Speaker 1: Meaning a man like this man letting butterfly flapping and wing.
Speaker 1: They've down in a force.
Speaker 2: Man, it gonna cause the tree fall, letting five thousand
Speaker 2: miles away.
Speaker 1: Man, nobody see nobody else. See you don't need no
Speaker 1: Man's like you followed another story and you got back
Speaker 1: to protect that. That's the win. Man got back to
Speaker 1: dag on the panel. Man, you don't get no better, man, don't.
Speaker 2: Any Negativity is really fun. Criticism is really fun. It's
Speaker 2: productive too. You've learned quite a lot by deconstructing and
Speaker 2: criticizing our opponents, both on the nominal right and the
Speaker 2: woke left, And in fact, many of us got our
Speaker 2: start here through media criticism, right through pointing out the
Speaker 2: obvious accesses of twenty sixteen era woke politics. But at
Speaker 2: a certain point in time, it becomes necessary to turn
Speaker 2: that critical gaze inward to your own guys, to guys
Speaker 2: that you like, to people that you wish had won.
Speaker 2: And that's why I think this episode is an important
Speaker 2: companion piece to the show I did with Carl yesterday
Speaker 2: examining Thomas Massey's loss in Kentucky, not Tennessee. As I
Speaker 2: said in my last monologue, because nothing we said there's wrong.
Speaker 2: I stand by everything I said, and in many cases
Speaker 2: this analysis pairs very nicely with it. But there's a
Speaker 2: lot to take away from this. Obviously, the fact that Apac,
Speaker 2: Miriam Adelson and co. Spent nearly three thousand, actually over
Speaker 2: three thousand dollars a voter in this election. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's dramatic. But I think we need to look at
Speaker 2: Massy individually as a man and as a politician, and
Speaker 2: then extrapolate that to some problems on the right, and
Speaker 2: like our part of the right, not just the neocons,
Speaker 2: not just the conservatives that we love bashing, and look
Speaker 2: I like bashing them too. I've made a middling career
Speaker 2: out of it. But in all seriousness, we have to
Speaker 2: understand that there are times when we or our friends,
Speaker 2: people we like, display the exact same beautiful loser tendencies,
Speaker 2: the desire to destroy yourself over an unwinnable fight, to
Speaker 2: sacrifice your chance of power, your chances of success, for
Speaker 2: outdated political modes, right fighting the battle of ten years ago.
Speaker 2: And that's the argument that the author of the piece
Speaker 2: that Ron Dodson and I went over makes great article
Speaker 2: for Compact linked in to description. Effectively, Massey was a
Speaker 2: man out of time. He comes from a time when
Speaker 2: the Republican Party didn't have an identity, where it wasn't
Speaker 2: bound around a central idea or central figure. I think
Speaker 2: he's correct. Now, that doesn't mean that Donald Trump is
Speaker 2: exactly who I would want to be occupying that central role,
Speaker 2: or that I think massew was wrong and should have
Speaker 2: lost not at all. But to say when there is
Speaker 2: a time for unification, well either you get on board
Speaker 2: or you get axed. And I think it's important to
Speaker 2: mention that Massey did not do a great job appealing
Speaker 2: to other people or making himself friends right now. Obviously
Speaker 2: he made an enemy of the Israel lobby, and that's
Speaker 2: something that as we go forward, will be less and
Speaker 2: less of a problem. Look at the demos of who
Speaker 2: voted for him. Look at how much money it took
Speaker 2: to unseat him. But now that's a gamble that cost
Speaker 2: you money. Criticizing the president on war powers that cost
Speaker 2: you something. And do I think he was right one
Speaker 2: hundred percent? Do I think he was right to challenge
Speaker 2: Jpack one hundred percent? But you have to look at
Speaker 2: this in the cold light a day. You have to
Speaker 2: look at this. To be honest in an amoral context,
Speaker 2: you have to look at this seriously, not just flying
Speaker 2: off the handle because it feels good, not just allowing
Speaker 2: yourself to sort of be defeated forever because of your
Speaker 2: perfect consistency. And I think really the way that mass
Speaker 2: shows this is in his be honest libertarian holdovers right,
Speaker 2: the things he kept from twenty thirteen, the Ron Paul
Speaker 2: era stuff, which led to him making stumbles on areas
Speaker 2: he didn't need to, as regards immigration, as regards the
Speaker 2: Second Amendment, as regards stuff like that, where if he hadn't,
Speaker 2: if he had simply said, you know what, we're done
Speaker 2: doing this, he would have been in a better position
Speaker 2: enough to matter. Who knows, it's hypothetical, but I think
Speaker 2: it's important to look at that. It's also important to
Speaker 2: really be frank about the gap between what you care
Speaker 2: about and what the median voter cares about. That doesn't
Speaker 2: mean whatever that issue that came to your mind isn't important,
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that you're not right. But to say not
Speaker 2: everyone cares and not everyone cares in the same way,
Speaker 2: And I think Massew's failure largely speaks to that, particularly
Speaker 2: among the kind of people who vote in Republican primaries,
Speaker 2: which is old people. Right, he would have had a
Speaker 2: tough road to Hoe no matter what. But he put
Speaker 2: himself in a weird position, in a really weird position.
Speaker 2: And honestly, look, three thousand dollars a person does a lot.
Speaker 2: But I don't think it did all of this. I
Speaker 2: don't think it did everything. There's more to this story
Speaker 2: than the APEC money. Now, that's a big part of it, right,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say that it it's insignificant. Clearly
Speaker 2: it's a major part of this. And clearly this is unsustainable.
Speaker 2: You can't buy out every race to this tune forever,
Speaker 2: especially if current demographics continue. But that said, ass he
Speaker 2: wasn't a perfect candidate. He wasn't a perfect guy, and
Speaker 2: he made a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes
Speaker 2: we can learn from because effectively we're watching the Republican
Speaker 2: Party being built into a monolith, being built into the
Speaker 2: Party of Trump. And the Republican Party really hasn't had
Speaker 2: an identity. It had an identity during Bush, but really
Speaker 2: that's a holdover from Reagan. That's an old paradigm, and
Speaker 2: I think it's important to look at the party being
Speaker 2: made in Trump's image, and wonder, well, what happens next?
Speaker 2: Right now there are a lot of friends working at once.
Speaker 2: You know, the rising anti Israel sentiment across the board
Speaker 2: under fifty five, Well that's a major shift. But also
Speaker 2: the party is being stifle act more and more so
Speaker 2: with Trump loyalists. He is the message, he is the base,
Speaker 2: and clearly he has a ton of power. He decided
Speaker 2: this primary. He took a guy who swung at him,
Speaker 2: and let's not forget Massey swung at Trump over corruption,
Speaker 2: which is an issue I don't particularly care about, and honestly,
Speaker 2: I get the feeling that most voters, particularly Republican voters,
Speaker 2: don't really care about. And so that set the ground, right,
Speaker 2: that set the battlefield, and whatever happened from there, we
Speaker 2: have to remember that. I think it's also important to
Speaker 2: recognize that Zionism is different to different people in the
Speaker 2: sense that for a lot of people, and for a
Speaker 2: lot of the people that are nominally pro Israel, it's
Speaker 2: not really a position they think about that much. It
Speaker 2: doesn't occupy the same central nature that it does perhaps
Speaker 2: for you and I. For many people it's reflex it
Speaker 2: there's a lot more to do with the politics of
Speaker 2: the American nineteen seventies and with general fox New sentiment
Speaker 2: than it does any specific I'm like thought, any specific rationale,
Speaker 2: and that's not good. I don't think that should be
Speaker 2: the case. But it's important to remember that if you
Speaker 2: define yourself on that, if you're putting yourself out in
Speaker 2: public as a politician on that grounds. But it's sort
Speaker 2: of irrelevant to a lot of people. Now, should it be?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: And do I think that the actions of APEC in
Speaker 2: this race have made it more of an issue, made
Speaker 2: it more prominent. Certainly, We've got to remember when we're
Speaker 2: talking about trends, we're talking about the future, not now.
Speaker 2: As of now, this is not a winning proposition. That
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it won't be in the future. And so
Speaker 2: view this as sort of a I guess not even
Speaker 2: an opposition, but sort of a temper to what I
Speaker 2: said last time. Again, all of that analysis bears out.
Speaker 2: I don't know how any times I can say this,
Speaker 2: but I still got comments on the last article or
Speaker 2: a last episode. Rather if people misunderstanding my position. I
Speaker 2: wish Massey had one. I wish that we could kick
Speaker 2: Zionism out of American politics, but at least right now,
Speaker 2: we can't and we have to understand that. We have
Speaker 2: to understand that while the battlefield is changing, it is
Speaker 2: not transformed yet. It is more transformed than I would
Speaker 2: have guessed by a dramatic, dramatic degree, but it's not
Speaker 2: yet an interesting point that It's also going to be
Speaker 2: very interesting to watch how the Republican Party exists in
Speaker 2: Trump's image after the man himself is gone. Kind of
Speaker 2: saw it happen with Raken, But I think and I
Speaker 2: could be wrong, This could be a classic Jbird bad prediction.
Speaker 2: But I wonder if there is a possibility that we
Speaker 2: don't get a massive upset in the midterms. Maybe this
Speaker 2: is due to redistricting, maybe this is due to just
Speaker 2: changing voter attitudes. But there's a real possibility that there
Speaker 2: isn't a big price to pay. There isn't a big
Speaker 2: consequence coming out of this race, which could, I don't know,
Speaker 2: lead to an interesting situation, a situation where yeah, people
Speaker 2: aren't happy, but fundamentally there's been a greater gap placed
Speaker 2: between voter sentiment and the makeup of the House. Now
Speaker 2: broadly speaking, I actually support that. I'm not really a
Speaker 2: big democracy guy, And if I had to pick, I'd
Speaker 2: like a Republican controlled legislature just because it keeps certain
Speaker 2: bad things from happening. And the bad things that would
Speaker 2: have happened probably would have happened no matter what. So
Speaker 2: it's directionally preferable. But that's its own interesting thing. That
Speaker 2: we may well be moving away from the era of
Speaker 2: midterm snapbags. We saw that actually in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: even in twenty twenty right the Democrats, and maybe there's
Speaker 2: some shenanis there if you're more conspiratorially minded, that their
Speaker 2: dramatic Biden results didn't necessarily translate down ballot. So it's
Speaker 2: entirely possible that the House is going to become more stable.
Speaker 2: We're starting to see this sorting taking place, and again
Speaker 2: maybe that means everything is from a certain perspective centralizing.
Speaker 2: Trump has expanded the role of the executive. He's been
Speaker 2: fighting on that, and so maybe that's where power centralizes.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's an interesting question, and if we're
Speaker 2: looking at this frame of paradigm shift, maybe that's part
Speaker 2: of it. That the actual landscape of where politics happens shifts.
Speaker 2: We've already seen that as regards issues like abortion and
Speaker 2: largely the Second Amendment being kicked down to state levels.
Speaker 2: It's a very interesting series of possibilities and one that
Speaker 2: I think we, as the new writer, are uniquely suited for.
Speaker 2: We are winning, We are in the ascendent. Our values
Speaker 2: are becoming more popular, but they're not there yet. But
Speaker 2: given a long enough span of time, if current trends continue, yeah,
Speaker 2: will be more important than we are now. So just
Speaker 2: a series of thoughts on that. This article again is
Speaker 2: not what I agree with in every instance. There are
Speaker 2: things I disagree with, things that I would phrase differently,
Speaker 2: But it's well written, it's thought provoking, and so I
Speaker 2: think it's worth your time. Again, make sure that you
Speaker 2: do not make the mistake that Massi does, assuming that
Speaker 2: people care about what you care about, and assuming that
Speaker 2: the conflicts which formed you, which okay, may not be
Speaker 2: Ron Paul Revolution, maybe COVID, it may be something else,
Speaker 2: are uniquely applicable because look, the boomers don't get it,
Speaker 2: but also we don't get them, and at least for
Speaker 2: the time being, although maybe for less time than previously anticipated,
Speaker 2: they still matter. It's sort of a I guess, a
Speaker 2: rain on the parade type of podcast, but nonetheless a
Speaker 2: really good one. So as per usual, right find me
Speaker 2: anywhere you listen to podcasts. I'd appreciate reviews. I don't
Speaker 2: know if they help, but they do make me laugh,
Speaker 2: so maybe leave a review. Call me a slur in
Speaker 2: my blocket, but I do appreciate it. You can also
Speaker 2: check out our sponsor, Axios Remote Fitness and Coaching jd
Speaker 2: You guys, good work. You should support him also if
Speaker 2: you want the episodes early in ad free the monologues
Speaker 2: two days before everyone else a few bucks a month
Speaker 2: on Patreon, substack er com road. It's uh, how I
Speaker 2: do this without further ado, here's Ron Dodson. All right,
Speaker 2: Ron Dodson, welcome back to the jay Bird and show
Speaker 2: how you doing.
Speaker 1: Man Ah, fantastic, glad to be here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad to have you on. This will serve
Speaker 2: as sort of a companion piece to the last episode
Speaker 2: I did with Carl Dahl talking about Massey's recent primary
Speaker 2: loss in Kentucky, not in Tennessee. I made this mistake
Speaker 2: last time, and several people politely informed me, I don't
Speaker 2: know those two states. That's true, they're the same shape,
Speaker 2: they're in the same place. What do you want me
Speaker 2: to say? You're wrong? Is the answer? Not factually, but
Speaker 2: you're back talking a podcaster. Listen and learn in all seriousness, right, Ron,
Speaker 2: When you and I were talking about this, you sent
Speaker 2: me a really interesting article from Compact by Daniel McCarthy
Speaker 2: that we're going to go through and suffice it to say,
Speaker 2: this is very interesting analysis. I don't necessarily agree with
Speaker 2: McCarthy on everything, but it's well written and puts forward
Speaker 2: some really interesting points because I think that, especially for
Speaker 2: the people listening to this show, this election was a referendum,
Speaker 2: referendum on Zionism, and that is partially true, I think,
Speaker 2: especially for younger people, that's what it became. But in
Speaker 2: the co text of the GOP and in the context
Speaker 2: of older voters, that wasn't really the issue at hand.
Speaker 2: And as I spoke with Carl Dole last time, one
Speaker 2: of the things that I brought up is there is
Speaker 2: an assumption that just because you care about something, everyone
Speaker 2: cares about it. And it is true a lot of people,
Speaker 2: particularly older people, reflexively support Israel, but that's not really
Speaker 2: why they voted against Thomas Massey. And so again parts
Speaker 2: of this article I disagree with and I agree with,
Speaker 2: but it's an interesting point and one that I think
Speaker 2: we need to consider. So before we jump into it, Ron,
Speaker 2: is there anything you want to say?
Speaker 1: Well, I just full disclosure. Dan's a friend. I really
Speaker 1: like Dan. He's a good guy, but he is. His
Speaker 1: understanding and breadth of knowledge of not only the current
Speaker 1: happenings but the historical factors at play is pretty I
Speaker 1: don't want to say singular, but but he's well up there.
Speaker 1: If you ever listen to his uh his old modern
Speaker 1: age podcast on political philosophy and history, it's fantastic. So
Speaker 1: whether you agree with Dan, and Dan would say if
Speaker 1: he was sitting right here, he would say that, whether
Speaker 1: you agree with Dan or not or his conclusions, I
Speaker 1: think it's he's the type of thinker that's very beneficial
Speaker 1: to go through to see the gears that are turning
Speaker 1: in his head so that we, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of I know you have a younger audience, certainly younger
Speaker 1: than me. These some of the things he's going to
Speaker 1: reference are lived history for me, and I think it's
Speaker 1: good to just kind of get in there, get your uh,
Speaker 1: get your hands dirty in it, and and go through
Speaker 1: it and then be very informed in your agreement or disagreement.
Speaker 1: So that's my encouragement. And uh, and give Dan the
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt. He really is a good guy
Speaker 1: and he's one of us on the right, but very
Speaker 1: thoughtful guy.
Speaker 2: All right. So without further ado, let's get into it.
Speaker 2: The title is Thomas Massey's dead End Libertarianism. Ten years
Speaker 2: into Donald Trump's takeover of the Republican Party, his opponents
Speaker 2: continue to misunderstand and underestimate him. The defeat of Thomas
Speaker 2: Massey in his contest for renomination to Congress on Tuesday
Speaker 2: is yet more proof of this. Trump is doing exactly
Speaker 2: what his critics a decade ago said needed to be done.
Speaker 2: He's restoring discipline to a party that had become institutionally weak.
Speaker 2: Massey was a symptom of that weakness. He arrived at
Speaker 2: Congress at a time when the GOP was divided and directionless,
Speaker 2: and at first Massey seemed to be part of the
Speaker 2: answer to that party's woes, but the alternative he represented
Speaker 2: was stillborn. For reasons, the Kentucky Congressman supporters and critics
Speaker 2: alike should take the time to understand. Doing so will
Speaker 2: help them appreciate Trump. During the George W. Bush years,
Speaker 2: the Republican Party seemed to have a coherent worldview, one
Speaker 2: derived from a broader consensus among educated Americans. Democrats as
Speaker 2: well as the Republicans had learned to cherish capitalism, though
Speaker 2: leaders in both parties believe government had a benevolent role
Speaker 2: to play in making the best of markets. Bush Republicans
Speaker 2: favored policies to promote home ownership, for example, the cornerstone
Speaker 2: of the opportunity society.
Speaker 1: Let's pause right there. Okay, let's let's let's pause right
Speaker 1: there and come because there's some there's some meat in
Speaker 1: that first In that first paragraph he mentioned several things really. Uh.
Speaker 1: He makes an allusion to the rise of the Tea
Speaker 1: Party and why that happened, the fact that people continue
Speaker 1: on the left and the right to underestimate Trump. And
Speaker 1: then this this long term especially if guys, if you
Speaker 1: remember Trump's first term, the call was because because he
Speaker 1: literally had no one to staff his administration. Uh, you
Speaker 1: had to have a strong, coherent party. An old school
Speaker 1: that that for the longest time, the Democrats have done
Speaker 1: a much better job, uh than we have. So uh,
Speaker 1: so let's take that last thing first, Bush, is do
Speaker 1: I mean Bush, listen to me. That's our next point.
Speaker 1: Trump is very much trying to to uh and and
Speaker 1: not always completely coherently, but but he is trying to
Speaker 1: uh make the party of one voice, and that seems
Speaker 1: that's harder on the right than it is the left,
Speaker 1: because the right has always had structurally more diversity than
Speaker 1: the left. Uh. We are the faction of truth and
Speaker 1: truth truth with a small t is often uh a
Speaker 1: product of perspective, and the right has done a better job,
Speaker 1: especially in its more historic leaning branches, has done a
Speaker 1: better job of recognizing that. And so there's there is
Speaker 1: this there is this sense on the right of we
Speaker 1: we ought to have a bigger ideological tint. The problem is,
Speaker 1: if you're going to destroy the old ways that that
Speaker 1: have been that basically the post FDR, pro post war consensus, Leviathan,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to do it from the point of
Speaker 1: a singular voice. That's Trump's point. He is doing it
Speaker 1: in a messy, pardon pardon the pun way, Uh, but
Speaker 1: that that and everyone on the right was calling for this,
Speaker 1: and now when he's doing it now, people have their
Speaker 1: hands in the air again. I didn't I thought Massey
Speaker 1: was hilarious when he during his concession speech, he said, sorry,
Speaker 1: it took me so long, but I had my opponent
Speaker 1: was in Tel Aviv or something along those lines. That's
Speaker 1: that's funny, and I agree with that, but you know,
Speaker 1: there's cost to a unified voice, and and maybe that's it.
Speaker 1: And then we need to remember the reasons for the
Speaker 1: rise of the Tea Party, which Massey was a was
Speaker 1: a part of. It was not a it was not
Speaker 1: a coherent movement at the time. Uh It brought from
Speaker 1: a lot of Massy was kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: uh Ron Paul was hugely popular after after two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight for a lot of good reasons. He was
Speaker 1: so honest and such a breath of fresh air. And
Speaker 1: Massey really rode those coattails. And yet that's always going
Speaker 1: to be that perspective is always going to be a
Speaker 1: bit of a a prophetic voice from the outside looking in.
Speaker 1: That's not a you're just not going to rule or
Speaker 1: create a governing coalition from that standpoint, which is what
Speaker 1: the rest of the essay kind of goes on to
Speaker 1: talk about. But I just wanted to stop it right
Speaker 1: there and say, hey, you know, remember the history here,
Speaker 1: and then I don't know if you want to talk
Speaker 1: about you know, during the George W. Bush years, you know,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party seem to have a coherent worldview. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it had a coherent worldview that we're saying was was wrong,
Speaker 1: one of incredible neo conservative leanings of of of of
Speaker 1: massive cosma, you know, massive cosmopolitanism, of globalism and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. So, I mean, that's what I've got.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to stop and kind of catch us
Speaker 1: up right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think it's important to look at this
Speaker 2: and a morally neutral lens. Right. This doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: Thomas Massey personally is a bad guy. Everything he thinks
Speaker 2: is wrong, and that noever empty suit that they put
Speaker 2: a crosserman is the author or you're in my favorite politician,
Speaker 2: not at all. But to say, I like Massy, so,
Speaker 2: I mean, and I'm a little more sour on him.
Speaker 2: I think he's kind of annoying. But like that that
Speaker 2: doesn't matter in this context, right, setting aside personal feel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just like gadflies. You know those guys. Those
Speaker 1: guys are fun to listen to. Uh that you know,
Speaker 1: you just gadflies are also gonna be swatted. You have
Speaker 1: to understand that's part of the political game. If you're
Speaker 1: gonna be a gadfly, if you're gonna call the president corrupt,
Speaker 1: which is what that's what sparked this whole war between
Speaker 1: Trump and Massy was the the call of corruption. And
Speaker 1: and Trump may may be corrupt again, that's not what
Speaker 1: I'm on here to talk about. But you're gonna get
Speaker 1: But then you are gonna you are picking a fight.
Speaker 2: So well, like as a as a wise philosopher once said,
Speaker 2: if you're gonna swing at the king, you best not miss.
Speaker 2: Like this is what happens, you know when in chart
Speaker 2: when you challenge a aspiring imperial president, like, you're gonna
Speaker 2: get hit back. Regardless of if I wish that had
Speaker 2: happened or not, who won that conflict? But I think
Speaker 2: it's a really interesting question because and we'll get into
Speaker 2: this a little bit later, but really after Bush, the
Speaker 2: Republican Party and by extension, the right in America is
Speaker 2: in a massive identity crisis. And yes, the author gets
Speaker 2: into this, I just want to sort of lay the
Speaker 2: ground the Tea Party really was a negative identity. It
Speaker 2: is simply not that not Obama and many different people
Speaker 2: were able to project themselves onto not Obama. But if
Speaker 2: you really drill down to it, these were disparate people
Speaker 2: who didn't really have a lot in common. And I
Speaker 2: think that's particularly important to bear in mind considering what
Speaker 2: is the right now in America. Yeah, sure there's some
Speaker 2: positive vision, a lot of it is at its basis
Speaker 2: anti woke. Now it may have flowered from there, but realistically,
Speaker 2: if we're looking at what ties people together, it's effectively
Speaker 2: that let me carry.
Speaker 1: On, well and think about it real quick, think about
Speaker 1: it theologically in America, we have a history of that.
Speaker 1: We you know, America being at its foundation very waspy
Speaker 1: that p is Protestant, which for a lot of folks,
Speaker 1: not everyone, but for a lot of folks is just
Speaker 1: not Catholic. So there's this this very there's this kind
Speaker 1: of foundational presupposition within a lot of the American electorate
Speaker 1: that it isn't isn't meant to rule avass coalition because
Speaker 1: it is defined negatively. That's just there's a big part
Speaker 1: of that in American politics. So, and I think that'll
Speaker 1: show the further we go down.
Speaker 2: This all right, continuing with the article, the Bush era
Speaker 2: of vision was Reaganism without the rough edges compassionate conservatism.
Speaker 2: The framing is important. This Republican party wanted to be loved,
Speaker 2: even by its enemies. Some might say that applied to
Speaker 2: the foreign policy as well. After nine to eleven, President
Speaker 2: Bush made the point of calling Islam a quote religion
Speaker 2: of peace unquote. The war he launched in Afghanistan was
Speaker 2: not retaliatory. It was swiftly revealed to be an open
Speaker 2: ended commitment to turning that tribal society into liberal democracy.
Speaker 2: The war Bush began in Iraq was the same, secure
Speaker 2: in the knowledge that liberal democracy was both right and
Speaker 2: inevitable for the entire planet. Hadn't for Francis Fukuyama said so,
Speaker 2: there was no fear that prolonged occupation might prove futile.
Speaker 2: Hadn't we turned Japan and West Germany into good democracies
Speaker 2: after World War II? In fact, faced with a choice
Speaker 2: between rebuilding the American way or rebuilding the Soviet way,
Speaker 2: those peoples had acted according to their own priorities, not ours.
Speaker 2: Afghanistan in the eighties also opted for American aid over
Speaker 2: Soviet tyranny, then promptly succumbed to the Taliban Once the
Speaker 2: Soviets were beaten the Bush Republican ideology. Sorry do you
Speaker 2: want to interview?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, first of all, Japan and in Germany were
Speaker 1: you know, fire bombed to the absolute you know, there
Speaker 1: wasn't much left of of either. We went and made
Speaker 1: the ideology of Germany illegal and in the denotification made
Speaker 1: reconstruction look mild. Uh. We in Japan we knuked them twice.
Speaker 1: I find the you know, from from the beginning, we
Speaker 1: did not set out to turn Afghanistan into glass. We
Speaker 1: had this and again, I I don't know w Well,
Speaker 1: I've been around him some, and this matches his personality.
Speaker 1: This is just he's very much like you know, Barbara was, uh,
Speaker 1: and he's kind of a affable guy, which is at
Speaker 1: least on the surface. He didn't it didn't bother him
Speaker 1: to kill hundreds of thousands in the process. But there's
Speaker 1: this rule. There seemed to be this weird disconnect there
Speaker 1: about that. So you know, America's policy going into the
Speaker 1: Global War on Terror post nine to eleven was schizophrenic.
Speaker 2: No, definitely, And I mean you can see exactly why
Speaker 2: this this break happened. The party did completely and totally
Speaker 2: discredit itself. It sort of blew up any sort of
Speaker 2: common cultural basis it was running on, and also was
Speaker 2: faced with this sort of like rising generational figure of
Speaker 2: you know, brock Hussein Obama carrying on right, the Bush
Speaker 2: Republican ideology was discredited by the Bush Republican party's performance,
Speaker 2: couldn't win the wars it started, and the consequence of
Speaker 2: promoting easy credit for uncredit worthy home buyers was a
Speaker 2: housing bubble and catastrophic collapse of major lending institutions. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: it turned out that the capitalism enriching the world in
Speaker 2: rich China along with everyone else, even as it diminished
Speaker 2: the exceptionalism of American wealth, nor did it built door
Speaker 2: did it win its cultural battles at home. Progressives pursued
Speaker 2: the imposition of same sex marriage on the entire country
Speaker 2: through every means possible, and after they got it, which
Speaker 2: finally happened during the Obama years, they escalated the struggle
Speaker 2: to war over the very meaning of the term man
Speaker 2: and woman. So a couple things there, right, There were
Speaker 2: a lot of reasons to hate the neo conservatives. I
Speaker 2: One might view them as as traitorous, having divided loyalties,
Speaker 2: and that's certainly true that cannot be emphasized. But also
Speaker 2: they lost an immense amount of capital in the Culture War.
Speaker 2: The country jerked to the left after they blew up
Speaker 2: the Republican Party. And look, I don't wish they were
Speaker 2: still in power. I don't wish that Bush or someone
Speaker 2: exactly like him had won in eight It's not my
Speaker 2: point at all, but to say that's part of the
Speaker 2: reason they are viewed as anathema because they lost Conservatives
Speaker 2: a whole lot of ground that can't be overstated. It
Speaker 2: basically added fuel to the fire right. You have the
Speaker 2: financial collapse, which pushed a lot of people away from
Speaker 2: the Party of Big Business. Now we can all acknowledge
Speaker 2: that turned out to be a shell game. Obama was
Speaker 2: just in bed with the banks as anyone else, just
Speaker 2: as in bed with the insurance companies as anyone else,
Speaker 2: if not more. I'm not saying that that proved to
Speaker 2: be a wise calculate But this is a point that
Speaker 2: Scott Horton makes that these foreign wars, these foreign adventures, well,
Speaker 2: they cost us a lot. Here it discredited the Christian
Speaker 2: Conservative to be honest. Even to this day, the kind
Speaker 2: of like normal conservative evangelical is still measured up against
Speaker 2: the failures of that era. Right, it did definite damage
Speaker 2: to the nation, but it also did damage to the
Speaker 2: American right. It fractured it. There was no central point
Speaker 2: around which to rally. Sorry, Ron, I'll throw it back
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 1: No, I just think Dan's line, maybe it's one of
Speaker 1: two lines that really stood out to me in this
Speaker 1: whole piece. But he says when he says it couldn't
Speaker 1: win the wars it started, and that seems like just
Speaker 1: a zinger, but it's not that that hits at the
Speaker 1: very essence of the prudence with which this movement was
Speaker 1: being governed. And you know, philosophically, we can all jump
Speaker 1: on it because it was overly universal universalists that you know, well,
Speaker 1: we just had in Liberia hard enough, right, making reference
Speaker 1: to the fact that Liberia was given a very American
Speaker 1: style constitution and that turned into a hell hole. But
Speaker 1: we could do it this time with with Afghanistan. And
Speaker 1: I have no problem obviously with us enacting, you know,
Speaker 1: exacting justice after being attacked. You know, if everything was
Speaker 1: as it supposedly was. And I'm not a I don't
Speaker 1: have any dog in that game. By the way, there's
Speaker 1: people way more, way more down the rabbit hole of
Speaker 1: all the details of nine to eleven. I'm I was
Speaker 1: too close, you know. I'd just gotten married and we
Speaker 1: were my wife and I were trying to get pregnant
Speaker 1: and look for a house, and we just bought a house,
Speaker 1: and then nine to eleven happens on the way anyway
Speaker 1: to a fertility appointment. I mean, I remember it like
Speaker 1: it was yesterday. It's just too close. And by the
Speaker 1: end of the day, I'm thinking about going as a
Speaker 1: as a thirty four year old guy at the time.
Speaker 1: Where can I go in? Is there a way for
Speaker 1: me to get into OCS as a thirty four year
Speaker 1: old And so it's a it's just too I'm too
Speaker 1: close to it still to be able, like some of
Speaker 1: the younger guys are, to go back and really look
Speaker 1: into the details of what truly happened. All that to
Speaker 1: be said that the war we chose to have, instead
Speaker 1: of enact exacting justice, which didn't fully happen until until Obama,
Speaker 1: we decided to create this global war on terror, which
Speaker 1: was I think a disaster on every front. So it
Speaker 1: and and as Dan says, it couldn't win these wars,
Speaker 1: and so there's just a huge lack of prudence that's
Speaker 1: on display. And part of that is because there wasn't
Speaker 1: a unified There wasn't a truly conservative, rightist vision of
Speaker 1: who the American people were that the government was protecting.
Speaker 1: This goes all the way this and so instead we
Speaker 1: turned into this ideal that we were trying to fight
Speaker 1: for and sorry, that just doesn't work well.
Speaker 2: And I think that that really you can almost view
Speaker 2: Bush as a consequence of the ongoing American identity crisis
Speaker 2: since Reagan, right, what do we? What are we? After
Speaker 2: the kind of fallout of Vietnam, the fallout of the
Speaker 2: American Empire are looking shaky? Well, Reagan seemed to solve
Speaker 2: those problems, right, He seemed to provide an answer of well,
Speaker 2: what are we? And okay, fair enough, that worked in
Speaker 2: eighty that worked in eighty four, But once we hit
Speaker 2: the echo right twenty years later, does it still work?
Speaker 2: And one of the other questions we'll get to this later.
Speaker 2: I do want to get through this article is obviously
Speaker 2: what comes after Trump? And you sent me a podcast
Speaker 2: just briefly featuring the author of this piece in The Spectator,
Speaker 2: and one of the things that The Spectator, the host
Speaker 2: of the podcast at the Spectator was saying, is that
Speaker 2: it's from his perspective, which I don't necessarily agree with,
Speaker 2: we're in kind of another seventies right all over again,
Speaker 2: and the hope is for another Reagan figure. And I
Speaker 2: don't necessarily know if that can be done again for
Speaker 2: any number of reasons. But it is interesting if we
Speaker 2: talk about paradigm shift, something that's come up multiple times recently.
Speaker 2: Darryl Cooper John Fieldhouse in pee Quinonas did an exceptional
Speaker 2: episode about exactly this, is that you do get stuck
Speaker 2: in one for roughly a generation or two, that that
Speaker 2: is the solution. And it seems as if we are
Speaker 2: stuck in the paradigm of Reagan really one way or another,
Speaker 2: and we haven't shifted out of that point for another time.
Speaker 2: We'll come back to it later, put a pin in it.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, and that point about Reagan, again,
Speaker 1: Reagan was a negation. He was a negative figure. Everybody
Speaker 1: talks about his positives, a you know, positive aspect, but
Speaker 1: Reagan was and again, I was a politically active guy
Speaker 1: when you know, I was in high school in college
Speaker 1: when Reagan was around, and and it was we're not
Speaker 1: we're not this the weak exit from Vietnam. We're not
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter. We're not you know, We're not going to
Speaker 1: lose to the comedies in Russia. And it was it
Speaker 1: was very much it was Protestant. It was we're protesting.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a vision for what America is other than
Speaker 1: whoever wants to be, you know. And so I think
Speaker 1: you're exactly right there. Okay, we can we can move along.
Speaker 1: We need to do a pod some time on Reagan
Speaker 1: because it's it's a bunch of contradictions. Uh and and
Speaker 1: if you live through the seventies, man, it is something
Speaker 1: was going to happen because the seventies were weird.
Speaker 2: And you almost you almost have to look at Reagan
Speaker 2: as the fulfillment of Nixon. Again this we're radically outside
Speaker 2: of the scope of this article, but in the sense
Speaker 2: of Nixon was sort of cooed and his bass went
Speaker 2: on to become the Reagan Beasts. Yes again and yes
Speaker 2: with a lot of the to cop a phrase from
Speaker 2: this article, the rough Edges polished off. If we go
Speaker 2: down that line of inquiry, we are never going to
Speaker 2: finish this article. Put a pen in it.
Speaker 1: That's okay, that's it. But we do need to we
Speaker 1: do need to revisit that, because that's very You're so
Speaker 1: exactly right, Jay, You're so exactly right. But this article,
Speaker 1: I knew this was what would happen, because this article
Speaker 1: is so dense and so good and so thought provoking. Again,
Speaker 1: you don't even have to agree with it. It's just
Speaker 1: this is what good writing should do. And that's what
Speaker 1: I love about Dan.
Speaker 2: So, with the failure of Bush Republicanism, what could come next?
Speaker 2: The pundit class's answer was a nebulous thing called quote
Speaker 2: reform conservatism quote. The GOP's activist space preferred the Tea Party,
Speaker 2: a fight against Washington's crony capitalism and a return to
Speaker 2: Reaganism's rough edges. Neither of these post Bush ideologies had
Speaker 2: much to say about foreign policy. I would slightly object
Speaker 2: to that particular, and this wasn't one hundred percent aligned
Speaker 2: with the Tea Party, but they were kissing cousins. The
Speaker 2: explosion of the Ron Paul Revolution was certainly there was
Speaker 2: a lot of opposition to what we now call the
Speaker 2: deep state, right the excesses of government spending, but a
Speaker 2: lot of it was anti foreign intervention. The idea that
Speaker 2: we are a country we should care about that, not
Speaker 2: foreign wars. And a lot of the guys that are
Speaker 2: sort of in between you and I Ron in Age,
Speaker 2: the sort of elder millennial types, cut their teeth there,
Speaker 2: like I can think of George Bagbee. A number of
Speaker 2: other kind of prominent friends of mine who aren't on
Speaker 2: the Internet all came up during that era. And there
Speaker 2: most definitely was a foreign policy element of anti Bush,
Speaker 2: anti Cheney, and I think that's what pushed a lot
Speaker 2: of people into libertarianism. Effectively, I'm basically a conservative guy,
Speaker 2: but I don't want to waste my tax dollars blowing
Speaker 2: up children halfway across the world. Right, but Thomas Massey
Speaker 2: was aligned with a movement that did have a clear
Speaker 2: vision for foreign as well as domestic policy. In eight,
Speaker 2: the Texas republished and Congressman Ron Paul had found surprising
Speaker 2: degree of grassroots support when he mounted a presidential campaign
Speaker 2: explicitly criticizing the Bush era policy agenda, including the wars.
Speaker 2: No other GOP contender for the White House dared to
Speaker 2: criticize the eight. Republican Party looked to figures like John
Speaker 2: McCain and Rudy Giuliani to support a post Bush foreign policy,
Speaker 2: yet Paul defied them and propounded an alternative. His strictly
Speaker 2: non interventionist views were of a piece with his opposition
Speaker 2: to virtually all domestic federal activity beyond what the strictest
Speaker 2: interpretation of the Constitution would allow. Republicans didn't adopt Paul's
Speaker 2: view and mass, but with Democrats and fully control of
Speaker 2: Congress since the six midterms and Barack Obama in the
Speaker 2: White House, a strictly oppositionist ideology could find a niche
Speaker 2: in the GOP. The twenty ten midterms brought in a
Speaker 2: wave of new Tea Party Republicans into office, and along
Speaker 2: with them came a handful of more or less explicitly
Speaker 2: Ron Paul Republicans, including the congressman's son Rand who was
Speaker 2: elected to the US Senate from Kentucky two years later.
Speaker 2: With Obama on his way to reelection and the Republican
Speaker 2: Party at such a loss for leadership, Mitt Romney would
Speaker 2: be its most would be the most its presidential primaries
Speaker 2: could produce. Thomas Massey won a special election and subsequently
Speaker 2: a full term in the US House, overlapping only briefly
Speaker 2: with Ron Paul, who retired in January twenty thirteen. Anything
Speaker 2: to add to that history.
Speaker 1: Ron No, but you're saying again this very this returning
Speaker 1: motif of opposition as opposed to a pause, a vision
Speaker 1: for what you are. This is, you know, this is
Speaker 1: the post FDR right in America, except for I really
Speaker 1: think Nixon did have a vision. But that's again beyond
Speaker 1: the scope of this which you're saying, the right being
Speaker 1: defined by what it isn't not what it is.
Speaker 2: McCain had not supplied any new vision for the Republican Party,
Speaker 2: and Mitt Romney likewise failed to do so. The Tea
Speaker 2: Party was an exercise and negative partisanship, anti Obama, an
Speaker 2: anti Democrat, but a leaderless movement that couldn't steer a party,
Speaker 2: only complicate the efforts of anyone else attempting to do so.
Speaker 2: The House GOP was itself effectively leaderless for a decade,
Speaker 2: cycling through a series of speakers John Brenner, Paul Ryan,
Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy, who were despised by and had good reason
Speaker 2: to fear, the party's backbenchers. The House GOP caucus was
Speaker 2: a riot of factions, none of which possess enough authority
Speaker 2: to wield power. The Senate was a little better if
Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell's long tenure as Republican leader in the upper
Speaker 2: chamber was secure. Individual senators increasingly became brands unto themselves.
Speaker 2: The party division were on full display in the twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen presidential primaries clout it up with so many candidates
Speaker 2: the debates had to be broken up into separate tiers
Speaker 2: based on polling. Interesting point there.
Speaker 1: I do too the history. This is when this is
Speaker 1: the first time you really see that individual party members,
Speaker 1: especially on the Senate side, because they have such a
Speaker 1: longer run, and it's so many more people in the
Speaker 1: populous states, so many more people voting for them, they
Speaker 1: became personalities unto themselves who could go directly to the people.
Speaker 1: They didn't even they didn't have to have time on
Speaker 1: Fox or CNN or whatever. With the Internet and these personalities,
Speaker 1: you began to see this atomization of this factionalization of
Speaker 1: even within the party, of these of these personalities, and
Speaker 1: so you got these different brands that really came to
Speaker 1: prominence in this period.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that that is a synthesis of many
Speaker 2: things at once. One obviously the explosion of social media,
Speaker 2: and there's always been posturing for the camera. You see
Speaker 2: this in Senate nominations in particular, but really any time
Speaker 2: right that people have a chance to grill a witness
Speaker 2: or whatever. But with the birth of social media, and
Speaker 2: that really exploded. Obviously, you know Obama leveraged that heavily,
Speaker 2: but really in twenty sixteen, that is when we see
Speaker 2: the explosion of conservative politics online and effectively, what we've
Speaker 2: also seen is that if you can get a big
Speaker 2: enough following, you have a golden parachute for good or
Speaker 2: for ill. If you become an infamous or fai amus
Speaker 2: congressman or senator, you can become a figure in conservative media.
Speaker 2: Matt Gates, Marjorie Taylor Green, any number of people have
Speaker 2: done this, and so setting aside whether I like or
Speaker 2: dislike those figures, it's not important. That's an incentive. It's
Speaker 2: a major incentive, especially when there is no central leadership,
Speaker 2: there is no party line per se. It's dog eat dog,
Speaker 2: everyone out for themselves, and there is an incentive to
Speaker 2: differentiate yourself because well, that's how you get paid rand.
Speaker 1: It's very contra it's very contra party because differentiation by
Speaker 1: its very definition and differentiation that's just you're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, Harvard Business School, competitive advantage kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: How do you carve out your place on the market.
Speaker 1: It's through differentiation. That's not how you have a successful party.
Speaker 2: Though certainly brand poll is one of the year's contenders,
Speaker 2: he deluded his father's uncompromising libertarianism and performed worse than
Speaker 2: his father had in eight or twenty twelve. Ron Paul
Speaker 2: light wasn't what the GOP was looking for then or now.
Speaker 2: Ron Paul's appeal from the beginning had been his unwillingness
Speaker 2: to compromise, and therefore his freedom to criticize anyone and
Speaker 2: everyone else in the party. This was a necessary function
Speaker 2: at a time when the party had to be forced
Speaker 2: to confront its failures as the Party of the Bushes,
Speaker 2: and when it kept trying to avoid that confrontation by
Speaker 2: nominating a McCain in a Romney. But most Republican voters
Speaker 2: to stay nothing of. Lawmakers were never going to accept
Speaker 2: Paul's strictly libertarian constitutionalism as their own paradigm, which I
Speaker 2: think is something that a lot of libertarians right now
Speaker 2: don't want to admit. Look, there's a lot of cases
Speaker 2: where doctor Paul is right He's a great guy, and
Speaker 2: he is what I wish America could have become. But
Speaker 2: it's not going to work functionally. This system is too
Speaker 2: far away from his vision. It can't be bent into that,
Speaker 2: especially not with a libertarian attitude towards power. I will
Speaker 2: leave that there. Draw your own conclusions.
Speaker 1: No, Okay, well I'm I'm not gonna leave it there.
Speaker 1: You're exactly right, the libertarian This is because I love
Speaker 1: I voted for Ron Paul in O eight uh and
Speaker 1: uh so uh. I you know I was reading Misis
Speaker 1: in college and Hayek and and and so forth. The
Speaker 1: uh the libertarian paradox, which the only author I've known
Speaker 1: who really deals with it is Hoppa and then Jarvin.
Speaker 1: But Yarvin is Hopa Part two basically is that you
Speaker 1: must uh liber that that liberty and that that faithfulness
Speaker 1: to that founding ideal. And I'm not speaking of an
Speaker 1: a Jafa sense, So I'm speaking in a Hamiltonian, Washington sense,
Speaker 1: Madisonian sense can only be done within the walled garden
Speaker 1: of a protective, extremely powerful Article two Executive. Hapa goes
Speaker 1: so far to say, basically a king because only then
Speaker 1: libertarianism in and of itself excused power too much, and
Speaker 1: you've got to have someone someone has to bear the sword,
Speaker 1: the political sword. And this is the again, this is
Speaker 1: the libertarian paradox. Okay, so you didn't have to say
Speaker 1: it I did.
Speaker 2: This left Congress's handful of hardline liberty Republicans in limbo.
Speaker 2: They moved towards the mainstream, as Rand Paul did. They
Speaker 2: became difficult to distinguish from every other want to be
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan, with foreign policy being the clearest difference, but
Speaker 2: one few voters cared about the isolation cared but excuse me,
Speaker 2: with foreign policy being the clear difference, but one few
Speaker 2: voters cared about in isolation. This worked to Massey's benefit
Speaker 2: in the House. He may have been much less intervention
Speaker 2: interventionists than the typical Republican, including the typical Kentucky GOP voter,
Speaker 2: but that wasn't something that mattered much in an ordinary
Speaker 2: primary or red state general election. Conventional wisdom among Trump's
Speaker 2: detractors says he only won the twenty sixteen nomination because
Speaker 2: the Republican field was so divided, But the field was,
Speaker 2: of course no more divided for Trump than it was
Speaker 2: for every other candidate. Why shouldn't someone else have succeeded
Speaker 2: because of the large field. The most that can be
Speaker 2: said for this canard is that too many candidates were
Speaker 2: all trying to be the same thing, while Donald Trump
Speaker 2: defiantly stone stood alone in being different. Yet even that
Speaker 2: would not have helped if he hadn't been different in
Speaker 2: the ways that voters liked. They liked his hardline views
Speaker 2: on immigration. They liked his willingness to denounce the Bush
Speaker 2: foreign policy in terms hardly less vivid than Ron Paul
Speaker 2: had once used. Though Trump's objections were not about whether
Speaker 2: the wars were constitutional, but about why they weren't won.
Speaker 1: So these two paragraphs, I thine, so so good.
Speaker 2: Look several things here. One the point about your or
Speaker 2: my personal foreign policy preference and the electorate is one
Speaker 2: we sort of need to institutionalize. There are many, many people,
Speaker 2: especially in the anti war movement, who I consider friends
Speaker 2: who are morally or constitutionally opposed to war.
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm a you know, a cold hearted, you know, just
Speaker 2: soulless reactionary on.
Speaker 1: That you you really are.
Speaker 2: But for most people it comes down to winning or losing,
Speaker 2: and America likes winners. It's why the Maduro raid. Was
Speaker 2: it unconstitutional one hundred percent? Was it morally right? Up
Speaker 2: for debate, But it was a win. Our guys got
Speaker 2: him and paraded him through the street. That's awesome. That
Speaker 2: makes you look good. And look were our wars in
Speaker 2: the Middle East disastrous? One hundred percent? They were. Many
Speaker 2: people died, tens of thousands committed suicide, didn't get anything
Speaker 2: we wanted to And that matters more than functionally the
Speaker 2: moral implication. That matters more than, to be honest, the
Speaker 2: budget deficit. That is what is the operative concern winning
Speaker 2: or losing. Now that's not how I view things, but
Speaker 2: in a functional how do people feel about this? That's
Speaker 2: really what matters. And is there such a thing as
Speaker 2: a pyrrhic victory one hundred percent? Like that's not what
Speaker 2: I'm talking about either, But that's really what matters. And
Speaker 2: that's why I think Trump's early anti interventionism was so popular,
Speaker 2: because it fed into the general feeling that we're being screwed.
Speaker 2: This country isn't cool anymore, it isn't winning any and
Speaker 2: so it is a mistake to assume that because Trump
Speaker 2: was popular for anti interventionism, this sort of piece of
Speaker 2: policy is equally as popular. And again this is not
Speaker 2: my opinion what I would like to see America doing,
Speaker 2: but his analysis holds up.
Speaker 1: Ron I just I think it's so clear to remember
Speaker 1: these things that Trump didn't win because the field was divided.
Speaker 1: He won because he was he differentiated himself in ways
Speaker 1: that voters cared about immigration, trade being you know, calling
Speaker 1: out the Bush foreign policy failures, elite betrayal, and that
Speaker 1: you know, national humiliation. Just like you're talking about, the
Speaker 1: electorate loves winners, not and it's not just because they're winners.
Speaker 1: It's because the winning is that which proves the prudence
Speaker 1: of the decision. You. You know, there's the old saw
Speaker 1: in competitive in team sports that you can only you
Speaker 1: can only beat the teams that are on your schedule.
Speaker 1: The US is the global Hedgemen. We picked the schedule,
Speaker 1: so you've got to win your game. Every game is
Speaker 1: a home game. You picked it, and and other than
Speaker 1: I guess nine to eleven. But we chose how to
Speaker 1: to to prosecute that justice, so to speak, and we
Speaker 1: chose poorly. We chose to Uh. I think this even
Speaker 1: goes back the preseason was go four one, you know,
Speaker 1: and was that was that in hindsight, you know, moral
Speaker 1: and prudent, and did we do everything we needed to
Speaker 1: do there once we got in, you know, everybody we did.
Speaker 1: We chose not to go to Baghdad once we destroyed
Speaker 1: every bit of military hardware they'd had, and that again
Speaker 1: the government. You know, I'm not a big mass democracy guy,
Speaker 1: rather obviously, but I also know that the electorate isn't
Speaker 1: so dumb as to not connect winning with the what
Speaker 1: it takes to win, and so, you know, I really
Speaker 1: think that's hugely key. And then I think Dan describes
Speaker 1: Trump's worldview here. Trump thinks in terms of winners and losers.
Speaker 1: That applies to wars, and then that translates to trade, immigration,
Speaker 1: political races, television framing, real estate. All of that is connected.
Speaker 1: And so I just I think this is kind of
Speaker 1: the key section of this.
Speaker 2: Trump's politics is cohesive. They're not in the way well
Speaker 2: educated ideologics expect. Trump sees the world in terms of
Speaker 2: winners and losers, and those categories apply to go to
Speaker 2: the global economy as well as to real estate deals,
Speaker 2: television ratings, and political races and wars. Americans have been
Speaker 2: turned into losers by their leaders and the Republican Party
Speaker 2: in particular, has been played for suckers. Trump promised to
Speaker 2: change that. He would restrict immigration, conduct foreign policy along
Speaker 2: different lines, and give up worrying about how to be
Speaker 2: a kindler, gentler Reaganite. He was prepared to be neither.
Speaker 2: He would abandon small government rhetoric as well as claptrap
Speaker 2: about how diversity is our strength. He didn't care if
Speaker 2: he gave offense. Neither did the voters. He supplied a
Speaker 2: new vision for the party, one just as well adapted
Speaker 2: to the era of globalism as the Bush Republicanism that
Speaker 2: came before. Only this vision was adapted to the dark
Speaker 2: side of globalism, not the hopes and pipe dreams of
Speaker 2: the late nineties. The Tea Party in the Ron Paul
Speaker 2: inspired Liberty Republican movement of the twenty tens have been
Speaker 2: galvanized by the financial crisis, but MAGA was animated by
Speaker 2: the crisis of globalism itself, the question of what a
Speaker 2: nation could even mean in a world of mass migration
Speaker 2: and fully mobile capital. There might well be another financial crisis,
Speaker 2: but the crisis of globalization is ongoing. Though it may
Speaker 2: be more salient and sometimes than others, it never goes away,
Speaker 2: and I think that this is a really important point.
Speaker 2: Trump is often, i guess, criticized from all angles, and
Speaker 2: there's this idea, particularly among the sort of liberal establishment
Speaker 2: and also the kind of neo conservatives, that once he's gone,
Speaker 2: we can go back to normal. Right, that's done. Globalism
Speaker 2: is in crisis. It's plain to see. I mean, even
Speaker 2: look at the news out of Iran. Globalism is in
Speaker 2: a bad spot. And sure a system takes a long
Speaker 2: time to break down, but it is breaking down. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: even Biden realized that we needed to enshore critical parts
Speaker 2: of our defense infrastructure, and you could not say that
Speaker 2: Biden was a Trumpian figure. Clearly this is simply this
Speaker 2: is the win, Like, this is what is happening and
Speaker 2: in my mind, and we've referenced a couple times this
Speaker 2: podcast from the Spectator, which is quite good. The author
Speaker 2: conducts himself well, but the host and the other man
Speaker 2: across from him are both Tories. Right, they are talking
Speaker 2: about how kemmy badenoch a woman. I have strong opinions
Speaker 2: about that. I will not be going into for the
Speaker 2: sake of my YouTube channel. Will serve as a THATCHERI right,
Speaker 2: we'll serve as a way to write the ship and
Speaker 2: get back to normal. But fundamentally, the material conditions have changed.
Speaker 2: We no longer live in a world where globalism is
Speaker 2: possible in the same way, and so regardless of what
Speaker 2: happens of Trump and what happens to MEGA, there's no
Speaker 2: real going back to normal, at least from my perspective.
Speaker 1: On Yeah, I think the language here is correct. Globalism
Speaker 1: in and of itself is a crisis. It's anti human
Speaker 1: and it's that's being made evident or it's being enforced
Speaker 1: by the fact the very simple fact that we can't
Speaker 1: project power closer than the strike range of you know,
Speaker 1: of the radio the combat radius of our strike packages.
Speaker 1: And so you are going to be forced into a
Speaker 1: sphere of influence, more natural, more human model where there
Speaker 1: are just different parts of the world, the continents will be.
Speaker 1: It won't be back like it was, you know, in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, but it will be more way more
Speaker 1: so than it is than it is now. And this
Speaker 1: crisis of globalism is a the fact that it erodes
Speaker 1: what makes people unique is I'm I think I think
Speaker 1: the the even the non online right are starting to
Speaker 1: see that. Are you know, it's a you just want
Speaker 1: to live your own way. That's fundamentally, that's fundamentally conservative,
Speaker 1: or at least fundamentally of the right, that that we
Speaker 1: need to be able to find our own way. And
Speaker 1: this erosion is uh. I'm not saying anything. Your audience,
Speaker 1: you know, doesn't. We're all singing from the same hymn book.
Speaker 1: But the but the but what is needed, and what
Speaker 1: Trump has brought is an ability to convey that in
Speaker 1: a way that the bottom half of the electric can understand.
Speaker 1: It's not just about cheap TVs at Costco, especially when
Speaker 1: at Costco it looks like this, you know, a scene
Speaker 1: from Star Wars CANTEENA so okay, I probably said bad things.
Speaker 2: Sorry. The Republican Party was a mess when Trump found it,
Speaker 2: and it resisted his efforts to set it in. He
Speaker 2: was unprepared for how disloyal members of his own administration
Speaker 2: would prove to be. The weakness that had characterized the
Speaker 2: Republican Party since eight if not earlier, had given rise
Speaker 2: to factions, interests, and personalities that all pursued their own agendas.
Speaker 2: The ghost of Bush Republicanism had not yet been completely exercised.
Speaker 2: Failed attempts at replacing Bushism still haunted the party, too
Speaker 2: unable to win over the party as a whole, but
Speaker 2: defiant of any attempt by stronger leadership to bring order
Speaker 2: to the party's wilderness. Trump had a tough time in
Speaker 2: his first term as a result, and his party suffered
Speaker 2: staggering losses in the twenty eighteen midterms, though Bush, Clinton,
Speaker 2: George W. Bush, and Barack Obama had all suffered disastrous
Speaker 2: midterms of their own. Not only was it incumbent on
Speaker 2: Trump to restore party discipline, it was the duty of
Speaker 2: factions within the party to help him to do so,
Speaker 2: a duty they owed to themselves as much as to
Speaker 2: the party's voters and the country. The hard work confronting
Speaker 2: libertarian leaning Republics was to find its place where they
Speaker 2: and their principles could fit in the remade party. That
Speaker 2: was work that would require compromise in the near term
Speaker 2: to realize long term objectives. And nowhere was that more
Speaker 2: true than foreign policy, where the path to a less interventionists,
Speaker 2: if not non interventionist, disposition, would not be a straight line.
Speaker 2: Liberty minded Republicans would also have to make their voters'
Speaker 2: priorities their own. Massey wasn't an open borders libertarian, and
Speaker 2: he wasn't beaten by Ed Gallrain on Tuesday because he
Speaker 2: refused to support Everify. But Massey hadn't made himself seem
Speaker 2: indispensable to the immigration restrictionists in the party space. He
Speaker 2: had made himself the poster boy for balancing the budget.
Speaker 2: That wasn't what voters cared about the most, nor were
Speaker 2: the Epstein files, who release was another cause Massy made
Speaker 2: himself synonymous with. So I think the immigration point he
Speaker 2: brings up is vital and on the Epstein issue that
Speaker 2: is highly stratified by age. That is an issue that
Speaker 2: matters two younger people more so than older people. And
Speaker 2: Trump twenty twenty four base was a weird synthesis. And
Speaker 2: the podcast bros, the more conspiracy minded that care a
Speaker 2: lot about Epstein, that care a lot about JFK. They
Speaker 2: are a part of that base, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 2: But they are not the sort of base that wins
Speaker 2: you a primary in Kentucky. And that's important to remember now,
Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong. Do I think if Massey had
Speaker 2: been stronger on immigration, or at least publicly, if he
Speaker 2: hadn't gone after the president, would he still have his job?
Speaker 2: Quite possibly, Look maybe the Israel lobby hated him so
Speaker 2: much because of his comments on foreign wards and also
Speaker 2: the Epstein stuff. That's definitely possible. But I think we
Speaker 2: have to admit that as much money as APAC dumped
Speaker 2: into this, Massey did a lot of the work on
Speaker 2: his own. He made him.
Speaker 1: Three three thousand dollars per vote, which is absurd, genuine,
Speaker 1: it is absurd and completely unsustainable.
Speaker 2: Unsustainable, and it creates a major problem for a pack
Speaker 2: in the Israel lobby. This is something else I think
Speaker 2: that's important to mention in this UH. Much like the ADL,
Speaker 2: much like you cars for kids, much like the crs UH.
Speaker 2: A lot of these things really depend on not being
Speaker 2: plainly visible to the public. And at the point where
Speaker 2: Massey made the claim that Israel has an undue amount
Speaker 2: of influence and then the Israel lobby dumps three thousand
Speaker 2: dollars of voter to make sure that he doesn't win,
Speaker 2: I mean, you kicked him out of his role, but
Speaker 2: did you prove him wrong? Right? And this is another important.
Speaker 1: Part well, and for me, the key another key point
Speaker 1: that's being made here is the the the the you
Speaker 1: have a fork in the road that you have to
Speaker 1: choose do you want to be Joe Kent or do
Speaker 1: you want to be Tulsi Gabbard? And there are great
Speaker 1: arguments for both sides, but don't expect your head coach
Speaker 1: to support the guy who isn't a team player. Again,
Speaker 1: I love Joe Kent. I think Joe's been. I think
Speaker 1: Joe has has been. Uh. He's a great follow on X.
Speaker 1: If you don't follow him, you need to. But he
Speaker 1: chose to leave in auh and and take his chance
Speaker 1: as being more influential outside the game. But and he
Speaker 1: knew what he was doing. Tulsi has decided to stay
Speaker 1: inside and play, you know, be an influenced there. The
Speaker 1: most would say Tulsi's been pretty much sidelined, especially since
Speaker 1: the president has no longer takes a morning uh intel
Speaker 1: briefing every day. But that's that's what Massi was. You know,
Speaker 1: Massy picked is when he called the president corrupt. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying, you know, I'm not making a judgment
Speaker 1: here whether that's the correct statement or not. But he
Speaker 1: picked his poison and he's now I hope for where
Speaker 1: where you know, if he has good points to be made,
Speaker 1: I hope he has it set up to where he
Speaker 1: can be an influence outside because he had to know
Speaker 1: that this was coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that that's that's an important part
Speaker 2: of this, right that certainly, like the Israel stuff is like,
Speaker 2: that's a big part of it. You can't get away
Speaker 2: from that. But there are multiple variables here, right, There's
Speaker 2: multiple variables at play when examining this. So carrying on
Speaker 2: as I.
Speaker 1: Mean, real quick, real quick, I'll make this personal. So
Speaker 1: on I right, you know, I'm I'm obviously several orders
Speaker 1: of magnitude less important than the stuff we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But I write for some DC think tanks, and I
Speaker 1: knew when I came out strong and had a well,
Speaker 1: you know, at least well circulated, not very well received
Speaker 1: piece about the Iran War being a mistake, and about
Speaker 1: the same time you and I did the show on
Speaker 1: nuclear proliferation and everything, and that got passed around quite
Speaker 1: a bit. I knew that I was I had some
Speaker 1: heat come at me, and suddenly I went a while
Speaker 1: without getting a piece published again. Not I've got great
Speaker 1: platforms who I have great relationships with, but you've gotta
Speaker 1: you've got to be a big boy, and you've got
Speaker 1: to the folks if you're listening to this podcast, you're
Speaker 1: trying to be mature and educated about politics, and this
Speaker 1: is politics. You you you know, if you're going to uh,
Speaker 1: is the juice worth squeeze? You've always got to ask
Speaker 1: yourself that. And so you know, if we all you know,
Speaker 1: Jay here for instance, has built a very good platform
Speaker 1: not only on being very talented, but also having prudence,
Speaker 1: having interesting people to interview, and making good points without
Speaker 1: just you know, taking a blowtorch to everyone and everything.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's a prudent way to go about this,
Speaker 1: and you need to consider that all you guys who
Speaker 1: are listening as you seek to have a voice.
Speaker 2: Well, and on that point one, there's something to be
Speaker 2: said for inside and outside conversations. And look, this podcast
Speaker 2: is an inside conversation. If you're here, you're pretty far
Speaker 2: down the rabbit hole, right, So there are conversations that
Speaker 2: can be had there that as a congressman in a
Speaker 2: district in Kentucky, you can be right, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily help you. And it doesn't mean that you have
Speaker 2: to become a sort of like Limsey Graham, you know,
Speaker 2: obsequious lickspittle for a certain nation, not at all, but
Speaker 2: taking a dramatic stand on a divisive issue within your
Speaker 2: own base when you are not in a position to
Speaker 2: assume that will pay off for you, well, you shouldn't
Speaker 2: be surprised when it doesn't pay off for you.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That was a gamble, exact and in my mind, not
Speaker 2: a particularly good one. Now it turned out to be
Speaker 2: a better gamble than I would have thought.
Speaker 1: Right, And that.
Speaker 2: Again, I'm not a Zionist. That should be painfully clear
Speaker 2: to anyone listening to this.
Speaker 1: You're not.
Speaker 2: It's painfully clear based off of my friends and associations.
Speaker 2: I'll leave that there, But I think it's important to
Speaker 2: talk about the actual rationale of the choice that he made.
Speaker 2: As for foreign policy. By antagonizing pro Israel voters as
Speaker 2: well as Trump, Massey forfeited the opportunity to help shape
Speaker 2: his party's stances on war and peace. There's more to
Speaker 2: foreign policy that I ran in Israel, after all, and
Speaker 2: even at a time when the country is embroiled in
Speaker 2: a Middle Eastern conflict, Trump is changing America's posture to
Speaker 2: the world and historic ways liberty Republicans could have been
Speaker 2: part of that process, helping to make peace through strength
Speaker 2: and reality. Some libertarian leaning Republicans in the administration are
Speaker 2: doing that. The representatives who should have been Maga's peace
Speaker 2: wing in Congress chose to treat this moment like two
Speaker 2: thousand and three. Instead. To change government, including foreign policy,
Speaker 2: requires more than a single Senator or a couple of
Speaker 2: House members, requires a party led by a president. Anything
Speaker 2: else is just a protest movement. Libertarian leaning Republicans like
Speaker 2: Massey had a golden opportunity to make their case to
Speaker 2: the party base in the twenty tens, and having failed
Speaker 2: to expand beyond the numbers Ron Paul reached in eight
Speaker 2: and twenty twelve, they had a second chance to be
Speaker 2: part of a coalition that actually had a mandate to
Speaker 2: remake the party thanks to Trump. Instead of being targets
Speaker 2: for Maga, they could have played a part in picking
Speaker 2: Maga's targets. Rand Paul and Thomas Massey chose not to.
Speaker 2: Fair Enough, Massey made his choice and has received his
Speaker 2: judgment from the voters. Rand Paul goes before them in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty eight. But how is losing a primary meant
Speaker 2: to advance the cause of liberty or restraint in foreign policy?
Speaker 2: They couldn't capitalize on the quote libertarian moment quote what
Speaker 2: do they expect to achieve by themselves in an era
Speaker 2: of MAGA dominance? And I think that that's a really
Speaker 2: important point because look, I spoke last time about how
Speaker 2: the sea is changing on the issue of Israel dramatically,
Speaker 2: So this very.
Speaker 1: Vote my age stratification exactly.
Speaker 2: But we're not there yet. We're certainly much closer than
Speaker 2: I would have guessed even two years ago. To point
Speaker 2: the author makes short and honestly, uh, this could prove
Speaker 2: to be a very nasty divide very quickly.
Speaker 1: But again I want to sorry, yeah, and uh well
Speaker 1: remember to the and I'll remind everyone I am gen X,
Speaker 1: not a boomer, so quit it in the comments you did,
Speaker 1: but boomers to the average boomer.
Speaker 2: Hey, make this differentiation. Who's your favorite musician of all time?
Speaker 1: Eddie van Halen?
Speaker 3: Boomer that I worked for van Halen? I worked for
Speaker 3: van Halen, don't give me that.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Rod, I'm sorry, Rod, it was a stupid joke.
Speaker 1: But ask me, ask me who my second favorite musician is.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna Eric Clapton. That's totally all right.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have a conversation about guitar people another time,
Speaker 2: because this might be the most controversial thing. I say, yeah,
Speaker 2: what are you about to say?
Speaker 1: Go ahead and.
Speaker 2: Say Mark Knopfler is what everyone says. Eric Clapton is
Speaker 2: I love Mark Nophlin. Mark Knopfler is great.
Speaker 1: I don't care for that finger picking style over flat picking.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna go not going down these weeds. Okay.
Speaker 1: So as a genf say you can, so you can
Speaker 1: pull you can, so pull me out of my lane.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Well, anyway, so for the for the average Boomer and
Speaker 1: Israel a a uh, the Israel is a bastion of
Speaker 1: a bunch of white Europeans who are Judeo Christian in
Speaker 1: a sea of Arabs. And that's how they see it,
Speaker 1: and they're not going to see it any differently. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe they should. I think Jay and I, to varying degrees,
Speaker 1: have good arguments about you know, I'm not a Zionist,
Speaker 1: I have I'm fine with people finding their own way
Speaker 1: and what, you know, in whatever situation they are. I'm
Speaker 1: of the right. But if we're talking about Boomer democracy
Speaker 1: and how you just have to understand those are white
Speaker 1: Jews in a sea of Arab chaos and that's how
Speaker 1: they see it. And now you can make your arguments,
Speaker 1: but you got to realize that's the reality.
Speaker 2: Okay, And again that is not my position, but that
Speaker 2: is the commonly held position. And I think it's important
Speaker 2: and this ron we are going to do a show
Speaker 2: about this, not today because we're already over an hour
Speaker 2: and I want to finish this article. But I think
Speaker 2: it's very important for people to realize that for a
Speaker 2: lot of people, their position on Israel is not rational
Speaker 2: and it's not one that is borne out by data.
Speaker 2: For many people, sure there's the crazy dispensationalist stuff that
Speaker 2: you and I have spoken about before, that one hundred
Speaker 2: percent exists. But for a lot of people, Israel serves
Speaker 2: two functions. One, there's a little bit of displacement going
Speaker 2: on there where it's like they do all the cool
Speaker 2: stuff that we can't do. I wish you could do that.
Speaker 1: There's some wish, especially especially if you came to political
Speaker 1: fruition in the nineteen seventies, when we could get out
Speaker 1: of the way of our own ass pardon me that
Speaker 1: you have no idea, and then Israel goes and bombs
Speaker 1: the reactor at Oserak. I believe was the name of it,
Speaker 1: and suddenly they could do no. And this is after
Speaker 1: the raid on Entebbi and the fact, and after their
Speaker 1: entire wrestling team in seventy two gets massacred, they just
Speaker 1: go and kill everyone who might have been involved. Go
Speaker 1: see the movie Eric Bana Munich, which is about that.
Speaker 1: And suddenly we're like, can we have some of that
Speaker 1: competence that that gets? And if you grew up in
Speaker 1: that and I did not, I that's a little before
Speaker 1: my time. I mean, I've heard of all those things.
Speaker 1: I was cognizant, but that really wasn't on my radar.
Speaker 1: I was more a child of the eighties. They they
Speaker 1: that was hugely attractive to the folks who again came
Speaker 1: to political fruition in uh In in that time period,
Speaker 1: the late the late sixties and early seventies, starting really
Speaker 1: starting with the Six Days War so well.
Speaker 2: And on that point, oftentimes people on our side of
Speaker 2: the boomer divide will express sentiments along the lines of
Speaker 2: you don't get it. That's true, but also a listener,
Speaker 2: you don't get it. There are emotional attachments which again
Speaker 2: are not rational. They are not based on a chart,
Speaker 2: they are not based off of some rational exchange that
Speaker 2: are very dearly held to people and another part of it,
Speaker 2: And there's every reason to believe that this is completely
Speaker 2: and totally synthetic. Supporting Israel has become a part of
Speaker 2: what it means to be a conservative in the same
Speaker 2: way that opposing abortion, in the same way that getting
Speaker 2: really mad at Colin Kaepernick. Which there are reasons for
Speaker 2: both of those positions, but it's sort of amp smell, right,
Speaker 2: it's not rationally thought out. It is simply part of
Speaker 2: it in the same way. So often able to point
Speaker 2: this out in the left right, why do they hate
Speaker 2: Elon Musk? Why do they call him an in cell?
Speaker 2: Is it because he actually is an insult? No, it's
Speaker 2: literally just.
Speaker 1: My team really not an insult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, we have the but you know what I mean, right,
Speaker 2: that insult thrown out? Yeah, we run the numbers on this. Well,
Speaker 2: we have some proof to the contrary. I'll put it
Speaker 2: that way anyway. But it's just gut low. It's reaction,
Speaker 2: and look, that's really difficult to change. Carrying on, the
Speaker 2: Republican Party of the Future may become less supportive of
Speaker 2: Israel if present trends among younger voters continue, but anti
Speaker 2: Zionism already has a home in democratic primaries, where it
Speaker 2: fits perfectly with the anti colonial's, anti western principles of
Speaker 2: the left, although it troubles many friends as well of
Speaker 2: foes of Israel's. To say so, Israel itself is part
Speaker 2: of a much larger question about people's homelands and historical
Speaker 2: justice in the globalized conditions of the twenty first century,
Speaker 2: Americans have to take a side on that question, which
Speaker 2: has the greatest bearing on domestic as well as foreign policy.
Speaker 2: MAGA knows where it stands, as does the left. Full
Speaker 2: on open borders. Libertarian neoliberal globalists know where they stand too.
Speaker 2: The likes of MASSI are a lot less certain. The
Speaker 2: Young Right it's views on Israel, notwithstanding, don't seem to
Speaker 2: be in much doubt unless it is anti Zionism overrides
Speaker 2: it's anti globalism. I disagree with this framing slightly. In
Speaker 2: my mind, anti globalism and anti Zionism aren't necessity are
Speaker 2: in opposition. And if you look at the America first,
Speaker 2: and I don't just mean Fuentes, I mean you know
Speaker 2: what he calls the young Right. To me, it's pretty
Speaker 2: clear that for people under fifty five at least according
Speaker 2: to the data we saw out of this very primary,
Speaker 2: those could be wed quite handily, and in fact, much
Speaker 2: of the strongest opposition from Massi and others kind of
Speaker 2: more on the conservative side, really has very little to
Speaker 2: do with the jewishness of Israel. Be careful why I'll
Speaker 2: express this, but it has to do with exactly that
Speaker 2: America first proposition, why are we supporting you? Which I
Speaker 2: think is a very strong argument and one I see
Speaker 2: often expressed. There are people, many of whom are my friends,
Speaker 2: who are right wing Hamas supporters. I don't see that
Speaker 2: as being nearly as common. What I see is basically
Speaker 2: the same reaction to Ukraine, which is, you, guys, sort
Speaker 2: your own problems out, don't bring us into it. This
Speaker 2: isn't my fight, Particularly when the Israel lobby dumped a
Speaker 2: ton of money on a primary that, even if people
Speaker 2: didn't particularly like Thomas Massey or his message was kind
Speaker 2: of out of date. It is a little weird, right.
Speaker 2: It feels like something that shouldn't be allowed for a
Speaker 2: country that receives a lot of money to be using
Speaker 2: the money they get from us directly or indirectly. I
Speaker 2: understand to control our politics, right that rankles people naturally,
Speaker 2: and that is both anti globalist and also by no
Speaker 2: means anti colonialist or anti Western. That's the point of
Speaker 2: difference I think I have with the author on Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think Dan is saying that anti globalism really is
Speaker 1: this is the is the chief organizing principle of of
Speaker 1: of the right, and especially of the MAGA right. It's uh,
Speaker 1: defend nations, borders, industrial capacity, uh, democrat, demographic continuity, political authority,
Speaker 1: and civilizational self respect and controlling you're near abroad. That is,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the new Right in a nutshell. And
Speaker 1: I think Dan is saying that it's you know, if
Speaker 1: you choose to be anti zionists, that's fine, but don't
Speaker 1: allow the anti zionism to clap to overcome this larger
Speaker 1: anti globalist uh priority. That's a much anti globalism is
Speaker 1: a much stronger organizing principle than simple anti zionism anti
Speaker 1: if because and and here's where I'll jump in is
Speaker 1: before before this, I mean, the level of influence and
Speaker 1: control that the UK, especially in the Intel services UH
Speaker 1: tried and often was successful in manipulating the US was
Speaker 1: uh breathtaking. Uh. You we've seen shoot just in the
Speaker 1: last few years. What what Ukraine? How the Ukraine? Uh,
Speaker 1: the Ukraine listened to me, that's old school. How Ukraine
Speaker 1: manipulated us into uh endless uh uh you know, dollars
Speaker 1: and and and so forth. So we are susceptible as
Speaker 1: a factionalized democracy to foreign influence. That's part of it.
Speaker 1: That's a structural problem. And therefore Dan is saying we
Speaker 1: need to make sure that this anti globalism sits at
Speaker 1: the top of the pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs,
Speaker 1: so to speak, for the New Right, because anti Zionism,
Speaker 1: while valid, can distract if that becomes your organizing principle.
Speaker 1: I think that's the point that Dan is trying to make.
Speaker 2: Well, and you've seen that in the UK, where I
Speaker 2: think that Restore Britain has done a much better job
Speaker 2: of navigating that question by basically saying we will not
Speaker 2: accept any money whatsoever from foreign interests when being asked
Speaker 2: about the Israel lobby, whereas you've seen this bizarre marriage
Speaker 2: of anti Israel sentiment with far left policies, and again
Speaker 2: not a fan of but.
Speaker 1: Because it's anti colonial, it's the whole anti colonial thing,
Speaker 1: and people having a play anything tied to you know,
Speaker 1: ethnogenesis or whatever, or even Creedle uh fidelity UH is
Speaker 1: considered anathema to the left, and you just you have
Speaker 1: to be careful not to get sucked down that that pathway.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a huge issue on the right.
Speaker 1: I think maybe sometimes in the ultra you know, fully,
Speaker 1: I don't want to, you know, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: clarify what I think Dan's point is here. You know,
Speaker 1: I how would I put it? Maybe America should not
Speaker 1: be dragged into Israel's wars. We all agree with that
Speaker 1: US policy should serve US interest and those US interests
Speaker 1: should be defined by the citizenry of the US, not
Speaker 1: just it's trading or internationalist interests. Right, aid and commitments
Speaker 1: should be you know, limited and scrutinized. But Israel's claim
Speaker 1: to exist as a nation state is not the very
Speaker 1: that should not sit at the top of the organizing
Speaker 1: principle of the new Right.
Speaker 2: I think that's the point in conclusion. How yeah, go ahead,
Speaker 2: and I'll just get to this last paragraph. So I
Speaker 2: think it's it's express is a very important important point here.
Speaker 2: Many friends of mine are die hard Massy supporters. I
Speaker 2: understand where they're coming from, but not where they think
Speaker 2: they're going. Some pure content to live forever in two
Speaker 2: thousand and three, twenty thirteen, refighting the battles they lost
Speaker 2: ten or twenty years ago. They would do more for
Speaker 2: their cause if they tried to make the best of MAGA.
Speaker 2: Trump has turned the GOP into a real party again
Speaker 2: for the first time in decades. That party has a
Speaker 2: chance to change things for better or worse, which it
Speaker 2: will depend on who is in the mix. That is
Speaker 2: true for the country too, and is the point of
Speaker 2: self government. It's hard work, and I think that that
Speaker 2: is an interesting codea on this again. It is very
Speaker 2: easy to point out the mentality of being a beautiful
Speaker 2: loser when it's someone you don't like, But I think
Speaker 2: we have to be very frank about the fact that,
Speaker 2: guess what, you may have that instinct as well, or
Speaker 2: someone you like may have that instinct as well. And again,
Speaker 2: given the choice, I would have picked I would have
Speaker 2: picked Massy in this primary for any number of reasons.
Speaker 2: We have to understand, going back to the beginning of
Speaker 2: this article, that by being a twenty thirteen libertarian, he
Speaker 2: massively alienated people on issues that actually matter. He wasted
Speaker 2: his social capital on libertarian bs right, whining about ice,
Speaker 2: whining about the budget, whining about all these things, and
Speaker 2: he spent it in some good places. Right. That also
Speaker 2: alienated him with the base, but in a way that
Speaker 2: was probably worth it, like with the Epstein files. And
Speaker 2: if he had not spent down his capital over again
Speaker 2: immigration in the budget, maybe he would have had enough
Speaker 2: to fend off this attack. Maybe he could still be
Speaker 2: a solid anti war Republican, which we are in sore
Speaker 2: need of. But instead he chose to die on old hills,
Speaker 2: die on hills that nobody except for him cares about.
Speaker 1: He wrote political checks that he didn't have the political
Speaker 1: capital to cover, and many a career has been ended
Speaker 1: by that.
Speaker 2: Well, one could even say Ron he started wars he
Speaker 2: couldn't win, right, echoing the same problem with Butch. It's
Speaker 2: the same problem.
Speaker 1: It's that's why I think this that's kind of the
Speaker 1: you know, esoteric point of Dan's artill that came out also.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we can link it in the
Speaker 1: show notes. The podcast that we've mentioned several times is
Speaker 1: Dan discussing this with on the British Spectator podcast with
Speaker 1: Chris Caldwell. Who's brilliant, and Chris is probably he's more
Speaker 1: skeptical of some of some of this. It's a very
Speaker 1: good conversation if you like these kind of heady, conceptualized
Speaker 1: think pieces. And it's not long, it's thirty four minutes
Speaker 1: something like that, but I highly recommend it. It's worth
Speaker 1: the listen. And again it's not so that you agree
Speaker 1: always with what these guys are writing. You like good
Speaker 1: writers because they help you. They just help you get
Speaker 1: your thinking clear as you decide what position you have.
Speaker 1: It's just incredibly important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's it's it's good to go through
Speaker 2: an article like this because it does run contrary to
Speaker 2: my and many others gut feelings on this right where
Speaker 2: your kind of lizard brain is leading you. And again
Speaker 2: I've said this one hundred times, like I would prefer
Speaker 2: mass you to have won, but it's important to understand that. Yeah, look,
Speaker 2: the money's there, the changing demographic trends are also there,
Speaker 2: things that you know, we're very comfortable pointing out. But
Speaker 2: there's other parts of this and simply those two factors,
Speaker 2: and if we are going to win, if we are
Speaker 2: going to succeed, we have to have kind of the
Speaker 2: uncomfortable conversation with ourselves, with people we like, with people
Speaker 2: directionally we agree with more because we're not there yet.
Speaker 2: If again, present trends continue and anti Zionism or at
Speaker 2: least non Zionism becomes a winning issue in the Republican Party,
Speaker 2: great awesome. But until then we have to play ball
Speaker 2: in a different way. And that's what I think needs
Speaker 2: to be understand from this article. So, Ron, this has
Speaker 2: been a fascinating discussion. I appreciate you sending me this article.
Speaker 2: It's genuinely great. If people are interested in you and
Speaker 2: your work, I know you've mentioned it a couple of times,
Speaker 2: but where can people find you?
Speaker 1: I write for the American Mind, publication of the Claremont Institute.
Speaker 1: I write for American Reformer on political theology, occasionally for
Speaker 1: Responsible state Craft, uh, and quite often at my substack,
Speaker 1: the Eyes of Apilles or Ron Dodson dot substack dot com.
Speaker 2: Sorry, right, I realized that sounded like I was digging
Speaker 2: you for mentioning your work before. I just meant that
Speaker 2: you've been on my show a lot, right, Like, I
Speaker 2: feel like people have probably heard you at.
Speaker 1: Least one No, it's okay.
Speaker 2: I came across as a progressive I can.
Speaker 1: I can pull it out. It's okay. We can stop
Speaker 1: them leaving, all right, Ron.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Everyone at home, keep your head up.
Speaker 2: Good night.
Speaker 1: HM.
Speaker 2: What