The Ricochet Podcast - A Fabulous Fourth

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

To kick off a great Fourth of July Weekend we’ll need firecrackers, but, of course, only with adult supervision. For the former, we’ve got John Yoo filling in for Rob and Charles C.W. Cooke as our first guest – for the latter, Mr. Bill McGurn. To start, Peter and James get to pick Yoo’s brain on a few of the recent Supreme Court decisions along with Bill Cosby’s release. Then Charlie gives an ode... Source

Okay, so this is actually starting to be interesting. Once you warm John up, he's okay. I have a dream. This nation will rise up. Live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal. As we know, there are known knowns.

There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and John Hughes sitting in for Rob Long. I'm James Lileks and today we talk to Charles Cook about America it's the ricochet podcast with peter robinson and john you sitting in for rob long i'm james

lalax and today we talk to charles cook about america and bill mcgurn about hong kong so let's have ourselves a podcast i can hear you welcome everybody it's the ricochet podcast number 551 why don't you head over to ricochet.com right now and sign up join Join us. Be part of the most stimulating conversation and community on the web. You're home for sane, civil, center-right conversation. You've been looking for that place all your years on the internet. Ricochet.com is waiting for you. I'm James Lylex in Minneapolis. We've got John Hughes sitting in from Rob Long, who is perambulating somewhere, and Peter Robinson, of course. Gentlemen, it's the

4th of July weekend coming up, and the Biden administration has tweeted out a GIF that tells us that prices are down, well, 16 cents overall from last year. It's a victory for the Biden economic plan. Pork and beans are down, hot dogs are down, ice cream is down. Lemonade is down. And chocolate rations have been increased by 40 grams. So I hope you spend your 16 cents wisely. But rather than talk about economics, we got John, you lawyer here. Not just any lawyer, but a member of the Pennsylvania Bar. So he's a little able to tell us what happened to Cosby. As I understand law this week, John, a rich man triumphed in the Cosby case. The church and state issue before the Supreme Court indicates that we are once again heading, barreling towards a theocracy, a fascist theocracy.

And also the dark money has racked up another victory because the Supreme Court said it's OK for shadowy, unnamed forces to corrupt our democracy. Do I have it right here? Let's start with Cosby. I think you've got the bottom line pretty much right. You also notice the nexus of Philadelphia in your first two cases, which screwed up the law so bad that higher forces had to intervene and correct the errors in my hometown. So in the first case with Cosby, there's actually a really interesting case.

So I think a lot of people are upset, maybe justifiably so. I think the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reached the right decision. And its holding was basically this. The prosecutor in that case, my home county, Montgomery County, I didn't realize Cosby and I lived in the same county. I thought I saw him at CVS a few times, at the cheesesteak shop. I don't think he gets cheese whiz on his cheesesteak. So he was basically promised by the district attorney. Cosby was promised by the district attorney in Montgomery County that he would not be prosecuted for any criminal sexual assault for the person in that case. That released him from any ability to claim a fifth amendment right not to incriminate himself and so when the victim sued him civilly for damages for money she once the government decided not to prosecute she went ahead and just sued him for millions of dollars he couldn't claim i have a fifth amendment right not to incriminate itself i refuse to testify the

court actually forced him to testify because the prosecutor said, I'm not prosecuting him. So this presidency Supreme Court said, that's a deal. Once the prosecutor says that, no person later on, a new prosecutor can come along and say, I changed my mind. We're going to go after Cosby, which is basically what happened at trial here. So I think Cosby actually, despite no matter what he did and whether it was right or wrong, I think his victory is actually a victory for individual rights and for the meaning of the Bill of Rights to protect all of us from the government to force us to testify. This is, tell me if I'm wrong about this. No, don't tell me if I'm wrong.

You'll tell me if I'm wrong. this. No, don't tell me if I'm wrong. You'll tell me if I'm wrong. Here's the way it occurs to me. He got off on a technicality. Nobody is suggesting that they've discovered any new evidence about the way the man conducted himself. The way he conducted himself is not at question here. Somebody screwed up. This is the same kind of thing as a criminal getting off because a cop fails to read him his Miranda rights. It's a pure technicality that's letting a guilty man walk. Correct? No, sorry, Peter. You're still going to get one right one

of these years, but not this time. Your streak continues. The problem was that Cosby was never prosecuted. So you would be exactly right, Peter, if this had happened and the prosecutor had gone ahead and tried Cosby the first time and he had the ability to raise his rights. But in this case, the things that Cosby said the second time were used against them, but they were made not in a criminal court. They were made in a civil court. And those civil courts, in fact, that case never went to trial. Cosby settled that case. So this is the sequence.

Prosecutions drop the first time. Then the victim sues him in civil court. That case actually never goes to trial. Cosby and the victim settle. Yeah, he pays something like $3 million. And then things he said as part of that settlement were then used against him in the criminal trial. In a new prosecution. Or there is a prosecution.

The prosecution, they change their minds and say, oh, look, what we have on the record now, suddenly we have a case. Throw the guy in jail. Correct? Yeah. Roughly. All right. Yeah. Why didn't his lawyers bring this up at the very start of the prosecution? They tried. They tried motion to dismiss because he's got to get out of jail card free and they can't do this. And then the judge just waved it away and let it proceed. There's very good lawyering here and very bad lawyering here. And it goes to your point, James, at the beginning, maybe the rich guy got off here because he could afford good lawyers. His attorneys did identify this and they raised it. This was the main issue on appeal at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and they won on it. And it's quite clear that the prosecution the

second time should never been brought. There's also really bad lawyer here. There is actually an interesting figure here, which is the prosecutor who made that promise in the beginning. Is none other than Bruce Castor, who was President Trump's second impeachment attorney. You might have seen him on the floor of the Senate just a few months ago yelling and screaming. In fact, I think he did such a bad job that you might have noticed he kind of disappeared over the course of the proceedings. And a different fellow kind of took over. I thought he made a terrible decision in the beginning to say, I'm going to publicly announce

that we're not going to prosecute Cosby for this. I thought, though, if you look at the evidence now, as Peter's suggesting, looks like the evidence was pretty strong against Cosby. He shouldn't have dropped that. But so Cosby's attorneys did a real, I mean, a really, really good job. Well, there's the other case. Oh, go on, Peter. No, I was just going to say enough of the Cosby's interesting, but we have something

here that's historic. I think, right. The, the, but go ahead, James, you, you,

you're better at setting these things up than I am. We're going in the same direction. It's a little small, tiny issue, church and state, the Fulton versus I'm sorry, Fulton V Philadelphia court ruled the Catholic social service agency was entitled to a city contract. Even if it's religious views prevented it from compliance with local policies,

forbidding discrimination against same-sex couples decision said the city of Philadelphia unlawfully suspended a Catholic organization from a government funded foster care program, because it wouldn't work with same-sex parents. This seems to be contrary to everything that the courts are moving. And yet it was nine to zip. That's something. So why John was this a nine to zip. That's something. So why, John, was this nine to zero? We would expect one side to feel one way and the other side, I hate to say side, but we know that's the case here. Why was this unanimous? Was there some fundamental principle that left and right can unite upon?

Yes. And actually, the interesting thing is really the fight over between the conservative camps here. But the unanimous position, the unanimous agreement was the fact that the city of Philadelphia could not intentionally single out religious groups for discrimination. Here, right, they said the Catholic church is not going to be allowed to, I'm sorry, the city of Philadelphia is not going to be allowed to exclude Catholic social services, the Catholic church, from sorry, the city of Philadelphia is not to be allowed to exclude Catholic social services, the Catholic church, from participating in the placement of foster children. And the reason why was because the Catholic church does not believe in gay marriage. And the court found that the city of Philadelphia singled out. So it's interesting, if the city of Philadelphia had

just said, no group that doesn't believe in, say, equal treatment, equal rights for gays is going to be allowed to participate in our city programs. That would be one thing. And that's what everybody agreed on. But if the city of Philadelphia singles out Catholic churches, the Catholic church, that can't happen. That's a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution. But the interesting thing, and this is actually why, and Peter's right, this is a really important case, not just because of this free exercise point, but because it signals where the conservative 6-3 majority is heading. As you said, James, there are sides. We don't really seem to care anymore, like we did two years ago or three years ago, what the three liberals on the court think. Their opinions are not interesting anymore. The really interesting parts of the Supreme Court-

Could you just repeat that? I'd like to just gloat for a moment. We no longer have to worry about someone who is intellectually second rate, and I'm talking about Justice Sotomayor, she should never have mattered. And now she doesn't. Is that not a glorious thing to be able to say, John? Well, it started with the Reagan administration really took 40 years for that to happen. Isn't that the scary thing? But if you look at the liberal opinions, they are, I hate to say, they're kind of like warmed over reruns from the Warren court. There's nothing new. There's nothing interesting. They're just playing defense.

All they're trying to do is preserve their victories from the 60s and the 70s. All of the interesting arguments, all of the interesting opinions are now on the conservative side. This goes to James' point. There are two sides. There is a conservative side and a liberal side. But what you see in this case is actually there are two sides within the conservative camp now. There's the side led by Chief Justice Roberts, which tries to keep every decision as narrow as possible. This case is extremely narrow. In fact, as Alito said, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch are

on the conservative wing, the other side of the conservative wing. Just as Alito said, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch are on the conservative wing, the other side of the conservative wing. Justice Alito said, this case is almost a nothing burger because if you delete one sentence from Pennsylvania's statute and just said, nobody who doesn't believe in gay marriage is allowed to participate or nobody who doesn't believe in equal rights for gays is allowed to participate in adoptions. Alito says, seems fine under Chief Justice Roberts' opinion, and Philadelphia can just go right ahead and discriminate against. The problem, this is a funny thing, the problem for Philadelphia was that they didn't discriminate against enough groups. They singled out the Catholic Church, but they discriminated against the Catholic Church, and they discriminated against Republicans and conservatives and people from West Philly around them, they excluded more people

from participating in this adoption program. According to Chief Justice Roberts' opinion, Philadelphia would be okay. The problem is that they singled out the Catholic Church. Let's go to the next case, which has to do with election law, Brnovich versus DNC. And every time I keep looking at that, I thought, did somebody lose a vowel on the way to the court? It's no B-R-N-O-V-A-C-H versus the DNC. 6-3 decision. Court ruled Arizona. By the way, James, you better worry.

His wife's a federal judge in Arizona. After your little joke, you can't step foot within the state of Arizona. I guess not. I'm planning a trip there, but I will have to divert, I guess. I didn't know that the gendarmes will be at the airport saying that you made fun of a vowel. This name court ruled Arizona was on solid legal ground in enforcing rules that prohibit third parties from collecting mail in ballots, gasp and disallow votes cast in the wrong precinct. Oh, my God. Disenfranchisement. The majority rejected Democratic claims that the state discriminated against minority votes in a decision that could make it more difficult to challenge new state efforts to tighten election regulations. So 6-3, what does this mean? Does this mean that the days of ballot harvesting and letting people vote in the wrong precinct are over? Is this not again a threat to our democracy, John? Well, it's a threat to some people's vision of a pure majoritarian democracy with no rules, but mob rule.

The other interesting thing about this case is that it suggests that the Biden Justice Department, which is suing Georgia right now, is going to lose. It also suggests that the states will have very strong grounds to resist the passage of H.R. 1, this idea that there will be a uniform federal election code, which the Democrats are still pushing forward in Congress. And the reason why is this, the court said there's a law, the Voting Rights Act, which has been used for since 1965 to freeze the election laws, mostly in the Southern states, and then to subject all changes in voting laws in those states to extra scrutiny. And then really, it's used to challenge a lot of changes to election laws, redistricting and so on in a lot of other states too. The court said, and it's very interesting,

the court has never really said this before. What's important is that the court said, when we look and see if some kind of change to the voting laws discriminates on the basis of race, we're not going to look only at disparate impact, whether a law has some heavier burden statistically on one race or another. Instead, what we're going to ask is, does this law make common sense? Is this law reasonable? Does it place really excessive burdens in the way of people and their ability to vote? And as you said, James, ballot harvesting. And then the other part of the law that was challenged was, can the government make you vote in your precinct? Can the state make you vote where you live? And the court said,

look at the effects of these laws. Look at how these laws work. Is it really a burden? Is it really an effort to try to prevent you from voting based on your race to just require that you vote near where you live? Is it really an effort to interfere with your right to vote, to require that you hand off a ballot to a post office or an election worker? Or the other exception was, or allow, have a family member or someone living in your household deliver your ballots. And the court said, look, look at the common sense. That's just, that's reasonable. No one's, this is just not a effort like the ones in the South, in their segregation, to try to prevent people from the access to the ballot.

If the court applies that standard throughout, I think it's going to lose, the Justice Department is going to lose its effort to undermine and attack the Georgia voting laws that was passed. I think it's going to lose its efforts to try to challenge the voting right bills in a number of states that have been passed since January. And I think the states are going to have good political defenses in the Senate and the House against H.R. 1. John, a 4th of July question for us conservatives. On the one hand, this decision comes down, I'm just giving you my subjective response, and it's thrilling. Wow.

Donald, those, those, Defender-in-Chief, your book actually was onto something. Donald Trump, those appointments really did matter. The argument, but Gorsuch actually is a good argument for what we went through in the last four years. It really mattered. And then a moment later, I find myself thinking, wait a minute. All they did was say, of course, you fools. We can prevent third parties from picking up ballots, which is an obvious invitation to fraud. And of course, we can say that states have the right to organize land as obvious. All we're achieving with this 40 year effort to restore some kind of sanity to the court is just that the merest little step in the direction of, as you put it, common sense. And really, that's not that much of a victory. It's our guys huffing and puffing for 40 years and they produce. Yep, states get to

organize voting by precinct. So, how pleased should we conservatives be as we go into this 4th of July weekend by this 6-3 majority, such as it seems to be on the court? Is it a big deal or are they only going to be tinkering around the edges? I think so. That's the big, you know, now with inflation, $6.4 million question. I would say this, and that's what we're all thinking about, wondering about, are the Trump appointments the start of a revolution or are they just, as you said, moderating? Are they just, yes, he's tinkering around the edges, stabilizing, just saying this is just this far and no farther. Next term, it's really going to put your question to the test

because next term, you've got a case about gun rights, right? Can a state like New York essentially prohibit you from having a gun outside your house? You've got the abortion case. Can a state essentially ban abortion after, I think, 15 weeks, which runs counter to the something of a conservative counterrevolution on the court that really pushes back on what the Warren Burger courts did and maybe restore the Constitution and constitutional law to the way it was. So far, you can't say that the Trump appointees have done that, but you could see this as the start. right? This is to be able to say that to be able to see that happening next year, you would have had to see these outcomes this year. If they would have had to do this much.

Got it. Yeah. Then you would be worth it. They would have had to start someplace. Yeah. You would have said, oh, these last four years were a waste. Okay. Can I wedge in one last question about these about this very matter?

You've said, and this is one of those places where I trust you, John, you've said the intellectual ferment, the interesting arguments, if there's such a thing as intellectual excitement in the law, all of that is now on the side of the conservatives. And the liberals are just rehashing the old arguments. I looked a little bit at, I glanced at Justice Kagan's dissent in the Arizona case, and it was just civil rights, civil rights, civil rights. It was the greatest moment in the 20th century. There was no real, it was just trying to bring to bear the moral authority of something that happened more than half a century ago now. Okay. Do you sense that in law schools? Are your students starting to pick that up?

Well, what you're seeing in law schools and the academy, and you see this, what you see instead is not that much interest, as you say, in these opinions. Instead, what you see the left doing or people critical of this conservative majority is going way beyond things that the left-leaning justices say to things like critical race theory. Really explosive efforts to just say, let's burn the whole thing down. And why are we working within, even within the strictures of Supreme Court opinions or liberal conservative or the sides that James was talking about. Let's just go far beyond it.

And now the country seeing what's been going on, even the liberals on the Supreme Court haven't started pushing critical race theory quite yet. But they might start if they start losing next year. It goes without saying that if any of the things that Arizona did resulted in a disparate impact, that would be proof of a racist policy. And the only thing possible to do then is to have an anti-racist policy, according to Kendiism, which would make legal all the things that the Supreme Court just struck down. So you're right. The energy on the left is from something that's far more Jacobin than it is. Let's go back to the 60s. The 60s of those people might as well have been two, three hundred years ago. Listen, this is just a tip, a small portion, a soup of the legal analysis you can get on SCOTUS issues. The Law Talk podcast here in the Ricochet Audio Network with our own John Yu and Richard

Epstein. We'll go into these things in excruciating detail and you'll be prepared to discuss them at any dinner party should they come up. That's the Law Talk podcast. Indeed. Speaking of law, one of the things that people who run a business know they have to deal with are compliance laws, HR laws. There's so many little problems you have, big and small, to dealing with people you hire. HR issues can kill you. Wrongful termination suits, minimum wage requirements, labor regulations, and an HR manager's salaries, by the way, are not cheap. Average of $70,000 a year. That's a lot of lettuce. Bambi, spelled B-A-M-B-E-E, was created specifically for small businesses. You can get a dedicated HR manager, craft HR policy, and maintain your compliance, all for just $99 a month.

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No. Let Bambi help. Get your free HR audit today. Go to Bambi.com slash Ricochet right now to schedule your free HR audit. That's Bambi.com slash Ricochet. Spelled B-A-M to the B-E-E dot com slash Ricochet. And we thank Bambi for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Charles Cook, graduate of Oxford, Charles CW, that's not conventional wisdom, but conservatarian warrior Cook, senior writer for National Review, former editor of the National Review Online, has appeared repeatedly in the pages of the New York Times, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, along with appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher. Wow. We'll have to talk about that. One of his favorite subjects is American exceptionalism. And every time that I talk to him, I feel, Charles, I feel as though my cords are

untidy because I think the last time we talked, we were at a bar in Washington, and I think you showed me a picture of your server with all of the cords just arrayed with such precision and beauty. And I think then you showed me a picture of your golf cart. And then I think you showed me pictures of your children. So I know that that's not actually your priorities, but American exceptionalism, this is a perfect weekend to discuss this. And I really want to talk about your golf cart

because it is one of the examples of American exceptionalism and how this protean country can embrace people from wherever who find out what's cool and good and great about this place. But I'll let you start. You wrote that great piece about how you're glad to be an American after 10 years. Top of your head, favorite two things that you enjoy about this great land and that make you proud to be a citizen. Are those the same things? Or can I say two things I enjoy and then two things that made me proud to be a citizen? Because one of the things I point out in that piece and others is that there really are two elements to my love for America. And I sense this in other immigrants.

One is intellectual and the other is just a resonance in that, you know, I can list all of the reasons I love America for you. I mean, we probably agree on most of them. I can, you know, here are two of them, the US constitution and its order, and the dynamic nature of the economy. Those are two intellectual reasons. And then there are the other bits that are much more difficult to explain, especially as an immigrant, you know, why do I love New Orleans jazz in the way that I do? There's no history of that in my family. That's hard. That's much harder.

Why do I love the wide open spaces? Sorry, Peter. No, well, there's a, you wrote a beautiful piece, National Review Online, brief piece, but a beautiful piece, a 4th of July piece and I love America peace and you being you first of all you speak with a certain authority because you chose to come here and in the second place of course you're just a wonderful writer so it was just a glorious piece but there was a bit about it that puzzled me and here it is you're a polemicist. You take sides. That's what National Review does and

that's what you do at National Review. And yet, you were just astoundingly generous in this piece. You said, I love, I'm paraphrasing now. I wish I had it in front of me because it's worth quoting, but people can find it in reader for themselves and they should. I don't just love red America. I love all America. I don't just love the middle of the country. I love New York and LA and San Francisco. And I thought to myself, no, 98% of the time, Charlie is fighting what LA and San Francisco and New York stand for, but he loves them. He really loves them all the same.

Charles, explain yourself. Well, I think there's a couple of things. The first thing is one doesn't have to have any respect for, and indeed, one can have a great deal of contempt for the politics of, say, New York City or the state of California. There we go. That's the Charlie I know. No, but and still love those places because, and this I think is one reason I'm a conservative. I think that politics is important and it's part of life, but it's not everything. There was one of the problems I think progressives had when Donald Trump was president was they couldn't be happy while he was there. Every single thing in life was filtered through Donald Trump.

And I didn't feel like that when Obama was president, even when I was filled with rage towards the guy. I didn't dislike America. I didn't stop loving America. I was worried about America. So, I mean, one can go to New York City and have a great time and recognize it for what it is, which is one of the great cities of the world. One can spend time in Napa Valley without spending the whole time worrying about the politics. I mean, I don't know if this is apocryphal or not, but one of the stories I was told by my history teacher when we were studying Russia when I was in high school was about Lenin, who went to this place of enormous beauty. And he's looking out across this valley and he's silent. This was rare for him. He's talked all

the time. He's completely silent. And one of his friends comes up to him and says, what is it, Vladimir? What? And he looks out across this vista and he turns and he says, they're effing Mensheviks, right? Even there, you just couldn't enjoy it. And I don't. Yeah.

I'm sorry. I just, I want to come in on that one because there is something that is not apocryphal. Gorky related in a conversation he had with Lenin. This is not apocryphal. And Lenin said that his favorite Beethoven sonata was the Appassionata, but he could never permit himself to listen to it because it was his job to crack skulls. And there you go. And there you go. And that's the thing. And the other part is this. Within reason, I think the country needs to have a different system than Florida, where I live, okay. You know, if California wants to change its tax rates up to 13% on top of federal tax rates, while Florida has 0%, okay. And I think it's possible to enjoy those places without in any way being burdened by their political choices.

And of course, you know, I can fly out of California or Massachusetts or Minnesota. Charlie, it's John. It's great to see you. I'm sitting in for Rob Long. So but I'm holding back on my pop culture references. I want to ask you a sort of counterintuitive question. So when I start out with my classes on the founding, which you are a great student of, which is, was the American Revolution really that great a thing?

Suppose that the United States had not declared independence and had remained part of the British Empire. Wouldn't things have actually turned out a lot better? Slavery would have ended in the United States decades earlier, and we would have been such a powerful empire. The Germans would never have messed with us.

There would have been no World War I's or World War II's. Can you move the camera over so I can see Howard Zinn with a gun to your head? But, you know, Churchill, Roosevelt, they all recognized this, the commonality. We stuck together this whole time. Hasn't our division actually been more harmful than it could have? Maybe we should, maybe the American... The interesting thing about the revolution that we're celebrating tomorrow is that the colonists were already the freest, the most equal, the wealthiest people in the Western world at that time.

Rebelling against London was almost the biggest middle finger of ingratitude one people ever gave to itself. Well, I think actually that's why it's so admirable, in that if you look at what the founders were fighting for and fighting against, and you compare it to tyrannies in the way that we understand them now with the benefit of the 20th century behind us, you realize that they were really fighting for their conceptions of good government. I mean, even compared to, say, Jim Crow, what the founders were subject to was minimal. But I think that makes them more, not less admirable, that they were prepared to do it at the cost of great blood and treasure.

In terms of the question of what would have happened if they hadn't, I think we can tell in one way, because we have a control experiment called Canada. And Canada doesn't have the American Constitution and it doesn't have that guidebook that is the Declaration and the Federalist Papers. And I think, you know, when Madison talks about the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights, he likes the idea that if you write these things down, then people will attach themselves to them. And that, I think, was a great insight because in England, you have to start every discussion of rights from scratch. And you have to say, well, yes, people should be able to speak because. And it is a useful shortcut, not because there isn't a good intellectual case, but it's a useful shortcut in America to be able to say, well, the First Amendment, because that means something to people. They have hung a lot of ideas and passions on the First Amendment. And in terms of slavery, you know, this is I know you don't believe this, of course, but this is actually an argument you read every year in Vox.

They republish that essay. I always think it's really silly because, yes, it is had no domestic political opposition beyond those who were directly involved in it financially. But also, if the United States had remained part of Britain, then the argument in Britain would have been substantially tougher to advance because all of those colonies would have been filled with slaves, slaves that were making profits, and you would have had the problem that even Lincoln struggles with, which is, well, what do you do if we suddenly free all of these people who have been subjugated? And as the United States learned,

and this is a great tragedy of its history, despite the efforts of Lincoln and then the Republicans with reconstruction, it's still led to decades of hurt and violence and murder. And Britain would have had to deal with all that. And so whenever I read that piece in Vox, which I sort of do every year for masochistic reasons, I think, well, you're just assuming that the British

would have not had to deal with the same problems as the Americans did. But of course they would have. Hey, Charlie, may I ask a question? And if you can't answer it now, the request would be, I'd just love to see you to devote some thinking and writing to the question. I think you're especially well positioned to answer it. And it's a real question in the sense that I'm not leading you someplace. It's a question I have. I don't know the answer. We start with federalism. States get to be different.

And then the question arises, in recent history, in the 80s, California and New York were still in play politically. Ronald Reagan carried California both times. George Bush carried it in 88. I believe Bush lost New York. I may be wrong, but certainly Reagan carried New York both times. Reagan even carried Massachusetts. And we see New York and California move so far to the left that neither state is even, no presidential candidate would spend a penny in either state because they're going to vote Democratic. Texas is the reverse example. Florida, your beloved home state, glorious cover piece that you wrote for National Review on Florida. These are reverse

examples. Texas, not that long ago, Ralph Yarborough was their senator. He was a liberal Democrat. This notion that, oh, well, all the Democrats in Texas were conservative. It's just not so, actually. Ann Richards was as liberal a governor as the political circumstances permitted her to be. And Texas moved in the other direction. When Jeb Bush was elected governor, it was a squeaker. And the Democrats control, I believe they still control both houses of the legislature in Tallahassee. And now Republicans are firmly, in other words, the political cultures of states shift and change. And it's as if states somehow make decisions about what they are going to become.

How does that happen and how can our side achieve, so to speak, more Texas's and Florida's or at least prevent our... If we lose Texas, we're gone, right? Do you find that an interesting question or am I just babbling? Oh, no, I do. I mean, the first thing, and it's slightly aside from your question, is that it is important because of this to try to limit the federal government's authority as much as possible to create room.

Also, so that you don't end up with these wild swings. You know, this is also my case for the filibuster. Yeah, you do have an interesting shift. I mean, California was slow and then it was fast. It always astonishes me to look at the difference between the vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the vote for George H.W. Bush in 1988. George H.W. Bush carried the state, but only just. And since that point, it's been completely lost. You know, to an extent, though,

this is the story of American diversity in the useful sense of that word, not the shove it down your throat sense of that word. We talk about Hispanics. Hispanics in California are very different than Hispanics in Florida, who are very different than Hispanics in Texas. And Hispanics in Texas have been there in many cases longer than white people have. In fact, it was Mexico. Hispanics in Florida are disproportionately Cuban, increasingly Venezuelan, Colombian.

These people flee tyranny, and they're much easier to convince to our side of things because, you know, I mentioned the First Amendment as a sort of shortcut. Well, if you say socialism to a Cuban, Venezuelan, Colombian, Guatemalan in South Florida, they're going to go, oh, yes, I don't want that. I remember what that was. And Californian Hispanics are different yet again. kind of go oh yes i don't i don't want that i remember what that was and and uh california and

hispanics are different yet again so so part of it i suppose um is demographic but the last part and i don't have a particularly well thought through view on this but you know you asked the last part is is leadership which is often a sort of uh cliched shorthand but jeb bush really did change florida i mean in in one sense, Jeb Bush invented modern Florida. Florida now has an election system that is the best in the country, not the case in 2000. Florida has an efficient legislature that only meets two months a year, but when it does, it is not held down by an old boys network, which it was in the 80s and early 1990s. Florida has good infrastructure, and it's got a diversified economy,

which it didn't have 20, 30 years ago. I mean, if tourism declined in Florida, those are decisions that people have made. And so in one sense, Florida, I think, has become really Republican because Republicans have done a really good job in Florida. And that's the bit we often sort of miss when we talk about this stuff as if it's inevitable. Right. Cultural historical question. One of the great things about America is that it contains so many epochs and regions and cultures and times. And it's fun to go back and LARP to find an era in which one would like to live for reasons.

If I lived in Florida, for example, and I was dependent or indulged in golf cart culture, I would customize my golf cart with tail fins, with a two-tone turquoise and white Bel Air paint job, with pointless decorative chrome mammaries in the front and a whip antenna. And when I pulled it up in the parking lot, if it was next to a things-to- come WPA, modern, sleek little golf cart or an iron horse from the

early train days, they would all fit on the same page because they're all part of American culture. I would do what I do because I have a particular interest in the aesthetics of the post-war era. Where would you like to, of course, we love the present, the present is glorious, but where in America's history, if you could, would you like to spend some time? Because politics, because aesthetics, because music, what? Oh, I think about this a lot. And one of the eras to which I'm drawn is the 20s, but I always have to remind myself that there was prohibition, which wouldn't really have worked very well for me.

Although maybe I would have just been able to be one of those people who stocked up in 1990. No, I think you would have been fine, yes, between your influences and your ability to plan ahead. You would have had, yes, a great and bounteous seller. But go on, the 20s, the architecture, the style, the politics, the go-go nature of it, what? Well, not all of the politics, of course, but many of the politics were actually pretty great. I mean, whenever anything bad happened in the economy in the 20s, the government went, yeah. Now, people say, oh, well, that led to 1929. I actually don't agree with that at all. But of course, it was probably not a good time to live through because then you get the depression in the Second World War. So you'd have to work out how old you were going to be. And then the 60s i mean the 60s had so many uh problems too but you had music you had the

aesthetic you're talking about you had the moon landing um let me ask you this when you say the 60s some people when they say the 60s, they think the counterculture. They believe that the counterculture actually was the counter. It was the culture. No. And that Woodstock and beads and grooviness was the dominant aesthetic when actually the culture, the sort of square john, button down, IBM, narrow tie. That was the culture. Is that the part of the 60s that you're talking about? Well, I think the great part of living then would have been that you'd have got both.

I mean, I wouldn't have been in the counterculture, but I'm not sure I'd have been a sort of square tie either. There is a middle ground somewhere. Walt Disney, which was here, he wasn't counterculture, but he wasn't an IBM short-sleeved Mormon lookalike. Yeah. So I think you've got both, right? I mean, it's, but there are so many problems. I mean, the other problem with this always,

I always come up against is, then you start looking at medical outcomes. And then you always think, actually, I'm kind of happy I'm alive now. That's the thing, dental anesthesia and the rest of it is enough of an inducement to stay here. If yes, it'd be a fun place to visit, but I certainly wouldn't want it. But just, it would be, what interests me sometimes is what we've lost, the ephemeral and unknowable things about those eras, the smell, what this particular gum might have tasted like, what aromas hit you

when you walked into a movie theater, all of those things we can never recapture, but it's fun to speculate. So we should probably let you get back to Florida and back to your life and just end you with this. Fourth of July plans, are you doing the manly traditional expected thing and standing over an open firewall, incinerated, ground up parts of animals are toasted for the benefit of your family and friends? Well, there will be toasted for the benefit of my family and friends, but we've accepted an invitation to someone else's house. So someone else will be doing that. And we will be getting there. And it's funny you mentioned this on the golf cart and you can't see this, but in the next room on the kitchen table,

there is a set of new wheels uh new lights um and a whole bunch of structural stuff because i am actually upgrading the golf cart again james so i've been told to get this done by july 4th so i'm cutting it a little fine do you have the little small tanks of propane so that you can hit them and just have the burn effect just shoot out the back no it's an electric i mean i'm so i'm starting to see your golf cart the way of James Bond's little helicopter in You Only Live Twice. Right, right. You can get the little sidewinder missile.

Peter, you had one more. Charlie, yes, Charlie, if I'd been a little quicker, I'd have asked this question two seconds after your lovely tribute to, little tribute there to Jeb Bush, which strikes me as entirely deserved he is a major figure in american history because he remade florida whatever donald trump did to his

reputation jeb bush is a remarkable figure i believe yeah where does ron desantis stand is he as good as he seems from california i think he's a terrific governor. I mean, I didn't like him when he ran in 2018 because he was so Trumpy that he ran a campaign ad in which he explained how Trumpy he was. And I thought, well, that's not really that interesting at a state level. I voted for him, of course, because I don't want Florida to change. And I liked his policies. And about two days after he won, I liked him instantly. He made the most interesting inaugural speech in which he said all the conservative stuff that I like. But he also focused hard on school choice. He gave a nod to the people who had elected him

because he had plans to clean up some of the environmental problems, which isn't a priority for me, but it is if you live in the middle of the state. And I thought, oh, he's going to get it right. And he has got it right. And then he got it really, really right during COVID and for some reason was lambasted for it.

So yeah, I think he's done a terrific job as governor. I don't like every one of his policies, but who does? Let me just ask one last question for you, Charlie. It's prompted to me by Ron DeSantis. Could someone like Ron DeSantis actually ever appear and succeed, or someone like a Donald Trump ever appear and succeed in the British political system? And because I was thinking while you've been talking about your move to America and what makes America so different, what do you tell people in England, your family members, your

friends from back there, what makes America different? How do you explain it? It's more than just Churchill. What did Churchill say? He said, we're common people, we're two people separated by a common language. We're actually much more alike than we're different. That's what always strikes me about the British. Charlie, John wants a seat in the House of Lords. Can you possibly- No, don't get me off on the, remember, I want to get rid of the aristocracy and the monarchy. Yeah, yeah. You keep saying that. No, but I admire the British political system and history enormously. So whatever I think about, I think what's different is that the British people existed before the British government.

To the British people, this is just another phase and a lot of different things they've tried to govern themselves. America, our government came first. The American people came after. Most of the American people come after. That's what you see in a lot of the discussion, what makes America exceptional. I'll ask Charlie, is that what you tell people back in England? And you explain, what does it really mean to be an American? I doubt what you say.

Oh, because the state was first and the people were second, unlike England or France or Italy. I would say it's a more open place. People care less about your credentials. I sense that changing and that bothers me. You know, Christopher Hitchens said he moved to America because in England he was stuck in the antechamber to the waiting room. And once he got here, people didn't really mind

how long he'd been waiting or hadn't. They just wanted to know what he could do. America's different because it much more efficiently preserved British liberties, which is an irony, but is real. And America is different because it is huge. And that allows different sorts of people enough space to flourish. I mean, this is not the primary reason I love America, but it fascinates me that you could never have had the Mormons. I mean, you don't have Amish in the same way. You don't have so many subcultures. And that's why the loss of the word diversity has been such a disaster,

because what diversity means now is you fill a room with people who look different and have different sexual preferences, and they all say the same stuff. Whereas what it really should mean is that you have a difference in politics, religion, geography, attitude, and so on. And you really find that here, and I just think that's great. So Charlie, your interesting answer is that what makes America exceptional is that there is no one prototypical paradigmatic American. It is because, you know, in Europe, there are all these jokes. Oh, this is what a British person is like.

This is what a German, right? What is it? You don't want to live in a hell where the German run the police and the British are the cooks, right? And the Italians are the office managers. Right. British are the cooks, right? And the Italians are the office managers. But your answer is interesting. It's because you can't define what is an American because we are so different. That's what makes America great. Yeah. And the last thing is, and perhaps in some sense, this is contradictory, but I don't think it is because I think what America is,

is a framework that allows for that. The other big difference is you just cannot become of any other place in the way you can become of America. I mean, you cannot move. If I moved to Japan, I'm sure everyone would be very polite to me and welcome me. But if I said to somebody, hey, I'm Japanese, they'd look at me funny. And that's true in France. If I went to France and said, I'm French, they would say, not really. But in America, you know, other than MSNBC viewers who send me rude emails, no one ever says to me, you know, you're not an American. No one says that. And that's that's an incredible, incredible draw for people around the world. And it's something we seem to be pell-mell hell bent on demolishing. Yeah, I know. The progressive side of it wants to abolish the

notion of a civic identity and replace it with these particulars of racial and sexual identification that atomize people at the same time they collect. I collectivize it. It's crazy. But I mean, you have to grow up in a country that is so free and so prosperous and so and filled with such liberty to be idiotic enough to spend all of your time microwaving your seed corn as the progressives seem to be doing at this point. I know what you mean. There's a pub I walk into every year in England. And when I do, they always say, it's the American.

Right. Which I like. And I could spend 20 years in this little seaside town and I would still be the American. Oh, forever. Yeah. I hope they're buying you free booze. This is twice.

No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. And they like me because I tip. I have that strange custom from the, from the across the pond where people actually pay you more money than you are charged, which is a strange thing. Charlie, we got to let you go and we could ramble on forever, but what the heck you got a life to get to. We got a podcast to conclude, ads to get to,

and thank you so much for joining us. Happy 4th, my fellow American. Hope to see you soon. Happy 4th. See you soon. You know, John mentioned the vision of hell where the British are cooks, and that's true. I've been to England. I've had the food and the Indian food over there is great. I personally like to make Indian food. I'm just not that very good at it, but I'm getting better. You know why? Better tools. Let me ask you a question. How does your favorite restaurant consistently make such delicious food? And the short answer is they have access to the right kitchen tools. With Made In's professional quality cookware and kitchenware,

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Joining us now, Bill McGurn. William McGurn is a longtime member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board. He has a weekly column in the journal called Main Street, which is simply a must read. Bill was chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. And earlier in his journalistic career, he spent a decade writing and reporting from Hong Kong, where he became, we'll let Bill tell the story, he became godfather, literally godfather, to Jimmy Lai. Bill, explain that, would you? Well, Jimmy and I had become good friends, and more to the point, his wife and my wife had become very good friends. I mean, we hit it off, Jimmy had a devotion to Hayek, right? So, and I, of course, like Hayek. So, we spent a lot of conversations over that, but I don't think we

would have become the friends that we are had our wives not really found each other simpatico. So, right before the handover, about a month, I think, Jimmy- The handover from a month i think jimmy um converter handover from britain to china back to china and uh then he wasn't cardinal then but um bishop zen um baptized him in the cathedral and i was his godfather but i would say that his wife was really far more the influence than i was i was just kind of a vehicle of it and then, his wife became godmother to my middle daughter, Maisie, and my wife is godmother to their daughter, Claire. So we're a very intertwined family.

I hope your wives weren't brought together by Hayek, too. Then I'd be working. Maybe their aversion to hearing it discussed all the time mutual aversion bill is there anything left of the hong kong you knew i want to come to jimmy in a moment of course but uh what's left it doesn't seem so you know um i haven't been there in in years the last time i was there i think was when I might have gone once after. But I think the last time I was there, we were adopting our youngest girl, Lucy, from China. And we went through Hong Kong on the way out.

And I remember having this lunch with Mark Simon, Jimmy Lai's right-hand guy, Jimmy, Young Wai Hong, his associate, Audrey Donathorn, this very old English woman who had been best friends with Margaret Thatcher at Oxford and had herself become a Catholic and a de facto link between Rome and the church in China. And now I look back, and Jimmy, of course, and so now I look back at that table, you know, Mark Simon can't go there because he'll be arrested. Jimmy's in jail. Hong is out but nervous. Audrey John Thorne is dead. I never could have imagined this. I wrote a book called Perfidious Albion, and I always thought that the worst that could happen to Hong Kong was that it would become just another Chinese city. In other words, it could be rich with skyscrapers and all this, but not that free and open center where people just tasted opportunity, freedom. And I'm afraid it's going there. With that is the national security apparatus.

I mean, they've got this new national security law that they basically invoke to do whatever they want, and it trumps everything else. So it's just it's China now. It has some residue, and it trumps everything else. So it's China now. It has some residue, but it's China. And it seems to have a police force that's more like a Chinese police force than a British police force. When I was there, the police were incredibly well-trained, professional, and restrained. And now you see the things they do and you wonder. Are you surprised that the bureaucracy of the city turned so quickly to become loyal to the mainland? Like, you know, one thing you could have, you know,

might have predicted is that the leadership of the city and the government, the police, the courts, the law, politicians would still have resisted the takeover from the mainland. And but that didn't seem to happen. Yeah, I think you're right, John. I mean, actually, to me, Hong Kong's greatest treasure was its civil service. And they were inculcated in in laissez faire. I don't I don't mean in the sense of doing nothing but restraint, which is the hardest thing, you know, for bureaucracy. And they were good people and they were honest. You know, when I was there as a newspaper newspaper man we're always looking for scandals the kind of scandals we found is someone

had an illicit garden you know in on their balcony in a in a high rise that happens to us in california right now you're not allowed to have gardens or water but i think water for sure as you say a communist bureaucracy has um has uh has taken over and just infected Hong Kong. And so its distinctiveness just keeps being eroded every day. Were the police supplanted by CCP people? I mean, we were. I'm not as familiar. I think the training was the difference that I do believe that China brought in people

that train them and the superior officers and so forth. And, you know, one of the things about that, James, is that if you look at what's been done, like they shut down Jimmy Lai's newspaper, right? The way they're doing everything is with police orders. They're not even, you know, people talk about, oh, Hong Kong had a wonderful tradition of independent courts. Well, it doesn't matter if you go around the courts. None of this is being done through the courts. It's being done through this national security law. And then they're going to set up national security law courts, special courts that they

control. So it's really a disaster. And I would go further. A lot of people see this as just a freedom of the press issue with Jimmy's paper, Apple. But the reality is this is a thing about companies, too. I mean, they froze his shares. They did all this stuff, again, with no courts involved. And basically, if they can take a company from someone, prevent him from voting his shares, they could do it to anyone. And there are a lot of other companies that in the past have fallen afoul of China for whatever their business practice is. I believe a couple of years ago, the Chinese wanted Cathay Pacific

to turn over the names of employees that had participated peacefully in pro-democracy marches. So it's really a troubling sign. Bill, I have three questions and I'm going to give them to you all at once because in a way they fit together. Jimmy Lai and Martin Lee, maybe this is just ignorance on my part. Here's question number one. As far as I can tell, those were the only two men of their generation who had made their money and done Hong Kong made them remarkable figures. Jimmy was a billionaire. Right. And there are a lot of billionaires in Hong Kong.

Question number one is why did only two fight for the order that had enabled them to become what they were? Question number two is how's Jimmy doing? Are you in touch with him? How's his family? And question number three, while the Chinese were putting pressure on Jimmy, then they throw him in jail, then they shut down his newspaper, and now they've established an entirely new and thuggish order, as you were saying, in Hong kong that happened across two administrations trump and biden did the united states do enough did it even say enough all right that's my bundle of questions okay well the first

question is i do think there were other people apart from martin and jimmy i mean martin was a barrister very respected um barrister i he wasn't in the billionaire category in Hong Kong. But he had standing in that town. He had standing and he is well off. And of course he was, I meant to say he was at that lunch that I was at many years ago and he has not been put in jail.

He's in his eighties now, but he was convicted and given a suspended sentence. You know, back when I was in Hong Kong in the eighties, the joint declaration setting out the terms for the return of hong kong to china in 1997. you know that was hailed everyone was so bullet not me not the wall street journal but everyone else was so bullish you know it was china would never strangle the goose that lays the golden eggs. The the tail Hong Kong would wag the dog China. And everyone was pretty optimistic. And Martin Lee was was on the

committee trying to write the Constitution called the Basic Law. And he had he had protests. If he got 50 people at a protest when I was there in Hong Kong at first, I was considered extraordinary. People were just so positive. Then what happened? Tiananmen Square happened, and that really awakened Hong Kong people. And they marched, you know, like a million of them came out. This is at the time a city of, I think, under six million. So it's quite an extraordinary number. And ever since then, people have been much more distrustful of China, and they've awakened to their own identity as Hong Kong people. You know, when I was there the first time, if you asked someone what he was, he'd probably say Cantonese, you know, the dialect that they spoke and so forth. And the same as people, you know, across the border in Canton, which we call Guangdong province, Guangzhou city,

they'd probably say Cantonese. And now they've discovered their identity as Hong Kong people. Wait, we're special. We have these things. And it may have come too late for them. But, you know, in the beginning, everyone, you know, everyone said, oh, the communists are going to involve. They'll never do this. And then you look not only what they're doing, but how crudely it's being done. You know, communists are crude people and they rely on lies. The second question was Jimmy. How's Jimmy? How's Jimmy? How are his? I think Jimmy is remarkably at peace with himself. And I would attribute that to two things that are kind of together, his wife and his faith,

and especially his wife's faith, because she is a rock, you know, and again, you know, as a Christian, his wife's attitude to his arrest. First, she sent me that picture that I have right behind me there. That's Jimmy being let off in handcuffs and chains when he was arrested. And I said, you know, she said they're humiliating him. And I said, well, they might intend to humiliate him. But the Hong Kong people don't see those chains as a humiliation, those handcuffs. They see them as a badge of honor because he could have run away.

He didn't have to do this. He has houses all over the world. He could have gone there. And he chose to go from billionaire to dissident. And now there's a new step. And I say it without irony. His wife is telling him, your job is to be a saint in prison and he this this is a man who's a fighter when i lived in hong kong uh armed robbers invaded his house and robbed him

and not political just just just thugs and he fought with them even though they were armed and he got conked over the head with a wrench um when the guy was trying to get his wife's wedding ring. He didn't get the wedding ring. So I think Jimmy prevailed. But his instinct is to fight. His instinct would be if he were out there and the police were coming through the doors of Apple, he would throw the newspapers at them. That's his instinct. Fix bayonet.

Never, never surrender. But what his wife is saying to him now is, Jimmy, I knew this day could always come. The day I married you, I knew this was a possibility for us, despite a very nice life we had. And I will walk this every step of the way at your side. But this is your way of the cross, and you have to embrace it. And the incredible thing is that this man is doing that, because I say his instinct is to fight. And without Teresa and without his faith, he'd be like a bear in a cage, manacled, raging against his chains, living on anger and hate. And he's not, he's trying to improve himself. I mean, I get notes from, he says, you know, I got to do more time here because I'm expiating my sins for being in here. He's a man remarkably at peace with himself for this. So,

it's an extraordinary thing. And I attribute a lot of that to his wife. You know, I've been urging him to keep a diary and to write on different things. And I thought one of the things he might write on was the difference between male and female strength. I mean, he's such an example of male strength. He'll fight. He won't surrender and so forth. But there's something about female strength and endurance. You know, the worst thing for a man, right, is to have to watch someone he loves being tortured or abused in some way and being helpless to stop it. But women know, they know they can't stop this, but they stay for it. There's just something about that endurance and his wife certainly exhibits that.

So, I would say he's doing pretty well in prison. I sent him a quote I found from Solzhenitsyn who said, you know, bless my prison cell. It taught me the real priorities in life, what's important and what's not and i i think there's something i mean he would like to get out there's no question of that right but i think there's something to that it's kind of extraordinary it's a part that people don't really see they admire his defiance and his principles but he's he's remarkably calm he might be this country let hong kong i was gonna say did this country let Hong Kong down? Did we let Hong Kong down? You know, I'm not sure. I think we could do different things. I think we have to speak out.

I'm not sure that we could have prevented it. You know, I'd like to think that we could. I'm not a big believer in tariffs. I mean, I think Trump tried with China and its behavior, the tariffs. I think there are other things we can do to China. I think we have to match them militarily and intelligence and so forth, where there's a lot that we can do. But in terms of changing their behavior, I think we have limited goals. And I think what we should do is be trying to give them an avenue to come out. The British said they would accept up to three million people that come. That would be a good thing. I think the other answer is to make sure we keep Taiwan safe and secure as a free Chinese

society. So, you know, I'm not sure that the U.S. could have done anything against Xi Jinping's determination to just crush this. And also, there's a lot of people in China that don't sympathize with Hong Kong. They think those guys are so spoiled. They have it so good. What are they complaining about? I think that might be changing as they see Hong Kong being crushed. But there is there is that it's not the most sympathetic place in in China because they feel they they put up with a lot more in Hong Kong. It's a lot more freedom than they do.

John, you had a question. Oh, I was my effort to shore up Peter here saying, is Jimmy Lai going to become the Sir Thomas Moore for the China of the 21st century? But I'm actually more interested in what the United States should do next, Bill, because you say we could raise military strength, we could put more economic pressure. It doesn't seem like it would have changed the fate of Hong Kong. I wonder whether it would change the fate of Taiwan. You go to the Chinese and you saw everything worked in a way. And why not do the same thing to Taiwan? You see no determination on part of the United States, not just the United States, other countries to stop this slow, gradual takeover of Taiwan and then South China Sea and all these other,

Tibet, so on and so forth. There's nothing. Why, if you're the Chinese, why would you change your tactics right now? Exactly, John, you're right. Just on the Thomas More, I just sent Jimmy The Life of Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd, a great book. And, you know, what's the interesting thing is Jimmy's very close to Cardinal Zen, who is himself an incredible man, an extraordinary leader. And around June 4th, that's the anniversary,

you know, the Tiananmen marches and everything. And in Hong Kong, they were banned. You know, you weren't allowed to have them. Cardinal Zen had a few masses where it was the only sort of thing allowed. And the government put up these posters of Cardinal Zen and they had all these Chinese characters. They had one English word devil in it. And then they had a picture of a priest with horns and so forth. But the, there was some worry that Cardinal Zen might be arrested too. He's offered himself for arrest, but the people that, that think that, that they could solve their problems by arresting Cardinal Zen, they don't know Cardinal Zen. Cardinal Zen would gladly go to jail.

And he would say, my parish is behind bars, so it makes it easier for me to make my rounds. And then the Thomas More analogy would be quite apt with Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, you know, both in the tower. In terms of what the U.S. can do, I think it's important. I really do think now it's important to shore up taiwan to make sure they can defend themselves i mean we can't necessarily stop china if it's really determined from but we can make them pay a price for it i do think an invasion of taiwan while i'm not sure who would come to their aid i do do think it would be not easy and would really harm China,

his own interests in a lot of ways, the trades. I mean, it really would make him an enemy. So I'm not sure that's as big a threat as people think. I think the threat does enough harm because Taiwan's so small. you can drive down their stock market by lobbing a few bombs in the area. You know, one of the constraints of China that no one really talks about is for all its bigness, if you look at it to the west, you have India, almost China size, more than a billion people, you know, hustle. The Indian army, I think, just put 50,000 people on the Chinese border. To the north, you have Russia, also not historically friendly to China. Northeast, you have Japan, which has a formidable military, and the South Koreans who have their own

formidable military. And then you have Southeast Asia, which has always been suspicious of China, partly because they have their own Chinese population. So it's very much surrounded by a lot. It's not just the U.S. going up against China. If China were to enter a conflict, you know, it goes up against considerable forces. Which would seem it would have been in their advantage to play nice. But what we have is an antagonistic government with its fingers everywhere. I mean, I was reading the other day about how Montenegro is into China for a billion dollars because they lent them the money to build a road.

Chinese influence, pernicious as it is, will be no doubt something we read from you in the future. And Bill, I hope that we hear a column that talks about Jimmy Lai getting out and taking the editorial reins at Apple in Taiwan, because that would be a great place from which to continue the fight. Thanks for joining us today, Bill McGurn. You're welcome. Thanks, Bill. Have a good Fourth. Thanks, Bill.

Happy Fourth of July to you and your wife and girls. Yeah. If you were in Taiwan, for example, or if you were in Hong Kong a year ago and you saw what was coming, how would you avoid necessarily tipping your hand whenever you went on the Internet? That's something we always think about. And maybe you ought to think about that here, too, in the States, because a lot of your IP traffic can be tracked and recorded. But look at it this way. Using the internet without using a VPN is like taking a call on a train or a bus or a speaker for everybody to hear. You don't want to be that guy, right? So VPNs are good, but then there's VPNs and then there's ExpressVPN. Internet service providers, you know, like Comcast, Verizon, they know every single website that you visit. ISPs can sell this information to ad companies and tech giants who then use your data to target you. Aliexpress VPN creates a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the Internet so people can't peep in on your online activity. Just fire up the app, click one button.

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One button and you're there. Secure your online activity today by visiting expressvpn.com slash ricochet. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash ricochet. And you can get an extra three months for free. That's an extra three months for free at expressvpn.com slash ricochet. And we thank ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Gentlemen, before we go, do you want to talk about that ridiculous ranking that they did of the

presidents? This is always one of those things that pops up that just says, we talked to some 75 year old historians who have glowing nostalgia, drenched memories of Kennedy somehow, and they rated him higher than they possibly should have. Or do you just want to tell everybody what you're having for the fourth and leave it at that? Actually, how about this?

Fireworks, fireworks. Do you guys light off fireworks? They're illegal in California right now, along with a lot of other things. It's a very lawyerly answer, John, but it doesn't answer my question. I actually want to test California law. I am going to set off a marijuana firework. There you go. John, he's going to load up a canister with marijuana and syringes and aim it at Venice Beach. That'll be absolutely perfect. Peter, do you get out there with the punk and light the sparklers and the rest of it, the fountains?

Actually, it's been a long time. The answer is no, I don't. But we do. There are a number of places there's one place called kite hill near our neighborhood called kite hill for obvious reasons it's where people go to fly kites or used to anyway and if you go to the top of kite hill on the fourth of july which we used to do when the kids are little we're little maybe we'll do it again this year you can see fireworks taking place all up and down the California peninsula, the Northern California peninsula. So we love the fireworks.

We just don't blast any away ourselves. I, by the disappointing family legal selection at Target, and they're nothing more than just cones and fountains and the rest of it, it's fun. But my next door neighbor- Oh, that's not nothing. Well, it's not nothing, no, but and fountains and the rest of it. It's fun. But my next door neighbor. Well, it's not nothing, no, but I have a neighbor in the neighborhood, to be redundant, who has industrial, professional, commercial grade fireworks. And hence, over our houses bursts the most extraordinary collection of shells and displays you can find. And they liquefy squirrels.

You can feel them in your solar plexus. The poor dogs, that's the worst part about it. I have to give them like a Dramamine the size of a baseball and then put them in his thunder jacket. And then even then he goes downstairs and sits in a car and is unhappy. But for those of us who love the great fourth and all of its bright blossoms in the sky, it's nice to see. So we wish everybody a fourth of happiness and patriotism and hot dogs and the rest of it. And if it's after the fourth, I hope it was great. By the way, we gave you a Vacation Week podcast this week. Next week, we're taking our break. We'll be off next week and back after that. And by the way, you should go to Ricochet.com.

You should join. It's dirt cheap. You should find the community you've always been looking for. And if you're already a member, great. We will see you in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Happy 4th. Thanks, John. Thanks, Peter. We'll see you down the line. Happy 4th. Happy 4th of July, everybody. Saturday in the park I think it was the 4th of July.

Saturday in the park, I think it was the 4th of July. People dancing, people laughing, a man selling ice cream. Singing Italian songs. E compare, e se nante, can you dig it? Yes, I can. And I've been waiting such a long time for Saturday. Ricochet! Join the conversation.

Another day in the park I think it was the 4th of July Another day in the park I think it was the 4th of July People talking, reading, smiling A man playing guitar And singing for a song Will you help him change the world Can you