Speaker 1: Well whiskey coming fame, my Pain, the money, my ray whiskey.
Speaker 1: Why think alone when you can drink it all? In
Speaker 1: with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, Join your bartenders, Steve Hayward,
Speaker 1: John Yu and the International Woman of Mystery, Lucretia. Where
Speaker 1: the laps it Appen? David? Ain't you busy on the
Speaker 1: should chaps gotta giving?
Speaker 2: Welcome everyone to a special revolutionary episode of the Three
Speaker 2: Whiskey Happy Hour. I don't even know what the fancy
Speaker 2: Latin word is for two hundred and fiftieth would be
Speaker 2: something like sesq with duo tennial or something. But we
Speaker 2: are taping on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
Speaker 2: the battles of Lexington and Conquered, and we will get
Speaker 2: to that in the show itself for our on the
Speaker 2: American Revolution. But there's gonna be a lot of deep
Speaker 2: thoughts in this episode, not the kind of rat attat
Speaker 2: what's going on in the front page of the New
Speaker 2: York Times that drive Steve Hayward's daily agenda.
Speaker 1: So Steve, where are you? How are you? I'm drinking
Speaker 1: Lefroyd ten advertised as huge smoke seaweedy note intense pete
Speaker 1: with as with a hint of sweetness. See seaweedy.
Speaker 2: Are you serious, it says, Scenes says, yes, Seaweedy, You'll
Speaker 2: sell You'll sell dozens in Korea. I mean I grew
Speaker 2: up eating seaweed.
Speaker 1: Korea. That's like George Will's joke about his uh. I
Speaker 1: forget which book it was. It might have been state
Speaker 1: Craft is soul Craft the book that he said that
Speaker 1: sold dozens.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I hope people will go and read
Speaker 2: your book review of Max Boot where you said within
Speaker 2: a month it was already on the remainder tape. Boots,
Speaker 2: bierfy Reagan very five bucks right, and Lucretia, the International
Speaker 2: Woman of Mystery? Where are you? And what are you drinking?
Speaker 2: How you doing?
Speaker 3: I am home and I'm not drinking whiskey. I'm drinking wine.
Speaker 3: But there's a reason. This is good Friday and it's evening,
Speaker 3: but I am fasting, So I figured, you guys really
Speaker 3: don't need me drinking whiskey and an absolutely empty stomach.
Speaker 2: Haven't you been doing that for the last five years
Speaker 2: on Friday nights.
Speaker 3: I miss I eat at noon or afternoon, but I
Speaker 3: don't usually go the entire day unless I'm fasting for
Speaker 3: religious as opposed to diet purposes, which I am doing today,
Speaker 3: and so I am slowly sipping Brunola di Monticino.
Speaker 2: You know, just a note of how the tariff wars
Speaker 2: are disrupting what's really important. The followers of our podcast
Speaker 2: will know that the three of us went to Italy
Speaker 2: and had a great time visiting winery. We were setting
Speaker 2: up for that winery and it's owners to return to
Speaker 2: the United States. Unfortunately, I just got word that they're
Speaker 2: not coming because of the terriffs, and Italian wine are
Speaker 2: so high apparently, and the margins of money they make
Speaker 2: are actually not that great. Yeah, that Italian wine makers
Speaker 2: are thinking of pulling out of the US market.
Speaker 3: Well, lucky thing, my wine refrigerator is full. I will
Speaker 3: tell you that I have not been able to purchase
Speaker 3: any any wine from our friend Giovanni's winery for about
Speaker 3: the last year and a half. I was able to
Speaker 3: get one case and now they have it at the
Speaker 3: place I bought it from originally, but they won't sell
Speaker 3: it to me anymore. And that was long before the
Speaker 3: terrorf So I don't know what the reason for that is.
Speaker 3: It just says, we can't sell it to you where
Speaker 3: you live.
Speaker 2: So oh, that sounds like a dormant commerce clause violation
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, should I I got a lot of violation's happening.
Speaker 3: So you know, I don't know where to start. John
Speaker 3: must leave it that, So let's start.
Speaker 1: It's been a busy, busy week.
Speaker 2: I mean it's like each week, well, each topic could
Speaker 2: be its own show. So I think in the first
Speaker 2: segment we're going to talk about the stunning news that
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court to the I think the cheers and
Speaker 2: applause of my Claremont friends has granted sir sure or
Speaker 2: I on the birthright citizenship question, Steve, what are your thought?
Speaker 3: Actually?
Speaker 2: And there was a rather long article published in Real
Speaker 2: Clear Investigations where Lucretia and I are featured. I'm kind
Speaker 2: of like a punching bag because I think he talked
Speaker 2: to like eight Claremont people and then me. But I
Speaker 2: did have a good last line that was the close
Speaker 2: of the article, right, which Steve didn't even get to
Speaker 2: because he fell asleep two thirds of the way through.
Speaker 1: No, Well, I will post in the show. It's actually
Speaker 1: article ran back in February and it was is Look,
Speaker 1: I'll summarize it this way, which is that here tool
Speaker 1: for the argument against birthright citizenship has kind of been
Speaker 1: limited to a small circle of Claire Monsters, you know,
Speaker 1: John Eastman, Ed Earler, a few others.
Speaker 2: And what didn't you credit earlier with really being the
Speaker 2: first person to focus on this in Claremont world?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, he was writing about this back in
Speaker 1: the eighties and early nineties, and then Eastman picked it
Speaker 1: up some. But now, as that article showed, it's sort
Speaker 1: of breaking out into the wider conservative legal world with you,
Speaker 1: Randy Barnett agrees, and a whole of other people. And
Speaker 1: then I sent you guys out the book What Too.
Speaker 3: A new edition is coming out everyone, Everyone, by the
Speaker 3: United States and Crisis by Edward Earler, the paperback edition.
Speaker 1: Okay, well I'll link to that too. If you've got
Speaker 1: a link you can send to me.
Speaker 2: But look that the point is, just as the paperback
Speaker 2: the book, the book's only one one hundred and fifteen
Speaker 2: to twenty pages long, right in.
Speaker 3: Two new chapters, and it's coming out in paperback.
Speaker 1: Okay, the past, just as the clare Monsters were the
Speaker 1: people who kept alive and spread the idea of the
Speaker 1: administrative state, which is now broken out into wide currency. Right,
Speaker 1: I think that the issue of birthrights citizenship is now
Speaker 1: breaking out into wider currency. And John, you deserve to
Speaker 1: be the punching bag, because you're a lot of very
Speaker 1: serious people, not steeped or you know, marinated in the
Speaker 1: Claremont world or the Straussian world, even who say, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, this is a lot less of a
Speaker 1: slam dunk than people think. And the latest is that
Speaker 1: long Law Review article that I agree with Lucretia's a
Speaker 1: bit turgent, but still I did not expect to see
Speaker 1: the argument criticizing birthright citizenship laid out in such copious
Speaker 1: fashion from Elan Werman, who I don't know, but you know,
Speaker 1: he's a young guy. Why is he taking yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: why is he taking this up? Well, because he thinks
Speaker 1: it's a serious matter.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I've never denied that this is a
Speaker 2: hard You know that this is not easy. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is an interesting question of constitutional interpretation. Think you
Speaker 2: guys are going to lose overwhelmingly at the court, but
Speaker 2: I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: Well, you had them at least four justices who will
Speaker 1: thought that worth hearing right, And I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't think they did that just to upset liberals who
Speaker 1: are what's that four panel meme that has what's his name,
Speaker 1: Vince McMahon, where you know he's brighter and brighter, and
Speaker 1: so you know they're going to revisit Humphrey's executor. They're gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, they're smacking down district court judges and tors
Speaker 1: and they're going to take up birthright citizenship. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I think the left is going to have a very long,
Speaker 1: sad weekend this weekend.
Speaker 2: Lucretia, what are your thoughts about the Court taking up
Speaker 2: you know, says stress. Not only they tacking it up,
Speaker 2: but they have scheduled it for a May argument, which
Speaker 2: they never do. They don't have war arguments in May.
Speaker 2: The term ends in April usually. But that shows to
Speaker 2: me is the level of interest in the court by
Speaker 2: the Court that they've scheduled a special session for this.
Speaker 3: So and you'll remember that when you and I did
Speaker 3: our contributions to the symposium on birthright Citizenship, one of
Speaker 3: the things that I did was I went to the
Speaker 3: famous case which is Wan kim Ark. And you know
Speaker 3: that one's of course been interpreted and analyzed over and over.
Speaker 1: But I went into the.
Speaker 3: Precedents that the Court used to justify their idea that somehow,
Speaker 3: even in that case, legal residents of the United States
Speaker 3: could in fact be considered birthright citizens. And of course
Speaker 3: all of the precedents are misused, do not support the
Speaker 3: court's position in Wan Kim rk. And it really does
Speaker 3: wrap around the whole idea of the common law, the
Speaker 3: idea that somehow our constitution is a common law constitution,
Speaker 3: and everything we need to understand about it is from
Speaker 3: the execrable Blackstone on this subject only, I mean that
Speaker 3: because he talks, of course about subjectship, it has nothing
Speaker 3: to do with citizenship, because the concept of citizen in
Speaker 3: a monarchy is absolutely an oxymor It doesn't exist because
Speaker 3: of course you are not a citizen if you are
Speaker 3: this subject of a monarch. And he talks about the
Speaker 3: allegiance one owes to a monarch, and on and on
Speaker 3: and on. Well, the court misused the precedents that actually
Speaker 3: said exactly that, and none of the precedents that the
Speaker 3: Court used in one Kim Mark actually supported their position,
Speaker 3: and the descent points that out. But so the first
Speaker 3: place is there is it's neither the juris or what's
Speaker 3: the other?
Speaker 2: Oh you you solace, you sanguinous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it. So it's neither because of your you're
Speaker 3: automatically a citizenship a citizen excuse because of your parents,
Speaker 3: Nor are you automatically a citizen because of your birth.
Speaker 3: You are a citizen because of social contract. And the
Speaker 3: social contract goes two ways. It is you agree to
Speaker 3: be a citizen and your fellow citizens agree to have you.
Speaker 3: There's not time to go into the whole John Locke
Speaker 3: theory of social contract, but it does change the conversation entirely.
Speaker 3: So bringing up Blackstone or somebody like that has absolutely
Speaker 3: no relevance whatsoever to the discussion of birth right citizenship.
Speaker 3: You must go to the fourteenth Amendment and to the
Speaker 3: subject to jurisdiction clause, and look to the Civil Rights
Speaker 3: Act of eighteen sixty six the subsequent practice. And if
Speaker 3: you do that, we don't have time to go into
Speaker 3: the details. But if you do that, you realize that,
Speaker 3: of course it is up to probably Congress, probably Congress
Speaker 3: to determine what subject to the jurisdiction means, but it's
Speaker 3: certainly does and can mean that Congress can choose not
Speaker 3: to grant citizenship to the children of parents results.
Speaker 2: I ask you something because you didn't I don't remember
Speaker 2: you making this argument when we talked about last time.
Speaker 2: But why does Congress get to define subject to the
Speaker 2: jurisdiction rather than the courts?
Speaker 3: Because it's the fifth the section Yeah, the enforcement close
Speaker 3: says nothing about the courts doing it. It's entirely up
Speaker 3: to Congress to define what all of the provisions of
Speaker 3: the Fourteenth Amendment.
Speaker 1: Section.
Speaker 2: Section five says in fource not interpret.
Speaker 3: By appropriate legislation. Yeah, well, so they have to ask
Speaker 3: the court before they can pass legislation pursue it to
Speaker 3: the Fourteenth Amendment. Is that what you're arguing.
Speaker 2: No, I'm saying that can Congress change the meaning of
Speaker 2: the words in the Fourteenth Amendment from what the Court
Speaker 2: has already said it means?
Speaker 3: Of course it can, because the Court's not the final
Speaker 3: say on that it does the Fourteenth Amendments. Is that
Speaker 3: the Court is not. I mean that, I can't argue
Speaker 3: that to somebody who's you know, very much part of
Speaker 3: the legal profession and very distinguished in the area of
Speaker 3: you know, the Supreme Court and someone but let's be serious.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: Of course, Congress can determine that subject to its jurisdiction
Speaker 3: means you must be subject in this way. This is
Speaker 3: and the Court can't say anything about it.
Speaker 2: Could Congress pass a law over turning Wan Kim ark.
Speaker 3: I don't know that they need to, because the second
Speaker 3: part of my argument is that Wang Kim arc of
Speaker 3: course doesn't apply because he was in fact born to
Speaker 3: parents who were here, if not legally, before before illegal
Speaker 3: residents or legal aliens were really a thing that anybody
Speaker 3: worried about. So it's so anachronistic it really doesn't apply.
Speaker 3: And if if the Supreme Court decides to rely on
Speaker 3: Wan Kim, market will just show that they're all about
Speaker 3: judicial supremacy and they don't give a damn what either
Speaker 3: the constitution or legal theory has to say. There you go.
Speaker 1: Can I ask a point of clarification lucretia, because I'm
Speaker 1: having some heartburn right now. Did I take you a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes ago to reject Blackstone wholesale or just
Speaker 1: Blackstone as applied to this question, because he wasn't called.
Speaker 3: Blackstone in a lot of ways should be rejected. And
Speaker 3: the whole idea that we can somehow substitute a written
Speaker 3: constitution for the with the common law should be rejected.
Speaker 3: But I think there's quite a bit to be learned
Speaker 3: from Blackstone. It's just if you're just going to accept
Speaker 3: Blackstone wholesale. Blackstone said this, so we have to do
Speaker 3: it because the Constitution is based on Blackstone's you know,
Speaker 3: don't I.
Speaker 2: Don't actually think that people on the side I favor
Speaker 2: and hope aren't saying and the Constitution that somehow in
Speaker 2: corporates Blackstone. It's more, you know, there are words in
Speaker 2: the Constitution that are from the eighteenth century legal words,
Speaker 2: and why not look at Blackstone to see what the
Speaker 2: kammal law thinks. It's not that the kammalaw controls the
Speaker 2: Constitution's meaning, because they clearly tried to change some of
Speaker 2: the meanings. But it's just like it's just a tool
Speaker 2: of interpretation, like looking at a dictionary.
Speaker 3: But it's not that.
Speaker 2: But that is the what I don't get about Edstone.
Speaker 2: Ed's argument is constantly that the common law is like
Speaker 2: an ideology that's rejected by Locke, right, and that I
Speaker 2: think that there's a common law too much.
Speaker 3: Credit in the social contract theory. It does. But what
Speaker 3: I would say is that, first of all, the Fourteenth
Speaker 3: Amendment was not eighteenth century, So there's nothing to turn
Speaker 3: to with respect to Blackstone that would inform us in
Speaker 3: any way, shape or form about what the framers of
Speaker 3: the Fourteenth Amendment meant.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And second, and there are in fact sources whatever you
Speaker 3: want to call it, that that should be turned to. Again,
Speaker 3: the debates in Congress over the Fourteenth Amendment, that debates
Speaker 3: in Congress over the A teen sixty six Civil Rights Act,
Speaker 3: those things are, in my opinion, absolutely controlling, to the
Speaker 3: extent that any kind of reference to something outside the
Speaker 3: words of the Constitution should be controlling. It's certainly not Blackstone,
Speaker 3: That's what I know.
Speaker 2: Well, I would agree, I don't think any of those
Speaker 2: sources are controlling. They're just ahead.
Speaker 1: Sorry, and I didn't well, I didn't mean to get
Speaker 1: off on the black way. Maybe we could do a
Speaker 1: whole half sec or half an episode on Blackstone sometime.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to suggest that, No, I agree with
Speaker 1: you the creation that it is not useful for the
Speaker 1: Fourteenth Amendment in this particular question or other Fourteenth Amendment questions.
Speaker 1: But I do think Blackstone was very influential with the
Speaker 1: founders and understanding on law, and John correct me. I
Speaker 1: thought in the Heller Oral arguments way back when, Blackstone's
Speaker 1: understanding of the right of self defense, Oh yeah, was
Speaker 1: part of the oral argument and thought important. And I
Speaker 1: think the logic of the logic of Blackstone is still
Speaker 1: compelling on that and many other issues.
Speaker 2: So actually, you look at like opinions by Scalia and
Speaker 2: Heller and the Second Amendment cases, the justices don't see
Speaker 2: Blackstone in law as being in contradiction. Generally they think
Speaker 2: of them as kind of That's what I mean, Like
Speaker 2: the common law is not to lawyers. We don't think
Speaker 2: of it as an ideology or political theory. It's just
Speaker 2: the accumulation of practice. It's just like what the British
Speaker 2: were doing at the time.
Speaker 1: It doesn't natural law, John, See, I don't think it
Speaker 1: is even And what.
Speaker 3: The reason that I have a fundamental suspicion of using Blackstone.
Speaker 2: Is exactly you don't want to use them at all.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, A suspicion that doesn't mean not at all,
Speaker 3: but a suspicion about it is because we have a
Speaker 3: written constitution, The British Constitution is in fact, what what
Speaker 3: did you call it whatever you said. The British Constitution
Speaker 3: is not written law. A written constitution is something entirely
Speaker 3: different than the common law, the common law, good practice,
Speaker 3: over time, et cetera, et cetera. All of that's great,
Speaker 3: But we have a written constitution with one purpose to
Speaker 3: define exactly what the powers of government are and to
Speaker 3: make sure that they're no greater than that, because the
Speaker 3: people are sovereign. Blackstone wrote for a monarch who was sovereign,
Speaker 3: and all power emanated from the monarch. That's why Blackstone
Speaker 3: is not generally speaking applicable to the American constitutional system.
Speaker 2: Well, appreciate it. Just blew a hole in the unitary executive.
Speaker 1: Theory then, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 3: The unitary executive theory stands on its own. It doesn't
Speaker 3: need Blackstone.
Speaker 2: No, But the definition of what the executive power means
Speaker 2: under the people write about this, A lot of it
Speaker 2: comes from Blackstone. Well that's where Hamilton looks too in
Speaker 2: the Pacific. Okay, what a wonderful conversation we're having, and
Speaker 2: we have hit the first of our commercial breaks. I'm
Speaker 2: sorry I have to call this to a temporary help,
Speaker 2: but I'm sure on I think it's May fifteenth, when
Speaker 2: the arguments are going to be held, We'll have a
Speaker 2: live play by play commentary by your friends at the
Speaker 2: three Whiskey Happy Hour. So we will be back after
Speaker 2: these messages. Well, one place that is no doubt going
Speaker 2: to have no debates about birthright citizenship because they don't
Speaker 2: let John Eastman on campus was going to be Harvard University.
Speaker 2: I just probably had you know there used to be
Speaker 2: I think it was. Was it a McLoughlin group, basically
Speaker 2: a great segment like Winner of the Week, Loser of
Speaker 2: the week. There's no doubt that Harvard University has been
Speaker 2: the loser of the week. It started out with the
Speaker 2: Trump administration on Friday, and then Harvard I think, I
Speaker 2: guess came back with his response over the weekend, and
Speaker 2: then on Monday saying that it was going to cut
Speaker 2: Harvard off from twenty two billion dollars in.
Speaker 1: Federal two point two billion.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a two point two billion, maybe nine billion,
Speaker 2: maybe go.
Speaker 1: Up to nine with another six billion in questions.
Speaker 2: Yes, because US Harvard is refusing to cooperate with the
Speaker 2: Trump administration's demands that it stopped DEI, stop the use
Speaker 2: of race, protect Jewish students, you know, attack anti Semitism.
Speaker 2: But then the list went a little farther, I think
Speaker 2: than I was certainly expecting. It included things like changing
Speaker 2: Harvard's governing structure, requiring viewpoint diversity and emissions and faculty
Speaker 2: hiring and the running of departments, requiring that certain departments
Speaker 2: be placed under special scrutiny, and something like, you know,
Speaker 2: being thrown into bankruptcy proceedings as it were. And so
Speaker 2: Harvard said, no, no, we'll never do this, as interferes
Speaker 2: with our academic freedom and the First Amendment and free
Speaker 2: speech and refused. The next day, Trump said, well, maybe
Speaker 2: Harvard doesn't need its tax exempt status anymore, and the
Speaker 2: IRS is apparently currently investigating whether Harvard ought to be
Speaker 2: stripped of its taxis and status. And then the next
Speaker 2: day Trump said, and maybe that I shouldn't be allowed
Speaker 2: to have any international students because they have not been
Speaker 2: providing records and keeping tabs and reporting to the federal
Speaker 2: government all the students and where they're from and what
Speaker 2: they're up to. So lucreat it sounds like Trump has
Speaker 2: been listening to the podcast and doing all the things
Speaker 2: you want to do to universities. But let me ask
Speaker 2: you do you think they went too far? I mean,
Speaker 2: it seems to me they're on safe ground with the
Speaker 2: anti semitism ending, the use of race ending, the use
Speaker 2: of DEI. But what about all these other things, like
Speaker 2: these departments have to start hiring people of diverse viewpoints,
Speaker 2: and emissions has to be restructured, and the governing system
Speaker 2: of Harvard has to change.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: You know, I suppose you can argue that those other
Speaker 3: things that the follow on things, as you put it,
Speaker 3: that might be going too far, they're probably necessary if
Speaker 3: any of the other instructions are going to be at
Speaker 3: all effective. Here's what I think is a really important
Speaker 3: point to be remembering this is a political thing. It
Speaker 3: may be a little bit of revenge and so on,
Speaker 3: because but this is a political thing. And you know,
Speaker 3: I might even if you'll forgive me, I don't want
Speaker 3: to get into the other discussion yet, but I might
Speaker 3: even go so far as to say that it is
Speaker 3: on par with the Brago Garcia scumbag thing going on
Speaker 3: on the left, where Trump understands absolutely. How does this
Speaker 3: play to magaland how does this play to those independents
Speaker 3: that are continue to move toward Trump? How does this
Speaker 3: perhaps even I'll throw a bone to you two overcome
Speaker 3: the tariff discussion. Because if I'm a middle class, lower
Speaker 3: middle class household, and you know, I'm looking at my
Speaker 3: federal income taxes, which we all just paid last week,
Speaker 3: or you know, paid war last week, I guess I
Speaker 3: should say then, And I'm knowing that a Harvard has
Speaker 3: this huge endowment that people who give money to Harvard
Speaker 3: get tax exempt status for giving that money, that their
Speaker 3: endowment is not taxed. That there they're tax free bonds,
Speaker 3: on and on and on, And I'm thinking to myself, Okay,
Speaker 3: how many students would you guys told me what their
Speaker 3: their freshman class is? Four hundred?
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: No, No, it's much bigger than that, But whatever it is.
Speaker 2: It's sixteen hundred a little more.
Speaker 3: We talked when we talked about the Harvard case, you
Speaker 3: mentioned that they could triple the size of it.
Speaker 2: But anyway, oh yeah, I mean, I mean an undergraduate
Speaker 2: body here at Berkeley is like six thousand.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and ours is even much bigger. But anyway,
Speaker 3: my point is, why am I the struggling homeowner? You know,
Speaker 3: my working two jobs can't pay this or that, can't
Speaker 3: go out to eat more than once every month, whatever
Speaker 3: it might be, Why am I subsidizing Because tax exempt
Speaker 3: status is a subsidy for an a an entity that
Speaker 3: has proven itself to be anti American politically. We don't
Speaker 3: even have to go into all the evidence of Harvard
Speaker 3: other than John who didn't give his usual a full
Speaker 3: disclosure that he is in fact a Harvard graduate.
Speaker 2: Not only am I a Harvard graduate, I'm one of
Speaker 2: the greatest Harvard graduates, the greatest.
Speaker 3: John is a rarity at Harvard because not only is
Speaker 3: he conservad you made it out of Harvard relatively with
Speaker 3: some relatively conservative.
Speaker 2: I mean was I was actually the conservative columnist on
Speaker 2: the student newspaper, which maybe there's one every five years.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I wrote all kinds. I wrote a comm
Speaker 2: endorsing George H. W. Bush for president, which drove the
Speaker 2: rest of the which is why.
Speaker 3: They are afraid John's head paper mache head that people
Speaker 3: can throw things at ye. But my point is very simple.
Speaker 3: All of these, all of these tax issues and DEI issues,
Speaker 3: and and you know the idea that Harvard's you know,
Speaker 3: raking in money because they're they're contributing so much to
Speaker 3: the world. Really other than John. I don't see anything
Speaker 3: that's a great argument for Trump. It's an absolutely great
Speaker 3: political argument for Trump, and I think he probably believes
Speaker 3: in it too. I'm not saying it's totally you know,
Speaker 3: crass and that kind of thing. I think he believes it,
Speaker 3: but he recognizes that framed properly, nobody gives a damn
Speaker 3: about Harvard losing their tax exempt status or their nine
Speaker 3: billion or whatever it is. They're rich, they know, we
Speaker 3: know they're rich. Stop letting people give money to that,
Speaker 3: and let them give to a real charity.
Speaker 1: There you go, Oh, I am rubbing my Steve.
Speaker 2: Steve's strip tax exempt status from all universities in the country.
Speaker 1: Well, well, so, first of all, I'm rubbing my hands
Speaker 1: with glee because for a rare occasion, I can be
Speaker 1: much more radical than Lucretia on this subject.
Speaker 3: Real.
Speaker 1: First of all, I won't go in precise order, but
Speaker 1: since you raised the tax exempt status, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: so old. I remember the Bob Jones case in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and the issue there was, well, they did well,
Speaker 1: they lost in court of it ultimately too, but which
Speaker 1: is important because the Reagan people said, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: the irs does not get to enforce civil rights laws.
Speaker 1: That has to be done through the Justice Department or
Speaker 1: somewhere else. They didn't actually say Bob Jones was exempt
Speaker 1: from civil rights a vulnerability discrimination, but said IRIS. And
Speaker 1: then the Supreme Court disagreed and they said no, no,
Speaker 1: actually they get to. And so it seems to me
Speaker 1: that if the IRS can use Title six and the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Act against Bob Jones University, they can. The
Speaker 1: IRS can do it the Harvard University today. And this
Speaker 1: gets onto using the left's rules against them, which maybe
Speaker 1: we'll come to in a minute. But look, I mean,
Speaker 1: I like to think that Trump escalated because they thought,
Speaker 1: you know, we gave in too easily to Columbia. We didn't.
Speaker 1: We weren't tough enough on them. Here's the point. If
Speaker 1: you can break Harvard, if Trump can break Harvard, you
Speaker 1: will break every other university in the country. So I
Speaker 1: think the extreme demands, all of which I like. By
Speaker 1: the way, I'll just stipulate that are designed to make
Speaker 1: this a fight to the death. And maybe it's the
Speaker 1: right week for it. John, I know you wanted to
Speaker 1: bring up that this is the two hundred and fiftieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the firing on Lexington Concord. Well, this is
Speaker 1: the week we fired on Harvard University to start a
Speaker 1: new revolution against our corrupt universities. Oh my god, I'll
Speaker 1: just see. I told you I should compete with Lucrestian this.
Speaker 1: Let me just say two more things about it. I
Speaker 1: could say a lot of it. I'll just say two.
Speaker 1: And there are two related thought experiments. We saw two
Speaker 1: weeks ago that at Princeton University you had a mob
Speaker 1: of students yelling at Jews go back to Europe. So far,
Speaker 1: i've heard no disciplinary measures or whatever. Now suppose at
Speaker 1: Harvard you had a bunch of white students yelling at
Speaker 1: black students go back to Africa. There would be a
Speaker 1: five alarm fire nationwide for weeks. At Harvard would have
Speaker 1: expelled all those students within fifteen minutes. Okay, Now on
Speaker 1: the foreign students. My favorite part is excluding the foreign
Speaker 1: students overall. One is it's gonna it's going to hurt
Speaker 1: the revenue streams for a lot of universities, because Chinese
Speaker 1: students is a revenue model, an important one for a
Speaker 1: lot of programs. This is well known, probably not Harvard,
Speaker 1: but I think it's the middle Eastern students and the
Speaker 1: you know, anti Semitic, anti American ones they're bringing in.
Speaker 1: So a related thought experiment, suppose forty years ago, whatever
Speaker 1: it was, that South Africa was the big issue on campuses, right,
Speaker 1: and if Harvard had said, no, we're not taking any
Speaker 1: white South African foreign students who defend apartheid because those
Speaker 1: values are repugnant to us, They're poisonous, and so we
Speaker 1: won't do it. I think this is exactly the same.
Speaker 1: I think our government is exactly right to say we
Speaker 1: are not going to let you universities admit foreign students
Speaker 1: who are anti Semitic or anti American, and you know, universities,
Speaker 1: you just have to shape up. The other issue is
Speaker 1: I will just leave aside for the moment, because I
Speaker 1: could go on on the viewpoint diversity thing for a
Speaker 1: long time too. I will just say, listeners, if you
Speaker 1: want to know what's wrong, what's wrong one of the
Speaker 1: things wrong with universities. And maybe Lucretia wants to come
Speaker 1: back in on this, just google cluster hires at places
Speaker 1: like Cornell or in California. Right, cluster hires, Right, but
Speaker 1: we're missing.
Speaker 3: Before he goes on, before you go in I just
Speaker 3: have to address the cluster hires really quick, John, because
Speaker 3: when I was being pushed at one point to make
Speaker 3: a cluster higher for all of my military friends out there,
Speaker 3: there is a different word that the military is fond
Speaker 3: of using, and the first part is cluster. The second
Speaker 3: word starts with an F and ends with a K.
Speaker 3: So I will let you use your imagination family show.
Speaker 2: Not a family.
Speaker 3: I'm tired of hearing about these cluster and I use
Speaker 3: the wrong word by honestly, by accident. Military it was.
Speaker 3: It was quite the moment, let me just tell you.
Speaker 3: But that's what I think of when I think of
Speaker 3: cluster hires.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, So just one last question, though, do you
Speaker 2: worry you know, since we're conservatives who like to have
Speaker 2: a federal government of limited powers, all these policies in
Speaker 2: that letter from the government, I think would be entirely
Speaker 2: beneficial for universities, great improvements. Oh but do you worry
Speaker 2: that it's too it goes beyond what the federal government
Speaker 2: should be doing. And do you worry about what happens
Speaker 2: when President GRETCHENM. Whitmer comes into office in twenty twenty nine,
Speaker 2: what they would do with exact same power let me just.
Speaker 3: Say that I'll answer the second part. First, John, they
Speaker 3: did do that, Bob Jones and others. I mean, how
Speaker 3: many diniversities other than Hillsdale are out there refusing to
Speaker 3: take federal dollars? And secondly, what I will argue is
Speaker 3: is from the point of view of conservative smaller government,
Speaker 3: less powerful government, all of those things, what we have
Speaker 3: is the opposite. And what Trump is doing is threatening
Speaker 3: to take away something Harvard never had a right to
Speaker 3: in the first place, and that is, you know, massive
Speaker 3: amounts of government funding, massive amounts of you know, what's
Speaker 3: essentially revenue generated by the fact that they don't pay
Speaker 3: taxes on so many things, so many things including tuition.
Speaker 3: This is this could possibly actually tax the revenue that
Speaker 3: they make from tuition. Why is a university exempt from that?
Speaker 3: Most most corporations, and Harvard is a corporation, are not
Speaker 3: exempt from taxes like that. They're not a religion, they're
Speaker 3: not a church. So what's the purpose of them being
Speaker 3: tax exempt in the first place. And so I just
Speaker 3: want to make it very clear that what we're not
Speaker 3: talking about is additional government interference. We're talking about less
Speaker 3: government interference.
Speaker 1: Here, Well, I can i add to that that, first
Speaker 1: of all, I'm not afraid of that at all, because
Speaker 1: it's what they've been doing already, and if they go
Speaker 1: into higher gear, it's just going to make it worse
Speaker 1: for the universities down the road, I think. By the way,
Speaker 1: let's to Lucretia's point, Let's keep in mind that there
Speaker 1: has been this growing and for time thriving for profit
Speaker 1: educational sector. It's mostly for vocational education, things like the
Speaker 1: University of Phoenix and certain other ones like that, and
Speaker 1: starting with Obama, the federal government has persecuted those institutions ruthlessly,
Speaker 1: and the reasons for that were entirely political, because they
Speaker 1: were actually competing for students for things like nursing degrees
Speaker 1: that you know, bookkeeping, practical things that could get you
Speaker 1: a job instead of going to a liberal arts college
Speaker 1: where you're going to be converted into being like simple.
Speaker 3: And accessible kinds of constructional methodology. Yes.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh, and you know, I've known some people in
Speaker 1: that business and they say, you can't believe the kind
Speaker 1: of harassment we get from the federal govern Starting with
Speaker 1: Obama and Biden double down on all that. So you
Speaker 1: know they're already doing this and this gets back to
Speaker 1: or it gets onto that I think terrific article in
Speaker 1: the news article in the Wall Street Journal that has
Speaker 1: raised a ruckus on the right, quoting quist Roofe on
Speaker 1: others sayings.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're getting to that after the break, so let's
Speaker 2: still Actually this is actually the perfect time because we
Speaker 2: are bringing up on our second good break, and since
Speaker 2: Steve already started the segue, although I wasn't really sure how,
Speaker 2: but we're going to interrupt the right in the middle
Speaker 2: and we'll be back right after these messages. Okay, So Steve,
Speaker 2: you were going to bring up this article, which I'll
Speaker 2: describe briefly a very interesting Wall Street Journal piece. It
Speaker 2: says that the real guiding philosopher of the New Right
Speaker 2: and perhaps of the Trump administration is none other than
Speaker 2: Antonio Gramshe. Gram She's famous early twentieth cent from Marxist.
Speaker 2: I had to read him in college for our sociology class,
Speaker 2: which was what I actually thought was really interesting. But
Speaker 2: his main argument was that it was very interesting because
Speaker 2: you know, you know, Marxists have a problem. You know,
Speaker 2: the communist revolutions occurred in the least developed economies Russia
Speaker 2: and China when they were supposed to occur the most
Speaker 2: advanced capitalist societies like the United States, England and France,
Speaker 2: and so Graham She's solution was that it was to
Speaker 2: switch the focus of Marxism away from or at least
Speaker 2: explain why it hadn't happened in those economies by saying
Speaker 2: that had to happen with culture first. It wasn't really
Speaker 2: descriptive so much as a call for action. And you
Speaker 2: can see all these I actually was. And so then
Speaker 2: Christopher Ruffo, a friend of ours who's at the Manhattan Institute,
Speaker 2: who's been really the guy who is beating the drama
Speaker 2: about critical race theory, yes, very successfully, you know. He
Speaker 2: he says he's a great reader and admirer of graham
Speaker 2: sheet and admitted that he's been guided by gram Steve
Speaker 2: is quite taken with this article, because Steve, I think
Speaker 2: his little red shirt he's a little Marxist in art anyway,
Speaker 2: he's a red shirt wearing lafoud drinking Marxist. Steve.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I mean I think Lucreatia will agree
Speaker 1: with me on some of this, or maybe most of it. Look,
Speaker 1: the argument is, so why you left out John that
Speaker 1: Ramsky is credited with having come up with the phrase,
Speaker 1: we need to have the long march through the institutions.
Speaker 1: Apparently he didn't, it was someone else, but it's very
Speaker 1: congruent with his thinking, which was, Oh, and then the
Speaker 1: Frankfurt School that you know.
Speaker 2: The Frankfurt School. You know, it's just like people who
Speaker 2: were not as profound as gram she, but were just
Speaker 2: kind of applying.
Speaker 1: His Arguably, they were more profound but more insidious.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, God, I found the Frankfurt School people
Speaker 2: so turgid and people She's actually fun to read, I think, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, well, he was more political.
Speaker 1: The other guys were more philosophical, but but they shared
Speaker 1: this insight, which is culture is more important than economic
Speaker 1: material forces. And so that's why you want to capture
Speaker 1: the cultural high ground, which of course the left is
Speaker 1: done Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Universities, public universities exactly, media entertainment.
Speaker 1: And so Rufo's point and the people who say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we need to do that, and the criticism, and
Speaker 1: I won't name any names, but I've been reading it
Speaker 1: the last yesterday and today from some people, Oh, this
Speaker 1: is terrible. We should stick to our principles of conservatism
Speaker 1: and Burkinism and classical liberalism, And I'm thinking, here's the
Speaker 1: whole problem and why I'm like what Trump is doing,
Speaker 1: even when I think it's being done clumsily. Even once
Speaker 1: it's done clumsily, I like it because we've been playing
Speaker 1: nice for fifty years and slowly losing on all fronts.
Speaker 1: And let's take them Skins at their word that everything's
Speaker 1: a struggle for power. Said, fine, it's a struggle for power,
Speaker 1: then we're going to compete for it, and we're going
Speaker 1: to We now have reached the point where you need
Speaker 1: some exercises of raw power to turn back the damage
Speaker 1: they have done. Trying to be nice to universities into
Speaker 1: Hollywood has not worked and is not going to work
Speaker 1: full stop. And so the you know, I think what
Speaker 1: you've got is the I didn't like this phrase during
Speaker 1: Trump won, but now I kind of agree with it.
Speaker 1: The sort of vs Conservatives as someone called them. It
Speaker 1: might have been our pal Michael Walsh, who really understands
Speaker 1: the Frankfurt people. Well, you know, they're willing to continue
Speaker 1: losing as long as they can be nice and play
Speaker 1: with the old rules. And I think we're done with
Speaker 1: all that. I think that's what we've seen from Obama
Speaker 1: and the Biden administration. So you know, we need to
Speaker 1: crush them. I mean, it's that simple. It's a fight
Speaker 1: to the death. Mitch Decor said that forty years ago,
Speaker 1: said a culture wars are matters of the heart and
Speaker 1: their fight to the death, unlike fighting about tariffs or
Speaker 1: labor policy or other kinds of things where they're economic
Speaker 1: winners and losers. That's small potatoes. So I'm all for this.
Speaker 1: I agree with it. I will add this one last
Speaker 1: bit and see from Lucretia, Greece. There's really nothing in
Speaker 1: the Frankfurt schools criticisms and epis on culture that you
Speaker 1: actually can't find in the classics. You know, they say
Speaker 1: language is a tool of power. Well, that's what Plato's
Speaker 1: Gorgias was all about. It turns out that to all
Speaker 1: of the arguments, and Plato's trying to teach you a
Speaker 1: deep appreciation for not only natural right but also the
Speaker 1: necessities of politics. But we become so illiterate starting in
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century that these crazy German immigrats come
Speaker 1: along like Horkhimer, and people think, oh, this is something new.
Speaker 1: It's not new at all. It's one of the oldest
Speaker 1: arguments in political philosophy.
Speaker 2: Steve is trying to outflank you on the radicalism now measure,
Speaker 2: but he.
Speaker 3: Did somewhat conflate two different issues. One is the cultural
Speaker 3: culture war per se, I didn't disagree with anything he said,
Speaker 3: And the other is the methods, the means versus the ends.
Speaker 3: So by beginning and even giving credence to those idiot conservatives,
Speaker 3: vishy conservatives we'll call them, who say somehow we can't
Speaker 3: abandon our principles. I don't know if Steve remembers this,
Speaker 3: but this is this was a defining moment for me,
Speaker 3: and like Steve, this is where I become analogy lucretia.
Speaker 3: I fit many many things into the framework that this
Speaker 3: that this created in my mind. So our professor Harry
Speaker 3: Jaffa was talking about how Ted Kennedy had invited Pat Robertson.
Speaker 3: I think it was Pat Robertson. Somebody who at that.
Speaker 3: I mean this was in the early eighties, guys, I'm
Speaker 3: really old. In the early eighties, Ted Kennedy had invited
Speaker 3: Pat roberts Robertson. Let me do that the other way.
Speaker 3: Pat Robertson invited Ted Kennedy to come and speak to
Speaker 3: some some conservative group, and I think I have the
Speaker 3: name right, but it could have been one of those
Speaker 3: other people. And they gave Ted Kennedy a standing ovation,
Speaker 3: and Ted Kennedy returned the favor, and they booed Pat
Speaker 3: Robertson off the stage. Now, think what you want about
Speaker 3: that anecdote. That is a microcosm of conservatives versus liberals.
Speaker 3: We don't want to be like those liberals who those
Speaker 3: leftists who would boo somebody off the stage. That's not gentlemanly,
Speaker 3: that's not h So those are not our principles. Those
Speaker 3: are our methods. And the problem with conservatives, over and
Speaker 3: over and over again is that they refuse to fight dirty.
Speaker 3: They when Obama says, we don't bring a knife to
Speaker 3: a gunfight, and then we don't bring and then we
Speaker 3: bring knives to a gunfight, over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: So that's the first thing I'll say about it. And
Speaker 3: I do think Graham, she has a great bit to
Speaker 3: teach us there. I cried when Andrew Breitbart died. It
Speaker 3: really did. I mean, it caught me and I was
Speaker 3: like the tears were running down my face. I was
Speaker 3: very sad. That's how seriously. I took Andrew Breitbart. You
Speaker 3: can think what you want about him, but I thought
Speaker 3: he was amazing. And so the second part of that
Speaker 3: is we're not abandoning our principles when we decide our
Speaker 3: principles are worth fighting for. That's the argument I'd want
Speaker 3: to make, and learning to fight the way we need
Speaker 3: to fight, and not oh my gentleman friend across the
Speaker 3: aisle McCain style, or Lindsey Graham's style or Mitt Romney style.
Speaker 3: Screw them. I'm done with those people. It is the
Speaker 3: things that we believe in that we care about. I
Speaker 3: would argue that not one of us on this podcast,
Speaker 3: and probably not one of our listeners would disagree about
Speaker 3: the things we care about. Where the debate happens is
Speaker 3: how do we get there? And we have let ourselves
Speaker 3: be kicked kick We walk around wearing the kick me
Speaker 3: sign on our back, and the left says, happy to
Speaker 3: do so. Trump the last thing, Steve, you said it yourself.
Speaker 3: Trump is successful because either because of resentment over the
Speaker 3: way he was treated. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3: I don't know how much of this he gets. I
Speaker 3: read John's book and I still can't tell you how
Speaker 3: much of it Trump gets and how much of it's
Speaker 3: just instinct, But he gets it one way or another,
Speaker 3: and ways that no other conservatives do.
Speaker 1: Sorry, well, it was, it was. John Gabriel of Ricochet
Speaker 1: had a great tweet about this yesterday today. He said
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney tried being the gentleman, the left called him
Speaker 1: a Nazi. You know that's all you need to.
Speaker 2: Know, right, Okay, But do you guys worry it? It's
Speaker 2: like my worry with the last worry again, John, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, in a liberal society, do you
Speaker 2: want the government, And of course the left has been
Speaker 2: doing it, but do you want the government when we're
Speaker 2: in charge to be you start nakedly advancing certain moral
Speaker 2: and cultural views.
Speaker 3: This way, I'm happy if they'll just advanced constitutional views,
Speaker 3: and that to me partially answers your objection, John, if
Speaker 3: I make any sense to you, do I necessarily want
Speaker 3: the government advancing my Catholicism and the things I believe
Speaker 3: in as a Catholic. No? Do I want them advancing
Speaker 3: the idea that a man is a man and a
Speaker 3: woman as a woman, and that children shouldn't be turned
Speaker 3: into some freaks of nature? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, Yeah, John, I mean, the way you phrase
Speaker 1: it in the abstract, then it's hard to escape answering no,
Speaker 1: you don't want the government doing that. However, when do
Speaker 1: you break it down, as Lucretia just did in a
Speaker 1: specific instances where public opinion is overwhelmingly against what the
Speaker 1: left is doing, then to use force against them, I'll
Speaker 1: put it as bluntly as possible, is to defend democracy
Speaker 1: and to defend the rule of the people against the
Speaker 1: people who want to rule over us without our consent
Speaker 1: and shut things down our throat. You know, I've been
Speaker 1: radicalized on this. I did not talk this way ten
Speaker 1: years ago. But I'm so disgusted with things that partly
Speaker 1: is Lucretia's baleful influence on me after all these years,
Speaker 1: finally breaking through. But so that's why I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we again, we've reached the point where it's become necessary skeptical.
Speaker 3: Well, we just bring up the sort of the crucible
Speaker 3: of all this. So we know that who was Van
Speaker 3: Holland from Maryland? Right, Christian Holland decides to go down
Speaker 3: and he asks and asked and asked, and he finally
Speaker 3: let him into the prison, and he has Margarita's or
Speaker 3: Mihido's or something with that scum bag, gang banger, wife beater,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Okay, they're desperately trying to make this argument,
Speaker 3: and they may succeed because the problem is, here's what
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say about it. Every time I turn around,
Speaker 3: a conservative is waffling on this point. This is their argument.
Speaker 3: Sure Trump won on illegal immigration, but he can't go
Speaker 3: around deporting murderous scumbag sex traffickers, child sex traffickers, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera without due process because he does that, and
Speaker 3: the next thing they're gonna do is come for you.
Speaker 3: It's a powerful argument, the thin end of the wedge,
Speaker 3: camel under the tent, camel's nose under the tent, whatever
Speaker 3: stupid analogy you want to put there. But my point
Speaker 3: is this, we cannot give into that nonsense. We need
Speaker 3: to talk about why it is Americans can choose to
Speaker 3: remove people like that from their country. They don't deserve
Speaker 3: due process and it is not the same as doing
Speaker 3: that same thing to Americans. And just a little aside,
Speaker 3: those same people screaming about poor Ms three, gang banger
Speaker 3: wife beater said not a word when members of the
Speaker 3: DOJ showed up with a swat team at Roger Stone's house,
Speaker 3: at that pastor's house. At one last story, Steve, I
Speaker 3: don't think you weren't with me. I got pulled aside
Speaker 3: at a conference we were at by a gentleman because
Speaker 3: you and I had been talking about January sixth, and
Speaker 3: he pulled me aside. He says, I don't want anybody
Speaker 3: to know this, but I was at January sixth, and
Speaker 3: I'm afraid every day that someone is going to recognize
Speaker 3: me and they're going to show up at my house
Speaker 3: and they're going to take me away and put me
Speaker 3: in solitary, and I won't hear from my family, etc.
Speaker 3: Where were those those despicable, hypocritical, hypocritical right wing, supposed
Speaker 3: right wing conservatives when that was happening. Shut up, go away,
Speaker 3: Send every MS three thirteen, gang Bang or anyone who
Speaker 3: might be affiliated.
Speaker 2: Without any judicial hearing, due process, just pick them up
Speaker 2: and send them none. Well, that's on constitutional No.
Speaker 3: It's not. The Constitution doesn't. I don't care what the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court is. It doesn't protect people who are not citizens.
Speaker 2: It is a package. It says due process applies to
Speaker 2: persons not citizens in the constitutional text that we were
Speaker 2: just reading together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess due processes. You come to our
Speaker 3: country as an illegal alien, you're out. That's my due process.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Executive branch just gets to do it without
Speaker 2: any judicial review at all.
Speaker 3: Well, a real American citizen, then due process is okay
Speaker 3: with me. They don't care about due process. Don't give
Speaker 3: me that they didn't care about due process for the
Speaker 3: January sixth protests.
Speaker 2: Well, they all did get presented to a judge and
Speaker 2: had a trial. That's due process, just like the way
Speaker 2: many of.
Speaker 3: Them spent months in solitary confinement before they even saw
Speaker 3: a corrupt to Washington DC judge.
Speaker 2: So when they get through process, it doesn't count because
Speaker 2: they're all corrupt judges anyway.
Speaker 3: In Washington, DC, they are all right, well, this.
Speaker 2: Is a good time to take a break when we're
Speaker 2: going down the conspiracy theory wormhole, and we will be
Speaker 2: right back and then take up the two hundred and
Speaker 2: fiftieth anniversary of Lexington and Conquered, where I have to say,
Speaker 2: in my view, the colonists actually thought very much the
Speaker 2: way that Lucretia does. I was just accusing Lucretia of
Speaker 2: being conspiracy theorists. But I don't mean that in a
Speaker 2: bad way, because I would say that our revolutionary forefathers
Speaker 2: were conspiracy theorists. So let me put it to you, guys.
Speaker 2: Let's not talk about Lexington and conquered specifically. But the
Speaker 2: question I always like to ask is why did we
Speaker 2: have a revolution at all? So if you go back
Speaker 2: and look, I think objectively at the situation of the
Speaker 2: colonists in the seventeen seventies seventeen sixties, they are already
Speaker 2: some of the freest, wealthiest, equal people on the face
Speaker 2: of the planet. Now, they don't want to pay taxes,
Speaker 2: they don't like the exertion of parliamentary supremacy over their legislatures.
Speaker 2: But they had been living, you know what's called under
Speaker 2: a policy but non neglect, where they had basically been
Speaker 2: self governing for over one hundred years, and the one
Speaker 2: most important source of wealth in Old Europe, in fact,
Speaker 2: in the rest of the world was plentiful and cheap.
Speaker 1: I e.
Speaker 2: Land. In America, you had no aristocracy. You had I think,
Speaker 2: a society that was I would say, freer and wealthier
Speaker 2: and more equal than any other society in the history
Speaker 2: of mankind. Up to that point. So why have a
Speaker 2: revolution at all? Think about how great things would have
Speaker 2: been if America had stayed part of the British Empire. John,
Speaker 2: there's there's my question.
Speaker 1: Indeed, you accuse us of being monarchist. John, Now the
Speaker 1: shoes on the other foot, I want to say, Lucretia,
Speaker 1: who wants to tell him? Is that meme goes? Look? John,
Speaker 1: I know that we spend way too much of our time.
Speaker 1: We conservatives are re expire monsters, especially looking at the second,
Speaker 1: first and second paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. But
Speaker 1: the answer to your question is, in all the specific
Speaker 1: indictments of the king, very little witch had to do
Speaker 1: with taxation. It wasn't a tax revolt. It was a
Speaker 1: revolt against the erosion of self government. Right, All the
Speaker 1: indictments of really a parliament that said the king. But
Speaker 1: that was a clever rhetorical trick that they played. But
Speaker 1: the substance of it was, you know, we're being tyrannized
Speaker 1: step by step by step, and that has to stop.
Speaker 1: That's why I have a resolution. It was not going
Speaker 1: to change without a forceful rebuke. And here, just to
Speaker 1: just to annoy Lucretius slightly, you know Edmund Burke sympathized
Speaker 1: with the grievances of the colonists, and for that he
Speaker 1: was nearly expelled from the House of Commons for expressing
Speaker 1: sympathy with our point of view.
Speaker 3: Whatever you said that before, I'm unimpressed.
Speaker 2: Take away, I mean the British. I mean undeniably the
Speaker 2: British made several errors and how to handle the colonies, errors,
Speaker 2: mistakes and mistakes of part. They were too harsh on
Speaker 2: the colonies. They didn't certainly have to send troops right
Speaker 2: until even after Lexington and conquered. There are you know,
Speaker 2: Americans trying to heal the breach? Why why did the
Speaker 2: revolution occur just because of parliamentary supremacy.
Speaker 1: Of the Romans? Ever done for us? Argument from your
Speaker 1: John is that what we're getting the Romans.
Speaker 3: Then into a serious conversation for a moment. Mind you.
Speaker 3: First of all, what it says in the Declaration of
Speaker 3: Independence that prudence indeed will dictate that government's long established
Speaker 3: should not be changed for light and transient causes. And
Speaker 3: all experience has shown that mankind is disposed to suffer
Speaker 3: while evils are sufferable to write the forms to which
Speaker 3: they are. They've become accustomed. Why because engaging in a
Speaker 3: revolution against the regime and power puts you back into
Speaker 3: the state of nature. And what we know from Hobbs,
Speaker 3: your favorite John, and from Lacke, but from Hobbes, the
Speaker 3: state of nature life is solitary, poor, Nazi, British and short.
Speaker 3: Nobody wants to live there. Okay, but prudence dictates that,
Speaker 3: you know, you should think about this. But Jefferson goes on,
Speaker 3: and this is when a long chain of abuses evincing,
Speaker 3: you know, basically absolute tyranny. Okay, you could quibble. I
Speaker 3: get that, you can quibble with whether or not in
Speaker 3: the long history of humankind what the colonists were experiencing
Speaker 3: was indeed absolute tyranny. You could quibble. And let me
Speaker 3: just point out not part of my soliloquy here, but
Speaker 3: the king owned all the land as long as they
Speaker 3: were colonists. But we'll leave that one aside for another day.
Speaker 3: The other thing I want you to remind you of
Speaker 3: is Hamilton's admonition in Federalist Number one that it is
Speaker 3: up to the people of the American people to decide
Speaker 3: the important question whether societies and men are really capable
Speaker 3: or not of establishing good government based upon reflection and choice,
Speaker 3: or whether they are forever destined to depend for their
Speaker 3: political constitutions upon accident, force, and whatever we do, he says, well,
Speaker 3: decide it for all of mankind.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: There's two really important points there. One, you don't you
Speaker 3: shouldn't have a revolution every time you don't like something
Speaker 3: that happened. Prudence dictates whether or not you should exercise
Speaker 3: what is your natural right to revolution? And there are
Speaker 3: several elements to prudence, but one of them is you
Speaker 3: can can you affect this revolution? Can you bring about
Speaker 3: what Hamilton said we needed to bring about with this
Speaker 3: new constitution, which is a government based upon reflection and
Speaker 3: choice that protects the rights of people, etc. Etc. That's
Speaker 3: why Lexington and conquered, and then the subsequent revolution. The
Speaker 3: Declaration of Independence makes sense because in fact, the American
Speaker 3: colonists were disciples of Locke, disciples of the notion of
Speaker 3: natural right, the disciples of the notion of social contract,
Speaker 3: disciples of the notion of the sovereignty belongs to the people.
Speaker 3: Jefferson even argued that in the Summary address. But they decided,
Speaker 3: yes we can do it, Yes we can actually form
Speaker 3: this government based upon reflection and choice because of the
Speaker 3: unique circumstances of the American experience, exactly as you described them, John,
Speaker 3: they already had the habits of self government. They already
Speaker 3: had the habits of understanding the difference between liberty and
Speaker 3: license and all those other things that we've seen. Sequent
Speaker 3: attempts to establish some kind of constitutional government fail miserably
Speaker 3: because they don't have those habits. So that was a
Speaker 3: unique time. I don't know if I since it's Easter weekend,
Speaker 3: I might even go so far as to say that
Speaker 3: perhaps it was providential that at that moment, at that time,
Speaker 3: a people well versed in their rights in their own
Speaker 3: sovereignty were able capable of affecting a revolution and imposing
Speaker 3: a new government upon themselves, likely to affect their safety
Speaker 3: and happiness. But perhaps I do believe that that maybe
Speaker 3: there was some providential good fortune blessing the Americas at
Speaker 3: that time, and continuing even despite all of our complaints
Speaker 3: to bless the United States today.
Speaker 2: Linda's running for office.
Speaker 1: Elect me with that, I you know, I mean, we
Speaker 1: don't have a live audience, but if there were, a
Speaker 1: stillness would fall over the room. At this point. That
Speaker 1: was really great Are you kidding?
Speaker 2: I fell asleep. Oh so that's a perfect time, I
Speaker 2: think to take a break. We're nearing the end of
Speaker 2: the show. Will take one more commercial break before we
Speaker 2: hear from Lucretia about the Babylon be headlines. And then Steve,
Speaker 2: I'm told, has a new sign off for us, and
Speaker 2: we're back at the end of Lucretia's patriotic soliloquy, far
Speaker 2: better than anything that ever appeared in Shakespeare. I am
Speaker 2: sure we are now demanding that she conclude with Babylon
Speaker 2: b headliness.
Speaker 3: There's so many you guys will just have to say,
Speaker 3: shut up, Lucretia and you're done. Okay, So first I'm
Speaker 3: going to go with all the ones we've talked about today,
Speaker 3: and that on the first one, Harvard confident it can
Speaker 3: harass it's Jewish students even without Trump's federal funding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I should laugh at that, it's true.
Speaker 3: But okay, liberals warn enforcing immigration law is a slippery,
Speaker 3: slippery slope that may lead to enforcing other laws. That
Speaker 3: was kind of my point. You remember that it was
Speaker 3: a while ago, but okay. China retaliates against US tariffs
Speaker 3: by stopping payments to Congress I know, Steve, you some
Speaker 3: of these Steve, I saw you had in your substack.
Speaker 3: But I'm not sure everybody's reading your substecks, so forgive
Speaker 3: me if I'm repeating them. Okay, Trump summons Elon Musk
Speaker 3: to Oval office to help them open a PDF. Sometimes
Speaker 3: I wish I had Elon Musk to help me with
Speaker 3: that too.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: You know, Trump reveals he took which Harry Potter house?
Speaker 3: Are you in quiz? And he's a gryffindor I heard
Speaker 3: him talk about.
Speaker 2: I don't get it.
Speaker 1: No, I haven't heard that one, but I'm sure some
Speaker 1: listeners know this.
Speaker 3: So oh god, you guys, I know you saw the
Speaker 3: the Taylor Lawrence thing about. Uh, we didn't discuss it.
Speaker 1: I don't know who that is.
Speaker 2: Who's Taylor Laurence was washing a post.
Speaker 1: She was this whacko at the Washington Post who they fired,
Speaker 1: I think, and they fired.
Speaker 3: And she's the Luigi Mangon she's a moral Yeah, he's
Speaker 3: just awful.
Speaker 1: It was just a hero, and right on and on
Speaker 1: and on.
Speaker 3: So terrified Luigi MANGIONI files restraining order against Taylor Lawrence.
Speaker 1: That makes some sense, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Concentrated excuse me, concentration camp prisoners concerned China being bullied
Speaker 3: by America. Right, okay, because it's Eastern.
Speaker 1: Happy Easter, my friends. I hope all my.
Speaker 3: Good Jewish friends had a lovely passover. Donkey entering Jerusalem,
Speaker 3: glad to be finally getting recognition he deserves. You gotta
Speaker 3: love those guys. I'm sorry, you just gotta love them.
Speaker 2: You're sure, I'm done, Steve oh Well, you got anything
Speaker 2: for us, But let me preface it with always drink
Speaker 2: your whiskey, neat and Steve.
Speaker 1: Well, courtesy of AI, I have a whole lot of
Speaker 1: song lyrics for three Whiskey Happy Hour, and here's the
Speaker 1: one I'm going to give you this week as an
Speaker 1: ending three Whiskey Happy Hour, past and present, twist and tower,
Speaker 1: toast to time, the fleeting power of the three Whiskey
Speaker 1: Happy Hour. Bye bye, everybody, see you next week.
Speaker 3: Happy everyone, Bye.
Speaker 1: Ricochet joined the conversation