Speaker 1: I can't believe that Trump hasn't thought of doing Trump
Speaker 1: branded social Security bracelets. That would be the authors next step. Right,
Speaker 1: I got it.
Speaker 2: So you've fallen, you can't get up. So okay, are
Speaker 2: we ready?
Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 3: Mister Gorbachow, tear down this wall.
Speaker 2: It's the Rocchet Podcast with Charles C. W. Cook and
Speaker 2: Stephen Hayward, James Lelex David. We talked to Doah Rothman
Speaker 2: about well basically the world. So let's have reselves a podcast.
Speaker 4: Under the authorities vested in me as the President of
Speaker 4: the United States, I'm officially invoking Section seventy forty of
Speaker 4: the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. You know what
Speaker 4: that is.
Speaker 5: I stand with the people of Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: I stand with Mayor Bowdler, and we are strongly supporting
Speaker 3: their efforts to stop this scheme.
Speaker 4: This is Liberation Day in DC, and we're going to
Speaker 4: take our cat capital back. We're taking it back.
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast and which one is it?
Speaker 2: Why You're right? It is Episode seven hundred and fifty three.
Speaker 2: You can join us at Ricochet dot com. You really can,
Speaker 2: and you can be part of the most stimulating conversations
Speaker 2: in community on the web, the place you've been looking
Speaker 2: for all these years. Forget Twitter, forget x forget facebooks.
Speaker 2: You'll find your friends at ricochet dot com. I'm James Alex.
Speaker 2: I am joined as ever by Stephen Hayward in California,
Speaker 2: I presume, and Charles Setel you cook in Florida, I presume,
Speaker 2: And gentlemen, all eyes in the nation are turned to
Speaker 2: d C, where the continuing withard atarian fascist takeover continues
Speaker 2: to this day, with people being arrested. So the interesting
Speaker 2: thing about this to me is that there are, as
Speaker 2: we keep saying, there's a big middle lane there for
Speaker 2: somebody to drive through when it comes to all of
Speaker 2: these social issues, and the Democrats can insist on going
Speaker 2: to the narrowest part on the left, like the like
Speaker 2: the gutter in a bowling alley, and staking out their
Speaker 2: claim there. It appears now that you've got to in
Speaker 2: order to be anti Trump, you have to be pro
Speaker 2: the crime in DC, which isn't that bad, mind you,
Speaker 2: It's not that bad. It's really not that bad, and
Speaker 2: we've got the figures to show it. Well, you juke
Speaker 2: the figures, but it's not that bad. So let's uh, Stephen,
Speaker 2: you want to take this first. And then Charles respond
Speaker 2: to what our friend says.
Speaker 1: Well, it is Trump has a genius for this, of
Speaker 1: making the Democrats overreact and try and persuade us of
Speaker 1: what our own eyes tell us is not the case.
Speaker 1: Forget the official statistics, which like the Feerau of Labor
Speaker 1: statistics job figures, which are now very contentious. The statistics
Speaker 1: being reported are very iffy these days. I mean the
Speaker 1: DC actually put on leave someone credibly accused of faking
Speaker 1: some of the statistics. But I say forget those statistics.
Speaker 1: Everyone who walks into a CBS or a Walgreens in
Speaker 1: an urban area and everything is behind a locked case,
Speaker 1: or people who see all the videos of shoplifting going
Speaker 1: uninterrupted and unpunished, that may into climb, but it's still happening.
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to persuade the general public that
Speaker 1: there isn't a general problem of disorder and crime. So
Speaker 1: what what did I hear? James? I think you had
Speaker 1: something like was it one hundred and twenty four car
Speaker 1: break ins? Or is carjackings last weekend or something? Or
Speaker 1: a few nights ago, something crazy.
Speaker 2: You know what's been happening all over the city. One
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty here, one hundred and twenty another ninety
Speaker 2: is that they go through the neighborhoods and they just
Speaker 2: break the window of every single car in the street,
Speaker 2: and then they rifle through it looking for rifles or
Speaker 2: cards or door openers or anything, and then they move along.
Speaker 2: The police are under orders not to pursue them, so
Speaker 2: even if they see them doing this, the guys getting
Speaker 2: their cars and race off and the police say, well,
Speaker 2: what are we gonna do? Hands are tied. And it
Speaker 2: hit our neighborhood two three nights ago or so. We
Speaker 2: had about ten windows on the street shattered, and everybody
Speaker 2: the next morning with you know, the tape up and
Speaker 2: the plastic and the rest of it. It's just grand,
Speaker 2: absolutely griand so yeah, and does that thing. Does that
Speaker 2: qualify as murdered and assault in the rest of it? No,
Speaker 2: But it's quality of life. Everybody look over their shoulder
Speaker 2: and grind their teeth and be angry at the officials
Speaker 2: who do nothing.
Speaker 6: Charles, I have many thoughts. Where to even start, that's
Speaker 6: always yeah, I was going to start with a song.
Speaker 6: I usually start with structure, how the constitution works, and
Speaker 6: this is a slam dunk.
Speaker 5: DC is a federal district.
Speaker 6: D C is no more able to resist the authority
Speaker 6: of the federal government than was the Northwest Territory. It
Speaker 6: can if it wants to have a council or a mayor,
Speaker 6: but Congress can.
Speaker 5: Take those away. That is a delegation of choice.
Speaker 6: So the idea that this is somehow an imposition for
Speaker 6: the federal government to run the federal district, it's completely ridiculous.
Speaker 6: That's not authoitonism. If this were happening in Louisiana, then
Speaker 6: those who were griping would have a case. If President
Speaker 6: Trump work up tomorrow and said I am so worried
Speaker 6: about crime New Orleans or Baton Rouges that I will
Speaker 6: send in federal troops and we now have martial law,
Speaker 6: well yeah, okay, that's a state. It has sovereign claims.
Speaker 6: We have a federal system. The federal government has numerated powers,
Speaker 6: et cetera, et cetera. But that's just not the case here.
Speaker 6: And on the material point, I just don't think the
Speaker 6: good question is is crime coming down? Even if you
Speaker 6: believe the statistics, and I agree that a lot of
Speaker 6: them are duked. But even if you think that that's true,
Speaker 6: the question is yes, but is crime tolerable? Now, sure
Speaker 6: people will say no crime is tolerable, but we live
Speaker 6: in a free country. You're never going to have no crime.
Speaker 6: I don't know anyone on the left or the right,
Speaker 6: and I know both in Washington, d C. Who thinks
Speaker 6: that crime is tolerable, especially women. It just seems to
Speaker 6: be a terrible place for women to exist. And if
Speaker 6: that is the case, then the federal government is totally
Speaker 6: within its rights to look at the existing mechanisms for
Speaker 6: dealing with crime and to say you're not doing your job.
Speaker 6: We are ultimately responsible, especially when the last two or
Speaker 6: three weeks have brought crimes that are connected intrinsically to
Speaker 6: the functioning of the federal government. We had an intern
Speaker 6: in Congress, the Article one branch murdered while going to McDonald's.
Speaker 6: And then we had this doge employee known as Big Balls,
Speaker 6: who got himself into a fight through no fault of
Speaker 6: his own because he was trying to help someone who
Speaker 6: had been assaulted. So you don't even need to fall
Speaker 6: back on the can. That's an ought sort of question.
Speaker 6: If Congress's interns and federal bureaucrats are being routinely assaulted
Speaker 6: in the federal district, then I think it is not
Speaker 6: only reasonable, but imperative for the federal government to do
Speaker 6: something about it. So I'm very much in favor of this.
Speaker 6: What I'm not in favor of, just as a caveat,
Speaker 6: is what James Comas had on Cable News yesterday, which is, well,
Speaker 6: this is a great recipe for the rest of the country.
Speaker 6: Maybe we'll start doing some other cities.
Speaker 5: No, you won't.
Speaker 6: Those other cities are not federal districts have a different responsibility.
Speaker 6: But this fine with me.
Speaker 2: So I'll put you out down as a qualified Okay,
Speaker 2: then when you talk about being a horrible place for women,
Speaker 2: I mean you have anchors on television talking about how
Speaker 2: they have been assaulted outside their studio, how there are
Speaker 2: weedy waggers in the stairwells of the Metro. I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: When I moved to DC in the early nineties, it
Speaker 2: was it was bad. It was very bad, and I'd
Speaker 2: come from a place that was not characterized at all
Speaker 2: by this kind of disorder. By the murders, so many
Speaker 2: murders and so many potholes, and so many vagrants, and
Speaker 2: and I looked at this place as with horror. That
Speaker 2: was my initial impression of DC. I didn't like it.
Speaker 2: I didn't like it at all, and I got out
Speaker 2: after three years. But I went back in the teens
Speaker 2: when I was doing some books for Encounter books, and
Speaker 2: I would stay up late and walk back from the
Speaker 2: tabern into my hotel at two o'clock in the morning
Speaker 2: with the totter and my step and it was absolutely fine.
Speaker 2: I mean, it really got good. It got good for
Speaker 2: a while because they were doing something and the something
Speaker 2: was working. Now, the interesting thing about it, though, is
Speaker 2: that while they were doing something and achieving results and
Speaker 2: getting a safer street by many metrics, they weren't addressing
Speaker 2: any of the root causes. But now, of course, what
Speaker 2: we're always told is that it's pointless to do enforcement
Speaker 2: and all the rest of these things, because what really
Speaker 2: matters is our old friend, root causes, and that unless
Speaker 2: you adjust the sociolomic problems socioeconomic problems that causes in
Speaker 2: the first place, you're doing a bad thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: you can't do anything unless you address these things, which
Speaker 2: of course we've been addressing for fifty sixty years. And
Speaker 2: that's why. One of the reasons that the Lift seems
Speaker 2: paralyzed about this is that even though they would kind
Speaker 2: of like to walk into a CVS or people's drug
Speaker 2: as we used to call and get some tied without
Speaker 2: having to call somebody over and run the tumblers what
Speaker 2: it would take to do that, they really are kind
Speaker 2: of squeamish about that. And besides the people who are
Speaker 2: stealing these things, or Jean Valjean's who just just need
Speaker 2: to wash their drawers.
Speaker 6: I think root causes are generally nonsense in crime. I
Speaker 6: just think this is such guff. I mean a, it's
Speaker 6: incredibly patronizing. My family historically was very poor. They didn't
Speaker 6: commit crimes. They were not looked upon favorably in the
Speaker 6: social class system of Great Britain. They didn't commit crimes.
Speaker 6: I don't know what that's supposed to imply it. But second,
Speaker 6: it doesn't work. Even if you feel bad for the
Speaker 6: people who commit crimes, that's your prerogative, it doesn't work.
Speaker 6: To go after the root causes. You have to do
Speaker 6: something about it. You have to put cops on the street,
Speaker 6: you have to arrest them, and you have to give
Speaker 6: them sentences. I'm a squish on this question when it
Speaker 6: comes to procedure. I am very much a small L
Speaker 6: liberal when it comes to the due process part of
Speaker 6: the equation. But that doesn't mean that you can't have
Speaker 6: rigorous policing, and it certainly doesn't mean that once you
Speaker 6: have satisfied all the due process steps, you can't punish
Speaker 6: people harshly. You just have to make sure they did it.
Speaker 6: You have to make sure that the accusations are correct,
Speaker 6: that the jury is convened, that the promises that we
Speaker 6: make constitutionally, and half the Bill of Rice is about this,
Speaker 6: are satisfied. But once you've done that, there's no obligation
Speaker 6: just because you have a liberal, small L liberal attitude
Speaker 6: towards due process, to say, oh, let him off then,
Speaker 6: or let him out after a week, or it doesn't
Speaker 6: really matter.
Speaker 5: Nonsense. But none of this works. We know how to
Speaker 5: fix this. It's so annoying.
Speaker 1: We know how to fix this, and we don't do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm reminded of one of Reagan's great lines when
Speaker 1: he was governor of California in the sixties. He says,
Speaker 1: a liberal's idea of being tough on crime is giving
Speaker 1: a longer suspended sentence.
Speaker 5: That was right.
Speaker 1: Isn't that typical? Right? I'm sure it's one of its originals. Yes,
Speaker 1: And you know, I grew up in those years as
Speaker 1: so you did to James, and root causes was the
Speaker 1: great banner of reform liberalism in the Great Society and
Speaker 1: so forth. And I don't know if it was Juliani
Speaker 1: or who back in the nineties when we were getting
Speaker 1: a handle on it, said we finally figured out that
Speaker 1: the root cause of crime is criminals. And you know,
Speaker 1: while the left has sort of learned nothing and forgotten everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, I go back to twenty nineteen when presidential
Speaker 1: candidate Kamala Harris was talking about one how great bussing
Speaker 1: was and the need to get back to finding the
Speaker 1: root causes of illegal immigration and so forth. So the
Speaker 1: left still says that the root cause of crime is poverty,
Speaker 1: except most poor people, the overwhelming majority, are not criminals.
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, and no one's ever been
Speaker 1: able to do even one of those fancy regression models
Speaker 1: to demonstrate that you know what level of poverty or
Speaker 1: where our so forth. On the other hand, we do
Speaker 1: know the data now goes back decades that these are
Speaker 1: rough numbers, but it's something like, you know, eighty percent
Speaker 1: of crimes are committed by about twenty percent of the
Speaker 1: criminal population. And one of the things that did work,
Speaker 1: Charles mentions, we know what works was identifying and giving
Speaker 1: sentences to those people, and we stopped doing that. And
Speaker 1: partly again, this is the academic left pushing democrats. If
Speaker 1: you are an inmate in higher education, as I unfortunately
Speaker 1: have in for a while now, one of the big phrases,
Speaker 1: and maybe Charles you've heard this is the carceral state. Yes,
Speaker 1: America is the carceral state. And the decarcoral movement, which
Speaker 1: I think never makes the sort of mainstream press very much,
Speaker 1: but boy, it's huge in the academic journals and classes
Speaker 1: and so forth, has been very big and influential, and
Speaker 1: so you know, the Democrats have gone with that, and
Speaker 1: here we are the.
Speaker 2: Decarceral movement, which is very very noisy online, eventually devolves
Speaker 2: down to this is that while we shouldn't put anybody
Speaker 2: in prison, if somebody does commit a horrible rape or murder,
Speaker 2: they will be dealt with in other ways by society.
Speaker 2: And basically it comes down to vigilanteism. In the end,
Speaker 2: with all of these things, instead of having somebody go
Speaker 2: to a place where they're children and fed and clothes
Speaker 2: for the rest of their life, I will just beat
Speaker 2: them to death with sticks on the outskirts of town.
Speaker 2: Great Charles are gonna say.
Speaker 6: Well, I've always thought that the decastoral people missed the
Speaker 6: follow up question. So one thing that they like to
Speaker 6: say is the United States has a greater percentage of
Speaker 6: its population in jail van and then they insert.
Speaker 5: Whatever, Italy, Europe, the West.
Speaker 6: And my follow up question that never gets asked is
Speaker 6: always Okay, what do they do? Because if the answer
Speaker 6: is they jaywalked, then I have a problem with it.
Speaker 6: If the answer is, which it's not, by the way,
Speaker 6: they smoked marijuana, then I have a problem with it.
Speaker 6: But the answer actually is that they did back things.
Speaker 6: Because America is a more violent and lawless place than Europe,
Speaker 6: especially Western Europe.
Speaker 5: I don't think that is a good thing.
Speaker 6: I do think it's a fact of our history that
Speaker 6: has obtained since the colonial period. Americans were more lawless,
Speaker 6: and I think it's related to our being more freedom
Speaker 6: loving in a perverse and than Europeans. And if you're
Speaker 6: going to have a more lawless society, You're going to
Speaker 6: end up with more people in jail. You can't just
Speaker 6: focus on the consequence of it as if it's bad. So,
Speaker 6: you know, yes, in that sense, like you need to
Speaker 6: look at the root causes, which are that we are
Speaker 6: more lawless. But once you've established that, you just got
Speaker 6: to lock people up and become circular, right, I know.
Speaker 2: My favorite thing to be said the end of the
Speaker 2: argument about root causes comes from West Side story, which
Speaker 2: I believe came out in nineteen sixty one, in which
Speaker 2: the Jets are sitting around and singing off as a
Speaker 2: Krupky signs and they no, it's not that one. They're
Speaker 2: explaining exactly. They're progress of the social welfare system. And
Speaker 2: when they learn or that they do what they do
Speaker 2: because of their origins, they say, you know, sarcastically.
Speaker 7: I'm depraved on a com undeprived. They knew it as
Speaker 7: a punchline in a joke the criminals. Then no, I'm
Speaker 7: not confusing, of course the Jets with actual criminals, but
Speaker 7: the line was there, and I have no doubt whatsoever
Speaker 7: that it reflected a true reality. I'm not deprived, though,
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Speaker 2: Fighting Back against Progressives, War on fun, It must follow,
Speaker 2: Foreign policy columnists, and we, uh, well, today there might
Speaker 2: be some developments because we're the President is meeting Putin
Speaker 2: in formerly Russian territory, which I'm glad we have and
Speaker 2: bought and all the rest of it. All right now,
Speaker 2: press conference coming up. What do you expect?
Speaker 3: I have no idea I really happen.
Speaker 2: Thank you, we'll talk to you later. We're going to
Speaker 2: go to our next gist.
Speaker 3: I mean, these are very bad pundit answers, but they're
Speaker 3: also honest pundit answers. And anybody who says otherwise, I
Speaker 3: think either has access to a crystal ball or is
Speaker 3: leaning too hard into their own priors and assumptions. I
Speaker 3: don't know what to expect from this. The President is
Speaker 3: very has been very mercurial when it comes to his
Speaker 3: understanding of this conflict. His navigation of this conflict, and
Speaker 3: I don't know where his head is at at any
Speaker 3: given moment. The Russians, on the other hand, are telegraphing
Speaker 3: to the extent we can understand what their strategy is,
Speaker 3: and their strategy maybe to pull a crazy eyev In
Speaker 3: at the negotiating table, But what we understand their strategy
Speaker 3: is is really transparent. It is to provide the President
Speaker 3: with every opportunity to talk about everything other than the
Speaker 3: Ukraine conflict. They're going to offer him deals. They're going
Speaker 3: to offer him the prospect of economic integration and joint
Speaker 3: infrastructure projects in the Arctic. They're going to talk about
Speaker 3: future security arrangements and security cooperation in Europe, and all
Speaker 3: this is going to prove very enticing. I suspect to
Speaker 3: the President. To his credit, he has said it's great.
Speaker 3: All that's great, but none of that's going to happen
Speaker 3: unless we get this war stopped concluded. But my fear
Speaker 3: is that there's a real imbalance when it comes to
Speaker 3: objectives here. The President and his subordinates seem to want peace,
Speaker 3: and that's noble, but peace and what terms And there's
Speaker 3: a big internal argument within the administration over this conflict,
Speaker 3: And I'm frequently asked, why are you a little down
Speaker 3: on this summit? What do you think is not going
Speaker 3: to happen or is not going to go very well?
Speaker 3: First of all, the history of semetry with the Russians
Speaker 3: is a fraud study. And the second is that you know,
Speaker 3: these people will say, well, the President's negotiated conflict settlements
Speaker 3: or at least ceasefires in Sub Saharan Africa, in Southern
Speaker 3: South Asia and the Caucuses. What makes this one different?
Speaker 3: And what I would say is that the the administration
Speaker 3: doesn't seem to be of two minds on those conflicts. Indeed,
Speaker 3: they seem to understand those conflicts within the parameters of
Speaker 3: the conflict itself. When it comes to Ukraine Russia, there
Speaker 3: is a big internal war over the very nature of
Speaker 3: that conflict, who who the parties are, the belligerents are,
Speaker 3: and what their motives are, and how deserving they are
Speaker 3: of American support. And it has much more to do
Speaker 3: with domestic politics than it has to do with the
Speaker 3: actual conflict on the situation on the ground. Russia's grand
Speaker 3: strategic interests in the region, NATO, all that seems to
Speaker 3: be secondary and subordinate to the domestic interests that are
Speaker 3: on one side of this conflict or the other, and
Speaker 3: that's why it's been a very confused process. And then
Speaker 3: they're going into anchorage with this confusion as opposed to
Speaker 3: Russia's which is singularly focused on its objectives, which is
Speaker 3: taking Ukraine either today, tomorrow, ten years from now. But
Speaker 3: that is their grand strategic goal and they're pursuing it
Speaker 3: with monomania in a way that I don't think this
Speaker 3: administration quite is when it comes to it's a coach
Speaker 3: to securing peace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they wanted to end because warbad, et cetera. I
Speaker 2: get that. But the thing of it is is you
Speaker 2: give putin this slice of the Ukraine that he already occupies,
Speaker 2: then think he just resets his clock and waits until
Speaker 2: the next time that he can invalidate or renee gun
Speaker 2: whatever he said before and give it another shot. And
Speaker 2: Ukraine is reeling after years and years of this. What
Speaker 2: do you think what do you think is going to happen? Is?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 7: Is it unrealistic to think, as so many did a while.
Speaker 2: Ago, that the Ukraine was going to actually was going
Speaker 2: to win, this was going to push Russia out, was
Speaker 2: going to get crime up. I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 2: to talk about that they're going to blow up the
Speaker 2: cursed bridge and they're going to get it back, and
Speaker 2: they're gonna cripple. I mean, Ukraine has done some absolutely
Speaker 2: fantastic things in this war, and I've always been a
Speaker 2: supporter of them always. But are we getting to the
Speaker 2: point where the reality of Russian occupation is just simply
Speaker 2: going to have to be what is accepted going forward
Speaker 2: because the alternative is just bleeding the country white and
Speaker 2: endless war. I don't know. Well.
Speaker 3: I certainly reject the premise that acceptance is something the
Speaker 3: United States or the West must acquiesce to. We didn't
Speaker 3: recognize formally the Soviet occupation of the Baltics. At no
Speaker 3: point we recognize governments in exile. That was an illegitimate
Speaker 3: occupation from nineteen forty one, I believe nineteen forty rather
Speaker 3: to nineteen ninety one. It would be a shift in
Speaker 3: American foreign policy to acknowledge, as Stephen Wikoff was playing
Speaker 3: with earlier this year, the notion that the illegally annexed
Speaker 3: territories Crimea or the other four oblasts would be functionally
Speaker 3: Russian territory at no point should we acknowledge the legitimacy
Speaker 3: of those gains. Occupation maybe a de facto premise, but
Speaker 3: it is not one we should certainly should accept. And
Speaker 3: there's also those who are who are frankly, willfully ignorant
Speaker 3: of diplomacy to the degree to which they say, what's
Speaker 3: the big deal here? They're just talking, They're just sitting down.
Speaker 3: What are the material consequence is from that, you war
Speaker 3: mongering lunatic. The material consequences of it are that the
Speaker 3: Russian government now sitting on American soil, enjoying the legitimacy
Speaker 3: conveyed to the Russian government by the American presidency, says
Speaker 3: and will say that it's diplomatic isolation as a result
Speaker 3: of the second invasion of Ukraine is over. And when
Speaker 3: they say stuff like that, it indicates to the Russian
Speaker 3: markets that their long period in the cold is going
Speaker 3: to be over pretty soon and we're going to be
Speaker 3: re into our economic segregation is over. When that happens,
Speaker 3: the Russian markets explode. They generate a lot of capital
Speaker 3: capital that the Russian government can borrow against and undermine
Speaker 3: the sanctions regime. So you're functionally contributing to the Russian coffers.
Speaker 3: By doing stuff like this, which has a material impact
Speaker 3: on the battlefield, we will see it. And that's the
Speaker 3: sort of thing that they just gloss over because they
Speaker 3: don't understand the subject on which they're opining. And I
Speaker 3: suspect that a lot of people are invested in that
Speaker 3: sort of ignorance. Those who want to see peace come
Speaker 3: whatever the cost agree.
Speaker 2: But last question, I mean, I'm not sure there's so
Speaker 2: many people who are just what's the word I'm looking for.
Speaker 2: They don't care exactly about the nationhood of Ukraine. They
Speaker 2: don't care, they don't Why are we even talking about this?
Speaker 2: Why is this conflict important? And I think it's important
Speaker 2: because of Russian ambitions. I think it's important because of
Speaker 2: looking at what Russia is casting its eye elsewhere, and
Speaker 2: they hasn't been able to do so because they've been
Speaker 2: tied down. And I think it's also strange to grant them,
Speaker 2: as you say, the diplomatic legitimacy at a point where
Speaker 2: it becomes apparent that yeah, we can do business. Why
Speaker 2: would you want to integrate Russia back into the European economy?
Speaker 2: Why would you want to make Europe more dependent dependent
Speaker 2: again on Russian fuel. What is the disadvantage to freezing
Speaker 2: them out at every possible opportunity as a display of
Speaker 2: American soft power and economic power. Why cozy up now
Speaker 2: and I'll stop them. I'm not a question, I'm just ranting.
Speaker 2: So maybe I should give it to somebody else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't quite know. I mean, the scenario here
Speaker 3: that makes me nervous is that the prelude to Ukraine
Speaker 3: War III consists of something like the Mensk Agreements. These
Speaker 3: two agreements, the first of which wasn't worth the paper
Speaker 3: it was written on. The Russians never observed it and
Speaker 3: kept taking territory afterwards, the second of which was also
Speaker 3: never observed, but at least the line of contact held.
Speaker 3: It was never quiet, it was always hot all the
Speaker 3: way up into twenty twenty two. But that's the condition
Speaker 3: that we would see, and that resulted in a more
Speaker 3: security guarantees to Europe, not less. I mean that was
Speaker 3: preceded the Crimean invasion in twenty fourteen was preceded months
Speaker 3: earlier by Obama removing the very last armored division from
Speaker 3: European soil since World War Two, as well as many
Speaker 3: other divisions we had just been withdrawing from Europe in
Speaker 3: our forever quest to pivot to Asia. The desire to
Speaker 3: pivot to Asia at the expense of the European theater
Speaker 3: makes the European theater more hot and results in more
Speaker 3: commitments to Europe's security, not less, And that's what we
Speaker 3: would see. We would see a NATO alliance, particularly members
Speaker 3: on the frontier, get very very nervous, very very jumpy
Speaker 3: about their security and keeping the thirty three member states
Speaker 3: in line is the or most job of prima enter paris,
Speaker 3: the United States the first among equals in the NATO Alliance,
Speaker 3: and so we would see a lot of disunion and
Speaker 3: perhaps a little bit of adventurism on the part of
Speaker 3: some of our allies on the NATO frontier, which would
Speaker 3: force us to put more troops into the NATO frontier
Speaker 3: to satisfy our NATO allies. But the big scenario that
Speaker 3: really keeps me up at night is not a fold
Speaker 3: a gap style invasion of Europe. I don't think Russia
Speaker 3: has that capacity. What they could do make an attempt
Speaker 3: is to destabilize Estonia. Take a little chunk of Estonia
Speaker 3: and say de facto situation on the ground, deal with it,
Speaker 3: or maybe even get more ambitious and attempt to establish
Speaker 3: a land bridge between Russia proper and Kaliningrad, East Prussia
Speaker 3: as we all remember it. And that's the sort of
Speaker 3: thing that's really scary because they could very well do that,
Speaker 3: and then Berlin and Paris and Ottawa and Washington and
Speaker 3: London are all confronted with the die for Danzig scenario.
Speaker 3: Do you really want to risk no conflict with a
Speaker 3: nuclear on power over tiny tollin.
Speaker 2: Like an origami lesson? Right?
Speaker 1: So Noah, it's Steve Hayward out in Gavin Newsom stand
Speaker 1: as I call my miserable home state. Look, here's the
Speaker 1: difficulty is that most people who will be listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast, after we know the results, or least some
Speaker 1: of the results, it may be literally years before we
Speaker 1: know everything that passes behind closed doors today. So I
Speaker 1: want to use the Ukraine situation today to draw you
Speaker 1: out onto a broader scene of the world and about
Speaker 1: Trump too. This caused a little bit of setup. When
Speaker 1: I heard that they were going to be meeting in Anchorage, Alaska.
Speaker 1: I go in maybe too much for historical analogies, but
Speaker 1: I immediately thought of the hastily arranged summit which was
Speaker 1: not a summit between Reagan and Garbachov in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six in Reikubc, and of course you remember there Reagan
Speaker 1: walked out against the intransit demands of the Soviet leaders
Speaker 1: when they offered him a deal that he really wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, deep cuts in nuclear weapons. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of differences. One of them is this time unlike Reagan, Remember,
Speaker 1: Reagan really blindsided our allies, especially Margaret Thatcher. They were
Speaker 1: very upset that that deal nearly happened without consulting them.
Speaker 1: We know that Trump spent a lot of time on
Speaker 1: the phone with the NATO leaders in the last few
Speaker 1: days working out red lines and so forth. We know
Speaker 1: that very interesting Wall Street Journal story that I don't
Speaker 1: know if you saw, about how Trump is very close
Speaker 1: to the president of Finland, who seems to be a
Speaker 1: pretty solid guy, a right of center person, which I
Speaker 1: didn't know Scandinavia had in any case. So I am
Speaker 1: hoping and now again people will know, maybe by the
Speaker 1: time they're listening to us, that if Putin tries to
Speaker 1: play Trump the way Gorbachev did Reagan, that Trump will
Speaker 1: do the same thing. He will walk out also angry
Speaker 1: like Reagan did, but who knows, there are some other
Speaker 1: aspects that encourage me a little bit, And that's what
Speaker 1: gets me to a broader question. You know, just watching Trump,
Speaker 1: he's still Trump. He's very mercurial. As you say, he
Speaker 1: still fit to contradictory outbursts. You know, one day you're
Speaker 1: the worst person in the world and the next day
Speaker 1: you're the second coming of Gandhi. But on the whole,
Speaker 1: he seems generally more comfortable in his own skin, a
Speaker 1: little more tempered, I guess, i'd say about our relations
Speaker 1: with our allies, it just seems he has act more together.
Speaker 1: So I love if you comment on what your impressions
Speaker 1: are of Trump too generally, and then from there I'd
Speaker 1: like to move on to the Middle East.
Speaker 3: Sure, so Trump too in his second term when it
Speaker 3: comes to foreign policy is hard to gauge because the
Speaker 3: first two months I was horrified frankly by his performance,
Speaker 3: and then the subsequent several months we're very encouraging and
Speaker 3: diametrically opposed to the administration's approach to our adversaries and
Speaker 3: allies in those initial two months, So you have to
Speaker 3: take it all with all in total, in some and
Speaker 3: sort of that prevents me from issue grander verdicts because
Speaker 3: I just need more inputs, I need more information before
Speaker 3: I were to render a verdict. Then when we talk
Speaker 3: about the Middle East, I suspect they'll be far more
Speaker 3: complimentary to the administration's approach when it comes to this conflict.
Speaker 3: In particular, the Putin regime and the negotiators are going
Speaker 3: to put a variety of scenarios to the President. There
Speaker 3: could be a ceasefire with some modest land swaps that
Speaker 3: Russians don't want a modest landslap, they want a huge
Speaker 3: one at landswap. They want a part of don Bass
Speaker 3: which is very heavily fortified, including some industrial towns that
Speaker 3: they couldn't take on the battlefield and would be very
Speaker 3: difficult to take back. But also something along the lines
Speaker 3: of an air cease fire, which would also beneficial to
Speaker 3: Moscow because while it's raining rockets and drones down on
Speaker 3: Ukrainian population centers, Ukraine is targeting infrastructure sites like Russia's
Speaker 3: petroleum processing facilities, which are very difficult to put back together.
Speaker 3: You can build an apartment building in a year, it's
Speaker 3: not that easy to rebuild a petroleum refining facility. So
Speaker 3: all these are all things that sound really reasonable, but
Speaker 3: would also advantage the Russian position more than the Ukrainian position.
Speaker 3: And that's the sort of thing that I'm worried. The
Speaker 3: Reikievik scenario. I mean, Ronald Reagan was just frankly frustrated
Speaker 3: and very mad when he had to walk away from
Speaker 3: the table. It was one of his best moments. But
Speaker 3: I submit that he shouldn't been approaching the Russians with
Speaker 3: the kind of disarmament agreements that he was seeking. He
Speaker 3: was very wide eyed and ideological about disarmament, and he
Speaker 3: was also attached to SDI and missile defense technologies, and
Speaker 3: when the Russians said, don't research that sort of thing,
Speaker 3: he got up and walked away. Good for him, But
Speaker 3: the very virtue of the fact that he had that
Speaker 3: summit in the first place was an embarrassment that, as
Speaker 3: you said, the Europeans came down on him, the press
Speaker 3: came down on him, and cemetry with the Russians is
Speaker 3: fraught in that way. Joe Biden was burned in the
Speaker 3: same way. Russian troops were building up on Ukraine's borders
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one. He said, let's have a summit,
Speaker 3: and then four months later, Buttna'm sorry. Eight months later
Speaker 3: the Russians invaded. Make Putin look like an idiot or
Speaker 3: Biden looked like an idiot? Nineteen sixty both of them.
Speaker 3: Nineteen sixty one, Kennedy goes to Vienna and is land
Speaker 3: basted by Khrushcheff gets into this high minded ideological argument
Speaker 3: about the tenets of Marxism, is on his back foot,
Speaker 3: and then concedes that the Sino Soviet Alliance ISS functionally
Speaker 3: has military parody with the United States. And then three
Speaker 3: months later the Berlin Wall goes up, and a year
Speaker 3: later we have offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba. These sort
Speaker 3: of things matter if they go wrong. They matter historically.
Speaker 3: And I wonder if this administration is as of single
Speaker 3: minded when it goes to the negotiating table as the
Speaker 3: Russians will be.
Speaker 5: I suspect not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we'll just have to see what happens, and
Speaker 1: thank you for your attention to this matter. As Trump
Speaker 1: likes to say, let's switch to the Middle East a bit,
Speaker 1: because I know, I know you follow that closer than
Speaker 1: just about anybody. I guess. I'd say as a general
Speaker 1: proposition that Trump has been pretty robust and consistent in
Speaker 1: the support with Israel, with of course the occasional outburst
Speaker 1: at net and Yahoo, because that's just what Trump is.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 1: What I worry about right now is two things. One
Speaker 1: is there's this massive propaganda campaign about starvation and genocide
Speaker 1: in Gaza, all of which is nonsense, but which a
Speaker 1: lot of conservatives are buying into, or maybe not a lot,
Speaker 1: but too many. You know, the American Conservative magazine, which
Speaker 1: I used to read because I thought had interesting stuff,
Speaker 1: has gone full anti Israel in the last couple of months.
Speaker 1: And then you have a couple of our key allies
Speaker 1: saying we're going to recognize a Palestinian state. And I
Speaker 1: haven't followed whether Trump has said anything about that. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of disappointed. If he hasn't that that maybe I
Speaker 1: missed it, but it seems to me that that ought
Speaker 1: to call for some pretty direct and forceful condemnation by
Speaker 1: our government with some consequences. I think, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: threatening people in the UN who don't take anti American positions.
Speaker 1: I think this merits at least equivalent treatment. But so
Speaker 1: give us your grade or give us a two or three.
Speaker 1: Noah Rothman Summary Assessments of where that scene stands right now.
Speaker 3: Well, just a quick note on the recognition of a
Speaker 3: Palestinian state? Which Palestinian state? Right are we recognizing? These
Speaker 3: are non contiguous territories with very distinct governments, which, by
Speaker 3: the way, are at one another's throat when they get
Speaker 3: the opportunity. They have different foreign policies, different economies, different
Speaker 3: relations with Israel. So which one are we recognizing? And
Speaker 3: if you're recognizing the whole of these territories as one
Speaker 3: single Palestinian entity, are we then immediately sanctioning that recognized
Speaker 3: Palestinian entity for being governed by a lawless terrorist group,
Speaker 3: which you acknowledge is a terrorist group with European and
Speaker 3: American blood on its hands. It's a very foolish proposition.
Speaker 3: It's not a foreign policy it's a temper tantrum, and
Speaker 3: it is one I agree s tot even that should
Speaker 3: be met with condemnation from the US government and probably
Speaker 3: a few disincentives to engage in this sort of thing.
Speaker 3: The President's conduct when it comes to foreign policy in
Speaker 3: the Middle East has been generally laudatory from my perspective.
Speaker 3: The attack on Iranian nuclear sites was we were told
Speaker 3: supposed to beget gottardam Room, and we have not seen that,
Speaker 3: perhaps because as the conditions on the ground had changed
Speaker 3: so dramatically over the course of Russia rather Israel's war
Speaker 3: against the Seven Armies that ringed Israel. The ring of
Speaker 3: fire that was the Iranian military proxy network decimated systematically
Speaker 3: over the course of the war that Hamas started on
Speaker 3: ten to seven, and as such we had a much
Speaker 3: more limited capacity for Iran to engage in retaliatory strikes.
Speaker 3: This was the window of opportunity, and the President took
Speaker 3: the absolute made the most of it in ways that
Speaker 3: are very salutary, I think. And the very fact that
Speaker 3: it has not begat the kind of response that a
Speaker 3: lot of the handwringers expected, or perhaps even hoped for
Speaker 3: in a perverse way, if only to justify their opposition
Speaker 3: to this sort of thing, is an example of the
Speaker 3: kind of intuitively I'm sorry, not intuitive, the opposite of intuitive,
Speaker 3: non intuitive approach to foreign policy that has been discouraged
Speaker 3: by the Foreign Policy Apparatus and Abraham Accords are also
Speaker 3: illustrative of that didn't exactly spring from Donald Trump's forehead,
Speaker 3: and there have been think tanks that have been working
Speaker 3: on this for a long time, but the notion that
Speaker 3: you could do one of tooth. You could do two
Speaker 3: things to unlock a new dynamic in the Middle East.
Speaker 3: The first is to push the Palestinian issue to the
Speaker 3: back burner. Don't deal with that first, as the peace
Speaker 3: protestors insist, you had to deal with it last, and
Speaker 3: then refocus the entire region, especially the Sunni States, on
Speaker 3: the threat posed by Iran and it's Scheite militias, which Egypt,
Speaker 3: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, all of which we're engaged in
Speaker 3: this somewhat quiet cold war hot conflict, and all that
Speaker 3: sort of unlocked this diplomatic and military cooperation with Israel.
Speaker 3: It created a new dynamic in this region that would
Speaker 3: not have been realized in the absence of American leadership.
Speaker 3: I think we're seeing some of that here with the
Speaker 3: dynamic between Israel and Iran and the United States. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of political pressure, as you say, on the
Speaker 3: West in particular, as a result of this propagand and
Speaker 3: distic campaign which alleges that Israel engage is engaged in
Speaker 3: the most cartoonishly evil campaign of em miseration and genocidal
Speaker 3: reprisals against civilians that you could imagine, the motives for
Speaker 3: this are allided. Nobody ever really describes what Israel gets
Speaker 3: out of the deal. How does how does it end
Speaker 3: up with this, you know, placid condition in which everybody's
Speaker 3: ethnically cleansed because they've starved and murdered them all. I mean,
Speaker 3: the population seems rather stable, so they're doing a terrible job,
Speaker 3: as Genisi dares. But nevertheless, I mean, it's just assumed
Speaker 3: on the part of people who assume the worst of Israel,
Speaker 3: that that this is what's going on. It's taken at
Speaker 3: face value, and it's an extraordinary claim that lacks the
Speaker 3: extraordinary evidence you should have to support it. And the
Speaker 3: president deserves a lot of credit for just bucking And
Speaker 3: this is one of the things that he does very
Speaker 3: well because he is he's so on the outside when
Speaker 3: it comes to the conventional wisdom, be it cultural or
Speaker 3: political or foreign policy's, he's rather suspicious of it and
Speaker 3: often contemptuous of it, and sometimes it serves him well,
Speaker 3: and in particularly the Middle East, it has served him
Speaker 3: very well. Donald Trump will go down in history as
Speaker 3: someone who presided over a revolutionary change in the geopolitical
Speaker 3: situation in the Middle East for good or for ill,
Speaker 3: and I think mostly for good. But it's all because
Speaker 3: he approached it in a way that was really contemptuous
Speaker 3: of the staid and unchallenged assumptions that had calcified in
Speaker 3: the American foreign policy establishment over decades.
Speaker 2: Okay, I give up, Charles. You try to draw this
Speaker 2: guy out because we're coming up with nothing.
Speaker 3: Am I not performing to expectations here?
Speaker 5: I know you know who I am.
Speaker 6: I've heard of you because we work together, and in
Speaker 6: fact to hung out together forty five minutes ago to
Speaker 6: do the other podcast, which you should listen to. I
Speaker 6: have a question that is broad and we can zoom
Speaker 6: all the way out into spice. Tim Curry would say,
Speaker 6: I don't obscure rep I get it. How dangerous is
Speaker 6: the world because the prevailing view of younger people seems
Speaker 6: to be that everything is.
Speaker 5: Very dramatic at the moment and.
Speaker 6: America has never been like this, and the world has
Speaker 6: never been like this. And I'm habitually and reflexively hostile
Speaker 6: to these claims because my great grandfather fought in World
Speaker 6: War One and then lived through the depression that my
Speaker 6: other grandfather's fought in World War two.
Speaker 5: And then they live through.
Speaker 6: The people of the fifties and sixties, and I just
Speaker 6: am not persuaded. On the other hand, we have got
Speaker 6: wars going on, and there is a situation in Israel,
Speaker 6: and that's the prospect in the Pacific of an invasion
Speaker 6: of Taiwan and China really is a threat. So and
Speaker 6: how dangerous are things relative to any point you want.
Speaker 3: To pick in history, Well, let's start one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty five years ago. Let's just start at the turn
Speaker 3: of the century. The if you look on you know,
Speaker 3: if everything's relative. But if you were to plot on
Speaker 3: a graph casualties from warfare, you would find the prior
Speaker 3: to October seventh, the wars in October seventh that began then,
Speaker 3: or let's say, prior to to the Ukrainian invasion of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, you've seen fewer casualties from warfare and
Speaker 3: battlefield conflict. Then in the whole of going back into
Speaker 3: you know, the treaty was failure to the extent that
Speaker 3: we have actual numbers, and we do to a certain
Speaker 3: degree about battlefield casualties. The condition that was that arose
Speaker 3: amid American hegemony, unquestioned superpower status across the planet Earth
Speaker 3: was one of unparalleled peace, unparalleled safety and security. The
Speaker 3: human species had never known that kind of security. And
Speaker 3: there are basically three dynamics that typify the geopolitical landscape
Speaker 3: since that period. The first is the one that we're
Speaker 3: experiencing now, US hegemony the United States. For all of
Speaker 3: China's rising power capacity and what have you, it cannot yet,
Speaker 3: to the extent that we understand it project power across
Speaker 3: its borders in a sustained way. We haven't seen that yet.
Speaker 3: It might, but it hasn't attempted that. It certainly can't
Speaker 3: project power across the other side of the planet Earth
Speaker 3: in a sustained way. No other power on Earth can
Speaker 3: but us. The second dynamic is bipolarity, which is roughly
Speaker 3: what defined the Cold War period between roughly equal superpowers,
Speaker 3: the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: and its allies. And that was a very bloody time.
Speaker 3: It was a very dangerous time. That's not to say
Speaker 3: it was unstable, and I think that stability is largely
Speaker 3: a result of the existence of our respective nuclear arsenals.
Speaker 3: But to the degree to which the United States and
Speaker 3: Soviet Union fought proxy battles across the planet Earth, many
Speaker 3: of which were very bloody, many of which had absolutely
Speaker 3: no concern for the individual civilians and the proxy forces
Speaker 3: that were fighting on our behalves, and Cuba to a
Speaker 3: lesser extent, if you look at Angola, that was a
Speaker 3: far more unstable condition if you want to just measure
Speaker 3: a geopolitical stability in terms of the number of people
Speaker 3: dying in the number of wars that were being fought.
Speaker 3: And the third dynamic is multipolarity, and that's when you
Speaker 3: have multiple geopolitical polls that have rough a parody between
Speaker 3: each other militarily, economically. That is the least stable dynamic,
Speaker 3: but it is the least predictable dynamic. And to the
Speaker 3: degree that we're entering into a multipolar world when it
Speaker 3: comes to nuclear power, that is one that is that's
Speaker 3: a very disconcerting dynamic because there are just more variables
Speaker 3: at play and more powers that have the capacity to
Speaker 3: alter their geopolitical environments. But we've experienced nothing like even
Speaker 3: during the Cold War period. Well, we've experienced nothing like
Speaker 3: the kind of violence and the prospect for violence that
Speaker 3: we had during the multipolar period, in which you had
Speaker 3: a variety of states that had inviolable spheres of influence
Speaker 3: that were policed and that you could not penetrate. For example.
Speaker 3: Now just say this, the global economic marketplace that we
Speaker 3: have now is a pretty new invention. It actually coincided
Speaker 3: with another new invention, which is roughly Hyeki and Milton
Speaker 3: Friedman's conception of what should be market economics. These are
Speaker 3: all pretty new things. We talk about these things like
Speaker 3: they're ancient ideas that were just you know that the
Speaker 3: wisdom of Adam Smith and you know Montesquieu, was this
Speaker 3: this vision of the world that we're living in today.
Speaker 2: It was not.
Speaker 3: It was basically built in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties,
Speaker 3: but within my lifetime it's pretty new. The old condition
Speaker 3: is state control of economics, state intervention in cultural affairs,
Speaker 3: and a variety of spheres of influence that locked powers
Speaker 3: out of their their backyards, of a great powers backyard.
Speaker 3: So we had something like a global economic system in
Speaker 3: nineteen fourteen close to it, and it was basically just
Speaker 3: European colonial possessions trading with one another, as well as
Speaker 3: the United States and Canada, and then we didn't have
Speaker 3: that until nineteen ninety one. There was no mark global
Speaker 3: market until for the most of the twentieth century. So
Speaker 3: all this stuff is pretty new and very fragile. But
Speaker 3: it is the case that the world that we're living
Speaker 3: in today is relative in relative terms, the safest, the
Speaker 3: most stable, the most predictable, and therefore was something that
Speaker 3: you should just fall on your knees and thank the
Speaker 3: fates that delivered you into this time and history, and
Speaker 3: in my view, have some gratitude for it and work
Speaker 3: to preserve it. And I see quite a lot of
Speaker 3: people who just look upon this as though it was
Speaker 3: this condition that our grandfathers and fathers fought and died
Speaker 3: for in order to bequeath it to us. There's just
Speaker 3: a lot of ingratitude for it and the assumption that
Speaker 3: something better is available on the horizon. I just don't
Speaker 3: know what that is, and I fear that toying with
Speaker 3: the status quo, as the revisionist powers are, and as
Speaker 3: some people who want to retreat behind American shores would
Speaker 3: like to do themselves, we'll just beget a more unstable
Speaker 3: world and hasten our descent into a multipolar world in
Speaker 3: which spheres of influencer once again the dominant condition and
Speaker 3: the geopolitical landscape.
Speaker 2: Ahistorical ingratitude is one of the things I hate the most,
Speaker 2: and there's so much of it today. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, I was watching Twitter today. I'm sorry X.
Speaker 2: There was an appalling video of somebody who traveled a
Speaker 2: very long distance to go to a conference an outdoor celebration.
Speaker 2: It was even LGBTQ plus to a spirit friendly, but
Speaker 2: they've been denied entrance because the people at the gate
Speaker 2: had deemed her braid to be a cultural appropriation. She
Speaker 2: insisted that actually know it was Viking. They said, no,
Speaker 2: it's Rostafarian, and since we're all about having a welcoming
Speaker 2: and inclusive thing here, we cannot allow you to enter
Speaker 2: with the braids that some people might regard as a
Speaker 2: cultural appropriation. Oddly enough, none of these people looked like
Speaker 2: they'd be any fun to be around ever, aside from
Speaker 2: the here and the septum rings. But it reminded me
Speaker 2: that there's a man who wrote a book called The
Speaker 2: Rise of the New Puritans and fighting back at the
Speaker 2: Progressives war on fund and if I were to have
Speaker 2: him on the show, he might give a preseason this book.
Speaker 2: They would encourage people to go out and bite it
Speaker 2: in the very global marketplace at which he had spoken.
Speaker 2: Could that be?
Speaker 5: You know, it could be.
Speaker 3: I can either confirm nor deny, but do seem to
Speaker 3: have a lot of information to this effect.
Speaker 5: So will I do?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 1: Noah, you wrote that book at the high tide of wokeness.
Speaker 1: I think. Didn't it come out in twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: or twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: It came out in the summer of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: and I will tell you the fates conspired against it
Speaker 3: because just about two weeks or a week and a
Speaker 3: half before release date, the Dobbs decision was leaked. The
Speaker 3: entire media apparatus was on fire with the notion that
Speaker 3: the Republicans were trying to force you do not have sex,
Speaker 3: as though that had anything to do with the decision.
Speaker 3: But this was this was what the media was saying
Speaker 3: on MSNBCS, which made my book tour rather difficult. So
Speaker 3: my third is it will encounter fewer headwinds.
Speaker 1: Well, my quick question, which I say quick question, it's
Speaker 1: not we're running short of time, so it calls for
Speaker 1: a brief answer. But it does seem to me that
Speaker 1: the tide has turned notably generally. But because Trump is
Speaker 1: leading a ferocious counter attack against Woker in general. What
Speaker 1: kind of grade you give him on that or how
Speaker 1: things are going.
Speaker 3: I'll give him a very high grade on antio cookery,
Speaker 3: in particular, the attack on meritocracy and his efforts to
Speaker 3: restore meritocracy, and some of the heavy handed interventions into
Speaker 3: the cultural spheres in which the executive branch has a
Speaker 3: statutory and cultural role or constitutional role, those I think
Speaker 3: are salutary. They're a backlash to a backlash, and they
Speaker 3: deserve to have the effects that they're having on the
Speaker 3: opposition because the opposition is finally willing to acknowledge the
Speaker 3: degree to which they had been led astray by the
Speaker 3: activist class.
Speaker 1: Not do much.
Speaker 3: About it, mind you, but at least acknowledge it and
Speaker 3: sort of express quiet frustrations about it when they're in
Speaker 3: closed doors and among like minded company.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'll just say, you look more cheerful than I'm used
Speaker 1: to seeing you. Noah. I like your grumpiness, which seems
Speaker 1: to be largely absent today.
Speaker 3: So I was so grumpy earlier, Steve. I was grumpified
Speaker 3: by the Russian the Russian talk, and then you got
Speaker 3: okay ungrumped.
Speaker 2: Noah, we like, and you should buy his book, The
Speaker 2: Rise of the New Puritans and just read it conspicuously
Speaker 2: in public places because the Puritans of the left hate
Speaker 2: to be called Puritans because they associate that with God.
Speaker 2: Brothers like Cotton Mather and Increase for that matter. So yeah,
Speaker 2: great book, great conversation. Glad to have you back, and
Speaker 2: it's always interesting when we do.
Speaker 3: And can't wait until the next time we have you
Speaker 3: on Noah, my pleasure, guys, Thank.
Speaker 2: You, bye bye. One of the things though, that I
Speaker 2: got to mention and I should, is that after this
Speaker 2: I'm going to the gym. I used to do that
Speaker 2: when I was at the office. I would have my
Speaker 2: brought worths for lunchton had to the gym. But I
Speaker 2: don't work in an office anymore. I'm retired. Eh, I'm retired.
Speaker 2: I just quit my job, so I have to go
Speaker 2: elsewhere for a gym. And the thing is if I don't,
Speaker 2: I feel old and I feel creaky. So you've got
Speaker 2: to limber up. You get to keep things working, but
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Speaker 2: Your older self will thank you before we goo, gentlemen,
Speaker 2: we have a fantasy football update. I know ye, I
Speaker 2: watched the Vikings play their first preseason game last week.
Speaker 2: It's it's begun and I love football because it begins
Speaker 2: on a hot August day and it ends in the
Speaker 2: absolute cold seller of winter with disappointment and bitterness. Fifty dollars. However,
Speaker 2: cash prize cash money to the league winners. Charles tell
Speaker 2: us about this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, not any can you come play and have
Speaker 6: fun with other Ricochet members, but you can.
Speaker 5: Earn some dollars dollar bills if you win.
Speaker 6: And that's per league because there's a maximum number of
Speaker 6: people in each league, but we are willing to create
Speaker 6: as many leagues as necessary. We have two hundred sign ups.
Speaker 6: We will create ten leagues of twenty people each, and
Speaker 6: each winner of those leagues will receive fifty dollars no
Speaker 6: strings attached, except that you have to be a Ricochet
Speaker 6: member for the duration, so you can't join, then play
Speaker 6: fantasy football, then rejoin and say where's my fifty bucks?
Speaker 6: You have to be a part of the community. That's
Speaker 6: the only rule, and we hope you will sign up
Speaker 6: if you want to do that. You'll notice on the
Speaker 6: site if you look to the right, there is a
Speaker 6: little link on the homepage has a football leather backdrop
Speaker 6: and it says play fantasy football, win some money or
Speaker 6: some such.
Speaker 5: Click the link, follow the instructions and you're in.
Speaker 2: You know, you think about joining and signing up and
Speaker 2: then quitting and doing that. Yeah, it presupposes a level
Speaker 2: of craftiness that I don't think characterizes the average No.
Speaker 6: No, I didn't think anyone would actually do it. I
Speaker 6: just said no strings attached, and then I'd rather it
Speaker 6: was one before we go.
Speaker 2: I heard this that Trump is reconsidering, not reconsidering considering,
Speaker 2: reclassifying marijuana to a Schedule three controlled substance, and a
Speaker 2: lot of people sat up when they heard that. I
Speaker 2: didn't because I don't know what a Schedule three is.
Speaker 2: I'm not exactly sure what this means. Have either of
Speaker 2: you followed this story, and I mean AI overview from
Speaker 2: Google says Schedule three are substances that have a moderate
Speaker 2: potential for abuse and addiction, as well as they currently
Speaker 2: accepted medical use in treatment. So I don't know if
Speaker 2: this is an upgrade or a downgrade. Downgrade, it's a downgrade.
Speaker 2: It's a four. Now.
Speaker 6: Well, the classification system I think sets the most dangerous
Speaker 6: drugs one.
Speaker 2: It's schedule one. Now, yes, is schedule one, and the
Speaker 2: who has recommended moving it, and so we are going
Speaker 2: to be I don't know. It's like it's like Defcon.
Speaker 2: Which order does it go? And the magnitude of stars
Speaker 2: point is I think the entire country, well not the
Speaker 2: entire country. I think a lot of people are rethinking
Speaker 2: the whole Oh, just decriminalize it. I'll let people smoke
Speaker 2: it wherever they want to do, because it leads to
Speaker 2: a stinky streets. Then people say, oh, what's the what
Speaker 2: do you care? Come on living in a city, you know,
Speaker 2: just I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I was working on.
Speaker 2: My outdoor lighting system at my house. Somebody walked past
Speaker 2: smoking something and it was at the bottom of a
Speaker 2: hill and it wafted up all the way to me
Speaker 2: and it was this potent when they got to my nostrils.
Speaker 2: I don't know when they changed the aroma of marijuana,
Speaker 2: which my college days was not this so difference. But
Speaker 2: it's just like I hated and I walked walked to
Speaker 2: New York and other streets and it's just choking clouds
Speaker 2: of it. Can't stand it.
Speaker 5: But go on, can I give a limited defense of this?
Speaker 5: Go ahead?
Speaker 6: Well, first off, I don't think the federal government is
Speaker 6: allowed to prohibit marijuana constitutionaling, so I would like to
Speaker 6: see them out of it. Irrespective of what the policy
Speaker 6: was to be, you could then have prohibition in the
Speaker 6: States if you wanted it.
Speaker 5: I just don't.
Speaker 6: Understand why we needed a constitutional amendment to allow the
Speaker 6: prohibition of alcohol. But then a few years later the
Speaker 6: government said drugs, let's do that. The enumerted powers doctrine
Speaker 6: is still there. It's still in there. You can read it.
Speaker 6: But in terms of the smell on the street, I
Speaker 6: one hundred percent agree with you, James. What I don't
Speaker 6: understand is how smoking it in public became an intrinsic
Speaker 6: part of decriminalization.
Speaker 2: What happened is sitting around the dorm room and listening
Speaker 2: to Genesis.
Speaker 6: But the thing is right is you could have a
Speaker 6: situation in which a state says we are not going
Speaker 6: to criminalize marijuana, but also you are not allowed to
Speaker 6: smoke it on the street. And I don't think this
Speaker 6: is a weird view because a we already do this
Speaker 6: with drinking. Most states have some restrictions or cities on
Speaker 6: whether you're allowed to drink in public. For example, in Jacksonville,
Speaker 6: you are not allowed to drink on the street except
Speaker 6: on game day and between certain hours within a certain
Speaker 6: part of the city, which makes total sense for tailgating. Second,
Speaker 6: we have now reached the point with progressives at which
Speaker 6: they think that if somebody smokes tobacco on the street
Speaker 6: they should be instantly executed. Yes, but that smoking marijuana
Speaker 6: on the street is a normal part of a functioning
Speaker 6: civil society. And I don't understand why more people who
Speaker 6: are more libertarian minded have not taken the view decriminalize
Speaker 6: marijuana and ban smoking it in public.
Speaker 5: Because that's the bit that everyone hates.
Speaker 6: But we already do it for drinking, So just do it, Like,
Speaker 6: why does this become the hell that these people want
Speaker 6: to die?
Speaker 5: On the A would probably lead.
Speaker 2: To a disparate impact argument at some point. I know rubbish.
Speaker 2: I'm with you there, but I completely agree, Stephen. We
Speaker 2: know that you're the kind of guy who just gets
Speaker 2: out his gandof bond and rips them off on the
Speaker 2: weekend while listening to some King Crimson. But whats you
Speaker 2: take on the mon thing.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, you mentioned one of you mentioned prohibition,
Speaker 1: which brought me the frame of mind of Will Rogers
Speaker 1: great remark that well, at least prohibition is better than
Speaker 1: no liquor at all, and I wish we could go
Speaker 1: back to something like that. Actually, I think the terms
Speaker 1: Charlie laid out or right, And I've joked for a
Speaker 1: long time that the way the left operates is tobacco
Speaker 1: is illegal and carries a death sentence, but marijuana smoking
Speaker 1: will become mandatory. I do think, though I haven't followed
Speaker 1: the medical literature closely, but I do think we're going
Speaker 1: to end up having a lot of second thoughts about
Speaker 1: our rush to legalize it. So one thing about decriminalizing it,
Speaker 1: I'm all for that, but I do think that commercializing it,
Speaker 1: legalizing it, giving it a social approval is a bad idea.
Speaker 1: And you know it was true that, you know, before prohibition,
Speaker 1: we really did have a serious problem with alcohol consumption
Speaker 1: and alcoholism and it went way down under prohibition. It
Speaker 1: never came back to quite the level it was beforehand.
Speaker 1: But we still have a lot of problem people who
Speaker 1: have alcohol problems and treatment programs and AA and all
Speaker 1: the rest of that, and my ideal world would be
Speaker 1: finding that kind of stable equilibrium for marijuana as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, the thing is is that a lot of
Speaker 2: the people who were voting for this were remembering back
Speaker 2: to their healthy on commedy college days when the stuff
Speaker 2: they're buying ditchweed from somebody who was essentially getting it
Speaker 2: from the guy down out in the country who would
Speaker 2: sell it in giant hefty bags and beat like tumble.
Speaker 1: Rights for Friday. I think stuff today is more powerful, right,
Speaker 1: I think it stuff today?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And although James, I have to say, I do resemble
Speaker 1: that remark of sitting around a dorm room listening to
Speaker 1: Genesis with our.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, why did I say that? What do you think?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 2: I know exactly I resembled it. I embodied it. I
Speaker 2: just know that there's something that it's just very on
Speaker 2: to walk into my high class grocery store, ultra high
Speaker 2: class and they've got a whole section for THHC. And
Speaker 2: again if you want to have, and they have a
Speaker 2: liquor section of course too, because you can drink some
Speaker 2: of these things and become sparklingly interesting people after half
Speaker 2: a glass. But you drink this and you become an
Speaker 2: insensate moron who has absolutely nothing of no merit to say.
Speaker 2: But that's my old biases coming there. I suppose I'm old,
Speaker 2: I'm a boomer, and I prefer the fine products of
Speaker 2: the Scottish Highlands when it comes to an amber liquid.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, I've got a space side
Speaker 2: lined up for myself tonight, but that's hours away. Right now,
Speaker 2: I got to say thank you podcast brought to you
Speaker 2: by Cozy Earth and by Quality of s Analytics support
Speaker 2: us by becoming part of the best place for civil
Speaker 2: center right conversation and joining up at Ricochet. And of
Speaker 2: course I would like you to leave a four star
Speaker 2: review on Apple Podcast, not a five star. No no,
Speaker 2: I've been asking for that for years and move the
Speaker 2: need a little bit. So I'm saying four star and
Speaker 2: maybe you will, out of just sheer stupporness give us
Speaker 2: a five because I didn't ask for it. But what
Speaker 2: we mostly ask for you to do is come back
Speaker 2: next week, when Charlie and Stephen been another guest, I
Speaker 2: hope will entertain you with insight, amusement, observations, and everything
Speaker 2: else you've come to expect from the Ricochet Podcast over
Speaker 2: these seven hundred and fifty three episodes. Gentlemen, it's been
Speaker 2: a pleasure, and we'll see everybody in the comments at
Speaker 2: Ricochet or Point up. Bye bye,