Speaker 1: Well, Whiskey coming game.
Speaker 2: From power Line blog dot com and produced by Ricochet
Speaker 2: dot com. This is the three whiskey Happy Hour with
Speaker 2: your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You and power Lines International
Speaker 2: Woman of Mystery Lucretia got a giving Let that whiskey
Speaker 2: blow where you're being in loud down and load.
Speaker 3: Well, John, you will be happy to know that we
Speaker 3: have the evidence this week that our exertions are now
Speaker 3: being rewarded in the marketplace. You may have noticed, or
Speaker 3: maybe not, if you've been traveling, that while the stock
Speaker 3: market was taking huge, McDonald's stock is on a huge rally,
Speaker 3: so our church of course, of course right, and we're
Speaker 3: finally showing up in the marketplace.
Speaker 4: So people runs for safety, and in a disaster, you
Speaker 4: should run for the McDonald's. That's right, It's all the
Speaker 4: food will be. That's right, you know, mc ribs and
Speaker 4: thirty day tea bills. That's where you want to be,
Speaker 4: right now, exactly right. I spent a lovely eve. Oh
Speaker 4: by the way, I'm good morning, Lucretia. How are you?
Speaker 5: I'm well? Thanks? How are you?
Speaker 3: Steve?
Speaker 1: I am good because I spent a delightful evening.
Speaker 3: Listeners were recording Saturday morning, as we often do when
Speaker 3: we can't get together during the week. I spent a
Speaker 3: delightful Friday evening with as he is now known, Baron
Speaker 3: Andrew Roberts of Belgravia and our mutual friend or Lucretia's
Speaker 3: mutual friend of mine, Lance Zumi, was there. Lance is
Speaker 3: an open monarchist, and I confess to Lord Roberts he's
Speaker 3: either Lord or Baron that I'm accused by you of
Speaker 3: being a closet monarchist. But I give it away when
Speaker 3: I keep calling him Lord Roberts, because I'm known him
Speaker 3: for a long time, and he says, no, call me Andrews.
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 3: I'm one of those American traditionalists who you know, sort
Speaker 3: of swoons in front of British Royalty.
Speaker 4: Do you also pull the forelock of your hair? Oh
Speaker 4: you don't have any hair, Steve, What do you pull?
Speaker 4: Do you pull your nose? Do you pull your ears?
Speaker 4: You can't. I hate to see see I think of
Speaker 4: the idea of Steve curtseying, but I could. I mean,
Speaker 4: that would fit in really well with the Olympic ceremonies.
Speaker 4: To see Steve curtseying before a British lord. You could
Speaker 4: have right next to the whatever that was of the
Speaker 4: last supper that they had at the opening ceremonies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, finding the little story on that
Speaker 3: is a midweek I dashed back to Washington to be
Speaker 3: taped for a documentary that's being produced, and they told
Speaker 3: me you're going to show up at twelve noon for
Speaker 3: hair and makeup. And wait, they haven't looked at me lately.
Speaker 3: I don't need hair, just make up.
Speaker 5: Well, maybe you could have asked them for some.
Speaker 1: I thought about that.
Speaker 3: I will give you a piece that was not gossip,
Speaker 3: but a little bit of an insider thing. I don't
Speaker 3: know if we're gonna have time today to talk about
Speaker 3: project twenty twenty five that will keep for any week,
Speaker 3: But put it this way.
Speaker 1: I talked to a very well placed source.
Speaker 3: Who told me that, in fact, Trump is still calling
Speaker 3: Kevin Roberts every week, and so what's going on?
Speaker 5: You know what you probably have about a little bit
Speaker 5: of context So the Trump administration, some stupid millennials inside
Speaker 5: the Trump administration have put out and obviously Trump has
Speaker 5: gone along with it, the argument that not only did
Speaker 5: Trump have nothing to do with the twenty twenty five project,
Speaker 5: which is the Heritage Project that has a whole list
Speaker 5: of recommendations for what the next administration should do to
Speaker 5: try to save our country, most of which are perfectly
Speaker 5: sound and Trump no doubt agrees with. But some millennial
Speaker 5: Oh god, we gotta go on defense because the Democrats
Speaker 5: are accusing us of being behind Project twenty twenty five. Morons. Sorry, yes,
Speaker 5: I've decided. I've decided that millennials drive me absolutely up
Speaker 5: my mind, which we're going to come back to when
Speaker 5: we get to Abigail Shearer. But yeah, whatever name is,
Speaker 5: she's not worth anyway. All right, what she wrote was stupid.
Speaker 5: I know she Actually she's done a lot of good stuff.
Speaker 5: I take I take it back. But my point is,
Speaker 5: of course Project twenty twenty five should be and probably is,
Speaker 5: endorsed by Trump. And why is it that Republicans always
Speaker 5: have to go on defense instead of coming back and saying,
Speaker 5: this is what's really in twenty twenty five? What do
Speaker 5: you have against this? What do you have against this? Right? Well,
Speaker 5: well we'll talk about they don't get it.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I guess a little background.
Speaker 3: This is actually even before John was was still a
Speaker 3: pup is the Heritage Foundation.
Speaker 1: They've been doing I think every four years.
Speaker 3: Maybe they took some elections off, but ever since nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty they've done a big, thick, usually eight hundred page,
Speaker 3: detailed policy recommendations for an incoming and conservative at a
Speaker 3: Republican administration. This is the first time the left has
Speaker 3: decided to go off on it.
Speaker 1: And yes, you're right.
Speaker 3: I think it was cowardly of them to take the
Speaker 3: bank and.
Speaker 5: Actually named a couple of twits that were behind it
Speaker 5: so kind in the Trump campaign consultants who advised them.
Speaker 4: To Well, I confess I actually I actually downloaded it
Speaker 4: and read parts of it because I was curious too
Speaker 4: as I read the legal parts, which were you know,
Speaker 4: they actually had a lot of you know, the Russia
Speaker 4: collusion stuff and immigration, but didn't actually propose any serious
Speaker 4: changes to why the Justice Department of law enforcement worked
Speaker 4: in this country. I mean it was I mean, people
Speaker 4: could read it and they would fall asleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think the only thing that really probably upset Trump
Speaker 4: was that I think it takes a much more pro
Speaker 4: life position than he wants to take. Although how that
Speaker 4: translates into policy in the working of the deep state
Speaker 4: or administrative state, whatever you want to call it doesn't
Speaker 4: really come through. I mean, what would a pro life
Speaker 4: administrative state look like, might be even more powerful than
Speaker 4: a pro choice administrative state. I don't know. It doesn't,
Speaker 4: it doesn't. I think he just didn't like the pro
Speaker 4: life stuff in it, even though it's not a big
Speaker 4: part of the document as far as I could tell.
Speaker 3: Well, look, I mean, I think you see this in
Speaker 3: almost all campaigns. It's the not invented here mentality. The
Speaker 3: Trump administration didn't control this, They weren't directly behind it.
Speaker 3: If you go back to nineteen sixty four in a
Speaker 3: Goldwater campaign, he had no greater supporters and boosters the
Speaker 3: National Review and the sort of young conservative movement around
Speaker 3: Buckley and William Rusher who helped Goldwater get the nomination,
Speaker 3: and the campaign did their best to keep them at
Speaker 3: arm's length and distance themselves from National Review during the
Speaker 3: campaign that year. And that's just part of the course.
Speaker 3: I think it's almost that simple. Although I will agree
Speaker 3: with the creche about stupid millennials, but we should talk
Speaker 3: about Actually it's a unifying theme for the day. I
Speaker 3: realized when we were looking at new stories to comment
Speaker 3: on that they're a unifying theme emerged, and that theme
Speaker 3: was what No, I didn't forget what it is that
Speaker 3: the common theme is American identity and human nature. So
Speaker 3: here's several stories. We'll tike through a bunch of them,
Speaker 3: and they're all about the same thing.
Speaker 1: I argue.
Speaker 3: One is Trump's appearance before the Society of Black Journalists,
Speaker 3: which too many to talk of Lucretia about conservatives not
Speaker 3: getting it. I've been really disappointed at how a lot
Speaker 3: of people who should know better have responded badly.
Speaker 1: Second, the attacks on Kamala.
Speaker 3: Harris as a diversity hire, which Abigail Shier, who I
Speaker 3: think otherwise is very sound, has dissented on.
Speaker 1: That's what Lucretia picked out as our article of the week.
Speaker 3: And then this controversy coming out of the Olympics about
Speaker 3: the boxer who's not exactly transgender, but as one of
Speaker 3: these intersex persons that's very problematic for sports, and I
Speaker 3: know a bit about some aspects of that. And then
Speaker 3: if we have time, I'll do a brief homily and
Speaker 3: political philosophy, because we're really falling down on the job
Speaker 3: for that. But all right, who wants to start? I mean,
Speaker 3: I have my own thoughts. I'll give you my position.
Speaker 5: Reach one.
Speaker 3: Well, let's start with Trump before the black journalists, and
Speaker 3: we're going to see why there's a unifying theme to
Speaker 3: all these stories.
Speaker 1: Oh, it was terrible.
Speaker 3: Of him to say, uh, you know, Harris used to
Speaker 3: be Indian. Now suddenly she became black. I didn't know this,
Speaker 3: and everyone was saying, oh, what a blunder, and this
Speaker 3: is terrible. I think it was another typical Trumpian stroke
Speaker 3: of genius. And I'll defend that proposition, but I'll bring
Speaker 3: you guys in to give your reactions and observations.
Speaker 1: First, John, you want to go first.
Speaker 4: Ah one. I thought it was good that he went.
Speaker 4: I think I think it just as a tactical political matter,
Speaker 4: not sure tactically, you know, people, I think he's changing
Speaker 4: the face of a Republican party, and one of the
Speaker 4: good things about that is he's going to places that
Speaker 4: Republican candidates haven't gone in the past. He gets no
Speaker 4: appreciation from it from his audience, who you know, were
Speaker 4: quite hostile in the I mean the other I mean,
Speaker 4: I think Trump had a good point. I mean he
Speaker 4: over overdoes it. I mean always, it was a good
Speaker 4: point to say, I just got here in the first thing,
Speaker 4: you say, as a litany of things, claim me I'm
Speaker 4: a racist, right, I mean, I don't blame although that
Speaker 4: things like that have happened to me from time to
Speaker 4: time when I've come to speak to So that's the first.
Speaker 4: The second thing is, I don't I don't think it's
Speaker 4: wrong for the campaign to raise identity politics because the
Speaker 4: other side is raising identity politics too, right. They're trying
Speaker 4: to portray Trump now is the old white man candidate,
Speaker 4: which is funny. They weren't saying those things when Biden
Speaker 4: was still running. But I think as a matter of
Speaker 4: campaign broader campaigns historically, you know, I'm not sure. I mean,
Speaker 4: maybe this is just what's different about Trump and his
Speaker 4: campaign is usually the you know, the vice president is
Speaker 4: the attack dog, and the president kind of sits back
Speaker 4: and you know, makes more positive, optimistic statements about the country,
Speaker 4: and the vice president goes after the presidential candidate of
Speaker 4: the other party. Here, it's like, uh, they're they're reversed.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, Trump likes being the attack dog.
Speaker 4: He likes getting in the trenches and fighting. He likes
Speaker 4: to be the vice presidential candidate, and you're the thing
Speaker 4: they were saying about the party was saying about JD.
Speaker 4: Vance was, Oh, he was the broader thinker, he was
Speaker 4: the one who was going to create the way forward
Speaker 4: for the Republican Party. Actor Trump, he's the one who's
Speaker 4: going to put meat on the bones of Mega And
Speaker 4: so it's weird. It's a reverse dynamic. And maybe it'll work.
Speaker 4: Maybe the voters want to see the presidential candidate himself
Speaker 4: getting his hands dirty, to be the boxer in the ring,
Speaker 4: the non whatever x x Y candidate in the ring
Speaker 4: and duke it up. But it seems to run counter
Speaker 4: to the way people, you know, professionals have tried to
Speaker 4: run campaigns in the past, and maybe that's where you're
Speaker 4: you're starting to see the downsides all that.
Speaker 1: John, that was a B minus answer Lucretia time.
Speaker 3: Peter bringing Oh, come on, I'll tell you why in
Speaker 3: a minute, Like John McLaughlin used to do Lucretia.
Speaker 1: I'll bet you understand the point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but first of all, let's talk about how this
Speaker 5: is such a manufactured controversy on the part of the
Speaker 5: right end the left. Trump went there. He absolutely killed it.
Speaker 5: The only people who didn't think so were the squishy rhinos,
Speaker 5: the never Trumpers and the people on the left who
Speaker 5: aren't going to vote for Trump anyway. Trump's base thought
Speaker 5: he was terrific. He was terrific, you know, and like
Speaker 5: John pointed out, he went to the hostile place that
Speaker 5: Mala refused to go. I don't get this controversy. I
Speaker 5: don't get the controversy about making fun of Kamala's race
Speaker 5: or identification of her race. Of course you should make
Speaker 5: fun of it. She used to be Indian American and
Speaker 5: Jamaican American, and now she's black American. What the hell
Speaker 5: is she? She's darker than her parents. But okay, so
Speaker 5: never mind that, all right, But why do we let
Speaker 5: them focus on something like that when instead we ought
Speaker 5: to be focusing on white dudes. For Kamala what a
Speaker 5: bunch of Beta mail pussies, oh my god. Or the
Speaker 5: coordinated effort in the less than twenty four hours where
Speaker 5: five thousand Democrats, democratic politicians and media personalities called Trump
Speaker 5: and vance weird means oh yeah, right, when are we
Speaker 5: going to stop playing defense on these people?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: This is well, this is my point and why I
Speaker 3: think here's the way I read it. It was on offense,
Speaker 3: and I think in a splendid way. The Democrats are
Speaker 3: devoted to identity politics. However, they try to constrain the discourse.
Speaker 3: It's identity politics as only they understand it, only they
Speaker 3: get to identify. You decline what identities are than anyone
Speaker 3: who dissents, whether it's in terms of DEI or anything else,
Speaker 3: as racist. And you can't and you have to shut up,
Speaker 3: you know. I keep going back to that line. Glenn
Speaker 3: Elmers wrote a few weeks ago that I thought was
Speaker 3: very good. Race said, there's a reason why Trump exaggerates
Speaker 3: and even sometimes lies. You have to do that to
Speaker 3: break through the suffocating narrative of our establishment. That's what
Speaker 3: So what Trump did is he forces people to reckon
Speaker 3: with the fact that the Democrats are obsessed with identity politics.
Speaker 3: Your melon level is what counts most of all, and
Speaker 3: you know, the darker your melon and the better. That's
Speaker 3: why Kris wants to go from being Indian to black
Speaker 3: and right and so and that.
Speaker 1: She's a phony.
Speaker 3: Right, she's a phony, and we're gonna and now you
Speaker 3: make an easy transition to.
Speaker 1: Her issue positions. I think she's equally phony there. I
Speaker 1: think it's very effective. The media, forget the media.
Speaker 3: One last point, John, I mean you did say something
Speaker 3: quite important that he went there. Uh, you know, it
Speaker 3: really hasn't been a politician really since Reagan who was
Speaker 3: willing to go to hostile audiences. You know, Reagan appeared
Speaker 3: before the NAACP in nineteen eighty during the campaign, and.
Speaker 1: Then eighty two he spoke to I think it was
Speaker 1: either again.
Speaker 3: The NAACP or it might have been the Urban League,
Speaker 3: which is kind the same thing. And eighty two is
Speaker 3: a horrible recession, ten percent unemployment. And Reagan's whole speech was,
Speaker 3: you know, the Great Society was really bad for black people.
Speaker 3: It made everything worse for you, and that's why you
Speaker 3: should turn away from liberalism.
Speaker 1: And all the media was out now.
Speaker 3: Of course, of Reagan was polite and stylish, his usual thing,
Speaker 3: but the media was just as outraged as they are
Speaker 3: about Trump, and so why not go big like Trump?
Speaker 3: Did you know he attached the leads to the plunger
Speaker 3: and plunged it and blew it up, and I think
Speaker 3: it puts them on the defensive.
Speaker 4: You don't agree, No, No, I think I wish he
Speaker 4: had done that. And he could have done that. He
Speaker 4: had a great opportunity, right they started they gave him
Speaker 4: the perfect opportunity to say, why does her race matter?
Speaker 4: He could even say, you know, Kamahas to me stands
Speaker 4: for someone who's benefited her whole career by being a
Speaker 4: little fluid with how she described herself. I'm sure we're
Speaker 4: going to do it under gender fluidy, all this stuff
Speaker 4: and racial fluidity later in the podcast, but dis pointing
Speaker 4: out that, and then then he just said, I just
Speaker 4: don't care. I believe the colorblind constitution. Constitution doesn't care
Speaker 4: about a race. And he could have just thought saying
Speaker 4: I'll beat her no matter what her race is or
Speaker 4: what she calls herself. That's all he needs.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: In fact, I actually find it kind of feel I
Speaker 4: feel a slight cringe when I hear Trump or any
Speaker 4: republic Republican candidates always say are saying I've been good
Speaker 4: for the black community. Yeah, right, like you said, seem
Speaker 4: it should just be I'm great for everybody, but stident
Speaker 4: I always say exactly the same thing.
Speaker 5: We had a huge discussion about it in terms of
Speaker 5: whether or not candidates should appeal to those those groups.
Speaker 5: But you were the one John who came back and said,
Speaker 5: that's not the reality we live in it's not the
Speaker 5: reality we live in. And the fact that he was
Speaker 5: addressing the Black Journalists Association or whatever the hell it
Speaker 5: was called, is proof of the fact that that's the
Speaker 5: way they see the world. I'm not sure that a
Speaker 5: half an hour interview with some antagonistic moron is the
Speaker 5: opportunity to remind everybody out there of genuine constitutional principles
Speaker 5: of equality before the law. I think that that he
Speaker 5: could have done a little bit of what you talked about,
Speaker 5: but but I actually I hate to say it. I
Speaker 5: agree with Steve on this one, considering the with me.
Speaker 5: I do hate with you, Steve, because you know, I
Speaker 5: don't want to give you any kind of.
Speaker 4: Credence, but it's a common feeling amongst the audience to stem.
Speaker 5: That that, you know, the the immediate political uh victory
Speaker 5: of what he said was probably more important than trying
Speaker 5: to do what you're talking about. And all I want
Speaker 5: to I don't want to necessarily end this conversation, but
Speaker 5: it takes me to why I was so annoyed by
Speaker 5: Abigail's peace, which is reflective of a lot of things
Speaker 5: you see in the media right now, which is, you know,
Speaker 5: the the Trump campaign is going after Calm a Law
Speaker 5: all wrong, probably starting with Calm a Lah as a
Speaker 5: way of making fun of her that, you know, we
Speaker 5: have to be above it all and we have to
Speaker 5: concentrate on policy, and her policies are so bad, and
Speaker 5: we don't understand how incredibly successful she's going to be
Speaker 5: because of the circumstances by which she rose to the
Speaker 5: queen ship. And you know, just on and on and
Speaker 5: on what. Okay, Yes, her policies were terrible. We've talked
Speaker 5: about how terrible are policies. Get them out there, get
Speaker 5: them out there every day. But one is not precluding
Speaker 5: of the other. You were, of course, you could talk
Speaker 5: about the fact that it turns out she was not
Speaker 5: just Willie Brown squeeze, that's my nicest term for it.
Speaker 5: And Montel William's second girlfriend, and she was probably a
Speaker 5: call girl. There are pictures out there of her in
Speaker 5: you know, short leather dress skirts and high fishnet stockings,
Speaker 5: and now they're probably AI. Okay, they're probably AI. But
Speaker 5: stuff out there on Trump is AI all the time.
Speaker 5: In the left post with it, I say, we go
Speaker 5: with it. I mean, there are so many surrogates out
Speaker 5: there speaking on Trump's behalf or speaking just because they
Speaker 5: support Trump. You can have all of these arguments in
Speaker 5: the public sphere, but instead of Republicans that we don't
Speaker 5: want to go there. In the meantime, you know, Democrats
Speaker 5: are Trump is weird. Jd Vance is weird, and everybody says, well,
Speaker 5: that's okay. You can say that.
Speaker 1: Well, let me do.
Speaker 3: But we'll turn to the Shreyer argument in a moment
Speaker 3: because it actually introduces an element of timing, which is secondary.
Speaker 3: But look, of course that we can always say that Trump,
Speaker 3: but this is true that any candidates can do a
Speaker 3: better job rhetorically of how he did it.
Speaker 1: But I think that's less important than that he did it.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing.
Speaker 3: I actually think Trump does get this at some again
Speaker 3: elemental level. It's worth going back sometime if you had
Speaker 3: the time to do it and watching us first inaugurl.
Speaker 3: I don't know how many people remember this, and maybe
Speaker 3: people didn't watch it, but the I was there, you.
Speaker 1: Were okay, So you know that there's always a center.
Speaker 4: I thought it was January sixth, twenty twenty one, but
Speaker 4: it was actually twenty seventy.
Speaker 3: So as you know, there's always a senator who is
Speaker 3: the host of inauguration, it was Chuck Schumer, and in
Speaker 3: welcoming the crowd, Chuck Schumer starts ticking off all the boxes.
Speaker 3: I forget the exact words, but he mentioned African Americans, immigrants, Hispanics, Asians.
Speaker 3: You know, he just went all down the list of
Speaker 3: what I call the Democrats certified victim groups, because that's
Speaker 3: how they think, and that's how they talk, and that's
Speaker 3: how they want to divide up in America into groups
Speaker 3: that need administrations of big government. Trump gets up, and
Speaker 3: what did he talk about. We're all Americans. We may
Speaker 3: be of different races and whatever, but we all have
Speaker 3: the same with our blood all runs red. Trump's the
Speaker 3: guy who gave the message of common citizenship, a common humanity,
Speaker 3: and that contrast, I think is what's being brought up here.
Speaker 3: And that brings us to Schiber's article. She says, why
Speaker 3: don't we just attack her on her issues? And my
Speaker 3: point is, I know, we're only one hundred days the election.
Speaker 3: There's plenty of time for that. There's actually reason to
Speaker 3: hold your fire on those things while the honey moon
Speaker 3: period for Harris gets over with. And so I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, she did I think an excellent the articles.
Speaker 3: In the show notes, she did excellent recitation of Harris's
Speaker 3: political weaknesses, and then she says, yeah, she's a dei higher.
Speaker 3: That's true, she says, but equally beside the point, and
Speaker 3: that Lucretius where I lost it too, because I think
Speaker 3: that is the point.
Speaker 1: That is, to my.
Speaker 3: Mind, I've been saying for years now, and you and
Speaker 3: I both the central political controversy of our entire age
Speaker 3: is human nature, of which this whole idea that you
Speaker 3: can define your own identity and your own gender will
Speaker 3: come to. That is central to leftist orthodoxy because they
Speaker 3: have a rage against human nature. And Shira understands this
Speaker 3: and I don't. She seems this is a failure of
Speaker 3: political understanding in my mind, and that's my critique of it,
Speaker 3: because it is the point, and Trump is making it
Speaker 3: the point, which is great.
Speaker 1: That's okay.
Speaker 5: Well, and you know what, she makes some kind of
Speaker 5: pathetic argument about making people feel bad because they got
Speaker 5: their jobs, they got their positions whatever, through affirmative action,
Speaker 5: and why are you gonna humiliate those people? She makes
Speaker 5: that argument, You know what, people like that should be humiliated.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, Lloyd Austin should be humiliated. Because he was
Speaker 5: made the Secretary of Defense and he's a moron despite
Speaker 5: he did something good. Well, come back to that. I
Speaker 5: mean you see it everywhere where the especially in the
Speaker 5: Dei pimp industry, where these people who have no other,
Speaker 5: no other redeeming qualities other than they've gone through the
Speaker 5: propaganda they've got. They got their gender studies degree or
Speaker 5: their African American studies degree, and then they went on
Speaker 5: and got an edd And I don't mean by that
Speaker 5: the thing you need biagrapher. I mean that ridiculous excuse
Speaker 5: for a.
Speaker 1: Doctor Chill's degree.
Speaker 5: Doctor Jill's degree. And then and then somehow they are
Speaker 5: experts in something which nobody knows what it is, and
Speaker 5: they're dumb. All they can do is tout the the
Speaker 5: you know, the principles of Dei orthodoxy. And now, like
Speaker 5: you say, Trump, what Trump did was he's got all
Speaker 5: sorts of people either trying to defend Dei at the
Speaker 5: same time they're denying that Kamala is a Dei position
Speaker 5: or in she's in her position because she's a Dei whatever,
Speaker 5: what is what would you call it thing? She's a
Speaker 5: Dei thing. So I mean, well, frustrate, have you guys
Speaker 5: ever met a DEI, like a vice provost who is
Speaker 5: who was intelligent, who had something other to bring to
Speaker 5: the table than the propaganda that they were fed about
Speaker 5: de I.
Speaker 3: Well, I will want to be fair, Yeah, I mean, well,
Speaker 3: actually the first DEI person at Berkeley was a guy
Speaker 3: from the chemistry department who I think didn't like the job,
Speaker 3: and they sort of succumponied him to that, right, and
Speaker 3: and he left, and then they hired one of these
Speaker 3: professional types that you're talking about, who's much worse.
Speaker 5: But Steve.
Speaker 3: I know, yeah, I know that I'm actually trying to
Speaker 3: agree with you, but to say that the way it's
Speaker 3: now structured, you can't tell if you're smarter not because
Speaker 3: those jobs demand that you be dumb. That's one way
Speaker 3: I'll put.
Speaker 6: It, Okay, No, I was just say at Berkeley, they usually,
Speaker 6: you know, most of the professors are pretty you know,
Speaker 6: pretty distinguished people in their fields.
Speaker 4: So usually the ideal is someone who's distinguished but then
Speaker 4: doesn't do very much. Yes, like they're almost embarrassed there
Speaker 4: in the job. I think, Well, there was once like
Speaker 4: a physicist who was in the job, and he seemed
Speaker 4: totally embarrassed that he had to create these events and
Speaker 4: say these things, and but I also don't think he
Speaker 4: did very much, which was great.
Speaker 5: Yeah, quickly, John, we have now seven vice provos in
Speaker 5: one or another DEI category, so for African American advancement
Speaker 5: and Native American advancement. Guess what, I know what you're saying,
Speaker 5: and I do think that you know that some of
Speaker 5: those positions allow for someone of substance to be in them.
Speaker 5: But it's more and more become a racket. It's become
Speaker 5: the DEI pimp industry, and it's you know, that's so
Speaker 5: I get what you're saying. There are people who were
Speaker 5: put into that job. What I was actually asking was,
Speaker 5: do you know somebody whose whole career has been built
Speaker 5: on DEI who's really quite accomplished and so on? So
Speaker 5: go ahead, I'm sorry, John, go ahead.
Speaker 4: Oh no, I'm just going to add something about the
Speaker 4: Shire pieces. One way you could do this, I think,
Speaker 4: just like again as a matter of campaign tactics, is
Speaker 4: you don't have to attack Kamala Harris's identity because you
Speaker 4: can just attack all the policies that she supported over
Speaker 4: the years. And you know, these aggressive DEI policies they
Speaker 4: are going on in California and then all the ones
Speaker 4: she wanted to support when she was senator and it
Speaker 4: becomes apparent, you know, make her defend them. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: you don't have to separate her identity from these policies,
Speaker 4: but you just attack those race based policies.
Speaker 5: Well, you do both.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's not a de candidate in the sense that
Speaker 4: people in California elected or voted for right like they
Speaker 4: the people in California want to DEI policy. So it's
Speaker 4: a great way to use California to right win the election,
Speaker 4: just show people's really the regime you want to live under.
Speaker 3: Well okay, well a little footnote on that is she
Speaker 3: won her first statewide race by about sixty thousand votes
Speaker 3: in twenty ten in a very democratic year. I mean,
Speaker 3: she's never been a powerhouse on the ballot, and then
Speaker 3: elected the Senate in one of those crazy jungle primaries
Speaker 3: where she was running against another Democrat in November who
Speaker 3: got a third of the vote, right a, Loretta Sanchez.
Speaker 3: So it anyway, she's never been an electoral powerhouse and
Speaker 3: she's never really run except for that first race, a
Speaker 3: tough race against the Conservatives. So we'll see how that
Speaker 3: all goes, but unless well, I think that's probably on
Speaker 3: that because the next layer of this is this.
Speaker 1: This episode at the Olympics where.
Speaker 3: You have a boxer who has high testosterol levels, I
Speaker 3: think should be precise. This boxer from what Algeria wherever
Speaker 3: it is, is not actually trans It's not somebody who
Speaker 3: has transitioned from you know, male to female in the
Speaker 3: ways we're doing it on such a wide scale in
Speaker 3: America and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But it's it's one of these extremely rare cases.
Speaker 3: And I'm aware of a couple others of someone who
Speaker 3: is genuinely intersex who's born with in this case, female anatomy,
Speaker 3: but with male hormone levels and some sort of male
Speaker 3: characteristics like actual testes that are you know, inside their
Speaker 3: right and there are you know, it's extremely rare. But
Speaker 3: the point is is that there are people with female
Speaker 3: appearents a bit, although I'm going to show you a
Speaker 3: picture of one in a minute that I'll put in
Speaker 3: the show notes.
Speaker 1: And so here's the problem.
Speaker 3: I think that and what they've tried to do in
Speaker 3: some sports is actually measure testosterone levels and they tell athletes, well, okay,
Speaker 3: if you want to compete on the women's division. You
Speaker 3: have to take hormone suppressors and they'll do blood tests
Speaker 3: to see if you're homewarn level. I think this is insane.
Speaker 5: It's insane as any humane and barbaric.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so in boxing, which you know viles violin force,
Speaker 3: this is actually quite dangerous. I think now, Lucasia, if
Speaker 3: you put up on the screen for John to see
Speaker 3: the black runner.
Speaker 1: So now listeners will be able. Yeah, the listeners will.
Speaker 1: It will be in the show notes.
Speaker 3: But the person in front is cast Semania, a South
Speaker 3: African you know, born with female you know, genitali and
Speaker 3: so forth, and dominates the women's eight hundred meters. The
Speaker 3: Olympic Committee has never allowed Samania to run in the
Speaker 3: Olympics because they say, oh, and if you will, by
Speaker 3: the way, I mean, this person is very masculine features.
Speaker 3: And if you watch Samania in the races that she's
Speaker 3: been in, she'll be in the pack and then in
Speaker 3: the last one hundred and twenty yards she just leaves
Speaker 3: everybody in the dust because just stronger because of want.
Speaker 3: And in professional track they've said, okay, you can run,
Speaker 3: but you have to have your hormones measured.
Speaker 1: And all the rest of this.
Speaker 3: Now put up the other person to the cretia that
Speaker 3: that I gave you the the the the picture, Yeah
Speaker 3: that one right, So the other person, that's is what
Speaker 3: you're seeing on the screen. John, That is the women's
Speaker 3: world record holder in the eight hundred meters.
Speaker 4: No way, that was a picture of you in college.
Speaker 3: It looks pretty masculine, right, I think, I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure. This is from back in ninth This is
Speaker 3: the longest standing world record, by the way, is the
Speaker 3: women's eight hundred. Nobody's come close to it in forty
Speaker 3: forty one years now. By the way, our mutual friend,
Speaker 3: the runner that the world class runner you knew in
Speaker 3: law school. I won't mention his name, he was actually
Speaker 3: in this meet and the men's fifteen hundred and told
Speaker 3: me he watched this race and said, what do you think?
Speaker 1: And and he's Our assumption was this was just typical.
Speaker 3: Eastern European doping, which they did on such a massive
Speaker 3: scale and all the Olympic sports in those years.
Speaker 1: But that picture's kind of hard to tell.
Speaker 3: And so here here's the problem is uh uh, it's
Speaker 3: just as a matter of sports and fairness, it seems
Speaker 3: to me that you have to tell these people. You know,
Speaker 3: we're very sorry that you have this very rare and
Speaker 3: unusual medical circumstance, but you can't compete in the women's races.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, the worst part about what happened to
Speaker 5: that poor Italian woman after you know, nearly being killed
Speaker 5: by the guy in two punches and then you know,
Speaker 5: just being heartbroken, and then she was shamed into apologizing
Speaker 5: for her behavior. And I actually heard people on Fox
Speaker 5: News this is going to be my stick on it.
Speaker 5: I'm driving driving somewhere and I nearly crash because I'm
Speaker 5: so angry about it that they feel sorry for the guy.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry you. As we've discussed before, someone in the
Speaker 5: Lucretia household was an Olympic trial alternate. And you know,
Speaker 5: you don't have a right to be in the Olympics. Nobody,
Speaker 5: Oh my god, if he, she, it, whatever, had not
Speaker 5: been able to compete as a boxer or what have
Speaker 5: you in the Olympics. It's not a travesty. I'm sorry,
Speaker 5: I'm sorry. Get over that, people. That's thing one, the
Speaker 5: more important thing is every single person on Fox talked
Speaker 5: about this as if it was a gender issue. It
Speaker 5: is an issue of sex. Folks, Your biological sex is
Speaker 5: gender is a language construct. But the even when the
Speaker 5: conservatives discuss it, they use the misnomer of gender when
Speaker 5: you have when you have a gender reveal party, you're
Speaker 5: not having a gender reveal party. Your baby's either a
Speaker 5: male or female, and so you're having a biological sex
Speaker 5: reveal party. Stop allowing the left to use that awful
Speaker 5: term of gender. You don't you. Yeah, you can choose
Speaker 5: your gender. You can say I'm a female, not a male,
Speaker 5: because it's a word, But you don't get to choose
Speaker 5: your biological sex. If you are one of those unfortunate
Speaker 5: people who was born intersex from Afrida, what's the appropriate
Speaker 5: term now, I guess it's probably not hermaphrodite.
Speaker 1: I think intersex is what you say.
Speaker 5: Okay, intersex? Just like what y Just like I saw
Speaker 5: this video of a woman yesterday with no arms picking
Speaker 5: up her little baby, sitting on a chair, picking up
Speaker 5: her little baby with her feet to put the baby
Speaker 5: in the swing. That it's unfortunate for her too, But
Speaker 5: you know what, life is not fair. You don't get
Speaker 5: to be in the Olympics if you have the biological
Speaker 5: body composition of a male and compete against females regardless
Speaker 5: of what you know, what your chromosomes are. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's not hard, folks.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know how the International Olympic Committee is
Speaker 3: organized exactly, but they have and casters mania from the
Speaker 3: Olympics on the ground I just explained. They also said,
Speaker 3: what's the trans the swimmer you know in America.
Speaker 4: Won the Lea Thomas, Lea Thomas.
Speaker 3: They said, Lee Thomas, Sorry, you can't swim in the
Speaker 3: Olympics either. So they have drawn the line quite sensibly.
Speaker 3: And by the way, the IOC, I always suspected they
Speaker 3: were a bunch of I think they are. They're always
Speaker 3: sort of you know, pro communists. You know, Swishes go
Speaker 3: along with the conventional wisdom. But somehow the boxing people
Speaker 3: have gone along with all this, and you know, we'll
Speaker 3: see no no.
Speaker 4: I thought from what I read is that these two
Speaker 4: boxers are not allowed to box internationally. They were banned
Speaker 4: by their own sport. It's only the Olympics that kind
Speaker 4: of overrule the boxing. Now this is funny because like
Speaker 4: the right, the IOC says, oh, that boxing community they're
Speaker 4: too corrupt, which itself is rife with corruption and bribery,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, banning the people who govern their
Speaker 4: sport is being too corrupt or it's like, yeah, saying
Speaker 4: there's too much gambling going.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean there's there's a race on for we
Speaker 3: don't have Olympics for sports corruption because the Olympic Committee
Speaker 3: and the FIFA World Cup people could compete for the goal,
Speaker 3: right literally.
Speaker 7: For the goal.
Speaker 5: So we had our live podcast last Friday, right before
Speaker 5: the Olympic opening ceremonies opened with the Last Supper. But
Speaker 5: I had sat on at the very end if you'll
Speaker 5: recall that I wasn't going to watch the Olympics because
Speaker 5: I was offended by the idea of some drag queen's
Speaker 5: scumbag being allowed to carry the torch. Well, and you know,
Speaker 5: you know right, I mean I'd already made up my mind.
Speaker 5: But again, then thinking about what they shoved in our
Speaker 5: face with that opening ceremony, are you really surprised about
Speaker 5: any of this? I mean, they want to destroy any
Speaker 5: vestige of human nature being a definance here right, human beings,
Speaker 5: and that's what's in your face. Oh no, No, we were designing,
Speaker 5: we were trying to be inclusive, we were trying to
Speaker 5: offend it. If you were offended, that's basically your fault
Speaker 5: because you're not inclusive.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, John Well, I would just say I had
Speaker 4: this love hate relationship with the Olympics because I love
Speaker 4: the resurrection of an ancient ceremony to identify the best
Speaker 4: in humanity, right, faster, stronger, whatever, the other one was higher, right,
Speaker 4: But it also represents the worst of this sort of
Speaker 4: international elite, globalized you know, not NGOs, right, the Olympic, right,
Speaker 4: you saw in full display at these Olympics like you
Speaker 4: do every Olympics. What the you know, the international elite
Speaker 4: thinks is good for us? Right, and it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: let's let's make you know, let's make mockeries of everything
Speaker 4: in the Bible by transgendering all of it.
Speaker 5: Well, let's remind ourselves who came out strongly in favor
Speaker 5: of it. Our good friend from Utah, mid Rock, what
Speaker 5: a yeah, yeah, of course, you know, remember.
Speaker 1: Right in two thousand whatever, it was right and perfect job.
Speaker 5: For Lake City. But but but imagine actually the the
Speaker 5: impact of statement against it by Mitt Romney might have had.
Speaker 5: But he can't do it. He just can't do it.
Speaker 5: He's turned into such a rhino squish that he couldn't
Speaker 5: possibly come out on the side of good any longer.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry. And and of course, you know, doctor Jill said,
Speaker 5: we're never going to be able to reach those heights
Speaker 5: when we have the next time, when we have the
Speaker 5: Olympics in the United States. We just can't possibly beat
Speaker 5: how great friends did this. She's such an idiot. Yeah,
Speaker 5: my god, I'm so happy that she's being pushed out. Uh.
Speaker 5: And I wonder are they going to pay if if, if,
Speaker 5: if Trump wins, will they still keep playing the First
Speaker 5: Lady's Hail to the First Lady music for Milania? Or
Speaker 5: will they play for Doug m Hoff?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, well the first Gentleman. Yeah.
Speaker 3: By the way, I mean, I hope you both fir
Speaker 3: saw baby. At the end of the Hostages coming home,
Speaker 3: when they're all off and you know, off of their families,
Speaker 3: Biden gets on the plane that wasn't going anywhere.
Speaker 1: My joke was, darn it.
Speaker 3: We almost exchanged Biden for the hostages because the plane
Speaker 3: was going to go back to I don't know.
Speaker 5: And that I found that, you know, that's hard for
Speaker 5: the course. You know, what really offended me was that
Speaker 5: he and Kamala stood in front of the families, so
Speaker 5: that the first person that they had to it's all
Speaker 5: about them, every moment, every day, And there was yesterday.
Speaker 5: I saw a video of Kamala getting out of an
Speaker 5: suv to go, and it said she'd spent half an
Speaker 5: hour inside studying her speech. She gets out of the suv,
Speaker 5: you know, the secret Service there opens the door. You
Speaker 5: have to see the video just to get the sense
Speaker 5: of what a god awful excuse for a human being
Speaker 5: she is. She doesn't acknowledge anybody opening the door helping
Speaker 5: her out, and she starts walking to the podium and
Speaker 5: realizes she's still holding onto her cell phone, so without
Speaker 5: looking back, she goes like the show, Sorry you can't
Speaker 5: see it in that, but she takes her arm and
Speaker 5: pushes it backwards and expects one of her aides to
Speaker 5: just run up and take it from her, without making
Speaker 5: eye contact, without a yes, thank you. With that, I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't understand how people can be so darn ugly.
Speaker 5: But that's why I sent you guys the article that surfaced.
Speaker 5: It's not getting a lot of press, of course, from
Speaker 5: back when she was Attorney general in California, some Democrat
Speaker 5: had his son be an intern in her office, and
Speaker 5: all the stories that we've heard about her being just
Speaker 5: you know, there are no words for me to describe
Speaker 5: how awful that is.
Speaker 4: Right, Can I ask you too, political science? Can I
Speaker 4: ask you two political scientists a question? Though? It is like,
Speaker 4: I think she's done really well though these last two weeks.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm not saying I would vote for it.
Speaker 5: But like the script, but.
Speaker 4: I mean, but like, if you just look objectively at it, right,
Speaker 4: she's pulled them out from this big hole because of Biden.
Speaker 4: Raised three hundred million dollars in two weeks and looks
Speaker 4: like she's pulled even in most of the battle and
Speaker 4: in all the battleground states. I mean, if you were them,
Speaker 4: you would be really happy with pulling this off.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's everything's working, John Boy, you were really having an
Speaker 1: off day, aren't you.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying I supped like that. If we if
Speaker 4: we were in the same position on the other side,
Speaker 4: I suppose we had, you know, like an eight ninety
Speaker 4: five year old candidate, and we pulled a switcheroo like
Speaker 4: this and basically brought the race back to where it
Speaker 4: was before the first debate. We'd be overjoyed yeah.
Speaker 3: And I hope they keep being overjoyed that way and overconfident,
Speaker 3: because look, she's done no interviews, almost no appearances that
Speaker 3: weren't heavily scripted Lucretian mentions.
Speaker 1: I still think the template here it won't be as
Speaker 1: big as swing, but I still think the.
Speaker 3: Template here is do Coccus Bush in eighty eight when
Speaker 3: it was a twenty five point net swing between August
Speaker 3: and election day in November, and all that was required
Speaker 3: was to point out that this, remember John for an
Speaker 3: awful of Americans. I mean, yeah, they've heard Kamdell Harris's
Speaker 3: vice president, but they know nothing about her, people who
Speaker 3: don't follow these things closely, and they're going to learn
Speaker 3: about her, as I say, in due course. The Trump campaign,
Speaker 3: I think, will drip feed it effectively starting next month
Speaker 3: probably is one they should do it, and putting her
Speaker 3: on the defensive her issues.
Speaker 1: But this has not surprised me at all.
Speaker 3: I'm surprised he's actually not seriously in the lead. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's only got one or two polls to show her
Speaker 3: actually ahead of Trump in a few states. Trump still
Speaker 3: leads narrowly, but leads consistently in all the poll averages.
Speaker 3: He's still got the inside track to win, and she's
Speaker 3: done that. She's gonna Oh, by the way, her word
Speaker 3: solid on that, I've got it out.
Speaker 5: Yes, So in two weeks she has not had a
Speaker 5: press conference. She has I mean, okay, I was a
Speaker 5: little worried, almost agreed with John. The first speech she
Speaker 5: gave after when she went to biden reelection headquarters, after
Speaker 5: Biden d texted out and gave a speech, and she
Speaker 5: kept completely to script. And you know, we're sitting there watching.
Speaker 5: It's not a bad speech. She didn't do a bad job.
Speaker 5: This is the first time the first thing she said
Speaker 5: when she wasn't on script, and that was when she's
Speaker 5: standing there when the hostages were returned. She says, and
Speaker 5: I quote, this is just an extraordinary testament to the
Speaker 5: importance of having a president who understands the power of
Speaker 5: diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the
Speaker 5: significance of diplomacy.
Speaker 3: There we go, that's our camel that we've come to
Speaker 3: know and love, right, and you know she can' This
Speaker 3: is my point, is that they're doing so well despite
Speaker 3: all the things you said.
Speaker 5: Because of the media gasm.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's too too easy for us in the
Speaker 4: conservative world to blame the media all the time.
Speaker 1: Well, look it.
Speaker 3: Some other time I'll go into I should Well, it
Speaker 3: takes a while to go through this. I've actually got
Speaker 3: a chapter in this book called coming out next month
Speaker 3: that Michael Walsh is at it called against the Corporate Media,
Speaker 3: and I go through the social science data from Tim
Speaker 3: Gross close about he I think and others have. Well, actually,
Speaker 3: let me give my witness Barack Obama. Barack Obama in
Speaker 3: twenty twelve said if it weren't for Fox News, I'd
Speaker 3: be five points stronger than I am. Now, even Democrats
Speaker 3: understand the media give them a boost, and there's some
Speaker 3: good data to back that up.
Speaker 1: But for another day, we'll talk about it.
Speaker 5: Now Fox News is on their side.
Speaker 3: Well okay, so but look, I want to draw it
Speaker 3: back to the point that you you know, look, Cammel's
Speaker 3: bad behavior and sort of a fullness as a boss
Speaker 3: is well known to people in California.
Speaker 1: I think I've mentioned before.
Speaker 3: Liberal democrats I know who work as career employees at
Speaker 3: the Attorney General's Office hated her. I mean didn't just
Speaker 3: weren't just critical, they hated her actively. One lady I
Speaker 3: met asked for transfer to from Sacramento to the Fresno
Speaker 3: branch office to get away from Herris.
Speaker 1: It's that bad.
Speaker 5: The article Steve really quickly. More than that, though, I mean,
Speaker 5: those are people that are attorneys and you know, accomplished
Speaker 5: people on their own that she treats like yes, rap, Now,
Speaker 5: I sometimes do that as a matter of course. If
Speaker 5: the hoiity toitier people are the less likely I am
Speaker 5: to treat them well. I treat everybody well, I know.
Speaker 5: But what she But what really gets me is that
Speaker 5: article I was mentioning. The young intern, young male intern
Speaker 5: was told you are not allowed to look at her.
Speaker 5: You're not allowed to make eye contact, You're not allowed
Speaker 5: to address her except when she walks in in the
Speaker 5: office in the morning. You are to stand at attention
Speaker 5: as she walks by and say good morning, General.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, good morning General.
Speaker 5: And then and then the rest of the day she
Speaker 5: spends screaming at them, blaming them for her failures, which
Speaker 5: are legion, and using every profanity under the sun to
Speaker 5: call them names.
Speaker 3: All right, but this draws back to my general theme again,
Speaker 3: which is you post a question in your email to us, why.
Speaker 1: Are so many liberals such miserable people.
Speaker 3: And my field theory of this is, well, again, let's
Speaker 3: look at some data. Liberals tend to be higher levels
Speaker 3: of mental illness. They're unhappy by the Conservatives are much
Speaker 3: happier than liberals.
Speaker 1: And there's all kinds of reasons for this.
Speaker 3: By the way, what liberals say about why conservatives are
Speaker 3: happy or just ridiculous sometimes. And I think there, Now,
Speaker 3: this isn't universal, it's not all of them, but I
Speaker 3: think what explains a lot of people on the left
Speaker 3: like this is is they are at war with human nature,
Speaker 3: human nature as it manifests itself in economics. They're at
Speaker 3: war with human nature on you know, gender preferences and
Speaker 3: self identification, and when the world doesn't conform to their dreams,
Speaker 3: it makes them angry and bitter and miserable. Combine that
Speaker 3: with the progressive premise that they are the elect you know,
Speaker 3: they're going to be leading us into this glorious future.
Speaker 3: That of course, if you're a nineteen or twenty year
Speaker 3: old intern in the office, you know, maybe you're a
Speaker 3: loyal voter or something like that, but you're still a
Speaker 3: peon to them, right because you're someone who needs to
Speaker 3: be led you're not an equal citizen because they don't
Speaker 3: really believe in real equality as we understand it.
Speaker 1: And I actually do think that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can play this out at great length,
Speaker 3: but I think that's the real reason why. And again
Speaker 3: it comes back to what I say is the central
Speaker 3: political question of our time is human nature.
Speaker 1: And I'll stop there, and John, John.
Speaker 5: I want to add one thing to that so that
Speaker 5: you can respond to the whole thing, and that is
Speaker 5: I was the one step further, Steve, And note that
Speaker 5: it is a crisis of I hate to use this word,
Speaker 5: but I don't want to make this too religious in nature.
Speaker 5: It's a crisis of spirituality. In other words, if if
Speaker 5: your God is the progressive god of will to power
Speaker 5: or whatever how whatever it is, of environmentalism and so on,
Speaker 5: that's an empty god, you know. And so so the
Speaker 5: biggest problem is that if you have nothing to believe in,
Speaker 5: that's if you don't believe in good and evil, you
Speaker 5: don't believe in God. You don't have to be a
Speaker 5: you know, converted Catholic to be happy and understand there's
Speaker 5: something greater than you in the universe. Is I guess
Speaker 5: what I'm trying to say without being offensive to anybody,
Speaker 5: but what we find are people who have at least
Speaker 5: some understanding that the universe is ordered by something greater
Speaker 5: than themselves. They are happier, and that leads to a
Speaker 5: recognition of your of the common humanity that you have
Speaker 5: with everyone footnote.
Speaker 3: Footnote is that the day to show that religious conservatives
Speaker 3: are the happiest people of all in America. Way, John,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you want to jump on any
Speaker 3: of that or not. You think we're all crazy philosophers,
Speaker 3: You're sort of.
Speaker 4: No, No, I I I get the point. I'm just
Speaker 4: not sure whether it really is what's going on in
Speaker 4: our politics right now. Like I don't think Trump represents
Speaker 4: natural rights and natural well, I could only see the arguer,
Speaker 4: you know, Harris represents.
Speaker 3: No no.
Speaker 4: But you were saying, you know that, you know this
Speaker 4: is the central political debate and it comes through in
Speaker 4: this presidential election. I could see how Harris represents this
Speaker 4: kind of the progressive view of government and the ability
Speaker 4: to basically just run and manage everything and change human nature.
Speaker 4: But I'm not sure to see the Trump, you know,
Speaker 4: maga campaign as you know as the second coming of
Speaker 4: Lincoln and the Republicans of this old war.
Speaker 5: So I'm driving home.
Speaker 4: I find the Trump campaign's policies to be this kind of,
Speaker 4: I don't know, not really particularly well thought out, sort
Speaker 4: of instinctive reaction to a great deal of change happening
Speaker 4: too quickly.
Speaker 3: All right, well that's stipulate, perfect vessel. But Lucreas, you
Speaker 3: had the last word, and then I want to press on.
Speaker 5: All I want to say is is I was driving
Speaker 5: home from work yesterday with the Laura Ingram Show on.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 5: When it went to commercial, she said, We're going to
Speaker 5: have President Trump here talking about his religious beliefs when
Speaker 5: we come back from break, and I swear to God,
Speaker 5: I almost changed a channel because I thought a little
Speaker 5: bit like John, I don't want to hear this, you know, I, uh,
Speaker 5: this is kind of cringey. It was. He was actually
Speaker 5: quite good. He didn't he says. He says, I don't
Speaker 5: believe in But he didn't say it like this, but
Speaker 5: he probably believed it or not said it better shoving
Speaker 5: my religious beliefs down people's throats, he says, But I
Speaker 5: do believe that. I believe in God, I believe in
Speaker 5: good and evil. I believe that this country that the
Speaker 5: trouble that this country is in is because of a
Speaker 5: lack of religious faith. He said, all the all the
Speaker 5: data show that. And then she said, do you pray?
Speaker 5: He says, I pray every day. I pray for my family. First,
Speaker 5: I pray for my country. He says, as crazy as
Speaker 5: it sounds, I pray for the world because the world's
Speaker 5: basically screwed up. And it was a It was a
Speaker 5: thoughtful response. John. I think you actually would have been surprised,
Speaker 5: because I was. I was expecting some kind of a
Speaker 5: little bit more trumpy in response. But but I don't
Speaker 5: know that anybody could listen to it and not say, Okay,
Speaker 5: that means well there.
Speaker 3: He channels my hometown neighbor, General Patton, who, when the
Speaker 3: chaplain saw the Bible Wise Nightstand said, you read the
Speaker 3: Bible in patents.
Speaker 4: I mean what you're talking about. So this is the
Speaker 4: thing that disappoints me in conservativism is, yes, there's this
Speaker 4: maga movement, but I don't think it really has a
Speaker 4: political theory behind it. You just laying out one that
Speaker 4: I wish they had, or wish they promoted.
Speaker 5: The constitution absolutely that the Constitution has been set aside
Speaker 5: for the progressive project, and they want the Constitution back.
Speaker 5: They don't want special favors, they want the Constitution back.
Speaker 5: And I think that's what unites Mega more than anything.
Speaker 3: Well, that allows me to go on to my last
Speaker 3: little humbly for the day. See, John, we default in metaphysics,
Speaker 3: and you don't have a metaphysical bomb in your body,
Speaker 3: as we have accused me of God.
Speaker 4: That's why I'm so healthy and happy. You know, That's
Speaker 4: what you should have said, is the happiest people are conservative,
Speaker 4: non metaphysical people. Well, all right, so whatever that means, we've.
Speaker 3: Been falling down on the job a little bit on
Speaker 3: our annual or irregular installments of political philosophy.
Speaker 1: Brief story. My very first day.
Speaker 3: In graduate school more than forty years ago. Now, I thought, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to study political philosophy. I better try and
Speaker 3: figure out what it's about. So I pulled off and
Speaker 3: read in one sitting Leos Strauss's great essay What is
Speaker 3: Political Philosophy? And I can't believe now I read and
Speaker 3: it took me like three hours. It's a very dense article,
Speaker 3: it's very profound. Really, I was insane because I didn't
Speaker 3: really understand it.
Speaker 1: Of course, so.
Speaker 4: Oh this is instead of as Bible. Look what's next
Speaker 4: to my reading.
Speaker 1: Quill? You know there's and then here's the other.
Speaker 4: One I have right next to it that I've been reading.
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 4: Oh, Carl Smith, there's hope. I'm where I'm like, where
Speaker 4: is my decoder ring? I really need to go to
Speaker 4: six years of Claremont Graduate University to get the glossary
Speaker 4: for all this.
Speaker 5: Not anymore, not anymore there.
Speaker 3: I've been rereading the essay very slowly, like one page
Speaker 3: a day, and puzzling over it because every sentences got
Speaker 3: some stuff in it. There's a short passage that jumped
Speaker 3: out of me the other day that I think is
Speaker 3: very apropos of our educational crisis and connects to the
Speaker 3: whole ruck that's about Israel and Gaza.
Speaker 1: So and I'm gonna share it's very short.
Speaker 3: After this long section where Straus critique social science quite skillfully,
Speaker 3: he does say this, there's the first of the two sentences.
Speaker 3: It is prudent to grant that there are value conflicts
Speaker 3: which cannot in fact be settled by human reason. But
Speaker 3: if we cannot decide which of two mountains whose peaks
Speaker 3: are hidden by clouds is higher than the other, Cannot
Speaker 3: we decide that a mountain is higher than a mole hill? Okay,
Speaker 3: you know mountain Molehill's fine. The next sentence is the
Speaker 3: one that applies to the Gaza war.
Speaker 5: By the way, John, Well, yes, but this is.
Speaker 3: No hang on a mante This is actually isn't I
Speaker 3: think about Prudence Lucretia.
Speaker 1: It's something that Prudence more. Yes, let me do.
Speaker 3: This sentence and then rhyme people the story behind it.
Speaker 3: If we cannot decide regarding a war between two neighboring
Speaker 3: nations which have been fighting each other for centuries, which
Speaker 3: nations cause is more?
Speaker 2: Just?
Speaker 3: Cannot we decide that Jezebel's action against Naboth was inexcusable? Well,
Speaker 3: I had to go back to first Kings to read
Speaker 3: that story because I didn't remember my old testament.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: Naboth was the name of King Ahab. Ahab wanted Naboth's vineyard,
Speaker 3: offered to buy it, and I'll get you another vieward.
Speaker 5: It's my ancestral home. I can't sell it to you. Yes,
Speaker 5: this would have to keep going.
Speaker 3: Uh So what happens is is neighbous is No, it's
Speaker 3: been in the family. I want to keep it, thank you,
Speaker 3: but no thanks, and Aheb is very uh disappointed this
Speaker 3: couldn't happen. Jezebel decides to whip up a mob telling
Speaker 3: lies about Naboth, and Naboth had been uh what a heretic,
Speaker 3: a scoffer of God, and whips up a mob.
Speaker 1: To stone Naboth to death so you realize it was fun.
Speaker 3: Here is a told a massive lie that costs naboth
Speaker 3: is life.
Speaker 1: In other words, what happened in his vineyard?
Speaker 3: And then of course a right, But the point is
Speaker 3: is a monstrous lie. And I think the parallel to
Speaker 3: October seven is exact right there. Right, people say, oh,
Speaker 3: Israel and Gaza, and you know Israel's been mean and
Speaker 3: the and uh, you know you hear our Left saying
Speaker 3: that the Palestinians are justified in resistance, and here Strauss
Speaker 3: is saying it ought not to be difficult to make
Speaker 3: a moral distinction between doesn't matter the two sides. I've
Speaker 3: been fighting each other for centuries. What was done on
Speaker 3: October seventh is monstrous, full stop, and are Left cannot
Speaker 3: admit that. I think for a lot of reasons, but
Speaker 3: one of them is the defects of our moral education
Speaker 3: and our universities. We have trained generations of students now
Speaker 3: to be moral illiterates, and they get into newsrooms. All right,
Speaker 3: I can stop there, but that is my political homily
Speaker 3: for the day. And once again, you know, Strauss identifies
Speaker 3: a problem and a very compact passage there. And of
Speaker 3: course it assumes some biblical literacy. I had to go
Speaker 3: look up a story because I didn't remember it. I
Speaker 3: didn't steve what you didn't have to, of course, not
Speaker 3: because you're the great crea.
Speaker 5: Well, actually, you know. Before you know, before I went
Speaker 5: through my atheist questioning stage. Before that, I spent a
Speaker 5: lot of time. I've read the Bible through many times.
Speaker 1: I don't remember those old stories, but.
Speaker 5: I because that was memorable. I don't remember all of them.
Speaker 5: But and I remember I'm also elector in my church,
Speaker 5: so I actually read those stories now.
Speaker 4: And then I used to read it in church because
Speaker 4: the ceremonies are so boring.
Speaker 5: Well that's because.
Speaker 4: It's a whole it's a whole hour listening to these guys.
Speaker 4: I'd rather read the Bible in the back.
Speaker 3: By the way, Andrews had a great we'll move to
Speaker 3: an and Andrew Roberts had a great line about how
Speaker 3: we used to know we used to call the Anglican
Speaker 3: Church the hoary party at prayers is but now they've
Speaker 3: moved so far left it's really the Angler Church is
Speaker 3: now the labor party, not at prayer, which it's good,
Speaker 3: all right?
Speaker 1: Did John, you have any any anything you want to
Speaker 1: weigh in on that before we wrap it up?
Speaker 4: No? No, I still don't have an answer to any
Speaker 4: of my questions. But why is Kamala Harris doing so well? Why?
Speaker 6: John?
Speaker 1: Why it's all funny?
Speaker 4: It needs holes? The Post? I mean, the Post don't lie,
Speaker 4: do they Steve Well.
Speaker 5: Yes they do.
Speaker 1: But they're transient, John, I'll put it that way.
Speaker 4: So they trance there, their trans there, transsects, intersects.
Speaker 1: Spool up some bees for us. We can get out
Speaker 1: of here.
Speaker 5: Okay, I have to do that. I've got them. But
Speaker 5: we we haven't talked any more about the conspiracy theory
Speaker 5: last week in my hat and I'm not going into it,
Speaker 5: but I do want you to know John, that that
Speaker 5: probably the against both of you. Actually, the most excoriating
Speaker 5: comments I've ever seen were about your naivety about what's about.
Speaker 4: The FBI I'm sure the comments. I'm sure like, of
Speaker 4: course the FBI isn't on a conspiracy.
Speaker 5: No, it was mostly you guys are idiots for not
Speaker 5: opening your eyes to what's really happening. But anyway, okay,
Speaker 5: but but but so just I'm not.
Speaker 4: Really like what percentage of the comments actually take this
Speaker 4: view this disturb.
Speaker 5: This last time?
Speaker 4: The comments people who think that there was a conspiracy
Speaker 4: to assassinate Trump. No, no, and or the FBI is
Speaker 4: covering it up.
Speaker 5: Eight percent who thought you guys were being idiots?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 4: Oh well, that could be true on any number of subjects, right,
Speaker 4: and it is.
Speaker 5: Yes, okay, so but I had to mention that only
Speaker 5: so that I could bring up this one. New video
Speaker 5: shows Trump shooter on roof holding huge signs saying I'm
Speaker 5: going to shoot Trump.
Speaker 1: I saw that one, right, Okay, all.
Speaker 5: Right, let's say we didn't I know, Steve wanted to
Speaker 5: spend a little time. We didn't really get to it.
Speaker 5: Nine to eleven, Mastermind given plea deal after FBI confirms
Speaker 5: he was not present at at Capital on January sixth.
Speaker 4: That's pretty good, all right.
Speaker 5: Let's move to the media gasm over Kamala and uh,
Speaker 5: van Jones being so upset about Biden. A couple of
Speaker 5: those flooding at CNN headquarters traced to Van Jones crying
Speaker 5: again and then president to lie in state until election.
Speaker 1: That's cut to the drunken.
Speaker 5: Kamala mistakenly picks wrong Shapiro for VP, and of course
Speaker 5: it's a picture of Ben Shapiro. I'm sorry. Uh, Massad
Speaker 5: takes out hamas leader with Mike Lindell's my exploding pillow.
Speaker 1: That turned out to be true?
Speaker 5: Yeah, was it a pillow?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know, but it's still fun, right, it's
Speaker 1: uh yeah.
Speaker 5: White House, this is for you, Joan white House is
Speaker 5: Sure's journalists. They only have to pretend Kamala is likable
Speaker 5: for a couple more months. Wait, wait, wait, a couple
Speaker 5: more I have them already to go. So DEI hire
Speaker 5: is a slur, explains head of DEI Hiring Department.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's a real headline.
Speaker 5: True, it is a real headline. And to end with
Speaker 5: the Olympics, I don't even a main killeth. However, you said,
Speaker 5: when's first ever gold medal in freestyle domestic violence?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Right, No, that's also close to the truth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, John, Let's get out.
Speaker 4: Always drink your whiskey, meat and place holder for what
Speaker 4: we're going to do. Let's go Brandy for Comma, Right, Steve, you.
Speaker 3: Just waste another perfectly hour listening to the three Whiskey
Speaker 3: Happy Hour, unburdened by what has been, but suiting to
Speaker 3: be burdened, maybe by what could be.
Speaker 7: Bye, everybody.
Speaker 1: Ricochet joined the conversation.