WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.760 --> 00:00:08.000
Well, whiskey coming, take my
pain, don's my brain? Oh whiskey,

2
00:00:08.400 --> 00:00:12.000
don't you let me go? Whiskey? Won't you help me hide?

3
00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:26.280
Oh you don't let me go?
Where they slapped it up and live it?

4
00:00:26.280 --> 00:00:30.960
Ain't you easy on the Soldier Times
guy to give it and let that

5
00:00:31.079 --> 00:00:41.560
whiskey flow where you're feeling lowest down
and low Well, all right, gang.

6
00:00:41.640 --> 00:00:46.600
I'm not sure whether to call this
episode Ricochet Podcast over time or free

7
00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:50.960
Whiskey, Happy Hour, after hours
or a bonus edition, but our fanatical

8
00:00:51.039 --> 00:00:56.039
fans will know that yesterday the three
of us occupied the flagship Ricochet Podcast,

9
00:00:56.200 --> 00:01:00.159
taking Peter Robinson and Rob Long's place
and tormenting poor James Alex, who's really

10
00:01:00.200 --> 00:01:03.719
a very good guy. And by
the way, he and I, I

11
00:01:03.759 --> 00:01:07.400
will tell you, did not form
a fade length against you, because James

12
00:01:07.519 --> 00:01:11.120
is a fellow progressive rock enthusiast and
like all the same seventies acts that I

13
00:01:11.200 --> 00:01:15.640
do. Oh my god, I
thought I could hear air Supply playing in

14
00:01:15.680 --> 00:01:23.959
the back. Oh that's not air
Supply. That's even worse than me called

15
00:01:23.959 --> 00:01:32.680
a monarchist man. But there were
a couple of issues that we discussed in

16
00:01:32.719 --> 00:01:37.439
the course of that very wide ranging
and fun time with James that I thought

17
00:01:37.560 --> 00:01:42.120
are worth revisiting and more detailed because
we're ideally suited for it. And so

18
00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:45.560
if you didn't listen to the Ricochete
podcast, don't worry. You don't have

19
00:01:45.640 --> 00:01:48.200
to go back and listen to it
as a preface for this one. This

20
00:01:48.280 --> 00:01:51.159
will stand all on its own.
But it's kind of like power Mind back

21
00:01:51.200 --> 00:01:55.480
in the classroom, as Lucretian I
have done a few times. So the

22
00:01:55.599 --> 00:01:57.799
two issues that I think we should
say a little bit more about as one

23
00:01:59.079 --> 00:02:02.079
is the question of I think what
you'd say, institutional trust, and the

24
00:02:02.120 --> 00:02:07.319
second one is the whole problem of
human rights, positive rights, natural rights.

25
00:02:07.800 --> 00:02:10.560
And you know we've touched on these
before. But John, it would

26
00:02:10.599 --> 00:02:15.919
give us an opportunity to tease you
about your Hobbes video from a few months

27
00:02:15.919 --> 00:02:19.400
ago that we kept threatening to do
but never got round to. So,

28
00:02:20.039 --> 00:02:23.400
so with that, any inter of
you want to say anything more about our

29
00:02:23.439 --> 00:02:28.120
star turn on Ricochet yesterday before we
get launched, Well it was it was

30
00:02:28.159 --> 00:02:30.560
fun to take over. I think
they should let us just run their podcast

31
00:02:30.599 --> 00:02:37.479
permanently. Well, I'm convinced Peter
Robinson is stashed in the Witness Protection program

32
00:02:37.599 --> 00:02:42.360
somewhere or something I don't know,
is in that jail where they put preppy

33
00:02:42.479 --> 00:02:49.080
criminals. I was gonna say,
maybe he's shopping for new ascuts and sweaters.

34
00:02:47.840 --> 00:02:53.199
That's that's what John always accuses him
of, right right, all right,

35
00:02:53.319 --> 00:02:55.319
So it was fun. James is
a bit of a I do have

36
00:02:55.439 --> 00:03:00.319
to say. I have to tell
people that we were texting and chatting back

37
00:03:00.360 --> 00:03:07.560
and forth about the fact that James's
ability to segue into his sponsors advertisements is

38
00:03:07.199 --> 00:03:13.000
legendary. I mean, it's I
have no idea how even does that.

39
00:03:13.080 --> 00:03:16.919
He picks up on something somebody else
says and twists and turns it and the

40
00:03:16.919 --> 00:03:20.960
next thing you know, he's talking
about a sponsor that has nothing to do

41
00:03:21.039 --> 00:03:24.520
with anything, right, Yeah,
So that was that. I was impressed.

42
00:03:24.680 --> 00:03:28.159
And you're halfway into the ad before
you even know what he's done,

43
00:03:28.319 --> 00:03:32.000
right And Well, there used to
be the practice that we've all given up,

44
00:03:32.039 --> 00:03:36.199
but Rob Long would interrupt him and
try and knock him off his game,

45
00:03:36.479 --> 00:03:38.680
and I think James finally decided he
had enough of that, so we

46
00:03:38.719 --> 00:03:43.639
don't do it to him anymore.
But that was always fun, you know,

47
00:03:44.120 --> 00:03:46.280
Rob and say well, where are
you gonna get some nice sheets?

48
00:03:46.280 --> 00:03:47.759
I mean, I don't know,
there's nobody really who sells nice sheets.

49
00:03:47.759 --> 00:03:52.680
So that's on the way in the
bowl and branch and whatnot. All right,

50
00:03:52.719 --> 00:03:57.199
well, then let's charge into it. The to my mind, one

51
00:03:57.199 --> 00:04:01.120
of the biggest problem today, and
Lucretia, you brought it up I think

52
00:04:01.199 --> 00:04:04.479
last week of the week before about
things are so bad? Is there any

53
00:04:04.520 --> 00:04:09.520
way to get the country back together
again after the polarization that everyone is concerned

54
00:04:09.560 --> 00:04:14.159
with. So I always point to
what is called the trust problem. So

55
00:04:14.199 --> 00:04:16.160
here's the top line. If you
go back to the late fifties, when

56
00:04:16.199 --> 00:04:21.560
the major polling organizations Gallop Paris then
and others, they ask people a question

57
00:04:21.720 --> 00:04:27.600
that usually went, do you have
confidence in the federal government to do the

58
00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:30.879
right thing all the time? Most
of the time, or none of the

59
00:04:30.920 --> 00:04:34.079
time, or very little of the
time, something like that. And it

60
00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:39.000
used to be that the people who
said they had confidence in the federal government

61
00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:43.639
to get things right was about seventy
eight percent in the late nineteen fifties.

62
00:04:44.120 --> 00:04:48.279
Today it rarely gets above fifteen percent. And if you chart the time series

63
00:04:48.319 --> 00:04:53.839
from the sixties to now, it's
an all unbroken slope downward, with the

64
00:04:53.879 --> 00:04:56.680
exception of the Reagan years, which
you can put a side and leave for

65
00:04:56.759 --> 00:05:00.240
later. Now before you go inste
you can I just say, is that

66
00:05:00.319 --> 00:05:03.120
because of the famous Reagan line,
the whatever number of many words, it

67
00:05:03.199 --> 00:05:08.000
is scary words and dangerous word,
scary words in the English language. Oh,

68
00:05:08.040 --> 00:05:11.160
we're from the government and we're here. I'm here. Well, yeah,

69
00:05:11.160 --> 00:05:13.079
all right, I'll just say this, but we come back to this

70
00:05:13.160 --> 00:05:16.680
point. James Q. Wilson made
the argument some years ago that at the

71
00:05:16.800 --> 00:05:20.519
end of the nineteen fifties, when
Gallup first started asking that question, the

72
00:05:20.560 --> 00:05:25.800
average citizen looks out and sees what
they see a American government than one.

73
00:05:25.879 --> 00:05:29.759
World War Two set a generation of
gis to college, and the GI Bill

74
00:05:30.079 --> 00:05:33.120
built the Interstate Highway system. It
was a good time for all Americans.

75
00:05:33.160 --> 00:05:38.480
By the way, people say,
well accept blacks. True that you still

76
00:05:38.480 --> 00:05:42.959
had segregation in the South, but
the black white meeting income gap fell by

77
00:05:43.040 --> 00:05:47.560
half during the nineteen fifties, so
even black Americans were advancing rapidly in the

78
00:05:47.639 --> 00:05:51.000
nineteen It was a good time for
America, and the government looked like it

79
00:05:51.040 --> 00:05:54.879
had done a pretty good job.
From the sixties on. We know what

80
00:05:54.920 --> 00:05:59.399
the government's record is, right,
Can we just make the point in case

81
00:05:59.399 --> 00:06:01.680
anybody us is it, which I
doubt they will, which is that government

82
00:06:01.720 --> 00:06:06.279
tried to do so much less in
those days to begin with, never mind

83
00:06:06.319 --> 00:06:11.800
the corruption of it, but government
didn't try to do everything. The Interstate

84
00:06:11.839 --> 00:06:18.759
Highway was probably the Interstate Highway project
was probably something a little bit beyond what

85
00:06:18.839 --> 00:06:24.959
government had often done before. You
know, you can think back to seventy

86
00:06:24.959 --> 00:06:29.879
five years before that when presidents would
veto attempts to do essentially what we're interstate

87
00:06:30.439 --> 00:06:34.120
roads, right, that was you
know, that was probably a step further

88
00:06:34.240 --> 00:06:38.120
than they gone. But it was
a massive success. And of course today

89
00:06:38.920 --> 00:06:42.560
our government can't even keep those roads
up. But anyways, sorry I interrupted,

90
00:06:42.600 --> 00:06:44.920
go back. That's all right,
I think at one point, well,

91
00:06:44.920 --> 00:06:46.959
it's worth mentioning. I'm glad you
did bring it up. It's worth

92
00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:51.480
mentioning that there was still in that
you know, what really was the heyday

93
00:06:51.519 --> 00:06:56.120
of the New Deal era, what
New Deal ideology was still writing strong.

94
00:06:57.160 --> 00:07:01.800
Eisenhower thought and the leaders in Congress
thought, this has to be constitutionally permissible.

95
00:07:01.839 --> 00:07:05.040
So remember the Interstate Highway Act.
I think that's formal title is something

96
00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:12.000
like Highways and National Defense Authorization Act
of nineteen fifty five or something like that.

97
00:07:12.240 --> 00:07:15.480
Other words, they had to anchor
it in a clear constitutional power,

98
00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:18.439
whereas when you get ten years later
to education. By the way, That's

99
00:07:18.439 --> 00:07:21.439
what James Q. Wilson thought was
the real turning point when the federal government

100
00:07:21.480 --> 00:07:28.199
passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Assistants
Act. I think it's called in sixty

101
00:07:28.199 --> 00:07:34.199
five. No constitutional justification for that
right and that highway system. It's just

102
00:07:34.279 --> 00:07:40.680
Act by the way, Elementary and
Second Dairy Education Act. Okay ee a

103
00:07:41.199 --> 00:07:45.040
right, yeah, yeah yeah.
So I was a young reporter at the

104
00:07:45.079 --> 00:07:49.319
Wall Street Journal summer after college,
and they wanted me to do a story

105
00:07:49.360 --> 00:07:53.399
for Labor Day. So I was
trying to figure out what the story story.

106
00:07:53.600 --> 00:07:57.959
I did. The finishing of the
Interstate Highway System. This is nineteen

107
00:07:58.040 --> 00:08:01.240
eighty nine, thirty forty years after
the start of the Internet. State Highway

108
00:08:01.240 --> 00:08:05.360
sstant. They were still working on
it. There were still parts that weren't

109
00:08:05.439 --> 00:08:09.319
finished. Yes, And it's funny
even while they were finishing it, other

110
00:08:09.360 --> 00:08:11.959
parts were deteriorating that they didn't go
back and fix up again. So it's

111
00:08:11.959 --> 00:08:16.879
like a never ending, you know, Habit trail, you know for the

112
00:08:16.959 --> 00:08:20.879
Gerbil But what was interesting one two
things about it. One was yeah,

113
00:08:20.959 --> 00:08:26.439
I my recollection is that the main
driving force behind the Internet state highway system

114
00:08:26.519 --> 00:08:30.000
was President Eisenhower. Yes. And
the reason he was is because when he

115
00:08:30.120 --> 00:08:35.120
had gone into Germany during World War
Two, he saw the German highway system

116
00:08:35.200 --> 00:08:39.360
and admired it because it allowed them
to move troops and equipment back. So

117
00:08:39.440 --> 00:08:46.120
here's another example of Teutonic influences coming
back to America. No speed limit part

118
00:08:46.200 --> 00:08:50.360
come with it, I know.
Well, of course, as we know

119
00:08:50.679 --> 00:08:56.440
for Lucretia, speed limits are strictly
optional, so it's meaningless signs anyway,

120
00:08:56.480 --> 00:08:58.759
And the one of the thing my
editors said, oh, well, we

121
00:08:58.799 --> 00:09:01.759
want you to go to some part
of the highway system that's in bad shape

122
00:09:01.799 --> 00:09:05.639
and drive along it and talk about
it. So I arranged the only time

123
00:09:05.679 --> 00:09:09.639
I've done this, I arranged to
go in an eighteen wheeler truck those gigantic

124
00:09:09.759 --> 00:09:13.759
highway cruisers, to sit in the
cab with a driver. And one of

125
00:09:13.759 --> 00:09:20.200
the worst rated places was between I
think New Orleans and Streeveport, Louisiana.

126
00:09:20.399 --> 00:09:24.600
So we drive along and you know
when you hit a pole? Ten or

127
00:09:24.639 --> 00:09:28.240
what was it? Do you remember? I remember maybe a ten or something.

128
00:09:28.279 --> 00:09:31.440
So we hit a pothole. And
when you sit in those cabs and

129
00:09:31.440 --> 00:09:33.960
you hit one of those big pothles, you go up like a foot in

130
00:09:35.039 --> 00:09:37.399
the air inside the cab. So
I was like, so we hit the

131
00:09:37.440 --> 00:09:41.840
first one, and I'm like,
what happened? What happened? How come

132
00:09:41.840 --> 00:09:43.480
I'm not knocked out? And I
looked up at the top of the cab

133
00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:52.480
and the driver had installed like a
six inch thick phone piece at the top

134
00:09:52.519 --> 00:09:54.879
of its cab, and you could
see the indentations where its head kept hitting

135
00:09:54.919 --> 00:10:00.679
it over and over again from all
the bottles in the highway system. Well,

136
00:10:00.759 --> 00:10:03.000
first of all, can I send
my experience? I just learned two

137
00:10:03.039 --> 00:10:07.919
things that I did not know.
Uh. First of all, the visual

138
00:10:09.039 --> 00:10:13.159
of you writing an eighteen wheel truck
is I don't even want to say about

139
00:10:13.200 --> 00:10:16.000
that. That's just beyond the imagination. At least he didn't let him drive

140
00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:18.679
it, Steve, Oh, I
know, I beg I begged the driver.

141
00:10:18.799 --> 00:10:22.360
He wouldn't let me. Oh no, those are quite hard to drive.

142
00:10:22.879 --> 00:10:24.759
But then I didn't know that you
had been a reporter at the Journal

143
00:10:24.799 --> 00:10:28.679
was that. Was that the early
years of the Bartley Fellowship or something like

144
00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:33.039
that? Or was I was a
reporter not an editorial writer. Oh really?

145
00:10:33.120 --> 00:10:35.480
When I first met Paul gy go
oh, I see it was a

146
00:10:35.600 --> 00:10:39.399
job. You had a real job. It was a real job. Jow

147
00:10:39.559 --> 00:10:43.440
wow. Yeah, he's ever thought
I had a real job when I worked

148
00:10:43.440 --> 00:10:46.320
as a journalist. But no,
I did when you worked as a journalist.

149
00:10:46.600 --> 00:10:50.600
Okay, but actually that explains a
lot about what you two are so

150
00:10:50.840 --> 00:10:58.679
felicitous with your writing because of your
journalism experience and how you both thinking so

151
00:10:58.759 --> 00:11:03.720
quickly just have an idea and turn
out an article fifteen minutes later. That

152
00:11:03.120 --> 00:11:07.600
always impressed me, even with Steve
John from the moment I met him.

153
00:11:09.360 --> 00:11:11.360
Everything else I made fun of,
but I always told him that he had

154
00:11:11.399 --> 00:11:18.960
a tremendous way with words, And
yeah, I was always impressed by that.

155
00:11:18.080 --> 00:11:22.480
So that explains a lot. It's
all about the lead, baby,

156
00:11:22.559 --> 00:11:26.000
That's what I always say. Okay, all right, back back to our

157
00:11:26.039 --> 00:11:31.159
topic. One one more bit of
news and then we can get us some

158
00:11:31.240 --> 00:11:33.519
themes and explanations and remedies. See, because I think John, you're remedy

159
00:11:33.519 --> 00:11:39.159
on the FBI, which I'll repeat
is necessary but not sufficient. If you

160
00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:43.240
go down below the top line level
for the government as a whole and so

161
00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:48.039
forth, and do individual institutions,
what you see there is a wider range.

162
00:11:48.440 --> 00:11:52.679
And so the public confidence has always
remained pretty high for things like the

163
00:11:52.720 --> 00:11:58.639
military, the police. Actually,
after the Michael Brown affair back in twenty

164
00:11:58.639 --> 00:12:03.840
fifteen that started Black Lives Matter,
public support for the police and defund the

165
00:12:03.840 --> 00:12:07.840
police, public support for the police
actually went up in the six months after

166
00:12:07.879 --> 00:12:11.039
that. That's not true, Yeah, it was really Gallup has the numbers

167
00:12:11.039 --> 00:12:15.600
on that. It was not surprising, I think, But after the relentless

168
00:12:15.639 --> 00:12:20.320
publicity after the George Floyd a moment, even public support for the police has

169
00:12:20.320 --> 00:12:24.639
been trending down. The point is
is that a lot of institutions held up

170
00:12:24.639 --> 00:12:31.039
pretty well, including the FBI,
and now public's confidence in specific institutions is

171
00:12:31.120 --> 00:12:33.200
plumbering across the board. So the
military, for the first time in some

172
00:12:33.360 --> 00:12:37.080
surveys is below fifty percent. I
think there's lots of specific reasons about that.

173
00:12:37.919 --> 00:12:41.399
We should go into some of that. Can I just ask you a

174
00:12:41.480 --> 00:12:45.919
question about that. Do you have
in front of you any data about the

175
00:12:45.919 --> 00:12:50.000
difference between the confidence in the military
respect whatever you want to call it.

176
00:12:50.080 --> 00:12:58.159
For the military as an institution now
and say immediate post Vietnam, I don't.

177
00:12:58.080 --> 00:13:03.039
That's sorry, I didn't, But
no, I wanted to try and

178
00:13:03.039 --> 00:13:05.639
look some of that up. And
uh, it takes a while to go

179
00:13:05.679 --> 00:13:09.159
back and find what the and I'll
bet it was lower for the same reason

180
00:13:09.200 --> 00:13:13.000
we'd lost the war, we'd you
know, I think also the draft was

181
00:13:13.080 --> 00:13:16.799
unpopular. Of course, by the
mid seventies, when the war is finally

182
00:13:16.840 --> 00:13:20.960
lost, we'd abandoned the draft.
But still, why didn't people want to

183
00:13:20.960 --> 00:13:22.440
I mean, I graduated high school
in the mid seventies. I didn't want

184
00:13:22.480 --> 00:13:26.240
to go into the military because you
know, why would you that? You

185
00:13:26.279 --> 00:13:28.840
know, the pay is low,
the morale is low. What's it gonna

186
00:13:28.879 --> 00:13:33.000
do? Uh? And you know, morale's sword under Reagan, as we

187
00:13:33.039 --> 00:13:37.759
know, one of the first things
Reagan did was raised pay for soldiers,

188
00:13:37.759 --> 00:13:41.679
so that you know more. You
know, the mini victory of Grenada didn't

189
00:13:41.759 --> 00:13:46.159
hurt either, you know that,
right, and and uh it was strength

190
00:13:46.200 --> 00:13:50.679
to the point a little bit.
But you know when uh, in nineteen

191
00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:54.919
eighty one, when our aircraft carrier
commanders were saying, what are the rules

192
00:13:54.960 --> 00:13:58.600
of engagement when these Libyans keep harassing
us with the airplanes and Reagan said,

193
00:13:58.600 --> 00:14:01.200
you can shoot back. He says, how far can we chase them?

194
00:14:01.279 --> 00:14:05.200
And he said all the way back
to the Hangar, and that was known

195
00:14:05.200 --> 00:14:07.080
as the Reagan Rules of Engagement.
Well, that's good from moral right,

196
00:14:07.600 --> 00:14:11.639
So I have a similar problem now, I think, right, we've you

197
00:14:11.679 --> 00:14:15.120
know, twenty years of involvement in
the Middle East, which has soured everybody

198
00:14:15.159 --> 00:14:16.759
on it, and then the walkerie, which you've talked about. We can

199
00:14:16.799 --> 00:14:22.000
come back to all that. Steve
reminded me when we get to remedies to

200
00:14:22.200 --> 00:14:28.639
think about what's really happening in what
you just described, and that is that

201
00:14:28.600 --> 00:14:31.960
it was kind of the reason that
I brought it up. It's that you

202
00:14:33.039 --> 00:14:41.559
actually can turn things around with the
right message and the right actions that underlie

203
00:14:41.600 --> 00:14:46.200
that message. I guess might be
how I put it in other words,

204
00:14:46.799 --> 00:14:50.440
you know, I remember you probably
remember this too. I'm sure John's too

205
00:14:50.480 --> 00:14:54.200
young. And after the Iraq or
during the very beginning of the Iraq War,

206
00:14:54.360 --> 00:15:01.679
when they started playing that Tony Orlando
song with a tie yellow ribbon,

207
00:15:01.960 --> 00:15:07.759
and then I mean that ribbons now
show ribbons for everything It wasn't just yellow

208
00:15:07.840 --> 00:15:11.320
ribbons for the troops coming home.
You know, breast cans are on and

209
00:15:11.360 --> 00:15:15.320
on and on every silly thing under
the planet. But that made a huge

210
00:15:15.360 --> 00:15:20.320
difference as well, that there was
just this push to instead of to be

211
00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:28.519
treating soldiers returning from conflict as pariah's
and worse, you know, call yellows

212
00:15:28.559 --> 00:15:33.600
and all that other nonsense. We
saw that with the right kind of message,

213
00:15:33.480 --> 00:15:37.639
that you could actually turn those attitudes
around. Same thing I think happened

214
00:15:37.679 --> 00:15:41.679
after nine to eleven. Yeah,
well, let's hold that thought because I

215
00:15:41.679 --> 00:15:46.279
think that that's all right, that's
okay, all right. Let me give

216
00:15:46.320 --> 00:15:52.480
you, uh, sort of three
aspects of the causes here, or the

217
00:15:52.519 --> 00:15:56.120
deeper background of it. I mean, we talk a lot about corruption within

218
00:15:56.159 --> 00:15:58.000
certain elements of the FBI and partisan
champa, and you know, some of

219
00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:03.679
that's been really proven the Russia hoax
business and so forth. And then we

220
00:16:03.720 --> 00:16:07.559
already mentioned competence. The government is
now trying to do things beyond its competence

221
00:16:07.639 --> 00:16:11.440
and people are gonna perceive that,
right, We're gonna We're gonna eliminate poverty

222
00:16:11.440 --> 00:16:15.360
in ten years. Lyndon Johnson's people
told us in nineteen sixty six fifty years

223
00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:18.720
ago. Now. The other one
is ideology is part of it. I

224
00:16:18.759 --> 00:16:23.000
think that's one of the reasons.
I mean, I saw a headline that

225
00:16:23.039 --> 00:16:30.360
says the rebuilding effort in Lahina in
Hawaii will be based on principles of equity.

226
00:16:30.720 --> 00:16:36.799
What's that gonna mean. It's gonna
be a cultural sensitivity probably right.

227
00:16:36.879 --> 00:16:38.639
It goes along with it, right, instead of just letting people rebuild.

228
00:16:38.679 --> 00:16:45.440
It's good. I mean, I
remembering your comment about some oddities of this

229
00:16:45.519 --> 00:16:48.639
fire. There have been two,
at least in my lifetime, big fires

230
00:16:48.639 --> 00:16:52.120
in Santa Barbara that wiped out hundreds
of houses and it was just twenty thirty

231
00:16:52.200 --> 00:16:56.679
years ago. Huge bureaucratic hurdles just
to rebuild your house on the land had

232
00:16:56.679 --> 00:17:00.320
been on before. And that's gonna
happen in Hawaii. It's going to be

233
00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:04.440
a mass, great case study worst
probably, that's right. I do want

234
00:17:04.440 --> 00:17:07.599
to make a real quick mention though, that your weekend pictures, and it

235
00:17:07.640 --> 00:17:11.480
wasn't in the comments, it was
in your part of the weekend pictures.

236
00:17:11.519 --> 00:17:15.640
My conspiracy theory got a little bit
of notice from some of your means.

237
00:17:18.119 --> 00:17:22.039
I don't remember which one happened,
the one about the directed energy for instance.

238
00:17:22.599 --> 00:17:23.839
Oh, I don't I don't remember
that one, now, you know.

239
00:17:26.480 --> 00:17:30.759
Yeah, anyway, sorry, the
other thing is so ideology, competence,

240
00:17:30.839 --> 00:17:34.599
corruption, And here's the broader point. And you guys can help me

241
00:17:34.599 --> 00:17:38.079
flesh this out a little bit.
Maybe if you go back to the late

242
00:17:38.160 --> 00:17:45.559
forties, after the war, fifties. Uh, we've always had elites.

243
00:17:45.640 --> 00:17:48.359
I mean, you know, sometimes
the attack on the leads is a little

244
00:17:48.400 --> 00:17:55.880
overdrawn. But I'll say this way, are old elites used to have what

245
00:17:55.920 --> 00:17:57.599
do you want to say? They
took the idea of no bless a beach

246
00:17:57.759 --> 00:18:03.720
more seriously, Now it's condescension,
I mean right, it's Oh you see

247
00:18:03.720 --> 00:18:07.519
the reaction to this guy who's done
this, Uh what ginger Man. I

248
00:18:07.559 --> 00:18:11.799
think you called him the preciate,
this guy who's done this Beard right,

249
00:18:11.359 --> 00:18:17.200
rich Man north of Richmond, And
it's this huge cultural sensation and you're seeing

250
00:18:17.240 --> 00:18:22.279
the backlash against it, including even
from National Review, which really shocked me.

251
00:18:22.359 --> 00:18:29.920
I mean even well almost his establishment. Well that's a serious point about

252
00:18:29.960 --> 00:18:33.240
how you know, William F.
Buckley was always an elitist. But I

253
00:18:33.279 --> 00:18:36.720
don't think you would utter a condescended
to this guy. Quite the opposite,

254
00:18:36.759 --> 00:18:40.599
I think even understood exactly and for
his magazine now to dump on this guy

255
00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:44.680
for not celebrating the greatness of America
and the ways you can get ahead is

256
00:18:44.720 --> 00:18:48.680
just so tone deaf. But the
point is, I don't quite know how

257
00:18:48.720 --> 00:18:52.960
to draw this point out precisely,
but I think there was in the older

258
00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:57.920
elites. I don't know if it's
a more genuine public spiritedness as opposed to

259
00:18:57.960 --> 00:19:02.720
a grandistness of elite status or what
it is, but I'm gonna let John

260
00:19:02.759 --> 00:19:04.440
talk first, but I have the
answer. Well, my point is,

261
00:19:04.680 --> 00:19:08.440
you know, I'm thinking of people
like the Dullest Brothers and even Dean Atchison,

262
00:19:08.480 --> 00:19:12.319
who I can criticize the day is
long, But there were different kinds

263
00:19:12.359 --> 00:19:17.440
of people than the ensconced elites we
have today. That's the point I'm trying

264
00:19:17.480 --> 00:19:21.519
to develop. Don go no,
I agree with you that the elites are

265
00:19:21.559 --> 00:19:26.519
different. I think we have.
I think Charles Murray's shown this with this

266
00:19:26.519 --> 00:19:33.480
this elite that's built around credentialism and
higher education rather than elite's built on achievement

267
00:19:33.759 --> 00:19:37.119
or elites you know, based on
I know history, you know, although

268
00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:41.359
I'm not for aristocracy or anything,
but you know, the original question is

269
00:19:41.839 --> 00:19:47.839
why are we having this assault on
the institutions and what's the best response?

270
00:19:48.480 --> 00:19:52.160
Lucius saying, what's the remedy?
So I don't think the change in the

271
00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:57.119
elites necessarily is what's causing the loss
of confidence in the institutions. I don't

272
00:19:57.119 --> 00:20:03.200
blame younger people or thinking there's a
problem, because they think about what this

273
00:20:03.240 --> 00:20:06.359
generation has lived through. They lived
through, you know, very little.

274
00:20:06.400 --> 00:20:07.960
When they're very little, they see
the nine to eleven tax, where they

275
00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:12.559
think the country has failed in the
basic mission of secure national security. And

276
00:20:12.559 --> 00:20:17.880
then when they were little, they
probably saw their parents suffering from the economic

277
00:20:17.960 --> 00:20:21.799
collapse in two thousand and eight two
thousand and nine, which I don't know,

278
00:20:21.839 --> 00:20:23.079
I don't know what you guys think. Seems to me to to an

279
00:20:23.079 --> 00:20:30.319
inflated housing bubble, bubble caused by
or economic policies. And then they see

280
00:20:30.359 --> 00:20:33.960
all the uncertainty nowadays being wrought by
the introduction of new technology into the economy.

281
00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:37.680
So I don't blame them for saying, what does any of this work?

282
00:20:38.200 --> 00:20:45.240
These institutions have poorly served us.
Maybe the problem is since we have

283
00:20:45.359 --> 00:20:51.680
this different elite class, they're not
really the best representatives or defenders of institutions.

284
00:20:52.720 --> 00:20:55.640
You know, they're you know their
defenses. Well, I scored high

285
00:20:55.640 --> 00:21:00.680
on the SAT so you know it's
a good institution. That's not very compelling

286
00:21:00.880 --> 00:21:04.319
a right, So you know,
we but just like my conservative instinct is

287
00:21:06.720 --> 00:21:08.519
I can't remember who it was.
You guys are into these people more than

288
00:21:08.559 --> 00:21:11.240
I. But you know the guy
who said, you know, when you

289
00:21:11.319 --> 00:21:15.240
come to a fence, uh and
just blocked your way, don't think you

290
00:21:15.240 --> 00:21:17.519
have to tear it down. Someone
probably put it there for a good reason

291
00:21:17.559 --> 00:21:21.000
in the first place. Is that
like one of your one of your PEPs,

292
00:21:21.519 --> 00:21:25.119
one of your peeps. So but
I might you know some my instinct

293
00:21:25.160 --> 00:21:30.680
is yeah, I mean I wouldn't
automatically think we should burn down these institutions.

294
00:21:30.680 --> 00:21:33.759
I just feel like a lot of
the people on the right, especially

295
00:21:33.759 --> 00:21:37.759
the nat con movement, has that, you know, that's their agenda.

296
00:21:38.160 --> 00:21:41.519
So so when we talked on the
Brookochet podcast, my foot, you know,

297
00:21:41.599 --> 00:21:45.119
I just raised the FBI. You
know, there's a strong segment of

298
00:21:47.359 --> 00:21:51.440
the conservative movement that is now talking
about defunding the FBI. There might be

299
00:21:51.480 --> 00:21:53.640
good reasons or bad reasons for that, but just getting rid of the FBI

300
00:21:53.759 --> 00:22:00.079
and pretending the need to protect our
country from terrorists or espionage or from mafia

301
00:22:00.279 --> 00:22:03.960
organized crime groups. It's still going
to be there yet to have a solution.

302
00:22:03.319 --> 00:22:07.359
So that's why I favored maybe moving
the headquarters, decentralizing it, you

303
00:22:07.359 --> 00:22:11.920
know, which it does, But
getting rid of the FBI that seems like,

304
00:22:11.559 --> 00:22:15.200
you know, remedy, you know, the cure that's worse than disease

305
00:22:15.319 --> 00:22:19.160
or remedy that you creates all kinds
of unintended consequences that are worse. No,

306
00:22:21.119 --> 00:22:25.279
not because part of the reason for
that is it hammered Now, John,

307
00:22:25.359 --> 00:22:29.759
sorry to hammer you, because I
think that that you're gonna agree with

308
00:22:29.799 --> 00:22:33.680
my criticism John, when the episode, this is what happens. When you

309
00:22:33.720 --> 00:22:37.400
read those seven thousand page tomes about
the FBI, you get this insights into

310
00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:44.000
him. We didn't have an FBI
until Jay Edgar Hoover, and he,

311
00:22:44.400 --> 00:22:48.240
you know, because of the kind
of person he was, just found all

312
00:22:48.279 --> 00:22:52.400
sorts of ways to expand the jurisdiction
of the FBI. At the same time

313
00:22:52.839 --> 00:22:57.079
that the federal government started pausing laws
making activities illegal that they have no business

314
00:22:57.200 --> 00:23:02.160
doing. You know, remember remember
the day, back in the day when

315
00:23:02.200 --> 00:23:07.279
criminal laws were primarily the subject of
state, the police powers of the state.

316
00:23:07.680 --> 00:23:11.839
So if you get rid of ninety
nine percent of the federal laws on

317
00:23:11.839 --> 00:23:18.160
the books, you do only need
an FBI for the purposes of worrying about

318
00:23:18.400 --> 00:23:22.359
international terrorism? Do I do?
I want? The FBI is shown itself

319
00:23:22.400 --> 00:23:30.319
to be completely what's the word untrustworthy
when it comes to domestic terrorism. I

320
00:23:30.319 --> 00:23:33.759
mean, they're after me, for
God's sakes, because I'm a domestic terrorist.

321
00:23:33.759 --> 00:23:34.759
I'm proud of it, by the
way. I'm proud of the fact

322
00:23:34.759 --> 00:23:38.319
that I'm on an FBI watch list, and anyway, I'm kidding, But

323
00:23:40.400 --> 00:23:44.599
first of all, are you really
on an FBI watch list? It was

324
00:23:44.640 --> 00:23:51.039
a joke because I'm a I'm a
radical, traditional Catholic by the way,

325
00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:53.880
So we're doing its job right.
You should behind the watch should have been

326
00:23:55.759 --> 00:23:59.799
I'm not one of those thirty unindicted
co conspirators. Well, here's a tip

327
00:23:59.799 --> 00:24:02.839
for listeners. If you want to
get an FBI file started on you,

328
00:24:03.279 --> 00:24:07.279
what you do is you send them
a FOI request asking for the contents of

329
00:24:07.319 --> 00:24:10.839
your FBI file, and if you
don't have one, they'll start one at

330
00:24:10.920 --> 00:24:12.960
least on your foyer. And I've
heard this, and then you know a

331
00:24:14.039 --> 00:24:17.079
year later you're right and say,
may I please see my FBI file,

332
00:24:17.119 --> 00:24:19.119
and they'll send in the file of
your first letter in first response. So

333
00:24:19.720 --> 00:24:25.839
you know, there's a perfect example
for John of the idea that I might

334
00:24:25.920 --> 00:24:30.519
be willing to keep an FBI if
it was reduced to about two percent of

335
00:24:30.519 --> 00:24:36.440
its current workforce. The fact that
the FBI has time to do things like

336
00:24:36.519 --> 00:24:41.240
that, to be spying on private
citizens and uh, you know, collecting

337
00:24:41.319 --> 00:24:45.559
dossiers on them, that's I mean, that's ridiculous, the idea. And

338
00:24:45.599 --> 00:24:51.720
they've just shown themselves over and over
and over again to be so incredibly corrupt,

339
00:24:52.200 --> 00:24:56.839
so biased. And do you remember
back when one of those people this

340
00:24:56.920 --> 00:25:00.680
is a little bit off the topic, but it was straight my point,

341
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:06.519
when one of those people and was
killed by police, I want to say,

342
00:25:06.519 --> 00:25:11.160
in Brooklyn maybe I think it was
maybe Brooklyn, and because he resisted

343
00:25:11.319 --> 00:25:18.839
arrest, but they were arresting him
for selling individual cigarettes because you know,

344
00:25:18.920 --> 00:25:22.599
the price of cigarettes had gone up
so much, and so he would buy

345
00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:27.799
cigarettes and sell them individually because people
he was arrested for that, Yeah,

346
00:25:27.839 --> 00:25:33.440
I mean so, so then and
why is that a crime? Because it

347
00:25:33.480 --> 00:25:36.319
was depriving the government that they're huge. I think that guy would buy them

348
00:25:36.319 --> 00:25:40.079
at Indian casinos where they're exam from
the federal and state taxes and right,

349
00:25:40.200 --> 00:25:44.839
well, arbitrazing. So that's a
tax problem. But well, but no,

350
00:25:45.039 --> 00:25:48.799
it's a government overreach problem. Government
doesn't I mean. And so across

351
00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:56.640
the board, the FBI is enforcing
laws that it has no business enforcing because

352
00:25:56.640 --> 00:26:03.319
they shouldn't be on the books,
and no federal I mean. Oh,

353
00:26:03.839 --> 00:26:08.759
I promise you if you got rid
of the FBI tomorrow, if they completely

354
00:26:08.839 --> 00:26:15.119
shut down all completely shut down,
every every penny that goes to the Federal

355
00:26:15.119 --> 00:26:19.880
Bureau of Investigation, this country would
not fall into uh, you know,

356
00:26:21.119 --> 00:26:26.799
attack by domestic or international terrorists.
There are other agencies that could pick up

357
00:26:26.839 --> 00:26:30.480
the slack on that one, you
know, And there's so much overlap between

358
00:26:30.519 --> 00:26:33.759
all of the agencies that have law
enforcement powers. We just need to look

359
00:26:33.759 --> 00:26:37.279
at the whole thing and say,
too many damn laws and too much power

360
00:26:37.319 --> 00:26:42.640
in the federal government, including in
the FBI. Let's just uh, I'll

361
00:26:42.680 --> 00:26:48.240
make him. Well, now here's
the here's the thing. If you abolish

362
00:26:48.279 --> 00:26:52.480
the FBI or started something new,
eventually it would fall in the same patterns

363
00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:56.440
of incompetence. But we have some
time. Well all right, I mean

364
00:26:56.480 --> 00:27:00.039
you know, and I think there's
a solution here. There's I Creasius completely

365
00:27:00.119 --> 00:27:03.880
right before the FBI, each agency
wouldn't you know, have its own enforcement

366
00:27:03.920 --> 00:27:08.400
agency, right, so like that's
we have leftovers of that, like the

367
00:27:08.440 --> 00:27:14.920
ATF and the DA. You know, they're they're the remember the Yeah,

368
00:27:14.960 --> 00:27:17.839
yeah, Elliott Nest doesn't work for
the FBI, works for the Treasury Department,

369
00:27:17.880 --> 00:27:22.160
Like he's basically customs of fancy customs
and tax officer. So you could

370
00:27:22.200 --> 00:27:29.079
say, maybe it's good to have
multiple agencies when you're worried about liberty because

371
00:27:29.319 --> 00:27:32.599
the agencies will compete with each other
and fight with each other too. To

372
00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:37.039
make so the example that is used
sometimes is I think that this way.

373
00:27:37.279 --> 00:27:41.440
Was it better when we had a
separate army and Navy and later air Force,

374
00:27:41.920 --> 00:27:45.039
or was it better now when you
have a centralized d D with all

375
00:27:45.079 --> 00:27:49.240
these officers and commands and all that's
sit on top of them. Maybe it

376
00:27:49.319 --> 00:27:53.279
was better when the services were always
competing and fighting. Well, they still

377
00:27:53.279 --> 00:27:59.400
are to a great extent, John, just so you know, But the

378
00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:02.759
whole when you read these stories about
you know, what to do in the

379
00:28:02.839 --> 00:28:06.279
rock or so in Afghanistan. I
think this is Colin Powell's fault in a

380
00:28:06.279 --> 00:28:07.839
way, right, Like there's this
idea there will be a Chairman of the

381
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:12.480
Joint Chiefs and he shall give you
the military advice. And I like the

382
00:28:12.559 --> 00:28:15.960
better when I read stories about World
War Two and you know there's FDR and

383
00:28:17.000 --> 00:28:19.279
you've got like the head of the
Navy and the head of the Army arguing

384
00:28:19.319 --> 00:28:22.960
about the best way to you know, whether we should go to Pacific or

385
00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:29.400
the European theater first, rather than
pretending, oh, there's one central you

386
00:28:29.440 --> 00:28:32.480
know, expert military advice, which
is what you get when you centralize.

387
00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:34.400
Yeah, well, now you don't
even know. There's no such thing as

388
00:28:34.480 --> 00:28:41.400
military advice anymore. It's all about
social policy and social policy within the military.

389
00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:45.279
I mean, I am so tired
and just have to since we went

390
00:28:45.319 --> 00:28:48.880
off on this tangent whining every day
coming out of Austin and other people in

391
00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:56.480
the top brass about Tuberville's stopping of
any appointments going forward and how, oh

392
00:28:56.680 --> 00:29:00.039
my god, this is terrible military
readiness. Every single actually shouldn't say because

393
00:29:00.039 --> 00:29:03.319
some of them are my friends.
And they're really good people. But most

394
00:29:03.359 --> 00:29:10.480
of those people who have not been
promoted and confirmed for their positions are bureaucrats.

395
00:29:10.640 --> 00:29:12.200
And it's going to make no difference
one way or the other. But

396
00:29:12.559 --> 00:29:17.240
why is this a problem? It's
why is this an issue? Why is

397
00:29:17.279 --> 00:29:26.039
Tuberville stopping it? Because because Austin
insisted on making it a public social statement

398
00:29:26.680 --> 00:29:32.799
that they would pay for women,
I guess, or excuse me, birthing

399
00:29:32.839 --> 00:29:37.759
persons to go to different states if
they were stationed in a state that had

400
00:29:37.839 --> 00:29:44.519
outlawed abortion or outlaw making abortion available
for their particular circumstances. It has been

401
00:29:44.559 --> 00:29:48.799
a policy of the military for decades
that if you needed to go somewhere else

402
00:29:48.880 --> 00:29:56.119
for medical treatment. I remember flying
from Germany to walter Read for just that

403
00:29:56.200 --> 00:30:00.880
purpose, not for an abortion,
but for because my husband needed surgery and

404
00:30:02.440 --> 00:30:06.119
it couldn't be done in Germany,
so we flew in. The government paid

405
00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:10.119
for the entire thing. They do
that. This whole thing is about Austining

406
00:30:10.319 --> 00:30:15.680
making sure it's in your face.
Why are we doing that with our military?

407
00:30:15.200 --> 00:30:19.039
Why? Well, this gets back
to my point of ideology is taken

408
00:30:19.079 --> 00:30:25.079
over our elites and alienating everybody,
And okay, without even getting into what

409
00:30:25.119 --> 00:30:29.039
are the defects of it and so
forth. Back to John's point real quick,

410
00:30:29.079 --> 00:30:32.920
though, I think he's onto something
here because I remember, you know,

411
00:30:32.960 --> 00:30:34.640
my dad, a World War Two
Navy flyer. I used to talk

412
00:30:34.680 --> 00:30:40.559
to him some about the different requirements
the naval Air services versus the Army Air

413
00:30:40.599 --> 00:30:45.359
Corps, and starting an air force
did not solve that problem. And this

414
00:30:45.359 --> 00:30:47.720
will take us too far afield,
but you know, one of the reform

415
00:30:47.759 --> 00:30:51.039
attempts, and maybe this is worth
the parallel case studies we talk about the

416
00:30:51.079 --> 00:30:55.200
FBI and CIA and others. You
know, the Goldwater Nickels Bill in the

417
00:30:55.200 --> 00:31:00.000
mid nineteen eighties was meant to streamline
these inner service rivalries and these fights between

418
00:31:00.119 --> 00:31:03.599
the different services. And I'm not
sure if that has improved things or not.

419
00:31:04.200 --> 00:31:07.200
And I know a lot of the
lore about you know, McNamara thought

420
00:31:07.240 --> 00:31:10.680
we need to make one kind of
fighter plane. I think we're still doing

421
00:31:10.680 --> 00:31:14.200
this, and things like the F
thirty five one kind of fighter plane that

422
00:31:14.279 --> 00:31:17.319
all the services can use. It
sort of one size fits all, and

423
00:31:17.960 --> 00:31:19.319
that's a mistake. I think you're
right. I think we get a better

424
00:31:19.359 --> 00:31:23.480
as a result from competitions. Another
exam here's another example. It helps it

425
00:31:23.480 --> 00:31:27.240
makes your points to you that I
think, lucresh WILLI is after nine to

426
00:31:27.279 --> 00:31:30.240
eleven, we thought there was an
intelligence failure, and so what do we

427
00:31:30.279 --> 00:31:33.440
do. We create one guy,
one guy, gigantic DHS. Yeah,

428
00:31:33.519 --> 00:31:40.039
and we're you know, combined twenty
different agencies the Director of National Intelligence,

429
00:31:40.400 --> 00:31:42.680
right, and we did it with
the intelligence community. Not clear. It's

430
00:31:42.720 --> 00:31:48.640
a good idea, wastes a lot
of money, creates lots of more government

431
00:31:48.720 --> 00:31:53.480
unions and security. Actually, what
they talk about again, watch what they

432
00:31:53.519 --> 00:32:00.519
talk about. What the major pronouncements
coming out of the DNI is, uh,

433
00:32:00.640 --> 00:32:08.240
diversity and how do we get more
inclusive about our intelligence community so that

434
00:32:08.240 --> 00:32:16.799
we have a grant. I have
a grant to increase the diversity of the

435
00:32:16.839 --> 00:32:22.119
intelligence community. Oh my god,
oh yeah, yeah. Now see this,

436
00:32:22.319 --> 00:32:25.000
Now this has helped me crystallize my
money. I'm gonna take it.

437
00:32:25.119 --> 00:32:29.559
John. Come on, let's do
a study. I'll do a study for

438
00:32:29.599 --> 00:32:34.200
you at how many intelligence the racial
diversity of intelligence agents that show up at

439
00:32:34.279 --> 00:32:43.240
McDonald's. All right, let's at
McDonald's now, John, this uh,

440
00:32:43.400 --> 00:32:45.359
now, this helps crystallize the point
that I was struggling with at the end

441
00:32:45.359 --> 00:32:50.920
of my opening bid, which was
the dullest brothers Dean Ashton. They ever

442
00:32:50.960 --> 00:32:52.720
would have called in for this nonsense. They may have been, in the

443
00:32:52.720 --> 00:32:55.240
actions case, a liberal and a
new dealer and all the rest of that,

444
00:32:55.279 --> 00:32:59.680
but they wouldn't have They wouldn't have
surrendered to this kind of trendy,

445
00:32:59.680 --> 00:33:02.880
idiot logical fashions. They would have
actually kept their eye on what's central and

446
00:33:02.920 --> 00:33:07.960
what's important. One last thing I'll
say, by the way, about that,

447
00:33:07.240 --> 00:33:09.640
and then I think we should move
on to topic number two. I

448
00:33:09.640 --> 00:33:14.279
didn't give my my go ahead.
Well, that's well, all right.

449
00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:20.920
I've said this long time ago.
But one of the very fine senior FBI

450
00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:23.279
agents I used to know, he's
now long retired. He actually was one

451
00:33:23.319 --> 00:33:29.279
of the invest principal FBI investigators who
arrested all rich Ames, the CIA trader

452
00:33:29.319 --> 00:33:31.200
back in the early nineties. You
Oh, he told me great stories about

453
00:33:31.240 --> 00:33:36.799
that. After he'd retired from the
FBI, he was offered the head of

454
00:33:37.519 --> 00:33:39.519
I don't know if it's counterintelligence,
but the top intelligence one of the top

455
00:33:39.519 --> 00:33:45.079
intelligence jobs in the new Department of
Homeland Security. And he said, I

456
00:33:45.119 --> 00:33:47.319
wouldn't go near that with a ten
foot poll because he knew it was going

457
00:33:47.359 --> 00:33:51.240
to be a bureaucratic mess. You
know, the FBI was bad enough.

458
00:33:51.279 --> 00:33:53.559
And he used to show me his
picture of being sworn in as a young

459
00:33:53.599 --> 00:33:57.920
agent by Jagger Hoover himself, which
was kind of cool. Right, all

460
00:33:57.960 --> 00:34:04.279
right, Lucretia, what's point of
appealing to your guy's classical philosophies? So

461
00:34:05.039 --> 00:34:07.639
is this actually when you make your
point about Atchison? And so, by

462
00:34:07.679 --> 00:34:10.920
the way, I had this great
little tidbit about Atchison. Yes he was

463
00:34:10.960 --> 00:34:15.840
a liberal, but I was reading
this book about the Berlin Wall crisis and

464
00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:20.800
Atchison's advice. They brought Actison into
the Kenny administration because they didn't know what

465
00:34:20.840 --> 00:34:23.960
they were doing, and Atchison said, let's just take six divisions, drive

466
00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:27.760
it down the Audubon, and if
the East Germans tried to stop us,

467
00:34:27.800 --> 00:34:30.480
let's drop a few tactical nukes on
them. So those were those were that

468
00:34:30.639 --> 00:34:36.800
was liberal for Bossy in the good
old days. And of course JFK's like,

469
00:34:36.880 --> 00:34:40.559
get this guy out of here.
Yeah, but this is this is

470
00:34:42.400 --> 00:34:49.599
remind you of Plutarch and Polybius and
this idea of you know, republics are

471
00:34:49.639 --> 00:34:52.960
young, and they are tough,
and they you know, they do great

472
00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:58.679
things and then they become rich and
luxurious, And is what we were talking

473
00:34:58.679 --> 00:35:01.599
about a sign that we're just too
wealthy, that our elites have the luxury

474
00:35:01.639 --> 00:35:07.000
to worry about what the workforce should
look like because they are fat and happy

475
00:35:07.039 --> 00:35:09.280
and they're not worried about the security
of the country anymore. Isn't it sounds

476
00:35:09.320 --> 00:35:14.119
like the end of the Roman Republic. I thought that's what Lucretia's viewalist Now

477
00:35:14.239 --> 00:35:17.800
mine's deeper even than that, And
it's really very simple. I do believe

478
00:35:17.920 --> 00:35:23.880
that I'm gonna say this oversimplified to
make it not such a long discussion,

479
00:35:23.960 --> 00:35:32.800
Steve, that our current elites are
complete nihilists, and because they believe in

480
00:35:32.960 --> 00:35:39.840
nothing, they certainly cannot believe in
any kind of patriotism or recognize why Americans

481
00:35:39.840 --> 00:35:44.719
exception America is exceptional, or any
of those other things. So where they

482
00:35:44.880 --> 00:35:52.840
are is having to grasp onto any
kind of solid foundation. Right now.

483
00:35:52.880 --> 00:35:58.119
The solid foundation is climate change,
it's d ei, and it's you know,

484
00:35:58.239 --> 00:36:02.639
world global dominance. That you know
that they're none of those things actually

485
00:36:02.760 --> 00:36:07.639
make any sense when you push down
into any one of them, right I

486
00:36:07.639 --> 00:36:09.000
mean, we don't have to go
into that because we've discussed it a million

487
00:36:09.039 --> 00:36:15.239
times. But that's that's the current
reigning orthodoxy or dare I say religion.

488
00:36:16.159 --> 00:36:21.840
The problem is that when you you
adopt this sort of man made religion,

489
00:36:21.960 --> 00:36:25.400
just like with what we saw with
with communism in the Soviet Union. Uh,

490
00:36:27.159 --> 00:36:30.920
in order to make sure that you
you know, you can fully,

491
00:36:31.840 --> 00:36:37.519
that you can embrace this explanation for
the world fully and give your life meaning.

492
00:36:37.840 --> 00:36:39.880
It's not enough just to believe it
yourself. You have to force it

493
00:36:39.920 --> 00:36:44.840
on everybody else. And I do
think that that's part of the problem with

494
00:36:44.840 --> 00:36:50.320
our elites. Why is it that
every time the left moves from being you

495
00:36:50.360 --> 00:36:54.440
know, totally obsessed by feminism and
what we have to do there to the

496
00:36:54.480 --> 00:36:58.360
next thing. You know, let's
throw the feminists under the bus and let's

497
00:36:58.679 --> 00:37:04.960
embrace transsexualism and transgenderism. And we
don't care even if you're a feminist.

498
00:37:05.599 --> 00:37:10.320
Uh Now, we can sacrifice you
because we've moved on and this is our

499
00:37:10.360 --> 00:37:15.199
reigning orthodoxy and if we all don't
join it, we have no meaning in

500
00:37:15.239 --> 00:37:20.400
life. And if we don't force
it on everybody else, we can't be

501
00:37:20.480 --> 00:37:24.639
sure that it's reality, right,
I mean, does that explanation make sense

502
00:37:24.920 --> 00:37:29.840
as opposed to someone. You know, I have no idea of Dean Adjison

503
00:37:30.079 --> 00:37:36.280
or Eisenhower. Any of those people
were religious, but they certainly were grounded

504
00:37:36.480 --> 00:37:39.760
in some sort of basic idea that
there's a difference between good and evil.

505
00:37:40.360 --> 00:37:45.440
Yeah, well they are nothing,
I'll say the dullest brothers. They were

506
00:37:45.480 --> 00:37:49.280
the three of them, h and
you know, one the Secretary of State,

507
00:37:49.280 --> 00:37:53.199
Oneman's head of the CIA, and
the third was a prominent Jesuit's right.

508
00:37:53.719 --> 00:37:59.280
They were very much believers in old
fashioned religion. And I mean know

509
00:37:59.320 --> 00:38:01.960
that bring back the Dallas Brothers.
Maybe that's gonna be my theme, John,

510
00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:07.400
I don't know, But does what
I say makes sense? Why why

511
00:38:07.440 --> 00:38:09.719
they can't leave us alone? You
know, Steve's favorite thing is the Left

512
00:38:09.760 --> 00:38:14.519
doesn't care what what you do as
long as it's mandatory. But as long

513
00:38:14.559 --> 00:38:17.840
as they get to make it mandatory
is what the phrase really should be.

514
00:38:17.920 --> 00:38:22.880
It's you know, they want it
doesn't matter what they make you do.

515
00:38:22.760 --> 00:38:24.920
I told Steve I wasn't gonna do
it, but I'm gonna do it after

516
00:38:24.960 --> 00:38:30.360
all in this context, So there's
an article there's all over Twitter this morning,

517
00:38:30.480 --> 00:38:37.920
John, is a story about how
the Biden administration is in the process

518
00:38:37.960 --> 00:38:44.360
of putting in place a new mask
mandate and lockdowns for the latest variant of

519
00:38:44.440 --> 00:38:50.880
COVID, and that they're starting with
the TSAU pilots, stewardesses, et cetera

520
00:38:50.960 --> 00:38:53.119
will have to We'll be required again
because they can do that, you know,

521
00:38:53.199 --> 00:39:00.079
for federal regulations. They can tell
stewardesses and airline pilots that they have

522
00:39:00.119 --> 00:39:04.880
to wear masks, and that two
months from now the lockdown, the COVID

523
00:39:04.920 --> 00:39:08.079
lockdowns will be complete again. I
don't know, I don't have I told

524
00:39:08.119 --> 00:39:14.360
Steve you guys still still haven't sent
me my designer tinfoil hat. So I'm

525
00:39:14.440 --> 00:39:17.280
just gonna I told Steve, I
gotta put this out there on this podcast

526
00:39:17.400 --> 00:39:22.960
because if I'm wrong and two months
from now, none of this has happened,

527
00:39:22.960 --> 00:39:25.599
thank goodness. If I'm right,
I'm gonna go see I told you

528
00:39:25.639 --> 00:39:30.360
so, and you can say,
see you guys can look at me and

529
00:39:30.400 --> 00:39:32.599
say, now, you, Lucretia, you're a nut job. Be quiet.

530
00:39:32.639 --> 00:39:37.199
Oh look, I figured Steve's got
the science math kid who's just went

531
00:39:37.239 --> 00:39:39.360
off to college. It's I was
hoping he's gonna design the damn thing.

532
00:39:39.400 --> 00:39:45.360
I've been waiting. We come on, Steve. Oh, I'll get him

533
00:39:45.400 --> 00:39:50.239
on that right away. Speaking of
classical virtue that you brought up a mom

534
00:39:50.239 --> 00:39:52.760
gonna go, John. That's topic
number two left over from yesterday. We

535
00:39:52.920 --> 00:39:54.960
got off. I don't remember how
this happened, but we got off on

536
00:39:55.000 --> 00:40:00.679
the whole problem of human What's that
John brought it up? Yeah, and

537
00:40:00.039 --> 00:40:04.119
is interesting discussion. Actually, yeah, it was. But I think we

538
00:40:04.159 --> 00:40:06.800
should carry on with it because there's
a lot more to be said with it,

539
00:40:07.360 --> 00:40:08.400
and we're the right people to do
it. Plus it gives us a

540
00:40:08.480 --> 00:40:12.280
chance to tease John about his Hobbes
video from a few months ago, which

541
00:40:12.320 --> 00:40:15.239
we never got around to. We
talked about human rights, and of course

542
00:40:15.280 --> 00:40:17.760
my joke is, we're not even
sure what humans are anymore. There are

543
00:40:17.800 --> 00:40:21.679
no more women's rights, since there
are no more women, as we know.

544
00:40:21.840 --> 00:40:28.320
But the confusion is the way of
what it is that human rights are

545
00:40:28.440 --> 00:40:31.119
essentially any good thing that people assert
that they want, a right to housing,

546
00:40:31.199 --> 00:40:35.800
a right to health care, right, all kinds of things. Now,

547
00:40:35.840 --> 00:40:39.440
as it happens, quite separately from
all this, the other day I

548
00:40:39.519 --> 00:40:45.280
came across a book I hadn't heard
of before called Thomas Hobbes and the Natural

549
00:40:45.400 --> 00:40:47.840
Law, and it's just out from
Actually it's been on a while, but

550
00:40:47.880 --> 00:40:52.639
I just found out about it by
a guy named Cody Cooper, who apparently

551
00:40:52.719 --> 00:40:55.559
was a student of Tom Pangel And
certain listeners in the know will know what

552
00:40:55.599 --> 00:41:00.320
that's code for. And he's arguing
that Hobbs act had more in common with

553
00:41:00.400 --> 00:41:07.719
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas than is generally
thought that actually his views are entirely harmonious

554
00:41:07.519 --> 00:41:12.079
with the classics, and this is
a renegade view in modern times. And

555
00:41:12.119 --> 00:41:15.280
so this has led to people to
say, ah, here it comes.

556
00:41:15.440 --> 00:41:20.280
We're gonna get Hobbistottle to go on
the shelf next to Locastottle. That you

557
00:41:20.360 --> 00:41:22.760
may know, there's this big project
to harmonize lack in Aristotle, that Tom

558
00:41:22.800 --> 00:41:28.440
West is one of the key figures
about behind and now we're gonna get Hobbistottle.

559
00:41:28.559 --> 00:41:30.920
So I don't know. I mean, this is a good way of

560
00:41:30.920 --> 00:41:36.920
getting back into explaining the distinction between
classical natural law, classical natural right and

561
00:41:37.079 --> 00:41:45.840
modern natural law and natural right and
how it ultimately degrades into well, I

562
00:41:45.880 --> 00:41:47.519
was gonna I was gonna pause here, and he's hanging on the edge of

563
00:41:47.559 --> 00:41:51.880
my seat. Right, do you
want to weigh in with any more clarifications

564
00:41:51.920 --> 00:41:59.320
lucretia, But I can find it's
the problem. This is just Strauss.

565
00:41:59.400 --> 00:42:01.840
I don't know why you can't just
turn to Strauss and have this Christians very

566
00:42:01.880 --> 00:42:09.480
simply, and that is that the
ancient world and the classical classical philosophy understood,

567
00:42:10.480 --> 00:42:15.559
or let me put it differently,
operated within a horizon where there was

568
00:42:15.679 --> 00:42:23.239
not a monotheistic universal God. And
so each community, each ah polis what

569
00:42:23.360 --> 00:42:27.480
everyone call, had their own gods
who made the laws, and so on.

570
00:42:27.519 --> 00:42:32.840
With the advent of Christianity and the
Romans carrying a Christianity all over the

571
00:42:32.880 --> 00:42:37.960
world, you have a universal regime
and a universal god, Christianities, the

572
00:42:37.079 --> 00:42:45.920
universal God. Politics becomes very difficult, very difficult, indeed, and because

573
00:42:45.280 --> 00:42:49.360
who do you owe to whom do
you owe your allegiance in the In the

574
00:42:49.360 --> 00:42:52.679
classical world, you owed your allegiance
to the gods of the city, which

575
00:42:52.719 --> 00:42:57.320
was at the same time obeying the
laws with piety. If you are in

576
00:42:57.360 --> 00:43:00.159
the modern world, obeying the laws
is not necessarily piety. It could be

577
00:43:00.239 --> 00:43:04.639
if you if you live under a
regime with good laws. But this whole

578
00:43:04.679 --> 00:43:10.280
religious problem created. For Machiavelli,
for instance, he saw that as the

579
00:43:10.360 --> 00:43:16.840
major problem of the modern world was
how do you how do you return powerful

580
00:43:16.880 --> 00:43:25.599
government to its rightful place in human
politics in a world dominated by Christianity.

581
00:43:25.679 --> 00:43:30.599
And so what you find it works
for Locke, it doesn't work for Hobbes.

582
00:43:30.760 --> 00:43:35.760
Sorry, is that you can in
fact find natural right in Hobbes that

583
00:43:35.920 --> 00:43:42.360
is fully consistent with Aristotle, fully
consistent with Aristotle in the sense that that

584
00:43:42.519 --> 00:43:47.360
Locke is operating in a world transformed
by Christianity. You cannot return, as

585
00:43:47.400 --> 00:43:57.239
you once did to the classical Greek
polis, where you could question the gods

586
00:43:57.239 --> 00:44:00.360
of the city, question the laws
of the city, because as you all,

587
00:44:00.440 --> 00:44:02.920
it's that's done. I mean,
you played a walked us out of

588
00:44:02.920 --> 00:44:07.880
the cave. Socrates walked us out
of the cave, and now you know,

589
00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:12.920
so it's a different situation altogether.
The real question is how do we

590
00:44:14.360 --> 00:44:22.880
what what gods of the city can
we use in order to give our laws,

591
00:44:22.159 --> 00:44:29.320
our fundamental regime principles, the same
kind of authority that the gods of

592
00:44:29.320 --> 00:44:31.960
the city once were able to do. And that's of course social contract theory

593
00:44:32.000 --> 00:44:37.840
and the fundamental notion of equality,
which builds, of course, on the

594
00:44:37.920 --> 00:44:43.000
Christian idea of all human beings equal, being equal before God, and so

595
00:44:43.599 --> 00:44:49.960
you can. Locke doesn't work if
you stick him in third century BC Greek

596
00:44:50.039 --> 00:44:55.960
cities, but third century BC cities
don't work if you put them in seventeenth

597
00:44:57.039 --> 00:45:04.519
eighteenth century England or twenty first for
America. Wow, it's It's not a

598
00:45:04.559 --> 00:45:10.320
Marxist view, not at all.
It's an understanding of of the the the

599
00:45:10.360 --> 00:45:16.679
experiences under which you operate, the
environment, the culture, the all of

600
00:45:16.719 --> 00:45:19.920
that. I don't even know what
the right word for it all is.

601
00:45:19.960 --> 00:45:22.760
But you cannot go back to the
days where we just have the gods of

602
00:45:22.760 --> 00:45:25.480
the city. Maybe you could even
say that that's somewhat what the left is

603
00:45:25.519 --> 00:45:30.239
trying to do. They're going to
replace the Christian God and the notion of

604
00:45:30.320 --> 00:45:34.920
right and wrong revelation with their own
gods, which are you know, climate

605
00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.679
change and diversity and so on.
Uh. We're always looking for authority,

606
00:45:39.920 --> 00:45:45.639
We're always looking for something beyond ourselves
that we can believe in, that that

607
00:45:45.639 --> 00:45:52.239
that can remind us that maybe we're
not non existent human beings staring into the

608
00:45:52.320 --> 00:45:55.239
void. I don't even know anyway, sorry, I'll be quiet now.

609
00:45:55.760 --> 00:46:00.559
Well that was a tour to force
John. Do you want to comment or

610
00:46:00.599 --> 00:46:04.639
ask a question about that? Yeah? Yeah, so I how do you

611
00:46:04.719 --> 00:46:10.920
respond then, to the idea that
the state of nature and the social compact

612
00:46:12.599 --> 00:46:17.559
are really the creation of Hobbes?
And Hobbes uh, you know, isn't

613
00:46:17.599 --> 00:46:22.079
so accommodating to Christianity as Locke is. Just you know, so, you

614
00:46:22.079 --> 00:46:24.119
know, you guys are teasing me. I did you know, I am

615
00:46:24.159 --> 00:46:28.599
a I do like the work of
Hobbes, and I do like people who

616
00:46:28.679 --> 00:46:30.440
write it, you know, trying
to revive interest in him, and I

617
00:46:30.480 --> 00:46:32.800
did. I don't know why,
but Prague, are you asking me to

618
00:46:32.800 --> 00:46:37.639
do these videos about Hobbes? And
so I actually went back and reread Hobbs

619
00:46:37.679 --> 00:46:42.480
for the first time in a while, probably since I sat down in Harvard

620
00:46:42.480 --> 00:46:46.519
Mansfield's intro to Political Theory and read
it carefully in the you know, the

621
00:46:46.519 --> 00:46:52.400
original carefully. And I think of
him as thinking he is making a break

622
00:46:53.039 --> 00:46:57.239
with the ancients, and you know, making a break with Arson Plato with

623
00:46:57.280 --> 00:47:01.920
this idea of the state and nature
and social unpacked and you know, his

624
00:47:01.920 --> 00:47:07.079
his account, I think very strange
treatment and discussion of the Church and Christianity.

625
00:47:07.079 --> 00:47:12.719
It seemed like he was being very
weasily, actually much more forthright about

626
00:47:12.719 --> 00:47:15.760
it. You could still be burned
at the stake for heresy and those you

627
00:47:15.800 --> 00:47:19.320
have to be very careful what you
right. Yeah, I mean, I

628
00:47:19.599 --> 00:47:22.639
know this is what how Strassman's approach
it. Right. You guys say there's

629
00:47:22.679 --> 00:47:27.639
something you say to the general public
that won't get you in trouble, and

630
00:47:27.679 --> 00:47:31.039
then you hide the real message inside
that. And so when I was trying

631
00:47:31.039 --> 00:47:34.519
to think of it that way,
it seems to me Hobbs was quite dubious

632
00:47:34.599 --> 00:47:37.039
about Christianity and its role, even
though I didn't want to say it out

633
00:47:37.079 --> 00:47:44.079
right. That seems quite contrary to
what you just describe. Don't be harmonious

634
00:47:44.159 --> 00:47:49.280
with the past. Well, first
of all, let's let me go to

635
00:47:49.320 --> 00:47:53.360
your first question, and that's the
difference between Hobbs and Locke and why why

636
00:47:53.400 --> 00:47:58.039
it is? When I think the
way you put it was, if you

637
00:47:58.800 --> 00:48:02.920
see the modern the answer to the
modern problem as a social contract that you

638
00:48:02.920 --> 00:48:08.559
know that we understand from that construct
of the state of nature, why then

639
00:48:08.599 --> 00:48:14.400
do I not see Hobbs in the
same light as say Locke and beyond.

640
00:48:14.599 --> 00:48:17.320
Here's the difference, and I'll just
do talk about the difference between Hobbes and

641
00:48:17.360 --> 00:48:24.760
Locke. It is a fundamentally different
view of human nature. And so Hobbs

642
00:48:24.840 --> 00:48:34.440
believed that there was no such thing
as virtue, as goodness, as morality

643
00:48:34.719 --> 00:48:42.199
at the only thing that he thought
in human beings was a trait that was

644
00:48:42.800 --> 00:48:50.519
reliable in any way was just that
sort of you could almost call it the

645
00:48:51.480 --> 00:48:57.559
who's the guy the apple from the
tree? Newton right as right as it's

646
00:48:57.639 --> 00:49:02.760
almost for Hobbes, it's it's a
sort of uh, non moral non out

647
00:49:02.800 --> 00:49:08.920
there, and it's just like it's
this very basic almost like an object in

648
00:49:08.960 --> 00:49:15.039
motion wants to remain in motion.
Okay, that's it's no more than that.

649
00:49:15.119 --> 00:49:20.559
It's not even an emotion. It's
mechanical. It's mechanical, and that

650
00:49:20.639 --> 00:49:25.159
becomes the most reliable thing about human
nature, and upon which you can build

651
00:49:25.239 --> 00:49:31.519
a much more solid political regime than
you can on these you know, all

652
00:49:31.519 --> 00:49:37.320
this flighty notion of Christianity and blah
blah blah blah blah. The difference between

653
00:49:37.360 --> 00:49:42.400
Hobbes and Locke is that Locke actually
he talks about it. He says,

654
00:49:42.480 --> 00:49:47.800
the help me Steve. The actual
quote is the rightness of the law of

655
00:49:47.880 --> 00:49:52.519
nature is written on the heart of
man. Yeah, no, the law,

656
00:49:52.880 --> 00:49:53.880
Now that that's not it. It's
not the law of name. The

657
00:49:54.000 --> 00:50:00.280
idea of right and wrong is,
according to Locke, part of our nature

658
00:50:00.840 --> 00:50:06.239
that we recognize the difference between right
and wrong that we you know, and

659
00:50:06.360 --> 00:50:09.159
everything that flows from that. The
problem is it's not reliable. Do I

660
00:50:09.199 --> 00:50:14.679
think that Hobbs and and Locke disagreed
about that? Maybe maybe not. But

661
00:50:14.880 --> 00:50:22.480
for Locke, you don't have to
reduce human beings to that mechanical. I'm

662
00:50:22.519 --> 00:50:29.039
the only thing that motivates me is
the fear of violent death. You can,

663
00:50:29.159 --> 00:50:36.119
in fact recognize that human beings have
a moral compass, even if it's

664
00:50:36.159 --> 00:50:39.639
faulty, and that's where you build
your political regime from. And that's what

665
00:50:39.760 --> 00:50:45.159
takes us back to Aristotle. Ah, look, can I can I during

666
00:50:45.199 --> 00:50:49.079
at this point? Yeah? I
mean I sometimes say that on the surface

667
00:50:49.079 --> 00:50:52.119
and getting started, you could say
that Locke is Hobbs with a happy face.

668
00:50:52.239 --> 00:50:57.000
I mean, he's more optimistic about
the potentiality of human sociality. But

669
00:50:57.079 --> 00:50:59.280
here's the thing. I mean,
Yeah, we think of Hobbs as the

670
00:50:59.320 --> 00:51:02.079
founder of through modern political thought and
contract theory. You know that's correct,

671
00:51:02.800 --> 00:51:07.199
but I'm not sure how far you've
gotten your reading of Strauss. John you

672
00:51:07.239 --> 00:51:13.920
said you were struggling through natural right
and history. Strauss repeats the conventional of

673
00:51:13.960 --> 00:51:19.039
you that Hobbs founds modern natural modern
political science. But then he says this,

674
00:51:20.280 --> 00:51:24.880
it was Machiavelli, that greater Columbus, who had discovered the continent on

675
00:51:24.960 --> 00:51:30.400
which Hobbs could erect Hiss structure.
In other words, Hobbs going straight from

676
00:51:30.440 --> 00:51:38.960
Cockavelli. Now you mentioned the sometimes
a perverse, overdone methodology of esoteric reading

677
00:51:39.000 --> 00:51:44.440
that Strauss sans do what it looks
to be. I think it is the

678
00:51:44.519 --> 00:51:47.360
central paragraph of that whole book,
and maybe you shouldn't put too much weight

679
00:51:47.360 --> 00:51:52.000
on it. But this one sentence
that I think explains the problem very well,

680
00:51:52.199 --> 00:51:54.119
which Lucretia brought up a minute ago, which is different conceptions of what

681
00:51:54.119 --> 00:51:59.519
we mean by nature, Nature as
a standard and grounding of justice or nature

682
00:51:59.599 --> 00:52:02.400
is just a totality of phenomenon in
modern life, and we reduce it to

683
00:52:02.760 --> 00:52:07.239
simply self preservation as the bedrock of
things. So here's the sentence that I

684
00:52:07.239 --> 00:52:12.199
think is very useful from Strauss again, page one sixty one, the central

685
00:52:12.239 --> 00:52:16.840
page of the book. It is
important that the difference between the Aristotelian view

686
00:52:16.840 --> 00:52:24.519
of natural right and machiavellianism be clearly
understood. Machiavelli denies natural right because he

687
00:52:24.599 --> 00:52:30.519
takes his bearings by the extreme situations
in which the demands of justice are reduced

688
00:52:30.639 --> 00:52:37.000
to the requirements of necessity, and
not by the normal situations in which the

689
00:52:37.039 --> 00:52:40.960
demands of justice in the strict sense
are the highest law. Lot mark can

690
00:52:42.039 --> 00:52:45.199
be said about all that, But
the point is is that Machiavelli starts the

691
00:52:45.239 --> 00:52:49.760
break and Hobbs continues it. But
now, as I say, there's this

692
00:52:49.760 --> 00:52:52.480
book, comes along the letter thinkers
saying, well, you know, actually

693
00:52:52.079 --> 00:52:55.840
Hobbs, like Locke comes Now there's
more room for harmonization than you think.

694
00:52:57.039 --> 00:53:00.519
Yeah, okay, can I just
express the difference. This is why I'm

695
00:53:00.559 --> 00:53:04.719
so surprised you guys disagree with me
about Hawes, because I actually I'm a

696
00:53:04.760 --> 00:53:08.920
little more maybe I'm excessively optimistic about
Hobbes. So Hobbs, you know,

697
00:53:08.920 --> 00:53:13.440
for you know, somewhat for the
law. We think about why do people

698
00:53:13.480 --> 00:53:17.039
cooperate? That's the main issue,
and how do people cooperate? And so

699
00:53:17.679 --> 00:53:22.280
with Hobbes, as you said,
necessity forces you people to cooperate, and

700
00:53:22.320 --> 00:53:28.559
you describe Block as almost suggesting human
beings by nature are sociable, so they

701
00:53:28.599 --> 00:53:32.280
will cooperate because they want to,
not because necessity forces them too. So

702
00:53:32.519 --> 00:53:37.679
two things about that is one,
I actually like Hobbes description because it doesn't

703
00:53:37.719 --> 00:53:42.800
make you overly ambitious and setting up
a society, you know, Hobbs.

704
00:53:43.119 --> 00:53:46.159
The other part I thought about how's
it was not appreciated as much or hasn't

705
00:53:46.159 --> 00:53:51.519
been appreciated much as you know.
He gives a kind of description of relatively

706
00:53:51.559 --> 00:53:57.559
minimal state that I think Lucretia would
like, where where basically hopefully the state

707
00:53:57.599 --> 00:54:01.360
maintains basic law and order and then
people are just left to you know,

708
00:54:01.480 --> 00:54:06.360
enjoy their lives, spend their time
from Yeah, I mean, there's one

709
00:54:06.360 --> 00:54:08.559
of these big issues is what are
you supposed to do in a Hobbes in

710
00:54:08.679 --> 00:54:13.639
society after law and order is established? And he really doesn't have anything to

711
00:54:13.639 --> 00:54:15.880
say about it. He's just not
He doesn't really say, oh, and

712
00:54:15.920 --> 00:54:19.559
then people should do A B and
C and D with their free time.

713
00:54:19.960 --> 00:54:22.280
Where's the thing that worries me?
About Locke is if you want to build

714
00:54:22.280 --> 00:54:27.880
a society that's based on people want
to cooperate in these sort of almost Christian

715
00:54:27.920 --> 00:54:31.679
traits about their nature, then I
worry the state might get too involved with

716
00:54:31.760 --> 00:54:37.159
what we do with our free time. Try to make from Locke. This

717
00:54:37.199 --> 00:54:42.760
is what Locke says, that exactly
in response to what you just said.

718
00:54:44.960 --> 00:54:49.159
But freedom of men, this is
from Locke's second Treatise. But freedom of

719
00:54:49.199 --> 00:54:52.239
men under government is to have a
standing rule to live by, common to

720
00:54:52.400 --> 00:54:57.199
everyone of that society, and made
by the legislative power erected in it.

721
00:54:57.519 --> 00:55:02.880
A liberty to follow my own will
in all things where the rule prescribes not

722
00:55:04.119 --> 00:55:08.199
and not to be the subject to
be subject to the inconsistent, uncertain,

723
00:55:08.400 --> 00:55:15.199
unknown, arbitrary will of another man. That's referring directly to Hobbs as freedom

724
00:55:15.199 --> 00:55:20.360
of nature is to be under no
other restraint but the law of nature.

725
00:55:20.400 --> 00:55:25.159
In other words, Locke says,
in the state of nature, you are

726
00:55:25.239 --> 00:55:29.800
subject to the law of nature.
The problem with that is the law of

727
00:55:29.880 --> 00:55:35.639
nature written, he says, on
the Hearts of Men is often interrupted,

728
00:55:35.719 --> 00:55:39.079
shall we say, by the passions. Rationally speaking, it's very easy to

729
00:55:39.119 --> 00:55:44.280
know how we ought to behave with
respect to one another. But the passions

730
00:55:44.320 --> 00:55:47.480
get in the way. So that
is why man forms a social contract sets

731
00:55:47.559 --> 00:55:51.079
up that government. But the whole
point of the government, and this is

732
00:55:51.119 --> 00:55:55.039
another difference between the classics and the
moderns. For law, it's very clear

733
00:55:55.440 --> 00:56:01.000
you are free to do whatever it
is that the government does not proscribe.

734
00:56:01.360 --> 00:56:07.800
Remember the classics were very clear.
A good government is a government that creates

735
00:56:07.920 --> 00:56:13.760
laws, prescriptive laws that help you
become the best person you can be.

736
00:56:13.920 --> 00:56:15.679
I guess, yeah, that's the
last sentence. That last sentence is what

737
00:56:15.760 --> 00:56:20.880
worries me. I was with you
all the way until yes, that the

738
00:56:21.000 --> 00:56:23.519
state, and I think I could
see that in Lock. Oh, I

739
00:56:23.559 --> 00:56:28.679
think I just read you the part
where yes, that's why I'm worried.

740
00:56:28.880 --> 00:56:34.679
But sorry, go ahead, all
right, I'll go ahead. Look,

741
00:56:34.800 --> 00:56:37.079
I don't look. You have to
work some You have to really help out

742
00:56:37.119 --> 00:56:44.559
Lock to make him an avatar of
limited government. Remember his one one one

743
00:56:44.599 --> 00:56:50.719
of his most ringing phrases is tyranny
is merely monarchy misliked. In other words,

744
00:56:50.760 --> 00:56:54.400
there's no objective ground for saying something
that tyranny. He's following, I

745
00:56:54.480 --> 00:56:57.400
met Hobbs. Sorry, I said, yeah, I met Hobbs. Thank

746
00:56:57.440 --> 00:57:00.800
you. I'm sorry I do that
a lot. Yeah, says tyranny is

747
00:57:00.840 --> 00:57:05.639
merely monarchy, mislike he is following
Machiavelli there and being in some ways more

748
00:57:05.679 --> 00:57:10.599
explicit than usually very explicit Machiavelli.
Uh oh boy, where do we go

749
00:57:10.639 --> 00:57:14.079
with this? We're listeners. By
the way, We thought this would be

750
00:57:14.079 --> 00:57:15.519
like a half hour episode, and
here we are coming up to an hour,

751
00:57:15.639 --> 00:57:20.039
and so I think I need to
play the tyrant the Hobbesy and tyrant

752
00:57:20.079 --> 00:57:22.639
and brought us to an end.
But we've got quite a lot out there.

753
00:57:22.880 --> 00:57:27.360
You guys, have any last thoughts
here before we mercifully release our listeners

754
00:57:27.440 --> 00:57:30.119
from I have one little one,
and maybe we picked this up next time

755
00:57:30.199 --> 00:57:34.000
Steve. But I was going to
give Steve a hard time yesterday in the

756
00:57:34.079 --> 00:57:40.760
Ricochet podcast John because he brought up
the unshe the positive Yeah, the Universal

757
00:57:40.840 --> 00:57:45.880
Declaration of Rights and how they established
positive rights, and because of the format,

758
00:57:45.960 --> 00:57:49.519
I never got the opportunity to say, why would you bring that up?

759
00:57:49.599 --> 00:57:54.400
Before you brought up FDR's Economic Bill
of Rights that he gave in the

760
00:57:54.440 --> 00:57:59.320
State of the Union address. And
that's where I think at least in the

761
00:57:59.360 --> 00:58:06.320
United States, to have a much
more powerful reorientation from the rights that belong

762
00:58:06.400 --> 00:58:13.280
to humans to citizens, to be
free from government interference, to be treated

763
00:58:13.320 --> 00:58:15.960
equally, civil rights, being treated
equally before the law, and those things

764
00:58:16.000 --> 00:58:22.159
that don't require anything anybody at the
governmental level. To be reorganizing society and

765
00:58:22.519 --> 00:58:27.079
gaining more and more power doing so. That starts with Roosevelt. And that

766
00:58:27.119 --> 00:58:29.119
was the only point I wanted to
make, not that you were wrong,

767
00:58:29.199 --> 00:58:35.159
Steve, but I was actually surprised
you picked that instead of Roosevelt's introduction of

768
00:58:35.159 --> 00:58:37.800
those ideas. Well. The only
reason I did it was it's a good

769
00:58:37.800 --> 00:58:42.360
illustration of the confusion between what we
would call the old fashioned natural rights of

770
00:58:42.400 --> 00:58:46.559
individuals and positive rights of claims on
the government. So you have Roosevelt,

771
00:58:47.320 --> 00:58:51.400
well, but he doesn't. Yes, I mean you can trace the four

772
00:58:51.480 --> 00:58:54.159
freedom speech directly back to the Commonwealth
Club speech, which we've talked about at

773
00:58:54.159 --> 00:58:57.400
great length, And that was on
purpose. You're right, but I think

774
00:58:58.320 --> 00:59:01.559
it's very accessible to notice that you
have traditional things that sound like our Bill

775
00:59:01.599 --> 00:59:07.280
of Rights in the UN Declaration.
And then but also it's so much fun

776
00:59:07.320 --> 00:59:10.840
to point out a right to pay
vacation does a fundamental international human it's so

777
00:59:10.960 --> 00:59:15.840
ludicrous on its face that I and
again it's simple to approach, that's all.

778
00:59:15.519 --> 00:59:17.920
Yeah, Okay. All I'm gonna
say is you know that look at

779
00:59:17.920 --> 00:59:21.800
the rights he talked about, the
right to a good education, the right

780
00:59:21.840 --> 00:59:24.320
of every family to a decent home, right, the right of every businessman

781
00:59:24.400 --> 00:59:29.880
to trade an an atmosphere of freedom
from unfair competition. You know, the

782
00:59:29.960 --> 00:59:34.079
right of farmers to raise and sell
products at you know, a fear return.

783
00:59:34.559 --> 00:59:37.639
None of those things are rights.
Yeah, they're they're you know,

784
00:59:37.719 --> 00:59:42.719
they're good policy in many cases good
policies. But when you tell I think

785
00:59:42.760 --> 00:59:45.360
that this was even a point John
made and James yesterday, when you start

786
00:59:45.440 --> 00:59:51.800
calling them rights, you have really
messed up the vocabulary in a way where

787
00:59:51.840 --> 00:59:57.159
you mess up people thinking about them, and you change the dynamic. All

788
00:59:57.239 --> 01:00:00.760
right, do you have a Do
you have a I don't suppose, since

789
01:00:00.760 --> 01:00:02.760
we did this hastily, John,
you have a Camelism of the week.

790
01:00:02.840 --> 01:00:07.280
But I'm sure Lucretia has got some
babylon Bees for us. Yeah. I

791
01:00:07.320 --> 01:00:09.840
don't have any any commulisms. Well, I mean, I I've forgotten our

792
01:00:09.840 --> 01:00:16.199
old communism for you John always always
drink your whiskey. Wait wait, wait,

793
01:00:16.239 --> 01:00:22.440
now I've forgotten it. We are
drinking the whiskey that we've been drinking.

794
01:00:22.639 --> 01:00:24.760
Well, actually she did say,
I've got one one sentence. It

795
01:00:24.840 --> 01:00:27.880
was, you know, one of
the objects of our policy has been to

796
01:00:27.920 --> 01:00:32.599
bring down energy prices. And it's
like what she wanted again. Yeah,

797
01:00:32.719 --> 01:00:37.599
currently, of course not it is
time to drink the whiskey we've been drinking,

798
01:00:37.639 --> 01:00:40.280
and that time is every day.
That's what's from a long time ago.

799
01:00:40.400 --> 01:00:45.679
But so you know, again,
it's so hard to pick, but

800
01:00:45.000 --> 01:00:51.360
one of my favorites was desk caused
by Hurricane Hillary to be labeled suicides.

801
01:00:53.119 --> 01:00:57.519
That one's pretty good, huh.
And then you guys will appreciate this one.

802
01:00:58.360 --> 01:01:05.400
California achieves world first crime rate of
zero after legalizing all crime. Yeah,

803
01:01:05.480 --> 01:01:07.880
that's I know, I know.
Sometimes it's not even funny, and

804
01:01:08.079 --> 01:01:14.400
I'll actually I had to laugh about
this, and it probably doesn't even work

805
01:01:14.400 --> 01:01:19.199
in the midst of this whole podcast, but I laughed at it. It's

806
01:01:19.239 --> 01:01:22.360
got it. This really old guy, Why do all these lazy kids live

807
01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:25.559
with their parents? Says Grandpa,
who once bought a five thousand square foot

808
01:01:25.639 --> 01:01:31.559
house for two potatoes. All right, I'm done. Oh hey, this

809
01:01:31.599 --> 01:01:36.519
week we've got the first Republican debate
coming in. Right, we have a

810
01:01:36.519 --> 01:01:40.880
lot to talk about on the next
show. Yeah, I'm gonna have to

811
01:01:40.920 --> 01:01:44.480
drink a lot just to be able
to watch that. Let's have a drinking

812
01:01:44.519 --> 01:01:46.239
game. Yeah. Oh I always
do that. Yeah, all right,

813
01:01:46.480 --> 01:01:52.760
start start our start, our exit
launch John, always drink your whiskey.

814
01:01:52.800 --> 01:02:00.320
Meat. Let's go Brandon and Steve. God save the queen man right next

815
01:02:00.320 --> 01:02:09.480
week, everybody, I try to
trust the country man, then a town

816
01:02:09.679 --> 01:02:19.079
man. You can judge, fise
eyes, take a love if your can

817
01:02:20.960 --> 01:02:34.440
you sign no star survivor trace side. I try to trust the man who

818
01:02:34.719 --> 01:02:43.760
works with these hands. He loves
that you wants. You know, we

819
01:02:44.199 --> 01:02:57.239
un understands don't need any ship when
you hide your love feel the downy.

820
01:03:00.519 --> 01:03:10.559
I'm so along with my fear without
the thing that I keep, and every

821
01:03:12.400 --> 01:03:30.960
single d that I've walked to whe
me back came again. I've got to

822
01:03:31.239 --> 01:03:40.960
find the priest and magician singing all
the chants, and they never heard,

823
01:03:43.840 --> 01:03:52.960
and they're all calling down my name, even academics searching printed words, and

824
01:03:54.679 --> 01:04:02.400
my father to the left of me
Ricochet joined the conversation