don't I mean I would say, for
Bill, I think the idea was that he articulated when it seemed as if
Um in fact was true that the culture and the political culture certainly, and
the um you know, the broader culture of the unities of America had absolutely
done with the idea of sort of individual liberty and capitalism by the by the
end of the World War two, for for for some good reasons, of
bad reasons, right, I mean, so sudden sudden about face in what
it be expected from the government after um the depression, sudden about face from
what we thought the government could accomplish. After it accomplished this amazing task in
the forties of smashing Hitler's Europe. That was a massive federal program, if
you want to think of it that way, that was incredibly effective. It
was also very pensive, and it was also very wasteful, but it accomplished
the mission. And then you had a bunch of people coming back home in
the fifties, it's the late fourties and fifties who were expected the federal government
to do things like build highways and stuff. And what needed to happen was
somebody had to rearticulate or adjust what it meant to be a conservative, a
conservative American and for Bill Buckley, I think it meant in the fifties,
it meant that you couldn't you You weren't going to be an old New England
bigot, right. So he kind of you know, cleaned out the stables
of the conservative movement and he articulated set of principles that was incredibly attractive to
people. And he did a thing that I think the Buckley sort of a
sort of a you know Buckley inc. What they really were. They sort
of comment in a big comment in the sky, you know, and people
just kind of followed them, and they inspired a whole bunch of other study
set off a whole lot of sparks. That little whole lot of little fires
all over are, including one with a you know, a union leader in
Los Angeles in the late fifties who Ronald Reagan, who was inspired by a
thoughtful, fun articulate statement of a conservative purpose that you could read National Review
and there was it was funny and smart. It still is, but I
think at the time it had it didn't seem like you Despite his saying we
stand athwart history and you'll stop, which was sort of a joke, he
was not, by any means a Luddite. He was not trying to turn
the clock back. He was a very modern guy. And I think that
was what they did. They say they took a what was in fact,
kind of an ossified old cobwebby American theory of what conservatives and really meant in
the twenties and thirties and forties, and he said, no, no,
no, we have to be conservatives with the twenty first century. I think
that's what they did. Buck looking fair. But but but the problem isn't
it though? When you Rob is saying you tell this to the twenty year
old to the twenty two year olds on Peter's campus, it's a long time
ago. It's like when I was in high school coming up and telling me
all about Calvin Coolidge and what I could learn from. Yes, that's right,
And so I mean, do we not run the risk? Well,
of course we do. Just seeming like to use Robs rays ossified in cobweb
bound. When we're constantly reaching back to touchstones that are gone, it means
something to us. But time moves on, and kids today telling them to
look to Reagan and Buckley, which would be wise, it doesn't seem it
seems seed cast on stony ground. Well, even if you're the most lefty
Reddit obsessed kid, you do know there's a conservative movement and the curiosity of
well, how did this thing come to be? Because prior to National Review
and a center right nation was still a center right nation. It was more
of a center right nation in the mid fifties, there was no no,
no thing that rallied it and that was a National Review that was Bill Buckley.
If I was alive then and try to create National Review, we would
not have a conservative movement because it's by the virtue of the particular characters,
characteristics and dig and one of the traits that Bill had rob you your thing
about you know, comic. They were just inspired. Bill was an inspiring
person in his very larger than life way, and Jim Buckley was inspiring in
his dignified way. So the two of them as a fraternal tag team were
essential to creating the political movement that, like it or not, exists today.
People who want to know how this came to be should get to know
who Bill Buckley is, who Jim Buckley is. Okay, so um,
give me a little uh kind of like as much as you want to say,
what's the state of conservative media today. Oh, I mean it doesn't.
It seems like more choices, right, it's louder and noise, and
there are more places to get more choices and dumber, much dumber. But
is that what do you think? Well? I think it's It's hard for
me, particularly who walked through the doors of National Review forty years ago,
to unwind these things, because at one point National Review was the only game
in town, and Bill Buckley was so happy that other entities came about,
even competitors. Take the Week you know of late, the Weekly Standard,
of course, Rush Limbaugh. But we're all just for you. I took
a little shot at the Weekly Standard in an email to Bill when it was
something along the lines of well, this new magazine won't be anything like National
Review, and Bill wrote back a very sharp reply, we should all be
delighted that now there's another one, right well, and we should be delighted
that there is a plethora of means of Remember, it's twenty four hours in
a day. I have to get if I want my conservatism, I have
to get it somehow. I'm reading the magazine, listening to podcasts, watching
Fox or Newsmax, whatever, So there's plentiful out there. I guess when
it becomes more plentiful the level of having started as a journal of opinion and
high intellectual there's no way to go on the intellectual level. But down that
doesn't mean it's bad. You know, Rush Limbaugh was not reading from work,
Yeah, work, right, but he was still meaningful and influential.
So Bill loved him, by the way, we love it so but that
said, um, you know, there's too much This not necessarily applies to
conservative journal There's a lot of echo chambering going on, and that's the thing
that turns me most. Yeah, by the way, I just looked up
Jack. I looked this up on Amazon. If people want to experience Jim's
prose, which again is not it's him, it's not Bill. Bill's pros
is spectacular, and there's so much motion, and Jim's is beautiful, beautifully
have the feeling of something really carefully wrought craftsman life. There are two books
of essays, Freedom at Risk Reflections on Politics, Liberty and the State,
that was published in I had the date here twenty twelve, twenty twelve,
and Saving Congress from Itself, Emancipating the States, and Empowering Their People,
which was published in twenty thirteen, I think twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen.
So I make that point that they're available on Amazon, and also that James
Lane Buckley turned one hundred yesterday and yet he's still more recently published than Rob
Long or Peter Robinson, well or me. I read some James James publishes
all the time, but he's he's not done a book, so that's well.
I mean, I've not done a book. I've got seven of them.
I just got a royalty check from the guys. Oh wait, autem
randomist track me down and said, look, we can't find your agent anymore.
And I told yes, that's because he was first a a crook and
then second b dead um. But they had some royalties from a book that
I published in two thousand and one and they wanted to ship off to me.
So that was great, you know, if I may, Writing for
Jim Buckley was much more of a struggle that his brother Jim. A Bill
would go upstairs during a dinner and crank out a column in twenty minutes and
come back down for dessert. Jim. This is one of the reasons he
was not reluctant to be on the federal judge but it really did mean you
know, you're writing a traditional opinion. It's not it's not seven hundred and
fifty words. And writing came slowly to him, but so that the judge
ship really consumed him entirely because of just the amount of work that went into
it. But he was he was extremely highly respected as a judge. Well,
I'm glad that you came to tell us about him, and I'm sure
he's honored by the words that you said. And yes, Peter, I
was just gonna say, how is he? Have you sent him an email?
Congratulations? I assume he was overwhelmed. But he's still emailing and chatting
on the phone as I understand it. Yeah, he is. One of
my former colleagues saw him a few weeks ago, Jim. You know,
there was a hope that there would be a celebration of course for a hundred,
but he's still with it. These the marbles have not been lost,
but the mobility has taken a hit of late. So, but he's there's
no dotage going on. Ritrim Buckley, Oh, she cannot say. For
some of us on this podcast, really, we all not live so long
as to have our insufficiencies revealed for all. But Jack, we wish may
you'll live a hundred years. And you know we got to have you on
next time to talk about what you're doing because your contribution to National Review in
the movement is big and extraordinary and long last ding. We love you for
it. Well, thanks for having we'd love you for having you on the
show as well. We'll have you back, ladies and gentlemen. Jack Flower,
Thanks see you later, Thanks job, thanks check. All right,
guys, thank you very much. What you could say is that these guys
back in the fifties beat a Coolidge or a Reagan or a Buckley, planted
seeds they would later grow into stout trunks. Well that's all the segue I'm
gonna do, because Franklin, it's a good one. Thought. Trunks,
stout trunks, limbs of girth. Yeah. Maybe we were talking before about
how spring is coming, which it is, which is why you should,
you know, look at what you're gonna eat. You should also look at
what you're gonna do with your yard. I'm looking at my yard and thinking
this year I might actually get myself an electric lawnmower. I know it sounds
like one of those crazy, you know, green future things, but I
just want to do the whole Eddie albert Land spreading out so far and wide,
feeling I'm owing your own lawn. I do, and maybe, you
know, maybe I'll plant a tree here and there. I got a lot
of trees, but anybody who has a lot of trees know that they die
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thank Fast Growing Trees. Responsing this the Ricochet podcast, I got some housekeeping
here to come to do. Rob. I believe you have a brief note
about human beings actually communing in a shared space that is not cybernetic or virtual.
Caught him flat footed, there, didn't I. We called this week
in radio, we called this dead air, and we would abhor it podcast.
Some people seem perfectly willing to let it go on as long as they
wanted to. That was so embarrassing. I was talking and you were talking
over me, and I was like, why is he talking as he talking
over me? And I realized, Okay, I had a cough, so
I have a I had a mute. Um, I do have a cough.
So we do, in fact have Ricochet meetup stats what you're talking about.
We have meetups and Ricochet where real people get together and have fun and
there's something they're coming up. There's the last call coming for the John Meet
John Gabriel and Phoenix. So if you're in the Phoenix areas, sign up
quickly. Um, you know, get to meet the King of Stuff.
Um. They'll they meet March eleven, which is like Saturday. So if
it's if you're one of the people who listen to this podcast on Sunday,
go to Ricochet and see how the meet up was. People usue post pictures
and stuff. A bunch of us are going to be in New Orleans next
month for French Quarter Fest. We including me and I hope to see you
there. Flicker in Stillwater, Minnesota is having a meetup that is happening in
April twenty second in Stillwater, Minnesota, Minnesota. That's about your neck the
woods. I hope to make it, unless, of course I'm in Barcelona
and I don't want to go through that again. Okay, I was right
by the way about Barcelona and we just heard that Winston Salem meetup. There's
a Winston Salem meet up in the works from mid July, So if you're
in that area. If you're not those areas or those dates don't work for
you, here's the solution. You just join Ricochet posts that you want to
have a meetup somewhere closer to you on a date that works for you,
and I guarantee you people will show up. People at Ricochet tend to show
up and have a good time. So details are all. This stuff is
at Ricochet. So go to ricochet com, slash events or find the module
and sidebar on the website. Join Ricochet kind of a meetup, look forward
to seeing you meet up. So are good like a Ricochet should. When
you mentioned Winston Salem, when I was a kid and discovered that actually there
was a city called Winston Salem, because I was just aware of it and
its cigarette incarnations because my sure, so many of my family smoked Winston's my
uncle uh, and then one of the aunts was puffing away at the Salem's
to discover that those are actually it was one city. I was just absolutely
going away. What's next? Marlborough Lark? Where do you live? I
live in Durrell, Kent. Yeah, Terryton. Yeah. I had an
aunt that smoked Terryton too. And you know, virtually all the cigarette brands
were distributed amongst my aunts and uncles, right down to the raleighs which had
the coupons you could say, you could, oh, yes, that's right,
when you had to wonder about a cigarette whose quality was such that they
had to give you these coupon and enticements that you would collect for you know,
things like golf, you know, you know, uh, oxygen tanks
and the rest of it. But they all had their own individual brands,
which I to this to this day when I when I hear Winston Salem,
what pops into my head is my uncle Myron and uh and my aunt?
Who was it? Was it? V? I think vy smoke shows anyway.
Um, that's another marker of adulthood that kids don't grow up with.
They don't know Bill buck Lean, they don't know cigarette brands, highways kids
kids today. So what else have we going on? Before we leave?
We could talk about anything in the world. We could talk about what we
happened to be, what we used to do this, you know, we
used to say what we were, what we were watching. The streaming thing
to give people an idea of something else to watch. Because I have a
question, though, Can I ask a question? We only briefly discussed it,
but I remember this is a legit question. So, um, when
you went to Mexico, James, Yes, did you feel at risk?
No? And here's why I asked, because I go to places where the
people say, oh, I would never go there. I would. Were
you safe in Jerusalem? Are you safe in Egypt? Were you what about
May? And I think, yeah, I'm really safe and then but but
I do sometimes look at the news and thinking I'm not going to Mexico.
Yeah, well, you know on the cup and the Cancoon subredit. Which
is interesting that all these people who are just coming in with their hands a
flutter saying I heard about all this cartel violence. Is it safe to go
to Cancoo? You know, that's like saying there there's a whole bunch of
drug wars going on Washington State. Is it safe for me to go to
Disneyland, disney World, disney World in Florida? The answer is yes.
Now, is it is it possible that somebody could come up alongside of our
van and wave the guy over and releave of our property. Yes, could
have in in Minneapolis too. Now Mexico is a lot more lawless in that
respect. But I tend to think that there's a an understanding that the cash
cow that is this enterprise shall not be shall not be gutted and shot.
So I don't I feel no. Plus, I'm way up there, right,
But do you feel like I mean, I guess I'm asking is that
they're people? There were hearings or people. I saw a lot of senators
and people making speeches on TV after this. Do you feel like the American
government? I mean, it seems like that's the lever we should pull as
to say, you know, maybe Americans should rethink going and spending their money
in Mexico's tourists doesn't seem terribly safe, or at least don't go there for
off brand plastic surgery. I suppose, because I would say, yeah,
they don't go down there for medicine or to butt tuck or the rest of
it. But I mean, there isn't there talk now about putting on the
table the American military option to deal with with drugs and cartels. Bill Barr
published a piece in the Wall Street Journal. Was it this week or late
last week, I think it was this week saying Bill Barr, former Attorney
General the United States, saying that we should that the United States military should
handle the cartels in Mexico, that the drug deaths in this country and the
undermining of Mexican society, that the Mexican government and military cannot handle them on
our own. And Bill Barr essentially called for the first invasion of Mexico by
the United States since the Pancho Villa expedition of nineteen seventeen, when Blackjack Persian
chased Pancho Villa all around Sonora, and I thought, you know, I
couldn't find a flaw in his argument, but I still thought, oh,
oh yeah, by the way, is it the question is it safe?
Somebody I know well was an executive at a pretty big bank down in Mexico,
and every executive from the level of vice president and up was either kidnapped
or had a member of his family kidnapped. Every single one. Routine and
very dangerous because everyten the kidnappers have to kill somebody to remind you that we're
serious about wanting ransom. It's not right. I go to an isolated Simuel
Lackram of the experience that I in no way confused in any sense with actual
Mexico, and that includes the food. Right it is, it is what
it is. It's this fantasy little bubble in which you live, and that's
great. But we all know that Rob Long believes that the problem is not
consumption and demand in America but Mexican production. That's why you, Rob are
in favor of a full throated military response to the cartels. Right, No,
I'm not. I read that Bill bar Pie said, I I know,
I think that that's not our solution. Our solution is but you know,
let's I mean, I'm always low hanging fruit. Do the easy stuff
first. First, control of border. Hit border control on. Second,
put economic pressure on Mexico to clean itself up, in the sense of like
telling Americans they shouldn't go to Mexico. They shouldn't. I really I would
do that Forore. I would invade. I would say, listen in the
State Department issues at a while, an alert for a lot of places.
We're going too alert for the entire nation of Mexico. Don't go until until
the streets are safe. And I think that would get the attention of a
lot of people in Mexico would kind of think like, well, yeah,
if you go here, you go there, you go to that state or
that state of the other state, you're gonna get in trouble. But yeah,
basically you can get off your cruise ship. Now, don't go into
cruise ships. I mean that I would do that. I would do that
kind of pressure before I would start sending American military into Mexican territory so that
they as in the same way that the look, you start dropping bombs on
people and killing people, you're gonna kill some innocent people and you're gonna kill
an innocent family, and that's going to be on you know, the news.
That's not a good idea, certainly, not until you've exhausted all the
other possibilities, one of which I think is to get control of the border,
Like you know, like why why do it always the hard way?
That's it's hard enough to get control of the border. But that seems like
a job number one. Well, I think we could do it though.
Three days. We can march to Mexico City, install our own governments.
A matter of fact, that's send the troops with the dress parade uniforms.
Oh wait a minute, hold on I've heard that story before. We'll be
as liberators, we will be greeted as liberators. Indeed, well you know
some of us, did. I remember a couple of happy people, but
when we pulled down the statues of Saddam. But then that's another story,
something else that I wanted to point out. I can't remember what it is
precisely. Oh right, Well, when Peter, when you talk about the
kidnappings and the constant kidnaps and the rest of it, yeah, I mean
that sort of seems only part of the problem. The other is that the
new leadership in Mexico, from what I understand, is rejiggering their sort of
election, overseeing committees and rules. It makes it more difficult to challenge the
results, which just means it seems to be drifting back to if it ever
got too far away from the permanent, the permanent revolutionary institutional party that they
had before, and that the hope that we had when they opened up and
there was actually a you know, a ye, that those days seem to
be gone. In Mexico's better days are behind it rather than they had.
However, Ricochet's better days are always ahead of it because we know that you
the listener, if you're not a member already, will go and be compelled
to join. Not compelled in the literal sense, but compelled by what you
find. Now. Mind you, if you go there, you're not going
to find everything because the member feed were a lot of the real good communities
and all the vivacious, interesting discussions about all kinds of topics. That's where
you know, that's the fun part. So go to Ricochet, give it
a look, give it a try. You don't like it, you can
quit. You know, we're not going to be one of those places that
locks you in the contracts and the rest of it, are we guys,
No, okay good. I would also like to know that fast Growing Trees
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next Week, Next Week, Boy Week, Ricochet joined the conversation