The Ricochet Podcast - Event Horizon

Episode Date: April 12, 2019

This week on America’s Most Trustworthy Podcast®, we talk about the meaning of the word “spying” and try to determine exactly what the definition is. Then, a bracing and brilliant discussion on reparations with the great Shelby Steele, who unlike most candidates for President, actually knows something about it. Then, our long time amigo Arthur Brooks calls in to talk about his new book... Source

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Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing. First of all, I think you missed his time.

Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilex, and today we talk to Shelby Steele about reparations and Arthur Brooks about decency. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 443. I'm James Lilex with Peter Robinson and Rob Long, who has a fresh Nespresso in his hands, I believe. Correct, Rob? You are correct, sir. Yes. Well, of course, that puts you in the top 1%. So, you know, you have those wonderful little colored foil capsules that you use.

You're in a silk bathrobe at the moment, perhaps. Your monocle is freshly polished. I've just set the scene for everybody. Peter Robinson, of course, on the other side of the country, perhaps your monocles freshly polished. I've just set the scene for everybody. Peter Robinson, of course, on the other side of the country, I believe with his sweater casually, but yet perfectly knotted around his shoulders. And me here in Minnesota, which is cold and has snow and no one's happy about it. So between the three of us, we have every possible situation to discuss the week that just happened. Well, what did happen? Was there spying? The word spying was used and everybody absolutely had a full body spasm about that. Guys, how could they have said that there was spying? James, first point is you were born three quarters of a century and even three quarters of a century too late god god made you for radio and somehow

or other the delivery got held up no i just i just listened to you that gentle mocking of rob polishing his monocle i just wanted that to go on it sounded to me like the beginning of a really wonderful show that i wanted yeah well i'm opening myself up for the same from him so i'm cutting it off right now i need a monocle actually i wouldn't mind having a monocle i actually looked at it turns out i know you did no one literally no one is surprised at this point the only reason that i would want a monocle is so it could fall out of my eye into my tea as somebody walks by wearing bloomers you know something like that well warby parker so a one-time sponsor of this podcast warby parker sells monocles and i wanted one but it turns out they don't sell them in for

people with astigmatism my prescription right now yeah i want a trifocal monocle there's something about which probably works out to being a bonnacle all right do you want to get serious here? Is that the idea? I'm in a bad mood. Go on spying. Um, the attorney general of the United States, Bill Barr said that spying of the Trump campaign took place. He used the word spying and that as far as he was concerned, I think this is a quotation. If it's not a quotation, it's a very close paraphrase. Spying on a political campaign is a big deal. Barr was correct in every possible way, technically, colloquially. He was certainly correct that to have the FBI and the intelligence community spying on a presidential campaign is an extremely big deal. Notwithstanding, and did spying take place?

Of course spying took place. Everybody understands spying to mean listening to, observing people without their knowledge or permission. And that is certainly what took place. The FBI asked the FISA court for permission to spy on members of the Trump campaign. Low-ranking members, but members of the Trump campaign. Whereupon, the media and the Democrats just went wild. He was politically motivated. Spying didn't take place.

Who was it? Schiff, the chairman of the now Democratic chair, now that the Democrats have taken over. Schiff said the only spying that took place in the 26th campaign was spying by Russians. OK, over to Rob. Yeah, I mean I think it's essentially correct. Most of the people who are gunning for Trump have not accepted is that the FISA warrant, it has a very, very narrow, by the way, narrow application. It is designed to allow eavesdropping, spying, wiretapping on citizens for national security purposes. Correct. Otherwise, you just go get a regular warrant.

But you need a FISA warrant for that. And the results of that FISA warrant produced zero indictments. I mean, it is not true. I mean, it is true that there have been people who have been indicted. It is true there are people who are going to do jail time because of the Mueller case, Mueller investigation. It is not true that those people are going to do jail time or were indicted for national security reasons. They were – it's all financial. It was all financial shenanigans, violations of reporting, violations of all sorts of money issues. But nobody put the national security in jeopardy.

So the basis of the FISA warrant, which was to protect national security, now we know was completely irrelevant and unnecessary. We also know that the basis of the FISA warrant was a dossier that was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. They used a cutout. They used a couple of third-party intermediaries, I should say. But the source of the money for the fake – and Donald, it's correct. Fake is the word. The fake dossier was the opponent in the presidential campaign. And the FBI, which is meant to be utterly impartial and a

picture of rectitude went for it they used phony material that they knew had been paid for by the democratic presidential campaign to ask the fisa court for permission to spy and william barr says this doesn't he says in effect this doesn't smell right. We need an investigation. One more point and then back to you, Rob. And my point is simply that in the not very old days, there would have been Democrats who said, absolutely right. We disagree on policy, but we agree a totally bipartisan matter is that the intelligence community in the United States must be impartial. And Ed Muskie, a Walter Mondale, a George McGovern, every one of them would have said,

Attorney General, clean up this mess. And there's not a single Democrat saying that today. The whole point of the FISA warrant is to protect against exactly this, that you go to a separate court with separate judges to protect national security interests, and they allow this very, very, very circumscribed investigation of citizens, United States citizens, who are not supposed to be investigated for these things. Certainly not by the CIA, certainly not by the national security apparatus. So that is all true.

We don't know. I mean, the reality is the Steele dossier, which seems kind of overblown to me, but it could be 100 percent correct. It could be all true, but it doesn't – none of the things in that dossier suggest violations of national security uh they the one thing we do know is true i mean this is not you can't really this is not disputable is that the trump had a whole lot of business dealings with some very unsavory characters including some iranian national guard uh cutouts we know that that doesn't necessarily mean that he that the mueller investigation should have returned any other any other result the problem with all these people is that the disaster for them, people who are gunning for Trump here, is that it turns out Trump is at least 65% or 70% correct.

And they just were not prepared for that. They're only prepared for a scorched earth, a total repudiation of the Trump administration, the Trump family, the Trump family, the Trump businesses, every single action that Trump took from the day he published Art of the Deal in the 80s to today. And they're not going to get that. And because they're not going to get that, they seem unable to sort of grasp the realities of, I mean, it's an amazing amount of fritting away time when they could be advancing some kind of, you know, I don't know, agenda to win the election. But it becomes very, very hard at this point, I think, for the American people,

even people like me who are not actually I mean, I think everybody listening to this podcast knows I am not on Trump's side as you know, to use the incredibly, incredibly blunt terminology. I'd be perfectly happy to believe that he is – was a corrupt individual and that he had all sorts of media. I mean I would absolutely believe it if Buehler told me it was true. After all this exhaustive investigation, I would believe it. But he didn't tell me it's true. He said it wasn't true. So that's that, and it seems case closed.

This obsession with now – you know that you're on the wrong side of an issue when you're quibbling about the definition of a word right right if you're saying it's not spying it was it was it was a court sanction eavesdropping surveillance what all that you are you are losing and you know you're losing well that's the horror on the other side i mean rob is i'm sure you'll agree with me on this it was possible during the election and afterwards to not be a Trump fan, but at the same time, believe that the collusion narrative was nonsense. And I think, yes, I'm sorry. It's just what, James, I'm sorry. Just one thought just popped into my head and it leapt out of my mouth before I could close my lips. I'm sorry, James, I'll get back. But now that I've said all this, I may as well say this.

Isn't it fascinating? And I mean, really, it's sort of neutrally just an interesting case that the Clintons, the Clintons have, in effect, made it impossible to go after Trump on the on the grounds that you just stated, which is that the dossier was was it was illegitimate grounds for a FISA warrant. Had the court known that the Clinton campaign was the ultimate source of the money for the dossier? By the way, you said the dossier might be 100 percent true. I think you meant that in theory. There's not a piece of it that has been corroborated. Exactly.

Not a single piece. Right. OK. So the Clintons paid for it and then then you make the other point. I keep thinking to myself, if only the Democrats had not, even from their point of view, if they hadn't gone down this Russian collusion rabbit hole for two years, and they had attacked Donald Trump on his business dealings, everybody knows, everybody, I have friends who work in the city of New York in finance, and everybody in finance knows that not Goldman Sachs, not Morgan Stanley, not a reputable American bank was willing to make a loan to Donald Trump for at least 20 years. characters, including Russians. But even there, the Clintons have inoculated him because just as unsavory characters have been donating to the Clinton Foundation. The Clintons have a proclivity

for dealing with unsavory characters. It is just amazing. In an ordinary circumstance, Trump would be vulnerable, but the Clintons in some weird way have protected him. Right. I mean, when Donald Trump took $500,000 from a Russian bank, you got some nice marble in the lobby. When Bill Clinton takes $500,000 from a Russian bank, where does it go? Beautifully put. Exactly. Exactly.

Shanker cream. My point was going to be earlier that, and I've forgotten what it was. Oh, I'm sorry, James. No, I think it was this. It's's you know i i never bought it but a lot of the people that i talked to who did were of the opinion that this sort of contradictory idea that there was no plot there was no crossfire hurricane insurance policy plot to get rid of donald trump and at the same time they believed that such a thing was necessary

because donald trump posed an existential threat to the democracy. It's like that didn't happen. Right. But I kind of but I hope it did. And it's hard to square those things. But it should have. So now to find it all coming back at them, I don't think anybody anticipated that there would be that this would they would actually have the presence and the fortitude to go

back and say this was wrong. Let's see what happened. And that's that's what horrifies them even more. That's I mean, it's one thing for collusion not to pan out. was wrong let's see what happened and that's that's what horrifies them even more that's i mean it's one thing for collusion not to pan out it's another then after you've been punched hard in the yarmules to get an uppercut in the jaw that puts you back on the mat and and i may point out i've been suddenly been paying attention i pick it's a remarkable a publication in any event but i've suddenly been paying attention to the atl our friend Andy Ferguson is now writing for The Atlantic.

An article in The Atlantic, which I think we all have to agree is notwithstanding Andy, who's new there, is fundamentally a center left. David Frum, a never Trumper. David Frum is a brilliant man and a good friend, but I think it's fair to call him a never Trumper. He's about as far to the right in their lineup as it goes. Story in The Atlantic. Headline, The Fundamental Legitimacy of Donald Trump. Meaning all of these early attacks that he was going to undermine the democracy have not panned out. The guy, you may dislike him

all three of us find him distasteful there's a range of opinion on this program about how distasteful but still nevertheless he is behaving like a lawful president and i think that's an excellent point i mean and and the tragedy of that is he's been president for a year and a half so it took him a year and a half to realize that actually when you take the oath of office you're the legitimate president united states i the the irony here is that is that the everyone's trying to do it the hard way i mean the right to i mean the right is not exempt from this kind of uh psychosis everybody wants to do everybody wants to get power and become president or or or sway the American people or have some kind of majority, moral or legislative majority.

But they all want to do it the hardest possible way. It seems so strange to me. Like the idea of resisting or combating Donald Trump, it's the hardest possible way to imagine that we're going to have an independent council and they're going to come up with something. They're going to investigate stuff, and that stuff is going to be released, and then there're going to come up with something they're going to investigate stuff and that stuff's going to be released and then there's going to be the people that what on what a complicated mousetrap that is at live score bet we love cheltenham just as much as we love football the excitement the roar and the chance to reward you that's why every day of the festival we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to 10 euro if your horse loses on a selected race that's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing cheltenham with live score

bet this is total betting sign up by 2 p.m 14th of march bet within 48 hours of race main market excluding specials and place bets terms apply bet responsibly 18 plus gambling care.e at the same time you have like people on the right saying well you know uh we we need all this sort of like weird media stuff and narrative stuff and the liberal bias stuff in the media. All that's true, but there's a simple solution to it. Win the election. Exactly. We have an actual system that has extremely fair and very transparent rules. People have won, conservatives and liberals have won presidential elections regularly throughout history, throughout modern history, throughout even contemporary history,

throughout our lifetimes. We've had very conservative presidents. We've had moderate conservative presidents. We've had moderate liberal presidents. We've had very liberal presidents. It's possible. Republicans control the House and the Senate. Democrats can control written 200 and so exactly exactly just we we are we are watching a a really I I have to say to me to anybody with a sense of history it's really kind of thrilling in a funny way the resiliency of the constitution when necessary it is government on training wheels consider Donald Trump look what happened he gets into office and says oh to make stuff happen all I have to do is sign these executive orders. He signs a few executive orders.

Courts object. And he gets trained. No, no, no, no. There's a whole process here, Mr. President. If courts object, we have to go to court, make an argument. And Trump has been behaving lawfully. Now, the Democrats, the hard left, though they may be, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may disagree with what I'm about to say, but the Constitution is showing the Democrats, no, no, no, no. This is all set up to persuade

your neighbors not to take someone down with whom you disagree on policy by using legal, extra legal, legal means, so to speak. Go back to the old way, persuade your neighbor, make arguments, run campaigns. It is just glorious to me the way this two century and some decades old document is kind of training politicians and the american public yet again back to the center persuade your neighbors this is a democracy it's a lawful democracy do it the right way and it doesn't mean you persuade them to some kind of milquetoast centrist position right you persuade them to a far left or far right position as long as you're out there doing it this country i mean i say this all the time when I give speeches.

This country constitutionally banned alcohol. A country built almost entirely on whiskey. Banned alcohol. They passed a constitutional amendment. If it can do that, if you can persuade people to do that, which they did by persuading, by meetings and rallies and all sorts of things, if you can do that, which they did by persuading by, you know, meetings and rallies and all sorts of things. If you can do that, you could do anything. Well, I think they did it because the people who opposed it were too drunk to show up at the polls. But Rob makes a good point.

Also suffrage, women's suffrage. Big part of it as well. But Rob makes a good point. I mean, yes, there's an electoral process. Problem is, for the left, is that they had eight years of Barack Obama who was helping helping to usher in a progressive utopia, and that would be continued by Hillary Clinton. And now, with that interrupted, the frustration is such that the elements and tools of democracy are a hindrance to utopia. It's not that they want necessarily a better America. They want a transformed place that is something else entirely out of sort with the American character. And they were lulled, you're right, lulled by eight years of incredibly restful sleep. Yes, and Rob's quite right there.

Rob mentioned sleep because he was doing me a little favor here. So I thought. It's like an unexpected lateral in a football game. All of a sudden, the ball's in your hand, you run for the end zone. And that's what I'm going to do right now. And I've got plenty of energy to do so because I have a very restful sleep because I am comfortable, comfortable, comfortable, comfortable. The three most important words for getting a very restful sleep because I am comfortable. Comfortable, comfortable, comfortable. They're the three most important words for getting a good night's sleep, period.

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He specializes in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. He was appointed a Hoover Fellow in 1994. And, Mr. Steele, we have a clip from Julian Castro that we'd like you to cogitate upon. I have long believed that this country should resolve its original sin of slavery, and that one of the ways we should consider doing that is through reparations for people who are the descendants of slaves well and cory booker has introduced a bill to study the matter of reparations is this bad news from the republicans who are going to find themselves on the wrong side of a moral issue or is it good news and what is the likelihood of this happening? Well, I think it has almost no likelihood of happening.

It's one of these issues that just comes up every now and then to scrap over. Somebody sees a possible political advantage in exploiting it in some way. I think the Democrats are using it now as a test of liberal alignment. And, you know, if you support it, then you're on the side of the good. If you're against it, then you're evil. And Republicans, as always, or very often at any rate, are on the wrong side. And that's in that scheme of things and that morally driven view of the world of guilt and innocence is in play when we're talking about race. Shelby Peter here.

What do you mean by that? So I get the notion that Republicans are placed immediately on the political defensive by this because, oh, you're just white people who don't want to give money to African-Americans. Or you get Republicans saying my great grandfather fought in the civil – it sounds like old, cranky white people. I get the political point, but you talk about this notion of guilt, how one side is able to use guilt to political advantage, and the Republicans are just naked before that attempt. What do you mean by that, the guilt question? It goes back to our original sin, slavery. But since the 60s, this idea of America as being somehow inherently evil has been in many ways certainly one of the most powerful ideas in our culture that drives our politics and drives liberalism is almost nothing more than the argument that we will defend and we will redeem America from its evil past. That's why we have a

moral authority that our opponents on the right do not have. They can't do that. They can't redeem us. They can't bring us moral legitimacy. That's ours over here on the left. And they're just sitting there, standing there flat-footed with nothing in their own arsenal to compete with that. So liberalism in one form or another, and reparations is just the most recent sort of formulation of this, but liberal that. And so, and, uh, so we have a legitimacy that, uh, that has given liberalism enormous power. They, they own our culture. They have driven our culture completely for 60 years now on this idea of, of redeeming America of its inherent evil. Hey, Shelby, it's Rob Long. Thank you for joining us.

I was talking to a bunch of people about this not too long ago, conservatives mostly, and there was a certain interest in the idea of reparations as a kind of a class action suit that has a settlement and the settlement comes with certain conditions meaning that if you you know you sue a company for for a tort which is kind of you know in many ways you could describe slavery as the theft of a lot of things right um And then this is the settlement. Then after the settlement, there's no more claim. The claim has been discharged. The suit has been adjudicated and the payment's been made.

And then comes the dismantling of pretty much everything. I mean, this is a thought experiment, obviously. It's not going to happen. But a dismantling of pretty much everything that we've built over time in our culture and society to try to try to amend that. I mean, if reparations are necessary, it really is. It presupposes that everything that we're doing and everything we've done, including the most of the liberal welfare state, most of the not all of the racial set asides in work and school and all sorts of places have been failed or have been failures and have failed. If they failed, then we should stop doing them, and maybe reparations is the answer.

I mean, it's a thought experiment. Isn't that at least mildly intriguing? Well, the problem with that, I think, is that I don't think we'd accept – you'd never get the other side to say – there's no way you could pay it off where they would sort of drop their guns and say, oh, we'll go home. There would always be reparations. You didn't give me enough.

And so I want this now. And I want, it never ends. It is, from the point of view of minorities, it is what is so terrible about it is that we have been in a position for 60 years now of basing our plans for moving ahead in American life on arguing for our own dependency on the goodwill of the very people who oppressed us in the first place. So reparations is really an argument saying, please do not take this dependency away. Great. It is especially destructive

to black America. I mean, we've already it's not just that these social programs have failed for 60 years. It's the fact that the injury to black America is greater than what segregation was.

Here's a curious way of looking at it. I mean, obviously, since reparations are being aimed at people who can trace their lineage back in the country decades, it's not being extended to somebody who came over from Liberia yesterday. And the argument, as I understand it, is that the legacy of slavery and the legacy of racism prevented African Americans in America from building the social, political, and monetary capital that made it possible to succeed at the same rates of others. I get that argument. But isn't it also saying that if that's the case, then America is not a systemically racist place today because those people who came over from Africa without any of those hindrances that derive from slavery, we're able to prosper and flourish. So, I mean,

so it almost says that we're not the racist hell hole that we're made out to be. Is that, does that make sense? It makes, it makes, it makes great sense. Yeah.

I don't think we are. As I've said many times, I do not believe that racism is our, the problem for African-Americans or any other group at this point in American history. I grew up in segregation. I remember I know what racism is really, truly like. And I know what it's like to be a minority in American life today and be faced with a plethora of opportunities. I mean, anything I want to do, anywhere I want to go,

any level of education I want to achieve, anything I want to work for, I have as good a chance at it as anybody else. Not to say that there aren't still some undercurrents of racism here and there, but they don't have legitimacy. I grew up when racism was legitimate. It was a, you know, you did not feel ashamed of, you felt it was a feature of respectability to say that blacks could only come to your back door and not to your front door. I remember all of that.

That's gone. That's gone. That's gone. I can, I don't, you know, young blacks don't know anything about that. Don't have no memory, no knowledge of that. So America is different, which is part of what... At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football.

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie I think part of what's happening, blacks are saying, oh my God, this is our last chance at dependency. Affirmative action failed. War and poverty failed.

Great society failed. They're going to take this, they're going to wake up and take this stuff away. Well, they still haven't paid us off for slavery. We can still work the game. We can still make hay out of white guilt. They'll take it seriously because they never paid us. They never put any money in our pocket.

Well, that's what i think is happening shelby peter here if you made a fascinating point that if reparations are granted it'll never be enough uh in fact i my theory here i i don't know that this is supported by polls, but I just feel that it's true – that to some extent, when Barack Obama was elected, in the minds of some white voters, that was the settlement. That was fine. We've just elected an African-American president of the United States. We're done. We've put it behind us. And now a decade later, we have claims for settlements. But on Rob's point, this whole notion of a settlement, I get what you're saying.

The dynamic of it is that no matter what the settlement is, certain people would come back for more. Got that. But about two years before he died, Charles Krauthammer came out in favor of reparations on the following – with the following condition. And he called – he wrote a couple of columns in which he referred to the grand settlement. Reparations, reparations plus an end to affirmative action, full stop. If you could take that deal, would you? If I – I wouldn't take any deal. You wouldn't? I wouldn't take any deal, no.

Again, to make a deal, I'm trading on my race. I see. That's the original sin itself in its most naked form. I'm out here bargaining. In one minute I'm saying, oh, don't hold my race against me. Next minute I'm saying my race is my source of power. But in modern intersectional politics, that is the greatest currency. That's right.

Where what happens to be on that pyramid of grievances and victimology is the money of the public sphere now, I'll ask. That's absolutely right. My feeling is the challenge has always been, as corny as Martin Luther King may have been at some times, he was really on the money. It's the content of our character, not the color of our skin. Any time, my feeling after thinking about this for a lifetime, anytime race enters the public sphere, corruption follows. Anytime.

It's an evil inherently. It brings out the worst in human beings on both sides. It brings out bigotry, hatred, so forth. There's no way. It'll never be different. There's no bargain, no buying off, no settlement, no nothing. It's not. There is no settlement.

It has to disappear. It has to fade. It has to be overcome. Any settlement we make will last about until the sun goes down. So, Shelby, Dr. King died 40 years ago. Past 20 years, or past 30 years at least, we can say, maybe 30 years. Pretty much

steady economic growth. Pretty good economy. Pretty low on employment. So why now? Why reparations or the idea of reparations? Why do they seem to have a little bit more momentum than they've had for the past 40 years? And why now? Because it's probably all it's

all that's left uh the terror and i mean that word literally uh in in certainly in in political black america is to break this the symbiosis of depend black dependency and white guilt so we are fighting to keep that symbiosis alive. Neither side really knows who the hell they are without that symbiotic bond. And so what reparations is saying, well, my God, liberalism has so completely failed, we're going to lose our edge.

We're going to lose the bond. So blacks are saying, well, okay, give us reparations. We'll keep you in the deal if you keep us in the deal. So in a sense, you're saying – It's what we already know. We're going through this because this is the pattern we formed over the last 60 years, white and black America, the symbiosis we have. Is this the last gasp of that? White and black America, the symbiosis we have. The group that's seeing racism and institutional racism everywhere is on the march, and the group that maybe is more aligned with Dr. King is on the retreat. And you seem to be saying – correct me if I'm wrong – is that no, no, no, this is the last gasp.

This is the last arrow in their quiver, and when they don't get it what what happens well boy things things get very interesting um suppose white america gets to the place where it no longer has affirmative action and reparations and wars on poverty and all that sort of thing to hide behind. And so a black can say, well, you're racist and whites have nothing to put on the table to prove that they're not. That's the circumstances that both sides are terrified of getting to. But aren't we there? I mean, I know a lot of people say that about they say, what do you do? What do you do?

And I voted for Barack Obama. Why are you still complaining? I mean, just to be blunt. Right. And so and so reparations is saying, no, that's not enough. Barack Obama was no big deal and didn't in no way resolve that fundamental tension. And so we're going to try reparations now. Well, OK, you can try reparations now. You can get something or you cannot get

something. It won't matter because the underlying symbiotic corruption between the two races is still driving everything. Everything. When whites say, hey, I'm not going to be guilty, I'm not going to act guiltily anymore. The game's over. And I can tell you that what will happen on the other side, on the black side, is that we'll get right in line, and America will move on. But, you know, all this is really in the hands. As long as whites are out there saying, you can hit on us, we're open-minded,

we'll consider things like, even though we know where we don't believe we're racist, we can, you know, we'll somehow, well, I forgot my point, but whites will come to a point where they say that's enough. Whenever that happens, we will make real progress in race relations. Until that happens, because whites keep incentivizing blacks to play this dependency game. I'm proud of the black if I'm fighting white people to get reparations. So that's the gift of death. For you, the secret to racial healing or at least racial progress in this country isn't to convince African-Americans of something. It's to convince white Americans of something, namely –

That's part of it. That's one half of it. The other half is to convince black people. My own thing about reparations is I will announce anywhere, anytime I will refuse them, even if they're a million dollars. And my actual grandfather was born a slave. There's nothing you can, there's no, then you're stealing my dignity on top of everything else. You can buy me off from what, from four centuries of oppression for what, $20,000? You know, pick a figure. My message to black people is it is now time for us to achieve everything on our own. Everything. Join the American society. Join the American dream. Get serious.

Become competitive. We can do that now. The door is wide open. What would happen if you said that you can what happened if you went to a i don't know power university you gave the commencement address and you said that what do you think probably 40 percent of all the students there would get you know would cheer me on um you know probably 30 percent would sort of be confused and then the other would be outraged.

That's pretty good, by the way. That's a pretty good. That's a pretty good numbers. Yeah, that's Shelby Peter here. One more. This is sort of my my question is for you personally. I listen to you. I listen to Tom Sowell, our mutual friend, Tom Sowell. And I keep thinking they're right. Of course, they're right. And they're eloquently correct. Where is the response to Shelby and Tom? Who comes next in this line of dignity? And there's Jason Reilly and not a lot of other people. But do you get – so what is your email traffic like? What do you sense among young African-Americans? You write a piece in the Wall Street Journal making this point about the need for an end to white guilt.

And what happens? On the comments of the Wall Street Journal, you get ripped to shreds. Do you get emails that give you hope? Oh, sure, I do. Yeah, there's a growing Black sensibility, and I think even among young Blacks, there's the idea that, well, something's got to give, something's got to change. All of these things that we believe now for the last 50, 60 years have failed. And we've got to try something new. We're not getting anywhere.

So there's an openness there that I don't remember even five or ten years ago. We've just exhausted everything. How much longer can we argue that our problem in America is white racism or is a government that's indifferent to us? It's our responsibility. We have to pay off, in that sense, the freedom we won. We have to show that it was not misguided. We have to show that we have to become men and women among men and women. We have to look people in the eye and say, I'm at this university as a freshman because I earned my damn way here just like you did. you have no, nothing over me. That ought to be the fire in the belly of black America at this moment, in history.

We would like some of the audience to type that out, carve it into a slab of marble, and we will have it installed in every major university and minor in the country. Thanks so much for joining us today. Shelby Steele, it's been, as always, a great pleasure and honor. Well, thanks for having me. Shelby, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, with all the talk about reparations and income tax and the rest of it, you may be clutching your wallet in pain. Well, you may be in debt. It's no shame, but for decades, credit cards have been telling you, buy for it now and pay for it later with interest. Despite your best intentions, that interest can get out of control fast. Well, with Lending Club, you can consolidate your debt or pay off your credit cards with one fixed monthly payment. Since 2007, Lending Club has helped millions of people regain

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So go to LendingClub.com slash Ricochet. Check your rate in minutes. Borrow up to $40,000. That's LendingClub.com slash Ricochet. LendingClub.com slash Ricochet. All loans made by WebBank, member FDIC, equal housing lender. And our thanks to LendingClub, of course, for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast arthur brooks he's the best-selling author social scientist and the president of the american

enterprise institute his new book is love your enemies how decent people can save america from the culture of contempt and it's a good book and if you hold it so the spine is out you can use it to strike people hard in the head because they're idiots all the wrong things um so i gotta ask here in this climate good lord love your enemies what what's what sort of uh pan-glossian nonsense has infected you here love your enemy i mean you mentioned decent people as though there are any left i know it's a diabolical trick to win your arguments it's the it's funny i was uh over the past few years like like you guys, I'm out speaking in public a lot, and one of the things that I've noticed is that nobody's winning any arguments, that nobody's convincing anybody of anything. It's just a lot of virtue signaling and scratching our

confirmation biases. I thought to myself, what could I do to actually persuade people? Nobody in history has ever been insulted into agreement. And I decided to write a book to figure out to my own satisfaction what I could do to be a more persuasive person and a little bit happier and maybe bring people together a little bit more, maybe a win-win-win and love your enemies as a result. Well, part of it, as you mentioned, is the fractures of today's politics manifested. The worst on Twitter is an automatic contempt for people who believe differently and even within the group that you belong to you can become the instant source of derision if you deviate from what that person's ideal thing is so i mean it's it's how do you i mean i'm in a midwestern culture where people are basically decent and we get along with each other and the rest of it.

Are you saying essentially that if everybody behaved like a North Dakotan and a Minnesotan, I mean, we'd talk less. There'd be less hugging. But are these the cultural attributes we need? How do big cities, in other words, learn to live in peace and harmony with each other and become decent? What I talk about in this book is the main problem. It's not that we don't hug each other enough. We don't even have to like each other all that much. We just have to stop behaving with this one cultural characteristic, which is contempt.

That's the conviction of the utter worthlessness of another person. That's the eye-rolling. That's the sarcasm. That's the derision and dismissiveness that actually takes somebody with whom you disagree and turns that person into an implacable foe. I interviewed a guy for the book named John Gottman, who's the world's leading expert in marital reconciliation, which is fantastic. And the first thing I said was, what drives couples apart?

And he said, not anger. It turns out anger is uncorrelated with separation and divorce, which, you know, the lack of correlation between anger and divorce is the secret to my 30-year marriage to a Spaniard. The problem is when you mix in disgust, when you mix in disgust with anger, and it turns into contempt, the conviction of the utter worthlessness of other people. And what we'll find is that when people have a million ways of ascertaining when you're treating them with contempt, and they will hate you when you do. And that's exactly the habit we've gotten into in our political discourse in the United States today. That's what we have to get away from if we want to convince people of anything ever.

And we want to feel happier as people because there's a lot of brain science that shows that when we treat people with contempt, we become unhappier as people. And if we actually have a tiny little patriotic urge to not drive our country even more vigorously into the ditch than it already is. Arthur, I owe you a link. I've owed you a link for a year. I know this is not like saying I owe a rooster to, you know, Asklepios. But a long time ago, a year almost, in Washington, we were talking about an article in The New Yorker in which they were using virtual reality, very immersive virtual reality, tactile virtual reality to let people experience other situations, other forms, other shapes. And they discovered that having VR immersion creates a form of empathy with other people in other situations that it's almost impossible to get anywhere else, from literature to music to poetry, et cetera. Now, obviously, we're not all going to put on VR suits in order to understand our political opponents, but there is an element there that I think sometimes the right has better than

the left. A lot of us on the right, we're on the left at some point and understand in our marrow the source of the ideas. Could it possibly be that one of the things the left would like to do, should do, in order to feel less burned up by contempt is attempt to honestly understand what it is the other side is doing. Do you see any inclination that they really, truly seek to understand, become empathetic with the intellectual ideas that the right has? Some, yes, but in the main, no. And a lot of people increasingly on the right have grown up on sort of the starchy right and have no empathy or sense of connection with ideas on the left either. And part of that is because millennials and people that are younger than millennials didn't grow up in an environment where most communities were actually ideologically mixed.

The sorting has been brutal over the past 30 years. Geographically, the sorting has been brutal. If you live in Waco, Texas or Seattle, Washington, likely as not you know almost nobody who's from the other political tribe than you, which is really problematic because that means that they actually can't engage in that empathy. Now, one of the reasons that this VR experience that you've talked about and, in fact, having empathy with others,

the reason that it's useful is because you can connect to another person. It's neurologically, the phenomenon that's going on is there's a neurotransmitter called oxytocin, that when you connect with another person on a personal level, you tell somebody a story about your life, when you understand their lives, and when you actually make eye contact with that person, your brain emits this hormone that gives you human connection and actual feeling of love. And so, you know, love is a biological phenomenon as much as it is just the will of the good of the other is other, whatever St. Thomas Aquinas called it. And so it's very important to remember that you need to get out of your nest. You need to go and meet people that you don't know before, and you need to understand their experience and really listen to them with some amount of empathy. If you want any prayer of them listening to you and being persuasive reminds me a lot of my actual boilerplate speech that I give when everybody and when anybody asks me to speak, I usually say something like this. You can see it tonight, by the way. I see it Saturday night on C-SPAN, apparently. But the real question, though, is why would anyone in 2019 want that?

I mean, everything's everybody's getting served perfectly well. If you if you want to live in your bubble and you want to watch MSNBC, you can. If you want to watch Fox News, you can. What's the what's so great about empathy and and in that sense when we can have a radical left-wing president for eight years and then we can have Donald Trump for another eight years and we can swing back and forth? I mean aren't you – in a way, maybe I'm just too cynical. Aren't you missing one element, which is that people are kind of awful in a lot of ways, and they kind of like this conflict, and they vote for it whenever they can. And when given a choice, they prefer to watch the news channel that serves them the news that they like. Why would you get out of your bubble?

That just seems like a lot of work you're asking me to do. Yeah, it does feel like a lot of work. And that's the first question I ask in Love Your Enemies. Maybe this is what people want, but then I look through the data, because that's kind of what I do, and the data are clear. Ninety-three percent of Americans, when asked anonymously, hate how divided we've become. One in six have stopped talking to a family member or a close friend because of politics. When you look at, since 2006, what percentage of Americans say that they're thriving in their lives, which is much better than how happy are you. It's gone from 62% to 50%.

Depression is up. Anxiety is up. Stress is up across, at the same time, the GDP per capita is rising. The problem is in our hearts. At least we know in our hearts that our problem is in our hearts. There's no public policy. There's no economic policy that's going to solve this. We hate how divided we've become.

Now, why do we keep watching MSNBC and Fox News and clicking on, and God forbid, Twitter? Why are we using the contempt machine? And the answer is because of dopamine, a neurotransmitter of addiction. You know, Twitter is the new Philip Morris in the American economy. It is basically making people, they don't like what it does. You know, you notice that people don't say, you know what? I love Twitter. Nobody has uttered those words in a long time. They use the product because they're addicted to the product. They scratch their confirmation bias because it's an easy thing more satisfying, until they have that opportunity, they're going to continue to patronize the outrage industrial complex, which is making tons of money and getting famous.

I mean, these news channels are making boatloads of dough and social media, and they're going to keep doing it, and they're going to keep getting less satisfied and less happy with their lives. I love Twitter. I love Twitter. I said it. And I'll tell you, you asked for lives. I love Twitter. I love Twitter. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you. You asked for that. I will tell you exactly why do I don't love cigarettes, although, you know, good cigar

from time to time. The reason I do is because it's a very varied platform with all sorts of things and you have to build the right world. Today, I've read all kinds of interesting discussion of the new Star Wars movie. There was a charming little story about somebody who found a dog by the roadside and adopted it with their lost brothers and sisters. There's great commentary. I just found

an Islamic moderate, an imam who preaches against extremism. It was a fascinating feed. And I've been watching people on the left go nuts and crazy and people on the right go nuts and crazy. It's informative. If you curate it, there's Rob's favorite word, the right way, it can actually be a tool. But you're right, of course, I get what you mean. It becomes a confirmation bias reinforcing dopamine. You're just constantly

hitting the lever for more crack. And I get that. But it's- Yeah, no, I mean, back in the 50s, there were these great experiments back before we had internal review boards at universities where we'd get away with any experiment. You could get a freshman to cut off his pinky finger for money, and it would be fine, a human subject experiment. But they had these experiments with primates where chimps would be able to self-administer cocaine to themselves. And within 24 hours, they'd be sitting in front of the self-administration lever, you know, neglecting sleep and water and food and sex, and they would literally die. And that's how a lot of people are. You know, I see people in my industry that are at the urinal hitting Twitter.

I'm thinking about Cocaine Monkey. And, you know, maybe it's great. You can actually use it responsibly. That's amazing. I think there are some people who can use cigarettes responsibly as well. I was bad. The night I set my bed on fire, I thought to myself, maybe there's a lifestyle change at work here. And I think a lot of people in social media are going to have the bed on fire experience that's going to take something like that.

Well, I hate Facebook, if there's any consolation. Or could it be something about, I mean, what I usually talk about is that the incredibly, the misunderstanding of scale in American culture, that the people who watch these shows, I mean, just to, you know, Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity, they really think that these shows are important and they're

somehow have a mass appeal, but actually, you know, they have fewer viewers than Jill Stein got voters. I mean, these, they're really, really small. And they aren't, they don't persuade anybody, but they're not designed to persuade anybody. There was a poll of, I think, Republicans, mostly Republicans or conservatives, have named the five biggest, you know, the five top leaders of the republican party and number one of course

was trump because that's his president but number the remaining four were the fox news lineup which suggests suggested a real problem with the understanding of scale like well you know everybody i know in politics whenever they go to hollywood they always roll their eyes and think oh you people in ho in Hollywood think you're so great. If your movie opens to $200 million or $300 million, if you get 10 million people to go see it, you're thrilled. Or 5 million people to go see it the weekend, you're thrilled. I've got to get 63 million people to do one thing on a Tuesday. And if I get 63 million people to do it, I still lose because the other guy gets 65 million people.

Arthur, Peter here. Could I ask you to do a thought experiment? Walk us through a thought experiment. Take the Kavanaugh hearings. Everybody knows that Antonin Scalia, who wasn't confirmed all that long ago, was confirmed to the Supreme Court and the Senate by 98 to 0. These things, the kind of vituperation that we saw during the Kavanaugh hearings, not your way of doing politics, how would they have comported themselves differently at the hearings? How might that have affected what we saw on television? And would they have been rewarded politically?

Is there any incentive in the political system for people to love their enemies? Is that a good question? Can you take us through that question? OK, for sure. So there are places where politicians are being rewarded for it. It's called states and cities. There are politicians are getting rewarded all over the United States, not for being more partisan, not for accusing their political opponents of being Donald Trump or Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or, you Stalin or whatever else is coming

out of the mouths of all the people up on Capitol Hill these days, but rather to do things. And that's the good news, because this is an intensely state and local country. The problem is that the national political scene has become a reality show. I mean, our president is a reality show star, and CNN basically got Donald Trump elected president of the United States by giving him 80% of their coverage. And in a lot of ways, you find exactly what you'd expect in a populist political environment

that's heavily populated with new technologies so that people can see everything that's going on all the time. Where people are nicer to each other is in cities and states, and where people hate each other in a theatrical way is on the national stage. Everything becomes an avatar issue for Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and everything. It's sort of kabuki for our national anxiety. So there's a lot of good news, but the good news is not news. The news is the entertainment page. That's all that's left, effectively, when we talk about politics at this point. So I'm both discouraged and really hopeful at the same time. What about Mayor Pete? Is he applying the Arthur Brooks thesis to a

presidential politics? Is that what's going on with him? I think he's trying. I think there are a bunch of people on the Democratic side that are trying. I think that Beto O'Rourke is kind of trying, and they're basically saying, look, maybe there's a nice guy laying here. Maybe there's a sane person laying here. I mean, look, in 2016, in the run-up to the 2016 election in the Republican primary, Donald Trump was getting consistently 20 or 22 percent, and everybody else was splitting up the rest. So if you had one aggregate sort of Frankenstein candidate called normal Republican, Donald Trump loses four to one. And so all the Democrats have taken notice of this. They said, maybe there's a 20 percent non-really hardcore leftist, non-democratic socialist thing, nice guy, something or other, where I can kind of run through this hole if I can occupy it in a unique way.

I think that's actually – that's what's going on with Buttigieg. But only if the decent person promises to confiscate other people's property and limit other people's freedoms. Otherwise, it kind of falls apart there. But what won't fall apart is the book because it's well-bound and well-glued. Love Your Enemies, How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt. Arthur Brooks, thanks again for joining us, and we'll talk to you later down the road, I'm sure. Arthur, thank you, and enjoy these final couple of months. When do you actually step down at AEI?

I step down on June 30th is my last day, and I become a professor at Harvard University of all places on July 1st. Oh, those are the enemies I really won't love. I'm sorry. You'll love me, though. I will continue to love you, Arthur. I will continue to love you. So I hope you have a lovely round of farewell dinners and receptions. I hope you enjoy every minute of it.

Thanks, Arthur. Thank you, gents. I appreciate it. You hope you enjoy every minute of it. Thanks, Arthur. Thank you, Jens. I appreciate it. You have a great show. Thank you. Thanks. Well, now that he's off to Harvard, I'm sure that Arthur will acquaint himself

with what has to be the world's finest internet, right? You would think that Harvard, of all places, would have every single nook and cranny wired for the best internet possible. Maybe not. Maybe they got an arrow. They'd be smart if they did. They'd be Harvard smart if they did.

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It's a place where all of your passwords are backed up, never lose them, and it goes anywhere and you no longer have to say, what did I use for that one again? Scratch your head and the rest of it. If Peter were here, he'd tell you the joy of one password plus Eero means that he can log in and do anything from anywhere. Never think about what, Peter at this moment is getting a cup of coffee. That's why I said that. Never think about Wi-Fi. Peter, at this moment, is getting a cup of coffee. That's why I said that. Never think about Wi-Fi again, ever.

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clarity. You could see absolutely every detail of that black hole photograph. People were actually complaining that it was blurry. I was expecting something with amazing resolution and jets of fire and stuff on the event horizon and the rest of it. It just kind of looks like this I don't know, what is it? a little napalm in a circle?

Good Lord. What did you guys think of the picture? I had only one question for it. My question was, is this something I need to worry about? Exactly. Is this a bad thing, or is it just a – look, it looks like a really cool corporate logo. It looks like a really cool corporate logo. I'm fine with it.

It's fine. It's fine. It's great. How long until we get sucked in? Yeah, my first question was, is this something I need to, like, do I still have to pay my American Express bill? Yes. Unless you have a very, very interesting payment schedule, yes. Eventually, I'm sure it will draw us all in,

and all the mass in our galaxy will be compressed. Will it? Do these things, I mean, it will draw us all in and all the mass in our galaxy will be compressed. Will it? Do these things – I mean is that just inexorable? Did we just get a picture of our far-off destruction or do these things just die at a certain point? Oh, it's complicated. It depends on which theory you want to go with. It depends whether you believe that heat death is the inevitable end of the universe because there's insufficient mass to hold everything together. So every atom eventually will be millions of light years apart from each other it's infinitely depressing or there's the

idea that the massive black holes at the centers of all the galaxies eventually consume them all and then collapse into some strange little singularity that spews on another universe on the other side of the point that we'll never know about because that's the multiverse etc there are people with scientific knowledge right now listening to this just absolutely pulling their hair out over what I just said. But you know what I mean. It's called Five Dumb Questions. And I want to have people and I want to ask them five dumb questions. And just have people who know how to answer them answer them and then that's it.

It would be like a ten-minute podcast, just five dumb questions. Do I need to worry about this black hole? Is the stuff, is the light around it light? Or is it just what happens when matter gets pulled into the black hole and then what's on the other side of it? And then again, I'd ask the second – the last question would be the first question again, which is do I need to worry about any of this? And then I would be done. Well, you do need to worry about it in as much – not that one, but the idea that there could be rogue black holes moving through our galaxy that could disrupt

things, shall we say. I mean, we got our big brother there, Jupiter, hanging out, doing its job of attracting and deflecting and all the rest of that stuff, but whether or not that would be sufficient. You know what I blame? What? Climate change. That's what's causing all these black holes, James. You know it's climate

change. We didn't have these black holes 50 years ago, it's climate change we didn't have these 50 years ago people we have them now why chemical you're absolutely right if we'd driven less we would not have to have craved them the reason we see what we see we're actually looking at it side on which is interesting i mean we're not looking at it from the top looking down whenever you see those pictures of the galaxy and it's all spiraled the rest of it i always think how do they get that shot exactly it's like the old 60s movies long selfie stick right the old one of the things that always bugged me about james bond um you only live twice one of my favorite movies one of the first ones i saw as a kid attack on a spacecraft by one that comes up and swallows it and what's even at the time i couldn't figure out

was how people on the ground could be watching this happen right because they would cut from what we in the movie theater see to what they're seeing on black and white monitors right is there a camera hanging around what's happening there yeah right they had a crane shot but i had to go but i had okay i'm just saying like i have a i have a meme assignment for someone. Someone taking a selfie in front of the black hole while they're being slowly sucked into it, you know, so the head is being elongated. Spaghetti eyes, I think is the term. Something like that. There you go. I was waiting for somebody to come up with an image from the Disney movie, The Black Hole, and put that in there.

But nobody did because all the people who saw that probably are past memeing, and the younger generation regards it as a laughingstock, which they probably should. But between the James Bond movie and The Black Hole movie, you have a similarity, John Barry, the composer. And I think one of the first albums I ever bought was a James Bond soundtrack, because I thought it was so cool. Tomorrow, or I should say Saturday, the 13th, is Record Store Day. Apparently, we're supposed to go out and buy some vinyl. So I have to ask Peter and Rob if they recall what was the first record they bought. I do recall.

But if I say this, the two of you will just laugh me to scorn. Well, why not you so often you can say that we wouldn't yeah that you wouldn't laugh at anyway all right i my first uh record was an album by the monkeys do you remember the monkeys who was it peter tork yeah do you remember the money yes yes i think they brought out two albums. I bought both of them. Peter Tork, Mike Nesmith, Mickey Dolenz, and Davy Jones. Davy Jones. Davy Jones is dead, and Peter Tork just died.

Davy Jones is not dead. Oh, he's been dead for years, Rob. Where have you been? So I bought the Monkees. I have an older brother. My older brother had already had all the Beatles albums, and my dad had a Reader's Digest collection of the great band era. And I went back and forth between the Monkees and the great bands and just sort of never quite – And you still do.

I still do. I just never quite got onto the Beatles. I don't know why. Popular music, James? Popular music? There's nothing wrong with your choice, Peter. Thank you. Granted, now people look at that and say you took the last train to Dorksville, but the Monkees had some fine songwriters behind them.

And it's an interesting story of a prefab band that actually had aspirations and how they incorporated and co-opted the Beatles idea. I mean, it's interesting. How old were you? I mean, you were like 10, right? Yeah, something like that. 10, 11, something like that. No shame in that.

Of course, the first record that I bought actually was Greve and Schumann Piano Concertos. I think I was seven. So I'm obviously more highly sophisticated than you. No, I was given that album by an aunt who thought actually that it had something to do with Jonathan Livingston's Seagull because there was a white bird on the cover. She just thought it was, you know, kids today, they like that Jonathan Livingston Segal. Here's a Segal on the cover of this. And she gave me the first of the 48 Grieg Schumann piano concerto pairings that I own.

All right, Rob, how about you? We're going to put you on. We're going to put the audience on mute so you can tell us and then we'll react to it. All right, everybody. Rob's on. You're on mute, so you can't hear what Rob's saying. All right, Rob. What is it?

That's on. You're on mute, so you can't hear what Rob's saying. All right, Rob, what is it? That's ridiculous. Oh, my. Oh, gosh. Well, I'm glad nobody ever heard that. Oh, wow. Wow. Okay, well, in the comments, folks, you can add your speculation to what you think Rob Long's first record was. It's a doozy.

That's all I'm going to say. That's all I'm going to say. And we've said enough. And. It's a doozy. That's all I'm going to say. That's all I'm going to say. And we've said enough. And it's been a great pleasure. Hey, by the way, Bowling Branch, Eero, and Lending Club have been our sponsors. They make great things. Avail yourself of them. You'll be happier. And if you're so happy about all this

and you've got a little time left over, why not head over to iTunes and give us a nice little review? Doesn't hurt. And people find it. And then after they find it, they join Ricochet. Like you have, right? Or like you're going to now, right? Right. Peter and Rob and everybody else, thanks for listening.

And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week, boys. Oh, baby, don't you know I suffer? Oh, baby, can you hear me, Lord? You caught me under false pretenses How long before you let me go? Ooh, you set my soul alight Ooh, you set my soul alight

Patience melting in the middle of night And I set my soul alight Patience melting in the middle of night And I set my soul alight I thought I was a fool for no one Oh baby, I'm a fool for you You're the queen of the superficial Hell on the brink, tell the truth

Ooh, you set my soul alight Ooh, you set my soul alight Rayshards melting in the middle of night And I'm the superstar Set to do the super dance Rayshards melting in the middle of night I'm sipping some I'm sipping some I'm sipping some It's Super Flash and Black Amour It's Black Amour It's Super Flash and Black Amour It's Super Flash and Black Amour

It's Super Flash and Black Amour Ricochet. Join the conversation.