The Ricochet Podcast - No More Rush Hours

Episode Date: February 20, 2021

This week, we’ve got Powerline’s Steve Hayward sitting in for Rob Long ( who’s busy being lionized) as we bid a sad so long to Conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh. Then, Ayaan Hirsi Ali stops by to discuss her new book Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights. Also, be sure to visit her new website and subscribe to her new podcast. Also, Ted Cruz defies The Wall and goes to... Source

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I don't like this being used as a distraction from the real issues. But it wouldn't be a distraction if you'd stayed here and said these same things, right? And gotten out, yeah, in the streets. I agree. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Stephen Hayward sitting in for the vacationing Rob Long. I'm James Lalix and today we talk to Ayaan Hirsi Ali about Europe and so much, much more. Let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 532. Does that seem right? 31, 33 in this pandemic swirl. I can't keep track of anything. Could be 600, could be 700, but we do know this. Rob Long is in Africa and settling in probably permanently because Rob will be eaten by a lion based on the pictures that he'd been sending us is Stephen Hayward from Powerline.

Hey, thanks for joining us. And Peter Robinson in California. Gentlemen, how are you on this fine day? I hope you're warmer than they are in the great state of Texas. I'm no warmer at all than they are in the great state of Texas because I am actually in the Rockies. I am in Wyoming. My wife said toward the end of last week, the pandemic is driving you, meaning me, crazy. I could not gainsay her. And so she, on very short notice, arranged for us to go bury ourselves in the snow. I have been working, but also snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. And just ponder that

for a moment or two, if you'd like some comic thoughts. You do look in from your Zoom picture to be in some sort of medieval keep. Yes, roughly. It would not be surprising if somebody in the floor above you emptied a chamber pot out the window that we see. Stephen, where are you? I'm out on the coast here in California. And as disgraceful as California has become, it is moments like this that we get to smile and mock the rest of the country for the misery that they're all having to go through. Yes. Well, you know, we've had subzero temperatures for two weeks or so. But here's the thing. And I want you all to know that it's very important that the White House, there are two things that happened today, one of which

is the White House apparently has backtracked on a lot of its immigration orders and says that, no, they're going to continue to deport, and the ACLU is furious. But the real story of the day to me is for the modern politics comes from this new Twitter thread, which is the official Twitter thread for the White House dog. Some adult actually wrote this. This is the dog speaking. My dad, POTUS, is very pup set many humans are introduced humans who wrote this a ferengi is enduring freezing temps in their home so he declared state of emergency i've never been so grateful to have a dad who genuinely cares about all of us pets too he personally puts logs on the fire for me there's two things in there one a dog would not say personally, P-U-R-R, as if they are a cat that goes against the rules of their species. And two, this log on the fire thing is

sort of setting up how we're supposed to see kindly Grandpa Joe, isn't it? He's just a log on the fire, help-been-out kind of guy who goes to bed with warm Ovaltine at eight o'clock at night. So there you have it. Only James would criticize that post on the ground that that's not the way dogs talk. Well, it certainly simply isn't and wouldn't be. So the first question in the White House press briefing this afternoon, shouldn't the very first question be to Jan Psaki or however she pronounces her name? Who wrote that? And were they doing that on a taxpayer salary? Well, like honestly, if there were journalism in the country, even easy questions like that should be asked. Like a dog circling on its bed before its sleep.

She'll have to circle back to you on that. Stephen, looking at this last week, do you think the Biden administration has handled the Texas situation great? Is the Texas people have the Texas people acquitted themselves with glory. Did, did Ted Cruz just indicate he's the most tone deaf. There we go. Visual optics bungler of all time. How do you take what's going on this week? Yeah, I think Chris Christie must be sending him postcards right now from that

beach location where Christie was a couple of years ago. Right. Yeah. Well, Ted Cruz's biggest mistake was he didn't take a private plane like Al Gore or Nancy Pelosi or Dianne Feinstein would. If he flew commercial, this is an obvious blunder, because any liberal would have, or John Kerry, you know, they, as John Kerry told us last week, he has to fly private because he's so important. And so Cruz made a mistake by actually being

small-D democratic about his travels. Yeah, we can talk about Texas if you want. You know, I can walk out a long time on the whole electricity scene. I don't want to bore the audience, but it's been a real Rorschach test to watch the way the left has been reacting. And I have to say, a few people on the right take the criticism of wind power a little bit too far. Not too far.

The wind power deserves to get bashed. But I think that it's fun to watch the train wreck. Could I ask one question? I'm sorry. You're right. We could do a whole show on this. But how is it that Texas, which, as I understand it, has its own grid, it's the only state that has a statewide grid. Texas is in charge of its own grid. How is it that Texas, which the liberals have now been telling us deserves exactly what it's getting because it's been run by Republicans for a couple of decades? True, it has been run by Republicans, which raises this question. How did it come to be that in Texas, of all places, up to a fifth of the energy has been provided by windmills?

Yeah. So that's the irony here that's so fun to see right now. Yeah, Texas is the leading wind power state in the country. But of course, the first article of fate for the left is we have to hate on Texas. The reason, it's two reasons it's the leading wind power state. One is it is able to take advantage of the ridiculous federal subsidies for wind power. That's main reason number one and second because it has its own grid it was actually able to build the infrastructure uh to accommodate it uh and yeah some days when the wind when things are going well in texas wind is 40 even 50 percent of their electricity capacity uh but it collapsed uh earlier this week just completely collapsed

because the windmills froze because no one ever thought it would get that cold in Texas, unlike Minnesota, where I think Minnesota probably has the same kind of windmills they have in Denmark and those other Scandinavian countries where it's routinely cold, right? But they froze up and they didn't build enough backup capacity. I'll just say this briefly. If you talk to smart environmentalists, either one of them, they'll tell you, having done some really good technical studies, that if you want to have wind power, like Minnesota has a bunch, you want to build a lot of gas, natural gas backup for when it's intermittent. Texas didn't do any of that. They've reduced their coal power by more than half in the last 10 years, thrown it all into windmills, and they've gotten away with it, but they didn't have any additional gas capacity to back it up. By the way, gas capacity is what if you want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, that's what you have to go with your windmills.

And so can I one follow up question and then we can close it out, move on to other things. Of course, it's not as if we have a shortage of matters to talk about. So the the attack from the left, the Texas deserves what it gets because it's been run for two decades by Republicans, is valid. Is it the state government that messed up here? Or is it some sort of semi-private, semi-public utility company? Or is it privately held energy companies that failed to provide adequate backup? If democratic system, we need to know whom to hold to account. It's all of the above. Oh, is it really? Oh, really?

And you have, I like to call it big wind. The wind lobby in Texas is just as powerful as it is in other states. And to the extent you've got private energy investors willing to take advantage of these subsidies. One more thing, sorry, I know we don't want to wonk out on this, but realize that you can make money in wind power even by paying people to take your power. I'm not sure how many people know that if you have a windmill, you are guaranteed by the federal government $22 a megawatt hour that you produce. Whether anybody uses it or not.

Whether they use it or not. So what happens is if you have a, suppose you have a coal plant, a nuclear plant, or a natural gas plant, and the utilities say, hey, we need X amount of power tomorrow. The gas guy says, I can sell it to you for $5 a megawatt hour. The wind guy says, I can sell it to you for minus $2.

I'll pay you $2 to take my power. And the guy still pockets $20 from federal taxpayers, from us in the subsidy for it. I don't think people realize how massively we put our finger on the scale on behalf of wind. It would seem sensible to have a diverse number of sources in your basket. In other words, wind is great. Hey, it's free, kind of, sort of. Gas is good.

Nuclear is wonderful. You can switch between all these things when you need to get the base load satisfied. But as with the pandemic response, as with everything we've seen in the last year, with every time that one of our institutions approaches a crisis, it fragments into a million shards like a piece of Turkish taffy struck by a hammer. Do you get the feeling that we're going to end, that when this is over, people are going to say, all right, let's have that conversation about nuclear. No, we can't. Because for some reason, the people who are running the Green New Deal and the rest of it seem to have in their mind an endless loop of the China syndrome movie playing over and over and over again, that tells them that we can't do nuclear because it's too dangerous. And obviously, there's danger to not having a source that's dependable as that, too. France, Stephen, we were talking about France before, and we'll be talking about France a little bit with our guest. France still has a commitment to nuclear, don't they? Germany said, no, no, no, no. We're getting rid of that.

We're getting rid of coal. We're going to go with the sun and the wind. And they've been paying the price. But France is still quite proud of its nuclear facilities aren't they yeah 80 of their electricity is from nuclear power which they developed almost entirely in one decade in the 1980s they went after it hard and did very well and they sell it to germany so go figure yeah it's almost as if those of us being told to follow our european betters constantly that always glides over france doesn't it curiously enough yeah well you know

which is culturally chauvinistic, which pays lip service to the EU transnational movement, but it's France at the end of the day has nuclear power, has their own nuclear weapons. Essentially France. We're always told to be more like the Europeans, except like the French whom they love the most because they're French. Anyway.

So there's that. There is that. What else have we for this week before we get to our guest? You said, Peter, that there's so many things that we can talk about. What else is on your plate?

Well, we need to pause for a moment. Rush Limbaugh was a great figure. In my experience, also a marvelous human being. But the professional accomplishment, you have to treat him as both a broadcaster and a conservative. They overlap, but they're not the same thing, really. And as a broadcaster, he was Babe Ruth. There was just never anyone like him before him, and there will never be anyone like him afterwards. He was just Everest rising from the plains of Kansas. That voice,

the timing, the sense of humor, the ability to talk to the audience as if, well, he knew what his audience was. These were guys who'd pulled over to get lunch at the truck stop, like the truck stop your dad ran up in Fargo, James, or these are people who'd have rush on the radio as they painted the side of a house. Or there were people like me who were in their car and you'd get home and turn off the car and keep listening because he was that good. To build an audience of what, 25 or 30 million people in the course of a week. That's how many people would listen to him week after week after week, three hours a day for 30 years. It was just a staggering accomplishment. My little insight into this came years ago when Hugh Hewitt had me guest host his show for a week.

Three hours a day wiped me out And Rush did it for 30 years. As a conservative, there's a lot of carping. Even among conservatives, the op-eds have been complicated. And of course, that's because in these final years, it's impossible to separate Rush from Donald Trump. But the way I view conservatism, let's put it this way. Bill Buckley was a very harsh critic of ideologues. Bill admired Rush, liked him, but also admired him deeply.

And said he couldn't think, this is years ago, of course, but this is a conversation that Bill and I had. Bill understood that his audience was tiny, influential, but this is a conversation that Bill and I had. Bill understood that his audience was tiny, influential, but his own audience has always been tiny. National Review at its peak had a subscription of 150,000. And there was Rush getting a million people a day, a million people in a segment to listen to him. And Bill said he couldn't think of an issue on which Rush had proven mistaken. And then in my personal encounters, which were not that many, funnily enough, rather shy. I think Rush Limbaugh only felt really at home in front of the microphone. His audience really were his friends. They really were his community,

but he was kind and funny and self-deprecating whenever I had any encounter with him. You know, Peter, there's a great story about Buckley, about the first time he was asked about Limbaugh when he first became nationally famous 30 years ago. And he was asked in a speaking engagement, what do you think of Rush Limbaugh? And Buckley said, well, it reminds me of the two Spaniards in the bar. And one says to the other, what do you think of Franco?

And the person who was asked took his friend out the front door, into a taxi, out to a lake, got into a rowboat, rode out into the middle of the lake and said, I like him. It's a great quick story. I may have bragging rights. I was listening to Rush when he first started in Sacramento on KFBK in 1985. I couldn't believe how good he was. And I couldn't believe he's quoting National Review and the American Spectator. And then I realized how truly extraordinary he was when I listened to him during the Iran-Contra hearings. And he was absolutely on fire with great insight and on the attack, but always controlled.

And when I heard the next year he was going now. At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race. That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing. Cheltenham with LiveScoreBet. This is total betting. Sign up by 2pm 14th of March. Bet within 48 hours of race.

Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie FBD doesn't stand for friendly business ducks. Or for the freelance beatbox department. FBD stands for support. We support businesses and communities across Ireland. Visit your local branch to talk to your FBD stands for support. We support businesses and communities across Ireland.

Visit your local branch to talk to your FBD insurance team and see how we can support your business. FBD Insurance. Support. It's what we do. FBD Insurance Group Limited, trading as FBD Insurance, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. I thought, oh, he's going to be huge. I was not a bit surprised he became the sensation that he was. Well, James Lilacs is Mr. Radio here to us at Ricochet.

You must have a thought or two on Rush Limbaugh as a broadcaster. Well, I was working at KSTPA in 1500 in St. Paul. And my producer one afternoon slid a cassette across the table and said, we're going to be carrying this guy. Give it a listen. It's nuclear. And I listened to it. And my head exploded.

I was a good liberal at the time. And I thought, this is the most outrageous stuff I'd ever heard. And it wasn't by modern standards at all. But at the time of talk radio in those days, in the fairness doctrine days, my God, it was just absolutely a complete paradigm reordering event. And so we started carrying him. And in those days, when Rush was picking up stations, he would do an hour with the station. He would talk to the people in town. So I had Rush on my show for an hour, taking calls and doing all the rest of it.

Well, so that was fun. I was listening, but I was still a good liberal, a good Minnesota liberal. And then I started working for a newspaper, got out of radio, and they sent me to New York to interview Rush because this phenomenon was getting larger. They were worried about it. Who is this ideologue? Who is this strange man who's changing minds and saying these things? And of course, the thing about Rush is that they would ding him because they thought his criticism of the homeless advocacy movement meant he didn't care about homelessness, which is the same way that they view the right in every single aspect. It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with the problem and have a different set of solutions. You have to agree with their solutions. You have to agree with their terminology. And the fact that this guy wasn't using their vocabulary and

their solutions was appalling. So who is he that's corrupting the minds of the nation? So they sent me out to New York. I go to the EIB building, which is Madison Square Garden at the time. And like I say, at the time, still a good liberal. I walked into that interview thinking, this has got to be a shtick. You know, really, I mean, it's good radio, but it's a shtick. And after the show, we sat down and had lunch in his office, and he talked to me for an hour. Like, one-on-one, he's trying to convince me. He's arguing with me.

He's trying not just to be the guy from on top spouting down, but he's trying to have an actual conversation about the issues. And I was, you know, at the end of it, I thought the processes of going and intellectually interrogating these ideas. He's come up with a pretty coherent way of looking at the world, which is interesting. And thereafter, I began my own journey and listened to him for years. I fell away in recent years because the show, whatever reason, I moved on. I enjoyed it more when he had callers. But he was always there in the firmament as such, and it's sad that he's passed. My dog has just come in, which reminds me, my dog is going to his dog bed, and my dog bed is comfortable, but it's not as comfortable as mine. That's right,

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when you use our promo code RICOCHET at checkout. That's Bowland Branch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D-B-R-A-N-C-H.com. Promo code RICOCHET. And our thanks to Bowland Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast Ayaan Hirsi Ali, research fellow with the Hoover Institution, founder of the AHA Foundation. She served as a member of the Dutch parliament from 2003 to 2006, and she's got a new book, Prey, Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights. It's her first visit to the Ricochet podcast. Thanks for joining us. Welcome. Well, thank you very much for having me, James. So let's talk about the subject of your book, obviously, first of all.

Why are so few people discussing the fact that there is a disconnect between the virtues and values that the European Union always professes and the values of some of the people that they seem to want to come and change their society or at least populated. There's an eruption of sexual violence and harassment in European cities, and no one in position of power seems to want to admit that the problem is linked to a particular demographic influx. It's verboten for them. Is it because they're paralyzed by their own politics that this can't be said? Is there some political advantage to stifling it? Explain for us here in the West what we're not getting from those in Europe who are watching this happen. Well, I think, number one, the issues of Islam and immigration from Muslim countries have been very sensitive and extremely controversial. And any mainstream politician in any part of Europe would like to avoid that topic altogether. That's one reason. A second reason that I hear quite often is some of these European leaders are atoning for the past, the past of colonialism, of what happened in the

Holocaust. We live in the age of identity politics and no one wants to be accused of being a bigot, xenophobic, racist or whatever. Then there's a third reason, which is maybe more calculated. There are now large pockets in some of the bigger cities in Europe where, in fact, Muslim communities have become an electoral factor. And so the leadership of these Muslim communities will say they don't want to have any sort of criticism of Islam. And any politician who does that is punished at the ballot box on a local level. So if you combine all of these issues, I think you get to a place where most politicians avoid the topic. I think a reason that almost no one talks about is also there is a level of incompetence. These problems are big.

They're happening in parts of the world that they have really no control over or want no control over. And they see the problems, but they don't know what to do. And so they camouflage their incompetence by moralizing, talking about how compassionate they are. We should be welcome to immigrants. We should welcome people who are fleeing civil war and economic strife. That's the sort of thing you hear. And anyone who's against that is demonized as xenophobic and heartless and so on. When you mentioned the sort of the shame of colonialism, it seems to make history stop at a particular point. I mean, the colonial expansion of Europe is the historical record. Prior to that, however, we had the Islamic invasion of Andalusia.

We had Constantinople falling. I mean, and it's not to say that there's one demon in one. That's history. That's the back and forth of it. But they start with colonialism as a unique sin of Western civilization because they're coming from a leftist perspective. They're coming from a leftist perspective. They're coming from a leftist perspective. And I think the Islamists, so the organized political Islamist groups in and outside of Europe exploit this. So the way the story is told is that we are going to talk only about certain empires and not others. So European empires of the past and all their sins. But

obviously, we're not going to talk about Islamic empires and their sins. That's one way of doing it. But then the other way of doing it is also we're going to talk about European colonialism as only something that was bad. If I say, and I want to say I'm a beneficiary of at least the British Empire. But if I say there were some good things that the Brits did when they went to India and when they went to different parts of Africa and they left a legacy of which people like myself have benefited, oh my goodness, can you imagine the indignation? So it's not just that history is now abused as an excuse to do nothing or to do the wrong thing, but history is also told selectively. So, yeah.

I could go on for hours, but of course we've got Peter and we have Stephen. Gentlemen. Steve, I just want to repeat the name of the book because it's just out. The book is Prey. Ayaan and I taped an episode of Uncommon Knowledge yesterday, which runs an hour, which even at that was far too brief as far as I'm concerned. But look for Uncommon Knowledge with Ayaan in the next week or so. And again, the book is Prey. Steve is going to ask all kinds of very learned questions, but here's something we didn't mention yesterday, but you mentioned just now, which is the European openness to large numbers of immigrants out of a sense of, I think the word is simply guilt. So, an American who

wouldn't participate in this European consciousness, would say colonialism ended substantially in the 30s and formally by the 1940s. India gets its independence in 1948. There are African nations, let's say the 50s at the latest. That's a long time ago. The Second World War was horrifying, but we're three generations of Germans on from the Second World War. How is it that Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, throws open the borders in 20, you'll correct me on this, 2017 perhaps it was, for Syrian refugees and eliminates any notion of any cap on the number of refugees. It seems almost an indulgence in war guilt, a kind of self-indulgence, almost a self-destructive impulse all these years after the war. How can that remain an animating factor in European politics, colonialism, and war guilt

two, three generations on? So that particular incident, I spoke to some of the German leadership, German politicians, when I was in the process of writing this book. And unanimously, they said that was a thoughtless act, that it was an impulse. It was just that the cameras were on her at the moment when the child cried. And at first, Angela Merkel tried to explain the logic of not throwing the gates open and having everyone come in. But when the little girl sobbed and this is a moment caught on camera yeah then she really said what she did and without thinking about the consequences of that that's what some of the german people that i've spoken to told me that there was no logic to it there was no plan and in fact when she went back to her office and was gathering with her party, her fellow politicians within her own party

were upset with her, and she had to explain how is this going to work out. And as you see, it didn't work out. Yeah, it's great to see you again. It's been several years since we've had a chance to talk. When I saw the title of your new book and the subject, I was brought back to conversations that I know both of us have had with our great mutual friend, Christina Hoff Summers, who's been saying for 25 years or longer, why are feminists silent about the misogyny you find in Arab countries and in so many precincts of Islam? I've given up hope that feminists will ever actually live up to their convictions in a more universal way. And I think you're absolutely right that this is that phrase that that great French writer Pascal Bruckner uses, the tyranny of guilt over European liberals, as they're called these days, and Americans. On the other hand, I am picking up some signs that maybe things are starting to change in Europe faster than they

are in America. So I think you probably know more about this than I do. I just followed from afar that there are now controversies about immigration in places like Denmark and Sweden, these tolerant countries, and even in Germany to some extent. And then about 10 days ago, astonishing story in the New York Times. I don't know if you saw it, but the headline was, Will American Ideas Tear France Apart? Some of its leaders think so. First of all, the fact that it appeared in the Times was amazing, but then the story itself had President Macron and a lot of leading French government officials and intellectuals saying, all this critical race theory out of America and political correctness and post-colonial nonsense is a threat to France. So my first thought was,

well, I guess we can start calling them French fries again. And who would have thought that President Macron would be more sensible on these subjects than the President of the United States? Anyway, so I guess the question I'm trying to, the question mark I'm trying to put on the end of this little monologue is, are you picking up some of of this too is there a change afoot is there what's what's how do you size up the scene i think the changes that i'm picking up uh in for a long time all the topics that we just talked about were silenced as you know anyone who raised them was called xenophobic racist racist, bigoted in some way. So this proper discussion was inhibited. And the main argument that was used, if you were to raise these issues in public, was the far right would gain credence and popularity. And what you see in France is that's exactly what happened.

Next year, there are elections in France, and Marie Le Pen's Front National may actually win that election. There is a likelihood that she could win that election. And five years or four years ago, there was the same fear, almost terror among the French mainstream people that they could have Marie Le Pen as their next president. And I think there's nothing that focuses the mind more than an event like that in a country like France that is supposedly very proud of being anti-racist and not bigoted in the least. So I think circumstances, events have forced President Macron to talk more openly now about some of these things.

First of all, what he calls Islamist separatist ghettos. We had the beheading of Samuel Paty, the school teacher, when he was trying to teach about free speech. And so that became a national event. And what Macron did was he tied the incident to its roots, which is we have a cohort of people who live in France. Maybe many of them were born and raised in France, but they don't live according to French norms or according to French laws. And in fact, they're hostile to all of that. He described that as separatist and he said he was going to put an end to that. And then now he's also confronted with what we call here cancel culture or wokeism. to laugh a little bit because the ideology actually was born in france and in french

universities and was led by french intellectuals such as leota and derrida and for cold but that was a very small fringe group made its way to our american universities evolved into what has now become a very big um a very big deal an ideology with many followers. And I think Macron and the Minister of Education in France are absolutely right when they state that this particular ideology is actually divisive. It's not only French society, in any society where that ideology is applied, people are going to be divided into tribes that are hostile to one another and can only think in terms of zero sum, which is you have power, I don't. The only way I can empower myself is to take something away from you. justice theory critical race theory critical theory in general what we call woke in the end what it says is the only way to get rid of oppression and injustice is to tear down all

of the institutions and start from scratch and so he sees it mccrae sees this and it's a good thing that he's fighting it uh and i i can only for whatever i don't care what reason is behind i don't care what his motivation is but the fact that as a world leader, he's taking it on is something to celebrate. By the way, if I can just interrupt, if you're a student of French history, you know that French currency and its value and this guy named Necker, it's a fascinating story what happened to them run up to the revolution. It makes you think a lot about the soundness of your money. You might be thinking about that now, too, because for the first time since Obama's first term, we are facing a Democrat-controlled House, Senate, and presidency. Now, I'm no Nostradamus here, but that sounds to me like a lot of taxing and spending with no checks and balances. So that means more debt, more inflation, and the further devaluation of the dollar. Look back at any time of instability,

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So why wait? Time's running out, but you can protect your savings now. Our thanks to Birch Gold for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now on with the show. It's amusing to hear the French complain about these new American values being imported to them. It's like, they gave us the seeds

and we're just returning them a billion bushels of what the crop yield was but this desire to tear everything down start from zero i mean previously that was political social cultural religious now it's attacking ideas of gender and i don't even believe that the french revolution maybe if they'd had the time i ever got around to destroying uh reconfiguring gender relationships and it would seem to me that this element of wokeism imported over there, the idea that we have perhaps 67, 72, 148 genders, that it's a fluid construct, etc., is really starkly in contrast with the values of the immigrants.

So, again, we come back to that question. Is France going to then say, are the woke people, are the Bien-Person French society criticizing the cohorts and the Baniers for not having these enlightened values, or do they just give them a pass and say, because there's so much condescension in saying we can't expect these people living in these horrible suburbs to be as enlightened about gender as we are do they just think that they'll have to come around eventually someday or is it just their contempt for them basically that says we don't even care about changing them i think the french left had and we still have a great deal of condescension and contempt for the inhabitants

of the banlieues but as long as those people kept to themselves within the perimeters of those suburbs and didn't affect the rest of France, then everybody could just look away and avoid the subjects. And what's happened in the last few years with the terrorist attacks and now with the gender issue is the problem is not staying where it's supposed to stay. You see, actually, you even see this in Germany, you see it in Sweden, you see it in other countries that have a substantial number of immigrants from particularly Muslim countries, not exclusively, but particularly Muslim countries.

And again, I don't want to say that all Muslims engage in acts that are violent or criminal or bad in any way. But there is a large group of young men who are Muslim who do this. But the problem is not staying where it's supposed to stay. It's not staying within their homes or their neighborhoods or their ghettos. It's now coming out and affecting everyone else. And so I think the left has made itself irrelevant. Someone like Macron, I hope, has no patience to listen to these excuses about colonialism and decolonization and so on. I think he now needs to act.

And it's almost like this is the last act. If he doesn't get this right now, then France is going to go and do what the French used to do in the past and the Germans. These people were always at war with one another before the Second World War. They've now known a few decades of peace. And I think there's a sense, there's a

dread in many European countries that they're going to sink back to what they used to do before the Second World War. Ayaan, something you've said, you mentioned this a couple of times yesterday, and you mentioned it again today. And it's just now that the question is exploding in the back of my mind. There's been a fear of discussing these issues in Europe because of the thought that it might embolden or empower the far right. Now, those of us on this podcast right now are very used to being attacked as far right, Q and all the nonsense. So what I'm wondering is, in your judgment, your judgment, are the attacks... Let's take, for example, here's the way I'll queue up the question. Poland and Hungary are both derided routinely as having far-right nationalistic governments. And yet yesterday, when we went through some of the prescriptions,

suggestions at least, that you identify in your book, Prey, on what Western Europe needs to do, some of that, much of it actually, is already being done in Poland and Hungary. Control of the borders, enforcement of the law impartially, and insistence on assimilation to the national language and knowledge of national history, the shared consciousness or community of those countries. That strikes me as not bad. So in your judgment, to what extent is the far right being unfairly derided? To what extent is it not really far right, but sensible and conservative as we would understand it in the American context? Yeah. So Peter, that's a fantastic question. It's actually the question

of the day. And I say this because there are a lot of people who want to have a sensible, good faith discussion about how do we tackle these issues of immigration, of the clashing values, of assimilating the process of assimilating these populations into host societies in Europe. And unfairly, those people who want to have that good faith, you know, solution-based approach are derided, unfairly derided as far-right, as nasties, as bigoted, as xenophobic, little England. You know, there are all sorts of derogatory labels that have been thrown at them, and the problems get bigger and bigger and bigger. And so at some point, it becomes impossible to carry on like this. But the far right in Europe

still exists, and words matter. Words matter in the sense that if you find outfits that are organized around anti-Semitism, they carry swastikas, they have neo-Nazi slogans, and that's there in Europe. Once you display actual far-right white supremacy, language, symbolics, and you organize yourself around this type of thing, then that's what we used to call far-right. Same here in the United States. Once upon a time, the word race and racism actually had meaning. Now it's completely, it's thrown at everyone. So it's so blunted that, I mean, if it hits me in the face i wouldn't recognize it and that's that's where we are i think with europe but the europeans can't escape and most europeans are well educated

enough to know exactly who's far right and who's not right uh if you take a party like uh marie le pen's uh the national front the national front when her father was leader of the party, the party was anti-Semitic. And it was exactly... Full stop, unambiguous. All of these descriptions, yeah. When she took leadership, the leadership of the party, she said, we're going to say goodbye to that far right past of ours. We are now center right. And we are going to talk about issues of national identity.

And we're going to talk about issues of boundaries and values and so on. But because of the brand Front National, I think she will have to struggle for a long time with the French and beyond to make the case that they are no longer far rights. So it's a little bit complex, but yeah, you're absolutely right. There are people who are unfairly, and parties and groups who are unfairly dismissed and derided and insulted as far-right, and the idea is to shut them up. Last question, because we know you have to go and we appreciate the time you've given us. It's a parochial question. My congressperson is Ilhan Omar, with whom you've tangled a little bit from time to time. And when I look at the waves of immigrants that came to Minnesota after World War II, a lot of them came from Eastern Europe and were fiercely patriotic. They loved

this country for the opportunity that it was given them. They hated the socialism and the statism that they'd fled. Representative Omar is always talking about how awful and dreadful and disappointing and nasty this country is. As a matter of fact, for somebody who's attained the power and the money that she has, she now wants a revolution to tear it down, to take it apart. Is there something cultural about Somali political structure that we here in America and perhaps in Minnesota don't get? That there's a, I don't want to say a mindset, but there's a cultural elements that we don't know about. In other words, how would you describe if somebody grew up in Somali politics, how would you describe, if somebody grew up in Somali politics,

how would you describe what is the dominating factor? Clans and power? Or is there an intellectual ideological component to it that she's just expressing? So obviously, the Somali political structure and the structure of power and influence in Somalia is radically different. It couldn't be more different from the history of power and influence in Somalia is radically different. It couldn't be more different from the history of America. Yes, we are divided into clans and families and sub-clans, and it's totally zero-sum. There's not a particular ideology to speak of.

It's really clannism that rules. But I think, and here's an analysis, I have not met Ilhan Omar myself, but I don't think that her anti-Americanism comes from Somalia. I think it's born here in the United States, and she's just been a student of the left, the far left, you know, the kind of anti-Americanism that the woke people are disseminating is not from Somalia, it's not from Arabia, it's from our own universities here, it's from the gender studies and race studies and that sort of thing. And I think she's, unfortunately, as a young, impressionable person, she was exposed to much of that and she absorbed it.

And I find that, honestly, I find it unfortunate. That's not to say that we have, you know, a clash of values when it comes to American values and Somali values. That's there. But I know of a lot of Somalis who are infinitely grateful to America and Americans. My experience too. That is, I would just say that is, that's really the problem. Well, we thank you so much, Stephen. I believe you had a segue to get us out of this, but perhaps no, you don't. Peter, we do know that you have a long conversation on uncommon knowledge with

Mazzoli that people should pay attention to. And if they missed that, there's no reason that they should. Buy the book, Pray, Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Right. Thank you for joining us today. It's been a pleasure. We could talk forever and hope the next time we speak, there's great news about Europe and the world and everything else and probably not. And James, I have one more thing to share, please. Yes, sure. I've launched a website.

Yes, and a podcast. And I'd like to invite your listeners and viewers to subscribe to the website or go to the website and subscribe to the podcast. Great. We'll have the links on the page at Ricochet. So everybody knows where to subscribe to the website or go to the website and subscribe to the podcast great we'll have the links on the page at ricochet so everybody knows where to go to can't wait a website and a podcast the media empire is taking hold here we can just see it books podcast you look movies are next that's the only thing thank you so much thanks so much for joining us today thanks steven bye-bye uh you know we were talking before about France not freezing in the cold,

right, Peter? Right, Stephen, because they got all this nuclear energy? Okay, that's great. And you said that Minnesota has nuclear and gas as well. That's true, but it's been like 13, 18 below here. And the other day I walked outside and I realized that not only is the air trying to kill me, the ground is trying to kill me because it's full of ice. So I could slide, slip, fall off, lose a shoe. My toes are gone. I live in a place which like Florida for the opposite reason, because it's hot or Australia, because it's full of critters is trying to kill me. And it makes you realize that life is fragile. You don't have to do anything in Minnesota to die. You just have to go outside without enough layers. So here's the thing. I layer up, but protecting yourself

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Ladderlife.com slash ricochet. And our thanks to to ladder for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast well um so steven peter you had a long conversation with her on these matters and issues do you really get the sense either of you that there is sort of an awakening in europe when she was talking about how people fearing that germany and france are reverting to old ways i didn't know if that meant that they were becoming more nativist um as they are wont to do from time to time or whether or not this bespeaks a looming clash between the two because of all the repeats that i really don't want in the 21st century it's france and germany at each other's throat again

what does a reprise like that look like what what exactly do you think that uh are we looking at an increase in continental tensions for heaven's sake? Oh, well, here's, I'll say a couple of things, then turn it over to our historian friend, Steve, who will know more. Africa, according to some projections I've seen over the course of this century, the population of Africa, population projections are always to be taken with a grain of salt. But still, the population of Africa on current trends is projected to grow by as much as a billion people. The population of Europe,

of what we think of as Europe, native-born Europe, absent large influxes of immigration, is projected to shrink and shrink and shrink. So you have a rich society that's hollowing out and a poor society that is booming in terms of population. There are tensions, there are problems there, even apart from the pronounced difference in values between Africa and the Middle East and Europe. Problem one. Problem two, as best I can see, the European Union is coming unstuck. It was supposed to provide economic, it was supposed to provide prosperity for everybody.

It provided prosperity for the Germans. It has impoverished the Italians, whose economy has not grown in two decades. It has subjected the Spaniards to boom and bust, overbuilding in real estate and then busting. It just, France has had real estate and then busting. France has had very modest growth and high unemployment. It hasn't delivered the goods. Now we discover that it has failed to protect the values of the society by opening it in a willy-nilly, thoughtless, uncontrolled way to large numbers of immigrants. The argument was they were fleeing desperate situations. No doubt they were,

but a huge majority of these were young men. People were not bringing families. It was young men who were getting out who could. So it just feels to me as though the whole project of the European Union is coming unstuck. And that means that there's a lot of political fluidity, and a lot of people are waking up enough, quickly enough. Can they organize? Can they get out from under European history or the label of racist? I don't know. But something tells me Steve Hayward does. Well, I don't know if I do or not. I did, by the way, just yesterday see a population projection, I think by the UN Population Agency, that thinks that the population of Nigeria in five or six decades will be larger than the population of China, just Nigeria.

And so extrapolate that across the continent. And the wave of immigration you saw or asylum seekers you saw in 2015 that was the year it happened um that you were trying to think about that that'll be just a warm-up from what you might see in 30 40 50 years because uh well we'll see there are a couple of bright spots in africa like botswana that's subject for another time i you know i i always think that the biggest problem we have everywhere for so many problems is simply historical ignorance and forgetfulness. I was reminded not long ago of the TV newscaster in the Midwest recently reading the chyron on the teleprompter referred to World War XI. Oh, wow. Right? And my sense of Europe is, well, there's the old line,

what was NATO formed for nato was formed to uh keep the russians out keep the americans in and keep the germans down and now at the end of the cold war the european union kind of replaced that function to keep the germans down and other things keep the americans out now in certain ways i suppose uh but you know my recollection visiting germany you know 40 years ago as a student was that next generation of Germans in particular really were ridden with the war guilt and the guilt of the Holocaust. And now they're forgetting the next generation. They're forgetting all that. I don't know if you're going to have a reversion to, you know, the German barbarism of Wagner and Nietzsche and all the rest of that.

I have no idea. But I do think that we've taken for granted these last 50, 60 years of peace, and I think we should. Yeah, well, World War II, as some of us call it, still does loom in the minds of our generation. But the next one, I mean, of course, we can't expect them to have the same sort of references because their parents didn't fight. It's handed down to them. It's black and white. What do they know? But it's tremendously relevant mean it it it it remains so um i was just there's a twitter debate uh somebody had mentioned the bombing of hamburg and they were they were you know just the worst thing that was ever done the allies were war criminals just like hiroshima

now in order to have that perspective of course you have to believe that the war of preparing citizens for the times and the trials to come. And we all know that that's the case. It goes back to what I said before about Texas and nuclear power. We're not going to have a debate at the end of this about whether or not we should have more nuclear power because that's off the table. Just as with the educational debacles that we've seen for the last year with in-home schooling and the way that the urban children are being left behind while the suburban children sit at home with their computers and do fine, we're not going to have a debate about attaching money to students rather than the public school system. The same old systems, sclerotic as they are, will continue to reassert themselves. And you can't really say that with Uncle Joe or Grandpa

Joe, I forget which, sitting in the Oval Office putting more logs on the fire that there's a certain intellectual dynamism there that's going to help us shake up these old paradigms. It doesn't happen. But the thing is, personally, you never know what life is going to throw at you. And yes, I am doing a spot because we have to get to men, and you're not going to believe what we got coming up there. You're going to love to hear this, though. But I have to tell you that one of the things we've seen this year, of course, is the unpredictability of life. Now, you may respond better than government systems. You may look at the things that happened to you and say, I have to change. I got to fix something. Let's say, for example, that you've been using credit cards to pay for unexpected expenses. Fantastic. Great.

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Well, there are important things to talk about. We could talk about other planets in the search for life. But I think what a lot of people are really thinking is what's the deal with McConnell and Trump? Deathless subject. Gentlemen, do you have any opinions on the matter? Well, I'll set it up for Steve. Mitch McConnell voted to acquit Donald Trump to find him not guilty in the impeachment trial in the Senate, and then within an hour and a half gave a speech on the floor of the Senate just excoriating Trump.

The following day, he published in a column in the Wall Street Journal in which he drew the distinction between what he viewed as the Senate's constitutional jurisdiction, which did not extend to trying a former president or a former official of any kind, and therefore to uphold the Constitution, he voted against, he voted to acquit Donald Trump on the one hand. On the other hand, he said there was no doubt, I believe that was the phrase he used, no doubt that Donald Trump was morally responsible, again, the phrase he used, for the attack on the Capitol on January 6th. Pause for two or three days, and then Donald Trump issues a statement in which he, I mean, it's just filled with name-calling. Mitch McConnell is a dour, sullen, unsmiling politician. If Republican senators remain yoked to him, now I'm paraphrasing, they'll lose the Senate even worse than they already have, and on and on and on.

And Steve Hayward will now tell us which side we should be on. Well, I'm not going to tell people which sides they should be on. I have a simple theory, though, about why McConnell did that. He didn't have to give that no he did not or write that op-ed and he doesn't usually say things he doesn't not that he doesn't have to do it but i have a simple theory on this uh which is this is mcconnell's last term i think he turns 79 years old tomorrow uh and he was just re-elected to uh what sixth term or something like that i think of course he's fed up with trump he blames trump for losing the two georgia seats all right i think a lot of i think so yes i think that was such a fiasco i think the republicans would have won that if uh they hadn't okay uh so uh i think what trump

was the uh sorry mcconnell was deliberately making himself a lightning rod uh in other words give air cover to all the other senators who would otherwise have to declaim on the subject. In other words, McConnell will pick the fight with Trump, Trump will react to McConnell, and then we'll put all this behind us. Because, you know, we've seen these tantrums from Trump for five years now. He attacks McConnell, he attacks Republicans, and then things calm down and we kind of forget about it. And I think this was, I don't know, cauterizing a wound. I think that's what McConnell was trying to do. And he'll attract the fire. And then hopefully we can move on. I think

that's part of what his motivation was. So Mitch McConnell, in his final term in the Senate, was engaging in one last act of shrewdness and calculation and patriotism. He was saying the party needs to move on from Donald Trump. He's not going to let that happen. So message to Trump, you want to fight? Pick on somebody your own size, and that's me. That's your argument? Yeah.

Fascinating. Yeah, I think so. Strikes me as plausible at a minimum. James, what was it? There's something that happened in that realm that so fascinates you, but that I find just so boring. What was it? Outer space? The solar system?

What happened there? Fill us in. Yes, the 99.99 infinite number of nines percentage of the universe that is not occupied by humans that we have yet to know a lot about. We know so much, but we're just getting started. And we put another robot on Mars. Amazing, astonishing, technical achievement. I mean, do you guys know how they set this thing down? It's not that they... No. There wasn't a cargo plane that came in low and they just shoved the thing out the door.

They had to get it in the atmosphere. They had to deploy the parachute. And then this crane, this big thing lowers on wires, the car and drops it off. And then the crane part flies over there so it doesn't hit it on the way. And that's the landing part. Before that, you have to get it from here to Mars, to a specific location on Mars. It is an astonishing technical accomplishment. It's like, yay, humanity is amazing. And it just makes you feel proud to be of the species that still explores and proud to be the part of the American country that does it. So the mission is to look for life, and this is a big deal. So we're going to have another robot up there driving around for a while and communicating back. And the

interesting thing is, is it has a Twitter account as well, and it's more intelligent than the Twitter account of the White House dog, or for that matter, of the White House itself. So I know that Peter doesn't care whether or not we find life up there. If we find trilobite fragments in a rock somewhere, it's a big deal. Is it not, Peter? It means that we are not alone. That actually the conditions, if you have a billion years worth of water, you're going to get life, means that the galaxy could be teeming with this stuff and we're not alone. As Carl Sagan said, either we are alone or we aren't, and either is an absolutely sort

of terrifying idea. But we know we are on this. You couldn't care less. Well, Peter, you should cheer up. This is giving us an opportunity for lots more memes. I mean, if this had happened 20 years ago, we would have had jokes and memes about discovering Jimmy Hoffa at long last. Right now, I'm already seeing memes of Bernie on his chair with his mittens being found by the rover driving around, right? But, you know, a semi-serious point, barely semi-serious. I'm not sure i did an environmental impact statement for this you're gonna let this vehicle drive

around mars and spew stuff around and i say semi-serious there are environmentalists who say if we ever do find a planet that's habitable we couldn't possibly go there because we'd ruin the ecosystem it would be wrong and immoral and anyway that's what we have to contend with. No, there are already people saying that it's just simply white patriarchal colonialism to say that we should go to Mars, even if it has microbes on it, that we can't go there. Now, when you say it, of course, you're joking about the environmental impact statement, but they designed, I believe, some of the landing jets for some of the craft that we put there to be shower heads instead of hoses because the dispersal doesn't cook whatever might be down there. If there is bacteria and you cook it, then you've just screwed the pooch and your mission is

good. So yeah, I mean, they've thought this stuff out. They're built in clean rooms so we don't import Ebola over there and kill everything else. But still- Was this a NASA mission? Yes. It was NASA, right? Yep. Yep. Okay. I mean, everybody's going

go on it doesn't actually capture my imagination but i grant i clearly you have a fine mind and a wonderful imagination and you love it i don't begrudge you that at all what i don't like is actually i'm not even sure i just during the cold war it seemed to me to make perfect sense to spend money on this stuff as a nation because it was very important to show that we were technically up to the task and at least equal with the Soviets. We just had to do that as a matter of national morale. And now, James, you will be delighted to hear that I might just be swinging right back into line, because it's really important for us. China's always been much more populous. Soon enough, it's going to become not as rich per person, but as rich as a nation as we are.

All we have is our beliefs, our principles, and our ability to innovate. That's all we have in the long struggle that I believe is shaping up with China. And you know what? I don't really care whether there are microbes on Mars. I'm sorry. I'm just built that way. If my interplanetary neighbors are bacteria, I'll leave them to you. But I do care a great deal that Americans understand that our nation is dynamic enough and technically innovative enough to stay out ahead. And so I'm swinging back into line, James. I'm so happy that you say so, because then it means that you'll be behind the efforts to make sure that the first flag on the red planet isn't a red flag. And doesn't that sound like just old 1950s, 1960s anti-communist paranoia?

We're not going to have a red flag on the red planet, but damn it. It does matter. You know, and I would love for it to be a joint Israeli-American-Indian voyage. That would be fantastic. The democracies all heading up there as one. Chances are it's going to be our version of Tony Stark stark you know elon musk's crazy scientist billionaire guy sending people up there to live in a in an igloo for 10 years and live on potatoes but wouldn't you settle for that wouldn't you be happy if it were private enterprise absolutely but but any but a private enterprise would be stupid not to ally itself with other countries that have their own dynamic space programs going on. Because yes, it does matter. It shows the rest of the world, strong horse, weak horse,

who's got the... There is no real point to going to Mars, practically, unless you're doing it for purposes of exploration and enrichment of human advances and frontiers and the rest of it. But that in itself says something about your society. If you're just going to stay home with VR helmets clapped on your head and participate in Fortnite and other imaginary worlds, then you're a declining civilization. If you take the VR helmet off, point up in the sky and say, we're going there. We're going to make money doing it. We're going to go to that asteroid.

We're going to pull a bunch of minerals off it. We're going to put a ship up there. We are going out. We are expanding because we're not done. We're just getting started. That's a dynamic civilization. And that's, I would like to think, is what we still are. Well, with that peroration, I think I'm going to wrap it up because I got to deal with a tile repairman who's coming to the house.

Peter on vacation has no such problems. He just has to stay warm. Stephen in California. From bacteria and Mars to gunk in your tile. That's life. From the celestial to the most quotidian you can imagine. That's exactly how it is. Stephen, what do you got coming up this week in the hopper?

What are you going to be writing for Powerline that we should be watching? Oh, I never have any idea. I'm like Buckley. I get up in the morning and find three things that annoy me and try and write about them. Yes. And you're never disappointed, I gather. No. You never disappoint your audience.

I can tell you that. For me, it's three things at the end of the day. And then I do that. And then I wake in the morning and look at what I intemperately said the night before and said, yeah, I'm going to stick with that. I'll go with that. All right, Peter, enjoy your sabbatical. Stephen, thank you for joining us. And if Rob gets eaten by a lion, of course, come on back.

You're welcome as well. Oh, by the way, folks, the podcast was brought to you by Bowling Branch, by Ladder, by Upstart, and by Birch Gold. Support them for supporting us. And you can always listen to the Best of Ricochet radio show,

which is hosted by some short guy from North Dakota. And it's on this weekend on the Radio America Network, so check your local listings. And please, of course, if you haven't gotten to the Apple podcast page

and given us five stars, give us those five stars right now, this very moment, and that will help the podcast surface and gain more listeners and Ricochet will gain more members. And that guarantees we'll be here to lament whatever happens in 2022 and 24, 26, and all the rest of the years in between. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thank you, Stephen, for just sitting in for Rob, Peter.

Farewell, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Thanks, Steve. Next week, James. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I went back to Ohio But my city was gone

There was no train station. There was no downtown. So town had disappeared. All my favorite places. My city had been pulled down Reduced to parking spaces Oh, where to go, Ohio Ricochet. Join the conversation. I went back to Ohio

But my family was gone I stood on the back porch There was nobody home I was stunned and amazed My childhood memories Sort of swirled past Like the wind through the trees Oh, where to go, Ohio I got a postcard from Rob in Tanganyika telling me I was foolish. Oh, really? I was glad you noticed. Tanganyika. Tanganyika uses a politically incorrect...

Oh, you go to jail. Just go to jail. Don't even wait to be arrested. Just turn yourself in. We gotta go. We're out of here. See ya. Be good.

And yet another exciting chapter of broadcast excellence in the can.