The Ricochet Podcast - An American Centenarian and The American Century

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

William Buckley attracted a lot of attention—and we’re all the better for it. But his big brother Jim was no small player in the conservative rebound that saved the country in the late 20th Century. On March 9th the elder Buckley celebrated his 100th birthday, and Jack Fowler joins to remind us of the significance of the WWII veteran and member of the small club of public servants who’ve served in... Source

Finally, we got around to talking about potatoes, and I asked him my crinkle cut theory. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Read my lips. No new answers. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilex. Today we talk to our old friend from the National Review, Jack Fowler, talking about Buckley, the other one. So let's have ourselves a podcast. You also said that you were invited by a friend, Barry Weiss. My friend, Barry Weiss. So this friend works for Twitter or what is what is her? She's a journalist. So you're in this as a threesome. Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochet podcast. And

this is episode number 633. And I don't know why I'm emphasizing those words as I do. Other than, you know, here we are. We're having fun. we're together, it's me, it's Peter, it's Rob, and, you know, it's Ricochet. And if you haven't been there, you gotta go to Ricochet.com and find your place in the most stimulating and civil conversations on the right side of the web. Gentlemen, good day, how are you? Sorry I was gone last week, but not sorry at all, I was luxuriating in the white sands of... Oh, knock it off. Okay, sorry. White Sands of Mexico, though, let's be... Yes. And you were not kidnapped?

No, I was not down there for some medical treatment. I was down there to enjoy myself while my wife played tennis. It's her little indulgence of the year. That's lovely. Where were you? Grand Palladium in north of Cancun. You got to bounce around for about an hour It's our little indulgence of the year. That's lovely. Where were you? Grand Palladium in north of Cancun.

You've got to bounce around for about an hour on just awful roads to get there. And when you do, you're astonished that they built this place where there's a two-lane road coming to it. And how did they get everything from there to here? It's an enormous thing. You can't figure out the economics. You can't figure out how much they make. Your white sands were on the Pacific or on the Sea of Cortez? On the Atlantic part.

Oh, on the Atlantic. Okay, sorry. It was gorgeous and great. So I'm happy and I'm back now in the snow and all that and the rest of it. The world turns on. We had this week some interesting congressional hearings, I think. Usually I don't say that. Usually it's just an opportunity for somebody to get up and blather away and nothing ever happens and nobody ever gets called for their misinformation. But there were two of them on Twitter. Is it the most important thing in the

world? No, but it's germane. The COVID hearings, I think that matters. Let me know what you guys think. First of all, Twitter. Rob, I know, loves Twitter, can't stay off it. And he was glued, I'm sure, to every single second that Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi were interrogated by some of the, and I shouldn't be ad hominem, but some of the dumbest box of rocks I've seen expostulating from a government position in a long time. That sounded like a question to you rob yeah i did i'm sorry i was on mute uh you know uh i i actually i i have a hard time getting too exercised over the twitter thing and whenever i say that to people they get really mad at me but i just like i i get it i just feel like we i mean i don't know i feel the the idea that twitter... I mean, look, it's bad, but they did, and I'm glad we know what they did, and I'm glad that people in the media in general... Who's the they in your statement? The people running Twitter at the time. Not the government?

Yeah, I guess so. I just kind of feel like it's a... It is one more indication that I think it's fair that it seems to be exercising the left a lot, but something that people on the conservative side have done all along, which is that the news that we are getting is often shaped by the priorities of the people who are choosing what to put on the front page or page 829 um or what to shadow ban or not to i mean thus it has always been but this is a difference of the government this is the difference of the government talking to the people who do the disseminating say thou shalt not amplify this viewpoint well i mean i guess i guess my argument is this is that the government didn't coerce them these were these are these were um that's that's not so clear i don't know like i feel to me like these are these were all already in the tank they're called it's as if like

the the biden administration doesn't have to coerce the new york times to print its nonsense they they agree nice little social network you got here. Shame if anything happened to it. That's right. That's right. Maybe the people were leaning into this, but at the same time, who knows what they might have done

in a more free-flowing exchange of information when they don't have... Elon Musk takes over Twitter. He discovers that his predecessors have indeed been censoring all kinds of political points of view and scientific points of view. Jay Bhattacharya, we now know. Barry Weiss is the one who broke the story that Jay had been on some block list that kept him from... Okay, all that is true.

Elon lets us know by releasing files to Barry Weiss and Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger. I think there may have been one or two others, but those three for sure. And Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger get called to testify before the new committee on, it's being called the Committee on the Weaponization of the Government. I'm sure it has a more, a boring formal name. All right. And they are submitted to hectoring and the most ignorant, demeaning kinds of questions you can possibly imagine, or at least I couldn't have imagined it, from the Democrats on the committee, particularly Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who said, isn't it right that you shouldn't accept spoon-fed, cherry-picked information if it's likely to be incomplete. In other words, you, Matt Taibbi, and you, Michael Schellenberger, should not have accepted this leak from Elon Musk. And they both just looked at her and said, no, that's not the way, no, yes or no, yes or no. It was unbelievable.

And then this other, I can't remember the other one's name, there was another member of Congress who was trying to make us look as though they were in it for the money. She said, and who's this Barry Weiss person? She'd clearly never even heard of Barry Weiss. I looked at it. I was so astonished. I looked it up. Debbie Wasserman Schultz received 129,000 votes when she was reelected. I am pretty sure that that is, thatry gets a bigger number of readers on her

substack every single day we have more podcast listeners yeah exactly substack what is substack what is she's looking at like this this this amusing little trifling meaningless detail that arose in the course of the life would go on so this is this is what's left on the beach after the democratic tide after the years when they controlled the house it's over and debbie wasserman schultz hasn't adjusted she doesn't know what a fool what a how hectoring how demeaning the idea that any citizen let alone two very bright extremely skilled journalists should be subjected to bullying by some two-bit member of... It's just...

Anyway, I thought it was... A, it was delicious, but B, it was kind of shocking that Debbie, the lack of self-knowledge, the feeling that she could go into these hearings knowing as little as she did and assuming, just assuming that to state that you ought to abide by government censorship would somehow elicit immediate obedience. It was kind of shocking what they've been thinking all along and now finally gets exposed. That was my take. James? Yeah, pretty much.

I'm just curious about the fact, A, again, as we go before, their idiocy. What is this sub-stack? What is Twitter? What are all these things? Because they're utterly out of touch with the information dissemination mechanisms of today, and they don't, which seems to be a break with what we assume to be a bipartisan tradition about protecting sources. We tossed out the window immediately because we have to get to the bottom of this, which is what exactly? What do they think was trying to be accomplished here, that there was a band of well-funded vociferous idiots who were determined to make America consume horse dewormer and bleach by some devious means in order to accomplish something. I don't know. None of that. I mean, what they think the other side was trying to do is still a mystery to me. What we wanted at the time was a full discussion of what was happening. And every time we started to go in ways that were not, you know, officially approved,

all of a sudden the guardrail snapped out of place and we were put back in the proper lane. Now, why was this done? Too much time looking at eco-health and too much time looking at where the money went, finding the fingerprints of Dr. Fauci here and there was inconvenient and unnecessary because what we really had to do was to look forward and all that stuff doesn't matter. Well, all that stuff mattered a lot. It mattered then and it mattered now. And the idea somehow that the left, the institutional left, would throw up all of these barriers to a free inquiry to finding out these things because of, oh, I don't know, xenophobia. I don't know, because the wrong people might say that it's China's fault and then go attack somebody in New York on the subway.

We were prevented from having the discussion we needed to have then, which in the hopes that it would all blow over and that we would continually move forward. There'd be an intellectual pandemic amnesty, and nobody would suffer any consequences. That's what they wanted to do at the time. They wanted us to keep us from having discussion on all manner of things, on the educational impact of the lockdown, so the economic, I mean, all of it. We needed to have a robust discussion. We needed to have a conversation, first and and foremost about the Great Barrington Declaration, not because it's some sort of manifesto of wild-eyed, bomb-thrown maniacs out there, but because it's an alternative to doing what we saying, this was done, is stunning to me and tells you what they will do without fear, without question, without hesitation, if something else comes along and it's anywhere near in the ballpark of what COVID was. That's the end. I'm done for the day. Thank you very much. It's been a great time. Have the meal. There's one piece of this that I want to make sure

that Rob saw. Rob's busy, but I happen to know one of the projects Rob is working on involves a long-form treatment of what happened during COVID. All right. So CDC Director Robert Redfield testified, and he was asked if it was likely that American taxpayers – you remember that they covered up the notion. We weren't even allowed to ask whether the virus leaked from a lab. Now it seems more likely than not that it did leak from a lab. What was it doing in the lab? It was being developed in gain-of-function research. Who was funding that?

And Dr. Redfield was asked if it was we, the American taxpayers, who funded it. And Redfield said, quote, I think we did, not only from the NIH, but from the State Department and from the Department of Defense, close quote. The sitting director of CDC at the time of the outbreak is now on record as saying that money from the american taxpayers was used by dr fauci and others to create the virus right it's staggering and they they knew or they i don't think you can't know the future but they anticipated and they were concerned about what every sentient adult knows, which is that these things never work. Like somebody's going to walk out of the lab with the virus and not know it. Right. They knew that, so they stopped doing it in the United States, which they used to.

And they said, well, where can we do it where nothing, where, you know, like, big deal. So it happens. Where's the great place to study? Where life is cheap. Let's go ahead and say it. They used to. And they said, well, where can we do it where nothing, where, you know, like, big deal. So it happens. Where is the great place to study? Where human life is cheap. Let's go ahead and say it. That's the thought in the back of everybody's mind. That is exactly right. Outrageous. By the way, but that is an attitude on human life that is shared enthusiastically by the communist government in china so right but but the the in the age of blunder which we're in now they thought which is something that every person knows that there will that they could do

this and it wouldn't escape the lab and that to me is what's the most sort of you know shocking there's a i i wrote a comment this last week that there was a guy in on january 11th i think i may have a date wrong this year contractor for the faa and they're going through all the the horrible house of cards uh computer code that kind of runs our uh aviation system which everybody agrees is at least two decades out of date two decades out of but it's worse than two decades out of date it's two decades out of date with a bunch of patches you know it's like it's horrible right so he's right it's one guy by the way he's in a room with a bunch of other people one guy by mistake deletes some code for the norm something something

the i forget what it's called but it's the alert system that all the pilots everybody uses and every single flight is grounded for two hours in america remember that happened this year yes yes um how'd it happen since 9-11 now imagine being that guy you know that feeling like we've all have we've all had that feeling that moment where you think oh no what just happened didn't happen i left a bag with my ipad and my computer and a bunch of things on the la subway once and because i was i'd taken it for the first time and i left the the train and just as i realized what i'd done i turned and i saw the doors close and the train go away and i had that feeling not the same thing as grounding every plane but someone's always going to do something like that and when they they designed a virus this is actually what's amazing they designed a virus that was perfectly perfectly created so that you could have it for a week and not know it and spread it

um and so somebody had it for a week and didn't know it and spread it probably in october maybe uh or some version of it because guess what you know there's always some reason you have to run out to the lab and you don't you don't do the shower or change your overalls or whatever. People just make these mistakes. And the compounding problem we had was we had sort of a nervous breakdown, a panic attack among the policymakers and the media. And then we had a terrified, you know, the guy in the FAA reaction from the people who knew exactly what had happened and how it had happened and you had this sort of horrible perfect storm of people lying um and the irony is is that that everybody in america kind of knew the truth maybe not the details of the truth by june we knew that

you know we're all going to get it and some of us are going to get it and it's going to be bad but those people we kind of can anticipate and some people are going to get it and it's going to be bad but those people we kind of can't anticipate and some people are going to get it it's going to be fine and all america all people knew the truth that was what i think was the weirdest thing is that the the dry run of the orwellian nightmare which we ran i think in during covid um it failed for the authorities and so i'm uh i guess what i'm saying about the twitter what, just to rephrase what I was saying at the beginning about the Twitter thing, I am more interested in having a thorough, vicious, merciless, relentless series of hearings and trials for people who lied. I want to make it so painful, the idea of lying to the American public again, so painful to the people who did it, that they'd never do it again. The only way to restore trust in the system is for everybody to admit how bad the system was.

I agree. I agree. And here's, if I may, this is one reason I'm so pleased by what, yes, I know we've got to get to a spot, but I want to say this. This is one reason I am so pleased that Rob is doing what he's doing. And before this podcast is over, he's going to have to tease it to the extent of a sentence or two. The government failed. People like Fauci told us whoppers, but the government always fails. They're always telling us whoppers, but the government always fails and they're always telling us whoppers.

What to my mind was distinctive about this catastrophe was that the press covered up for them. Yeah. And what you're doing is one step, it's one something. And because you do this stuff well, it'll be a big something for the recovery of the duties of the press. It is an after-action report that'll tell the truth, and it'll tell the truth about the press as well. The press covered up for them because they loved this new set of rules, and they loved

working from home, and they loved ordering the door down. All of it. Exactly right. Exactly right. They enjoyed being the people who were the best at following the rules. But hey, you know, folks, now, of course, it's done. I'm sorry. COVID isn't over. According to the people on Reddit, we're still in the pandemic phase. Now, the rest of us are out and about in the world, which means we're going

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we do thank Factor for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast, our old friend, Jack Fowler, Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships for American Philanthropic, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Civil Society, and the co-host of the Victor Davis Hanson Show. He's with us to talk about the great James L. Buckley, who just yesterday celebrated his 100th birthday. Welcome, Jack. James, my friend, I thank you for having me.

Can I just say two things before we get into Jim Buckley? Can you say one thing? Can you make it one? No, it has to be two the first is uh you know i don't read ads like uh you just read on factor and we have a toenail fungus cure head slash victor victor.com so i'm envious of the kind of advertising you have on this terrific podcast you know i'm a ricochet subscriber. The second thing is, of course, being with you, James and Rob and Peter. Even though I'm looking out the window, I'm seeing my neighbor

has a dumpster out there. I have visions of National Review cruises in my head. I can even smell pina coladas somehow or other. So it's great to be with you. It's good. It's been a long time.

So we would like to talk about what you've been doing and all the rest of that stuff. But Mr. Buckley, let's say somebody said, Buckley, I've heard that name before. I was talking with some Canadians in Mexico last week, and I mentioned Buckley. And three out of the four of them all knew who William F. Buckley was. Oh, really? Still, that's good. Yeah, it is good. So the name persists. But tell us about James L. Buckley. Well, Jim was the older brother of Bill. And as Buckleys go, and I know Peter knows this because he's interviewed Jim Buckley a few times on Uncommon Knowledge.

Jim was not a smoker, which is why he's 100 years old. He's a quiet man, healthy, very dignified, in many ways very different from Bill. Don't play off the dignified as if Bill is undignified, but Bill Buckley was an impish man, a mixer, stirred it up, he created a movement, and Jim was a very quiet man. He just wanted to be a, he's a Yale graduate, Yale Law School, he just wanted to be a country lawyer. But the fickle finger of fate decided in the mid-1960s that Jim had much more in public service to perform, unbeknownst to him. And I can tell that story quickly, James, if you'd like to hear it we would okay well you know after the debacle of the 1964 presidential election where you know barry goldwater was just

devastated and there's an important buckley train of events that happens quickly in 1965 a year later bill buckley runs for mayor of new york and of course he does not win, but he does better. He does better than might have been expected, right? Much, much better. In Queens and Staten Island especially, there were people who loved him. Trump territory, you know, from the outer boroughs. He did remarkably well. The following year, now there's a conservative party in New York, an official line.

A man named Paul Adams runs for governor against Nelson Rockefeller, and I forget who the hell a Democrat was, but he pulls a significant amount of votes. So the feeling is, wow, this party, there's some element here that maybe we can either out-poll the Republicans or really make the Republicans more conservative. I think that was the larger goal 68 election jacob javits liberal republican is up for re-election and jim buckley at bill's instigation decides to throw his hat in the ring i'll raise bill's instigation though i think it's recurring well well bill said you know, I did my duty. I ran for mayor in 65. I think literally the phrase was, it's your turn to Jim. And Jim said, I will run as long as I'm not going to win. He understood that this is the 1968 U.S. Senate election, conservative party candidate Jim Buckley pulls over a million votes. So people are shocked by this outcome.

1970 is another election coming up because Bobby Kennedy, New York senator, is assassinated. He's replaced by Republican Charles Goodell, who is the father of the current uh nfl commissioner by the way but he was sort of a conservative-ish congressman from from the buffalo area so he's up he now he's going to run for that seat officially having been appointed dick ottinger who's a liberal republic liberal excuse me democrat congressman, is a Democrat nominee. So you have two liberals, because despite being, quote-unquote, conservative in the House, Goodell immediately went left. So the powers that be thought, you know what? Now, Jim, a conservative could win this race. A conservative could get a plurality of votes.

And that's exactly what happened jim buckley decided he was never going to run again one and done i'm not doing it again except when when it was put to him well you know you could win you could win yeah there's time you could win you know what i think i can win so he ran he he was such a jim Buckley is the most dignified and wonderful man. Christian, his brother Jim, brother Bill called him the sainted junior senator. Well, that's after he won. But he had such dignity, which was such a counterpoint to the chaos in New York of 1970. And Jim is not a glad handler.

You know, you will not confuse him on the campaign trail with say Bill Clinton or anybody, you know, he's not a back slapper, but he was the man for the moment. And the people, um, there was a,

there was a, a jacket. I can, can I, may I come in? I could add just a little bit of color because I was a kid in upstate New York in 1970. Yeah.

I think I was in ninth grade as I recall. And here's the situation in New York State in 1970. My father gets home and reads the evening newspaper every day, and he's shaking his head. And I can't tell whether he's shaking his head at what the Democrats have just done or what the Republicans have just done, because the state was totally dominated by the Rockefellers and the liberal Republicans. There was no room. And upstate and the liberal republicans there was no room and upstate we were conservative there was no room the albany county always voted democratic buffalo but upstate binghamton new york we were conservative and there was no place for

conservatives to go jim buckley's 1970 campaign slogan was a senator for the rest of us. And at upstate New York, we knew just what he meant. We knew just what he meant. And he was this extremely, he came and campaigned. Actually, no,

this was after he was in the Senate. He came and did a trip. He went to the, um, it's the only political figure. My parents showed any interest in. He turned up at the Vestal Public Library to answer questions. And I remember thinking, I don't know, a United States Senator, this is a glorious figure.

And he showed up in a rumpled suit and took off his jacket. And I remember, all I really remember is how gracious and how quiet spoken he was. People were constantly straining to hear what he had to say, and also that his shirt tail was out. This proves that his wife was not traveling with him. In any event, if you were a conservative in New York, there had been no place to go since 1956, I believe, is when Nelson Rockefellereller was first elected governor so it was a liberal republican and then a liberal democratic establishment there was nowhere to go and then this dignified well-spoken sweet charming man becomes our hero yeah peter the the uh advertising line was isn't it time we had a senator that's it that's it there was a question

and answer all let's say it was very powerful ad campaign run by uh clifton white uh and i think roger ailes was also involved in the campaign way way back so well jim was uh you know quickly i mean he was elected he only served one term because he ran his re-election in 76, which was a tough year for Republicans, of course, but Daniel Patrick Moynihan was the Democrat nominee. But then Jim went on to serve in the Reagan administration as an undersecretary of state, ambassador to the Mexico City conference. City Conference, and after that he was appointed, nominated, and confirmed as a U.S. judge where he is by all accounts on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which some people call the Little Supreme Court. He was regarded as with most distinction there of all the judges sitting. So I know people have heard this before, but

in American history, there are only 45 people who have ever served in all three branches of government, executive, federal, legislative, and Jim Buckley is one of them, and he's the only one alive who's done that, and the only one in modern American history who's done that. And his service to America has just been so profound, and his service to the conservative movement, not only as somebody who galvanized the movement politically with his election in 1970, but as you stated, Peter, the dignity of this man has so impressed so many people over the years. So he's just not a one-shot, one-term, got-in-by-luck or by, you know, the stars aligned correctly political event, which was true.

I mean, the stars did align, but he really has had a profound impact on conservatism. And finally, I will shut up, is that he has been so active. He turned 100 yesterday, but, you know, he was writing books until the early 90s. He was still giving public speeches as of two years ago. By the way, we should also add, conservative as he was, the sense of dignity and honor. He was elected on the conservative party ticket in New York, but when he got to the Senate, he caucused with the Republicans. Right. on the Conservative Party ticket in New York, but when he got to the Senate, he caucused with the Republicans, which is why he is known as the first Republican member of the Senate to call on Richard Nixon to resign. He did. He was at odds with other, there wasn't, you know, that overwhelming

a conservative block of senators, but, you know, Barry goldwater was a colleague and yeah jim was the first person to do that did that um at odds with some of the others but it took a lot of a lot of nerve to do that by the way of the um there's only one member of congress who is still serving while jim was in office and that is charles grassley who was a member of the house at the time and joe biden of jim buckley in in the u.s senate yeah well with biden's age i'm glad i'm guessing his telomeres are about a you know one ninth the size of what mr buckley's would be well you know you're as young as you feel or are you or as old as you look? Well, you know what? Here's the thing. Extending lifespan, that's great, I guess. But what if you could extend your lifespan and feel younger at the

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Oh, no. What do you tell – you've written for National Review for I don't know how long. All of us have read National Review. I was fortunate enough to know, well, I think all of us were fortunate enough to know the Buckleys, Jack better than any of us, but I got, all right. Anybody, here I sit on the Stanford campus, these extremely bright 22- 22 year olds have no clue who the buckley's were why they mattered how would you how would you how would you what statement would you make rob that would enable people to understand why they matter to all four of us you mean jack you know what i mean you mean no no i mean to rob i mean to rob this is a question for me peter yes it is yes oh i would say i mean, I mean to rob. I mean to rob. Is this a question for me, Peter?

Yes, it is. Yes. Oh, I would say, I mean, I would say for Bill, I think the idea was that he articulated when it seemed as if, in fact, it was true that the culture and the political culture, certainly, and the broader culture of America had absolutely done with the idea of individual liberty and capitalism by the end of World War II for some good reasons and bad reasons, right? I mean, a sudden about-face in what is expected from the government after the Depression. Sudden about-face for what expected from the government after um the depression sudden about face for what we thought the government could accomplish after it accomplished this amazing

task in the 40s of smashing hitler's europe it was a massive federal program if you want to think of it that way that was incredibly effective it was also very expensive and it was also very wasteful but it did accomplish the mission and then you had a bunch of people coming back home in the 50s it's the late 40s and 50s who expected the federal government to do things like build highways and stuff and um what what what needed to happen was somebody had to re-articulate or and adjust what it meant to be a conservative a conservative american and for bill buckley i think it meant in the 50s it meant that you couldn't you you you weren't going to be an an old new england bigot right so he he kind of you know cleaned out the stables of the conservative movement and he articulated a set of principles

that was incredibly attractive to people and and he did a thing that i think the buckley sort of is a sort of a you know buckley inc what they really were was they were sort of comet in a big comet in the sky you know and people just kind of followed them and they inspired a whole bunch of other study that set off a whole lot of sparks that lit a whole lot of little fires all over the country including one with a you know a union leader in los angeles in the late 50s who ronald reagan who was inspired by a thoughtful fun articulate statement of conservative purpose that you could read national review and there was it was funny. It still is. But I think at the time, it didn't seem like you, despite his saying, we stand to thwart history and you'll stop, which was sort of a joke. He was not, by any means, a Luddite. He was not trying to turn the clock back.

He was a very modern guy. And I think that was what they did. They took what was, in fact, kind of an of an ossified old cobwebby american theory of what conservatism really meant in the 20s and 30s and 40s and he said no no we have to be conservatives for the 21st century i think that's what they did buckling is that fair jack but but the problem isn't it though when you rob saying you tell this to the 20 year olds the 22 year olds on peter's campus it's a long time ago It's like when I was in high school coming up and telling me all about Calvin Coolidge and what I could learn

from him. Roughly correct, yes, that's right. And, I mean, do we not run the risk, well, of course we do, of just seeming like, to use Rob's phrase, ossified and cobweb when we're constantly reaching back to touchstones that are gone. It means something to us, but

time moves on. And kids today, telling them to look to Reagan and Buckley, which would be wise, doesn't seem to be a seed cast on stony ground. Well, even if you're the most lefty, Reddit-obsessed kid, you do know there's a conservative movement and the curiosity of, well, how did this thing come to be? Because prior to National Review, in a center-right nation, we're still a center-right nation, it was more of a center-right nation in the mid-50s, there was no thing that rallied it, and that was National Review, that was Bill Buckley. Look, if I was alive then and tried

to create National Review, we would not have a conservative movement because it's by the virtue of the particular characteristics and the traits that Bill had. Rob, your thing about Comet, Bill was an inspiring person in his very larger-than-life way, and Jim Buckley was inspiring in his dignified way. So the two of them as a fraternal tag team were essential to creating the political movement that, like it or not, exists today. People who want to know how this came to be should get to know who Bill Buckley is, who Jim Buckley is, who Jim Buckley is. Okay, so give me a little, as much as you want to say, what's the state of conservative media today?

I mean, it seems like more choices, right? It's louder and noisier, and there are more places to go. More choices and dumber, much dumber. But is that, what do you think well i i think it's look it's hard for me particularly who who walked through the doors of national review 40 years ago to unwind uh these things because at one point national review was the only game in town and bill buckley was so happy that other entities came about even competitors uh let's take the week you know of late the weekly standard of course rush limbaugh but we're all i took just for you i took a little shot at the weekly standard in an email

to bill when it was something along the lines of well this new magazine won't be anything like national review and bill wrote back a very sharp reply we should all be delighted that now there's another one right well and we should be delighted that there is a plethora of of means of remember it's 24 hours in a day i have to get my if i want my conservatism i have have to get it somehow, either I'm reading the magazine, listening to podcasts, watching Fox, Newsmax, whatever. So there's plentiful out there. I guess when it becomes more plentiful, the level, having started as a journal of opinion and high intellectual, there's no way to go on the intellectual level. But down, that doesn't mean it's bad you know rush limbaugh was not a reading uh from um uh work right but he was still

meaningful and influential so uh bill loved him by the way we i loved him so so uh but that said um you know there's too much. This not necessarily applies to conservative journalism. There's a lot of echo chambering going on, and that's the thing that concerns me most. By the way, I just looked up, Jack, I looked this up on Amazon. If people want to experience Jim's prose, which again is not, it's him, it's not Bill. Bill's prose is spectacular and there's so much motion and Jim's is beautiful. Beautifully, you have the feeling of something really carefully

wrought, craftsman-like. There are two books of essays, Freedom at Risk, Reflections on Politics, Liberty, and the State that was published in, I had the date here, 2012, and Saving Congress from Itself, Emancipating the States and Empowering Their People, which was published in 2013, I think, 2013 or 2014. So, I make that point that they're available on Amazon and also that James Lane Buckley turned 100 yesterday, and yet he's still more recently published than Rob Long or Peter Robinson. Well, or me. I read some books.

James does. James publishes all the time, but he's not done a book. So that's... What do you mean I've not done a book? I've got seven of them. I just got a royalty check from the guys. Oh, wait a minute. Random House tracked me down and said, look, we can't find your agent anymore.

And I told them, yes. The man who's outlived his agent. That's because he was first A, a crook, and then second B, dead. But they had some royalties from a book that I published in 2001, and they wanted to ship off to me. So that was great. If I may, writing for Jim Buckley was much more of a struggle than his brother jim a bill would go upstairs during a dinner and crank out a column in 20 minutes and come back down for dessert jim this is one of the reasons he was not reluctant to be on the federal judge but it really did mean you know you're writing a

judicial opinion it's not uh It's not 750 words. And writing came slowly to him. But so the judgeship really consumed him entirely because of just the amount of work that went into it. But he was extremely highly respected as a judge. Well, I'm glad that you came to tell us about him. And I'm sure he's honored by the words that you said. And, yes, Peter? I was just going to say, how is he? I sent him an email of congratulations.

I assume he was overwhelmed. But he's still emailing and chatting on the phone, as I understand it. Yeah, he is. One of my former colleagues saw him a few weeks ago. Jim, there was a hope that there would be a celebration, of course, for 100, but he's still with it. The marbles have not been lost, but the mobility has taken a hit of late. But there's no dotage going on with Jim Buckley. Which you cannot say for some of us on this podcast.

Really. May we all not live so long as to have our insufficiencies revealed for all. But, Jack, we wish, may you live 100 years, and, you know, we've got to have you on next time to talk about what you're doing, because your contribution to national review in the movement is big and extraordinary and long-lasting, and we love you for it. Well, thanks for having me. We love you for having you on the show as well.

We'll have you back. Ladies and gentlemen, Jack Fowler. Thanks. See you later. Thanks, Jack. Thanks, Jack. All right, guys, thank you very much. What you could say is that these guys back in the 50s beat a it a Coolidge or a Reagan or a Buckley, planted seeds.

Oh, nice. They would later grow into stout trunks. Well, that's all the segue I'm going to do because, frankly, That's a good one, though. I like stout trunks. Stout trunks, limbs of girth. Yeah. Remember we were talking before about how spring is coming, which it is,

which is why you should look at what you're going to eat, you know, look at what you're going to eat. You should also look at what you're going to do with your yard. I'm looking at my yard and thinking this year I might actually get myself an electric lawnmower. I know it sounds like one of those crazy, you know, green future things, but I just want to do the whole Eddie Albert land spreading out so far and wide feeling a mowing your own lawn. I do. I get it. And maybe, you know, maybe I'll plant a tree here and there. I got a lot of trees, but anybody who has a lot of trees know that they die

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pulling, vacuuming, scraping dirt out of my trunk for the next couple of weeks. Plus, what I love about this, and I'm going to use them again come the spring, is we got some arborvitae that are dying because they're dumb plants. But for some reason, we just keep putting them in again and again and again because they fill the gap and the need and the rest. My wife is tired of them. And we're going to go and get the plant experts to tell us what we need based on where we live.

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Do it now and you get 15% off your first entire order. Get 15% off at fastgrowingtrees.com slash ricochet. And we thank Fast Growing Trees for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. I got some housekeeping here to come to do. Rob, I believe you have a brief note about human beings actually communing in a shared space that is not cybernetic or virtual. Caught him flat-footed there, didn't I? In radio, we call this dead air, and we would abhor it. Podcast, some people seem perfectly willing to let it go on as long as they want.

Oh, boy, that was so embarrassing. I was talking, and you were talking over me, and I was like, Why is he talking over me? And I realized, okay, I had a cough, so I had a mute. I do talking and you were talking over me and I was like, why is he talking over me? And I realized, okay, I had a cough so I had a mute. I do have a cough. We do, in fact, have Ricochet meetups. That's what you're talking about. We have

meetups in Ricochet where real people get together and have fun. And there's some that are coming up. There's a last call coming for the John Gabriel in Phoenix. So if you're in the Phoenix area, sign up quickly. Get to meet the king of stuff. They if you're in the Phoenix area, sign up quickly. Get to meet the king of stuff. They meet March 11th, which is

Saturday. If you're one of those people who listens to this podcast on Sunday, go to Ricochet and see how the meetup was. People usually post pictures and stuff. A bunch of us are going to be in New Orleans next month for French Quarter Fest,

including me, and I hope to see you there. Flickr in Stillwater, Minnesota is having a meetup. That is happening April 22nd in Stillwater, Minnesota. Minnesota, that's up on your neck of woods. I hope to make it, unless of course I'm in Barcelona, and I don't want to

go through that again. Okay. I was right, by the way, barcelona uh and uh uh we just heard that winston salem meetup there's a winston salem meetup in the works for mid-july so um if you're in that area if you're not in those areas or those dates don't work for you here's the solution you just join ricochet post that you want to have a meetup somewhere closer to you on a date that works for you, and I guarantee you people will show up. People at Ricochet tend to show up and have a good time. So, details on all this stuff is at Ricochet,

so go to ricochet.com slash events or find the module and sidebar on the website. Join Ricochet. Come to a meetup. Look forward to seeing you. Meetups are good, like a Ricochet should. When you mentioned Winston-Salem, when I was a kid and discovered that actually there was a city called winston-salem because i was just aware of it and it's cigarette

incarnations because my sure somebody in my family smoked winston's my uncle uh and then one of the aunts was puffing away at the salems to discover that those are actually it was one city i was just absolutely blown away what's next marl Lark? Where do you live? I live in Durrell, Kent. I live in Tarryton. Tarryton. Yeah, I had an aunt that smoked Tarryton, too. You know, virtually all the cigarette brands were distributed amongst my aunts and uncles, right down to the Raleigh's, which had the coupons. Oh, yes, that's right. When you had to wonder about a cigarette whose quality was such that they had to give you these coupon enticements that you would collect for things like golf,

oxygen tanks, and the rest of it. But they all had their own individual brands, which to this day, when I hear Winston-Salem, what pops into my head is my Uncle Myron and my aunt, who was it? Was it Vi? I think Vi smokes. Anyway, it's another marker of adulthood that kids don't grow up with. They don't know Bill Buckley and they don't know cigarette brands. Kids.

Kids do that. So what else have we going on before we leave? We could talk about anything in the world. We could talk about what we happen to be. We used to do this. We used to say what we were watching, the streaming thing, to give people an idea of something else to watch. I have a question, though.

Can I ask a question? We only briefly discussed it, but this is a legit question. So when you went to Mexico, James, did you feel at risk? No, not at least. And here's why I ask. Because I go to places where people say, oh, I would never go there. Were you safe in Jerusalem? Were you safe in Egypt?

And I'm thinking, yeah, I'm perfectly safe. But I do sometimes look at the news and think, I'm not going to Mexico. Yeah, well, you know, on the Cancun subreddit, which is interesting, you had all these people who were just coming in with their hands aflutter saying, I heard about all this cartel violence. Is it safe to go to Cancun? That's like saying there's a whole bunch of drug wars going on in Washington State. Is it safe for me to go to Disneyland, Disney World, Disney World in Florida? The answer is yes. Now, is it possible that somebody could

come up alongside of our van and wave the guy over and relieve us of our property? Yes. Could happen in Minneapolis too. Now, Mexico is a lot more lawless in that respect, but I tend to think that there's a, uh, an understanding that the cash cow that is this enterprise shall not be, uh, shall not be gutted and shot. So I don't, I feel no, plus I'm way up there. Right.

But do you feel like, I mean, I guess what I'm asking is that there people are, there were hearings or people, I saw a lot of senators and people making speeches on TV after this. Do you feel like the American government, I mean, it seems like that's the lever we should pull, is to say, you know, maybe Americans should rethink going and spending their money in Mexico as tourists. It doesn't seem terribly safe.

Or at least don't go there for off-brand plastic surgery, I suppose. I would say, yeah, don't go down there for medicine or to buttock or the rest of it. But I mean, there isn't a talk now about putting on the table the American military option to deal with with drugs and cartels. Bill Barr published a piece in The Wall Street Journal. Was it this week or late last week? I think it was this week. Bill Barr, former Attorney General of the United States, saying that the United States military should handle the cartels in Mexico, that the drug deaths in this country and the undermining of Mexican society, that the Mexican government and military cannot handle them on our own and bill barr essentially called for the first invasion of mexico by the united states since the pancho villa expedition of 1917 when blackjack persian chased pancho villa all around sonora it's been a while you know old times and i thought you know i couldn't find a flaw in his

argument but i still thought oh oh. Oh, yeah. By the way, the question, is it safe? Somebody I know well was an executive at a pretty big bank down in Mexico. And every executive from the level of vice president and up was either kidnapped or had a member of his family kidnapped. Every single one. Routine. And very dangerous because every so often the kidnappers have to kill somebody to remind you that we're serious about wanting ransom it's not right i go to an isolated simulacrum of the experience that i in no way confuse in any

in any sense with actual mexico and that includes the food. Right. It is what it is. It's this fantasy little bubble in which you live, and that's great. But we all know that Rob Long believes that the problem is not consumption and demand in America, but Mexican production. That's why you, Rob, are in favor of a full-throated military response to the cartels, right? No, I'm not. I read that Bill Barr piece that i i i no i i think that's not our solution our solution is but you know let's i mean i'm always low-hanging

fruit do the easy stuff first first control the border get border control and second put economic pressure on mexico to clean itself up in in the sense of like telling americans they shouldn't go to mexico they shouldn't i mean i really i would do that before i would invade i would say listen state department issues at a an alert for a lot of places we're going to issue alert for the entire nation of mexico don't go until uh until the streets are safe and i think that would get the attention of a lot of people in Mexico who kind of think like, well, yeah, if you go here, you go there, you go to that state or that state or the other state, you're going to get in trouble. But basically, you can get off your cruise ship. No, don't go on the cruise ships. I mean, I would start sending American military into Mexican territory so that they, in the same

way that the, look, you start dropping bombs on people and killing people, you're going to kill some innocent people and you're going to kill an innocent family and that's going to be on, you know, the news. That's not a good idea. Certainly not until you've exhausted all the other possibilities. One of which of which i think is to get control of the border like you know like why why do it always the hard way that's it's hard enough to get control of the border but that seems like a job number one well i think we could do it though three days we can march to mexico city install our own governments as a matter of fact let's send the troops with the dress parade uniforms. Oh, wait a minute. Hold on. I've heard that

story before. We'll be greeted as liberators. We will be greeted as liberators indeed. Well, you know, some of us did. I remember a couple of happy people when we pulled down the statues of Saddam. But then that's another story. Something else that I wanted to point

out. I can't remember what it is precisely. Oh, right. Well, when Peter, when you talk about the kidnappings and the constant kidnapping and the rest of it. Yeah, I mean, that sort of seems only part of the problem. The other is that the new leadership in Mexico, from what I understand, is rejiggering their sort of election. That's right. Overseeing committees and rules, it makes it more difficult to challenge the results, which just means it seems to be drifting back to, if it ever got too far away from, the permanent revolutionary institutional party that they had before. And that the hope that we had when they

opened up and there was actually a choice, those days seem to be gone, and Mexico's better days are behind it rather than ahead. However, Ricoxico's better days are behind it rather than ahead however ricochet's better days are always ahead of it because we know that you the listener if you're not a member already will go and be compelled to join not compelled in the literal sense but compelled by what you find now mind you if you go there you're not going to find everything because the member feed where a lot of the real good communities and all the vivacious, interesting discussions about all kinds of topics. That's the fun part. So go to Ricochet.

Give it a look. Give it a try. If you don't like it, you can quit. We're not going to one of those places that locks you into contracts and the rest of it. Are we, guys? No? Okay, good. I would also like to note that Fast Growing Trees and Youth Switch and Factor are all products that will make your life easier and or better.

Support them for supporting us. And I think about the five-star review at Apple. I'm not going to say it this week because if I did, I would have to mention again that it takes only a couple of seconds. And again, it means that people find the podcast easier. And it means that Ricochet thrives. I've said that before. I'm not going to say it again at all. What I'm going to do is say

it's been great. And Rob, Peter, we'll see everybody at the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, boys. Next week, fellas. Ricochet. Join the conversation.