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