Speaker 1: Well whiskey, come and take my pain, hondys all.
Speaker 2: Ray whiskey. Why think alone when you can drink it all?
Speaker 2: In with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders,
Speaker 2: Steve Hayward, John You and the International Woman of Mystery, Lucretia.
Speaker 3: Where they slapped it up and David, ain't you easy
Speaker 3: on the Sooda?
Speaker 2: Have you got a giving? Well, it's a Friday morning
Speaker 2: taping of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour, which means it's
Speaker 2: a little too early to have any whiskey, even for me.
Speaker 2: But John is with us in from Texas, Lucretia in
Speaker 2: her bat cave in Arizona, and I am back finding
Speaker 2: from Iceland and trying to get back in the swing
Speaker 2: of things. And one of the things John, I'll start
Speaker 2: with you that I did keep up catch up with
Speaker 2: the last few days is the number one show worldwide
Speaker 2: on Netflix by a lot is K Pop Demon Hunters.
Speaker 2: And since it's got the South Korean K pop theme,
Speaker 2: I mean not, you know, got to catch up with
Speaker 2: these things? Have you seen It's It's quite the thing.
Speaker 2: I've seen ten minutes.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna try again. I tried to watch it. I
Speaker 3: started it I couldn't take it, but I'll try again
Speaker 3: for the for our loyal loyal viewers and listeners. But
Speaker 3: I cannot understand how K pop and all this Demon
Speaker 3: Hunter stuff, which are these themes in Korean, like it's
Speaker 3: Korean kind of like adult anime, you know cartoons, has
Speaker 3: become a global phenomenon, and even people in the United
Speaker 3: States like this. It's it's just like this weird sort
Speaker 3: of combination of pop music and then sort of fantasy
Speaker 3: because it involves demons and hunting them, and the Demon
Speaker 3: Hunters themselves are a K pop band. It's just so
Speaker 3: weird that people love this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's so you know. One of the
Speaker 2: early scenes is these three the young ladies who were
Speaker 2: the pop stars, putting on their makeup, but between say,
Speaker 2: doing the mascara on one eye, left eye and then
Speaker 2: the right eye, they do some you know, karate kicks
Speaker 2: and kill some demons who are a Slant's say, I
Speaker 2: don't know, you know, I do remember you may remember this.
Speaker 1: I have to ask before we go on. Are they
Speaker 1: I mean, it is the idea that the real sort
Speaker 1: of evil demons, like the kind Jesus would kick out
Speaker 1: of people Okay, so I do after you're done, I
Speaker 1: have a comment about that, Steve.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, I mean, oh, I maybe heading the same
Speaker 2: direction as you. I remember fifteen years ago now, somebody
Speaker 2: put out a campy movie, I mean, a live action
Speaker 2: movie that was if I recall, I didn't see it,
Speaker 2: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.
Speaker 3: I thought this was amusing, that was kind of funny
Speaker 3: because it's so ludicrous. I mean, it was totally ludicrous.
Speaker 2: Well, I wanted to do, you know, Winston Churchill Nazi Hunter,
Speaker 2: except that was too literal. I think the Weekly Standard
Speaker 2: at a parody of you know, Harry Truman Nazi Hunter
Speaker 2: something like that. But the point is is that I think,
Speaker 2: I don't think I'll have time for this, but I'll
Speaker 2: bet I could work out a Ken Musougi style interpretation
Speaker 2: of how this is either Western Straussianism or Eastern Straussianism
Speaker 2: and who the demons are. I'll bet I could. I'll
Speaker 2: bet I could do that if I really try. But now, Lucretia,
Speaker 2: I think, you know, South Korea is this Protestant Christian culture.
Speaker 2: I think that's accurate, and I don't know where were
Speaker 2: you going to go with that.
Speaker 3: It is the most religious of the Asian most Christian
Speaker 3: of the religion of the Asian countries.
Speaker 2: Of that right, I was going.
Speaker 1: To go a little bit, a little bit deeper maybe
Speaker 1: on that. And one of the things that I have
Speaker 1: been that I have been impressed by on social media
Speaker 1: and even to some extent in the kind of larger
Speaker 1: opinion world. You know, so many places you can go
Speaker 1: to read things now, is that there seems to be
Speaker 1: this call it a revival, and the revival religious revival
Speaker 1: has sort of two sides to it. One is this
Speaker 1: what you know, sort of turning towards God, going back
Speaker 1: to church. One of the most viral things that came
Speaker 1: on X was this young guy, kind of goofy looking,
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you, who put on a really sorry,
Speaker 1: cheap looking, ill fitting suit and a tie and said,
Speaker 1: I've never owned a suit before. I'm taking my family
Speaker 1: to church and you see that. I see that all
Speaker 1: over my feet on X, which is quite heartwarming. But
Speaker 1: on the other side of it, which is what makes
Speaker 1: me think of your show, I'm gonna call it your show, John, Okay,
Speaker 1: fair enough, but I don't have Netflix. But the idea
Speaker 1: I've seen this kind of a sentiment expressed over and over,
Speaker 1: which is I don't know yet if I can fully
Speaker 1: say that I believe in God, but I know that
Speaker 1: evil exists, and it's becoming more and more real, and
Speaker 1: so I am on my journey to figure out where
Speaker 1: God is. I'm putting a lot of words in people's
Speaker 1: mouths that aren't quite there, but that's the sentiment, and
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering if it's not just Charlie Kirk. You know,
Speaker 1: we began to see some of this evil manifesting itself
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. If you look at the
Speaker 1: if you look at the background of the person who
Speaker 1: killed those children at the Catholic school, shot the others,
Speaker 1: it's this satanic cult group. I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: into the details. I don't even want to give it
Speaker 1: any kind of credence, But more and more people are
Speaker 1: seeing a division between and you know the famous line
Speaker 1: from The Usual Suspects, the Devil's greatest trick was to
Speaker 1: convince the world that he doesn't exist. And I think
Speaker 1: that maybe this is an evidence of some kind of
Speaker 1: I guess, I don't know what other word to call it,
Speaker 1: religious revival in this secular world where more and more
Speaker 1: people are saying there has to be something more here,
Speaker 1: because what's happening with the young left is that the
Speaker 1: nihilism that they're being presented with is causing them to
Speaker 1: take these awful sorts of influences and internalize them. And
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's transgenderism, defurreism and whatever. Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: my deeper thought on it, Steve, And again, I wish
Speaker 1: I could just sort of take the time to pull
Speaker 1: together all of the different postings and even articles that
Speaker 1: I see that. I mean, there was a big article
Speaker 1: today about Charlie Kirk that we should all honor Charlie
Speaker 1: Kirk by respecting the Sabbath. Respecting the Sabbath.
Speaker 2: And you know, right, yeah, you know that story, right, Okay.
Speaker 1: Yes, and what he does. But but it was an
Speaker 1: interesting article because it said, you know, this is from
Speaker 1: a religious point of view, a very important thing to do,
Speaker 1: but just from the point of view of of living
Speaker 1: in the modern world and not letting yourself being taked
Speaker 1: and over even by the technology demons. Put your phone
Speaker 1: in the drawer for twenty four hours, read a book,
Speaker 1: spend time with your family, go outside and walk. You know,
Speaker 1: it was very interesting to see these kinds of things
Speaker 1: showing up.
Speaker 2: So let's try into it this way. I am actually
Speaker 2: working on an article that will probably drive you a
Speaker 2: little crazy, the cretie. We'll see. It's not quite the
Speaker 2: analogy man stuff. But I've started. Actually I'm going to
Speaker 2: send this into Richard rynhild Civitas, and I am working
Speaker 2: from a single sentence from Max Weber's Politics as a
Speaker 2: Vocation where he says, this is the theorist of bureaucracy, right.
Speaker 2: He says, the world is governed by demons, and he
Speaker 2: who lets himself in for politics, for power and force
Speaker 2: as means contracts with diabolical powers. And there's more from that,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to play that out. I'm only halfway
Speaker 2: done with it, and but yeah, that's my parallel thought
Speaker 2: and all that. But let's use that to get started
Speaker 2: on all this. And I think we've got to take
Speaker 2: up and discuss some of the you might say constitutional angles,
Speaker 2: some of the free speech and hate speech and the
Speaker 2: FCC and getting Jimmy Kimmel kicked off in order and
Speaker 2: connect that to a larger team. I think, but's work
Speaker 2: into it this way and maybe reverse chronology. So a
Speaker 2: big memorial service on Sunday. They're expecting an overflow crowd.
Speaker 2: Bro thousands of people are going to have to watch
Speaker 2: from an indoor arena on a big screen. It's going
Speaker 2: to be live streamed, and I bet it's going to
Speaker 2: have an enormous audience. I was starting to get worried
Speaker 2: a few days ago, and I'm in the last thirty
Speaker 2: six hours. I've had other people worry about this, that
Speaker 2: there might be a risk that this turns into a
Speaker 2: conservative version of the Wellstone Memorial service in Minnesota in
Speaker 2: two thousand and two. I don't know if either of
Speaker 2: you remember that really, right, Yeah? I mean for listeners
Speaker 2: who don't understand that, it's, you know, Paul Wellstone dies
Speaker 2: in a plane crash Walter Mondale. Howly was this a
Speaker 2: week to go before the election or two weeks Walter
Speaker 2: Mondale came out of retirement to take his place on
Speaker 2: the ticket and lost to Norm Coleman and then later
Speaker 2: had the steats stolen from him in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: But leave that for another day. The point is is
Speaker 2: that the Welston Memorial turned into a offensive partisan Democratic
Speaker 2: Party rally, even though you had prominent Republicans in the audience.
Speaker 2: Like fret Lott was there. Some of them walked out.
Speaker 2: It was so grotesque. And so the worry is with
Speaker 2: all the intense passions around Kirk and a lot of
Speaker 2: people coming, you know, President, Vice President Tucker Carlson, others that.
Speaker 1: Way by I don't know.
Speaker 2: No, I conservatives don't make the same mistake Democrats did.
Speaker 2: That's the question I'm asking Lucretia. I think there's a
Speaker 2: reason they won't, but I don't think that's an unreasonable
Speaker 2: question to ask. I think there is a risk of that.
Speaker 1: John, I'll let you go first. You're a reasonable Republican.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's going to happen. It could, I suppose,
Speaker 3: but I wouldn't worry about it. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: I think Kirk and his life stood for certain values. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't think it would be wrong for people to
Speaker 3: defend freedom of speech and what Charlie stood for, and
Speaker 3: the fact that he was killed for exercising his speech,
Speaker 3: and because he had very strong values, Christian values. So
Speaker 3: I don't think it has to be a Republican party
Speaker 3: or it needs to become a Republican party rally.
Speaker 2: But I don't talk down.
Speaker 3: With it being a rally for freedom of speech, and
Speaker 3: you know the traditional social values he believed in.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the reason I think it may be
Speaker 2: a triumph is what's already mentioned his religious faith. But
Speaker 2: I don't know. You know, the things I don't know,
Speaker 2: things can spell out control. Well, the other thing I
Speaker 2: do worry about is provocateurs. We're going to be letting
Speaker 2: sixty five thousand people in. We know that some Antifa
Speaker 2: people showed up on January sixth and wore Maga style
Speaker 2: clothing to partly, you know, be insiders of things, and
Speaker 2: so I don't know.
Speaker 1: So first of all, you do have to register. You don't, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing you can show up no matter what I did.
Speaker 1: I am not going to make it up there. It's
Speaker 1: about a three hour drive and h and you need
Speaker 1: to be there probably the night before and camp out
Speaker 1: to get in even with registering, but they're supposed I
Speaker 1: think the big deal about registering is they give you
Speaker 1: the instructions the night before if you've registered, So they're
Speaker 1: they're trying, they are trying to control. I'm more worried
Speaker 1: about violence, if you want to know the truth. Because
Speaker 1: Victor Davis Hansen had a wonderful piece this morning about
Speaker 1: pretty much all the gas lighting that those people. This
Speaker 1: is not who I'm not talking about the people you
Speaker 1: were talking about. That's why I asked why or who's
Speaker 1: worrying but all of the left, who's trying very hard
Speaker 1: to make it seem like Republicans will react to the
Speaker 1: murder of Charlie Kirk the same way that the left
Speaker 1: reacted to the murder of George Floyd. And then you know,
Speaker 1: as as Victor is wont to do, lays out very
Speaker 1: carefully the differences between the two. But I don't think that.
Speaker 1: I don't think that what you're worried about is going
Speaker 1: to happen. I am worried about violence, and I know
Speaker 1: that my good friend of mine, who is a DHI detective,
Speaker 1: it will actually they'll be flying F sixteens over the
Speaker 1: over the event. And you know he's he called up
Speaker 1: the other night and said, you cannot imagine what the
Speaker 1: the uh preparations are the security preparations are for this
Speaker 1: kind of event that was only really put together, what
Speaker 1: a less than a week ago. It'll be maybe eight
Speaker 1: days worth. The other thing I want to mention this
Speaker 1: is came to me from one of our very very
Speaker 1: loyal listeners, Michael Mike Lee, who asks us if we
Speaker 1: think this is how he put the question, if we
Speaker 1: think that Trump will sort of set his ego aside
Speaker 1: a little bit and let jd Vance take the day.
Speaker 2: Oh you know I didn't.
Speaker 1: Is it where he thought I was going husty?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: No, well, I thought I'm taking a similar question, which is,
Speaker 2: it will be very interesting to see what Trump's speech
Speaker 2: is like, and you know this will be an interesting
Speaker 2: moment for him.
Speaker 3: And did you say it started at your comments start
Speaker 3: out with well Trump set his ego aside?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: Well, why do you even ask who comes after that?
Speaker 3: Clauset a sentence going to happen?
Speaker 2: Surprise us?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he might. And not only that, but you know,
Speaker 1: remember at the beginning of this this year, it's hard
Speaker 1: to believe it's only been a year. Trump was very
Speaker 1: hesitant to give too much credence to the idea that
Speaker 1: Jade Vance would be his his logical successor, and he
Speaker 1: certainly wasn't endorsing jd Vance to be his logical successor
Speaker 1: early on. That makes sense to me, and I didn't
Speaker 1: consider that necessarily evidence of his ego so much as
Speaker 1: you know, the moment you do that, you really are
Speaker 1: lame duck, right, you really are lame duck president. But
Speaker 1: he has been much more supportive. My point is this,
Speaker 1: if jd Vance is the person responsible for Trump getting elected,
Speaker 1: jd Vance is also excuse me not jd Vance. Try
Speaker 1: Kirk is responsible in many ways. He's also responsible for
Speaker 1: kind of helping jd Vance to become, you know, more
Speaker 1: of a personage in the MAGA movement. This is the
Speaker 1: opportunity to let jd Vance shine. Will Trump do it?
Speaker 1: That's what I was getting at, because his legacy matters,
Speaker 1: not just for the end of this four years, but
Speaker 1: who takes the mantle for MAGA after he can running
Speaker 1: awa Well.
Speaker 2: Part of the context of that comment about Vance and
Speaker 2: the successor was I think if thing what I'm thinking of.
Speaker 2: He mentioned that Rubio, who was performing very well, continues
Speaker 2: to perform very well, makes a pretty credible success or two.
Speaker 2: So I don't know that, maybe just sort of political diplomacy.
Speaker 2: One O one, one last observation and we'll get out.
Speaker 2: There is one other speaker I think is a reason
Speaker 2: to wonder how it's going to play out, and that's
Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson, right, is he going to want to bring
Speaker 2: up his Israel stuff? I sure hope not. But you know, right,
Speaker 2: it's that's he's the real wild card in the in
Speaker 2: the UH, all the people on the roster, I think, right,
Speaker 2: because he's uncontrollable and he probably himself doesn't know what
Speaker 2: he's gonna say because he he's even worse than Trump
Speaker 2: and you know, sometimes going off and free associating. I've
Speaker 2: seen him. You have to I think in live settings. Okay,
Speaker 2: all right, well we'll keep that and you know, we'll
Speaker 2: see what happens and maybe analyze it later. Let's do
Speaker 2: a couple of the UH controversies of the week. There's
Speaker 2: one question. Well, a lot of discussions about, you know,
Speaker 2: Pam Bondi, about hate speech, about Brendan Karr at the
Speaker 2: FCC and the Jimmy Kimball firing. But there's one question,
Speaker 2: and I haven't heard asks. But so first of all,
Speaker 2: for listeners, I'm sure most know what has happened is
Speaker 2: first Pam Bondi said we're going to crack down and
Speaker 2: hate speech, which is what the left said, and she'd
Speaker 2: try to correct herself, but still it was not It
Speaker 2: was an unforced error, and then Brendan Karr at the
Speaker 2: FCC saying, hey, you know you, Jimmy Kimmel is irresponsible.
Speaker 2: We have a mandate for about content, and personally I
Speaker 2: think the FCC should just be abolished. And you know,
Speaker 2: there's all that, but then the broader we can tell
Speaker 2: you guys want to talk about anything about those particular
Speaker 2: aspects of the story. The third part of this comes
Speaker 2: is there's an awful lot of people being fired for
Speaker 2: their grotest expressions of support for what happened to Kirk.
Speaker 2: And although everyone has a right to free speech, they
Speaker 2: don't necessarily have a right to their job, except maybe
Speaker 2: in the case of people employed by government entities, which
Speaker 2: would include public schools, public universities, which are always have
Speaker 2: always been held to a higher legal stand for protection
Speaker 2: of First Amendment rights. That question I have not heard
Speaker 2: brought up, or if it has, I haven't I missed
Speaker 2: it somehow. But you know, what do we think of
Speaker 2: school teachers and other people work for public and government
Speaker 2: institutions who are getting fired for their out of job comments.
Speaker 2: In most cases, I mean, if someone says in the classroom,
Speaker 2: I think you're entirely, entirely justified in showing them the door,
Speaker 2: But for people to make a social media post and
Speaker 2: other kinds of things, I think that's less clear. John.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of questions here that you raised, Steed,
Speaker 3: I would like to address first the Jimmy Kimmel controversy
Speaker 3: and the SEC. So, if I had my preference, the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court would have struck down long ago the idea
Speaker 3: that the FCC and use its statutory authority to grant
Speaker 3: licenses to broadcasters quote unquote, in the public interest to
Speaker 3: police the content of the speech going on those channels.
Speaker 3: Maybe that made sense when the only television we received
Speaker 3: was three channels and broadcast airways, although I'm not even
Speaker 3: sure it was justified then. And there was something called
Speaker 3: the fairness doctrine, and you might remember this case called
Speaker 3: Red Lion Broadcasting versus FCC, which the basic argument was
Speaker 3: because the broadcast spectrum is limited, therefore the government has
Speaker 3: the right to allocate it because it's a scarce resource,
Speaker 3: and has the right to do it in the public interest,
Speaker 3: and that allowed it. For example, I don't know you
Speaker 3: guys remember this. I remember like on TV shows there
Speaker 3: would be like the local news would have an editor
Speaker 3: like a person would come on and give like an
Speaker 3: editorial view at the end of the show, and then
Speaker 3: the next week, some like Bozo who disagreed with them
Speaker 3: was allowed to have free time on the on the
Speaker 3: private air channels.
Speaker 2: I thought, what the hell, what the hell is this?
Speaker 3: So but that makes no sense today when I'm sure
Speaker 3: barely anyone gets three channels over the airwaves. We all
Speaker 3: watch even our local TV probably on cable or through
Speaker 3: the internet. Now and once you have abundant, unlimited number
Speaker 3: of broadcast channels, I mean just channels because of new technology,
Speaker 3: the idea that the FCC should be policing speech has
Speaker 3: absolutely no justification. I So that's one I just don't
Speaker 3: think the FCC should be. Second, there is an argument
Speaker 3: about whether what car did was truly coercive or just complaining.
Speaker 3: So my conservative friend should look at the Murphy case
Speaker 3: from the Supreme Court case from a few terms go,
Speaker 3: which we talked about on the podcast, where the Biden
Speaker 3: White House right pressured Facebook and YouTube Twitter to deep platforms.
Speaker 3: Some of the people we know in friends who are
Speaker 3: criticizing the COVID lockdowns, and the court said that if
Speaker 3: the government had actually coerced the social media platforms. That
Speaker 3: could be a First Amendment violation, but it's just like
Speaker 3: Teddy Roosevelt complaining from the bully pulpit and attacking corporations.
Speaker 3: That's not actually a First Amenent violation, as private companies
Speaker 3: can do what they want with speech. So that's the
Speaker 3: other question I think is raised by the Jimmy Kimmel
Speaker 3: thing is is what Brendan Carr said on these podcasts,
Speaker 3: is that really coercive? Is that really tantamount to what
Speaker 3: I thought was going on with COVID, where I think
Speaker 3: the Biden White House was coercing the social media platforms,
Speaker 3: But if you look at what they did, they were
Speaker 3: like identifying posts, identifying statements, going to the social media
Speaker 3: and saying you ought to take this down and so
Speaker 3: on and so forth, with.
Speaker 1: Real threats behind it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like they were like yeah, and so I wonder,
Speaker 3: you know, Brendan Carr saying we can do this the
Speaker 3: easy way are the hard way? And you know some
Speaker 3: of the local ABC affiliates have merger business before the FCC.
Speaker 3: Is that really a coersive threat? It's not a threat
Speaker 3: on a part with what happened during COVID, I think,
Speaker 3: But is it some kind of coursive that that's the
Speaker 3: I think? And then I let's let's pause after we
Speaker 3: talked about this and talk about the private employer issue too,
Speaker 3: because I think generally private employers can fire whoever they right.
Speaker 3: There's no obligation for a private property owner to have employees.
Speaker 3: It comes from the this famous Supreme Court case about
Speaker 3: newspapers or they said, newspaper owner doesn't have to allow
Speaker 3: people to, you know, write in its off at pages
Speaker 3: if it doesn't want to because disagree, And the court said,
Speaker 3: it's just like if you own private property, no one
Speaker 3: can force you to put a campaign right campaign sign
Speaker 3: on your on your law.
Speaker 2: That you disagree with.
Speaker 3: So I don't see you have a problem with Microsoft
Speaker 3: buiring people who want to say I want to protest
Speaker 3: the gods of war while you know they don't have
Speaker 3: to work at Microsoft. But whether government employees can is
Speaker 3: a wholly different question than what.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's hold that question. Lucretia. Do you
Speaker 2: you want to weigh in on Kim, on the FCC
Speaker 2: and all the rest of this or do you care?
Speaker 1: No, I don't. I don't disagree with anything John said.
Speaker 1: What I will say I probably tied those two things
Speaker 1: together that he mentioned a little bit more. If if
Speaker 1: you allow the FCC to regulate the airwaves in the
Speaker 1: public interest, then you have what ends up being the
Speaker 1: two examples that you gave, which is government. Okay, the
Speaker 1: public interest is making sure all of those crazy mega
Speaker 1: and other type people are getting their COVID vaccines because
Speaker 1: otherwise the pharmaceutical companies won't make enough money, and that's
Speaker 1: in the public interest. Now I'm being snipe, but your
Speaker 1: point about government shouldn't regulate it at all makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense now. And it also was because you know,
Speaker 1: supposedly the airwaves were limited. Do we expect, for instance,
Speaker 1: the government to be a little bit more censoring of say,
Speaker 1: things that children shouldn't watch or is that cat out
Speaker 1: of the bag completely because of the Internet? I mean
Speaker 1: they there is simply no way to stop children from watching, say,
Speaker 1: porn or anything like that on parents might be able
Speaker 1: to do it, but otherwise that they've there's just no
Speaker 1: way logically efficiently to keep children who really want to
Speaker 1: see porn on the Internet from seeing it. They can't
Speaker 1: even stop it from happening in libraries, you know, so anyway,
Speaker 1: so that's all I wanted to say about what John
Speaker 1: had to say. I think he's right. The best thing
Speaker 1: to do is to let the marketplace shut this stuff down.
Speaker 1: But with that comes a lot of ugly stuff out
Speaker 1: there on the airwaves. However you wanted to find them internet,
Speaker 1: television radio. By the way, one last really funny story.
Speaker 1: I used to have a five thirty in the morning
Speaker 1: on Sunday's radio station radio program where, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: I was. I was the opposing opinion that they were
Speaker 1: forced by the fairness doctrine to have to put me on.
Speaker 1: It was a country Western station, but the guy who
Speaker 1: did the news was very liberal, so they had me
Speaker 1: on with him for an hour at five point thirty
Speaker 1: on Sunday morning to talk about politics and give a
Speaker 1: more conservative view. That was the start of my great
Speaker 1: career as a something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was that you and your your broadcast partner
Speaker 2: in art Bell or the three right, that guy, he
Speaker 2: was his wacko was on it.
Speaker 1: You know, people used to actually listen to it, believe.
Speaker 2: It or not. People are up at all kinds of
Speaker 2: hours no I.
Speaker 1: Know anyway, Sorry, So John had a much more important
Speaker 1: point to make than that, though.
Speaker 2: To continue well, one last question on this before we
Speaker 2: push on. So one argument you're hearing, including from a
Speaker 2: lot of conservatives, is gosh, whatever the particular wherever you
Speaker 2: land on the power of the FCC to oversee content.
Speaker 2: I said, wosh, what will happen if, you know, the
Speaker 2: liberals get back in power and they'll use the same
Speaker 2: power against conservative media. And my first thought was, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, do you know the history of the FCC
Speaker 2: During the John sorry, the Kennedy administration, the labor unions,
Speaker 2: who were the thugs for the Democrats, leaned on the
Speaker 2: FCC to deny broadcast license renewals to radio stations and
Speaker 2: TV stations for their conservative content. And then by the
Speaker 2: time you get to the eighties and then the nineties, especially,
Speaker 2: the FCC would bring pressure for diversity on boards and
Speaker 2: on the senior executive rank. So there's that whole racket, right,
Speaker 2: So the left has been.
Speaker 1: Using John's example was just as good about how we've
Speaker 1: already experienced it across the board, the Murphy case and
Speaker 1: so on.
Speaker 2: Right, So the point is that the left has been
Speaker 2: using the FCC, and that's why I think really the
Speaker 2: Republicans were smart. They would push for abolishing the FCC today,
Speaker 2: we don't need a learn thing anymore. Any any legitimate
Speaker 2: functions of just the ministerial part of licensing stations, of
Speaker 2: allocating spectrum that could be done by the Department of
Speaker 2: Commerce and a purely you know, by the numbers way.
Speaker 2: And I don't think we even need to do that anymore.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, But I think this is the other part
Speaker 3: of your question that I think is interesting, is Okay,
Speaker 3: so you're seeing all these people being fired for criticizing
Speaker 3: Charlie Kirk or saying inappropriate things about his assassination, and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, put aside the just the bed, the bad,
Speaker 3: the poor taste that all of that is in. Do
Speaker 3: they have a constitutional right to do it? So this
Speaker 3: is an interesting question that is really I think for
Speaker 3: a long time be deviled the courts. I think originally
Speaker 3: they had the right position, and the right position was
Speaker 3: espoused by your friends, the friend of you both, Oliver
Speaker 3: Wendell Holmes.
Speaker 2: Oh God, nice, try so.
Speaker 3: Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote an opinion, so.
Speaker 1: Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
Speaker 3: Famously, but on this question, he said, you have a
Speaker 3: constitutional right to free speech. You do not have a
Speaker 3: constitutional right to be a Boston police officer, and so
Speaker 3: he upheld the right of the Boston Police Office, you know,
Speaker 3: Boston City of Boston to fire a police officer because
Speaker 3: he was speaking about political matters. So in the beginning
Speaker 3: of the court said there's no right of free speech
Speaker 3: for a government employee on their worktime. Then the court
Speaker 3: this is something called I believe still called the Pickering test.
Speaker 3: And of course then in the Warren and Burger court
Speaker 3: years it became a big mush. And so now there's
Speaker 3: a limited right of free speech for government employees, but
Speaker 3: it has to be balanced against the needs of the
Speaker 3: government to run itself properly. So it's completely unpredictable, but
Speaker 3: I will give you some examples. So, for example, the
Speaker 3: court has upheld the Hatch Act right which prohibits government
Speaker 3: employees from engaging in you know, campaign political activity while
Speaker 3: on the job.
Speaker 1: So you are using resources.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can do it off, you know, in your
Speaker 3: free time, but you can't do it with government resources
Speaker 3: in your government time. However, right, for example, you know,
Speaker 3: three of us, you know, people who are professors, do
Speaker 3: we have a right to free speech when we work
Speaker 3: for public universities and the courts have suggested there is
Speaker 3: some kind of right to free speech, but it's not
Speaker 3: the same as just a citizen standing in the street corner.
Speaker 3: It can be limited by the needs, whatever the needs
Speaker 3: are to run the university. But it's much broader than
Speaker 3: Oliver Wende Holmes's view. So I would say there's this
Speaker 3: weird balancing test that court uses or balances your right
Speaker 3: of speech against the government's need to run its business
Speaker 3: or to run the university. But as with all balancing tests,
Speaker 3: I find it completely unpredictable and just really up to
Speaker 3: the courts. Personally, I actually like Holmes's view. I actually
Speaker 3: think you don't have a right to free speech if
Speaker 3: you're a government employee. I think universities it's not really
Speaker 3: it's not really the free speech to me, when we're
Speaker 3: university professors and we're engaging in writing articles and debating,
Speaker 3: I don't think it's really we have a right to
Speaker 3: free speech. I think it's because the state has created
Speaker 3: a university whose job it is to find truth through debate.
Speaker 3: But I don't know if you have a constitution right
Speaker 3: of free speech against the university. But that's not the
Speaker 3: way the Supreme Court thinks about it they have this way.
Speaker 1: Let me take a rabbit hole for you. One thing
Speaker 1: that has always been an exception across the board, I
Speaker 1: think to all of that is the military. And so
Speaker 1: lately we have seen military personnel, you know, active duty
Speaker 1: or reserve, writing on their private Facebook, the Facebook or
Speaker 1: one of the others things that are you know, just
Speaker 1: just despicable. There's no way around it. They're vile, They're awful.
Speaker 1: They indicate that the kind of human being who could
Speaker 1: write such a thing has just no soul. They're just
Speaker 1: evil and vile. But do they have outside of their
Speaker 1: time spent which and if you're in the military, if
Speaker 1: you've ever been in the military, which I know you
Speaker 1: guys haven't, but you're never off the clock in the military,
Speaker 1: is what it comes down to. That's the way they
Speaker 1: look at it. But that's not really the point here.
Speaker 1: Doesn't the military have some obligation to judge the character
Speaker 1: of their soldiers because of the importance of the jobs
Speaker 1: that they do protecting the country, securing our freedoms and
Speaker 1: so on. Or is it no different, for instance, than
Speaker 1: a government, than a teacher, than a preschool teacher teaching
Speaker 1: her kids about Palestine? And I don't know. Jeez, whatever,
Speaker 1: what do you think, John Well?
Speaker 3: I actually think that if you were going to recognize
Speaker 3: some kind of rights. Again, I don't think they should
Speaker 3: have them, but if you were going to recognize some
Speaker 3: Cindacy might say say that the need to make sure
Speaker 3: the military maintains it's a political role in our society.
Speaker 3: It's more important than say having a political school teachers
Speaker 3: or a political fireman. That because of the special the
Speaker 3: role of the military and the idea that they are
Speaker 3: always subject to the commander in chief, no matter which
Speaker 3: party it is, that I think they might have more
Speaker 3: restrictions on their speech.
Speaker 2: And I do.
Speaker 3: And then I think it is appropriate for military commanders
Speaker 3: to punish soldiers who are going too far in their
Speaker 3: social media comments.
Speaker 2: I love Holmes.
Speaker 3: I was like, you would say, you know, you have
Speaker 3: a right to free speech, you don't have a right
Speaker 3: to be a soldier in the United States military.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as a special government employee like Elon Musk, I
Speaker 1: like to make that connection, you know, because it makes
Speaker 1: me seem a whole lot more important. But that was
Speaker 1: just you could not attach anyway. If you were the
Speaker 1: little pin that the secretary would give us and made
Speaker 1: a comment on if you if there was a picture
Speaker 1: of you and you were associated with some political kind
Speaker 1: of message, whether you know you're interviewed by the newspaper
Speaker 1: this or that, they would it was considered an ethics
Speaker 1: violation and you would get fired. Just so you know,
Speaker 1: it's because you don't have a right to be a
Speaker 1: special government employee, even when they don't pay you. So anyway,
Speaker 1: did you want to talk briefly and explain to me
Speaker 1: what I don't get John about the Texas A and
Speaker 1: M president who was fired. I think just this morning,
Speaker 1: this is very interesting.
Speaker 2: It just hap well, yeah today, Well let's tell listeners
Speaker 2: what we're talking about, because most of our listeners do
Speaker 2: not know. So one of you please tell a story.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've read it too, but I mean.
Speaker 3: From what I saw the stories because I happened to
Speaker 3: be in Texas today. So people are buzz about this.
Speaker 3: But apparently a lecturer was teaching a class on children's
Speaker 3: literature and a signed a book that in which a
Speaker 3: transgender person played a major role. And so the teacher,
Speaker 3: I suppose, was talking about transgender and a student. And
Speaker 3: there's a video you can't see the teacher or the
Speaker 3: students' faces in the video, but it's you know, you
Speaker 3: can hear it, and the student says, you know, this
Speaker 3: is what you're teaking, you're teaching. You know this gender
Speaker 3: ideology you're teaching is wrong, that there's only two sexes,
Speaker 3: that the law prohibits the use of the classroom for
Speaker 3: the teaching of this transgender ideology. The teacher has said
Speaker 3: in public that I think she says it on the video.
Speaker 3: She kicks her out, kicks a student out of the class,
Speaker 3: and says that she has the right to teach this
Speaker 3: transgender ideology and that she has the law on her side.
Speaker 3: So the president of Texas and initially defended I believe,
Speaker 3: the teacher, but then under pressure from politicians here in Texas,
Speaker 3: he fired the teacher and I believe two other faculty
Speaker 3: members who were defending her. But apparently this was yeah,
Speaker 3: this is not good enough, yea, And so he just resigned,
Speaker 3: I believe today, if not last night. And so this
Speaker 3: is raising again these questions we're talking about, but also
Speaker 3: maybe a larger issue we're talking about with Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 3: How far does the government have to have in its
Speaker 3: power to dictate what teachers or what said on the
Speaker 3: university campus.
Speaker 2: Well, can I add just one more layer to the
Speaker 2: story from Clemson in South Carolina where you had I
Speaker 2: think three different faculty members posted out extremely vile things
Speaker 2: about Charlie Kirk and celebrating his killing, and the university
Speaker 2: put out a statement deploring it, but we support academic freedom,
Speaker 2: at which point the Republicans in the state legislature went
Speaker 2: nuts and said, you're a state institution shame with something
Speaker 2: happened to your budget, and the trustees should do something
Speaker 2: about this. Well, the trustees met an emergency session and
Speaker 2: all three of those faculty members have now been fired.
Speaker 2: So and I'm all for that. I'm you know, lads
Speaker 2: in my heart, but I think we're seeing some accountability
Speaker 2: and long overdue course corrections in these things.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Yeah, it's a tough call because, as you know,
Speaker 1: the same argument you made almost just a few moments ago,
Speaker 1: that the left will do that to us when they
Speaker 1: get back in power. That's probably true, as you and
Speaker 1: you as you also pointed out both of you, that
Speaker 1: they have been doing that to us, maybe not quite
Speaker 1: in such a such a public way. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that much more likely that conservatives with conservative viewpoints
Speaker 1: who challenged the leftist dog about transgenderism and DEI and
Speaker 1: all those other things. They weren't necessarily fire outright, they
Speaker 1: were just they just in a subtle, sort of insidious way,
Speaker 1: had their careers ruined or never had an opportunity to,
Speaker 1: you know, even establish a career. So it's it's gonna
Speaker 1: be interesting to see how all of this comes down.
Speaker 1: You know, colleges are My university came out and said, oh,
Speaker 1: we're not going to be worried about enrollment anymore. We're
Speaker 1: going to be worried about retention because nobody wants to
Speaker 1: go to college anymore, and they definitely don't want to
Speaker 1: go to the second rate state universities like mine is,
Speaker 1: and so well, let's just give in on that. But
Speaker 1: part of the reason for that is that as as
Speaker 1: this Charlie Kirk story has come out, I got a
Speaker 1: I got a text message from a student complaining about
Speaker 1: something the university had done and said, Charlie Kirk was
Speaker 1: right rip about colleges. You know, so they're going to
Speaker 1: have I think that it's not just the ideological conservative
Speaker 1: side of things is pushing this, but sooner or later,
Speaker 1: if colleges can't make their budgets because they can't even
Speaker 1: keep students coming in, then I think you're going to
Speaker 1: see some changes anyway. Yeah, but thank you for explaining.
Speaker 1: I still don't quite know why he resigned after he
Speaker 1: ended up actually firing those people.
Speaker 2: John.
Speaker 1: That's the confusing part to me.
Speaker 3: I think the way the story looks is that his
Speaker 3: initial resistance to firing them is what caused politicians in
Speaker 3: Texas to demand that he leave too. Okay, you know
Speaker 3: that was his initial instinct was to say, you know,
Speaker 3: she can't be fired, and that's hardcore.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it used to me that it was
Speaker 2: no confidence votes by the faculty that would force out
Speaker 2: a college president like Larry Summers at Harvard twenty years ago. Now,
Speaker 2: if it's the no confidence vote of the legislators that
Speaker 2: oversee their budgets, so be it. I like it.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I think Look, I think both of you
Speaker 3: recognize it's the state creates the universities. They have the
Speaker 3: right to dictate what's taught in them, just the same
Speaker 3: with public K through twelve schools, and federalism will provide
Speaker 3: a good competitive market for this, you know. Yeah, don't
Speaker 3: want to send their kids to Texas, A, and M.
Speaker 3: They can send them to a lot of other options,
Speaker 3: and there every places that can say oh, we're going
Speaker 3: to allow transgender ideology to be taught in the classroom,
Speaker 3: and then parents and students can decide where they want
Speaker 3: their kids to go there or they can send them
Speaker 3: to Texas and where it's not going to be taught apparently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, well I can add one more detail about
Speaker 2: this in a certain sense. About five years back, a
Speaker 2: friend of mine who teaches at another public university in
Speaker 2: Texas was telling me about going to the state legislature
Speaker 2: meeting with legislators saying, these campuses are out of control.
Speaker 2: You should do something about it. And you know, Republican
Speaker 2: majority keep running into not exactly a brick wall, but
Speaker 2: just confusion and well, gosh, we don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, the trustees are all kinds of slop. Well
Speaker 2: that has changed dramatically, and now legislatures in Texas and
Speaker 2: other states around the war path. So it's a whole
Speaker 2: different world very suddenly. And as I say, I like it,
Speaker 2: anything else to add to that, otherwise I'm going to
Speaker 2: press ahead to it'll seem like something new, But it's
Speaker 2: really not so last thought on Charlie Kirk and then
Speaker 2: go to the Constitution and one of the questions I
Speaker 2: was thinking about are one of the aspects of the
Speaker 2: whole story is why did Charlie Kirk drive the left
Speaker 2: so far out of their minds? And you know, I've
Speaker 2: confession and I've written about this, that I wasn't originally
Speaker 2: impressed with Kirk when he first showed up still as
Speaker 2: a teenager, what almost fifteen years ago, but then did
Speaker 2: start noticing, Boy, is he maturing, getting more sophisticated, more substantive,
Speaker 2: more confident, more effective. And what you notice on all
Speaker 2: the clips you see is that he asked for specifics
Speaker 2: and when challenged on something, he's got an arsenal. It
Speaker 2: was like somebody had mainline the works of Thomas soul
Speaker 2: among other things, but also in theologylosophy, and even law
Speaker 2: in many cases. H And what I realize and he
Speaker 2: outclassed almost everybody he talked to, not just students who
Speaker 2: you know, he sort of overmatched, and that the fact
Speaker 2: that he's now older, a little older than they were.
Speaker 2: But you know, the Oxford Union debate, I don't know
Speaker 2: if you've seen any of that where he absolutely clabbers
Speaker 2: some Oxford faculty members in very impressive style. So here's
Speaker 2: the point. The left hates to be challenged. They're not
Speaker 2: used to it, they're no good at it. Partly we
Speaker 2: can go through the reasons why, whether it's psychological and philosophical,
Speaker 2: but they the presumption that because they're right, they don't
Speaker 2: need to defend their positions. And I think that's part
Speaker 2: of what's going on there, right, Lucresie, you wanted to
Speaker 2: I want I just.
Speaker 1: Want to add something to that, And that is my favorite.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite clips of Charlie Kirk is when
Speaker 1: he's being challenged by this stuffy pro elitist professor who
Speaker 1: says that, you know, why are you so down on colleges?
Speaker 1: You never you were a dropout, you never went to college.
Speaker 1: And he accuses Charlie of X amount of colleges is
Speaker 1: not I didn't even have that much a community college
Speaker 1: blah blah blahlah blah, right, and then proceeds to ask
Speaker 1: him if he had read this book or you know,
Speaker 1: just just embarrasses the guy. Guy, of course, is too
Speaker 1: arrogant to realize how much he's actually being humiliated. In
Speaker 1: a very large crowd, but the crowd can sense what's
Speaker 1: going on, and I think that's also part of it.
Speaker 1: A little bit back to what I was saying earlier,
Speaker 1: If Charlie Kirk can be that kind of educated person,
Speaker 1: capable on his feet of bringing arguments to bear from
Speaker 1: all comers, I don't think I've ever seen a clip
Speaker 1: They may be out there of Charlie Kirk actually being
Speaker 1: defeated in a debate in one of those you know,
Speaker 1: kind of free for all arenas. If Charlie Kirk can
Speaker 1: do that without college, and can be actually much better
Speaker 1: educated than your average college students, never having gone to college,
Speaker 1: then what does that say about the necessity of our
Speaker 1: higher education or institutions of higher education.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, something I often say to students is don't
Speaker 2: let college get in the way of getting an education,
Speaker 2: because I have a lot of thoughts about that. My
Speaker 2: parallel one is one I thought was especially delicious was
Speaker 2: a student saying, you know, how can you talk about economics?
Speaker 2: I'm an economics major and you didn't even finish college.
Speaker 2: How can you talk? And he says, okay, who's Milton Friedman?
Speaker 2: I had never heard of him? How about lovely von
Speaker 2: me says. He mentions, you know, Nobel Prize winners and
Speaker 2: Emine economists that this kid had never heard of that.
Speaker 1: The kid says, Oh, I'm sure he's some economists.
Speaker 2: It's just you know, I mean, we talk about utter humiliation,
Speaker 2: the exposure of this sort of superficiality that left. Here's
Speaker 2: what I mean. We didn't do that format this week,
Speaker 2: but you know, once in a while, will each of
Speaker 2: us grab an article. And the one this week has
Speaker 2: me rolling on the floor laughing. Is Jill Lapour, of
Speaker 2: the Government Department at Harvard and also a writer for
Speaker 2: The New Yorker has an article out in The Atlantic, which, boy,
Speaker 2: has that ever slipped? And it's called how original is
Speaker 2: killed the Constitution? And it's it's well, the article is
Speaker 2: so stupid. I'll just give you one reason of how
Speaker 2: stupid it is. We haven't really meaningfully amended the Constitution
Speaker 2: now for fifty years, like this is a scandal. It's
Speaker 2: self evidently obvious that if we're not constantly amending the Constitution,
Speaker 2: it's out of date. And she's on to say that
Speaker 2: originalism is what's killing constitutional innovation. I mean, this goes
Speaker 2: with all the articles recently in the New York Times
Speaker 2: and elsewhere where progressives say progressives will never win again
Speaker 2: unless we change the constitution, changed the rules. And I
Speaker 2: keep raising my hand saying, well, wait a minute. You
Speaker 2: know the Democratic New Deal Coalition, which was pretty progressive.
Speaker 2: They dominated American politics for more than fifty years with
Speaker 2: the existing rules. How come it's not working now? Is
Speaker 2: there no reflection? And maybe that's that famous story about
Speaker 2: the dogs who don't like the dog food and the
Speaker 2: marketers can't understand why we will change the label, and
Speaker 2: someone finally says, well, maybe the dogs don't like the food. Right.
Speaker 2: This doesn't seem to occur to progressives, And you know
Speaker 2: that's part of the lesson of Charlie Kirk. And when
Speaker 2: you read the sort of elite liberals talking to each
Speaker 2: other without any serious engagement in originalism, and I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe that's an opening John to beat you up for
Speaker 2: you as okay, I do want to mention.
Speaker 1: In the same context really quickly, earlier contexts actually fires, Fire,
Speaker 1: the organization Fire. They've just been horrible on all of this.
Speaker 1: And my university is plugging an article that came out
Speaker 1: not very long ago by somebody from Fire called you
Speaker 1: can't fire your way to free speech, and they've just
Speaker 1: been awful on this whole thing. If you ask me,
Speaker 1: this sort of absolutist a moral approach to the idea
Speaker 1: that free spe speech simply speaking is the be all
Speaker 1: and end all, with no consideration whatsoever for the impact
Speaker 1: of that speech. You know, there are big on supporting
Speaker 1: pro Palestinian Free Palestine Now student groups, and you know,
Speaker 1: they've just been terrible. I don't know what's happened inside
Speaker 1: that organization, which used to be somewhat something of a
Speaker 1: you know, a good organization actually protecting the right of
Speaker 1: reasonable people to speak on college campuses, but they're not
Speaker 1: that anymore. Or am I wrong?
Speaker 3: I tell a story I was. I'm here at EUT Austin.
Speaker 3: I gave a Constitution Day lecture yesterday and someone got
Speaker 3: up and said, don't you think the threat to freedom
Speaker 3: free speech is in the wake of Charlie? Because I
Speaker 3: talked about Charlie and you know how I think his
Speaker 3: assassination was an effort to shut down political debate. And
Speaker 3: this guy said, don't you think that threat to free speech?
Speaker 3: Or actually, these univers these that are firing people, the
Speaker 3: military firing people now Jimmy Kimmel being fired and so on,
Speaker 3: and you know, so I made this distinction between private
Speaker 3: and public employers. But then I said, look, you know,
Speaker 3: after teaching at Berkeley thirty years, the only events I
Speaker 3: have ever seen where someone could not in the end
Speaker 3: speak have been only the last year when someone from
Speaker 3: Israel has tried to speak. And so you want to
Speaker 3: talk about the threat to free speech, just people protesting
Speaker 3: trying to prevent Israeli speakers and Jewish speakers from speaking
Speaker 3: on campus, and the harassment of Jewish students on the faculty,
Speaker 3: that to me is far worse than the you know,
Speaker 3: these isolated instances seems to me of people being fired
Speaker 3: who go too far in their comments about Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 3: which I think, I mean, I understand is they are
Speaker 3: attacking someone who's assassinated, not because they're being They're not
Speaker 3: being fired because they just disagree with someone's point of view.
Speaker 1: A student in Texas at Texas State University at a
Speaker 1: memorial event re enacted the assassination of Charlie Kirk at
Speaker 1: the memorial event and Abbott Greg Abbotts demanded that the
Speaker 1: student be expelled, and the university complied. That's not free speech.
Speaker 1: That's that's I'm sorry that you know the write an
Speaker 1: article saying why Charlie Kirk was wrong? But why would
Speaker 1: I guess I just want to be too reasonable and
Speaker 1: rational about these things.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Well, I have to be a little
Speaker 2: careful about what I say, but I will share this much.
Speaker 3: That's a first.
Speaker 2: Well, it's because I have I have some proprietary inside
Speaker 2: knowledge that I'm really not supposed to share. But I
Speaker 2: can tell you and listeners that Fire at the staff
Speaker 2: level and at their board level is having biggorous debates
Speaker 2: and considerable intern disagreement about all these questions and much
Speaker 2: to be done. So it's not open and shut, and
Speaker 2: you know, we'll see how it unfolds. I do know that,
Speaker 2: you know Greg rookianof who runs it, he hadn't been
Speaker 2: getting a lot of sleep lately. I'll just put it
Speaker 2: that way. Because there's a lot of pressures being put
Speaker 2: on them on a lot of these questions. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I thought they aired on the Palestinian question on campus
Speaker 2: and so forth, because I think that's just speech correct,
Speaker 2: it's very clearly harassment and so forth, and they're trying
Speaker 2: to draw upright line, I think they're yeah, I I
Speaker 2: I se write yeah. And by the way, they're hearing
Speaker 2: from donors, so you know, there's they're hearing from some
Speaker 2: of their major donors that hey, we're not sure you
Speaker 2: guys are quite right about all this, so to be
Speaker 2: continued pay attention and you know, and by keep making criticism.
Speaker 1: But absolutely last comment. I was the only dean in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty of the entire university and the only senior
Speaker 1: administrator of any kind who refused, I declined. I'll say
Speaker 1: it like that, find to make a public statement in
Speaker 1: support of George Floyd and Black Lives.
Speaker 2: Matter, right, yeah, which had.
Speaker 1: Nothing nothing to do with the university. Of course, there
Speaker 1: was no reason for them to say anything about it.
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk is a much different But I don't know,
Speaker 1: have you heard at least my university hasn't. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe your university has made a statement, but nobody at
Speaker 1: my university.
Speaker 2: Has so well. I mean I wrote about this the
Speaker 2: other day on our substack. Is every university put out
Speaker 2: statements about George Floyd. They also a lotwful lot of
Speaker 2: them put out statements after Trump won in both twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen and again in twenty twenty four about how traumatic
Speaker 2: it is. You know, my old mentor Stan Evans joked
Speaker 2: about how when he was a young conservative the sixties,
Speaker 2: we had to get over the Goldwater defeat without grief counselors.
Speaker 2: And now that's the standard model for fragile.
Speaker 3: Liberty, folloring books and write and lush toys.
Speaker 2: Notice that conservatives don't need grief counselors and plush toys
Speaker 2: and all the rest of that. It's that, in itself
Speaker 2: is revealing that they know that the bulk of their
Speaker 2: students are so emotionally and intellectually fragile that they have
Speaker 2: to be coddled like that, which is I've made.
Speaker 1: This comment before, I'll say it one more time that
Speaker 1: we really can get off the subject. But in the
Speaker 1: old days, what there was the joke was this, how
Speaker 1: many dead grandmas did you have this semester? You know, Sorry,
Speaker 1: but I can't make the final I can't turn my
Speaker 1: essay and on time, whatever it might be, because my
Speaker 1: grandma died. Right For in any given semester, forty percent
Speaker 1: of my students total, not the ones who just ask
Speaker 1: for leniency for some reason. Forty percent of my students
Speaker 1: will ask for leniency because of a mental health issue.
Speaker 1: I have anxiety, I have depression. I can't get my
Speaker 1: work done.
Speaker 3: That's how I feel for when we start the podcast.
Speaker 1: I know, but you pull through, John, and you don't
Speaker 1: ask for cretia.
Speaker 3: Lets us have it. I have great sense of anxiety.
Speaker 3: I need a plush toy.
Speaker 2: Well, it seems to me the U. It seems to
Speaker 2: me the the CDC ought to investigate closing down colleges
Speaker 2: as a public health hazard. That's you know, based on
Speaker 2: those statistics. All right, lucretia, do you have some Babylon
Speaker 2: bes right?
Speaker 1: Them are perfect. I'm gonna start with this one. It's
Speaker 1: a picture of uh Hakim, Jeffries and and Schumer. This
Speaker 1: is a both sides issue, says side that assassinated Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 1: shot President Trump, tried to assassinate Kavanaugh, tried to assassinate
Speaker 1: Trump again, murdered school kids in Minnesota, shot Steve Chalice,
Speaker 1: firebomb Governor Shapiro, murdered school children in Nashville, bird an
Speaker 1: elderly Jewish woman. And it goes on and on and on. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that's not funny, it's but yes, jd Vance takes over
Speaker 1: as host of Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 2: Or Marco Rubio. Oh, no, one more job Marco Rubio
Speaker 2: has to take.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Babylon b is outraged to learn Jimmy Kimmel
Speaker 1: was canceled just for being a mega Republican.
Speaker 2: That's that's very good.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, people, okay with murder outraged by TV show cancelation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, get it right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's probably good. Oh wait, one last one. Matt
Speaker 1: Gutman tears up while citing personal touching mind komf.
Speaker 2: Oh god, oh Man, Well that's the ABC guy said,
Speaker 2: Oh those email threads were so touching and affectionate, and
Speaker 2: it was you talk about tone deaf anyway?
Speaker 3: Right, all right, John, always drink your whiskey, Meed buy
Speaker 3: more books? And Steve, what Ai demon hunter poem do
Speaker 3: you have about the Three Whiskey Happy Hour?
Speaker 2: So I'm going instead with poetry. I'm going with novelists instead.
Speaker 2: So you guys is lightning around? You want Flatner or Hemingway? Oh, Hevyway, Hemyway. Okay,
Speaker 2: here's Hemingways by Ai. The Three Whisky Happy Hour podcasts
Speaker 2: was a place where men sat in quiet rooms drinking
Speaker 2: their whiskey slowly listening to the voices of those who
Speaker 2: had seen too much and felt too little. It was
Speaker 2: a conversation without pretense, rough and real about the things
Speaker 2: that mattered. Whiskey, of course, but more so the stories
Speaker 2: behind it. They spoke of history, of culture, of the
Speaker 2: wars fought in the minds of men. The voices were raw,
Speaker 2: like the sound of a cork popping from a bottle,
Speaker 2: sharp and full of promise. Every word mattered, though none
Speaker 2: were wasted. In the end, it was a meeting of minds,
Speaker 2: but not of comfort. There was no time for comfort,
Speaker 2: just whisky and the slow rhythm of life in the
Speaker 2: half light. And that is why I never cared for Hemingway, but.
Speaker 1: Because he was a Russian spy or Soviet castro.
Speaker 2: Buddy were going about. Okay, anyway, that's it'll Floppner's better,
Speaker 2: but I'll use it next week.
Speaker 1: Okay, guys, it's great to see you. Guys.
Speaker 3: Everyone have a wonderful week, right you two.
Speaker 2: Take care, Charlie, Long live your legacy all the things
Speaker 2: you did for me.
Speaker 4: Way can the youth of our country helping us stay
Speaker 4: American han free, fighting for the Constitution and American ideals.
Speaker 5: The Lord is with you, and His word is your seal.
Speaker 4: May the angels sake you up to heaven with God.
Speaker 5: You are a true hero, and your courage leaves a sinner.
Speaker 1: So Franchise STI.
Speaker 5: Will always remember all you did for this chantrey to
Speaker 5: way up in heaven looking down for its Your spirit
Speaker 5: will stick around with you.
Speaker 2: Nothing will ever be.
Speaker 5: Quiet the same, but we will always remember your name.
Speaker 4: You spoke to the youth and change a generation, a legend.
Speaker 3: In the history of this nation.
Speaker 1: May you have eternal salvation.
Speaker 5: May this song be a true celebration for all that
Speaker 5: you did and all those you help.
Speaker 2: Your loss of something we should never have felt.
Speaker 4: Your kids and family will always live on.
Speaker 5: We will remember you forever, long after you're gone. So long,
Speaker 5: Franchise rest in peace. Will always please remember all you.
Speaker 2: Did for this job.
Speaker 5: Strain you way up in heaven, up and down pointernity.
Speaker 5: Spirit will stick around without you. Nothing will ever be
Speaker 5: quite the same, but we will always remember.
Speaker 2: Ricochet. Join the conversation.