The Ricochet Podcast - Not Much Love

Episode Date: February 14, 2013

It’s action packed post-State of the Union podcast. We chat with GOP rising star Artur Davis on the President’s speech, the GOP response, and how to attract more minorities to the party. Then, an actual President for a change: Hillsdale College’s Dr. Larry Arnn joins to discuss the Constitution, the rising cost of higher ed, and whether online education really is the future. Finally... Source

Laptop, check. Spanner, check. Screwdriver, check. A career built around me, check. Bring your best self to work every day with exciting heavy vehicle mechanic apprenticeship opportunities with BusAaron and Dublin Bus. We are leading the way in sustainable public transport, moving from fossil fuel to zero emissions. Join our team and help keep Ireland on the road to greener journeys. Enjoy a career that's built around you. To apply, visit careers.busseran.ie today. Activate program. See, for much of human history, most people were trapped in stagnant societies

where a tiny minority always stayed on top and no one else even had a chance. But America's exceptional because we believe that every life, at every stage, is precious. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs and our guests today are Archer Davis, Dr. Larry Arnn from Hillsdale, and Josh Trevino from the Republic of Texas.

From the POTUS to the Pope, let's have ourselves a podcast, shall we? There you go again. Welcome, Ricochet listeners. And if you are a Ricochet member, you're interested in politics. You're interested in media, old and new. You're interested in whether or not this country we love so much is a financial house of cards. Well, if you are, there's a television show, House of Cards.

Cable quality. And you don't have to pay to get it. You can get it free. That's a television show, House of Cards, cable quality, and you don't have to pay to get it. You can get it free. That's right. If you're a Ricochet member, you can go to netflix.com slash ricochet and you get a free 30 days of Netflix streaming services, hundreds of thousands of programs to choose from. We'll be talking a little bit more in the show about that, but go there now and sign up netflix.com slash ricochet, netflix.com slash ricochet. Netflix.com slash Ricochet. And tell me at Ricochet that if the House of Cards season was written by a conservative, how would it be any different than the show that it is? And let's bring in Rob Long and Peter Robinson to discuss that very fact.

Hey, guys, it's like Mad Men. It's a show that's beloved by about 14 critics and watched by maybe half a million people, while 68 billion people, of course, gorged themselves on the glorious buffet that was last night's State of the Union address. Good morn, guys. And what did you think of the president's laundry list and rolling out of the bold new initiatives? As Margaret Thatcher once said, the trouble with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money. I just wish he ran out of other people's words and it would have been shorter. The speech was tired last night. And I don't mean he was tired. He actually worked up some emotion toward the end when he got to gun policy and began introducing people in the gallery. But the

ideas were tired. The actual policy initiatives were small. Grand rhetoric but small initiatives. Does he really think any tinkering he's going to be doing with energy policy will have any effect at all by comparison with what's actually happening in the private sector with hydraulic fracturing which is driving down the price of natural gas? This is just an exhausted liberal vision. That's my humble opinion. Rob? Well, I mean I agree that he's wrong. I mean I agree that he's wrong on the facts. But I think he's got exactly the right strategy to do what he wants to do, which is to expand the federal government to do more and to raise taxes. Look, you can't get people to pay more for stuff they already have. You can't go into your house and say, well, listen, you know what? You underpaid for that refrigerator,

so we want another 50 bucks, which is basically what the tax debate is, right? How do we pay for stuff we already bought? What he said is, I'm going to give you shiny new stuff. I'm going to charge you more for it. It's brilliant. And the fact is, he put a little, he's right. This is

the, George McGovern dreamt of giving this speech. Walter Mondale – this was the speech that Walter Mondale would have given in 1986 at his State of the Union. Had he won? It's perfect almost. It's like it's pitch perfect. It could have been written – it is absolute left-wing status, high-taxing, big government, boilerplate. And you know it's big government, including when he said something that every big government liberal always says, which is, oh, I don't think government should be bigger. I think it should be smarter.

It's ridiculous. to try to convince an electorate that is already halfway there, that he's going to give them wonderful new goodies, and they're going to pay more in taxes when in fact the taxes they're going to pay are going to pay for the goodies they already own, and the future tax is going to go up to a walloping 63 percent on middle-income people to pay for the goodies he's giving them now. But that's not going to be his problem. problem uh i i who i you you have to stand and applaud at least silently at the sheer nutritious audacity of it and the sheer out thinking outsmarting out maneuvering of the hapless republicans he's done yeah i'm not so sure well look we've got a lot of guests today who probably have thoughts on this as well so i i'm going to defer to them i'm not so sure. Well, look, we've got a lot of guests today who probably have thoughts on this as well. So I'm going to defer to them. I'm not quite sure that Republicans are as hapless today as they were even two weeks ago.

On the fiscal cliff, they're in a position. They've called his bluff twice. And twice ain't bad after the results of the election that we just endured. Once on the fiscal cliff, they said, OK, fine. We've given you the tax hike you wanted. Now what? And Marco Rubio has said, as he said again last night in the Republican response, Mr. President, we've got a bipartisan solution to immigration. It involves securing the borders first.

It involves green – are there one or two steps involved here? I think what he said is – But it's done. Mr. President, we have a – hold on a minute. But as the president will tell you, he has put more boots on the ground at the border than anybody else in the entire history of that space of the American continent going back to the Neolithic era. So how can you flank him on that? Republicans are now in a position to say, congratulations.

Thank you very much. We're happy to hear it. Now, we have a few more little odds and ends that need to be. We need to. Peter, don't concern the man with the things. We need effectively an audit. But we've got the deal for you, Mr. President. Don't bother the president with details. Don't bother the president with details.

Let's fix it. Let's fix it. Get her done. Get her done. It was Larry the cable president last night. Hortatory exhortations. Get it done and fix it. Go on. I'm sorry.

I just had to get that off my chest. No, no, I just, I agree with everything Rob said. It was a meretricious, phony speech that ignored every important reality in Washington, but it was clever. I just, I dissent to some extent when Rob says that Republicans are hapless. In my judgment, the Republicans are finding their feet

a little more quickly than I'd expected. And what you mentioned was immigration, right? Illegal immigration has gone down since the recession, plummeted since the recession. So now finally we're tackling a problem which seems to be on the verge of solving itself. That is not a crisis because – I mean we've been promised a crisis in immigration for about 10 years. It hasn't been delivered, and that's what we're fighting. Meanwhile, we're going to be fighting ourselves to exhaustion immigration. He's going to be expanding every single federal program there is.

He didn't call for expanding every single federal program there is last night. He called for quite modest. He's going to raise the minimum wage. He's going to – I mean all that investment in infrastructure, all that – all the investment. When he calls it an investment, we know it's a federal program. I mean there's a reason why – Well, on infrastructure, it's just a question of what the numbers are. He's not going to get an $800 billion stimulus package through under the guise of infrastructure.

That just won't happen. He's got – OK. Well, we shall see. I agree. I agree with your analysis of what he's trying to do. I just suspect that the Republicans are finding their feet a little bit better and a little more quickly than I had thought, say, two weeks ago. And that the red state Democrats have been trade the red state Democrats. He's got senators from red states who are going to be up for reelection.

This guy is now, it happens the day after you take the oath of office the second time. Barack Obama's lame duck. Senators are now thinking they'll be there after he's gone. Things have changed. We shall see. I mean, there's a laundry list of things that he wants to do, but how much of this will translate to specific legislation is another issue. I mean, what I heard was a guy buffing his historical record for the American public and the historians to come. Whether or not any of this stuff actually gets through, I don't think he could care a bit. It's just a matter of presenting this wonderful image of himself to everybody else. And there was a line there that was tweeted by our local mayor,

because things like this just sent liberals into a tizzy about how the president spoke of our common obligations and that's what defines us as our obligations to each other which is just a facile twaddle in one sense yes it's it's true but on the other sense who defines the what the obligations are and who and who and who defines what it means to meet those obligations if you are freedom that's what it defines us our Right, which is in itself an individualistic concept. But the way the liberals look at it is to say that our obligations bind us together. Therefore, when somebody says you have an obligation to the children, it means I have no choice but to pay whatever they say in the amount of taxes in order to pay for a

union-based educational system. So we can have interesting arguments about that. But it was platitudinous to the extent. I mean, yes, it was effective. Yes, it was good. Yes, he got worked up to a certain amount of emotion last night, fake or otherwise, but it was about him and whether or not specific things come out of it,

I haven't the faintest idea. I mean, look, this is where the country is. At the end of it, conservatives looked at that and said, I see nothing but a man who wants to use the power of the state to diminish my personal property and my individual freedoms. And the liberals looked at it and said, wow, there's a guy who wants to use the power of the state to take away personal property and diminish individual freedoms, and that's awesome. I mean, I think we're pretty much agreed exactly on what the problem is

and whether or not it's a problem at all. Guys, should we bring in somebody who may have something? I want to bring in somebody who knows something. There you go. Well, we could indeed bring in a former four-term member of the U.S. House of Reps from Alabama. We could bring a current fellow

from Harvard's prestigious Institute of Politics. We could and we will. He's one of the newest Ricochet contributors, Arthur Davis. He's a columnist and commentator across a wide media spectrum, 1990 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard U and 93 cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. Licensed attorney in D.C. and he previously served as a federal prosecutor with a near 100% trial conviction record. And as a partner at the law firm of S&R Denton LLP, we welcome to the podcast, Ricochet contributor, Arthur Davis. Nice to talk to you.

Good to talk to your audience. The only problem is in 15 seconds, I heard three references to Harvard. I can't imagine a worse way to be introduced to a lot of your audience. Yeah, they've turned you off already. So other than that, it's good to talk to you. Hey, this is Rob along in LA. I heard you in DC at the National Review Summit. It was an excellent speech. Thank you.

And you talked a little bit about how Republican Party talks to America. So last night, how do you think we did? Well, let me actually go to something that you were saying literally right as i was coming on the line you were talking about how conservatives engaged obama speech last night how liberals engaged it and i agree with part of what you said there's no question that to a lot of conservatives who heard the speech to a lot of liberals who heard it they did see it in these philosophical terms in terms of what the scope of government ought to look like, what the space of the public or private sector ought to be. But let me for a moment point out that I suspect there are a lot of people who listened to

that speech last night who are, frankly, not philosophically steeped in any of these arguments, any of these abstractions if you will about liberty freedom of the relative space of the individual versus the state and i don't minimize the importance of those philosophical questions all the enormously important questions is current political debate illustrates but there's a chunk of americans i would venture to say probably more than half of the country who heard that

speech who just don't engage political argument that way they engage political argument by a very simple question is this going to make things better for my family yes they do want to know if we can afford it uh... they do get to washington spending an enormous amount of money yes they do want to know

uh... if it's good policy or bad policy but they define that question based on a very narrow thing, how it affects their family and how it affects their lives. If we're going to have a chance as Republicans and conservatives to compete for the votes of those individuals, we've got to recognize that. And I'll give you one example, if I can just last night speech when the president talked about universal pre-k a lot of republicans respond that by saying oh that's government getting into the business family that's government getting into the raising children that's money we can afford a lot of people heard that though and they kind of like that idea. Well, here's something I think

Republicans have got to start pointing out. The issue with something like universal pre-K isn't just an abstract philosophical question. It's very basic. The most pressing problem in education today is frankly not what happens to kids before they're six. It's what happens to kids after they enter public schools and they're ill-educated by those public schools to move on to the next grade level. We have schools in this country that are graduating children from the seventh grade to the eighth grade

when 75% of them can't read on the appropriate grade level. We have kids who are being moved on to the ninth grade when they don't have seventh grade level math We have kids who are being moved on to the ninth grade when they don't have seventh grade level math skills yet. That's the most pressing problem in education, not what happens to kids before they're six. And if we as conservatives want to engage Obama on the terms of what works and what doesn't work, we've got to start making arguments like that and frankly move beyond just making philosophical arguments about politics at least that's my opinion no i agree with that i think that's probably true it it does

put us in the position of always being the people say well we can't afford it we can't afford it uh whether or not it's a good idea i mean it does seem to me that there's a lot of i mean just to take that one issue there's a lot of evidence to suggest that pre-K and preschool are super important and actually have a generally beneficial effect on life. Teen pregnancy and early marriages and jail time, they all go down. But it does seem like a time for us to – I mean he advanced a pretty spectacular agenda I think. Peter and I disagree. But I found that to be a very left-leaning, very liberal, very retro, frankly,

agenda. Laptop. Check. Spanner. Check. Screwdriver. Check. A career built around me? Check. Bring your best self to work every day with exciting heavy vehicle mechanic apprenticeship opportunities with BusAaron and Dublin Bus.

We are leading the way in sustainable public transport, moving from fossil fuel to zero emissions. Join our team and help keep Ireland on the road to greener journeys. Enjoy a career that's built around you. To apply, visit careers.busaaron.ie today. Come up with something better than, oh, it's too expensive.

Because the problem with it isn't that it's too expensive. The problem with it is that it's harebrained. And it's not going to work. Well, the problem with a lot of it is that it misunderstands the real problem. The problem with a lot of it is that the solution that Obama proposes is flat wrong. And the problem with some of it is that it is too expensive. We've got to just be creative enough and smart enough to make those arguments. There's nothing wrong with saying that something costs more than we can afford. I think people get that. I don't think many people out there necessarily fully engage these arguments about what the size of the public space versus the private space ought to be. I think that's

the kind of thing that people who are steeped in philosophy and people who are deeply concerned about these ideological issues care about. I'll go back to the point about pre-K again. There are many states in this country who are thinking about launching pre-K programs, and that's a good thing if they can afford it. That's consistently a good use of state taxpayer dollars. But again, the big problem in education, as I see it, is not what's happening to children before they're six, which is what pre-K deals with. It's what happens to them between 13 and 15, when junior high school all across this country appears to be miserably failing in terms of giving children the skills they need to go further. What's happening between ages 15 and 18 when our high schools are graduating people

who are ranking 33rd in the world in math and science skills? That's the educational crisis that the president needed to talk about and that was missing from last night's State of the Union vision, and it was missing from the inaugural. I'll tell you what I think is missing. Barack Obama tends to look at problems with an eye toward finding a new program to create. Sometimes problems aren't about a new program. They're about more accountability for systems you have today.

Right. Hey, excuse me for a second, Peter, but one of the reasons you have kids coming out of high school who don't know anything, who think that the answer to one plus one is B, is because they were coming from a system where the teachers suffer absolutely no problems whatsoever if 100% of their class is ignorant. My daughter's just going into that period right now,

and all the Minneapolis schools are pretty good. I hate to think of what would happen if there's a new set of federal regulations that require her to learn X, Y, or Z, which is the question I want to ask you, Arthur. Have the Republicans lost the argument that local, state is better than federal? Because there seems to be, when the president gets up there, this notion abroad that a federal law pronounced by the president somehow has a power that simple municipal and state regulations don't?

Well, I'll be frank with you. It's an argument that we don't make enough to gauge whether or not we've lost it or won it. Candidly, we've got to do a better job as Republicans and conservatives of not just saying that everything is something government shouldn't be doing and that this is a problem we ought to leave individuals to fix themselves. We ought to be making the coherent point that, yes, this is a problem, but it can be more intelligently tackled at the state level. That's the point that we need to be making.

You know, sometimes I'll hear people, you know, who are on the political right, like, you know, we are, most of those listening to this are, and I'll hear them essentially act as if states shouldn't do anything either uh... i'll be sometimes people in virginia politics make arguments you know i live now virginia people make arguments that suggest that will be richmond shouldn't be doing anything no the reality is the framers weren't too worried about what richmond was doing

the framers weren't too worried about what state capitals would do, because A, they knew it could only go so far, it only affected people from the borders of one state, and they knew that state capitals were close to the constituents, and that constituents could always put pressure on state capitals. And finally, they knew that state capitals would never have this large, oppressive bureaucracy that would run way beyond the will of the elected people. All of the things we worry about with overreach in Washington, frankly, don't apply in state capitals.

So we as conservatives need to understand that we're talking about state government. The question isn't one of liberty or constitutional values, typically. The question is, what works for the people living in our states and what doesn't work. Peter Robinson here. The whole question of Republican branding, we, even before the election of Barack Obama, well, the 2000 election,

George W. Bush at the convention in Philadelphia did everything he could. I was there. I remember it. Speaker after speaker, even down to the musical groups that played during interludes to reach out to African Americans and to Hispanics. He did all right with Hispanics. But of course, we Republicans are so used to getting a small proportion of the Hispanic vote that 33%, 34% seems pretty good to us. And among African-Americans, I believe his percentage was 8%. And now here we are, 12 years later, we've just come through an election in which we got an even lower proportion of both of those groups. The Republican Party, too white, too southern, it is the party of what was a majority but is soon to become a minority in this country.

What do we do about that? First of all, push back against the premise if you'd like to. Well, here's the first thing I think we've got to do. The first thing we've got to do is recognize that blacks and Latinos aren't monoliths. They don't all think alike. You're talking about 55-year-old guys who are working in manufacturing who have been told their jobs won't be around six months. You're talking about 35-year-old women who may be divorced or single moms in some cases who are trying to figure out what's going to happen to their kids when they're working during the day. You're talking about 40-year-old couples who are trying to figure out how to send their kid to college and so on and so on. We've got to understand that if we do a better job as conservatives of making a case

about how conservative policies will work for middle-class families, and making that case, we're also touching the interests of blacks and Latinos who fit those categories. So rather than getting caught up on, well, what do we say to the African-American people or what do we say to the Latino people, let's understand that the Latino people and African-American people are combinations of Americans who are facing the same anxieties and issues as everybody else. And many of them are middle class. And many of them are middle class people trying to raise families

and continue tough economic times. If we learn to talk to those people more effectively, we'll begin to make a case to blacks and Hispanics too. So the very moment we think in terms of reaching out to blacks as blacks or Hispanics as Hispanics, we've already made a mistake. Well, what was the wonderful Will Rogers line about Herbert Hoover?

And I know most people in the audience, you know, you have a lot of young people who follow this podcast. A lot of them have no idea who Hoover is. No, Will Rogers is. But there's this old line that, you know, Herbert Hoover's president during the Depression, he said, you know, this is simply a perception problem. And Will Rogers famously said, yes, is simply a perception problem and will riders famously said yes there's a perception problem hoover doesn't see the american people may see right through him we have to be

very careful of thinking this is just a perception problem i heard you have some good republican friends of mine a few weeks ago say a all the issues of blacks and hispanics in this perception problem was more than a perception problem we've got to do a better job as conservatives of talking about how our policies work for ordinary people. Because I go back to my point at the beginning of this. Most voters don't vote based on theory. They want policies that work for their families.

And let's understand the core point about the people in this society. I know sometimes we say, oh, there's this big mass of people who don't even pay taxes at the end of the year, you know, and they're subsidized by the rest of us. That group of people, the reason they don't owe taxes at the end of the year is because they paid them for their paychecks and their money being taken out every two weeks. In addition to the money coming out to pay their income tax, they had FICA and Social Security taken out. And they have state sales taxes, which are very high in many communities. And in about 20 states, they have very high state income taxes. And, of course, in 45 states, they have some level of state income taxes. So the reality is a lot of people in this country right now who are working and struggling

are paying a lot of their taxes to Washington, and they have this crazy notion, this quaint notion, that maybe they ought to get a return on their investment and that some of those tax dollars ought to be paying for policies that work for their families. That doesn't make them takers as opposed to makers. That doesn't make them a subsidized class. That makes them people who want a return on their investment. Peter here with one last question for now.

We'll see you on Ricochet and we'll have you back. But you've said it a number of points. We all say it. We need to do a better job of this. We need to do a better job of that, of explaining of ourselves, of explaining how our policies are relevant to ordinary Americans and the way they lead their lives. Question, in the current circumstances, who's we? John Boehner? Mitch McConnell? Where do we find, we don't have a president, we don't even have a small number, two, three, four leading Republicans who undoubtedly or unambiguously speak for the party. Who's we? And how do we find a we that can speak, that can carry the case to

the people? Well, it's all of us who believe that conservatism offers a better solution for the next decade than liberalism does. We, as all of us who happen to believe that conservatism will offer a better accounting of how we fix today's problems than liberalism does. Anybody who cares about the future of conservatism, I don't care whether you're an elected official, whether you're a blogger, whether you're an activist, at some level, you've got a responsibility, if you care about this, to talk to people in a way that resonates with their lives. We have to abandon this fixation, frankly, on thinking that most people don't judge government policies by results. We've got to realize that what many people in our country know about the

Tenth Amendment is that it probably follows the knife. And we've got to recognize a significant number of people who are here are people who are working enormously hard, who are playing by the rules in every sense, personally and professionally, and who still aren't making it. And I think we have to really challenge this notion that some have that if you work hard enough and you take responsibility, that that by itself is a pathway of success. There are many good people in this country who can tell you that it's not. And we as conservatives have to understand that. We have to be responsive to that.

And we have to, last point I'll make, if you're a conservative, you ought to believe that conservatism works for all the challenges we have in this country. I think conservatism can fix poverty better than liberalism. I think conservatism can fix schools better than liberalism. I think conservatism can solve the question of unsustainable entitlements better than liberalism. And yes, I think conservatism can solve the question of unsustainable entitlement. It's better than liberalism. And yes, I think conservatism can tackle the health care challenges more effectively than liberalism. If you're a conservative who believes that, then we shouldn't be afraid to talk about these various issues.

Absolutely. We look forward to you talking about them a little bit more at Ricochet when you write the next piece. We've got a lot more things to ask you, but we'll have to wait for the next time. And we thank you for joining us here in the podcast, Archer Davis. No, thanks for having me. Thank you. Talk to you soon. Really enjoyed it, Archer. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thanks. I appreciate it. You write about the perception problem. Yeah. Very much so. I'm sorry people missed it. He gave a terrific speech at the National Review Conservative Summit, sort of introductory morning speech that was really – I kept thinking like maybe he should have been given the keynote, but there you go. Well, I think that what we should really do is rename the entire movement and the party the progressives and just uh and let that work for us because most of the ideas that we're talking about are not conservative in the

sense that people think they're actually a change of the ossified old notions that we've inherited used for the last hundred years or so so find something that means progressive and forward looking and use that to rebrand it because tea party isn't working and republican just makes people think of warty old guys and white warty old white guys walking around in good suits. I don't know if you guys have been watching House of Cards or so. Peter, I think we talked about this earlier. You'd seen an app. Rob, have you seen anything?

I have not seen it, but I plan to. A lot of people have this crystallized opinion about it. They're fascinated by it. They hate it, and they have to watch it more because there's this weird reptilian loathsomeness to it. They find the characters, you know, some of them are adorable and some of them are sparkling and some of them are Macbethian archetypes. I've yet to talk to anybody who's watched it and hasn't had a strong opinion about it. And I'm racing through the episodes. My wife is going through that.

I was talking to the TV critic at our paper, as I said at the top of the podcast. How would the House of Cards be different if a conservative had written it? Because the way it portrays not just the Democrats, but the liberal characters themselves is not flattering. The unions, not flattering. The power, the hypocrisy, not flattering. The way it treats the media, I'm enjoying that. You can see the show for free. This is not one of those things you have to wait around for the Blu-ray to come out and then maybe, maybe subscribe to HBO next year to get

the third season. No, you can get it now for free at Netflix. Netflix, bless them. Their instant streaming service is sponsoring this podcast, and with Netflix instant streaming, you can watch thousands and thousands of TV episodes. You can get hooked on Hoarders and watch Hoarders for three weeks in a row like I did.

It's on your Xbox, your PS3, your Wii, your PC, your Mac, your iPad, your iPhone, your Touch. All these devices will stream Netflix content, and for a month, you get it at no cost. Now, you might want to check out House of Cards, as I noticed, if for nothing else, if for Kevin Spacey's performance. You can watch Breaking Bad.

People love this show. It's in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It's about a 40-something-year-old high school teacher with cancer who says, you know what? Huh, I think it would be a meth maker. Jonah Goldberg can't say enough about this show.

You can buy the first three seasons of Breaking Bad on iTunes or DVD and that costs you like $78, $80. No, if you go to netflix.com slash ricochet, you get a free 30-day trial to Netflix.com slash Ricochet, you get a free 30-day trial. Netflix.com slash Ricochet, free 30-day trial.

So we thank Netflix for their support of the podcast. And of course, you know that at the end of this podcast, I will mention once again, Netflix.com slash Ricochet, free 30-day trial. Our next guest, we can't wait to speak to him. He's got, I'm sure, probably a few things to say about the speech yesterday. It's Larry Arnn. He's the 12th president of Hillsdale College, got his BA in 74 from Arkansas State U, graduating with the highest

distinction. He received his MA in the government in 1976 and his PhD in government in 1985 from the Claremont Graduate School. He also studied in England from 77 to 80. Ah, the heady days of punk. First as a research student in international history at the London School of Economics, where of course Mick Jagger famously went for a week. And then in modern history at Worcester College, Oxford. Dr. Arnazipulik is a professor of politics and history at Hillsdale College. He teaches courses on Aristotle, Winston Churchill, the American Constitution. He and his wife Penelope have four children and they live in Hillsdale College. He teaches courses on Aristotle, Winston Churchill, the American Constitution. He and his wife Penelope have four children, and they live in Hillsdale, Michigan. We welcome him to the podcast. Hello, how are you? Hey, Larry. Which is great. Larry, Peter Robinson here. May

I take a first shot at you? Yeah, please do, Peter. How are you doing, anyway? I'm well. I'm well. I'm very well. From the point of view of the Constitution of the United States, what did you make of the speech last night? Well, it was very good and a mortal danger to the Constitution of the United States. Obama seems to me lately to have really hit his stride. And it's a charming and confident and imperative. He, you know, Obama speaks often in the tone of orders. It's an imperative transformation. It means now that limited government requires more government. It means that, you know, it's just like in Franklin Roosevelt and the Commonwealth Address where our property rights cannot be secure

unless the government can guarantee our property. But it can't do that unless it has unfettered access to our property. That's what Obama is doing. And it really is a limitless form of government. I'm so depressed I don't have a follow-on question, Larry. Well, Rubio was good. Yeah, Rubio was good. So here's my thought on Rubio. And I was a little worried that Rubio – excuse me. As you know, I'm an old Reagan guy.

So about halfway through Rubio, I was thinking, wow, Ronald Reagan would have loved this. There's scarcely a word here that Ronald Reagan couldn't have delivered. And then by the second thought, half I thought to myself, yeah, but there are a lot of people who just say, no, no, no. That was then. There's nothing fresh about Marco Rubio's message except Marco Rubio. Now, I believe that what he was saying has abiding permanent value. But did it seem dated? Do we seem somehow – is there a need somehow to update the constitutional, the liberty message?

Well, we have to be more oppositional. First of all, remember the claim of the founding is exactly the opposite of the claim of Obama. In Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that implicit in the Constitution structure in the very idea of ordered liberty is the rejection of absolute truth. That's what he writes. And by the way, he's since run for president twice with $3 billion spent against him,

and nobody has pointed out that that's the abnegation of the Declaration of Independence. So first of all, we are going to be more timeless than he's going to be. He is radically the invention of the new. But we should gain timeliness by becoming the opposition to him. And that means these things have to be taken on. And to my mind, Rubio, by the way, I was sitting next to a television producer and director watching the thing here at the Kirby Center of the College in Washington. And he was just shaking his head because he said the production should have been better. Of Rubio. Yeah, that poor guy shouldn't have had to reach out of the frame for a cheap-looking plastic bottle of water at a minimum, right?

That's right. And it didn't look like a really impressive setting, you know, and there's ways to do that better, I guess. But having said that, he might instead have just made this thing a long statement about Obama and what Obama does and go after him, right? Because Obama goes after his enemies very effectively. And so there was some of that in there, but I thought there should have been more.

And I thought there should have been more from Romney too because Obama is A, holding the chief executive officer of the land, and B, transforming the government and about the size of the government. And they don't like it growing so big. And by the way, there are large majorities that would rather see government cuts across the board than see tax increases. Why is that not our central message? And so, Larry, I have to say, so often when I think of you, I think to myself, there is a man who would have been right at home in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. But as I listen to you now, it's about 80 years later, I think to help us find – your view is we have done a very poor job of fighting. Is that correct?

I haven't made the argument. And a great national campaign, any, by the way, political campaign, should be regarded as a civic duty. And that means that you are required by your duty to your country and your fellow citizens to make the main case. That's one point. And the second point is no successful company, our college is successful, we do not proceed by asking our customers what they want to hear. Apple Computer doesn't do that.

In fact, its genius is that it invents a bunch of stuff we didn't know we needed. And so to run any major enterprise on the basis of polling is just a terrible mistake, not that you wouldn't use it. But we think we really got it made now because we can ask people what they think and then say it back to them. And that, in my opinion, is a prescription for disaster. Dr. Ron James Lilacs here in Minneapolis, two major institutions, did not lower themselves to polling. That would be Ricochet and Hillsdale. They have combined, of course, and at ricochet.com slash Hillsdale, you can enroll in this new American heritage course. We'll mention that a little later.

But it brings up something that the president also spoke about, the rising cost of higher education. And a lot of us were saying, well, yes, that's because you've been guaranteeing loans and pumping money into it. And administrators have been building themselves fancy new palaces, and the cost has nothing to do with what students get, and the burden of debt keeps them from ever getting anything else. Does the president have the completely wrong idea about how to fix higher education, or just a half-wrong idea? Well, you have to know, first of all, that the man speaking in the last two weeks, his Department of Education, has put a hard quota on every college that accepts the money from the government that 7% of its staff must be in the category disabled. And so, first of all, does that not have a cost effect? And there are hundreds of pages and thousands of rules like

that that apply to every college that takes, for most of them, remember, this amounts to about a third of what they call student revenues is actually coming from the government. The government is governing their cost structure in close detail. And that's, you know, so maybe what he should do is what you implied, and that is let them compete and try to make a living on their own, because what you'll get is something different than what we've got right now. Well, like many of the prescriptions that we heard yesterday, we just heard an exhortation to fix it. Do you believe that the president regards his ability to identify a problem is somehow synonymous and contemporaneous in his mind with that problem then being solved by virtue of the fact that he has cast his gaze upon it. Well, I do, and there are two ways to govern people. There's the constitutional way and there's the bureaucratic way.

And the bureaucratic way involves the making of rules at the center. Obama is an arrogant man, I think, and so he's not much into the details of the rules, but he does think that his command gives rise to legislation, which gives rise to regulations, which fix problems. And the other way to think of it is, human beings are a very unusual kind of being. They're not like, for example, a team of horses. You don't just drive them wherever you want to go. By the way, a team of horses is not fully like that, because I happen to know growing up in Arkansas that a good team of horses kind of figures out what you want to do and solves a lot of problems for itself. Human beings are radically like that. So if you work in a college, for example, here's what you learn.

It's not so much that you teach as that they learn. And you have things to teach them. And you must find a way to create in them, help them find the great spark of wanting to know. Because most of the work is theirs. and so like it's a simple idea anytime you teach them anything you have to really believe it's worthy and if it's a serious thing you have to start by telling them how beautiful it is and then by the way they want to know and the minute you know and and it's the greatest trick in the world one pulls it all the time do you really want to understand that and they'll say yes and they'll say why tell me what it is now they're struggling with the problem and that means everything in human life is like that

isn't it the best person to do a job is the one who possesses that job. Obama, think about that thing about the minimum wage, which is, by the way, patently stupid. And I'll tell you why. If it would actually fix the problem of the poor to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour, then, by the way, if you would just raise it to $100,000 an hour, you could put everybody in the tax bracket that Obama wants the rich to be in. You see? In other words, why wouldn't that work, right? If it really were true that all we've got to do is say to people, you've got to pay

everybody who works for you $9 an hour, and then they would and could. You see, and that means the people who actually have to do it are not just an afterthought to Obama. They are simply a thing to be manipulated. Right. I think that's one of the most, I think one of the most surprising things for those of us on the other side to grasp and one of the hardest things for us to remember is that he really sees people, wealth creators, job creators, people running businesses, employees, taxpayers as tools, as little instruments to get what he wants. And it's always astonishing to me.

I have to remind myself of that all the time. He's just playing by a different set of rules. And it's scary. And I think that probably what I would like to say – I know we've got to let you go. But before we do, I want to say one of the things that helps us remember that and remember what we're actually supposed to be doing here in this country is a study, which I think is now – we now consign that to the past or to our own past in high school or Ricochet Podcast and for being a great Ricochet contributor and cheerleader, but also for the new American Heritage course, which our listeners can sign up for at ricochet.com slash hillsdale. It's going to be great. I'm going to join it. I'm going to try to do as much as I can of it because we all sort of need to go back to school to learn – to relearn this stuff because that's what the future is all about. That's what the present is all about.

That's what the current debate and fight is all about. You want to say a little bit about online education? I mean you guys are on the forefront of that and we're really the beneficiaries of it. I mean it's a great course and everybody on this site loves Paul Ray especially. But is that going to be – are you going to do more of those things at Hillsdale? I mean it does seem like a great mission for you. Thank you. First of all, I reciprocate what you said.

Ricochet is not the coolest thing of its kind. It's the only thing of its kind, and it's really great. Well, with Peter Robinson, it can't be cool. We know that. It's really neat, and I read it myself, and I enjoy it immensely. We're proud to be affiliated with it. About the course, there are two things about the course to know. One is we are teachers.

We love to teach these things. We've studied them all our lives, and these things are beautiful and important and anytime you said about any task with people who love a thing and have given themselves to it and they are humbled by it and think it beautiful and worthy to know the results are likely to be good and so far these courses are extremely popular I mean I think it's more than half a million people have taken them now. And we do intend to teach the whole core curriculum of Hillsdale College online. And you can get yourself a certificate for knowing all that stuff.

And, you know, it's a tour through the great books and the natural sciences. And everybody ought to do that because it will enrich your life immensely. Dr. Arn, we thank you so much for coming by today. We hope to have you on the podcast as well and see you at the site, ricochet.com slash hillsdale is where people can enroll and reacquaint themselves or acquaint themselves for the first time with the American Heritage Course offered by this fine institution. Thank you, sir. We hope to see you down the road. Thank you both very much.

Larry, thank you. And here's why we like Ricochet, of course. You can either go to Netflix and get the free sign-up to hear about a drama with a teacher who turns to being a meth dealer, or you can go to the Hillsdale site and get actual teachers teaching you about the foundational concept. It's either Breaking Bad or Paul Ray. Right. And then you can spin right around and pick up who the boss is. They're both selling a powerful drug.

That's right. Then you can also talk a little religion, which is a subject that pops up from time to time in Ricochet. We have some interesting schisms in the readership who manage to hash these things out calmly and in a way that's just emblematic of the tone of the site itself. But speaking of the Pope, you don't necessarily think of Texas when you think of the Pope, but we thought of Josh Trevino, of course, who is our favorite Texan. He's the vice president of the Texas Public Policy Institute,

frequent podcast guest. Josh, any chance of a Texas Pope this time out? Well, you know, I believe technically any Catholic male is eligible, and we have a few here in our office. So I've got high hopes that one of the Texas Public Policy Foundation scholars will become the vicar of Christ in Rome pretty soon. With that smoke then coming out the chimney, be mesquite?

That's what I'm thinking. It will probably be mesquite-flavored, and the Latin will somehow slide into Spanish over the course of the next few weeks. Splatin'. I don't believe that's it. So first pope to hang up the miter in 400 years. What's your take on this? It's amazing.

And what's been interesting to me, well, I mean, first of all, you know, Pope Benedict XVI has such a deep sense of church history and precedent and rectitude that the fact that he reaches back to 1415 AD for a precedent on the end of his career is not that surprising. What's been interesting to me is how much of the media has gotten the coverage wrong, talking about what a modern thing it is to do. And yeah, I guess if modernity began in the 15th century, maybe it is, but I'm, you know, I, I honor the guy. I have been within six feet of him one time in my life. So not friends exactly, but, but I'm certainly an admirer and a great man. It is a profound loss for the world that he is stepping off the stage.

Who does reviving that precedent worry you a little bit? His successor, next successor, successor after that, and beyond that, I don't care because at that point, I'll be dead. But these guys tend to stay in office for a while. But the notion that whoever his successor is, once he comes under pressure, he can now come under pressure from this group or that group. People will start saying, resign, resign. You're not up to the job anymore. That is entirely possible. And of course, the politics of the Curia and of the College of Cardinals are exceedingly opaque, which of course makes the plot of Godfather Part Three possible.

But, you know, we don't know. I mean, let's be blunt I mean the papacy is at least in theory a monarchy and monarchy does not imply absolutism which I don't believe the papacy is except in a very narrow sense but yeah

it's possible but look if you are a believing catholic well and beyond you accept that the church is the body of Christ on earth, informed by the workings of the Holy Spirit. And you have to place your faith in that ultimately and just entrust that it will prevail. If you're a believing Christian, you know how the story ends. You don't know what comes in between, But that's ultimately what we repose our faith in and I don't – certainly the resignation of Benedict doesn't affect that at all.

But isn't it – this is Rob in LA. I mean I should say I'm not only not a practicing Catholic. I'm not even a non-practicing Catholic. But isn't it – I mean traditionally the pope dies. Everybody freaks out and then there's a lot of politicking traditionally and then they got – but there's an urgency to it. We need a new pope. We need a new pope fast. Everything happens really quickly and there's a benefit to that, which is the parliamentary system. They call an election.

Election has got to happen. This seems to be sort of adding another four weeks to the process of almost the American presidential system where how does the politicking not start even before they all arrive in Rome? I mean this must be – I mean it must at least be interesting, right? I mean – One is hard-pressed to imagine that Pope Benedict XVI playing the role that he has, being the master of intrigue as it were were, for decades on end, has not already set up the dominoes in a fashion to his liking. Really?

Well, I would be shocked. That's cool. This is high theology here. It is. I think it's cool because traditionally the pope just kind of like dies and then everybody – it's got to like – they got to figure it all out. But this one is more interesting and I think probably – I mean maybe this is – I mean listen. I mean as – I think any decent Roman Catholic worth his salt should be horrified that something that's been going on for 500, 600 years is now changing. But on the other hand, it does seem like a minor improvement that the current pope has

a hand in maneuvering the next pope. That's new, isn't it? That's new. It's great. Well, look at the age in which Pope Benedict XVI lives. He had the church that was very much, and I don't know to what extent, Peter, you may agree or disagree on this or not,

but I think that at least in the West, the post-Vatican II era was a tremendously perilous time for the church, especially in places like the United States and Europe, falling off of congregations and pedophilia scandals and just this whole, I mean, it was a very difficult and terrible time, frankly, for the church. It ain't over yet.

It ain't over yet, exactly, exactly. And so you have Europe dechristianizing the historic center of the faith, the West at large secularizing. Pope John Paul II defeated the major external threat to the faith when he joined up with Reagan and Thatcher to crush Soviet communism. But the internal threat remains and is arguably more potent.

And so if you are Benedict XVI and you are looking and realize that, you know, and keep in mind that one of the great aims of his papacy was the re-Christianization of Europe. If he wants that to continue, he has every interest in playing a direct hand in the picking of his successor. And again, I cannot imagine that he has not already laid the groundwork to his satisfaction to that end. This is a generational, even centuries-long project. Well, the real question is whether or not the cardinals realize that unless they conform to the wishes of Chris Matthews that they're going to suffer an awful lot of bad – I imagine right now – You mean Cardinal Chris Matthews?

Well, it's possible they've wrapped him in a carpet and smuggled him out of the country and then they'll unroll him in the Sistine Chapel and ask for his wisdom. Because essentially what Chris Matthews is saying is that unless there's birth control, that whole small little ridiculous issue goes away, that there's – that essentially we're just electing another old quasi-fascist old man who doesn't know what it means to love um so he won't be happy until they nominate the first unitarian pope all right right precisely so so josh a lot of people are talking that perhaps this might be the first uh pope from africa which to me would not be a sign of a of a liberal pope at all no no no no no not in the slightest. Yeah, well, yeah, there's talk about Cardinal Lorenze, although he's getting on an age. He's 80. Right.

I mean, when we talk about youthful papal candidates, you're talking about guys who were like 66, 67 years old. I mean, this is, it's not quite a Kremlin gerontocracy, but it is an august group of people who have been around for a long, long time. Yeah, I mean we are looking at – it's interesting to see how quickly the Italian hold on the papacy, which lasted for over a millennium, has now dissipated to this point. We've had a Polish pope. We've had a Slav. We've had a German at this point. And so we've basically covered Central Europe now. So we're talking about candidates from South America, from Quebec, from Africa, from East Asia. And any one of these would be representative, especially if it was from Latin America, Africa, or Asia, of the growing epicenter of the global church. And that's all for the good.

Josh? That's what the church is. Yes, please. Let us suppose that the Holy Spirit is listening at this very moment and wondering. He is. He is. No worries there. Hmm. Hmm. Whom would Josh Trevino.

Is he a member? He's got to be a member. That's true. Whom would Josh Trevino recommend? I want the membership. Who would I recommend for the papacy? Yes. Oh, gosh.

You know, it's just, you know, Rick Perry is not Catholic. And I just, it's such a stumbling block. Okay. But if we can figure that out, well, look. I am not the man to ask. Michael Brendan Doherty actually has a very good piece up at I believe Business Insider or Forbes, one of the two, in which he kind of handicaps the papal candidates. But this is a process that's not really susceptible to what we like to do in horse race terms and talk about who the likelies are and who the dark horses are. This is something that's – yes, please. Last question because Rob has to go off to Burbank. So sum up – I have to go to my secular godless world. He's of Burbank but not in it.

Give us two sentences, three sentences that sum up the papacy of Benedict XVI. Holding the line and turning the tide. Very nice. Josh, thank you. Thank you, sir. We'll go off the line for that and we hope to have you back soon. We'll see you down the road, Josh, and thank you for joining us on the podcast today. We're going to let Rob go.

Rob has got pressing business. Peter and I will just mutter a bit here and clean things up. But Rob, as ever, a pleasure. And I advise people to go to the thread on what's going to happen with North Korea because I think Rob made a really great point about how they're playing China. It's one of those things that – I look at you wrote and I just thought, that's so smart. I think the North Koreans are smart in a way, right? They only have a few cards to play and the ones they're playing, it's brilliant.

Right, exactly. It actually is an art of war thing. When in trouble, cause trouble. And your enemies will be fractured and fighting each other and the solution will be to pay you off well we know when the next episode of your your uh your sitcom starts you know having full frontal nudity that you're you're in trouble because you're causing it exactly right you got different laws and cable right there all right buddy we'll see you down the road we'll see you thanks fellas see See you soon. Everybody else hang on here because Peter and I remain.

What was I going to... Can you imagine being Rob's fifth grade teacher when in trouble, cause trouble? I'm not sure that it should apply necessarily to early school. My daughter is in middle school, as they called it. It was junior

high when I was a kid. Was it junior high when you were going up? Yes, junior high when I was there. Middle school sounds more highbrow. Well, it does, but it also sounds like something... Middle school is where rich kids went, as far as I was concerned. It just sounds like this trough, this thing that you dog paddle through until you get to high school, like nothing matters. And they've also changed it so you enter at sixth and you leave at eighth. When I was in high school, it was seven, eight, nine was junior high and then 11, 12 was senior high. And that made sense. That was a nice little demarcation. You knew when you were going to be the low dog on the totem pole to mix metaphors,

and you knew you would rise to the top and then be cut down again. I mean, it was three big chunks and now it's kind of a wash. But the other day she came home from school and I asked her what she'd learned. And in humanities, she said, we learned about the fire in the factory. Now here's your American history lesson. What was she referring to? The, uh, the shirt factory in the middle of Manhattan. Uh, what was it called? The something, something when that's right. It was the something, something factory, which is exactly don't believe it's gotten the attention it could the triangle triangle thank you that's it exactly shirt waste factory and then they were talking about andrew carnegie and i said well you know that's sort of scrooge mcduck andrew carnegie was scrooge mcduck and scott who came over and was poor and made a

lot she said well we saw pictures of him looking at steel. I said, yes, yes, I imagine you would. And just to be cruel as a parent, I said, and what was the steel process called? And then her eyes lit up and she said, oh, oh, I know, I know, B, B, B, B, we learned this. And I said, Bess, Bess, Bess, Bessimer. So here are the things that I know next to nothing about, except that I'm supposed to know a little bit about them and hence do. Triangle, shirtwaist, Bessemer. These were tent poles that somehow remain from my education in Fargo, North Dakota 30 to 35 years ago. And they're still teaching the same thing today, which in a way makes me completely and utterly despair because I know that the more she gets into the educational system, the less she's going to learn.

And that it's up to me to make her interested in learning, which goes back to this whole online thing. That's what I'm getting to in my roundabout way. When we were talking to Dr. Arn about online education, the problem with this and the reason that the credentialed classes are going to fight it like crazy is that it seems to say that the quality of the education that you get is equal to the prestige of the institution where you get it. I mean, doesn't this completely ruin everything? If you can get a degree and knowledge from the online you of Richfield, Minnesota, and you are equal to somebody who went to a place with ivy and carved marble, doesn't that upend the whole self-justifying? Sure does.

It sure does. Yeah. It certainly does. It calls the – as we know at elite institutions, they tend to be dominated by liberals and the liberals have been telling themselves – these liberals on these faculties have been telling themselves for decades now that they're giving the students invaluable, irreplaceable instruction. And now online learning calls their bluff. What they're really giving them at many institutions, too many institutions, is prestige. Not education, prestige.

And this online learning calls that. It makes it obvious. It will cause much gnashing of teeth in places where teeth should be gnashed. Right. And I hope in the future that we don't – I mean as much as I love the University of Minnesota and I feel a great sense of civic and personal pride when I go there and great new research buildings are rising and it's a revitalized area and it's kids live in dorms nowadays. If you borrow $30,000 to live in a dorm, that's got widescreen televisions and a workout center and a fireplace in every little

unit, you are an idiot, an absolute idiot. But yet they do. And they have to, one of the reasons that they come out with the debt that they do. But when I go and I see the university of Minnesota, there's, there's pride, there's local pride, as I said, there's personal pride. At the same time, I can't wait for these things to just be, to lose all of the old trappings of the dons with the robes and the four years late in the spring, it's not working anymore, especially if you come out of college with $100,000 and a degree that qualifies you to do nothing more but bag groceries at the convenience store.

So if you people listening want to have a little taste of online education, that's why you go to ricochet.com slash hillsdale and sign up for the American Heritage course. Ricochet.com slash hillsdale. Start your online experience now. Are you going to get a degree at the end of it? No, but you'll get something that will fill your brain and you can use it in an argument with somebody who knows nothing,

nothing about American heritage. And incidentally, if you also want to learn about everything from why people compulsively hoard newspapers to why women marry mobsters and delude themselves about their husband's jobs, or if you just want to watch everything Star Trek related ever made, or if you'd like to watch The Office, eight seasons of The Office, and if just want to watch everything Star Trek related ever made. Or if you'd like to watch The Office. Eight seasons of The Office. And if you want to watch the British version too. All of this stuff. The entire library.

The huge, immense library of Netflix streaming is yours. Free for 30 days. If you go to Ricochet.com slash Netflix. And that'd be great. Because even if you're not that interested in watching television a lot, go there, sign up, take a look at it, and when they see that you have come to sign up from Ricochet, it'll tell them that Ricochet is a going concern,

and gosh, we've got to sponsor these guys some more. So we thank you for doing that. We thank our guests today. We thank Rob and Peter. We thank everyone for listening. We thank the president for providing us with something to talk about. Peter, have a grand day, and see you at the site. Take care.

Next week, James. I try to be amused, but since the wizard got busted, you know the angels want to wear my red shoes. But when they told me about the side of the bargain, that's when I knew that I could not refuse. And I won't get any older now, the angels want to wear my red shoes. I was watching while you're dancing away. I look at Brad shoot in an echo and sway. How come everybody wants to be your friend? You know that it still hurts me just to say it. Ricochet. Join the conversation.

She's feeling so beautiful. She gets tired of the conversation. Oh, I said I'm so happy I could die She said drop dead and live with another guy That's what you did if you go chasing after vengeance Ever since you got me pumped, she doesn't spend my sentence So I used to be disgusted When I tried to be amused Since the wings have gotten rusted You know the angels wanna wear my