Speaker 1: Well whiskey, come and take my pain, the moneys my ry.
Speaker 1: Why think alone when you can drink it all in
Speaker 1: with Ricochet's three whiskey happy Hour. Join your bartenders, Steve Hayward,
Speaker 1: John You, and the international woman of mystery, Lucretia. Where
Speaker 1: the lapped it up? It live? It ain't you easy
Speaker 1: on the should tap? Gotta give me from Tokyo three
Speaker 1: whiskey son, I am sitting here in Tokyo. Where are
Speaker 1: you guys? John? Are you in Philadelphia? I think.
Speaker 2: All I know is wherever the other Japanese are, whose
Speaker 2: eyes are rolling and stomach's turning at you calling a
Speaker 2: three whiskey sogn My gosh, doesn't that mean you're gonna
Speaker 2: for your sins? You're gonna have to do ten land
Speaker 2: acknowledgements right.
Speaker 1: Pardon my cough. I'm still finding off the after effects
Speaker 1: of a nasty bronchitis I seem to have brought back
Speaker 1: from Italy. But Lucretia, where are you hiding? You're hiding
Speaker 1: at home?
Speaker 3: I'm home. I'm home.
Speaker 4: And by the way, it's really hot here, hotter than way,
Speaker 4: harder than usual, almost one hundred degrees in my little
Speaker 4: mountain town.
Speaker 1: And that is amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I am drinking apperall sprits my son.
Speaker 4: All right, all right, but it's almost gone because you
Speaker 4: guys took so long. So what am I going to
Speaker 4: do when it runs out?
Speaker 3: I guess I have to get whiskey from the bar
Speaker 3: behind me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I have to confess that I thought during several
Speaker 1: days over here, I would thoroughly investigate Japanese whiskeyes, especially
Speaker 1: from sun Tory. What's that line of Bill Murray and
Speaker 1: lost in translation? Is let it be a sun Tory day.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to live right. Oh yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm living a reenact. Did you ever
Speaker 1: see that movie? It's thirty years old. It's a great
Speaker 1: It is a great.
Speaker 3: Really, I had a hard time with it. I was
Speaker 3: a little bored by it.
Speaker 1: Well, it doesn't have a plot.
Speaker 2: It's one of those in Japan. It makes sense.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, exactly, that makes total sense to me. Now
Speaker 1: I'll have to say we did venture out here yesterday
Speaker 1: to the Shoebaya crossing. You know, that's the thing you
Speaker 1: always seen all the movies. Boy, that place is that area?
Speaker 1: Is that neighborhood is insane? I mean, it makes Hong
Speaker 1: Kong look orderly and Scandinavian by comparison, I think.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Well, now, Steve, Mike, but you ought to. I
Speaker 2: expect to see you learning their cultural norms, like eating
Speaker 2: chicken pieces under railroad tracks and then getting totally trashed
Speaker 2: and falling asleep on the sidewalk like any Japanese ballary men.
Speaker 1: Oh, don't make me laugh, John, because I still got
Speaker 1: this cough bugging me. H. But all right, let's get
Speaker 1: to it, John, You have some explaining to do. I
Speaker 1: think I saw the headline of this huge heist of
Speaker 1: whiskey in broad daylight in Philadelphia, and I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it was a day you were there. Can you account
Speaker 1: for your whereabout's last Friday when the whiskey hest went down?
Speaker 2: Whiskey ice? What in Philadelphia we just call that enterprise?
Speaker 2: Probably whiskey heist? What are you talking about? So first
Speaker 2: I looked this up, so U yeah, five hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars of bourbon stolen. What did these people do? They
Speaker 2: showed up in a delivery truck and they said, we're
Speaker 2: here to pick up the whiskey, and the people in
Speaker 2: the place gave it to them, and they drove off
Speaker 2: that really, that's not even stealing, that's just called education.
Speaker 2: I mean, what are we talking about? And then I
Speaker 2: looked up where this is in Philadelphia and any idiot
Speaker 2: who would store half a million dollars of bourbon in
Speaker 2: that neighborhood that is one of the most more dangerous
Speaker 2: neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia. What were they thinking?
Speaker 2: I mean, they were they this was this is a
Speaker 2: learning experience for this company. And I'm sure now that
Speaker 2: they're going to transfer their whiskey to Fort Chuoka, Arizona
Speaker 2: for safekeeping other places, you know, other safe places like
Speaker 2: the central coast of California, to keep their whiskey safe.
Speaker 4: Well, the last two commanding generals up for what Chuka
Speaker 4: have both been big, big, big bourbon affiction audos. And
Speaker 4: my one friend who's now retiring, former G two of
Speaker 4: the Army has pardon me, Steve's making me cough, has
Speaker 4: something on the order of two hundred and fifty six
Speaker 4: bottles of bourbon.
Speaker 3: He just collects them off. And so the other guy
Speaker 3: just as more of a bourbon and cigar kind of
Speaker 3: enjoy it sort of guy.
Speaker 4: But so, yes, they could you could bring it here,
Speaker 4: they would take very good care of it because all
Speaker 4: of my other friends two hundred and fifty six some
Speaker 4: bottles are all really good stuff because people know he
Speaker 4: collects him and so they give him really good bottles.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's probably his. His two hundred fifty six
Speaker 4: bottles are probably worth more than five hundred thousand, so yeah,
Speaker 4: I probably should. Well, he's not at Fort Wachuk anymore,
Speaker 4: but it was so right, OK, we can bring it,
Speaker 4: or we could take it to Fort Knox since there's
Speaker 4: no gold there.
Speaker 1: We're back to that lucretia. I think you were started
Speaker 1: to say. Let me put it this way that the
Speaker 1: people who stole the whiskey, unlike William Marbury, they had
Speaker 1: their paperwork.
Speaker 3: They had paperwork. There was something missing.
Speaker 1: I forget what it was.
Speaker 4: I got the joke, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a fake
Speaker 4: They had a fake invoice. Something was missing, something electronic
Speaker 4: was missing. But since they had the invoice, they just
Speaker 4: let them take it. And it was basically a cybercrime.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So a cybercrime with a truck to go with it.
Speaker 1: Pretty neat. Well all right, well, let's then let's move
Speaker 1: on one more level of seriousness, but not completely to
Speaker 1: the story in the Wall Street Journal. I think I
Speaker 1: sent you guys that says suddenly the Supreme Court is
Speaker 1: investigating the drinking habits of the founders. And I meant
Speaker 1: to look up. But maybe you remember this genre or lucretia,
Speaker 1: both of you. There's that great inventory of how much
Speaker 1: whiskey and George Washington passed out to election workers in
Speaker 1: the election of seventeen ninety six or something.
Speaker 3: And it was a britt John Marshall when he ran
Speaker 3: for Congress, was that it well, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: it happens. Yeah, same thing. And in the book you
Speaker 3: don't like, or by the author you don't like, you know,
Speaker 3: Jean Edwards, Jean Edward Smith, that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: He talks about how they all sat at a table
Speaker 4: and as people came up, you know, if they look
Speaker 4: like they were going to be for this candidate, they
Speaker 4: came over and had bourbon from them. And yeah, it
Speaker 4: seemed like a great way to hold an election if
Speaker 4: you ask me. At least you knew that when people
Speaker 4: were voting, they were legitimately voting and they were supposed
Speaker 4: to be there.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, this as an under marker of how
Speaker 1: much American democracy has declined because about twenty thirty years back,
Speaker 1: there was a big scandal in California when Republicans got
Speaker 1: caught giving out donuts to people who turned up to vote.
Speaker 1: So it used to give out your pints of rum
Speaker 1: and whiskey. And now you're in trouble if you give
Speaker 1: out donuts.
Speaker 4: Why did they not mind when they gave out donuts
Speaker 4: and people came to get their COVID shots?
Speaker 1: Well, right, So, but the serious point of the article,
Speaker 1: And I don't know, John, if you're follower, you probably
Speaker 1: are at some level. I guess the vices of the Founders,
Speaker 1: especially their consumption habits of alcohol, have a bearing on
Speaker 1: a current case about gun rights. Right, And does the
Speaker 1: Second Amendment protect the right of someone to have firearm
Speaker 1: against statutes and ordinances that have been passed that try
Speaker 1: to ban gun possession by people who have either a
Speaker 1: drug problem or a history of alcohol abuse something like that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'll just say, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: what's coming on the law of it. I'll just pass
Speaker 1: on a quick story. I used to go out into
Speaker 1: the high desert in California with a bunch of my
Speaker 1: college friends for shooting parties. And you know, we had
Speaker 1: you know pistol shooting, we do skeet shooting. And a
Speaker 1: friend of mine had this old shack up in the mountains,
Speaker 1: and well, we had a rule, and the rule was
Speaker 1: the moment the first beer has opened, the guns are
Speaker 1: put away for the rest of the night.
Speaker 3: We please.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you probably didn't even take your cigars out there either.
Speaker 4: You didn't invite the atf and all you did was
Speaker 4: shoot with no alcohol.
Speaker 1: Well, look, a bunch of college guys, I think that
Speaker 1: was probably a sensible rule, because yeahuse as it was. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you've known some of these guys, I think you
Speaker 1: would approve the rule anyway, John, are you following this
Speaker 1: and what do you think?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's it's part of this new test that
Speaker 2: the Court created about restrictions on the Second Amendment, which
Speaker 2: is you have to find, see Steve would do so
Speaker 2: well at the court, you have to find a historical
Speaker 2: analogy to the regulation of this challenge today. So the
Speaker 2: case is about whether the federal government can take away
Speaker 2: your right to have a gun if you have committed
Speaker 2: a drug crime. And so the defender of this guy says, well,
Speaker 2: having a gun now and having used drugs is kind
Speaker 2: of like the way there were founders who drank a
Speaker 2: lot and had guns, and so you couldn't be prohibited
Speaker 2: from having guns just because you drank a lot. And
Speaker 2: that's kind of their version of drug use back two
Speaker 2: hundred and almost fifty years ago. Now, so that's the
Speaker 2: argument I got to see. I gotta say, I suspect
Speaker 2: this court is not going to be persuaded by that.
Speaker 4: I think they're the arguments done to begin with, not
Speaker 4: the plaintiffs or whoever, the argument the defense. This is
Speaker 4: the one time I've disagreed with Clarence Thomas. I think
Speaker 4: that this historical basis for the Second Amendment is the
Speaker 4: dumbest argument ever, because, of course the basis for the
Speaker 4: for the Second Amendment, if you want to talk about
Speaker 4: the history, it's that the colonists had weapons and could
Speaker 4: fight against the damn British. So why do we need
Speaker 4: to have the Second Amendment to guarantee that the people
Speaker 4: have weapons so that they can fight against the tyrannical
Speaker 4: government should our government become tyrannical. That's the purpose of
Speaker 4: the Second Amendment. It's and and so so everything should
Speaker 4: be viewed through that lens, not through this Oh, what
Speaker 4: did they do in history, And did they let guys
Speaker 4: that beat up their wives have guns in history?
Speaker 3: That's dumb. I'm sorry, I get why they do it.
Speaker 2: I understand. What would the test be then, So if.
Speaker 4: Somebody's a former drug addict, don't they have a right
Speaker 4: to uh revolt against their government if it becomes tyrannical?
Speaker 4: Or do you give that right up? Once you've smoked
Speaker 4: a joint or something. Isn't in fact a natural right
Speaker 4: belonging to you as a human being.
Speaker 2: So you could be any kind of felon and still
Speaker 2: have the right to have a gun after Like you
Speaker 2: could be a murderer who's released on after you serve
Speaker 2: your sentence. But you would say they still have a
Speaker 2: right to have a gun. Well, they could probably tyrannical
Speaker 2: central government.
Speaker 3: No, that's too easy, So I put them to death.
Speaker 1: Problem solved, Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2: Right, is the rule that all felonies were subject to
Speaker 2: the death penalty, which was the eighteenth century rule?
Speaker 3: Than you had a lot of fewer felonies then, right,
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, we only had what was it, John, We
Speaker 1: only had something like flies. Yeah, yeah, we only had
Speaker 1: like fifteen federal criminal statutes in the seventeen nineties. I
Speaker 1: mean they were a long time yeah, yeah, right right, Well,
Speaker 1: I have to say the article does the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal oracle does give a more reasons to admire the Founders.
Speaker 1: It quotes Justice gorsic Uh in a recent interview saying
Speaker 1: John Adams took a tankard of hard cider with his
Speaker 1: breakfast every day. James Madison reportedly drank a pint of
Speaker 1: whiskey every day. Thomas Jefferson said he wasn't much of
Speaker 1: a user of alcohol. He only had three or four
Speaker 1: glasses of wine a night. So more reasons to admire
Speaker 1: the founders and against them.
Speaker 3: But they all live to be old. Tell us crap
Speaker 3: about alcohol is bad for you? Who believes that nonsense?
Speaker 3: I mean, honestly, they all live to be old. I
Speaker 3: don't know if there are the ones.
Speaker 2: Who the ones who we know were old, But what
Speaker 2: about all the other ones who died young? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, yeah.
Speaker 2: Expectancy back then was probably like eighteen, Like yeah, it
Speaker 2: was probably like thirty five or something.
Speaker 3: Which is fine.
Speaker 4: But it just proves that if you drink enough alcohol,
Speaker 4: you'll and you're a man, you'll outlive the life.
Speaker 3: Expectancy for males in the eighteen hundred.
Speaker 1: So well, now I'm going to throw a big sweeping
Speaker 1: curve at Lucretia. I had mentioned that the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Critical article says that the of the justices most skeptical
Speaker 1: of historical analogies is Chief Justice Roberts, your favorite justice.
Speaker 4: But unfortunately for him, I don't think it's because he
Speaker 4: thinks we should adopt the natural law view of understanding
Speaker 4: and interpreting the Constitution. It's because I do think, and
Speaker 4: he's probably right about this, that he thinks it's just
Speaker 4: a little bit too easy to manipulate what the history is,
Speaker 4: because like Steve, you can find any historical analogy for anything,
Speaker 4: however inept it might be.
Speaker 3: And so I'm sure that that's Robert's approach to the
Speaker 3: whole thing.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's fine.
Speaker 2: Well, the problem is that the history and tradition tests
Speaker 2: or historical analogy tests, actually much more generous to the
Speaker 2: right to bear arms than what Roberts would do or
Speaker 2: any of the modern tests. And I don't think you
Speaker 2: could have a unlimited natural right approach to the Second Amendment,
Speaker 2: because what do you do with Can you have guns
Speaker 2: and government locations? Can you have guns if you've been
Speaker 2: convicted all these things we don't know. I mean, but
Speaker 2: if you use the test that the court uses in
Speaker 2: other areas, you would actually have much more reduced gun right.
Speaker 2: And you know the court's current approach.
Speaker 1: Well, right, And I you know, we used to have
Speaker 1: the old Western saloons that said you have to leave
Speaker 1: your guns outside or check them in, right, I mean
Speaker 1: that I don't think we was out of.
Speaker 2: Well that's private property. You're allowed to do that. You're okay,
Speaker 2: private property owner. You don't have to let anybody onto
Speaker 2: your property with a gun if you don't want right, right.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, the problem is, let me just let
Speaker 4: one last comment on this, and that is that you've
Speaker 4: got a couple of different things going on there, and
Speaker 4: one of them is is that I acknowledge that the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court cannot make too much of the right to
Speaker 4: revolution and its relationship to the Second Amendment. They are,
Speaker 4: in fact, you know, the bulwark of constitutionalism and the fault.
Speaker 3: You know, as the Constitution is the foundation of our government.
Speaker 4: And so I understand why even someone like Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 4: who I think I think fully understands the full purpose
Speaker 4: of the Second Amendment and it's the fact that it
Speaker 4: is in fact the the the instrumentation of the right
Speaker 4: to revolution. You got to be careful saying that out
Speaker 4: loud in a Supreme Court case, and that that creates
Speaker 4: a single a first a first problem.
Speaker 3: And then of course you.
Speaker 4: Can't have zero absolutely in this day and age with
Speaker 4: the complete lack of education. You know, just think about
Speaker 4: those those roaming bands of teenagers, you know, just going
Speaker 4: in and destroying places and and and they're they're animals.
Speaker 3: They're just sort of subhuman.
Speaker 4: They haven't been taught anything, they haven't been educated, they
Speaker 4: have no morals, they have no ethics, they don't know
Speaker 4: how to behave You can't really talk about Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: they have a right to have a gun too. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's so there are prudential considerations here.
Speaker 1: You know, boy, that's uh at. I'm going to take
Speaker 1: a great risk here, John and say, that's as close
Speaker 1: to Burkinism as I've ever heard Lucretia express yourself.
Speaker 2: In Japan. And Lucretia can't get at them stuff like
Speaker 2: this right now.
Speaker 1: She probably has agents everywhere. All right, We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick ad break and we'll be right back with
Speaker 1: more after this. Hey everybody, it's Steve. I have a
Speaker 1: new podcast to recommend to you. It's called The Future
Speaker 1: of Freedom Podcasts. You know, politics today feels like one
Speaker 1: endless shouting match, but the Future of Freedom podcast is different.
Speaker 1: Each episode takes a major issue facing America and it
Speaker 1: brings together two thoughtful voices from the right who see
Speaker 1: it differently. One might be more libertarian, the other more conservative.
Speaker 1: But here's what sets it apart. It's not a debate.
Speaker 1: There are no interruptions, no viral gotchas, no trying to
Speaker 1: score points. For that, you have to stick with us
Speaker 1: at the Three Whiskey Appy Hour. But on the Future
Speaker 1: of Freedom Podcasts, each guest gets the space to explain
Speaker 1: their position and then you decide what makes the most sense.
Speaker 1: Hosted by Scott Bertram of Hillsdale College, who's an old friend.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've been a guest on his Hillsdale show
Speaker 1: a couple of times. He's a great host and a
Speaker 1: great interviewer. So if you're looking for more thought and
Speaker 1: less noise, check out The Future Freedom Podcast. Wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcast, it's on Apple, iTunes and all the
Speaker 1: usual places. And now back to the Three Whiskey happy
Speaker 1: hour now, John, topic number two, You are practicing grand
Speaker 1: strategy without a license once again with your article on
Speaker 1: the Thucidities trap China. No oh no, it is a
Speaker 1: good article, except well, we want to walk through this
Speaker 1: because first of all, yeah, I know you're teaching grand
Speaker 1: strategy again, some aren't you, I think here and there? John, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so okay, it's not quite without a license. But first
Speaker 1: of all, tell listeners who may not heard of this,
Speaker 1: what is the Thucidities tap and what's the context where
Speaker 1: it comes up here in the last two three weeks.
Speaker 2: First of all, if your cities didn't call it a
Speaker 2: trap himself, as in something you know modern American scholars
Speaker 2: had made up. But the basic argument is that the
Speaker 2: Thucydides trap is when a powerful country, let's call it
Speaker 2: the Hedgemond, detects a rising, younger power that's going to,
Speaker 2: if thinks, challenge it for supremacy, so it launches a
Speaker 2: preventative attack early rather than let the rising power eventually
Speaker 2: grow and displace it. So the argument here, the reason
Speaker 2: why it's called the Thucidies trap. If you studied the
Speaker 2: Peloponnesian War Sparta is according to Thucydides, the powerful country
Speaker 2: Athens is the rising, commercial, rapacious democracy and Sparta essentially,
Speaker 2: according to Thucydides, which and there's an interesting debate about
Speaker 2: whether the facts that Thucidities reports actually support his thesis.
Speaker 2: But Thucidity's thesis is that Sparta is responsible for the
Speaker 2: pelop Pnesian War because they were afraid of the rise
Speaker 2: of Athens, and so they launched a preventative war and
Speaker 2: destroyed the whole really destroyed the world of Greek city
Speaker 2: states and eventually laid the whole thing opened to Philip
Speaker 2: of Macedon and Alexander the Great to come in and
Speaker 2: invade and really wipe out the independence of all the
Speaker 2: little city states eventually. So it really a destructive war
Speaker 2: between the two great superpowers of the time, Athens and Sparta.
Speaker 2: So apparently, when Trump showed up for the summit in China,
Speaker 2: Gnijianping says, you know, we don't want to get into
Speaker 2: a facinity's trap here, mister President over Taiwan and making
Speaker 2: the illusion, the claim that the United States is Sparta
Speaker 2: and China is Athens. And so a piece that I posted,
Speaker 2: I sort of I argue that the city's trap itself
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily exist at the time of the Greek city states.
Speaker 2: But if anybody is Athens, it's the United States now.
Speaker 2: And if anybody resembles you know, this regimented right freedomless,
Speaker 2: you know, society built on slave labor, it's China is
Speaker 2: the Sparta of today. And so to me, I was like,
Speaker 2: the analogy doesn't work, but it has the best line
Speaker 2: I think I've written in a long time, which is,
Speaker 2: but where are the Chinese bearing gifts? Greek gifts? Right?
Speaker 3: My favorite line, No, no, no, no, my love.
Speaker 4: My favorite line was the fucinities trap may not be
Speaker 4: about preventive war, but about great powers defending, defeating themselves
Speaker 4: by drawing the wrong analogies all past, because that not
Speaker 4: only gets those koity toity whoever they were on I've
Speaker 4: heard of them people. You are so impressed with uh
Speaker 4: making these silly arguments, But it also is a little
Speaker 4: bit of knife into Steve as well.
Speaker 1: I mean that how did I walk into this?
Speaker 2: But also you, guys Strouss, you love writing about this
Speaker 2: period of history, right, you love writing about the Greek
Speaker 2: city states and Athens and Sparta and so so Crates
Speaker 2: and Aristotle, Right, you guys actually think there's a lot to.
Speaker 3: Be learned from this wind, don't you dude?
Speaker 2: What what? Oh?
Speaker 1: Really? Yeah, I'm missing something there, dust Win.
Speaker 4: Dude, when when Ted meets up with Socrates and Bill
Speaker 4: and Ted's excellent adventure and so creates That's right.
Speaker 1: That was my first Ted talk. That's I always call it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, let's let's first of all, let's start on the
Speaker 1: op Well, I'm going to do the strous and analysis, John,
Speaker 1: let's start on the surface here with the optics of
Speaker 1: the whole thing. First of all, she made those comments
Speaker 1: and put a public session open for the press, right,
Speaker 1: So this was the speech not just Trump, but to
Speaker 1: the whole world. And my first thought was, it's hard
Speaker 1: to envision Trump huddled over his thucidities were in his life, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know we're used to Trump, so, you
Speaker 1: know at a Liberty University back in twenty sixteen where
Speaker 1: he talks about like that passage in two Corinthians, like,
Speaker 1: you know, two Corinthians walk into a bar. Was that right?
Speaker 2: Or you know at the time he said about Frederick Douglas,
Speaker 2: didn't he say I I Corinthians.
Speaker 1: No, I think he said to Corinthians you know, it's
Speaker 1: that passage.
Speaker 3: And the funny thing is I have heard people, oh
Speaker 3: I know that way right.
Speaker 1: But then but then the other one was the time
Speaker 1: he talked about Frederick Douglas in the present tense. Right now. Look,
Speaker 1: this is a small thing, but it was still kind
Speaker 1: of amusing talking about Frederick Douglas. Good to see him
Speaker 1: getting the recognition he deserves, you know. It was and
Speaker 1: he's doing a great job. That's sort of the typical
Speaker 1: you know Trump for he was, what a.
Speaker 2: Great Jobiden, right looking around for the dead Congress wan.
Speaker 1: A little bit of that. No, it's not that bad.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the point is is, I thought, uh, who's
Speaker 1: g's audience there? I thought that was, you know, beyond
Speaker 1: simply what do you say, just trying to make chit chat.
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't know, I know, he's messing with
Speaker 1: Trump's hands and messing with our hands.
Speaker 2: No, I think that's exactly right. It's actually a bit
Speaker 2: of propaganda. I mean, I think he's not saying this
Speaker 2: for the consumption of the Chinese domestic audience, who also
Speaker 2: probably don't know who the city is is, although maybe
Speaker 2: there might be more of them who know who he
Speaker 2: is than Americans these days. But he's right, he's sending
Speaker 2: a message to American elites and European elites, Yeah, trying
Speaker 2: to lose faith in our trying to get to lose
Speaker 2: confidence in ourselves.
Speaker 1: Well, that could be right. I mean, I do think that,
Speaker 1: you know, there are stories that that leak out now,
Speaker 1: in that leak out that there is a lot of
Speaker 1: interest in Chinese universities in Tokville, probably the classical Greeks
Speaker 1: as well, and also Strauss. There's a whole little body
Speaker 1: of Strauss's students in China. Now I don't know how
Speaker 1: widespread this is. Well, I did hear a Chinese scholar
Speaker 1: at the APSA three or four years ago give a
Speaker 1: presentation on Strauss that was just unbelievably bad. I mean
Speaker 1: it was just so completely wrong. You had to be
Speaker 1: trying to be that wrong. So I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: what's going on there entirely. But all right, let's say.
Speaker 3: They read it and they read air t Me, they
Speaker 3: read Plato and didn't get the joke.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's well they or they read the
Speaker 1: they read people like Sho on how to understand Strauss
Speaker 1: that it's totally wrong, all right, But never mind that
Speaker 1: the second point is part of your a lot of
Speaker 1: many of the points of your article, John and just
Speaker 1: said it, but say more about it is that we
Speaker 1: really don't understand the causes of warfare. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: this this model that we derive supposedly from ucidities. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I've talked to Victor Davis, Hanson's handsOn
Speaker 1: about it, and he has the same view that you do,
Speaker 1: which is, yeah, they got the facts here out of proportion,
Speaker 1: but yeah, causes of wars. It's amazing. And all this
Speaker 1: time we still haven't really settled into a cause of
Speaker 1: conflict that can be generally.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you, what do the Straussians think cause war?
Speaker 2: So there's a great Berkeley political scientist who I think
Speaker 2: was thought to be the great international relations guy, was
Speaker 2: dating Ken Waltz and he said he broke it all.
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, he I felt quite Coopelly said,
Speaker 2: there's three basic explanations. There's one that blames human nature
Speaker 2: that just man is warlike and so it's because of
Speaker 2: human beings. And they said and then the name of
Speaker 2: the book was Man the State of War. And then
Speaker 2: they said the second type of explanations is the state.
Speaker 2: It's city states or nation states, but it's the organization
Speaker 2: of domestic government that causes war. And then he said,
Speaker 2: now it's his view is the third explanation, it's the
Speaker 2: system and the state of nature internationally is why we
Speaker 2: have war. But he said, all the theories kind of
Speaker 2: break down those three parts. What do the Straussians think.
Speaker 2: I've never really talked with you guys about this.
Speaker 4: Definitely number one to begin with, no doubt about that,
Speaker 4: definitely number one. And that the lack of education to
Speaker 4: virtue either at the individual, state level or you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, think about it in a modern terms. Democracies
Speaker 4: don't go to war with each other. We're told it's
Speaker 4: mostly true.
Speaker 2: I know that the their exceptionelve right.
Speaker 3: But why because of a commitment to a certain kind
Speaker 3: of what would you call it? Commitment to human I
Speaker 3: hate to use this term. I'm looking for another one,
Speaker 3: but I'll say it.
Speaker 4: Human rights, but not as like the human rights people
Speaker 4: understand it the way Straussians would understand it. Human rights
Speaker 4: coming from natural rights, the dignity of every human being.
Speaker 4: You don't consider huge populations of people just expendable for
Speaker 4: your purposes, much like Hitler did, for instance, in the
Speaker 4: Second World War. And so that's the explanation for why
Speaker 4: democracies or republican democratic governments don't necessarily rush to war
Speaker 4: with each other to solve their problems. They have other
Speaker 4: ways to do so. But I do think it's number
Speaker 4: one is the answer. Number one is the answer. The
Speaker 4: two the other two that you mentioned are are not immaterial,
Speaker 4: but they're secondary. They're secondary to number one.
Speaker 1: Well, the third one about you know, would just say
Speaker 1: a third one state of nature, right, international state of nature, right,
Speaker 1: competition for resources, uh, you know, worries about threats.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So Strauss did actually write a long chapter on through
Speaker 1: cydidies in the city, and man, it's the only thing
Speaker 1: that I know they ever wrote about it. I think
Speaker 1: you may have taught a class on it. But and
Speaker 1: one thing is, you know, the word state that we're
Speaker 1: so familiar with, that's really a modern term. And every
Speaker 1: and every time I see a translation of Aristotle's politics
Speaker 1: that uses state in place of poll us, I get
Speaker 1: mad because it does not mean the way you know,
Speaker 1: the German Reich, you know, of modern times, and if
Speaker 1: you think about it in scientific terms, we often talk
Speaker 1: about steady state, right, you know, the steady state of
Speaker 1: a stable component or a physical system. Strauss points out
Speaker 1: something that you know, a detailed I missed reading through Cidities,
Speaker 1: which is he describes early on and throughout the book
Speaker 1: as all these the city states we'd call them now,
Speaker 1: of the ancient world, none of them are stable. They're
Speaker 1: always in motion, as wars are just simply an extreme
Speaker 1: example of the motion of human societies. I think it's
Speaker 1: very interesting stuff. But then the other thing I noticed
Speaker 1: that I had never thought about before is he goes
Speaker 1: on and unlike say the theory of Graham Allison on
Speaker 1: the Lucidity's trap, he makes the case for Sparta why
Speaker 1: Sparta was right to think the way they did. And
Speaker 1: then the next section is the case for Athens. And
Speaker 1: the light bulb bled off in my head because I
Speaker 1: remembered that, you know, jeff is famous book on the
Speaker 1: Lincoln Douglas the basis the case for Douglas, then the
Speaker 1: case for Lincoln. You will never see the case for
Speaker 1: Stephen Douglas stated better than Jeff's account of it and
Speaker 1: Crisis of the House Divided, which surprises a lot of
Speaker 1: people to hear that who have not read the book.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I think Strauss, at least in that chapter,
Speaker 1: does not himself, I think, suggest a fundamental cause or
Speaker 1: reductive accounts of why wars happen. But I think the
Speaker 1: suggestion there is states are always in motion, and that
Speaker 1: means there's always going to be conflicts, and many times
Speaker 1: those conflicts will erupt into wars. So you know, look
Speaker 1: at us in Iran right now, which maybe we'll come
Speaker 1: back to in a second.
Speaker 4: But what else John's mentioned of the second The second thing,
Speaker 4: I think probably is what you're getting at a little
Speaker 4: bit probably deserves just a little bit of explication here.
Speaker 4: The idea that because the police is in motion and
Speaker 4: there are always tensions domestically within the police, you often
Speaker 4: see war or empire building, or you know, just outward
Speaker 4: looking sort of violence as an antidote to the conflict
Speaker 4: that goes on in domestic politics, and as a way
Speaker 4: to refocus the warring factions and domestic politics onto something
Speaker 4: outside of the police, the regime, the city, state, the state, whatever.
Speaker 3: You want to call it.
Speaker 4: That's you know, the pat explanation for what happens to Rome,
Speaker 4: because Rome couldn't handle the plebeians and the patricians or
Speaker 4: they you know, the rich versus the poor, to oversimplify it,
Speaker 4: and so the way that they often handled it was
Speaker 4: by foreign conquest. Again goes back to human nature. Those
Speaker 4: things that John mentioned number two and three are secondary
Speaker 4: or derivative from that first thing.
Speaker 3: That's what I would say is the Josian.
Speaker 1: You the other thing I wondered about, going back to
Speaker 1: the optics of it for a moment, John Is you
Speaker 1: mentioned your article. A lot of people were saying twenty
Speaker 1: years ago that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were
Speaker 1: like the expedition to Syracuse and Sicily that went so
Speaker 1: badly for the Greeks, which.
Speaker 2: Went so great for the three whiskey Happy Hour. Our
Speaker 2: invasion of Sicily was a great success.
Speaker 1: Of course, it was left with.
Speaker 2: Much booty and power and gold. Right, but of course,
Speaker 2: or at least overweight, a little bit more weight. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But one of the aspects of the Sicilians misadventure was
Speaker 1: the role of alcibieties, right. I mean, he was a
Speaker 1: dubious The point is I was trying to I was
Speaker 1: wondering if g was so clever as to be trying
Speaker 1: to suggest in the subtle way that Trump is our
Speaker 1: alcibieties with his uh invasion of I don't know, or
Speaker 1: is attack on Iraq, I don't know. I think that
Speaker 1: would be way too recondite evens.
Speaker 2: Originally what most people most people stretched there, well that's
Speaker 2: my job, but there's this no, but this is there's
Speaker 2: this theory that strategists have that they've constantly tried to
Speaker 2: say the United States is like Athens and that we're
Speaker 2: grasping and commercial and since we're democratic, we give our
Speaker 2: given to crazes and Feds, and that it's Athens that's
Speaker 2: prone for democracies are prone to exuberant, irrational exuberance and
Speaker 2: over extension. And so they almost say, you know, you're
Speaker 2: just like Athens had Sicily we had. But then they
Speaker 2: keep making these arguments that turn out through wrong and
Speaker 2: they say, oh, well Vietnam is our rights to an extradition,
Speaker 2: then Afghanistan and Iraq are Sicilian expedition. Yeah, we still
Speaker 2: remained the hegemonic power after these incidents, so you know what,
Speaker 2: America has had an amazing ability to recover. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: one thing about yeah, all the city states do change
Speaker 2: of politics of time change, but the one city state
Speaker 2: that didn't change was Sparta, right, they they and also
Speaker 2: but they left no monuments, no writings. I think if
Speaker 2: you go to Sparta now, there's nothing to see because
Speaker 2: all they built was this little militaristic society. But when
Speaker 2: I talk to strategists, they always American ones in particular,
Speaker 2: they always sympathize with Sparta. They think Sparta did the best.
Speaker 2: They prefer Sparta to Athens, which I think is crazy.
Speaker 2: There's no philosophers in Sparta. They would all be put
Speaker 2: out to die Drousians in Sparta, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Don't it may ge me cough again, let's get out
Speaker 1: with this. Maybe it doesn't really connect. But and I'm
Speaker 1: avoid of bringing this up before, but what do we
Speaker 1: make of what's going on with the whole wrong situation?
Speaker 1: I mean, as we're speaking here, the latest oscillation of
Speaker 1: the things is that Trump says we got a deal,
Speaker 1: we don't need to attack them. The stock market boomed
Speaker 1: here today or yesterday. And I mean I only have
Speaker 1: a couple of very limited thoughts because I've been reserving
Speaker 1: judgment about things. But where do you think it stands, Lucretia.
Speaker 4: Do you have a you know, me done not the
Speaker 4: expert here? It sounds like a little bit more, a
Speaker 4: little bit more time to be a little more optimistic,
Speaker 4: cautiously optimistic, that this really is a deal, that his
Speaker 4: threats of just destroying any.
Speaker 3: Possibility that the regime could continue.
Speaker 4: Have taken hold, and that he's supposedly actually reached the
Speaker 4: people who can truly negotiate inside the IRGC. I hope
Speaker 4: it's true. I certainly hope it's true. The idea that
Speaker 4: he wanted to back off from invading the island and
Speaker 4: taking all that over, which would have been terrible cost
Speaker 4: probably for us in terms of, you know, the ground
Speaker 4: game and the casualties that would come from that. That
Speaker 4: you know, that supposedly weighed heavily on his mind, but
Speaker 4: he was prepared to do it if necessary, and then
Speaker 4: letting them know that, hey, I'm going to do this
Speaker 4: and you're going to end up like Venezuela. You're not
Speaker 4: going to have control over your oil. The United States will,
Speaker 4: or you can come to the negotiating gables. Supposedly that's
Speaker 4: what brought them there.
Speaker 3: But again I'm going to defer to you guys. This
Speaker 3: is not my area of expertise.
Speaker 4: I'm just being I'm praying and being cautiously optimistic because
Speaker 4: I for a variety of reasons, for the sake of
Speaker 4: the the Iranian people, for the sake of i'll be honest,
Speaker 4: for pure partisan hackery.
Speaker 3: I want to see this war over with. I want
Speaker 3: to see the economy bounce back.
Speaker 4: I want to see Trump to be able to say, no,
Speaker 4: I wasn't gonna fight it forever war, a choice for
Speaker 4: a forever war, and all the stupid things that people
Speaker 4: are saying about that. And you know, there's time for
Speaker 4: the economy to turn around if the war's truly truly over,
Speaker 4: for oil prices to drop significantly, and I think it
Speaker 4: would all be a good thing.
Speaker 3: So again, right, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, it.
Speaker 1: Apparently threats to actually take over Carg Island. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure be militarily difficult, but it might destroy the place.
Speaker 1: And I think I heard from the beginning that we
Speaker 1: wanted to preserve Carg Island so that a new Iran
Speaker 1: would have an economy. And so now I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's going to happen or not. He's I've heard
Speaker 1: a couple of analogies that trum Trump is proving to
Speaker 1: be a better rug merchant than the Iranians are. I
Speaker 1: don't know about that he's getting. He's getting terrible press
Speaker 1: about all this, including from a lot of conservatives who
Speaker 1: support him. Otherwise. The one thing, well, right, of course,
Speaker 1: But the one thing I've been watching is the runnings
Speaker 1: have a timeline. But we have one too. Some oil
Speaker 1: people I follow closely really follow a daily basis. We've
Speaker 1: been drawing down the strategic petroleum reserve, you know, seven
Speaker 1: eight million barrels a week.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: International oil storage is estimated to run out about the
Speaker 1: end of July early August, and that's when you'd start
Speaker 1: to see some serious economic problems right now. I mean
Speaker 1: you mentioned inflation. The inflation number this week was bad,
Speaker 1: except as almost all energy prices, which at the food
Speaker 1: and everything else were flat, which means under prices, well,
Speaker 1: it'll transfer into that given enough time. Right. That's something
Speaker 1: I teach my energy policy classes. Only half your energy
Speaker 1: consumption is direct, the rest is indirect. That can of
Speaker 1: Campbell's soup do the energy footprint. It's an exercise I
Speaker 1: have students due to understand this. Anyway, John, do you
Speaker 1: where you settle out on the matter right now?
Speaker 2: If the problem is that this is like the third
Speaker 2: or fourth time present and Trump has announced where about
Speaker 2: a day or two away from an agreement. And it's
Speaker 2: not because President Trump doesn't want to reach an agreement.
Speaker 2: It's clearly because the Iranians can't be trusted to keep
Speaker 2: any word that they give. And I think the problem
Speaker 2: is that American Negotia has reached some kind of deal
Speaker 2: with whoever is representing the Iranian government, but the people
Speaker 2: who really in control the Rerignan government are the Iranian
Speaker 2: Revolutionary Guard Corps, and they then turn around and violate
Speaker 2: whatever the agreement there is. So here's the problem is
Speaker 2: that you could reach an agreement with Iran, and how
Speaker 2: do we know they're not going to start cheating right away,
Speaker 2: because that's what they've been doing already these last two months.
Speaker 2: So I don't know how Trump overcomes that problem. It
Speaker 2: might be that we reach in the end something like
Speaker 2: what happened with Iraq after the ninety one war, where
Speaker 2: we don't really reach a hey steal, we just have
Speaker 2: like a cease fire or an armistice where we just patrol.
Speaker 2: You know, we have a no fly We had a
Speaker 2: no fly zone over parts of Rock and we would
Speaker 2: periodically bomb Iraq when we thought they were up to
Speaker 2: no good, But there was never any kind of settled piece.
Speaker 2: Another reason that might not work is because you need
Speaker 2: to stop the attacks on the straight of hormus, and
Speaker 2: so it would have to be something more than just
Speaker 2: a cessation of hostilities.
Speaker 4: And you don't think that, Sorry, sir, I was just
Speaker 4: gonna ask you don't think that there are any signs
Speaker 4: that this that this negotiation might produce a better outcome
Speaker 4: than those previous ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing I don't see is why would
Speaker 2: the Iranians say, oh, this time, we really do mean it?
Speaker 4: But he would be my argument to you, but not
Speaker 4: so much my argument, But what I would say to
Speaker 4: get your feedback, and that is that Trump's promise this
Speaker 4: time to take out just about every capability they might
Speaker 4: have had to do any kind of offensive sort of
Speaker 4: attacks on anyone. His promise was, you know, forgive me,
Speaker 4: but we're gonna we're gonna bum the you know what
Speaker 4: out of them, and and showed it the last two
Speaker 4: nights and was prepared to do so again tonight whether
Speaker 4: the day were recording this. Maybe, I mean, at some
Speaker 4: point a bully does back down if you're tough enough.
Speaker 3: Is that a possible outcome? Of this in your mind
Speaker 3: or just.
Speaker 2: No, oh no. I think you're right that at some
Speaker 2: point you could lay sufficient waste to Iran that they
Speaker 2: would say, okay, we give up. But the destruction of
Speaker 2: the last few days has not been all that much.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have seen. I don't know why this level
Speaker 2: of attack would suddenly produce conciliation on the place.
Speaker 3: Wasn't it the promise of what he was going to do?
Speaker 1: We got to wind up? I just last comment here.
Speaker 1: We don't know what information Trump has about what's going
Speaker 1: on inside Iran, who the competing factions and so forth.
Speaker 1: But one thing signaled to me is that the world
Speaker 1: markets are taking us all with great equanimity. I mean
Speaker 1: about the market swings up and down, but an awful
Speaker 1: lot of that is just the oil price question. And
Speaker 1: it's also right now there's a lot of market volatility
Speaker 1: because of the whole AI and chip trade. But the
Speaker 1: markets overall are taking us all with a great equanimity.
Speaker 1: They're not showing the great concern that this is a
Speaker 1: long term problem. And that's it's significant to me. And
Speaker 1: you know, you would think of the markets were worried
Speaker 1: about it, they wouldn't jump as big as they did
Speaker 1: here on what Thursday of this week when Trump said
Speaker 1: We've got a piece of deal and suddenly the dow,
Speaker 1: which was flag goes up almost a thousand points. That
Speaker 1: they wouldn't keep jumping at that if they thought that
Speaker 1: there wasn't the likelihood that it's going to turn out
Speaker 1: something like that. I think, I don't know. You don't
Speaker 1: have much to go on from afar, that's all. It
Speaker 1: was a problem. But one thing we do have to
Speaker 1: go on is the friendliness of our sponsors, for whom
Speaker 1: we're gonna stop for a moment and take a quick message.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, all right. Last topic for today,
Speaker 1: uh it. You know we've talked about Gordon Wood on
Speaker 1: this show before. In fact, you know, we beat him
Speaker 1: up a couple of times, and you've defended him, John,
Speaker 1: and I have to say the news.
Speaker 2: Don't you feel bad?
Speaker 1: Well, that's the whole point is I mean, you know
Speaker 1: when you heard that. I mean, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily a shock when someone of the age of ninety
Speaker 1: two dies, but to have been struck down by an
Speaker 1: accident a motorist in a parking lot in Providence, Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: it's pretty horrific and shocking, and coming just the month
Speaker 1: before the July fourth is. I don't know, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: reading too much into it, and maybe I'm too much
Speaker 1: sentimental and all the rest of that, but that struck me.
Speaker 1: As I guess, it's not really an omen of anything real,
Speaker 1: but still it's quite an amazing thing that this historian,
Speaker 1: of all people be the person who would be struck
Speaker 1: down in an accident right now as we're gearing up
Speaker 1: to you know, talkships and everything else. And I did
Speaker 1: have to say, and I you know, I've said this
Speaker 1: before too. I've mellowed on the guy quite a bit,
Speaker 1: partly because he got better the old regot. And I've noticed,
Speaker 1: by the way, the lot of people who would have
Speaker 1: critics of his are also singing his praises this week.
Speaker 1: Do people surprise me?
Speaker 2: In fact?
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's like who, well, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: name names, actually I don't well, actually, well some of
Speaker 1: the clare monsters actually who otherwise, Because you know, Jaffa
Speaker 1: tangled with Wood a couple of times, I'll put it
Speaker 1: in here. Wood wrote a long piece in the New
Speaker 1: York Review of Books in nineteen eighty eight called the
Speaker 1: fundamentalists in the Constitution, and it was an attack on
Speaker 1: the Straussian bi centennial, that's what he called it. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't a nasty piece, but it was very critical
Speaker 1: and I make reference to it in my Civitas Outlook
Speaker 1: piece that's just up. And although Jaff is real target
Speaker 1: back then was another guy at the New York Review.
Speaker 1: He used was Miles Bernaiatt guy from Oxford and Jaff
Speaker 1: and he went back and forth in letters, both public
Speaker 1: and private letters, for months more than would but in
Speaker 1: any case, but would you know, it's come around much
Speaker 1: closer to I think the position it celebrates the decoration
Speaker 1: of independence for mostly the right reasons, and that was
Speaker 1: completely absent from his breakout book from nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: So that showed his evolution. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: either want of you want to say any more about Wood,
Speaker 1: but I have a follow up question though that Wood
Speaker 1: brings up.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure he changed. I think he was thinking
Speaker 2: about different So the thing that struck me about the
Speaker 2: difference between creation, which is basically his PhD dissertation and
Speaker 2: then the radicalism of the American revolutions, I think came
Speaker 2: out in the early nineties. Yeah, I think it's like
Speaker 2: ninety three or ninety four, and the Creation is like
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy around then. Is that he's
Speaker 2: I think, writing more about the society and economy and radicalism,
Speaker 2: whereas the Creation he's really writing. He thinks of intellectual
Speaker 2: history about ideas, and so I think in his own mind,
Speaker 2: if I remember how he reconciles them, is that he
Speaker 2: thinks really that American society kind of left behind this
Speaker 2: kind of classicism of the Founding and Republican in that
Speaker 2: really short order that and I think he thinks that,
Speaker 2: like James Madison, doesn't recognize the world he's living in
Speaker 2: after he's president. It's just because of the sort of
Speaker 2: Jacksonian spirit is really the true nature of the Revolution.
Speaker 2: So I don't think to me that's not a change
Speaker 2: in the way you think of it, that he's changed
Speaker 2: his view of intellectual history to be that the Founding
Speaker 2: was motivated by natural rights. I think he's much more
Speaker 2: impressed by the economic and social changes of the Revolution,
Speaker 2: And I don't maybe he thinks that the I mean,
Speaker 2: he just really doesn't discuss the natural rights element all
Speaker 2: that much.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a missing element. I mean that you just
Speaker 1: said something interesting about James Madison didn't recognize or couldn't
Speaker 1: recognize the world he was in after he was president.
Speaker 1: Did you ever read was it Washington Irving's Rip van Winkle?
Speaker 1: You know, we always think Rip van winkels the story
Speaker 1: the guy who falls asleep for twenty years wakes up,
Speaker 1: and we think that the story's about a guy who
Speaker 1: falls as like.
Speaker 2: Oh, you mean like the original story. No, I've never
Speaker 2: read it.
Speaker 1: Like, oh see, that's the thing is that I haven't
Speaker 1: read it now in forty years. But well, you know again,
Speaker 1: you start reading things more careful, you're like, we weirdos do.
Speaker 1: And what you notice this is what does the actual
Speaker 1: conclusion of the story, Rip van Winkle wakes up and
Speaker 1: what it could be eighteen thirty or something like that,
Speaker 1: and he looks around and he's like, boy, this place
Speaker 1: is all busy and there's all this commotion, and everything's changed,
Speaker 1: and I don't recognize this country. And it's sort of
Speaker 1: a when you say, one interpretation is it's an account
Speaker 1: of the chaos of American society and how much how
Speaker 1: dynamic a society it is, and if you like some
Speaker 1: old settled aristocratic view of politics, which some people say
Speaker 1: would was celebrating or advocating. That's not really correct. It's
Speaker 1: very suggestive of that. But I think the Radicalism book
Speaker 1: you mentioned that was I think maybe his best book,
Speaker 1: and I thought, ah, what do I thought the conclusion
Speaker 1: of that book was, is they really did mean it
Speaker 1: about this equality, business and freedom and liberty and people,
Speaker 1: can you know, the pursuit of happiness. He didn't put
Speaker 1: it directly in those terms, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: who he's running at a time when the whole Marxist
Speaker 1: view of the American founding and early republic were was
Speaker 1: being revived, and that I think.
Speaker 2: Is the great achievement of him and Bernard Balen is
Speaker 2: to restore Like That's why I don't understand why he Straussians,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, slammed the guy so much to
Speaker 2: read he but at the time that he and Balen
Speaker 2: were writing, you know, Charles Beard was still the dominant
Speaker 2: figure about the account. He doesn't they said the revolution
Speaker 2: was about ideas, not about you know, property owners protecting
Speaker 2: their property. Yet that's you guys always give your friends
Speaker 2: a much harder time than your enemies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wouldn't call him a friend, I would call
Speaker 4: him neutral, just just I just don't think he's important.
Speaker 4: You guys seem to think he's I don't want to
Speaker 4: say anything bad about it. And the guy just was
Speaker 4: killed in a b a driver. I don't want to
Speaker 4: say just I guess I I come from a tradition
Speaker 4: that just didn't think he was worth spending too much
Speaker 4: time with, just because Yeah, they're just There're a lot
Speaker 4: better things to read about the American founding than Gordon would.
Speaker 3: That's what it comes down to. It's not a choice
Speaker 3: between reading Charles Beard or Gordon Wood. There are just
Speaker 3: better Who is.
Speaker 2: The great Straussian historian of the American Revolutions?
Speaker 3: A lot of I don't know that you have a
Speaker 3: single grade.
Speaker 1: Where are they?
Speaker 3: I would read Abraham Lincoln every single day before I
Speaker 3: would ever bother to read it.
Speaker 2: Abraham Lincoln was a Straussian.
Speaker 1: Well you didn't know.
Speaker 3: Somebody because they're a Straussian.
Speaker 2: But what I was saying, who's the great Straussian historian
Speaker 2: of the American Revolution? I thought you said Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3: Those games I don't play well.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're just a game, I'm just who
Speaker 2: gives the best account the Straussian account of.
Speaker 1: The Revolution, there isn't. Yeah, but he was alading trying
Speaker 1: to write a history about it. He gave an understanding
Speaker 1: of it. It's a political one. He wasn't a historian, right,
Speaker 1: he was a politician. And that's fine, but no, but no,
Speaker 1: but seriously, now you can't say you don't like historian
Speaker 1: because there's other people who are better who aren't historians.
Speaker 1: How about some names like Edmund Morgan or Forest McDonald
Speaker 1: or Robert Middelkoff the Glorious Cause I bet you haven't
Speaker 1: read any of those books, have you?
Speaker 2: Am a big fan of Fort McDonald, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, he's one of the guys
Speaker 1: who really slammed the door shut on Charles Beard. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew Forest McDonald a little bit. I never thought
Speaker 1: to ask him about what he thought of Beard. That
Speaker 1: would have been interesting.
Speaker 2: You know, what do you think about Strauss? And that
Speaker 2: would have been interesting too.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now here's something that actually is well known about
Speaker 1: Forest McDonald. I learned this from Leonard Levy, who liked
Speaker 1: Forest McDonald. Forest McDonald, you know how to farm?
Speaker 2: Would would would Leonard Levy be one of your guys?
Speaker 1: Well, of course, he's a constitutional historian and not a
Speaker 1: you know, across the border story. And but yeah, pretty much,
Speaker 1: even though you know, of course it's our guys who
Speaker 1: got him to change his mind about a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: I'll leave that aside for now. H I learned from Levy.
Speaker 1: I'd known about Forrest McDonald, read him some as an undergraduate.
Speaker 1: But McDonald lived on a farm outside of wherever University
Speaker 1: of Alabama is, and he liked to run his tractor
Speaker 1: and and stun his porch in the nude. I mean
Speaker 1: he really wasn't. Yes, he was a nudist. I mean
Speaker 1: it's just weird.
Speaker 2: Wait, Steve, you're the one walking around in the Japanese
Speaker 2: robe on the You're already halfway there, man, you're ready
Speaker 2: halfway there.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, I was not gonna say about I don't
Speaker 1: know something else.
Speaker 3: But okay, I'm okay with you guys discussing it. I
Speaker 3: just don't have that much to say about it.
Speaker 1: All right, Well there is this question.
Speaker 3: It was not good and I just said I don't
Speaker 3: want to read anything else's school.
Speaker 1: Well, well, there's this question that raises and we'll make
Speaker 1: this our last word.
Speaker 2: Here is.
Speaker 1: In a big lecture that would gave last year, celebrating
Speaker 1: almost exclusively the Declaration of Independence that he'd ignored in
Speaker 1: the Creation Book. He ends by saying that this is
Speaker 1: why America is a creedle nation. He said, creed Oh
Speaker 1: is the transcript, but it means the same thing. We're
Speaker 1: a creedle nation. And there's that big debate right now.
Speaker 1: So you know, Bill Galston was trying to pick a
Speaker 1: scab last week in the Wall Street Journal, and he
Speaker 1: mentioned the Claremont Institute in it, saying, there's this division
Speaker 1: on the right between people who see America as a
Speaker 1: creedle nation in Lincoln's terms, or as a historic nation,
Speaker 1: or that has several forms. Right, it's cultural, it's religious,
Speaker 1: it's an ethnic heritage. Right, that's the heritage Americans argument
Speaker 1: that comes out one version of this. Have you heard this,
Speaker 1: by the way, I only recently learned this that some
Speaker 1: of the critics of the declaration, say, conservative critics say, well,
Speaker 1: this is that all men are created equal, the sort
Speaker 1: of universal principle. It's what is the pillar of open
Speaker 1: borders and unlimited immigration, which is idiotic, but nonetheless that's
Speaker 1: something that some people are saying. And Galston threw that
Speaker 1: out there as a provocation, I thought, but that are
Speaker 1: the three polls, right, I've always thought a synthesis was possible.
Speaker 1: I think there is possible to do one better than would,
Speaker 1: but it would have to be on that scale, and
Speaker 1: no one has really done it. Maybe the closest is
Speaker 1: Brad Thompson's book title Him Forgetting. Thompson, a student of
Speaker 1: Gordon Wood, did his pH d with the Wood, but
Speaker 1: the second half of his dissertation was a criticism of
Speaker 1: Wood his dissertation advisor, which I think is pretty nervy
Speaker 1: of Brad.
Speaker 2: I kind of like that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, what do you guys think? I mean, peace, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but that point, I mean, you know, is it necessary
Speaker 1: to take polls between the Creedle nation view and the
Speaker 1: historic cultural nation view?
Speaker 4: Or is this as it's an artificial.
Speaker 3: Somebody needed to write an article and come up with something.
Speaker 1: Well, no, this has been this has been around for
Speaker 1: quite a while, right, and so.
Speaker 4: Here's here I will try one more time to defend myself.
Speaker 4: I'm not interested in reading any historians view of the matter.
Speaker 4: I'm interested in reading primary sources. I'm interested in reading
Speaker 4: those people as they as they understood themselves.
Speaker 3: By reading them.
Speaker 4: And I'm not I don't need somebody else's lens to
Speaker 4: tell me how to think. And I think if more
Speaker 4: of us stopped expecting the Howard Zenz to explain it
Speaker 4: all for us, we would understand better what our founding
Speaker 4: is all about. But instead we read people who tell
Speaker 4: us what you think.
Speaker 2: But I'm talking about why I read like scholars books
Speaker 2: or why have scholars? You sound like a spartanectuals.
Speaker 1: Remember, remember Chaff is a great line about that history
Speaker 1: is much too important to be left to historians.
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed, but.
Speaker 2: You don't want to read any thing.
Speaker 3: It's not that, it's just I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't place them in a sort of vaunted place.
Speaker 4: I mean, I love reading James McClellan's uh histories of
Speaker 4: the Civil War. I think I think he's a great writer.
Speaker 4: He brings up I'm not sure Iryer.
Speaker 3: McLean's the general.
Speaker 2: No, I love it.
Speaker 3: I mean I I do. I don't want I don't want.
Speaker 4: Them to tell me how to think about things, is
Speaker 4: what it comes down to. And I don't want them
Speaker 4: to put it all in a big package for me
Speaker 4: and tell me this is the the theory behind and
Speaker 4: and this is how you have to view all of
Speaker 4: American history through this lens. That that I find that
Speaker 4: just uninteresting.
Speaker 2: Isn't that when you guys do with political theory.
Speaker 3: Nope, you do the opposite.
Speaker 2: I'm just finishing Mansfield's book on right the all of
Speaker 2: national and I really love it. But the whole the
Speaker 2: thing is a theory of all political modern political theory
Speaker 2: and how to think about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: An he's like Straussian and chief. He's like chiefest staff
Speaker 2: to the Straussian movement these days. Right, isn't that why
Speaker 2: you guys write your books is to persuade people how
Speaker 2: to understand all these thinkers? Is that what you're doing
Speaker 2: is telling people how to think? Well, the really quickly
Speaker 2: loud no.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: But but when we had our podcast with RJ.
Speaker 4: Pastrito, one of the things that I mentioned was I
Speaker 4: I had long before I met him, I was a
Speaker 4: huge fan because without a huge shove it down your throat,
Speaker 4: this is how to think about it. He presented things
Speaker 4: in a way that you could think about them, think
Speaker 4: them through, and then come to your own conclusions about
Speaker 4: the damage. I know I agree with him about the
Speaker 4: damage that Woodrow Wilson has done to this country and
Speaker 4: other progressive. But it wasn't again as shove it down
Speaker 4: your sort of thing and this is the only way
Speaker 4: to understand anything. It was here's the facts, folks, and
Speaker 4: here's an interesting way to look at them kind of thing.
Speaker 3: I prefer that. Again.
Speaker 4: I don't like the Howard Zinn approach to history, and
Speaker 4: that's so much of what I see intellectual scholars doing today.
Speaker 4: If it's not, you know, I know that that's a
Speaker 4: crass example because he's a crass person, but he's also
Speaker 4: that view overtook other views, which became the dominant view
Speaker 4: and is now taught everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yuh, yuck. Let's read real history, not Howard zin Well.
Speaker 2: Let me can I just defend Bill Dalston. One quick
Speaker 2: point was he wasn't right. Steve's right, Well, he wasn't
Speaker 2: inventing these categories or driving any theory. I think this
Speaker 2: is a debate that's been going on for much of
Speaker 2: American history, which is this America founded on allegiance to
Speaker 2: certain set of ideas or is it more like a
Speaker 2: traditional nations with our nationhood h deriving from history and
Speaker 2: territory and people. I would have thought you guys would
Speaker 2: have been very sympathetic to Galston. You know, Galston believes
Speaker 2: it's a credle nation, right, He's a critical of j.
Speaker 2: D Vance and Patrick Denin, who he attaches to. I
Speaker 2: would have thought Jafa people would have thought we are
Speaker 2: a credle nation and supported that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, well so so Galston. Galston is one of
Speaker 1: the only left Straussians. He's not that far left. He
Speaker 1: was a Clinton Knight right, which is uh and uh.
Speaker 1: He was an Alan Bloom student at Chicago way back when.
Speaker 1: So he's kind of part of the club a little bit,
Speaker 1: and that's why he knew exactly what he was doing.
Speaker 1: But it isn't I remember at the aps A, I
Speaker 1: think it was two thousand and one, a vicious, ferocious
Speaker 1: debate between Tom West and a guy named Barry Shane,
Speaker 1: who ill bet Lucreatia has never heard of, but he's
Speaker 1: been around.
Speaker 3: A long time running that debate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that that, you know, that debate was was
Speaker 1: epic and pretty vicious. I mean Shane's saying that Tom's
Speaker 1: book Defending the Founder should never been published. I mean
Speaker 1: he was that sort of rude about He's a really
Speaker 1: nasty guy, and you know that he would have talked.
Speaker 2: Oh what did he say back?
Speaker 1: Well, you know it was the one only time I've
Speaker 1: ever seen Tom look like the nice, friendly guy, right
Speaker 1: because always meloded. All right, let's put it all to
Speaker 1: be continued, except not after our next ad break. Instead,
Speaker 1: we're going to go to a close, so we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. All right. We need some help this week
Speaker 1: from the our friends at the Bee Lucretia.
Speaker 3: Yes we do so. Picture of Karen vass It says
Speaker 3: California reminds voters there are just thirty days left to
Speaker 3: vote in last Tuesday's election.
Speaker 2: Can help it?
Speaker 4: Can help it because I'm still frustrated about it? Or
Speaker 4: Los Angeles a fish worn? It may take several weeks
Speaker 4: to tell the up goals from World Cup matches. Can
Speaker 4: I just say that nothing bores me more than even
Speaker 4: a discussion of soccer.
Speaker 1: Oh have you seen this? What's burning up Twitter right now?
Speaker 1: Is this German tourist over here and attending the World
Speaker 1: by the South? Yeah, and but he discovered BUCkies and
Speaker 1: you said, can't believe it exists? Is based on ones?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh really?
Speaker 2: Oh that's awesome. I guys see that. Can I tell
Speaker 2: you I was driving in Pennsylvania today on the Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: Turnpike and there was a sign that said something like
Speaker 2: nearest BUCkies eight hundred miles.
Speaker 1: I was like, I can't believe.
Speaker 2: They put up back. That was so funny. There's no
Speaker 2: BUCkies in Pennsylvania or Ohio. I don't like the nearest
Speaker 2: one must be down at Oklahoma or something.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm going to throw another one that we two
Speaker 4: on the Carmelo Anthony verdict that came out this week.
Speaker 4: Nation shocked as jury rules you cannot stab someone in
Speaker 4: the heart for no reason at all, and then Carmelo
Speaker 4: kicking himself or not converting to Islam and stabbing someone
Speaker 4: in the UK instead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of these aren't even it's true.
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny.
Speaker 4: California officials pleased with voter turnout of two hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty percent.
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, and then sorry one more. I tried to
Speaker 3: find the one I promised you guys about BUCkies. It
Speaker 3: was hilarious.
Speaker 4: World Cup stadium empty as European tourists all just hanging
Speaker 4: out at Bucky's.
Speaker 1: There we go, right'.
Speaker 3: I could leave one since we spent too much time.
Speaker 4: According to Steve and Iran, I'll leave us with this
Speaker 4: Trump sets new world record by winning war with Iran
Speaker 4: twenty seven times in one year.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm dead.
Speaker 2: Always drink your whiskey, meat, buy more books, and Steve
Speaker 2: a good sign off from Tokyo, Japan.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, uh, what's uh? What's the what's the Japanese goodbye?
Speaker 1: I've forgotten It's not Yanara oh man, that's it. I
Speaker 1: keep wanting to say a Reeve dirty But that was
Speaker 1: the place we read two weeks ago, right, or you know,
Speaker 1: knietchi Wall backwards or something like that. But you have
Speaker 1: been listening to another edition, another Cosmopolitan edition of the
Speaker 1: Three Whiskey Happy Hour. I'm actually on a whole different
Speaker 1: day from the two co hosts, hosted by Ricochet dot Com,
Speaker 1: sponsored by our friends at the Civitas Institute. Come back
Speaker 1: again next week when we will resume all these usual
Speaker 1: discussions with our usual Vim and Vigor. Bye, guys Ricochet,
Speaker 1: join the conversation.