The Ricochet Podcast - Not Easy Bein' Green

Episode Date: February 8, 2019

This week, we forgo the guests and turn the floor over to you, our faithful Ricochet members that we are eternally grateful for (reading this and you’re NOT a member? Please join!). We get questions on books, the host’s careers, Ricochet’s business model, and more. Also, the Green New Deal and what the heck is going in Richmond. Music from this week’s podcast: It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green by Frank... Source

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is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylex. Today we talk to, well, Rob Long and Peter Robinson. And me, James Lylex. So let's have ourselves a podcast. It's the Ricochet Podcast

number 434. I'm James Lilex here with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. Hey guys, how are you today? Very well. Excellent.

I'm doing very well, James, thank you. I'm cold. It's only six below here, but you know, it's a bit nippy. It keeps one motivated to not die in the air.

Right. So where are you, fellows, at this moment? Yes, where are you, Rob? I'm where I always am, Northern California, just on the edge of the Stanford campus. I'm in New York City. You're about – Oh. I have a question about New York City, Rob.

Here's this. Let me set this up a little bit, and this is relevant and germane to modern events. See if you can tell where I'm going with this. Everyone who flies into Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport has to pay a little fee that's tacked onto their ticket, and this money is used to insulate all of the houses from the noise of the plane underneath. Now, never mind that when we bought the houses, we knew there were planes. We knew there was noise, but they want to make it quiet. So the first phase of this put thousands and thousands of new windows into houses under the flight path so that it could be quieter. It cost a huge amount of money.

The second phase of this is giving us more windows. So I had some guys come into my house and measure every single window, ask which kind I wanted, giving out the laser pointers and all the rest of this incredibly complex thing that's taking years to replace the windows in just a few homes in Minneapolis. Let's imagine replacing the physical plants, the heating plants of every building in New York. I see. That was a segue. Wow. How long do you think that that would take? Well, it'll take never because it never will happen. It'll take infinity. You are referring to the Green New Deal, I think, just to replace everything with everything and for us to go I guess, pre-industrial revolution, an agrarian society. But not even an agrarian society because one of the things that they are concerned about is the actual environmental effects of agriculture. Yeah, cows. So yeah, it would take forever. And I think what's interesting, of course, about all that stuff is that if you were a glazier or a window maker, those taxes are fantastic.

That extra bill is fantastic. The government is going to give you money to redo something that you don't necessarily need, as you put it. You knew the planes were flying overhead. It reminds me of somebody who once explained to me what the European debt crisis was all about in 2008. And he said it's as if everybody in Germany bought everybody in Greece a new kitchen and a new bathroom. And that's exactly what it is. It's just a transfer payment, which is what those extra taxes were. It's just like, well, we're going to put a little extra on your plane tickets so we can, you know, empoison people, which may or may not be a good idea, but it isn't really all about the airport. But Peter, don't you find this instructive? I mean, if you believe seriously that climate change is an existential threat, then this is the only thing really you can support. Any half measures other than the Green New Deal are doomed to fail. This is necessary.

You are pointing out something very important, which is, first of all, of course, Rob is right, it'll never happen. I think the general point that we all feel is that it's hilarious. The Green New Deal is hilarious. It is so ignorant of – it's actually ignorant of climate science, but it is so ignorant of the way American politics works. And the writing and the bullet points and the speech that AOC gave and even Edward Markey, senator from Massachusetts, who's been in Congress for 30 years now. It was at the level of a high school presentation. Kids worked up about something about which they know nothing. Okay. Which was hilarious.

Just ridiculous. At the same time, though, Rob makes the point, if you're a glazier, if you're in the window business, and some part of this that affects your industry does get put in place, you want it to go on forever and and so nobody believes that ethanol is going to help anything not the climate not nobody and but every president since the ethanol program started goes to every candidate for president goes to iowa and says of course i'm a free market. Republicans do this. I'm in favor of free markets. But of course, we'll continue the ethanol subsidies. Grow your corn here. So what I'm saying is that there's also some ridiculous, as it seems, there's also some

danger here that even if little bits of this ridiculous program get put into place and what it involves, of course, is transfer payments from us to specific interest groups i don't know i don't know which pieces of it will get put in place but you already know it's the cylindra part it's the it's those yes all of those and then it'll be virtually even republicans will find it almost impossible to undo so the thing is actually i mean on the one hand it's it is jaw-droppingly ridiculous but also quite dangerous I think. Hey, I just want – go ahead. Sorry, James. No, no. I'm going to go long. So go short.

Oh, then I'll try to go short. I mean to me, when I look at something like this or any kind of proposal like this, I look at it in two ways. It's politics and policy. Some things are smart policy and dumb politics. Capital gains, tax elimination, I think smart policy, dumb politics probably won't go. You could have dumb policy and smart politics. Probably a certain amount of trade restrictions, in my opinion, are dumb policy, but they seem to play well with a lot of people. So that's smart politics.

And you have – occasionally, like once every time – every time we see Haley's Comet, we get smart policy and smart politics. I can't think of anything offhand right now that fits that description, but it is theoretically, hypothetically possible. And then you have dumb policy, and then you have dumb politics, and that's what the Green New Deal is. It's dumb policy because, of course, it's completely absurd. The idea – it never addresses the most important thing, which is our relationship to the two fastest-growing economies of the world that are the major polluters in the world, China and India. It doesn't address that at all. And then it's also dumb politics because nestled in there are so many idiotic statements. I mean, the one that was like,

I saw that jumped out at me because it jumped out at everybody on Twitter was that part of the Green New Deal includes a livable wage for people who are unable or unwilling to work. Unwilling? Unwilling. Sign me up. Yeah. It's like – and my point about that is like I don't think people who are unwilling to work at all should get any money. But I mean maybe if you're willing to work just a few days a week, three.

Because like I could do Mondays and Tuesdays and Thursdays. Wednesdays are like errand days for me, and Fridays I just want to take off. So I would like the government to pay me just for those two days that I don't want to work because I'm reasonable. I'm compromising. But the idea that – notice how all these sort of crazy left-wing Democrat presidential hopefuls jumped on except one, Joe Biden. And probably – there's one or two others that are not jumping onto that. I didn't hear any ringing endorsement from Howard Schultz

either, by the way. You're starting to see the sensible candidates gathering because they have their eye on the big prize and the sort of more ludicrous celebrity candidates jumping on nonsense very, very quickly.

Work is a tyranny imposed upon us by the commodification that capitalism demands. So in a good world, there doesn't need to be any work. We can simply do what we want for maximum self-actualization. I agree. And if under MMT you can simply print whatever amount of money you need, then work does not – there's no need to stigmatize those people who are not work-abled, who are not work-directed, shall we say. But you're right.

I mean what I love about this is how it lays everything bare. One, it shows you which candidates hop onto nonsense like this. And then two, it also shows you that the end result of the apotheosis of their politics is this, that the government provides everything. The government directs the economy, that the government is no longer involved with the protection of liberty, but the government is there to do the good things. That's – I mean that's what I love about this. It's finally admitting at the heart of the whole enterprise what they want to do. And so you're right.

I mean canny guys like Biden will say – and even Nancy Pelosi threw some mean great shade on the whole thing. But Kamala Harris came out and said that this is a great idea. And, of course, those are states. You know, this is a starting point. It's a talking point. You know, we always have to work backwards from these things, which is amusing because they say, you know, okay, so we won't retrofit every building in the country.

We'll just retrofit every building in the country that's more than 50 years old. But what I love the most, AOC reveals herself in these interviews and these documents to be an absolute nattering twit. She's just not a smart person. Convinced, however, of her brilliance, she will say things like that this is their generation's version of the moonshot, which I love. The moonshot had a very specific technical objective, and they knew the means to do it. It was a question of figuring those things. They knew where the moon was. And what's more, they knew where the moon would be.

They knew exactly what was required and the amount of foot pounds to get a certain amount of payload off the ground to get to the moon. So it was a question of taking existing technologies and figuring out what to do and inventing an awful lot of stuff along the way. This is not that. There is no moon here for them to aim. I mean, if you don't make it to the moon at the end of the decade, as JFK said, then that's the failure point. There is no failure point here where AOC and the rest of them can say, well, we didn't make it to the moon in 10 years, but we then must continue for 10 more to do this nonsense.

But also, you know deep in your heart of hearts, not even deep in your heart of hearts, you just know for a fact that if we somehow could scramble the timeline just slightly and be doing a moonshot now with those particular characters in national politics, the first thing they'd be saying is, wait, what's happening to those booster rockets? Exactly. Are they just flowing in the ocean to hurt the ocean creatures? That rocket fuel needs to be biomass. Ethanol. Ethanol. We've got to squeeze that stuff out of corn stalks.

Speaking of fuel. That's a very important point. Not only is it not the moonshot, the Green New Deal, it is aggressively anti-science in the following very specific but I think very important sense. It rules

out nuclear energy. We will turn our backs on nuclear energy forever, close the few reactors that still remain, and never pursue nuclear energy again. That is in there. I'm paraphrasing, but it's in there. And do you know that there are, I was talking with a friend who knows the energy industry very well, there are something like between 25 and 40 or so nuclear energy startups that are heavily funded. The technology has been transformed. It's much, much safer. One of the backers of nuclear energy, much smaller exactly. One of the backers of nuclear energy is the Gates Foundation. No raging conservatives at the Bill and Melinda Gates.

And of course, we know this. We do know that we're talking about that was very astute, James, that the moonshot was based on what we already knew. We know that the densest production of energy by far is nuclear. And we also know that at least in small batches you can reduce the size of the plants make and aoc says nope nope nope no science for us and yet you know that they would make i mean you know that all these people the sort of the people who don't believe in science don't believe in progress and don't believe in technological innovation despite 100 a century of nothing but those things, they don't believe in them, and yet they would roll their eyes and kind of poo-poo and tsk-tsk if they went and found some church in Mississippi that's preaching that the earth is 5,000 years old.

As if – like believing the earth is 5,000 science and what we do know in the laws of physics and enshrining that in policy is so much more damaging. I'm the idiot because I say, well, we can take nuclear waste in 50 years and shoot it into the sun, which we probably will. When we had the cold snap here when it was 25 below a couple of weeks ago, they were running a little short on energy because one of the energy companies, for whatever reason, hadn't planned or didn't have enough. There was a regional organization that is responsible for coordinating various energy companies, and they managed to – there's this graph, this picture of the United States with about the middle third of it in red. And that was the area that they had some jurisdiction over. They were able to cobble together sufficient force sufficient energy and channel it to where it needed to be and they did that by scaling up this plant scaling up that plant they had coal they had gas they had nuclear

they could do it all you can't do that with the kind of technologies that they're talking about no every day my family's gas company takes a a diesel or takes a tank load of diesel to the trains at the edge of town and fills them up. These are huge thundering machines that chew up a lot of – they drink a lot. They're really thirsty. And these are the things that bring all of the freight from the ports on the west to Chicago to New York to elsewhere. They're full of all kinds of stuff. They've got food. They've got cotton.

They've got chairs. They've got cars. It's all that stuff. They got food, they got cotton, they got chairs, they got cars, it's all that stuff. Tell me exactly what technology is supposed to replace the diesel engine that brings the freight all over the country. Now, when you say that, you say, all right, okay, great. So we just should drown in 10 years? That's what you want? We're all going to drown because the seas are going to go up by 10 feet? That's what you want, right? No, that's not what I want. What I want is a mixture of all of these things with all of our options used to create the most prosperity

that we possibly can get. And yes, 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. We should develop... I mean, I'm all for doing as much cold fusion research as you possibly can. It will be great when we got a suitcase you can put in the basement. It will give you all the power that you need. But until that point, you can't say in 10 years the trains have to stop running and be replaced by what?

Frickin' ox carts going. I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. I think this is one of those things you ought to say to yourself every day the way you say your prayers. And so I'm going to say it again. One industrialized country and only one has actually significantly reduced its greenhouse gas emissions over the last five, six, seven years. And that country is the United States of America, not Germany, not France, not England. And the reason we did it was because of science, technology, and free markets, that we have figured out how to produce natural gas so cheaply that it's now supplanting oil and coal to a greater and greater extent.

It's a carbon-based fuel, so apparently AOC wants us to lock it in the ground. In other words, the point is not, this is really the central point, I guess, right? It really is a kind of religious or religion replacement. They're not concerned about results. If you really cared about results, you'd say, wow, technology and the free markets have given us the greatest advance in controlling greenhouse gases that has taken place any place in the world in the last decade. We need more of that. That's what you'd say if you were interested in results.

This is a kind of chant around Stonehenge. This is a kind of druidical impulse, and it's dangerous. Well, I know they've thrown a whole bowl of spaghetti against the wall, and it's dangerous well i do i do think that i know they've thrown a whole bowl of spaghetti against the wall and it's ridiculous but you know one or two strands may stick nancy pelosi say may say oh okay this program this program we'll get that through the house will that do for that's the way it'll work of course but it's also philosophically and directionally um alarming and and ahistorical and reactionary in all of the ways they accuse the right of being. This is sort of classic Freudian projection, right?

I mean this is – everything they accuse people of on11 was, we need to drill. We need to develop our own carbon and our own fossil fuel resources in this country. And we did. And we are now a net oil exporter, energy exporter in this country. That is a remarkable change in 10 years, 15, 20 years, whatever it's been. That's incredible. Oh,

it's astonishing. Yes. It's done. It's nothing less than sort of drive a stake in the, in the heart of the leverage that the middle Eastern kingdoms had over us because the price of oil is now in many, many ways controlled and levered by us since we're the biggest exporter.

And that doesn't mean that we're only using oil that we pull out of the ground. It just means that we've now added to the general oil reserves in the world and we still have plenty of oil left that the price is low. And the price is low enough that if we decide that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is once again supporting terrorism that kills Americans on American soil, as we know they starting in 2001, 2002 really, that made that either an explicit or implicit goal. Well, we were told, of course, back in the 90s and even in the aughts that we'd reached peak oil. And anybody who disputed that was a science denier. And I never thought that was the case because we're always going to find more of that stuff. And I'm not convinced actually that it doesn't actually occur.

I don't think that all the oil that we're finding is just what was made and that's it. I think there may be an argument for it naturally occurring, but it's beside the point. So now peak oil is nonsense. But you have to go back to the idea before that, which was scarcity. The left is in love with the collapse of everything because it's a fresh, wonderful crisis that gives them the opportunity to change and modify behavior. What does the car represent to us? The car represents freedom. What does it represent to them?

Atomization, sprawl, cities that can't be herded into nice little tenements with a train running by. Freedom. And it's not a winning thing. I mean, when I was a Democrat, I remember there was a certain muscularity for it. We've been doing this podcast 500 times and that's the...

Oh, you knew. Oh, I would have thought twice about this, Jim. Go ahead. We'll have to discuss that later. You have a bit of lifelong red-blooded conservative like me and Peter. Yeah. Go ahead, James. I was one of those anti-communist Democrats, which you could be back then, and socially liberal, wanted the right thing for the good people and all the right laws and the rest of it.

And I changed when I started getting a job and a mortgage and the rest of it. But in those days, it was possible to sort of have, you know, to have a connection to the, to the people who made things, to the factories, to the, to the towns, to the, to the folks who worked. And now when I look at it, I see what I really want to join a party that says you can't have a car. Women can have penises. Um, and, um, a baby isn't a baby until it's actually born.

All of these things seem really, really extreme, and they don't seem to realize that that's how they appear. And I hate to say that that's how you get Trump, but that's how you get Trump. But by the way, they are revising that last part, babies and a baby until it's born. I mean they changed that in Virginia and New York's a they've come up with new reasons yeah it's still in the danger zone yeah still up for discussion you look back to 1999 and it's in the democrats then and they seem like really moderate people and perhaps i don't know you you guys remember 1999 we were convinced that uh y2K was just going to – Oh, sure.

And the X-Files theory that that's when the government was going to use FEMA to hurt us into camps and all the rest of it. Paid all that money for software. I mean, software, it's a ridiculous scam, don't you think? Well, in 1999 – It is. I mean, in 1999, the amount of software that you had was small and limited, and finding it, you had to get all the floppies and put that in. It's an unsolvable problem, though. Well, I wouldn't say that it is, because things have really changed. They really have, and that's thanks to companies.

Blame yourself. Well, that's thanks to Capterra, is what I'm trying to say, and I thank Rob for assisting me on that one, by the way. You know, 20 years ago, software finding stuff, it was just a mess. Well, nowadays, it's really easy to find the software that you need for your business and elsewhere. And it's thanks to capterra.com. Capterra is the leading free online resource to help you find the best software solution for your business. With over 700,000 reviews of products from real software users users might you discover everything you need to make an informed decision now you can search more than 700 specific categories of software everything from project management email marketing yoga studio studio management software it gets

that specific no matter what kind of software your business needs capterra makes it easy to discover the right solution fast so join the millions of people who use Capterra each month to find the right tools for their business. Visit capterra.com slash ricochet for free today and find the right tools to make 2019 the year for your business. Don't be computing like it's 1999. No, capterra.com slash ricochet. Capterra, that's C-A-P-T-E-R-R-A dot com slash ricochet.

And our thanks to Cap cap terror for sponsoring this, the ricochet podcast. Well, gentlemen, um, we have, uh, questions from the audience,

right? This is, uh, this is, this is our, our, our, our program today.

We do this a couple of times a year, put out on a ricochet. And by the way, ricochet Rob is what again? Uh, uh, wow. That's great. uh, ricochet. I mean ricochet i mean you caught me off guard here

congratulations james yes thank you um ricochet is if you're listening to this podcast you know we produce podcasts and we have a great site conversation and a community site we have solved the problem of the internet swamp uh all of our members and conversations are civil and smart and witty and from all different perspectives, not, you know, we're not lefty crazy, but, you know, we're centered to the right, to the Trump, to the not so Trump. This is a healthy, healthy place

to have a conversation and it's a healthy conversation to have. And if you're listening to this podcast and you like this podcast, we would like to turn away from the economics of the Green New Deal, which suggests that everybody can have everything for free without cost. And instead, sign up. Go to Ricochet.com and become a member of Ricochet today. $2.50 a month is nothing, but it means the world to us and I cannot overstate how much it would mean to us if the people, everybody

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Just I'm going to shut up. I gave you the opportunity to say that because these are all member questions. So if you join Ricochet, you can ask questions like these and post them on the site. And so the first came from John Stanley, who's a Coolidge-level member, mind you. And he said this question comes from a libertarian who's getting more libertarian every day. Question is, what book best explains your theory of liberty freedom? Peter? The New Testament. The New Testament.

I'm not trying to make some high-flying religious point here, nor, of course, would I turn my back on the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament. But Whitaker Chambers made a point to Bill Buckley in some letter exchange between them that just registered with me when I was reading the, I can't remember which book it's in that Bill mentioned this. So this is years ago, and it lodged in my mind that Whittaker Chambers said, the politics of freedom, liberalism, or libertarianism, but liberalism properly understood, is the New Testament written into politics. And what he meant by that is that if you read the New Testament, what you see, and of course if you're a Christian,

you believe that this man, Jesus, man and God, what is the unit of society that he deals with? He doesn't spend time with kings. He's not negotiating with unions. Every single time that we hear us, he tells parable, it's the woman at the well. It's the woman who touches the hem of his garment and is healed. And I just think you could take it as a literary point. You don't have to take it as a religious point. But what you see in the New Testament, that's kind of a foundation of the understanding that the individual is the inviolable unit in society. That is what we build our civilization on and certainly is what we build our politics on.

Everything follows from that. Yeah, he makes a giant mess. Top that, Long. I can't. I can only say that you're right. He makes a giant mess of the temple, right? Not crazy about bureaucrats and institutions in that sense. I would have to say from the sublime, not to the ridiculous, but to the secular sublime, Free to Choose by Milton Friedman.

Free to Choose is – it's so lucid and clear that you almost think that you're missing it, but you're not. It is absolutely at the heart of sort of everything that I sort of believe and it is incredibly incredibly optimistic and one of the things i was going to say earlier when i discussed about the green the green new deal is what uh you know it's ludicrous of course and we can make fun of it and all the things about it that are bad or bad but one of the worst things about it is just how pessimistic and and and parsimonious it is about the future and about the future possibilities. And I feel that the left is not alone in this. I think that happens a lot to people on the right. It happens a lot to Republicans. It happens a lot to sort of people on Ricochet, this creeping fatalism and futurism and catastrophic thinking and the idea that everything's going – everything's going to be terrible.

That's for me. I'm free to talk. And everything's going to be terrible, and it's not. Everything's not going to be terrible. Everything's going to be fantastic. We just have to keep pushing and keep doing and keep moving forward. And I feel like rather than – I mean we should all take a timeout from making fun of the left and get our own house in order because I sometimes feel like that's something that we've done too. This nasty, catastrophic, it's all going to fail, which is why I love Milton Friedman's Free to Choose because it says, no, no, no. There's sort of – you may be exhausted and you may be at your wit's end, but as long as you're creating and you're working for an opportunity society, someone else is going to be an extraordinarily innovative, extraordinarily contributive, and probably extraordinarily rich person, and we should be applauding that this is we're talking about politics now but i want to make a ask you about a separate point you said that free to choose is so lucidly written so clear so accessible that you almost feel you're missing it which leads me to ask you rob long master prose stylist that you are

isn't it true that the best prose is the most lucid and the most accessible almost always we got faulkner is an exception but but isn't that all isn't that almost always true well or at the service of what it's supposed to do yes like you know faulkner's supposed to give you this kind of inside fbd doesn't stand for friendly business ducks or for the freelance beatbox department 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 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. Look at the maelstrom inside someone's mind, which is obviously, as we all know, is not lucid and not rational. It's crazy inside your head. But what Milton Friedman's doing is just trying to... He is showing you how self-evident his philosophy is and his economic theory is by explaining it in as that hard to explain right it should be easier to it should be easy to explain and easy to understand

if it's true um and i think that's one of the reasons why it's i think he i don't think he i don't think he decided to write it simply i think he just saw it really clearly and these are very very clear ideas and very powerful ones so So they don't need a lot of extra words. I mean, you were speaking about the New Testament, Peter, and I was thinking to myself, I was talking to some people earlier this week about it. And one of the things that I've always kind of, I thought it was kind of funny in a weird way is that Jesus says in his parable, look, if you got two coats, you should give one away. And so for 2,000 years, people have thought to themselves, I wonder what that really means. And what does it mean, though?

And they go, well, no, if you got two coats, you should give one coat away. Yeah, yeah, no, I heard you, I heard you. But what does it mean, though? What are you trying to say to me? And it's almost as if somebody of different temperament might start screaming, I mean exactly. I heard you. But what does it mean, though? What are you trying to say to me? And it's almost as if, you know, somebody of different temperament might start screaming. I mean exactly what I said. If you have two of something, give one of them away. But we don't want to hear that because that's like, yeah, I'd rather I'd rather make it more complicated because I can make it more complicated. I can skirt the obvious truth here, the obvious challenge to me personally, which is that I have lots of coats and I like them all.

I don't want to give any away because I'm kind of a selfish person. I like my stuff. And so I'm going to make this statement. If you have two coats, give one away as complicated as I can so I don't have to face the truth, which I think was what people do with a lot of things. They do it with economics. They do it with energy policy. They do it even with acts of giving. If you have two of something, give one away.

Who knew that Jesus 2,000 years ago was anticipating Marie Kondo? Well, yes. I mean, I think there's a lot to that. Yeah. James, get us back on track, please. Rob and I are veering farther and farther away. I think for me, it's a good question

which book describes your feelings about liberty and the rest of it. And I was thinking here, and I'd have to say it's Goodnight Moon. I just sprayed tea all over my – What? What? Goodbye brush. Goodbye mush.

Goodbye noises everywhere. That's sort of what it feels like to let go of the left. No, it would be um let me think perhaps going on what you said peter about individuality this may sound counterintuitive but a clockwork orange because the clockwork orange is all about the necessity of the individual as the primary building block of society and that the cost of eliminating individual volition and will is is too great. I mean what they're trying to do is to reduce vandalism and youth violence and the rest of it by subjecting these kids to the Ludovico technique, which makes them incapable of acting upon their will.

And where you get a safer society from that, you've also destroyed individual will, and that is a greater loss than the security that you gain and it also helps that the movie version which you can argue about was filmed you know in this this incredibly grim dystopian socialist reality that that they didn't have to build a set for it they just had to go to england and find it because it's all over the place and it shows you the sort of world that they want um the the end the the the end result of all the policies of the left from the 70s to the 80s to the 90s to today is this these hives of people this um atavistic uh segment of the culture that's completely divorced from tradition the the overweening government with its science and good wishes it's it's an instructive book and burgess

wrote a drunk which is even more remarkable. By the way, so on the movie, there's a sort of category, now that we're getting, the movies that we can remember are getting to be older and older documents. You make a very important point that on the edges of the clockwork orange, if you're not looking at

the characters, but you're looking at the settings, you get a glimpse, a pretty darn good glimpse of Britain before Margaret Thatcher. The sense of decay, the sense of anime. It's a pretty, by the way, Our Man in Havana, which was shot in Cuba, in Havana, just a few months before the Cuban Revolution. Once again, it's an important document. I think it's an important document. Not because, I mean, it's a wonderful movie. Noel Coward, Alec, but it was shot in Havana and Havana was a rich, attractive,

beautiful city. And you can see it right there, six or seven months before Fidel took over. I have no idea what that has to do with the question that our Coolidge member, John Stanley asked, but I'm saying it anyway. Next question. Richard Easton asks,

what are the best and worst things Trump has done? Who will be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020? And he also says, how many Democratic office holders in Virginia have been worn blackface? We can leave that one aside. But what are the first two best and worst things Trump has done and who will be their presidential candidate? Rob, one minute round. Oh, Democrats, I think, will come to their senses, I think. I mean, it's a large party, so they tend to – I don't know.

It's a long primary season for them. So I think it's going to be Biden, actually. I think it will be Biden. The best and worst things that Trump's done – I mean I don't know about the best things. I mean the stuff he's done that Republican presidents do, cut taxes and nominate as conservative but it turns out he's kind of a moderate. I think the same thing is going to happen with Brett Kavanaugh. So that stuff, yes. I think shaking up foreign policy with China, even though it makes me queasy, I think that's probably a smart move for him, and I hope he doesn't cave. I suspect he's about to cave.

So in that respect, I don't blame him specifically. That's sort of just what American presidents end up doing. The worst thing I think he's done is coarsen us and coarsen our party or court, not our party, because I'm not a Republican, but you're not. No, wait a minute. James is a Democrat. You're you're a former. I'm feeling lonely. Yeah, I just it's just I. All right. I don't like I went went to see Colin Quinn's play last night here, and he had a very funny line. He said he can't believe we still have two – we only have two parties in this country, two parties. We have four genders.

We have six kinds of bathrooms. We only have two parties. I thought that was a very funny line. It would have been a bigger laugh outside of Greenwich Village, I guarantee you. He got polite titters very funny one. It would have been a bigger laugh outside of Greenwich Village, I guarantee you. He got polite titters on that one. I think he was surprised. us into or ushered us in or amplified our willingness to throw away things that are true and to pretend that winning is winning, that losing is winning when in fact it's losing. Cheering these disastrous midterms as if somehow they were good because we have our fealty to his popularity, which is silly.

Believing before he was president that somehow we were losing when, in fact, we had these astonishing gains on the right, I mean, across the country, on the House and the Senate and state houses and governorships that were now are on the other side where we're on the downslope. Well, so, you know, that I think is the worst thing he's done. I think that's probably temporary, I hope. But I know on an alternate face, I think not. I'm with you the alternate phase i think not i'm with you on both of those and i'm with you on biden um the thing about trump is i don't think that i think he's given us permission or some people permission i mean i i think he's revelatory the same way that the green new deal is he he didn't make anything happen he just simply revealed what was there

and now it's out for better for worse and kind of obvious. Or am I wrong? Peter? I grant everything that Rob just said, but I'd add this point. And it's simple. The State of the Union that he delivered on Tuesday – now, he has delivered beautifully written speeches before. State of the Union – or the one that wasn't really a State of the Union, but it was to a Joint Senate of Congress soon after he was elected. His speech in Warsaw was magnificent. His speech in Saudi Arabia was pretty good. He gave a speech in Vietnam that was terrific.

But he stepped on his own press within 24 hours in every single one of those instances. This speech that he gave on Tuesday night was, I thought, the best he's ever delivered. I agree. I agree. By quite a margin, the best he's ever delivered. And it's almost as though he's been listening to Robert Long saying over and over and over again, you can't just be satisfied with your base. Your base is 37, 38, 39 tops percent of the American. You've got to reach it. This speech was a speech that from beginning to end was intent on reaching out. What do you mean?

Peter, what do you talk? Bob Costa said that it was a dark speech equal to the carnage in America speech that he gave when he was inaugurated, which makes you scratch your head a tad, no? It makes me think that Bob Costas should scratch his head. There's something wrong with that view. And my view is not idiosyncratic. It got reported this way almost everywhere.

Oh, I agree. I think you're totally right. But the really significant bit is, this is only 10 seconds worth that I need to say, for a whole Oh, I agree. I think you're totally right. understands that all he has to do to increase his approval ratings by at least five to eight points is stop acting like a jackass on twitter uh maybe who knows but it was a it was a remarkable speech and it may be in some way a turning point it could also be that one of the things that presidents do is they when they uh they know they're about to disappoint their base they try to enlarge their their base they try to enlarge their base. They try to enlarge their popular margin.

He has no popular margin. He's been upside down since the day he took office. He is about to compromise, budget compromise, and take considerably less than what he wanted for the wall, probably under $2 billion, maybe to change. It is going to be a capitulation for somebody who said he would never capitulate. It is going to be a compromise. It's going to bug some people, some of his biggest supporters on the right. But if he can gather some people in the middle, that is what presidents have been doing since the beginning of the presidency.

You know, you you you what you're trying to do is get new people in the tent all the time. The old people, the longer they're in the tent, the more they hate you. The new people are new, you know, you only have eight hours, eight years to play with anyway.

So time is on your side here. If he continues that move and continues to do stuff like that, you know, he might actually make it out of 2020, you know, with his administration intact.

I'm not hopeful, but I think that could happen. Last question. And before the break, and I'm going to answer this one before I go to the break. This is from fighting in Philly. That's remember, as the Ricochet executive committee, surely you have one now discuss changes to the model, such as sponsored podcasts. Well, that's we have or higher priced membership tiers. For example, are there 100 Ricochet, that's what we have, or higher-priced membership tiers. For example, are there 100 Ricochet

members that would pay $1,000 a year? How about podcasts where a specific topic, say the Constitution or Civil War, is discussed over 10 episodes? I mean, if Charles Cook can talk about the Beatles for six hours on Political Beats, surely you can pull this off. Maybe there is a hunger for less current event-focused material.

The answer to that is yes, and I will be renewing and revealing my 48th podcast, episode podcast on Genesis and progressive music in the 70s and the 80s in a couple of weeks now. And if you sign up now at Ricochet at the $5 level, I promise

not to put that podcast up. No, it's a good idea. Something to kick around. Hey, guys, by the time you listen to this, Valentine's Day may have come and gone, and you may have blown it. You may have really blown it. But if you've still got a few days here, well, you've got to ask yourself, are you a Valentine's Day pro?

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Rob, do you want to choose a question or do you not have the questions in front of you? I have them in front of me. Oh, good. Then ask them. I'm actually going to combine two questions together because I think they're really interesting and they just sort of are scratching the itch that I'm feeling these days. From Hank Rohde, meddling cowpoke, given what you know right now, would you advise a hypothetical 17-year-old son to go to college or take up a trade? If you knew that no one would ever ask for his diploma, would you advise him to finish high school? That's a really interesting question, an RPD kind of as a complimentary question, which is what, if anything, can be done about the left's domination of academia? They seem to have a chokehold from K to post-grad.

I think that's – I think that's true, and I think the solution to both of those is sort of the same thing. I don't know whether I would tell a young person to go to college or take up a trade. I guess it would depend on what it is that they were really fascinated by. I think we have a lot of people in college now who don't really care about the's a whole bunch of people who are homeschooling who aren't homeschooling for religious or philosophical reasons they're homeschooling because they believe in education um uh so so to me i i feel like i don't think you necessarily have to have any of those things to be a successful productive uh even phenomenally successful member of society there the two great american heroes at least in my pantheon right now, are two people that you probably haven't heard of. One of them is named Salman Khan.

Sal Khan has something on YouTube, and it's an app called the Khan Academy. And if you have a kid in school or you're in college or you're even out of college and there's an area of study that you feel that you need to refresh yourself on or learn, or you have a kid who's studying or is not getting the kind of technical or science-based education you think they should get, go to the Khan Academy. It is – Salman Khan, who put five years who has a great, rigorous, and empowering education. And we are not doing that as a society. We're not doing that as a country. We should – and to me, the only time I ever get crazy, one of these crazy right-wingers, like Alex Jones kind of style, insane, is when I'm arguing with a liberal about education because that has real – has had real consequences, and they've been disastrous. So if I was going to say – so that's what I would – I don't know if I would recommend somebody.

And what if anything can be done about the left's domination of academia? I think it's to boycott it. It's to say why am I going there? Why don't I go to Khan Academy? There's no ideology at Khan Academy. Oh, the other hero I had is a guy named Austin Allred. Austin Allred is a young guy. Like click on his Twitter profile picture. He looks like he's 12, and he started a thing called the Lambda School, which teaches computer coding. So coding and UX design and backend and frontend stuff, all the things that Peter and I were just baffled by when we put together Ricochet and remain baffled by. He's teaching it, and he's teaching it online, and his way – his business model is really interesting. You only pay when you get a job in that field over a certain number. I think it's like over $60,000, $70,000, something like that.

So it's a significant – it's a significant salary. And then you start paying a percentage of your salary back to the company that invested in your training. It is brilliant. And do you think that Harvard or Yale or Princeton or Stanford would have the guts or the fortitude to stand by the practical value of the education they're offering? The answer, of course, is no. No, because college today does not give you knowledge or wisdom. It gives you credentials.

And that gives you access into a class where the credentials are accepted. And I love when they say you go to college for the connections. You spend $40,000, $50,000 a year and then you learn things. Not so much, but you become connected to those lines that will take you to the next job.

Well, then why don't you just take that $200,000 and bribe somebody? Because it's faster. You don't necessarily come out of college with anything. I mean, when we look at the HuffPo and BuzzFeed and everybody else laying off all of these people, they're all people who have college degrees and write like they're in high school, and they're not particularly smart, but they've adapted a certain mindset. And they're always appalled and horrified and were po not particularly smart, but they've adapted a certain mindset. They're always appalled and horrified and were poach you to Twitter if you tell them to learn to code.

You all know the whole look of the code. Because coding is a skill. It is a valuable skill. It is a skill in demand, and it's the complete opposite of what they want to do. They want to control the people who do the coding. Coding is like coal mining for them. That's what they told the coal miners, but to them, it's like getting your hands down

and doing things, and at the end of the day, you've got to wash the coat off your hand. So, no, I mean, we're too far down this. The only way you can demolish it is for it to collapse with its own weight, for nobody to be able to afford it because the loans won't be there,

or they realize that this liberal arts degree will get them nothing, and they'll be crippled by debt for the rest of their life. Once they wake up to that, and there's enough people who find education and meaningful employment elsewhere. But I just don't see that happening anytime soon. I'd like to happen in the next six months, because my daughter's going to school, and she gets it back from Brazil, but unfortunately, it won't. There is one counterexample.

So like everybody else, we looking we have five five thousand colleges and universities in america why isn't why isn't somebody why isn't the market working there's one place that i'm aware of that is really doing new things very brief and it's purdue under mitch daniels two items two items alone you You mentioned Austin Allred's plan. Purdue is now working with financial companies to make loans to its own undergraduate. First of all, it's important to note that Mitch Daniels, the cost of attending Purdue in nominal terms is the same today as it was when he became – he has frozen tuition and actually cut the costs of lodging and food so in real terms he has cut the cost of attending purdue every single year and at the same time he's moved up the quality of students they're able to accept item one but just by cutting costs item two purdue had purchased kaplan uh test, which had a big online presence.

So Mitch understands that he needs as a major university. There's a huge opportunity to innovate online. And then this third point there, they are making the idea that education should be free. Mitch's view is no, no, no, no. Either we're providing value to our students or we're not. And if we are, let us write the loans. And there are terms that if you don't get a job or if your salary is below such and such a point, you get years more to pay it off. But the notion is some portion of your salary – it's not a fixed term.

It's a portion of your salary. You then owe us over some period of years to pay off the loan. Fantastic. But it's the only – that should be sweeping the country yeah as far as i know it's just i just i mean we have to we have to keep moving but i would just say about the some of the larger question which is uh you know if you're interested in the arts or or uh you know i was an english major you want to be a writer or you want to be in the arts or you want to be in humanities i i i'd be a hypocrite if i wasn't encouraging that but a little friction there and a little resistance there both financially and sort of uh in in terms of certainty is not a bad thing it makes you better it makes you i mean

a better writer because you have to work a little harder the nervousness of being a writer the the uncertainty of it that the friction there actually creates better product and better art. So I'm not against that. But I would just say that if you're a cancer cell or you're a driverless car or you're a giant server, you don't care and you will not know where somebody's knowledge of biology or chemistry or computer science came from. If you're a cancer cell, you're worried about the researcher who knows what he or she is doing, not the researcher who went to Princeton or Yale. And so the society in general, we should be honoring and celebrating mastery of a subject and innovation in a subject and pioneering work in that subject and not the accrual of credentials. You're here. work in that subject and not the accrual of credentials. I think those credentials mean less than they used

to. I mean, it used to be a Harvard man. You would be bowing down, but now it's sort of shorthand for, oh, here comes something from the Erie castles. Peter, you want to pick on another question? Let me see here. I'll get one fast. We can do this quickly. Go, go, go. You go, you go, you go.

Clive Staples. Can even never Trumpers recognize that no Republican president or presidential candidate since Reagan has given such a full-throated, in-your-face take down of the current, most egregious postulates of the progressive movement as was done in the State of the Union speech? Raising my hand, and I will say no. That's what I loved about it i hate as much as i hate to think that we're at the point where it's necessary for the president to say the united states will never be a socialist nation here we are nonetheless and i'm glad that he did it yeah me too it's like the minute he did it i thought to myself so the so the democrats are now absolutely convinced that they want four more years of Trump.

That's exactly – I would be doing nothing differently were I a Democrat and wanted four more years of Trump than the Democrats are doing now. If you found one, Peter. Have I found a question? Oh, yeah, Fred Cole. Fred Cole, who's one of our contributors. What are you reading right now, James? I am reading Metropolitan Dreams, which is a book about a beautiful old building that was erected amidst financial scandals at the end of the 19th century in Minneapolis and then was torn down during the frenzy of urban renewal and slum clearance in the 60s. There was no reason for it to go. It was structurally sound.

Inside, it was the opposite of the outside. Outside was all heavy, rusticated, Romanesque stone. Inside was a light court of amazing delicacy and brilliance. But the new model, architecturally and urban design-wise, was to level all the old and build the new. Bland towers marooned in asphalt oceans. Horrible, horrible infliction on the cities of America. And the metropolitan, which went up with scandal and housed scandal and eventually just had a quiet, tired old life as a big brick mansion castle downtown. It went down, and it's illustrative of every urban design thing that built the cities and

wrecked them in the 60s as well. It's by Larry Millett, and that's what I'm reading. As for what I'm writing, I'm always writing something. I've got a novel that I'm working on now, which takes place in 1928 in Minneapolis at the peak of the building boom. What do you know about that, James? A tad. I don't know. I mean, unlike you.

Peter, Rob, what are you reading and writing? I am rereading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which is kind of a short but early Middle English epic poem that makes no sense and is so bananas that I keep rereading it every now and then just to make sure I still don't understand it. But I mean I understand what's happening in it. I just have no idea. I have no way – I don't know why any of what's happening in it. I just have no idea. I don't know why any of it's happening, which I think is kind of fun. And what I'm writing right now, I'm rewriting a script which I promised to have done two months ago and just like intervened.

And so I'm rewriting that. And then I have another one which I was supposed to be writing now, but I've been delayed by a couple months. So that's kind of what I'm trying to do. Yeah. I'm finishing up Andrew Roberts' biography of Churchill. Finishing up, I am about to begin the final chapter. I interviewed Andrew because I had to travel.

There was things just happened. Well, what happened was that George H.W. Bush died. So I pride myself on reading material or at least doing a pretty thorough skim before interviewing someone for uncommon knowledge. But with Andrew, as I told him, I just, I had to fly back to Washington for the funeral. And so now I am reading the biography. It is a wonderful read. And furthermore, it's a fair and honest portrayal of Churchill in the following sense. It is a high art in history to let the reader know what your view is and Andrew's view is that Churchill was a spectacularly successful and admirable man while presenting enough data, so to speak, enough of other points of view

for the reader to draw his own conclusion. And my conclusion is that Churchill made a few more mistakes than the ordinary record suggests. Anyhow, it's a wonderful book. And what I'm writing right now is I'm trying to pull together some notes. I have friends who are insisting that I commit to paper the story of the 1987 Berlin Wall address while i can still remember it that's me boys wasn't there a book about the cold war coming or should i just not mention that yeah no no there was a book about the cold war coming and then but that's been shoved off i that's a complicated story i'm i will write one but it's going to be very short it's going to be something like 20 things you ought to know about the cold war so you're taking time from one book and you're giving it to the other.

Yes, that's right. It's like Peter Robin Hoodson. No, I'm sorry. Robin Hood. You know, Robinson. Got it. Yes, yes, yes. The thing of it is, though, is that Robin Hood actually exists as an investing app

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a free stock like Apple or Ford or Sprint, just to help you start to build your portfolio. Sign up today at ricochet.robinhood.com. That's ricochet.robinhood.com. And our thanks to Robinhood for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. You'll make lots of money, and of course, what will you do with some of that? You'll up your membership so you're the highest level we have and we'll be very happy um do we have time for more questions should we discuss virginia i think virginia everybody knows what's it's just a mess no one's no one's going to resign more questions that's what we're here for rob you got one you're staring at that you uh want to do um oh let me give me a second here i'm just scrolling and i

found other well here's one for you. Has Rob Long ever worked in movies? This is from John from VW. Oh, yeah. Have you ever worked in movies? And what are the benefits of working in TV versus movies? Well, there's really no benefits for the writer to work in movies. You're the hired help as the writer of movies. And the director is the king and the general.

And he's even the casual listener of this podcast, might surmise, I'm not that good at being an employee. I'm pretty bad at it, in fact. And so I've done some rewrites and they've been they've been OK and they've been sort of fun, but but nothing I really cared about. And I much prefer television. The writer's in charge. Let me ask you this. What's going on in Virginia now? Make a better miniseries on television or a better movie? How do you see it?

What I love about what's going on in Virginia right now is it is – it's like a tidal wave. It's like a tsunami that eventually covers everything. Everybody gets wet. So that when you're really thinking about it, people engage their outrage mouth before they engage their outrage brain. And the problem is that if you're outraged by everything, then suddenly you have to ask yourself, well, what about what Fred Armisen did on Saturday Night Live? What about what Joy Behar did? What about Ted Danson what about right al jolson yeah well famously in 93 when he was dating whoopi goldberg they appeared at a friars club roast and he was he in black he appeared in blackface with her by the way so i mean what what i love about all this stuff is um

you know um is that it does seem to like when the when the gates come up and everybody's allowed to be angry at everybody, the people who tend to pay the price are people who you, who were just kind of spy standards. And they're, you know, half the people are going to pay the price on this or like, Hey, what if,

don't get mad at me. I'm a liberal, right? I'm a, I'm a liberal Democrat, but suddenly I'm getting trashed. And I, I find that incredibly,

incredibly entertaining. I can't. Same here. Same here. Best person, but I love, I'm loving it. Right. Best, trashed and i find that incredibly incredibly entertaining i can't same here same i'm the best person but i'm loving it right best best entertainment since robespierre got sent to the guillotine couldn't happen to a nicer group well it's that sounds a little uncharitable of me doesn't it but that's but that's exactly the way i've been feeling about they set up these standards let them suffer under them. See, this is what

Rob meant before about Donald Trump coarsening the culture. We get to the point where Peter Robinson says, I feel a little bit of schadenfreude about these people. Is that bad of me? I suppose I should feel worse, but I don't. They say, Peter, how much you're being brought down and cheapened by this. Of course, they made the rules. These are the new rules. They don't like the new rules, but as long as they're going to apply them to everybody else. The problem is that while people, big people names, the people who are on television, the talking heads and the rest of them may seem a little bit more disinclined in the future to join the lynch mobs and the Twitter mobs. The Twitter mobs are ever self-renewing. There will never be anything that can shut them down because they're anonymous and they feed on this and they love it and it's blood sport it's just simply blood sport so i i don't see any way of doing that until we

as a society and a culture completely unplug from the roiling massive red venomous anger that rolls around the internet in its uh disembodied form and i don't see that happening either because it's too much fun to participate or watch yeah yeah but i I mean it becomes just that. It becomes just a spectator sport, which is fine by me. When you run into troubles, when it actually breaks out into the real life business, when suddenly you have Brett Kavanaugh

That's it. I'm still ticked off about Brett Kavanaugh. Yeah, I'm still off the surface of it. It's legit. And now suddenly when those rules are inconvenient, when it's the lieutenant governor of Virginia, it's suddenly, well, we need to be careful and have our nuances. And what about – it suddenly becomes, when it's inconvenient, something that requires a momentary pause, a thinking, a philosophical recalibration, whereas when it was just the most anodyne judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals, the most moderate ABA-approved judge on the D.C. Court

of Appeals, suddenly we need to scream and yell and march in the Capitol and act like the sky is falling. Well, the sky is always falling for some people. Everything is always the worst that it's ever possibly been. This is a millennial attitude. But people feel really good about themselves, about feeling really bad about everything. It's the way to show that you care and that you're a deep person.

Where was the piece in the New York Times, I think, that one of the opinion guys was opining that we don't need billionaires. We don't need. There's no reason for anybody to have that kind of money. So here you have essentially a guy writing for a newspaper that was saved.

That's right, it was Manju. A newspaper that was saved by a billionaire. Yes, good point. And it wasn't like Carlos Slim. Well, that's kind of Good point. And it wasn't like Carlos Slim. Well, that's kind of an obvious point. It wasn't like Carlos Slim just had $1.6 billion in his pocket and says, I'm going to spend $1.5 billion of this on The Times. No, when you have a lot of billions, you're able to do things like buy The New York Times.

Yes. So, I mean, in one sense, our plutocratic class is certainly giving us our entertainment in as much as we have a billionaire president working with a magazine that had penis pictures of another billionaire bald guy in a lair who owns and runs everything. And so you have Bezos versus. I mean, it is it's Roman in certain ways, but, um, I don't know. I, I don't share either sides despair about the country or the future. And I just keep wondering if that's, if I'm like the bumper sticker, if you're not outraged,

you're not paying attention, but I pay an awful lot of attention. I'm just not despairing is either side. How about you guys? We'll, we'll end this way. Um, do you,

do you, I mean mean we doubt, yes. We doubt, we fear, we wonder, we quaver. But I don't despair. Rob, you're not the despairing type. No, no, no. I mean despair is a sin really. I don't despair at all. I guess there is something – as long as it's sort of funny, I think we'll be okay.

It's sort of funny what's happening in Virginia. There's just the absolute storm of it. It's hilarious. I think it's funny that the guy whose job was saved by a Mexican billionaire wrote a piece about how we don't need billionaires. I think it's hilarious. You know, I, I think it's, I think those things are fun. I think it's funny that all they are, that at least the ones that I saw on Twitter, the reporters probably are wonderful writers are probably really great people, but who were laid off by a company that was bizarrely overcapitalized and under,

and under successful then tweeted, Hey, listen, I'm been laid off. So if anybody needs someone who writes and reports on gender, social justice, and intersectionality, please let me know. I mean there must have been – I must have seen a dozen of those. And it doesn't take Milton Friedman to say there might be a problem with oversupply in that area right or or under demand shall we say yes um and i just think what as long as that's not as long as people are still behaving

in hilariously idiotic ways that i see echoed throughout the ages in every piece of literature that's ever been written since the beginning of time um we'll be okay just because something's funny though doesn't mean it's okay i mean if you see a nuclear mushroom cloud on the horizon and your radio happens to be playing We'll Meet Again by Vera Lynn, you don't say, oh, man, that's so cool. That's hilarious. That's just a little toe on the nose, but that's pretty good. I'm loving it. I take your point. And, Peter, you don't despair.

No, I don't despair. I don't despair. The country, it is an amazing i i do keep thinking wait a minute there should be specific things like i didn't think the economy would recover as much as it has i sat in a presentation a year and a half ago by mick mulvaney with a bunch of professional economists and after mick mulvaney who was then director of OMB, presented what he and what the Trump plan was, all the economists said, well, well, well, well, whatever they do, they're not going to get above 2% growth. General resources available somehow in this country, growing welfare – I know all about that. But somehow, why is it that it is still the case? I'm in favor of immigration control. We have to get the rule of law to extend to the border. But just think, why is it that a Mexican can suddenly provide for his family better once he crosses the Rio Grande than he ever could?

Why is it that all you have to do is somehow or other touch the soil of the United States for your entire life prospects to be transformed? In some way, this country is a miracle. And that is still true. Well put. some way this country is a miracle and that is still true well put to some of course it's a a wretched remnant of colonialism that ought to be dismantled as aoc herself said i believe this week that all latinx people latinx people are descendants of the indigenous people of the americas which is an interesting interesting thing square, and I'm sure the people at 23andMe are going to be working overtime on that. We'll probably have to get back to you

on that with another podcast, with another day, another week, another guest, etc. But we're out now, and Peter, Rob, we've got to thank you, of course, and of course we have to thank Cap Terra and Robin Hood and Pro Flowers. Support them and you support us,

which is good for everybody. Also, I don't want you to go to iTunes. I do not want you to leave a review. I do not want new listeners to follow us. Those are things I say every week, and I'm tired of saying it, so I'm telling you, just don't do it, okay? Make me happy. Don't do it.

Other than that, we're done, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week, boys. Next week, fellas. other than that, we're done and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 3.0 next week boys next week fellas it's not that easy being green having to spend each day the color of the leaves

when I think it could be nicer being red or yellow Or gold or something much more colorful like that It's not easy being green. It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things. And people tend to pass you over because you're not standing out like flashy sparklers on the water or stars in the sky. But green is the color of spring. And green can be cool and friendly like. And green can be big like an ocean.

Or important like a mountain. Or tall like a tree. When green is all there is to be. It could make you wonder why, but why wonder, why wonder? I am green, and it'll do fine. It's beautiful and I think it's what I want to be. And green can be big like an ocean Or important like a mountain Or tall like a tree When green is all there is to be

It could make you wonder why But why wonder, why wonder I am green and it'll do fine It's beautiful And I think it's what I want to be. Ricochet. Join the conversation.