The Ricochet Podcast - Heaven Forfend!

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

The Ricochet Podcast is back, and jam-packed with chatter on sex, comedy, food and fun... and the lack thereof we find among our postmodern youth. Noah Rothman, author of The Rise of the New Puritans, returns to discuss the war on fun in America along with the war on Hamas in Gaza. Plus, James, Rob and Steve Hayward show their age as they canvass the finer points of flag etiquette. - Sound from this week's open: ABC’s Terry Moran with Sen. Dick Durbin’s comments on the Justice Alito flag “controversy.” 

The idea that, like, well, nobody wants that, well, that's actually not true. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast. Stephen Hayward is sitting in for Peter Robinson. Rob Long's here. I'm James Lileks. We're going to talk to Noah Rothman about fun in the absence of.

So let's have ourselves a podcast. Tonight, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is calling for Justice Alito to recuse himself from all cases stemming from January 6th. That upside down flag was a symbol of the big lie,

the attempt to steal the election and not admit that Joe Biden was elected. What in the world is it doing at the home of a Supreme Court justice? Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 693. Is that true? I thought it was that last week. Maybe it's 690. Whatever. Guaranteed that when we have episode number 700, you'll be able to tell, because fireworks will be lighting up the sky like a Portugal fireball. But that's a ways away. Weeks away. Depths of the summer. Right now, we are poised at the beginning of the most

wonderful, clement, verdant season of them all. Summer with tornadoes and hurricanes and disaster because the world is ending because the climate is changing, etc. Let me restart. Welcome. It's Memorial Day weekend and we're all looking forward to brats and hot dogs and the rest of it and Decoration Day and those other things we've all lost. Nobody really talks about Decoration Day anymore, do they? Right, right. Rob Long and Stephen Hayward sitting in for Peter Robinson. How's that for an education production?

Nice. Nicely done. We used to call it Decoration Day, which gave it much more of a sort of a, it's something you did as opposed to something, you know, passively absorbed. So if you guys had to go decorate, where would you decorate? I would fly one of those wonderful antique Revolutionary War flags from my beach house, if I had a beach house. Something, I don't know, just one of those wonderful Revolutionary War ones that everybody loves so much. You are a fascist, so you are an actual Nazi, a crystal fascist, because you're talking about appealing to heaven for Fendt. a lethal controversy wherein a flag, which would have been an absolute patriotic statement if it had come from somebody on the left who was protesting a Trumpian policy. But now we have

to worry about the Christofascist J6 elements infecting the minds of our Supreme Court. And frankly, he should recuse himself going forward from everything. I mean, I think if you found in the library of a SCOTUS member, if he had a copy of John Adams, the HBO show, which runs its credits over the Appeal to Heaven flag, I think that would be proof enough that impeachment proceedings ought to begin entirely now. Well, Alito's mistake was that he did not burn the American flag. That would have caused cognitive dissonance on the left, because they approve of burning the flag. It's flying it upside down or running the colonial era flag that George Washington's aide-de-camp designed is what's offended the left. But, I mean, look, this is no mystery.

What's really going on here is that the left wants to delegitimize the Supreme Court because they do not control it any longer. And so, you know, they want to pack the court, they say that openly, and they want to intimidate justices whenever they can so they will manufacture any controversy to try and stir things up. And it's been pointed out that lots of previous justices have had either A controversial spouses or have entered controversies themselves directly, like the sainted Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And you can go on back to Stephen Douglas back in the 60s and 70s. So this is all manufactured.

And the fact that the media give it legs, well, I don't think I need to go on from there. We know what's going on. Yeah, there was a time when you weren't. I mean, there are obviously two things happening here. The upside-down flag that was flying in front of the Alito house is actually wrong. It is the wrong thing to do. They should be, the Alito, whoever flew that flag should be soundly and roundly criticized for uh flag etiquette period they were not in distress it's a very it's a very very it's like sending out an sos when you're not in distress like it's calling mayday when you're

not made it i'm a stickler as a boy scout you just don't do that even if you're making a point you don't make a point with that so that would be what i would i would give them a tongue lashing and a tsk tsk and i would take away their citizenship merit badge um and i think they deserve it like a flag etiquette's important you know um the other flag is like come on like it's such a bizarre it's such a bizarre thing to fall into um and also i mean i have whiplash because like every now and then at least recently the supreme court has been voting sort of with a big majorities to surprise the conservatives or surprise the um the straw men that are created by the liberal media for conservatives right um and so like it was only last week or two weeks ago that we were talking about well you know the supreme court's

very interesting because they voted this or that on... They voted one way on Alabama. Wait. South Carolina. They voted one way on South Carolina, another way on Alabama. So it's hard to argue that they're turning back the clock. If anything, they're moving it back five minutes and ahead five minutes. So a lot of this is just like this panic on the side on the on the side of the left

or the sort of the institutional left try to figure out what how to how to what what new outrage that can they scream about that's going to finally galvanize good americans into realizing that they have to this is all about trump obviously they have to. They have to stand up against Trump. What they don't understand is that now the shrieks and the cries are actually a battle cry to the Trumpers. As I said in 2020, these people seem like their goal.

They will not be happy. They will not sleep until I, a 100% never Trumper, am wearing the MAGA hat. It's like the editorial board of the New York Times and National Public Radio, they're like outside my door right now. They're all holding a MAGA hat, and they just want to put it on my head. And I find that such bizarre behavior.

And I think you should let them, Rob, but that's just me. Before Stephen responds to that, I just want to say one thing tell me your middle-aged male without actually saying you're a middle-aged male and the answer is let me talk about flag etiquette well you know and i agree and i agree with you completely i was in new york a couple of ago, and I was down on the east side. You know, Rob, down there, there's the docks, and there's old ships. There's a big, beautiful old ship, and it had flags arrayed on the main mast. And there was a flag. The order of the flags was the New York State flag, the American flag, Old Glory, and the Pride flag.

And there were a bunch of tour guides standing around just waiting for the next batch of Boy Scouts or whoever to come by. And I said, you know, that's the wrong order. Nothing against the pride flag, but the American flag is always on top. That's flag etiquette. And they looked at me as though this was the most bizarre thing they could ever possibly conceive, that there is flag etiquette and that it matters and that anybody would point it out.

And I walked away feeling old and chaste, not chastened, but feeling like somebody has to care about the traditions. And you feel utterly irrelevant. Anyways, Stephen, you were going to say to Rob's point that everybody seems convinced to run this thing so that the people who hated Trump can't stand him still have a taste in their mouth from J6 are saying, damn it. Yeah. And of course, they'll say that that's just an excuse. You really want to vote for him anyway. You really want the Reich.

You really want the authoritarian. You're just just playing it up but they're not making it i mean for the middle they're not really making a great case that we're the uh the calm stewards that are going to get us through the next four years of crisis um anyway steven you were going to say uh well i wasn't going to say very much except that i take rob's point about proper flat etiquette i think that is a serious thing but it. But it's the hypocrisy of the left just drives me out of my mind. You know, they also hate the Gadsden flag, which doesn't come into play in this episode. But, you know, they think it's, you know,

revolutionary violence. It's a right-wing symbol, also with its colonial roots. But, you know, I remember the Bush years and, of course, Trump's first term in office. I'm referring to it already. When the left said, well, resistance, Trump's first term in office, I'm referring to it already, when the left said, well, resistance is the highest form of patriotism. All right. Except when a Democrat's in office and you criticize them, or you mention patriotism, it's hate speech, right? Or patriotism is hate speech when it's the other way around. And so this gets tiresome and it goes on forever. Yeah, it does. It's treason of course if you if you are um

you know fighting back against what you believe to be a a inelegant inept set of ideas and the rest of it but you know what i do what i love about this is is the is what i'm being told constantly on twitter by the acolytes of the administration is that we should all be really really glad because yeah i mean groceries have gone up a little bit, but everyone's pay has gone up as well. And America is respected in the world, and all you have to do is look to, well, somewhere over there. I mean, Biden brought us back. Everything that they point to, I just, if they would say that, yes, there are problems, and they would have been worse had not for the stern hand at the till that we had with george but but they were led to believe that we're really

stupid for taking in what our own eyes are telling us and this flag thing is an example of that and it will be forgotten in a trice and replaced with the next hair on fire thing as we move from here on fire to here is on fire so there is like uh there is a consistent thread running through some of this stuff and i think the the left does it and the right does it which is this obsession with what people are saying in the media and that that's the reason why things are shown or lousy i should say um because that's because what people are saying the media so the left says well russia russia russia or let's say as well, you know, the heart of the Russia gate was that Russian Twitter bots and Facebook bots were posting false things. And Americans are so stupid, they believe it.

And what they're saying is that now they're saying, well, actually, times are really great. But the media has been talking about how times are not great. And Americans are so stupid, they believe that times are not great and americans are so stupid they believe that time's not great but the idea that the media what the media says is driving people making them say stupid things and believe stupid things is something the right does too and fundamentally underlining all that is this attitude that everyone is a sheep and they need to they need me to be the shepherd and i just think that's just not true um and right now it's the left seems to be doing it louder but the right does it too um what if people are kind of smart and they kind of you know thread the needle their way and they don't you know that they hold their nose and vote for the least worst moron running for president

and um they've kind of done that all the time like they've kind of always done that in america um i don't know what if that's the case and it isn't just well if i only could control the media then i could control what you think which is simply not the case um it isn't the case the the the when when the people on the right say that they seem to think that the that if somehow we control the right conservatives control the news media then the republican candidate or or you know trump or whomever would get 100 of the vote because the america will never have a 48 percent uh electorate that disagrees with you which is simply never going to be the case um that's why all presidents need to sort of learn how to

compromise and make deals um that's why people when they say i like trump because of his uh enemies are making i think i understand the argument but they're making a terrible mistake about the president united states and what his job is an effective president is is effective because of his friends not because of his enemies unfortunately we live in a 51 nation anyway ran over i just want to say this before we go to steven who will have a more judicious response. No, I haven't been drinking. A more judicious response than I can summon at the moment. I just wanted to interject when it comes to the media. It's amusing, though, to see the media show exactly what it believes. And I point you to the New York Times. The New York Times had a story yesterday that said,

here's why Republicans are focusing on voting by non-citizens. House Republicans are pushing legislation to crack down on voting by non-citizens, part of an effort to sow doubts about the election outcome, and take aim at immigrants who they say have no business participating in elections in the United States. So you got that? They're pushing legislation to sow doubts about the election outcome that even hasn't started yet this story appeared in my news feed on google news under a story that reads as follows majority of house dems vote to allow non-citizen voting in dc so the story is the democrats want non-citizens and underneath that is the new york times saying the real story is Republican pushback and the and the and the pouncing and

seizing and the devious underhanded reasons that they are doing so so yes I would like there to be at least in the control of one or the other but just just just give me facts for heaven's sake yeah I mean let's remember a couple things. One, I recall visiting Washington, D.C. right before the election in 2020, and you heard us in other cities, and downtowns were heavily boarded up. Who were they boarding up the things? They were not boarding them up against Trump voters. And that's one of the shame, one of the bitter pills of January 6th, if that hadn't happened, it happened for the other side in that one location, and that was very bad. But the same thing will happen again. My prediction is if Trump wins, as right now I think he's going

to, and if he wins the most votes instead of winning an inside straight with the Electoral College, you are going to see a massive operation from the left to say the election was stolen, like 2016, will try and persuade the electors to not cast their votes for him. Who knows, they might even gin up some crazy scheme to arrest Trump. I don't know. But I think that all those things about casting down the election will turn on a dime if the election turns out the way that they don't want it to. Well, whoever we get, we're guaranteed that they're going to be old. Everybody is aging. The question is whether or not you feel it. I don't. Why? Well, let me ask you this.

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Noah, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Great. To talk to you again, National Review. We'll get around to your latest piece there. I follow you on Twitter, as everybody should. I always enjoy what you put up. It's zesty, piquant.

You know, the war on fun. It's sort of an all-encompassing aspect of our culture today, it seems, a certain joylessness to it. And I guess one of the things that comes to mind is watching what we see unfolding on the college campuses. Now, one could say that the people animated by justice and a desire to protest the things that they hate, why should they be fun? But there's something under, there's a tone underneath. There's an angry joylessness to it all, arrogant, shrieking, unpleasant character that seems to characterize the generation. I mean, even if you look back at the yippies and the hippies and the rest of them, the guys were flashing you the peace sign and giving you a dope adult smile from time to time. But there's a certain red guard aspect to these people that characterizes the generation. Or are

we just cherry picking from the people we see screeching on Twitter? Well, I mean, if it's cherry picking, there's a lot of cherry picking. There's a lot of cherries out there. I tried actually in the book to stay away from tweets and Twitter and the ephemera that populates social media because it is it's it could be momentary lapses of judgment. What you like to cite are the stuff that is written down and proofread and goes through an editor and is published in an institution that stands by it. And there's a lot of that. I wasn't I wasn't deprived of material when writing that piece, when writing that book, rather. And I try to be charitable about, I mean, the premise of the book is fundamentally a charitable premise.

It is that this younger generation has rejected the nihilism of the baby boomer generation that produced the sexual revolution. And they actually have a very rigid moral code that they are applying to the world around them. It has pursued in a zealous way that is indistinguishable from fanaticism, which is why it's become so oppressive. But fundamentally, this generation perceives itself to be very moral and wants to impose its moral framework on the world around them. And why it's puritanical, insofar as its

progressivism emerged from the ashes of the Puritan experiment in mainland Protestant New England, it is something that prescribes on its supporters constant activism, constant efforts and labors. The sweat on your brow is the mark of your status and your worth and value and morality. And they perceive themselves to be forever engaged in the pursuit of rooting out injustice wherever it may be, particularly in the places where you don't see it. Their capacity to see behind the curtain and reveal the evil that lurks behind and lurid, sordid behaviors that lurk behind seemingly placid and benign activities. That is the mark of somebody who's really, really attuned to their world. They spend the whole day with their hands clasped over their ears hearing dog whistles that have the volume

of air raid sirens. Only they can hear it. They persist, yeah, and they insist that these are aimed at demographies and people who have a particular ideology that they must be finally attuned to, but those people never seem to hear these things. It's only them that can identify, you know know why there's a racist code in the word constitution and chicago and apartment i know it's steve hayward uh currently overseas this week and so i'm not keeping on top of u.s news going on right now wow however you are you made the right

choice there it's going well don't worry about it i've heard everything taken care of first just a follow-up question on the new Puritans, and then one about the Middle East, one of many we can ask, of course. So I'm an aging baby boomer on the cusp of my get-off-my-lawn years, and I didn't think it was possible that another generation could be as horrible as my generation has been. And so is the Gen Z worse than us baby boomers uh or how do you size it up how do you compare them i don't know if i would make a a moralistic judgment there one way or the other um there was a just a far more live and let live approach to um the baby boomers political

philosophy insofar as there is one that they subscribe to. But the sexual revolution was libertine and therefore quasi-libertarian. It did abide by your individual choices. And when we see it in, let's just take sex. Let's just drill down on sex for a minute. You know, because Lurid doesn't work. That's what she said so the the difference between the baby boomers approach to this and um the uh the gen z approach the millennial approach and the new puritanical framework can seem to be pretty compatible in a cosmetic way because if you just you know glance over the the landscape here when this

out of this generation views sex, it is very permissive. It accepts all sexual appetites. It invents new sexual appetites. It creates a variety of labels to describe really pretty obscure practices that make them seem like they're more prolific than they actually are. But if you drill down into this, all of those identities have a particular ideology associated with them and a political program associated with them. So they don't necessarily talk about the self-satisfaction, the gratification you might take from sexual enterprise. It is about the activism that is supposed to accompany your sexual identity. Combine that with the fact that there are a variety of mores now, and even structures and attempts in law, but certainly on college campuses, to codify things

like that kind of nebulous concepts like consent. Now, non-consensual sexual experiences are criminal and should be prosecuted. But the efforts to define what constitutes consent, the affirmative consent standard, which was attempted to be made into law in California and is a covenant on college campuses, is designed to make the whole process of pursuit, pursuing a partner boldly, aggressively, assertively, a fraught enterprise to the extent that people don't actually engage in it anymore. And you talk to young women who are in the dating pool, and they will tell you how unsatisfying it is to be pursued by young men nowadays, because they are absolutely terrified of the inadvertent consequences they could trigger

if a social cue is overlooked or something is misread. There are real consequences, social and legal, associated with that. And the result has been a generation that is having far less casual sex than their forebearers did. And people who advocate for this, like people like Ezra Klein, supported this sort of thing, saying, and I'm paraphrasing, but it's a very close paraphrase, that this law, this attempt at this law in California, would send a cold spike of fear into the hearts of young men. Right. And that would be great.

He was happy about it. He was positive about this. This would address injustices. What it has is made the generation anxious and miserable. Yeah. 55 years ago, 50 years ago, the cover of Time Magazine, Newsweek Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, and all those places, our college campuses are giant orgies.

This might be stopped. It was like the degeneracy of the college kid without any sense of propriety or decorum throwing out. They didn't have the Yale prom anymore. There was just something they used to call, when I was in school, they called it parietals, which is like

the rule about having, this is high high school but still like having a uh uh someone of the opposite sex in your dorm room was like at this series there were hours for it and you had to have a certain age you'd sign in and like pariah like the idea that was all thrown out and now of course we're trying like well wait a minute right how do we get all that back we stamped we stamped all that out just culturally without any rules, just cultural rules. And now we need to bring it back. The chapter in the book on sex is the same chapter on booze.

They're threaded together. They often are. I discovered. But the thing is that this generation is patting itself on the back for discovering suddenly that when you have single men and women in the same social environment and it's bathed in alcohol destabilizing things can happen people can get into sticky situations and they've suddenly just rediscovered this and then they're attempting to impose restrictions on it the great two era but dorothy parker quote dorothy parker always said you know candy is dandy but liquor is quicker yeah well yeah yeah and if all was the other one if all the

young ladies who attended the yale prom were late and and i wouldn't be a bit surprised the top of the me too era there was this effort in progressive institutions to try to limit the ability to access alcohol because it was perceived to be the source of all these you know making these men into menaces and brutes and all this language is the language of francis willard it is the prohibitionist it is prohibitionist language to by to the letter verbatim but at the same at the same time we have this this what you've been talking about we have something else we have a generation that is more obsessed with identity sexual identity than any other generation before and has come up with this endlessly kaleidoscopic number of ways in which one can define and perceive oneself and insist that the other world, that the rest of the world should do so as well. But as it

concomitant with their obsession about the identity, they seem to be utterly indifferent to the fact of the act itself. I mean, this seems to be a generation that derives its entire sexual pleasure from imagining themselves to have a particular sexual identity that that that constitutes intimacy really is just the rest of the world knowing on which particular pronoun you want to hang your your hooks and your keys or am i wrong about that no no i mean the puritanism that we see today just the general i mean on one hand you open up twitter and you are overwhelmed occasionally as rob will tell you uh i don't know why, with porn bots. And at the same time that you have this humid stew going on there and you have access to

the most, I mean, the stuff that you can get if you want to just go to the main websites is a hundred times more than what the Mitchell brothers were putting out in cheap reels in San Francisco grindhouses, right? But at the same time you have that, you have this cultural sort of puritanism about it because everybody's afraid that if they get a little spicy in the rest of it, they're going to be tutting for reinforcing heteronormity or encouraging a non-consensual culture. Or genuinely putting people in dangerous situations or potentially criminal situations i try my best not to not to be too judged you know too harshly judgmental over this uh because a that we're talking about a narrow sliver of a generation

that is you know not necessarily representative of the entire generation it is just a very visible and politically active sect nevertheless punches above its weight and um when you talk about this kaleidoscopic good word for uh the uh you know the the spectrum of sexual orientations when you drill down into them a that yes they have a political uh affiliation a political program associated with them but some of them are actually really banal. Have you heard of demisexuality? Yeah, sure. Do you know what demisexuality is? Isn't it... Am I confusing with sapiosexual? No, sapiosexuality

is somebody who's, I believe, is someone who's attracted to intelligence. Yeah, I don't have that problem. Well, that rules us out, Rob. A demisexual... I will never be a peanut in that porn, Meg. A demisexual is somebody who has a worn out vhs copy of g.i. jane oh wow oh wow there you go that's poor demi right no it's demi-sexual yeah but wait what is it just so it is somebody whose sexual orientation is to feel attraction to someone after forming a

strong emotional bond with them what we used to describe as romantic relationships aka normal say what's the trick here right something as normal as it's attraction what's your to intelligence attraction to physicality attraction to emotional to emotional bonds none of this deserves to have its own word or political program or activism associated with it. It is just the pursuit of identity and uniqueness. So what is the political program? I mean, we all know that everybody involved in this deconstruction of the usual old binary has a particular agenda. And it's not something you can necessarily vote on.

There are no bills before the House about it. But describe for us what you would describe it say is the political program well the political program the ideological well it is it all blends into each other the point of the book is the political program is the progressive the progressive suite of desiderata um right and they are pretty much a three legged stool. It is environmental remediation, racial rapprochement and the leveling of income disparities. And that's just essentially the progressive program. And it's all its various permutations only boil down to that. So all of these disparate identities are created in order to funnel these people into activism, to political activism, conventional progressive political activism. But it takes various forms. When you just said suite of desiderata, I think that was just, you were just throwing red meat to the sapiosexuals.

You were just trying to bring favor with them shamelessly. I just, I mean, the book is called The Rise of the New Puritans, Fighting It Back Against Progressive War on Fun. And when I see fun, I think funny. And let me just try this theory on for you.

One of the reasons why comedy has to be policed so, absolutely so strictly by this, you know, new culture. And one of the reasons why it has to find other places to be expressed, like comedy clubs now, which are actually really interesting places, and even TikTok and Instagram, very interesting comedians breaking laws, is because comedy is involuntary it happens to you it it activates something deep inside you before your brain activates its inner um you know inner uh blue stocking its inner um uh harvard uh uh political science adjunct professor before any of that happens you're already laughing and then you're embarrassed because oh my god i laughed at that joke and i shouldn't have it means that i'm a bad person or a racist or whatever it is um isn't that going to be impossible for them to stamp out are they going to be able to stamp out that part of you that just involuntarily laughs totalitarians have been trying from time immemorial i think the subhead on the chapter on comedy is called the heresies of the unconscious mind

yeah uh in part because i just I describe exactly what you just outlined. And the chapter on comedy is also dovetailed with food because there's a big progressive war on food and comestibles and the enjoyment you take in it. And particularly the enjoyment you take in consuming good food with people that you like and being surrounded by them. That's the sort of thing that needs to be disrupted in the puritanical progressive mindset.

And yes, it is. Your body betrays you when you encounter something that you find humorous, right, that you know you're not supposed to, and the intellect intervenes, and you go, oh, I shouldn't have laughed at that. But it's too late. You already did. The same can be said when you release the Epicurean sigh of relief after having consumed a sinfully decadent meal. These are the – your body is reacting in ways that the intellect cannot control, and for those who are consumed with controlling you, that's a threat. Can I offer just a quick theory on that? Because you gave the, or both of you, I think you used

the word involuntary. So, you know, Rob, I mean, you've been in the comedy writing business. I've said for a long time that philosophy and comedy are inverse phenomenon. Philosophy is about working out asymmetries of problems, and you have to think about it hard. Comedy is the other way around. The logic of the asymmetries, you don't have to think about it, right? You don't have to go through a chain of logic. Well, you know, the saying, if you have to explain the joke, it's not funny, right? When a joke... So, you don't have, it's instantaneous in your brain why something is asymmetric and therefore funny, and you laugh, and you can never beat that out of human beings. I think that's absolutely right. P.J. O'Rourke, I had a chance to sit down with him to speak for the book before he passed,

and he described the joke as sprung logic uh as two planes of logic intersecting in unexpected ways in which produces an involuntary reaction in you because it is a surprise by virtue it is shocking to your sensibilities that is what the laugh is it's also very joyful because when you're in a room and you're that's why comedy always works better when it's with you with other people because you are in a room laughing in your involuntary response is now mimicked and confirmed in community with other people and you're like well we can't all be that different i can't be all i can't i'm not alone everyone else laughed at this mean joke too and it's a very that's one of the reasons why um comedy's in trouble right now i

mean you'd be some some of the world's most famous and sensible comedians are saying that jerry seinfeld has a now his new career and saying it's crazy it's insane people aren't laughing anymore um and it isn't because they don't um it isn't because they don't remember what's funny or they don't want to laugh it's because they are trying hard not to and of course as everybody knows the best way to burst out laughing is to try hard not to it is a failing exercise but um should we move on to i guess there's other stuff we could talk about steve yeah well yeah i want to do what uh i actually do a bridge here believe it or not because i want to talk to know about the middle east which he covers very closely hilarious and two and i want to talk to Noah about the Middle East, which he covers very closely. Hilarious. And I want to start with one I know.

Well, actually, the first question I want to ask him about is an event this last week that brought some joy to Noah that pleased me to no end, because I've said this before. I delight in Noah's crankiness and sour demeanor from time to time. I mean that as compliments, by the way. And it's the International Criminal Court issuing an indictment for Netanyahu. That was almost as good as another Iranian missile attack for generating some sympathy for Israel. For listeners who don't know the backstory, the International Criminal Court, Bill Clinton committed us to it, but wouldn't set the treaty to be ratified because they knew it would never pass the Senate.

George W. Bush had us unsigned the United States from that treaty. Otherwise, Joe Biden would have been in a tough spot this week because Biden did come out publicly and say this is a mistake of international criminal court. It's terrible. It makes it harder. But if we were part of that treaty, he would have had to have backed up that indictment and even perhaps even promised to try and enforce it. But you found the same bright side I did, Noah. So say a little more about that, because I was delighted to see and enforce it. But you found the same bright side I did, Noah. So say a little more about that, because I was delighted to see you do that. Well, I was, yeah, I mean, I've actually been pleased by the reaction from the Bidenites to the ICC's announcement, which was

wholesale rejection of it. Now, that is motivated by self-interest. The ICC looks askance at Western nations that pursue their national interests with a certain amount of vigor. And you can it's not doesn't take a lot of foresight to foresee the ICC turning on the United States and seeking the arrest of American presidents for the pursuit of America's national interests. So that's self-interested. Nevertheless, a welcome sign, because what the document this the ICC produced, though it has the occasional upside. And I get to that in a little bit, it's a wholly fantastical document. It's a draft from an alternate universe. It's a universe in which there's something called the State of Palestine, which it refers to frequently, which is not a legal entity with any weight or authority in the international environment or any domestic environment. Okay, I have to stop you right there because this week three countries recognize the state of israel and what's more i saw on twitter

somebody posted a manhole cover from 1934 that said palestine public works on it so you're operating you're in a different unit alternative universe but at no point was there anything called the territory of israel quote unquote which is what the icc refers to israel as the territory of israel uh an aspirational uh you know sovereignty that doesn't really exist in its own mind um but just by virtue of the fact that the icc has absolutely no um jurisdiction in this realm it's like my my former colleague at uh commentary abe greenwald made me laugh out loud in my car the other day as i'm listening to the commentary podcast as he describes this as like an r gang exercise where it's where it's like you know spanky's the judge and it was just a

fantastic image because that's what it's it is they're just reenacting what a court would do with any without any jurisdiction the only people are going to mete out justice to Hamas. And the ICC is valuable insofar as it's the only UN institution that I've seen that belatedly found that Hamas had, in fact, engaged in sexual assault and rape during the 10-7 attacks and after, providing some legitimacy to something I'm sure they were reluctant to do. Nevertheless, the fact that they're saying, you know, we're going to meet out justice to Hamas, that is for Israel's province alone. And it also demonstrates for critics of these international institutions that the problem that they have with Israel is that it's pursuing a consensus agreement among all Israelis, almost all Israelis, that Hamas needs to be extirpated from the face of

the earth because they indicted not just Netanyahu but um Galant Yoav Galant the defense minister who's a Likud member same party but a consistent critic of Netanyahu's which made which demonstrates that they don't observe these political distinctions because politics happens in Israel too and they don't observe those political distinctions um they you know they see the the consensus around the need to eliminate Hamas as the political and military authority of you know they see the the consensus around the need to eliminate hamas as the political and military authority of the gaza strip as the problem which makes them the enemy of israel and the civilized world yeah can we you brought up so i was my next question really is about you have a lot i mean i mean i have to tell you that i i was reading what

his concerns were and i think he has he's raising really good issues um about what's going to happen when this is over because we know how it's going to end it's going to end in a pile of rubble and war lording and whatever goes on and so one thing to have that happen i mean just to be super blunt was one thing for that to happen in in iraq which is a million billion miles away from new york city it's another thing for it to happen just over there like it's as if we were letting if i live in new york city's of new york city's letting new jersey sort of fall into you know the pile of rubble without a plan i mean he has a point does he not so i'm the farthest thing from an expert on israeli domestic politics so i may be speaking out of turn however the claim that there first of all, there's two ways to look at it. One is that the fact that there is no plan for a day after is because it's

premature to have a plan for the day after. Well, it's not really true, is it? I mean, the allies started to plan for the post-war Europe right after the Battle of Midway. That's the thing. There are plans. The first point that I'm trying to make here is that in the public, the public sphere is not debating the day after Hamas is extirpated. The point right now is to destroy Hamas, maintain public support for that mission and see it through to the end. The second point is that it is not true that there are no plans for the day after in Gaza. Just you can Google the reports on the plans, conflicting plans for the day after in in Gaza both Israel's plans and plans that involve the United States this is not public stuff it is leaked and hard to verify because it no one wants

to debate it yet they don't want to be pinned down on any of these possibilities hypotheticals that have a that will not necessarily be operative depending on what the situation on the ground is after the mission is completed so it's the notion here that it is simply premature to talk about this, I think, has more explanatory power than the fact that the idea that there is simply no planning going on whatsoever in the Israeli wartime government for the post-Hamas future. I just find that to be unreliable, unlikely rather um i mean i hate to be pedantic rob but yes the we were planning for post-war germany but theirs was i think you know this bitter divisions inside the roosevelt

administration and with our allies on what that plan should be yeah so if we right and i'll bet the same things right i think the same thing is likely just my hunch is likely going on at the highest levels of the Israeli government right now. And so they can't really talk about it because that will make the problem worse. Because the American people would have loved the idea of the Morgenthau Plan. They would have loved to see Germany reduced to a series of feudal states. That's true. is the destruction of hamas um just a semantic issue meaning it's not you're not going to destroy the whatever the the gaza whatever whatever hamas represents to some people you're not going to they

might just rename themselves and rearm themselves and find a new source of funding what is the actual what what is gaza going to look like in a year is going to be administered by the state of israel is going to be administered by the un is it going to be administered by 17 warlords who are fighting each other that i think at this point since it is a war of consensus and you are asking the american people not only to fund it but to support it morally and generally having just come from we what i perceive to be a fairly disastrous experience in iraq and afghanistan um i mean i i sort of agree with you on the logic of it but isn't that sort of you know that's kind of tough luck you you this is 2024 it's in the wake of all those things so you have to kind of have a vision for what this is going to

look like and they do i don't know what the ultimate situation is going to look like um but from what i've seen and there's a reason reason why the Biden administration doesn't want to talk about this, is I think it's the Biden administration's fondest hope, which is why they're attaching themselves to it, in unconfirmed reports, that there's some sort of a multinational Arab-led force primarily dominated by Palestinians on the ground who provide security for a Gaza that is not occupied by Israel. Israel will not reoccupy Gaza. It was a very painful experience pulling out in 2005, and they do not want to repeat it.

But there would be some, from the reports I've seen, there's some American involvement in at least the training and leadership of this multinational force, and that's contingent on Saudi compliance with this agreement, which is contingent on the future status of the Palestinian territories. It is all very much in flux and extremely delicate so that's why they're not talking about in public if if it but if the defense minister of israel doesn't know then isn't that a problem well there is no plan so he doesn't know what the plan is because there is no plan that's not to say they are not talking about a plan and it's in yo galan's political interest to um maximize his leverage within the coalition it's also netanyahu's interest to say i got a plan it's in my back pocket i'm not talking

about it now maybe would that be tenable in the long term well that's i think isn't that the issue here i mean i i i i my concern is that the the the Israel is becoming inextricably mixed with support for Netanyahu. And I think that's a mistake. Oh, I don't see it that way, Rob. I mean, certainly some people do, but I don't see it that way. Netanyahu is extremely unpopular in Israel. Netanyahu is extremely unpopular in Likud, his own party. Nobody likes Bibi.

I think a lot of people can make a distinction between that and the cause of the israeli people in their minds at least i can well if you just want to think about how things have changed imagine going back to ancient rome and saying okay cato you say carthage delenda est yeah but but how what are your plans he had a plan what are your plans to rebuild it afterwards you know no he, he would get out the salt and start going. Although that supposedly is something. And they did rebuild it anyway. Well, yes, under Roman terms.

Steve, we know you've got to scoot eventually. You know, you can't be here for six or seven hours, though. We'd love to do it. So, Steve, you've got a last opportunity to ask Noah something before we let him go. Oh, gosh. You know, I've got a million things I want to ask him about. Stick to 567,342. Actually, yeah, maybe a dumb question. Do you have another book in the works, Noah, or are you too busy doing sort of regular journalism right now for National Review, which is a different animal from commentary, of course?

Yeah, no, I do not have another book in the works right now. Thank you for asking, though. Yeah, I just moved over to Just. I've been over at national review for about 18 months now so i've been getting my sea legs over there and they keep me pretty busy uh between that and the podcast since tv so i've had a couple of ideas that are maybe building off of some of the um some of the long form pieces that i've wrote for that magazine, but I was going back and forth with my agent over a possible draft of a new book based on some of those pieces, most of them being about the war on things that work and the attack on appliances and conventions and just lifestyles that actually have, over generations, we've figured out are actually maximally efficient. Right.

Well, we want first crack when that starts to come together and in the meantime so right yeah what was the response i've already given away the idea so it's no no yeah but it seems like it's gonna be hard so i'll let you do it i will do a spontaneous 17 minute peroration on the inefficacy of my dishwasher anytime somebody wants so if you got a dishwasher chapter, I'm your man. I do have a dishwasher chapter. Well, there was a piece, the war on things that work that touched on why it was all about appliances, particularly gas powered appliances, which have become anathema to the progressive left. And I, you know, I have a couple of electric appliances, one of the yard work appliances, and they're fine for small jobs, but you can see exactly why they have a problem with it. Because if you have an acre of land or more, it's totally inefficient. It does not work. It absorbs far more of your time

and more of your money, which is why it's not efficient. The word efficiency has been euphemized. It no longer means doing a job quickly and well. It means fewer inputs, less water, less air, less gas, less oil, which is not the same thing and but more time i have a big yard and anomalous for the city a large yard and i had to get a new lawn or because i dumped my service because they're charging too much and i said i can mow this huge expanse of greenery this land spreading out so far and wide this place is pitched at about a 45 degree angle i can do this he said not realizing it would tax every muscle of my body and take an hour and a half to do every Saturday, but I'm glad to do it. The point is, is when I went to get a

new appliance, they were trying to sell me on this Ego branded electric thing. And I was tempted because I knew the battery would run out halfway through and I could quit and tell my wife I'll finish it tomorrow, but she wouldn't like that. Or I could buy another heavy, expensive battery that would eventually end up in a landfill somewhere. No, I went with gas, Briggs and Stratton, four stroke. And because I am a by God, American, I got a self-propelled lawnmower, like, you know, the things you take to the move. It still is a pain to get it up the hill. But the sound of that motor, that, that, that, that, that, that purring sound of that brapping sound of it and the smell the gorgeous perfume of the oil and the gas i love it i absolutely love it i feel like an eagle should

alight on my shoulder and i should raise the appeal to heaven banner before me so that's america man yeah the long years ago years ago just before i let no go i i when i was um i just signed a big fat studio deal and i thought you know i need a i need a fancy car and i went and i test drove this new bmw 6 series which is a convertible which is an idiotic car basically um they had they had improved it right they had improved it from the the old one i was driving which was on the six which is five which had was a manual transmission which i still prefer but no they improved it with all sorts of electronics the whole thing ridiculous uh and as i'm starting that drive running test drive the guy that the dealership which is by the

way um it you notice the sound it sounded kind of rough and noisy just um that's a choice. It does not need a tune-up. They put that in because people like the sound. And I thought, oh man, this is... I'm going back to a Subaru because this is just stupidity, right? That's the dumbest thing ever. I drive it like one block and I'm thinking,

I have to have this car. This is awesome. The noise is just fantastic. And I didn't, but I will regret it to this day, not be able to use it. Listen, you have two choices now. You have fake engine sounds or Elon Musk's weird fart noise that his car has made for no discernible purpose other than he's a kook. I want the Jetson bleeble, bleeble, bleeble.

Thank you if I'm going to get one of those. Noah, you know, we could do this all day, but it's great to have you here. I hope to see you. Were we outside having a smoke at the Christmas party? Were you there? I haven't smoked in five years. So, yes, I was. So it wasn't you.

Now I'm a vapor, which I think until the longitudinal studies come in, I think is better. Yeah, well, I puff on the cigar from time to time. And Jeff wanted to go out. Anyway, the books are The Rise of the New Puritans, Fighting Back Against Progressive War on Fun and Unjust Social Justice and the Unmaking of America. Noah Rothman. Follow him on Twitter. Read him at NR by his books. And stay tuned for the next time we have him on because it's always a pleasure.

Noah, thanks. Thanks, Noah. Thanks for the treat. Appreciate it. And now, before we go, we have to remind you that Ricochet is not just an incorporeal entity floating over the, not the airwaves because we don't broadcast, but the podcast waves flowing through the DSLs and the cables and the Cat5s and the rest and the Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth. No!

It is a place where actual human beings get together, not just on Ricochet.com, but in bars and restaurants and celebrate, well, the joys of getting but in bars and restaurants and celebrate uh well the the the joys of getting together in bars and restaurants and rob of course is here to tell you the meetups soon to be happening yes uh these are fun meetups and they're and they're all in the summer man this is the busy summer uh randy waivoda who is uh was the guy who arranged our fantastic new orleans meetup recently um may you remember uh he is has an open invitation to join him in cookville tennessee so cookville tennessee to pour a drink

it's national bourbon day on june 14th which i didn't even know there was a national bourbon day but i i tend to observe that um daily more often yeah right at least every morning uh red herring member red herring is calling all national Review cruisers the National Review cruise the Alaska cruise which is coming up the week of June 16th, they're going to get together and that is actually one of the high points of the National Review cruise by the way are the Ricochet members there

Katie Koppelman hosting a 4th of July weekend meetup in Fargo North Dakota. It's killing me I can't make it it is killing me. Where are you? I'm going to be out but if I and I'll tell you where later but by gum and by gosh by golly i mean that's my home it's perfect right in your uh your neck of the woods matt balls are setting plans for the annual ricochet german fest that's an annual meet meet up and that'll be the weekend of july 26 in milwaukee uh so it's like that's kind of nice like this we're doing stuff in fargo and milwaukee

somewhere in the in the great center of this country um and obviously if you're booked up the summer and you can't make it uh mark your calendar for the weekend of october 3rd because there's a st louis um meetup being planned for october 3rd and i'm sure in the summer goes on there'll be more gates listed so ricochet is not just, as James said, this little chit-chat fest on the air. It's also a club, and we want you to join. I'd love to go to the St. Louis one. Never been there. Always wanted to.

It's a great city. I know. I know. And I'm missing out by not going there. You especially, with your love of classic American architecture, man. And America and the rest of it. My love of, you know, classic American architecture, man. In America and the rest of it. My love of America. Love of classic America.

Hate this new stuff with the saccharine and the aspartame. We got Grandpa started. No. No, that's the thing. I mean, that's the thing. And you'll find this on Ricochet. You'll find people who have a memory of the old and also one foot firmly planted in what the country is now. And it's always been such. I mean, there's not a point in this country's history where people haven't

bemoaned the fact that it's morphing into something that they don't recognize anymore it's i mean i looking at papers from a hundred years ago which i spent a lot of time doing you say you see divisions my my favorite thing that i saw i was looking at 1934 i just sort of randomly chose a date randomly chose a date, randomly chose a paper, and on the front page of the Los Angeles Times was a story about a utopian conference that was being held. Sinclair Lewis was talking about socialism bringing about utopian ideas, there were other people who had all these things, and apparently a brawl broke out between the rival factions of the utopians. It just seemed like something it would absolutely fit in the paper today if they

had the space and the inclination to cover it uh steven anything before we go i know i keep going to you is like uh so what do you what do you got to say steven but i'm curious what what do you have to say before we wind ourselves up here oh i i don't know i'm over in europe for three weeks on a lecture tour so blessedly remote from things and taking in nice restaurants and things like that so uh can we ask where you are right now i'm in rome at the moment and i'm right and i'm off to budapest early next week to see our mutual friend john o'sullivan and hang with him for a while yeah um and then uh then i don't know what's happening i'm done with classes for the semester which is always a grind and so i'm looking forward to a summer when i get home of relative relaxation i thought it was budapest and well it's like barcelona or however rob says it well you know oh sullivan is actually one of the great hosts in general but especially in budapest

you will eat and drink very well that's like oh yes right i this is my this is like my fourth visit with john so yeah i i said when i was there last time i was sort of saw him the next day i said hey you know i was walking home and i found this great kind of fun hipster ish kind of bar a lot of young people sitting around and like looking very middle european it kind of felt like a movie and it was just great. There was this great beer. They were drinking Havana Club rum. It was fun.

He said, have you heard of it? He looked at me and said, no. I wouldn't. It's not where I would. Of course not. Sullivan's a little more sophisticated, I guess. Did he not preface it with dear boy? Dear boy.

That's always implied in every face screwing up in in all this sad dear sad dear boy dear man dear woman dear friend dear child everybody who listens to this podcast we thank you for sticking with us for episode number 693 next week episode 694 i guess and who knows what it'll bring all All I know is it'll bring the usual sparkling conversation, enjoyable insights, and all the stuff from your favorite people. In the meantime, go to Ricochet, sign up if you haven't already, because it's the place you've been looking for. Honest to gosh, the member feed, it's the community you've been looking for on the web. And if you could go to Apple Podcasts and give us five stars, it's not like we would say anything other than thank you very, very much.

We appreciate it. And, of course, Qualia, Senulytics, our sponsors, support them for supporting us, and everybody gets supported. So, with that, have a grand Memorial Day or Decoration Day. Grill the bronze. Tip a hat towards those who got us to where we are today. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0 next week next week fellas happy memorial day ricochet join the conversation