The Ricochet Podcast - Benignly Pompous

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

Now that impeachment is upon us we thought we’d let the guys do a long segment (that’s not a euphemism) on it themselves. Then, Niall Ferguson joins to explain why the Trump administration is like the Corleone family, but trust us — he means this as a compliment ( calm down and read the column, MAGA folks). We go celestial with this week’s Lileks Post of The Week Winning the Cosmic Lottery by @ Source

I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston Telephone Directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing. First of all, I think he missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Alex.

Today we talk to Neil Ferguson about the godfather and Trump and Roger Scruton. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, and it is number 479. Wow. How did we get that far? Well, thanks to the founders, Peter Robinson and Rob Long. Guys, how are you doing? I'm feeling old now that you put it that way. Yeah, I'm scared. Well, we've been doing one a day for a couple of years. So yeah, it'll add up after a while. I was just in Palo Alto, Peter's stomping ground, and it was 52 degrees and people were complaining a little bit about the chill. Here in Minnesota right now, it's six below. A blizzard is bearing down upon us. But somehow I'm more

concerned about the weather than I am about looming impeachment. I know that we have to talk about it. But, as Paul Harvey used to say, today's news of most lasting significance, Mitch McConnell got the trade deal pushed through. Yesterday, I believe, Trump inked a trade deal with China, the first. These would seem to me to be rather significant accomplishments and things that have more impact on the daily lives of the American people and their economy. What would you say, guys? Or is it really all about the big I and the fancy pens that Nancy Pelosi used to sign it? I haven't found anybody. We recorded an episode of Uncommon Knowledge yesterday with Richard Epstein and John Yoo, which I hope will go up today, a kind of user's guide to impeachment. And that conversation was fascinating because,

of course, when you talk to Richard and John, you begin with Andrew Johnson in 1869. What Madison had in mind and the election of 1800 and all that. So if you're talking to those two, impeachment can be fascinating. Nobody else yesterday, the day before today, nobody else in my life as much as mentioned the word impeachment. Just as a matter of actual lived experience, it's a yawn. Now, Rob may have a different experience because he's living in Greenwich Village these days where they're all rooting for. Yeah, they definitely are rooting for it. I mean, there are a lot of people in these places rooting for, or maybe not. I mean, it's hard for me to believe that anybody thinks this is really going to happen. And yet I suspect that there are some people, partly I feel like this is a political exercise and a political calculation, which is kind of not like any other impeachment.

I mean, I think that the half impeachment or the incipient impeachment of Richard Nixon was actually designed to remove him from office. The impeachment of Bill Clinton, I think, it seemed to be governed by the need to respond to perjury, that you can't commit perjury. Perjury is one of those things that if people decide that they can say anything under oath and there are no consequences, then really this incredibly fragile thing about our judicial system then becomes even more completely irretrievably broken. So a lot of people felt compelled to march through impeachment.

This one feels kind of frivolous, like by choice. It just feels kind of like they were laughing as they were signing the articles of impeachment. It was kind of like by choice. It just feels kind of like – they were laughing as they were signing the articles of impeachment. It was kind of fun. It was like, oh, this is like we found a great piece of oppo, and now we're gleefully buying TV commercial time to put it on the air. So I don't think anybody – I mean I don't think anybody in their right mind is expecting this to happen. strange is that they seem to be unperturbed by the total indifference of the American people to this. Or I should say, the Americans who aren't indifferent to it take a dim view of it. Well, their base, I suppose. There are the Tom Steyers of the world. He has billions of dollars to publish his views. But there are a lot of people who are hard left and really think this is necessary as an act of political hygiene.

Just get that garbage out of the Oval Office. They're not trying to convince Americans in general. Correct. This is something, hey, listen, wake up. There doesn't seem to be any sort of moral call to Americans who are basically kind of shrugging their shoulders. Big deal. By the way, yesterday, this is relevant to what you were saying, Rob. And you made the very same point about the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Yesterday, we went through the three previous impeachments. Andrew Johnson, who was impeached and would have been convicted,

say, for one senator who voted to keep him in office. And then Richard Nixon, who was not formally impeached. They never brought the articles of impeachment to the floor because Nixon resigned before they did so. And then, of course, Bill Clinton. And John Yoo and Richard Epstein both agreed that the impeachment of Richard Nixon was well done. It was meticulous. It was thorough. It was bipartisan. It demonstrated respect for the Constitution and indeed for the office of president. So what you suggested, Rob, a moment ago is that that was serious. That was solemn. And when Nancy Pelosi signing the articles of impeachment with 27 different pens, all of them embossed with her signature on the side, souvenir pens,

when Nancy Pelosi said this is a solemn, prayerful moment, of course it wasn't. But she was old enough to remember when there really was a solemn moment. Peter Rodino, congressman from New Jersey, who was chairman of the committee that, and by the way, they took their time about it. This was one of the things that impressed Richard and John Yoo. The hearings began in October of 73 and continued to August of 74 when Nixon resigned. And Peter Rodino clearly was not happy about a single moment of it. There really was no glee. You really did get the sense of people doing their solemn duty, not for joy, not for glee,

not for political advantage, but because they felt they had to. Well, I think that Nancy Pelosi probably gave us something, a clue to the future, because hers was the first impeachment effort that was sponsored by Franklin Mint. Those pens are all going to be reproduced. But Rob said something earlier that was interesting when he talked about Bill Clinton being impeached for perjury. And this was a line that we had to withhold the precious structure of our justice system, etc. And he's right. But there was also amongst a of Republicans, the feeling that this was a cumulative thing, that it may have been perjury that they got him on. Nobody said this out loud, but in the back of the heads of a lot of people who hated

Bill Clinton, and they hated Bill Clinton, this was payback for him skating on Whitewater, on Travelgate, on ChinaGate. All of the things that he had somehow managed to get away from were now somehow bound up invisibly in this thing that finally was going to deliver justice. I've talked to a few people who feel the same way exactly about this, that Trump may have done something stupid here, but what this really is about is a judgment on him in total, his character, his person, and all the things that he's done, even back in his private life, even back in his corporate life before he even got into politics, that he has this coming.

And a lot of people felt the same way about Bill Clinton. There's one, Grant, I grant every bit of that. The correct measure would have been to censure him. Yes. And the distinction that I would draw, I'm sounding like a lawyer because I spent an hour yesterday with two real lawyers, two real constitutional experts, Richard and John. But the distinction is that Bill Clinton admitted to a crime. There was no doubt that he had engaged in criminal activity. He had lied under oath.

The question, the whole question, was whether that rose to the level of an impeachable offense. With Donald Trump, we have two articles of impeachment. We went through them yesterday with Richard and John. Neither article of impeachment even suggests criminal activity. So the Clinton thing, I grant that for some of those who supported the impeachment of Bill Clinton, it was just, we got to get this guy one way or the other. It's like getting Al Capone on tax evasion when you really would have liked to have gotten him for murder. But with Trump, they should have censured him. This is just not there's just nothing impeachable here. Yeah, no, I agree.

But I mean, the thing about the Clinton issue is that the Clinton the Clinton perjury demanded a response. And even at the time, I mean, you know, we're all enough to remember, even at the time, there was there were like a lot of pathways open. And they were censured him as well. There were loyal, loyal Democrats who were saying, yeah, it's bad, but he should be brought to the well of the Senate and rebuked. Right. There's a way to do that. And it's like a hugely humiliating thing to do to somebody, bring them to the well of the Senate while they're getting rebuked by their, essentially their colleagues.

And then they go, they scuttle back to the white house to, you know, like I've been taken to the woodshed. Um, all that's possible. All that was possible. In fact, even afterwards people thought that would have been a better outcome. Right. Um, cause once you've, once you've beaten the rap, it seems like, okay, well now you're, you know, we don't, we don't, we don't, even though the legal language is not, is not guilty, we always say innocent. And once you've beaten the rap, you seem like you've got free, right?

There's nobody more – there's nothing quite like being – what is that phrase? Quite like being shot at and missed. Nothing is more exhilarating than being shot at with no effect. And there's no – I think there's probably no political rebound quite as strong as that. Right. I mean, Bill Clinton, months after being impeached and beating the rap, as they say, retired from his presidency. Immensely, immensely popular nationwide. I mean, he never had numbers as quite as good as he had after he had been impeached and beaten the rap. So all of this is such a dumb waste of time. And kind of a kind of a strange way for people whose main beef with Trump is that he seems unpredictable and zany and he hasn't thought things through and he seems impulsive and

he seems entirely driven by petty and foolish and small-minded vendettas. It all seems like – I'm not – as I always say, I'm not licensed to practice psychiatry in the state of New York. But project much, this is an incredibly powerful indictment of a group of people who should – who by their own standards should be behaving better and behaving with a lot more restraint and a lot more self-control. You can't blame Trump for the Democrats going insane. You can't. They went insane all by themselves. I'd agree with every sorry word of that.

Well, I go back to where I began this thing. It's interesting that we're still talking about this instead of the fact that we got these trade deals done. We were told, for example, everyone said the idea was you have a trade war with China. We're going to lose. There's no way we can win anything like that. And if we try to renegotiate NAFTA, it's going to be the end of the thing that has brought so much prosperity here and there, etc. Now we have two deals apparently renegotiated in American favor. The thing that I keep hearing is that we're going to be exporting rice to China, which really is a calls to Newcastle kind of thing.

That only made it on our business page today, farmers mull over impact of new U.S.-China deal. It would seem to me that would be a front page thing since the tariffs and the war that was going to destroy the American economy. I can assume so many people's minds for some time. The fact that it's going well. Well, it's not. We have to be careful. It's not going well. I mean, there's a huge, huge, huge amount of time, energy and treasure spent, the result of which is really kind of an idiotic renegotiation. It is not a success. It simply wasn't a disaster. This is a classic Trump move,

which is to create a giant mess, and then when it doesn't all fall apart. I mean, to be fair, I mean, to be impartial here, this was a complete and colossal waste of time. We have given farmers more money than we used in the bailouts in 2008. That is absolutely an incontrovertible fact. The reason for a trade war or any kind of trade dispute with China is because of their flagrant violation of copyright law and intellectual property, none of which is addressed in this treaty. None. It's all pushed to a later

date. As, of course, we could have had that. He could have had that on day one of his presidency. Obama could have had that at any point. So the idea that this is a victory is not the case. This is a president who is not good at trade, period. It's- Yeah, I'm willing to agree with every word of that as well. The renegotiation of NAFTA, what do they call it now? Now it has a new name. The renegotiation with Canada and Mexico. I'm not an expert in these matters, but I work with people who are experts. It's pretty much a renegotiation of the same darn thing that we had in the first place. There's a little of this here and a little of that there. If anything, it favors the Democrats because we put some

provisions in that favor union labor in this country. Okay. Grant all that, that the trade deals are probably not much in and of themselves. But here, to me, two astonishing facts. One is that everybody I know, all the economists I know believe that the Trump tax cuts were powerful. And we have an economy, the labor market in particular is enormously tight. Unemployment among African-Americans and Hispanics is at the lowest levels ever recorded. Wages for the working Americans are going up in real terms. The economy is doing well for ordinary Americans. Trump may be talking too much about trade. He may have wasted. But in that regard, he said, in effect, I'm going to take care of the ordinary Joe and Josephine, and he's done it.

Item one. Item two, he takes out Soleimani, General Soleimani, and the Democrats and the press attack him for creating World War III. And two weeks later, the Iranians engage in what is, I think you have to say, an almost pathetic move of bombing a couple of our military bases, but giving us through the Iraqis so much advance warning, everybody could skedaddle. Nobody was killed, neither an American nor an Iraqi. They make the mistake, apparently was an error, had to have been an error, of shooting down a Ukrainian airliner. And now there are protests in the streets against the Iraqi regime. So what do the Democrats do in their debate? They say, we have to have socialism at the very time that capitalism is demonstrably helping the people they claim to be their constituents. That is to say, the people who struggle hardest in this country, Hispanics,

African-Americans, and they say, ah, capitalism may be work. No, we need socialism. And then they attack Trump again and again and again for this move, which as far as I can tell, represents one of the, we'll have Neil Ferguson on in a moment. Neil knows far more about this than I do, but who knows what will come of it. But there's a moment when young people in Iran are talking back to the regime. That's a dramatic development and a good development. And the Democrats, oh no, that was all a terrible mistake. What are they thinking? They impeach the guy when nobody really cares to have him. Nobody really cares. And they attack capitalism when it's helping their own people. And they attack this move in the Middle East when it seems to be creating at least a temporary and at least a small opening to human liberty

in Iran. I have two working theories. Well, not one working theory I'm trying to test, and another thing that I just think we should say off the top, which is that it is true that they totally misread all of the Iranian twists and turns. I mean, you know, Donald Trump is president of the Lucky Club that nobody could have predicted that the Iranians would have been so stupid and so incompetent as to shoot down an airplane, except that everybody I know who's sort of in the business of that kind of technology, defense technology, says, you know, it's actually really hard. Everybody thinks it's a video game and you just put the crosshairs on the thing like in a movie. But it's actually really hard to do.

And it's surprising that more accidents don't happen. But OK, fine. Everybody in the media, the left-wing media anyway, they're pretty much morons. They haven't bothered to know anything about Iran or what's happening in Iran. All they know is Orange Man bad. So everybody who doesn't like him, they like, and they don't bother, they didn't bother to know there have been anti-regime protests. I think it's like one every other week for the past three years in Iran.

Not in Tehran, but in Isfahan and Tabriz and big cities around that country. So they don't know anything about it. All they know is when he does something, and then they suddenly pay attention to it and they decide it's bad. Whereas if you do it in Iran, you'd assume that there'd be anti-regime protests because of the death of Soleimani. So anyway, here's my working theory about Donald Trump is that he is governing as an old timey patriotic Democrat of the kind that existed in Queens, the kind of old-timey, patriotic Democrat that, in fact, Archie Bunker was. Archie Bunker voted for Kennedy, probably. He definitely voted for FDR. It was only later that he voted for Nixon. And that is the kind of president, tough on trade, but giveaways to big labor,

giveaways to farmers, wants to spend money on defense and has a robust sort of America First policy, but also doesn't mind sending troops around the world at the drop of a hat. This is a guy who is governing like an old time Democrat. And the reason we haven't reason it's not obvious to us is because there aren't haven't been any old time Democrats in a long, long time. They've disappeared. They're now, you know, the faculty lounge Democrats. But this used to be a normal kind of Harry Truman style kind of person who was a big Jimmy Hoffa, big labor Democrat. Harry Truman, Scoop Jackson, Hubert Humphrey.

If Hubert Humphrey had won in 1968, this is the way he would have governed. George Meany, all the union officials right through the 60s. The union officials were, well, maybe not Walter Ruther, but George Meany, Lane Kirkland. Lane Kirkland is running the AFL-CIO. He cooperated with the Reagan administration in helping Lech Wałęsa's union, Solidarity, in Poland. These guys were – they wanted – essentially, they wanted the New Deal. And they were anti-communist and pro-New Deal, right? And I would say – yes, exactly. old line patriotic Democrats of the way that I think Trump is in that tradition would also

approve of a tax policy because they didn't really care about corporate taxes because what they wanted was to raise the individual tax burden, which Donald Trump has done. I mean, once you take away state and local tax deductions, the federal income is going to go up. Everybody I know, this sort of tax cut for the rich, everybody I know who's in a 10% or in the top tax brackets paid more last year, and will pay more this year. Everybody you know, because everybody you know lives in California or New York, but yes. Right. That's a huge part of the wealth of the country. So there's nothing wrong with that. But that is exactly what an old line patriotic Democrat would do. Build up the defense and increase the federal expenditure. I mean,

we don't have a smaller government. We have a larger government. Correct. Patriotic is a good word to use. Patriotic and dare I say, nationalist. These guys were pro-American and unashamed to say so. And that was replaced after the long march of the institutions of the 60s and 70s with a transnational ideal that did not hold America to be acceptable, except to be exceptionally bad, and wanted to subsume national identity and sovereignty into an international idea run by people who go to Davos and hang around the UN and know better than everybody else.

And that's unfortunate for the Democrats, because they lost a lot of the people that naturally would be drawn to them for the reasons that Rob said. But it is remarkable. I mean, I too lament the loss of the state and local tax deduction. But on the other hand, it does have the effect of concentrating one's mind on what your taxes in your local area are. Right. Which is why liberals hate it, by the way. Right. Because it's honest and transparent. It's removed one of those little fictions that people used to be able to do.

And it's interesting how it hasn't affected home prices around here. So things are going well. But then again, we look at the Democratic debate and we have Bernie versus Warren. And oh, my gosh, either one of those has an economic vision that would destroy the country. The one thing you can say about Bernie, though, I love this when people say, he may be wrong. He may be completely wrong, but he believes it. He's earnest. And earnest isn't exactly something that I'm necessarily in favor of, unless, of course, earnest.

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so you'll always get the support that you need. Start saving today. Now, our listeners get a $100 cash bonus when you refinance a student loan at earnest.com. That's a $100 cash bonus when you refinance a student loan at earnest.com. And our thanks to Earnestest for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Neil Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Studies, Harvard, where he served for 12 years as the Lawrence Tisch Professor of History. He's the author of 15 books, most recently, The Square and the Tower, and Kissinger,

1923 to 1968, The Idealist. He also writes a column for the London Sunday Times. You can follow him on Twitter at N-F-E-R-G-U-S. Welcome. Neil, you wrote a provocative column last week in the Sunday Times about the Corleone family doctrine. And it makes the argument that Donald Trump made Iran an offer it couldn't refuse. What was the offer? I assume he didn't stuff cotton in his mouth like Brando did, but what was the offer that Trump made to Iran? Well, I suppose the phrase

that jumped to mind when I heard the news of Qasem Soleimani's demise was that he sleeps with the fishes. There was a kind of godfather-esque quality to this bold move to take out really the number two guy in Iran. And because this was very much a signal, rather than, say, the prelude to increasing US involvement in Iraq, something I think Trump has no interest in, it sent me back to The Godfather. And then I began to delve a little deeper into it and realized that, yeah, The Godfather really is a big influence on Trump. It's one of his favorite movies. And I've noticed in my own interactions with some people around him, a distinct tendency to talk in godfather language. So my first observation was this is very much Trump's style. The second observation was, which was more

provocative, that in terms of international relations, there's something to be said for the Kalyani doctrine. It certainly got Iran's attention. And all the people who subsequently commented that we were on the brink of World War III and terrible retaliation would ensue now look rather foolish, because clearly the Iranians didn't have any credible retaliation at all. So I think there's something to be said for this, not in domestic politics. One doesn't really want the godfather style there. But when it comes to the dark forest of international relations, it's not so bad to be Don Corleone. Dark forest. I love that. Neil, it's Peter here. I was a little nervous. I had no idea what the killing of Suleiman might mean. And then a tweet came up, and it was your Twitter feed, and the link was to your column. And you said

in your column immediately, you were up within hours, as far as I can recall, of the news breaking, saying, listen, whatever happens here, Iran is in no position to go to war. Great relief. And you were right. And you were right from the get-go. So I'm not even asking a question. I'm saying, congratulations, Neil, you did it again. Well, it was important, if you were following this, to know that Iran's on its knees economically. The economy contracted 9% last year. It is in deep trouble politically. There were protests in most major Iranian cities in November, December time. And so the Western media, as usual, got this wildly wrong because they just weren't paying attention to the way that the reimposition of sanctions has really squeezed this regime. Iran just doesn't have the capability to take on the

United States. I don't think it really has the capability to do more than it's been doing in Yemen and Syria and Lebanon. It's actually suffering from what might be called overstretch, to use an old 1980s term. So the idea that he could then take on the US was never remotely plausible to me. As soon as I heard that Soleimani had been taken out, I thought, well, that'll show them, because they'd been acting by attacking not only Saudi facilities, but ramping up their activities elsewhere. They've been acting as if they thought Trump would never respond, that he was in fact a dove, or all mouth and no trousers, as they say in Britain. So this decisively demonstrated to the Iranians that they were underestimating Trump, and he was capable of bolder action than his two predecessors.

That was my immediate reaction to the news. And as you say, Peter, subsequent events seem to have borne out my view that Iran is very weak indeed and not capable of taking the US on. Neil, I know Rob wants to get in with a question as well, but I have one more. You mentioned a moment ago that Trump has no interest in a deeper involvement in the Middle East. And to the contrary, I think it may not be on the record explicitly, but we know from H.R. McMaster, what he said, we know that his whole instinct is to get out, get out of Afghanistan, get out of Iraq. He hasn't been able to find a way to do so, but he keeps telling his generals hasn't been able to find a way to do so, but he keeps telling his generals, you're not giving me a way to end this.

What do you make? Is there a strategy here or just an impulse? Is there, we're going to slowly withdraw, but every so often we're going to throw a right hook and leave somebody with a bloody nose. Is that, is that a sensible strategy? What's the, is there, is there a strategy? I think there is a strategy. It's of course informed by Trump's observation that his electoral base has had enough of so-called forever wars.

And, and, uh, and after all, it was the electoral base that was more likely to have its sons in Afghanistan and Iraq than the coastal elites. Well observed, yes. The second point is that it's actually much less important for the United States to be the dominant power in the Middle East, the policeman or power broker, because the United States is now an oil exporter. It's no longer dependent on energy imports in the way that it was back in the 1970s. There's a strategic logic or an economic logic there. I think there's also a sense in which it makes strategic sense for the United States to be more like the offshore balancer that intervenes, in marked contradistinction to some Republicans in Congress, he doesn't mind if it's actually Russia and Turkey who are the power brokers in the Middle

East, as long as American young people aren't having to bear the brunt of managing the world's most unstable region. So no, I think there is a strategy to this. It's very much at odds with the way neoconservatives thought back in the early 2000s. But I think from the point of view of domestic politics, it makes sense. And I think, frankly, from the point of view of regional geopolitics, it makes sense, too. Got it. Hey, Neil, it's Rob Long in New York. Thank you for joining us. So I just want to have just two questions before we probably take a left turn here at some point. All American presidents say, let's bring the boys home. But all of them end up keeping the boys there or even adding to their number, just like Trump. Is Trump going to really be different at the end of his term? It just seems like one of those things that American

presidents say, like, well, you know, we're going to we're going to finally fix the national, the federal debt. And they don't really it's just awfully hard to do when you're in the Oval Office, even if you're Trump. Well, what's the likelihood he's going to do that? I mean, there are more troops out there now than there were before. Yeah. There weren't a huge number before, because there had already been a substantial drawdown under Obama. I mean, it's not quite true, the generalization you make. Lyndon Johnson massively increased US troops. Vietnam. Richard Nixon said he was going to reduce them and did, down to zero. So I think there's a precedent for these changes of direction in American policy. And I think in some ways, to the outside observer, there is a pendulum-like quality to the US attitude towards the world.

Periods of drastic withdrawal, like the 1920s and 1930s, of course, then are followed by sudden return to the world stage when the proverbial hits the fan. And so I think we're going through one of those periods of drawdown after the overstretch of the Bush administration. Will this continue indefinitely? Can the United States just put America first and ignore the rest of the world? Probably not. At some point, we'll see the pendulum swing the other way. But my suspicion is that it won't be in the Middle East or for that matter in Afghanistan. Americans get redeployed in the next 10 or 20 years. One of the key features of the Trump administration is that China is public enemy number one, national security threat number one. And I think having just got back from a trip to Asia, we will see American engagement in the next 10 or 20 years much more likely to be in East Asia

than in the Middle East. So Americans are going back to East Asia? Well, at some point, it's going to have to happen because China's relentless expansion in the South China Sea, its threats against Taiwan, its increasing missile buildup, will ultimately require some kind of response, unless the US is simply going to acquiesce in China becoming the dominant power in the Asia Pacific. And US policy, the Trump administration's own doctrine, says it won't acquiesce in that. That's been made absolutely clear, not only since McMaster's national security strategy, but in speeches by Vice President Pence and Secretary Pompeo. So the scene of the action is shifting. The Obama administration talks about a pivot to Asia and didn't pull it off. I think the

Trump administration is doing it for real. Then is it, how much of that is enabled and afforded by the oil, which is about, what is it, $50 something, $60 a barrel now. I mean, that was predicted to be $190, $200 a barrel at some point. Not that long ago, people thought it was going to be a disaster. The tacit argument for American intervention in the Middle East has always been, well, we got to be there because they got the oil. I mean, once America became a net energy exporter and once we, you know, fracked the bejesus out of the places that we could frack under George W. Bush and reluctantly, but he did it, Barack Obama, what really are our interests in the Middle East? Do we have any, aside from the protection of our singular ally there, Israel? We don't want to see Iran the dominant power.

That remains, I think, a consistent principle. But it's no longer primarily about the oil, if it ever really was. Remember, it was the left that insisted the Iraq war was about oil when it actually wasn't. So no, I think we're shifting back to a more balance of power view of the region. Broadly speaking, Trump lined up the anti-Iranian forces from Israel through the various Arab states, Qatar defected, but most people signed up for a kind of anti-Iranian stance. It didn't work out perfectly, but I think it was a kind of move in the direction of balance of power. And that is the way to minimize American resources being consumed. The big mistake of 2003 was to act in a way that greatly benefited

Iran by overthrowing Saddam, who'd been the major counterpoise to Iranian power. And that led to a huge expense, a kind of ultimately failed imperial enterprise. And now I think we're back to balancing. And offshore balancing is way cheaper than doing empire in all but name. And I guess just to wrap up, just to rant for a minute, and I know Peter wants to jump in, but is it fair to say that sanctions work? Well, depends what you mean by work. I mean, they can certainly impose very heavy economic burdens, but they're not, in their own right, a sufficient foreign policy. They weren't sufficient to stop Iran from meddling aggressively all over the region any more than the Iranian nuclear deal

had restrained Iran under Obama. So no, that's why Don Corleone had to make an appearance, because sanctions are not enough. Neil? I like that. Neil, Peter here once again. Sir Roger Scruton, 1944 to 2020. Why did he matter? And what do we need to hold on to from his work? Scruton was one of the great conservative thinkers of our time, one of the great thinkers of any political persuasion, great inspiration to me and others of my generation who were undergraduates in the 80s and found in Roger the kind of intellectual leadership that we

was seeking. And with his passing and last year's loss of Norman Stone and Jeremy Cato, I feel like all my mentors when I was a young man and my formative years ago. And we are the epigone standing on the shoulders of giants. Well, we do have you, of course, to take up the slack. And one of your most recent books, one of your recent books, The Square and the Tower, is still relevant. It came out a couple of years ago, but it's still relevant today. The point of the book, if I take it right, is that we sort of overestimated the power and the abilities of those on the tower

above, looking down and underestimated the ability and wisdom, or the influence at least, of those in the square. Looking at the next couple of years, next presidential election, let's say, how do you see that dynamic playing out? In other words, I'm going to do the American thing. Give us a winner here. What's the line on square and what's the line on tower? I'll say one last thing and then I really have to jump. The thing that I remember with some pain from four years ago was going to the World Economic Forum in Davos and saying confidently that Donald Trump had no chance of being president. And the thing I think I take away from that is that whatever you think in January of an election year will probably turn out to be nonsense by November.

At the moment, I get a sense of widespread consensus. There you go. I'm out. I got to go. See you. It's been a pleasure. Bye-bye. I only wish, I only wish we'd had him around long enough to use the phrase Davosian. Um, because if, if Neil Ferguson uses a word like Davosian to indicate the attitudes of people at Davos, then I think we're all entitled to use it. Wouldn't you say guys happily? Yes. Happily. So I, I never thought you were entitled to it, James. I don't need a, I don't need't need extra, you don't need extra credibility from me. But it would be, you know, some people say Davos. So would it be Davosian or Davossian? How would you rhyme it? Davos rhymes with floss. Nobody likes to floss. The reality, James, is that nobody likes to floss, but there's nothing to be done about it.

It's just, well, you know, it's hard to get, it's hard to get a kid to floss because The reality, James, is that nobody likes to floss, but there's nothing to be done about it. It's just... Well, you know, it's hard to get a kid to floss because you have to tie them down first. You have to glue them, duct tape, sometimes it works. I mean, we all remember when we were a kid and we didn't want to floss. Yeah, getting a kid to floss is like getting a cat down a toilet, but it is possible to give them habits that they will carry through them their adulthood, right? Make it fun to brush? Is that even possible? Rob would say, no, James, it's not, because Rob helps out like that sometimes. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? You know what I'm talking about, the best possible way to brush your teeth, Quip. Quip, the makers of the Quip electronic toothbrush. They want you to know that this single discovery about brushing well and brushing often and

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And I've heard rumors that we're going to actually have some sort of professional sounder for that. Some, you know, I used to do that. Remember back in the days, guys, we used to have the big story next week's big story. We predict would be the next big story. I do. I do dimly remember that we we buried that because we were always wrong. Always wrong. Can't have that. Can't have that. But that had some grandiose faux sounder for it here. And I hope I can get something appropriately dramatic for this in the future. The post of the week is Winning the Cosmic Lottery by Bryce Carmody. Interesting stuff.

Quote, one popular opinion is that because the universe has so many stars, there must be life all over the universe just because it's far away. But when you view how compounding variables work, it's quite likely our lovely Earth may be the only bastion of life in the cosmos, end quote. So, why was this the post of the week? A couple of reasons. One, it's obvious we're talking about impeachment and Soleimani and Iran and domestic stuff, of course, as we do in Ricochet. It's a place to have the center-right perspective in the matters of the day.

But in the member feed, we go wide and wild and all over the place. And there's nothing more Ricochetian, not DeVosian, than a conversation about life out of the stars. Because you get your sci-fi geeks, you have your hard-cold scientists, you get your people who believe that we'll never die. I mean, it's just a great conversation to have every six months or so. It's the sort of thing you'd like to talk about, sitting around with some friends, having a beer on a weekend. I could have gone with the What's the Worst Steve Miller Song post. I didn't want to do two music posts in a row because, again, it's just fun and ricochet when everybody starts talking about music and slinging stuff around and putting up YouTube videos that nobody watches. But this one I liked because it was philosophical and made you think, and I knew that Peter would probably look at that and say, no, there's nobody else out there.

I couldn't agree more. I'm pretty sure there is nobody else out there. I'm not sure there are that many people here either. And I just find that an absolutely stunning thing to think given the vastness of the cosmos. And it's also the most depressing thing I can possibly think that this incredible, unimaginable, nearly infinite, vast assemblage of material has only us. I mean, as Carl Sagan said, either we're alone in the universe or we're not, and either idea is terrifying. But I prefer to think that there's... Go on. No, neither. Well, being alone and the it's the theological idea. What was it? John Paul II.

Theology here is John Paul II said that man. What was it? Man. Man is the only creature that God created for the sake of itself. So the notion that all of the universe demonstrates to us the immensity of the mind of God, but that he created it in some way wouldn't surprise me at all. It seems to me consonant with the Christian understanding of the universe. Consonant with, not necessary, but consonant with. C.S. Lewis, better Christian, more knowledgeable than I, was convinced that there must be life on other planets. I just, it wouldn't surprise me if there weren't. Rob, how's that, James?

I think that's a good theological argument. I could say, I don't really know. I guess what I would say is that it is possible that we are alone in the universe because it is possible that our job is to people the universe.

Long silence. Long silence. Someone's got to be Adam. Maybe we're Adam. Often I feel like when we look around and we say, well, there's got to be this or that. We have to have somebody to do this or this. The truth is that our job is to do that. The thing that we long for is the thing that we need to create. Or simply that our existence gives meaning to the universe by the fact that an intelligent species is looking at it, apprehending it, attempting to find out its secrets in detail. We give meaning to the universe simply by looking at it.

Without an intelligent being to look at it, there's no point. If this argument works, we don't necessarily have to go out and populate it. It is sufficient for us to stand here and observe it. That's what gives it meaning. But again, that's a bit ridiculous, too, because we can't peer into absolutely every corner. We are, however, in the last 20 years, we have seen sites that just stunned the imagination with the absolute, you know, you want to say the beauty of it, a lot of this has to do with the way the human mind is chemically attuned to call this beauty and this not. Some of these pictures are tweaked a little bit, shall we say.

But the extraordinary expanse of space, and when you look at that little corner of a Hubble star field, for example, and realize that every small little dot that you see is a galaxy. You know, some people feel horrified by their insignificance. I take great solace in it. I mean, it's, I mean, really, and it's not a nihilistic sort of thing. It's just, it's the wonder of realizing that you belong to that nevertheless by the fact that you are part of this construct. Now, whether or not this is the first universe or the 190th universe or the

billionth universe ever to spring into existence, whether or not these black holes collapse and create singularities that spew out into another dimension with their own little rules and create that multiverse that some people love and some people hate, I don't know. It's enough to ask the questions and to know that they won't be answered. That said, I would love it if the Vulcans would land in Montana at some point and walk out, because we'd know how to do that thing with the two fingers salute, that four finger salute. We know how to do that. So if the Vulcans show up, they're really going to be impressed that we got that done. I'm thinking maybe we need to take back this award from Bryce Carmody, the Ricochet member who put up winning the Cosmic Lottery,

because he prompted the three of us to yak in a way that I am sure has listeners across the country rolling their eyes right now. Isn't that always the case when people talk about space? Yes, yes. The greatest thing about outer space is that it encourages and maybe even requires a certain level of expansive, benignly pompous conversation, which I celebrate. I have inspired that without hearing the phrase all my life. Gee, I wonder who that was aimed at. Okay. It's hard not to. You're talking about literally universal topics.

So how else could you speak except in universal terms? I think you're right. And that's going on my business card if I ever had one, because it's not bad. You know, benignly pompous is, it actually, you know, the benign pompous of love is another line of Steve Miller's song that we couldn't stand. So yes, that was a great post. And you too can be a part of that if you go to ricochet.com and sign up, which that was a great post. And you too can be part of that if you go to ricochet.com and sign up, which would be a great thing. Would it not? Would it

not? Oh, that's right. We don't do the raw member. No, I haven't done the post of the week. I mean, I haven't done the poll in a while. I'm going to come up with a better one. We have some pretty good data, but I want, they were getting a little too abstruse for me. I get it. We got to drill down a little harder. Yes. And it's hard to say abstruse without wanting to too abstruse for me. We've got to drill down a little harder. Yes, and it's hard to say abstruse without wanting to say abtruse and abstruse. The fact that you can get abstruse right is very DeVosian of you. One last thing before we go here, guys, and that is a backdoor for phones. Now, William Barr thinks that Apple should create a way for the government to access phones that the crooks have been using. Apple makes the phones now so you can't get into them.

Should they? Should the government have a secret little key that they can use to get into your phone that they can employ? And here we're going to have the child missing. We're going to have the ticking bomb, the 24, Kiefer Sutherland scenario. How do you guys feel about this? I don't know. And I know I don't know because I found myself reading the Wall Street Journal editorial on it yesterday. The Wall Street Journal sides, broadly speaking, with Apple and against William Barr and thought

to myself, I'm just not sure. So if I feel that way, usually the Wall Street Journal persuades me. I really don't know. I see arguments on both sides and I don't know. So I I feel that way, usually the Wall Street Journal persuades me. I really don't know. I see arguments on both sides and I don't know. So I'll defer to the two of you. I don't know either. I can go both ways on this. And I suppose that I should be a good polarizing podcast host and have an instant authoritative answer, but I don't. And so I'm sort of about it, which means that into that space, I'm sure government power will flow and take up the entire space. We've done something dangerous. We've left it to Rob. Well, I mean, unfortunately for you fellas, I agree. I don't know. I, the only thing

I know pretty much for certain is that if you find a backdoor, they'll just find another encryption method and we'll continue the cat and mouse of encryption, decryption, encryption, decryption forever. It seems hard for me to believe that that wouldn't be the case. Although I don't know. This is a level of technology that is so baffling to me. I could be wrong about that, too. I mean, that is, I think, ultimately the problem with technology, or not the problem, but the challenge of it is that, well, I don't know, maybe. It seems like a losing bet to say, here's the solution, when we know that these new solutions appear and disappear every couple

hours in the world of technology. So it's hard for me to believe that terrorists or plotters against democracies are going to be smarter or more nimble than the National Security Administration. But I could be wrong about that, too. It's difficult to underestimate the stupidity of people out there. I mean, we always think that there's these super cyber ninjas who are able to do all these things. The fact of the matter is that back when LimeWire was a great way that people used to distribute pirated music, right?

Everyone would install LimeWire on their computer, join a peer-to-peer network, and essentially left their hard drive content open for anybody to see. So you could actually use LimeWire to, and somebody did, build a little crawling bot that was able to see what was on everybody's drives. And there's a fascinating piece in The New Yorker, about two months or so about this, about a company that eventually fell apart. But what they did was they were able to find that guys in the DOD, terrorist cells, Catholic diocese, school boards, were installing LimeWire in the personal computers

and exposing the secrets of their organization and their own personal perfidious pornography download habits to the entire world. An exploit like that is just astonishing. I don't doubt that at some point we might need to get into a phone of a terrorist, but it's entirely possible that he put his entire plans on his Facebook page and forgot to set it to private. All I'm saying is, humans are fallible. This podcast was brought to you by Earnest and by Quip. You

can support them. That supports us. It also supports you. You get great products. You get your student loan refinanced, and you get clean teeth. It's a great way to start 2020. Also, if you would, I've never mentioned this before, have I? I think I should. This is the first time. I've got a great idea. Why don't you go to Apple's iTunes podcast section and give us a five-star review? I know you never thought about that before, but I'm telling you, go give us a five-star review, because then more people find the podcast and more people join Ricochet, and Ricochet is here in perpetuity, and the founders themselves will be well-meet and pleased. Rob, Peter, it's been fun.

Here we are in January. Next time we get in January, it'll get together, it'll be three quarters over or so, and the president will still be the president. I don't know what else we can predict, but that will be the big story of the week thing, and we don't do that because we were always, as Peter said, wrong. Always wrong. Always wrong. Always wrong. That won't keep us from pushing forward towards podcast number 500 and beyond.

I myself won't be here next week, but a Peter Robinson from one of the many alternative universes will be sitting in. I don't think you'll be able to tell the difference. Next week, fellas. Probably not. Next week, fellas. Probably not. Next week. Thank you. ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ Thank you. Ricochet. Join the conversation. I point the gun

They shoot for fun You are the problem I try to help myself You are the one Who are the talking You got me wrong I caught you falling I hear you calling

Don't hesitate Time heals the pain You ain't the problem I live the dream I hope to be who I believe in I used to hate myself You got the key, break out the prison Oh, I hope to never see time pass

And don't hesitate Time heals the pain You ain't the problem I want you to rest well In a month from now This Hollywood big shot's gonna give you what you want It's too late They start shooting in a week. I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse. you