The Ricochet Podcast - Bearing Down

Episode Date: July 18, 2014

This week, Lileks returns and we’re all about borders — both our own and the ones in Eastern Europe. We’re joined by Russian expert Yuri Yarim-Agaev, who gives some remarkable insight into the downing of the Malaysian Air 777. Then, the Center for Immigration Studies’ Mark Krikorian joins to discuss the ongoing disaster unfolding on the border with Mexico. Also, Lileks abroad and welcome our... Source

activate program more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism well i'm not a crook i'll never tell a lie but i am not a bully mr gorbache, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs. Rob Long is off swanning amongst the Illuminati this week, so Troy Sinek is sitting in for him. Our guests, Yuri Yarimageev from Hoover and Mark Krikorian.

Putin, the world, Obama, immigration, lather up. Let's have a podcast. There you go again. Yep, this is it. This is the Ricochet Podcast and it's number 223. Who's it brought to you by? You may ask. It's brought to you by Harry's Shave. That's right. Metal blades that remove the little things from your face if you're a man. We're going to

talk a little bit more about that, why it's the greatest shave a man can ever get, and have an actual testimonial from Peter Robinson who uses it, whose house is full of guys shaving their face with Harry's products. Also brought to you by Encounter Books. For 15% off any title, go to EncounterBooks.com and use the coupon code RICOCHET at checkout. This week's featured title is Faithless Execution, Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment, something that's been in the news recently, brooded and bandied about.

Andy McCarthy is the go-to guy for that story. And of course, it's brought to you by Ricochet. Now, Ricochet is the greatest bargain on the Internet, on the Earth, perhaps in the known and observable universe. $5 a month, $39.95 a year. Now, there's a Thatcher and a Reagan tier, which cost a little bit more, but you have the warm, cockle

heart feeling of knowing that you've kept this thing going and alive. This would usually be the point where Rob Long steps in, but Rob at this moment is off in the Bohemian Grove somewhere wearing an owl mask and this moment, is off in the Bohemian Grove somewhere wearing an owl mask and nothing else, chanting Latin as the guys

who run the world secretly are deciding the agenda for 2015. He'd be here. He would tell you that there are Thatcher members anew, such as DTW56, Blondie, MSGL, James Galran. Now, Galran, of course, was a famous Klingon military leader. I wonder if that's a reference.

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members who entered the Be Don Pardo for a Day contest, people wanting to replace me, apparently, and fine, be that way. I honor them all. Since we mentioned Rob is gone, but we've got Troy Sinek sitting in, as ever, a wonderful addition to the show, and I heard Peter Robinson's genial chuckle there. Gentlemen, welcome. The end of the week is here. And I think my favorite tweet of last week came Thursday from Jim Garrity who said, today has been brought to you by the producers of 24.

That's how it felt. Right. Right. Troy? Well, you know, it's interesting as we've gone through this week and gone through the last week, gone through the last couple of months. I do – as a lot of our Ricochet members know, we do a podcast Military History Working Group who I've talked to on this show who evoke parallels. There is a pervasive sense that the world is sort of coming apart at the seams and doing so on so many different fronts that there is the capacity for chaos sort of latent in the system right now that has conceivably not been seen since that point. I don't think there's anything that has happened this week that would make you think otherwise. Well, let me push back on that and throw it to Peter. One of the things they say about World War I is that the powers, the great powers were

itching for a fight, spoiling for it. Pressure had been building up for decades and people were looking for an excuse. Oh, an Archduke gets cacked. All right, everybody arm up. Peter, would you say that we're in the same position now? I see a world that is weary and doesn't necessarily want to go to war. As far as entangled in – the entangled alliances that drag one partner unwillingly into something, do you think NATO is the equivalent of those alliances today?

No. NATO is tired. Nobody in Western Europe wants to go to war. Certainly Barack Obama, no American wants to go to war and this administration is doing anything, everything it can to avoid war. It's not at all clear to me that Vladimir Putin wouldn't mind a quick, sharp war. They always think it's going to be quick and sharp to take about the eastern one-third or so of Ukraine. Brett Stevens made an interesting point switching down to Israel and Gaza, made an interesting point in a column earlier this week that Israel is totally capable of handling the Gaza Strip. As long as they're tossing rockets, the Hamas is firing rockets on Israel.

Israel is now launched a ground invasion. We don't know yet how extensive it is, how violent, but they'll handle Gaza. What Israel would be defenseless against would be the tactics of Mahatma Gandhi. If the Gazans lay down in front of the tanks, if Gazans went on hunger strikes, in other words, if they embrace the tactics of nonviolence, Israel would be defenseless against that. Israel is too, if anything, too acutely conscious of the moral equation involved in living in the Middle East. But they will never – so that's – Brett Stevens said that. I think that's exactly right. But in Gaza, to Hamas, the violence is the point.

That's right. The violence is what they want. So unfortunately, here and there in the world, not here and there, two large places, certainly this rising group of lunatics that calls itself the new caliphate in the center of Iraq and Syria, they want violence. Violence is the point well-trained. We got used to a thoroughly second-rate Russian military, tanks that wouldn't work, command system that was unclear whether it would ever operate under combat toward the end of the Cold War. But now the people who watch the move into the Crimea say, no, no, no. This is a better trained, better equipped, much higher morale Russian armed forces. And let it never be forgotten that Russia still possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons, which of course leads to the critical point. If that caliphate, if Hamas gets a nuclear weapon, everything gets bad in a hurry, which means that

if there's a suspicion, this may be the tripwire. The tripwire in World War I was that assassination of Franz Josef Don and Sarajevo. But if somebody becomes convinced that there's a nuclear weapon in play or that Iran is about to get a nuclear weapon, something may happen. Don't want to overdo it. Just as Troy said, I don't want to overdo the parallels. This is a different time and place. But it's nasty. Troy?

Well, and James makes a good point too in making the distinction precisely on why you can't overplay the parallels because as a member actually of Ricochet noted yesterday – Peter, you put up a post yesterday when we started to get a sense of what had happened with this airliner going down with the question, what should the president's response be? And forgive me. I don't remember. I don't recall who the member was. But somebody said in the comments, well, the operative question is not really what our response is. We're not directly the aggrieved party. I mean it turns out we are to the extent that there were Americans on that plane. But they said the real question is what's the Dutch response?

I mean this is their airliner, and everybody sort of said, well, we don't expect very much. The Europeans, this should be catalytic to get the Europeans off their duffs. They're the ones who have been extremely hesitant, extremely tentative throughout this whole process about applying any deeper sanctions to the Russians. And I think for that reason, James' point is well taken. There's plenty of aggression being sown all across the world but in most cases, the party victim to it is pretty hesitant to respond. Obviously Israel being an exception but I think the thing that is remarkable about Israel given the capacity they have and despite the fact that they're being denounced throughout the Western press is how incredibly restrained they are. In the context – Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this week the difference between us and them is that we're using missile defense to protect our civilians and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles.

Right, right right right yeah well really what we got here is a bunch of stingy jews right 200 dead on the other side and they're only willing to spend one on the israeli side how can you possibly say that that's fair and i'm quoting there paraphrasing mind you the bbc i was listening yesterday to the b as i came home from work and there's this insufferable guy, the later afternoon news. And he was talking to an Israeli official and talking about the asymmetric and unbalanced form of this war where the Israelis survive because they've invested billions of dollars in protecting their own people, not just in missiles but in hardened facilities and rooms and safe rooms and all the rest of it. And these other guys spend their money building tunnels that they can move the little missiles around. And he's castigating them for this fact.

And the Israeli guys heard it a million times before, and he points out that they had found rockets in a UN school, right? And at this point, the BBC announcer interjects and says, but it was an unused school, wasn't it? These are the fine little points of casuistry in which the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic left has got to content itself with. Well, it was an unused school. So, you know, you can't really – At which point – I loved this.

The Israeli guy said – came back and said, yes, but it was a UN school. And that had to trump it because, oh, you got me there because the UN, of course, is a great and holy noble organization. So, yeah, I'll admit Hamas was traducing the great UN there for a second. But that's what they were concentrating on. It's like the other clip that's going around of Wolf Blitzer hammering the Israeli spokesman about the four little kids he hit on the beach. That's all they see are these incredibly small atomic little details and they are unable to apprehend one, the idea that Israel is facing an existential foe and that two, this foe itself has his eyes on the rest of the west i i mean it's it's stunning to see this happen to see everyone willingly ignore what is out there that wants to kill us i mean at least in the 80s right in the 80s we knew at least that the russians were were the fo. I mean those of us who were on the right anyway.

But Troy, Peter, help me out here. Is it because that it is seen on the left as xenophobic and anti-multiculturalism and bad for dealing with the image of the third world if we say that Islam is the problem? What do you think is the reason that they refuse to be able to say who our enemy is? Well, I think one of the reasons is that Hamas especially is – they're very good at playing the media game, right? I mean they understand that they can't win this as a tactical matter but they understand that they can win it in the court of public opinion with an extremely gullible western press.

So they want the martyrs. I mean that is a key point of – if you look at what they've been doing, there is no – they know that Iron Dome is there. They knew that there was no way that any of these rockets were going to do much in the way of damage. They were trying to draw the counterfire. I mean that's the whole point of the exercise is to be able to parade a bunch of their own corpses in the press as a way to turn public opinion against Israel. And like I said, to me, the amount of restraint that comes out of the Israeli government is heroic. And it may be somewhat misguided by any historical standard prior to sort of a late 20th century, 21st century understanding of the rules of international play, you would not see this kind of restraint.

I mean this would have been taken care of a long time ago and they would have plowed the soil with salt. But Israel plays within the rules of what's understood to be expected internationally and it's remarkable given how much they suffer from doing that. Two points for your – I actually think that this is a kind of dereliction of reporting duty. All the commentary – not all but the commentary just as you pointed out, James, is heavily anti-Israel in tone. I actually think the reporters are missing what should be one of the sort of inside the paper stories, a sub-, but it's still an important story. And that is all the very interesting, commendable, but interesting in their own right ways in which Israel is taking going to

taking measures to avoid injuring civilians. We know, for example, that the Egyptians attempted to arrange a ceasefire, and the Israelis observed it for six hours. And for six hours, Hamas fired rockets into Israel. Israel just thought, okay, fine, we'll just sit here and take it for six hours and see if somehow or other that encourages the other side to – they didn't do it. They've developed – a friend of mine who has a nephew in the IDF in Israel told me about this. They've developed what in Israel they call knock-knock bombs. And these are weapons, precision-guided of course, which will land on the roof of a building and do nothing except land with a thud, which is a warning signal. The next one is going to be real, clear out, telling people to leave. Before they launched the ground invasion yesterday,

they told the people in Gaza where they were going to go, which neighborhoods they were aiming at, and gave them roughly 24 hours to get out of the way. I think, as I say, I think it's a journalistic dereliction of duty that somebody hasn't written a story about the measures the Israelis are taking in any event. It's just – well, we're here. We're calling it the way we see it. Good for us, James. Good for us, Troy. Well, when the BBC went to it yesterday, again, they went to a guy in Gaza who essentially talked about how he'd never seen bombardment like this. There was tracer fire, and it was horrific, and he wondered if he was going to live through the day. Yeah, when it comes to the modern Carthaginian, Troy, you're right.

We're on a low-sodium diet. Somebody who can possibly speak to us about this and other issues is our old friend and previous guest, Yuri Yarim Agaev, who's a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as a scientist and a human rights activist. We welcome him back to the podcast, sir. Hello. Hello. I'm here. Hey, Yuri.

Glad to be here. Yuri, welcome back. It's Peter Robinson here. Hi, Peter. We'll get to the Malaysian jetliner in a moment. But first, a question or two as if it had not happened. Right up until we all read the news yesterday, it looked as though Poroshenko and the forces in Ukraine were gaining a lot of ground

against the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. It looked as though the pro-Russian separatists had had to withdraw to one city, Donetsk, and it looked as though Putin was simply leaving the pro-Russian separatists out, hanging them out to dry, letting them get defeated. He didn't seem to be taking any measures to support them. Is that a correct reading of what was taking place? And if it is correct, what was Putin doing, just letting them get beat?

No, it's a little bit over-optimistic view which you just offered. Yes, Ukrainian army was on offensive for a while. It recaptured the strongholds of those separatists in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk. But, unfortunately, it let most of those guys escape and get to the center of Donetsk and Lugansk, which are two major cities in Donbass. So, actually, the situation became, in one sense, they gained some ground, I mean, Ukrainian army. On the other hand, they made the situation more difficult because separatists now are in the center of a larger city. Donetsk is a city of over one million people. And they are spread inside this large city.

So, yes, I mean, there was some momentum. But as I say, the situation is still difficult and complicated. And one million of the civilian population in Donetsk is actually terrified with what would happen next. I see. Now, Putin's position is very hypocritical, mind you. I mean, yes, he hasn't completely abandoned his support. He still provides separatists with weapons, and actually there the movement of trucks with new people across the Russian

borders, which was observed and witnessed. Now, separatists have shot several airplanes before Malaysian Airlines. Effectively, Putin and separatists established, let's say, no-fly zone over eastern Ukraine without declaring it. I mean, that's absolutely atrocious situation when they effectively exercise for last couple of weeks and no-fly zones. They shot every object which is in the air, which so far before recent events where Ukrainian airliners, both transport airlines and military jet,

but they definitely had means before, and it was apparent, to shoot down all flying objects over their skies. And they exercised meticulousness that undeclared no-fly zone policy. So before the jetliner went down, the situation was that Poroshenko and the Ukrainian forces had gained ground, literally, they'd gained ground. But the separatists had now concentrated in two major cities, including Donetsk. They now hold in Donetsk effectively a million hostages. And if they had not gained control of the sky, they had certainly successfully denied it to the Ukrainian Air Force. Is that correct?

So it's still an extremely serious... Yes, that's correct. And it sounds now a little bit less optimistic than you said in the beginning. And particularly with one million people hostages, as we understand, that's quite a terrifying situation, right? And again, you have family in Donetsk, as I recall. Isn't that right, Yuri? Yes, absolutely. control over the city. And, I mean, they don't do anything positive there. The only thing they do is they destroy the city, which may change the whole political equation of the whole situation.

What do you believe happened? Do we know enough to make an informed guess or should we just be holding off until the wreckage is combed for clues to what actually happened oh well i i think we know already a lot first thing we know that and i think it was confirmed already yesterday by american intelligence that the airliner was shot down by the rocket that's not disputed any. It was not accident it was shot down by the rocket. The second thing I'm positive that this rocket was launched by

either separatists who were in possession of such rockets which could have shot that airline or maybe even by Russians from the Russian side of the border. More probably by separatists, but it doesn't matter. It's splitting the hair.

It's the same gang of people. I mean, to me, whoever specifically pressed the button, whoever specifically gave the order, it's still the same gang, and final responsibility still lays with Putin I mean there is one version that they wanted to shoot down

Ukrainian transport airplane but instead this rocket chose the larger target which was Malaysian airliner and shot it down well it may have been the case Peter but it doesn't matter to me again. You know, I mean, was it done absolutely intentionally?

Did they want to shoot another plane, which would have been also crime to me? And it's all the same, you know. I mean, it's Putin's troops which are acting there. Let's say it very clearly. How disciplined are those troops, whether they make some errors, whether sometimes they shoot one target and hit another target. Look, none of that elevates any responsibility from Putin himself. He initiated this whole campaign. He directed this whole campaign. He controls this whole campaign. And full responsibility for any such actions lays with him. That's my position.

Yuri Troisenik, you said a moment ago that the plane being shot down could fundamentally change the dynamic there. How do you think it's going to play out? Is this going to catalyze the Europeans to get tougher in a way that they haven't? What happens from this event yesterday as we play this forward? Well, I would hope so. Well, look, the fact that there was 154 Dutch citizens in this airplane, among them 80 children from Holland. I mean, it's very difficult to ignore, I believe, to Holland such situation, and it's very difficult to ignore to other European countries. And although Merkel somehow still insists that adding new sanctions is a little bit early,

I think she will find herself in a more and more difficult position to justify that. You know, because there are, as I say, many Europeans, peaceful children who were killed in this tragic accident. And I think it cannot be ignored at all. So I think it will change the political situation. Peter, here once again. What about the situation inside the Kremlin itself? We know now that in the last days of the Soviet Union, I'm talking about the final years, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze wanted to move in one direction. There were hardliners who staged a coup and so forth.

The politics inside the Kremlin can be complicated. Do you suppose that at this point there are people in positions of responsibility, people in the Duma? Can Putin or his supporters be shamed? I don't think so. I don't think that anything can change as long as Putin stays in power. Duma has absolutely no power. It's Potemkin's village. It does everything.

It's rubber stamps, anything which Putin tells them to do. All immediate Putin's surrounding is also selected by him and consists of the same KGB officers who systematically conduct anti-American and anti-Western policy. And we may pretend that it doesn't happen. We may close our eyes, but it happens, and it happens very apparently. So, I mean, the main problem which I see now, Peter, with our foreign policy, if I can call it such, is not even the weakness of our sanctions. And they don't measure up to what Putin is doing.

But with very confused message, we still treat Putin as a partner rather than aggressor and perpetrator of those events. I think that's our main problem. You know, we should clearly define for ourselves that Putin is responsible for all these things. He cannot be partner. He cannot be mediator. You know, he is a criminal who is responsible for what happens. And imagine for a moment such strange situation, say, if tomorrow Putin's troops come to Donetsk and Lugansk, arrest separatists, mind you, not support, but instead arrest them, persecute them, and install their order, you know, and keep their troops there and say, we came to liberate people of Donetsk from those terrorists, etc. Imagine such a strange scenario.

I wouldn't be shocked, you know, that in that situation, Obama and Merkel would accept it, would accept Putin as a peacemaker. You know, the very man who started all the situations, they say, okay, but at least there is some law and order now, you know, and people are not terrorized. You know, maybe it sounds a little bit paradoxical to you, but it's not so paradoxical to me because we have absolutely no clarity in our foreign policy.

And it's much more important than even the level of sanctions, even to send clear message to Putin that we consider you perpetrator of this event and we want you, we request you to be completely out, completely out of any Ukrainian politics. We don't need you as a peacemaker. We don't need you as a moderator. You should be out. That should be our clear message, which we do not send yet. Yeah.

Yuri James Lalix here in Minneapolis. Clear messages, not something this administration has been good at, nor the follow-up. But nevertheless, there are two questions I have for you about what we can do. One, short-term, is there anything that we can do to hurt the oligarchs on whose goodwill Putin depends, freeze them out of the international banking system, deny them their right to land in other countries, hurt them personally and hard? And secondly, in the long-term. How long does, as one of our members asked in the chat room, how long does Putin have before the American energy boom,

the Israeli Leviathan field, before all of these things start to bring the cost of energy down so that Putin no longer has that sweet energy money to prop up his faltering country? What can we do short term, and how long does Putin have, really, when you look down the road? Well, short term, we can start with so-called sector sanctions, economically. And that's important, because so far our sanctions are very limited and very selective, and we don't really completely block such defense sector and energy sector of Russians, which we can do. But we can also help Ukrainian army directly.

You know, we can provide them a weapon to fight. We can send our forces, some operations. I don't call for that, but we do not need to jump and declare that we would never do anything like that. We should keep Putin at least in suspense on those issues. And energy policy in the longer term is also very important. But there is also the third aspect which relates

to what I said before. We should exclude Putin as a partner and consider him as our partner in any international arrangements. Look, we should include him not only from the Ukrainian situation as a partner and as an equal mediator or whatever else,

but also from all the Middle Eastern situations, from the Iranian and Syrian situations. Let's look soberly at what's going on. Whenever we bring him as allegedly our partner or ally in all those situations, he uses it as an entry to exercise his power and hijack those things, like it was in Syria, like it was in Iran, like it now happens in Ukraine. I mean, we that would be very

important sanction, mind you, if the West would tell Putin, look, from now on, we don't consider you any longer our ally or our partner in any international deals. You are against us.

We finally recognize that. We can deal with that. We are not afraid of that. We'll manage by our own. But you are out. I think that would be a very important political sanction against Putin and against his government. Peter Robinson What would need to happen, Yuri, for Putin to look at the situation in Ukraine and sort of draw a line? We assume obviously he's operating rationally. So there's got to be some

sort of deterrent. There's got to be something that could be done where he says, you know, this isn't worth a candle anymore. The costs of this are too high for me to push any further. What do you think could accomplish that? Well, all we discussed before, all the sanctions, the political, economic, etc., addition, you know, helping Ukrainian military in this situation, making it stronger and letting it more successfully to carry its operation against separatists, that would be a decisive factor also. You know, I mean, at some moment he would be faced with the fact that either he has to invade directly with all his armies, or he has accepted the defeat of the separatists, right?

Now, this economic and political sanctions should stop him from that latter idea of direct invasion with full strength of Russian army, and helping the Ukrainian army would allow to suppress and stop all those terrorist and separatist movements. So that could eventually end all the situation, combination of those two things. Yuri, thanks for joining us today. We really appreciate your insight, and one of these days we wish to have you on

to talk about all the wonderful things that are going to happen to the world after our enemies have been vanquished and the field for peace is clear. I would talk about this anytime. I like to talk about nice things so I would join you at any moment.

We'll give you a call in 2097. Thank you very much. Yuri, thank you so much. Take care. Thank you. much. Yuri, thank you so much. Take care. Thank you. Yes, one of those. You know, the idea of, how do I put this? Well, here.

Maybe a sound effect is what you want. You know what that is, guys? I don't have a clue. A copy grinder? Make me nervous, James. That is a bunch of small small little tiny blades that are spinning around at a high speed like an Iranian centrifuge, digging into my flesh. Digging right into it. Oh, man. And I'm kind of used to it.

I'm kind of the guy who shaves at his desk because it's that sort of Days of Wine and Roses thing. I always like that. Jack Lemmon shows up at the office hungover, takes the electric razor out of his drawer, starts doing, we really tied one on last night. I'm too much of a multitasker, too busy, too scattered to actually spend any time shaving. I got to do it while I'm doing something

else. But when I was taking a trip to Europe a couple of weeks ago, I realized that unless I wanted to wake up on the plane and show up in Paris with stubble, which of course course, you know, would be appropriate, I guess, for a certain ruined romantic look. You might look almost French. Right. I went, and if I, you know,

sat there with a half-lit, you know, a half-smoked Galois hanging out of my mouth, yeah, that could work, but no. You want to feel neat and clean when you arrive in the City of Light. So I went to the store that they have at the airport where you can buy razors. And there, for the user's price of about $7.97, you could buy a little Bic that had two blades on it

with some creamiest lather down your face. And you were guaranteed, just looking at this, knowing that, A, the blade is so cheap, it's going to rip about the first three levels of epidermis off the face. And secondly, that you're going to be bouncing around up there in turbulence, and you're probably going to gash yourself and open up a carotid artery. So I bought the razor, but I didn't use it and I regretted the fact that I had to arrive in Europe unshaven. was no longer home was a box and it was a box from Harry's. Now, if you're a guy who shaves, if you're a gal who shaves, whatever, here's what you know about blades. You use them once,

right? And they're never the same afterwards. You shave once and you think it's great, but you know, the cartridges are too expensive and you go back to the disposals. You buy the one you see at the store and it's great, but it gets all gooky and you don't care about it. Well, what if there was an alternative for you to buy shaving where you didn't have to go to Walgreens or CVS or Target or the rest of the place and spend a quarter million dollars to get some stuff? What if there was a place where it came to you? And that's the idea behind Harry's Shave. I had less than a year old this company and they're already changing the shaving industry. Yeah, there are those places out there that will send you behind Harry's Shave. Less than a year old, this company. And they're already changing the shaving industry. Yeah, there are those places out there that will send you a razor for a buck.

But I repeat my, they'll send you a razor for a dollar, okay? Harry's isn't going to send you a razor for a dollar. It ain't a dollar razor. Now, the company makes these amazing German-engineered blades. And to be truthful, well, they care so much about the product that they bought the factory. That brings back that old, those old guys. I liked it so much, I bought the company. Well, they did. A 93-year-old German factory that makes the blades is now in the Harry's family. Co-founder of the company, Jeff, also co-founded the eyewear brand Warby Parker, which I am keen

to try because I'm sick of my specs. And there's some similarities between the companies. Great design, meticulous craftsmanship, amazing value, and highly personal and dedicated customer service. Now, I've got one of these hairy shave erasers right here in my hand. It is an attractive item. It looks like it would belong on the Hindenburg. It's got that wonderful 30s styling to it. It's well-balanced, and it has, as far as I can tell, 17 blades.

No, it's actually about five or so. And it is, you know, remember before that grinding sound of those little tiny blades going into my flesh? I am right now drawing this thing against my skin without any lotion. And it is as smooth and as painless as you can possibly get. I'm not bleeding. I promise. But don't trust me. Peter Robinson and his family full of manly men with lots of facial hair have been using this product for quite some time.

And Peter, it's time for you to deliver a testimonial. Thank you very much, James. By the way, it says something about Harry's design that James Lilacs approves of the retro look. James Lilacs, who is the world connoisseur of retro looks. I discovered Harry's. I can't think how, maybe just trolling the web one day, or maybe a friend mentioned it. In any event, I have three sons,

three shaving age sons, let's put it that way, two of them off in college. Here's what you need to know. You can get the Harry's set, which is a beautiful razor, shaving cream that comes in a little tube. It's not really cream. It's more paste.

You rub it between your hands. In other words, it lasts longer than would a bottle of shaving cream. And three blades for just $15. The retro look, the chrome handle that James is talking about costs $25. So $15 a piece. And then you can get a year's worth of blades, at least at the rate at which kids in college shave. 12 blades, a blade lasts them a month, 12 blades for 20 bucks. So you can get your stinking sons, 35 for 35 bucks, you get them set up to shave for a year and they have no excuse afterwards. That's what was in my head. They love it.

The razors look cool. They look as though they're not dad's razor. Or they did until I got a Harry's razor myself. I splashed out for the Winston set. It's a smooth, good, economical shave. And there's something about the fun of using a product that's well designed by the way i should add that that when you buy even this inexpensive 15 truman set as it's called it'll gift so what am i saying my boys use harry's and have for almost a year now i've used harry's for three or four days now i would be willing to rub my cheek cheek against James's in a contest of smoothness.

There's a mental image with which I will stop. I'm going to insist that you guys don't do that. Yeah, okay. Yeti, stop. I'm stopping now. Just wind that one up here. Peter, thank you for that. And we'll have our cheek comparison at some point in the next Ricochet meetup.

But I want to tell everybody this. If you are saying, okay, it's a great razor, it's a great price, there they use, huh? I'm here to tell you the typeface in the packages is Nutra. And I'm a sucker for anything that uses Nutra because it's one of my favorite fonts, and it's named after Richard Nutra, the famous

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to just talk about things that weren't death and despair and the world crumbling and falling apart? But we must return. Now back to – But it does make you realize that, of course, when you simply when you hold these simple totems of industrial design in your hands that we take for granted the fact that a guy can get up and shave himself in the morning we take for granted that you can get up and have

a great cup of coffee when i was hanging around europe last week it's everybody's taking this thing for granted everybody's just sitting around in cafes having a wonderful life because this is the epitome of civilization this is where it all ended up and there's nothing that can possibly threaten this eminently civilized civilization not the case exactly but if there's one thing that can threaten um the american what i want to say here constituents the american makeup the american body politic it might be immigration um I know, I know. Why don't I bring up a contentious idea about which we can disagree? But no, we're going to talk about immigration. We've got Mark Krikorian, Executive Director for the Center for Immigration Studies since 1995, internationally recognized expert on immigration issues. Also contributed to Ricochet and National Review.

And you can follow him on Twitter at Mark S. Krikorian. Thanks for joining the show today. What's going on in the border? Oh, nothing. I don't know. It doesn't seem to be much. It's pretty quiet. Hey, Mark. Mark Peter here. So here's the question. How bad is it? Well, it's pretty bad. I mean, so far this year, something like 60,000 unaccompanied minors, most of them teenagers, have, that sort of thing. The illegal immigration in South Texas has been increasing rapidly for a couple of years now. And only when the New York Times noticed a couple of weeks ago, did it really become a national issue. Hey, Mark. So what I was hoping and what I think I have said in a couple of podcasts turns out to be just flat wrong, I guess.

Here's what I was saying. I was not the only one saying it, that we have a moment here when we can just work that one through, maybe assimilate because the immigration problem has – on the ground has all but ceased. Remember that? For almost two years now, everybody has been saying the immigration – the net immigration is a slight outflow to Mexico rather than an inflow from Mexico. We still have a problem in principle. But in practice, we have at least a lull when the immigration, illegal immigration has all but stopped. And that, was that wrong at the time? Or was it a lull which has now simply ended? Yeah, there was a lull to some degree. There's

no question about it. The problem is that people assumed that that meant this problem was over. I mean, there was this great New York Times op-ed in 2012, featured op-ed with a box right in the middle of the page. And the beginning of it, I don't have it in front of me, but it said something like, the immigration crisis, which has roiled American politics for so long, is receding into history. I mean, that's, it was, and this was written by a professor who should know better. And that was the premise, though, Wow. pretty much resolved. It's been stabilized at least. So let's clear the decks and start fresh by amnestying the people who are here. At some point, you can make that argument. I mean, I've in print has said, sure, amnestying some people at some point, once you're tying up the

loose ends and have finished fixing the problem is not, I don't like it, but you know, reality, sometimes you have to bow to. But we are not there yet. And in fact, we're farther away than we were a couple of years ago. Mark, one more question. I know Troy wants to ask you. This is the last question? No, no, no.

This is my last question for a moment or two. Troy is sending me little emails saying, let me in here. I want to ask a few. So here's my one last question about the nature of what's taking place at the border right now. You mentioned 60,000 unaccompanied minors, many thousands of others who've come with families or accompanied by adults. A lot of them are not from Mexico. They're from further south. Is that correct?

Yeah. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador seem to be the biggest sending countries of this latest flow. So that is another body blow against the lull argument because the lull argument depended very heavily on the improving Mexican economy. And by the way, the Mexican economy is improving and the current president does seem to be an improvement. There is a business class rising in Mexico. It looks as though they may finally get out of their own way and put together a modern economy that will reach across the country rather than just Monterey and the cities on the north. But that won't help if we're required to accept any immigrant who wants to

cross our border from impoverished countries further to the south, correct? Yeah, exactly. And frankly, if you're sitting in Honduras, Mexico looks like Norway. So the goal really, it seems to me, and this is not something, you know, the president could ever say. He wouldn't even believe it. But this is something that, you know, we can say the goal is for Mexico to have its own illegal immigration problem with all these Salvadorans and Guatemalans moving to Mexico City to work. The problem is the Mexicans are waving them through, shaking them down along the way, stealing their money, and then sending them

to the United States. If they couldn't basically make them continue into the United States, Mexico itself would start cracking down more than it already has. Mark, this is Troy. Is there any plausible explanation for how you get all these kids amassed at the southern border that doesn't involve at the very least willful blindness on behalf of the Obama administration? No. The fact is there has to be a reason for people to want to leave where they live. Things are lousy in Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador. There's no question about that. But you have to have two things. The place you're coming from has to be lousy. You have to have a reason to want to leave. But you also have to have a reasonable expectation that you'll succeed

in getting into the United States. And that's where Obama's five years of gutting immigration enforcement comes into play. You know, and whatever the president may say about, you know, please don't send your kids. We're going to send them back. People are going to look at actions, not words. And when we are simply letting illegal immigrants go with a piece of paper saying, please show up for your hearing, you know, three months from now. Ridiculous. Those illegal immigrants, they go to their relatives in Chicago or Washington, D.C. or L.A. They call home and they say, hey, it's relatives in Chicago or Washington, D.C. or L.A.

They call home and they say, hey, it's true. Everything they said is true. They actually just let us go. So come while the getting is good because the Americans can't be this stupid and keep it up forever. So there's a window of opportunity. You need to take it now. That's why people are coming. Mark, you mentioned just a moment ago that Obama has spent five years gutting border control.

Distinguish between border control and deportation because what we hear over and over again is, wait a minute, wait a minute. He's not a pro-immigrant president. He's been deporting more people than anybody before him. It's immigration control in general is the issue here. But you're right. The claims of deportation was used by the White House as a way of saying, look, he's serious about enforcement. That's why we can move forward with an amnesty. The problem is what they really did was they kept those numbers seeming high in two ways. First, they have counted as deportations things they never would have counted in the past as deportation. So they basically cooked the books. They're cooking the books. Of course they are. Why didn't that occur to me? Go ahead. And what has happened is that enforcement, they basically stopped enforcing the law inside the country.

So as a former head of ICE, the Immigration Enforcement Agency, said just a few weeks ago in the LA Times, if you're a run-of-the-mill illegal immigrant in the interior of the United States, your chances of being deported are close to zero. tried to do and has done to some significant extent is turn illegal immigration into a secondary offense so that you have to be a murderer or a drug dealer in order for them to actually take action against you based on your illegal status. If you're not, you're basically home free. What about the politics of this, Mark, with the request that the administration has made for the $3.7 billion? Best I can tell, almost none of that actually goes to border security. What should the Republican response be there? I mean what's the responsible thing to do at this point? Well, I mean they do need more money in some sense because – I mean, DHS and also Health and Human Services that

handles these unaccompanied minors are burning through money fast, obviously. The problem is what I think they need to do is tie the money to a prohibition against Obama expanding these unilateral amnesties he's been doing. In other words, there's something called DACA, which is basically the DREAM Act, amnesty for kids who came here illegally as kids. They're adults now. I don't even think that's necessarily a bad idea if Congress were to pass it, at least in some form. But Congress hasn't passed it. And two years ago, the president just did it on his own. So there's close to 600,000 illegal immigrants. He has basically amnesty. He is now threatening to amnesty another five or six million illegal immigrants that way. So what Congress, I think,

needs to do is give him this money, but only on the condition that no money at all can be used to expand that unilateral amnesty in the future. Mark Peter here once again. If I may, I want to ask you who's good in a moment. But first, let me ask you if we've seen any cases of repentance or at least people adding nuance to their arguments or positions. Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, has any of them commented on what's taking place at the border and suggested that it has implications for their own positions? Yeah, Rubio seems to have been – seems to be the best on this or at least the most contrite if I'll put it that way. I don't know if I really put it as in form of contrition, but he has run away from his earlier position

farther than the others. Paul Ryan, while making some sounds about, you know, we need to have border enforcement, basically is saying that, you know, we really do need comprehensive immigration reform to address this problem, which is really the line of Democrats. And I haven't heard Jeb Bush say anything one way or the other. Right. And one more. I keep saying one more. Well, yeah. What the heck it is. It's just the thing is that talking to you is like eating peanuts. Each one leads to another. So one more question. How do you answer? I've asked you this before, but you do such a good job of it. I haven't asked you when there was a situation quite like this taking place, though. Consider the desperation their parents must have felt to put them into the hands of these coyotes, these runners, to take them to the United States.

How can you even imagine sending them back? This is a country of 300 million people. It is a rich country. Surely we can absorb 60,000 or 100,000 of these heartbreaking cases a year. Someone, what I'd love to ask the bishops is what Deng Xiaoping asked Jimmy Carter when he objected to immigration controls from China. Deng said, how many do you want? 10 million, 20 million, 30 million? The fact is there are 5 billion people in the world who are poorer than the average Mexican. 5 billion. So, you know, why these particular Central Americans and not the entire population of Congo

or East Timor or any number of countries you could mention. The fact is we need to govern with our heads even if we feel with our hearts. Mark, you're a cold and heartless man. And the truth of the matter is this. You are fighting a rearguard action against keeping these people who are just pre-citizens, if you want to use that term, out. And what we really should be talking about is how to use the American air power to go to these countries and scoop up as many as possible and bring them here because obviously we have an obligation to them. It would be great if we could just start with getting the language back, which I fear is a lost cause. You know, of course, the case of jose antonio vargas who

was arrested this week he's a he's a guy he's an immigration activist as they say uh which is a term meaning that he probably isn't a citizen uh he's an illegal alien right exactly right and um the new york times reporting on his temporary detention said well noted of course that he's a pulitzer prize winning journalist which right right there, well, say no more. We got to keep him in the country, says he's an activist for immigrants who, like him, do not have legal status. Well, they do have a legal status and it is illegal to be detained at the airport because you don't have sufficient proof of your identity, you know, I went through a couple of checkpoints in other countries and they were pretty darn keen on me showing my papers, especially to get back into America.

It's almost as if they regarded my legal status as a citizen of this country to be an important element in considering whether or not I should get on that plane. And I find it astonishing, actually, that we're still arguing about the importance of legal status and the meaning of citizenship. At this point, it seems to me as though that point, the meaning of the importance of citizenship is already lost. It's a tincture that has dissolved in a great ocean of tears and compassion. And I wonder if I'll ever get the terms back. We are, I mean, this border thing really, I think, does help get us to the core issue that we need to debate. And that is, do the American people have the right to decide who comes into their country and who doesn't? That's really what it amounts to.

Do we decide, can we place limits or restrictions on who comes here or can't we? And frankly, the libertarians and much of the left, their answer is no. That anyone who wants to come here, who isn't a dope dealer or a terrorist, we have to let in and we don't have the right to keep them out. I mean, that really is the core question. It's not even whether I want less immigration or you want more immigration. Should we have farm workers or should we have computer programmers? Those are all, in a sense, almost secondary issues. The first one is, do we even get to decide? Do we have the right to control immigration? And frankly, much of our political class, right and left, their answer is

no, we don't. In fact, there was a posting on the site by Fred Cole, I think, and it had a huge number of responses. And he actually, I think, effectively put that position that there shouldn't be any limits on immigration, that foreigners should be able to decide how many people move to the United States. Yes. Well, unfortunately, you are slowing down. We know you're a robot and apparently your mainspring is unwinding because it sounds as if you're breaking up there. So we're going to have to let you go. But thanks, Mark.

We'll see you at the corner. We'll see you at Ricochet. We'll maybe see you on a ship one of these days. And we thank you for joining this, the Ricochet podcast. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Mark. You know, when we were talking about what Obama has done, I was stunned for a little bit there because he did something. When we heard the president yesterday describe the downing of the aircraft as it may have been a tragedy or whatever words that he used before he launched into the prefab speech about infrastructure, many people have pointed this out, that the president is the most disengaged president we've ever seen in our lifetimes. He doesn't seem to enjoy being president anymore.

He's decided that he's not going to do the actual governing part. He's just going to do the speech fine and grip and grin and eat the burgers. That's the part that appeals to him. That's the part that we're going to get. Do you get the same feeling that we actually don't have a chief executive at this moment for all intents and purposes? He's bored, right? He's intellectually above it. This is the Valerie Jarrett line that keeps getting recycled every couple of years. He's never really been challenged in his life. And at the time that she said that, the idea was the presidency is the one task that's worthy of him. That's the one thing that will actually get him firing on all cylinders because everything has come so easy to him that nothing else has ever represented a serious challenge. Well, it turns out that that's not about his intellect. That's about the fact that he's just not – he's not engaged. He's lazy and he doesn't want to deal with these things because they challenge his preexisting conceit that the world is going to march to his tune.

I mean it's amazing that – I don't think there has been a presidency where there has been less learning. There is no sense at any point that he has been disabused of any of the notions that he brought to the campaign trail in 2008. And that to me is more damning than the utopian qualities he had at that time is the fact that he has not been disabused of any of them. I would grant all that and then add a slightly different twist to it I think. As usual, the way I look at Obama is colored a great deal by my own experience in the Reagan White House. And in the second term, to a large extent, what the president did was reap the seeds that he had sown,

Ronald Reagan this is, in his first term. That is to say the defense buildup, the clarity and rhetoric all take place during the first term. That is to say, the defense buildup, the clarity and rhetoric all take place during the first term. He sustains them in the second term. And then he gets Gorbachev coming and signing the signing a new treaty that actually reduces nuclear weapons in December 1987, as I recall, the INF Treaty, and suddenly the Cold War is effectively over. And you know what? I am not absolutely certain that Barack Obama feels he needs to do much more in this second term because he sowed exactly the seeds he wanted to sow

during his first term. And things are proceeding about as he would have hoped they would proceed. And I come more and more to the conclusion that George Will is correct. George Will has argued that what Barack Obama wanted to do was to conduct his presidency in such a way that he changed the character of the United States of America.

He's enacted an enormous piece of social legislation, Obamacare, which as we are now discovering turns out to be very, very difficult to undo. I believe Republicans should remain committed to undoing it, but it is hard to undo. It's difficult to unravel the legislation. It's difficult to work backwards and get out of all the insurance company arrangements. The insurance companies, many insurance companies like it. They're fat and happy with it. It's difficult to make the argument to public opinion.

In foreign policy, he gave speeches early in his first term that effectively the whole notion of a reset and the notion that America is not an exceptional country, he was engaging in effectively a withdrawal from the world. He was trying to shrink America's conception of its place in the world. And you know what? He may have done a pretty good job with it. That Putin is now running things in Europe, or at least in Eastern Europe. That Hamas and Israel, Israel is on its own, that Iran gets to decide whether it develops a nuclear weapon, that is not entirely outcomes that Barack Obama would be unhappy with.

He may as well go play golf and have dinner with pseudo-intellectuals because things are moving along about as he might have hoped. That's my new view of Barack Obama and the second term. But let me tell you, Harry's is a smooth shave. There is a bright side here. Look, some of these things can be done. Some of these are not permanent changes to the American psyche. We'll see in the next presidential race whether or not we have somebody who has a certain amount of Texan to his spine, be he from Texas or not, who decides to tap into a large, vast

reservoir of American desire not to be a weakling who can be pushed around by anybody. And we saw, I mean, Carter was Carter and then came Reagan. That doesn't mean that it can't happen again. Doesn't it won't happen the same way or a different country slightly, but there's a certain American spirit that does not want to be just another player. We want to be a force for good and have the power to back it up. When it comes to Obamacare, yes, this is a big thing. It has redefined, if you want to say, the relationship between government and the people that all of a sudden we're not citizens. In a sense, we're vassals. But is that a clean break or is that an attenuation of something that's been going on since the Great Society? I think it's the latter, frankly.

It's just a worse – the good thing about Obamacare is that it eventually touches everybody and is an object lesson in the inadequacies of government to suit your needs. You can shrug your shoulders and shake about various government programs and regulations because you never see the impact on your own direct life. But when your insurance gets canceled, when you're herded into the camp along with everybody else for a substandard policy, all of a sudden you realize what's been done. And I think, as we're going to see in 14 and 16, there's going to be a great American pushback. Is Obamacare going to be easy to unravel completely? No. But let's use this perhaps as an example of showing people that actually more freedom and opportunity and goodness for you and your family comes from a lessening of a government program as opposed to promising

more and more and more and more. That's my hope. I'm just not going to give up on the country yet. And I hate to think that something this great and this powerful and astute and austere has been ruined by a feckless college administrator who wandered into the break room and dropped a couple of pearls of wisdom and everybody swooned at his rhetorical skill and enacted his desires. No. He wanted to funnel – The feckless college administrator is holding a press conference at this hour. Quote – I'm quoting something that he said just moments ago, quote, it's too early to try to determine what the motivations of the people who shot the plane are. Close quote. It's too early. Barack Obama, call Uri. James, back to you. Sorry. It's too early to determine the

motivations. Is that what he honestly said? It's too early? It's too early to try to determine what the motivations of the people who shot the plane are. And this, gentlemen, is why the American people should make a conscious decision to never choose another person admitted to the bar of any state as president of the United States of America. It's too early to try. I'm sorry. You worked so hard to bring us out on an up and then I just put in that. That went over like a lead – listen. I revert to Harry's. It's a smooth shave. It's inexpensive.

It's beautifully designed. James, get us out of here on a high note, will you please? Well, I will tell you this, that if you wanted to – if you're fired up about what the president may have done to the country and you're sort of intrigued by all this impeachment talk, it's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. But if you want to understand the legal basis for it, the underpinnings, the rationale, the reasons, et cetera, what exactly it takes to impeach a guy, what it means if you just want to praise him for that, you can go to Andy McCarthy's new book at EncounterBooks.com. And if you use the checkout code Ricochet at EncounterBooks.com, you will get Faithless Execution, Andy's new book, and 15% off that or anything else. And need I tell you that if you go to Harrys.com

and enter that same sainted coupon code of Ricochet, you get five bucks off your first order. And the moment that you take a Harry's blade to your tender skin, you will say, hmm, huh, I get it now. And then you'll be a customer for life. And you, of course, will have to go to Ricochet.com and sign up if you haven't already and become a customer for life for this, the most popular,

growing, extraordinary home for center-right conversation of a civil nature you'll find anywhere on the internet, this planet, or, you know, other planets, multiverses, universes. This is nothing like Ricochet. Nothing like Peter and Troy. I hope to get Rob back next week, but if not, the old gang will be here

with, well, we might have a presidential contender or two. Troy, by the way, just one closing question for you. James just returned from Venice, Italy. Rob is off in Muir Woods, north

of California at the Bohemian Grove, I believe. What are you doing this summer? I am... Just try to live up to them, baby. I am nothing nearly that exciting, although I will tell you

that I've got Rob beat because while Rob is doing this strange year-long walkabout in New York that no one seems to understand, I will actually as of next week be leaving California for good and I'm actually moving to Nashville, Tennessee to better represent Ricochet from the heart of the country. Yes, indeed. And when you go there, I believe there's a replica of the Parthenon. The Parthenon. There is. Yes.thenon, there is. Yes.

Centennial Park in Nashville. And it's not historically accurate in as much as it wasn't filled with gunpowder during the Greek Rebellion and blown up. But it's one of those wonderful things where you look at it and you say that America is indeed the inheritor of all of these things, the Greek idea of self-government and we hope the Spartan spine as well. Time will tell. Guys, it's been a great podcast. It's been a pleasure to be back. Happy to be here. And we'll see you at the comments at Ricochet 2.0.

Thanks, James. Thank you, fellas. Enjoy. Next week, boys. ¶¶ ¶¶ She prays to herself that we're easy Listening to the Vodafone radio This song comes from 1962 Dedicated to a man who's gone 50,000 watts out of Mexico

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and she hopes for a change while listening to the Voter Radio her life and she hoped for a change while listening to the border radio. Ricochet. Join the conversation. This song comes from 1962 Dedicated to a man who's gone 50,000 watts out of Mexico This is the border radio

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