The Daily Signal - #327: William F. Buckley's Legacy and Ideas

Episode Date: October 27, 2018

On today’s show we feature an interview with Kathryn Jean Lopez, a senior fellow at National Review Institute and an editor-at-large of National Review. We discuss how the National Review Institute is carrying on the legacy of the late William F. Buckley, founder of National Review and host of "Firing Line."Lopez spoke at The Heritage Foundation’s recent event honoring the life of J.J. Hanson, an opponent of physician-assisted suicide. Afterward, she spoke to The Daily Signal about how Hanson's story is an alternative to that practice. We also discuss the new movie "Gosnell: The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer," media bias, and why so many young people are supporting socialism.Also on today’s show:Clips from The Daily Signal’s recent trip to a Houston rally with President Donald Trump. Find out what these devoted Trump supporters say about illegal immigration.Your letters to the editor. Don’t forget, your letter could be featured on our show; write us at [e-mail] or call 202-608-6205.Some exciting news about one of our co-hosts.The Daily Signal podcast is available on the Ricochet Audio Network. You also can listen on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts.If you like what you hear, please leave a review or give us feedback. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, October 29th. I'm Rob Blewey, editor-in-chief. And I'm Ginny Maltabano. On today's show, we'll feature interviews from a recent Trump rally in Houston. Ginny traveled to her hometown to hear what's on the mind of these Texans. We'll share those clips with you in a few minutes. We also have some of your letters and some good news about my co-hosts.

But first, we visit with Catherine Jean Lopez, a longtime conservative journalist at National Review, who shares her perspective on media biop. bias, socialism, and what Americans can learn from the movie Gossnell. We'll be right back with that interview. Are you into storytelling podcasts that help explain some of today's toughest policy issues and debates? Every week on the Heritage Explains podcast, we interview experts, intermingling media clips and personal stories to help simplify issues from a conservative perspective.

Find us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Catherine Jean Lopez, welcome to The Daily Signal. Thanks for having me on. You are a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and editor at large of National Review. We're all big fans, of course, and have our own Kate Trinco, who is a National Review alum. So it's great to have you on the Daily Signal podcast. Yeah, no, it's great to be here.

I think I've known you for like two decades now. You don't look old enough for that, but I think it's true. That's not the first time that's come up on the show. It's not. Well, I want to ask you, just to begin with, tell our listeners about the National Review Institute. I know you had a major event just last week, which we covered on the Daily Signal, in which our former president, Ed F. F. F. Buckley, Jr. Prize for leadership and political thought. But it's just one of the many things that you do at the Institute. So tell our listeners

a little bit more about it. Right. So Bill Buckley founded the National Review Institute, and it's had many iterations over the years. There were a lot of great conferences in the 90s that went on. We have a fellows program, actually regional fellows program in different cities that started maybe about 10 years ago or less than that. And the idea now is really to focus on Bill Buckley's legacy and not just the person, but the ideas. And so it's very much in the tradition, too, of National Review in general. So we have the magazine, of course, which many of your listeners are probably familiar with. But, But this sort of complements it in a couple of ways. One of them, to be honest, is we don't know what the future of magazines are going to be.

Younger people especially don't subscribe to magazines. And so a number of the writers, including myself, are at the Institute. And we do other things. Like today, I co-hosted a panel with Ryan Anderson here on assisted suicide. So we're able to talk about ideas in lots of different venues and bring people together, which is something that Bill Buckley always did, both in the pages of National Review, and just by virtue of who he was. He would have people over for dinner and have conversations.

And, of course, there was Firing Line where, firing line really, first of all, the Hoover Institution, I'm so grateful they have a number of the episodes online. And he wasn't afraid to have anybody on there. He had Saul Olinsky on it. He ran the gamut. He had Mother Teresa, he had Saul Olensky. He had, there's a famous episode with Hugh Haftner, where he basically starts by saying, I think, I think you're contributing to the moral route of America, you know, is sort of, so he didn't, he didn't, he wasn't shy about his opinions, although in the mother Teresa one, he did say he was going to uncharacteristically not comment during the course of the interview. But, but anyway, so we're trying to, to continue in that tradition.

And obviously it's a really important thing right now, particularly given politics where politics is. What is the conservative movement and what is that going to look like in the future? So that's some of what we do. And I direct an institute on civil society, religion, and culture, which makes me so happy. I don't have to pay attention to the midterm elections as much as some other people have to. And we obviously do that at NR. but I can focus on some of the longer range. Yeah, well, we certainly appreciate it.

And, of course, we had a great event at the Heritage Foundation. I believe it was last year in which we honored William F. Buckley and his legacy. And as you and I were talking, the Daily Signal in many respects tries to carry on as well, the legacy of Buckley and the work that we do. And I'm glad you brought up firing, Larn, because I think in some ways it's kind of an inspiration for this show. Of course, one of the longest running or not the longest running public affairs program on television. So a lot to admire with William F. Buckley and National Review. So thank you again.

And, of course, his picture is on various floors of the Heritage Foundation. So he's no stranger to Heritage and he spoke here many times and was a supporter and friends of Ed Volner's and others. Yes. Catherine, you mentioned that you're here at the Heritage Foundation for the event that celebrated the life of J.J. Hansen. Can you tell us about who he was? An amazing man, and we had his wife as one of our speakers, and she's just wonderful and amazing. So he was a Marine, and he was diagnosed with brain cancer and was told that he had a few months to live, and he should just go home and die.

And at the same time, Brittany Maynard was in the news because she had gotten a diagnosis, and she was moving to a state where physician assisted suicide was legal so she could take her life. And she became a household name and he didn't. And his story needs to be known. So the day of his funeral mass, I emailed Ryan and said, we have to do this. And he agreed entirely when the time was right. Obviously, we weren't going to. I knew Kristen had to be a part of this panel.

And I'm so grateful the Daily Signal has interviewed her. She's just a wonderful witness. And what is probably most powerful about their story is he was a Marine. He had a wife who was in the fight with him who would be an advocate for him. People don't have that. People don't always have that. And so she talks about how hard it was for them. It's so much harder for people who don't know what they're getting into.

and obviously it's such an emotional time and issue. And if you don't have doctors on your side, which isn't a given that you have doctors on your side, it's a really dangerous place to be. So we wanted to celebrate his life. We started with two videos where we had him. So he was essentially a panelist, which was a tremendous thing to be able to do. And I remember he died at the end of last year. And in January, it was actually a blizzard in New York the day of his funeral mass.

And you would not believe the people who got there, including, I don't know how the, you know, this was one of those Noriesters, everything's shutting down, you know, civilization comes to a halt kind of things. And they live in Yuland, New York, which is sort of by the Catskills, I think, but it's very, very, very rural out of the way kind of place. People from California and Denver were getting there. It was amazing. I myself got there, I confess in an Uber, which is a whole other story, but made it within five minutes of the funeral. It was just, it was this convergence.

You knew everyone who was there was supposed to be there, you know, and maybe somebody was watching out for you to make sure you got there. But it was such a testament to his life and how powerful there was a over- overflow in the church parish hall, you know, because it was standing room only in the church in a certain point you can't fit any more people in the church. So anyway, it was tremendous that we were able to talk about. Not only his life and what they went through and the advocacy work that Kristen continues to do at the Patience Rights Action Fund, but we also had the mother superior of the Hawthorne

Dominicans who were an order of Catholic women religious who are dedicated to caring for cancer patients. And actually that day of JJ's funeral mass, a few of us wound up at their hospice in New York getting a tour of it. And it's really powerful when you start to get to focus on there are actual solutions here. We're not, people who are advocating against assisted suicide aren't asking for. for people to have to suffer needlessly. You know, that's not what it's about.

It's about providing the support so that people can live until the natural end. Well, and I'm so glad that we were able to showcase some of those stories. It is really remarkable, you know, the stories that don't get told. You set up that question by talking about the contrast, And it seems that the media does tend to celebrate those stories that end in physician-assisted suicide. And you don't hear about alternatives. So for us to be able to bring that. One of the other stories that I think has a similar parallel is Kermit-Gosnell.

You'll remember that during the trial, the media didn't show up. I mean, here is an abortion doctor in Philadelphia. You would think that the case itself would generate attention. But thanks to the work of Anne McElhaney, who was a guest on the story, podcast recently and Phala McAleer. There's a new movie called Gossnell, which is in theaters. You wrote about it for National Review. And I wanted to ask why you think it's so important for Americans to see this movie and what message it brings. It's important, first of all, because it doesn't have a lot of support. They had to fundraise.

They had to fight to get this in theaters. We should support it. Period. I have it on my computer, but I went to the theater and brought people with me because that's important. Opening weekend, you know, don't wait for it to go on Netflix or wherever, but go to the theater. And there's not much time because it's being taken out of theater. So go, go tomorrow, go this weekend. You know, actually, we had a small lunch discussion after our panel today and Gazznell kept coming up in the context of assisted suicide because the Gazznell case really shows the dangers of the complicity and the ideologicalization of medicine and politics. Because you had a Republican governor who said, stay away from that, you know, in terms of his

own health department, keeping a clinic to standards of care, right? because it was about abortion. We don't want to touch that. You see in the movie where the lead prosecutor is told, you're not going to have a career if you lose this case because it's about abortion. And so when you talk about assisted suicide, there's this danger that it becomes politicized. And once it's legal, the medical profession automatically becomes complicit in this. and, you know, doctors need to keep jobs, and so they go along, and all the, that is just

a disaster for the individual, right? And it's striking to me, too, that assisted suicide is pushed as is abortion with words euphemistically, like freedom, you know, and at the end of the day, this is not, this is not, most of the people who are going to be hurt by assisted suicide laws, as in the case with abortion are poor minorities. That's what we saw in Philadelphia in the Gossinnell case. Mostly black women, an immigrant who died in the clinic. This is, you know, we have these debates and it, but it's almost like we have the luxury to think about, well, this radical autonomy idea. at the end of the day, we're just ending people's lives and making families miserable.

And one of the important things assisted suicide is just on my mind, obviously, because we spent three hours talking about it today. But people are hurt by this. And the idea that the whole idea of sister, Mother Mary Frances talked about this today, talked about the sanctity of dying moments. We're really doing a disservice to people when we're saying ending a life sooner is better because, yes, we don't want to suffer needlessly. But very often at the end of life, that's where family reconciliation happens. We're just robbing people and depriving people of so much. But the Gaznell movie is really an example. First of all, the perseverance and the tenacity of the filmmakers.

And I give a lot of credit to the actors who said yes to this movie, because that was sort of a thinkless thing. That's another reason you should go out and support it. Dean Kane didn't need to do that, you know. This is the kind of thing that as conservatives we need to support. Not every conservative needs to work at the Heritage Foundation. You know, we need to be doing things like this. Well, Rob mentioned that during the Gossnell case, the media didn't really show up.

They've taken a lot of heat from that. The media is still taking a lot of heat in general. You've had a long career as a conservative columnist. How has the media bias become worse under President Trump, would you say? Oh, gosh. Well, it's certainly a subject of presidential tweets quite often, right? Yes. I think it's out in the open a lot more.

I've always been an advocate of, let's just be honest. We all have our worldview. let's just advertise what our worldview is. People know I'm a Catholic commentated, conservative commentator, and so my cards are on the table. I think everybody's cards should be on the table at the end of the day. And I guess that's sort of what Trump is managing to do, forcing people's cards to be on the table. Very often people in the media don't even realize their own biases, which I think is why there should be sort of an examination of conscience and newsrooms where you figure out, actually, this is what we've

been doing, advocacy, you know, because it would just make everything a lot more honest. Well, I want to ask you, by the way, it's great to talk to you about these cultural issues. I mean, I think it's one of the things that, you know, people like Andrew Breitbart always said culture is upstream from politics, right? And in so many cases, we see both the media and Hollywood and others, you know, determining the way that American people think about things. And one of the things that we've seen recently in polls is the support for socialism and socialist policies on the rise, particularly among young people and Democrats. What do you attribute some of these changes in thinking to? I mean, it's not long ago where it was thought of as, as I

believe Eric Bowling told us, if you called Barack Obama a socialist, you were called out by members of his own party and now they're wearing it as a badge of honor. I think some of it may just have to do. I was struck by the number of people who the primaries had supported Bernie Sanders and then switched to Trump. You know, some of it I think is personality driven. Some of it is a rebellion against the system kind of thing. Obviously, some of it's a lack of education. You know, something that drives me crazy and I'm sorry for anybody in the building who might talk about this,

but I don't think heritage people do. the constant talking about a civil war, a pending civil war, do you not know what the civil war was? We do not want a civil war, you know? I don't think we're on the verge of a civil war either. I think people who stoke that are having those kind of conversations are maybe lighting a fire in, you know, a combustible area. But I think that probably has a lot to do with it. Well, Ginny, you had the opportunity to visit Houston, Texas. hometown for President Trump's rally with Senator Ted Cruz. And we're going to play some of those clips after the segment.

So we'll hear from some of those Americans who are certainly opinionated about the direction our country is headed. Catherine, thanks so much for joining us on today show. Thank you so much. Are you tired of the left defining what it means to be a feminist? Then you'll love problematic women, a podcast and Facebook live show that takes on women's issues from a conservative perspective. Subscribe and tune in every Thursday. Ginny, you recently have the opportunity to travel with our colleague Morgan Walker to another Trump rally. This is your second in just a few weeks.

Tell us what it was like to be in Houston, Texas. It was great. The first rally we went to in Ohio was sort of in the middle of nowhere, and this one was smack dab right in the middle of Houston. So it was much more chaotic. But I think they gave out something like 100,000 tickets. They did it at the Toyota Center, which hosts the Houston Rockies. people were fired up, they were excited. What struck me is how many young people there were and how many women and also how many

families were there. And people were so willing to talk and so happy. And the clips you'll hear are about immigration and the caravan. But something else I asked them, which I hope we put out soon, is what is your message to President Trump? And people were so thankful, Rob, so grateful. They kept saying, don't let people get you down. You're fulfilling your promises.

We're proud of you. It was really something to hear that, especially in my first. hometown. So thank you all for letting me go down there. Well, we're glad you did and certainly getting outside of Washington and hearing from Americans is something that we love to do at the Daily Signal. So let's take a listen to what they have to say. We need to stop this mob of people that are coming up from Central America. And now that's going to be up to more than us. It'll have to be those countries involved in it too. I want to see him called the quote unquote caravan, what it really is. It's an invasion. And I want to see him take action on that.

a heck out of me because unfortunately we're going to have to take care of all those people and I don't like my tax dollars going towards that. There's rules and there's laws that people have to follow and that's how societies work and if you can't follow them then go somewhere else. I'm sorry but that's just that's just reality. I know they're wanting to come to the United States who wouldn't but I think they should do it legally and I think the way they're doing it is overwhelming. If they're going to come over here illegally then you know that's That's not right.

You know, we've got a lot of people that come over here and done it the right way. That's the way it should be done. I'm an immigrant from Mexico, but I'm here legally. I mean, we paid a lot of money to become legal. So it's, you know, my family, my mom, my dad, we're all here legal. I have plenty of friends who are here legally, my, you know, immigrants. And it's not fair that they've gone through the process. And then there are people just coming over illegally while these people are waiting years and years and years just to get green card,

citizenship. It's just not fair. I have no problem with people coming here and actually get their citizenship because I have a friend whose family has been working really hard to try to get a citizenship, but it's hard for him not to actually get it because there's so many actual legals here. Because I do business here in Texas, have a business, there are a lot of good, hardworking people that come here from other countries, and I'm sure they feel the same way that I do, that everybody comes in legally because a lot of people that are here that have businesses, they've all come in here legally and they're doing very well.

Yes, my mother came legally to the United States and from Canada. And so all these people coming illegally, it's not right. I feel bad for them, but come the right way. Get here legally and we'll welcome you here. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature some of our favorites both on this show and in our Morning Bell email newsletter. Ginny, what do we have this week?

Well, first up, Mike Williams writes, Dear Daily Signal, I have listened to the Daily Signal podcast for almost a year and enjoy it very much. I had a free moment at work today and thought that I would finally let you know. I am a 57-year-old black man who is a physicist in Washington State. I am an Army veteran who also served during Desert Shield and Storm. Please keep up the great work. Well, thank you so much for that comment, Mike. We appreciate your listenership and hope you continue to enjoy it.

This letter comes from Jenny Finn, who says, Hi, Rob, I'm a New Zealander living in New Zealand. I found the daily signal when looking for sane news commentary on U.S. events. Thanks for bravely doing what you do. Even though we're far away, we understand the significance of U.S. political events, particularly at this time. The whole world is affected by what happens in U.S. politics, your decisions, and world views. We pray much for your country.

We are pro-Israel, pro-protecting America. and making it great again. I pray strength, protection, wisdom, and fearlessness to you and your Daily Signal team. Well, thank you again for your letters. We always love hearing from you. We do, and your letter could be featured on next week's show.

Send an email to Letters atdailySignal.com or leave a voicemail message at 202-608-6205. And next we'll share this week's good news story about my co-host here, Rob Bluey, Rob, you received one of the 2018 Buckley Awards, and they recognize outstanding young professionals for their above and beyond service to the Liberty Movement, and they honor the work that William F. Buckley, Jr. did for the conservative movement. So congratulations. I know I was able to attend and see your speech. What was that like? Well, it was a true honor, Jeannie. I have to tell you, one of the things I said when receiving the award from the America's Future Foundation, which hosts. the event and has done so for the last couple of years. The Buckley Awards themselves are about nine years old. And being named, we just talked about William F. Buckley with Catherine Lopez.

And so as you, our listeners heard in that interview, it's really meaningful to me as a journalist myself, as somebody who's worked in media, to receive an award in his name. He, of course, did tremendous things throughout his career. And the Daily Signal, as I said, is in many respects a culmination of some of the ideas that he put forward and what we're trying to carry on only not in the form of a magazine, but a digital and multimedia enterprise. Something that you said in your remarks that really struck me to everyone in the room was about giving back. And you talked about how many great mentors you were fortunate to have during your career and your start and even now. And you know, you wanted people in the room to really think about being mentors themselves.

And I know you've been a fantastic mentor to me and so many people at the time. daily signaled in the movement. So thank you for that. And congratulations again on such a special award. Well, thank you. And I really do feel that that is so important. In fact, I was recently listening to a podcast from one of the award winner sisters. And she was interviewing Tony Dungey, who had a similar message. And Tony Dungey, of course, is the Super Bowl winning coach for the Indianapolis Colts, a former Pittsburgh Steeler. So I'm spot in my heart. And I really do think people like that who give back and any way that we can make America stronger in the future by helping young people is something that we can all contribute. So I'd really encourage our listeners

if you're involved in your community, find ways to give back. I also want to congratulate some of the other winners because they are friends of the Daily Signal. Erica Anderson, who we featured on this show in the past, is a former employee of the Daily Signal and the Heritage Foundation. She's written a book, which is called Leaving Cloud 9. She won an award. Carrie Sheffield, who is the founder of Bold, a news program, which just recently featured our own Kelsey Harkness, was another winner. And Christina Sandifer, who is at the Goldwater Institute in Arizona. So congratulations to the three of them as well. What a great night. I know you're able to share it with your family. So congratulations again and to all the winners. Well, we're going to leave it there for today.

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