The Ricochet Podcast - Ducks in a Row to Administer the Algae-rithm

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Our hosts are out of sorts as they prep for the Independence Day celebration: Hayward is on the high seas, Lileks is in Boston, and the always-fashionable Cooke is even later than usual. But the gang had to get together once more before the holiday break to make their grumblings known about a less welcome kind of revolutionary spirit...Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ricochet-podcast--5817275/support.

And you're going to appear in all sorts of people's ads, all sorts of Republicans' ads to say, this is what you're going to get if you vote for the Democrats, a communist. You know, I think that is, that framing is one that I've been very proud to be able to say I don't respond to. It's the Rikishay podcast. I'm James Lillings with Charles C.W. Cook and Stephen Hayward. Today we talk about the DSA spreading like Algae through the New York political system. So let's have ourselves a podcast. And as we said in our pledge, you know, we're for.

capitalism, not socialism. We're for safety, not lawlessness. We're proud of America, not ashamed of America. And we need to be promoting those things. And, you know, the far left and the far right, you know, they're all very well organized. But those of us that don't support those far left or far right principles need to do a better job organizing and getting our message out. Welcome, everybody, to the Rickashay podcast, episode number 795. I'm James Lollecks in Boston, of all places. And I'm dealing with a travel microphone for here. your scratches and glitches and thumps and bumps and the rest of it. With me is Stephen Hayward.

And I can tell by the curtain that you are apparently doing some convention somewhere. And on the other side of it is a long group of people waiting to line up for you to autograph, cast, photos. No, actually, I've been flouncing about the Northern Pacific on a cruise ship for the last 10 days. And somewhere now in the wilds of the panhandle of Alaska with possibly sketchy internet. I may glitch out once or twice as we go, but we'll just bear with. with it. Well, that's great because that just shows you the grit and determination that we have in bringing these to you every week. Charles C.W. Cook will be along very shortly. I just want to relate something here as it pertains to American infrastructure. When I was heading into the airport last night, flying in, I looked out my window, filming as I was, because I always film.

I look like a guy who's never taken a plane before because I shoot the takeoffs. I shoot the landings. But, you know, first time? No, actually, my 57th. I just love it. And I edit them all later and set them to music. and I'm looking at the window and I'm thinking that plane is really close to us. That's unusual. But then I thought, oh, come on. If I could see it, the pilot can see it. That's what they do. And then we get to the airport and the pilot hits the togo button and off we go.

I have never experienced anything quite like that. I did not know that there was actually a button on the throttle. The nope button that just takes you right up and out. And so, yeah, when I get down and I talk to my relatives, and said, yeah, an aborted landing. They said, you're going to be on the news. There have been two aborted landing in the last week. And sure enough, a plethora of.

And so when I went to the web to see what people were saying about this, everybody's blaming it on DEI hires and the rest of it, and the Trump having fired everybody, that's why there's the aborted takeoff. It must be nice to have a worldview so absolutely solid, complete, and simple that anything plugs into it. It's just, it's an omni hole that can, reshape to whatever you want to shove into it.

We learned this week that Donald Trump invented algae in warm, fresh water. Who knew? Did he now? Yeah. All right. When it comes to strange blooms choking up the ecosystem, there's the matter of New York politics. People are wondering whether or not what happened in New York is a bellwether for the rest of the country, at least in cities that have the compositional ideological makeup is New York.

But, Stephen, why don't you take a look at who won and why you think they won? and what it portends for the electoral map and America's future. Are we all going DSA now? Is it time to invest money in your red roses? Well, it looks like it. You know, there's lots of survey evidence showing that the, well, really, this is a fruit of Trump derangement syndrome that's now spreading throughout the Democratic Party. And the young voters, especially, according to surveys, are, A, pro-socialism.

We've known this for a while now. And B, they think all the energy is with the so-called insurgents and the, you know, the resistance to Trump and so forth. I'm so old like you, James, and I can remember when we lamented the McGovernization of the Democratic Party in the 70, right? That spawned that great saying of Stan Evans, that that government is best, which McGoverns least. And 72 election, we certainly McGovern at least. But now we're watching what's happening. It's almost a complete takeover of New York by the Democratic Socialists, at least, because all three of these people will be in Congress. Now, here's my radical idea. You know, one of them was this woman, however we say your name.

a graduate of Columbia. She must be so proud, although I guess she's still in the PhD program at age 33. I shouldn't boast too much about that. I was kind of slow myself. But in any case, she doesn't just want, you know, health care for all and things like that. She wants to eradicate Western civilization, her words, abolish the police, abolish prisons. I haven't heard her to claim on the Constitution, but I'll bet she doesn't like it. And that raises to my mind the ultimate mischief. If Speaker Mike Johnson hangs on, in the November election, he might try and round up the Republicans and say, you know, we could vote to refuse to seat all three of these members who are being elected in New York on the grounds that they will not fulfill their oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. That would be a funny moment. It blow things up, of course. But on the other hand, we now have

people who make Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look like the moderate. That's how crazy we're getting. Look moderate, exactly. What's happening, as people are noting, is that completely reliable, good liberal progressive people are being shunted out because they're just simply not rabid enough about a conflict taking place on the other side of the planet, which is the most important thing in the world. If you don't have the bona fides on Gaza, if you haven't put on your pin with the red bloody hands, if you haven't said genocide enough, if you didn't go to a Hamas rally on October 8th and start waving the flag, then you are ideologically suspect. It's just bizarre how this is taken over the party. And it's amazing that it did so, one of the most, I believe, the most Jewish cities in America. If you look at who voted, actually, most of the, I mean, the people who voted them in were the young disaffected professionals who moved to New York, expecting perhaps to make, you know, finance money

and get some finance-adjacent job in the living three-to-a-room in Williamsburg. And in a crappy apartment, the washing machine is downstairs. They have huge college debt, and they wonder exactly why they're not as, rich off is the people that they knew when they were high school and there's resentment and we have to do something because at least stage capitalism sucks and we have to get rid of it. Ergo, I mean, I can see being disaffected at a young age. I was too.

I was in Minnesota so it wasn't so dire. But I would not have thrown my lot in with an organization whose recent platforms includes, well, abolishing the Senate. Right. replacing the president in the Supreme Court, that's kind of an end goal there to have them. So I think elected by the House that remains defund the Department of War, of course, goes without saying. Right. Abolish the carceral state.

They love that word, carceral. They just absolutely love it. Free Palestine goes without saying, and the sanctions on Cuba, because poor Cuba. For Cuba. Abolish ICE. Amn the Steve. I'm reading from their platform here. abolish ice and amnesty for everyone.

Remake elections nationwide. Oh, I love that. That's good and specific. Here's my favorite. Public ownership of major corporations. So I say it's communism and the hell with it. The idea that somehow this is just another flavor of liberalism that we had when we were growing up in government style. No, no.

Right. No, this is a whole different beast. Yeah. They're more than happy to take over the Democratic Party, hollowed out from within, and kick out anybody who was insufficiently pure on any ideas that I want. Go on. Well, one of these candidates did actually blurt out that, well, we're running as Democrats, but we're really socialist.

We just use the Democratic parties a vehicle of convenience. We'll see if party leadership, such as it is, can figure out some way to fight back. Not so far. It is, you know to James, that the people who voted for these candidates, turns out from the exit poll data, mostly white college-educated younger people, turns out, especially the woman who won part of the Bronx, she did very poorly with black and Hispanic voters in that district, which may be a point of a little ray of ironic hope.

Your point about they want to abolish the Senate and do all the other things, I have for a while been pondering the cognitive dissonance of progressives, because on the one hand they say, Trump is a threat to the Constitution. in the next sentence is the same constitution that we hate and want to get rid of. I wish they'd make up their mind, right? Right. They love them one day, they hate it two days later.

Somebody assembled some of the tweets of one of the characters, and I can't remember who it was. It may have been Dary-Eliza Villa Chevalier about how, you know, I couldn't find a napkin, so I rubbed my dirty hands on the American flag, complaining about interracial marriage, basically tweet after tweet after tweet after tweet saying, white people suck, America says, et cetera, et cetera. I haven't seen this kind of naked racialism

embraced by a party for some time, but it's all acceptable because the targets are acceptable and the end goal. Of course, when you say, you know, get rid of the Constitution, get rid of the United States of America, yes, absolutely so, because it is a stain on you, it is a unique stain on humanity, the likes of which we've never seen and hopefully we'll never see again, because once this nexus of capitalism and whiteness is abolished,

there will be nothing but absolute peace, utopia, heaven on earth. Well, no. Question is, does this spread to other places? Minneapolis has its DSA idiot. Somebody was pointing out that Chicago hasn't really had this efflorescence of stupidity yet because they already elected one of these guys. I think it was Jeff Behar from National Review who was saying that the current mayor of Chicago is an utter failure and we'll get up.

And instead of talking about issues that really bothered the city, will lament the transfemmicide, the transacide, the transphemicide, I think was the word that he invented to create a panic for the day. I don't see any way out of this for them, except for complete and total electoral defeat, but that's not going to happen in New York, is it? Seems unlikely to me. I mean, the last time I remember voters in heavily Democratic districts actually rejecting some crazy people or people who were deeply compromised was all the way back in 1994

when Dan Rostenkowski lost his re-election because of his corruption. And then also there was that Representative Jefferson from New Orleans, the one who kept $100,000 in his freezer, speaking of cold cash. And so, but it's rarely done on ideological grounds. Once you get the Democratic nomination

in those districts in New York City, you're as good as in. You don't even need a campaign for November. Right. Well, how does it affect the next presidential election? Whoever comes along is going to have to deal with these people. Do you expect some sort of sister-soldial moment where they're repudiated and being ushered off the stage as being antithetical to the American experience? That's going to take some guts.

And every single possible nasty assinuation and accusation of them will be made. Is it possible in this day and age for somebody to repudiate these people without being excoriated for being racist themselves? and xenophobic and chauvinistic and the rest of it. What would Clinton do? Well, you've got to find a sift to soldier to beat up on, and they're all very popular now in the Democratic Party. You know, Clinton could get away with that because in those days, you still had an awful lot of Democrats,

well, really, the Reagan Democrats, that Clinton got back, and he got them back in part by appealing. But I think all the Reagan Democrats are now long gone. They're all now firmly Republicans, they're Trumpist. And so the Democratic Party base is much further than, was when Clinton was around. Oh, we've temporarily lost, Stephen. Oh, you're getting spotty up there.

Here we complain. It's probably Starlink, right? You're using Starlink? It just worked well for me in the past many times, but not this trip. Well, that may be because Russians are jamming it because they want to take the whole system down with thermonuclear weapons. Let's snap ourselves over and take a look at that before Charlie comes on to the... Well, I see Charlie right now. Oh, you are here.

Oh, I'm enjoying it. Then I would have expected you to pipe in and add your two pence, I'm sorry, to this idea. We're talking, of course, the Corbynization of the Democratic Party, as some of you're calling it, and their absolute dissent into DSA madness and whether or not it will be an electoral winner, I don't think so, but whether or not anybody will have the political stones to be able to disassociate and distance themselves from it come the national election. What say you? Well, I think they're all.

terrified of these DSA types on the Democratic side. The DSA is taking great pleasure in telling the Democrats who don't like them that they are going to use their infrastructure to win elections. I saw this done to James Harrison, who said, you're not Democrats. Stop running as Democrats. No offense, he said. And they said, uh, we're going to do it anyway. And then I saw this happen to near a Tandon who was complaining about it. And some guy said, actually, no, we're going to use your infrastructure, take over, and then execute you all. Maybe not the last bit, but it was implied. So I think that the median reaction to this is going to be of the type that we saw from, say, Chris Murphy,

who just sounds a little bit too much like Ted Cruz back in the Trump nomination process to me, where I think Donald Trump's terrific, but you're running against him. I think he's terrific. Chris Murphy just doesn't want the headache. He doesn't want them to target him. He doesn't want them to go up Metro North into Connecticut and try and take him out. So he's going to smile publicly and fume privately. And I would not be shocked if the movement grew. The chocks are off. The guard. seemed to be off. There was a student group, I think, in Boulder, Colorado University

who was publicly celebrating a man of firebombed a synagogue. The Jewish event, killed an old woman, injured 12 others, and they put together a letter the other day and released it about how they admire his courage. They admire his ability

to sacrifice his liberty and his proximity to empire. One of those just lines that just makes your teeth hurt. You can just, all you can do is just think of Orwell, shaking his hit over the smelly little orthodoxies and these nuts. But they're hard to disassociate from, too, because they, too, have the right stance on the most important matter of the day, which is Palestine, the supposed nation of.

So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it, but like I was saying, the mantle for a Democrat to pick up the old, the opportunity for a Democratic presidential candidate to put themselves in a Clinton mode, however that may be defined as today, is extraordinary. And it just seemed to be at the moment institutionally incapable, resisting the forces that push them leftwards and leftwards and leftwards. Have fun, boys. Good. Enjoy it. This is what you get. Before you got here, though, we were discussing the reflecting pool issue, and I'm sure that you're up on this as well, and Donald Trump's malicious injection of algae into the system. You have no particular thoughts on that. You have no particular worries, or it is not, because I saw a protester the other day standing on

the street corner with a with a placard that referenced the reflecting pool. This is in the suburbs and there was like 50 white women in their 50s and 60 standing on the corner waving anti-Trump signs, and several of them reflected the pool issue, which has great meaning to them. And I couldn't really, frankly, care less. So I guess that's that's not something that's high on your, um. Why am I allowed to hate everyone? You are. Go ahead. Let me tell you how I see this. The Democrats say all the time that Donald Trump is uniquely awful and that they wish he were more like those lovely friendly Republican presidents like George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. You mean the previous Hitler's?

Yeah. And my argument for a long time has been the Democrats are right when they say that Trump is different. and in many ways egregious. But they're right by accident, because they always do this. It was Nixon, then it was, well, why can't Reagan be more like Nixon? And then it was,

why can't George W. Bush be more like Reagan? And now it's Trump should be more like George W. Bush, which in his conduct, forget policy, in his conduct, would be welcome from my perspective. But that is an accidental insight. And I think with this reflecting pool, insofar as there have been mistakes made, the Democrats and those who went crazy about this

went crazy long before they knew that. They said right at the beginning. This is a disaster. We obsessed over it. And they didn't know that. So I think you've got to separate this out. On the one hand, it does seem as if there were mistakes made here. on the other hand, some of the mistakes made all the problems that are being experienced.

Actually, are common. I looked up the history of the repairs to the reflecting port. So Obama repaired it twice, once in 2012, once in 2016-17. And after both, there were big problems with either in the one case algae or in the other case, this poisonous substance that killed ducks. and they had to drain it. The 2012 repair was removing the reflecting pool from the system that delivers fresh city water and moving it so that it uses the water from the Potomac,

which makes it more likely you'll get algae. This was an environmental measure, but it's one that's made it more difficult to fix. So this does happen, is the backdrop. It happened to Obama twice. That said, the more I read about this, it seems that first off, the Trump administration should have bitten the bullet and fix the pipes. They're old, they leak. They make it more difficult to manage. They didn't.

Second, I think it's possible some of the coating on the bottom is coming up. I don't actually know. And I'm reluctant here to pass judgment because although I think that Trump's probably being crazy where he talks about. sabotage. It's not beyond the realm of possibility. And the reason that I say that is that right now, if you fly into Washington, D.C., there is a massive open area near to the White House, covered in grass that says 8647 on it, because some people either use weed killer or their feet or something to destroy the grass. The same people, by the way, who are saying, it's just outrageous that at the 250th anniversary, the reflecting pool is full of algae.

Really? Because you just wrote 8647 in a football-sized portion of grass. So there are people out there who are actually destroying things in Washington, D.C. And if you look at the rest of Washington, D.C., Trump's done a pretty good job. The fountains are working, and Union Station is tolerable. So it's probable that Trump's being crazy and hasn't got this perfectly right. But I am going to withhold the whole judgment on that until I have some actual information to evaluate because there really are people out there who are trying to screw this stuff up.

Stephen, I'll let you respond to that in a second. But first, I just want to say, there's that movie Civil War, which you may recall, which wasn't that good, in which the only electric moment in it for me was this fellow with red glasses holding an AR-15 who interrogate people and say, well, you know, what are you? And they would say, well, I'm an American. And he would say very calmly, what kind of an American? American art. So creepy. Very malevolent thing. And Charles, unfortunately, you would, you would say I'm an Algae American and you'd be shot. Well, I deal with it enough in my own

swimming pool. I should be able to pronounce how I want. It's algae. It's algae over here. So, no, we'll call you an algae. Flowers for algon. Yes, exactly. So, Stephen, we need belaborate further. But as Charles said, there's so much of D.C. that actually has been beautified. which of course is what fascism likes. Fascism likes the broad, clean bill ofards and the fountains that splash and all the rest of it. It's a very bad sign. I just love when we say that Obama repaired it twice,

as though he was out there rolling up his shirt sleeves, taking up the lining and the rest of it. Supreme Court is probably a more important issue, and we had something this week that said, it goes to what you were saying, Charles. The temporary status actually, as it turns out, can mean temporary. And this can be adjudicated beyond the sentiments of the person who said that it is going to be temporary.

In other words, if Donald Trump says bad things about the people who are going, that doesn't mean that temporary has to mean permanent. And some of the tweets I've seen have been extraordinary. You mean to say that you're taking people who have lived here for 20 years, have put down roots in the community, raised families contributed, are going to be sent back. That doesn't, as Stephen Miller pointed out, that doesn't really sound particularly temporary. that actually sounds quite permanent. So how do you regard the Supreme Court decision? And isn't this temporary fiction? Wasn't it always a fiction anyway?

Stephen? Well, yeah. I mean, what's Ronald Reagan's old line? That the nearest thing to return life is a temporary government program. And I do think, though, that we're being set up for a disappointment on the birthright citizenship case, which I think will be out next week. Charles, your take on the Supreme Court? Well, the vast majority of the commentary about this, and this is unfortunately typical,

has failed to acknowledge what the Supreme Court is, which is a court that is charged with interpreting statutes and in that case the Constitution. if one is upset that these Haitians have been sent home, then one is upset with Trump, because Trump made that decision. This court case was not about whether Haitians are nice or nasty. It was not about whether the temporary protected status program should exist or shouldn't exist. It was about what the law, which I believe, leave was passed in the 90s, literally says, and what power it literally gives to the president,

who, like it or not, is the same as any other president in his authority. And so if you actually look at the decision, all it says is that there is a line in this law that says that the determinations of the executive branch about the applicability of temporary protected status is non-justiciable. That is to say, the court's not allowed to second guess it. There are some questions the court can examine, whether the law itself is constitutional, whether other parts of the statute have been followed, and so forth. But the president deciding yes or no, the president deciding whether or not a given country is safe or unsafe,

the president deciding how long those who have been given temporary protected status can stay in the United States is not up to the court. and the court said, not in an arrogant move, but in an act of self-abdigation, we can't decide this, so we won't. So if you're upset about this, then you're either upset on substantive grounds with Trump, because you think that he made the wrong decision about Haiti, or you're upset with Congress for passing a law that delegated that authority to the president and then said the courts can't review it. The notion that the court is somehow mean, I said this on Twitter,

I really think they believe. that the Supreme Court should say, we have upheld our values as defined by Representative Smith, and our values have determined that the mean people are bad and must be exiled, and that the nice people are good and must get their way. I think that's what they think Supreme Court decision should say. It's the only conclusion I can come to, because this was utterly mundane.

It was a purely procedural matter, and the judiciary did what it should have done. Could you imagine the alternative? The alternative is the Supreme Court reads a literal line in the law that says this is non-justiciable and says, I think, well, justiciable that. Come on, come on, guys. Understand how the Constitution works. You shouldn't have to take it from me, somebody who says algae. Well, it shouldn't.

What they would say is, well, it depends on what the meaning of justiciable is then. I mean, you're using technicalities here, Charles. You're using all of these definitions and these words. and procedures to mask what is obviously a xenophobic and racist idea in the first place. Ergo, there is no other possible laudable conclusion to this than saying that they can stay, period, because anything else is mean. And I mean, that's what it seems to be. People seem to be either willfully misreading it or not reading at all because they want this.

And if they don't get that outcome, that it means that the bad people won. You know, when the DSA says we'd like to abolish the Supreme Court, you just, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's why they would, because then laws can be just completely whatever they say they are at the moment. And it's Calvin Ball. And we're Brazil in the 19th century with 17 governments and, you know, 42 constitutions and all the rest of it. Well, there are others to come. Some people are saying that the Supreme Court is actually giving Trump, what, he wants on these so that they can then drop a bomb on birthright citizenship and say, no, that that's going to stay. I don't know. I don't know if there's that deep, dark plotting and the rest of it, but then again, my knowledge of the Supreme Court in its inner workings and the mysteries of the chambers back there with the black robes is just about nil. But there was

another decision, wasn't there? There were lots of decisions. Well, you being a keen court scholar, tell us what you like, and maybe what you don't. Stephen will be back, by the way, as soon as he can get some. Right now, he is up on the mast of the ship, I think, trying to repoint the Starlink disc so it can hook up to some backup. Well, there was another case that was covered just as ineptly as the one I've just described that involved Roundup, which is a weed killer. Oh, right, right, right.

Oh, this is the one where they sided with cancer because they like cancer, because they're conservatives, right? This is another one where they just had to look at a law. Now, I'm not saying they got it right. I think they probably did. It was 7-2. It was an odd lineup because Justice Jackson and Justice Gorsuch dissented together. But an issue in this case, irrespective of the way you come down on it,

was not whether you like big business or cancer. It was whether or not federal law preempts the states in the matter of labeling poisonous substances. Again, why do I have to? to read New York Times headlines that say Supreme Court sides with big business over cancer victim. Why? Because

that's not what happened. What happened was very boring. Supreme Court examines federal law to determine whether federal preemption statute obtains. So that was that one. The one that interested me, of course, was Hawaii's vampire rule

which was struck down. Wait a minute. Are you telling me that the Aloha spirit did not prevail? Oddly enough, James, the spirit of Aloha does not trump the US Constitution. So this is a little bit complicated, but also fairly straightforward. The common law presumption in the United States, in basically every state, and since the time of the founding, and indeed before the founding, is that generally accessible private property, by which I mean a gas station, a supermarket, a restaurant, not your house, is accessible subject to the rules set by the property

owner. That is to say, the assumption, the default presumption is that you can go in and do what you want unless the property owner has said you can't. And that includes carrying a gun, providing its legal in the state. Hawaii inverted that. Hawaii inverted it only for guns. They didn't invert it in any other circumstance. And they inverted it because they were angry that they had been told in 2022 that they had to issue concealed carry permits because the Second Amendment applies in Hawaii. And the Supreme Court said, no, you don't get to do that. The reaction from the left has been, so I guess we don't care about private property anymore. We're actually in the case the left is true. The reaction has also been, oh, so I suppose states can't have gun laws anymore.

But Hawaii explicitly made this change so that it was impossible for people to carry guns in Hawaii. They admitted as much into arguments. They said, well, people in Hawaii don't like guns. The problem is, the majority opinion makes very clear, is that if you invert that presumption, not only you are actually putting more burden on private property because you're telling property owners what the rule is absent their decision. But you're making it functionally impossible in modern life for a person to carry a firearm. Because if you have a gun, say, in your car, or in your hip while you're in your car, you don't know if you can go to the parking lot of a supermarket, if you can go to a cafe, if you can fill your car up with gas. You are at every. You are at

every single possible point risking criminal or civil punishment. So the court said the government made this change, the government's bound by the Second Amendment, this was a clear attempt to undermine the Second Amendment and retaliate against our decision. No. I think it was a sensible, straightforward decision. And more than that, it's a decision that brings Hawaii into line with every other state bar a couple. who only again made these changes to get back at the Supreme Court and into line with how America has worked for three or four hundred years.

Now, folks listening at home may have noticed that nobody was interrupting Charles and shouting him down and making points that were contrary to his and in general making it an unpleasant experience, not unlike a Facebook or a Reddit thread, right? Well, that's the idea behind the Future of Freedom podcast. Not what I've just described, of course, but the opposite. Politics today feels like one long, endless shouting match. And so that's why we recommend it the Future of Freedom Podcast.

Each episode takes a major issue facing America, like guns, like Al Gay, and brings together two thoughtful voices from the right, from the right, mind you, who see it differently. One might be more libertarian, the other could be more conservative, but here's what sets the podcast apart. It's not a debate. No interruptions, no viral touches, no trying to score points. So each guest gets the space to explain their position and then get this, you decide what. what makes the most sense. If you're looking for more thought and less noise, check out the future of freedom wherever you get your podcasts.

And we thank Future of Freedom for sponsoring this, the Rickshay podcast. You know, Charles, when you're talking before that the liberal will say, oh, you don't like private property now. I spend a lot of time on Reddit. Probably shouldn't. But that's where you get to see people in the left talk amongst themselves. You get to see what their assumptions are about the right. It's interesting.

It's, you know, the ability to be able to sum up the other side's position in a way that they recognize is, as somebody pointed out, the true definition of empathy. And aren't we supposed to be more empathetic? Well, there was an argument about a shooting in Minneapolis, um, of which there have been many. And somebody was just saying, you know, well, you know, it's what happens when you don't have, uh, gun laws. And somebody said, correctly, the people doing the shootings aren't following current gun laws. The folks that do follow the laws aren't running around shooting folks to which the response of the person who started the thread was, so laws are pointless? The ability to leap from one of the other is extraordinary. I mean, and that's why there's

no point in having a discussion, because then if you even begin to say, I didn't say that no, all laws were pointed. Well, the answer to that, I've always thought, is, yes, they are pointless in certain circumstances, which is to say, it depends what you're trying to achieve. most of our laws, because we live in a free country, are designed to punish somebody after the fact if they can't prevent them from committing the act in the first place. Well, they do have the restraining effect if one is able to conceive of a future in which you are held responsible for your actions. But the point I'm making is if you want people to pay their taxes, then you have to include punishments for not paying taxes. And then

you get two benefits from that law. One is that people will say, well, I'm going to pay my taxes because I don't want to be punished, as you say. The other is that if they don't pay their taxes, you can then go after them and either take the taxes post hoc with penalties or if they're particularly recidivist you can put them in prison. The reason this doesn't work with the gun debate is that the democratic position is if you pass this law, this won't happen. But that's not true. The laws in America, because there are so many guns, are used after the fact to punish people for what they did. But if somebody is determined to ignore those laws, which criminals tend to be,

you can't stop them in the first place. And that's why I always think it's annoying when they say, well, oh, so we shouldn't have any laws. No, it's not that we shouldn't have any laws. It's just that we need to accept that a lot of laws are not going to stop the people who want to break them. You can punish them afterwards, and we should. But that's not what we're debating, right?

everyone agrees we should punish somebody after they've shot somebody. The question is whether or not your new law is going to prevent them from shooting them. And usually what happens with the new law is it just actually prevents the people who weren't going to do anything wrong in the first place from being able to protect themselves. I mean, you know all this, but this just, that irritates me because it's, you know, you started, I wasn't here with this Chevalier character. So did you see the interview that she did where she was asked if she would consent? sent to putting murderers in prison?

No. And she four times wouldn't answer it. Oh, right, right, right. We shouldn't live in a world in which people are murderers. And the interviewers kept saying, but we do. And there was this case recently where this guy actually killed someone else, which is quite common in human history, what should happen to that person? And she said, we shouldn't live in a world where people murder each other.

And that to me is the issue here. you either accept that we do live in a fallen world or you don't. And the fact that we do is why I'm a conservative. But once you accept that we do live in a fallen world, then saying, well, we shouldn't live in a fallen world actually sounds quite stupid. Right. And saying, well, so laws are pointless then. It's just a good example of a totally inability to reckon with the fact that the people you're trying to bind in that circumstance don't care. But we live in a fallen world only because of a specific set of economic conditions, which can be quickly changed. I mean, that's why they don't want to have the conversation.

What do you do with murderers? Because it tracks from the conversation of we have to immediately change all the things that produce murderers in the first place. And if you say, well, what about domestic murderers? What about a rapist? They don't want to answer that. They wave it away. It's all distractions from the main point that the carceral state, to use their favorite

word, is simply an instrument of oppression by an illegitimate force. And therefore, we concentrate on removing that force. That's where you spend your energy. You don't spend your energy trying to do something about actual murderers. No, that's cut to the chase. They all want to cut to the chase because just around the corner and down the block is the utopia. And it's just a sheer mullishness, stupidity, torpor, and oppression that keeps us from dashing towards that wonderful, wonderful place.

No, I think they're right, James. You do? No, I do. And I think that's why, obviously Donald Trump, on January 6th was motivated by a lack of material wealth. Yeah, I know. That's right. They can't answer that basic question, can they?

Because if you look at what they say in their speeches, they say two things simultaneously. They say, number one, the only reason that people do bad things is because they don't have enough material comfort. Number two, billionaires are evil and they're stealing all our stuff. Right.

But why would they do that? If the only reason people do bad things is a lack of material possessions. Because they have been corrupted spiritually and morally by wealth. I guess so. But then that completely undermines point one, right? No, there's a certain point. No, there's a specific dollar amount, which they haven't told us yet, after which you become corrupted.

But before that, you're great, as a matter of fact. You are just the embodiment of human decency, empathy, sympathy, and charity and all the rest of it. well before we go we uh we'd best talk to uh you um about uh and i don't want to just saying hey you got a funny accent what do you think about going on there in britain but since you do know something of the culture and the politics uh starmer's out i remember when he was i was actually in glasgow at the time when he was when he was edinburgh when he came in and i thought this is not this is not going to end well and it didn't um and in comes andy burnham who is a little bit more blokey, they say, but basically the same policies. And labor is not going to do any better.

The only chance that they have is for reform and remain and restore and renew and whatever to split the vote amongst them and usher in Greens is somewhere and some council election. But it seems it seems a bog from which there seems no national will to emerge. There is. But if you do, when you go out in the streets and you start waving your flags, you are regarded as, you are regarded as, beyond the pale. So what do you make of Starmer's ouster? James, would you like me to depress you? Because I'm about to. Yeah, no, me too. So I think Kirstarmer was a terrible prime minister and I think this labor government is a

disgrace. But I don't think that the reason that Britain is in trouble is because of Kier-Starmor or this labor government, I think they are symptoms of why Britain is in trouble. I agree. I just don't see any move. No. Among the public. Upset as it seems to be with the state of affairs and their governments, I don't see any move to take the obvious steps that would be necessary to fix it. Upset, yes.

But does that motivate them? I don't see it. I see a tutting and a head shaking and it's too damned bad and the rest of it. and what are you going to do and then then change to the test match or or something else. I mean, I hear, let me say, rephrase that. I don't necessarily hear when I'm over there or talk to my friends. Loud proclamations have discussed with it with many aspects of British side today. But it's, but there's sort of a quiet dismay.

And then the, the understanding that it's best not discussed too much because it leads to the empowerment of the wrong people or the expression of the wrong thoughts and the rest of it. They've walled off a whole series of ideas and actions as being something that just is not done. It's just not done. You know what I mean? Yeah. And the incoherence of what the public is demanding makes it very difficult for anyone to govern. Again, I'm not defending Kirstama or anyone else who's been in office recently.

but the British public doesn't seem to be able to join the dots. The only thing I can think of where that's true here in quite as pronounced away, social security, but they want cheaper energy, but they want net zero, which has driven up energy prices. They want a more dynamic economy, but they don't want to cut spending,

they don't want to cut regulation. They want to cut regulation. to have better public services, but they won't allow any reforms whatsoever. They are vaguely aware that their productivity has been flat and wages have been flat and that they are now poorer per capita than Mississippi. But they also look down on America and say we don't want that as our solution. They know that they can't project force around the world in the way they could 30 years ago, but they don't want to spend money on defense or anything, frankly, other than welfare.

They're aware that it's much too expensive to buy a home, but they don't want existing home prices to go down or for new homes to be built. And I just, there is a certain point at which, and I say this with great love, obviously being from there and my family still living there, there's a point at which if that's your position and that's what you're asking of your politics, then that's your fault, not Kirstama or Rishi-Soonak or Boris Johnson or anyone. That's your fault for being unwilling to take the leap and get yourself out of the mess. You're absolutely right.

Well, I may have a clear. Oh, he's back. We thought he's in a dingy, by the way. He's left. He's left the ship and he's now, so go ahead. Well, if it holds up longer than 10 seconds, the craziest thing of her. yet from the net zero business is to ban peat farming or digging up heat because that releases carbon into the air now if you actually ban harvesting peat in the british aisles it will kill the whiskey industry

this is the definition of full communism that we all know steve's heart is right um and his pallet which is a good one as well i mean i'm true i saw the same thing and i saw the same concerns and i thought well they wouldn't let that happen i mean they simply wouldn't would they would they Would they be so daft as to abandon one of the great gifts that they have given to the world in order for net zero, which itself is a fool's errand and is never going to produce what they want to do? I mean, the argument that we've been hearing from Europeans of this last week about air conditioning, for example, so, you know, yes, you know, two, three thousand people die of the key. But on the other hand, we're getting closer to saving the planet. And when you point out exactly how are you different from the Mayans who dragged people up a pyramid and took their heart out and waved it at the sun, how are you different? You're sacrificing people on the altar of your particular god that just happened to be climate ideologies.

And somebody from Europe posted a long great explanation as to the building type and the electricity and all the rest of it and retrofutable. fitting would be expensive and labor intensive and where are we going to get the people to do that labor? We'd have to bring in more immigrants and the xenophobes don't like that. I mean, really, these are the arguments that he was making. We just simply don't have the people in Europe who could install air conditioning. And somebody would point, and somebody responded in the comments, well, actually, I got a unit right here in my living room and it's got a pipe that goes out the window to which the person responded, well, not everybody can have the pipe that goes out the window, you know, and if the window is going to be open, it's just going to reduce the efficacy of the unit. I mean,

his entire persona, his life, his mind, his identity is built around arguing why this cannot be done. And this seems to be the class that has taken over Europe and made it sclerotting. The people who make their money explaining why something can't happen as opposed to the people who are interested to make something happen for the good of all. Says, me and Stephen, if you can give us one last glug, glug before you sink below the sea there, Are you still with us? No, he's gone. He's gone. I might be with you, but not for more than 10 seconds, probably. So I will just salute and say, we'll drink to rebellion starting in Scotland over whiskey

the next time we're together in person. That's great. And if you're in the Pacific Northwest up in the ocean and you see somebody bobbing along there and waving, that's probably Stephen, activate your light. Oh, that's right. It's activated by saltwater. Don't worry about that. And do blow that whistle. It's such a married little tip. Is that true? What, it's activated by saltwater? Yeah. I didn't know that. That's fascinating.

That was what I was told by the fellow in Gold braid, who was giving us the safety instructions at the beginning of every cruise, who would later show up as the bartender on the island that the cruise line owned. This guy's bore every single shirt and cap possible. Charles, we wish you well with the algae in your own pool, the neighborhood, but of course Florida being the paradise that it is, I'm sure they've got it figured out. Me here in Boston, well, I'm going to take a creaking, shrieking,

green line train downtown and look at architecture and build. and visit at the library and then have dinner somewhere if we can find a reservation so life is good. We thank you for joining us. We also thank, of course, the, sorry, we thank the, I just swallowed there. You can cut that three, two, one. We thank you for joining us. We thank you also for listening to the future of Freedom Podcasts, which you're going to love. And yes, Riggishay 5.0 is coming. I'm not going to make Charles tell you what's going to be new and different, but it's going to be, well, new and different. And there will be many improvements that make. get these sites to go to if you don't already know.

It'll have a great algae rhythm. Oh, oh, I am physically ill. Good thing. There's a commode nearby. I'm out of you. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad.

In the meantime, we'll see everybody in the comments at Ruggishay 4.0. Bye-bye.