WEBVTT

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I'm losing your voice for some reason. Well, I've been trying to lose

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his voice for a long time.
Congratulations, Ask not what your country can

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do for you, ask what you
can do for your country. Mister Gerbuschov,

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tear down this wall. Read my
lips. It's the Ricochete podcast with

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Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm
James Lolas and Day. We talked to

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Paul Ray about Sparta. When was
the last time you thought about Sparta?

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Well you're going to know, because
let's have ourselves a podcast. The border

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is secured. Frankly, mister nor
Roster, I don't care what you think,

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sitting in your safe office and removed
from everybody, playing with some numbers,

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Go and talk to people. The
answer is to have real borders.

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The answer is to have the rule
of law. And once you established that,

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then you look into what needs to
be done in our immigration system.

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Well, come everybody, this is
the Ricochet podcast number six hundred and fifty

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nine. Boy, that's a lot
of podcasts. Have you've been there from

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the start? Good for you?
Are you just joining us for the first

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time? Well, have you got
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go to Ricochet dot com. Join, sign up and learn all the advantages

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of being a Ricochet member. Does
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a triple a where you get ten
percent off if you go to the outback

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steakhouse. No, it means you
are part of the most interesting, civilized

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center right conversation on the web Ricochet
dot com. Check it out and then

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get back to us with you know
all of your details so we can invite

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you into the family, a family
that includes founder Rob Long Peter Robins.

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It will be along in just a
second time, James Lilacs in Minneapolis.

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Rob, Hello, how's Gotham?
James, how are you? No,

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Gotham's actually quite lovely. It's it's
got that. It's the perfect time,

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you know. It's yep, it's
still kind of sun it's not quite autumn,

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so it's not cold, but it's
not hot. It's kind of nice.

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And yes, it's you know,
everybody knows it's about to get really

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good. That's when it said it's
best as you walk along with a fragrant

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smell of roasted chest nuts and crystal
and apple breeze and weeds, smokes skunk

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defying the air. Yes, indeed, it's the it's not yet chestnuts.

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It's there still is a wafting odor. It's not chest nuts. I never

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know on anybody who actually bought the
chest nuts off of those. I don't

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know what you're supposed to do with
them, rather than it's just the scent

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is perhaps like an air freshener for
Gotham, like the equivalent of a tree

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hanging off a rear view mirror or
something like that. I don't know anybody's

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weird because in New York it's we
think of it as a New York thing

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and nowhere else. But everywhere in
Europe in the autumn and the winter,

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there's they're roasting chestnuts on the street. I mean, they do it in

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Paris, they do it in Budapest, they do it everywhere. It's actually

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just kind of a thing. But
we only do it here in New York.

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I don't think they don't do in
Chicago. Do they Chicago? No,

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Because nobody wants to know who ever
says, boy, if I got

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a yen for some roasted chestnuts,
because I really eaten chest nuts when I

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was a little kid, it was
a big, big deal. It only

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happened a few times when I was
in school from my father to take me

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down to New York and when I
must have been seven or eight, my

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first visit to Manhattan wintertime, and
he bought me a bag of roasting chestnuts.

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They were disgusting, but he did
buy them and I did eat them.

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There are different spells, I mean, different things for other people.

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I like buttane on charcoal Brickett's as
a matter of fact, but that's not

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something you're going to find anybody daubing
behind the back of the rear. Well,

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Peter, welcome here we are.
I'm back after my sojourn in London

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and Walber's away. Can suffolk with
interesting tales to tell? Tell that at

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the end of the story, and
promise, I promise they're interesting because they

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involved interesting people, not just myself. So in the news today, the

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whole bunch of stuff, of course, the usual back and forth of politics

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and war and the rest of it. The story that I think is the

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most interesting has to do with a
immigration crisis on the board. I don't

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know if you guys have noticed,
but we're having something of an immigration kurf

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fluffle, are we. Yes?
We are. Eagle Past Access declared a

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state of emergency because they think that
more about oh ten thousand migrants or so

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are expected to enter the town,
which itself has a population of under thirty

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thousand. It brings to mind the
video that we've seen of a small island

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off of Italy which has a population
of something like six thousand and has been

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overwhelmed by twelve thousand migrants, and
the reaction seems to be, well,

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we have to find a way to
disperse them all through Europe, to which

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most people might say why the Hungarians
certainly say that Hungarians certainly would, But

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of course they're run by a you
know, yah boord Mine Jory. They're

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run by a complete fascist, don't
you know. So the idea of having

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sort of a country for yourself and
border control is now verging on authoritarianism.

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We seem to be told by our
moral betters that we have an obligation to

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take in absolutely anybody who shows up
here and do everything for them. The

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Biden administration is considering an ID for
the illegals. I'm sorry, the undocumented.

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Oh there's a new term. There's
a new I can't remember what it

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is that I heard it the other
It was on a report from New York

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Now that the mayor wants working permits
for these people. There's yet another new

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term, and I can't remember what
it is. Of course, they're just

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too many of them. I can't
remember. Well, undocumented was it for

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a while, as though that as
though you know, a piece of pain.

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I mean, undocumented is somebody who
just doesn't have it on them.

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That doesn't mean they're even titled to
the document in the first place. But

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you know, of course that after
the ideas are done, the from the

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idea comes to the driver's license,
and eventually comes the voting. Because while

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they're here, they're impact. They're
impacted by all of these decisions, so

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it's wrong not to let them have
a say in that. You'll take on

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this gentleman, which, well,
what I love about the Internet is that

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that someone, not me, but
someone could actually do a little research and

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find out when exact act when you
pretty much within the day probably we started

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saying migrant, what day was that? That was very recent, So there's

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gotta be a day it's gonna be
like, oh, you know what on

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June third, migrants. Yeah,
it just came to the new term unpapered

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is somebody who's sitting in a bathroom
stall and realizes that there are there are

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no roles. I'm sorry, but
Rob is making the question saying, every

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time the time gets introduced, we
can end the internet. We'll let you

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know when that exactly when that time
actually is. And I think I'd like

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to know who and when and where
it first appeared. And then I want

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to find out who decided, because
I I bet someone decided. It just

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feels like a brainstorming session in the
New York Times style book editorial meeting,

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where we can't call them that,
and we can't call them this, and

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let's call them something that they are
clearly not. I mean, they are

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illegal. They are also undocumented.
That is true. That's a euphemism.

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They are also on paper that it's
also true. It's a euphemism. But

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they're not migrants. No refugees didn't
work. And yeah, migrants come and

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they go that's what they do,
or they keep moving. So someone,

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someone made a decision. And I
was in a room and with a big

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dry erase board, and they had
all these names up there. No bad

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someone said, no bad, there
are no bad suggestions, no bad ideas,

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And some sad little sap raised his
hand and probably said something that was

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a little bit you know, descriptive, and they all yelled at him and

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said, well, there's that bad
idea. How about migrants? And I

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just want to know what date that
was and where that was. You're right,

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So my reaction is fatigue at this
point. Anger. I can I

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can summon up the anger all over
again, and I'll tell you why I'm

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angry and why we should all be
angry. But I've noticed that I have

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become inured to this and that is
the not me, but that seems to

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be the case with the country.
Even on Fox News. What was I

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watching last night? The special the
Brett Bear Show. Brett Bear was in

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Saudi Arabia doing but in any event, it was the Brett Bear Show,

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and there was footage of people streaming
across the border, and it was just

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a three minute segment, even on
Fox News, which is which sort of

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lives to get us all outrage.
So here's why I'm angry. In nineteen

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eighty six, when Reagan signed his
immigration bill, there were three million people

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it was believed there were three million
people in this country illegally, and that

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was such an outrage that there had
been a bipartisan Commission established under Jimmy Carter

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almost a decade before. It was
chaired by that good and holy man Theodore

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Hesburg, Jesuit priest, president of
Notre Dame University. Both sides got it

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was uncontroversial that we had to do
something. It was difficult to work out

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exactly what had to be done,
which is why it took year after year.

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Finally legislation got enacted, and that
was to address three million illegals in

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this country. Eight million have entered
the country during the presidency of Joe Biden

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alone eight million. And now we're
down to a three minute segment on Fox

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News. I mean, what am
I saying? I guess I'm angry that

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I can no longer work up the
angry. We're all the anger. We

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are all just numb to this.
I can recall this is years ago.

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I had a conversation with a philosopher
who, to my astonishment, was a

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kind of conservative guy, and I
said, how what about this argument that

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the earth belongs to all of us
and that no nation has the right to

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at least orders that the poorer always
have the And he said, well,

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I can be very sophisticated about this
or I can just ask you this.

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Do you have the right to the
use of your own home? Are you

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permitted? Are you morally permitted to
lock your front door, perhaps to put

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a fence around your front yard?
And everybody knows that that's true, And

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he said, the argument from the
individual homeowner to the nation is identical,

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identical, And we have lost the
will and the wits to make this argument

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to get angry about an administration that
has chosen at this point of course,

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it's not administrative difficulty. It's not
lack of money they've given. They've chosen.

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All right, I'm trying hard to
work myself up into anger again,

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and I just can't do it.
They haven't known, we haven't lost it.

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We have been informed that certain attitudes
are nationalistic, xenophobic and therefore are

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outside of the pale. Where have
been informed and instructed that the idea is

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is that we are a nation of
immigrants. Ergo, anything that involves immigrants

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is just absolutely fantastic. Now I'm
one of those wide you know, pro

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immigration guys. I think it's great. We need give people, smart people,

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we need workers demographically wise. Yes, let's vet everyone, let's get

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good people in here. Let's provide
a solace and an asylum for the people

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who are truly, truly needed.
But what we are seeing now is a

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lot of single men, economic refugees, or people who just have made a

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very sensible, rational decision to crash
into this country and get more for themselves

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than they could elsewhere. It's a
rational, sensible thing to do. But

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the interesting thing about this is that
we're supposed to believe that it's all sort

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of dispersed, that these are just
little droplets into the great ocean of America.

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When we see as in New York, as we see in in Chicago,

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and as we see in this town
in Texas, that you have instantaneous

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shifting of the culture in these specific
places where it happens. So in the

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case of the Italian Island, I
find it fascinating because they say that they're

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going to want to disperse them throughout
Europe. When two to one now the

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people of this nation, of this
little island are out numbered by the other.

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Why why not just keep them on
that island there and have them do

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whatever they're going to do. And
the reason is, of course, is

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that it would completely destroy the culture
of that island, which then leads to

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the conversation as to whether or not
the people of that island deserve to have

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their culture unmolested, unshifted by exterior
elements. I was listening to the BBC

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Hard Talk the other day where this
unbelievable interviewer was excoriating a Swedish politician who

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was suggesting that the bombings, the
crime waves, the difficulties they have in

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Sweden require them to redouble their efforts
to instill Swedish values into immigrants, and

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perhaps consider whether or not they should
be taking in as many migrants as they

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should migrants. There. I just
said it, and the interviewer was just

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was yelling at him practically for saying
that these are right wing talking points.

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It is right wing now to say
that Sweden country does not have the population.

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The United States has the right to
maintain its own culture, to believe

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what their own culture is, and
to keep it from being shifted and changed

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by people who are antithetical to it. Now, the America's America is not

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Sweden. We're not a mono culture. We were were the melting butt.

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It's also the point they're not yeah, I mean they're not antithetical. Wait

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wait, wait a minute, No, the migrants in Sweden, because the

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Sweden obviously, but that's the we're
even weasel wording that they are. They

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are Muslims. They're from Muslim countries
right, from Syria and places like that,

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and they're refugees from a terrible war
and they've come to Sweden and they

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are different. They are very different
from the sweets. Right, everyone's different

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from the sweets, but these people
are really different the sweets. I'm sorry

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I interrupt you. Mid No my
rant is this, yes, there's good

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news about It's good news is that
suddenly all those things that James says,

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which rightly were attacked and thought it
was right wing talking points in the United

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States but we had to separate it
and that's not Sweden, are now things

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being said by the liberal mayor of
New York. Hey, we gotta do

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something about all this. Hey,
what's going on? Right? So that

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that is some small good news.
The other thing that I just I know,

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I shouldn't even get mad at it. It's just too it's like too

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complicated to be mad at. But
every time someone says their refugees from Venezuela,

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I'm like, well, whose fault
is that how many liberal Americans who

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are down there in Venezuela or praising
Hugo Chavez. He's saying he's a socialist

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king, and he and Castor have
the right answer instead of saying what everybody

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knew, which was it was a
despotic, chaotic and utterly incompetent regime that

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was going to take an energy supplying
nation, an oil rich nation, and

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drop it down somewhere between you know, Burkina Fosso and Niger in its GDP.

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Right, that that is what socialism
did. And it's not my fault.

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It's the fault of the political science
department at Harvard and a bunch of

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Hollywood actors who praised this guy.
They created a problem. Now the problem

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somehow we have to solve. And
then then the other problem is this is

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that a long thirty and fifty thousand
foot view of this is that we have

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had this bizarre sleepwalking attitude about this
problem because there's always like in the you

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know, it's like, I mean, I don't have trying to be you

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know whatever. But there was always
the you don't have the Wall Street Journal

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editorial page argument that actually, this
is not a problem. There were a

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bunch of a California economists and business
people said, look, this is not

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a problem, it's gonna it's actually
necessary for the growth. Then there was

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you know, when it started really
happening in the nineties, when when you

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know, unemployment in America was sort
of below what anyone ever thought it could

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be institutional just just as a matter
of the number was lower than anybody ever

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thought would jo it's a giant magnet
for labor. Came from the South,

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and we all, you know,
maybe I got to get it direct.

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It was enormous growth in the nineties. Mean, the economy grew and grew

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and grew and loose of great years
for us. We all kind of slept

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walk through it. And then we
had you know, then you know,

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I'm here. Tom Tancredo from Colorado. He ran on this and didn't get

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anywhere in the Republican Party, and
Republicans kind of rolled their eyes and said,

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it's not really a problem. And
then Trump made it his issue,

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and I think that was a huge
part of his appeal. And then even

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when Trump got in, he did
basically nothing. He built as fewer miles

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of Obama. He said he was
gonna build a wall that's correct. That's

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correct, that's correct. So I
have a secondary rant, and this one

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I still can get pretty good and
angry about Mexico. Mexico is a country

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that was making enormous progress for about
twenty years, and now they can't pull

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themselves together. They claim to block
wave after wave after wave of immigration that

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begins at their southern border, crosses
Mexico and then enters our southern border.

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Right, Mexican immigration into this country
has become relatively modest. It's people from

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farther south, those Venezuelans you talked
about, and now we know perfectly well

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the people from all over the world
are crossing Mexico to enter our southern border

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illegally. The Mexican the Mexicans can't
get their hands on that. The Mexicans

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also are seem unwilling and this is
I mean, of course, what I'm

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saying, all of this is a
matter of political will. They also seem

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unwilling to get out of the fentanyl
game. And among young Americans, drug

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overdose has now become the leading cause
of death. We lose a hundred thousand

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kids, overwhelmingly kids a year.
Now I'll tell you about I'd better not

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quote them because they didn't know I
was going to yea. It was confidential,

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at least private conversations. But here's
what one former member of a presidential

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cabinet told me. What's going on
is that the Chinese are supplying the Mexicans

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with the raw materials for drugs.
The Mexicans then do the final cooking,

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the final assembly, so to speak, and of course transmit it to this

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country. And the Chinese are doing
this to accumulate cash outside China. We

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know who the Mexican we're tracking.
The Chinese is difficult, I was told

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by this cabinet officer, but we
know a great deal about the Mexican drug

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dealers, all right. Next item, another former member of a presidential cabinet

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took a tour of the southern border
in Arizona and talked to some ranchers in

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Arizona, and it turned out there
was so much trouble with them so called

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mules, these young Mexicans who entered
the country illegally. They we're breaking down

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fences. So the ranchers on the
American side got in touch with the ranchers

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on the Mexican side and said,
listen, tell the drug dealers. We're

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going to install fences. Don't have
mules break down the fences. We're getting

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cattle mixed up every single night.
Just use the gates we're going to install.

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I beg your pardner, mis spoke, We're going to install gates.

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Just make sure they close the gates
behind themselves. And so this is now

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going on that there is an informal
but perfectly straightforward arrangement for illegal entry of

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drugs into this country. Final point
here is that remittances from Mexicans back to

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Mexico are now fifty billion dollars a
year. Fifty billion dollars of our economy

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gets transferred directly to Mexico each year. This is insane. It is just

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insane that we and the Mexicans cannot
pull ourselves together to help them if they

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need the help, if they'll accept
the help and to and to get rough

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diplomatically rough at least, if they
won't accept the help to stop this immigration

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across their country and to stop this
drug trade, all right, it is

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just insane. It isn't. Now
that may be difficult, they may be

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on what we are making, no
effort difficult, just difficult. Saying difficult

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was it to sant As. You
said, the occasional sidewinder or tomahawk into

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a meth lab would concentrate the mind. Oh, but they move elsewhere.

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Okay, then hit that one.
I'm sorry. If you have somebody who's

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shipping, imagine if these factories were
producing plutonium and we're smuggling that into the

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American cities and very small quantities,
mind you, but it killed an awful

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lot of people to be the same
thing. To very good point, you

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admittances, ban them, ban them? Sorry you would you would you like

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to get this money back? Okay, here's what you need to do.

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You need to stop people from coming
up here, and you need to do

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something about the fentanyl. Then we
can talk about starting the remittances up again.

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Three. The fences, the doors. That's interesting because when something like

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that comes along, what I think
is that probably health and safety. What's

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the Oh, they're going to make
sure that the doors that the mules get

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through are our ADA compliant. That
would be the only thing that the government

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would be concerned about that. If
indeed you are installing you need ramps.

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Do they swing both ways? Are
they power assistant? We're gonna build ramps

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and Mexico's gonna pay for it,
that's right, absolutely, So I know

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the answer seems simple to those of
us who don't have to do anything about

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it. Of course, people,
you know that the ones who are involved

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in task with these things themselves barely
get any sleep whatsoever, and toss fitfully

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because they know that the answers are
there, if only we could sum it

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00:21:47.720 --> 00:21:49.680
up, the wheel and the money
to do it. But those people,

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if they wanted to sleep a little
better, well we know what they would

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use, wouldn't of course they would
use bold and branch sheets. So bold

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00:21:57.839 --> 00:22:00.759
and branch. You know we're talking
sheets, right, and you know that

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00:22:00.839 --> 00:22:03.880
sheets are necessary for sleep, good
sleep. How do you sleep better?

301
00:22:03.880 --> 00:22:06.839
I gotta ask. You go to
bed earlier, you silence your phone,

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00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:10.119
you read in the evening so you
can me I just drop right off.

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00:22:10.200 --> 00:22:11.640
I mean, those are all good
ways to get you to sleep. But

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00:22:11.720 --> 00:22:15.119
if you want the highest quality sleep, you have to get the highest quality

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00:22:15.200 --> 00:22:19.160
sheets. And if that sounds ridiculous, okay, I think you've got sheets

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00:22:19.200 --> 00:22:22.440
made out of burlap, you're going
to sleep well. No, So scale

307
00:22:22.480 --> 00:22:25.680
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308
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311
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the years to come. And when
they say years, the mean years.

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00:22:47.880 --> 00:22:52.720
I mean I've had my Bowling Brand
sheets one set for as long as I've

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00:22:52.720 --> 00:22:55.960
been doing these spots, and yes, they do become incrementally softer with every

315
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single wash. That's years now.
Wow. Bowl and Brand sheets are loved

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319
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And of course we thank Boland Branch responsing

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this the Ricochet Podcast, and now
we're welcome back to the podcast. Bricochet

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00:23:45.200 --> 00:23:48.559
Favorite Ricochet writer Paul Ray, professor
of history at Hillsdale College. He holds

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00:23:48.599 --> 00:23:52.720
the Charles O. Lee and Louise
K. Lee Chair in Western Heritage.

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Is the author of Republic's Ancient and
Modern Soft Despotism and most recently, Sparta's

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Billion Proxy War, The Grand Strategy
of Classical Sparta. Welcome, how are

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you? We're all grand and we
have been just despairing over the course of

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modern events. So it's always fun
to cast our mind back to history when

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things were probably worse than bloody ear
and like give us the play. So

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the last week on Twitter, and
I know you're on Twitter like five six

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00:24:23.960 --> 00:24:29.920
hours a day, somebody somebody who
posed the question, you know, I

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wonder how often men think about ancient
Rome And the answer was generally intended to

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00:24:34.200 --> 00:24:40.880
be almost every day or every day
and myself, it's about every other day

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00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:42.839
because if you study art history,
if you study politics, if you study

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any I mean, Rome is from
my Twitter feed. I got guys who

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00:24:45.960 --> 00:24:51.559
are showing me mosaics and marbles and
stories and busts and the rest of it.

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So Rome was always still part of
my imagination on a daily basis,

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and it's not surprising that people do. So this got to people thinking about

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00:24:59.680 --> 00:25:06.519
that. But you know, Rome
gets all the pr Sparta Greece less.

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So what will it take Paul to
make us think about Sparta every day?

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The Michigan State football team would have
to would have to bounce back in a

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serious way. And let me say, the great ambition of my life is

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to give a lecture during halftime at
a Michigan State Michigan game on the ancient

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Spartans. But but let me say, there are more sports teams named after

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the Spartans than there are named after
the Romans. And it strikes me that

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if one we're to pose the question
how often do people think about Sparta,

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00:25:45.880 --> 00:25:51.079
it would be more often than you
think, especially in wartime. But look,

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00:25:52.160 --> 00:25:56.920
the Sparta Sicilian Proxy Wars. My
fifth book on Sparta, it'll be

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released by encounter books on Tuesday or
Wednesday. Paul, I have to stop

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00:26:03.119 --> 00:26:07.079
you there. You know too much. It cannot be good for your brain.

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It just cannot be good for your
brain. You know too much.

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Continue. I'm beginning. I'm seventy
four, so I'm beginning to forget A

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00:26:15.039 --> 00:26:25.920
lot may be helpful. Maybe twenty
years will meet our our knowledge levels will

358
00:26:25.960 --> 00:26:30.799
meet. A part of what has
been, you know, driving my writing

359
00:26:30.880 --> 00:26:38.480
these books is a conviction that the
two camps in thinking about American foreign policy

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in this country, the realists best
represented by John Mersheimer University of Chicago,

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00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:52.119
and then the sort of Willsonians pretty
well represented by the younger Bush are both

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00:26:52.160 --> 00:26:57.680
out of their minds. Both yes. I don't think that we have had

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00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:07.559
a good administration with regard to foreign
policy since Ronald Reagan, and that both

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the Republicans and the Democrats have ignored
what is right in front of their eyes.

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00:27:15.400 --> 00:27:21.799
There has been a kind of utopian
vision that if we could unite everyone

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in a neoliberal international order, that
commerce would cause the spread of democracy,

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and Russia and China would become ordinary
polities. I believe that was crazy from

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the beginning, because you need to
pay attention to cultural differences. And one

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00:27:48.880 --> 00:27:53.000
of the people who directs you to
paying a difference attention to cultural differences is

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Subsididies. In Book one, paragraph
seventy, the Corinthians try to instruct the

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Spartans about what the Athenians are really
like and what they're up against. And

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they juxtapose the two peoples and you
realize that they're very, very different.

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They will respond to the same situation
in quite different ways. So to think

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that the Russians wouldn't try to re
establish a Russian empire in Eastern Europe is

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00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:27.119
simply crazy. And to think that
the Chinese would not try to be the

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00:28:27.240 --> 00:28:33.720
central kingdom and dominate the world is
equally crazy. And what we've done is

377
00:28:33.759 --> 00:28:41.279
averted our Gays from the facts for
thirty years under the influence of these two

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00:28:41.400 --> 00:28:48.960
schools of thought, which are equally
committed to ignoring cultural difference. So Paul

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00:28:49.039 --> 00:28:57.039
could I way back during the Cold
War days, so the Persian Wars versus

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the Peloponnesian Wars. Back in the
old days of the Cold War, we

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00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:06.640
used to talk quite a lot about
the Persian Wars because there you had a

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democracy. The Athenians led the Greeks
in standing up to this vast autocratic empire,

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and it fit very well our feeling
of ourselves. Or you can see

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00:29:18.720 --> 00:29:23.480
the same, fundamentally the same storyline
in Star Wars. It's the republic versus

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00:29:23.599 --> 00:29:30.920
the empire. And that was a
source of great encouragement because Athens beat the

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00:29:30.039 --> 00:29:36.599
Persians and we were going to beat
world communism. Okay, but we kept

387
00:29:36.640 --> 00:29:41.599
our mouth shut about the Peloponnesian Wars
because that didn't fit at all. That

388
00:29:41.759 --> 00:29:48.960
wasn't encouraging at all. There you
had a more or less democratic Athens that

389
00:29:48.279 --> 00:29:59.759
lost to a centrally controlled autocratic Sparta. Well, I don't think that's true.

390
00:30:00.240 --> 00:30:00.920
Go ahead, go ahead, go
I want to hear it. I

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00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:06.200
want to hear you adjust these templates
for us. What do these two wars

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00:30:06.279 --> 00:30:11.799
mean to us today? Well,
look, let me step back. George

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00:30:11.880 --> 00:30:18.920
Marshall gave a talk at Princeton in
nineteen forty eight, and in that talk

394
00:30:18.519 --> 00:30:22.240
he said, you cannot understand the
position of the United States in the world

395
00:30:22.640 --> 00:30:27.400
today unless you study Thucydides. And
I can tell you at the war colleges,

396
00:30:27.680 --> 00:30:33.359
the Naval War College, the Army
War College, the Air War College,

397
00:30:33.400 --> 00:30:37.720
where I lecture and have lectured off
and on since the eighties, and

398
00:30:37.880 --> 00:30:42.720
the Marine Corps University, they're all
focused on Thucydides. And so the view

399
00:30:42.960 --> 00:30:51.200
was Sparta that's the Soviet Union,
Athens that's the United States. And I

400
00:30:51.319 --> 00:30:56.960
would say that there is a certain
similarity in the struggles that have taken place

401
00:30:57.119 --> 00:31:04.400
in the world from the sixteen nineties
to the present day, because the main

402
00:31:04.519 --> 00:31:11.799
struggles have involved maritime powers in the
rim Land, Britain, the United States,

403
00:31:11.960 --> 00:31:22.279
and so forth against continental powers the
Napoleon Louis the fourteenth, the kaiser

404
00:31:22.400 --> 00:31:27.400
Reich, Nazi Germany, the Soviet
Union, and I think it is still

405
00:31:27.680 --> 00:31:34.640
pertinent. And of course there are
big cultural differences between commercial powers and land

406
00:31:34.720 --> 00:31:41.200
powers. Commercial powers are not so
much interested in territory. So the Spartans,

407
00:31:41.319 --> 00:31:44.480
the Spartans here are the land power. Is that correct? Yeah,

408
00:31:44.720 --> 00:31:51.079
China's a land power trying to be
a sea power, just the way the

409
00:31:51.200 --> 00:31:56.440
Kaiser's Germany was a land power trying
to be a sea power. And so

410
00:31:56.920 --> 00:32:00.160
I'm trying to get to the parallel
here is part it was a land power

411
00:32:01.200 --> 00:32:06.039
and the Athenians were a sea power. Essentially. Yes, Okay, that's

412
00:32:06.119 --> 00:32:10.400
right. But here's the other thing. Sea powers have a tendency to go

413
00:32:10.640 --> 00:32:17.119
off on crazy adventures. The Athenians
went to Sicily, which gave the Spartans

414
00:32:17.160 --> 00:32:21.680
the opportunity to really stick it to
them, and to do it on the

415
00:32:21.799 --> 00:32:30.160
cheap through a proxy war. And
whenever you have these land and sea powers

416
00:32:30.200 --> 00:32:35.359
against one another, you tend to
have a stalemate. And of course in

417
00:32:35.440 --> 00:32:38.319
the nuclear age, you tend to
have a stalemate. And so when you

418
00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:44.480
get a stalemate, you often get
proxy wars. So the Korean War was

419
00:32:44.559 --> 00:32:49.960
for the Russians a proxy war they
could bleed us on the cheap. Vietnam

420
00:32:50.119 --> 00:32:53.480
was a proxy war for the Chinese
initially and the Russians later so they could

421
00:32:53.519 --> 00:32:59.000
bleed us. The first Afghan War
that we were involved with was a proxy

422
00:32:59.079 --> 00:33:02.759
war on our part against the Soviet
Union, and it may have contributed mightily

423
00:33:02.880 --> 00:33:09.640
to bringing down the Soviet regime our
time in Afghanistan, we just opened ourselves

424
00:33:09.759 --> 00:33:14.400
up for it, and the Pakistanis
took carried out a proxy war against us.

425
00:33:15.839 --> 00:33:20.200
And in Iraq, both the Iranians
and the Syrians carried out a proxy

426
00:33:20.279 --> 00:33:24.400
war against us. And what we're
doing right now in Ukraine is carrying out

427
00:33:24.440 --> 00:33:29.079
a proxy war against the Russians,
and we are bleeding them. Oh my

428
00:33:29.200 --> 00:33:35.319
god, we're bleeding them. And
it put NATO back together, and it

429
00:33:35.480 --> 00:33:38.920
added the Fins and the Swedes.
I have to ask here because you brought

430
00:33:39.000 --> 00:33:44.160
up Ukraine. It's always fascinating to
go back to see the patterns repeating themselves

431
00:33:44.240 --> 00:33:45.079
as we sing of arms and the
men and the rest of it. In

432
00:33:45.160 --> 00:33:49.480
human nature not changing, etc.
But we are seeing when you talk about

433
00:33:49.480 --> 00:33:52.680
air power, some new fundamental shifts. Are we not in our expectations of

434
00:33:52.720 --> 00:33:55.319
what the battlefields of the future we're
going to look like. This is the

435
00:33:55.359 --> 00:33:59.839
first time that I can think of
that we've had drone warfare like this,

436
00:34:00.160 --> 00:34:05.240
swarms of it, overwhelming it,
finding its way into the little chinks in

437
00:34:05.279 --> 00:34:08.559
the little holes. It's fascinating to
see what we're learning in this war.

438
00:34:09.360 --> 00:34:13.320
And aren't we learning about that?
A lot of a lot of the paradigms

439
00:34:13.360 --> 00:34:17.559
that we've been comfortably settled with for
a long time are actually out of date,

440
00:34:17.719 --> 00:34:22.159
and we'd best keep up. Yeah, that's always the case. Look,

441
00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:31.679
when the try reams invented and the
Persians began sending out large pleats and

442
00:34:31.840 --> 00:34:37.400
they managed to get horses onto try
reams. Suddenly, amphibious warfare became a

443
00:34:37.440 --> 00:34:43.440
possibility for the first time in human
history. Uh. And it transformed things

444
00:34:43.519 --> 00:34:47.400
so that the technology is always changing. And boy, are you right about

445
00:34:47.480 --> 00:34:55.079
drones? And you know that that
leads one to a kind of question.

446
00:34:57.079 --> 00:35:02.320
I was on at a gathering of
the M Kinder Forum yesterday and I can't

447
00:35:02.320 --> 00:35:06.679
tell you who was there because I'm
not allowed to, but I tell you

448
00:35:06.760 --> 00:35:15.920
what I learned. Yeah, yeah, yeah, seventy six percent. You

449
00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:21.440
know, all of the computer stuff
depends on rare earths right down to your

450
00:35:21.480 --> 00:35:24.000
cell phone. Seventy six percent of
the rare earths are produced in China,

451
00:35:25.039 --> 00:35:30.719
fifteen percent in the United States.
You might ask was that always so?

452
00:35:30.920 --> 00:35:35.800
And the answer is no. The
environmentalists pushed the United States to shut it

453
00:35:35.880 --> 00:35:42.039
down because the pollution that comes from
it's pretty ugly. The fifteen percent we

454
00:35:42.199 --> 00:35:50.079
produce is refined in China. So
look, Sunsu argues, one of the

455
00:35:50.599 --> 00:35:53.719
greatest victory you can achieve is one
where you win the victory without having to

456
00:35:53.800 --> 00:35:59.159
do any fighting at all, by
putting the other side in a position where

457
00:35:59.239 --> 00:36:05.360
they cannot resist. And I would
suggest you that our dependence on China for

458
00:36:05.800 --> 00:36:10.519
rare earths is such that we can't
fight a long war against China, except

459
00:36:10.559 --> 00:36:14.519
of course, what's one other country
that's been in the news lately that has

460
00:36:14.599 --> 00:36:20.480
a tremendous amount of rare earth Well, Ukraine. Okay I didn't know that.

461
00:36:20.880 --> 00:36:23.679
Yes they do, but they haven't
been producing it. They have,

462
00:36:23.800 --> 00:36:25.880
they've been trying to wrap it up, but since the war it's been a

463
00:36:25.920 --> 00:36:30.840
bit difficult. But a lot of
people have said that Putin's grab on the

464
00:36:30.880 --> 00:36:32.840
East part portion of Ukraine is it
is a resource grab. I mean there's

465
00:36:32.880 --> 00:36:37.400
lots of you know, the neon
is one of the things that Ukraine produces

466
00:36:37.440 --> 00:36:42.199
that it outstrets other capacity and that's
very necessary, and semiconductors from what I

467
00:36:42.280 --> 00:36:45.079
understand. So there's a lot of
reasons. The nationalistic getting the old band

468
00:36:45.119 --> 00:36:49.599
back together big brother or old brother
thing for Ukraine might actually be over a

469
00:36:49.679 --> 00:36:53.519
fight over resources and money in oldigarchy. And imagine that well, to some

470
00:36:53.719 --> 00:37:02.079
degree, it surely is it.
You know, they say that amateurs talk

471
00:37:02.199 --> 00:37:10.639
strategy and professionals in warfare talk logistics, right, and if you look at

472
00:37:12.039 --> 00:37:16.199
Sparta Sicilian expedition involvement in the Sicilian
expedition. A lot of it has to

473
00:37:16.280 --> 00:37:21.840
do with the fact that the Athenian
logistics are a nightmare because you've got to

474
00:37:22.000 --> 00:37:28.119
you've got to make supply people over
eight hundred miles of sea with the technology

475
00:37:28.239 --> 00:37:31.960
of the time, and you know, to the extent this rare Earth's thing

476
00:37:32.159 --> 00:37:37.639
is significant. That's a matter of
logistics and a very important one. And

477
00:37:37.920 --> 00:37:46.079
we for thirty years we averted our
gays from the possibility of war, and

478
00:37:46.239 --> 00:37:54.320
we didn't think about logistics. Well, I mean, every military history I've

479
00:37:54.320 --> 00:37:58.400
ever read, in every military history
I've ever talked to, eventually you start

480
00:37:58.440 --> 00:38:02.159
talking, you say the same phrase, which is cut off the supply right,

481
00:38:02.800 --> 00:38:07.079
to break up the supply chain,
get them so that you know,

482
00:38:07.239 --> 00:38:10.199
every army of Napoleon's army travels on
stomach. That's you know, you just

483
00:38:10.320 --> 00:38:16.280
expand that definition to include everything,
material, everything. The Ukrainian strategy right

484
00:38:16.320 --> 00:38:23.400
now is so clearly to cut off
the line supply lines to Russia from the

485
00:38:24.079 --> 00:38:30.440
force, the Russian forces in Ukraine
territory now. But part of it has

486
00:38:30.440 --> 00:38:35.159
been done because we're so rich.
The Americans were so incredibly affluent, and

487
00:38:35.239 --> 00:38:37.800
we were looking at a nation sort
of across the Pacific that was poor,

488
00:38:37.960 --> 00:38:40.360
and we thought, well, you
know, let them make these dirty things,

489
00:38:40.400 --> 00:38:45.639
I mean making a semiconductor, which
we now do. We think about

490
00:38:45.719 --> 00:38:49.639
and designed them in the United States, some of them, but we're making

491
00:38:49.719 --> 00:38:52.679
them as dirty. It's dirty business, so we're like, let them do

492
00:38:52.840 --> 00:38:57.599
it. There's a certain kind of
decadence that sets in to a country that

493
00:38:57.760 --> 00:39:04.719
is no longer willing to sort of
grasp what it needs. I always said

494
00:39:04.719 --> 00:39:07.599
that with electric cars, electric cars
run on electric car batteries. Electric car

495
00:39:07.679 --> 00:39:13.719
batteries really run on cobalt, and
that cobalt is dug by little children in

496
00:39:14.079 --> 00:39:20.880
Africa with their little fingers, and
they are literally are slaves. And we

497
00:39:21.000 --> 00:39:22.719
never hear about that. We only
hear about, well, it's better for

498
00:39:22.800 --> 00:39:25.880
the environment. Well it's not better
for their environment. Like I guarantee you

499
00:39:25.960 --> 00:39:29.719
that. I mean, it's the
great Thomas Soul always teaches us. There

500
00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:34.679
are no solutions, there are only
trade offs. So let me ask you

501
00:39:34.719 --> 00:39:37.400
a historical question. First of all, I have two th one. I

502
00:39:37.519 --> 00:39:40.840
just want to tell you this little
story. We occasionally, when we're looking

503
00:39:40.880 --> 00:39:45.320
to hire somebody for Ricochet or our
new Ricochet productions, we're talking to young

504
00:39:45.159 --> 00:39:52.599
Bright almost exclusively Hillsteal graduates. They're
all really smart and everyone I say things

505
00:39:52.679 --> 00:39:55.000
like, hey, do you ever
take a class and Paul Ray, and

506
00:39:55.400 --> 00:40:00.440
almost to the student they go,
oh yeah, that guy hard, Yeah

507
00:40:00.639 --> 00:40:08.719
Hard. So I guess that's a
compliment. Uh. I remember in the

508
00:40:08.920 --> 00:40:15.039
two thousand campaign, So that's al
Gore versus George W. Bush. The

509
00:40:15.159 --> 00:40:22.920
foreign policy platforms were very different.
Al Gore was part of that nation building

510
00:40:22.400 --> 00:40:31.239
interventionist we can build a new country
here and there foreign policy, and George

511
00:40:31.400 --> 00:40:35.679
W. Bush said that this is
silly. We can't do these things.

512
00:40:35.800 --> 00:40:40.079
We shouldn't do these things. We
should pivot to China, that Middle East

513
00:40:40.079 --> 00:40:45.800
should be we should be benign neglect
I think was the actual term they used,

514
00:40:45.159 --> 00:40:50.239
and it sounded so sensible. And
then nine to eleven happened. And

515
00:40:50.480 --> 00:40:54.000
it isn't as if they grafted a
policy onto their existing policy. They just

516
00:40:54.280 --> 00:40:59.519
changed the policy. Yep. So
how how do you what advice would you

517
00:40:59.599 --> 00:41:06.880
give people to remember that despite all
of the things that happened, because you

518
00:41:06.960 --> 00:41:12.239
know these things happened, it happened
in history, that you don't change that

519
00:41:12.360 --> 00:41:17.239
policy. I mean, it seems
like it's human nature right. What I

520
00:41:17.320 --> 00:41:23.840
would say is the question that should
always be asked is what can go wrong?

521
00:41:25.079 --> 00:41:30.440
Yeah, and how likely is it
to go wrong? And in my

522
00:41:30.599 --> 00:41:36.679
opinion, in Afghanistan it was inevitable
that it go wrong. Right. In

523
00:41:36.800 --> 00:41:40.639
Iraq there was a chance. But
then you have to ask a second question,

524
00:41:42.639 --> 00:41:47.199
can you do it at acceptable cost? In other words, to turn

525
00:41:47.400 --> 00:41:54.960
Iraq around? What would it take? And I think the answer, which

526
00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.639
I did not consider at the time, is it would take a long time.

527
00:42:00.199 --> 00:42:06.559
The question is are we ready to
make a long term commitment now.

528
00:42:06.719 --> 00:42:12.320
In some measure we succeeded in Iraq. They still have free elections, which

529
00:42:12.440 --> 00:42:17.320
is really quite remarkable. In other
ways, we weakened ourselves and strengthened Iran

530
00:42:19.840 --> 00:42:25.199
because Saddam Hussein stood in the way
of Iran. You know, if you

531
00:42:25.360 --> 00:42:32.719
go back to the Iran Iraq War, to some degree we used it as

532
00:42:32.760 --> 00:42:40.079
a proxy war against Iran because we
gave at least intelligence help to Iraq at

533
00:42:40.199 --> 00:42:45.000
crucial moments, and of course we
intervened at one point to keep the flow

534
00:42:45.320 --> 00:42:52.760
of oil going from Iraq, which
was very important for Kiss's famous line during

535
00:42:52.880 --> 00:42:55.920
that conflict, if only they could
both lose, it's a good line.

536
00:42:57.679 --> 00:43:01.480
It's a good line because either one
of us is neither one of them could

537
00:43:01.519 --> 00:43:05.960
possibly have been a friend of ours. But it led us, I think,

538
00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:08.519
to the wrong jump. But it
led us to the wrong conclusion.

539
00:43:08.639 --> 00:43:15.639
The argument that I heard from people
making that Iraq was a nation and that

540
00:43:15.880 --> 00:43:22.559
nation could be fortified by our presence
was that Iraq, this multi sectarian Shia

541
00:43:22.679 --> 00:43:28.039
Sunni state, Shia Suni Curred state, fought together under one flag against the

542
00:43:28.079 --> 00:43:35.800
Shia hundred percent Shei a nation,
and this multi multi sectarian nation that really

543
00:43:35.880 --> 00:43:39.440
only exists in Iraq and the in
that region managed to hold itself together.

544
00:43:39.599 --> 00:43:45.000
Forgetting that they did that because to
the rear was a bloodthirsty dictator who had

545
00:43:45.440 --> 00:43:50.760
forced them to fight. So the
country once we went in, exploded into

546
00:43:50.920 --> 00:43:54.119
sectarian violence that we didn't predict.
It wasn't It wasn't that we didn't pay

547
00:43:54.119 --> 00:44:01.400
attention to the ancient rule, which
is that people hate each other sometimes,

548
00:44:01.440 --> 00:44:04.920
and they hate each other for a
long long time. I mean, nobody

549
00:44:04.960 --> 00:44:08.360
predicted that Yugoslabby and nobody predicted that
in Iraq, right, I mean,

550
00:44:08.440 --> 00:44:10.320
I still still go back to the
ancients, and I'm thinking, well,

551
00:44:10.360 --> 00:44:15.440
why don't you people just read the
history. The other thing, wait forgot

552
00:44:15.639 --> 00:44:21.599
is they have a tendency to unite
when the unite against a foreigner, and

553
00:44:21.719 --> 00:44:25.760
the longer we stay there, the
more we look like the foreigner. Paul

554
00:44:25.800 --> 00:44:34.639
could I on this theme. Yugoslavia
is a country for what four decades?

555
00:44:35.559 --> 00:44:40.119
Tito dies, the Cold War ends, and it breaks up into Serbia and

556
00:44:40.320 --> 00:44:49.199
Bosnia, Herzegovina and Croatia. And
it turns out that the Orthodox Serbs still

557
00:44:49.760 --> 00:44:59.159
hate the Catholic Croatians and they both
still hate the Muslims in Herzegovina. Okay,

558
00:44:59.280 --> 00:45:02.960
that's number one, number two,
and maybe even more dramatic. What

559
00:45:04.039 --> 00:45:07.079
I'm getting at here is the question
is going to be about historical continuity.

560
00:45:08.079 --> 00:45:17.039
Here we have Vladimir Putin behaving in
roughly the same way as Ivan the Terrible

561
00:45:17.960 --> 00:45:28.679
for a thousand years Russian rulers,
romanoffs communists, and now whatever Putin is,

562
00:45:29.280 --> 00:45:32.639
there's no ideological through line at all
from Putin to Ivan the Terrible?

563
00:45:34.480 --> 00:45:39.199
What is the mechanism? What is
the transmission mechanism? How is it that

564
00:45:39.880 --> 00:45:49.039
we recognize in Vladimir Putin a Russian
and that there's something underlying all that.

565
00:45:49.280 --> 00:45:53.519
Even Communism was a kind of overlay. This is complicated, but it was

566
00:45:53.599 --> 00:46:00.480
a kind of overlay under something permanent. Where does this permanence come from?

567
00:46:01.280 --> 00:46:04.960
Is? How is it that we
miss it? But what is the Why

568
00:46:05.039 --> 00:46:09.599
should Vladimir Putin have failed to grasp
the chance to become a liberal, rich

569
00:46:10.719 --> 00:46:15.599
democracy. He prefers being a Russian
the son of a bitch? How does

570
00:46:15.679 --> 00:46:22.199
this happen? Well, the sense
of historical mission, something that runs deep

571
00:46:22.280 --> 00:46:28.480
within the people, the heritage of
Pan Slavism, the heritage of Pan Orthodoxy.

572
00:46:29.480 --> 00:46:36.280
And look, Jijin Ping is like
a Chinese emperor with the same kind

573
00:46:36.599 --> 00:46:46.440
of of aspirations. Now there's one
sweet thing about all this Chinese aspirations,

574
00:46:46.559 --> 00:46:51.519
which is to say, to control
all of the territory that China ever controlled,

575
00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:58.599
conflict with Russian aspirations, to control
all of the territory that Russia ever

576
00:46:58.800 --> 00:47:02.400
controlled, if only they both could
lose. Well this, you know they

577
00:47:02.440 --> 00:47:07.679
fought a war in nineteen sixty nine
over Siberia. Yeah, right. And

578
00:47:07.519 --> 00:47:13.440
one of the unequal treaties that the
Chinese denounced and that they teach their school

579
00:47:13.599 --> 00:47:19.480
children to resent, is the treaty
that gave Siberia to Russia. Charles de

580
00:47:19.559 --> 00:47:22.960
gaul Is supposed to have said that
by the end of the twentieth or it

581
00:47:22.039 --> 00:47:28.480
might be the twenty first century,
the eastern border of Russia would be the

582
00:47:28.639 --> 00:47:32.960
Ural Mountains. I believe that's true. I think you're right. I believe

583
00:47:34.079 --> 00:47:37.480
that's true. There are only two
countries in the world with a claim on

584
00:47:37.719 --> 00:47:44.119
territory that is currently that is Russian
territory, was Russian territory in nineteen ninety

585
00:47:44.519 --> 00:47:47.360
five. One is Japan, and
it has to do with some small islands

586
00:47:47.519 --> 00:47:52.400
and it's kind of irrelevant. The
other is China, which has claims on

587
00:47:52.559 --> 00:47:57.480
all of Siberia, and I think
they're going to get it. I don't

588
00:47:57.519 --> 00:48:01.079
quite know when they'll take it.
Maybe they won't have to. Yeah,

589
00:48:01.639 --> 00:48:06.199
the more Russia becomes a vassal state
of China, perhaps it'll be part of

590
00:48:06.199 --> 00:48:08.480
the foreclosure agreement. Maybe at the
end of this we learn I mean,

591
00:48:08.519 --> 00:48:12.320
as Peter was saying, great point
thousand years why not well, culture,

592
00:48:12.440 --> 00:48:15.400
culture matters. Culture matters more than
ideology and a lot of these things in

593
00:48:15.440 --> 00:48:17.000
shaping the way that people develop.
But at the same time, the culture

594
00:48:17.000 --> 00:48:21.440
of Sparta doesn't seem to be evident
in the Greeks today. So over time,

595
00:48:21.599 --> 00:48:23.400
things a road, things are malleable. And maybe as Americans we have

596
00:48:23.519 --> 00:48:29.360
this protean culture that's always shifting and
changing because we have so many different influences

597
00:48:29.400 --> 00:48:31.159
that come to bear on it.
So you know how this all ends,

598
00:48:31.280 --> 00:48:35.800
whether or not in two thousand years
there'll be filmmakers making versions of the United

599
00:48:35.840 --> 00:48:38.719
States at Iwajima like they make Sparta
in the in the movie four hundred Who

600
00:48:38.800 --> 00:48:43.960
Knows. Thank you for telling everybody
in reminding everybody that yeah, Rome is

601
00:48:44.000 --> 00:48:47.800
cool. Room's cool, but there's
there's Sparta. And one of the reasons

602
00:48:47.840 --> 00:48:52.519
that I think that that's particular cool
is because North Dakota. Farther north Dakota,

603
00:48:52.679 --> 00:48:58.920
my school was the Spartans as so, as a matter of fact,

604
00:48:59.039 --> 00:49:02.119
when we went as a school group
to Rome and had a one of those

605
00:49:02.159 --> 00:49:06.920
big meetings with the Pope, every
group got to stand up and say something

606
00:49:07.559 --> 00:49:08.960
a little you know, school model
or something like that. So I stood

607
00:49:09.039 --> 00:49:13.360
up and just shouted, go Spartans, which may not have been the thing

608
00:49:13.400 --> 00:49:20.920
to say at Vatican City at the
time or like extra pating pagan crowd,

609
00:49:21.039 --> 00:49:24.159
but you know, it's hometown pride. I have to go torture, I

610
00:49:24.239 --> 00:49:30.119
mean, teach freshman in Western Heritage, and I've got to be up there

611
00:49:30.199 --> 00:49:34.880
in about five minutes, so I
leave it, depart. Thank you very

612
00:49:34.960 --> 00:49:37.679
much for having me on. Thank
God. I don't care. I don't

613
00:49:37.719 --> 00:49:40.440
care how hard a greater you are. Your students are lucky. They are

614
00:49:40.519 --> 00:49:45.519
lucky. And it's been too long. We need we need regular sessions with

615
00:49:45.599 --> 00:49:50.199
Professor Ray. The world is too
interesting and it resembles the ancient world too

616
00:49:50.320 --> 00:49:53.000
much. That's why we need a
little guidance. Thank you, Thank you,

617
00:49:53.039 --> 00:49:57.719
professor, Thank you, take care. Thanks Paul true So, Peter

618
00:49:58.559 --> 00:50:00.960
Rob, I know you have to
go, but how often do you think

619
00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:05.199
about ancient Rome? I do a
lot. I felt like I felt,

620
00:50:05.440 --> 00:50:07.119
I felt embarrassed, like, yeah, that's kind of meat. You do

621
00:50:07.360 --> 00:50:09.840
me too. I felt exactly the
same. I don't know that I think

622
00:50:09.840 --> 00:50:14.000
about it every single day, but
I think about it a lot. I

623
00:50:14.079 --> 00:50:16.760
have the Aid on my bedside table, I have the Caesar's a pretty good

624
00:50:16.760 --> 00:50:22.000
translation of Caesar's Gallic Wars on the
bookshelf right here next to me. Yeah,

625
00:50:22.119 --> 00:50:24.880
I think about it, you every
like I said, just about every

626
00:50:24.960 --> 00:50:28.800
day or so, given the cultural
and the historical things that I study,

627
00:50:29.039 --> 00:50:31.480
And of course Paul's right, we
ought to think about the ancient Greeks as

628
00:50:31.519 --> 00:50:34.599
well too. As a matter of
fact, those people who are classic Greek

629
00:50:34.679 --> 00:50:38.440
scholars are just sitting there and fuming
that we're not giving the Greeks the do

630
00:50:38.800 --> 00:50:44.679
they deserve. Speaking of fuming,
you, how does that bring to mind?

631
00:50:45.400 --> 00:50:50.400
Bring to mind? Maybe not fuming, you know, doing the cold

632
00:50:50.480 --> 00:50:52.920
turkey thing. Hey, listen,
cold turkey may be great on sandwiches,

633
00:50:52.960 --> 00:50:55.199
but there's a better way to break
your bad habits. Not everything in a

634
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something I want to carry on my
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654
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was just the wonderful aroma that came
when I opened up these packages. I

655
00:52:24.639 --> 00:52:29.000
mean, I thought, if these
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sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast. Well, whilst we are talking there about the

668
00:53:21.760 --> 00:53:24.239
things you can do, Fume wise
robbed decamped, but we knew that was

669
00:53:24.280 --> 00:53:27.559
going to happen. He's got important
meetings, he's got things to go to,

670
00:53:27.679 --> 00:53:29.599
he's got deadlines to me. Do
you know what life is like in

671
00:53:29.639 --> 00:53:31.000
New York? It's all bustle,
It's all hustle. Man it's tired of

672
00:53:31.039 --> 00:53:35.159
New York. It is tired of
life. Actually telling you the truth,

673
00:53:35.199 --> 00:53:37.719
I'm kind of tired of New York
myself, but I'm not tired of life.

674
00:53:37.719 --> 00:53:40.599
And I know that because I'm not
tired of London. Anyway, Peter,

675
00:53:40.639 --> 00:53:43.440
you're gonna you're gonna ask me a
question. No, well, I

676
00:53:43.519 --> 00:53:45.199
was simply going to say, here, we have to sit through this whole

677
00:53:45.719 --> 00:53:50.840
show, Paul Ray, the Rise
and Fall of Empires. Who cares about

678
00:53:50.880 --> 00:53:53.480
any of that? You said at
the beginning you'd just come back from Britain

679
00:53:53.480 --> 00:53:55.800
and you had stories to sell.
And I've been sitting here through the whole

680
00:53:55.840 --> 00:54:00.519
show wondering what stories the moment has
ad Jane, Well, yes, I

681
00:54:00.559 --> 00:54:04.400
suppose it has. And to tell
you the truth, I wrote about them

682
00:54:04.480 --> 00:54:07.320
at Ricochet. I did not put
them on the main page. I put

683
00:54:07.400 --> 00:54:09.199
them in the member feed for the
people who are now. And we have

684
00:54:09.280 --> 00:54:13.079
to tell you it's not expensive.
And I know that getting people to do

685
00:54:13.119 --> 00:54:16.159
any sort of subscription these days are
tough, but if you can subscribe to

686
00:54:16.199 --> 00:54:19.840
the member feed, that's where we
have the conversations and that's where you can

687
00:54:20.159 --> 00:54:23.679
comment. And I told a couple
of tales there about the ferryman. One

688
00:54:23.719 --> 00:54:28.159
of the ferryman was Patrick, the
limo driver who took me from Walter's Wick

689
00:54:28.199 --> 00:54:30.920
and Suffolk down to the Heathrow and
for two and a half hour. For

690
00:54:30.960 --> 00:54:36.920
an hour, we had this conversation
with this fellow top gear Britain petrol station

691
00:54:37.039 --> 00:54:42.480
manager formerly liked motor boats, and
so here we are completely different sides of

692
00:54:42.519 --> 00:54:45.679
the ocean, and we're talking about
the perfume of a two stroke engine and

693
00:54:45.760 --> 00:54:50.760
the beauty of a nice piece of
well oil the firearm. It was great,

694
00:54:50.960 --> 00:54:53.239
I mean, virtually had a little
in common with this guy until we

695
00:54:53.280 --> 00:54:57.800
start talking and find out that as
members of Western civilization and men of a

696
00:54:57.840 --> 00:55:00.639
particular age, we can talk for
hours. The other fairyman happened to be

697
00:55:00.719 --> 00:55:05.199
the gentleman that I interviewed in London
who had ferried to the other side of

698
00:55:05.239 --> 00:55:09.880
Styx the memory of an ancestor of
his great uncle Harry. Have you heard

699
00:55:09.880 --> 00:55:13.599
about this book, Peter, No, I have not coming out soon.

700
00:55:14.159 --> 00:55:17.079
What the man did was he came
from a family, a fairly prosperous family.

701
00:55:17.440 --> 00:55:21.480
His great grandfather was an Oxford don
who gave it all up to marry

702
00:55:21.519 --> 00:55:23.400
a woman and became a vicar in
a small town, had about five or

703
00:55:23.400 --> 00:55:29.599
six kids. Everyone did stokingly great, except for the last born, who

704
00:55:29.679 --> 00:55:32.119
was late and probably an accident,
never found his way much in the world,

705
00:55:32.320 --> 00:55:36.159
wasn't very good at school, and
this is the height of empire.

706
00:55:36.320 --> 00:55:38.159
So off he goes to India to
work in the railways, and we hear

707
00:55:38.199 --> 00:55:40.920
the tales of what he did there, what life was like. Because of

708
00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:45.079
the bureaucratic machinery that was the British
Empire, the author of this book was

709
00:55:45.119 --> 00:55:50.960
able to find all sorts of information
about this man, who literally was unremarkable

710
00:55:51.119 --> 00:55:53.559
except for the fact that he was
the author's great uncle and he felt some

711
00:55:53.639 --> 00:55:58.559
sort of obligation to him, and
also for the fact that as an unremarkable

712
00:55:58.599 --> 00:56:02.559
exemplar of empire, he's a man
of a lost world. So in telling

713
00:56:02.639 --> 00:56:06.719
the story of his great uncle Harry, he told the story of the end

714
00:56:06.760 --> 00:56:09.239
of the Empire, essentially, because
Harry, after failing in India, goes

715
00:56:09.320 --> 00:56:14.039
to New Zealand becomes a farm hand, but he signs up the moment World

716
00:56:14.079 --> 00:56:17.559
War One starts and you turn the
page after basic training and you see the

717
00:56:17.639 --> 00:56:22.360
title of the next chapter is Gallipoli. And your heart sinks because you know

718
00:56:22.440 --> 00:56:24.880
what the man's in for when he
made it through all of that. He

719
00:56:25.039 --> 00:56:30.400
died in World War One and left
behind a series of very blunt journals which

720
00:56:30.400 --> 00:56:31.840
didn't really say much. I mean, there would be a battle at the

721
00:56:31.920 --> 00:56:37.519
Psalm or Gallipoli in which tens of
thousands were cut down by mechanized modern warfare.

722
00:56:37.559 --> 00:56:40.840
In the entry would be received two
pairs socks from home today. So

723
00:56:42.159 --> 00:56:46.360
he tells this story of this man
and brings him to life as best as

724
00:56:46.400 --> 00:56:50.360
he could, and he doesn't dress
up the skeleton with him any modern clothes

725
00:56:50.440 --> 00:56:52.960
or assumptions. He just gives us
a good idea of the men. And

726
00:56:52.760 --> 00:56:58.400
the only reason that we know about
this guy is probably because the author had

727
00:56:58.440 --> 00:57:01.559
the poll to get it published.
The author is Michael Palin of Monty Python.

728
00:57:02.480 --> 00:57:07.800
And if you only know Palin from
Python, you would think that's strange.

729
00:57:07.880 --> 00:57:09.559
But if you know Palin from his
subsequent pipe post python work, you

730
00:57:09.639 --> 00:57:15.800
know that he's a man of many
talents. A travelog, he does art

731
00:57:15.960 --> 00:57:21.039
history, he's a humanist, he's
a just a lovely fellow. So I

732
00:57:21.119 --> 00:57:23.440
got to sit down for dinner for
two hours with Michael Palin and have a

733
00:57:23.519 --> 00:57:27.880
conversation and ask him about his book
and joke about and the rest of it.

734
00:57:28.440 --> 00:57:30.760
And it was one of the highlights
of my life. I never thought

735
00:57:30.800 --> 00:57:34.760
I had have a bucket list they
would have dinner with a python, but

736
00:57:35.119 --> 00:57:37.599
this was about as good as it
got. And so that's what I did

737
00:57:37.639 --> 00:57:43.239
in London, London, and interviewed
at the home. Get this now.

738
00:57:43.760 --> 00:57:46.599
It was arranged by a couple of
friends of mine who know everybody because they

739
00:57:46.639 --> 00:57:51.000
were in theater and musical theater and
television and the rest of it, so

740
00:57:51.119 --> 00:57:54.519
they know everybody of a certain era. And the house where we had the

741
00:57:54.559 --> 00:58:00.079
dinner wasn't a restaurant, was the
house of an actor who himself had a

742
00:58:00.800 --> 00:58:04.840
brilliant career less so lately. Because
it's interesting and every one of this,

743
00:58:04.960 --> 00:58:07.519
Peter, you probably have your variant
of it. I know that I do

744
00:58:07.119 --> 00:58:15.559
his his IMDb listening start with uncredited
and then minor role starring role starring role

745
00:58:15.000 --> 00:58:21.880
as himself in a documentary, and
and then and then and then voiceovers for

746
00:58:22.000 --> 00:58:25.639
animated children's shows until they diminished to
something two or three years later like that.

747
00:58:27.360 --> 00:58:29.840
But one of the movies that this
guy did was one of the movies

748
00:58:29.880 --> 00:58:37.360
that I that I hated with an
intensity of unbelievable magnitude in my youth because

749
00:58:37.320 --> 00:58:42.039
they made a movie about my favorite
composer, Gustav Mahler at the time.

750
00:58:42.599 --> 00:58:45.880
And I go to see the movie
and it's a Ken Russell movie, which

751
00:58:46.000 --> 00:58:52.760
means that you have Gustav Mahler tortured
and and and pale and dying as he

752
00:58:52.840 --> 00:58:57.880
has visions of Nazi clad freulines are
writhing on crosses. I mean, it's

753
00:58:57.960 --> 00:59:01.199
just it was just awful because it
was Ken Russell. But this guy was

754
00:59:01.320 --> 00:59:04.840
Mauler, so I'm in here.
He's not there at the time. They

755
00:59:04.880 --> 00:59:08.199
were off, so I'm in the
house of the guy who played Mauler in

756
00:59:08.280 --> 00:59:13.280
the movie I hated so much in
nineteen seventy three. That's the weird kind

757
00:59:13.320 --> 00:59:15.800
of life that I slipped into when
I go there. We were having dinner

758
00:59:15.920 --> 00:59:21.280
later in Walberswick with a couple of
friends and I met these people before.

759
00:59:21.360 --> 00:59:23.599
One of them is he's named Miles
Richardson, and he is the son of

760
00:59:23.679 --> 00:59:28.599
Ian Richardson the Shakespearean Act The State
of the Great State, British stage actor,

761
00:59:29.440 --> 00:59:31.559
and he's doing My Fair Lady right
now with Alan Cox, who was

762
00:59:31.639 --> 00:59:37.599
the son of Brian Cox, succession, etc. Etc. And they just

763
00:59:37.679 --> 00:59:39.679
casually mentioned that O'Brien was in town. He stopped at the anchor for dinner

764
00:59:39.719 --> 00:59:43.440
and drinks last week. You just
missed him. You tear your hair out.

765
00:59:43.559 --> 00:59:46.679
But that's what life is in this
small town. It's just extraordinary,

766
00:59:46.800 --> 00:59:50.320
the people who passed through, the
people you meet, the conversations that you

767
00:59:50.440 --> 00:59:53.760
have. And I know it's not
real in the sense that every time I

768
00:59:53.840 --> 00:59:57.079
go there, I have a great
time and I meet all my old friends

769
00:59:57.119 --> 01:00:00.480
and we have brilliant conversations. But
man, I would go to live there

770
01:00:00.559 --> 01:00:04.320
forever in a heartbeat, and it
won't happen. So I just have to

771
01:00:04.400 --> 01:00:07.199
go back now. And then,
So London, with its museums, I

772
01:00:07.320 --> 01:00:09.800
learned a new one Walberswick, with
its small town charms and the sea and

773
01:00:09.840 --> 01:00:13.800
the culture of all that, and
the wonderful people there. It was a

774
01:00:13.880 --> 01:00:16.280
grand week and I was happy to
come home because I love it here,

775
01:00:17.519 --> 01:00:25.920
But man, do I love it
there too. Next week. We'll see

776
01:00:25.960 --> 01:00:30.559
you next week. Thank you for
listening and join why don't you at ricochet

777
01:00:30.760 --> 01:00:35.360
dot com. See you in the
convents at Ricochet is at five point oh

778
01:00:35.440 --> 01:00:38.639
yet no but soon four point zero, but soon to be five point zero

779
01:00:38.639 --> 01:00:42.320
where everything bright. No, we're
fixing, we're making sure that nothing breaks.

780
01:00:42.360 --> 01:00:44.159
So when it comes to you,
it will be absolutely fantastic, and

781
01:00:44.199 --> 01:00:45.320
you'll say words that's been all my
life, and you'll sign up. You

782
01:00:45.440 --> 01:00:53.639
will sign up, right right Ricochet
Join the conversation