The Ricochet Podcast - Crimea River

Episode Date: March 6, 2014

Direct link to MP3 file This week, Troy Senik sits in for the absentee Rob Long as we welcome the always irrepressible James Delingpole, reporting in from this side of the Atlantic on CPAC, Apple, and his imbibing of adult beverages. Then we track down Michael Totten (read his indispensable blog here) for his sophisticated take on what’s happening in Ukraine, Russia, and even Cuba. Also... Source

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mr gorbache, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. Rob Long is off today. Troy Senec is sitting in Rob's chair. Hope he doesn't readjust it. Rob hates when you do that. Guests, well, we've got James Delingpole from CPAC. We've got Michael Totten to talk about the Crimea and Cuba. You crane, I crane,

we all crane for a podcast. There you go again. Yes, welcome to the Ricochet Podcast number 25. I'm sorry. Just my nose there. This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com, the leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment. If you ever laid up with a cold and want something to entertain you,

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of course, that Rob Long hasn't taken all the money out of the Treasury and decamped for parts unknown, leaving us, well, in the able hands of Troy Sinek. Hey, Troy, welcome to the podcast again. Thanks for showing up here. And let me ask you, do you blame Obama a little for what happened in Ukraine, or do you blame him a lot? Apparently conservatives are incapable of not blaming everything on the president and it's preposterous really to assume that there's any blame at all you can lay at the president's feet, right? Well, the only aspect of that criticism from the left that I have a little sympathy for is that, yeah, we can't blame him entirely to be sure.

I mean Barack Obama didn't instill this desire for territorial expansion in Vladimir Putin's mind. But what he did do is make the cost of that aggression very, very low. And the thing that I – has struck me for the past week or so, however long we've been going through this process, is I keep thinking about the 2008 election and both Hillary Clinton and John McCain in the course of that election repeatedly said about President Obama, then Senator Obama, because of his lack of experience. The presidency does not lend itself to learning on the job. And five or six years later, I find myself thinking, no, learning on the job would be an improvement. I mean we're half a decade through.

There is no sign of that. That's true. I mean we're half a decade through. There is no sign of that. What is remarkable to me when you – and you saw this in the reaction that we had to Russia's incursion when you had Secretary Kerry say that this is a 19th century act in the 21st century. And we've had the president and the administration explain earnestly to the Russians that this is not in your interest. I keep thinking about all these initiatives that we had to reset with Russia. We had the new beginnings with the Muslim world and it never seems to have occurred five years later to this administration that maybe the rest of the world, maybe especially hostile regimes, don't define their interests in the same way that we do. Maybe it is more important to Vladimir Putin to reconstitute as much of the old Soviet Union as he can than it is to host the G8 summit.

Maybe that's not crazy. Just maybe. Just maybe. Just maybe you'd think they'd cracked a book or two on Russian history, for goodness sake. Astounding. Yes. If you want us to go on about Russia and Ukraine, James, beginning now, I'm happy to start.

I do. I do. But you mentioned history. What use is history really when we're transforming fundamentally the world as we know it? We're creating a new world in which these old petty ideas of self-interest – I just – I smile just to say the words – are obviously swept aside by a desire for a transnational set of principles and agreements that can tackle the important issues. Like the warming of the planet. Like defining gender roles in new ways for people in Borneo who otherwise might be hurt by their culture standards. It seems to be mystifying sometimes to the president that what you call history, Peter, and what others may call human nature,

troublesomely reasserts itself as if it's some sort of weed that they can't quite find the herbicide to get rid of, as if their plans toward moving us all towards this post-humanist world – I'm sure I'm using the term wrong – are thwarted by reality. You were going to say, Peter. How would you look at the president's reaction? It is – Ronald Reagan was accused over and over and over again of being the most ideological president we'd had in perhaps 80 years, perhaps longer, perhaps ever. And yet if you contrast Ronald Reagan with Barack Obama, what you see during the Reagan administration is a man behaving as he does in the world because he really is steeped.

He's not somebody who wrote books or would have felt at home in the faculty lounge at Yale, for example, but Ronald Reagan really was an intellectual in the sense that he'd read books all his life, written constantly, took ideas seriously, and was willing to learn from experience, from what he saw around him. In Hollywood in the 1940s, he was a perfectly standard liberal Democrat. And even as Hollywood moves to the left, if he were going to be impressed by fashion or ideology, he'd have moved left beginning in the 50s and 60s, not to the right. He's thinking and learning. By contrast, just as Troy pointed out, the Obama administration, Obama prides himself as we saw in that endless profile of him by David Remnick in The New Yorker, what, two issues ago?

Not quite a month ago now. Obama prides himself on being the realist, on understanding nuance and complexity. The truth is his insistence on placing his ideology as a kind of totally – as an overlay on reality and seeing the – forcing reality to conform to what he expects it to conform to in his thinking at least. He is just infinitely more ideological than Ronald Reagan ever was. Am I not correct, Troy? I think I'm correct. No, I agree with you on that point. And I think the thing that's interesting about it is that that ideology or that realism, as he defines it, always coincidentally lays the predicate for inaction.

Remember, this was the situation with Iran in 2009. We didn't get involved because it was more important. I found this astonishing at the time that they went on the record saying this was the reason. We didn't get involved because the president didn't really want to see the regime trustworthy partner to keep the promises that they made about disposing of those weapons. We've done the same thing with Russia, thinking that all these agreements we've made over the past couple of years, the weapons reductions and everything else, would get us down the road to where we needed to be. Now we don't – they've been saying within the last week, well, we want to be careful about what we do here because we need Russia's help when it comes to Syria and when it comes to Iran. And this is always justified as, well, we're playing the long game, sort of condescendingly. You people don't understand.

We're playing the long game sort of condescendingly. You people don't understand. We're playing the long game. And the question at a certain point becomes, well, how long exactly? I mean at a certain point – at a certain point, if you play possum long enough, it becomes indistinguishable from just actually being dead. And that's sort of where we are. You asked James a moment ago, what use would history be? I think I would offer two points right now that if the administration had just spent a few times reading a few hours reading popular histories of Russia, they'd know the following two things. and recurrent theme, which means that it is the powerful default position, is a strong man at the center with a nobility. Let's call it a nobility. It takes different forms at different points.

A nobility that he buys off, cows, dominates, and everyone else reduced to the status more or less of peasant. And that has been in place for a thousand years, which means that Vladimir Putin isn't some kind of innovator in Russian history. He's simply snapping the country back to the overwhelming default position that Russian history presents. And what that means, if you know that that is the default position, you know you've got to watch them carefully. If they're going to work against their default position, you know you've got to watch them carefully. If they're going to work against their default position, if they're going to begin to become a liberal democracy, it is extremely hard work.

And you've got to watch them, help them, stand up to them when they show bad tendencies. That's one obvious lesson from history. The other is that the Crimea has mattered to Russia for 300 years, and they were not going to let it go easily. That you would have known. The Fort of Sevastopol captured in 1683. Finally, Russia has an ice-free port. It's been important to Russia and then the Soviet Union since 1683. the port of Sevastopol on the Crimea. That was going to be a flashpoint sooner or later. Andy, you'd have known that if you knew anything about Russian history.

There, two useful lessons from history. Well, again, you're talking about history as if it matters. What matters at this point is the ability of Obama to affect change in Russia so that the Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox, both endorse gay weddings. That's the end game. That's the important thing that will bring freedom to a people and change things. All of the stuff about ports and ships and the rest of it is an annoyance to people who really know what matters in the world. People like James Dellingpole, for example. Now, you know him well.

He's the host of Radio Free Dellingpole and now the editor of Bright Bart London. But, of course, he will always call Ricochet home. And we believe now that he is speaking to us from not Blighty itself, but from our own shores through a clangorous hangover. And we welcome him back to the show. James, are you there? My hangover actually has almost gone, I'm pleased to say, because it was biblical yesterday. I went drinking with, weirdly enough,

the British Secretary of State for Education was over in D.C., so I got taken out for a dinner with some other distinguished people. I mean, I don't include myself in that number. And the booze was really good, and it was just too abundant, and I was just, I was finished. Well, tell us more about this British Undersecretary for Education and whatnot. What is this person doing? Michael Gove.

Okay. Michael Gove, he's one of the best people in the British government. It's a weird situation. He's a close friend of mine. He is very, very close to David Cameron, who, of course, I totally despise for being a pussy liberal, conservative and name- only squish sellout and michael gove is very good at playing playing the both of us he's law to camera and yet he's law to me um and i'm kind of

gove's political conscience in that i remind him that at heart he's actually a conservative not a kind of liberal squish and i tease him about this occasionally. And, of course, he teases me occasionally for being a wild-eyed right-wing loon. What is the future of education in England? Do they have any movements underfoot as they do in America to empower charter schools to try to bring? Yeah. Your problems are our problems and your solutions are our problems. I think that the backlash against the terrible tradition, the progressive tradition of Dewey and so on, is that the battle is being won.

I think that people are finally pushing back against these, against all the progressives who have infiltrated the education system and poisoned it and ruined the lives, particularly the poor people. I mean, that's the great thing. There is a fantastic conservative case for education, which simultaneously looks after the weakest in society. So you can be a right-wing bastard and yet be a caring right-wing bastard because what you're trying to do is restore rigor and quality into the education and discipline.

You're not trying to apologize for people's background. You're trying to give them a start, trying to give them a leg up. This is true in Britain and it's true in America. And I think as long as you can persuade the progressives about this, you know, the Dems and the liberals, you're on to a winner because you get kind of cross-party support

for your agenda. Your problem, of course, is that if England does manage to fix its educational system and they come to America to tell us what you've done, you will have to begin everything by saying, of course, in England, we call private school public school and public school is private school and people's eyes will cross and never hear a word that you're going to say. I believe Peter now has a query. Robinson here. Listen, James, I was shaken just nine hours or so ago because my wife had recorded, I don't know when, a few weeks ago on PBS.

She had recorded the 50th anniversary performance, celebration performance at the National Theatre in London. And I sat there and saw archival film footage and reenactments of 50 years of really good theater. Wonderful acting, brilliant staging, play after play from Shakespeare to American musicals, all just brilliantly done. And I found myself thinking, oh my goodness, we have nothing like that here. Point one. Point two, of course, the reason they have it there is that the National Theatre is a national theatre. It receives government support. Point three, however, if you grant that the National Theatre is a good thing, you've just granted that socialism is a good thing. Point four, maybe socialism is a good thing. Point five, I must ask James Dellingpole.

I can see why these things would make me feel very uncomfortable. I think it is true that the National Theatre, like the Royal Shakespeare Company, does receive state subsidy. And gosh, maybe that is an argument for socialism. I'm not going to say that. But I think what is interesting is that many of the productions that start out, the quality productions that start out in the National Theatre and the RSC, tend to transfer to the commercial theatre, to the West End, where they tend to make a fortune. I'll give you one example of this. Did you know that Les Miserables started out as an experiment at the Royal Shakespeare Company as a state-subsidized experiment?

One of the world's most successful shows. I imagine that that would have brought in a lot of money to the RSC. It would have got production credits or whatever. I don't know how this thing works. So, yeah. Well, maybe it's just that we in Britain, we did kind of invent, invent drama, didn't we? Maybe it's just that we're the best. And that's why the National Theatre is good. Not because, because it's been sucking on the

teeth of big government. Thank you, James. I feel better now. Well, you could make the same point about the, you could make the same point about the BBC. BBC Radio, leaving aside the world, the news service, which I listen to more than I should. The dramatic offerings of BBC Radio can be extraordinary. I mean, really, really good. And it's a genre of art. You said BBC Radio? Yes. You're not serious. If I'm driving along in my car and I hear an afternoon play, I switch off instantly. BBC drama is suckspill. Maybe on the radio,

occasionally on Radio 3, which is kind of the highbrow channel, you might, if you're driving along at about 11 o'clock at night, you might get something pretty erudite. But the rest of it, it might as well have been written by sort of fifth form students.

If you want to talk about some of the modern offerings, perhaps, where they toss an idea from the headlines to a writer and they've got 15 minutes to come up with a play. Some of that stuff, yes, is Jujun, but the adaptations that they've done of good literature. They did a series of James... They did a James M. Cain series,

which was just spectacularly good. And the documentary... I don't know if three or four is documentaries, but the documentaries they produce... Again, these are things America could do. We've decided not to do them, but that's maybe a whole other show, and I believe that Troy wants to ask you about the glories that are CPAC.

Yeah, James, it's Troy Sennett. Listen, I am so loving CPAC. I've only been here a few hours, but the thing is, it's one of the only places in the world where I don't feel like a freak. People come up to me and they look at my name tag and they smile at me. They go, Breitbart. They go, oh, that's really good. That's a really cool thing. Not an evil thing. I mean anywhere else in the world, Breitbart is like wearing a badge saying I am in the service of Satan. But here, it's a badge of honor. This is the vast right-wing conspiracy, and it's really cool.

James, what's the contrast when you're with a gathering of American conservatives versus being with a group of British conservatives? Speaker 2 Yeah. The thing I find weirdest about the American right is this division you have between libertarians like me, um, sort of straight conservatives and, uh, and so-cons, um, I think that term so-cons. Is that the term, so-cons? Yes. Social conservatives. Social conservatives, yes.

Yeah. And I find it's great for your... Everyone sort of in that conversation is assessing each other on what their position is on abortion and on all the other hot-button issues. And part of me feels, why can't we all get along? It's weird that libertarians are viewed as kind of freaky by some conservatives, whereas I think that I believe in small government.

And shouldn't all conservatives believe in small government? Isn't that the essence of conservatism? And if it's not, then what kind of conservative are you? The problem, James, may be that you're a long-haired, dope-smoking hippie weirdo, if I'm to believe your tweets now. I think you had something the other day. I am, yeah. I know, I think you had something the other day.

Go on. Carry on. Well, I'm slightly disturbed. When I mentioned that I prefer dope to booze to half conservative America, half of conservative America makes a sort of cross sign at me. Like, what is wrong with smoking weed? Since when was George Washington smoking weed? And even if he didn't, even if he didn't, what is wrong with everyone being allowed to choose their own poison?

I'm always heartened when you say that because it's an interesting argument. And I like to know that if somebody I'm arguing with is going to be smoking weed as opposed to having a drink first because it means I'll win. Yeah, you will. Same with bridge. I play bridge when I'm stoned. And people who aren't stoned, they tend to beat me. It's the difference between something that makes you antisocial and a little bit inert and blurry, shall we say, and something that sharpens you temporarily before it completely drowns you in a bathtub of vodka,

which brings us back to Russia, I guess. You are also on record as saying that we need a new Crimean War, perhaps with people with port and sherry in their hands on one side and people with rotgut, vodka, and antifreeze on the other. Explain to us why we need this new war and whether or not people at CPAC are yet talking about the Ukraine situation. I would imagine that there are lots of people at CPAC who see this as a kind of a new Cold War with Russia.

I don't see this at all. I don't think Russia represents any kind of problem. I grew up in, I remember as a child in the 80s, we're talking about the Red Dawn era. If you were a child in the early 1980s, you genuinely believe that when you became an adult, you would probably be called up to fight in a war of civilizational

war against the Soviets. And that the Soviet tanks were going to come rolling across Lunenburg Heath, and your mother and your sister were going to get raped by the advancing Soviet troops, and you were going to die fighting this evil menace. I do not look, when I look at Putin, I see a bad guy. I mean,

you know, a sort of routinely, a routine dictator, but he's not Adolf Hitler. He is not Stalin. I am not threatened by Russia in the slightest. And frankly, the Ukraine can go and keep itself. It's a basket case. I do not care. And if that makes me against the current of what happens in CPEC. Well, that shows how intelligent I am. I do not want a war with Russia. I was joking about the Crimean War. Of course, the Crimean War was one of the British Empire's biggest disasters. Yeah.

James, Peter here. What about the argument? I have to say I tend in your direction on Ukraine and Crimea and Russia. All right. We can sort that out some other to our own satisfaction some other day. But what about the argument that wait just a moment? If we permit Putin or Russia, I mean, we're talking about 10 or 15 years. Putin may eventually have a successor. But if we permit them to intervene, they move troops across an international border into Ukraine on the pretext that they they have established a precedent that would enable them to move in for the very same reason into Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania. Would you care about that? Are the Russian nationals in Estonia? Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Lots of Russian speakers.

I think that I think that the response of the West will be very, very different if they moved into the Baltic states, which after all are part of the European Union, apart from everything else. More is the pity. I mean, I went to Estonia last year on a Hillsdale cruise. And I have to say, I felt very sorry for the Estonians who are about as free market as you can get, but they've been subsumed by the evil empire of the European Union. That's by the by. Some of the comments I get on my

blogs that say things like, well, you say that about Mr. Putin, clearly you've forgotten what happened in the Sudetenland in the 1930s. That's the argument, right. Yeah, I just don't buy this argument. Okay, those who ignore lessons of history are condemned to repeat them, but that does not always apply.

The Russians moving into Ukraine is nothing like the Zatenland, not least because Putin has not written a book called Mein Kampf, declaring his intention of subverting, of overwhelming the Slavic intermention and wiping out the Jewish race. There's an order of difference between Hitler's territorial ambitions and Putin's not unreasonable ambitions, nationalistic ambitions, to sort of gain himself some kind of Russian sphere of influence. And I don't blame him for that. I think we always see things from a kind of a western sort of Cold War

perspective. Actually I speak to Russians about this and I don't really, they don't like Putin necessarily but I think we know that they're a proud people and why shouldn't they keep the countries nearby on the side maybe because maybe because they're free nations with their own identity and russia's

yes yes yes it is a basket it is a basket case but i'm not that does that doesn't mean that it's not a nation with its own culture, its own language, its own history, and its own traditions. It depends on which one, but east or the west. Yeah. Yes, it does indeed. But it is a country with borders, a sovereign nation, so for 22 years or so. I actually believe that the presence of a Russian culture in the east means that Putin is entitled to go and take it. No. I understand saying that you can say you understand his reasoning.

I do. I just don't find it admirable, and I don't find it right. Okay. I don't find it admirable. Can I ask you a question then? Sure. What are you going to do about it? Well, that's the question.

What I would do would make it very difficult in the international world for Putin to pretend that he is a member in standing with the rest of the nations that don't do this sort of thing. And that means all the little niceties about being invited to the great places and the nice palaces with the thick paper and the good China. No, he doesn't get to come anymore. And screw him in the banks so that some of those ill-gotten $60 to $70 billion he's siphoned off from the Russian government and secreted away, make it disappear. There's banking things that we can do. Make it unpleasant for him and his immediate surroundings.

James and Troy, this is Peter who's falling under the influence of James alarmingly quickly. I mean James Dellingpole alarmingly quickly and you're going to have to – so stop me. But the argument would run as follows. Ukraine has been a country with its own independence and borders just as James said for a total of about 22 years. Go beyond that and it's extremely complicated. It's a grand – it's effectively a state within the Soviet Union. Before that, it's a grand duchy. It's a this.

It's a complicated history. But we do know a couple of things that since 1683, since conquering, since establishing the fort of Sebastopol, the Crimea has been vital to Russia and substantially Russian, this little peninsula that juts down into the Black Sea. So suppose we're saying, Troy, that what we've got here is effectively, it's jostling, it's unpleasant, it's ugly. Even in the Crimea, which is majority Russian speaking, there are plenty of Ukrainian speakers over in the eastern bit of Ukraine, Donetsk and so forth. Again, it's Ukrainian in many ways, but it seems to be dominantly Russian speaking. Let's not forget that I can't pronounce his name. Yakunovich, the president who was overthrown, was in fact a democratic Yanukovych.

Thank you. He was democratically elected with support of people in the eastern bit of Ukraine. And so if four or five years from now, what's happened is that Ukraine has effectively divided from a bit in the east, which is unmistakably, unambiguously within the Russian sphere of influence, and however, a bit in the west centered on Kiev, which is pro-European, pro-free market. What would be so terrible about that, Troy? Oh, this is a question for me. Yeah. Yeah, Troy. No, well, that's a situation – I mean look, if you're just talking about that region, I mean what's the most objectionable is the way that this is happening. But you can understand that there's a certain logic to the way that it plays out because of those cultural ties.

I don't think that's the big concern. In fact, in some ways it makes – if you get Ukraine divided up by that, and this is something we should ask Michael Totten about when he's on next because he's written about this. In some way, it makes Ukraine more coherent if at that were involved in this and how easy it is because it's not the first time this has happened. I was in the West could presage. But having said that, I want to – we can't have James on without asking him at least one question about the green movement, about environmentalism. We cannot let him go without asking him about – I'm going to talk to you about Chevron. Okay. Well, I want to ask –

Oh, glorious. This is a glorious tale. Please sing it. Chevron. I've just written a piece called Chevron versus Big Green. Capitalism finally grows a pair. Because it's true i mean for the last 20 30 years the oil industry has been surrendering it's been paying dame gelt to the dame and the dame gelt the dame has been coming back for more

finally big oil stood up for itself and stood up for capitalism it's fantastic oh no it's extraordinary the junk science the lies, the manipulation of the courts, the venue shopping, the Chevron tale is a thing of beauty. And you're right. They did grow up here and they did so in their GMO and they weren't organic. I mean, it was a marvelous tale. We have to ask you, though, before you go, whether or not you're selling all of your Apple stock because, as we understand it now, the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, and I'm a big Apple fan, has said essentially, if you don't believe in global warming, don't buy our stuff. I mean, it really almost came down to that, didn't it? I could probably give you like a terrible confession.

Yes. Even though I totally despise Apple, I think they are the very model of liberal evil in Excelsis. I mean, the fact that they recruited Lisa Jackson earlier this year, Lisa Jackson of the EPA to join their senior staff, that is enough for Apple to deserve never to have another customer of conservative persuasion again.

However, a friend of mine has got one of those, what are they called, iBook minis? Are they the small iPad minis? Yes. I'm afraid I cut at one. And I'm afraid you can call me a hypocrite if you like, but that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get one while I'm in the States because they're cheaper over here. Bravo. You'll enjoy it a great deal.

And write many screeds against those idiots on it, if you you will you'll find it's a great thing for consuming and producing and james i will read those pieces at ricochet we'll see you of course uh around various venues and hear you on your podcast and we thank you again for showing up for this the ricochet podcast give our regards to those at cpac james delingpole ladies and gentlemen you know the one thing we didn't get to talk about, he was talking about the old days of thinking that we were all going to go up in a nuclear holocaust. I remember that because I was in my 20s

and the 80s at that time as well. And I remember that there was always those hopeful signs. John Kerry mentioned the other day that, for the second time, that this is not Rocky IV. He used that line before when he was talking in the conventions about Mitt Romney, got his foreign policy from Rocky IV, hardy, hard, hard.

And then last week he said that this is not Rocky IV. Apparently the only prison through popular culture prison through which John Kerry sees a Russia-United States conflict is Rocky IV, which ended, if you'll recall, spoiler, with one of those signs that maybe we won't have a war after all. Maybe we'll find common ground because, look, Gorbachev is standing and clapping for Rocky. He's so impressed. And I remember that and thinking, well, it's not really Gorbachev, but it's a bald Russian with a mark on his head, a big birthmark.

Now, they asked Gorbachev why he didn't take that birthmark off. And he said essentially that it would have been an act of vanity and he wanted to show that he was not that sort of fellow, which is brave. Because when you're in the communist tyranny business, the idea that you might be run out of town and be hiding in a shed somewhere, you wouldn't want a very conspicuous big red birthmark on your head. But there he had it. If you're going to be a criminal, don't have a distinguishing mark like that. I was thinking about that when listening to Inspector Van Viteren's mystery Woman with Birthmark, because

I'm fascinated by detective stories in other countries, and this is one of those. And you know, if you want to hear it, free at audible.com, you can hear the entire Inspector Van Viteren mystery, or the four books before it, or the four books before it or the four books after it and learn about Swedish detective novel stories and gain a knowledge that you never had before. It's worth it.

It's free. But after that, whichever you pay, it's worth it. Audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet. Audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet is where you go to get your free 30-day trial and your free audio book. And, of course, this has the WhisperSync technology, which means you can pause it on one device and pick it up on another. Ha! Wait until Dellingpole gets used to listening to something on that iPad of his and then realizes that he can pick it up again on his phone. He'll be sold shoveling money into the maw of those godless environmentalists. Gentlemen, if you were to suggest a book, what might it be? The Death of a President by William Manchester, which I'm reading now in delayed response

to the 50th anniversary of the – it's a wonderful book in that it goes into the detail of those few days in Dallas and then back in Washington planning the funeral and so forth. It explains a lot of which I myself was only dimly aware. The fight between the Kennedys and the Johnsons, why did – Johnson people, why did they hate each other so much immediately after the president was shot? It begins to explain some of that. It's also very interesting in that you can see right there, right from the get-go, what this – the liberals immediately said in effect that

it was right-wing Americans who were one way or another responsible for the death of John Kennedy. It's nonsense. Manchester tries very, very, very hard to tie Lee Harvey Oswald to Dallas culture, Dallas right-wing culture, to suggest that in some way or other, he was affected by the John. And of course, so what you have in The Death of a President is the best shot the liberals can take at making this argument, and it doesn't stand up. Manchester fails to tie Lee Harvey Oswald to the American right-wing. Of course, Lee Harvey Oswald spent two and a half years in the Soviet Union and only a couple of months in Dal. Anyway, fascinating book both for what it says and for what it says about events that would follow in the Democratic Party.

Interesting. Troy, give us a recommendation that says something about – well, about events in Troy. I'm still sort of basking in the beauty of that segue, James. It's like fractal geometry. Just wait to see the shape emerge. My recommendation actually kind of following on to what Peter was saying in the first segment about the importance of history and with these pronouncements that everything that's happened in the last week is a violation of all the precepts of the 21st century for a little perspective, I would recommend – I think the finest sort of general history that's accessible to a popular audience on the 20th century, which is Paul Johnson's Modern Times. Oh, great book. Our membership is – everybody's intellectual interests are so wide that inevitably when that happens, the more things you're interested in, the less time you have to focus on any one. And if you want a single volume to understand this era, I think Modern Times is as good as it gets. And also if you enjoy that, I would say go read History of the American People, which is Paul Johnson's book on American history.

You cannot go wrong with either one of those. And with Modern Times, there's a lot of valuable perspective on everything that happened with Russia and the Soviet Union in the 20th century as well. So Modern Times by Paul Johnson would be my recommendation. Excellent. Well, you know, there are other books to talk about, and I would love to wander off into that topic right now. But why, when we have an author and somebody who's got actual experience with the places we've been talking about. We welcome back to the podcast Michael

Totten and I wish that we were talking about Cuba, how the revolution has thrown off the Castro's and we're going to be revisiting Havana and rebuilding the city because I loved your dispatches from Cuba. But here we are now talking about Russia and the Crimea and welcome to the podcast, Michael. Tell us about your experience in 2009 when you were there. Crimea, I mean. Well, yeah, I went to Crimea in 2009 with a friend of mine, and I wasn't actually planning to go there. The only reason I went there was because he and I went into Ukraine

because we wanted to visit Chernobyl. And for whatever reason, the Ukrainian authorities weren't letting anybody enter Chernobyl that week. Excuse me, half your story started out this way. I didn't intend to go to Iraq. I didn't mean to go to Kurdistan with a deathly flu. I didn't mean to go to Beirut during the shelling, but carry on. Yeah, that's my life abroad sometimes.

So we went down to Crimea unplanned. So I didn't interview anybody down there. I just went down and checked it out. I didn't really intend to write about it. So I wasn't doing formal journalism. And I was only there for a couple of days. So all I can really give you are impressions. I can't give you anything incisive that I learned while I was in Crimea.

But I will say this about it it's one of the nicer places in ukraine it's fairly well developed it's not impoverished like a lot of the rest of the country is although kiev is not impoverished either but most of the most of the country is very very rust belt let's just put it that way it's a very nice diplomatic way of describing most of ukraine is Belt, and Crimea is not. It's on the Black Sea. It's got a Mediterranean climate. It looks and feels very Russian, and it is somewhat Russian. I think it's something like 58% of the people who live there are ethnic Russians, but it's high-functioning. The friend of mine who went with me – I've never been to Russia proper, but he has, and he described Crimea as the Russia that works.

He's not describing it that way today. Crimea was fine a week ago, but now it's a little more like Russia back home if you know what I mean. So, Michael, what was your response when Putin effectively grabbed Crimea, whatever it's been now, five or six days ago, did you immediately rise up in outrage and say, this must not stand? Or did you say, oh, OK, here we have more of the usual jostling within the old Soviet Union? Yeah, the second response was more mine. I didn't rise up in anger right away.

And I'm still not necessarily, mostly because I saw it coming. I mean it was kind of obvious. I mean if you know how to read a geopolitical board. By the way, this sets you apart from the president of the United States, but go ahead. Well, apparently – I mean I wrote about this in my book, Where the West Ends, and I recently published an excerpt that I had written years ago about Crimea. And I had said, and I was apparently wrong, that everybody knew that Crimea might one day be part of Russia again. Well, apparently not everybody knew that. But it seemed to me that everybody knew that. But then again, I had been around the Black Sea in various countries, and everybody in that region knew

that this might happen. And so I guess I just sort of picked it up from them. But not everybody stateside saw it coming. But I did see it coming years ago, so when it happened, I just sort of groaned and thought, yeah, well, okay. So it finally happened. And personally, I wouldn't be upset if Crimea does rejoin Russia, but not this way. I mean if they want to have a referendum on their status, that's reasonable, but not under Russian military occupation. That's not a reasonable way to go about it. I mean, is this vote going to be free and fair? Who's going to believe that a vote on Crimean status is going to be free and fair when Russia just invaded it? So, Michael, if the outcome, okay, you're making

the point, I think you're on Troy's side. Troy is going to get in here in a moment. We've been talking about this so far on the podcast. If the outcome a decade from now is that the Crimea and the regions of Ukraine on the Dnieper – I can't say that without starting to sneeze. The Dnieper, Donetsk and so forth. Effectively the bits where there's a large Russian speaking very close to let's say a plurality become Russian and eastern Ukraine centered on Kiev, the really thoroughly Ukrainian bit where people do speak Ukrainian and think of themselves as historically, culturally, ethnically different from the Russians. If that becomes pro-European, that's an OK outcome, right? I think so. I mean look, most of Ukraine is ethnically Ukrainian even though they don't all speak the Ukrainian language. I don't remember what the exact number is.

It's less than 20 percent of the country is Russian ethnically. Right. regions just because the country would be automatically, as a simple matter of math, more pro-European because most of the anti-European sentiment comes from the Russians. Right. And it would be more democratic and more cohesive. It would be a less divisive place. It would make more sense as a nation state. So it would be on a larger scale.

Wait, wait, wait. Would we feel good about ceding the lower fourth of California back to Mexico? No. If it was shown that most of them were ethnically Mexican and really, you know, California would be better off if we just shuffled off the troublesome 20 percent. Well, now I feel terrible saying it with what you bring up, this analogy. I'm not sure how well the analogy works exactly. I'm just throwing it out there to be mean. Go on. I'll give you the opposite analogy and then we'll let you sort it out, Michael. Czechoslovakia broke into two.

The Slovaks didn't want to be pro – Slovaks did not want to embrace the market. The Czechs wanted to move faster. The Czechs and Slovaks both thought they were right. They were both willing to break into two and what happened was that the Czech Republic was able to move faster, set an example for Slovakia, and probably you'd have to say both sides are better off because they broke and the Czech Republic was just able to move faster. There's the opposite analogy. Yes, and they did it peacefully and they weren't – neither side was strong-armed in doing it by foreigners. They both went their own ways and they're both fine today. I mean I think that people should have the right to – nations should have the right to determine their own affairs.

And if Crimea really doesn't want to be part of Ukraine, fine. I don't think it should be under the boot heel of Kiev, but I also don't think it should be under the boot heel of Moscow, which it is right now. Well, go on, Troy. Michael, this is Troy. How much concern or how seriously, I should say, do you take the concerns that Putin could go beyond Crimea? I mean what do you think are the circumstances that could lead that to happen? Well, yeah, I don't know. I don't think that's going to be as likely. But who knows? I mean look, seeing Putin taking Crimea was not – that was not difficult to foresee.

It is difficult to see beyond this because – I mean look, I don't think it would be rational for him to take any more. I mean he could take the eastern part of Ukraine also as well as the southern part. I don't know how good it would do him. I mean this is a backwards poor part of the country, and he's certainly not going to get any money out of it. It's going to be a financial sinkhole for him if he takes it. And he's not going to get anything out of it. I mean he's not going to get any more leverage over Kiev than he is already getting by taking Crimea. So I think it's unlikely but possible, and taking Kiev would just be a ridiculous headache for him. I think that he would get violent resistance if he tried to take Kiev.

So James and Troy, you have to fight back because Michael and I have now sketched out a heretical case for lying back and doing nothing. I'm just – I'm going to ask this question. The situation where Russia gets to just have Crimea in abrogation of the treaty that was supposed to run to 2046. And then we peel off the other 20 percent, which gets folded into Russia. Essentially, the country is being partitioned into three parts. Does that remind anybody of Ronald Reagan or Joe Biden? Is a Reaganist response to acquiesce to that? Well, yeah, I think he would.

I think he probably would, too. I mean, it doesn't sound Reagan-esque, but I think he probably would. I mean, what are we going to do? We're not going to go to Aurora, Russia, or Kribea. No, no, no, no. Here's another. Hold on a second. Go ahead.

Because, Peter, you're talking about lying back and thinking of England, et cetera, et cetera. Yes, it may not be Reagan-esque to acquiesce to that. But do you think that we would have this supinity, shall we say, in the rhetoric from Washington and the steepled fingers and the wise gaze and the tempered minds that we hear? No. that we hear? Or would there be spine shown at least in public to draw a line between the action of this government and the actions of free people in the West? I mean, this seems to be an illustrative moment to be able to show what you stand for, as opposed to standing for the eventual decisions of the international community that have nothing in common with each other and nothing except their own self-interest

masked with airy words. That's what I would say. I don't know. I'm a little protective of the Ukraine when I hear people just sort of sit back and carve it up. It gets my dander up. But that, again, is where I'm coming from. So perhaps to –

But in other words, where I'm with you, James, entirely is that Reagan would have pointed out that the way you sort out matters. He would have pointed out he would have given a lovely speech, which I can tell you who would have written it. Probably Josh Gilder would probably have written the speech. And I can see how the way the speech meeting would have unfolded. You don't settle things by rolling in the troops. That's that's for sure that on that much we can all agree, and Ronald Reagan would have pronounced that point pretty unequivocally. Satisfied now? I am satisfied. Now, since we've all got hurt feelings over this discussion, I want to find something that we can all agree on and also

praise our guest fulsomely for, because as I mentioned at the start of this, Michael, you went to Cuba and you wrote some extraordinary dispatches about this. I would love to go to Cuba for the architecture which you described, the decay of Havana, the needless destruction of Havana as a perfect symbol of what collectivism and socialism does. Tell us a little bit more about what you found there. Well, the first thing I saw in havana aside from the airport in my hotel room was the restored city center of havana and i was really quite stunned by it um because they did such an exquisite job restoring the old city center and the restoration is in a much larger part of the city than i expected. I mean, I have seen so many pictures of Havana before I went there, and I didn't really hardly see any pictures ever, and I can hardly find any on the internet of the restored part

of the city, which I think is fascinating right there. Nobody photographs it. Why does nobody photograph it? It's beautiful. So I thought my first impression was, gosh, Havana is in better shape than I thought. But it's a bubble. It is a tourist – Havana – the old part of Havana is huge. Not a lot of people live there.

It's maybe 2 million people. It's about the size of my hometown, Portland, Oregon. But the old part of the city is vast. So the fact that they've got this big restored section of town, it's actually maybe only 10% of the city. So when you go beyond that 10% bubble, it looks like a war zone. I mean, it looks like a place that's just been destroyed by a gigantic catastrophe. There's just no bullet holes in the walls because there wasn't any fighting. And it is soul crushing because it is so obviously a place that used to be prosperous. I mean poor countries do not build cities that look like Havana.

I mean this place is a huge, beautiful, architecturally exquisite European city in the Caribbean, and 90% of it is just destroyed. And it was very, very sad and depressing to see. I've seen worse poverty in other parts of the world. I've seen worse poverty in Guatemala. I've seen worse poverty in Iraq. And I've seen worse in Egypt. Worse than Guatemala? I mean –

No, worse in Guatemala. So Guatemala is in worse shape than Cuba economically, most of it. But Cuba is more depressing because it used to be like Eastern Europe. There are reminders everywhere that it used to be a pretty lovely place. So Michael, did you get a chance – so effectively the restored bit of old Havana – and of course old Havana is Havana because under communism, you don't build new cities, right? So the restored bit of old Havana is effectively a tourist attraction. It's a kind of Las Vegas strip.

Is that correct? Yeah, it is kind of fake in some ways. I mean architecturally, there's nothing fake about it. But it feels weird after you first get over what it looks like. It feels strange and it took me a little bit to figure out what exactly feels weird about it. And it's that you can't buy anything. There's nothing for sale really. So what goes on in Old Havana?

There are restaurants and there are cafes and there are bars that nobody is in there except for foreigners because the locals can't afford it. And these restaurants are very nice, and the food is pretty decent. And they do a good job with these establishments. But the thing is if you want to go out to dinner in Havana, it's going to cost – the bill is not huge. It will cost you about $20 including drink and tip per person. The problem is, and the reason no Cubans go there, is that Cuba has a maximum wage of $20 a month. I mean we have a minimum wage in the United States. They have a maximum wage. And their maximum wage is a tiny fraction of our minimum wage.

So nobody can go out to eat unless they get hard currency in the form of remittances from relatives abroad or if they work in the tourist industry and get tips. That's the only way. Or if they're the elite in the government and they get more than $20 a month. Well, it's an egalitarian paradise. Who are these people then who are in the restaurants? Might they be Europeans coming over to just dip a toe in the beauties of Cuba?

There are some of those and there are some Americans too. More Americans than you would think and fewer Europeans than you would think. Most of the tourists were speaking Spanish to each other. So they're from Chile, Argentina, Mexico, places like that. Oh, they're not all Spaniards. They're not Cubans. I don't know. I mean I can't tell the difference between Spanish, Spanish,

and Chilean Spanish, for instance. I see. I know Spanish reasonably well, but I can't just casually overhearing somebody at the next table tell which country they're from. Not usually. Did you get a chance to talk to – so you were there. You watched.

You saw. You wrote. You spoke to people. Did you have the feeling that this is a place that can't wait for the death of Fidel? Oh, God. Because some kind of revolution is in the air. Or did you get the feeling, well, you know, the regime has this pretty well under control. They're raking in enough money off tourism to pay off the people they need to pay off.

What I'm seeing is a glimpse of the future. Well, okay, I talked to lots of people about politics and they were a little more open with me than I thought they would be. I mean, it is a total surveillance police state, but there seems to be just enough latitude that people can complain about the government. But the interesting thing was that, okay,

100 people, I mean 100 a hundred percent without a single exception who offered an opinion on the government had a negative opinion. A hundred percent, but none of them complained about Castro ever. Was that because they were wise or because there's no point or because there's still a remnant respect for the bearded one? I don't know. or because there's no point or because there's still a remnant respect for the bearded one? I don't know. All I can say is that there was no complaints about Fidel or Raul or Che Guevara, zero, but also zero support for the government in general in the abstract.

Yes, well, if they license the image of Che Guevara, that probably is responsible, thanks to T-shirt sales for 20% of government revenues. Michael, thanks a lot for coming on today. We look forward to where you go next. Stay safe and give us the web address for your site where people can read and contribute. Okay, thanks guys. You can get to my site via the World Affairs

website, which is where my blog is hosted. You can also get there by typing my name, micheltotten.com. Yeah, that'll do it. It is the internet. There's this Google thing we've heard all about. Thanks much for being on the show. And as I said, we look forward to your next dispatch. Thank you, Michael.

Thank you. Cuba, you know, it ought to be a lesson standing there to everybody who proposes that sort of government control, of course, for the good of the people, to have its fingers in absolutely everything, to declare what the maximum wage should be, which is, of course, something that you feel progressive elements would love to do. Of course, they would get a little bit more than others, but, you know, all animals are equal, four legs, good, two legs, you know, all of that stuff. The question is where does this stuff come from? It comes from the founders of liberalism as we understand it today, Herbert Crowley, Robert Bourne, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, H.L. Mencken, all the luminaries who came up with the ideas that would lead America and the world into the bright new future.

Well, actually what it was predicated upon was a sort of contempt for average American folk. And that is where The Revolt Against the Masses, How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class, by Fred Siegel, is a book that you need to pick up. It's from Encounter, of course, your place for all such wonderful things. From the Paracys, let me read. Critical of mass democracy and middle-class capitalism, liberals despise the businessman's pursuit of profit as well as the conventional individual's pursuit of pleasure.

And in the 1950s, liberalism expressed itself in the scornful critique of popular culture. It was precisely the success of a recently elevated middle-class culture that frightened the leaders of this new class who took up the priestly task of democratizing America in the name of administering newly developed rights. Does that sound like a clear way of putting what you feel happened to the country in the last half century? If so, well then, this is the book you want. The Revolt Against the Masses, How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class by Fred Siegel. 15% off.

Go to encounterbooks.com and use the coupon code RICOCHET at your checkout. We thank Encounter Books for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now, we're not over. We still have a little closing chat with Peter and Troy. So let us ask here. We've been all over the place. We've been to Cuba. We've been to Ukraine.

We've been here. We've been there. Not a lot domestically. And here we had Michael Totten on and asked him nothing about the Middle East. Bibi came to town and Bibi got his nose bloodied in the press by an interview with the president before he even got here. Thoughts, gentlemen, about the relationship as it stands now between the United States and Israel? Troy? Well, if you're Israel – if you're Bibi Netanyahu, I really don't know what you expect to get out of trips like this other than – I mean you have to do them for protocol's sake.

I have to imagine. I mean we see this a lot with the content of the stuff that Judith Levy writes all the time about Israel. I don't know why – and they don't. If you were Bibi Netanyahu or his government, you would give a second thought at this point to the United States other than probably having to worry what roadblocks are they going to throw up in front of us. I mean it's a terrible position that we put ourselves in relative to them and shameful I think. But that's got to – I mean God bless Bibi Netanyahu because he actually – he came and I think it was the speech at AIPAC that I saw. And he is, by the way, I think amongst heads of government the world over the single most articulate speaker that we have and also probably the single most principled. And it was great, and at least he got that out of the trip. But yeah, if you're Netanyahu, if you're the Israeli government, I mean we're just – we're a thorn in their side at this point. It's a terrible, terrible situation.

We're a thorn in their side and yet I have to believe that we're relying on them. Our intelligence is relying on them day by day and moment by moment, Israel is, as best I can tell, our hope is that Israel has people in place in Iran who are monitoring the nuclear program day by day. So that we're basing our policy. The reason we feel relaxed about – this is the wrong way to put it, but that's certainly the way Obama seems to be, pretty relaxed about Iran. We can trust them. We've, we've, we've cut a deal with them. I have to believe, at least I hope that we're basing that on Israeli intelligence. Israel is just critical to us, to the West at this moment. And yet the, the coolness, if not implicit hostility with which Netanyahu and Israel itself is being treated by this administration strikes me as just shocking. The other thing that's important to grasp about Israel, I mean, during the Reagan years, we all stood up for Israel.

We believed it. But Israel was essentially still a socialist state. And those days where the founding fathers, so to speak, of Israel were all socialists and kids were still being raised on kibbutzim. Those days are just gone. Israel now has a really happening economy. I'm conscious of that because venture capitalists here in Silicon Valley are flying back and forth to Israel all the time, looking for engineers, making investments. Arthur Herman on this podcast last week pointed out that Israel has now discovered and is on the verge of developing immense natural gas reserves just off the coast of Israel. And by fracking, Israel could become an important source of natural gas for Europe, for the Middle East. It's a vital country.

It's on our side. We rely on them and we give them the back of our hand. It's just – That's right. By fracking, they become even more evil to the left than they are now. It's one thing for them – Of course. I overlooked that. You're right. Of course. For the occupiers of Palestine to then start fracking, it just compounds the magnitude of their evil.

So, yeah, it's a marvelous thing to see happen because the more you can wean Europe off of Russian gas, the more you can cut out the power that Russia has. You're right. We ought to be much more close to them. That would go against what I believe is the president's inclination to regard them as a vestige of colonialism, as an occupying power, as a nation that dares to pursue self-interest, which he seems to think is a sign of a bad actor in the first place. But you're right, Peter. He's going to find that they come in quite handy. What else is new? About the president, we have approval ratings at record lows. And how do you solve that?

How do you solve a problem like the midterms to use a to sing a sound of music? Well, of course, you wave the wand again and you make sure that nobody has their insurance taken away before the election. Troy, how do you see this? Do you think this is going to not going to work? Not going to work. Not going to work. No. I mean these little incremental adjustments to Obamacare and the messaging that they're trying to push on right now seems to be income inequality, which means minimum wage. There's a war on women. Pay equity. That's part of it. Universal pre-K.

Thank god. I mean these are the issues that every time I see this kind of like fifth and sixth year stuff come up, particularly in a democratic administration, I always find myself thinking – I wrote this at Ricochet about the FDA labeling. Really? This is what you ran to become president of the United States for? And none of this stuff – the problem is in a sort of theoretically neutral environment, yeah, maybe this gets you a little here and there, kind of micro-targeting people on this basis. But the overwhelming trajectory of the country is such that this stuff is not going to cut against what we're seeing with – what we're seeing with Obamacare, what we're seeing with the economy. Those are the two big things and then to a lesser extent this foreign policy stuff, although frankly I think this sort of bothers us on the right more than – it still doesn't have any wider traction I don't think because I think as a whole, the electorate still wants the world to go away. I think even if there's a recognition that, yeah, this is probably not good, what's happening in Ukraine right now.

People can say, well, it doesn't really apply to me. And if nothing is going off in an American city, I don't have to think about it. But on the domestic front, on those big economic issues, unemployment, Obamacare, I mean he can chip away at it all at once. There's just nothing there. If they're going to have something that changes the dynamic before November, it's going to be a surprise and we haven't seen it yet. It would have to – it would have to be an exogenous event because nothing right now is going to do that for them. I really think you're underestimating that FDA labeling thing. I really do. I mean when you consider what they did, not – for $2 billion as I think you pointed out.

Yes. Not only did they increase the typeface size. I mean they must have boosted the caloric content from about a 16-point font to about a 35. Yes. If that doesn't reduce obesity rates almost instantaneously, I don't know what does. But the other thing you have to realize is the majesty and power of the federal government, the wisdom of the Solons up there who adjudicate the smallest matters of our life with their

capable and brilliant brains, finally got around to deciding that a portion of ice cream is a cup and not a half a cup and have doubled the caloric content accordingly. Now, when Barack Obama said that he wanted to fundamentally transform this country, I think that's really what he was talking about, that when he strode into the office the first day, he said, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but five years from now, I'm going to adjust that portion control size to ice cream. And really at this point, he may be sitting back and saying, I've done what I need to do.

What more is there? Peter, does this strike you as a – when Troy mentioned that these things are not happening on our shore. They're happening elsewhere. I agree Americans have isolationist periods, but there's also a cumulative effect I believe that accretes when people are tired of feeling as though America is weak. I mean we're not. That's right. We're still an incredibly powerful country. When people say America is weak, what they're really saying is the administration is weak

and that's what I think people will tire of. Yeah, the administration is weak. The country looks weak abroad and I still believe – we talk all the time about the demographic changes that have taken place since the 80s, since the 70s and 80s and there's – you want to worry about that, concern yourself with that and you want to concern yourself with the breakdown of the family. I still believe that most Americans still somehow grasp that this country is exceptional. Fundamentally, it's a good place. And they're proud of it. And this feeling that the president of the United States, at some basic level, this is what it comes down to. He's ashamed of this country. And most Americans say, that's just not the way I experience this

country myself. You and I, Mr. President, we are out of sync. By the way, quickly, I was in Washington last week. I did an interview with Mike Lee, the and I, Mr. President, we are out of sync. By the way, quickly, I was in Washington last week. I did an interview with Mike Lee, the junior senator from Utah. And for folks on Ricochet who like politics, just a political note. Mike Lee is really smart, articulate. There's Mike Lee. There's Ted Cruz, who, of course, is getting a lot of press in his role as battering ram. But what I became conscious of is that those two represent a rising generation in the United States Senate. There's Barrasso of Wyoming. There are half a dozen others.

And then in November, we're likely to see new faces. Tom Cotton is a member of Congress from Arkansas who's running for the Senate. He's been ahead in five out of the last six polls. Tom Cotton grew up in Arkansas, went to Harvard, and then Harvard Law School. So, of course, he should have gone and become a partner at Cravath in New York or Wilmer Cutler in Washington. And by now, he's in his late 30s. He'd be making a couple million dollars a year. He had his ticket out of Arkansas.

Instead, he joined the United States Army, served two tours in Iraq, and then went back home to Arkansas. This guy is articulate and determined and conservative. There's a fellow running for the Senate in Nebraska called – I think the first name is Ben. It's Ben Sasse. If we win the Senate in November, a new generation, an articulate, principled, unashamed generation will come to the fore in the United States Senate, and it will be a thrilling moment. I believe having spent 90 minutes with Mike Lee, who's just one of a dozen of these fellows who will be in charge in the Senate. They'll be the center of gravity in the Republican caucus.

And if Republicans take control in November, watch out. We're going to have it'll be really refreshing. We'll cut taxes. We'll slash regulation. We will reform the public schools. We will strike and extirpate root and branch federal agencies that don't need to be. We will bring about an era of prosperity that will sweep and wash across the land, and we will have ten fat ears. And at the end of it, inevitably, there will be the turn of the economy as things happen, and there will be a little bit of a crash.

And at that moment, the Democrats will step up and say, see, none of that stuff worked. And then people will give them back to government to ruin for another five years or so. Guys, we've got to go. I have to say, and I'm happy to to say that there's absolutely no Oscar talk whatsoever because I don't care. The only thing that came to my mind when thinking what would I would possibly have to say about the Oscars is when I was growing up, there was such a thing as Reader's Digest condensed books where they took the important books that everybody was reading and squished them

down with some magical compaction algorithms they had. And I thought if Reader's Digest had taken 12 years as a slave, they would have put out eight years perhaps as a slave for a Reader's Digest condensed version book. But maybe not. So we'll do the Oscar talk next year. We want to thank Encounter Books as ever for supporting us. You can go to EncounterBooks.com and enter the coupon code RIPGAUCHET for 15% off Fred Siegel's book about the middle class and the liberal war on it. You can go to AudiblePodcast.com slash RICOCHET as well. AudiblePodcast.com slash RICOCHET and get your free book and your free 30-day subscription. Thanks to Michael Totten. We'll see him around the web and discuss what he talked about in the comments. Next week, I will not be speaking through my nose. I will be better. Rob will be back, although we didn't miss him because, Troy, you were great.

Peter, as ever, thank you, and we'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet.com. Next week, boys. See you, fellas. Come out, come out, no use in hiding. Come now, come now, can you not see? There's no place here, what were you expecting? Room for both, just room for me So you lay your arms down Yes, I will call this home All this. Away, away.

You have been banished. Your land is gone and given to me And here I will call this home What's this you say? You feel right to remain and stay And I will bury you Ricochet. Join the conversation. Just say your father's spirit still lives in this place. I will silence you. Here's the hitch.

Your horse isn't there You miss your boat, it's leaving now And as you go I will spread my wings Yes, I will call this home I have no time to justify