The Ricochet Podcast - Bitcoins, Brexit, and The Plight of The Disappearing Pundit

Episode Date: June 2, 2016

It’s another Super-Sized edition of the Ricochet Podcast (1 hour and 20 minutes!) and we’re all over the map and all over the news to bring you very best in podcast punditry. First up, the great George Gilder (his new book The Scandal of Money: Why Wall Street Recovers but the Economy Never Does is a must read) stops by to talk about why conservatives have such a hard time winning the economic... Source

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meets city charm. Good evening Mr and Mrs North and South American all the ships at sea let's go to press. Hello. I think the media is among the most

dishonest groups of people I've ever met. That's terrible. One of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides. What Boehner is angry with is the American people holding him accountable. If I become president, oh, do they have problems. They're going to have such problems. That's funny. I don't know why that's funny. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lileks,

and our guests today are George Gilder talking about the future of money, and Toby Young from across the pond talking about the Brexit. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Yes, it's the Ricochet Podcast number 306, and that rhymes with blicks, as in Hans Blicks, that UN negotiator you remember all about. Well, if you want to know his communication strategies, that's the UN. If you want really about? Well, if you want to know his communication strategies, that's the UN. If you want really good communication strategies, go to The Great Courses. The Great Courses really want you to try The Great Courses. Plus, they're giving you, our listeners, an opportunity to watch their popular course,

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Do I sound like a happy man? I am. That's because my email box is in control and I got it that way with SaneBox. And naturally, we're brought to you by Ricochet.com, the towering edifice, the necessary element of this political season that keeps us from going at each other's throats and basically destroying our side of the political argument.

Rob. Yes, sir. How are you, first of all? You're back from New York, I understand. Thank you. Yeah, I'm in not quite sunny Los Angeles, but it'll be sunny later today. Of course, rub it in. And you want to tell everybody why they should take the jaws of life to their bank account and siphon off a few drachmas for this thing we love. Well, look, I got an interesting comment in Ricochet.

I mean, here's one of the reasons we should talk about it. An interesting comment in Ricochet. I mean here's one of the reasons we should talk about it. Interesting comment in Ricochet about this very topic. What is it that makes Rico with anyone, you can't on most – on almost every single site. We have solved that problem with a free market system. You pay a little bit. You become a member of Ricochet. You can join the conversation. You know the conversation is not going to be disgusting or filthy. We have a code of conduct and civility rules in Ricochet.

Even if it does not rule elsewhere. So for all of you never Trumpers and for all of you Trumpers, I know all of you, Gary Johnson, Bill Welds out there, you have to agree on one thing that civility is lost. This is the place to have a real conversation. But it's not free. It's not free to us to put it up for you, and it's not free for you to sponsor it either. So we're asking you to strike a blow for that. Despite the manifest evidence on the outside world that it is not a losing cause, but a cause in peril, go to Ricochet.com, get a free month, check us out. You can listen to all the podcasts.

You can listen in the confidence that you are participating in a free market solution to a real world problem. Bite me, you cuck. Peter, you're in California as well. We're looking right now. I'm in Northern California where it's already sunny. Take that, Rob. I take that, yeah.

California is now the last stand for Bernie Sanders? Or is this where Hillary puts it away? Is this where Bernie reminds everybody that their party seems to be as split as the Republicans were a few months ago as well? I am no expert on what's happening on the Democratic side. And furthermore, as best I can tell, California is really, really hard to poll because the delegates are going to be divvied up on the basis of congressional district. Polling at that level is hard. However, we do know that in the state as a whole, Bernie's at 47 and Hillary's at 49.

That two-point difference is tiny. It's within the margin of error. And Bernie Sanders throughout these primaries has, causing all the right people just the correct amounts of consternation, gnashing of teeth, fear and dread. The Democratic Party is a mess and it could very well get worse when we get the results on June 7th, the results here in California. Rob, in your rarefied circle of elites on the coast, is there Bernie fever or Hillary resignation? There is, I think it's Hillary resignation

from the people that I know here. It is very much what the Republican race would be, you know, within reason. Had Jeb Bush be the number one of everyone of the of the anyone but Trumpers in the primaries and hung on. Right. There are a bunch of people who think, oh, you know, she's got all these her again. You know, we already know her.

She's got, you know, weird baggage. But you know what? Let's just go with it. And there are people who are – no, Bernie will usher in the second coming of – frankly, of Obama. The most interesting thing is to hear the Bernie supporters, especially Bernie supporters here who are huge Obama supporters, make these elaborate – almost these exquisite arguments about Obama's sort of basic failure as a president. And they're all – they are very complicated because in order to be pro-Bernie, you have to believe that we've had eight years of misery. And in order to believe that we've had eight years of misery, you have to believe that the president has been asleep at the switch for eight years. You can't do that if you're a Bernie supporter. It just doesn't compute. No, no, Rob, no. He's been stymied by a Republican party. When Obama came in, Mitch McMoner said that they were going to make sure they're going to oppose everything the

president did and make sure that he was a one-term president. They've never said that before about anybody. Every time a president came in before the other party, I always said, we're going to work with him to pass the entirety of his agenda, which is ideologically opposed to ours, because that's how America works. It's that's why that's why. OK, I mean, I just heard this in so many times that from the start of the Republican. No, no, you're absolutely right. But but I wish they'd done it. It's a it's a it's a wonderful position. It's a wonder. It's a wonderful position to observe people people being in how's that for the strange sentence because you you you get to see them uh fall into their own trap and then

have to pull themselves out because there is a president and they they feel like he hasn't gone far enough and so the best argument for bernie i've heard from someone is get falling into the trap of that we've been eight years of hell uh and Bernie's going to save us to, you know, you don't understand, transforming a nation and a culture. It turns out, James, that you didn't know this, transforming a nation and a culture fundamentally takes more than eight years. And so Bernie is the likely and useful, I don't know, what is it? What's the apocalyptic term?

The usher? It turns out that Obama's not the devil. He's the key man. Obama's the usher. Here comes the rule. Well, Peter, let me ask you this. The other day, the president was making a speech and talking about how it's necessary to keep going

on the path that they're going because they need to build on the start that they've made. And I thought, the start. The last eight years were just the start to these people. There is, well, this is an old observation about liberalism, but never has it been more pertinent than it is right now for the very reason you just gave. And the old observation is that on the liberal side, there is no limiting principle. If you sat down, Rob Long and James Lilacs and Peter Robinson and said, what do you want? We could put down on a list. We could drop a list that would run to no more than one half of one sheet of paper, tax cuts, stronger Navy, and we'd be done. We'd say, give us that, and we'd be happy. Give us that, and we would ask no more.

Liberals have no end in sight. When you go from gay marriage, now the next thing agitating the culture is transgender rights. Unbelievably, the Obama administration has inserted itself into bathrooms across the nation. I will stop talking about bathrooms now because I know Rob thinks that's a loser. But the point is they cannot give you a list of the items they want and then they would be done. It is simply never ending with them. It's a disease rather than a set of principles. Well, but it's also – so that's why it's a religion, right?

Yes. The religion is never finished. We're just trying to perfect it. It's almost like – it's like Hasidism, right? Isn't it Hasidism? The Jewish messiah sect where you have to – the world has got to be a certain level of perfection in order to – The Lubavitch? Yeah, I think the Lubavitchers are – they believe the world will never get good.

But there's this kind of idea that we have to perfect ourselves and it's not going to be much of a socialist utopia or progressive utopia despite all the federal programs that you could come up with, despite all the reengineering of the US economy, despite all of those institutions that you could fix. It won't be a progressive paradise, Peter, because you are in it. I think it's because we're here and we need to go. It's like the environmentalists are like basically they want human beings to disappear. I think what these guys want basically is coming to that inchoate reasoning that what they really need us to do is change my mind. I think, Peter, what you're saying is you don't see that there's a general organizing underlying principle underneath it. I think there is. No, no, no, no.

I say there's no limiting principle. Oh, no, no, no. I agree there's no limiting principle. There's no, no, no, no. There's no, I know. I agree. There's no, let's say, give us this and we're done. Whereas with conservatives, we could draw up a list of Ted Cruz. Basically there's the list. You do that with the federal government. We'll never ask for anything else because I go ahead. I think there is, I think there is something that they would say and then they'd be done. And that would be, we want to replace all of your norms with ours. We want every single organizing intellectual principle of this country we want to replace with ours. And to me, Rob just touched on something. Actually,

Rob just answered a question that's been puzzling me for quite a long time. See, every now and then. Every now and then. Here's what's been puzzling me for quite a long time. And every now and then, every now and then, here's what's been puzzling me. Stalin insisted on confessions. All those people, all those millions of people were going to get thrown into the gulag or they were going to get a bullet in the back of the head. What difference did it make if they signed a confession before he executed them? Who's the famous, begins with a T, it's a Russian name, in any event, he was a hero in the 1921 attempt to defeat Poland. He was an important Soviet general. And we have his signed confession spattered with his own blood. He signed it and then they executed him. Why did Stalin,

why did the communists insist on confessions? Because they wanted proof. It was not enough that you do our will. It is not enough that if you refuse to do our will, we will eliminate you. We must have proof that we have gotten into your heads, that in your very will and thinking you have submitted. And that is why – smaller matter but not unrelated – that is why the Obama administration insists on crushing the Little Sisters of the Pooh. Yeah, right. Well, they're ideological enemies. They are the equivalent of printing an opposition newspaper, right? They have to be stopped because you need to stop – it has to – it isn't enough for you to accept the bathrooms.

You must also love the bathrooms. Yes. And there is something weird about that. And, you know, I had a long conversation with a very, very dear friend of mine, one of the smartest, most brilliant writers I know. Yesterday, we sort of sat on my front porch and had a cigar and we talked about stuff. And he's a Democrat. He's going to vote for Hillary Clinton. He's not that happy about it. But he's no Bernie Sanders.

But he loves American history. And he loves America. And he, you know, he's a big, big, big modern Democrat. The guy would vote for, if old line Democrats were running again, he would vote for them. And he's the second in the line to go off to the camps, but go on. Right, exactly. And he was telling me how horrified he is absolutely apoplectic at the LGBT, the T part of it. He thinks that this is a monstrous amount of child abuse going on by these sort of weird progressive parents who are being really loosey-goosey about this stuff. And he doesn't understand why no one's saying anything about it um

and uh and in fact he you know there's a there was an uprising at his at his universe at yale uh a year ago we all read about that and he couldn't he couldn't bring himself to write the the donation check uh this year because he just couldn't bring himself to support that kind of nonsense and i think there are a lot of people like that. I agree. On the left. The people on the left who are not writing the support checks to Yale, let's build them a statue in the public square. But how many of them, and I can't judge you, I'm sure he's a perfectly wonderful person. Hashtag first world problems. I can't bring myself to write my check to Yale. How many of them have interrogated themselves for their role in the diminution of the speed bumps, the guardrails,

all of the things that supposedly should have guided us away from this sort of madness? Or did they acquiesce in it because a general idea that they had agreed with was being advanced? I mean, I know it's hard, Rob, especially when it's a friend of yours and you're sitting outside and you're having a cigar and you're having a conversation. Oftentimes, though, those in the second drink are the places where some real – you get down to the pith and the gist and you find out that there's actually more in common than you think. And it gives you hope, but it requires the ability to know how a conversation works as opposed to yelling at somebody. I will not interrupt this segue because not only is it brilliant, but I want to applaud it. I'm going to interrupt you to applaud it because you not only said something, I think, absolutely brilliant and a wonderful turn of phrase at the start,

but now you're doing a spot. So fantastic. That's what I do. If Rob had simply interrupted me, that would have been lousy communication. Although sometimes it works. If he had simply acquiesced and let me go on and on and on, that would have been... No. Conversation is a given flow.

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That's thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet. And now we welcome to the podcast George Gilder. Of course, you know him. He's the chairman of the George Gilder Fund Management, host of the Gilder Till Scum Forum. Did I get that right? I'll ask you in a second. And the publisher of the George Gilder Fund Management, host of the Gilder Tel-Scom Forum. Did I get that right? I'll ask you in a second. And the publisher of the Gilder Friday Letter.

Telecosm, James. Telecosm. There we go. I'm sorry, my mistake. Your latest book is The Scandal of Money, Why Wall Street Recovers What the Economy Never Does. Welcome, sir, to the podcast. Hey, George. It's Rob Long in California.

Thank you for joining us. I devoured Telecosm when it came out. I there was going to be streaming video all over the place. And I don't know whether you heard, but it turns out that you were absolutely right. And as somebody in the TV business, I remember reading Life After Television and thinking, if this guy is right, I'm going to have to start working a lot harder than I do. And unfortunately, you were right about that. So here's my question. I've just finished Scandal of Money. It is a passionate, thoughtful, kind of I thought sneaky almost argument for returning to the gold standard. Why do we use the term gold bug as if people who want to return to the gold standard are nutty? Well, gold bugs are associated with a lot of hustles. I mean, people are trying to sell gold all the time as an investment.

And gold isn't really an investment. It's a measuring stick. It brings time into the economy. As interest rates register it from the ground, as mining gear has become more efficient, gold has become more attenuated and in deeper loads. So the actual time to extract gold has been pretty steady through the centuries. And as a result, gold has brought the measuring stick of time into the economy. And that's why it has been the monetary element. Let me unpack that a little bit.

But I think we can add Bitcoin gold today. We can add digital gold. We'll get there. But let me just unpack that idea because I had to read it a couple of times. I should say the book is brilliant. It is not a long book, but it's got lots of big thinking in it. And you might have to sit with a piece of paper. You talk about the time of – that gold is a yardstick, that money is supposed to be a yardstick, a way to measure things. What happens when interest rates are at zero? You make a very, very passionate case that when interest rates are low, all we do is rob the future. Is that right? Do I have that right?

You have that right. You eclipse time. You tell people the signal that zero interest rates bring is that there is zero opportunity cost to spending now. And that there's zero yields through the economy. And so they lure people to bid up existing products rather than to produce new products for the future. So in a zero interest world, you would predict asset inflation, asset bubbles, real estate, the Dow, other things. That's the correct observation, that you bid on existing values. I mean, what's happening now

is that most of the new money that the Fed creates, 62% of it goes back to the government, but most of the rest goes to big companies that use it to buy back their own shares. That is not investing in the future. That's merely bidding out the value of what exists. And it is a scandal of money is what it is. So as you're sort of going through the list of the parade of horribles,

as I think Justice Hand said, you're talking about the zero-interest world, the zero-sum world world stifles opportunity and growth for most Americans. And it's an injustice. You think it's an injustice that I'm quoting from you that dwarfs all the other items in the ledger of national decline, shrinking media incomes, deteriorating educational performance, the preference for socialism on college students, the loss of entrepreneurial ambition among young people. You think that comes – that springs from this unreliable, corrupt, or manipulated money?

It's a gestalt, and money is not the only factor, obviously. And interest rates tell something that's true. I mean, the Fed could not enforce zero interest rates and near zero interest rates, even for long-term investments, if yields across the economy were large. What this zero interest rate world reflects is a zero productivity growth world, which we're also in. And it's a massive regulatory apparatus with tentacles in every business and every activity in our economy that is suppressing growth. And it springs from a lot I try and put our campuses in my view. So I know Peter wants to jump in here, but let me ask you one more question because you write a great sentence, which is no one ever won an argument with Milton Friedman.

And he said two things. One, inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. And when you guys, I guess you were with him going through China years ago, and his counsel to the communist leaders was, quote, get control of their money supply. So why was Milton Friedman wrong? Well, because the money supply does not determine spending patterns, as he assumed. M.V., money is multiplied by velocity, which is the turnover of money.

And Milton Friedman believed that velocity was essentially a constant, that the number of times we turn over each dollar is determined by psychological factors, the permanent income hypothesis that he introduced, which helped win him a Nobel Prize. But we've learned now that velocity is wildly volatile and unsteady. So money supply no longer constrains the economy. The economy is governed by individual human decisions to invest or spend or learn or grow well. I know, Peter, you want to jump in. Can I just ask one question? Because what you suggest is that up until we closed the gold window in the early 70s. Richard Nixon did that. We had one set of economic conditions, or I should say market conditions,

financial market conditions. And since then, it's been demonstrably and noticeably more volatile. Is that, that seems to me to be, I mean, I just can remember all sorts of panics. That's true. It has been more volatile. The Bretton Woods system where the dollar was tied to gold and the rest of the currencies of the world were mostly tied to the dollar was an extraordinarily stable and successful scheme, which yielded global economic growth of 2.5% a year, unequaled before or since. The Brentwood system was an incredible success, and it was, I believe, erroneously abandoned by Nixon,

counseled by Milton Friedman, who was a great man and got almost everything right, except the monetarism for which he gave his Nobel Prize. like you, I revere Milton. I pulled up Milton's argument, a summary of Milton's argument on the gold standard from his book, Capitalism and Freedom. He had no objection to the gold standard in principle. In fact, he writes here, if an honest to goodness gold standard in which 100% of the money in a country consisted literally of gold were widely backed by the public at large, imbued with the mythology of a gold standard, with the belief that it is immoral and improper for government to interfere with its operation. It would provide an effective guarantee against governmental tinkering. say that in practice, however, there's never been a gold standard. Even in the old days when the Bank of England was supposedly running the gold standard skillfully, it was always a mixed gold standard, paper money standard, a managed gold standard. And Milton argues, again, in Capitalism and Freedom, that once the government introduces a fiduciary element into the gold standard, the temptation to print money

is irresistible. Okay. So is George Gilder arguing that Milton was simply wrong about the importance of money? Or is George Gilder arguing that Milton had all kinds of good points, including the central importance of money to the economy, and that technology is now about to give us Bitcoin. We are on the threshold of an era in which we can introduce just the kind of standard that Milton approved of in principle. Is Bitcoin the way out of the dilemma? I think it is. Bitcoin makes possible, again, the creation of a measuring stick. And by the way, Milton Friedman predicted Bitcoin. He said all the monthly digital currencies would prevail. So, so Melvin, uh, I had a lot of things, right.

But he had a kind of purism about money where either the gold standard was, uh, perfect. And I don't believe a gold standard, a hundred percent gold standard is even desirable. So I think Melvin was wrong about that. You do need financialization to some degree, as long as it's tied to money as a measuring stick rather than a magic wand for central bank. So if we, if Donald Trump, forgive me for introducing, in fact, I withdraw that name because I don't want to go off on a Donald Trump discussion.

That's a separate matter. If the next president, whoever he or she might be, named George Gilder chairman of the Fed, what would George Gilder do? I would target the price of gold, and I would remove the governmental monopoly on money to the extent that I could. I would remove as many obstacles as I could to the triumph of digital money. And I believe the ultimate solution will be some combination of digital money with a gold polaris, a gold measuring stick. And I think the price of digital money, Bitcoin, will tend to converge with gold because both of them reflect what remains scarce when everything else becomes abundant in an economy is time.

And time is the ultimate measuring stick for human life and physics as well. Mr. Gilder, joining James Lalix here. I think one of the problems with Bitcoin adaptation will be telling people what it is and where it comes from. And when you speak digital currency, people think, well, I got this plastic rectangle in my pocket. Some cultures, some countries want to eliminate cash. Scandinavian countries, for example, want to eliminate cash and just go to an all virtual currency, which is a different thing than Bitcoin. And a lot of us are saying, no, no, we need to keep cash.

The idea that the government can then just go in your bank account and levy whatever they want is a very bad idea. Do you see that taking a little bit less? The desire to abolish cash springs in part from the desire to reduce negative interest rates so that you can filch savings without even loving a tax. You know, if cash is available as an alternative with no yield, it's superior to savings with a negative yield. So the Fed can't impose negative interest rates effectively without abolishing cash. the motivation for many leading economists advocating the abolition of cash, because they believe that negative interest rates are necessary to stimulate the economy in a time of deflation that they believe is currently before us because of the decline in creativity of technology and other factors. But I think all this is alibis for the final failure of the Keynesian and Margarita's dream of centralized manipulation of the world economy. Hey, George, it's Rob again. manipulation of the world economy. Every couple of weeks. I don't really check it that often, but I can see Bitcoin going down. And in my mind, I cannot help but think of Bitcoin as a stock.

I bought a stock, a share in the Bitcoin experiment, and it's going down. Should I be worried about that? is the solution or just that the solution will come from what they call, this is getting very geeky, but what they call the blockchain, the means by which Bitcoin appears. So it could be any, we could call it anything, but you're predicting a cryptocurrency rising just naturally because the market demands it. Yeah. And I like Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is a brilliantly conceived

and executed currency alternative. And I hope that the banks that are currently exploring the Bitcoin blockchain without the Bitcoin currency because of the brilliant innovation that the blockchain represents, will finally understand that the ultimate contribution is to produce money as a measuring stick again, money as a metric of value rather than value itself. I know you've got to go, but I want to just ask that one more time

because I think it's an important distinction. Economists always say that the great thing about a market is that it's for price discovery. That's where you find out what something's worth. You find you have a market. And if a market's working, price discovery works. So if there's a market in healthcare, we have price discovery. We know what healthcare is worth. We know what a nose job is worth versus a heart transplant. With money, we don't know what it's worth because there's no market. There's no price discovery. The price of money is set by who? We're saying the Fed governors, right? Yeah. Well, my view is that a measuring stick can't be part of what it measures.

So the ultimate value of money has to derive from the ultimate scarcity. What remains scarce when everything else is abundant? And that is time. And that's why I think money is ultimately rooted in the passage of time, as we understand through interest rates and all the ways we use money to move value across time and space. And so I think that the von Mises-Hayek view of money as a commodity is fundamentally wrong. And that's a major idea that I introduced in this very Austrian book, The Scandal of Money, is that the commodity view of money is false.

Spoken like a pro. Hit the book title on the way out. It's not part of the economy. If money is part of the economy, it becomes just another price and a self-referential loop where all values become uncertain and economic growth straight. Well, thank you for coming on with us today. The Scandal of Money While Wall Street Recovers But The Economy Never Does is George Gilder's latest book.

Pick it up and get more on what we've been talking about here in the last few minutes. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, George. Thank you, George. Um, I gotta say the book is, um, fantastic. It's really great. It's incredibly mind blowing for me because, uh, I've always wondered about these things and I'm sort of naturally a gold standard kind of person, gold standard, I guess I can't say gold buggy. But it's really worth it. It's really worth it. These issues are interesting at all to you, and they should be absolutely by the book.

It's dynamite. And I would always bet on George Gilder to know how the future is going to shape up. Well, I hate Bitcoin. I may end up, of course, using it like everybody else. Why? Really?

A couple of reasons. One, even though everything that I have around here is very high tech. I've got all my family movies, all my records, all my work. It's all digitized. It's all up in the cloud. When it comes to money, somehow, there's something, the incorporeal nature of it in modern times always gives me a little bit of the jitters. I like to have something in my hand that I can hold, even if it's a piece of fiat currency that is just backed by consensual delusion.

There's something about that I like. And while I am comfortable, I guess, with money in the bank and I understand Bitcoin, A, it seems the people who are – it's like the people who are backing it are always those anti-social tech nerds and deep recesses of Reddit who are talking about the glories of it and why it's all important and great and it's neck-burdened beards and their World of Warcraft life. Complete, total parody. Right. But the other thing is, is that right now, well, I have no idea whatsoever if China has massive server farms in the world. Mining Bitcoin? Mining Bitcoins. And the idea somehow that also that it's immune from what happens to our – if our bank fails, the FDIC walks in and backstops the accounts to a certain amount of dollars, right? Mount Gox goes down. And there wasn't a lot of –

No, I think that's a very solid point. The arguments are about – the blockchain is that the blockchain is almost impossible to bust because it contains a time element. And so it restricts the ability to create Bitcoin by definition and that the watchdogs for it is everyone. Because if everyone's sitting around, all the money is in gold mocks and the entire world is looking at gold mocks all the time. That's kind of the theory. Marc Andreessen is a very smart guy. He's written a lot about this. But it does make people uneasy, I think. I totally understand that.

It is. But it's a matter of changing people's perceptions and eventually over time that they do. For example, you know, I like to have some money. I like to have some hard copies of my photographs that I've done. Whenever I write a book, I print it out. There are some things you just want tangible copies of. But, you know, I look around the house here and one of the reasons I'm able to move is that over the years I've divested myself of a number of these things by going to their virtual equivalents. And, for example, I no longer actually buy books, paper books. I get the digital version or I listen to them because it saves time. And sometimes you want to listen to something that you might not want to read because you're in your car or you're cooking or you're doing the rest of it.

And that's where Audible comes in. So while I might not be a Bitcoin guy yet, when it comes to the digital version of books, I'm all for it. Have a story told to you by somebody with a mellifluous voice. Fall into a tale as somebody relates it to you and enjoy it knowing that it's free. Audible. Audible.com is offering the listeners a free 30-day trial membership and a free audiobook. I mean, what's the point of a free membership if you don't get a book? Go to audible.com slash ricochet and browse over 180,000 audio programs. Guaranteed, there has to be one there for you. Download title free, start listening. It's that easy.

Go to audible.com slash ricochet. That's audible.com slash ricochet and get started today. It's not just books, by the way. They're the leading audiobook publisher of broadcasting, entertainment magazine, newspaper publishers, business information providers, all kinds of stuff. Right now I'm reading Tom Holland's account of the fall of the republic. And I hope it's on Audible. It probably is. It's a great book. Tom Holland is a wonderful historian.

He writes with a great – it's a story I've heard told many times. We all know the story of the personalities and the events that led up to the decline of the Republic. But to read it again and feel as if you're meeting all these personalities for the first time, it's a wonderful piece of work. So there you go. Go to Audible. Don't go anywhere here, though,

because we've got somebody else coming up right around the corner. In that corner being turned, now we bring you Toby Young. He's the author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and the co-founder of several free schools. In addition to being associate editor of The Spectator, he writes a regular blog for The Telegraph. You can follow him on Twitter at at Toadmeister.

Welcome to the podcast, Toby. Thank you. Britain, you, you, you. You want him to head for the X's, right? That is correct, yes. Why? Well, I think the main argument is a sovereignty argument. Britain no longer makes all of its own laws.

It has outsourced some of its lawmaking to Brussels, the center of the European Union. And it's not even as if laws are made by the European Parliament, which at least consists of elected officials, even if the UK elects fewer than 10% of them. Laws in the European Union are made by unelected European commissioners. And that's not merely undemocratic. It's actually anti-democratic, because a lot of these EU commissioners are people who have just lost elections. So probably the best known British European commissioner is Neil Kinnock, who led

the Labour Party to defeat twice, first in 1983, and then again, first in 1987, and then again in 1992. So the idea that people who've been explicitly rejected by the electorate are now making, by my estimate, 59% of the UK's laws is, I think, a very good reason to get out of the European Union. No taxation without representation. Toby, Peter Robinson here. Before I ask my question, I want to put in a plug for The Spectator or The London Spectator, as we refer to it over here. All our listeners who have, and you can read a fair amount online without having to pay the subscription, but if you, you're likely to want to pay the subscription, The Spectator is one of the most brilliant sustained acts of journalism anywhere in the English speaking world. It is just

a dazzling piece of work. So congratulations on being associated with that publication. Now, may I put things the other way around? Yeah, absolutely. For a lot of our listeners, for a lot of people will have my point of view, and I think Rob's point of view, although I'll let Rob Long speak for himself in a moment, which is I'm going to ask you to help us understand the other side of the argument. Germany, you can see why they want to be part of a European Union because of their German history. They want to dissolve their sense of identity in some other entity. Spain, after Franco, they want to be reconnected to the modern world.

Italy wants the Germans running their economy. You can see the French are still crazy enough to think that this is some sort of route or opening for them to run the world. You can sort of understand the psychology for why every European elite wants the European Union except Britain, where all its greatness through centuries – and I don't mean centuries in the dim, distant past. I mean, right through Margaret Thatcher, Second World War, right through Margaret Thatcher, its greatness has stood on its sense of separate identity, on that one remove from the continent, on a distinct Anglo-Saxon approach to governance and to the economy. How do you go from Margaret Thatcher to David Cameron, from a prime minister who's in skepticism toward the European Union, grows during her time in office, and within two years of leaving office, she's pretty unambiguously against it, to a Tory prime minister, the direct

successor of Margaret Thatcher, who's risking his career on persuading his fellow subjects to remain in. What are Tories thinking? Well, first of all, the British aren't the only race within Europe who are sceptical about the benefits of the European Union. Norway has twice held a referendum and twice the Norwegian people have said no to joining the EU. Various other nations have held referendums which have resulted in the people rejecting membership of the European Union. Usually what the EU does is just force those nations to hold referenda again and again and again until they get the result they want. I hope that won't happen in our case. Margaret Thatcher, I've just actually finished editing an anthology of pieces that appeared in The Spectator in the run up to

the 1975 referendum, which is when the British people were first consulted about whether they wanted to be in the European Union. And Margaret Thatcher actually campaigned for a yes vote back then. But as you say, became more and more sceptical in the course of 11 years in office. So did Oswald Mosley. Oswald Mosley was one of the arguments that the Remainers think is a knockdown, decisive argument is that both Putin and Trump think we should get out of the European Union. Therefore, we should definitely stay. And my response is, well, Mosley, as you say, Mosley campaigned for us to remain in the European Union in 1975. I mean, it's a kind of inverse of

the argument from authority and no less fallacious. We should make up our minds on the merits, not who is for or against the proposition. Why is David Cameron a Europhile? I mean, it's slightly odd because he started out as a Eurosceptic, has always claimed to be a Eurosceptic. And during his renegotiation earlier this year with the other leaders of the 27 other member states of the EU, said that Britain was quite capable of standing on its own two feet. And if he didn't get the deal he was hoping for, he would be campaigning for an outvote. But weirdly, he then didn't get the deal he'd set out to get. He got almost nothing, but nevertheless, pretended he'd got something and said he was now going to enthusiastically campaign for remain. And is now telling us, along with George Osborne and other members of the government, that if we were to vote leave, it would be absolutely catastrophic, virtually cause the

Third World War to break out in addition to plagues of locusts and the slaughter of the first born and so forth. So why is he such an adamant Europhile? I think it's partly because he genuinely does believe that the British economy would take a hit, a short term hit, if we left the EU. And that could damage the Conservative Party's prospects of being reelected in 2020. He said he's going to step down in 2019. I think he has a gentleman's agreement to hand over to George Osborne. And I think he feels that it will probably harm George Osborne's chances of winning in 2020 if we left the EU. I think it's partly a function of the antagonism that exists between David Cameron, who styles himself a moderniser and a one nation Tory, and the kind of right wing fringe of the Conservative Party, who've always been a bit of a thorn in his side and all of whom are very Eurosceptic pro-Brexit.

I think it's partly just once you start associating with members of the club, other heads of state, people like Angela Merkel, the president of the European Union and so forth, you become kind of institutionalized. It's the aristocratic embrace, and you begin to feel you have a responsibility to sustaining this kind of elite club you're a member of. I mean, it is rather baffling to me. I can't say that I've become completely disillusioned with Cameron. I'm still a supporter.

I still think he's the preeminent politician of his generation in the UK. But nevertheless, it has dented my confidence in him. Hey, Toby. It's Rob here. Hey, Rob. So what's going on over there? Like you have a – Scotland has a referendum to leave that gets defeated but is now more popular than ever. You've joined the EU. Now you're going to have another referendum to get out of the EU.

It feels like you guys are having a nervous breakdown over there. Am I getting that roughly right? I mean I say that with great respect considering we're having one here too. Is that happening? Well, I think certainly British identity is quite fluid and is up for grabs. And the rise of Scottish nationalism, I think, can partly be attributed to the declining authority of the United Kingdom as an entity. And I think partly one of the consequences of the rise of the European Union is that nation states begin to exercise less of a gravitational pull. People's identities become more fluid and people begin to identify with international institutions and international ideological movements more than they do with national institutions but is that true but do people do that or does or do their governments do that i mean they're not doing that they're not

doing that in norway and they're not doing that they're they're parts of holland they're not doing that they certainly are they came very close to almost not doing that in austria um they're not doing that here i mean here there's a you here there's a movement irrespective of who you support. There's a movement against globalism. There's a movement against immigration policy. Are these all parts of the same thing? I think they are parts of the same thing. I mean, I think when you say they're not doing it in Austria, they're not doing it in Norway, Holland, et cetera. Actually, what's happening in those countries is the same as what's happening

in the UK and in America, which is you see this schism opening up between the beneficiaries of globalization, the educated, mobile elite who are relatively prosperous, own their own homes, and so forth, have educated children, and the rest, the losers from globalization, the rump of the white working class, the less educated. And those are the people in the UK, the losers from globalization, the rump of the white working class, the less educated. And those are the people in the UK, by and large, with some exceptions, who are for Brexit. Those are the people who supported Norbert Hofer in Austria, who are supporting Marine Le Pen in France, and who are supporting Trump in the US. And I think you see this kind of schism opening up. And it's a real challenge, I for classical liberals that that that that there are losers from free trade and and how do we how do we how do we sell free

freight to them and as a classical liberal I'm conflicted about uh the European Union as well but actually there are quite a few classical liberals now who are campaigning on the leave side it's not a classically your European problem is that in order to get free trade, I mean, you had a common market. You didn't also need this extraordinary bureaucratic apparatus in Brussels that really most Americans, even Americans, where there are extraordinary bureaucracy, would find shocking legislating everything to the size of the sugar cubes. No, I think that's a given. The European Union is far too overregulated and that's one of the reasons that it's one of the few regions in the world that has stagnated economically. It hasn't grown at all in the last 10 years whereas India and China's economies have doubled in size. the difficulty is, can you have free trade without having a free movement of labour?

And it's the free movement of labour which is causing so many problems within the EU, not just in Britain, but in Austria and elsewhere in Germany too. And the reason, the problem is, particularly if it coincides with a migration crisis, 1.67 asylum applications were received within the EU in 2015 alone partly in response to Angela Merkel's invitation to Syrian refugees and refugees elsewhere to make their way to Germany. the problem is most of those, about two-thirds of those, will be granted citizenship within one of their EU states. And when they have, they can then travel freely because we have freedom of movement within the EU. And for every asylum seeker who's granted asylum, roughly four family members come to join them as soon as they secure their protections. And so the population of Europe will probably increase by as much as 5 million just as a result of the refugees who came to Europe last year alone. So if this migration

crisis continues, you can see the population of Europe increasing to an unmanageable degree. And then these people being able to travel completely freely within the European Union, provided we stay in the EU. And that causes tremendous strains on communities, downward pressure on wages. It creates housing problems, problems for public services like our National Health Service, public education system and so forth, put under an enormous strain by our ever-growing population as a result of free movement of labor. So how can you as a classical liberal justify putting some kind of points-based immigration system in place in the place of freedom of movement even though the free movement of labor is one of the pinnacles of a kind of classical liberal market philosophy? James Lylek is here in Halcyon, Minnesota where all these things seem very remote.

When you mention what Merkel is doing there, when you bring in that many people and you put them in small towns, you've changed the composition of the culture locally and then eventually nationally. Sweden's having the same difficulties, where all of a sudden Swedish ideals are coming up against people that don't share them. And it seems to me that the schisms that we're talking about aren't just because somebody wanted to knit together these countries a little better and make things more efficient. The overall idea was always to have a transnational set of ideals that themselves would stand in opposition to local culture, to local nationalism, to say that these are the ideals under which we all must live. And that seems to me that they overplayed their hand. It wasn't sufficient just simply to integrate a little bit more. They were trying to create a new European

culture that went at odds with what people feel about their place, their land, their town. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. You can't have a functioning democracy without a demos. And often people compare the European Union to the United States and say that individual states were willing to give up their right to autonomy and self-determination and transfer sovereignty to federal government. But I think it's possible to do that in a geographical area in which people share a common language, certain customs, traditions, institutions, a common religion. Whereas the people of Europe are just simply too diverse for them to come up with institutions, principles to live by, which are capable of commanding everyone's loyalty.

No one's going to actually die for the EU flag. No one feels their emotions being stirred when the EU national anthem is played. They're too bland, too amorphous. They're kind of lowest common denominator common ideals. It's a kind of Eurovision song contest vision of Europe, which is kind of a sort of Disney-fied version of Europe, which really commands no one's loyalty. And the problem is it's getting more and more diluted as the European Union becomes larger and larger. So it started when Britain joined in 73. It consisted of nine member states. It's now up to 28.

And countries like Albania and Turkey are now in the queue to join the European Union. And as people who share even less of our kind of common European ideals join the European Union, so the kind of what's supposed to unite us and hold us together becomes more and more watered down. And that's one of the reasons that democracy doesn't really work in the European Union. There is no common – a citizen of Greece isn't willing to – or a citizen of Germany isn't really willing to pay into a pot, which a citizen of Greece who the German feels isn't working nearly as hard, can then take out of. You don't have that sense of demos, which can kind of create a sense of commonality and allow welfare institutions and those principles to function properly. Although they did. Although they did.

The citizens of Germany did exactly, precisely that. Well, they did, but they're beginning to object to having to continue to do it as the Southern European pigs, as they're called, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Nice. Keep on taking money out of the pot, put nothing in. Toby, Peter Robinson here with a couple of days ago when a poll carried out for The Guardian, left-wing newspaper, showed that suddenly, and it does seem to have been quite sudden, a small majority now wants out. 52% say out, 48% say in. This month is the vote, June 23rd.

When we Americans wake up on the morning of June 24th, what does Toby Young predict we will learn? You know, there has been some interesting movement in the polls in the past week. It's partly the result of the two sides finally competing on a level playing field until what we call purdah kicked in when the government is no longer allowed to campaign for one side or another in an election or a referendum. They weren't competing on a level playing field because David Cameron's government was campaigning for remain and he certainly used the full machinery of the government to try and push his message. So that now they're competing on a level playing field, it seems to be a little more level pegging.

Another reason is that immigration and security issues have hoved into view in the last week or so with new data revealing that over a quarter of a million EU nationals have taken up residence in the UK in the past year. And whenever migration and security issues are in the headline, that plays better for Leave than it does for Remain. And I think Remain have been focusing nearly all their armaments on pressing home the economic message. You're going to be worse off if we leave the European Union. And it turns out some polling immediately following the poll in The Guardian yesterday revealed that two thirds of British

people actually don't think their personal finances would be negatively affected by Brexit. Call it, call it. 21 days from today. What's the vote? I hope with all my heart it'll be a victory for Brexit. But my head tells me that it'll probably be a narrow, a narrow victory for Romain. All right. If the former, this is my last question. If the former, if your heart is correct and it is a victory for Brexit, will Cameron essentially be forced to resign? That is certainly the conventional wisdom. I think it'll be difficult for him to stay because the big task of whoever the prime minister is, if we do vote to leave, will be to renegotiate our relationship with the European Union and try and negotiate some kind of trade deal, which doesn't place us in a worse off position than we are now. And it'll be difficult for people to trust Cameron with that task, given that they'll think his heart isn't really in it.

If Cameron goes, is it obvious that it will be Boris Johnson who replaces him or is that wide open? Well, there's a dark horse candidate in the form of Michael Gove who's one of the most impressive of the current generation of Tories. He was a very effective education secretary. It was partly his education policies that inspired me to set up now four free schools. And he is probably the second most prominent of the Leave campaigners. And he's been appearing alongside Boris. He's on Sky tomorrow night to talk about leave. The prime minister's on Sky tonight. But so I think and he's certainly the preferred choice of the Conservative Parliamentary Party and of the Conservative Party membership. So I think he would be an interesting bet. He's currently six to one against. I've got 50 quid on him becoming the next prime minister.

Well, everyone, if you want a post-election roundup of what's going to happen, of course, you can listen to Toby and James Dellingpole at the London Calling podcast here on Ricochet, where you can have every episode of Kaleidoscopic Fluorescence of Choreoscating and Judition. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. We'll talk to you later. Thank you. Thanks, Toby.

Okay, cheers. Well, yes, I kind of hope England does go its own way. Don't you guys? Hold on, can you repeat that? A kaleidoscopic... What did he say? A kaleidoscopic something-something of coruscating erudition.

You just made that up? The minute I heard that, I thought, James, no, no, no, you practiced that. I think it's Gilbert and Sullivan, isn't it? I am the very model of a kaleidoscopic whatever I said of erudition. All right. I just love the accent. You just, you have to. I've been listening to this.

I've been listening to this parody show from the 1990s of British BBC news programs, On the Hour with Chris Morris. And it's just hilarious. And it just, the level of theatricality in's just hilarious. Um, and it just, it, the, the level of theatricality in some of those shows that they mock is just, is absolutely wonderful. And I was, uh, I was writing to somebody in my, in England, a friend about this and, uh, did not realize that the show was, was 23 years old. You think when you discover something over here, you know, uh, they all, they all know about it. It's, it's, it's, and you know, there's only 24

episodes like most British things. And it was funny because when this friend emailed me back with some other information about some travel stuff like that. I got it. I got this transition. I got it. Go ahead. Sorry. He emailed you back.

Six rules of conversation. Rule number three, don't step on somebody's line. Actually, if somebody feels really smart about a point they're about to make, don't make it for them. Let them make it. Did you get the email? Did it appear in your inbox? No, it didn't. Well, it did.

What? What happened was the attachment was moved off to my Dropbox folder because it's where I can find them easily. And I can access them. And they're stored. And they're not lost. And I don't instantly or mistakenly delete them or anything like that. That's because I've got SaneBox. And SaneBox is what you should have too.

How many emails do you have in your box right now? If you're Rob, you got zip. If you're me, you got about 23. But most people, 1,000, 20,000. I look at the little badge on my daughter's phone at how many emails she has and I weep for her. Well, it's always too many emails, really, isn't it? But even though you want to do something about it, you don't know what because you don't want to sit down and go through them all one by one. Oh, let's master link to everything from LinkedIn. And then, you know, you miss something from somebody you haven't seen in

20 years. Well, here's what you do. You get SaneBox. I can't recommend this enough because I love it. It sorts through your email and moves all the trivial stuff off into a different folder. So the only messages in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see, need to see, should see. And aside from moving all the junk so you can focus on the messages that matter, ah, there's their wonderful little thing that we have that is just cruel to the people that you want to be cruel to. The people who send you this. I got an email list somehow for construction equipment. And they were always telling me what Caterpillar was up to. I don't care. So into the black hole it went, and I never heard from them again. So if you go to SaneBox.com slash Ricochet,

they'll throw in a $25 credit on top of the two-week free trial, and you don't have to enter your credit card information unless you decide to buy, so there's really nothing to lose. Check it out. Let us know if you love black hole as much as we do, and let us know if you reach inbox zero like Rob, poster boy for email control, because he's got SaneBox. Once again, that's S-A-N-E-B-O-X dot com slash ricochet.

All right, guys, a couple of questions from the member feed here. Doc J, back, great, said, or asked the question, what's going to happen to the conservative pundits when they're completely unstuck by a Trump victory? Quote, what do you think will happen to the conservative pundits when they're completely unstuck by a Trump victory? Quote, what do you think people will have? What do you think will happen to the conservative pundits if Trump is elected? My feeling, says Doc, is that many will be like the desiccated husks of stone like a high watermark of a river that's losing its flow. Some will improvise, adapt,

overcome. But a lot of the people we're used to hearing and seeing in the news will be blown out of sight with the changing wind. I don't know. Desiccated husks of stoneflies. If I may say so, that prose is almost Lylexian. Thank you. Thank you. And maybe Doc's been taking notes. I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, I know my friend Hugh Hewitt will continue to be a political analyst of what goes on in Washington. A lot of the never Trumpers are simply, I mean, I can't see Kevin Williamson saying, I have to rethink my life and my career and my ideas. And I can't see Jonah doing the same thing either. What will be interesting is some of the people who become such devoted acolytes, whether or not they find themselves unable to oppose their hero because of their fulsome praise leading up to the election. I'm not saying that Laura Ingraham right now has got massive credibility and audience, but do you really want to hear her cheerlead

over and over and over as the, I don't know, the sort of half-speed Ann Coulter? half speed and culture oh no oh james i'm not even i like laura that's all i'm going to say about that well i think it's a strange question because it's also part of the problem i think and as much as i love doc j i gotta say um the people who oppose trump aren't opposing him because they think he's a surefire loser in November. This is not a political prognostication. They disagree with him, the ones that I'm talking about. They disagree with him, and I disagree with Obama, and Obama won. It's a strange thing to be this obsessed with – so obsessed with winning that you don't care who wins as long as he's got the R after his name as if he's going to do anything R, right? There I have to disagree.

I mean the way I read Doc J's question is he's asking about the – well, maybe I'm misreading it. But what I assume he means – or a part of what he means is he's asking about the never Trumpers and there is – I mean Jonah is so talented. He will go on and on and on. Bill Crystal will remain a revered friend of mine, a wise man, relevant. He will go on and on and on. But there is, I think, coming for people who have devoted the last two months to dumping on Trump, the Trump dump. There's a kind of Rumpelstiltskin moment. They're going to have to get over. They're angry. They're furious. And it's simply – Get over.

I mean – No, no, no. Because the argument has been it can't be Trump. It mustn't be Trump. It shouldn't be Trump. It won't be Trump. It can't – folks, it's Trump. Oh, I know.

But what does that mean though? That doesn't mean that – that doesn't mean that if you believe that he's the wrong candidate, that you you have to that and if he wins he is no no no no you don't that's the point that's what isn't he saying that what what are all the prognosticators going to do when trump wins well and the answer is they will oppose him because they oppose his policies how is that i don't see how that's complicated i opposed obama and i oppose his policy and he won it's not complicated but you're not listening to what I'm what I'm saying. What I'm saying is there's there for some of our friends, they're stuck in a little bit of a of an eddy of an argument. It mustn't be Trump. It can't be Trump. Move on.

Is Trump speaking on behalf of never Trumpers? We have moved on. We've accepted the fact that he's going to have the nomination. This doesn't change anything that we think about the guy. Some people in the Never Trump camp are going to go into that booth and they will pull the lever. Some won't, although they'll write in somebody else. The idea that Trump could be stopped, forget about it. That's done. That's over.

I disagree. I simply disagree. I read this stuff. I listen to this stuff, as all of us do. We have differing opinions here. I'm not going to argue the two of you into submission. But at first, there was a long period in which it can't be Trump. It must be Trump.

Now we spent the last two weeks in this kind of moral equation. Is it a question of character? Charles Murray's, I thought, semi-hysterical piece suggesting that there's a moral deficiency, a deficiency of character on whether you are permitted to vote. It's just it's all about two weeks behind the actual political reality. That's all. Peter, here's where you can say here's where our friends are simply out of step. But here's where the exact here's exactly where your argument falls apart.

You conflated two things. And here's the problem. It can't be Trump. It mustn't be Trump. It is Trump. It is. But it but it but here's the problem. It can't be Trump. It mustn't be Trump. It is Trump. It is. But it mustn't be. It shouldn't be. But it is. But that doesn't mean I have to fall in line. No, I'm not suggesting that. Wait, wait. That is what Doc J is suggesting. Wait, let me finish. Because what he's suggesting is that when Trump wins, we're all going to have to explain ourselves.

But first of all, we won't. I mean I didn't have to explain myself when Obama won. George Will wrote a column two days ago in which he went through all the rather dated polling material on Trump's negatives, totally ignoring the change in the polls over the last 10 days that show Trump ahead of Hillary Clinton. All right. George Will, one of the leading columnists, devoted a column to politically dated material. Oh, but I look. No, that is that phase. I would feel better about the Trump supporters if they were if they were part of the reality community. The idea that

the trend line of all the polls is somehow now completely obviated. I did not say that. What I said was that George Will was being unrealistic. He was quoting dated material. He was the one who was not even acknowledging a shift in the polls. You can't twist my argument. You can't – sure. Argument would be disagree, but don't do a total jujitsu in suggesting that I'm arguing the opposite of what I'm saying. It's George Hill who's being unrealistic. It is – He's a great man.

He's a brilliant – I will say this because I am one of those people, right? So then I will copy one of those people. If Trump wins the presidency, I will be the first to say, I could say it now because I didn't think he was going to win the primary, to say that I am not a very good prognosticator of American electoral politics. I joined you. That I was right about 2008 and 2012, and I was wrong about 2016. That's not going to require any hand-wringing or knickers-twisting on my part. I'm perfectly willing to say that. But I am not willing to say that because he wins, which he will not,

that that's a good thing that I should support. And in addition- I am not- Wait, wait, and in addition- And Jay doesn't say that. You're reading something into him. I've now reread his question. He doesn't say that either. It's a little... I grant you could...

You can interpret his question in different ways, but you keep repeating, returning to this point that the suggestion that guys who've opposed Donald Trump are stuck... Okay, all right.

And let's put a bookmark in it. The. And let's put a bookmark in it. Let's put a bookmark in it. Let me finish now. Let me finish. That the definition of getting unstuck is to fall in line and support the guy. I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that you've got to,

that if George Will is using dated material, brilliant columnist that George Will is, he's out of, there's a little bit of remedial work. Not remedial. That sounds too condescending. Some of our guys are just out of phase. You don't have to support him. You've got to get back to saying interesting, current things. Okay. All right. Let's put a bookmark in it. Let's talk in six weeks. I just sent in my absentee ballot and I voted against Donald Trump in the California primary.

Let's put a bookmark in it and let's talk in six weeks. And in six weeks when the polls have flipped and she has now got a bump and he is eight points behind and we're looking at a landslide victory for Hillary Clinton, then let's ask the Trumpers to explain why they will not fall in line. Instead, you and I both know what they will say. They will say, oh, you're lying, or the polls are lying, or they'll come up with some idiotic excuse why what is true and happening is somehow not true because of four polls in late May. Yeah, okay. So I think we're reacting a little bit to two separate, I keep drawing the, in my mind anyway, maybe not on this podcast, but I keep drawing the distinction. There are people, there are Trumpers.

For sure, there's the Ann Coulter contingent. The people with whom I myself identify are this much larger group who are saying, wait a minute. This guy has won the Republican nomination. David French is very unlikely. God bless him, but he's extremely unlikely. That's fair. To get more than a point and a half in the polls on a good day. There's not a single state. If Ross Perot didn't carry a single state when he got to 19 percent running against George H.W. Bush, David French isn't going to carry.

This is not going to end up in the House of Representatives. It's going to be Hillary Clinton versus the Haley Barber position. That's what I'm trying to say. I cut people like Haley Barber, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, opposed Donald Trump all the way through and is now simply saying, how do we make this work? How do we make the best of this? Well, that's what you're making. You're arguing my point earlier, which is Haley Barber's point is he's not my cup of tea, but I'm going to vote for him. I think we do. Yeah, right. There's nothing wrong with that.

And that was that's what I got over the memorial. But I'm not suggesting Jonah would ever take that position or ever should, or George will, or any of the never. I'm just saying I, George will, I revert to George will. I'm not going to argue. All these guys are hugely talented. I'm just saying where there's the, maybe about 10 days behind journalistically.

Because it's a newspaper column. And these people have to write way in advance. For heaven's sakes, my next piece in National Review was something that I wrote a week and a half ago. You know, over the Memorial Day weekend, I was talking to friends and relatives. We have friendly conversation, not adversarial. I know these people. They're all conservatives. They're all Republicans.

And they were all voting for Donald Trump. And I was asking them exactly how they feel about that, feelings being important in this modern age, given that the man is, you know, you're a religious person. This guy is essentially everything that you have taught your children not to be, more or less. How do you feel about that? And they don't like it.

They feel greasy about it. They don't like him. Hillary's worse, and so they're going to pull the switch, but they don't like him. Right. And so, I mean're going to pull the switch, but they don't like him. Right. And I mean, the number of people, if he makes it to be president, the number of people who voted who feel absolutely no affinity whatsoever to the man will be a huge proportion. But like I say, six weeks, we'll talk. No, that was Rob who said that.

Well, I speak in the editorial week on behalf of the California State. It's not a good editorial week. It is. And we tell you to go to thegreatcourses.com. Actually, it's thegreatcoursesplus.com where you'll find those wonderful lectures

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You will love it. You will love it. It's fabulous, and if you don't, sad. See you in the comments, everybody, at Ricochet, and thanks for listening to this, number 306. We deliver it this week. I keep looking for a place to fit in where I can speak my mind. And I've been trying hard to find the people that I won't leave behind

They say I got brains, but they ain't doing me no good I wish they could Each time things start to happen again I think I got Something good going For myself but what goes Wrong Sometimes I feel very

Sad Sometimes I feel Very sad Sometimes I feel very Sad Sometimes I feel I'm not it I guess I just wasn't made for this time Every time I get the inspiration to go change things around No one wants to help me look for places where new things might be found

Where can I turn when I'm there where the friends come out? What's it all about? Each time things start to happen again I think I got something good going for myself But what goes around? Sometimes I feel very sad Sometimes I feel very sad Sometimes I feel very sad Sometimes I feel very sad

I guess I just wasn't made for this time Ricochet! Join the conversation. I guess I just wasn't made for this.