The Ricochet Podcast - Just Over The Border

Episode Date: April 25, 2013

This week we’re all about The Big Issues. First, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus stops by to talk about how we get back to the business of winning elections — yes, we can! Better organization, better messaging, and more sophisticated databases. Then, our hosts take center stage for a rousing conversation on immigration and yes, gay marriage. Our thanks to Ricochet member GayFreedomLover for his post A... Source

Every business needs leaders. Those with the vision to see where their business is going. Those who make big decisions where they matter most. At ESB's Smart Energy Services, we work with business leaders every day. Because we lead the way in delivering clean energy solutions at scale. So whether you want to reduce your energy costs or reach your sustainability goals, we can lead your business to a clean energy future. Find out more at esb.ie forward slash smart energy.

Activate program. While they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Robin Allais. Well, Rob Long.

I'm James Lylex, and our guest this week is RNC top honcho Reince Priebus. After that, it's a spirited discussion. Or three guys flapping their jaws in the echo chamber for half an hour. You decide. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, indeed. A Ricochet podcast.

Not just any Ricochet podcast, but number 165. And it's brought to you by Audible.com, leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment. Aside from this podcast, of course. You can listen to audiobooks whenever and wherever you want. Just go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet and get a free audiobook and a 30-day trial. Gentlemen, here we are. Things have solidified since last we spoke.

All of our suspicions were confirmed, if indeed we had them. So what do you think? I am interested in what you guys take on how the media, I should say the media on the left, it's a little redundant, has handled the fact that these guys did not turn out to be Christianist tea partiers. Peter and Rob, good morning, good day, good afternoon, wherever you happen to be, and tell me how you think this has shaken the foundations

of everyone from the Great Lady on down. Good morning, James, but before we go, I have to do a little bit of business here. I have to say, and by, you know when they say when they're sponsored? There's another sponsor? Yeah, there's another sponsor. We're sponsored not only by Audible.com, but we're also and by a book called Tiny Lies by our own James Lilacs. Tiny Lies, it's 150 plus small ads

from the back of old magazines and newspapers annotated and commented upon by our own James Lilacs, so you know it's going to be hilarious with varying degrees of strained amusement. But no, I don't think strained at all. I think it's going to be hilarious. If it's a tenth as funny as the Gallery of Regrettable Food or Interior Desecrations, It's going to be hilarious.

And it's less than a penny per page. But here's the thing. If you're listening to this and you're a Ricochet member and you want to get more Lilacs, it's only a buck and a quarter, $1.25. But you have to buy it from Lilacs.com, L-I-L-E-K-S.com. It comes in a PDF form so you can read it on your phone. You can read it on your computer. You can read it anywhere you want. You can read it on your computer, you can read it anywhere you want. You can read it on your Kindle, right?

If you have the right kind, if you've got the fire. Kindle fire. Display certain qualities of graphics. And there are two reasons why this is a wonderful thing. The one is, of course, it's a new book by James Lilac, so that's always a cause for celebration. The second is that it's somebody going

sort of around the whole system and saying, look, for $1.25, you can get my work. You know it's funny. The splash page on his site is hilarious already. We've all seen these ads. It's very, very funny stuff. So it's a buck and a quarter. Do it. And what we would say disintermediate publishing behemoth.

I'm even going around Amazon and Kindle. How about that for staking? You're disintermediate. Publishing behemoth. I'm even going around Amazon and Kindle. How about that for staking out? You're just disintermediating. It works like this. What I could have done was put this together and sell it through Apple's iBooks, which does have a nice little publishing platform. But Apple's iBook has no traction, and it's impossible to get publicity for it. It's just off the radar.

They get 30%, right? They get 30%. Yeah, they do. and i would have to increase the price a buck and a quarter is a lot actually well i wouldn't make it a buck and a quarter then i would make it 4.99 5.99 or something like that but i'm you know i'm looking at this thing and i'm saying you know i've been plinking away at this little thing for two years now never intending it to be my next book as such in the sense that regrettable foods or regrettable Foods sequel or any of those books were. Because it's black and white, essentially. There's no color pictures. It's not a big coffee

table thing. But at the same time, I wanted to do something with it that people would actually, what's the word I'm looking for here? Read it, look at it, enjoy it. And if you put it on Apple and charge five bucks, a lot of people shrug and walk away. But if you just sell it as something they can look at in their browser and you make it at that little peanut price of $1.25,

then people say, well, what am I going to lose here precisely? So this is the first in that, and I've got some other smaller knockoffs to come too that will either be done selling them by myself or through Kindle's, Amazon's, whatever they call them, program where it's for a buck you get a thing. You are disrupting the disintermediators, which is a double form of, a triple form of

revolution, always a good thing. And I, you know, and if you, at lilacs.com, you can, the link will be on the main page. Yes, indeed. Well, that's me just rolling, rolling incendiary devices. Peter, what have you written that we can buy? What are you selling today?

I have nothing to sell today. However, I am in a very chipper mood. Good. Because Ricochet CEO Todd Loudon and Ricochet advisor Joe Malchow and Peter Robinson had lunch yesterday with a friend of mine, a fellow called Mark Phillips, who has a company called Search Forecast, which advises all kinds of big companies on how to run their websites, how to structure their websites. And we spent two hours over lunch kicking around ideas for the redesign of Ricochet, the website, which is now well underway. And it is just so fascinating to hear about the new disciplines of – to me, of course, what I needed was simultaneous translation. But architecture, architecting, that's now a verb, all the kinds of things. No, it's not.

Yeah, I was just going to say no. It's not a verb. It's just one, but it's a very impactful verb. Oh, excuse me. Are we getting the Yale English department sniffing at us? We don't have to invent new ones. In any event, it was just – I can't tell you exactly what was said because it's a foreign language to me. But it was fascinating to get a glimpse of these entirely new disciplines of structuring and marketing websites and providing services to users,

this is all going to be fun. It's also going to take another few months, but it's all going to be fun. Well, it'll be great. And we'll talk about this actually in a half an hour or so. And we'll argue about whether or not architecting is a cromulent word or not. But for the moment, when you talk about redesigning things or restructuring things, a lot of people think that the Republican Party is in need of just that. Which brings us to our first guest and our only guest today, Reince Priebus. He's got a long history in Republican politics, having served in the first campaign at the age of 16. Since then, he's worked his way up through the ranks of the party as first congressional district chairman, state party treasurer, first vice chair, and eventually state party chairman. In 2009, he served as general counsel to the RNC,

and Reince Priebus was elected chairman of the Republican National Committee in January 2011. We welcome him to the Ricochet podcast. Welcome, sir. Hey, I'm happy to be back on the show. Hope you guys are doing well. Hey, Reince, Peter Robinson here. Could you do us all a big favor now that you're in a really august position? Don't do it today because we want her to enjoy herself at the opening of her son's presidential library, but could you please take Mrs. Bush aside and just ask her not to step on the message, will you please? I mean, just yesterday, George W. Bush was saying Jeb should run for president, and I'm a big Jeb fan. And in fact, I did an interview with Jeb Bush just this past Monday, which will appear next Monday, I think. I was wondering where you were going.

Yeah, exactly. And then this morning, Mrs. Bush said, no, I don't think you should run for president at all. Reince, it's up to you to get this sorted out. Will you please? Well, it's funny. Well, absolutely. We'll get it sorted out quickly. The nice thing, though, and I think we all understand this, is that we have a great bench in our party. I mean, you really do have, you know, you have a lot of choices. And, you know, between Jeb and Marco and Christy and Nikki Haley and Susanna and Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, I mean, you really have a pretty big bench. And so we really do have a lot going for us there,

but certainly there's definitely a buzz about Jeb, too, and there's no doubt about it. So if he's your guy, then you've got someone people are talking about. Hey, so here's the big news in the GOP this week, and that's the launch, the first hearings being held on the Gang of Eight immigration legislation. Of course, we keep talking about the Gang of Eight, but really what it comes down to is Marco Rubio. He's the action in that committee. Broadly speaking, were you pleased by the launch?

You know, listen, I will get to your question, so I'm not avoiding it. But I really don't get involved in the actual making and decision of what the bill is going to look like and what the details are. Obviously, I'm in the loop. So, I mean, there's no question that I know what's going on, and I'm in the loop. So let me get to your broader question. I think that when it comes to leading an immigration reform, and I want to also make clear, I don't think there are a whole lot of Republicans that are arguing that we don't need massive immigration reform. I mean, even Rand Paul is calling for comprehensive immigration reform now his version is probably very different than where john mccain is at but the fact of the matter is when it comes to leading on this issue

who's leading who's the person that's leading on this issue it's mar Marco Rubio. Now, you've got a president who loves talking, but he didn't lead on it. He had a 60-vote majority in the Senate. He had a supermajority in the House for two years, promised Hispanic families the world, delivered nothing, and it's really the Republicans that are once again leading on this conversation on immigration reform. And it was the Democrats, because I think we need to get the narrative straight, then it was the unions that paid for killing many of these reforms that we're talking about now. So you can tell that I'm pleased that Marco is leading. As far as the details of the legislation, obviously that's up to the legislature.

And there's diverse opinion within our own party on this issue. Right. So, Peter, once again, I put this question to Jeb Bush. This is in my mind because, as I said, I did an interview with Jeb Bush on Monday. And come to think of it, I had dinner with Haley Barber. Haley Barber and I are old friends from the Reagan years. And we both talked. Yeah, yeah.

So here's the Jeb Bush question. Under the Gang of Eight legislation, this is a political question. I'm not going to ask you to comment on the legislation itself. But under the Gang of Eight legislation, there are a number of triggers that have to be pulled, all of which go to getting control of visas, getting control of the border, that is to say all three of those are in effect, then those who are in this country illegally can have to wait for six years before applying for a green card. There's another waiting period. It looks as though it'll be a minimum of 10 to 14 years before they can actually apply for citizenship. Now, Jeb Bush has said the GOP needs to get immigration behind us. And my concern is that that long, long waiting period will give the other side, Democrats,

a decade to keep the issue alive. They will say in speech after speech after speech, the waiting period is too long. They will propose again and again and again that certain forms of federal benefits should be available to people while they're in this waiting period. And when that waiting period finally ends, far from having gotten immigration as an issue behind the GOP, those people finally achieving citizenship will be so solidly democratic that they'll make Hispanics today look iffy. That's the concern, that the legislation, because of this long waiting period, it represents a new kind of political problem.

How do you think about that? Well, I think that you're a talking point to first go to border security. And the reason I go to that place is that I think most people believe that some form of immigration reform is necessary. We've got amnesty right now. And that we can't get to even putting ourselves in the position that you're describing if at least you don't have as close to an absolute secured border as humanly possible. And so the problem with the scenario that you described, because I think it's very real,

is that if you don't absolutely do everything on the front and to secure the border, you're then going to be in these political battles. Now, I think, and I also think the other question is, you know, what type of immigration reform, what kind of visa and residency title or status you're going to give people who are here illegally. And that's another issue that I think is going to be debated throughout this process. I wouldn't make the mistake to believe that everything that is vaguely laid out is suddenly, I guess it's not vague anymore, it's a full-blown, it's hundreds of pages. But I wouldn't make the

mistake to believe everything that's written currently is going to end up becoming the past bill. I think all of the issues you're bringing up and all the issues I'm bringing up. Every business needs leaders. Those with the vision to see where their business is going. Those who make big decisions where they matter most. At ESB's Smart Energy Services, we work with business leaders every day. Because we lead the way in delivering clean energy solutions at scale so whether you want to reduce your energy costs or reach your sustainability goals we can lead your

business to a clean energy future find out more at ESB.ie forward slash smart energy are the same things that are being debated now in both the House and the Senate. And so I guess in a long answer, I'm telling you, I think everything you're saying should be seriously considered, but the first step has to be that border. And if that border isn't secure and if it's not serious and if it's not detailed with standards and expectations that need to be met prior to even triggering any sort of status change, whatever that might be,

then I think you've got a problem. And I think that you've clearly identified a big one. Hey, Reince, it's Rob Long in Los Angeles. How are you? Hey, Rob, I'm doing great. I got a question. So I want to pivot a little bit from immigration to guns, right? These are the two issues that we think, I think if we're strategizing the midterm, certainly,

and strategizing the 2016 presidential election, we know the other side's going to make a big deal of. They think these are really good wedge issues for them. Are they actually wrong? Are they good wedge issues for us? Senator Max Baucus, Senator Montana, is not running again. That's got to have something to do with these issues that don't play well in his home state. We got a lot of legislators, both senators and congressmen on the Democratic side, worried about Obamacare and how that's going to play back home. I mean, if you're measuring all these things and kind of weighing them all together, what do you think the challenges are for the right and what do you think the challenges are for the right, and what do you think the opportunities are for the right?

Well, I think certainly there are opportunities. I mean, you mentioned one of them, Montana, and there's another, you know, South Dakota, and there's a big open race in Michigan, and there's a big open race in Iowa. And I got to tell you, those are winners for us. But I think it's going to be about much more than that. I mean, that's just one issue, and there's multiple reasons for why you don't support that particular measure. I mean, one in particular is that the information that's available

in regard to somebody's mental condition, health, mental health. I mean, the problem with all these lists and all of this supposed information that's out there is a couple things. Number one, we all know that the federal government doesn't seem to care about the hundreds of thousands of people that have been rejected in purchasing guns that have never been followed through on. That's number one. Number two, the information that you need for these checks to be done, a lot of it's not attainable because it's protected by laws that secure mental health information that you would want to know whether someone is purchasing a gun that shouldn't be purchasing a gun i don't think anyone disagrees that people who are mentally unstable or bad people that shouldn't have guns shouldn't be they shouldn't have them i don't think anyone

disagrees with that but the problem is is that we have to come up with uh we have to we have to enforce the laws that are already in place. So let me get to the issue, though, that you're bringing up, which is sort of what might be defining the 2014 races. I still think that obviously the debts, the spending, the mass facing this country is still a total winner for our party. And I know that in presidential elections it becomes a much bigger vote and a big cultural vote, but the math still matters, number one.

Number two, Obamacare is going to be the issue. People do not like this bill. They do not like what's happening. People are going to feel the effects of Obamacare over the next year. You see that Democrats that voted for Obamacare are now trying to negotiate for themselves and their own staffers here in Washington not to be a part of Obamacare. That's an issue. Secondly, balanced budgets and the whole issue of the cut cap and balance I see coming back into the debate. And then I would also tell you that education in regard to school choice

and charter schools is an issue that we need to continue talking about as a party. And I understand the issues of federalism, but as a party, we've championed school choice. And I think it's not only the right issue, and I think it's the right thing to do for our country. It's also an issue that parents, no matter where you live, believe in, and that we want the best education for our kids. And so I think those are kind of the main issues that we're going to be looking at. That being said, and I realize this is a long answer, so I'll wrap up. My job and where my head's at is I've got to get our infrastructure straight. I mean, I know mechanics and tactics aren't always the most interesting things to talk about,

but that's really my world. I mean, my world, we've spent a lot of time talking about all the policy. My world is really how do we become a permanent party on the ground in an off year that can compete with what Barack Obama is doing? How do we hire hundreds of people coast to coast, going to community events, swearing in ceremonies, voter registration drives, and then we have to pay for it. We have to motivate our base and our donors to be behind it. I mean, that's the world I live in, and that's sort of what my challenges are

and what I think we need to do to really capitalize. We can have transformational figures. We talked about all these presidential candidates, but if we don't have a ground operation that one of these people can plug into that is really, really good, I don't think we'll win. So that's why I live in that world.

Do you think 2014 you're going to have one? Yeah, I do. I mean, that's why we live in that world. Do you think 2014 you're going to have one? Yeah, I do. I mean, that's why we're working so hard now. I mean, we need to work hard now so that we can use 2014 as not just a test, but to have an RNC that's more engaged than we've ever been before in an off-year election, that we just can't be a presidential year campaign committee that comes in six months before an election and expects to compete with a permanent ground operation that Barack Obama's put in place. I think we're very candidate obsessed and I think that we need to be cause obsessed and cause focused and that means a lot of hard work on the ground on a year-round basis right right this is a James lilacs here in Minneapolis

Minnesota where the all democratic controlled government has managed I am like in all over the country you are indeed yeah up here there's some lessons to be learned because we have a Democratic Senate. We have a Democratic House, Senate and governor, which means the taxes are going up on everything from clothing to cigarettes to dark matter. They're actually going to prove the existence of it in order to tax it. That's what we got here. But they won and Barack Obama won. And one of the reasons that people say they won is what seemed to Republicans to be a rather silly form of addressing people through social media and email by sending them emails with a subject line of, hey, or having web pages that say, are you in? I've got your back. Things that seem silly to grownups actually worked really well for them when it came to their target markets. How does the Republican Party use that sort of language

and vernacular of social media and the internet to talk to the younger demographic without seeming like grandpa trying to do the funky chicken? I mean, how do you make the brand seem attractive to this demographic that's decided it's old, musty, stale, white, and doomed for the ash heap. So one of the things they did really well, I mean, I'm not talking about the past to explain, but the fact is, if you've got $26 million of debt and you've got 80 employees and two credit cards suspended, it's pretty tough to build out a $300 million digital and data scraping apparatus that Barack Obama had built out,

and we were in a traveling circus debating each other 23 times. So, I mean, let's just kind of be straight with what's been going on. But secondly, I tell you, the answer to that is that we have to invest in testing. And testing means taking messages just like you've outlined, different messages, and you test them to different audiences. And you test whatever you're doing, whether it's messaging, whether it's, hey, click here and read this, or whether it's, hey, can you send us $3 for this idea or $10 for that idea. And you have to test these things. You test them both in the demographic that you want to influence,

and obviously you analyze the results, but you also test them with people, behavioral people, behavioral scientists. There's companies that are out there for us to use, and there's individual entities that specialize in this process. So all of that stuff comes into play, there for us to use and there's individual entities that specialize in this process. So all of that stuff comes into play and that's a big piece of what we're doing in our Growth and Opportunity Project. It's a massive effort.

Here's the one thing that's a takeaway because I know this is a little deeper show and I'll tell you that the RNC has to be in the middle of all of this. And the reason is that federal candidates can't take improved data and improved infrastructure from soft money organizations. So in other words, let me explain it this way. If you all that are interviewing me right now, let's just say you're all billionaires, and you all decided, you know what, nice guy, but I'm not sure if he knows what he's doing on this stuff. We're all going to do our own thing.

Let's just fix this data problem for them and put in $50 million and we're going to do it. And you improve all the data. The problem is you can't give that improved data to a person running for president because you used soft money to build and improve that data. So the RNC, we're not the presidential candidate. Barack Obama did it himself, so he was able to use the data that he spent four and five years building. So there is no presidential candidate out there that's going to spend $300 million starting tomorrow to improve the data. So who's left?

The Federal Money Hard Committee, the Republican National Committee. That's why we're in the middle of it. And that's why it was such a big piece in our report. Reince, Peter here. I had lunch not long ago with somebody who was right in the middle of the Romney campaign. You probably know who he is. I won't mention his name because he's a businessman. I think that was his moment in public. But he told me this story from the campaign. What they discovered about the sophistication of the Barack Obama data operation was this. Right down almost to the level of one house to another house and one apartment to another apartment, but certainly down to the level of

street by street and apartment building by apartment building, the Obama campaign operation knew which voters were completely against him and unpersuadable, and therefore you didn't want to spend time or money on, which voters were going to vote for Barack Obama no matter what, and therefore you didn't need to spend time or money on, and who the voters were in the middle. And they had a ground operation which involved enough actual human beings to send out to hundreds of thousands of voters, and on a basis of neighborhood by neighborhood, they were able to give these volunteers an iPhone or smartphone app that enabled them to knock on a door or ring a doorbell and ask no more than six questions and find out whether that individual voter was likely to vote for Barack Obama or against Barack Obama, and what issues of two or three were

most important to that voter, so that that voter could then be entered into the database, mailings could be sent, phone calls could be sent, someone could be sent around to make sure that that voter on election day went to the voting booth. And this happened in closely contested states and neighborhoods across the country. How close are we to having something like that? Well, we're very close because we're basically doing the same thing, except they did it for three and a half years, and they're better at it. But it's not that we're not... We know who the likely voters are. We know who the people who aren't registered but are leaning to Mitt Romney. We know who is a 7 out of 10 for Mitt Romney in Cleveland and that their number one issue is spending

and that we send them information on spending and we try to influence them to get them from a 7 out of 10 to a 9 out of 10 or a 10 out of 10. The difference is, though, that they spent a whole lot more time in knowing, where I think the big differences are isn't so much the scenario you laid out, but it's other little things that add up and are huge things. So if that person's a 7 out of 10 for Barack Obama and say their issue is the environment and they're in Cleveland, what they were really good at is then going to that person's Facebook friends and finding two or three of those friends to influence that 7 out of 10 voter to make that voter either a 9 or a 10 or a 10 out of 10, and then turning that voter into a casual volunteer, and then making that 10 out of 10 person over the course of months,

why don't you make 20 calls for Barack Obama? Here's how you can do it. Click here. That is the type of thing that makes the difference. In ten seconds, I can give you the list of women who are Republican, who took out a hunting license in Ohio, who has ever given more than $20 to any Republican. I can, in ten seconds, give you that list, and I can throw it up on a Bing or a Google Map, and I can show you where they live and i can show you their border history but we have that

the difference is is is taking that voter once you pinned on all that other information and then using others to influence the voter at the best friend or a family member and then making that particular person they casual or serious volunteer for the campaign. It's that nuance there that makes a big difference. And I can assure you that that's exactly where our heads at as far as focusing in on that.

It's data, but it's sharing data and using the data in a way that's personal. And it's hard to explain, but I think you guys understand it. We have data, but we haven't yet raised it to the level of sophistication where we can turn it into actual engagement. Is that it? I think that's right. I think that's exactly right. I think it's certainly not, there is engagement, but it's not to the level that it needs to

be to compete with what the Obama team had done. And a lot of it is time and longevity, but it's also a commitment to having sort of a startup mentality and a willingness to fail once in a while, too, and take chances and say, you know what? It didn't work, but let's get back to the drawing board and figure out what will. So, I mean, that's sort of the attitude that we need to foster and that we are here. And hopefully you can tell in my explanations and discussion of it that we really do understand the problems and the issues. Now it's a matter of solving them, which we're working on diligently, I can assure you.

The Battle of Waterloo was one of the playing fields of Zuckerberg. Facebook is the future. Well, we'll win this next one through Instagram. Thank you for being with us today, Reince Priebus. We let you get back to managing the industry. It's a pleasure. Thank you, guys. Thanks.

Appreciate it. You bet. And as somebody who's now actually interacting with people and liking them on Facebook and stuff like that. I used to just have a Facebook account so I could get free deals or something if I liked them on Facebook, which is why when I see that something has 475,000 likes, I just shrug my shoulders and say, there's a bunch of people who really likes Cheez-Its, who really considers themselves to be a friend of and part of the social network of Cheez-Its.

But yet that's where the data is, and I'd like to think that they're mining it and doing what they will. I like Cheez-Its. So do I. I don't know why I consider them a friend. That's the problem. But is that what that means? Because I see that now.

I see a lot more of that embedded stuff in my Facebook news feed. I confess I'm not really much of a Facebooker. I don't really go on there that much. I just check in on a few people who I know who are close friends of mine who do go on it. There's just too many things to keep up with. Actually, I prefer Instagram because it's just a picture. I can live with a picture. But no one's trying to be friends with Cheez-Its.

I recently got my clout score. Do you have done that clout score? Clout with a K. Clout with a K. My score is 60, which I guess is high, although I suspect that just signing up for it and then linking all your stuff to it, and a week later they reward you by inflating your score a little bit

just because you're participating. To this day, I have no idea what it means. I don't think it works. I think it's nonsense, and I despair of what deals they're going to offer me based on what they've seen in my Facebook and Twitter profile. I don't know what on earth they're going to think, oh, here's what this guy needs, new pencils or something. I have no idea. It is preposterous.

I said liking stuff on Facebook. If you, for example, McDonald's, right? My daughter in school, they showed her the Super Size Me documentary where the guy did nothing but eat McDonald's, you know, and came perilously close to getting diabetes and the rest of it

because that's what schools do, mind you. So if she likes this then, is she liking it because she enjoys the Pommes Frites once in a while or because she buys into the entire nutritional paradigm that encourages diabetes in Americans? But then you may ask yourself, is it just yanks and humanoids who get diabetes? What about owls? I was

thinking about that the other day, and I asked myself, do owls get diabetes? Because they can be kind of chunky and plump, and so I entered it into Google, and sure enough, the only thing that turns up is the fact that there is a book that's called Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls. And while you wouldn't think that that'd be something... There is not

that. Whoa, whoa, whoa. This had better be a segue to something. Well, it was. Either that or you are simply going stark raving out of your mind. Go, go! I was headed by God until the penny on the track made me jump. Well, that's me. That's...

But he's got my face on it. Let's explore diabetes with owls? Yes, it is indeed a book. Now, you may think that it's just a piece of nonsense, but of course it is a piece of nonsense by David Sedaris, who's that very popular fabulous to you here on NPR, if you listen to that, and who did all the books about me talk good one day or running with scissors.

No, that's Austin Google's Burroughs or something. I can't keep any of these guys, these monologuists, these funny guys straight. But people love Sedaris, and if you don't want to read his stuff, you can actually listen to him tell the stories, which I understand, for those inclined to like the genre, are

hilarious. And apparently his latest book is indeed Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls. It is. I just googled it. Good little thing right there. Unbelievable. And if you go to audible.com, you can listen to it and you can listen to it for free. That's just the thing now the reason we mentioned

this of course that audible is indeed one of the sponsors of this podcast and they've got a three a free 30-day trial for you and only you know what you can have access to 100,000 titles and just about every single genre probably not slash fiction for star trek but you know give them time and they've got that whisper sync technology that is pretty cool because it syncs your Kindle to your audio device, and so you're always on the same page, or what would be the page if it was a physical object. You've got to see it and hear it to believe it.

So audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet is where you can claim your free membership. You know that. You've been putting it off. Go do it, for heaven's sakes. What's your problem? Peter, I understand you're on book 472 of the Master and Commander series. Is that one available? I have actually, to be perfectly honest, and why not, I haven't listened to an Audible book this week. And I stopped the Mastering Commander Patrick O'Brien series because I realized I only had three novels left

and quite a few years still to live. So I'm saving a few. I'm saving a few. So I'm sorry. I really have no way to turn this question into an amusing answer or riposte except to say move to Rob quickly. Well, I will say, I mean mean I'm a David Sedaris fan.

His voice certainly is not for everybody, but it's idiosyncratic and I've always laughed loudly and hard at stuff he's written. And I think if you do – if you're honor bound, if you're a Ricochet member and you do go to Audible and get your free audio book download, which I – by the way, it's great. I use it all the time. It's a great, great, great deal. You then should send a buck and a quarter to James Lilacs

to get the PDF of his little book, Tiny Lies. Yes, I should explain a little bit more about that since it's one of the sponsors here, and it's rare that a guy gets to pimp his own work. It's this, essentially. In the back of magazines and newspapers from 1880s to 1950s, 60s, 70s, there's these little tiny ads that sold everything from arsenic suppositories to help you lose weight, which, you know, eventually did in the sense that you were a skeleton, to electrical

prostate guns, to all sorts of quack medicine that would keep you healthy by realigning your electrical impulses, to magic love potions, a drop of which would last for weeks, which means you'd be there with a piece of sandpaper trying to get the stuff off your throat because dogs were following you. All of these little tiny ads before they were completely regulated out of existence by the government, the postal authorities, would promise nearly everything. And some of these promises that they made, you would say, well, like for example, frogs. You gave them money, and they would ship you frogs. And what were you supposed to do with this?

Well, there was a huge national appetite coming soon for frogs, and the company was National Canning, which led you to believe that they would send you one big pregnant frog, and you'd sit on the thing, you'd put it in your bathtub, and then a little while later, you'd go to the post office with a sack full of frogs and mail them to National Frog Canning, which

would send you a little check for the legs once they'd sundered them and given the rest to a biological experiment. I don't know. Hamsters, same thing. When hamsters were first introduced, there's a little tiny ad in one of these things that introduced them as the new pet. They weren't called hamsters, they were Syrian bears. Oh, Syrian bears, sure.

And they were adorable, and it said that you could raise them at home, and they make great pets, very clean, also needed in research. So you could have the choice of treating them as... Would they send them to you? They would send you a pregnant one, and then you'd send them back all the rest.

They'd send you how? Well, that's just it. They were mailing animals all over the place. The one ad that I didn't have that I was reserving for a future volume is something that appeared in comic books in the 60s where you would send in no money now and they would send you a monkey. And the monkey would have a little – Like in a box, like the UPS would just arrive or USPS. I guess back then it was the post office. It was just a box with holes in it and like a little bit of a bag of water or something. Right, a screeching monkey with his hands going through the air holes,

you know, reeking of the terrified feces he'd flung throughout the journey, or a small little chihuahua dog, which was inevitably shown in a cup with big eyes sadly saying, take me home. Sadly saying, open the box, probably. Please open this box. There's no place to breathe. Imagine being a mailman that seems like i have this world's surliest uh letter carrier uh and i don't even

get much mail to the house but he like the guy i see him from my window all the time when i'm sitting here writing and i always sort of give him a cheery hello and he kind of looks at me uh like you look at the person you you are silently planning to kill at some point in the future. And God, he would not have borne up in those days of the post office that you're describing, delivering puppy, chihuahuas and monkeys and Syrian bears. And poisons and toys and all the rest of it. So Tiny Lies is just essentially 150 of these small ads that I glean

from all of these magazines that I either buy or find on the internet, and then it's not enough just to put it up there. You have to say something about them so every one of them gets a little bit of commentary or some actual history, because I did do some research on these things. I mean, one of them, if you sent away now, you would get the latest miracle in movie technology,

which is a hand-crank thing that you had at home, an Edisonomic or something. And they promised that they would send you the kiss. Well, that must have meant something to the audiences at the time because they didn't explain any more. And upon Googling, you find that one of the early salacious little movies that Edison made

was indeed the filmed act of busing between humans. So, I mean, this was... Nowadays, you can sit down and type the most egregious thing that your mind can summon up sexually into the menu bar, and there will be 747,000 hits instantaneously. And you can stream it there live in mere seconds. In the old days you had

to send away and wait six weeks to get a to get seven frames of human beings kissing and that was as that was as your preacher would tan your hide yeah that was the beginning of the end right there he'd cane you if he saw you with something like that so it it's a look at a previous age of science of morals of advertising and uh and and you may learn a few things. But mostly, a bucket of quarter, it's 150 pages of japery. 150 pages, so it's less than a penny a page. Less than a penny a page, that's right. Now, Peter, you're working on the Cold War book, I understand, here.

And how goes that? How old is the oldest of these ads, James? Oh, 1888. Back to way, way back. Okay. I was thinking fifties when you first started. And then I began to realize you were going back much. So you go way, way, way, way back. Yeah. You go, it goes back to ads in which people are suffering from diseases that we don't have anymore or describe. I mean, you always find things like, uh, shinny, shinny quinces, you know, or, or the gravel, uh, a lot of Qatar, a lot of Qatar in those days, just about everything was Qatar, uh, which sounds vaguely piratical, but actually was just a, uh,

general overall term for inflammation. Uh, you find disease, You find things like nervous feet. Are you suffering from nervous feet? Which I can't possibly imagine what they meant. These things would sweep through. Nerves, everything was nervous for a while there. And then everything was a guitar for a while. And then eventually science came into it and things could be cured by electricity,

no matter how that meant. Essentially sticking your tongue on a live wire connected to a generator would realign your humors. So it's – yeah, it goes back to the 1880s and stops at about 1949. But you're ducking the question, Peter. You're working on your old book, which everybody – I'm working on my own book, but I have very little to report at the moment because the first part of this week went to interviews and went to working on the redesign of Ricochet. But as I mentioned to Reince, I interviewed Jeb – well, Blue Yeti and I shot two episodes of Uncommon Knowledge this week, one with Jeb Bush and one with Tom Sowell. And then I happened to have a nice long dinner with my old friend, Haley Barber.

So let me tell you about, Haley made a really interesting observation. I thought we were, of course, moaning about the Romney campaign and how the Republican Party couldn't seem to figure out how to appeal to Hispanic voters. Needless to say, a point of particular concern to those of us who live in California and even more to those of us who are married, as I am to a Hispanic voter. In any event, Haley said, now wait just a moment, let's not get too discouraged. Romney, in spite of the line he took on immigration and in spite of saying that his policy amounted to one of self-deportation, which was about as crude a way as you could put it from the point of view of Hispanic voters, still got 27% of the Hispanic vote. And Haley, shrewd man

that he is, said, that means more than a quarter of Hispanics are going to be with us almost no matter what. And he's involved in a project to gather, we were talking to Reince Priebus a moment ago about data. Haley's involved in a project to gather data about a range of, for all I know, he's working with Reince Priebus, but to gather data about all kinds of Republican voters. But in particular, Haley said, we ought to be finding out more about that 27%. Where do they live? What issues do they care about? And how can they help us figure out how to get from 27% to 42% or to 44%? Very interesting point. And I offer it to cheer you up as Haley cheered me up, because let's face it, you could hardly have done worse with Hispanic voters than Mitt Romney. And he still got 27 percent.

And you don't need 51 percent. You don't need you just need 43 percent. You know, you don't have to win everything. You got to have a little bit, you know, you got to have a little bit from every every every pot. That's the problem. Well, how do you appeal to your own personal Hispanic voter there, Peter? Is it a question of helping around the house with more? That's right.

Taking care of yourself, flowers now and then. My wife is, if anything, more conservative than I am. She's Cuban. Well, she was born in this country the year after her parents left Cuba, but her parents left Cuba. Her father figured out what Castro was up to right away. So her father was a professor of economics at the University of Havana. He knew Fidel a little bit. The revolution took place. Her father was invited, so to speak, to serve in the new Ministry of Economics. And he did that for three months, during which he was figuring out how to get his family out of the

country and did so. By the way, as best I can tell, my father-in-law, Alberto Piedra, is the only man ever to have served in the administrations of both Fidel Castro, Ministry of Economics, and Ronald Reagan. He was our ambassador to Guatemala. That's a distinction, isn't it? So my wife, you know, you lose a country to the communists, and that tends to make you conservative. You understand what the conservatives are talking about when they insist on all kinds of ways.

Fundamentally religious outlook, immense emphasis on the importance of family, hard work. Tom Sowell makes the point that he's lived in California for more than a quarter of a century now, and he's never once seen a Hispanic on a street corner begging. It's just not part of the culture. So my wife will come home and say that she's discovered all of this about such and such a person, and yet that person couldn't dream of voting Republican. That's the conundrum. Well, it's not quite so simple. I mean, I would say that Tom Sowell probably is in a little too much. If you read Victor Hansen's book, Mexifornia, that's almost a decade old now. The statistics are a little different. I mean mean the rates of incarceration and the rates of homelessness all that stuff they are rapid california anyway they are rapidly approaching uh american levels

um which is not to say yeah well very good point you it's it's complicated it's not a hispanic male at least i think i'm almost sure in any event it's not part Hispanic male at least. I'm almost sure. In any event, it's not part of the culture to ask for a direct handout, and yet they seem to have no trouble signing up for welfare, for example. A lot like the Chechen immigrants. Ah, yes, which brings us to – over to you, Rob. We can talk about the events in Boston. I mean they've been rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed. We know that they were – we know a couple of things.

We know that they were on assistance, these two boys. We know that they came here in I think 2002 or 2001 by applying for political asylum. They were fleeing persecution back in the homeland, and then they went back to the homeland and presumably they are not and they are not suffering persecution i mean the the idea that i mean it's a it's a mistake i think just in terms of policy to sort of conflate all immigration issues as if they're all part of the same thing i mean border security is necessary no matter no matter what your immigration policy is i mean we have an open border with practically practically with Europe, and I still have to go through customs every time I fly in. So we have border security no matter where we are, but it does seem interesting that we have these elaborate buckets and categories for immigrants that seem not to correspond at all to their place of origin.

And that is something that will muddy the immigration out and it might need to be a more complicated conversation than we think. Because in general, we kind of like the idea of having – in the long history of America, people fleeing persecution and coming to this country because they fled persecution have been enormously contributive to the country.

They've been great. Usually they're at least in the 30s and 40s in Europe, et cetera. I'm not sure. I mean, my God, they've been fantastic. I'm not sure contributive is the right word. Maybe impactful? Impactful. They've been very impactful.

Well, let's architect out this new strategy then. Would you say that we're going to mandate that if you are fleeing persecution, it has to be the right kind? I mean that's kind of what we're saying here, isn't it? Well, I mean look. Persecution from a despotic government in Moscow has been traditionally how we got a lot of great dissident immigrants from that. I mean I wouldn't want – I don't think any of them should be bes be uh um you know besmirched but on the other hand i don't i mean i i think we now have uh the way the way it always works is someone figures out a way to game the system right so you have people who are in chechnya or wherever they were i guess they're kyrgyzstan at

the time bishkek uh and they managed to sort of figure out a way to game the american immigration system and they arrived here they managed to figure out a way to game the American immigration system. And they arrived here. They managed to figure out a way to game the American social welfare system. And all the while, they managed to figure out a way to do all those things and also despise America. That, to me, is a hat trick that we need to figure out not why. I don't care why. But how to stop it. From Boston back to immigration, because you just used the phrase game the immigration system. I suppose this is happening to all of us as we watch the debate going on in Congress and read up on immigration.

That fact after fact after fact emerges. I thought I knew the picture fairly well. But almost every new fact that I'm learning about it I find just enrages me. So here's the enraging fact of the week. 40%, something like 11 to 12 million people in the country illegally right now. Now, I have to confess that I had a mental image of many of those people, most of them perhaps, struggling people coming overwhelmingly from Mexico at great risk to themselves, leaving behind their families to come to this country to work. And with X thousand miles of borders, it must be very, very hard to

prevent that from happening. So that's the image wrong. Not completely wrong. There are millions of such people here, but 40 percent, 40 percent of the people who are in this country illegally have simply overstayed their visas. Right. They can answer legally and they're here wandering around. Does the federal government know how to find me? Does it know how to find you? Does it know how to find Jay? Absolutely. You use your ATM card, you leave an impression of where you were. You use your cell phone, you know where you are. It is a total, now I'm getting enraged. I really am enraged. The breach of faith with the American people that the federal government has engaged in year in and year out, Republican president, Democratic president, is just staggering. It is. To grant visas year after year after year and make no serious effort. What's the downside?

What is the downside for the people who are issuing these visas? Does anybody ever lose their job because these people slip away? No, they don't. There's absolutely nothing that happens to them because of it. And because there's nothing that happens and because the debate is usually about how any attempt on the side of the right to modify the current situation of immigration is inevitably portrayed as some sort of xenophobic, racist, bigoted reaction to people whose melanin concentration is slightly denser than what they believe the party thinks is right for America, then anything that we do is racist. So if you point out, we've got 40 million, 40% of these people who could be deported tomorrow, people reel back in horror because you've mentioned the D word.

What sort of a mean person are you? On the other side of that, however, the reality of the world is that you have government officials who are refusing to comply with the law that says they have to be deported and have to be sued by ICE themselves

and then have a government official say, no, you have to follow the law. That goes completely by the board and nobody pays attention to that at all because the media chooses not to. We've also crossed a weird line in this country. I mean, traditionally of conservatives, you know, Tom Sowell's perfect example. When you wanted to find the most vehement, diehard, even violent anti-American, you found them on a university campus, right? They were Americans. They're not citizens.

They're not citizens. They were born here. They're fifth generation, some of them. I mean, some of them were, you know, from Bill Ayers, I think, is one of the, is almost a Mayflower family, right? Yeah, that's right. You find them, you find them. And you want to find somebody who really hates America. You could have to find American first. And that's been the case for many, many years. And for a lot of conservatives, look, hey, I like it when people want to come to this country because it means they love it.

And you scratch an immigrant and you find a diehard patriot. That's what – nobody does what you have to do to get to this country from some benighted corner of the world and get here and complain. They get here. They build business. That's been true for a long time. Lately though, what's astonishing me is that there are these people in Chechnya, Muslim separatists in Chechnya. By the way, I have a certain amount of sympathy for Chechnyan separatists. In many ways, they are in American interests, right? To break up the Russian empire is a good idea for us anyway.

And yet they come to this country and they arrive and within months they've decided that it's a hellhole, that it's a completely – it's a twisted and dark place. Within a month, they decided they hate it. And where do they get the hatred? Where do they get this idea that they hate America? Where did Dzhokhar Tsardinov, whatever his name is, where did he find that? He found it on the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was a 9-11 truther, this guy. And how do you – he learned his anti-Americanism.

He learned how to hate this country here in this country. The vocabulary they gave him and the money they gave him in the Islamic sort of the jihad network, whatever that was, wherever that was, but it was – I'm pretty sure it was overseas anyway where he went back with a – Tamerlan went back and got radicalized. That was just – I personally believe that was just icing on the cake or that was the catalyst or that was the fissile material. But the support for his beliefs came here from the culture. Van Jones thinks that 9-11 was an inside job. Here is the thought that is forming in my head. I will express the thought but only in a very tentative version. So you tell me, James and Rob, whether it's a cheap thought, cheap shot, and misinformed, or whether there's something to it. Is it the case that if you wanted to drop people from another country

into one neighborhood in America, in which anti-Americanism is more in the air than in almost any other neighborhood, you would choose Cambridge, Massachusetts? Yes, absolutely. You choose a college town, right? That college town in particular perhaps. that, I mean, if you want to learn, if you want to be surrounded by people who believe that America is the problem and that bringing America and humiliating it and bringing it to its knees and terrifying its citizens is the solution, you could maybe on the West Coast, it'd be Berkeley on the East Coast, it'd be Cambridge. And you do pretty, that'd be a pretty effective job of it. Yeah, absolutely.

Now, I'm not blaming the culture for what they did. I don't think I don't, again, it's not our fault. We didn't do anything. We are allowed to be roundly and loudly and irrationally critical of our own government. And that doesn't mean that two foreigners get to blow people up on Boylston Street. No. who believe that America is always the problem are themselves giving fuel, are dilettantes, frankly. They don't really mean that, right? A tenured professor at a political science department in an American university cannot actually legitimately and logically believe that this country, which provides him with such generosity and such a largesse, he's allowed to teach whatever crackpot theories he wants without fear of being fired. That is an extraordinarily generous and open-minded society, that he can't truly believe that this is – that our country is the problem because if he truly believed that, he would

leave and they don't because they have it good. No, they leave – well, right, because they have it good and also because they are involved in the necessary transformation of the country through whatever – everybody has to contribute as they please. They, they leave. Well, right. Because they have it good. And also because they are involved in the necessary transformation of the country through whatever everybody has to contribute as they please. They do believe it. There's just no consequence to them believing it. There's no shaming in the streets. Right. I was having my haircut the other day. Pure dilettantism is what that is. I was having my haircut yesterday and the haircut gentleman was actually going to college and I asked him what for. And he said he was studying Native American agricultural techniques, which is vital usefulness. And it depends on what you're going to do with that

degree I suppose but I asked him in particular what they were doing and he said well ethnobotany what the Indians what Native Americans that was the term used to cook how they used to cook it and the professor had a had a paper that he wanted us to write about which was about sustainability versus capitalism. And so I was curious about the distinction. It went on. And it turns out that by sustainability and usability and local vor and all the rest of it, what he meant was the ideal for a society, said the professor, is that everybody should raise the food that they need. That a community shall be self-sufficient.

And this is opposed to the capitalist model, which of course industrializes and commodifies everything. And so I said to the guy who's cutting my hair, well, you know, the fact that you're able to stand here and cut my hair as opposed to being home tending beets, I mean, that's what modern agriculture gave us. It gave us civilization that allowed us to flourish, to make industry, to make art and all of these things. And, you know, subsistence, that was the word, subsistence farming, as the Indians do, that's pretty much been the norm for the majority of humankind, and you don't get anywhere with that.

And he's saying, well, that's true, but the problem is, as we have it today, and I was explaining, you know, when I go back and look at old ads, I see the miracles of strawberries in the winter, when Birdseye presented these to the American housewife back in the 40s. Look, fresh strawberries in the winter. And he said that the problem with that said the guy cutting my hair who had the scissors so i wasn't going to argue much um was the carbon footprint and that when you when you when you have a society like that that moves these goods around by by carbon producing

elements it harms the earth likewise we shouldn't import any flowers, vegetables, or anything of the sort because it's harmful to the earth. He believes that. And everybody in his circle believes that. And everybody at the University of Minnesota, it's part of the intellectual oxygen that they breathe. So the idea that they don't believe it really, Rob, you may be right if you got them down and strapped them to the rack and said, what do you want? Strawberries or less carbon? They might eventually say strawberries. But this is their entire worldview and it saturates. But it has zero consequences. And when it does have consequences, it's usually they're really ugly. But right now, you can take any pose you want. You don't have to pay for it. I mean,

but speaking of poses right now, right as we speak, unfortunately, I was kind of hoping I could watch part of it, but the TV's in the other room. The Bush Library is being dedicated. All the presidents are there. I've been reading some of the Twitter feed. Larry Sabato just tweeted what I'm sure was a great moment. We'll see later tonight on the news. George H.W. Bush gives a very short talk, good for him, and then turns to his son and asks, too long? To great laughter, which I think was great. But here we have all these presidents gathered together. And the one who's the most vilified is the one sort of being celebrated in a way, is the opening of his library, George W. Bush. Today of all days, we see that the State Department,

I believe it's the State Department, the Obama administration anyway, is confirming that Syria has used chemical weapons. Obama has said that if Syria uses chemical weapons, that is crossing a red line. Does anyone think, does anyone listening to me now, and I think I know the answer to that, want a commander- commander in chief, Barack Obama, to intervene in Syria? He didn't mean the intervention. He just meant a red line would be crossed. Oh, yeah, that's true. That's true. That's very true. This may mean that instead of sending them a strongly worded letter with using the auto pen, that he'll actually bestow his his great imaginative signature in person upon it, begging them to cease and desist. There will be no consequence for him not doing it. There will be no consequence for the FBI or the CIA not putting this guy on the watch list.

There will be no consequence for the administration if they – I mean nobody holds them responsible because we generally have a compliant media that is on the same side and is not really interested in harming these guys. I don't know what it's going to – Let's – shall we pause for just a moment since they're dedicating that library and just consider this. From 9-11 until last week, there was no terrorist attack in this country. Well, it depends.

Fort Hood, there's an ROTC shootout. I mean the people say that there was the foiled attempt of the propane bomber in Times Square. Foiled. Foiled attempts. Foiled attempts. Foiled attempts. The shooter in Fort Hood. All right.

I'll grant you the shooter in Fort Hood. Let's put it this way. No bombing. I won't even – I don't even want to argue the particulars. I'll grant that there have been many incidents. I think it's accurate to say no major terrorist attack until last week. Everybody knows that that is largely because George W. Bush pivoted his administration from whatever else he had planned to do during his still young presidency to a

total focus on the war on terror. We know that Barack Obama, president of the United States for six years now, who ran as the anti-Bush, promising to undo virtually every Bush policy you could think of, uses drones more extensively, not less so than did the Bush administration, still has enemy combatants, called them enemy combatants. That remains the legal designation. Still has them at the base in Guantanamo and has effectively adopted George W. Bush's policy of pursuing a war on terror in Afghanistan. We still have troops in Afghanistan. I think you have to say that if even Barack Obama wasn't able to figure out once he got into office and began receiving those daily intelligence briefings and began dealing with reality as it cascades on a president of the United States, if even Barack Obama

effectively continued many of the George W. Bush policies, I think you have to say that a lot of what George W. Bush did was necessary and prudent. And we ought to be grateful to that man, even though, yep. I sort of agree. I kind of, I'm not, I'm still not persuaded about Iraq. Although I see the logic to it. But I kind of agree. Look, he got elected running against nation building and intervention. I mean the stated Bush policy, foreign policy on inauguration day was ignore Europe, benign neglect to the Mideast, focus on China. And within six months, nine months, he had a change. And so it wasn't the idea that, oh, he came in with a plan. He didn't come in with a plan.

He came in with the opposite. He came in saying, I'm not going to worry about that. I'm going to focus instead on our relationships in East Asia. And in 2001, in January of 2001, that seemed like the smart thing to do. We forget there was a huge diplomatic crisis. A spy plane was shot down or forced down in China in the spring of that year. So it seemed like the smart thing to do, and then events intervened, and he changed his mind. So yeah, I mean I – I think it's also kind of weird when you see all the presidents together, and you know they all hate Jimmy Carter.

Maybe Obama is the one who doesn't hate Jimmy Carter. They all hate Jimmy Carter. Nobody hates Jimmy Carter more than Bill Clinton, but they all hate Jimmy Carter. And then you sort of see George H.W. Bush sitting there in his wheelchair, and he's got this great old guy, you can all go to hell kind of look on his face. And I think it's kind of cool. It's kind of cool. So in other words, we should say that Barack Obama is like George Bush in that he came in and pivoted,

that both men when confronted with a reality gave up their ideological baggage in order to keep America safe. I mean that's certainly the case they could make in favor of Barack. I guess you could. You could probably make that case if you wanted to, I suppose. It would be slightly harder because what he's done is he's drawn down or trying to draw down our physical presence and just increased and doubled and quintupled the drones because he doesn't really care about civilian casualties. He cares about having things happen off camera. Right. But you also have this stunning incoherence of administration figures

such as John Kerry going over and talking about comparing the Boston bombers to the Turkish flotilla guys who got there, took us handed to them. Just a remarkable reach. Well, it's a media. Anything but what's in front of your face. Anything but jihad. Anything but jihad. A, B, J, right? It can't be the thing that it is. It has to be something that's more palatable. I started out with that and asking you guys exactly how they're dealing with it. So let me ask again, why? I mean, we all have our theories.

Why is it that the ThinkProgress says, no, it wasn't jihad. It was the fact that he was a boxer and got hit in the head an awful lot. The New York Times pours over his tweets and says, you know, he's really sort of an alienator Holden Caulfield-like type. You're right. No, I'm serious. But it's never Jihad. Peter First, why do you think that is? Why can't they stare at the truth of what they're looking at? I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. Well, I think I know. I mean, I think it's because... Go ahead. I think it's because... And we have to get to the gay marriage post too, so I want to make sure we address that at least a certain way.

I think it's because... In a way, this ties into my theory about the gay marriage post or the gay marriage sort of debate. I think they don't want to say anything because they think they know how we're going to react. And they don't want to, like children, you don't tell children certain things because you don't want them to react in a certain way.

How long is the drive? You don't say four hours. You say, oh, it's a little while because we don't want them to have a tantrum. They think that everyone in America is a child to the elite media types, right? So you can't tell them the truth. If you tell them the truth, they'll freak out. So what do you do? You massage it.

You kind of weasel word it. You make it sort of palatable to the crazies out there so that nobody freaks out and has a tantrum. And maybe give them a little – tell them to relax. It's no big deal. Tell them to sort of take a deep breath. Everything's going to be fine. And that's how you get through it. Yeah, I think that's a great part of it, that the ravening yahoos that exist between the thin crust of enlightened people,

enlightened civilization on the coasts, is just waiting for a pretext and excuse. They can't handle the truth, and so why tell them the truth? Why not just tell them as much as they need to know? The reason I want to bring this gay marriage thing, first of all, if you're listening, you haven't. I know it's a lot. It's probably about 1,000 comments by now. It's 830-something when I chimed in. So it's on its way to being the longest post, the biggest thread we've ever had, bigger even than I think the, hey, Ricochet is on the way out post.

If you haven't read it, you should just wait through. I know it's a lot to read. I read them all last night. It we have a very articulate member, gay freedom lover and some very articulate other members on the other side of the gay marriage question. And it seems to me that it comes down to, to, uh, um, to what, what Milton Friedman said, uh, uh, uh, described as an assumption of bad faith.

And that, that the assumption may be correct. It may be incorrect, but, but whatever it is, it seems like it's a heart, an assumption that people who are in favor of gay marriage, gay people who are favorite gay marriage,

especially think that interpret opposition to it as opposition to their, uh, their lives and the first step in trying to put them back on the illegal list where it used to be. It wasn't too long ago before they were rounding them getting me to throw away all my religious beliefs and taking – essentially, it's a little bit dramatic, but it's the theory is taking my Bible away. And both people are really arguing about a matter of sort of public policy and government licenses. But they are imputing upon each other, rightly or wrongly, that's irrelevant really, but they're imputing upon each other a certain amount of bad faith. And what's interesting about this thread is if you read through it, you kind of get through that and you hear it and everybody kind of crosses the line and everybody kind of comes back from the line.

And I don't think it's ever resolved. I don't think the thread shows any resolution at all. I think there probably are. I mean I like to think that everything is wrapped up in a nice little bow at the end and everybody's parts friends. But I think there's probably some heart hurt feelings there and probably some misunderstandings and maybe even some understandings, which are sometimes worse. But it's a really interesting, as everything is on a ricochet, a really interesting dissection of the debate and the sides of it. And at least it comes from people who are directionally largely on the same side of the political spectrum.

Well, and I'll say this to wrap us up here. You're right. And in tying it to the left's inability to call jihad jihad, it's the same thing. It's the assumption of bad faith that the audience will misinterpret this as a reason to kill all Muslims, to hate all Muslims, because the other side automatically does hate all Muslims and refuses to ever make a distinction between Islamism and Islam itself because, frankly, anything outside of their own narrow definition of Christianity is evil and must be extirpated. That's what they think that we will do.

On the other hand, the right does not look at the left and say, you are defending Islamism because you are sympathetic to it. That is not an assumption that we make. That would be the other version of the bad faith, is to say, well, you're not calling it jihad because you're all secret Muslims or you love it and respect it. We all know that that's probably not the truth. The left, if anything,

holds Islam in a sort of uninterested contempt. At the best, it's an example of gorgeous mosaic, and it's a wonderful example of vibrant multiculturalism when they have mosques in their own town, not in their own neighborhood, because they don't want to hear the wailing five times a day,

but the notion that somewhere in their town there is a mosque, and it's vibrant, and it's all multicultural. That makes them feel good. But as for the tenets of the religion themselves, you can't tell me that anybody who considers themselves to be progressive doesn't look about the world and cast an askance eye at some of the illiberal aspects of Islam as it's practiced in, say, other countries. But here you get into the hierarchy, the old hierarchy of causes, for example. They will defend Islam from imagined right-wing attackers because that's the noble and progressive multicultural thing to do. However, they will attack Islam when the issue is young girls in Islam being forced to marry a second cousin in Pakistan because then it's a female issue and it can be separated somehow from the uncomfortable philosophical tenets behind it

because it's girlfriend, right? You know, so they're not defenders of it in any sense. They look at, for example, when one of us says, why do we have on the dole a guy who is preaching the destruction of America specifically? And they roll their eyes because, well, it goes without saying that the guy's a nut. Why do you want to bring it up? What shadowy forces do you want to align yourself with? What's the point?

There's no point, actually, to getting exercised about these guys because the real problem are the remnants of conservative, Christian, middle American values that stand in the way of all the things that are great and good and have to be. We are the problem, not those guys, which is why we're always the ones they think bomb things. But I think, unfortunately, we carry that kind of paranoia on both sides. I don't. I'm paranoid. Wrong word. Years ago, a dinner with Milton Friedman and he said he said he made I've said this before, but I think it's really something I've tried to do and have failed. and a lot longer by assuming that when people are arguing with him or debating with him on a point, that they are debating from a position of good faith, meaning they're only trying to assert that which they are asserting. There's no hidden agenda there. And he said, look, there may be a hidden agenda there. There may not be one. It doesn't matter.

But it makes your life a lot simpler when you just assume that there isn't and you argue on the points. And if you watch him debate, you go to the YouTube things, you see him talk to Peter on Uncommon Knowledge, you see him talk to Phil Donahue, you realize that's exactly what he does and it's super, super effective in getting your point across. And so I'm trying to do that. I think that sometimes, especially in that gay marriage debate, because it's about somebody's life that they're leading,

that our member gay freedom, is leading this life. It's hard for him not to feel that people are attacking his life. But people who are not – don't really know him. We're sort of all in ricochet together, but we're not friends. I haven't been to his house. I haven't had dinner. Those are people who are saying, no, I'm not attacking your life. I'm just talking in the abstract because I'm on a computer now and I'm writing a post, and that's how that works.

It's hard. People's feelings are right there on the battleground and people's lives are on the battleground. So it's hard to argue and to debate from a position of sort of dispassionate good faith, assumption of good faith. But I think that's kind of where that conversation got almost. If not there now, it's on its way. And I think that's a very, very, very valuable thing. And I think it's on its way. And I think that's a very, very, very valuable thing. And I think it says something about conservatives that – and I think everybody on that – everybody arguing in that thread is a conservative.

Something about conservatives that I think is really important, which is that we ultimately find the rational center that's grounded in principle that's not designed to destroy the other person's freedom. And I think that's the opposite for being a liberal. Being a liberal is the argument is always about taking away what you've got because you don't deserve it or because you have it too much or you're using it the wrong way or somebody else doesn't have it. And conservative is really all about preserving that thing that makes you and gives you freedom, personal freedom, and also preserving that thing that sustains us all, which is our community and our country and our constitution and our way of life. And I think that to me is really – I'm being inarticulate, but that to me is the big difference in wading through that thread. That's why I would recommend to people, even if you're totally bored of this conversation and you don't really want to have it, kind of wade through it and you can see it gets a little hot. It gets a little personal. It gets a little offended.

It gets a little disoffended. But it's fascinating. And I think it's really the best of what we've got right here at Ricochet. And if you contribute to Ricochet and renew your membership, we will be paying Patrick Stewart to read the entire comment thread out loud in an audiobook version. But until that comes out, you can go to audible.com, of course, and sign up for your free 30-day trial. And don't, please, do not forget to sign up if you haven't already for Hillsdale College's free

online courses on the Constitution and Western Heritage. Ricochet.com slash Hillsdale. Sign up today. Well, Robin in LA, as somebody Twittered me this week said, is Rob's last name Long or in LA? Because the docs say people tell you, this is Robin in L.A., as somebody Twittered me this week said, is Rob's last name Long or in L.A.? Because when he talks to people, he'll say, hi, this is Robin in L.A.

And so Robin in L.A., which sounds kind of game showy, enjoy yourself. Peter in wherever you be in Sunny Cal. James Loudlix here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We'll see you in the comment threads. Thanks for listening. And thanks, as ever, for belonging to Ricochet.com. Thanks, guys.

Next week, boys. Next week. Wouldn't it be nice if we were older And we wouldn't have to wait so long And wouldn't it be nice to live together In the kind of world where we belong I know it's gonna make it that much better When we can say goodnight and stay together Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up in the morning

When the day is new And after having spent the day together Hold each other close the whole night through Happy times together we've been spending I wish that every kiss was ever ending Wouldn't it be nice Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true Run, run, run

Baby, then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do We could be married We could be married And there we'd be happy And then we'd be happy But wouldn't it be nice Ricochet Join the conversation You know it seems the more we talk about it

It only makes it worse to live without it But let's talk about it Wouldn't it be nice Bye.