Speaker 1: I'm guessing though, you're going to get a flood of
Speaker 1: gift packages containing Walmart time X watches from people who
Speaker 1: say you don't know what time it is or something
Speaker 1: like No. Of course, and I think too that I
Speaker 1: can say that in my years.
Speaker 2: Of public life, that I welcome this.
Speaker 1: Kind of examination because people have got to know whether
Speaker 1: or not their president's a crup.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not a crup. It's the Ricochet Podcast with
Speaker 3: Charles C. W. A. Cook and Steven Hayward and James Lellax.
Speaker 3: Today we're going to be talking about misery. We will
Speaker 3: have none of that here. Thank you. Let's episodes a podcast.
Speaker 2: The objectives I've outlined to you again, I repeat them
Speaker 2: because I see these reports of like as the use
Speaker 2: of talk clear on what objectives are there.
Speaker 1: We've been as us even bossy to be from the
Speaker 1: very first night of what the objectives of this mission on.
Speaker 2: We're going to destroy their factories that make missiles and
Speaker 2: rockets and grown, We're going to destroy their navy.
Speaker 1: We're going to destroy their air force, and we are
Speaker 1: going to significantly destroy their missile launchers so they.
Speaker 2: Can never hide behind these things to get a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 3: Well, welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, episode number seven
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty two. Why don't you just mosing on
Speaker 3: over at rigochet dot com and be a member. You
Speaker 3: can be part of the most stimulating conversations and community
Speaker 3: on the web. That place you've been looking for, that's Ricochet.
Speaker 3: I'm James Lilax in the place that I was looking
Speaker 3: for and found in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And it's a beautiful, cold,
Speaker 3: crisp day out. There should be a little bit more
Speaker 3: spring like, but you know, we had seventy five degrees
Speaker 3: two days ago and today it's spring. All the flowers
Speaker 3: in because it's below freezing. And then Stephen Hayward in California,
Speaker 3: I presume in his bookline study with his skylight above him.
Speaker 3: If you're watching the video, it's kind of funny. It
Speaker 3: just looks like there's this sort of angelic beam of
Speaker 3: heaven coming down into an illuminatu your nogin and explain
Speaker 3: your insights and the rest of it. Charles Seedle, your
Speaker 3: cook will be along in just a second. We'll have
Speaker 3: to upgrade him for his tardiness and make him. We'll
Speaker 3: be like the class. You know, when the when the
Speaker 3: you know, the bad kid comes in late and the
Speaker 3: teacher gives him the look and the rest of it,
Speaker 3: and he has to put a piece of paper down
Speaker 3: explaining his absence. But before he gets here, let's settle
Speaker 3: the Iran war. So Stephen President says, going to unleash
Speaker 3: hell end quote on Iranian energy infrastructure maybe a good
Speaker 3: idea if we want the state to thrive post liberation.
Speaker 3: But it's a five day halt on strikes to open
Speaker 3: negotiations about the strait and the rest of it. Everyone's
Speaker 3: saying contradictory messages. Everybody is saying backing off, everybody's saying failure.
Speaker 3: I just think that we ought not to believe anything
Speaker 3: that we hear, because it's entirely possible that people are
Speaker 3: saying things in public that actually don't comport with what's
Speaker 3: going on in private. There's smoking, misdirection and the rest
Speaker 3: of it. That would seem to be the canny thing
Speaker 3: to do in war.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, there's several scenarios you can play out
Speaker 1: that are quite plausible. And yeah, I don't know anything either.
Speaker 1: I'll just say I have a general rule right now,
Speaker 1: which is, well, I'll put it this way, how can
Speaker 1: we tell that we are winning this war very strongly,
Speaker 1: as someone might say, because the media says it's a quagmire,
Speaker 1: right right, I mean really, I think you can't go
Speaker 1: too far wrong saying whatever the media says, the opposite
Speaker 1: is probably closer to the truth. Now, I do think
Speaker 1: that this sort of day to day bouncing ball. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's Trump trying to call them the markets. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: playing for time until the eighty second airborne gets in
Speaker 1: position so they can do a serious landing to take
Speaker 1: carg Island. I think carg Island is again, I don't
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know anything about this, really, I
Speaker 1: don't have deep expertise.
Speaker 3: But never stopped any of us before, of course.
Speaker 4: Not that's right.
Speaker 1: So I mean, look, I think it's, uh, it's game
Speaker 1: over for the Iranian economy and their leverage if we
Speaker 1: take their main oil terminal.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And and now you know, we can force the straights
Speaker 1: open if we want. They're the risks, of course.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I think maybe he's thinking, well, maybe we
Speaker 1: kill enough Iranians to destroy enough places where they're finally
Speaker 1: going to come to their senses and make a sensible deal,
Speaker 1: which right now they seem to be resisting. So I
Speaker 1: don't know what's happening either, But you know, the track
Speaker 1: record so far is you never know with Trump, right,
Speaker 1: we now know before the war started that he was
Speaker 1: playing for time while they got everything in order and
Speaker 1: really forming a serious battle plan that they said would
Speaker 1: be four to six weeks of taking out the And
Speaker 1: so I don't know.
Speaker 4: Maybe Iron surprised us by attacking.
Speaker 1: So many of its neighbors as hard as they have.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if we expected that or not. I again,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I'm still reasonably confident. I know
Speaker 1: Charlie thinks the clock is running, and I'm starting to
Speaker 1: warm up to this point of view that the domestic
Speaker 1: politics are going to get increasingly difficult for Trump just
Speaker 1: because but right now, I'm just going to sit back and,
Speaker 1: as someone likes to say, we'll just have to see
Speaker 1: what happens.
Speaker 3: Indeed, when you say they're going to strike a deal
Speaker 3: with the Iranians, who exactly? I think, well, right, that's
Speaker 3: the question. Who's left. Are we going to be negotiating
Speaker 3: with mull as we are not? Are we going to
Speaker 3: have to probably hold our nose and talk to some
Speaker 3: people that we wouldn't like to because they may have
Speaker 3: had something to do, but they're you know, the whole
Speaker 3: argument about whether debathification was the necessary thing to do
Speaker 3: in a rock and you know, whether or not they
Speaker 3: should have left a structure in place and then just plug,
Speaker 3: you know, our strong man in as opposed to doing
Speaker 3: what they did. That's something for history to decide something.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, something I've not heard anybody talk about
Speaker 1: that surprises me a little bit is recognizing a new
Speaker 1: government in other words, like we did in World War
Speaker 1: Two by recognizing the gaul as the legitimate government of
Speaker 1: France or you know, the Polish government in exile and
Speaker 1: so forth. I don't know why we aren't saying something
Speaker 1: like or thinking about saying, gosh, there's no more government
Speaker 1: in Iran.
Speaker 4: All their leaders are gone. It's chaos. We don't even
Speaker 4: know who to negotiate with.
Speaker 1: And there is a plan with the former shaw Son
Speaker 1: that I've seen, and supposedly he is ready to step
Speaker 1: up and organize a government, a transitional government.
Speaker 4: Why why aren't we thinking about saying.
Speaker 1: We now recognize this is the legitimate government of Iran
Speaker 1: And of course it's a you know, bold political move.
Speaker 1: And how does that actually work anymore. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's something that I think could be interesting to try.
Speaker 1: Maybe the fear is it just starts a civil war
Speaker 1: in Iran, but that may happen anyway.
Speaker 3: Well, joy us with two cold buckets of water to
Speaker 3: tell us why if is sticking? It is? Charles W. Cook, Charlie,
Speaker 3: how are you doing good? How are you so you're
Speaker 3: saying the clock is ticking? That time is of the
Speaker 3: essence people are calling it a quagmire? Is if the
Speaker 3: definition from modern Quakemier isn't up in Ukraine, which would
Speaker 3: seem to be quagmarish. It's not a quagmire at all.
Speaker 3: It's just been and it's been going on curiously off stage,
Speaker 3: it feels like for quite some time now. But you
Speaker 3: think that domestic political calculations are going to enter into it.
Speaker 3: Tell us why?
Speaker 5: Well, partly because the war was never discussed or debated
Speaker 5: or explained.
Speaker 3: Detail.
Speaker 5: Partly because Trump does have a history of starting things
Speaker 5: capriciously and ending things capriciously. I don't mean by that
Speaker 5: this term you see thrown around taco. Trump always chickens out,
Speaker 5: but he is bothered by the stage of the bond
Speaker 5: markets that the stock market, oil and so on. And
Speaker 5: when you haven't laid out a clear plan and you
Speaker 5: don't have the public on your side, which he doesn't,
Speaker 5: then those things loom large.
Speaker 3: I have gone, No, there should be more bully pulpiting
Speaker 3: going on. Don't you think there should be more explainers?
Speaker 3: There should be a speech from the Oval Office with
Speaker 3: flags behind. That's kind of what I want more of.
Speaker 5: Well, I do in theory and in practice, I think
Speaker 5: he should have done it. Irrespective, but his ability to
Speaker 5: stick to a topic is, let's say, limited, so I
Speaker 5: slightly wonder whether it would have been as useful as say,
Speaker 5: I President Reagan had done it. But yeah, I do
Speaker 5: think he should have done that. And I must say,
Speaker 5: for those who think that I'm couching some hidden opposition
Speaker 5: to the war in these criticisms, I've become more hawkish
Speaker 5: as this gone on, not less. I was just saying
Speaker 5: as much on the Editors podcast. I think that there
Speaker 5: is absolutely no doubt that the case against Iran is solid.
Speaker 5: If the big problem with Iraq was that many of
Speaker 5: the claims that were made weren't true, either at the
Speaker 5: time they were made or turned out to be untrue,
Speaker 5: that's not true of Iran. The Iranian regime is exactly
Speaker 5: as described. The Iranians were producing weapons that they were
Speaker 5: not allowed to have. The Iranians did for years kill Americans,
Speaker 5: and I've had the last one really emphasized to me
Speaker 5: in the last few weeks when I've spoken to veterans
Speaker 5: about this. I live in an area full of veterans,
Speaker 5: jackson Ville's and Naval Base. Also veterans have come to
Speaker 5: some of the events that I've put on in the
Speaker 5: last two or three weeks. And yeah, they're self selecting
Speaker 5: conservatives by definition at those events less so here, but
Speaker 5: all of them, all of them are pumped because they
Speaker 5: also the same thing.
Speaker 2: Especially those who served in a rock in Afghanistan.
Speaker 5: Those guys killed my friends. This isn't debatable. The question
Speaker 5: is whether we should go in sure, and how we
Speaker 5: should do it. But I've become more hawkish because I
Speaker 5: don't think that there is a strong case against hitting
Speaker 5: Iran on the basis that Iran is bad.
Speaker 4: It is right, I agree it.
Speaker 1: But the thing about James point about a you know,
Speaker 1: an Oval office speech with the flags behind you, I
Speaker 1: think that way too, because I remember, you know Reagan
Speaker 1: or you know Nixon, earlier presidents. Trump's not very good
Speaker 1: at those, you know, he's sort of stiff the few
Speaker 1: times he's tried it. I also think it does not
Speaker 1: get the audience that used to get right. It used
Speaker 1: to be when there were only three networks that did
Speaker 1: the so called roadblock right. So the wherever you turn
Speaker 1: on your TV, you're going to get the president for
Speaker 1: half an hour or an hour, and that's not true anymore.
Speaker 4: So I don't know what works anymore.
Speaker 1: The crowded media landscape and are sort of customizing our tainment.
Speaker 1: Who watches TV. Everybody's on TikTok or Instagram or whatever.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I think it's a harder communications environment.
Speaker 1: That's not to excuse Trump the administration, Charlie for what
Speaker 1: you say of having a coherent message. I do worry
Speaker 1: that at the back of that is Trump's improvisational characteristics,
Speaker 1: that what he wants above all else is for Trump
Speaker 1: to win or be able to claim a win, and
Speaker 1: if that means leaving the current regime in place with
Speaker 1: what looked like acceptable terms, he would do that, even
Speaker 1: after saying, you know, in January, we are coming to
Speaker 1: help the Iranian people throw off this evil regime.
Speaker 4: Well, you know which is it? We need to either
Speaker 4: see it through or something else. I don't know it.
Speaker 4: It is perplexing and troubling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to leave the regime in place at the end
Speaker 3: of all of this would be not a stab at
Speaker 3: the back. I hate that phrase. It would be a
Speaker 3: gross abrogation of duty. Now that you start this thing,
Speaker 3: I mean's one of those of you break it, you
Speaker 3: owned things, as Colin Paul used to say. Of course,
Speaker 3: nobody can quotes him that much anymore. Yeah, Supreme Court
Speaker 3: Scota is going to hear arguments on birthright citizenship. I
Speaker 3: love the name of this. In this case it's Trump v. Barbara,
Speaker 3: which just somehow sums up our age more than anything else.
Speaker 3: Which one of you constitutional scholars would like to take
Speaker 3: a crack at this and tell and think, reading your
Speaker 3: tea leaves which way you think it's going to go.
Speaker 5: I think you should start, Steve, all right, Well, I'll
Speaker 5: give it a try.
Speaker 1: I haven't been keeping up with the briefs on this case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's going to be argued I think Thursday this week.
Speaker 1: I haven't been keeping up with the briefs. One thing
Speaker 1: that struck me though, is I should make pub explain
Speaker 1: for listeners. The clause of the fourteenth Amendment, what they
Speaker 1: call the citizenship clause, says, all persons born are naturalized
Speaker 1: in the United States comma and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
Speaker 1: Comma shall be for whatever the rest of it says.
Speaker 1: That clause subject to the jurisdiction thereof has become very
Speaker 1: controversial in recent years. It's long been thought that that
Speaker 1: meant an exclusion, say of diplomats. Right, if you're a diplomat,
Speaker 1: you're subject to the jurisdiction of your home country. So
Speaker 1: if you have kids born, why you're posted in Washington
Speaker 1: or New York or something, they don't have birthright citizenship.
Speaker 4: But there's active debate.
Speaker 1: About whether that meant, for example, should include the modern
Speaker 1: phenomenon of birth tourism. Right, there's a thriving industry out
Speaker 1: here in California of your rich Chinese mothers come over
Speaker 1: here to have their babies born in Orange County or
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills. Never mind, you know, poor Mexicans crossing the
Speaker 1: border and then they fly back home to China and
Speaker 1: now they have a child with entitlement to an American passport,
Speaker 1: and all that would come with that, including ways of
Speaker 1: getting assets out of the country later on and so forth.
Speaker 4: Well, are these people who come here for a week
Speaker 4: to have a child born? Are they really subject to
Speaker 4: the jurisdiction of the United States in a meaningful sense?
Speaker 4: Now saying that they're not, and that the expansive understanding
Speaker 4: of birthright citizenship that we had for a long time
Speaker 4: is challengeable.
Speaker 1: Had been a friend a very few, some of them
Speaker 1: friends of mine, like John Eastman's been arguing this for
Speaker 1: thirty years. But the view has been spreading amongst a
Speaker 1: lot of other serious constitutional scholars. Illin Worman, a young
Speaker 1: guy up there near you in Minnesota. James has written
Speaker 1: very strongly about this. Richard Epstein, I believe has come
Speaker 1: around to this point of view. I think he has. Charlie,
Speaker 1: you can't keep up with the copious flood of Richard's verbiage.
Speaker 3: Richard wrote forty seven thousand words about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, right, So, And the point is is that
Speaker 1: the view that well, wait a minute, maybe we should
Speaker 1: And really there's only one case about it from the
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties that everyone says settled the matter. But I
Speaker 1: think if you look closer, it's not a complete slam
Speaker 1: dunk the Wong Kim r. Case, I think was called
Speaker 1: been a while since I've read all these. So the
Speaker 1: last thing I'll say, and then Charlie can correct and
Speaker 1: fill in and add to it, is a lot of
Speaker 1: people are saying they might not reach the constitutional question
Speaker 1: of that clause in the fourteenth Amendment because there might
Speaker 1: be some statutory grounds where they might reject the challenge
Speaker 1: and thus leave the deeper challenge for another day, which
Speaker 1: I think would be unfortunate. But we are asking the
Speaker 1: Court to do an awful lot right now under President Trump.
Speaker 5: I think there are a couple of things here that
Speaker 5: interests me. The first is I hear it said quite
Speaker 5: often that one of the big problems with the Trump
Speaker 5: administration is that it asks questions constitutionally that have been settled.
Speaker 5: I think that's wrong in the sense that there is
Speaker 5: a paradox within our constitutional order, and that is that
Speaker 5: we are, and the lower courts are, and the governments
Speaker 5: are obliged to follow the Constitution and to follow Supreme
Speaker 5: Court President. But if you think that that Supreme Court
Speaker 5: president is grievously wrong, the only way that you can
Speaker 5: get it hurt is to do something that violates it,
Speaker 5: as we of course learned in the most famous case
Speaker 5: of all Brown brought of education. And so if, for example,
Speaker 5: like the state of Florida, and I agree with him
Speaker 5: on this, even though I'm not fond of the policy,
Speaker 5: you think that basically every single Supreme Court pronouncement in
Speaker 5: the last seventy years on the death penalty is complete nonsense,
Speaker 5: then the only way that you can get it heard
Speaker 5: again is to pass a law that contradicts it. Well,
Speaker 5: Trump thinks or hopes that our birthright citizenship presidents are wrong,
Speaker 5: and the only way you can really get around to
Speaker 5: determining whether or not he's right at the Court hasn't
Speaker 5: been heard for a long time is to do something.
Speaker 5: And in his case, he passed an executive order, which
Speaker 5: is not a law, but which has the effect of
Speaker 5: bringing up the matter. So I'm not angry with Trump
Speaker 5: for having done this in the way that some are.
Speaker 5: That said, I do think that he's probably wrong. Certainly,
Speaker 5: I think he is wrong to think he can do
Speaker 5: it via executive order. So the maximalist case against Trump
Speaker 5: is that the Fourteenth Amendment mandates birthright citizenship and subject
Speaker 5: to the jurisdiction thereof just means diplomats and so forth,
Speaker 5: and therefore there's nothing anyone can do about it unless
Speaker 5: we amend the Constitution. We have birthright citizenship. Maybe it's
Speaker 5: a terrible policy. I actually think it is.
Speaker 2: But that's the constitution. Deal with it.
Speaker 5: And then it's this third way argument that I've become
Speaker 5: a little more sympathetic to having read the amicus briefs,
Speaker 5: which is that no, the fourteenth Amendment does not mandate
Speaker 5: birthright citizenship, but changes to the meaning of subject to
Speaker 5: the jurisdiction there are have to be made by Congress,
Speaker 5: and Congress can decide who is eligible for birthright citizenship
Speaker 5: and who is not. And that argument has been made
Speaker 5: with increasing frequency, and I think with increasing quality, and
Speaker 5: I think there's some truth to that. If that's the case,
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court will have to say that though, because
Speaker 5: Trump didn't get a law pass and won't get a
Speaker 5: law passed unless the Republicans were to say, boris the
Speaker 5: filibuster and they get every single person on site to
Speaker 5: change this, which isn't going to happen, and not with
Speaker 5: fifty three vote, So he's not going to get his
Speaker 5: own way. But I don't really resent him for trying,
Speaker 5: because Steve's right, the last time this was heard in
Speaker 5: ernest was one Kim Mark, which was in the late
Speaker 5: nineteenth century. So it's totally reasonable to put together a
Speaker 5: brief and say I think this is wrong. As long
Speaker 5: as you then respect the law when it's been adjudicated,
Speaker 5: I'd likely.
Speaker 3: To be an executive order that banishes the income tax.
Speaker 1: You go back, right, James. You and I grew up
Speaker 1: with that great cliche in the sixties. It began every
Speaker 1: New York Times editorial. Any country that can land a
Speaker 1: man on the.
Speaker 4: Moon can solve x problem.
Speaker 1: Yes, And my favorite version was any country that can
Speaker 1: land a man on the moon can abolish the income tax.
Speaker 4: We never heard that one for some reason.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, No, because the thing that I was bothered me
Speaker 3: loving to put a man in the moon. Why I
Speaker 3: can't do this? Well, because putting a man in the
Speaker 3: moon is a very specific objective with a very specific
Speaker 3: set of technical requirements.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And it's uh, it's it's it's something you sit down
Speaker 3: to do with slide rules and the rest of it.
Speaker 3: And so yes, but I mean it's, well, I guess
Speaker 3: what we can't do right now? What's that? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well, I'm on the moon.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, man, my fingers are crossed about this
Speaker 3: next one. They really are, they really really, But we'll
Speaker 3: get to that in point. If I may change the
Speaker 3: subject for a second, gentlemen, I would like to discuss
Speaker 3: the fact that it's Friday and that means that I'm
Speaker 3: going to have pizza. And no, my friends, I am
Speaker 3: not going into an ad. The local grocery store is
Speaker 3: having a bogo for pizza. And there are two things
Speaker 3: about that. One, I hate the term bogo because it's wrong.
Speaker 3: Buy one, get one. Well that's that's the nature of
Speaker 3: every commercial transaction, which you mean is buy one, get
Speaker 3: one free, which would be bog off. But you never
Speaker 3: hear bog off. You just hear bogo. But I was
Speaker 3: standing there yesterday and I was beholding the range of
Speaker 3: frozen pizzas that we have. It's extraordinary how many there are,
Speaker 3: and how good so many there are. I grew up
Speaker 3: in fargan nor At Dakota, where Pinky's pizza was the standard,
Speaker 3: and it was one of those saltine crusted pizzas with
Speaker 3: little cups of Greece. You could, you could, you could,
Speaker 3: you could grease the tread of a Sherman tank with
Speaker 3: one of those pizzas. But it was good. But now
Speaker 3: I look with what we have and it's extraordinary, how blessed
Speaker 3: we are in the frozen pizza department. And I can
Speaker 3: look at all around life and find that meant you
Speaker 3: find manifestation of that Abundon's absolutely everywhere that I look,
Speaker 3: and it makes me happy. And that brings us to
Speaker 3: our guest. Our guest is an English American conservative journalist.
Speaker 3: He's a luminary at National Review, don't you know. He's
Speaker 3: a graduate of Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford and he's
Speaker 3: the author of the Conservatorian Manifesto. In addition to the
Speaker 3: National Review, of course, he's written for The New York
Speaker 3: Times and The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and other
Speaker 3: places as well. It's been described by the Atlantics perhaps
Speaker 3: the most confident defender of conservatism younger than George will
Speaker 3: We Welcome to the podcast, Charles C. W. Cook. Hello, Charles,
Speaker 3: thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: And you know how this went to my because I
Speaker 5: was late for this, So the moment you have me
Speaker 5: as a guest, then I stopped behaving like a diva.
Speaker 3: We're having Charlie on because first of all, why not,
Speaker 3: and he's lots of fun to talk to, and he's
Speaker 3: written a spanking article for a cracking article for National
Speaker 3: Review about well before we had Trump v. Misery, this
Speaker 3: is Cook v. Or we had Trump v.
Speaker 1: Barber.
Speaker 3: This is Cook v. Misery. Well enough with the long faces,
Speaker 3: is the subhead of his piece at National Review. America
Speaker 3: is not, in fact a hellscape. And to some people,
Speaker 3: the bristle when you say this, because no, this is this,
Speaker 3: this is there's no reason for cheer. Look around, everything
Speaker 3: is horrible. That's the scent of fascists boot in the
Speaker 3: face of Americans. But oddly enough, as you point out,
Speaker 3: eighty one percent of Americans are either very or somewhat
Speaker 3: satisfied with their lives, while just twenty percent are either
Speaker 3: very or somewhat satisfied with the way things are going
Speaker 3: for the US in general. Now, this disconnect is not unusual,
Speaker 3: but it seems to be really extreme. Now, so you
Speaker 3: make the case that, well, you make the case against misery.
Speaker 3: Tell us what prompted you to do this and what
Speaker 3: your insights were are will.
Speaker 5: Be Well, I just think that it's a little bit
Speaker 5: absurd that we live in this extraordinary place, and really
Speaker 5: we shouldn't underestimate that it is an extraordinary place right
Speaker 5: now as it exists. This country, this people, this economy,
Speaker 5: this culture is extraordinary.
Speaker 2: I know it could be better.
Speaker 5: I know that there are people in government on left
Speaker 5: and right who make bad mistakes.
Speaker 2: I know that if people listen to me and.
Speaker 5: You James and you Steve, and they just adopted all
Speaker 5: of our ideas, it would be far better than it
Speaker 5: is now, of course, but I just find it somewhat
Speaker 5: absurd that everyone is so down and the tone of
Speaker 5: our politics is what you would expect from a country
Speaker 5: that was in terminal decline, that had nothing going for it.
Speaker 2: If you listen to both parties, they are.
Speaker 4: Sour.
Speaker 2: The argument is an effect.
Speaker 5: Well, yes, if we won all the time and the
Speaker 5: people who don't agree with us were vanquished, it would
Speaker 5: be a good place. But until then, and I just
Speaker 5: don't agree. And this is not the same thing as
Speaker 5: saying that the politics doesn't matter, or I don't have
Speaker 5: strong opinions, or that you know we shouldn't fight to
Speaker 5: make the world a better blues but I think you
Speaker 5: have to remember your baseline and just for once I
Speaker 5: wanted to write a piece that said, guys, I know
Speaker 5: every month I say here's what's wrong or here's how
Speaker 5: this could be fixed.
Speaker 2: But could we just recall this?
Speaker 5: And when I found that Gallup data that said eighty
Speaker 5: one percent of Americans, as you say, we're happy with
Speaker 5: their circumstances, but twenty percent were happy with the country,
Speaker 5: that made me realize that most likely what's happening here
Speaker 5: is that people think that other people are unhappy or
Speaker 5: that they might be all right, but the problems that
Speaker 5: we face are so great as to render that irrelevant.
Speaker 5: But that doesn't make too much sense because we live
Speaker 5: in America. So if America has produced eighty one percent
Speaker 5: of people who are happy with their situation, then surely
Speaker 5: it's going okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a cover story. Let's add that
Speaker 1: for listeners, this is what the young people they, I guess,
Speaker 1: would call a banger of an article. That's the phrase
Speaker 1: I hear a lot from them, right, And I like
Speaker 1: it because it attracks very closely with my disposition about things.
Speaker 1: It reminded me of actually a comedy sketch from back
Speaker 1: during the Great Recession around two thousand and two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine by Louis c k who was later disgraced
Speaker 1: me too for some really borish behavior. But you had
Speaker 1: a little sketchy did called everything's amazing and nobody's happy,
Speaker 1: and it was very funny stuff about the people complain
Speaker 1: about progress. Right, you know if our phones have a
Speaker 1: you know, a five second delay getting connected, and he says, well,
Speaker 1: you just wait a minute. It's got to go to
Speaker 1: a satellite first, and it doesn't cost you anything. Whereas
Speaker 1: you know, James and I will remember, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to call somebody three minutes a long distance, you had
Speaker 1: to wait till eleven oh one pm when rates went down.
Speaker 4: Right, So we're spoiled.
Speaker 1: And there's a certain decadence about all this that maybe
Speaker 1: is a theme that we should explore a bit.
Speaker 4: There is a.
Speaker 1: Couple of parts of the article that I don't disagree with,
Speaker 1: but I think need to be probe a little harder. So
Speaker 1: you point to the gallup data saying, my life's going great,
Speaker 1: but the country's in terrible shape. I have for a
Speaker 1: long time, and I present to students and ask them
Speaker 1: sometimes the first day of class, to explain why what
Speaker 1: their theories are for the following data, which is if
Speaker 1: you go back to about nineteen fifty eight, when Gallup
Speaker 1: and Harris and others started asking Americans do you have
Speaker 1: high confidence or trust in the federal government to do
Speaker 1: the right thing most of the time or all the time?
Speaker 1: When it started that time series, and then I've been
Speaker 1: asking that question or close to it ever since.
Speaker 4: Then Pugh took it up.
Speaker 1: Okay, back in nineteen fifty eight, the number of people
Speaker 1: who said yes to that question high trust, high confidence
Speaker 1: was almost eighty percent eight zero. Today it rarely gets
Speaker 1: above fifteen percent. And it's been all downhill ever since.
Speaker 1: A slight retreat during the Reagan years, but nowhere close
Speaker 1: to what it was under Eisenhower in the first few
Speaker 1: years of Kennedy. Well why did that happen? And I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of explanations, but what I'm actually coming
Speaker 1: around to, Charlie is you're a fragment of one sentence
Speaker 1: where you say, certainly life is more than mere politics.
Speaker 4: Strongly agree politics.
Speaker 1: Is consuming more and more of life, and our political
Speaker 1: class is so evidently incompetent.
Speaker 4: So you know, James Q.
Speaker 1: Wilson once said thirty years ago, says, in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: when people looked at at their government.
Speaker 4: What they see.
Speaker 1: They'd see the federal government that had one World War
Speaker 1: two very quickly, relatively speaking, built the interstate highway system
Speaker 1: pretty fast, expanded schools in suburbia for making homes affordable people,
Speaker 1: the education system. The GI Bill sent hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of returning GI said, you saw a record of competence
Speaker 1: and achievement by our federal government. And what have we
Speaker 1: had since then? It's just increasing in competence. And so
Speaker 1: I think there are reasons why people sour on the
Speaker 1: results were getting from our government. And then the other
Speaker 1: problem is we politicize more and more of life. So
Speaker 1: when you say, certainly life is more than mere politics,
Speaker 1: I'm remembering the sixties when the New Left started saying
Speaker 1: the personal is political. And these days more and more
Speaker 1: things are politicized that weren't when James and I were
Speaker 1: growing up.
Speaker 3: And that's yeah, that second point of your Steve's I
Speaker 3: was just about to make it that that's why I'm
Speaker 3: stepping along. I'm gonna let I'm gonna let our guests
Speaker 3: do it. But we are a simpatico wavelength on that one, buddy.
Speaker 3: But the first thing that you were talking about I
Speaker 3: just wanted to say this before Charlie takes over, is
Speaker 3: that all the things that you mentioned are now in
Speaker 3: disfavor with the fringes and people. The fact that we
Speaker 3: world won World War two, well, we were siding with
Speaker 3: the wrong guy, that Churchill maniac. The fact that we
Speaker 3: built the interstate system allowed to empty out the city
Speaker 3: so that you know, the fact that people could go
Speaker 3: to the suburbs meant that the core cities were destroyed,
Speaker 3: and that endless suburbia sprawled gave rays to a rise
Speaker 3: to a car culture. That's horrible and we should all
Speaker 3: be taking the trolley. Everything that you mentioned. Either the
Speaker 3: left hates because it is given us the you know,
Speaker 3: the suburban America that we have today, or the right
Speaker 3: hates because why, I don't know whatever, their horse shoeing,
Speaker 3: their way of being as idiotic as the left. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean we did accomplish those things, but then we're
Speaker 3: all held up as being well, yeah, okay, so would
Speaker 3: you be done for me lately? Or these are really
Speaker 3: bad and we should all be trotting along in horses
Speaker 3: and cobblestones and buildings that are you know, the big
Speaker 3: cities no longer not taller than six stories anyway, Charles,
Speaker 3: that's derailed things say something about.
Speaker 5: Well, yes, I agree, I am a conservative. I think
Speaker 5: that that is a huge problem. Steve and James, I
Speaker 5: think that's a huge problem. But can I just counter
Speaker 5: it in that I think, obviously the government's too big,
Speaker 5: and it's incompetent, it spends too much, and we have
Speaker 5: people like Gavin us some in power, and trun doesn't help,
Speaker 5: And all of those criticisms are right, And that's why
Speaker 5: I engage in politics. If I thought that everything was
Speaker 5: perfect and the best of all worlds, I wouldn't do this.
Speaker 5: I would do something else. But at the same time,
Speaker 5: later in the piece, I cite some statistics about the
Speaker 5: place the United States currently occupies in the world that
Speaker 5: maybe are at best despite the government, or could be
Speaker 5: in some cases the result of policy.
Speaker 2: I mean, for example, yeah, we don't have much trust
Speaker 2: in government because government does all of the stub stuff.
Speaker 2: But we're also in a way that we were not
Speaker 2: in two thousand, for example, energy independent.
Speaker 5: We're a net exporter of energy that is the product
Speaker 5: of a combination of public policy successes, and you can
Speaker 5: thank conservatives for those and mostly the private sector. We
Speaker 5: have an economy that is now one and a half
Speaker 5: times the size of the ears, where in two thousand
Speaker 5: and eight when Barack Obama was elected, they were the
Speaker 5: same size.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's a lot of private enterprise did that.
Speaker 5: Ultimately, that's the only way of creating wealth and GDP.
Speaker 5: But it's also thanks to tax cuts and regulatory policies
Speaker 5: and us having a different set of rules in place
Speaker 5: than the rest of the world does, and it ought
Speaker 5: to be said, a different set of rules in place
Speaker 5: than we had in nineteen seventy when we had wage
Speaker 5: and price controls and a ridiculous tax system. We have
Speaker 5: got much better federal tax policy and federal regulatory policy
Speaker 5: in many ways now than we have ever had, or
Speaker 5: at least that we've had since prior.
Speaker 2: To the New Deal.
Speaker 5: So I agree with pretty much all of your criticisms,
Speaker 5: of course I do. You and I agree on politics mostly,
Speaker 5: But the notion that everything's sliding backwards, you know, this
Speaker 5: is slightly outside of the room of the piece, and
Speaker 5: I may write something else on this, but this phrase
Speaker 5: I see all the time at the moment. This is
Speaker 5: what they took from you. Yeah, some of that's true,
Speaker 5: but you could have done that in any decade. In
Speaker 5: the nineteen nineties, this is what they took from you,
Speaker 5: would have been peaceful streets. The crime was unbelievable. People
Speaker 5: who were born in the year two thousand and five
Speaker 5: cannot imagine what crime was like in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 5: In the nineteen eighties, the abortion rate was downright disgusting,
Speaker 5: and people thought they were going to die in a
Speaker 5: nuclear war. In the nineteen sixties we had race riots,
Speaker 5: but the Vietnam War. So this is what they took
Speaker 5: from you. Instinct is a good one in some senses,
Speaker 5: and it's one I share as a conservative. You do
Speaker 5: want to watch trends that are negative, and there are
Speaker 5: lots of them. But also it can't exist in a vacuum.
Speaker 5: We can't just say this is what they took from
Speaker 5: you and then imagine that whatever it is that you're
Speaker 5: looking at was surrounded by sunlit uplands and rabbits running
Speaker 5: around happily and frolicking in the evening, because that's just
Speaker 5: usually not true.
Speaker 3: You know it's not. And when you when I see
Speaker 3: those things, they are inevitably attached to some picture of
Speaker 3: suburbs from the from the eighteen. You know, from the
Speaker 3: late nineteen eighties or early nineties. Everything is basked in
Speaker 3: this nostalgic golden glow. It's an old pizza hut that
Speaker 3: had the red glasses and the checkered plastic table closet,
Speaker 3: and all that is true. Nobody took it from us.
Speaker 3: In most of these cases, I would sell if it's gone,
Speaker 3: it's because we didn't want it and it went away.
Speaker 3: But they didn't take it from us. There are alternatives
Speaker 3: and analogs to be found today. But you're right. The
Speaker 3: crime was horrible. When you walked outside of that pizza hut.
Speaker 3: There was a chance you're going to get shanked when
Speaker 3: you if you didn't and you were living in the
Speaker 3: suburbs and you would go in your bananas bike somewhere
Speaker 3: with the little streamers coming. You were worried about nuclear
Speaker 3: war in the back of your head. You're absolutely correct.
Speaker 3: And when they say this is what they took from you,
Speaker 3: and they show you a grand Baroque cathedral which with
Speaker 3: its incredible rocal cod you know, fizzy decorations going into
Speaker 3: the heavens, you have to forget. There's probably a steaming
Speaker 3: pile of heap right order right outside of the steps
Speaker 3: because there wasn't any sanitation, and cholera then cholera right,
Speaker 3: and plague from time to time. So yes, all things
Speaker 3: being equal, But I think one of the reasons that
Speaker 3: people do feel in miserated today is twofold one. As
Speaker 3: Steven said before, the personal is the political. We have
Speaker 3: not been given any safe space in which we can
Speaker 3: just simply exist. Everything has to be tied up into
Speaker 3: this bolus of intersectionality and everybody has to work. Well
Speaker 3: I don't, but people have to worry that they have
Speaker 3: the correct opinions about absolutely everything. Somebody put it on
Speaker 3: Twitter the other day. I thought it was just great.
Speaker 3: Is that the problem today? Probably maybe it's been hours.
Speaker 3: The problem with modern progressives is that they have an
Speaker 3: idea and they keep themselves from considering second and third
Speaker 3: orders because it would require observations and solutions that would
Speaker 3: put them out of favor with their in group. I
Speaker 3: think that's absolutely it. So there's this constant performative nature
Speaker 3: to make sure that your politics are correct. I was
Speaker 3: having a conversation of coffee with Cora with a former
Speaker 3: coworker the other day, and I really had to watch
Speaker 3: what I said because unless I had said certain words,
Speaker 3: condemnatory words about certain topics, I was going to be
Speaker 3: cast into the like of fire. And the second thing
Speaker 3: I think that it doesn't help is social media. When
Speaker 3: people have a fire hose of people who are ratcheting
Speaker 3: up everything to make you angry, and it's blasting in
Speaker 3: your head and you're scrolling in an infinite way, there's
Speaker 3: no there's literally no bottom there, and I think that's
Speaker 3: a big part of it. And people who bedrot and
Speaker 3: just sit and look at that and see how everything's
Speaker 3: awful when they could be out there, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know, look look Maxing and Singapore or something. It's
Speaker 3: not helpful. And I don't see a way necessarily around that.
Speaker 3: So how Charles and your piece for the public here,
Speaker 3: do you deal with the pernisious effects of hold on?
Speaker 3: I got it, I got a notification on Twitter. I'll
Speaker 3: read that letter. How do you deal with the pernicious
Speaker 3: effects of social media when it comes to combating misery?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 5: Do you write cover stories and national review that solves
Speaker 5: the problem? I mean, it's all I can do, right.
Speaker 5: I agree, it's a huge issue. And one of the issues,
Speaker 5: of course, is that it's impossible for anyone who did
Speaker 5: not live through those eras to know what's true and
Speaker 5: what's not, and the only things that survive are the
Speaker 5: good things.
Speaker 2: It's like cars.
Speaker 5: Now, there's so many beautiful cars from the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 5: but when you go to a car show, you end
Speaker 5: up thinking, wow, all the cars from.
Speaker 2: The fifties and sixties were beautiful.
Speaker 5: But actually almost all of them were terrible, and there
Speaker 5: was a handful of them that were stunning. And the
Speaker 5: ones that were stunning are the ones that we look
Speaker 5: at now at the car show.
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying.
Speaker 3: That I'll argue with that, but we can do that
Speaker 3: in the garments.
Speaker 5: But do go on, well, right, choose whatever it is
Speaker 5: that you want. If you disagree on cars, Let's say,
Speaker 5: I mean pop music is a good example. I love
Speaker 5: a lot of music from the nineteen sixties, but ninety
Speaker 5: percent of it was garbage and the stuff that here
Speaker 5: and I was awesome. So you can apply that quite fairly.
Speaker 5: I think not to society, because I actually am off
Speaker 5: the view that America has always been great. I hate
Speaker 5: this view that well, yeah, I mean fine, but in
Speaker 5: nineteen ten, women didn't have the vote like yeah, okay,
Speaker 5: and I agree that's not good for women, But that
Speaker 5: doesn't mean America was a hellscape. But I think that
Speaker 5: if you go back and you actually talk to people
Speaker 5: who were there, you get a much better conception of
Speaker 5: what life was like and what was good about it.
Speaker 5: And they become nostalgia because they grow old as shure,
Speaker 5: but they also remember things and you find out things
Speaker 5: about them, and you see pictures of them and you think, oh,
Speaker 5: you're quite poor and had a really small house and
Speaker 5: your carlxis was about to fall apart. But on social
Speaker 5: media you could present, especially with Ai, this this paradise conception,
Speaker 5: and it's so hard to fight against. Although I'm rambling
Speaker 5: a bit, what I will say is this one of
Speaker 5: the things that I personally find a little bit weird
Speaker 5: about some of those look what they took from you
Speaker 5: is on social media is that they actually.
Speaker 2: Look a lot like my town. I mean, some of
Speaker 2: them are like a kid riding a.
Speaker 5: Bike, yeah right, Or there's a whole bunch of people
Speaker 5: out in the park and there are American flags and
Speaker 5: they're having a picnic.
Speaker 2: Or you know, it's like a.
Speaker 5: Family around a Thanksgiving table having dinner. That's what they
Speaker 5: took from you. Don't you do that every in November.
Speaker 5: So there's probably something else going on here that actually
Speaker 5: is bad. But I don't know how you fight it
Speaker 5: other than to tell people that it's wrong. And also
Speaker 5: maybe remember that most people aren't on social media, and
Speaker 5: those that are on social media usually aren't engaged in politics.
Speaker 3: Well, I just want to go ahead, Stephen, then last
Speaker 3: this with both of you.
Speaker 1: Readers should know our listeners should know that you really,
Speaker 1: at the end call for we need a disposition of
Speaker 1: the happy warrior.
Speaker 4: More about it. I mean, one sentence jumps out of me.
Speaker 1: You say there is more to being a statesman than
Speaker 1: perpetually provoking a citizenry into disgruntlement. I like disgruntlement, and
Speaker 1: I keep thinking we need pg. Woodhouse to tell us
Speaker 1: how to gruntle ourselves, to see one of his great passages.
Speaker 1: And I agree with all that the substance is important.
Speaker 1: And I'll just add a little caveat to James. I
Speaker 1: heally agree with everything he said about progressives. But you know,
Speaker 1: Republicans have been complicit in the growing incompetence of government too.
Speaker 1: Not as bad as Democrats, but still they share some part.
Speaker 4: Of the blame.
Speaker 1: I do wonder and I said this once before, and
Speaker 1: now I'll give you one example of why I think it.
Speaker 1: The question of what decadence is and how you measure
Speaker 1: it as a serious one, And you know, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of a social scientist, so I resist these broad generalizations.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, up here.
Speaker 1: In what used to be a backwater wine region of
Speaker 1: California is now a fancy wine region of California. Where
Speaker 1: it used to be all the wine was never more
Speaker 1: than five dollars a bottle for some pretty good stuff,
Speaker 1: and you walked in as a little family the operation.
Speaker 1: Now it's wineries that cost you forty dollars for a tasting.
Speaker 1: And starting about twenty years ago, I would see people
Speaker 1: showing up with my hairline, which you know, I have
Speaker 1: no hairline, except the guys would have their beards, their
Speaker 1: hipster beards and a ponytail, and they would drive in
Speaker 1: in their Lexus that had a Bernie sandersticker on it. Yep,
Speaker 1: And I thought, something's gone really screwy here. That doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. And that's just sort of a you know,
Speaker 1: sort of a microcosm of a broader decadence that I
Speaker 1: think afflicts the Europe worse than us. And by the way,
Speaker 1: your point is that, boy, if we feel bad, the
Speaker 1: Europeans really ought to be down on the dumps.
Speaker 4: Right, Yes, So anyway, I mean, I appreciate all that.
Speaker 1: But I guess what I want to see from you, Charles,
Speaker 1: maybe is a whole book, because there's this is a
Speaker 1: profound problem you put your finger on, and a worthy
Speaker 1: remedy that we need to flush out.
Speaker 3: Here's the chapter for it, and I'll give it to
Speaker 3: both of you, you say in the piece twas ever, Thus, yeah,
Speaker 3: American statement. There fire up the random date selector and
Speaker 3: consider a decade. You are tempted to romanticize, all right, Charles,
Speaker 3: what would that decade be for you?
Speaker 5: Well, of course it will be the nineteen nineties, because
Speaker 5: I was a kid slash early teenager, and I do
Speaker 5: think objectively speaking, there was an awful lot to be
Speaker 5: said for the nineteen nineties. So I'm not pretending that
Speaker 5: we just always favor the time in which we were young.
Speaker 5: I have not, although I don't know too many people
Speaker 5: of that age. I've not met too many people who say,
Speaker 5: you know, the nineteen thirties, that was where it was
Speaker 5: at I think the nineties were objectively good, but also
Speaker 5: there were lots of bad things about the nineties that
Speaker 5: I've forgotten, and that didn't matter to me because I
Speaker 5: was nine, so that would be mine. Although there's a
Speaker 5: lot of crime, like I say, I mean when I
Speaker 5: was a kid, even in England, but you'd hear about
Speaker 5: this in America all the time, and unlike now where
Speaker 5: the British and the Europeans are obsessed with all these
Speaker 5: evils of America.
Speaker 2: Most of which on it's true. It was true in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Steven one decade for you, I'll be the eighties, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, so yeah, I started coming of age around
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight. I was only eleven, ten or eleven,
Speaker 1: but I was paying attention to things, and my parents
Speaker 1: were involved in the world in serious ways, and I
Speaker 1: thought the world was coming to an end, right, the assassinations.
Speaker 4: The riots, the war that wouldn't end. I mean it really.
Speaker 1: Then the seventies were just awful with inflation and you know,
Speaker 1: things going wrong, and then Reagan comes along and look
Speaker 1: really turns things around the country.
Speaker 4: That decade went really well.
Speaker 1: I do agree the nineties were a very fortunate decade
Speaker 1: for the reasons, Charles says, but I take either one
Speaker 1: of those, and I would not want to go back
Speaker 1: to nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm tempted to romanticize the fifties because I love
Speaker 3: the style, the vibe, and the rest of it. But
Speaker 3: two things. One, I know that it's probably a lot
Speaker 3: more annoying and banlan than I did to think it was.
Speaker 3: And two, I really fear that I would be one
Speaker 3: of those Mort Saul types who was just sneering at
Speaker 3: the ikes in the you know, the suits and the
Speaker 3: rest of it a little what I know. But then
Speaker 3: I go to the twenties. I really like the twenties.
Speaker 3: The twenties are fascinating to me because it's one hundred
Speaker 3: years ago, one hundred years ago, but it's so recognizable
Speaker 3: to us today. They had papers, they had radio, they
Speaker 3: had magazines, they had newspapers, they had automobiles, they had skyscrapers.
Speaker 3: The whole modern vocabulary of our lives is there, and
Speaker 3: I'm tempted to romanticize it a little bit, except the
Speaker 3: whole thing about trying to get some liquor and it's
Speaker 3: really tough, And also the sort of the I mean
Speaker 3: but if you read the newspapers, you will find that
Speaker 3: there's a lot. There's a lot of blue stockings, there
Speaker 3: are a lot of cotton mather types. There was a
Speaker 3: lot of wiggery and prairie and the rest of it
Speaker 3: that I wouldn't have liked. But frankly, I mean, just
Speaker 3: looking from the newspapers, it's a smart, interesting, crackling era
Speaker 3: that I would love to look at, but I know
Speaker 3: better than to romanticize it.
Speaker 1: Well, but remember James so Will Rogers great observation, and
Speaker 1: at least prohibition is better than no liquor at all.
Speaker 3: Yes, do you know?
Speaker 5: A few years ago I went to Atlanta with my
Speaker 5: dad as part of a Civil War trip that we took,
Speaker 5: and we went to this beautiful, big mansion house somewhere outside.
Speaker 2: Atlanta, I don't know where, and.
Speaker 5: The tour guide said to us that when prohibition was
Speaker 5: passed while the Volsted Act was being debated, the owners
Speaker 5: of this house bought two decades worth of alcohol, wine, beer,
Speaker 5: spirits and so forth, and so for them, prohibition never happened. Now,
Speaker 5: this is, of course, the cardinal sin of nostalgia, and
Speaker 5: the one I'm arguing against, because everyone thinks if they'd
Speaker 5: lived in the Roman era, that had been Julius Caesar
Speaker 5: rather than a guy who got tetanus at the age
Speaker 5: of nineteen. But if you could have lived James in
Speaker 5: the twenties like that, then I think it would have
Speaker 5: been pretty swell.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, there's an element to American
Speaker 3: life that perhaps runs through all of these decades that
Speaker 3: we talk about and seems particularly poignant. Given the art
Speaker 3: of your piece, it is a reconstruction or reevaluation, or
Speaker 3: you're re updating of the famous Nighthawks by Hopper, which
Speaker 3: has always been a haunting painting for several reasons. One
Speaker 3: the fact that there's no door. Usually those places the door,
Speaker 3: there's the door in the corner, but there isn't. There's
Speaker 3: just that piece of curved glass which is inviting some
Speaker 3: yegg or who loligan to put a rock through it.
Speaker 3: And then two, there's the cross the street. There's this
Speaker 3: sort of empty, uninhabited will blankness that may or may
Speaker 3: not have people slumbering in small, little dark apartments, and
Speaker 3: those people who are sitting there are not having a
Speaker 3: wonderful convivial conversation. There is in a partners there is
Speaker 3: a loneliness there's a three am in the morning of
Speaker 3: the American soul there, and that runs through from then
Speaker 3: to now except now, of course, as we say, it's
Speaker 3: people who are being alone together as they sit in
Speaker 3: bed and scroll one last thing before where we going.
Speaker 3: It's another piece that Charles did, and it had to
Speaker 3: do with the beach idiots. In defense of beach idiots.
Speaker 3: I haven't read the piece. I assume you mean the
Speaker 3: people who when they put a microphone at him and
Speaker 3: ask what country are we currently at war at they
Speaker 3: say Iowa. And not the people who are rampaging on
Speaker 3: beaches and causing riots and shootings and the rest of it,
Speaker 3: but just the sort of genial, bubble headed person who
Speaker 3: goes down there to have a tan and drink and
Speaker 3: hook up. And you're defending them. You're defending these people, Charles,
Speaker 3: to defend yourself here.
Speaker 2: How long have you got?
Speaker 5: This is in a sense of a piece with the piece.
Speaker 5: But I had a few observations about this that I
Speaker 5: made some people deeply unhappy. And I got an email
Speaker 5: from a guy who said that I was out of
Speaker 5: touch because when he was a young man, he spent
Speaker 5: his late teens protesting Richard Nixon, and then he said
Speaker 5: I shall be watching you going forward, and I thought, well, qed, buddy,
Speaker 5: because you were exactly who I was writing about.
Speaker 3: He spent his teens protesting Richard Nixon. I have that
Speaker 3: an image in my life or in my head of
Speaker 3: the Simpsons with the comic book, guys walking down the
Speaker 3: street and a missile is headed directly towards him and
Speaker 3: he says, oh, I've.
Speaker 2: Wasted my life.
Speaker 5: Well, look, The reason that I defended these guy's is fourfold.
Speaker 5: The first reason is that I have really, am genuinely
Speaker 5: not persuaded that the sort of person who is eighteen
Speaker 5: nineteen twenty years old and doesn't know anything about foreign
Speaker 5: policy or economics is materially different than the sort of
Speaker 5: person who is eighteen nineteen twenty years old and doesn't
Speaker 5: know anything about foreign policy or economics but talks about
Speaker 5: them all the time. I see nothing in our young,
Speaker 5: indignant activist class that tells me that they are well read.
Speaker 5: They're prolific, they're annoyed, they're annoying.
Speaker 2: But I don't think they're particularly well read.
Speaker 5: Second, I looked at the video that Fox put out.
Speaker 5: I do think it's funny that the lack of intellectualism
Speaker 5: was being.
Speaker 2: Argued by Jesse Waters.
Speaker 5: But I looked at this video that Fox put out
Speaker 5: and everyone and it seemed happy. And I think that's
Speaker 5: really important, especially when you're nineteen. There's lots of time.
Speaker 5: And don't take this to mean that adulthood is unhappy.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 5: But there's lots of time to do the things that
Speaker 5: make you take an interest in politics, things like have children,
Speaker 5: get a mortgage, have a job, move, you know, these
Speaker 5: are things that make you wonder about that elections thing.
Speaker 5: But these kids are nineteen. They seemed really happy, and
Speaker 5: that's good. The third thing is that politics, and this
Speaker 5: is I think similar to a theme that both of
Speaker 5: you touched on earlier in our conversation. Politics is not
Speaker 5: an end done to itself. When you politicize everything, you
Speaker 5: forget what.
Speaker 2: Politics is for.
Speaker 5: Politics exists and is important for this reason, so that
Speaker 5: we can create the right conditions within which civil society
Speaker 5: can flourish.
Speaker 2: You get the politics right.
Speaker 5: That means that people can have families and churches and
Speaker 5: businesses and sports leagues and associations and restaurants. And that's
Speaker 5: the point in it. And if you look at that
Speaker 5: beach That's one of the reasons we have civil society
Speaker 5: is to create the circumstances in which nineteen year old
Speaker 5: girls can say, the main thing I worry about every
Speaker 5: morning is which bikini to wear. And the last point
Speaker 5: that I've made is that if you look at a
Speaker 5: nineteen year old who says the main question in my
Speaker 5: life is which bikini to wear, and you see that
Speaker 5: as a failure, then you've actually forgotten what most of
Speaker 5: human history was like, including relatively recent human history. I mean,
Speaker 5: my grandfathers were mining their own business in nineteen thirty
Speaker 5: nine in England. My grandfather on my mom's side worked
Speaker 5: at an orchard in Devon, and my grandfather on my
Speaker 5: dad's side was an apprentice carpenter, and then the world
Speaker 5: blew up and they went and signed up. They weren't conscripted,
Speaker 5: but I don't think that either of them had thought
Speaker 5: on the apple orchard or in the apprentice carpenter program.
Speaker 5: You know what I wish I were doing right now?
Speaker 5: I wish I were fighting in North Africa, or I
Speaker 5: think I were, in the case of my dad's dad,
Speaker 5: in North Atlantic convoys that were being sunk every day.
Speaker 5: They thought about other things. I mean, they presumably didn't
Speaker 5: wear bikinis, but they were thinking about other things that
Speaker 5: were probably quite fatuous, and that was good, you know.
Speaker 5: I would imagine that much of the time they spent
Speaker 5: killing people and having all their friends killed, I imagine
Speaker 5: a lot of that time was spent thinking about how
Speaker 5: it would be nice to go back to having days
Speaker 5: where you didn't have to think about too many important things.
Speaker 5: And I just don't want us to lose sight of that,
Speaker 5: because we do. Sometimes we get so obsessed with politics
Speaker 5: and injected into things that it doesn't belong that we
Speaker 5: forget why it is that we have it in the
Speaker 5: first place.
Speaker 3: I get your point, and I think that we all
Speaker 3: should be grateful. And look at that nineteen year old
Speaker 3: girl and you look male gaze thing, but consider her
Speaker 3: and the problems that she has about which bikini she's
Speaker 3: going to choose, and just say, I hope she gets
Speaker 3: one V two dropped on the motel, just one, just
Speaker 3: just to put things in perspective. Charles has been fun, Steven,
Speaker 3: it's been fun. Everybody, it's been fun. I invite you
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Speaker 3: since they plugged this thing in. Gentlemen, thank you for
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Speaker 3: the moment. Bye bye,