Speaker 1: Well, whiskey, come and take my pains all right, Oh whiskey.
Speaker 1: Why think alone when you can drink it all in
Speaker 1: with Ricochet's three whiskey Happy Hour, Join your bartenders, Steve Hayward,
Speaker 1: John You and the international woman of Mystery, Lucretia where.
Speaker 2: They slapped it up and David, ain't you easy on
Speaker 2: the shoulda tap?
Speaker 3: Got agive me?
Speaker 1: And let that? Well, folks, we are I want to
Speaker 1: say live that's not really correct but for listeners, and
Speaker 1: we don't have the live stream working. John and Lucretia
Speaker 1: are sitting two feet apart from each other.
Speaker 4: I haven't smacked him once.
Speaker 2: And you know, for the people who try to find
Speaker 2: me after my death, I have my Apple tech.
Speaker 1: Track it right. And you know, there's of course some
Speaker 1: risks that not only will Lucretia reach over and smack
Speaker 1: you some point, but you could catch her cooties John,
Speaker 1: and so who knows.
Speaker 2: But I feel like I'm in an episode of Breaking
Speaker 2: Bad and Lucretia is going to bury me in the
Speaker 2: desert out here in Arizona.
Speaker 3: And you know what they say in casino, always dig
Speaker 3: the hole first, because if you don't, somebody's didn't come along.
Speaker 3: You'll be digging holes all night. You know that.
Speaker 1: Well, now, why don't we just tell listeners what you
Speaker 1: guys are? What brings you two guys together? Uh, since
Speaker 1: you're not about.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you because I'm excited about it. So John
Speaker 3: is here. It started out that John was coming to
Speaker 3: speak to uh, mister Lucretia's intelligence intelligence studies. The actual
Speaker 3: program is Intelligence and Information Operations Program, a class to
Speaker 3: talk about his sundry things. And John you is such
Speaker 3: a celebrity that it has ballooned and blossomed into a
Speaker 3: major talk with under cover police officers of course, because
Speaker 3: for security and whatnot.
Speaker 4: And he's actually going to talk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he can take him. But all he asked for
Speaker 3: actually was the opportunity to be able to carry concealed Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: the even though the police are good friends, they wouldn't
Speaker 3: allow me to do that, So they're going to be
Speaker 3: there undercover.
Speaker 2: Actually, I'm looking for Lucretia's handbag because I want to
Speaker 2: see the guns she must have in it. You left
Speaker 2: your guns in the car, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, look, things are getting kind of I
Speaker 1: mean to be semi serious for a minute. I mean, John,
Speaker 1: you and I are around. But I'm assuming you guys
Speaker 1: have seen the news that Antifa turned up at Berkeley
Speaker 1: in force a couple of days ago.
Speaker 2: I was teaching that day and we were oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I was on campus, but it did as far as
Speaker 2: the law school. But I know if you were there, Steve,
Speaker 2: you would have gone down, of course in person, to
Speaker 2: oh yeah, I miss the insanity. But I was like,
Speaker 2: I hope they don't block traffic on my way home.
Speaker 2: I don't want to have to run over more people
Speaker 2: than I usually do when I drive in downtown Berkeley.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I know they I mean, you saw that
Speaker 2: our friend Harmeat Dylan, head of the Civil Rights Division,
Speaker 2: is announced that the Justice Department has announced an investigation,
Speaker 2: and you know there's questions about whether the security is
Speaker 2: adequate for people to exercise their free speech rights.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right, Well, I mean, you know, borrow a
Speaker 1: statement of an old friend of mine. I would think
Speaker 1: that the only thing to protect Antifa in Arizona would
Speaker 1: be the game laws. But I don't know, right, But
Speaker 1: who knows well. So, first of all, so this is
Speaker 1: a little unusual episode since where you guys are there together,
Speaker 1: and we'll see how that goes. I did have a
Speaker 1: few people tell me they listened to last week's episode,
Speaker 1: which we taped live in the lobby of the Washington
Speaker 1: Hilton in a you know, sort of a random fashion
Speaker 1: of who was available, and they said, well, that was interesting,
Speaker 1: but that was strange, and you know, is it normally
Speaker 1: like that? And I said, of course, oh no, it's
Speaker 1: usually much worse. But that was rather gonzo. And maybe
Speaker 1: we'll come back to all that. Look, we got some
Speaker 1: serious things. Well there's always serious things going on, but
Speaker 1: we're not going to follow the headlines today exactly, but
Speaker 1: I do want to just plant a sequel. Well, Sidney
Speaker 1: Sweeney's back in the news, and it's always fun to
Speaker 1: be able to mention her.
Speaker 3: But also, wait a minute, I want to point something
Speaker 3: out here. So Sidney Sweeney lost thirty pounds in order
Speaker 3: to be able to well, she gained thirty pounds in
Speaker 3: order to be able to be the be in the
Speaker 3: movie Christy, and she lost back the thirty pounds seven weeks.
Speaker 3: All I want you guys to know is and she
Speaker 3: talked about how she went from a size twenty seven
Speaker 3: back down to a size twenty three. And I want
Speaker 3: you all to know that Sidney and I have something
Speaker 3: in common. I wear the size twenty seven that she
Speaker 3: wires when she's thirty pounds heavyer.
Speaker 1: Yes, but the difference is while she was just playing
Speaker 1: a boxer temporarily, you do that at three sixty five
Speaker 1: twenty four seven. I'll just put it that way.
Speaker 2: She's in a movie as she plays a one boxer.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, really yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 3: You would never know what was her just looking at her,
Speaker 3: not even because she's thirty pounds heavier, but because she's
Speaker 3: got dark, curly hair and yeah, it's all.
Speaker 1: Much yeah yeah, And apparently the movie did very poorly.
Speaker 1: That's opening box office weekend. But interesting she picked up.
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, we'll spend twenty seconds on this. All
Speaker 1: the sensation about her interview with a Gentleman's quarterly where
Speaker 1: she humiliated the interviewer. That's happening a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: Oh oh yeah, it was so good.
Speaker 3: So imagine if I was at that age, mature and
Speaker 3: had the same attitude as I was today. That's Sydney
Speaker 3: Sweeney in that interview. She just the lady says, well,
Speaker 3: you know, are you sure you don't want to apologize
Speaker 3: for making those comments about your jeans and you know
Speaker 3: a lot of people to you know, anytime I actually
Speaker 3: feel I need to explain myself about something, I can
Speaker 3: assure you I'll do so.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah and she oh, and she had this wonderful
Speaker 1: dismissive look on her face because she is a you know,
Speaker 1: a talented Hollywood performer.
Speaker 3: My my favorite one, by the way, my favorite meme
Speaker 3: on that was the obnoxious chick from MSNBC asks her,
Speaker 3: you mean happy holidays, right?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Then, and Sydney Sweety's in this you know, Santa Baby
Speaker 3: costume right that.
Speaker 1: Look, I have a whole collection of those memes. But
Speaker 1: I mean, needless to say, when they finally make the
Speaker 1: movie of the three Whiskey Happy Hour, uh, Sidney Sweeney
Speaker 1: will obviously play you, Lucretia, and then John. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've already been played in at least one movie I
Speaker 1: can think of.
Speaker 2: And so like twenty year old Korean you know, Maile.
Speaker 3: After I told you in the report, I was offended
Speaker 3: because they made the guy instead of this handsome squash
Speaker 3: playing worked out, they made him kind of a dopey,
Speaker 3: little chubby Korean guy and it really busters.
Speaker 2: That is most Korean guy that was.
Speaker 4: I was very offended by.
Speaker 1: That stereotypes, right, oh god right?
Speaker 2: Anyway, you know Don Rickles is no longer.
Speaker 1: I know it was Don Rickles. And you want to
Speaker 1: find the you want to find the human equivalent of
Speaker 1: the Swedish chef from the Muppets.
Speaker 3: That's always the one that's practically your avatars.
Speaker 1: I know exactly. So I'll just say last word on
Speaker 1: Sidney Sweeney. I've seen a couple of interviews with her
Speaker 1: which makes me think she's supremely intelligent, and only because
Speaker 1: of the way she discussed how she thinks about her
Speaker 1: career and business opportunities and other things. So, and she's
Speaker 1: willing to take risks like playing this role, but you
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect from what she's done before. You know, rom Comms,
Speaker 1: and you know some of the White Lotus she was in,
Speaker 1: which I never watched because I don't have time, So
Speaker 1: you know, keep your eye on her.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: The other bitter story, a little more serious, uh, in
Speaker 1: ideological terms, is what I'm calling Helen's legs, and I
Speaker 1: mean Helen Andrews, and I am.
Speaker 2: I've never obsessed with this article. Well, but the thing
Speaker 2: is a feminization.
Speaker 1: Of well, I just make this obsert Well, right. I
Speaker 1: mean there there continues to be a lot of chatter
Speaker 1: about it, and this is now a month old article,
Speaker 1: and so you know Ross doubt that had a podcast
Speaker 1: about her with somebody disputing it and greading some and
Speaker 1: lots more secondary commentary on substack by all the you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of different substackers. And I'm starting to think,
Speaker 1: I think I know what's going to happen next. And
Speaker 1: I think she's I expect she's going to write a
Speaker 1: book on this. If not, some publisher is going to
Speaker 1: beat a path through her door, and that book will
Speaker 1: be the next closing of the American mind, in other words,
Speaker 1: a big public publishing sensation from the right that will
Speaker 1: then spark a whole lot of discussion and debate for
Speaker 1: months or years. And the reason I think that is,
Speaker 1: you know, not quite a historical analogy, but you know,
Speaker 1: Bloom's famous book, which took everyone to my surprise, began
Speaker 1: as a magazine article in National Review in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: I remember the article was the cover story. Jack talked
Speaker 1: about it all.
Speaker 3: A bit.
Speaker 2: Well, but Bloom and Helen Andrews have so much in common, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know, Well, no, actually, he's a pull up,
Speaker 2: professor of political theory at the University of Chicago, and
Speaker 2: his book had nothing like you know, his book was
Speaker 2: like most people write it, probab didn't understand like ten
Speaker 2: percent of it. Well, I'll come back to that polarization
Speaker 2: of you know, just feelings people have about society. Well,
Speaker 2: i'll slow down you too, political theory in it.
Speaker 1: Well, when i'll slow down you two. You know that
Speaker 1: book began as an article in National Review. Jaffo actually
Speaker 1: brought to class and talked about it. It was the
Speaker 1: semester I had with him, the first semester I had
Speaker 1: with him. And then lo and behold, five years later
Speaker 1: he's got or four years later, he has a book
Speaker 1: out about it because somebody said you should do a
Speaker 1: book on this. Uh, if you know the story. Simon
Speaker 1: and Schuster printed ten thousand copies and was hopeful they'd
Speaker 1: be able to sell those, but they weren't sure, and
Speaker 1: of course it becomes this monster bestseller. Now why did
Speaker 1: it become a best seller? Well, a couple of things,
Speaker 1: but one of them was he had that somewhat ridiculous
Speaker 1: chapter on rock and roll music where he obsessed with
Speaker 1: Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson. It doesn't read very well,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people seized on that. But then
Speaker 1: there was the very long and very very serious chapter
Speaker 1: towards the end, which was called from Plato's Republic to
Speaker 1: Heidegger's Rector's Address, although he put the hidigger in German
Speaker 1: and that was very dense and difficult, and nobody got
Speaker 1: through that, and it was not included on the audiobook's
Speaker 1: version of the book. So you had everything from soup
Speaker 1: to nuts in that book, and you know, it caught
Speaker 1: everyone by surprise, including Bloom. I could see Helen's book
Speaker 1: and probably she'll throw in something outrageous. That's the equivalent
Speaker 1: of taking after Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger, and then
Speaker 1: we're off to.
Speaker 4: The racist after Boomers.
Speaker 1: Sure, but that's an easy target now exactly. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: well maybe that leads us then to our first a
Speaker 1: serious topic on the agenda. So to put it bluntly, Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Where I am right now is in the
Speaker 1: grip of gropersm Do you know what grouperism? John is? John?
Speaker 1: You probably don't.
Speaker 2: It's the followers of Nick fun Days.
Speaker 1: Is that right? It's kind of like it. I think
Speaker 1: it goes beyond him. I'm not sure I could define it,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely.
Speaker 4: After the stupid frog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it was, see right, and that's been around
Speaker 1: a while now then I've ignored that. And but you
Speaker 1: know there's a I'm calling this, by the way, new
Speaker 1: right four point five, and I could go through one
Speaker 1: through four and why it's four point five, but I won't.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be doing that on Friday up at
Speaker 1: Yale for the Buckley Institute.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: Rodreer wrote a substack note because he was here over
Speaker 1: the weekend along with the Hungarian delegation visiting President Trump
Speaker 1: and Vice President Vance. And he wrote a long substack
Speaker 1: here a couple days ago. That's getting a ton of attention.
Speaker 1: He's a good writer and a good reporter, and he's saying, gosh,
Speaker 1: we got a ton of these gropers, and by most
Speaker 1: estimations of in fact, there's an ambulance going behind me.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can hear it. I'm on
Speaker 1: Connecticut Avenues. Okay, good. Anyway, he's saying that, you know
Speaker 1: what we're told is And the backdrop here, of course,
Speaker 1: is this the STM and dron at the Heritage Foundation
Speaker 1: and Kevin Roberts going on right now, that's also gripping
Speaker 1: the town. And so the point is is he says,
Speaker 1: you know, like thirty to forty percent of the young
Speaker 1: conservatives working on Capitol Hill and for the think tanks
Speaker 1: and the media organizations are you know, Flente's adjacent. I'll
Speaker 1: put it at least that way, right, And they like
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, and they hate the baby boomers. They have
Speaker 1: contempt for Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley and you
Speaker 1: know boomer conservatism, and the twitter wars right now on
Speaker 1: this are quite intense, I'll just put it that way.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, if you didn't know that that's
Speaker 2: that's the right figure, that seems like a real exaggeration
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know. I mean, he said, that's just
Speaker 1: I'm talking to people around town. And yeah, I'm a
Speaker 1: little suspicious too, but I think I do think this
Speaker 1: is a five alarm fire because well, I mentioned to
Speaker 1: you guys, I mentioned on the Ricochet podcast that these
Speaker 1: really bright students I met at Mississippi a month ago.
Speaker 1: I really like them. They've read stuff, they're smart, they're
Speaker 1: going places, and several of them said, we kind of
Speaker 1: think Nick Fins might be the successor to Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 1: And I said, but you know what about the crazy
Speaker 1: You know what he's said about Hitler, and you know
Speaker 1: Eddie's an anti Semitic and all the rest of that.
Speaker 1: And they said, oh, yeah, that's kind of crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: But we like that he's outrageous. And then he's you know,
Speaker 1: just rejects all the conventions. And so a key sentence
Speaker 1: in Rod's piece was, h this is not people who
Speaker 1: are looking for an end of wokery and return to normal.
Speaker 1: They're looking for revenge. And I don't that may or
Speaker 1: may not be an overstatement. I didn't get that from
Speaker 1: the students I talked to at Mississippi, but they certainly there.
Speaker 1: If they're out for revenge, they're taking you out against
Speaker 1: old boomer conservatives like me and you. I suppose to right.
Speaker 2: These people, as far as I understand their views, are
Speaker 2: ignorant and racist and misogynists and ill deformed, fairly educated,
Speaker 2: and I think are much smaller proportioned. I've met no
Speaker 2: students who say good things about Nick flent Days or
Speaker 2: any of these gropers. I mean, it sounds to me
Speaker 2: like they're these people sitting in their basements of their houses,
Speaker 2: you know, posting and engaging in social media, which has
Speaker 2: effective exaggerating how many people you think really agree with
Speaker 2: them because they post a lot. But that doesn't I
Speaker 2: mean thirty or forty percent. I think that. I think
Speaker 2: that's might be three or four percent or five percent.
Speaker 2: I've not met anyone who takes these views seriously. Amongst
Speaker 2: the young people. They might like that, you know, he's
Speaker 2: raising a ruckus, and they might like a chaos going
Speaker 2: to the Heritage Foundation. But actually people who agree with
Speaker 2: his views, which I take it he thinks Hitler was cool,
Speaker 2: and that he thinks Stalin is interesting and Maw too,
Speaker 2: I suppose, And I mean they actually go. I've not
Speaker 2: heard young people say they actually agree with these things
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean I necessarily disagree with everything you said.
Speaker 3: I have actually talked with quite a few young people.
Speaker 3: And you guys probably don't remember this. It might have
Speaker 3: been with Richard epste We were on a podcast and
Speaker 3: I mentioned this, Oh, I think.
Speaker 4: It was Amy. It was Amy Wax And I.
Speaker 3: Mentioned that there's a at my university, there's a course
Speaker 3: on the Holocaust that teaches that it was all the
Speaker 3: Jews fault, really really, and I guess what I would
Speaker 3: argue when you said that they're ignorant, and then you
Speaker 3: said that they're racist and anti Semitic. They are racists
Speaker 3: and anti Semitic because they're ignorant, because they, as Reagan
Speaker 3: would say, they know so much that isn't true true,
Speaker 3: and that that's the failure that and you know, let's
Speaker 3: give some credit to conservatives for at least taking seriously
Speaker 3: the idea that however large that percentage of call it
Speaker 3: the conservative, the right wing, whatever, however large that is,
Speaker 3: we don't just ignore it, thank goodness, or we're going
Speaker 3: to find ourselves with, you know, a Nick Flintes type
Speaker 3: becoming mayor of New York City before you get it right.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's, you know, all of this angst over
Speaker 3: Tucker Carlson and Nick Flintes. I find all of that
Speaker 3: stuff highly, highly objectionable. But at least, you know, conservatives
Speaker 3: actually look at the views of each other and and
Speaker 3: do demand a certain kind of call it homogeneity on
Speaker 3: these views.
Speaker 4: We tolerate Libertarians.
Speaker 3: John and I were having a really interesting discussion about
Speaker 3: libertarianism before this. Sorry the Gora, but I was telling
Speaker 3: John that I saw this. I think it was the website,
Speaker 3: the huge banner on the website of the Colorado Libertarian
Speaker 3: Party abolish Ice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you take at all.
Speaker 3: These nuts that come under the big tent on the
Speaker 3: conservative side. But we at least pushed back on some
Speaker 3: of these things, and hopefully we make those ignorant young
Speaker 3: people who are resentful about what they've been through. You know,
Speaker 3: there's white males don't go to college anymore. Why not
Speaker 3: just because college is a waste of time, as we've
Speaker 3: all learned recently, but because they.
Speaker 4: Weren't welcome, right, they weren't welcome.
Speaker 3: And you know, and if they got there, what were
Speaker 3: they going to study? And even if they went into
Speaker 3: a stem field, they'd be like one of my kids
Speaker 3: who went there and was told on the first day
Speaker 3: and his physics first day with his physics advisors, that
Speaker 3: your only purpose here is to make sure that you
Speaker 3: may get marginalized students through this program. Your success depends
Speaker 3: on this, you know. So they have a reason to
Speaker 3: be resentful. Yeah, and we didn't protect them when we
Speaker 3: should have.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, let me give let me give one Crusius
Speaker 2: said that I agree with is that you have someone
Speaker 2: on the Democrats side who's now the right. He's the
Speaker 2: mayor of the largest city of the city with the
Speaker 2: largest number of Jews outside of Israel, and he's clearly
Speaker 2: anti Semitic, and his party in the end embraced him.
Speaker 2: And because they don't, I think that's there. They don't
Speaker 2: police is the wrong word, but they don't, you know,
Speaker 2: cultivate what's right and wrong amongst their members. And the
Speaker 2: one healthy thing I think out of all this is
Speaker 2: that you see a number of leading people coming out
Speaker 2: and condemning what Nick Flin takes thinks. Tucker carlsrom for
Speaker 2: giving him such a softball interview, and he and Kevin
Speaker 2: Roberts for giving Pucker pass. I think that's entirely healthy
Speaker 2: and good for conservative movement. That's out in public and
Speaker 2: we can have a debate about it. And yeah, I
Speaker 2: think people, you know, you know that this view should
Speaker 2: be stifled, not for First Amendment, not stifled in first Ammican,
Speaker 2: stifled because it's wrong. Right, The Democrats are very happy
Speaker 2: to have antison Mites in their political coalition.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I think that's quite right now.
Speaker 3: Sean Davis, of whom I'm a huge fan, by the way,
Speaker 3: but he can be a little extreme.
Speaker 4: From time to time.
Speaker 3: Sean Davis from the Federalists says that this whole reaction
Speaker 3: by the you know, the donors that these think tanks
Speaker 3: and on and on and on, is really because they're
Speaker 3: they're desperate to turn the Republican Party away from Mega
Speaker 3: to ruin any chance that JD Vance becomes the heir
Speaker 3: apparent and and get the GOP back on its country
Speaker 3: club and Chamber of commerce routes where it belongs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I've heard that, and I I think that's overdone.
Speaker 1: But let me offer I.
Speaker 3: Like to put the ideas out there right.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think it's wholly wrong. And let's hold
Speaker 1: the JD answer for a moment because that's and we
Speaker 1: maybe end on that. But let me give you an
Speaker 1: end of one, in other words, one data point, first
Speaker 1: for John's benefit, but also to show that the framing
Speaker 1: of this it's a young male problem, right for all
Speaker 1: the reason that are quite right. And that's my driver
Speaker 1: in Mississippi on now four trips to and from the
Speaker 1: airport over this last year. She's graduated but working at
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independent Center. She's really smart. She knows
Speaker 1: stuff she's a good evangelical Christian, but but young lady, right,
Speaker 1: And she says, yeah, I kind of like nickquentn taste.
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, why and yeah, he said some
Speaker 1: crazy stuff and all that, and she's just very sweet,
Speaker 1: and she says, but you know, I really don't understand
Speaker 1: why we give so much money to Israel. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I don't None of the students there struck
Speaker 1: me as having a rop of anti Semitism. There's none
Speaker 1: of that there, but I think in this particular by
Speaker 1: the way, then John I went and explained why we did.
Speaker 1: Here's the whole history of it, and this is a
Speaker 1: little bit like a Ukraine argument. We're developing military technologies
Speaker 1: jointly that benefit us and that we're using and they
Speaker 1: buy our stuff and so forth. And at the end
Speaker 1: of my explanation, that was just on that part of it.
Speaker 1: You know, I've never heard that before. That's a good explanation.
Speaker 1: So we're following. And I think we've assumed that we
Speaker 1: conservatives Republicans didn't need to make this case. Well now
Speaker 1: actually we do. And then the second thing I talked about,
Speaker 1: and this is the week before Vance went there for
Speaker 1: his big appearance, and if you remember the highlight reel,
Speaker 1: there was a student that got up, had a maga
Speaker 1: hat on and he was asked a very anti Israel
Speaker 1: question happed with the sentence at his last sentence was
Speaker 1: and by the way, you know, they're a country that's
Speaker 1: not even our religion. And I did we Okay, I
Speaker 1: didn't know if I had with you or not. But
Speaker 1: the point is Ronald Reagan would have said we called
Speaker 1: through Judeo Christian tradition for a reason. Vance didn't do
Speaker 1: any of that. He just said an America first explanation,
Speaker 1: which I think actually played into what's driving all this.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of foreign sources, other bad faith
Speaker 1: actors have been insidiously trying to reach people like some
Speaker 1: of these students I met there and elsewhere.
Speaker 2: I think our argument has to be stronger than that,
Speaker 2: because I guess you can make that argument right, which
Speaker 2: I've made, about why Israel is a good ally of ours,
Speaker 2: regardless of it's exactly just significance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 2: I personally think people who don't want Israel to exist,
Speaker 2: and so they're saying, oh, you know, they're against Zionism.
Speaker 1: What are they called it?
Speaker 2: That is anti Semitic too. So there's this idea that
Speaker 2: you saw in these questions and the conversation, you know,
Speaker 2: with your new girlfriend from Mississippi, whatever her name is,
Speaker 2: that there's something it's okay to say, I'm not a Zionist,
Speaker 2: but I'm not anti semi sub that it's okay for
Speaker 2: me to think Israel should not exist as a state,
Speaker 2: but I'm not anti Semitic. That's totally different than saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: well I don't think that. Now, who's been a great
Speaker 2: prime minister or I would have run the gods of
Speaker 2: war differently. You know, those are questions, you know, of policy,
Speaker 2: But I think there's this theme now that's emerging. You
Speaker 2: know that Israel shouldn't be a state. But I'm not
Speaker 2: anti Semitic for believing that. I think that's wrong.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: You don't hear people coming out challenging that view like
Speaker 2: you're saying, Jade van Stein, come out and challenge that view.
Speaker 2: And you know I was talking. I was talking to
Speaker 2: a liberal student who said, what's so wrong about saying
Speaker 2: from the river to the sea Palestine shall be free?
Speaker 2: It just means that everybody should get along and live together. God,
Speaker 2: I was like, do you realize what territory this is
Speaker 2: the river.
Speaker 1: To the sea.
Speaker 2: If it's Palestine, that means Israel actually can't exist because
Speaker 2: that's the entire state is Israel. A lot of young
Speaker 2: people think think this, that the state of Israel has
Speaker 2: no legitimate right to exist. I think we should harder
Speaker 2: on all those people who think that are really useful
Speaker 2: idiots for anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: What's the only country you know? The answer this what's
Speaker 1: the only country in the Middle East where Arabs get
Speaker 1: to vote in free elections? It's called Israel.
Speaker 2: To the student, if you will behind the veil of
Speaker 2: ignorance or in the state of nature, and you knew
Speaker 2: you were going to be Arab, and you didn't know
Speaker 2: where you were going to be born, you would hope
Speaker 2: you would be born in Israel. Well that's good, that's
Speaker 2: a good Arab country, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although I hate even leaving the door open a
Speaker 1: crack sneaking rolls in his veil of ignance. But oh
Speaker 1: that's okay, all right, yeah, okay. Well, now, speaking of
Speaker 1: libertarians to change gears, our friend Richard Epstein has what
Speaker 1: he's written this article about, Oh, the unitary executive theory
Speaker 1: threatens to eat up the independent judiciary, and this is terrible.
Speaker 1: And maybe John, you're going to or have already done
Speaker 1: a law talk with Richard about this question. The part
Speaker 1: I thought the mean, I thought, this is John, youugh
Speaker 1: bate was where he said there's very little textual support
Speaker 1: for the unitary executive in the constitution. I think I'm
Speaker 1: gonna turnover to you. But I think what we have
Speaker 1: here at Lucretia is this is a proxy debate between
Speaker 1: Thomas Hobbs who is John, and Adam Smith, who is Richard.
Speaker 1: And because Richard is pure libertarian and so I don't know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the article is dense about the cases
Speaker 1: going back to the eighteen fifties, and I got kind
Speaker 1: of bored with it in hurry. But I do think
Speaker 1: I thought it was quite wrong headed.
Speaker 3: Actually, John gave gave me an excellent sort of summary
Speaker 3: of the article.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, give sure, go ahead. John.
Speaker 4: Why it is that Richard came to this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think so. One thing is I
Speaker 2: think he's wrong about the text. And most of the article,
Speaker 2: as you said, Steve, was a strange technical discussion of
Speaker 2: not even the executive branch, but of these weird courts
Speaker 2: that Congress has created called Article two courts, which are
Speaker 2: not federal Article three one Article one courts. Article three
Speaker 2: courts are the ones that we know and love, like
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court. Right, but people will be shocked to
Speaker 2: know most cases under federal law, like social security benefit
Speaker 2: disputes and things like this, get heard by these courts
Speaker 2: which are not really federal courts. They're handled by these
Speaker 2: fake judges, and they're called articles. We call them Article
Speaker 2: one courts because.
Speaker 1: That would be just give an example. Isn't the Court
Speaker 1: of Federal claims an Article one court claims a tax court?
Speaker 2: But then number immigration courts are the best example. These
Speaker 2: are people who do not have lifetime tenure, their salary
Speaker 2: can be reduced, they don't have judicial independence.
Speaker 3: And before you go on, I just don't have it
Speaker 3: in front of me. But the one line that he
Speaker 3: threw in there was, of course, their their development was
Speaker 3: not constitutional. It was haphazard. And he had a funny
Speaker 3: turn of phrase that he said. In other words, this
Speaker 3: was just sort of thrown at us, and we accepted it.
Speaker 3: But now, of course we have to bow down and
Speaker 3: realize that our constitutional fall apart without it.
Speaker 4: Go ahead John Well.
Speaker 2: So one thing is Richard's a libertarian, and so libertarians
Speaker 2: traditionally like ineffective government, right, They don't like to have
Speaker 2: an effective executive branch. They would prefer Congress do very
Speaker 2: little and a very powerful judiciary because they want the
Speaker 2: judiciary to protect individual rights against the government and against majorities.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: They also fear just majorities, especially because majorities trample on
Speaker 2: individual liberties. So Richard's argument, you know, when you look
Speaker 2: at it, is basically just fitting into the traditional libertarian
Speaker 2: approach to government. But the second thing is he then
Speaker 2: overlays us with this weird approach to constitutional interpretation. He's
Speaker 2: not an originalist, he's not a textualist either. He is
Speaker 2: actually very close to what you may think of it as
Speaker 2: like a history and tradition guy. So when he talks
Speaker 2: about these weird article on courts, he just as Lucretia says,
Speaker 2: he just accepts them because they've been around a long time.
Speaker 2: Which is strange because he doesn't have that same attitude
Speaker 2: to the executive branch, which he thinks must be stripped
Speaker 2: down to some magical eighteenth century, you know, tiny executive.
Speaker 1: But he accepts.
Speaker 2: So we've had these debates about affirmative action, and I
Speaker 2: give him a really hard time. See supports race based
Speaker 2: affirmative action. It's been around a long time, and it
Speaker 2: you know, things that have been a long time constitutionally
Speaker 2: have some claim to permanence, which I just think that's
Speaker 2: completely wrong because why writing down the constitution that quick question.
Speaker 1: On that does that? Does his view differ in any
Speaker 1: substantial way from just reliance interests, which is often comes
Speaker 1: into play.
Speaker 2: It's not so much narrow idea about Okay, Starry decisive,
Speaker 2: but this is just you know, it's like treating the
Speaker 2: Constitution as if it were just the common law and
Speaker 2: you just build on it and build on it, you
Speaker 2: never go back to the original beginning. And then the
Speaker 2: last point is the one you suggest to see, the
Speaker 2: idea that there's no textual foundation for the unitary executive
Speaker 2: is just exactly right when the Constitution says, right, the
Speaker 2: executive power has vested in the pre and then it
Speaker 2: gives them the commander chief power and the take care clause.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like, what what what part of it
Speaker 2: is not justifying?
Speaker 3: I mean he has a throw off line about Locke
Speaker 3: in there too, as if somehow Locke says something about.
Speaker 4: It, but who cares. Let me ask you a question.
Speaker 3: You and I actually believe that the the the beginning
Speaker 3: of Article two that says the executive power shall be
Speaker 3: vested in as compared to the beginning of Article one,
Speaker 3: which says the legislative powers hearing granted, But that he
Speaker 3: and granted that's the hearing granted. Okay, I'm but but
Speaker 3: I have a minor point here. Article three begins, the
Speaker 3: judicial power shall be vested in. So how is it
Speaker 3: we are not arguing that all of these Article one
Speaker 3: courts in and of themselves are unconstitutional.
Speaker 2: No, that's exactly rightly a cretia. This is why Richard
Speaker 2: doesn't like the constitutional text, because if you actually read
Speaker 2: the constitutional text, he would be utterly wrong because he's saying, oh,
Speaker 2: the executive power of being vested in the president. That's
Speaker 2: just ceremonial language that has no substance. But Article three
Speaker 2: says the judicial power is vested in the Supreme Court. Right,
Speaker 2: that sentence is the only sense that really justifies judicial review,
Speaker 2: justifies the independence of the Article three courts in their
Speaker 2: power over certain classes of cases. Is why the Congress
Speaker 2: can't just take cases away from the Supreme Court. Whenever
Speaker 2: it feels like the claim of you know, this judiciary
Speaker 2: is an independent, equal branch comes from the same exact language.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Richard would say, oh no, that vesting of
Speaker 2: the judicial powers undermined by the history of these fake courts.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, right, he was like, oh love,
Speaker 2: but the same language an Article two has no meaning
Speaker 2: at all, and we can reduce executive branch to basically
Speaker 2: I think, you know, a president at a desk with
Speaker 2: a pencil in the White House and no substance of
Speaker 2: powers at all. Now we gotta have Richard on the show,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure he could speak for thirty minutes straight
Speaker 2: about why he's right. So this is cause, he said,
Speaker 2: he wrote a book about it. I called it up
Speaker 2: out of library. He says, the constitution is we have
Speaker 2: a constitutional convention. By not convention, isn't a meeting, but
Speaker 2: conventions like just things. The way we do things, he
Speaker 2: calls us exactly, he calls us the prescriptive constitution. We
Speaker 2: do things which are good policy. They might be unconstitutional,
Speaker 2: but we accept them. And so another example he would
Speaker 2: use would be the independence of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Speaker 2: He said it doesn't make sense under the Constitution, but
Speaker 2: it's just such a good idea. We've accepted it and
Speaker 2: now we have to keep it because it's so efficient.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe it's a good idea.
Speaker 4: Well, I would.
Speaker 3: Say that, however, that this, you know, we're kind of
Speaker 3: making a little fun of Richard and don't mean too,
Speaker 3: because he's obviously very serious.
Speaker 2: Call no, no, no, no, I mean to I don't.
Speaker 3: But here's this is actually an important question because the
Speaker 3: context of the article you should probably link to it, Steve.
Speaker 3: The context of the article is the Supreme Court needs
Speaker 3: to reign in all of these needs to reign in
Speaker 3: Trump and.
Speaker 4: At least uphold all of these.
Speaker 3: Other court decisions that have tried to reign in the
Speaker 3: executive power. And that's the context of the article, which
Speaker 3: is very important and one of the things that you
Speaker 3: I think we have to give credit to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: Maybe not Katangi, although Katangi came through last week.
Speaker 4: Let's get credit where credits do.
Speaker 3: They are indeed trying to separate what the Constitution says
Speaker 3: about executive power, even what their prior decision said about
Speaker 3: executive powers, from Trump and realize that it is as
Speaker 3: Marshall would say, it is a constitution that we are expounding.
Speaker 3: It is not the Trump presidency. And I hope to
Speaker 3: God that Robert he seems to have so far, keeps
Speaker 3: on the straight and narrow and doesn't cave because of
Speaker 3: all the criticisms that are coming about coming against the
Speaker 3: Court because they're taking Trump's side in things, because it really,
Speaker 3: I mean, Trump is making some really important corrections to
Speaker 3: our constitutional system, not out of any because he wants
Speaker 3: to be Hitler or an Autocrat, but because those corrections
Speaker 3: needed to be made. And I hope the Court sees
Speaker 3: that and looks to the future and says, yes, of
Speaker 3: course it can be abused by a future president. Of
Speaker 3: course it can. Of course it could have been abused
Speaker 3: by one in the past, which it was. But the
Speaker 3: answer to that is not the Court's reigning it, and
Speaker 3: the answer is the American people.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, well, okay. I tend to incline to the
Speaker 1: old fashioned and maybe too simplistic view that Article one
Speaker 1: is the first article to Constitution for a reason that
Speaker 1: the founders thought Congress ought to be the most important
Speaker 1: and dominant branch for driving American progress, not the president.
Speaker 1: President proposes and all that I know, and maybe that's
Speaker 1: too strong. On the other hand, I've always liked someone
Speaker 1: who said, I don't know who it was, John, someone
Speaker 1: who said that Richard's ideal bill of rights would have
Speaker 1: consisted of the sentence Congress shall make no law, period
Speaker 1: and we all go home. Right. Yeah, that's right. But
Speaker 1: my thought experiment here that would be fun is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I just thought of this while we were talking.
Speaker 1: It would be fun to lock Richard in a room
Speaker 1: and force him to read Harvey Mansfield's book on executive power,
Speaker 1: Taming the Prince, and watch his head explode and just
Speaker 1: wait for all the emanations from Richard's very fast thinking brain.
Speaker 1: That could be pretty amusing.
Speaker 2: So maybe one thing to also say in his defense
Speaker 2: is he has different reasons for it, but his view
Speaker 2: is probably the same view that most American constitutional laws
Speaker 2: scholars have, right, which is they think the executive branch
Speaker 2: is out of control. Trump has stopped and you need
Speaker 2: a especially strong judiciary to do it, and you shouldn't
Speaker 2: let it be broken up with all these weird courts.
Speaker 2: You should just focus on, you know, the bolstering the
Speaker 2: independent federal Article three judiciary so that can stand up
Speaker 2: to Trump.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: They don't make these arguments when Obama and Biden are president.
Speaker 2: They didn't make these arguments when Biden tried to cancel
Speaker 2: all the student loans in the country or force everyone
Speaker 2: to get a vaccine. But right when Trump's president, they
Speaker 2: suddenly resurrect this this suspicion of executive power that is
Speaker 2: part of the American American political tradition. There's always been
Speaker 2: this suspicion of power.
Speaker 3: You don't need to you don't need to go into
Speaker 3: some deep theoretical justification for it. On the surface, the
Speaker 3: idea of a powerful, responsible and accountable executive makes perke sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really does.
Speaker 3: If you and you can look at the experience across
Speaker 3: states that have plural executives. You know, the governors elected
Speaker 3: separately from the lieutenant governor. Ex that a lot of
Speaker 3: them do that nowadays as this way of supposedly, I
Speaker 3: don't know, who do you blame for the abysmal ca
Speaker 3: UH state of schools in California?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Who has to be who's responsible for that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? We have an elected supervisor in public instruction who
Speaker 1: you know, used to be a big deal, but now
Speaker 1: the governor Okay, right.
Speaker 3: So, but you can't hold someone accountable either if they're
Speaker 3: not responsible, if they don't have the power and the
Speaker 3: responsibility to make things happen, you can't hold them accountable.
Speaker 3: So who do you hold accountable for the mess that
Speaker 3: are our interest rates?
Speaker 2: Right now?
Speaker 4: Who do you like for that?
Speaker 1: Well? Well, interest rates are not set by the Federals.
Speaker 1: There only the like the overnight rate, that's the only
Speaker 1: thing that but they're.
Speaker 3: Not also not doesn't there there's a perfect answer to
Speaker 3: my question, or illustration of the answer to my question.
Speaker 4: Nobody knows who you blame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, okay, that's a I think it's some of
Speaker 1: a different category. But one other point, though, John is
Speaker 1: I'm having fun pointing out to my liberal friends that
Speaker 1: Trump isn't asserting any powers. That Franklin Roosevelt didn't want it,
Speaker 1: and it was always a controversy when the court got
Speaker 1: in his way, right, and they finally capitulated, right. And
Speaker 1: I do think Trump's.
Speaker 2: Face all the cases we've been talking about so far,
Speaker 2: the court even was there. Trump is just saying the
Speaker 2: statue grants me the power. Yeah, He's not like FDR
Speaker 2: saying I can just close the banks because I feel
Speaker 2: like it for a week, right, go off the gold standard,
Speaker 2: right right, right, right, yes.
Speaker 1: Right, right, Well, I mean I do think we'll follow this,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe at the end of this next term.
Speaker 1: But it seems to me the Supreme Court is getting
Speaker 1: the kind of workout by the assertion of executive power
Speaker 1: that it has not seen since the nineteen thirties, Right,
Speaker 1: Roosevelt and the Congress were doing all these crazy things.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean, I think the last big moment
Speaker 2: there were some cases when you know, the Reagan attacks
Speaker 2: on the independence of the Special Council, But I think
Speaker 2: I think the other big moment was Watergate and Nixon. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know this this is a similar moment of you know,
Speaker 2: what constitutional cases going to think of all the cases
Speaker 2: they got the Pentagon papers, you know, and you know,
Speaker 2: Nixon himself being subject to subpoena. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of big nick but ye, Nixon, and then the previous
Speaker 2: one would be FDR. Now Trump would like it to
Speaker 2: just stay at the Nixon level and not elevate to
Speaker 2: the FDR court, Packing right, packing level, although that's the court.
Speaker 2: You know, then we could just move the podcast to
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court. Since all three of us will be there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right. So uh on related matter, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I knew John last week when we were
Speaker 1: talking to Aki Lamar about his new book Born Equal,
Speaker 1: that oh boy, we're gonna be in trouble with Lucretia
Speaker 1: and I should mention the Creatia that after your trip
Speaker 1: to Hawaii got canceled. I thought the last minute, I
Speaker 1: thought about mention this to John, maybe we should make
Speaker 1: Lucretia come back here for the Federal Society Conference just
Speaker 1: to sit in. Problem was, it was sold out, and
Speaker 1: so it was a moot point. And next year, right,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna move back.
Speaker 2: And ask that we be able to do our yeah
Speaker 2: pod cast next year at the Federal Society Convention for
Speaker 2: a live audience.
Speaker 1: That'd be huge fun. Right. We've got a lot of
Speaker 1: listeners there. A lot of the judges will hide in
Speaker 1: the back, you know, with masks on or something. I
Speaker 1: don't know, listen to us, right, you know who you
Speaker 1: are out there? Anyway? You know, it's really great to
Speaker 1: get a kill. Right. He's a busy guy, the big deal.
Speaker 1: We thought we'd be lucky to get him for five
Speaker 1: minutes to say what's your book about? But he hung
Speaker 1: around for a while, you know, despite it, despite the
Speaker 1: interventions of Roger Palan, and you know Hadley turned up
Speaker 1: and Judge Pryor was great, and anyway, I don't know
Speaker 1: hard to handle all this. This is the second book
Speaker 1: of a trilogy. As I understand John that he's writing
Speaker 1: on how we quality is unfolded under the Constitution from
Speaker 1: the founding up to present time, and LUCRETI did you
Speaker 1: want to make him observation just that.
Speaker 3: He doesn't understand anything about equality, and he doesn't understand
Speaker 3: anything about jaffa. I find his his deference to feminism
Speaker 3: revolting and evolution of Lincoln's thought. M But we don't
Speaker 3: have time to do that today. I'm afraid because I
Speaker 3: have to take the celebrity here.
Speaker 4: Important engagement. So Steve, with your permission.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna do a couple of Babylon bes with
Speaker 3: your permission, of course, the top one of Democrats sombrely
Speaker 3: remove some breros singing and of shutdown.
Speaker 4: I thought you'd like that one. Fans, this one's not political.
Speaker 5: But for those of you who you know follow any
Speaker 5: kind of social media fans can't believe how much rock
Speaker 5: singer has aged And the last fifty years or sixty.
Speaker 4: Right, it's amazing.
Speaker 2: Jack's still alive. I heard, I.
Speaker 3: Know, dances across the stage like he's forty five or something.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Banks now requiring your grandkids to co sign your fifty
Speaker 3: year mortgage? Oh boy, yeah, Auschwitz Guard explains he doesn't
Speaker 3: hate Jews or anything, just Zionists. Yes, that one's for you.
Speaker 3: And then I'll end it with this Congress prepares to
Speaker 3: pivot from doing nothing because of the shutdown to doing
Speaker 3: nothing because they're Congress.
Speaker 1: That's good, right, all right, John.
Speaker 2: I'll kick us out. Well, always drink your whiskey, Neat,
Speaker 2: buy more books than Steve. What latest ai confection do
Speaker 2: you have for us?
Speaker 1: I didn't have time to do a new one because
Speaker 1: I was taking down my government shutdown decorations and putting
Speaker 1: up my Jeffrey Epstein decorations. Since let's go back to that, right, So,
Speaker 1: by the.
Speaker 3: Way, I have to end with the only the only
Speaker 3: negative thing that's come out of at least the release
Speaker 3: of stuff today is the fact that that Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 3: ended his relationship with Bill Clinton because he was a
Speaker 3: pathological liar.
Speaker 1: All right, by bye, right, Bady We'll be back next
Speaker 1: week with a more normal like me.
Speaker 3: So h
Speaker 1: Ricochet join the conversation.