Speaker 1: Mister Gorbachoff teared down this wall.
Speaker 2: It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lylax Stephen Hayward this
Speaker 2: year and we're going to talk to Daniel Mahoney about
Speaker 2: the totalitarian impulse and whether or not Donald Trump but uh,
Speaker 2: tone it down or not. So let's everselves a podcast.
Speaker 1: We are part of one civilization, Western civilization. We are
Speaker 1: bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations
Speaker 1: could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry,
Speaker 1: and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common
Speaker 1: civilization to which we have fallen air.
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast. Number get this seven
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy seven. I'm sure that's lucky somewhere. Why
Speaker 2: don't you play it in the lottery today or even
Speaker 2: better investment of your money. Go to ricochet dot com
Speaker 2: Join up, sign up part of the most stimulating conversations
Speaker 2: and community on the web. I'm James Lylax in Minnesota,
Speaker 2: where it was wonderful and warm, and the sun came
Speaker 2: out and all the snow melted, and then six inches fell,
Speaker 2: which taxed the ability of my little Toro to get
Speaker 2: it my back, my back, But that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 2: Somebody who was not here but is there is Stephen Yward. Stephen,
Speaker 2: how you doing.
Speaker 3: I'm good, James. How are you snow blowing challenges?
Speaker 2: That's a fraud question these days, But you know, here
Speaker 2: we are. Minnesota seems to have calmed down a little bit.
Speaker 2: I have no idea if I is working at the
Speaker 2: same level it did before, but the whistle blowing and
Speaker 2: the protests and all the rest of it seems to
Speaker 2: have subsided, so that perhaps and then you know, National
Speaker 2: Nightmarre has moved elsewhere. But that doesn't mean that the
Speaker 2: world isn't full of things to discuss. And no, I
Speaker 2: don't mean to imply that if Minneapolis is having troubles,
Speaker 2: it's something that everybody has to constantly think about. I'm
Speaker 2: tired of it myself. Tariffs by yeah, well go completely sorry,
Speaker 2: go ahead, No, bring us up to speed on this.
Speaker 2: This is a new development. I'm sure everybody is keen
Speaker 2: to know what you think and what is next then
Speaker 2: exactly what was said, what was struck down?
Speaker 3: Right? So what the court ruling released this morning and
Speaker 3: it's one hundred and seventy pages long, and I've barely
Speaker 3: gotten through about two pages that I'm I'm trying to
Speaker 3: grab the main threads because there's all these partial concurrences
Speaker 3: and then the scent. So it's six 's three vote,
Speaker 3: I should say that, and the three dissenters were not
Speaker 3: the three Liberals. It's Thomas, Alito and Cavanaugh. Something of
Speaker 3: a surprise. I would have thought Kavanaugh would have been
Speaker 3: in the majority on this second. I'm sorry Charlie's not
Speaker 3: here because he's already tweeted out that the decision was
Speaker 3: absolutely correct and it should have been nine zero. And
Speaker 3: I understand his argument, and I think I sympathize with it.
Speaker 3: But what it said was is that Trump does not
Speaker 3: have unlimited scope to impose tariffs under a particular statute,
Speaker 3: the What International Emergencies Economic Emergencies Act something like that.
Speaker 3: I don't have it in front of me, But that
Speaker 3: does not strike down all tariff power. He still has
Speaker 3: Section three h one and retaliatory tariffs, and that goes
Speaker 3: back decades. And I mean, I looked this up once.
Speaker 3: You know, Ronald Reagan free Trader threatened Spain in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six with two hundred percent tariffs on everything, because
Speaker 3: Spain had a bunch of really bogus trade barriers against
Speaker 3: American agricultural imports, and Spain folded and lifted all those
Speaker 3: within forty eight hours. So that power. But that's always
Speaker 3: retaliatory power, or against clearly determined unfair trade practices by
Speaker 3: our trading partners. Trump wanted sure stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, doesn't it go without saying that was the
Speaker 2: motivation that Trump was choosing that it was that they
Speaker 2: had unfair barriers to us, and therefore we're going to
Speaker 2: do it to them. I don't buy the emergency thing.
Speaker 2: The emergency thing is like one of those little weasel
Speaker 2: words they use in government to just addy absolutely everything,
Speaker 2: like interstar commerce, right. But retaliatory yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 2: somebody's got a big tariff wall against our products and
Speaker 2: we do the same, why is that not within the
Speaker 2: scope of the powers?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's because Trump didn't invoke Section three oh
Speaker 3: one or it's a tool. I forget the numbers because
Speaker 3: I'm not a trade expert. But instead he invoked a
Speaker 3: statute from the seventies and it had, you know, as
Speaker 3: the words in it about the power to regulate foreign
Speaker 3: commerce under emergency circumstances, which is up to the President
Speaker 3: to determine, but regulate is not the same as tax,
Speaker 3: is what the Court is saying in the majority opinion.
Speaker 3: So okay, he can probably still impose some of these
Speaker 3: tariffs under other legal authorities the President retains that have
Speaker 3: not were not challenged or not before the court. Whether
Speaker 3: he can do things like, for example, the threatening the
Speaker 3: big tariffs on Indian and other countries to stop them
Speaker 3: from trading in Russian oil. They may have just wiped
Speaker 3: out that power, and gosh, that's something an awful lot
Speaker 3: of pro Ukrainian people are. People are critical of Trump
Speaker 3: kind of like right now. So this is an odd circumstance.
Speaker 3: There is an interesting, curious subtext to the case that
Speaker 3: I picked up on so far, which is that the
Speaker 3: case relies in part on statutory construction. That the statute
Speaker 3: simply doesn't grant that brought a power to impose tariffs
Speaker 3: as a remedy for controlling foreign trade. But the major
Speaker 3: questions doctrine. That's what Chief Justice Roberts brought up, which is, look,
Speaker 3: whatever the ambiguities may be, and I'm paraphrasing very widely here,
Speaker 3: Congress needs to be clear about it and specific under
Speaker 3: the new doctrine the Court embraced two three years ago,
Speaker 3: the major questions doctrine. Well, guess what the three liberals
Speaker 3: on the Court who sided the Roberts. They filed separate
Speaker 3: concurrences saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't want to Essentially,
Speaker 3: what they're saying is, we don't want to use that
Speaker 3: major questions doctrine because that is a major impediment to
Speaker 3: the administrative state ruled by bureaucrats that the left depends
Speaker 3: upon these days. So I think it also means not
Speaker 3: to go on too long about this. I think it
Speaker 3: also means that the the big move we talked about
Speaker 3: last week, repealing the endangerment finding for the EPA to
Speaker 3: regulate climate I think it means that that is, the
Speaker 3: Trump's moves are likely to be held up under the
Speaker 3: same doctrine of a major questions doctrine, And so in
Speaker 3: a collateral way, this decision is bad news for the
Speaker 3: environmentalists and the climate cult.
Speaker 2: Is there a minor questions doctrine? Imagine when it comes
Speaker 2: to when it comes to government and emergencies, Imagine everything
Speaker 2: is a major coe. So it the s and P.
Speaker 2: Five hundred of course leaped up after this, and everybody says, well, great, okay,
Speaker 2: this is back to the old order. But the old order,
Speaker 2: we're told, the globalist order of free trade and the
Speaker 2: rest of it has fallen under. Let's see a cloud,
Speaker 2: a dark cloud in the last year two years or so,
Speaker 2: as everybody looks around us says, wait a minute. What
Speaker 2: we were supposed to get to was a frictionless world,
Speaker 2: the end of history, everything being flat, everything being interesting.
Speaker 2: We get cheap, cheap stuff, there are standard of living
Speaker 2: goes up. A lot of people looked at that bargain
Speaker 2: and said, wait a minute, No, this didn't readown to
Speaker 2: our benefit. What we got was the hollowing out of
Speaker 2: American industry. We got barriers to immigration, drops so that
Speaker 2: society becomes diluted, et cetera, et cetera, all of the
Speaker 2: things about globalism that people don't like. Does this mean
Speaker 2: globalism is back on the menu, boys, as they would say,
Speaker 2: as the orcs might say, or have we moved beyond
Speaker 2: that to a case by case basis where we're still
Speaker 2: going to be protecting American industries and attempting to re
Speaker 2: shure as much as possible, because that's what interests me
Speaker 2: about this whole thing. I didn't like. I don't like tariffs.
Speaker 2: And part of the reason I don't like tariffs is
Speaker 2: because I was awake in junior high and learned that
Speaker 2: Smoot Hawley killed everything. I mean, we all have our narratives, right,
Speaker 2: Smooth Holly came along, tariffs went up. Things were bad,
Speaker 2: stock market was too frothy. Everyone was buying things on
Speaker 2: the margin, and then it crashed and the bankers jumped
Speaker 2: out of the window or sold apples on the corner
Speaker 2: or both. You know, if they had a stock pointing.
Speaker 2: That's what I So I've always had in the back
Speaker 2: of my head an aversion to tariffs, even though you
Speaker 2: know they paved the way for the budgets for decades.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's it's interesting to watch that movie about
Speaker 2: the assassination of Garfield and realize, you know, how much
Speaker 2: power the guys who ran the ports and did the
Speaker 2: tariffs had. I mean, there's an extraordinary money maker for
Speaker 2: them in the times. But anyway, so I don't like them.
Speaker 2: But the part that didn't bother me necessarily was the
Speaker 2: part that said we are going to look at critical
Speaker 2: supply chains. We're going to provide incentives for country, for
Speaker 2: companies to come back to the US and build I
Speaker 2: like that. Everyone says you're dreaming if you think they're
Speaker 2: going to make whirlpool washing machines in Columbus, Ohio anymore.
Speaker 2: Part of me says, but then let me dream, because
Speaker 2: they're while I pine sort of for aspects of the
Speaker 2: past that we may romanticize a little bit. There is
Speaker 2: something to be said for having a solid, productive industrial base.
Speaker 2: And then people quote the numbers that you actually with
Speaker 2: this are the industry we have Now everything's fire. We
Speaker 2: all know in our heart of arts that we'd be
Speaker 2: happy if iPhones were made here, if washing machines and
Speaker 2: microwaves were made here, if all the drugs were made here,
Speaker 2: if we didn't have to rely on China for everything.
Speaker 2: So that's my incoherent, romantic and unsubstantiated beef against Tariff's
Speaker 2: promo con which is why I'm not on the is
Speaker 2: why I'm not in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I mean, the big problem with trade going
Speaker 3: back decades is not so much to other countries have
Speaker 3: tariffs against this, straightforward tariffs of ten percent or something.
Speaker 3: It's that they employ a lot of non tariff trade barriers.
Speaker 3: They're called in other words, yes you can send American
Speaker 3: cars to Japan, but then they let out a bunch
Speaker 3: of conditions which make it expensive or impossible to do so.
Speaker 3: But because they're not formally a tariff, you could ensue
Speaker 3: at the International Trade Court or whatever it's called world
Speaker 3: the WTO it's called now okay. So as insofar as
Speaker 3: Trump wanted to use this whole exercise as a way
Speaker 3: to blast a part remaining trade barriers and also secure
Speaker 3: supply chains, like you'd say, I was all for it
Speaker 3: and willing to go along with it. And by the way,
Speaker 3: if we ever do make washing machines here in the
Speaker 3: country again, and I think we might, it will be
Speaker 3: made by human beings, will be made by robots. And
Speaker 3: that process is already very far along, right.
Speaker 2: I know, I know that's that's the part that you
Speaker 2: realize that it would not be guys toiling away with
Speaker 2: a lunch bucket who would go home when the whistle
Speaker 2: blew that it would be made. Then we think, well,
Speaker 2: it's going to be made by robots. So we're going
Speaker 2: to need lots of programmers to design and build those things,
Speaker 2: and now out of the point where, well, actually we
Speaker 2: don't because AI can design and program those things. And
Speaker 2: you know, essentially what used to be one big, huge
Speaker 2: factory in the end of town with a smoke belching
Speaker 2: out of the stack and grimy men leaving at the
Speaker 2: end of the day to get into their DeSotos and
Speaker 2: go home to their small little house. The American dream
Speaker 2: actually turns out to be one guy in Miami who's
Speaker 2: sitting there filling a winner's laptop. So and what everybody
Speaker 2: else does for what everybody else does for a living,
Speaker 2: I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, there's one last loose end about the case
Speaker 3: today that I'm sure some listeners will wonder about. Is
Speaker 3: what about the one hundred and fifty billion whatever the
Speaker 3: number is in tariff revenues the Trump is collected from
Speaker 3: which he was promising two thousand dollars checks to all
Speaker 3: of us. Do those have to be refunded? That question
Speaker 3: was not before the court today, and so they said
Speaker 3: nothing about that. And I think there may be some
Speaker 3: lawsuits filed saying from companies or somebody saying, hey, we
Speaker 3: was one of the costs of these terraffs. Now you
Speaker 3: owe the money back. Which will further further make our
Speaker 3: whole fiscal situation so much brighter, won't it?
Speaker 2: Oh so much so? All right, let's turn our eyes
Speaker 2: elsewhere across the pond to Europe. Europe is in a
Speaker 2: parlous situation.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: Caught in a world in which its influence is shrinking.
Speaker 2: It has overestimated its soft power, It has made suicidal
Speaker 2: bargains when it comes to its energy policy, in its
Speaker 2: demographic makeup Western Europe, and it is becoming essentially sort
Speaker 2: of a theme park with nice old buildings and in
Speaker 2: half a little tight town, compacted town squares with winding,
Speaker 2: twisting little streets where you can get a good pay.
Speaker 2: Marco Rubio went there and laid down some markers and
Speaker 2: some truths. People are seeing it as a book. ND
Speaker 2: to the last year's fans speech packed the conference, the
Speaker 2: Munich Security Conference. You know, whenever you hear about Munich conferences,
Speaker 2: I tend to shift in my seat a little bit, right.
Speaker 2: But you know, he opened it talking with the origins
Speaker 2: about how the continent had been riven by the Cold War.
Speaker 2: And I remember those days as you do too. Barbed
Speaker 2: wire laid down in Berlin and the guard posts went
Speaker 2: up a nuclear proliferation Soviet Union on the March, And
Speaker 2: I mean you probably, like me, Steve grew up seeing
Speaker 2: the Eastern Bloc as just a fact of history that
Speaker 2: wasn't going to be dissolved anytime soon. It just it
Speaker 2: seemed it seemed set in concrete. But of course Soviet
Speaker 2: concrete was pretty cheap, and after a while it falls
Speaker 2: away and crumbles. Rubio said, united not just by what
Speaker 2: we were fighting against. We were united by what we
Speaker 2: were fighting for. And that's true. Underneath that, however, of course,
Speaker 2: was an anti American strain that was built both perhaps
Speaker 2: a little bit of resentment, but mostly by resurgent leftism,
Speaker 2: which regarded the United States as colonial and awful and
Speaker 2: you know, unfit to lead the world into its brave,
Speaker 2: new collective future. People are praising this speech as a
Speaker 2: re establishment of a commitment to a certain kind of
Speaker 2: way of looking at the world. Is it passe? Is
Speaker 2: it just simply return with a V and avatars on X,
Speaker 2: with the classical statuary and bygun nostalgia for a world
Speaker 2: that is simply no longer able to be put back together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I liked how you put up that it was
Speaker 3: a bookend from JD. Vance's very tough speech last year.
Speaker 3: I think you could call it good cop bad cop,
Speaker 3: because the substance of Rubio's speech tracked very closely with
Speaker 3: what Vance said, but the difference was in the rhetorical
Speaker 3: style of it. It was more reagan Esque. In fact,
Speaker 3: it reminded me a lot of Reagan's famous to me.
Speaker 3: You may remember too, his speech that he gave in
Speaker 3: London in nineteen eighty two about the meaning of the
Speaker 3: Cold War and why not only are our ideas better,
Speaker 3: but Marxism is a failure and we're going to transcend
Speaker 3: them and they're going to end up on the ash
Speaker 3: heap of history, heap of history, right. You know, Oh,
Speaker 3: it was a wonderful larcenary of old Marxist rhetoric. And
Speaker 3: I do remember the New York Times saying, oh, this
Speaker 3: is Cold War rhetoric from the fifties. Isn't this terrible?
Speaker 3: And that was you know, a year later it comes
Speaker 3: back with the Evil Empire speech. Right, that was sort
Speaker 3: of the JD events at Reagan. But look, the content was,
Speaker 3: I say, tracked pretty well but well received, partly because
Speaker 3: Rubio's stock is rising. Second, I do think I got
Speaker 3: standing ovation, they say, I did notice, like Reagan's speech
Speaker 3: in eighty two that the sainted Alexandria Ocasio Cortez complained
Speaker 3: that he was talking about Western civilization, and how terrible
Speaker 3: that is.
Speaker 2: I mean, he promoted those Let me read the quote,
Speaker 2: which our producer has kindly provided for me. It says,
Speaker 2: here we are part of one civilization, Western civilization. We
Speaker 2: are abou to one another by the deepest bonds that
Speaker 2: nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry,
Speaker 2: and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common
Speaker 2: civilization to which we have fallen. Heir. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: but a lot of people get angry about that. And oh,
Speaker 2: on the on the mind Cortes, I love the fact
Speaker 2: the last name is literally a Spaniard who came over
Speaker 2: and wiped out an indigenous empire. But I mean people
Speaker 2: have been nitpicking this apart and saying this is absolutely preposterous.
Speaker 2: Somebody living in Lithuania has has nothing to do whatsoever
Speaker 2: really with somebody living in Portugal, somebody in the Hebrides.
Speaker 2: What have they got to do with somebody living in Greece?
Speaker 2: And to me, it's a petty, even meritricious way of
Speaker 2: looking at it, because obviously there is something called Western sieve,
Speaker 2: and it's you know, the only time the left seems
Speaker 2: to acknowledge it is when it's sandwiched between the phrases
Speaker 2: haho and has to.
Speaker 3: Go yeah yeah. Well, I mean, I think that that's
Speaker 3: not even the subtext of the speech. But I think
Speaker 3: what's really going on here is Europe has lost confidence
Speaker 3: in itself and its heritage when they're not in fact
Speaker 3: hostile to it, right. And I think that's what's different
Speaker 3: from say forty to fifty years ago, when we were
Speaker 3: often frustrated with our European allies for being weak, for
Speaker 3: being two appeasement minded to the Soviet Union. But now
Speaker 3: it's worse. And I'll just give you one instance right
Speaker 3: now that's not getting a lot of attention in the
Speaker 3: American press. Is so, you know, when Reagan decided to
Speaker 3: bomb Libya nineteen eighty six, after they had bombed the
Speaker 3: disco in Berlin, our bombers took off. You may remember this, James,
Speaker 3: from an airfield that we run in Britain which we
Speaker 3: still have the base rights there, that had to fly
Speaker 3: around the straight of Zibalder because France said no, okay,
Speaker 3: leave that aside for the moment. But right now the
Speaker 3: British are denying us permission to use that base and
Speaker 3: also the Diego Garcia base and the Indian Ocean for
Speaker 3: any operations against Iran. At least that's what's being reported
Speaker 3: right now. And you know, this is an outrage, right,
Speaker 3: this is an exact and because look, the attitude of
Speaker 3: Europe toward Iran, especially England has been in full appeasement
Speaker 3: mode really since nineteen eighty, right, so this is very frustrating.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure, well Rubio is, you know, a kinder
Speaker 3: and gentler version of Vans in his speech. I hope
Speaker 3: and expect that behind the scenes he was giving him
Speaker 3: the business about this.
Speaker 2: I hope so too. There's nothing I read out of
Speaker 2: England and their politics that makes it well, actually, there's
Speaker 2: quite a bit, because you have a group now, a
Speaker 2: new party, which is at full throated expressing what a
Speaker 2: lot of people have said needs to be done for
Speaker 2: Britain and whether it makes you know, it makes reform
Speaker 2: look like look frankly wet. But we can get to
Speaker 2: that in a minute right now, we're going to talk
Speaker 2: to Daniel Mahoney. Daniel J. Mahoney, Professor Emeritus at Assumption University,
Speaker 2: where he tried from eighty six until twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: Senior Fellow with the Claremont Institute, Senior writer at Law
Speaker 2: and Liberty, and Executive editor of Perspectives on Political Science.
Speaker 2: Is twenty twenty two book The Statesman as Thinker Portraits
Speaker 2: of Greatness, Courage and Moderation received the Award for Conservative
Speaker 2: Book of the Year by ISI in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: In his latest book is The Persistence of the Ideological Lie,
Speaker 2: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and now fascinating topics. Let's get
Speaker 2: right to it, Daniel, welcome my pleasure. Well, so earlier
Speaker 2: this week you were a piece called discipline at a
Speaker 2: moment of power. And it's a critique, a measured critique
Speaker 2: of the administration from a and let's use your description.
Speaker 2: I believe a friend but not a flatterer of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: All right, so let's just get right to it. Why
Speaker 2: does Trump have a duty to outgrow the worst of
Speaker 2: his excesses. Everyone always says, oh, it's the mean tweets,
Speaker 2: but it's it's it's more than that.
Speaker 4: Look, whenever you proper this kind of advice toward Trump
Speaker 4: or the administration, a thousand voice rise in unison and say,
Speaker 4: but he won't change, it'll do no good. Look, we're
Speaker 4: obliged to point out these things, partly because some of
Speaker 4: this behavior affects self presentation are very self defeating, and
Speaker 4: partly for intellectual and moral hygiene. You can support this administration.
Speaker 4: It's brought goals many of the specifics of what it's done.
Speaker 4: You could acknowledge that Donald Trump has been the only
Speaker 4: person in the political class in recent years who's willing
Speaker 4: to face up to the crisis the country is facing,
Speaker 4: the sort of active subversion of our constitutional order, the
Speaker 4: moral foundations, and democracy. But you can also acknowledge that
Speaker 4: his modus operendi is a sometimes a self defeating mixed bag.
Speaker 4: And you know, I think the president really never learned
Speaker 4: that there's a veryubstantial difference between campaigning and governing. When
Speaker 4: you govern, I mean, even maga partisans want you to
Speaker 4: sometimes be presidential. And as I said at my piece,
Speaker 4: we owe in the language and the Declaration of Independence
Speaker 4: a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.
Speaker 2: Before we go further some examples. Do you think of
Speaker 2: the self defeating behavior? Just we got some stuff on
Speaker 2: the table.
Speaker 4: Well, look, I said, probably the most extreme and dramatic
Speaker 4: example I gave, and I gave it because dozens of
Speaker 4: people I knew who were generally supportive of this administration
Speaker 4: were very much taken back by it. The remarks about
Speaker 4: Rob Reiner and his wife when the son was killed,
Speaker 4: but the son killed them, and Trump's reaction was just unacceptable.
Speaker 4: It was narcissistic, it was brazen, it was petty, and
Speaker 4: the high minded thing to do would have also been
Speaker 4: the self interested thing to do. Just be magnanimous. We
Speaker 4: didn't agree on anything, but this is a human tragedy,
Speaker 4: absolutely lamentable, et cetera. And that small mindedness hurts, and
Speaker 4: there's no there's no use in pretending it doesn't. And
Speaker 4: I happen to be in Europe during the whole Greenland thing,
Speaker 4: and I saw something very ominous. I saw conservative and
Speaker 4: conservative populist thinkers very very were well disposed to trumpet
Speaker 4: it defended him, really react extremely negatively to what they
Speaker 4: perceived is bullying. And and you know when Stephen Miller says, look,
Speaker 4: how did the Dans get Greenland. Well, you know, three
Speaker 4: boats went there and all that. Well, does anyone get
Speaker 4: anywhere you got there by boats?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Evan Burke says, never looked too close below the initial,
Speaker 4: you know. And the fact is, you know, they sounded
Speaker 4: like settler colonialists, the Danes. So there are many Europeans
Speaker 4: who won uh one take some pleasure in uh in
Speaker 4: ticking off. But the Danes were reasonably friendly government, you know.
Speaker 4: And you could have handled this in a far less
Speaker 4: blastic way. I can give other examples, but by the way,
Speaker 4: this is a pro trum piece. I'm I am trying
Speaker 4: to say to the President the people around him, if
Speaker 4: you want to succeed, and we want you to succeed,
Speaker 4: you you can't double down on the things that undermine
Speaker 4: the larger course.
Speaker 3: Well, Dan, by the way, great to see you. Listeners
Speaker 3: should know that you and I have known each other
Speaker 3: for a long time. I hate to say along.
Speaker 4: Spid went back to nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think that's right. We were both interns in Washington.
Speaker 3: It was those glorious days, right I did. I'm not
Speaker 3: chose with you, but I I did get thrown out
Speaker 3: of the Hawk and dove once on Pennsylvania Avenue. There
Speaker 3: are you and I used to go there some for
Speaker 3: happy es.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I got through thrown out there once along with
Speaker 3: Martin Morris Moooster if you remember him, because we were
Speaker 3: eating too many of the free chicken wings.
Speaker 4: I remember Mark Morris was he was a watch at
Speaker 4: a conservative statement. Oh that's right, yes, centric intellectual.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. Yes. Well, anyway, back to the main
Speaker 3: point is you know you, you and I have talked
Speaker 3: a great length about you know, Churchill and de gaul
Speaker 3: and you know, gall could be a nasty piece of work. Also,
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe arguably lacks some magnanimity. But here's the
Speaker 3: point question I'm coming to. Maybe this is too broad,
Speaker 3: but I think that in the fullness of time, but
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, ten, twenty thirty years from now
Speaker 3: or longer, we're going to look back on Trump for
Speaker 3: some reasons. You already articulated in others as one of
Speaker 3: the most consequential and necessary presidents in our history. That's
Speaker 3: sort of my pre casting, but I think it's going
Speaker 3: to be in the future. But he does lack that magnanimity,
Speaker 3: except he does surprise sometimes, and so yeah, I was
Speaker 3: right with you. I thought the mistake about the Rob
Speaker 3: Reder tweet was most America is not on social media.
Speaker 3: We think everybody is, but they're not. And so most
Speaker 3: people didn't know about Reiner's, you know, derangement about Trump.
Speaker 3: And so this is called attention to the fact that
Speaker 3: Trump is a thin skin and and most Americans knew
Speaker 3: Rob Reiner is this beloved filmmaker. Right, So what a
Speaker 3: blunder because it could only hurt Trump. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: here two days ago, I wonder if he did this
Speaker 3: on purpose. He sends out a very effusive, true social
Speaker 3: post on Jesse Jackson. Right now, if there's anybody who
Speaker 3: has it, there's a dossier of I mean, we don't
Speaker 3: speak ill of the dead, except Trump usually does that
Speaker 3: very effusive posts about someone about whose dossier of bad
Speaker 3: deeds and effects in American politics is quite long and
Speaker 3: quite serious. Right. And did he do that just to
Speaker 3: mess with liberals heads? I don't know, but he can't
Speaker 3: do it once in a while.
Speaker 4: So Trump is quite capable of being humorous and self
Speaker 4: deprecating and generous, and he has an act for making
Speaker 4: up with people he called terrible things. Think of Secretary
Speaker 4: of State Rubio no and I think a problem that
Speaker 4: the the officer class, you know, the guardians of democracy
Speaker 4: as it's been redefined. The mistake they make is they
Speaker 4: take everything Trump says literally. Half the time Trump is
Speaker 4: kidding around, or exaggerating, or or or pushing buttons. And
Speaker 4: I recognize all that, but but I do think one
Speaker 4: point I am at one point I emphasize on my piece,
Speaker 4: and I think this is no mean political consideration, is
Speaker 4: that President Trump is exhausted.
Speaker 3: And yes, I.
Speaker 4: Have talked to untold number of people who voted for
Speaker 4: him two or three times who say this president to
Speaker 4: see is exhausted. He's people need a bit of a break.
Speaker 4: And but I do think acting presidential doesn't mean that
Speaker 4: Trump shouldn't be Trump. It doesn't mean he shouldn't take
Speaker 4: on the the woke, censorious, neototalitarian left. It doesn't mean
Speaker 4: there's a way of doing all of that and yet
Speaker 4: just avoiding those those self inflicted wounds that give powerful
Speaker 4: ammunition to his to the despising right.
Speaker 3: I've been saying the same thing about Trump is that
Speaker 3: actually George Will was saying this in the first term.
Speaker 3: Of course, George has really got a full blown case
Speaker 3: of TDS. Unfortunately, I think. But you know you're also.
Speaker 4: One from being a Burkie into a hyperlibertarian. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 4: that's a good life crisis.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know. That does an interesting change, right. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll leave that for some other day. Where's that going?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so you may remember this. Trump took a
Speaker 3: weekend off here sometime last year, and again social media,
Speaker 3: what nuts, where's Trump? It's been thirty six hours since
Speaker 3: we've heard from it. Has he had a stroke because
Speaker 3: he thought was he died? And Trump had a lot
Speaker 3: of fun with that the next day. But that's just
Speaker 3: his nature is to do, you know, fifty things before lunch.
Speaker 4: Look, I think a lot of people on our side
Speaker 4: have forgotten a fundamental truth about politics. And Monesque talked
Speaker 4: about this in seventeen forty eight and the spirit of
Speaker 4: the laws. When you win, immediately those people who with
Speaker 4: your party, who voted for you, a certain number of
Speaker 4: them are immediately going over to the other side because
Speaker 4: everything you say and do creates a certain amount of discontent,
Speaker 4: and that means public opinionshifts, and there's the waivers. The
Speaker 4: most people are used to be partisans, but a small
Speaker 4: number go over to the other side, and the other
Speaker 4: side wins elections. So it means even as you're taking
Speaker 4: on as both premp has done impressively, you take on
Speaker 4: this censorious left, you take on the deep state, but
Speaker 4: you also have to keep in mind those ten or
Speaker 4: fifteen percent of the voters who they may be annoying,
Speaker 4: they may be uninformed, they may underestimate the crazy, you know,
Speaker 4: the nasty character of the other side, but you have
Speaker 4: to persuade them in some way. And persuasion isn't just
Speaker 4: through a series of rational arguments. It's just not giving
Speaker 4: them reasons to go over the other side. So you know,
Speaker 4: in politics, it's always that judicious balance between doing what
Speaker 4: you were elected to do and not offending, needlessly offending
Speaker 4: people so that you give of. In this case, we're
Speaker 4: in a dark plays in our politics because we really
Speaker 4: can't afford for the other side to win if we
Speaker 4: keep the public, and that means there's a special responsibility
Speaker 4: not to be in permanent campaign mode, but to persuade
Speaker 4: that fickle part of the country. These these no one
Speaker 4: annoys me more than independent voters who.
Speaker 3: Oh, oh, I'll go off on rants about how you
Speaker 3: usually have the last presidential debate every four years is
Speaker 3: with undecided voters in a town hall format, and it's
Speaker 3: always a room full of morons, right, who could be
Speaker 3: undecided three weeks out from a national election? And they
Speaker 3: asked the dumbskie? Okay, we know that story.
Speaker 4: George Will wrote a column and he said, do we
Speaker 4: really want the fate of the Western world to those
Speaker 4: who are listening to music in their car and driving
Speaker 4: on November fifth and still deciding who they're going to
Speaker 4: vote for? But it's just a fact of life, and
Speaker 4: and yeah, and also with the foreign policy stuff, a
Speaker 4: decent respect for opinions of mankind. I was very worried
Speaker 4: when I started seeing serious publicists, editorialists, others in Europe
Speaker 4: who are pro national minded, very much opposed to the
Speaker 4: despotism of the extreme center, as some of my European
Speaker 4: friends call it, who were really appolled saying Trump, you know,
Speaker 4: does Trump really care about us? We got to recognize, well,
Speaker 4: it's perfectly legitimate and necessary and welcome to be American patriots.
Speaker 4: We need to encourage other national minded and patriotic people
Speaker 4: and a big coalition, a kind of conservative international where
Speaker 4: we say we're in this together against globalism. The erosion
Speaker 4: of national sovereignty, the replacement of you know, sound morals
Speaker 4: and common sense consensus with woke nonsense. And when they
Speaker 4: these people start saying, you know, Trump's Trump just doesn't
Speaker 4: like us, you know, he doesn't distinguish between you know,
Speaker 4: good and bad Europeans, it's worrisome. And that's where I
Speaker 4: think that Rubio's talk in Munich was perfect because he
Speaker 4: didn't say anything wholly different from Vance, but he didn't
Speaker 4: he didn't exude contempt.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, when you say the opinion of mankind though, that's
Speaker 2: one of those phrases, I'm not sure what you mean
Speaker 2: by that. I mean, to me, it would seem to
Speaker 2: be Europe and Canada perhaps, and some friendly nations in
Speaker 2: Japan perhaps, you know, in Australia if they want to come.
Speaker 2: But the opinion of mankind is self interested, and they're
Speaker 2: self interest of course, is going to look at us
Speaker 2: and say, you know, what do we get out of
Speaker 2: this place?
Speaker 4: Well, you left out a word I decent respect for
Speaker 4: the ads in mankind, which means all that mean is
Speaker 4: the factors didn't just for the out of seventy seventy six,
Speaker 4: didn't just or seventeen seventy five. Didn't just revolt against
Speaker 4: the Brits. They gave reasons to the world, candid facts,
Speaker 4: you know, they laid out the reasons for it in
Speaker 4: a very and very civil, pugnacious but civil terms.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I think that means he make a case, make a case.
Speaker 4: It doesn't mean we should defer to what the editorialists
Speaker 4: and Laguardian or Lamone said.
Speaker 2: God forbid, I know I'm in agreement with so much
Speaker 2: of what you're saying. I just want to come back
Speaker 2: to the change and whether or not if it happens,
Speaker 2: what effect it would have. Is anybody persuadable at this point?
Speaker 2: Now doesn't Europe as it ever matter. But it was
Speaker 2: talking about the undecided, the people who hate I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't think that anybody would have who hates Trump
Speaker 2: would have hated him any less if he kept his
Speaker 2: yap shot during the during the winer tragedy is it.
Speaker 2: Can the needle be moved at this point?
Speaker 4: It has to be moved or we'll lose big. In
Speaker 4: twenty six and twenty eight, Chris Caldewell had a column
Speaker 4: and The Spectator World the Less Issues, saying Trump's losing
Speaker 4: supports from his supporters. You know, some people in his
Speaker 4: coalition are turned off. And you know, I think Minneapolis,
Speaker 4: of course, the press covered over the an teeth of
Speaker 4: militants and the nonsense and turned these two rabbl rousers
Speaker 4: into martyrs and and but you know, the Tom Holman
Speaker 4: approach of making distinctions. And you know, I think Trump listened,
Speaker 4: and I think we have an approach here that doesn't
Speaker 4: make him the enemy, doesn't highlight you know, there is
Speaker 4: a consensus in this country about sealing the border and
Speaker 4: deporting the worst of the worst. It probably isn't a
Speaker 4: consensus to kick out twenty to twenty five million people.
Speaker 4: But the point is in Minneapolis, when Homan came in there,
Speaker 4: a troubled situation was righted pretty dark quickly. And I
Speaker 4: do think it makes a difference, especially if Coldwell's right
Speaker 4: that a certain number of Trump's natural supporters are disillusioned
Speaker 4: and tired. They have no illusions about the left, but
Speaker 4: they're enthusiasm or Trump. Not a majority, not maybe even
Speaker 4: a significant private of enough and it's five or eight
Speaker 4: or ten percent. It's a game of change.
Speaker 3: Dan, one more question about your article, and then I
Speaker 3: actually want to introduce something beyond the scale for your
Speaker 3: article and shift gears a bit. One of the things
Speaker 3: I really liked about the article is you saying very
Speaker 3: forcefully and clearly, look, all this talk of Trump being
Speaker 3: a dictator and authoritarian threat to democracy is all nonsense.
Speaker 3: And you know, sometimes when people hear a criticism of
Speaker 3: Trump like you've made, they'll default to saying, oh, you're
Speaker 3: really a closet never Trump or something. So anyway, that
Speaker 3: was a very valuable part of the people Trump.
Speaker 4: Three times right, and I wasn't exactly holding my nose like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, that's right. But then the other thing is,
Speaker 3: I'm not quite sure I completely agree with you when
Speaker 3: you brought up the old distinction time honored in American
Speaker 3: political analysis between campaigning and governing. In other words, I
Speaker 3: think that I think you'll understand my analysis and probably
Speaker 3: agree with it, so so restate your arguments so that
Speaker 3: I get it better. The sort of the structure of
Speaker 3: our government, with the administrative state, the deep state, what
Speaker 3: everyone want to call it, the way the media operates,
Speaker 3: the way the opposition operates, is no longer possible to
Speaker 3: govern without being deeply political and being on the offense
Speaker 3: all the time, and That's why I think you can't
Speaker 3: really separate those two realms anymore. Like you know, the
Speaker 3: first president Bush said, I've in campaign mode and I'm
Speaker 3: in governing mode. I think that distinction doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I largely agree with that, But you know, there's
Speaker 4: multiple ways of campaigning. I think it's good of Trump
Speaker 4: to do these rallies. It energizes the base, she taught
Speaker 4: the media and the lies of the political class. But
Speaker 4: he can do other things, you know. And you know
Speaker 4: he went to Higoway recently. He was supposed to talk
Speaker 4: about the economy, as I say, and the piece there's
Speaker 4: such good news share with the American people seeing the border.
Speaker 4: Everyone said it was undoable and it's being done, and
Speaker 4: it's been done. But I do think you know, when
Speaker 4: he went to Highway he was supposed to talk about
Speaker 4: the economy, he immediately started praising his accomplishments and saying,
Speaker 4: there's no real problem with the economy, and look, the
Speaker 4: economic news is much more good that it's bad. But nonetheless,
Speaker 4: if people see the prices of groceries going up and
Speaker 4: have formed a certain impression, probably fueled partly by propaganda
Speaker 4: and the media, you got to meet them a little
Speaker 4: bit of the way, yeah, and all that, and so
Speaker 4: these are these are not questions of really a radical
Speaker 4: or fundamental reorientation. It's just you know, he says, well,
Speaker 4: you know, up said, I'll be presidential when I have
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 3: Well, well we're waiting, Yeah, you have to be Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and.
Speaker 4: You mentioned, Look, I've spent my whole life and as
Speaker 4: you have, Steve, you know, talk you know, talking up
Speaker 4: the nobility and dignity of high minded statesmanship. And I'm
Speaker 4: obliged to admit, you know, if Trump nodded every once
Speaker 4: in a while in that direction, yeah, well it's in
Speaker 4: his self interest. Occasionally he does, I.
Speaker 3: Know, well cheer up. Maybe long story and won't count now.
Speaker 3: But I've talked to some people, some of the speech
Speaker 3: writers and people in the Domestic Policy Council at the
Speaker 3: White House, and you know, they have serious ideas about
Speaker 3: July four coming up, and if Trump stays on message,
Speaker 3: I think it will be really good. So let's just
Speaker 3: put a pin in that and hope right.
Speaker 4: I only talked about Trump briefly at the end of
Speaker 4: the Statesman as thinker, but I said, look, you can criticize,
Speaker 4: you can criticize him, but I said, in the summer
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty, when the political class revealed themselves to
Speaker 4: be cowardly createns, if not insurrectionists, Trump spoke in defense
Speaker 4: of the country. The talk, the speech he gave Mount
Speaker 4: Rushmore was a tour de force of intelligent, spirited patriotism.
Speaker 4: And I hope this is a twenty twenty six will
Speaker 4: be a wonderful opportunity for Trump to play in the
Speaker 4: higher ground. But in a way that makes clear what
Speaker 4: he's defending, what we're defending. He's quite capable of doing it.
Speaker 4: And it's just that I don't think we do this
Speaker 4: presidency any good by saying, well, he won't change, or
Speaker 4: you know, the other side's terrible because in retrospect, eventually
Speaker 4: people will admit all this when he's gone. You know,
Speaker 4: you have to sometimes it's better to admit it. Well,
Speaker 4: it's going.
Speaker 3: On, right, Well, what's the online of Churchill's was you
Speaker 3: have to take the rough with the smooth, right. He
Speaker 3: used to say that, exactly right.
Speaker 2: Let's say that we live in an alternate dimension in
Speaker 2: which rondas anss had won. Do you think we would
Speaker 2: have gotten what we've gotten from the last oh, you
Speaker 2: know year of Trump administration.
Speaker 4: You know, I mean, look, I don't know the answer
Speaker 4: to that. I think you would need Solomon's judgment, you know,
Speaker 4: because Roder Sanders has done wonderful digson Florida, tough minded, determined,
Speaker 4: pugnacious things. He was a terrible candidate, and I think
Speaker 4: he decided to he's stiffened up somehow. Whether he would
Speaker 4: have he certainly hasn't had that bearing as governor. And
Speaker 4: look a little bit. But I'm tempted to say Trump
Speaker 4: Trump is one of a kind, and uh, he's he
Speaker 4: is willing to take on what everyone says is untouchable.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: He, as I say in the piece, he has he
Speaker 4: is the only person in the political class who from
Speaker 4: the get go had utter contempt for the secular religions
Speaker 4: of climate change, gendary theology, the racialism and all that.
Speaker 4: He feels it in his bones. By the way, I think,
Speaker 4: I think the governor Florida is against all those things too.
Speaker 4: But maybe Trump Trump where there have been the same
Speaker 4: determined assault on the elite universities which have become bastions
Speaker 4: of illiberalism, and intellectually, I don't know, but I think
Speaker 4: just could have been a very good president, even yeah,
Speaker 4: even if he was a mediocre candidate.
Speaker 3: Right, So Dan, let me uh the last question here,
Speaker 3: last topic, and we can go on a long time
Speaker 3: and don't have a long time, but it's already it's
Speaker 3: over to Europe a bit because listener should know that
Speaker 3: you have not just detailed expertise about European politics, but
Speaker 3: you're acquainted with, as I like to put it, all
Speaker 3: the most sensible people in France, both of them. I'm
Speaker 3: tempting to joke, right like you know, but also you
Speaker 3: are I think I think i'd be so bold as
Speaker 3: to say, and you'll disclaim it, but you're maybe the
Speaker 3: leading or at least one of the three or four
Speaker 3: leading American scholars of social netson.
Speaker 4: I think that's fair to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, good. I was afraid you're gonna accuse me
Speaker 3: of hyperbole because I do that's true. Look, so I
Speaker 3: don't know. I want to confine the question and we'll
Speaker 3: be here all day. You know, you mentioned we've all
Speaker 3: talked about rubio speech, how good it was, and I'm
Speaker 3: thinking he was trying to, you know, grab Europe on
Speaker 3: lapels and say, have some confidence and respect for yourselves please.
Speaker 3: That's one way. But then there's France. You know, Trump
Speaker 3: maybe at forty percent or less. Mat Prone is down
Speaker 3: to what sixteen percent approval rating.
Speaker 4: I think it's even lower.
Speaker 3: Than Yeah, and I don't know.
Speaker 4: Matt Crow was you know this conservative of a consertive
Speaker 4: fellow got kidnapped and murdered and leonned by some Antifa
Speaker 4: people who are linked to the left wing party Frances friends.
Speaker 4: I'm about and Crow yelled at the Prime Minister Maloney
Speaker 4: of Italy said, you have no right to speak about this. U.
Speaker 4: Pierraman I recently said, look, if you talk about conservatives,
Speaker 4: they're all in human and totalitarian people. Are Are you
Speaker 4: going to be surprised that they're killed? Yeah? No, macall
Speaker 4: is very unpopular. He represents this technocratic ethos you heard
Speaker 4: me say, the extreme. Soult and On calls it the
Speaker 4: fanaticism of the center. These are the people from the
Speaker 4: old mainstream parties, even the Christian Democrats in Germany who
Speaker 4: are determined, determined to bury democrities to save it. And
Speaker 4: also McCall has that goalist hauteur without the greatness of
Speaker 4: soul that the goal had. You know, you if you're
Speaker 4: an honor of mediocrity. It log and technocrat. You can't
Speaker 4: pretend you're Winston Churchill or Trills to goal. The Olympian
Speaker 4: haughtiness looks ridiculous. By the way, Mertz is down in
Speaker 4: at about twenty percent of the polls in Germany because wow,
Speaker 4: he you know, do Germans keep unvoting him and the
Speaker 4: social Democrats out and they form these coalitions to keep
Speaker 4: the populace out And now they're following the Greens are
Speaker 4: part of their alliance. They're following these suicideal ecological policies
Speaker 4: and electricity bills like the northeast where I lived, my
Speaker 4: electricity bill is twice what it was last January and
Speaker 4: literally becoming a place that's unlivable. And the Germans are
Speaker 4: mad as hell that, you know, green ideology is literally
Speaker 4: undermining their way of life, their economic prosperity. Yes, Trump
Speaker 4: is infinitely more popular. You may have seen inside or
Speaker 4: advantage in another recent poll that came out, the ones
Speaker 4: who were most accurate about the twenty twenty four election
Speaker 4: have Trump closer to fifty forty two percent. So I'm
Speaker 4: not sure Trump is in so much trouble. I think
Speaker 4: reports of his death are much exaggerated to resurrect that
Speaker 4: old saying.
Speaker 3: But but.
Speaker 4: He's got so much against him, has so many you know,
Speaker 4: the media class, in intellectual class, no doubt some Republicans
Speaker 4: who will come out of the woodwork when it's advantageous
Speaker 4: that he he doesn't have as much room for maneuver.
Speaker 4: So I'm sure there people call me a rhino. I'm
Speaker 4: not a rhino. I'm not an You know, there's nobody
Speaker 4: who considers Bill Crystal to be more of a lunatic
Speaker 4: than me. Right now, he's now referring to Trump as
Speaker 4: executing people at Minnesota.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, he's lost his mind.
Speaker 4: I don't He's supported I'mdani.
Speaker 2: I know, well, Daniel, your latest book is the persistence
Speaker 2: of the ideological lie that totalitair in impulse. Then and now.
Speaker 2: Last question, what's the difference, well.
Speaker 4: Between then and now? Yes, Well, what's not a difference
Speaker 4: is the structure of the position. I argue that the
Speaker 4: root of the evil goes back a century and a
Speaker 4: half or two century, displacement of the age old distinction
Speaker 4: between truthful so good evil, with this pernicious distinction between
Speaker 4: progress and reaction. The guys who are on the side
Speaker 4: of history and the people or are holding it back, and
Speaker 4: that that's what wokeness is now. In the case of
Speaker 4: the French Revolution, in the case of twentieth century totalitarianism,
Speaker 4: that orientation justified full scale totalitarianism, you know, assaulting the
Speaker 4: bodies and souls of whole groups of human beings. The
Speaker 4: woe haven't gotten there yet, because we still notice I
Speaker 4: called my the book that sometimes I say the impulse.
Speaker 4: We don't live in a totalitarian state, although we came
Speaker 4: closer to it in the summer of twenty twenty, but
Speaker 4: the totalitarian impulse is alive and well, it's been institutionalized
Speaker 4: in many institutions like the universities, et cetera. And look,
Speaker 4: Steve mentioned, I've spent a lot of my adult life,
Speaker 4: my scholarship writing about totalitarianism, about communism, And I said,
Speaker 4: right from the get go in eighty nine, unless we
Speaker 4: pass on real lessons about the totalitarian episode, it will
Speaker 4: reassert itself and reassert itself very quickly. You can't just
Speaker 4: say we won, or it was a victory of the
Speaker 4: market over planned economy. All that's some of it's true,
Speaker 4: but it's superficial. You really have to know the lie.
Speaker 4: You have to know what it was. This was not
Speaker 4: just a poor economic model. This was a war against
Speaker 4: human nature and a war against the human spirit, and
Speaker 4: a war against the roots of free government. And it's
Speaker 4: alive and well, I say in my piece, I don't
Speaker 4: think there as many eighty twenty issues as people say
Speaker 4: there are. There's a lot of people out there who
Speaker 4: have bought into lunacy, and so we shouldn't. I mean,
Speaker 4: I was asked to contribute to a symposium a week
Speaker 4: after trump Onet is wokeness finished? How going to be
Speaker 4: because of an election? You know, wokeness is deeply extantiated
Speaker 4: in well, in the you know, the bmpulse on the
Speaker 4: chattering classes. They're they're default position as woke. They're they're
Speaker 4: they've stepped back a bit under pressure. But this is
Speaker 4: a battle royale and and it's not just going to
Speaker 4: be won by winning elections. We have to recover or
Speaker 4: do our best to recover the institutions of civil society,
Speaker 4: the churches, the universities, you know, the corporations which you
Speaker 4: know became agents of a wokery and certainly in the
Speaker 4: last generation.
Speaker 2: What this country needs is another good, long march with
Speaker 2: comfortable Chinese shoes, Daniel, thank you, Thank.
Speaker 4: You so much, guys. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: The persistence of the ideological lie that to tell Journey
Speaker 2: Impulse Then and Now is his latest book. We thank
Speaker 2: him so much for coming on board, and we'll talk
Speaker 2: to you again down the road. By Daniel. So before
Speaker 2: we go, a couple of things, I've got to mention
Speaker 2: to you that Ricochet meetups happen. People actually get together
Speaker 2: in real life IRL, as they say, and as I've
Speaker 2: found out that many of these things talk about anything
Speaker 2: except politics. I'm only going to talk about politics at ricoghet, right.
Speaker 2: That's what you do, that's why you go there, That's
Speaker 2: why you pay for it. What's that you haven't paid
Speaker 2: for it? He says, with a stern and knitted brow. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, I know what it's like to get
Speaker 2: people to pay for things on the internet, believe me.
Speaker 2: But it's worth it because it's cheap and what it
Speaker 2: gives you access to a community on the member side
Speaker 2: that you won't find anywhere else on the web. And
Speaker 2: that's where you find conversations all over the map, from
Speaker 2: old radio to new movies, to sports to politics. He
Speaker 2: has to culture to it's just it's a fantastic place,
Speaker 2: and if you pay that a little bit, you get
Speaker 2: to comment, and that's what keeps the comment sections interesting
Speaker 2: instead of being just absolute sispool. You know, free for
Speaker 2: alls like you find elsewhere. So that is something you
Speaker 2: want to do. And you'll find mentions of meetups, perhaps
Speaker 2: in your area, and hey, if there isn't one in
Speaker 2: your area, start one. That's a great thing about Ricochet.
Speaker 2: People tell them to come and they'll show up and
Speaker 2: they'll probably bring hot dish or something like that. Not
Speaker 2: at least in Minnesota had a couple of high profile
Speaker 2: deaths we're having. You know, a whole generation is expiring,
Speaker 2: it seems when you're of the age of Stephen and myself.
Speaker 2: It's not unexpected, but it always hits you right there,
Speaker 2: because wasn't this guy just thirty five forty years old
Speaker 2: just a little while ago. No, that was in the eighties.
Speaker 2: Jesse Jackson perished, died, and it a unique American figure
Speaker 2: and I read an awful lot of eulogies, and people
Speaker 2: who were not necessarily on his side in his corner
Speaker 2: viewed him as something of an opportunist, but nevertheless would
Speaker 2: attested the man's charisma and his ability to charm and
Speaker 2: the rest of it. And he did bring an interesting
Speaker 2: brio to American politics and then seemingly vanished. Stephen your taking.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, you put your finger on it at two observations. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the charisma that you really don't see his successors like
Speaker 3: Al Sharpton and so forth. I was a reporter at
Speaker 3: the Democratic Convention in nineteen eighty four, as a cup
Speaker 3: reporter at a press pass and only convention I've ever
Speaker 3: been to. I don't like big crowds like that. And
Speaker 3: his speech, a keynote speech closed out the second night,
Speaker 3: I guess, was absolutely electric, and I remember thinking wow,
Speaker 3: and then I read the speech the next morning in
Speaker 3: the paper and it was not the same. In other words,
Speaker 3: the orator was greater than the oratory, right, and that
Speaker 3: was always his problem. His substance was pretty bad, but boy,
Speaker 3: he could light up a room. I do think that
Speaker 3: some of the conservatives, maybe a National Review said nice
Speaker 3: things about him this week, and I guess, you know,
Speaker 3: don't speak ill of the dead. I think he looks better.
Speaker 3: Well put it this way, the cleanest shirt and a
Speaker 3: lot of dirty laundry. His successors like Al Sharpton are
Speaker 3: so much worse human beings than he was, and that
Speaker 3: you know, Jackson had lots of loss personal and professional,
Speaker 3: politically and so forth, but it's only gotten worse. And
Speaker 3: he kind of propelled us. I think he did mainstream
Speaker 3: helped mainstream anti semitism on the left. The famous Heinee
Speaker 3: town remark right, right.
Speaker 2: So came to my mind within ten seconds of hearing
Speaker 2: his death.
Speaker 3: Frankly, yeah, exactly right. And then yeah, so I'm going
Speaker 3: to go on about him, but I think that's enough.
Speaker 2: Robert Duvall, Robert passing of Robert de Val is hard
Speaker 2: because we're losing a certain kind of guy. It seems
Speaker 2: a certain sort of I mean, it's ridiculous for me
Speaker 2: to judge his acting skills. They were fantastic and it's obvious,
Speaker 2: and there's I shouldn't get patted on the back or
Speaker 2: a gold star for saying what a range that man had.
Speaker 2: It's a great actor. But there's a certain sort of
Speaker 2: archetype that we seem to be shedding, and Devall was
Speaker 2: one of them. A squareness, quietness, as centeredness, a sort
Speaker 2: of American presence that you know, I was watching anatomy
Speaker 2: of a Murder the Other Night, which he is not in,
Speaker 2: and for the time, it was a startlingly modern movie
Speaker 2: in the words that it used and the things that
Speaker 2: it discussed quite so frankly, but it's still in the period.
Speaker 2: In the character of Jimmy Stewart, there's a there's an
Speaker 2: American quality to there that you recognize instantly when you
Speaker 2: see it, and you gravitate towards it if you're of
Speaker 2: my generation, because it's familiar. And I wonder sometimes if
Speaker 2: it's hard to get young people involved and interested in
Speaker 2: old movies, not just because they're black and white, but
Speaker 2: because the culture, in the archetypes and the values that
Speaker 2: they seem to effortlessly inhabit seem alien and foreign and
Speaker 2: probably wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think there's something to that, although I'll
Speaker 3: just say that you now actually inspired me to think
Speaker 3: that maybe ought to show a Robert Duvall movie or
Speaker 3: something to my students. I like to use movies in
Speaker 3: class to illustrate the serious content of what I'm teaching,
Speaker 3: but also to sneak in some old culture, and one
Speaker 3: that I use with great effect is The Man Who
Speaker 3: Shot Liberty Balance, which in its political teaching, really is
Speaker 3: about what are the conditions necessary for the rule of law?
Speaker 3: And is Tom Donovan Aristotle's beast or a god? I mean,
Speaker 3: I go through a bunch of classic political questions with
Speaker 3: the and they like it. I mean, first is like,
Speaker 3: this thing's slow, it's black and white, but you know,
Speaker 3: I make them sit through it in a whole class period.
Speaker 3: And then we discussed it and it works pretty well.
Speaker 3: And I think that Lonesome Dove is maybe the greatest
Speaker 3: mini series ever made. And he's what Augustus McCrae and
Speaker 3: that I think he said that's his favorite role he
Speaker 3: ever did his entire life. And that's kind of an
Speaker 3: epic of the Old West without apology for stolen land
Speaker 3: or any of the nonsense that preoccupies Hollywood and other
Speaker 3: woke folks today. So yeah, they don't make them like
Speaker 3: him anymore.
Speaker 2: One I'll be sad to lose with somebody about who.
Speaker 2: I'm watching a documentary recent in the last few days.
Speaker 2: It's on HBO. It's about Melbrooks. The ninety nine year
Speaker 2: old man is actually delightful, as is he. So to
Speaker 2: show you a class blazing saddles stee oh yeah, point
Speaker 2: them to that and say that, well, the movie add
Speaker 2: its slight controversial aspects to it. Take a look and
Speaker 2: the spirit from what in which it has made, and
Speaker 2: try and tell yourself that these aren't the freest people
Speaker 2: you've ever seen in your life. Tell my daughter that
Speaker 2: the seventies were awful. Trust me, the seventies were awful.
Speaker 2: But you know, you can imagine somebody in a convertible,
Speaker 2: smoke and a cigarette without a seatbelt, driving down on
Speaker 2: their way to see Blazing Saddles, and those are the
Speaker 2: freest people that ever existed on the face of the earth.
Speaker 2: Now they may have been killed in a crash and
Speaker 2: they got lung cancer and the rest of it, and
Speaker 2: the sentiments of Blazing Saddles curdl does Meilbrooks try to
Speaker 2: get lightning in a bottled subsequation doesn't matter. I mean
Speaker 2: there's a brio, there's an openness, and there's there's a
Speaker 2: cheerfulness to these things that just you know, when you
Speaker 2: in this tendentiously careful age is refreshing to see.
Speaker 3: So that'll be hard, yeah, I mean, if nothing else,
Speaker 3: I always like to mention the scene where Melbrooks's governor
Speaker 3: La Pedamain says, quick, we've got to do something to
Speaker 3: save our phony belonging Jorge Job. No short thing was
Speaker 3: ever said about our political class.
Speaker 2: And at the time, at the time, none of us
Speaker 2: could go on the internet and look up Petamain and
Speaker 2: figure out what it meant, what it was a reference
Speaker 2: to that was the thing. You would have to go
Speaker 2: to the You'd have to know it meant something. You'd
Speaker 2: have to go to the library. You'd have to go
Speaker 2: to the section of the card catalog that talked about
Speaker 2: French entertainers. You'd have to pull it out, page through
Speaker 2: the Dewey decimal notations, find it, go, get the book,
Speaker 2: hope it wasn't in French. Pull it out, then say, oh,
Speaker 2: mel Brooks is referencing a man who went on stage
Speaker 2: and farted in a theatrical fashion. Brilliant. Now, of course
Speaker 2: we have access to everything, and nothing means anything except,
Speaker 2: of course this, and except of course the fact that
Speaker 2: if you give us five stars at the Apple podcast reviews,
Speaker 2: we will it will be in your debt in the
Speaker 2: most meaningless fashion for the rest of our lives. We
Speaker 2: hope that Charlie is with us again next week. He's
Speaker 2: at the funeral of our friend that we discussed last week.
Speaker 2: John acdaw and we thank you for listening. Everybody. I'm
Speaker 2: James Lenox Stephen. We'll see you all in the comments
Speaker 2: at Ricochet four point zero. Bye bye.
Speaker 3: Ricochet.
Speaker 2: Join the conversation.