Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I've had people say they want me to
Speaker 1: get at least two good Charles CW. Cook rants out
Speaker 1: of you with a Molly Coddle in each one or
Speaker 1: something or it's equivalent.
Speaker 2: Right, I'm trying to find some what that mocks me out.
Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 3: Mister Gorbacho, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast.
Speaker 1: Steve Hayward sitting in the host chair today, joined by a.
Speaker 3: Recovered Charles CW. Cook. So let's have ourselves a podcast.
Speaker 4: And you know, it's not like I agree with everything
Speaker 4: the administration does. So it's like there's I mean, I
Speaker 4: agree with much of what the administration does, but we
Speaker 4: have differences of opinion.
Speaker 1: So then I'm a little.
Speaker 4: Stuck in a bind where I'm like, well, I don't
Speaker 4: want to, you know, speak up against the administration, but
Speaker 4: I don't want to also don't want to take responsibility
Speaker 4: for the administrations doing.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and
Speaker 1: forty four. It's Steve Hayward sitting in for James Lilax today,
Speaker 1: who is comforting somewhere over in the wilds of Italy.
Speaker 1: I am in the North Atlantic, where it is snowing
Speaker 1: at the moment. I'm so far north, but I'm pleased
Speaker 1: that we are joined by the fast recovering Charles C. W. Cook,
Speaker 1: who's been down with the bubonic plague or something like that. Charles,
Speaker 1: how are you feeling and what have you been going
Speaker 1: through the last couple of weeks?
Speaker 2: A man, I don't quite know what it is. I
Speaker 2: thought it was strap because I work up with a
Speaker 2: horrendous razor blade esque sore throat, and then it wasn't
Speaker 2: strapped because that went away pretty quickly. But all these
Speaker 2: other symptoms came along and now I have what is
Speaker 2: really a glorified cold. That's the best part thus far
Speaker 2: of my journey. I feel like I'm on the exit ramp. Aha.
Speaker 1: Well, sounds like I'm about to put to sea. When
Speaker 1: the sound of that horn blowing in the background, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know if you heard that or not.
Speaker 2: On the exit round then no, I am not right.
Speaker 1: Well you sound good, Charles, so it's good to hear
Speaker 1: your voice again. I don't know whether you've been, you know,
Speaker 1: in bed, in your cozy your sheets, perhaps avoiding all
Speaker 1: the news, but The thing that is amazing me, and
Speaker 1: I think everyone is the I think what some people
Speaker 1: thought was the inevitable divorce of Donald Trump and Elon
Speaker 1: Musk has finally occurred.
Speaker 3: Who knew that the long prospected civil war.
Speaker 1: For America would turn out to be between the forces
Speaker 1: of Duke Elon of Musk against the Viscount Donald of
Speaker 1: trump Landia. But here we are, and I don't know
Speaker 1: where you want to start. I'll give you one of
Speaker 1: my opening observations, which is I long expected something like
Speaker 1: this for reasons that I think are obvious but maybe
Speaker 1: are worth discussing. But one of the blows that Musk
Speaker 1: threw down, which I thought was quite outrageous, was saying
Speaker 1: Trump is.
Speaker 3: In the Epstein.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: First of all, I'll say this, I don't think there
Speaker 1: are any Epstein files or an Epstein list, or if
Speaker 1: there was one, it was long ago destroyed and recreating
Speaker 1: it is a difficult thing. And second, if there was
Speaker 1: such a list, I don't know how Elon Musk would
Speaker 1: know who was on it. So that's my first observation,
Speaker 1: and then I have several. But I want to hear
Speaker 1: what do you have to say about this? Which I'm
Speaker 1: sure you may have expected.
Speaker 2: To well, unless that is true, which, for the reason
Speaker 2: jee outline strikes me as very unlikely. That is a
Speaker 2: truly outrageous thing for Musk to have said, and we
Speaker 2: ought not to lose sight of that, purely because the
Speaker 2: drama is so interesting. You just do not accuse people
Speaker 2: of being a sex criminal in the midst of an
Speaker 2: argument for giggles, I think that Musk is on a
Speaker 2: manic episode. I mean, the closest analogue that I can
Speaker 2: find to the last twenty four hours of Musk is
Speaker 2: Kanye West.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I say that as somebody who admires Musk in many ways,
Speaker 2: as a great American eccentric inventor of a long line
Speaker 2: of such people, all of whom are crazy. But the
Speaker 2: behavior yesterday struck me as being redolent of someone who
Speaker 2: has got to be in his bonnet and is now
Speaker 2: looking for any weapon at hand. In the course of
Speaker 2: yesterday's trade, Musk suggested that Donald Trump is a sex
Speaker 2: criminal and is on the Epstein list. He said that
Speaker 2: he was going to dismantle SpaceX's program. He said that
Speaker 2: he wanted Donald No, he didn't say, that's not fair.
Speaker 2: He retweeted the suggestion that Trump be impeached and replaced
Speaker 2: with JD. Vance. I mean, these are extreme rhetorical positions
Speaker 2: to take, and he just did it one by one,
Speaker 2: and I think it just struck me as being manic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, now, if I have this right, he made
Speaker 1: his formal exit a week or more ago, which I
Speaker 1: think was on the way anyway. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: always going to be a temporary government employee, and there's
Speaker 1: like specified in the law of how long you can
Speaker 1: be such a person with aut all kinds of complications happening.
Speaker 1: But then it was shortly after that he criticized the
Speaker 1: big Beautiful bill for I think rightly. I think you'll
Speaker 1: agree that that it didn't cut down the deficit. That's
Speaker 1: really uh. I forget what he called it a travesty
Speaker 1: or worse, And it seems to be Charles. He's right
Speaker 1: about that, isn't he. I mean, we talked about this
Speaker 1: before and should say more about it, but that seemed
Speaker 1: to set off Trump.
Speaker 2: One caveat with that. I think he is right about that.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump doesn't care about spending, he doesn't want to
Speaker 2: reform entitlements, and he has different political imperatives than Musk
Speaker 2: Musk is more of a free marketeer. But the one
Speaker 2: thing Musk has done on this that I found irritating
Speaker 2: Steve is that he will not say aloud the truth
Speaker 2: about our fiscal problems. He will not say that this
Speaker 2: is being caused by unfunded entitlements, that without reforming Social
Speaker 2: Security or Medicare, you cannot fix the budget. He's still saying,
Speaker 2: as he did throughout his fora with Doge, that this
Speaker 2: is the question of pork. That's the word he used
Speaker 2: in his tweet criticizing the bill.
Speaker 1: Pork.
Speaker 2: No, there is pork, of course there is. There is
Speaker 2: discretionary spending that should be cut. There's also some ways
Speaker 2: for auden abuse, although there's not that much of it.
Speaker 2: There's also spending that the executive controls, as in, for example,
Speaker 2: USAID that absolutely should be cut by a Republican administration.
Speaker 2: But that's not why we're hurtling off the cliff. We're
Speaker 2: hurtling off the cliff because however much we raise taxes,
Speaker 2: we cannot outpace the growth in Social Security and Medicare.
Speaker 2: And it's just telling to me that Musk won't say
Speaker 2: that either. In that sense, he's being Trumpian while criticizing Trump.
Speaker 2: But generally, yes, I am on Musk side with this question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a good warm up rant, Charles. Listeners
Speaker 1: will appreciate that you clearly your vigor is returning in
Speaker 1: a rapid clip. Well, let's linger on this for a minute.
Speaker 1: I thought one notable event of the last ten days
Speaker 1: was Jamie Diamond, the very capable chairman of JP Morgan.
Speaker 1: Let's remember JP Morgan is one of the only big
Speaker 1: banks that was not in serious trouble back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and I think Diamond deserves a lot
Speaker 1: of credit for that.
Speaker 3: As any CEO should. And he's a Democrat.
Speaker 1: He was widely rumored to have been on a short
Speaker 1: list to be Treasury Secretary for either candidate, but especially
Speaker 1: if we had had God forbid President Harris. And he
Speaker 1: made this speech last week out at the Rank and
Speaker 1: Library significantly perhaps that Gosh.
Speaker 3: We can't keep going on like this.
Speaker 1: The spending is so far out of control and the
Speaker 1: debt is piling up so fast that sooner or later,
Speaker 1: And I think he said he thought sooner the bond
Speaker 1: market was going to make this clear. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: my gloomy view has been all along is nothing is
Speaker 1: going to happen until we have a crisis, at which
Speaker 1: point the solutions will all be much worse than what
Speaker 1: could be done now, no matter how difficult things are now.
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly right. It's also worth noting that
Speaker 2: while that crisis might come in the form of a
Speaker 2: rebellion within the bond market, there are automatic cuts to
Speaker 2: social Security that will kick in if we don't fix this.
Speaker 2: So some of the rhetoric you hear, especially from the Democrats,
Speaker 2: that we should not do anything. Hillary Clinton said when
Speaker 2: she was running for president we should decrease the age
Speaker 2: of which one is eligible for Social Security and Medicare.
Speaker 2: That is certainly a popular idea among the Alexandria Acasia
Speaker 2: Cortes types. Well, that's not an option that is not
Speaker 2: going to happen. If we do nothing, we don't move
Speaker 2: into sunlit uplands in which everyone keeps getting Social Security
Speaker 2: in Medicare, and we just risk some sort of default
Speaker 2: the law asset stands that would have to be executed
Speaker 2: by whatever president is unlucky enough to be in office
Speaker 2: at that time will do the cutting for Congress unless
Speaker 2: it is amending. So yeah, I think we're headed for
Speaker 2: either a crisis in the bond market or some sort
Speaker 2: of catastrophic economic catastrophe you know that that is caused
Speaker 2: by debts being unable to be repaid, or we're going
Speaker 2: to see exactly what it is that those who don't
Speaker 2: want to cut entitlements say is a crisis because it
Speaker 2: has to happen.
Speaker 1: Well, now, another aspect of this fight that's been going
Speaker 1: on is Trump saying, well, I know how we could,
Speaker 1: you know, balance the budget or reduce the deficit, and
Speaker 1: that's to cut off the billions and billions of dollars
Speaker 1: of Tesla subsidies. So, first of all, I don't think,
Speaker 1: I don't think it amounts of billions and billions.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I haven't looked at the numbers for a long time.
Speaker 1: Second of all, you know I'm thinking about the electric
Speaker 1: car market. Is if you go back to before the election,
Speaker 1: I remember distinctly Musk telling I think the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal that got should be fine with me. If we
Speaker 1: got rid of all the subsidies that Biden laid out,
Speaker 1: it might actually be good for Tesla because, as you
Speaker 1: probably know, and many listeners may know, Tesla is actually
Speaker 1: able to produce their cars profitably with one caveat I'll
Speaker 1: come back to. While I think GM and Ford are
Speaker 1: still losing something like thirty or forty thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: every single electric car they produce, which and they're not
Speaker 1: making it up on volume, as.
Speaker 3: The old joke goes, right, And.
Speaker 1: So I think what I think Musk realizes that he
Speaker 1: has a competitive advantage, having been at this now for
Speaker 1: more than fifteen years of making the electric cars that
Speaker 1: the other companies are not able to catch up with
Speaker 1: and haven't been able to and it gets worse, and
Speaker 1: this is the caveat. So we talk about the subsidies
Speaker 1: which the Biden budget blowout tried to limit or to
Speaker 1: middle income people and strip away from hir income people
Speaker 1: who were collecting most of the tax credits for electric
Speaker 1: cars beforehand. But it turns out that Tesla makes a
Speaker 1: lot of money selling emission credits to the other automakers
Speaker 1: who aren't able yet to meet some of the ambitious
Speaker 1: targets for lowering the emissions or the mileage requirements of
Speaker 1: their car fleets. So you know, that's actually a more
Speaker 1: important subsidy in my mind, because I think that's a
Speaker 1: more reckless and dumb subsidy anyway that starts the market.
Speaker 1: So and I haven't seen any acknowledgment of that in
Speaker 1: the in the media coverage or the social media.
Speaker 3: A fury about what's going on.
Speaker 2: No, and I think Trump is being really unfair here
Speaker 2: to mask This is a line that has been picked
Speaker 2: up in Congress as well. He's just against this because
Speaker 2: he doesn't want to lose his subsidies. He's been pretty
Speaker 2: consistently opposed to those subsidies. The one thing that he
Speaker 2: has said alongside opposing subsidies for evs is that he
Speaker 2: doesn't want any subsidies for oil and gas either, so
Speaker 2: he'd like a level playing field. But it's just not
Speaker 2: the ca that he is angry with this bill because
Speaker 2: it kills the subsidies. It should kill more subsidies. Steve,
Speaker 2: I think Republicans are missing an opportunity. I have said,
Speaker 2: and I always miss out the border funding. So that's
Speaker 2: my fault because I do support that. But the bill
Speaker 2: I would like to have seen and will adding the
Speaker 2: border funding as well, would have said. The twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is hereby renewed permanently. The
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two Inflation Reduction Act is hereby repealed in
Speaker 2: its entirety. There's no reason Republicans should be allowing any
Speaker 2: of these subsidies to go through. And the left ha's
Speaker 2: got this idea that we simply can't compete with China
Speaker 2: technologically without the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a preposterous
Speaker 2: thing to think, given that we were doing pretty well
Speaker 2: at competing technologically with China prior to twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: So I don't think that Musk is basing his opposition
Speaker 2: to this on eve subsidies or mandates or what you will.
Speaker 2: I think he's genuinely worried about the name since fiscal situation.
Speaker 2: But as with Doge, he is mischaracterizing a little bit
Speaker 2: what is causing that, and that's going to be a
Speaker 2: problem for him in this fight.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, now the subsidy question, the Biden people were dabblishly
Speaker 1: clever in directing a lot of the money to rip states.
Speaker 3: Yep. And so you know, you know what happens.
Speaker 1: It's just like the whole ethanol game in Iowa all
Speaker 1: over again.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Republican presidential candidates are always petrified against coming out for
Speaker 1: the ethanol mandates and subsidies because that's the first the
Speaker 1: nation primaries we all know, or caucus every four years,
Speaker 1: and this has now expanded that idea. So you have
Speaker 1: a lot of these red state senators in the Midwest
Speaker 1: who love these subsidies for wind and solar power because
Speaker 1: it's you know, creating the phony government funded jobs there.
Speaker 1: It does turn out I did a calculation on this
Speaker 1: a long time ago now, but it turns out that
Speaker 1: one mischievous proposal will put an end to a lot
Speaker 1: of this, which is all right, let's have uniform subsidence
Speaker 1: the East based on not the technology, but on the
Speaker 1: energy output that you're able to produce. Because it turns
Speaker 1: out that even if you say the oil and gas
Speaker 1: industry get x millions of dollars in subsidies, they produce
Speaker 1: eighty percent of our energy, right, and so the subsidy
Speaker 1: and you can argue about what qualifies as a subsidy,
Speaker 1: but if you go by the subsidy for per BTU
Speaker 1: or water or whatever energy measurement you wish to use,
Speaker 1: you find out that the subsidy for oil and gas
Speaker 1: is iiny, it's minuscule. And if you got rid of
Speaker 1: all the subsidies, oil and gas wouldn't change their output
Speaker 1: a bit, whereas if you reduce the subsidies or made
Speaker 1: it linked to the energy output wind and solar in
Speaker 1: particular would have a really time. I do think the
Speaker 1: one wild card here, and sorry to ramble a bit,
Speaker 1: is a nuclear power. I'm very frustrated with this whole subject,
Speaker 1: and I don't understand why we have not been able
Speaker 1: to figure out over all these years how to drive
Speaker 1: the cost down. And so there the argument as well,
Speaker 1: if we really want big baseload power, it might, by
Speaker 1: the way, still survive. When are my theoretical proposal of
Speaker 1: having a uniform subsidy for a unit of energy produced,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I'd have to do some advanced math on all that.
Speaker 1: But that's the other caveat about And apparently it's been
Speaker 1: a big argument among Republicans in the House and the
Speaker 1: Senate as to how to treat the nuclear subsidies in
Speaker 1: the big beautiful bill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nuclear is an odd one in the I almost
Speaker 2: feel that we should subsidize nuclear just to offset all
Speaker 2: of the crap that those who want to put nuclear
Speaker 2: power into effect I had to deal with over the
Speaker 2: last fifty years. You know, we had a small look,
Speaker 2: I'm not big on great national plans. You know, I
Speaker 2: am romantic about the highway system because I love cause,
Speaker 2: but I do take the conservative criticism of it, which
Speaker 2: was that it was ultimately a federal program. But I
Speaker 2: would be much more open to a grand national project
Speaker 2: to nuclearize all of our power than to almost anything else,
Speaker 2: So I can see some sort of room for that.
Speaker 2: The system you just described, though, with subsidies, does make
Speaker 2: the case for abolishing the minuscule oil and gas subsidies, right,
Speaker 2: because if they wouldn't output any less energy as a
Speaker 2: result of it going away, then why do we need it.
Speaker 2: It's just a small distortion in the market. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I I think that the bill is a problem if
Speaker 2: you are worried about our fiscal situation, and it's a
Speaker 2: problem if you want Republicans to do more. Where Trump also, Steve,
Speaker 2: and I wonder what you think about this, where Trump
Speaker 2: also has the upper hand, is just as a matter
Speaker 2: of elemental political gravity, it is the case that we
Speaker 2: have what one two votes to spare in the House
Speaker 2: of Representatives, and that a lot of the people who
Speaker 2: are going to be expected to push this over the
Speaker 2: line are squishes. Now yesterday, Elon Musk tweeted out, should
Speaker 2: we create a new party, a third party for the
Speaker 2: eighty percent of people in the middle who don't feel
Speaker 2: represented by the geopy or the Democrats. I think that
Speaker 2: is an exaggeration. I don't think it is quite eighty percent,
Speaker 2: But of course there are a lot of independents who don't.
Speaker 2: What I think is unusual about this suggestion, though, and
Speaker 2: does demonstrate a certain naivety on Mask's part. Is Number one,
Speaker 2: we have what was a fairly decisive victory from Donald
Speaker 2: Trump in twenty twenty four, and still he can't get
Speaker 2: half of what Republicans would like to do. On why
Speaker 2: does Musk think that would get better if you created
Speaker 2: a party in the middle? And second, is he really
Speaker 2: under the impression that the middle of the political spectrum
Speaker 2: in the United States is desperately in favor of cutting entitlements?
Speaker 2: Because I don't think it is.
Speaker 1: Is it right? Well, this is one of those cases,
Speaker 1: and I've experienced this from Silicon Valley and tech people
Speaker 1: for years now. Is they they tend to not understand
Speaker 1: why social and political problems can't be solved exactly like
Speaker 1: an engineering problem. And look, Musk is in some ways
Speaker 1: the perfect median voter. Let's recall that fifteen years ago
Speaker 1: he was all in for Obama and I don't remember
Speaker 1: if he was for Biden or not eight years ago
Speaker 1: or whatever, but or four years ago, and now he's
Speaker 1: then he flipped to Trump, and now he's slipped somewhere
Speaker 1: in the middle. And I think that's just someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't really understand politics. I think that's exactly right that
Speaker 1: we've been hearing about the angry middle is going to
Speaker 1: rise up and organize for at least since Ross Parrot,
Speaker 1: if not earlier. It never happens. It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1: So well, let's get out on this, you know the way.
Speaker 1: You know, we're sort of known now that Trump's insults
Speaker 1: often have an expiration date or can be turned around quickly.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible that by the time this episode goes
Speaker 1: live they will have kissed and made up.
Speaker 3: Stranger things have happened.
Speaker 1: The other one is is people think that there's people
Speaker 1: there's some conspiracy theorist saying this is all fake news.
Speaker 1: It's professional wrestling, which they both attend, and this is
Speaker 1: to distract the Median Democrats from something. And in fact,
Speaker 1: some Democratic group did call for now for releasing the
Speaker 1: Epstein list, which I think is pretty darn funny. Anyway,
Speaker 1: do you have any predictions on how this is going
Speaker 1: to unfold? Is it just going to go away in
Speaker 1: a few days or are they going to kiss and
Speaker 1: make up?
Speaker 3: What do you think?
Speaker 2: Well, I think one of those two things. I certainly
Speaker 2: don't think that it's going to have catastrophic consequences for
Speaker 2: the Republic. I've seen some people say this is it
Speaker 2: for the right, this is it for America. No, I
Speaker 2: don't think so. I think we'll get about it in
Speaker 2: six months. I don't think the space program is going
Speaker 2: to be set back by it. Donald Trump is already
Speaker 2: sounding somewhat consideratorly, orbeit from a condescending position where he says, well,
Speaker 2: that guy's crazy. I don't want to talk to him,
Speaker 2: but I hope he gets the help he needs. And
Speaker 2: the mask started to back off yesterday. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you saw this. There was some user with seventeen
Speaker 2: followers who said, you know, like a mother to the
Speaker 2: two of them on Twitter, come now, this is silly.
Speaker 2: I don't like this, we don't need this, and Musk respond,
Speaker 2: all right, fine, I won't cancel the space program. So
Speaker 2: some guy on Twitter with seventeen followers may have saved
Speaker 2: the future of the United States' presence in space. I
Speaker 2: don't think that ultimately this is going to cause big
Speaker 2: problems for America. I suspect they'll either make up or
Speaker 2: or just go away. But look, they are both very rich,
Speaker 2: successful men with egos. They don't agree on everything, and
Speaker 2: this was inevitable as a result. So those of us,
Speaker 2: which was everyone who said I can see what it's
Speaker 2: going to happen, shouldn't be shocked that has finally come
Speaker 2: to fruition.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, I think this kind of the intensity of this
Speaker 1: is something that could only happen in a social media age.
Speaker 1: I think, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Agreed.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, while while we were all distracted by this great circus,
Speaker 1: a couple of interesting things happened this week on the
Speaker 1: legal front, which I know is you're Baileywick first, another day,
Speaker 1: another Trump decision, another federal district court judge blocking it.
Speaker 1: And it's twice this week, maybe or maybe more than that.
Speaker 1: At this point I yawned, it's you know, what else
Speaker 1: is new? But unless you want to comment on that,
Speaker 1: I was going to move on to something I think
Speaker 1: more interesting that is getting glossed over. And that was
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court this week issuing two nine zero decisions
Speaker 1: with the opinions written by the liberal justices, the two
Speaker 1: most recent Soda Mayor and Katanji Brown Jackson, that take
Speaker 1: not exactly a conservative point of view, but reject implicitly
Speaker 1: the progressive you about civil rights and religious liberty. Did
Speaker 1: you follow those? Yes, raise your eyebrows as much as
Speaker 1: I did at that result.
Speaker 2: Sorry, which one are we talking about here?
Speaker 3: Sorry?
Speaker 1: I should explain for listeners who may not know this. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're following the Musk Trump feud. The first case a
Speaker 1: nine zero case. I forget the name of it, but
Speaker 1: it was the case out of Ohio involving a woman
Speaker 1: who had sued under Title seven aims the Aimes case.
Speaker 1: She had sued alleging reverse discrimination, saying that she passed
Speaker 1: over for promotion and I think by a state agency,
Speaker 1: by your supervisor, in favor of lesser qualified gay employees,
Speaker 1: and lower courts had ruled no, sorry, because she's a
Speaker 1: member of a majority group, meaning she's a white woman,
Speaker 1: left standing to sue for civil rights because the assumption
Speaker 1: there is that civil rights laws are only meant to
Speaker 1: protect the officially protected classes of minorities, and was that
Speaker 1: the one sodo My wrote the I don't remember which
Speaker 1: liberal woman justice wrote.
Speaker 2: Which James Jackson wrote that one. That's the Aims case.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: And I think what's very significant about that is for
Speaker 1: at least forty years, I mean, I can remember the
Speaker 1: civil rights community back in the eighties when Reagan was
Speaker 1: contesting some of this, saying, no, you don't understand. I
Speaker 1: know the language of the Civil Rights Act as neutral
Speaker 1: and speaks of individuals, but really the intent was to
Speaker 1: apply it to minority groups have been oppressed, and so
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually protect white people.
Speaker 3: They were open about this.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember the woman back in the eighties
Speaker 1: who made this argument quite brazenly and openly. And now
Speaker 1: for the court to rule the three liberals on the
Speaker 1: Court to go along with the older plain reading of
Speaker 1: the text, I think it's quite significant. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to be waiting to see people on the left react
Speaker 1: with some degree of dismay about this.
Speaker 2: Well, I was ably thrilled about this. I'm going to
Speaker 2: take the opportunity which you offered in passing just to
Speaker 2: quickly comment on the judge trying to prevent the deportation
Speaker 2: of the Soliman family just because on this podcast. In
Speaker 2: the past, I have been critical of some of the
Speaker 2: legal positions that the Trump administration has taken on deportations.
Speaker 2: Not the deportations themselves, which I thoroughly support, but I
Speaker 2: have thought that the strategy was ill conceived and likely
Speaker 2: to provoke activist judges to jump in. This time, Trump
Speaker 2: is one hundred percent right. This judge who has tried
Speaker 2: to jump in here is crazy, has not offered a
Speaker 2: single legal argument, and the briefs that are being filed
Speaker 2: are just funny. There was one this morning I read
Speaker 2: the habeas brief that didn't offer a single argument based
Speaker 2: in statute or precedent, and just said that deporting the
Speaker 2: family of this jihadis was a bit like Nazi Germany.
Speaker 2: So Trump's right on this judge is wrong on the
Speaker 2: Ames case. You know, it's interesting, Steve, that you say
Speaker 2: that the prevailing progressive view of civil rights law is
Speaker 2: that it doesn't apply to minorities majorities. Sorry, because that
Speaker 2: is true, but it is also inexplicable if you've ever
Speaker 2: gone back and read the text, If you read the
Speaker 2: Fourteenth Amendment, if you read the congressional debates that led
Speaker 2: to the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in Congress and
Speaker 2: in the States, if you read the eighteen sixty six
Speaker 2: Civil Rights Act which preceded it, and indeed the to
Speaker 2: Friedman's Bureaus Act as well, and then if you read
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Act and all of
Speaker 2: the attendant discussion, you will see that it is quite
Speaker 2: clearly in text, in intent, in original public meaning, even
Speaker 2: in legislative history, which we don't like, but is there.
Speaker 2: It is a law that applies to individuals. The discrimination
Speaker 2: attaches at the individual level. And what was so great
Speaker 2: about the Supreme Court decision as written by Justice Jackson,
Speaker 2: probably the most progressive member of the Court, is that
Speaker 2: she sounds like Justice Scalia when she is explaining the text.
Speaker 2: She says this in no uncertain terms, over and over again,
Speaker 2: that there is no such thing as a majority group
Speaker 2: or a minority group, that there's no reverse or forward racism,
Speaker 2: that there's no caveats in the law. If you are
Speaker 2: discriminated against based upon your sex, your race, your national origin,
Speaker 2: and so forth, you are able to lodge a complaint
Speaker 2: under the Civil Rights Act, and this was a repudiation
Speaker 2: of all of the nonsense that has built up for
Speaker 2: forty years, both in the courts, but especially in academia
Speaker 2: and in elite opinion, and has been unchecked. So for
Speaker 2: this to be nine and nothing is wonderful. It's also wonderful, incidentally,
Speaker 2: because each justice only gets a certain number of opinions
Speaker 2: each term. When we got to use a justice Jackson
Speaker 2: opinion on our outcome.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then the other case was out of Wisconsin and
Speaker 1: involved a state agency or I guess it's a state
Speaker 1: tax official denying the tax exemption to a Catholic charity.
Speaker 3: And their argument was, as well.
Speaker 1: As Catholic charity, these activities are really secular purposes or
Speaker 1: not related to the religious mission. And the Wisconsin State
Speaker 1: Supreme Court agreed with that by a four to three split.
Speaker 1: It turned out to be the four Democrats against the
Speaker 1: three Republicans. And essentially I haven't read the decision. I've
Speaker 1: been traveling and goofing off, but again, a nine zero
Speaker 1: decision was so to my orn the majority, and what
Speaker 1: I gather from the brief news squibs I've read is
Speaker 1: that essentially what the opinion says is no, the state
Speaker 1: does not get to decide what is or isn't anchored
Speaker 1: in the religious mission of a bona fide religion like
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, which has been around a while together.
Speaker 3: And I think that's another.
Speaker 1: Blow for religious liberty and against the the definite undertone
Speaker 1: of the secondar left for also for several decades now
Speaker 1: to try and marginalize and squeeze religion out of the
Speaker 1: public square.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I haven't read this one either. I'll confess
Speaker 2: I read AMS and I read the Mexico gun case,
Speaker 2: but I haven't read this one. What I find so
Speaker 2: encouraging about this case is that it is yet another
Speaker 2: chipping away at this completely fake jurisprudence that has obtained
Speaker 2: in America, starting with the war in court that invented
Speaker 2: this so called wall of separation between church and state.
Speaker 2: It is, of course the case that the United States
Speaker 2: can't and shouldn't have an established religion, and there are
Speaker 2: a few consequences of that that trickle down into other areas.
Speaker 2: But generally speaking, most of the rules that have been
Speaker 2: imposed since what nineteen sixty five, Yeah, nonsense, they're completely
Speaker 2: Maybe you think they should be that. Maybe you think
Speaker 2: that's they're a good thing, or if we were right
Speaker 2: to a constitution from scratch, we would insert them. But
Speaker 2: they are totally a historical, that's totally a textual. And
Speaker 2: this was too. I'm just surprised that it was nine
Speaker 2: to nothing. I'm shocked. Thoughts of my old wrote this one.
Speaker 2: But you know, the courts moved to the right and
Speaker 2: that is a good thing.
Speaker 1: Well, I can go back now or a decade or
Speaker 1: more when sus Kagan said we're all textual us now,
Speaker 1: which is for you know, of accommodation of originalism, and
Speaker 1: I think that was actually quite significant, and it seems
Speaker 1: like that view has taken hold in ways that I like.
Speaker 3: I say, this has to be.
Speaker 1: Giving a heartburn to liberal jurisprudes and the all the
Speaker 1: law schools you mentioned.
Speaker 3: I didn't put this on the list.
Speaker 1: The Mexico gun case that was the Supreme Court saying no,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna hear a.
Speaker 3: Suit from Mexico about guns. Is that? But I got
Speaker 3: that basically right.
Speaker 2: How long have you got ob my area? But this
Speaker 2: was maybe the crazy lawsuit I've read in a long time.
Speaker 2: But I want to go back a few years. First,
Speaker 2: just to introduce this because this is a hobby horse
Speaker 2: of mine. In two thousand and five, while George W.
Speaker 2: Bush was president, Congress passed a law that extended certain
Speaker 2: protections to gun manufacturers in order to stop a whole
Speaker 2: host of lawsuits that had been brought to try to
Speaker 2: create through the courts gun control that could not be
Speaker 2: achieved legislatively. Now this is pre hella, So there's no
Speaker 2: prohibition on gun control at that point, in quite the
Speaker 2: way there is now, although it should be said at
Speaker 2: that point forty four states did have state level right
Speaker 2: to keep them bear arms. But the left had got
Speaker 2: into the bad habit which started really in earnest under
Speaker 2: the Clinton administration and Andrew Cuomo as hud director of
Speaker 2: bringing court cases against gun manufacturers on the grounds that
Speaker 2: their products were dangerous to do what they couldn't do legislatively.
Speaker 2: So they would say this gun is very, very dangerous,
Speaker 2: it can kill a lot of people, and therefore, commercially
Speaker 2: it should not be available. And Congress said, no, that's
Speaker 2: not how this should work. The liability does not attach
Speaker 2: in that way. And it passed this law, and it
Speaker 2: was a bipartisan law in both the House and the
Speaker 2: Senate Bernie Sanders voted for it in two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: The National Association of Manufacturers was very much in favor
Speaker 2: of it, despite having no great interest in the gun
Speaker 2: control debate, because it understood the threat that was being posed.
Speaker 2: It did not, as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have
Speaker 2: both lied about relentlessly, It did not make gun manufacturers
Speaker 2: immune in such cases as guns are badly manufactured or
Speaker 2: go wrong. What it did was it said, if you
Speaker 2: kill someone with a gun that works, you can't sue
Speaker 2: Smith and Wesson. In the same way if I drive
Speaker 2: my car into you, you can't sue Forward if the
Speaker 2: breaks go wrong in my car. Of course I can
Speaker 2: sue Ford if a gun goes off, which doesn't happen,
Speaker 2: by the way, But if it were to happen because
Speaker 2: of a manufacturing defect and kill someone, of course you
Speaker 2: can sue Smith and Russon. But you're not allowed to
Speaker 2: use the law to get what you can't get. Politically,
Speaker 2: that law has been on the books now for twenty years,
Speaker 2: despite the Democrats' obsession with getting rid of it. If
Speaker 2: you look back at the twenty sixteen and twenty twenty elections,
Speaker 2: the Democratic candidates went on and on and on about this. Well, Mexico,
Speaker 2: the country of Mexico, the sovereign state of Mexico, a
Speaker 2: couple of years ago, decided that it might try to
Speaker 2: affect gun control in the United States as well, and
Speaker 2: so it brought this case that argued, in effect, that
Speaker 2: American gun manufacturers knew that the guns that they were
Speaker 2: making and marketing would make their way into the hands
Speaker 2: of the cartels, that they wanted that to be the case.
Speaker 2: Not just that they were negligent in the usual way
Speaker 2: of not caring about whether they did, but they actually
Speaker 2: wanted the American gun cash to go down south, and
Speaker 2: they tried to impose all manner of restrictions on what
Speaker 2: guns you can and can't buy through this lawsuit. And
Speaker 2: this went to the Supreme Court. It was considered under
Speaker 2: this two thousand and five law and uniformly nine to
Speaker 2: nothing in a decision written by Justice Kagan, of all people,
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court said, you just can't do that. That
Speaker 2: is exactly what this law was designed to stop. I
Speaker 2: find it amazing that anyone ever took this seriously, Steve,
Speaker 2: and they did. The gun control groups were all over this.
Speaker 2: They pretended that this was a meritorious suit, and so
Speaker 2: on and so forth. It was, quite honestly the stupidest,
Speaker 2: most cynical pretextual laws I've ever read. And I think
Speaker 2: it's a good thing for America that this was.
Speaker 1: You know, Well, I've got one that may equal it
Speaker 1: or exceed it that I'll come to. Well, I'll just
Speaker 1: say that I think we file these three cases as
Speaker 1: legitimate entries in the so much winning file.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Here's the corollary case just out in the last ten
Speaker 1: days or so. It's a state case out of Washington State.
Speaker 1: The climate crazy people have brought a wrongful death lawsuit
Speaker 1: against the fossil fuel man you know, oil companies essentially.
Speaker 1: And the circumstances were a woman essentially died of heatstroke
Speaker 1: in her car on a hot summer day. Now what's
Speaker 1: left out of the story is why is she in
Speaker 1: her car on a hot summer day with the windows up.
Speaker 1: There's something they're not telling us here. Was she passed
Speaker 1: out from fentanyl? What she drunk? Was she homeless? We
Speaker 1: don't know that, but my suspicions are on.
Speaker 3: High alert here.
Speaker 1: But even even if it was just someone who fell
Speaker 1: asleep because I was just tired of something like that,
Speaker 1: And none of those factors come into play. The idea
Speaker 1: that you can now attribute the hot day to the
Speaker 1: oil companies who sold their and a woman who apparently
Speaker 1: bought their product for her car, Well, that suit has
Speaker 1: been filed, and I think what both these suits say.
Speaker 1: You know the guncases, which you know I've been aware of,
Speaker 1: but these climate suits have been following for a while that.
Speaker 3: Want to hold the oil companies liable for global.
Speaker 1: Warming, even though the big oil companies in the US
Speaker 1: and Europe account for such a tiny amount of emissions
Speaker 1: on the global scale going back decades. As if you
Speaker 1: actually do the math on this, it shows you that
Speaker 1: the impulse on the left to try and use the
Speaker 1: judiciary is the primary mode to get what they want
Speaker 1: still runs very strong. But boy, it's sure hitting a
Speaker 1: wall right now. I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 2: For a very long time the left has done that,
Speaker 2: and look, sometimes it's been legitimate. You do need to
Speaker 2: be able to take cases to court that are unpopular
Speaker 2: in vindicating your rights if those rights exist. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 2: left has recognized for decades that if it gets the
Speaker 2: right people on the court, it can go to the
Speaker 2: court and ask the court to make up rights that
Speaker 2: don't exist, abortion, gay marriage, and so on. And that
Speaker 2: era does seem, at least for now, to be coming
Speaker 2: to an end at the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Do you agree, yes, I think so, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: a lot of things to be unwound or modified. So
Speaker 1: I have a lot of work ahead of them, not
Speaker 1: to mention all these crazy district court injunctions. At the Court,
Speaker 1: we'll see what they do here. We're now down to
Speaker 1: the last several weeks. The big case we're all waiting
Speaker 1: for is Scurmetti. That's the one about Tennessee's law restricting
Speaker 1: your transgender surgeries on children and so forth. So we'll
Speaker 1: see how that all goes. I don't have anything else
Speaker 1: in legal news, is there. I know that you know
Speaker 1: you're running law talk these days, and it's something you
Speaker 1: like to follow. There's something else of your mind, A.
Speaker 2: Question for you, but it's not a law talk sort
Speaker 2: of question. Sure, how much on a scale of one
Speaker 2: to ten, are you looking forward to reading care and
Speaker 2: Genepa's new book Independent.
Speaker 3: Well, I was going to bring that up. I had
Speaker 3: it on my list.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't see this coming, right, I mean
Speaker 1: there's all these books about Biden right at original sin
Speaker 1: and all.
Speaker 3: The rest of that.
Speaker 1: And so now the Democratic firing squad, a circular firing squad,
Speaker 1: is reforming with Kareem John Pierre in the middle saying
Speaker 1: I'm an independent. Now, by the way, maybe she can
Speaker 1: go to work for Elon Musk on that independent party
Speaker 1: he wants to put together. Right, And I mean, boy,
Speaker 1: this has only been in the last forty eight seventy
Speaker 1: two hours about the story. And I mean, just as
Speaker 1: Biden's sinility was obvious to anyone, her incapacity in the
Speaker 1: job as press spokesman was obvious to everyone. That she's
Speaker 1: a complete mediocrity was an identity politics higher full stop.
Speaker 3: I mean, this was obvious to everybody.
Speaker 1: And now you're seeing you know, anonymous sources and axios
Speaker 1: and elsewhere saying.
Speaker 3: Oh, she was terrible at her job.
Speaker 1: So the knives are out for and here I just
Speaker 1: have to get even fatter than I'm already am on
Speaker 1: another sixty four gallon drummer popcorn.
Speaker 2: You know, I think Mark Hemingway pointed out that this
Speaker 2: is the definitive proof of the Left using the immutable
Speaker 2: characteristics of people to deflect criticism because some of the
Speaker 2: same people who are now saying, right, she was an idiot,
Speaker 2: we never liked her, were telling conservatives who criticized her, oh,
Speaker 2: you only say that because and we would say, no,
Speaker 2: we're not saying that because she's a lesbian, saying that
Speaker 2: because she's black. We're saying that because she's just not
Speaker 2: good at her job. She has to open a binder
Speaker 2: every time she's asked her name. And they would say, no, no,
Speaker 2: you just hate powerful women. Well, now the same people
Speaker 2: are acknowledging that she was a liability to the White House,
Speaker 2: that they didn't like her, and that she'd been hired
Speaker 2: purely for the the nature of her being, and that
Speaker 2: is absurd, I think. But I just think that this
Speaker 2: is the most cynical and astonishing shift that I have
Speaker 2: ever seen, Steve. I mean, this would be like me
Speaker 2: coming out tomorrow and saying my new book is called
Speaker 2: why All Guns Should be Banned? And in not accounting
Speaker 2: for the shift, people would say, hang on a minute,
Speaker 2: we were watching you day in, day out make the
Speaker 2: case for the Second Amendment. When did you what she
Speaker 2: stood on that podium and this is her job, This
Speaker 2: isn't a criticism. You have to do this if your
Speaker 2: White House Press secretary. But she stood on that podium
Speaker 2: day and day out, and she made the case for
Speaker 2: Biden and the White House. She said what she was
Speaker 2: told to say. She defended the party line. So every
Speaker 2: day her line is Biden is right, Biden is right,
Speaker 2: Biden is right, Biden is right. And then the first
Speaker 2: thing we hear from her the moment she leaves that
Speaker 2: job is actually, I'm kind of an independent.
Speaker 3: Are are you kidding?
Speaker 2: How cynical could you get?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: I mean well, just as it was appalling that the
Speaker 1: media would avert their gaze from Biden's obvious incapacity, I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe that self respecting, seemingly self respecting reporters would
Speaker 1: sit there every day and swallow and not beat back.
Speaker 1: I can hurt up appallingly mediocre and often ridiculous and
Speaker 1: visible answers. I mean it was I thought, this has
Speaker 1: to be a rejected Aaron Sorkin script, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, they would end up asking these Obama style
Speaker 2: questions of per So they would say things like does
Speaker 2: the President find it hurtful when Republicans say? Or what
Speaker 2: did the President like the most about his recent trip
Speaker 2: to Italy. That's how they got around it. They didn't say, hey,
Speaker 2: you who's supposed to tell us the truth? What about this?
Speaker 2: They would say, what do you find most enchanting about
Speaker 2: working in the White House?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it reminds me a little bit. And
Speaker 1: maybe this is an apt parallel, but back in the
Speaker 1: battle days of arms control talks with the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: or any summits for that matter, the Soviet negotiators will
Speaker 1: always come in with big thick notebooks, and our team
Speaker 1: or sometimes our president if it was face to face
Speaker 1: with Brezhnev or somebody would say X, and the Russian
Speaker 1: translation would go through, and then that all the Russians
Speaker 1: would be pouring through their notebooks to find a prescripted
Speaker 1: answer to a question they had anticipated. So that's why
Speaker 1: a lot of those negotiations, aside from the substance of them,
Speaker 1: took forever to get anywhere, because then so it became
Speaker 1: a game for our side to try and think of
Speaker 1: a way of putting a question that they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had a pre cooked answer for, and then then they
Speaker 1: would on take a break, is what the Soviets would do.
Speaker 1: So I kept thinking back to that when I'd watch
Speaker 1: a kreem John Pierre pour through a notebook and oftentimes
Speaker 1: give an answer that was often not even tenuously related
Speaker 1: to the question, and it was just embarrassing to watch it.
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe the media put up with it.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if you've ever come across this
Speaker 2: story as a historian, but I heard it related on
Speaker 2: the old Cold War series that Ted Turner commissioned for
Speaker 2: CNN that is narrated by Kenneth Branna. Yeah, that during
Speaker 2: the I guess early seventies, Nixon went to a meeting
Speaker 2: with the Chinese and he wanted something from them. I
Speaker 2: forget what it was. It could have been arms control,
Speaker 2: but anyhow, the meeting involves a dinner. Everyone's getting along. Famously.
Speaker 2: Of course, Bill Buckley hated this. He would go on
Speaker 2: a tear whenever he saw this. But Nixon is being
Speaker 2: diplomatic and a great statesman, and then the Chinese premiere
Speaker 2: just starts tearing into the United States for forty five
Speaker 2: minutes and describing their crimes as he puts it in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and Nixon just sat there and he sensed that this
Speaker 2: was for internal consumption, that they were going to release
Speaker 2: it in all the newspapers, and so he just sat
Speaker 2: there and then when it was over, everyone sort of
Speaker 2: looked at each other and he raised a toast and
Speaker 2: they just carried on. You know, I watched this story
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, I understand that's probably what you
Speaker 2: have to do sometimes in these situations, but I don't
Speaker 2: think Trump would do that. I just don't think Trump
Speaker 2: would be berated to his face by the Chinese premier.
Speaker 3: Do you no, Nope, that's for dark Sure.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I think we ought to move up to
Speaker 1: a couple of things of foreign affairs, because I also
Speaker 1: think the Ukrainian attack on the Russian bombers in the
Speaker 1: week is really stupendous. I mean, people are saying it's
Speaker 1: on the level of what the Israelis have done over
Speaker 1: the years, and one wonders how much they how many
Speaker 1: other things they might have up their sleeve, because although
Speaker 1: I think it's a thrilling thing for supporters of Ukraine,
Speaker 1: and I do still think that the underlying correlation of
Speaker 1: forces and the ambivalence, if you can put it that way,
Speaker 1: of the Trump administration still makes me rather pessimistic about
Speaker 1: the scene. How do you size it up right now.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's still of war of attrition, and
Speaker 2: that does seem to be hurting Russia slightly more, but
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. Peutin Kaz the drone attack was incredible.
Speaker 2: It had the effects of both thrilling me as somebody
Speaker 2: who wants to see Ukraine win, but also as a
Speaker 2: human being, terrifying me because I could see those drones
Speaker 2: coming over the American border and I wondered if we
Speaker 2: had the capacity to repel them. If this is how
Speaker 2: wars will be fought, we have some catching up to door,
Speaker 2: or at least I do in my understanding of warfare.
Speaker 2: The analogy I drew on the Editor's podcast when we
Speaker 2: talked about this was if you go to a meeting, sorry,
Speaker 2: a museum of World War One, the exhibits tend not
Speaker 2: to start in nineteen fourteen, but in the American Civil War,
Speaker 2: and then they run through the Franco Prussian War and
Speaker 2: possibly the Russo Japanese War of nineteen oh five. The
Speaker 2: point being that the technologies that eventually came to dominate
Speaker 2: World War One and make it such a meet go
Speaker 2: had been evident if you'd been looking carefully since the
Speaker 2: American Civil War, and I just wondered, if this is
Speaker 2: what we're now going to see in the future, that
Speaker 2: in fifty years time we'll be saying, well, of course
Speaker 2: where this started was Russia Ukraine in twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: to whenever it ended. It worried me a little bit,
Speaker 2: just because it seems so difficult to stop. But its
Speaker 2: application was incredible. I mean, to do that much damage
Speaker 2: to the Russian air force was it one third of
Speaker 2: the planes taken out? But I don't know if it
Speaker 2: changes the fundamental problem on the ground, which is that
Speaker 2: you have two dug in armies, you have a defensive advantage,
Speaker 2: and you have prerogatives on both sides that make it
Speaker 2: difficult to stop. The Russians want to take Ukraine and
Speaker 2: they're led by a madman, and the Ukrainians quite rightly
Speaker 2: don't want to give up Ukraine. So did that really
Speaker 2: change much?
Speaker 3: Yeah, some of the same worries that you do.
Speaker 1: I mean, years ago, I might have been more confident
Speaker 1: that our defense establishment was more forward looking and anticipating
Speaker 1: and developing countermeasures that we didn't know about. There are
Speaker 1: lots of examples of that in the past. But I
Speaker 1: kind of worry that our defense establishment may have gotten
Speaker 1: sluggish in recent years. I'm reminded a bit that you
Speaker 1: mention some of those precursors to World War One. I
Speaker 1: do know the story of Churchill, I think before he
Speaker 1: was First Lord of the Admiralty, maybe way before that,
Speaker 1: but sometime, you know, the submarine was being developed and expanded,
Speaker 1: and the British Navy, as I recall the story, rightly,
Speaker 1: said well submarine, Yeah, we've looked at him, and they
Speaker 1: might be useful for coastal defense. And Churchill said no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you don't understand. As these things get better and scaled up,
Speaker 1: they're going to be used for interdiction of shipping out
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which is exactly
Speaker 1: how Germany started using it, as we saw in World
Speaker 1: War One and especially World War Two. So you know,
Speaker 1: it takes some imagination and some buddy to push the subject.
Speaker 1: There's more can be said about Churchill and technology like
Speaker 1: the tank and so forth.
Speaker 3: So I'm I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm worried about this, and a lot of the research
Speaker 1: would be classified, of course, so we won't hear about it.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, but it is something to worry about.
Speaker 2: You know, Churchill said a few days after the war
Speaker 2: in Europe ended, one of his friends or colleagues asked
Speaker 2: him if he'd been worried, and he said, no other
Speaker 2: than the German submarine War. Now that wasn't quite true.
Speaker 2: He was worried. He at one point thought he was
Speaker 2: going to have to fight his way out of Downing
Speaker 2: Street with a revolver and would die on the floor
Speaker 2: choking on his own blood.
Speaker 3: But he.
Speaker 2: Seems to have been most worried about exactly what you
Speaker 2: described because he saw it so early. He understood the threat.
Speaker 3: Oh well, you know one of it.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll keep going on this because I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a huge Churchill fan. It was one of his
Speaker 1: first speeches as a member of the House of Commons.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to say nineteen hundred and nineteen oh one.
Speaker 1: And remember he'd seen some of the some of the
Speaker 1: things that you described a moment ago in his own
Speaker 1: experience in the Boer War and in the River War
Speaker 1: in Sudan, you know, the mass killing of autumn mechanized warfare,
Speaker 1: and wrote very movingly about it in his lesser known
Speaker 1: books like The River War, and one of the speeches
Speaker 1: he said paraphrasing here, So you know, there's all us
Speaker 1: optimism that were now people like Theodore Roosevelt was saying
Speaker 1: that war is a thing of the past. The twentieth
Speaker 1: century be a century of moral progress and material progress,
Speaker 1: and utter leading thinkers said, no, there won't ever be
Speaker 1: another big European war. And Churchill, and one of his
Speaker 1: memorable phrases said, the wars of peoples are going to
Speaker 1: be worse than the wars of kings, and they will
Speaker 1: involve entire populations. Is very prescient, right, He was having
Speaker 1: none of this facile optimism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you just look at the casualty figures,
Speaker 2: and especially World War two, more people died in the
Speaker 2: civilian population in the world than in ominously right.
Speaker 1: Well, last topic, perhaps the Tenan House biography of Bill
Speaker 1: Buckley is out this week.
Speaker 3: I have read it and have a long review forthcoming.
Speaker 3: I don't know if.
Speaker 1: You've had a chance to read it yet. I know
Speaker 1: it's been a subject of course at the National Review Circle,
Speaker 1: and there have been I will say, some what do
Speaker 1: you say, disparate reviews on the site. You know Neil Freeman,
Speaker 1: who was close to Buckley forever and was very skeptical
Speaker 1: of the idea. Rick brook Heiser had a more favorable
Speaker 1: review of the book.
Speaker 3: Have you had a chance to read it yet?
Speaker 1: And what are people around the office saying if you've
Speaker 1: been able to talk to him?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 2: I haven't read it yet. I have read a lot
Speaker 2: of reviews of it. I've read the two you mentioned,
Speaker 2: I've read Matt Continetti, I've read Helen Andrews, and in conversation,
Speaker 2: I've spoken to Rich Lowry about it. He's read it
Speaker 2: the floor in it, and you've read it, so I
Speaker 2: should give you the floor spelled differently. But the flaw
Speaker 2: in it that I have most commonly heard related is
Speaker 2: that it it doesn't seem too interested in the main
Speaker 2: achievement of Buckley's life, which was the creation of the
Speaker 2: modern conservative movement. Is that true?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think that's right.
Speaker 1: And he's I'll give you this one very particular sentence
Speaker 1: from the book that I thought gives away that I
Speaker 1: don't know what penan house purpose was or what his
Speaker 1: disposition is, but he refers to Reagan's and here's his words,
Speaker 1: Reagan's foolhardy invasion of Grenada in nineteen eighty three. I think,
Speaker 1: why was that fool hardy. You know, it actually deposed
Speaker 1: a communist regime. There were no real threat to America.
Speaker 1: But still there was not nothing foolhardy about that, unless
Speaker 1: you're somebody deeply on the left who thinks that any
Speaker 1: use of military force or this is adventurism.
Speaker 3: Or or who knows what, boy what.
Speaker 1: I can't believe an editor didn't raise a flag about
Speaker 1: that sentence. But I'll add that that's part of the
Speaker 1: oddest part of the book is the book goes for
Speaker 1: I think the count has eight one hundred and twenty pages,
Speaker 1: taking a story of Buckley from his birth in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty five to the election of Reagan in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: and then the period of time from nineteen eighty to
Speaker 1: Buckley's passing in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: Is only forty four pages.
Speaker 1: So it's like what he rushed to finish the book,
Speaker 1: he lost interests, because that's when some of the most
Speaker 1: interesting things happen, is when Buckley's favorite president is in
Speaker 1: office and they have a frequent communication. Buckley had the
Speaker 1: private address that Reagan gave him to send notes to
Speaker 1: get directly to Reagan and not through some filter. And
Speaker 1: we also know that there was a lot of disagreements
Speaker 1: between them, especially on arms control and the openings to
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union in the second term. And Buckley himself
Speaker 1: published some of the excerpts of letters he had with
Speaker 1: Reagan during those years, but none of that appears in
Speaker 1: Tannenhouse's book, So I don't know if he was, like
Speaker 1: I say, lost interest in the thing. The publisher lost
Speaker 1: his patients after twenty seven years they expected the book,
Speaker 1: or he wanted to get it out in time for
Speaker 1: one hundred anniversary of Buckley's birth, which is this year.
Speaker 1: But it's very peculiar that way, among the other defects
Speaker 1: of the structure of it and the ideological treatment. And
Speaker 1: certainly I could go on a long time, and I've
Speaker 1: written a long review that I will flag for everybody
Speaker 1: in due course.
Speaker 2: I do think it's good that it came out after
Speaker 2: Buckley had died. Yes, it's not comfortable. I'm sure to
Speaker 2: write an auto a biography of somebody who is still
Speaker 2: living twenty seven years that strikes me as a bit excessive.
Speaker 2: It's funny you mentioned the disagreements between Reagan and Buckley,
Speaker 2: because National Review was very pro Reagan in many ways,
Speaker 2: but people forget how cauistic the magazine could be in
Speaker 2: the later Reagan years, especially as you say, on arms control.
Speaker 2: There was some nineteen eighty five editorial on an arms
Speaker 2: control treaty that the Reagan administration was working on that
Speaker 2: started this would never have happened if Reagan was still alive.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I have had several biographers. Jean Edward Smith,
Speaker 1: the late Geen Edward Smith, told me this once that
Speaker 1: you should never write a biography of a living person
Speaker 1: because while they're alive, there's just going to be too
Speaker 1: many different camps.
Speaker 3: And uh oh.
Speaker 1: William Manchester found this out way back in the sixties
Speaker 1: when Jackie Kennedy asked him to write an account of
Speaker 1: the assassination of JFK. And then they didn't like the
Speaker 1: result and hounded him for it. And I've heard of
Speaker 1: some other biographers.
Speaker 2: So on the.
Speaker 1: One hand, I'll bet Tannon House always intended to wait
Speaker 1: until Buckley died, and I think disappointed apparently that he
Speaker 1: didn't finish it in time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, especially given the Buckley asked Tannon House to
Speaker 2: write the book. I mean, it's one thing to write
Speaker 2: an unauthorized biography of a person who is still alive.
Speaker 2: But it's quite another to deliver the manuscript having been
Speaker 2: asked to do it of somebody who is still alive,
Speaker 2: because if they hate it, the book's dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, Nancy Reagan never allowed Van Morris's Dutch, which
Speaker 1: someone said should have been called Botch, to be sold
Speaker 1: in the Reagan Library bookstore, even though she was one
Speaker 1: of the persons, along with Mike Deaver, who picked Evan
Speaker 1: Morris to write the official biography of Reagan.
Speaker 3: It turned out so strangely.
Speaker 2: So I haven't there you go that book, Steve, you
Speaker 2: can tell me if this is true. So daneshtises A
Speaker 2: twenty five years ago said that the problem with that
Speaker 2: book is that the author wasn't as interested in Reagan
Speaker 2: as he should have been, so he starts writing by himself.
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 1: Yes, that's a good summary. I mean, I'll tell you again,
Speaker 1: there's one sentence that tells you the defect of the book.
Speaker 1: Morris had great access to Reagan, interviewed him lots of times,
Speaker 1: and towards the end of Reagan's presidency, Morris asked him,
Speaker 1: what do you consider to be your greatest achievement? And Reagan,
Speaker 1: who wasn't introspective in that way, but he said, I
Speaker 1: think it has to be my tax cuts and the
Speaker 1: changes in the American tax policy. The next sentence in
Speaker 1: the book is Morris saying at that at that point,
Speaker 1: I closed my reporter's notebook, So he wasn't interested in
Speaker 1: representing what Reagan isn't it.
Speaker 3: I thought that just betrayed.
Speaker 1: The problem with Morris in that book, just in that
Speaker 1: one sentence, Just like it's similar to Tannanhouse saying, you
Speaker 1: know Reagan's fool hardy Invasion of Grenada, which is tone
Speaker 1: deaf and wrong and so forth.
Speaker 3: So there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's always a problem with a biographer who well.
Speaker 1: I wrote a piece actually for the Civitas people recently
Speaker 1: about what makes a good biography, And one of the
Speaker 1: things that makes a bad biography is people who think
Speaker 1: they're smarter than the subject or or understand their subject
Speaker 1: better or differently than they ought to be. They become
Speaker 1: Freudian or some other nonsense, and those are usually the
Speaker 1: worst biographies, and the best ones are the ones that
Speaker 1: try to understand their subject as their subject understood themselves,
Speaker 1: and that's not always easy to do.
Speaker 2: Well, it sounds like I'd better read this, although nobody
Speaker 2: who has told me that they have read it has
Speaker 2: said you must go and read this, so it's.
Speaker 1: Well, god, well it is almost a thousand pages. I
Speaker 1: have to say the wealth of detail is amazing, and
Speaker 1: some of it's too much detail and extraneous, but I
Speaker 1: have to say that the wealth of detail, at least
Speaker 1: until you get to nineteen eighty when he loses interest
Speaker 1: here and there you learn some really interesting things.
Speaker 3: So for that.
Speaker 1: Reason it's probably worth reading if you are as devoted
Speaker 1: to Buckley this memory as I have been from my
Speaker 1: entire life.
Speaker 2: All right, well, I will put it on a list
Speaker 2: of books that I intend to read that are very long.
Speaker 2: That is already itself slightly too long for comfort.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have that problem too. Anyway, Charles, glad you're
Speaker 1: feeling better. Welcome back. Do you have any closing thoughts
Speaker 1: or have we worn out what's little little of.
Speaker 3: Your voice you have back so far?
Speaker 2: I think we may have wanted out, but we've won
Speaker 2: it out in an enjoyable way. So the next thing
Speaker 2: for me today is Steve is start drinking wine again.
Speaker 3: Oh well, right, well.
Speaker 1: I'm about to because I'm several hours later than you.
Speaker 1: My next stop is going to be the bar after.
Speaker 1: I remind listeners if you haven't all ready to sign
Speaker 1: up as a Ricochet member, join our great community of
Speaker 1: good hearted and civil people, and we will be back
Speaker 1: again next week and in the time will look for
Speaker 1: you in the comments of Ricochet four point zero.
Speaker 3: Bye Charles, Bye bye.