Well, whiskey coming, take my pain, don's my brain? Oh whiskey,
don't you let me go? Whiskey? Won't you help me hide?
Oh you don't let me go? Where they slapped it up and live it?
Ain't you easy on the Soldier Times guy to give it and let that
whiskey flow where you're feeling lowest down and low Well, all right, gang.
I'm not sure whether to call this episode Ricochet Podcast over time or free
Whiskey, Happy Hour, after hours or a bonus edition, but our fanatical
fans will know that yesterday the three of us occupied the flagship Ricochet Podcast,
taking Peter Robinson and Rob Long's place and tormenting poor James Alex, who's really
a very good guy. And by the way, he and I, I
will tell you, did not form a fade length against you, because James
is a fellow progressive rock enthusiast and like all the same seventies acts that I
do. Oh my god, I thought I could hear air Supply playing in
the back. Oh that's not air Supply. That's even worse than me called
a monarchist man. But there were a couple of issues that we discussed in
the course of that very wide ranging and fun time with James that I thought
are worth revisiting and more detailed because we're ideally suited for it. And so
if you didn't listen to the Ricochete podcast, don't worry. You don't have
to go back and listen to it as a preface for this one. This
will stand all on its own. But it's kind of like power Mind back
in the classroom, as Lucretian I have done a few times. So the
two issues that I think we should say a little bit more about as one
is the question of I think what you'd say, institutional trust, and the
second one is the whole problem of human rights, positive rights, natural rights.
And you know we've touched on these before. But John, it would
give us an opportunity to tease you about your Hobbes video from a few months
ago that we kept threatening to do but never got round to. So,
so with that, any inter of you want to say anything more about our
star turn on Ricochet yesterday before we get launched, Well it was it was
fun to take over. I think they should let us just run their podcast
permanently. Well, I'm convinced Peter Robinson is stashed in the Witness Protection program
somewhere or something I don't know, is in that jail where they put preppy
criminals. I was gonna say, maybe he's shopping for new ascuts and sweaters.
That's that's what John always accuses him of, right right, all right,
So it was fun. James is a bit of a I do have
to say. I have to tell people that we were texting and chatting back
and forth about the fact that James's ability to segue into his sponsors advertisements is
legendary. I mean, it's I have no idea how even does that.
He picks up on something somebody else says and twists and turns it and the
next thing you know, he's talking about a sponsor that has nothing to do
with anything, right, Yeah, So that was that. I was impressed.
And you're halfway into the ad before you even know what he's done,
right And Well, there used to be the practice that we've all given up,
but Rob Long would interrupt him and try and knock him off his game,
and I think James finally decided he had enough of that, so we
don't do it to him anymore. But that was always fun, you know,
Rob and say well, where are you gonna get some nice sheets?
I mean, I don't know, there's nobody really who sells nice sheets.
So that's on the way in the bowl and branch and whatnot. All right,
well, then let's charge into it. The to my mind, one
of the biggest problem today, and Lucretia, you brought it up I think
last week of the week before about things are so bad? Is there any
way to get the country back together again after the polarization that everyone is concerned
with. So I always point to what is called the trust problem. So
here's the top line. If you go back to the late fifties, when
the major polling organizations Gallop Paris then and others, they ask people a question
that usually went, do you have confidence in the federal government to do the
right thing all the time? Most of the time, or none of the
time, or very little of the time, something like that. And it
used to be that the people who said they had confidence in the federal government
to get things right was about seventy eight percent in the late nineteen fifties.
Today it rarely gets above fifteen percent. And if you chart the time series
from the sixties to now, it's an all unbroken slope downward, with the
exception of the Reagan years, which you can put a side and leave for
later. Now before you go inste you can I just say, is that
because of the famous Reagan line, the whatever number of many words, it
is scary words and dangerous word, scary words in the English language. Oh,
we're from the government and we're here. I'm here. Well, yeah,
all right, I'll just say this, but we come back to this
point. James Q. Wilson made the argument some years ago that at the
end of the nineteen fifties, when Gallup first started asking that question, the
average citizen looks out and sees what they see a American government than one.
World War Two set a generation of gis to college, and the GI Bill
built the Interstate Highway system. It was a good time for all Americans.
By the way, people say, well accept blacks. True that you still
had segregation in the South, but the black white meeting income gap fell by
half during the nineteen fifties, so even black Americans were advancing rapidly in the
nineteen It was a good time for America, and the government looked like it
had done a pretty good job. From the sixties on. We know what
the government's record is, right, Can we just make the point in case
anybody us is it, which I doubt they will, which is that government
tried to do so much less in those days to begin with, never mind
the corruption of it, but government didn't try to do everything. The Interstate
Highway was probably the Interstate Highway project was probably something a little bit beyond what
government had often done before. You know, you can think back to seventy
five years before that when presidents would veto attempts to do essentially what we're interstate
roads, right, that was you know, that was probably a step further
than they gone. But it was a massive success. And of course today
our government can't even keep those roads up. But anyways, sorry I interrupted,
go back. That's all right, I think at one point, well,
it's worth mentioning. I'm glad you did bring it up. It's worth
mentioning that there was still in that you know, what really was the heyday
of the New Deal era, what New Deal ideology was still writing strong.
Eisenhower thought and the leaders in Congress thought, this has to be constitutionally permissible.
So remember the Interstate Highway Act. I think that's formal title is something
like Highways and National Defense Authorization Act of nineteen fifty five or something like that.
Other words, they had to anchor it in a clear constitutional power,
whereas when you get ten years later to education. By the way, That's
what James Q. Wilson thought was the real turning point when the federal government
passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Assistants Act. I think it's called in sixty
five. No constitutional justification for that right and that highway system. It's just
Act by the way, Elementary and Second Dairy Education Act. Okay ee a
right, yeah, yeah yeah. So I was a young reporter at the
Wall Street Journal summer after college, and they wanted me to do a story
for Labor Day. So I was trying to figure out what the story story.
I did. The finishing of the Interstate Highway System. This is nineteen
eighty nine, thirty forty years after the start of the Internet. State Highway
sstant. They were still working on it. There were still parts that weren't
finished. Yes, And it's funny even while they were finishing it, other
parts were deteriorating that they didn't go back and fix up again. So it's
like a never ending, you know, Habit trail, you know for the
Gerbil But what was interesting one two things about it. One was yeah,
I my recollection is that the main driving force behind the Internet state highway system
was President Eisenhower. Yes. And the reason he was is because when he
had gone into Germany during World War Two, he saw the German highway system
and admired it because it allowed them to move troops and equipment back. So
here's another example of Teutonic influences coming back to America. No speed limit part
come with it, I know. Well, of course, as we know
for Lucretia, speed limits are strictly optional, so it's meaningless signs anyway,
And the one of the thing my editors said, oh, well, we
want you to go to some part of the highway system that's in bad shape
and drive along it and talk about it. So I arranged the only time
I've done this, I arranged to go in an eighteen wheeler truck those gigantic
highway cruisers, to sit in the cab with a driver. And one of
the worst rated places was between I think New Orleans and Streeveport, Louisiana.
So we drive along and you know when you hit a pole? Ten or
what was it? Do you remember? I remember maybe a ten or something.
So we hit a pothole. And when you sit in those cabs and
you hit one of those big pothles, you go up like a foot in
the air inside the cab. So I was like, so we hit the
first one, and I'm like, what happened? What happened? How come
I'm not knocked out? And I looked up at the top of the cab
and the driver had installed like a six inch thick phone piece at the top
of its cab, and you could see the indentations where its head kept hitting
it over and over again from all the bottles in the highway system. Well,
first of all, can I send my experience? I just learned two
things that I did not know. Uh. First of all, the visual
of you writing an eighteen wheel truck is I don't even want to say about
that. That's just beyond the imagination. At least he didn't let him drive
it, Steve, Oh, I know, I beg I begged the driver.
He wouldn't let me. Oh no, those are quite hard to drive.
But then I didn't know that you had been a reporter at the Journal
was that. Was that the early years of the Bartley Fellowship or something like
that? Or was I was a reporter not an editorial writer. Oh really?
When I first met Paul gy go oh, I see it was a
job. You had a real job. It was a real job. Jow
wow. Yeah, he's ever thought I had a real job when I worked
as a journalist. But no, I did when you worked as a journalist.
Okay, but actually that explains a lot about what you two are so
felicitous with your writing because of your journalism experience and how you both thinking so
quickly just have an idea and turn out an article fifteen minutes later. That
always impressed me, even with Steve John from the moment I met him.
Everything else I made fun of, but I always told him that he had
a tremendous way with words, And yeah, I was always impressed by that.
So that explains a lot. It's all about the lead, baby,
That's what I always say. Okay, all right, back back to our
topic. One one more bit of news and then we can get us some
themes and explanations and remedies. See, because I think John, you're remedy
on the FBI, which I'll repeat is necessary but not sufficient. If you
go down below the top line level for the government as a whole and so
forth, and do individual institutions, what you see there is a wider range.
And so the public confidence has always remained pretty high for things like the
military, the police. Actually, after the Michael Brown affair back in twenty
fifteen that started Black Lives Matter, public support for the police and defund the
police, public support for the police actually went up in the six months after
that. That's not true, Yeah, it was really Gallup has the numbers
on that. It was not surprising, I think, But after the relentless
publicity after the George Floyd a moment, even public support for the police has
been trending down. The point is is that a lot of institutions held up
pretty well, including the FBI, and now public's confidence in specific institutions is
plumbering across the board. So the military, for the first time in some
surveys is below fifty percent. I think there's lots of specific reasons about that.
We should go into some of that. Can I just ask you a
question about that. Do you have in front of you any data about the
difference between the confidence in the military respect whatever you want to call it.
For the military as an institution now and say immediate post Vietnam, I don't.
That's sorry, I didn't, But no, I wanted to try and
look some of that up. And uh, it takes a while to go
back and find what the and I'll bet it was lower for the same reason
we'd lost the war, we'd you know, I think also the draft was
unpopular. Of course, by the mid seventies, when the war is finally
lost, we'd abandoned the draft. But still, why didn't people want to
I mean, I graduated high school in the mid seventies. I didn't want
to go into the military because you know, why would you that? You
know, the pay is low, the morale is low. What's it gonna
do? Uh? And you know, morale's sword under Reagan, as we
know, one of the first things Reagan did was raised pay for soldiers,
so that you know more. You know, the mini victory of Grenada didn't
hurt either, you know that, right, and and uh it was strength
to the point a little bit. But you know when uh, in nineteen
eighty one, when our aircraft carrier commanders were saying, what are the rules
of engagement when these Libyans keep harassing us with the airplanes and Reagan said,
you can shoot back. He says, how far can we chase them?
And he said all the way back to the Hangar, and that was known
as the Reagan Rules of Engagement. Well, that's good from moral right,
So I have a similar problem now, I think, right, we've you
know, twenty years of involvement in the Middle East, which has soured everybody
on it, and then the walkerie, which you've talked about. We can
come back to all that. Steve reminded me when we get to remedies to
think about what's really happening in what you just described, and that is that
it was kind of the reason that I brought it up. It's that you
actually can turn things around with the right message and the right actions that underlie
that message. I guess might be how I put it in other words,
you know, I remember you probably remember this too. I'm sure John's too
young. And after the Iraq or during the very beginning of the Iraq War,
when they started playing that Tony Orlando song with a tie yellow ribbon,
and then I mean that ribbons now show ribbons for everything It wasn't just yellow
ribbons for the troops coming home. You know, breast cans are on and
on and on every silly thing under the planet. But that made a huge
difference as well, that there was just this push to instead of to be
treating soldiers returning from conflict as pariah's and worse, you know, call yellows
and all that other nonsense. We saw that with the right kind of message,
that you could actually turn those attitudes around. Same thing I think happened
after nine to eleven. Yeah, well, let's hold that thought because I
think that that's all right, that's okay, all right. Let me give
you, uh, sort of three aspects of the causes here, or the
deeper background of it. I mean, we talk a lot about corruption within
certain elements of the FBI and partisan champa, and you know, some of
that's been really proven the Russia hoax business and so forth. And then we
already mentioned competence. The government is now trying to do things beyond its competence
and people are gonna perceive that, right, We're gonna We're gonna eliminate poverty
in ten years. Lyndon Johnson's people told us in nineteen sixty six fifty years
ago. Now. The other one is ideology is part of it. I
think that's one of the reasons. I mean, I saw a headline that
says the rebuilding effort in Lahina in Hawaii will be based on principles of equity.
What's that gonna mean. It's gonna be a cultural sensitivity probably right.
It goes along with it, right, instead of just letting people rebuild.
It's good. I mean, I remembering your comment about some oddities of this
fire. There have been two, at least in my lifetime, big fires
in Santa Barbara that wiped out hundreds of houses and it was just twenty thirty
years ago. Huge bureaucratic hurdles just to rebuild your house on the land had
been on before. And that's gonna happen in Hawaii. It's going to be
a mass, great case study worst probably, that's right. I do want
to make a real quick mention though, that your weekend pictures, and it
wasn't in the comments, it was in your part of the weekend pictures.
My conspiracy theory got a little bit of notice from some of your means.
I don't remember which one happened, the one about the directed energy for instance.
Oh, I don't I don't remember that one, now, you know.
Yeah, anyway, sorry, the other thing is so ideology, competence,
corruption, And here's the broader point. And you guys can help me
flesh this out a little bit. Maybe if you go back to the late
forties, after the war, fifties. Uh, we've always had elites.
I mean, you know, sometimes the attack on the leads is a little
overdrawn. But I'll say this way, are old elites used to have what
do you want to say? They took the idea of no bless a beach
more seriously, Now it's condescension, I mean right, it's Oh you see
the reaction to this guy who's done this, Uh what ginger Man. I
think you called him the preciate, this guy who's done this Beard right,
rich Man north of Richmond, And it's this huge cultural sensation and you're seeing
the backlash against it, including even from National Review, which really shocked me.
I mean even well almost his establishment. Well that's a serious point about
how you know, William F. Buckley was always an elitist. But I
don't think you would utter a condescended to this guy. Quite the opposite,
I think even understood exactly and for his magazine now to dump on this guy
for not celebrating the greatness of America and the ways you can get ahead is
just so tone deaf. But the point is, I don't quite know how
to draw this point out precisely, but I think there was in the older
elites. I don't know if it's a more genuine public spiritedness as opposed to
a grandistness of elite status or what it is, but I'm gonna let John
talk first, but I have the answer. Well, my point is,
you know, I'm thinking of people like the Dullest Brothers and even Dean Atchison,
who I can criticize the day is long, But there were different kinds
of people than the ensconced elites we have today. That's the point I'm trying
to develop. Don go no, I agree with you that the elites are
different. I think we have. I think Charles Murray's shown this with this
this elite that's built around credentialism and higher education rather than elite's built on achievement
or elites you know, based on I know history, you know, although
I'm not for aristocracy or anything, but you know, the original question is
why are we having this assault on the institutions and what's the best response?
Lucius saying, what's the remedy? So I don't think the change in the
elites necessarily is what's causing the loss of confidence in the institutions. I don't
blame younger people or thinking there's a problem, because they think about what this
generation has lived through. They lived through, you know, very little.
When they're very little, they see the nine to eleven tax, where they
think the country has failed in the basic mission of secure national security. And
then when they were little, they probably saw their parents suffering from the economic
collapse in two thousand and eight two thousand and nine, which I don't know,
I don't know what you guys think. Seems to me to to an
inflated housing bubble, bubble caused by or economic policies. And then they see
all the uncertainty nowadays being wrought by the introduction of new technology into the economy.
So I don't blame them for saying, what does any of this work?
These institutions have poorly served us. Maybe the problem is since we have
this different elite class, they're not really the best representatives or defenders of institutions.
You know, they're you know their defenses. Well, I scored high
on the SAT so you know it's a good institution. That's not very compelling
a right, So you know, we but just like my conservative instinct is
I can't remember who it was. You guys are into these people more than
I. But you know the guy who said, you know, when you
come to a fence, uh and just blocked your way, don't think you
have to tear it down. Someone probably put it there for a good reason
in the first place. Is that like one of your one of your PEPs,
one of your peeps. So but I might you know some my instinct
is yeah, I mean I wouldn't automatically think we should burn down these institutions.
I just feel like a lot of the people on the right, especially
the nat con movement, has that, you know, that's their agenda.
So so when we talked on the Brookochet podcast, my foot, you know,
I just raised the FBI. You know, there's a strong segment of
the conservative movement that is now talking about defunding the FBI. There might be
good reasons or bad reasons for that, but just getting rid of the FBI
and pretending the need to protect our country from terrorists or espionage or from mafia
organized crime groups. It's still going to be there yet to have a solution.
So that's why I favored maybe moving the headquarters, decentralizing it, you
know, which it does, But getting rid of the FBI that seems like,
you know, remedy, you know, the cure that's worse than disease
or remedy that you creates all kinds of unintended consequences that are worse. No,
not because part of the reason for that is it hammered Now, John,
sorry to hammer you, because I think that that you're gonna agree with
my criticism John, when the episode, this is what happens. When you
read those seven thousand page tomes about the FBI, you get this insights into
him. We didn't have an FBI until Jay Edgar Hoover, and he,
you know, because of the kind of person he was, just found all
sorts of ways to expand the jurisdiction of the FBI. At the same time
that the federal government started pausing laws making activities illegal that they have no business
doing. You know, remember remember the day, back in the day when
criminal laws were primarily the subject of state, the police powers of the state.
So if you get rid of ninety nine percent of the federal laws on
the books, you do only need an FBI for the purposes of worrying about
international terrorism? Do I do? I want? The FBI is shown itself
to be completely what's the word untrustworthy when it comes to domestic terrorism. I
mean, they're after me, for God's sakes, because I'm a domestic terrorist.
I'm proud of it, by the way. I'm proud of the fact
that I'm on an FBI watch list, and anyway, I'm kidding, But
first of all, are you really on an FBI watch list? It was
a joke because I'm a I'm a radical, traditional Catholic by the way,
So we're doing its job right. You should behind the watch should have been
I'm not one of those thirty unindicted co conspirators. Well, here's a tip
for listeners. If you want to get an FBI file started on you,
what you do is you send them a FOI request asking for the contents of
your FBI file, and if you don't have one, they'll start one at
least on your foyer. And I've heard this, and then you know a
year later you're right and say, may I please see my FBI file,
and they'll send in the file of your first letter in first response. So
you know, there's a perfect example for John of the idea that I might
be willing to keep an FBI if it was reduced to about two percent of
its current workforce. The fact that the FBI has time to do things like
that, to be spying on private citizens and uh, you know, collecting
dossiers on them, that's I mean, that's ridiculous, the idea. And
they've just shown themselves over and over and over again to be so incredibly corrupt,
so biased. And do you remember back when one of those people this
is a little bit off the topic, but it was straight my point,
when one of those people and was killed by police, I want to say,
in Brooklyn maybe I think it was maybe Brooklyn, and because he resisted
arrest, but they were arresting him for selling individual cigarettes because you know,
the price of cigarettes had gone up so much, and so he would buy
cigarettes and sell them individually because people he was arrested for that, Yeah,
I mean so, so then and why is that a crime? Because it
was depriving the government that they're huge. I think that guy would buy them
at Indian casinos where they're exam from the federal and state taxes and right,
well, arbitrazing. So that's a tax problem. But well, but no,
it's a government overreach problem. Government doesn't I mean. And so across
the board, the FBI is enforcing laws that it has no business enforcing because
they shouldn't be on the books, and no federal I mean. Oh,
I promise you if you got rid of the FBI tomorrow, if they completely
shut down all completely shut down, every every penny that goes to the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, this country would not fall into uh, you know,
attack by domestic or international terrorists. There are other agencies that could pick up
the slack on that one, you know, And there's so much overlap between
all of the agencies that have law enforcement powers. We just need to look
at the whole thing and say, too many damn laws and too much power
in the federal government, including in the FBI. Let's just uh, I'll
make him. Well, now here's the here's the thing. If you abolish
the FBI or started something new, eventually it would fall in the same patterns
of incompetence. But we have some time. Well all right, I mean
you know, and I think there's a solution here. There's I Creasius completely
right before the FBI, each agency wouldn't you know, have its own enforcement
agency, right, so like that's we have leftovers of that, like the
ATF and the DA. You know, they're they're the remember the Yeah,
yeah, Elliott Nest doesn't work for the FBI, works for the Treasury Department,
Like he's basically customs of fancy customs and tax officer. So you could
say, maybe it's good to have multiple agencies when you're worried about liberty because
the agencies will compete with each other and fight with each other too. To
make so the example that is used sometimes is I think that this way.
Was it better when we had a separate army and Navy and later air Force,
or was it better now when you have a centralized d D with all
these officers and commands and all that's sit on top of them. Maybe it
was better when the services were always competing and fighting. Well, they still
are to a great extent, John, just so you know, But the
whole when you read these stories about you know, what to do in the
rock or so in Afghanistan. I think this is Colin Powell's fault in a
way, right, Like there's this idea there will be a Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs and he shall give you the military advice. And I like the
better when I read stories about World War Two and you know there's FDR and
you've got like the head of the Navy and the head of the Army arguing
about the best way to you know, whether we should go to Pacific or
the European theater first, rather than pretending, oh, there's one central you
know, expert military advice, which is what you get when you centralize.
Yeah, well, now you don't even know. There's no such thing as
military advice anymore. It's all about social policy and social policy within the military.
I mean, I am so tired and just have to since we went
off on this tangent whining every day coming out of Austin and other people in
the top brass about Tuberville's stopping of any appointments going forward and how, oh
my god, this is terrible military readiness. Every single actually shouldn't say because
some of them are my friends. And they're really good people. But most
of those people who have not been promoted and confirmed for their positions are bureaucrats.
And it's going to make no difference one way or the other. But
why is this a problem? It's why is this an issue? Why is
Tuberville stopping it? Because because Austin insisted on making it a public social statement
that they would pay for women, I guess, or excuse me, birthing
persons to go to different states if they were stationed in a state that had
outlawed abortion or outlaw making abortion available for their particular circumstances. It has been
a policy of the military for decades that if you needed to go somewhere else
for medical treatment. I remember flying from Germany to walter Read for just that
purpose, not for an abortion, but for because my husband needed surgery and
it couldn't be done in Germany, so we flew in. The government paid
for the entire thing. They do that. This whole thing is about Austining
making sure it's in your face. Why are we doing that with our military?
Why? Well, this gets back to my point of ideology is taken
over our elites and alienating everybody, And okay, without even getting into what
are the defects of it and so forth. Back to John's point real quick,
though, I think he's onto something here because I remember, you know,
my dad, a World War Two Navy flyer. I used to talk
to him some about the different requirements the naval Air services versus the Army Air
Corps, and starting an air force did not solve that problem. And this
will take us too far afield, but you know, one of the reform
attempts, and maybe this is worth the parallel case studies we talk about the
FBI and CIA and others. You know, the Goldwater Nickels Bill in the
mid nineteen eighties was meant to streamline these inner service rivalries and these fights between
the different services. And I'm not sure if that has improved things or not.
And I know a lot of the lore about you know, McNamara thought
we need to make one kind of fighter plane. I think we're still doing
this, and things like the F thirty five one kind of fighter plane that
all the services can use. It sort of one size fits all, and
that's a mistake. I think you're right. I think we get a better
as a result from competitions. Another exam here's another example. It helps it
makes your points to you that I think, lucresh WILLI is after nine to
eleven, we thought there was an intelligence failure, and so what do we
do. We create one guy, one guy, gigantic DHS. Yeah,
and we're you know, combined twenty different agencies the Director of National Intelligence,
right, and we did it with the intelligence community. Not clear. It's
a good idea, wastes a lot of money, creates lots of more government
unions and security. Actually, what they talk about again, watch what they
talk about. What the major pronouncements coming out of the DNI is, uh,
diversity and how do we get more inclusive about our intelligence community so that
we have a grant. I have a grant to increase the diversity of the
intelligence community. Oh my god, oh yeah, yeah. Now see this,
Now this has helped me crystallize my money. I'm gonna take it.
John. Come on, let's do a study. I'll do a study for
you at how many intelligence the racial diversity of intelligence agents that show up at
McDonald's. All right, let's at McDonald's now, John, this uh,
now, this helps crystallize the point that I was struggling with at the end
of my opening bid, which was the dullest brothers Dean Ashton. They ever
would have called in for this nonsense. They may have been, in the
actions case, a liberal and a new dealer and all the rest of that,
but they wouldn't have They wouldn't have surrendered to this kind of trendy,
idiot logical fashions. They would have actually kept their eye on what's central and
what's important. One last thing I'll say, by the way, about that,
and then I think we should move on to topic number two. I
didn't give my my go ahead. Well, that's well, all right.
I've said this long time ago. But one of the very fine senior FBI
agents I used to know, he's now long retired. He actually was one
of the invest principal FBI investigators who arrested all rich Ames, the CIA trader
back in the early nineties. You Oh, he told me great stories about
that. After he'd retired from the FBI, he was offered the head of
I don't know if it's counterintelligence, but the top intelligence one of the top
intelligence jobs in the new Department of Homeland Security. And he said, I
wouldn't go near that with a ten foot poll because he knew it was going
to be a bureaucratic mess. You know, the FBI was bad enough.
And he used to show me his picture of being sworn in as a young
agent by Jagger Hoover himself, which was kind of cool. Right, all
right, Lucretia, what's point of appealing to your guy's classical philosophies? So
is this actually when you make your point about Atchison? And so, by
the way, I had this great little tidbit about Atchison. Yes he was
a liberal, but I was reading this book about the Berlin Wall crisis and
Atchison's advice. They brought Actison into the Kenny administration because they didn't know what
they were doing, and Atchison said, let's just take six divisions, drive
it down the Audubon, and if the East Germans tried to stop us,
let's drop a few tactical nukes on them. So those were those were that
was liberal for Bossy in the good old days. And of course JFK's like,
get this guy out of here. Yeah, but this is this is
remind you of Plutarch and Polybius and this idea of you know, republics are
young, and they are tough, and they you know, they do great
things and then they become rich and luxurious, And is what we were talking
about a sign that we're just too wealthy, that our elites have the luxury
to worry about what the workforce should look like because they are fat and happy
and they're not worried about the security of the country anymore. Isn't it sounds
like the end of the Roman Republic. I thought that's what Lucretia's viewalist Now
mine's deeper even than that, And it's really very simple. I do believe
that I'm gonna say this oversimplified to make it not such a long discussion,
Steve, that our current elites are complete nihilists, and because they believe in
nothing, they certainly cannot believe in any kind of patriotism or recognize why Americans
exception America is exceptional, or any of those other things. So where they
are is having to grasp onto any kind of solid foundation. Right now.
The solid foundation is climate change, it's d ei, and it's you know,
world global dominance. That you know that they're none of those things actually
make any sense when you push down into any one of them, right I
mean, we don't have to go into that because we've discussed it a million
times. But that's that's the current reigning orthodoxy or dare I say religion.
The problem is that when you you adopt this sort of man made religion,
just like with what we saw with with communism in the Soviet Union. Uh,
in order to make sure that you you know, you can fully,
that you can embrace this explanation for the world fully and give your life meaning.
It's not enough just to believe it yourself. You have to force it
on everybody else. And I do think that that's part of the problem with
our elites. Why is it that every time the left moves from being you
know, totally obsessed by feminism and what we have to do there to the
next thing. You know, let's throw the feminists under the bus and let's
embrace transsexualism and transgenderism. And we don't care even if you're a feminist.
Uh Now, we can sacrifice you because we've moved on and this is our
reigning orthodoxy and if we all don't join it, we have no meaning in
life. And if we don't force it on everybody else, we can't be
sure that it's reality, right, I mean, does that explanation make sense
as opposed to someone. You know, I have no idea of Dean Adjison
or Eisenhower. Any of those people were religious, but they certainly were grounded
in some sort of basic idea that there's a difference between good and evil.
Yeah, well they are nothing, I'll say the dullest brothers. They were
the three of them, h and you know, one the Secretary of State,
Oneman's head of the CIA, and the third was a prominent Jesuit's right.
They were very much believers in old fashioned religion. And I mean know
that bring back the Dallas Brothers. Maybe that's gonna be my theme, John,
I don't know, But does what I say makes sense? Why why
they can't leave us alone? You know, Steve's favorite thing is the Left
doesn't care what what you do as long as it's mandatory. But as long
as they get to make it mandatory is what the phrase really should be.
It's you know, they want it doesn't matter what they make you do.
I told Steve I wasn't gonna do it, but I'm gonna do it after
all in this context, So there's an article there's all over Twitter this morning,
John, is a story about how the Biden administration is in the process
of putting in place a new mask mandate and lockdowns for the latest variant of
COVID, and that they're starting with the TSAU pilots, stewardesses, et cetera
will have to We'll be required again because they can do that, you know,
for federal regulations. They can tell stewardesses and airline pilots that they have
to wear masks, and that two months from now the lockdown, the COVID
lockdowns will be complete again. I don't know, I don't have I told
Steve you guys still still haven't sent me my designer tinfoil hat. So I'm
just gonna I told Steve, I gotta put this out there on this podcast
because if I'm wrong and two months from now, none of this has happened,
thank goodness. If I'm right, I'm gonna go see I told you
so, and you can say, see you guys can look at me and
say, now, you, Lucretia, you're a nut job. Be quiet.
Oh look, I figured Steve's got the science math kid who's just went
off to college. It's I was hoping he's gonna design the damn thing.
I've been waiting. We come on, Steve. Oh, I'll get him
on that right away. Speaking of classical virtue that you brought up a mom
gonna go, John. That's topic number two left over from yesterday. We
got off. I don't remember how this happened, but we got off on
the whole problem of human What's that John brought it up? Yeah, and
is interesting discussion. Actually, yeah, it was. But I think we
should carry on with it because there's a lot more to be said with it,
and we're the right people to do it. Plus it gives us a
chance to tease John about his Hobbes video from a few months ago, which
we never got around to. We talked about human rights, and of course
my joke is, we're not even sure what humans are anymore. There are
no more women's rights, since there are no more women, as we know.
But the confusion is the way of what it is that human rights are
essentially any good thing that people assert that they want, a right to housing,
a right to health care, right, all kinds of things. Now,
as it happens, quite separately from all this, the other day I
came across a book I hadn't heard of before called Thomas Hobbes and the Natural
Law, and it's just out from Actually it's been on a while, but
I just found out about it by a guy named Cody Cooper, who apparently
was a student of Tom Pangel And certain listeners in the know will know what
that's code for. And he's arguing that Hobbs act had more in common with
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas than is generally thought that actually his views are entirely harmonious
with the classics, and this is a renegade view in modern times. And
so this has led to people to say, ah, here it comes.
We're gonna get Hobbistottle to go on the shelf next to Locastottle. That you
may know, there's this big project to harmonize lack in Aristotle, that Tom
West is one of the key figures about behind and now we're gonna get Hobbistottle.
So I don't know. I mean, this is a good way of
getting back into explaining the distinction between classical natural law, classical natural right and
modern natural law and natural right and how it ultimately degrades into well, I
was gonna I was gonna pause here, and he's hanging on the edge of
my seat. Right, do you want to weigh in with any more clarifications
lucretia, But I can find it's the problem. This is just Strauss.
I don't know why you can't just turn to Strauss and have this Christians very
simply, and that is that the ancient world and the classical classical philosophy understood,
or let me put it differently, operated within a horizon where there was
not a monotheistic universal God. And so each community, each ah polis what
everyone call, had their own gods who made the laws, and so on.
With the advent of Christianity and the Romans carrying a Christianity all over the
world, you have a universal regime and a universal god, Christianities, the
universal God. Politics becomes very difficult, very difficult, indeed, and because
who do you owe to whom do you owe your allegiance in the In the
classical world, you owed your allegiance to the gods of the city, which
was at the same time obeying the laws with piety. If you are in
the modern world, obeying the laws is not necessarily piety. It could be
if you if you live under a regime with good laws. But this whole
religious problem created. For Machiavelli, for instance, he saw that as the
major problem of the modern world was how do you how do you return powerful
government to its rightful place in human politics in a world dominated by Christianity.
And so what you find it works for Locke, it doesn't work for Hobbes.
Sorry, is that you can in fact find natural right in Hobbes that
is fully consistent with Aristotle, fully consistent with Aristotle in the sense that that
Locke is operating in a world transformed by Christianity. You cannot return, as
you once did to the classical Greek polis, where you could question the gods
of the city, question the laws of the city, because as you all,
it's that's done. I mean, you played a walked us out of
the cave. Socrates walked us out of the cave, and now you know,
so it's a different situation altogether. The real question is how do we
what what gods of the city can we use in order to give our laws,
our fundamental regime principles, the same kind of authority that the gods of
the city once were able to do. And that's of course social contract theory
and the fundamental notion of equality, which builds, of course, on the
Christian idea of all human beings equal, being equal before God, and so
you can. Locke doesn't work if you stick him in third century BC Greek
cities, but third century BC cities don't work if you put them in seventeenth
eighteenth century England or twenty first for America. Wow, it's It's not a
Marxist view, not at all. It's an understanding of of the the the
experiences under which you operate, the environment, the culture, the all of
that. I don't even know what the right word for it all is.
But you cannot go back to the days where we just have the gods of
the city. Maybe you could even say that that's somewhat what the left is
trying to do. They're going to replace the Christian God and the notion of
right and wrong revelation with their own gods, which are you know, climate
change and diversity and so on. Uh. We're always looking for authority,
We're always looking for something beyond ourselves that we can believe in, that that
that can remind us that maybe we're not non existent human beings staring into the
void. I don't even know anyway, sorry, I'll be quiet now.
Well that was a tour to force John. Do you want to comment or
ask a question about that? Yeah? Yeah, so I how do you
respond then, to the idea that the state of nature and the social compact
are really the creation of Hobbes? And Hobbes uh, you know, isn't
so accommodating to Christianity as Locke is. Just you know, so, you
know, you guys are teasing me. I did you know, I am
a I do like the work of Hobbes, and I do like people who
write it, you know, trying to revive interest in him, and I
did. I don't know why, but Prague, are you asking me to
do these videos about Hobbes? And so I actually went back and reread Hobbs
for the first time in a while, probably since I sat down in Harvard
Mansfield's intro to Political Theory and read it carefully in the you know, the
original carefully. And I think of him as thinking he is making a break
with the ancients, and you know, making a break with Arson Plato with
this idea of the state and nature and social unpacked and you know, his
his account, I think very strange treatment and discussion of the Church and Christianity.
It seemed like he was being very weasily, actually much more forthright about
it. You could still be burned at the stake for heresy and those you
have to be very careful what you right. Yeah, I mean, I
know this is what how Strassman's approach it. Right. You guys say there's
something you say to the general public that won't get you in trouble, and
then you hide the real message inside that. And so when I was trying
to think of it that way, it seems to me Hobbs was quite dubious
about Christianity and its role, even though I didn't want to say it out
right. That seems quite contrary to what you just describe. Don't be harmonious
with the past. Well, first of all, let's let me go to
your first question, and that's the difference between Hobbs and Locke and why why
it is? When I think the way you put it was, if you
see the modern the answer to the modern problem as a social contract that you
know that we understand from that construct of the state of nature, why then
do I not see Hobbs in the same light as say Locke and beyond.
Here's the difference, and I'll just do talk about the difference between Hobbes and
Locke. It is a fundamentally different view of human nature. And so Hobbs
believed that there was no such thing as virtue, as goodness, as morality
at the only thing that he thought in human beings was a trait that was
reliable in any way was just that sort of you could almost call it the
who's the guy the apple from the tree? Newton right as right as it's
almost for Hobbes, it's it's a sort of uh, non moral non out
there, and it's just like it's this very basic almost like an object in
motion wants to remain in motion. Okay, that's it's no more than that.
It's not even an emotion. It's mechanical. It's mechanical, and that
becomes the most reliable thing about human nature, and upon which you can build
a much more solid political regime than you can on these you know, all
this flighty notion of Christianity and blah blah blah blah blah. The difference between
Hobbes and Locke is that Locke actually he talks about it. He says,
the help me Steve. The actual quote is the rightness of the law of
nature is written on the heart of man. Yeah, no, the law,
Now that that's not it. It's not the law of name. The
idea of right and wrong is, according to Locke, part of our nature
that we recognize the difference between right and wrong that we you know, and
everything that flows from that. The problem is it's not reliable. Do I
think that Hobbs and and Locke disagreed about that? Maybe maybe not. But
for Locke, you don't have to reduce human beings to that mechanical. I'm
the only thing that motivates me is the fear of violent death. You can,
in fact recognize that human beings have a moral compass, even if it's
faulty, and that's where you build your political regime from. And that's what
takes us back to Aristotle. Ah, look, can I can I during
at this point? Yeah? I mean I sometimes say that on the surface
and getting started, you could say that Locke is Hobbs with a happy face.
I mean, he's more optimistic about the potentiality of human sociality. But
here's the thing. I mean, Yeah, we think of Hobbs as the
founder of through modern political thought and contract theory. You know that's correct,
but I'm not sure how far you've gotten your reading of Strauss. John you
said you were struggling through natural right and history. Strauss repeats the conventional of
you that Hobbs founds modern natural modern political science. But then he says this,
it was Machiavelli, that greater Columbus, who had discovered the continent on
which Hobbs could erect Hiss structure. In other words, Hobbs going straight from
Cockavelli. Now you mentioned the sometimes a perverse, overdone methodology of esoteric reading
that Strauss sans do what it looks to be. I think it is the
central paragraph of that whole book, and maybe you shouldn't put too much weight
on it. But this one sentence that I think explains the problem very well,
which Lucretia brought up a minute ago, which is different conceptions of what
we mean by nature, Nature as a standard and grounding of justice or nature
is just a totality of phenomenon in modern life, and we reduce it to
simply self preservation as the bedrock of things. So here's the sentence that I
think is very useful from Strauss again, page one sixty one, the central
page of the book. It is important that the difference between the Aristotelian view
of natural right and machiavellianism be clearly understood. Machiavelli denies natural right because he
takes his bearings by the extreme situations in which the demands of justice are reduced
to the requirements of necessity, and not by the normal situations in which the
demands of justice in the strict sense are the highest law. Lot mark can
be said about all that, But the point is is that Machiavelli starts the
break and Hobbs continues it. But now, as I say, there's this
book, comes along the letter thinkers saying, well, you know, actually
Hobbs, like Locke comes Now there's more room for harmonization than you think.
Yeah, okay, can I just express the difference. This is why I'm
so surprised you guys disagree with me about Hawes, because I actually I'm a
little more maybe I'm excessively optimistic about Hobbes. So Hobbs, you know,
for you know, somewhat for the law. We think about why do people
cooperate? That's the main issue, and how do people cooperate? And so
with Hobbes, as you said, necessity forces you people to cooperate, and
you describe Block as almost suggesting human beings by nature are sociable, so they
will cooperate because they want to, not because necessity forces them too. So
two things about that is one, I actually like Hobbes description because it doesn't
make you overly ambitious and setting up a society, you know, Hobbs.
The other part I thought about how's it was not appreciated as much or hasn't
been appreciated much as you know. He gives a kind of description of relatively
minimal state that I think Lucretia would like, where where basically hopefully the state
maintains basic law and order and then people are just left to you know,
enjoy their lives, spend their time from Yeah, I mean, there's one
of these big issues is what are you supposed to do in a Hobbes in
society after law and order is established? And he really doesn't have anything to
say about it. He's just not He doesn't really say, oh, and
then people should do A B and C and D with their free time.
Where's the thing that worries me? About Locke is if you want to build
a society that's based on people want to cooperate in these sort of almost Christian
traits about their nature, then I worry the state might get too involved with
what we do with our free time. Try to make from Locke. This
is what Locke says, that exactly in response to what you just said.
But freedom of men, this is from Locke's second Treatise. But freedom of
men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to
everyone of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it.
A liberty to follow my own will in all things where the rule prescribes not
and not to be the subject to be subject to the inconsistent, uncertain,
unknown, arbitrary will of another man. That's referring directly to Hobbs as freedom
of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.
In other words, Locke says, in the state of nature, you are
subject to the law of nature. The problem with that is the law of
nature written, he says, on the Hearts of Men is often interrupted,
shall we say, by the passions. Rationally speaking, it's very easy to
know how we ought to behave with respect to one another. But the passions
get in the way. So that is why man forms a social contract sets
up that government. But the whole point of the government, and this is
another difference between the classics and the moderns. For law, it's very clear
you are free to do whatever it is that the government does not proscribe.
Remember the classics were very clear. A good government is a government that creates
laws, prescriptive laws that help you become the best person you can be.
I guess, yeah, that's the last sentence. That last sentence is what
worries me. I was with you all the way until yes, that the
state, and I think I could see that in Lock. Oh, I
think I just read you the part where yes, that's why I'm worried.
But sorry, go ahead, all right, I'll go ahead. Look,
I don't look. You have to work some You have to really help out
Lock to make him an avatar of limited government. Remember his one one one
of his most ringing phrases is tyranny is merely monarchy misliked. In other words,
there's no objective ground for saying something that tyranny. He's following, I
met Hobbs. Sorry, I said, yeah, I met Hobbs. Thank
you. I'm sorry I do that a lot. Yeah, says tyranny is
merely monarchy, mislike he is following Machiavelli there and being in some ways more
explicit than usually very explicit Machiavelli. Uh oh boy, where do we go
with this? We're listeners. By the way, We thought this would be
like a half hour episode, and here we are coming up to an hour,
and so I think I need to play the tyrant the Hobbesy and tyrant
and brought us to an end. But we've got quite a lot out there.
You guys, have any last thoughts here before we mercifully release our listeners
from I have one little one, and maybe we picked this up next time
Steve. But I was going to give Steve a hard time yesterday in the
Ricochet podcast John because he brought up the unshe the positive Yeah, the Universal
Declaration of Rights and how they established positive rights, and because of the format,
I never got the opportunity to say, why would you bring that up?
Before you brought up FDR's Economic Bill of Rights that he gave in the
State of the Union address. And that's where I think at least in the
United States, to have a much more powerful reorientation from the rights that belong
to humans to citizens, to be free from government interference, to be treated
equally, civil rights, being treated equally before the law, and those things
that don't require anything anybody at the governmental level. To be reorganizing society and
gaining more and more power doing so. That starts with Roosevelt. And that
was the only point I wanted to make, not that you were wrong,
Steve, but I was actually surprised you picked that instead of Roosevelt's introduction of
those ideas. Well. The only reason I did it was it's a good
illustration of the confusion between what we would call the old fashioned natural rights of
individuals and positive rights of claims on the government. So you have Roosevelt,
well, but he doesn't. Yes, I mean you can trace the four
freedom speech directly back to the Commonwealth Club speech, which we've talked about at
great length, And that was on purpose. You're right, but I think
it's very accessible to notice that you have traditional things that sound like our Bill
of Rights in the UN Declaration. And then but also it's so much fun
to point out a right to pay vacation does a fundamental international human it's so
ludicrous on its face that I and again it's simple to approach, that's all.
Yeah, Okay. All I'm gonna say is you know that look at
the rights he talked about, the right to a good education, the right
of every family to a decent home, right, the right of every businessman
to trade an an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition. You know, the
right of farmers to raise and sell products at you know, a fear return.
None of those things are rights. Yeah, they're they're you know,
they're good policy in many cases good policies. But when you tell I think
that this was even a point John made and James yesterday, when you start
calling them rights, you have really messed up the vocabulary in a way where
you mess up people thinking about them, and you change the dynamic. All
right, do you have a Do you have a I don't suppose, since
we did this hastily, John, you have a Camelism of the week.
But I'm sure Lucretia has got some babylon Bees for us. Yeah. I
don't have any any commulisms. Well, I mean, I I've forgotten our
old communism for you John always always drink your whiskey. Wait wait, wait,
now I've forgotten it. We are drinking the whiskey that we've been drinking.
Well, actually she did say, I've got one one sentence. It
was, you know, one of the objects of our policy has been to
bring down energy prices. And it's like what she wanted again. Yeah,
currently, of course not it is time to drink the whiskey we've been drinking,
and that time is every day. That's what's from a long time ago.
But so you know, again, it's so hard to pick, but
one of my favorites was desk caused by Hurricane Hillary to be labeled suicides.
That one's pretty good, huh. And then you guys will appreciate this one.
California achieves world first crime rate of zero after legalizing all crime. Yeah,
that's I know, I know. Sometimes it's not even funny, and
I'll actually I had to laugh about this, and it probably doesn't even work
in the midst of this whole podcast, but I laughed at it. It's
got it. This really old guy, Why do all these lazy kids live
with their parents? Says Grandpa, who once bought a five thousand square foot
house for two potatoes. All right, I'm done. Oh hey, this
week we've got the first Republican debate coming in. Right, we have a
lot to talk about on the next show. Yeah, I'm gonna have to
drink a lot just to be able to watch that. Let's have a drinking
game. Yeah. Oh I always do that. Yeah, all right,
start start our start, our exit launch John, always drink your whiskey.
Meat. Let's go Brandon and Steve. God save the queen man right next
week, everybody, I try to trust the country man, then a town
man. You can judge, fise eyes, take a love if your can
you sign no star survivor trace side. I try to trust the man who
works with these hands. He loves that you wants. You know, we
un understands don't need any ship when you hide your love feel the downy.
I'm so along with my fear without the thing that I keep, and every
single d that I've walked to whe me back came again. I've got to
find the priest and magician singing all the chants, and they never heard,
and they're all calling down my name, even academics searching printed words, and
my father to the left of me Ricochet joined the conversation