Well, whiskey coming, fake, my Paine, my brain, Oh Whiskey,
don't let me go. From Powerline blog dot com and produced by Wickachet
dot com. This is the Three Whiskey Happy Hour with your bartenders Steve Hayward,
John You and Powerlines International Woman of Mystery Lucresia's gotta give it and let
that whiskey blow. Where you've been in love down and low? Well,
Well, hi everybody, and welcome to a special unorthodox edition of the Three
Whiskey Happy Hour. Because John You is absent this week. He's over in
Korea, or he may even be flying home right now. I forget.
We weren't able to schedule it when John could join us, and so Lucretia
and I are going almost solo except here. In a few minutes, we're
going to bring on Glad Elmer's to talk about his terrific brand new book in
the Narrow Passage. Proper introduction in due course. But Lucretia, I am
in a boutique hotel in Hollywood for a couple of days, and I feel
like I've walked onto the set of Barton Fink. If you ever knew that
old Cone Brothers movie about the guy riding a wrestling picture, but I don't
know if you ever saw it anyway, how are you? How are you?
Steve? Pretty good? One thing about this hotel, I'm just going
to mention it's got the same window coverings as your sheek little Berkeley get.
Yeah, I know, but that's because the sun's right behind me and this
is the only person. It's fine, it's fine. But the mini bar
does have Glenn live at twelve, so you know, I'm actually doesn't look
very mini. Well, this is a half bottle, but that's actually for
many. It's the biggest mini bar I've ever seen anyway, So so so
we could accommodate our our friend Glenn. Um and I've already been working nine
hours today. I needed coffee, so I decided to make my you know
me, I drink. I drink soda, water, wine and Scotch and
black coffee. That's it exactly. Every now and then I break out and
I have an Irish coffee with bush mills and whipped cream and espresso in it.
And that's what I have here. That's a good way, that's a
good substitute for the three whiskey happy hour. Well it is whiskey. It's
right, it's right, it's just Irish whiskey rum. You know, there
you go, all right, At the risk of getting a eleven scoring rant
on a scale of one to ten, I have to ask you which is
the biggest farce of the week. Was it the Secret Service investigation as the
Mysterious Origins of cocaine and the White House? Or was it FBI Director Ray
in front of the House Committee explaining that, oh, we're all just all
patriots of the FBI who love all Americans. By the way, our numbers
of recruits in Texas are up, they're astronomically high, Ray says, because
that's just proof of how popular we are in places like Texas. As he
was talking to a Texas senator, you know, when the senator tried to
claim that, I forget what liberal publication might have been The Washington Post said
that the FBI is at the lowest approval in the history of the universe.
They're lower than um pond scum, I think is what he said. I
forget, But anyway, I don't know Steve, the idea that the idea
that Ray can get up there and say that the idea that the secret service
can get up and say, well, we've we've closed out this investigation without
finding anything. You've been in the White House, Steve, you could not
leave a gum wrapper on the floor without it being recorded, you. I
mean, the idea that they do not know who left this cocaine in there
is so ludicrous, and they just think that, you know, this will
go away because them it's not a sexy enough story for the media to keep
going on. Mob Head has already said, you know, the story's over
as far as she's concerned, and they're gonna get away with it. Now.
The way, I might not be quite as easy for them to get
away with it because people have figured out that the FBI is corrupts and has
become the praetorian guard for the Biden administration. Yeah. So, by the
way, the White House spokesperson you referred to as mop Head I saw.
I don't know if you watch The Simpsons, but somebody said she looks like
Sideshow Bob, which I think is pretty good too. Is well, you're
not a Simpsons fan, but listeners who know Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons will.
By the way, I always voiced by what's his name? The guy
who played Frasier Crane, who's a conservative. Oh, I'm blanking on the
grammar, Kelsey Grammar. That's right. Who is as a today? I
think on strike as the actors are on strike in Hollywood anyway. Uh,
what anybody knows in our strike? Yeah, I'm right. Well, I
mean, I mean maybe people will. I won't because I don't have television
anymore. So yeah, but um, and you know, quite frankly,
I have a hard time watching a new movie. It's I may try to
go see Freedom, um, Sound of Freedom. Not because I don't want
to see it, but I definitely want to support them. I'm too weak
when it comes to that sort of thing. I don't want to know about
children being trafficked and so on, but I want to support them. I
definitely want to support James with it, Jim how do you say his last
name? I'd like everything I've seen him in and he's just a good guy.
So I might buy the go to the theater, buy ten tickets and
hand them out. Yeah that's right. Yeah, because i'd have nightmares for
six months. Well you know the story there and can This is one of
those kind of scandalous aspects of things as that movie was made five years ago,
and apparently Disney had the rights to it and put it on a shelf
and didn't want to release it. And I'm not quite I don't know the
whole story, and I haven't had time to check it out, but somebody
prided loose or quite often a movie rights expired, you'll have movie rights for
four or five years. Harvey Weinstein was famous for buying up films, paying
a lot for them, and then putting him on a shelf because he thought
they were competition for the films he really wanted to promote and win awards with.
And I mean, I've known a couple of filmmakers who said they got
really nice offers from Harvey Weinstein and turned them down and took less money from
another distributor because they knew that they couldn't count on Weinstein to release the movie.
Something like that happened with this movie, apparently, and now it's a
big hit and bigger than any Well, that's right, And you know,
one might ask why didn't they want to release this movie. I mean,
I would be open to listening to the argument that they didn't know how to
market it, because opening to listen to whatever live going to tell? Well,
then I would be suspicious that there are other motives in play that would
you would? I really do. So there you are in California, Steve,
give me the story about why it is they killed a bill that made
sex trafficking a felony. I don't even get it's what's that all about?
Can you even explain it? No? I cannot. I mean except that
it's a manifestation of the extreme liberationist ethic. I guess you put it that
way of the left, which is they can think of no rational reason or
authoritative reason to put any barriers in front of any perversity someone declares as their
personal right or their personal desire. And I have a hard time believing this,
but I think that may actually be the explanation. You remember, I
don't want to bring it up again. But the same the same monster excuse
for human being professor who says, yeah, of course we can force children
to have sex with us happen on want because we forced him to do things
all the time. The idea that any human being could actually utter those words,
I think those words in his brain, never mind utter them out loud.
I mean, he should have been shot on site, in my opinion
shot on site. And maybe I'm sounding like one of those new young wright
people we're going to talk about with Glenn. I hope. Yeah. But
but yeah, I did the what remember I told you also that I used
to in my previous Twitter life. I followed the US Marshals. What a
weird thing to follow, except that they were they they had the most successful
task force running down child and and and adult sex trafficking. Yeah, and
they would publish on Twitter, you know we uh, we rescued eighty nine
children and we arrested one hundred and twenty two sex traffickers today in such and
such small town in the Midwest. And you know it would I would would
pass it on and it would I can't say quite that it would make me
happy, but it wouldn't, you know, because it's not really something to
be happy about, but the fact. And then Biden the day the day
he got into office, shut down the task force. Yeah, you do
wonder about that. Wrap your head around it, Steve, Yeah, you're
right, I get it. When you say you don't get it, you
try to explain it in some rational, theoretical way. It just there's no
explanation for it. Your explanation is the best I've ever heard. Yeah,
but all right, why don't we try. I'm gonna I'm gonna tempt Yeah,
well, happier subject example, but you'll still find a way to disagree
with me or controverted. I didn't disagree with you. I agree with you.
Oh, I know. Well, all right. My thesis is,
I mean, we've said this a little bit, but I think the judicial
revolution that's under way at the moment is even bigger than just what we saw
in the Harvard UNC case and some of the other major questions doctrine a year
ago. Uh, you know, because I mean John has been talking about
how gosh, we have the most favorable judiciary in seventy five years or conservatives,
I think that, Well, I'll get right to it. We had
another case this week out of the DC Circuit. It's very technical, it's
very dense and difficult to get through. But the bottom line is is the
DC circuits set the Department of Energy about a rule involving commercial boilers. Oh
boy, there's a hot subject to keep you awake at night. And the
Department's been working on an efficiency standard for boilers. At what up end the
whole industry for six years, and they're at the final rule making stage and
the DC Circuit said, nope, sorry, we're throwing out your rule.
And this is the first time I can think of a major rule has been
thrown out this late in the process. Now, maybe I've missed one or
two. The main Lobster case was different, a little different stage of the
thing. I think, yeah, well, I think they are equivalent in
their broader meaning. So yes, there's that case. Also that about two
three weeks ago. What they do have in common is this, It used
to be said, and this was the argument for deference to administrative expertise,
is gosh, you know, you can't expect judges to master all the technical
details of these rules. You should just trust us, the experts, and
you should just deem as factual the claims that we make in our rulemaking process.
And these last two cases, and especially the one this week, the
court said nope, sorry, we are not buying it now. It was
helpful that the industry had challenged a lot of the convenient assumptions of the Department
of Energy, a lot of shoddy methodology, and the Appeals Court said,
boy, you didn't give every any convincing answers to these objections, and so
they killed this rule. And now I think this reminds me of a previous
change in legal procedure from forty fifty years ago now, and it was the
antitrust revolution. This is probably bores you, but I was. My economist
side of me was always interested in this for decades, from you know,
the New Deal into the seventies. The judiciary was completely incoherent about antitrust and
you'd read these decisions and you couldn't figure out what the heck was going on
and how they could say this merger is good, another one is bad,
and why this company had to be broken up and so forth. And you
had the real intellectual revolution, led by people that included Robert Bourke, saying
this is in irrational, incoherent, and here's a better standard, which was
consumer harm. You know, is this company harming consumers? Is it anti
competitive with this merger hurt consumers? If the answer to those questions is no,
then let the marketplace decide. And by the late eighties, the Reagan
administration, which still brought some antitrust cases, started losing those cases in court.
The government, the Justice Department always won those cases for thirty forty years
and they suddenly started losing. I think we're now seeing same turn on these
regulatory administrative date cases. I think we are seeing that the agencies are now
going to start losing in court a whole lot more. And this just makes
my day. It makes me hap the only I'm going to be contrary,
not because they disagree, but let me throw this out at you. It's
one thing to be because I want to separate the two. And I want
to separate the two, the antitrust from the other case, because how is
it possible now that what we've discovered is the call it the wokeness, the
the affinity between corporations and the left, that there is not at some fundamental
level a belief that we don't have to worry about say them, I know,
as a bide administration about the case, but that we don't have to
worry about collusive you know, lack of free market stuff with antitrust violations,
because of course the corporations are as we know, are absolutely in bed with
the government now. And I I'm just wondering if your theory is comprehensive across
all of these kinds of issues or if you perhaps see that there might be
a difference between looking at a regulatory agency and saying, you, guys,
what you know everything they say, versus not going along with antitrust. Yeah,
so no, that's right. I mean, I've had several commenters say,
yeah, the court ruled this week that the Biden administration can't block Microsoft
buying Activision, And I don't care about video games, so I don't care
much about this. But people say, we want these tech companies to keep
getting bigger and controlling more of these domains. Maybe not in the case of
just social media. Let's limit it to that. I think some of the
older antitrust doctrines we control antitrust out completely and say anything goes. But I
think maybe the older doctrines of a common carrier, which we apply to public
utilities and be consumer harm, may still be effective and a principal legal levers
against what's going on. And a lot of people thinking about this, and
and so part of the reason when I say that about video games is you're
going to that, believe it or not, the video game world is as
woke in most cases as is say a universe, the university atmosphere, the
academic world, and so the I'm not going to say this was a collusive
lawsuit between the Biden administration and but I am. My thought was I was
conflicted about the decision. Let me put it that way, because on the
one hand, I don't want to see Microsoft become any bigger or have any
more any larger share market share in the video game industry because they're already despicable,
and the video game industry is absolutely despicable when it comes to and God
only knows the kind of influence they have on young people. But I mean,
you know, they're they have every woke policy that you'd find at the
student union in Stanford University. To get honest with you, anyway, it
gets confusing to me, is the problem. I don't know enough about anti
trust to say anything really important or insightful on it, or intelligent for that
matter. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I guess it's really
huge business because it seems to me that Microsoft is overpaying. Like I say,
I don't know that business and if that's true or not. But beyond
that, I did have a student one time try and convince me, a
pretty pretty bright guy that grand theft auto is actually a game, which I've
always you know, just what I hear about I don't like but finds violence.
Yeah, there's some conservative aspects to it, and I was skeptical,
but well I don't think it was that one. But there I know of
other games that you know, wore games, those sorts of things where mortal
well there's all si I mean, call it duty. But the pressure on
them to you know, have the transgender Act in leading it, you know,
the troops and just I'm just making that up, but the pressure on
them to become much more woke and in fact, the monitoring call it that
and censoring that goes on on the live gamers is actually downright scary. I'm
surprised that's not more of an issue, to be honest with you. Yeah,
well, collecting all of the time on live gamers and the things they
say, well, some other time we should have a learned discussion of the
Platonic Socratic case for censorship of music and poetry, which applied to video games.
But at this point, let's take a quick break for our sponsors and
then we'll come back with Glenn Elmer's. Glenn Elmers joins us now to talk
about his brand new book published just this week our friends add Encounter Books,
the Narrow Passage subtitle Plato Fuco and the Possibility of Political Philosophy. And first
of all, and congratulations not just unpublishing a book. I mean, that's
easy to say, but you've done something I think quite remarkable here. You've
got a serious, in depth argument about where we are in a modern world
day and what's going wrong in seventy nine pages. And uh and and although
some of the ideas are I guess I don't. I don't want to mislead
listeners by saying dense and difficult to dissuade them. Just the opposite. The
writing is very clear and crisp and direct and difficult. It is probably what
you want to say. And what then does is make them accessible. Yeah,
exactly. So let's start this way, by the way, thank you,
Yeah, good to be here. Good. Yeah. Let me draw
into it with a couple of we'll start on the surface, as teachers of
ours like to say. Right, I was having a conversation recently with someone
of my age, a baby boomer, right, who of some prominence,
A name you don't know, but I won't say who it is because it's
not important who said I think we've reached peak woke, and I'm thinking to
myself, you can point to places where they've lost some skirmishes, but I'm
doubtful about that, and I think for reasons that you get at. And
so that's why one of the things that you lay out that I think is
the most easily accessible argument for non specialists or even specialists, is you make
Actually Fred Siegel's been saying this for years, and you say a more philosophical
way, the nineteen sixties never ended. That's the way Fred and I put
it. You put it a little differently. What you say is we had
a halftime from the culture War. In other words, we thought the sixties
and all the predations there were over, but they actually came back. The
vocabulary today baby a little different, but it's the same thing. And we
were misled by I guess, support the Reagan years when we've turned all these
things back. But now it's back. And why that's important is both a
the subject matter and the generational split this cost you say in your book,
and I totally agree. The baby boomers and my age and Lucrease's a too
many of us are complacent about this saying this too, shell pass like it
did before. Don't know would put me in your pocket with that one mystery.
I have never ever joined that opinion. But no, no, I
know I haven't either. I'm just saying you're always the one saying, oh
oh yeah, this happened before. It'll be fine. No, well,
we'll come back to what Jaffa thought about this on the last page of Glenn's
book in due course. If you let us thinks about it, well that
too anyways, see him going with that. Glan is taken from there about.
I guess this inspired the book, right is the younger generation of saying,
I don't know why you guys are optimistic because they've seen nothing but rack
and ruin, whereas we did see a certain recovery of a certain kind.
Right, well, I think a big thing is having lived through the Cold
War and having seen the victory over the Soviet Union and the dissolution, the
dissolution of the evil Empire. People who didn't live through it don't appreciate what
a massive fact that was, and what a massive thing it was that we
won, you know. Reagan famously said his approach contrary to his predecessor,
Jimmy Carter was we when they lose, and that turned out to be the
case. Now, you know, this points again to something Leo Strauss said,
and Jaffa brought this up, and Steve, you'd like to quote this
line from Jaffa that the defeat of the Soviet Union did not mean the defeat
of the ideology. And Strauss said this about the Nazis and German philosophy,
right, that we defeated German ideas, that we defeated the Vermacht, but
we didn't defeat the German ideology, the philosophy. And you could say the
same thing at the end of the Cold War. We defeated the Sivie Union,
but we certainly did not defeat various forms of Marxism and neo Marxism,
as Jaffa pointed out. But you know, we did have the peace dividend,
We did have a sort of relaxation during the Clinton years, you know,
Francis Fukiyama and others said, well, this proves that liberal democracy has
won where victorious there are no other alternatives, and then the War on Terror
nine to eleven sort of, you know, turn things around a little bit.
But my argument is the cultural Cold War is now back, and so
a lot of the things people were saying in the seventies and eighties turn out
to be relevant again. And on the question of the generation gap, you
know, the boomers who saw the end of the of the Cold War said,
look, you know, we defeated the servites. We've been through this
political correctness stuff before. It didn't destroy us. And now the new version
is actually even more lame because it's so self pitying and so pathetic, right,
how can you take it seriously? And of course for the young people
who are growing up now in clown world and had never seen anything like the
American dream, they certainly don't think it's it's a small beer, right well,
and as everyone knows, it's broken out. In the sixties, seventies
and eighties, it was mostly confined to the campuses and some radical journals.
Now it's in boardrooms all over America and in the military, right and and
uh so that is something I did not anticipate. I couldn't believe this craziness
would do that. Lucretia, you so have a I have a question,
and I everyone now and then I thought I got a glimpse of your answer,
but sometimes it was just it just uh, just a little bit out
of my grasp, and that the question is thinking about those two statements,
the one by Jaffa the one by Strauss, the general tendency of conservatives to
be resting on their laurels for the victories in the Cold War and so on.
What is it about leftist ideology that makes it the ideology itself? The
idea is so pervasive and ultimately victorious despite its concrete failures over and over again.
What is it specifically that that it gets into people that you can't get
rid of it despite all the real evidence that it's you know, how many
different memes have you seen? This is communism doesn't work because it hasn't been
tried, you know, silly stuff making fun of that, whoping. What
is it? What's the explanation. It's a very difficult problem. In a
way, it's it's the underlying theme of the whole book, And you have
to I have to be very careful about how I say this because it's very
easy to misunderstand. But in a way, it goes back to Socrates and
the problem of Socrates, and it's the idea that you can bring reason into
our public life, into our political life. Now, the ancients were very
cautious about that. They were very anti utopian. They saw very clearly the
limits of reason in political life. But it does hold out this tantalizing idea,
this tantalizing promise, right, and you know, the republic people don't.
People forget that it's a comedy, that it's ironic, right, and
people read it in a straightforward way that you can actually have the role of
the philosophers and then Christianity again, and I want to be careful about how
I say this, but also adds a complication. Um, you know,
you have a sort of other worldliness, you have people people want to you're
a sort of crazy line from Votland immanentizes the Eshton right, people people want
to bring the city of the City of God on to earth. And so
there's this utopian, tyrannical temptation that takes hold in the Western mind and it's
very hard to get rid of it. It's very hard to control. And
that's a long complicated story, but I think that's the root of it.
And so do you think that the demise of Christianity because of Macchiavelli over time
that there's actually something in the human soul that absolutely demands that kind of certainty,
that kind of promise of utopia, that either the gods of the cities
in the ancient days or the God of Christianity. That that's part of the
reason why reason is why rationality. Reason is never going to be a substitute,
because most human beings are not capable of living in a world where they're
just thinking themselves. They're just thinking about things as opposed to having faith in
them. Do you think that's just part of the human soul, the human
psyche. Yeah, so's there's a tension there, and it's insurmountable. And
it's what Strouss pointed to when you talked about the tension between the philosopher and
the city. Because there's another very you know, another theme in the book,
which is also very deeply embedded in the human psyche, is the need
for what I call the holy city, that is a closed community of true
believers, fellow citizens, united by an intense devotion to some transcendent idea.
And to the degree that modern secular, hedonistic life has sort of given us
empty souls and led to this angst and this existential on we and all that
people are now searching for that trying to recreate that sense of belonging in a
way woke religiosity. Is this part of the human psyche re emerging and returning.
Yeah, so I think there's a complimentary explanation which is implied in your
book. But I always think that one reason for the persistence of leftism is
the way Whittaker Chambers put it in Witness. Right, it is the perennial
peal, is the oldest temptation of all, Ye shall be as God's So
that assumes perfect knowledge, also perfect power. Right, only God as we
understand him is the only legitim a tyrant, because only God is all knowing
and all just. Now to the extent that, and this your book is
explicit about, to the extent that the postmodern left as we call it,
has abandoned reason. They've seen it's a dead end. They become willful and
nihilistic and angry, and as you point out, they're not even interested in
persuading anybody anymore. And because if you don't believe in reason, you have
nothing to persuade people about. And so one of the early sentences, there's
so many sentences that jump out that. By the way, there should be
a tweet thread for sentences of the book. I think that way because Okay,
you point out on your introduction that there's no woke utopia, unlike classical
Marxism. There's no woke utopia. There's no final utopia. There's just the
permanent revolution. Because if they don't have that, they've really got nothing.
They don't have much, but they wouldn't even have that. I think that's
a really striking point right right on this other thing. So one of the
main arguments I think, which I think is sort of quasi original, is
the left is torn in a way. And we've touched on this a little
bit of attention. On the one hand, they still believe in reason.
They profess to believe in science. Right look at Fauci. You know,
you have to accept the science I am science. The expertise in the bureaucracy,
the credentialing in the universities, all of that comes out to be a
little academic here comes out of Hegel and the idea of the rational state.
But on the other hand, another part of them is torn by what we've
been talking about, is this postmodern Nietzsche nihilism, and the left is in
a way schizophrenic, and part of what makes it so angry and confused and
confusing is that it's pulled in these opposite directions between rational science and expertise and
postmodern anti rational nihilism. Yeah, I mean, I guess I think that
the way science has talked about these days as thus science, you know,
I am the science. I think that's more tribal than it is reasonable.
And you say that in the book. I mean, the return of tribalism
is the main felum in the book that I think is quite useful. By
the way, Steve makes some sense when we look at how many things felt
she was wrong about, and yet he remains that the priest, the high
priest of the science. Yeah, it doesn't even matter if Fauci is wrong,
He's he's the authority. Yeah, this is Fuka. You're useful.
Actually, I'll do this now, Glenn, you're a tiebreaker. I have
been saying with Lucretia for years now that you know we need to read some
of these leftist philosophers to use the tools against them. So I think your
book you're coming out saying I'm right and Lucretia's wrong. That's not no.
I think what he's saying is that he's a better person than me for being
able to slog through. That's what he's saying. Joke. When I talked
about Fuco at a conference done in Florida a few months ago, I said,
I'm not reading this because I enjoy it. I'mlike Fuco, I'm not
a masochist exactly. We were there for that. That was yes, we
were Yeah, that was excellent. But like, so, what I want
to ask you when you said about the Holy City, this is one of
the things that I thought of. So in the ancient Holy City, where
the odds, the gods of your city were your gods, and you know,
there was no ecumenicalism or no evangelization. You know, your gods were
your gods, and that was the piety and citizenship were all wrapped together.
And then Christianity destroys all that. And I wish you could give us a
really long discussion of that, because it's fascinating, but we probably don't have
time. But what I want to ask you is that when leftism, we'll
just call it that, in a general way, decided to substitute all of
these different things. For call it that part of the human soul that reaches
out for the holy city is leftism, not trying to be persuasive, but
nevertheless tyrannical, because it needs it needs some kind of holy city to surround
it to avoid the abyss. I don't know exactly how to say it.
How if I'm a leftist and you don't believe in my climate change, or
you don't believe in my radical gender ideology or whatever it might be, then
you're sort of denying my existence in a way that my human psyche cannot tolerate.
Does that make sense? And do you see that? Yeah, something
like that. I do a better job because I'm just sort of spitballing here.
I shouldn't say and this is not false modesty. It's generally is still
confused. I mean, I try to make sense of it as much as
I can in the book, but I think I still fall short because I
don't think anyone can completely understand. There's many cross currents here, many different
factors at work. You know, the two that I point to, Nietzsche
and Hegel are only to the most obvious ones. But there's very complicated psychological
philosophical theoretical intersections here, you know, So what happens when you have,
first of all, one thing on the we wish to be God's and the
one thing we haven't mentioned, which plays another part of this is the power
of science. Right. One reason that tempt the god temptation wasn't quite as
prominent in the ancient world as first of all, you didn't want to proselytize,
right, your gods belong to you, and you didn't want the heretics
from some other city leaving your gods. They were dirty and unclean, right,
you just wanted to destroy them. So there was no proselytizing. But
also and so the idea of globalism is something really quite modern. And then
the idea of science. Right, we really did persuade ourselves through the power
of technology that we can turn anything into anything. We now think that we
can turn little boys into little girls through the power of science. And in
principle, you know, the transhumanists think, I have a piece coming out
on the current but in the next Claremount review of books on sort of the
biosecurity state and transhumanism, they think that we can come close to immortality because
we now have the ability to repair you know, human cellular mechanisms, you
know, almost almost interminite power, so that the science, that power of
technology really does exacerbate the god problem that Steve talked about. So what is
the point of going on here? Right? It's the point of intersectionality.
Why do they still want to be global rulers? I mean, that's it's
hard to figure these things out. I get I get it. What is
the point of intersectionality? What is it about leftist ideology with you know,
it's a little like when you you ever try to teach progressivism to students and
they can't wrap their head around it because progressivism has all these you know,
different starting way back in the in the nineteenth century and so on. Leftist
ideology makes no sense. You point this out very clearly in your book,
from the point of view of being any kind of comprehensive explanation for anything.
But there has to be some point of intersectionality across all of these different fingers
of thought that that causes them to be so tribal to to you know,
to um. Just as one example for the UH, the transgender people to
successfully to denounce the jk rowlings of the world. You know, the radical
feminists from before who used to be sort of at the vanguard of all of
this. What is it that brings them all together? Is there anything?
Yeah, I mean there's still a lot to do. You know, there's
more thinking and writing, I think, to be done on this subject.
It's not totally obvious to me why people who are for abortion and labor unions
and radical environmentalism and you know, all of these very disparate things see themselves
as natural allies. And they all repeat each other's agendas and talking points almost
without thinking. And they don't you know, or you know, social media
oligarchs and antifa anarchists and green new I mean, how do these red Glen's
book, right, it's right obvious, Right, that's not obvious except to
the degree that they're reverting again to something very primitive, which is friends and
enemies, right right. The enemies are the deplorables. The enemies are the
traditionalists. That's easy to see. And so to the degree that they have
common enemies, they see themselves as natural allies. That's and I was just
going to ask or put pose an option that doesn't go against anything you just
said. Probably is not a conference of explanation. But I have a long
discussion, especially in your part about FUCO. Is it, in some ways
not just the belief that we can be our own gods, but the absolute,
unwavering attempt to undo human nature or to overcome human nature, not just
nature, but not just the technological side of it, but now of course,
to prove that our natures have absolutely no hold on us, and then
we can. I mean, even if you think about radical environmentalism, there's
a certain sense where they're substantial goal is to get rid of all human beings.
Now I get that they don't want to get rid of themselves, but
that you know, they want to stop us from reproducing and do it.
So is it all? Actually? What might what might unite them to some
limited extent, is this belief that they that they have in fact overcome nature.
And every step they go further along those lines you have to get on
board with. Yeah, certainly a rejection of nature is a big part of
it. You know, the self loathing element, there's so many there's so
many different things going on here. You know, Nietzsche talked very perceptively about
the self loathing that comes and he blamed it on biblical monotheism because it elevated
meekness and subservience and humility, and he found that sort of a degrading aspect
of the human condition. That's not necessarily to agree with everything Nat says about
Christianity and Judaism, but he does identify what he called this slave mentality,
and that's that's part of the modern problem too. So again, there's a
lot of different things going on. Well, can we treat some of the
just the philosophical side of this for a moment and have some fun a little
bit, because you say at one point here is page twenty six, you
say something quite provocative and intriguing. You say that Plato is, in crucial
respects the author of our cold civil war, our culture war of the moment.
Oh, this is really fun. I guess maybe the first way to
approach this is uh was Wilmore Kendall you mentioned Harry Newman also said this were
they write when I said she actually Athens had a point and wanting to execute
Socrates, they actually had a decent case against him. Yeah, I think
that's right. Right. You say more about that work. We one of
the things I want to do in my book, and one of the things
that Harry Newman, this other great Claremont professor that you've mentioned, who you
know, co taught a seminar with Harry Joppa. Newman was very good on
this question of the to be political is an essential part of our nature and
you can't ever get rid of the political, uh, you know. Newman
used to say he didn't really think the Last Man. He thought Nitzsche was
sort of wrong about the Last Man. He thought people couldn't live that way,
and that in the end nihilism would always turn to violence because he thought,
he thought the last you know, we see this nowadays. There are
a lot of sort of what Bronze Age Pervert calls the bug men, right,
people who just live in their cubicles and they're sort of dead inside.
How long that can last? And Newman used to say that there's a part
of the human spirit that will always rebel against that, and that's the emphatically
the political, I mean, the spirited part, the themotic part, and
we've sort of forgotten the power of that now. And but to the degree
that uh, liberal institutions are coming apart, one danger is unleashing this themotic
element. One of the things politics does is keep that under control, channel
it right, and if we don't take politics seriously, we risk the spirited,
themotic, angry part of humanity getting out of control. Forgive me for
doing a political thing here, but do you suppose that some thinly thin understanding
of that is the explanation for the incredible pushback not against just Trump, but
the deplorables and especially young people who you talk a lot about, those young
men. I have one of those. I mean, I have one of
those, and it's a little bit rough for somebody like me, you know,
who's been taught about prudence and all those other things to listen to some
of the things that those young men talk about in my house, and they're
radical, and you know they're I won't even say it because I actually I
don't care if they come for me, but I don't want the FBI come
from my kids, So we'll just leave it at that. But there is
a little bit of that most left in that middle flyover America, if even
if they don't understand it, and there's a lot of that tendency on the
part of the elite left to want to squash it so that it doesn't become
something is that Is that an unfair way of applying your brilliant insight? No,
I think that's right. You know, on the for a lot of
young guys on the right, they're called the new right or the Distant Right
or whatever. The base sometimes base right, the base, Um, you
know, they work out, they yeah, but they point out all the
different ways that the establishment, the uniparty and all that is trying to make
them weak. Right, I mean, look, where do we just read
in the news in the last week or two? Working out is fascist?
Right? Right? Sorry? Could you see the headline? Oh yeah,
you see the Babylon Bee headline that club's close for two weeks to slow the
spread of fascist right right. Sorry, Babylon Bee is not a satire paper.
It's actually the greatest news source for the information. Yeah. Right,
So physical fitness is fascist. And look at look at what they've done to
food in this country. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to say
that, you know, the establishment has tried to make our food unhealthy for
the last fifty years. Well, and I will tell you that my own
we don't eat seed oils, We certainly don't eat soy of any kind.
We try to buy organic doesn't do you any good. But I actually buy
a lot of imported food and you know, imported basic ingredients to make things
from scratch, mostly because I'm you know, encouraged to do that. But
the more you look into it, it's just downright scary. What the different.
We had a lovely conversation with our friends from Italy about this. You
know, they have a hard time eating our food because it's gross so bad.
Well, basically, real fun is whenever the government puts out a pyramid
of anything, you should just turn it upside down, right, I mean,
it's a right good way to live. By the way, George McGovern,
did you a little bit of trivia? Did you know that George McGovern
was partially responsible for the food pyramid? I didn't. Doesn't surprise me,
you know, I don't know, because well, he pushed it. He
was He was in Congress at the time and was one of the people pushing
uh, the USDA to promote that, you know, heavy carbohydrates, yeah,
you know, low protein. Well, farm State Senator, this is
a sort of an early version of the ethanol racket in some ways. Right,
it was good for farmers, right, Can I form minute, though,
Lucretia can I and you'll you'll want to jump in on this. Uh
we do a brief detour on Harry Newman that you mentioned, because Lucretian I
both had that seminar with him, him and Jaffa And well we had a
different one than the one that Glenn is referring to. I was in that
one too. Uh. Well, we had the Harry Harry, Dog and
Pony Aristotle show. Yeah, well, not the Niegi nihilism. I took
a class on the right with what I wanted to bring up. One thing
that did happen in our class that bears on Glenn's book. It didn't make
any difference, by the way, what the title of the class was,
Steve, I know that, Okay, Just well, I didn't mean to
contradict you on that. Well, first of all, I'd like to get
your opinion. A lot of us thought that Newman was putting us on that
he wasn't really a nihilist. But the point is, if people didn't take
it directly or weren't persuaded directly by Jaffa Newman, this is one theory Newman
would would try and make them confront at the consequences of their easygoing nihilism,
so that they might absorb the truth or be open to the truth indirectly.
Now, what brings us to mind is something Lucretian I have recalled. I
think it was a winter of nineteen eighty four, and that was when the
McMartin preschool sex sex abuse scandal broke. This was national news, above the
fold every day, and you know, it was the media was all over
this, and it was you know, and as we know later it turned
out to be completely fake, but at the time it just seemed, you
know, the law enforcement believed it, and we have all this evidence quote
unquote pouring out and everything was everything was worse and worse. And I remember
Jaffa one day and Newman agreed with him. Jaffa said, one day,
I don't believe a word of this. This is all phony. It's all
fake. And a lot of us were shocked that we were sort of young
and thought, if the Los Angeles Times as reporting us every day, how
could this possibly be wrong? Per fact? How could you say such an
outrageous thing. Well, it's the contrariness that linked leaks to links to deeper
things for both of them that said this is obviously wrong. Now, of
course we're all very suspicious, whether it's a COVID or other things, because
a rold who have now seen all this right? But I think that connects
to that deeper philosophical question. Let me just well, you're thinking. My
favorite thing that newman ever said to Jaffa, and he used to say it
fairly often, was you don't have to worry. Your liberalism is safe with
me, which, yeah, all right, I have one more provocation.
I mean, have a lot more questions, but one more provocation. You
write in your book. I forget which page it is, but you quote
Strouss talking about how natural right is dynamite, and I got to thinking,
oh, that's kind of makes him sound like Edmund Burke a little, doesn't
it. That's mostly a provocational lucretia. But go ahead and help me out,
Glenn. Yes, But unlike Edmund Burke, I would say for Strouss
it was necessary dynamite or inevitable dynamite. You can't suppress it or get rid
of it or diffuse it. You can try it, you have to be
careful with it, and you can try to control it. But this in
a way goes back to what we were talking about earlier, right that once
you introduce reason into political life, and there's really no getting around that.
You know, part of what you see now on the new right or the
distant right is a reaction against theory and philosophy. Right, let's get an
incident in a way. It goes back to the old paleo conservative critique,
the declaration. Right, let's just focus on tradition and custom and religion,
that pernicious theory out. The problem is, you can't do that. You
can't. You can't. You can in a way turn people into subrational animals.
But first of all, that's not a very elevated or noble way of
living. I mean, the same people who resist theory and philosophy also want
to have noble lives and embrace the beautiful. Uh So you can't get reason
out of out of political life unfortunately. But it does bring in a problem,
that is, once you start thinking, you know, what is the
best way of life, what is the best regime, it does have the
potential to be dynamite. Well, if it's if it's true, if you're
right that Plato is the author of our culture war, that long argument I'll
restate the problem this way. The conventional account, which we all scorn and
you do rightly in your book, is that, well, put it this
way, you take Plato literally, the Republic literally, and the conventional of
you is that theoretical wisdom is superior to practical wisdom. Contemplation is the highest
life over action. But this, uh, is this us some I'm not
quite sure how to put this at some level that is wrong, or certainly
the political level. In other words, prudence and statecraft are hired in contemplation
and philosophy. Am I being completely incoherent here understand what I'm driving at?
I mangled it beyond recognition? Well, uh, yeah, yeah, it
just depends on the way you look at it. I mean, uh,
statesmanship is certainly more important for human life in ninety nine point nine percent of
the cases, and even for the philosopher. And I mean even the philosopher
needs statesmen because the philosopher has to live in at least a semi decent regime,
right, he has to have some time to think. Um, he
has there, you know, he can't be in his date of complete war
of all against all. And so philosophers too needs statesmen. To establish reasonably
just, prosperous, peaceful regimes. Yeah, all right, let me try
to let me approach the same question from a different angle that may be simpler.
One of the things I realize I recognize from your book is a phrase
I've heard a lot from the dissident young right recently that they didn't quite understand.
The phrase will hear from them is the return of the old gods,
a return of the strong gods. And you don't use that phrase directly,
but you explain what that's about, which is this return to tribalism that we
see is a return to something very old, and it's sort of base nature,
irony of people call themselves based right, In other words, it's unphilosophic
politics, which is the war of all against tall. It is my town
and my tribe against your tribe, and let's kill each other if we can't
live together. And so platonic rationalism provides the elevation and the completion of human
nature. And that's my very crude summary of Aristotle. But it's impossible to
have perfect knowledge, right right, So far, so good, I'm you
know, towards the end, you actually it's your final chapter, and what
do we do progress our return? And you talk about how at the beginning
of the metaphysics and the Danima Aristotle search that all men desire to know.
Of course, the premise there is that something can be known, right,
and something true can be known? And you know the way yeah, yeah,
I'll just say one more sentence and then let you go. Let you
both of you have at me. The way I explained the difference between ancient
and modern skepticism, which bears on this problem with science and rationality, is
that socrates skepticism was I know that I know nothing. Modern skepticism is I
know that nothing can be known. And there's a huge gulf between the two.
Yeah, that one I will trademark, but that there's a huge gulf
between the two. And there's our problem. I think your book says an
awful lot of that, right, Yeah, so where to start? So
right, So, for a lot of the dis and right, the return
of the old gods, the strong gods, it means something um, certainly
sub philosophic, right Achilles or something like that, right, warrior, spirit,
militant, you know, strength, nobility, honor um, and all
of those things have their place and they're worthwhile, and our our modern establishment
does way too much to disparage those uh, and it call and the dangers
that it backfires. Um, but we're you know, there's more to human
life than that. Uh. You know, the answer to Alcibides might to
Achilles, might be al Sobides, who had who was also this great warrior,
but also had great respect for Socrates, and Socrates tried to tame him.
And that's a long complicated story. Um. So I have one literary
question to close with, but I'll pause and see from Lucretia has another one
or two things on her mind. She wants to get in. I only
wanted to ask because this is what we often have conversations about out not the
central point of your book, but whether whether you ask an interesting question?
What would conservatives actually do if they you know, if if they could bring
things back, what would they bring them back to? What would what would
be the you can commit? Thank you? What would be the um if
they get to have anything they ask for, what would they want? They
probably don't know, Yeah I could. Here's a sentence from Glenn's book.
If traditional patriotic Americans could somehow win back political power, what would they do
with it. That's what you're asking, right, what well? I'm bringing
up that Glenn said that as a way of asking him if there is,
in fact in our constitution, in our founding principles, a return, a
possible return to those founding principles that can actually that they can solve the central
problem that you talk about, that can bring us back to a certain kind
of tribal or holy city, but based upon that lovely combination of reason Athens
and Jerusalem in a way that they're no longer at a great tension with each
other. Is there a possibility for the people like you and me that even
talk sometimes loosely about revolution, Can we have a revolution taking us back to
founding principles that might be applicable today, which we I think, I hope.
I'm not putting words in your mouth when I say you believe like I
do that because the founding principles of the American regime were based upon a fundamental
understanding of human nature, they are still applicable today. Just knowing having the
prudential wisdom to be able to figure out how they would apply today is really
the hard question, in my opinion. Would you agree with that? Yes?
So this is always the sixty four thousand dollar question. Everyone wants to
know what to do, and it's very, very difficult. You know,
if you could somehow wave a magic wand and say we want to recover you
know, the you know, the founder's legacy, the best part of the
past, what year would you go back to? And that's a very difficult
question. And I don't know that you would even get even among ten very
intelligent people on the right, you know. Charles Kessler, sort of riffing
off of Strauss's Three Waves of Modernity essay, wrote a famous essay called the
three Waves of Liberalism, and he points out that the first wave the progressives,
that's now more than one hundred years ago, and then the second wave
was the economic revolution by FDR, and then the cultural revolution in the sixties,
and we're now well passed the third wave. So how far back do
you have to go? And then how feasible is that? Right? Can
you go back to an eighteenth century set of institutions with digital capitalism and the
internet and you know, the rise of China and the nation, you know,
And so in a way, this another to quote another strousse line,
I think, is this at the beginning of CD Man, we can't simply
recreate the past. We can only look to the past to give us lessons,
and we must find our own solutions today. And I think the challenge
for the right is to figure out what part of our institutions don't work anymore,
which can be what parts we have to keep? How do the principles
apply? But we can't simply go back to some arbitrary year in the past.
I think, yeah, it's pretty well agreed on. All right,
last question and we'll let you go. Glenn. As I said at the
beginning, so remarkably compact book, seventy nine pages. The temptation for anybody
like you and I is to write a long book right every pagere you go
on for a much longer time. And so I guess what I'm asking is
is what to inspire you to write this book and keep it so compact?
And then the follow up question is do you have something else on the drawing
board as a sequel or what might be next for Glenn Elmer's So this started
out as an essay. I've been thinking about these things for a long time,
and I just I'm one of these people. Partly everyone does this right?
In order to think something through, I start writing it down in order
to explain it to myself. So I wanted to write this essay just to
understand this idea of you know, how does Strauss's template about the unfolding of
modern philosophy help explain the work regime crisis? And it just kept getting a
little too longer and longer, and it became too long to publish as an
essay anywhere, or even as a book chapter. But then I figured I
had sort of said what I wanted to say just on this particular point,
and it ended up being, you know, too long for an essay,
just barely long enough for a book. And encounter thought, so yeah,
you know, it's a short book, but a very long a little too
long to be an essay. Yeah. The second point is, yes,
I'm working on so there's more I think to be said on this now.
I'm looking very closely at Max Weber and want Max are called the problem of
polytheism or values fears, which I think we're something we're still living with.
You know, Weber was in a way the smartest post Nietzsche and social scientists
in Strauss paid very close attention to him, and I think awful lot and
Theabor also influenced the postmodernists, like for Co and others, and I think
there's a lot more to be gotten out of Favor that I think is relevant
today. Oh, this is going to be so much fun because I have
kind of a not really literally this way, I have a bit of a
fanboy crush on Vabor just to drive Lucretia crazy because she she scolds me all
the time for referring the maxim. No. I think there's a lot there,
Glenn, and I will look forward to that work. Yeah, congratulations,
Glen, We're gonna let you go. And you was having me.
It's always great on the show. I appreciate it, right, take care
Glenn, Glenn. Well, gosh, I could talk to Glenn all day,
and uh, I'm gonna look forward to his work on Max Weber because
it allowed me to need to use them more. But I'm just like I
say, I'm glad Glenn can read it and understand it and he can make
it accessible for me because ought to want to do it. I'll just say
this for now. I mean, yes, a lot of Max Weber is
just mind numbingly dull, but here and there especially the two famous vocation lectures
from nineteen nineteen, shortly before he died of the Spanish flu by the way,
I think, are much more interesting reading, and much more thoughtful,
and much more troubling in the sense that he realized that Weber was spotting problems
that he didn't have good answers for. Let's leave that for now, and
you know, some other time we'll take it up with Glenn. Let's say
one more worried about judiciary. I was talking about, you know, administrative
law and administrative state. But I think I sent you Alan Dershowitz. Is
you know I've met Hwitz a couple of times now, Yeah, I like
Dershwitz personally. I mean I said to him when he had him at Berkeley
two or three years ago, said, what happened to the world that after
I really hated you in the eighties, I really like you. Now did
the world change that we change? What happened? And it was a fun
conversation, But I thought of articles. Would you argue, Steve, Sorry,
I hate to interrupt you, but I have to ask you this question
about Alan der Schwitz. Would you argue that, because he is what we
might call an old fashioned liberal. Yeah, that he himself can. And
I think that that article actually proves my point. Cannot stomach the kind of
intersectionality and complete complete rejection of rationality and human nature that the new left has
taken, and that because of that, he's really not any farther to the
right than he ever was, but the left has gone so far the other
direction. We have more common cause with him than we would have, say,
twenty five or thirty years ago. Do you think that's a true explanation
or not? Really? Not quite. I don't think he's that philosophical however,
but maybe, but in the light sense he is. And here's why
I think that, Yeah, he's a little liberal. But I as I
look back now, he first started defecting from the leftist party line. You
remember how Glenn was saying a few minutes ago that you know, the left
all believed the same things, where it's climate change or labor unions, these
things that seemed you know, abortion, they seem not directly connected, but
they always are for the left. Dershwitz, starting twenty years ago or more,
started noticing that anti Semitism was spreading and accepted on the left. Because
he's a big defender of Israel, and I think he started connecting the dots
because the people who are or anti Semitic are also leftists in many other causes.
And he started saying, if they're wrong about Israel, they're probably wrong
about a lot of these other things too, and so that's reasonable and the
common sense meaning of the word explanation of it and so, and that's fine.
I mean, I'll take that. But this article saying, oh gosh,
or a war, and he would have been right there with Robertson Thomas,
and I thought, oh, you know, well, you just don't
read carefully enough. Alan. I hate to say it, and I was
the argument I learned from you, really and that earlier, that if you
read Brown carefully and some of the other cases from the Warren era, you
realize what the part of our problem the last twenty thirty years was the messages
they created, and that Anthony Kennedy perpetuated. So well, I think Anthony
Kennedy perpetuated them. But I have a hard time he doesn't give any citations,
so I assume you'll link to it, Steve. But what Dershowitz says
is he had a conversation with Warren, and Warren indicated that he was committed
to the notion of a color blind constitution. Now, if you'll recall,
in one one of our podcasts with John You, John You claimed that the
reason claimed, or at least intimated that the reason that Warren chose the path
he took, which we'll talk about momentarily, rather than say citing the very
famous descent of John Marshall Harland, Justice John Marshall Harland and plus versus Ferguson
where he says our constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes amongst citizens,
etc. That the reason Warren didn't go for that is because he wanted
a unanimous decision and the only way to get everybody to go along with it
was a stupid psychological bs that he goes on and so forth. I pushed
back on John for a variety of different reasons, which you can imagine yourself.
What Dershowitz is trying to say is he doesn't give us a reason why
Brown doesn't do the things that he claims it does or sort of hints that
it does. But he says, yeah, I had a conversation with Warren,
and he because he was committed to this colorblind constitution stuff. That's why
he issued the Brown decision and hasn't hasn't been wonderful. And that's just it's
nonsense, Steve, It's absolutely nonsense. But remember, remember we did an
entire podcast on some buddy who had um said this is the plus e versus
Ferguson's descent, Harlan's descent was the basis for Brown, and tried to make
that argument, you know, and then what we see too is is canteningy.
Well, no, wait a minute, I think you should. I
think you should. Well no, I didn't mean that. I was gonna
say, I think you should maybe retire that one and just use President Biden's
name for Justice Sea Calls or Ken G. Brown Justice Ken G. Brown.
Joe, I know, sorry I interrupted you, but no, no,
it's all right, you're you're perfectly well. No, here's the problem
again. We don't need to go through the whole thing because Steve wrote a
really fine blog post about it, and I actually want you to link to
that blog post so that anybody who's interested in this conversation right now can just
go read it, and we don't have to reproduce it. The short story
is round versus Board of Education, upholds plus e versus Ferguson. They just
find a different psychological The evolution of psychology has gone in such a direction that
feeling bad about race is a bad thing as opposed to a good thing.
And therefore, if you feel bad about your race, that has a really
bad effect on public education. If you feel good about being separated by your
race and you are a member of a minority, then maybe no problem.
Maybe there'll be no problem, which is of course exactly what happens. And
so you have Pet arguing about what she calls the myth of a colorblind society.
Right. The problem with that, there's so many problems, but the
most basic problem with it is there isn't. Actually, she's right, there
is no colorblind society. That's absolutely true. But there is a colorblind constitution.
And that's the point that what Roberts but especially Thomas makes absolutely clear is
that the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause, and in general, the whole thrust
of constitutional principles are that equality before the law definitely does not include taking account
of race. That there is no such thing as taking account of race.
To get beyond race, you know all of that. But the point is
when she says that it's a myth to say that we have a colorblind society.
Nobody said there was a colorblind society. And in fact, as you
pointed out in our last podcast, Steve, that we know that there was.
The Supreme Court has never, up until the case, the Harvard case,
even hinted that that's what they wanted. Yeah, you know, there's
never been an edict from the Supreme Court, a rationale in a majority decision
that said our constitution is color blind. Yeah, so you know, well,
your reference the fact that the political explanation often given as well, Warren
wanted to have unanimous chord for its political force. Okay, that's move yuck.
Yeah right, Well, but see I can conversely say, you know,
I wonder if maybe Warren always shied away from a direct confrontation with racial
classification because it would cast a bad light on his role in the Japanese internment
of World War Two. I don't know. Well, look, I mean,
if you know, if you're going to make up the stuff about either
political reasons for the writing the Brown decision the way he did, there's a
bigger reason now and I've mentioned this before, but this is the perfect place
to bring it up. The precursor case from what nineteen forty eight about law
schools Sweat versus Painter. I think it's a point I wanted to go back
and find a record of the oil argument in that case, because had the
arcus told me once that there's a moment where as he recalled Justice Wiley,
Rutledge says to the person arguing for the plant if, why don't why don't
you ask us just to declare all racial classifications unconstitutional under the protection clause of
the fourteenth Amendment and the law. I know how it went, the lawyer
said in his memoirs afterwards, I proceeded to give Justice Rutledge ten minutes of
pure bullshit. In other words, he didn't say, yes, you should
do why not? I think from very early on it was always intended to
reserve the possibility that you could have racial classifications for the purpose of redistribution of
wealth reparations, right, And they never wanted the court to actually do what
the Court has finally done here two weeks ago. Yes, exactly, that's
right, right, and uh, and you know we saw I think we've
mentioned you have justice. Brennan. I think it was saying, you know,
we've never recognized the color blind constitution in the backy case. Right,
So anyway, this is uh, you know, gets curious or and curious
or the longer you go. Well, and quite frankly, it was not
the opinion of conservative justice is other than Thomas. Until recently it was even
conservatives were unwilling to make that principle stand. I guess if you're if you're
a rankdist or Scalia positivist, then you know, the whole idea that there's
a principle of equality enshrined in equality before the law, that's not something that's
not a way you want to go. You want to appeal instead, which
is okay. I mean the appeal to fundamental fairness, the idea that you
don't make somebody who is not part of the injury part of the remedy.
You know, you don't punish an innocent person who's never discriminated, who didn't
own any slaves. You know, you don't do those things in order to
prefer someone else. And in a zero sum game, that's exactly what happens
in Harvard admissions, medical schooled admissions, and so on. But there have
been so few people in between Marshall, John Marshall, Harlan excuse me in
eighteen ninety six and Clarence Thomas in twenty twenty three who were even willing to
argue the fundamental principle of the rule of law and equal protection before the law
that is enshrined and was intended to be enshrined by the fourteenth Amendment. And
when when I mean that's maybe in my entire life. The only thing that
cantin ye Jackson Brown ever says with which I will agree, and that is
that the myth of a colorblind society. We don't have a color We have
a society that is obsessed with the question of race at every level. We
can no longer was it California or was it I don't Chicago. That's going
to automatically reduce the sentences of black black's convicted talking about that somewhere. Of
course, I don't, right, we are obsessed with it. Yeah.
One one more stray thought from something you said a minute ago. The Brown
decision rested on psycholog iCal evidence. That's that segregated schools made black people feel
inferior. We'd say these days lowered your self esteem. Well, here we
are today, and what do you see. We're resegregating universities, we have
black housing, we have these separate ethnic graduations. Why do we do that
because it makes them happier? I mean, it isn't the claim right,
this is good for their right, there's no there's no stigma, that's you
know, good for their So in other words, the even the central prop
of brown has been reputated by the left so well. And I would go,
so go one step further than that, and and look at some of
the attempts to provide cover for KTNG in the left, you know different,
uh, that they really have to work hard to try and overcome. What
is very obvious to people, anybody with any intelligence whatsoever, is that she
doesn't have any That she is absolutely unqualified to be on the Supreme Court.
She has know, she doesn't have what we would call a legal mind.
You know, she's no Richard Epstein, she's no John Marshall. She would
probably I mean, if she wrote something like that descent for as a case
brief in my class, I'd have failed her for it because the arguments are
so stupid and bad. But what do you expect and the point I have
to bring it up again because it's such a good point that John made a
couple of weeks ago when the case first came out. This is the problem
with affirmative action, and maybe it's will be the left sundoing, which is
that across so many different important occupations, merit matters. Merit matters, And
I don't care if my doctor. I don't care what color my doctor is.
I kind of like them not to have an accent so thick that I
can't understand them, because but beyond that, you know what, if you're
the best doctor, that's who I want. I couldn't care less what color
your skin is, what sex you or any of those things. I do
you care if the person is there just because they happened to be the right
color and they didn't have the merit to do what they needed to do.
But remember, medical schools no longer use tests, yeah at all. They
don't. You pass or you fail. And I mean it's United. Steve
likes to fly United. I'm a little iffy about it because United has made
it very clear that their entire pilot staff is now subject to very strict quotas
did you know that. Well, yeah, I'm also skeptical they're really going
to go through that. But let's draw a veil over that will to be
continue. We're going to return to all these issues and as we go forward,
and I think we should move on to our closer, which actually involves
the same subject in different contexts, our affirmative action. Right, the other
lady whose name you like to actuate, John's not here to do our camela
Ism of the week, so we'll have to do it for him. I
was telling Steve before we got started today that I actually was listening to something
on as I was driving today, and they started off with Kamala's latest word
salad, which I'm going to read for you here, and then they actually
went through a nice montage of all of her ridiculous word salads, which we
don't need to do here because we had actually covered every single one of them
at some point or another. But she and another affirmative action of pointy,
Pete Buddha Jedge hosted a round table with disability rights leaders, and she was
complaining about how inaccessible airline bathrooms are, right and and this is the crisis
of our time, and you know, so she got she got lots of
grief about the fact that, you know, with all the crises out there,
the fact that airline bathroom which are no fun for anybody, thank you.
I mean, nobody wants to use them if they don't have to,
they usually do have to anyway. So she makes this comment, I have
to get it right. It is, well, there's a tweet about it,
but that I have. But well you have the treat. But this
is what she actually said talking about how important it was. This issue of
transportation is fundamentally about just making sure that people have the ability to get where
they need to go. It's that basic. Yeah, here's your tweet for
the middle of the week. It came out of nowhere. The majority of
domestic flights do not have accessible restrooms. This is absolutely unacceptable. Our administration
will soon announce a solution to help end this inequity. So inequity, by
the way, I think she said most so maybe it's correct. I think
the latest generation of why bodies, the Triple sevens and seven eighty sevens,
they do have a wheelchair accessible bathrooms on them, but they're bigger planes.
Do they have the chair accessible aisles? Uh? Well, yeah, they
have those little skinny wheelchairs they bring people on, right, So how you
Okay, it's what do you do if you're one of those heavy set people
that the only reason you're in a wheelchairs because you're too fat to walk?
Well, okay, that's uh, that's sorry. Sorry, I'm being rotten.
Yeah, that's uh. Well, my question is are they going to
get into aircap craft design now? No more likely because there's a mandate that
uh, you know, airlines have to reptrofit or seven thirty sevens, which
are well, let's sometimes fly allway across the country, but to take out
two rows to put in a wheelchair accessible restroom and I don't know. I
mean, that's you know, and part of me doesn't feel too sorry for
the airlines after all the money they got during COVID anyway, So well,
yeah, there's I know, I'm all over the place tonight. I do
want to follow on that, however, with the Babylon v quote, because
she was also um, as we all know, she is the Aiyes are
for the Biden administration. Oh right, that's so, And this is not
exactly her quote. It's actually very close to this though, because I heard
the quote. But this is from the Babylon be In a speech given this
week, Vice President and Artificial Intelligences are Kamala Harris probably announced it. After
months of dedicated research and extensive study, she has determined what the initials AI
stand for. This discovery, she says, is the result of intense research.
It is with great pride that I am here to let the world know
that the letters AI actually stand for artificial intelligence. That's the part she did
say. At no point in the history of AI has this secret been known.
I have gained this knowledge and now know this knowledge, because after you
gain knowledge, you then know it. This is how knowledge works. And
then she cackles. The part she said was that the letters AI actually stand
for artificial intelligence. You can go jokes all day on her discovering artificial intelligence
when she hasn't having natural intelligence themselves. Don't say, Steve, all right,
let's get out. We're starting to urge on going too long. Let's
see what John usually says, always drink your whiskey, neat, Let's go
Brandon and God saved the Queen Man. God saved the Queen Man. John
will be back this next week, but for now, Bye bye, everybody.
Thanks for listening. U No, no, you nervous at the end.
Just keep this means that once I've gone your devotion. Sweet come to
me, I got a whole mass case for your recreation. Some sorry asked
me something gap betweet janations, your raoul. You have bepted, tell me,
tell you right to the world, the worlds attention. Don't be school.
Pleaside your hand and on like it's going down the giant to you know,
until you know the love creation. Sweet rail, come to me,
I got are so sorry as sweetserations see Ricochet join the conversation.