Speaker 1: Well, whiskey coming fame, my pain, moneys, my ry.
Speaker 2: Oh whiskey. Why think alone when you can drink it
Speaker 2: all in with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, join your
Speaker 2: bartenders Steve Hayward, John You, and the international woman of
Speaker 2: Mystery Lucretia, where they slapped it up and David ain't
Speaker 2: to bes on the should have gotta give me. Well,
Speaker 2: here it is everybody, the special holiday bonus edition of
Speaker 2: the Three Whiskey Happy Hour with a special guest today.
Speaker 2: Who will get to in due course. It's Richard Samuelson.
Speaker 2: I'll get to it now because the people on YouTube
Speaker 2: are watching our lives. You can see you. So Richard,
Speaker 2: what's that.
Speaker 1: I'm the turkey?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know about that. We still think, at
Speaker 2: least Lucretian. I think that Gordon Wood is the turkey,
Speaker 2: and you are the arbiter. Being the pre eminent expert
Speaker 2: on John Adams, what you're going to get to as
Speaker 2: part of our bicentennial series. But first, yesterday's special episode,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of trash talk about Thanksgiving and
Speaker 2: I just want to say, first of all, John, you
Speaker 2: it looked like you outsourced Thanksgiving to the Metropolitan club.
Speaker 2: Is that what you did?
Speaker 3: Yeah? It was awesome. Awesome, it was awesome. I don't
Speaker 3: know how people. I had a kind of a U
Speaker 3: family reunion, which hasn't occurred in about fifteen years on
Speaker 3: my father's side of the family, and we had people
Speaker 3: from Hawaii, Los Angeles, Texas, Philadelphia of course. I mean
Speaker 3: we had people from all over the country. Come, how
Speaker 3: do people actually cook Thanksgiving dinners for such large numbers
Speaker 3: of people and then not want to kill each other
Speaker 3: by the end of the day. So I figured, let's
Speaker 3: all go out to So we went to the Metropolitan
Speaker 3: Club in Washington because the matriarch of the whole clan
Speaker 3: is now ninety three years old and she lives in Virginia.
Speaker 3: So I was like, let's all go to the Metropolitan.
Speaker 3: It turned out that the shooting of the two National
Speaker 3: Guards people, yeah, happened one block away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I actually squinted out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I went and looked at the crime scene, and
Speaker 3: I saw what they were doing. And you know, the
Speaker 3: whole place is surrounded by media who are shooting hourly
Speaker 3: updates with that, you know, with the Farragut West metro
Speaker 3: stop in the background, and it's about thirty eight degrees
Speaker 3: in Washington today.
Speaker 2: Oh well, we'll come to that story here in due course.
Speaker 2: But I'm not finishing. I'm not finished abusing Lucretia back
Speaker 2: for mocking my Where is it? There we go, I'm
Speaker 2: going to share with you a couple of picks for
Speaker 2: your benefit, and I'll describe it to listeners. There are
Speaker 2: my pop ups.
Speaker 3: We're not Thanksgiving food, but you know what it's about
Speaker 3: that those are popovers cooked on a backyard gas grill.
Speaker 2: And by the way, it was seventy degrees out. I
Speaker 2: didn't have this thirty eight business, and I didn't know
Speaker 2: if it would even work, but you can see it
Speaker 2: works splendidly.
Speaker 3: And then what is that like a bread popsicle?
Speaker 2: Like? What is It's like? It's like Yorkshire pudding, except
Speaker 2: it's just like Yorkshire pudding.
Speaker 3: And I may hope you have not said any words
Speaker 3: that sound remotely delicious Yorkshire pudding.
Speaker 2: All that must be great? Then, and here is the rotisserie.
Speaker 2: Oh god, it is not burned as Lucretia said it is.
Speaker 2: It is smoked, so it's got a great smoky flavor,
Speaker 2: juicy throughout even the breast meat because it's self based
Speaker 2: and you have all that lovely juice below it. And
Speaker 2: I will try and post these pictures and show notes
Speaker 2: on Ricochet when we finally get round to it. And
Speaker 2: so so there, and that.
Speaker 4: Looks like Facebook too, Steve.
Speaker 3: Okay, well I did that already, but it looks like
Speaker 3: it was a haroshima Jesus. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then but I also got shipped. Finally it arrived today,
Speaker 2: my new favorite whiskey, Kilcoran from Campbelltown. It is fifty
Speaker 2: eight percent fifty eight percent alcohol, so what's I almost
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty proof. It says they're heavily petd,
Speaker 2: which means I won't have to share anyone. It's really good. Well,
Speaker 2: I've discovered this store. I don't know if you ever saw, John,
Speaker 2: but about a block down from the Washington Hilton where
Speaker 2: the Federal Society Annual beating is, there's a store in
Speaker 2: the corner called Spirits and Spices. Yes, okay, that's what this.
Speaker 2: This is where I discovered it. They were tasting this
Speaker 2: and well they have great stuff there, including you know,
Speaker 2: great custom spices. Okay, I'm glad you know that place because.
Speaker 3: It looks nice.
Speaker 2: Souh Okay, Lucretia, What are you going to be drinking later?
Speaker 4: I'm drinking Famous Grouse, which is a blended scotch. But
Speaker 4: because it's three o'clock in the after actually it's only
Speaker 4: one o'clock in the afternoon where I am, I'm drinking
Speaker 4: it in a little chocolate container. It's a dark chocolate
Speaker 4: container filled with scotch.
Speaker 3: The bottle made the bottle of chocolate, and you eat
Speaker 3: the bottle.
Speaker 4: You eat the bottle, you bite the end off the bottle,
Speaker 4: drink the scotch and the rest of it. Oh wow,
Speaker 4: I'm going to do that right now, because it's about
Speaker 4: the appropriate amount of scotch to be drinking in the
Speaker 4: middle of the afternoon on a Friday, even if it
Speaker 4: is sort of a holiday.
Speaker 2: So yeah, And Richard, are you are you imbibing in
Speaker 2: recommended spirit this weekend?
Speaker 3: Not?
Speaker 2: Just yeah?
Speaker 1: Probably have some Highland park I would probably be having.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, that's right, right.
Speaker 5: It wasn't Famous Grouse, Margaret Thatcher's prefer a Scotch.
Speaker 2: Oh it might be.
Speaker 4: All I know is that Steve drinks that swell, that
Speaker 4: the that the King likes.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, Freud, yeah, I think so. Yeah, But he's well, okay, yeah.
Speaker 5: That's Scotch should gather no moss.
Speaker 2: Okay, I won't count that one against your quota, Richard.
Speaker 2: That's pretty good. I mean that the other one you
Speaker 2: get to pass on is sickle sell amnesia. That's an
Speaker 2: awfully good one, right for people who forget. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: a that's a wonderful one. That's a good one. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 2: well it turns out to be true. All right. So
Speaker 2: let's turn to a couple of items of news, and
Speaker 2: then we're going to get to with Richard to talk
Speaker 2: about John Adams and stuff. So, yeah, John, you just
Speaker 2: mentioned you're there where the National Guard shooting is. And
Speaker 2: I don't know what to say about this yet except
Speaker 2: the oddist well, probably a lot of exceptions. The fact
Speaker 2: that this person was living in Bellingham, Washington, and so
Speaker 2: he had to drive at least five days across the
Speaker 2: country to commit this shooting. Why drive all that way?
Speaker 2: There are lots of National Guard people and government officials
Speaker 2: and probably Ice agents you could have found in Seattle
Speaker 2: if you wanted to. So the fact that he wanted
Speaker 2: to drive all the way to Washington, d C. Suggests
Speaker 2: some kind of premedita obvious premeditation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But then the next question is was he a radical
Speaker 2: jiehattist while he was working in cooperatively with our forces
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan or was he radicalized over here after he
Speaker 2: came here in twenty twenty one when we bugged out
Speaker 2: of Afghanistan? Do you John, do you anybody having opinion
Speaker 2: on this or another question to raise about it?
Speaker 3: Well, I think for the question of first degree murder
Speaker 3: capital murder, the statute is wonderfully old fashioned. It doesn't
Speaker 3: say a lot of modern you know, modern language. It
Speaker 3: actually uses the old fashioned English description of first degree murder,
Speaker 3: which is murder with malice a forethought, right, That's the
Speaker 3: way it used to be known in the common law,
Speaker 3: and so that but that's cold blooded murder. Was a
Speaker 3: planned or was it deliberate as opposed to something that's
Speaker 3: not going to be usually subject to the death penalty,
Speaker 3: like you're a sudden reaction or you're responding something self defense,
Speaker 3: something that's caused by the events. So the planning driving
Speaker 3: five days makes it sound and the going to Washington,
Speaker 3: it's just a symbolic target, makes it seem like there's
Speaker 3: not going to be a lot of difficulty claiming first
Speaker 3: degree murder. But President Trump, i think yesterday said or
Speaker 3: even this morning, said he heard that this guy had
Speaker 3: mental health problems caused by his service in Afghanistan. That's
Speaker 3: the kind of Yeah, working as a for an Afghan
Speaker 3: unit that was trained by the CIA to uh, you know,
Speaker 3: work on you know, sounds like they were an assassination unit.
Speaker 3: Maybe if that's true, then they're gonna his defense will
Speaker 3: use that to try to claim that he is mental
Speaker 3: illness and that he can't and he hasn't and if
Speaker 3: he really is mentally ill, then you know, he's he
Speaker 3: can't be found guilty of murder. You have to be
Speaker 3: held as what used the old fashion phrase used to
Speaker 3: be criminally insane?
Speaker 2: Yeah, can I ask.
Speaker 4: A question about that and just get you guys' thoughts
Speaker 4: on it. So I recognize that the Supreme Court has
Speaker 4: said that you cannot execute someone who is not mentally
Speaker 4: capable of understanding the oh, the reason that that their
Speaker 4: crime was a crime, et cetera, et cetera. I'm of
Speaker 4: the opinion that that's when you ought.
Speaker 2: To execute someone.
Speaker 4: And here's what I'm thinking about this is, so the
Speaker 4: guy that killed that set the woman on fire in Chicago,
Speaker 4: just a week or so ago, was let out of
Speaker 4: the mental the mental prison what was it called the
Speaker 4: mental institution prison? There's a name for it, because he
Speaker 4: was too dangerous to be there.
Speaker 2: Wow, I know that he chat one through.
Speaker 3: So what then do you do?
Speaker 4: And and if someone has become so so unhuman, inhuman,
Speaker 4: that's other lacking human qualities due to mental health problems,
Speaker 4: why then do we owe them the right to stay alive.
Speaker 4: It's just something that doesn't make a lot of sense
Speaker 4: to me. You know, a guy who gets off after
Speaker 4: raping and torturing in a small child because he's got
Speaker 4: mental of course, you have mental health problems. Only a
Speaker 4: person with severe mental health problems could do such a
Speaker 4: horrid thing, And a lot of crime falls, in my opinion,
Speaker 4: into that category. Why don't we execute people who are
Speaker 4: mentally unstable or schizophrenic or whatever? I mean, what's the
Speaker 4: argument other than what can't it's I don't know what
Speaker 4: the argument is.
Speaker 2: I mean, I suppose the argument would be that sometimes
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about this. Sometimes people with mental
Speaker 2: illnesses get over them, either to treatment or who knows what. Right,
Speaker 2: you know, brain functions are still really mysterious Is.
Speaker 4: That an ancient thing though, guys, no.
Speaker 3: No, this is this is a Supreme Court do process clause.
Speaker 3: So it used to be in our country that the
Speaker 3: death penalty wasn't limited to first degree murder. Right, it's
Speaker 3: only a recent Supreme Court case seventy thirty years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that says you, because rape, first degree murder, not just
Speaker 3: for but rape used to be a capital right act
Speaker 3: in some states.
Speaker 2: But I do things.
Speaker 3: Over time in the sixties and fifties and sixties at
Speaker 3: the Court started to really narrow that death penalty could used.
Speaker 3: Fronder they doe process clause. I think that was, of course,
Speaker 3: a lot of that was the reaction to the I
Speaker 3: think abuse of the death penalty in the segregated South.
Speaker 3: But maybe, like a lot of things at the Warrant
Speaker 3: Court did, they went so far in eradicating segregation that
Speaker 3: they just banned things completely which in some other context
Speaker 3: might be legitimate.
Speaker 5: Richard, my recollection is the seventeenth century, and then more
Speaker 5: the eighteenth century. I remember the way the law went
Speaker 5: in English law and the colonies. There were hosts of
Speaker 5: offenses for which a death penalty included kidnapping and other things.
Speaker 5: So we actually have scaled it way back from the
Speaker 5: founding era justly, but.
Speaker 2: Compared to well in those days. It's the act itself,
Speaker 2: not that was qualified as a rape right. It was
Speaker 2: always a capital crime back then. I do think Lucretia,
Speaker 2: the argument in favor of your point is actually a
Speaker 2: theological one that of all people, this will confound you
Speaker 2: a little bit of all people. The person who argued
Speaker 2: that a death penalty was actually merciful was Russell Kirk
Speaker 2: about thirty years ago in a very interesting article in
Speaker 2: Modern Age which somehow stuck in my head, and he said,
Speaker 2: if weirdly believe that people have a soul, and you
Speaker 2: have somebody who that we described as having mental illness
Speaker 2: or something, but it obviously has a tortured soul, are
Speaker 2: we really doing them a favor by keeping them alive
Speaker 2: in a prison cell for forty years. I don't think
Speaker 2: that's a frivolous argument. It may be a hard one
Speaker 2: to make legally and otherwise, but I think that's a
Speaker 2: serious argument. I think that's the better one.
Speaker 4: But it's not necessarily a problem with that. Steve is
Speaker 4: not necessarily just a death penalty. I mean, they don't
Speaker 4: put people accused of serious mental problems in regular prisons
Speaker 4: either they put them in Why can't I remember them?
Speaker 2: I used to have next.
Speaker 4: Door to one.
Speaker 1: They put them in women's bathrooms.
Speaker 4: Yeah that was good.
Speaker 2: Okay, that was good.
Speaker 4: But I sorry, I didn't mean to get us off
Speaker 4: on that tangent. But I was actually seriously thinking about
Speaker 4: it when I saw the news report the other day
Speaker 4: about how the judge had let that guy out because
Speaker 4: he was too dangerous for a mental prison, a mental
Speaker 4: institution prison, I think, prison for the criminally insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think. Actually, there are a lot of people
Speaker 2: in regular prisons that have mental illness. You hear this
Speaker 2: a lot, and that's become a substitute for the lack
Speaker 2: of mental institutions like we used to have, I think.
Speaker 2: And so the ones staunch here is that the one
Speaker 2: this person was in was not equipped for a violently
Speaker 2: mentally ill person because he hadn't been convicted in a
Speaker 2: normal way. If you know how that plays out, it's
Speaker 2: just shows the dysfunction of the whole darn scene. Right now.
Speaker 3: This is what the voters of Illinois won, right or
Speaker 3: this is Illinois because they're not willing to spend the
Speaker 3: money to build the right kinds of prisons and build enough,
Speaker 3: pay for enough police force, and they're going to have
Speaker 3: a system where judges are build directors are letting out
Speaker 3: people like this, and then they visit this kind of
Speaker 3: harm on their population, and then they keep the same
Speaker 3: officials in business. Will electing people who make these decisions
Speaker 3: that allow this kind of crime rate to go on.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, yeah, I mean I wonder about the premise
Speaker 2: of your statement, John, I'll bet if you put it
Speaker 2: to a vote in Illinois the way we can put
Speaker 2: things to a vote in California. I'm thinking back to
Speaker 2: the three Strikes initiative thirty years ago, which passed two
Speaker 2: to one in California, right, And if you put a
Speaker 2: bond measure to build more prisons, I'll bet it would
Speaker 2: pass in California. In Illinois, you know, people vote for
Speaker 2: complicated reasons, and prison and crime maybe number one, but
Speaker 2: they don't necessarily associate her to vote or cast a
Speaker 2: vote on that issue anyway.
Speaker 3: But this is a result of one party blue states.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: This is like this happened in California too, This happening
Speaker 3: in Illinois, happening in New York where you have high
Speaker 3: crime rates because of the refusal to engage in tough sentencing.
Speaker 2: And Richard to give you the last word on which
Speaker 2: she keep re electing these people to off.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but John would know about this much better than I.
Speaker 5: But I mean some of the issue is the federal
Speaker 5: courts have I posed standards of minimal housing, minimal housing standards,
Speaker 5: want of a better term on prisons, which makes them
Speaker 5: much more expensive, and then you kept them back and
Speaker 5: so you're squeezed on the budget side and on the
Speaker 5: other side of the people that I think overly compassionate people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right, Well, there's the just one.
Speaker 4: Last thing, because there's always I always think about this
Speaker 4: whenever John says this. It's not that I disagree. He
Speaker 4: said the same thing. I'll remind you when we would
Speaker 4: talk about under the Biden administration, Uh, why it's an
Speaker 4: emergency for states to stop illegal immigrants going through their
Speaker 4: their states. And John's argument was what people should vote
Speaker 4: Biden out of office, which of course they did. But
Speaker 4: there is too many layers of separation. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: not even Kevin Bacon style stuff. It's really serious separation
Speaker 4: between a politician who goes out in front of these
Speaker 4: people in lies about what they're doing, or or dissembles
Speaker 4: or gas lights and one party rule and all those
Speaker 4: other things. I guess I'm saying the same thing that
Speaker 4: Steve was saying in a different way. There is not
Speaker 4: a one to one correlation between the crime that people
Speaker 4: see in their communities and the stupid mayor that they
Speaker 4: voted in to be mayor of Chicago.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, let's put a let's put aside for some
Speaker 2: other time the problem of rational ignorance in the complex
Speaker 2: field of voting choice and so forth, and let's just
Speaker 2: get out with one more aspect of this. So Trump
Speaker 2: says he wants to prohibit or pause or whatever immigration
Speaker 2: from certain high.
Speaker 4: Risk countries countries.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, he said that. Okay, I'm thinking of his
Speaker 2: previous formulation of those kinds of countries, which okay. But
Speaker 2: here's the adjunct, adjunct, the parallel question right now, is
Speaker 2: this scandal out of Minnesota. I say scandal, I mean
Speaker 2: Scott Johnson, my old writing partner's been writing about this
Speaker 2: for years, of the massive fraud of the Somali immigrant
Speaker 2: community in Minnesota, which is now really exploding into the
Speaker 2: public view. Seventy eight prosecutions so far, with more to come.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's an immigration problem, and it's not
Speaker 2: just unique to us. You're seeing you know, over in Europe,
Speaker 2: you're seeing more and more public support behind not only
Speaker 2: rolling it back. But oh, didn't Trump use the phrase remigration.
Speaker 2: That's a phrase that's been used by some of the
Speaker 2: nationalist parties in Europe recently, Like, you know, people have
Speaker 2: come here, they need to go back home, which I've
Speaker 2: been predicting for years was going to start happening. But
Speaker 2: now the President of the United States is talking about it,
Speaker 2: and other countries are talking about it. I don't that's
Speaker 2: an observation, not really a question. Anyone want to grab
Speaker 2: hold of that for a moment before we move.
Speaker 3: On and guarantee one place there's not going to be remigration.
Speaker 3: As to people wanting to go back to Afghanist.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't laugh, of course.
Speaker 3: Like what you mean like voluntarily leaving the United States
Speaker 3: to go back somewhere else, or you mean involuntarily being deported? Well,
Speaker 3: see Blue, migration doesn't add anything if you're just talking
Speaker 3: about deporting people.
Speaker 4: So, John, the last time I was was at you
Speaker 4: at Berkeley. My Uber driver from the airport to the
Speaker 4: hotel in Berkeley was an Afghan who had been relocated
Speaker 4: after the disaster in Afghanistan, and Uh indicated he might
Speaker 4: have worked for the CIA. He was a chancelator, and
Speaker 4: he was quite a charming fellow. We talked the whole
Speaker 4: way and it was really quite interesting to me. But
Speaker 4: I remember thinking that some of his views were a
Speaker 4: little off, And so I'm just wondering if it's really
Speaker 4: true that the idea that you can just bring in
Speaker 4: massive quantities of people who want out of where they
Speaker 4: come from is isn't necessarily the entire indication that they
Speaker 4: belong here in America.
Speaker 3: I guess no.
Speaker 4: Douglas Murray had a great piece of I.
Speaker 3: Agree with you. I agree with you, But I also
Speaker 3: think we can't leave our allies behind. I mean, if
Speaker 3: this guy really was working for the CIA, I mean,
Speaker 3: he would have been executed by the Taliban. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think we have to. I mean if we don't,
Speaker 3: I think how hard it's going to be for us
Speaker 3: to have local allies the next time we're in a war.
Speaker 4: And to be fair for a moment, remember that was
Speaker 4: a huge I'm sorry, I mean to talk about. There
Speaker 4: was a lot of outcry against the Biden administration for
Speaker 4: not bringing all those people back at the time, do
Speaker 4: you guys remember that, a lot of outcry about it, well.
Speaker 2: Let's get out, let's get out with this, which was
Speaker 2: just out of historical memory being important. Let us recall
Speaker 2: that in the nineteen seventies, Senator Joe Biden opposed bringing
Speaker 2: over to our country South Vietnamese citizens who had worked
Speaker 2: for American forces in the CIA in that conflict. And
Speaker 2: by the way, I'm not aware of any South Vietnamese
Speaker 2: who did come here either in nineteen seventy four to
Speaker 2: seventy five or in the second wave in seventy nine
Speaker 2: and eighty, that any of them became terrorists are violent
Speaker 2: in this country. So there's that cultural question, which is
Speaker 2: the course, very delicate. But we've got to figure that out. Okay.
Speaker 2: The other thing that some listeners have asked us about
Speaker 2: before we get to Richard Sammons soon on our main
Speaker 2: subject is this case out of Texas. It's now like
Speaker 2: ten days old, involving the district court judge that struck
Speaker 2: down the Republican Republican proposed redistricting plan for next year's election,
Speaker 2: which prompted a dissent by judge, where is it here?
Speaker 2: Jerry Smith? Jerry Smith, And boy, I've never heard that way.
Speaker 2: He's a district a circuit judge, I guess right, circuit judge. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a couple of samples. It's one hundred and four pages,
Speaker 2: and of course it immediately gets into the weeds of
Speaker 2: all the different precedents and different tests and the details
Speaker 2: of district by district. But the part that got into
Speaker 2: the media was Judge Smith saying, fasten your seatbelt. It's
Speaker 2: going to be a bumpy knight. And then he's criticizing
Speaker 2: the district judge who ruled, Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown, who
Speaker 2: I understand is a Trump appointee. A judge Smith said
Speaker 2: it was pernicious judicial misbehavior. He says, in my thirty
Speaker 2: seven years on the federal bench, this is the most
Speaker 2: outrageous conduct by a judge I have ever encountered in
Speaker 2: a case in which I have been involved. And he
Speaker 2: says page three, if there was a Nobel Prize for fiction,
Speaker 2: Judge Brown's opinion would be a prime candidate. Says, this
Speaker 2: is the most blatant exercise of judicial activism I have
Speaker 2: ever witnessed. And then this part is really gratuitous, but
Speaker 2: I like it. There's the old joke, what's the difference
Speaker 2: between God and a federal district judge? Answer? God doesn't
Speaker 2: think he's a federal judge. And he's got a second
Speaker 2: version of the joke, just to make sure we get
Speaker 2: the point. So, first of all, I gat it this
Speaker 2: has been stayed by an upper court. But John, this
Speaker 2: strikes me as rather unusual. I mean, it's one thing
Speaker 2: to have a sentence or two that pokes the other
Speaker 2: side of an opinion. You know, Justice Scalia was good
Speaker 2: at that, but this goes on for several pages and
Speaker 2: he's really angry about it. And this makes me as
Speaker 2: somewhat rare or you know, out on the spectrum of
Speaker 2: judicial descents. And I think it points to a larger question.
Speaker 2: I'm going to hold for now, But what did you
Speaker 2: make of the whole thing?
Speaker 3: This is the harshest descent I've ever read by any
Speaker 3: judge at any core. But it doesn't have to do
Speaker 3: with the substance of the case. I mean it's not.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's not what prompted the over the top
Speaker 3: descents that the judges. So this is a special case, right,
Speaker 3: This is under a voting Rights Act challenge to the
Speaker 3: Texas redistricting, which we all followed, and the claim by
Speaker 3: the plaintiffs was that Texas actually redistricted for racial reasons,
Speaker 3: not the effort to squeeze five more house seats out
Speaker 3: of Texas, which seems like the obvious and apparent reason,
Speaker 3: which was much discussed publicly. So the thing that got
Speaker 3: Judge Smith, who's an excellent conservative judge, one of the
Speaker 3: most conservative circuit judges in the country in that court
Speaker 3: along with Eve Jones, who we've had on the podcast,
Speaker 3: was that the judges issued their opinion without giving Judge
Speaker 3: Smith the chance to issue his descent, and so the
Speaker 3: descent came several days later. That's I mean, that's usually
Speaker 3: basically unheard of. Usually, you they come out together because
Speaker 3: the one of the purposes of the descent is that
Speaker 3: it's there to force the majority to respond and it
Speaker 3: helps to narrow the issues down. And for the majority
Speaker 3: just to issue their opinion without letting the dissent issue
Speaker 3: at all is I don't think there's any statute against that,
Speaker 3: but I've never heard of anybody doing that before. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's so outrageous. So Judge Judge Smith, I think was
Speaker 3: quite right to be over the top of this heat.
Speaker 3: The other thing about these kind of courts is that's
Speaker 3: a three judge court and they're only done for these
Speaker 3: Voting Rights Act cases of them are trial judges, and
Speaker 3: only Judge Smith was the appeals judge. So he's basically saying,
Speaker 3: you idiot, trial judges have no idea how to act
Speaker 3: on an appellate court when you have three other judges,
Speaker 3: two other judges on the panel with you, and you're
Speaker 3: supposed to be collegial, and you go back and forth,
Speaker 3: and it helps the decision making process to have a
Speaker 3: majority in descent that go back and forth. So I'm
Speaker 3: not surprised at all that Judge Smith sent up this
Speaker 3: warning flare with this descent, and Judge Justice Alito intervened
Speaker 3: and stayed the case, and it will probably, I imagine,
Speaker 3: get granted by the Supreme Court. And I think we
Speaker 3: first because I think Judge Smith's subsequent points were right,
Speaker 3: that the majority is completely wrong trying to detect signs
Speaker 3: of racism and the Texas redistricting when it's obvious why
Speaker 3: Texas did it was to get more Republican seats, and
Speaker 3: that's okay. The courts are not allowed to review partisan
Speaker 3: motives and redistricting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the whole the separate case the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court has already heard on about the Voting Rights Act
Speaker 2: may have implications in this, I think, is that correct?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the Calais case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that might.
Speaker 3: That might remove any grounding any claim that even race
Speaker 3: can be permitted at all, because still there is this
Speaker 3: so far, there's still legal authority under the Voting Rights
Speaker 3: Act as it's read by the courts, to redistrict in
Speaker 3: order to increase the representation of minority members of Congress,
Speaker 3: which I think is completely a violation of the fourteenth
Speaker 3: and fifteenth Amendments. But well, I think that's the way
Speaker 3: the Court will ruled this summer too. By this summer
Speaker 3: too right.
Speaker 2: Well, my political theory meaning ordinary politics theory of not
Speaker 2: political philosophy, theory of Judge Smith's vituperation on the first
Speaker 2: few pages was to make sure that became a public spectacle.
Speaker 2: Out of mean spectacle in the pejorative sense of that word,
Speaker 2: but the fact that it made news. It may be
Speaker 2: like front page news, And I think it highlights a
Speaker 2: broader problem we're seeing right now, which is we're really well,
Speaker 2: we're just putting a lot of strain on the judiciary
Speaker 2: under Trump, as we dine under President Franklin Roosevelt. I
Speaker 2: may come back to that point later. So this is
Speaker 2: not unusual in a certain broader historical sense. But we've
Speaker 2: seen all these district judges trying to nationwide injunctions and
Speaker 2: so forth and willfully blocked Trump's agenda. And this was
Speaker 2: not a Trump matter. This was just the state of Texas.
Speaker 2: But still it seems to me that Judge Smith said,
Speaker 2: you know, it's time that more of the public be
Speaker 2: aware that there's a lot of lawfare going on, not
Speaker 2: just against Trump. That's my theory of it.
Speaker 3: Well, also, he made sure the Supreme Court knew about
Speaker 3: the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, and.
Speaker 3: Immediately intervened right to stay this decision.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's actually interesting. I'm actually curious what the other everybody
Speaker 3: else thinks, because it's not clear to me that Trump's
Speaker 3: gambit to get states to rejigger their maps to increase
Speaker 3: the number of republic House and it is going to work,
Speaker 3: because if Texas ends up getting stayed in some way
Speaker 3: in calif Fifornia as goes ahead, then Trump will have lost.
Speaker 3: There will be actually more Democratic seats than they were before.
Speaker 2: Won't there could be? I mean, you know, who.
Speaker 4: Knows, assuming a status quo election, which is a big assumption.
Speaker 5: But yeah, and my understanding is the referendum for redistricting
Speaker 5: in California wasn't quite regular, and the Republicans decided not
Speaker 5: to challenge it preemptively, and they.
Speaker 1: May not have won, but it's interesting.
Speaker 5: I think they apparently decided that was too aggressive or something.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure what how the decision making went. I
Speaker 5: for a little bit about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think I have.
Speaker 3: Subsequently, the Justice Department actually has and right me, Dillon,
Speaker 3: your guest on the podcast, has brought suit.
Speaker 2: And then there's some California that and some state Republicans
Speaker 2: have brought a suit too, and I don't know, you
Speaker 2: know what level the hell will be consolidated or whatever,
Speaker 2: But yeah, Richard, I think the reason that happened wash First,
Speaker 2: it would probably been hurt in state court first, and
Speaker 2: they would have lost because the state courts are tilted. Second,
Speaker 2: you know, at the beginning of all that, it looked
Speaker 2: like the Republicans might defeat the initiative. I actually expected
Speaker 2: it when it first was announced that it would be defeated,
Speaker 2: but news of his folks ran a really good campaign,
Speaker 2: had a ton of money, and they managed to make
Speaker 2: it about Trump. And the funny thing was just a
Speaker 2: couple of great polls by you know, our pals at Berkeley,
Speaker 2: John that you know what's his name does and and
Speaker 2: a couple other polsters, well Citron and you know his
Speaker 2: polster guy that never minded Africa Field Pole Field, the
Speaker 2: old Field Pole guy, right, who does you know? He
Speaker 2: used to share an office with him, and he's a
Speaker 2: really good polster. But they found that on the one hand,
Speaker 2: huge majority of Californians prefer redistricting by the Nonpartisan Commission.
Speaker 2: We have that Democrats have gained. But never mind that.
Speaker 2: But they're going to vote for this initiative because there's
Speaker 2: a way to signal their displeasure with Trump, and that's
Speaker 2: what all the ads are about. And so and then
Speaker 2: Republicans gave up, I mean, they quit spending money against
Speaker 2: it because they realized they were losing so badly. Okay,
Speaker 2: so that was a weird thing.
Speaker 1: What else?
Speaker 2: What also?
Speaker 4: I mean it was a really low turnout election.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, Lucretia were like this. It was mail in only.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Mail in ballants. Right, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know what the turnout was. But all right, let's
Speaker 2: move on because uh, Richard has to go here in
Speaker 2: a little while. So rich as you know Richard, last
Speaker 2: week we had a spirited debate that pitted Lucretian and
Speaker 2: I against John about the great Gordon Wood. A lot
Speaker 2: to be said about that. But one of the things
Speaker 2: about Wood's argument, or about his book is there's a
Speaker 2: famous chapter in it called the Relevance and Irrelevance of
Speaker 2: John Adams, and I haven't read it in a long time.
Speaker 2: I tried to dust it off a little bit incuting
Speaker 2: and also another article of yours i'll bring up in
Speaker 2: a moment. But so, first of all, I had this
Speaker 2: odd recollection. That chapter was kind of an odd man
Speaker 2: out or an oddball chapter is sort of stuck down
Speaker 2: towards the end, and it just takes in John Adams
Speaker 2: at isolation and and I tried to scam it here earlier,
Speaker 2: but I didn't get very far. And so you are
Speaker 2: the John Adams expert, and so i'll ask for your
Speaker 2: take after first you identify yourselves for listeners as to
Speaker 2: where you were teaching, and you know what you do.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm American historian and the founding by training an
Speaker 5: associate professor of government at Hillsdale College is Washington, DZ Campus.
Speaker 1: Right, So that's the short version, and you.
Speaker 5: Could have transitioned by point out we're talking about Elvitte,
Speaker 5: Gary's close friend John Adams.
Speaker 2: Oh, oh, good, point right, the originator of gerrymandering or
Speaker 2: gary mandering. That that argument's going to be one forever.
Speaker 2: How you're supposed to pronounce it? Anyway, What do you
Speaker 2: make of that chapter of wich or what should people
Speaker 2: know about? Well, first of all, John Adams was one
Speaker 2: of the co authors of the Declaration of Independence, or
Speaker 2: at least he had some substantial input into it, even
Speaker 2: if Jefferson was the primary drafter and the person we
Speaker 2: always quote about the matter. But so start wherever you
Speaker 2: want with John Adams. What do we know about him?
Speaker 5: Oliy Adams was one of the leading politicians in lawyers
Speaker 5: and politicians in Massachusetts, and so he was the head
Speaker 5: of the first if I remember correctly, he was the
Speaker 5: first person selected for the delegation to both Congresses and
Speaker 5: was probably the leading guy in the second Congress, but
Speaker 5: also was pain in the net because he was pushing
Speaker 5: worth anyone else for independence, and wasn't patient to let
Speaker 5: other people.
Speaker 1: Come along, right, And then he was the.
Speaker 5: Principal author of the Massachusetts Constitution of seventy eighty in
Speaker 5: Massachusetts was the first state to have a special convention
Speaker 5: and then ratification by the people. So they created that
Speaker 5: process proposed actually by the people, have conquered roughly lay
Speaker 5: process in seventeen seventy six.
Speaker 2: Can I interrupt you there for just a moment to
Speaker 2: and refresh my memory. The preamble of that great seventeen
Speaker 2: eighty constitution has the phrase that goes something like a
Speaker 2: frequent recurrence to funda mental principles is necessary for good government,
Speaker 2: to survival of republic, something like that.
Speaker 5: That's the declaration of rights, I think, and that's actually
Speaker 5: in other constitutions as well.
Speaker 1: Right, they all believe that was fun.
Speaker 5: You have to recur to fundamental principles right in order
Speaker 5: to sustain the republic amid changing times. And they believe
Speaker 5: there were principles. As Licoln said, there are such things
Speaker 5: as truth applical to all men at all times, something
Speaker 5: that most many modern historians have trouble with because it's
Speaker 5: by definition antihistorical. To say there are certain things that
Speaker 5: are simply true about men across the ages.
Speaker 2: Well, Adams was often called the first conservative. I think
Speaker 2: you noticed note that in one of your writings. And
Speaker 2: what else remind me was he at the Philadelphia Convention
Speaker 2: for the Constitution seventeen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: He and Jefferson are both in Europe, both of are
Speaker 1: You're okay?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: Adams was our first minister to Great Britain and Jefferson
Speaker 5: was in in Paris.
Speaker 2: Right, So thought experiment if Adams, sorry, if Adams and
Speaker 2: or Jefferson had been in Philadelphia in seventeen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: do you think they would have had a major influence
Speaker 2: on things?
Speaker 1: It may not come out so well.
Speaker 5: These strong personalities may may have prevented some of the
Speaker 5: compromises that were necessary.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, one of Wood's arguments about Adams is
Speaker 2: he had this aristocratic view of a mixed republic where
Speaker 2: things like the Senate and the Presidency were supposed to
Speaker 2: reflect you know, sort of aristocratic formal class elements that
Speaker 2: you saw in Britain. Right, Whereas I think our federalists,
Speaker 2: if I can use that term, thought more of the
Speaker 2: sovereignty based on the people and really believed in the
Speaker 2: idea of equality. Is that, I know it's very crude,
Speaker 2: but is that I'm on the right track, or help
Speaker 2: us out.
Speaker 5: That's what's so complicated, because in Creation the American Republic,
Speaker 5: Adams might be the guy who quotes for anyone else,
Speaker 5: and that might be where the chapter comes from because
Speaker 5: he doesn't quite get Adams he actually literally is as
Speaker 5: far as does not mention the ratification of the Massachusetts
Speaker 5: Constitution by the people in seventy eighty. He mentioned seventy
Speaker 5: eight they rejected constitution because it was not created by
Speaker 5: a separate convention, but he doesn't mention they ratified. Therefore,
Speaker 5: popular ratification and the application of that that the people
Speaker 5: are ultimately in charge can be associated with the Federal
Speaker 5: Constitution as a repudiation of something that came before it.
Speaker 5: I don't think that's an accurate account of atoms.
Speaker 1: I mean, he goes, he supports declaration.
Speaker 5: His ideas are there, and it's the same sentence in
Speaker 5: which are first our rights from our creator and including
Speaker 5: the right to governed by consent to the government, and
Speaker 5: we change our governments when we don't like it.
Speaker 1: That's all one.
Speaker 5: Thought, right, and Adams is very much on board with that.
Speaker 5: The question then is about inequality. There is going to
Speaker 5: be an elite. Every society has some people with more authority,
Speaker 5: more power than others. How do you reconcile that with
Speaker 5: republican government. That's the challenge. Wood wants to portray Adams
Speaker 5: as an old having mora old fashioned idea of aristocracy
Speaker 5: in general, which is kind of how John Taylor Caroline character.
Speaker 5: I don't think correctly. Adams simply say it's empirical fact.
Speaker 5: They are going to be people with power for reasons
Speaker 5: you wouldn't choose, such as having a famous father, or
Speaker 5: being tall or good looking. These factors get people ahead.
Speaker 5: It's just the way the world is.
Speaker 2: Okay. I was typing a note here to Lucretia, but
Speaker 2: I'll ask, because I couldn't finish. Was it Adams or Jefferson?
Speaker 2: I think was Jefferson in their exchange of letters who
Speaker 2: talked about the natural aristoi? Was that they both do?
Speaker 1: They both they disagree about their meaning. They use the
Speaker 1: word they mean different, something different by it.
Speaker 5: Jefferson wants to call the You know, the natural aristocracy
Speaker 5: is the wise and good. It's from nature by birth.
Speaker 5: You actually read them closely. It's kind of problematic.
Speaker 2: He says.
Speaker 5: Fortunately people don't read as they ought to, like we
Speaker 5: read our russ. Otherwise you'd have a genetic arista. And
Speaker 5: Jefferson says that in that letter Atams is describing from
Speaker 5: the perspective of empirical science, there will be this group
Speaker 5: by nature, in the vulgar sense of nature, There's going
Speaker 5: to be a group that rises for reasons good and bad,
Speaker 5: that will have an overage of power and the challenges
Speaker 5: to help them use their talentes can be genuine ability
Speaker 5: to do things and also just their ability to get
Speaker 5: ahead to serve the public. And that's why you know
Speaker 5: checks and balances are actually not in the federal spapers
Speaker 5: that phrase.
Speaker 1: It's very much all over atoms work on the constitution.
Speaker 4: Right, So in order to say a should I put
Speaker 4: this in order to preserve the political impact of the
Speaker 4: idea of human equality, you have to deny the inequalities
Speaker 4: that are manifest in nature and that actually make representative
Speaker 4: government possible. If that makes sense, I mean, who is
Speaker 4: it this as if if the major head and fit mankind,
Speaker 4: it's Jefferson, it says, with these natural aerostoys who could
Speaker 4: actually help govern the people. The difference is what you
Speaker 4: don't want then as a hereditary aristocracy, because it's not
Speaker 4: clear that those important characteristics are always genetically transferred number one,
Speaker 4: and then you have no longer consent being the reason
Speaker 4: why these people are ruling over us. And Jefferson makes it,
Speaker 4: I think, really clear that the whole purpose of education
Speaker 4: is twofold. It's to make sure that you pull the
Speaker 4: natural Errstoy out of the general population, where he seems
Speaker 4: to intimate they come in the poor as well as
Speaker 4: the rich. You know, that kind of thing, but also
Speaker 4: to educate the people well enough to recognize the characteristics
Speaker 4: of those people who are by nature not destined to rule,
Speaker 4: but better fit to rule if they're chosen to do so.
Speaker 5: Is that remember is the creator would be a bundling
Speaker 5: artist if he had not created a sort of people
Speaker 5: who will be fitted to rule society. And Jefferson thinks
Speaker 5: you can train the people sufficiently well so they will
Speaker 5: recognize that on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: Adams is more skeptical.
Speaker 5: They'll have their heads turned as often as not by
Speaker 5: the wrong sort of thing, and therefore the checks and
Speaker 5: balances become more important.
Speaker 1: It's just extent something through that.
Speaker 5: What's interesting if you think about how in Madison my
Speaker 5: riad of Madison is not the common whether I think
Speaker 5: it's correct, I think the extent is fear is primary
Speaker 5: for Madison. Remember checks and balances the term, but that's
Speaker 5: an auxiliary precaution. And what's primaries a reliance on the people.
Speaker 5: But he says the reliance of people doesn't work in
Speaker 5: a small republic. It works in a larger republic because
Speaker 5: then you're more likely to have the proper characters and
Speaker 5: they're more likely to be recognized. There's some truth to that,
Speaker 5: but up to a point, and then it can you
Speaker 5: can be very conspicuous for the wrong things, as as
Speaker 5: we know from from from history over and over again.
Speaker 4: Is it unfair though, to say that that You can't
Speaker 4: blame Madison or Jefferson for having that view in so far,
Speaker 4: and you have to look at John Adams as being
Speaker 4: somewhat correct, because we have in fact failed generation after
Speaker 4: generation to give them the kind of civic education. Sorry,
Speaker 4: you hate to use that term because they know you
Speaker 4: hate it, Steve and everything. It implies, no, because you say,
Speaker 4: I don't want to get into the whole debate about civics, education,
Speaker 4: I mean genuinely education to teach citizens to be good citizens.
Speaker 4: And part of that, of course, is to recognize demagoguery
Speaker 4: and those who will flatter them and so forth. And
Speaker 4: we've done a excuse the expression, a piss poor job
Speaker 4: of educating generation after generation of Americans to recognize what
Speaker 4: is in their best interest in terms of being self governed.
Speaker 4: But I don't think it had to be that way.
Speaker 4: I mean, you can look at what's happening in public
Speaker 4: education now and over the last say forty years, and
Speaker 4: it's just, I mean, it's spine chillingly evil what they
Speaker 4: do to children in schools now, and it's certainly not
Speaker 4: teaching them to love their country and to be on
Speaker 4: the lookout for tyrants what Jefferson wanted out of public education,
Speaker 4: if you'll recall basically.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we have to accept there is a category tyrant,
Speaker 5: and you can recognize it across time and know what
Speaker 5: it is. And there is a bias in modern education
Speaker 5: to deny there are such categories that, oh, that's just
Speaker 5: a prejudice, and then you back ended in and say, oh, well,
Speaker 5: we kind of recognize that anyway, But we're uncomfortable with
Speaker 5: starting with this is something that exists across time in
Speaker 5: many governments, and it has certain characteristics, and therefore we
Speaker 5: correctize it. This is not the way the modern story
Speaker 5: and has been trained since we created the modern history
Speaker 5: fashion of the nineteenth century. That's our biases against thinking
Speaker 5: there are such things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's a kind of funny contrast because on
Speaker 4: the one hand, they would deny that these well trained
Speaker 4: elites would do anything but use their power for the
Speaker 4: public good. At the same time, they also treat these
Speaker 4: elites as if they are in fact deserving of that
Speaker 4: power over the rest of us, poor slobs who are
Speaker 4: incapable of really ruling ourselves. And so they do believe
Speaker 4: in tyrants. They just believe that there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 4: the tyrants as long as they're the right kind of times.
Speaker 5: Yeah, discussing Adams long it was I remember what exactly was.
Speaker 5: I did a liberty fund and afterwards me and the
Speaker 5: other recent PhDs Adam Smith camp and talking to a
Speaker 5: hardcore rational libertarian, I use the phrase, well, Adams sinks
Speaker 5: people are irrational in predictable ways, and that phrase has
Speaker 5: since become very well because of cast unsteamate your tailor's work.
Speaker 5: But Adams use it more broadly. Who has included the
Speaker 5: set of people who are rational in predictable ways social scientists, bureaucrats, right,
Speaker 5: And that's precisely they want exemptance wit checks and balances.
Speaker 5: Don't trust anybody to be judging their own case. And
Speaker 5: all people will be tempted enough of the time. Maybe
Speaker 5: not the first year, but you're five to six seven,
Speaker 5: it gets worse to push things more and more. That's
Speaker 5: the problem with the modern administrative state. The checks and balances,
Speaker 5: at least in adams view, are an exercise in moderating souls.
Speaker 5: They keep you from going to excess because somebody's in
Speaker 5: your way, and that might be necessary over time for
Speaker 5: most of the people.
Speaker 1: Most of the time.
Speaker 2: Well let's do this, yeah, please, yep, or we leave.
Speaker 3: So two questions. So first, Richard, are you saying that
Speaker 3: you disagree with Wood's view of Adams where he thinks
Speaker 3: of this separation of powers as a checks and balances
Speaker 3: system that's determined by social class. So that's what Wood says.
Speaker 3: He says, you know, I think he uses atoms in
Speaker 3: my view to show how different the new Constitution was,
Speaker 3: because Adams's defense was that American constitution. State constitutions are
Speaker 3: so good because they kind of replicate a checks and
Speaker 3: bounces where different classes of society check each other. And
Speaker 3: that's not the Constitution's method, right, The constitution method is
Speaker 3: functional and there's no social c So are you saying
Speaker 3: that you think Wood's wrong in the way he read Adams,
Speaker 3: and then that Adams's view is closer to we might
Speaker 3: think of as the American view of separation of powers.
Speaker 1: Well, there are two things.
Speaker 5: One of the separation of powers the three branches legislate, executive, judicial,
Speaker 5: and Adam is very much on board with that.
Speaker 1: Right that was that was the message constitution.
Speaker 5: He defends it regularly across The defense does come up
Speaker 5: that often because it was more or less settled by
Speaker 5: the time he wrote the defense, but he meant it's
Speaker 5: mentioned in passing, and he defends it every now and then.
Speaker 5: It's just not the focus. The question is what's the
Speaker 5: second house for. There was a lot of push for
Speaker 5: a second house, for a single house, because we don't
Speaker 5: have an aristocracy, you don't need to have a second house,
Speaker 5: and Adams saying that doesn't work out that way, because
Speaker 5: what's going to happen in a single house is you'll
Speaker 5: have a small cabal that runs it most of the time,
Speaker 5: and it'll actually be less good for having legislation that
Speaker 5: is for.
Speaker 1: The common good.
Speaker 5: So Adams thinks the category of person when you have
Speaker 5: we don't call the Senate the upper house and the Constitution,
Speaker 5: So why is it those the upper house. There is
Speaker 5: a natural tendency to see a hierarchy, and there's a
Speaker 5: tendency of people when they become talking to about.
Speaker 1: Students this way who work in Washington.
Speaker 5: Yes, people get full of themselves when they become senators
Speaker 5: of or it happens off I mean as kygre been too.
Speaker 1: But you see a difference in personality in the in.
Speaker 5: The two chambers, and Adams is anticipating that and thought
Speaker 5: that would serve the public good.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what he means by having in lead.
Speaker 5: It's and in some of the many cases will be
Speaker 5: people who are either themselves or married into a distinguished family.
Speaker 5: And it's still that still happens often enough in the
Speaker 5: Senate as well. I think what exaggerates to reach which
Speaker 5: Adams thinks this is simply a mixed regime. One other point, though,
Speaker 5: it's very interesting if you look in June.
Speaker 1: Fifth and sixth.
Speaker 5: Dickinson says, yes, you're one house from the people when
Speaker 5: you're working toward the connected compromise.
Speaker 1: But you know we second house. You know, well, we
Speaker 1: don't have lords, we want that, but.
Speaker 5: We have states. So he's defend what becomes the connecting
Speaker 5: compromise is saying the states can serve as proxies for
Speaker 5: Oldhams and Baronites. That is, they represent the regions and
Speaker 5: then the legislature selects someone who represent them. That's the
Speaker 5: day that Madison writes, Jefferson is in Paris about John
Speaker 5: Adams's awful influence in the Convention's.
Speaker 3: Right about a second question.
Speaker 2: We can just killed Richard's point quickly with the famous
Speaker 2: story attributed to various speakers of the House, most recently
Speaker 2: the Nuke Gingrich who said, oh, our enemy is the Democrats,
Speaker 2: and Gingridge said, no, no, our enemy is not the Democrats.
Speaker 2: Our enemy is the Senate. Right, okay, yeah, well our
Speaker 2: tip O'Neil said it. See it's been attributed to multiple
Speaker 2: does sound like, but it does sound like the logic
Speaker 2: Richard is describing about the house. We will have a
Speaker 2: different influence on the call of the of a single house.
Speaker 2: So anyway, John, question two.
Speaker 3: So my last question because you guys have you guys
Speaker 3: have both Philip bustered and old Senate tradition and Menzli
Speaker 3: you and Linda with your Philip bustering questions with Richard,
Speaker 3: But there's actually something as a historian, because this is
Speaker 3: something we got into last episode two, was do you
Speaker 3: think that there are these eternal truths that you can
Speaker 3: draw out from? He says to discussions that they aren't
Speaker 3: all talking about the same thing across history, because I
Speaker 3: think we're talking about woods speech at AEI, and I
Speaker 3: was trying to say that, you know, would My sense
Speaker 3: of him was a Wood was very critical of the
Speaker 3: idea that right, that we can interpret what they're saying
Speaker 3: back then as if it has to do with today's
Speaker 3: arguments about natural rights and natural law. And a lot
Speaker 3: of historians accuse people of being what they were. They
Speaker 3: call him presentists, right, or they have a lot of
Speaker 3: different variety of wards to accuse people who try to
Speaker 3: who make the mistake of thinking they're vocabulary their thoughts
Speaker 3: from even this recent as seventeen eighty nine really are
Speaker 3: the same things we're writing and talking about now, and
Speaker 3: we talk about natural rights and natural law. And that's
Speaker 3: how I tried to make sense of Wood's speech because
Speaker 3: would right, he's he is saying in his speech that
Speaker 3: America should be a credle nation, you know, a nation
Speaker 3: built around the Declaration and its principles. Didn't really say
Speaker 3: that in his book, right, I mean, I think it's
Speaker 3: fair to say that was not the argument in his book.
Speaker 3: And argument is book is that there's this weird conspiracy
Speaker 3: theory ish way that the Americans thought about why they
Speaker 3: had to break away from me. And it's very much
Speaker 3: you know, as follows right along with our balance arguments too.
Speaker 3: But that's that seems to me very typically how historian
Speaker 3: talks about things, like it's so weird and context dependent
Speaker 3: and they're not really talking about the same things we are,
Speaker 3: and we have to put ourselves in their minds and
Speaker 3: understand why they thought so strangely. But Richard, sometimes when
Speaker 3: you write, I think you actually do believe that there
Speaker 3: is this kind of eternal argument that they're talking about
Speaker 3: the same things we are.
Speaker 5: Well, there are a couple of things, and one is,
Speaker 5: you know, it's interesting what classically would say and historian
Speaker 5: can't say what the American regime is he can say
Speaker 5: what Americans have attended to think it has been.
Speaker 1: There's no essence in woods spistemology, there's no essence of
Speaker 1: a nation. All you have is you know.
Speaker 5: And he might even say that's just the summary of
Speaker 5: what we've been. But he's this that I like, it
Speaker 5: is not a historical opinion. I read the op ed
Speaker 5: the piece in the journal. I didn't attend the speech
Speaker 5: on the full transcripts available, but that's very interesting that
Speaker 5: maybe he's changed his mind on that though.
Speaker 1: It's the other thing just on when that chapter.
Speaker 5: Ends, that Wood was pointed to some truth about Americans
Speaker 5: we were uncomfortable with, meaning that I think you're saying
Speaker 5: that there's a communition. But from Adam's perspective, as I
Speaker 5: read it, you know, Adams is saying this chap the
Speaker 5: chapter is strange.
Speaker 1: It's unnecessary from a.
Speaker 5: Literary perspective, because the book closes with that chapter afterwards
Speaker 5: about what they'd achieved, and before that you set up
Speaker 5: the final chapter what the Constitution did. I think he
Speaker 5: knows he's missed something, and I think what is missed
Speaker 5: is Adams has a point of view that he can't
Speaker 5: quite get his head around because how does an historian
Speaker 5: who believes everything is contingent give a good account of
Speaker 5: somebody who does not believe that?
Speaker 2: And not only that, As.
Speaker 5: I read Adams, he's defending that point of view against
Speaker 5: the new philosophical point of view, which is twenty two
Speaker 5: human nature being radically fluid. So I think Adams thinks
Speaker 5: there are classically that would not have been a problem
Speaker 5: to historians going back to the citizens. It's the modern
Speaker 5: historians who think it's all contextual and there's no up
Speaker 5: underlying baseline.
Speaker 1: Give you one. I think I can get away with this.
Speaker 5: On this podcast, Adams is reading I can't remember who it's,
Speaker 5: you know, a classic account about biblical stuff when the
Speaker 5: critics late seventeenth century about pages and pages of how
Speaker 5: they all debate did Adam and Eve get together in
Speaker 5: the garden? And he's saying, Adams, this is crazy. He
Speaker 5: writes to his margin, had Eve bubby's b u b
Speaker 5: b I ees exclamation point exclamation. He's a guy, this
Speaker 5: is a cross, This is across the ages, right.
Speaker 1: What do you think he did?
Speaker 5: Your point is that's how guys are right, and that's
Speaker 5: a truth. And you're met with women men around power,
Speaker 5: these things have patterns and you can see them happening,
Speaker 5: and you can't.
Speaker 1: Rather you can't. There's certain things are never going to
Speaker 1: work when you try to make a government.
Speaker 5: Do that, because we humans simply ain't gonna ain't going
Speaker 5: to cooperate with what your vision is. So I think
Speaker 5: there's that underlying element that the modern historian has trouble
Speaker 5: with because we know in the backside that yeah, okay,
Speaker 5: some things don't quite work out.
Speaker 1: But before the modern age, historians.
Speaker 5: More comfortable, and maybe it often pushed too far with
Speaker 5: saying that you know, something they kind of had it
Speaker 5: was not unreasonable to anticipate, Okay, this is why this
Speaker 5: is gonna work. This is why that's gonna work, not
Speaker 5: gonna work, based on the constants in what human beings
Speaker 5: are like.
Speaker 2: Well, that was really good, Richard. That was actually was
Speaker 2: trying to get out of you my opening question that
Speaker 2: I kind of mangled here here. I think you're honto
Speaker 2: something about Wood didn't know what to do with Adams.
Speaker 2: Here's two quick quotes from Wood. First, one, Adams deserves
Speaker 2: to be regarded as a major founder, so he clearly
Speaker 2: respects adams profound grasp of constitutionalism. But then Two sentences later,
Speaker 2: he says, for all his intense involvement in constitutionalism, and
Speaker 2: for all his insight into his own and America's character,
Speaker 2: Adams never really comprehended what was happening to the fundamentals
Speaker 2: of American political thought in the years after seventeen seventy six.
Speaker 2: Another words, he's saying, Adams didn't figure out the civic
Speaker 2: republican tradition the way I did. That's one, maybe not
Speaker 2: an uncharitable way of reading it, but I've just thought
Speaker 2: that was odd. Well.
Speaker 5: Another way of saying this is Adams didn't think the
Speaker 5: fundamentals of political thought can change.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they're not fundamental.
Speaker 2: Then right, all right, let's get out with this because
Speaker 2: it's Lucretia Bate. It's your article from ten years ago
Speaker 2: called John Adams versus Edmund Burke, which I just think
Speaker 2: is really fun in one particular part. And this is
Speaker 2: debate John Hugh just as much. You have a long
Speaker 2: passage about what Adams thought about prudence, and I'll skip
Speaker 2: over it until your concluding sentence about all that, where
Speaker 2: you say of Adams views prudence divorced from the other
Speaker 2: virtues would become a moral pragmatism. In other words, you'd
Speaker 2: become John Yu.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's wrong with that?
Speaker 2: I'm skipped over a lot now. Was just a gratuit
Speaker 2: to slap at you, John, that's are you.
Speaker 1: Saying, John isn't courageous.
Speaker 3: I don't wrong with AMORL pragmatism is because you guys
Speaker 3: don't mean anything when you say prudence. At least it's
Speaker 3: AMORL pragmatism to start. Well, all right, I still don't
Speaker 3: get what it is.
Speaker 2: I know that's the whole point to bring.
Speaker 3: With you guys think it is. This is kind of mushy.
Speaker 3: Do the best thing possible the circumstances.
Speaker 4: I'm not even going to entertain that. I do want to.
Speaker 4: I told Richard that my only regret about the boring
Speaker 4: talk about Wood last week when Steve, when you guys
Speaker 4: both came back with well, he's the most consequential intellectual
Speaker 4: historian out there, blah blah blah. I said, that's why
Speaker 4: history is a dying field. And what I wanted to say,
Speaker 4: but you got you jumped in immediately, Steve and came
Speaker 4: back with something. And so what I did get to
Speaker 4: say was if there were more historians like Richard it
Speaker 4: wouldn't be a dying field.
Speaker 3: Dump on him. Balon and Wood made ideological history cool again.
Speaker 3: I mean this is you guys should like you, guys.
Speaker 2: I love you guys.
Speaker 3: Always attack your allies, you always kfe your allies and
Speaker 3: respect your enemies. I don't understand you people.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the very very kind kind of you, Lucretia.
Speaker 5: But I I think of what is cultural story and
Speaker 5: who writes about thoughts?
Speaker 1: I don't think he really writes about ideas fair enough.
Speaker 3: Not the way you guys do. But he's an intellectual
Speaker 3: history I mean considerable by the way.
Speaker 1: He hasn't done any He did a collection of essays.
Speaker 5: I don't think James cebrity those are not books in
Speaker 5: intellectual history.
Speaker 1: His dissertation and his first.
Speaker 5: Book is the only one that's in that that would
Speaker 5: be in that field.
Speaker 4: I think of James mc pearson is something of a
Speaker 4: cultural historian too. I liked I like reading his history.
Speaker 4: I like the the culture and all the economics and
Speaker 4: all those other things. I don't want to get ideas
Speaker 4: from him. I don't see I don't see agendas or
Speaker 4: ideas or things like that in there. That's okay. It's
Speaker 4: when they get it wrong. That's the problem.
Speaker 2: Ah, like like like Gary Will's book on the Gettysburg
Speaker 2: Address exactly.
Speaker 3: But you guys, the thing that Balin and Wood I
Speaker 3: think that they did. And it's just a it's hard,
Speaker 3: I think, to put ourselves back in what history history
Speaker 3: of the Founding was like back then was they think
Speaker 3: ideas motivate why people act? Right, that's like, that's like
Speaker 3: seems like crazy back then, right, they thought it was
Speaker 3: all Marxist, you know, materialism, and this is I think
Speaker 3: this is what launched. I think, even though we debate
Speaker 3: and just maybe very disagreed with what they their conclusions,
Speaker 3: but the folks they think ideas motivated people. That's what
Speaker 3: you guys believe the idea. I don't think you have
Speaker 3: about what the ideas are.
Speaker 5: I think Baialance, chapter conspiracy, suggusted. The idea is basically
Speaker 5: shaped in ways they couldn't possibly understand.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's.
Speaker 5: Saying the ideas moved them, and they were moved by
Speaker 5: essentially on the forces of the background.
Speaker 1: And I'm pushing it too much.
Speaker 5: Bailon is more moderate than would when you get down
Speaker 5: to this and you start looking at the theory, especially
Speaker 5: as theoretical writings.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, I mean, oh, sorry, Richard, I mean well,
Speaker 2: you know you and I were together at that conference
Speaker 2: on John Patrick Diggins with last year at City College
Speaker 2: in New York, and Diggens, who is a liberal, kind
Speaker 2: of a proto se of artist Lessenger. He went after
Speaker 2: Balin and Wood really hard, and his critique was not
Speaker 2: that their accounts of the ideas were incorrect or inaccurate,
Speaker 2: but that their premise is that they're idiot, that it's
Speaker 2: the ideologies were a result of sub rational forces that
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the day, they weren't really based
Speaker 2: on rational idea formation, rational philosophy. And they're not explicit
Speaker 2: about that because they're not well enough trained to get
Speaker 2: at that fundamental problem. But sorry, Richard, will give you
Speaker 2: the last word here.
Speaker 3: They're not What do you mean when they're not well enough?
Speaker 3: These guys are amateurs. What are you talking about? Did
Speaker 3: you just say would and bail And are inadequately trained
Speaker 3: to write about ideas? And like, was it only Straussians
Speaker 3: can write about history because they're adequately Come on, you
Speaker 3: don't believe that.
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't say the last part, but the
Speaker 2: first part. The answer is yes, but Richard will give
Speaker 2: me the last word implication. Well, okay, not really, because
Speaker 2: they're competing schools with Straussians like Quentin Skinner in those
Speaker 2: network way off, way off the beam. Richard, Well, do
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 5: I think, as I've been saying, the I think the
Speaker 5: difference between once we the history created the creation.
Speaker 1: Of history PhD.
Speaker 5: Which is the model of the history on the sciences,
Speaker 5: and hence this cumulative knowledge, and you try to the
Speaker 5: old modern story idea of his historiography, not having read
Speaker 5: other people, but that you have a cumulative field building
Speaker 5: a better idea.
Speaker 1: It fundamentally pushes you.
Speaker 5: Towards towards culture. The second thing is Tokevils chapter on
Speaker 5: histories of Democratic ages. In aristocratic ages, we exaggerate the
Speaker 5: importance of individuals. In democratic ages, we basically make its
Speaker 5: large cultural forces who were uncomfortable with the notion that
Speaker 5: some people are more significant historically than others.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of our problems.
Speaker 5: And but there are you know, someone like Alan Wellso
Speaker 5: is terrific on Lincoln and other things. There are historians
Speaker 5: out there I think that who are doing do very
Speaker 5: good work. There is a whole contrary tradition. I can
Speaker 5: give you a history of that, but I don't think
Speaker 5: we have time for it. No one wants to listen
Speaker 5: to it. The history of history can be rather boring.
Speaker 5: But I do think that one of the keys the
Speaker 5: Founding is there is a debate in the Founding about
Speaker 5: these ideas, and somebody's in the space between Adams and
Speaker 5: Jefferson about the depth of human nature, how much can
Speaker 5: be changed? And ERNs Kasher, the great German philosopher, story
Speaker 5: and who happened? I think overstood over over saw Leos
Speaker 5: Forrausi's dissertation, not as menture in the full sense, but
Speaker 5: he writes in his Philosophy Enlightenment that the odyssey becomes
Speaker 5: a political problem in the In the Enlightenment, the.
Speaker 1: Problem of evil is no longer. How did God create
Speaker 1: such a world?
Speaker 5: It's okay if we believe in progress through reason, how
Speaker 5: do we account for the bloody pages of history? Something
Speaker 5: must be wrong. The Atoms view is there's something. We
Speaker 5: have the angel on one shoulder, the devil on the other,
Speaker 5: to use amendment, to use the one metaphor, and that's
Speaker 5: not changing, and that puts a radical limit on progress,
Speaker 5: which makes the modern very uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: Because which is why I'm sorry. You said you could
Speaker 4: have the last word, but can I have the addendum,
Speaker 4: which is that that is why that the radical progressive
Speaker 4: project is all about making sure that that is entirely destroyed,
Speaker 4: that that even the notion that there's an angel and
Speaker 4: a devil must go way, because both of them place
Speaker 4: limitations upon what is possible. And so if you want
Speaker 4: to deny human nature, you we are so far down
Speaker 4: that progressive road that we now deny human nature by
Speaker 4: saying that it doesn't matter if you're a man or
Speaker 4: a woman, that that's your choice, you choose your identity.
Speaker 4: We don't even call it sex anymore. We call it
Speaker 4: a stupid language term gender instead of sex. It's not
Speaker 4: you don't have a gender, that's if you're a here
Speaker 4: or a she. Right, But okay, or we you know,
Speaker 4: we can be furries. We don't have to be human
Speaker 4: beings anymore. We can be animals and we can have
Speaker 4: weird sex as weird animals and there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 3: Or we can be I'm learning so much right now
Speaker 3: that I never knew before.
Speaker 1: There is there, well, there there are two things, and.
Speaker 5: One is right to borrow from Madison in the modern
Speaker 5: sexuality the l B, G, T, Q, W X, Y, Z,
Speaker 5: et cetera. We have extended the queery right. The other
Speaker 5: thing to mone of a serious point, that is, there
Speaker 5: was a fine line that separates idealism from misanthropy. That is,
Speaker 5: if what you want is it compative that human beings
Speaker 5: are like, you actually don't like human beings, and that
Speaker 5: might explain some of the violence of bloodshed we've seen
Speaker 5: by leftist regimes over the years.
Speaker 4: Last week there was the final report out of HHS
Speaker 4: about whether or not gender affirming God what a horrible phrase.
Speaker 4: Gender affirming surgeries and treatments for children is actually a
Speaker 4: salutary thing. And HHS pulled together some real experts, did
Speaker 4: a number of very solid evidence based scientific studies, released
Speaker 4: the draft, and lo and behold, all of the American
Speaker 4: Psychiatric Association, the American Pediatric Assosia, I don't remember all
Speaker 4: of them. All of them came out and denounced it.
Speaker 4: So the AHHS came back and said, okay, find your
Speaker 4: go ahead and you know, pick this apart. Tell us
Speaker 4: what's wrong with our methodology, tell us what's wrong with
Speaker 4: our research studies?
Speaker 1: Et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: They could not do it, they would not do it,
Speaker 4: and the ones who did come back had absolutely lame,
Speaker 4: non scientific complaints about things. So on the eighteenth of November,
Speaker 4: the Trump Administration's Health and Human Services published a study
Speaker 4: with the detractors included that, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 4: it's not a good thing for children who might have
Speaker 4: other mental health issues to get surgery that cuts off
Speaker 4: their vital parts so that they can pretend to be
Speaker 4: a different sex. What happens all of those people, what
Speaker 4: did you call it? Misanthropy? There's a fine line between.
Speaker 1: My ideal misanthropy, and it's.
Speaker 4: Because so much of that is part of the progressive project.
Speaker 4: If we can't remake humans in the imagery, and these
Speaker 4: are children who are victims of these god awful, evil,
Speaker 4: vile adults who want to use them as experiments to
Speaker 4: advance the progressive project that destroys human nature. That's my
Speaker 4: there's the explanation of the modern world.
Speaker 5: Well if I if I, Well, the problem is, as
Speaker 5: you said, if you give the surgery to a kid,
Speaker 5: they can't really experience pleasure. In other words, their entire
Speaker 5: rest of their life is an anti climax, Richard deserve
Speaker 5: that were.
Speaker 3: He to turn this all into some kind of gender
Speaker 3: history discussion, We're.
Speaker 2: Going to let you go, Richard, although we're going to
Speaker 2: get to advertise to listeners that you finally found a
Speaker 2: way to apply the mark gnalia of John Adams to
Speaker 2: Sidney Sweeney. Because it's a rule this podcast we got
Speaker 2: to mention Sidney Sweeney as often as we can. It's because, you.
Speaker 4: Know, anyway, think that someday, I think Steve said this
Speaker 4: that if they ever have to make a movie about me,
Speaker 4: that Sidney Sweeney will play me.
Speaker 3: That's my dream.
Speaker 2: All right, Richard, we'renna let you go. We'll have me here. Okay,
Speaker 2: you can just log off when you want, Richard. And yeah,
Speaker 2: so we never did lucrease you get to the question
Speaker 2: of his John Adams versus Edmund Burke. But we can
Speaker 2: go back to that because we'll we've got a lot
Speaker 2: to go between now in July four of next year.
Speaker 2: And by the way, Richard's point about a fine line
Speaker 2: between idealism and misanthropy, I think it was Arthur Kessler
Speaker 2: who said the problem with the left is something like
Speaker 2: the revolutionary left is they love humanity. It's individual human
Speaker 2: beings they don't like and you see that in real
Speaker 2: life right oftentimes.
Speaker 4: Although I'm not even sure I buy that anymore. St
Speaker 4: I think it was probably true for a while. But
Speaker 4: what kind of what kind of evil Frankenstein monster wants
Speaker 4: to do that kind of surgery on children and celebrates it.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just sorry.
Speaker 2: Well I have a field theory for that, but we
Speaker 2: are out of time, and so I have we.
Speaker 4: I don't have a lot because we just had a
Speaker 4: podcast a few days ago, and even the people at
Speaker 4: Babylon Bee have been staying home and hanging out with
Speaker 4: their family.
Speaker 2: But I do have a.
Speaker 4: Few, and I'll make it quick. Chicago, you'll like this one.
Speaker 4: Chicago kicks off holiday season by unveiling festive, red and
Speaker 4: green crime scene tape. Okay, Chicago judge hoping twenty third
Speaker 4: time is the charm for rehabilitating violent criminal. Oh Trump
Speaker 4: reminds Americans to give thanks for him this holiday.
Speaker 3: To get it a second.
Speaker 4: Okay, we talked about last time about the turkeys that
Speaker 4: Trump said weren't truly pardoned because of the auto pen
Speaker 4: when Biden was president. He pardoned by Biden administration four
Speaker 4: Times commits violent turkey murder. And then finally, just because
Speaker 4: we're entering the Christmas season, mal Santa prepares for seasonal
Speaker 4: gig by cutting off ankle monitor.
Speaker 2: All right, get us out of here, John, we got ready.
Speaker 3: Always drink your whiskey, meat, buy more books. And Steve,
Speaker 3: what's the latest AI brainwashing you have for us?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: I can't find it, so we're run overtime anyway. I
Speaker 2: had one, but I can't. I can't find it on
Speaker 2: my computer. It's just my desk is chaos. So we'll
Speaker 2: just have to go that one this week. But that's
Speaker 2: probably Steve.
Speaker 4: You didn't record yourself live for five minutes this time?
Speaker 2: No, I didn't. All right, well, we'll be back again
Speaker 2: next week with you know, a regular episode. So drinking well,
Speaker 2: of course.
Speaker 1: John Adams, I know him.
Speaker 2: That can't be.
Speaker 3: That's that little guy who spoke to me all those
Speaker 3: years ago.
Speaker 1: What was it eighty five?
Speaker 5: That poor man agent to eat him a live? Shoes
Speaker 5: are right, Empires fall next to Washington.
Speaker 2: They all look small.
Speaker 5: All alone.
Speaker 1: Watch them run.
Speaker 5: They will tear each other into peace.
Speaker 2: Sis, Jesus Christ is going to be fun.
Speaker 1: Dadada Ricochet
Speaker 2: Join the conversation