What over this shoulder is my GK. Chesterton show? I can't GK.
Chesterton's shelf? And up there's C. S. Lewis, Damn Thomas s.
Yeah, I'm saying quick, quick, funny story for you. Where
the where are your where are your diverse? Where's your where's your Oh that's
it's a lot of It's not a frame, it's over. Yeah, they're
there. They're there with the in the science fiction fantasy section. Ask not
what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your
country. Mister Gorbachew, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with
Stephen Hayward sitting in for Peter Robinson and Rob Long. No, he's not
sitting in for both. Rob's here me too. I'm James Lolacks and today
we talk about just about everything. So let's aversos a podcast. You go.
Twenty seventeen matifest Day said you've reduced that migration to tens of thousands.
You know. Twenty nineteen matifest Day said immigration would massively reduced. Why on
earth should anybody believe the Fifth Manifesto the promises cuts into that migration because of
the record of this Prime Minister. So we've had. Welcome everybody. It's
the Ricochet podcast number six hundred and ninety six, or if you flip it
upside down at nine hundred and sixty nine. I'm James Linacks in Minneapolis,
Minnesota recently voted the happiest city in the country. I know I'm not doing
my part, so there has to be somebody who's out there strewing flowers Tralla
lying throughout the day. Rob Long is in New York. Stephen Hayward is
somewhere. We'll get to that in just a second here, but I just
want to say that when I came into this conversation a few minutes ago,
I heard Rob Loong saying that Joe Biden was conceived when the results of the
war, when the outcome of the war was not yet certain. And I
wonder what there's some sort of mythological thing that you were talking about where a
child was born and the tides of battle changed. Bring people up to speed,
because you were having a fast we were trying to talk about the well
Steve and I, by the way, welcome Steve, thank you for sitting
in. We were talking about how the among the many horrible things about this
presidential campaign year. Maybe one of the most horrible will be that both of
these sides are going to probably spend somewhere between you know, half a billion
and a billion dollars showing endless footage of the other guy at his most doddering
and incoherent, and it is not It's just not going to be our best
look. And I was thinking, like, so, these guys technically boomers
are not well. Trump is technically a boomer. He's forty six, right,
forty five, forty six and then and Biden was forty two. I
think so, I mean they're they're three and a half years apart, whatever
it is, So they are I think boomer or either boomer or the Greatest
generation, which is the I the irony, most ironic thing. And I
was just thinking that maybe Joe Biden was conceived since you asked James in between
Pearl Harbor and Midway, the Battle Midway, which is a very uncertain time.
And I'm not an astrologer, but I was an astrologer, I would
say he was already born during world instability. Yeah, now, Rob,
I'm not as down on Trump as you are, although I have lots of
criticisms, but My mind keeps running back to the famous Henry Adams quip that
the progression of presidents from George Washington to Ulysses Grant single handedly disproved the theory
of what would he say? Now? Why don't he? Trump is being
I don't get doddering vibes from Trump. I mean, may he may gesticulate
and say interesting things while on the stump, but he's not right. But
he's not standing there with an absolutely vacant look on his face and the expression
of somebody who's just taken a fifty milligrams gummy about ten minutes ago and is
wandering off to talk to a parachuter that he's imagined in his mind. I
mean, the difference between the two in vitality seems to be stark. That's
absolutely true. Yeah, I just think we're gon have to decide whether we
want crazy drunk uncle who doesn't make any sense but is you know he's in
the conversation, or Grandpa, Grandpa, you know, stay away from the
light. You know that guy. I don't know. I just look,
you make your peace with what you got, right, you know, it
danced with the one that brung you. You go with the old guy that
makes you the least nervous, which is kind of an I think, a
new thing for American voters. Does he really though? I mean, it
is what people look at that and they see, all right, four years
have elapsed. We didn't think that he was actually the sharpest attack in the
bin in a little who's the you mean Biden four years ago and now?
I mean Paul Ryan was talking the other day about the difference between Biden now
and the guy that he debated, and if you just conjured that back in
your mind, you remember Biden being sharp and being an absolute jerk and being
quick and all the rest of it. That isn't who he is right now.
And it's interesting that they say, well, you know in private,
In private, he's incredibly engaged in sharp But for some reason, we've just
decided that when he goes out in public, he's going to behave like somebody
who's got a brain full of tappyoka who's been piffed. So yeah, yeah,
I mean, dance with the one who bring you. I didn't bring
him. He brought us to this point where we have to choose between him
with the possibility of Kamala Harris as the president. And former years of Donald
Trump, which people are red conning into something of a golden age. And
you know how much red how much red conning is actually involved if you take
out the last year in Jay six, which admittedly is a lot, I
don't know, but I mean, I again am stunned at that we're at
this place and fully, fully prepared to admit that everything that I said about
the impossibility of a second Trump term is wrong. Trust nothing I say going
forward? Right, feel the same way? Well? Yeah, Well,
you know interesting thing about Trump that I just noticed the other day that he
not only wants to win, we know that, but it looks like he
may actually want to govern. And so we know that in twenty twenty two
he endorsed a lot of terrible candidates, you know Oz in Pennsylvania, herschel
Walker and Georgia. Well, this cycle, he has first of all,
endorsed a number of more moderate, non MAGA candidates against by the way,
people who had endorsed him previously. So he's on the side of candidates who
can win in Virginia and a few other states. Second, he has endorsed
some people for reelection who were for Ron DeSantis and who criticized him, and
that's showing me that he's learned something. No, maybe not much, but
I mean I think he's learned from his mistakes. And that suggests to me
someone that you might have a little bit more optimism about if he wins,
which I think he will. I think he could easily win. I'm not
sure. I don't know where I put my money down. I think whoever
I put my money down, is I'd lose. I kind of get your
I get your point. I just despair of the phrase. I know.
I think he's ready to govern after four years of just complete disarray. I
think he's ready to like to make the tough choices, which I think he's
not. I mean, full disclosure, I was not a big fan to
begin with, but I just find his behavior during COVID to be unforgivable and
then after the election to be unforgivable. It depends, I mean, what,
okay, what do we mean by governing exactly? Though? I mean,
well, yeah, I mean that's right. Do we believe in a
laser focused, sharp Donald Trump who will engage with the Congress on an atomic
level in order to push through the planks of the things that he's crafted and
written. Yeah, but answer the two ways. The one way is just
the slow. I agree with Steve that he does seem to be making smarter
choices. There's a news out today that he might may actually endorse uh for
the senator from Marilyn Larry Hogan, who was the former republic very very popular
Republican governor, has a really good shot at becoming the first Republican Senator from
Maryland in a long long time. But who did say, hey, listen,
we got to whatever. He said something which we consider anodyne and cliche
after the New York jury return to conviction and then was roundly attacked by Trump
Eunichs and acolytes and the courtiers in his circle, including his own idiotic daughter
in law, and said, well, no Republican should ever stand for this
guy. Should be drummed out of the party. And a couple of weeks
later Trump, I think if he does this, he'll be really smart,
says, why do I care if I could pick up an R in Maryland?
We should be picking up an arm Maryland. And he's moronic daughter in
law should have known that as the leader of the party before she opened her
stupid Now I mean, I'll just be super blunt for once. But the
second thing is is this is like and I know that when he does that,
the daughter in law now runs through RNC will slavish and in coweringly backtrack
everything she has said. And so there is a kind of a Donald Trump
sort of circle of people who are courtiers and eunuchs and kind of like even
JD. Vance who like said incredibly mean things about him, now bows and
scrapes for this man. That's not great. It's also not great that,
on the other hand, we have a president who is probably out of it,
and we have a country and a commander in chief who is incapacitated mentally,
and so the country is being run by bureaucrats and political appointees, and
that is not how it's supposed to go. And especially for me, those
particular appointees who are all far, far, far more left wing than your
ordinary American or even probably your ordinary Democrat. This point so not good.
Well, if you're saying that we have the choice now between sycophants and prevaricators,
this has this has characterized the American political scene from time to time.
I think Stephen Stephen rob made an interesting point that the people who are handling
Biden and the rest of it are are much more are much more progressive?
Are our squad adjacent, if not squattish themselves. Do you think that that
side is an ascendant or are they sort of tamping it down for the for
the sake of seeming moderate during the election, or or what if we saw
another Biden turn? I mean, if you remember when Biden got in,
it was going to be Green New Deal, it was going to be FDR,
you know, three point zero since Obama was two point zero, I
guess, and we know what happened to that the Green New Deal foundered.
We got infrastructure spending in the trillion, which has resulted, I think in
one EV charger in Pembera, North Dakota. Uh. You know, do
they still have after four years a lot of steam in the engine, a
lot of gas in the tank to make another run at finally nailing for good
this country, locking it in new into a progressive future. Oh? Look,
I think the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has an iron lock on
it. And they also live in a bubble. I mean, they really
do. Look, if you only read the New York Times, your ideas
are never challenged, and they really aren't aware of how deeply unpopular a lot
of their ideas are. Let me just pick out two things from the last
couple of weeks I find significant. One is CBS has a brand new poll
out three four days ago and it said, gosh, the race is dead.
Even well, there's some real breaking news. You had to get way
down in the poll and the CBS story to find a really stunning finding,
which was that sixty two percent of respondence as registered voters favor a federal program
to deport illegal aliens. And that has that number has doubled in the last
three four years. And that's why immigration is either number one or number two.
It was never that high until the last three years of complete dereliction at
the border. Second one is a little thing that I'm amazed hasn't gotten more
attention, and I'm trying to write a little piece about it. About two
weeks back, the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm gave a speech where she
said the United States needs to triple its nuclear power capacity over the next twenty
thirty years if we're going to meet our climate targets. And you know that's
heresy to you know, what I call oldsmobile environmentalism from the seventies. But
it's also a recognition of reality, which is you're not going to be able
to power all these AI data centers and all the other things in industrial country
needs with wind and solar power and batteries. But the next question then is,
well, all right, fine, are you going to do regulatory reform
that's going to make it possible to build Oh she even said maybe we need
to reopen some of the nuclear plants we've closed down. Well, well,
that could cause riots in New York and the Hudson with the plant, right,
And so I was staggered by that announcement. And as I say,
the question is, are they're going to be serious about it and propose real
regulatory reforms so we can build nuclear plants at a reasonable cost and in a
reasonable timeframe. And I'm very doubtful about that. It is almost more likely
that these new new plants, and you know, these hypothetical new plants make
it through the regulatory you know, hurdles, and it takes longer for that
to happen than for us to invent a brand new kind of energy cold fusion
or like the solar mass some like or some some of the windmills work.
I mean, I mean, I think I've told this before. The story.
A friend of mine tells me the story, like he was a kid
growing up in Long Island and his family they make they at that time,
they had a little factory. Family fact, they make tiger counters and all
sorts of other kind of nuclear stuff, the nuclear is stat as nuclear scientists.
He now is kind of a nuclear physicist, brainiac. And he remembers
as a kid, he's my age, so I guess he was like fifteen
sixteen, middle of the night, flashing lights. New York State troopers come
to his house, bang on the door, Wake up the dad, you
got to come with us. There's been a nuclear disaster at a place called
Three Mile Island and we need all and we need your help. And so
dad went and they did all the stuff. His dad to this day,
and I think his dad has now passed on, but he remembers as a
kid just growing up, and the rule in the house was that this was
a perfect example of the stupidity of people in general, because nothing happened at
Three Mile Island. There was no meltdown. The system actually totally worked there
was no leakage, nobody got anything. Everybody's fine, this is a proof
that it works. That is not the story that we hear. No,
of course, not because Jane Vonda made a movie in which Michael Douglas as
a cameraman went yes when somebody said there was a conspiracy to cover up the
deficiencies. And because also at that time we were coming out of a period
where we didn't think that America could build anything or do anything. Our sky
labs fell from the sky arago. It's made sense that our shoddy nuclear powers,
built on the cheap for profit, it would kill us off. And
the other thing was Chernobyl. Of course, Chernobyl was a completely different kind
of reactor run by idiot's full state of and collectivists, and naturally you got
what you got. So between the two of those, we couldn't have that.
And then we had in the entire eighties we had the We had an
anti nuclear movement in which our best and brightest intellects such as wood Willie Nelson
or Bruce Springsteen would get up and play concerts against nuclear energy and weapons.
You know, anything that really had to do with Adams, you know,
the stuff that's spinning around like that. We don't like it, all of
which, of course was powered by immense coal or you know, gas fired
stuff, which is now of course it has to be stricken from the planet
lest Miami be submerged by a yard high wave imminently. Yeah, all of
that was wrong, and nobody ever took a nobody ever took responsibility for it.
And now we're coming to the fact where when the secret what a democratic
secretary of energy says this, then we must be ten years behind the inevitability
and the necessity of it. So it's very interesting in the two things that
you noticed there, Stephen. The first one is what interests me most because
this twins with what's going on in Europe. Europe has been having these elections
where somebody said, amusing, you know, Germany gave the vote to young
people, to you know, to a younger cohort, thinking well, they're
young, they'll vote left. No, they voted in a different fashion.
And so now you have the government, you have the left wing in France
scrambling to put together coalitions from the Moderates to the trotsky Ies in order to
defeat the rise of the far right. And you have the far right coalicing
around some people that they don't like in order to do what. Immigration is
suddenly, all of a sudden, something people seem to be able to talk
about in European politics. I mean in some of the Scandinavian countries, you
know, the guardrails were there where it simply wasn't discussed. But as we
know, this doesn't make the issue go away. It breeds a lot of
people who are very keen on talking about it a lot. So guys,
give me your thoughts on what you think Europe is doing. Well, Steve,
you just came back, Well, okay, I'll go for I was
gonna let you go first, Rob, because you know France better than I
do, because you know we'll get different fan right, Yeah, yeah.
So I was in Hungary for two weeks, right on the eve of the
parliamentary elections that took place last Sunday, and I was telling Rob before you
went on that I watched some of the Hungarian TV. I don't know the
language, but you could actually figure out what the political ads were saying,
and the ones from Victor Orban's FIDEJ party were all saying, you know,
vote for us, because if you vote for the other guys. You're going
to get the influence of George Sorows, You're going to get more Muslim immigrants
crammed down our throat by the European Union, which, by the way,
a European court just said they must do just the last two three days and
oh and then we're gonna have world War three with Russia. That was also
one of the main messages. And yeah, two weeks ago Saturday, I
watched about a three hundred thousand people march through Budapest in the Peace March.
You're very worried over there that we don't know what we're doing in Ukraine.
I think there's good reason for them to that, and that they're the ones
at risk if nuclear weapons start going off, or if it escalates or there's
a war with NATO. I'll add this a little bit. I mean,
most Americans don't know that Hungary was the biggest loser of the World War One
settlement. They lost two thirds of their territory and about half of their population
was hived off and given to other countries, and so the country shrank.
So they're not terribly impressed with claims that Ukraine's territorial integrity is of utmost importance
to the world. I guess I kind of get that, but you know,
most Americans aren't aware of that sentiment. They have more broadly though,
Yes, you put your finger on something important, James, that younger voters
who used to be probably half the vote for the Green Party in Germany,
they've turned sharply away from the Green Party, and it's the Green Party in
these stupid coalitions they have in parliamentary governments. Their sole demand is get rid
of nuclear power, and Germany has foolishly done that. Last thing I'll say
is I did an energy tour of Germany fifteen years ago now as a guest
of the government, and you spent a week to ring all their fancy stuff.
And my conclusion at the end was the two most magical words in the
English language are German engineering. I was actually kind of unimpressed. But the
important thing was, at that time, I think Merkle had just come to
power or was about to, and everybody we met said, we can't possibly
meet our emissions targets for twenty twenty or twenty thirty. This is two thousand
and eight. I was there unless we keep our nuclear power, and they
didn't They freaked out after Fukushima, And now I think Germany is going to
have to talk about reopening the plants they've got otherwise. Right now, you
know what they're doing. They're going back to burning lignite coal, which is
the dirtiest kind of coal. So there you go, Rob, Why do
you think it is that the youth of Europe, who have been inculcated from
cradle to believe in the glorious transnational future in which all nationalities are washed away
into a glorious European soup broth? Why do you think that they are all
of a sudden saying, wait a minute, hold on, we have a
culture. I want it, I would like it to be in this particular
form. Well, they kind of aren't already saying that. They've been saying
that for two thousand years. I mean, these are these are cultures that
have been fighting about bizarre to Americans, bizarre differences that we don't even what
are you talking about? Alsace. Lorraine is like, how can you you're
all the same? Like I was a kid, I lived in southern Holland,
and like the Dutch would like make these elaborate distinctions between you do you
live in robots now like you're practically Belgium and Belgian. The Belgians are just
our mystery to the Dutch, even though they speak basically the same language,
a little bit of French, and they eat French fries like everybody else.
They've actually they perfected French fries. We should call French fries Belgian fries to
be fair. And then and the French find the Belgians to be absolutely baffling.
Who are these people that live, you know, one mile there on
the other side of this river. So they've been, you know, better
for worse. They've been expressing their own national identity for a long time,
and even when they were parts of larger empires, they still had this powerful
national identity. Even the Roman Catholic the Pope would refer to the Catholic Church
in the English Catholic Church as the Church in England because it was like so
weird and different. So even after the Protestant Reformation, there wasn't that weird
because they were already very English and not very Roman. But I will say
a couple of years ago I was in Budapest, and I will now name
drop. I had a small gathering with the once in future and let's hope
not forever President of Hungary, Victor Orbon. It was sort of a charming
guy, kind of a big, garrulous guy. He's like a buncular character,
speaks good English, makes good jokes, kind of dragged us all out
to the patio. Was in the in the pest part the castle district,
I think that's the past part, that's the budapart, and like it gave
us a tour of the horizon you're looking at, you know, pointing out
all this stuff. He's like really really charming guy. And most of the
people there were very sympathetic. Some of them were not, but most of
them were very sympthetic. And I was struck by two things. One is
that his own people, a guy named Orba. I don't know how if
I told you the story ready, the guy named Orbon ballas or Orbon.
Very smart guy, very smart guy. And in the meeting it was like
chiming in and correcting Victor and kind of disagreeing with him here or there and
amending things and basically being you know, surprisingly jerky for the guy who works
for the I mean I was impressed by but guy works for the strong man,
and I thought, oh, well, of course he's Bolage Orbon and
he's just it's just dad, daddy Orbon or uncle Orbon. He's like he's
in the family. And someone said, no, no, no, they
are not related Orban, it's just a common name. So basically, so
Victor Orban has a kind of a large coffee clatch of people looks like who
you hit the ball back really hard for him. And the second thing he
said was we were talking about nationalism and is that a problem, and people
wanted to be a problem here, and he said, look, we're Hungarian
culture. We speak Hungarian, we have music and food and language and poetry
and our own epic poem. We have been hungry, the nation of Hungary
free for maybe twelve years, maybe twenty five years all in, from the
beginning of time to now. And so we really is the first time we've
actually had an idea that we're going to be hungry for a long time.
We're not going to be part of an Austro Hungarian empire right part of the
Roman Empire. We're not going to be part of a Soviet empire. We're
not going to be this weird interregnum after some peace process that didn't really work.
This could be it. Can we just enjoy it for a little bit?
No, he said, can we just be Hungarians for I give us
fifty years? No, fifty years from now. I don't know. Let
everybody in, it's fine, but can we just enjoy being Hungarian and Hungarians
in the country of Hungaria or Hungary for just a little bit more? And
I found that to be very persuasive and also hard to deny. And his
point is it's one thing for the French and the English and the Dutch and
the Germans to have this decad an idea about letting everybody in and what's going
to be the problem. But it's another thing if you're just started, you're
just this new country and the idea that you're just going to well now,
we're not going to be now. We're part of a European bureaucratic empire that
does not care about our gulash and our music and our dancing and our architecture.
I think that's a to me that was very persuasive. But they don't
get to have that, they shouldn't have that. They have that, then
they'll like it and they'll get used to it, they'll be exclusionary and we
can't have that. I mean what you said before about the differences between the
French and the Belgians and this and that. I mean it's almost rob as
if you're saying that seventy years of attempting to get rid of culture and folk
ways in favor of a unified European identity, really it really doesn't work.
That there's actually something there that people cling to, and they will keep quiet
about it as it's a literally a bit, you know, until the point
where it seems as if they are losing national identity. And the curious thing
is this. It is odd, sort of kind of in a way for
me as an American to look at what you're talking about and saying, well,
yeah, I mean I get it because America is different. We are
syncretic people. We have a culture that is born of a civic identity.
Right, anybody can become an American. I like that, and I like
that about us, But I don't think that's the case in Europe. I
don't think that anybody can go to frances and be a Frenchman. I don't
think anybody can go to Denmark. And I can't go to Denmark and be
a Dane in the sense that the people who are there are anybody can come
here and be an American. I like that, I love it. But
I get why they want a unified culture in the place where they speak and
they have songs and the ghulash and the rest of it. And it seems
madness for them to have embarked on a project where this is the composition is
changed, and not even just changed in a way that makes it more sort
of everybody slashing around in Europe, but it's changed by the addition of people
with values that are antithetical to what they supposedly believe in. And that's the
part that it just jars. It's like, well, are we are coming
up with the new European identity which is based on the end of patriarchy,
the end of gender distinctions and the rest of it. Oh and by the
way, here are these people from this culture which believe the absolute opposite of
it. They're going to live here now and you're going to pay for them.
So it's the fact that this is happening it doesn't surprise me. But
I think that there's so much sclerotic power still invested in Europe that I don't
think that anything is going to change. The fantasies of deportation and the rest
of it aren't going to play out. Well, what's going to happen now?
I don't think they're going to happen, but I do think that's what
it is an interesting sort of canary to coal mine. When you when you're
leader political movement or part of a political coalition and you are losing the support
of people that you really shouldn't be losing, You've got two choices. One
is you double down and you just you cut those people off and you say,
oh, I don't need any more you know, elderly socialists. So
I'm going to run a progressive European coalition of twelve, you know, like
with Democrats in eighty you know, there's some thing called Reagan Democrats. So
the question was, well, why are these Democrats not voting for us?
What's what are we doing wrong? And for better or for worse, they
kind of sort of almost figured it out. They had eight years of Clinton
kind of in the little bit of the middle, and he kind of got
those people back a little bit. To me, it's always astonishing when people
are clinging so much to their the most extreme version of their belief right,
and that that is the story of the EU. You made total sense.
You have a common European common market. My god. The Europeans have immense
economic gains after World War Two. A lot of it was because we gave
them the money, but a lot of it was because they had a common
market. And then the EU was an incredibly smart idea to like unify certain
things that didn't really need to be different. And you just then guess what,
you say, stop, we got it. It's easy to get from
one place to another, it's easy to use one piece one currency from another.
Our currency is unified. It's fine, But we're still going to be
French and snoody, and we're still gonna be English and like the chocolate our
way, and we're still going to be Italian and like. And that created
an enormous amount of prosperity in Italy that they simply, the bureaucrats simply couldn't
say, well done, everyone, now let's go home. Instead they said,
wait a minute, what else can we do? And how about we
destroy this thing we just created? And I think that's what you're saying in
Europe you're just seeing this idea that like no one on the traditional left.
Although you know, we keep saying far right, it's not like these people
are doing for you know, America. You know, these people would find
Mitt Romney to be a fascist, right, yes, but but it's not
like it's not like they're it's not like they're they are no longer hearing the
insults the same way that it is the same, the same experience you find
in you know, socially conservative or even slightly uncomfortable Americans with the progressive movement
when people call them racist or homophobic or bigotry or whatever hatred. They just
don't hear those words anymore. Those words are being used so often they no
longer have any value. And I think that's what's happening in Europe. I
mean, I mean, don't you didn't you feel that way state when you're
in Western Europe? I mean, you're not in Hungry. That there is.
But hold that thought, Stephen, hold that thought right there, because
for a minute here I have to intercede and ask both of you, since
we're moving away from Hungary now to Western Europe, did either of you have
the famous fruit brandy in Hungary? Palinka. I think it's called kidding me.
Yes, yeah, it's like it's like eighty proof or something like that
could be so good. It can put you away, It can really put
you away. And they bring it because they have this gen this host culture,
this generous culture that if you go to they bring like all of them
and then if you oh, that's interesting, well, this one's this one,
this one's that one, this one's summer plum, and then you have
to try them all and so essentially you're blind walking on your knees in about
twenty minutes. Then that can mean a bad next day. Frankly, you
just can't. You can't bounce back like you used to, especially the older
that you get. But you know what, if you are faced with the
situation in which you are required or nay lucky enough to sample all of the
fruit brandies of Hungary choice, you can either have a great night or a
great next day, or you can use z biotics. Z biotics pre alcohol
probiotic drinkers the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists
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times this summer, Steve, and we were going to let you talk about
Western Europe. Well right, Well, as you move over to Western Europe
and the European Union, you can keep going across the Atlantic to compare it
to our country. I think because you see the same thing going on.
I mean, James mentioned, you mentioned a second ago. Who's running the
Biden White Houses of the permanent government or the deep state or whatever you want
to say. I think we're now learning, or Europe is learning what I
think conservatives in America figured out decades ago, although we haven't got a good
remedy for it, which is the it's public choice theory. The incentives for
our bureaucrats are just the same as the incentives for any profit making country,
except bureaucrats. Look for more budgets or larger budgets, more power, more
votes if you're a politician. And that's why this saying economic analysis can be
brought to both Okay, in the European Union, I was reflecting to the
Europeans. I was talking to a peculiar figure of speech they use, which
I'll bet you've noticed too, Rob. The European Commission will come out and
say today we're pleased to announce three new competencies companies. Right, what that
really means, that's a US mission for power. We now have three more
things we're going to regulate or dictate terms to all the members of the European
Union. And you know what I said was nobody in America would use that
word because the government is so manifestly incompetent these days. Right right, So
I mean mentioned as you know, a week or two ago, I don't
remember now, But so beyond just the flashpoints of immigration, the net zero
green new Deal nonsense that both countries are dealing with, is the larger question
of well why are Somebody had a picture of the G seven summit going on,
and above each of the national leaders was a negative number of how far
underwater they are in the polls. You know, Pierre Justin Trudeau is like
minus fifty in the polls. Richie Biden actually pretty good. He was like
the he was the most popular unpopular leader. Actually Maloney was the least unpopular,
but he was second. But you're right, Biden was second. And
uh. And you know, we ought to take a larger lesson here,
which is modern government has simply become well, you know, Reagan's line was
too big, doing too much, and the incompetence is more and more obvious
to everybody. And I don't know how you fix that. Well, I
mean I have ideas how you fix it, but I mean it's a practical
matter. It's hard to persuade people, you know what, big, big
changes that you want to make. Yeah, I mean they tried to graft
the federal a federal system over a chaotic parliamentary over only chaotic parliamentary systems.
And I'm always interested in how often American politicians left in the right decide or
delude themselves and forget and think that we also live in a parliamentary system,
you know. So like, you know, you find the people who are
like, well, Joe Biden's president, he should get what he wants,
like, well, no, that's not how it works. Usually what happens
is the American voter says, well, not so fast, we're going to
put some you know, the opposite party in charge. People like cheering about
Trump, like, oh, Trump's reelected. I mean it's gonna be relcted
by very thin margin. He's going to be able to do all this stuff.
It's like, well, no, actually he's not. My my,
my great. You know, the partisans on both sides usually say things like,
well, the thing I like about Biden thinking like about Trump's I like
his enemies. He's making the right enemies. I like that. Whereas,
you know, the relative strength and political impact the president has is never based
on his enemies. It's always based on his friends. That we ain't not
like it. But the presidency is a job of compromise and making friends and
twisting arms and wheeling and dealing and kind of sewing your way through the navigation
of the shoals and the valleys. Right and the europe has never had that
problem because if you're the head of the government, the prime minister, you're
by definition you've have cobbled to get this coalition. You can't do anything you
want. That's why they have this crazy volatility all the time. And what
they're discovering now is that they have they have lost the thread and lost connection
to their voters. So even if you look at what's happening in France,
which is I mean, I know it's real and I know that these are
real people, but it's just also hilarious because it's so French. It's just
there was a seventy few hours there where you couldn't figure out what who's who
was on what side because they kept switching. You couldn't even figure out.
They locked the head of the you know, the head of the one of
the conservative coalition parties. Uh, they tossed it out, but then he
said you can't toss me out because you didn't do the meeting right, and
so then they so he locked everybody out of the office. And then they
had a break like there was on the news. They had a britsbody in
with a key. She had a spare key, the secretary general against the
party and she opened like this crazy stuff. Right, But that's because they
all want to put together coalition to win by one vote in the Assembly or
two enough and then they want to make radical change in the country, and
that's just just not going to ever happen. You can't get too far ahead
of the ordinary, normal American sense of normal Americanism. In the same way
you can't get too too far of the ordinary French person. And the ordinary
French person loves France and doesn't love having a little Anchora in France or Damascus
in France. They don't like that. Well, well, well, did
you see rob Or James the map of there's almost color coded maps, just
like the red and blue in America, and it's it's all brown. Of
course, how funny they pick that color for the far right right. But
it's all brown except this little island of Paris and maybe slightly pale, and
Marseille and one or two other plays. And so it's the country versus the
city. It's quite astounding, although not really when you think about it for
a moment. Look, the French already like they make a deal with themselves,
and they make a deal with the culture, and that it's a deal.
I think you find a lot of what we call now sort of more
nationalist conservatives are making in this country, which is, look, we have
a way of life we like. Don't tell me that it's inefficient for us
to have nine thousand different farmers growing nine thousand different kinds of lettuce. That's
how we do it. We want to have a country that has farms and
rural and we're going to do that, and it's going to cost money,
and so what don't tell me that where our education system isn't inclusive enough because
it is not our equity equitable enough, because it is not. But it
is rigorous and we're just going to keep that going. And there's a lot
of people in this country, I think it's not really an American idea,
but are nervous about the kind of rapid change they're watching in their culture and
they don't like it. No, they don't, and they will. I
heard a little verbal there from Steven un though you wanted to leap in,
go go well, I was just Rob mentioning the farmers in France, and
it's true of some of the other countries. Does to recur to a previous
subject. I asked the Frenchman, I know some years ago, how is
it that you managed to build eighty nuclear reactors when we stop building at all?
And his answer, you may have heard his story. His answer was
odd is simple. You see, says in France we have three hundred kinds
of cheese and one kind of nuclear reactor, where in America it's just the
opposite, one kind of cheese. Yeah, and there's a large amount of
truth to that. There's a lot of truth to that, I mean.
And also I think they the French, pride themselves culturally. If we're going
to you know, you know, emulate them in any way. They pride
themselves on their logic. They are all the French farmer of French, you
know, it doesn't matter the bike messenger, the guy running OXA, the
giant insurance company. They all consider themselves Cartesian. You know, we're very
like Druk were Renny Descartes disciples. And so if you want to get into
a fist fight with a Frenchman during a debate about anything, just say,
and you know, say it's not logical what you're saying, and it's like
them's fighting words. Also pride themselves in their technology. I mean, they
used they used to be they used to be us. I mean at the
turn of the century, the previous one, uh, the you know,
the French military prowess and the French technological innovation was regarded as you know,
fantastic, and they lost that. I mean could be said that they got
there too early. They had an Internet before we did. Uh, and
they have their own homegrown computer industries. But it's all fall and they haven't
really been innovating in the sense that you know, we have for an offul
long time. But still, yes, great pride. But here's the thing
Rob mentioned, changing the culture. People don't like when there's a lot of
when there's too much cultural change, too fast, and they're they're demonized for
pushing back against it or even questioning it in any way. This shifts the
subject somewhat, but it still does include Europe and the cultural cultural wars.
This is Pride Month, and it seems to me, from a cursory examination
of the changing of the icons of the corporate nature on my Twitter feed,
that there is not the same sort of full throat at here we go month
long celebration that there was last year. Target base here in Minneapolis. It
has been receiving criticism from an unexpected direction because the people who wanted more pride
merch are not getting it, and they feel as if they're being vetted a
little bit harder, and they're seeing this is all part of a backlash against
against a LGBTQ bright et cetera. Well, it's not. It is very
specifically a disinclination and a turning away from a happy, smiley, classy face
attitude toward the tea part of that equation. I think, if you're honest,
the LGP portion got what they wanted, which was indifference. In the
end, that's what you want. You want nobody to really particularly care,
because it's like caring whether not somebody is left handed or blue white. It
doesn't matter. And that's kind of where we were. And as with every
organization, it will be occupied and inhabited by people who want to push the
agenda further. And that's where the Q and the Q theory came into it.
And the next thing you know, we're being asked to believe a series
of things about gender that to most people are manifestly patently absurd and target for
whatever reason, last year went really all in on this. There was a
lot of transprite stuff in the stores, there were merchandise online. They didn't
really vet the guys well enough. I think who were doing this because they'd
buy a mug from this guy, and if you went to his actual shop,
there would be little pins that would have a guillotine for the turf that
would there would be little pins that said, Satan respects your pronouns. People
just sort of reared away from this, thinking, no, if we are
actually talking about preventing the puberty of children, about performing surgery upon them,
about believing this kaleidoscopic notion of Jenuary, and then this, no, I'm
not going to believe this. I people may again ultimately be indifferent as to
what somebody calls themselves as long as you don't have to participate in what they
are going on in their head. But the idea that this is to be
imposed by HR divisions on down by television, by media, by the rest
of it has left a lot of people with just with no. They don't
want they don't want it, and they're really not comfortable with the party that
insists that you have to believe this, that you have to believe this.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's very true. I think it's I
mean that feels to me like a not just a specific cultural conflict or cultural
whatever friction, but it is. It is a general example. It exemplifies
the problem, which is that it isn't just that oh, you know,
we'll we'll get there. We'll get there. As a culture, that's usually
what people say, right, we'll get there. This is a deep,
deep rift between two different ways to look at the world and two different ways
to look at human biology that I probably you're never going to get reconciled.
That's one thing that the brilliant when he was brilliant, Newt Gingrich said in
ninety four, even before ninety four and afterwards, So well, here's how
you here's how the center right can win. Just to remind people how weird
the other side. There's so weird. He said. That should be our
watch word, not not wrong, not this, not just weird, that
like what these are weird people who believe he was talking about people in the
nineties he was talking about just talking which now is is the Beaver Cleaver era.
Oh my god, yeah, I know. But the idea that that
that this is going to be a moment where where eventually, you know,
in ten twenty years, people are going to have a different idea about I
don't know what gender is. It just doesn't seem real to me, Like
things don't inextorbally keep going. They do, they do reach a point where
it's like people are like, I don't think we're now at the elemental,
elemental cellular division of the human organism, and I just don't think you can
get much more. You can't progress out of that. Well. I think
there's a backlash underway right now, or the pendulum is swinging. And I
actually predicted at the end of last month that you would see much less of
the Pride celebration from corporate America than you saw in last year's as James points
out, but you're seeing that across the board, less enthusiasm for Black Lives
Matter, a big move on Wall Street away from the ESG, Environmental Safety,
and government's rubber stamp investing. The big one problem here is quite aside
from the substance of it, and I'm in heated agreement with both of you
about how ridiculous this is is the demand for absolute conformity on a nationwide basis,
And so people have kind of forgotten this or maybe never focused on it.
But I think it was within six weeks of the Obergefeld decision legalizing same
sex marriage that you suddenly had the transgenderism movement erupt and it started on the
local level in North Carolina. You may remember this as the school district in
Charlotte. I think it was said, well, transgender people can use whichever
bathroom they want to, and the state legislature erupted and passed the bill saying
no, you can't. This is crazy. A number of Democrats, Black
Democrats by the way, voted for it, and then a compromise was struck,
like, all right, we're not going to make a state wide law.
If you want to have it locally, go ahead, but were However,
what happened at that point was the Obama education departments, at the behest
of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, said no, this needs to be a
national policy, and they put out a guidance letter. This is the the
coursive way the Obama administration operated, not a formal regulation, and they said
any school district, any school district anywhere in the country that does not allow
transgender people to pick their bathroom will be denied their federal funds. And Texas
was the first state to say, go ahead and make our day. How
many Democrats want to get re elected to Congress right, and so it's sort
of just. But the point is I've always been for years now, as
early as the nineties, what might I used to call it, a moral
federalist. Let Salt Lake City be Salt Lake City, and let San Francisco
be San Francisco, and don't try and make this uniform across the country,
and we'll sort ourselves out. But no, that is not acceptable to the
cultural left. We all must believe the same thing, and there must be
punishment anywhere for anybody who dissents. That's I think that's really true. And
I think the maybe I'm just a god the most rock ribbed conservative, because
like that is the point of the United States Constitution, and the Constitution is
is we think of it as like it enumerates our rights, but it really
does. It enumerates our restrictions. Here's what I can't make you do.
Here's what the government can't make you do. It holds you back. It
maybe ties one arm behind your back, and that's okay. And the idea
was this is going to be sloppy and messy, and it was sloppy and
messy to get it ratified, and even people ratifying you, this is not
going to go. This is not going to be easy. Their worst nightmare
was confirmed I don't know sixty seventy years later, when the country erupted in
a civil war. That was the blood is for in human history up till
that point. But it's still better than trying to fix everything all at once.
There's a there's a soft to Peter wants. And he looked at me
like I was speaking Sanskrit, even though he and I tried. When we
were building Ricochet years and years ago, we talked about this. Two of
there are two big ways of looking at software development right. One is I'm
sure they're more better now, but like this I'm talking about fifteen years ago.
One is called agile, and one was called waterfall. And the waterfall
version you fix the chunk and you move to the next chunk. Can you
fix that? You move, you keep moving forward as you add complete units
of code. And then there's the waterfall where you kind of just kind of
get going and you kind of add stuff and you go back and you fix
you got can fix a waterfall. The agile always looks chaotic and like a
mistake, but it's almost always stronger because you just start and that the United
States Constitution. This country is agile, meaning kind of we kind of got
started before we had figured out one big thing, and we had to pay
the price for that. We're still kind of paying the price for that.
But it's much better than thinking that we know everything and we can just kind
of like the European Union, like the European Federation. We're going to sit
in a room, we're going to comfort all the laws, we're going to
pass all the laws, and then we're done. It's like, that's not
going to work. Let me wrap this all up into one thing. No,
I mean it's possible to do so. One of the reasons that you
have the ormies as they're called with such derision but recoiling a bit perhaps from
the excesses of the left, is that everything sort of gets wrapped up in
these protests that we're seeing on campuses and elsewhere, when we're seeing people who
are loudly advocating for the success of a terrorist organization. I mean, it
started that out word was all about free Gaza, but you know, kind
of morph without even gee gosh, how did that happen into prohamas flags waving
around with the people who will be standing there with ridiculous signs like Queers for
Palestine, which is you just again just absolutely takes an egg beater to your
brain. And you see them occupying the halls as they used to and trashing
things, and at La Fayette Square, for example, showing up and spray
painting Death to America, et cetera, et cetera, and the statuary there
and suffering absolutely no consequences for whatsoever, which is remarkable you think about it
that. I mean, the protests sort of wrap it all up. It
wraps up the anti Western element, It wraps up the curious monocultural religious,
ethnic portion, which is apparently it's okay if they're doing it. It wraps
up all of the strange, meaningless alphabet ideologies that find a home in this
simply because it's anti Western. I mean, this is like, I hate
to make parallels, but we're coming up to another sixty eight, another convention
in Chicago like we did in sixty eight, in the cultural mood of the
of the normies, of the silent America, of the archie Bunkers hitting in
his lazy boy in Queen's is looking at these people with the same amount of
contempt. So are we where we were in sixty eight, where the silent
majority speaks and their riots in Chicago, et cetera. You guys tell me
before we go, because we have four minute it's just settled it all all
right, Steve? You first, Well, it's everything. Yeah, No,
I'm kind of gloomy. I think no matter who wins, rent for
some very bad times down the road. By the way, I think if
Trump wins, you're going to see riots. I think you're going to see
the left is going to erupt much worse than January sixth, although it'll be
more diffuse across the country. So I hate to be so cheery about things.
I'll give you one thing to cheer you up on this last point.
I just found this new story this morning that some playwrights in England have put
together a play attacking JK. Rowling because of her bleak. It's called turf
Bleeding. Yeah you saw that story. And they can't get any actresses and
want to play the roles because they're all saying, no, we don't want
to do that, which I think is a sign of again the pendulum swinging
back row. I mean, I took I'm a gum generally an optimist.
You know, I feel like it's I go back to Ronald Reagan, right,
Megan used to say this, there's not one problem that we face as
a country that is not being solved somewhere by somebody right now. And a
lot of what we have to do is just to remember what we already know
and pay attention to what other people are doing and see if they're doing a
good job and the one they are and some people are, and get out
of the way. I mean, obviously that's a complete cliche, but sometimes
it's basic cliches are true. So I actually do have faith in that.
I do believe that is true. And I in the sense that I even
look at the not my own sort of natural patriotic, you know, condescension.
If I can look at Europe and think, you know, you guys
would be much better off if you are a little bit more American. That's
if you wanna. If you wanna, if you're desperate to import immigrants,
why don't you let some of us comfort, you know, five six months,
walk around your cities, eat your food, drink your wine, and
then we'll head home. But is a Europe is a better, safer,
smarter place now? Because Americans were there for twenty five still there that it
was for the two thousand years before. Yeah, well they haven't had one
hundred years war for some time now, Thank you very much. Basically,
you're welcome. Ramsteam I held that you're absolutely right. I too am an
optimist, but like Stephen, I am to a little bit of a pest
miss down the road. I think that there are sclerotic, to use that
word again for the twice in one podcast, forces at work that keep education
from being reformed, that don't address the cultural problems, that create busted families,
that create kids who have no concept of history or behavior. Social media
that in pumps and in flames and the rest of it. We have problems,
and while we know what to do about them, there just seems to
be a timorous lack of will to do anything about him. Here in the
Twin Cities, they've started to address the disor or on the light rail system
by actually sending in get this people to do something about it, people with
uniforms who will actually do something, and it's having a little bit of an
effect somewhat. It's not perfect yet, but people scratch their heads. It's
the old fox butterworth thing. I don't understand it. The prisons are full
yet crime is down. Yeah. Anyway, before we leave, robb usually
tells you what's going on when it comes to and I got to say also
that we are in ever debt to our great producer Perry, who just you
know, wrote a wonderful rundown of things that we could discuss here, and
we completely ignored everything that he did. But I did not want it to
go unnoted that had we showed up as as stumble tongued guys, we would
have had the whole roadmap in front of us. Anyway, Robbi, you
want to tell them about those meetups before we leave. Yes, in addition
to this wonderful podcast, which you get for free by the way, like
a European socialist, you could be in a real America. Can enjoin Ricochet
and at ricochet dot com become a member, and it's not just about the
podcast. It's not even just about the conversation. So we have on there
that are cover everything and anything in the world and not just politics. But
in fact the ones that are not about politics, I find it the most
interesting. But we also have real meetups and you can meet real people who
are nice people and you can meet them. Coming up, I'll tell you
what happened. Coming up, fourth of July weekend, Fargo, North Dakota.
It's going to be a German Fest meetup in Milwaukee during the last week
in July. It's going to be one in Saint Louis in early October two
and there's can be more. You just have to go. You have to
go to ricks dot com, go to the member site and the meetups are
all there. And if you want to go to one and none of those
dates work for you, guess what. Just say you're going to You want
to have a meetup wherever it's close to you, on whatever date works for
you, and you will find Ricochet members will show up because that's what they
do. They show up. And if you've made it through six hundred and
ninety six episodes of the podcast checking out Ricochet, first of all, I
don't know what the matter. I don't know what I can do, but
you're to drop by this time because we there's such I mean, Rob's right,
politic stuff is fun. It's great to go in there and discuss.
But we got two posts this week, one by Gary McVeigh talking about the
horrible design of the fifties, and there's Gary's always a pleasure to read.
Gary's fantastic, just just knows scary on scold be guests they should be.
And then doctor Bostian, who oh yeah, who had a piece about well,
it's about doing well and the decision to do well. And it starts
out with a patient who about to shuffle off the mortal coil. And none
of the kids are going to drop by and say, good, why why
is that? And it's great piece. And I read that and I thought,
you know, this magazine that I have in front of me, here,
this newspaper that I have here, this this other website, none of
these have anything like this, and they still want to charge me money for
it. And Ricochet is just giving it to us. But you know,
if you go to the member side where this stuff comes up in advance,
that's where you will find friends in community. And I highly advise you to
go there. Maybe you'll do it after the seven hundred podcasts and figure,
you know what, I think these guys are going to be around for a
while. Anyway, It's been a great pleasure. Thanks as ever, Thank
you Stephen for sitting in for Peter. Thank you Rob. As ever,
I will be out for a little while unless we can do next week and
on Thursday we can do that, I'll be here. Otherwise I will be
gallivanting and you'll be, uh well, it'll be one of those situations where
I go and nobody replaces me and it's just the two of you, which
is fine. Will you tell us where youre going that? Are you going
to tease us? Tease you big surprise, lots of fun, but yeah,
big surprise, and don't even think about it because our house is heavily
armed, wired, alarmed and will be occupied, so you know there because
I can't take the dog anyway. That's it. It's been fun. We
thank ze Biotics for sponsoring us. Give it a try, believe me,
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