The Dispatch Podcast - Motion to Placate | Roundtable

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Congress did their job—for now. Sarah is joined by Steve and Jonah on today’s episode of The Dispatch Podcast to discuss Speaker Mike Johnson’s successful passage of Ukraine and Israel aid and explain the intellectual history of the illiberal right. The Agenda: —Ukraine aid passed —Heritage Foundation vs. Erick Erickson —What is conservatism? —Columbia protests —Will history prove them right? —Genocidal language at Columbia —Looking Jewish Show Notes: —Ukraine: The Latest with Jonah —Jonah's recap of the Mike Johnson saga —Erick Erickson’s article on free markets —The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left —Norman Rockwell painting —Why are we protesting? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgir, and we've got Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg to talk all the things. Jonah, starting with you, kind of a surprise, the House and Republicans, speaker, Mike Johnson, functional. I don't even, it sounds weird to say that word because it sounds like it's not even a full word, um, like dysfunctional is the only word we've ever been saying on this podcast. They passed the Ukraine aid. Why? How?

Huh? Yeah. Um, I was just doing the London Telegraph's, uh, Ukraine podcast, which I was very psyched to do. And, um, I said on there, it feels like nature is healing. Like, you actually had this guy who was a backbencher and a bomb thrower, I mean, a quiet bomb thrower, but, you know, he was one of these guys who took the sort of populist line on everything and opposed Ukraine aid, become speaker and actually become statesmanlike and thoughtful and responsible. And he deserves credit for it and you should celebrate, we should celebrate it. I don't think it's necessarily long lived.

I think a lot of different things came into effect here. One is he was very smart to get Donald Trump in advance. to support this to some extent, right? To at least promise not to be a wrecker, a bowl in the china shop on it. And so people like Marjorie Taylor Green and Massey, Thomas Massey, and Paul Gosar, who, you know, I think we can say

are among the three worst Republicans alive today. People like that don't actually have much power within Republican ranks if Trump is not supporting them. If they're seen as proxies for Trump or whips for Trump, then they have a lot of power. But if they're on their own, people are much more free to say, yeah, get out of here. And so I think that was part of the dynamic. I also think the Biden administration was smart about how they handle this.

McConnell and the various relevant committee heads and national security types were smart. They briefed Johnson. They walked them through the consequences of this, according to the reporting and people have talked to. and there's something sobering, there's something reassuring that it turns out that when you, you know, like sort of the lesson from Spider-Man

with great power comes great responsibility, when you take even one of the sort of more populous guys and you actually put them in a position of power, and they are actually faced with the consequences of doing X or not X. And in this case, basically, but for Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson was the indispensable man because of the position, not because of his character,

but because of the position, if he held up Ukraine aid, Ukraine would lose the war. Or at least that is, or there's a very high chance it would. He didn't want to face that. He was persuaded by arguments according to all the counts. He was also persuaded by stuff about how Christians are treated and prayer. But like when actually like, holy crap, I'm going to go down in history one way or the other on this question. he decided to do, as he put it, the right thing and let the chips fall where they may, but he also handled it politically astutely, I think.

The reason why I don't think it's going to last is that, you know, and the reason why Biden was smart was, and Hakeem Jeffries and those guys, is they signaled without actually saying or making a big deal about it, that the Democrats would save Johnson if there was actually a motion to vacate, because he can't actually go out there and scream from the heavens, Johnson's our guy if you're a Democrat without hurting Johnson, but signaling that it would be futile to do it really helped isolate that trio, even though there are a lot more Republicans who are mad at them. But it's not like Democrats are going to be counted on to like save Johnson

on any other issues at any other time. I think this was a one-off or a four-off because there was four bills. And I think that they'd get Johnson's back if there is a motion to vacate, but then game over, right? Then it's Johnson's on his own with his Republicans and a lot of Republicans just don't want to get rid of him until after the election

in part, again, because Trump's incentive is, we're in this weird place where Trump doesn't want to be embarrassed by the GOP, which is like weird, right? And another one of these speaker fights would signal chaos

that the Republicans don't know how to govern, and that is not a message that is helpful for the Trump campaign. And also, the last thing is, this is a point Chris Starwalt made to me yesterday. There are a handful of Normie Republicans who haven't quit, who would if there was another speakership fight. They were just like, all right, I'm done. And then the Democrats become the majority party and control the House. And that's not good for Republicans. And it's not good for Bush, made it for Trump. And so it was a, it was sort of a perfect storm. Steve, I want to make an argument to you and see what you think of it. Because there's

been a lot of sort of sarcastic, dunking, eye roll, whatever you want to call it, that Republicans initially said that they wouldn't back Ukraine funding unless it came with border security. Then, of course, Senator Lankford negotiates a border security bill.

Trump comes out against it. Republicans reject it. And they pass Ukraine aid without border security. Like, Democrats were willing to give them a lot of what they wanted on immigration, and they reject it and instead gave the Democrats what they wanted without getting anything in return.

Okay, so that's the narrative, and I want to give you my version of it, which is that actually that was better for Republicans. They got what they wanted politically. Now, of course, if you care about immigration and want to solve the problem, you didn't get anything. But politically what they did, I think actually makes a lot more sense because if they had solve the immigration problem or done

sort of large-scale immigration reform that's only going to get done you know, once every so often as we've seen, maybe once every lifetime. You know, there's polling right now that says the majority of Americans favor mass deportation of illegal aliens in the country. That's not

what that border security bill was going to do. And look, this is why we haven't had comprehensive immigration reform because each side thinks they're one election away from getting more of what they want, yes, Republicans think they're one election away from getting more of what they want. They want it as a campaign issue. It would have taken immigration off the front burner because neither side would be able to really run on the issue. Well, the issue helps Republicans more. Therefore, they kept the issue alive. They didn't tie it to Ukraine funding. It was always a game of chicken. They thought Democrats wouldn't come to the table on it and they could reject Ukraine funding. But in fact, it was never that they actually wanted to get border security in exchange for Ukraine funding. What say you? Yeah, I think your cynicism is well earned. If you look back at the time that that broader bill was, broader legislation was

spiked, Republicans, many Republicans were pretty blunt about what they were doing, right? I mean, Donald Trump said, I need this issue. You had members of the House saying, like, we can't possibly give an issue. We can't work with Joe Biden on this. We can't give them an issue. So, I mean, they were, you know, usually that you have these operators are in the past you've had these operators who are sort of smart enough or sophisticated enough to play really cynical, um, politics and not admit it. In this case, they just admitted it. They just said,

yeah, we don't, we don't want this. We don't want to be seen as, as helping Joe Biden. On the broader, uh, question, the Ukraine funding question, I mean, I think you're, you're right to isolate what just happened and what had happened before. I mean, I think if, if you want to be optimistic about Republicans and about this moment, moment, you look at the summary that Jonah gave. And it was a very good summary. Maybe we should send you up to Capitol Hill with a reporter's notebook. Very impressive. It was weird. It felt weird to me. I didn't like it. It's weird to have me be prepared for something about anything. Y'all will notice on this podcast that I never go to Jonah first. No, I get it. But it's like, hey,

update our listeners on what's been going on with X. Steve, Mike, David. Yeah. But Jonah said ahead of time, he's like, come to me. I got this one. And I was like, okay. It was good. Impressive. So if you want to be optimistic about what Republicans are doing about Republicans in this moment,

look at what Jonah just described and say, okay, this looks like, you know, certainly a leader who seems to be maturing, maybe a party that seems to be getting more serious about these issues. But if you want to be cynical about it, Sarah, include everything that you described in the run-up to this moment. and there's not as much reason for optimism. On Mike Johnson specifically, I do think, I mean, I think the stories that have emerged that he took seriously the intelligence briefings that he was getting. And, you know, when you are Speaker of the House, when you are one of the big four in the House or in the Senate, you get sort of special intelligence briefings.

So you're privy to intelligence that even members of the Intelligence Committee aren't necessarily briefed on on a regular basis. They can usually get it. But there are special briefings that are reserved for the top two leaders in each party in each chamber. And Johnson was getting those and said, okay, that made a difference to me. I think that's pretty notable because, you know, so much of what we talk about over the last eight years is this sort of willing suspension of reality on the part of too often Republicans, sometimes Democrats. choosing to make political arguments, choosing to advance their political case,

and simply just setting aside reality. I think what we saw with Mike Johnson was he was not in a position to set aside reality. He would have had to look at the facts that were arrayed before him in these briefings and, you know, say in effect, they don't matter. They don't matter as much as this political moment.

And I do think the framing, there were a lot of people who made this case to him. It was interesting, It started coming up. The first place I saw it, I think, was in a tweet from Liz Cheney like months ago saying, you know, Mike Johnson will be on the wrong side of history if he, if he doesn't do the right thing on Ukraine. And it was a, it was a popular argument and I think a very effective one because, you know, we've seen and we've discussed here that Johnson is willing to do things that we know that he doesn't believe, right? I mean, his carrying the ball for Trump in December of 2020 on the, the, the Texas brief. He didn't believe it. He was telling people in real time that he didn't believe what he was doing, but he wanted to be sort of Trump's lawyer on it and thought the president deserved to make a case. I think, you know, in this instance, you saw that this was really going to matter. It was going to matter for a long, long time. And he did not want to be the person who was

blamed for allowing Vladimir Putin to dominate Ukraine and potentially go further. Okay. I want to take this to a larger question of conservatism because as the Republican Party feels like it's breaking apart on the issue of conservatism, there was an interesting Twitter back and forth about that from the Heritage Foundation, sort of the OG Reagan three-legged stool think tank. And this was, you know, this is Ed Meese's home. This is all of it, right? So Eric Erickson for National Review wrote a piece entitled, The Conservative Movement is Defending Free Markets from Both Sides. And the argument is basically, as he puts it, limited government and free markets are under threat from the left and from some on the right,

but principled conservatives are pushing back. And you had the chief of staff to the head of the Heritage Foundation kind of take this to task. And here's what he wrote. This piece sadly defines the problem with establishment conservatism. Free markets and limited government are not ends in themselves, but rather means to an end. That is, a justly ordered society full of human flourishing. The conservative movement must stop defending free markets, though it is a good,

and start defending the American family for which the free market was created to serve. Likewise, limited government is not an end unto itself, but rather a means to an end, that is, self-governments. This disconnect, by the way, is why Donald Trump captured the constitutional. conservative movement starting in 2016. He doesn't defend vague principles of conservatism, but rather the people and institutions those principles are designed to serve. The so-called three-legged stool coalition made sense for its time. But a new coalition is needed for today's challenges. I believe this new coalition should center around the traditional family, self-governance, and national sovereignty. A new coalition does not mean we are abandoning

conservatism, but rather fighting to preserve it. Okay, so look There's so much there There's so much there But in some ways he's saying I think less than meets the eye Because as he defends it later on You know, he's basically like

Yeah, yeah, I like that everything in the three-legged stool I just want to brand this differently So there's that aspect of it Maybe it's not as big a jolt as it first seems But there's a pretty big jolt here Of moving from process if you will to the ends itself. And then the means don't matter as much

if it's only about the ends. The conservative movement was really about the process. The process was the point. If we followed this process, then the ends would be better than any alternative, basically. It's sort of the, you know,

the worst form of government except for all the others. And I guess it sort of goes to like, what is conservatism? And I've been thinking about this at the most simplistic level I can. So bear with me at how dumb this is going to sound, but it's helped me, right? So again, take away all of the partisan teams that we have right now. I'm talking about political philosophy

of these terms. You have liberalism on the one side. This is sort of individual freedom against the state. You have authoritarianism on the other side, which is the state above the individual, the state's rights and abilities and then in middle of that you have conservatism what I'll define as Berkian conservatism Chesterton's fence conservatism minimalism

in change that things are there for a reason no revolutions small movements etc and so I guess Steve I'll start with you which is

I understand why they still want to call themselves the conservative movement, but aren't they basically just saying now that we think we have power, we're done with the Berkian minimalism conservative stuff, and we're just going to call ourselves conservative, but it's actually not in any way any longer philosophically conservative. Yeah, I mean, that's so interesting. It's an interesting way that you framed it, because I would say in some respects, they're probably closer to Berkian conservatism than the libertarianism or the more classical liberalism that this thread takes on rather directly. But if the question is, you know, is this the rift in modern conservatism? I think the answer is

clearly yes. I think, you know, one of the reasons that we all wanted to talk about this was because I think this lays it bare almost as well as anything. I mean, there was the Sorabamari David French fights. a few years ago, but this tweet thread from the chief of staff of Heritage Foundation, which was, you know, since it's founding in the early 1970s, seen as, you know, one of a couple of the staunchest defenders of the kind of conservatism that he is now, that he is now criticizing. And Heritage Foundation needs to update its mission statement, because the mission statement of the Heritage Foundation still to this day. Heritage's mission is to formulate and

promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. I mean, he basically takes on the first three of those. And if you look at what Heritage is doing on Ukraine and Russia, and I would argue lots of other things, they've sort of abandoned a strong national defense at the same time, the only thing that Heritage really still fights on as it relates to that mission statement is traditional American values. And that's sort of his argument there. Let me read his answer to that, which is on the mission statement. Yes, we base policies in part on those two ideas, free enterprise limited government, but we don't promote policies for those

ideas unto themselves. They are part of the map. They are not the treasure. Yeah, that's totally incoherent. Can I just say, like, that's totally incoherent. That is not what the mission statement says. So he can try to recast it however he wants. Yeah, he's just, I mean, he's making it up. But it's literally defining the difference between process and ends, right? Like,

he's saying, like, the process, like, yeah, that could be a helpful process to get to the ends I want. But if it's not getting to the ends I want, then I certainly don't care about that process. But the mission statement is laying those out as objectives. I mean, that's what the, that's what the mission of the Heritage Foundation is. And let me just say,

like, I don't come to this as a sort of a neutral, distant observer. I worked at the Heritage Foundation. It was my first job out of college. I worked there in 1993, and for six, eight months, I wrote on behalf of Ed Fulner, who was the founder of the Heritage Foundation and then the president of the Heritage Foundation. So I wrote many of his letters. I wrote to heritage members. I wrote to big foundations to get Heritage Grants.

In a sense, my job was to help understand and articulate. heritage's mission, what heritage existed to do for the founder of the Heritage Foundation. So what this guy is saying and doing, and look, this is of a piece with what we've seen from Kevin Roberts, who's the new populist Trumpy head of the Heritage Foundation. This is, it's throwing aside what the Heritage Foundation was existed to do, what it was created to do, what it had done for decades in favor of this new, this new, sort of right-wing populism that is very useful in appealing to small donors. Just asking for myself at age 21, did you make coffee?

I did not have to make coffee as a heritage staffer. However, I had interned there in academic relations six months earlier, and I made a lot of coffee, and I had the very unglorious job of Heritage published something called the annual guide to public policy experts and it was great book and it was sort of academics and researchers around the country if you needed to if a journalist in particular needed an expert on a subject you could go and just flip by topic and then call these people well my job was to update it so my job was to go in every day and call these people and you know in effect confirm that they're still alive because if them were very old and then asked them if they're

still experts on these given subjects and if they'd added expertise since the last time we asked them So that was my job all day, every day for a month, plus getting coffee. I love the image of Steve walking, little young Steve, walking into various offices, holding a mirror under the nose of ancient scholars. He's breathing. Still an expert. I'm torn reformed guys still hanging in there. There were some of those, for sure.

For those who were curious why I'd ask about the coffee at 20 years on, I'm still struggling with whether I was fired from my first job on. the hill for not making coffee and whether that was sexist or not. It goes back and forth, depending on the mood I'm in and how I wake up. Generally speaking 20 years on, I think I was fired for being obnoxious. But, you know, it's why I went to law school because I'd seen legally blonde and I thought, no joke, if I have a Harvard law degree, then they won't ask me to make coffee. That's a good reason to spend that amount of money. I bet if I'd just written them a check for that same amount, they also wouldn't have asked me to make coffee.

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Jonah, can we just really get to the center of this? What is the rift on the right? Sure. What is the difference between what Eric Erickson is saying and what this guy is saying, is it my process point? Is it, uh, some more authoritarian power interest? Like, get, get to the nub. You're a nub guy. So I, I want to say, like, first of all, you've experienced prepared Jonah. And, and now you've seen restrain Jonah. Like, I have, I have views on this stuff that I have been writing about at great length for quite a while. This is a weird podcast.

Informed, like informed Jonah and restrained Jonah? I know. It's very strange. Are you feeling Okay? Is there a fever? Should be called Jessica? Are you having a strong? I have forgotten the letter H. If that's a sign of something. Are you smelling anything? I smell burnt hair all the time. You're, I wouldn't use the word authoritarianism. I would use the word illiberalism and liberalism, right? It's sort of like, which is. Isn't illiberalism authoritarianism by a nicer term? Yeah, but anyway, but there are, there are, all right, that's fine. We can use authoritarianism. You're the host, you know. I'll use no, no, no, no, I'll use authoritarianism. That's fun. But the fundamental rift, I think you're focusing on it essentially correctly, which is that it is the authoritarian types

or illiberal types. They have developed this, at least among the intellectual types. They have developed this highly cultivated, I would argue, completely absurd argument that what they call with great scorn, procedural liberalism is morally bankrupt, neutral, and since the other side doesn't recognize it, the other side will always win when our side actually cares about norms and institutions

and rules if the other side doesn't care about rules. And so they've embraced essentially sort of a Schmidtian as a German philosopher, Karl Schmidt, philosophy of power. And I've been writing about this for a very long time about how the left, I used to criticize the left for being enamored with Saul Olinsky, who basically had any means necessary approach to politics. And when I was writing about it, I was saying it was bad. And a lot of people, I got a lot of attention for it. And then at some point, the power worship kicked in on the right. And they said, yeah, they went from saying, it's terrible how the left always wins by using these Olenskiite methods to say, no, no, no, no. Alenski was right. We just have to do the same thing.

And so at a philosophical level, there's a lot of that. And there's a lot of, again, scorn and ridicule for the idea of liberty being institutionalized as systems, as systems that do not lead to desired ends. And if you read Patrick Deneen, if you read a Jim Vermeul, if you read, you know, well, Sora Bimari is a bit of a moving target, but at times Sora Bimari... Most generous characterization you could give. Restrain Jonah. It's wild, right? And. Strange, you guys.

I'm concerned. If this keeps up, what do we get? They're going to have the, you have the situation where they basically say, we need new systems that guarantee the ends we want, even if they violate constitutional or liberal norms. And. Okay. I have a history question. I want to stop you here because I have a history question, which is, you are an expert on hating Woodrow Wilson, which is not. just an expert on Woodrow Wilson, an expert on hate him.

I know more about hating him than I know about Woodrow Wilson. Yes. And to me, and I obviously study this far more from the legal conservative movement side, but the same thing is happening. I would say the specific rifts are different, but the definitional why there's a rift is the same. And so I go back to the legal movement and how it was affected by the progressive movement. in and around Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Of course, it's not going to track their presidencies exactly, and I'll save my legal conservative and progressive movement thing for the flagship podcast. But to me, this is the same thing that happened to the Republican Party at that time when it was overtaken by progressives. And again, progressives of the historical movement that I'm talking about, not unrelated to today's progressives,

but a totally different thing. Right. Family lineage, but a different culture, child, that kind of thing. Yeah. Certainly not interchangeable. Correct. Those progressives were, and again, I'm summarizing like a whole big intellectual movement, but they were sort of about the perfection of man and society. And so economic regulation, eugenics, curtailing free speech were all good things because if you had those experts, in the right place who knew all the right things, you could sort of create this utopia, this progress. That's sort of the progressive virtue. And of course, the problem that they ran into is the same problem that every utopian ideal runs into, which is who gets to decide what that progress is? And, you know, eugenics is a great example of why that's a really bad

idea. And I guess I feel like this is the exact same thing happening to today's former conservative movement, they can abandon the means, the process part of this, because they know what the correct ends are. This is common good constitutionalism in the legal movement, and this is Sorabamari and those dudes that you named in the political movement, which is we know how a well-ordered society should look. Therefore, to the extent free markets help get us there, great. But if they don't, then ditch them. And the problem with that, Why do they think they'll be the ones in charge? And we already did this 100 years ago.

A hundred years ago, like, to the day, we've already done all of this. And it failed. Why would it ever succeed this time? Do they not know history? Why am I the only one sitting here? Like, this doesn't even sound creatively clever anymore. So this is one of my standard rants, right? So Friedrich Hayek, praise be upon him, of blessed memory.

probably his greatest essay was on the uses of knowledge in society and his basic argument was entirely sort of a pragmatically empirical argument even though it was couched in some theory which is simply that the reason why markets are good

at things is that they are better at coordinating information and knowledge and signaling things right and so like the amount of data the amount of influences that go into the price of a bag of potato chips includes everything from the weather in Asia to, you know, blight in Idaho to whether or not the price of oil for diesel

trucks and blah, blah, blah, blah. And no expert can grasp all of this data in real time as effectively or as efficiently as prices can. And so prices are a signal. And so the idea of incorporating, which was the progressive idea that basically John Dewey in that crowd said, no, no, no, individual intelligence can be so masterful. As Walter Lippman put it, the argument was drift versus mastery. Capitalism left to its own devices is drift. We're just going to go where democracy and consumers take us. Mastery is where experts, disinterested experts, will be able to use data at their fingertips to sort of direct economic decisions in a brilliant way. And high exploit, and it sounds great. It just won't work because you're not going to have

the kind of information and knowledge that the market conveys and close to the ground. And this was standard intellectual dogma on the American right from my entire life until about 10 years ago. And now the argument is, no, no, no, no, no. The reason why the experts and planners failed is because they were progressives. Conservatives know how to do this stuff. right and so that's the basic empirical flaw with the argument i do want to i mean i i can do this stuff all day and be happy to but i do want to get one point in here away from the philosophy even though that's where i would prefer to stay i think the way to understand what heritage is doing rather than some of the intellectuals is that heritage basically now sees itself and it

started with the tea parties the heritage foundation started to see itself long before Kevin Roberts got there as essentially a specific demographic or a specific market niche segment, whatever, as their embassy in Washington, right? They were representing a certain slice of the American electorate and their interests and their arguments. They were the Tea Party embassy in Washington. And when the Tea Party was in power, I didn't mind it that much because I agreed with a lot of the Tea Party and it was pretty libertarian. Trump took the Tea Party constituency, added some other people into it, kicked some other people out,

and made it MAGA and nationalist and populist. And now Heritage, under Kevin Roberts, Heritage is now the MAGA embassy in Washington. And they are not doing intellectual work. They're doing diplomatic work. They are translating the populism of their donor base and of the Fox News audience and the Newsmax audience and the people that they want to turn into their donor base,

they are turning it into intellectual-sounding arguments the way diplomats will take the sort of raw political mood of a country and turn it into diplo-speak. And the diplo-speak for heritage sounds like it's intellectual, but that's really what they're talking about, is they're talking about basically we're going to do the things that are the interests of our constituency. And when the free market is in the interest of our constituency,

when limited government is limited government, for the things that our people care about, well, then that's what we're going to be in favor of. But when it conflicts with the sanctity of the family or some other high abstraction, they're saying, no, no, no, no, the government needs to intervene on behalf of our people. Basically, they want to pick winners and losers

with certain demographics in the society. And people on the left are say, oh, it's all about racism, and it's not that, and it's not all about Christian nationalism. It's about a market segment. And I think that that's sort of the problem. The last point on the philosophy stuff, Yvallivan, handsome man, powerful man, also, you know, my colleague and technically my boss

at AI, in his book, The Great Debate, he makes this argument about the difference between left and right in America and that it basically tracks the differences, philosophical differences between Edmund Burke and Thomas Payne. And Thomas Payne's metaphors, the way he thinks about the world and the role of government is about reaching. a destination, right? It's about getting to a place and that making everybody in society march as a unit towards that destination, towards an end. Burke's metaphors are about space, about freedom, about a zone of liberty, where there are certain rules to protect everybody, but other than that, you're left on your own to do what you want to do. And that's American

conservatism historically, or at least prior to about 2015, is that the individual pursuit of happiness is an individual right, but we need a society in which individuals achieve their happiness in groups, which is how it works with federalism and that kind of thing. Heritage is basically buying into the Thomas Payne progressive understanding of these things and saying, no, and so are all these illiberal guys, is they say, no, no, no, no, individualism is the problem because it undermines the cohesion, moral and philosophical cohesion of the group, And they are talking about society as the irreducible unit of society basically being either the family or the community or a demographic rather than the individual. And that's liberalism means nothing if it doesn't mean that the individual is sovereign, that the individual is the captain of himself and that the irreducible unit of our politics is the individual, not the group.

And I would argue whether you call yourself right-wing or left-wing or conservative or liberal, if you practice philosophically and programmatically the idea of picking winners and losers among groups, you were no longer a traditional American conservative. Okay, so Steve, here's my question to you, and feel free to comment on any of that that you want. Why did, though, it work for so long with actual conservatism? Like, why did the Heritage Foundation? Why did Reaganism? Why did the three-legged stool, legal conservatism? From Jonah's description, it sounds like none of that should have ever taken hold in the first place. Correct. No, no, the other way around. It shouldn't, it should not have

not have been swept aside. I apologize. I miss her. No, and I mean, I don't mean should in a moral sense. I mean, like, how to politically it ever work? Well, I mean, there have been these temptations before, right? And I think back to Nixon's wage and price controls, which was basically the right-wing version of this, right? I mean, they were dealing with inflation. They were dealing with all sorts of economic problems. Richard Nixon decided that he wanted to create this cost of living counsel and impose wage and price controls. Not even, I think what Jonah described that progressives want, or maybe it was you, you know, this, I think it's a false notion that you can bring together the best

and the brightest, the smartest people in the country, they can make these decisions that, you know, where the market fails or where the market doesn't provide what they think the market should provide, but that's not how it works in practice. And, you know, the cost of living counsel under Nixon was sort of case in point. I, in the book that I wrote about Dick Cheney, I talked to him about this because he was one of the handful people in the room. I mean, it was a very interesting group in the room, Rumsfeld, Alan Greenspan played a part in it, this is in the early 1970s.

But Cheney described to me this scenario where Nixon in effect said, hey, we're going to do this. you guys figure out how to make it work. So they get together in this room. And they are all of the sudden passed with deciding the cost of a pound of hamburger. And then it looked around each other. We don't know what the cost of a pound of hamburger should be. And, you know, most of them, I think Rumsfeld was the most outspoken.

Cheney was sort of willing to do what Nixon wanted him to do. He didn't have, he didn't have sort of deeply formed ideological views at this. point. He was much more pragmatic. So he didn't object. Rumsfeld hated it. Rumsfeld said, I don't believe in this. I believe in markets. We shouldn't be doing this. But Cheney, as a point of trivia, ended up writing Nixon's talking points when Nixon went out and announced the wage and price controls and defended this dramatic intervention in markets. But it didn't work. It failed, right? And it failed for all the reasons that Jonah's arguments suggest that it would fail. I mean, it's not how prices work. It's not how the government works. So there have been these

temptations for conservatives along, and every once in a while, you see a conservative who sort of, you know, or maybe just a Republican, who falls for the temptation. But what makes this different is this is now a decade worth of temptation. And it's like an argument. They're making a case here. And what strikes me is that they're pretty blunt about what they're doing. I mean, I think that's why this thread from the Chief of Staff of the Heritage Foundation was was so striking is there's no pretense there.

I mean, he's just saying it, right? Like, nope, we don't believe in this stuff anymore. I mean, I guess he tried to sort of claw that back a little bit with his further explanation of the heritage mission statement. But they're just changing what the definition of modern American conservatism had been and the principles that are at the heart of modern American conservatism have been. As I say, I find it very useful for the heritage to do that. Part of my question is also, though, at the same time that the three-legged stool lasted for, if you want to call it, 35 years. Or you can go back to Goldwater and say it was 45 years. I mean, however you want to think about it. But a long time, there, you know, when I started out as a political operative, every candidate had to genuflect at the beginning of any speech about Reagan. Reagan's out of favor. The three-legged stool thing's out of favor. Like the whole political...

movement that they came from is being repudiated by the very same people who were genuflecting to Reagan every chance that they got. George W. Bush didn't change that, so it's not simply that, you know, Reagan was president, you know, for a few terms, and then as soon as there was sort of a new standard bearer, it shifted. That's not what happened. So, Jonah, what's your explanation for why the Reagan movement or Goldwater or whatever you want to, you know, Buckley, however you want to think about it. Why did it last for so long and why is it failing now? Because the three-legged stool had a lot more flex in it than people appreciate.

I would argue and wrote at the time that George W. Bush, who I think is an honorable and decent man and will be remembered better in history than people think, did some serious, at least rhetorical damage to the three-legged stool. He ran on a humble foreign policy. He was not a Reaganite as a candidate originally. he rejected Buckley's explicitly in an interview with Fred Barnes rejected the limited government thing

and he said, I don't believe in big government, but I believe in the strong government. And you would say things like, you know, when somebody hurts, the government's got to move. I mean, so that was not Reaganite per se, but there was enough given it that it was, and he was still a man of sufficient character working within the sort of muscle memory

of the Republican Party who did not want to throw over the three-legged tool. He just wanted to have some different emphases that it could survive that. Donald Trump does not know what the three-licked stool is, does not care about the three-legged stool.

And as of a certain character, people have forced themselves to make allowances for whatever comes out of his head as like some sort of genius thing. But moreover, there was the rot of the culture war, this thing that let this Olenskiite stuff

dominate the psychology of the right, convinced a lot of people, as David has often pointed out, that in the culture war, everybody each side thinks they're losing. And so there was this sense among a lot of conservatives and Republicans, particularly after eight years of Obama, who were like, we got to stop being Mr. Nice Guy. Look what it got Mitt Romney. He's Mr. Nice guy, and they destroyed him. They said he gave someone cancer because he bought a company, right? And Trump was this fighter, this counter-puncher, all this stuff. And because he has no coherent philosophy, basically a lot of the intellectual right

that was pro-Trump and donor-dependent, including small donor-dependent, the only safe harbor was to say, look, I trust Donald Trump. I trust his instincts, right? Because he contradicts himself all the time. You can't have a coherent intellectual thread in defense of Donald Trump

because he will embarrass you on it. So I think that was part of the cult of personality part is a big part of it. The capture of places like Heritage and Fox and talk radio by basically small donors and mass markets is a big part of it. But I also think, look, I mean, there's a thing like Donald Trump doesn't know who Agent Vermeul is

and could not, you know, and does not read Patrick DeNine. He does not represent these ideas in himself. He's a battering ram that has smashed through a lot of stuff. And there are a lot of intellectuals who, in pursuit of power, have embraced these ideas because you need a different idea than what came before that is consonant with the sort of strongman rhetoric that we have about Trump. And you're like, Sarah, you know, I've talked about this before. A lot of the common good constitutionalism people on college campuses, they take these positions, I would argue,

because they would rather be the president of their own group than be a peon in cog and pay their dues within the federalist society. Million times, yes. When the line gets too long, you figure out a way to cut the line. Right. And this is a thing on campus. Always been a thing on campuses is no one wants to be the assistant sports editor for the main paper. They'd rather be the editor of the whole new smaller paper and do whatever the hell they want, right?

This is a very common thing on college campuses. It's a very common thing in campus politics. And I think we're seeing it at scale with a lot of these people who are using Trump as a pretext to basically skip the line or who because they felt locked out from institutions like AEI or National Review is a very old story of people starting their own thing and claiming that they are this alternative to this calcified old monopoly and they're just grabbing the nearest weapon to hand to make their arguments and it's I think it's there's some very serious people I think Andrew Vermeel is a very serious guy right I think Patrick Denine is a

very smart guy, but they're getting caught up in arguments and movements that I think would, that but for Trump smashing a lot of this stuff, would not see the light. Yeah, I mean, I think this is in some ways the most under discussed aspect of the last eight years, particularly if you look at it and sort of the what's happening on the intellectual side of the right, because it's not just, you know, they make arguments, as I say, pretty candidly, pretty openly that what really needs to happen is conservatives needs to be, need to be the ones exercising this power that the left is exercised for all these years. And if we need to cast aside the rules and the processes that have held conservatives back all these years, so be it. But the better

argument, or I'd say it's an argument that lays alongside that is that they themselves want to be the conservatives who are exercising this power. It's not just that theoretically they think conservatives should be doing this. They want to be doing this. And in many cases, they make these arguments, they create these arguments that sort of impose intellectualism around what Donald Trump is doing. And it doesn't matter as much what Donald Trump is doing. He's exercising power. So they claim it's conservative. They claim it's their own. I mean, stop for a moment and think about how absurd it is that you have people like this Heritage Chief of Staff claiming that it's really sort of a version. I mean, he says this, that it's Donald Trump and Donald Trumpian

conservatism that will save the American family. Like, stop and think about who Donald Trump is and what his family looks like. And think about how absurd it is that you're going to make an argument that he's the one who's saving the American family. Last point, I mean, the joke is sort of on them, I think, at this point, in many ways because Trump has done what Trump almost always does, which is people rush to defend them. They often make indefensible or incoherent arguments on his behalf, and then he just undermines them at a certain point. And Trump did this this last month. You have all of these people saying, you know, this is Trumpian conservatism, this is modern conservative conservatism, this is what Heritage is saying, we are now

the true conservatives. And Trump says in March, I'm not even a conservative. I'm just a common sense man. I'm not a conservative. I mean, literally, the quote is, I'm not a conservative. I'm a man of common sense. You have all of these people bending themselves into contortions trying to claim Trump is a conservative and Trumpian conservatism as their own. He's not even willing to be on their own side on it. Okay, so to summarize, what I find sort of fascinating about all this, though, is there's been people at the back of the line

who didn't want to wait in line every single generation. It worked this time. And more to the point, it's also working worldwide, right? You're seeing Trump-like people being elected everywhere. And so, you know, whenever we talk about this, I try to bring it back to like, why now, how do we explain not just what's happening in the United States and this conservative movement, but sort of internationally as well. I keep coming back to the 2008 financial crisis, just giving a foothold in the door that was unlike what came before it.

But it remains fascinating. Relatedly, though, speaking of movements that are reaping what they sowed, very interesting piece in the Atlantic brought to my attention by, Nick, who won't come on this podcast, but we love you, Nick, and we love everything you write and post on Slack and maybe someday. What if we'd use like a voice decoder, Nick? Would you come on then? Maybe we could create a Nick Catojo AI that just speaks, that is, mimics what he would say. But don't you feel like the people you most enjoy reading are the ones that AI could never capture because they don't say what you think they're going to say and therefore what AI would think they're going to say. Like, George Will still is one of the best television commentators of all time because it was exciting. You weren't sure which side he was going to take,

what he was going to say. I was on TV with him one time, and I sort of forgot that I had to say something next because what he said kind of blew my mind while I was sitting there next to him. It was also one of the coolest moments of my entire professional career. But so, yeah, so I feel like AI can't capture you and Nick and they can capture me pretty well. Okay. So on the campus stuff, George Pecker and the Atlantic wrote this piece. It was basically arguing that, like, why these campuses are having trouble dealing with the pro-Palestinian protesters is because this is what they've taught them. And so on the one side, obviously these, you know, administrators and faculty were the same people who were doing these encampments in some. incidents in 1968 and they've just sort of risen up to the level of adults and so these students come to campus being totally immersed in the waters of settler colonial theology and oppressor oppressed dogma that they don't even really teach it or question it like they can't defend it they

don't really know the philosophy behind it or where it came from because it's just obviously what you believe. So how can they now tell these kids that what they're doing isn't right? On the other side, though, for the, you know, Jewish pro-Israel students, they've also taught students that any time you are feeling upset by someone's argument, words are violence. It is up to the person hearing the words to determine whether those words are offensive, not the intentions of the person saying them. And so... We, on the outside, see it as hypocrisy, right? Free speech for me, but not for thee.

That there were safe spaces for everyone else, but not for Jews. And so we are coming up with this anti-Semitism framework. And I think, Jonah, you and I have both felt at times that, like, kind of, at moments it is. And at other moments, that's not, it doesn't, the hat doesn't quite fit very well. And I think this explained it, this piece explained it well for me. We'll put it in the show notes that, like, yes, there's obviously a lot of anti-Semitism.

sort of sewn into the clothing here. But the clothing is just what these universities have been building and wearing for 70 years now, but it's coming to a head because it's two different things that they've been teaching that are now in conflict. And Jonah, I know you have thoughts about the pro-terrorists, as you have said repeatedly on CNN.

And boy, they've really enjoyed you saying that. I just, by the looks on all of their faces, their reactions, they love having you there to say that. Well, I mean, if you celebrate a terrorist group by normal earth logic, you are pro-terrorist. I do not find that it, I find it very strange how difficult this is for some people to comprehend. Can I just say one of the points that you made, though, that I think is really, really important and worth underlining is that you, me, everyone at the dispatch so repeatedly calls out. anti-Semitism on the right, racism on the right, bad actors on the right, where are the people on the left calling out their anti-Semitism? And in fact, I have experienced the exact opposite that despite calling out anti-Semitism on the right, whenever we talk about anti-Semitism on any show

that I'm on, they basically are like, well, I mean, but there's like tons of anti-Semitism on the right. I'm like, I know, I've been saying that. Why aren't you acknowledging that there's anti-Semitism on the left? And they downplay it. They say it's not as bad as the anti-Semitism on the or it's not anti-Semitism or it's not pro-terrorist. There's just, I guess I'm very thankful that the Trump stuff has freed us of that sort of mindset of defending one's side because it just does not exist yet on the left in any serious form from that pundit class. They're absolutely impressive writers who I think would say they were on the center left

who absolutely have called it out and are worth. Right. It's also just, I mean, we're going to go here. Worth pointing out that like, there is a whole, I mean, there are a whole, there are careers that have been made out of by young reporters chasing down Republicans in Congress and demanding reading them a tweet from Donald Trump or Eric Fuentes or somebody saying, do you condemn this? Do you condemn this? Do you condemn Steve King, right?

We're not seeing the same sort of media watchdogging. and holding Democrats accountable about any of this stuff. They're letting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say these are all peaceful anti-war protests and there's none of that passion to say, aha, see, I'm proving

by guilt by association, like if you're not willing to denounce this, Mr. Republican, then you condone this. We're not seeing any of that from the gaggle in the Beltway press. Okay, I'm bummed about this package, piece because I wanted to write about this point and I haven't read it yet, but it sounds like I agree with them entirely. I think it is, I've been collecting examples of this and if you guys see any more, let me know. I think it's amazing how many times people, they're usually nobody's, so I can't really hang it on them, but how there are these like people on Twitter and Instagram and these other places who will say, literally people will say it always turns, out that the protesters were right, right? That throughout history, whenever people protest, they may be

condemned in their own time, but history always vindicates them. And it's like, what on earth are you talking about? I mean, it's like, but this is the pedagogy of higher education. I went, because I was going to write about this, and damn you, George Packer, I went Googling through the course catalog of Harvard, just looking up the number of courses, teaching the history of protest as this morally wonderful thing, right? There's this, you can call it Selma Evie envy or Civil Rights envy. There's this whole thing about how, but for protests in the 1960s, you never would have gotten rid of Jim Crow. And I think there's a case for that, right? The civil rights protests mattered, and that but for protests, you wouldn't have gotten the end of the Vietnam War.

less of a case for that. You know what you got from the, I was talking to Starwold about this yesterday, but like what you got from the protests on college campuses about the Vietnam War, you got Richard Nixon as president. You got the bombing of Cambodia, right? I mean, the idea that going around screaming,

you know, this stuff about many more October 7th and death to America and that... One solution? One solution. And globalized the Intifada. You think middle America is going to be, like, oh yeah, this is the team I want to side with. And this idea that, like, literally, all you have to do to be right about anything is set up a tent and hold up a sign. So if, like, if I set up a tent and

hold up a sign saying two plus two equals a duck, does that mean that's what two plus two now equals? I mean, like, it is this such bravery on the cheap, this idea that you are on the winning side of history solely if you get to hang out with a bunch of your friends and make a lot of noise. But that is central to a lot of the pedagogy in American higher education where being part of a protest is seen as a part of a well-rounded education. And that if you didn't do that, you didn't get the full college experience. When in reality, the only people who think about college that way are basically professors and college administrators who did that and are nostalgic for it. Most people, whether they're left wing or right wing, do not go to college to cosplay

anti-Vietnam war activists or civil rights activists. They go to get drunk, to get an education, to get a job, to meet a girl or a boy or whatever. They go to parties, to go to sports. But they don't go to like, you know, right side of history reenactors sitting around on the quad, recycling their own urine and shouting ridiculous nonsense. And I think this is a huge part of the problem. And the other thing the people who are nostalgic for that do is they go become journalists. And it is the only thing that just sort of infuriates me more about this is how sort of like with all this other stuff we were talking about, when protesters protest from the right, it's like petting a cat the wrong way.

for a lot of journalists. Like, no, no, no, no. Protest is the good guy's form of, of demonstration and of, of, you know, politics. How dare the Tea Parties do this, too. This, you know what this is? This is fascism. But, like, Occupy Wall Street, awesome. It's funny how they all have no problem remembering bad protests when it's someone on the right protesting.

So, you know, one of my most favorite pieces of art. Because art in its best form, I think, should capture all the senses for you of a moment, and including one that you weren't at, is Norman Rockwell's Ruby Bridges painting. You know, if you haven't seen it, just Google it. It's stunning. It's all the things that art, I think, should be. Who do you think's throwing the tomatoes? Protesters.

Right? Like, why do you think she needed someone to walk her into school? protesters. They have no problem remembering Charlottesville and we will not Jews will not replace us as a protest but then when there's these other protests protests are always good and it's like well no you just you knew

just a couple of years ago how bad anti-Semitic protest. It was the reason Joe Biden said he was running for president right? Was Charlottesville. What is the difference between Jews will not replace us and one solution? Because those guys could have been chanting one solution just as easily. In fact, I bet they were. But I don't know. Steve, I don't want us to just all agree on this podcast. So I'm going to throw this out to you. I think that plenty of the pro-Israel folks are just as illiberal as the pro-Palestinian folks on these campuses. We agree with what they stand for. But they are not necessarily the good guys in any of this. I've seen some of them call for university presidents to be tried. like criminally i don't know um they have uh gotten the valedictorian canceled from speaking at the university of southern california because they sent in so many threats of violence if she were to speak um that's it's not you know fighting fire with fire

fine but i'm not going to cheer you on or think that you're the good guys just because i happen to agree with your side of the debate okay good you're right i will disagree with you look I yeah I will too when I think you're I think the the um if if you want to have a huge bucket of illiberal acts that that we look at in the context of these campus fights and campus protests and include the examples that you just included fair enough right I think that's true and and you could add in I mean I think if you if you look at what uh Texas governor Greg Abbott tweeted yesterday about the protests and about the reason for the arrests. He didn't say they were in the wrong place.

He didn't say that they were. They didn't get a permit. They were breaking the law. No, he said he didn't like what they were saying. We will stop anti-Semitism. I mean, it's just a clear violation of sort of basic, basic free speech rights. So for sure, it's the case that there have been moments of those who are fighting anti-Semitism where they've gone too far

or said things that go too far. I just think it's if they're the the same and kind, there's just so different in degree. I mean, one of the things that I find most striking about the kinds of protests that we've been seeing is just the willingness of people to say this

stuff. Like, there used to be some pretense for a lot of this stuff. And there just isn't anymore. I mean, whether it's the chance that you all have mentioned, whether it's the direct confrontations, this stuff is scary and it's they're they're open and unapologetic about it many of them i mean i think there are sort of three groups as far as i can tell i have not gone and reported on any of these

protests i haven't been a part of them but in having done reading about them there's sort of three broad groups i have not been a part of them good good to know but there are there are sort of I think probably well-meaning protesters who are there doing what they're doing because they are frustrated by the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Fair enough. There are protesters, it seems to me, maybe there aren't as many of them, but they're certainly vocal. And Lord knows the media finds them who are saying these, you know, I think using genocidal language. calling in effect for the extermination of Jews. And then there are protesters who are just there because there's a protest, and they don't

kind of know what else to do. And those are the funniest interviews, because they ask them from the river to the sea, what's the river? They don't have any idea. Or they ask them sort of why they're there. There was a very interesting or funny interview of a young woman who had made her way from the Columbia protest down to an NYU protest because she had heard that there were reinforcements needed at the NYU protest.

And they said, she was asked, so what is it that NYU is doing wrong? Why are you protesting? She said, I don't know. And she asked her friend, why are we protesting? I wish I were more educated on that. Yeah, I wish I were more educated on. Why are we protesting? So I think you have those three groups probably good to make distinctions among them.

I just will say, as a quota, you know, the way that Columbia has handled this has been atrocious. But in keeping with what we've seen from Columbia over the years, going back to the late 1960s, I had, I was involved or reported on Columbia administration bad behavior when I was there as a grad student in the late 1990s, Ward Connerly, who had read, who had led Proposition 209 in California in 1996 to ban racial and gender preferences in state education contracting, what have you. was an invited speaker by Young America's Foundation. They rented a room at Columbia and was coming to speak. And the administration at the last moment sort of declared that they couldn't guarantee his safety. And they canceled the contract and didn't allow him to speak. Now, he had an NYPD escort. He could have stayed safe for sure. But it was pretty clear there had been protests against Ward Connerly speaking. It was pretty clear that they just didn't want him to speak. So they shut the thing. down. This is the same university that, as we see today, is making all sorts of accommodations for people who are literally calling for the extermination of Jews and also went out of their way to invite Mahmouda Ahmadinejad when he was running the terrorist regime in Iran. Colombia allows people to speak or platforms people or amplifies people. The administrators agree with and they're willing to shut down others. So Columbia itself is guilty of illiberalism, even as it's trying to create

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investing beyond the benchmark, because your money can't grow if it doesn't move. Learn more at dynamic.ca slash active. I don't want to have one small disagreement with Sarah about this. I think there is a false equivalence as Steve puts it in just sort of scale. Obviously, there are Jewish pro-Israel people, Jewish and or pro-Israel people who are saying stupid things are being. a liberal. I'm happy to stipulate that. I haven't seen a lot of it, but fine. And there are certainly

ones who are aggrieved, right? But like, first of all, the examples you gave or the sort of allusions you made to the kinds of behavior, it's at least worth pointing out that those Jews or pro-Israel people are invoking the rules as they were explained to them, when they went to college, right? Yep, I agree. So, like, they are like, wait a second. That doesn't make it good. I agree, but.

And it doesn't make them liberal champions. Of course it doesn't. They're just, they're in the same soup as everyone else. We just happen to agree with what they're saying, but they would do the same thing if they had the numbers and the power right now. This is just a power thing here. That's where I think I kind of disagree with you because we, A, there's no evidence of that because they're never going to have the numbers or the power.

These kinds of things don't happen at places that have a high number of Jews. at them, like University of Florida or Brandeis or Tulane, there is a certain radicalizing thing that happens when, first of all, you are told this stupid policy that these universities have about safetyism and that words are, you know, words can be violence, but violence can be speech and all that nonsense, and we all hear or disagree with all that stuff. But you're told these are the rules that, you know, you can't be triggered, you can't be singled out for hate speech and all these kinds of things. And if you are, the administration is going to get your back and then find out except for Jews, right? So there's a radicalizing thing that comes with that. And there's a particularly

radicalizing thing that comes from that when you are not some pro-Israel protester, you're just trying to get to the library and you make the mistake of looking Jewish and they harass you and go after you. And so I think there's a little bit of victim blaming in the construction of your point. I mean, I think your point is well taken. that there are liberals who want to just extend. And it drives me crazy when Jews say or when pro-Israel people say, we just need to reinforce the fact that Jews are part of the coalition of the oppressed and should deserve victim status.

I don't like that. I think you should get rid of that whole scheme. I guess this is my overall point. Just because someone is saying something you agree with doesn't mean that you should be on their, that you should assume that you're on their team or that they're on your team. or that they're on your team. Fair enough. Sure.

Okay. Glad we solved that. I mean, I can argue with you more if you want. Yeah. No. Okay. One other. Also, Jonah, you said something really interesting about looking Jewish.

And I'm curious if, I mean, you grew up in New York. So maybe you never really had this experience. But I grew up in a very rural part of, you know, outside of Houston. and when I moved into Houston it was the first time anyone had said that I looked like a Jew and they did not mean it in a good way and it was the first time I'd really even experienced that

and I it was similar because my mother's side is from Ireland my grandparents you know born and raised and were adults in Ireland and they would always talk about someone like looking Italian and I didn't know what that meant either like I just I didn't really grew up in a place where there were enough people of specific ethnicities to start identifying where people were from. And I always find that to be a really odd thing still that people can kind of identify other people, you know, based on how they look. And I think that as we have more and more generations of mixed marriages, racially mixed marriages, ethnically mixed marriages,

that's going to get so impossible that future generations are going to be as equally baffled as I am by the concept that back in the day you could tell the difference between Irish and Italians just by looking at them and how they dressed

and what neighborhood they lived in or whatever. A great book on busing that I read about Boston in the 1970s, right, where you had all the different neighborhoods that were totally ethnically coherent. But, yeah, I was curious when you realize that you might

look like a Jew that someone else could think you look like. So it's funny. So first of all I mean one of the one of the good tells of being Jewish is if you're like wearing a yamika, right? You know, like so like there's those kinds of instances. That's a getaway. So and I want to thank there's a listener who I said at the beginning

of all this when people were just attacking people wearing yarmacas, Steve and I did this event in New York that we recorded as a podcast and I said you know I don't wear a yamika. I'm not a very observant Jew but it makes me want to wear a yarmica so I can just become a helicopter of fists when people come at me with this stuff. And a listener to the Remnant sent me a Remnant-branded Yamaka,

which is kind of awesome. But just me personally, like, when I first came to Washington, D.C., and I was young and single, and I had these Jewish friends, and they brought me to a couple, like, Jewish singles, you know, meetups at bars and that kind of stuff. And I went to a couple in New York, but, you know, also right after college or during college. because my friends were going to them and the number of

charming Jewish ladies who would say, you're not Jewish, are you? Because I don't present. You got reversed Jude. Well, that's the thing. It's like I have one of the Jewish names out there, right? I mean, short of Shlomo Abramowitz, Jonah Goldberg is like

super Jewel. But I don't think I look particularly Jewish, at least I've often heard that I don't look particularly Jewish. And I don't, I think there's going to be a longer tale for some people, particularly Ashkenazi Jews from, you know, a certain lineage kind of thing of looking, quote unquote, Jewish for a while because of the emphasis on marrying within the faith. So it's going to last a bit longer than maybe some other things. But regardless,

attacking and harassing people just because you're guessing that they're Jewish is somewhat what different than anything the illiberal Jewish people on campuses were doing. But Steve, and maybe, I don't know, maybe we're wrong. Maybe we're sitting here in our comfy little, you know, houses. But, you know, post-9-11, didn't all of us think what we would do if we had been on flight 93? You know, really put yourself in those seats and try to imagine, especially as a man. I can't imagine that the vast majority of men in this country didn't really think about it and say, yeah, I would have rushed the cockpit. in a similar vein, isn't it odd that we haven't seen more violence and particularly Jews going into these protests for the purpose of provoking someone to assault them and like really assault them?

It's odd that it hasn't happened. I'm grateful, I guess. One other example where I think I'm legitimately shocked there hasn't been violence. These jackasses in solidarity with terrorists because they're pro-terrorist. shutting down bridges and highways to, like, the entrance of airports. And I think about, like, if I was trying to get my wife to a hospital or something like that, or trying to get to my first job interview or anything like that, and these punks are doing that, I'm amazed that some people who are quicker to anger and fisticuffs have not taken things into their own hands with some of those people.

Yeah, I guess I am a little surprised. And I think, you know, knock on wood, I think we've sort of gotten lucky. I mean, you look at the intensity of the confrontations in the middle of these protests. And it is surprising that there hasn't been more likely. I don't know. I mean, it's a good, it's a fair question. I guess I don't, I guess I'm less surprised that don't have people going, going there seeking violence, looking to, to, you know, be the spark.

Except I'm sitting here thinking about it. I'm like, man, if I were a college student right now, that's exactly, again, as I'm sitting here now, as an older person, all of that stuff. But I think about it all the time, what I would be doing if I were a college student right now. See, but we're thinking about ancient Rome. Would you be doing it for strategic reasons? Would the goal, if you were going to do this, you'd go in there and say, like, I'm going to see if I can provoke, provoke. I would assume they wouldn't kill me. To these protesters into a violent response.

I would. I'm not saying that's a good instinct. I'm not defending it, but yeah. I kind of love the image of a young, young, winsome Sarah dressing up as Jewie McJewis and walking into. It would need to be a humid day because my hair can get real big. Zionism, bitches. I'm just glad you're out of college. But I mean, there's something about if you were a,

if you were a conservative on a college, on a liberal college campus as I was, this is always what conservatives were doing. This is the affirmative action bake sale. This is the inviting Phyllis Schlafly to campus. The whole point was to needle the rest of campus to provoke. And I didn't actually like those things from conservatives when I was on campus. but like that's what college students do when they feel like they're in the minority.

I sometimes did like those things. I mean, I liked the sort of the provocations so long as they were short of violence. I mean, I guess that's the big difference, right? Oh, I just like literally don't like Phyllis Schlafly and what she stood for. It really bothered me that like Phyllis Schlaffley and it was a bunch of men in college Republicans inviting Phyllis Schlaffley and thinking they were so countercultural. Like, okay. So one possible explanation of this is that they actually believe that they're pro Hamas and believe that murdering Jews is okay. And so, like, you always knew you were safe and it was cosplay doing the bake sale. But, like, when they say a thousand more October 7th, like, maybe they mean it and we'll kill you. Just a thought.

And on that cheery note, thanks for joining us for this extra long edition of Dispatch Pod philosophy from the 1915s all the way through 1916. to Reagan to your college campus. Exciting stuff. Thanks, guys. That was fun. You know,