We're back with another edition of The Federalist for Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinsky,
culture editor here at The Federalist. As always, you can email the
show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr
LST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts into the premium version
of our website at Well, that's Chris Bedford. He needs no introduction.
Christopher Bedford, Executive editor over at the Common Sense Society, intentionally coughing or
in the introduction, the Big B is back. I just had to get
out of the way in case you wanted to start over. So to be
clear, this is all my fault that Chris hasn't been on the podcast for
a while, because I was in Ohio last week. Great great time at
the Lutherans for Level booked me. I know. It was a great time
at the Lutherans for Life conference down in Cincinnati. Then before that, I
was in Vegas. I was in Vegas for the first time I was alone.
I walked the whole strip, looked at my phone afterwards and I'd walked
ten miles. Chris, I've done that walk before when I was stuck in
Las Vegas for our conference. I don't like going to Las Vegas in general,
but walking just people watching can be interesting. Well, I'd never seen
any of the resorts in casinos, so I was well for the first time
seeing I just walked. I made it a smoke though, yes, like
and I made a goal for myself to walk into every lobby of every major
resort and casino, and I guess that's how I wracked up the ten miles.
But in the time that since Chris has last been on the podcast,
the leaves have changed. There is a chill in the air, and the
world is in chaos. Here on Capitol Hill. There is no Speaker of
the House still as we were recording this on Thursday. Things will perhaps change
before the podcast airs, but the establishment Republican wing is trying very hard to
convince enough Republicans to support Speaker pro time Patrick mhae Henry, who is very
much one of their fellow travelers, very much a member of the establishment wing
of the Republican Party, and the Conservative movement is mounting a sort of last
bid effort to rescue Jim Jordan's potential speakership. He obviously, like Steve Scalice,
made it out of an internal conference vote, did not get enough votes
on the floor, could only afford to lose four lost about twenty. It
seems like that margin has only gotten worse for Jim Jordan. The Conservative movement,
though, is obviously powerful in the Republican Party and is really pulling out
all the stops. Chris, I still don't think Jim Jordan has the math.
No, he doesn't right now. The uniparty has a math right now.
I mean there's a significant there's a significant enough amount of opposition to Jim
Jordan. First, the first vote was twenty in opposition. People aren't seeming
to come around right now, and the rumors are, if it hasn't happened
already, that he's going to step aside in the Speaker's right in general at
least for a period of time, just so that Washington DC can get what
it wants, which is another cr right and some money towards Ukraine. They
won an omibus. I really want that omnibus. And Kevin McCarthy, you
know, I've set up aforeils it again, was the only person. That's
why he went through fifteen ballots sort of happily right like that was very dramatic
back in January, but everyone knew the eventual outcome. We certainly knew Chris
that there's basically no way Kevin McCarthy, no matter how many ballots it took,
he was going to be the Speaker of the House because everybody from Matt
Gates to Kevin McCarthy himself knew that nobody else had the enough votes when you
have such a slim margin to bring together the Matt Gates's of the world Marjorie
Taylor Green's of the world with you know, the establishment wing of the party.
And Kevin McCarthy spent years working to do that. Patrick McHenry is not
Steve Scalise is not trusted by conservatives in the way that Kevin McCarthy was because,
and whether you think that's wrong, Kevin McCarthy spent years building that relationship
and building that outreach, and he gave a lot up. Whether Scalice would
be willing and it was the same was an open question, and people disliked
him for it. And the more establishing winging of the GOP. Yes,
people were angry that he was wanting to do that. I mean, there
was a time not too long ago and actually including today, where it would
be fairly normal for the Republican majority leaders last speaker to absolutely rip on the
Republican base. I mean John Bayner was really open and how much he dislikes
the Tea Party, Oh was he? He was pretty open whenever he disliked
someone. He was fairly honest in that regard. And sometimes they even hear
conservatives talking about how they missed that, how at least to have a speaker
who would curse you out to your face and let a cigarette was you knew
where you stood, but there was Kevin McCarthy reached out to the growing conservative
base to two well, huge amounts. Huge amounts of money flowed through the
Speaker's office and through the power the apparatus and through the RNC. There are
now outside sources, and I think which helped the outside opposition, the conservative
opposition. And I think what we're really witnessing here is just the scurliosis of
the GOP that's been around for decades that Rick Sentaorm was talking about fifteen years
ago as now just a full broken back, completely broken spine, where you've
got Republicans in Washington, d C. Who are calling intimidation tactics for conservative
activists to be calling them in support of a Speaker of the House, saying
it reminds me of the two thousand and seven immigration amnesty fight where a bunch
of Republicans came forward and there was a who're going to work with Senator Ted
Kennedy to pass amnesty at the end of Bush's term and senator from Ohio,
I think, Voinovich said, in response to the outpouring of base attacks and
Republicans for doing this, that I will not be intimidated by the American people.
Oh my gosh, that's a that's something that I actually don't really mind
hearing from a senator as much. We'll get right right, right, but
I definitely mind hearing that from members of House of Representatives. And that's been
really the tax that they've taken. We won't be intimidated by the American people
and what are their goals here? I mean, there's obviously a lot of
animis. You can't really dig that too much. There's obviously a lot of
animis behind Matt Gates and his crew of folks who took on McCarthy. Personal
politics and personal dislike and likes drives a lot of what goes on in Washington,
d C. Behind the scenes more Southern principle very often. But there's
just a real hatred and anger of Jim Jordan. There's a hatred of the
conservatives that's being kind of just laid bare, and you can really see it
and how much cry baby garbage is coming out. I mean, if you're
going to be a conservative in Washington, DC, you have your friends sometimes
fairweather friend in Fox News, you've got talk radio, you've got the Federal
As, You've got a couple of the people who are generally supportive of you.
But you're extremely unpopular with the business interests, with the defense interests,
with a lot of your colleagues, with leadership. You're with CNN and MSNBC
and New York Times and Washington Posts. You don't get that respect. And
just for the moderates and the establishment guys and the uniparty and the only thing
that we care about is getting more money to Ukraine Caucus of the GOP.
This is like some of the guys first time getting getting constituent hate and getting
attacked and they really don't like this, and they're say, oh, just
this as evil. It's just interpidation like this is what conservatives have to deal
with every single day, and they're not taking it very well. They're angry,
and I think it's really it's just putting on stock display the differences between
the politicians elected here in Washington, DC and the people who voted for them.
So I want to read this quote from The New York Times. I
think I've referenced it on a podcast before, but this is four days ago,
so I think it was over the weekend. The New York Times tweeted
Representative Jim Jordan and his allies have begun a right wing pressure campaign against Republicans
opposed to electing him Speaker Kamma, working to unleash the rage of the party's
base voters against any lawmakers standing in the way of his election. It's a
quote from the Time story that is just an incredible excerpt from a piece of
journalism, piece of I guess neutral journalism, because we're talking about the House
of Representatives and they are casting as a sort of dark reality the idea that
Jim Jordan would quote unleash the rage of the party's base base voters. The
party's base voters, that's exactly who they're supposed to represent. Yeah, again,
this is not the US Senate, it's the House to representatives. And
they don't even think twice about writing stuff like that, right, Like,
it's it's very icky that you would actually represent the peace people who voted you
into office. Who's pay your salary if you're Jim Jordan, but if you're
AOC or if you were Ilhan omar By all means unleash the rage of those
parties voters. They are marginalized, they are oppressed, et cetera, et
cetera. No, there wasn't actually an article that came out. I think
it was in Political pro this week that said, all, do you have
political pro are you paying Politico? No? I don't have political pro I
get screenshots. Some people do, lobbyists, and there's there was an actual
article that came out that said that they were serious worry in Washington, d
C. Amongst the lobbyist class about the lack of business ties that Jim Jordan
has. And I believe it, I totally absolutely. And so now they're
going to try and put out speaker mckenry. Some friends of ours are pushing
for that. There's all this excitement, but here's the Really, this is
going to be the new normal. You know how we complain a lot about
here here about how the House representatives in the Senate they don't legislate anymore.
They call about the cr on the omnibus, they don't nothing. It's just
it wears a skin suit of the legislative branch. But it really isn't the
legislative branch anymore. The executive really runs everything. They pass omnibuses. They
do this, they give speeches, they go on Fox and CNN, and
they raise money for themselves, but they don't actually legislate. And I think
that Speaker Henry would be a death toll for the speakersition in general, because
as the parties start to pare up terror part and they really need to tear
a part, there's no real thing that holds certain different members of the GUP
together other than like an American tradition of a two party system. They're so
disparate in their ideas. And remember AOC said that, I believe she was
talking about Nancy Pelosi. She said, in Europe, we would never be
in the same party. Yeah, she said, why am I in the
same party as Chuck Schumer and she had a good point. It's maybe a
break towards the parliamentary system sort of thing. But they're coming up with these
temporary powers for the speaker, which won the part of the powers that are
already designated to Speaker Tempore. They claim to be somewhat narrow, but anyone
with a brain could drive a truck through through the looseness of the rules.
Need to oversee and use the powers that are necessary, etcetera, etcetera.
But if this becomes accepted by Washington d C. Because the party is incapable
of actually selecting a speaker, I think it will become pretty standard. Just
like we no longer actually pass budgets, there's a decent chance that will no
longer elect speakers that a party that's incapable of that refuses to appease its conservatives
and its base and its voters. Maybe a Democratic party that refuses to appease
to the level they do, and they don't have nearly this curly assist that
we do. The Republicans to excuse me, that refuses to appease their base
could just say, well, fine, we'll have someone that everyone agrees on,
who keeps the money flowing, who keeps who keeps the cash going to
all the projects, who passes the curs and the omnibuses a speaker temporari and
nothing is just very very There's nothing that's temporary in Washington. Things that are
temporary last forever, especially if they're easier for those people who have the money
and want the money. You know, that's actually interesting because Jordan was a
two way street with the establishment, and I remember we talked about that a
lot about a year ago in the Yeah ever tech anti trust Yeah, Yeah,
he's Google's best friend, and that upset a lot of people, and
conservatives are behind the scenes. It didn't totally spill out into public. We
talked about that a ton though, back at the time before Rachel Bobert was
dispatched back to the Senate. Yeah, Jim Jordan's tech policy might as well
be run by the Coke Institute, Freedom Partners or Stand Together or whatever fruity
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me of an anecdote I've wanted to mention a little bit. Have you been
following Matt Rosendale's potential senate campaign over in Montana? Tangentially, someone flagged the
FEC filings for me, and he back his campaign committee paid this group,
Capital Research Group. I think in the most recent quarterly filing, I showed
they paid about twelve thousand dollars roughly twelve thousand dollars of services to this group
in August and about ten thousand they paid in the previous quarter before that.
You see it on the FEC website. And was really interesting about that is
Capital Research Group. It's like an OPO firm. They do vulnerability reports,
totally normal stuff in Washington. But that Capital Research Group was founded by a
guy who also founded this group, Narrative Strategies. Do you know about narrative
strategies? Okay, So Narrative Strategies is also one of those Like he's just
like a DC kind of swampy consulting firm. And one of their clients,
funny enough, is Blackstone Blackstone Group. And I just thought this was this
was flagged to me by someone, and I just thought this was really an
amusing illustration of the swamp and kind of perfectly fits actually into the context that
we're talking about right now. So Blackstone is run by Steven Schwarzman, really
Trump friendly guy. I think he flirted with maybe supporting DeSantis. The New
York Times described him as like a lifelong Republican who favors lower taxes and spending
alongside beliefs like the need to preserve women's reproductive freedom. That's like one of
rum the New York Times. He also helped broker like a deal with President
shi Jin Pang and President Trump during the Trump administration. But it's just like
a very I just find it to be such an amusing, swampy anecdote that
someone who is working for Narrative. The guys name is Ed Mullin, So
somebody who's working for Narrative is also working for Rosendale. Who even the Wall
Street Journal editorial board was like nah, like he said something. During the
he's been very supportive. He voted, he motioned, he voted for the
motion of a Kate Kevin McCarthy. So he's definitely like a rabble rouser.
I don't know if he's actually in the Freedom Caucus, but Freedom Caucus adjacent
at the very least. Again, like representative probably have a lot of his
constituents in a way that wrinkles the Wall Street Journal editorial board. And here
you have somebody who has a foot in both camps and is in theory helping
Blackstone Group will also helping the Rosevelt campaign. Like it is just such a
it's so normal here, it's such a normal part of the culture, so
there's nothing unusual about it at all. But someone flagged that for me,
and I was like, that is so perfect. That is exactly the type
of thing that never gets any coverage. But is We'll see how long it
lasts. And you know, I was curious. Usually oftentimes in DC,
you can help left wing causes and Republican democratic causes and Republican causes, fine,
but if you start to deal too much with working with someone who's upsetting
leadership, right, then you get in a lot of trouble, right.
I mean, we know folks who have done a lot of work and been
very successful and had great careers fighting and working with the rabble rousers. But
those people are objectively barred by McConnell and his team from ever touching the nominee
wo's one of theirs. They will never get any of that money, they'll
never have access to that pot because they touch the forbidden fruit, and Blacksmim
spends millions of dollars lobbying, they've been involved in ESG stuff. It's just
like it is an objectively evil company. There is no ideological consistency between And
this is obvious to any normal person outside of Washington, DC, that there's
no ideological consistency between working for a consulting firm that's helping Blackstone and working for
an opera group that's helping Rosendale. Like that's just money. It's literally just
money and power. That's only logical way to explain a relationships like that.
But here's just we don't even batten I we don't even bat an eye.
And to your point, I'm very curious how this speaker race, not necessarily
to see whether it ends up being McHenry or Jordan or somebody else. I'm
curious how this period, unprecedented period of what at least two weeks without a
Speaker of the House changes the way power is I guess distributed in the House
of Representatives, Like does a speaker ever matter? Now that it's been like
clear that you can go a couple weeks without a speaker, does that motion
of a kate? Does the squad give up the motion of a kate?
If Democrats win the House again, or do they demand like Freedom caucusers did,
that they have a one person motion of ak. Yeah. I kind
of lean towards the House Representatives being fairly permanently damaged by this episode agree and
not being able to get it back together. I mean the House representatives like
what we talked about this the other day with the argument server on the Senate
side dress code, Like how much is the House representatives operating remotely the way
that ought to? It's not. You know, I've heard this from some
of the Gags people, and I think that I really don't buy the grand
strategy of the Gags people. They keep on trying to spend it. There
was one point they're like, wholl holding up Funny into Ukraine was the point
of that? And it's like, Okay, no, it wasn't. The
dog caught the car and said it was because it was for the bumper or
something. But now they're saying, well, the point is we wanted to
show the emperor had no clothes, right right, right right, And the
point was the point is the chaos, and the point is showing how much
Republicans, Republicans will work with Democrats to just get their spending agenda. Pushed
on their foreign wars and their pet projects, and that we want to show
just how much scoring the GOP has for its own base. I think it's
a useful exercise. I don't think that was the goal. No, they
really think they know what the goal was. And if they did know what
the goal was, and they've been absolutely terrible at actually communicating that in real
time. Nowadays they're doing like a big clean up thing that's also not what
they were elected to do. And again, like, I actually think there's
a good case for the argument you just laid out, like the House of
Representatives is the swamp on autopilot because of the omnibuses, and they pushed McCarthy
to do single subject bills and to move away from omnibuses. That became extremely
difficult because they couldn't get anything done. And part of this, I'd be
curious as to see how this year had played out if they had had a
bigger majority, if they had, like in a hypothetical fantasy world, had
gotten all those concessions out of McCarthy and just had a more comfortable margin of
power in the House, like, would they have been able to actually do
some really serious damage to the UNI Party or would it have made it Would
that have been better for the uniparty because McCarthy would have gotten more of what
he wanted. I don't know. Christian would have probably been better for the
UNI Party. But it is actually interesting that this entire experiment ran with such
a slim slim majority because it just made it almost impossib almost impossible, And
that's why McCarthy didn't want to concede the motion of vacate. On the other
hand, though Pelosi got rid of the motion of vacate, that was unprecedented.
That was what was unprecedented. So the Republicans who demanded it were not
wrong in saying we should go back to the way things were. It's just
that to your point, Chris, And actually this is something Crystal Ball over
her breaking Points, she mentioned this today. She's like, it's got to
be McHenry because when things are default, that's what Washington loves. There's nothing
easier for Washington than they're shrugging and letting the sort of slouching towards bethelhem right,
just letting everything play out based on autopilot. And that's a really interesting
point because if that happened, if the speakership's permanently damaged, if the House
of Representatives is permanently damaged. I also, though contragates, see that as
a really big win for the UNI Party, because they're the ones who win
if the House of Representatives is just thrown into chaos, because Washington will just
function as usual instead of having any targeted, serious, muscular threat to its
power. It'll just keep going on. Yeah, I think that's right.
The autopilot definitely favors the Unit Party. They're going to fund Ukraine. They
will do it well. The President's giving a primetime address tonight from the Oval
Office, not about any of the afflictions hitting the United States right now,
but about Israel and Ukraine, which Jonah Goldberg says, by the way,
or the same war. Did you read his column? No, I don't
read Jonah Goldberg columns. The same war, the same which, by the
way, is like to compare the Dawn Boss to the West Bank in any
way, even implicitly, even implicitly, it's just so incredibly insulting. Well,
if if I were to take the Nikki Haley, with all of her
incredible foreign policy experience as an ambassador nations, any war that America doesn't fight
against whoever Nikki Haley designates, helps China take Taiwan. Yes, yes,
so that's probably maybe. Is that what General god Work's point was, Well,
take Taiwan. But can we say, actually, this is a really
worthwhile point that's gotten basically zero media attention to the last couple of days.
Well, Joe Biden was in Israel falling asleep next to net and Yahoo,
Chijin Ping and Vladimir Buten. We're in Beijing celebrating the tenth anniversary of the
Belt and Road Initiative, talking about how they are old friends. And in
the shadow of all of that, Iran's power is also metastasizing. Well,
the Biden administration sensibly has an Irani inspiring the State Department and the Pentagon has
a lot to do with Hamas well. No, that's what I'm saying,
like exactly all of this is happening in the shadow of Ukraine and whatever Biden,
whatever else Biden is talking about. I saw Biden's speech talking about how
it was the other team, as I referred to Hamas, and I don't
if he was so kind to Republicans and conservatives, Maga, conservatives are terrorists.
But us AS is the other team. It seems like there's been a
real switcheroo in Washington, DC on that one. He's going to give this
speech tonight. I think he's going to try and position himself as a wartime
president. As my guess, I mean, his domestics are following so dramatically.
That's not to say that he doesn't believe that these wars are really important
to America, but I do think that the American people don't no longer instinctively
believe that fighting the Russians and even fighting in Israel are instinctive are necessary American
wars. So he's in order to position himself as a wartime president, he's
going to have to convince the American people that these are America's wars, and
that's going to be I think a harder sell than it would have been twenty
years ago. Did you see Ntaho's speech where he talked about the access of
evil with Hamas and has below, Because I'm of two minds on that.
Who gave clearly a wartime president speech. He's in huge hot water obviously in
Israel, where as we've talked about, I mean, people are furious about
the security failure and the intelligence failure, and rightfully so, and a lot
of that opprobrium is being directed at Nan Yahu. He came out and gave
an address talking about how yeah, these are this is the Hamas has bela
access of evil. That is that phrase is obviously I'm not using this flippantly,
but like triggering for a lot of people in the West, especially in
America, because it sounds like an invitation to a new never ending right at
the same time, I mean, they're one. It's not really much an
access of evil as much as as I ran and then Iran allied with Russia
who were fighting a proxy war against to the tune of millions and millions of
dollars China, who were in a cold war with and fighting right now over
the potential the potential source of like all of the chips that we need for
some of the most important weapons, some of the most important pieces of American
daily life. And then you add North Korea to the mix, and that
sort of that hexas let's call it, is coalescing right now. And the
way that we approach Hesbalah and hamas Is and Israel on the other side is
really fragile and sensitive right now because we could look back on what happened in
Israel as a much sort of larger scale Frans Ferdinand assassination is I hope people
understand that it's not in our interest to be hyperbolic about that kind of thing.
I'm genuinely not trying to be hyperbolic. I really think this is a
fragile ecosystem right now. Yeah, it's incredibly fragile, and we have Joe
Joe Biden at the wheel falling asleep. Yeah, as well, Joe Biden's
run his foreign policy. It's sort of thing that could definitely trigger a regional
war, which could trigger a broader war, especially there is a regional war.
Yeah, it's a regional warrior, right, two of them. The
broader war would be if it becomes Israel versus Iran, which is possible.
I'm really I'm surprised that Israel has not gotten into Gauza yet. I don't
really know why. I don't see a win for them if they go into
Gaza. It seems like it's an absolute abject disaster. I don't even know
if they have the force and the power going to Gaza. One thing that's
become abundantly clear from this whole disaster that Nonaho finds himself in is that the
weakness and the atrophy and the decadence that has impacted the broader West Israel is
not immune from. There's very little better clarification of that than the awful images
we saw of a bunch of teenagers and people in the early twenties coming up
from a night of techno fuel drugs in the desert, with vicious, hardened
barbarians descending from the sky with guns to massacre them right past the security systems.
That the decadence and the atrophy that we've we've generally found in America with
probably our problems with crew men are problems with attacks on our national self understanding.
Israel turns out to have not been immune from that. It was interesting
that festival was so close to Gaza, Yeah, really interesting. I got
a techno burning man or something that so close to Gaza and it was for
peace right. It was a piece music festival. Yeah, it was a
peace music festival, but it was six am when everyone was awake. I
mean it was a drug music festival. You know. I just met like
they're sort of purported and I don't mean purported again pejoratively. That's there are
a lot of really well intentioned people who are caught up in decadent culture and
who are caught up in some really some really laudable goals, for instance peace.
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podcasts. We've talked about this in the podcast before, but there's and there's
just an incredible amount of damage that vicious cruel men can do to men.
Yeah, really that can do to anyone, but particularly towards people who think
things are good and have been the beneficiarias of wealth and success and peace.
They can do a lot. And the willingness and the feeling that a lot
of Western powers have to for the States just rely on aircraft carriers, which
I think we'll probably see an aircraft carriers sink in the next quarter century,
next quarter century at least, the temptation amongst Israel's leaders to rely on the
Iron Dome, you know, this great, great defense and we're just going
to stop them, and the security at defenses we'll just have We'll just have
female soldiers every now and then, many these very high tech sections. The
feeling in England to rely on CCTV and just the goodness of people, or
in America with all these because we're just if we're just easier on criminals,
I think it's just a broader trend if we just go easier on people,
if we if we don't sentence so strongly, if we don't arrest for all
these minor crafts, hard vicious people exist, and they will take advantage of
that. People who do not care about human life, people who hate you,
and you see it all across the West as barbarians are essentially at the
gates. Sometimes I talk to you, and you legitimately reframe an issue in
such a thoughtful wacross. Because as as you saying that, I'm thinking of
the deaths that happened here in the United States, and especially in the one
in New York of the like a cab activist who was stabbed. He had
been sitting with his girlfriend on a bench at like four in the morning in
Manhattan and a roving he was psychologically damaged. Man stabbed him to death.
And this guy had been, you know, an anti police, social justice
activist. There was another story in Philadelphia, though that one is turning out
to be much more complicated. It looks like, actually, the what I
thought it was, Yeah, I'm sure you did. Sure that was your
suspicion, was a victim of his own lifestyle. It turns out that they
may have had a statutory rape relationship. Actually that he was like some thirty
four year olds who had been courting a fifteen year old boy anyway in recent
years. Yeah, so anyway, a little bit more complicated. But that
question of decadence also brings us to the college campuses. It also brings us
to the streets of Dearborn, Michigan, which it doesn't surprise me one bit
that the streets of Dearborn, Michigan look like they have looked over the last
couple of days, with people waiving Palestinian flags and large numbers. Dearborn is
obviously a hugely Muslim community in Michigan, but you've also seen it in Times
Square. You've seen people openly not just supporting Palestinian civilians, but supporting Hamas.
We saw the paraglider image being used a couple of times by social justice
groups. This isn't to say every person who is organizing on behalf of the
Palaestin Miilian civilians is interested in supporting Hamas, although I would say some of
them actually are, because we have seen the paragliders, and we have heard
what people have said. And again, if you are somebody with answerree in
Palestine, if you are somebody who has this anti colonial mindset, then I
mean, I guess logically your argument for Palestine is you know, I think
it's awful. I guess it checks out. You know, It's like that
Washington Post author liking the tweet that was like, what did you guys think
decolonize meant? Of course, this is what decolonizing looks like it's not you
know, holding hands and singing Kumbaya. It is essentially ethnic cleansing in Israel.
That's what from the river to the sea and practice means there is no
from the river to the sea by holding hands. That's not what it looks
like. So Chris, I did find it interesting that some of these students
ended up not being docs because they signed public letters, but having employers,
having employers look for the names of everybody who had signed those letters, some
people. I think at least one person lost a job at a big like
white shoe firm because of it. That's the decadent bubble being burst, right.
It's all fun and games when you're talking about decolonizing. It's all fun
and games when you're talking about colonialism. When you are smacked in the face
with the harsh reality of the world, I think your ideology is going to
change a little bit. And I feel like there actually is a generation of
people who have the social justice ideology because our culture has conditioned them to see
it as the only moral way to approach the world, who are slowly being
mugged by reality. I mean, it's a lot easier to talk about decolonization
when you no longer have the Apache rating your settlements and killing your women and
children and carrying them off and slaughtering the men and burning it down again,
and when you're not seeing social media images of people being slaughtered in mass Yeah,
it's really easy for these kind of decolonizer folks to reach into the pass,
to a brutal pass that they have no connection to, where they don't
know what it was like on the frontiers, in the back and forth battles
between the colonists and the Indians, which were brutal on all sides. There
was war. They don't have that anymore. The now America's Indian population lives
an extremely impoverished, drug addicted human trafficking reservations and some of them living around
casinos. But they're certainly not raiding borders and attacking people. So that's easier
than to go back and say it was really bad what happened. Everything was
evil this combat, and there was there was evil on all sides of of
course, but us both satirism here when you're very fine people on both sides
of the Mississippi River, but when you've got a hamas live streaming horizontally.
It might add live streaming these vicious attacks on stoned concert goers fleeing in the
desert, and you can't just close your eyes and say it's not real.
I mean they still have They've started to say, well, they didn't capitate
thirty babies, forty maybe thirty, it was just it's they're still trying to
draw that line. But here you are confronted with the thing that you claim
is so good. Like it's like there's they're making a remake of this.
Like the other side of the Israeli security fences, it's just fern Gully where
people live in complete the noble, savage and complete sympatico with natures. Actually
no, it's some pretty hard barbarians on that side that will kill everyone here
if they get the chance. I have a rule where I cut Chris off
anytime you mentioned fern Gullie. I'm implementing it right now. I always joked
at it as all the Pocahontas rule, where it's like these evils, evil
Europeans has arrived and disturb the peaceful, nature loving ecosystem that existed in America
before them. It's a complete and total fantasy. It's just Chris's only pop
culture point of reference to his only pop culture point of reference into world affairs
is fern Gully also Captain Planet mostly fern Gully thirty years war. Well that's
not pop culture maybe in your mind. Christopher Bedford, Executive editor over at
The and Since Society, thank you so much. It was great to have
you back, great to be here. All right, Well, you've been
listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Drshinski, culture
editor here at The Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then,
be lovers of freedom and anxious for the Fray