Speaker 1: If a man today were to say that if he wants.
Speaker 2: A girlfriend that can cook or clean, you might as
Speaker 2: well be screaming me inward.
Speaker 3: Okay, well you sound like a democrat. I'm not retarded.
Speaker 4: Well whiskey, come and take my pain, the honeys, my ry,
Speaker 4: oh whiskey.
Speaker 3: Why think alone when you can drink it all in.
Speaker 5: With Ricochet's three whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders Steve Heyward,
Speaker 5: John U and the International Woman of Mystery Lucretia, where.
Speaker 6: They slapped it up and David ain't too.
Speaker 4: Easy on the should tap got to give me and
Speaker 4: let that whiskey.
Speaker 5: Well, boy, I sure learned my lesson to try and
Speaker 5: do a podcast without real producers, didn't I?
Speaker 1: I don't know. John, and I managed without you as
Speaker 1: a producer just because we were a little crazy.
Speaker 5: Well, yes, I preserve some of john little one liners there.
Speaker 5: Otherwise I am in fact invoking me as I put
Speaker 5: it in a substack. Note what Star Trek did with
Speaker 5: their original pilot that NBC rejected because it was too cerebral,
Speaker 5: and instead of junking it, they recut it and wrapped
Speaker 5: a whole new story around it. So we're going to
Speaker 5: do that listeners, okay.
Speaker 1: Because we're too cerebral for you, Steve, is that what
Speaker 1: you're saying?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, Maybe you didn't see the note.
Speaker 1: But I did see the note. I saw the undisciplined apart.
Speaker 1: But I prefer to think that that's that John and
Speaker 1: I were just a little too highbrow for you and
Speaker 1: you can't keep up.
Speaker 5: So okay, yes, well, well, John reveled way too much
Speaker 5: in avoiding my mention of a certain statute. But I
Speaker 5: also in the frame of mind of the director in
Speaker 5: the mel Brooks movie, the producers who we read the script,
Speaker 5: and he says, all that whole third act has got
Speaker 5: to go. The Germans are losing the war. So I've
Speaker 5: shorten a few things to that, but I moved everything around.
Speaker 5: And so first of all, I do want to refer
Speaker 5: to the little teaser cold open before our theme song.
Speaker 5: You know what, John especially likes to rib me for
Speaker 5: being obsessed with Sidney Sweeney. But she's back in the news,
Speaker 5: so you know, on her HBO show, as you heard,
Speaker 5: if you listen from the beginning, she someone says, are
Speaker 5: you a Democrat? And she says, I'm not retarded? Looking
Speaker 5: right now?
Speaker 3: The funny thing is.
Speaker 5: The social media reaction has been utterly predictable. All these
Speaker 5: leftists are saying, oh, it's terrible. She would say that,
Speaker 5: you know, Republicans say retarded, but Democrats don't. And of
Speaker 5: course the obvious answer is you want to supply.
Speaker 1: They are exactly Thank you.
Speaker 5: I thought you'd say that, but I did see a squire,
Speaker 5: but I didn't chase after it. But apparently Candice Owens
Speaker 5: and Megan Kelly are down on her.
Speaker 3: I'm not quite sure why.
Speaker 5: I think it's because she's supposedly allegedly has come out
Speaker 5: saying she likes Trump, she's for the Iran war against
Speaker 5: anti Semitism, and so guess what she's now taking sides
Speaker 5: beyond just wearing good jeans. Okay, sorry, all right, enough
Speaker 5: of that mirth though, I think for at least a
Speaker 5: couple minutes, so you guys didn't do the order that
Speaker 5: I kind of had mine. But guess what, it's a
Speaker 5: simple matter to rearrange them.
Speaker 3: So, you know.
Speaker 5: I think that the story on the gerrymanderin cases is fascinating,
Speaker 5: not so much for the law of it, which you
Speaker 5: guys talked about, but I think it is interesting because
Speaker 5: of the reaction to it. So let me just cut
Speaker 5: back in here to your guys discussion and we will
Speaker 5: pick it up on the other side.
Speaker 1: Okay, I do want to ask you what you think
Speaker 1: about all of these crazy court cases about redistricting. We
Speaker 1: talked about it last time, so most of our listeners
Speaker 1: heard the basic thing. But since we talked last time,
Speaker 1: we had we see Tennessee. Let me get it right,
Speaker 1: Tennessee and Louisiana. Now District Tennessee is being sued by
Speaker 1: the na A c P arguing that the Memphis redistricting
Speaker 1: is in and out of itself racially discriminatory. Right. I
Speaker 1: don't know where where they'll get with that. The Virginia
Speaker 1: Uh did you follow any of that Virginia suit to
Speaker 1: the United States Supreme Court?
Speaker 7: Oh? Yeah, just got thrown out today just while our podcast.
Speaker 7: Oh that was obvious that would happen. Yeah, that was
Speaker 7: There was no federal issue. It's all just a question
Speaker 7: of Virginia is it's the question of Virginia constitutional amendment procedure.
Speaker 5: Right, and John unplugged.
Speaker 7: That our complete election state in the country would be
Speaker 7: fit for decision by the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, crazy, It was crazy, but we also have
Speaker 1: some I mean, the Democrats have decided to go crazy
Speaker 1: on this whole thing. Okay, I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: my usual dismissive self about everybody in the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: but they seem you know, Kamala Kamalama ding Dong came
Speaker 1: out today said there are no bad ideas. And yeah,
Speaker 1: she came out and said, there's no bad ideas. There's
Speaker 1: no reason why we shouldn't pack the court, why we
Speaker 1: shouldn't try everything we can to get around this silly
Speaker 1: Supreme Court decision about you know, not discriminating on the
Speaker 1: basis of race and districting. She just went on and
Speaker 1: on and on what you know, the all of the
Speaker 1: things that the left that lost the left the election
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four she's doubling down on and so
Speaker 1: are lots of leftists. I mean, in Virginia they were
Speaker 1: going to pack the Supreme Court. Then they were going
Speaker 1: to just abolish the whole thing. They did try the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, you know, to the US Supreme Court. Is
Speaker 1: it really an existential crisis for the Democrats? Do you
Speaker 1: think John's so?
Speaker 7: One thing is I listened to your guys Pod episode
Speaker 7: where you talked about it and I think you're quite
Speaker 7: right about the effects of the decisions. That this is
Speaker 7: not going to produce I think a huge change in
Speaker 7: the midterms, but there will be maybe six to eight
Speaker 7: extra seats that will be added, could be added by
Speaker 7: states that thought they were thought they were acquired by
Speaker 7: the Voting Rights Act to add majority minority districts that
Speaker 7: they're called, and now that they don't have to under Klay,
Speaker 7: they can go back and draw the districts they wanted to.
Speaker 7: And there's nothing wrong with eliminating, for example, a Democratic
Speaker 7: seat in Tennessee that was sat in Memphis if you
Speaker 7: just want to create the maximum number of Republican states.
Speaker 7: And one thing that Kalay said is that it's now
Speaker 7: the burden is on the plaintiffs to show that what
Speaker 7: the legislature is doing really isn't just about maximizing partisan
Speaker 7: advantage or protecting incumbents or all the many reasons that
Speaker 7: states usually engage in redistricting.
Speaker 3: That's one, you know.
Speaker 7: The second thing I think you guys are both right
Speaker 7: was the key relative impact. The real importance of it
Speaker 7: will come after the twenty thirty census, when a lot
Speaker 7: of seats.
Speaker 3: Are going to shift.
Speaker 7: I think from the liberal old states like California, in
Speaker 7: Oork and ILLINOI and they're going to move to the
Speaker 7: sun Belt and southern states. That plus Klay could lead
Speaker 7: to a major shift in House of Representative seats in
Speaker 7: the South, and then they'll be districted to maximis. Because
Speaker 7: I think once you've started this, Lucash, I don't know
Speaker 7: what you think, but I think once Trump said let's
Speaker 7: go ahead and do this, and a number of states
Speaker 7: did it, I don't think there's any going back. I mean,
Speaker 7: what would be the incentive for a state to say, oh,
Speaker 7: we're not going to do that. I mean, look at
Speaker 7: New England, right, New England has basically reached it. All
Speaker 7: the states of New Ly have basically I think, redistricted
Speaker 7: all but one Republican seat out of existence in the
Speaker 7: entire region. And they've never gone back. This has been
Speaker 7: going on for years up in New England and they've
Speaker 7: never gone back, even though no other states retaliated against
Speaker 7: them for this, and the way you're seeing states do
Speaker 7: it now, so I don't see why we'd ever go
Speaker 7: back to the world before. But lastly, I don't see
Speaker 7: what's so bad about that. I mean, really, what I
Speaker 7: don't really understand why it's so bad for states not
Speaker 7: to because this makes right state legislative elections important. People
Speaker 7: should care about who they elect to the state house
Speaker 7: because they're the ones drawing the districts, and so to
Speaker 7: me it seems like a I mean, this is just
Speaker 7: a I don't know, a consequence of democratic elections. I
Speaker 7: don't see what's so bad about jerrymanders. I see lots
Speaker 7: of people complaining about jerry manning. It's so terrible for democracy.
Speaker 7: I don't think it is a federal system where you
Speaker 7: have fifty different states and they're allowed to draw the
Speaker 7: districts as Maybe it would be a bad thing if
Speaker 7: you had one single gigantic districting system for the entire
Speaker 7: country and you could redistrict a cole you know, whole
Speaker 7: party out nationwide, but that's not the case in our
Speaker 7: federal system. So real it is so bad about jerrymandering.
Speaker 1: I don't get it. Let me put all play Devil's advocate,
Speaker 1: and I don't. When I say that, I mean it sincerely.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I fully believe this, But I
Speaker 1: even looked a little bit of skance at the whole
Speaker 1: idea of Trump asking Texas to redistrict in a in
Speaker 1: the middle until I started paying a little more attention
Speaker 1: to what, like you talk about what the Democrats had
Speaker 1: actually really done with districting in the past without ever
Speaker 1: being countered in any way to speak of by the Republicans.
Speaker 1: But I can remember being, you know, in an American
Speaker 1: government class talking to my students and saying that the problem,
Speaker 1: for instance, in California is not so much that the
Speaker 1: voters are choosing their representatives, it's that their representatives are
Speaker 1: choosing the voters. Right, You've heard that, that old cliche. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At what point, though, do we stop believing that you
Speaker 1: can buy demographic information and other pieces of information about
Speaker 1: voters determine how they're going to vote. When will they say,
Speaker 1: for instance, and this is going to be a question,
Speaker 1: I promise, when will voters look at this whole situation say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't really like that you did this,
Speaker 1: and now I'm going to vote for the other party
Speaker 1: they talked about that happened in Virginia if the ten
Speaker 1: to one thing had gone through, So voters, do voters
Speaker 1: still have a say? Is what it comes down to.
Speaker 1: Could they still elect a Democrat in out of one
Speaker 1: of those redistricted Memphis areas.
Speaker 7: Do you think, Yeah, what if a party said, we're
Speaker 7: the clean government party and we can't paign on getting
Speaker 7: rid of jerrymanders, and we can't paign on having a
Speaker 7: redistricting committ right, and you or the people, as they
Speaker 7: did in California once upon a time, or in Virginia,
Speaker 7: vote for a a nonpartisan redistricting commission, or New York
Speaker 7: and then right then you have these people come in
Speaker 7: and say, it's actually interesting, it's mostly in blue states
Speaker 7: who write the blue states who once said we wanted
Speaker 7: to have these in the first place, but now we
Speaker 7: don't like the results, so we're going to get rid
Speaker 7: of them for one time only, or two elections only,
Speaker 7: like the Virginia override. But that's something that you can't
Speaker 7: paign on. First state legislative elections. Right, you could say
Speaker 7: the people are electing parties to control the state houses
Speaker 7: in part because of their control. I think about it also.
Speaker 7: You know, it's interesting I was thinking about this, Linda. Look, Critia,
Speaker 7: I don't know what you think, but this must have
Speaker 7: been the way it was before the seventeenth Amendment, right
Speaker 7: before right when Lincoln is running for Senate. Lincoln is
Speaker 7: actually asking people to elect certain members to the Illinois
Speaker 7: State House because they were the ones who would pick,
Speaker 7: would pick.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, we're back. And I'll just add this,
Speaker 5: Aside from the legal questions about it and the long
Speaker 5: politics of jerrymandering, I've noticed that the reaction to it
Speaker 5: is significant, I think in two ways. One, you had
Speaker 5: a bunch of people, including I think David French at
Speaker 5: the New York Times, but who cares having their knickers
Speaker 5: in a twist about why didn't the Virginia Supreme Court
Speaker 5: intervene before the vote to save the taxpayers the cost
Speaker 5: of an election, and this and this and this, and
Speaker 5: of course the simple answer is the law said they couldn't,
Speaker 5: And actually, appellate courts don't rule on prospective things unless
Speaker 5: there's an error in say the language or the law
Speaker 5: that's drafted in the initiative. That's happened occasionally. Lots of
Speaker 5: Supreme courts have struck down initiatives state supreme courts around
Speaker 5: the country after they've passed, So there's nothing unusual about that.
Speaker 5: But then the shocking reaction of the Democrats in Virginia,
Speaker 5: let's fire the whole Supreme Court. I mean, forget court packing.
Speaker 5: Let's reduce the retirement age to fifty four so they
Speaker 5: all have to leave and reappoint new people. I mean,
Speaker 5: this has been nan Republic stuff. You know, packing the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court is constitutional, right, this is Congress can change
Speaker 5: the number, so that's true.
Speaker 1: But presumably so can the state of Virginia legislature or
Speaker 1: change the constitution. You know, it's likely a different process
Speaker 1: because there are very few states that actually have the
Speaker 1: protections for the Supreme Court that the United States does.
Speaker 1: But anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: Well, now you add one more layer onto this, which
Speaker 5: is the Voting Rights Act case. You have the Democrats
Speaker 5: in hystery about it with the Democratic House leader what
Speaker 5: Hakeem Jeffrey's saying, this is an illegitimate court that's been
Speaker 5: a refrain for a while now, an illegitimate court.
Speaker 3: Who was it who said?
Speaker 5: Somebody tweeted out some Democrat packed the court. Now I thought, okay,
Speaker 5: let's give from five more justices. I mean, they're not
Speaker 5: even thinking this through at all. But the point is
Speaker 5: is that I am now I'm going to recant something
Speaker 5: that I think I said in some episode many months
Speaker 5: ago that well, I think we are both reflecting that
Speaker 5: wonder about getting rid of the filibuster. And I still
Speaker 5: don't like the idea, But now I am convinced that
Speaker 5: the Democrats, if they get the chance, they will abolish it.
Speaker 5: They will pack the court, they will admit DC and
Speaker 5: Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1: They will elect college or try.
Speaker 5: Or abolish it correct one of those things.
Speaker 1: And well, they're already, They're already they do have statutory statewide,
Speaker 1: statutory methods whereby they're going to undermine the electoral college.
Speaker 1: And yes, I do think they will do that, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that the elector all electoral college votes will
Speaker 1: go to the popular vote winner, and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I need to think sometime sometimes, I need to think
Speaker 1: through what the actual practical ramification as that are, because
Speaker 1: I'm guessing it wouldn't turn out the way they expect
Speaker 1: it to. You know, I had to. I was going
Speaker 1: to send you something and I just thought busy. I apologize,
Speaker 1: But who was it in California that now wants to
Speaker 1: change your jungle primary of course, back to you know,
Speaker 1: a party based system, because hey, this isn't working out
Speaker 1: what way the way we thought it would? You know,
Speaker 1: that we would have one hundred percent full time forever.
Speaker 1: Uh one party advantage with this jungle primary.
Speaker 5: Yeah so typical, right, yeah, I mean so as you know,
Speaker 5: our democracy trademark is actually literally true.
Speaker 3: Our democracy means we.
Speaker 5: Win, right, we will if if we're not getting our way,
Speaker 5: we changed the rules. But here's the This gets back
Speaker 5: to an even older conversation we had along with John
Speaker 5: maybe three years ago now maybe more.
Speaker 3: We were speculating about, you know, could there really be
Speaker 3: another civil war?
Speaker 5: And you know we we you and I tangled a
Speaker 5: bit about whether the Spanish Civil War is a model
Speaker 5: or not. I am proposing, not highly facetiously, what I'm calling.
Speaker 5: You'll see why it's half facetious. I want to propose
Speaker 5: the Union of Concerned Political Scientists doomsday clock, and I'm
Speaker 5: gonna I'm gonna move the clock up to four minutes
Speaker 5: to midnight. Right, people, remember the the action was the
Speaker 5: bullt of the Atomic Scientists, and the Union of Concerned
Speaker 5: Scientist was even worse. But the point is is they
Speaker 5: made lots of publicity for decades with their doomsday clock,
Speaker 5: and it would go up a minute.
Speaker 1: We're a minute, We're a minute, We're a minute.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you know if oh so, let me add
Speaker 5: one more data point and then we'll go on to
Speaker 5: the next legal question.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: We've essentially seeing the we mentioned this before a week
Speaker 5: or two ago. We've seen the mayor of New York
Speaker 5: City essentially threaten Ken Griffith, you know, one of the
Speaker 5: the great financial titans of our time, by standing in
Speaker 5: front of his apartment around the corner from where that
Speaker 5: Luigi what's his name guy shot the seat Mangioni and
Speaker 5: became called hero for the Left. I guess there's even
Speaker 5: a stage play about him, already celebrating him typical.
Speaker 3: But we've seen two things.
Speaker 1: You see, by the way, from a female point of view,
Speaker 1: he's not that cute. He's a soy boy. Go ahead,
Speaker 1: all those women who want to marry him or do
Speaker 1: something with him anyway.
Speaker 5: Well, you know there's there's always that cohort of women
Speaker 5: who write love letters to like Charles Manson in prison, right.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is not it's ridiculous. But you know
Speaker 5: who wanted to have a date with Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker 1: I share and he wanted to eat them with dates?
Speaker 5: Well, okay, I was gonna say he wanted to share
Speaker 5: open face sandwiches with him.
Speaker 3: I know that's worse there. Sorry, so you'll set.
Speaker 1: Me, okay, I sent you a text.
Speaker 5: Well, here's the serious point. You have these polls showing
Speaker 5: a parality of Democrats thinking the Butler attempt on Trump
Speaker 5: and the White House core respondesced and attempt were faked,
Speaker 5: which is Looney Tunes territory. But then you also have
Speaker 5: especially younger liberals and Democrats coming along like forty percent
Speaker 5: saying violence is justified for political uh, for your political goals.
Speaker 5: So if it comes to pass that you have always
Speaker 5: reformed and I agree with you, probably wouldn't work out
Speaker 5: the way the Democrats think. Uh, then what happens after
Speaker 5: that possibly bad stuff. And so that's why four minutes
Speaker 5: to midnight is it is a gimmick. It's I want
Speaker 5: to make fun of all those you know, Union of
Speaker 5: Concerns scientists.
Speaker 3: But it's not crazy to think about.
Speaker 1: So let me just throw something a little And we
Speaker 1: didn't talk about this, but I'm want to throw it
Speaker 1: at you anyway. You know, I'm the one who always
Speaker 1: complains about Republicans refusing to recognize the war that they're in.
Speaker 1: And you know, wanting to be gentlemen, wanting to to
Speaker 1: and wanting to stick with principles, wanting to defend institutions,
Speaker 1: and even being willing to lose because they're defending their
Speaker 1: principles and their institutions. I wonder how much longer, you know,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party can veer toward Mike Pence if the
Speaker 1: Democrats continue to go down this road, which I do
Speaker 1: think is it's becoming worse. You know, you're four minutes
Speaker 1: to midnight, whatever you want to call it. I just
Speaker 1: you have to wonder. I'm not saying civil war necessarily,
Speaker 1: but Trump is popular in large part because he doesn't
Speaker 1: care to play the game the way it's always been played,
Speaker 1: which is they get to do whatever they want. John
Speaker 1: brought up a really good point in this regard about
Speaker 1: the jerrymandering that you know, come on, let's be real.
Speaker 1: Democrats have jerrymandered both racially jerrymandered and politically jerrymandered, partisan
Speaker 1: jerrymanderd for years. It's part of the reason why they're
Speaker 1: so desperate. There's nothing left for them to jerrymander. Steve right, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, and so Trump and I confess to being
Speaker 1: a little bit unnerved by Trump, you know, encouraging it
Speaker 1: in Texas and didn't feel right right me of all people,
Speaker 1: but you know, John convinced me that this is what
Speaker 1: we have to do. We don't have a choice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's a rare day when Sean is more
Speaker 5: ferocious than you and I are. But all right, I'll
Speaker 5: just add this. You know, I think it's our friend
Speaker 5: Tom Klingenstein, who's been writing for several years now, the
Speaker 5: phrase that we're in a cold civil war, like the
Speaker 5: Cold War is so cold and so that the question
Speaker 5: is when does it become a hot civil war for real?
Speaker 3: And I also I just add a plug Haret, And
Speaker 3: you know I interviewed.
Speaker 5: Noel Rothman on the Ricochet podcast, who's got just got
Speaker 5: a brand new book out this week on violence of
Speaker 5: the left right. And so there's that. But we're going
Speaker 5: to go to a quick ad break with some bumper music.
Speaker 5: That is the baseline that is blowing up the internet.
Speaker 3: So the Internet says, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Hi, everybody, it's Steve. I know you were expecting one
Speaker 2: of those automated drop in ads, but instead today what
Speaker 2: I want to do is encourage all of you who
Speaker 2: are regular listeners to the Three Whiskey Happy Hour. To
Speaker 2: consider subscribing to our group, Substack Political Questions. You can
Speaker 2: find it at Steve Hayward dot substack dot com. It's
Speaker 2: completely free to subscribe, though, if you'd like to become
Speaker 2: a paying supporting subscriber, our rates are much much lower
Speaker 2: than your average substack and it would be a nice
Speaker 2: token of support if you're so inclined. It's not just me,
Speaker 2: but you will find John Yu from time to time,
Speaker 2: Lucretia from time to time, but in particular every Thursday
Speaker 2: and Friday, we have the very popular novelist Max Cossack,
Speaker 2: and on Friday, Ammogirl shows up every week with her
Speaker 2: humorous stylings and sometimes snarky observations.
Speaker 5: On the world.
Speaker 2: So please join up with Political Questions. You'll have a
Speaker 2: lot of fun and we'll enjoy having you there. And
Speaker 2: now back to our regular programming, beginning with some snark
Speaker 2: from John from our original taping session that went so sideways.
Speaker 7: You know, guys, if you let Steve have his own
Speaker 7: addendum and appendix to our podcast, it's just going to
Speaker 7: be about air quality. I mean, does everybody want to
Speaker 7: listen to Steve talk fifty I and class have lifted
Speaker 7: to Steve talks for fifteenth straight minutes about clean air,
Speaker 7: during which time he used up all the oxygen in
Speaker 7: the room.
Speaker 5: All right, let's resumed with lucretia and John unplugged, this
Speaker 5: time about a recent important case from the Ninth Circuit
Speaker 5: Court of Appeals that I completely missed.
Speaker 3: So take it away, guys.
Speaker 1: Well this gives me an opportunity. John, I'm going to
Speaker 1: jump right in. There was a Ninth Circuit Court decision
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago now, and I of course
Speaker 1: don't remember the name of it, but it was actually
Speaker 1: one of those COVID area era decisions where an employer
Speaker 1: held health employer, medical employer some kind would not grant
Speaker 1: religious exemptions for the vaccine, and that people were placed
Speaker 1: on leave and ultimately fired because they wouldn't they couldn't
Speaker 1: get the exception, and the place wouldn't allow them to
Speaker 1: come back. I should have sent you the case. But
Speaker 1: the reason I want to mention is we have brought
Speaker 1: up a couple of times this whole question of the
Speaker 1: free exercise clause versus say, you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: transgender protections for transgender people and things like that, and
Speaker 1: how the courts have not been really good about it.
Speaker 1: But this Ninth Circuit decision actually really got me because
Speaker 1: here was the argument, and it's unfair to do this
Speaker 1: to you because you haven't read it, but it was
Speaker 1: that an employer, a health employer needs, you know, medical employer,
Speaker 1: needs the people to be healthy. They need them to
Speaker 1: be healthy. They don't want them to pass any diseases
Speaker 1: on to other people, and that therefore the requirement that
Speaker 1: you get the vaccine or get fired made sense. It
Speaker 1: was one of those reasonable accommodations, a reasonable compelling interests
Speaker 1: that the employer could do, and it was something about
Speaker 1: what was reasonable. Well, here's my point. If you fire people,
Speaker 1: if your reason for demanding that they get a vaccine
Speaker 1: is so that you don't lose your workforce, and then
Speaker 1: they fire people who don't get the vaccine, didn't anybody
Speaker 1: on the court think that that was problematic? I know,
Speaker 1: again unfair, but there is a bigger issue. When are
Speaker 1: we going to have courts that actually take the First
Speaker 1: Amendment seriously?
Speaker 7: Again, Well, this is interesting because it depends who the
Speaker 7: employer is. If the employer is a private company, then
Speaker 7: the First Amendment doesn't apply to them at all.
Speaker 3: If it's a state.
Speaker 7: So if it was a state or local government, doesn't
Speaker 7: sound like it was. But if it was a state
Speaker 7: in local government, then you would have to go back
Speaker 7: to the arguments that we were having with Phil Munnos.
Speaker 7: If you remember, is the government allowed to pass a
Speaker 7: generally applicable law and if it just happens to affect
Speaker 7: religious groups more under this case called employment division versus Smith,
Speaker 7: unless there's a compelling I mean, unless there's actually it
Speaker 7: sounds like there's almost no cases where the religious minority
Speaker 7: could prevail unless you could prove that the law was
Speaker 7: really a pretext and was really drawn to discriminate on
Speaker 7: the basis of religion. Here's the interesting thing, Lucretia, is
Speaker 7: that prohibition on hiring and firing by private employers is
Speaker 7: not from the First Amendments from Title seven of the
Speaker 7: Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four. And you could
Speaker 7: make the argument that the Title seven does not create
Speaker 7: the use the same standard that the First Amendment does,
Speaker 7: that it actually could be tougher on employers, that it
Speaker 7: could require them to accommodate religious minorities. So, to take
Speaker 7: an example, I think that and am player could not
Speaker 7: get away with something that said, we're just firing everyone
Speaker 7: who gets who won't take a vaccine on religious grounds
Speaker 7: because we don't think religious grounds are right, genuine and honest, right.
Speaker 7: I think that would the employer would clearly lose.
Speaker 1: I think that that issue was addressed and dismissed that
Speaker 1: they had, you know, done whatever due diligence to determine
Speaker 1: that it was in fact religious exemptions. I don't know
Speaker 1: how you actually prove something like that.
Speaker 7: So then the real question is, you know, so you
Speaker 7: have a you know, like IBM or Microsoft, they fire
Speaker 7: someone because they won't take the vaccine, and then the
Speaker 7: employee says, I have a religious reason for not taking
Speaker 7: the vaccine. Usually the government employed, I'm sorry, the employer
Speaker 7: would have to show some kind of what they call
Speaker 7: something like a reasonable business justification for why they have
Speaker 7: that rule. And I don't know. I mean, I think
Speaker 7: some of this is then going to depend on the
Speaker 7: science of whether you can read, you know, whether you
Speaker 7: really need to demand everybody have a vaccine to have
Speaker 7: a functioning workforce. It's really interesting, though, I just don't
Speaker 7: I don't know how court resolved because I think this
Speaker 7: is really I don't think this has reached the US
Speaker 7: Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: This is the Ninth Circuit case two weeks ago. But
Speaker 1: that was the other thing. If at some point the
Speaker 1: the it was absolutely determined, which of course I think
Speaker 1: it already has been, but absolutely determined from a scientific
Speaker 1: point of view that the vaccine was not only not
Speaker 1: effective in the ways that they claimed, but harmful to
Speaker 1: many people. That was not addressed at all in the opinion.
Speaker 1: Would that make a difference, because wouldn't you be looking
Speaker 1: at the employer's state of mind at the time. That's
Speaker 1: my first question I had to follow on. No.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's a really great question. So I think
Speaker 7: one of the things that would have to get to
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court is if the employer made the decision,
Speaker 7: say in twenty twenty, right at the beginning of the pandemic,
Speaker 7: before anybody really knew very much, maybe they could say
Speaker 7: we're going to require everyone to get the vaccine. But
Speaker 7: then suppose over time you learn more information, For example,
Speaker 7: as you say the Cristia that the vaccines not really
Speaker 7: necessary if you're under forty, or the vaccine isn't necessary
Speaker 7: if you're healthy, you could go on and say or
Speaker 7: you're in the age group where the vaccine might actually
Speaker 7: be harmful. Then you know, this is interesting. Does the
Speaker 7: employer have an obligation to update the policy in line
Speaker 7: with new information? I would think you would have to.
Speaker 3: Don't think you could.
Speaker 7: I don't think an employer could say I'm meeting Title
Speaker 7: seven because i have some anti antidiluvian policy that was
Speaker 7: made before scientification, and I'm allowed to just stick through
Speaker 7: it no matter how much new information comes up.
Speaker 1: So there's some back and forth about this in the chat.
Speaker 1: And that's the question back to the question of whether
Speaker 1: or not it's a public it's an agent of the
Speaker 1: state involved. The employer is actually a public employer, not
Speaker 1: a private one. But there are cases that deal with
Speaker 1: religious persecution of religious minorities or single persons who are
Speaker 1: claiming a religious exemption or the right to practice a
Speaker 1: religious belief. And is there no First Amendment protection for
Speaker 1: that at all.
Speaker 7: For non people not connected to the state. Yeah, I
Speaker 7: don't not under the Constitution. Again, it has to come
Speaker 7: from Title seven. And look, maybe it's an interesting, I
Speaker 7: think fundamental question. I ask you, Lucretia, does political theory
Speaker 7: require that we have that we make private firms and
Speaker 7: individuals not discriminate on the basis of religion when they act.
Speaker 7: I think we could make a strong, a very strong
Speaker 7: claim that the government shouldn't pick amongst religions when it's acting.
Speaker 7: But why do you and I care whether you know,
Speaker 7: if Lucretia only wants to drink I don't know Mormon
Speaker 7: made whiskey. Why can't you just buy Mormon made whiskey,
Speaker 7: like there would be such a thing, Or you know,
Speaker 7: why can't Chick fil A, for example, say we don't
Speaker 7: want to hire people who want to work on Sundays,
Speaker 7: or we're like, why can't Why can't a private company
Speaker 7: decide to discriminate on the basis of religion in its
Speaker 7: operations and right if that's offensive, then people don't have
Speaker 7: to work there, they don't have to buy the products.
Speaker 7: And theoretically other competitors will come in and say we
Speaker 7: are more religious or we're less religious, buy from us,
Speaker 7: work for us. I don't so explain to you, why
Speaker 7: do you want Why do you think private firms or
Speaker 7: companies or individuals should be under some non discrimination standard
Speaker 7: for religion?
Speaker 1: What about hobby lobby not wanting to purchase insurance under
Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act.
Speaker 7: That's to me, I know, to me, hobby lobby should
Speaker 7: be free to discriminate on right, that's because the state
Speaker 7: made them. That's my point is the state was trying
Speaker 7: to force them not to not to and it's thought
Speaker 7: discriminate against we're you know, groups. I think this hobby
Speaker 7: lobby should be allowed to.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is a little bit of a changing
Speaker 1: of the subject, but it follows on what we're seeing,
Speaker 1: the rise of anti Semitism that's tied so clearly to
Speaker 1: supposedly to anti Zionism. Right, you can hate Israel, and
Speaker 1: I hate Israel, but I don't hate Jews. Now we
Speaker 1: know that that that's just simply not the case. Israel
Speaker 1: is going to sue the New York Times for that ridiculous, ludicrous, obnoxious.
Speaker 1: I don't have enough negative adjectives to describe the Nicholas
Speaker 1: whatever his name is, christof piece that. You know, anybody
Speaker 1: with two brains in their head realizes that not only
Speaker 1: was it just an absolute lie and made up a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff, but it was also done to try
Speaker 1: to mute the mute the impact of the testimony and
Speaker 1: the vision, the images and so forth coming out from
Speaker 1: what Hamas did on October seventh, which you know, was
Speaker 1: barely recognizable as human as human, and so they had
Speaker 1: to come up with something even more inhuman to try
Speaker 1: to get people's attention away. But can the State of
Speaker 1: Israel sue the New York Times for for libel?
Speaker 3: No, I don't think so.
Speaker 7: I mean, I read a book, I read a note
Speaker 7: about that, and uh, you know, so you know Ash,
Speaker 7: so you know the New York Times versus Sullivan's standard,
Speaker 7: And I think we I think we discussed this many
Speaker 7: years ago. I think we both agree that is not
Speaker 7: part of the original understanding of the First Amendment free
Speaker 7: speech clause that you used to have more robust libel
Speaker 7: and defamation laws at the time of the founding. There
Speaker 7: was no idea at the time of the founding that
Speaker 7: since she simply because you were a public figure or
Speaker 7: government official, you were somehow not allowed to sue people
Speaker 7: for a libel and defamation unless they had committed actual malice. Right,
Speaker 7: That was the standard the Supreme Court has come up
Speaker 7: with in the New York Times case. But if that
Speaker 7: is the standard, right, then then Israel and Israel would
Speaker 7: have to And it's interesting. I also don't know here's
Speaker 7: a I share.
Speaker 3: The thought, is.
Speaker 7: Ken a country claim that it's been defamed. Usually it's
Speaker 7: the idea is it's an individual's reputation, and you know,
Speaker 7: you look at the founding. They almost talk about reputation
Speaker 7: as if it's a property right. It's like an property interest.
Speaker 7: It's something that you own that can be harmed.
Speaker 1: If they do understand that in the context of what
Speaker 1: Israel's going through right now.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, But I just wonder whether it's a legal concept.
Speaker 7: Can a country have a reputation like you and I
Speaker 7: can have a reputation and then sue to say you've
Speaker 7: harmed our reputation or could it be the case that
Speaker 7: you and I allowed to say whatever the hell we
Speaker 7: want about other countries?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 7: There's just is there any this is That's an interesting thing.
Speaker 7: I've never seen anyone try to excavate what the First
Speaker 7: Amendment free speech, free press clause meant in terms of
Speaker 7: protecting the reputation of a state, a country, or even
Speaker 7: maybe this came up in an American state. For maybe
Speaker 7: an American state might have done this, but it'll be
Speaker 7: the same question. But putting that aside, then you'd have
Speaker 7: to prove that Nick Christoff had violated the actual malice
Speaker 7: standard when he wrote, and that would mean what did
Speaker 7: he actually do to try to verify that this outrageous
Speaker 7: accusation had any basis in fact, did he call anybody?
Speaker 7: Did he talk to anyone? Or was he just repeating
Speaker 7: something that was in the most fevered swamps of the internet.
Speaker 1: Now he actually his source was a pro Haamas journalist.
Speaker 1: I guess that was his source. I'm to understand. Let
Speaker 1: me go back to the Sullivan case New Times, the
Speaker 1: Sullivant case for a moment, and carry on with what
Speaker 1: you said about you know what Israel's reputation so on.
Speaker 1: Remember that the justification for adding the extra requirement of
Speaker 1: actual malice. So the defense against libel is the truth.
Speaker 1: You cannot see someone for libel if they have printed
Speaker 1: something that was true. If an unknown person like me
Speaker 1: is the victim of some outrageous slander libel in a publication,
Speaker 1: I can sue because nobody knows who I am, and
Speaker 1: therefore all I have to prove is that they lied
Speaker 1: behind you hide behind what if they defamed the great
Speaker 1: Lucretian name, that would be awful. But anyway, but if
Speaker 1: somebody writes some scandalous things about you. You have to
Speaker 1: prove the intent behind the falsity, not just the falsity.
Speaker 1: But the court's rationale is that not requiring that would
Speaker 1: have a chilling effect on free speech, which is again
Speaker 1: a made up rationale. Why that would have a chilling
Speaker 1: effect on free speech? I think it would have a
Speaker 1: chilling effect on lies. I don't think it would have
Speaker 1: a chilling effect on free speech. But that's what the
Speaker 1: Court is said. Do you think there's any chance that
Speaker 1: they will abandon it?
Speaker 7: So there are I think Justice Thomas and maybe gor
Speaker 7: Sich might have joined him, but Justice Thomas has written
Speaker 7: an opinion calling for the Court to re examine New
Speaker 7: York Times versus Sullivan. It's obviously not an opinion that's
Speaker 7: rooted in the original understanding of the free speech and
Speaker 7: free press clauses. And this Court is trying to guide
Speaker 7: its decisions by originalism.
Speaker 3: And if you do, then you.
Speaker 7: Would want to look back at it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: The other thing I think to follow on your point
Speaker 7: about why the Court thought this was necessary was, or
Speaker 7: at least some scholars have said the real point of
Speaker 7: the free speech clause is to create a robust space
Speaker 7: to criticize the government, that that's really what the free
Speaker 7: speech laws allow us to engage in self government, and
Speaker 7: we need to therefore be able to have even stronger
Speaker 7: protections for speech that hacks the government. But you know what,
Speaker 7: we could actually figure this out because there are lots
Speaker 7: of other countries in the world that are Western democracies
Speaker 7: that don't have the New York Times versus Sullivan, and
Speaker 7: we could say, you, has free speech really been curtailed?
Speaker 7: Right England? Famously, you can go to England and sue
Speaker 7: people for libel for the very same things you can't
Speaker 7: sue here, and that's not uncommon that you see those
Speaker 7: kinds of cases. Is free speech in England?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 7: Free speech in England's under attack for by other reasons,
Speaker 7: for different reasons, not because of the libel law. It's
Speaker 7: being too strong there.
Speaker 5: All right, that was actually a great discussion and I
Speaker 5: do want to add this and you can respond as
Speaker 5: you like. I think one thing, by the way, that
Speaker 5: should be said about the Nick Christoph piece is that
Speaker 5: remember he's an opinion journalist and not a news journalist.
Speaker 5: That are trying to skirt the line there because they
Speaker 5: did give him three thousand words. I think for that piece.
Speaker 5: Is that right anyway? And he he likes to represent
Speaker 5: himself as a reporter, but you know, they don't really
Speaker 5: edit opinion pieces. And I think it's significant that the
Speaker 5: news pages there have not picked up on the story.
Speaker 5: They're not trying to deepen his reporting so called reporting.
Speaker 1: Are you making apologies for The New York Times here, Steve.
Speaker 5: No I just I want to make this point that
Speaker 5: opinion journalists often get away with something that news reporters
Speaker 5: would not get away with. I think it's a bad practice.
Speaker 5: I think it should not be done.
Speaker 1: Especially when it's factual reporting supposedly as opposed to it's
Speaker 1: my opinion that the Israelis are just as bad and
Speaker 1: less human than even Hamas's. That's something entirely different than
Speaker 1: making up facts.
Speaker 5: Well, now here's actually I wanted to bring back something
Speaker 5: you and I have called a few times in the
Speaker 5: last few years. When I heard that crazy story about
Speaker 5: dogs being trained to rape Palestinians, my mind ran back
Speaker 5: to the McMartin preschool case and all those related cases
Speaker 5: at the times when the media and law enforcement bought it,
Speaker 5: hook line and sinker. And you know, there was a
Speaker 5: case a couple of years later down in San Diego,
Speaker 5: our friend and contributor Lloyd Billingsley reported on it at
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 3: This is Daniel Lachike guy.
Speaker 5: So he was Asian, apparently had some I don't know
Speaker 5: if he had some congenital birth defects. He looked kind
Speaker 5: of creepy, you might say, in the ordinary sense. And
Speaker 5: he got convicted. I think he was convicted. I got
Speaker 5: to check the facts on this, but some of the
Speaker 5: testimony from the kids working on recovered memories was, Oh,
Speaker 5: they slaughtered horses and elephants in our classroom. They borrowed
Speaker 5: from the zoo. I mean, absolutely preposterous things that then
Speaker 5: the news media would report without any skepticism at all.
Speaker 5: When you know, you know, you know I've mentioned this.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Jaffa walked in one day in the middle of the
Speaker 5: hysteria front page of the La Times every day and said,
Speaker 5: I don't believe a word of this. I thought, huh,
Speaker 5: he's a pretty smart guy. Turned out to be absolutely right,
Speaker 5: and we saw a bunch of this hysteria and utter
Speaker 5: credulity of the media and prosecutors. Right. Janet Reno did
Speaker 5: a case in Florida. There's a horrible case out of Massachusetts.
Speaker 5: They all got eventually overturned, but not until many people
Speaker 5: spent several years in jail. And so for the media
Speaker 5: in this case to say, wait a minute, how does
Speaker 5: this actually even work? Anatomically right? I mean, not to be.
Speaker 1: Too deep, I guess that's what I would say. The
Speaker 1: difference is a little bit, Steve that I read Douglas
Speaker 1: Murray's column, I think in the New York Coast yesterday,
Speaker 1: where you know, he said that there's never ever been
Speaker 1: a single recorded incidence of dogs being trained to do
Speaker 1: anything like that, ever it ever, you know, And so
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't the hysteria that followed McMartin, et cetera,
Speaker 1: that there is a little bit of a basis in
Speaker 1: fact for you know, child molestation, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So I do see them as slightly different. You would
Speaker 1: you would have to be what I accuse the New
Speaker 1: York Times of being to run the story so deluded
Speaker 1: and committed to a horrible ideology. Even to allow that
Speaker 1: story to run, I can't even imagine that there are
Speaker 1: very many New York postscuse me, New York Times news
Speaker 1: reporters who would be willing to put their reputation on
Speaker 1: the line for something that atrocious, right, But what the
Speaker 1: editorial board was.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and the one of comment I'll offer on
Speaker 5: it now that it's gonna want to write an article
Speaker 5: for a while on this now is what John was asking.
Speaker 5: And I can't, I can't. I don't remember now exactly
Speaker 5: how you put it. But where is this surge of
Speaker 5: anti Semitism coming from? And I want to suggest it's
Speaker 5: coming from, uh, where it came from back in the
Speaker 5: Really a lot of what you're hearing now is an
Speaker 5: invention of the Soviet Union propaganda arms starting decades ago.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: And you know, I remember hal Roud Armont taking us
Speaker 5: through tracing out where this was a different subject, but
Speaker 5: it would trace out where some of those crazy stories
Speaker 5: got into the media, especially like the Black press about
Speaker 5: how AIDS was creation and and and crack cocaine and
Speaker 5: cocaine was you know, a CIA plot undermine Inner city.
Speaker 5: Those stories always showed up first in some Indian newspaper,
Speaker 5: I mean as an India Indian not you know, the
Speaker 5: Maveajo reservation, and then would gradually creep their way through
Speaker 5: into Western press and break out and you know, whispers
Speaker 5: and you know the Chicago Defender. Maybe I don't know,
Speaker 5: and uh so I'll bet that's happening now on a
Speaker 5: very big scale from the same people. Russia. Iran I
Speaker 5: think is pretty good at this. Not sure, but Tar yes, probably,
Speaker 5: katar oh absolutely, And not sure about China because I
Speaker 5: think if they tried it on social media would sound
Speaker 5: too much like a Nigerian prints trying to your bank account.
Speaker 5: I don't know, am I, but here's a little interesting
Speaker 5: tidbit for you. So I'm I don't know how I
Speaker 5: stumble across this, but uh you know, ts Eliot had
Speaker 5: a mixed reputation, shall we say, when it came to
Speaker 5: anti Semitism, right, you know, jaff It was not fond
Speaker 5: of him, and.
Speaker 3: He deserves it.
Speaker 5: I mean, Elliott wrote some really nasty stuff and some
Speaker 5: early poems, and there's some lectures he gave in the
Speaker 5: forties and fifties that have some typical anti Semitic tropes,
Speaker 5: and you know, you might be I don't think you
Speaker 5: should be, but you could be suspicious of his idea
Speaker 5: of a Christian society book. I read it recently because
Speaker 5: I got curious and I didn't see a difficulty. But whatever,
Speaker 5: somebody wrote to Elliott in nineteen fifty three. So you know,
Speaker 5: Stalin I think is still alive in early fifty three,
Speaker 5: and I asked him if he would sign a statement
Speaker 5: deploring Soviet anti semitism, and he wrote back a long letter,
Speaker 5: and he said, of course I'll sign this. But on
Speaker 5: the inter hand, how hard is it to deplore Soviet
Speaker 5: anti semitism? You know, I mean, how can someone decline
Speaker 5: to an appeal to protest Soviet anti semitism. But then
Speaker 5: he went on and I'll just quote a little bit
Speaker 5: from this letter that I think is quite interesting, and
Speaker 5: what is it? Explain some things going on now? So
Speaker 5: here I'll quote him. The only striking difference between the
Speaker 5: present anti semitism in Russia and the anti semitism of
Speaker 5: Hitler's Germany seems to me this that the Russians have
Speaker 5: learned from the mistakes of the Germans and are much
Speaker 5: shrewder propagandists. The Nazis persecuted Jews for being Jews, and
Speaker 5: thereby incurred at once the antipathy of all civilized people.
Speaker 5: The Russians refrained from any overt doctrine of racial superiority,
Speaker 5: which would too flatly contradict their supposed principles and interfere
Speaker 5: with their foreign policy. And he goes on their say
Speaker 5: more about it, but he says this is a matter
Speaker 5: of policy to stoke hysteria. Well, that's curious about Elliott.
Speaker 5: I don't know if he had a big change of
Speaker 5: mind or if he was just thoughtless in some of
Speaker 5: his earlier expressions. But that description of what's going on
Speaker 5: again that's seventy years ago now, I think is really
Speaker 5: quite extraordinary.
Speaker 1: And I hate to tell you, Steve, but anti Semitism
Speaker 1: long precedes the Union, I know. But yeah, and I
Speaker 1: don't understand it. I really don't understand it. But I
Speaker 1: meet people who are, Oh I'm not anti Semitic, I'm
Speaker 1: anti Zionist all the time.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's but you talk to them for very long
Speaker 1: and it's you know, who made that movie Jews kind
Speaker 1: of thing? Right? You know? I find it despicable, I
Speaker 1: really do. But you know, and it's not just because
Speaker 1: some of my best friends are Jews, but they do
Speaker 1: happen to be so.
Speaker 3: And many of our favorite.
Speaker 1: Teachers, right yep, absolutely almost all of them. It was
Speaker 1: a funny thing that, you know, all of those good
Speaker 1: Midwestern Protestant Catholic boys came back to California to study
Speaker 1: with that nice old Jewish guy. But I always thought
Speaker 1: that was strange.
Speaker 5: While we're on it's not directly related, but I just
Speaker 5: got my latest copy of First Things magazine in the mail,
Speaker 5: and I can't believe I'm this many years old before
Speaker 5: I've heard this phrase. The lead story is called tomophobia. Tomophobia.
Speaker 5: In other words, it's it's a tomistic. It's again, it's
Speaker 5: about a quiles see if you if you're if it's uh,
Speaker 5: it's Mary Harrington, who I don't I'm not that familiar with.
Speaker 5: But what a great phrase. I am going to keep
Speaker 5: that and use it and throw them back in the
Speaker 5: face of all the people who say homophobia.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, all right, it's a little obscure, Steve, But okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, good question for you, and I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: spring this on you. I would probably ask you this
Speaker 1: offline if we were offline, but we're not.
Speaker 7: So.
Speaker 1: I have seen three or four articles in the last
Speaker 1: couple of weeks about Harvey Mansfield, two of them two
Speaker 1: of them in the Chronicle of Higher Education. What's going
Speaker 1: on there?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 5: Well, I think it's newsworthy that a person who's taught
Speaker 5: at Harvard since at nineteen sixty four, what is that?
Speaker 5: Sixty years almost?
Speaker 3: It's amazing long time. But it does have this book out.
Speaker 5: I've got the galleys and so it's coming out on
Speaker 5: where Harvard went wrong, and it's a collection of a
Speaker 5: lot of his articles over the years, some resolutions he
Speaker 5: wrote the Harvard faculty meetings that did no good. Of course,
Speaker 5: so there's a certain valedictory nature to it. I think
Speaker 5: I mentioned once being on some zoom meeting. I'm vague
Speaker 5: about what exactly the providence of it, but one of
Speaker 5: the participant was Pippin Norris, who's very prominent in the
Speaker 5: Harvard government faculty, and she was arguing against trying to diversify,
Speaker 5: arguing against the viewpoint diversity and now though it was
Speaker 5: pretty weak, so I finally interjected and said, so, you know,
Speaker 5: Harvey Mansfield's going to retire soon. Will the government department
Speaker 5: at Harvard try and replace him with somebody like him?
Speaker 5: And there's a long pause and she said maybe. I
Speaker 5: said I'll take that as a no until I see different, right,
Speaker 5: And you know, so we'll see about that. But the
Speaker 5: point is is that what's the old saying the only
Speaker 5: good conservative is a dead conservative.
Speaker 3: Well he's not.
Speaker 5: He's still with us, but he's now retired, and so
Speaker 5: you can say, ah, he's a national treasure, whereas a
Speaker 5: year ago he was still a fascist.
Speaker 1: Okay, well they're saying retired but still roaring was the
Speaker 1: latest title that I saw of the article. So anyway, anyway,
Speaker 1: I had to ask I just I thought it was strange.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's getting his due, and you know, he's getting
Speaker 5: his due and he deserves it.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Steve, I wanted to tell you also,
Speaker 1: since the AP has determined that musket that what are
Speaker 1: they called loaders the seventeen seventy six, why can't I
Speaker 1: never remember not muskets, muscleloaders. Muscleloaders are are they're not regulated?
Speaker 1: Did you know that? Did you know that, Steve? And
Speaker 1: he's passed and I wanted to have a chance to
Speaker 1: get it out and I didn't. I didn't, So I
Speaker 1: was going to come on the three Sky Happy Hour
Speaker 1: with my muzzle loader just to see if somebody from
Speaker 1: the AP would turn me into the The ATF is
Speaker 1: the perfect example of why muzzleloaders should in fact be regulated.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I'm if Richard Samuelson were with us, he
Speaker 5: would have a quick punt about you know, if you
Speaker 5: ban muzzleloaders, then you'll ban muzzles or something like that,
Speaker 5: which we really need for Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, all, sorry, that was my fault. I deserved.
Speaker 1: I deserved the bad pun.
Speaker 3: Okay. So, okay.
Speaker 5: The last segment from you guys that I'm keeping in
Speaker 5: our reformulated episode is John surprising me and maybe you
Speaker 5: with how presidential Trump is being. So let's roll that
Speaker 5: now and then we will multi a conclusion.
Speaker 7: So can I ask you, but what do you think
Speaker 7: about Christia? I actually think that Trump is really acting
Speaker 7: most presidential now for this reason. He's doing something which
Speaker 7: she really thinks is in the national interests, even at
Speaker 7: the cost of his short term political standing. Right, So
Speaker 7: everyone thinks, oh, Trump is so craven, he's a populist
Speaker 7: who's appealing to write this megabase. But isn't he actually
Speaker 7: saying I agree with them. I think the idea of
Speaker 7: Iran having ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons would be very,
Speaker 7: very bad for our country and our allies. And he's
Speaker 7: incurring large short term hits to his political standing in
Speaker 7: order to pursue I think something that most rational people
Speaker 7: should think is in our national interests, and that to
Speaker 7: me is the leader. That's like the definition of leadership.
Speaker 7: I mean, so I said, as a friend of Neil Trump,
Speaker 7: you know, I think in contrast to these quick strikes
Speaker 7: like Venezuela or in his first term killing SOLMANI you know,
Speaker 7: those were things that were calibrated to not hurt his
Speaker 7: short term political est. But now I think he really
Speaker 7: is sort of acting like a war president, where you
Speaker 7: have to do some things that are going to be
Speaker 7: politically unpopular because you think it's in the best long
Speaker 7: term interests of the country. So I actually I admire
Speaker 7: him for this. And even though he's getting enormous, right,
Speaker 7: enormous criticism from his own side, the Democrats criticism criticizing
Speaker 7: him is just predictable. And you know, if he if
Speaker 7: you figure out a way to remove China as a threat,
Speaker 7: they would still the Democrats would still criticize them.
Speaker 1: Or as people say, if he found a cure for cancer,
Speaker 1: the Democrats are still criticizing for you, although you know,
Speaker 1: I agree with everything you just said, but sometimes I
Speaker 1: sort of have to shut him off because the fifty
Speaker 1: first Venezuela being the fifty first state.
Speaker 7: Wie.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I just don't even get why he does this
Speaker 1: sort of thing.
Speaker 7: You know, he's just like taunting the media, right, do
Speaker 7: you think that's it's just the the cats. I think, yeah,
Speaker 7: I think he's just taunting people, taunting the taunting the media,
Speaker 7: saying crazy things that drive him us. He can't be
Speaker 7: but at least we should make Venezuela territory first before
Speaker 7: he made it a state.
Speaker 1: No, it just anyway, So, uh, we actually are almost
Speaker 1: at the end of the hour, believe.
Speaker 4: It or not.
Speaker 5: All right, Lucretia, it's time for our help the Babylon B.
Speaker 1: I have to say that this has not been This
Speaker 1: has been a week that I think the Babylon b
Speaker 1: agrees with me that there's not a lot of news.
Speaker 1: So there some of them are a little fun like that.
Speaker 1: The whole thing with Christopher Nolan and so the thing is,
Speaker 1: it's a picture of Steve Bischemi and it says too
Speaker 1: far Christopher Nolan casts Steve Muskimi as Helen of Troy.
Speaker 5: Well, he cast Ellen Page is what somebody hector or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Elliott Page, Elliott Page, Sorry, I just yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, I know who I believe will end
Speaker 5: up being the next James James bond.
Speaker 1: If oh god it yeah, and nobody will go see it.
Speaker 1: Faux pas. Trump gives President g with pot of honey
Speaker 1: from White House beehive and the picture. The picture. He really,
Speaker 1: I mean he looks like Winnie the Pooh in the picture. Right,
Speaker 1: go ahead, I'll.
Speaker 5: Bet the Babylon beet is censored in China. Just a hunch,
Speaker 5: just a hunch.
Speaker 1: Conservative too exhausted to form opinion on Thomas Massey, you
Speaker 1: know that feeling? Man oh man? Okay? The New York
Speaker 1: Times updates slogan to all the news that's fit to print,
Speaker 1: plus any rumor, no matter or how implausible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's too true.
Speaker 1: I know it's not funny. Some of these things are enough.
Speaker 1: And you won't get this, Steve, but I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: it anyway for our younger listeners. Millennial figures out how
Speaker 1: to use six seven signaling the end of the fad.
Speaker 3: I know what that's about. I've got him, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm going to kid who was you know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I forgot you're right, and then, along
Speaker 1: with my muzzle loaders, about that, I'm sorry, sorry, along
Speaker 1: with my muzzleloaders, Associate Press warns that trey bouchets are
Speaker 1: exempt from US gun laws. So how you say it?
Speaker 3: Yeah it is, Yep, you got it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, I want one of those two. Actually, I
Speaker 1: want a can into my front yard. Right, one of
Speaker 1: these days we'll get one. But next time I'll bring
Speaker 1: my muzzle loader, I promise, Quinn, Quinn, right, That's all
Speaker 1: I have for today, Steve.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, John Point always says, always drink your whiskey
Speaker 5: and eat, buy more books. And you have been listening
Speaker 5: to the three Whiskey Happy Hour, sponsored by the Civitas Institute,
Speaker 5: produced and hosted by ricochet dot com. The podcast dedicated
Speaker 5: to what single malt singular metaphysics advanced Sidney Sweeney studies,
Speaker 5: which we've proved this week. Uh And we'll be back
Speaker 5: again next week, hopefully with a more ordinary and normal
Speaker 5: edition of a whisky Happy Hour, we hope.
Speaker 3: Are you kidding?
Speaker 1: Christian?
Speaker 7: This has been the best podcast since sement on Vacation Gone.
Speaker 6: What are you talking about, Ricochet? Yes, Join the conversation