The Ricochet Podcast - Kind Of A Drag

Episode Date: April 10, 2014

Turns out experts don’t have so much expertise after all; the zen and psychology of the tax code (and Rob’s pitch for the flat tax); the evolution of the word “tranny”; Ricochet editors ( Senik, Levy, and Gabriel) on their favorite member posts; Is the debate about Benghazi over?; a view of the U.S./ Israel relationship from the Israeli P.O.V.; and Lileks needs help finishing his limerick. Source

activate program more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism well i'm not a crook i'll never tell a lie but i am not a bully mr gorbache, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. Well, not really. He's under that beautiful California weather today. But Rob Long is here along with a panoply of Ricochet editors. John, Gabriel, Troy, Sinek, Judith, Levy, here to discuss current events

and Ricochet itself. Let's have a podcast. There you go again. Yes, the Ricochet podcast is brought to you each week at this time by Encounter Books. Featured title this week is Dancing with the Devil, The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes by Michael Rubin. We'll be talking a little bit more about that later in the show. In the meantime, you can scurry off and get this or any other Encounter title for a mere 15% off the list price. That's not

mere, that's big. By going to Encounter Books and using the coupon code RICOSHAY at your checkout. And of course, we're brought to you by Ricochet.com. And usually when people say mention the Reagan and Thatcher tears, they talk about the pain and the weeping that the left had during the 80s but uh no there there's there's another spelling for tears and here's rob log to tell you all about that thank you james uh if you are listening to this ricochet podcast and you are a member of ricochet we thank you and we are

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deeper Ricochet experience, and we're giving that too. We have a Mrs. Thatcher level. And Peter always refers to it as Thatcher level, or the Thatcher level, or the Margaret. I call it the Mrs. Thatcher level. I kind of like that. But anyway, the Mrs. Thatcher level, where you get some more goodies. Check it out on the site, and it's a little bit more.

And then we have the Reagan level, the Reagan tier, which of course is the highest tier. There can be no higher than anything named Reagan, right? Right. And that has some even extra goodies and lots of sort of special meetup-y things that I think you'll all enjoy. So please check it out. Please, if you're not a member, please join. If you are a member, thank you. And we're thrilled to have you.

I think there's a – isn't there a presidential level named after one of those guys who died three weeks into his tenure as president? Yeah, the McKinley. Isn't that McKinley? Yeah, that's just the short term for people who want to just – Yeah, it's the one day. Yeah, but McKinley was shot. He was shot. He was not – I'm trying to think of the president who gave a speech

and supposedly caught pneumonia or catarrh or grip during his inauguration. Harrison, I think that's it, and died shortly thereafter. Now they're saying that it probably was not pneumonia or the cold that did him in. It was the fact that the White House was located, not metaphorically, but actually literally near a sewer that in those days people would just dump the night soil did them in. It was the fact that the White House was located, not metaphorically, but actually literally near a sewer that in those days people would just dump the night soil out the window and down it would gutter into the Potomac. Very organic, don't you think?

I mean that's a natural way to live. Early composting. That's just how the Greens would like it. Yes. Well, they discover all that stuff. I mean I read this wonderful book once called The Ghost Map about the cholera epidemic in London. And of course at that point, the settled science was the scientific community had coalesced around a hypothesis, which was absolutely true, which is that cholera is carried by bad wind, by vapors, by …

By ill humors. Ill humors. The air, it was airborne, which of course was nonsense and scientific inquiry suggested it was nonsense. So one guy decided he will – before he comes to a conclusion, he will draw a map of the cholera victims. And of course they spiraled out from one central point in London and the central point happened to be a well, which was of course built right next to a sewer. So now of course it seems insane, right? Well, it's insane. As you noted about settled science in your post at Ricochet.com, it turns out that the idea that fleas and rats were totally to blame for the black plague may be a little exaggerated,

that there may have been an airborne component. Now that one was airborne, yeah. Now that one was was so it turns out that it was ill humors on the breeze in that point uh it's it's it's fascinating stuff we've got so much more to learn but you're right uh when it comes to science james settled science and one of the things that's settled of course is that the more you tax people the harder they will work um to compensate for the taxes they're paying right i mean it's tax season now and everybody is looking at what they have to pay. And I got slaughtered this year and was looking at the new taxes. Oh, well, no.

I just want the thanks. I want all of my liberal relatives to just come over to the house and thank me. I want them to cook me dinner because everything that I made over – everything that I made this year more than last year, all of it went to taxes, 100 percent. And I'm just perverse enough of an idiot to say, well, then I'll have to make more next year if I want to see anything, which is nuts. Why? That's the theory. Why do I bother?

Why do I bother? You will attempt to get in front of it. But I don't – I mean I understand when people say – economists always say, well, it affects behavior. And I guess it does. But I think what it does is more insidious in that it changes the price of everything in your head. I mean it changes what everything is worth in your head because you're always making a tax calculation. I mean the complicated taxes did that to housing prices with the mortgage interest deduction. So you're kind of always calculating the price. It isn't really $5 because it's this and that and the other.

It's after taxes. And I think that's the most insidious thing it does to the economy is it forces you to believe that the prices don't reflect anything and that the prices are different for everybody else, right? Because it depends on your specific tax situation. I agree. I agree. For example, when we were refinancing our house and this is – I know this is just fascinating tax talk.

We looked at the fact that we'd be paying much less in mortgage interest and that meant that you couldn't deduct as much. Now, in my head, it makes sense to have as small as possible and to have as little – because when you pay the mortgage interest, you're just throwing money out the window. Thank you so much for giving me this pile of money. And $4.87 is applied to your principal. I would rather pay down what I owe because I abhor debt. I hate debt. Debt is a terrifying thing.

You're Midwestern. That's great. Right. So what happens then is that you end up getting penalized when you pay because you're not taking on huge amounts of fluffy little mortgage interest that you can't deduct. So you're right. Everything is distorted by this complicated tax code and everybody knows it. And yet any attempt that the Republicans have to get in front of that and say, look, folks, what we want is to clarify matters with a flat rate, a flat rate tax, not a flat tax, but a flat rate. And make that – What do they call it? Flatter tax?

Right. With fewer – now, for example, the camp proposal came out and said we're going to phase out the mortgage deduction. Am I correct? Yeah, it went crazy. And everybody went crazy. Now, why is that? They go crazy because it's the one thing they think they get from government? Yeah. I mean that's the other thing insidious about it.

It feels like you're getting a break on something that's insanely expensive. Of course it's insanely expensive because the break is built into it. Right. So that's one reason. But also just – it's like nobody wants to give up a break because they feel like they're taxed so much. And it's a hard thing. And I also think it's a matter of trust that they simply – the tax code writers in Washington who are elected representatives by definition, we just don't trust. It's too complicated.

We don't trust them to do anything, which is why I think the flat tax is a really great idea because it simplifies things. And I actually have always advocated a flat tax even if it's going to be at a higher rate than we'd like. Even if the flat tax is higher than you think it should be, I think it's still a win for us in general, even if it's 3 percent or 4 percent more than we want it because then now we can have one argument every year, lower it from 20 to 16 or from 21 to 17 or whatever it is we want to lower it to, or from 17 to 12. That to me is a fight I can win, but the fight of like,

well, no, no, here's what we're going to do. We're going to give you a tax code rebate. If you're thinking, and this complicated formula, it doesn't even seem like a tax cut,

but really just a math assignment. Well, that, that's not as interesting. It's not as clear. So no, I think we, I think we on our side are obsessed with tax rates and the tax code and we should all be saying the same thing, just simplify it.

If it's a little high, that's fine. We'll fix it later. You're right. organized political party is to tell people that the point of the tax code is to raise money to pay for the duties and obligations that the federal government is entrusted with by the constitution and that we have taken on through the actions of our legislatures. The point of the tax code is not social policy. It isn't. Yeah, I know. And it can't and it ought not to be. But there was a post on Ricochet and I kind of should Google this.

Maybe it was Rachel Liu. I don't know who posted it. I will check this. Maybe one of our editors will. We have some editors, guest editors today. So I'll ask them about whether you think the marriage deduction should be – whether the marriage deduction should be a deduction or should it be a tax on single people, whether the tax code should be used to sort of do a generally good thing, which is to encourage people to have families and children. And there's an argument for it. I just – but I'm with you, James.

I don't think the tax code should do that. Oh, lord, yes. Well, there was a slate or a sell-on or a slate or dysentery or commentary or whatever. There's an article where somebody was saying that he should pay more taxes, that the child – people who are actually having children. Right. That's what it's based on. Exactly. Right. And what I loved about that was – Ryan Salon. Ryan Salon, who's a wonderful writer, by the way. Great, great writer. I didn't disagree with what he was saying, but I went down to the comments and the comments are all bitter cat ladies essentially. Why should I have to pay for your spawn? Why should you breeders have to get some sort of social prominence over those of us who don't reproduce and are therefore being better to the planet? I mean that parsimonious, narrow, sourpuss, lemon-sucking way of life that if you're living in 300 feet in San Francisco somewhere, yes.

If you're living in a small little cubbyhole somewhere in San Francisco and you regard the rest of the country as being a bunch of waddling, obese fools who go to Walmart and shoot guns, yeah, of course. Then why would you want them to reproduce? I just want to get away from the idea of tinkering with society by using the law and the tax code so if they phase out the mortgage deduction over five years it's 10 years whatever if they say this is a great social policy but unfortunately it has distorted prices and we're going to phase it out and let the air go out of it so that no markets crash well you know i can't sit here and say get everybody off the federal teat when i might and I'm not saying that a tax deduction is the same as getting money from. But if I want to disentangle us from the government, then I got to give it up.

Then I got to give it up. That's right. So what else is going on in your planet there over in California? Speaking of – well, I'll tell you. I was in New York for a few days and I liked it very much. I really do like New York a lot. I just – whenever I go there, I really have a good time. So I've got to figure out a way to get to New York or at least split my time half and half.

But I also feel like maybe it would be useful here because we don't have an editor from Ricochet from the East Coast now. Really? I don't think of a full time. John's in Phoenix. Troy's itinerant. Troy, we'll have to get into where Troy actually lives. He's always on the road. We all know where you are.

We all know where Peter is. So maybe, you know, I don't know. But I like it very much. But I came back yesterday and I did this stupid thing where I thought, oh, you know what? I'll just take the early plane from New York. So I got to 6.30. Oh, lord. And I landed – it's actually not that bad because you get up a little bit early but there's no traffic.

So you get zipped right to the place. And I always get the window seat so I can always sleep against the window. But I landed at 9.30, did some stuff, caught up and then went to work and then work was harder than I thought it would be. So I did get back until very late. So that's why my voice is a little hoarse. Well, you know what? Then we need to give you some relief. And some relief will come in the fact

that we have 97 people now coming out of the show. We should mention that Peter is under the weather today. So it's not as if he's not in a ditch somewhere. Peter who? Peter Ixnay. There is no Peter on the Eater Pay, right? Okay, if you look at the photos, we're already airbrushing

him out. Come on. So we have a festival of editors here to replace Peter. We've got Troy Seddick, we've got John Gabriela, we've got Judith Levy. They're your Ricochet editorial staff. What I need right now is the match game or the love connection theme as the set

turns around and there they all are sitting on director's chairs, smiling and waving at the crowd. Hi, guys. Welcome to the podcast. Hi, fellas. How are you? That was boosters, James. That felt like we all should have been running through a banner. Yeah, exactly right. That was exactly right. It makes me

feel like Jim Lang. All right. So, Troy, hello. How are you? Good. How are you, sir? Good. Where are you?

I am in deepest, darkest Middle Tennessee right now. I'm not actually in Nashville. You go to the middle of nowhere and then drive for an additional hour and a half. Troy, don't take this the wrong way, but you're a little hot today. So you could either back off the mic or turn it down a little. Okay. Done, James. It's great Tennessee connectivity. And Judith, what time is it where you are?

You're in Israel. It is now, yeah, it's almost 20 after 6 p.m. So this is the hour, this is the John Kerry appreciation hour in Israel. And John, Gabriel, you're in Phoenix, right?

Yes, I'm in beautiful Phoenix, yes. Well, welcome, guys. First, can we just start with this? Tell me how much you love Ricochet 2.0. Well, if nothing else, I think Ricochet 2.0 has disproved any supposition that we might be the recipients of substantial amounts of Koch brothers' money. It has certainly served that function. No, we – the reality of it is I think that we've – obviously nobody is going to deny the fact that we had a rollout that was not optimal. You're already talking like a politician. Yes, yes, euphemism of the year. But look, we're making progress on it now and we're actually going to be making – the most exciting thing I think

is we're going to be making a lot more progress in the weeks to come. We actually saw earlier this week the mock-up for the new design on the homepage, which will take us back to that single column that we used to have. You can expand out the post. So yeah, it's been rough, and we've all had a pretty hellish couple of weeks up front. But we're getting to a good place, and more than anything else, I think probably all the editors would want to say that we appreciate all the support and patience that we've gotten from the membership. Right. Yeah, that is true. I don't think you can actually overemphasize our gratitude to the members for sticking with us.

I mean what I love about the members is that they'll – I mean there will be like 50 comments about just how awful this is and what idiots we are. And then there will be like 50 more like, well, we'll give you one more week. And I like that. They're conservative. They're still conservatives. No one has given us a break. But I really appreciate it. Of course we love the tiers, the member tiers. I think it's going to be real helpful, very helpful for us.

But in general, OK, I know that I was the last holdout on the multi-column stuff and this is extremely boring to anybody who's not a member of Ricochet, which is just all the more reason for you to become a member of Ricochet because when you become a member of Ricochet, this kind of thing is fascinating. But I'm persuaded and I think we're doing the right thing. Now, I mean what I've also noticed is that we – that their comments are longer now or can be longer, and I kind of like that. I think that maybe in retrospect, we were a little too tight in the first version. I like the longer comments. I mean I think our members kind of appreciate that. What do you think? Am I dreaming?

I agree. I think – I like the longer comments. This is John. And also it just sets us up so well for the future. And just to be able to on the fly make changes is going to be incredible as technology changes over the years. Mistakes were made. We look forward. At this point, what difference does it make? Exactly.

This is days old news. This is like, oh, I think this has been exhaustively covered. So speaking of what difference does it make, I just want to get your guys' take on this. Charles Krauthammer said on I think the Brett Baer report, and I think he's right. The clock has run out on Benghazi as a political scandal. It's terrible. It's horrible. We wish it hadn't happened. I wish that this were not so.

But it's really over as an issue, and it's not going to work in the general – and it's not going to work in the midterms and we should move off of it. What do you think? I'll start where – as close as to the outrage as possible to Judith. What's your sense? Is there political sport to be made here, political gains to be made here? Well, I mean I haven't read that piece by Krauthammer, but who's is that? But it it's incredibly disheartening. I really, really hope he's wrong.

I keep hoping that it's going to come roaring back. I think it should be the central issue. And I... The central issue of what? Of the anti-Clinton? Going into... Yes, attacking Clinton. And if it's over, then she's the presumptive nominee

and it's just incredibly disheartening. So what are his grounds? Why is he saying that... I don't understand i i'm kind of depressed now well then i'd like my work done hey john do you get a sense that it's that it's fading it's an issue i mean look it on our side among people that we all follow don't care is it that americans don't care because i'm not close enough to you guys to know or they've been hearing about it for two years or a year and a half.

I mean, everybody I follow on, this is what I'm concerned by, everybody that I follow on Twitter and that I read and all that stuff, they all seem to be really, really interested and exercised by Benghazi to keeping it alive. But there is something rational and there is something

unfortunately that sounds true when I hear Charles krauthammer say what guys it's got no it's got no uh it's got no legs part of the part of the problem is that to people who haven't been paying attention and people who never knew what they should be paying attention to in the first place because the mainstream media did a very poor job of setting it out is that they're hearing people talk about Benghazi as the equivalent of people talking about the Liberty incident with Israel. It's a sign that you're nuts.

It's one of those things that birchers are talking about. It's become a code word for an undue interest. It's MENA. It's Vince Foster territory. That's what it's become. Those are good names to pull out of your hat. John, do you get a sense of that? Is that true? I think it is. Again, among the people I travel with, it is an issue.

But I think to the general public, it's kind of interesting, as James said, comparing it to Mina and Vince Foster. It's almost they did with an issue what they did with Sarah Palin when she first emerged on the scene. They tried to make her toxic, and any comment of her was toxic and should be – obviously this person isn't serious. They should be thrown out, and that's what they're doing with Benghazi now. They've kind of recast it in the left and on the media, but I repeat myself, as saying the word Benghazi is like saying we need to know the truth of 9-11, and they've made it kind of a fringe, odd situation. Until new information comes out, I don't know how we get the mainstream to be concerned about it, which is a pity.

So, Troy, you're right there in the middle of Tennessee. I mean – In the heartland of Middle Eastern policy, yes. Exactly. Right, right. I mean the thing is that my overarching – my constant fear is that we are in a very good position right now to sort of dominate the Senate. And that would be a very good – that would be a very good position for us to maybe run the table in 2016. And that's always a good thing. It's good to win. But we also traditionally – our side traditionally has kind of a strong hand. We managed to fritter it away on something. Even if it's valid, we managed to play the game poorly, and it is a game.

So my concern is are we making a mistake dropping it or are we making a mistake pushing it? Well, I think that there's a distinction between saying that you can't get any further mileage out of Benghazi and saying that it's actively going to hurt you. I can't see that happening. I think the sentiment there is that because there's kind of a general aversion to foreign policy in general, this doesn't have the kind of traction that it would otherwise. And I think to John's point, what the left has done with Benghazi, it's not at all dissimilar really from what they've done with the IRS scandal, is they've tried to define it out of existence by taking the most extreme hypothetical and disproving that. So for instance, like with the IRS scandal, if – a lot of people on the left will functionally make the argument that if you can't tie it directly to the Oval Office, there's nothing there.

There's nothing to talk about, and they will equate all manner of conservative complaints about it with something directly tied to the president himself. And by doing so, try to keep any other aspect of the story that's damaging out of the way. But no, I don't think with Benghazi it's going to hurt us. I actually am fairly – this is a very uncomfortable position for me to be in. But I'm fairly confident about where we're at going into the fall, and there's always the chance that you're going to find that liability that's going to hamstring us somewhere. It tends to be in individual races. Sometimes that can spread out into a wider meme like it did last time with the Missouri and Indiana races. But I don't see that kind of liability from Benghazi.

But Krauthammer is probably right in the sense that the people who care about it seem to be overwhelmingly the people who would have been inclined to be on our side to begin with. And for whatever reason, it doesn't have much traction beyond that. I think that's pitiful, but it does seem to be the reality. So a dead ambassador and the Al-Qaeda flag flying over an American embassy does not have traction among Americans? This is incredibly disturbing. Wow. Well, you put it that way, Judith. This is incredibly disturbing. Wow. Well, you put it that way, Judith.

It sounds pretty bad. I don't think – I think it may as a – well, here's my problem. I think that Hillary Clinton probably is the presumptive nominee for that party in 2016. If she wants it. If she wants it. And I think that we're going to have a hard time picking and choosing the scandals. I mean I still think that it's weird that she made a lot of money in cattle futures, but I'm an old man, so maybe that just hits me. And so you kind of don't want to – you don't want to birdshot this because – I don't think you do because because it just seems like then

you're just jumping on her for everything you want to make sure what you've got makes her uncomfortable it makes her squirm um i am not as sanguine about the well i was about to say something now i'm thinking about i disagree i was going to say i was i'm not as sanguine about the power of the liberal media being undermined. I used to think that we had a shot at it. We still do have a shot at it. We still do win elections. We still do come pretty close. The liberal media hurts us, but it doesn't – it's not a fatal wound.

But I think that the – I think it's going to be worse in 2016 because I think the press feels they owe Hillary Clinton something. I think they believe that she's got a credit in the bank for them. She's of their class. But they also turned on her in 2008. Well, I mean I really – It was for a noble cause. Yeah, but I know a lot of media professionals who believe that they feel a little guilty about 2008 because they wanted Hillary so badly and they didn't think this guy was going to make it and then he started to make it. And they kind of feel like now she deserves it. And so actually I think the coverage of Hillary Clinton in 2016 is going to make the coverage of Barack Obama in 2008 seem positively nonpartisan. How about that?

Do you know how I totally depressed you, Judith? My head is on the desk, Rob. I don't know if I can get it up again. I don't know. Troy, am I crazy? We lost Troy for a minute. John, am I crazy? We lost Troy for a minute. John, am I crazy? You are not crazy.

I think – and they really – the media did set the table so well for 2012 and 2008 that I think they're feeling their oats. They feel powerful and they love power. So if any way they can influence the election will be great. The thing about Hillary though, despite the press's motivation to help her out, she's just such an unappealing candidate when people see her a lot. When she's behind the, in the shadows somewhere, when she's on a jet flying around the world, logging up those all important miles and diplomacy, people don't mind her because they don't see her and they think of the modest list of good things she's done. But the more they see her, she's just an off-putting

person and I've seen that among Democrats and obviously Republicans. But I think the media is going to be highly motivated to help her, but she really isn't very appealing. So that sounds very hopeful, but I'm not sure I buy that spin there. Troy, what do you think? No, I agree with John actually. I think that the idea of Hillary Clinton has always been a lot more alluring than the reality of Hillary Clinton. I think if you have to live – That's the meanest thing.

I think it's true though. I think the reality at least as a candidate, the reality of Barack Obama matched up pretty well with the idea of Barack Obama. He was a guy that you actually like to watch on the stump. I mean we didn't, but you can understand why somebody in the middle might because he gave you this sort of very – this very bland message but delivered in very inspiring terms. Hillary, you can't, I don't think, not have sort of a natural decline in the attraction around that candidacy over the course of, she's hard to watch. She's, you know, I hate to put it in these terms,

but I'm damn well going to. Hillary Clinton, when you listen to her speak at length, Hillary Clinton is everybody's first wife. and that is not something that wears well over the course of six or nine months. I'm with John on this. I just think that there's going to be a natural decline. And once you get past the idea of the first female president, you're going to have to deal with the idea of a Hillary Clinton presidency, and that's a lot less alluring. Does it really matter? The first female president just seems like, well, come on. I mean we've had the first black president now. So do we really need to – I mean isn't there –

wouldn't there be a little bit of a fatigue? I mean look, I think – I will say this, and I will say this publicly. I think a lot of people voted for Barack Obama because they really, honestly, truly wanted to vote for a black man because they wanted America to have – and I know people who are conservative republicans who felt this way and voted for him anyway because they felt in 2008 that he was the guy, that he seemed moderate and normal and it would be good for the country to have him there and he wouldn't do crazy stuff and he would be a very good person to have in that position. It would solve a lot of social problems we have. And you know what? This is – now is the time. And they voted for him and of course they regretted it probably from day one.

But that was the – that got a lot of people to the polls to abandon their traditional republicanism or their whatever it is in in quotes independentism right and vote for the guy and i'm just not sure i see that kind of like a giant social american cultural healing behind voting for hillary clinton but but maybe i'm i mean i don't know you're right you're right. It flattered people's self-conception. It made them feel good about themselves. I'm the kind of person who will do this. And Hillary is different. But when you talk about what the media is going to do, you know, the media – indeed Hillary does wear thin and tends to grate.

So they'll just show less of her. I mean, the media's job, either overt or subliminal in their own heads, is to ensure the maintenance of democratic power over the important institutions so that everything that they like continues to be legal and provided to people. And whoever comes along the Republican side is not going to be held as an equal challenger, as somebody who's trying to get the job just as the other person is. They're going to be seen as an interloper, as an enemy to the maintenance of progressive principles. And so for them, the story is not Hillary, for heaven's sakes. We know everything about her.

The story is this strange creature that has crawled out of the hinterlands to grab control of the power. I mean there's an instinctive, instinctual bias against – What do they call it? They call it othering, right? Isn't that what the liberal progressives call it? Precisely. You're othering me when you say somebody's weird. I mean, I think these transgender people are always complaining that they're being othered. Yes, well... Which is great. Every ten minutes, there's a new phrase, othering. I like it. Microaggression, othering.

Microaggression of othering. Conscious uncoupling. Transphobia, which is the next problem that's going to sweep the nation, 47 percent of the country now apparently being transgendered. Now that's interesting because I was just told this rather – I mean in the sense – in the form of a memo that you can no longer call someone or use as a pejorative, the term tranny. Right. And I didn't even know that was a pejorative that people used until I watched an episode of Project Runway.

Yeah. You guys are going to make fun of that. I'm not asking for it. Like five years ago or six years ago or something, and the guy who won this sort of short little very sort of – a flamboyant gay guy. He had a lot of personality. He was very funny, and he called everything a tranny mess. So it went from five years from being something that – an officially approved figure of the progressive liberal elite, a phrase that he used with a bandit five years later is like you cannot say that on television. There's going to be somebody in an auto repair shop who's going to be brought up on hate speech because he told somebody their tranny was shot.

Well, Troy, you're – half a day you're a tranny. What do you think? Like that? Well, I always find it a little strange that you have these social choices, these individual choices that people make that are explicitly for the purpose of calling attention to themselves. And then there is a revulsion, shock, and horror when a descriptive phrase is used to call that to people's attention. I mean it's a little strange. You can't sort of inhabit both worlds. Right, right. Judith, from afar, when you read this stuff, do people just kind of – Israel is kind of like a, God, man, people in the States are crazy.

We're relying on them. I mean I sent an email to my stepmom about a week ago. That's a couple of weeks ago that said the subject line was just what the hell is going on over there wait did you really say hell was it really hell i really said that because i had just read an article in the new yorker about a i don't even remember what is the right term now. A what is she? She's born a girl, but she believes that she's a boy. So she has already succeeded in getting her school to her teachers and everyone has to refer to her and think of her as a boy. But what really, really did it for me is that she's 16 years old and her parents have arranged for her to have a double mastectomy

because she's a boy because she's decided that she's a boy and it's a very reverential piece and it's it's you know and and i i just thought okay i i just i'm i'm at a loss i'm really at a loss and then i read something and actually rob you can give me some insight into this. I read something about how there's a problem now. There are awards that are given out for female playwrights. But this is an issue now because men are saying that they feel like women. And so they should be eligible for awards for female playwrights. So what? You guys tell me what the hell is going on over there?

Well, Captain Scully... That's a standard thing. Writers just like awards, so they'll say anything to get an award. Captain Scully, the guy who landed that plane in the Hudson, has changed genders and now wants to be known as an aviatrix, apparently. So, yes, it's endemic.

Wait, that's a joke? Of course it's a joke. What's going on is a very small percentage of people are attempting to change a national conversation about gender in order to reduce the distinctions, in order to make the distinctions between them less important. Because if you say there's a thing as – such a thing as a man and a woman, then you assign to them certain characteristics and those always, of course, always redound negatively against women. So if we make gender irrelevant, then we've reduced all distinctions between people to be irrelevant and there's no more male privilege. There's no more patriarchy. There's no more of the bad things that have caused this to be the worst society ever cobbled

together by human beings. I don't know exactly what – I don't know what their end point is for all of this other than just to – the joy and the glee of taking a hammer to all of the characteristics of Western civilization that heretofore have made this society. I mean it's – they can't run out of things – they never run out of things to wreck. There's always something new that gives them a shine in their eye. Yeah, we got to fix that. Yeah. Oh, all right. So do you think that we may be in a period of overstep for the progressives? And I say that because I'm, as you know, I, all of you guys, I mean, I desperately look for trends all the time. That's pretty much everything I post on Ricochet is, Hey, is this a trend? Usually I hope it's a trend or I'm hoping it's not a trend. But there does seem to be an interesting trend here where even people who consider themselves progressive elites or progressive liberals get uneasy.

And I did go to – I was at a dinner once talking to some people who are in fact very progressive liberals and we were talking about this very idea. I don't know if it was – Judith, was that actual article. It was an article very similar to it about a younger person who had decided that I think he was transgendered and everyone at the table was like, I feel weird about that. I know I shouldn't, but I feel weird about that. And then what happened this week is the CEO of Mozilla, which is a nonprofit tech business, and they are – create the open source Firefox browser among other things. And it's always been a very kind of cool, hippie kind of attitude place where, hey, man, we're just – this is a nonprofit. We're just building web products for the people and it's a good browser. It turned out that the CEO who actually was an author of JavaScript among other things, he's an accomplished guy, had in 2008 contributed $1,000 to the Prop 8 – the pro Prop 8 campaign

in California which was the proposition to essentially define marriage as between a man and a woman. To privilege existing – preexisting gender status. Exactly. To other – to other – And macroaggression against those who do not fit the old parameters. Exactly. And in the ensuing fervor, he was fired. He didn't – they said he stepped down, but he did not step down.

He was fired for that because they found out he had contributed to this proposition. Basically, they found out that in 2008, he had exactly the same politics as Barack Obama. For that, he was fired. Pretty interesting in that one of the chief critics of what he called I think a lynch mob was Andrew Sullivan who was a – at this point, fairly progressive character, an out gay man, activist and staunch proponent of gay marriage. Wait a minute. Back up. Andrew Sullivan is gay? Yeah. I hope he is because his dating life would be better.

And he came out against it along with a lot of other people. And so I don't know. Am I looking for signs that aren't there? John, I mean – I think there is a little bit of revulsion at the – as you were saying, the glee that the left seems to take in, the destruction of other people. And really it does come down to tolerance. The statement made by Mozilla once Ike walked away from the company, quote-unquote, to spend more time with his family or whatever the excuse was, it was beyond Orwellian. It was we're all about tolerance and inclusion and that's why we had to get rid of him because don't you know the only way we can have diversity is if we destroy everyone slightly different from us. Silence. Yes, exactly.

That seems to be their attitude. I think the only thing – same-sex marriage really seems inevitable, and it has over the past few years. It's gained so much acceptance so quickly. I think the only thing that could slightly – has a slight chance of derailing it is just the overzealous enforcement by the thought police. And I think the Mozilla situation just shows. Brendan Eich was willing to work with 95 percent of employees who completely disagreed with him. They weren't willing to work with one single man who disagreed with them. So the tolerance is a one-way street. Well, it's entirely possible that once his opinions were out and people knew exactly what a hidebound 19th century cretin he really was, that they would want to perhaps show him through constant daily interaction that they were not devilish figures and that he might learn from them.

But of course, those same people would say, oh, what am I thinking about here? The peril, for example, of engaging a rogue regime, just because you act nice to them doesn't mean that Iran or North Korea is going to act nice back to you. So what's the point? Those are the people who would have read Michael Rubin's new book,

which is, of course, Dancing with the Devil, the perils of engaging with rogue regimes. That was a fast segue, but we got to get it in here. Let me tell you what this is. It's from Encounter. You know that. And here's the prices. The, but we've got to get it in here. Let me tell you what this is. It's from Encounter. You know that. And here's the prices. The world has never been as dangerous as it is now.

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engagement with rogue regimes a cost-free option. In fact, all these rogue regimes have one thing in common, they pretend to be aggrieved in order to put Western diplomats on the defensive. To get Michael's book for 15% off the list price, you can go to EncounterBooks.com and use the coupon code RICOSHET at the checkout. And we thank EncounterBooks for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Hey, I did not interrupt that segue. Thank you very much. I was just jamming it in there. But the point, I mean, I actually was making a point, was that instead of having Mr. Ike inside the fold and say, you know,

learn from us, let's all learn from each other. And then, you know, six months later, he would say, you know what, I was wrong. You know, he would do it. Eventually, yes. And then they find out, of course, that OKCupid may have been trolling Mozilla in the first place, or Mozilla, as I like to say, because one of the founders of OKCupid

apparently gave some money to a guy who was virulently anti-gay. 500 bucks, but that was 10, 12, 14 years ago. So apparently the statute of limitations applies to people who make the wrong decisions and are on the wrong side of history. You're just out of step with Barack Obama. That's exactly right.

Hey, James, I got a question from a member once who said – who asked me – we love it when you interrupt James Segway's. It's hilarious. Does he love it? They were kind of like – I think they were asking me to ask you, is it OK when I do that? Oh, it's been years since I turned off the mic, threw my headphones on the floor, walked out of the room. Well, because I say that because we have the editors here and it does seem like a time – we have a few minutes in the podcast to talk a little bit about behind the scenes stuff. And we had – I mean look, mistakes have been made as Editor Gabriel pointed out and we're not – there's no reason to – what at this point – what does it matter at this point?

But despite the rocky 2.0 rollout, which on the podcast where we're sort of racing through guests and we're racing through topics and we're getting mad about stuff. We forget that there's this huge, vibrant, giant room at Ricochet that's filled with great conversations. Some of them are hilarious and some of them are brilliant and some of them are incredibly, incredibly angry. And some of them are – Some of them are pure clickbait, like worst movie you've ever seen. Who cannot plow through all eight screens of that? What I love is that like it's just a natural thing that everyone – everyone has an inner BuzzFeed editor, right? So Troy, let me ask you.

What was your favorite post – well, I won't say of the week but like of the recent couple weeks say? Well, we've actually – we've had two this week that I really enjoyed from members that I think illustrate sort of two different dynamics at Ricochet. One was two or three days ago, we have a member whose handle is Mike H who wrote a post entitled, are we morally obliged to follow Obamacare? And what was interesting about this post, what I like about this post is I think it gets to what we do really well at Ricochet, which is the following. Ricochet is – we're not a news site in the sense that we're not going to – we don't have reporters. We're not going to break things as they happen. What we are I think is the best possible supplement to your regular news consumption, which is the place where you go after you read the initial news story.

Maybe the day you go – the place you go the day after once you've had some time to think about it. And you have the bigger philosophical conversation about what's going on and that's what this post was. It was a very serious, I thought very sober and thoughtful conversation about the tension between fealty to the rule of law and civil disobedience. The operative question there really being at what point does a law become so onerous that you have a moral obligation to excuse yourself from it? It's a fascinating conversation that's rolled out over several pages. really enjoyed is we have a – I think it's over – well over 100 comments now on the standards that should apply to the use of the Oxford comma. Ricochet is an extremely literate group and there are some very – how should I put this? There are some very strongly held views about grammar propriety within our membership. There are not a lot of places on the web that you can go and have these kind of conversations

without them devolving into either some sort of silliness or kind of name-calling. And those two – I mean two threads that couldn't be more different, but I think two threads that are illustrative. That it starts with a small thing and then they instantly get – I mean not instantly, but then like page two, page three. When people gravitate to the topic, then there's a core group of people talking about it a little later, and they're starting to get into big stuff. It starts kind of like, hey, do you think that some small provision of Obamacare – and then people talk about the provision for a couple of pages, and then the third or fourth page is like, well, wait a minute. What are we even doing as a people? I love that because that is how conversations go and I kind of think there isn't enough space for people to have deep conversations on the fly. Everybody has got deep thoughts I guess.

We love them but how do they leak out into the general population? That's the issue, isn't it? That's the issue. Yeah, I don't know if they do but I do think it's nice to have a place to have them and then maybe some of the – we should ask the members that. Maybe – does some of what happens on Ricochet naturally bleed into your normal life? Like in your normal life of having discussions and debates with people, does it bleed – does our way of sort of organizing an online conversation have any effect on that? It's interesting. Hey, John.

So John Gabriel, what was your post of the week? I had actually a couple. One is despite trying repeatedly in college during my moody teen and early 20 years, I'm horrible at poetry. And somebody announced that it's National Poetry Month, and they just put up a Ricochet Challenge. And yeah, I'm checking now. I have about 70 comments. And again, it just amazes me how much talent and how much knowledge and how much learning the Ricochet community brings to things. And so I've just been checking in with that every day and trying to improve my own skills.

But it's just something that I'm not usually exposed to in my normal – when I'm trying to troll for facts and information in the latest data on Twitter, it's good to pause and have a deeper read. Also the serial comma discussion because I believe that that uh i'm i'm an ap style guy and i'm anti-serial comma so uh i got to uh wave the flag in that i love this i i almost responded to the poetry discussion last night about one o'clock in the morning and i thought what am i i started writing uh there once was a fellow named Rob Long. Yeah, you can. Who swanned around in a sarong. When they called him Squish, he said, don't you wish. And then I was trying to get that last line, and I'm looking at the computer, and it's 1 o'clock, and I said, what am I doing?

I'm trying to end a limerick about Rob Long. That is now going to be every other comment on this podcast as far as you know. Hey, Judith, what was your favorite post this week? I mean feel free to go a little higher brow than Troy and John. Well, I promoted a piece by Fred Cole called Thoughts on a Libertarian Solution to the Crisis in the Crimea. Yeah. And I really, really, really like this post. I like it because it is kind of an old school rhetorical approach to an issue where you state the opposing view, and then you fisk the daylights out of it. And he did it so coolly and in such a reasoned way. It's very closely argued.

It's also educational. It's beautifully written. It's a terrific post and I encourage everyone to go. If you didn't read it when it first came out, go back and look for it. He came to a New York meetup. That's part of the fun. It's like meeting people in real life. IRL, as the kids say. What do you look for when you promote a post?

Besides just that there's a lot of heat around it and people seem to be commenting a lot. Why do you promote a post that doesn't have a lot of comments? Well, one of the great things that I'll look for sometimes, the post that Judith just mentioned from Fred, a day later we had an equally thorough rejoinder to it. And it was very well written and I promoted that. I mean that's one of the things that we – I will look for quite often is something that continues a preexisting conversation. For instance, if somebody writes something in we had three or four really good back and forth posts on Jeb Bush's comments on immigration, all from different angles, all

very smart. So anything that advances a conversation that's already occurring is on there. The other thing – and I've told members this before in person. Because we're not a news person, because we're not a news site, because we don't have reporters on the ground filing stuff, a lot of times members will get material up before any contributor can on stuff that's in the news, and we will push that to the forefront. The main thing –

I'm glad you do that because I have a problem with it. If I hear something, I thought, oh, this is an amazing story. I've got to race to get it up, and I'll do it, and I'll just put it right up. I'll just run to the computer and do it. And then usually some member says, hey, hello. I was on the member feed, and I'm like, oh, damn. I didn't bother to check that because I was just racing to get this thing done. So yeah, that is great.

I think that's really good. There's one other thing that I'll say, and then I'll yield to my fellow editors. This is an issue for both contributors and members. This is the main thing I would tell people, particularly if they're looking to get a post promoted. The single biggest vice and the easiest one to fall into – I fell into this when I first started contributing at Ricochet. Gosh, I guess over three years ago now. The single biggest vice that you can fall into on Ricochet is writing defensively. What I mean by that is when somebody writes an op-ed or something that appears in a more conventional format, you're essentially writing a monologue, right?

I mean you might get email back from somebody, but for the most part, that's a one-way conversation. What happens at Ricochet because the dialogue goes back and forth is that people will get self-conscious about that and they will start trying to write posts and they will make posts three or four times longer than they need to be because they're trying to anticipate every possible objection that somebody could raise and end up formatting this almost sort of scholastic treatise on something. And the thing that I would tell people is don't worry about that. That will happen naturally in the comments.

I mean part of the beauty of this is you can leave those things unsaid and they will come out in comment 10, comment 20. That actually leads to better conversations. You sort of write the capsule up front, the big thing version of it and then you can get into the weeds down below. Yeah, OK. That explains why my next post is going to be simply Hillary sucks. Hey, John, what do you think?

I definitely look for things that advance the conversation. Also, I just love the slice of life things that pop up. People sharing their struggles with health insurance, their frustration with the job market, things like that from people who don't happen to be best friends with a national reporter, so their story never gets reported. And these several different people, they all have different styles, different angles, different experiences, and different professions too, which is great to hear someone with some medical background talk about healthcare. There's a great post called Inevitably Expensive Care, which is a really touching story about family members passing away and others having very high medical bills. And it just shows a side of the story that you don't get out of charts and graphs coming from Wonkblog. I think – I mean if I had to say – if I had to ask

the members for more of a certain thing, I would ask them for more of that exact kind of post. Just as a reader, just as a general reader who reads the site, even if I wasn't part of it, if I was just a member like everybody else, I would – that's what I love to read because it's incredibly, incredibly illuminating. Just the level of expertise that exists across – just the last two weeks. I mean I got a member, Ryan – I don't know. I know his name. I'll say his name. What the hell? Ryan. I know his name. I'll say his name. What the hell?

Ryan McPherson. No, I can say his name because he wrote a book. Ryan McPherson. Put together some of his posts into a book. It's a really interesting book. I mean – and the first email he sent to me, he said, oh, you know, what do I know? I'm just a – I think at that point he was a public prosecutor or a public defender. I'm like, well, that actually is a really interesting job.

And you have an interesting window on American society that a lot of other people don't. So the more of that, the better. And I know – it's just maybe it's just my own taste. I love reading stories. I agree with you completely. There was a piece in one of the British newspapers, Independent or The Guardian. And the author was decrying and just poo-pooing this ridiculous American obsession with what you do. Every time you meet an American, they always ask, what do you do?

And I always ask that myself, too, because it's a great starting point. And you can always find out something because everybody does something and hence has a little piece of knowledge that you don't and you learn things. And it may be anecdotal but it's all anecdotal in the end of it. And when you listen to people who are out there experiencing the effects of what a large Leviathan government does to them, the problem is getting outside of this and turning all of these individual narratives into an idea that will shape people's view of how we move forward. In other words, if all you do is tell stories about bad insurance companies, they're just going to say, well, then we need single payer. If you tell them, well, I'm being done in by regulation, they say, well, then we need a more efficient regulatory state. We need a bureaucratic panel to re-look at the regulations. We have to find a way

to blow up the existing paradigm for how people view the way we've organized societies. I love D.C. McAllister. God knows I love her. And I don't just say that because I come up to her sternum, height-wise. She can

literally look down on me. But she has a post today, which I recommend that everybody go read, talking about the book that Rush Limbaugh should read to reach a new audience and a new generation. That would be his own autobiography, his own story. Now, it's an interesting post and as ever, it's written well and sprightly. But the thing is, is that's like telling me when I was 18 or 19, you know, you really ought to listen to Paul Harvey some more and you'll figure out how things go. I came to love Paul Harvey for a variety of reasons, not of which was his incredible mastery of the pause in dead air. Oh, yeah. But when I do radio, I absolutely rip him off.

Absolutely. Yeah. Right. He was the best. I'll tell you a little story too in a second here. But telling the younger generation that they can learn anything from Rush, Rush to them is an old, fat blowhard who's a hate monger. Don't you think she's right though? I mean the story, Rush's story is really interesting.

Yes, it is. But I'm telling you that it ain't going to work with an 18, 19, 20, 21-year-old to tell them to go pay attention seriously to Rush Limbaugh. There's so much institutional bias built, so many hardened arteries when it comes to that generation. We have to come up with something, someone new. Troy Sinek story? I don't know. Troy, what are you, 18? And new ways to tell the story. And we can't rely on a new commentator or somebody who's really making funny videos. Yeah, OK. We have to –

But here's – OK. Here's something. I know we got back to politics and we know we have to wrap it up. But let me ask this one question based on – we're talking about member posts, all of which are great. I was going to say my favorite one recently was Lance's song of the day. The Sunday's new music song of the day was he posted a video of St. Paul and the Broken Bones, which is a fantastic band out of Alabama. And I actually – Reese is my favorite post because Lance – maybe half of the time, I know the bands or the acts that he's posting. But the other half, I don't and I think to myself, God, I am so out of it. But it was just to see this.

I not only know this obscure Alabama-based band. I've seen them play live and I felt like such the cool dude by actually posting that. And I made Lance suitably um uh suitably impressed so that was the important thing um so i uh so i wanted to um i wanted to ask one last question because i feel like james is pointing to something who whose story is interesting for 2016 because John – and you should start, John, because you posted about the big question about Scott Walker. Can a college dropout be president? Yeah, it is interesting just to – we've had the best and brightest run things for a long time, and they haven't done terribly well. And here's another great example of members feeding into it as well. I asked, could somebody without a college degree run for president in this day and age?

And Doc J says, oh yeah, I wrote about that about a week ago. I read it and the comments were fantastic and it broadened my thinking as well because people have already been discussing this. But he, Scott Walker, left college in his senior year and he went to work for the Red Cross. And I don't think it really matters that he doesn't have a college degree because he's proven himself since then. It's kind of if I'm hiring someone for a job and they're 45 and the only accomplishment they can point to is a degree that they earned at 22, I'm like, huh, okay, what have you done in the real world? And that's what he brings to the table.

He's obviously succeeded on a statewide basis as an executive, and I love that executive experience. I would love to have that in the next president. And I don't think it's a big issue, but how will it play on the national stage and how can the democrats thread that needle of politely in a way mocking the anti-intellectualism of the right Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the like, who didn't graduate college either, who barely even tried at it because they viewed it as a distraction. And I think it'll be really interesting to see how, if he throws his hat in the ring, how the Democrats can thread that needle of their normal mocking and sneering without alienating a big portion of this country. Let's hope they can. Yeah.

Is it correct? Did I see somewhere that Walker is actually thinking about completing the degree? I thought I saw that headline the other day. Yeah, yeah. I wish he wouldn't give them that. Yeah, me too. Yeah, I don't want him to because it seems like he's just trying to fill in a checkbox. It reminds me of someone – they launch an exploratory committee, then they fly to Israel. So they can say, hey. Exactly. And it's one of these pro forma – OK, yeah. Right before the New York primary.

Exactly. My best friends are rabbis. The other terrible example of that, not to pick on Walker because Walker of all the potential candidates in the field is the one that I'm the fondest of. But on precisely that note, John, a couple of weeks ago, Sheldon Adelson had this big confab in Las Vegas and everybody was dutifully marched out there to establish their foreign policy pro-Israel bona fides. And Scott Walker, the one time that I have had occasion to go, oh, Scott, that wasn't necessary. Scott Walker did the thing that I hate the most coming from governors running for president, which is that he made a big show of referring to himself when talking about foreign policy as the commander-in-chief of the Wisconsin National Guard. That is a practice that needs to be retired forever and for always when it comes to ambitious governors running for president of the United States.

Go fighting badgers. Yeah, exactly. Don't cross the Wisconsin National Guard. Judith, from overseas, right? Yeah. From the country that is currently undergoing its slowest betrayal ever by its staunchest ally starting in January of 2009 and continuing. And if you put in your sort of self-interested I live here kind of hat, like who's best for me, do you ever think, well, wait a minute. That guy doesn't have any foreign policy experience.

Or do you think – or is there another set of criteria you look at? Well, first of all, I should preface this by saying I always feel obligated to say that the relationship that we have with Obama, there is a public relationship and there is a less public relationship. And it has to be acknowledged that the military cooperation between Israel and the U.S. has not only continued unabated through his administration, but has actually accelerated somewhat in a sub rosa way. So we can't just diss him. I actually believe, I really do believe that he wants desperately to disengage with the whole world, including us. But it's a little bit of a, look, put it this way, he doesn't know what he's doing here. He doesn't want to be here. The one thing that I've been wanting for a long time is for the Americans to just kind of take a step back. And sometimes

that's the best thing for us. It's the best thing for the process. It's the best thing for the relationship with the Palestinians. It's the best thing for the process. It's the best thing for the relationship with the Palestinians. It's the best thing for all of us, for the Americans to just back off because we are, we are not anyone else's legacy. We are our own legacy. And so we need to kind of work some of these things out for ourselves. So to the Palestinians.

And I think that without the Americans kind of hovering over us with their own set of hopes and expectations, it's in, it's in everyone's best interest. You know, so it's, it's happened before that, that an American administration that, that is either seems to be, or actually is hostile to us, turns out in the long run to kind of be helpful because they, they just, they just get off our backs. And that's what we want. Well, that was judicious.

If you look at the press – It's totally unsatisfying, but okay. I'm sorry. But if you look at what's being written right now in the press over here, if you look all the way from the gamut from the right to the left, everyone is saying to Carrie, oh, thank God you've left. Thank God you've left. It runs the gamut from the right wing press saying you were trying to shove something down our throats that we don't want.

All the way to Haaretz on the left saying we don't deserve you. And so it's better off. No one deserves John Kerry. Right. You know, and your efforts were fruitless anyway, and so you might as well just let us stew in our juices and so on. But the point is that right now all of us here, almost across the board, just want the Americans to just back off, which is what we've got.

Wow. I guess that's a win. In a way. I think that the end of this current round of peace negotiations for sure is a win. Yeah. We should – well, you'll probably do a podcast on that very topic, I hope, or at least post on it because I think it's really fascinating. And again, typical for our podcast, we start a really interesting topic right when we have to say goodbye because we're so showbiz

savvy. But before we go, I would like to say to members of Ricochet, first of all, thank you for your support. And if you're not a member, Ricochet.com is where you want to be. Trust me. We are going to look for community moderators. One of the things that we're trying to – we're struggling with is obviously we have – as everyone who's listening knows, we have three incredibly talented editors. But we still run kind of hot. There's still lots going on on the site, and not everybody is on it all the time.

And so we're looking for community, modern people in the community, in a Rickshake community who think, OK, well, you know, I can moderate for this period of this time or something. And basically moderating the comments, right, so that when a comment is flagged for whatever reason and that happens, you know, not like all the time, but it does happen. We've all been there. Somebody to sort of help take action is a much easier thing to do now on our new systems. WordPress is much more stable. And so that's one of the things we're going to be starting to open up. So if you are a member of Ricochet and you are interested in doing that, let us know. And if you aren't a member of Ricochet, uh, don't be ridiculous. Join. We want to have you here. So James, um, how would you, you were the

big, you not worthy, big, you were a Ricochet 2.0 skeptic. And I imagine you still are. How do you think it's going as we, as we wind this up? I think it's, I think it's going great. It, the platform is much more solid. Some of the design decisions that were made at the beginning seem to be rethought. I wasn't a skeptic of 2.0. I wasn't a skeptic of the platform. I was a skeptic of making it look like just virtually every other site out

there and losing the things that made it unique. I think it kept some uniqueness partially, maybe entirely, through the unique voices that are on it that characterize it and shape it. And there are a few more design tweaks that I think will make it better. I'm not one of those guys who likes 47 columns of little boxes with two words of text. I like a little bit more substantial meat in the front page.

I don't like a carousel that I have to scroll back down on that refreshes once every other day and makes me think that the content hasn't changed in the last 24 hours. I'm laughing at your saying is the nicest way possible. Yes. Well, I, when this whole thing started out and they, and they presented it to me,

I said one column and no carousel and watch those boxes on the top. And well, you know, free advice is, is worth every Benny. I guess, but there you have it so so i like it so it's going to be good and it's only going to get better and the reason it's going to get better the people who are right now listening in the chat room the people who are going to be listening to this later on the interwebs the

people are going to comment the editors that we just have in the big robust community that rob and peter have built around this idea of civil conversation a right tone right place in the big robust community that Rob and Peter have built around this idea of civil conversation, a right tone, right place, and the right people. And thanks to all the editors for showing up today and telling us what makes the site great and giving us your insight on this, that, and the other. Three distinct voices, all of whom find a home at Ricochet. We hope Peter is well enough to join us the next time. And as ever, we thank Encounter Books. If you go there and enter that coupon code Ricochet, you'll get 15% off this or any other book. And this is Dancing with the Devil by Michael Rubin. A lot of devils out there.

Our dance card is full. It's that kind of world. Where are you going to go to figure it out and talk about it? Of course, Ricochet. Dare I say, Ricochet 2.0. Hey, John and Troy and Judith, thanks for joining us. Thank you, guys. Pleasure.

Thank you. Guys, thanks. We'll see everybody in the comments. See you soon, fellas. Don't love you Kind of dry When you know she's been untrue Listen To what I've got to say Girl I still love you

I'll always love you Always love you Anyway Anyway I'll always, always, always love you anyway. Anyway. Anyway. Kind of a drag when your baby says goodbye. Kind of a drag when you feel like you wanna cry Oh, girl

Even though you make me feel lonely I still love you I'll always love you Anyway Anyway You'll always love me anyway Anyway Anyway Ricochet Join the conversation

Listen I'm always Anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway.