Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you and
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 2: Either you were with us or you were with the terrorists.
Speaker 2: Was he betting that they would get him or they
Speaker 2: wouldn't get him? It sounds like he was betting on
Speaker 2: his removal from office up a euro when he's like
Speaker 2: Peter's betting on his own jam and it's a little
Speaker 2: like Peter Rose. I'll look into it. It's the Ricochet
Speaker 2: Podcast with Stephen Hayward Charles Cook. I'm James Bonicce. So
Speaker 2: we're going to talk to Elio Shapiro about all things legal.
Speaker 2: Oh trust me, it's fun. Let say Rosel's a podcast.
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty six. I'm James loloxs in Minneapolis on a beautiful
Speaker 2: spring day. The flowered trees are blooming and Stephen Hayward
Speaker 2: I assume as in California, Charles C. W. Cook in Florida.
Speaker 2: We span the continents, gentlemen, how are you today? Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: it's a very British ant. It could be worse, that's okay,
Speaker 2: right right, compared to what could be at could be
Speaker 2: a rabbit hedgehog above. Let's get right to it. Jerry
Speaker 2: Mandering one of those things that people seemed to whenever
Speaker 2: somebody talks about it and say, we again jerry matter.
Speaker 2: The Republicans are trying to jerry mander. Somebody always posts
Speaker 2: a picture of Illinois, which has these districts that resemble
Speaker 2: no natural shape on Earth and seem almost consciously carved
Speaker 2: out block by block to achieve the desired effect. But
Speaker 2: Virginia is the latest. They have a sorde of controversy
Speaker 2: about it. So who wants to explain to everybody what
Speaker 2: to think about that?
Speaker 1: Well, I'll go first, because I've been living with the
Speaker 1: jerrymandering wars out here in California since the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: if not sooner than that, and I always love it.
Speaker 1: The double standard showing up once again with the left.
Speaker 1: They ruthlessly jerrymandered California in the nineteen eighties, and Republicans
Speaker 1: tried twice to run ballot measures to overturn it and
Speaker 1: failed badly both times, and it then became a scamp
Speaker 1: to democracy when Republicans got good at it. Well, guess what,
Speaker 1: suddenly Democrats are good at it again, and we're not
Speaker 1: hearing that anymore. So, not just Illinois, but you may
Speaker 1: know that the northeast the New England States, Republicans get
Speaker 1: about forty percent of the net House vote in the
Speaker 1: New England States and have zero House seats. So how's
Speaker 1: that representation. And then in Virginia they're going to go
Speaker 1: what it's going to go from five to four to nine,
Speaker 1: eight to one, something like that. And one of the districts,
Speaker 1: never mind the salamanders of Illinois, James, one of the
Speaker 1: districts in Virginia is being called the Lobster district because
Speaker 1: it stretches out from Fairfax County, which is now very
Speaker 1: democratic because it's government employees and consultants and beltweight bandits,
Speaker 1: and it stretches out into some of the rural counties
Speaker 1: to dilute the Republican vote. So the lobster clause are
Speaker 1: kind of an appropriate metaphor for what they've done there.
Speaker 1: And we'll just have to see if the court challenges
Speaker 1: get anywhere. I have no idea whether they will or not.
Speaker 1: But I'm just sitting back and saying, and finally, last
Speaker 1: lesson which Charles will make if I don't. Republicans started this,
Speaker 1: you know, Donald Trump thought it'd be a good idea
Speaker 1: to have Texas use its redistricting power, and the Democrats said,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, well we can do that too, And it
Speaker 1: looks like they're going to come out ahead in this
Speaker 1: this year's skirmish.
Speaker 2: Charles, I'll bet you're one of those people who doesn't
Speaker 2: believe it, doesn't understand that these measures are essential to
Speaker 2: preserving our democracy a democracy. Once our democracy is restored
Speaker 2: and the court is packed and there's permanent majorities and
Speaker 2: the rest of it, we can make sure that the
Speaker 2: fashionst nightmare that we've been living there for the last
Speaker 2: two years or so, it can never be repeated. I mean,
Speaker 2: isn't this like just making sure that the governance of
Speaker 2: post war Germany never provides for the opportunity for a
Speaker 2: Hitler to rise again. I suppose you're going to make
Speaker 2: some sort of argument that our democracy is actually not
Speaker 2: served by all this.
Speaker 3: Yes, our democracy, it means the Democratic Party. I basically
Speaker 3: agree with everything Steve said. I'm pretty sangument about jerry mandering.
Speaker 3: I think it is a political exercise. I don't think
Speaker 3: you can abolish politics. The notion that we could hand
Speaker 3: over control to independent commissions. I think would go about
Speaker 3: as well for Republicans as others supposedly independent organizations usually do.
Speaker 3: I had Shawn Trending on my podcast this week and
Speaker 3: I asked him about this, and he essentially said, both
Speaker 3: independent commissions and computers.
Speaker 4: The other proposed solution are garbage in garbage out.
Speaker 3: That is to say, all of the political decisions that
Speaker 3: you have to make in the process of jerrymandering you
Speaker 3: have to make if you hand over the process to
Speaker 3: an independent commission or a computer, so you can't abolish
Speaker 3: the politics of it. The only thing I would add
Speaker 3: is I think Steve's right, the Republicans did lose this.
Speaker 4: I think it's a short term lass.
Speaker 3: If you look at that Virginia jerrymander, I am of
Speaker 3: the view that it's probably a dummy mander, as the
Speaker 3: Texas one maybe as well. The trend in total not
Speaker 3: this year where I think Republicans will have a disastrous midterm,
Speaker 3: but over the next five years it's probably going to
Speaker 3: yield a Republican win because you've got the Virginia gerimander,
Speaker 3: which will backfire, and if it doesn't return to the
Speaker 3: status quante in twenty thirty, you've got the census of
Speaker 3: twenty thirty, which is not only going to finally count.
Speaker 4: The population properly, but.
Speaker 3: Incorporate all of the changes that should have been made
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty but weren't. That census was a catastrophe.
Speaker 3: Every single controversial question went against the Republicans. Amazing, and
Speaker 3: you've also got the Texas gerrymander which started this. But
Speaker 3: we'll still be there. And so I just think that
Speaker 3: in four or five years, the crowing that you're hearing
Speaker 3: from the left may seem a little premature.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: That's not to say the Republicans aren't playing hardball here too.
Speaker 3: They are, but jerrymandering is hardball, and so I just
Speaker 3: have very little time for those who are trying to
Speaker 3: turn it into something else. It's been there right from
Speaker 3: the beginning of the republic. There's no way of avoiding it,
Speaker 3: and we should just grow up.
Speaker 2: Well, there's something interesting you said in there that's sort
Speaker 2: of tangential to this or not related at all. That
Speaker 2: you believe it's going to be a blood bath. Is
Speaker 2: that because people are I mean, midterms are midterms, but
Speaker 2: the Democratic platform is not a popular one, at least
Speaker 2: as they're talking about it now. And we have better
Speaker 2: border security, lowered drug prices, the economy is not cratering,
Speaker 2: Or do you think it's gas prices? I mean, I
Speaker 2: think entirely that people could fail to make the distinction
Speaker 2: between gas being high because of regulatory prohibitions and drilling
Speaker 2: and gas being high because we're engaged in a high
Speaker 2: stakes geopolitical contest in order to control a certain regionally
Speaker 2: the world. Maybe people make that distinction, maybe they don't.
Speaker 2: Is it just gas? Is gas's three seventy nine. I'm
Speaker 2: not voting for try Why.
Speaker 4: How long have you got James?
Speaker 3: Is such a long answer, but I'll try and give
Speaker 3: you the back of the envelope answer. First, I think
Speaker 3: people are tired of Trump. He's been the main character
Speaker 3: in our politics for eleven years. Second, I think Trump's
Speaker 3: made some mistakes tariffs. I think going into Iran without
Speaker 3: telling anyone was a mistake. Here's the main reason. There are,
Speaker 3: of course, great presidents in history who make a difference,
Speaker 3: and sometimes that difference is economic. The Roaring twenties, I
Speaker 3: think were the result of policy in many ways. The
Speaker 3: shift in the nineteen eighties was the result of policy.
Speaker 3: I'm not being a nihilist and saying nothing matters. But
Speaker 3: a lot of the time, it's really much easier to
Speaker 3: screw things up than make them good. And yet we
Speaker 3: have presidents who seem willing to tie themselves to the
Speaker 3: vicissitudes of the economy. And I think people are somewhat
Speaker 3: wrong on this economy. I think it's much better than
Speaker 3: people think, but they don't like it. The best case
Speaker 3: I've heard in favor of the economy is, well, it's
Speaker 3: not that much different than it was at the end
Speaker 3: of the Biden years.
Speaker 4: People didn't like that.
Speaker 3: And so I think that Trump, because he's such a personality,
Speaker 3: basically promised that he would fix everything.
Speaker 4: That was his pitch.
Speaker 3: He said, again, I alone can fix People believe they
Speaker 3: were going to go back to twenty nineteen when the
Speaker 3: economy was fantastic, and we haven't got there. And I
Speaker 3: don't think that's necessarily Trump's fault. There are a few
Speaker 3: things that are, but I think he suggested otherwise, and
Speaker 3: therefore he's been bitten by the same bug Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: Biden promised that he would fix things. Biden then proceeded
Speaker 3: to make things horrible by signing off on a massive
Speaker 3: two trillion dollar spending program that caused inflation, but we're
Speaker 3: not in a golden age, despite Trump saying so. And
Speaker 3: I think the Republicans are going to get bitten because
Speaker 3: Trump has now been around a long time and people
Speaker 3: aren't happy with how things are going. And I think,
Speaker 3: as as simple as that.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. I don't think he takes up as much
Speaker 2: oxygen as he used to, at least not to me.
Speaker 2: Or maybe I've just been so preoccupied and busy that
Speaker 2: i haven't noticed. Stephen, do you agree with Charles back
Speaker 2: of the envelope and it was a legal pad legal,
Speaker 2: that's fine, that's what we want here. We don't want
Speaker 2: to be scanned and quick. We want to be detailed
Speaker 2: and meaningful and all the rest.
Speaker 1: Yes, although I'll give this caveat. I mean, all those
Speaker 1: reasons are correct. I'll at a couple Residents in their
Speaker 1: second term usually have the worst midterm outcomes historically, although
Speaker 1: that's been scrabbled a lot the last twenty years. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the first term goes worse, so it's a little unclear.
Speaker 1: But second, this could be a rerun of twenty twenty two, when,
Speaker 1: as Charles points out, things were really bad. Inflation was
Speaker 1: soaring all the polls show Republicans are going to roll
Speaker 1: and they underperformed. Let us remember and Henry Olsen thinks,
Speaker 1: and you know, Henry's my guru, and all these things
Speaker 1: that could repeat itself this time for the Democrats. Now,
Speaker 1: having said that, my last point is this will shock people,
Speaker 1: maybe even Charles for a moment until he thinks about it.
Speaker 1: I kind of hope that it is a disaster for
Speaker 1: Republicans for this reason. I don't root for a disaster
Speaker 1: for Republicans on the merits, but it will make Democrats
Speaker 1: over confident. They will come out of it thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't have any problems we need to fix, when
Speaker 1: their party is more underwater than it's ever been with
Speaker 1: the public on general approval ratings, and they will nominate
Speaker 1: someone crazy in twenty twenty eight and get clobbered. So
Speaker 1: that's the upside of a Republican shlacking in November. So
Speaker 1: in a certain long run point of view, and here
Speaker 1: I'm what Charles, we should think for the long run always,
Speaker 1: I think this is some ways a no lose outcome,
Speaker 1: even though the sting will be very sharp in the
Speaker 1: short run. If it's a.
Speaker 2: Debacle interesting, yes, I would rather get the presidency back
Speaker 2: and have power and go to agenda and the rest
Speaker 2: of it, and spend the next four years then undoing
Speaker 2: what might be done in the next two years after
Speaker 2: the mid terms. I mean, nobody wants exactly what as
Speaker 2: you're saying, they're underwater. Nobody wants what they're selling. Nobody.
Speaker 2: New York may Park Slope may feel awfully darned proud
Speaker 2: of itself for giving them them Mandami, but I don't
Speaker 2: feel that surge amongst the national moderate Republican Democrats. Just don't.
Speaker 2: But they're going to get democratic socialism, whether they like
Speaker 2: it or not. Interesting story this week there was a
Speaker 2: member of the Delta for I think it was Delta
Speaker 2: Special Forces guy who was canned unceremoniously because he had
Speaker 2: bet in a market on the likelihood of Maduro being
Speaker 2: snatched from power, and he made a lot of money
Speaker 2: on it. He made four hundred thousand dollars on it.
Speaker 2: Did you see this story and do you think, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, these guys are good at their job and
Speaker 2: they're a precious few. We really really shouldn't lose them.
Speaker 2: I rather an appallingly stupid thing to have done, but
Speaker 2: it certainly did catch my attention and twin that with
Speaker 2: something else. There is in Britain a move amongst their
Speaker 2: special forces to quit because they don't believe that anybody's
Speaker 2: going to have their back. They believe that they're going
Speaker 2: to be held up on by human rights lawyers. We're
Speaker 2: going to go back and look at their action after
Speaker 2: action reports and say that this was wrong, you shouldn't
Speaker 2: have done this, and bring them up in the hag.
Speaker 2: It seems two different approaches. The robust American approach is
Speaker 2: to go to the casino and bet on the fact
Speaker 2: that you're going to go in with guns and secret
Speaker 2: weapons to get a guy. And the British version is
Speaker 2: to quietly retire because you are fear You are fearful
Speaker 2: of a government that doesn't have your back. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure there's anything to say about that except to ask
Speaker 2: you if there's anything to say about that.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm sorry, I really take no pleasure in saying this.
Speaker 3: Ships but isn't that just emblematic of Britain right now?
Speaker 3: Special forces have a real new plan of what's that
Speaker 3: to quit?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: That's just where things are on the island. It's just
Speaker 3: it's depressing. I kind of love this guy who definitely
Speaker 3: should have been caned, by the way, the special Forces
Speaker 3: guy in the US. But I do think that's a
Speaker 3: fundamentally American story.
Speaker 2: It absolutely is, It absolutely is. Oh yeah, I hope
Speaker 2: he had a big shrewd screwed in the corner of
Speaker 2: his mouth. And he was when he was doing it too.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: I remember someone asked Franklin Roosevelt why he appointed Joseph
Speaker 1: Kennedy to be the first chairman of the Securities and
Speaker 1: Exchange Commission, which was created in the mid thirties, and
Speaker 1: Roosevelt's answer was, it takes a thief to catch a thief.
Speaker 1: And I just do these thought experiments about how Joe
Speaker 1: Kennedy would have played the futures market or the prediction
Speaker 1: markets if he was around today. Look, I mean the
Speaker 1: old story Ronald Reagan's you know, the nine most scary
Speaker 1: words rhyme for the federal government, and I'm here to help.
Speaker 1: I think in Europe and also in America, especially Europe,
Speaker 1: the three most fearsome words are human rights lawyer and
Speaker 1: of course, who does Britain have as a prime minister
Speaker 1: now a human rights lawyer? And so it's not surprising
Speaker 1: that you're seeing this insanity go on. And then of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: the prediction market sky. His mistake there was being greedy, right,
Speaker 1: You can make a little bit of money if you're
Speaker 1: subtle and quiet about it and don't get greedy. But
Speaker 1: my hunch is, and we'll learn more I guess is
Speaker 1: that's maybe the only bet he ever placed, and so
Speaker 1: it really sticks out like a sore thumb when suddenly
Speaker 1: you make a killing on the first bet you've ever made.
Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, you were on the helicopter
Speaker 1: or wherever he was.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, it depends on what he bet. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you bet in the likelihood of a duro going,
Speaker 2: that's one thing. But if his bet consisted of the
Speaker 2: strike package will approach at three am and a neutralizing
Speaker 2: force will then use the suppression he actually laid out
Speaker 2: what they were going to do, I can see. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that would be a bit of a p but it's
Speaker 2: not a problem to have our next guest, and we're
Speaker 2: happy to have him. We welcome I Lea Shapiro. Now
Speaker 2: he's a senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at
Speaker 2: the Manhappen Institute. Contributing editor of City Journal, of our Favorites.
Speaker 2: He runs Shapiro's Gavel substat and he's the author of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty Supreme Disorder, Judicial Nominations in the Politics of
Speaker 2: America's highest Court, and last year's Lawless The Miseducation of
Speaker 2: American Elites. Welcome, good to be with you.
Speaker 5: It's a great group. I'm I think this is my
Speaker 5: first time with the full compliment, not not just me
Speaker 5: and Steve drinking his wine.
Speaker 2: Well, I've never got the opportunity to drink Steve's wine,
Speaker 2: but perhaps that is will avail itself some time. Elites
Speaker 2: we loved, We love those elites, especially in they're misbehaving
Speaker 2: and being miseducated in the rest of it. And we
Speaker 2: saw a perfect example of it this week where that
Speaker 2: it was a UCLA law school. Right, I think some
Speaker 2: high spirited youth disrupted a federal Federalist Society event in
Speaker 2: in old days, you'd like to think they would have
Speaker 2: been bodily carried out, but no, they prove their willingness
Speaker 2: to debate ideas by insisting that the ideas they don't
Speaker 2: like should be shut down, not seasonable.
Speaker 5: Like, what I don't get is okay, fine, you should
Speaker 5: be civil and I, you know, not use actual arguments
Speaker 5: and whatnot. But why even attend, Like if there was
Speaker 5: someone who at my law school whose views I just
Speaker 5: didn't like, I just wouldn't go, Like, I just don't
Speaker 5: understand the impetus to sit there and to come and
Speaker 5: just holding up signs that make you look idiotic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, first of all, you're probably ill, you feeling
Speaker 1: like you have some company today, so listeners should know
Speaker 1: or they might remember that you were shouted down at
Speaker 1: Hastings Law School what's six seven years ago? By the way,
Speaker 1: it's not called hater, you're.
Speaker 5: Dead naming them, Steve, it's you see law SF Rings
Speaker 5: had turned out did some things that are now considered
Speaker 5: politically incorrect.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, just like Bold at Bold, Haul at Berkeley.
Speaker 1: But you know, I can't understand what's wrong with UCLA
Speaker 1: and Stanford when believe it or not? Berkeley? Right, John,
Speaker 1: You and I had you to speak at Berkeley shortly
Speaker 1: after you've been shouted down Hastings, and it went off fine,
Speaker 1: even though you got it.
Speaker 5: There was a plane closed cop who blended in and
Speaker 5: I even said a statement against the recent antisemitic resolution
Speaker 5: that they I mean it was and John you was there.
Speaker 5: I mean it was, but nothing. And I tell you all,
Speaker 5: that wasn't my only time. I've spoken to Berkeley probably
Speaker 5: half a dozen times in my life and nothing. It's
Speaker 5: always these random other places, right that have these run ins.
Speaker 1: Well, one difference is I think you may know, is
Speaker 1: that you know our dean at Berkeley, law Irwin Chemerinsky,
Speaker 1: who's very far out to the left on constitutional questions,
Speaker 1: but on this question. He put out a message to
Speaker 1: students after your appearance at Hastings saying essentially, you do
Speaker 1: that here, there will be consequences. And he said that
Speaker 1: again after Stanford. He likes the thumb as nose of
Speaker 1: those other schools, and so he really does mean it.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we had you, we had Heather
Speaker 1: McDonald who had a lot of upset students, but they
Speaker 1: did not interrupt or disrupt it. We did have a
Speaker 1: problem with Simka Rothman from Israel, where I think they
Speaker 1: The point is is that it's not hard to stop this.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is say, there will be
Speaker 1: visibly Jewish.
Speaker 5: See I was just speaking words, but he was doing
Speaker 5: physically right.
Speaker 2: You stand used to being visibly Jewish? Right, Well, you say,
Speaker 2: I mean you, in your sort of who cares what
Speaker 2: happens to society way, say well, I just wouldn't go.
Speaker 2: They are going because these ideas must be shut down
Speaker 2: and kept from being disseminated. These are the ideas that
Speaker 2: will lead to the end of our democracy and the
Speaker 2: rise of the booth that trod's eternally on our face. Right,
Speaker 2: I mean they have a moral duty to do these
Speaker 2: sorts of things.
Speaker 5: That seems to be the as I paraphrased to circle
Speaker 5: back to Bill Crystal, as I phrased one of his
Speaker 5: recent tweets, we have to burn down the village in
Speaker 5: order to save it. It's and look, it's it's particularly disturbing.
Speaker 5: This is why I wrote my book, my last book, Lawless,
Speaker 5: that that this is happening at law schools.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: If if an English or a sociology, let alone a
Speaker 5: blank studies department goes off the rails, I mean, that's
Speaker 5: sad for the accumulation of human knowledge and pedagogy and whatnot.
Speaker 5: But law schools graduate the gatekeepers of our legal and
Speaker 5: political institutions. So if certain points of view are anathema
Speaker 5: of certain topics simply can't be discussed because they're unsafe
Speaker 5: for triggering that we got a huge problem with the
Speaker 5: foundations of our society.
Speaker 2: If tossed it to terms in just a second. But
Speaker 2: I wanted to say, this is because how much of
Speaker 2: this is due to critical theory, because it's infected journalism
Speaker 2: as well, where you have young stats my profession or was,
Speaker 2: you have students coming out who are saying that the
Speaker 2: old standard of objectivity was just a way by which
Speaker 2: the old forms and systems asserted their power and perpetuity.
Speaker 2: That to be objective is to lend credence to ideas
Speaker 2: that ought not to be circulated and should not be
Speaker 2: considered to be on the same level or plane as
Speaker 2: the good ideas. And a lot of that comes from
Speaker 2: the same sort of deconstruction that has infected nearly everything
Speaker 2: that passes through the academic strength, he said, making a
Speaker 2: point not necessarily a question.
Speaker 1: You went to Chicago, which I don't think was ever
Speaker 1: infected with critical legal theory, which Harvard was in the nineties.
Speaker 5: Well, I went there in a particular time. I was
Speaker 5: there two thousand to two thousand and three. We had
Speaker 5: certainly heard of not just critical race theory, but critical
Speaker 5: legal studies, all of that stuff. It had been something
Speaker 5: from the eighties and early nineties that had been you know,
Speaker 5: a curiosity and then was relegated to some niche corner
Speaker 5: of the sociology department or maybe one professor or something
Speaker 5: like that. But then, you know, sometimes it feels, you know,
Speaker 5: it's been almost twenty five years since I graduated law school,
Speaker 5: and sometimes that feels like just yesterday. Sometimes it feels
Speaker 5: like a long time ago on a planet far far away,
Speaker 5: because we have had the crits come back, and that
Speaker 5: is the ideological bit, but that's what everyone likes to
Speaker 5: talk about. That's the red meat. But it's not just
Speaker 5: the ideology. It's also the bureaucracy and the leadership. And
Speaker 5: it's those failures and those change that have really made
Speaker 5: it an inflection point and led to the illiberal takeover
Speaker 5: of Higher Ed. Not just the latest iteration of the
Speaker 5: decades old conservative complaint about the the hippies taking over
Speaker 5: the faculty lounge. Right, those hippies, the Berkeley free speech
Speaker 5: movement in the sixties would now be considered retrograde white
Speaker 5: supremacists by today's radicals. And you know, that's not just
Speaker 5: faculty bias, although there is a generational shift of you know,
Speaker 5: the millennial activists replacing the boomer just standard old school
Speaker 5: ACLU liberals. But it's also that the cultures of these
Speaker 5: institutions are set by bureaucracies, the admissions office, the student
Speaker 5: services office, not just the dei office, where all the
Speaker 5: growth has been in the last decade, and the deans
Speaker 5: and the presidents and the provosts, who themselves are not
Speaker 5: generally woke radicals or social justice warriors, they cowtow to
Speaker 5: this crowd because there's lost coward and so you have
Speaker 5: this vicious circle.
Speaker 3: So there's a paradox. We have probably the best Supreme
Speaker 3: Court we've had in eighty years, really high standard, really
Speaker 3: good writing, analysis and inquiry, and then we have what
Speaker 3: you're describing on college campuses. Do you think and perhaps
Speaker 3: this is a both answer, but do you think that
Speaker 3: this is because the right has just got really good
Speaker 3: at cutting through that, or do you think it's because
Speaker 3: the nonsense that you describe in the book, and I've
Speaker 3: heard you talk about many times has led to an
Speaker 3: atrophying of the quality of left wing legal thought that
Speaker 3: they've got nothing left and so we're just running circles
Speaker 3: around them.
Speaker 5: Well, the legal left never end it up coming up
Speaker 5: with something to beat originalism.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: Scalia always said original it was not perfect, and we
Speaker 5: can keep developing it and things that I'd say are
Speaker 5: sometimes wrong, but you got to have a theory. You
Speaker 5: can't beat a theory with nothing. And the left is
Speaker 5: showing more and more that it's it's mainly about power politics,
Speaker 5: and it's mainly about instantiating these postmodern theories about baked
Speaker 5: in power dynamics, and therefore institutions have to be restructured accordingly.
Speaker 5: And the you know this, the Supreme Court is the
Speaker 5: realization of a decade's long, systemic attempt to take back
Speaker 5: that particular institution, the judiciary, and and that and that
Speaker 5: finally happened, But that's only one institution among many.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: And the the problems that we see in higher ed
Speaker 5: generally and and legal education specifically are somewhat related to,
Speaker 5: you know, the conservative legal movement attempt to take over
Speaker 5: the judiciary, but it's also part and parcel of larger
Speaker 5: social and cultural trends that are you know, far beyond
Speaker 5: the scope of a you know, constitutional exegesis.
Speaker 3: So will it collapse if we don't fix this, because
Speaker 3: you calm run the country from the Supreme Court.
Speaker 5: Well, my friend Sarah Isger has a new best selling book,
Speaker 5: Last Last Branch Standing, it's the only functioning branch. It
Speaker 5: seems like you can't, you can't. And the Supreme Court
Speaker 5: has its own issues, of course, although it's it's overstated
Speaker 5: by the left, the so called legitimacy issues that the
Speaker 5: left keeps trying to make a thing. It's not going
Speaker 5: to be a thing. But what we do have, at
Speaker 5: a time of historically low social trust and institutions, we
Speaker 5: do have a historically big gap in confidence in the
Speaker 5: courts and in the Supreme Court, especially as between the
Speaker 5: left and the right, Republicans and Democrats. And that's a problem.
Speaker 5: If half the country doesn't believe in the institution, if
Speaker 5: you know, if nobody believes in the integrity of elections,
Speaker 5: if you know, then that's you know, that's what leads
Speaker 5: to the ultimate collapse. As far as law schools go,
Speaker 5: as far as universities go, it's kind of a case
Speaker 5: by case situation. Some of them are definitely falling and
Speaker 5: will fall. Some who have skilled and savvy leaders will
Speaker 5: reorient themselves and figure out how to capitalize on this.
Speaker 5: Elena Kagan now of course on the Supreme Court. When
Speaker 5: she was dean of Harvard Law School, did a lot
Speaker 5: of great things to help an institution that had been
Speaker 5: in decline. Some of it ideological in terms of faculty bias,
Speaker 5: balance some of it in terms of making it more
Speaker 5: palatable for students to live there, to get away from
Speaker 5: kind of the paper chase, old stodgy nineteen forties and
Speaker 5: fifty style pedagogy to something that was more to the
Speaker 5: then modern era of the nineties. So, you know, but
Speaker 5: we're seeing, I think, a churn in terms of prestige,
Speaker 5: in terms of student applicants voting with their feet, donors, alumni,
Speaker 5: all all of that. So that the constellation of higher
Speaker 5: education is going to look different in twenty years than
Speaker 5: it does now, as it looks different now than it did,
Speaker 5: you know, twenty five years ago when I was, when
Speaker 5: we were students.
Speaker 3: And my last question is, you were pretty critical of
Speaker 3: Katanji Bran Jackson's nomination. Now that she's proven herself to
Speaker 3: be such an intellectual heavyweight, do you regret speaking out
Speaker 3: as you did.
Speaker 5: Well, I could say you could say that Charles, I
Speaker 5: couldn't possibly comment, and to be clear, I wasn't criticizing
Speaker 5: her in particular, I made my controversial tweet before there
Speaker 5: was a nominee. I was just saying that whoever came
Speaker 5: out of that kind of failed process that was based
Speaker 5: on race and sex would be less qualified or lesser,
Speaker 5: as iron artfully put it. But yes, she's certainly not
Speaker 5: uh covered herself in in Garlands uh to say the least.
Speaker 5: I think it's you know, the left, especially the progressive activists,
Speaker 5: might go all yes queen on her performance, but it's
Speaker 5: not exactly moving the ball in their direction.
Speaker 2: So I guess I guess it's yes Queen, Yes Queen.
Speaker 2: We have to give our vowel correctly. If you're going
Speaker 2: to steal, if you're.
Speaker 5: Going to culture, I have and I have I have
Speaker 5: a mid Atlantic accent on that.
Speaker 2: Just don't culturally appropriate from the drank quing community. So
Speaker 2: here's the question, though, if they if our democracy has
Speaker 2: saved and restored, then Democrats get back in power and
Speaker 2: they decide to pack the courts that they wish to do,
Speaker 2: and they put in a whole bunch of people who
Speaker 2: decide that issues of constitutionality shall be decided from the
Speaker 2: from the posture of learned lived experience, instead of a
Speaker 2: dusty old document that nobody should really care about anymore.
Speaker 2: Isn't it over?
Speaker 5: You mean they're going to resurrect Woodrow Wilson, you know
Speaker 5: with AI, I just had a piece along that line,
Speaker 5: lauding Justice Thomas's speech in Austin last week. Well, this
Speaker 5: is one place where I can sympathetically invoke Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 5: This is possibly the only thing I've ever agreed with
Speaker 5: him on. When he was running for the twenty twenty
Speaker 5: Democratic presidential nomination, he and Joe Biden were the only
Speaker 5: ones to be against court packing, and he said, I'm
Speaker 5: not going to do the accent, but he said, look,
Speaker 5: if we add four people, then the next time they
Speaker 5: get in power, they're going to add four people. In
Speaker 5: fifty years, we're going to have eighty seven justices. It's
Speaker 5: no good. And that's that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: So I remember that famous, infamous tweet you pointed out
Speaker 1: that look, the best qualified person or suddenly supremely qualified,
Speaker 1: was a Strenovasian from what the DC circuit. What a
Speaker 1: thought experiment to think about how these recent arguments would
Speaker 1: go if he was on the court. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think Jackson is a monumental blunder by Biden because he's
Speaker 1: settled the court with someone who even alienates the other
Speaker 1: two liberals on the court. That's quite an achievement. But
Speaker 1: that's what happens when you limit your pool of potential
Speaker 1: applicants to only what three percent of the American top
Speaker 1: four percent of the American population.
Speaker 5: Right, even looking among black women, I think Leandra Krueger
Speaker 5: of the California Supreme Court would have been a better choice, right, more,
Speaker 5: you know, intellectual heavyweight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me ask you about Thomas's great speech on
Speaker 1: the Declaration that you just referenced, and specifically the reaction
Speaker 1: to it in this sense. You know, there is a
Speaker 1: I think a weakness of Thomas's argument which none of
Speaker 1: the critics have bored in on except not a critic,
Speaker 1: but you know, John, you of course disagrees with the
Speaker 1: Justice that the Declaration of Independence has any operative relevance
Speaker 1: to constitutional adjudication.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He and I argue about this endlessly because I'm on
Speaker 1: Justice Thomas's side.
Speaker 5: Is that an east coast, west coast Straussian thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, partly, But I'm not going to do that, bef. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to inflict that on our listeners. Neil, Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm just not. But you could have brought that up
Speaker 1: in your critique of Thomas's speech. Instead you got Paul
Speaker 1: Waldman at MS now and then completely insane a former
Speaker 1: judge Mike Ludig saying the same thing. We always thought
Speaker 1: he was something of a conservative still, but maybe not.
Speaker 1: They both said, gosh, why is Thomas picking on Woodrow Wilson?
Speaker 1: The real architect of progressivism was Teddy Roosevelt, and first
Speaker 1: of all wrong, but that's a long story. But second
Speaker 1: of all, why this impulse to suddenly defend, even with
Speaker 1: just the deflection Woodrow Wilson? And I think it's because
Speaker 1: what the speech represented was a frontal constitutional attack on
Speaker 1: the administrative state, and that is the project dearest to
Speaker 1: the left. And finally, what a switch roo. It was
Speaker 1: only a decade ago that liberals woke up and said, oh,
Speaker 1: Woodrow Wilson was a racist. We have to take his
Speaker 1: name off the Princeton University School of Public Affairs.
Speaker 5: That Wilson's over there. Luckily it's not written in you know,
Speaker 5: some sort of electronic device, otherwise they would have read contract.
Speaker 1: And right, what do you make of this crazy reaction
Speaker 1: to the speech.
Speaker 5: Unhinged and unhelpful to their cause. I think, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 5: it would serve them well to say, you know, Wilson
Speaker 5: was racist and here's what he got wrong. And the
Speaker 5: Constitutional Accountability Center, I think has the correct approach if
Speaker 5: I were a progressive to say, look, the don't see
Speaker 5: the Constitution and the Declaration to the conservatives, this is
Speaker 5: the proper way of doing originalism, and you know, all
Speaker 5: these good things that we like are actually in there
Speaker 5: in this way. It's not that it's antiquated and dusty
Speaker 5: and and what have you. It's just the conservatives got
Speaker 5: it wrong and hijacked it. It's a more subtle and
Speaker 5: I think certainly more receptive in today's judiciary sort of argument.
Speaker 5: But it's not just the administrative state. I don't think
Speaker 5: the progressives, either the Capital p one hundred years ago
Speaker 5: or the current progressives really think about it as such.
Speaker 5: It's not, you know, we need to have the bureaucracy,
Speaker 5: we need to you know, get the decision making away
Speaker 5: from Congress or any elected representatives. It's more that this
Speaker 5: whole idea of the right coming from Wilson's One of
Speaker 5: Wilson's speeches, the Newtonian checks and balances have to have
Speaker 5: been obviated by a kind of Darwinian Darwinian evolution. And
Speaker 5: now that the science of government has evolved in a
Speaker 5: very late nineteenth century German sense, you know, we can
Speaker 5: have more expertise in government and and don't need to
Speaker 5: defer to yokels of of of of any kind. It's
Speaker 5: it's not, you know, rule by bureaucracy per se, but
Speaker 5: it's it's ruled by wise experts who would share the
Speaker 5: the modern values that we that we hold your point.
Speaker 2: There that the left of gresses should find their own
Speaker 2: form of originalism. I'm always keen to understand exactly how
Speaker 2: the other side thinks. And you have an agile mind
Speaker 2: and know them probably, So what exactly if they wish
Speaker 2: to extend the tentacular manifestations of the administrative and bureaucratic
Speaker 2: state and in every aspect of American life as so
Speaker 2: to improve it and nudget towards utopia? Where is that?
Speaker 2: Where is it in the Constitution? Do they? Is everything
Speaker 2: going to be under the commerce clause? Or what am
Speaker 2: I missing? How do they? How do they get that
Speaker 2: total sort of regulatory power for civil rights?
Speaker 5: For civil rights issues Section five of the fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 5: that gives Congress power to implement uh, you know, vast
Speaker 5: equal protection protections.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: That would be from a progressive perspective, interpreted broadly to
Speaker 5: allow everything from affirmative action to know, you name it,
Speaker 5: disparate impact on still.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: In terms of expansive federal power, yeah, it's it's the
Speaker 5: Commerce Clause. It's national power to solve national problems.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: And this day and age, everything is everything national. We
Speaker 5: saw that in the debate over Obamacare and related issues. Now,
Speaker 5: you know, they make common cause with originalists on certain things.
Speaker 5: For example, rights need to be in privileges or immunities
Speaker 5: rather than substance of due process. There's other subtle shifts.
Speaker 5: I think, you know, the major questions doctrine would work
Speaker 5: a different way if it worked at all. But there,
Speaker 5: you know, there's this progressive originalism Jack Balkin at Yale
Speaker 5: as well, where it doesn't mean that they are a
Speaker 5: strong textualists necessarily, So there you might have a bigger
Speaker 5: difference as between originalism and textualism than you do among conservatives.
Speaker 2: I still feel as if they're trying to hammer a
Speaker 2: round peg into us into a square hole. They don't
Speaker 2: believe actually in the document itself. They just want to
Speaker 2: find clever ways to get what they want to do. Well.
Speaker 5: They believe in the idea of an ever more perfect union,
Speaker 5: which I think is actually a European perversion of Lincoln.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I hesitate to mention Jack Balkan's famous
Speaker 1: book to James for fear of what he might do
Speaker 1: with it. But Balcon's most prominent book on the subject
Speaker 1: is called Living Originalism, which sounds one of the great
Speaker 1: oxy morons. All I knew you'd crack up at that.
Speaker 1: I have a last question for you. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: another sort of breaking story this.
Speaker 5: That reminds me, and sorry to interrupt, that reminds me
Speaker 5: of Chief Judge Bill Pryor of the eleven Circuit, his
Speaker 5: critique of common good constitutionalism, this kind of living constitutionalism
Speaker 5: of the right, if you will, more result oriented and whatnot.
Speaker 5: But he wrote a trenchant essay called living common Goodism,
Speaker 5: uh to say that what they're doing is just matching
Speaker 5: the left game with with with a different results at
Speaker 5: the end of the of the goal.
Speaker 2: And it reminds me of the late Walter Williams, who
Speaker 2: would say, if somebody sat down across from the table
Speaker 2: and say we're going to play living poker, the rules
Speaker 2: will change depending on the city. M anyway, Stephen go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well some oar time'll you will have to talk
Speaker 1: about ed your interview mule and that whole business, because
Speaker 1: it's a mess.
Speaker 5: He was my administrative law professor. That's before he had
Speaker 5: that's before he converted, converted on a number of fronts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, Uh, last question. New York Times this week
Speaker 1: thought they had a breathless, scandalous scoop about the what
Speaker 1: is they called the rocket docket of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: And it involved, right, the shadow doc the shadow docket.
Speaker 1: That's it. It involved the course the case I know
Speaker 1: a lot about, which goes back to the Clean Air Act,
Speaker 1: which I'm strangely obsessed with.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: And but they act like this was some kind of
Speaker 1: scandal when A, it was an entirely sensible decision for
Speaker 1: reasons you can explain if you want. And B it's
Speaker 1: something that the left did for years when they were
Speaker 1: had the majority on the court, back in the War
Speaker 1: in Court era and so forth. So I mean, how
Speaker 1: out of touch are these people to think they've discovered
Speaker 1: something scandalous. That makes perfect sense.
Speaker 5: Now, the big the big scandal from that leak was
Speaker 5: that there was a leak. Yeah right, it's it's the
Speaker 5: harmful to court deliberations. I mean, the idea that justices
Speaker 5: exchange strongly worded memos among each other. That's supposed to
Speaker 5: be news or you know, we criticize or the left
Speaker 5: criticizes the so called shadow dockets, sometimes called the emergency docket,
Speaker 5: but they're not always emergencies, so it's interim relief docket. Anyway,
Speaker 5: there's this whole meta battle about what to call all
Speaker 5: of this. That's not the kind of the regular train
Speaker 5: of having oral argument and full briefing and months of
Speaker 5: before the decision and all that. But the criticism that
Speaker 5: they don't explain themselves fully. It's like, oh, well, finally
Speaker 5: we get memos. It turns out they were thinking through
Speaker 5: all of this stuff, and now we don't like it
Speaker 5: because I'm not exactly sure I mean, the process. This
Speaker 5: leak showed that the process worked and they weren't just
Speaker 5: basing their decision on and you know antipathy to Obama.
Speaker 2: Well, Eli, you've been the perfect guest, knowledgeable, articulate with
Speaker 2: an intonation that indicates that you've concluded your point, and
Speaker 2: you use a word like retcon, which tell me that
Speaker 2: there's just a whole stuff that we could probably talk
Speaker 2: about in addition to the law. And so we intend
Speaker 2: fully to have you back as off as handsome, handsome
Speaker 2: extraordinarily that's right burly with a man full swath that
Speaker 2: that makes the ladies go week at the knees. So
Speaker 2: there you have it, and read another books that we
Speaker 2: can have you on, or just don't write an article,
Speaker 2: do something in the substack and say, hey, guys, you
Speaker 2: want to talk about it, I guarantee you we will
Speaker 2: you silver the substack. Tell them what the substack is.
Speaker 5: Again, it's Shapiro's gabble. And it's there that I sort
Speaker 5: of play around with some uh, some more fun stuff
Speaker 5: than I that I can often do in the pages
Speaker 5: of City Journal or Wall Street Journal or what have you.
Speaker 5: And that's where an idea for a satirical piece that
Speaker 5: I published in the winter's issue of City Journal came
Speaker 5: out my two decades in the swamp, written kind of
Speaker 5: in pg r ark style. He was he was my client, actually, uh,
Speaker 5: and one time I told him that, you know, he
Speaker 5: was a. He was a an unpaid fellow, honorary fellow
Speaker 5: at CATO, and I said that he was worth every penny.
Speaker 5: And he said that as his lawyer, I too was
Speaker 5: worth every penny. I work probona. We miss him dearly,
Speaker 5: we do, but we won't miss you because we'll have
Speaker 5: you back. Thanks for joining us today, and have a
Speaker 5: great weekend.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: Big issue today, going green, you might say, and not
Speaker 2: in a way that a lot of people like. Administration
Speaker 2: has decided. The Acting Attorney General Todd signed it an
Speaker 2: order on Thursday to reclassify both FDA approved marijuana drug
Speaker 2: products and state licensed medicinal marijuana from the Schedule one
Speaker 2: to Schedule TLAH. This loosens federal instructions on its use. Previously,
Speaker 2: as a Schedule one drug, the Devil's Cabbage had been
Speaker 2: considered to have quote no currently accepted medical use and
Speaker 2: a high potential for abuse. Yeah, now a medical marijuana
Speaker 2: will be classified as having quote moderate to low potential
Speaker 2: for physical and psychological dependence, placing the same category as ketamine. Yes,
Speaker 2: elon mosk, we see you waving your hand, anabolics, and testosterone.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how much this will change the quality,
Speaker 2: the character of our daily lives and streets and hallways
Speaker 2: and the rest of it. But I have become weary
Speaker 2: of weed and the role that it plays in contemporary society.
Speaker 2: I think everybody they signed on and said, oh, yes,
Speaker 2: let's let's decriminalize it. What's the harm. It's just to herb.
Speaker 2: I think they were remembering sort of the mild, the
Speaker 2: mild intoxic that they had in the dorms way back
Speaker 2: in the day, where you'd stare at your hand for
Speaker 2: thirty minutes, or the gatefold album cover on a Yes album.
Speaker 2: And now you have something that has apparently been chemically
Speaker 2: engineered to smell like a silverback gorilla in heat. And
Speaker 2: when you walk around in this dead skunk smells hit
Speaker 2: putrefying skunk smell hits you in the nostrils in American streets,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't blow. I mean, it takes about a
Speaker 2: forty mile an hour wind dissipate it. The stuff just
Speaker 2: sort of sits there like a wraith that you have
Speaker 2: to walk through. Colorado is considering a law that would
Speaker 2: make it illegal to smoke in your backyard if it
Speaker 2: gets over in your neighbor's area. And oh, the editorials
Speaker 2: we're saying, how criminalizing a smell? That's just to girtonism
Speaker 2: with this, But I think they have a point. It's
Speaker 2: everywhere now people hate it, except for the people who
Speaker 2: do it, who don't know or care because they like
Speaker 2: to smell or they're stoned. What do you guys think?
Speaker 2: Do you think I'm just being an old cotton Mather
Speaker 2: killed Joy by saying we should not have to smell
Speaker 2: the stuff when we walk around the street all the time.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know, James, I'm inclined to agree with you,
Speaker 1: although I do wonder a couple of things. You know,
Speaker 1: I went to college in the seventies in Oregon, where
Speaker 1: we'd smoking was ubiquitous on campus, and I don't remember
Speaker 1: it being as odorific as it is now. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, people still smoke cigarettes back then, and you know,
Speaker 1: several people on my dorm floors smoked cigarettes. And we
Speaker 1: were used to that, right, I mean, you know, we're
Speaker 1: orderly of the age where people still smoked on airplanes
Speaker 1: and restaurants and even movie theaters, and we were used
Speaker 1: to it, I think, right. And nowadays most Americans can
Speaker 1: spot us, you know, a whiff of cigarette smoke from
Speaker 1: fifty yards outdoors, right, you don't have these signs saying
Speaker 1: you have to be at least fifty feet away from
Speaker 1: a door. It's a great, great essay what thirty years
Speaker 1: ago now by Peter Berger and commentary on the plight
Speaker 1: of the furtive smoker. All these people outdoors in the
Speaker 1: winter in New York shivering to have their smoke break.
Speaker 1: And now you've got to go to Central Park, and
Speaker 1: even there it's probably banned, as my.
Speaker 2: Guess, I'm sure that it is. But if people smell it,
Speaker 2: they die right on the spot. They die.
Speaker 1: But I do wonder if we haven't just become more
Speaker 1: sensitized to secondhand smoke. That's a possibility. I'm with you.
Speaker 1: I think it could be both. By the way, I
Speaker 1: do think stuff is definitely stronger today. We know that
Speaker 1: from you know, basic chemical analysis. But I think it's
Speaker 1: also true that we're now much more alert to it,
Speaker 1: and there's more of it. I mean, it used to
Speaker 1: be just in the college campuses, and now it is
Speaker 1: every street in New York as and everywhere else. As
Speaker 1: Charles is.
Speaker 3: Mentioned, I am just so tired of it as well.
Speaker 3: And I've changed my mind to some extent on the
Speaker 3: underlying question, in so far as it just never heard
Speaker 3: to me, given the way that smoking was being villainized,
Speaker 3: that if we legalize marijuana, which I was in favor
Speaker 3: of and I'm certainly in favor of federally because I
Speaker 3: don't think the federal government has the power to superintend it,
Speaker 3: then you would smell it everywhere. It's a very, very
Speaker 3: weird development. I think we probably talked about this before,
Speaker 3: but it's just so odd that we got.
Speaker 4: Rid of smoking. I can remember being in college.
Speaker 3: When smoking was banned, and that smell went away, and
Speaker 3: that habit went away. And then marijuana was legalized, and
Speaker 3: either it's explicitly allowed to be smoked on the street
Speaker 3: where cigarettes aren't, or the authorities just turn a blind
Speaker 3: eye to it. But whichever one has been picked by
Speaker 3: most of America's major cities. The consequence has been that
Speaker 3: you just can't go anywhere without smiling.
Speaker 2: Reed and absolutely turn a blind eye to it for
Speaker 2: social reasons. It's the it's the old effectory version shoplifting.
Speaker 2: What are you gonna do? What are you going to do?
Speaker 3: We can't, Yeah, but if you lit up a cigarette,
Speaker 3: they would be on you in ten seconds. But right
Speaker 3: reason it's okay, I'm sweet, and I think people hate this.
Speaker 2: I absolutely do. And it's because there's some peculiar number
Speaker 2: of virtue or coolness or outsiderness or whatever that attends
Speaker 2: to the people to smoke it. You're right, I mean,
Speaker 2: Steven's right. I grew up in the same era. I
Speaker 2: smoked cigarettes, and my gosh, everything smelled like cigarettes. I
Speaker 2: worked in a bar, no, actually a restaurant which had
Speaker 2: a small non smoking section that consisted of two little tables.
Speaker 2: That's where Prince sat when he came into the restaurant.
Speaker 2: And the idea that somehow you were insulated from the
Speaker 2: smell of cigarettes in this place with these two little
Speaker 2: tables is that there was a guard all shield that
Speaker 2: just No, of course not everything smelt like a plane,
Speaker 2: smelled like a lobby, smelled like an elevator, smelled like it.
Speaker 2: Probably white people, you know, doused themselves in Calvin Kleiner drack.
Speaker 2: Our new war when they got into the elevator was
Speaker 2: to combat the smell of the cigarettes. I still have
Speaker 2: this day. I wrote a piece about this, I think
Speaker 2: for National Review Online. Remember that there were ashtrays outside
Speaker 2: of elevators because the idea the social compact was, do
Speaker 2: you mind not smoking in the elevator?
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 2: Okay, it's like twelve floors, we understand. But if you
Speaker 2: could stub it out here, you can smoke as soon
Speaker 2: as you get out of the elevator, you know, some
Speaker 2: light right back up. But if you just stub it
Speaker 2: out here for that twelve floor, right, we'd appreciate it.
Speaker 2: So ingrained and then gone thanks to Minnesota, which I
Speaker 2: had the first law I think in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2: So yes, we've made that. But we've also gone so
Speaker 2: far is that if somebody gets a whiff of an
Speaker 2: aromatic Prince Albert pipe in the park or something, they
Speaker 2: believe actually that the carcinogens will envelop their body and
Speaker 2: turn them into a walking tumor within forty eight hours.
Speaker 2: It's it's ridiculous, it's preposterous. The only thing we can
Speaker 2: afford that we are supposed to smell right now in
Speaker 2: public is weed. Okay, well, anything else before we head
Speaker 2: out the door. Any Iraq war predictions. I think we're
Speaker 2: firmly in quagmire position now. No, I mean it's fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty five days, and it takes a while, and
Speaker 2: it's work and the rest of it. I thought, frankly
Speaker 2: the molds would have cracked by now they haven't. But uh,
Speaker 2: turn off the money, see what happens. I see the
Speaker 2: guys are still doing what they want to do, and
Speaker 2: I don't think it's going well for them. But I
Speaker 2: wish it was more demonstrabily going well for us. But
Speaker 2: then again, what do we really know?
Speaker 3: Well, James, you just quote it the Iraq War, which
Speaker 3: I think gives us an insight that.
Speaker 2: Oh that's telling. Sorry, Sorry, my mind's been, My mind's
Speaker 2: been elsewhere. Yes, I'm here. I'm stuck in the nineties
Speaker 2: and stuck in the stuck in the odds. The Iran
Speaker 2: or the yes, the coalition, not the coalition of the willing,
Speaker 2: but the I think I saw a tweet the other
Speaker 2: day about some Indian tanker. I think the captain had
Speaker 2: had paid off the Iranians in crypto or something and
Speaker 2: gotten a safe word passage and they were shelling him anyway,
Speaker 2: and he was he was peeved off.
Speaker 1: That I mean. I think I think the blockade is
Speaker 1: uh uh. If if Trump's willing to stay the course,
Speaker 1: and my guess is he is, I think it's probably
Speaker 1: going to put maximum pressure on Iran to finally cut
Speaker 1: some kind of and I think Trouble allowed them a
Speaker 1: face saving deal. But I think it's the endgame move
Speaker 1: by Trump. I think it's pretty clever. It depends who's
Speaker 1: left in power.
Speaker 2: I mean, the the whole point of this was to
Speaker 2: get the Mulas out, was to get the mulas out
Speaker 2: to have and I don't know, I don't know who
Speaker 2: he's talking to. If he's talking to some civil authorities,
Speaker 2: if he's talking to, you know, somebody that the Shaw's
Speaker 2: Sun gave him in his rolodex, I you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: Well, well, well, here's a larger takeaway I have, which is,
Speaker 1: for years we've been saying, gee, has Iraq War one
Speaker 1: or two finally put the Vietnam syndrome behind us? And
Speaker 1: my argument or perception right now is if we see
Speaker 1: this through, we will have put the Vietnam syndrome behind us.
Speaker 1: In this sense, the problem with Vietnam was always we
Speaker 1: had sort of calculated escalations which allowed the North Vietnamese
Speaker 1: and the viet Cong to set the pace of the war.
Speaker 1: And really for the last forty years with Iran, we've
Speaker 1: let them set the pace of their low intensity warfare
Speaker 1: against US and everybody else. And so the sweep of
Speaker 1: this initial attack, which was not slow s collation, it
Speaker 1: was went big. From the first thirty seconds, I said,
Speaker 1: an end to all that. We're not playing that stupid
Speaker 1: game anymore, which, by the way, was a game invented
Speaker 1: in the fifties and sixties by the liberal technocrats. And
Speaker 1: so you know, it's important that it be seen through.
Speaker 1: But you know, we didn't finally get serious about blockading
Speaker 1: North Vietnam and bombing them in a serious way until
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two when it was too late, right, And
Speaker 1: then that war, you may remember, James ended pretty quickly
Speaker 1: because that may you know, Nixon was the crazy man.
Speaker 1: Now Trump is much crazier than Nixon, I think, we'd
Speaker 1: say so. I mean, a lot could still go wrong,
Speaker 1: but right now I kind of like the scene.
Speaker 2: Well there's the Afghan I rock syndrome too, you could say,
Speaker 2: which is the people who had get very, very tired
Speaker 2: of things that lasted a long time, where we're supposed
Speaker 2: to be proud of ourselves wet because we put a
Speaker 2: KFC in cobble and they can vote and now they're
Speaker 2: part of the family. Of nations and no, it's kind
Speaker 2: of a parent that they're actually worn societies that will
Speaker 2: never reform themselves, and we're wasting a lot of money
Speaker 2: on this. Charles, what's your opinion. What's your take on
Speaker 2: the current situation.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure it's going well. If well involves are
Speaker 3: either achieving regime change or opening the street of four moves.
Speaker 3: I do think that this line I'm starting to hear
Speaker 3: on the left and from critics on the road too,
Speaker 3: that Trump's just going to end up with the Obama
Speaker 3: deal is wrong in that even if he were to
Speaker 3: agree to the old Obama deal line for line, it
Speaker 3: would still be the case that their nuclear program has
Speaker 3: been destroyed. So the situation is better than it was
Speaker 3: before we went in in some regards, but I don't
Speaker 3: think it's a smashing victory, and I think that's because
Speaker 3: we're not prepared to do what we could do and
Speaker 3: go in really hard, because the public's not on board
Speaker 3: and they know it, and they know that far that
Speaker 3: by closing the straight they can cause domestic problems for
Speaker 3: the president.
Speaker 2: I think we had smashing successes, but victory is still
Speaker 2: out there. And as I said, I think anything short
Speaker 2: of regime change. The removal of the molos in the
Speaker 2: theocratic government is a failure.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Jane, I I know you want to wrap. I
Speaker 1: think it's worth mentioning the I.
Speaker 2: Want to sit down with I want to sit down
Speaker 2: here and wrap with the kids and see exactly. I
Speaker 2: want to find out what's going on, man, what's happening?
Speaker 1: Well, maybe for next week. I do think the story
Speaker 1: this week of the Southern Poverty Law Center is significant
Speaker 1: and potentially huge. So put a pin in that one,
Speaker 1: because I think that's I've been waiting for something like
Speaker 1: this for a very long time because I've known for
Speaker 1: a long time a lot of people have that they're
Speaker 1: totally corrupt.
Speaker 2: It is a thing of beauty. I mean, every time
Speaker 2: that organization's name come up, I get this sort of
Speaker 2: dark cloud in front of me and I just wonder
Speaker 2: what they said around all Right, we're center. What kind
Speaker 2: of a center army? Well, we're a law center. Okay,
Speaker 2: what kind of a law do we practice? Well, we
Speaker 2: practice poverty law. I'm not sure what poverty law is.
Speaker 2: There's something else that we could use to find it.
Speaker 2: We how about Southern poverty? Oh, Southern poverty.
Speaker 6: That's a special flavor of poverty right there that'll get
Speaker 6: people to open their wallets. Everything between Tobacco Road and
Speaker 6: the down trodden in the in the rural southern poverty.
Speaker 1: Law Yeah, I've been asking for years why there's no
Speaker 1: northern poverty law center. It seems the ilan Omar has
Speaker 1: missed a trick here.
Speaker 2: Yes, or just midwestern Midwestern poverty, say, would just not
Speaker 2: sound the same because you just see a bunch of
Speaker 2: guys in ski caps who are huddling around, you know,
Speaker 2: the food bank and the rest of it, and there
Speaker 2: wasn't much law you could do for them. But no, this,
Speaker 2: they're hate map, their hate charts, their temperatures, they're fundraising
Speaker 2: all the rest of it. It is beautiful to see
Speaker 2: it unmantled, and the idea, as some have frequently said,
Speaker 2: that the supply of racism in this country is so
Speaker 2: small that it actually has to be subsidiated, subsidized and produced.
Speaker 2: That they're paying guys to go of these things and
Speaker 2: to gin up some transportation. Can you give a ride
Speaker 2: to that really bad guy there to the Charlottesville rally
Speaker 2: so he can. It's lovely and the tentacles are going
Speaker 2: to be found to be going elsewhere. That's why I
Speaker 2: fear the loss of the midterms, because you need some
Speaker 2: sort of initiative to go from, you know, to keep
Speaker 2: the Doge spirit alive and written brand. I mean, was
Speaker 2: it the Times or the or the News or the
Speaker 2: Washington Post that had a story about some USAID people
Speaker 2: used to pull down a quarter mill and now they
Speaker 2: can't get a job at Pesny's spice selling. Did you
Speaker 2: see that article?
Speaker 3: Idea that's a cool and I think almost everyone who
Speaker 3: read it took the opposite message from the one that
Speaker 3: was intended, which was so this person has no marketable skills.
Speaker 2: Well there you go goes right back to blazing settles,
Speaker 2: as does everything else. Gentlemen, we've got to predict our
Speaker 2: phony Bologney jobs, one of which is talking from a
Speaker 2: microphone on a podcast. But we've done it for seven
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty six. We hope to be here for
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Speaker 2: Charles and Stephen, but been great as ever and we'll
Speaker 2: see every one of the comments at Ricochet soon to
Speaker 2: be five point zho bye bye