September 19, 2025 • 56 mins
We open today's ad-free episode with a whimsical look at the global sensation over the Number One Netflix show, "K-Pop Demon Hunters," and despite his Korean heritage, John Yoo can't explain it either. But near as we can tell, this anime cartoon show is somewhat classic melodrama, where the demons deserve defeat. And though it may seem a frivolous leap, we wonder about the demonic aspects of the larger story about Charlie Kirk's murder, with Steve recalling Max Weber's line—meant especially for young people—that "he who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical powers..."
After reviewing the week's controversies over free speech and the mercy-killing of Jimmy Kimmel's pathetic late night show, we get down to one root of the larger problem—the inability of so-called progressives to brook any dissent from their party line, the lack of any introspection about any possible defects of their worldview, which was the primary object of Charlie Kirk's campus interrogatories. We'll come back to this subject in the coming weeks, because we sense a full-scale, China-syndrome level progressive meltdown is under way.
You'll want to listen all the way to the end of this episode, for our extended exit bumper music, from Harrison Tinsley: "Charlie Kirk (Remember Your Name)."
After reviewing the week's controversies over free speech and the mercy-killing of Jimmy Kimmel's pathetic late night show, we get down to one root of the larger problem—the inability of so-called progressives to brook any dissent from their party line, the lack of any introspection about any possible defects of their worldview, which was the primary object of Charlie Kirk's campus interrogatories. We'll come back to this subject in the coming weeks, because we sense a full-scale, China-syndrome level progressive meltdown is under way.
You'll want to listen all the way to the end of this episode, for our extended exit bumper music, from Harrison Tinsley: "Charlie Kirk (Remember Your Name)."
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well whiskey, come and take my pain, hondys all.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Ray 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.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Where they slapped it up and David, ain't you easy
on the Sooda?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Have you got a giving? Well, it's a Friday morning
taping of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour, which means it's
a little too early to have any whiskey, even for me.
But John is with us in from Texas, Lucretia in
her bat cave in Arizona, and I am back finding
from Iceland and trying to get back in the swing
(00:50):
of things. And one of the things John, I'll start
with you that I did keep up catch up with
the last few days is the number one show worldwide
on Netflix by a lot is K Pop Demon Hunters.
And since it's got the South Korean K pop theme,
I mean not, you know, got to catch up with
(01:11):
these things? Have you seen It's It's quite the thing.
I've seen ten minutes.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I'm gonna try again. I tried to watch it. I
started it I couldn't take it, but I'll try again
for the for our loyal loyal viewers and listeners. But
I cannot understand how K pop and all this Demon
Hunter stuff, which are these themes in Korean, like it's
Korean kind of like adult anime, you know cartoons, has
(01:34):
become a global phenomenon, and even people in the United
States like this. It's it's just like this weird sort
of combination of pop music and then sort of fantasy
because it involves demons and hunting them, and the Demon
Hunters themselves are a K pop band. It's just so
(01:54):
weird that people love this stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, I mean, that's so you know. One of the
early scenes is these three the young ladies who were
the pop stars, putting on their makeup, but between say,
doing the mascara on one eye, left eye and then
the right eye, they do some you know, karate kicks
and kill some demons who are a Slant's say, I
don't know, you know, I do remember you may remember this.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I have to ask before we go on. Are they
I mean, it is the idea that the real sort
of evil demons, like the kind Jesus would kick out
of people Okay, so I do after you're done, I
have a comment about that, Steve.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, okay, I mean, oh, I maybe heading the same
direction as you. I remember fifteen years ago now, somebody
put out a campy movie, I mean, a live action
movie that was if I recall, I didn't see it,
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
I thought this was amusing, that was kind of funny
because it's so ludicrous. I mean, it was totally ludicrous.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Well, I wanted to do, you know, Winston Churchill Nazi Hunter,
except that was too literal. I think the Weekly Standard
at a parody of you know, Harry Truman Nazi Hunter
something like that. But the point is is that I think,
I don't think I'll have time for this, but I'll
bet I could work out a Ken Musougi style interpretation
of how this is either Western Straussianism or Eastern Straussianism
and who the demons are. I'll bet I could. I'll
(03:11):
bet I could do that if I really try. But now, Lucretia,
I think, you know, South Korea is this Protestant Christian culture.
I think that's accurate, and I don't know where were
you going to go with that.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
It is the most religious of the Asian most Christian
of the religion of the Asian countries.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Of that right, I was going.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
To go a little bit, a little bit deeper maybe
on that. And one of the things that I have
been that I have been impressed by on social media
and even to some extent in the kind of larger
opinion world. You know, so many places you can go
to read things now, is that there seems to be
this call it a revival, and the revival religious revival
(03:54):
has sort of two sides to it. One is this
what you know, sort of turning towards God, going back
to church. One of the most viral things that came
on X was this young guy, kind of goofy looking,
I'll be honest with you, who put on a really sorry,
(04:15):
cheap looking, ill fitting suit and a tie and said,
I've never owned a suit before. I'm taking my family
to church and you see that. I see that all
over my feet on X, which is quite heartwarming. But
on the other side of it, which is what makes
me think of your show, I'm gonna call it your show, John, Okay,
(04:39):
fair enough, but I don't have Netflix. But the idea
I've seen this kind of a sentiment expressed over and over,
which is I don't know yet if I can fully
say that I believe in God, but I know that
evil exists, and it's becoming more and more real, and
(04:59):
so I am on my journey to figure out where
God is. I'm putting a lot of words in people's
mouths that aren't quite there, but that's the sentiment, and
I'm just wondering if it's not just Charlie Kirk. You know,
we began to see some of this evil manifesting itself
in a lot of ways. If you look at the
if you look at the background of the person who
(05:24):
killed those children at the Catholic school, shot the others,
it's this satanic cult group. I'm not going to go
into the details. I don't even want to give it
any kind of credence, But more and more people are
seeing a division between and you know the famous line
from The Usual Suspects, the Devil's greatest trick was to
(05:45):
convince the world that he doesn't exist. And I think
that maybe this is an evidence of some kind of
I guess, I don't know what other word to call it,
religious revival in this secular world where more and more
people are saying there has to be something more here,
because what's happening with the young left is that the
(06:06):
nihilism that they're being presented with is causing them to
take these awful sorts of influences and internalize them. And
you know, whether it's transgenderism, defurreism and whatever. Anyway, that's
my deeper thought on it, Steve, And again, I wish
I could just sort of take the time to pull
together all of the different postings and even articles that
(06:30):
I see that. I mean, there was a big article
today about Charlie Kirk that we should all honor Charlie
Kirk by respecting the Sabbath. Respecting the Sabbath.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
And you know, right, yeah, you know that story, right, Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yes, and what he does. But but it was an
interesting article because it said, you know, this is from
a religious point of view, a very important thing to do,
but just from the point of view of of living
in the modern world and not letting yourself being taked
and over even by the technology demons. Put your phone
in the drawer for twenty four hours, read a book,
spend time with your family, go outside and walk. You know,
it was very interesting to see these kinds of things
(07:11):
showing up.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
So let's try into it this way. I am actually
working on an article that will probably drive you a
little crazy, the cretie. We'll see. It's not quite the
analogy man stuff. But I've started. Actually I'm going to
send this into Richard rynhild Civitas, and I am working
from a single sentence from Max Weber's Politics as a
Vocation where he says, this is the theorist of bureaucracy, right.
(07:34):
He says, the world is governed by demons, and he
who lets himself in for politics, for power and force
as means contracts with diabolical powers. And there's more from that,
but I'm going to play that out. I'm only halfway
done with it, and but yeah, that's my parallel thought
and all that. But let's use that to get started
on all this. And I think we've got to take
(07:56):
up and discuss some of the you might say constitutional angles,
some of the free speech and hate speech and the
FCC and getting Jimmy Kimmel kicked off in order and
connect that to a larger team. I think, but's work
into it this way and maybe reverse chronology. So a
big memorial service on Sunday. They're expecting an overflow crowd.
(08:16):
Bro thousands of people are going to have to watch
from an indoor arena on a big screen. It's going
to be live streamed, and I bet it's going to
have an enormous audience. I was starting to get worried
a few days ago, and I'm in the last thirty
six hours. I've had other people worry about this, that
there might be a risk that this turns into a
(08:37):
conservative version of the Wellstone Memorial service in Minnesota in
two thousand and two. I don't know if either of
you remember that really, right, Yeah? I mean for listeners
who don't understand that, it's, you know, Paul Wellstone dies
in a plane crash Walter Mondale. Howly was this a
week to go before the election or two weeks Walter
Mondale came out of retirement to take his place on
the ticket and lost to Norm Coleman and then later
(09:01):
had the steats stolen from him in two thousand and eight.
But leave that for another day. The point is is
that the Welston Memorial turned into a offensive partisan Democratic
Party rally, even though you had prominent Republicans in the audience.
Like fret Lott was there. Some of them walked out.
It was so grotesque. And so the worry is with
all the intense passions around Kirk and a lot of
(09:22):
people coming, you know, President, Vice President Tucker Carlson, others that.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Way by I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
No, I conservatives don't make the same mistake Democrats did.
That's the question I'm asking Lucretia. I think there's a
reason they won't, but I don't think that's an unreasonable
question to ask. I think there is a risk of that.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
John, I'll let you go first. You're a reasonable Republican.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
I don't think that's going to happen. It could, I suppose,
but I wouldn't worry about it. On the other hand,
I think Kirk and his life stood for certain values. Yeah,
I wouldn't think it would be wrong for people to
defend freedom of speech and what Charlie stood for, and
(10:08):
the fact that he was killed for exercising his speech,
and because he had very strong values, Christian values. So
I don't think it has to be a Republican party
or it needs to become a Republican party rally.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
But I don't talk down.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
With it being a rally for freedom of speech, and
you know the traditional social values he believed in.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Well, I think the reason I think it may be
a triumph is what's already mentioned his religious faith. But
I don't know. You know, the things I don't know,
things can spell out control. Well, the other thing I
do worry about is provocateurs. We're going to be letting
sixty five thousand people in. We know that some Antifa
people showed up on January sixth and wore Maga style
(10:53):
clothing to partly, you know, be insiders of things, and
so I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
So first of all, you do have to register. You don't, Okay,
I'm guessing you can show up no matter what I did.
I am not going to make it up there. It's
about a three hour drive and h and you need
to be there probably the night before and camp out
to get in even with registering, but they're supposed I
think the big deal about registering is they give you
(11:19):
the instructions the night before if you've registered, So they're
they're trying, they are trying to control. I'm more worried
about violence, if you want to know the truth. Because
Victor Davis Hansen had a wonderful piece this morning about
pretty much all the gas lighting that those people. This
(11:41):
is not who I'm not talking about the people you
were talking about. That's why I asked why or who's
worrying but all of the left, who's trying very hard
to make it seem like Republicans will react to the
murder of Charlie Kirk the same way that the left
reacted to the murder of George Floyd. And then you know,
as as Victor is wont to do, lays out very
(12:04):
carefully the differences between the two. But I don't think that.
I don't think that what you're worried about is going
to happen. I am worried about violence, and I know
that my good friend of mine, who is a DHI detective,
it will actually they'll be flying F sixteens over the
(12:25):
over the event. And you know he's he called up
the other night and said, you cannot imagine what the
the uh preparations are the security preparations are for this
kind of event that was only really put together, what
a less than a week ago. It'll be maybe eight
days worth. The other thing I want to mention this
is came to me from one of our very very
(12:47):
loyal listeners, Michael Mike Lee, who asks us if we
think this is how he put the question, if we
think that Trump will sort of set his ego aside
a little bit and let jd Vance take the day.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh you know I didn't.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Is it where he thought I was going husty?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
No?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
No, well, I thought I'm taking a similar question, which is,
it will be very interesting to see what Trump's speech
is like, and you know this will be an interesting
moment for him.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
And did you say it started at your comments start
out with well Trump set his ego aside?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Well, why do you even ask who comes after that?
Clauset a sentence going to happen?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Surprise us?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, he might. And not only that, but you know,
remember at the beginning of this this year, it's hard
to believe it's only been a year. Trump was very
hesitant to give too much credence to the idea that
Jade Vance would be his his logical successor, and he
certainly wasn't endorsing jd Vance to be his logical successor
(13:57):
early on. That makes sense to me, and I didn't
consider that necessarily evidence of his ego so much as
you know, the moment you do that, you really are
lame duck, right, you really are lame duck president. But
he has been much more supportive. My point is this,
if jd Vance is the person responsible for Trump getting elected,
(14:19):
jd Vance is also excuse me not jd Vance. Try
Kirk is responsible in many ways. He's also responsible for
kind of helping jd Vance to become, you know, more
of a personage in the MAGA movement. This is the
opportunity to let jd Vance shine. Will Trump do it?
(14:40):
That's what I was getting at, because his legacy matters,
not just for the end of this four years, but
who takes the mantle for MAGA after he can running
awa Well.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Part of the context of that comment about Vance and
the successor was I think if thing what I'm thinking of.
He mentioned that Rubio, who was performing very well, continues
to perform very well, makes a pretty credible success or two.
So I don't know that, maybe just sort of political diplomacy.
One O one, one last observation and we'll get out.
There is one other speaker I think is a reason
(15:13):
to wonder how it's going to play out, and that's
Tucker Carlson, right, is he going to want to bring
up his Israel stuff? I sure hope not. But you know, right,
it's that's he's the real wild card in the in
the UH, all the people on the roster, I think, right,
because he's uncontrollable and he probably himself doesn't know what
he's gonna say because he he's even worse than Trump
(15:34):
and you know, sometimes going off and free associating. I've
seen him. You have to I think in live settings. Okay,
all right, well we'll keep that and you know, we'll
see what happens and maybe analyze it later. Let's do
a couple of the UH controversies of the week. There's
one question. Well, a lot of discussions about, you know,
(15:54):
Pam Bondi, about hate speech, about Brendan Karr at the
FCC and the Jimmy Kimball firing. But there's one question,
and I haven't heard asks. But so first of all,
for listeners, I'm sure most know what has happened is
first Pam Bondi said we're going to crack down and
hate speech, which is what the left said, and she'd
try to correct herself, but still it was not It
was an unforced error, and then Brendan Karr at the
(16:15):
FCC saying, hey, you know you, Jimmy Kimmel is irresponsible.
We have a mandate for about content, and personally I
think the FCC should just be abolished. And you know,
there's all that, but then the broader we can tell
you guys want to talk about anything about those particular
aspects of the story. The third part of this comes
(16:36):
is there's an awful lot of people being fired for
their grotest expressions of support for what happened to Kirk.
And although everyone has a right to free speech, they
don't necessarily have a right to their job, except maybe
in the case of people employed by government entities, which
would include public schools, public universities, which are always have
(16:58):
always been held to a higher legal stand for protection
of First Amendment rights. That question I have not heard
brought up, or if it has, I haven't I missed
it somehow. But you know, what do we think of
school teachers and other people work for public and government
institutions who are getting fired for their out of job comments.
(17:19):
In most cases, I mean, if someone says in the classroom,
I think you're entirely, entirely justified in showing them the door,
But for people to make a social media post and
other kinds of things, I think that's less clear. John.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
So there's a lot of questions here that you raised, Steed,
I would like to address first the Jimmy Kimmel controversy
and the SEC. So, if I had my preference, the
Supreme Court would have struck down long ago the idea
that the FCC and use its statutory authority to grant
licenses to broadcasters quote unquote, in the public interest to
(17:59):
police the content of the speech going on those channels.
Maybe that made sense when the only television we received
was three channels and broadcast airways, although I'm not even
sure it was justified then. And there was something called
the fairness doctrine, and you might remember this case called
Red Lion Broadcasting versus FCC, which the basic argument was
(18:21):
because the broadcast spectrum is limited, therefore the government has
the right to allocate it because it's a scarce resource,
and has the right to do it in the public interest,
and that allowed it. For example, I don't know you
guys remember this. I remember like on TV shows there
would be like the local news would have an editor
like a person would come on and give like an
editorial view at the end of the show, and then
the next week, some like Bozo who disagreed with them
(18:43):
was allowed to have free time on the on the
private air channels.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I thought, what the hell, what the hell is this?
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So but that makes no sense today when I'm sure
barely anyone gets three channels over the airwaves. We all
watch even our local TV probably on cable or through
the internet. Now and once you have abundant, unlimited number
of broadcast channels, I mean just channels because of new technology,
the idea that the FCC should be policing speech has
(19:11):
absolutely no justification. I So that's one I just don't
think the FCC should be. Second, there is an argument
about whether what car did was truly coercive or just complaining.
So my conservative friend should look at the Murphy case
from the Supreme Court case from a few terms go,
which we talked about on the podcast, where the Biden
(19:32):
White House right pressured Facebook and YouTube Twitter to deep platforms.
Some of the people we know in friends who are
criticizing the COVID lockdowns, and the court said that if
the government had actually coerced the social media platforms. That
could be a First Amendment violation, but it's just like
(19:53):
Teddy Roosevelt complaining from the bully pulpit and attacking corporations.
That's not actually a First Amenent violation, as private companies
can do what they want with speech. So that's the
other question I think is raised by the Jimmy Kimmel
thing is is what Brendan Carr said on these podcasts,
is that really coercive? Is that really tantamount to what
I thought was going on with COVID, where I think
(20:17):
the Biden White House was coercing the social media platforms,
But if you look at what they did, they were
like identifying posts, identifying statements, going to the social media
and saying you ought to take this down and so
on and so forth, with.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Real threats behind it.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, like they were like yeah, and so I wonder,
you know, Brendan Carr saying we can do this the
easy way are the hard way? And you know some
of the local ABC affiliates have merger business before the FCC.
Is that really a coersive threat? It's not a threat
on a part with what happened during COVID, I think,
But is it some kind of coursive that that's the
I think? And then I let's let's pause after we
(20:54):
talked about this and talk about the private employer issue too,
because I think generally private employers can fire whoever they right.
There's no obligation for a private property owner to have employees.
It comes from the this famous Supreme Court case about
newspapers or they said, newspaper owner doesn't have to allow
people to, you know, write in its off at pages
(21:15):
if it doesn't want to because disagree, And the court said,
it's just like if you own private property, no one
can force you to put a campaign right campaign sign
on your on your law.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
That you disagree with.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
So I don't see you have a problem with Microsoft
buiring people who want to say I want to protest
the gods of war while you know they don't have
to work at Microsoft. But whether government employees can is
a wholly different question than what.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
All right, Well, let's hold that question. Lucretia. Do you
you want to weigh in on Kim, on the FCC
and all the rest of this or do you care?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
No, I don't. I don't disagree with anything John said.
What I will say I probably tied those two things
together that he mentioned a little bit more. If if
you allow the FCC to regulate the airwaves in the
public interest, then you have what ends up being the
two examples that you gave, which is government. Okay, the
(22:06):
public interest is making sure all of those crazy mega
and other type people are getting their COVID vaccines because
otherwise the pharmaceutical companies won't make enough money, and that's
in the public interest. Now I'm being snipe, but your
point about government shouldn't regulate it at all makes a
(22:26):
lot of sense now. And it also was because you know,
supposedly the airwaves were limited. Do we expect, for instance,
the government to be a little bit more censoring of say,
things that children shouldn't watch or is that cat out
(22:48):
of the bag completely because of the Internet? I mean
they there is simply no way to stop children from watching, say,
porn or anything like that on parents might be able
to do it, but otherwise that they've there's just no
way logically efficiently to keep children who really want to
see porn on the Internet from seeing it. They can't
(23:08):
even stop it from happening in libraries, you know, so anyway,
so that's all I wanted to say about what John
had to say. I think he's right. The best thing
to do is to let the marketplace shut this stuff down.
But with that comes a lot of ugly stuff out
(23:29):
there on the airwaves. However you wanted to find them internet,
television radio. By the way, one last really funny story.
I used to have a five thirty in the morning
on Sunday's radio station radio program where, believe it or not,
(23:49):
I was. I was the opposing opinion that they were
forced by the fairness doctrine to have to put me on.
It was a country Western station, but the guy who
did the news was very liberal, so they had me
on with him for an hour at five point thirty
on Sunday morning to talk about politics and give a
more conservative view. That was the start of my great
(24:11):
career as a something.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah, it was that you and your your broadcast partner
in art Bell or the three right, that guy, he
was his wacko was on it.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
You know, people used to actually listen to it, believe.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
It or not. People are up at all kinds of
hours no I.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Know anyway, Sorry, So John had a much more important
point to make than that, though.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
To continue well, one last question on this before we
push on. So one argument you're hearing, including from a
lot of conservatives, is gosh, whatever the particular wherever you
land on the power of the FCC to oversee content.
I said, wosh, what will happen if, you know, the
(24:52):
liberals get back in power and they'll use the same
power against conservative media. And my first thought was, wait
a minute, do you know the history of the FCC
During the John sorry, the Kennedy administration, the labor unions,
who were the thugs for the Democrats, leaned on the
FCC to deny broadcast license renewals to radio stations and
(25:14):
TV stations for their conservative content. And then by the
time you get to the eighties and then the nineties, especially,
the FCC would bring pressure for diversity on boards and
on the senior executive rank. So there's that whole racket, right,
So the left has been.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Using John's example was just as good about how we've
already experienced it across the board, the Murphy case and
so on.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Right, So the point is that the left has been
using the FCC, and that's why I think really the
Republicans were smart. They would push for abolishing the FCC today,
we don't need a learn thing anymore. Any any legitimate
functions of just the ministerial part of licensing stations, of
allocating spectrum that could be done by the Department of
Commerce and a purely you know, by the numbers way.
(26:03):
And I don't think we even need to do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Okay, Yeah, But I think this is the other part
of your question that I think is interesting, is Okay,
so you're seeing all these people being fired for criticizing
Charlie Kirk or saying inappropriate things about his assassination, and uh,
you know, put aside the just the bed, the bad,
(26:27):
the poor taste that all of that is in. Do
they have a constitutional right to do it? So this
is an interesting question that is really I think for
a long time be deviled the courts. I think originally
they had the right position, and the right position was
espoused by your friends, the friend of you both, Oliver
Wendell Holmes.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Oh God, nice, try so.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote an opinion, so.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Famously, but on this question, he said, you have a
constitutional right to free speech. You do not have a
constitutional right to be a Boston police officer, and so
he upheld the right of the Boston Police Office, you know,
Boston City of Boston to fire a police officer because
he was speaking about political matters. So in the beginning
(27:23):
of the court said there's no right of free speech
for a government employee on their worktime. Then the court
this is something called I believe still called the Pickering test.
And of course then in the Warren and Burger court
years it became a big mush. And so now there's
a limited right of free speech for government employees, but
it has to be balanced against the needs of the
(27:44):
government to run itself properly. So it's completely unpredictable, but
I will give you some examples. So, for example, the
court has upheld the Hatch Act right which prohibits government
employees from engaging in you know, campaign political activity while
on the job.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
So you are using resources.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Yeah, you can do it off, you know, in your
free time, but you can't do it with government resources
in your government time. However, right, for example, you know,
three of us, you know, people who are professors, do
we have a right to free speech when we work
for public universities and the courts have suggested there is
some kind of right to free speech, but it's not
(28:27):
the same as just a citizen standing in the street corner.
It can be limited by the needs, whatever the needs
are to run the university. But it's much broader than
Oliver Wende Holmes's view. So I would say there's this
weird balancing test that court uses or balances your right
of speech against the government's need to run its business
(28:49):
or to run the university. But as with all balancing tests,
I find it completely unpredictable and just really up to
the courts. Personally, I actually like Holmes's view. I actually
think you don't have a right to free speech if
you're a government employee. I think universities it's not really
it's not really the free speech to me, when we're
(29:11):
university professors and we're engaging in writing articles and debating,
I don't think it's really we have a right to
free speech. I think it's because the state has created
a university whose job it is to find truth through debate.
But I don't know if you have a constitution right
of free speech against the university. But that's not the
way the Supreme Court thinks about it they have this way.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Let me take a rabbit hole for you. One thing
that has always been an exception across the board, I
think to all of that is the military. And so
lately we have seen military personnel, you know, active duty
or reserve, writing on their private Facebook, the Facebook or
(29:55):
one of the others things that are you know, just
just despicable. There's no way around it. They're vile, They're awful.
They indicate that the kind of human being who could
write such a thing has just no soul. They're just
evil and vile. But do they have outside of their
time spent which and if you're in the military, if
(30:16):
you've ever been in the military, which I know you
guys haven't, but you're never off the clock in the military,
is what it comes down to. That's the way they
look at it. But that's not really the point here.
Doesn't the military have some obligation to judge the character
of their soldiers because of the importance of the jobs
that they do protecting the country, securing our freedoms and
(30:37):
so on. Or is it no different, for instance, than
a government, than a teacher, than a preschool teacher teaching
her kids about Palestine? And I don't know. Jeez, whatever,
what do you think, John Well?
Speaker 3 (30:52):
I actually think that if you were going to recognize
some kind of rights. Again, I don't think they should
have them, but if you were going to recognize some
Cindacy might say say that the need to make sure
the military maintains it's a political role in our society.
It's more important than say having a political school teachers
(31:13):
or a political fireman. That because of the special the
role of the military and the idea that they are
always subject to the commander in chief, no matter which
party it is, that I think they might have more
restrictions on their speech.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
And I do.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
And then I think it is appropriate for military commanders
to punish soldiers who are going too far in their
social media comments.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
I love Holmes.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I was like, you would say, you know, you have
a right to free speech, you don't have a right
to be a soldier in the United States military.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah, as a special government employee like Elon Musk, I
like to make that connection, you know, because it makes
me seem a whole lot more important. But that was
just you could not attach anyway. If you were the
little pin that the secretary would give us and made
a comment on if you if there was a picture
(32:07):
of you and you were associated with some political kind
of message, whether you know you're interviewed by the newspaper
this or that, they would it was considered an ethics
violation and you would get fired. Just so you know,
it's because you don't have a right to be a
special government employee, even when they don't pay you. So anyway,
(32:31):
did you want to talk briefly and explain to me
what I don't get John about the Texas A and
M president who was fired. I think just this morning,
this is very interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
It just hap well, yeah today, Well let's tell listeners
what we're talking about, because most of our listeners do
not know. So one of you please tell a story.
I mean, I've read it too, but I mean.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
From what I saw the stories because I happened to
be in Texas today. So people are buzz about this.
But apparently a lecturer was teaching a class on children's
literature and a signed a book that in which a
transgender person played a major role. And so the teacher,
(33:11):
I suppose, was talking about transgender and a student. And
there's a video you can't see the teacher or the
students' faces in the video, but it's you know, you
can hear it, and the student says, you know, this
is what you're teaking, you're teaching. You know this gender
ideology you're teaching is wrong, that there's only two sexes,
(33:32):
that the law prohibits the use of the classroom for
the teaching of this transgender ideology. The teacher has said
in public that I think she says it on the video.
She kicks her out, kicks a student out of the class,
and says that she has the right to teach this
transgender ideology and that she has the law on her side.
(33:57):
So the president of Texas and initially defended I believe,
the teacher, but then under pressure from politicians here in Texas,
he fired the teacher and I believe two other faculty
members who were defending her. But apparently this was yeah,
this is not good enough, yea, And so he just resigned,
(34:20):
I believe today, if not last night. And so this
is raising again these questions we're talking about, but also
maybe a larger issue we're talking about with Jimmy Kimmel.
How far does the government have to have in its
power to dictate what teachers or what said on the
university campus.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Well, can I add just one more layer to the
story from Clemson in South Carolina where you had I
think three different faculty members posted out extremely vile things
about Charlie Kirk and celebrating his killing, and the university
put out a statement deploring it, but we support academic freedom,
at which point the Republicans in the state legislature went
(35:02):
nuts and said, you're a state institution shame with something
happened to your budget, and the trustees should do something
about this. Well, the trustees met an emergency session and
all three of those faculty members have now been fired.
So and I'm all for that. I'm you know, lads
in my heart, but I think we're seeing some accountability
and long overdue course corrections in these things.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
So anyway, Yeah, it's a tough call because, as you know,
the same argument you made almost just a few moments ago,
that the left will do that to us when they
get back in power. That's probably true, as you and
you as you also pointed out both of you, that
they have been doing that to us, maybe not quite
(35:44):
in such a such a public way. I mean, I
think that much more likely that conservatives with conservative viewpoints
who challenged the leftist dog about transgenderism and DEI and
all those other things. They weren't necessarily fire outright, they
were just they just in a subtle, sort of insidious way,
(36:04):
had their careers ruined or never had an opportunity to,
you know, even establish a career. So it's it's gonna
be interesting to see how all of this comes down.
You know, colleges are My university came out and said, oh,
we're not going to be worried about enrollment anymore. We're
going to be worried about retention because nobody wants to
(36:26):
go to college anymore, and they definitely don't want to
go to the second rate state universities like mine is,
and so well, let's just give in on that. But
part of the reason for that is that as as
this Charlie Kirk story has come out, I got a
I got a text message from a student complaining about
(36:47):
something the university had done and said, Charlie Kirk was
right rip about colleges. You know, so they're going to
have I think that it's not just the ideological conservative
side of things is pushing this, but sooner or later,
if colleges can't make their budgets because they can't even
keep students coming in, then I think you're going to
(37:09):
see some changes anyway. Yeah, but thank you for explaining.
I still don't quite know why he resigned after he
ended up actually firing those people.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
John.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
That's the confusing part to me.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
I think the way the story looks is that his
initial resistance to firing them is what caused politicians in
Texas to demand that he leave too. Okay, you know
that was his initial instinct was to say, you know,
she can't be fired, and that's hardcore.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah. I mean it used to me that it was
no confidence votes by the faculty that would force out
a college president like Larry Summers at Harvard twenty years ago. Now,
if it's the no confidence vote of the legislators that
oversee their budgets, so be it. I like it.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
Well, yeah, I think Look, I think both of you
recognize it's the state creates the universities. They have the
right to dictate what's taught in them, just the same
with public K through twelve schools, and federalism will provide
a good competitive market for this, you know. Yeah, don't
want to send their kids to Texas, A, and M.
They can send them to a lot of other options,
(38:14):
and there every places that can say oh, we're going
to allow transgender ideology to be taught in the classroom,
and then parents and students can decide where they want
their kids to go there or they can send them
to Texas and where it's not going to be taught apparently.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, well, well I can add one more detail about
this in a certain sense. About five years back, a
friend of mine who teaches at another public university in
Texas was telling me about going to the state legislature
meeting with legislators saying, these campuses are out of control.
You should do something about it. And you know, Republican
(38:48):
majority keep running into not exactly a brick wall, but
just confusion and well, gosh, we don't know. I mean,
you know, the trustees are all kinds of slop. Well
that has changed dramatically, and now legislatures in Texas and
other states around the war path. So it's a whole
different world very suddenly. And as I say, I like it,
(39:08):
anything else to add to that, otherwise I'm going to
press ahead to it'll seem like something new, But it's
really not so last thought on Charlie Kirk and then
go to the Constitution and one of the questions I
was thinking about are one of the aspects of the
whole story is why did Charlie Kirk drive the left
(39:29):
so far out of their minds? And you know, I've
confession and I've written about this, that I wasn't originally
impressed with Kirk when he first showed up still as
a teenager, what almost fifteen years ago, but then did
start noticing, Boy, is he maturing, getting more sophisticated, more substantive,
more confident, more effective. And what you notice on all
the clips you see is that he asked for specifics
(39:51):
and when challenged on something, he's got an arsenal. It
was like somebody had mainline the works of Thomas soul
among other things, but also in theologylosophy, and even law
in many cases. H And what I realize and he
outclassed almost everybody he talked to, not just students who
you know, he sort of overmatched, and that the fact
that he's now older, a little older than they were.
(40:12):
But you know, the Oxford Union debate, I don't know
if you've seen any of that where he absolutely clabbers
some Oxford faculty members in very impressive style. So here's
the point. The left hates to be challenged. They're not
used to it, they're no good at it. Partly we
can go through the reasons why, whether it's psychological and philosophical,
(40:33):
but they the presumption that because they're right, they don't
need to defend their positions. And I think that's part
of what's going on there, right, Lucresie, you wanted to
I want I just.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Want to add something to that, And that is my favorite.
One of my favorite clips of Charlie Kirk is when
he's being challenged by this stuffy pro elitist professor who
says that, you know, why are you so down on colleges?
You never you were a dropout, you never went to college.
And he accuses Charlie of X amount of colleges is
not I didn't even have that much a community college
(41:03):
blah blah blahlah blah, right, and then proceeds to ask
him if he had read this book or you know,
just just embarrasses the guy. Guy, of course, is too
arrogant to realize how much he's actually being humiliated. In
a very large crowd, but the crowd can sense what's
going on, and I think that's also part of it.
A little bit back to what I was saying earlier,
(41:25):
If Charlie Kirk can be that kind of educated person,
capable on his feet of bringing arguments to bear from
all comers, I don't think I've ever seen a clip
They may be out there of Charlie Kirk actually being
defeated in a debate in one of those you know,
kind of free for all arenas. If Charlie Kirk can
do that without college, and can be actually much better
(41:48):
educated than your average college students, never having gone to college,
then what does that say about the necessity of our
higher education or institutions of higher education.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah, well, something I often say to students is don't
let college get in the way of getting an education,
because I have a lot of thoughts about that. My
parallel one is one I thought was especially delicious was
a student saying, you know, how can you talk about economics?
I'm an economics major and you didn't even finish college.
How can you talk? And he says, okay, who's Milton Friedman?
(42:19):
I had never heard of him? How about lovely von
me says. He mentions, you know, Nobel Prize winners and
Emine economists that this kid had never heard of that.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
The kid says, Oh, I'm sure he's some economists.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
It's just you know, I mean, we talk about utter humiliation,
the exposure of this sort of superficiality that left. Here's
what I mean. We didn't do that format this week,
but you know, once in a while, will each of
us grab an article. And the one this week has
me rolling on the floor laughing. Is Jill Lapour, of
the Government Department at Harvard and also a writer for
(42:51):
The New Yorker has an article out in The Atlantic, which, boy,
has that ever slipped? And it's called how original is
killed the Constitution? And it's it's well, the article is
so stupid. I'll just give you one reason of how
stupid it is. We haven't really meaningfully amended the Constitution
(43:13):
now for fifty years, like this is a scandal. It's
self evidently obvious that if we're not constantly amending the Constitution,
it's out of date. And she's on to say that
originalism is what's killing constitutional innovation. I mean, this goes
with all the articles recently in the New York Times
and elsewhere where progressives say progressives will never win again
unless we change the constitution, changed the rules. And I
(43:36):
keep raising my hand saying, well, wait a minute. You
know the Democratic New Deal Coalition, which was pretty progressive.
They dominated American politics for more than fifty years with
the existing rules. How come it's not working now? Is
there no reflection? And maybe that's that famous story about
the dogs who don't like the dog food and the
marketers can't understand why we will change the label, and
(43:57):
someone finally says, well, maybe the dogs don't like the food. Right.
This doesn't seem to occur to progressives, And you know
that's part of the lesson of Charlie Kirk. And when
you read the sort of elite liberals talking to each
other without any serious engagement in originalism, and I don't know,
maybe that's an opening John to beat you up for
(44:18):
you as okay, I do want to mention.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
In the same context really quickly, earlier contexts actually fires, Fire,
the organization Fire. They've just been horrible on all of this.
And my university is plugging an article that came out
not very long ago by somebody from Fire called you
can't fire your way to free speech, and they've just
(44:49):
been awful on this whole thing. If you ask me,
this sort of absolutist a moral approach to the idea
that free spe speech simply speaking is the be all
and end all, with no consideration whatsoever for the impact
of that speech. You know, there are big on supporting
(45:11):
pro Palestinian Free Palestine Now student groups, and you know,
they've just been terrible. I don't know what's happened inside
that organization, which used to be somewhat something of a
you know, a good organization actually protecting the right of
reasonable people to speak on college campuses, but they're not
(45:33):
that anymore. Or am I wrong?
Speaker 3 (45:35):
I tell a story I was. I'm here at EUT Austin.
I gave a Constitution Day lecture yesterday and someone got
up and said, don't you think the threat to freedom
free speech is in the wake of Charlie? Because I
talked about Charlie and you know how I think his
assassination was an effort to shut down political debate. And
this guy said, don't you think that threat to free speech?
(45:58):
Or actually, these univers these that are firing people, the
military firing people now Jimmy Kimmel being fired and so on,
and you know, so I made this distinction between private
and public employers. But then I said, look, you know,
after teaching at Berkeley thirty years, the only events I
have ever seen where someone could not in the end
(46:18):
speak have been only the last year when someone from
Israel has tried to speak. And so you want to
talk about the threat to free speech, just people protesting
trying to prevent Israeli speakers and Jewish speakers from speaking
on campus, and the harassment of Jewish students on the faculty,
that to me is far worse than the you know,
(46:40):
these isolated instances seems to me of people being fired
who go too far in their comments about Charlie Kirk,
which I think, I mean, I understand is they are
attacking someone who's assassinated, not because they're being They're not
being fired because they just disagree with someone's point of view.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
A student in Texas at Texas State University at a
memorial event re enacted the assassination of Charlie Kirk at
the memorial event and Abbott Greg Abbotts demanded that the
student be expelled, and the university complied. That's not free speech.
(47:21):
That's that's I'm sorry that you know the write an
article saying why Charlie Kirk was wrong? But why would
I guess I just want to be too reasonable and
rational about these things.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
I don't know. Well, I have to be a little
careful about what I say, but I will share this much.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
That's a first.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Well, it's because I have I have some proprietary inside
knowledge that I'm really not supposed to share. But I
can tell you and listeners that Fire at the staff
level and at their board level is having biggorous debates
and considerable intern disagreement about all these questions and much
to be done. So it's not open and shut, and
you know, we'll see how it unfolds. I do know that,
(48:07):
you know Greg rookianof who runs it, he hadn't been
getting a lot of sleep lately. I'll just put it
that way. Because there's a lot of pressures being put
on them on a lot of these questions. And yeah,
I thought they aired on the Palestinian question on campus
and so forth, because I think that's just speech correct,
it's very clearly harassment and so forth, and they're trying
to draw upright line, I think they're yeah, I I
(48:31):
I se write yeah. And by the way, they're hearing
from donors, so you know, there's they're hearing from some
of their major donors that hey, we're not sure you
guys are quite right about all this, so to be
continued pay attention and you know, and by keep making criticism.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
But absolutely last comment. I was the only dean in
twenty twenty of the entire university and the only senior
administrator of any kind who refused, I declined. I'll say
it like that, find to make a public statement in
support of George Floyd and Black Lives.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Matter, right, yeah, which had.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Nothing nothing to do with the university. Of course, there
was no reason for them to say anything about it.
Charlie Kirk is a much different But I don't know,
have you heard at least my university hasn't. I don't know.
Maybe your university has made a statement, but nobody at
my university.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Has so well. I mean I wrote about this the
other day on our substack. Is every university put out
statements about George Floyd. They also a lotwful lot of
them put out statements after Trump won in both twenty
sixteen and again in twenty twenty four about how traumatic
it is. You know, my old mentor Stan Evans joked
(49:46):
about how when he was a young conservative the sixties,
we had to get over the Goldwater defeat without grief counselors.
And now that's the standard model for fragile.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
Liberty, folloring books and write and lush toys.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Notice that conservatives don't need grief counselors and plush toys
and all the rest of that. It's that, in itself
is revealing that they know that the bulk of their
students are so emotionally and intellectually fragile that they have
to be coddled like that, which is I've made.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
This comment before, I'll say it one more time that
we really can get off the subject. But in the
old days, what there was the joke was this, how
many dead grandmas did you have this semester? You know, Sorry,
but I can't make the final I can't turn my
essay and on time, whatever it might be, because my
(50:36):
grandma died. Right For in any given semester, forty percent
of my students total, not the ones who just ask
for leniency for some reason. Forty percent of my students
will ask for leniency because of a mental health issue.
I have anxiety, I have depression. I can't get my
(50:58):
work done.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
That's how I feel for when we start the podcast.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
I know, but you pull through, John, and you don't
ask for cretia.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
Lets us have it. I have great sense of anxiety.
I need a plush toy.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Well, it seems to me the U. It seems to
me the the CDC ought to investigate closing down colleges
as a public health hazard. That's you know, based on
those statistics. All right, lucretia, do you have some Babylon
bes right?
Speaker 1 (51:23):
Them are perfect. I'm gonna start with this one. It's
a picture of uh Hakim, Jeffries and and Schumer. This
is a both sides issue, says side that assassinated Charlie Kirk,
shot President Trump, tried to assassinate Kavanaugh, tried to assassinate
Trump again, murdered school kids in Minnesota, shot Steve Chalice,
(51:44):
firebomb Governor Shapiro, murdered school children in Nashville, bird an
elderly Jewish woman. And it goes on and on and on. Sorry,
that's not funny, it's but yes, jd Vance takes over
as host of Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Or Marco Rubio. Oh, no, one more job Marco Rubio
has to take.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Yeah, the Babylon b is outraged to learn Jimmy Kimmel
was canceled just for being a mega Republican.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
That's that's very good.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Yes, right, people, okay with murder outraged by TV show cancelation.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Yeah, yeah, get it right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Okay, that's probably good. Oh wait, one last one. Matt
Gutman tears up while citing personal touching mind komf.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Oh god, oh Man, Well that's the ABC guy said,
Oh those email threads were so touching and affectionate, and
it was you talk about tone deaf anyway?
Speaker 3 (52:51):
Right, all right, John, always drink your whiskey, Meed buy
more books? And Steve, what Ai demon hunter poem do
you have about the Three Whiskey Happy Hour?
Speaker 2 (53:03):
So I'm going instead with poetry. I'm going with novelists instead.
So you guys is lightning around? You want Flatner or Hemingway? Oh, Hevyway, Hemyway. Okay,
here's Hemingways by Ai. The Three Whisky Happy Hour podcasts
was a place where men sat in quiet rooms drinking
their whiskey slowly listening to the voices of those who
(53:25):
had seen too much and felt too little. It was
a conversation without pretense, rough and real about the things
that mattered. Whiskey, of course, but more so the stories
behind it. They spoke of history, of culture, of the
wars fought in the minds of men. The voices were raw,
like the sound of a cork popping from a bottle,
(53:48):
sharp and full of promise. Every word mattered, though none
were wasted. In the end, it was a meeting of minds,
but not of comfort. There was no time for comfort,
just whisky and the slow rhythm of life in the
half light. And that is why I never cared for Hemingway, but.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Because he was a Russian spy or Soviet castro.
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Buddy were going about. Okay, anyway, that's it'll Floppner's better,
but I'll use it next week.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
Okay, guys, it's great to see you. Guys.
Speaker 3 (54:21):
Everyone have a wonderful week, right you two.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
Take care, Charlie, Long live your legacy all the things
you did for me.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
Way can the youth of our country helping us stay
American han free, fighting for the Constitution and American ideals.
Speaker 5 (54:44):
The Lord is with you, and His word is your seal.
Speaker 4 (54:47):
May the angels sake you up to heaven with God.
Speaker 5 (54:50):
You are a true hero, and your courage leaves a sinner.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
So Franchise STI.
Speaker 5 (55:00):
Will always remember all you did for this chantrey to
way up in heaven looking down for its Your spirit
will stick around with you.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
Nothing will ever be.
Speaker 5 (55:16):
Quiet the same, but we will always remember your name.
Speaker 4 (55:26):
You spoke to the youth and change a generation, a legend.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
In the history of this nation.
Speaker 1 (55:33):
May you have eternal salvation.
Speaker 5 (55:37):
May this song be a true celebration for all that
you did and all those you help.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
Your loss of something we should never have felt.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
Your kids and family will always live on.
Speaker 5 (55:49):
We will remember you forever, long after you're gone. So long,
Franchise rest in peace. Will always please remember all you.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Did for this job.
Speaker 5 (56:04):
Strain you way up in heaven, up and down pointernity.
Spirit will stick around without you. Nothing will ever be
quite the same, but we will always remember.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
Ricochet. Join the conversation.
Well whiskey, come and take my pain, hondys all.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Ray 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.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Where they slapped it up and David, ain't you easy
on the Sooda?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Have you got a giving? Well, it's a Friday morning
taping of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour, which means it's
a little too early to have any whiskey, even for me.
But John is with us in from Texas, Lucretia in
her bat cave in Arizona, and I am back finding
from Iceland and trying to get back in the swing
(00:50):
of things. And one of the things John, I'll start
with you that I did keep up catch up with
the last few days is the number one show worldwide
on Netflix by a lot is K Pop Demon Hunters.
And since it's got the South Korean K pop theme,
I mean not, you know, got to catch up with
(01:11):
these things? Have you seen It's It's quite the thing.
I've seen ten minutes.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I'm gonna try again. I tried to watch it. I
started it I couldn't take it, but I'll try again
for the for our loyal loyal viewers and listeners. But
I cannot understand how K pop and all this Demon
Hunter stuff, which are these themes in Korean, like it's
Korean kind of like adult anime, you know cartoons, has
(01:34):
become a global phenomenon, and even people in the United
States like this. It's it's just like this weird sort
of combination of pop music and then sort of fantasy
because it involves demons and hunting them, and the Demon
Hunters themselves are a K pop band. It's just so
(01:54):
weird that people love this stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, I mean, that's so you know. One of the
early scenes is these three the young ladies who were
the pop stars, putting on their makeup, but between say,
doing the mascara on one eye, left eye and then
the right eye, they do some you know, karate kicks
and kill some demons who are a Slant's say, I
don't know, you know, I do remember you may remember this.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I have to ask before we go on. Are they
I mean, it is the idea that the real sort
of evil demons, like the kind Jesus would kick out
of people Okay, so I do after you're done, I
have a comment about that, Steve.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, okay, I mean, oh, I maybe heading the same
direction as you. I remember fifteen years ago now, somebody
put out a campy movie, I mean, a live action
movie that was if I recall, I didn't see it,
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
I thought this was amusing, that was kind of funny
because it's so ludicrous. I mean, it was totally ludicrous.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Well, I wanted to do, you know, Winston Churchill Nazi Hunter,
except that was too literal. I think the Weekly Standard
at a parody of you know, Harry Truman Nazi Hunter
something like that. But the point is is that I think,
I don't think I'll have time for this, but I'll
bet I could work out a Ken Musougi style interpretation
of how this is either Western Straussianism or Eastern Straussianism
and who the demons are. I'll bet I could. I'll
(03:11):
bet I could do that if I really try. But now, Lucretia,
I think, you know, South Korea is this Protestant Christian culture.
I think that's accurate, and I don't know where were
you going to go with that.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
It is the most religious of the Asian most Christian
of the religion of the Asian countries.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Of that right, I was going.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
To go a little bit, a little bit deeper maybe
on that. And one of the things that I have
been that I have been impressed by on social media
and even to some extent in the kind of larger
opinion world. You know, so many places you can go
to read things now, is that there seems to be
this call it a revival, and the revival religious revival
(03:54):
has sort of two sides to it. One is this
what you know, sort of turning towards God, going back
to church. One of the most viral things that came
on X was this young guy, kind of goofy looking,
I'll be honest with you, who put on a really sorry,
(04:15):
cheap looking, ill fitting suit and a tie and said,
I've never owned a suit before. I'm taking my family
to church and you see that. I see that all
over my feet on X, which is quite heartwarming. But
on the other side of it, which is what makes
me think of your show, I'm gonna call it your show, John, Okay,
(04:39):
fair enough, but I don't have Netflix. But the idea
I've seen this kind of a sentiment expressed over and over,
which is I don't know yet if I can fully
say that I believe in God, but I know that
evil exists, and it's becoming more and more real, and
(04:59):
so I am on my journey to figure out where
God is. I'm putting a lot of words in people's
mouths that aren't quite there, but that's the sentiment, and
I'm just wondering if it's not just Charlie Kirk. You know,
we began to see some of this evil manifesting itself
in a lot of ways. If you look at the
if you look at the background of the person who
(05:24):
killed those children at the Catholic school, shot the others,
it's this satanic cult group. I'm not going to go
into the details. I don't even want to give it
any kind of credence, But more and more people are
seeing a division between and you know the famous line
from The Usual Suspects, the Devil's greatest trick was to
(05:45):
convince the world that he doesn't exist. And I think
that maybe this is an evidence of some kind of
I guess, I don't know what other word to call it,
religious revival in this secular world where more and more
people are saying there has to be something more here,
because what's happening with the young left is that the
(06:06):
nihilism that they're being presented with is causing them to
take these awful sorts of influences and internalize them. And
you know, whether it's transgenderism, defurreism and whatever. Anyway, that's
my deeper thought on it, Steve, And again, I wish
I could just sort of take the time to pull
together all of the different postings and even articles that
(06:30):
I see that. I mean, there was a big article
today about Charlie Kirk that we should all honor Charlie
Kirk by respecting the Sabbath. Respecting the Sabbath.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
And you know, right, yeah, you know that story, right, Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yes, and what he does. But but it was an
interesting article because it said, you know, this is from
a religious point of view, a very important thing to do,
but just from the point of view of of living
in the modern world and not letting yourself being taked
and over even by the technology demons. Put your phone
in the drawer for twenty four hours, read a book,
spend time with your family, go outside and walk. You know,
it was very interesting to see these kinds of things
(07:11):
showing up.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
So let's try into it this way. I am actually
working on an article that will probably drive you a
little crazy, the cretie. We'll see. It's not quite the
analogy man stuff. But I've started. Actually I'm going to
send this into Richard rynhild Civitas, and I am working
from a single sentence from Max Weber's Politics as a
Vocation where he says, this is the theorist of bureaucracy, right.
(07:34):
He says, the world is governed by demons, and he
who lets himself in for politics, for power and force
as means contracts with diabolical powers. And there's more from that,
but I'm going to play that out. I'm only halfway
done with it, and but yeah, that's my parallel thought
and all that. But let's use that to get started
on all this. And I think we've got to take
(07:56):
up and discuss some of the you might say constitutional angles,
some of the free speech and hate speech and the
FCC and getting Jimmy Kimmel kicked off in order and
connect that to a larger team. I think, but's work
into it this way and maybe reverse chronology. So a
big memorial service on Sunday. They're expecting an overflow crowd.
(08:16):
Bro thousands of people are going to have to watch
from an indoor arena on a big screen. It's going
to be live streamed, and I bet it's going to
have an enormous audience. I was starting to get worried
a few days ago, and I'm in the last thirty
six hours. I've had other people worry about this, that
there might be a risk that this turns into a
(08:37):
conservative version of the Wellstone Memorial service in Minnesota in
two thousand and two. I don't know if either of
you remember that really, right, Yeah? I mean for listeners
who don't understand that, it's, you know, Paul Wellstone dies
in a plane crash Walter Mondale. Howly was this a
week to go before the election or two weeks Walter
Mondale came out of retirement to take his place on
the ticket and lost to Norm Coleman and then later
(09:01):
had the steats stolen from him in two thousand and eight.
But leave that for another day. The point is is
that the Welston Memorial turned into a offensive partisan Democratic
Party rally, even though you had prominent Republicans in the audience.
Like fret Lott was there. Some of them walked out.
It was so grotesque. And so the worry is with
all the intense passions around Kirk and a lot of
(09:22):
people coming, you know, President, Vice President Tucker Carlson, others that.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Way by I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
No, I conservatives don't make the same mistake Democrats did.
That's the question I'm asking Lucretia. I think there's a
reason they won't, but I don't think that's an unreasonable
question to ask. I think there is a risk of that.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
John, I'll let you go first. You're a reasonable Republican.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
I don't think that's going to happen. It could, I suppose,
but I wouldn't worry about it. On the other hand,
I think Kirk and his life stood for certain values. Yeah,
I wouldn't think it would be wrong for people to
defend freedom of speech and what Charlie stood for, and
(10:08):
the fact that he was killed for exercising his speech,
and because he had very strong values, Christian values. So
I don't think it has to be a Republican party
or it needs to become a Republican party rally.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
But I don't talk down.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
With it being a rally for freedom of speech, and
you know the traditional social values he believed in.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Well, I think the reason I think it may be
a triumph is what's already mentioned his religious faith. But
I don't know. You know, the things I don't know,
things can spell out control. Well, the other thing I
do worry about is provocateurs. We're going to be letting
sixty five thousand people in. We know that some Antifa
people showed up on January sixth and wore Maga style
(10:53):
clothing to partly, you know, be insiders of things, and
so I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
So first of all, you do have to register. You don't, Okay,
I'm guessing you can show up no matter what I did.
I am not going to make it up there. It's
about a three hour drive and h and you need
to be there probably the night before and camp out
to get in even with registering, but they're supposed I
think the big deal about registering is they give you
(11:19):
the instructions the night before if you've registered, So they're
they're trying, they are trying to control. I'm more worried
about violence, if you want to know the truth. Because
Victor Davis Hansen had a wonderful piece this morning about
pretty much all the gas lighting that those people. This
(11:41):
is not who I'm not talking about the people you
were talking about. That's why I asked why or who's
worrying but all of the left, who's trying very hard
to make it seem like Republicans will react to the
murder of Charlie Kirk the same way that the left
reacted to the murder of George Floyd. And then you know,
as as Victor is wont to do, lays out very
(12:04):
carefully the differences between the two. But I don't think that.
I don't think that what you're worried about is going
to happen. I am worried about violence, and I know
that my good friend of mine, who is a DHI detective,
it will actually they'll be flying F sixteens over the
(12:25):
over the event. And you know he's he called up
the other night and said, you cannot imagine what the
the uh preparations are the security preparations are for this
kind of event that was only really put together, what
a less than a week ago. It'll be maybe eight
days worth. The other thing I want to mention this
is came to me from one of our very very
(12:47):
loyal listeners, Michael Mike Lee, who asks us if we
think this is how he put the question, if we
think that Trump will sort of set his ego aside
a little bit and let jd Vance take the day.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh you know I didn't.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Is it where he thought I was going husty?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
No?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
No, well, I thought I'm taking a similar question, which is,
it will be very interesting to see what Trump's speech
is like, and you know this will be an interesting
moment for him.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
And did you say it started at your comments start
out with well Trump set his ego aside?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Well, why do you even ask who comes after that?
Clauset a sentence going to happen?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Surprise us?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, he might. And not only that, but you know,
remember at the beginning of this this year, it's hard
to believe it's only been a year. Trump was very
hesitant to give too much credence to the idea that
Jade Vance would be his his logical successor, and he
certainly wasn't endorsing jd Vance to be his logical successor
(13:57):
early on. That makes sense to me, and I didn't
consider that necessarily evidence of his ego so much as
you know, the moment you do that, you really are
lame duck, right, you really are lame duck president. But
he has been much more supportive. My point is this,
if jd Vance is the person responsible for Trump getting elected,
(14:19):
jd Vance is also excuse me not jd Vance. Try
Kirk is responsible in many ways. He's also responsible for
kind of helping jd Vance to become, you know, more
of a personage in the MAGA movement. This is the
opportunity to let jd Vance shine. Will Trump do it?
(14:40):
That's what I was getting at, because his legacy matters,
not just for the end of this four years, but
who takes the mantle for MAGA after he can running
awa Well.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Part of the context of that comment about Vance and
the successor was I think if thing what I'm thinking of.
He mentioned that Rubio, who was performing very well, continues
to perform very well, makes a pretty credible success or two.
So I don't know that, maybe just sort of political diplomacy.
One O one, one last observation and we'll get out.
There is one other speaker I think is a reason
(15:13):
to wonder how it's going to play out, and that's
Tucker Carlson, right, is he going to want to bring
up his Israel stuff? I sure hope not. But you know, right,
it's that's he's the real wild card in the in
the UH, all the people on the roster, I think, right,
because he's uncontrollable and he probably himself doesn't know what
he's gonna say because he he's even worse than Trump
(15:34):
and you know, sometimes going off and free associating. I've
seen him. You have to I think in live settings. Okay,
all right, well we'll keep that and you know, we'll
see what happens and maybe analyze it later. Let's do
a couple of the UH controversies of the week. There's
one question. Well, a lot of discussions about, you know,
(15:54):
Pam Bondi, about hate speech, about Brendan Karr at the
FCC and the Jimmy Kimball firing. But there's one question,
and I haven't heard asks. But so first of all,
for listeners, I'm sure most know what has happened is
first Pam Bondi said we're going to crack down and
hate speech, which is what the left said, and she'd
try to correct herself, but still it was not It
was an unforced error, and then Brendan Karr at the
(16:15):
FCC saying, hey, you know you, Jimmy Kimmel is irresponsible.
We have a mandate for about content, and personally I
think the FCC should just be abolished. And you know,
there's all that, but then the broader we can tell
you guys want to talk about anything about those particular
aspects of the story. The third part of this comes
(16:36):
is there's an awful lot of people being fired for
their grotest expressions of support for what happened to Kirk.
And although everyone has a right to free speech, they
don't necessarily have a right to their job, except maybe
in the case of people employed by government entities, which
would include public schools, public universities, which are always have
(16:58):
always been held to a higher legal stand for protection
of First Amendment rights. That question I have not heard
brought up, or if it has, I haven't I missed
it somehow. But you know, what do we think of
school teachers and other people work for public and government
institutions who are getting fired for their out of job comments.
(17:19):
In most cases, I mean, if someone says in the classroom,
I think you're entirely, entirely justified in showing them the door,
But for people to make a social media post and
other kinds of things, I think that's less clear. John.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
So there's a lot of questions here that you raised, Steed,
I would like to address first the Jimmy Kimmel controversy
and the SEC. So, if I had my preference, the
Supreme Court would have struck down long ago the idea
that the FCC and use its statutory authority to grant
licenses to broadcasters quote unquote, in the public interest to
(17:59):
police the content of the speech going on those channels.
Maybe that made sense when the only television we received
was three channels and broadcast airways, although I'm not even
sure it was justified then. And there was something called
the fairness doctrine, and you might remember this case called
Red Lion Broadcasting versus FCC, which the basic argument was
(18:21):
because the broadcast spectrum is limited, therefore the government has
the right to allocate it because it's a scarce resource,
and has the right to do it in the public interest,
and that allowed it. For example, I don't know you
guys remember this. I remember like on TV shows there
would be like the local news would have an editor
like a person would come on and give like an
editorial view at the end of the show, and then
the next week, some like Bozo who disagreed with them
(18:43):
was allowed to have free time on the on the
private air channels.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I thought, what the hell, what the hell is this?
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So but that makes no sense today when I'm sure
barely anyone gets three channels over the airwaves. We all
watch even our local TV probably on cable or through
the internet. Now and once you have abundant, unlimited number
of broadcast channels, I mean just channels because of new technology,
the idea that the FCC should be policing speech has
(19:11):
absolutely no justification. I So that's one I just don't
think the FCC should be. Second, there is an argument
about whether what car did was truly coercive or just complaining.
So my conservative friend should look at the Murphy case
from the Supreme Court case from a few terms go,
which we talked about on the podcast, where the Biden
(19:32):
White House right pressured Facebook and YouTube Twitter to deep platforms.
Some of the people we know in friends who are
criticizing the COVID lockdowns, and the court said that if
the government had actually coerced the social media platforms. That
could be a First Amendment violation, but it's just like
(19:53):
Teddy Roosevelt complaining from the bully pulpit and attacking corporations.
That's not actually a First Amenent violation, as private companies
can do what they want with speech. So that's the
other question I think is raised by the Jimmy Kimmel
thing is is what Brendan Carr said on these podcasts,
is that really coercive? Is that really tantamount to what
I thought was going on with COVID, where I think
(20:17):
the Biden White House was coercing the social media platforms,
But if you look at what they did, they were
like identifying posts, identifying statements, going to the social media
and saying you ought to take this down and so
on and so forth, with.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Real threats behind it.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, like they were like yeah, and so I wonder,
you know, Brendan Carr saying we can do this the
easy way are the hard way? And you know some
of the local ABC affiliates have merger business before the FCC.
Is that really a coersive threat? It's not a threat
on a part with what happened during COVID, I think,
But is it some kind of coursive that that's the
I think? And then I let's let's pause after we
(20:54):
talked about this and talk about the private employer issue too,
because I think generally private employers can fire whoever they right.
There's no obligation for a private property owner to have employees.
It comes from the this famous Supreme Court case about
newspapers or they said, newspaper owner doesn't have to allow
people to, you know, write in its off at pages
(21:15):
if it doesn't want to because disagree, And the court said,
it's just like if you own private property, no one
can force you to put a campaign right campaign sign
on your on your law.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
That you disagree with.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
So I don't see you have a problem with Microsoft
buiring people who want to say I want to protest
the gods of war while you know they don't have
to work at Microsoft. But whether government employees can is
a wholly different question than what.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
All right, Well, let's hold that question. Lucretia. Do you
you want to weigh in on Kim, on the FCC
and all the rest of this or do you care?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
No, I don't. I don't disagree with anything John said.
What I will say I probably tied those two things
together that he mentioned a little bit more. If if
you allow the FCC to regulate the airwaves in the
public interest, then you have what ends up being the
two examples that you gave, which is government. Okay, the
(22:06):
public interest is making sure all of those crazy mega
and other type people are getting their COVID vaccines because
otherwise the pharmaceutical companies won't make enough money, and that's
in the public interest. Now I'm being snipe, but your
point about government shouldn't regulate it at all makes a
(22:26):
lot of sense now. And it also was because you know,
supposedly the airwaves were limited. Do we expect, for instance,
the government to be a little bit more censoring of say,
things that children shouldn't watch or is that cat out
(22:48):
of the bag completely because of the Internet? I mean
they there is simply no way to stop children from watching, say,
porn or anything like that on parents might be able
to do it, but otherwise that they've there's just no
way logically efficiently to keep children who really want to
see porn on the Internet from seeing it. They can't
(23:08):
even stop it from happening in libraries, you know, so anyway,
so that's all I wanted to say about what John
had to say. I think he's right. The best thing
to do is to let the marketplace shut this stuff down.
But with that comes a lot of ugly stuff out
(23:29):
there on the airwaves. However you wanted to find them internet,
television radio. By the way, one last really funny story.
I used to have a five thirty in the morning
on Sunday's radio station radio program where, believe it or not,
(23:49):
I was. I was the opposing opinion that they were
forced by the fairness doctrine to have to put me on.
It was a country Western station, but the guy who
did the news was very liberal, so they had me
on with him for an hour at five point thirty
on Sunday morning to talk about politics and give a
more conservative view. That was the start of my great
(24:11):
career as a something.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah, it was that you and your your broadcast partner
in art Bell or the three right, that guy, he
was his wacko was on it.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
You know, people used to actually listen to it, believe.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
It or not. People are up at all kinds of
hours no I.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Know anyway, Sorry, So John had a much more important
point to make than that, though.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
To continue well, one last question on this before we
push on. So one argument you're hearing, including from a
lot of conservatives, is gosh, whatever the particular wherever you
land on the power of the FCC to oversee content.
I said, wosh, what will happen if, you know, the
(24:52):
liberals get back in power and they'll use the same
power against conservative media. And my first thought was, wait
a minute, do you know the history of the FCC
During the John sorry, the Kennedy administration, the labor unions,
who were the thugs for the Democrats, leaned on the
FCC to deny broadcast license renewals to radio stations and
(25:14):
TV stations for their conservative content. And then by the
time you get to the eighties and then the nineties, especially,
the FCC would bring pressure for diversity on boards and
on the senior executive rank. So there's that whole racket, right,
So the left has been.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Using John's example was just as good about how we've
already experienced it across the board, the Murphy case and
so on.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Right, So the point is that the left has been
using the FCC, and that's why I think really the
Republicans were smart. They would push for abolishing the FCC today,
we don't need a learn thing anymore. Any any legitimate
functions of just the ministerial part of licensing stations, of
allocating spectrum that could be done by the Department of
Commerce and a purely you know, by the numbers way.
(26:03):
And I don't think we even need to do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Okay, Yeah, But I think this is the other part
of your question that I think is interesting, is Okay,
so you're seeing all these people being fired for criticizing
Charlie Kirk or saying inappropriate things about his assassination, and uh,
you know, put aside the just the bed, the bad,
(26:27):
the poor taste that all of that is in. Do
they have a constitutional right to do it? So this
is an interesting question that is really I think for
a long time be deviled the courts. I think originally
they had the right position, and the right position was
espoused by your friends, the friend of you both, Oliver
Wendell Holmes.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Oh God, nice, try so.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote an opinion, so.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Famously, but on this question, he said, you have a
constitutional right to free speech. You do not have a
constitutional right to be a Boston police officer, and so
he upheld the right of the Boston Police Office, you know,
Boston City of Boston to fire a police officer because
he was speaking about political matters. So in the beginning
(27:23):
of the court said there's no right of free speech
for a government employee on their worktime. Then the court
this is something called I believe still called the Pickering test.
And of course then in the Warren and Burger court
years it became a big mush. And so now there's
a limited right of free speech for government employees, but
it has to be balanced against the needs of the
(27:44):
government to run itself properly. So it's completely unpredictable, but
I will give you some examples. So, for example, the
court has upheld the Hatch Act right which prohibits government
employees from engaging in you know, campaign political activity while
on the job.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
So you are using resources.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Yeah, you can do it off, you know, in your
free time, but you can't do it with government resources
in your government time. However, right, for example, you know,
three of us, you know, people who are professors, do
we have a right to free speech when we work
for public universities and the courts have suggested there is
some kind of right to free speech, but it's not
(28:27):
the same as just a citizen standing in the street corner.
It can be limited by the needs, whatever the needs
are to run the university. But it's much broader than
Oliver Wende Holmes's view. So I would say there's this
weird balancing test that court uses or balances your right
of speech against the government's need to run its business
(28:49):
or to run the university. But as with all balancing tests,
I find it completely unpredictable and just really up to
the courts. Personally, I actually like Holmes's view. I actually
think you don't have a right to free speech if
you're a government employee. I think universities it's not really
it's not really the free speech to me, when we're
(29:11):
university professors and we're engaging in writing articles and debating,
I don't think it's really we have a right to
free speech. I think it's because the state has created
a university whose job it is to find truth through debate.
But I don't know if you have a constitution right
of free speech against the university. But that's not the
way the Supreme Court thinks about it they have this way.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Let me take a rabbit hole for you. One thing
that has always been an exception across the board, I
think to all of that is the military. And so
lately we have seen military personnel, you know, active duty
or reserve, writing on their private Facebook, the Facebook or
(29:55):
one of the others things that are you know, just
just despicable. There's no way around it. They're vile, They're awful.
They indicate that the kind of human being who could
write such a thing has just no soul. They're just
evil and vile. But do they have outside of their
time spent which and if you're in the military, if
(30:16):
you've ever been in the military, which I know you
guys haven't, but you're never off the clock in the military,
is what it comes down to. That's the way they
look at it. But that's not really the point here.
Doesn't the military have some obligation to judge the character
of their soldiers because of the importance of the jobs
that they do protecting the country, securing our freedoms and
(30:37):
so on. Or is it no different, for instance, than
a government, than a teacher, than a preschool teacher teaching
her kids about Palestine? And I don't know. Jeez, whatever,
what do you think, John Well?
Speaker 3 (30:52):
I actually think that if you were going to recognize
some kind of rights. Again, I don't think they should
have them, but if you were going to recognize some
Cindacy might say say that the need to make sure
the military maintains it's a political role in our society.
It's more important than say having a political school teachers
(31:13):
or a political fireman. That because of the special the
role of the military and the idea that they are
always subject to the commander in chief, no matter which
party it is, that I think they might have more
restrictions on their speech.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
And I do.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
And then I think it is appropriate for military commanders
to punish soldiers who are going too far in their
social media comments.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
I love Holmes.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I was like, you would say, you know, you have
a right to free speech, you don't have a right
to be a soldier in the United States military.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah, as a special government employee like Elon Musk, I
like to make that connection, you know, because it makes
me seem a whole lot more important. But that was
just you could not attach anyway. If you were the
little pin that the secretary would give us and made
a comment on if you if there was a picture
(32:07):
of you and you were associated with some political kind
of message, whether you know you're interviewed by the newspaper
this or that, they would it was considered an ethics
violation and you would get fired. Just so you know,
it's because you don't have a right to be a
special government employee, even when they don't pay you. So anyway,
(32:31):
did you want to talk briefly and explain to me
what I don't get John about the Texas A and
M president who was fired. I think just this morning,
this is very interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
It just hap well, yeah today, Well let's tell listeners
what we're talking about, because most of our listeners do
not know. So one of you please tell a story.
I mean, I've read it too, but I mean.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
From what I saw the stories because I happened to
be in Texas today. So people are buzz about this.
But apparently a lecturer was teaching a class on children's
literature and a signed a book that in which a
transgender person played a major role. And so the teacher,
(33:11):
I suppose, was talking about transgender and a student. And
there's a video you can't see the teacher or the
students' faces in the video, but it's you know, you
can hear it, and the student says, you know, this
is what you're teaking, you're teaching. You know this gender
ideology you're teaching is wrong, that there's only two sexes,
(33:32):
that the law prohibits the use of the classroom for
the teaching of this transgender ideology. The teacher has said
in public that I think she says it on the video.
She kicks her out, kicks a student out of the class,
and says that she has the right to teach this
transgender ideology and that she has the law on her side.
(33:57):
So the president of Texas and initially defended I believe,
the teacher, but then under pressure from politicians here in Texas,
he fired the teacher and I believe two other faculty
members who were defending her. But apparently this was yeah,
this is not good enough, yea, And so he just resigned,
(34:20):
I believe today, if not last night. And so this
is raising again these questions we're talking about, but also
maybe a larger issue we're talking about with Jimmy Kimmel.
How far does the government have to have in its
power to dictate what teachers or what said on the
university campus.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Well, can I add just one more layer to the
story from Clemson in South Carolina where you had I
think three different faculty members posted out extremely vile things
about Charlie Kirk and celebrating his killing, and the university
put out a statement deploring it, but we support academic freedom,
at which point the Republicans in the state legislature went
(35:02):
nuts and said, you're a state institution shame with something
happened to your budget, and the trustees should do something
about this. Well, the trustees met an emergency session and
all three of those faculty members have now been fired.
So and I'm all for that. I'm you know, lads
in my heart, but I think we're seeing some accountability
and long overdue course corrections in these things.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
So anyway, Yeah, it's a tough call because, as you know,
the same argument you made almost just a few moments ago,
that the left will do that to us when they
get back in power. That's probably true, as you and
you as you also pointed out both of you, that
they have been doing that to us, maybe not quite
(35:44):
in such a such a public way. I mean, I
think that much more likely that conservatives with conservative viewpoints
who challenged the leftist dog about transgenderism and DEI and
all those other things. They weren't necessarily fire outright, they
were just they just in a subtle, sort of insidious way,
(36:04):
had their careers ruined or never had an opportunity to,
you know, even establish a career. So it's it's gonna
be interesting to see how all of this comes down.
You know, colleges are My university came out and said, oh,
we're not going to be worried about enrollment anymore. We're
going to be worried about retention because nobody wants to
(36:26):
go to college anymore, and they definitely don't want to
go to the second rate state universities like mine is,
and so well, let's just give in on that. But
part of the reason for that is that as as
this Charlie Kirk story has come out, I got a
I got a text message from a student complaining about
(36:47):
something the university had done and said, Charlie Kirk was
right rip about colleges. You know, so they're going to
have I think that it's not just the ideological conservative
side of things is pushing this, but sooner or later,
if colleges can't make their budgets because they can't even
keep students coming in, then I think you're going to
(37:09):
see some changes anyway. Yeah, but thank you for explaining.
I still don't quite know why he resigned after he
ended up actually firing those people.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
John.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
That's the confusing part to me.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
I think the way the story looks is that his
initial resistance to firing them is what caused politicians in
Texas to demand that he leave too. Okay, you know
that was his initial instinct was to say, you know,
she can't be fired, and that's hardcore.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah. I mean it used to me that it was
no confidence votes by the faculty that would force out
a college president like Larry Summers at Harvard twenty years ago. Now,
if it's the no confidence vote of the legislators that
oversee their budgets, so be it. I like it.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
Well, yeah, I think Look, I think both of you
recognize it's the state creates the universities. They have the
right to dictate what's taught in them, just the same
with public K through twelve schools, and federalism will provide
a good competitive market for this, you know. Yeah, don't
want to send their kids to Texas, A, and M.
They can send them to a lot of other options,
(38:14):
and there every places that can say oh, we're going
to allow transgender ideology to be taught in the classroom,
and then parents and students can decide where they want
their kids to go there or they can send them
to Texas and where it's not going to be taught apparently.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, well, well I can add one more detail about
this in a certain sense. About five years back, a
friend of mine who teaches at another public university in
Texas was telling me about going to the state legislature
meeting with legislators saying, these campuses are out of control.
You should do something about it. And you know, Republican
(38:48):
majority keep running into not exactly a brick wall, but
just confusion and well, gosh, we don't know. I mean,
you know, the trustees are all kinds of slop. Well
that has changed dramatically, and now legislatures in Texas and
other states around the war path. So it's a whole
different world very suddenly. And as I say, I like it,
(39:08):
anything else to add to that, otherwise I'm going to
press ahead to it'll seem like something new, But it's
really not so last thought on Charlie Kirk and then
go to the Constitution and one of the questions I
was thinking about are one of the aspects of the
whole story is why did Charlie Kirk drive the left
(39:29):
so far out of their minds? And you know, I've
confession and I've written about this, that I wasn't originally
impressed with Kirk when he first showed up still as
a teenager, what almost fifteen years ago, but then did
start noticing, Boy, is he maturing, getting more sophisticated, more substantive,
more confident, more effective. And what you notice on all
the clips you see is that he asked for specifics
(39:51):
and when challenged on something, he's got an arsenal. It
was like somebody had mainline the works of Thomas soul
among other things, but also in theologylosophy, and even law
in many cases. H And what I realize and he
outclassed almost everybody he talked to, not just students who
you know, he sort of overmatched, and that the fact
that he's now older, a little older than they were.
(40:12):
But you know, the Oxford Union debate, I don't know
if you've seen any of that where he absolutely clabbers
some Oxford faculty members in very impressive style. So here's
the point. The left hates to be challenged. They're not
used to it, they're no good at it. Partly we
can go through the reasons why, whether it's psychological and philosophical,
(40:33):
but they the presumption that because they're right, they don't
need to defend their positions. And I think that's part
of what's going on there, right, Lucresie, you wanted to
I want I just.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Want to add something to that, And that is my favorite.
One of my favorite clips of Charlie Kirk is when
he's being challenged by this stuffy pro elitist professor who
says that, you know, why are you so down on colleges?
You never you were a dropout, you never went to college.
And he accuses Charlie of X amount of colleges is
not I didn't even have that much a community college
(41:03):
blah blah blahlah blah, right, and then proceeds to ask
him if he had read this book or you know,
just just embarrasses the guy. Guy, of course, is too
arrogant to realize how much he's actually being humiliated. In
a very large crowd, but the crowd can sense what's
going on, and I think that's also part of it.
A little bit back to what I was saying earlier,
(41:25):
If Charlie Kirk can be that kind of educated person,
capable on his feet of bringing arguments to bear from
all comers, I don't think I've ever seen a clip
They may be out there of Charlie Kirk actually being
defeated in a debate in one of those you know,
kind of free for all arenas. If Charlie Kirk can
do that without college, and can be actually much better
(41:48):
educated than your average college students, never having gone to college,
then what does that say about the necessity of our
higher education or institutions of higher education.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah, well, something I often say to students is don't
let college get in the way of getting an education,
because I have a lot of thoughts about that. My
parallel one is one I thought was especially delicious was
a student saying, you know, how can you talk about economics?
I'm an economics major and you didn't even finish college.
How can you talk? And he says, okay, who's Milton Friedman?
(42:19):
I had never heard of him? How about lovely von
me says. He mentions, you know, Nobel Prize winners and
Emine economists that this kid had never heard of that.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
The kid says, Oh, I'm sure he's some economists.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
It's just you know, I mean, we talk about utter humiliation,
the exposure of this sort of superficiality that left. Here's
what I mean. We didn't do that format this week,
but you know, once in a while, will each of
us grab an article. And the one this week has
me rolling on the floor laughing. Is Jill Lapour, of
the Government Department at Harvard and also a writer for
(42:51):
The New Yorker has an article out in The Atlantic, which, boy,
has that ever slipped? And it's called how original is
killed the Constitution? And it's it's well, the article is
so stupid. I'll just give you one reason of how
stupid it is. We haven't really meaningfully amended the Constitution
(43:13):
now for fifty years, like this is a scandal. It's
self evidently obvious that if we're not constantly amending the Constitution,
it's out of date. And she's on to say that
originalism is what's killing constitutional innovation. I mean, this goes
with all the articles recently in the New York Times
and elsewhere where progressives say progressives will never win again
unless we change the constitution, changed the rules. And I
(43:36):
keep raising my hand saying, well, wait a minute. You
know the Democratic New Deal Coalition, which was pretty progressive.
They dominated American politics for more than fifty years with
the existing rules. How come it's not working now? Is
there no reflection? And maybe that's that famous story about
the dogs who don't like the dog food and the
marketers can't understand why we will change the label, and
(43:57):
someone finally says, well, maybe the dogs don't like the food. Right.
This doesn't seem to occur to progressives, And you know
that's part of the lesson of Charlie Kirk. And when
you read the sort of elite liberals talking to each
other without any serious engagement in originalism, and I don't know,
maybe that's an opening John to beat you up for
(44:18):
you as okay, I do want to mention.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
In the same context really quickly, earlier contexts actually fires, Fire,
the organization Fire. They've just been horrible on all of this.
And my university is plugging an article that came out
not very long ago by somebody from Fire called you
can't fire your way to free speech, and they've just
(44:49):
been awful on this whole thing. If you ask me,
this sort of absolutist a moral approach to the idea
that free spe speech simply speaking is the be all
and end all, with no consideration whatsoever for the impact
of that speech. You know, there are big on supporting
(45:11):
pro Palestinian Free Palestine Now student groups, and you know,
they've just been terrible. I don't know what's happened inside
that organization, which used to be somewhat something of a
you know, a good organization actually protecting the right of
reasonable people to speak on college campuses, but they're not
(45:33):
that anymore. Or am I wrong?
Speaker 3 (45:35):
I tell a story I was. I'm here at EUT Austin.
I gave a Constitution Day lecture yesterday and someone got
up and said, don't you think the threat to freedom
free speech is in the wake of Charlie? Because I
talked about Charlie and you know how I think his
assassination was an effort to shut down political debate. And
this guy said, don't you think that threat to free speech?
(45:58):
Or actually, these univers these that are firing people, the
military firing people now Jimmy Kimmel being fired and so on,
and you know, so I made this distinction between private
and public employers. But then I said, look, you know,
after teaching at Berkeley thirty years, the only events I
have ever seen where someone could not in the end
(46:18):
speak have been only the last year when someone from
Israel has tried to speak. And so you want to
talk about the threat to free speech, just people protesting
trying to prevent Israeli speakers and Jewish speakers from speaking
on campus, and the harassment of Jewish students on the faculty,
that to me is far worse than the you know,
(46:40):
these isolated instances seems to me of people being fired
who go too far in their comments about Charlie Kirk,
which I think, I mean, I understand is they are
attacking someone who's assassinated, not because they're being They're not
being fired because they just disagree with someone's point of view.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
A student in Texas at Texas State University at a
memorial event re enacted the assassination of Charlie Kirk at
the memorial event and Abbott Greg Abbotts demanded that the
student be expelled, and the university complied. That's not free speech.
(47:21):
That's that's I'm sorry that you know the write an
article saying why Charlie Kirk was wrong? But why would
I guess I just want to be too reasonable and
rational about these things.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
I don't know. Well, I have to be a little
careful about what I say, but I will share this much.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
That's a first.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Well, it's because I have I have some proprietary inside
knowledge that I'm really not supposed to share. But I
can tell you and listeners that Fire at the staff
level and at their board level is having biggorous debates
and considerable intern disagreement about all these questions and much
to be done. So it's not open and shut, and
you know, we'll see how it unfolds. I do know that,
(48:07):
you know Greg rookianof who runs it, he hadn't been
getting a lot of sleep lately. I'll just put it
that way. Because there's a lot of pressures being put
on them on a lot of these questions. And yeah,
I thought they aired on the Palestinian question on campus
and so forth, because I think that's just speech correct,
it's very clearly harassment and so forth, and they're trying
to draw upright line, I think they're yeah, I I
(48:31):
I se write yeah. And by the way, they're hearing
from donors, so you know, there's they're hearing from some
of their major donors that hey, we're not sure you
guys are quite right about all this, so to be
continued pay attention and you know, and by keep making criticism.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
But absolutely last comment. I was the only dean in
twenty twenty of the entire university and the only senior
administrator of any kind who refused, I declined. I'll say
it like that, find to make a public statement in
support of George Floyd and Black Lives.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Matter, right, yeah, which had.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Nothing nothing to do with the university. Of course, there
was no reason for them to say anything about it.
Charlie Kirk is a much different But I don't know,
have you heard at least my university hasn't. I don't know.
Maybe your university has made a statement, but nobody at
my university.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Has so well. I mean I wrote about this the
other day on our substack. Is every university put out
statements about George Floyd. They also a lotwful lot of
them put out statements after Trump won in both twenty
sixteen and again in twenty twenty four about how traumatic
it is. You know, my old mentor Stan Evans joked
(49:46):
about how when he was a young conservative the sixties,
we had to get over the Goldwater defeat without grief counselors.
And now that's the standard model for fragile.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
Liberty, folloring books and write and lush toys.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Notice that conservatives don't need grief counselors and plush toys
and all the rest of that. It's that, in itself
is revealing that they know that the bulk of their
students are so emotionally and intellectually fragile that they have
to be coddled like that, which is I've made.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
This comment before, I'll say it one more time that
we really can get off the subject. But in the
old days, what there was the joke was this, how
many dead grandmas did you have this semester? You know, Sorry,
but I can't make the final I can't turn my
essay and on time, whatever it might be, because my
(50:36):
grandma died. Right For in any given semester, forty percent
of my students total, not the ones who just ask
for leniency for some reason. Forty percent of my students
will ask for leniency because of a mental health issue.
I have anxiety, I have depression. I can't get my
(50:58):
work done.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
That's how I feel for when we start the podcast.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
I know, but you pull through, John, and you don't
ask for cretia.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
Lets us have it. I have great sense of anxiety.
I need a plush toy.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Well, it seems to me the U. It seems to
me the the CDC ought to investigate closing down colleges
as a public health hazard. That's you know, based on
those statistics. All right, lucretia, do you have some Babylon
bes right?
Speaker 1 (51:23):
Them are perfect. I'm gonna start with this one. It's
a picture of uh Hakim, Jeffries and and Schumer. This
is a both sides issue, says side that assassinated Charlie Kirk,
shot President Trump, tried to assassinate Kavanaugh, tried to assassinate
Trump again, murdered school kids in Minnesota, shot Steve Chalice,
(51:44):
firebomb Governor Shapiro, murdered school children in Nashville, bird an
elderly Jewish woman. And it goes on and on and on. Sorry,
that's not funny, it's but yes, jd Vance takes over
as host of Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Or Marco Rubio. Oh, no, one more job Marco Rubio
has to take.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Yeah, the Babylon b is outraged to learn Jimmy Kimmel
was canceled just for being a mega Republican.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
That's that's very good.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Yes, right, people, okay with murder outraged by TV show cancelation.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Yeah, yeah, get it right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Okay, that's probably good. Oh wait, one last one. Matt
Gutman tears up while citing personal touching mind komf.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Oh god, oh Man, Well that's the ABC guy said,
Oh those email threads were so touching and affectionate, and
it was you talk about tone deaf anyway?
Speaker 3 (52:51):
Right, all right, John, always drink your whiskey, Meed buy
more books? And Steve, what Ai demon hunter poem do
you have about the Three Whiskey Happy Hour?
Speaker 2 (53:03):
So I'm going instead with poetry. I'm going with novelists instead.
So you guys is lightning around? You want Flatner or Hemingway? Oh, Hevyway, Hemyway. Okay,
here's Hemingways by Ai. The Three Whisky Happy Hour podcasts
was a place where men sat in quiet rooms drinking
their whiskey slowly listening to the voices of those who
(53:25):
had seen too much and felt too little. It was
a conversation without pretense, rough and real about the things
that mattered. Whiskey, of course, but more so the stories
behind it. They spoke of history, of culture, of the
wars fought in the minds of men. The voices were raw,
like the sound of a cork popping from a bottle,
(53:48):
sharp and full of promise. Every word mattered, though none
were wasted. In the end, it was a meeting of minds,
but not of comfort. There was no time for comfort,
just whisky and the slow rhythm of life in the
half light. And that is why I never cared for Hemingway, but.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Because he was a Russian spy or Soviet castro.
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Buddy were going about. Okay, anyway, that's it'll Floppner's better,
but I'll use it next week.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
Okay, guys, it's great to see you. Guys.
Speaker 3 (54:21):
Everyone have a wonderful week, right you two.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
Take care, Charlie, Long live your legacy all the things
you did for me.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
Way can the youth of our country helping us stay
American han free, fighting for the Constitution and American ideals.
Speaker 5 (54:44):
The Lord is with you, and His word is your seal.
Speaker 4 (54:47):
May the angels sake you up to heaven with God.
Speaker 5 (54:50):
You are a true hero, and your courage leaves a sinner.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
So Franchise STI.
Speaker 5 (55:00):
Will always remember all you did for this chantrey to
way up in heaven looking down for its Your spirit
will stick around with you.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
Nothing will ever be.
Speaker 5 (55:16):
Quiet the same, but we will always remember your name.
Speaker 4 (55:26):
You spoke to the youth and change a generation, a legend.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
In the history of this nation.
Speaker 1 (55:33):
May you have eternal salvation.
Speaker 5 (55:37):
May this song be a true celebration for all that
you did and all those you help.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
Your loss of something we should never have felt.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
Your kids and family will always live on.
Speaker 5 (55:49):
We will remember you forever, long after you're gone. So long,
Franchise rest in peace. Will always please remember all you.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Did for this job.
Speaker 5 (56:04):
Strain you way up in heaven, up and down pointernity.
Spirit will stick around without you. Nothing will ever be
quite the same, but we will always remember.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
Ricochet. Join the conversation.
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