The Ricochet Podcast - A Fistful of Tush

Episode Date: December 1, 2017

This week, a Minnesotan’s view on Franken and Keillor, we get handsy with our old pal David Limbaugh (would he vote for Roy Moore — tune it to find out), and a chat with an actual southerner about the south (that’s Weekly Standard writer Barton Swaim). Also, a bit about Flynn, and some turkey and tax talk. Music from this week’s episode: Stars Fell On Alabama by Ella Fitzgerald & Source

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I'm James Lilacs, here with Peter Robinson, and we're talking to David Limbaugh and Barton Swain from the Weekly Standard. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 380. And it's brought to you by the fine people at – hold on a second. Wait a minute. I got – where's my ad copy?

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about space lizards, which just practically guarantees that in the member feed they're going to be talking about space lizards and David Icke and the people who live in the center of the planet and all the rest of it, but in a joking fashion, right? Right, Peter? You'll be there. You're not a space lizard believer. I am not a space lizard believer. James, we have a story that is breaking while we are recording this podcast, And it's a story that's big. And people who listen to this podcast over the coming few days may wonder why we didn't go on about it. And the answer is because it's breaking right now. Michael Flynn, former national security advisor to President Trump during the first month of the administration, is pleading guilty. We saw him go into court about 20 minutes ago. So he's likely to make a statement. The story's going to develop during the day. Safest for us to move on to other matters about which we know something.

Right. And the Flynn thing will be interesting. Not a surprise to me, frankly, or anybody else who's looking at this. Pretty much thought that was going to be what it was. People will see the guilty as being Flynn guilty means that there was everything that they're saying happened, that there was the collusion, the Russian mind beams to keep Hillary from going to Wisconsin, all the rest of it. And it's not going to end up in impeachment. I'm just going to put that marker down right here now.

But if I'm proven wrong in a year or two, fine. So it's – I mean – We have seen the court documents. He has yet to plead or I suppose he may be pleading while we're speaking right now. He may make a statement. Who knows about that? We know the court documents show that he's pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about a conversation he had with a Russian ambassador in December, which is during the presidential transition. There is nothing illegal for the incoming presidential team to speak to ambassadors from foreign countries.

Indeed, it would be rather odd if they didn't. Flynn, for reasons known best to Michael Flynn, lied to the FBI about two or three points in his discussion with a Russian ambassador before Trump became president. Where this will go, who knows? But it's not on the face of it anything to do with that reaches Trump or suggests impeach, blah, blah, blah. We'll see. We'll see. But it doesn't look that way. There are three narratives on the left. One, that Trump is a Russian puppet. Two, that Trump is an authoritarian.

And three, that Trump is crazy. The first one, I don't think so. The second one, authoritarian, the more you devolve government and do things like say we're going to get rid of these kangaroo courts where the bureaucrats and the regulatory agencies get to be judge and executioner, that's devolving power back. That's not expanding the state. When it comes to the authoritarian thing, I keep looking at the expansion of the state and the, uh, and the rest of these things as a, as a hallmark. I don't see an awful lot of Hitlerian 34, 35 kind of stuff going on, but keep your eyes peeled folks. Uh, and the third one, Trump crazy. Well, we can get to that. Um, we can, we can get to that because it's one of those weeks where you say, Hey, if we really get some tax reform out

of this, that's great. It's a legislative win. It's a number on the board for the administration. And does this mean, however, that everything else that was crazy about the administration, particularly the guy at the top of it, is something we ignore and forget and just shrug and say that's just him? How much was he responsible for this? Would we have gotten this, Peter, do you think, any under another Republican president with the same configuration in Congress? Yeah, we might have gotten this under Ted Cruz. Sure, maybe. But Donald Trump beat Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz wasn't available after the primaries. We certainly wouldn't have got, we would not have

got this under Hillary Clinton. That is absolutely clear. James, by the way, Minnesota questions. Al Franken gave an interview this past week during which he squirmed and fidgeted and refused to admit that he had done what it is alleged he had done while at the same time apologizing for it. Very odd. And then Garrison Keillor got canned. These are two Minnesota boys. I expect you to explain the meaning of this to all of us. Right. Gee. Yeah, the Franken thing didn't really convince anybody and didn't do him any favors. And his reputation is tarnished.

And now there's a sort of a kind of a deer in the headlights mortification that you associate with him as opposed to the cocky guy who knows everything who was here to save you from the bad internet guy's persona that he had before. Franken is, from my personal experience and from the discussions of a lot of people who've met him, is an unpleasant character. He may play a happy-go-lucky fun guy in certain fundraisers or when he's meeting fans at the state fair, but I've never got a good sense of the guy as a, as a hail fellow. Well met. Sorry.

Keeler or, or Franken and Franken, Franken. Oh, Franken. Okay. Right. So,

you know, I'm, I'm still torn as to whether or not actions taken before one was a Senator mean that you have to resign. It seems to me that if you are grabbing a fistful, the tush all the time, and you're paying off people with public money and the rest of it, your behavior as a senator, yes, you don't want to have somebody in there who essentially is sort of the result of asking a cartoonist to draw a horny pep boys. And I just – but we'll see. The ethics thing will play out and he will know that forever his Wikipedia entry will contain a section on his butt grabbing.

And it, it, it turns sort of the master of the universe persona into something else into perhaps the, the fellow in high school who, uh, the girls would hang, would have him around because he made them laugh.

But that was the only reason. So I don't know, whatever psychology, whatever grossness, whatever icky, moist minded goat brain is at work here, I don't care. Let's see how that process plays out. And there's another election to come eventually, and Al will be held accountable there.

The Keillor thing is different. The Keillor thing. Okay, go ahead. Let's hear about that. Well, okay. We don't know what happened aside from the fact that we have Garrison Keillor's side of it. Because the NPR has said there aren't any other allegations as far as I know. NPR, they're not even talking to themselves.

The radio station hosts – By the way, you are saying NPR as in Minnesota Public Radio, not national, but Minnesota Public Radio, which Garrison Keillor more or less invented. Isn't that – he put Minnesota Public Radio on the map. It's been an instrumental – yeah, I mean the – so Minnesota Public Radio hosts will say we reached out to Minnesota Public Radio and they declined comment. So they're not even talking to themselves. and resulted in mutual mortification and the rest of it. If that's all there is, then this unpersoning of him seems extreme, right? Or not? Yeah.

Well, no, it seems that way. I read his statement on his website. It's a little bit odd, to tell you the truth. He patted her on her bare back. What was she doing with her bare back? He patted her on her bare back after was she doing with a bare back he patted her on her bare back after she told him about her unhappiness so that's a that it requires a little more filling in and nuance does it not and he patted her on her bare back and his hand slid up six inches

and they were both embarrassed and he apologized odd but yeah on the face of it, innocent, but odd. Sorry there. I temporarily lost my microphone. Yeah, the description is peculiar. But let's say it's a little bit worse than that. We don't know. If there's a pattern of all this stuff, then yeah, but there doesn't seem to be any pattern. I mean, and I've talked to people. I've been around.

I've such to people. I've been around. I've such and such. There doesn't seem to be anything to indicate that there's this Matt Lauer-esque libido rampaging through the halls of National Public Radio. So what that says perhaps is that we are expected by the radio station itself to accept Mr. Keillor's version of the events because they're not saying anything as sufficient reason for the memory holding of every one of his products and that's what's so strange about this i mean i can understand them saying yes there's there's been an allegation that we're going to have you know we're going to suspend or we're going to get rid of this or but they nuked everything they got rid of the merchandise the writer's almanac they got rid of the repeats and the rest of it and i'm surprised that they're not sending out people with tanks of whiteout to to to you know to go through line by line the novels and stories and eliminate those from public eye. If you start to – and artists, there are bad, bad, bad people who are artists. I mean Picasso was a horrible man.

That's right. Right. And Woody Allen, we know. So because we know what we know about Woody Allen, do we take a movie like Radio Days and do we destroy it? Do we take the works of Picasso and burn them? Or do we see everything done in the context of what we know about the artist and go on? Or do we do what seems to be now the thing is to have the maximum penalty for them to show that they get it? We understand that this is a climate.

It's a me too thing. We get it. He's done. Which means the penalty for the leastest is the same as the penalty for the mostest. And everybody gets put into the same bucket. And that seems to me to be you make an extremely good point, an extremely good point. We have only one account of what happened. His account.

It's a little odd, but it's certainly innocent. And NPR's reaction to that account is clearly a huge overreaction just a huge overreaction so npr m is in minnesota minnesota public radio has one of two choices either it explains to the public that in fact what took place was much more egregious than mr keeler has let on or it says you know what we did overreact we should you you may still buy prairie home companion goods from our online site and you may still download back episodes of prairie home companion we're pulling him back out of the memory hole i agree they have those two choices the current situation makes no sense now i was listening to this as i was walking around the block with my dog in the morning,

listening to National Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio on my phone. And I found my phone, frankly, because my phone was where I wanted it to be. But what if it hadn't been there? That's right. I'm doing an ad. And if Rob were here, I would have done it too quickly for him to be able to ruin it. But he didn't. So here's the deal.

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author, and attorney, you can follow him on Twitter at David Limbaugh, where he kindly discusses things with people who disagree. And he does a nice job of not taking off their heads. Usually, although sometimes David, you kind of want to,

don't you? That is correct. Um, I. Although sometimes, David, you kind of want to, don't you? That is correct. I'm really concerned about how... FBD doesn't stand for friendly business, Dux. Or for the freelance beatbox department. FBD stands for support. We support businesses and communities across Ireland. Visit your local branch to talk to your FBD insurance team and see how we can support your business. FBD Insurance. Support. It's what we do.

FBD Insurance Group Limited, trading as FBD Insurance, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Twitter has become a forum for people to show they're the smartest, cutest, cleverest people in the room. And they often do that through meanness and snark as a substitute. But the trouble is a lot of these people are very smart. I wish they wouldn't try to have to demonstrate it through their meanness. And the other thing that bothers me is that there's a mob mentality that when someone is mean on there, he's applauded for his cleverness. And I'm no purist and I'm no saint, but sometimes it gets a little old.

Hey, David. Go ahead, James. I was just going to say you're right. The culture is defined by who gets wrecked, who claps back, who gets smoked for this and whether or not you make twitchy with a devastating boom remark that supposedly ends the argument. It's it's it's not conducive to civil discussion, but there are places where it happens. Peter, you're going to say, no, I want David. Here's a large we can I want to get to tax reform in Alabama and all of that. But here's a big question for you. Over the last couple of days, two items. Here's a tweet by Donald Trump. New questions arise, I beg your pardon, by David Gergen about Donald Trump. David Gergen. New questions arise about Trump's temperament and

mental health. Just speculation at the moment, but do family and staff need to evaluate? And this morning in the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, no relation, I stress. How long are we going to pretend that President Trump is rational? How long are we going to ignore the signs that he is dangerously out of control? David Limbaugh, you support a chief executive who is dangerously out of control. Yeah, I saw that tweet and I even quoted it and responded to David Gergen saying, meaning no disrespect to Mr. Gergen. Trump has not changed. Trump has not changed appreciably since the campaign.

And there's a group of people who want to reverse the results of the election and pretend that Trump has now changed and is now mentally incompetent. And I just submit there's no difference in his idiosyncratic behavior before or after. Sometimes I cringe at these tweets. Other times I smile because of who they're upsetting. But Trump is Trump and that's no excuse. But it is he's not incompetent. If he is incompetent, he was incompetent when he ran. Both you guys voted for him. Let me ask you, is it normal for a president to say that a political media adversary should be investigated for complicity in the death of somebody? Is that normal?

Absolutely not, and it's objectionable. And I agree with that. But it's not. It's not grounds to invoke the 25th Amendment. Right. No, but there's... In my view. I agree, but it's the but that I keep hearing.

That's what just drives me crazy, because I can't stand it. It's objectionable. It's weird. It's it's not normal. But the but the but is the entire argument. The but is important. The but is. But there were the other choices, Hillary Clinton, who would have been worse. But Donald Trump, all the evidence suggests that Donald Trump's tweets have almost no Donald Trump's tweets. When he attacks, the press are criticisms, criticisms of the press. all the evidence suggests that Donald Trump's tweets have almost no Donald Trump's tweets when

he attacks the press are criticisms, criticisms of the press. He's venting the first amendment does not prevent the president of the United States from attacking the press. If there were any evidence that it had any policy implications that the federal communications committee commission, we're going to crack down on the on cnn or any of trump's particular enemies if there were any evidence of that uh that would be alarming there is no such evidence the president of the united states mouths off so what but how can we sit here at ricochet and say we're a great place for conversation because we don't have space alien conspiracy theories in the in the comments and then we have a president who essentially is reading the comments from these things. And I'll calm down now. Go on. Well, what he I think you're talking about what he suggested about Joe Scarborough. Right. Yeah, that's ridiculous and outrageous.

And when I read those kind of tweets, I go, OK, today for the next 10 seconds, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm going to side with a never Trumpers. Then I regained my senses and now, because that's not, that's not what their objection is anyway. I mean, there there's, there's so, this is so complex, but, but, but I would agree with you that, that there, what he did there is indefensible, but I would agree with you that what he did there is indefensible, but I would agree with Peter that it doesn't rise to the level of anything. It's not a 25th Amendment issue. It's not an impeachment issue. It's just distasteful, objectionable, and something we should criticize, but we all know it won't do any good to criticize it. There.

Tax bill. Are we going to get it? Should we get it? David? I wrote a column on this yesterday, and it appeared today, and arguing strenuously that the Republicans need to pass the best tax bill they can, the most pro-growth bill they can. I don't like a lot of it. I don't like that the Republicans, especially Donald Trump, have surrendered to this class warfare

argument and that that is incorporated in the bill where the richest people are punished in this bill to some extent. That really bothers me. But even though it does, I am still not wanting the perfect to be the enemy of the good. I really want this to be passed because I do think ultimately it's pro-growth on balance with the corporate cuts and the individual middle class cuts. It's going to be on balance. But what bothers me is now we also incorporate this premise, this liberal premise that we must view everything through static models and that there's no growth impact on tax cuts when we have historical evidence that there is.

And so the way we have to do this is anytime we have a tax cut with a static model, we now have to somehow find a way to make up that revenue, which means we can never really have a supply side tax cut anymore. And I just challenge that assumption. Why can't we in the alternative say, no, we don't have to find an alternative tax increase. We need to decrease spending. Now, one last thing, that decreasing spending is easier said than done because the real bulk of the spending is in entitlements.

But finally, Ryan, the entitlement hawk, has announced that he will initiate this. Will it pass, which is I know the question you asked me originally. I don't know because you got three senators, Corker Flake and Lankford, who are holding this hostage, which is reprehensible. I somehow believe that this will pass. I just hope it's not in such a diluted form that it's even worse than it already is. Okay. By the way, Lankford, this is fairly recent then. Lankford, the physician, young senator, very conservative senator from Oklahoma, he's objecting to that, to the tax bill?

Well, I read that. I may have written it down wrong for my preparation for this August podcast. That's what I read. Okay. because i couldn't have made that name up and david you've also written recently that there's no gop civil war now wait a minute you just said corker and flake and langford are holding hostage those were the words you used holding hostage the tax reform bill, and yet there's no GOP civil war. How can this be? You make a good point. I should have had you around when I was writing this column. I have a theory about some of the best columnists, some of the best writers

are those people who think outside the box and can ask themselves questions. Sometimes I write columns and I read back and somebody makes the point, darn, I wish I would have thought of that. Why do I have to stay inside the box? I think Jonah Goldberg does a good job of getting outside the box. And I'm capable of that. I'm just too impatient. So I want to get the stupid thing in.

But here's the point. There is distinction. Had you asked me, had you been a considerate friend and been here when I was writing the column and asked me that, I would have made the distinction. There's no civil war in the rank and file is what I mean. When you're talking about the people that are in the positions of power, you're exactly right. We're precariously marginal on our power, and you've got three or four, five senators that have been holding everything up, including Obamacare. What I mean really briefly, because you don't want to go into this tangent about there's no civil war. Ultimately, I mean that so many of the people in Washington and in the punditry and in office don't realize what what the rank and file Republican believes and where they really are,

that the Trump movement transcends Trump, that it's about a simmering rage that's been going on for decades, and that there's just normal people that are strong, strong conservatives, who I argued with during the primary when I was adamantly pro-Cruz and adamantly anti-Trump. And I discovered that these people weren't being as superficial in their analysis as I thought they were. Even though I disagreed with them, they are smart, legitimate, authentic, bona fide constitutional conservatives. They're not all backwater hicks that are rednecks in southern Alabama. And that's, by the way, what some of the GOP leaders are trying to imply about the Moore thing. And that's the tangent I gladly go off on.

Well, and we will in a second. I mean, I never thought they were backwards Southern Hicks because I don't make that assumption about my political opposites or people within the party with whom I may disagree. I mean, I knew too many people in Minnesota and North Dakota who could make the case for Trump, not the man, but Trumpism the thing. But you mentioned Moore. So if we want to – let's say just do the rank and file then, the people who generally get behind the amorphous definition of Trumpism. Do they believe, as the judge Moore does, that it's the gays, the lesbians, the bisexuals, and the transgenders who are behind this effort to keep him from assuming his rightful place in the Senate, do they believe that?

I sure hope not. And it's that element that taints Trumpism. By the way, I'm not a Trumpist in that sense, but it t the the Tea Party kind of a movement. And and there is, I can see an element of that that is just conspiracy theory and and ridiculous. I hope I hope it's not prevalent. I hope it's not even prevalent in Alabama. However, you know, more is apparently popular down there. And these people are thinking, well, the last last 40 years he's he's been pretty clean and if this had been true we would have heard more about it you know they go through all this i by the way i have my very very strong suspicions that that a lot of this may be true so i'm not

uh i'm not going to argue that that i don't think he's guilty of some of it because I do. But then they screwed up, if indeed they screwed up, by Gloria Allred's overreach because she might very well have made some of that stuff up. This woman is vicious. So she just gave the supporters of Moore a free gift there because one out of eight allegations is now tainted and therefore looks like the rest of it might be. David, in one way or another, what we're talking about here is the midterm elections of 2018. You're saying that Republicans need to pass the tax reform for the substance of it to promote growth, but also because they need to do something. They need to do something popular. We're all concerned that the election of Judge Roy Moore will be used by the media to taint the whole Republican Party. You have lived all your life in Missouri, which is a pretty closely balanced state politically. It has two senators, one's a Republican, the other is a

Democrat. The Democrat Claire McCaskill is up for reelection next year. What's happening in Missouri? Is Donald Trump going to bring her down or enable her to skate by to reelection? Claire, by the way, is a law school classmate of mine and and a friend and a friend. Socially, I have nothing in common with her politically. But I think from what I've read, she's in trouble politically, and she's handicapped to lose this thing. So, yeah, I think that there's a good chance that Josh Hawley, the attorney general, constitutional Cruz-type conservative, will unseat her if the election is held. By the way, Peter, I want to be clear, and I didn't get a chance to flesh this out in the column. There's this constant refrain from the left and from many of the never-Trumpers.

Again, I hate that label, regardless, that there's so much tribalism going on. I don't support the Republican Party because I have some allegiance to the party. I don't want to preserve this seat because I want to preserve more wins or more votes in the Republican side because I like the color of republicanism. I think the Republican Party is the vehicle for stopping the leftist agenda, the best of the worst vehicles, the only vehicle right now. And so there's nothing about tribalism with me, although I am a strong partisan, but only as a means to an end. Well, then let me ask you this then, because we're going to get to the treat that you had explaining how a religious Republican supports more. But if the necessity is stopping the left and the vehicle are these flawed individuals, then why does it matter that he's been clean about this recently?

If as a 70-year-old man he was chatting up 16-year-old girls and trying to date them, wouldn't that be okay, too? Because the alternative is the left. Well, that's the dilemma that I was raising on Twitter. I just have to concede, and it's hard to concede this,

but I have to concede that it's thinkable that I would vote for Moore, even if I thought he was guilty of some of this stuff, because I look, and this comes at great pain to me, because I'm. FBD doesn't stand for friendly business ducks. Or for the freelance beatbox department. FBD stands for support. We support businesses and communities across Ireland. Visit your local branch to talk to your FBD insurance team and see how we can support your business. FBD Insurance. Support. It's what we do.

FBD Insurance Group Limited, trading as FBD Insurance, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. I believe in and have long written 20 years' hints that the Constitution, like John Adams said, is made for a moral and religious people, that character and virtue matter, that it's all tied together. And so it's very difficult to say that I would countenance the idea of a moral reprobate in that position. And I'm not

saying I would. I'm just saying I'm torn, and I'm saying there's a difficult issue here, because what I look at is, how will these two people vote? I don't like the example it would set in fact if i had to vote for more i would throw up literally uh while doing it but when i look at the practical ramifications of what are consequences of what could happen i see doug jones who will be a very pivotal vote in a very close senate at a time when we are on the precipice of stopping uh the leftist agenda now are never doing it. I mean, you're looking at the worst-case scenario, which is what I tend to do sometimes when it comes to politics. And what will Jones do?

He's a guy that advocates abortion and government-funded abortion all the way up to the moment of crowning. How evil is that, by the way? And some people will argue, well, Senator, really, I'm going to affect the vote. This is a judiciary. Well, that's not true when it comes to appointing judges who will ultimately make this decision. But even if it isn't true, what we're really arguing about is not moral absolutes, but people who are weighing these things and the people who are adamantly against Morrison. You could never support that guy, but you could support an abortion on demand liberal because it will never happen.

But what if it would happen? What if this abortion on demand liberal had an ability to kill babies? Then would it be a moral dilemma? And then you get into the issue to me. This is what bothers me about the whole Trump thing. I don't, I don't fault and morally judge never Trumpers, except when they are so sanctimonious about us. That's what bothers me. And that's, what's going on with the more thing. Here's the deal. And that's what went on in Twitter today, condemning the Federalists for allowing how dare the Federalist publication allow some pro-Morp apologists to visit its pages. Here's the thing that bothers me. Why do we have to say that we can't reduce ourselves to the lesser of evils?

When did this argument, you see, it's fine to talk about that in the fairy tale world, but in the voting situation, it's necessarily binary. And I know a lot of people who I respect and admire and who are smarter than I am, some of them, very few of them, no, I'm just kidding, some of them say that they can't countenance voting for one bad guy, let's say Trump, and they vote for nobody, and they have discharged their moral duty. Now, I'm not saying they haven't. I'm saying that doesn't work for me because I know in reality that one of the two candidates is going to win. Therefore, I have to do everything in my tower to make sure the least damaging, in this case, person is elected. So I don't, in my conscience, don't discharge my moral duty by sitting home. It's a very convenient thing. I wish I could. I wish I could say that

and be done with it, but I can't because I think the stakes are too high and I have to weigh the whole thing knowing that one of those two people are stakes are too high and I have to weigh the whole thing knowing that one of those two people are going to win. Then I have to weigh which is worse for the republic. And that's what everybody does. That's what everybody ultimately does. Because if they're saying you absolutely can't vote for Moore because he's a probable child molester, that's what they would say. I'm not saying he's probable. I just don't know whether he is or not. But but if if he is, you have to vote for him because other against him, because it's too immoral. What are there no moral considerations for voting for Doug Jones on the other side? I just to me, there's a lot of moral consideration.

Yet well stated, David. And I'm going to, I just have two points after which I'm going to let you go to make it seem like I won the argument. Uh, and the first is, uh,

the first, the first is the end result of this is that, uh, I don't want to hear anybody complaining about the morals of a Ted Kennedy or a Bill Clinton again, because it's the ability to occupy that moral, that mohigro, as we used to call it, it's gone. And the second thing is, I understand, I don't think the people who vote for more are moral reprobates themselves. I understand that people make this calculation that everything

seems binary. We've got to rush the cockpit door. I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it. But here's the deal. Some people drew the line here at a certain place and said, I'm not going to cross over. I'm not going to cross over. I'm not going to put my name next to that man for reasons that we can argue about. And the people who are voting for Moore now say, look, I understand that there's a moral question here, but this is important. This is binary. I'm not going to draw the line. But at some point, you're going to have to imagine a situation in which you absolutely cannot cast your name in with somebody because you would feel as though you would endorse the moral stain that says something about what you are willing to endure.

And at that point, when people hit that line, just don't look back at those who drew the line a little earlier and say that there was something wrong with us. No, we wanted to keep ourselves from having to draw the line about that guy by drawing the line about this guy. And that sounds tremendously self-serving. And don't we wish you could respond, but we're out of time. Hey, David, tweet about it, write about it, and come to the comments. We'd love to have you on. And it's been a great chat, my friend. Thank you. Let's not get numb to the dangers of what the left can do through all this. But I'm not saying I'd vote for more. I'm saying it's a tough, tough issue, and these sanctimonious people who say it's absolutely clear,

that's fine for them. It just doesn't work for me. Numb. Thanks, David. We'll talk to you later. David, I will not permit James to go numb. You have my word. Yeah, I will not be applying.

James is the least sanctimonious of never-Tr Trumpers forever and ever, for which I applaud him. And thank you guys. Take care, David. Bye bye. I won't be applying any moral or a gel, shall we say. Hey, before we get to our next guest, I need to tell you about something that is important because you're a charitable soul, aren't you? If you're hanging around on Ricochet or listening to this, probably so. Well, it's no secret when it comes to doing something with your money it's hard to do something

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DonorsTrust.org slash Ricochet. And now we go to Barton Swain, opinion editor of the Weekly Standard. From 2007 to 2010, he worked for South Carolina's Governor Mark Sanford as a speechwriter. And in the experience he wrote about that, a memoir called The Speechwriter, A Brief Education in Politics. And I, unfortunately, can't participate in this conversation because I've used up all of my weekly standard visits for the – no, wait a minute. It's the first of the month.

I've got at least five free weekly standard articles to read. So we welcome him to the podcast. Hello, Barton. Hi. Thanks for having me. Barton, Peter Robinson here. We've never met, but I've admired your prose since your book came out. The book is The Speechwriter, A Brief Education in Politics, published, let's see, two years ago, 2015? That's right. Yep.

Okay. And now you are in the tradition of Joseph Epstein and Andy Ferguson and Phil Terzian. You are holding up the beauty in prose chair at the Weekly Standard as opinion editor. Okay, so here's the first question. to say this, Republican and lunatic governor of South Carolina who disappeared for five days, claiming he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail when he was in Buenos Aires with his mistress. He finally left the governorship and two years later, the people of South

Carolina, or one district in South Carolina, sent him to the House of Representatives. All right. Roy Moore, you're a southerner yourself. You have experience of southern politics. Roy Moore, you're a southerner yourself. You have experience of southern politics. Roy Moore, who is running for the Senate in Alabama, was down in the polls after claims, allegations about his behaving in improper way with young women, very young women, is now back up in the polls, and it looks as though he's actually going to win. What the heck is going on? Well, 2009, which is when the Sanford thing happened, seems like ages ago.

You know, that was back in the good old days when we had real scandals. Yeah, Mark Sanford's scandal is unusual in at least one respect. There was at least one thing you could say for it. The woman was a grown-up with whom he had the affair. It wasn't a staffer or a prostitute. It was somebody genuine. Which actually happens less often than you would think.

Elliot Spitzer, that happened around the same time. There was a contrast in Mark's favor, I think. The Roy Moore thing, I do not understand, and that's a difficult one to interpret. Wow, James, how long has it been since we had anybody on the podcast who answered in effect, I don't know, you got another question for me? So, okay, Barton, let me go and we will, you are, you are entirely permitted to say, to shrug your shoulders when it comes to Roy Moore, your current piece in the Weekly Standard, or at least the latest Weekly Standard to reach me here

in California. And I, unlike some people on the line, Lilacs, am a subscriber to the Weekly Standard. I get it in paper and also have unlimited access to it on online so you have a piece called good luck doing the right thing yes the cultural contradictions of modern liberalism and you write this is going to be a little bit of a paraphrase here um when people are placed under a contradiction this is not a paraphrase i've found it and i'm quoting you when people are placed under a contradictory set of demands that they don't understand, they may reject the whole system and look for something they can make sense of. My guess is that we've begun to see that rejection and we're about to see more of it. Explain. Right.

Well, I have felt as a conservative for a long, long time that one of the frustrating things about living in a society that's dominated by what I describe in the piece, modern liberalism is that the rules keep changing. The, the, the cultural norms keep changing and you're, you're, if you, for example, and, and, and we're all writers here on this podcast. And so we're used to this feeling, but if you decide, Hey, I want to write something about um you know sexual ethics or race um you immediately get nervous your wife probably tries to persuade you not to write it um you you're you're a fool if you tweet anything about it right um you know i'm exaggerating, but because in a very short space of time, certain things that were not thought of as particularly significant, you know, just phrases, ways of expressing certain realities, and then opinions become outlawed. And depending on how you express yourself, you might run afoul of one of these laws.

And suddenly you are characterized as a racist or a homophobe or whatever. Now, that is not particularly new. Many conservatives have complained about this. But I wrote the piece trying to describe the feeling of people who just, you know, ordinary people, how they think about it. And I do think that there is an underlying frustration among ordinary people that the rules about what they can say and what they can't say and the opinions that they're supposed to hold and not hold and express in polite company, those rules keep changing. And, you know, I didn't make the connection explicitly with the Trump phenomenon, but I don't think they're entirely unrelated. So here's something that came to my mind while I was reading your piece. In one fancy educational institution after another, there are co-ed dorms.

In a lot of them, there are only co-ed dorms. And many of them refuse even to segregate the genders by floors. And the boys and the girls are mixed up floor to floor to floor. And they use the same bathrooms. And this is widespread across the ivies and other elite institutions so on the one hand the message is you get to tumble around together clothed unclothed all you want and on the other hand the message is here in california for example the state legislature it is now actually statutory i think you mentioned this don't you in your article in the uc system university of

california system before sexual uh encounters or activity consent explicit consent verbal written explicit consent must be given yes and it seems as though those two sets of that one reality of course uh go fulfill yourself sexually. On the other hand, make sure she signs on the dotted line. And that'll drive ordinary people crazy, roughly, is a paraphrase of your argument, right? Yes, that's correct, yes. And even writing that, I got a little nervous.

You don't know if you're going to say something that's just outrageous and find yourself on trial. But yes, the whole notion of consent is a very difficult one to pin down in real circumstances. You know, in some circumstances it means one thing, in some it doesn't quite mean that. Who knows? And treating sexual encounters in this way is completely absurd.

That's not the way humans relate to each other. Well, we have all these contradictory messages. We say on one hand that males are generally predators and that the patriarchal arch the patriarchal system exists to extend privilege to men to do what they wish and then on the other hand if you say well you know a young woman who's physically vulnerable should not get hammered in a room full of strange men who are otherwise equally intoxicated that that somehow that's blaming the victim. And so there's no load star morally for any of this. And when you talked about the frustration that people feel, and the frustration manifests itself by shutting down and

just not saying anything outside the confines of your house, it's matched by a feeling that the other side is able to say whatever that they wish. The blue checks on Twitter are taken away from the people who say a few inadvertent things or some truly awful things. But the blue checks remain on people who say things that are extraordinarily blanket condemnations of people with particular genital apparatuses or people who happen to have a lack of melanin. They can say just about anything and it's seen within the within the context of a struggle and dethroning privilege and all the rest of it and it's the role of the people who previously as they would say felt entitled to spread their heteronormative patriarchal privilege bias everywhere without care now it's really their time to shut up and if if the balance of free speech means now that they don't have very much that's okay because that's going to

result in a more egalitarian world well not maybe for everybody but for the people who need and deserve it right yeah yeah um another one that i was just thinking of, you know, in the way teenager, what cultural appropriation actually meant. Because I kept seeing this phrase, and what does that, you're not supposed to in any way represent the thoughts or feelings of another race. I think it's something like that. So, again, you know, you think that you've seen it all. You think you know what the rules are and you're a pretty sophisticated person. But be careful. Well, yes and no.

I mean, no, you're not supposed to assume the thoughts and feelings of people from different cultures as though they are your own. costumes for the Cinco de Mayo and are reprimanded for that, or the women, the white women who choose hoop earrings and are dressed down for culturally appropriating a piece of jewelry that has come to be associated with African-American cultures. So you don't know. And again, it's the feeling that there's no, that it's only on one, that you can't look at other people and say, well, aren't you a pro? I mean, isn't it strange sometimes to look at a James Bond movie in the 1960s set in Japan and they're all wearing Western suits? Is that, is that not? I mean, I adore cultural appropriation in the

sense that you have cultures informing and enriching each other and trading and teaching and the rest of it. That would seem to be the sort of syncretic American experience that we want to, that we want to applaud, not the cliches of wearing the sombrero and the rest of it, that would seem to be the sort of syncretic American experience that we want to applaud. Not the cliches of wearing the sombrero and the rest of it, but realizing that there's this mutual exchange of ideas that makes us all better. And it's one of the things that's made America what it is. It's vaulting over tribe and assuming larger values from what we can get from each other. Go on, Peter.

Barton, yeah, question for you. This may be hitting you cold with this one. You worked in South Carolina. You're a southerner yourself. We were discussing Alabama earlier. Is this, is the sense of anger, defiance,

we're tired of being pushed around particularly strong in the South? There are all kinds of studies. Where was the last one? Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book in which he included a study showing that the sense of honor is still demonstrably, psychologists have sorted out experiments that you can actually kind of quantify this, that there is still a sense of honor, personal pride, and so forth in the South that's distinctive.

Is the South distinctively defiant of political correctness and the culture of the elites on the coasts? Yeah, that is hitting me pretty cold. Probably, yes. You can write an essay about it and mail it in to us. Yeah. I think that there is truth in that characterization. I mean, the South is very different from what it used to be, obviously, both because the times have changed and because many people have moved here. And the culture is not for good and ill, is not as distinctive as it used to be. say be safe and say southern white people that um that um the south is always being characterized in some unfair way right um so if um you know if there's a if there's a drama on television and um you know a a and there's a terrorist strike on the u.s or something like

that um and they're and and they want to portray a backlash you know against muslims or whatever even though the south has no particularly no particular history of of of anti-Muslim sentiment, the show will almost invariably portray that backlash. It's happening in like Georgia or something. Right, right. And we're all used to this. We all sort of complain about it. And we're probably too prickly about it. But yeah, that's a just general sense that that we're unfairly characterized and probably fairly characterized in some ways.

But but still, yeah, all of that contributes to a sense of of. I don't know if it's defiance, but a prickliness. Yeah. All right. Well, growing up in North Dakota, all I knew about the South, I learned from Yosemite Sam in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. And he stepped over the Mason-Dixon line and he said, my boots touch Yankee soil.

I have to burn my boots. But I will say also that having spent some time in Washington, D.C., and claiming that as being in proximity to the South, I realized that y'all is a perfectly useful and necessary word. And as a North Dakotan, I appropriate that culture without an apology. Martin, thanks for joining us on the podcast today. Hope to talk to you soon. Thank you, gentlemen. We're going to start referring to you as the prickly Barton Swain.

It's a nice word, isn't it? Y'all are prickly.on swain it's a nice word isn't it you all are prickly oh thanks barton thanks okay you know prickly also describes that pins and needles feeling you get you know of course when you're sleeping wrong and your arm goes numb or something like that it's not going to happen on a casper no no no no no no no casper mattress the sleep brand they continue to revolutionize its line of products to create an exceptionally comfortable sleep experience one night at a time. Casper mattresses, well, they provide all the support the human body needs in all the right places.

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Well, um, any thoughts before we, uh, we head out here into December? Are you in a holiday mood, Peter? I am in a holiday mood, actually. I'm already five pounds over target weight from Thanksgiving and eager to put on another 10 useless pounds. Here in California, it's sunny.

The sky is creamy rather than bright. That's what happens here in winter. It's lovely. And it took me years. Of course, the much more subtle changes in the seasons, but it's high winter here in California. And after all these years, yes, it makes me feel like Christmas. I'm looking out the window at a barren ground. I'm actually looking at green grass. I'm looking at bare branches clawing a gray sky. No snow yet at all?

No snow whatsoever. I'm looking at the temperatures today in the 40s, and it may even rise over the weekend. I'm looking at a place where last weekend, as I put up the Christmas lights, it was 60 degrees in the end of November. And I swore as I was stringing them, remembering the seasons past where my fingers were numb, I could barely manipulate the little plugs to get the lights in. This year, I swore I heard a lawnmower up the street. And I just had a vision of somebody who decided that it would be a great time to mow the lawn.

You could tell from the cadence of the motor and the way that it paused and changed timber when he went around the corner. Somebody was mowing his lawn. And that seemed so wrong, but it felt so right now i know we'll probably get really cold but the idea that we live in minnesota and we don't get a white christmas is one of those things that sets people's teeth on edge we'll put up with it with the interminable dark vault of february of january we'll we'll put up with the miserable raw scrape of march but we deserve that courier knives wonderful snow on the eaves, twinkling, falling on Christmas Eve, Christmas that we all grew up with.

I mean, we don't have to dream of a white Christmas because we get a white Christmas. And when we don't, Minnesotans turn angry. So who knows? Who knows? Al Franken may win political points by leading a cause for some sort of cloud seeding to make sure that we have a white Christmas. We'll forgive him for all the tush grabbing or maybe not. We hope we've grabbed your attention here for this for the last hour or so.

And we remind you, Donors Trust, Tracker and Casper are fine sponsors. They've helped make this podcast possible. And please support them for supporting us. I want to dance on iTunes if you would, too. There's lots of great podcasts. But gosh, if you leave us good reviews, we get surfaced, we get more readers, we get more people going to Ricochet, and we get more people contributing, which you should do. You've done so, right?

Join Ricochet. $5 a month, a great Christmas gift for somebody else or just a gift for yourself. You deserve it. And I say that in the sense of knowing nothing about you whatsoever. It could be possible that you don't deserve it. But you know what? Pony up, give it a try, and. You deserve it. And I say that in the sense of knowing nothing about you whatsoever. It could be possible that you don't deserve it. But you know what? Pony up, give it a try, and see if you do. There's a podcast here, by the way.

It's just $2.50, which is cheap. Thank you, Peter. We thank our guests, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week, James. James We Lived Our

Little Drama We Kissed In A Field Of White And Star We kissed in a field of white

And stars fell on Alabama last night Oh, yes I can't forget the glamour Your eyes held a tender light And stars fell on Alabama Last night Just fell on Alabama last night. Oh, by the season. I never planned in my imagination a situation so heavenly. So heavenly A fairyland

Where no one else could enter And in the center Just you and me, dear My heart beat like a hammer My arms wound around you tight And stars fell on Alabama Last night I never planned

In my imagination A situation So heavenly A fairyland Where no one else could enter. In the center. Ricochet. Join the conversation.