In this episode, Ryan breaks down the real forces shaping today’s conservative movement. Joined by Modern Age editor Daniel McCarthy, Ryan explores the history of the American right, the rise of neoconservatism, and the ongoing struggle between principled conservatism and personality-driven politics. They confront the GOP’s internal conflicts, the lasting influence of Donald Trump, and the dangers of fringe rhetoric—including a clear rejection of anti-Semitism. The conversation also highlights lessons from past conservative thinkers, what young conservatives should prioritize today, and where leaders like Ron DeSantis fit into the movement’s future. It's a Numbers Game is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome back to a Numbers Game with Ryan Grodowsky. Thank
you for being here again. I hope everyone had a
very happy Thanksgiving. We are now in December, closing out
twenty twenty five, which is kind of wild that it's
almost over. To twenty twenty five has felt like a
decade and a month in the same exact time. One
of the best parts of December that everyone enjoys is
that Spotify and Apple they get their annual streaming numbers
(00:25):
and you find out who your number one artists or
band was that you listened to the most, was your
number one song of the year. But you also get
to find out which is your number one podcast of
the year, and if it's not a Numbers Game of
Ryan Grodski, if that's not in your top five, I
hope that you like and subscribe to this podcast on Apple,
Spotify or YouTube or the iHeartRadio app, so that way
next year I might be in your top five. Think
(00:45):
about it. I would appreciate you. Your Christmas gift to
me would be subscribing if you have it yet. As
this year is coming to a close, I've been thinking
a lot about relationships one on many different levels. My
relationship with family, money, god, friends, having a work life balance.
I think that it's very important to be reflective at
this point of the year and saying to myself, how
(01:08):
am I doing making sure I can be the most
of a person I am with the time that I have,
get the most of a life, and achieve the most
that I have. I am at the beginning stages of
middle age, and I only have a certain amount of
time to do everything I want to do. And I
hear I've talked with a therapists about this. I know
this is not normal, but I hear the clock ticking
of every moment in my life of what do I
(01:28):
have left and what can I possibly do. I'm insanely meticulous,
but not wasting time, and it is how I've been
able to have a podcast and a pack and a
political work and a nonprofit and all the rest of it.
So at the very beginning of the year, what I
always do is I make a list of ten to
fifteen goals that I want to achieve this year. I
write them down to my day planner that I carry
(01:50):
with me everywhere, and then I don't look at it
for the entire year. And at the end of the year,
I look back and say, what did I achieve of this?
What is important to me? What's not important to me?
Because I will write some I'll be like, oh, I
want to write a nonfiction book about robots, and I
don't know why I think these things. I didn't say
that actual thing, but you know, something crazy that I
really no interest in. And I'll be like, this was
(02:11):
not a goal like this that I did not care.
And it's not a failure when you don't do everything,
because your priorities change and your time changes. And certainly
in twenty twenty four meeting, I didn't say I want
to have a podcast, but I didn't. This show has
been so great and I've had a decent listenership and
people have responded and emailed, and I think that that's
a really important way to kind of close out the year.
(02:32):
And one of the things I've been thinking about, as
far as relationships goes, is how I've you know, I'm
I know, I'm low on the totem pole of conservative
quote unquote influencers or people with large public profiles, but
I'm on there. I mean I'm there, and I've managed
to very actively stay out of the quote unquote Republican
civil war, which is what I want to talk to
(02:53):
you guys about, because basically every talking head in the
conservative movement has had this come to Jesus moment where
they say, Wow, Trump isn't going to be around forever.
Where is this party going, Who's going to lead us?
What do we believe in? What's what's where's this endpoint?
And or where's this moving towards? And there are people
who really want the gooped to return to what it
(03:15):
was before Trump right. There are some people who want
to take the party into a more populous place than
it was before Trump. They want to find the way
that true populism should move. Some people are looking at
alternatives to Trump right, someone with more philosophical consistency, less drama,
who's maybe funny. I mean, good luck finding that that prize,
but I'm sure it maybe exists somewhere. I don't know.
(03:37):
And then there are some people who have been labeled
as being part of the right. I don't know if
they all are, who are using the moment to raise
their own personal profiles and to continue the gravy train
that Donald Trump has presented to conservative commentators. I think
people don't understand how much money some people have made
(03:58):
from being from telling Trump's supporters everything they want to
hear and trying to feed anxiety or hope or anything
to these voters. And unfortunately some of them are using
this moment and using this kind of open question of
who we are as a movement, where we're going as
a people, as an American public, to say some genuinely
(04:20):
anti Semitic points. And I want to be very clear
right now that not every criticism of Israel is anti semitic,
Not every or arguing over American foreign policies not anti semitic.
Criticizing bib Nitt, Yahoo is not anti semitic. Not even
conversations every conversation about the era, about the war between
Israel and Gaza was anti semitic. You can talk about
(04:40):
things and not be anti Semitic. However, you when certain people,
certain certain commentators who have been Lumpton as part of
the right, when they speak about Jewish people in a
dehumanizing way and decide that it's important in this moment
in twenty twenty five to reference things that have happened
almost one hundred years ago, like the Holocaust, and insists
(05:02):
that either it didn't happen, or that it was you know,
some commentators have platform people who said that it was
as a good thing, but a was a it was
the best option available, instead of really noticing and noting
if you have to talk about it, which you really
don't have to talk about it, but if you, if
you must talk about it, noting how horrible and cruel
(05:23):
and dark at that point of humanity was. There are
just some people in the commentary class who right now,
in this year, in this time, have said talking about
the horrors of World War two and talking about the
past is more important than talking about the future, talking
about AI and declining fertility rates and family formation and
(05:44):
inflation and you know, the amount of money we're going
to see transfer from the baby, but when we're in
silent generation to their children and how to ensure that
their kids can sit there and get you know, a
start to have a family and buy a house and
build wealth and generational value, having real conversations that are
(06:07):
very very important. No, they're not having it. They're talking
about World War II for some reason at a almost
insanely like it happens like every five minutes, Like there's
no like it's it's it's a lot of these conversations.
I'm sorry, they're just stupid. They re tarded, like there
is no useful reason, there's no foresight about having this,
(06:27):
there's no talking about the future and where we are going.
And the people who are doing that. Some of them
I know, smight, I don't know some of my like
as people. It's incredibly frustrating because it's all negative and
it doesn't lead to anything positive towards twenty twenty six,
towards where we're going both as a party and as
a people, and what we should really be talking about.
(06:48):
A concernedive, I have to say, there's a lot of
things that keep me up at night. I have a
lot of anxieties. I'm completely unmedicated for all of them,
but I have a lot of anxieties. And the things
that keep me up around up don't involve global jewelry
or the Holocaust or I mean, they don't make my
top ten, top one hundred, top one thousand, and the
(07:12):
things that do, the things that are important are being
missed in this last year, the things that will affect
and shape our future. Those conversations are not even happening,
even though the country is moving forward on them, and
we as conservatives are missing out on navigating where those
(07:32):
that stuff should go, where those policies should go. Other
people are going to sit there and create the framework
mold our future because we're argument things that don't frankly
matter and make us look crazy, make us look anti semitic,
make us all look like we have a problem that
(07:53):
I think is completely completely made up just for people
who want to make sure that they continue to get
clicks all the time to feed either their bottom line
or their ego. And I want to just bring something
to the attention of young right wingers right now, mostly
young white men. I was one of you not so
long ago. I guess it's getting further and further by
(08:14):
the day. But those who look at the trends of
the world and say, wow, people who look like me
are being targeted for identity, and countries that my ancestors
built all over the world are increasingly turning against me.
And I'm worried about this. I am worried about the
way the world is working and the way that I'm
not going to have a future in it, and the
(08:35):
language that the left has used, especially against white people.
I get it. I fully and completely get it. I understand,
and you feel like the right doesn't speak to those
issues well enough either. But to those who are too
young to have read enough history books or lived through
enough history, you're hearing a ton of noise, an absolute
ton of noise. And I have to tell you right now,
(08:57):
you do not need to look up to anyone who
praise is Hitler. You don't even have a private conversation
about it. You don't need a joke about it. You're
not being edgy, you're not being funny. You know, put
the Holocaust aside for a second, and it was horrific
and dark and terrible, But put that aside for a second.
Let's say you are one of these young men who say, wow,
the world that my ancestors built is completely gone, and
(09:18):
the identity of European Americans, of European people are being
wiped away by mass migration all the rest of it.
And I know you will have data to back it
up one hundred percent. You shouldn't praise the man who
or fit look up to the man, or look up
to anyone who's praising the man that caused a war
that killed fifty million Europeans. And if that war had
(09:40):
never happened, there probably be one hundred million, one hundred
I looked this up, one hundred and ten or one
hundred and twenty million more Europeans alive today had that
war never started, right, one hundred and twenty million more
Europeans alive today had World War two never happened, including
seventy five million in Eastern Europe in thirty to forty
million in Western Europe. Hitler was such a piece of
shit person, And I know that it seems like we're
(10:01):
done to like why are you while they're saying that
everyone knows it, because it's as World War Two's living
history is going away as older people pass away and
the lived memories of those experiences go with them. People,
it's becoming a meme. It's becoming a joke. And I
get that at nine to eleven is the same thing.
Everything in history kind of is less attached to you
(10:22):
as you don't live through it. But I know you
may not have experienced that. I know you may not
have cared about this, but the ideas and the world
that you live in have manifested greatly because of those actions. Right,
you can understand and you can make fun of it.
But it's not worth ever praising someone like that. And
in this last year, so many young right wingers have
(10:42):
lost jobs, they've lost careers because they have sat there
and said, let's be edgy, let's be edged lords, let's
sit there and have some fun. Let's say Hitler was great.
I'm giving you professional advice. I'm giving you life advice
as a man who's not that old but who has
walked through your shoes. You don't have to be like that.
You don't have to look up to this person, and
you shouldn't look up to anybody who sat there and
(11:04):
praised him. They're all grifting, they're all lying to you
right now, and they're leading you to profit themselves and
harm you because it doesn't matter to them if you
do well or not. And that's just the truth of
the matter. And I have to I wanted to bring
it up. I hate lecture. I'm not trying to lecture anybody.
I just I'm around a lot of younger people a
(11:25):
lot through work and through other things. And I always
say to myself, as somebody who lived in my early
twenties wanting to work in policies, really ambitious, really hungry
for everything. I see so many people who are in
those steps that I was in, who are being told
(11:46):
information that will never help them get to a place
where I am. Not in a place where I am
but a good job, a stable life, a career. They're
turning you into ideas and thoughts that are not helpful
for you. And I always look out for especially people
who I relate to. As far as you know, they
walked in the shoots that I walked in. Anyway, Sorry,
(12:08):
go around tangent. I don't want to. I don't want
to sit there and make this whole lecture, but I
have to sit there and say that in this point
because anyone telling you that Hitler was a good guy,
he wasn't, and they're turning you into astray. You don't
look edgy, you don't look cool, you look like an idiot,
and it's gonna bite you in the ass. So if
you can learn anything from other people's experiences here, don't
be that person. And also half of them are so
(12:30):
overweight they would never be able to survive, and Hitler's arn't.
I don't know where these overweight people think they would
survive in fascism. It's you say that because you've never
lived in authoritarianism, like half of you would never survive
a single war, let alone, you know, Nazi training to camps, like,
give me a break. Anyway, back to the Republican Civil War.
Don't mean to go into a lecture, but I think
(12:50):
there are some people who are having really legitimate arguments
about the future of the MAGA movement and how to
move it forward and what does that look like. Does
it does it exist after Trump? Does it exist in
three years? Some are arguing this because they want to
stay relevant, but some people are really trying to have
good ideas, solid ideas about where the Trump experiment moves
and what is the next evolution of it when he retires,
(13:14):
you know, and God willing lives a long life in
a happy life. I'm not you know, I'm not going
to name names on this fight in fighting, but I
think that I think I know you most you know
what I'm talking about. But I want to talk about
how you said understanding one, understanding the moment. Understand that
this chaos and this quote unquote Republican Civil War that
(13:35):
has had a lot of my friends who are influencers
feeling very kind of not conflict is not the right word,
but very stressed about it's normal. Part of this is normal.
Part of what you're seeing is completely healthy, and it's
been done before. Right, this is not new where the
right or I'm proba sure the left, but I'm definitely
on the right. Where we see our leaders changing, where
(13:57):
we see are the issues changing, and we don't know
where to go from it, and so people squabble, especially
the commentary class. Even before the Internet, this was happening.
Here's the good news for everybody you know. And you
may be sitting there like James d and Rebel without
a cause or screaming you're tearing me apart. But here's
the good news. There will be a way. There will
be a forward, and it won't include a lot of
(14:18):
the ugliness. It won't include a lot of the anti semitism,
and it won't include a lot of what the old
old right is sitting there. The bush right wants to
sit there and bring us back to We're going to
figure it out. But my next guest is probably the
smartest person when it comes to the history of the right,
the history of the conservative movement and this conflict that
came before, and how it may help provide and navigate
(14:42):
us into how it will sort itself out in the future.
That's command Nick Staniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern
Age Journal, and he's written for so many outlets. That's
sign in Funny, The New York Times, American Conservative, American
Mind first Things, just an overall brilliant, brilliant guy, Daniel McCarthy,
Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Oh, thanks for having me on Ryn.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
So you wrote an article and I want to talk
with two of your pieces, but one of the main
ones is for first things, it's called the right thirty
year war, and you draw the comparison of how kind
of the right wing is having an internal conflict now
and comparing that to the nineties and what happened after
the Cold War ended, because there was a real rift
(15:26):
and I think part of the rift right now is
the kind of coming to Jesus moment like Trump's not
going to be around forever as the main central art
to throwing together. Can you just can you expand on
that which you wrote?
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah, so, you know, if you go on social media,
you'll often see conservatives of the baby boomer generation say,
wouldn't it be great if Bill Buckley were still with us?
He would be able to lay down the law on
exactly what the limits of conservative discourse should be, and
he would throw out anyone who was, you know, too
extreme on the right and would basically create a sense
(15:57):
of harmony and unity. And so I decided to go
back and look at one of the sort of well
known conflicts that Buckley was involved in in the late
eighties and early nineteen nineties. So, just as the Cold
War is wrapping up, you have this real conservative crack up,
and actually it really starts, you know, even during the
Reagan years. But then once Reagan leaves office, you have
George H. W. Bush come in, and there's this real
(16:19):
question of whether Bush is carrying on the Reagan legacy.
The Cold War is coming to an end, so there's
the question of what happens to US foreign policy after this,
and related to that, there's also the question of what
happens to trade. You know, immigration is in the mix
as well, And already in the late nineties you have
a number of conservatives who are starting to question the
(16:39):
sort of complacence that you find complacency you find in
the conservative movement about things like immigration. So Chronicles magazine,
for example, comes out in nineteen eighty nine with an
issue that says we really need to crack down on immigration,
and that becomes quite scandalous Richard John Neuhouse, who eventually
goes on to found the magazine First Things, he is
an editor or is involved with the think tank that's
(17:00):
publishing Chronicles, and he's outraged by this and says, well,
we have to we have to banish these people who
are criticizing mass immigration. They're racists, their xenophobes, their nativists.
So all these issues are bubbling up in the late
nineteen eighties and early nineties, and then of course, you know,
foreign policy comes into a focus with the rush to war,
with the with the rack and the Persian golf crisis,
(17:20):
and Bill Buckley's called into this, and in the course
of criticizing the idea that America is going to fight
a war in the Middle East, Pat Buchanan goes on television,
He goes on the McLaughlin Group and says a number
of things that indicate that, you know, maybe this war
is being pushed by people who have Israel's interests in
mind and not America's interests, and that becomes a massive,
massive media flap in the New York Times and elsewhere
(17:42):
with these attacks on Buchanan calling him an anti Semite,
and so Bill Buckley gets called upon to adjudicate and
to declare whether or not he thinks Pat Buchanan is
an anti Semite.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Yeah, and I think that. You know, the funny thing
is is there's a young guy who I follow, who's,
you know, a nice enough person. But the problem with
like problem with most people is and they haven't haven't
read enough. The problem with young people as they really
haven't read enough, nor do they have like the living
memory of anything. And Buckley has kind of become I'm
reading the Buckley biography right now, which is super long
(18:13):
but very good. But the thing is Buckley has become
a villain in the minds of a lot of MAGA
types who are super young, live on the Internet a lot,
and they kind of show him in adversity to Pappy Cannon.
But that wasn't that. I mean, they weren't closed, but
that wasn't their relationship at all. And you write and
you know that he in nineteen ninety two endorsed Pat
(18:33):
against George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
So the real history is actually more interesting and more
complicated than what the sort of mythology that's been retroactively constructed,
what have you think? And it's ironic because both Buckley's
some of Buckley's biggest fans and also some of his
biggest critics.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
They both have a reason for endorsing.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
The myth of Buckley as the guy who's you know,
purging the right, the guy who is sort of leading
what might be called the right wing version of cancel culture.
The reason this myth gets established now midtally, there are
episodes earlier in Buckley's career involving the John Birch Society
and others where Buckley, you know, is criticizing various figures,
including the Birch Society itself and its founder, and you know,
(19:14):
is playing this role of kind of drawing the lines.
But what's interesting if you go back and look at
the book that Buckley writes in nineteen ninety two called
In Search of Anti Semitism, which is based on an
essay he published in late nineteen ninety one on the
same topic, and you see what Buckley's actually trying to
do there. It's kind of clear that Buckley is being
sort of pulled in two directions. So instead of being
the decisive figure who's laying down the law for every
(19:35):
conservative to follow, Buckley in fact feels that he's being
pulled in opposite directions by the neocons who are saying
that Patrick Cannon is an anti Semite, you've got to
denounce him, and by basically every other conservative who's saying, well, no,
Pat Pricknn's not an anti Semite. Maybe he went too
far in what he said, but he's definitely not someone
who hates Jews, and they're saying, you can't possibly, you know,
consider denouncing Pat Mric Cannon over this. So there's already
(19:57):
this and the great thing about Buckley's book, In Search
of Anti Semitism, Buckley's own you know, material in there
isn't of the highest order, of the highest caliber, I
would say, but it has this wonderful collection of the
correspondence that Buckley receives from it. So you have neo
cons writing to him, you have paleo conservatives and others
writing to him basically weighing in and giving their perspectives
on what's happening. And that's I think the most interesting
(20:18):
part of the book. So Buckley has pulled in opposite directions,
and he actually tries to like try to find a
middle ground, which of course winds up satisfying no one
and leads to you know, a lot of the misunderstandings we.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Have today typical. Yeah. I think that John Birch, Society
Buckley coming out opposition them decades decades, and that a
lot of that had to do with Eisenhower kind of
created this myth that he was always doing that there's
throughout his entire life, which she wasn't. And the most
depressing part of your piece from first thing as I
was reading, was I mean, on one side, you have
(20:49):
Buchanan and you have Norman, but you have Murray Rothbart
and Robert Novak, and then you have Henry Kissinger and
Charles Krodhammer and Norman Darwitz, and they're these just jobs,
these intellectual giants one after the other, really arguing of
our ideas. And I think right now a lot of
it is about personalities in a certain way. But I
think that the overlapping of Reagan was leaving and the
(21:12):
Cold War was changing, so we were losing. The Right
was losing its hero and its enemy at the same
exact time. And now at the same time, you have
I guess the media is the end, but you don't
have a commonality opposition that links people together. And Donald
Trump is in his last term although it's the first year,
was last term. We're closing the first year last term.
But that VA can see that vacuum is where I
(21:36):
think the change happens. And although the neoconst I think
we're very successful about the nineties and two thousand certainly
of crafting the policies that generate America, I feel like
right now they may feel like we're on the back
bench on a number of issues, but let's put Israel
as the forefront because it's where we have the most
sympathy or most you know, I guess a currency with
(21:57):
the average Republican.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
I think that's right. You know.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
One of the problems is that success is sometimes its
own punishment. So the whole point of the conservative movement
for you know, decades was to elect someone like Ronald Reagan. Well,
they succeed, and then Ronald Reagan, you know, does guide
the Cold War to a successful conclusion. He does, you know,
at least bring down on non defense discretionary spending in
domestic politics, And while that's you know, perhaps not the
(22:21):
thing that people would most want to see in terms
of shrinking government, it is something and he you know,
keeps tax rates down as well. I mean, there's some
taxes that go up, but he generally, you know, keeps
taxes on most Americans fairly low. So, you know, you
have this fairly successful Reagan presidency. But then the question
is where do you go from there, especially when you
have this complete change in the world security strategic environment
(22:42):
with the end of the Cold War, which then you know,
it really does raise questions about economics as well. If
you think about Richard Nixon opening up the United States
to China, the whole point of that was to play
a Cold War card. It was to you know, make
sure that you could break apart the Soviet Union and
the communist China and communists China were economically involved with
the United States and the West in order to weaken
(23:05):
the Soviet Union. Well, that succeeded, But then, of course,
once the Soviet Union is not a factor anymore, what
do you do. Do you continue pursuing integration with China
for its own sake in the hopes that that's going
to liberalize China or do you say, hey, now, this
is actually strengthening the most powerful communist state that's still
around and the one that's perhaps the biggest threat all
across the board.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
You're quite right.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
The neocons wind up being very successful in the early
nineties and really throughout the nineties and into the George W.
Bush years, and as a result, you on immigration, the
right is very weak. When it comes to free trade.
The right is pursuing, you know, the Conservative movement, i
should say, is pursuing integration with China. It's generally not
taking a hard line against China. And then, of course,
(23:45):
in foreign policy, the United States is getting involved in
all a number of foreign conflicts, especially in the Middle East.
So the neo conservatives wind up being successfully win everything,
and yet then they have to live up to, you know,
what they've promised.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Right, and when America see.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
The results of what the neocon policy is delivering in
terms of our industrial base, in terms of our workforce,
in terms of mass immigration, and then also in terms
of foreign policy, American voters say, this is awful, this
is not what we want. So the neocons succeed, but
then they have to live with the punishment of their
own success, which is showing everyone, showing the whole world
what their record actually looks like when it's put into practice.
So now it's the turn of populace to have you know,
(24:22):
a share of power and to try to, you know,
do things the way we want them done. And people
will judge basically whether we're being successful or not. And
of course, you know, the Trump administration, it's doing some
great stuff, but also some things like Venezuela look pretty
questionable from a paleo conservative perspective.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah, and you know, and the big I think, the
big elephant in the room is the question of not
just the question of Israel, but the questioning of Jews
as a people entirely. There is there are legitimate conversations
over Israel happening, and then there are just anti Semitism,
and there is a difference between the two, and they
are being kind of mesh together. The transformation of young
(25:01):
people around the idea of Groper's or what that is
or you know who that is. You had a fascinating
peace in the American mind called defeating gropersm on a
conservative terms, and I thought it was so valid and
important because what the I think the response to the
rise of this genuine anti semitism has been is very outdated. Right.
(25:24):
It is like the Mark Levins of the world. I'm
trying not to name people's names, but like the Mark
Lebins of the world, who is no friend of mine,
and nor has I agree with him on most policy issues,
but he has his defense and his deflection of why
what you should do in your response or the rights
response should be wouldn't It doesn't work in the internet world,
and it doesn't work to the criticisms that are happening.
(25:45):
And I think that your opinion of it was very, very,
very intelligent, and it's not just to sit there and
boil things down to a liberal response. Could you tell
the into that. Could you talk about that?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:58):
So, I mean, you know, the right throughout the twentieth century,
basically you had such an enormous amount of cultural dominance
by progressives and by left liberalism to the point where
the conservative movement was only like a half way rebellion
against it. Right, So the conservative movement says, well, we
don't like the economics of this left, and we don't
(26:19):
like some of what they're doing, you know, in terms
of states rights or in terms of you know, kind
of national civil rights bills or whatever suit. So the
right was talking about those things, and of course it
loses those battles, you know, over you know, questions of
civil rights and the Voting Rights Act and things like that.
So you wind up with a kind of shell shocked
American conservative movement in the late twentieth century and the
(26:41):
early twenty first century, which basically, you know, is trying
to prove that it doesn't have all the bad qualities
that the left is accusing it of being. So it's
going out of its way to show, you know, we're
not racist. You're the real racist, it says to the Democrats.
And you know, we're the most anti antisemitic people on
the planet.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
We love Israel more than any one else. We are.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Therefore, look at how much we love the victim groups,
and you know we are don't call a suppressors, you know,
if anything, you know, we love you know, everyone who's
you know, you claim to be standing for more than
you do. And this is this is you know, it's
psychologically it's very interesting because this is like you know,
it's it's like a battered spouse syndrome or something. Right,
I mean, this is this is just the right overplaying
(27:21):
its hand and trying you know, to be more you know,
more Catholic than the Pope were in this case, more
progressive and liberal than Al Sharpton or something. Now you know,
obviously Sharpton has some some Israel problems, I imagine, but yeah,
it will go beyond that, but more and more, more,
you know, sort of anti anti defamation than the ADL.
In the limited media environment of the late twentieth century
and early twenty first century.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Maybe that was fine.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
But now you know, where people are free to you know,
kind of see just how clownish these people look when
they're making these arguments.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
It doesn't work at all.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
And that's that's one of the things that feeds into
the Groyper movement because I think the Grouper movement and
Nick Fuentes, these guys poke fun at and satirize and
mercilessly mock this kind of attitude from the right, which
is this you know, sort of constant defensive crouch and
this constant attempt to show that they are more progressive
than the progressives. And and so I mean that that
whole thing is is a dead end. That is not
(28:12):
only a dead end, it's counterproductive because the more that
the center right tries to, you know, play that card,
the more ridiculous it looks in the eyes of younger
people on the right right, so.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
They and just like add on to that point. It's
like in the two thousand and eight election to twenty
sixteen election when they were attacking Hillary for being too
hard on crime, and you're like, what are who are
these voters all of a sudden that are appealing to it?
And there are I would say that that worldview is
still a majority of members of Congress or centers. There's
(28:45):
a bill in the Defense Authorization Act which will force
suburbs to like take massive section and housing increases and
like because we you know, we have we don't have
enough opportunity zones and enough welfare programs for certain minority
po groups. And it's always about how do you appease
the people who vote against you at the cost of
(29:06):
the people who vote for you. And that's what the
right was doing. And that's why Donald Trump was such
a you know, shock, not necessarily on all his policies,
but at least in his rhetoric, a shock to the
guard rails. Let's see the bill crystals of the world
have you and you write and this is why I
think this piece was very, very thoughtful and thought provoking.
(29:26):
Is your solution to groperism. Not necessarily everything that everybody says,
because you could find something that's agree with almost anybody,
no matter where they are on political scale, but their
main contention, which is the true anti Semitism and dehumanization
of Jewish people, especially in the vitriol towards Israel. You right,
In recent centuries, liberalism has caused the West to lose
(29:49):
its sense of the duty. The universalists owes to the
particular Israel, however, reminds us of it. Just what does
that mean to the It's very eloquently written, what does
that mean to like the average person.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Well, you know, I'll kind of start from a fairly
abstract position and then come down to something more concrete.
So in a lot of ways, progressive liberalism is an
attempt to secularize.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And replace Christianity.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
And just as Christianity, you know, is a religion that
is universal and that you know, applies everywhere.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
God, you know, loves all of mankind.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Liberalism has this view that you know, liberal institutions are
meant to serve the entire planet. If you say that, well,
no institutions like our own government, our own nation state,
are meant to serve us as a people and not
serve the entire you know, the liberal faith all around
the globe that is seen by liberals, by progressive liberals
as being it's a heresy. I mean, it's really a
(30:45):
terribly immoral thing for anyone to say in their eyes.
And so and this this, you know, a big part
of liberalism as it has evolved over the last century,
is this emphasis on this sort of two tiered humanity,
where you have the good part of humanity who are
victims and who have been oppressed, and the bad part
of humanity, who are like demons, you know, in the flesh,
(31:06):
who are the oppressors and are always the source of wickedness.
And so justice, you know, in this liberal mythology is
precisely raising up and empowering and even allowing the use
of violence to those who are victims or oppressed, and
then tearing down those who are considered part of the
oppressor class. And you know, we can point to some
of the parallels this has with Marxism and its view
(31:27):
of economic class. But this is applying it to braces
and social groups, which is kind of ironic because of
course progresses insist that races, you know, far from their minds,
but it's not. I mean, race is really the core
of this. It's funny even to go.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Early construct it's all and it's just imagination exactly, but.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
It's the construct that apparently determines who's a good person,
who's a bad person, who gets the law on their side,
and who gets you know, a knife in the neck.
So and this this critique of or this worldview that
depends on victims and oppressors. This is one of the
things that you see, you know, a lot of defenders
of Israel actually playing into because they'll say, hey, Israel
(32:05):
is actually a victim. Jews, you know, historically have been
victims in reality, so you know, they should have a
victim class status and that means they should be part
of the top of the totem pole. And not only
in progressive rankings, but also those of conservatives who go
along with this, and that it just seems to me
is suicidal for Jews.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
For Israel. It's just a terrible thing.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Overall, because of course, the left has long since decided
that no, Jews are actually oppressors. If you look at
what you know, left wing radicals in America say about
not just Israel, but Jews in general. They will go
along with you know, black radicals who want to say, hey,
you know, the Jews are stealing our rappers, you know,
revenue from the record companies, just the whole thing. And
(32:46):
there's a great Sopranos episode you probably know, it's all
about this.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And one of the.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Great things, you know, when the Sopranos was at its best,
it was able to touch on these topics that everybody
knows and that everyone talks about in these communities.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
But of course, you know.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
That generally are not openly admitted in polite television shows.
So anyway, the Jews are actually now positioned as an
oppressor group, and in fact, you know, because they'ren oppresser group,
but they are a small group and Israel is a
small country. So they're really a test case right now
for whether this ideology of assembling all the victims against
(33:21):
the oppressors can succeed in you know, really crushing an
oppressor group. In some ways, they're a test case, and
that that's one reason why it's very important to make
sure that that test case doesn't succeed where these progressives
are trying to attempt it. Now again, I'm not so
much talking about direct policies towards Israel, whether giving them
aid or not. I'm actually very critical of giving them,
you know, lots of American money, but just on principle,
(33:43):
the fact that Israel is based on a people staking
a claim to a land. They're saying, you know, this
is our land as a people. We have a you know,
religious reason as much as anything we're making this claim.
And basically, you know, we might like liberalism or democracy
up to a point, but if those things ever come
out to conflict with our possession of our land, we
will reject those things. And that's what makes Israel a
(34:05):
very important country right now. And if you think about
how the same oppressor victim narrative is applied to the
United States as a supposedly settler colonial state, it's the
same thing on a much bigger scale. And we Americans
have to be prepared to say, you know what, maybe
trade is good up to a point, maybe you know,
we have a humanitarian concern for other people in various ways,
(34:25):
but fundamentally, if liberalism or other ideologies from the left
are going to attack our position as a people who
has a possession of our land. If you claim that's unjust,
We're simply going to cut off our conversation. We're not
going to allow ourselves to be morally bullied by progressives
into having this sense of guilt about our land and
our people.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Right. And you know, it's so funny that some countries
which are quote unquote colonial colonizer countries like Brazil, which
is completely you know, a Madi country of Portuguese former
colonies and the kind she's half white, half Metsisos and black,
they don't have this kind of identity crisis that the
(35:09):
United States has. It's very strange how that how certain
countries are plagued with this. And I think part of
it is, you know, deeper anti Semitism, but also the
fact that Jews are considered white and whites are the
ultimate enemy, and so for there is no escaping that parallel.
And I have a very good friend who is a
convert from being a liberal Jew to a conservative Jew,
(35:30):
and she always says, we just made all the wrong friends,
And I'm like, yeah, you picked a lot of the
wrong battles. You know, why have you? I don't have
any more questions about your articles, but you're just so
well thoughtful and read on everything. If you were talking
to a young conservative and eighteen year old, twenty year
old whatever, twenty two year old or someone just interested
in politics young, what are two or three sources that
(35:51):
they should go to that are that to you sit
there and say, this is really one of the more intelligent,
thought provoking, interesting things of what the basic principles and
the first Prince was of conservatism really are.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Well.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I do edit this journal of Modern Age which talks
about these issues, and you know, I think a young
person coming to Modern Age for the first time might
be a little perplexed because we'll talk about some of
these older issues as well, and we tap into our
archives which go all the way back to nineteen fifty seven.
But if they came to it on a regular basis,
they would actually find an interesting sort of conversation across
(36:25):
generations on the right, both from the new material we
publish the podcast that I do for Modern Age Everywhere,
and also this older material from Russell Kirk and Richard
Weaver and others. By the way, they'd be interested to
find out. I think that many of these you know,
sort of old these conservatives, like I mean Russell Kirk,
for example, says in nineteen eighty nine, I think it
is that not seldom have certain neo conservatives mistake in
(36:48):
Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States. So
I think, you know, instead of you know, following the
groupers down to you know, means and just a nonsense,
you could actually ask yourself, well, why did Russell Kirk
say that? And what was going on here? And what
were the neo cons actually trying to get up to.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Back then you.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Could look at, you know, people like Richard Weaver and Robertisbet.
They also had very conservative views, very right wing views
that I think would still appeal to a lot of
younger a lot of the younger generation.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I can also say another source that I recommend is
Chronicles Magazine. So Chronicles was sort of the original paleo
conservative publication. It was involved in a lot of these
conflicts back in the late eighties and early nineties. And
today the editor of Chronicles is himself Jewish, It's Paul Gotfried,
and so he's a good refutation both of these claims
(37:38):
that the Paleo's are anti Semitic, and he's got you know,
his own views which are quite i think well thought
through on Israel. I mean, he's pro Israel, but he's
not pro Neocon, and I think separating those things is
actually very important and Paul is a great example of that.
And then another magazine that I've been involved with for
a long time is, of course, The American Conservative, and
I know you've written there as well, and you know
that's a great magazine for you know, some pretty strong
(38:01):
criticisms of US foreign policy across the board.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
People are focusing right now.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
You know, they get a lot of flak for what
they say about the Israel relationship, but they're also focusing
a lot on what's happening with Venezuela, and that I
think is.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
That's where we're really being drawn.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Into, you know, a conflict that I think would be
you know, this this decade's Iraq war or this decade's
Libya crisis. So I think that's an important thing to
keep an eye on.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yeah. I like Paul Godfrey's writing against just always when
he has a book at it's you know, thirteen thousand words,
thirteen thousand pages and you're like, I'm Paul, this is
a very this is too why I brow from me.
But Dane McCarthy, thank you so much for coming on
this podcast where people go to read more of your stuff.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Well, you can find my podcast and a lot of
my other work at Modern Age Journal dot com. So
that's Modern Age Journal dot com. And you can also
find my syndicated column. I write a column every week
for Creators Syndicate. The New York Post usually runs it,
and so I can be found there also on Chronicles,
and I write a fortnightly column for the Spectator World.
So yeah, those are the places to find my writing.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
And Daniel is one of the people on the New
York Times when they'll be like, how do this debate
performance go? And it's like seven cycle. Liberals been like
I think Joe Biden look like the peak of health,
and Dmail's like, now he's in mental decline. Which I
always love watching your your reaction compared to, like, you know,
some of the very far left other commentators. So Dianel,
thank you for coming on this podcast. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Thanks Royan.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Now it's time for Ask Me Anything. If you want
to be part of the ask Me Anything segment. Email
me Ryan at Numbers Game Podcast dot com. It's Ryan
at Numbers Plural Numbers Gamepodcast dot Com. I love you guys' emails.
I have a bunch is sitting in the doc right now,
so I will get to them and we'll have a well,
maybe have a final end of the year episode where
I really go into all of them. I would do
a drinking game, but I've that would I've got so
(39:47):
few brain sales left to work with and I'm not
going to sit there and be able to drink through
a ask Me Anything segment, So but we'll have fun. Well,
I'm going to get through as many as possible for
the end of the year and make sure we close
up and start twenty twenty six fresh. This question comes
from John from Connecticut, John vmailman before and he says,
thanks for answering my primary question on Desanta's prospects going forward.
Is this only realistic path to the presidency to have
(40:09):
JD lose in twenty twenty eight and then run in
twenty thirty two, And any thoughts on the Atlas poll
that had a ten point two of a ten point
two four that said Sears was the within one point.
I would say on October twenty fourth that said Sears
within one point and Mers was going to win by seven. Okay,
so first on the poll, Yeah, Alice had a great
year last year and I didn't have this year. Good
(40:30):
this year and good, good numbers this year. And I
think that part of the problem with a lot of
pollsters is they're building universes of who they expect to
turn out. And I think that for Atlas, they were
probably over sampling Republicans, Republican independence, or people who just
didn't show up. Now, Virginia had a huge turnout, so
what my guess is that they didn't have enough low
(40:51):
propensity Democrats who would show up kind of put into
the numbers, and how they waited them kind of just
didn't work out. I mean, and it happens with all polsters.
So if it happens year after year after year after year,
you're goin to put those polsters inside and say this is,
you know, garbage. But if it happens once in a
ballo moon, everyone gets them wrong sometimes, so I'm not
(41:11):
going to hold them to it. Atlas is a fairly
new firm and they've had a lot of big wins
so I want to sit there and give them more
time to see their record before I judge them as
a good polster a bad polster. And I've emailed them
so many times that's come to the podcast. I would
love to have them and talk about there the way
they do polls. Okay and Desantas. I want you to
remember nineteen sixty may not have been alive. I wasn't,
(41:35):
but in nineteen sixty there was a very close presidential
election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and Nixon
goes on to lose by a smidge In nineteen sixty four,
Nixon sits out of that election for Barry gold Wars
nominee goes down in Flames but Goal. But Nixon actually
campaigned harder for goal War than anybody did. Nixon was
completely still on the ticket. He was like, I'm going
(41:58):
to campaign for my party. Go Water loses I think
all but six states or seven states, the Deep South
in Arizona, and then we go to sixty eight and
Nixon goes on to win. He runs again, wins after
this long break, and then he goes on to have
this landslide forty nine state victory in nineteen seventy two.
I think if I was consulting to Santas, which I'm not,
(42:19):
I would sit there and say, you know, build your
coffers up, for your packs, and hit the ground running
across the country and be on the team. And if jd.
Vance is the nominee or Mark Rubya's nominee, whoever's nominee,
hit the ground running for them. Can't pagn harder for
them than anybody else. You could possibly imagine, like make
(42:40):
that your full time job to be part of the
party and build that loyalty back up, because that loyalty,
you know, some residual loyalty is there with the average
Joe Republican who remembers Covid and all the great things
to Santas has done as governor besides Covid, I mean
Covid it was only the biggest part of his governorship,
but it when you look at all all the things
he's done, it's really a footnote. I mean, he's done amazing,
(43:03):
amazing things in Florida. Finish out your term strong, be
the biggest campaigner for the Republican Party across the country,
go to every swing state, raise money for them. Bill
Loyalty Show your part of the team. Campaign for who's
ever the nominee for president in twenty twenty eight, and
then if they lose in twenty thirty two, take another
look at it. Go on television and remind voters I am,
(43:25):
you know, the advocate. I'm the guy who turned Florida
into the deepest red state possible, and I think that
that is I think that would be the game plan
if he doesn't run in twenty twenty eight, which I
think he probably shouldn't, and if he still if the
Republicans win in twenty twenty eight and twenty thirty two
comes around at that point, call a day. Like history
is littered with men who would have made great presidents.
(43:48):
It is what it is. You don't win, and running
for office is like a window, and sometimes when it shuts,
it shuts for good. Ask Chris Christy right, he had
a chance in twenty twelve, and that was his only chance,
Santa's unless Trump would have made him as VP, which
in twenty twenty four, which is no telling he would have.
Unless he would have, then probably twenty twenty four was
the only time he could ran for president, and if
(44:09):
he didn't win, he didn't win. It happens, so happens
to the best of them anyway. Thank you for listening
to this episode of the podcast. I hope you like it.
Please like and subscribe in the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, YouTube,
wherever you get your podcasts, and I will see you
guys on Thursday.
Welcome back to a Numbers Game with Ryan Grodowsky. Thank
you for being here again. I hope everyone had a
very happy Thanksgiving. We are now in December, closing out
twenty twenty five, which is kind of wild that it's
almost over. To twenty twenty five has felt like a
decade and a month in the same exact time. One
of the best parts of December that everyone enjoys is
that Spotify and Apple they get their annual streaming numbers
(00:25):
and you find out who your number one artists or
band was that you listened to the most, was your
number one song of the year. But you also get
to find out which is your number one podcast of
the year, and if it's not a Numbers Game of
Ryan Grodski, if that's not in your top five, I
hope that you like and subscribe to this podcast on Apple,
Spotify or YouTube or the iHeartRadio app, so that way
next year I might be in your top five. Think
(00:45):
about it. I would appreciate you. Your Christmas gift to
me would be subscribing if you have it yet. As
this year is coming to a close, I've been thinking
a lot about relationships one on many different levels. My
relationship with family, money, god, friends, having a work life balance.
I think that it's very important to be reflective at
this point of the year and saying to myself, how
(01:08):
am I doing making sure I can be the most
of a person I am with the time that I have,
get the most of a life, and achieve the most
that I have. I am at the beginning stages of
middle age, and I only have a certain amount of
time to do everything I want to do. And I
hear I've talked with a therapists about this. I know
this is not normal, but I hear the clock ticking
of every moment in my life of what do I
(01:28):
have left and what can I possibly do. I'm insanely meticulous,
but not wasting time, and it is how I've been
able to have a podcast and a pack and a
political work and a nonprofit and all the rest of it.
So at the very beginning of the year, what I
always do is I make a list of ten to
fifteen goals that I want to achieve this year. I
write them down to my day planner that I carry
(01:50):
with me everywhere, and then I don't look at it
for the entire year. And at the end of the year,
I look back and say, what did I achieve of this?
What is important to me? What's not important to me?
Because I will write some I'll be like, oh, I
want to write a nonfiction book about robots, and I
don't know why I think these things. I didn't say
that actual thing, but you know, something crazy that I
really no interest in. And I'll be like, this was
(02:11):
not a goal like this that I did not care.
And it's not a failure when you don't do everything,
because your priorities change and your time changes. And certainly
in twenty twenty four meeting, I didn't say I want
to have a podcast, but I didn't. This show has
been so great and I've had a decent listenership and
people have responded and emailed, and I think that that's
a really important way to kind of close out the year.
(02:32):
And one of the things I've been thinking about, as
far as relationships goes, is how I've you know, I'm
I know, I'm low on the totem pole of conservative
quote unquote influencers or people with large public profiles, but
I'm on there. I mean I'm there, and I've managed
to very actively stay out of the quote unquote Republican
civil war, which is what I want to talk to
(02:53):
you guys about, because basically every talking head in the
conservative movement has had this come to Jesus moment where
they say, Wow, Trump isn't going to be around forever.
Where is this party going, Who's going to lead us?
What do we believe in? What's what's where's this endpoint?
And or where's this moving towards? And there are people
who really want the gooped to return to what it
(03:15):
was before Trump right. There are some people who want
to take the party into a more populous place than
it was before Trump. They want to find the way
that true populism should move. Some people are looking at
alternatives to Trump right, someone with more philosophical consistency, less drama,
who's maybe funny. I mean, good luck finding that that prize,
but I'm sure it maybe exists somewhere. I don't know.
(03:37):
And then there are some people who have been labeled
as being part of the right. I don't know if
they all are, who are using the moment to raise
their own personal profiles and to continue the gravy train
that Donald Trump has presented to conservative commentators. I think
people don't understand how much money some people have made
(03:58):
from being from telling Trump's supporters everything they want to
hear and trying to feed anxiety or hope or anything
to these voters. And unfortunately some of them are using
this moment and using this kind of open question of
who we are as a movement, where we're going as
a people, as an American public, to say some genuinely
(04:20):
anti Semitic points. And I want to be very clear
right now that not every criticism of Israel is anti semitic,
Not every or arguing over American foreign policies not anti semitic.
Criticizing bib Nitt, Yahoo is not anti semitic. Not even
conversations every conversation about the era, about the war between
Israel and Gaza was anti semitic. You can talk about
(04:40):
things and not be anti Semitic. However, you when certain people,
certain certain commentators who have been Lumpton as part of
the right, when they speak about Jewish people in a
dehumanizing way and decide that it's important in this moment
in twenty twenty five to reference things that have happened
almost one hundred years ago, like the Holocaust, and insists
(05:02):
that either it didn't happen, or that it was you know,
some commentators have platform people who said that it was
as a good thing, but a was a it was
the best option available, instead of really noticing and noting
if you have to talk about it, which you really
don't have to talk about it, but if you, if
you must talk about it, noting how horrible and cruel
(05:23):
and dark at that point of humanity was. There are
just some people in the commentary class who right now,
in this year, in this time, have said talking about
the horrors of World War two and talking about the
past is more important than talking about the future, talking
about AI and declining fertility rates and family formation and
(05:44):
inflation and you know, the amount of money we're going
to see transfer from the baby, but when we're in
silent generation to their children and how to ensure that
their kids can sit there and get you know, a
start to have a family and buy a house and
build wealth and generational value, having real conversations that are
(06:07):
very very important. No, they're not having it. They're talking
about World War II for some reason at a almost
insanely like it happens like every five minutes, Like there's
no like it's it's it's a lot of these conversations.
I'm sorry, they're just stupid. They re tarded, like there
is no useful reason, there's no foresight about having this,
(06:27):
there's no talking about the future and where we are going.
And the people who are doing that. Some of them
I know, smight, I don't know some of my like
as people. It's incredibly frustrating because it's all negative and
it doesn't lead to anything positive towards twenty twenty six,
towards where we're going both as a party and as
a people, and what we should really be talking about.
(06:48):
A concernedive, I have to say, there's a lot of
things that keep me up at night. I have a
lot of anxieties. I'm completely unmedicated for all of them,
but I have a lot of anxieties. And the things
that keep me up around up don't involve global jewelry
or the Holocaust or I mean, they don't make my
top ten, top one hundred, top one thousand, and the
(07:12):
things that do, the things that are important are being
missed in this last year, the things that will affect
and shape our future. Those conversations are not even happening,
even though the country is moving forward on them, and
we as conservatives are missing out on navigating where those
(07:32):
that stuff should go, where those policies should go. Other
people are going to sit there and create the framework
mold our future because we're argument things that don't frankly
matter and make us look crazy, make us look anti semitic,
make us all look like we have a problem that
(07:53):
I think is completely completely made up just for people
who want to make sure that they continue to get
clicks all the time to feed either their bottom line
or their ego. And I want to just bring something
to the attention of young right wingers right now, mostly
young white men. I was one of you not so
long ago. I guess it's getting further and further by
(08:14):
the day. But those who look at the trends of
the world and say, wow, people who look like me
are being targeted for identity, and countries that my ancestors
built all over the world are increasingly turning against me.
And I'm worried about this. I am worried about the
way the world is working and the way that I'm
not going to have a future in it, and the
(08:35):
language that the left has used, especially against white people.
I get it. I fully and completely get it. I understand,
and you feel like the right doesn't speak to those
issues well enough either. But to those who are too
young to have read enough history books or lived through
enough history, you're hearing a ton of noise, an absolute
ton of noise. And I have to tell you right now,
(08:57):
you do not need to look up to anyone who
praise is Hitler. You don't even have a private conversation
about it. You don't need a joke about it. You're
not being edgy, you're not being funny. You know, put
the Holocaust aside for a second, and it was horrific
and dark and terrible, But put that aside for a second.
Let's say you are one of these young men who say, wow,
the world that my ancestors built is completely gone, and
(09:18):
the identity of European Americans, of European people are being
wiped away by mass migration all the rest of it.
And I know you will have data to back it
up one hundred percent. You shouldn't praise the man who
or fit look up to the man, or look up
to anyone who's praising the man that caused a war
that killed fifty million Europeans. And if that war had
(09:40):
never happened, there probably be one hundred million, one hundred
I looked this up, one hundred and ten or one
hundred and twenty million more Europeans alive today had that
war never started, right, one hundred and twenty million more
Europeans alive today had World War two never happened, including
seventy five million in Eastern Europe in thirty to forty
million in Western Europe. Hitler was such a piece of
shit person, And I know that it seems like we're
(10:01):
done to like why are you while they're saying that
everyone knows it, because it's as World War Two's living
history is going away as older people pass away and
the lived memories of those experiences go with them. People,
it's becoming a meme. It's becoming a joke. And I
get that at nine to eleven is the same thing.
Everything in history kind of is less attached to you
(10:22):
as you don't live through it. But I know you
may not have experienced that. I know you may not
have cared about this, but the ideas and the world
that you live in have manifested greatly because of those actions. Right,
you can understand and you can make fun of it.
But it's not worth ever praising someone like that. And
in this last year, so many young right wingers have
(10:42):
lost jobs, they've lost careers because they have sat there
and said, let's be edgy, let's be edged lords, let's
sit there and have some fun. Let's say Hitler was great.
I'm giving you professional advice. I'm giving you life advice
as a man who's not that old but who has
walked through your shoes. You don't have to be like that.
You don't have to look up to this person, and
you shouldn't look up to anybody who sat there and
(11:04):
praised him. They're all grifting, they're all lying to you
right now, and they're leading you to profit themselves and
harm you because it doesn't matter to them if you
do well or not. And that's just the truth of
the matter. And I have to I wanted to bring
it up. I hate lecture. I'm not trying to lecture anybody.
I just I'm around a lot of younger people a
(11:25):
lot through work and through other things. And I always
say to myself, as somebody who lived in my early
twenties wanting to work in policies, really ambitious, really hungry
for everything. I see so many people who are in
those steps that I was in, who are being told
(11:46):
information that will never help them get to a place
where I am. Not in a place where I am
but a good job, a stable life, a career. They're
turning you into ideas and thoughts that are not helpful
for you. And I always look out for especially people
who I relate to. As far as you know, they
walked in the shoots that I walked in. Anyway, Sorry,
(12:08):
go around tangent. I don't want to. I don't want
to sit there and make this whole lecture, but I
have to sit there and say that in this point
because anyone telling you that Hitler was a good guy,
he wasn't, and they're turning you into astray. You don't
look edgy, you don't look cool, you look like an idiot,
and it's gonna bite you in the ass. So if
you can learn anything from other people's experiences here, don't
be that person. And also half of them are so
(12:30):
overweight they would never be able to survive, and Hitler's arn't.
I don't know where these overweight people think they would
survive in fascism. It's you say that because you've never
lived in authoritarianism, like half of you would never survive
a single war, let alone, you know, Nazi training to camps, like,
give me a break. Anyway, back to the Republican Civil War.
Don't mean to go into a lecture, but I think
(12:50):
there are some people who are having really legitimate arguments
about the future of the MAGA movement and how to
move it forward and what does that look like. Does
it does it exist after Trump? Does it exist in
three years? Some are arguing this because they want to
stay relevant, but some people are really trying to have
good ideas, solid ideas about where the Trump experiment moves
and what is the next evolution of it when he retires,
(13:14):
you know, and God willing lives a long life in
a happy life. I'm not you know, I'm not going
to name names on this fight in fighting, but I
think that I think I know you most you know
what I'm talking about. But I want to talk about
how you said understanding one, understanding the moment. Understand that
this chaos and this quote unquote Republican Civil War that
(13:35):
has had a lot of my friends who are influencers
feeling very kind of not conflict is not the right word,
but very stressed about it's normal. Part of this is normal.
Part of what you're seeing is completely healthy, and it's
been done before. Right, this is not new where the
right or I'm proba sure the left, but I'm definitely
on the right. Where we see our leaders changing, where
(13:57):
we see are the issues changing, and we don't know
where to go from it, and so people squabble, especially
the commentary class. Even before the Internet, this was happening.
Here's the good news for everybody you know. And you
may be sitting there like James d and Rebel without
a cause or screaming you're tearing me apart. But here's
the good news. There will be a way. There will
be a forward, and it won't include a lot of
(14:18):
the ugliness. It won't include a lot of the anti semitism,
and it won't include a lot of what the old
old right is sitting there. The bush right wants to
sit there and bring us back to We're going to
figure it out. But my next guest is probably the
smartest person when it comes to the history of the right,
the history of the conservative movement and this conflict that
came before, and how it may help provide and navigate
(14:42):
us into how it will sort itself out in the future.
That's command Nick Staniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern
Age Journal, and he's written for so many outlets. That's
sign in Funny, The New York Times, American Conservative, American
Mind first Things, just an overall brilliant, brilliant guy, Daniel McCarthy,
Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Oh, thanks for having me on Ryn.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
So you wrote an article and I want to talk
with two of your pieces, but one of the main
ones is for first things, it's called the right thirty
year war, and you draw the comparison of how kind
of the right wing is having an internal conflict now
and comparing that to the nineties and what happened after
the Cold War ended, because there was a real rift
(15:26):
and I think part of the rift right now is
the kind of coming to Jesus moment like Trump's not
going to be around forever as the main central art
to throwing together. Can you just can you expand on
that which you wrote?
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah, so, you know, if you go on social media,
you'll often see conservatives of the baby boomer generation say,
wouldn't it be great if Bill Buckley were still with us?
He would be able to lay down the law on
exactly what the limits of conservative discourse should be, and
he would throw out anyone who was, you know, too
extreme on the right and would basically create a sense
(15:57):
of harmony and unity. And so I decided to go
back and look at one of the sort of well
known conflicts that Buckley was involved in in the late
eighties and early nineteen nineties. So, just as the Cold
War is wrapping up, you have this real conservative crack up,
and actually it really starts, you know, even during the
Reagan years. But then once Reagan leaves office, you have
George H. W. Bush come in, and there's this real
(16:19):
question of whether Bush is carrying on the Reagan legacy.
The Cold War is coming to an end, so there's
the question of what happens to US foreign policy after this,
and related to that, there's also the question of what
happens to trade. You know, immigration is in the mix
as well, And already in the late nineties you have
a number of conservatives who are starting to question the
(16:39):
sort of complacence that you find complacency you find in
the conservative movement about things like immigration. So Chronicles magazine,
for example, comes out in nineteen eighty nine with an
issue that says we really need to crack down on immigration,
and that becomes quite scandalous Richard John Neuhouse, who eventually
goes on to found the magazine First Things, he is
an editor or is involved with the think tank that's
(17:00):
publishing Chronicles, and he's outraged by this and says, well,
we have to we have to banish these people who
are criticizing mass immigration. They're racists, their xenophobes, their nativists.
So all these issues are bubbling up in the late
nineteen eighties and early nineties, and then of course, you know,
foreign policy comes into a focus with the rush to war,
with the with the rack and the Persian golf crisis,
(17:20):
and Bill Buckley's called into this, and in the course
of criticizing the idea that America is going to fight
a war in the Middle East, Pat Buchanan goes on television,
He goes on the McLaughlin Group and says a number
of things that indicate that, you know, maybe this war
is being pushed by people who have Israel's interests in
mind and not America's interests, and that becomes a massive,
massive media flap in the New York Times and elsewhere
(17:42):
with these attacks on Buchanan calling him an anti Semite,
and so Bill Buckley gets called upon to adjudicate and
to declare whether or not he thinks Pat Buchanan is
an anti Semite.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Yeah, and I think that. You know, the funny thing
is is there's a young guy who I follow, who's,
you know, a nice enough person. But the problem with
like problem with most people is and they haven't haven't
read enough. The problem with young people as they really
haven't read enough, nor do they have like the living
memory of anything. And Buckley has kind of become I'm
reading the Buckley biography right now, which is super long
(18:13):
but very good. But the thing is Buckley has become
a villain in the minds of a lot of MAGA
types who are super young, live on the Internet a lot,
and they kind of show him in adversity to Pappy Cannon.
But that wasn't that. I mean, they weren't closed, but
that wasn't their relationship at all. And you write and
you know that he in nineteen ninety two endorsed Pat
(18:33):
against George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
So the real history is actually more interesting and more
complicated than what the sort of mythology that's been retroactively constructed,
what have you think? And it's ironic because both Buckley's
some of Buckley's biggest fans and also some of his
biggest critics.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
They both have a reason for endorsing.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
The myth of Buckley as the guy who's you know,
purging the right, the guy who is sort of leading
what might be called the right wing version of cancel culture.
The reason this myth gets established now midtally, there are
episodes earlier in Buckley's career involving the John Birch Society
and others where Buckley, you know, is criticizing various figures,
including the Birch Society itself and its founder, and you know,
(19:14):
is playing this role of kind of drawing the lines.
But what's interesting if you go back and look at
the book that Buckley writes in nineteen ninety two called
In Search of Anti Semitism, which is based on an
essay he published in late nineteen ninety one on the
same topic, and you see what Buckley's actually trying to
do there. It's kind of clear that Buckley is being
sort of pulled in two directions. So instead of being
the decisive figure who's laying down the law for every
(19:35):
conservative to follow, Buckley in fact feels that he's being
pulled in opposite directions by the neocons who are saying
that Patrick Cannon is an anti Semite, you've got to
denounce him, and by basically every other conservative who's saying, well, no,
Pat Pricknn's not an anti Semite. Maybe he went too
far in what he said, but he's definitely not someone
who hates Jews, and they're saying, you can't possibly, you know,
consider denouncing Pat Mric Cannon over this. So there's already
(19:57):
this and the great thing about Buckley's book, In Search
of Anti Semitism, Buckley's own you know, material in there
isn't of the highest order, of the highest caliber, I
would say, but it has this wonderful collection of the
correspondence that Buckley receives from it. So you have neo
cons writing to him, you have paleo conservatives and others
writing to him basically weighing in and giving their perspectives
on what's happening. And that's I think the most interesting
(20:18):
part of the book. So Buckley has pulled in opposite directions,
and he actually tries to like try to find a
middle ground, which of course winds up satisfying no one
and leads to you know, a lot of the misunderstandings we.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Have today typical. Yeah. I think that John Birch, Society
Buckley coming out opposition them decades decades, and that a
lot of that had to do with Eisenhower kind of
created this myth that he was always doing that there's
throughout his entire life, which she wasn't. And the most
depressing part of your piece from first thing as I
was reading, was I mean, on one side, you have
(20:49):
Buchanan and you have Norman, but you have Murray Rothbart
and Robert Novak, and then you have Henry Kissinger and
Charles Krodhammer and Norman Darwitz, and they're these just jobs,
these intellectual giants one after the other, really arguing of
our ideas. And I think right now a lot of
it is about personalities in a certain way. But I
think that the overlapping of Reagan was leaving and the
(21:12):
Cold War was changing, so we were losing. The Right
was losing its hero and its enemy at the same
exact time. And now at the same time, you have
I guess the media is the end, but you don't
have a commonality opposition that links people together. And Donald
Trump is in his last term although it's the first year,
was last term. We're closing the first year last term.
But that VA can see that vacuum is where I
(21:36):
think the change happens. And although the neoconst I think
we're very successful about the nineties and two thousand certainly
of crafting the policies that generate America, I feel like
right now they may feel like we're on the back
bench on a number of issues, but let's put Israel
as the forefront because it's where we have the most
sympathy or most you know, I guess a currency with
(21:57):
the average Republican.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
I think that's right. You know.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
One of the problems is that success is sometimes its
own punishment. So the whole point of the conservative movement
for you know, decades was to elect someone like Ronald Reagan. Well,
they succeed, and then Ronald Reagan, you know, does guide
the Cold War to a successful conclusion. He does, you know,
at least bring down on non defense discretionary spending in
domestic politics, And while that's you know, perhaps not the
(22:21):
thing that people would most want to see in terms
of shrinking government, it is something and he you know,
keeps tax rates down as well. I mean, there's some
taxes that go up, but he generally, you know, keeps
taxes on most Americans fairly low. So, you know, you
have this fairly successful Reagan presidency. But then the question
is where do you go from there, especially when you
have this complete change in the world security strategic environment
(22:42):
with the end of the Cold War, which then you know,
it really does raise questions about economics as well. If
you think about Richard Nixon opening up the United States
to China, the whole point of that was to play
a Cold War card. It was to you know, make
sure that you could break apart the Soviet Union and
the communist China and communists China were economically involved with
the United States and the West in order to weaken
(23:05):
the Soviet Union. Well, that succeeded, But then, of course,
once the Soviet Union is not a factor anymore, what
do you do. Do you continue pursuing integration with China
for its own sake in the hopes that that's going
to liberalize China or do you say, hey, now, this
is actually strengthening the most powerful communist state that's still
around and the one that's perhaps the biggest threat all
across the board.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
You're quite right.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
The neocons wind up being very successful in the early
nineties and really throughout the nineties and into the George W.
Bush years, and as a result, you on immigration, the
right is very weak. When it comes to free trade.
The right is pursuing, you know, the Conservative movement, i
should say, is pursuing integration with China. It's generally not
taking a hard line against China. And then, of course,
(23:45):
in foreign policy, the United States is getting involved in
all a number of foreign conflicts, especially in the Middle East.
So the neo conservatives wind up being successfully win everything,
and yet then they have to live up to, you know,
what they've promised.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Right, and when America see.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
The results of what the neocon policy is delivering in
terms of our industrial base, in terms of our workforce,
in terms of mass immigration, and then also in terms
of foreign policy, American voters say, this is awful, this
is not what we want. So the neocons succeed, but
then they have to live with the punishment of their
own success, which is showing everyone, showing the whole world
what their record actually looks like when it's put into practice.
So now it's the turn of populace to have you know,
(24:22):
a share of power and to try to, you know,
do things the way we want them done. And people
will judge basically whether we're being successful or not. And
of course, you know, the Trump administration, it's doing some
great stuff, but also some things like Venezuela look pretty
questionable from a paleo conservative perspective.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah, and you know, and the big I think, the
big elephant in the room is the question of not
just the question of Israel, but the questioning of Jews
as a people entirely. There is there are legitimate conversations
over Israel happening, and then there are just anti Semitism,
and there is a difference between the two, and they
are being kind of mesh together. The transformation of young
(25:01):
people around the idea of Groper's or what that is
or you know who that is. You had a fascinating
peace in the American mind called defeating gropersm on a
conservative terms, and I thought it was so valid and
important because what the I think the response to the
rise of this genuine anti semitism has been is very outdated. Right.
(25:24):
It is like the Mark Levins of the world. I'm
trying not to name people's names, but like the Mark
Lebins of the world, who is no friend of mine,
and nor has I agree with him on most policy issues,
but he has his defense and his deflection of why
what you should do in your response or the rights
response should be wouldn't It doesn't work in the internet world,
and it doesn't work to the criticisms that are happening.
(25:45):
And I think that your opinion of it was very, very,
very intelligent, and it's not just to sit there and
boil things down to a liberal response. Could you tell
the into that. Could you talk about that?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:58):
So, I mean, you know, the right throughout the twentieth century,
basically you had such an enormous amount of cultural dominance
by progressives and by left liberalism to the point where
the conservative movement was only like a half way rebellion
against it. Right, So the conservative movement says, well, we
don't like the economics of this left, and we don't
(26:19):
like some of what they're doing, you know, in terms
of states rights or in terms of you know, kind
of national civil rights bills or whatever suit. So the
right was talking about those things, and of course it
loses those battles, you know, over you know, questions of
civil rights and the Voting Rights Act and things like that.
So you wind up with a kind of shell shocked
American conservative movement in the late twentieth century and the
(26:41):
early twenty first century, which basically, you know, is trying
to prove that it doesn't have all the bad qualities
that the left is accusing it of being. So it's
going out of its way to show, you know, we're
not racist. You're the real racist, it says to the Democrats.
And you know, we're the most anti antisemitic people on
the planet.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
We love Israel more than any one else. We are.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Therefore, look at how much we love the victim groups,
and you know we are don't call a suppressors, you know,
if anything, you know, we love you know, everyone who's
you know, you claim to be standing for more than
you do. And this is this is you know, it's
psychologically it's very interesting because this is like you know,
it's it's like a battered spouse syndrome or something. Right,
I mean, this is this is just the right overplaying
(27:21):
its hand and trying you know, to be more you know,
more Catholic than the Pope were in this case, more
progressive and liberal than Al Sharpton or something. Now you know,
obviously Sharpton has some some Israel problems, I imagine, but yeah,
it will go beyond that, but more and more, more,
you know, sort of anti anti defamation than the ADL.
In the limited media environment of the late twentieth century
and early twenty first century.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Maybe that was fine.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
But now you know, where people are free to you know,
kind of see just how clownish these people look when
they're making these arguments.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
It doesn't work at all.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
And that's that's one of the things that feeds into
the Groyper movement because I think the Grouper movement and
Nick Fuentes, these guys poke fun at and satirize and
mercilessly mock this kind of attitude from the right, which
is this you know, sort of constant defensive crouch and
this constant attempt to show that they are more progressive
than the progressives. And and so I mean that that
whole thing is is a dead end. That is not
(28:12):
only a dead end, it's counterproductive because the more that
the center right tries to, you know, play that card,
the more ridiculous it looks in the eyes of younger
people on the right right, so.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
They and just like add on to that point. It's
like in the two thousand and eight election to twenty
sixteen election when they were attacking Hillary for being too
hard on crime, and you're like, what are who are
these voters all of a sudden that are appealing to it?
And there are I would say that that worldview is
still a majority of members of Congress or centers. There's
(28:45):
a bill in the Defense Authorization Act which will force
suburbs to like take massive section and housing increases and
like because we you know, we have we don't have
enough opportunity zones and enough welfare programs for certain minority
po groups. And it's always about how do you appease
the people who vote against you at the cost of
(29:06):
the people who vote for you. And that's what the
right was doing. And that's why Donald Trump was such
a you know, shock, not necessarily on all his policies,
but at least in his rhetoric, a shock to the
guard rails. Let's see the bill crystals of the world
have you and you write and this is why I
think this piece was very, very thoughtful and thought provoking.
(29:26):
Is your solution to groperism. Not necessarily everything that everybody says,
because you could find something that's agree with almost anybody,
no matter where they are on political scale, but their
main contention, which is the true anti Semitism and dehumanization
of Jewish people, especially in the vitriol towards Israel. You right,
In recent centuries, liberalism has caused the West to lose
(29:49):
its sense of the duty. The universalists owes to the
particular Israel, however, reminds us of it. Just what does
that mean to the It's very eloquently written, what does
that mean to like the average person.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Well, you know, I'll kind of start from a fairly
abstract position and then come down to something more concrete.
So in a lot of ways, progressive liberalism is an
attempt to secularize.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And replace Christianity.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
And just as Christianity, you know, is a religion that
is universal and that you know, applies everywhere.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
God, you know, loves all of mankind.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Liberalism has this view that you know, liberal institutions are
meant to serve the entire planet. If you say that, well,
no institutions like our own government, our own nation state,
are meant to serve us as a people and not
serve the entire you know, the liberal faith all around
the globe that is seen by liberals, by progressive liberals
as being it's a heresy. I mean, it's really a
(30:45):
terribly immoral thing for anyone to say in their eyes.
And so and this this, you know, a big part
of liberalism as it has evolved over the last century,
is this emphasis on this sort of two tiered humanity,
where you have the good part of humanity who are
victims and who have been oppressed, and the bad part
of humanity, who are like demons, you know, in the flesh,
(31:06):
who are the oppressors and are always the source of wickedness.
And so justice, you know, in this liberal mythology is
precisely raising up and empowering and even allowing the use
of violence to those who are victims or oppressed, and
then tearing down those who are considered part of the
oppressor class. And you know, we can point to some
of the parallels this has with Marxism and its view
(31:27):
of economic class. But this is applying it to braces
and social groups, which is kind of ironic because of
course progresses insist that races, you know, far from their minds,
but it's not. I mean, race is really the core
of this. It's funny even to go.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Early construct it's all and it's just imagination exactly, but.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
It's the construct that apparently determines who's a good person,
who's a bad person, who gets the law on their side,
and who gets you know, a knife in the neck.
So and this this critique of or this worldview that
depends on victims and oppressors. This is one of the
things that you see, you know, a lot of defenders
of Israel actually playing into because they'll say, hey, Israel
(32:05):
is actually a victim. Jews, you know, historically have been
victims in reality, so you know, they should have a
victim class status and that means they should be part
of the top of the totem pole. And not only
in progressive rankings, but also those of conservatives who go
along with this, and that it just seems to me
is suicidal for Jews.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
For Israel. It's just a terrible thing.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Overall, because of course, the left has long since decided
that no, Jews are actually oppressors. If you look at
what you know, left wing radicals in America say about
not just Israel, but Jews in general. They will go
along with you know, black radicals who want to say, hey,
you know, the Jews are stealing our rappers, you know,
revenue from the record companies, just the whole thing. And
(32:46):
there's a great Sopranos episode you probably know, it's all
about this.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And one of the.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Great things, you know, when the Sopranos was at its best,
it was able to touch on these topics that everybody
knows and that everyone talks about in these communities.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
But of course, you know.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
That generally are not openly admitted in polite television shows.
So anyway, the Jews are actually now positioned as an
oppressor group, and in fact, you know, because they'ren oppresser group,
but they are a small group and Israel is a
small country. So they're really a test case right now
for whether this ideology of assembling all the victims against
(33:21):
the oppressors can succeed in you know, really crushing an
oppressor group. In some ways, they're a test case, and
that that's one reason why it's very important to make
sure that that test case doesn't succeed where these progressives
are trying to attempt it. Now again, I'm not so
much talking about direct policies towards Israel, whether giving them
aid or not. I'm actually very critical of giving them,
you know, lots of American money, but just on principle,
(33:43):
the fact that Israel is based on a people staking
a claim to a land. They're saying, you know, this
is our land as a people. We have a you know,
religious reason as much as anything we're making this claim.
And basically, you know, we might like liberalism or democracy
up to a point, but if those things ever come
out to conflict with our possession of our land, we
will reject those things. And that's what makes Israel a
(34:05):
very important country right now. And if you think about
how the same oppressor victim narrative is applied to the
United States as a supposedly settler colonial state, it's the
same thing on a much bigger scale. And we Americans
have to be prepared to say, you know what, maybe
trade is good up to a point, maybe you know,
we have a humanitarian concern for other people in various ways,
(34:25):
but fundamentally, if liberalism or other ideologies from the left
are going to attack our position as a people who
has a possession of our land. If you claim that's unjust,
We're simply going to cut off our conversation. We're not
going to allow ourselves to be morally bullied by progressives
into having this sense of guilt about our land and
our people.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Right. And you know, it's so funny that some countries
which are quote unquote colonial colonizer countries like Brazil, which
is completely you know, a Madi country of Portuguese former
colonies and the kind she's half white, half Metsisos and black,
they don't have this kind of identity crisis that the
(35:09):
United States has. It's very strange how that how certain
countries are plagued with this. And I think part of
it is, you know, deeper anti Semitism, but also the
fact that Jews are considered white and whites are the
ultimate enemy, and so for there is no escaping that parallel.
And I have a very good friend who is a
convert from being a liberal Jew to a conservative Jew,
(35:30):
and she always says, we just made all the wrong friends,
And I'm like, yeah, you picked a lot of the
wrong battles. You know, why have you? I don't have
any more questions about your articles, but you're just so
well thoughtful and read on everything. If you were talking
to a young conservative and eighteen year old, twenty year
old whatever, twenty two year old or someone just interested
in politics young, what are two or three sources that
(35:51):
they should go to that are that to you sit
there and say, this is really one of the more intelligent,
thought provoking, interesting things of what the basic principles and
the first Prince was of conservatism really are.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Well.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I do edit this journal of Modern Age which talks
about these issues, and you know, I think a young
person coming to Modern Age for the first time might
be a little perplexed because we'll talk about some of
these older issues as well, and we tap into our
archives which go all the way back to nineteen fifty seven.
But if they came to it on a regular basis,
they would actually find an interesting sort of conversation across
(36:25):
generations on the right, both from the new material we
publish the podcast that I do for Modern Age Everywhere,
and also this older material from Russell Kirk and Richard
Weaver and others. By the way, they'd be interested to
find out. I think that many of these you know,
sort of old these conservatives, like I mean Russell Kirk,
for example, says in nineteen eighty nine, I think it
is that not seldom have certain neo conservatives mistake in
(36:48):
Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States. So
I think, you know, instead of you know, following the
groupers down to you know, means and just a nonsense,
you could actually ask yourself, well, why did Russell Kirk
say that? And what was going on here? And what
were the neo cons actually trying to get up to.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Back then you.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Could look at, you know, people like Richard Weaver and Robertisbet.
They also had very conservative views, very right wing views
that I think would still appeal to a lot of
younger a lot of the younger generation.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I can also say another source that I recommend is
Chronicles Magazine. So Chronicles was sort of the original paleo
conservative publication. It was involved in a lot of these
conflicts back in the late eighties and early nineties. And
today the editor of Chronicles is himself Jewish, It's Paul Gotfried,
and so he's a good refutation both of these claims
(37:38):
that the Paleo's are anti Semitic, and he's got you know,
his own views which are quite i think well thought
through on Israel. I mean, he's pro Israel, but he's
not pro Neocon, and I think separating those things is
actually very important and Paul is a great example of that.
And then another magazine that I've been involved with for
a long time is, of course, The American Conservative, and
I know you've written there as well, and you know
that's a great magazine for you know, some pretty strong
(38:01):
criticisms of US foreign policy across the board.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
People are focusing right now.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
You know, they get a lot of flak for what
they say about the Israel relationship, but they're also focusing
a lot on what's happening with Venezuela, and that I
think is.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
That's where we're really being drawn.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Into, you know, a conflict that I think would be
you know, this this decade's Iraq war or this decade's
Libya crisis. So I think that's an important thing to
keep an eye on.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yeah. I like Paul Godfrey's writing against just always when
he has a book at it's you know, thirteen thousand words,
thirteen thousand pages and you're like, I'm Paul, this is
a very this is too why I brow from me.
But Dane McCarthy, thank you so much for coming on
this podcast where people go to read more of your stuff.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Well, you can find my podcast and a lot of
my other work at Modern Age Journal dot com. So
that's Modern Age Journal dot com. And you can also
find my syndicated column. I write a column every week
for Creators Syndicate. The New York Post usually runs it,
and so I can be found there also on Chronicles,
and I write a fortnightly column for the Spectator World.
So yeah, those are the places to find my writing.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
And Daniel is one of the people on the New
York Times when they'll be like, how do this debate
performance go? And it's like seven cycle. Liberals been like
I think Joe Biden look like the peak of health,
and Dmail's like, now he's in mental decline. Which I
always love watching your your reaction compared to, like, you know,
some of the very far left other commentators. So Dianel,
thank you for coming on this podcast. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Thanks Royan.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Now it's time for Ask Me Anything. If you want
to be part of the ask Me Anything segment. Email
me Ryan at Numbers Game Podcast dot com. It's Ryan
at Numbers Plural Numbers Gamepodcast dot Com. I love you guys' emails.
I have a bunch is sitting in the doc right now,
so I will get to them and we'll have a well,
maybe have a final end of the year episode where
I really go into all of them. I would do
a drinking game, but I've that would I've got so
(39:47):
few brain sales left to work with and I'm not
going to sit there and be able to drink through
a ask Me Anything segment, So but we'll have fun. Well,
I'm going to get through as many as possible for
the end of the year and make sure we close
up and start twenty twenty six fresh. This question comes
from John from Connecticut, John vmailman before and he says,
thanks for answering my primary question on Desanta's prospects going forward.
Is this only realistic path to the presidency to have
(40:09):
JD lose in twenty twenty eight and then run in
twenty thirty two, And any thoughts on the Atlas poll
that had a ten point two of a ten point
two four that said Sears was the within one point.
I would say on October twenty fourth that said Sears
within one point and Mers was going to win by seven. Okay,
so first on the poll, Yeah, Alice had a great
year last year and I didn't have this year. Good
(40:30):
this year and good, good numbers this year. And I
think that part of the problem with a lot of
pollsters is they're building universes of who they expect to
turn out. And I think that for Atlas, they were
probably over sampling Republicans, Republican independence, or people who just
didn't show up. Now, Virginia had a huge turnout, so
what my guess is that they didn't have enough low
(40:51):
propensity Democrats who would show up kind of put into
the numbers, and how they waited them kind of just
didn't work out. I mean, and it happens with all polsters.
So if it happens year after year after year after year,
you're goin to put those polsters inside and say this is,
you know, garbage. But if it happens once in a
ballo moon, everyone gets them wrong sometimes, so I'm not
(41:11):
going to hold them to it. Atlas is a fairly
new firm and they've had a lot of big wins
so I want to sit there and give them more
time to see their record before I judge them as
a good polster a bad polster. And I've emailed them
so many times that's come to the podcast. I would
love to have them and talk about there the way
they do polls. Okay and Desantas. I want you to
remember nineteen sixty may not have been alive. I wasn't,
(41:35):
but in nineteen sixty there was a very close presidential
election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and Nixon
goes on to lose by a smidge In nineteen sixty four,
Nixon sits out of that election for Barry gold Wars
nominee goes down in Flames but Goal. But Nixon actually
campaigned harder for goal War than anybody did. Nixon was
completely still on the ticket. He was like, I'm going
(41:58):
to campaign for my party. Go Water loses I think
all but six states or seven states, the Deep South
in Arizona, and then we go to sixty eight and
Nixon goes on to win. He runs again, wins after
this long break, and then he goes on to have
this landslide forty nine state victory in nineteen seventy two.
I think if I was consulting to Santas, which I'm not,
(42:19):
I would sit there and say, you know, build your
coffers up, for your packs, and hit the ground running
across the country and be on the team. And if jd.
Vance is the nominee or Mark Rubya's nominee, whoever's nominee,
hit the ground running for them. Can't pagn harder for
them than anybody else. You could possibly imagine, like make
(42:40):
that your full time job to be part of the
party and build that loyalty back up, because that loyalty,
you know, some residual loyalty is there with the average
Joe Republican who remembers Covid and all the great things
to Santas has done as governor besides Covid, I mean
Covid it was only the biggest part of his governorship,
but it when you look at all all the things
he's done, it's really a footnote. I mean, he's done amazing,
(43:03):
amazing things in Florida. Finish out your term strong, be
the biggest campaigner for the Republican Party across the country,
go to every swing state, raise money for them. Bill
Loyalty Show your part of the team. Campaign for who's
ever the nominee for president in twenty twenty eight, and
then if they lose in twenty thirty two, take another
look at it. Go on television and remind voters I am,
(43:25):
you know, the advocate. I'm the guy who turned Florida
into the deepest red state possible, and I think that
that is I think that would be the game plan
if he doesn't run in twenty twenty eight, which I
think he probably shouldn't, and if he still if the
Republicans win in twenty twenty eight and twenty thirty two
comes around at that point, call a day. Like history
is littered with men who would have made great presidents.
(43:48):
It is what it is. You don't win, and running
for office is like a window, and sometimes when it shuts,
it shuts for good. Ask Chris Christy right, he had
a chance in twenty twelve, and that was his only chance,
Santa's unless Trump would have made him as VP, which
in twenty twenty four, which is no telling he would have.
Unless he would have, then probably twenty twenty four was
the only time he could ran for president, and if
(44:09):
he didn't win, he didn't win. It happens, so happens
to the best of them anyway. Thank you for listening
to this episode of the podcast. I hope you like it.
Please like and subscribe in the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, YouTube,
wherever you get your podcasts, and I will see you
guys on Thursday.
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