Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 2: Mister Gorbachoff, tear down this wall.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricaget Podcast. I'm James Lillax and of course
Speaker 1: we have Generald your cook here, and who's walking through
Speaker 1: that doorwiye, it's founder Peter Robinson. Yes, let's have ourselves
Speaker 1: a podcast.
Speaker 3: Will you make a public commitment today to rule out
Speaker 3: US regime change in Cuba?
Speaker 2: Regime change?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Oh no, I think we would love to see the
Speaker 2: regime their change. We would like to see That doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that we're going to make a change, but we
Speaker 2: would love to.
Speaker 4: See a change.
Speaker 3: I'm not asking you whether we would prefer a different
Speaker 3: kind of government. I'm asking whether you are trying to
Speaker 3: precipitate the fall of the current regime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's statutory the Helms Burton Act. The US
Speaker 2: embargo on Cuba is codified.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody, it's the Ricagete Podcast, number seven hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy four. You Yes, you can join us at ricochet
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Speaker 1: and community on the web. Join the member site where
Speaker 1: the real friendships form, and you'll say where's this been
Speaker 1: on my life?
Speaker 4: Where?
Speaker 1: Well? Waiting for you, and we're waiting for Peter Robinson
Speaker 1: to say hello. It's been a while. Hello Peter, it
Speaker 1: has been a while.
Speaker 4: How are you?
Speaker 1: James couldn't be worse. And Charles C. W. Cook, who
Speaker 1: is with us from Florida. Charles, You're glad you've joined us.
Speaker 5: Nice to be here.
Speaker 1: And of course I'm in Minneapolis or Snoogot issue as
Speaker 1: some people are calling it. It's a term particularly fond of.
Speaker 1: But it has been another week. It has been another week.
Speaker 1: We'll get to some of the things that happened. But
Speaker 1: the most breaking story I love saying that breaking is
Speaker 1: that they not only arrested Don Leman, but they arrested
Speaker 1: an independent journalist in Minneapolis Saint Paul area for participating
Speaker 1: in the church break in or the sit in or
Speaker 1: the the Kurf fluff or whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: where they barged in and started telling everybody how bad
Speaker 1: they were. This is interesting to me because and I
Speaker 1: would like to pretend to grapple with it. Before coming
Speaker 1: to I pre examined my predetermined conclusion. But this whole
Speaker 1: arresting journalists thing, there's a lot in that. There's a
Speaker 1: lot in the word journalist, there's a lot in independent journalist.
Speaker 1: Where are we exactly now with this? And it's a
Speaker 1: dark new age that is besetting the country. Peter, I'll
Speaker 1: let you start, because it's been such a long time.
Speaker 4: Uh sure, I want to hear more from you in
Speaker 4: due course, of course. I mean, in particular, I still
Speaker 4: think of Minneapolis, my couple of exposures to Minneapolis. It's
Speaker 4: left of center and all, but it's a very neighborly place,
Speaker 4: the just sort of pervasive air of friendship and goodwill
Speaker 4: and neighborliness. And I gather that even there are attentions
Speaker 4: are such that even in a grocery store, you can
Speaker 4: actually feel it. So I want to hear about that.
Speaker 4: On the journalism, I just don't know. A journalist used
Speaker 4: to be a reasonably well defined person, and you could
Speaker 4: prove she could prove that he was a journalist by
Speaker 4: showing that he worked for the Washington Post or the
Speaker 4: New York Times or CBS News. And now anybody with
Speaker 4: a sub stack can say I'm an independent journalist.
Speaker 5: So I mean.
Speaker 4: I don't And then, of course we know that even
Speaker 4: under the most carefully the most careful construction of the
Speaker 4: First Amendment and the freedom of the press. Even at that,
Speaker 4: even when if you're dealing with a thoroughly credentialed journalist
Speaker 4: in the old sense where we all understood what journalists meant,
Speaker 4: there are lots of things journalists can't do. They can't
Speaker 4: break into they can't they can't trespass, they can't engage
Speaker 4: in violence, they can't engage in incitement. So I don't know,
Speaker 4: I'm the whole thing makes me very uneasy. Is does
Speaker 4: everything that's taking place in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: In Minnesota credential doesn't He is an interesting word. What
Speaker 1: exactly does that mean? What does it mean? Right? If
Speaker 1: you go to journalism school, does that mean you are credentialed? No, necessarily.
Speaker 1: If you are working for a newspaper, does that mean, Well,
Speaker 1: it depends on the newspaper. Is it one guy where
Speaker 1: they you know, you know, putting together four sheets folded
Speaker 1: in his basement from the Hewart packer printer or is
Speaker 1: it a big sheet that rolls off of a massive
Speaker 1: does that Does that mean it's credentialed and legit?
Speaker 4: I mean, even somebody such as Charlie Cook, for example,
Speaker 4: could claim to be a journalist.
Speaker 6: Well, I wouldn't have to, because there is no distinction
Speaker 6: in the law between journalists credentialed or otherwise than anybody else.
Speaker 6: The First Amendment applies or it doesn't.
Speaker 4: Well, wait a minute, what about what about New York
Speaker 4: Times v. Sullivan?
Speaker 5: But that applies to everybody.
Speaker 6: There's no such thing as a journalist in the law.
Speaker 6: The First Amendment either applies to the activity or it
Speaker 6: does not. The New York Times or they run a
Speaker 6: sub stack, or they just one day decided they were
Speaker 6: going to go out and observe something, The same laws apply.
Speaker 6: Second point I would make about this, and I also
Speaker 6: don't know how this will come out, but for various reasons,
Speaker 6: some of them good. Historically, the sentence the president has
Speaker 6: initiated the arrest of all prosecution of a journalist makes
Speaker 6: people nervous in the same way as the sentence the
Speaker 6: president has initiated the arrest or prosecution of a judge
Speaker 6: makes people nervous. But one has to get to the
Speaker 6: second part of any sentence to know whether it's good
Speaker 6: or bad. We had this case in Wisconsin in which
Speaker 6: this judge facilitated the escape of an illegal immigrant. The
Speaker 6: Trump administration went after her. The press immediately said, oh
Speaker 6: my god, this is Nazi Germany, where they go after judges.
Speaker 6: But she was convicted, and the reason she was convicted
Speaker 6: was because she did it. And I think the one
Speaker 6: thing about this that makes me a little bit nervous
Speaker 6: to combine those two points is that we have seen
Speaker 6: this reflexive argument instantly emerge in the wake of this arrest,
Speaker 6: the presumption underneath of which is that there's no way
Speaker 6: that a journalist with credentials could have done something wrong,
Speaker 6: And this is a self conception of the press that
Speaker 6: is bizarre.
Speaker 5: It seems to me entirely possible.
Speaker 6: I'm not saying likely, I'm not saying guaranteed, but it
Speaker 6: seems to me entirely possible given what we know about this,
Speaker 6: that Don Lemon was part of a violation of the
Speaker 6: Face Act. He knew what they were going to do,
Speaker 6: he didn't try and stop it, he didn't happen upon it.
Speaker 5: He was part of.
Speaker 6: So the case goes the construction of an illegal act,
Speaker 6: and journalists are not allowed to get away with that
Speaker 6: just because they shout.
Speaker 5: The First Amendment.
Speaker 6: Now, on the other hand, if he was merely acting
Speaker 6: in a reportorial capacity. Then perhaps he's innocent, and perhaps
Speaker 6: he'll get away with it anyway, because they'll apply a
Speaker 6: different level of scrutiny to him because he is a journalist.
Speaker 6: But I just hate the wooly thinking that I'm seeing
Speaker 6: on this that ipso facta, it's wrong to prosecute him
Speaker 6: because at one point or another they worked for CNN.
Speaker 6: We can't have a country in which that's the case.
Speaker 1: Well, we have a conception of journalists in this country
Speaker 1: that goes back eighty years and it precedes all the
Speaker 1: president's spen. It goes back to every wise cracking newspaper
Speaker 1: movie that was ever made, going back to the thirties,
Speaker 1: where you have a bustling room full of hard nosed
Speaker 1: guys in wisecrack and gals who are getting the story,
Speaker 1: who are working for the public, who are trying to
Speaker 1: get the truth out there part of a big organization
Speaker 1: with lots of smoke and lots of liquor and lots
Speaker 1: of fast docking pattern and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And that was the model up in the popular imagination
Speaker 1: up until you know, I don't know, ten fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: when the idea of the newspaper as such begin to
Speaker 1: recede completely until now it's just the only time people
Speaker 1: really think about them is when the Washington Post announces
Speaker 1: it's shuttering its entire sports desk or something like that.
Speaker 1: So I mean saying I've never called myself a journalist.
Speaker 1: I worked for a journalist organization, but I never pretended
Speaker 1: to be objective, and so I never felt comfortable calling
Speaker 1: myself a journalist. I was an opinion writer, a columnist,
Speaker 1: and just because I had an ax to grind, though,
Speaker 1: do that mean that I wasn't a journalist. I guarantee
Speaker 1: you that there are many actes being sharpened on big
Speaker 1: whetstones in the back of the mind merely everybody who's
Speaker 1: got into the profession. Now what is should the government
Speaker 1: do something about it?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 1: There was a case tell me what you guys think
Speaker 1: about this of somebody who was said that there was
Speaker 1: a bad security at a nuclear facility and we sho
Speaker 1: shouldn't shouldn't be so lax and securing stuff like this,
Speaker 1: it's dangerous stuff. And so he hopped the fence just
Speaker 1: to show how easy it was to get in, and
Speaker 1: once he got in, security found him and arrested him,
Speaker 1: and the FBI had a file of fourteen hundred pages
Speaker 1: in the US Attorney for the state of Illinois and
Speaker 1: paneled a grand jury to charge him with espionage. Do
Speaker 1: you think that that was correct? Hold on, let me stop.
Speaker 1: Do you know who that man was.
Speaker 7: In?
Speaker 1: Was Paul Harvey? Really good day? Yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: first things he did in his career working for a
Speaker 1: radio station was to you know, get bad nuclear security,
Speaker 1: and he hopped the fence got himself arrested. It's called
Speaker 1: participatory investigation. Participatory journalism is what they call it at
Speaker 1: the time. So Paul, of course would go on to
Speaker 1: be a national treasure. But it's interesting how these details
Speaker 1: come to mined sometimes. Anyway, Well, there you go.
Speaker 6: I answer to the question, though, is that if there
Speaker 6: was a problem with that charging, it was because it
Speaker 6: was over zealous, not because he was claiming to act
Speaker 6: in a journalistic capacity. I mean, I wouldn't want you
Speaker 6: or anyone else to be charged with that. It's not
Speaker 6: because he was poor Harvey, right. And I keep harping
Speaker 6: on this just because journalists do seem to believe it's
Speaker 6: a class, that they are specially protected, that the First
Speaker 6: Amendment applies to them and not other people. That if
Speaker 6: they just show their press credential, then they can get
Speaker 6: away with something that others wouldn't. And that's just not
Speaker 6: how the law works, and it's annoying as well.
Speaker 1: Right, But let me tell you that you show your
Speaker 1: press credentials and you do have special treatment. You do
Speaker 1: get to go places at other people don't. I remember
Speaker 1: in Washington, I went for my press credentials and behind
Speaker 1: me was a flag and it was a I think
Speaker 1: it was white with a green striped diagonal. And what
Speaker 1: that meant was I had certain access to certain areas.
Speaker 1: So you could look at somebody's press credential and tell
Speaker 1: exactly how far they could get in based on the
Speaker 1: flag behind them. If you are at a political convention
Speaker 1: where I've been, you have big, huge badges around your
Speaker 1: neck with holograms on them to tell them whether or
Speaker 1: not you can go in this room. You get used
Speaker 1: to that, You get used to waving the press card
Speaker 1: and being able to go places that other people can't,
Speaker 1: and this I think affects how you see you.
Speaker 2: All.
Speaker 1: Right, another shooting, we had Alex, pretty intensive care nurse
Speaker 1: killed by federal agents. And now we have a new
Speaker 1: video and Charles, let's get to Wooly thinking about this,
Speaker 1: because when the new video came out showing him on
Speaker 1: the site kicking out the tailight of an ice vehicle
Speaker 1: and spitting at it and saying the F bob and
Speaker 1: the middle finger and all the rest of the charming
Speaker 1: ways in which we protesting this country, some people were saying, well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't change anything, doesn't mean he deserved to get shot,
Speaker 1: which is wooly thinking. Guide us through, if you will,
Speaker 1: as a firearms enthusiast, how you regard this episode, especially
Speaker 1: the people say, oh, I thought you like Copencarey. I
Speaker 1: thought they were supposed to have I thought they were
Speaker 1: supposed to have guns in order to withstand a tyrenical government.
Speaker 1: Isn't just this that?
Speaker 6: Wow, there's so much there. I'll try not to speak
Speaker 6: for ten minutes.
Speaker 1: Peter jump in after nine.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the second video does not affect the shooting because
Speaker 6: it was on a different day, in different circumstances. He
Speaker 6: was not shot for his cumulative actions or for his character.
Speaker 6: So in so far as people saw that second video
Speaker 6: of him kicking out the tail light.
Speaker 5: And said, Aha, that explains it, it doesn't.
Speaker 6: The second video does, though, obviate the claim that he
Speaker 6: was just a lovely, peaceful nurse who spent his time
Speaker 6: helping puppies and children. That's not true, and that has
Speaker 6: been smuggled in to the narrative to make it seem
Speaker 6: as if he was an innocent bystander, in much the
Speaker 6: same way as the shooting of Rene Good was after
Speaker 6: a few days described as the murder of a mother
Speaker 6: who was in the wrong place at the wrong time,
Speaker 6: having dropped off her child. And if you believe that
Speaker 6: the truth matter is an idea, then we ought not
Speaker 6: to allow that. The video of him kicking out the
Speaker 6: tail light shows somebody who was very angry and unhinged,
Speaker 6: somebody who is shouting, verbatim, effing, assault me, you mother, effers,
Speaker 6: somebody who committed a felony by kicking a federal vehicle
Speaker 6: and causing more than a thousand dollars of damage to
Speaker 6: look up the cost of the tail light.
Speaker 5: That's the law.
Speaker 6: Below a thousand is a misdemeanor, above a thousand is
Speaker 6: a felony, and who had a gun on him, which
Speaker 6: renders it a felony irrespective of the scale of the crime.
Speaker 6: So the video doesn't matter, and it doesn't, but it
Speaker 6: matters in so far as it pushes back against this
Speaker 6: desire some how to turn everyone who has been the
Speaker 6: victim of a wrong into a saint. On the gun point,
Speaker 6: he committed in the second video of federal crime by
Speaker 6: committing a crime while carrying a firearm. That's a felony.
Speaker 6: But he wasn't arrested, he wasn't charged, and eleven days
Speaker 6: later he got into a different incident, which I think
Speaker 6: is much more difficult to passe out as a matter
Speaker 6: of prudence.
Speaker 5: I don't think you should carry a gun and fight
Speaker 5: with fee officers.
Speaker 6: But some of the rhetoric that's come out of the
Speaker 6: Trump administration about this is just wrong. It is not
Speaker 6: true that you are not allowed to go to a
Speaker 6: protest armed. There are some states in which that is true.
Speaker 6: California is one of them, which makes it ridiculous that
Speaker 6: Gavin Newsom has adopted this stance. He has because he
Speaker 6: signed the law outlaw and carry it protest, But Minnesota
Speaker 6: is not that state. Minnesota wants to be that state
Speaker 6: because Minnesota father brief with the Supreme Court arguing that
Speaker 6: the Second Amendment doesn't apply to protests that was signed
Speaker 6: by Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of Minnesota. But at
Speaker 6: the moment that is not the law. The law is
Speaker 6: that you can carry it a protest. You can also
Speaker 6: approach cops and federal agents while armed and not expect
Speaker 6: to get shot. A lot of what the Trump administration
Speaker 6: has said is wrong. On the other hand, a lot
Speaker 6: of what the left has said is wrong as well,
Speaker 6: in that a it has been trying to outlaw the gun.
Speaker 6: He was carrying carry itself and carrying a protests, but
Speaker 6: is now acting as some sort of indignant Wayne Lapierre
Speaker 6: stand in.
Speaker 5: That's ridiculous.
Speaker 6: And the description of the Second Amendment here from progressives
Speaker 6: has been bizarre. Dean Phillips, who ran for president against
Speaker 6: Joe Biden in twenty twenty four on the grounds that
Speaker 6: Joe Biden was too old shocker, said that he finally
Speaker 6: understood what the Second Amendment was for.
Speaker 5: That's an insane thing to say. Let's just clarify this.
Speaker 6: The Second Amendment is in part there to protect against
Speaker 6: tyrannical governments.
Speaker 5: But you have to actually start a war to exercise it.
Speaker 5: It's not an ally kart system.
Speaker 6: You can't say, well, I don't like this law, I
Speaker 6: don't like this agent, I don't like this tactic in
Speaker 6: this city, so we can just what shoot them. I mean,
Speaker 6: the Second Amendment is all or nothing. If you're going
Speaker 6: to take the Second Amendment remedy, you are starting a
Speaker 6: revolution that you have to take to its logical conclusion.
Speaker 6: So this doesn't somehow substantiate the Second Amendment. It doesn't
Speaker 6: render those of us who are in favor of the
Speaker 6: Second Amendment and haven't said what the Trump administration has
Speaker 6: said hypocrites.
Speaker 5: We don't believe you are allowed to open fire on
Speaker 5: federal agents.
Speaker 6: So I think so much of the commentary on this
Speaker 6: has been completely ridiculous. I do think this was a
Speaker 6: bad shoot. I will say I think they got it wrong.
Speaker 6: I think it was probably the product of an accident.
Speaker 6: I think there was a misunderstanding. He did have a gun,
Speaker 6: he was disarmed. Someone shouts gun. Some people said the
Speaker 6: gun went off. I'm not sure if it did or not.
Speaker 6: And then the agent opens fire and is joined by
Speaker 6: another agent. I don't think that it was willful. I
Speaker 6: don't think that it was an assassination, but I do
Speaker 6: think it was a mistake. I do think they were
Speaker 6: too trigger happy, and I think that it's important to
Speaker 6: acknowledge that as the Trump administration did not, at least initially.
Speaker 6: Trump's been much better than all of his underlings, because,
Speaker 6: as I said before, the truth has to matter.
Speaker 1: I think both were regrettable and wrong, to be frank,
Speaker 1: and I think both were entirely avoidable. And it's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that don't park like gar perpendicular in
Speaker 1: the street. When I see the police apprehending some Peruvian
Speaker 1: pedophile what they've managed to track down? Peter, what say
Speaker 1: you are? Is this fellow a domestic terrorist? As Christine
Speaker 1: doan calm, No.
Speaker 4: No, the use of the word terrorist is wrong. There
Speaker 4: by the way, Charlie, thank you very First of all,
Speaker 4: when Charlie's angry, he's the thing to behold. He's a
Speaker 4: wonder on any podcast, and he is extremely angry right now.
Speaker 4: That's lovely. I confess to wooly thinking. I began with
Speaker 4: the program with Willy thinking. I'm just offering up my
Speaker 4: sort of reactions reading the news, looking at it as
Speaker 4: it pops up in my ex file. Thank you Charles C. W.
Speaker 4: Cook for rigorous thinking about journalism and the law and
Speaker 4: the constitution. Now I confess I go from wooly thinking,
Speaker 4: confessing that to confessing a second thought, which is that
Speaker 4: my thinking tends to run in political grooves, and the
Speaker 4: politics of the thing that I see here are as follows.
Speaker 4: Five weeks ago, four weeks ago, the big story in
Speaker 4: Minnesota was the enormous corruption, the theft at staggering levels
Speaker 4: of public monies by largely the Somali community, which of
Speaker 4: course raises all kinds of questions about immigrants and our
Speaker 4: failure to assimilate them and what they're doing there, and
Speaker 4: the bad guys in whom I would include, even if
Speaker 4: an almost endearingly fumbling bad guy, the governor of Minnesota,
Speaker 4: Tim Waltz, were so much on the defensive five weeks
Speaker 4: ago politically that Waltz announced he was no longer going
Speaker 4: to run for a third term as governor. They were losing,
Speaker 4: and the administration, or put it more broadly, the conservative
Speaker 4: movement or the just the impulse toward decency and accountable
Speaker 4: government was winning. And now we have horrible incidents. Are
Speaker 4: they regret They're both regrettable.
Speaker 1: For what it's worth.
Speaker 4: The second incident seems to me just as Charlie said, so,
Speaker 4: I mean, you have to bear in mind these guys
Speaker 4: are they're being screamed at, spat at. Their heartbreak is up.
Speaker 4: There is an adrenaline release, and they can make mistakes
Speaker 4: under those circumstances. It looks to me like a mistake.
Speaker 4: But the way christinom yapped and said things that were
Speaker 4: mistaken and untrue and provided an opening for the mayor
Speaker 4: of Minneapolis and Governor Waltz, who just weeks ago were
Speaker 4: slinking around with their tails between their legs, provided an
Speaker 4: opening for them to reassert themselves politically as and give
Speaker 4: one speech after another of righteous indignation strikes it strikes
Speaker 4: me as just astounding. So at the political level here
Speaker 4: Charlie deals with the truth, which I admit is a
Speaker 4: higher concern. But at the political level, the administration is
Speaker 4: just screwed up.
Speaker 1: That's what I think. I think.
Speaker 4: So taking uh a Veno Holman home Tom Holman seems
Speaker 4: a huge improvement. I'd I'd love to hear it. Just
Speaker 4: that the guy seems professional. He comes across as a
Speaker 4: very ordinary, decent guy. He comes across as more than
Speaker 4: intelligent enough, but also there's a kind of solidity and
Speaker 4: decency about him that, let's put it this way, sending
Speaker 4: him and strike me as as the correct move politically Again.
Speaker 4: I'm talking politically because he seems like the kind of
Speaker 4: person who just is so solid that by his presence
Speaker 4: he'll calm things down.
Speaker 1: But his opinions on getting illegal people out of the
Speaker 1: country to the progressives puts him in the same category
Speaker 1: as Steven Miller wearing a floor length black leather SS
Speaker 1: outfit designed by Hugo Bass. I mean, his ideas are
Speaker 1: seen as reprehensible, which is what I want to get
Speaker 1: back to all the time when it comes to these things.
Speaker 1: Charlie is talking about the basic principles, you're talking about
Speaker 1: the politic grooves. I am constantly struggling with how to
Speaker 1: argue and discuss this with neighbors, friends, relatives, etc. Who
Speaker 1: have a set of assumptions that I don't know what
Speaker 1: they are. Sometimes I never hear them. Sometimes they don't
Speaker 1: have the assumptions at all. Sometimes they have no predicates whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they have no thoughts. They haven't thought about immigration
Speaker 1: at all. They start with seeing a bad thing. They
Speaker 1: start with seeing guys with masks going into a house,
Speaker 1: and they see their fellow Minnesota and standing on the
Speaker 1: street corners being unhappy about it, and from that they
Speaker 1: draw the only possible conclusion, which is that the people
Speaker 1: who are protesting are in the right because, as we know,
Speaker 1: in this country, anybody gets out there and protests and
Speaker 1: has signs is correct, has the moral high ground. That's
Speaker 1: how it works since nineteen sixty whatever. And that the
Speaker 1: bad guys. However, you want to work that argument back,
Speaker 1: they're the bad guys. So they are the culmination of badness.
Speaker 1: You can't get these people. They don't want to talk
Speaker 1: about where this starts. It starts with the idea of
Speaker 1: a nation of citizenship, of borders, of control, of what
Speaker 1: it means to be a citizen, what it means to
Speaker 1: be able to say you are a citizen and you
Speaker 1: are not. And that may sound unfair to some people.
Speaker 1: What is it an accident of birth? No, but this
Speaker 1: is how we've operated the state. This is this is
Speaker 1: how it is set up. You cannot open the borders
Speaker 1: to absolutely everybody, because then you lose your nation. Oh
Speaker 1: so you're saying then that once the nation isn't composed
Speaker 1: exactly like the demographs of the North Dakota, it won't
Speaker 1: be America anymore. That's that's what I'm saying. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: why we have to control it. So if we're going
Speaker 1: to control it, we have to have a mechanism for enforcement.
Speaker 1: If we have to have a mechanism for enforcement, it's
Speaker 1: going to have to involve force. How do you how
Speaker 1: do you get rid of the Laotian drug dealer or
Speaker 1: the guy from Uganda who came here and drove his
Speaker 1: car drunk into somebody and killed three people? How do
Speaker 1: you go find them and get rid of them except
Speaker 1: by force? And is it the fact that they have
Speaker 1: scary uniforms and they're masked, Is that it if they arrived,
Speaker 1: you know, in pastoral robes, would that be better? The
Speaker 1: argument never happens because it's all focused on big scary
Speaker 1: guys doing big scary things to people in our neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Our neighbors in our neighborhood now. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: I will agree arbitrary detention of somebody who just doesn't
Speaker 1: look right. I don't agree with that. And I hear
Speaker 1: stories about this. I hear stories about this all the time.
Speaker 1: I don't know how true they are, but I hear
Speaker 1: stories about this all the time. But the idea that
Speaker 1: the enforcement mechanism that we've done for decades, that Obama
Speaker 1: did over and over and over again, is somehow now
Speaker 1: illegitimate because they're masked, because they're pulling people out of
Speaker 1: the houses. And if you try to tell them, well,
Speaker 1: they're pulling people's out of the houses because they had
Speaker 1: to go get them because the jails let them go,
Speaker 1: that's an argument that they don't want to have either.
Speaker 1: It's just ice out. That's it. It's just ice out,
Speaker 1: ice out, ice out, ice out.
Speaker 6: And this is why, James, I will not have the
Speaker 6: conversations you're describing with until we establish as a common
Speaker 6: starting point that the federal government gets to execute federal
Speaker 6: law even if people don't like it. Because all of
Speaker 6: the subsidiary objections that you've mentioned, some of which are true,
Speaker 6: some of which I agree with, are in this instance
Speaker 6: being used as smoke screens for the actual objection, which
Speaker 6: is to immigration law per se. The people who are
Speaker 6: pushing back against this are doing so in absolute terms.
Speaker 6: They will say, well, I'm upset about the masks, or
Speaker 6: I'm upset about this particular incident. And again maybe I'll
Speaker 6: agree with them on the tactics from time to time,
Speaker 6: but what they really mean and what they always eventually
Speaker 6: get to, whether implicitly or explicitly is that Ice should
Speaker 6: not be there in the first place, and nobody else
Speaker 6: execute the immigration law should be there.
Speaker 5: You see this with Jacob.
Speaker 6: Frye, the mayor of Minneapolis, who will say things that
Speaker 6: are true, for example, that Minneapolis is not obliged to
Speaker 6: enforce federal immigration law itself.
Speaker 5: That's true.
Speaker 6: Prince of the United States nineteen ninety seven Supreme Court
Speaker 6: case justifies that, as does the old Prig case from
Speaker 6: eighteen forty two. But then he'll say, get Ice out.
Speaker 6: Then he'll say, these are our neighbors we benefit from.
Speaker 6: He calls them immigrants, but we're dealing here with illegal immigrants.
Speaker 5: Okay, that's a separate.
Speaker 6: Issue, and we resolved this pretty famously in eighteen sixty five.
Speaker 6: The federal government gets to execute federal law. We do
Speaker 6: not have a country in which, with the state government
Speaker 6: egging them on, networks of activists are allowed to systematically
Speaker 6: prevent the enforcement of duly enacted laws. And those laws,
Speaker 6: for what it's worth, those laws are not controversial. We're
Speaker 6: not talking here about the federal government claiming powers that
Speaker 6: Congress hasn't given it. We're not talking here about the
Speaker 6: federal government usurping the power of the states in violation
Speaker 6: of the Constitution. We're not talking about a law that
Speaker 6: is vague or that is disputed. We're not talking about
Speaker 6: a law that is currently in litigation in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 6: These laws have been on the books for thirty fifty
Speaker 6: seventy eighty one hundred years. Most of the systems that
Speaker 6: are being used at the moment by ICE were put
Speaker 6: into place in nineteen ninety six in the Clinton administration,
Speaker 6: and so I have been quite open to criticisms of ICE,
Speaker 6: as we've just discussed. I think this was a bad shooting,
Speaker 6: and I think the renee Good one was probably legally
Speaker 6: defensible but morally problematic. But I just am not going
Speaker 6: to be distracted by all of the smaller picture questions
Speaker 6: to the point of which I lose sight of what's happening.
Speaker 5: I'm not that stupid. I'm not going to be calmed.
Speaker 6: They don't want immigration law enforce and that's unacceptable. That's nullification,
Speaker 6: and it just cannot stand, and the Trump administration can't
Speaker 6: allow it to And there.
Speaker 1: We have the problem. You call them smaller issues, and
Speaker 1: to them they are the only issues. The biggest issue,
Speaker 1: the main primary issue is irrelevant, Peter, do you think
Speaker 1: that this is because and I don't want to psychoanalyze
Speaker 1: too much. Although it's fun, part of it is like
Speaker 1: I was something to do. Part of it is a
Speaker 1: God shaped hole. Part of it is looking for a cause.
Speaker 1: Part of it is, you know, people have described all
Speaker 1: sorts of things to this, but part of it surely
Speaker 1: stems from the idea that this is an illegitimate nation
Speaker 1: to begin with, a nation built on colonialism and plunder
Speaker 1: and slavery and smallpox blankets, and therefore the very idea
Speaker 1: that it has any right to determine who and who
Speaker 1: shall not be here is preposterous. As some of the
Speaker 1: Mexican advocates would say, I didn't move the border moved.
Speaker 1: The border moved and put me in a different country.
Speaker 1: It's all arbitrary. None of these things should really exist
Speaker 1: in the first place, so we don't have the moral
Speaker 1: standing to say somebody is illegal, no human being is illegal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I'm sure there's an element. You're on the ground there, James.
Speaker 4: So you hear what people are saying at Starbucks, you
Speaker 4: see what they're saying on the news when they're protesting
Speaker 4: and so forth. I'm sure there's an element of the
Speaker 4: hard left, real hostility towards the nation. It strikes me
Speaker 4: if I were trying to be charitable, to put the
Speaker 4: most charitable possible construction I could on this, I would
Speaker 4: say something like, Minnesota is a state heavily settled by
Speaker 4: Scandinavians and Germans, and for decade in and decade out,
Speaker 4: they were centered in small communities where people went to
Speaker 4: church and knew their neighbors. And honestly, this is one
Speaker 4: reason why Minnesota has a wealth, used to have a
Speaker 4: welfare system, used to be able to pride itself on
Speaker 4: a welfare system that worked, because there really was a
Speaker 4: sense of neighborliness about it. And what is taking place
Speaker 4: is when Jacob Fry, who surely knows what he's doing,
Speaker 4: refers to these immigrants as our neighbors. He is touching
Speaker 4: a button and it's a kind of decency button that
Speaker 4: a lot of people in Minnesota grew up with, and
Speaker 4: they immediately say, wait a minute, neighbors. We pride ourselves
Speaker 4: on taking care of our neighbors, on helping each other out.
Speaker 4: It's a corruption of a really decent impulse that has
Speaker 4: deep historical roots in Minnesota, which in some ways makes
Speaker 4: it even more outrageous. Every word that Charlie uttered is
Speaker 4: true and well chosen, and there's not a single member
Speaker 4: of the administration who's making those arguments at anything like
Speaker 4: I am just troubled again and again and again. I'll
Speaker 4: say it once and stop saying it, because it's an
Speaker 4: observation we've been making for years now when it comes
Speaker 4: to Donald Trump and the members of his administration. The
Speaker 4: inability of the administration to articulate itself even when it
Speaker 4: is clearly in the right, obviously in the right, even
Speaker 4: when it is pursuing laws as Charlie pointed out, set
Speaker 4: in place systems set in place by Bill Clinton. The
Speaker 4: inarticulateness of the administration I find striking again and again
Speaker 4: and again. With the one reservation, I believe that Tom Holman,
Speaker 4: now he doesn't put it at the level that Charlie does,
Speaker 4: but Tom Holman does make this point, we're here to
Speaker 4: enforce the law. He stands on that point again and
Speaker 4: again and again. But oh my lord, they have arguments,
Speaker 4: as Charlie. Charlie just proved that they're just not making well.
Speaker 1: Rubio made some arguments the other day. Did anybody watch
Speaker 1: that went before the Center Foreign Relations Committee. Peter, you
Speaker 1: had a gust of something, well.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, So here I am talking about how
Speaker 4: inarticulate the Trump administration is, and Marco Rubio is spectacularly articulate,
Speaker 4: tough knows his position, is perfectly willing to go up
Speaker 4: with people who are former colleagues of his and I
Speaker 4: Rubio had had a reputee. I know a couple of
Speaker 4: members of the Senate, and Marco Rubio was very well
Speaker 4: liked these people off camera. At least these people are friends,
Speaker 4: even Rand Paul and Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. I'd
Speaker 4: like to hear what Charlie makes of this on the law.
Speaker 4: But Rand Paul was pushing and pushing and pushing. My
Speaker 4: inclination is that Rand Paul actually has a very good
Speaker 4: point that they're building, that they built much too large
Speaker 4: an operation on the slender rationale of a police action,
Speaker 4: and that Rand Paul had a better point, had the
Speaker 4: better argument, I think than Marco Rubio. But I want
Speaker 4: to hear what Charles has to say about that. Even
Speaker 4: at that Rubio handled himself brilliantly, refusing to concede an
Speaker 4: inch to Rand Paul, making the point again and again
Speaker 4: and again, that Mudur was illegitimate, that he was a criminal,
Speaker 4: that he was a thug, that what we had done
Speaker 4: was in the interest of simple decency and hygiene in
Speaker 4: our own hemisphere. I just thought that it was a
Speaker 4: real to it. By the way, I've also over the years,
Speaker 4: I've heard people wonder, Honest, I'll just put it. The
Speaker 4: people who observe the Senate have wondered from time to
Speaker 4: time over the years, just how frankly intelligent Marco Rubio is.
Speaker 4: He didn't go to Harvard Law School or the University
Speaker 4: of Chicago Law School and went to Miami. There's question
Speaker 4: is Marco Rubio, Mark Rubyo is highly articulate, very shrewd.
Speaker 4: We are dealing with a very intelligent man here. I
Speaker 4: was very impressed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he drank some water on television.
Speaker 6: Well, I was impressed by him too. I think there's
Speaker 6: often a difference between who wins debates and who is right.
Speaker 6: It will not shock you to learn. I suppose that
Speaker 6: I saw a lot of debates at the AUC for
Speaker 6: Jinian in which the side with the better debate is one,
Speaker 6: even when that side was wrong. I think Marc Rubio
Speaker 6: is often right so this isn't a criticism of Marco Rubio,
Speaker 6: per se. I think in this case it's difficult in
Speaker 6: that I am of the view, as I've argued over
Speaker 6: and over again, that Congress needs to authorize military action.
Speaker 6: I know there are very smart people who disagree with me.
Speaker 6: There is a memo I believe it was written by
Speaker 6: Bill Barr back in the first Bush administration to justify
Speaker 6: the removal of Noriega that is being leaned on by
Speaker 6: the Trump administration in this case. Now that doesn't mean
Speaker 6: that the memo is correct, but the memo is precedent
Speaker 6: for now, and.
Speaker 5: It's unlikely that this is justiciable.
Speaker 6: That is to say, the Supreme Court's not going to
Speaker 6: get involved and determine what the federal government can and
Speaker 6: can't do. So ultimately this becomes a political question. I'm
Speaker 6: more on Ranpaul's side than Marco Rubio's. But while I
Speaker 6: one hundred percent agree with what you said, Peter about
Speaker 6: the Trump administration being representing its own case even when
Speaker 6: its case is strong, that doesn't seem true. Have applied
Speaker 6: to Mark Rubio in this instance. He's about as good
Speaker 6: and advocate as I've.
Speaker 5: Seen in American politics. Recently.
Speaker 4: Ever, Yeah, well I go back a little farther than
Speaker 4: you do, Charlie, although please don't remind me of that.
Speaker 4: I would say he's as good as i've seen. Ever.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the things that came up, one of
Speaker 1: the issues is and I love this because if I
Speaker 1: can remember the sequence right, it was Greenland, Venezuela, Cuba,
Speaker 1: or was it Cuba Venezuela. Because it's been a busy year.
Speaker 1: We dispensed with the Greena situation. I guess we dispensed
Speaker 1: with asit Venezuelan situation that's out the table, and now
Speaker 1: a nation turns its lonely eyes to Cuba, Cuba, and
Speaker 1: we're being told that we should have regime changed there
Speaker 1: by the end of the year, which I end is
Speaker 1: one of those things that makes you sit up, take
Speaker 1: notice and think, well, how would that happen? What would
Speaker 1: it look like? If indeed there's some sort of benevelment
Speaker 1: that keeps Iran from shipping as much as they'd like,
Speaker 1: the Venezuelan oil no longer comes, Russian oil doesn't get there,
Speaker 1: why the Cuban economy might collapse, you know, as if
Speaker 1: it's this sort of robust thing striding the island in
Speaker 1: the first place. Do you think this is likely? It's
Speaker 1: have we gone from the government policy of ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd like to see him gone, But you know, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do to actually trying to do something.
Speaker 1: As somebody said to me the other day, you know,
Speaker 1: if China invades Taiwan, we're going to take Cubea. The
Speaker 1: next day, I thought that was interesting. What do you
Speaker 1: think of the cuber situation, Charlie Well.
Speaker 6: I also liked Marca Ruvia's answer on this, which was
Speaker 6: that while it might not be the role of the
Speaker 6: United States to take out the Cuban regime, it would
Speaker 6: be good for the United States if the Cuban regime
Speaker 6: were gone, because it is a force for evil within
Speaker 6: Cuba and within the rest of the world. Of course,
Speaker 6: he said it with all of the righteous indignation you'd
Speaker 6: expect from somebody who is Cuba.
Speaker 5: It parents game from Cuba.
Speaker 6: I suspect that we will not take overt actions in
Speaker 6: the way we did in Venezuela, but I would be
Speaker 6: shocked if we were not behind the scenes doing everything
Speaker 6: that we can. Also, the action we took in Venezuela
Speaker 6: and the pressure we're putting on venezuela is as far
Speaker 6: as I understand it related to Cuba, because Cuba relies
Speaker 6: heavily on venezuela, especially for energy, and as we're seeing
Speaker 6: in Iran in a completely different circumstance, when you do
Speaker 6: have internal economic pressure, that makes the likelihood of overthrowing
Speaker 6: the government higher, although it doesn't necessarily guarantee it. So
Speaker 6: I think Arka Rubio is a fascinating person. Obviously, he
Speaker 6: was my senator for a while here in Florida. He's
Speaker 6: been in politics for a long time. We resented career politicians,
Speaker 6: but he's a career politician who has learned his trade
Speaker 6: and bided his time. He has, in some respects been
Speaker 6: a chameleon. In others he's had a core set of
Speaker 6: beliefs he's stuck to. He has managed to weather the
Speaker 6: Trump administration better than pretty much anyone else, maybe the
Speaker 6: Trump years better than anyone else. He was little Marco
Speaker 6: and he was beaten round me in twenty sixteen. Then
Speaker 6: he didn't run for president again, but he somehow got
Speaker 6: himself into a position within the presidency where he holds a.
Speaker 5: Whole lot of power, wears a whole lot of hats
Speaker 5: and is advancing his agenda. So did he really lose?
Speaker 1: It's one of the better memes that's out there is
Speaker 1: Rubio is sitting there looking a bit downcast, hands folded,
Speaker 1: and people have been photoshopping and draping anything around him
Speaker 1: with it. Then Isuel and army clothes, you know, Muller clothes.
Speaker 1: I just just asserted how many things that he has
Speaker 1: on his plate and how many things that he has
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 4: Here's the way it works. Here's the way it works.
Speaker 4: I'm told he goes to the State Department for an
Speaker 4: hour or two hours at the most each morning, and
Speaker 4: then goes to the West wing of the White House,
Speaker 4: which is where he spends the rest of the day.
Speaker 4: Nearly every day. He is right there, right and nobody
Speaker 4: has behaved. Nobody has had that large a brief since
Speaker 4: Henry Kissinger on Cuba. Could I just add one note?
Speaker 4: My wife is Cuban. I know these people, I have
Speaker 4: know many Cubans. Let's put it that way. Here's my
Speaker 4: one note, just for all our listeners. James probably is
Speaker 4: already well aware of this movie. You may be as well, Charlie.
Speaker 4: On somewhere online it's available maybe YouTube, maybe on Netflix,
Speaker 4: watch Our Man in Havana. Our Man in Havana. It
Speaker 4: was filmed in nineteen fifty nine. It's a wonderful dark comedy.
Speaker 4: It's slightly anti American. It's based on Graham Green, but
Speaker 4: the lead is played by Alec Guinness Noel Coward. It's
Speaker 4: British production. Noel Coward plays a role Ernie Kovac's Its brilliant,
Speaker 4: fast moving, hilarious, witty dialogue. But here's the point. It
Speaker 4: was shot very largely on location in Havana, just a
Speaker 4: few months before the revolution, just a few months before
Speaker 4: Feel came down from the Sierra Maestra mountains and took over.
Speaker 4: And so what you will see in the background is
Speaker 4: Havana as it actually looked in nineteen fifty nine. And
Speaker 4: people are well dressed, there is traffic in the streets.
Speaker 4: It is a bustling, beautiful city. So watch that and
Speaker 4: then go click around. Look at Havana today on Google
Speaker 4: and click under images and just look. Those buildings are
Speaker 4: still there. They're in a state of total decay. Many
Speaker 4: of the same vehicles, the same vehicles, the same vehicles
Speaker 4: are still on the streets, but of course they've been
Speaker 4: patched together and I mean the failure is total.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a what you do, what you do
Speaker 1: with the I mean, I mean what you do to.
Speaker 4: The difficulty in thinking about the future of Cuba, not
Speaker 4: that any of this can is in Super Bowl, is
Speaker 4: that some people have been there suffering for seven decades now,
Speaker 4: and there are going to be tensions between those people
Speaker 4: and the ones who got to this country and have
Speaker 4: done extremely well. Uh So that's going to be kind
Speaker 4: of a problem. But if the government changes there, I'm
Speaker 4: told that all over Havana there are banks, there are
Speaker 4: contracts and safety posit boxes. The Cubans have written day
Speaker 4: X is the day the government decisively falls, and X
Speaker 4: plus ten. There's going to be ferry service introduced from
Speaker 4: Miami to Havana. The Cubans, the Cuban community in Miami
Speaker 4: has the investment running ready to go. It could happen very, very,
Speaker 4: very fast. The question is exactly how, what's the mechanism,
Speaker 4: but that it is rotten and disgusting. Anybody can watch
Speaker 4: that by anybody can see that for himself by looking
Speaker 4: at a wonderful old movie and then comparing the background
Speaker 4: shots in that movie with Havana today.
Speaker 1: Yes, and if the people, if they come back from
Speaker 1: Miami on the ferry ten days afterwards, reclaim their old property,
Speaker 1: they will be regarded as Yankee colonialists who are bringing
Speaker 1: Calaby run back to right, as opposed to the people
Speaker 1: in the Palestinian camps who have an eternal right to
Speaker 1: this house in this olive grove. That those people would
Speaker 1: just be going home after the nackbar Peter. It's great,
Speaker 1: it's wonderful to look at that old architecture, in those
Speaker 1: great old cars. But of course Batista, you know, Batista,
Speaker 1: secret police, inequity, all of these things, every single scread
Speaker 1: of beauty that you see of civilization there had to
Speaker 1: be sacrificed in order to down the horrible thing and
Speaker 1: institute equity, and they did. Everybody is equally miserable. It's
Speaker 1: the same with Iran. The United States has absolutely no
Speaker 1: standing whatsoever to criticize what happened because of most of
Speaker 1: the day fifty three. You know, we had our hands
Speaker 1: in that, and so you know we're eternally tainted for that.
Speaker 1: But the fact is is that if you don't get
Speaker 1: Iran during the Shaw's reign, and yes, he was fantastically
Speaker 1: corrupt and indifferent and a bad leader and all the
Speaker 1: rest of those things, and screwed the poach and did
Speaker 1: a Nicholas the second And I mean, yeah, right, I
Speaker 1: get it. But women had the rights that they don't
Speaker 1: have now. Women were able to walk around in Western attire.
Speaker 1: The cities, even though teh Ran was sort of faphazidly
Speaker 1: built and you know, may have had the street grid
Speaker 1: of a Roman you know, of Rome in two thousand
Speaker 1: BC there are two hundred BC, it still was a
Speaker 1: fairly enlightened place, proud center of Persian culture. And apparently
Speaker 1: they had to sacrifice all of that because of the
Speaker 1: sins of the Shaw, because of Western alignment. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's sometimes I think how they think about it, is
Speaker 1: it when they look at what was lost, they say, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't perfect, right, nothing ever is. And the
Speaker 1: best that you incrementally work on what you've got then
Speaker 1: to do the wonderful, magical, romantic, heart pounding work of
Speaker 1: revolution and raise the red banners and storm the barricades
Speaker 1: and the rest of it, and build a new world
Speaker 1: from ground zero, because it never works. There's one that's worked,
Speaker 1: that's here, and we weren't starting from ground zero. We
Speaker 1: weren't rewriting human nature, weren't. We were gathering up everything
Speaker 1: we'd learned from Britain and the Enlightenment and the rest
Speaker 1: of it, and we did a pretty damn good job
Speaker 1: of it. And everybody else seems to have forgotten the
Speaker 1: lessons of that. But I'd like to see it. I
Speaker 1: would love to go to Havana some day, but it
Speaker 1: can take an awful long time to go back there
Speaker 1: and fix everything up, because it's all falling apart. FED
Speaker 1: chair Kevin Walsh worsh sounds like one of those things
Speaker 1: you like. His name is Wash, but you've got a
Speaker 1: peculiar mid Atlantic accidenth Kevin Walsh nominated to share the FED.
Speaker 1: I know nothing about this except that they meet in
Speaker 1: secret and make arcane pronouncements that make numbers go up
Speaker 1: and down. I don't know where we are at the
Speaker 1: rate right now, whether it needs to go up or
Speaker 1: go down. I read what I read, my eyes crossed,
Speaker 1: I saw, but Peter, you interviewed him last year. Tell
Speaker 1: us what this guy's all about.
Speaker 4: More than that, Kevin and I are old friends, so
Speaker 4: I don't want to. Kevin is extremely intelligent, and everybody
Speaker 4: who's an economist tells me that he really does know
Speaker 4: his economics. He is, Charlie. This to go back to
Speaker 4: what we were talking about, this the inarticulousy of the administration.
Speaker 4: As Chairman of the FED, he will not strictly be
Speaker 4: a member of the administration. But Kevin is wonderfully articulate.
Speaker 4: As I just reposted the interview that I did with him,
Speaker 4: and I guess it was just about last spring, six
Speaker 4: months or so ago, now that he's been nominated the
Speaker 4: FED chairmanship. Kevin's view, I'm not putting words in his
Speaker 4: mouth here. This is in that interview. Kevin's view is
Speaker 4: that the quantitative easing went too far and lasted too long,
Speaker 4: and that the and that it was used to underwrite
Speaker 4: vast expansions of federal spending under the Biden administration, and
Speaker 4: that it is time to reduce slowly, carefully, but to
Speaker 4: become very very serious about reducing the Fed's balance sheet,
Speaker 4: much of which has happened under Jerome Powell. But more,
Speaker 4: Kevin is also extremely upbeat, optimistic about the economy. His
Speaker 4: view is that the Big Beautiful Bill and contained not
Speaker 4: widely not headline, but if you read the Big Beautiful Bill,
Speaker 4: there are provisions there that cut taxes on corporations in
Speaker 4: way that make investment much easier, and so he was
Speaker 4: generally speaking. So I guess I think I can say
Speaker 4: this without being accused of putting words in Kevin's mouth.
Speaker 4: But at the sort of the high level, his view
Speaker 4: is that we need to get out of the way,
Speaker 4: constrain government spending, return the FED to a much more
Speaker 4: limited role in the banking system, and that the American
Speaker 4: economy is not sick, it's recovering nicely from the disruptions
Speaker 4: of COVID, and that we really are on the cusp
Speaker 4: of serious growth. That's as I understand Kevin's views.
Speaker 1: Will we be able to see this interview through a link?
Speaker 4: It's up, it's up, it's up. You can I linked
Speaker 4: to it again this morning on x OH fantastic.
Speaker 1: Well, gentlemen, before we head out here, some interesting things
Speaker 1: that we might want to discuss. Two related stories we're
Speaker 1: learning today out of Geneva that the UN chief has
Speaker 1: told member states, and I'm quoting here from Reuters, that
Speaker 1: the UN is at risk of quote imminent financial collapse,
Speaker 1: and he's citing unpaid fees and a strange budget rule.
Speaker 1: He's reportedly spoken about the organization's work worsening liquidity crisis,
Speaker 1: but this is the starkest warning yet that the UN
Speaker 1: financially may collapse. In related news, scientists at MIT have
Speaker 1: managed to construct a violin out of two atoms, and
Speaker 1: I think that's going to be very, very handy to
Speaker 1: to to use when we serenade our sadness about this
Speaker 1: story about the UN? Is the UN relevant? Is the
Speaker 1: UN necessary? If the UN goes away, what do we
Speaker 1: do do we have a World Council of Peace with
Speaker 1: an emblem that just shows the northern the western hemisphere,
Speaker 1: what do we do? Do we empty out the UN
Speaker 1: and turn it into condos? And I'd like to think,
Speaker 1: given the way it sits, the you know, the morning
Speaker 1: light and that is going to be beautiful, but it's
Speaker 1: probably getting it really hot around eleven o'clock or so
Speaker 1: you'd have to bring the windows down. Whither the UN, gentlemen.
Speaker 6: I loathe the UN. I think it is pointless and
Speaker 6: should be disbanded. It is a relic in that it
Speaker 6: is full of privileged members whose privileged status was the
Speaker 6: product of their having been on the right side at
Speaker 6: the end of World War two, not always at the
Speaker 6: beginning of World War two Russia and not of much
Speaker 6: else besides. And it's also full of countries that are
Speaker 6: worse than the United States. It's almost all of them are.
Speaker 6: And if you have a representative body that is full
Speaker 6: of terrible countries or people, that representative body is going
Speaker 6: to be malicious.
Speaker 5: And it's full of.
Speaker 6: Institutions like the Institution for the Advancement of Women that
Speaker 6: are run by Iran or Saudi. I would get rid
Speaker 6: of it. But I want to emphatically draw a distinction
Speaker 6: between the UN and NATO. I think NATO is a
Speaker 6: terrific organization. I don't think it has outlived its usefulness,
Speaker 6: and I think that it ought to be sustained. I
Speaker 6: agree with President Trump that its members ought to pay
Speaker 6: more for their own defense and probably criticize America less
Speaker 6: while benefiting from American military lodges. But UN bad NATO good,
Speaker 6: is my take.
Speaker 4: Well done, Charlie. I would also abolish the UN if
Speaker 4: I could. It strikes me as a lot of trouble,
Speaker 4: and so second choice would be ignore it, which the
Speaker 4: Trump administration is doing a pretty good job of. I think,
Speaker 4: just ignore the damn thing up. If they're hard up.
Speaker 4: Let them be hard up. NATO has not outlived its usefulness.
Speaker 4: What is its usefulness now, Charlie.
Speaker 6: I think that if you're going to have an alliance
Speaker 6: of nations that are better than all the others, and
Speaker 6: if you're going to use that alliance as a block
Speaker 6: against Russia to lesser extent and increasingly China and its
Speaker 6: sphere of influence, then you're going to have to have
Speaker 6: some sort of organization that manages it. And while I
Speaker 6: agree with some of the smaller criticisms of NATO, I
Speaker 6: think whatever you end up with is going to look
Speaker 6: a little bit like NATO, with an agreement to guarantee
Speaker 6: one another's security, with an ability to speak as one voice,
Speaker 6: and with an arrangement that is backstopped by the American military,
Speaker 6: which has its tendrils out into various other countries that
Speaker 6: are close, relatively speaking to.
Speaker 5: The United States.
Speaker 6: So, you know, while I'm open to reform, I think
Speaker 6: that the basic logic underneath NATO is still sound.
Speaker 4: And how do you so? Irving Crystal. Irving Crystal published
Speaker 4: an essay in The New York Times in nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: three predicting that European dependence on the United States would
Speaker 4: infantilize Europe. He didn't use that word, but that was
Speaker 4: the argument. And then who's this man who's the former
Speaker 4: head of mi I six. I can't remember his name.
Speaker 4: I thought you might as a proper Englishman. He's an
Speaker 4: establishment figure. But he said during an interview just last year,
Speaker 4: yes twenty twenty five, that NATO had infantilized Western Europe,
Speaker 4: that they had lost the ability to think clearly and
Speaker 4: engage in uses of hard power. Hard power was his phrase.
Speaker 4: So how do you so is that?
Speaker 2: Is?
Speaker 4: That? Is that fundamental to NATO? Do we simply pay
Speaker 4: that price that we're in charge and everybody else suffers
Speaker 4: some dependency? Or if they kick up their spend and
Speaker 4: actually produce real militaries and the Germans are now sending
Speaker 4: troops to Lithuania, Can we want allies not vassals?
Speaker 5: Do we?
Speaker 6: I asked that, because no, I asked that quite seriously,
Speaker 6: in that I would prefer if Europe were not infantilized.
Speaker 6: I prefer of Europe were able to defend itself. I
Speaker 6: prefer of Europe didn't have a thousand year history of
Speaker 6: interonisan warfare. But I will borrow this from rich Larry
Speaker 6: who said this recently, and I largely agree. If you
Speaker 6: told any great nation in the history of the world,
Speaker 6: all right, here's the deal. You get to be the
Speaker 6: richest and most powerful nation in the world, and you
Speaker 6: also get to effectively control an infantilized Europe, they would
Speaker 6: have said, Wow, that's fantastic. I mean, hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 6: of years of European history are marked by one country
Speaker 6: or another hoping to dominate the continent. It tended to
Speaker 6: end in a horrible conflict well after nineteen forty five
Speaker 6: the Americans.
Speaker 5: But yeah, we kind of are in charge now. We
Speaker 5: should be thrilled by that.
Speaker 6: So if the alternative of them not being infantilized is
Speaker 6: not on the table, which unfortunately it's not, I think
Speaker 6: this is the next best option. It's fantastic for the
Speaker 6: United States that we can put our troops wherever we want,
Speaker 6: that we can count on these other relatively rich nations,
Speaker 6: albeit not to do exactly what we want, but to
Speaker 6: do mostly what we want. I don't think we can
Speaker 6: improve on that other than to have proper allies in
Speaker 6: the way you describe, which I agree.
Speaker 1: Would be preferable, except that eventually you end up with
Speaker 1: a thirty five year old single guy living in the
Speaker 1: sofa in his parents' basement, which is what seems to
Speaker 1: be at the end of all this. And I would prefer,
Speaker 1: for the sake of Western civilization and itsntinuance, that they
Speaker 1: actually have more national grit fiber character muscled than they
Speaker 1: seem to be having now. Now there's just a lot
Speaker 1: of fumes of self regard and empty statements because they
Speaker 1: can't back up what they do with force. Well, we
Speaker 1: live in a post we live in a post force world,
Speaker 1: don't we wishould not, shouldn't be settling things by forces?
Speaker 1: And absolutely ourchare concept we're beyond that. It's twenty first century.
Speaker 1: No human nature hasn't changed, and the iron laws that
Speaker 1: governed international relations haven't either. So if they if they
Speaker 1: equip themselves more for their defense, that's great. There's only
Speaker 1: one direction that's pointed.
Speaker 5: In, though I'm not sure that's sure.
Speaker 1: Well, there is the new German tank production going to
Speaker 1: be used to, you know, to roll into China when they're.
Speaker 5: When when they have the direction.
Speaker 6: I agree with you they're fantalized, but I don't think
Speaker 6: the trend is to it endless infantalization.
Speaker 5: Producing Eastern Europe.
Speaker 6: Is arming itself and spending more on its defense. Trump
Speaker 6: has made headway in this area.
Speaker 1: Have no I agree. What what I'm saying, though, is
Speaker 1: that all of these self defense mechanisms are pointed in
Speaker 1: one direction. They're all in response to the existence of
Speaker 1: the Russian threat.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: The United States has this vast military apparatus that can
Speaker 1: project power at any corner of the globe, which is different,
Speaker 1: which means will still be on top. But again, yeah,
Speaker 1: we would like them to be strong. I read stories
Speaker 1: of the Royal Navy in its condition, and you want
Speaker 1: to weep. The nation that held Trafalgar is a great
Speaker 1: emblem of national spirit. Can't get a ship out of
Speaker 1: the dry dock, and the Silent Service is sitting there
Speaker 1: with its you know, with its wires rotting. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's dreadful. On the other hand, as we always say,
Speaker 1: you know, if there's one thing that we really need
Speaker 1: more of, its German remilitarization. You just realized how things
Speaker 1: have changed. If things have changed, I mean the friendship to.
Speaker 5: Do it as well. I mean, if you told my
Speaker 5: grandfather that he was and say.
Speaker 1: Italy, Italy, can you get some guys marching in proper
Speaker 1: lockstep down there. For heaven's sakes, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: The more things change, nothing new under the sun, except well, no,
Speaker 1: this isn't new either. I have to remind you the
Speaker 1: Ricochet members do get together in person, in human in
Speaker 1: places where you can actually see each other and laugh
Speaker 1: and talk and hoist classes. Got a couple coming up
Speaker 1: in February. One group are in talks about a meeting
Speaker 1: at in the Detroit area after a Hillsdale College visit,
Speaker 1: and there'll be another media of Florida Space Coast. That's
Speaker 1: February sixth, like six to the eighth this year. So
Speaker 1: go to ricochet dot com slash events and you will
Speaker 1: find out where people are meeting in your neighborhood. And
Speaker 1: if there isn't anything in your neighborhood, why don't you
Speaker 1: host him. That's a great thing. They'll show up, they'll
Speaker 1: bring tater tans. And if you think I really want
Speaker 1: to sit around and talk about politics, I experience of
Speaker 1: every Ricochet meet up I've ben we talk about everything,
Speaker 1: but there's a certain like minded nature to it. But
Speaker 1: we talk about everything in the world. And then I
Speaker 1: would ask you also to Peter, am I gonna how
Speaker 1: many stars do I want people to give this podcast? Four? Five?
Speaker 4: Wait? How many stars are there?
Speaker 1: How many? Now we know whether not Peter was listening
Speaker 1: or had just checked out by the time I got
Speaker 1: to every podcast and told people five.
Speaker 4: I have heard this once or twice. I have discovered,
Speaker 4: by the way my children explain this to me, that
Speaker 4: in any five star system, the only star that counts
Speaker 4: is the fifth star. Everybody assumes that the four stars
Speaker 4: are going to be filled in. So it's important not
Speaker 4: only to fill in five stars, but to fill in
Speaker 4: every arm of that fifth star.
Speaker 1: All five, all five.
Speaker 4: With an exclamation point.
Speaker 1: All I know is that I've been looking for household appliances.
Speaker 1: I go to Amazon and I look for the one
Speaker 1: star reviews because they're the most informative. Yes, how does
Speaker 1: this toaster perform? And there's seven hundred and forty three
Speaker 1: paid you know, a real person who bought this, but
Speaker 1: is actually probably just a digital robotic figure tapping you know,
Speaker 1: a screen somewhere in Shanghai, And when you get down
Speaker 1: to the one percent is where you find the word
Speaker 1: fire in every single view of the toaster. My favorite
Speaker 1: being doesen't toast, and you know when you're a toaster
Speaker 1: and toasting is the entirety of your raise. Old debts
Speaker 1: or a dozen toast is a pretty good one star review.
Speaker 1: But we hope we fulfilled your expectations, folks, and we
Speaker 1: deserve those five stars we'd like you to give us.
Speaker 1: We would also like you to go to ricochet dot
Speaker 1: com itself and take a look, because there you will
Speaker 1: see if you haven't already, the member site. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: got to pick a couple of you know, Lira, Denari
Speaker 1: whatever to get to it, but it's worth it because
Speaker 1: when you remember, that means you can comment, which keeps
Speaker 1: Ricochet from being like the cess pools of iniquity and
Speaker 1: screaming and miserable old curmudgeons in their basement pounding out
Speaker 1: stuff on a Cheeto's dame check you know. Uh no,
Speaker 1: no that's not us. So go there, give it a try,
Speaker 1: and Peter, we hope you will have you back soon.
Speaker 4: I just figured out what Charlie reminds me of. Charlie
Speaker 4: reminds me of the Dalmatian emperors.
Speaker 7: In the elite, in the in the level empire goes
Speaker 7: about seas, these these these caesars, these emperors would come
Speaker 7: from the outskirts of empire and show up and roam
Speaker 7: and say, boys, boys, you've all become a feminis.
Speaker 1: We've got an empire to run in here.
Speaker 5: I'll take it.
Speaker 1: What emperor would you like to be, Peter?
Speaker 4: What emperor would I like to be? Oh? I thought
Speaker 4: Augustus had it pretty well, pretty good.
Speaker 1: That's what I would figure to it. Yeah, exactly, that's right. Half.
Speaker 4: Essentially, let's let's Caesar set up the empire, he gets knifed,
Speaker 4: and then Augustus comes along and runs it. That seems
Speaker 4: like a good job.
Speaker 1: Dies in bed, did did I perform my part in
Speaker 1: the play? Well? Yes, I think that he did. And
Speaker 1: I like the Roman empire itself.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: I was going to say we end, but then again,
Speaker 1: the you know, they did split off and have another
Speaker 1: thousand years in Constantinople. Yes, I'm still calling it that
Speaker 1: because I'm still mad about that. But that's another podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. Everybody will see you in the comments.
Speaker 1: At Ricochet four point whatever, by bye bye bye.
Speaker 4: Ricochet. Join the conversation