The Ricochet Podcast - New Right 4.5

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

We're one year into Trump 2.0. And it's America at 250. James, Steve and Charles discuss and debate an especially wild week for an already-adventurous Trump administration.

But now what I'm asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located, that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection. It's a very small ask compared to what we have given them for many, many decades. It's the Rickshank. I'm James Lange. We have Charles C. W. Cook and Stephen Hayward. We're going to talk about Trump, term two, year one. So let's have ourselves a podcast. So again, I'm not popular with you now because I'm defending Donald Trump,

but I really believe we can be happy that he is there because he has forced us in Europe to step up, to face the consequences that we have to take care more of our own defense. I'm absolutely convinced. Without Donald Trump, we would not have taken those decisions and they are crucial. Welcome, everybody. It's the Rickershey podcast episode number 7173. You can join us at Rickashay.com. Everybody can.

you can be part of the most stimulating conversation and community on the web. We'll tell you a little bit more about that later if you don't already know. I'm James Loddix in Minneapolis with the temperature has climbed to 7 degrees to minus 14. After a certain point, it's just moot. It's just cold.

That's all there is to it. Somewhere up in the northern part of the state, they are getting wind chills of 50 below, which is, you know, some folks will never lose a toe, but then again, some folks will. If you go outside improperly dressed, you're going to suffer the loss of some digits. but in warmer places, friendlier places, better climbs.

We have Charles C.W. Cook in Florida, I presume, and Stephen Hayward, who, though Globetrotter that he is, is probably ensconced in the utopia of California. Am I correct, gentlemen? Except for the utopia of California part, yes. I am in California, but it's no utopia anymore. Well, what a week. What a week, what a week. Okay, Greenland, that's overdone, settled. Now Cuba.

Let's get rid of the communist government by 2026. Wait a minute. What about Venezuela? Tommy's out of Cuba by 2026. It's baffling. But, you know, it's been a year like that. It's been one year of this administration. And on ricochet, people were banding about the various ways in which it has succeeded or failed as that falls along the usual lines, as you might think.

The people who believe that he's been a rhino disaster, that he's actually, you know, enforced a whole bunch of leftist ideas about government intervention, that he's contravened Congress. that he's behaving like a Caesar, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If you look at The Daily Beast today, the Daily Beast says that Donald Trump last night went on a late-night truth, social rant following his European humiliation. And what they mean by that, of course, is that he was humiliated in Europe.

I took a look at what was said and saw a lot of cold truths that needed to be slapped on the table, and Davis was just a place for it. So it's hard to know where to start when you look at the last year. I guess the best thing to do is look at yesterday. What did we have yesterday? But let's cast our eyes back, 365.

Gentlemen, your assessment, if you will, on the first year of the second term. Well, as I've been saying for a while, if you're on the left, you measure the Trump administration, Trump 2, in dog years, right? Because every day he does so darn many things. Talk about energy and the executive

in Hamilton's famous phrase. And so what I've been taunting my leftist friends is, cheer up, you only have 12 more years to go of the second Trump term, right? Because it's going to seem forever. Yeah, you can go down a scorecard and do a lot of stuff. I think of it in general terms that the disposition of this administration has been so much more aggressive even than Trump's first term, which was pretty aggressive itself. And there's a lot of swings and misses, of course.

And there's a, you know, he'll claim that he has cured teenage acne and everything else in every other speech, whether the fact. back it up or not, and that's just his style. But look, the Davos thing, everyone thinks that, I say everyone, people keep thinking, oh, this Greenland thing, it's not sure if there's really a deal or if it's just him wishcasting, but it's another art of the deal attempt by Trump. And there's probably something to that. I think people are missing the bigger story, which is he squashed Davos. I mean, what's Davos supposed to be about? It's supposed to be about climate change and Gaza and inequality and anything but Trump.

And so instead, by doing his temper tantrum over Greenland and threatening war and all kinds of other ridiculous stuff and tariffs, he dominated the whole darn thing. So that my favorite little cherry on top of the whole story, James, is that Al Gore was there. I don't know why. I'll talk about a has-been, but his has-been status is ratified by the fact that he had some little meeting he called to talk about climate change. and I think something like 20 people showed up.

So, you know, Trump absolutely took over the thing and killed it, which in it so much deserves killing, doesn't it? Charles? I don't know, Steve. I think we disagree on this. I think if the question is, has Trump done a lot of good things in the last year? The answer is obviously yes, renewed the tax cuts, closed the border, got rid of a lot of racist policies,

that the federal government had been executing for decades. I don't know to what extent it's attributable to Trump. I'm not saying it's not. I just don't know. But crime is apparently at its lowest rate in the United States since 1900, especially the murder rate. So there is a lot to like. There's a lot to dislike. Tariffs, I think, are illegal and counterproductive.

But I don't think the last week has been good. In fact, I think he has embarrassed himself in the country and got very little for it. I'm open to the idea that we would buy or take more control of, not via an invasion, Greenland. But he has emboldened the left in Europe. He's upset some of our closest allies with unnecessary comments. He said, for example, that the British didn't fight on the front lines in Afghanistan. when they did. 487 of them died in Afghanistan on the front lines.

Some of them were my friends as it happens. So I think the last week has been the bad side of Trump. I think it's been the liability. That isn't to say it wipes out all of the good. I think he has had a relatively successful first year, but I don't like how he behaved in Davos. Well, let's take a look at that then a little bit more. When it comes to the whole Greenland situation,

if I understand this, a ridiculous assertion was made at the beginning, backed up with the threat of extraordinary action, and then at the end of it, a deal was struck that made the position struck in the end look moderate. Have we seen this before from this fellow? I think we have. And it's just amazing to me that everybody, nobody gets it yet, That's how it always goes. We're going to have a 9,000% tariff on China.

And everybody freaks out in the market's crash, and then you end up with a 4% tariff on spatulas from the plastic spatula factory. I mean, we've seen this before. So if the end result is actually getting something, is getting more middle rights, more security, more this and that out of Greenland, okay, fine. We've had interest in Greenland for a long time. You're right, of course, about the optics,

and you're right about the tone of voice and the rest of it. But I think what a lot of people are liking is the fact that we don't have the same old consensus technocratic go-along, cowtowing at Davos that you might have gotten from, definitely from a Democrat and probably from, you know, a rhino wants to fit into the ethos of Davos, if you will. And that hard truths need to be told to them just simply to lay down a marker. nobody has said yet to them, well maybe Trump has and others have noted it on Twitter, that there are problems facing Europe that are going to lead to its inevitable and in total decline. And if that emboldens leftists, that just shows that they have a culture that is unable to save itself and pull itself out of the morass in which it is. You want to disagree.

I just don't recognize that as a description of what has happened this week. I have historically been sympathetic to Trump's approach, which is to think. throw his weight around and do things differently than others. I also am sympathetic and I've written as much to his lecturing Europe, alongside J.D. Vance, on questions such as freedom of speech, how much they contribute to their own defense, they're hurtling towards socialism and so forth. But this isn't that.

They got nothing. They got nothing of any consequence. And they have cost American individuals. interests for it. I think this is a bad deal. This is not me saying, I don't like mean tweets. It's not some form of Trump derangement syndrome. I think that the cost of Trump's behavior in the last week massively outweighs the benefits. The temper tantrum that he had a few months ago over Canada, where inexplicably he started saying that Canada had to be absorbed into the United States, meant that we now have for the next four or five years a Canadian government that is hostile to American interest rather than one that is friendly toward American interests. That was not a good deal. Very often with Trump, it is a good deal.

And I don't care about the niceties. I want the good deal. But there is no good deal here. We didn't get anything for this. We now have a whole bunch of pissed off people and countries that are historically sympathetic toward us. And the parties in countries such as Denmark and Scandinavia more generally have been emboldened, not on the right, where we can.

make better deals with him in the future, but on the left. And I don't think we got much for that. So I think this was stupid. I don't think this was normal Trump dealmaking. I think it was stupid. And I think it's an example of the downside of him rather than of his upside. Stephen? Yeah, you know, I tend to, I mean, I agree a lot of what Charlie says. And by the way, James, when you say Europe needs to have some truth told to them, here I am with Charlie. They do need to be true, some of the things he's saying. Many of them were and some of them weren't, as Charlie has mentioned rightly. Look, here's how I look at it differently.

In part because I'm right now literally this weekend watching the spot market for natural gas and electricity prices, which are going to be very volatile because of the weather system. And I think of Trump in the same way. If you think of Trump as the volatility measured in the spot market for Trump's latest eruption, this set a new high. There's no doubt about that. But I do think it tends to regress to the mean.

Now, the mean is mean tweets. Okay, I didn't mean to make that pun. But I think this will be forgotten as so many Trump things are. I mean, does anybody still talking about his really ridiculous true social about Rob Reiner from six, eight weeks ago? No, no, that's sort of forgotten now. And this is more important than that, of course. But I do think this will blow over. I think that the liberal governments in Europe that get overconfirmed from this are they may enjoy a temporary spike in popularity.

And one of the criticisms that people make, I think Charlie hinted at this, is that some of the populist parties that like Trump and that Trump likes are being set back by this last week. And I think that's true in the short run, but I think that won't be true in the long run. So I don't know. Maybe I'm optimistic about it. I just think that Trump is generally right when he's setting the Europeans. Canadians have put aside for some reasons. Charlie mentions, but I think it's good putting the Europeans on their back foot. And, you know, Trump's basic understanding is always be on offense, always be setting the agenda.

Now, the difficulty with that is to use a great analogy of Churchill about the offensives in World War I, it's like throwing a bucket of water on the floor. And to keep it going, you have to throw more and more buckets. And so there's one problem is Trump faces the problem of diminishing returns, and we are only one year into it. And where's it going to be a year from now? I do think that does call for more caution and sort of measured approach on his part, and good luck with that. Charles, when we talk about setting back the right-wing elements in Europe, are we talking about the sort of moderate center consensus? There's that word again, technocratic, there's that word again, institutional right in Europe, or are we talking about the AFP? Are we talking about the organizations that get shut out because they are outside of the guardrails of.

of a proper European thought. I mean, who exactly in the right is being, is losing influence here when the institutions around them are seemingly devoted to keep them from having any influence at all in the government? Well, I think we're talking about both. Also, we need Europe as an ally, and we need to cajole Europe into being a better ally. And I don't think we did that.

If you use Canada as the example, I am much more conservative than Pierre Pollyev, but he was a good antidote to the Canadian government that has run that country for nearly a decade. He is far preferable to Mark Carney, who's a bloodless type. He's obviously far preferable to Fidel Castro, I mean Trudeau. And the same is true in Europe. And if that message is going to be heard in Europe, where it will go down very hard, then it's going to have to be delivered in a way that doesn't put up the backs of the public and make them do what the Canadians did and say, despite all the things we're angry about, including immigration, free speech and so forth,

we're just going to pick the bloodless left. I watched this closely in England where anti-Americanism is an interesting phenomenon that ebbs and flows. Trump made it worse there this week. And if there was something that he had got from that, I think that would be worth it, but there wasn't. Now, I will say, where I do agree with Steve,

I don't want to give off the wrong impression. I don't think this is the end of the world. I've read some articles in the European newspapers this week. They're just profoundly ridiculous. They say this is the end of NATO. This is the end of the Transatlantic Alliance. This is the end of the special relationship with Britain. The stock market will never recover.

Bonds are going to skyrocket forever. The housing market in the United States as a result will stay unobtainable. The Europeans are going to exit American treasuries. The Americans are going to retaliate. by kicking the Europeans out of the cloud. That's all nonsense. This is already blown over in the most part. I'm just saying that where Trump is it is best

is where he does weird and unusual things that other politicians don't, and then get stuff for it. The border is a perfect example of this. Trump says some things on the border and immigration that make me feel uncomfortable, but look at what he's done. He shut that thing down,

and now we have net outflows of migration for the first time in a long time, and illegal immigrants have been deported on mass. That's good. That's great. Good for him. I don't care about the ugliness of it. But here he didn't get nothing. Well, there is one thing, Charles, that you ought to be celebrating. It's not connected to this last week,

except only the coincidence of the calendar. And that is that Trump is now imposing, I guess he's pulled the trigger on imposing these 500% tariffs on countries that trade in illicit Russian goods and maybe other... Right. Right. That, of course, that was a congressionally passed statute, which, again, conforms to the Charlie Cook principle that Congress ought to be involved in terrorists, which I agree with. And, I mean, it's early yet, but I've seen some news reports that the Chinese banks and India and others are saying, yeah, I guess we're going to have to go along with this. And so suddenly they're really finally turning the serious economics grooves on Russia.

Everyone thought that, you know, Trump is soft on Russia and whatever. But this is a serious measure. And maybe it helps, I don't know if the last week helps or hurts the European cooperation in that, although I note another news item out this morning is the French Navy has intercepted and boarded one of the Russian black fleet oil tankers. So it's not just us in the Caribbean. It's some of the Europeans are getting in on the action too. Yes. I saw a headline this morning that said the attempt to build a United EU front against Trump hampered by Franco-German tensions. and I thought, that just feels so 19th century to see Franco-German tensions in the news again. I just, it pleased me.

No, the tariffs and the Chinese reaction to it in exactly how much of their wonderful, unlimited relationship military-wise, puts Russia in another spot. Of course, we've been all waiting for three years for the imminent collapse of the Russian economy. It's one of those things that very, very strangely refuses to lie down and die. but it might be actually happening now, but I'm not going to say that because nothing ever happens. Or might it. We can get to Ukraine in a second here,

but I want to circle back just for one thing and says what Charlie said, and he can, of course, again, slap me with a wet mackerel, if he so prefers. When a population is insulted, as the Canadians or some Europeans were, and I understand that, I get that. And I'm a North Dakota, for heaven's sakes.

I'm a Minnesotan. I'm a practically Canadian in temperament when it comes to getting along and being nice. I don't like it. I don't like smash-mount politics. That's just not my day. But if they do feel insulted, the notion that, well, I'll show you, I'm going to vote against my own interests and the interests of my country.

Just a show where I am about this. Well, then let them live with the consequences. I'm not, I mean, fine, if you're going to have a petuline fit about a petulant fit and elect in the worst government you can, that won't do anything about your problems. That's on you. That's not on Trump. Except my interest is not in them.

It's in us. My objection here is that it hurts American interest. I don't care if silly countries want to elect silly people who do things that are against their interests. I care about the United States. And my point is that we hurt ourselves in Canada. I have no objection to the Canadians. I like the Canadians.

I think they're a good ally and a good neighbor to have, given the alternatives. But if they want to do silly things in Canada, that's their lookout. But we would have been better off with five years of Pierre Pollyev than we will be with Mark Carney on the world stage, domestically, as well. And I think the same is true in Europe. So I agree with you. Of course, it's ridiculous.

But that is what seems to happen. And I don't think it helps America, which is my concern. Agreed. It is questionable what Pierre could have done. It would have been great if he'd, you know, all of a sudden showed up like a frozen Argentinian and started doing the things that needed to be done. I probably wouldn't have started overchairs to China, for one thing, and he

wouldn't have made anti-American speeches in Europe, and he wouldn't have called for a new world order that excludes the United States. So, I do think it matters. Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes I just feel like the Canada in your, in my head is just already gone. You know, with

the Mounties and the square jaw and the hats and the frozen wilderness and the beautiful European an accented architecture built in the middle of nowhere by hearty people. Somehow I just feel as if that national temperament is as gone as the Australians. The Australians, for heaven, say, you'd like to think of, you know, you're Paul Hogan type, that's not a knife. That's a knife.

So you've played Knifey Spoonie before. I have, right. Nivey Spoonie, I have. Grilling my ars in the Barbie. I, I, you sometimes, you listen to their correspondence, ask questions of the American tennis players and say, how do you feel about representing that flag, that horrible flag of oppression, death, Naziism, fascism, and the rest of it. And you realize, yeah, Australia's gone too.

And well, anyway, so let's go to Ukraine. It's still going on. We were told that he was going to get a peace deal really quickly. I don't think he should have said that because, or whatever he said about it. But here we are. And on go to the negotiations. On goes the war. On goes the attacks on the oil facilities.

And then none of that for a while. And then a barb in building in Kiev. It's incessant. It's interminable. It's horrible. It's deadly. It's massive. It can't go on forever, but yet it seems that it will.

If the tariffs do indeed cut off the spigot, and if indeed there is a Russian contraction of the economy, and I mean, right now they just raise their vat. They just raised more taxes in the middle. Clives, you know, they're feeling this. At some point, don't they have to crack and come to the table? You'd think so. All the Russian dead enters right now are. laughing at that. Well, the dead enders, I mean, I guess there's a logic to rulers and regimes

like Putin's, which is you have to go on to the bitter end or you lose everything. I'm never, I'm never in quite sure if that was true, but it certainly seemed to be true of, you know, the Nazis in World War II and so forth. And I guess that logic is right. Because look, the deal, I think the outline of a deal is in front of us. Russia gets to keep most of the territory they've conquered. They want some more concessions, which maybe you're worth doing just to end it. Along with, apparently, you know, we're part of, tentatively at least, a security guarantee. And, you know, we gave them a security guarantee once before. Look how that worked out for them. So, you know, if I'm the Ukrainians, I'm like, well, if we have to swallow that bitter medicine,

we might be willing to. But that deal is out there. I think maybe there's something we don't know. But I think it's the stubbornness of Putin. I think he knows he can. can't win, but he's afraid of a negotiated deal might be entered in the loss column in Russian politics. I think a negotiated deal at this point, if they got to keep what they have, would be

touted as a win. The absorption of a portion of little Russia back into Mother Russia objective. And who is going to say otherwise? Everybody's going to get back to business. Everybody's going to be happy when all of a sudden they get absorbed back in the West because the war is over and the rest. Everybody's going to make money.

The oligarchs will be happy. People will stop falling out of windows, you know, or dropping their tea with a sudden stricken look on their face. And, you know, and Putin goes on. The idea that if he somehow stopped now, didn't control the whole country, kept the Dombas, and everyone around him is going to say, that's, that, the regime is weak. Now we strike and, and he's deposed. I don't think that would happen. I think he declared victory, go home and continue to roll around until he dies in bed. War turned his attention to the old Baltic states. I mean, that's what you keep hearing about as a possibility.

You know, what's the old Churchill line that Russia is the riddle wrapped in the side of mystery, inside of an enigma, right? Well, you know, my go-to person on these matters is Gary Saul Morrison at Northwestern University. He's maybe the finest professor of Russian literature in America. I know him a little bit. He's written some great articles where he says, look, Russian imperialism is part of their sort of cultural and national DNA going back centuries. It wasn't just a Soviet thing or a communist thing.

And so he thinks what's going on as a regression to the mean there, which is, you know, they do have these ambitions of empire. They've always had, I was always struck when I visited the hermitage in St. Petersburg that, what Catherine de Great and all the others, they collected all this wonderful Western European art. And I went through room after room of that giant place. And where's the Russian art? There is an inferiority complex, I think the Russians have always had. and and so if you know if they're not they were never part of the great overseas empire game of the europeans

in the 19th century and whatnot um so i don't know if all those things are right but i'm going to follow professor morrison and thinking that this is what they're like and we have to recognize that and not think they can be bought off by just by commerce alone to say they may have an inferiority complex because except for certain areas of literature and music they're absolutely mediocre anyway Yeah, I was going to say it's a funny meme that I saw, and it says literature in different countries. And in the first panel, there's a Frenchman. And underneath, it says, I will die for love. And then in the second one, there's an American.

And the American says, I will die for liberty. And then the Russian one, it just says, I will die. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Precisely. Well, Charles, do you agree with my assessment about the business?

as usual getting on to it, if they just take what they've already got and declare victory and go home? Unfortunately, I do. I resent that that is the most likely outcome, and at this stage, perhaps the best outcome, given the number of people who are dying every day. Still, somehow, it's almost three years since this started, just reminds you that whenever anyone says it'll be over by Christmas, you should slap them with a wet mackerel, because it never is. This has been a war of attrition in the way the First World War was.

But I do agree with you that that's the outcome and that there will be a lot of people on both sides who will be happy with it. But it isn't good. I think we should be able to be grownups and say that's what's going to happen without having to convince ourselves that it is good. We've also learned about the New Age of Warfare. Drones have made a difference in this war like, I can't imagine anywhere else in my lifetime. A new invention, a new rapid development. War is great for tech. You know, war is the health of the state,

but it's also pretty marvelous for R&D. And a lot of assumptions you would like to think in the Pentagon have been upended by seeing what we have seen there. And I think who did we have on? Was it McMasters we had on? We were talking about whether or not the United States is intellectually adapting to this. Because all of a sudden you think, we've got these great incredible aircraft carriers,

and these battle groups and the rest of it. And oh, we just lost one because of, because two million Chinese drones just appeared over the horizon, you know, and dropped on them, and he just couldn't take them out. Worry about that, and worry about us not getting the right lessons. But yes, so when you say,

they'll then turn their attention to the Balkans. Have they learned anything, do you think? Has the Russian leadership, or Putin, learned anything from the last three years? You know, I draw blank. I can't answer that question. I have no idea what lessons they may be thinking they're learning. I was going to ask you that too, but slightly differently phrased,

which is, do you think Putin regrets having gone in, which is a separate question from whether he can back off? I think he would regret it if it meant that he is deposed and dies in a cold room. Then I think he would. As long as he maintains his personal level of comfort and authority, I don't think that he does. really that suggests he's not a good person I don't think he is

yeah well I looked into his soul and I didn't see him as being particularly good either all right well that's that and we would like to think that the the presence of Russian activity the Baltics would concentrate the mind wonderfully and all of a sudden the United States would seem like an awful great guy to have a round two

so we hope now Ross outfit, I think over at the times, was arguing something that, again, we were talking about on ricochet, ricochet.com. Go there, sign up. Talking about how Reagan's second term has, quote, ended the conservative era.

And he's talking about a post-Trump GOP, and I was thinking about that the other day when somebody in the comments was talking about that Trump is a rhino. And that, you know, but unlike other previous rhinos like Mitt Romney and John McCain and the rest of it, I thought those turn, that term

doesn't mean anything anymore. We It pains me as an old Reagan 80s kind of guy, but that's gone. That's dead. I remember before the Trump election, I think it was an American, it was one of those interests, American interests. It was where the flight 93 piece ran that somebody was saying basically, well, we're going to have a Caesar. We're going to have a Caesar. So it might as well be our Caesar. And there's a lot of that thought here.

We're going to use the instruments of the state to accomplish the good things. because they need to be done, and they're not being done by other means, and if we don't do them, then the country and the republic is gone. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I understand the appeal, and I understand the argument, or am I wrong? I think Dothet wrote, the new nationalist era, and again, I'm a nationalist, is still defined primarily negatively in terms of the things

that probably won't return to Republican politics anytime soon. The nation-building efforts of George W. Bush? Yeah, okay, done with that. The immigration amnesty of the Reagan era? Yeah, done with that. The sweeping changes to entitle of Republican. pushed by Paul Ryan, the button up moralism of Pence. In terms of a positive agenda, Dothan rights,

there are a lot of very different ways that the Republican Party of 2028 or 2032 could be nationalist and many of the fiercest battles inside the Trump coalition, especially the great influencer war that broke out after Charlie Kirk's assassination, recommend fundamental divisions over what exactly a nationalist right should want. So I'll ask you guys, Charles,

what should a nationalist right, which sounds, terrifying to some people. What should they want? Well, this is very hard to answer because I think they should want what I want. Yes. And I'll start here. I don't think that we have a Caesar. I know others have argued otherwise. I don't think we have a Caesar. I sort of think, for the record, that Trump has done anything in his excesses that comes close to Joe Biden trying to spend half a trillion dollars without Congress. That's not.

to... Tweeting a constitutional amendment. Yeah. Now that's not to defend Trump. I've been critical when I think he's wrong, and I think he is wrong quite often. And I think in general, the balance between the executive and Congress is off and that Trump exemplifies that as much as anyone else. But I don't think we have A. Caesar.

And if we do, then we had one last time around as well. I don't agree with Dau Thurt entirely. I think a couple things. one is that Trumpism is hard to imagine absent Trump he can change opinion on the right with one tweet but then if he changes his mind back so do the people who had their minds changed

so I need to see evidence of a profound shift in thinking that is divorced from Trump before I believe that conservatism, which I think is a natural instinct in polities, is dead. The second thing I would say is that there has always been a balance on the right between the ideas that were perhaps crystallized by Ronald Reagan and the ideas that Douth thinks have taken over. Pat Buchanan challenged George H.W. Bush for the presidency. probably cost him a second term.

The conservatism of many in the 20s and the 50s, Taft, for example, Senator Taft, that is, were different on tariffs and foreign policy. There has always been this debate on the right, and I don't think that it is currently a sign that one side has lost forever, that another side is ascendant. So I think sometimes there is this binary conception of conservatism where there's Reaganism, and I'm a Reaganite, and then there is everything else.

And if everything else gets to take the floor for a while, then the Reaganism must be dead. One caveat, before I shut up, there obviously have been a couple of genuine shifts. One, as you say, an end to foreign adventurism. That incidentally was a Bush era approach, not a Reagan era. Reagan was not a foreign adventurist. And there's been a shift on immigration, which I think is salutary because the Bush era Republican Party was way out of kilter with the base. It was the biggest problem that George W. Bush had. He over and over again, and then the Republicans in Congress in 2010, 1214, echoed this, tried to push an immigration policy that Republicans

voters absolutely hate it. But I'm not convinced outside of that that we have yet seen this big shift. And I'd recommend Ramesh Pannuru's piece in The Washington Post that responds to Rostathod on this point. Yeah, so I'm, I was actually almost done with a long article for our friends at the Civitas Institute on what I'm calling the different phases of the new right. I'm so old James like you that I can remember several iterations of the new right being announced by the media and by various leaders in the world. And by my calculation, we are today living in the era of New Right 4.5. I won't go through all the different ones of why I gave them those numbers or it starts

sounding like a ricochet rebranding. That's Charles's department. But New Right 4.5 is Trump's nationalism, with all the changes that have already been mentioned, and hostility to trade and certain other U-turns of what was traditionally conservative consensus, I think, except for Charles's right to point back to the whole Taft era, which is when all the new rights started showing up after World War II. And the point five is whether the so-called young disaffected groipers, as they're called, or groperism, if it's actually a thing, is really something to be reckoned with and durable, or is it just a generational revolt like the new left against established liberalism in the 1960s? That remains to be seen. Leave that aside for now. So Ross's piece, I thought, started off strong saying, you know, Trumpism is really Trump,

and he's holding together with the force of his personality, a lot of discordant elements, and they won't be sorted out until he's gone. I think that's absolutely right. But then you can almost hear the air going out of the balloon of the piece the further along you got because then he starts saying, well, it could be this, it could be that. I kind of like something, how did he put it? He said, I'd like, you know, national solidarity and technological dynamism. in economics, you know, a multiracial, religiously informed idea of what it means to be an

American and so forth. And that's all fine, I guess. It's too general for my taste. There are two things missing right now, I think, from the people speculating about what New Right 5.0 will be. They'll sound familiar to you and me, James, but missing in Rasa speaks. One is individual liberty, you know, the old idea of, you know, freedom. and it's dropped out of the Trumpist vocabulary and the nationalist vocabulary.

And in fact, you see some people like Pat Deneen, who we had on the show here a couple of years ago, is actually hostile to the classical liberal tradition. I'm still an unreconstructed follower of Hayek and the classical liberal tradition and think we're going to need it again, perhaps soon. And then the other thing that's related to that is free markets. Pause right there. Pause right there. Because it is possible that in an era of identity politics,

the idea of focusing on the individual seems like a wasted time and wasted effort because what matters is group solidarity. That's what I hate about this era. It's what I really hate about this era. And it's a natural outgrowth of everything that came out of the 60s and 70s. But if we're going to group together people by,

if people say, well, okay, if I'm going to be as an individual seen as being deficient, morally, philosophically, spiritually, historically and all these things because of some of the attributes that I cannot change, then I can either, you know,

accept your definition, or I can get with the rest of the prison gang that's on my side and form a block to oppose you. And so that's why it's going to be difficult. I too, I mean, one of my favorite books is Clockwork Orange, because it's about the individual versus the state. That is the fundamental building block of a free society as individual liberty. So I agree, but unfortunately, we've been moved into blocks clawing for the spoils. Anyway, the second point you're talking about. Yeah, well, I'll just add a code into what you just said, which is, it's entirely understandable and I think to some extent legitimate for white males who have been on the brunt of cultural and legal discrimination for quite a while now to say we as a block

want to stand up for I mean the phrase I don't like is you know ethno nationalism now I as I say I totally understand it it's a predictable and in some ways just reaction to what has been going on but it's also a mistake for the long term and I hope that a new right 5.0 does not make that a front the center principle of what should come next. By other point was, you know, free markets, right? It goes along with individual liberty. You know, an awful lot of the NACONs, some of them anyway, they're all for, well, some of them say they like the New Deal.

And here's a shout out for National Review from this beginning. You know, New Right 1.0 was some names now forgotten like Peter Varek and Clinton Rossiter, and even Walter Littman to some extent. And what were they saying in 1950? They said conservatism should support the New Deal. and we should accept coexistence with communism. And then you go to National Reviews of founding statements. And by the way, national review, I think you can say, starts New Right 2.0.

And it was called the New Right by the media in 1955. And, you know, Buckley says in that famous mission statement that, you know, no, we're not making peace of the New Deal. And anybody who does is not a conservative. He was directly attacking Rossiter and Virek and people like that. And so, and then, of course, you know, coexistence with communism is unacceptable. philosophically, he would say. As a practical matter, of course, they have nuclear weapons, but we cannot accept ideologically that they're legitimate. Okay. That history is well known, but now the NACcons are bringing back some of the old neo-statist ideas of, you know,

Peter Varek and all those soy-desan conservatives of 1950. And, you know, I tend to resist these cycles of history theory, but it does seem sometimes like we're caught in one. Charlie? I agree. I think that despite the preference of many NACONs for throwing tomatoes at National Review, if you read National Review's statement from 1955, which is brilliant piece of writing by William F. Berkeley, Jr. and others, you find that we essentially believe the same things as we did then. and individual liberty is core, and free markets are core. And even if you don't like those two things,

I think as a practical matter, they are the cause of everything else that is good about America. That doesn't mean that there are no trade-offs. Please don't misunderstand me. It also doesn't mean there are no downsides to those things there are. But the reason that America is militarily preeminent, The reason that America outlived the Soviet Union, the reason that America is technologically advanced,

is because of individual liberty and free markets. I think there is a tendency, certainly this is true on the left, and it does exist to a smaller extent on the right, to believe that this is the natural order of things, that there is something intrinsic to America in the soil or the sky that has led to it being wealthy and powerful. And I don't think that's true.

I think that the power and the wealth are the product of assumptions that have baked in right back to the Declaration, and that if we lose those or substitute them and become sort of mediocre, fluffy European social democracy type country, we'll lose the rest of it. So I don't just think that it is a good in and of itself, although I am an individualist free marketer. I think that it undergirds everything else that we like on the right about the United States. Yes, Charles. Well, that's just you down there in your nice house living in America's wang where the rest of the country suffer. You're absolutely right. I agree with everything you said with the counter argument is why should we believe in these things? Because they have brought this country to the state in which it is.

You have an overall optimistic impression of the country. You like it. You see good in it. you see strengths. There are people who do not see good in it, who do not see strength. And the rise of anti-Americanism on the right that mirrors the anti-Americans of the left

is one of those curious things. And one of those bothersome things. And it has to do with people who say, well, look where we are. All the factories are gone. Pointless wars in other countries, sold everything to China. The white men can't get jobs.

Miserable, awful wine box, women are running HR. Why should we have any investment in this? And we've come to this because of what you've described of individual liberty instead of thinking of deep consciousness and of free markets instead of saying the government is going to control and make things right for the right people. I don't agree with any of that, but I think that's what they're thinking and that's the problem that we have to address. Well, I think all three of us have said we're all Reaganites. And, you know, someone was written so much about Reagan. I take it personally when I hear the the young and up and rising people talk about how we don't want any zombie Reaganism,

or the more general form of that is, what is conservatism, ink, as they like to say, ever done for us? What does it conserve? It really does remind me of Monty Python's, what are the Romans ever done for us? You go through rolls and schools of water, because I can tick off a lot of things. And some of this is just simple ignorance. I mean, a lot of people who trash Reagan, just to take that is a central example, truly haven't bothered to study him at all. They really literally don't don't know what they're talking about. They don't understand, as I wrote an article about this also recently for Civitas, about how the Trump administration, especially in its comprehensive attack on what we call the administrative

state, learn from the experience and some of the failures of the Reagan years. And the Reagan people, I think they learned by the end of two terms that the problem of our administrative state was much more serious and fundamental than they thought. They thought some simple reforms would make great progress. they made only limited progress. But without that experience and that perception, I think we wouldn't be seeing the fight going on today, especially in the courts and elsewhere. And for that, they owe a debt of gratitude to the Reagan years and that conservative movement, that really National Review has such a large part of the story. And so I don't know, I'll just add this, James, because some of the things you ticked off is a discussion I often bring up with students is, is the American Constitution pro-capital? capitalists. Because remember, you know, Adam Smith's wealth of nations was also published in 1776. Maybe not entirely a coincidence. I don't know. And I can point to a number of clauses. I won't do it now that differ significantly from, oh, I don't know any European Constitution. And they're implicitly pro-open markets, pro-competition. Implicit in our Constitution is an embrace of competition between states. That's part of federalism, but it also means economic competition. And we seem to be losing sight of that. And so what I hear, last point, sorry, what I hear from a lot of the younger disaffected people is, well, our founding was really defective. Why? Because it proved insufficiently robust to stop the century-long progressive assault.

Now, that's a decent criticism, but is the answer then to say the founding was defective or we need to fight our way back through what's been going wrong for 100 years? And, you know, that's a serious fight going on these days. And I think they ought to join the right side of that. Yeah. there's a lot of people who want to return with a V. It's not just

they're not content with going back to basic American foundational ideas and strengthening those what they want is this sort of efflorescence of a lost European culture that they romanticize to cathedrals and the whole

disposing with modernity in its various ugly forms and I understand that and I'm slightly sympathetic to it but the other day in one of these forums and Twitter, somebody posted one of those return videos that has, this is the vision vouchsafed to you of what we could be, if only we did these sort of ethno-nationalism things. And I slowed it down,

and I noted with interest a frame from a Jack Benny movie that had some celestial stares, which I thought was curious. And then I noticed something else that thought was weird. And these shots appeared about a duration of a quarter to half a second, in this montage, this melange of all the wonderful things that were built by the white race.

And it was a very large domed building that I recognized as having never been built in Berlin. It was Spears, big, monumental, ugly piece of garbage over-scaled nightmare, you know, whatever the house of the German people were supposed to be, various approving angles of it.

And I say, oh, okay, I got I know where you're coming from. Charles, I want to ask you this, before we begin to wrap it up here, when Steve was talking about the administrative state, the stranglehold that it may have on the, does have on the economy, we have learned now the extraordinary level of fraud that we have in this country, in this state, might I add, in this country. We've been hearing for years about fraud and abuse. I see that as one German word. I'm going to cut the budget by tackling frowning abuse. And now we have it.

And now some people are saying that 10% of the government, 10% of the, 10% of the. economy is fraud. I think that may be understanding the issue. We have a bunch of people who are today leaving work in order to go to the protests about ICE and the local Democratic Socialist Party is

telling them, hey, use that new Minnesota time off family leave law. It just never ends. It never ends. Did we see, do you think, to enough to extent, to penetrate the general American consciousness between Doge being, or between USAID being a massive money,

washing scheme that sloshed it from the government to a Soros institution to someplace else in Peru and the combination of fraud that we have. Do you think that we have enough rage to tackle an attempt to do something about the administrative state, the reparations, retribution, redistribution state? Or is the swamp just too deep and too offended? I don't know, but let me answer that by noting something that I found interesting. In Steve State, California, there are those who wish to impose this so-called billionaires tax. And I think maybe for the first time in a long time, they've pushed it too far, because Californians will put up with a lot to live in California,

and quite rightly, because California is incredible, wonderful weather, geography, food, culture, atmosphere, and so forth. one of the things that I keep hearing the billionaires or the startup mavens who aren't billionaires but are nervous that this law would destroy their businesses say that they haven't said before is you know what you guys don't need more money you need to use it properly you need to stop the waste you need to allocate it efficiency And then they'll point to other states. They'll say Texas managers, Florida managers, and they spend a hell of a lot less than you do. I haven't heard those people say this until this year. Often they're incredibly defensive, and they essentially say,

take whatever you need, I need to keep making money. Or they'll mutter about taxes hurting economic growth, which is true in the more classical sense. But for the first time, they've started saying, actually, your problem is not more money. That's not what you need. What you need is different spending choices. And I think that might signal a shift.

Whether that is going to penetrate the general electoral consciousness, I don't know. Can I just add a little footnote about that the billionaire's tax? There's a feature in it that's not widely understood or known yet. There's a feature note that says maybe you own on paper 3% of a privately held startup. Or maybe it's gone public. I think it doesn't actually matter. But if they are Class A voting shares and you control, say, 20 or 30 percent. They're saying your share of the company is actually 20 or 30 percent,

and therefore that's the amount of money we're going to ask from you in taxes. Not your 3% share of the net worth of the company on the market or privately assessed, but, you know, your voting share amount. That is a dagger intended to kill the entire venture capital industry in California and drive every startup out of the state. And I kind of wonder if that's on purpose. I actually think that, You know, people like Robert Rice, who's behind us, so hate capitalism and venture capitalists that they don't care that most of them are liberal Democrats. It's an astounding feature. I think they just believe that these people will go out to the shed and get another golden goose and cut it and open it up and the coins will tumble out. I've been looking at what the list of proposed bills in Virginia in the new legislation is just an absolute eye-opener.

And we actually should probably do a whole show about this because, I mean, again, these things won't be passed. but now that everybody's licking their lips and saying, okay, what can we do to Virginia? It is nothing but taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes, new tourism tax raises, raises the hotel tax. $7.75 tax on incomes over a million creates new tax brackets and points a 3.8 investment tax

on top of state income allows every locality to raise the sales tax by 1% raises, rounds up the state and local taxes to the nearest $0.5 cent increment. Allows localities to outlaw gas-powered leaf blowers and then taxes the electronic versions that they have, the electronic versions they have to buy. It is exactly what they do because they believe that not enough fair share is being paid

that there's just so much money out there and if they got their hands on it, then justice would somehow follow. Not enough justice. We've got to keep taking it. We've got to find out more places to take it from, but justice will finally be done. Hey, I got to tell you this, folks,

if you would like to meet like-minded people, like you're listening to this podcast and saying, my gosh, these men are just brilliant. We're not. Handsome too, James. Hands of time. We're just average RICOchet folks,

and the women are good looking as well and smart and just as mouthy. We have meetups in person. That's right. You don't find that in other sites because we actually trust each other to show up and not start getting stabby. Got a group coming up in Detroit, Michigan.

We've got another one in early February at the Florida Space Coast. Go to ricochay.com. Look for the meetup page and see what's there. It's ricochet.com slash events. And hey, if you want to meet Ricochet people where you meet and live, announce it on the page and see who shows up.

You'll make new friends. And the fun part about it is, you'll probably not spend any time talking about politics. That's what I always found. Every other direction the conversation goes. That is probably it for us today. And I should tell you, maybe to give us that five-star review on Apple podcasts, but I think I'm going to let that go this week, I should tell you that if you go to ricochet.com, it's not all free.

I mean, yeah, lots of fun stuff there is free. but the real communities form on the member site. And it's a couple of centavos, Lirae, whatever you want to say, does cost a little, but not much. And what you get is the right to comment. And that's what keeps it sane and civil and center-right and moderated and just a good place to make friends. Trust me.

Stephen, it's been great, Charles. Again, I've enjoyed every single essence jot phoneme of our conversation. I hope the other people have as well. And I trust we will convene here next week. week. Only if you stay warm, James. I'll stay warm. Even if I don't stay warm up here.

And Charles, we are now in what version of Rurkechay 4-point or do you just want to just wave your hands and say you don't know and it doesn't matter? I want to wave my hands and point people towards some of the new podcasts that we have. Oh, tell them about it. Well, I did. We had Henry Olson's new podcast, Conservative Crossroads, and there is another one in the work. So I can't announce yet, but I will on a future episode of this show.

And the diner is back and every Saturday as well and yeah it's not just the post it's not just the member feed it's all the podcast as well what a media empire we are and we'll certainly surely soon become

anyway it's been fun we'll see you in the comments at Rickishay guys bye bye Rickashay Join the conversation