Speaker 1: While the whole in our hearts and lives will never
Speaker 1: be filled. I hope that in time our family can
Speaker 1: find healing. I pray that the other victim's family can
Speaker 1: find some semblance of the same. I'm hopeful that all
Speaker 1: the wounded are able to make a full recovery and
Speaker 1: return home to their families. And finally, all the people
Speaker 1: and especially the children impacted by this horrific event, are
Speaker 1: able to recover mentally and find strength to live loving,
Speaker 1: happy and full lives.
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody to the Ricashey Podcast, Episode number seven hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty five. I'm joined by Stephen Haywood in California
Speaker 2: and Charles W. Cook in Florida, and gentlemen, thank you.
Speaker 2: So uh, I guess I should start with the news
Speaker 2: I live. Technically, I'm on fifty first and the Annunciation
Speaker 2: Church in Minneapolis is on fifty fourth, so I'm close.
Speaker 2: There's the creek, the creek between us, beautiful rushing water
Speaker 2: that goes down to minne Falls. Lovely neighborhood, beautiful neighborhood,
Speaker 2: beautiful day, and I get to call for my sister
Speaker 2: in law, who are attacks for my sister in law
Speaker 2: who lives about a block away from the church that
Speaker 2: there had been a mass shooting and annunciation, and she
Speaker 2: goes out and talks to her neighborho had actually seen
Speaker 2: the demon do it. And within seconds, it seems as
Speaker 2: if every as I wrote in Ricochet, every siren in
Speaker 2: the world was heading our way. This this this, this
Speaker 2: chorus of whales. That was astonishing, and it was it was.
Speaker 2: It was a bad day here. And the only thing
Speaker 2: I can think of, that's that's that's apt Is nine.
Speaker 2: And I know people drag that into everything, but the
Speaker 2: same sense of after the event, and the and and
Speaker 2: just the stunned feeling, that ghastly miasma that descends over
Speaker 2: the community, and how the TV is always on. The
Speaker 2: TV is your friend, It's right there, and it's it's
Speaker 2: always on all the you know, all the local channels
Speaker 2: were dumped their Judge Judy and when went to this
Speaker 2: and you know, we all know now what it was about.
Speaker 2: We all well, we we do. It seems some of
Speaker 2: the authorities are still scratching their head and trying to
Speaker 2: figure out what the motivation was. We may never know.
Speaker 2: The strange thing for me was that I was getting
Speaker 2: on X the identity of this guy about forty five
Speaker 2: minutes before the authorities announced it. I don't know how
Speaker 2: that happened. I don't know. Obviously, the ide'd the miscreant
Speaker 2: right away, and the FBI was on the scene, and
Speaker 2: the FBI was able to pull the stuff down from YouTube.
Speaker 2: Apparently there's a there's there's a protocol for this, there's
Speaker 2: a there's a red phone that rings, and they know
Speaker 2: it's the FBI telling him to take something down because
Speaker 2: his manifesto that he'd put up was gone, but somebody
Speaker 2: had scraped it and taken screenshots and put the whole
Speaker 2: thing up and got the guy's identification. And I'm still
Speaker 2: trying to figure out exactly how that happened. And it
Speaker 2: just once again shows you how the world has changed.
Speaker 2: It used to be you sit by the television and
Speaker 2: wait for Walter Cronkite to break in and take off
Speaker 2: his glasses and wipe his eyes and tell you something.
Speaker 2: But now no, it's blasting out of that little magic
Speaker 2: glass rectangle in your pocket. And what we know about
Speaker 2: the guy, of course, is fascinating, not in a good way.
Speaker 2: It's a look I thought for a lot of people
Speaker 2: into a part of the dank in cell, moist, miserable,
Speaker 2: nihilistic cave in online in which so many of these
Speaker 2: people dwell and a lot. I mean, if you looked
Speaker 2: at what he wrote on his gun, his rifle in
Speaker 2: the magazines, it was a compendium of Internet memes and
Speaker 2: cliches and references. I hope a lot of people take
Speaker 2: a look at that and study what it means and
Speaker 2: figure out exactly what to do about guys like this,
Speaker 2: because my first instinct is not demand the guns.
Speaker 3: Oh. I always try to go by the seventy two
Speaker 3: hour rule in these things, which is way too you
Speaker 3: have some information and confirmation of things. This is one
Speaker 3: case where you can set some of that aside, because,
Speaker 3: first of all, James, I'm a little curious too that
Speaker 3: we got photos of the guns and other information came
Speaker 3: out so quickly. Maybe it was some you know, random
Speaker 3: people on social media.
Speaker 2: Who out No, No, I don't think so. The most
Speaker 2: likely thing. I think, the most likely explanation is that
Speaker 2: he set this thing to go to be to go
Speaker 2: public at a certain time, and one of his mutuals
Speaker 2: got a notification. Oh and when they got the notification,
Speaker 2: they scraped it, downloaded it, and then sent it to
Speaker 2: somebody to give themselves some distance from it. That's the
Speaker 2: only thing that I can imagine that makes some sense. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be conspiratorial about this and say
Speaker 2: that it was all you know, this is all this
Speaker 2: is all black rock deep state stuff.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: False.
Speaker 3: No, no, Well, but sorry, Jay, if we can't our
Speaker 3: mind back to the shooting in Nashville, what a year
Speaker 3: and a half ago, also by a transgender student of
Speaker 3: great trouble who had a manifesto that was actively suppressed
Speaker 3: by the police and the authorities. Parts of it have
Speaker 3: finally leaked out, and I thought, maybe somebody's leaking it
Speaker 3: out to get ahead of the suppression effort, which is
Speaker 3: point number two, which is I'm watching the media turn
Speaker 3: somersaults to avoid bringing up the chosen identity of the shooter,
Speaker 3: so they'll say, you know, troubled person, maybe mental illness issues.
Speaker 3: NPR kept talking about they shot themselves for this person
Speaker 3: used to day then pronounced I was watching NBC Nightly
Speaker 3: News about it the other night, and I thought, how
Speaker 3: ironic that they won't mention this at all, and yet
Speaker 3: to have an ongoing segment right now in NBC ninety
Speaker 3: news called the cost of denial. It's about health insurance
Speaker 3: and all those problems that are not new to be
Speaker 3: reported on. But I thought talk about cost of denial.
Speaker 3: The media and all of our authorities are going out
Speaker 3: of their way to deny that any sort of mental
Speaker 3: illness and mental unbalance of this person could be in
Speaker 3: any way related to his gender identity issues. Oh no,
Speaker 3: we can't talk about that. That's a bigotry and hate
Speaker 3: and everything else.
Speaker 4: Charles, Well, I'm sorry that happens so close to you.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry it happened at all. But it sounds as
Speaker 4: if it was more horring for you than I am.
Speaker 2: The least important element of this story.
Speaker 4: No, I know, but still, but still it's worse when
Speaker 4: things happen close to you.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think it's.
Speaker 4: The guns either, And not only do I not think
Speaker 4: it's the guns, but I think that this is an
Speaker 4: irrelevant factor because even if you want it to, you
Speaker 4: can't ban guns. There's hundreds of millions of them. So
Speaker 4: then the question is what can you do? And I
Speaker 4: never know the answer. James like, well, can.
Speaker 2: You keep a guy from walking into a pond shop
Speaker 2: passing the background check because he has no criminal record
Speaker 2: and working out with one of these things. No, well
Speaker 2: you can't if you simply say you can't do that
Speaker 2: in Minneapolis. But then of course you can go to Richfield.
Speaker 4: Well right, but also you can go to the black market.
Speaker 4: And this guy, unfortunately, was obsessed with other school shooters.
Speaker 2: He was clearly.
Speaker 4: In a line of mass shooters and that's how he
Speaker 4: saw himself. He'd written their names on the magazines. So
Speaker 4: if you're that determined, the argument that adding friction into
Speaker 4: the process it's problematic in many ways. It's a constitutional right.
Speaker 4: If you do that, you also end up preventing people
Speaker 4: who need guns to defend themselves from getting them and
Speaker 4: so on. But the argument in favor of adding friction
Speaker 4: between a gun purchaser and a gun makes sense in
Speaker 4: certain circumstances from a purely practical perspective, if, for example,
Speaker 4: you wish to stop somebody killing himself on a whim,
Speaker 4: or if somebody is very angry and would have calmed
Speaker 4: down had he not been able to get a gun,
Speaker 4: that's the theory at least. But in this case, I mean,
Speaker 4: you're talking about somebody who wrote a manifesto, and the
Speaker 4: manifesto is crazy, and I do think we ought to
Speaker 4: keep that in mind. It's crazy in so many different ways,
Speaker 4: some of which touch politics. But the most crazy thing
Speaker 4: about it is this bizarre, schizophrenic flipping between I want
Speaker 4: to kill children. I thought that is abhorrent to almost
Speaker 4: everyone in the world, and hey, Tommy, be nice to mum,
Speaker 4: make sure that you do your homework.
Speaker 2: What what sort.
Speaker 4: Of person is concerned about the relationship between their sibling
Speaker 4: and their mother but also is talking about killing children.
Speaker 4: This is the part that I think is impossible to interrogate.
Speaker 2: I share.
Speaker 4: Steve's absolute irritation with the press because the press does
Speaker 4: not take the view that I usually take left or right,
Speaker 4: trans or not man or woman, that the people who
Speaker 4: do this are usually crazy. The press likes to focus
Speaker 4: in on details. And you can bet your asset if
Speaker 4: this guy had had a Maga hat, even if every
Speaker 4: other thing he had said was left wing, if he
Speaker 4: had one Maga hat in his bedroom, or it would
Speaker 4: have been caught in the frame or of a red
Speaker 4: hat for an oil company had been caught in the
Speaker 4: frame of the video, they'd have talked about it. But
Speaker 4: now it's too nuanced, it's too difficult to know. So
Speaker 4: what they're doing is they're systematically and selectively suppressing what
Speaker 4: we are allowed to know and talk about.
Speaker 2: I find that wildly annoying, even though I'm.
Speaker 4: Not somebody who tends to take the view that hey,
Speaker 4: somebody on the other side did this. Therefore, I think
Speaker 4: that's usually useless. But the press doesn't, so we get
Speaker 4: it only in one direction, and I find that furiating.
Speaker 2: But they can't because the information is out there and
Speaker 2: everybody's having the conversation, and there's some conversations that they
Speaker 2: don't want us to have. They're just not because they
Speaker 2: you know, I hate that thing den tricks that your
Speaker 2: dentist doesn't want you to know. What I mean by
Speaker 2: that is it's an uncomfortable conversation that exposes hypocrisies and
Speaker 2: flaws in arguments and theories. And it has to do
Speaker 2: with the guy's transgender identity. One. I don't think I'm
Speaker 2: looking at this guy. I don't think he was on anything.
Speaker 2: To be frank, I don't think he was going through
Speaker 2: any medicalized transition. I just get that feeling and I
Speaker 2: had that that was reiterated by a transgender advocate who
Speaker 2: was in my Twitter feed, who said, you know, this
Speaker 2: person was just trying on an identity. They put their
Speaker 2: hair in pigtails, didn't take any drugs, didn't do any surgery,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. So not not really a transgender person.
Speaker 2: I thought, oh wait, hold, hold on a second, that's
Speaker 2: not what we've been told before we had been told
Speaker 2: the whole basis of self ID is that one need
Speaker 2: not have to go through any of these things. That
Speaker 2: simply declaring oneselves to be another general is sufficient because
Speaker 2: they know, because our children know, listen to the children
Speaker 2: they know, and therefore everything should flip and they should
Speaker 2: have all the access to the to the other sex
Speaker 2: that you know that the natural born females or manles have.
Speaker 2: So that's part of the Other part is is that
Speaker 2: if you want red flag laws or people who have
Speaker 2: manifest signs of mental instability, If you want to say no,
Speaker 2: that crazy person walking into the gun shop should not
Speaker 2: get a gun, what do you say about a hulking
Speaker 2: man in address with pigtails and makeup? Are you allowed
Speaker 2: to say, I don't believe that that person has the
Speaker 2: mental stability that we generally require from people to you know,
Speaker 2: to possess this, because then all of a sudden. Then
Speaker 2: you're classifying their way of presenting and identifying themselves as
Speaker 2: a mental instability, and we can't have that. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: what the whole everybody has suppressed, not suppressed, but just
Speaker 2: decline to discuss the nuances that surround the whole transgender,
Speaker 2: general identity, general ideology thing. They just they just state
Speaker 2: what is what must be agreed upon and that we
Speaker 2: must be kind and then we move on from that
Speaker 2: point without every being able to discuss. But people want
Speaker 2: that discussion, and online is exactly where we're having that discussion. Well,
Speaker 2: other discussions to come, and that will be this we
Speaker 2: are going to talk to Oh wait a minute, Wait
Speaker 2: a minute, wait a minute, talk Why talk when you can,
Speaker 2: you know, do something else like check your bank balance?
Speaker 2: Have you done that recently? Have you? How about your investments?
Speaker 2: Looked at those? Well, well, I'm sure of course the
Speaker 2: answer to this will be to invest in our community,
Speaker 2: invest in this, and invest in that. Whenever you hear
Speaker 2: a politician use the word invest the you mean anything
Speaker 2: except what invest means. But you're probably thinking, well, I
Speaker 2: should invest. I like to invest. Investing is good, But
Speaker 2: you got to ask yourself, are you being lined to
Speaker 2: and know. They tell you to defer paying your taxes
Speaker 2: by saving in a four to one k or an
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Speaker 2: sponsoring this the Ricaget podcast. And now we welcome to
Speaker 2: the podcast Will Chamberlain, vice President for External Affairs at
Speaker 2: the Edmund Brooke Foundation. He's also the senior council at
Speaker 2: the Article three Project and the Internet Accountability Project. Well, welcome,
Speaker 2: good to be with you. Well, of course I'd like
Speaker 2: to know about the vice president for Internal Affairs. But
Speaker 2: more than that, I'd like to know about the Edmund
Speaker 2: Brooke Foundation. Tell us about it. It's having its fifth
Speaker 2: annual National Conservatism Convention conference in DC next week. What
Speaker 2: should people know about the organization?
Speaker 5: Well, so it's found a boy your and Hiszzoni, the
Speaker 5: author of the Virtue of Nationalism. And really if you
Speaker 5: want to learn, you know precisely, like what the political
Speaker 5: beliefs of the organization are. What we're trying to put forward.
Speaker 5: There's a statement of principles available at the website. I think,
Speaker 5: you know, it's really a conservatism that's deeply rooted in nationalism.
Speaker 5: That and I think it orients itself and it finds
Speaker 5: itself very much at the center of the modern right.
Speaker 5: Not necessarily, you know, there's not a uniform view on
Speaker 5: foreign policy, but it's more oriented towards restraint than previous
Speaker 5: dominant intellectual strengths and conservatism.
Speaker 6: It's also very much.
Speaker 5: Focused on you know, the right of peoples to maintain
Speaker 5: their sovereignty, and that's very focused on immigration. And it
Speaker 5: is not certainly not you know, the orthodox kind of
Speaker 5: libertarian view on economics. It you know, we're not, we're
Speaker 5: very much heterodox, although I mean we're not socialists or anything.
Speaker 5: But we're perfectly willing to see terrorists used judiciously, and
Speaker 5: so we find ourselves very much an approval of much
Speaker 5: of the Trump agenda.
Speaker 2: Nationalism is one of those words. It probably gets you
Speaker 2: red flagged over in Europe. Here in the States, how
Speaker 2: would you regard nationalism as having the same sort of
Speaker 2: bad odor that it does in the Well, yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean the EU is this wonderful transnational project that's going
Speaker 2: to dissolve borders and have everybody grouped into this this
Speaker 2: happy union of shared ideas. And you know, America is
Speaker 2: a country based on an idea, but we're also based
Speaker 2: very firmly in the fact of our geographical location, the
Speaker 2: fact that we are in nation. So where doesn't what
Speaker 2: do you think nationhood pull nationalism polls these days?
Speaker 5: I think it would pull pretty strongly. Donald Trump, you know,
Speaker 5: famously said I am a nationalist and that he didn't
Speaker 5: think it was a bad word, and all of a
Speaker 5: sudden he's you know, he's the leader of the Republican
Speaker 5: Party and the President of the United States. I think
Speaker 5: it's probably popular.
Speaker 3: JD.
Speaker 5: Vance actually, I think described what nationalism is nationalism is
Speaker 5: pretty well at last year's conference where he was a keynote.
Speaker 5: I mean he said, you know, it's not We're not
Speaker 5: merely just an idea. We're a common people with a
Speaker 5: you know, a common history and a common future. And
Speaker 5: there's there's I mean there obviously people can join that.
Speaker 5: This isn't a like, this isn't blood and soil. People
Speaker 5: can join that. That people, but it's more than just
Speaker 5: an idea.
Speaker 2: Well, here's our here's our Brookie and Charles Headley Cook
Speaker 2: to to ask you the next question. Charles, so what
Speaker 2: is not a nationalist?
Speaker 4: Maybe that's a better way of looking at who do
Speaker 4: you not want to be like?
Speaker 5: On the right or the left? I mean, who do
Speaker 5: we not want to be like on the left? I
Speaker 5: mean it's pretty easy to you know, this is people,
Speaker 5: I mean, the kind of people who national identity is
Speaker 5: bad that we should you know, submit to a single
Speaker 5: world government or some sort of globe, some sort of
Speaker 5: other type of liberal imperial arrangement. And then further centrists,
Speaker 5: I think the kind of the tax you know, not tacky,
Speaker 5: but the sort of simplistic way to put it would
Speaker 5: be the invade the world, invite the world viewpoint, which
Speaker 5: is the idea that we ought, you know, that it's
Speaker 5: perfectly fine for us to be, you know, have a
Speaker 5: global empire where we're you know, running everything everywhere, but
Speaker 5: simultaneously have no discrimination about who we admit in because hey,
Speaker 5: if you just you know, say, you know, say say
Speaker 5: the words of the Oath, you can be an American
Speaker 5: just like everybody else. And I think it's a little
Speaker 5: it's quite a bit more than that. And then I
Speaker 5: think on the right, we certainly don't want to be
Speaker 5: like the you know, I think truly blood and soil,
Speaker 5: uh and really you know, aggressively bigoted people. I think
Speaker 5: that's a really simple way, simple way to understand it.
Speaker 5: But there, you know, there are there are groups on
Speaker 5: the right that you know, seem to uh believe that
Speaker 5: things like jewsers averting the white race, like all sorts
Speaker 5: of silly nonsense like that, and that's definitely not us
Speaker 5: and we we really don't have any time for it.
Speaker 5: I think you know, Or himself is Israeli, and you
Speaker 5: know the kind of you actually look at the conference leadership,
Speaker 5: it kind of comes.
Speaker 6: From all over the place.
Speaker 5: You know, Anna Wellis is Polish and lives in America.
Speaker 5: I'm I'm American, but of you know, like you know,
Speaker 5: my dad's a Wasp, my my mom is Jewish. So
Speaker 5: it's you know, there's a lot of and then there's
Speaker 5: plenty of you know, Protestants and Catholics. So it's it's
Speaker 5: a it's a wide it's a wide range of people
Speaker 5: from different backgrounds, but it's it's a there's a deep
Speaker 5: Americanism to it, and it's in you know, these are
Speaker 5: people most of these people, especially on the American side,
Speaker 5: are people who've been you know, been here. They aren't
Speaker 5: just necessarily like recent immigrants.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 4: I think some of the people who are very critical
Speaker 4: of Trump and I have been at times, they miss
Speaker 4: remember how much nationalism was in the Republican Party historically.
Speaker 4: They think that there was this time there was no
Speaker 4: one who's in favor of tariffs and immigration restrictionism, and
Speaker 4: so it's just not true.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So obviously you have your figures like Pap Buchanan, who's
Speaker 4: opposed to boy for a certain portion of conservatism.
Speaker 2: But if you go back to Reagan, do you see Reagan.
Speaker 4: As a nationalist in some ways or is this project
Speaker 4: in opposition or tension with the Reaganism.
Speaker 5: I think it's a little bit of both. I mean,
Speaker 5: I think our attitude towards Reagan will be some good,
Speaker 5: some bad. I think we would probably look back at
Speaker 5: some of Reagan's amnesty decisions as some of the you know,
Speaker 5: the worst policy decisions he would have made that really
Speaker 5: set us back in a number of ways. And it's
Speaker 5: you know, on the other hand, obviously Reagan bringing back
Speaker 5: the Republican Party as a brand and a lot of
Speaker 5: nationalist ideas, and I think much of his foreign policy
Speaker 5: approach was something we would broadly agree with. So it's
Speaker 5: a mix of both. It's also kind of hard to criticize,
Speaker 5: you know, I when when Reagan was around, when Reagan
Speaker 5: was president, you know, I was three, So I'm sort
Speaker 5: of I'm always a little skeptical of presentism. With regard
Speaker 5: to criticizing Reagan. You have to wonder what was the
Speaker 5: debate about immigration, Like what were people thinking?
Speaker 2: And I don't know.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's quite possible that there were more prescient
Speaker 5: people who were extremely critical of Reagan from the right
Speaker 5: on his immigration policies. I don't really know, And so
Speaker 5: I'm willing to give the man himself a bit of
Speaker 5: grace on that. But I think we would look back
Speaker 5: at that part of his record and say that that
Speaker 5: was certainly a mistake and there needs to be a
Speaker 5: corrective towards it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just one very great thing on that in the
Speaker 4: late nineteen eighties, National Reviews to run these editorials in
Speaker 4: a favorite running line when they criticized Reagan was this
Speaker 4: would never have happened if Ronald Reagan was still alive.
Speaker 4: Even that was some of.
Speaker 2: That yeah, well, can I jump in here on that point.
Speaker 3: It's Steve Hayward out in California, Will and I'll just
Speaker 3: say straight out that I've been fascinated by the National
Speaker 3: Conservative Project for a while. I attended the first, the
Speaker 3: very first one, which was the twenty seventeen now or
Speaker 3: eighteen in.
Speaker 6: Washington, eighteen twenty nineteen, I think, yeah, whatever it.
Speaker 3: Was, and I wanted to come to several more. There
Speaker 3: was either I had a scheduled conflict or in one case,
Speaker 3: I was going to come to a Miami meeting and
Speaker 3: the airlines didn't cooperate, I couldn't make it, and I
Speaker 3: can't make it next week, unfortunately, which I'm sorry because
Speaker 3: I'm delighted to see you're giving your big Beaconsfield Prize
Speaker 3: to my one of my mentors, Chris Debuth, good friend,
Speaker 3: and so forth.
Speaker 2: At one point about the Reagan business.
Speaker 3: Now, of course, by the time the failure of that
Speaker 3: amnesty of eighty six eighty seven became obvious by the
Speaker 3: mid nineties, really you know, Reagan had his Alzheimer's. But
Speaker 3: Mee told me several times, oh yeah, that was a
Speaker 3: terrible deal. We should never have done it. We believe
Speaker 3: the Democrats, the Congress would and the bureaucracy would enforce
Speaker 3: employment verification other things that didn't happen, and said we
Speaker 3: should not.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, they regretted that fairly early on.
Speaker 3: But Reagan was always something of an immigration dove, going
Speaker 3: back to his experience as California governor when you had,
Speaker 3: you know, a guest worker program for agriculture, and okay,
Speaker 3: that probably worked decently anyway, but it's true, Charles Race
Speaker 3: is a good point. One of the things that people forget,
Speaker 3: including a lot of pro Reagan nostalgist who I am
Speaker 3: at least half the day, is during the eighties there
Speaker 3: were a lot of conservatives, and I was among him,
Speaker 3: who were very frustrated with Reagan over arms control, Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: Immigration was not as big, but there were some people
Speaker 3: and certain fiscal matters which now look very differently in retrospect.
Speaker 2: But I'm going to that. I wrote a large book
Speaker 2: about all that. A couple of things about.
Speaker 3: Well, let me do one big one is you may
Speaker 3: reference a moment ago to jd Vance last year saying
Speaker 3: I forget how we put it or how you summarized it,
Speaker 3: but I understand what he's on about, which is well,
Speaker 3: there's always been this debate about whether America is a
Speaker 3: credle nation deca had our identity really for the declaration
Speaker 3: of independence, or whether we're a historical nation. And I
Speaker 3: remember Margaret Thatcher saying once that Europe is a product
Speaker 3: of history, America is a product of philosophy, hilted toward
Speaker 3: the creedle part. And as you may know, we've been
Speaker 3: having these rather bitter debates about some aspect of that
Speaker 3: question for decades among conservatives. I'm scratching my head thinking,
Speaker 3: why can't it be both? Why can't someone produce an
Speaker 3: intellectual synthesis that blends them together, which I actually think
Speaker 3: is the right answer to things. And maybe you guys
Speaker 3: will be the ones who come up with that in
Speaker 3: the fullness of time.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think I think Joram's book is I mean,
Speaker 5: he's really I think he does a good job of
Speaker 5: integrating the you know, the creedle part to an extent.
Speaker 5: I mean it is you know, he talks about kind
Speaker 5: of the nation as the sort of middle ground between
Speaker 5: the tribe and the empire, right is, you know, and
Speaker 5: it's sort of tribes unifying. He roots it in kind
Speaker 5: of the experience of these biblical Israel and the Bible,
Speaker 5: you know, and I think that there's something to the
Speaker 5: idea of kind of the expanding circle of loyalties. Vans
Speaker 5: also talked about this when he had that whole discussion
Speaker 5: about order of Morris, the idea that you know, it's
Speaker 5: like the people closest to your family you most loyalty too.
Speaker 5: Then it expands and the degree of loyalty care reduces
Speaker 5: as you expand outward in the concentric circle.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I think it's all it's a difficult way thing to
Speaker 5: balance because you have these obviously truths, right, the idea
Speaker 5: that we have immigrants that come in and they really
Speaker 5: duly truly become American. But on the other hand, simply
Speaker 5: saying the words clearly is insufficient.
Speaker 2: And when you go.
Speaker 5: Simply embrace the idea entirely that you're just a credal nation,
Speaker 5: you end up admitting a bunch of people who have
Speaker 5: no meaningful loyalty to the country. Like I could I
Speaker 5: usually name specific names people, you know, it blows my
Speaker 5: mindlets around. I'm Nadi Mamdani is running for office in
Speaker 5: New York. The guy was it wasn't even a citizen
Speaker 5: until five years ago.
Speaker 6: I think that.
Speaker 5: You know, a guy named Oron McIntyre had a great
Speaker 5: epithet for this. It's a paperwork, American, like, you've signed
Speaker 5: the words, you said the oath, But do you actually
Speaker 5: agree with any of the founding principles? Does your politics
Speaker 5: resemble anything that like twenty years ago, Americans would have thought, Ah, yes,
Speaker 5: that's that's something we can recognize as an American viewpoint.
Speaker 6: And I look at Zora Mundani and I think, no,
Speaker 6: not really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, I'm reminded of the story that
Speaker 3: maybe true told about the Battle of Bulge in World
Speaker 3: War Two, when apparently there was a unit of Germans
Speaker 3: dressed in American or British uniforms who could speak English,
Speaker 3: and what was the question you asked them to determine if
Speaker 3: they were authentically not German? And the question wasn't what's
Speaker 3: the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence? It was
Speaker 3: something like who won the World Series last year? Something
Speaker 3: only an American would know, Right, So I said, I
Speaker 3: don't know if that story is true. He gets often
Speaker 3: told let me switch to another sort of issue that's
Speaker 3: almost say troublesome to me. I'm fascinated by it. But
Speaker 3: and you're going to have another debate about it at
Speaker 3: this conference. I see from the agenda, and that's industrial policy.
Speaker 3: And here see, I wasn't three years old when Reagan
Speaker 3: was president. I was voted for the third time in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four when Nash Review and conservatives like me
Speaker 3: all said Walter Mondale's out of his mind calling for
Speaker 3: industrial policy and saying America needs to have destiny over
Speaker 3: making its microchips and computer screens and all the rest.
Speaker 2: Oh, domestic content.
Speaker 3: Legislation for cars and machine tools was a big, a
Speaker 3: big and it was this was socialism, this was central planning,
Speaker 3: we all said. And now suddenly I'm hearing it from
Speaker 3: some national conservatives. I don't categorically say like we did
Speaker 3: in eighty four that this is socialism or central planning,
Speaker 3: but I'm not entirely persuaded.
Speaker 2: By ore and casts.
Speaker 3: And again I haven't made the meetings, but I haven't
Speaker 3: seen a lot of progress and really refining this. How
Speaker 3: do you make it something that we're confident will work?
Speaker 3: And how do you avoid all the pitfalls of red
Speaker 3: seeking and special interests and and simply dead weight mistakes?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it's there's a I think part of
Speaker 5: part of the answer to that is you have to
Speaker 5: be intelligent about how you do it. And part of
Speaker 5: the answer to that is you have to embrace some
Speaker 5: amount of that as the cost of having industrial policy
Speaker 5: and therefore trying to achieve the positive ends that you're
Speaker 5: trying to achieve. You know that there's going to be
Speaker 5: some amount of rent seeking with regard to all this.
Speaker 5: I think it's interesting to you know, I've talked with
Speaker 5: a number of kind of people, intellectual influencers my age
Speaker 5: in the conservative movement. You know, the people who grew
Speaker 5: up went you know, went to high school when Bush
Speaker 5: was president, for example, and you know, we all we
Speaker 5: all had this experience. Many of us went to you know,
Speaker 5: like Conservative Fellowship type things or or you know, put
Speaker 5: things put on by the Coke Foundation, and we're taught
Speaker 5: all the free trade stuff, and and and then I
Speaker 5: remember having this discussion somebody were like, you know, so
Speaker 5: when somebody actually started making arguments about why that wasn't true,
Speaker 5: I realized, like I didn't really listened to the accounter arguments.
Speaker 5: I literally had just heard the arguments, the free trade arguments,
Speaker 5: and I hadn't heard any of the other arguments, and
Speaker 5: I think, you know, Rubio had an interesting speech or
Speaker 5: he was gonna he was just being interviewed at one
Speaker 5: point where he said during his presidential campaign, you know,
Speaker 5: he was parent, he was saying the free trade line,
Speaker 5: and then he visited the rust belt and said to himself,
Speaker 5: you know, there's a there's a real downside here, and
Speaker 5: and we have look back at NAPA and say that this,
Speaker 5: whatever this was, it certainly was not helpful, not good
Speaker 5: for these voters. And these voters are our people, the
Speaker 5: people who vote, you know, people who we want to
Speaker 5: vote Republican. So you know, I think I think there's
Speaker 5: two obvious angles that industrial policy makes sense on. First is,
Speaker 5: obviously there's a huge national security angle, which is that
Speaker 5: there's a you know, having supply chains of important things
Speaker 5: controlled by China is very risky to our national security,
Speaker 5: and so reshoring a huge slew of manufacturing just needs
Speaker 5: to happen. Pharmaceuticals, important, uh, strategically important military assets, rare with.
Speaker 6: Metals, you name it.
Speaker 5: And then the second thing is, yeah, we need to
Speaker 5: we can't be cavalier about the jobs of working at
Speaker 5: the working class Americans who vote Republican. We just can't
Speaker 5: be cavalier about that. Those people demoralize means, and it's
Speaker 5: it's self defeating to not want to make sure those
Speaker 5: people are doing well. And the reason it's self defeating
Speaker 5: is because if they're demoralized, they don't vote.
Speaker 6: In the socialists takeover.
Speaker 5: So, you know, I think that that has to be
Speaker 5: There has to be a real politic element from the
Speaker 5: right about you know, whatever whatever inefficiencies result, there has
Speaker 5: to be a real politic element about if if if
Speaker 5: our voters are not doing well, even if then then
Speaker 5: we're going to be in trouble and the end results
Speaker 5: is going to be bad for everybody.
Speaker 3: One more then I'll turn will turn you back to
Speaker 3: the tender or untender mercies of James and Charles, and
Speaker 3: it be the other hot button or divisive question, which
Speaker 3: is foreign policy. And I see you are going to
Speaker 3: have a whole panel on the United States in the
Speaker 3: Middle Eastern War, and you know, Israel and Gaza and
Speaker 3: what I from the looks of the lineup, that's going
Speaker 3: to be a barn burner. And so we now have,
Speaker 3: as I think, a subset of the net cons the restrainers,
Speaker 3: who I mean Dan McCarthy's a friend of mine and I,
Speaker 3: you know, I have a lot of agreement with a
Speaker 3: lot of what they have to say. But this looks
Speaker 3: like one of the naughtiest problems than that cons because
Speaker 3: I think the disagreements there are serious and deep and
Speaker 3: hard to harmonize.
Speaker 5: I think that's right. I mean, it's it's it's our
Speaker 5: biggest challenge. It's it's really the only panel I think
Speaker 5: where there's explicitly it's almost explicitly set up to have
Speaker 5: a really distinct clash of viewpoints.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: That's not necessarily the case on a lot of other
Speaker 5: panels where the participants in our movement are basically aligned.
Speaker 5: You know, there isn't there isn't some open borders immigration
Speaker 5: advocate debating somebody else on immigration, for example. But on
Speaker 5: the Iran strikes, you know, there were definitely are competing
Speaker 5: factions that would I would think of as both within
Speaker 5: the NAT content, you know, the American conservative restrainer types,
Speaker 5: and then more kind of actually you know, hardcore realists.
Speaker 5: I would say, I don't even think of it as
Speaker 5: neo conservatism. I think it is a straightforward, very pragmatic realism.
Speaker 5: That's you know, says, I mean that, you know, I
Speaker 5: personally find myself on the realist side. I think that
Speaker 5: the basic you know, I joke about trusting the plan, right,
Speaker 5: you know, borrowing all that from qan on. But I think, uh,
Speaker 5: there's something I could actually develop that into an entire
Speaker 5: theory of foreign policy approach, which is defference.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: I elect a guy who I think of as having
Speaker 5: sharing my general perspective, and then when he makes decisions,
Speaker 5: I assume he's making them for the in the right
Speaker 5: way because he has I have enough evidence of him
Speaker 5: viewing the world the way that I do that I
Speaker 5: assume that his decisions are rooted in the intelligence and
Speaker 5: makes sense. And I think those people who did that
Speaker 5: with regard to Trump and Iran, even if they were
Speaker 5: not inclined towards intervention, found themselves vindicated because, of course
Speaker 5: the war. You know, the strikes were very effective and
Speaker 5: the war wrapped up in forty eight hours.
Speaker 2: You know, we to get back to industrial policy versus
Speaker 2: a second now that you're not making interesting points there,
Speaker 2: But here's the deal. We always say nowadays, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we warned you you wouldn't like the rules when they
Speaker 2: were applied to you. It's something we tell the left
Speaker 2: because they change things. They say law fair is great,
Speaker 2: and now you know se on the other foot. The
Speaker 2: she's going to be on the other foot at some point.
Speaker 2: And if we start to become accustomed to and normalize
Speaker 2: a great deal more government and intervention in corporate policies,
Speaker 2: the left is going to take that right up. They're
Speaker 2: not going to do it for a nationalism reason. They're
Speaker 2: not going to do it because of nation that. They're
Speaker 2: going to do it seemly because they want the control
Speaker 2: in order to make the industries do what they want
Speaker 2: them to do, or to use it as a pretext
Speaker 2: for nationalizing them without actually having to do it or
Speaker 2: go through that. Is there a point where you would
Speaker 2: be concerned about the government's intertwining with business? Ten percent
Speaker 2: of Intel's okay, but fifty five you ain't. What's your
Speaker 2: comfort level on the amount of intervention that the the industry?
Speaker 5: There is obviously a level at which I would be uncomfortable.
Speaker 5: We're I don't think we're there really particularly close to
Speaker 5: there is the answer to that specific question in terms
Speaker 5: of the argument about kind of precedent setting. I have
Speaker 5: a general perspective on this sort of argument, which is
Speaker 5: that it is not it is not a productive use
Speaker 5: of time to worry about the precedents who are setting
Speaker 5: for Democrats when you constantly complain about them doing unprecedented
Speaker 5: things all the time, when they have power, they do
Speaker 5: unprecedented things all the time, Which means that the consequence
Speaker 5: of the presidency said you really should think about, is
Speaker 5: this this uniquely a precedent they would not exploit but
Speaker 5: for our having opened the door. And I don't think
Speaker 5: that's true at all with a guard to economic policy.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, we do we criticize Biden for
Speaker 5: being one of the most absurdly you know, corporatist presidents. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't think that was that was not a product
Speaker 5: of Trump suddenly bringing up industrial policy again. That was
Speaker 5: a product of Biden wanting to shovel something like two
Speaker 5: billion out the door at the end of his presidencied
Speaker 5: all sorts of his political allies. So I think that
Speaker 5: that's that's This is a very very strong view that
Speaker 5: I have, at least for the regard to president. I
Speaker 5: always find the arguments about, oh, well, the Democrats might
Speaker 5: exploit this president. I mean, think about all the judicial
Speaker 5: wars the Democrats have always been the first to defect
Speaker 5: on every issue of consequence with regard to the judiciary,
Speaker 5: you know, deciding to revive the legislative filibuster for judicial
Speaker 5: nominees and then revoke it themselves, Like this is how
Speaker 5: Democrats operate. Jerrymandering another great example, right, the Democrats have
Speaker 5: been aggressively jerry mandering. So you name it, you find
Speaker 5: a place where the Democrats have always been the first movers.
Speaker 5: And I think that's that's rooted in the kind of
Speaker 5: basic democratic vibe in their politics, which is we are
Speaker 5: morally righteous, so we don't care about the rules.
Speaker 6: Ultimately, they're just there to be exploited.
Speaker 5: Uh So, I think the Republican approach and response to
Speaker 5: that should be, well, tit for tat. It's one you know,
Speaker 5: obviously we're going to do tit for tat. We're not
Speaker 5: just going to submit and uh too, just the willingness
Speaker 5: to say we're not going to sit here and worry
Speaker 5: about the president. We're just going to say is this
Speaker 5: the right thing to do for us? Like does this
Speaker 5: help our voters? Does this help our does this help
Speaker 5: our politics? If so, then we should do it. And
Speaker 5: you know, and worry about, like what the Democrats are
Speaker 5: going to do when they do it, realizing that it's
Speaker 5: not it's not a consequence of our actions.
Speaker 6: And in this case, well.
Speaker 2: My redline would be the government taking over reply Sat
Speaker 2: Company and forcing them to make Tupper Aware. I mean,
Speaker 2: I missed up Aware. It's a great product, but I
Speaker 2: think the market is spoken.
Speaker 5: To man Donnie deciding to set up state run grocery stories.
Speaker 5: I think that's all we never do. That we talk
Speaker 5: about talk about the silliest idea in the world. You know,
Speaker 5: the guy's like seeing grocery as a high margin industry
Speaker 5: or something they're going to buy and bulk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, amazing new idea, Charles, you had one more before
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 4: What do you think is going to happen when Trump's
Speaker 4: no longer in charge? So you've got three and a
Speaker 4: half years and then he leaves office. Now, just for
Speaker 4: the sake of argument, for an intellectual exercise, I'm sure
Speaker 4: media matters will love this. Assume that he leaves office
Speaker 4: and dies peacefully the same day, so he's not a
Speaker 4: king maker, but he's just gone. What do you think
Speaker 4: happens on the right, Because Trump's obviously extremely powerful, he
Speaker 4: has the ability to move voters. He moves people who
Speaker 4: are devoted to him, but he also moves Median Republicans
Speaker 4: from one position to another seamlessly, and that makes it
Speaker 4: quite difficult to tell where the Republican Party is. Where
Speaker 4: do you think it is? What do you think is
Speaker 4: going to happen? Is it going to be a grand fight?
Speaker 4: Will there be one candidate who's the old school Republican
Speaker 4: and another who's the heir to Trump? What is being
Speaker 4: an heir to Trump? Like? Are you confident? Do you
Speaker 4: think it's a complete open fight? Are we going to
Speaker 4: go when Trump's not in charge of everything?
Speaker 5: I think I think it's as about, you know, giving
Speaker 5: an imagine an open seat in the role of leader
Speaker 5: of the Republican Party and president's nominees open. It's going
Speaker 5: to be about as determined a race as we've ever had.
Speaker 5: It's going to be Vance. I think that it's really straightforward.
Speaker 5: Vance has not just he's not just the sitting vice president,
Speaker 5: a remarkably articulate speaker, very strong popularity ratings, and the
Speaker 5: sort of competitors to Vance, I mean, the most obvious
Speaker 5: one is Rubio. But I think it's just going to
Speaker 5: be as simple as a Vance Rubio ticket in twenty eight.
Speaker 5: I think that's really that. If it were anything but that,
Speaker 5: I would be quite surprised. On the Republican side, I
Speaker 5: don't think there's I think that this strategy of like
Speaker 5: the old school Republican has been tried and it you know,
Speaker 5: NICKI Haley managed to clear out everybody else in the
Speaker 5: lane of the sort of anti Trump or Trump's skeptical Republicans,
Speaker 5: and her prize was nothing. Her prize was thirty percent
Speaker 5: of the Republican primary vote, and that seventy percent was
Speaker 5: going to be all Trump's. I think Vance, even in
Speaker 5: the absence if Trump just disappears and doesn't endorse his
Speaker 5: sitting vice president somehow, I think Vance represents that wing
Speaker 5: of the party. I think that's the future of the party.
Speaker 5: And in a sense, we're in a strong position as
Speaker 5: a result. We're kind of we're kind of set in
Speaker 5: terms of we have not just the leader of the party,
Speaker 5: but also kind of the heir apparents waiting in line
Speaker 5: and the Democrats as and so there's much more message
Speaker 5: uniformity and less infighting. I think you're seeing a lot
Speaker 5: of craziness in the Democratic side as a result of
Speaker 5: somebody trying to stand out, get a little more influence
Speaker 5: in cachet and as a result saying more and more
Speaker 5: radical things that kind.
Speaker 6: Of drag them further and further away from the median voter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Newsom is doing a wonderful job with this. The
Speaker 2: other day in the air he said that Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is just not going to have the election at twenty
Speaker 2: twenty eight. He's going to figure out a way to
Speaker 2: cancel the elections. And you expected Newsome to say after that,
Speaker 2: and that's why I'm running right, Okay, all right, fine? Great?
Speaker 2: So will the conference is going to be live streamed?
Speaker 2: Will people be able to find it online? What's the
Speaker 2: what's the website if they do?
Speaker 5: All right, so National conservatism dot org is the website.
Speaker 5: I don't believe there will be an active live stream,
Speaker 5: but there will be plenty of clips and videos coming out.
Speaker 5: You'll see them on x you'll see them on YouTube elsewhere.
Speaker 5: But we just don't we don't do an immediate live
Speaker 5: stream that you can just live watch it. The way
Speaker 5: to watch it live is to attend, which is in Washington,
Speaker 5: d C. On September second to fourth, that's next week
Speaker 5: starting next Tuesday. There are tickets. It's an awesome conference.
Speaker 5: I mean I've been going every year well before I
Speaker 5: actually became joined the organization running the conference. It's been
Speaker 5: them the best conference on the right from the word
Speaker 5: go in terms of really yeah, well, you know, extremely
Speaker 5: intellectually dynamic.
Speaker 2: Washington, DC. All that violence and carjacking. Oh wait, not anymore.
Speaker 2: I know somebody. If somebody asked me in Minneapolis whether
Speaker 2: or not I would be, well, how would you feel
Speaker 2: about the National Guard in your corner? And I thought
Speaker 2: I would love It would have been great if they've
Speaker 2: been there when I was Guyja karjacked in my driveway,
Speaker 2: and I love to see it when they drop by
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty after the city went up and play.
Speaker 2: So yes, I can see an instance in which they
Speaker 2: are useful. Will Chamberlain, thank you very much and good
Speaker 2: luck with the conference, and we'll have you on again
Speaker 2: to talk about the Article three project and what that
Speaker 2: means for the future of American politics. Good to see you,
Speaker 2: Thanks for dropping back.
Speaker 3: Can I just add before you go, Will, but some
Speaker 3: we haven't met in person, which is regret because I
Speaker 3: want to shook hands with Wilt Chamberlain.
Speaker 2: My hand.
Speaker 3: No, and I want to shake hands with Will Chamberlain
Speaker 3: just to keep my w Chamberlain's.
Speaker 2: In all in one place.
Speaker 6: Wonderful.
Speaker 2: Thanks wells for having me, guys, Bye bye. Of course
Speaker 2: there's Richard Chamberlain, Dick. We don't want to share. So
Speaker 2: Ricochet is many things, and it's you know, it's such
Speaker 2: as politics. If you ever go there, and if you're
Speaker 2: a member and you go to the member of you
Speaker 2: know that we discuss all matter of things, religion and arts.
Speaker 2: We have wonderful threads on television and not just the
Speaker 2: oh I remember that show, but I mean really insightsive
Speaker 2: things from people who know their business. It's great fun.
Speaker 2: But there's also sports, and you're thinking, oh man sports, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's a big part of America football. It is.
Speaker 2: And I'm here with a man with a vastly inferior
Speaker 2: team to my own Vikings Charles, why don't you tell
Speaker 2: us about the fantasy football that's going on right now
Speaker 2: at Ricochet.
Speaker 4: But you know, I'm actually, in a perverse sense routing
Speaker 4: for the Vikings, or at least the Vikings offense, because
Speaker 4: I am a Justin Jefferson fan, and my seven year
Speaker 4: old is playing fantasy football this year. It's his first
Speaker 4: journey has Justin Jefferson, so on his behalf or have
Speaker 4: good Vikings too well. The Ricochet Fantasy Football Extravaganza has returned.
Speaker 4: Last one was twenty twenty four, and this one's shockingly
Speaker 4: is twenty twenty five. You have a few hours still
Speaker 4: to sign up. The draft is tomorrow, and if you
Speaker 4: win your league, and we'll put together as many leagues
Speaker 4: as we need depending on how many people sign up,
Speaker 4: you will not just win the affection and admiration of
Speaker 4: all of us, but fifty dollars. So you have fifty
Speaker 4: dollars and the affection and admiration of all of us.
Speaker 4: If you go to the homepage on Ricochet and you
Speaker 4: look on the right, you'll see a little link looks
Speaker 4: like a football and you can click it. Follow the instructions,
Speaker 4: sign up, be in tomorrow, and then have five long
Speaker 4: months of joy and heartbreak.
Speaker 2: Yes, well join heartbreak those two attributes of a Vikings
Speaker 2: fan that we know quite well. Yeah. Go to rocchet
Speaker 2: check it out and also notice the subtle little changes.
Speaker 2: There have been many subtle little changes, including the time face,
Speaker 2: the headline, time face, and the rest of which all
Speaker 2: part of what Charles does behind the scenes, tinkering and
Speaker 2: adjusting and getting out his code Scalpel and doing his work.
Speaker 2: More to come on Ricochet, of course, but what's there already,
Speaker 2: it's pretty darn great. I had a conversation, of course,
Speaker 2: in the Sight about flag burning executive order. So there
Speaker 2: are two, there are two ideas, and this one. People
Speaker 2: are saying, well, this is absolutely ridiculous. Some of this
Speaker 2: is a matter of free speech. And then there were
Speaker 2: those who said, actually, know this is this is a
Speaker 2: clever little trap by Trump because he's not really changing
Speaker 2: anything at all, and he's just making people go out
Speaker 2: and burn flags to look silly. And an American I
Speaker 2: didn't think it was something we particularly needed. But where
Speaker 2: do you guys stand on it?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, if you actually read the executive order, it's
Speaker 3: fairly narrow and tries to conform with the existing Supreme
Speaker 3: Court President and say and connected to incitement for violence
Speaker 3: or rioting, which may be a reach, I mean that
Speaker 3: may not stand up legally. I do remember Ronald Reagan
Speaker 3: when he was governor again around nineteen seventy. How do
Speaker 3: we get the kids, how do we get the left
Speaker 3: to stop burning the flag, Well, why don't we subject
Speaker 3: him to our antie air pollution regulations. And that'd be
Speaker 3: one thing that Trump could propose to the EPA that
Speaker 3: the liberals would oppose. They're all up in arms about
Speaker 3: Trump and his EPA changes. But I think the real
Speaker 3: trapier James is not that the left is going to
Speaker 3: go out by the way. I think I've seen some
Speaker 3: things online and some leftist groups are calling for some
Speaker 3: flag burning beings this weekend, so that part is working.
Speaker 3: But I mean two thoughts. One is, you know, I
Speaker 3: believe and Charles may disagree with me about this, we'll see.
Speaker 3: I still think those flag burning cases were wrongly decided
Speaker 3: low those many years ago, and I'm not sure the
Speaker 3: current court would not rule differently. Remember those were five
Speaker 3: to four cases. And the reason for this is it's
Speaker 3: a long story. And so I'll just say in one sentence,
Speaker 3: I've always thought our First Amendment jurisprudence went off the
Speaker 3: rails when it said free expression was the same as
Speaker 3: free speech, and that applies to not just flag burning,
Speaker 3: but you know, naked dancing and things of that kind
Speaker 3: of pornography and all the rest of that has gone
Speaker 3: along for such a long time. However, it seems to
Speaker 3: me that the right remedy, and here I bet Charles
Speaker 3: will agree with me, is Republicans should propose a constitutional
Speaker 3: amendment to ban flag burning. And then let's see how
Speaker 3: many Democrats want to vote in favor of permitting flagburning
Speaker 3: to continue by opposing the amendment. That would be fun too.
Speaker 4: All right, I'm going to be this quiesh.
Speaker 2: It's my role today.
Speaker 4: I'm aware that I'm on the wrong side of the
Speaker 4: public on this question. I do think a lot of
Speaker 4: people who think those cases were rightly decided. I'm one
Speaker 4: of those people need to understand that their position is unpopular.
Speaker 4: I don't see any acknowledgement of this in the press,
Speaker 4: and I think that has informed some of the coverage
Speaker 4: of Trump because they don't understand it.
Speaker 2: This is a wage issue.
Speaker 4: But first off, I think those cases were right. I
Speaker 4: agree with you, Stev actually about the expression question. I
Speaker 4: do think this is a tough one as well. When
Speaker 4: the First Amendment was written, of course, it only applied
Speaker 4: to the federal government, so you have to go through
Speaker 4: an enormous amount of law to get to the application
Speaker 4: of the First Amendment to the states, and of course,
Speaker 4: in the original Constitution there is no enumerated power that
Speaker 4: would allow the federal government to prosecute flag burning at all,
Speaker 4: so it wouldn't have come up. So it's quite difficult
Speaker 4: to discern what the original public meaning was in this area.
Speaker 4: But I think given that enormous numbers of Americans during
Speaker 4: the Alien Tedition Acts burned John Jay and effigy, there
Speaker 4: was a tradition of burning even effigies of people to
Speaker 4: protest government policy, even on war, which was where the
Speaker 4: government was strictest in the colonial and post colonial eras,
Speaker 4: so I think the case was just about right. More
Speaker 4: than that, though, this is why I say I'm a squish.
Speaker 4: I loath people have burned the American flag, and I
Speaker 4: would never do it myself. Very proud immigrant, but I
Speaker 4: do think that passing laws that empower the national government
Speaker 4: to prosecute people for burning flags is ultimately a sign
Speaker 4: of under confidence, and an unnecessary one given the way
Speaker 4: in which Americans revere the flag and do so organically
Speaker 4: without legal mandate. We know who the people we hate are.
Speaker 4: They're the people you just mentioned respond to Trump's order
Speaker 4: by going out and burning flags. Those people suck. I
Speaker 4: quite like the fact that they have this way of
Speaker 4: segregating themselves from the rest of us by doing stupid things,
Speaker 4: and I think to try to use the force of
Speaker 4: law to stop them doing it, to me is a
Speaker 4: sign of civilizational under confidence. It's just unnecessary. I don't think,
Speaker 4: as some people have said, that we would lose something
Speaker 4: as a society people couldn't burn flags. I don't think
Speaker 4: that it is valuable speech. It's also not debate. It's
Speaker 4: not a marketplace of ideas question. But I am ultimately
Speaker 4: of the view that America and it's lag can stand
Speaker 4: without government force, and it would be fine if there
Speaker 4: was an amendment that's the right way to do it. It
Speaker 4: will be fine. Off the Court overturned that. It's not
Speaker 4: a core case, but it's just not something that I
Speaker 4: particularly worry about on the amendments. The order itself that
Speaker 4: Trump wrote, it's very odd because on the one hand,
Speaker 4: it seems to completely acknowledge all of the Supreme Court cases.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, it is potentially a problem because
Speaker 4: he implies in it that he's going to start using
Speaker 4: whether one burned a flag as the gateway to look
Speaker 4: into other crimes, and that might have under current jurisprudence
Speaker 4: that might have some issues.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: You can't, for example, say well, we can't prosecute you
Speaker 4: for your political opinions, but we can see what crimes
Speaker 4: you're committing while expressing them. If you only look into
Speaker 4: those people, then you fall a foul of the law.
Speaker 4: So if that is how it's enforced, maybe problematic, But
Speaker 4: I actually think it and do anything. I think Trump
Speaker 4: wants to be seen to be doing this rather than
Speaker 4: actually violating the constitutional mandate.
Speaker 2: I want to pick and choose. I agree with Steven
Speaker 2: that the shift from speech to expression did open up
Speaker 2: a Pandora's box that said, I'm not willing to close
Speaker 2: it because there are things of expressions that our speech.
Speaker 2: And I sided mostly with Charles on this one too.
Speaker 2: I mean to spend all the time and energy on
Speaker 2: a constitutional amendment. I think those should be rare and necessary,
Speaker 2: and I've got a few others i'd like to see
Speaker 2: cuta before that one. But a person burning a flag
Speaker 2: tells you everything about them at that point in time.
Speaker 2: I don't want the government to tell me that I
Speaker 2: cannot burn any emblem of authority, idea, creed, etc. Whatever.
Speaker 2: If I want to be that jerk. Then then I'm
Speaker 2: going to be that jerk, and it's not their role
Speaker 2: to tell me that I can't. And he asked everybody saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can burn in the backyard if you want. I
Speaker 2: get that. I get that, And yes, it is incitement,
Speaker 2: and if maybe perhaps an executive order that says that
Speaker 2: if anybody is incited by the sight of a burning
Speaker 2: flag and therefore stamps the fire out and in the
Speaker 2: process does the same to the person holding it. I mean, sorry,
Speaker 2: he was just in the way as I was stamping
Speaker 2: out the fire. It's it's it's not a it's not
Speaker 2: a big burning issue. Sorry, I didn't mean to say that.
Speaker 2: What is. However, probably this was strike some people as
Speaker 2: proof of my madness, seedlectivity and efeat sensibilities. But I was,
Speaker 2: you know, strugging my shoulders at the burning of the flag.
Speaker 2: But I got really excited about the executive order that
Speaker 2: mandated the Federal Classical style of buildings. This is something
Speaker 2: that trun tried to do in the first administration, and
Speaker 2: I and Biden overturned it. And the thing is, you know,
Speaker 2: having a conversation just the other night about this about
Speaker 2: how architecture sort of broke the social compact with people
Speaker 2: after the war, and we developed these these increasingly inhuman
Speaker 2: scale buildings and styles. It's better now. It's not as
Speaker 2: bad as it was in the seventies when it was really,
Speaker 2: really bad. Somebody had a beautiful Twitter throw it the
Speaker 2: other day where they said, you know, this is my
Speaker 2: one strange architec actual preference. I will die on this hill,
Speaker 2: and that is brutalism with lots of vegetation. And he
Speaker 2: had a point that when you actually drape these things
Speaker 2: in jungles, there's a certain certain power and beauty to it.
Speaker 2: But I prefer that they weren't there at all. The
Speaker 2: best example would seem to me to be the thumb
Speaker 2: that is Obama's library, which looms over this neighborhood like
Speaker 2: some soul sucking machine that's been dropped out by the
Speaker 2: necromancers in orbit. It's a ghastly thing. And I this
Speaker 2: probably would not have been affected by that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: when they're putting something small in a little town, a
Speaker 2: little post office, one of those embassies of the empire,
Speaker 2: and that reaches into the small corner, don't just put
Speaker 2: up a ball, you know, dull brick international style whatever, boy,
Speaker 2: give it some grace, even if the columns aren't true,
Speaker 2: even if they're just pilasters, and it looks like some
Speaker 2: you know, in nineteen thirty stripped down government. F you know,
Speaker 2: a modern style that's better than something that's just been
Speaker 2: snipped and disconnected from human history. So that's I'm okay
Speaker 2: with that. There really am you, guys, James.
Speaker 4: You know what I find really weird. I remember Trump
Speaker 4: doing this in his first term. I did a whole
Speaker 4: podcast with a guy who is obsessed with his topic.
Speaker 2: Justin Schuber. How is that the guy?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think he was on the Ricorchet podcast too, Is
Speaker 4: he probably?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I hope so ye.
Speaker 4: And I'm still baffled by the contention that I hear
Speaker 4: from progressives that classical architecture is fascist but brutalist architecture
Speaker 4: is democratic because classical architecture comes from Greece, and the
Speaker 4: early Republic in the United States based its capital on
Speaker 4: it for a reason, and brutalist architecture has mostly been
Speaker 4: the preserve of the worst regimes in history, and building
Speaker 4: for the masses, not building for the masses, is sometimes necessary.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's inherently fascistic or anything. But it's
Speaker 4: not individualistic to put up concrete blocks. So how can
Speaker 4: they say that that is the complete opposite of the truth.
Speaker 4: Where do they get that idea?
Speaker 3: Well, Charlie, you put your finger on a key point
Speaker 3: that really does not get much public recognition. I was
Speaker 3: also stunned at the reaction of you might say, modernist
Speaker 3: architects to Trump's first term directives to build in the
Speaker 3: federal style.
Speaker 2: And they like to.
Speaker 3: And by the way, Jane, it's not just the seventies architecture,
Speaker 3: but some recent big federal courthouses.
Speaker 2: Which have huge projects are just awful.
Speaker 3: Yes, And I mean I do think that, you know,
Speaker 3: the architecture not just people prefer efficiency or you know,
Speaker 3: they're trying to unleash their interflank brank wade right or something.
Speaker 3: I think that as part of the cultural rot we
Speaker 3: see in the humanities and social sciences and so many
Speaker 3: other places. I never perceived that. But justin Schubacht, maybe
Speaker 3: we should have him back again. He's in the middle
Speaker 3: of all this with the Trump administry. He really opened
Speaker 3: my eyes to the fact that this is not just
Speaker 3: a matter of architectural taste. It's actually a deeper, more
Speaker 3: significant aspect of our culture war right.
Speaker 2: What they're doing is they're severing the public sphere from
Speaker 2: any relationship to something that went before you know, you could.
Speaker 2: The point was made that if you looked at the
Speaker 2: cities of England after the war, you would think that
Speaker 2: they'd been bombed, but no, they've been leveled by actual
Speaker 2: by the council to build something that was anti human.
Speaker 2: The deliberate desire to take people and sever the relationship
Speaker 2: between the forms of the past is seen as a
Speaker 2: way of bringing about this better world, because the old
Speaker 2: world was what do we get from the old world?
Speaker 2: We got World War One, we got destruction, we got devastation.
Speaker 2: They associated with Western culture, which is white, which is
Speaker 2: all of these things that have brought such unending misery
Speaker 2: to the world. So if you are one of those
Speaker 2: people who has, you know, a marble statue in your
Speaker 2: Twitter profile, well, first of all, you're probably a guy
Speaker 2: in India somewhere who's doing a bot farm. But if
Speaker 2: you're one of those people who wants to return to
Speaker 2: certain sets of values, they see this as all right
Speaker 2: wing coded dog whistle hh eight eight Here comes, you know,
Speaker 2: here comes the most horrible form of nationalism, violence and
Speaker 2: ethnic supremacy. You can imagine when no, we just it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful and it's of our and we respond to
Speaker 2: it in ways that go deep. So, yeah, what are
Speaker 2: we doing this show today? Nationalism and old and classical
Speaker 2: architecture ideas that used to be mainstream in the old days,
Speaker 2: but now apparently patrias is way out there. So I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure we're gonna get taken down it by YouTube
Speaker 2: and Twitter before the day is out. But if you
Speaker 2: found yourself listening to this, we thank you for that.
Speaker 2: If you found yourself thinking, hey, bank on yourself, I
Speaker 2: had to check that out. Do so support us by
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Speaker 2: a minute to give us a five star review on
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts if you would, and then send me proof
Speaker 2: of it in the form of a screenshot, and I
Speaker 2: will give you. I got a coffee canyon for pennies
Speaker 2: here that I have to take to the store and
Speaker 2: pull down and poured down the coin stars apout. But
Speaker 2: if you do that, you get all the pennies. I'm
Speaker 2: kidding this opera is not legally binding. I should shut
Speaker 2: up before I get us in more trouble. Charles been
Speaker 2: a pleasure, Stephen as always, and hey everybody, we'll see
Speaker 2: you in the comments. At Rik Aschet, what is it now?
Speaker 2: What is the version?
Speaker 4: I think it's four point fourteen point.
Speaker 2: Two, four point fourteen point two and actually right four
Speaker 2: point fourteen point two b by the time this is up.
Speaker 2: Thank you everybody, See you next week. Bye bye,