WEBVTT

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That escalated quickly, right. Not
what your country can do for you have

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what you can do for your country, mister garbachaw tear down this wall.

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It's the Ricget podcast, usually with
Peter Robinson and Rob Long, but today

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we have Stephen Hayward and Charles C. W. Cook sitting in for them.

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I'm James Lylax, and we talked
to Noah Rothman about the world then

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where it's at. So let's episode
was a podcast. This morning I read

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Letter to America, which is Osama
bin Laden's letter to America explaining why he

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attacked Americans. It's wild. America
is a nation that can be defined in

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a single word. I was gonna
foot him for the excuse me. We

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never get born. Welcome everybody.
This is the Ricochet Podcast, number six

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hundred and sixty seven. I'm James
Lylax. In a crisp fall day here

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in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sixty one
degrees yesterday, sixty to sixty nine or

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something like this, an absolutely fantastic
fall. Takes your mind off everything that's

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going on in the world. But
of course you can only stay in that

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little bubble of happiness for so long
before the real world and drus and here

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dragging the real world behind them like
Jacob Marley's cash boxes. Are Stephen Hayward

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and Charles C. W. Cook, sitting in for Peter Robinson and Rob

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Long, who at this point after
two weeks, I see them now just

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off somewhere, holding hands, skipping
merrily through a field of dandelions and daisies

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or something. I don't know where
they are, but I hope they're having

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fun and enjoying themselves. And I'm
glad to have you guys here. Welcome

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well, thanks James. Although I
think Charles and I are both starting to

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feel like the replacements in the NFL
strike from twenty years ago, whenever that

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was, we're hanging around way too
long, or more like when the quarterback

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gets knocked out for an injury and
somebody else comes along and electrifies the team

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and the fan base with their brilliant
performance. So we expect nothing less than

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that from you today, Hi,
gentlemen. Before we get to the surprising

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resurgence Osama bin Laden in the TikTok
community, which itself is kind of two

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stories. You know, last week
we were talking about the rise or the

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revelation of anti Semitism on the left. I think it's fair to talk about

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the rise in or revelation of anti
Semitism on the right as well. We

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I mean, in both cases you
have the usual suspects. You have stupid

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people, and you have credulous intellectuals
who are whose depth is way over estimated

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by most people. And this week
we had well, I think we had

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Charlie Cook or Charlie Cook, sorry
Charles, we had Charlie Kirk. You

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can understand why I would make that
mistake. Charlie Kirk talking about Jewish money

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behind anti white causes, Jewish people, Jewish money, the ADL to black

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lives matter, Jewish money in Jewish
people, in cultural Marxism debates, which

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seems to conflate blood and religion with
an intellectual stance. It seems to say

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that there's something intrinsic about Judaism and
being Jewish that inclines one to these positions

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as opposed to them simply being intellectual
stances that some people take regardless of their

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ethnic makeup. But lurking in the
background, you just wonder if these guys

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are six months away from tweeting out
a picture of some you know, black

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Lives Matter financier with an octopus for
a yarmaca and a her block tag coming

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off him. That's a ritless cosmopolitan. Are you surprised dismayed? I expect

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so. But what's your take on
this? Guys? Oh boy, this,

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I've been noticing this too, and
it's been bothering me even well before

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October seven came along. And there's
an old problem here that goes back one

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hundred years or more. You know, it was often said, Gus,

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why is it so many of the
Bolsheviks and the revolutionaries of Europe are Jewish?

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And you know that some of the
kinds of anti Semitic sentiments, well,

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the Nazis right, and that has
persisted. You know, that was

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part of although McCarthy, Joe McCarthy. I don't think it was anti semi,

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but the phenomenon McCarthy is sometimes trafficked
in those regions too. And I

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have noticed in amongst the younger,
very online right, it's sometimes called a

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lot of I'll just put it this
way as gently as I can, snarky

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comments that I find disturbing about Jews
and Judaism, even among some very very

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smart young people I know who otherwise
are thoroughly fluent with and students of Jewish

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philosophers and Jewish thinkers. So this
really bothers me. And now you see

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the popularizers people like well, Candice
Owen's Charlie Kirk, whom I would never

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confuse with Charlie Cook by the way, Yeah, that would Anyway, This

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is very disturbing because I mean,
I think that anti Semitism is overwhelmingly the

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property of the left, of these
stays, and to the extent that you

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are people on the right giving it
aid and comfort. Ah, that's a

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big problem. Yeah. The most
charitable reading might be, well, you're

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not supposed to say that, and
so we're the people who say the things

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you're not supposed to say. So
we're going to say snarkily these things and

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everyone will sort them. Oooh you
said it, but it's still not good.

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Charles. Your take, Well,
you know, it's funny you say

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that, because I've heard that theory
as well, and I can't think of

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anything less conservative than that. I
think sometimes it is imperative to say that

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conventional wisdom is wrong or that taboos
are there for a bad reason. There's

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nothing wrong with over time noting that
a particular intellectual climate is false or yielding

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bad results, But as a rule, you probably should at least wonder why

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it is that certain things have become
taboo, and this particular one has become

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taboo because of all of human history, the idea that you would just blow

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past that really it's not conservative and
people on the right should resist it.

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I have again been shocked. I'm
happy to own my naivety here. I

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knew that there was antisemitism in the
world, and I knew there was some

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in America, but the scale of
it once again has alarmed me. I

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think the question of whether it's stupidity
or evil it's difficult to answer, but

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actually does matter a great deal.
There are different sorts of bigotry. I

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asked on my podcast this week why
it was that I'd been so alarmed by

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some of the scenes out of college
campuses, which is a left wing version

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of this, and the answer that
I came to was that the nature of

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the anti Semitism was different than any
big that I've ever encountered myself. The

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vast majority of the bigotry that I've
encountered myself, I don't mean against me,

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I just mean i've been witnessed too, has been promulgated by people who

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hadn't thought it through and who didn't
want to defend it, whether because they

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actually realized under closer inspection it didn't
make any sense, or they were just

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embarrassed by it. You know,
people mostly in England where I grew up,

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who would say things about English people
who were non white, maybe soccer

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players. You'd hear it, you
know, go burg to her over and

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you say, but you like him, you know, you like that player,

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and they go, well, yeah, well, why do you want

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him to go back? Well,
I guess I don't that I can comprehend

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that I can deal with, even
if the person ends up just being an

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unreconstructed bad guy, I can comprehend
it. What I find truly alarming is

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watching interviews on YouTube with people who
have PhDs or who have positions within the

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academy, who will give you a
really calm and ostend to be a well

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reasoned explanation for their anti Semitism,
or why they won't condemn her mass or

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why they think that some international terrorists
is actually a good person. That I

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find scary because I know what that
has led to in the past. And

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I'm not quite sure which one of
these is insinuated itself into the right,

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because frankly, I think Charlie Kirk
is very stupid. But I don't know

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whether he is echoing something that is
more deep seated or whether he's just mouthing

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off because he thinks that it's edgy
and will lead to more clicks on his

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on his podcast. But I do
think it matters what the answer is.

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Yeah, well the edgy nurse is
well, you know, shut, you

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know, sly like shy, like
he did charge too much interest. You

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know, I guess we can't say
that, can we say that? And

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I find it hard to believe that
he's channeling some ancient reservoir of waspy revulsion.

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You know. It's in the case
of the left too, it is

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they have an intellectual reason for this
that somehow conveniently taps into an ancient hatred.

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That's the thing I mean. Amongst
the left, the anti Semitism nominally

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springs from a new cultural Marxist prism
of oppression and oppressor and seeing it all

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through the you know, the lens
of colonialism and the rest of it.

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But they seem very comfortable to settle
into it. It's like I have a

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very good, intellectually satisfying reason for
lowering my bottom into this warm broth of

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ancient fecal stew. I don't know
what it is, and frankly, I

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don't care. What I do like
is that it unmasks people who are intellectually

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facile and have have been elevated to
positions way beyond their intellectual capabilities simply because

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they say that they say things that, well, you know, you can't.

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Nobody else is saying what Candice O
want to saying. Nobody else is

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saying what Charlie Cook is saying.
Yeah, but are they saying it particularly

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well do they have Have they come
to this through some long drawn out,

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complicated intellectual process or are they just
saying the things that they know are going

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to get them the clicks and their
their grift. You know, grifter's got

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a grift. And I think in
the case of a lot of these people

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on the right inlet it's it's it's
that it's just they say, they say

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those things, and nobody else is
saying them. It's the stuff that comes

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from email, from you know,
from people that I can't wait for Thanksgiving

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to come around and we all have
these conversations around the table, and one

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of those conversations, I'm sure if
you have young people, I'm just tempted

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if there are any young folks coming
to the Thanksgiving table to say, so,

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oh, b L, what do
you think? Because there have been

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and this is a two prong story. One, there are a bunch of

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tiktoks that are going around about people
who read over Sama bin Laden's letter to

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America and are saying, guy makes
some good points. It really does.

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Scales filled from my eyes with a
clang like manhole covers all on the road

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to Tarsus. See at all now, kids who lived no idea what two

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thousand and one was, what was
nine to eleven was like all of a

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sudden saying, you know what,
he sounds pretty damned progressive, probably as

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I read in the tweet today that
his work was ghost written by a socialist

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American who joined the Islamist faction and
may have been the guiding force people between

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I mean, do you really think
that was down? Have been a lot

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most particularly interested in the Kioto records. I don't. And if you explain

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to these kids, you know you're
talking about a NEPO baby. Here,

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you're talking about one of those guys
you supposedly ate. His dad was in

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construction, which was horribly carbon intensive, and he inherited a bunch of money

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and you know, basically lived office
folks in capitalism and you like and oil

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and you like that guy. So
that was but hold On said, that

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was worrisome. But how widespread was
it? Was it more widespread that somebody

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capitalized this? And because from what
I understand it was a Yashir Ali retweet

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of all this that just went absolutely
massively viral, that may have heeded the

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actual quantity of Osama bin Laden admiration
that is out there, is all I'm

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saying. Well, I don't know. I think there's some chance that you

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could see Osama bin Laden t shirts
rivaling the old schak but t shirts,

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right, And this is not I
mean, it is outrageous. It's not

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new. You know. Several months
ago, I think we talked on this

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program about how when Ted Kaczynski,
the unibomber died, you had all these

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articles saying, gosh, you know, he really had some good points about

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technology, and maybe we've read wrong
an awful lot. What's going on right

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now reminds me of the campuses during
the Vietnam War, when, of course

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the chant of the lot of the
student radical anti war movement was not that

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there was a foolish war, that
we shouldn't be there, or even that

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this was colonialism, but they were
actively on the other side. Right Remember

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the chant James Ho ho Ho Ho
Chi Minh. The NLF is bound to

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win. So I think some of
that is going on now. This is

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what the late Roger Scrutin liked to
call the culture of repreation. Whatever it

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is about our civilization, he us
whatever club comes to and that club is

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this twenty year old letter from Osama
bin Ladden. Well, the club that

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was in my hand the other day
was a long silver pipe, and I

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had a dog in one hand and
the pipe in the other, and I

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was going to deliver the pipe.
And I was very, very angry that

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somebody would stop me. But I
knew that if I could, I could

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brain them on the nogin with the
pipe that I had, or sick the

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00:13:18.320 --> 00:13:20.440
dog upon them. Now, that
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00:13:20.519 --> 00:13:24.480
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thank Beam for sponsoring this the Ricochet
Podcast. And now welcome back to the

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Podcast with Pleasure. Noah Rothman,
senior writer for National Review, where he

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provides essential commentary on the wars.
Now we got plural now in Ukraine and

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Israel or some people say the Ukraine
and the Israel know they don't. He's

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the author of the Rise of the
New Puritans, fighting back against progressives,

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War on fun, welcome back.
We're going to let Charlie go first,

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because we've been just yelling our heads
off here about this Osama bin Laden TikTok

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thing that's going on. Yeah.
No, So my question is the American

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support for Israel and Ukraine is just
another example of imperial i swomongering lit by

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Raytheon right. Clearly it goes without
saying for those this thing I work with,

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noahs, he and I chat about
this stuff, but that is an

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argument that you, Hey, why
is it wrong? Well, I mean,

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it's absurdly foolish. There's a reductionist
sort of Marxian habit where quite a

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lot of events are analyzed from the
perspective of the outcome rather than the impetus

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for the outcome, and very often
that leads, in the Marxian perspective,

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or at least those who are partial
to that framework, towards the idea that

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capital and the pursuit of it or
lack thereof, is the motivating factor.

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Various other competing frameworks like the intersectional
framework with substitute raise for capital. But

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by and large they seek to force
events to comport with the framework rather than

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the other way around. That's part
of the reason why frameworks are something that

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I find increasingly detrimental to at least
the discourse, if not the psychology broadly,

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or psychology political psychology. But that's
I suppose the answer to that is

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just an effort to force, to
force events to make sense to those who

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use these frameworks to navigate the world. All right, let me put it

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in another way, why should we
give Israel and Ukraine money? So I

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was just having this conversation. Actually, one of the concerns that seems to

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be dominating Washington now as they're talking
about this dual aid package is why is

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Israel getting less money than Ukraine?
Why do we need fifty five hundred million

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dollars or something like that or five
hundred billion dollars I'm sorry, fifty billion

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dollars for Ukraine and fifteen billion dollars
for Israel. And the answer is Israel

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doesn't quite need it. One of
the few things that we provide to Israel

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are the interceptor missiles. They have
long range capabilities it's a very capable,

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competent military. The idef to the
contrary, Ukraine needs more support because it's

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fighting a broader war against its more
significant power. The Russian military is a

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broader, bigger power. But the
answer to both of those questions is that

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it's in America's interests. On the
other side of those conflicts are all of

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America's adversaries. We like to fool
ourselves in the West with the notion that

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there are profound distinctions between the Chinese
and the Russians and the Iranians and the

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various terrorist proxies that orbit around them, and they're all hostile to one another

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because the Says don't like the Shiads
don't like the Sunnis, and the Chinese

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have profound historical grievances with the Russians, and so do the Iranians for that

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matter, and blah blah blah,
blah blah. And the bottom line is

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they can subsume all of these distinctions, which are real to the imperative that

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they're all aligned behind, which is
putting an end, hastening an end to

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the American led order. They don't
see these distinctions. They are all aligned

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behind this goal. It is in
the United States interest to forestall or prevent

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that they're objective for as long as
we possibly can, and we just don't

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want to do it. In the
United States and the West broadly do not

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like that fact. We don't want
to think that there are countries a rated

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against our interests that want to hasten
a very hopsy in reality, which we've

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seen on the ground in Ukraine,
which we saw on the ground in southern

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Israel. We don't want to think
that that future is in the offing for

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us, but it most certainly is, and it will be if we decline

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to see to our own interests and
keep the jungle, as Fred Kagan called

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it, from growing back before Stephen
Job's in here, I have to ask,

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as a follow up to Charles question, So we've given them this money,

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these aid packages, and I support
both of them. Are we going

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to see any of it back in
what form? Well, what's our ROI?

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It depends, I mean, the
the ROI can be said to be

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geopolitical, that there's there's something to
be said for spending this money and no

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American blood to bleed Russia drives been
made. But the other is, you

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know, actually getting some money back
from the guys. Is that even discussed,

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because I think most people kind of
think that these packages that are loans

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or something where eventually Ukraine and Israel
has to just done and write a check

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and hand it back to us and
say thanks, and we're not asking for

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a lot of interest on this,
but maybe some of the money back.

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Well, it strikes me as a
profoundly parochial concern. If that is the

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concern. The advantage that we get
from preserving the American led geopolitical order is

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most certainly capital, is most certainly
material. If you were to hasten the

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return of inviolable spheres of influence,
for example, like what we had between

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nineteen fourteen and nineteen eighty nine,
you would see a profound contraction of the

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geopolitical economy. We have a global
economy for the first time, beginning in

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nineteen eighty nine nineteen ninety one,
for the better part of a century,

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and it produced a flourishing of the
human condition that like we haven't seen at

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any point in the existence of of
civilization. But it most certainly redounded to

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Americans benefits in the form of untrammeled, unmolested navigation of the seas maintained by

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the United States, and the global
traffic in commerce and trade expanded our economy

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dramatically in that interim, and the
rest of the world's economy too. So

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if we were to see the restoration
of global the truncating of global maritime navigation

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roots, for example, or the
cutting off of certain parts of the Middle

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East or the Europe or the European
continent to American commerce, then you would

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absolutely feel it in your wallet.
You would certainly feel it in your taxes

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because they would go up required to
sustain the forward presences that our allies would

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demand, because the deterioration of the
international security environment ensures that we would have

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to contribute more to our collective defense, not less. But you would also

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see a contraction of the global economy, and most certainly you would feel that

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in your way. So if Americans
are so parochial, and I don't think

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they are, but if they were
so parochial that they concern themselves only with

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their pocketbooks and not the stability of
the world that they're bequeathing to their children,

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then yeah, that concern is on
the table too, right. But

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seeing things beyond our border, as
you describe the meritime the freedom of maritime

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move in all of these things.
The interconnectingness of the world is a fairly

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sophisticated argument. Do you think there's
a politician out there who can make that

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case convincingly and the next election?
I don't. Oh, I do.

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I do, I certainly do.
But I also think that they're convinced that

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their interlocutors in the electorate are just
not sophisticated enough to understand it just the

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way that you said it. I
think they think so little of the voting

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populace that they wouldn't that they would
dumb down the argument or decline to make

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it. And I think that's a
profound disrespect to their voters. I do

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think Americans are capable of comprehending the
geostrategic situation and America's obligations to its own

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security and the security of its allies, and it only takes somebody with the

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courage to make the argument at the
risk of offending a particular class, a

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very vocal but still nonetheless written not
representative portion of the electorate that wants America

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to close up shop and retreat to
within its borders. There's a McGovernite impulse

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that is very popular in particularly in
online forums, and is catered to by

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very loud voices in alternative media venues. But we have no indication from any

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reliable data in the polling that suggests
it's representative of a broad array of public

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opinion. You would be forgiven for
thinking that Ukraine is unpopular, right,

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It's not. We had a poll
last night from I think Quinnipiac that shows

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that a majority of the American majority
of a registered American voters still think that

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the United States it's in America's interest
to contribute to Ukraine's defense and degrade one

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of its most capable near peer competitors, a near peer competitor that has a

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demonstrable interest in expanding its territory and
subjugating the peoples in its borders. That's

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not a sort of thing that's hard
to comprehend. Only if you're committed to

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not comprehending it. Could you miss
it? I would substitute victory for defense.

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But I agree with the principal Stephen. Yeah. No, there's the

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blunt Noah Rothma that I came to
love on the on the commentary podcast.

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I know I used to tune into
the commentary podcast, chiefly for you because

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of the splendidly cranky way you would
contest John pod Honz And even when I

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didn't agree with you, which was
actually sometimes quite often, I still enjoyed

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the back and forth. And so
we miss you there and glad you were

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here. We are all flawed creatures, that part of you. Well,

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so I want to well, I'll
protest you a little bit because it'll bring

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out that splendid crankiness. That's a
compliment. By the way, of course,

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first, as you're calling today about
that the Israel faces no alternative then

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to reoccupy Gaza at the end of
the fighting. And I see the logic

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of that. On the other hand, I mean, I just think of

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our own bitter experience in I Rock
and Afghanistan that it looks to me like,

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you know, a long difficult The
occupation would be lots of gorilla fighting,

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lots of terrorist strikes on Israeli personnel, and the kind of thing that

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is. I don't know how that
works. Maybe there isn't an alternative,

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but aren't you worried that it's just
going to be a quagmire? Yeah?

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I mean, who wouldn't be,
It would be foolish not to be.

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The problem is not that this is
a difficult mission. The problem is not

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that Israel would rather do anything else
than occupy Gaza. They've demonstrated over the

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course of decades, even that long
preceding the two thousand and five pull out

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and this eighteen year failed experiment in
autonomy in the Gaza strip, that they

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have no interest in this part of
the world. They don't have a biblical

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claim to it, they don't have
a lot of interest in occupying it militarily.

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It's a rat's nest. They don't
want anything to do with it.

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They have been this has been imposed
on them. And if there was some

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sort of alternatives, some peace loving
civilian authority that could be incepted into existence,

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some international organization, or even Cairo
or Jordan would be interested in reassuming

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some authority here, I don't know
if Israel would be all that disinterested in

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it. But that's not in the
offing. It's not as though this is

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something that's that's you know, that's
an alternative that's on the table. There

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are no alternatives on the table.
And I think that you're right that there

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is an apprehension rooted in the idea
that democracy promotion in our post nine to

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eleven projects was a failed experiment.
That's a debatable proposition. In Afghanistan,

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we summarily abandoned it. In Iraq, we have one of the more stable

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parliamentarian democracies in the Middle East,
with conditions that vastly improved on the status

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quo ante under Saddam Hussein, where
there was no peace. We were consistently

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at war with Saddam Hussein's regime,
executed three strike three different rounds of strikes

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on the regime and the regime targets
over the course of the no fly zone

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period, the interim between Gulf War
One and the Iraq War, and it

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culminated in the invasion and dissolution of
the regime. The idea that there would

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be peace in the absence of the
Iraq War seems to me fallacious and not

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not rooted in any history. But
how do you sorry, but how do

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you respond to people who say that
all that being true? And I agree,

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it's what he widely shared now across
the political spectrum that Iraq was our

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biggest foreign policy mistakes since Vietnam.
Well, there are quite a lot of

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erroneous assumptions that I don't share that
are popular. Nonetheless, just because it's

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popular, doesn't this is the it
was really popular, I'd be here saying

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nine to eleven was justified, right, And you know some of bin Laden

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had a point, popular does not
make right good good. Let's switch to

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Ukraine for a minute. I'm with
you there. I want Ukraine to win.

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But three quick points. One is
it's clearly now on the back burner

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since October seven. Second, the
counter offensive this year it didn't seem to

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unfold the way the optimists thought it
would. And then third, it still

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seems to me like the balance of
forces. I'm no fan of John Meerscheimer,

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but to say the least, but
when he describes and others described the

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superiority the Russians enjoy and manpower materiall
never mind their morale problems, which are

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serious. That it's an uphill fight, and so is it time now for

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a negotiated settlement to the into the
room, into the chat. And when

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you answer that, let me add
to his second point. Do the people

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who are looking ahead to the counter
offensive and saying what should happen and what

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they thought would happen. Did they
have any idea actually what they were talking

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about? Oh yeah, I think
they did. I you know, there's

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it's impossible to judge the efficacy of
a military campaign before it makes first contact

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with the enemy. There's simply no
way to do that effectively. You can

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raise a series of scenarios and outcomes, all of which are possible. I

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don't think anybody would say I certainly
wouldn't say that the counter offense have met

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its objectives. The counter offensive failed
to achieve its objectives. It failed in

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ways that the twenty twenty two counter
offensives did not that were spectacular in their

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capacity to resist the russiananslaught and beat
back the russianan slot in places like Kirsana

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Kharkiev. It was always going to
be an uphill battle. We're talking about

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a much smaller country with a much
smaller, less capable military against one of

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the pre eminent militaries on the planet
Earth. There was always going to be

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a struggle, and the administration I
think deserves a fair amount of criticism as

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they've received from people who know what
they're talking about, like US Army lieutenant

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general retired Lieutenant General Doug Lute,
who said, quote, our incremental approach

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to providing military assistance has assured that
there will be no silver bullet to restore

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mobility to this conflict. But it's
a mistake to call it a stalemate.

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A stalemate implies that there's no movement
along the front lines, and there is

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movement along the front lines. Just
this week we had a regrouping effort among

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Russian troops to DeCamp to the left
bank of the Miopro River, which is

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on the other side of the Kiirson
under pressure. It's not as though there's

404
00:30:04.559 --> 00:30:08.880
nothing happening on the front lines.
It is just not the dramatic movement that

405
00:30:08.920 --> 00:30:14.359
we saw in twenty twenty two,
and given expectations, I can understand why

406
00:30:14.359 --> 00:30:19.720
people would say that that's an underwhelming
performance from the Ukrainian military. The alternative

407
00:30:19.759 --> 00:30:25.119
is as ever, just as it
is with Israel re entering the Gaza Strip.

408
00:30:25.519 --> 00:30:29.920
Compared to what that is the question
with which we are always confronted,

409
00:30:30.559 --> 00:30:34.720
and the comparison to a Ukraine that's
fighting for its survival, excuse me.

410
00:30:36.039 --> 00:30:41.480
On the far eastern edge of Ukrainian
territory by the Russian border is something far

411
00:30:41.519 --> 00:30:48.599
worse from the perspective of NATO.
It is Ukrainian forces executing retrograde operations falling

412
00:30:48.640 --> 00:30:52.880
back closer to Kiev, falling back
closer to NATO's borders, increasing the apprehension

413
00:30:52.880 --> 00:30:57.440
among NATO's allies, some of whom
will see to their own defense in the

414
00:30:57.440 --> 00:31:03.319
absence of America's support, which introduces
infinitely more complexity to the conflict, infinitely

415
00:31:03.319 --> 00:31:07.759
more potential for them to take a
step that we don't sanction or support,

416
00:31:07.079 --> 00:31:14.000
and perhaps well, you know,
introduce the prospect of a conflagration that includes

417
00:31:14.079 --> 00:31:18.640
NATO allies. That's not off the
table whatever happens in Ukraine that if we

418
00:31:18.640 --> 00:31:22.799
were to get, if we were
to pair back, our support in Ukraine

419
00:31:22.799 --> 00:31:27.559
were to consequently fall backwards, it
would bring the fighting closer to NATO's borders,

420
00:31:27.599 --> 00:31:33.480
and it would decrease our security relative
to Russia and not increase it.

421
00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:37.200
So my question is to advocates of
that sort of thing, is how how

422
00:31:37.240 --> 00:31:40.000
would this bring about peace? It
wouldn't bring about peace. It would bring

423
00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:45.440
about more insecurity and compel us to
commit more resources to the NATO frontier,

424
00:31:45.759 --> 00:31:49.039
thereby not freeing us up from devoting
our attention, for example, to the

425
00:31:49.039 --> 00:31:52.519
Indo Pacific, which is precisely what
people who advocate for that sort of thing

426
00:31:52.599 --> 00:31:55.880
say. They say, Oh,
we need to stop our focus on Europe

427
00:31:55.880 --> 00:31:57.839
because we need to devote more attention
to the Indo Pacific. Well, how

428
00:31:59.200 --> 00:32:01.000
first of all, the reasons,
sources that we need in Europe are the

429
00:32:01.119 --> 00:32:06.039
precise opposite of what we need in
a naval campaign. And second, those

430
00:32:06.079 --> 00:32:09.880
resources are not our finites. They
would be devoted to European security and the

431
00:32:09.920 --> 00:32:14.559
preservation of the alliance structure that we
have now. Only if you want to

432
00:32:14.599 --> 00:32:19.400
see that dissolve, if you want
to see that project destabilized, would you

433
00:32:19.440 --> 00:32:22.440
advocate for that sort of a course, And I think frankly a lot of

434
00:32:22.440 --> 00:32:25.319
people who advocate for that sort of
course do want to see the alliance structure

435
00:32:25.319 --> 00:32:35.759
that the United States maintains in Europe
destabilized and reduce variety of psychology difficult,

436
00:32:36.960 --> 00:32:40.000
We're familiar. Fact, it's even
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437
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getting that thing to fit together and
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438
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onton cordiel. Well, I have
a problem because I'm short and the way

439
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I'm built, it's very difficult for
me to go to the store and find

440
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pans right off the rack that I
like and that fit. It's impossible,

441
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And what happens when you go online?

442
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You find something, you order it, you put it on the eight looks

443
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444
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445
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450
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Roan for sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast. One last question and pivot to domestic

473
00:34:55.519 --> 00:35:00.239
politics for a minute. As we
see these shocking scenes of anti semitism on

474
00:35:00.280 --> 00:35:07.280
college campuses, but also in the
streets, I hear lots of anecdotes of

475
00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:09.639
often progressive Jews or liberal Jews who
were saying, oh gosh, I thought

476
00:35:09.639 --> 00:35:14.519
these people were on our side.
And you're hearing these anecdotes that there are

477
00:35:14.519 --> 00:35:17.639
some second thoughts occurring to people,
and you're wondering if this is the aftermath

478
00:35:17.679 --> 00:35:22.639
of October seventh, is going to
be an inflection point that makes it's not

479
00:35:22.679 --> 00:35:27.400
a perfect comparison, but a whole
new generation of neo conservatives, or are

480
00:35:27.440 --> 00:35:31.079
po simply people dropping their allegiance to
the left. I haven't seen any polling

481
00:35:31.159 --> 00:35:36.559
data on this. I'm surprised there
isn't some survey organization asking Jews for their

482
00:35:36.599 --> 00:35:39.079
opinions on things. What's your sense
of things? Do you do you think

483
00:35:39.119 --> 00:35:43.199
that there's a prospect that that's going
to happen or what are you hearing and

484
00:35:43.239 --> 00:35:45.639
seeing? Well, I think it's
a mugs By reality moment for a lot

485
00:35:45.639 --> 00:35:50.320
of people, actually, and yeah, that is what I'm seeing. Does

486
00:35:50.360 --> 00:35:54.320
that translate into more Republican votes,
more Trump votes? Nope, I don't

487
00:35:54.320 --> 00:35:59.880
think so, not in the near
term, but it definitely does contribute to

488
00:36:00.199 --> 00:36:07.679
precisely what you accurately say was the
neo conservative moment, when if we were

489
00:36:07.679 --> 00:36:14.280
to apply the word appropriately to its
actual historical historical context, we would see

490
00:36:15.639 --> 00:36:22.199
left leaning liberals who were astonished by
a McGovernite sensibility that had overtaken the party,

491
00:36:22.920 --> 00:36:27.639
that was no longer confident in America's
capacity to project power to defend its

492
00:36:27.719 --> 00:36:32.639
values, and had given up on
the social covenant at home, particularly when

493
00:36:32.679 --> 00:36:40.119
it comes to crime prevention and the
sort of promotion of American values domestically,

494
00:36:42.239 --> 00:36:47.159
the virtue of American liberties, of
freedom, religious pluralism, freedom of speech

495
00:36:47.159 --> 00:36:52.519
and expression. Those were all the
things that contributed to the neo conservative moment.

496
00:36:52.559 --> 00:37:00.199
And these were not Republicans necessarily,
they were shocked into a shot out

497
00:37:00.239 --> 00:37:05.159
of complacency liberals. They remained liberals, but they were liberals in a classical

498
00:37:05.199 --> 00:37:10.679
sense, and they were opposed to
a progressive orthodoxy that had abandoned liberalism altogether.

499
00:37:10.719 --> 00:37:15.800
Now, eventually that cohort became a
reliably republican cohort, but it wasn't

500
00:37:15.840 --> 00:37:21.360
until the late nineties early two thousands
that that evolution culminated in what we now

501
00:37:21.400 --> 00:37:24.079
today considered neo conservatives. And even
today a lot of people who are not

502
00:37:24.119 --> 00:37:29.400
neo conservatives are branded neo conservatives.
It's become a byword for people who support

503
00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:31.800
extroverted foreign policy, but that's not
really what it means. So now I

504
00:37:31.840 --> 00:37:43.079
have one more question. Is Osama
bin Laden actually good? This is a

505
00:37:43.199 --> 00:37:52.599
nuanced, nuanced claim that we need
to contextualize and really parse that the Humanities

506
00:37:52.639 --> 00:37:54.960
Department could. I was always in
the bad camp. Well you're such a

507
00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.159
medic, you're such a menchi.
Yeah, that was my instinct. I

508
00:37:59.159 --> 00:38:04.440
went with badon I stayed with bad. But then I'm watching these people on

509
00:38:04.480 --> 00:38:08.480
TikTok and they're they're doing those reaction
videos like they're watching phol Collins something in

510
00:38:08.519 --> 00:38:15.239
the air for the first time,
but actually they're reading ben Laden's letter about

511
00:38:15.239 --> 00:38:20.199
how we will need to be forcibly
converted to Islam if not killed. And

512
00:38:21.199 --> 00:38:25.079
I'm wondering, I mean, is
he good, fresh new look? Well,

513
00:38:25.119 --> 00:38:32.320
if you, I'm what these young, unlettered or young people who are

514
00:38:32.559 --> 00:38:38.239
products of misbegotten educations need to read
after they read Osama bin Laden's Letter to

515
00:38:38.320 --> 00:38:50.920
America is Michelle Hollenbach's novel Submission,
which describes condition in which modern France submits

516
00:38:51.000 --> 00:38:59.079
itself to a sort of a Sharia
interpretation of Islam and finds new meaning and

517
00:38:59.159 --> 00:39:06.280
new purpose in steeping itself in this
radical Islamist milieu. It was kind of

518
00:39:06.400 --> 00:39:12.159
absurd, absurd satirical fiction when it
was written, but the outlines of that

519
00:39:12.280 --> 00:39:17.079
are perfectly visible today. I mean, these people are inadvertently, perhaps but

520
00:39:17.119 --> 00:39:25.400
nonetheless endorsing the most strict version of
a conception of an Islamic social covenant,

521
00:39:25.440 --> 00:39:34.880
which includes hostility to gays and lesbians, and the absolute elevation of Islamic moral

522
00:39:34.920 --> 00:39:38.639
principles and the elimination of separation between
church and state, all of these things

523
00:39:38.679 --> 00:39:44.639
that progressives you would think would shy
away from. But because it is radically

524
00:39:44.679 --> 00:39:50.440
anti American, all of that is
erased. Because being radically anti American is

525
00:39:50.480 --> 00:39:53.519
hit. I mean, that is
just the mark of a sophisticate somebody who

526
00:39:53.639 --> 00:39:59.559
sees more to dislike in their country
than two like. And I think that's

527
00:39:59.599 --> 00:40:04.559
the prime draw, that's the biggest, the biggest draw for these people intellectually,

528
00:40:04.559 --> 00:40:08.159
the temptation to be hostile to the
place of their birth, and that

529
00:40:08.320 --> 00:40:15.239
was really the draw primarily in Hollenbeck's
novel. Does France have the same problem

530
00:40:15.280 --> 00:40:21.400
of self castigation among its Uh?
It's better thinkers as America does. Maybe

531
00:40:21.400 --> 00:40:22.960
it better. Charlie's better at that
than I am. But I think they've

532
00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:27.800
gotten better at it recently. I
think in the last twenty years they've there's

533
00:40:27.880 --> 00:40:32.880
been certainly since the Bouta Cline attacks
that there's been something of a recognition that

534
00:40:34.559 --> 00:40:45.159
the bifurcated or or really multifaceted sort
of siloing of ethnic groups and really you

535
00:40:45.159 --> 00:40:52.199
know, definitive moiety between France,
French France and French culture and the cultures

536
00:40:52.199 --> 00:40:55.280
that were being imported into France.
I think that there's something of a recognition

537
00:40:55.360 --> 00:41:00.719
that that was an untenable status question. I think, ticularly in the case

538
00:41:00.719 --> 00:41:02.199
of the French, I don't think
that any of them who would mouth the

539
00:41:02.280 --> 00:41:07.639
ideas of a transnational European identity based
on values, et cetera. Oliver Welcome

540
00:41:07.840 --> 00:41:12.000
really believed it, especially when you
talk to a Frenchman and get his actual

541
00:41:12.039 --> 00:41:15.880
true opinion on whether or not somebody
who is not French in the sense that

542
00:41:15.960 --> 00:41:20.360
we all say can be French in
the same way. None of them would

543
00:41:20.360 --> 00:41:22.880
say yes. They would all mouth, and my French friends are very liberal,

544
00:41:22.920 --> 00:41:27.559
they would mouth the series of pieties
that they're expected to believe is good

545
00:41:27.559 --> 00:41:32.239
members of the EU and the human
community. But they didn't. You scratched

546
00:41:32.320 --> 00:41:38.239
down a quarter of an inch and
you'll find national chauvinism that is very French.

547
00:41:38.920 --> 00:41:43.360
England is another matter. How are
we to view what has been going

548
00:41:43.360 --> 00:41:47.400
on? I mean somebody pointed out
a series of photographs of the bridge by

549
00:41:47.480 --> 00:41:53.360
Parliament empty when talking about Yemeny atrocities, empty when talking about an atrocity here.

550
00:41:53.400 --> 00:41:58.400
But this particular one absolutely packed and
full. And we saw people climbing

551
00:41:58.400 --> 00:42:01.079
the cenotaph in London, we saw
people, We saw the police standing down

552
00:42:01.159 --> 00:42:05.679
because they were afraid of the people. They saw them arresting the people who

553
00:42:05.679 --> 00:42:07.440
have the gall and the audacity to
bring the Union jack to these things.

554
00:42:07.880 --> 00:42:12.239
It seems an inversion of what we
would always like to think about there always

555
00:42:12.239 --> 00:42:16.280
being a Britain, etc. And
now London being what it is in its

556
00:42:16.280 --> 00:42:22.280
current composition, seems to be facing
an evaluation and they probably will do nothing

557
00:42:22.280 --> 00:42:24.159
about it, and I'm not sure
what they can. I'm not sure what

558
00:42:24.239 --> 00:42:29.159
they can either, but I mean
the first step would be to recognize what

559
00:42:29.320 --> 00:42:35.920
led them to this point. There
was a I don't think multiculturalism per se

560
00:42:36.719 --> 00:42:40.679
is a bad thing. It is
the idea that multiculturalism should be elevated to

561
00:42:40.719 --> 00:42:46.440
a virtue above and beyond patriotism,
of fealty to one's country, of fealty

562
00:42:46.480 --> 00:42:52.159
to the values that have created the
conditions in which you prosper and thrive.

563
00:42:53.920 --> 00:43:00.079
That's when it becomes something that's noxious
and a detrimental to the social fabric.

564
00:43:00.599 --> 00:43:06.000
And that's precisely what we're confronting here
to a certain degree, but most certainly

565
00:43:07.119 --> 00:43:10.599
in Europe, not just in England, but on the continent as well.

566
00:43:12.679 --> 00:43:20.559
Is this assumption that the culture in
which we're born has more sin to it

567
00:43:20.599 --> 00:43:25.880
than virtue, that it is festooned
with all of these historical woes, that

568
00:43:25.960 --> 00:43:34.559
it is guilty of more harm than
good, and uniquely and uniquely so more

569
00:43:34.559 --> 00:43:37.679
than any and the British would say
the Britain that the British have more sins

570
00:43:38.039 --> 00:43:40.960
than the Americans. The Americans would
say the Americans have more sins in the

571
00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:45.440
British, and so on. And
it's really just a sense of insecurity,

572
00:43:45.480 --> 00:43:52.599
a crippling insecurity that is unearned but
has become cultural cachet and is certainly capital

573
00:43:52.639 --> 00:44:01.039
on American college campuses. It is
just jingoistic, chauvinistic to believe that your

574
00:44:01.079 --> 00:44:07.079
country is is good and virtuous,
that the United States has bent over backwards

575
00:44:07.119 --> 00:44:14.360
throughout its history to create a better
geopolitical environment, and that profound sacrifices were

576
00:44:14.360 --> 00:44:19.159
made to bequeathed to us. The
kind of world we live in now,

577
00:44:19.239 --> 00:44:22.599
I mean, that's just simplistic,
you know, the real, real big

578
00:44:22.639 --> 00:44:30.960
deep thinkers. Uh see, a
history littered with sins and offenses against you

579
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.079
know, just all that was rightious, righteous and decent, and all of

580
00:44:34.119 --> 00:44:39.039
it motivated by uh, you know, really parochial and uh uh you know,

581
00:44:39.559 --> 00:44:45.920
uh, an individual desire to benefit
ourselves in a way that is just

582
00:44:45.840 --> 00:44:51.679
really trite. So yeah, I
think that's there's there's a lot to be

583
00:44:51.719 --> 00:44:54.320
said for that, and it's it's
more shallow than I than I think we

584
00:44:54.400 --> 00:44:59.199
give it credit for. It's a
sort of thing that doesn't really survive in

585
00:44:59.239 --> 00:45:02.320
the scrutiny of the light of day, but it does in these hermetically sealed

586
00:45:02.360 --> 00:45:06.800
campuses. And where do these people
go. We've been doing this experiment for

587
00:45:06.840 --> 00:45:09.800
ten years. Where do these people
who are steeping themselves in this meal you,

588
00:45:09.880 --> 00:45:12.880
this self hating milu. Where do
they end up? Well, they

589
00:45:12.960 --> 00:45:15.559
end up at the State Department,
they end up at USAID, they end

590
00:45:15.639 --> 00:45:20.239
up at the breaking news desks of
every major American media institution. And then

591
00:45:20.239 --> 00:45:23.119
what happens. There's a ten to
seven massacre. And the first instinct is

592
00:45:23.119 --> 00:45:34.079
to apply these obscuring, obscuring frameworks
that reduce and explain away the horrors that

593
00:45:34.119 --> 00:45:39.840
we're privy to and make them harder
to discern by applying all these these other

594
00:45:39.920 --> 00:45:45.559
principles, these other caveats, these
other extra efforts to contextualize the stuff away

595
00:45:46.280 --> 00:45:50.960
to the point where we can't actually
analyze the events that were that we're seeing.

596
00:45:51.159 --> 00:45:53.159
We can't analyze the evidence in front
of our eyes. And that's the

597
00:45:53.199 --> 00:45:57.360
whole goal. That was the whole
the whole point of this project was to

598
00:45:57.360 --> 00:45:59.880
make it sure that so that there
is no truth, that there is no

599
00:46:00.280 --> 00:46:02.000
universal set of values to which we
can look to and say, well,

600
00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:06.960
this is a violation of it,
or this is an example of it.

601
00:46:06.960 --> 00:46:12.079
It's all subjective, and that subjectivity
has become a source of real concern.

602
00:46:12.599 --> 00:46:16.719
So beIN lauden. Yes on a
I mean, I'm in no, but

603
00:46:16.760 --> 00:46:22.039
I'm clearly behind the times. All
right, you're right that these things are

604
00:46:22.039 --> 00:46:25.960
facile and they do not stand up
to scrutiny, but they are the most

605
00:46:25.960 --> 00:46:30.079
absurd things said by nominally intelligent people. There was a tweet thread the other

606
00:46:30.119 --> 00:46:35.159
day where somebody was talking about that
Israel, of course, is an illegitimate

607
00:46:35.199 --> 00:46:38.480
colonial enterprise and the United States and
Israel should be making plans really to relocate

608
00:46:38.559 --> 00:46:43.880
everybody in Israel because it's not going
to last histories against it. And when

609
00:46:43.920 --> 00:46:47.039
somebody said, so, that means
that they all have to leave because they're

610
00:46:47.039 --> 00:46:51.079
not from there, and her response
to that was, yes, like the

611
00:46:51.199 --> 00:46:54.880
United States, Israel is an illegitimate
settler country. So in other words,

612
00:46:54.920 --> 00:46:58.239
what she was saying, if you
thought about it, was that everybody from

613
00:46:58.280 --> 00:47:00.880
Israel who is Jewish should be taken
to a mayor. But then they should

614
00:47:00.960 --> 00:47:04.400
have about two weeks to relax and
not unpacked, because we're going to move

615
00:47:04.440 --> 00:47:08.599
everybody from America to some other unspecified
place, perhaps back in Europe. And

616
00:47:08.639 --> 00:47:12.559
then what do you do with the
people from Central and South America who are

617
00:47:12.599 --> 00:47:15.800
of mixed blood, who are from
indigenous and the Spanish conquerors. We never

618
00:47:15.800 --> 00:47:19.400
seem to really hear a lot about
the Spanish imperialists doing. Are these people

619
00:47:19.440 --> 00:47:22.039
supposed to go back to Spain?
Can they stay? Do they flip a

620
00:47:22.079 --> 00:47:23.400
coin? Do they go to a
big platform in the middle of the Atlantic

621
00:47:23.400 --> 00:47:29.719
Ocean. The end result of all
of this decolonization stuff is bloodshed and or

622
00:47:30.760 --> 00:47:37.400
bloodshed more often, but yet serious, thinking, tenured people will cling to

623
00:47:37.480 --> 00:47:44.320
these words as though they speak of
framework to which we can we can,

624
00:47:44.360 --> 00:47:46.400
we can fix these things once they're
all gradually assumed to be the case by

625
00:47:46.400 --> 00:47:51.360
everybody or the people in power.
And you're very charitable, You're very charitable

626
00:47:51.360 --> 00:48:00.599
to thinking and tenured. The latter
descriptions. The tenured part was supposed to

627
00:48:00.639 --> 00:48:02.920
be a sarcastic rejoinder. I should
if I was speaking in a New York

628
00:48:02.960 --> 00:48:06.360
accent, it would have been a
parent But since I'm from North Dakota,

629
00:48:06.440 --> 00:48:09.199
I speak into sort of ameliorating,
you know, nice guy kind of tones.

630
00:48:09.519 --> 00:48:13.719
I just I really have to wrap
myself back here. And North Dakota,

631
00:48:13.760 --> 00:48:16.280
by the way, was a great
multicultural weighted place to grow up because

632
00:48:16.320 --> 00:48:19.360
we had the Polls, we had
the Lutherans, we had the Catholics,

633
00:48:19.360 --> 00:48:21.880
we had the Norwegians, we had
the Swedes, we had all and nobody

634
00:48:21.880 --> 00:48:23.280
believed me when I say that it
was multicultural, that any of these things

635
00:48:23.320 --> 00:48:28.199
were different. They were anyway.
So Noah, you're going to respond to

636
00:48:28.519 --> 00:48:30.880
uh, to whatever word salad.
I just don't know. And the litany

637
00:48:30.920 --> 00:48:37.840
of colonizers from in your stock renders
all of those opinions rather suspect viking,

638
00:48:38.079 --> 00:48:43.840
just call them vikings, I think, right precisely. Yeah, And I

639
00:48:44.559 --> 00:48:47.760
find it very hard to take many
of those arguments seriously because I find them

640
00:48:47.760 --> 00:48:54.480
so fatuous and just simply an an
exercise in Onanism. It's it's just a

641
00:48:54.519 --> 00:49:00.840
way for them to demonstrate their own, uh, the lingua frank of the

642
00:49:00.880 --> 00:49:06.800
institutions to which they belong, and
to navigate. Once you actually scratch at

643
00:49:06.840 --> 00:49:14.280
the surface of the idea that of
this colonizer paradigm the idea that a population

644
00:49:14.440 --> 00:49:17.199
that was not native to a particular
Porsche parcel of land, which by the

645
00:49:17.239 --> 00:49:22.639
way, doesn't really apply to Israel, as Israelis will fully tell you there's

646
00:49:22.000 --> 00:49:27.840
and why the archaeological historical record demonstrates
is that the ties to the land are

647
00:49:27.960 --> 00:49:31.320
actually five thousand years old or something
along those lines. But it's of no

648
00:49:31.400 --> 00:49:38.760
bearing. It's simply irrelevant to the
practical matter before us, which is matters

649
00:49:38.760 --> 00:49:47.199
of war and diplomacy and geostrategy.
It's a way to defer those conversations and

650
00:49:47.320 --> 00:49:53.280
to subsume them into something highly abstract
and very theoretical in order to get around

651
00:49:53.599 --> 00:49:58.199
the problems that we are confronted with
today, which are far more practical.

652
00:49:59.039 --> 00:50:01.000
So I don't find them to be
especially compelling, right right, and really

653
00:50:01.000 --> 00:50:06.440
reflect poorly, frankly on the people
who think that they substitute for any actual

654
00:50:06.559 --> 00:50:09.760
expertise in the region or in the
in the field of military or political affairs.

655
00:50:09.760 --> 00:50:13.599
But the fact that you would use
a fellow centric term like ononism in

656
00:50:13.639 --> 00:50:15.679
the first place, I think it
allows me to discredit everything that you've just

657
00:50:15.719 --> 00:50:21.840
said, Stephen Old Testament. Yes, right, yeah, well, I

658
00:50:21.840 --> 00:50:24.320
think it's perfectly appropriate. No,
you're can't imagine this is what I imagine

659
00:50:24.559 --> 00:50:28.079
these people doing the faculty lunders.
No, you're no, for sure,

660
00:50:28.719 --> 00:50:32.280
you're absolutely You're absolutely correct. I'm
just astonished. But we can still use

661
00:50:32.280 --> 00:50:37.159
the word without somehow being accused.
A's some deep level of transphobia. But

662
00:50:37.119 --> 00:50:40.559
and the amount of intellectual atonism that
goes on must make the decks as slippery

663
00:50:40.599 --> 00:50:45.280
as those of a ship in a
hype. This is going down, which

664
00:50:45.280 --> 00:50:46.719
is why I'm giving it back to
Charlie, who's going to give you another

665
00:50:47.239 --> 00:50:51.679
historical monster and ask you to approve
of him or not? Charles who would

666
00:50:51.719 --> 00:50:55.119
be next? Oh, I don't
know you've thrown that one right at me.

667
00:50:55.159 --> 00:50:59.360
I mean I did. I must
say, see some pretty amusing jokes

668
00:50:59.400 --> 00:51:06.719
on Twitch implying the wait until they
discover my in camp of all people,

669
00:51:06.800 --> 00:51:10.480
Tommy Theaters, that's how you say
it, who was an Obama flack of

670
00:51:10.519 --> 00:51:15.320
the late two thousands. He said
that it was a good thing that there

671
00:51:15.360 --> 00:51:19.559
was an adderall shortage, because that
meant they wouldn't be able to get through

672
00:51:19.599 --> 00:51:22.920
mine camps, and perhaps we won't
getting new found respect for the third Reich.

673
00:51:23.960 --> 00:51:27.679
I'm not going to ask Noah Rothman
whether Hitler was a good guy or

674
00:51:27.760 --> 00:51:30.320
not. Even though you have teed
me up to do that, James,

675
00:51:30.360 --> 00:51:34.280
I'm going to decline on this particular
occasion to do that. Well, we'll

676
00:51:34.320 --> 00:51:38.559
probably be at that point next year. I mean five years ago. If

677
00:51:38.559 --> 00:51:42.480
you'd asked me do you think that
do you think that French bus drivers will

678
00:51:42.519 --> 00:51:45.119
refuse to take Jews to a ceremony? Five years ago? I would have

679
00:51:45.159 --> 00:51:46.280
probably said no. If you'd asked
me a year ago about that, I

680
00:51:46.280 --> 00:51:49.960
probably would have said, yeah,
I think French bus drivers probably would for

681
00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:52.960
a variety of reasons. If you'd
ask me in America if we'd ever have

682
00:51:52.039 --> 00:51:55.440
bus drivers who would refuse to board
Jews to take them to a pro israel

683
00:51:55.519 --> 00:51:58.719
A rally from dollars, I would
have said, no, this is the

684
00:51:58.800 --> 00:52:01.639
United States of America. Now I
say, yeah, I absolutely can see

685
00:52:01.679 --> 00:52:06.960
it, because it just did.
But look, it feels to me this

686
00:52:07.000 --> 00:52:13.159
one is just so poignant for me
as a thirty nine year old, the

687
00:52:13.159 --> 00:52:16.079
idea of Asama bin Laden being a
good guy sixteen when nine to eleven happened.

688
00:52:16.079 --> 00:52:20.199
But if you actually look through I'm
not sure they're exactly the same.

689
00:52:20.239 --> 00:52:29.079
People, but some of the people
that various enclaves online like and have reevaluated.

690
00:52:29.440 --> 00:52:31.960
You will find obviously the classics,
Sheik Rivara being one of them,

691
00:52:32.000 --> 00:52:37.000
but you will find Stalin. I
mean, there is a subculture on Twitter

692
00:52:37.159 --> 00:52:43.880
of Tanky. Tanky absolutely love Stalin
and think he did nothing wrong. They

693
00:52:43.920 --> 00:52:50.400
love Lenin, they think he did
nothing wrong. They look at the various

694
00:52:50.559 --> 00:52:54.840
dictators that have held power in Asia, whether that's in China or Vietnam,

695
00:52:55.880 --> 00:53:00.079
Cambodia, and they say, well, you can't make nominal without breaking it.

696
00:53:00.119 --> 00:53:02.400
So I mean, I suppose I
shouldn't be a shocked by this,

697
00:53:02.400 --> 00:53:07.119
as I am, but it's because
this one was the one that I suppose

698
00:53:07.159 --> 00:53:10.440
it must be a little bit like
if you'd be born in nineteen twenty and

699
00:53:10.599 --> 00:53:15.079
people suddenly started saying, you know, it was a good guy, Hirahita,

700
00:53:15.239 --> 00:53:17.400
that's who was a good guy.
You know, that would really cut

701
00:53:17.400 --> 00:53:22.800
you to the quick. So that's
why I have been saying now for a

702
00:53:22.840 --> 00:53:30.159
month that it is necessary to simply
clean house at our universities in the country,

703
00:53:30.280 --> 00:53:32.440
and I think the chance of that
happening is close to zero. Now

704
00:53:32.519 --> 00:53:36.400
you mentioned nine to eleven, you
go back to a couple of years afterwards.

705
00:53:36.400 --> 00:53:38.519
I remember on article about this recently. You remember that Ward Churchill,

706
00:53:38.519 --> 00:53:42.400
guy at the University of called out, yes, we had it coming.

707
00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:45.480
Those people in the Twin Towers are
the little likemens of capitalism. He got

708
00:53:45.559 --> 00:53:50.559
fired, although they fired him for
a technicality. They didn't fire him for

709
00:53:50.599 --> 00:53:52.360
being a left wing loon. That
was the real reason they fired him.

710
00:53:52.519 --> 00:53:55.840
But they found that he'd plagiarized,
that he'd lied about stuff. And that's

711
00:53:55.840 --> 00:54:00.360
a crazy story. I see nothing
of that happen opening now. In other

712
00:54:00.400 --> 00:54:06.239
words, I don't think Word Churchill
would be fired today for saying the things

713
00:54:06.239 --> 00:54:08.360
that the pro Hamas academics are saying
on our college campuses. Well, that

714
00:54:08.440 --> 00:54:10.880
shows you how much worse things have
gotten. Let me ask Noah this.

715
00:54:12.119 --> 00:54:16.480
Noah, you've seen that there's been
almost immediate retribution and consequences for people who

716
00:54:16.480 --> 00:54:21.960
have been identified, ripping down posters
of the kidnapped children and people right there

717
00:54:21.960 --> 00:54:25.239
are several accounts, the several Twitter
accounts that name and shame and follow up

718
00:54:25.320 --> 00:54:30.960
with their dis grassroots enterprises. Though
that's not a top down a response by

719
00:54:30.039 --> 00:54:35.840
authority figures true, but the it's
an effort to shame authority figures whould otherwise

720
00:54:35.840 --> 00:54:39.000
look the other way into doing what
would be their custodial jobs as exactly.

721
00:54:39.239 --> 00:54:44.039
But it's a start. They're not
doubling down in every instance and saying free

722
00:54:44.079 --> 00:54:45.119
speech. They are actually saying,
oh, this is very bad. We

723
00:54:45.119 --> 00:54:49.199
want to disassociate ourselves from this person, if only for pr reasons. I

724
00:54:49.239 --> 00:54:51.480
mean, it'll take whatever reason they
want, but it is happening. May

725
00:54:51.480 --> 00:54:53.320
have the sequence of events wrong here, but I think quite a lot of

726
00:54:53.320 --> 00:54:59.960
that was incepted by the refusal of
the professional class to simply accept these people.

727
00:55:00.760 --> 00:55:06.519
Quite a bit of this was followed
by or rather institutions like colleges beginning

728
00:55:06.519 --> 00:55:09.400
to take this seriously. Was preceded
by big law firms saying, look,

729
00:55:09.440 --> 00:55:13.840
if you're praising the slaughter of you
know, Jews, we're not going to

730
00:55:13.920 --> 00:55:17.519
hire you, point blank. And
at which point you were menacing the bottom

731
00:55:17.599 --> 00:55:22.639
line of these institutions, which really
focuses the mind. Yes, it does

732
00:55:22.800 --> 00:55:24.320
like a hanging. I know.
It's been a pleasure as ever, just

733
00:55:24.400 --> 00:55:28.760
an absolute pleasure to talk to you. And we'll talk again soon and maybe

734
00:55:28.760 --> 00:55:31.159
one of these days we'll talk about
the resurgence of a Pax America and how

735
00:55:31.199 --> 00:55:36.760
everything is going absolutely grand at China's
and retreat and the West stand strongs again.

736
00:55:37.679 --> 00:55:39.719
I can always dream. Thank you
for joining us, and everybody by

737
00:55:39.760 --> 00:55:45.159
the book. Thank you all.
Take care. Yeah, you know you

738
00:55:45.239 --> 00:55:49.719
wonder sometimes if these people will over
have an intellectual pull shift and realize how

739
00:55:49.760 --> 00:55:52.960
wrong that they've been. We all
have those moments where we have to realize

740
00:55:52.960 --> 00:55:55.960
that we've done something that wasn't particularly
wise and upbraide ourselves for it. And

741
00:55:57.000 --> 00:56:00.280
it's a learning lesson sometimes. But
then sometimes, really, when you think

742
00:56:00.280 --> 00:56:02.480
about it, it's better to avoid
the problem in the first place, is

743
00:56:02.519 --> 00:56:07.760
it not. Let me turn to
the subject of quaffing an adult beverage,

744
00:56:07.800 --> 00:56:13.800
which is something that I enjoy doing. A fine is a Scotch whiskey.

745
00:56:13.880 --> 00:56:16.920
Oh that'll be frankly, what's on
the agenda for tonight? But you know,

746
00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:20.960
at my age, and I'm at
the age where plan B does not

747
00:56:21.079 --> 00:56:24.199
mean a backup course of action.
I don't exactly bounce back the next day

748
00:56:24.239 --> 00:56:27.440
like I used to when I was
a pop. I have to make a

749
00:56:27.519 --> 00:56:30.719
choice. Can I ever have a
great night? And believe me, my

750
00:56:30.800 --> 00:56:34.440
definitions of great nights extend to some
backing alias at the back of the ship

751
00:56:34.440 --> 00:56:37.360
and the NR cruises where we'd all
get together with Conyax's the cars. Oh

752
00:56:37.400 --> 00:56:40.639
great, but I eat the next
day. So now I'm a big fan

753
00:56:40.679 --> 00:56:46.119
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754
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755
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756
00:56:57.199 --> 00:57:00.440
gut. It's this byproduct, not
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757
00:57:00.599 --> 00:57:06.320
rough next day. Now, z
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758
00:57:06.320 --> 00:57:07.840
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760
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761
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762
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764
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766
00:57:32.559 --> 00:57:35.280
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769
00:57:42.719 --> 00:57:45.000
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Thank you Zbiotics for sponsoring this the
Ricochet podcast. Well on the way out,

773
00:58:00.320 --> 00:58:01.880
anything else that has been bothering you, gentlemen that you want to get

774
00:58:01.920 --> 00:58:07.239
off your chest before we close,
well that could take another hour. Good

775
00:58:07.320 --> 00:58:10.679
grief, But Charles is so saturnine. I know that nothing really truly bothers

776
00:58:10.760 --> 00:58:15.599
him. He has just got that
even tempered or am I wrong? No,

777
00:58:15.639 --> 00:58:19.199
I'm fairly even tempered. That doesn't
mean nothing bothers me. It just

778
00:58:19.239 --> 00:58:23.559
means I've learned to cope with it. I mean, I actually do think

779
00:58:23.800 --> 00:58:31.679
that we are in a really bad
moment for our political parties to have made

780
00:58:31.679 --> 00:58:39.599
the decisions they seem to be making. I understand that history runs in cycles,

781
00:58:39.920 --> 00:58:49.719
and I'm not making an overwrought Flight
ninety three argument here, but there

782
00:58:49.760 --> 00:58:52.320
is such a thing. I said, good year in which to be frivolous

783
00:58:53.079 --> 00:58:55.880
and a bad year in which to
be frivolous. And I think we've got

784
00:58:57.000 --> 00:58:59.679
a bad year in which to be
frivolous. If you look around the world,

785
00:59:00.719 --> 00:59:05.239
you haven't just got the crisis in
Ukraine, the crisis in the Middle

786
00:59:05.239 --> 00:59:07.760
East. You've got a resurgent China
that keeps hinting that it's going to invade

787
00:59:07.760 --> 00:59:14.760
Taiwan. You've got interest rates higher
than they've been for forty years because inflation

788
00:59:14.960 --> 00:59:19.400
is higher than it's been for forty
years. You've now got a federal budget

789
00:59:20.679 --> 00:59:25.960
that has no chance whatsoever of being
balanced at any point in the near future.

790
00:59:27.239 --> 00:59:34.800
We're paying nearly a trillion dollars a
year and debt repayments. We've got

791
00:59:34.880 --> 00:59:37.360
an entitlements crisis that no one wants
to talk about anymore. At least fifteen

792
00:59:37.400 --> 00:59:44.039
years ago, the two parties would
acknowledge it existed. Now neither one seems

793
00:59:44.039 --> 00:59:50.039
to want to do that, and
we seem to be headed toward an election

794
00:59:50.400 --> 00:59:57.559
that will be held most likely between
a guy who is essentially dead and a

795
00:59:57.639 --> 01:00:00.320
guy who is likely to be a
convicted felon. I don't think that's a

796
01:00:00.360 --> 01:00:04.920
good moment to do that. Past. The set of problems that you have

797
01:00:05.079 --> 01:00:09.000
laid out there clearly indicate that we
need men of experience and perspective who have

798
01:00:09.079 --> 01:00:13.679
seen a lot in their lives.
And that's why I'm I'm with you.

799
01:00:14.039 --> 01:00:16.519
The idea that I still I don't
believe it's happening. I still don't believe

800
01:00:16.519 --> 01:00:21.960
it's happening. I'm going to be
in the booth right about to cast my

801
01:00:22.039 --> 01:00:23.679
vote, and I'm going to look
down and see Biden and Trump, and

802
01:00:23.719 --> 01:00:27.320
I'm going to I'm going to go
back and say, are you sure this

803
01:00:27.360 --> 01:00:30.360
is the one that five minutes ago
you just weren't handed one that says Newsome

804
01:00:30.440 --> 01:00:35.880
and DeSantis, Because that's that's the
one that probably we should be should be

805
01:00:36.000 --> 01:00:39.320
should be doing now, not these
I mean, the idea for the last

806
01:00:39.360 --> 01:00:44.039
election that we will be replaying it
with these men four years hence is so

807
01:00:44.199 --> 01:00:49.920
immensely, immensely depressing about the electorate
and the parties themselves. Stephen, do

808
01:00:49.960 --> 01:00:52.639
you think he's going to make it. I mean, the DNC after he's

809
01:00:52.639 --> 01:00:54.960
nominated, from what I understand,
can swap him out and they don't have

810
01:00:55.000 --> 01:00:58.960
to vote, they don't have to
ask anybody to you know, what to

811
01:00:58.960 --> 01:01:00.920
do. They can just do it. And I've been saying of this podcast,

812
01:01:01.440 --> 01:01:07.480
probably frivolously but increasingly seriously for the
last six or seven months or so,

813
01:01:07.559 --> 01:01:09.280
that I think that's what's going to
happen, that Biden is going to

814
01:01:09.320 --> 01:01:15.480
be raised up, He'll be nominated
again, and then he'll just sort of

815
01:01:15.559 --> 01:01:19.760
ascend to heaven like Romulus or Claudius
and into that slot that they will put

816
01:01:19.840 --> 01:01:22.480
Nwsan because they can, and because
he's young and vital, and he's got

817
01:01:22.480 --> 01:01:24.079
the hair and all the rest of
it, and he would thrash Trump for

818
01:01:24.119 --> 01:01:28.199
a variety of reasons. Yeah,
I think I agree with all that,

819
01:01:28.679 --> 01:01:31.679
you know, as a thought experiment. And actually, you know Conrad Black,

820
01:01:31.719 --> 01:01:34.880
who was, you know, a
friend of Trump's, a supporter of

821
01:01:34.920 --> 01:01:37.679
Trump's, who's now critical of him. He wrote I think before the end

822
01:01:37.719 --> 01:01:43.079
of the year in twenty twenty that
Trump would be much advised to do the

823
01:01:43.119 --> 01:01:46.119
Andrew Jackson strategy. He can claim
the election was stolen, but he would

824
01:01:46.159 --> 01:01:50.199
seize his efforts to try and stop
it because he's run out of time,

825
01:01:50.840 --> 01:01:53.440
and then he would do what Andrew
Jackson did in the the eighteen twenties.

826
01:01:54.000 --> 01:01:59.079
If you hadn't had January sixth and
the intranscendence of Trump, I think he

827
01:01:59.119 --> 01:02:02.199
would be ten points head in the
polls right now and heading for a landslide

828
01:02:02.599 --> 01:02:07.199
triumphal reelection. Leave aside the merits
of Trump and all the characteristics and all

829
01:02:07.199 --> 01:02:09.519
the rest of that. And so
there's the tragedy of Trump that goes with

830
01:02:09.559 --> 01:02:15.239
this personality, right, And so
yeah, you know I have actually since

831
01:02:15.280 --> 01:02:20.599
twenty sixteen, I've been repairing to
two famous statements. One James Madison from

832
01:02:20.599 --> 01:02:23.280
Federalist ten that enlightened statesman will not
always be at the helm. We've been

833
01:02:23.280 --> 01:02:28.360
testing that proposition for quite a while
now. And then second, the line

834
01:02:28.360 --> 01:02:31.880
attributed to Bismark that what is it
God looks after drunk schools in the United

835
01:02:31.880 --> 01:02:37.679
States of America. We're testing that
proposition too. You know, I tend

836
01:02:37.719 --> 01:02:40.199
to be a congenital optimist because you
know, I grew up with Ronald Reagan,

837
01:02:40.360 --> 01:02:45.000
and you know, think myself still
as a true Uru Reagan. I

838
01:02:45.159 --> 01:02:49.920
despite all the people saying Reagan's passe
and so forth, and the younger generation,

839
01:02:51.480 --> 01:02:55.519
and I keep thinking something's going to
happen. Somebody's going to replace somebody

840
01:02:55.559 --> 01:02:59.079
on the ticket next year. I
don't know if it's but yeah, what

841
01:02:59.280 --> 01:03:00.480
right now? It keeps saying,
are we really going to have an election

842
01:03:00.519 --> 01:03:05.760
where one candidate campaigns from the basement
again and the other candidate campaigns from a

843
01:03:05.840 --> 01:03:09.719
jail cell. This is not an
implausible or impossible scenario, And it's just

844
01:03:09.840 --> 01:03:14.000
mind boggling. If you've said,
you know, as Charlie was saying earlier,

845
01:03:14.039 --> 01:03:16.039
if you've said even ten years ago
that we'd have a circumstance like this,

846
01:03:16.119 --> 01:03:20.239
she would have thought, no,
if you pitch step to some Hollywood

847
01:03:20.239 --> 01:03:22.800
producer, take it out of here
with a crazy story like that, Reagan

848
01:03:22.880 --> 01:03:28.760
is no longer relevant. But Karl
Marx is incredibly start right to this date.

849
01:03:30.320 --> 01:03:34.719
Well, that being said, I
would like to remind you, and

850
01:03:34.760 --> 01:03:36.880
as soon as I say these things, you're going to think the podcast is

851
01:03:36.920 --> 01:03:38.079
over, but it isn't. We'd
like to remind you that we were brought

852
01:03:38.119 --> 01:03:43.199
to you by Beam by Roan and
bes'szbiotics. All of these things can enhance

853
01:03:43.239 --> 01:03:46.000
your life and if you support them, you support us the Circle of Life

854
01:03:46.079 --> 01:03:50.840
and capitalism. And if you could
take a minute to leave a six star

855
01:03:50.920 --> 01:03:54.239
review on Apple Podcasts, your reviews
allow other new listeners to find the show,

856
01:03:54.440 --> 01:03:58.199
and that gets more listeners. And
you should, of course go to

857
01:03:58.280 --> 01:04:00.599
ricochet dot com and join if you
haven't. But in the meantime, we'll

858
01:04:00.599 --> 01:04:03.599
see you all in the comments at
Ricochet four point zero. Thank you,

859
01:04:03.639 --> 01:04:09.960
gentlemen, and thank you for listening. See you around, James Ricochet.

860
01:04:12.679 --> 01:04:13.639
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