The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Almost Live Q & A Episode

John Yoo is over in Korea this week, where he says he is "lecturing," but we know he's really just arranging to smuggle back a ton of tariff-free Korean barbecue sauce. So in his absence Steve and Lucretia attempted to hold alive live taping streamed on YouTube (in Steve's case accompanied by Bad Rock rye whisky that "Pizza Bob" supplied directly to him this week), but we missed a technical step in the preparation process and couldn't get it to work. But we have posted the video anyway on our all-new 3WHH Podcast YouTube Channel. And we'll aim to get the livestream option working my next week. 

In anything case, we did have a small audience join us live on the Zoom webinar, and we fielded a number of listener and reader questions, culminating in a long discussion of good books about the American Founding, to get a jump on the semiquincentennial (250th) anniversary of the Declaration of Independence coming up next July. Steve went with four short books: Edmund Morgan's classic Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789; Martin Diamond's The Founding of the Democratic Republic (hard to find alas); Gordon Wood's The American Revolution: A History (which is both much shorter and better than his famous Creation of the American Republic); and Larry Arnn's The Founders' Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It. 

Lucretia offered up her oral history of how the founding ought to be understood and more importantly taught to students, before settling on a challenging new book. Edward Erler's Prophetic Statesmanship: Harry Jaffa, Abraham Lincoln, and the Gettysburg Address, which doesn't sound like it's about the American Founding, but actually is. And we had a few other stray books to include, which is likely more than our questioner wanted. In any case, much more t

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well wifty, come and take my pain, the Moneys.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
My ry, oh whiskey. Why think alone when you can
drink it all in with Ricochet's three whiskey happy Hour.
Join your bartenders, Steve Hayward, John You and the International
Woman of Mystery, Lucretia where.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
They slapped it up it David, ain't you easy on
the show?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Have you gotta give it and let that? Why flon?
Well darn it Now, I've got to start collecting cracker
barrel memes because that's the craziest story this week. You Lucretia.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hi, Steve, it's great to see you. You'd think that
the CEOs would have learned something along the way Target.
Target is going under. I mean there's a whole there's
a whole, entire cohort of gen Z and millennials who
can't shop anywhere except for Target, and it's going under
because the CEO was so damn stupid and tried, by

(01:03):
the way to backpedal a bit and it didn't help.
I know people including me, who won't even walk in
the store and probably never will again. Because you'll remember, Steve,
that I stopped going there when they stopped the Salvation
Army people right, and the Salvation Army people went under,
and you know, it's just it's hard to it's hard
to be morally, Uh what's sound these days? Morally politically sound?

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Right? Right? But well, anyway, we were able to actually
we're actually able to have a live show today because
John U is away overseas in Korea. His cover story
is that he's lecturing at a Korean university, but we
know better he's really just stocking up and going to
smuggle in a lot of Korean barbecue sauce to beat
Trump's tariffs. That's what's really happening.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Not only that, but he doesn't even speak Korean, So
how's he gonna lecture?

Speaker 2 (01:53):
I think they know, I think they know English better
than he does, but they Okay, well that's not right. True. Meanwhile,
because we are sort of back in the public mode
and we're in the evening like we're supposed to, I
am enjoying a wonderful bottle of bad rock straight rye
Whiskey one hundred and eighteen proof, So that's gonna make

(02:14):
things rock and roll from Glacier Distilling in Montana, given
to me this week at Amo Girl's comment or con
four Bye see it's Jim. I think this is the
right pronunciation, Jim Poge, although he's better known as Pizza Bob.
Now I know who Pizza Bob is. He does, however,
attach a stipulation to the drinking of this whiskey, which

(02:37):
is we're forbidden to have any further discussions about prudence.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah it was the train Wreck.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, it was the train Wreck episode John of course,
because he's not here right, No, but I do.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
And I, on the other hand, so when we started
the three whiskey Happy Hour, and it was just even
me back in the day, it was suppose to be
a good whiskey, a bad whiskey, like a good scotch,
a bad awful scotch, like the kind Steve likes to drink,
and then something sort of sweet, like an Irish whiskey
or something along those lines. And of course, as you

(03:13):
all know, we just can't. We can't keep to anything.
We have no discipline on this show, and so you know,
sometimes we don't even get to whiskey at all. But
I today am offering three whiskeys. I've shown this once
you guys before. It's my new bottle because it is
probably now my favorite woven honor, the very hard to
come by orphan barrel. But I also have ready with

(03:35):
me just a twelve year old Glenn footage, and if
I run out of that, I haven't opened it yet.
I have an eighteen year old bottle of Glen footage,
So I'm prepared for anything. It's going to be a
good show. So all three whiskeys are good.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Well, right, I mean, because we were encouraging questions from
our viewers, and also we've collected a few of the
people have sent in. I mean, I did think. You know,
I just got my notice yesterday from Pepperdine University that
my every other year mandatory sexual harassment training seminar is
now due in the next couple of weeks. I could

(04:10):
live stream that for the audience. Right, It's like a
two hour thing I have to sit through. Right, it's
mandated by California law. I mean, Pepperdine actually kind of
apologizes for this nuisance, but who knew that it's the law? Right.
I'm sure some listeners have been through these at their workplaces,
and I kind of enjoy them because it, you know,
it gives me some new moves. Right, what, No, you're

(04:32):
you're not you don't want to see Okay, we won't.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
I don't want to see your I don't want to
see your move Steve. Steve comes from the day from
our old friend Ken Masougi some of you've heard of
who's his His line was back in the eighties. Let's
get metaphysical. Yes, he's out on more than one woman unsuccessfully.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, but but but but you have to do the
author of that, which is Sir Isaac Newton. John. That's
the punchl I'm sorry. Well, well, let me do just
two loose ends from last week. One may last a minute,
so let me do it in reverse order. At the
very end last week, at the signed off, John said,
always buy more books, and you harrumped and said, I
have too many books I haven't read now. And the

(05:17):
thing is, yeah, but the thing is I will refer
to Humbirdo Echo, who had fifty thousand books in his
house at the time he died, and he says, I'll
just read to you. He said, it is foolish to
think that you have read all the books you buy,
as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more
books than they will ever be able to read. It
would be like saying you should use all the cutlery

(05:37):
or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bot before
buying new ones. I think that analogy is not that good.
But I agree with him about you want to have
lots of books around for insulation.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Well, not only, but I do have every book that
Umberta Echo ever wrote read in my library because I'm
very fond. Yeah, my favorite is actually the Name of
the Rose. But there's plenty of but they're rough, are
not easy reading, but they're worth reading, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
So I'm pleasantly surprised because I thought you would hrumph Echo.
Maybe well, I could see.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Some great funny story really quick, I'll make it very quick.
One of my professors, my medieval philosophy professor in graduate school,
who from whom I took my monodes and you know,
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, told me that
he found it impossible to get through the Name of
the Rose. He found it too dense.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, and and was that in part because of the
long Latin passages?

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Who knows? I thought I was. I was riveted through it, honestly,
you know. And then I actually thought the movie was
relatively no I thought the movie did is as good
of a job as a movie could on something that
sort of esoteric, shall we say?

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Right, Well, I think today what would happens would be
a ten hour HBO series which would really do it. Well,
I think, well. Somebody asked Echo once, why why did
you leave all those Latin passages untranslated? And he said, oh, me,
me and my publishers. We all assumed that most people
by the novel would be familiar enough with Latin to
get through them, which was quite an assumption of American readers.

(07:18):
I don't think he ever thought it was going to
be the raging bestseller it was.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Actually, you know, it's quite profound in its message, you know,
Aristotle's comedy and the you know all of that. Right anyway, Well,
enough of that, we have more books to get to, Steve.
We do get to start.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Well, we want to do that, all right, Oh, you
were questions first, Well, not well that was a question,
but I was going to do one other sort of
correction or update from last week. You asked last week,
what would be required for this the Russia hoak scandal
to break out and become a big deal that would
have consequences for the deep state and so forth. And
I said, and I can see why this misfired. I said,

(07:58):
it needs a John Deane, somebody from the inside wh
will blow the whistle on him. And I had a
couple of people contact me and say, how can you
possibly mention John Dene? He's a scumbag and a horrible
human being and a trader and all that, and all
that's correct. I mean, I it's hard to have a
lower opinion of John Dene than I do. But there
could be a competition for that, right. The point was,

(08:19):
I was thinking of it more in the theatrical aspect
of you want someone from the inside who will force
the media to shine a light on the bad stuff
that the Obama and Biden people did. That's my point.
It's the figure that's involved, not so much, you know Deans.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
I did get that, Steve, but because of the whole,
you know, we'd already gone deep in the discussion. I
do want to mention one thing that it's probably because
of John Dean that Nixon ever looked into the whole.
It just began the cover up in the first place,
because he was, in fact such a scum and so.

(08:54):
But still that doesn't change the point I knew you
were making, which was because he claimed to be an insider,
he was taken more seriously and it was good theater,
and so on and so forth. I don't know. I
guess maybe if you had James Comey or he's just

(09:14):
he's just a nut job, leave him with Taylor Swift.
But maybe maybe Clapper. I don't know if Clapper came
out and said, you know, I was, I was a communist.
I really am still a communist. I believe Obama's a communist.
But what we did was destructive of the American political regime,

(09:35):
and maybe that would work. But even then I have
my doubts.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Well, you know, the actual communist amongst them, the real communists,
was Brandon admitted he voted for Gus Hall in nineteen
seven or second Hall. You know, I remember his story
once in the second term of the Reagan administration, and
Bill Crystal made a joke about how he had accidentally
voted for the communist candidate for Congress in Cambridge, Massachuset.

(10:00):
He was at Harvard then, and that held up his
approval of his appointment in the Reagan administration for three
weeks then'll look at to whether he was actually a
funny story. It might even be true. You never know
what Bill these days, right, But.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Well, in Massachusetts, do they actually put the party affiliation
on those kind of local candidates. I could have probably
voted for a local candidate who is a communist and
not known.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, I just I think they do, And well, maybe not.
But what Bill said was that, you know, the congressman
was Tip O'Neil, Right, I didn't want to vote for
Tip O'Neil, so I ticked off the next box or
something like that, and that was the communists. There was
no Republican running in that district. So anyway he's assumed
it was anyway a funny story, might even be true.

(10:43):
I'll just mention here for your interest in listeners, and
we don't have to talk about this at all. But
Mark Helprin, who I think shoots pretty straight these days
and is no friend of the mainstream media anymore, he
today said that in his view, Gavin Newsom is now
by far and away the front runner for the Democratic
nomination in twenty twenty eight, and he gave some reasons why,

(11:03):
and I thought, huh, that's interesting. He might turn out
to be right, not because Newsom is that good, but
just because, you know, helpers.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Because they don't have anybody else.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Well, they don't have anybody else and help and Newsom
does have some advantages. And I'm not persuaded entirely, but
you know, the Democrats say they want a fighter, and
most people are just yelling and cussing. Newsom's done a
little that, but he's also trying to ape Trump. You know,
the all cap tweets that are written in Trump's voice,
and you know you and I think probably that's lame,
and I think it is, but it might actually be

(11:34):
working for him because they also he.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Uh oh, folks, Steve is frozen. I will take on
and say, for those of you out there that are
as old as me, you might remember the name of
an actor by the name of Bruce box Lightner. That
picture of Gavin Newsom that they've put up. You're frozen, Steve.
So I took over. Oh okay, that whole thing we lost,

(11:59):
and I was just talking about how Gavin Newsom looks
like Bruce box Lightner from the old days. And I
think it was actually a picture of hint a Bouce
box Lightner and not Gavin Newsom that with the flags
and so forth. Anyway, saw that, right, I was covering
for you, Steve, come back to us.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Okay, right, yeah, that's I had a couple of long
zooms this morning that went fine. So I don't know
a quick question. I'm not sure who this is from.
But my oldest kid is coming to visit Washington in October.
He'll want to go see all the things, but he
likes a fine whiskey and a martini. What recommended places
in DC? My favorite place to drink in DC is

(12:42):
still the Tabard Inn on N Street and is a
no and it's more like a European hotel than any
typical American hotel. And they have a very charming bar.
They make great drinks quite a One of the reasons
I like the Tabart is it's not where the K
Street lawyers and lobby are trash go. You have more
interesting people go there to drink, So that's one. And

(13:05):
I can't remember the name of the place. There's also
a serious whiskey bar I think up on Columbia Road
in Northwest in the Adams Morgan area. If I can
think of it, I'll put it in the show notes.
I didn't have time to look it up, but the
Tabernam you cannot go wrong, and it's near metro stop,
so there's one.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Is it safe to go there? Now that the South
and Trump are walking the streets?

Speaker 2 (13:28):
So yeah, I was gonna say, you know, more wins
for Trump. He got his huge fine thrown out. And
then my joke about it is tonight he is uh
trolling DC with the cops. I mean it's not just patrolling,
he's trolling too. Isn't this fun? A? Yeah? I wish
I could be Uh, I wish somebody runs a camera

(13:48):
on that because I think it'd be funny. Right, all right,
let's do another short one and before we get into
the books question. Somebody asked us what are our favorite
bats in history? And I'll go first because minor, quick
and easy. I think that's a hard one to do
because there's so many great candidates. But I picked two,

(14:10):
and I think you'll recognize their common and relevant threat immediately.
It's either the Battle of La Ponto in fifteen seventy one,
which is a naval battle between you the Habsburgs and
the Holy Roman Empire remnants and the Ottoman Empire on
the Ocean or the Siege of Vienna a century later
sixteen eighty three, when the Polish cavalry comes in at
the last moment and relieves the siege of Vienna by

(14:32):
the Ottoman Empire and pushes them back. In other words,
they both of those battles saved Christian Europe from an
Islamic invasion, And boy, don't we need that spirit again
just now. That's why I like those twos.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
Those are good choices, very good choices. My choice is
it's rough, but also trying to be somewhat relevant. Is
the Battle of Little round Top with the famous Joshua Chamberlain.
I believe he will as a colonel then, right, is
that right? He was a kind and he becomes a
major general or something like that. But I mean, they

(15:08):
run out of AMMO, and what do they do. They
fix bayonets. That is so manly and brave. Gotta love it, okay,
And so Steve I told him that that.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Now.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
There's there's a lot of good civil war battles. There's
a lot of really great uh World War One battles
and fewer World War two battles, But Little Roundtop is
sort of this, you know, this tiny little battle that that,
you know, fix bayonets. I mean, I always wanted one
of my rifles to have a bayonet on it, but

(15:42):
it wasn't just kind of disappointing to me. Steve, What
about Joshua Chamberlain.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, So he had been before the war a professor
of rhetoric and something else at Bowden College in Maine,
home of one of our great friends and occasional listener,
Professor Jean Yarborough. And when he told the university that
he wanted to go off and fight for the Union Army,
they denied him leave to go join the army and fight.

(16:08):
So what he then was apply for a sabbatical. I'm
going to go teach overseas, and they gave him a sabbatical,
whereupon he went and joined the Union Army. Now, after
the war, I've heard this story and I tried to
verify it, couldn't find it quickly, and I don't know
where I heard it. But he was later became president
of Bowden College I'm going to say around eighteen seventy something,

(16:31):
And the story I heard once is that when he
became president, he went and fired all the administrators in
faculty who had opposed giving him leave to go fight
in the war. That's my kind of college president.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, I'm really liking that. So you know, Steve, I've
actually on sabbatical officially as of Monday. Do you think
that where should I what battle should I go fight?
I'm looking for answers. You know, I live in Arizona.
I'm thinking about going to going to work for Andy Biggs,
who's running for governor. Really great and there's not much
they can do about it if I decide to go

(17:03):
work for Andy Biggs. So maybe I'll do that. It
won't really be quite like fixing a bayonet in battle,
but it could be close.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yeah, And I could say, while we're transitioning here to
our next subject, Pizza Bob, this bad rock is drinking
very smoothly. And I'm not often a fan of Rye whiskey,
but this one I really like, so well done. It
may maybe the one hundred and eighteen proof talking already,
but yeah, I was going to say, and.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Steve is going to be completely slash this podcast is over,
but that's okay. I've taken over for him before I
can do it again.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
When you're on the floor, Steve, Okay, Well, I'm not
drinking it that faster hard, but you never know.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
You know, when it tastes good and smooth, it slips
down really easily.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
That's the only problem, right, right, Yeah, all right, we
have a great question. And I should preface this by
saying that we want to do several shows and I
don't know events between now and July fourth of next year,
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,
which we're calling the semi Quinn Centennial. It just rolls

(18:07):
off the tongue so easily. Anyway, Well, give me a
few more of these, will see. So a reader and
the person I know very well, fellow whiskey drinker, Liam Dugan,
wrote in to say, so, you know, what are some
good books about the American Revolution for people and an

(18:28):
American founding.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
And two different things?

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah? Well, I know, and that's for the problem. And
I've got four short books. Do you want to go first?

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Or you want to go first?

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Okay, I've got four short books, and my criteria was
one a short accessible book for say a non scholar
or someone who doesn't have a lot of background in
the matter. Too. It's hard. I don't think anyone has
ever written. There may be one exception. There's Robert Middlcoff
wrote a book called The Glorious Cause forty years ago
that I think is pretty good at integrating both the

(19:00):
politics and also some of the battlefield aspects of it,
because most books are either about the politics of the
revolution or to tell the battle stories or biographies of
Washington and so forth. And oh, that's very good. So
I have four. I have two old books and two
recent ones. The first old book is Edmund Morgan's book
called The Birth of the Republic seventeen sixty three to

(19:21):
seventeen eighty nine. The book was written in the fifties.
It's one that, by the way, Lucretia Leonard Levy like
to recommend to people, and it's short and you know,
you can tell the story they're at birth of the
Republic and gives the timeline of the key years. The
slightly more difficult book that's mostly just on the thought
of the revolution was Martin Diamond's. By the way, I
can't find my Edmund Morgan I have it somewhere, but

(19:43):
Martin Diamond did the founding of the Democratic Republic. It's
pretty good. It's not that long, but it's a little
dense in places, and also I think make some mistakes
in a couple of places, and we may or may
not come back to that. The two modern books i'd recommend,
actually I'm gonna do that one last. The one book

(20:04):
that very recent that's just on the thought of the founding,
nice and short, is Larry Arne's book, The Founder's Key.
What's the subtitle, the divine and natural connection between the
Declaration and the Constitution and what we risk by losing it.
And you know, if you know Larry, he writes playing
straightforward English, but also captures the substance very well. He

(20:24):
does direct battle with the left, but he does it
in the ways that are polite and not polemical, I'll
put it that way. It's only about one hundred and
twenty pages of text and some appendencies of you know,
the Constitution, the Federal's Papers. I think it does a
wonderful job at getting at the essence of things for
the non specialists. And then finally for a more general book,
and I'll see what you have to say about this.

(20:44):
Lucretia is Gordon Wood two three years ago put out
The American Revolution History. It's a short little book. Yeah,
you're shaking your head already, aren't you. It's a short
little book. And Wood writes, well, and I'll just say
this and see what you want to say in reply.
He I'm a big critic of his famous book from
fifty years ago, The Creation of the American Republic. That's

(21:07):
the book that mentions, in six hundred pages, mentions the
Declaration of Independence once only to shove it aside and
say individual rights were important. And I think he's changed
his mind a bit. And so this little book has
a long passage on the Declaration, which culminates with this sentence.
The Declaration of Independence set forth a philosophy of human
rights that could be applied not only to Americans, but

(21:30):
to peoples everywhere. It was essential in giving the American
Revolution a universal appeal. Now I still don't think he
has the depth of the whole matter. But that's a
different Wood than we had fifty sixty years ago when
it first came out.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Okay, okay, And it's nice reading, so okay, it's always
it's always good to read about the founding of the
American Republic, unless it's just really crap, like something that
what's her name Hanna Nicole Jones would do or something,
you know, I mean Mary Will Yeah. So I don't

(22:05):
want to be too hypercritical of those things. My issue,
I'll just go straight to the fundamental theoretical argument here
is that our republic is now actually, I believe in
a philosophic civil war.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
You know.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Lincoln talked way back, you know, because of dread Scott
about how ultimately this is a philosophical problem that separates
those who think slavery is a good thing and those
who think slavery is a bad thing. And the only way,
Lincoln says, the only way that this is going to
be resolved is by a philosophic answer, if that makes sense.

(22:43):
And what I mean by that is, I'm becoming more
and more convinced as I go that it is progressivism,
starting with the progressives way back at the end of
the nineteenth century well into the twentieth century, who created
the if you could call it this theoretical foundation for progressivism.

(23:06):
I do think that there is some common things. I'll
come back to that, and then over time the appeal
of it, along with appeal of German philosophy, Steve and
other things, just because Marxism, all of those evolution, all
of those things became so endemic across Western societies that

(23:29):
they destroyed what our founding fathers understood and for which
they fought the Revolutionary War. And that is the idea
that there is an unchanging human nature, that we can
learn enough about that unchanging human nature, pardon me to

(23:49):
design now we have learned enough about that to design
a constitutional form of government, a social contract, a government
and designed by the people, designed to protect their humanity.
I would call it that, I really would, their natural rights,
which are their humanity. And everything that the progressives have done,

(24:12):
in one way or another is designed to destroy that.
And we see that evidence in I'm say sorry. We
see that in things like eugenics, like abortion, like planned parenthood,
of course, all of that, but also in this idea
that we can reintroduce classes of society where one class

(24:35):
is evil. Of course, the rich people, except for those
rich people giving Mandani money. The rest of them, of course,
are all evil and need to be destroyed. That's a
legacy of progressive and anyway, my point is this that
I am sort of at the point where as we
celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our Declaration
of Independence. We need to return to what Lincoln said

(24:58):
in eighteen thirty eight, long before he was a politician,
long before he was famous, where he said that the
principles of the Declaration need to be a political religion,
and it needs to be taught to the listing Babe
in the cradle, and I forget all of the different
but it needs to have in the hearts of Americans

(25:20):
that sort of deep abiding reverence for the notion of
human equality, natural rights, social contract, the principles of the
Declaration of Independence, or if we don't, we will be
destroyed from within. That's his message in the Lyceum speech.
I think that Trump I'm going to get pushed back,

(25:43):
but I'm going to say it anyway. Step that Trump
is perhaps Providence's answer to the destruction done for the
last one hundred plus years by progressives, because what he does,
much like Lincoln, is appeals to that deep seated understanding

(26:06):
that good Americans have about why their country, why their
country is good, why their country is great, and why
it is the last best hope on earth.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yeah. Okay, but before I ask you for a book
title or two or three let me just add to it. No,
I'm in a heated agreement. I mean Lincoln remember Lincoln's line,
we keep going the way we're going. We're not going
to keep going the way we're going. The House divided
cannot stand. But then remember the lesson there was, how
do you put it? We're either going to become all
one thing or all the other. We're either going to

(26:40):
be all free or we're going to be all slave.
We can't go on the way we're doing it now.
So look, the basic question of politics, from the classics
on down is what who rules? Now? Our theory has
been the people rule. That doesn't just mean fifty one
percent in pure democracy. It means, as you know Aristotle
and others put it, the people rule, but they take
turns ruling. That's the perfo of elections. Lincoln understood that, right,

(27:03):
the people law, and well, the rule of law was correct.
But the point is the people rule in a take
turns ruling and being ruled. The progressive view is no, no, no,
you should be ruled by a permanent class, meaning them right.
This is why, well, yes, an expert and all those things.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Expert.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Well, I mean I'm going to write a piece about this,
uh sometime the next week. Great, great, most revealing article
in the New York Times this week. I'm going to
get the headline exactly right if I can find it quickly.
It was shoot here it is, yeah, here it is

(27:47):
h five days ago headline, New York Times, abolish the
Senate and the Electoral College packed the court? Subhead why
the Left can't win without a new constantution. So if they,
you know, this is I think a philosophical problem. Their
view is we represent the the the arc of history,

(28:09):
the side of history. Therefore, if we're not winning, change
the rules. And one point to make a simple one is,
you know, the Democratic Party dominated American politics for fifty years.
We call that the New Deal era. Right under those rules,
Suddenly they're not winning every election and they're not winning

(28:29):
every issue. And so what do they say, Oh, change
the rules. They had no problem with those rules when
they were winning elections, so only when they lose. This
is why I say they don't believe that the people
should rule. And by the way, I you know, I
always say I'm too theologically modest to make declarations about providence,
but I would not dispute your proposition about Trump, well, and.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
I would go one step further, Steve, don't disagree with
the single thing you said, but I would go one
step further, and I would say that understand what I mean.
Understand what I mean. Progressives did everything they possibly could
to undermine the Constitution within the confines of the Constitution itself.

(29:12):
You know, they did what they could that they they
you know, destroyed parties where parties were problematic at the
local level and so forth. They used the Supreme Court
to change the Constitution to the greatest extent that they could.
They used the Constitution to you know, they amended the
Constitution to get rid of Senate election by by state legislators.

(29:35):
I could go on and on and on with these
progressive attempts to remake the Constitution using the rules of
the Constitution itself. And here's here's a shout out. I
guess you could say to the genius of the framers
that despite all of that, the Constitution has to some
extent prevented the progressives from being ultimately and finally successful.

(30:01):
And that's why now it's not just good enough to
manipulate and bend the Constitution, the living Constitution, to their will.
They need to change it, because the Senate still remains
a problem. The Electoral College remains a problem because the
people still have a say under the terms of the
Constitution and can prevent They can't prevent an idiot like

(30:23):
AOC getting elected, or the woman who married a brother
what's her name, eleanor Ormar or Mandani or any of
those other morons, evil morons. They can't do that, but
they can prevent the entire country from going under with
progressive policies. They've tried. They've been awfully successful for a
long time, but they realize they've hit a stopping point

(30:47):
because the American people are wise to their nonsense. That's
what I would say. Thanks to Trump.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, I mean, I guess the old cliche of the
irresistible force of progressivism has hit the movable object of Trump.
I think I'm going to work on that before we
get to the sentence. We have a question about that.
But you haven't given us a book title.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Oh gosh, so you guys, I got all ready for
this with a half a dozen of them. I don't
know what the answer is for the Revolutionary War, or
even for the founding period. I'm less likely. I always
been less likely to want to read what somebody else
had to say about it. I'd read. I'd read biographies
if they're good, biographies of the Revolutionary War generation. Remember

(31:35):
it's it's I think Jefferson in in when he's in
a letter to James Madison, who says, you know, the
American people need to read history so they can understand
the ways of tyrants and when you understand the ways
of talking. So learning history, genuine history, not not oh god,
what did this insignificant people's do? But real history about

(31:58):
the actions of great man, evil and good.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
So you know, right well, let me let me stop
you for a second, right there for a second, and
then let you keep going with some book titles. Is
we probably ought to tell listeners how you and I
teach the founding. I think I think we do it
the same way. We use all original material. I don't
as sign one.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Hundred level American political science courses.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Right So, in other words, they read the Federal's papers,
They read Jefferson speeches and Washington speeches, and the and
Abraham and the Death Ration. Don't have to read any
textbooks or even any secondary sources. If a student asks,
what's a good book? I could read to learn more.
I will recommend like Larry Arne's book and others, or
Jaffa's book. I do a sign as we'll further along.
I do assign Jeffs very challenging essay on what is equality?

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (32:46):
And I've had some students. Some students find it's just
too difficult, others really get into it. But the point
is read the original sources. Read them slowly and patiently
and together and together? Right? Oh yes, I make. I
assigned students to read passages allowed every week and then
I say, you know, what do you hear? Question? What
does that say? What does that mean?

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Right?

Speaker 2 (33:05):
And I have the law. I think you do it
the same way right I do.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
Now I will tell you, Steve, the one thing I
one concession I made when I had to move to
the god awful fully online modality, and I still, by
the way, had live lectures over. Initially it was over
something else. I forget what it's called, but then zoom.
But you know, still you have students attempting to read

(33:31):
these things without any help. I started assigning for my
American political thought class the Fritch and Stevens The Political
Ideas of American Statesmen I think that's the title.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
I yeah, something like that. The question you have in
they're the very best scholars writing really sparkling essays about
really sparking.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Essays from the point of view of let's understand that
these were not just these were not philosophers. These were
not people employed in a universe the philosophy department or
even a political science department. These were real people, real statesmen,
very active in the major crises of Yes, American, Uh,

(34:14):
the American.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Here it is it's uh, yeah, it was an American political.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Folk philosophical dimension of American statesmanship.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
There you yeah, and uh, this is got jaff Is
in this, I think and uh, but also I can't
my table.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
There's a great essay on Jefferson by Harvey Mansfield.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Right, Uh, Herbert Storing on Frederick Douglas, Walter Burns on
Alliver Wendell Holmes. Oh my god, no smoking next to
that essay. So there.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
I mean, it's still available because I still will assign
it to students. You can probably get it cheap. It
doesn't matter what addition you get get it cheap online. Uh.
And it's worth reading. It's worth reading and reading through
the different all the different statesmen that they cover, and
then you can just who you want to read out
of that, right, I guess is a good way to
put it. So that's my one concession to something other

(35:07):
than primary sources, and again only because it was necessary
with the online format.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, well, I'll just do this qualification that there are
some people who are so good they almost qualify as
primary sources. We can talk about that some, right, I mean,
that's that's who's who of the greatest political thinkers of
our time who are mostly passed away. Ralph Lerner is
still around. Harvey Mansfield's ninety five, but there's still a
few with us.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, isn't The one on the federal is actually done
by Martin Diamond. Yes.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, it's an adaptation of his famous essay on the
Federalist from the fifties. So, okay, you got to do
books and appreciate I keep saying that so many.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
I don't know where to start. I actually don't want
to talk. You've talked enough about the original reconstruction. I'm
going to give you a few others because you've given
enough examples. I think I've said this to you on
this podcast before, Steve, But I'm going to say it again.
Oh yeah, I've read lots and lots of books on Lincoln,
all of the usual ones, all of the popular ones.

(36:08):
But I was I think I was actually in the
bookstore with you in in Berkeley. We were in Mo's.
Oh yeah, And I said, Steve, have you ever read this?
And you said, oh, that's so great?

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Are you kidding? Right? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (36:22):
And I had never even heard of it. I don't
know why. But Lord Harnwood, he's a Englishman.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
It was Jeffer's favorite biography of Lincoln.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
I don't know how I missed that, but there you go.
So it's it's Lord Charnwood's biography of Lincoln. Uh, just
just just great. It reminds me just a little bit
in style. Not that you know, our angle file Steve
could ever presoom to mimic Lord Charnwood, but it is

(36:50):
similar in its approach to what I consider one of
And I only have one copy because my son has
the one volume. Excuse me, my son has the other one.
I know, it's hard, a little bit hard to see
if I love this.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
I love this.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
What do you call it an approach genre? Steve? Subgenre
where it's not a biography but it's the life of
a person who is so profoundly, such a profound impact.
It's the life of a person set within the political, economic,
whatever environment in which that person operated.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
This is it's like, no, this is like two weeks
in a row. You've been so nice to me.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Well, I'll be honest with you, just for just a moment.
I'm still in such a war with the people at
my university, some of them that I probably spend all
my vitriol against them, and I have none left. Well,
I'm going to keep my better nature comes out now.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
I don't have to pay them more money to keep
it going. Unfortunately, no I say about the books is
uh yeah. The model is the Life and Times approach,
which has kind of fallen out of favor. But it
was my model was this will sound gradios, but it
was Churchill's four volumes about Marlborough, Marlborough, His Life and

(38:12):
Times right. And the other thing is the style of
it is also modeled after Paul Johnson, who I got
to meet a couple of times, and and you know
I came up with a phrase that he embraced. I said,
it's fair to describe your approach to write a history
as analytical narrative, and he said, yes, that's exactly right.
I like, that's a great phrase, he said, And I

(38:33):
took that as a compliment that I'd given him an idea.
And so it's an analytical narrative and a life and
times approach which is different from biography.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
That's correct and it's worth reading right now. There are
a lot of insights. I'll just put it that way.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
I am.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
I'm actually on kind of a different kick though, and
I'll get finally so you'll you'll love this one that
I've been rereading, Steve.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Oh is that the one oh Churchill and Achelle in.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
America, the one about how Churchill was his relationship with America,
which has some nice insights. But the other thing that
I've been reading, and this is danse It's not for everybody,
but I think we've talked about it before. I've been
reading my good friend John Marini's analysis. We could call it,
we could go so far as to call it his

(39:21):
analysis of the deep state, long before people started using
that term or understanding anything about it. There's another book
that he's that that is mostly that he's an editor of,
that has some really great essays. You can tell I'm
just all over the place. It's called the progressive revolution.
Back to what I was saying a little bit earlier.

(39:43):
So you know, I can't I can't make recommendations. So
what I'm going to end with, though, Steve and I
talked about this is my professor. My Let's let's tell
a really quick origin story here about Lucretia. Steve. Okay,
I was a freshman in college. I was a psychology major. Okay,

(40:06):
because my intention, my intention actually, Steve, was to transfer.
I started at cal State San Bernardino because I was
going to transfer to San Luis Obispo. But well, I
wanted in there, but their psychology program was impacted, so
they said if I went somewhere else for a semester,
I could probably get in in the in the next year. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
See, I didn't know that, because if I had known you,
then I could have fixed that. Because the chairman of
the psychology department of Cal Paula in those years was
one of my dad's best friends.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
So there you Okay, Well we didn't know each other there.
So I'm a psychology major and I go to college
and I live in a in an international co ed
dorm and I spend the next the next four or
five months doing nothing but drinking and partying and rarely
going to class. And when I do go to class,
I am bored to death. And I'm on academics probation

(41:00):
my first year in college. Oh and I leave college
and go and I get a job over the summer
being the executive assistant to the vice president of Coldwell
Banker in downtown Los Angeles. Long story. But the spring
before I did that, I touched you.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
Sorry once again. If i'd known you, I could have
gotten you a job with the president of Coldwell Banker,
who was a friend.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
Ok. I was okay, but so you know, I had
a good job, and you know, blah blah blah. But
in the spring before that, I had taken this class
with this guy named ed Ehler. It was an American
government class required jen ed course, and he did the
same thing you and I do, Jefferson Federalist papers and
so on. And I'm kind of finding this a little

(41:45):
bit interesting. But here's the crazy part. From day one,
all he did was make fun of me. He called Blondie.
He said I was dumb. What a dumb thing I said.
He constantly berated me and belittled me. And of course
what happens. I study really hard, just in that class,
not any other class, and become just a little bit

(42:07):
interested and instead of saying, oh, I could have a
great career being the executive assistant to the vice president
of Colwo Banker. And I'll go back and give it
one more time, one more semester if they let me in.
Because I had like all d's and f's except for
that course, I got an A in and that's how
I started. But his name was Ed Earler, and he

(42:30):
became my mentor and all the way through undergraduate and
graduate school and even after I became a professor. So
I am not a neutral observer. He's a very very
very dear friend of mine. I learned practically everything I
know worth knowing from him. He recently came out with
a book. Sorry I don't have the cover on it,

(42:51):
but it's called Prophetic Statesmanship.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Well, he're right, Well I have the yeah, okay, looks
like that.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Looks like that. Yeah, And it is actually a book
about his mentor, Harry Jaffa and Jaffa and Lincoln. But
he's trying to finish what I think before Jaffa died.
He was very close with Harry Jaffa, and there's a

(43:18):
you know, there's a sense where he's going further than
Jaffa did. But there are a couple of really important
points in this book that I think it's very it's
necessary to get out there. And the first one, I'll
be quick about it, Steve, is the the thing that
doesn't get quite enough attention, and that is the role

(43:41):
of religion in the founding and the fact that i'll
put it simply. We will have to discuss this in
detail on another occasion.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
But well you about all this right, Yes, Yet it's.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Hard to do it John, because he acts like a
lawyer and gets at every point he make it.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah, he's unteachable, Yes, okay, in.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Some ways because he's a lawyer. So the question in
classical political philosophy is what is the best regime? And
is the best regime possible? Or to put it another way,
can natural right become political right? And I know that
that deserves more explanation than I'm going to give it
right now. But you have even you have the classics

(44:29):
believing that you know, we'll put it like this, Plato's
best regime, the best regime is a regime in speech,
it is not indeed, And then there's Aristotle jump ahead
to the American Founding and Jaffa's argument. Jaffa's argument is
also he believes Strauss's argument. Earler's argument is this that

(44:53):
the American Founding is indeed the first actual man infestation,
practical manifestation of the best regime, simply speaking, not ancient
or versus modern, but simply speaking, and without going into
lots of detail, the main reason for that is that
the American political regime resolved what's called the theoretical excuse me,

(45:19):
the theological political question. How do you how do you
have loyalty to your God and to this and to
the city, to your political regime? It had always been
problematic since the days of Christianity and the old In
the old days, it was easy. The gods created your

(45:39):
political regime. Your piety meant you just obeyed the laws.
But that doesn't work under Christianity because render under Caesar's
what is Caesar's rendered to God? What is God's? You?

Speaker 2 (45:49):
You all know that that?

Speaker 1 (45:51):
And and what I'm going to read one one short
passage I think I have it. Let me say this
first What the American regime does is allows allows all
religions to be protected, to be protected by say, the

(46:14):
First Amendment, without any one religion becoming dominant. It allows
me to practice my religion, Steve to practice his, and
not to cause some kind of political problem because of
our theological piety, I guess, is the best way to
put it. Never before in the history of the world

(46:36):
had that been accomplished, and that has meant freedom in
ways that no other country has ever been able to
bring about. And that is why it is, in fact
the culmination of what Aristotle saw as the best regime.
That's really unfair. But you got to read the book.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Yeah, oh, I thought you were going to read a
little passage to us. No, I have one sentence that
I want to read. Please go ahead, Okay, I'm gonna
share one. First of all, we know John will listen
to this at some point in his travels this week
and so, and with apologies to Pizza Bob, here's one
sentence I'm just gonna plant now to make John's head explode.

(47:15):
It's from page seven. Prudence is therefore the center of
the theological political question. And poor John, is he ever
gonna get it when he comes back. I'll just say
that that that that is a I mean, it's enigmatic.
If you're not marinated, I.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Think you should read the whole that whole sentence, Steve,
continue to the end.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
It was at this fast, all right, I'll start over.
Prudence is therefore the center of the theological political question.
It is at the heart of natural right, which, according
to Aristotle, has everywhere the same force or power, but
is everywhere changeable. That's always been a very confusing part
of Nico McKeon ethics. Is it's a book five, chapter seven. Okay,

(47:57):
sorry to continue, You want me to continue. Yes, The statesman,
the man of practical wisdom, can mediate between what is
eternally just and what is possible under changing circumstances. In
order to know what is best under a variety of circumstances,
fro nimoy, that's the Greek word, must know, Yeah, the

(48:19):
frona must know what. Let me do the sentence again.
In order to know what is best under variety of circumstances.
The statesman, to translate, must know what is best. Simply,
prudence is a moral virtue, both theoretical and practical. Yeah,
that's a good paragraph, but that I'm sure a lot
of people who have not studied these are scratch their
head and say, okay, I need to know more. And

(48:40):
that's true. You you know a lot.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
So I will just say one last thing on behalf
of Professor earlier, and that is that he does actually
sort of what's the right word, belabors a lot of points,
I think, but I don't mind that the points I understand,
but I think that that maybe the slightly on a
new siated reader will find that it explains things quite well,

(49:03):
and so I really recommend this book. It will. What
it comes down to is pointing out what John doesn't understand,
and what we promised Pizza Bob we wouldn't discuss is
that in order to be a prudent statesman, it's not
just enough to have We're going to answer this question momentarily.

(49:26):
To appeal to the positive law, even of the Constitution,
you must in fact understand what is best, simply speaking,
and know what is possible in any given circumstance. In
larger circumstances, slavery being the best example Lincoln's approach to slavery.
He always argued that immediate abolition of slavery would cause

(49:47):
untold horrors and very bad things for a lot of reasons.
But never to give into the idea that slavery was
a good. That's prudence, and you can't do that unless
you begin from the fundamental understanding that slavery is an
evil because it violates human nature. And that's that would

(50:08):
be my recommendation.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, it's only one hundred and ninety six pages of
text and it's not fine print, so yeah, it's okay.
All right, let's try and knock out two more big questions.
Unfortunately before we have to adjourn after an hour. One
is from a famous person. I won't say the person's name.

(50:31):
What do you think about the proposal in the Senate
to tell the Democrats that Republicans will nuke the filibuster
unless they agree to a rules change that allows changing
the filibuster only by a two thirds vote. Not my idea,
this person says, it's a little confusing the way that
that is written. Right now, a Senate can change the
rules by a simple majority vote when they do the rules,

(50:53):
and they can change it mid and the filibuster, remember,
is not in the Constitution. It's a rule adopted by
the Senate. It's been around over one hundred years. It
used to be two thirds to philibuster. In the seventies,
we lowered it to sixty votes, which is where it
sits today. And you know, Democrats got rid of it
for appeals court judges when they wanted to pack the
DC circuit, and that came around and bit them when

(51:17):
Republicans took the Senate and then President Trump was appointing
people left and right, and boy do they regret that now,
which is always fun to watch them make their mistakes.
I'm not quite sure I get the logic of this
is trying to lock into place the current filibuster, and
should we be for that. I don't know. I go

(51:38):
back and forth on this about whether we ought to
because the filibuster used to be used rarely and for
important things, and now it's used routinely for everything and
slows everything down. I've always thought the solution to this
was the Senate majority leader of either party I don't care,
but especially Republican so to just say fine, if you're gonna,
you know, require the reading of all bills and acquire

(52:00):
endless roll call votes. This is even happening for approvals
to cabinets and judges where it's only fifty one votes.
But say, fine, we're staying here through the weekend. We're
going in the twenty four hour day sessions. So make
it painful. It's painful for your own members. And I
know they don't like it either, But I don't know
why we don't do that well.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
And I do think that the filipbuster itself is it
is simply a rule. It's just you know, it can
in fact be changed and has been changed. The nuclear option,
oh my god. But all that refers to is the
fact that it that the filipbuster is tied to the
founder's conception of the Senate. Remember the famous George Washington

(52:41):
quote where you know, asking about what's the difference between
the House and the Senate, and the George Washington says
something like, why do you pour your coffee into your saucer?
And the answer is why to cool it? Of course?
I mean, I've never done that in my life, but
I get the point. And the Senate, of course, is
this idea that the majority factions that quite easily can

(53:04):
take over the House of Representative because it's closer to
the people. It's the terms are shorter, all of those
things mean that the people's will, as opposed to their rationality,
can take over the House much more easily, whereas the
Senate has the ability because of the makeup of the
Senate itself, the six year staggered terms and so on,

(53:26):
would allow it to be more contemplative and deliberative. And
the idea behind the filibuster is, We're not going to
allow you to vote until you've heard everything that has
to be said about this. We're not going to rush
into a vote just because it happens to be really
popular at the moment, and I'm going to talk until

(53:47):
maybe I've convinced some of my other senators right, as
Steve pointed out, of course, hasn't been that very long time.
I don't think senators try to convince anybody anymore. I
don't think anybody in Congress tries to convince anyone else.
They just grants stand and their demagogues. But that's where
the filibuster comes from. If you decide to make it
stronger again, is the idea that they'll never be a

(54:11):
two thirds vote available in the Senate. I don't understand
either quite what the point would be.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
The problem is because the Senate makes its own rules.
There's no way you make the steal stick. I mean,
the Democrats might say, okay, we'll agree that. What makes
we need a two thirds vote to ever change the
filibuster rules? That would only last for the current Senate session.
So if you had Senate Majority Leader Bernie Sanders and
President AOC in twenty twenty nine, God help us. Speaking

(54:40):
of providence, they might say, well, you know, times have changed,
arc of history, arc of justice bends towards history, history,
whatever the hell they say. And so there's no way
to make it stick unless you wrote it the Constitution,
and that's not going to happen. And I think you
probably shouldn't in any case.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
So yes, I told Steve, I bet there are people
out there that are listeners that might have some insights
into this that we're missing. So if you do, please
feel free to put them in the chat.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
Well, well, I don't know, Like you know, I know
some sensible people, very sober, experienced, thoughtful on our side
who think we should get rid of the filibuster. Actually
mentioned it's christ to me with my old boss at
AEI thinks we should. And that's a surprise to me
because I very much an institutionalist. I haven't seen him
a while. Let me ask him if he still thinks that.
But this was several years ago. I heard him say that,

(55:27):
a right.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
One last question let me I want to add one point, Stephen. Sorry,
I don't want to belaevor it. But the only reason
I would say no to that is that I'm generally
of the opinion that we shouldn't be passing any laws,
and that every time a law has passed, it's likely
to be a bad thing. I mean, you know, odds
are and so anything that sort of slows down the

(55:51):
passage of legislation by Congress. You know, how do you
put it? Steve? That good luck's the next best thing
to constitutional government? Is that what I say?

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Well, that's in the line of Stan Evans, that's right, Yes, yeah, yeah,
good luck is good, et cetera. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
But but I mean that's a general point. There are
obviously sometimes good laws, laws that should be passed, but
they are well although.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
I have a rule or an axiom, and I might no,
I won't, But if I had all the time in
the world, I would do a quantitative study of this.
But my rule is the larger, the bipartisan majority in
favor of the law, the worse the law probably is.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Yeah, and you know the case lately.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
You know, I think better laws. I mean, sometimes you
want a law to pass with a healthy majority for
certain you know, civil Rights Act or something when it's
rightly done. But usually it's something so you know, California's
electricity deregulation passed almost unanimously in the state legislature. Boy,
they did a good job of that. Okay, last question.

(56:53):
The problem is this quite a while it's directed that
is certain one of our co hosts who's missing today?
I love this. Is there a common root cause between
being a legal positivist and a neocon? I get the
impression from listening to one of your co hosts of
your show that there is? And then the chaser, what
can we do to prevent this phenomenon?

Speaker 1 (57:14):
I left that little So do you want to take
it first? Because I told you how a deep theoretical
answer to it?

Speaker 2 (57:20):
Oh well, all right, I'll give you a historical one,
which is, first of all, you know, back in the arts,
neocon came to mean Jews we don't like, who want
to get into foreign wars. It's not how it began
by the way, you know, John doesn't fit the Jewish
part obviously.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Or they form your communist.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
Well there's that, okay. However, I think to understand about
the neocons, and actually Irving Crystal admitted this around twenty
ten or so, is they were liberals, many of them
had left their communism, or they were social democrats still,
but they were first of all, they were empiricists, and
they had no objection to a welfare state. In fact,

(58:00):
they generally supported it, but thought the one we were
building was going to be bad and was failing already
in the mid sixties. That's why Crystal and Daniel Bell
we quarreled about a few weeks ago. That's when they
started the Public Interest to say, let's think about what
we're doing here. They had no whereas you know, you're
Russell Kirk. Conservatives and others thought the welfare state is

(58:21):
in principle a bad idea. They didn't think that. So
that's and neo conservatism starts there, and they later a
lot of them come to move to the right over
foreign policy. Softest charts communism. That would be Norman pot
Harts and the commentary crowd. But so there's two strands
of it. And the old social science skepticism toward big government,

(58:41):
which I think they were very good at, that's kind
of disappeared. But that, yeah, But the point is what's
the basis of social science positivism? And so you know
again that the critique of the welfare state and the
critique of social science by Straussian's traditional con ne vatives,
that's based on principle and philosophy and not empiricism. So

(59:05):
you have a magic want and suddenly we have a
welfare state that works. Neo cons become liberals again.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
So I would I don't disagree with the single thing
Steve said. This is what I would add. If you
are a positivist, you believe that, for instance, I'll keep
it simple, but this is not all encompassing. You believe
that the Constitution has no principles that inform it. It doesn't,
for instance, get its animating principles from say, the natural

(59:35):
rights theory of the Declaration of Independence. It is as Scalia,
a positivist said, you know, they have they have constitutions
in Nazi Germany, and they have the and those are
just as legitimate as ours. Ours takes on, how does
he put it, Steve a certain because it's accepted, and I.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Forget, Yeah, well that was that was Rehnquist who said,
you know, if the majority adopts it, it takes on
a form of moral goodness or rightness, which is stupid.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Which is stupid. But that being said, this is what
I think the relationship is more than anything else. If
you are a positivist about the American Constitution as a
lawyer or what have you, what you have to do
because you don't have enduring principles that underlaw. Your call

(01:00:26):
it belief system, sorry, your belief system. What happens is
ultimately your belief system is a little bit suspect now,
isn't it. And it's not a whole lot to hang
your hat on. So what you need to do in
order to make sure your belief system is a little
bit more compelling and rock solid is enforce it, force

(01:00:48):
it on others. So why do we make the world
safe for democracy? Why do the neo cons want to
go in and remake this society and that society after
us after conquering them and you know, getting rich off
raytheon Anyway, that's that's a secondary issue because it's a

(01:01:08):
little bit like Nietzsche's Wild to Power. The way you
affirm your view of the world, which is built on
nothing but the abyss, is you enforce it on others
and they in turn make you feel and I really
mean that feel like this is something real. It's a

(01:01:30):
little bit like the environmentalists religion and you know, secularized
religion and all those other things. That's what I think
the real ultimately, the real relationship between neo cons and
positivists is it's because they need to They need the
affirmation of their worldview by others because they can't they

(01:01:51):
can't be, you know, alone in knowing that what they
believe in is right and just whether others believe it
or not.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
To be continued. But now you have to give us
a couple of Babylon bes and we need to get
out of them.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
I am gonna lighten this up and make you guys happy.
So dem say, mail in ballot band will place undue
hardship on dead voters. Okay, this one we didn't even
talk about. But I'm sure everybody's up more up to
date than I am. Man voting for whichever political party
will get this video of the male Vikings cheerleaders off

(01:02:28):
his social feed.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
God, oh my god, right, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
How about this one. Chuck Schumer said he never felt
in danger, never walking in DC, and neither have his
ten bodyguards. Trump to receive Nobel Prize for getting Zelensky
to wear a suit, right yep, Okay, So you talked
a little bit at the beginning about Gavin Newsom, meet Hank,

(01:02:54):
and I'm sure everybody's been following those those what are
they gen z twits? Those just obnoxious, foul, cringey twits
running his meat. Hank, the autistic chimpanzee who runs Gavin
Newsom's X account getting out of hand. New some orders
aid to shoot off his ear. That's good.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
They've done a picture like the bandage on his Earyes,
I think that maybe, look, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
They okay, I'm sure it's fake, but you never know
these days. Trump says, following reat phone call, Hurricane Aaron
has agreed to change course. And finally, because we didn't
talk about this either, because it's not really three whiskey
happy hour fodder, but it's still very relevant. California issues

(01:03:42):
commercial driver's license to Stevie Wonder.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
Oh yeah, well that's you know, connects to a but yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
Know it's a serious thing. But yeah, that one's been
interesting to watch how it's it's unfolded. You know, it
does give you a sense of let me real quick
Anecdi Steve, a very good friend, has a brother who
was for many years a long haul semi truck driver,
and five years ago he began to say that that

(01:04:13):
he's embarrassed even to admit he was ever part of
that whole profession, because he said, they have just turned
the truck drivers are the worst people in the world.
And I started, you know, thinking about that when he
told me that five years ago, I began to realize.
And he didn't say it outright, like you know that

(01:04:34):
this is a bunch of foreigners, but he said, these
are people who just don't give a damn about our laws,
about anything else. And he said, they're really making truck
drivers look bad. And I think that what we've been discovering.
I'm surprised when Duffy said he's going to require English
of truck drivers. I had no idea that that was

(01:04:56):
an issue, But now that it's really being investigated and
brought out, it's it's a huge issue.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
So yeah, I've thoughts about that myself, but my brother
was a team sir. Anyway, next time. So here's the
place where John usually comes in and says, always drink
your whiskey, neat, always buy more books describe what Lucretia says.
And this week's AI poem was generated in the style
of TS Elliott's Waste Land. And I'll just give you

(01:05:22):
the best part, Lucretia. You're gonna like some of this,
though after you get past the first sentence. It's not
long here he goes. Shall we toast to Edmund Burke
or bury him beneath the think piece heap? There are
no radicals in a well stalked bar, only tired moderates
with good diction and better Scotch ideas decay in daylight,

(01:05:45):
but here, in this curated gloom they shimmer briefly like
candlelight on polished wood. Okay, you either like elat or
you don't, but I think yeah, it was Okayaway, Thanks
everybody for coming, and we'll try and get the YouTube
livestream to work, but we will post this up just
as a straight up recording.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
Holding up the window, let the air bring in the
music of you. I'll see the birsy tangle. As you
hear their songs on cold above the earth. It's a
mystical morning. Let sure Harry Yard the freedom it deserves it.
It's ant of reflection of the inter connection you got,
the seeming leer of birds.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
Son goes on and ivn none.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
It seems like just a year.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
Ago that I have told you the weever some things
on me this.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
No, I'm still the same eighteen year road, just twenty three.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Regardlessly five days and dreams.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
Come on and start the show, but let the music.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Take you to replace You haven't gone and not in
row Ricochet. Join the conversation.