Speaker 1: Or period. Poor poor carrier pigeons. Ask not what.
Speaker 2: Your country can do for you, Ask what you can
do for your country.
Speaker 3: Mister garbashaw, tear down this wall.
Speaker 2: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long, John You and
me James Lylyx. Today we talked to you of all
eleven about his new book about the Constitution, how it
unified America once and could do it again. So let's
have herselves a podcast.
Speaker 4: I've known her a long time, indirectly, not directly very much,
and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was
only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black
until a number of years ago when she happened to
turn black, and now she wants to be known as black.
Speaker 3: Welcome everybody.
Speaker 2: This is the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and two.
I'm James Lylyx in a beautiful summer day in Minneapolis,
Rob Long in Gotham, presume, and John You is joining
us from California. Of course, the crucible of sanity in
the modern world.
Speaker 3: I'm sure he's going to tell us all about that, gentlemen.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Hello, well, hi, James, Johns is right, that's what
you do sometimes sometimes in radio and broadcasting. We like
to say the more dead air, the better, But oftentime
if we like to just kind of jump in there
with something that just gets the ball rolling. The ball
now seems to be rolling uphill for Donald Trump, downhill
for Kamala Harris as she's vaulted to the front of
the race. She's America's sweetheart and without really anybody taking
a look at the positions what not that she's had.
But perhaps over the next couple of months we'll have
the opportunity to revisit some old clips and see exactly
whether or not those old positions are still being held.
Do you think it's going to come back to buy?
I mean, the New York Times is doing stories essentially saying,
you know, she makes she made fudge on the stove.
Here's her seven tricks to keep it from from caramelizing.
I mean, that's my favorite headline was one of the
La Times.
Speaker 5: Uh uh, Kamala Harris is a knowledge of l A
restaurants is large? Will that help her win the presidency?
So okay, you guys all need to just just take
a deep breath here and relax.
Speaker 1: I uh it was. It still made me laugh.
Speaker 6: Uh yeah, well, I thought the Times recipe would be
camealized onions by now.
Speaker 3: Very good, very good.
Speaker 6: I thought I would replace I'm sitting in for Steve Hayward.
I mean, you know, Peter Robinson gets to sit in
for Steve Hayward. But now I'm sitting in for Steve.
Speaker 3: That's right, all right.
Speaker 2: Well, now that you are sitting in, let's uh, let's
let's put it to you. Do you think that? I mean,
you were there in California. You saw exactly what she
was able to do for that state. Tell us what
her what her California record might be, how it might
be introduced to the rest of the country, what it was.
Speaker 6: I have a piece up this week about her record
as district attorney attorney general. First, I think people are
going to see the bad campaigner she was in twenty twenty,
wants all this you know, happiness, it starts to maybe
it won't end, but all this happiness in the media
starts to end. Because I think she's the typical of
a California politician. We live in a one party state,
so she's never had to run a tough race before,
and so I think that's why. I think that explains
all the malapropism, weird stame a is goofy character because
if you're Kamala Harris, you've never had to run against
a tough candidate.
Speaker 3: But the broader.
Speaker 6: Issue is when people start to look at her record.
I think it's a mistake actually for Democrats to be
praising her as a prosecutor, because once people see the
decisions she'd made back here, they're not going to be happy.
There are some very well known cases in California. For example,
there was an early in her tenure there was a
guy who killed a police officer, severely wounded a partner.
His partner, she would seek the death penalty. Another example
where there's an illegal alien who is an MS thirteen
gang member, walked into a communie store, killed the owner,
shot up the two sons, and she didn't seek the
death penalty. She had a I think she had a
very lax attitude towards crime. So all this talk about
her saying, oh, I know Donald Trump, he's a felon,
and I know felons, I think that it's inviting the
wrong kind of scrutiny. Once America's who I worried about crime,
particularly in California, see the kind of progressive attitude she had.
Plus then you can get into stuff she dies as senator,
where she's calling for donations to bond funk bail, fights
for Black Lives Matter, and so on.
Speaker 3: So I think this is and where where might that
have been? John, Do you remember?
Speaker 6: I think somewhere up there in the north somewhere I
know there's like white stuff that's called somewhere where the
people comes out of the air. It's like water falls
from the air in solid form, things like.
Speaker 3: This, God's Dandre amazing. Yeah, that was here.
Speaker 2: That was the bailphone with the people who were who
were burning down the streets and burning down the buildings,
and she was telling that we need, you.
Speaker 3: Know, basically more of it.
Speaker 2: That the riots shall continue until we have equity spread
and evil even laer across the land. So yeah, there's that.
But again again, if all we get is happy warrior
energy and smiles and no real particular investigation from the media,
then I think a lot of you know, the vast
middle that needs to be persuaded, may just say, well,
she looks like more fun time for a wine on
for for for a president.
Speaker 3: Why not? And I don't want that crazy old guy.
Speaker 2: So I mean yeah, Now, so Rob, where do you
think the Trumps, the Trump campaign goes from here?
Speaker 1: Well, they better get it together.
Speaker 5: It should come as no shock that you're not going
to find for a progressive Democrat, really incredibly aggressive need coverage.
That should not be surprising to them. They didn't get
it for under Biden. They're not going to get it
under when Kamala Harris is running, uh, and they need
to focus and she's giving them all sorts of openings
and they just seem to be focusing on a lot
of stupid stuff at this point. Look, he got on a
hundred days, less than hundred days, so it's sprint. You
don't have any time for throat clearing. Everyone in America
should know about every single one of those cases that
John just mentioned that they should.
Speaker 1: The nasty term is to Willy Horton.
Speaker 5: But people forget that Willy Horton story was true, that
he did he was fur.
Speaker 1: Load from prison, and he did commit crimes, to commit murder.
Speaker 5: That the reason that that worked was because there was
no response from the Democrats and for the candidate then,
and the most governor of messages is Michael Lucaucus.
Speaker 1: To actually defend the the the process of furlough. He didn't.
He just ran away from it.
Speaker 5: It is and crystallized the difference between liberal and conservative
voters for liberal conservtive voters on law and order issues.
So everyone every time that this sort of like clown
car of a Trump campaign starts talking about anything other
than her record, they are wasting time and they have
very little time left.
Speaker 1: The problem with Trump.
Speaker 5: Is it's integral to the Trump campaign. A lot of
people don't like him. That is a real problem for him,
and they know him well, and what he needs to
do is not remind them about all the reasons they
have to not like him. They should be reminding them
of all the reasons they can't in good conscience vote
for this extremely liberal, extremely progressive alternative. And they see
me failing at that now, which is surprising to me
because you know, just go you go back to the debate.
Speaker 1: That debate, everybody focused on Biden.
Speaker 5: I said this at the time, and yeah, you're right,
it's terrible for Biden, but they forgot that it was
absolutely terrific for Trump, not just because Biden was a
dottery old man, but because Trump was controlled. I mean,
he had a little trumpy near the end, but you know,
we take our wins and we can find him. But
he basically held the line. He argued passionately for things
that he believes in, and he connected with voters. And
I'm starting to believe that that is the singular moment
of campaign discipline we're going to get from this candidate
in that campaign. And if that's the case, it's going
to be a disappointing election night for him. I suspect,
and again always the problem to think about it. It's
a gift, Kamala. Harrison's got to run on a record
which is not great if you're a moderate or a
centrist or conservative, which is what most of the country is.
All Donald Trump has to do is just to stop
being a jerk and stop reminding us how what a
jerk Donald Trump is and how tiresome me is. That
shouldn't be that hard, and yet it seems to be
a stumbling block for this candidate.
Speaker 2: Would you say that people don't like Trump, that's true,
but they don't like him for his personality, not necessarily
his politics, his policy preferences, which can.
Speaker 3: Be you know here there in the other place.
Speaker 2: So do we have a situation then where people say
I don't like him, therefore I'm going to vote for
the person who is completely opposed to just about everything
I happen to believe in, from energy policy to gun
policy to yeah, aliens getting to illegal aliens getting you know,
free healthcare, all of these things I.
Speaker 3: Just don't like.
Speaker 2: I just don't like this guy. So I mean, and
I know there is that element. I'm going to feel
good about myself because I feel good voting for this
person because it is a virtuous thing to do. But
you do have a fairly stark policy difference.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I would just say, right, there is the problem,
and Drama was going to hear, right, there is the problem.
It's the problem for the Trump campaign is that when
you start to say that people are going to vote
for Kama Harris so they don't like Trump our idiots
or fools.
Speaker 1: Emotional, I know, but that's what they are.
Speaker 5: You start doing that, you stop listening to why people
don't like you. And that is that is exactly how
the liberals got in a position they're in now because
everybody who said I don't really like those Liberals, they
instead of listening to that, no Democratic party listening to America,
they decided to steamroll over them.
Speaker 1: That is not a recipe for success at the ballot box.
Speaker 6: I operationalize what Rob is saying. I think it's pretty simple.
They could make a quick fix, which is usually in
campaigns the vice president is the attack dog and the
president is the one who sits back and puts out
the positive program for the future. Right, doesn't engage directly
in all this identity stuff. You know, I watched that
black journalist conference with the interview, and Trump likes paying
the attack dog. They should be sending jd Vance out
to do that kind of stuff, and Trump should turn
to a more positive That's just traditionally what happens in
presidential campaign. Strangely, it's the reverse, right. You hear people say, oh,
they picked Dvance because he is the broad vision for
what the party is going to be in the future. Yeah,
the roles, it's very strange. And the Trump campaign could
easily change that. And I think that would have that
would actually take what Rob's talking about and put it
into sort of real campaign practice. It'd be easy, excepting
you'd have to have Trump to And this brings me
to just one other point is the Trump campaign officials,
they may sadly look back on the days when Trump
Trump was a defendant with fondness and as the good
old days, because then Trump couldn't speak all day. He
was limited to this kind of two minute sound bites
when he was walking into an out of court. And
that's when Trump was doing the best because he couldn't
talk that much. The court forced discipline on him. And
that's the hard thing is that if they could switch
the president and vice presidential roles and then Trump, I mean,
this is wishing for a candidate that's not there could
be more disciplined at it, then it would be a
Then it would be a good campaign.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're always looking at the candidate. We don't have
to go ahead run.
Speaker 5: No, that's absolutely true. The structural problems are sort of
baked in obviously to the Trump campaign. But it's not
as if there isn't past performance that you can use
to you know, as they say, and they say they
won't do in the finance, but they should do in campaigns.
When did he lose in twenty twenty, And he did
lose in twenty twenty. He lost after the first debate,
and the campaign officials knew because they had focus groups
and numbers of Republican men and Republican women in Wisconsin
and Arizona and Georgia who turned off of Trump. That
is what happened, and they were perfectly. They have trained
the Republican voter to go into the ballot box and
to vote for the down ballot candidates with that are
by their name, and to leave the top slot blank.
That is a dangerous thing. You don't want. You don't
want your voters to be doing that. And there It
isn't that hard. I mean, it's not like we've seen this,
We've seen Trump do.
Speaker 1: It's not like he can't do it. It's just that
he won't. And that is I don't know.
Speaker 5: If that was in the Trump campaign, that would worry
me more than the JD. Van's stuff, More than anything else.
It would worry me that the most disciplined days of
the Trump campaign seemed to be over.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 6: One other thing about oh sorry, just one little small
point is he suppose Harris does great, and she is
doing great right now. We shouldn't like pretend it's not happening.
But all she's doing, if she succeeds, she will just
get the race back to what it was before Biden's
disastrous debate performance. It's still going to come down to
six or seven battleground states, and the country's close, and
it's divided, and it's going to be decided by a
pointer two. And so that's the other thing is Trump
really should be focusing just on those Midwestern states. The
polling I saw come out in the New York Times today,
it just seems to show that Harris has just come
back to even in all those battleground states. But I
don't think Trump's going to be winning Minnesota now, Sorry, James.
Speaker 2: Is she doing great or is it just being announced
that she is great? I mean, we get this flood
of relief from the media that they have this wonderful, charismatic, smart, braddy,
confident meme, goddess gout you know who can do it?
So is she doing great because of anything other than
she's a beaming alternative to the doddering old man that
they had before? And I mean, yes, you're always going
to get a bounce when you introduce somebody new who
comes in who's younger, has got a little bit more,
it has more vibrant energy in the rest of it.
Speaker 3: Before the honeymoon fades and people get tired of it.
Speaker 2: But I mean, doing great. I don't think right now
has anything to do with what she's said or she's.
Speaker 6: Raised three hundred million dollars and the parties unified behind her,
and she's starting to restore support in the Democrat for
the Democrats amongst minorities women. I mean, this is I'm
not saying she's doing better than they did in twenty twenty.
She's just getting them back to the same start line
is twenty twenty. But that's that's an achievement because Biden
was going to get trounced.
Speaker 5: I mean, look, I mean four weeks ago, I mean,
it's probably about eight weeks ago. It was a it
was absolutely de facto truth that everybody knew projecting forward
that either one of these parties replaced either one of
their top candidates with almost anybody, they would get a
bounce because the negatives were really high on all of
these candidates. And one party did it kind of halfway,
not really, but they kind of did it.
Speaker 1: And that's what you're seeing.
Speaker 5: I mean, we would have predicted this with person X
at the top of the side on either side, so
none of this is a surprise. All of the problem
is it in a compressed timeline, which is what this is.
You don't have that much time to define your candidate.
And luckily for Kamala Harris, Trump defines himself in the
negative constantly, and instead of defining her and I get
you know that bill, that list of all of those
people that she was ill served as Attorney General of California,
instead of having those be household names, what about this person?
Speaker 1: What about that person?
Speaker 5: What about those two kids in a store? We're talking
about whether her father is Jamaican or whether he's like
half Indian. Like this nonsense, waste of time. And if
they brought it up, they started it. They need to
like get there, They need to get back into control.
Speaker 1: And they are not. They do not look to me
like they're doing it.
Speaker 2: You know, I might have not have been the best
way to spend the week, but at some point, since
ethnicity and identification and all these things are of absolute
critical importance. Right now, it is a fun conversation to
be had, but not at the moment because our guest
is here. You've all leven the director of Social, cultural
and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Speaker 3: That's the AIE. Of course.
Speaker 2: He's the founder and editor of National Affairs and the
author of seven books, The most recent, published earlier this summer,
is American How the Constitution Unified our Nation and could
again you've allved, thanks for joining.
Speaker 7: Us, Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2: Well, you know that the title of the book presumes
that there is a period of unification behind us, in
a period of constitutional unification that could be before us.
So that would mean we are in an interregnum of
constitutional disunity. How would you describe where we are right
now Visa VI, that old piece of bellum.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.
I mean we are in a moment when we are
not unified about or by the Constitution in the ways
that we ought to be. And I think a lot
of Americans recognize that we're very divided, but tend to
think that the Constitution is the reason and are frustrated
by the various ways in which it holds them back
when they win elections or when they have ambitions. And
rather than see that the Constitution is a solution to
the kind of division we have now, they tend to
see it as the problem, Michaal in this book is
to help people see that, in fact, the Constitution is
much more like the solution than the problem that it
exists to help address exactly the sort of problem we have,
which is the challenge of holding together a diverse and
divided society, and that to the extent we're living through
a period of constitutional failure, which I think we are
to an extent, it's a failure of constitutional practice and
not of constitutional design, and therefore it calls on us
to reacquaint ourselves with the structure of the system and
what it might have to teach us. And that's what
I hope this book might help to do.
Speaker 5: Hey, you boy, can I try a little theory on you?
You can tell me if I'm bull of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, John already's rolling his eyes. I can see.
Speaker 5: In the strength of the Constitution, this strange document that
we still argue and fight about.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think there's another document.
Speaker 5: Maybe since the Gospels, that people have been reading and
rereading and fighting over. In software engineering, right, there's this
two big categories of how you put together a giant
software project. Right. One is called agile and one's called waterfall.
Waterfall is you go step by step, you accomplish one component,
and you move the next component, and you move to
the next component.
Speaker 1: You just kind of chip away in it that way.
Speaker 5: An agile is you kind of you start before you've
got everything taken care of, and you just get going,
and you know that there are weaknesses.
Speaker 1: You can have to fix those later.
Speaker 5: But the idea is to keep going and you create
a document that is both incredibly resilient, or you create
a product incredibly resilient but also has problems that need
to be fixed over time. But the point is you
got it going and everybody kind of agreed on the
big vision. It feels to me like in terms of
the software, the code for the United States of America,
which is the Constitution, that it's an incredibly brilliant piece
of agile coding. And every argument we have about it,
when people talk about how well this is, like, well,
this is our problem. We're still fighting over this. We're
still fighting over the Second Amendment. I think that is
the great act, that great strength of the Constitution, right
that we're still going to fight over it, and our
grand channel will fight over it.
Speaker 7: I think it's absolutely right. It's a really good metaphor
for how the system is meant to work, and it's
intentional in a lot of ways. What you see when
you look at the records of the Constitutional Convention is
that the framers of the Constitution dealt with some very
serious problems by containing them as tensions within the system. Right,
were they going to empower the large states or the
small states? That seems like a stark choice to make,
but their answer was, yes, We're going to empower the
large states and the small states, and the fights between
them are going to be essential to the political life
of our society. Right. Is the President of the United
States an elevated head of state or is the president
a kind of glorified clerk. Well, the answer is yes,
the president is both those things, even though that's obviously contradictory,
and the presidency is a contradictory office about which we
fight constantly and unendingly, and a lot of the most
significant and kinds of tensions that occupy us as Americans
in our political life are contained within the structure of
the Constitution. What that allows the system to do is
to is to shift its weight as it needs to
without losing its balance. It's extraordinarily precisely agile, because it
allows us to emphasize different things at different times. There
are moments when we need a strong president to respond
on behalf of the country to dangerous problems. There are
moments when we need Congress to be stronger. And a
lot of the arguments we can have are about how
to rebalance and shift the weight of the different parts
of the system. I think those are a lot of
our arguments now, and it's a sign of strength in
our system. We underestimate the stability and strength of the
American system. We've had the same institutions in America since
seventeen ninety. There's no other country that can say that
about its governing institutions.
Speaker 6: You've all. What strikes me, why it's John you, I'm
sitting in for Steve Hayward. What strikes me is I
could see a youngster reading this book and going, You've
all you don't know what time it is, right, that's
their big frame. It's so you know, the both the
left and the right, young people on the left and
the right all have you know, reject the constitution. Right,
the left is so influenced by the sixteen nineteen project.
This is the work of racist and sexist oppressors. But
also on the conservative side, there's this big movement, you know, saying,
you know, the Constitution is also holding us back. You know,
we should be advancing conservative social values despite originalism and
despite all these ideas that tried to create a neutral
approach to the Constitution. These last week, it seems like
everybody wants to go beyond the Constitution. Now, how do
you respond to them?
Speaker 7: You know, the book very much speaks to exactly those
younger people. And one thing I would say is, I'm
a conservative, so I think it's always the same time.
It's time to raise another generation of Americans to be
decent human beings and good citizens. That's always our challenge.
That was your grandparents' challenge, and it's going to be
your grandkid's challenge, and it's your challenge.
Speaker 3: And I think a.
Speaker 7: Lot of what you don't know what time it is
kind of arguments on the right now are a form
of escapism from responsibility. They want to say, well, this
was how we used to work, but now all the
rules have been broken, so we don't need to worry
about the rules either. Well, no, they're still here. We
still need them. They still answer questions and challenges. They're
always with us, and we have to recognize that the
burden of sustaining this system is the privilege of being
an American citizen. But more than that, I think the objections,
in a sense, the objections that you find in the
Constitution on the left are familiar, and the book treats
those at great length. They're the same kinds of arguments
that the progressives have been making for more than one
hundred years about the Constitution, that it's not democratic enough,
that it's not sophisticated enough to govern in the modern world.
I disagree the Constitution is more sophisticated than these critics
are about the nature of the liberal society. The conservative
critiques are a little newer, and I think in some
ways they're misguided about the character of democratic life and
of our constitutional system. At the heart of a lot
of them is this notion that the Constitution is empty proceduralism,
that it doesn't have moral content, it's just about a
set of procedures and rules. And I think the whole
idea of empty proceduralism is completely confused. There's actually no
such thing as empty proceduralism. What procedures do is create
habits and virtues and facilitate moral formation. Just think about
if you want to speak for the Western moral tradition,
which they do, and if you want to say you're
speaking for the tradition, the classical Christian tradition that reaches
back to Aquinas and Aristotle. In that tradition, the way
in which we become morally formed is by being habituated
to practicing the virtues. And what is the mechanism for
a bituation. It's precisely what they call procedure. It's the
rules that govern how we engage with each other. And
constitutional procedures make us into citizens that respect each other's equality,
make us into people with some humility and some patience
and ability to deal with difference and confront one another
in a way that points to some constructive common action
that is deeply morally formative. I think the arguments on
the right about the nature of the Constitution are just
very confused.
Speaker 6: You just put a practical point on it as abortion.
So it sounds to me like you would support the
idea of Dobs that abortion should be sent back to
the States where we can all fight about it politically.
Because both conservatives and liberals want Congress to pass an
abortion bill, right, just in different points of the spectrum.
Even conservatives now are talking about passing a federal nationwide
pro life bill, just in the same way liberals want
to pass a restoration of ro versus Wade in Congress.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and look, I think that that's the venue where
we have to argue about questions like that. It's not
up to the courts to decide what our laws should be.
What our laws should be is the fundamental political question,
and that means we have to decide it together in
those arenas where we can actually engage with each other,
compete with each other, negotiate with each other. And that
has to happen in the legislature.
Speaker 1: Hey, I have maybe a political cultural question now.
Speaker 5: Obviously, the first ten amendments, a first ten amendments Constitution
happened all kind of at once, right, and then there's
a bunch more kind of in a cluster. And then
there was a couple around the Civil War periods, the
Civil War era kinds, and then there were there's a
bunch of them around turn of the last century that
were with suffrage and prohibion things like that. And then
kind of a quiet period where it just seemed like
whenever you say to people, well, you could have a
constitutional amendment, they kind of rolled their eyes, like, well, man,
that's just never going to happen.
Speaker 1: Two thirds of this two there's never going to happen.
Speaker 5: Are we going to Are we entering a phase when
that is true, that this is the idea of like
galvanizing a giant majority of Americans to do this thing
and throughout all these different houses of government state houses
and uh and and federal chambers.
Speaker 1: Or is it cyclical?
Speaker 5: I mean, could we look at another period in the
next ten twenty thirty years where we reminds us of
those turn of this turn of the twentieth century spate
of some of them were really dumb, but we managed
to get him through.
Speaker 1: I mean nobody.
Speaker 5: I don't think anybody's really arguing for prohibitions, certainly not
John Hughes.
Speaker 1: Not sure to get you up in the morning.
Speaker 6: Are you add more stuff just telcohol?
Speaker 7: John wants to mandate drinking exactly.
Speaker 6: I mean, how it's easier would be for us to
agree if we.
Speaker 5: All have the I mean, I guess that's what I'm saying,
is like, is it I mean, is the idea that
I always say to people when they complain of I'm like, hey, listen,
constitutions a living document.
Speaker 1: You can amend it. You can amend it.
Speaker 5: And they'll call, you know, come on, that's not realistic.
Is it not realistic? Or is it cyclical? Or is
it something that happened in the past and it is
possible to happen now.
Speaker 7: Well, I think the Constitution allows us for allow us
for a lot of room for political decision making, for
changing the rules that govern the workings of American government.
Without a constitutional amendment, we've, as you say, the amendments
of common bunches generally, and the last real bunch of
amendments was the Progressive Amendments. We had a series afterwards
in the middle of the twentieth century to sort of
fix a couple of things, presidential succession and so on,
lowering the voting age, and there was the final so far,
the twenty seventh Amendments was almost symbolic really as part
of celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the Constitution. The
last real amendments fifty years ago, and that is a
long time.
Speaker 3: I have to say.
Speaker 7: For one thing, I'm I'm a conservative, and therefore I
don't really see a lot of problems to which a
constitutional amount would be a solution. I don't think it's
obvious now that there are some essential amendments. I think
a lot of the problems of our political culture are
functions of things we can change without constitutional amendments. The
nature of the electoral process and especially the primary system,
the way Congress works. We don't have broad majorities for
anything in American public life right now, so the notion
that we would have a broad majority for a constitutional
amendment is a little hard to imagine.
Speaker 3: But these things do change.
Speaker 7: American party politics work in phases, and I can certainly
imagine that twenty five years from now we're in a
different enough place where there's public pressure for amendments. I
shudder to think what those would be, frankly, but it's possible.
I don't think that in this moment where we are now,
those would be possible, And I think the pressures we
do see actually reinforce the wisdom of the original structure
of the Constitution. You know, the Biden administration wants to
limit the terms of Supreme Court justices.
Speaker 5: To ask about to ask that that collection of quote
reforms unquote Yeah.
Speaker 7: I mean, look, I think those ideas are exactly an
example of why we have lifetime tenure for judges. When
you tell people people as wise they're left time tendre
you say, well, you want to protect them from pressure
from the political branches that would try to kick out
judges that make decisions they don't like. And people say, well,
that wouldn't happen. Well, that's literally what's happening now. What
the Democrats want to do here is exactly why there
is lifetime tenure for judges, and exactly why we have
to retain lifetime tenure for judges.
Speaker 6: I think isn't it fair to say that Donald Trump, Yes,
he's accused of being a threat to the constitution or democracy,
even though we live in a republic not a democracy.
But when you read about what the Democrats want to do,
aren't they the ones threatening longer term damage to the constitution,
right term limits on the justices. Kamala Harris back in
twenty twenty said she supported court packing these ideas about it.
They also want to get rid of the electoral college.
They talk about getting rid of the filibuster, adding Puerto
Rico and Washington, DC as states. I mean, I mean,
this is actually kind of like what Rob was talking
about before the big burst of progressive constitutional amendments were
designed to get rid of more guardrails pure democracy. Isn't
that what progresses want to do again right now? And
is it? Kamala Harris the right she is the phalank
had phalanx in that movement to undo this constitutional order
your favorite with It's just the Supreme Court termlament thing
is just the first of what they have in mind.
Speaker 7: I think what's always been striking about the progressives is
that they go at the Constitution head on. They openly
dislike the system and want to change it in fundamental ways.
When to undermine it fundamental ways, And I do think
a lot of what they're talking about here are direct
attacks on all of the countermajoritarian parts of the Constitution.
The Constitution exists of balance majority rule and minority rights.
All of the ways that restrain majority rule are under
attach now the Bill of Rights, one by one who
they're working their way through the first Amendment from religion
to speech and on from there. They talk the same
way about the Senate, now about the courts the electoral College.
As you say, it's a strategy that seems rooted in
this weird notion that they're the majority, which I actually
don't think is correct. But in any case, that's always
been how the progressives have thought about it. I think
there is a danger to the Constitution from the kind
of the approach that Donald Trump had to the presidency.
He was just not cognizant of the boundaries on the
president and didn't care much about them. I think that's
bad too. But there is a kind of direct assault
on the Constitution, a knowing assault on it, that is
much more characteristic on the left. But as you said
at the beginning, John, there are now threats to the
Constitution from both left and right, and we all need
a reminder of what the Constitution is, for why it
works the way it does, Especially the parts of it
that are most frustrating two narrow majorities, which are the
only kind we have now, are the parts of it
that we have got to sustain and remind people about,
because those elements are what allow our system to keep
its balance. The Constitution is meant to frustrate narrow majorities,
to force them to grow, and to empower only broad majorities.
That's the distinct feature of the American system. It's not
like parliamentary systems in that way. I think that's had
a lot to do with its durability.
Speaker 5: I always have a problem with my friends are like
talk about I mean, I get a lot of crap
on this podcast from people like John You about being
a rhino. But you know, when I talk to my
liberal friends, my very liberal Democrat friends, always say to them,
your MVP of the Democratic parties, Joe Manchin, the MVP
of the Republican Party, are all the rhinos like me?
Speaker 1: You need it, That's the way the system works. You
don't like it.
Speaker 5: I guess we need a prime minister. We're not going
to get one. This is the way the system is.
And it always stolished to me how quickly we forget that.
Speaker 7: Absolutely. Our system does not trust narrow majorities. And the
reason for that is very straightforward. Majorities can be dangerous.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 7: Majority rule is necessary to legitimate political power, but it's
also dangerous, and the Constitution deals with that by standing
in the way of narrow majorities so that they are
forced to grow.
Speaker 1: And some.
Speaker 7: Of the institutions built up around it, like the filibuster,
which I think is very important to protect and sustain,
are also they work that way. All the bipartisan legislation
of the twenty first century has basically been a function
of the filibuster, and the idea that getting rid of
it is what twenty first century American politics requires strikes
me as just crazy. There's an assumption at the bottom
of a lot of progressive arguments that there's this big
majority out there and it's being held back by the system.
But the problem we have is that there's not a
majority for anything, and we need to form majorities. That's
what the Constitution can help us to do.
Speaker 2: We were speaking before about the right not liking the
Constitutions parts of it because it was just procedural, and
you were right and correct to say that the entire
document is suffused with the philosophy at the times like
a building, the framework, the structure, the girders, or the
spirit of Western civilization, and the procedural stuff is the
cladding that goes up on top of that.
Speaker 3: We see.
Speaker 2: But I wonder if you had a constitutional convention, as
so many people seem to want to, are talking about,
some way of getting our arms around this thing and
making sure that it's adaptable for its next century. I
think that the right, I would fear less having a
constitutional convention, because I think the instincts of the right
would be still to constrain the power of the state
and have rights be natural rights, and that the left
would wish to enshrine in the Constitution any number of
an innumerable number of little detailed rights which the state provided,
guaranteed and was the source of. And maybe that's the
difficulty that we're talking about here when you say that
there's not a majority for these ideas.
Speaker 3: Well, they don't believe that.
Speaker 2: If the left may not believe that there is a
majority for these things, but more importantly, they are correct,
and therefore the things that stand in the way of
all of these things being manifested in the country are
illegitimate and immoral and possibly evil and the rest of it.
And that's why they would shread nearly any single aspect
of the Constitution that got in their way, whereas I
don't fear that from the right.
Speaker 3: So I agree with that.
Speaker 7: I think that well, I would be worried about a
constitutional convention from all directions. I think that opening up
the document in a way that some people suggest, and
just having a free for all about what it ought
to be would not serve ce well in this moment.
But I would certainly fear the left more than the
right for just the reasons you're suggesting. I think the
Constitution was written in a very peculiar moment in American history,
where there had been five years of war in the Revolution,
war against government that was seen as overly powerful and domineering.
And then there were five years after the Revolution in
which there was total pandemonium and government was too weak
and ineffective. And the Constitutional Convention responded to both of
those problems, and so was aware of the dangers of
weak government and strong government at the same time, and
sought for some kind of balance between the two. It's
very hard to imagine that at any other moment in
American history we would have produced quite that kind of balance,
and so I think for that reason, it's a good
thing that it's hard to amend the Constitution. Sometimes we
need to, but we should be very wary about opening
it up.
Speaker 2: I think it's great. I mean they say the center
to the place where the passions go to be cooled.
I mean the Constitutional Amendment brought is it process is
the deep freeze in which things are packed in ice
and the good luck getting out of that. Which is
good because, as you noted, it came out of a
very unique time. But at the same time we seem
to have been blessed by not only a time that
produced this unique document, but the temperaments the people who
crafted it and to understood it. And that's what baffles
me about the people who want to tear it up
and start all over or just tinker it into oblivion.
Is that human nature, what they discern, what they knew
about human nature and human systems at the time is
hardly irrelevant and outdated today.
Speaker 3: They haven't, they.
Speaker 2: Haven't changed, and they exist to this day. And there's
a lesson in that that an ahistorical generation seems completely
delighted to ignore.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think the notion that it's old and out
of its time is the most wrong thing about the
critiques that people offer about the Constitution. The Constitution is
I think more sophisticated than its critics about the most
difficult challenge that faces every modern democratic society, which is
the challenge of cohesion amid diversity. The United States is
you know, The most popular kind of critique among political
scientists of the Constitution is a kind of comparative critique
that looks at Norway or Denmark and says, well, these
systems are more directly representative and more proportional. The very
idea that we could even think to compare our government
to Norway's is an example of how effective the Constitution is.
The United States is not like Norway. It's like India.
It's like it's like Brazil and Mexico, except it's much
better governed than those places. It's a vast democracy that
works so well that it could compare itself to Denmark.
And the fact that we're able to do that is
a function of the incredible sophistication.
Speaker 6: That's crazy. I don't ever want to compare anything we
do to Denial. Yeah, well look than Denmark.
Speaker 1: This is a legit. What's a real question. I really
I've always wanted this.
Speaker 5: I get that they were really smart guys. You know,
I was forced to read the Federalist papers in college,
and so I get that they were smart. But the
idea that they were the architects of this system that
works at this scale, like at the scale that the
United I mean, the reason that we are not like
Norway's because we have Norway here too.
Speaker 1: It's up there somewhere close.
Speaker 5: To where James lips and we have a little bit
of Mexico down there.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have everything.
Speaker 5: And the idea that these Do you think these guys
had an idea that this country was going to be
loud and fractious and noisy, and that we needed a
system that was going to be able to contain that
and channel that. Or do you think they just thought, hey, listen,
you put people in a room together, no matter what
their background is, they're going to fight. Sometimes the most bitter,
the bitterest arguments are between family members.
Speaker 1: So so this works at scale.
Speaker 5: It works when we have, you know, thirteen colonies, works
when we have a population of one million, we have
two big cities, and it works when we have twenty
seven big cities.
Speaker 1: Is that did they know? Well?
Speaker 7: I certainly think they didn't know quite how the United
States would grow. I think I think they didn't have
a conception of what it could be in the twenty
first century. But I do think a number of them
had a very strong sense that the United States was
destined to be a great world power had a real
sense that it was going to grow geographically and demographically.
You know, Alexander Hamilton talks about the future of the
country in a way that is extraordinarily modern and far seeing.
They didn't know exactly how, but I think they were
building for durability and growth. And they had a sense
that politics is always contentious, that it is about fighting,
and therefore the system has to be built to contain
tensions but also facilitate constructive fighting. And that is an
insight that has served us very well. It's remained true.
And you know the United States, I mean Americans, I
think we always exaggerate our internal differences. We say, well,
we used to be, you know, this one homogeneous society
back then, but now we're so diverse and different. I
think we're kind of wrong on both ends of that.
The America of the late eighteenth century was quite divided
and fractious and felt diverse to itself, and the America
of the twenty first century. I mean, look, if you
spend a few weeks abroad and then run into an
American somewhere, you know that person's an American in five
seconds from across the room. We have a lot in common,
and it's not only when we agree with each other,
when we're from the same place. There is absolutely such
a thing in the world as the American character, and
in a lot of ways it's a function of our
constitutional system and of our political culture.
Speaker 6: Thank you all. What comes next. So there's an influential
theory out there that says, you know, American history goes
in these kind of cycles, and where you're at the end.
I feel like we're in one of these, Like at
the end of the ancient regime, the way things have
run for a while decades comes to an end. They say,
you get these years of closely divided elections where nothing happens,
people get more and more frustrated. Then some kind of
crisis occurs and we kind of break through that, and
then a whole new system comes into existence. So they
say Reagan was like that, FDR was like that, Lincoln
and Jefferson going back. You know, those are the major points.
Don you feel like we're in that now? And if
that's true, what's going to be what's going to replace
this kind of close elections, bitter divisions, polarization, which you know,
what you see at the end of a cycle. What's
the next one going to look like?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think that's right. You know, Samuel Huntington wrote
a book in the early eighties called The Promise of Disharmony,
which is an amazing book what really underappreciated, and he
describes this these kinds of cycles, and he even said
that we would be in one in this period in
the second deck of the twenty first century. And oftentimes
what characterizes these moments, like you say, is that there's
not an obvious majority party in American political life. So
most of the time, if you look in on the
United States, there's a majority party that's holding together a
complicated coalition. There's a minority party that's trying to broaden
its coalition. They're both engaged in coalition building, and those
phases kind of run out, and you reach a point
where neither party is engaged in coalition building, and our
politics just feels totally dysfunctional. I think that's actually a
great description of this moment. Neither party is engaged in
coalition building. If you step back from them, they're not
really trying to grow, They're trying to mobilize their existing
base of voters, and this creates an enormous opportunity for
political insight and political talent to build a real majority.
I think a lot of politicians in this moment think
that can't be a majority again, even though they live
through a paer. Look, Ronald Reagan won forty nine states
in nineteen eighty four. Nobody imagines that's imaginable, that's achievable now.
But a majority is absolutely achievable now.
Speaker 3: I think it's.
Speaker 6: Something like a conservative populist working class party, Isn't that
what it feels like is coming in.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think both parties have an opportunity. I think
Republicans have a bigger opportunity. It's easier to imagine Republicans
being that party, but yeah, it would be the popular party,
the party that speaks for the people in a kind
of up down politics as much as left right. You know,
the traditional divide in democracy is the few and the many,
and left right is a kind of modern addition onto that.
But the few in the many is still the most
powerful force in the life of a democracy, and our
politics increasingly feels like a party of the elite and
a party of the people. That obviously can be very unhealthy,
and I think we're seeing it as unhealthy. Both the
elitism and the populism we have now are unhealthy. But
to fill a majority that somehow cuts across some of
the familiar categories of the phase of our politics that's ending.
And I'm not talking about eighty percent, but sixty percent.
That's a big majority in American politics. I absolutely think
that is achievable. And that's what the next phase looks like.
Speaker 6: I just want to say, I want to be with
the elites because they all have the best stuff. But
when the revolution comes, I'm switching. I'm going with Rob.
Wherever Rob goes, I'm going with them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm a I'm a survivor, John. And to push
you off my bandwagon. Oh yeah, not that everybody. I
can get this guy.
Speaker 2: Well, we could get the entire country, forty nine states
at least if we agreed with John Yu that the
Mick rib should be available all year round in addition
to the Shamrock Shake or some of the popular menu items,
that being John's thing.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Barring that, It's hard to see what issue it'll be,
but we may find out. In the meantime, we recommend
that everybody, since we are in this period a TwixT
constitutional adherents at a national and social personal level.
Speaker 3: Read his book.
Speaker 2: The book is called American Covenant, How the Constitution Unified
our Nation? And good again, I've all even thanks so
much for joining us today. Fascinating conversation. We can go
on and on and on about it, and you know,
we'll talk to you maybe before the next book.
Speaker 3: What is the next book? By the way, thank you
very much.
Speaker 7: I appreciate it, though I have to said I don't
appreciate that question because it's always a very hard question
to answer right after writing this book. But time will tell.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I'll be in the newspaper business. Here.
We're all about the list.
Speaker 2: So i'd say that, you know, the Bill of Rights,
pick five and five favorite five hottest rights in the
turnat Bill Rights.
Speaker 6: There you go, no quartering, no quartering.
Speaker 1: Good for collects.
Speaker 3: Thanks you, thanks you all, thank you so much, thank
you all.
Speaker 2: You know, yes, top down pleabs versus the patricians, all
the rest of it, you know. But thanks to Marks,
we have a we have elites work collectivists. That that's
the strange thing, right right, prefer the old days when
the elites would just simply leave the peasants to be
in their fields and do what they want die as
long as they pay their access and give.
Speaker 3: Their farthings and leaves to the king.
Speaker 2: But no, we got to have this collective identity thanks
to our betters and oh you know Dave os w
EF all those places, all those crazy words.
Speaker 3: That we throw out there to say.
Speaker 2: And I don't believe that the WEF is actually anything
more than just a sort of amusing collection of supervillains
who just plot, who just tell you their stories out
and the the thing is that they always tell their
their plans about owning nothing in the fifteen minute city
and you know, eating the bugs living in the pods.
They always say these plans before they actually have James
Bond strapped into the laser castration machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right now.
Speaker 2: The thing about it, Yeah, you're supposed to reveal all
that stuff when you got the guy where you want
them and then you tell But no, they're out there
in the in the open telling us everything. In rickchhet
At the other day we were having a conversation about
fifteen minut cities. I know Rob lives in one, I
practically do. And the reason that I wanted to push
back against people throwing fifteen minute cities out there.
Speaker 3: Maybe we talked about this before, I can't remember. It
has to do with that. It's not a bad idea.
Speaker 2: It really isn't to design places where you can get
around and you can walk, and you can get your
groceries and you can go to a cafe in a
bar drug store within fifteen minutes not having to get
in your car. And the problem is a twofold one.
They use it as a means to bash the paradigm
that a lot of people have happily adapted to, which
is the suburbs. People are completely content to live in
the suburbs for a variety of reasons. And two, you
have to be very very careful that it doesn't turn
into a mechanism whereby this good idea, suffused with its
moral purity, becomes a way of the state extracting more
resources from you by putting, you know what, you can
drive out of your fifteen minute city elsewhere if you want,
but you're going to pay a congestion stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it bothers me.
Speaker 2: How so many things that we that in your heart
and in your head you agree with stewardship of the environment. Uh,
you know a end of the you know, the blight,
visual blight of billboards, etc.
Speaker 3: All of these things.
Speaker 2: They've got an aspect to it that, yeah, it's good
for all of us if we do this, But it
becomes a dogmatic it becomes be a stocking horse for
another ideology. See, it inevitably leads to the diminution of
your freedom. And that's one of those crazy words that
when you start throwing around, the younger generation starts to
roll the Riyes, do you know what word is now
making the rounds as being sort of suss to the
young You guys, you have any idea? I mean, free
and liberty. We know that that's what crazy people with
the red hat say. What's a word that also gets
their hackles up?
Speaker 3: Abundance?
Speaker 5: Abundance? Yeah, that's right. I believe that. You know, there's
no abundance. It's just shortages of everything.
Speaker 3: We shouldn't have. No, well, we shouldn't have it.
Speaker 2: But first of all, we don't have abundance because we're
in a post capitalist hell.
Speaker 3: But we shouldn't have abundance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's a philosophical question that they have.
It's a philosophical argument, but that's it is.
Speaker 5: I mean, it is absolutely the end product of everything
that we've been teaching them, which is that there's shortages
so and that there's less and that the future is
going to be filled with challenges like the ocean's on fire.
Speaker 2: You know what abundance means. Abundance means we turn the
light switch on, there's light. It means, and when you
turn the hot water on, there's hot. Well, that's what
abundance means. Actually we I mean, the things that we
take for granted are symbols of tremendous abundance and we need.
Speaker 1: It also means that if.
Speaker 5: You do well right, then that isn't zero sum that
I could do well too. We believe that the country
grows and the economy grows, and rising tidle of salt
boats and they roll their eyes at that, but it
is in fact, demonstrably, unquestionably quantifiably the truth.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, well, Rob, we agree that is not enough. It
is not enough for you and I to do well, John,
you must do poorly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the libraries.
Speaker 6: Where idea, neither one other idea, James, about just trying
to draw from you know, what's going on in the academy. Stuff,
crazy stuff, I read. But you know, there's one big
stream of thought going into conservatives asking why do we
have cities at all? You know, now that we're decentralizing,
now they have worked from home, now that our economy
is based on the production of information, why do we
why do we need cities? Why do we all need
to live together in these closely compacted, dense places with
expensive housing prices. And so here's here's the alternate world.
And I thought You've always going to mention this, but
he didn't, which was the constitution actually is great for decentralization.
It's a great government for what Rob was saying, a
large country with people all spread out and diverse communities.
And you think about the government we have now, you
think about the cities we have now that you're talking about, James,
that's mass production, factory style economics and society. That's not
the way things organize anymore. No, maybe that's why that's
what I think, that's behind what you're talking about, James
about Well, these fifteen minute cities and suburbs, that's actually
a way station to going back to something that might
look an organization more like the eighteenth century again, which
is where Rob really wants to live.
Speaker 5: Sure in a village. The villages are the most interesting places.
But I mean they're twin parts of the American experience
or just these are human nature.
Speaker 1: Right on the one hand, you want space. I want
my space. That's one of the things that people said
when they.
Speaker 5: Left the dirty, stinking city and they went out to
the suburbs the first time. I mean after about like
the thirties and forties and fifties, right, and like, look
at it.
Speaker 1: I had a lawn, I got a front yard, I
got all this stuff, and that is incredibly powerful. That's
a great thing. That's why people live.
Speaker 6: In Europe too, right, Yeah, because in Europe, the source
of wealth was just having land.
Speaker 5: And that's some people didn't want to Some people wanted
to be in the city. Actually when they were young,
and they want to be with other young people. They
wanted to be in It's kind of crazy. They were
willing to put up with it. And there's these two characters.
There's this you know, there's the urban dweller and then
there's the suburban choice. And then there's another human person
that's always there and that's the hoa head, right, that's
the hoa busybody, and that is more than more I
think than any other image is what people think about
when they think about the sort of the progressive left,
like this, these are there. They're going to walk around
the neighborhood and write your note because they don't like
your curtains or they don't like this, whether you put
up pum or you have a planter that's not the
right color. And I think that is also very human
like humans like to do that, we like to boss
each other around. But that is also part of this
kind of like small minded, limited mentality that if you
have this thing, we're all going to suffer. You look
like you're having fun.
Speaker 1: That's not good. And you know, unfortunately, culturally, I.
Speaker 5: Think think we're probably on the hope, we're on the
down side of that cycle, and we're coming back up
to the what I think the normal American view, which is,
go do you do you but as quietly as you
possibly can do it, because I'm trying to get you know,
some sleeves.
Speaker 6: If you're happy if Kamala Harris's president, you just don't
want it to be head of the city council of
your town.
Speaker 5: Well, I actually think that when Americans vote. You know,
if you look at the best of the probably the
most interesting, and see change. Political changes in my lifetime
happened when Bill Clinton was president and the Republicans took
the House and they took the Senate. And that's when
we got well for reform, and that's when we got
actually institutional congressional reform in a major way. I mean,
it now seems like a cliche, but the Newt Gingrich's
Contract with America was a radically, radically influential and successful document.
And you know, people kind of like this gridlock stuff,
but they also they do like sticking it to the
guy at the top. And I you know, if Kamala
Harris wins, which would not be surprising.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: I don't think that the conservative movement's dead.
Speaker 1: I don't think the conservative reforms are dead. I think
they might be even invigorated.
Speaker 3: I've never before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should lose this election because then people will
get really good and they'll realize that.
Speaker 3: I know, I'm kidding, I'm kidding him.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that that it's possible.
Speaker 5: The problem with both sides is they think it's inconceivable
that they're going to lose either now or in the future,
and they think that once you vote for your once
you voted for my guy for president, whether it's Kamala
Harris or Donald Trump, if forever you're just all the
things are going to be fixed and you're never going
to have any trouble at all. And that's the ultimately,
just go back to the Constitution. That's the problem with
our interpreting the Constitution, which people think of it, interpret
it only as this document that keeps them from getting
what they want, when in fact, it's a document that
keeps you from getting what you want. And that's kind
of how it's supposed to work, right. It restricts you
and not me, that's primarily what it does. So you know,
we should be prepared not maybe we'll win, maybe the
Conservatives will win in twenty twenty four, maybe they'll lose, but.
Speaker 1: They are going to lose elections in the future. So
how do you prepare for that?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just do know that if we have a massive
attack on Israel by Iran in the next week or so,
I would really be keen to know.
Speaker 3: Who's calling the shots here.
Speaker 2: Something tells me I ought to be the guy who
is called the president but I'm wondering if this is
going to be an opportunity for them to show count
Layers is foreign policy six dimensional chest shops and have
her in charge.
Speaker 3: Of what the American reaction to this is going to be.
Speaker 2: Or Biden will just get on the wrong plane again
and be whisked off to someplace and we'll never see
him again.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'd like a little bit more clarity at the top. Ever,
it is the top of the top of the hour,
end of the show. Usually we tell you right now
where they're going to be meet ups around the country.
But you know what, you can go and read that
att You should go and read that at Ricochet along
with everything else, and you should join as well, because
on the member feed, where all kinds of friendships are made,
in every single discussion and object of controversy and art
and music and the rest of it, you'll find it there.
You can hear me in my podcast The Diner, which
is available on Saturday. I think we're talking about dogs
and renaming streets, two vital crackling topics.
Speaker 6: You want to stop the presses, it's the same same subject,
stop the presses.
Speaker 3: Oh that's another whole issue. Maybe I'll get a shit
name the streets after dogs.
Speaker 2: Why didn't that occur to me? Well, you know what,
I'm gonna rip it up. I'm gonna go back. I'm
gonna do it the you collar me as we call it,
and read the show.
Speaker 6: I can totally see you living on Poodle Street.
Speaker 2: Come on one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm off.
Speaker 3: I'm really really is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well I think they have to have more here
than I actually do, so well it's better than Pug Place.
Speaker 3: Uh, John, Rob, It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 2: We'll see you both next week perhaps, and we'll see
everybody in the comments at Ricochet four point zero next week.
Speaker 6: Bye, guys, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Thanks John excellent as always, absolutely so.
Speaker 3: Ricochet Pea join the conversation.