Speaker 1: Good cool. Yeah, well excellent.
Speaker 2: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
what you can do for your country. Mister gorbu Shaw,
tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast number seven
hundred and thirty eight. Today it's Stephen Hayward sitting in
James Lilac's host chair and joined by some stranger named
Rob Long. Yeah, we're gonna kick around the news and
some reader questions.
Speaker 3: So let's say, waite, was James gonna was James gonna
do this and then he found it? I was gonna
do what he's done, doumb You know no, he's not
gonna show right, Okay, but I think you just traveled
on the ending, so I think it.
Speaker 1: No, sorry, that's all right.
Speaker 2: I think I should probably do that again.
Speaker 1: Perry, will you make it sloppy? Sloppy works?
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody to Ricochet Podcast seven thirty eight, And sure
enough it's me and Rob Long today taking your questions.
Fine and finally and the camelon, well that's.
Speaker 1: On way putting it.
Speaker 2: Look, we've got some great reader questions and as you
are our resident theologian in training, we do want to
ask you about the papal succession that's currently getting underway,
even though Rob, you should know that high trich Episcopalians
like yourself I always refer to as non Union Catholics.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Take that for what it's worth.
Speaker 2: But before we get into all that, i'd like to
get your thoughts on And I know you've been at
a monastery for the last several days on retreat, so
you may have missed all this. But there's quite a
lively debate going on on the sort of right intelligentsia
in the last week, started by a news story in
the Wall Street Journal called Meet Maga's Favorite Communists, and
it's mostly about how people like Chris Rufo have decided
we need to emulate Gromsky's famous long March for the
institutions and contest the left for power. And there's been
a lot of people, as you may know, who are saying,
you know, some of what Trump's doing with the universities,
I'm not too sure this is a good idea. It
may come back to bite us. Isn't this really an
abuse of federal power of the kind that we normally
object to on principle? And all that is yes on
the internet, And I think that you know, Genteel friends
of ours, like Jonah Goldberg, I think represents the point
of view that the right has always been at its
strongest when it emphasized ideas. You know the famous phrase
Richard Weaver, ideas have consequences. And you know my counter
to this is I've always agreed with that. I think
it was true in conservative history, going back to you know,
the rise of Reagan and so forth. But you know
the other thing that has consequences day to day are
votes on hiring in tenure committees in universities, and we
ain't got any of those. And so my own view
is I've been kind of tilting toward the RUFO direction, saying,
you know, if the if the left says it's all
about power, then maybe we're gonna have to play their game.
Speaker 1: It's got its obvious hazards.
Speaker 2: But I don't know if you follow any of this
at all, or even if you haven't, you can give
me yours first thoughts on that brief summary I just
provided you.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I I diviy in half. I mean
not actually in half. I mean I divide it in
terms of the national interest and.
Speaker 1: National lack of interest.
Speaker 3: In the national interest, I think it's hard to argue
that government funding in science, research, technology has not had
a force multiplier in the national product and the economy.
I mean, it's a hard it hurts to argue that
for me because I'm a Milton Friedman guy, and I
think no. But it's just hard to argue that that
did not happen. Just looking at the past four years,
fifty years, even of a massive government.
Speaker 1: Investment in research and technology.
Speaker 3: And science, hard science, theoretical science, rocket science, all sciences,
there is zero national interest in the country support being
taxpayer supporting or even the country supporting.
Speaker 1: English majors right, which I want, absolutely zero.
Speaker 3: And there is there's cascades of money out there that
is private that could basically fund that. And so when
you find people I think, I mean, you know, everybody
seeks the science has been corrupt too. I'm just gonna
set that argument aside for a minute.
Speaker 1: When you look at.
Speaker 3: How much money is just sluiced into higher education for
stuff that is absolutely at least the best you can say,
it's irrelevant to the national interests. You know, that's got
to stop, and that should stop. But I would say
two conservatives that the problem isn't to spend federal money
the way you want to spend it. The problem is
to not spend federal money at all. And right wingers.
Here's the problem with the right wingers. And I know
I'm all right, I know I've been you know, I've
been raising money from them for a long time.
Speaker 1: They are not building a useful alternative.
Speaker 3: Like if you go to a conservative billionaire philanthropist and
you say I want to publish, say seven books, I
want to do a project, or I want to do
a podcast or whatever, they will ask you if you, hey,
do you think that you could you you would get
on Sean Hannity with this, You think you could do this? Yes,
So conservatives in general tend to be obsessed with the
stardom within the conservative bubble, which is I understand that
it's a great business, but it does not move the needle,
whereas you find liberals are much much more uh creative
and strategic about the audiences that they're going for. And
I just think we just need to do that on
the right. And instead of arguing about where government money
should be spent, I mean, I think it should be
spent on stem and I don't think it's spent an
it's not stem. We should be arguing about, okay, well,
if you're all these rich guys.
Speaker 1: Build something.
Speaker 3: The idea that that Harvard and Yale and Princeton and
all the sort of these speak brands are inviolate and
eternal and some have some kind of aristocratic privilege is
anathema to a conservative viewpoint. We should be saying, no, no, no, no.
We criticize, as Michelangelo said, criticized by creating where is
the new Harvard?
Speaker 1: Where is the new Yale? These are these are institutions.
Speaker 3: That are out of gas and out of UH, out
of energy, and out of UH innovation. But they're not
out of this money. But there's plenty of money. There's
so much money build a new Harvard, build build a
new high school?
Speaker 2: Right, well, there is, uh. I mean there are a
couple of examples. I mean, one of course, where sort
of our buildillionaires so to speak, have funded quite adequately
this new startup University of Austin down in Texas, and
I think it's it's off to a great start, and
I think it's going to be a great success. And
then maybe someone will say we should do five more
of those, specifically on the Harvard question, you know, I
think people were shocked to learn that Harvard is, you know,
getting something like eight billion dollars from the federal government
when they have a fifty three billion dollar endowment and
a lot of them Dowman is tied up with restrictions
because donors like that. But you know, to the extent
that they're losing two or three billion immediately for scientific research. Supposedly,
you know, Bill Gates could write a check for that,
although he dropped out of Harvard, So I mean, I
think it's worth it. But that's another story, right, Yeah,
I'll mentioned and then there's also the Schools of Pacific
Education popping up in Red States at the public universities,
and that's a long story. I'm close to several of
those efforts and know a lot about them, and they're
explicitly wanting to hire more conservative faculty. They're doing cluster
hires for conservatives for a change, and we'll see there's
faculty resistance going on. That's a long story. But the
last thing I'll tell you about rob to cheer you up,
which you may not have heard the news, is over
one hundred faculty at Yale put out a letter a
few weeks ago didn't get any press calling on the administration, sorry,
calling for an independent audit of administrative bloat at Yale.
And apparently administrators out number faculty is something like five
to one at Yale. I mean, I've heard it's bad,
but that's way off the chart. And my favorite line
in a letter is students don't come to Yale for
the administration anyway. It's a very plus truth. It's fabulous
and you know, we'll see if this happens. But I've
been waiting, wondering for a long time when our faculty
going to revolt against all these administrators and demts. All
of them are paid with more than faculty usually who
do nothing useful at all. And anyway, so let's keep
track of that because I think that is a fun
story to watch.
Speaker 1: And I totally agree.
Speaker 3: I mean, the administrative bloat is an education starts in
you know, pre K, and it goes all the way
up to graduate school and there's been no stop to it.
But this is this is what you This is why
right where are things? Where are we getting good stuff?
What products are in the marketplace that are good things
and innovative and cheap and getting cheaper and they are
all all to an industry. They are industries that are
not subsidized in any way. FED higher education is subsidized
at the price of a higher A year at a
college is absolutely mapped on top of the amount of
money you can borrow. If that money went down one
hundred dollars, the cost would go down one hundred dollars.
If it goes up one hundred dollars, the cost goes
up one hundred dollars. It is the same with healthcare.
It is everything that is subsidized costs more because you
and and we essentially are covering the hard stuff that
places like Harbon Neil used to do. I mean Harvard
really really to be fair as a as an entity.
Speaker 1: Harv is a.
Speaker 3: Healthcare company with a university attached to it. I mean
just financially, it's what it is. It's the same thing
with you. It's a hospital network with a university attached,
so we cover It's a classic government gambit, right, We're
going to cover all of the hard things and important
things that you do, and the rest of the money
you get to hire you know, Marx's French deconstructive faculty.
And that is kind of how the government works with everybody, right,
we're gonna you know, if you're a socialist, like I
want the government to pay for everything important in my life,
and the money I have is going to be like
my little allowance and I can go and you know,
buy a latte if I want, And it really should
be the other way around, but we've allowed it to
sort of. You know, it's much easier to say I
want the government to do my healthcare because healthcare is
hard and gets my head hurt, so somebody else do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So all right, let's shift gears, because I think
the biggest story in the world right now is not
what's going on between Trump and all his enemies and whatnot.
It's that we are now facing the succession of the pope,
and even for non Union Catholics like you and me,
that's an important story. I mean, it has been for decades, right,
an important institution. And we have several reader questions from Ricochet.
The first one is from Aaron Hunt Ara Haunt. I'm
not sure how he says his name on his handle.
Do you have any are you handicapping who might be
the next pope or are you leaving that to the
you know, are true truly Roman friends.
Speaker 3: I am not handicapping it. I'm just I can you
could outline the considerations, right, I mean you the fastest
growing population, even Christian population in general, but definitely Catholic
poplation is in Africa what they call the term the
Global South, also South America, and while those people tend
to be on the left economically, they tend to have
very you know, the liberation theology has really taken roots
in a lot of those places. So we call them conservative.
That's not quite. They doesn't really sort of overlap with
our sense of politics, but they tend to be very
socially conservative. So if you're a cardinal in you know,
in the in the now real life reality TV movie
of Conclave, which is happening, this is so great, That's
what that's what you're thinking about, Like, like do I
you know, a lot of these people were elevated by
by Francis, so it's presumably they are sort of more
aligned with his you know, modified progressive politics, which are
you know, they're not quite He's not quite the wacky
red that we think he is. But you can only
go so far, and you can't lose Africa. You lose
Africa you lose the church and and and the Catholic
sort of thinkers and strategists that I know or I've
been reading.
Speaker 1: You know, when you read an article by them, you.
Speaker 3: Skip the first three paragraphs because the first three paragraphs
are just throw clearing about you know this, and the
fourth and fifth of the In the media, it's it's
a pure marketing play, like if we do this, we
lose Africa. If we do this, we can get Asia.
It's Asia growing faster and whatever are the growth? Where
are the opportunities of growth? And it reminds me of
this sort of ecumenical councils that happened in the early
twentieth century, and also the sort of the Catholic councils
that happened throughout the fifteen sixteen seventeenth century where they
didn't have the the Mba language that we have now.
But that's what we're really talking about. It's like, where
are the people for us? We're losing this group. How
do we know we're losing Catholics in Europe during the
Reformation Where we're going to find some more. We're going
to find some more in the New World. And I
think that's that's part of.
Speaker 2: What's going on. So Joseph Stanko asks, and I'm going
to mend this question, what would Rob do? I hear
elected pope, and I want to add what papal name
would you choose?
Speaker 1: And what state?
Speaker 2: What steps would you take us Pope to revive the
old Hollywood studio system?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I all I can say is that
I just steal from a famous Bill Buckley joke.
Speaker 1: But would Rob you, if you like to, Pope, demand
to recount?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't be the only one. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know that Roman Catholic Church is so bananas
and bizarre and wonderful to me. I don't I don't
know what I would do. I think I think you
have to uh yeah, and I think it'll be healthy
for them to come. If you're going to maintain I
think we'll say, you know, I totally understand why they
would do the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church all
that stuff. If you're going to maintain those, you refresh
the arguments for them. Instead of doubling down on tradition,
you double down on a on a real doctrinal or
even you know, theological argument and make them.
Speaker 2: I think people make them well, you know, you do
hear today there's a lot of press about people going
back to traditional churches, both Protestant and Catholic. I think
especially young men. I mean, I've seen some data recently
that young men are now outnumbering young women going to church.
I think it's an aspect of what sometimes called bro
culture and all these sort of young not necessarily all right,
but people who are into weightlifting and yeah, right, it's
just the leobros all that.
Speaker 1: I love that theobros.
Speaker 2: That's great, and there's a lot of it happening and
I never saw this coming, but so I don't know.
I mean, you know, it could be an interesting thing
where it's the old folks who have turned out to
be the post Vatican to you know, left leaning culturally
and theologically, and it's the young folks who are going
to lead it back to tradition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or at least the young folks are going to
lead back to sort of a more solid ground. Clearly,
there's a hunger I think I think the story of
I mean I'm just speaking purely on a on a
Western and European level, right, So American European level, the
story of young men returning to the church. Twenty three
percent of young men I just read this in the
in the UK say they're churchgoers. That's that's a like
of eighteen to twenty four or something. That's a giant,
giant number. And now I mean and they and they
outnumber and the Catholics outnumbered the Anglicans in the UK,
which is kind of astonishing. So there's something, there is
a hunger for something. A lot of it, I think
is that this lost generation of young men. The question
about you know, the sort of absent fatherhood I think,
or a different kind of fatherhood. I think we decided
the young men were evil and bad and needed to
be whipped into shape. And we guess what, we whipped
them into submission. And they every impulse that a young
man has, pretty much that it's biological impulse, has been outlawed. Yeah,
and we don't know what to do with him. And
the great story, I think, and which should make us
all happy, is that there are things to do and
they and know some of those young men are finding
it themselves, and that is kind of yeah, kind of yeah,
but dangerous.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, you know the contrast between the two pops back
Benedict the sixteenth, very conservative, and then Francis who is
much more liberal. I think in many ways, not always.
It's very confusing for an outsider, and so who knows
this conclave could go on a long time. And really
it's too bad that the Vatican doesn't have Bamboo HR
available to them to help them with this process.
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it was so easy for a rep the Vatican or
anybody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is not easy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although I mean it's like as a you know,
in the show show business way of looking at things
is always said of show business related uh, you know,
when there's a I think somebody told me once that
they were in a meeting someone, you know, they were
talking about a couple of movies and some studio was
releasing a movie and so, oh my god, there's a
school shooting.
Speaker 1: Oh no, uh what about this?
Speaker 3: And the argument that the tragedy was this the movie
about to re released has that shooting scene. Well, you know, yeah,
but there's other tragedies happening in a school shooting. But
the first thing that the show business people do is
if they think about themselves. There's an old story about,
you know, two guys meeting, two agents meeting for lunch
and one gets there early the restaurant and he's stead
of standing at the bar is having his iced tea.
He's looking at the news and it's been a terrible
plane crash. Everybody, you know, some plane went down, three
hundred people died. And his colleague arrives a little late
and says, what's going on, goes there's a plane plane crash.
People died, and this college says, oh my god, is
there anybody on it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And you know so that so I know the people
who conclave.
Speaker 3: The minute they woke up on Monday and said to Pop,
Francis died, they're like, yes.
Speaker 1: I mean terrible tragedy, but yes, right, because it's gonna
you know what, the conclave rentals go way up because
people want to know what's going on, and the movie's
really good for that as a procedural. It's fantastic. I
haven't seen it, but it's on my list.
Speaker 2: So before we switch gears here to a different subject track,
I will mention that I did see a great meme
the last couple of days. And it's a split screen,
and the first one is Catholics when they've chosen a
new pope, and it sees white smoke coming out of
the Vatican chimney, and then the bottom panel is baptist
when they picked a new pastor and the scuple of
guys huddled over steak on the grill in the backyard, which, yeah,
that's perfect right, all right, we'll go back to politics
here for a bit. Doctor Bastiat, who, by the way,
published his one thousandth.
Speaker 1: Ricochet post yesterday.
Speaker 2: Congratulations, I know, I mean he gets Does he get
a prize for that?
Speaker 1: Guys?
Speaker 2: I mean he should get some kind.
Speaker 1: Of it's the deep appreciation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So he's asking I guess both of us,
but I'll give you first crack in twenty twenty five,
what is the fundamental difference between a Republican voter and
a democratic voter, and we don't want to take the
rest of the show for that because.
Speaker 1: That could be I don't know. I honestly don't know,
and I and again I don't, I don't.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, it's it's a volatile and hard to
figure out. And we naturally, especially conservatives, naturally well, I
mean everybody's a conservative in this perspective, naturally loathe and
despised all change and calamity, or at least tumult. But
I think that we are we are in the middle
of a transition, and I think we're in the middle
of new parties being sort of created. They may keep
the same names, but they are morphing and becoming unrecognizable
to their you know, whatever came before them twenty years before.
And that I think is a part of American history
that we have just decided we just didn't pay attention to.
Speaker 1: And I think I think this is going to be
I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't know about twenty twenty five, but I think
it twenty these those two parties, I don't think they'll
both be around. But if they are around, I don't
think they're going to resemble what they used to do.
I mean, I really don't I think they're gonna be different.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think that there's one way in
which the parties resemble each other, not on their level
of ideas and what their policy objects are. They're quite
different there. But I'm starting to pick up a party
dynamic that you can trace an arc of over the
last twenty years.
Speaker 1: So you know, what explains Trump.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that explains Trump is that Republicans,
a lot of the grassroots, the conservative base, they were
tired of conventional Republicans losing to Barack Obama, right, and
so people, I mean, I'm sure you've heard all the
rhetoric of people dumping on you know, first Mitt Romney
and then John McCain for not being tough enough, not
fighting hard enough, and so forth, or people who just
like Mitch McConnell, which I think is gravely mistaken. I
think he's been a very effective sent maybe the most
effective Senate leader since Lyndon Johnson, because that's a job
that requires a lot of skill to do what he's done.
And I don't you know, Okay, so people take out
their frustrations on him, and so you know, Trump came
along as a breadth of fresh air and something new
and different and breaks all the China and so forth. Now,
I think Democrats are about to go through the same process.
You know, they've now lost to Trump twice. I think
there's huge buyers regret that they settled on Joe Biden
in twenty twenty and then stuck with him in twenty
twenty four. And so suddenly I am watching, as I'm
sure you may, Bernie Sanders, who is the sentimental favorite
of the lot of the party, is handing off the
mantle obviously to Alexandria Acossio Cortez. And I mean, right now,
I don't like to make these kind of predictions because
they're usually wrong, but right now she's my front runner
for twenty twenty eight. I think you're about to see
the Democrats lurks to They want their Trump or something
like it, and they think they think it's going to
be her or somebody like her. I still think they're
better off with you know, Andy Basher or maybe even
Governor Wes Moore of Maryland or Shapiro Pennsylvani. Yeah, they're
more conventional figures, and I think the party base wants
a brawler. They want their own Trump and I think
that may lead them into a disaster. I think they
could be heading to another McGovern in three years, depending
on everything else.
Speaker 3: Right, that's what they see people said about Trump in
twenty sixteen. I mean, I think variet these groups are wrong.
I mean, I think the idea that Republicans were losing
and that Trump turned that around is just fundamentally wrong.
I mean, when when Barack Obama won a fifty eight
percent popular vote majority, I think, or fifty three percent.
Speaker 1: It wasn't fifty three, It wasn't that.
Speaker 3: It was a giant, giant victory in two thousand and eight,
and it was so big that when he that in
twenty twelve, when he got a real run for his
money in the box office, in the ballot box, the
Bridian slip, he put so many votes that he could
still lose a lot of votes and still win. But
in twenty ten, the Republican took over the House and
Senate and stopped him in his tracks. And I think
sometimes these parties believe that if they win the White House,
they win everything and they get everything they want, and
that is not the way American politics works. Sometimes I'm
talking to my friends who are Trump supporters or you know,
even Democrats when they're projecting in the future and they
Democrats have An important thing for Republicans to remember is
that this psychosis about defending and protecting a president even
if he's weak and ineffectual. We saw with Democrats in Obama,
you were not allowed to criticize Obama. You must protect
Obama at all cases. And you're seeing the Republicans do
at the same time, So they had this kind of
distorted view of the successes of these presidents. You know,
Trump is under it was a forty percent popularity barely
at this point. So if you're if you're AOC, you're like, well,
I could be forty percent popularity.
Speaker 1: I could probably do that, and we may be setting up.
Speaker 3: More volatility back and forth, back and forth, back and
forth with these parties, which is one of the reason
why they're out of gas. I don't I mean, I
guess what I would say is, uh, to understand American politics,
it's not a show. It's designed to not be a show.
It's designed to be a win, slow, complicated process, and
that if you win, the best you get, even if
you have the House, the White House, and the Senate,
you get like a C plus B minus version of
you want what you want, that's considered success. That's built
into the DNA of this country and the DNA of
this governance. There's no way to change that except to
change the government.
Speaker 2: Well ah, okay, Well that leads me to my one
last point on this, which is thinking as a constitutionalist.
One of things I've been saying to liberals lately, and
it really upsets them, is says, look what Trump is doing.
This is the presidency you have always wanted, and all
the precedents going back to flepland Roosevelt and Would Wilson.
Speaker 1: So what's your problem? What's your argument?
Speaker 2: And keep in mind that what do we hear from
Democrats the last few years when something's in their way?
Change it pack the Supreme Court, you know, let's abolish
the filibuster. That's not in the Constitution, but it's still,
you know, an institution they want to get rid of
because it's in their way. I do think, to answer
doctor Bostia's question, I do think Republicans are more constitutionalists
in a serious way.
Speaker 1: The Democrats are.
Speaker 2: The Democrats are the Constitution as a matter of convenience
when it suits them. Rhetorically. And by the way, you know,
Trump has made these attacks on judges, you know, and
tweets and so forth. I tell people go back and
read not Roosevelt's court packing proposal, but read the speeches
he gave in nineteen thirty seven, attacking the court with
amazing ferocity. And it's way beyond anything Trump is said
about the court. And oh yeah, the idea that everybody
was all well behaved and American politics, it's long, long span,
resembles Trump more than yep, yep. I've been tron liberal.
I did this at the university, caught out a boulder
a couple of weeks ago, to gasps in the audience.
I just said, take these statements from Roosevelt, put him
in the mouth of Trump and see how you like it.
Speaker 1: And they wouldn't, right.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if there will be a rebalancing, well,
if Congress will I mean the terrorists for example, I mean,
regulating commerce with foreign nations is a power of Congress
an Article one, section eight, and they delegated a wholesale
to the president forty fifty years ago. And now, I mean,
maybe that was it. Maybe it fits with some older
cases that said Congress can't do that, which held up
Roosevelt briefly in the thirties, and it would be nice
if we actually got some restoration of proper constitutional balance
out of all. For that, I thought, you know, Trump,
maybe he's doing the Lord's work inadvertently.
Speaker 3: I mean, we'll see, yeah, well definitely invertally, but there
is that argument. I mean, any any gloss of the
US Constitution is pretty much you know, you can be
summed up by saying, don't do anything. Don't you dare government,
don't you dare the Constitution. We've distorted it over the past,
especially the last fifty years, as a document that enshrines
the rights of citizens, which it does, but mostly what
it does is that it restricts the powers of government.
And that's what that's what That's what they started by saying,
we're not going to get out of hand. And it's like, well,
you know, it's so much easier, as we said before,
it's so much easier to have government do it all
this stuff. I don't even want to do it. I mean,
I would rather sit here, you know, on my phone,
play on my phone. And I think we're discovering that
government not doing things is a very very good, very
good strategy. You know, one of the things that annoys
me about this administration, the way it has annoyed me
about past administrations.
Speaker 1: Is how quickly they act. Like if I with my.
Speaker 3: Executive orders or my sort of you know, Council of
Economic Advisors, I can bring manufacturing back. I am, I
have a time machine and I and it's all just
this sort of nonsense to MSNBC slash talk radio boosterism
that isn't connected to reality and shouldn't be, because the
truth is that I don't want the government to start
planning the economy. I want free movement and capital and
entrepreneurship and innovation to do it.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's keep going on the issue list. Chris
Williamson asks about illegal immigration. So we have this peculiar circumstance,
and here I have to say, I'm on Trump's side
about the problem here the fine points not to sure about.
But you know, the Biden administration simply opened the borders
and let millions of people come in without any due process.
By the way, if you and I had tried to
bring a suit saying our rights are being violated by
having an open border, because it's distorting. You could make
the claim it's distorting the municipal finances of where I lived,
like in New York City and so forth. Yeah, but
that lawsuit would have been tossed out of court immediately
for lack of standing. Okay, told that we can't deport
anybody without full due process hearings, which would take years.
And this seems on the level of common sense to
be perverse, and I think I fully agree with all that.
Maybe Congress needs to change the statutes. I don't know,
but I don't know if you're following this close to
a rob or not, because there's something new about every
five hours on the subway it like, But do you
have a quick take on it?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: My quick take is that you know, this is the
problem with letting a untenable.
Speaker 1: Situation get even more intentable, right, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, the fundamental problem with open borders is this, you
can either have open borders or you can have a
welfare state. You cannot have right, right, And if we're
not willing to make these decisions, and this this was
really kind of a scale problem because it was you know,
I'm living in California for thirty years, and when I
moved to California nineteen eighty eight. There was legal immigrants everywhere,
and nobody thought it was a problem.
Speaker 1: That was not a problem.
Speaker 3: Nobody crossed the border for in the morning to sleep
in the busation. They're all working. Over time. That, like
a lot of things, a lot of things you can ignore,
gets very bad and starts to a media If you
if you're a black man, black American citizen, between the
ages of something and something else, probably at this point
now almost retired, you can genuinely quantify the harm that
illegal immigration or total lack of border enforcement has had
on that particular population.
Speaker 1: That that's like, you.
Speaker 3: Can't even argue that, So that that is that it's
just absolute economic truth, right, And so now we have
to figure out a way to sort of build out
of that without without losing our sense of due process. Right.
It's very dangerous because you don't really want to go
you don't really want to cut those corners. The smartest
thing for us to do is to focus less on
deportation and focus more on border enforcement and immediate deportation.
So you get those things done. So start like I mean,
obviously it's like low hanging fruit. Start the emergency stuff
first and then do the deportation stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's like, I mean, it's definitely a priority,
but it's not number one. It's got to be number five.
Speaker 2: Well, now here's an interesting figure that you may have heard.
Barack Obama during his two terms deported three million people.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, now our immigration friends like Mikero Correan like to
point out that those numbers are kind of phony because
they were counting as deportations people they apprehended at the
border and turned back.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 2: But point number one there is at least the Obama
administration intercepted people and turned them back, and the Biden
administration did none of that. Right, And what Trump has
proven is that if you're determined, it's actually pretty easy
to secure the border. I mean, the numbers have fallen
to an infinitesimly small level, smallest in forty or fifty years,
I think. And now, maybe some of that is, and
here I don't want to deprecate it is maybe this
is they've actually made people prayed across the border. That's
not entirely a bad thing in my mind, even though
it sounds kind of ugly. Perhaps I think also some
of these deportations because there's so many people who I
think would be eligible legitimately to be deported, the numbers
are too large to actually do it as a practical matter.
So now we're getting back to you know, Mitt Romney's
the one who used that phrase that cost him dearly
self deportation. And there are lots of anecdotes of people
who are leaving on their own because they don't want
to be swept up and sent to a prison in
El Salvador or any other place.
Speaker 1: Right, So, I don't know, I want to let this
play out.
Speaker 2: I'm you know, I give Trump the benefit of the
doubt on this, even though they're going to make mistakes,
just as law enforcement does always on everything. And by
the way, I mean, you know again I'm a bit
of a cynic, but getting the Democrats to defend a
guy who pretty much looked like he was an MS
thirteen gang member and right, I mean, what a work
a political genius that is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like you're the me too movement, it
must be twisting yourself at the pretzels, because that is
he is not a He's definitely a me too violator.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would, I'm a I'm a I'm a.
Speaker 3: You know, down the line squish, not a squish, but
down the line, you know, completely uncreative thinker. I get
my immigration advice from Mark Grecrian. He was only here's
your on the podcast, right, and his argument seems to
me to be right, which is that like, okay, the
deportations are crazyly hard and incredibly impossible to scale. That's
a self deportation one. And you you enforce that on
the everify sign, like if you can't get a job
here and then you go home, and that it's not
gonna be everybody, but it's gonna be it's gonna reduce
a huge number of people you have to and then
you just you and you have border security.
Speaker 1: And that said that, that's that way.
Speaker 3: The problem is getting worse, and then the organism kind
of digests and ejects and then processes the people who
are left. And I the DAD is a doable solution,
an actual solution. It doesn't sound very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So now here's an interesting question that's directed to me, Rob,
But I'll bet you have some insight and thoughts on
this sense you lived in Venice for such a long time.
It's from Sandra Blondie Bright in North Carolina, and she says,
you know, we're here in North Carolina. We're trying to
get back to normal after the hurricane several months ago
blew through, and there's lots of great volunteer efforts going on.
Speaker 1: I've heard all that.
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of social capital in that
part of North Carolina. Uh. The question is is what
type of things have you seen or heard about rebuilding
out here in the LA area after the fires? And
now it's maybe relevant that I am actually coming to
you this morning as we're recording from Malibu. It's graduation
day for the School of Public Policy, where I'm a
faculty member now.
Speaker 4: And so I so you're are you? Is that that's Pepperdine, right, Yes,
that's Pepperdine correct, Right, So this is your office at
Pepperdine we're looking at Yes it is. Yeah, I just
I don't have a shelves are not full of books.
But it's brand new for me. So, but the point
is I'm allowed the office. I gotta say, I I
don't want to help you, but I have a nice
view of the mountains out my windows.
Speaker 3: So you're looking at it, So leave you got a
view so, like I'm saying, right, Pepperdine has got to
be the most gorgeously situated university in the world.
Speaker 1: It's it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I joke. It's like teaching a club med and I
always ask the dean please don't give me a classroom
with windows out on the ocean, because then you know,
I'll be competing with the ocean as well as all
the kids smartphones right in class. But look, I'm only
a mile north of where Highway one Pacific Coast Highway
is closed to general traffic because of all the still
the excavation work or the you know, the demolition work,
which is going to take forever because a lot of
those houses when they burned down, you might have some
of the oldest bestos, so lead pained or this and that,
and plus just the fire creates lots of toxic residue.
And it's going very slowly. Uh. What I've heard is
that I think the city of la it may be
a little more now, but as of a week or
two ago, the only issued four four one two three
four four building permits for rebuilding of houses that burned down,
which is pathetic. I mean, they keep saying, oh, we're
going to you know, fast track the process. Well, it's
really not happening. And as for volunteer efforts, good luck.
I don't think they will let anybody in who wants
to volunteer to clear out lots. And I know two
people who lost their homes at least one in Pacific
Palisades and one in Pasadena. And you must know some
people rob from your long time, so many people in
your industry where they're in Pacific Palisades, And yeah, it's
it's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I actually have not I only know
one anecdote, which is a decide you know, don't it's
on a data point. But I know, and I don't
know this person personally, but I heard the story was
on a crew A member of the crew, a usual
member crew called below the line there and the budget dudey,
I think he gave us some focus puller. He hit
a job right on a movie cruise and lived in
a part of town called mar Vista, which is you know,
it's the most part of town but it's like it's
not fancy, and had a house there. I bought it
his family, like in the late seventies, early eighties, and
he was going to lose the house because there's don't
work in LA and there's been no work in that
in what he does, and so he was thinking that
I'm gonna have lose his house. We're probably gonna lose
the house and leave. And then the fires happened and
somebody offered to rent his house. Somebody from the Pacific
Pali state. It's offered to rent his house in mar Vista.
So there's always you know, and apparently he's filled with
guilt about this because you know, it's like, well, I
cants it.
Speaker 1: Now, I've saved my house. I get to rent it
out at a very high price, and I get.
Speaker 3: To you know, he and his wife, I think are
moving just out of town somewhere for now, anywhere.
Speaker 1: They're almost retired, and.
Speaker 3: I should I feel guilty, but I I'm it saved
my life. So I don't know make of that way
you will. Yeah, it doesn't really answer the question.
Speaker 2: But right, well, now I do have a show business
question for you from Gary McVeigh. Yeah, and he says,
so he points out that you know, you started out
the TV and film business, and in those days film
was art and TV was furniture. Is that one of
your phrases. It's okay, well it says it all changed
radically and today it's prestige. TV is on the top
of the heap artistically over theatrical films. Or is his
phrase I guess is TV is hot. Movies are old. Now.
I've heard you talk about this a little bit on
the The Glop podcast and a couple of your three
martini lunches. I'll give you a sort of my theory.
I'll add on to what Gary s is a long
form TV allows you to tell stories at glater leisure,
developed the characters more. I don't always like that. By
the way, I think I'm with you when someone I'm
exactly with you. When someone tells me, oh, it gets
good at episode five, I'm out say. I might even
get through episode one, right, this is ridiculous. But I
do think there's something to that. And I don't know.
Maybe I'm not sure if the pace of production is
actually longer because you have more time to set up shots.
And I don't know, but movies these days is uh, gosh,
it must be. I'm just guessing here because I've never
done it. But for directors and producers, you've got the
budget you've got a schedule, expensive actors, You're you want
to get it done expeditiously, and you may do fifteen
takes of a scene.
Speaker 1: Probably do. But the TV shows, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, I they do seem very lavishly produced. Whatever
I see a rerun from a show from even the eighties,
I'm just kind of amazing, so cheap, right, I mean,
you know an old magnum p I rerun, I just
laugh and giggle.
Speaker 3: In the seventies, you know, the seventies cop shows, if
you watch them, pretty much every episode this boom shadow
and somebody goes, I got some boom shadow, and that
meaning when the boom might come right in between the
lights and you can kind of see it the shadow,
And then the answer is like that's fine. Yeah, everything
has gotten easier, so everything to shoot, all movies or
everything's easier.
Speaker 1: You know they used to be. You know, you used
to have to like.
Speaker 3: Cable pullers and people like and even in TV if
you watch live TV, especially shows like you know, Today's
Show or elaborate of those things in New York City,
you know the number of people they had to employ
just to carry cable around. And then there's like twenty
years where they didn't carry those people. There was no
cable to carry, but you still had to hire those
people because the union rules for such so that you know,
you every one of these sets, you'd find there was
a room with a table and the doughnuts and just
guys sitting around because you couldn't fire them, but they
had nothing to do. A lot of that is I mean,
so it's gotten simpler. But the thing is, I would
say that, and I would say this. You know, Gary
is a film historian, a film buff. He's like ran
the American Cinema Foundation. That's how I've known it for years.
And I you know, here's the bad news for Gary.
It's that everything is TV.
Speaker 1: It isn't that one is one has moved up from prestige.
Speaker 3: The others dropped. There isn't the other one. There are
movies that have a theatrical release for weirdos the way
they still press vinyl. But it's all TV. And that
is because inexorably, for some reason, the screen wants to
get closer to the customer. And you know, so the
screen was first it was downtown and you know, the
big downtown movie theater, and then the screen and then
the screen moved to the suburbs, and then the screen
moved your pocket. And I don't think that's necessarily an improvement,
but I think it's a movement.
Speaker 2: Well all right now, it does strike me that there
are still a few movies or directors who managed to
produce movies that you really want to see in the theater.
So you think of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, you really wanted
to see that in a big theater. The top gun
to a movie, I think, same thing, you know, totally.
And then, of course the big hit right now is
the Minecraft movie, which has just torn up the box office.
Right that seemed kind of obvious to me that that
might be a hit. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know,
but it looks like it's still possible. And is that
replicable or those one offs you think?
Speaker 3: I think that the well, the irony is that they
are one offs, I think. But show business has always
been about one offs. It's only recently that we believe that,
oh no, everything should be a franchise and it should
be the Marvel Cinematic universe. That's that's completely bananas for
most people in show business. For almost one hundred years,
you had to come up with a story and make
a movie. So I think I think that that could
return because it's still kind of fun to go to
the movies, but you got to give me a reason
to go. That isn't Yeah that I but I would
just also say that that, you know, the the TV
shows that are serialized that seem to be working are
the ones that are kind of remind you of old
fashioned TV or old fashion movies. Reacher. I don't know
anybody watch Reacher. Yeah, you know, it's a huge hit
for Amazon. You watch that show and it's like it
is super super low rent. That show is cheap. I mean,
I'm watching that show and I'm thinking I have seen
that car before that set before you guys rented a
house and you're shooting you're shooting out the house, like
all the scenes of the house, and like there's no
there are no extras. The town square is always empty.
Speaker 1: Empty for no reason.
Speaker 3: It shouldn't be, you know, like and they just they
have no they just don't spend any money.
Speaker 1: But it's it's it works. It's fine. You don't need
that much money, all right.
Speaker 2: So I have a general question for the Ricochet podcast,
and then I've got a couple of exit questions for you,
Rob so Stad asks have you thought about putting together
an activity book titled Where's Peter?
Speaker 1: Where are You?
Speaker 2: Peter?
Speaker 3: Peter is taking a break and I think he's going
to return in Triumph, but he might also be doing
I think he's doing some writing too, So I mean,
and also I feel like, you know, look, we love
doing this and I love doing when I can. As
you know, I'm a humble cleric now, so I don't
have much time between my devotionals. But you know, refreshing,
the rushing, the voices in the formats always a good thing.
It's always a good thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been fun to do, I have to say.
So it's uh so all right, aturally, well I will.
It's nice of you to say I've been but look,
I'm similar do you. I'm a professional talker. I've been
doing this for a long time. Right, it's it comes
from professor itis and so forth. Yeah, all right, so
let's do this there. I'm gonna sort of combine a
few different questions into this one, which is you have
just finished or in the process of finishing right now,
your first year they're at seminary, how long is the
whole process.
Speaker 1: That three years, two years, three years, three years?
Speaker 2: Right? And do you have one or two takeaways or
main takeaways or and or surprises from your first year?
Speaker 3: The surprises I find from my classmates and colleagues who
come from non denominational traditions, ah, you know more got
tocostals some of them, but were even more not not
a a shoal.
Speaker 1: And how.
Speaker 3: How fun and funny they are, and how smart they
are and how passionate they are about renewing their faith
and their church and learning from other people. And I
find that was really really refreshing. And I and and
their lack of pretense, which is something that we in
the sort of Anglican cohort have to remind ourselves because
Episcopalians and Anglicans tend to be super pompous and tweet
and precious about everything. And it's nice to be around
young people who are filled with faith but but are
not that that's that's been really kind of glorious. The
second thing you discover, I mean, you know, it's a
funny thing. It's I don't know why I should know
this as a conservative, but you know, Santa Augustine, Saint Augustine.
Speaker 1: He was really good. Yep, yeah, he was really good.
Like that's really good stuff.
Speaker 3: And if you read it, you're like, oh man, damn,
that's a really good And then something that professor said
early on in the in the semester in our New
Testament class is a wonderful, wonderful writer, wonderful wonderful guy said,
you know, the people who translated the Bible from the Greek,
we're not idiots. So when you go and you do
a word study, you know, you don't expect to discover
something or don't start everything with like, you know, actually
the more accurate translation from the Hebrew of the Greek
is this. It's like, the people have been doing this
for a thousand years. So I have a little respect
for the people. Assume for a minute that the reason
it's lasted a thousand years, the reason that word has
lasted on a thousand years is because it's the right word.
It may not be, but don't start for the premise
of like I'm going to find out where you guys
are wrong, because you're just going to waste your time
and look like an idiot. And I thought, oh, yeah,
that's a very good point. That is not something that
you say to people in when they're beginning inquiry, and
in something you kind of say, you know, think a
new but partly he's like, you think a new but don't, yeah,
don't say dumb stuff about Greek, because people who've been
this for a long.
Speaker 2: Time, those old words have a lot of staying power. Uh,
it's something you just said. It tracks the court with me.
You actually have some people there from a Pentecostal background.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, Princeton has a very very broad appeal.
So there's interesting the you know, the Anglicans, and there's
some Anglican Anglo Catholics, and then there's some Roman Catholics,
and there's some Metecostals and some non Denominationals, and there's
some it's lousy of the Presbyterians because the Presbyterian started it.
But but yeah, you have you have this kind of
cacophonous group of of.
Speaker 2: Students. Well in a certain way that doesn't surprise me,
especially if I'm gonna run an idea by you and
see if it if you detect this and seminary also,
but I have long my own experience at graduate school
a long time ago now, but also from when I
talk to faculty and meet other graduate students. Is conservative
graduate students. Let's put this way. I had liberal professors
who said they loved having conservative students in the class,
not for a gratuitous argument, but because the conservatives took
the material more seriously. They didn't have the mentality do
we have to memorize this because it's going to be
on the test now. Our v was always like, why
did Madison say that? What's his reasoning? Maybe it's right,
And a lot of professors, even if they were new
deoliberals in my case, they liked that disposition among students.
And I am guessing that something similar happens at seminary.
You might have non denominational people, Pentecostals, people from a
culturally more conservative background than you think of her Ivy league,
who bring to the seminary a seriousness about the subject
matter and not a modern historicist condescension.
Speaker 1: Is that a reasonable proposition? I think that's true.
Speaker 3: I think they probably, like like anybody in the in
these kind in these theological institutions in harved Yale, Princeton, Virginia.
Let's say that, Duke, they're liberal, but they there is
this the purposefulness of the study the idea that it's
kind of a weird elevated trade school, right. I mean,
you're supposed to be the right, and you're and you're
encouraged to share that in class. You're you're absolutely they
were pretty much every every exam I've ever taken or
every paper I've written has had a section so please
think about these issues and apply them to what you
think they would apply to in the ministry future ministry.
And so I think that part of that, that purposefulness.
You just don't have a time or inclination too to
get too weird with it because or to be incendiary
or to scream at somebody in as who disagrees with
you politically, because we're here for a higher purpose. And
that purpose isn't to tear down. It's to sort of,
you know, figure out, yeah, where to go next. And
so I suspect it's it's it's one of the reasons
why the politics that are very liberal on the campus,
which I enjoyed. These are all smart people. I enjoyed
talking to them. They don't seem as furious as they
seem other places. They don't seem as like divisive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so all right, let's get out with this, Rob,
so you you one takeaway here is sant Augustine that
he was a really smart guy.
Speaker 1: Turns out he was good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so next year we'll want to find out if
you proceed on to the other Saint Thomas aquineas but
also done Scotus and Selm.
Speaker 1: I'll bet that.
Speaker 2: Before right. Well, that'll be fun to take up with
you next year. But for now, we want to thank
all of our readers for sending him questions. We want
to think Bamboo h R for sponsoring the Cricochet podcast.
Please go to Apple, Spotify, whatever place as you source
your podcast and give us a five star review and
we'll look forward to seeing you in the comments at Ricochet.
Speaker 1: Is it four or five point zero?
Speaker 2: Now I've lost track of what we're up to, but anyway, up,
see you he in soon, Rob.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is fun. Let's do it in okay, Bye
bye everybody,