The Ricochet Podcast - Casserole of Mystery

Episode Date: August 23, 2019

Another busy week (is there any other kind?) and our intrepid podcasters cover it all: is The New York Times‘ 1619 Project the definitive (new) history of the United States? Spoiler alert: no. Hoover Institution and self-titled Grumpy Economist John Cochrane joins to discuss the possibility of a recession, and later, our own (well, by marriage) Seth Mandel (OK, he also edits The Washington... Source

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

Today, John Cochran on the economy and Seth Mandel on, well, Trump and the Jews. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast, and it's number 461. Peter, Rob, how are you today? I'm good. Don't think too hard about that one, guys. It's a standard opening question. It is, but it still brings me up short. I don't know, really, because 461 now, I was fine when I heard that. I thought, oh, my God. And I'm fine, too.

It's beautiful. But I'm not fine because my youngest started high school this week. And something happened. Something happened in america and i'm not talking about the election of donald trump or the crudit crudification of popular culture what i'm talking about is summer is ending sooner these days this is august people should still relax we went to we went back to school after labor day yeah i mean that's how you knew that's what labor day was all about that's how it's supposed to be the jerry lewis does the tel gets up in the chair, cries a little bit, you'll never walk alone, and then summer's over. Yeah, right.

Well, people have been complaining about this for an awful long time. And here in Minnesota, they passed laws, I believe, that said that school shall start after Labor Day. Because otherwise, if you go to the store after the 4th of july they have the school supplies up there's this sort of relentless push to get the the end of the summer in and everybody fights it and everybody knows that calendrical summer and and meteorological summer are two different things and actually there's three months of summer that extend into september but nobody believes that we all know that august ends september begins and with it the fall. And Rob, even though you can't believe it's 461 podcasts that we've done, just think that's at least 700 segues that you've ruined. No, I didn't ruin them.

I know. That's not true because I didn't ruin all of them. Well, speaking of ruining things, the New York Times has decided that America needs to have its face rubbed in its original sin in the 1619 Project, which they have framed as stating that the essence of the country, the essence of his history, everything about it goes back to slavery. Um, and, uh, Bravo to the New York times for bringing up the issue of slavery and race relations, which of course are completely absent from public discourse these days. Uh, but gentlemen, what do you think of this project? And what do you think, for example, of the Pulitzer people tweeting out that they are more than happy to provide the 1619 project to any school that wants to use this for their curriculum? Oh, okay. So there I would draw a line. If a school that, Mike, I would certainly be one of those parents who complained. For this reason, as best I can tell, the history is accurate enough as far as it goes. What it

drops out of the picture completely is the larger context. More slaves were imported to Brazil than to this country. We participated in 1619 through the time of independence. And then even to this day, we participate in Anglo-Saxon culture in all kinds of ways. Our law is Anglo-Saxon. It was the British Navy that ended slavery. And in the constitution itself, a date was set. They worked out, excuse me,

I won't go on and on and on, but slavery has been, I'll make the point Tom Sowell makes, slavery has been part of the human condition from the very first moment that we have records. It was universal, that is to say it took place in every culture, in every society, and in every place on earth, and where it ended was in our own culture. I stand with that very great man, Frederick Douglass, who said that the Constitution as written, permitting slavery, even though, as you will recall, the Constitution included an end date by which no more slaves could be imported into this country, but permitting slavery was a necessary scaffolding to construct the new country. This is an escaped slave, a former slave, Frederick Douglass, a necessary scaffolding. And as soon as the country could stand on its own, that scaffolding was removed.

Well, that sounds like a lot of snow. That is the story. That sounds like a lot of triggery, snowflakey stuff from the conservatives who are just freaking out about this because they can't stand to be anything to be said bad about America, which seems to be the response to criticism. I'm sort of baffled exactly as to the New York Times. Well, I'm not baffled, but I'm sort of amazed really that the intention seems to be not to instruct the new people into the horrors of slavery and the impact and the effect that it had in the country, but to delegitimize the very American experiment itself by saying that foundationally it was corrupt and rotten and immoral. And therefore the only exceptional claim that it has is being exceptionally bad, exceptionally hypocritical, exceptionally

worthy of being replaced with some other system, which I'm sure our betters at the times have brewing in the back of their head. Rob? Yeah, I mean, look, for me, all these things come down to one thing, which is that one side thinks that everyone's stupid. And so they don't want, you know, liberals always think that Americans are stupid. So we need to be careful what they see on Facebook because they're stupid. And they may, you know, they may believe all that nonsense. They may get everything wrong.

And so it's very important that we feed them very specific, sanitized, or at least prepared, edited, carefully shaped messages and stories because they're stupid. And the right feels the same way too here. It's like, well, we think Americans are stupid. So if they read this thing, they might think it's all about – that all of America is all about enslaved populations. I mean the problem is that they're both right. A lot of Americans are dumb. And I think a lot of Americans – and I think I blame people on the right especially – don't know the history of slavery. So all of these weird skirmishes or media skirmishes, like, well, what is the message of The New York Times on its in its in its in the series of articles it's going to write rather than saying, OK, I know a lot about the American history.

And I know, of course, that, you know, we were the ones who outlawed. I know, of course, that slavery exists today in Africa right now, today. All those things, every single thing that we worry about can be combated by simply knowing the facts. And we kind of sometimes don't, or we don't want to, it's too hard. So we're mad that we, a lot of people on the right are mad

that the New York Times is going to write a piece that they're not going to read, that other people are going to read and then think something about. And I believe we kind of need to, if we're going to skirmish about this, we already have all the tools we need, and they are in the history. What made me laugh about the New York Times thing is saying how incredibly shallow and unsophisticated and racist and kind of brutal it is to think that America's founding was about democracy. How shallow. America's founding was about democracy, how shallow.

America's founding is really about slavery. Well, actually, America's founding and America's development are about how those two things in many ways work together. People that wanted a certain government and envisioned a certain government were incredibly flawed, and they did make this horrible compromise to get the country together because I think they knew that eventually the words we use to describe ourselves and to describe our country and our nation had to comport with the way the nation was being grown and built and that happened you know less than a century later um i mean that seems like a long time it really isn't actually it wasn't what was it uh 60 years later right right right four score and seven yeah in that range. You're right, exactly. What's amazing to me is that all these stories aren't about people, the way they live their lives

as we all know it. It doesn't really matter what your politics are. You live your life essentially the same way. You have essentially the same failures and essentially the same weaknesses. There's not an honest person in America who doesn't know exactly how the founders, certainly the constitutional founders, came to that conclusion to allow slavery in the country.

Everyone knows how that happens. We do it all the time in our lives. It's as if socialism and communism are never held accountable for their failures. It's never been tried sufficiently or it's not real socialism, etc. America is always held accountable despite its successes.

The standard to which we're held is extraordinary. In one sense, that's great because having set these high standards, we ought to be judged against them. But to deny human nature and to deny the fact that people of the past weren't perfect and did not create a perfect society right out of the gate is extraordinary. And I mean, the American exceptionalism is now the degree to which we are going to be judged against some, again, mythic goal that's

hanging up there, which I think actually given this crooked timber, we've done a pretty damn good job of reaching up to those ideals that were set so long ago. But, you know, once again, if you want to abandon the constitution, as both sides seemed more than willing to do sometimes, I mean, you remember during the last election, we were being told that those who had inordinate love of the constitution were vellum fetishists. Right. Okay. Well then at the end of the day, to use that phrase we all hate, I think that's Rob's favorite phrase, we got nothing left then.

And where do we go from there? So it seems to me that the 1619 Project, however intended, is another piece, another shovelful trying to excavate the foundation of this country that I don't understand exactly. No, I do understand where it's coming from, but I don't understand exactly why so many people seem to be nodding along in agreement, not thinking about it. As if the foundation of this country is so strong, the bedrock so deep that we can constantly undermine it and never worry about it tottering and falling. I mean, whatever it is, it isn't journalism. Going back to 1619 is not exactly daily newspaper journalism.

That's point number one. I have three points. Point number two is the general expectation, but you could call it an expectation. I think that's correct for most of the founders, or at least a hope, at a minimum was a hope. At the time the country was founded and the Constitution was ratified was that slavery would die out. That did not happen in large part because of the development of the cotton gin. It turned out in the South after slavery was underway that it was economically useful to have large incoming flows of manual labor to harvest the cotton.

So the South became economically tied to slavery. And then the North began to grow impatient. The abolitionist movement arises. And the South becomes more and more brittle and insistent and ideological in its thinking about slavery. So the expectation is frustrated. What happens then? The country goes to war to end it. It is by, as a proportion of the population, no war since has cost as many American lives as the Civil War did. It didn't fade away, so we went to war over it. The final point I would make is this. This is so many arguments can just be not ended necessarily, but informed by looking at migration

patterns. How many people, how many Americans are attempting to leave this country for Africa, how many Africans are trying to come here? You know, really, that's what you need to know about the state of affairs today. There was a piece on NPR the other day, or maybe the Canadian version, or maybe National Public Radio. I don't know. There was a sonorous voice telling us of a show coming up, which was about many African-Americans who are going to Ghana to learn agriculture and to start farms. And the first person that they interviewed, this is just a preview of the show, said one of the necessary things at the beginning of these missions is to tell people that it's not going to be like America. And I

thought, wow, gosh, really? That that would be news? Who thinks that Ghana is going to be – how deluded actually do you have to be to think that there's going to be water and internet and Walmart and everything else and clean – the whole wonderful – Very. Yeah. You think it's going to get to be? The answer is very. Right.

Well, I don't know it's uh well i would say like we've all had that experience where you um you know there's a young person in your life uh or you know yeah a teenager usually and they've just learned a new thing or college students sometimes and they've learned a new thing a new fact a new event a new philosophy a new everything and it's because it's new to them they assume it's new to everybody and so they say things to you like did i mean you may not know this but yeah i do know that i've known it for a while right right right and that is sort of what i mean that is sort of what's interesting about this is that i believe that we are at the in a strength i mean this is my optimistic view okay my optimistic view is that people are dumb

and they're dumb because uh american history has been taught in the in an ass backwards way for the past generation right it's been taught in modules and nodes and uh projects and now we're going to talk about the old west and the native all these non-linear, non-specific things. And so American history is a strange kind of muddle, casserole of mystery for half the people. And I think half the people and half the journalists in the New York Times, I think you put a gun to their head and said, explain to me, pick something from that that's relevant to the topic. What was Dred Scott? And they would look at you like, well, I know it was – He was the pirate in Princess Bride, I think.

Right, right. And I'll tell you, I had this experience when I was talking to some very smart people who were younger than I am, but they were smart and they went to fancy colleges. And one of the things they found outrageous about the US Constitution was the three-fifthsfifths rule precisely it valued them at three-fifths of their true humanity right just shows how much in what exactly they held them in no that was no no abolitionists anti-slavery activists wanted that to be zero you shouldn't you should not be allowed to count slaves as the members of your population for the for the purpose of representation in Congress. Either they're citizens or they're not. And if they're not citizens, you don't get to count them. And the Southerners are like, well, they're three-fifths citizens because we need

them. And they looked at me like, what are you talking about? It's math, which you don't know either, by the way. But a lot of this is just this yearning in America, which I think is good, to know really how it all happened. And the truth is that you can't have anti-slavery without the Judeo-Christian traditions. Correct. Certainly the intellectual Judeo-Christian traditions of the founding of America. It doesn't mean – it does not mean that they were perfect. It doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that you, the whole idea of the Constitution isn't, these are the ideals that we live up to. The whole, the guiding philosophy behind the Constitution is people suck,

and they're going to make terrible choices, and they're going to be awful. And we've got to make sure that there are enough laws in place, and some of them redundant laws in place, to keep that from ever happening. And the irony for the left is that they think, well, people suck, so the Constitution must suck, so let's get rid of it and now have the people control everything. There's a lot to that. I mean, first of all, casserole of mystery should be the title of this podcast. Thank you, Rob. That's a pretty to that. I mean, first of all, casserole of mystery should be the title of this podcast. OK, that's a pretty good phrase. And secondly, you're right. People suck. But the idea that people are perfectible is the idea that in a secular society fashion is what the left loves. The right knows that people are not perfectible, that we are flawed and that's not going to change.

But the left believes that with the right mechanisms, we can perfect man. So it's not enough to say people suck in general. What's necessary is to say these people suck in particular. And our groups, our in-groups are anointed by a history of victimhood and downtroddenness and the rest of it that elevates them morally to the point where they now have the moral statute to redo society as they please. I mean, that's the tension that we're having – that we've had in this country for years. One little – if people – I don't know. This is occurring to me for the first time.

So if I get – if this turns out to be stupid, I know I can count on the two of you to say so. But George Washington, just look at the life of George Washington and there there are a couple of things you'll see. One is that he was very much a man of his time. Much of his fortune, many of his energies were devoted to acquiring land on the other side of the, of the Shenandoah mountains and what the big race to settle what was then the far West. But of course we now think of as the Midwest. Acquire who had that land first, Peter, who did he kill to get it? Of course, the Indians did, but you will discover throughout Washington's career and particularly as president over and over and over again, he's trying to restrain the settlers who

are going in there helter skelter. He's trying to insist on establishing diplomatic relations with Indian tribes, treating them as sovereign nations and settling with them for their land, paying them for it, establishing treaties. Now, of course, we now understand that the tribes did not have the same conception of land rights that we had, that in all kinds of ways, attempting to impose legal standards on them just didn't make sense. But Washington, the man of his time, you can see the impulse to try to rise above what he understands are the rawer interests and ambitions of his time. He's trying to do right. Washington inherits land from his wife's family. She brings a hundred slaves to the marriage. They are necessary to work

Mount Vernon. He's never comfortable with this. And in his will, he sets free all the slaves. Again, you'd rather he set them free from the get-go. You'd rather all kinds of things. But you see a man of his time, he's struggling to pay his bills, to operate within the economic system in which he finds himself. And yet at the same time, he knows this is not right. And he does what he can to set it right at the end of his life. I, again, he is far from a perfect person, but you can see it right there in one man's life that he is enmeshed in his time as we all are, but he's always struggling, not as hard as you might like, not as cleanly as you might like, but he's struggling to make

things right. Um, well, uh, I was going to say that what's, what's interesting about all of this stuff is that the human element, right? The idea that a person struggles, a person tries, a person's not perfect, is the story that we should be telling. And I don't think we tell that. That's the great story of history. Yes, it is. It isn't – especially somebody who we know well, I mean who is written about and talked about around him in a fairly modern way, George Washington. We know so much about him. The story is really fascinating.

And I don't think that we should be, as conservatives, should be afraid of that story being told. For one reason, just economically, I think it's very useful to remind people that a huge amount of America's agricultural wealth in the south was predicated on that kind of – on the enslavement of people, the taking of their labor, the taking of their work, which is something that we as free market capitalists are absolutely dead set against and that the and that freedom the most important thing you have your your rights your free rights your constitutional freedom is the is the is the chief capital by which you are supposed to make your way in the world and well it just it's always it always surprises me that it's the left that seems obsessed with this topic and the right that sometimes seems to hide from it because the the conclusion of of of a thorough investigation of slavery its evils and its wrongs leads you to freedom to free markets to free people to the judeo-Christian tradition of inquiry and change that no other society has had or has had since. But these things require, as we've been saying here before, and at least we're talking about 1619 and letting people know that there was such a year that history did not start anew in 2008.

And it's necessary to go back and look at the soil from which all of this sprung. But unfortunately, the more anxious and excitable people amongst us are the ones who want change now and want utopia now. And that can be achieved by a certain set of ideas. You had the Red Guard back in the days of communist China, right, who only believed you could purify society if you extirpated every single bourgeois element. So if they found the wrong pattern of China or the wrong color of finery in your house somewhere, you had to be taken out and a sign had to be put around your neck and you had to apologize to everybody and mouth the right words because they wanted to remake it all

now. So at least the New York Times is telling us that history is important. It's unfortunately they're giving us a version of history that's not entirely correct. But still, I prefer a historical perspective that's flawed to the idea that Mao had where the great helmsman was going to tell everybody how things were going to go and let the worst elements of society remake it. And speaking of helmsman, helmsman's shield cream. Oh, wow. Oh, nice. There you go.

I was wondering how you were going to do that, and that's brilliant. And it was right in front of my face. Go ahead. Speaking of my face. It literally was. Speaking of your face, that ruggedly handsome face of Rob Long, would you like to look as ruggedly handsome as Rob? Would you like to look as sharp as Peter Robinson's wit? Do you want to shave as smooth as Mel Torme after he's had a nice minty lozenge? Well, then

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Why, a testament would be great. Yes, please. It is. I picked up Helmsman to use it this morning for the first time and felt the same way. Both of you will understand what I mean. I felt exactly the same way I feel when I receive a book that a friend has written. Oh, good. Is it really going to be any good or am i just

going to find myself forced to say so helmsman is terrific oh it's thicker than this uh i i use the stuff the fizzy stuff that ordinary ordinarily sort of fizzes out of the bottle half gel half foam and helmsman is much thicker and the shave was beautiful and smooth. And it feels kind of as though it feels kind of as like a skin treatment almost. I don't understand all the chemical components, but it was a good shave and it was really comfortable. And it still feels still feels sort of soothing right now. And I am telling the truth. I'm relieved to be able to say. I thought you were going to say that, you know, like getting a book that a friend has written, that the first thing you did with

Helmsman was check the index to see if your name was mentioned. I would have done if it had an index. There you go. Helmsman, the shaving cream that doesn't need an index. And now we welcome to the podcast, John Cochran, Rosemary and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, also a research assistant at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. You can read his indispensable blog, The Grumpy Economist, and we'll put a little link to that on the Ricochet site. John, we've been hearing a lot about inverted yield curves and bonds and economies, and nobody seems to know what that means except they are being told recession is imminent. So where are we going with this economy? Are we headed to another recession?

Interesting question. It's not as clear. Recessions are very hard to forecast, and something needs to go wrong, usually financial, before we head into a recession. The inverted yield curve is a correlation, long-term bonds being lower than short-term bonds. It's worked well in the past. But you have to understand what the causes are. In the past, most of the inverted yield curves have been because the Fed tightened really hard, and that was the thing that caused the recession. That's not happening right now. So I would take that signal, that correlation to the big grain itself. John, Peter Robinson here. Why do – is a recession – is it always the case that after some unknown period of growth, we will have a recession?

Why do recessions happen in the first place? Is it always because the government screws something up, or is there simply a moment when every economy is exhausted and regathers? That is a deep question, and frankly, that's one of those things that after all these years, economists aren't all that sure about. I think the current consensus, though, is that the economy trundles along just fine until something bad happens. So expansions don't die of old age, is the adage. They need a shock. They need something bad to happen, usually financial, sometimes political, before we really kick into a serious recession. And what would you make of the argument that the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal has been making, which is that Trump's trade policy has been kicking the the economy again and again and again, that that's that's the bad thing that's happening and it's self-inflicted. Yeah, our trade policy is a clear self-inflicted wound. It is, however, at its current level, which is I would love to say it's the big problem because I hate trade restrictions, it's a minor irritant. Residential zoning restrictions and occupational licensing restrictions and overregulation,

they do the same kind of damage as trade. One good rule of thumb is that the damage of tariffs is the square of the tariff rate. So in fact, small tariffs, though annoying, don't really hurt the economy that much. I hate to say that. Now, the danger of a big all-out trade war, I think, is one that is weighing on people's minds, the uncertainty factor. But we've had uncertainty with Trump policy for a long time. So I think it's a danger, but not one that's hard to really point to and say, boy, that's imminently going to cause something bad. And I've got one more question, if I may, John. I know I've got two

colleagues on the line who are eager to jump in here. But if you were in the White House, bear with that thought for just a moment. I know you love academia. But if you were in the White House and the thought was, wait a minute, we have some difficulties here with the economy and we're facing reelection in 2020. What levers does the administration have to pull, if any, to keep the economy strong or give us some boost of growth? What could they do if they wanted to? The right kind of economic policy is not one that tries to jigger what's going on this quarter or next quarter and provide a little more stimulus here and a little less there. Let's set a strategy for long-term economic growth, put it in place, and let it rip. And that would involve the second round of tax reform, be much more serious about cleaning up our tax code,

keep going on the deregulatory reform efforts, stabilize trade, you know, just set things in motion and let it rip. And that would lead us to an era of unparalleled growth. Hey, John. Thanks for joining us. So, I mean, along the lines of what Peter said, I mean, Fed tries to cut interest rates. They're pretty low, not much to do. The national debt

is about a trillion dollars now. So, debt spending is hard. All of the easy levers don't seem like there's much, you's much more slack in those. All that's left is what you said are the hard levers, deregulation, maybe some targeted tax reform. All of those things seem harder and harder to do with a government that is as divided and as dysfunctional as this one. So if we do start seeing the signs of a recession, what are the practical things that any president or a president can do

that don't require, you know, a making peace with Nancy Pelosi, put it that way? Yeah, well, you have one good point that you're making. Our economy is not now suffering from deficient demand. So to think about things in terms of stimulus with a 3.9 percent unemployment rate just doesn't make a lot of sense. That's not where we are. It's about cleaning out the things that are holding back the supply

and not self-inflicting wounds like starting trade wars. And, you know, there is a staple, you know, first of all, don't cause more trouble. Try to have a predictable set of policies, clear long-run goals, and then, you know,

work on bipartisan consensus to try to fix the things that need to be fixed. But if you get away from this short run, what can we do this month to boost the economy a little bit? That's just the wrong way to think about economic policy, and that induces more uncertainty. But is that because the markets demand us to think that way? I mean, you know, the big fear fact now is the inverted yield curve that, you know, people say, oh, well, if the yield curve is inverted, that means a recession is going to happen.

So who are we who are really trying to educate here? Is it a market that is terrified because the economy seems to be good, but no one really knows why? Or is it a general consensus in Washington that the best way to solve any economic problem is to open the spigots and with with with federal spending and an incredibly loose Fed? Yeah, I mean, the debt problem is that's another one of those things that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. You know, I think if the U.S. embarked on a steady pro-growth, long run economic policy, the markets would absolutely take off. The markets are reacting to the uncertainty about what's going to happen now. And,

you know, geopolitical uncertainty. What if things blow up in China? That's the kind of event that I think would spark the next recession. Political things go wrong. Financial things go wrong. And then the recession would come. OK. If you had to pick one, one or two of your dream reforms, economic reforms that you think with some pushing and some shoving and some horse trading may actually get through and get enacted in as close to a way as possible, in as close to the ideal way as possible, which two would you pick? I mean if we're all going to row in a direction and pull in a direction, which direction should we be pulling in? What are the two top specific reforms

you would make if you could? Well, the problem with growth is it's like Marie Kondo-ing. We need to Marie Kondo our national economy, our legal system, and our regulation and our tax code. And as Murray Combe will tell you, it's not about let's go in and do the kitchen. You know, it all needs careful bipartisan thinking through what the long-run goals are getting there. So, you know, fix Social Security, fix Medicare, fix health care, fix the tax code. So if you kind of set up this is where we're going, I think it might be easier. But those are political questions. An election is coming.

I think the moment when you're coming to an election is not the moment to try to get something big done. It's the moment to say, here is our goal. Here's where we want to take the country after the election. And then that, I think, would forge a Congress able to do bipartisan compromise. Well, unfortunately, the Marie Kondo thing says throw it away if it doesn't give you joy. What gives the Democrats joy is more regulation, more confiscation of properties and open borders. So if we do have a slowdown coming into an election, on one hand, you've got the Republicans saying things like gold standard,

and you have the Democrats saying things like, no, no, we're going to give everybody more of everything. How do you possibly, how do the Democrats hope to tell us that a recession can be combated by more government and more population fighting for a diminishing number of jobs? Well, those issues that, you know, the debate going on within the Democratic Party is not really about recession. It's about Green New Deal and a 20-year government takeover of the economy. But there, too, it's not a united front. There are very many reasonable Democrats who are appalled at where the left wing of their party is taking them.

So I think that's the debate to be had. John, Peter here. All right. So I asked a moment ago what the administration could do, and you very nicely pushed back and said they ought not to be looking for levers for short term. Here's the question, though. Overwhelmingly, our listeners are going to be in the same position that the people questioning you are in. There's nothing we can do one way or the other, except next year we're going to be asked to cast a vote.

Can you if you're looking at if the single question is which side is likely to be better for the economy in the long run? And you have already instructed us to think only about the long run. And I'm setting aside questions of who's coarsening the culture. I'm setting aside questions of the court. I'm setting aside questions of green. I'm just asking for the growth, long run growth of the economy. Would you recommend voting for Donald Trump, who looks certain to be the Republican nominee, or would you recommend the Democratic nominee? Or can you not make up

your mind without knowing who the nominee is? How do you handle that one? Or don't forget the Libertarians and the Green Party, too. I'm not going to make a partisan political recommendation of that sort. What I hope is, you know, we need to see what comes out of the discussion, what the president decides he wants to campaign on, and how this great debate within the Democratic Party comes out of what are they promising us to go? Is it going to be the Green New Deal, or is it going to be sort of the centrist coalition that was there before? Well, it'll be fun to watch. Well, John, let's end with this. Trade wars, which we're told are good, but a lot of people seem to think that perhaps it's going to, in the long run,

just be a long grinding knockdown drag out that doesn't really seem to benefit us unless we get something out of it. What is the situation with China right now? Is China actually not as strong as some people might think because their economy is more brittle, they don't have as many arrows in the quiver, and they need us more than we need them. How do you think the China situation is going to play out? Well, first, they need us versus we need them. Can we, quote, win the trade war is idiotic. I mean, the whole trade war is a bad idea. Adam Smith figured that out in 1760, and we're still fighting over it. China is not so far on paper. China is a lot more vulnerable than people think. Remember, it's still a very poor country.

It's less than a fifth of the GDP per capita of the United States. And they're facing some serious problems in Hong Kong. And, you know, can the Communist Party stay in charge through a growth slowdown? So don't overstate it. But the right answer for us was, and continues to be, to the carrot, not the stick. Why are we choosing to create a geopolitical confrontation rather than to try to work with all of our allies to say, hey, guys, you want to join the international club? Here's the right way to behave. It is just not in our interest to create another Cold War when we don't have to. Well, what do you say to those people who would insist that China will never be enticed by an international coalition

to change their behavior on intellectual property, for example, that they can get away with it because they figure they can get away with it? That actually something other than... Go on. I think we got very overly excited about this intellectual property business, first. And second, slapping, self-slapping tariffs on which hurt us more than they hurt them is a kind of a silly way to go about it. You know, intellectual property is a strange thing.

We're not all that excited about defending the drug company's intellectual property to charge whatever they want in the United States. Just why we're so excited about that in China is an open question. But let's not delve too hard into it. I think the basic principles of free trade are still there. And even with a lot of the intellectual property stuff could be worked out much more easily than causing this trade war that might well lead us into a recession or to just a period of slower growth. John, we know you're on the road and you're heading somewhere and probably want to get back to it. So we thank you for joining us on the podcast today. Safe travels and we'll talk to you down the road.

Thank you, too. John, have a high time up the mountains. I have the feeling that there might be some, you know, there might be some zesty commentary in the comment section on the ricochet on this particular one when it comes to China and tariffs and intellectual property and the rest of it. Zesty indeed. Lemon fresh. Lemon fresh like those good cleaners that you use on the visit. Oh, stop it. Oh, stop it, you guys.

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go to grove.co slash ricochet. That's grove.co slash ricochet. And our thanks to Grove for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast, Seth Mandel, editor of the Washington Examiner and the husband of Ricochet editor and Ladybrain podcaster, co-host Bethany. You can follow him at Twitter, at Seth A. Mandel. And we'll have that, of course, right there on the Ricochet website. Seth, I don't know if this week if you're a beta cuck or a Trumpy, Trump face. So we had, get this, the president said something and or tweeted something

and people reacted and here we are to hash that over. This time it was anti-Semitism. And apparently the guy who moved the embassy to Jerusalem and has Jewish relatives and the rest of it has been accused of saying old tropes and the rest of it. I'm not talking about Omar this week, but we're talking about Trump's anti-Semitism. Tell us what was going on and what you saw, what you said about it? Well, Trump's comments were about the idea that Jews are essentially bad Jews for not taking the threat of anti-Semitism and the threat of anti-Zionism masking anti-Semitism or anti-Semitism being dressed up as anti-Zionism more seriously. And the words that he used were, look, in typical Trump fashion, he used the worst possible phrasing. And he does this pretty much every time. And he used the word disloyalty.

And, you know, you don't want to use that word. We've had debates on dual loyalty, especially concerning Omar and Tlaib, who have each had made statements about Jews and dual loyalty, and they've each had their own cycles of outrage about it. So there was no way that Trump was going to sort of get away with that. But the larger problem was that what Trump, what it revealed was not, um, that Trump, uh, has a, as a, has ill will toward the Jewish community. It revealed that he, uh, well, first of all, Trump buys into antisemitic stereotypes, but as a philo semi in a way, you. You know, he thinks they're compliments. And so I, on Twitter, I likened his comments to Peter Griffin from Family Guy, who in the

famous Family Guy episode, it sings a song called I Need a Jew. And his son is struggling in school. And so he tries to have him converted to Judaism. And, you know, so this is the sort of thing that it's also a lot of times you hear it, you hear it a lot in hip hop. There's actually a really funny video on YouTube, that's basically a supercut of all rappers bragging about their Jewish lawyers. So there's there's there certain, and Trump comes again, Trump comes from the entertainment world in part, the real estate world and the entertainment world. And so he sort of has this outlook. So he's a kind of Peter Griffin character, this cartoonish, you know, believes

in the Jew, in the stereotypes about Jews, but he thinks he's complimenting you when he tells you you're good with money. So Seth, Peter here, Peter here. I'm Trump, okay? I'm Donald Trump. Let me talk as Donald Trump and then you tell me, answer my question. So I'm Donald Trump. Seth, I have done more for Israel than any president you could name with the possible exception of Harry Truman, who recognized the state of Israel a couple hours after it was declared. And the Jewish vote in America for Republicans peaked with Ronald Reagan. I've done so much more than Ronald Reagan. I've been so pro-Israel. I've moved the embassy to Jerusalem. I make one pro-Israel statement, where's my Jewish support in this country? What's going on? So the answer is twofold.

The first part of the answer is that the Jews does not equal Israel. So the problem with your statements, Mr. President, is that the subtext is that Jews are being grouped into immigrant groups. You know, it's like saying, oh, well, the Italians, they've really made a place for themselves here in this country. That's how when he talks about Jews, that's how it sounds like. He says things to Jewish groups when he references Bibi Netanyahu. He says, you're prime minister. And he has a way of talking in which he. It's unbelievably condescending is what it is.

It's very condescending, but it also assigns a kind of ownership of this country abroad. And so, you know, we're not actually immigrants. We're just regular Americans. This is the religion we follow. But we're we're we're regular Americans like everybody else. So the first thing is that it suggests that Jews are visitors of some kind and that if you – all the things that he does for Israel are quite highly appreciated by a lot of people, even people who won't be voting for him. But the problem with the statement is not, you know, if he gets accused of being anti-Israel or, you know, knifing Bibi Netanyahu in the back or something, then he's going to say, I've done all this for Israel. And Barack Obama did the same thing. You know, he got, he would get criticism over his treatment of Israel and especially Netanyahu. And he would say, well, wait a second. I signed the memorandum of understanding that increased aid. I, you know, we've been working with Israel on iron dome,

that's intercepting missiles being shot at them from Gaza and all this stuff, you know, that's, that's a relevant defense because, you know, are you, Hey, you're being bad to Israel. No, I'm, I'm actually being good to Israel. And here's why. And the way Trump does it is you're, you know, you're being bad to Jews. No, I'm being great to Israel. And it's, you know, it's sort of there's a there's a disconnect. The second thing is that American Jews, the American Jews do care about Israel a lot. And, you know, the the old joke, of course, in the in the Jewish community will often joke that if only American Jews were as supportive of Israel as evangelical Christians. But, you know, so that he's probably hearing those types of comments inside his administration. And because he's Trump, he doesn't really have a filter and know not to

actually say them publicly. But the truth is that what's behind that joke is not the idea that American Jews don't care about Israel. It's that there's a certain bar that you have to clear. And one of the great things about America and its relationship with Israel is that America has been, the American political establishment has been generally pro Israel for so long that parties, major parties don't put up candidates who scare people. You know, if, if I think in the future, this is bound to change. I think that, you know, the way the democratic party is going in the future, they will put up a candidate like, um, you know, somebody who tolerates this sort of thing and changes the conversation like AOC, or maybe even a Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar type, but that's in the future. In the past,

they nominated people like, as long as your last name was Clinton, you got nominated basically. And then Obama also was of the left and he had some red flags, but it was not, he didn't have the sort of history where he was just going around making these awful comments. So the, the bar for being pro-Israel is low, not because people don't care about it, but because both parties have historically in the last, you know, half century or so really basically cleared it with ease. And they don't put up people who you are afraid of. When Obama ran for president, he went to, you know, he, Obama spoke to AIPAC during the election year and he said, Jerusalem must remain undivided. You know, even though there were things that concerned

the American Jewish community about him, he, he had, you had a candidate going through the same motions as everybody else. So, you know, the standard is not, you know, do you, do you give, do you move the embassy to Jerusalem? The standard is, okay, you're, you're, you know, you consider Israel a close ally and you'll have its back. Now onto the domestic, once you clear that bar, it's all about domestic issues, and that bar is generally easily cleared. Hey, Seth, it's Rob Long. Thank you for joining us. So we know who the enemies of Israel are in politics, right?

It's the three you mentioned. It's Ilhan Omar. It's Shia Tlaib. Maybe AOC. Maybe not so much, but at least those two are problematic, to say the least, in the Democratic Party on their support of Israel. But what about the Jewish Americans who are part of the BD – the Ban, the ban, disinvest, sanction movement. It seems to me that when American politics changes, it's not going to change because of some, you know, leader of a party in a general election, but it's going to change

because the calculation that you just mentioned, which is that you have to, there was a low bar. If you want some Jewish, some Jewish American support, you have to be basically in favor of Israel. It seems like that is going to disappear from the side of the Jewish American voter first, or am I getting it wrong? Well, I don't know what the order is going to be, but yes, in the future and maybe even the near future, this is going to change. They're going to be high-profile candidates who don't share the affinity. The reason they don't have to is because the Jewish voter that they've been courting, that they don't want to lose, is no longer supporting Israel.

It seems like Israel's support among Jewish Americans is waning. Well, it is and it isn't. It's not waning to the extent that a lot of people think it is. The crisis that everybody keeps predicting or saying is here in Israel-diaspora relations isn't here yet. But the problem with what you're seeing is that, and I've talked about this a bit in the past on Twitter the other day, trying to explain that basically when you look at the way, when you look at peer research surveys on religious and political attitudes for various religious groups. And you look at other surveys of the Jewish community, what you essentially find, and Batya Angar Sargon has written this

up at the Forward quite well, but what you find is that you have two different opinions of what it means to be Jewish. And so American Jews have increasingly identified their Jewishness with liberal politics or left politics, what they which is an incredibly toxic organization that's trying to destroy support for Israel. And you see them show – they are – you see the tokens show up. of the state of Israel, everything, all policy, American foreign policy, and I think I'm assuming Jewish American position and feelings about Israel were based on one binary thing. Will it exist or not? Should it exist or not?

And it was every single question was an existential question because it was surrounded on all sides by enemies who were invading it constantly. And now that that has changed, I think, Jewish Americans who are part of a BDS movement that seems like it's based entirely on the idea that not only is Israel not facing an existential threat, it is the aggressor. And that is a remarkable change in American politics. Well, it has no moral standing anymore because it is a colonial occupying power. And as liberalism becomes leftism, that means that the narrative

has to deprivilege Israel because people are being oppressed. But don't you, I mean, I guess what I'm trying to, I'm really trying to ask is, I think that, and maybe I'm wrong. My view is, Seth, that support for Israel is going to first turn and turn hard amongst American Jews who no longer feel that that nation, first of all, is under any threat, and second of all, speaks to them as they – certainly as they become more secular. Does that worry you or am I just overreacting? Well, it's not that you're overreacting and it's worrisome, but I do think you have the order backwards. What you said is true about Israel no longer being the underdog. And for the first 20 years of its existence until 1967, until the Six-Day War, Israel was viewed universally as the underdog, the plucky underdog. And then came the post-67 world, the world of the occupation, et cetera. And what took the reason it was all lagging indicators

because it took a generation to produce people who were born in an era when Israel's survival was not considered something they had to worry about. And my parents and grandparents would wake up in the morning sometimes hoping that Israel was still there. And that's not, you know, and so if you live during that time and you saw the transition, you might you don't feel it quite as strongly. If you were born after that time, you only know one Israel. And that is powerful. And the reason I think, but to your question about the order of things, what's happening is that going back to the point about American Jews associating and identifying their Jewishness with liberalism has put them in a position where they have bought into intersectionality, right? Which, you know, so Jews of, you know, if their skin color is light, they're not a minority of Jews, but they're, you know, the left just considers them white and therefore an oppressor and all these. Basically, intersectionality puts Jews at the bottom rung or near the bottom rung.

And that revelation is happening now. And so Jews have bought, a lot of American Jews have bought into this, the idea that leftism, progressive values, that this is, this is Judaism. And so they look at it as you look at a religion. And now it's sort of being thrown back at them by saying, you know, you bought into all this. And now also, by the way, Israel is evil and Jews are causing problems and all that stuff. And it's forcing them to think they're rethinking not just the political party, but they're they're being forced to confront their entire conception of their religious and political identity, which are a twin. And so going forward, you're going to see a lot of people refuse to believe their lying eyes because they are so invested in, remember that this political movement is one that is centered on their definition of justice. So they believe that justice is on their side and everybody else is evil. And now they have to sort of hold, you know, when confronted with this, well, maybe your entire ideology is pretty defective

because it's bad for the Jews and you're a Jew. So a lot of people don't want to believe that. So I don't think it's going to change first with Jewish Americans. I think it's changing first with non-Jewish Americans. And I think Jewish Americans are being confronted with a choice about how to react and interpret that. And it is accelerated by American Jews who don't believe their lying eyes and don't want to believe that the entire value system they've bought into as their new religion is bad. And so some of them will be high profile tokens for the ones who are not young Jewish members of Congress. It's Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, AOC. It's that. And that confronts Jews, progressive Jews, who supported them with this idea of justice with having to make a choice. Seth, I hate to cut up a conversation for the sake of time, but I am the chosen one, and I will do it now.

Thanks, buddy. We'll see you. We'll see you on the internet here and there. And, uh, thanks for joining us on the show today. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much. Thanks. The problem is of course, is that the intersectionality that he, as we all know, means eventually things collide and people have to make choices. I mean, if, if, if, if Jewish Americans have leftist Americans are going to say that we have to make choices. I mean, if Jewish Americans, if leftist Americans are going to say that we have to privilege the Palestinians because in the colonial dynamic, they're the ones who have the most moral authority, then what do you do when all of a sudden the Palestinian authorities ban LBGTQ, et cetera, demonstrations and the rest and show themselves

to be utterly illiberal on the matters that count much to the left i i there's an intellectual bloodshed and butchery that's going to take place there is going to be interesting to watch and speaking of butchery oh oh nicely done i wouldn't know it's horribly done but we have to get to it um well you have a stake you have a stake in. That's how I understand it. Ouch. Well done. I won't roast you any further. Oh, that was, yeah, that was rare in its term of being bad. Hey, ButcherBox.

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But a lot of people are, are aggravated by this because it just shows that absolutely everything is being corrupted. I mean, I see people weeping and shrieking and rending their garments on Twitter because they can't leave the house. Practically. They can't look at golf without thinking that Trump has played golf. They can't look at tennis without thinking that he said something bad about it. I mean, it's just the extent to which he has burrowed into these people's minds like the worm that they put in Chekhov's ear in Star Trek II. Anyway, the economist speaking of meat has said that more poor – this is their tweet.

More poor people are eating meat around the world. That means they will live longer, healthier lives. But it's bad news for the environment. Boy, I'm glad I don't get the economist anymore. Yes. Well, I mean, I, yeah, except that I, I, it's true. If you believe that stuff, it's true. That's the one thing that no one ever talks about is that actually it's a, it's agriculture. I think that contributes the

most to, of, of the greenhouse gases or something. Um, a cattle raising. The problem with it, they keep changing all the terms. So sometimes climate change is crucial, so I have to drive an electric car or walk. Sometimes I have to turn my thermostat down. Sometimes, I mean, all sorts of reasons for me to change my behavior, and they use it for whatever they want to use it. The idea that more people are eating meat around the world is a sign that poor people are getting richer around the world. That is a great thing. And there's zero evidence. In fact, there's massive counter evidence to suggest that prosperity is good for the

environment. Correct. And it's just They just keep changing. It's whatever they don't like that day is the thing that's causing global warming. And eventually people just turn it off. You hear your brain. I mean, you read that tweet. You hear your brain just go click.

I've got something to say on this just because I want to hear how Rob responds. There are startups here in Northern California, for all I know, there are many of them elsewhere as well. There are startups dedicated to the proposition that we can grow meat without animals. And I have not tasted any of this product, but I know people who have, and they come away shaking their heads and saying, hmm, tasted just like chicken. Hmm, tasted just like steak. So what I want to know from Rob and James. Oh, from James. You want to know from me, too.

I was wondering if Butcher Blocks was introducing James Lyle's Grand Shop of Rivers. Do go on. introducing James Lyle and Graham Chopper. I want to know whether this is a sacrilege, the very idea is a sacrilege, or if it's one of these arguments that we should be making. See, prosperity, technology, if you're serious about the economy, let prosperity rip. Let's start with Rob. Well, look, I mean, I think you should be allowed to eat anything you want to eat. I don't want to eat that. And I think it's probably true that we raise – the way we raise to raise that animal fat. It just seems crazy. And then we take another fat animal like pork and we try to raise it lean. We say it's the other white meat.

It's lean. It just seems insane to me. We'd be much better off with lean grass-fed beef and big fatty pork and eat more widely across the spectrum of vegetables and fruits and meats, so not just eat these chicken things people eat all the time. We'd be a lot healthier and our, and I think the environment would be better. That's fine too. But I'm not, I don't want to eat anything out of, I don't want to eat any steak out of a test tube. No way. Not for me.

Depends how good it gets. I've had one of those fake burgers. I don't know what they, several years ago, they're coming up with something they called Quorn, Q-U-O-R-N. It was some fungal version that was supposed to replace meat. I ate it. It was horrible. The gag reflex was unstandsible. But I've had these new burgers, and they're pretty good. I like them. If the price gets down to that of an ordinary burger, I can easily see swbing them out and not caring if they get as good with a proper seasoning, a little cheese, a little jalapeno, some bacon,

it's good. And here's the thing. Here's the other part. While I don't have any problem eating meat, I don't have any problem being a carnivore in general, in overall, in toto, if we raised confined and slaughtered fewer animals, I think that'd be better. And I'm not saying karmically, but if you know that the animal, they have to come up with all of these ways to make sure that when they're leaving the cattle to the slaughter, that they don't get too anxious. And they've discovered that if they put them on these curved ramps where they can't actually see precisely where they're going, that they don't get too anxious. And they've discovered that if they put them on these curved ramps where they can't actually see precisely where they're going, that they're a little bit more lulled into it before they get the nail to the brain pan. And so, you know, you say to yourself, well, that's great. We're caring people. We don't want the cows to actually be very fearful before

the horrible things happens to them. But you just also feel that I'm not all that upset about fewer animals being caged, confined and being killed for my dinner. OK. So what about – And if they can come up with a simulacrum, I – sure, sure. What about the rewilding movement? What about returning hundreds of thousands of acres of the Great Plains to its wild state, buffalo roaming again. Would you be in favor of that? And that we all get to go hunting more often and shoot our own meat more?

You'd be in favor of that? Well, there's more places in America where nobody is than there are places where somebody is. And people are kind of voting for their feet. They're kind of voting back into urban, more dense locations than they were before. I mean, some people aren't, but there's like a whole lot of people there. And, you know, it's natural.

I mean, the human beings have naturally gravitated towards communities that are denser than communities that aren't. There are always people who don't want to live in that kind of environment. And there's plenty of room in America for everyone. I mean, there's plenty of room in America for all that and the bison. The problem is really that

the federal government owns all that land. I mean, the federal government is the largest landholder in the country. So if they wanted to do it, they should do it. They are trying to reintroduce wolves into western Colorado. So because the wolf has sort of disappeared, and the idea is that if you could have wolves in western Colorado, then there would be sort of an unbroken chain of wolves the way they used to be from Canada to Mexico. And the wolf is a really sort of powerful symbol of America and American wilderness and all sorts of things. And it would be great. Why not? And that's the interesting thing is that if you're of a particular mindset, you hate the violence that is wreaked upon animals for our own food.

But on the other hand, introduce the wolves because they'll keep the deer down by ripping their throats out. If nature does it, it's okay. It's just great. Right. And nature is horribly violent and uncaring. It's just a vast machine that's consuming and killing and doing all the rest of it and trying to kill us at the same time. But if you reintroduce the bison, I would like to know exactly how you're going to keep them off farmland. Because if you're a farmer

and all of a sudden you see 500,000 of those guys coming across, I mean, in North Dakota, you can see them coming an awful long way. I can just imagine I-94 backed up for 40 miles because there's a herd moving across and nobody can move. So yeah, we love the idea of the whole unspoiled Great Plains returning again with the bison as it was before, but probably not going to happen until mankind has decided that we've left this planet. the bison will will swarm again when mount rushmore has been eroded down to unreasonable unrecognizable features which probably might be by the end of this podcast if we keep talking so i best wrap up butcher blocks great place butcher box will give you lots of great things to eat. Grove.co, keep your house clean.

And anybody else that I mentioned here that we want to talk about? Guys? Helmsman. That's right. Helmsman. That's right. So the best shave you ever had in your life, go to helmsman.com. And again, it's a Ricochet product, so endorse it. Thank you, everybody, for listening.

Go to iTunes right now promptly. If you're not listening already, give the show 78 stars. We'll be very happy. And that will keep people coming to Ricochet and the more people who come to Ricochet and join Ricochet. Right, Rob? Exactly right. Because you want us to be here to discuss the 2020 election and the 22 and the 24 at infinitum. Thanks, guys.

And we'll see you next week. Next week. Next week Next week fellas Hey pops what's wrong daddy You look like something's bothering you Nothing bothered me honey That a piece of roast beef can't fix up Well I'll tell you one thing pops A man works hard

Then comes on home Expects to find stew with that fine ham bone he opens the door then starts to look in say woman what's this stuff you cooking now that All that meat and no potatoes. I just sing right there like a green tomato. Here I'm waiting, pal, for Tatum. With all that meat and no potatoes. All that meat and no potatoes. All that food to the alligators. Now hold me steady. I'm really ready.

Now all that meat and no potatoes. I don't think that peas are bad. With me most anything goes. Yes, I look in the pot I'm fit to fight Cause, woman, you know that mess just ain't right Oh, that's all All that meat and no potatoes

Just ain't right Like green tomatoes Woman, I'm steaming Yeah, really screaming. All that meat and no pudding. Ricochet. Join the conversation. ¶¶ Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, four Pepsi, two cheap. Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, two Pepsi, one cheap.