The Ricochet Podcast - Borderline Insanity

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

Rob Long returns this week – meaning we’re back to business. We’re joined by Harmeet Dhillon to discuss her upcoming legal battle with Twitter, representing James O’Keefe of Project Veritas, along with the many she’s fought over the last year against Gavin Newsom. Then we’ve got Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies to discuss the latest developments on our border crisis. Also... Source

But the other component is she has three times taken cases against Gavin Newsom of California to the Supreme Court, and she's won all three times. Although Gavin Newsom is so stupid, almost anybody could do that, but I'm joking. I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident That all men are created equal We undo the damage by adding four seats to the court To create a 13-member Supreme Court With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey I've said it before and I'll say it again

Democracy simply doesn't work Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lallex, and today we talk to Harmeet Dhillon about suing Twitter and Mark Krikorian about the border. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 540. This is the flagship podcast of Ricochet.com. I know, Rob. Hey, if you would like to hear podcast number 1,000, which we're planning right now, it's going to be really great.

Join us and make sure that Ricochet continues in the future. Be part of the most stimulating conversation community in the web. And if you're listening to this and you're not a member, three free months. Just go to Ricochet.com slash radio. That's Ricochet.com slash radio. I'm James Lilacs in Minneapolis. And Rob Long is in New York. Peter Robinson in California. Gentlemen, how are you today?

James, can I just jump right in? I'm just going to speak for Peter. We're fine. Yes. My question is, how is your beloved Minneapolis? How are you? And I know, assuming for a minute we've all read the news, so we're sort of up to date. What do you say when you're walking around town?

Are people nervous? Are they battening down the hatches what's what's the what's the human atmosphere in minneapolis right now nobody in my part of town seems nervous at the moment um of course a candidate for the city council who wants to replace the the lackwits that we have now recently uh tweeted out something about how the people angry about police violence should not be looting their own community. They should go to the rich parts of town, which she named, and take their stuff because they have more than enough, which, you know, is great. Fantastic. Around here, the recent spasm of property reappropriation and redistribution did not necessarily hit us although about four blocks to the north they

trashed a smoke shop and the walgreens which was burned and looted and completely destroyed um apparently was boarded up so around here it's just this sort of reflexive cringe and we're used to it downtown is a whole different matter downtown seems to be bracing for absolutely everything to go to hell which is interesting. My building is completely surrounded with wooden barricades. The building next to me the other day went up, and they painted them nicely with a special paint that resists graffiti. You can hose it right off. Block after block after block has the windows boarded up.

The library is boarded up, as though they somehow presumed that the people who were angry and would take to the streets would trash libraries, which is sort of a judgment call there. So everything. And then there are large, huge Humvees and National Guard units sitting on the sidewalk with guys standing there with weapons as you walk along. A ranting preacher across the corner, a knot of arguing men outside the target, which is almost inaccessible.

In short, it feels like, it just feels like east freaking berlin in about 1947 right i'm the checkpoints and everything like that right james up really tired up to 10 days ago so before the trial began and before dante right if i'm pronouncing that name correctly before that horrible killing what was the occupant what did downtown feel like had it begun to return to normal or had it oh it had not all right no it hadn't because the presumption is still that the uh the pervasive covid miasma rolls unchecked through everything single skyway and office buildings so no it hasn't been um a little bit more action i can see a little bit more uptick but the restaurants are asthma rolls unchecked through everything, single skyway and office buildings. So no, it hasn't been. A little bit more action.

I can see a little bit more uptick, but the restaurants are still hurting and dying. There wasn't very much more. Somewhat more, but nothing like the bustling city that it used to be. So we're hoping that it comes back. Now we're saying we hope that it comes back in the fall. We've pushed everything off to the fall. Right. It seems like psychologically around pretty much the way it is around the country. I went to the office on a Saturday, which is rare.

I mean, nobody goes to the office anymore anyway. I go because I have to get out of the house because I want to be someplace different because it's just good to be in an environment that is different and remind myself of what the world used to be. I was unaware that the usual protocols for getting into the building on Saturday have been changed. You now had to go through a side door, which, get this, was braced with a wooden beam as if this was the Middle Ages. Somebody had to come down and take the beam to unbrace the door. I'm thinking, is there a moat with crocodiles that I have to go through here right now? And that's COVID, right? That's a COVID thing?

No, no, no. This is all presumptive of the riots. This is all presumptive that there will be looting and destroying and crashing. Well, can I ask you this question? I mean, because the last time I was in an anticipatory moment like this was a long time ago, 1992, I think, or three or four, whenever the Rodney King riots. But when the Rodney king riots but when the rodney king verdict was coming in in los angeles so if you're you know under 60 that was a big deal back then um and you we kind of you know you never know when the when the you never know when the the

jury's going to come back and jury's deliberating and there was a kind of a weird calm about it uh in the city so so much calm that that the chief of police daryl gates there was a kind of a weird calm about it uh in the city so so much calm that that the chief of police daryl gates who was a controversial figure as it was at the time yes uh was at a party a cocktail party in the late afternoon in the early evening i think and he told everyone there and we heard later of course that part of it was just his total incompetence to do the job he's supposed to do, that it was all going to be fine, no matter what the verdict was. And then the verdict came in and people expressed their displeasure. Is there, I mean, and I've been reading, I've been reading as much as I can.

I've been reading Andy McCarthy's and our old friend, his accounts of the trial, not daily but close. And it does seem to me that it's unlikely that Derek Chauvin's going to walk. It looks to me like there's going to be something. It seems so, too, to me. But, again, I have absolutely no idea. You get in there, everybody takes a vote and there's three holdouts and then and that you know what if it's hung right what if there are three people who absolutely completely believe that chauvin didn't do it that floyd was on a mixture of fentanyl and

carbon monoxide and meth and the rest of it and uh and refuse and we have to go through this again and what if it's manslaughter instead of murder? Does it feel as though unless he gets convicted of everything, unless the highest of the worst charge, anything short of that, there's going to be trouble in your town. Well, you know, I don't know.

I mean, it's not as if I'm out there pulling the people who are milling about, and there aren't that many people milling about when the trial started, there were a lot of people, festival atmosphere, people selling t-shirts and the rest rest of it and the obligatory people beating on drums nobody around the courthouse now there's virtually it's just it's not a scene of an occupation of a bunch of people um you know amassed to show their will there will be of course when

the verdict comes but it's strange it's like well we might we would get a full-scale destructive firestorm if he was if he was uh acquitted but we might get partial violence if it's a lesser term i mean it's it's the strange gradation of how the response is going to be um and i don't know i just don't know but you know it's monday closing arguments and then we brace for you know if they come back like that is there the question right i mean the question really is i mean again i haven't watched the trial it seems to me like it's just reading in mccarthy it seems to me that there's there's there's a reason he's being prosecuted um but is it is it even conceivable that this man who you know as i said he's on trial for good reason, that he's going to get an actual fair trial? I mean, if you're a member of that jury, is it even believable that you could look anybody in the eye and say, oh, no, we never considered the consequences of our verdict while we were deliberating?

It never once occurred to us that the city might burn if we came up with a different answer. I mean, that just seems impossible to believe. It does. But at the same time, you know, you'd like to think that people who do this, who go through this, have that spark of civic virtue that says, I have to pursue the truth wherever it leads. And that's a lot to ask of people. It really is, especially, I mean. James, is there any responsible figure? And I'm not even sure who it would be chief of police the mayor yes city council people who is there anybody saying either one of two

things one here is why this is taking place here is what due process means. Here is why even someone who seems to have done something that on the face of it, it looks like criminal activity. Here's why in this country, such a person is entitled to a trial and a defense. Is there anyone just taking the public through what's going on? There was somebody in Brooklyn Center after the incident in Brooklyn Center in which Dante Wright was shot by the police, killed by the police. There was indeed somebody in the city government who said, well, we have to let this go through channels. We have to let due process play out. That person was immediately fired. Immediately fired for having said that and uh because we that's that's right you can't say that

because when when when emotions are inflamed pointing out that there actually is a process for these things is injurious apparently or hurtful whatever so that person's gone so the presumption of due process and the rest of it seems to be um not a very popular thing with some people and is there anybody chief of police perhaps saying, whatever the verdict, we understand there will be people who are upset. Everyone, every American has a right to assemble and every American has a right to peaceful protest.

I emphasize people. Here's what we will permit. And here's what we will simply not permit. Is there anyone saying that kind of thing to lay the predicate for police action? If things get rough? No, what there is, um a a chorus of voices amongst uh the community and people in for example brooklyn center government

who are decrying the what they say is the militarized response to protests right the the idea that you put up the barricades that you get guys out there with rubber bullets um you know when this first started there was a video of a guy they were you know beaten on a police car the guy had a huge piece of cement and he picked it up like this as if to throw it at the police which generally you assume that somebody picking up a large piece of cement is not doing so as some sort of exercise to build muscle mass and promptly got hit you know the side of the head with a rubber bullet because they weren't effing around they weren't going to have happened to them what happened in Minneapolis. But people are decrying that and saying that it exacerbates it and flames things. You can't do that. So no tear gas, no rubber bullets,

none of this stuff. Just cower and let them do what they wish, which is to throw fireworks and to scream and to yell. I mean, there's a thousand people at the police station last night how many of those people were there to cause ma'am right i don't know one out of one out of ten possibly that's all it takes really and that's the problem is every one of these things where you have people righteously aggravated by what has gone on who are doing the american thing which is to show up and protest right are tainted by that i mean just, just imagine a vat of distilled water into which one or two or three drops of blood or mercuricum are dropped. Eventually, that just sullies and colors the whole thing. So that's what's going to happen. That's the nicest version of that phrase,

by the way. So when the verdict comes, yes, I expect the civic authorities to get out there and say that we want everybody to behave and not to break and burn things. But again, there is an opportunistic element here that just says this is time to get some stuff and break some stuff because it's fun. It's fun to break things. It's fun to put a brick through the window. People remember the last battle, right? I mean, before that, there was actual pushback from law enforcement. Over the summer, they all tested out this new theory.

We saw it on television, where there would be a line of police standing there, like UN Blue Helmets in Kosovo, watching the mayhem and the destruction take place. Containment. Because they were trying out a new theory which is what if we don't do anything we just say don't cross this line of course they ended up having to cross that line a million times but it to me that's sort of an interesting thing because we we we we keep forgetting what we've learned you know it's like we keep running an experiment and then getting a result and then forgetting the result, which is that you can't let these things go. If you do,

they overrun and they overrun a city and they overrun a great city. Nicholas Christoph had a piece in the New York times the other day about how Portland seems to be sullied somewhat by what's going on. I would hope. And it's, it's nice for the light bulb 10 watt that it finally is to ding on over his head, but it's an interesting piece. And I'm just wondering how long before he is kicked out of the New York times for saying things that were hurtful.

Are you to assume that what's going on in Portland is not righteous in every respect? Oh, I tell you, well, you know what? It's, uh, it's sitting where I'm sitting. When it happens, we will be hunkering in place. But at least I needn't fear the stores being loaded. We'll be hungry in place. You said hungry. I don't have to worry about that. I can worry about that because I can go downstairs and get something to throw on the grill. That sounds like Nero. That sounds like Mask of the Red Death. Grill on a burger while the city burns down around you. But you do have to eat.

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the Ricochet Podcast. My friend Harmeet Dhillon. Harmeet grew up in the American South. She attended Dartmouth College, an institution close to my heart, where she was editor of the Dartmouth Review. I recognize it's a small world, but if you are in the Dartmouth world, it's just going to be hard for anybody to follow the act of being editor of the Dartmouth Review. Harmeet has done so. UVA Law School. She's now here in California. She is a champion of causes that other people are willing to give up as lost, including the California Republican Party. More to the point, she has founded her own law firm. And in recent months, she has just filed a suit against Twitter.

We'll come to that in a moment. But in recent months, she has participated in one, two, three suits against the state of California's lockdown that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and that she won. Harmeet, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. I've been a listener and a fan of this podcast. Thank you. All right.

You're on with Rob Long and James Lilacs, who they have put their elbows out and come crowding in at any moment. So let me just get it going. Can you describe why? Why sue the state of California? And why not just wait for the COVID thing to end, which will it won't be in weeks, but it will be in months. You took them to court. How come? Well, I'm a person of faith and a fighter for the First Amendment my entire 28 years as an attorney. And to me, there's no more precious right in this country than the right to be able to worship without government interference. But along the way, I should add, I sued the state a dozen times for a number of other things. The state violated the state constitution by closing the beaches of Orange County. They also banned protests at the Capitol. They also, with no due process, shut down small businesses while allowing large businesses to thrive

throughout this pandemic. And they basically made a mockery of any of the guardrails that normally cabin and govern the actions of the government vis-a-vis our fundamental rights. And so as a person who lives here despite all of the trials and tribulations like you do, Peter, you know, this is unacceptable. There's really no reason to live in California if we enjoy none of our rights. And so I live here. I chose to fight for those rights and very gratified that the victory we had last week in the United States Supreme Court is being viewed. Can you describe the facts in that case and what the court decided? Among the many things the state did from the beginning was say that religious worship could

only be virtual. We, through court challenges, knocked that down. They imposed 25% caps. That was knocked down. And they said people cannot gather in homes to do Bible study or other worship of three families or more, while at the same time, you know, people are, of course, free to do that in many other settings. United States Supreme Court applied strict scrutiny to the imposition of restrictions on the worship in homes, and previously the right to be free from government interference in your religious worship, has enjoyed a second-class status under First Amendment jurisprudence ever since the famous peyote case that Justice Scalia, of all people, authored and basically downgraded the religious rights in the bundle of First Amendment rights. Commentators are viewing Friday's decision where the court very decisively scolded the state for

this discriminatory behavior and applied strict scrutiny to knock down this restriction as a sea change, elevating that right of religious freedom back into the primary tier of First Amendment rights in our country. So it's a huge decision. So you not only achieved a victory in that case, you achieved a landmark in jurisprudence that will affect the whole country. I hope so. I mean, it is a shadow docket decision. In other words, it is the state, it is the Supreme Court granting an injunction pending full review. But it was in a nine-hour span between the time the government put its papers in, the United States Supreme Court slapped them down very brutally. And so we have high hopes that this is going to be applied to other decisions as well. Warms the lawyer's heart. I have one more

question before handing it off to Rob, who wants to come in. He's sending me texts. So just, you'll come in in a moment, Rob. When you go, California has done all the things that you said it has done, including, there was a long period of time when, at my church, we had to have mass outdoors, and then Harmeet wanted the Supreme Court, and we could go back inside the church. Was California under the pressure of COVID and trying to act and figure out what it should do in this circumstance, taking advice from all the, what did we have, 52 counties, 52 different health officers, were they just bungling or were you, was there real malice or, malice is a word with a legal definition, was there ill will toward people of faith on the part of the bureaucracy in Sacramento? What did you feel yourself up against? Well, so first of all, when the announcement came that California was going

to shut down, I, like other responsible business owners, I employ a dozen people here in this office. We shut down our office. We didn't complain. We went to our homes or our weekend homes, as some of us have, and we sat it out, hoping we were going to be able to get back to the office. When the government started posting its restrictions and we saw immediately that these different tiers were being made up with no scientific basis, we began to realize that they were winging it. Again, cut them a little slack. But I think there is what the left would call an unconscious bias against religion. And that made it okay for the governor, who claims he's a person of faith, to say you can worship by Zoom without addressing the fact that this is a large state with a large rural population. There is no effective internet in parts of our state. I know that because I live on the weekends in a rural area. And so this immediately relegated faith to a subservient position. And he persisted despite numerous lawsuits and five losses in the United States Supreme Court. It is only a grudging response to say now we're going to eliminate our restrictions. So at first I thought it was simply fumbling and an unconscious bias. But when you repeatedly refuse court orders and you repeatedly refuse

to get the message, it becomes deliberate and it becomes deeply offensive. And that is why in the later versions of lawsuits, including our lawsuit to open up the schools in California, many Democrats were among the plaintiffs in those cases. I'm co-counsel with Mark Garagos, who's a liberal in many of these cases. And this is not a partisan issue. This is an issue of whether you believe in the First Amendment, whether you believe in fundamental rights and due process, or whether you think the government is paramount and we derive our rights from the government as opposed to under natural law from God. Got it. Rob? Hey, Harmeet, thanks for joining us. But all that happened really fast, I mean, to me, right? A year ago, we would never have imagined that. I mean, I live in New York City. I live in New York. I would never have imagined that the governor would have just arrogated these powers to himself.

And without, you know, we were all kind of in an emergency. I guess we just let it happen. Same thing with Governor Newsom, I think. Isn't that sort of – so I guess what I'm saying is I understand that I understand when you go to court and challenge a rule, a ruling or a law or a regulation imposed by the governor, a governor. battle you're fighting against the kind of forgetfulness that people have and the kind of willingness they have to sort of shrug and say okay i'll wear six masks okay they're close they're going to close the school i get i okay i mean i i don't think people are storming the barricades no not at all and i'm not i mean and i'm not sure that's a good that maybe they should be but i think you're right that over time we have become conditioned as the government grows, as we have Department of Education, Department of everything, like non-doctors dictating medical outcomes affecting in Los Angeles County, 10 million

people. The health department person there is not a doctor. She has more power than the, you know, potentates of third world countries and, you know, states in the United States. And so we have come culturally for decades to accept government playing an overweening place in our lives. three times we lost many times and we lost with justice roberts and others authoring opinions saying oh there's a pandemic the government uttered the p word and we and the government gets to do whatever it wants federal judge after federal judge cited a 1903 opinion jacobson versus massachusetts maybe 1905 that that predates all of the tiered scrutiny that the courts have built up and just said, oh, there's a pandemic. The government has emergency powers and they can do whatever they want. I think it's shocking that left and right forces in this country simply sat aside and said we should trust the government. We should trust the science as if the science

is some kind of a mantra that is fixed in time and that doesn't evolve. I studied science. I was actually pre-med at Dartmouth before I went into majoring in the classics. And so I know some science I've done. I've dissected frogs and deer and done experiments. And my father is a doctor. Both my grandfathers were doctors. And I don't venerate what Dr. Fauci says on one given day

when he changes it a few days later. So there has been a collective suspension of our normal critical thinking in this crisis that I hope is not a one-way ratchet. I think that we did wake some people up by fighting, but it was a lonely battle for many, many months. I think you're right. I think you did wake some people up. I mean, just on a practical level, your argument for the churches, I mean, that's an, let's just be honest, churchgoing is a theoretical issue to the majority of Americans at this point. The majority don't go to church. So we're using churchgoing and church closings as a kind of a canary in a coal mine. You know, when they came for the churchgoers i said nothing it does seem like we've arrogated enormous or not arrogant we we've we've ceded an enormous

amount of our own sort of sovereignty to an unelected bureaucratic class who are basically doing what they're supposed to be doing i mean fousey anthony dr fousey is kind of doing what you want the chief medical officer of the country to do, which is to say everybody stay home because it's dangerous out there. But we don't seem to have reclaimed our own personal responsibility and personal risk and risk appetite. Do you see that changing? Well, look, what I see here, and of course, California is somewhat of a unique situation because it is a one-party state. But even in a one-party state, obviously you have the doctors, they can urge the caution what you expect to have is the government then balancing the risks and the rewards you didn't have that uh our one-party state in california had no debate in

the legislature even the democrat legislators were happy to have the governor take the fall for shutting down the schools shutting down the businesses shutting down the churches shutting down protests even shutting the beaches which has zero scientific basis it was purely punitive so there was no accountability because we have a one-party state um you know new york is is somewhat less so but you still have this uh this perfect storm of fear uh sort of creeping authoritarianism and the administrative state. And then you have Americans, frankly, conservatives have been on the wrong side of many civil rights issues over the years. You know, I was on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union here in Northern California for two years after 9-11. And I've gotten nothing but hate from Republicans over

the years for that. But if you don't stand up and fight for your fundamental rights, whether it's the other guy's rights or your rights, you find yourself in this position where you can't send your children, even if you're rich and you have a private school, you can't send them to that school and you basically have no rights. And so I find this to be a watershed moment in United States civil rights and governance. And we're turning the tide. But man, losing the string of cases that I lost to get there, it was pretty humiliating for a relatively successful lawyer to do that. But it was worth it in the end. Let's talk about the case we hope you win. You're suing Twitter for banning James O'Keefe.

Now, of course, everybody knows that Veritas is guilty of chopping up their videos and making everybody look bad through deceptive editing, even though, of course, he'll release the entire two-hour tape so you can judge for yourself. But that's the thing on him. He's a criminal, he's convicted, and he lies. So a lot of people are just shrugging and saying, good, the Twitter's kicking him off because he's a source of disinformation. I assume the position is otherwise. Tell us why you're suing them and on what basis and

whether or not you think you're going to win. Sure. Well, the lawsuit's going to be filed, you know, not today, but, you know, sometime in the next few days. And the basis is defamation. They did not merely bounce him off of the platform, but they said false things about him to their allies in the media who immediately published those false things on Twitter where he had no ability to respond. Specifically, they said James was removed from the platform for utilizing fake accounts and for using fake accounts to amplify and manipulate algorithms or conversations on Twitter. And James says he does not do those things. And so, you know, you could remove somebody, and I've sued Twitter unsuccessfully here in California on behalf of what she would call herself a radical feminist

who was critical of transgender activists on Twitter. And the California court and the Court of Appeals ruled that the Communications Decency Act Section 230 lets Twitter do whatever it wants on the platform. I disagree with that, but until we have some Republican legislators with some guts, that is going to stand as the law there.

However, this is a totally different issue. This is whether Twitter has the right to bounce people off and then say false things about them. We don't think they have that right and that's really it's pretty simple that's the basis of it that is a novel approach um because it seems to be that most of a lot of conservatives would just say well private company they can do what they want if they want to ban anybody from criticizing the transgender movement they can do it go build your own but let's look at that go build your own argument. It's a little bit more complex than that, isn't it? Well, absolutely. First of all, they can ban anybody they want is itself false premise because every user of Twitter or any of

these platforms ricochet, you enter into a contract, a contract that governs the terms of service and your conduct. And in Twitter's case, they enumerate types of behavior that will get you removed. The type of behavior that will get that got my client removed was not part of their terms of service. They changed the terms of service retroactively, which, you know, is appalling. And the court said we're not going to even bother to look at contract law or tort law when it comes to these big tech companies. And yes, you're correct. The sort of conservative establishment and libertarian world has said, oh, they can do whatever they want. But when they try to do whatever they want, Exhibit A is Parler and there are other examples, a cartel of big tech companies that do the hosting simply exclude them. So IBM has kicked them off,

Amazon Cloud Services kicked them off. And services kicked them off and so it now becomes impossible when you allow this type of a cartel to dominate information technology in our world uh for any other alternative voices to occur and imagine this the uh governor of california says you may only worship through digital means those digital means churches have been using have included facebook live and others and so if you aren't able to participate in society through one of these software platforms, which I don't think you should be forced to use if you don't want to, you have no ability to communicate with others. Coming next, and this is not a far-fetched scenario, I have had to represent non-profits in california that have had their

their right to use mastercard their right to have payments processed through stripe uh right stripe platform they've had that taken away if you can't use money you can't speak what if verizon decides harmeet dylan is dangerous with all of her Court victories. We don't want her to have a phone with us. You are, and then what is a libertarian world going to say? LOL, build your own phone company? I mean, this is not practical. They will say that actually you can, that if you're kicked off the phone, then you should get two tin cans and string a couple of miles of wire and communicate that way. No, you're absolutely right. It is worrisome. And partially when you say the Twitter changed the terms of services,

everybody who logs onto these things periodically gets an update, which you just accept, right? Because they're constantly under the hood changing things and updating and the rest of it. Nobody has any conception of what they ever signed onto. If you really want to do something, if you want to do something else after you've had your string of legal victories for the next year, do something about the end user license agreement language and length. Just somehow find a way to reduce that down to four or five simple

little statements that people can understand and require it to be an opt-in as opposed to just automatically just doing whatever you happen to do to continue on with your day on the internet uh well rob peter additional questions i know we can go forever and ever but we've taken up a lot of our time last question for you i'm waiting thank thank you thank you for joining us um to go back to rob's question so you've been appearing a lot on fox news you've now got some press favor some favorable grudgingly favorable press because you're winning victories you're doing significant things do you feel in the comments you get on twitter and the things people say to you around town in san francisco do you feel that people are saying yeah yeah, we need to do this? Or do you feel,

are you fighting a battle that, do you feel the tide of the momentum in the battle turning in our favor, in the favor of reclaiming individual rights and putting government back in its box? Or do you feel you're fighting a glorious but slowly losing cause? Well, I don't believe it's a slowly losing cause. If I thought that, I wouldn't be doing it. It would be too hopeless. I would spend my time knitting and doing stuff that makes me money. None of this stuff makes me money, au contraire.

But how people respond depends on whether they have liberty. Is their name on the door of their business? Those people are free to communicate with me. If they are working for a big tech company, dating back to my lawsuit against Google for James Damore and others, we have found that people are not free if they work for big corporations to express heterodox views in our society. California is particularly acute, but now we have seen this culture come to Georgia and other states where standing up for one man, one vote equals some sort of Jim Crow tyranny, which is, of course, absurd. So I think we are definitely in an area of censorship, corporate censorship. I frankly think under the Biden administration, corporations are being used to deploy policies that would not pass in the legislature. That's a very dangerous development since most of these corporations derive more of their revenue from foreign sources like in China and India and third world countries than they do the United States. So the shareholders and profits are going to dictate policies being imposed on Americans, including speech policies, access to services, and of course,

voting rights. This is terrifying, and all Americans should be concerned about this, whether they're left or right, because one day the corporations abroad or their interests abroad may dictate some type of fascism here in this country that we don't want. So we have to stand up for these rights. Did Google require James DeMort be put in a bathysphere and dropped to the bottom of the Marianas Trench so that his mere existence on Earth did not cause harm. Or is he still walking around as a free man? He's walking around as a free man. But, you know, certainly people like me and like him who who express these types of views, I get death threats.

I get a lot of hate on social media. And I'm I guess I signed up for dating back to Dartmouth days. I was very controversial then. But, you know, your james damore of the world doesn't and so he still works in this country he still has a job but uh google turned him from a brilliant person earning a high salary into somebody who is a constant target of threats and abuse uh and so unfortunate well as they as the twitter as the Twitter mob calls it, that's just accountability. That's right. Armeet, thanks for joining us today. And we hope to have you on again after the successful conclusion of your battle with Twitter. Well, fingers crossed.

Thank you. Good luck. Thanks, Armeet. Thanks, Armeet. Bye-bye. You know, Rob, you mentioned something earlier in one of your questions about personal responsibility. I can't remember exactly what it was. Great question. Great point. But you were talking about how people sort of have abrogated to greater authorities. You know, what do I do? Right. What do I do? There's a store near me that serves, it's a gift shop that basically serves the wine mom demographic that has a Volvo with lots of bumper stickers. You know what I mean? And it's got, it has all of this stuff inside that is for people who are just, you know,

gifts for their outrageous people. They're just, they're just, they're those, they're just full of life. So everything is F something. Yeah. F you I'm embroidering F you coloring book.

And it's all, I mean, this is a store with lots of things for kids and toys. And there's a whole selection of stuff with the F word because they're, they're just outrageous. coloring book that it's all i mean this is a store with lots of things for kids and toys and there's a whole selection of stuff with the f word because they're they're just outrageous those women and then prominently i am an effing ray of sunshine with effing being of course with the maracota conduct would not allow me to say next to the mug that says i am an effing ray of sunshine is a is a mug with fauci's face and the words, what would Fauci do? WWFD.

And I thought to surrender your sort of philosophical questions and swap out Jesus with Fauci even as a joke. Yeah. Also because he's a doctor. Your doctor is supposed to say things to you like

you should exercise more, you should get off of the sofa, you should stop smoking, you shouldn't drink as much, your cholesterol. Your doctor is going to tell you all the sorts of things, all the ways you're supposed to live without any fun at all. That's why I don't go to one. That's fine. That's their job. But it doesn't mean that they get to accept those. It's different to have your doctor come to your house and wake you up and make you jog.

That's kind of where we're living now. I want my doctor in his office. I want to go there, feel the hot shame of my, you know, blood sugar, A1C number, promise to do better, and then leave. That's what I want from my doctor. Well, if the doctor did come to my house and wake me up, I would be happy to be awake. You'd be fast asleep. Because, well, I would, but I'd wake rested and refreshed because I have bowling brand sheets. It's as simple as that. Wow. You know, here, the thing these days, you may notice

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Promo code Ricochet. And we thank Bolland Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. We are joined now by our old friend Mark Krikorian. Mark is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and author of the new case against immigration, both legal and illegal. You can follow him on Twitter, at Mark mark s krikorian or all that'll be in the show notes we know mark very well mark what are you going to do with your life now that all the immigration problems have been solved by the election of joe by yeah i don't know i mean

it's over for you right what are you gonna do go into gardening or something like that all right so it does seem to me that the for four years under the previous administration, what we heard about was like the humanitarian crisis, kids in cages, terrible, terrible administration on the border. um it's really simple uh he's evil and we need to get him get rid of the president and then that happened and so suddenly now we're hearing well actually you know immigration is a very complex issue and it doesn't lend itself to this kind of uh black and white um and so instead of kids in cages we have them in you know plastic restraining cubicles or whatever it is. Can you cut through that? My instinct tells me that it's exactly the same problem. It hasn't changed at all.

It hasn't gotten better. It hasn't gotten worse. We still haven't dealt with whatever the underlying problems are that we need to deal with. And this is now the ball is in somebody else's court um am i wrong has there been progress has there been um uh the lack of progress has there been a retreat where are we exactly the same as it was before because the reason we have the crisis we're having now is because of president biden mean, this happened because of the policies that he's pursued and the things that he said. Now, this doesn't mean that the desire to sneak into the United States is new or Biden's fault. I mean, that's a kind of almost a given. You know, the president talks about addressing root causes.

Well, you know, in the long run, we're all dead, as Cain said. I mean, the fact is people are going to want to sneak into the United States. The question is, what message are they getting from us? And Biden inherited a border that wasn't perfect. It wasn't fixed, but it was stable. Trump had actually addressed some of the worst problems we have in border control, and Biden inherited that and broke it. And this is why we're facing what we're facing here. I mean, just to give one concrete example, there is this, it's called,

the shorthand for it is Title 42. It's a public health emergency measure that allows the border patrol to turn around that allows the border patrol to turn around anyone at the border and just send them back. No hearing, no nothing. Biden has actually kept that in place and boasted of keeping it in place, but he specifically exempted anyone under 18 coming on his own from being turned around and sent back or sent home. So what happened? The apprehensions of these are so-called unaccompanied minors has exploded because parents have said either they're here and they've hired smugglers to bring their kids over or they're in Central America and they've hired smugglers to bring their kids to the border to join other relatives who are already in the U.S.

That's directly a cause directly caused by what Biden has said and done. Well, so let me try this out for you. Just talk about compassion for a minute. You know, it's our favorite topic here in the Ricochet podcast, compassion. It it we all can agree that there there's donald trump is not a compassionate person not filled with you know kindness for whatever reason but is it kind to do what biden has done president biden has done which is to say things like just to spread the message that he's going to be more open and compassionate you know in air quotes and cause all these people to sort of amass at the border anticipating a much much much more lenient border policy when in fact as you put it in some cases he's not only kept he's extended i

mean he extended i think 10 minutes ago he extended the refugee cap that trump had what which is more compassionate to to to threaten all sorts of uh dire consequences if you appear in the border and then to even follow through on them or to encourage people in some way rhetorically to come and come to the border and then to do and then to treat them to to a pretty much the same regime as you as as the previous president it doesn't it seems like this is a i guess this is a very long-winded question it seems like the the worst possible outcome for immigration policy is for our rhetoric to be lenient and welcoming but the facts on the ground on the border border, to be forbidding. It's much better for it all to be unified. Yeah, I mean, exactly. I had a piece in NRO a while back.

I called it open-ish borders because it's not really open borders, but it's the rhetoric of open borders. So, I mean, it's open-ish. You're essentially inducing people to do things that ultimately isn't even good for them. And so we need to either be all one or all the other. I mean, as Lincoln said, in obviously a very different context. But that's why the libertarian approach to this, at least, and the hard left approach, they're the same on immigration, is at least honest and consistent,

that anyone who comes to the border has to be let in. We have no right to stop them. Because then you wouldn't have kids in containers or kids in cages or whatever. Everybody would just be able to move here. Now, that's terrible. I'm against that. It would be a disaster. But at least that's consistent. If you're not going to do that, you need to have a consistent policy in the other direction that you're not going to get in. We're not going to let you go. And OK, you know, we're not going to be a jerk about it the way Trump often was. But the policy has to be consistent and sustained. There's no hope for that.

Maybe not. I mean, if I'll take a consistent, sustained policy with the Trumpian unpleasantness, if that's what it takes. But there's no possibility of that now in the next few years, no. Right. Mark, Peter here. I don't want to go back and revisit all four years. So I genuinely, I'm just asking for a kind of summary answer because you know the answer. Donald Trump's last budget, Biden, of course, will blow through this, but Donald Trump's last budget called for 4.8, federal expenditures of 4.8 trillion. Getting the border done, we're talking about something that's a small fraction of the federal budget. He had four years to do it. Now, you said he stabilized the border, but he ran on building the wall. Turns out you can't build a wall across rivers. It's a little more complicated than that,

but he ran on enforcing the rule of law at the border and putting up physical barriers wherever necessary. And he didn't get it done in four years. Why not? Well, because it's not something the president can just, you know, snap his finger and get done. I mean, it's like when Truman was leaving office, he had said about Eisenhower, you know, he's going to think it's the army and you can just, of course, even Eisenhower didn't think that he He had beaten the Nazis, so he knew how things like that worked. But, you know, Trump probably didn't, did not know that, you know, and he sort of figured, well, he can issue an executive order or an edict and get it done. And you got to work with Congress. And the problem is that it's not just Trump's shortcomings that were the reason he didn't get more done. I mean, he had plenty of shortcomings and hopefully, you know, we're not going to have to revisit that in four years

all over again. But immigration is an issue where the left also, or even just, I mean, mainstream Democrats have radicalized even before Trump was coming into power. And so you have, before Trump had anything to do, wasn't even an apple in anyone's eye as far as politics goes, Nancy Pelosi said specifically that being an illegal immigrant is not reason enough to get deported.

In other words, that no one who is illegally in the US should be made to leave unless they rape somebody or kill somebody, that kind of thing. That perspective, there's no difference to split in some sense when if the other side holds that point of view. You know, it is now it was always on the fringe, but it is now the mainstream Democratic Party position that the borders of the United States are not legitimate, that the United States does not have the right to keep people out? And how do you compromise with that? This may seem a silly question and moot and useless, but I'll ask it anyway. Why did they

change? Do you have, is that the fundamentally the Democratic Party has always wanted open borders and everybody to come in and you should never be deported? They've had to lie to us for years about what they really think. Or do you have the old guard seeing this new pack of snapping jackals at their heels demanding the abolition of citizenship, the abolition of all these things? And they're and they're accommodating that they're trying to get around in the long run it doesn't matter if they adopt their policies but do you think their hearts are in it or this is just posturing that in the end will not work well for them because that's not the mainstream american opinion they're just huffing the gas that they that they get from twitter and aocs were always lying when they had an earlier more sane position i mean you had barbara jordan who, you know, first black congresswoman from the South, was the head of Clinton's Immigration Commission, said something to the effect that that credibility in immigration is people who should get in, get in, people who should not get in or kept out, and people who shouldn't be here are made to go home.

That is it kind of sums up what regular people would think immigration policy should be like. And Barbara Jordan wasn't lying. That wasn't some kind of fake thing. What's happened is that the left has changed. It has become post-American so that the unions have become post-American when, in fact, before really the 1990s, they might be a couple of follow ups of the immigration restriction, when in fact, before really the 1990s, they were at the forefront of the immigration restriction movement. In fact, the AFL-CIO was the only major American institution pushing for immigration control back in the old days. So this is a part of a broader cultural change on the left, where they've moved beyond America. Some of them actually hate America,

but most of them, I think, are just post-American. And you see that in a lot of places, but immigration is one of the places where that's most obvious and hard to avoid. Right. Yeah. Transnational progressives, as we used to call them. Well, you mentioned Barbara Jordan, and that's interesting because Tucker Carlson's taken some heat for floating this idea that the Democrats are trying to the the unfortunate old electorate we put over here and we bring in this new compliant electorate that we can deal with here. And he's pointing out that, you know, some are saying that's that's a dog whistle. That's a megaphone shout for white supremacism. But Tucker, at least the excerpt that I saw, said that actually this is this dilutes African-American black political influence. Barbara Jordan may have seen that.

I mean, so do you see that there's going to be a pushback from that in the African-American community saying, no, our political power is not going to be diluted when you bring in people who are going to vote in ways that are not in our interest or do not represent us? People have for a long time expected a sort of among Black Americans, among the Black electorate, some kind of pushback on immigration. And, you know, it hasn't happened yet. And it's not clear why. I think one of the reasons is that anything like that to happen would require a, first of all, a black political actor to take up the issue, because I can't go and tell, you know, black Americans, you need to be against immigration. It's like, well, who the hell am I? And that hasn't happened yet. There was a chance,

Harold Ford, who was, I don't know if any of you remember him. He was congressman. He ran for Senate in Tennessee when the seat opened up. He actually was OK on immigration, relatively speaking, for a Democrat. He and and he ran against what's his name? Who was the senator who just retired? Corker. They were both running for an open seat. Corker was a rich Republican. He had done the kind of immigration stuff you expect from rich Republicans, you know, hired illegal aliens. The chance, the opportunity was right there in front of him to be picked up off the ground. He would have walked away with that election. He didn't do it. He couldn't do it for whatever reason. And so until a credible black political actor picks up the issue and Barbara Jordan was credible, but she wasn't running for policy she was out of politics at that point i don't think it's you're going to see uh a anyone be able to tap into the existing real deep black ambivalence about ongoing immigration mark's summary is this your last question, Peter? Yeah, it's going to be. This is my last question, but it's... That's fine.

Yeah, I'm thinking of the contract. This is the last. It really is my last question. Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty in 1986. That's not what's interesting. What's interesting is that the legislation was the result of a commission that the Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, appointed. And one of the co-chairs of that commission was Father Hesburgh, the longtime president of Notre Dame.

And the commission report, which Father Hesburgh signed, and I've heard that he authored much of it himself, I don't know that that's the case, but that seems to be in the air, took it as axiomatic that we had the right to defend our borders and that our decisions about the way we handled the borders and whether we granted amnesty and what kinds of tools we used to enforce the law at the border, that also was axiomatic. All right? A couple of years ago, I did an interview with Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles, very good and holy man in my judgment, highly intelligent. And I said, but he was with the bishops, American bishops calling for so-called comprehensive immigration reform. And I said to him, construct what argument could you use under what circumstances would you be willing to stand at the border and say to a Mexican who's

on his way north and wants to come into this country, no, it's not right. This country does have the right to keep you out. And you know, Archbishop Gomez, highly intelligent, good a man as he is, had a lot of trouble with that question. This shift that you talk about is really, I hadn't thought of it in quite this way until you mentioned it. But it seems to me that we're in the position now of having to reassert the basics. So what is the basic? By what right do human beings north of the border keep human beings south of the border out? Where is the argument from justice or nationhood? What is the argument that appeals to a kid going to college getting nothing but wokeness thrown at him?

What's the basic right that permits us to do that? That's the question that's dominating our politics now in every respect. In fact, that is rather than left and right. That's the issue. Do nations matter or don't they? And that's, you know, I don't know. I mean, that's not a question you can say, here it is. This is, you know, the 11th commandment. You're part of a people and your people have a right to protect themselves. It's a kind of a, I mean, it's a values question. Do you have a greater moral responsibility to your fellow American citizens? Or if you're, you know, Irish to your fellow Irish citizens or whatever it is, this is really a broader question. Does nation, is nationhood legitimate? That's, you know, I answer answer yes but you can answer no and people do

answer no and that's the basis really of libertarianism and leftism is that nationhood itself is illegitimate um that's one of the that's a you know that's a an axiom i don't know how you you can't i don't know how do you prove that to a college student who is being taught all this woke baloney? I mean, you need to accept it or not. Well, it used to be, previously you had the EU as an example of a political structure that surpassed national boundaries. Even though there was national identity within it, there was the idea that there was this

European identity and they could take people in from all over the place and they would acclimate to European values, however those were defined. That was then, and that seems to have set the stage for where we are now, which when you combine with the new strains in the progressive community, attack America itself as an illegitimate prospect from the beginning. Our foundation in 1619 was poisoned. We are illegitimate. We are a, we are fraught in every fiber of our being with sin. And therefore really nationhood is illegitimate because this thing that we call a nation is morally bereft. It is morally corrupt. So yeah, we ought to let everybody into a tone for what we've done before. And that's what our politics is about now. I mean, that's why did Trump win?

You know, I mean, look, the guy's a jerk. Everybody knows that. But he won. I voted for him twice because he was articulating the American perspective versus the post-American perspective. And those that's what the two parties are now. It's not bigger government, lower government lower smaller government it's not looser abortion rules or tighter abortion rules it's america or post-america that's what the debate is about and immigration is just one of the most obvious places that show mark if you can't prove it i hope put a date on your calendar a year from now we'd like to talk to you because we expect all of these issues will be settled and done and we're going to ask you what you're going to do next with your career i'll be back in a composting that's what i'm going to do because i do a lot of that on the side anyway so i'll make that a little i just call it writing

the same thing yeah it's a variation of the 10 to your knitting or 10 to your garden mark ricorian thanks for joining us we'll see you at at NRO. Thank you, guys. Bye. Let's see. He's on Twitter, isn't he? At Mark Gregorian. I mean, we will put it in the show notes, but Mark S. Gregorian. Right now, good person to follow, by the way. Well, he's there for the moment. Like Andy McCarthy. He's there for the moment.

Andy McCarthy, a lot of good guys. They're there now, but who knows when they'll fall afoul of Twitter, as we saw happen to Veritas this week, talking about that earlier. Another example, it would seem, particularly since Veritas has just taken huge whacks at CNN and how they shaped their coverage.

Another example, you might say, of big tech looking at somebody saying something they aren't. You must. Well, Rob, the problem is it doesn't seem like there is anything you can do about it, which you can't do.

What you can do is you can keep these companies from having your personal data. I mean, why would you give them all of your nice little juicy demographic data so they could sell it to somebody else? Hmm?

Hmm? Big Tech's made it clear what side they're on. Now is the time for you to take a stand, and you can protect your personal data from Big Tech with the VPN we trust for our online protection, and that's ExpressVPN. See, every device, as you know or don't, you know this, your phone, your laptop, your TV,

it's got a unique string of numbers called an IP address. We're not at the point yet where China is coming up with new protocols for a whole new internet with a new IP security thing, which is going to be even more nightmarish if it happens don't even think about that oi but for now mark thank you so much just in a bad place not the worst place so when you search for stuff when you want your videos when you click on a link big tech companies can use that ip address to track your activity and tie it back to you so when you use express your connection gets rerouted to the secure encrypted server so the companies can't see your IP address at all. The internet activity becomes anonymized and your network data is encrypted. Best part, you don't have to be tech savvy, no genius,

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Well, you get three extra months free. Three months free. Go to expressvpn.com Ricochet right now to learn more. And we thank ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now it's been a while, but let's see how rusty our producer is, because it's time for... The James Lyons Never Post of the Week. Yes, well, that was a little bit in advance,

but he really had, let's call that a win. Let's not get the finger on the button here. I posted the week. There are so many that I want to do. And I mean, there's, we got a stable of great writers who write frequently and I'd love to do their stuff, but I've done them before. And then we have stuff that's really obscure that I like to highlight too, that, you know, stuff that gets, I don't know how many reads, but two comments, but it's, it's the thing that I look for all week long. Like the, uh, you know, the Saturday night old time radio show this week, I chose Hartman

Von. Oh, if I'm correct, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, we did a post on Michaela Peterson reacts to Marvel's slander of her father. Now this is one of those culture stories, internet culture stories. It's actually, it's actually big, um, internet sl one of those culture stories, internet culture stories. It's actually big. Internet slander of her father, of Jordan Peterson. Peter, Rob, do you know what this case happens to be about? I don't. He gets slandered all the time. So, no, this one.

But by Marvel. What'd you do to stand out? By Marvel Comics. I don't know. I don't know. You don't. Fill us in. Marvel Comics.

You know what? I see the word Marvel Comics? I don't know. I don't know. You don't? Marvel Comics. You know what? I see the word Marvel Comics, honestly, and I just go right over it. It's not in my thing of things that I think about. And you're in the business. You're in the Hollywood... I'm not in that business.

Well, okay. Well, here's the deal. Marvel Comics has a character, a villain, a super Nazi, a super Nazi called the Red Skull. Do you remember him from the movie, perhaps? Terrifying figure. Well, they did a comic in which the Red Skull appears on a YouTube video and starts talking about the means by which he gets young skulls and young brains and converts them into his nazi philosophy and what marvel did was take jordan peterson's rules and put them into the red skull's mouth thereby saying that jordan peterson is essentially espousing a super nazi philosophy now this is no small thing because the audience for the red skull comics and

jordan peterson right intersects and overlaps it's also indicative of the split between the cut you know the movies that we see the culture of these wagnerian arcs that we see and what is going on in the trenches of comic books which have become so woke over the last four or five years that they're unrecognizable from the super truth, justice, and the American way that we grew up with. Tahanisi Coates wrote it. So this guy that everybody was holding up as this wonderful exemplar of modern writing and philosophy is the guy who willfully perverted what Peterson said. And so the Ricochet Post of the week is just a link to Michaela Peterson explaining and defending her father in an amusing fashion and at the end of it capitalizing with some merchandise and t-shirts and hats which just go and poke a big

thumb right into the inflated nonsense that coats was writing in that comic book so that's what that's about and it's indicative of ricochet because you'll find politics culture high and low all wrapped into one site where you can scroll and scroll and scroll forever. Well, before we go out this week, anything ahead that you see? Are you going to be watching Prince Philip's state funeral? Or have we had, Rob, you missed the monarchy conversation last week, which was zesty. John, you essentially burned down Buckingham Palace. You'd be perfectly fine. Oh, yes. for a thousand years. It's just there. And as far as I can tell from this distance, the current

incumbent who never asked for the job at the age of 94 has spent almost seven decades on the throne now and not put a foot wrong on just an astonishing act of continued dignity, decorum, sense of duty, and so forth. But set that aside, it is the symbol of Britain. And Britain just in a very close election decided, 52 to 48, to leave the EU and reassert its sovereignty. So it's struggling with the very question that Mark Krikorian set out for us just a moment ago. Do nations matter? And if they matter, then in some way, this royal family with younger members giving interviews to Oprah and this 94-year-old woman who actually remembers the Second World War, burying her

husband who served in it, then that sort of matters too. That said, I have no intention of watching the whole thing. Highlights will be fine. Yeah. I mean, I guess it matters. It just doesn't matter to me. I mean,

Prince Philip was sort of interesting character. He's all, everyone who's about a hundred years old now has a, has a life that I find fascinating because I think the last hundred years have been really, what must have been an amazing thing to have a front row seat to. There aren't that many people whose half their half his family were fighting for the Nazis and the other half, including him, were fighting for the allies in a war that's now seemed so incredibly distant, it's almost irrelevant,

although it's not. So I don't, I mean, to me i don't i what i what the problem is is that the the whole idea of britishness and what it meant or englishness to be more specific and what it meant seems like well i all of those things are valuable i guess i mean it's kind of nice that there's a stiff upper lip and there's let's not make a big fuss and all that stuff um but it doesn't seem to be it doesn't seem to reflect reflect the Britain that exists today, which looks more and more like the United States. I mean, the second oldest son of the heir to the throne has figured out really quickly how to make money, essentially, as being a reality television star with his american starlet wife he's monetizing his celebrity he's monetizing it and of course the monetizing problem is i mean people forget right it it's hard to be rich in the world today you have to be really

really rich i mean and the queen and the royal family are not simply that rich i mean she's got the world's largest diamond but you can't sell it so what good is the world's largest diamond they're surrounded on all sides by people who are just practically richer than they are and that is one of the reasons why i think if you were the the current uh what is her duchess of sussex or some idiotic title like she must've gotten there and thought to myself, this is sort of low rent. You people in your, your musty old castles and stuff.

I thought it was all going to be cashmere and silk and, and caviar and champagne all day. And it's not there. They're stingy. And the queen is stingy with the money she gives. It's one of the reasons why Prince Andrew got in such much trouble and why his wife got in so much trouble. So, you know,

if you're the heir, it's great because no one's, no one complains no one complains that Prince William's going to spend money. But if you're not the heir, you've got to look to your bank account. A side hustle. A side hustle, and that side hustle can be a lot of things, but it does come in the shape of a Netflix deal and a house in Montecito and a couple of incredibly embarrassing interviews with Oprah Winfrey. So to me, it doesn't seem like there's much of a future for the royal family.

There might be a future for the king and queen. But I think if you're the brother or the sister or the cousin or the child, learn a trade. As for whether or not there's a future for england in a culture that's distinct from america a lot of the stuff that we get over here seems to point to a population that has been willingly infantilized by a police that will knock on your door if you have a bad tweet that will uh that will go that will go out and collect kitchen knives and saying we're doing something for knife i mean all of these little things that speak that the the gritty bearing through the blitz attitude has been sapped and you wonder if there's anything distinctively british left when you get down to it but there is i mean the last

time i was london in london i was walking to the train station to go up north to suffolk and i passed a trough it was full of flowers but it was an old stone trough, and it had an inscription on it. And I did a little research, and I found out that there was a society for the advancement of horse troughs at some point in the 19th century. And they placed strategically all over London these troughs where the horses could drink water. Very nice, humane thing to do. And of course, being Britain, there is a society now that is dedicated to preserving them, cataloging them, putting up the history on the web, this little obsessive hobby-like behavior that you love so much. And there's no American analog I can find for 200,

100 horse troughs in a city that has its own society lovingly looking after them. I got on the train and I went up to Suffolk. And I hope to do that again soon when I get my shots and I can return. And it's great because there by the seaside is this little cat, is this pub, this local that I go to where you can get the ale that's made across the river. And the only way you can get across the river, unless you take the big bridge, is to get on the barge and somebody will row you across for a pound. And they've been doing this for three generations. And there's the dog that's always, that's the descendant of the other dogs that have been pound. And they've been doing this for three generations. And there's the dog that's always, that's the descendant of the other dogs that have been there. And then when you sit down at the pub,

back from your little trip with a person rowing you, you have Coronation Chicken, the name of which goes back itself to the queen, to events. So it's still there. It's still there. And they love it and they prize it. And there's something that Lawrence Fox, we talked to before, is tapping into, I think. I don't think he'll win now.

But there's still something there. There is not, however, something here because we are done. I'd like to thank everybody for listening. I'd like to thank our guests. Thanks for ExpressVPN. Thanks to ButcherBox. Thanks to Bowlin Branch for sponsoring this show. By the way, you can listen to the best of Ricochet, all of our podcasts.

We select some highlights, and that's going to be hosted by a short guy from Minneapolis, and it'll be on Radio America Network this weekend. Check your local listings. Take a minute if you would. A minute to leave five stars at Apple Podcasts? I don't know. It would take a minute. I mean, how many seconds to click? You can probably do it in four, So go do it. Now the review helps other people find the show. They find Ricochet. They join Ricochet and we maintain ourselves into the future between the next election, the presidential election and beyond.

It's been fun and we'll see everybody in the comments. And Ricochet. Next week, boys. Tonight, my bag is packed. Tomorrow. goals. Tonight my bag is packed. Tomorrow I'll walk these

tracks that will lead me across the border. Tomorrow my love and I will sleep near the burnt skies somewhere across the border

We'll leave behind my dear Pain and sadness we found here And we'll drink from the Brazos muddy waters Where the sky grows gray and white ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ High upon a grassy hill, somewhere across the border, where pain and memory, pain and memory have been still. water sweet blossoms fill the air pastures of gold and

green roll down into cool clear waters and in your arms meet open sky I'll kiss the salt from your eyes

there across the border. Ricochet! Join the conversation. Sing the songs, and I'll dream of you, my corazón. And tomorrow my heart will be strong. And may the saints' blessing and grace carry me safely into your arms, bear across the board. A big topic, A new topic? Rob, it's conservatives complaining about being censored by the media. I was not aware that this was something you were all that keen to talk about.

I'm here. Can you hear me? Hey, there you are. I'm sleepy after listening to that ad. That's, I guess, a compliment. I don't know if that's i don't know if that's good or bad mark yeah oh and nobody noticed that the highlight box okay when we talk on zoom it's the same color as my shirt just no i just know that's true that's true i see it now