The Ricochet Podcast - California Cooking

Episode Date: January 16, 2014

Direct link to MP3 file This week, we talk Chris Christie, then NRO editor Charles C.W. Cooke (an actual immigrant) stops by to discuss immigration, life in New York under new mayor Bill de Blasio, and the NSA. Finally, is life in the Golden State getting better or worse? We pontificate, you listen. Music from this week’s episode: The Only Place by Best Coast The Ricochet Podcast opening theme was... Source

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Innovate. The IT solutions people. Speaks volumes about Skype, doesn't it, that we have to go through this every week? Let me go in three, two, one. Activate program. More than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. Well, I'm not a crook. I'll never tell a lie. Because I am who I am, but I am not a

bully. It was a confounded bridge. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lylex, and our guest today is Charles C.W. Cook from National Review, and we'll be talking about what's great about America. Yes, as Agnew might have said, the pusillanimous pundits of positivity are here at Ricochet. Let's have ourselves a podcast.

There you go again. Yes, indeed. Welcome to the Ricochet Podcast, number 198. It's brought to you by Encounter Books. And this week's pick is Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit. He's got The New School, How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself. For 15% off this or any other title, use the coupon code RICOCHET at checkout.

And it's also brought to you, of course, speaking of books, by Audible.com, the leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment. Listen to audiobooks whenever, wherever, however you want. Go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet and get a free, that's free, audiobook and a 30-day trial. I'm James Lilacs, and of course, as ever, joined by the founders, Peter Robinson and Rob Long. Welcome, guys. Say, listen, it's cold here in Minnesota. It's about 10 and above. And I'm not saying that I want to leave here and go someplace warm and clement and delightful. But do you guys have any suggestion for an event coming up that I might want to attend? Yes, James, glad you mentioned that.

In fact, we'll be beautiful here. The Ricochet podcast is celebrating its 200th anniversary. That's 200 times. That's a lot. That's a lot of times, just in case you're counting the number of times. 200 is a lot. And we will be doing a live version of it in Los Angeles on January 26th at 6.30 p.m. That's a Sunday at 6.30 p.m.

We have a limited number of tickets available. We have a special VIP reception for members. We would like to see you there. If you are listening to the Ricochet podcast and you're a member, come on. We want to meet you. Let's all get together. We're going to have a little VIP reception. We're going to have time to maybe even have brunch together.

It's going to be fun. If you're listening and you are not a member, man, this is the perfect time. This is the reason for – this is the basic reason to be a member of Ricochet, to meet and connect with conservatives and rhinos like me, not only fellow members but also contributors. Look, this is who is coming. This is who's going to be there to talk and to mingle and to have a drink. Pat Sajak, Jonah Goldberg, Dennis Prager, Andrew Klavan, Peter Robinson, James Lilacs, me. Molly Hemingway has decided she's going to come out there.

Troy Senec will be there. I hear yesterday I was doing a podcast with Jonah and John Podoritz, and John Podoritz said, oh, I'll come. So Podoritz is coming. So we're going to have a lot of people there. It's going to be a lot of fun. And if you are not there, you will be missed if you're listening to the podcast and you're not there. We will miss you. And we want to see you. We want to meet you. We want you will be missed if you're listening to the podcast and you're not there. We will miss you and we want to see you.

We want to meet you. We want you to be members of Ricochet. That's the best way to get there. And this is the time. This is the time. And we're going to have enough people that we're actually going to be able to perform the choral section of Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand. Yeah. Well, it will be grand. I can't wait to see you guys and I can't wait to see every Ricochet member there at the VIP or in the Hoi Ploy area afterwards.

We're all going to walk around and press the flesh and sign autographs and flash special gang signals, right? I can't wait. It's going to be absolutely wonderful. Gentlemen, aside from that, between now and then, something will happen, and that something will be the complete destruction and explosion of Chris Christie's career or the country will move on to something else, somehow less pressing. Let's start with you, Peter. Do you think it was a good week for Mr. Christie, all things considered, and what comes next? All things considered, I think it was an okay week for Mr. Christie. There was one false note in the press conference. He said, quote, I am not a bully, close quote.

Yes, he is. Everybody knows that he is. He's on YouTube over and over again on radio shows and in those town hall meetings that he held early first couple of years as governor. Talking back, browbeating, being overbearing. That's what people love about him. Yeah. And that's why I don't believe this scandal, so-called scandal. It's a real problem for him if evidence emerges that he knew about it,

because now he's absolutely dug in that he didn't know about it. But if some of his staffers did it, I just don't think it adds much information. People are not going to be terribly shocked that there's some dirty politics that goes on at a low level in New Jersey. And what people like about Chris Christie, if he has presidential prospects in 2016, it's because in essence, I'm overstating it a little bit, but only a little bit. People have the feeling that the federal government needs to be bullied, that you need a Chris Christie in there to clean up the mess. I don't think this was a bad – it will be a bad week in retrospect if something comes out. And if now that they've opened up, he's under investigation for this, for that, the press will swarm New Jersey with reporters.

If ten other scandals come out, even if they're small, the cumulative effect will be very damaging. But this, nah. I love the fact that they were doing a traffic study. What exactly is a traffic study where you shut down too late? Let's see how this impacts traffic flow. Well, it appears to reduce it. Well, it seems to be, yeah.

Rob, are we done with this? Is this tiresome? Does the rest of the country care? It's time to move on. The rest of the country does not care. I mean the idea that this is going to have any effect on his presidential aspirations is sort of ludicrous in 2014 that a year from now in the snows of New Hampshire – no, two years from now in the snows of New Hampshire, people are going to be saying, hey, wait a minute. What was that thing two years – or the snows of Iowa? They do not care.

This is a sign of a press that is off the hinges. States is so crazy and so childish and so naive that it could only be the product of people who are desperate to talk about anything else other than everything that's happening in the country right now that's not working, including a lot of people who apparently aren't working. Right. It's just – I mean it's almost staggering. I mean I'll meet the press on Sunday. They led with this on a day when there's a very – a book written by a very prominent American defense expert, former secretary of defense, not only for – I think he was secretary of defense for Bush Defense, right? And also Secretary of Defense for Obama, and he writes a book in which he portrays Obama and Hillary Clinton as the most craven lowlifes possible. And that is not a topic.

No one wants to talk about it. So this is – if anything, this helps him. If anything, I believe that – and I know Ann really well. Ann Coulter, for whom – last thing I heard her say about Chris Christie, we all heard on the podcast. He's dead to me. He's dead to me. I know she's sitting there thinking, well, if the liberal media is going after him that hard, maybe I like him just a little bit more. So I have a feeling this is going to help him with conservatives who are going to say, well, he's got exactly the right enemies and I don't like what they're doing to him.

Meanwhile, the next governor, American governor on the chopping block for a pseudo non-scandal is Scott Walker. There's something happening here. They're picking them early in the press corps and they're deciding which ones to go after early because they're the ones they're most afraid of. When Rob mentions that the press has gone crazy, it's even – of course, it's deeper than – it's cravenness. The president of the United States corrupted the democratic process. That is to say he misled the American people willfully and knowingly again and again and again on the most important piece of legislation to pass in this country in at least two decades by saying repeatedly, if you like your health insurance, you can keep it. We now know that he knew better even then.

That has been documented. Emails and memos from the White House show that they all knew it wasn't true, even as the president said it over and over and over again. Chris Christie didn't know. The press is all over him. And as soon as he discovered quite what had happened, he spent a day going over the documents. The next day, he called a press conference. He answered questions for two hours. He fired two people. He got on a helicopter and flew from Trenton to Fort Lee, where he personally apologized to the mayor and people of Fort Lee.

The contrast could not be sharper. Yeah, but what's so bizarre about this is like what – how did that hurt the mayor of Fort Lee? I don't even get it. Like even the – at some point, the crime itself, whatever it is, has got to make some sense, right? Like closing the – closing the bridge hurts the mayor how exactly? The people going through the bridge are mad at the mayor. It's so bananas. It's such a childish – literally, I think in the actual way that children think, pseudo non-scandal, that it's like anybody sitting in Washington right now on a talk show saying,

I think this might hurt him, is a moron. That is the definition of idiocy. You have to know nothing about American politics. Peter's point is interesting though. The reason that Barack Obama is not being held accountable for the lie that he told was because it was a good lie. It was a noble lie in the service of a better idea. Chris Christie and his administration had said that we are going to be closing down two lanes of this bridge for social justice in order to protest lane inequality. He would have lauded it and lionized.

As a matter of fact, for example, let's say, let us say that Chris Christie had put down the cones to inconvenience the 1% and said, this is an act of civil disobedience, which is meant to send a very clear message to the mayor and the governor and all elected officials in government that issues aren't being talked about like income inequality. Okay. Well, that was a city council person of New York's defense of shutting down the bridge leading into Manhattan for the Occupy event. All right?

So here you have somebody else who, let's see, I'm a city council person. What's the name here? Melissa Mark Viverito, who became council speaker last week after de Blasio was ascended. She was arrested November 17th of 2011 with a whole bunch of other people for being on the Brooklyn Bridge and saying none shall pass because of inequality on Wall Street.

Right. So that's a good thing though because to her constituency, that's a noble, interesting, fascinating theatrical act that gives them that little tingle up the leg that reminds me of the days when they had Che posters up in their dorms in college. The future was so fascinating. Yeah. So if Christie had done that, it would be great. What I don't like about this is that it's disingenuous. And there's kind of something – really nothing worse than that. I mean I like cynicism and I like cynicism from the press corps and I think the cynicism from journalists and reporters is right.

When they're cynical and nasty and they see the dark side of everything, I like that. That makes me feel happy. But this disingenuity about, oh, I like that. That makes me feel happy. But this disingenuity about, oh, I wonder if this is going to hurt him. Oh, this is a terrible thing that happened. Every single sentient press member of the – anybody who knows anything about American politics knows, A, New Jersey, this stuff happens. B, every single governor does this, has done this, has problems like this. I'm not saying they solve it by shutting down a bridge, but they're always closing. Traffic is the pothole, the equivalent of the mayor's pothole.

It's what you do. Every single governor, every political figure in America who has some kind of hands-on responsibility for his or her state has this experience. And for smart, sophisticated people wearing fancy suits on Sunday talk shows to pretend that that isn't true and pretend they don't know that is just repellent. It's repellent disingenuity. You know, somewhere in the East Coast press the other day, if you looked around, you would have seen that besides the horrible, incredible black hole of corruption that is Chris Christie, there's something else out there that bothers people on a more elemental and personal level. There's a great story about the school of no, it was called. It was a school that had no textbooks, no gym class, no art class.

For recess, they put the kids into the theater and or into the gym and show them movies on a sheet. The kids are in trailers that smell of animal urine. And naturally, of course, the principal for the school who rarely shows up drives a $40,000 car and is known for walking about in furs. So finally – this is in New York. The New York Post did a series of stories on it. And finally the school is looking to say, hmm, well, there might be something here. We'll take a look at this teacher. Perhaps this principal might be moved somewhere else and her salary might be reduced as, of course, to be fired and thrown in jail. Anyway, this is what really ought to focus the mind of the people, the incredible amounts of money that we spend on the educational system and what we get out for it. Oh. If you want to know. Oh.

I'm in awe of this segue. You want to take it? I'm in awe of this segue. I just figured it out. I'm in awe of this segue. I want to stop right now, stop everything and say, man, you crushed this segue. You crushed this segue. Well, there's even more to it if you want.

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I want more. Well, there's the issue of homeschooling for example. There's a case of a German couple where their children were taken away from them by the police who battered down their door to take them because the parents might run away to France and homeschool them and this goes against the German notion of inclusion and tolerance.

It's an extraordinary story and it's one we'll be looking at here in 10 years unless we do something, unless we shatter the paradigm that we've got right now. And the man to listen to on that perhaps might be Glenn Reynolds, the insta-pundit. Let us read from the praises of the book. Economist Herb Stein famously said that something that can't go on forever won't. For decades now, America has been investing ever-growing fortunes in its K-12 educational system in exchange for steadily worse results. Public schools haven't changed much since the late 19th century industrial model,

and as a result, young Americans are left increasingly unprepared for a competitive global economy. Now, what to do about this? In The New School, Glenn Harlan Reynolds explains how parents, students, and educators can and must reclaim and remake American education. Already explains many Americans are abandoning traditional education for new models, and many are going to charter schools or private schools, but others are going one step beyond and making the leap to online education. 1.8 million K through 12 students already.

All right. This is a short book. It's quick. It's fast. It's smart. It's fun. For 15% off the price of it, go to EncounterBooks.com and use the coupon code RICOCHET at the checkout,

and we thank our friends at Encounter Books as ever for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now let us turn to a guest. Since having us all just blather here to the delightful sound of our own voices, Ken Gettireson. Right, guys?

Right, right, right. Not me. I don't know. My praises here. The rundown for the show says that the next person we're to speak to is Charlie Cook. No, no, no, no. No, it's not. No. Charlie Cook is somebody else. We're talking to Charles. Charles Cook, who is the editor of National Review. And as a matter of fact, I believe that he gave himself not just one – well, not gave,

but appended not one but two initials in betwixt Charles and Cook. So as not to be confused with Charlie Cook, We welcome with pride Charles C.W. Cook. Good day, sir. Hello, how are you doing? Oh, just Jack Dandy. Hey, Charlie, it's Rob Long in L.A. How are you? Let's just make it clear here.

Good. Everybody knows that you are, in fact, really, truly, honestly English. That's not some kind of fakey accent you put on to sound smart, right? No, I am. And the reason I have the two middle initials, too, which is sort of English thing, I think, affect, is because I was frequently mistaken for the other Charlie Cook. And people would send me emails and write to me and say, well, I've been reading you since 1978. And I thought, well, you haven't because that was six years before I was born.

So I made it very obvious that I wasn't the other one. That's good. That's good. Well, I have the two little bit of middle initials too, but not to distinguish myself from any other political writer. All right. So we just spent the past 10, 15 minutes ranting about Chris Christie, which I don't think we need to go rant anymore, but I did want to know, you're in New York right

now, is that correct? Absolutely. So could you just give us a really quick little thumbnail sketch of what life is like under the de Blasio occupation? Has it changed much? Has the attitude changed at all? I mean, do people already feel doomed?

Well, I'll put it this way, and this is gospel truth. Ten days after de Blasio was elected, I moved to Connecticut. So that was, I should admit, an accident. It just happened to be that way, but I'm not sorry for it. No, I mean, he came in, and the first thing he... Well, I should say, before he came in, he gave his inauguration speech,

which was really quite amazing to see an American politician talk like that. And then he endorsed the description of New York as a plantation, and so on and so forth. Some people were making the joke, you know, he couldn't get Fidel Castro to speak at the inauguration because Castro is so old now. But it really did seem like that. And the first thing he announced is he's getting rid of the horse and buggy days,

which is interesting because on MSNBC, as you know, they are suggesting that the recent appointments the president has made, if the Supreme Court does overturn them, will be sent back to the horse and buggy days. And maybe this is a new progressive thing, the anti-horse and buggy. But Charlie, Peter Robinson here, small question and then a large question. The small question is, on what grounds does he oppose having people, tourists, ride around Central Park in a horse and carriage? He thinks it's cruel to the horses. From what I read, they get hot and occasionally die, apparently.

I mean, it's a good job he wasn't in charge of the Oregon Trail, isn't it? They never got past New Jersey. Of course, you can say the same thing about bad people. We do also occasionally get hot and die. So what I understand is that the stables where the horses are kept is actually a prime piece of real estate that somebody who contributed to the Democratic Party would like to develop. If that's the case, I've just heard that. But if that's the case, it would mean the abandonment of principles almost within inside the time frame of the inauguration itself you know usually a politician waits a while but but to actually sunder one's principles uh in in the course of being inaugurated i think would set a record but unfortunately i believe that de blasio is a

believer and not somebody who's just a raw opportunist speaking of which um so you moved good uh good good good for you and i and I hope that Connecticut treats you well. But when you go into New York now, you realize, of course, that at every tunnel entrance, your car is being monitored by cameras, that there's probably a black box in there from the NSA somewhere. I read in the newspaper this morning, and I hate to see these stories. It says NSA has infected 100,000 computers worldwide with secret little devices that allow them to control them remotely, which is great. It's not something I need to know. What do we do with the NSA? Wither its future? You've got a piece in our corner today describing two ways in which it could go. Describe it. Tell us a little bit more.

Yeah, but that's the practical side of it. The question being, does it work? Which, of course, has to be separated from the philosophical side of it. There are a lot of things obviously that governments could do that might work. And so all I did was to post the two different views, one of which says that

the NSA spying has done no good whatsoever and practical terms haven't led to any convictions, and the other one says that's nonsense. I do, before this work, although I'm very much anti-NSA myself, I do have some sympathy for the criticisms of that report because the people involved didn't get to see any confidential information, they didn't have a security clearance, and they don't really know, I have to admit, at various points in it, what they're talking about. So I think that's probably to be taken with a pinch of salt. But no, it is rather depressing.

And New York, in some ways, is not a great American dream for me, in that I came from a country that is absolutely full of cameras everywhere. And we don't just have the CCTV cameras that are famous in America and the sort of checkpoints that you were discussing in New York. We have these things called average speed checks, and those do precisely what they sound like. Your car is driving along, and at the beginning of a mile, it takes a picture, and at the end of the mile, it takes a picture, and it works out how long it took you to get there and therefore how fast you

were going. It doesn't take anyone with much imagination to work out that means, given that they're on all of the freeways in England, that they know exactly where you've been. They're effectively tracking you mile by mile, and there's no uproar about this at all. Well, in America, in most of America at least, there is. Places like Arizona, when they tried the speed cameras, people blew them up. They shot them out.

They drove past them over and over in gorilla masks because you have to be able to identify people's faces. But in New York, there seems to be very little pushback against this, and especially with de Blasio, that seems rather worrying. Charlie, Peter here once again. Now for my big question. You've sort of led into it. You're English.

You're here. You just said that in England, England is quite different culture. Even among Tories, there's no pushback against cameras and so forth. You edit National Review online. Is the United States, in your judgment, still exceptional? An exceptional country? Sorry, go ahead. Absolutely. No, it absolutely is.

Although it's at risk. And I suppose if I didn't think that, I wouldn't have the politics I have and do what I do. It is still an exceptional country on three or four important topics. For a start, it's the only country in the world in which you effectively have an untrammeled right to free speech brandenburg versus ohio 1969 effectively says you can do everything except say let's take down the government tomorrow at

nine o'clock we'll meet in the staples parking lot that's unprecedented uh in history and it's unmatched um the second thing in terms of personal liberty, firearms, privacy, and so on, the United States not only has better laws than most of the rest of the world, but it does have a better culture. It's something on which the majority agrees, which is odd coming from a country in which there are no guns or violations of free speech, privacy. Just a silly little example on this.

I sometimes watch sort of English television with my fiancée, and she just can't believe the way the police just walk into houses. Well, they do. So America has violations of these principles, but they're still pretty solid. And I'd say the third big thing is that this is true to an extent, I suppose, in other Anglosphere countries, but there really is no other place

in which you can become of that country, and nobody will question you. I mean, if I moved to India, no one is going to call me an Indian after 10 years. They'd laugh in my face. If I moved to France, they'd say, well, I'm French now. They would say, you're not.

But the Sri Lankan woman who runs the local coffee shop, I mean, nobody's going to laugh at her when she says I'm now an American. It's a beautiful thing to see and that's still exceptional I think. So Charlie – and I think we actually talked about this on an NR cruise. I want to talk about NR in a minute but from the perspective of an immigrant, what are you – what is the process to become an American right now if you obey the – I'm assuming you're obeying the rules, if you obey the rules. Is it super onerous? I mean I guess you've got to find some American gal and convince her that you're the one.

I mean – or is there an easier or harder way? Well, that is one way. I didn't actually do that. I came through National Review, and I joke with my fiancee. She's safe. She's not tied to my immigration status at all. She must know I do actually like her.

But no, it is a difficult process, and it's a very long process. I mean, I came in in 2011 in the summer on a visa that was good for three months, and then I got to extend that for a year. During that year, I applied for a green card, which took maybe eight months. Some of that time, I was barred from working, so I just sort of sat at home, which seems a silly system to me. They deliberately made me unemployed, but told me I couldn't leave

the country. Then I got my green card. From the point at which I got that, which was about a year and a half ago, it's five years to citizenship. So I'm a year and a little bit into that, and then I can become an American. So all told, it will have been six and a half years since I first got off the boat. All right, so that's actually a long time, but it's not onerous. You make a home here. You make a – you plant a flag here. You get a job. You do stuff.

And then six years later, if you follow the process, you become a citizen. I mean that is a path to citizenship. I mean is it strange for you when you talk about – obviously immigration is always a topic here. Is it strange for you when people talk about it because you're actually obeying the rules? Put it this way. I know a lot of people who – a lot of cab drivers who are furious about illegal immigration because they feel like, hey, they're obeying the rules. The rules are onerous and difficult.

Why should somebody else scoot in without the right – following the path? Yeah, that's been my experience too. It's certainly how i feel there i think that the irritation towards illegal immigration is possibly at it but uh... at the very with legal immigrants because

i think it is a thing it's not just that we follow the road expensive to it it's a good time to commit expensive and stressful but it's not just that we follow the rules and did that. When President Obama unilaterally announced his limited amnesty, I was still waiting for my green card. And USCIS, the agency in charge of this, basically said, well, because of the amount of paperwork that will now be coming in, they didn't prioritize those people, but because of the amount of paperwork, you're going to have to wait even longer.

I don't know, I think it delayed it by maybe two, two and a half months. And that's extremely frustrating if you've done the right thing all the way. Now, I'm not saying that that policy where it passed through Congress is not necessarily a good one. I don't really know what I think on those limited provisions of the DREAM Act and people who didn't come here themselves but were perhaps taught when they were one or two years old. But nonetheless, can you imagine the scale of that disruption should there be an amnesty for 11 million people?

It would be astonishing. And the people who are going to suffer are the guys who are you know maybe sitting back home and have been on the list for 15 years and still haven't gone here exactly hey charlie one last question so i i want to sort of ask one more immigrant question when your english friends back i'm assuming your english friends back home find a discovery you're becoming an american you're moving to the united states that you're sort an American, you're moving to the United States, that you're sort of an Americanophile. What's their reaction?

Well, they think I'm insane. Not for having moved to America, but for what I believe and what I write about. I didn't always have this viewpoint there. I just wrote a National Review cover story about this. I wasn't exactly a hard leftist, but I sort of absorbed that soft British leftism by osmosis. And it changed on 9-11, and then it changed when I went to university, and I started to realize, well, actually, what I really am is a classical liberal, and I've

discovered America and its philosophy, and it really appealed to me. And really, that was sort of the point at which I became Crazy Charlie with my friends. Crazy Charlie thinks you should be able to own a gun. Crazy Charlie thinks you should be able to say what you want without being arrested. Crazy Charlie believes in liberty rights. Crazy Charlie believes in low taxes. Crazy Charlie has to move to America. No, that's the point. I kind of had to.

I mean, well, there were two things I had to move. I'm from Cambridge and I went to Oxford, which made me an exile in both places. With bizarre views, I had to leave. I'm straight from the Emma Lazarus poem. Next for Christmas shopping season, the Crazy Charlie doll. Pull the string and it says, quotes the entire Second Amendment without ironic context. Hey, Charlie, Peter here. Could I do some quick word associations with you?

Texas. Texas. Big. That's all you're going to – no, you can't do that. That's like the Noel Coward line. Very big country, China. Very small country. I love Texas.

Well, but don't you respond to that? Every Englishman I know has responded in a particular way to Texas. Do you have anything to say besides big? Well, I'm a big fan of Texas. It's free. It's brash. It's great steak. It's everything that England is not.

But, you know, the size of it is actually something that I really noticed. You can drive for seven hours in England and you would end up in the sea. And that does impress me, just the sheer size of the country that I think most people who haven't been here from Europe don't quite grasp. One of my favorite stats is when they say you can fit the entire world inside of Texas and everybody would have 45 square yards or whatever, that would be great because they'd all have a gun. It's a complete liberal nightmare. You'd fit the entire world in Texas because everybody would be eating barbecue, destroying the environment with beef raising and have a good pistol.

All right, Peter, to ask you about New England. I, as an American, feel strong regional differences when I get off an airplane and within half a day in Boston, I know I'm in a different... Do you feel New England, California, Texas, do you respond to these regional differences in this country? Absolutely. And that's the great thing about the United States. And indeed, one of the things that I hope is preserved is its regional difference and its local... What do the tourist magazines say, local flavor. It's frustrating to me that the majority of British people that I know back home, if they've been to America, they've been to, say, New York City and or Orlando, and then they say,

well, I've been to America. But you know, you really haven't. And I'm odd in this regard in that I think I really like all of America. I like the South. I like the Southwest. I like California. I like the Northeast. I like the middle.

I just like the whole place. I'm sort of an America-phile. But I was down in the Gulf and Pensacola in Florida and Mobile, Alabama, and I drove across. And, you know, you look around these places, and they've been populated by the colonial Spanish, by the French, by the British. They've also been American, and they've been part of the Confederacy. And it all combines to create this sort of odd melting pot of – it's just an amazing place to be and it does have a history despite what

people say yeah that's actually one of my favorite parts of the country is the is the gulf coast um sometimes they're referred to pejoratively by people who go there there's the redneck riviera but it is pretty it's some of the most beautiful beach beautiful beachland in the world i love it um so um for a lot of us a lot our listeners, we have a lot of listeners. They are familiar with National Review. They read it. But some aren't. So tell me a little bit about National Review right now.

You're based in New York now. You're an editor there. You're an editor at NRO. What are the challenges for National Review going forward? How is National Review doing? We have a lot of NRO contributors here are also on Ricochet, and we feel – and I've written for the magazine for 20-plus years. How's it going? What's the state of conservatism and conservative journalism today, and are you hopeful? Are you going to get bigger? Are we all in a period where we're hunkering down and circling the wagons? That's an easy one, by the way, Charles.

Of conservatives, am I hopeful for conservatism or for National Review? Well, both. Conservatives and conservative journalism, conservative essays, conservative thought, conservative writing. It's been kind of a tough four years, don't you think? Well, it has been a tough four years, although it's probably worth saying that magazines that are, broadly speaking, in opposition do tend to do well. And so there's a catch-22 in there somewhere, in that very often what's good for National Review and what's good for traffic and subscriptions is not necessarily good for the country, because one of the reasons that people switch on to good conservative journalism is when, you know, bad progressive principles are regnant, as they are at the moment.

Although it's interesting this year with the elections, we'll see what will happen. But no, I'm very hopeful for National Review. I think National Review has maintained its quality. And I really started reading it nine years ago, probably just a little bit more, because there was nothing really in the UK that tallied with my politics and what I started to believe and think. And it was very refreshing to find a place like National Review and I don't think it's particularly changed really since the 50s in its role now do

I think that conservatism has something of a pessimist I am a little depressed at the moment about the way in which things are going but again you're going to need even if things, you're going to need, even if things decline, you're going to need people to document that. So there's no better place to do it than National Review.

Why not? That's a very good point. It's a new masthead slogan, chronicling the slow decline of the last hope of civilization as it disappears beneath the frothing waves. Great. Grand. Okay. All right. I think, Rob, this is – do I have – what are you most depressed about at the moment, Charlie? I'm trying to find a way to cheer you up basically. So you give us something and we're going to try to cheer you up about it well i'm most depressed in about the state of and size of government i mean it's not it's not a specific it's not a specific question you know i mean that

probably the deficit and the debt will in some way be turned around. And probably Obamacare will do many of the things that we said it would and become a mess. The problem is, Dan Foster is another former writer of National Review, he used to put this very well, and he'd say one of the problems with big government is that when you're arguing against it, you have to recognize that there are first and second order desires, the citizenry. The heroin addict is a heroin addict but doesn't want to be one. And my second order desire, if you will, for the United States is it doesn't become England because in England, the health service is a disaster.

The care is poor, it's a bureaucratic nightmare, and it corrupts the politics. So the Prime Minister spent half of his time asking questions in Parliament about an individual case in which somebody got flu in Western Supermare. That's not good for politics in a free country. And yet the British are oddly happy with the health service, largely because it's all that they've ever known,

and partly, I think, because they hew to the basic principle that people shouldn't be denied care. Now, I don't want Americans to get themselves into a position in which they accept that the health care system isn't very good, as the British do. They seem to grumble about it a lot. But they are nonetheless happy with it, and it can't be changed. And I think my greatest fear for America at the moment is that across the federal government, that seems to be happening more and more. Head start, for example, people know it doesn't work.

And yet you'll never get rid of it. Or at least we won't get rid of it absent a disaster. That's what depresses me. So would you – you would agree with Mark Stein then that once the government takes responsibility for healthcare, in some basic way, the game is over. That is irreversible. In Britain, even Margaret Thatcher, even in 11 years of her premiership, never uttered a word about privatizing the National Health Service. Once that happens, it's done. Would you agree with that? I think I would. And as I say, it's because it corrupts the politics so badly.

If the government is responsible for the most basic... No, I should rephrase that. If the government is responsible for your most basic healthcare needs, regardless of your situation, it does change the dynamic. The United States differed from Britain, in my view, historically, because although it did pick up various welfare programs and move towards socialism in some regards, it was reasonably well targeted. The deal was, well, okay, if you are really down, then we will help you out.

If you are old, we will help you out. But if you're a 37-year-old computer engineer living in San Francisco, we have nothing to do with you. We will just leave you alone. In other words, it was a net into which you would fall, whereas the British system has long been a net that envelops everyone regardless of their station. It doesn't matter who you are, where you work for, or with the exception of the very rich, what your income is, you're pretty much reliant on the National Health Service. And that will be the big question that will face you at the election. And that's where Stein is right, is that once you have created a system in which the government takes this over, it then has the capacity to bribe every single person in the country with their health care,

even if they don't need his help. And that, I think, is probably irreversible. Well, it fits the idea of the left wanting to meddle in absolutely every aspect of your life simply for your own betterment. I mean, if the old definition of a Puritan was somebody who thought that somebody somewhere was having fun, the new definition of the Puritan left is the sneaking fear that somebody somewhere is having lunch, and it's the wrong kind of meat, and it's in a place that's too expensive and doesn't pay its employees enough and it never ends. I mean you talk about the corruption between the individual and the state and the role. You're absolutely right. I have a friend who – a recent acquaintance who many years ago moved to England to marry actually one of the members of a boy band whose popularity was displaced by the arrival of the Beatles,

but they've done okay since. She's a happy citizen of England, but the other day we were discussing The Wizard of Oz, which my daughter was trying out for, and she discussed in great detail how she put on a play, a version of The Wizard of Oz, in the school, in England, and that prominently featured was the daughter of a doctor, and she liked getting in his good graces because that meant she didn't necessarily have to rely on NHS, that she could go to this doctor on the side if she needed to. Now, when you have that kind of thinking, that calculus entering into something as basic as a school play, look, that doctor, we can get something from him without having to go to the – without the state being an intermediary. People don't realize exactly how that corrupts you're right corrupts absolutely everything

listen no and and it also allows in the government in so many areas in which it was previously prohibited it's not just the old line which is true that well of course the government is responsible for your health care and it can tell you not to smoke and not to eat sugar and not to drink wine. But it's also, it breeds a country in which one can get things done by referring always to health. I'll give a little example of this in America. One of the positive elements of American policy in the last 25 years has been the total reversal of the trend on gun rights, which is something I write about a lot.

You know, if you'd said to people in the late 1980s, well, the public opinion will switch vastly. The concealed carry will be in all 50 states. The assault weapons ban will expire and not be renewed and so on and so forth. People would have looked at you rather askew. And it was interesting to watch the left change their tact recently when they recognized that they'd lost. They recognized they couldn't convince people that guns made life worse. They couldn't convince people to give them up. They couldn't convince them

that they would raise the murder rate and so on because they evidently don't. And so they started doing what they do, which is to subjugate the right to the sum of its externalities. You started to see these reports. Oh, yeah, we've discovered that, you know, that lead is doing this and all. We've discovered that the health care costs associated with gun ownership is this, and we extrapolate it, and all of this nonsense, which didn't work because America's wedded enough to the right. But in England, it does. In England, if you lose an argument on the basic merit, eventually somebody in Parliament will say, oh, well but we have to do this because of health costs. And that is, I'm afraid, cancerous, pun intended, to a free country. Well, I know we have to let you go here.

We will have you back because I would like to discuss whether or not Rupert Brooke was truly a World War I poet. I remember – This is not a podcast conversation. Well, we had that argument on the aft deck of the ship during Cigar Night on the NR cruise, and Charles and James of England, a Ricochet member, got into it. And first time I've ever seen people almost come to blows over poetry, and it gladdened my heart. And so perhaps we can have you both on to discuss the matter again. Charles, we'll see you at National Review. Always a pleasure, and we'll see you on a ship down the road, too. Or actually down the sea.

Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me on. Bye-bye. Thanks, Charlie. I remember during that last cruise, there was a big discussion, Rich and Jack and the rest of them talking about the future of NR and the ways to raise money and keep it going. I remember wanting to think, you know what we should do? We should look into counterfeiting. Not on a big scale, you know, but just on a, on a small scale. I mean, if the government is going to debase the currency and print it,

I don't see why we couldn't just, you know, send out a well-crafted one or $5 bill now and then. And, you know, it, it adds up. And the reason I thought about that was because I'd recently seen a movie called Mr. 880, which Edmund O'Brien, Edmund O'Gwynn, Edmund Gwynn O'Brien, I always get his name wrong. You know, the guy, Santa Claus from Miracle on 34th, in which he plays a beloved, cantankerous, lovable neighborhood counterfeiter. And it's sort of a preposterous story. And I was just tweeting about it.

And Terry Teachout, did I pronounce that right? Yeah, that's right. OK, because I never, I always think it would be Tichot. Tichot texted me and said, actually, it's a true story. And there was a guy like that and there was a New Yorker writer who did a great story on him. You may not have heard of him. Now, when Terry says something like that, it's not hipster speak. He's a great New Yorker writer.

You've probably never heard of him. It's entirely possible that you have. Terry – by the way, Terry is a fantastic writer. Our listeners have not. Google Terry T. Child. He's wonderful. He's absolutely wonderful. I mean there's Joseph Mitchell who wrote for many years for The New Yorker and now in retrospect appears to have made up a lot of stuff for newspapers and magazines.

But he pointed me to a guy named – and get this for a Tony Plummey name – St. Clair McElway who wrote a story about Mr. 880. And I thought, well, I would like to know a little bit more. And I found myself going to Amazon, and shazam, there's a collection. And wouldn't you know, there's even an audiobook version of it where you can get and hear what it sounded like to write for a middle-of-the-road, albeit a little bit highbrow, mass circulation weekly, The New Yorker, talking about this wonderful old counterfeiter whose story became a movie. This and other stories can be found in Reporting at Wit's End, Tales from the New Yorker.

And it's just one of the hundreds of thousands of texts that you can find at audible.com. It's an Amazon company, incidentally, so they're hooked in and plugged into all kinds of stuff. Now, here's what you do. You go there and you go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet and you enter yourself that coupon code. And what do you get? You get a free 30-day trial and a free audiobook. This one, reporting at wit's end, which I'm in the middle of reading now, will actually sync to your Kindle, to your iP device, to your this, to your that. Probably, you know, if you put your fingers in your ears and hum, you'll be able to get it sent wirelessly

to your brain that way as well. It's just astonishing. I advise you to go try that or any other book. And I also would like to know from Peter or from Rob what book you would suggest people read now. One of you is on the 538th Master and Commander novel, right? Where they're in Venus.

The other is me. I have one and I'm loving it. And I just – I'm trying to come up with the right way to pitch Audible. I drive. Of course, I have a little commute every now and then when I'm in production. I have to go to the studios, which are far away. But every now and then I drive up the coast and I like it and I like being sort of by myself. And usually if I have a particularly – trying a couple of days and I need to get away, it's nice to get away with a book.

And I've had a particularly trying couple of days. So the book I'm listening to and starting to getting into on Audible is Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson and it's really about the making of the modern Middle East was filled with spies for Standard Oil and other places along with Lawrence of Arabia, it's fantastic. It's pretty riveting and it's great stuff and I recommend it. So that's my audible pick. Got it. History of the Conquest of Mexico. Oh. I have to say –

By whom? By William Hickling Prescott. No, I mean by who? Who are the conquerors? Yeah. Which ones? Because there wasn't any Mexico when they first showed up. It's narrated by Cary Shale.

I have a list of books. I suppose we all have a list of books that we want to get to sooner or later. And an old historian, now long gone actually, gave me a list of books, actually quite a short list, that he said represented the English narrative tradition, English language narrative tradition at its finest. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Macaulay's History of England. Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico. Prescott wrote, Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico. Prescott wrote a second book, History of the Conquest of Peru. And then there's Parkman on the French conquest of North America, particularly Quebec.

Over the holidays, I read History of the Conquest of Mexico. A, it is wonderful prose, late 19th century, just for reading and listening. The beauty of the prose is just staggering. And B, I confess, even though I've lived in California all these years, I had never really gone into Mexican history. And the conquest of Mexico is a fascinating, thrilling, perplexing, almost incredible story. So I would recommend History of the Conquest of Mexico. Well, speaking of Mexico, California was the point of a... Oh, we should note incidentally that there you go. Those are three suggestions from us. And if you go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet, you will get your 30 day free trial audio book of your choice. Either one,

you get history fiction stories. It's incredible what you can find. And if you haven't gone there, go there and thank them for sponsoring this, the ricochet podcast, but back to California, Peter, you had a pod,

a post up on a ricochet the other day about seeing saving Mr. Banks and the California, the golden California that it seemed to describe. I was expecting that conversation to veer off into Disney hatred, which seems to be a popular topic among some. But no, expand on that a little bit more because you live in what seems to us in the Midwest from here to be the ruins of this wonderful thing that was inherited and grew after World War II,

this golden era that now seems so dimmed and so strange and so different from what our forefathers experienced. Rob is a younger man than I am, but chime in, Rob, because I have the feeling. By a huge number. I mean, let's be honest. I have the feeling that you will have felt a lot of this as well, although you were raised part of your youth out here in California. It's really very simple. I grew up in upstate New York. I can – in fact, the other day, New Year's Day, my youngest, my 11-year-old was watching the Parade of Roses in Pasadena on television and kind of coming and going from the room and thinking nothing much of it. It was on in the background. Whereas I, growing up in upstate New York on New Year's Day, watching that parade of roses in

California where the sun was shining and all of these floats were made out of flower petals. And I was watching it in black and white in those days. And it still, it just seemed like a kind of dreamland. And then, of course, in the Reagan White House, I got to know a lot of old California hands. And as best I can tell, California in the 50s and at least the first half of the 60s really was golden. I was right in some way to fantasize about that place when I was a child. Housing was cheap. Taxes were reasonable. Democrats and Republicans alike believed in economic growth. Jerry Brown's father, Pat Brown, preceded Ronald Reagan as governor and helped to which you could take your whole family without thinking twice as per Mary Poppins, which premiered in 1964.

Things are different now. The weather is still gorgeous. This place is still filled with talent. But cheap housing, no. Good government, no gorgeous. This place is still filled with talent. But cheap housing, no. Good government, no. Low taxes, no. Good public schools, no.

Hollywood still patriotic, still golden, no. Rob? There was oppression to some people back then, so your entire argument is invalid. Rob? Rob dropped off the face of the earth or he's quietly sobbing to himself. We'll get him back in a second. I know what you mean, Peter, but when I look at that from a Midwest perspective and I never wanted to go there. I just wanted to go back in time to experience a lot of the post-French Revolution era in which they attempted really to create a new modus vivendi, a new look for things, something totally modern that absolutely broke with historical precedent. And this is what the revolutionaries always wanted to do, be it in France or be it in Russia.

They wanted to create a new model of humanity, new Soviet man, right? Yes. The new revolutionary citizens, all of these things. We were going to remake human nature and create a perfect society. Well, in California, not from the top down but from the bottom up, simply by creating opportunity, people themselves willingly adapted a new way of life because they wanted it and they liked it. And it was the low-slung modern house that was stripped of all of the ornamental fripperies of the previous eras. Away with the gingham, away with the fringe, away with the moldings.

This was a new style of living in which people would wear artificial fabrics that were smart-looking. They'd drive great futuristic cars with tail fins on smooth highways and go to shopping centers that were nothing like the downtowns of yore but were bedecked with all sorts of gorgeous neon and new shapes. I mean it's the only time I can think of in which entire communities were constructed around a new visual vocabulary and people flocked to it because they wanted it and it was exciting and it was new and for about 20 years it worked it worked very very well until until their children grew up and realized that it was far more romantic to go live downtown in some crappy little place in some bohemian cold drafty room where you were your only illumination was a candle in a chianti bottle with a wax running down the side sitting on a table that was an old cable spool. And you would sit there with your bad grandma, your record player and your cheap little guitar and sing mocking songs about the ticky tacky houses that mom and dad lived in the suburbs, the ticky tacky places that were all the

same. And that sort of Levittown sneering that the boomer children inherited and grew up to think that really there's nothing more soul deadening than the suburbs. There's nothing more injurious to the human spirit than the sort of freedom and individuality that it requires. So they would all flock to the cities and live in the cheap places that their parents fled from in order to provide them with opportunity. And there began this idea that California, the suburbs, the car, it was all rot. It was all nonsense that had to be done away. And we all had to be herded back into the cities into small little boxes where you can hear your neighbor's knocking boots on the other side of the wall because it's thin sheetrock. But anyway, that's a standard rant of mine. We lost Rob, but Rob is now back from the Golden State, the wonderful technological purity, the place where

all the really cool, interesting things happen Internet-wise. And you lost your Internet, right? Yeah, I lost it. It just completely died. It's one of those things. I mean, I think I have Verizon Fios. So if anybody knows how to handle that, let me know. Yeah, it comes and goes.

That's sort of a metaphor for California, right? The headquarters of technology and innovation and still doesn't work. I mean, I think California is sort of the perfect example of the tragedy of the commons, the obverse of it, or the converse or something. It's this place that's so beautiful. Usually the traditional story of the tragedy of the commons

is this thing that everybody feels that they can use, but nobody feels any ownership of or nobody feels that they're responsible for, so it sort of declines. And I think in California, this place is so beautiful and prosperous that everybody thinks they own it, all of it. And they've basically looted each other, the state. They've looted the riches. They've looted everything about it. And now it can't pay its bills, in addition to a lot of other things it can't do. And all we have left really is the coastline, the weather, and amazing agricultural potential if we could husband it properly, which we can't. And so it's a very good example of what could happen to a country that has so many things going for it except a sensible restraint on the side of its people, not its politicians so much, its people.

It's the people of California who voted for all the nonsense. It's the people who decided that these public sector unions needed to get such amazing, amazing boondoggles. It's the people who decided to pass initiative after initiative with huge numbers of giveaways, but no fiscal restraint.

It's the people's problem. Rob, why do you hate poor people is the question that I want to ask you. Because the very fact that you're bringing these things up indicates to me that you hate workers and poor people and immigrants, which means you're xenophobic. And I can't see how anybody would not look at California as its constitutor today and see a shining example for the rest of the country. You know, when you listen to VDH talk about what goes on in the agricultural districts, your heart sinks a little bit more and you wonder, is there any way back for the city? You know what? I take that back.

Recent study about San Francisco showed that the recent hikes on the millionaires was leading a lot of them actually to pick up and leave and go to Texas. And if you read the comments in the newspapers and the websites, people are saying, who needs them? Get out of here. We don't need you. We've got a wonderful thriving civilization. And if you don't mind, I'm going to get back to popping my seed corn in the microwave because I'm hungry. They don't realize that exactly you need a few people who produce more than they take, but you can, if you are smart and canny, according

to these people build an entire economy around artisanal toast, uh, next to this article about people leaving was a link to a story about the author's search for the one San Francisco cafe that actually had perfected toast and what this meant for the economy of the future and how this would spread around the country. And we would all be eating thick chunks of toast with local Vore jam and the rest of it. And this, this to them is what powers a civilization. Good toast.

Yeah. Well, I mean, toast in many ways built the British empire, James. I mean, there's nobody more persnickety about toast than an Englishman, which we had Charlie Cook here give us a disposition on toast. Yes, but no, but the Brits were able to transplant the idea of civilized toast to India, which is different than some. I've been to India. You cannot get good toast in India. Don't kid yourself. Listen, I think, I mean, I think just to go back to what Charlie Cook said, he's driving around the country, he's going to Pensacola, right? When was the last time you heard of a sophisticated Englishman from Oxford going to Pensacola?

But Pensacola Coast, I mean the Gulf Coast, as I said, the Gulf Coast of Texas is gorgeous. It's truly gorgeous. Pensacola Coast, Pensacola, Florida. This is where – I mean what you hear – except for the natural – the weather really. Texas is a very beautiful place but the summer is hot and I mean it is really hot. But Texas, Jeb Bush, when he was governor of Florida for eight years in a row, he started out in a state that has no income tax in the first place. And he cut taxes every year for eight years. There is a reason the American South in that big arc reaching from Florida all the way over to Texas, you could include Arizona under Susana Martinez. You could include New Mexico.

Nevada still has low taxes. Nevada is a special case because it's so driven by the gaming industry. But to me, the feel of openness, you can buy a house, you can raise a family. If you're talented and want to start a business, there are still good reasons. If you're in finance, you want to go to Manhattan. And if you're in high tech, you still want to go a business, there are still good reasons. If you're in finance, you want to go to Manhattan. And if you're in high tech, you still want to go to Northern California. But short of those two, Texas, Florida, even Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana, I say even because those are states that are traditionally poor in resources, but with low taxes and

a reasonable government, these are places to go. And they're open to ordinary Americans. That's what's changed about California. If you're a smart kid, you can still cut a pretty good deal for yourself and live in San Francisco. But the great mass of ordinary people, can they buy homes and raise families in California the way they could in the 50s? Not the way they could in the 50s or the way they can today in Texas. And I think we need to be really careful as conservatives about our enthusiasm for change. You know, I mean, there's certain things that change and they change badly. We're not happy about it.

But there's a whole lot of things that are changing, I think, that are good for us. And one of them is sort of technological change. The ability to homeschool your kid. I mean, this is what the Encounter book is about this week, but the Instapot on it wrote, that's almost entirely fueled and made possible by technology. The fact that you can, you're not doing this sort of by-the-mail correspondence course anymore,

but you're doing on-the-web training, is a sign of something good for conservatives. This kind of breakdown of a centralized authority is a good thing for us. Even something crazy and nutty like Bitcoin shows that there's a group of people who are very, very smart, engineering, have very smart engineering skills,

who've managed to come up with a rather elegant solution to an international currency that isn't controlled and manipulated by a central banker. There's something really interesting about that, but I think conservatives, it makes us nervous a little bit. But at the end of the day, we should embrace, because that's what's going to happen. The only way that we're going to, I think, win back this country is if we remind people about how big it is, as Charlie said, and how many places there are in it. Reagan used to say something very interesting. He said that there's not one problem we face as a nation today that is not being solved right now by someone in America.

And I think that's really true. Well, of course, the minute we start to talk about Bitcoin and agree that it's a great thing and that it's a chink of the armor of the central banks, somebody points out that it's used mostly to buy child pornography and drugs online. Yes, of course. And then we end up having that argument and we're the social retrogrades again.

And we start saying, you know, but child pornography is wrong. And then the other side says, but Woody Allen is a great artist. And then you go on and on and on. And we're deep in the cultural morass up to our necks again. And we start saying, you know, but child pornography is wrong. And then the other side says, oh, but Woody Allen is a great artist. And then you go on and on and on. And we're deep in the cultural morass up to our necks again. And what do we do then? You're right, Rob. You're absolutely right. We have to be the party of opportunity and liberty. And it's, I know everyone says, and Arthur Brooks is on this, you can't just give people a concept. You've got to give them something concrete that relates to their lives as individuals and people in order to get them on your side.

But that is the overall arching intellectual umbrella that we have to carry around with pride is liberty and opportunity. And to point to the other guys and say, look, and I say this every week and I know it's tiresome, but they adopt the mantle of progressivism when their ideas are 100 years old. And Rob is absolutely right. They adopt the mantle of progressivism when their ideas are 100 years old. I know. Is that what I mean? And Rob is absolutely right. So much of what is coming down the line, thanks to technology, is, to use a horrible word, empowering the individual. And we've got to use that to break and smash the old models and reclaim the word progressive for ourselves. Because we're the ones with the new ideas.

We're the ones who are looking around and saying there are different ways to do this. Whoa, whoa, his presence came back. Yeah, I came back. All right. Well, before we leave then, one other thing, and that is the D.C. Circuit Court has rejected net neutrality. So it looks like in the future there may actually be tiered internet services. And the poor sites will be slow and the rich, powerful sites will be fast and they'll drive out everybody else. And I say, I'm not sure about this yet.

I've been thinking about this for years. But if bandwidth actually becomes a commodity, it means that these small, nimble sites that shoot you small amounts of data without overloading your pipes with splashes and ads and blinkings and banners and the rest of it, if we get to a much more lean little sort of internet

on the side, a quiet one back there, that might be actually a place that we can use to our advantage. But I'm not saying that the Ricochet 2.0 is going to be a bloated thing. No, it's going to be a lean, mean piece of beauty. Well, we hope. But you'll want to sign up for it now and join Ricochet before 2.0 so you can say you were in there at the beginning so you can be eligible for all of these VIP. Well, let me put it this way. We've got an event coming up, Los Angeles Ricochet Podcast number 200.

If you go to Ricochet right now, you will find tickets on sale. You'll see the guest list. Dennis Prager, for heaven's sakes. Oh, it's going to be fun for me to offer Dennis a cigar and see what happens. High drinks always ensue when I offer Dennis a cigar and see what happens. It's always high drinks always ensue when I offer Dennis a cigar. So be there as we improv our way through another gruesome exchange of tobacco products. And of course, lots of other folks.

We will be, let's see what we'll be doing. Well, next week, of course, we'll be talking about audible because they're a sponsor. We demand that you go to audible.com and use the coupon code ricochet at audible podcast.com slash ricochet to get your free trial.

And we demand, actually, that you go to Encounter Books as well and get Glenn Reynolds' The New School, How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, smashing those progressive paradigms we were talking about before. We're going to have Glenn on the show later. And you'll want to read the book so you know what we're talking about. Use the coupon code ricochet at the checkout and you get 15% off the list price. Peter, Rob, it's been a pleasure. I think we've said everything

that needs to be said. We're done. We're done. We're good. All right. See you in the comments, folks. Thanks for listening to this, the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lawless. And we'll see you in Los Angeles, so please. That? Join and join us. On January what's the date? 26. This is where we need So please join and join us on January.

What's the date? 26. This is where we need Darth Vader to say, join me. Look, it is your destiny. Next week, boys. We'll see you the mountains, at the birds, at the ocean, at the trees.

We have fun, we have fun, we have fun when we please. We wake up with the sun in our eyes. It's no surprise that we get so much done. But we always, yes, we always, we always have fun. Yes, we always, yes, we always, we always have fun. Why would you live anywhere else? Why would you live anywhere else? We've got the ocean, got the

babes, got the sun, we've got the waves. This is the only place for me. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Bye. We've got the ocean, we've got the waves, we've got the sun, we've got the waves.

This is the only place. This is the only place. This is the only place.