The Dispatch Podcast - Pain and Protest

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David discuss the continued fallout over the death of George Floyd and the events of Lafayette Square, why this moment feels different, police reform on Capitol Hill, and the "defund the police" movement. Show Notes: -The crackdown before Trump’s photo op -David's Sunday newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgird, joined as always by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit the dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts, and make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. Today, we're going to talk about events in Lafayette Park. Will we look back on that as a turning point? And I'll push David and Jonah on why this moment feels so different from just six years ago and the polling data that backs that up. We'll get into police reform proposals from both sides of the aisle. Jonah, of course, will air his grievances with the hashtag defund the police. And a little on our public sector unions. And then we will make a total hash of our

lighter segment at the end. Maybe it's about historical mistakes or it was supposed to be, oh well. Let's dive in, Steve, I want to talk about Lafayette Park again. The Washington Post put out a 12-minute video of their sort of timetable of what went on in Lafayette Park that day, dispelling some of the misinformation, but also just really including sort of a broader look, they had this wonderful graphic where each camera shot, they then showed on a map so that you could see where the camera shot was from. It was well done. Is Lafayette Park still the turning point of this event? Yeah, I think it's a problem for two main reasons. One, because

what we saw the police and law enforcement more broadly do there, and two, the complete unraveling of the White House narrative. What we saw from the police, you know, as the Washington Post video depicts very specifically, and I agree with you, it's a terrific piece of journalism, really sort of next level. I encourage everybody to look at it. You know, they show Attorney General Barr, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Millie, in the area before there is this push on what was largely a peaceful protest. I think that the most egregious thing to have happened was one protester who was videoed throwing two bottles of water as far as we can tell. But otherwise largely a peaceful protest and the police moving quite forcefully on that protest to displace the protesters

from their positions. That in and of itself, I think, is problematic. The manner in which they did it and the reasons that they said they did it, which were false. This was not a violent protest. There had been violence the night before, but it was not a violent protest at the time they did this. So the police action is one problem. The second problem is what the White House said and did about this. The park police came out early saying there was no tear gas used.

We went in some depth last week about the semantic debate on tear gas versus pepper spray versus other rag control agents. But virtually every other aspect of the White House story. on this has collapsed. And you've had this back and forth between the White House and their version of events and who actually called for the police to begin their movement. You had Kaylee McEnany, the White House press secretary, point the finger at Attorney General Barr. You had Barr say, in effect, I didn't actually give the order. I just said get it done. I didn't say go do it, which I think to many, including me as a distinction without a difference. Then you had the White House claiming that the president had spent time in the bunker, which many believe led to this thing because the Secret Service was concerned for his safety.

You had the president say, no, no, no, I was just doing an inspection of the bunker. I was only down there for a short period of time. Then you had Attorney General Barr in an interview with Brett Bear on Fox News say, you know, this was such a serious situation that the president had been whisked to the bunker in order to justify the kind of aggressive police action we saw. other aspects of the White House story here have fallen apart. And I think I think it's a problem for those two reasons. One, this aggressive action that if you take the time to look at it, I think is disturbing sort of no matter how you feel about the broader issues at play here. And two, the fact that the White House put out a narrative that was false in many different respects. David, I don't, I don't want to leave what Steve is saying. And I want to have sort of a wrap,

a larger wrap on this conversation, but I do want to move to a different aspect of this. You have written some really eloquent, wonderful things this week, but I want to talk to you about why this feels different compared to 2014. And so I want to go over some polling with you. And, you know, listeners, how I'm against single polls, but this is the Washington Post poll that was released yesterday.

It mirrors, however, several other polls. polls. So I'm just going to use the Washington Post number so as not to confuse myself and everyone else. But don't worry, it does look pretty similar to the other polls we're seeing. Okay, 69% say the killing of Floyd represents a broader problem with law enforcement. From 2014, that question was 43%. So a 25 point or so jump since 2014 about whether it's a broader problem or an isolated incident. I mean, just a huge shift in six years. Yeah. But all Also, 74% of Americans say they support the protests. And even if you break that along ideological lines, it's 87% of Democrats, 76% of independents,

and even the majority of Republicans, 53% of Republicans. And when you ask them whether the protests have been mostly peaceful or mostly violent, this is where it got really interesting to me. 43% say peaceful, 43% say violent. And if you're thinking, but wait, so many say they support the protest. that means that people who think the protests are mostly violent still support the protest. You are correct, actually. 53% who say the protests were mostly violent still support the protests.

And of those who say the protests have been largely peaceful, 91% support them. So what's interesting to me, and there's been this narrative that, like, violent protests will help the president because of his law and order messes. of his law and order message, for instance. That doesn't seem to be playing out this way. And does that have something to do with why we've seen such a shift in six years? Yeah, you know, I was listening to Tim Alberta, talked to Charlie Sykes. And after he wrote this really fascinating piece about whether what we're watching right now, sort of the last stand of the quote, law and order Republicans.

And he had a lot of polling data in that piece as well. and the really fascinating question came up as to why if you look at the difference between where the public was when eric garner had that awful i can't breathe moment in new york uh to where it is now and i think it's a combination of several factors uh you have one is just incident after incident after incident two is many of them caught on video um and three is why particularly now, and it's not just the awfulness of the George Floyd video, which is one of the most dreadful things I've ever seen in my entire life. It's coming on the heels of the Ahmed Arbery killing and the Brianna Taylor killing. Brianna Taylor in Louisville shot unarmed in a no-knock raid

and the Ahmed Arbery killing in Georgia, which was, again, one of the most brutal things that I've ever seen. And what made the Ahmed Arbery added this veneer of official misconduct to Ahmad Arbery is it was a former cop. And people watched Georgia law enforcement officers watched the same video we all watched and chose not to charge the killer. And so when you look at that agonizing George Floyd video, you realize that Ahmaud Arbery shooting occurred. And then the law enforcement did not react until one of the attorneys for one of the men involved in the chase unbelievably released the video thinking it helped it just on top of everything else and then combine it with a I'm sure a degree of pandemic frustration it just reached a boiling

point and I think there's a point at which an awful lot of good-hearted Americans who had not been willing to believe that these things occurred in this country at this time and had been willing to believe that there was always another side of the story that made it less unjust, reached a point where they said, wait a minute, maybe there's not another side of the story. Maybe what is actually happening is what I'm seeing with my own eyes. eyes. And I'll also say this, and I don't know for sure, you know, I don't know about the numbers on this, and my perception could be skewed. But I think particularly amongst the younger generation

of evangelicals, what I am seeing from evangelical leaders with huge platforms across the country right now is this just this unbelievable, heartbroken sense of anguish at where we are. And these are people with huge platforms. The president of the Southern Baptist Convention put out just an unbelievably moving statement yesterday. At my own church, we reopened. We reopened on Saturday, I mean, Saturday, Sunday. We reopened Sunday, and we said out loud in names of each one of those three folks,

Brianna Taylor, Omad Arbery, and George Floyd. And this is not a social justice woke church. It's a PCA conservative, you know, theologically conservative church in the middle of Franklin, Tennessee, a very red part of the country. And there's just this sense of anguish. And so I do think that there, you can almost feel the tectonic, plate shifting. And, and, you know, it's so many different factors at once. I mean, I think for different people, they reached a different breaking point in different incidents. But these three coming one

after the other, after the other, and two of them on video, both of the ones on video, agonizing and brutal, I think something just shifted. Joan, I want to come to you on the politics. If you accept some of what David is saying, and you don't have to, of course. This also seems to be built on a certain amount of skepticism. The police statements that we used to give the benefit of the doubt,

then video comes out, they're not true. And I think that's happened repeatedly over the last two weeks. There are people who are incredibly skeptical of what the president says. Turns out, not true. Politically, have we moved away from,

again, the security moms, the law and order winning over the suburbs? I think so, or I think there's reason to believe that's the case. It seems to me that, I mean, I agree with David that one of the reasons why, I think two of the most important, facilitating factors that made this a tipping point moment, where one, there's really no safe harbor in that video to find some mitigating counter argument. I mean, you just watch it, and, you know, they're coming out, well, he had this,

George Floyd had this history. He did these bad things, real or alleged, I don't know, it doesn't matter because the guy was handcuffed. You know, and so like the idea that, so there's just no place you can hide, you can sort of bunker in and make an argument. And I do think that the role of the pandemic lockdown is, is underappreciated in the sense of people were desperate to find a legitimate excuse, moral excuse to just say, just say screw it and go outside. Doesn't mean the moral authority of this is wrong or any of that kind of stuff, but just that pent-up frustration, I think, was really real. And it helps explain why this is going on in Europe, too, now over George Floyd. On the politics side, one of the weird ironies of this

is that the whole reason why we can talk about, I mean, we'll get to defunding the police, which, you know, we will. It has issues. But the whole reason why you, you can sort of demonize, villainize, attack the police, say that the police are no longer necessary or all these various forms, good and bad, persuasive and unpersuasive, is that crime is so low. People don't remember what it was like when Joe Biden passed in a push for the crime bill. There were homicides across the country. New York City accounted for like 10% of the murder rate in the country. It's amazing. If you go back and you watch, say, early law and order, not the Trump tweets, but the actual show, or early NYPD Blue, those shows began as fairly

realistic depictions of what crime in New York City was like, and that was broadcast across the whole country. And so when the country is particularly safe, you know, there is this sense of, well, why do we need all of this for? What is the point here? And so the whole sort of, you asked last week about the sort of tribal attachment to the police on the conservative side, I think that still exists on a core group of conservatives, but culturally writ large, when you feel really safe, you feel you have more permission, more reason to really condemn the excesses of the police. And I think that that's one of the problems that the GOP, it does not know how to. talk about these issues when the reality on the ground is no longer reinforcing the rhetoric. Steve, you want to synthesize some of this for us? I mean, what set aside President Trump for a moment, what is the Republican Party going to do in 2020 if this is a catalyst issue?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a real question. I think, you know, if you're the Trump campaign, And you have to be actually focused in part, Sarah, on the question, just as you framed it. You know, you see President Trump now, I think, a couple times a day, just tweeting out law and order. And it's, I mean, it's an interesting, there's all sorts of sort of potentially interesting psychological explanations, you know, just sort of saying it, almost willing it to be true in the middle of these, these protests and riots and looting. But I think, you know, if one of, if we all believed, and I think still believe that the main battleground or one of the main battlegrounds of the 2020 presidential election is likely to be the suburbs, I think it's not yet resolved that the security moms of old are no longer security moms for the reasons Jonah suggests. I mean, I think, you know, we've had this, this period of relative safety in the suburbs. particular, certainly not everybody has felt this elsewhere. But if it gets to the point, if the Trump campaign can make the case that by taking some of these measures, by talking about

the kinds of reforms that David has written about, that others have proposed, that Republicans seem to be warming to, in the current context, does that jeopardize this kind of safety that we've grown accustomed to. And if so, does that change the way people vote? I think the Trump campaign is going to try to exploit that. I mean, they are going, I don't think the president has any choice but to be the law and order president. At this point, I think he can try to, you know, to adapt to some of this new reality, but I think he's going to run basically as the law and order, I'm going to keep you safe guy. And I think there are, you know, there are real questions about that's going to play, particularly with the kinds of Republicans that were voters that Republicans

lost in 2018. That transitions nicely to what happens now. David, I've heard your thoughts and feelings on police reforms moving forward. The rise of the civil libertarian, I think you've said. It's a moment. But you have Tim Scott, it appears, really leading the charge on putting together the Republican response on police reform. You have Mitt Romney being very, very, clear in saying black lives matter, and I assume joining in that effort, Will Hurd as well in Texas, a retiring congressman on the House side. Do you want to walk us through some of the potential conservative police reforms before we get to the Democratic proposals?

Yeah, well, you know, that's going to be, that's a really interesting question, Sarah, because it's pretty obvious that there's going to be some civil strife. Surprise, surprise, There's going to be some civil strife on the right about this. Well, you know, look. Well, and worth saying, by the way, that the president has said that reformed a qualified immunity, which I assume you'll talk about here, is a non-starter for him, and Republican senators have said, shrug, maybe yes, maybe no. Right, exactly.

You know, the seeds for conservative reform in policing are already there. Conservatives have led the charge on, and particularly in Texas, prison reform. Texas prison reform has been a national model. If you talk to an average person and you say, who's led the charge in prison reform? Who's been most influential in prison reform? The state of Texas doesn't come front of mind, but it has been. It truly has. And so if you look at two elements, one, qualified immunity that we've talked about on advisory opinions, I feel like I just, that's all I ever say are the words qualified immunity anymore. But just to just another brief word on it, this is what allows, removing qualified immunity will allow people

who've had their civil rights violated, yet still have to prove that your civil rights have been violated to receive compensation. As right now, most people who've had their civil rights violated do not receive compensation in this country. And changing that is actually, if you look on the activist side, not the politics side, but the activist side, you have a coalition of religious conservatives like mild employer, at the Alliance Defending Freedom, libertarians like the Koch guys, and the old school liberal progressives like the ACLU are all united asking the Supreme Court to revisit qualified immunity.

So the seeds are there on the right. Here's another one where the seeds are there on the right, this phenomenon called policing for profit. That's where this is dealing with civil asset forfeiture, another thing that a lot of people don't know much about. But the police use at scale, more in 2014, for example, the police seized more property from private citizens than was stolen from private citizens by criminals. And this is a situation where the police are able to take your property even without proving you committed a crime because they literally sue your truck. it's it's crazy you'll read these cases like united states of america versus versus 2017 Chevy

silverado and they only have to prove uh they they don't in many cases around the country they don't have the same standard of proof um people get their good their their uh property seized they don't have the ability to get it back and police departments fund a lot of their operations with civil asset forfeiture so they have a direct financial incentive to seize property and then you have these what are called, you know, revenue collection efforts of police. For example, the Obama administration's Ferguson investigation found that the primary aim of the Ferguson Police Department was revenue collection and not public safety. And so that meant an enormous effort to collect fees and fines from the, mainly, you know,

from the poor residents of Ferguson, which just ground them deeper into poverty. And so these are kinds of, these are reforms getting rid of policing for profit, a lot of libertarians have raised concerns about no-knock raids, lifting qualified immunity. All of these things are things where there have been seeds laid within the conservative movement more broadly, sometimes for years, to do something about this. And conservative thinkers on crime have been thinking about this for years. And, you know, there are some indications that the time might be at hand for this translating from activism and judicial efforts to, or litigation efforts, into political efforts.

You know, I was saving this one for you, Joan. I've seen your Twitter feed. I've been watching. Let's do some defund the police, both as a hashtag, which is, I think, it's a very catchy hashtag. I mean, there's a reason that the president is using it to whack Biden and the Democrats. and there's a reason that the proponents of it are using it because it has spread really easily and quickly. And on 16th Street in D.C., they, just north of Lafayette Park,

they painted Black Lives Matter and now call it Black Lives Matter Plaza. And the protesters actually added equals defund the police on their own. And yet, Mayor de Blasio in New York City, Mayor Frey in Minneapolis, even the D.C. mayor, despite that mural, Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Karen Bass, Corey Booker have all said that they do not support it. Joe Biden has come out and said he does not support it. And perhaps most surprisingly, Bernie Sanders has come out and said he does not support it.

Defund the police also when you break down what that actually means to the people who do support it, including, for instance, Congresswoman Alexia Ocasia Cortez, they don't mean getting rid of the police. What they mean is, you know, limiting the budget increases and using that money for other things to fund education or community programs or having social workers or community, a new community group, take over part of police work. And then you have some of the more academic literature, which is more on restorative justice, which includes abolishing prisons and really re-envisioning what a police force means, for instance. But it all comes under this umbrella of hashtag defund the police, which in an election year, again, even, you know, from Joe Biden to Bernie Sanders, Democrats are rejecting that label while Republicans want them very much to adopt that label. Jonah, you have had thoughts on this. I have had thoughts.

First of all, on the Bernie Sanders supporting the police thing, there is. is, you can Google it, a pretty rich tradition of socialists being in favor of the government having robust police powers. We don't have to get too deep in the weeds on that. Google, Google, Google. No, look, I mean, I agree with everything you said in the framing of the question. There are lots and lots of serious, smart, and or opportunistic and realistic politicians who say, we don't really mean getting, we don't really mean abolish the police. We mean serious reform. We mean farming out certain things that the police currently do to social workers, to medical

professionals. All of those to me, whether I agree with all of the specifics, are utterly defensible positions. Where I think you're a little, just slightly off, is that, If you go on Twitter, and I've tested this in various ways, I've A-B tested this, in fact, on Twitter. If you go on Twitter and say they don't really mean abolish the police or they don't really mean totally defund the police, you will get a firehose of pushback, including from quite a few blue checkmark lefties and journalists saying you don't know what you're talking about. That's exactly what they mean. And this is a... Yeah, I just don't care what people on Twitter as a representative of any...

No, no, I agree, but like, okay. Yeah, but okay, but the most, one of the most viral videos of the last week in these protests was the mayor of Minneapolis getting up and saying to this very pushy crowd, you know, standing up doing all of the woke testimonial stuff, which counted for exactly nothing when they asked them a yes or no question, do you believe in, do you agree with abolishing or defunding, I can't remember the exact word, to police department, he says, no, I don't, I don't support completely getting rid of the police department. And they're like, get the F out of here.

They're all flipping them the bird, right? That's kind of dispositive of my point, too. It's not just Twitter. And so I think the left has a problem here. There are certainly are, there's some seriously fringy, but with a lot of sort of street activist types behind them people who really do mean abolish the police. and sane Democrats, and also just including a lot of just sort of sane and realistic, serious left-wing people, understand that, first of all, there are some police functions that just have to be done

whatever you call the police. If you listen to the New York Times Daily podcast where they try to explain what defund the police means to the people who say defund the police, there's one interview from this New York Times reporter who says, you know, okay, so, you know, what do you do? when, you know, what do you do about murder investigations? And they're honest about it. And they say, well, we really just haven't thought through all of this stuff. And it seems to me murder and investigation is kind of like the whole, I don't want to get

all Max Weber here, but the whole point of the government's monopoly on violence is that it's the government that should, the state should be investigating murder investigations. And there are all sorts of other issues. And again, it was an interesting podcast from The Daily. They talk about, you know, having local and effect community groups, militias, night watches, that kind of thing, going out and protecting their own communities. And part of the problem with that is that's how you get George Zimmerman, right? Then all of a sudden you get groups who say, and this reporter who is black and has dreadlocks, he says, don't you have a problem when I go into a community and I don't look like I belong there? and we don't have professionals who are trained to deal with these kinds of things.

And instead, it's just a bunch of dudes with guns or baseball bats or whatever. I mean, he didn't get into all the weeds on this. That can't be the way we replace the police for a lot of these things. And so, I mean, I honestly think if you sincerely believe in abolishing the police, say so. By all means, say so. And if you don't believe it, drop this stupid slogan as quickly as possible. Because it's only going to get you into trouble. Come up with rethink the police, reinvent the police, you know, reboot the police.

There are all sorts of things you could come up with that convey this idea, start over with the police, that convey this idea that you really want to rethink from the ground up. But just because a bunch of angry activists who may have a point are sick and tired about hearing about police reform doesn't mean you should give in to their sort of radical notion of scrapping the entire, function of policing violence and whatnot in this country. It's just insane. So I, I think actually you make a very good point. And I think you're, I mean, clearly the examples you've given suggests and the questions that have been posed, not just on the daily podcast, but by other reporters as well have, I think, demonstrated pretty well that this hasn't been very well thought out to be to be charitable, right? They don't know what the next steps are. I will say, as crazy as the

abolish the police or defund the police slogan is, and I do think it's crazy, it has succeeded in shifting the Overton window, right? I mean, the whole debate now has moved that far left. So Bernie Sanders looks like a pragmatist because he's saying, we're not going to defund the police. And I think this in part accounts for the broader shift that David and Sarah were talking about a little bit earlier, where you now have Republicans embracing ideas. is that, you know, not only five years ago, but five months ago would have seemed radical for some Republicans to have embraced. And I guess my cautionary note here is there's the debate as it's unfolding now seems to be, I mean, it is entirely focused. And I think to some extent properly focused on the ways that we can rein in bad cops, bad law enforcement officials.

And there are all sorts of reasons that we're having that debate right now, of course. I guess my concern is do you throw out, do you embrace reforms that could have negative, possibly catastrophic longer term effects in the name of sort of fencing in these bad cops and hamstring good cops from doing their jobs well. And that's my concern about the qualified immunity debate. I mean, you know, it makes perfect sense. If your assumption is, boy, these cops are bad. And if we just tell them that they no longer have this qualified immunity, they might think twice before they do the bad things that these bad cops do. On the other hand, if you're a, if you've just graduated from the police academy and you're looking at getting a $35,000 year job and

you've got a wife and two kids or you've got a husband in two kids and you're just about to join a police force, and you're facing the prospect of financial ruin if you make a bad decision in the heat of the moment that allows you to be sued by somebody who doesn't like what you've done and not necessarily having even to prevail in that setting. And if you eliminate qualified immunity, do you set good cops up to become targets of criminal syndicates who then decide that they can muck up the system by going after good cops and slow everything down or target things through use and abuse of the legal system. I think there are those questions, and I know, David, you've given a lot more thought to this than I have, but as I talk to people

I know in law enforcement, and of course, I'm talking to the good cops. These are some of the questions that they raise. At the same time, they're very open to reform. forms on the unions. And they are frustrated. I mean, as one of them said to me, nobody hates a bad cop more than a good cop. They're open, and they know, I mean, you talk to them, they say, we know who the bad cops are. I mean, it's obvious when you work in that kind of a tight-knit environment, who the bad cops are. And it's not surprising often when you have these kinds of incidents, they will say, well, we knew this was coming. But they're prevented from doing anything to remove or eliminate these bad cops because of strict union rules.

So I think they're open to some of these reforms. I guess my concern is in the middle of this heated national debate, do we, because the terms of the debate have shifted so far in one direction, do we risk taking steps now that we might regret later? So, David, wait, I just have a quick, like, footnote question for you. How much do you think this is like end the Fed, but on the left? It's a little bit like in the Fed, but on the left. coming from people who have enormous

more influence than Ron Paul did far more influence not just politically but far more influence culturally and particular into the microculture of Twitter where they have extreme influence which of course is very limited and

it's much more limited in the real world but two things real fast one and this is something that I've actually been kind of going back and forth in our dispatch comment board about is if you look at the U.S. military and look at it as for the most trusted institution in the United States by far, after Vietnam, the military was at a low point. It was at a low point, not just in public esteem, lower, at a historically low point from public esteem, but it was in a low point in actual discipline. It was a low point in

morale. It was a low point of capability. And one of the things that the military did is it, you know, it just, it said, we're going to pay more, we're going to expect more. It went back to fundamental principles, but it also did this. It said, look, if you're going to voluntarily join to serve your country, we're going to train you very well. We're going to have very high standards and we're also going to give you a good life and not just waiting for the pension, but you're going to have when you get when you're an officer when you're a senior enlisted you can have a good life and and you know it's interesting Bernie Sanders said he wants cops well trained well paid well educated I don't disagree with that at all I think that

as supposed to defund the police or start to pull back on their budgets it seems like a lot of the activist position is pay less, expect more. I think you should pay more, train better, expect more. And this is, you know, but this is a big problem, especially it's going to be, as we're emerging from this pandemic, where municipal and state budgets are going to be under immense amount of strain. But, you know, one of the things that I think is just a truism is that if you want excellence, you've got to pay for excellence, and you've got to train for excellence. Yes, you can hold people accountable,

and you should hold people accountable. And one of my responses to Steve on qualified immunity is, look, nobody gets compensation unless either they receive a settlement or they prove a civil rights violation. So the problem I have with qualified immunity is, as of right now, if my civil rights have been violated, my odds of recovering are pretty low of getting justice for that. are pretty low. But I still have to, I can't just file a lawsuit and like, you know, get cash

out of the ATM. You have to prove the civil rights violation and a, and a defendant in a civil case has an array of defenses available and including defenses that are available based on things like split session, you know, reasonableness defenses, et cetera, et cetera. So. But the process itself can be punitive. Yeah, there are a lot of lawsuits now. There are a lot of lawsuits now. There are a lot lawsuits now. Absolutely, the process can be punitive, which is why you have lawyers that are provided for you. That is why your defense costs are paid. It is, yes, but absolutely, absolutely. I do think it's worth clarifying because I've seen some confusion on this on our chat boards and just broadly. Qualified immunity does not prevent you from being sued. Correct. It is part of,

and actually there's an interesting question, circuit split on who the burden is with to prove that the law was not clearly established at the time you did violate the person's civil rights, whether that's on the police officer to prove that or the person whose civil rights were violated. But regardless, we were talking about the lawsuit is pretty far along. We're at a sort of early stage of it. You don't go to trial yet, but you very much get sued and have lots and lots of attorney's fees and lots of appeals on this question. So qualified immunity currently does not prevent you from being sued and going through a civil legal process. So can I just add one sort of other issue here that we haven't discussed?

And, you know, I'm not always your feminist ally, but I'll always be your federalist ally. That's like on a Valentine's Day card. I love it. So much of the conversation about all of this from the president on down and with the activists and the media and all that makes it sound like there's this huge role for the federal government in any of this. And, you know, I personally think abolishing the police in Minneapolis would be a very bad idea. And if they did it, they would probably end up coming up with some dudes or duets or whatever, but somebody would still have guns enforcing the law somewhere. Maybe fewer of them.

Maybe they'd have a different name. Maybe they all be dressed up like Disney characters. I don't know. But there's going to be some people who need to have guns because you're not going to have a posse stop a bank robbery. And but regardless, I'm okay. If Minneapolis wants to do that, let's. Let them try and have a teaching effect. When Donald Trump, I mean, I love Donald Trump earlier this week saying, we're not going to let anybody defund the police.

And someone asked, how are you going to stop them? And says, well, we withhold all of these grants. Well, wait a second. You're going to punish them for defunding the police by defunding the police? How does that work? You know? And so I be in favor of some experimentation here. I think the political, getting back to the political problem, though, is that.

I think the silent majority is generally dead as a concept. I think that the silent majority is actually very loud now, thanks to social media. But there is for sure, I shouldn't say for sure, but I would bet large sums of still useful currency, that if you actually follow through on any large scale, any state, any metro area with something seriously that looks like defunding the police, you would activate far more opposition than you would support for it. I'm reminded of the Who's song, Won't Get Fooled Again. I think you'd see in Minneapolis meet the new cops, same as the old cops. Exactly, yeah.

And even the talk and even the talk of defunding the police, I think, you know, if you're on the left, be careful what you wish for. I think we've already seen in the current environment a dramatic increase in the purchase of guns. I mean, if people think the police are going away, you can count on the fact that we will see a tremendous increase in the purchase and potentially use of firearms. Steve, I want to ask you to take on this little micro part of this larger conversation because I think it's instructive to the larger conversation. When we talked to Jane Koston last week, which was such a fun conversation for me,

because I love hearing how her mind works, she made some interesting points on, the conservative support for police unions and the liberal support for teachers unions and why maybe it's hypocritical and why maybe those are different arguments as well and I, you and I didn't get to talk afterwards and I wondered how you felt about that comparison the hypocrisy angle or the are they different?

Yeah, I pushed her a little bit on that precisely because I think the through line there is accountability, right? the thing that conservatives have consistently criticized teachers unions of all kinds, but in particular teachers unions about is that they're an accountability shield for bad teachers. And I think what you're hearing on the left, broadly speaking, is a similar argument, and I think to some extent a true argument with respect to police unions. I think that's something that the left will have to reconcile. I mean, we've already seen that I think labor, organized labor, unions in particular, have become a less important part of the coalition that makes up the Democratic Party, in part because there are fewer union members, both public and private, in part because they have less power than they did 20 years ago.

But I wonder if, as part of some of these reforms, if there are compromises to be had at all, and I'm not sure that there are, would we see some willingness? on folks on the left to give a little bit on on unions and you know I I think that there has to be sort of this basic recognition that that these unions are preventing really bad cops from being fired there there cases lots of cases that you can point to I think that make that clear including I mean Derek Chauvin had 17 previous um claims raised against him, there are lots of incidents like that that I think people could build an argument around. I think the big question is whether the sort of the Democrats, the elected left, the Democrats in Congress and states will give any on that. And it's a, it's a, I think it's a

competing, competing constituencies between the activists who are going to do what they can to make the police force and police unions less powerful and the old-school democratic constituencies that still count on those unions. Jonah, is this the end of public sector unions? One can only hope and pray. Look, I doubt it. Police unions have a different role in the Democratic Party than teachers' unions do, never mind bureaucratic unions and the federal government and the rest.

if you go and you look at the amount of contributions from public sector unions to Democratic candidates and campaigns over the last 10 years, it is, you know, I think the low end starts at 97% for a lot of these, you know, public sector unions. But, you know, it's worth remembering that FDR thought public sector unions were an outrage, the whole idea of, I mean, I get it As a conservative, I get it, if you were a coal miner in the 1920s, damn right, I'd want a union, right? I mean, I get that, given the safety situation and all the rest and the way they were treated. Where was the great Department of Motor Vehicle ceiling collapse of 1973 that justifies public sector unions? It is such garbage.

These are people who basically exact concessions from politicians that the politicians get to use taxpayer money for, that then when the bill comes due, the politicians are out of office. And you get a lot of things from working for the government, job security, all of the rest. The idea that you need, all of these protections, I mean, at least I understand the argument for protections for police.

I don't quite get them for EPA bureaucrats the way that they've got it right now. So that's interesting. So you're actually willing to draw the distinction the other way that police should have hiding protections, Whereas I think that the left would say they should have, you know, these are the guys carrying guns. They should have lower protections compared to teachers. They should have higher standards, right?

Because I agree, the EPA guy can only staple you in the forehead. But the people who have dangerous jobs, I understand why they would want better union protections than people who don't have dangerous jobs. And, you know, that's a big part of where unionism comes from is dangerous working conditions. David, I'm worried that we've just seen why we will not have compromise on ending public sector unions. Because Jonah believes his point is totally reasonable that the police have a better argument for having a union. And I think the left believes that teachers have a better argument for having a union. And this conversation will rage and cancel each other out. And maybe we'll move forward on qualified immunity.

For the record, I'm in favor of reforming police and fire unions. Yes. I mean, I... Sorry, I'm taking your argument and twisting it for my own purposes. I am very negative on public sector unions from police through the whole, from police through teachers. You can protect people from unfair, arbitrary, and capricious employment actions absent unions. I hate to keep going back to my military experience, but soldiers do not have a union and they do have, but they do have a degree regulatory protection, and they do have due process protections. But what that allows us to do in the military, though, especially early in a career, is sweep out the bad soldiers. In fact,

before my unit deployed to Iraq, the JAG officers in the unit were working late into the night every single night, discharging from service all of these terrible soldiers to the extent to that my regiment deployed slightly under strength on the books, but it was a classic addition by subtraction. And that's a story that a lot of officers can tell you pre-deployment, how their units will have swept out, sort of like remove the worst of the worst, and have improved the units overall. But that's not without regulatory protection, and that's not without due process.

You can, you can do that. This isn't, this isn't rocket science. It's very possible. And so that's, you know, that, but again, this goes to Jonas Federalism point. We act, you know, sometimes when you talk about police unions, we act as if there's just this one union and this one collective bargaining agreement when there are just countless collective bargaining agreements across the country. And I think, you know, it might be time for a state to try some reform, some union, public sector union reform that at the very least removes from collective bargaining. targeting sort of the disciplinary process. And with that, thank you, David.

Perhaps we leave on an optimistic note for change for the future. Okay, listeners, I need to confess something. We have this little text chain, all of us, and we chit chat about what we're going to talk about the next day and things like that. And for whatever reason, and I can't really pinpoint why there was a total collapse last night in communication where you're going to find out why. So for our ending topic today, well, let's just, you'll see the answers. Jonah, what is something in history that people get wrong that annoys you? Golly.

What an interesting question. It is an interesting question that I just asked right out of the blue. Yeah, fascinating. when you know when they make the making of documentary about this podcast this will be a big chapter you know the 10 part documentary yeah behind the podcast on VH1 so I have so many I actually want to do a whole remit I have to do a whole remnant on all of this but I would if I have to pick one for right now it is the designation of Austria after World War II as the first victim of the Nazis. And it was done for the sake of the Cold War to bring the Austrians online. And meanwhile, Switzerland gets demonized for resisting, joining the Third Reich for the entire day of World War II. They're supposedly the bad guys. And the country that literally, not figuratively, literally through a ticker tape parade welcoming the Nazis as they marched in

and took over their country is hailed as the first victim of the Nazis. And it drives me crazy. Jonah, let me tell you my answer to that question. My answer is when people talk about life expectancies at different points in history and constantly say that the life expectancy in ancient Rome, for instance, was 25 years old. Of course it wasn't. That was the life expectancy at birth, meaning your chances of making it today, too. We're only about 50% at some points. So, yeah, I guess that would make it a 25-year life expectancy, but it's a wildly misleading statistic.

The life expectancy in ancient Rome was actually closer to 53 years if you made it to adulthood. And I have this handy-dandy shirt right in front of me. In England and Wales in 1841, if you made it to age six, your life expectancy was 56 years. And today, by the way, it's 79. No, no, you meet people who think that being 25 in ancient Rome made you old. Made you old? Oh, my gosh. No, it didn't. It's so annoying. Okay. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you. David, you took a slightly different tact on this question. Yes. David, why don't you tell us something that you think was a mistake in history? Yes. I mean, I interpreted the question like people interpret defund the police. which is to say not at all based on what the words were. I took the question seriously, not literally.

If I could just read all this text message, I literally said, Jonah, do you mean a mistake in history? Or do you mean a mistake people make about history? And Jonah said, I'm in a mistake people make about history. And David comes this morning and is like, I took it as a mistake in history. Like I couldn't have been more clear. Okay.

So I came with, well, and maybe because I had actually been thinking about this because if you are a subscribe. This has to be real history, by the way, David. It's real history. Okay. It's real history. Not man in the high castle. So if you're a member of the dispatch and you read my newsletter, you know that I've been really excited about the SpaceX launch and the return of Americans to space from American soil for the first time in nine years. I've been fed.

I loved the SpaceX blooper reel, if you will, that you had in your last newsletter. It brought me so much joy last night as I was watching it in bed, just like endless. It was a little commentary at the bottom. It was so good. It was spectacular. And so it reminded me of the biggest mistake, at least from my perspective, as a sci-fi nerd, of our space program. And you all say it with me, the cancellation of the X-20 dinosaur in 1963. Jonah, did you know we were this close to having an actual space fighter that was going to fly, take off, and land, to, you know, launch from a launching pad and land on a runway 15 years before the space shuttle.

And it was going to be a single-seat Air Force fighter called the X-20. Who was it going to fight, David? Who are we fighting? Well, all I know, Sarah, is we're a lot less ready for the aliens now. because we did not get a 40... Will Smith has made clear that we'll be just fine eventually once they come. Think about if we've had a space fighter in 1966, 44 years of space fighter development, we might be close to the X-wing at this point,

at least somewhere near the Viper, you know, in Battlestar Galactica. And so just think about that, Jonah. I know you'd say, I know you'll sympathize with me. I'm with you. I'm not sure it warrants. completely doing this kind of violence to the question. But I'm with you. Wait, speech is now violence?

Wait. Just wait until we get to Steve. Steve, you have answered a different question. Entirely. Well, the original, I have answers. I just chose to answer the one that I thought was best. I have answers. There were, in fairness to Steve, we did, we threw

out a lot of different questions. I thought it was pretty clear the one we landed on, but Steve chose from the potpourri of options, his own, that was very clear we had not landed on. And the question was this, just hypothetically, I mean, a way out there scenario, what if someone hadn't been able to have alcohol for nine, the last nine months and was just really looking forward to a change in that, what would you recommend they have? And honestly, of anyone to misunder, to pick this one, I'm very grateful at Steve because I actually do want Steve's suggestion. I mean, for my friend, this. I think people, you know, people are going to assume that I will come up with some kind of Spanish wine and I won't to end the suspense.

But let me, let me in the spirit of the actual question that Jonah posed just off or two without going on at length about them. Part of my frustrations are the common misunderstanding of the history behind the three-fifths clause of the Constitution, tremendously frustrating, the common misunderstanding of the separation of church and state in our history. I think there are many people who believe that the Constitution actually says this, which is a pretty fundamental misunderstanding. The right question, so I'm maybe not the best person to ask. after one of my, after the birth of one of my children, I smuggled in a small cooler for my wife

with cans of Papp's blue ribbon into the hospital. So that would be a strong, a strong contender. But I think the right. I'm going to guess that wasn't the first one. That's not a firstborn. I think it was not. I probably would have been too nervous. That's like a senior level.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think, you know, given the fact that we're headed into. summer, the temperatures are rising. I will go away from a suggestion of a Spanish red wine big and heavy, although we could have gone with some kind of pre-a-a-a-a-grinche-based, lighter wine. Jonah's face right now, you guys, Jonah's face. I just wish you all could see it. Steve, Steve, don't, don't, don't. Just get, get. But the right answer, I mean, I could have done a Rueda, I could have done a Verdejo, which are the Spanish white. And the number of you who are

writing in asking for the Spanish wine podcast. David's head is. news to come. We got another request for that yesterday. So news to come. Joan is losing hair as he pulls it out. Sarah, the right answer, I think, is a nice bottle of Groth Sauvignon Blanc. It's clean and crisp. If you chill it, I actually like it colder than they recommend. It's fantastic. And I think it would be very refreshing upon your return home as you chill out with the brisket although brisket is red meat and this is a white wine there's a little i'm not eating him fair so sarah uh to paraphrase donald j trump i call jonah j goldberg calls for a complete and total shutdown of the light item feature on this podcast until we can figure out what the hell is

all right we will i will have uh it will lay down the law law and order on the light item feature moving forward. We will have signed affidavits of everyone agreeing that they understand the question and we'll stick to it. Thank you, listeners, so much for joining us. We appreciate all your support and comments, subscribe to this podcast and become a member of the dispatch so you can get in on all of these comment sections that David in particular, he just like, he's in him, like the Matrix. And we will talk to you again very soon. Bye. You know, Thank you.