WEBVTT

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Oh bum beast, he's me,
sir. Ask not what your country can

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do for you, ask what you
can do for your country, mister Gorbachev.

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Tear down this wall. It's the
Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and rob

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Blog. Yes they're back. I'm
Jamis Lylax. Today we talked to Victor

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Davis Hanson about Henry Kissinger, life, legend and all. Those are the

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things that Victor's great at talking about. So let's have ourselves a podcast.

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Have we been correct in pushing for
the expansion of NATO. I was opposed

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to taking in Ukraine and Georgia.
I believe the position of Ukraine it's so

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sensitive. America is a nation that
can be defined in a single word.

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I wasna foot him. Excuse music. We never get bored. Welcome everybody.

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This is the Ricochet Podcast. It's
number six hundred and sixty eight.

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Wow, we get that far well. As they say in public radio,

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things to people like you. If
that is you are a member of ricoshet.

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If not, go there check it
out. You'll want to join.

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That's ricochet dot com. You're home
for the most stimulating conversations and community on

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the center right web. Well,
the heck on the whole web it was

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founded. There should be patriotic music
and a flag rippling, and should be

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an eagle alighting on my shoulder by
Rob Long and Peter Robinson, who are

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with us back after a brief hiatus, and welcome Robin Peter. I think

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we're with us. That's always like, oh, you know, Rob Peter,

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they're still with us, you know, not doing good. How are

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they doing? Not good? Yeah, exactly, not good, but they're

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with us. They're kind of sentient, Peter, Peter. Peter seems to

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know when we enter the room.
Yes, exactly. You know. If

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I ever have to go into hospice, I want to go into the one

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that Jimmy Carter is going to,
because apparently that is just a life preservation

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center. He's been there for longer
than anybody else. I mean, for

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Heaven's sakes, and good for him, although sad for him. Interesting week

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newswise of people perishing and shuffling off
the mortal coil. We're gonna get to

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that a little bit later with the
victory Davis Hanson. But first I thought

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you guys might want to warm over
the leftovers from the debate between two people

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who are not running for president or
you know, you know what I mean,

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who are not their party fabs.
You know, at the moment,

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Gavin Newsom went up against Ron DeSantis, and DeSantis had a few arrows in

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his quiver, the poop map,
I love that the father in law who

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moved to Florida is kind of a
nice line and other things, and people

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looking back saying Gavin Newsom looks like
the guy that you were like president because

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he looks like president, or he
looks like the devil take a choice,

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and DeSantis is just not as natural
a politician and hence probably won't make as

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an impression on the American mind.
I don't know. It depends what people

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are looking for. It's a big
country. Depends what do you guys think.

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I thought you summed it up beautifully
just then, yeah, well then

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let's move along, right then,
Kenery kissing Dred, I know, I'm

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sorry, go on, well,
I mean, it seemed to me that

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DeSantis had so much more powerful an
argument to make you just keep coming back

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again and again and again to the
notion that people are leaving California and moving

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to Florida. That's really the whole
debate, right there, it doesn't matter

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what. And even at that Desantas
seemed to be on the defensive. He's

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just let's put it this way,
if this debate had any immediate political importance,

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it was Ron DeSantis's last chance to
light a fire under his candidacy,

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and he didn't do so. It
was still a better debate than any debate

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we've seen. I found Gavin Newsom
so smarmy, but of course I live

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in California. I'm in a permanent
state of agitation against the man. Anyway

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for two people, for two people
who represent just who are the representatives of?

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Too completely love the two opposed ways
of governing. There was just too

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much shouting and smarm and Hannity might
not have been the best moderator, And

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I don't know. I thought to
myself, how could you possibly keep controlling

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this debate with Gavin Newsom there determined
not to answer questions to talk over.

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The only way you could have done
that is if both sides had agreed that

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Hannady would have the results the right
to turn off a microphone, and obviously

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the Newsom people refused to do that. So it wasn't the debate that I

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was hoping for it was good enough
in the sense that it gave people a

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fair view of these two different men, and they're two different governing philosophies.

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But Gavin Newsom got away with much
more than he should have and Ron DeSantis

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accomplished much less than he ought than
he needed to do. That's sort of

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my view of it. Rob.
Do you agree, and do you agree

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that perhaps it doesn't matter if Desanta's
takes Iowa because that would change the momentum

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completely. Oh, I mean,
I think he needs a win. I

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mean, the political argument and the
debate conversation are kind of two different things.

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I mean, I don't know to
what a extent anybody who is on

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the I don't I don't know to
the extent that anybody's actually on the fence.

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You know, there's just a bunch
of Trump voters, and they don't

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seem to want to not vote for
Trump. My my feeling, my feeling

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is they should, they should vote
for Trump, that Republican should nominate Trump

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and let's just see how it goes. That's what they want to do.

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They should, you know, I
considered, I think it's a suicide pack.

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But okay, that's that's up to
them. You don't understand, Charlie

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is the only guy who can drain
the swamp that is so powerful that it

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will keep him from winning the presidency. Yeah right, Well, as we

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talked before the before the podcast,
the swamp, I consider the swamp of

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the federal bureaucracy, and I can't
imagine any any president, living president and

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living memory who who who gave up
his presidency to more of the federal bureaucracy

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than Donald Trump. Donald Trump basically
handed over the keys to the country in

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the economy, to the to the
federal health bureaucrats before that, as has

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been demands. Now, we don't
to litigate this has been demonstrated. These

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vaunted Trump economy pre COVID wasn't great
either. By the way, the COVID

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economy was his too. Twenty nineteen, the economy shranked because of his stupid

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steel tariffs. That's now, you
know that's that those are stats we don't

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have, so you know, that's
we don't need to litigate Trump. But

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the debate. What was sort of
cheering and depressing about the debate was was

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depressing about it, which just how
rusty everybody is at having an actual debate

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about a actual thing. I mean, if there are two greater choices in

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America, then Florida versus California,
I can't think of them. They seem

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to embody very different ways of thinking
about what a government's supposed to do,

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very different ways of think what economy
is supposed to do, very different ways

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of figuring out how to like revitalize
your economy. Right, we should be

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having those debates. That's what the
country should be deciding in November twenty twenty

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four and so. But the depressing
part about it was that everybody seems really

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rusty. He was not a very
good debate, and we're not going to

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hear that again. Actually, we're
all going to go and vote in twenty

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twenty four and we're not going to
have this very very important, thoughtful I

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don't know what airing out of two
very different visions about what kind of America

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and what kind of an American government
we should have. It was, now

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that I think about it, it
was more revealing than I felt at the

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time. And at least one regard
Gavin Newsom, Gavin Newsom really did not

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make an argument for his model.
He was there to attack and smear and

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obfuscate. He viewed it as an
entirely political encounter. I don't know whether

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he's studied up on this, but
he used the same technique that then Vice

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President Biden used against Paul Ryan,
the interrupting him, talking over him.

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So even Gavin Newsom, the governor
of the state of California, demonstrated that

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the people who champion that model champion
it for reasons of power politics. The

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teachers' unions are behind them, certain
minorities are behind them. They're not going

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to make an argument about it because
even Gavin Newsom eloquent, may not be

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the glib. Let's put it this
way. The man is good with words,

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intelligent, good with words. He
made no care he lacks any conviction

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in his own model. That was
revealing. Yeah, Also, don't you

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feel like that only twenty hours later, don't you feel like, deep down

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Gavin Newsom kind of thinks there's a
non trivial chance between now and I don't

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know, Labor Day twenty twenty four
that he is going to be the Democratic

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nominee. Absolutely absolutely, he just
you could just see it in his smug

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little hey look, and this is
this is his dress rehearsal all the Democrats

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now can see him. Wow.
He went into the Lion's Den with Kennedy

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and and Ron De Santis and look
at and he he was insulting and pugnacious.

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And no, no, no,
it just feels to me like beauty

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pageant time for him. He reminded
me, there was one the one time

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I sat in the owner's box.
I knew a rich guy who then owned

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a share of the San Francisco Giants. And when Barry Bonds went to the

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what was on deck warming up?
Nobody looked at anybody else, including the

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man who was at home who was
batting. He said, he was saying

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they were behind. He was saying
effectively to the whole and his bat speed

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was so much faster than the man
who was hitting. At that moment.

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The crowd looked at him, and
it was as if he was saying,

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don't worry, don't worry, I'm
next. I'm up. That's that's Newsom's

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attitude. Now, by the way, quick point on Iowa. The poles

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are overwhelmingly in favor of Trump,
and so I, like you, Rob

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thought, oh, for goodness sake, let's just get this over with.

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And then a couple of nights ago. I had a conversation with an Iowan

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who has attended Iowa caucuses and he
said, no, no, no,

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be very very careful. Yeah,
the old rule, the old joke in

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Iowa is that the Democrats hold their
caucuses in the gymnasium. They all come

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with their minds made up and it's
an athletic event. They try to shout

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each other into submission. But the
Republicans, of course, the idea here

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is that they get together in school, local high schools, which they often

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do, schools or churches. But
the Republicans hold their caucuses in the library.

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It's a much more neighborly event.
They do try to persuade each other.

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And he said, actually, people
do come into the Republican caucus with

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a sort of notional first and second
choice, but they're willing to talk this

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over with their neighbors. They're willing
to be neighborly about it. Votes do

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get shifted around. So in that
kind of environment, which is essentially unpollable,

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can't you can't pull It's going to
come out of a conversation things could

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still happen for DeSantis or Haley.
Maybe anyway, I put that out there

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yeah. I mean, look,
I think Iowa because I was always interesting,

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I think it's going to be interesting. I mean, full full disclosure,

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I predicted that Mike Pence would take
Iowa. So you know, I'm

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not really the best political prognosticator,
but I was. I was. I

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was very not that he's way too
conservative for me, but I was bullish

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on Pants on Pants's chances. I
think he dropped the ball, but that's

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you know, I was very you
know, evangelical state. They should like

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a Pence, but I think Pen's
kind of tried to have it both ways.

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Interesting thing for DeSantis to do if
he had another run at this or

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if the general does indeed turn out
to be the two of them, is

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to compare the California of Gavin Newsom
with the California of Ronald Reagan, because

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I think there's a I think you
can probably find a few key differences in

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those places, is when it comes
to economic diversity and energy and population and

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cleanliness and the rest of it.
And it would remind people that Reraken came

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out of that milieu, and you
know, taking California values at that time

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to the rest of the country meant
something different than it does now. I

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think everybody kind of gets that that
California, while it's always been the land

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of fruits and nuts in a place
of craziness and experimentation and new beginnings and

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the rest of it, is now
just more or less the poster state for

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DEI and various forms of social engineering
that are designed to enrich a Norman Cluttor

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of bureaucrats and not solve any problems
at all, which is so olbvious because

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the problems aren't being solved that Newsome
is more likely to be the sort of

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guy to say, we don't want
you to be in your car, we

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want you to be in an electric
vehicle if you must, and we're going

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to build high speed rail everywhere,
to which Decatus could point out exactly how

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California has done with high speed for
that matter, how California has done with

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anything, with anything. I mean, the fact that both states have a

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Disneyland is probably the only thing that
you can draw between them as a parallel.

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I don't know, but as somebody
else was saying, no, you

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don't go the rob route, nominate
Trump, lose, and then quit Donald

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Trump for good, because that would
be done. The only question is whether

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or not quitting Donald Trump for good
would be sort of one of those things

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you have to taper yourself off or
you have to just go cold turkey.

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Cold turkey, you know, I
know, I know at this point sounds

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like it's something nice, good for
a sandwich perhaps, although if you get

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any turkey left over from Thanksgiving,
i'd probably check that and maybe I hope

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he was refrigerator. But cold turkey
wise, there is a better way to

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break bad habits than cold turkey.
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You're gonna love these things, and
we thank you for sponsoring this the Ricochet

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Podcast. And now we welcome back
to the podcast with Pleasure VDH. The

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00:15:24.159 --> 00:15:28.120
Man Victor he's a senior Fellow in
Classics of Military History at Couver Institution,

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authored more than twenty books, including
most recently The Dying Citizen, and he's

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got another one in the Way,
The End of Everything, How Wars Descend

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into Annihilation. It's set to be
released May of next year. If we

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get there. We're going to talk
to Nick about the book in a little

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bit. And thanks for joining us. Obviously, the question we want to

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ask somebody like you has followed these
things and charted rise and falls history and

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then like Henry the kay passed at
one hundred and I hate to say,

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but he's being excoriated on Twitter for
some reason. People under thirty are really

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angry at Henry. Reservoir of hatred
there. I didn't know the existed.

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Judge the Man give us an overview
failings, successes, and perhaps why he's

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so hated to this day. Buyser
and Cohort, Well, you know,

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it's very funny. He was probably
the most influential American diplomat of the last

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fifty years, but he actually only
held power for eight as Secretary of State

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and National Security Advisor under Richard Nixon
and that brief Jerry Ford period, so

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he didn't have ex official power.
But almost every president consulted him, and

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even the stranger thing is they all
felt they needed to consult him, but

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they didn't want to publicize the consult
that they consulted him. So if you

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were a democratic president, you thought
that he had illegally he had engineered the

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illegal bombing of Cambodia, or he
had backed Pinochet, or he had sided

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with the Turks, or he had
sided with the Pakistanis against India, so

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he was a war criminal. If
you were on the right, you felt

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that he had opened he triangulated against
the Soviet Union by you know, legitimizing

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mouths seventy million dead in communist China. And then he didn't want to defeat

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as Reagan did the Soviet Union,
but he wanted to manage, manage it,

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manage maybe their decline. So the
right didn't own him. But then

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the people on both sides, whether
you were Bill Clinton or George W.

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Bush or George H. W.
Bush or Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama or

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Donald Trump talked to him, So
there has to be why was that?

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And he gave you a cold,
realistic appraisal of power human nature. It

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was a very Fucididian guy that believed
that human nature was predictable across time and

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space and what people said, and
this is very Thucididian with their bosses,

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the historian called, it was one
thing and the idea, the real motivation

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was another that's never expressed. And
he was a person who understand the real

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and that the real motivations that came
into the Middle East when he kind of

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taught us that what the Arab country
said about the Palestinian authority or Hamas was

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not what they felt. In other
words, they would side with them publicly,

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but privately they would tell us that, you know, Israel should destroy

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them. And that was the kind
of realistic appraisal that got a lot of

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ideals, very angry cynicism, I
guess, they would say. And did

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you like him, Victor? I
only met him twice. He had yes,

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only twice. He came to a
couple of lectures. I gave the

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Vista lecture in the Manhattan Institute,
and then I saw him at a person's

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home once. And he had a
habit of writing authors. So when I

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wrote about thucidity, I wrote the
introduction to the landmark These Cities. He

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wrote me a long, handwritten letter. And then he wrote me when I

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published a book on the Peloponnesian War, a handwritten letter. And he was

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very interested in thu cidities and human
nature. And I think that dovetail with

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his tally rand and what we're going
and what about the right wing, the

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right wing critique with which I associate
myself. Yes, you were an anti

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Kissinger person. Well, I was
a Reagan person. And it meant it

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meant View and Kissinger this is a
complicated figure, and that he and Nixon

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felt we were playing a losing hand
and that the decline that had to be

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managed was our own. And then
Reagan came along and said, well,

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no, actually we ought to be
We have all the cards in our hand.

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Let's start playing them. Of course
I'm oversimplifying. Then you've got Neil

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Ferguson saying, well, the Kissinger
detonte was useful. It bought us ten

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years and we really needed that decade. How do you what do you make

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of all he Let's put it this
way. Kissinger never felt comfortable with Reagan,

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as witness that in his last book, latest book, and do we

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now know? Last book, which
was titled Leadership, and he did profiles

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of what was it, half a
dozen leaders. The contemporary leader he profiled

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was Margaret Thatcher. Yes, Ronald
Dragan's I think Ronald Dragan's name may appear

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twice in the entire entire text of
four hundred words. I bought the book

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and I read it, and I
noticed that. But I think there were

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two things about that. One was
he had a prejudiced against people outside of

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the bipartisan establishment. They didn't have
the proper curses and norm of education and

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building some state department, whether it
was the left or the Reagan came from

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outside well outside that statues. So
in his way of thinking, these were

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populous yahoos, and they didn't They
weren't sober and judicious, and they didn't

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understand the intricacies of diplomacy and backroom
deals and all this. They were too

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over maybe even too trumpion. But
that being said, that was one thing

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I think, and the other was, you know, he wrote so in

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his early career so much about nuclear
strategy and the use of nuclear weapons,

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and then later on he was one
of the people who wanted to ban them,

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you remember, along with a number
of them, and I think,

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so, yeah, he was so
wedded to the idea that and he was

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right. Nuclear weapons and the Soviet
Union had so many of them that they

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when Reagan came in and said,
I want to defeat you know, it's

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very simple when they lose. He
thought, oh my gosh, this guy

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is a California populist. He's an
actor. He comes in and he thinks

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that the world of nuclear weapons is
sort of like a cowboy movie, and

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you can win and lose, and
you can't. There are no winners,

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there are no losers because of nuclear
weapons, and that was kind of ironic.

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Se he actually wrote a book about
how you could use nuclear weapons in

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a limited fashion if you had to. So there were certain prejudices there,

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but when you look at his intellect. I mean, there's one other thing

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I should say is that maybe you
met him, Peter, but William Shawcross

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that wrote that book Sideshow about the
bombing of he had a spouse that would

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go to Stanford Medical and he would
come and talk to me. And he's

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a wonderful guy. He will Crosswood. Yes, and he wrote the most

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damning appraisal if you remember about Kissinger, called sideshow and basically worse than Christopher's

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book, than the Hitchins book,
The Trial of Henry Kissinger, only because

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it's not a dire tribe like Christopher's. It's But the point I'm making is

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that he used to visit me at
Hoover and he retracted that entire book once

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he got older, and he looked
at the Cambodian what the Cambodian what the

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who did the actual slaughter in Cambodi
and the genocide and the nature of the

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North Vietnamese regime, and he kind
of I think he even formally apologized to

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Kissinger for that book. And I
asked Christopher about that, because you know,

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Christopher came to Hoover and I'd see
him in Washington Christopher Hitchins. Now,

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yeah, I'm not saying that Christopher
was repentant, but yeah, I

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think he would say that. You
know how he got had that flirtation with

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the Bush administration during the Iraq War, Yes, you know he was.

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00:23:18.880 --> 00:23:23.359
He was talking to Rumsfeld and all
those guys in that in that context he

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was he didn't have that animus for
Kissinger as he used to that he respected

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his own right. So the only
the only Kissinger anecdote I can. I

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mean, there's tons of witticisms that
he attributed, but the only one thing

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I think was relevant here was that. And I heard this first hand or

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secondhand, or but first hand.
Somebody was there. I said, uh,

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somebody asked, Kissinger, you know
you're you're blamed for all these things.

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It's an enormous list of specific crimes
and things that Kenry Kissinger is responsible.

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00:24:02.160 --> 00:24:03.279
What do you think about that?
And Kissinger, I guess, was

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00:24:03.319 --> 00:24:07.960
in some expansive mood. He kind
of laughed and he said, I'm paraphrasing.

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Hears like, even I don't think
that much of myself, which is

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sort of true, right. I
mean, there is a kind of a

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childish I mean, it's probably too
a childish attitude, but also if it's

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00:24:25.240 --> 00:24:27.680
from k Kissinger, but I mean
the childish attitude from people thinking that this

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00:24:27.839 --> 00:24:32.880
one big bad man did all these
big bad things. Now you're absolutely very

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It was a reductionist, especially on
the left, and I think you're absolutely

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00:24:40.599 --> 00:24:42.119
right about it. The other thing, I do think, though, I

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think it did get to him because
I know so many people had criticized them

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00:24:47.960 --> 00:24:51.039
and got a call from him,
you know what I mean. They would

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00:24:51.079 --> 00:24:53.319
he would actually call them and argue
with him. And these were pretty out

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there people. And I know that
William Shawcross and Christopher told me that that

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00:24:57.400 --> 00:25:00.839
he had actually talked to them and
was angry at them for what they had

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00:25:00.839 --> 00:25:06.160
written. In a case of Shawcross, he formally apologized once he heard the

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00:25:06.240 --> 00:25:11.279
Kissinger argument. And I think what
he was trying to tell everybody that the

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United States was I guess he had
a deep patriotic love, deserved a pre

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eminent place, and he was frustrated
sometimes that we didn't exercise our power or

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00:25:22.440 --> 00:25:26.960
we underestimated it, and we were
not directing affairs global and they weren't in

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00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:30.920
our interests. So when he looked
at the Iraq war, he was not

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00:25:32.319 --> 00:25:37.920
for it originally, but then once
it got it went south, he was

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not for losing it. He reminded
me a lot of Matthew Ridgeway. Eisenhower

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00:25:41.079 --> 00:25:44.759
called a Ridgeway, and same thing
as Kissinger and said, I want to

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00:25:44.799 --> 00:25:48.200
go into Vietnam and save the French. And Ridgway said, if you go

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00:25:48.279 --> 00:25:51.720
in there, it's a mess.
And then LBJ came in and said I'm

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00:25:51.759 --> 00:25:53.799
going to go in there, and
Ridgway said, did not do it.

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Then four years later, after TET, he called up Ridgeway and said,

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I want to get out. And
he said, there's only one thing worse

355
00:26:03.680 --> 00:26:06.799
than getting in. There's only one
thing worse than a stupid war, and

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00:26:06.839 --> 00:26:11.480
that's losing it, right. And
that was kind of Kissinger's attitude about right,

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00:26:11.880 --> 00:26:15.400
all of these awkule that was the
second George Bush administration. Kind of

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in a nutshell, yes, and
he was horrified. Kissinger said things about

359
00:26:19.119 --> 00:26:22.680
the I think he was horrified about
the Afghanistan at the end of his life.

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00:26:22.680 --> 00:26:27.880
To see that uiliation. I don't
expect all the time a Kissener,

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00:26:27.920 --> 00:26:32.680
but he does seem like he's a
like it's amazing when you realize that a

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00:26:32.720 --> 00:26:40.039
guy is so powerfully engaged, you
know, part of the American century that

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when he I mean, obviously what
he knew is going to die one hundred

364
00:26:41.640 --> 00:26:47.359
years old. But the obituaries are
incredibly, incredibly elaborate. I mean I

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00:26:47.359 --> 00:26:48.839
read. I mean, it took
me about twenty minutes to read the New

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00:26:48.920 --> 00:26:52.599
York Times of Ittuary today that this
thing had been on ice for a while,

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right right. The what I find
striking about Kissinger is that this is

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00:26:57.680 --> 00:27:03.599
incredibly strong guy, was very very
well, you know, educated, thoughtful,

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00:27:03.720 --> 00:27:07.880
strategic character. In the Nixon tapes, the ones that you could go

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00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:11.359
and listen to, I've heard a
lot of them, he's the worst kind

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00:27:11.359 --> 00:27:17.880
of obsequious round noser like it's it's
kind of shocking. I mean, am

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00:27:17.960 --> 00:27:22.400
I just being naive? Just the
why he was very young and insane person

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00:27:22.480 --> 00:27:26.039
is using human grandpa, you know, like there's a wonderful speech with the

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00:27:26.079 --> 00:27:29.079
president, all that stuff. It's
crazy. I think part of it was

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00:27:29.160 --> 00:27:32.920
that he was a Rockefeller guy,
and he was an academic, and the

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00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:38.480
Nixon people hated academics. So when
Rockefeller was out of the picture and didn't

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00:27:38.519 --> 00:27:42.559
do well in the primary, then
Nixon Nixon. He never thought Nixon was

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00:27:42.599 --> 00:27:45.559
going to call him up, and
Nixon called him up, and he was

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00:27:45.599 --> 00:27:49.519
shocked and he went from Remember he
said at the same time, the only

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00:27:49.599 --> 00:27:56.759
thing, what do you say about
academic politics are so vicious because the states

381
00:27:56.759 --> 00:28:00.799
are so small, right, and
so he got out of that world and

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00:28:00.839 --> 00:28:03.599
he never really went back. And
then I think you remember the first two

383
00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:07.519
years I think of the Nixon appointment
of him as National Security Advisor. Harvard

384
00:28:07.559 --> 00:28:11.720
had a big debate on whether to, you know, not let him come

385
00:28:11.759 --> 00:28:14.680
back, and it was kind of
like he put his hands to his mouth,

386
00:28:14.799 --> 00:28:17.039
kind of, oh my god,
they're not going to let me come

387
00:28:17.079 --> 00:28:21.680
back. I'm just going to be
the only national security advisor and Secretary of

388
00:28:21.759 --> 00:28:25.480
State the same. So I think
he and I think he was afraid of

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00:28:25.599 --> 00:28:32.680
Nixon, and I think he had
an enormous, enormous respect for Nixon's intellect,

390
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and but I think he did not
want to get on the wrong side

391
00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:38.839
of Nixon. And he was an
academic that was out of place. Some

392
00:28:38.960 --> 00:28:41.599
of the weird things about I mean, we dated all those beautiful women.

393
00:28:42.119 --> 00:28:47.279
Yeah, that doesn't jis Ozolboard,
Jill Saint John and all of those women.

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That was what he was. Yeah, we forget that he was in

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the paper almost every day. He
was in the in the seventies and he

396
00:28:56.119 --> 00:29:00.279
was He's the one thing I did
admire about among all the other things,

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is when you read that three volume
memoirs. He wrote. He wrote that

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00:29:04.839 --> 00:29:10.319
himself. It was not Guess Woe, and it's beautifully written. The prose.

399
00:29:10.440 --> 00:29:12.799
It reminds me of General Grants memoir. I mean it's he had Harold

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00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:18.119
Harold Evans edited every word, did
he? I didn't know. Kissinger told

401
00:29:18.160 --> 00:29:19.519
me that himself. I asked about
it. He wrote it on long hand,

402
00:29:19.799 --> 00:29:22.240
and then it went to Harold got
typed up and Harold Evans, the

403
00:29:22.279 --> 00:29:26.319
late editor, the late great editor, Harold Evans. Oh, yes,

404
00:29:26.640 --> 00:29:29.680
no, no, no, there's
no doubt about that. All his books

405
00:29:29.720 --> 00:29:33.000
have a certain ear. You can
tell that the man had for language.

406
00:29:33.079 --> 00:29:37.119
By the way, on the length
of the obituary, yeah, reminding us

407
00:29:37.160 --> 00:29:41.279
of what a presence he was.
I once asked Kissinger, I can't remember

408
00:29:41.279 --> 00:29:45.000
how on earth it came up,
But to this day, in any event,

409
00:29:45.039 --> 00:29:49.519
I've never been able to understand why
Eisenhower, during the Suez Crisis of

410
00:29:49.599 --> 00:29:56.319
nineteen fifty six cut the legs out
from under the British and the French and

411
00:29:56.359 --> 00:30:00.319
the Israelis to help Nasser. And
so I asked Kissinger about that, and

412
00:30:00.359 --> 00:30:04.519
he began his reply by saying,
well, as I wrote at the time,

413
00:30:06.559 --> 00:30:10.680
nineteen fifty six, and he was
already a serious enough person so that

414
00:30:10.759 --> 00:30:15.000
he was publishing on events in the
news. By the way, he himself

415
00:30:15.039 --> 00:30:19.880
had no explanation and also said it
was a terrible error to undercut our most

416
00:30:19.880 --> 00:30:25.960
important allies and the hope of Korean
favor with the Arabs. The one on

417
00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:30.559
the SD destroyed Anthony. Anthony Eden
was a good guy, and Anthony Eden

418
00:30:30.640 --> 00:30:33.559
was gone within what six or seven
months after that he was forced to resign.

419
00:30:34.079 --> 00:30:41.880
At a dinner at Bill Buckley's house, Kissinger this is nineteen ninety one

420
00:30:41.960 --> 00:30:45.079
or nineteen ninety right after the fall
of nineteen ninety two, right after the

421
00:30:45.119 --> 00:30:49.319
fall of Soviet Union, Kissinger stood
up and talked about a visit he had

422
00:30:49.359 --> 00:30:55.039
just made to the former Soviet Union, and he had sought out high ranking

423
00:30:55.119 --> 00:31:00.559
former officials in the former country,
and he said, to a man,

424
00:31:03.119 --> 00:31:10.359
they said that what broke them was
Reagan's strategic defense initiative, so very interesting.

425
00:31:10.440 --> 00:31:14.200
He never felt comfortable with Reagan and
ignored him in this last book on

426
00:31:14.319 --> 00:31:18.880
leadership. But he understood Reagan's achievements
there. Don't you think he was?

427
00:31:19.119 --> 00:31:25.680
You know, they make fun of
in realist foreign policy, they make fun

428
00:31:25.680 --> 00:31:27.759
of what they I guess they used
the word they use that left wing word

429
00:31:27.880 --> 00:31:33.440
intersectionality. But what happens in one
place affects the other. And he was

430
00:31:33.480 --> 00:31:37.440
a person who really said he would
say, and he wrote, if you

431
00:31:37.519 --> 00:31:44.200
get humiliated in Afghanistan, then the
Putin will go into Ukraine. If you

432
00:31:44.359 --> 00:31:48.359
let up Chinese balloon go across the
United States, then they will start threatening

433
00:31:48.400 --> 00:31:55.079
Taiwan. And the people had so
discredited the Domino theory that when he started

434
00:31:55.119 --> 00:31:59.839
talking like that in the seventies and
eighties, and he said that about to

435
00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:02.960
George W. Bush, I know
that for a fact when he said you

436
00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:10.480
should not leave Iraq without it being
stabilized because da Iran right and all the

437
00:32:10.519 --> 00:32:15.559
others. That's pretty accurate. But
we've kind of gotten away from that now.

438
00:32:15.720 --> 00:32:20.799
So Victor, what do you make
of the Neil argument that the Nixon

439
00:32:21.319 --> 00:32:29.440
Kissinger achievement was to biaus time and
that we needed that time. One sub

440
00:32:29.440 --> 00:32:30.960
element of this, but it's a
really important one, of course, is

441
00:32:31.079 --> 00:32:37.519
Vietnam. Yes, we lost in
Vietnam, but they slowed down the law.

442
00:32:37.640 --> 00:32:44.920
Kissinger and Nixon slowed down the loss
and preserve Vietnam in such a way

443
00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:49.279
that other, Thailand was able to
rise while we were fighting. In other

444
00:32:49.319 --> 00:32:52.519
words, the dominoes, the dominoes
didn't fall. We lost one big domino

445
00:32:52.680 --> 00:32:57.839
and then Cambodia went, but other
dominoes that might have fallen. What do

446
00:32:57.880 --> 00:33:00.559
you make of the argument that was
taken from you? Remember the National Review

447
00:33:00.559 --> 00:33:04.480
writer, he was right wing and
he turned left wing. He wrote the

448
00:33:04.480 --> 00:33:08.359
book The Necessary Vietnam, The Necessary
War, Michael. That was taken right

449
00:33:08.400 --> 00:33:13.440
out of that. Remember, he
made that exact argument that Vietnam had given

450
00:33:13.519 --> 00:33:20.640
us time and that we had stopped
the onset of Southeast Asian Soviet dominance.

451
00:33:20.920 --> 00:33:25.160
So I don't buy it. You
buy that. I'd kind of buy it,

452
00:33:25.160 --> 00:33:30.519
but only in the sense that I
think what they meant was and I

453
00:33:30.559 --> 00:33:36.319
don't think they meant I don't think
they understood quite. But when Reagan took

454
00:33:36.400 --> 00:33:42.599
on the Soviet Union, it was
a multi faceted economic, cultural, social

455
00:33:42.799 --> 00:33:46.200
revolution. He was saying, I
can take on the Soviet Union now because

456
00:33:46.200 --> 00:33:50.720
I'm going to have massive tax cuts, I'm going to unleash the economy,

457
00:33:51.079 --> 00:33:54.640
I'm going to bring back a traditional
love of America. And I think I

458
00:33:54.640 --> 00:33:59.079
don't know if those people are explicit
or avert. But in that period of

459
00:33:59.119 --> 00:34:02.559
the sixties and seven, when we
had a regulated economy and we had the

460
00:34:02.599 --> 00:34:07.159
campuses and the civil rights and the
whole thing, I'm not sure that we

461
00:34:07.159 --> 00:34:10.480
were capable of doing what Reagan did. I think for Reagan to have the

462
00:34:10.559 --> 00:34:15.679
confidence to marshal the country, because
even when you were there, we were

463
00:34:15.679 --> 00:34:17.800
doing it. Remember they had all
those Hollywood movies the day after and about

464
00:34:17.960 --> 00:34:22.360
yes, And I don't think that
the country was able. It didn't have

465
00:34:22.400 --> 00:34:29.119
the confidence after Vietnam. It didn't
have the economic wherewithal. So Kissinger and

466
00:34:29.199 --> 00:34:32.199
Nixon really did have a weekend and
they really did plant as well as they

467
00:34:32.239 --> 00:34:36.920
could have. They had a lot
weaker well, they had a weaker hand,

468
00:34:36.920 --> 00:34:39.960
but they were partly implicit because after
all, Nixon gave us waging.

469
00:34:40.079 --> 00:34:45.440
We won't mention the architect of that, but they gave us wage and price

470
00:34:45.519 --> 00:34:50.440
control, and they did not on
leash and Richard Nixon created a lot of

471
00:34:50.920 --> 00:34:54.760
bureaucratic bloat. But when Reagan came
in, it was sort of we're going

472
00:34:54.840 --> 00:34:58.920
to re examine everything, and we're
going to do it on the basis of

473
00:34:58.960 --> 00:35:04.840
what makes America powerful again and wealthy
and united and proud, and part of

474
00:35:04.880 --> 00:35:07.880
that agenda was obviously standing up in
the Soviet Union. And I don't think

475
00:35:08.039 --> 00:35:14.320
I don't think Reagan could have done
it if he had continued with the Nix

476
00:35:14.360 --> 00:35:19.039
and Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter economic
policies, and I just don't think he

477
00:35:19.079 --> 00:35:21.480
would have been able to get the
people behind him, or you wouldn't have.

478
00:35:22.360 --> 00:35:24.920
I mean, when you get seven
eighty four, the third half,

479
00:35:25.079 --> 00:35:30.480
the last three quarters of eighty four
was an aggregate seven or eight percent increase

480
00:35:30.519 --> 00:35:32.599
in GDP, you can do a
lot when that's happening, Yeah, you

481
00:35:32.639 --> 00:35:36.280
can. And when he said crazy
things like I'm going to have a six

482
00:35:36.400 --> 00:35:39.519
hundred ship navy, I'm going to
bring back the New Jersey and the Iowa

483
00:35:39.559 --> 00:35:43.360
and the Missouri, all these crazy
things, everybody thought he was nuts,

484
00:35:43.360 --> 00:35:46.800
but he did, and I think
the Soviet Union were freaked out by it.

485
00:35:46.880 --> 00:35:53.000
I really do. There's a story
that Reagan's at one point his erstwhile

486
00:35:53.199 --> 00:35:58.840
political advisor, Stu Spencer, and
then his hit The Return of Stu Spencer

487
00:35:59.039 --> 00:36:06.000
in nineteen eighty says on his way
flying to Detroit to the RNC, and

488
00:36:06.039 --> 00:36:07.800
he had just been brought on.
I mean, he had been in the

489
00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:10.639
deep breeze, the Nancy Reagan you
know, tundra for a while, and

490
00:36:10.679 --> 00:36:14.039
he'd just been brought back on and
he walked to the front of the plane.

491
00:36:14.559 --> 00:36:15.960
You didn't meet the talk to the
governor again, had talked to governor

492
00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:20.320
in tenureds right close to that,
and he said, of sat and said,

493
00:36:20.480 --> 00:36:23.920
so help me out, governor.
Governor Reagan. So, of those

494
00:36:23.920 --> 00:36:28.239
of you under ninety on this podcast, that's Governor Reagan. He was governor

495
00:36:28.239 --> 00:36:32.920
of California before Gavin Newson. He
says, So I got to ask,

496
00:36:35.599 --> 00:36:39.480
why do you want to be president? This is nineteen eighty. So there

497
00:36:39.519 --> 00:36:44.719
were hostages in Iran, and there
was stagflation, and there was a malaise

498
00:36:44.840 --> 00:36:46.400
in the country, and there was
a defeat in Vietnam, and there was

499
00:36:46.400 --> 00:36:51.920
a general sense of a decline in
the American century. Maybe it was over.

500
00:36:52.199 --> 00:36:54.320
And Reagan didn't even hesitate. He
just turned his stud and said time

501
00:36:54.360 --> 00:36:59.559
to win the Cold War. STU, just like that. And so there

502
00:36:59.599 --> 00:37:01.760
was a spencer says, there's nothing
to say. So it got up and

503
00:37:01.760 --> 00:37:05.599
said, okay, well I'll see
you on the ground, Governor. And

504
00:37:05.639 --> 00:37:10.239
then then there was a march to
victory. But in the midst of decline,

505
00:37:12.639 --> 00:37:15.360
when all the news was bad,
all the lights were red or yellow,

506
00:37:15.880 --> 00:37:19.039
there was one guy on that plane
saying, no, no, no,

507
00:37:19.599 --> 00:37:22.079
no, we're going to win and
here's how, here's what we're doing

508
00:37:22.280 --> 00:37:25.239
right. And you know, for
somebody it was and it was as as

509
00:37:25.519 --> 00:37:29.280
it was multifaceted. We're going to
win on the economy, we're going to

510
00:37:29.320 --> 00:37:31.320
win the culture wars, we're going
to win. The Republican Party is going

511
00:37:31.360 --> 00:37:35.920
to be back, and we're going
to get a dominant Republican Party again.

512
00:37:36.639 --> 00:37:39.000
And that was part of that whole
package. But I think if you look

513
00:37:39.079 --> 00:37:44.559
back, and I read some of
the obituaries that were pretty cruel. But

514
00:37:44.599 --> 00:37:46.480
these people, if you look at
a guy who comes from a German jew

515
00:37:46.559 --> 00:37:52.400
who leaves in thirty eight, right
before the last possible moment, and then

516
00:37:52.440 --> 00:37:55.719
they come with nothing, and then
he goes to New York guy City College

517
00:37:55.760 --> 00:38:00.239
for a while, or he's going
to counting or something, and then he

518
00:38:00.280 --> 00:38:04.880
goes into the army and then he
comes back and somehow that guy comes out

519
00:38:04.880 --> 00:38:08.119
of Harvard. It's Harvard that makes
him, yes, and then he's a

520
00:38:08.159 --> 00:38:12.760
brilliant guy. And then he goes
to work as a left wing academic.

521
00:38:13.559 --> 00:38:17.800
He's intellect is such that right wing
people want him, and then he kind

522
00:38:17.800 --> 00:38:22.840
of really guides, you know,
the Nixon administration. And then it's pretty

523
00:38:22.880 --> 00:38:28.920
amazing that a person had that spoken
ability, written ability, analytical ability,

524
00:38:29.039 --> 00:38:31.760
and energy. And I was just
thinking, you know, when I fly

525
00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:37.119
overseas, when that guy was in
his sixties and seventies and eighties, and

526
00:38:37.159 --> 00:38:44.519
he was still flying all over the
world. And so the last time I

527
00:38:44.559 --> 00:38:47.239
talked to him, I was at
a private club in North other in California

528
00:38:47.239 --> 00:38:51.760
whose name will not be mentioned.
But he was in a wheelchair and he

529
00:38:51.880 --> 00:38:57.360
was giving the keynotes and I was
keeping away from him because people were swarming

530
00:38:57.400 --> 00:39:01.360
him. And I was walking in
maybe ten weeks, and he was all

531
00:39:01.400 --> 00:39:05.440
crumpled up. He kind of shrunk, you know what. And he turned

532
00:39:05.440 --> 00:39:09.199
his head to the right and said, and I loot that Thucididus book you

533
00:39:09.280 --> 00:39:13.280
wrote. And he didn't say hello, he didn't say I don't know if

534
00:39:13.320 --> 00:39:15.159
you knew who I was, but
he said that, and so he had

535
00:39:15.199 --> 00:39:20.400
a twinkle in his eye. And
I think they get I think he were

536
00:39:20.440 --> 00:39:23.320
better off. The country's better off
for having him. But I also think

537
00:39:23.360 --> 00:39:28.719
that in a weird way, I
think he helped Reagan because Reagan used him

538
00:39:28.760 --> 00:39:30.920
as a foil. You remember,
you remember this is to me. This

539
00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:36.599
is the lowest moment for Kissinger.
For me. You can do with what

540
00:39:36.639 --> 00:39:40.519
you will with it, Victor.
But you remember that Gerald Ford refused to

541
00:39:40.639 --> 00:39:46.559
receive at the White House a visiting
Soviet dissident author and that author's name was

542
00:39:46.599 --> 00:39:53.159
Soljan Needson, and that was on
the advice of Henry Kissinger. That's appeasement.

543
00:39:53.280 --> 00:39:57.119
Don't get me really, there's just
no other word for it. When

544
00:39:57.159 --> 00:40:00.840
we won't president won't. Yeah,
yeah, don't get me started. Because

545
00:40:00.880 --> 00:40:04.840
there's two low points for me.
And one was the youm Kipper war when

546
00:40:04.840 --> 00:40:07.800
he went golden in the ears,
said they're going to attack us in twenty

547
00:40:07.840 --> 00:40:13.360
four hours and we're not going to
be fully mobilized, and if we preempt

548
00:40:13.400 --> 00:40:16.639
like we did in sixty seven,
we have a chance, and Kissinger said,

549
00:40:16.679 --> 00:40:22.320
no, you have to have the
guilt on them. And then when

550
00:40:22.360 --> 00:40:25.039
they were trying to resupply them,
remember they were playing cute games like Biden

551
00:40:25.159 --> 00:40:30.920
kind of about resupplying this and Nixon
FINII lost his temper and said get anything

552
00:40:30.960 --> 00:40:34.559
that flies and send over there.
That was one thing their thing is.

553
00:40:34.639 --> 00:40:37.119
I was in Greece during the invasion. I had gone to Cyprus. It

554
00:40:37.159 --> 00:40:40.519
was a beautiful Bela Pies, the
Northern Cypress. I was a student in

555
00:40:40.559 --> 00:40:45.840
Athens and seven give us the year
seventy three, seventy four, and they

556
00:40:45.880 --> 00:40:51.559
invaded. The Turkeys invade, Turks
invaded Cypress. They killed twenty thousand,

557
00:40:52.320 --> 00:40:55.760
eighteen thousand people were missing, maybe
three or four thousand Greeks were slaughtered.

558
00:40:55.960 --> 00:41:01.119
Two hundred thousand people were ethnically cleansed. This was our two NATO wild eyes.

559
00:41:01.320 --> 00:41:07.679
Greece had just been liberated from the
dictatorship Passock, Socialism and the Greek

560
00:41:07.719 --> 00:41:14.360
people were saying to Kissinger, stop
the Turks immediately, and we had the

561
00:41:14.400 --> 00:41:16.119
power to do that, and we
didn't do that. We knew they were

562
00:41:16.159 --> 00:41:22.920
coming in, and the attitude of
Kissinger and the Nixon administration was, if

563
00:41:22.960 --> 00:41:25.599
you look at the assets of Turkey, and you look at the assets of

564
00:41:25.639 --> 00:41:31.400
Greek and you look at the pass
Passock angry because of our dictatorship support,

565
00:41:31.719 --> 00:41:36.920
They're angry. The Turks have a
dictatorship. Basically, that's friendly. There's

566
00:41:36.960 --> 00:41:40.559
no it's a no brainer. All
of the assets political military on the Turk

567
00:41:40.679 --> 00:41:45.599
side. The Greeks don't write we
don't want to we don't want to ostracize

568
00:41:45.719 --> 00:41:49.159
or a and eight. The biggest
army in NATO, and the Greeks were

569
00:41:49.199 --> 00:41:52.360
just wild men that started it anyway
with the n O system was crazy and

570
00:41:52.400 --> 00:41:55.559
they just let them take it over. And it was very anti Semitic.

571
00:41:55.639 --> 00:42:00.000
I was really upset because the Greek
I think it was Taunay, I remember

572
00:42:00.119 --> 00:42:07.360
were they had the headline jo Hebreos
Kissinger, the Jew Kissinger, and it

573
00:42:07.400 --> 00:42:14.519
was so the hatred in Athens was
really venomous, antisomitic and angry. But

574
00:42:15.440 --> 00:42:19.039
I remember trying to defend him to
Greek friends in my age. I was

575
00:42:19.039 --> 00:42:22.639
only twenty. But I think we
really missed that. We should have been

576
00:42:22.679 --> 00:42:25.440
on the side of the Greece for
a lot of reason. And you can

577
00:42:25.480 --> 00:42:30.159
see that today more than ever given
their subsequent trajectory. So there's a lot

578
00:42:30.159 --> 00:42:36.000
of things to criticize, but if
you look at the Ledger at one hundred

579
00:42:36.119 --> 00:42:39.599
years, I think there's more positive
than negative, if I if I can

580
00:42:39.639 --> 00:42:43.679
grind the Gears here for a second. There's a new Napoleon movie out apparently

581
00:42:43.760 --> 00:42:45.920
While it's well shot, well shot
and beautiful to look at, it completely

582
00:42:46.000 --> 00:42:50.440
misses the character of Napoleon, misunderstands
the age, gets a lot of things

583
00:42:50.440 --> 00:42:52.800
wrong, and is very sort of
incomprehensible. And I'm wondering if it's because

584
00:42:53.239 --> 00:42:57.760
as of people now, we've just
no concept of the nineteenth century. We

585
00:42:57.800 --> 00:43:00.119
don't find it relevant at all,
But it is it, especially the Crucible

586
00:43:00.119 --> 00:43:04.920
out of which Napoleon came. A
movie about the terror about It's seventeen eighty

587
00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:07.320
nine, about the Jacobins, would
be tremendously relevant to these days. And

588
00:43:07.360 --> 00:43:09.920
at the time it must have seemed
to everybody as if the old world was

589
00:43:09.960 --> 00:43:15.360
completely falling apart into annihilation and chaos. Which brings us to your book.

590
00:43:15.199 --> 00:43:17.880
We briefly, since I know that
we have about forty seven seconds left,

591
00:43:17.920 --> 00:43:21.960
if you could sum up, I
know Peter is going to be doing an

592
00:43:21.960 --> 00:43:23.920
interview with you later that is going
to be absolute must listening to. But

593
00:43:23.960 --> 00:43:29.360
your book is the end of everything. How wars descend into annihilation and it's

594
00:43:29.400 --> 00:43:34.880
coming out next may just give me
the odds on us not descending into annihilation

595
00:43:35.079 --> 00:43:37.440
by then, And what might be
if we did, what might it be

596
00:43:37.480 --> 00:43:42.360
from Well, they're very rare that
a war usually ends, could be in

597
00:43:42.400 --> 00:43:46.159
a humiliating defeat like Nazi Germany.
But the idea that an entire losing sight

598
00:43:46.679 --> 00:43:53.159
as Carthage or classical Thebes or the
Aztecs or Constantinople, loses their religion,

599
00:43:53.239 --> 00:43:59.760
their culture, their people. They're
either wiped out enslaved ethnically. It's very

600
00:43:59.840 --> 00:44:04.000
rare, but it happens. And
so in the epilogue, I look at

601
00:44:04.360 --> 00:44:12.199
the traits that allow these to happen. Naivete over confidence, appeasement, stupid

602
00:44:12.239 --> 00:44:15.159
resistant. I talk a lot about
the Median Dialogue and the city the same

603
00:44:15.199 --> 00:44:20.199
thing. They're annihilated. But my
point is that I have a long epilogue,

604
00:44:20.280 --> 00:44:24.400
maybe too long, about certain vulnerable
peoples, the Armenians three million,

605
00:44:24.480 --> 00:44:30.920
the Israelis ten million, the Kurds
and the Greeks. They have fifty thousand

606
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:36.800
square miles and there's only ten million, and they've got this existential hatred of

607
00:44:36.840 --> 00:44:40.480
the Turks who. So my point
is that I try to give you a

608
00:44:40.519 --> 00:44:46.679
paradigm how it could happen, especially
in the age of bioweapons or nuclear weapons.

609
00:44:47.800 --> 00:44:53.400
Well, naivite, cultural decline,
appeasement, good good thing, we're

610
00:44:53.400 --> 00:44:58.000
not suffering from any of those.
Yeah, So I try to. After

611
00:44:58.039 --> 00:45:00.159
I do the four case studies,
I give you a paradigm how it happened,

612
00:45:00.159 --> 00:45:04.800
it cost time and space, and
then I apply it to some vulnerable

613
00:45:04.840 --> 00:45:07.199
areas today that could happen. It
could happen again. But it's otherwise,

614
00:45:07.199 --> 00:45:12.880
it's pretty rare. It's hard to
wipe out entire people. Hernan Cortes did,

615
00:45:13.199 --> 00:45:15.960
and so did Memo the Second,
and so did Alexander the Great,

616
00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:22.280
and so did Skippio Emilianus. One
thing I'll just finished with all of them

617
00:45:22.320 --> 00:45:25.559
who did that said they were men
of letters and philosophers, and they all

618
00:45:25.599 --> 00:45:29.719
said later in age they regretted it. Alexander, I didn't mean to do

619
00:45:29.800 --> 00:45:32.719
that. Skippy o, oh,
maybe some day it could happen to us.

620
00:45:34.320 --> 00:45:37.920
Cortez, I never really wanted to
destroy to notes Itlan. So that's

621
00:45:37.119 --> 00:45:40.800
Memet said, we could have used
it. We didn't. I'm the new

622
00:45:40.880 --> 00:45:45.199
Caesar, and so they all had. They were all men of letters.

623
00:45:45.239 --> 00:45:49.800
So it's kind of a scary that
people who consider themselves intellectuals are enlightened.

624
00:45:49.800 --> 00:45:53.480
Military leaders are the most dangerous.
Alexander in his ripe old age Victor,

625
00:45:53.519 --> 00:45:57.079
thanks for joining us today. We
may get you guys somewhere and run and

626
00:45:57.119 --> 00:46:00.960
it's always been a pleasure and we
hope to talk to you a sap about

627
00:46:00.239 --> 00:46:05.400
things in the world in your next
book. So it sounds great you guys.

628
00:46:05.440 --> 00:46:08.480
Fictor used lots of sunscreen down there
in Palm b Yeah, careful,

629
00:46:09.760 --> 00:46:15.840
I'm called a black sweet Peter.
That my family was that it was dark

630
00:46:15.880 --> 00:46:22.320
sweetish, so I don't have that
problem as you Anglo Saxon. There's so

631
00:46:22.360 --> 00:46:27.920
many ways to unpack that, Ictor. Okay, okay, bye, And

632
00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:30.320
just a reminder, Peter, you
are going to be speaking to vh on

633
00:46:30.519 --> 00:46:35.920
uncommon Knowledge about his book and going
into depth fit for forty five minutes for

634
00:46:35.920 --> 00:46:37.159
an hour or so. Again,
we'll post a link to that when it's

635
00:46:37.239 --> 00:46:43.440
up in Ricochet and ricochet dot com
is where you ought to go. Well,

636
00:46:43.480 --> 00:46:47.079
since Rob's back, that means he's
going to do his usual accounting of

637
00:46:47.159 --> 00:46:52.159
the places where Ricochet members meet in
real life. Yeah, and the last

638
00:46:52.159 --> 00:46:55.079
time I did this a few weeks
ago, we were talking about maybe the

639
00:46:55.119 --> 00:47:01.920
spring. But of course Ricochet members
do not wait for There's one tomorrow a

640
00:47:01.960 --> 00:47:07.559
meet up Ricochet members tomorrow in the
Seattle area. Rush Bay forty nine is

641
00:47:07.559 --> 00:47:10.360
putting on her annual chili party.
Go to ricochet dot com into the member

642
00:47:10.360 --> 00:47:16.800
of section and look that up.
Flicker as fielding suggestions for places to meet

643
00:47:16.840 --> 00:47:20.960
while he visits a Georgia the Peach
Day. So if you live around there,

644
00:47:21.119 --> 00:47:22.719
see if you can splay some Ricochet
members to head your way. It'll

645
00:47:22.719 --> 00:47:27.800
be late December early January. So
those in the Georgia area let's get together.

646
00:47:28.320 --> 00:47:36.719
And of course Chattanooga, Tennessee.
This is January fourteenth. Meet Up

647
00:47:36.800 --> 00:47:38.559
King. That's great. This is
we have to call him meet up King

648
00:47:38.559 --> 00:47:42.639
because he does I don't know how
many. I don't know how many of

649
00:47:42.639 --> 00:47:51.159
these he's arranged. Randy Wivoda in
Chattanooga is trying to to start a meet

650
00:47:51.199 --> 00:47:54.440
up on January fourteenth. If you
have not been to Chattanooga, and I

651
00:47:54.480 --> 00:47:59.199
of course have been to Chattanooga,
you should go to Chattanooga. Chattanooga is

652
00:47:59.199 --> 00:48:04.480
one of the most interesting, like
it's like the it's not even it's like

653
00:48:04.480 --> 00:48:08.039
the fourth biggest city in Tennessee.
Tennessee first of all is enormous, but

654
00:48:08.119 --> 00:48:15.239
there are four great cities in Tennessee
well three in Memphis and Chattanooga. When

655
00:48:15.320 --> 00:48:16.880
Memphis is a great city, but
it's not you know it, it's got

656
00:48:16.880 --> 00:48:22.800
issues. But Chattanooga is unbelievably beautiful. And then when you go there and

657
00:48:22.840 --> 00:48:30.639
you realize just how vibrant and powerful
and alive the Mid South was for hundreds

658
00:48:30.639 --> 00:48:35.960
of years, and I mean even
post Civil War. It's a great city,

659
00:48:36.000 --> 00:48:40.199
really interesting and great architecture too.
So chennumy fourteenth Chattanooga, Well,

660
00:48:40.199 --> 00:48:45.360
it sounds like a fantastic idea.
Anybody wants to come to Minneapolis. Of

661
00:48:45.360 --> 00:48:47.480
course I've got some recommendations, and
I might even show up now. Of

662
00:48:47.480 --> 00:48:50.519
course I'll show up. That's what
Ricochet is all about. I love the

663
00:48:50.559 --> 00:48:52.760
fact that Rush Bay forty nine is
having a chili party. However, many

664
00:48:52.800 --> 00:48:57.880
podcasts you listen to from the large
institutions that claim to be your friend,

665
00:48:57.960 --> 00:49:00.480
how many of them actually invite you
over that? What said that it is

666
00:49:00.519 --> 00:49:06.079
the Bricochet difference. Well, there's
a different wind blowing in various political cultures

667
00:49:06.119 --> 00:49:12.280
around the world. Argentina and Dutch
people comes to mind too. Javiier Millay,

668
00:49:12.440 --> 00:49:16.239
Do I have that pronounce correctly?
Is it mil mil Milay? Actually,

669
00:49:16.840 --> 00:49:22.880
you've got have the first name I
would be I'm sure I think it

670
00:49:22.920 --> 00:49:29.960
is Melea, although it might also
be Mila Mila, yes exactly. I

671
00:49:30.079 --> 00:49:32.400
like the way he shouts. I
like his anger. I like the way

672
00:49:32.440 --> 00:49:37.639
he talks. And it's very it's
very chunky, and it's very forthright,

673
00:49:37.800 --> 00:49:42.320
and it's smart and it is angry, but it's not angry in a sort

674
00:49:42.320 --> 00:49:45.320
of mad, puffed up Howard Rourke. I'm not going to take it anymore.

675
00:49:45.320 --> 00:49:46.119
Oh, it's got a little bit
of that too, but it's meat.

676
00:49:46.199 --> 00:49:50.920
He's get what he says, there's
truth to it, and all of

677
00:49:50.920 --> 00:49:53.320
these pithy little eyes. So of
course we all know that people like this

678
00:49:53.360 --> 00:49:59.679
get elected and then are instantaneously stymied
because there's so far outside of the bureaucratic

679
00:49:59.760 --> 00:50:02.719
norm that nothing can get done.
But we're rutting for him, aren't we,

680
00:50:04.159 --> 00:50:06.760
aren't we? Guys? Oh?
I think so? I think so?

681
00:50:06.960 --> 00:50:10.000
Yeah, kidding me, Yeah,
Archie, he wants the Falkland.

682
00:50:12.119 --> 00:50:17.719
Well, if he can, if
he can turn he can have. Yeah,

683
00:50:17.960 --> 00:50:22.840
that's mandatory for an Argentine politician to
say that. But I don't think

684
00:50:22.840 --> 00:50:25.320
he's going to be in a position
to do anything about it, nor well,

685
00:50:25.559 --> 00:50:34.920
any he is, He reminds me, he is what Margaret Thatcher would

686
00:50:34.960 --> 00:50:39.760
have sounded like if she were on
some some sort of drug that suppressed all

687
00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:47.519
inhibitions, right, because we know
Thatcher writes in her memoir that she realized

688
00:50:47.639 --> 00:50:52.559
when she became Conservative leader and had
people briefing her on how to fix this

689
00:50:52.599 --> 00:50:54.280
piece of the economy, do this
with the educator, she said, she

690
00:50:54.400 --> 00:51:01.480
realized that all the failures of Britain
were now so interconnected that you couldn't reform

691
00:51:01.760 --> 00:51:08.639
anything without reforming everything. That's a
fairly close paraphrase. James made the point

692
00:51:08.679 --> 00:51:12.880
that this is the kind of figure
who gets elected and then immediately finds that

693
00:51:12.920 --> 00:51:17.880
he's thwarted. Perhaps so, But
what the election itself indicates is that the

694
00:51:17.920 --> 00:51:24.199
country of Argentina, the people of
Argentina, realize that something big needs to

695
00:51:24.320 --> 00:51:30.079
be smashed. Whether this is the
man to pull it off, I don't

696
00:51:30.079 --> 00:51:34.960
know, although I do know I
do have friend here at Stanford who's from

697
00:51:35.920 --> 00:51:43.800
He's from Chile actually, and Malay
is known within economists as a serious libertarian

698
00:51:43.840 --> 00:51:46.360
and an informed man. And now
we know that he's also a performer and

699
00:51:47.320 --> 00:51:52.239
a very successful politician. We shall
see but yes, the answer is we're

700
00:51:52.280 --> 00:51:53.880
rooting for him. He also looks
like he should be a member of the

701
00:51:53.920 --> 00:52:00.440
British graphic design firm Hypnosis in about
nineteen seventy two. Yeah, look,

702
00:52:00.480 --> 00:52:04.840
I mean, what are their choices? You know, they've tried everything else,

703
00:52:04.880 --> 00:52:08.920
so they mas will try you know, sound Ludwig van Mesian, you

704
00:52:08.960 --> 00:52:15.760
know, Milton Friedman economics, what
what what if that works? It's worked

705
00:52:15.800 --> 00:52:19.719
before. Also, look a look, I think a lot of these countries

706
00:52:19.760 --> 00:52:21.639
are at a cross roads. I
think you know, I think Holland is

707
00:52:21.679 --> 00:52:25.440
in the Netherlands with a cross road. I was there last week. You

708
00:52:25.440 --> 00:52:29.199
could either have it. You were
there. You were there when the election

709
00:52:29.320 --> 00:52:32.519
results came. I was not there
when the election came in because I had

710
00:52:32.599 --> 00:52:36.719
already I left the day before.
But I was talking to Dutch people and

711
00:52:37.320 --> 00:52:40.559
they tell do tail do tell well, look you can. I mean,

712
00:52:40.599 --> 00:52:44.920
it's it's it's a it's a it's
a question that we have here, right.

713
00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:51.480
You can either have a very generous
social welfare system, which Holland has

714
00:52:51.480 --> 00:52:57.039
had for years, that's been held
together by a willingness to understand what Dutch

715
00:52:57.079 --> 00:53:01.039
society and cohesive Dutch society should be
something that we in the United States would

716
00:53:01.039 --> 00:53:07.199
not accept by the way, we
would find it too restrictive, but they

717
00:53:07.440 --> 00:53:10.559
like it. You can either have
that or you can have massive immigration from

718
00:53:12.079 --> 00:53:17.480
non Northern European countries. You can't
have both. You just can't. It's

719
00:53:17.480 --> 00:53:22.840
the same thing that a more honest
governor of California would say. Certainly it's

720
00:53:22.840 --> 00:53:28.760
something that the mayor of New York
City understands. You can either have a

721
00:53:29.000 --> 00:53:36.679
very generous welfare state or you can
have essentially open borders. You cannot have

722
00:53:36.719 --> 00:53:42.320
both. You cannot afford both.
You have to choose, and all Gered

723
00:53:42.360 --> 00:53:45.239
Bilders is a good Villains is what
we would consider to be a very liberal

724
00:53:45.320 --> 00:53:49.320
democrat here. He's not talking about
shrinking the state. He's just talking about

725
00:53:49.840 --> 00:53:59.880
closing the door and recommitting the Netherlands
to the Dutch identity, which sounds grim,

726
00:54:00.079 --> 00:54:02.320
you know, it sounds scary,
sounds like you know not you know,

727
00:54:02.840 --> 00:54:07.079
national socialism. But what it really
means is that they have a very

728
00:54:07.119 --> 00:54:12.440
specific kind of society that that we
we don't want to emulate in this country.

729
00:54:12.480 --> 00:54:15.719
We're much more free, we believe
in much much greater opportunity, individual

730
00:54:15.719 --> 00:54:22.280
opportunity, and he wants to protect
that, and you can't do that when

731
00:54:22.280 --> 00:54:28.159
you have massive immigration from non Northern
European countries. You couldn't. And people

732
00:54:28.199 --> 00:54:30.679
have been focusing entirely on what he's
saying about Turks and about Moroccans and the

733
00:54:30.679 --> 00:54:37.519
people in North Africa and Muslims.
But if you wanted to bust up Holland,

734
00:54:37.880 --> 00:54:40.880
you could just import a lot of
Italians. Italians don't want to Holland

735
00:54:40.920 --> 00:54:46.800
either, Like so, it's not
quite as dire as people mention it or

736
00:54:47.079 --> 00:54:54.880
people are painting it, but that
the the the response is sort of the

737
00:54:54.920 --> 00:54:58.960
same. It's been the same about
Trump. There's there are too many parallels

738
00:54:58.960 --> 00:55:02.679
between builders and trust being made.
They're not really that very similar. But

739
00:55:02.719 --> 00:55:07.480
the idea is that this has been
this has been an alarm bell for the

740
00:55:07.599 --> 00:55:13.199
establishment, and you what most people
think of in the New York Times and

741
00:55:13.239 --> 00:55:17.320
in the al Chamane dac Blot or
whatever it is there the Volkskron or whatever,

742
00:55:17.679 --> 00:55:22.719
what most people think of that now
we're alarmed at how large the right

743
00:55:22.760 --> 00:55:29.159
wing is getting, whereas the alarm
really should be we should be alarmed how

744
00:55:29.280 --> 00:55:36.559
far away we are from people and
their immediate concerns. So when you hear

745
00:55:36.639 --> 00:55:39.519
liberals in the United States talk about
this is alarming all these like the alt

746
00:55:39.639 --> 00:55:44.559
right in America, this alarms that
that's something that they feel like they need

747
00:55:44.599 --> 00:55:49.280
to squash, whereas the alarm actually
should be telling you, well, where

748
00:55:50.239 --> 00:55:52.400
how far away are we from these
people? Now? We're very far away.

749
00:55:52.440 --> 00:55:57.880
And I think that's that's what they
essentially Dutch establishment discovered last Wednesday was

750
00:55:57.880 --> 00:56:01.760
that they are very far away from
the Dutch voter, which is which must

751
00:56:01.800 --> 00:56:07.360
be very disconcerting in a country where
you know, there's a huge amount of

752
00:56:07.440 --> 00:56:14.880
social cohesion, there's a huge amount
of of intras inter class social class cohesion.

753
00:56:15.840 --> 00:56:17.880
The Dutch people are Dutch people are
Dutch people. They are very very

754
00:56:17.880 --> 00:56:22.119
similar. And I mean that with
all due respect. You know, I've

755
00:56:22.119 --> 00:56:23.480
lived in Holland as a kid,
so I'm not not you know, I'm

756
00:56:23.480 --> 00:56:30.400
not no shade. But in the
United States when politicians are out of touch,

757
00:56:30.280 --> 00:56:32.199
like yeah, yeah, you're out
of touch. It's a big country,

758
00:56:32.199 --> 00:56:35.559
you're not you're going to miss stuff. In Holland when you're out of

759
00:56:35.599 --> 00:56:40.519
touch, so what how far off
are you? And you know, that's

760
00:56:40.840 --> 00:56:44.960
just a different way of looking at
the obverse. The other thing, The

761
00:56:45.039 --> 00:56:47.960
other thing that strikes me is how
small these countries are. Population of the

762
00:56:47.960 --> 00:56:52.159
Netherlands a little under eighteen million,
population of Hungary little under ten million,

763
00:56:52.440 --> 00:56:58.320
Norway five million, Denmark seven million, Sweden ten million, And what do

764
00:56:58.400 --> 00:57:05.559
we know. Population trajectories are very
hard to predict, but all the predictions

765
00:57:05.840 --> 00:57:12.559
are that by twenty fifty the population
of Africa will have increased by a billion

766
00:57:12.599 --> 00:57:17.239
people a billion people, and the
population of all those European countries will have

767
00:57:17.280 --> 00:57:22.880
shrunk. Well, there's going to
be some empty villages in the Netherlands and

768
00:57:22.960 --> 00:57:29.760
France and Italy that look very appealing
to some of those billions in Africa.

769
00:57:30.239 --> 00:57:34.679
And it's just astounding to me.
At least you can tell me what I'm

770
00:57:34.679 --> 00:57:40.199
missing, but it seems astounding to
me that the people who run Europe have

771
00:57:40.559 --> 00:57:45.800
few If you're Dutch and you look
at these two, we're a very small

772
00:57:45.800 --> 00:57:47.960
country. We could lose our we
could be overwhelmed, we could lose our

773
00:57:49.000 --> 00:57:52.800
identity extremely easily, and we can
already feel it happening from the number of

774
00:57:52.840 --> 00:57:57.559
immigrants we've already accepted. In the
next twenty five years. We could simply

775
00:57:57.559 --> 00:58:04.760
be what politician looks though he's at
least grappling. It just seems to me,

776
00:58:05.199 --> 00:58:08.559
it just seems to be an obvious
question for any voter in any of

777
00:58:08.559 --> 00:58:13.840
these countries to ask to look Victor
Orbont, He's the only one addressing what

778
00:58:14.000 --> 00:58:17.840
seems to me, as a Hungarian
perhaps the major problem of the next generation.

779
00:58:19.239 --> 00:58:22.760
He's the only one who's addressing it. That's just a political system working

780
00:58:22.800 --> 00:58:29.159
the way it ought to, and
that this elicits shocks of howls of outrage

781
00:58:29.440 --> 00:58:34.840
is astonishing to me. It presumes
that the leaders care about maintaining a Dutch

782
00:58:34.880 --> 00:58:38.760
identity, it cares that they presume
about any sort of you know, national

783
00:58:38.880 --> 00:58:45.760
character at all. Why would they
when they can be part of a transnational

784
00:58:45.800 --> 00:58:51.159
apparatus that is well paid for and
well taken care of and manages the decline.

785
00:58:51.159 --> 00:58:54.960
They're not interested, particularly in national
ideas, because if there's anything we've

786
00:58:55.000 --> 00:58:59.960
learned from the Progressive Project, it's
that the the the idea of ethno states

787
00:59:00.039 --> 00:59:02.719
in Europe is prima facia, a
bad concept, an evil concept. They're

788
00:59:02.760 --> 00:59:07.079
the only ones who are not allowed
to have their own little cultural on c

789
00:59:07.119 --> 00:59:10.119
lives. Everybody else in the world
can have it. Nobody's looking at Somalia

790
00:59:10.199 --> 00:59:13.519
and saying, you know, the
problem with you guys is that you're all

791
00:59:13.559 --> 00:59:16.000
Somali. You should be seventeen percent
Dutch. It was an absurdity on the

792
00:59:16.000 --> 00:59:20.119
face of it. People's self segregate. They've they arranged themselves as they do,

793
00:59:21.000 --> 00:59:27.199
but they've redifind they're so poisoned by
the idea that that national identity within

794
00:59:27.320 --> 00:59:30.199
language and culture and history and folk
ways and the rest of it is somehow

795
00:59:30.239 --> 00:59:32.480
about one half of a goose step
away from the rise of of the Fourth

796
00:59:32.519 --> 00:59:37.159
Right, that they've just decided to
abandon the whole thing forever in the name

797
00:59:37.199 --> 00:59:42.920
of Europe, which means a set
of values and ideas that are completely to

798
00:59:43.079 --> 00:59:47.400
them, divorced and uprooted from the
cultures that produce them. So they were

799
00:59:47.440 --> 00:59:52.559
handed down by the you know,
the tablists, by Moses and God.

800
00:59:52.719 --> 00:59:54.119
One thing before we got to go
rob because we know you have a hard

801
00:59:54.159 --> 00:59:57.960
out, as we like to say
here, so finish up and then we'll

802
00:59:58.280 --> 01:00:01.480
leave. Oh. I was going
to say that the only issue here with

803
01:00:01.480 --> 01:00:06.559
with the with the Northern Europe and
the Europeans is that they they don't like

804
01:00:06.679 --> 01:00:09.960
change. They never have like change, and so they but they convinced themselves

805
01:00:09.960 --> 01:00:14.000
that if they just hunker down that
things won't change. And the reality is

806
01:00:14.000 --> 01:00:16.840
what they need is they need more
in Italy. They need more Italians,

807
01:00:17.039 --> 01:00:21.679
they need to have more kids.
They're upside down on their population group in

808
01:00:21.719 --> 01:00:25.000
how they need more Dutch people having
children. And they probably need to create

809
01:00:25.000 --> 01:00:31.000
a slightly bigger, broader opportunities society
for themselves instead of the regulatory states that

810
01:00:31.039 --> 01:00:37.079
they have because you can't you know, you can't pass the tax to or

811
01:00:37.159 --> 01:00:42.079
pass a law to outlaw tomorrow it's
going to happen. And had they what

812
01:00:42.159 --> 01:00:45.119
they they're now, they're they're dark. Theory is well, you know will

813
01:00:45.159 --> 01:00:49.360
be in charge and but we just
import a bunch of people and they'll do

814
01:00:49.440 --> 01:00:53.440
all the work. That doesn't really
that you have to be willing to shrink.

815
01:00:53.559 --> 01:00:55.559
If you can do that, you
have to be Japanese to do that.

816
01:00:57.000 --> 01:01:00.280
The Dutch can't do it and the
Italians can't do it. What they

817
01:01:00.320 --> 01:01:02.920
need is they need to they need
to create a vibrant, growing economy that

818
01:01:04.039 --> 01:01:07.800
encourages people to have children right and
to move out of cities and to do

819
01:01:09.199 --> 01:01:15.320
economic opportunity activities that you know,
grow an economy rather than just sort of

820
01:01:15.360 --> 01:01:21.079
hold it steady while you import people
from the global South to I don't know,

821
01:01:21.320 --> 01:01:25.400
make your bitter balling in your you
know, Kaiserschmarn somewhere else. Right

822
01:01:25.960 --> 01:01:29.239
then, when you wake up like
Ireland and you find it's time to talk

823
01:01:29.239 --> 01:01:31.159
about these things, they've made it
illegal to do. So it's been fun

824
01:01:31.400 --> 01:01:34.840
to talk about this again more next
week and for the weeks to come.

825
01:01:34.840 --> 01:01:38.000
Peter rob always a pleasure. You
the listener can go to ricochet dot com

826
01:01:38.000 --> 01:01:40.719
and sign up. You can go
to Apple and give his five started reviews

827
01:01:40.719 --> 01:01:44.639
in the podcast, and you can
go to Fume Fum try fume for that

828
01:01:44.679 --> 01:01:46.559
wonderful little product. Thanks to everybody
who's been listening, and we'll see you

829
01:01:46.599 --> 01:01:52.480
all in the comment, said Ricochet. F point Oho next week. Next

830
01:01:52.480 --> 01:01:59.039
week Ricochet join the conversation