Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
what you can do for your country, mister Gorbachev, tear
down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lillnxon.
Of course we get Charles C. W. Cook in as
far as our guest, Oh, he's not a guest. He's
one of us, the founder, Rob Long, So let's have
ourselves a podcast. Although I will say this, the last
few days you woke up thinking there might be news,
just saying, just saying there will be news sometimes just
so you know there will be news. And then I
didn't do any for two days and they said there
must be something wrong with him. Biden wouldn't do him
for months, You wouldn't see him, and nobody ever said
there was ever anything wrong with him, and we know
he was in the greatest of shape. No I heard that,
I get reports. Welcome everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast,
number seven and fifty six. How do we get that far? Well,
in the beginning was Rob Long, but we'll get to that.
You can join us at ricochet dot comy be part
of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web.
We have as usual, luckily, General C. W. Cook Stephen
Hayward is out this week. Lord knows where he is, Iceland,
New Guinea. But Rob's back. Rob the founders of Ricochet
is back with us. Seminary classes, I believe start today.
So he's a little white yesterday stressed yesterday. He can
be stressed about seminary studies. I mean, it's a calm
feeling of peace, no doubt this sends you as you
look over the landscape of theological disputation and find nothing
but harmony. But you are in New York and so
you're on the ground where democratic socialism is taking root joyously. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean technically I'm in Princeton, That's where I
live now. You know, I'm a full time graduate student,
really really thinking more about weighty matters, James, not quite
the worldly things you think about. Yeah, I mean, it
does seem like people are I don't know what the
word is. What is the word when you you know
something's coming and it's going to be bad and you
just wanted to start now and get get on with it.
People have that weird people's.
Speaker 1: Probably there's probably a civil war term for guys who
are going into the operating tent. Yeah, yeah, I pick
up the pick up the saw, get the saw.
Speaker 2: That's get it to start. And there's also that kind
of this this wishcrafting, wish casting that we are aside
does every now and then, where we have created a
weirdly a kind of a Marxian kind of way of
looking at the world, which is like, it's good, it's good.
We need my I was a dinner party with a
bunch of conservatives two weeks ago, and like we need mom,
Donnie Bie mayor just to remind people how terrible it is,
and then we can set ourselves up for a New
Giuliani kind of Bloomberg kind of uh event, as if
these things are sort of natural laws that must happen,
like gravity or laws of physics. They forget that things
can get really bad and stay really bad for a
long time, which has happened in New York City for
you know, nearly thirty forty years. So that is the
mood I would say in New York is delusional, but
that's kind of always the mood there in that city.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting. We have two examples. New York. We're
going to tax you. We're going to take as much
money as we can from you. But we're going to
open grocery stores that we'll have a one percent profit margin.
If that Florida, hmm, how about we abolish property taxes, Charles,
you would be the beneficiary of this. So you have
any thoughts on dessentiss musings.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, they're contradictory. One is that I would, of
course love to pay no property taxes. And I do
think that there's something psychologically problematic about property taxes in
that we all grow out watching Westerns, and the families
that moved into the middle of nowhere and built the
house had it free and clear, and that seemed such
a symbol of liberty and self sufficiency. No one came
up to them every year and said, and now the
money for living here. But we live in a world
in which governments spend money and you have to get
it somehow, And I think Florida's arrangements pretty good. What
you have in Florida is no income taxes or taxes
on anything that approximates income of any sort. Good, relatively
low sales taxes where I live at six and a
half percent, and then property taxes that aren't the lowest
in the nation, but aren't as high as stay taxes,
and I'm Gonnesota, and a lot of our taxes in
Florida are paid by people who don't live here and
therefore can't get upset about them. People who come in
as tourists and either pay the sales and hotel and
amusement park taxes or drive up and down the roads
where the tolls have been cleverly placed near the airports
and pay those. So it's not that I'm against the
idea of getting rid of property taxes per se, or
that I like property taxes, but I do think that
combining medium level property taxes with medium level sales taxes
in a state where a lot of taxes are paid
by other people and there's no income tax is working
really well for Florida. And so that the burkey and conservative
in me just says, don't screw with this, because I
don't know what would come next. And then there's another
part of me that thinks that it might be a
little bit unfair. And this is something I very very
rarely say in connection with taxes, but I think it
might be a little bit fair to get rid of
property taxes and say, hike sales taxes on people who
are poor. I just you know, that seems to me
to be a pretty unfair trait.
Speaker 1: I agree that would be regressive. But on the other hand,
business come from the fact that Florida has a state
budget surplut. Well, it wouldn't have any other kind budget
surplus now because of judicious trimming. And the idea is
is that we will continue to trim and be lean
and efficient, and therefore we don't have to take the
property taxes, because the property tax is psychologically in the
back of your head when you say the old idea
of your house free and clear of the old idea,
and then then somebody comes around once a year with
the bag opens, such as that it's the idea that
you can literally pay off your mortgage and to live
someplace for thirty five years, but at the end of
the year, at the end of the day, it's taken
away from you if you do not pay the state
and their portion.
Speaker 3: And that's of course the counter argument, which is a
strong one, which is that property taxes can push people
out of their homes, and that's also very unfair.
Speaker 1: So Florida would boom then from people who were moving
into escape New York's orous property taxes for example, and
that would lead to more sales tax revenue and the
rest of it. We'll see. It's interesting. I just love
watching people freak out about this. It's like, you know,
demolishing a category of taxes, it strikes some people is
completely irresponsible because its very nature is going to start
up the state, and we can't have that.
Speaker 2: Oh I want to do that, yeah, but it doesn't
have to start the state. I mean, I guess what
I'd say about these taxes is that there's no law
that says if you repeal one form of tax, you
can't make up the revenue somewhere else. The problem with
property tax at least in California, I don't really know
how they were. I didn't have to pay them in
New York and I had to pay them in California,
is that there's this kind of strange, murky subsidy. That's
what governments always want to do. They want to tax
you in a way that you don't really even notice it,
so that if you buy a house in a thirty
year mortgage, that your property tax is often part of
the loan of your mortgage.
Speaker 1: To be well, write that check out twice a month.
Speaker 2: But California often is. And so the idea is you're
hiding this giant fee and you're putting it somewhere where
people kind of don't see it, and they just don't
feel the pain. And I think when you feel the
pain of taxes, that's what no liberals want. You'd actually
sit there and write a check because that's like a
that's essentially a direct mail piece from the Republican Party.
It's your tax bill and and that's why your your
pay stub is so bizarrely configured and confusing so you
don't really notice it. I mean that one of the
Corps brothers early on, when when the security at Tax
Fight Attacks was imposed payroll tax. He he you could
go to his the brewery in Colorado and get your
paycheck on a Thursday, and you went to the window.
You had to get the full you have the full
paycheck in one window, get your gross pay and then
you had to go to the second window and you
had to pay your FIKA. Because he wanted everyone to
know exactly what was coming out of their paycheck. They
had those two or three minutes when they're standing in
line when they felt rich and then that incredible sinking
feeling later when they gave all the money the government
and he was then that was considered that. I think
they they made that illegal. You couldn't do it that way.
You had to take it out of the paycheck before
the worker gets it. And in general, I think anytime
taxes are more transparent and paid on the barrel head
and people see what they're paying for, they can decide
if they want to pay more or less, or if
they want more or fewer services. And that's the road
to not just democracy, but prosperity.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Just to upset I've on even further, who will think
I'm a squish here. The other thing that does worry
me slightly is it would be good to starve the
beast Florida has doesn't spend that much in the first place.
But I am slightly alarmed by the record of the
federal government here. I know states can't borrow in the
way the federal government can, but that theory has been
tried for a long, long long time. And we don't
cut spending, we just borrow thirty eight trillion dollars, and
so I do. There's at the back of my mind
there's a small don't break it, as I say, Burkie
in view that Florida is really great, it's working really well.
I don't feel like the government it's profligate. I don't
feel like taxes are too high in general, and I
worry that if we do this then what.
Speaker 1: True. But on the other hand, you don't lose your
house because you don't pay So the other thing that
caught my eye this week was the shakeup at CBS
News where Barry Weiss strikes out on her own, starts
up a substack, and then gets a bazillion patrons, makes
a lot of money, and now appears to be headed
for running CBS News, which I would actually watch again
under her tutelage because I would expect, not that I
would expect that it would conform to everything that I
said or thought, but it would be probably heterodox as
she is. Do you guys agree or do you think
this is just more moving the chairs around on the Lusitania?
And I use that instead of Titanic because Lusitania went
down real fast.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I you know, look, I think it's great.
I think it's any any time is to shake up
in that business. I mean, I still believe that there's
should there should be these robust businesses telling you the
news and that are that are not that are thoughtful
and are not you know, nuts nuts her, you know
the subst the free press, which I've you know, written
for which I'm I know, Barry, I'm a huge fan.
Is it real success? It's not a success to two
hundred million dollars. But if you were just bought this
giant behemoth of a company, Paramount Paramount Global, I guess
they called it at some point, and I that Listen,
I've been attached to Paramount Studios at Paramount for low
these thirty five years, so I've seen it through multiple handovers.
You know, you have this CBS thing that doesn't make
any sense. I think the broadcast side does, but the
news side doesn't really make any sense. It's filled with
all sorts of trouble and ossified things. And you know,
Barry's got a kind of very fresh way of looking
at the news, and she's managed to assemble a lot
of interesting writers around her. Whether she can run a
giant news division which is basically a TV network, who ohs.
But I admire the I admire the risk. I mean,
good for them, good for the Ellison's for riskiness, you know,
I wuish them.
Speaker 1: Well, Charles's last gasp of dying industry or a new
sign that it might be able to reinvent and revitalize itself.
I think the latter.
Speaker 3: So what I love about this is that someone has
realized that it's not working. It's not good.
Speaker 1: Finally, it's the most annoying.
Speaker 3: Thing about people in the media is that they are
the worst people in the world and they don't know it.
They can't accept any failures. They still conceive of themselves
as the greatest heroes in American history and their product
generally speaking, and there are some exceptions, of course.
Speaker 1: Isn't good. It's not.
Speaker 3: The evil conservatives who did this. It's not the internet.
There are lots of secular reasons that it's become more
difficult to run a news station. I understand that, but
the people I think are the key to it. And
I have the same view I had when we were
talking about the late night shows. Maybe make one that
isn't annoying and then see if it works, and then
if it doesn't, you throw up your hands and you say,
all right, well, there's just lots of different external factors
that made it impossible. In a way it wasn't in
nineteen seventy eight, but no one's actually tried this. We
CNN pretended that they were going to stop being ridiculous
and then they didn't do it. MSNBC occasionally acknowledges that
it is a drug trip and then doesn't do anything
about it. And Fox is its own thing because it's
really the only one on the right. But the mainstream
press just they don't seem to actually ever follow through.
They have these focus group meetings and expensive hotels and
say everyone hates this as we're rubbish, and then they
say what's the problem, and then they say it's because
we're heroes.
Speaker 1: So I just think this is good. I want to
see if this works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and I think also, look, it's a
it's a it's a I don't know the internals of
the deal, but mostly at two hundred million dollars, which
is actually not that much when you have eighty million
billion dollars that Ellson's have, and when you've just invested
a couple of billion a bunch of billion into the
giant company, so like, yeah, you're got to hive off
a little bit, and you're going to say roughly, this
is what we want our news organ our news operation
to cost. I think it's it could be really really interesting,
it could be really something great. And the thing about
Barry is that Barry will be infuriating and surprising to
people on the left and the right. She's going to
be exactly, in many ways exactly who the people on
the left in the media think they are, right, this
kind of we're you know, we I think freely. I
make these I call balls and strikes all that stuff.
She actually is that thing, yes, and that's why the
organism of the New York Times had to had to
reject it. But the truth is she is a she
is She is the app the real life, accurate projection
of what every you know, media grandee thinks he or
she is. And they're gonna they're gonna find out that
it can you know. Look, the worst thing that can
happen to them is that she succeeds.
Speaker 1: When Charles spoke before about evening the late night talk
shows and saying, you know, try one that isn't annoying
and see if that works, the Evening News sort of
brackets that as a tradition, and it's from another time,
another culture. When dad was home, you had your dinner,
and then maybe while you're waiting for mom to put
it on the table, you sat down and you watched
the Evening News.
Speaker 2: It's very gendered language, James, it is.
Speaker 1: It very much is. And you had a preference based
on who you liked, who you trusted, maybe even what
the theme music was. I have no idea, or perhaps
just you didn't care, and you flipped around and you
sat down and listened to Walter or Chat or whatever.
And then the evening, your evening was bracketed by sitting
down and watching Journey, Oh Joy Bishop. And these are
gone because, of course now the competition is myriad, multifaceted.
No one is waiting for Carson to come on because
they're streaming a whole bunch of things on their second screen,
and nobody sits down necessarily to watch the evening News
as sort of putting a pin in the part of
the day, the work that is done. So the question
is whether or not she wants to revive that at
all or just dump it. And I'm thinking I haven't
watched the Evening News for so long, and I did
last week when we had the tragedy the massacre, the
shooting in my neighborhood, and they were asking everybody. They'd
interviewed my niece for himn's sakes, And so I turned
it on and it reminded me that I used to
every night watch the Evening News, and I think I've
listened to NBC because they had the best theme, because
John Williams had written this suite of music called and
Get This the message that that was quite inspirational, and
I fell away from that at some point. Willingly didn't
miss it at all, and so launching the whole progress
of the tropes and the cliches of what the Evening
News was that, you know, the concern, the pained faces
that people standing outside the White House and the rest
of it just seemed like what I've been teleported back
in nineteen sixty two. So I don't know if there's
much to be had in trying to revive it, or
if she should just be more nimble and attempt to
rewrite the whole news idea on television right before her eyes.
It's got to be done, because Charles absolutely correct, they
don't know how bad they are. The other day, when
I was putting my groceries away, I saw headline on
the local paper, not the one that I know want
to work for, and it said shooters mystery may never
shooter's motive may never be known, and yeah, okay, and
that is why circulation continues to plummet at the rate
that it does. So. While we're on the subject of
the shooter, though, there are two interesting developments when it
comes to gender studies in America and theory. And the
first is something that I predicted the minute that people
started talking about red flag loss, the minute that they
were saying, well, we made to make we need to
make sure mentally ill people don't get guns. And I
think we all agree that that's a good idea. There's
a usual worry about red flag laws being used against
political opponents, against people who aren't really crazy, etc. Et cetera.
But I thought, this is what they're going to do.
Is they're going to say, if you believe you are
a boy when you're actually a girl, or vice versa,
that is prima facia evidence that you have a mental disability.
And sure enough, according to the Daily Caller, that is
exactly what they are proposing to do. Charles, you being
the Second Amendment absolutist. Uh, give us your take on this.
Speaker 3: Well, spectacularly unconstitutional and won't last one minute in the courts.
Speaker 1: Okay, but tell us why. I mean the predicate the predicate.
The predicate is in what they're trying to do here
is to say that transgenderism is, like I said, prima facia,
a mental disorder. Ergo can maybe guns, And it's making
the people on the left scream for gun rights, which
I think is quite funny. So what makes it unconcer stitutional?
Just for those ofment taking.
Speaker 3: Notes, Well, the Second amendments an individual right, as confirmed
by the Hella decision of two thousand and eight. The
Bruined decision of twenty twenty two updated that to hold
that any gun law that is to be presumed constitutional
must have a historical analog until that is whittled away
or reversed. That is how the lower courts, and indeed
the Supreme Court is obliged to look at it. So
the question then is, throughout American history, either in the
post colonial period or post reconstruction, are there any laws
that permit the government to determine that a class of
people is exempt from the Second Amendment. We're currently having
this debate over the laws that render it illegal to
buy or possess a gun if addicted to drugs, because
historically the laws didn't do that.
Speaker 1: There were.
Speaker 3: Prohibitions on carrying firearms while drunk, for example, but you
got your gun back the next day when you save
it up, right. So there is a case against the
law that got Hunter Biden into trouble on the grounds
adam rated in Bruin. Now there have historically been exceptions
for people who were violent felons, not non violent felons.
Those laws may go by the wayside. That's going to
be the next big case, and people who were mentally ill.
But both violent felons and mental illness had to be
adjudicated in some sense. It didn't necessarily have to be
adjudicated with a sentence from a court, as we found
out in the Rahemi case recently. Merely being the subject
of a restraining order is sufficient, at least under current president.
But there had to be some due process involved. You
could not just say everyone who supports the Minnesota vikings
is mentally ill, therefore they are not allowed to take
advantage of the Bill of Rights. And that's what Although
it's embryonic has been suggested by the Trump administration, as
far as I can see, is declaring that anyone who
is transgender is ipso facto mentally ill and thereby unable
to exercise their second memoris. That will not fly. Now,
the more interesting question would be, and I still think
this would be fraud.
Speaker 1: Could you pass a law.
Speaker 3: And you'd have to do that. That said, if somebody
who is transgender has been determined to be mentally ill
by a court, they are no longer able to exercise
their Second Amendment rights?
Speaker 1: Could you do that?
Speaker 3: That would be so complicated as a piece of litigation.
It's hard to know where to begin because you would
be singling out a particular group. Is it protected or
not not? Under current president? What would happen in the States.
But you can't do it absent due process, So I
think this is a non starter. It's it's in fact,
it's entirely what the Bill of Rights is there to prevent,
which is the designation of a group that has not
been adjudicated as being presumptively ex excluded from the Constitution.
Speaker 1: Boy, there's a lot in there, and I don't know
where to start, So I'm just going to say, so
I'm just going to say Rob.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I mean I I I defer to Charlie
at all, at all, all issues, all gun issues, mostly
because he's the one who's got the guns. But also,
I uh, I am. I'm nervous when governments of any
stripe start deciding who's crazy and who's not crazy, and
who's mentally ill who's not mentally ill. That seems complicated
to me, mostly because you know, there's how many millions
of people were in the Soviet Union were in sanatoriums
because they believed in private property. It's just it's this
is just a bad idea. And also it's just it's
it's disingenuous because they don't really mean it. They just
they're just mad that that guy was transgendered or whatever
he was, and it's just a it's a it's a
bad idea, especially when we're talking about constitutionally in numerated rights.
To start, we is a wording them for immediate political gain.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Once you start doing that, then you start banning things
when the left is in charge, which is going to
happen sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1: Probably what they're trying to do is established transgenderism. As
a mental disorder. It's very much a part of the
administration when it comes to the eos on bathrooms and
sports and the rest of it. But the problem is
is that, you know, Charlie said, there's no official body
that says that this is a mental disorder. There's and
even if there was, I can't imagine that it would
play in the courts. I mean, if you had an
accredited group of psychiatrists who said, we represent x percent
of the American psychiatrists and we have deduced this actually
is a mental disorder that you know, so what your
word against the guys who don't believe it so well.
Speaker 3: But just to add one thing to this, because Rob
mentioned what would happen if a Democrat tried this, A
good analogy I think would be with white supremacists. I
think that an awful lot of people who are transgender
are mentally ill. I think it's a delusion. We can
debate that if you like, but that's my view. I
think that it is probably not a coincidence that an
astonishingly disproportionate relative to their portion of the population number
of recent mass shooting events have featured transgender people. But
that doesn't mean that you can as a group exclude
them from the Constitution on the grounds that they are
more likely than others if you accept that, to commit crimes.
The same is true of white supremacists. If you looked
at some of the people who lived in the hills
of Kurdalene in the nineteen nineties, they were more likely
statistically than other people to be involved in gangs, in terrorism,
in crime. But it would be flagrantly illegal. And this
around the margins has been litigated to say therefore they're
not allowed to have guns. You can't do that. You
have to take them one by one. You have to say,
all right, you're a member of the area in nation.
Have you done anything wrong, have you been convicted of anything?
Is there any incredible reason why you should be regarded
as a violent person to whom the Second Amendment does
not apply? And the same thing would have to happen here.
And it doesn't really matter whether we like or dislike
the trans thing. It doesn't matter whether we like or
dislike white supremacists. There's just no mechanism in American law
to declare an entire group so dangerous. And the one
time that it has happened was prior to reconstruction at
the state level, where the states said black people are
just too dangerous, they're not allowed to own guns, and
the fourteenth Amendment was passed in part along with the
two Friedman's Bureaus Act in the eighteen sixty six Civil
Rights Act to stop that. So you're just not getting
this past the constitution.
Speaker 1: We switch from there and go across the pond, too
perfidious Albion with the same issue as manifested itself in
a different form. Irish comedian Graham Lenihan, whom I love
The It Crowd is one of my absolute favorite television shows,
and I know a lot of people love Father Ted,
but his career has been in lou for five years
because he started saying things about gender ideology more or
less indicated he did not agree with it. So JK. Rowling,
but without the megaphone of the power of the money
and his last three tweets I think, which were made
while he was in America. He hopped over here to
do the Rogan Show. I think I got him arrested
at Heathrow by five bobbies and he's on trial now.
For those people who are saying, wait, McGray, he was
arrested on Tuesday and he's in trial today. And no,
that's for another case of that has been brought by
activists against him for a thought word. Indeed, I asked
a friend of mine in England about this and she
hadn't heard about it. I got it before she did
the next day she figured it out. It's like I'd
also asked her about the Scottish lass with a knife
and the axe, and she hadn't heard about it because
it wasn't in their news. Well now it is in
every single one of the papers in Britain has got
it in the front page and sternly worded editorials. And
some people are saying that this is one of those
points where actual outrage bursts through and the whole country
is galvanized by this particular incident. So we have that
which covers free speech, and then we have the epping
protests and the rest of it which covers migration. These
are two issues, and people say it's England who cares.
I First of all, I care about England because I
love it deeply. But secondly, this is the this is
the continent, this is Europe, this is the cradle of
our civilization, and we want it to be free and
we want it to be European. So what come of this?
Do you think? Because I keep hearing people saying, oh,
all the flags, it makes me feel great. Something's going
to happen and I hate to be that meme nothing
ever happens. But I don't know what happens from all this.
I really don't unless Labor gets voted out as a
p and reform gets in and it's more weak tea
and more milk governance that really does nothing to address
the issues that they face. And I'll throw that to
Rob because I know he's a he's an anglophile.
Speaker 2: Yeah, rather than throw it to the actual the actual Anglo.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: My confusion is this and it's not just in Britain,
although Britain seems like it has the It's the boldest
relief is how is what the what the goal of
the regulators is is that it's just they going to
wear you down until you no longer notice that you're
being arrested. He throw for tweets or that you were
flying the union jack? Is that?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 2: The is that the end the strategy here because we're
just that we're we are going to seek really import
as many people as we can from, you know, places
that are falling apart, and hope that the things that
we're reading in rather etc. That nobody really cares about.
I mean, the idea that this is not a powder
keke that's going to explode and explode in the faces
of the people who are sort of advancing their crack
bot policy agenda seems just highly unlikely to me. Maybe
that's because I'm an optimist, but I don't think I'm
an optimist. I don't think this is good news. That
there's going to be trouble, but it just doesn't seem
possible to me. It is easier to imagine all those
things happening in the United States, where there's room where
if you want to go and live in some kind
of you know, progressive utopia, there are plenty of places
where you can go do that. There's just kind of
like you can our Our society just has a little
bit more elbow room. But there. To see the pictures
that I'm seeing, it just feels like they are willingly
turning themselves into that movie Children of Men Men, And
I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I just don't.
Speaker 2: I just don't Unerstan's strategy. But part of my problem
is always I want to know what the other side
is trying to do. What do you really want? What's
your goal? And this just seems the goal seems to
be nihilistic destruction of a culture.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to ask Charlie about that, but I
have to stop. I do, because I'm not going to
let it go un said. He noted the possibility of
declaring all Minnesota Viking fans insane. I'm a Minnesota Vikings fan.
I'm a football fan.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I was watching the Philly
game last night and I'm proud to say that they
lived up to my expectorations. But when it comes to football,
I like it. I'm not sure I know enough about it,
but if I was really into it, I won't put
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you have some words about this I can pertaining to
the season and to Ricochet's leagues.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a huge football fan, also unfortunately a Jacksonville
Jaguars fan. I was just for the record, James saying
that we shouldn't remove the constitutional rights of vikings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the fact that you went there right away, that's
just what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Why I said that because you were sitting in front
of me at least over video.
Speaker 1: But I do love it.
Speaker 3: I have a bunch of fantasy football teams. I have
Pick Them leagues, and I'm just always up for a
new app in which I have to make predictions, in
which I have to follow closely. It's how I learned
the game as a foreigner is trying to compete with Americans.
I am now an American. I'm still trying to compete
with them. And I like this Prize picks app, which
is extremely granular, doesn't just deal with football. Of course,
there are lots of sports on it. In fact, i'm
looking at it right now and there are Tennis is
one of the sports as well. I'm very much into tennis,
so I'm looking forward to digging into this. I do
like sports apps, especially where there's money involved.
Speaker 1: And well take that from Charlie there and when you
say app, wait, a minute. What's going on here? I'm
sending me to a website. No prize picks. Yeah, it's
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get this. You like doing this kind of stuff. You
haven't gotten into it before. You're curious about it. Well,
if you download the app today and use the code
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cricochet to get fifty dollars in lineups after you play
your first five dollars lineup prize picks. It's good to
be right, I think price picks responsoring this the Ricachet
podcast and we grind the gears and go back to
the subject we were talking about before, Charles, when we
were talking about England. You know English culture of course
better than any of us. I know parts of London
and Suffolk culture. So the nation as a whole, do
you think that there is something coming, something brewing or
will it simply be met with stoic passivity and whatever
comes next? And also pertinent to Rob's point about why
why are they doing this?
Speaker 3: Well, you know I have a I suppose different beyond this,
and I'm sure Rob will agree. I think we should
arrest more people who write comedic TV shows. No, I've
utterly appalled by this one. I wondered if this one
was going to be different in its consequences. You know
what bothered me about this, James, was that this could
not be put down to one cop who misinterpreted the
law or was rash or in the heat of the moment,
made a poor decision. They tracked Graham Lennarhan across the Atlantic.
They coordinated with IATA and the airlines they went to
Heathrow Airport, five of them to arrest him. That's premeditated.
That's a decision that you make and execute, and that
was qualitatively different, I think than what has come before,
which is the police have seen something. God my goodness. Okay,
now I think it's absurd what has happened before. But
you just cannot see this as anything other than the
flowering of government policy. And I don't know if the
British are as upset about it as they should be,
and as upset about it as they would need to
be to get it changed. They don't have the same
free speech culture we have now. The people who have
come in from other countries probably don't have great views
on free speech. There are a lot of problems in
England with immigration, and we all see the videos. But
it is more the case, in my view, that those
people who have come from elsewhere are used by existing
British people as justification for sense laws than that the
people who have come in are the driving force behind them,
because there.
Speaker 1: Aren't that many of them.
Speaker 3: The British, at least until now, are okay with censorship.
They put these laws in. Most of the bad free
speech laws in England were put into place in the sixties,
seventies and eighties. One of them was signed by Margaret Thatcher,
who I think is generally great, but was reflective of
her nation and class in being hostile toward edge case
speech in a way that Americans simply are not. So
you know, the way this is sometimes cast in America
is the plucky British against and then you can insert
the people we dislike on the other side. But actually,
the plucky British have for fifty sixty years been really
tolerant of the government telling them what they can and
can't say. Why I think this might be different, and
why I am a little bit optimistic is what the
British have started to notice is that the law is
enforced completely differently against some groups than others.
Speaker 1: Two to your justices a free right.
Speaker 3: And actually that is something that defends British people far
more than censorship. The British have a very strong sense
of fair play. The law has been used for years
against all types. My joke is their equal opportunity census.
So the Muslims get arrested for criticizing the Christians, and
the Christians get arrested for criticizing the Muslims, and the
atheists get accused of criticizing both of them and they
all go to jail together. But that's not happening now.
We saw this with Lucy Connolly, we saw this with
Graham Lenihan.
Speaker 1: They are now.
Speaker 3: Arresting certain people and letting others go, and that I
wonder if that will be the key to.
Speaker 1: Change all right, Well, perhaps the speaks laws and their
acquiescence too. There might be a consequence of being steeped
in the welfare state and having a paternalistic government over them.
But when it comes to the decision by the government
to forcibly change the demographics of the Septate dial it
was Rob was saying. He was like, and I think
it goes back to a whole bunch of simple things
we've talked about here in the podcast before. Tony Blair
wants cool Britannia, Right, the whole progressive movement doesn't want
to be steeped in nationalism. They hate the flags, they
hate all that waving. They think it's that it's the
last refuge of the scoundrel, that it's intellectually undefensible in
the modern world, that nationalism leads to tribalism, which leads
to war, and they just don't like it. And for
people who are not very smart and who are stupid. Actually,
this just tends to drip down until you are a
considered to be a good person. The more you drip
disdain for Western culture, western society, western history, and the
rest of it. Because it's bad. It did all the
bad things in the world. It had the wars. That's it.
It's bad. And somehow if we even that out by
changing the demographic mix, we will be better because diversities
are strength and multiculturalism makes us a society better, so
they say, And I think they're doing it because they
just have these basic boilerplate progressive ideas of transnational bliss
and everybody getting together in kumba yaing at the rest
of it, as well as exoticizing the outsider in the
other and the others as well as enjoying. Actually, when
people that they don't like are having a hard time
of it because their neighborhoods have changed. Uh, there's a
there's an element of just almost juvenile resentment and revenge
and and utter utter indifference to the culture that that
that is made In the end that's what I think.
They're not very smart and they think they're doing well.
Speaker 2: Mhmm yeah, I guess my, my, we don't have to
keep a laboring this because it's so depressing. But the
thing that strikes me is that all the all of
my encounters with that culture, that far and weird culture
that Charlie fled, is that there is that they're funny
British irony, Like they invented this kind of like incredibly
elaborate smart humor that you know, what's that great you
know phrase.
Speaker 1: It just it.
Speaker 2: If you ever go out with English people, two thirds
of the conversation is just you know, insulting each other
in more interesting ways. And to give that up, to decide, no,
we're gonna give this thing up. This like it's like
the French saying they're not gonna have Holliday sauce anymore.
It's like, no, no, this is what makes you you.
Speaker 1: And to.
Speaker 2: Resting at Comedian for his funny tweets is about the
least British thing I can imagine. That is a place
that I've always thought of as a very very funny
place where the guy driving the cab is he's funny.
People are funny and the minute they get touchy and
they lose that and they decide that this great contribution
we made to world culture, which is irony and double
speak and satire and a raised eyebrow and Benny Hill, Right, boy,
I don't know what else you got, Benny so.
Speaker 1: Last Wu Leonard and Heathrow. You expected yackety sacks to
be playing over the sound system, some super goggling after
goggling after half clad women.
Speaker 2: I'm a hashtag king, Benny.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing of it is is it's not going
to stop there. I mean they're hauling up canaries from
the coal mine, pining for the Fjords every single day.
In addition to the Online Safety Act, in an addition to
the len in case, there's the banter the banter bands
that are coming to the pubs where if anybody says
something that the bar made me take I'm sorry, the
bar person takes offense to that, the you have to
take the pub owner can be taken to course, so
you know we're not I have a vision of England
in the future where everybody is sitting underneath black cones
of silence from gets smart and it's the only safe
place that they can exist, but even those will be
bugged because you'll have AI reading your lips elsewhere in Chicago,
the mayor of Chicago has said that he's going to
defend the city against the fascists to take over, that
it's coming. Fifty eight people shot up with the weekend.
He said, they're going to defend the democracy of the
city of Chicago's at Mayor Brandon Johnson quote, We're going
to protect the humanity of every single person in the
city of Chicago. And by doing that, I mean he's
going to keep anyone from coming in apparently to instill order.
And Pritzkrow waved it off and said, look, you know,
it's a big city. What are you going to do.
I always loved when I was hearing something the other
day about somebody talking about it was a network newsperson.
They talked about, Yeah, there were fifty eight shootings in
Chicago and seven people died, but crime is down twenty percent.
And I thought, the reason that I hate the news
is because the proper way, the smart way, is to
invert that in your delivery. You start by saying, statistics
show that the crime is down twenty percent in Chicago, Nevertheless,
fifty eight people were killed, because that sort of aligns
with how people feel about this. Stats don't do anything.
Point give to showing somebody a red line going down
with an arrow doesn't mean anything if the vibe their
city is dangerous. So why do you think Chicago is
going to play out if the National Guard goes in.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Charlie. You're a law and order you
had a law of order.
Speaker 3: I I think this is really difficult because, on the
one hand, I do not understand how Chicago doesn't fix itself,
and I think what Prisca said, oh as a city
is crazy, and the politics of this are clearly and
Trump's favor. On the other hand, I defended to the
Hill the deployment of federal offices in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Because Washington d C.
Speaker 3: Is a federal district and really has no more capacity
to push back against federal control than you know, the
north West Territory did. That is not true of Chicago,
It's not true of Illinois. It is a state. And
the recent decision out of California, which held that the
federal government cannot perform police functions under the posscomat Artist
Act probably applies here too. So my tragic conclusion is
that Chicago has for decades been run by people who
don't want to fix the crime problem, that that is outrageous,
but that the tools the federal government has to do
anything about it are limited, and Trump hasn't changed that.
So I don't think a great deal is actually going
to happen, other than that this will cause a national
desbate in which the Democrats will say crazy things for
two months. And that's what Trump wants because he understands
that they're going to come out in favor of crime,
which I don't think that's hyperbole. That is what they've
done in DC. They haven't come out against federal troops.
Speaker 1: Some have.
Speaker 3: They've largely said it's fine, it's not fine.
Speaker 1: Well, Robbie, as Charlie noted, they've made them come out
in favor of the crime and also this week in
favor of Venezuela and drug smugglers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, yeah, it's very strange. I mean, I just
there's a there's a moment. I think somebody told me
there's a moment in the nineteen eighty eight when George H. W.
Bush was on TV doing something some you know, not campaign,
he was not a great campaigner, and Governor Ducaccus Michael
Dacacus of Massachusetts watching it with some friends. They're watching
in the news and he turns to his friends and
he says, I can't believe I'm losing to this guy.
And it got out and it was actually part of
a Sarien Life sketch I think the following week where
I think it was John Levitt says, I can't believe
I'm losing to this guy, and everybody laughed, and I
feel like that's that's The Democrats are still in that loop,
and they've had since twenty sixteen to kind of get
out of it, but they're still stuck on square one,
which is I can't believe I'm losing this guy. And
he answers, yes, you are losing to this guy, So
now what what you do about that? They still they're
still astonished, and he's I mean, you know, we are
not talking about the most disciplined opponent Trump, right, but
that he manages just by his own sheer, chaotic personality
to get them to say incredibly dumb things, to get
them to choose to be weird rather than to be normal.
And that is a very mean, you know, I I
just don't understand the level of sort of mental and
emotional imbalance that must be just prevalent in the sort
of the democratic think machine.
Speaker 1: But he's making them say what they believe he's making
by being on the eighty side of an eighty twenty issue.
They feel empowered, they feel righteous, They feel it is
necessary for them to defend the twenty percent of the
twenty percent of it because it's what it's what Either
it's either what they believe or what they know that
they have to say in order to be part of
the party, because the lanes of narrowed the party definitions shift.
What it means to be a liberal, what it means
to be a conservative. It's not you know, it's not
nineteen eighty three and eighty four anymore. They have to
be full throated in their condemnation of this, and they
have to be full throated in their endorsement of these
other things. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's they maneuver themselves of that position. I mean,
there are other they have other options. I just I
just my I have a lot of friends who are
would describe themselves have described themselves as sort of moderate
to conservative Democrats, and they are just baffled like that.
What is keeping people from saying crime is bad? It's
just a hard What is keeping people from saying that?
Speaker 1: And the voice in the back of their head that
says that crime comes from socio economic favor of factors
and racism, and that the carceral state that imprisoning people
and the rest of it is unjust because it has
disparate impact and all of these things that they've been
rolled off their tongue for the last twenty years. If
that's if you can't say you can't say crime, I
mean they will. I mean on Reddit. I go there
and you will find people condemning it. They hate it.
But again, the solutions are always midnight basketball. The solutions
are always that is mantling of white supremacy. I mean,
the solutions are never the sort of thing that made
Fox Butterfield so confused. Solutions are never take the guy
who just did the bad thing with a gun and
put him in this box for ten years. It's never
that you can't have that. It doesn't rehabilitate them, it's
not restorative, it's not any of those things. Speaking of Reddit, uh,
big question. I read it last week whether Trump was
dead on a speculation about his his his puffy ankles.
I guess his his puffy hand cosmetics in the hand
is to cover up some sort of infusion. Even Tim
Waltz got into the act, showing that he's just that
that that midwestern, good old, fine spirited dad that he is,
was joking about maybe waking up and getting news that
the president's dead. What I can't figure out about this
is one why it thinks that, why the left thinks
this makes them look good. I mean, it's been it's
been the norm ever since Kathy Griffith held out the
bloody severed head. We get it, you want them dead,
we get it. But do they realize that if Trump dies,
we get vance and Vance might be exactly what they
hate in Trump, except without the things that make people
go nuts. So what'd you guys think of the Trump
death watch this weekend?
Speaker 2: I thought it was weird. I mean, what's the what
was the You know, he's an elderly, extremely overweight man
who does not exercise, and we're wondering why his ankles
are swollen. It's like we had to call him Sherlock,
doctor Sherlock Holmes for this. He's an old fat man
who eats Big Max all the time. So yeah, he's
gonna be a little puffy and especially around the ankles.
And he probably gets you know, IV drips every now
and then because that's the fad, and they go in
the in the hand, and he wants to cover that
up with makeup because he's got plenty of makeup. You know,
he spends an hour and a half every day in
his hair and makeup, doing his own hair and makeup.
So it's not like he like this is a non mystery.
They keep they keep I keep feeling like these people
are are are every week they are being reintroduced to
the character of Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 1: They did know who he was. It's bard to me,
Charles were going to end with that, so I'll let
you have the last word on that.
Speaker 3: In the story, I was at a wedding in Philadelphia
for most of the weekend and then came back to
work on Tuesday to the news that Donald Trump wasn't
dead and wondered why everyone had assumed that he was.
This was probably an online I can assure you that
over three days in Philadelphia, having met hundreds of people
at this wedding and elsewhere, not one person said to me,
is the President dead? So I was shocked by this, James,
and confused it.
Speaker 1: Could be something that existed online in a proportion out
of whack with actual real world events and thoughts. Gosh,
who could have seen that coming? Then again, you know,
the other day on an interview, Joey Reid said, right,
I almost actually cared about what Joey Reid said. I don't,
but we hope that you've cared about what we've said,
because it's been fun to say it, and it's been
great to have brother Rob back with us again. You're
welcome anytime, you know, I love it.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know when I when I can take
a take time out for my religious studies, you know.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, you know, take off the itchy hairshirt and
the ton sewer. Yeah, put on civilian clothes and income
here smelling faintly of wax and benedictine and and hazel
nuts and all the rest of it. I've been great
to have you here, and Charles good as ever. Give
my regards to Florida, give my regards to Princeton, and
everybody else. Should do two things or maybe three Prize
picks will want broadcast was brought to them. Pick up
the app, give it a look, support us by becoming
part of the best place for civil center right conversations
would be be picking up Ricochet, of course, which has
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when we say go to Ricochet, what we mean is
sign up and you know, for a little bit of
the chit ching, you get access to the member feed,
which is where a true community has arisen over the years.
And if you could give us a five minute five start,
no five minute review on Apple podcasts, I want you
to go and speak and transcribe for five minutes everything
you love about it and paste it into podcast review.
Helps new listeners discover us, which keeps the show going,
which means that we're going to be here forever and
ever and ever. I shouldn't say that to Robie anyway,
it's been great, Thank you guys, and we'll see every
one of the comments in Ricochet four point what is
it now?
Speaker 3: Charles four point fourteen point eleven point four.
Speaker 1: That's what it was going to say. Great, bye bye,