The Ricochet Podcast - It's a Wonder Why They're Losing to This Guy

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Steve Hayward is traveling abroad, so Ricochet co-founder Rob Long takes a break from his seminary studies to join James and Charlie in a discussion of worldly ways this week. The trio discusses property taxes, crazies with guns, and Bari Weiss's making a big deal over The Free Press. Plus, there's a comedian on trial in the UK, sustained outrage over Trump's law-and-order blitz, and disappointment among his enemies that he could be away from the cameras and alive at the same time.- Sounds from this week's open: Tim Waltz on Donald Trump's "death" earlier this week, and Donald Trump's announcement that he was not dead earlier this week.- Visit this week's sponsor, Prize Picks, and use code RICOCHET and get $50 in lineups when you play your first $5 lineup!

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 Rickshay podcast. I'm James Lillen, of course, we'll get Charles C.W. Cook. And as far as our guest, he's not a guest, he's one of us, the founder, Rob Long. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Although I will say this, the last few days you woke up thinking there might be news.

Just saying. just saying there will be news sometime just so you know there will be news and then i didn't do any for two days and they said there must be something wrong with him biden wouldn't do him for months you wouldn't see him and nobody ever said there was ever anything wrong with him and we know he wasn't in the greatest of shape no i heard that i get reports welcome everybody this is the ricochet podcast number seven hundred and fifty six how do we get that far well in the beginning was rob long but we'll get to that.

You can join us at Rurkechay.com. You'd be part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web. We have, as usual, luckily, Charles C.W. Cook, Stephen Hayward is out this week. Lord knows where he is. Iceland, New Guinea. But Rob's back.

Rob, the founders of Rickache is back with us. Seminary classes, I believe, started today. So he's a little... Yesterday. Yesterday he has to be stressed about seminary studies. I mean, it's a calm feeling of peace. no doubt descends you as you look over the landscape of theological disputation and find nothing but harmony.

But you are in New York, and so you're on the ground where democratic socialism is taking root joyously, right? Well, I mean, technically I'm in Princeton. That's where I live now. I'm a full-time graduate student, really thinking more about weighty matters, James, not quite the worldly things you think about. Yeah, I mean, it does seem like. people are, I don't know what the word is.

What is the word when you know something's coming and it's going to be bad and you just want it to start now and get on with it? People have that weird people I find to do. There's probably a civil war term for guys who are going into the operating tent.

Yeah, yeah. Pick up the saw. Get the saw. That's it. Just get it to start. And there's also that kind of this wishcasting wish casting that our side does every now and then where we have created a, weirdly, a kind of a Marxian kind of way of looking at the world, which is like, it's good. It's good. We need, I was a dinner party with a bunch of conservatives two weeks ago. Like, we need Mom Dottie be mayor just to remind people how terrible it is. And then we can set ourselves up for a new Giuliani kind of Bloomberg kind of event, as if these things are sort of natural laws that must happen, like gravity or laws of physics. They forget that things can get really bad and stay really bad for a long time, which has happened in New York City for, you know, nearly 30, 40 years. So that is the mood, I would say, in New York is delusional,

but that's kind of always the mood there in that city. Well, it's interesting. We have two examples. New York, we're going to tax you. We're going to take as much money as we can from you, but we're going to open grocery stores that will have a 1% profit margin. If that, Florida, hmm. How about we abolish property taxes?

Charles, you would be the beneficiary of this. So you have any thoughts on dissentices musings? Well, yes, they're contradictory. One is that I would, of course, love to pay no property taxes. And I do think that there's something psychologically problematic about property taxes in that we all grew up watching Westons. And the families that moved into the middle of nowhere and built the house had it free and clear. And that seemed such a symbol of liberty and self-sufficiency.

No one came up to them every year and said, And now the money for living here. But we live in a world in which government spend money, and you have to get it somehow. And I think Florida's arrangements pretty good. What you have in Florida is no income taxes or taxes on anything that approximates income of any sort, good, relatively low sales taxes, where I live at six and a half percent, and then property taxes that aren't the lowest in the nation, but aren't as high as, say,

Texas, and, you know, Minnesota, and a lot of our taxes in Florida are paid by people who don't live here and therefore can't get upset about them, people who come in as tourists, and either pay the sales and hotel and amusement park tax. or drive up and down the roads where the tolls have been cleverly placed near the airports and pay those. So it's not that I'm against the idea of getting rid of property taxes per se or that I like property taxes, but I do think that combining medium-level property taxes with medium-level sales taxes in a state where a lot of taxes are paid by other people and there's no income

tax is working really well for Florida. And so the burkey and conservative in me just says, don't screw with this, because I don't know what would come next. And then there's another part of me that thinks that it might be a little bit unfair. And this is something I very, very rarely say in connection with taxes. But I think it might be a little bit fair to get rid of property taxes and say hike sales taxes on people who are poor. I just, you know, that seems to me to be a pretty unfair trade. I agree that would be regressive, but on the other hand, isn't this come from the fact that Florida has a state budget surplus?

Well, it wouldn't have any other kind. Budget surplus now because of judicious trimming. And the idea is that we will continue to trim and be lean and efficient, and therefore we don't have to take the property taxes. Because the property tax is psychologically in the back of your head. When you say the old idea of your house free and clear of the old idea, and then that somebody comes around once a year with a bag open, And such as that, it's the idea that you can literally pay off your mortgage and live someplace for 35 years.

But at the end of the year, at the end of the day, it's taken away from you if you do not pay the state in their portion. And that's, of course, the counter argument, which is a strong one, which is that property taxes can push people out of their homes. And that's also very unfair. So Florida would boom then from people who were moving into escape New York's honorous property taxes, for example. And then it would lead to more sales tax revenue and the rest of it. We'll see. It's interesting. I just love watching people freak out about this. It's like, you know, demolishing a category of taxes strike some people as is completely irresponsible because it, by its very nature, is going to starve the state. And we can't have that. Oh, I want to do that. Yeah, but it doesn't have to start the state.

I mean, I guess what I'd say about these taxes is that there's no law that says if you repeal one form of tax, you can't make up the revenue somewhere else. The problem with property tax, at least in California, I don't really know how they were. I didn't have to pay them in New York and I had to pay them in California is that there's this kind of strange murky subsidy. That's what governments always want to do. They want to tax you in a way that you don't really even notice it. so that if you buy a house in a 30-year mortgage, your property tax is often part of the loan of your mortgage. Not me.

I write that check out twice a month. But in California, it often is. And so the idea is you're hiding this giant fee and you're putting it somewhere where people kind of don't see it. And they just don't feel the pain. And I think when you feel the pain of taxes, that's what no liberals want is for you to actually sit there and write a check. because that's essentially a direct mail piece from the Republican Party is your tax bill.

And that's why your pay stub is so bizarrely configured and confusing. So you don't really notice it. I mean, one of the Coors brothers, early on when the Social Security tax, FICA tax was imposed, payroll tax, you could go to the brewery in Colorado and get your paycheck on a Thursday. And you went to the window, you had to get the full paycheck in one window. get your gross pay. And then he had to go to the second window and you had to pay your FICA

because he wanted everyone to know exactly what was coming out of their paycheck. They had those two or three minutes when they were standing in line when they felt rich and then that incredible sinking feeling later when they gave all the money to the government.

And then that was considered I think they made that illegal. You couldn't do it that way. You had to take it out of the paycheck before the worker gets it. And in general, I think any time taxes are more transparent and paid on the barrelhead and people see what they're paying for, they can decide if they want to pay more or less or if they want more or fewer services.

And that's a road to not just democracy, but prosperity. You know, just to upset everyone even further who will think I'm a squish here. The other thing that does worry me slightly is it would be good to starve the beast. Florida doesn't spend that much in the first place. but I am slightly alarmed by the record of the federal government here I know states can't borrow in the way the federal government can but that theory has been tried for a long, long, long time and we don't cut spending.

We just borrow $38 trillion. And so I do, there's at the back of my mind, there's a small don't break it, as I say, Burkean view, that Florida's really great. It's working really well. I don't feel like the government's profligate. I don't feel like taxes are too high in general. And I worry that if we do this, then what?

True. But on the other hand, you don't lose your house because you don't pay. So the other thing that caught my eye this week was the shakeup at CBS News where Barry Weiss strikes out in her own, starts up a substack, and then gets a bazillion patrons, makes a lot of money, and now appears to be headed for running CBS News, which I would actually watch again under her tutelage, because I would expect,

not that I would expect that it would conform to everything that I said or thought, but it would be probably heterodox as she is. Do you guys agree, or do you think this is just more moving the chairs around on a Lusitania? I use that instead of Titanic because Lusitania went down real fast. Well, I mean, you know, Look, I think it's great. I think it's a, any time there's a shakeup in that business.

I mean, I still believe that there should be these robust businesses telling you the news that are not, that are thoughtful and are not, you know, nuts, nuts. You know, the subs, the free press, which I, you know, written for, which I know, I know, I know, I'm a, I know, Barry, I'm a huge fan. Is it real success. It's not a success to $200 million, but if you were, hey, just bought this giant behemoth of a company, Paramount, Paramount Global, I guess they called it at some point. And I, listen, I've been attached to Paramount Studios and Paramount for low these 35 years. So I've seen it through multiple handovers.

You know, you have this CBS thing that doesn't make any sense. I think the broadcast side does, but the news side doesn't really make any sense. It's filled with all sorts of trouble and ossified things. And, you know, Barry's got a kind of very fresh way of looking at the news. And she managed to assemble a lot of interesting writers around her, whether she can run a giant, news division, which is basically a TV network, who knows? But I admire the, I admire the risk. I mean, good for them. Good for the Ellison's for risking this. I, you know, I wish them well. Charles' last gasp of dying industry or a new sign that it might be able to reinvent and

revitalize itself. I think the latter, what I love about this is that someone has realized that it's not working. It's not good. Finally. It's the most annoying thing about people in the media is that they are the worst people in the world and they don't know it. They can't accept any failures. They still conceive of themselves

as the greatest heroes in American history. And their product, generally speaking, and there are some exceptions, of course, isn't good. It's not the evil conservatives. who did this. It's not the internet. There are lots of secular reasons that it's

become more difficult to run a news station. I understand that. But the people, I think, are the key to it. And I have the same view I had when we were talking about the late night shows. Maybe make one that isn't annoying

and then see if it works. And then if it doesn't, you throw up your hands and you say, all right, well, there's just lots of different external factors that made it impossible in a way It wasn't in 1978. But no one's actually tried this. I mean, CNN pretended that they were going to stop being ridiculous, and then they didn't do it. MSNBC occasionally acknowledges that it is a drug trip and then doesn't do anything about it. And Fox is its own thing because it's really the only one on the right.

But the mainstream press just, they don't seem to actually ever follow through. They have these focus group meetings and expensive hotels and say, everyone hates us because we're rubbish. And then they say, what's the problem? And then they say it's because we're heroes. So I just think this is good. I want to see if this works. Yeah.

And I think also, look, it's a, I don't know, the internals of the deal, but it's most to be that $200 million, which is actually not that much when you have $80 million billion dollars that Ellison's have. And when you've just invested a couple billion, a bunch of billion into the giant company. So like, yeah, you get a hive off a little bit and you're going to say roughly this is what we want our news operation to cost. I think it could be really, really interesting. It could be really something great. And the thing about Barry is that Barry will be infuriating and surprising to people on the left and the right. She's going to be exactly, in many ways, exactly who the people on the left.

in the media think they are, right? This kind of, we're, you know, I think freely, I make these, I call balls and strikes, all that stuff. She actually is that thing. Yes. And that's why the, the organism of the New York Times had to, had to reject it. But the truth is that she is a, she is,

she is the app, the real life accurate projection of what every, you know, media, grandee thinks he or she is. And they're going to, they're going to find out that it can, You know, look, the worst thing that could happen to them is that she succeeds. When Charles spoke before about the late-night talk shows and saying, you know, try one that isn't annoying and see if that works. The evening news sort of brackets that as a tradition. And it's from another time, another culture. When dad was home, you had your dinner and then maybe while you were waiting for mom to put it on the table, you sat down and you watched the evening news.

It's very gendered language, James. It is. It very much is. and you had a preference based on who you liked, who you trusted, maybe even what the theme music was. I have no idea. Or perhaps just you didn't care and you flipped around and you sat down and listened to Walt or chat or whatever. And then the evening show, your evening was bracketed by sitting on watching Jarnie or Joy Bishop.

And these are gone because, of course, now the competition is myriad, multifaceted. No one is waiting for Carson to come on because they're streaming a whole bunch of things on their second screen. and nobody sits down necessarily to watch the evening news is sort of putting a pin in the part of the day the work that is done. So the question is whether or not she wants to revive that at all or just dump it. And I'm thinking, I haven't watched the evening news for so long

and I did last week when we had the tragedy, the massacre, the shooting in my neighborhood. And they were asking everybody. They'd interviewed my niece, for heaven's sakes. And so I turned it on. And it reminded me that I used to every night watch the evening. evening news. And I think I'd listen to NBC because they had the best theme, because John Williams had written this suite of music called, and get this, the message that was quite inspirational.

And I fell away from that at some point, willingly, didn't miss it at all. And so watching the whole progress of the tropes and the cliches of what the evening news was, the concern, the pain to faces, the people standing outside the White House and the rest of it just seemed like why. I've been teleported back to 1962. So I don't know if there's much to be had. in trying to revive it or if she should just be more nimble and attempt to rewrite the whole news idea on television right before our eyes. It's got to be done because Charles is absolutely correct.

They don't know how bad they are. The other day when I was putting my groceries away, I saw headline on the local paper, not the one that I know who would work for. And it said, shooter's mystery may never, shooter's motive may never be known. And, okay, and that is why circulation continues to plummet at the rate that it does.

So while we're on the subject of the shooter, though, there are two interesting developments when it comes to gender studies in America in theory. And the first is something that I predicted the minute that people started talking about red flag laws. The minute that they were saying, well, we need to make sure that mentally ill people don't get guns, and I think we all agree that that's a good idea.

There's the usual worry about red flag laws being used against political opponents, against people who aren't really crazy, et cetera, et cetera. But I thought what they're going to do is they're going to say, if you believe you are a boy when you're actually a girl or vice versa. That is prima facie evidence that you have a mental disability. And sure enough, according to the Daily Caller, that is exactly what they are proposing to do. Charles, you being the Second Amendment absolutist,

give us your take on this. It was spectacularly unconstitutional and won't last one minute in the courts. Okay, but tell us why. I mean, the predicate, The predicate is, in what they're trying to do here, is to say that transgenderism is, like I said, prima facie, a mental disorder, ergo can't have your guns. And it's making the people on the left scream for gun rights,

which I think is quite funny. So what makes it unconstitutional, just for those that haven't been taking notes? Well, the Second Amendment's an individual right, as confirmed by the Heller decision of 2008. The Bruin decision of 2022 updated that to hold that any gun law that is to be presumed constitutional

must have a historical analogue. Until that is whittled away or reversed, that is how the lower courts and indeed the Supreme Court is obliged to look at it. So the question then is throughout American history, either in the post-colonial period or post-reconstruction, are there any laws that permit the government to determine that a class of people is exempt from the Second Amendment? We're currently having this debate over the laws that render it illegal to buy or possess a gun. if addicted to drugs. Because historically, the laws didn't do that.

There were prohibitions on carrying firearms while drunk, for example, but you got your gun back the next day when you sobered up. Right. So there is a case against the law that got Hunter Biden into trouble on the grounds adambrated in, Bruin. Now, there have historically been exceptions for people who were violent felons. Not non-violent felons. Those laws may go by the wayside. That's going to be the next big case. And people who were mentally ill. But both violent felons and mental illness had to be adjudicated in some sense.

It didn't necessarily have to be adjudicated with a sentence from a court, as we found out in the Rahimi case recently, merely being the subject of a restraining order, is sufficient, at least under current precedent. But there had to be some due process involved. You could not just say everyone who supports the Minnesota Vikings is mentally ill. Therefore, they are not allowed to take advantage of the Bill of Rights. And that's what, although it's embryonic, has been suggested by the Trump administration, as far as I can see, is declaring that anyone who is transgender is ipso facto mentally ill and thereby unable to exercise their Second Amendment rights. That will not fly. Now the more interesting question would be, and I still think this would be fraud, could you pass a law, and you'd have to do that, that said, if somebody who is transgender has been determined to be mentally ill by a court, they are no longer able to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

Could you do that? That would be so complicated as a piece of litigation, it's hard to know where to begin because you would be singling out a particular group, is it protected or not, not under current precedent, what would happen in the States. But you can't do it absent due process. So I think this is a non-starter. In fact, it's entirely what the Bill of Rights is there to prevent, which is the designation of a group that has not been a due.

as being presumptively excluded from the Constitution. Boy, there's a lot in there, and I don't know where to start. So I'm just going to say, so I'm just going to say, Rob? Yeah, well, I mean, I defer to Charlie on all issues, all gun issues, mostly because he's the one who's got the guns. But also, I am, I'm nervous when governments of any stripe start. deciding who's crazy and who's not crazy and who's mentally ill, who's not mentally ill. That seems complicated to me, mostly because, you know, there's how many millions of people were in the Soviet Union were in sanatoriums because they believed in private property.

It's just, it's just a bad idea. And also, it's just, it's disingenuous because they don't really mean it. They're just mad that that guy was transgendered or whatever he was. And it's a bad idea, especially when we're talking about constitutionally enumerated rights to start weasel wording them for immediate political gain, right? Once you start doing that, then you start banning things when the left is in charge, which is going to happen sooner rather than later, probably. What they're trying to do is establish transgenderism as a mental disorder. It's very much of a part of the administration when it comes to the EOs on back. bathrooms and sports and the rest of it. But the problem is that, you know, as Charlie said,

there's no official body that says that this is a mental disorder. There's, and even if there was, I can't imagine that it would play in the courts. I mean, if you had an accredited group of psychiatrists who said, we represent X percent of the American psychiatrists, and we have deduced this actually is a mental disorder that, you know, so what, your word against the guys who don't believe it so? Well, just to add one thing to this, because Rob mentioned what would happen if a Democrat tried this.

A good analogy, I think, would be with white supremacists. I think that an awful lot of people who are transgender are mentally ill. I think it's a delusion. We can debate that if you like, but that's my view. I think that it is probably not a coincidence that an astonishingly disproportionate relative to the portion of the population number of recent mass shooting events have featured transgender people. But that doesn't mean that you can, as a group, exclude them from the Constitution

on the grounds that they are more likely than others, if you accept that, to commit crimes. The same is true of white supremacists. If you looked at some of the people who lived in the hills of Kerdalene in the 1990s, they were more likely, statistically, than other people. people to be involved in gangs, in terrorism, in crime. But it would be flagrantly illegal, and this around the margins has been litigated, to say, therefore they're not allowed to have guns. You can't do that. You have to take them one by one. You have to say, all right, you're a member of the Aryan nation. Have you done anything wrong? Have you been convicted of anything?

Is there any credible reason why you should be regarded as a violent person to whom the Second Amendment does not apply? And the same thing would have to happen here. And it doesn't really matter whether we like or dislike the trans thing. It doesn't matter whether we like or dislike white supremacists. There's just no mechanism in American law to declare an entire group so dangerous. And the one time that it has happened was prior to Reconstruction at the state level where the state said black people are just too dangerous. They're not allowed to own

guns. And the 14th Amendment was passed in part along with the two Freedmen's Bureau's Act and the 1866 Civil Rights Act to stop that. So you're just not getting this past the constitution. We switch from there and go across the pond to perfidious Albion with the same issue has manifested itself in a different form. Irish comedian Graham Linnehan, who I love, the IT crowd is one of my absolute favorite television shows, and I know a lot of people love Father Ted, but his career has been in lieu for five years

because he started saying things about gender ideology that more or less indicated he did not agree with it. Sort of J.K. Rowling, but without the megaphone of the power of the money, and his last three tweets, I think, which were made while he was in America,

hopped over here to do the Rogan show, I think, got him arrested at Heathrow by five Bobbies. And he's on trial now for those people who are saying, wait a minute, he was arrested on Tuesday. He's in trial today. No, that's for another

case that has been brought by activists against him for thought, word, and deed. I asked a friend of mine in England about this, and she hadn't heard about it. I got it before she did. The next day, she figured it out. It's like I'd also asked her about the Scottish lass with a knife and the axe.

And she hadn't heard about it because it wasn't in their news. Well, now it is. And every single one of the papers in Britain has got it in the front page and sternly worded editorials. And some people are saying that this is one of those points where actual outrage bursts through and the whole country is galvanized by this particular incident. So we have that, which covers free speech. And then we have the epping protests and the rest of it, which covers migration. These are two issues. And people say, it's England. Who cares? First of all, I care about England because I love it deeply. But secondly, this is the continent. This is Europe. This is the cradle of our civilization. And we want it to be free, and we want it to be European. So what comes of this do you think? Because I keep hearing people saying, oh, all the flags, it makes me feel great, something's going to happen. And I hate to be that meme, nothing ever happens. But I don't know what happens from all this. I really don't, unless labor gets voted out ASAP and reform gets in, and it's more weak tea and more milk governance that really does nothing to address the issues that they face.

And I'll throw that to Rob because I know he's a, he's an anglophile. Yeah. Rather than throw it to the actual form of the actual Anglo. My confusion is this, and it's not just in Britain, although Britain seems like it has the, it's the boldest relief. Is how, is what the, what the goal of the regulators is, is that it's just they're going to wear you down until you no longer notice that you're being arrested at Heathrow for tweets or that you were flying the Union Jack.

Is that the end the strategy here? Because we're just that we are going to secretly import as many people as we can from places that are falling apart and hope that the things that we're reading in Rotherham, et cetera, nobody really cares about. I mean, the idea that this is not a powder keg that's going to explode and explode in the faces of the people who are sort of advancing their crack-plot policy agenda seems just highly unlikely to me. Maybe that's because I'm an optimist, but I don't think I'm optimistic. I don't think this is good news that there's going to be trouble, but it just doesn't seem possible to me.

It is easier to imagine all those things happening in the United States, where there's room, where if you want to go and live in some kind of, you know, progressive utopia, there are plenty of places where you can go to that. It's just kind of like you can, our society just has a little bit more elbow room. But there, to see the pictures that I'm seeing, it just feels like they are willingly turning themselves into that movie, Children of Men. And I'm not sure, I just don't understand the strategy. But part of my problem is always, I want to know what the other side is trying to do. What do you really want?

What's your goal? And this just seems, the goal seems to be, um, nihilistic destruction of a culture well I want to ask Charlie about that but I have to stop I do because I'm not going to let it go unsaid he noted the

possibility of declaring all Minnesota Viking fans insane I am a Minnesota Vikings fan I am a football fan as a matter of fact I was watching the Philly game last night and I'm proud to say that they lived up to my expectorations but when it comes to football

I like it I'm not sure I know enough about it But if I was really into it, I would, well, put it this way. You know, you like players, like coaches, like me, we make decisions every day. But on prize picks, prize picks, being right can get you paid. Don't miss any of the excitement this season on prize picks where it's good to be right. And Charles, I believe that you have some words about this pertaining to the season and to Rickochet's leagues. Well, I'm a huge football fan.

I'm also, unfortunately, a Jacksonville, Jaguas fan. I was, just for the record, James, saying that we shouldn't remove the constitutional rights of Vikings. Yeah, the fact that you went there right away, that's just what I'm saying. Well, I said that because you were sitting in front of me, at least over video. But I do love it. I have a bunch of fantasy football teams. I have Pickham leagues. And I'm just always up for a new app in which I have to make predictions.

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There are lots of sports on it. In fact, I'm looking at it right now. And there are tennis. is one of the sports as well. I'm very much into tennis. So I'm looking forward to digging into this. I do like sports apps, especially where there's money involved.

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That's code RICOchet to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Prize Picks, it's good to be right. And we thank Price Pix's response like this, the Rikishay podcast. And now we grind the gears and go back to the subject we were talking about before. Charles, when we were talking about England, you know English culture, of course, better than any of us. I know parts of London and Suffolk culture. So the nation as a whole, do you think that there is something coming, something brewing, or will it simply be met with stoic passivity and whatever comes next?

And also pertinent to Rob's point about why? Why are they doing this? Well, you know, I have a, I suppose, different view on this. And as I'm sure Rob will agree, I think we should arrest more people who, Right, comedic TV shows. No, I've utterly appalled by this one. I've wondered if this one was going to be different in its consequences. You know, what bothered me about this, James, was that this could not be put down to one cop who misinterpreted the law or was rash or in the heat of the moment made a poor decision.

They tracked Graham Lennon across the Atlantic. They coordinated with Iyatta and the airlines. They went to Heathrow Airport, five of them, to arrest him. That's premeditated. That's a decision that you make and execute. And that was qualitatively different, I think, than what has come before, which is the police have seen something and gone, my goodness, okay. Now, I think it's absurd what has happened before.

But you just cannot see this as anything other than the flowering of government policy. And I don't know if the British are as upset about it as they should be and as upset about it as they would need to be to get it changed. They don't have the same free speech culture we have. Now, the people who have come in from other countries probably don't have great views on free speech. There are a lot of problems in England with immigration, and we all see the videos. But it is more the case in my view that those people who have come from elsewhere are used by existing British people as justification for censorship laws than that the people who have come in are the driving force behind them.

Because there aren't that many of them. The British, at least until now, are okay with censorship. They put these laws in. Most of the bad free speech laws in England were put into place in the 60s, 70s and 80s. One of them was signed by Margaret Thatcher, who I think is generally great, but was reflective of her nation and class in being hostile toward edge case speech in a way that Americans simply are not. So, you know, the way this is sometimes cast in America is the plucky British,

against, and then you can insert the people we dislike on the other side, but actually the plucky British have, for 50, 60 years, been really tolerant of the government telling them what they can and can't say. Why I think this might be different and why I am a little bit optimistic is what the British have started to notice is that the law is enforced completely differently against some groups than others. Two-tier justice is a phrase. Right. And actually, that is something that offends British people far more than censorship. The British have a very strong sense of fair play.

The law has been used for years against all types. My joke is their equal opportunity censors. So the Muslims get arrested for criticizing the Christians, and the Christians get arrested for criticizing the Muslims, and the atheists get accused of criticizing both of them, and they all go to jail together. But that's not happening now. We saw this with Lucy Connolly.

We saw this with Graham Linnehan. They are now arresting certain people and letting others go. And that, I wonder, I wonder if that will be the key to change. All right, well, perhaps the speech laws and their acquiescence to them might be a consequence of being steeped in the welfare state and having a paternalistic government over them. But when it comes to the decision by the government to forcibly change the demographics of the Scepter Dial, as Rob was saying, he was like, why? I think it goes back to a whole bunch of simple things we've talked about here in the podcast before.

Tony Blair wants Cool Britannia, right? the whole progressive movement doesn't want to be steeped in nationalism. They hate the flags. They hate all that waving. They think it's that it's the last refuge of the scoundrel, that it's intellectually undefensible in the moderate world, that nationalism leads to tribalism, which leads to war, and they just don't like it.

And for people who are not very smart and who are stupid, actually, this just tends to drip down until you are considered to be a good person, the more you drip disdain for Western culture, Western society, Western history, and the rest of it. because it's bad. It did all the bad things in the world. It had the wars. That's it.

It's bad. And somehow, if we even that out by changing the demographic mix, we will be better because universities are strengthened multiculturalism, makes society better. So they say. And I think they're doing it because they just have these basic boilerplate progressive ideas of transnational bliss and everybody getting together in Kumbay Yang at the rest of it, as well as exoticizing the outsider and the others, as well as enjoying actually. when people that they don't like are having a hard time of it

because their neighborhoods have changed. There's an element of just almost juvenile resentment and revenge and utter indifference to the culture that is made in the end. That's what I think. They're not very smart, and they think they're doing well. Yeah, I guess we don't have to keep elaborating this because it's so depressing, but the thing that strikes me is that all,

all the all of my encounters with that culture that far and weird culture that charlie fled definitely arrest you now is that yeah is that there is that they're funny british irony like they invented this kind of like incredibly elaborate smart humor that um you know what's that great you know phrase that just it if you ever go out with english people two thirds of the conversation is just you know insulting each other in more interesting ways and and to give that up to decide no we're going to give this thing up this it's like it's like the french saying they're not going to have hollanda sauce anymore it's like no no this is what makes you you and to to arresting a comedian um for his funny tweets is um about the

least british thing i can imagine um that that is a place i've always thought of as a very very funny place where the guy driving the cab is he's funny people are funny and the minute they get touchy and they lose that and they decide that this great contribution we made to world culture which is irony and double speak and satire and a raised eyebrow and Benny Hill right um boy I don't know what else you got Benny so you that's the line alone last up you landed in Heathrow you expected a yakety sacks to be playing over the sound system some superannuated man

goggling after half-clad women I'm hashtag team Benny well the thing of it is is it's not going to stop there I mean they're hauling up canaries from the coal mine pining for the fjords every single day in addition to the online safety act

and in addition to the Lenin case there's the banter the banter bands that are coming to the pubs or if anybody says something that the bar made me take I'm sorry the bar person takes offense to that the, you have to take, the pub owner can be taken to court. So, you know, we're now, I have a vision of England in the future where everybody is sitting underneath black cones of silence from Get Smart, and that's the only safe place that they can exist.

But even those will be bugged because you'll have AI reading your lips. Elsewhere in Chicago, the mayor of Chicago has said that he's going to defend the city against the fascist to take over that's coming. 58 people shot over the weekend. He said they're going to defend the democracy. of the city of Chicago said Mayor Brandon Johnson quote we're going to protect the humanity of every single person in the city of Chicago and by doing that I mean he's going to keep anyone from coming in apparently to instill order and Pritzker waved it off and said

look you know it's a big city what are you going to do I always love what I was hearing something the other day about somebody talking about it was a network news person they talked about yeah there were 58 shootings in Chicago and seven people died but crime is down 20%. And I thought, the reason that I hate the news is because the proper way, the smart way, is to invert that in your delivery. You start by saying, statistics show

that the crime is down 20% in Chicago. Nevertheless, 58 people were killed because that sort of aligns with how people feel about this. Stats don't do anything. Showing somebody a red line going down with an arrow doesn't mean anything if the vibe of their city is dangerous. So why do you think Chicago is going to play out if the National Guard goes in? I don't know, Charlie, you're a law in order.

You handle law in order. I think this is really difficult because on the one hand, I do not understand how Chicago doesn't fix itself. and I think what Prisker said oh this city is crazy and the politics of this are clearly in Trump's favor on the other hand I defended to the hilt the deployment of federal offices in Washington, D.C.,

because Washington, D.C. is a federal district and really has no more capacity to push back against federal control than the Northwest Territory did. That is not true of Chicago. It's not true of Illinois. It is a state. And the recent decision out of California,

which held that the federal government cannot perform police functions under the Posse Comitatis Act, probably applies here too. So my tragic conclusion is that Chicago has for, decades been run by people who don't want to fix the crime problem that that is outrageous but that the tools the federal government has to do anything about it are limited and trump hasn't changed that so i don't think a great deal is actually going to happen other than that this

will cause a national debate in which the democrats will say crazy things for two months and that's what Trump wants, because he understands that they're going to come out in favor of crime, which I don't think that's hyperbole. That is what they've done in D.C. They haven't come out against federal troops, some have. They've largely said it's fine. It's not fine. More obvious, as Charlie noted, they've made them come out in favor of crime.

And also this week in favor of Venezuelan. drug smugglers. Yeah. So, um, yeah, it's very strange. I mean,

I just, there's a, um, there's a moment, um, I think, uh, somebody told me,

um, there's a moment in the, uh, 1988, eight, when George H.W. Bush was on TV doing something, some,

you know, not, not campaign. He was not a great campaigner. And, uh, Governor Dukakis, Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts watching it with some friends. They're watching the news.

And he turns to his friends and he says, I can't believe I'm losing to this guy. And it got out and it was actually part of a Sariant Live sketch, I think the following week where I think it was John Levitt says, I can't believe I'm losing to this guy and everybody laughed. And I feel like that's the Democrats are still in. that loop and they've had since 2016 to kind of get out of it but they're still stuck on square one which is I can't believe I'm losing this guy and he answers yes you are losing to this guy

so now what what you about that they still they're still astonished and he's I mean you know we are not talking about the most disciplined opponent Trump right but that he manages just by his own sheer chaotic personality to get them to say incredibly dumb things to get them to choose to be weird rather than to be normal and that that is a very mean you know i i i i just don't understand the level of sort of mental and emotional imbalance that must be just prevalent in the sort of the democratic think machine but he's making them say what they believe he's making by by being on the 80 side of an 80 20 issue they feel empowered they feel righteous they feel it is necessary for them to defend the 20% of it because it's what it's what either

it's either what they believe or what they know that they have to say in order to be part of the party because the the lanes have narrowed the party definitions shift what it means to be a liberal what it means to be a conservative it's not you know it's not 1983 84 anymore they have to they have to be full-throated in their condemnation of this and they have to be full-throated in their endorsement of these other things yeah yeah but that's they've been maneuver themselves of that position. I mean, they have other options. I just, I just my, I have a lot of friends who are sort of would describe themselves, have described themselves as sort of moderate to conservative Democrats. And they are just baffled. Like what, what, what is keeping people from saying

crime is bad? It's just a hard, what is keeping people from saying that? And the voice in the back of their head that says that crime comes from socioeconomic favorite of factors and racism. And that, And that the carceral state that imprisoning people and the rest of it is unjust because it has disparate impact and all of these things that they've been rolling off their tongue for the last 20 years. If you can't say, you can't say crime. I mean, they will. I mean, on Reddit, I go there and you will find people condemning it. They hate it. But again, the solutions are always midnight basketball.

The solutions are always the dismantling of white supremacy. The solutions are never the sort of thing that made Fox Butterfield so confused. solutions are never take the guy who just did the bad thing with a gun and put him in this box for 10 years it's never that you can't have that it doesn't rehabilitate them it's not restrative it's not any of those things speaking of reddit uh big question on red it last week whether trump was uh dead on the speculation about his his his puffy ankles i guess his his puffy hand cosmetics on the hand to cover up some sort of infusion even tim waltz got into the act showing that he He's just that Midwestern, good old, fine-spirited dad that he is was joking about maybe waking up and getting news that the president was dead. What I can't figure out about this is, one, why the left thinks this makes them look good. I mean, it's been the norm ever since Kathy Griffith held out the bloody severed head. We get it.

You want them dead. We get it. But do they realize that if Trump dies, we get Vance? and Vance might be exactly what they hate in Trump except about the things that make people go nuts

so what did you guys think of the Trump death watch this weekend I thought it was weird I mean what's the what was the you know he's an elderly extremely overweight

man who does not exercise and we're wondering why his ankles are swollen It's like, we had to call on Sherlock, Dr. Sherlock Holmes for this. He's an old fat man who eats Big Macs all the time. Yeah. So, yeah, he's going to be a little puffy, and especially around the ankles. And he probably gets, you know, IV drips every now and then, because that's the fad.

And they go in the hand, and he wants to cover that up with makeup. He's got plenty of makeup. You know, he spends an hour and a half every day in his hair and makeup, doing his own hair and makeup. So it's not like he, like, this is a non-mytery. They keep, they keep, I keep feeling like these people are, are every week they are being reintroduced to the character of Donald J. Trump. They didn't know who he was. It's bizarre to me.

Charles, we're going to end with that. So I'll let you, I'll let you have the last word on that story. I was at a wedding in Philadelphia for most of the weekend and then came back to work on Tuesday to the news that Donald Trump wasn't dead and wondered why everyone had assumed that he was. This was probably an online thing. I can assure you that over three days in Philadelphia, having met hundreds of people at this wedding and elsewhere, not one person said to me, is the president dead? So I was shocked by this, James, and confused.

It could be something that existed online in a proportion out of whack with actual real-world events and thoughts. Gosh, who could have seen that coming? Then again, you know, the other day on an interview, Joy Reid said, sorry, I almost actually cared about what Joey Reid said. I don't. But we hope that you've cared about what we've said because it's been fun to say it. And it's been great to have Brother Rob back with us again. You're welcome any time, you know.

I love it. I mean, you know, when I can take time out for my religious studies, you know. Yes, well, you know, take off the itchy hair shirt and the tonsure. And put on civilian clothes and come here, smelling faintly of wax and Benedictine and hazelnuts and all the rest of it. It's been great to have you here. And Charles, good as ever. Give my regards to Florida. Give my regards to Princeton.

And everybody else should do two things. Or maybe three. Prize picks. The podcast was brought to them. Pick up the app. Give it a look. Support us by becoming part of the best place for civil center. Right conversations would be picking up ricochet, of course, which has had some under the hood improvements in

tweaks. That's going to be even better in the future. And, of course, when we say, go to ricochet, what we mean is sign up and, you know, for a little bit of the chiching, you get access to the member feed, which is where a true community has arisen over the years. And if you could give us a five-minute, five-stop, no, five-minute review on Apple Podcasts. I want you to go and speak and transcribe for five minutes, everything you love about it and paste it in the podcast review. Helps new listeners discover us, which keeps the show going, which means it going to be here forever and ever and ever um i shouldn't say that to rob anyway it's been great thank you guys and we'll see everyone in the comments it ricochet four point what is it now charles

four point 14 point 11.4 that's what i was going to say great bye bye