The Ricochet Podcast - Our Embraceable Yoo

Episode Date: October 9, 2021

Programming Note: the first version of this show had some tracks out sync due to an encoding error. If you received that version of the show, please delete that file and re-download the show to get the fixed version. We apologize for the inconvenience and added an additional outtake at the end of the fixed version as a gift for enduring our mistake. “The state is powerful and everyone else you... Source

Don't be a Roman. It's better than rinsing your teeth with urine. I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. He had not been aware of that. He literally had not been aware of what had transpired. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lylex, and today, say no more, we got John Yoo. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 565. Join us at Ricochet.com. Why don't you be part of the most interesting and stimulating conversations in community on the web? I can vouch for that. Rob can vouch for that.

Peter Robinson could vouch for that if he was here. He's a little bit late, but I'm sure that Rob and I can fill up the space with sufficient. Oh, yeah. I have so much plover. I'm all right. I feel like I'm good. As you know, I believe that despair is a sin, and so I try never to have any despair. Although I am a little bit more despairing.

I just, yeah, you know, you look at the news and you read, and I'm trying not to follow politics. I think politics is boring, essentially, but it, here's what i think i think that i i talked to a lot of people who say um to me um uh you know i everyone else is crazy right everyone else why isn't there and then they'll describe their sort of ideal political outcome which is used something you know basically center rightish center rightish you know the people that i know anyway and then even the liberals that i know are sort of center leftish where i mean somebody took issue with what i said last week i think but you know center left country i mean that tend to be socially a little bit more centrist to right and then but like in terms of government spending you know 10 people tend in this country even self-proclaimed republicans

conservatives and to be kind of on the left, like government spending, you know, maybe not $3 trillion, but $1 trillion is fine, that kind of thing. And so I kind of don't, I mean, everyone says the thing, everyone has identified themselves as different and reasonable, and everybody else is insane. And then I read this piece this week about someone who did a study of propaganda, and Peter's just joined us, so I'll just finish this quickly. Hi, Peter. did a study of propaganda and peter's just joining us so i'm i'll just finish this quickly hi peter um uh and the propaganda is really interesting because the probably the point of propaganda is supposed to be to make a point right um you know north korea north korea's victory we are marching to the future and the the point of it ostensibly is to make you feel that your north korea is marching in the future but it actually doesn't work that way propaganda doesn't convince you of what propaganda is supposed to convince you of, just

in terms of psychological research. What it does convince you of is two things. One, that the state is very powerful, because the state has put up propaganda, so they must be very powerful, because they've surrounded you with propaganda. They haven't actually changed your mind, you're just now cowed by the fact that the state is so

powerful, they have propaganda posters everywhere. And the second thing it does is it convinces you that everyone else you know is a moron and believes this crap and so um people the reaction people have propaganda isn't i i agree with it it's i disagree with it but i know my stupid neighbors believe it in which case it is successful in a way it does what it's supposed to do by not doing what it's supposed to do. It doesn't convince you to change your mind, but it convinces you that everybody you know is a robot and an automaton and easily cowed. So where's the propaganda coming from in your mind? Oh, well, everybody's got an extra grind.

I was on this thing last week, and i i wish i could find it i can't find it because of course it was pitched to me as like oh you're gonna be on msnbc uh which of course i would never turn down and i i and it wasn't it was something on called um it was on peacock plus or i don't know what the hell it is that some some version of msnbc that's streaming and then it has a there's a show on that i was on and um i was on with sally cone and dean o'dayla i believe is his name and these are people who are basically the pete hegseth and someone else of fox news right there that's their their version of that kind of although i'm doing them uh they're doing their fox news people to service i think um and it's

just like you're through the looking glass so i you know they're furious about uh uh mansion and cinema and they're furious it's outrageous how how could two senators subvert the will of the people you know the senate wants to do one thing and they're the ones holding it up and i thought that's interesting math because one way to look at it is that there are 52 senators in the united states who think that three zillion trillion dollars is too much and it's 48 who thinks it's just right um but they don't you know like they don't see it that way. They see that there's 50 senators who don't count at all because they're from states and they are conservative or Republicans.

And there's only 50 that count. And of the 50, 48 want something and two don't. So the 48 are really the majority. And I kind of felt like that was emblematic of the way we behave in the country. So when I said, well, you know, actually, I feel like for Democrats, Sin that was emblematic of the way we behave in the country so they when i said well you know actually i feel like for democrats cinema and mansion are the way out this is a solution for you you should be looking to them they're they you know if if either one of them is going to be replaced by a senator in their state it's not going to be a democrat certainly not going to be a progressive democrat it's going to be an even more conservative

democrat or a republican um and they looked at me like i was insane because of course to them i am insane and i that so that's my rambling um well to us too half the time so yeah really you're doing something marvelous rob but i i don't i'm sorry to have joined late i was monkeying around with my new microphone, which Blue Yeti tells me brings me up to the level at last of Rob's microphone. Okay. But I caught just enough of what you were saying about propaganda to be reminded of a conversation I had, I don't know, five years ago, whatever it was, with Nathan Sharansky, who is Anatoly Sharansky, of course course was a refusenik in the soviet union and spent nine years in soviet jails but he said almost exactly what you said that what the propaganda did was not convince you it cowed you you could tell the truth at home but only in your immediate family fathers and mothers would tell children from a very very early age kindergartenish age what they

could say to their fellow kindergartners and there were certain things you were only allowed to say at home when stalin died they were thrilled at home his father explained to him that a very good thing had happened particularly for the jewish people in russia but at school he should cry with the other children so he did right right and and and then this notion that you don't know who believes it um it's atomizing it just breaks down this is and and i have this is now you're going to call me crazy and feel free i maybe i'm making much too much of it but in my life here's what's been happening over the last week or two my workplace is reopened northern california is reopening and here's what people do when they meet each other.

Are we shaking hands or are we taking the mask off? Yeah. Which side are you on is really what's going on. Which side are you on? And it's, Oh, that person insists that he's scared. He's a rat.

It is atomizing people. It is breaking us into little tiny fragments of what used to be a perfectly comfortable convivial society. It's also superhuman, a superhuman attitude, right? Because it relies on your extremely dim view of your neighbor and your, your colleague and your fellow American, right? So, you know, we don't, I mean, this, these are going to be all examples from the left, but I'm sure there's some examples from the right. We don't want you to wear a mask because we don't want to tell you they're effective because then you'll buy them and you, you will dip, you, you won't care that doctors and nurses won't have a mask. We won't tell you that this is surely a man-made virus that escaped from a Chinese lab for whatever reason, however it did, because then you'll be mad at Chinese people. We won't tell you that the virus is going will stand in Chinatown and say, come on down, have a fun party. What do you what do you what are you? We won't tell you these things because we're sure you're a moron and you're venal and you're unable to make distinctions. You're so dumb that you won't know how to handle the truth.

And that is sort of like that impulse to think that your neighbors are stupid. Unfortunately, some of my neighbors are, but that leads you to believe that it doesn't matter whether the propaganda is working on me because I know it's working on that moron next door. And that is what leads us to like never trying to actually tell people the truth

because we think that they won't they alone, they specifically won't be able to handle it. We, of course, can handle it. We know what the truth because we think that they won't they alone they they specifically won't be able to handle it we of course can handle it we know what the truth really is they can't peter teal once remarked to me i can't remember the context but he said you know i have noticed that everybody believes advertising works but not on them right right same kind of thing oh well oh well well um gavin newsom i don't i i i don't know if i want to prolong this open chat with the grim particulars particular madness taking place gavin newsom has now announced that the vaccination is going to be mandated for school children but not for teachers or the much, much looser requirements for teachers.

This is not only not following the science, this is turning the science upside down. The younger you are, the less likely you are to transmit the disease and by far the less likely you are to suffer from it in any serious way. So here in California, where we're being told day in and day out that the liberal establishment is the enlightened establishment, they're the ones who are following the science. We are now the next major move is something that is totally, utterly unscientific. It is. It is. All right, I'll stop because you can see blood pressure rising the people who believe

that the number of rising cases is the only indication that you need the fact that there are schools opening and they're testing more and they're finding more positive tests means that all of these children are essentially suicide bombers who are going to run from the classroom into the nursing homes pull a cord explode and shower everybody with covid and so that we you know we have to the following the science is to get the vaccine into everybody and then to mask up and then to do that for another year or so i remember seeing you know you still to this day see all of these tweets of people saying especially in new york why are why the f are people going to restaurants

i can't believe it to which somebody responded lol we're living our life. We're not going to be cowed. We're going to get out there. To which somebody responded, how evil and vile can you be? So it's evil and vile to say I'm vaccinated. I'm going to go to the restaurant of the government broadcasting information or what they want you to think. It's it's not good propaganda work by them because it's so fragmented. It's all over the place. It's just it's a mess. And it varies from state to state and place to place. So the general issue, the general feeling that I get is not the power of the state, but the incompetence of the state to be able to figure out what to say. And the second thing is, is that as far as the the volunteer state media that you have cnn has been below a million viewers for months now so that's not exactly working the propaganda that's interesting is the stuff that's coming as a volunteer effort from the people who pardon me are the equivalent of the kid who lived across

the hall from winston smith in 1984 the little ones with a little you know young communist badges and scarves and the rest of it always on the lookout for thought crime and that's the interesting part about this to me is that when we say that you know we say we can't say this out loud in public because we'll get in trouble it's not because of a government mandate that's going to ship us off to the gulag it's because we're going to be beset upon by the all the people who are sitting right there stenopens waiting for jave chappelle dave chappelle to say something wrong and that's the fascinating thing to me rob started this out by saying that he didn't believe in despair i you know agree and the interesting thing about this era is that there are truly so many things about which one can despair that when the mind tires of one,

it can find refreshment in another, I guess. But one of the things I wanted to talk about before we run to the break is something that everybody knows and everybody sees and good enough. We can talk about it. Gas prices are going up. Inflation is supposedly going to be pegged at 11% for what they've said that $175 a month is what it's now costing Americans in terms of that. A piece in the Atlantic echoes what everybody knows, which is why are we sort of out of everything? Why, when you go to Target at 10 o'clock in the morning, do the shelves look like Saturday night at 9 at night? Everybody knows that there's this contraction. There's this things have gone wrong.

And it's very, I'm sorry. And it's very, very specific. It's not the sort of general malaise we had in Carter's era. It's not that sort of strange. Oh, have we lost our way? Can America do anything right that we had in the early 90s the early 90s which people forgot about this is very tangible and specific and it's showing up in joe biden's poll numbers which are fantastically bad so there's an opportunity here and i'm not wanting to you know i'm not going to stand there and you know do the old thing where you point out

the window and say the proles the proles will help us but come the next election and the one after that there are opportunities here and i think the despair while understandable perhaps is ill-advised when we consider that that they've tried and it's failing and it's failing in front of everybody's eyes yeah and they're the party or at least right now they are they seem like the party of scarcity yes yes and well and and it's funny because they they really they they they they have the upper hand on this they traditionally liberals do have the upper hand on the you know the new world and this and that and we're going to give you this you're going to have this and everything's gonna be better they they they should have a they should be playing a better hand just you know the

way these things go and yet they always do this is a very sort of late 20th century attitude from the from the liberals from the left which is like get get ready it's gonna get bad they've been doing this since the 60s since you know the post-war boom and it takes a sunny optimist i think i think i think i can say who the our favorite sunny optimist is on this podcast to come along and say okay yeah you this this and this is bad but everything's going to be great because we're americans and everything's great this is why i'm absolutely baffled and confused every day by the current mood in and even my own mood because i mean and when i when you say this to people left and right they go yeah you're we have a we we had a vaccine in 10 months

that works four different kinds and then poor merc they were writing articles about merc a month ago saying poor merc merc's the big farm left out of the bonanza poor merc and then merc comes in last week oh actually we have a treatment medication we've we've we've developed something for treatment which of course the vaccines don't do we have a genuine red pill right so this is american enterprise this american scientific enterprise and genius that comes entirely from the free market this is a great moment they i'm a broken record we we have revealed i mean you you have to twist yourself into a pretzel to believe that the teachers unions in this country care about the students or care about science or they want to go back to work they don't um it's fantastic we're we're winning 1977 light switch sanborn house dartmouth college

sanborn house was the home of the english department which was the home of jeff hart who was the one conservative well that's not quite true but he was he was a leading conservative at dartmouth and an editor at national review and my hero. And Jimmy Carter gives his malaise speech. And on this light switch, as on many lights, which is across the campus goes, goes up a sticker that says, turn out the lights.

And in his very distinctive handwriting unsigned, but every kid knew who it was underneath Jeff Hart wrote, produce more electricity and on that light switch lay the great divide and every at least i and my buddies all said he's our guy not the turn out the lights but that was exactly where jimmy and Joe Biden now have placed the Democratic Party. They are the party of scarcity. Right. Because we should be in that.

We should be humble. We should realize that we are killing the earth. We should realize that none of the conveniences that we take for granted should be granted to us because they are the product of an immoral system. Like, for example, I mean, the very idea that we pollute the planet in order to produce electricity for common items, the Romans got by perfectly well with a stick that had some fabric on it, and then they would use that to brush their teeth, and then they would whiten their teeth with urine. If it was good enough for the Romans, I don't know why we have to have some fancy sort of stuff. And if you're

thinking, why would anyone, for heaven's sakes, if you rinse your teeth with urine? Well, it worked for them. However, as much as I admire the Romans, we have made some improvements. Now, let me ask you this. I want you to fill in the blank. Brush, floss, then what? Well, if you didn't say rinse, you may not be getting a complete clean. Yeah, I was so expected. I couldn't even interrupt. I was too excited. It's a key part of your whole health.

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off a mouthwash starter kit, which includes a refillable dispenser and a 90-dose supply of Quip's four-times concentrated formula at getquip.com slash ricochet and the number five. That's spelled G-E-T-Q-U-I-P.com slash ricochet5. Quip, the good habits company. And we thank Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we are obliged to bring back to the podcast, John. He's the ricochet fast feud reviewer par excellence also of course our senior supreme court analyst spare time he's the emmanuel heller professor of law at university of california berkeley and he is also a senior fellow with the american enterprise institute as well as a visiting fellow at the hoover institution

where i'm sure he just drops by all the time and says just visiting and then just you know everyone just waits for this guy to leave. He also co-hosts the Pacific Century podcast with Michael Austin. You cannot follow him on Twitter because he's a sensible man and he is not on Twitter at all. All kidding aside, John, always a pleasure to talk to you. How are you doing today? Great, great. Thanks for having me back.

Well, good. Who canceled, by the way? Didn't somebody cancel? Yeah. Supreme Court starts its term very soon. What should we be looking for? I think this is going to be a great term. You've got three new justices, three Trump justices, and the cases everybody's been waiting for.

One on abortion, one on guns. All we need are drugs and rock and roll, and Rob would be really happy. Hey, John, could I ask first, we want to get to the substance of the cases. As far as I can tell, it's fascinating. The press is framing it as an explosive term. We'll come to all that. But the first thing I noticed is that Judge, Mr. Justice Thomas, during their first session, in-person oral arguments, what was this last week, they've now, instead of just interrupting the counsel who's making an argument and just peppering him with questions from the bench, and for year in and year out, Justice Thomas,

as far as I can recall, only spoke up twice in the last, what, more than two decades since he joined the court. This time he opened the questioning because they've decided that now they're going to go, they're going to question at least for part of the time in order of seniority. And he just question after question after question. Is this a change in his, what's going on? And it sounds to me as though it's a glorious thing if if if mr justice thomas is now a major visible voice for the of course always in chambers but now we get to see him this is great isn't it what's going on yeah this is a great case of giving liberals everything

they ask for and more right they used to complain he said anything. He never asked any questions. Why doesn't he talk more? And now they're going to be sorry that he's changed his mind. Now he's talking all the time, which anybody who knows him and seen him in public outside the court knows he loves to talk. Part of it, this is what you could call the COVID hangover on the Supreme Court. During COVID, they didn't meet in person. And so because it was like here, I actually still don't understand how the three of you keep track of who gets to speak in what order, right? But because you can't see anybody, you had to go to a specific order to ask questions in Zoom world. And so it went in order of seniority. So Justice Thomas always went right after the Chief Justice. And it's like, guess what, Mikey? He likes it. And so now he's decided, I think, to let it loose. And I'm sure he's going to keep asking questions because he got comfortable in the senior. Believe this. Can you believe this, guys? We were all out for his confirmation hearings. Now he is the oldest, longest serving justice on the court.

Not the oldest. Stephen Breyer is still older, isn't he? All right. Yeah, he's the most senior. He's been on the court the longest. And so that means he gets to speak right after the chief justice. If he's in the majority of the court and the chief justice isn't, he gets to assign the opinion. Hopefully that means he'll write more majority opinions. It means that he's really the one who can drive breathe new life into original, setting all that aside, he has the most beautiful voice and a really commanding magnetic presence.

Don't you agree? Actually, Peter, I think. He doesn't have the english accent but so he um i've always i've used to tease him that he's wasting his gifts on the supreme court because he's one of the most compelling speakers i've ever seen you could just go on youtube and see any number of speakers and he's really he's quite mesmerizing when he speaks he has a voice the laugh he's very humble but he has uh often radical things to say so a movie a movie trailer voiceover artist is what you think he is his true calling should have been he's the lilacs of the supreme court

in a world in a world where jurors prudence is John, so I'm trying to frame this right. I'm asking you to do the impossible, which is, you know, which I think is probably a quixotic mission, but we do it anyway. No, it's a conservative at Berkeley. So you have this gigantic drum roll for the next for this upcoming Supreme Court session, I guess, year. How bad is this going to be for Rachel Maddow? You know what I mean? Like, how bad is this going to be?

I mean, I don't mean like, how bad are they going to make it or say it is, but really, ultimately, how bad is it going to be? I feel like, I just, I guess my perspective on the Supreme Court is that, you know, they're not going to, they're not really going to, what's a famous thing, they do read election returns. How bad is it going to be for the left? How disappointing is it going to be for the for the anticipatory right?

What's going to at the end a year from now, what are we going to be saying about the Supreme Court? So, quote, one of my favorite TV shows, Winter is Coming for Rachel maddow and the left because and here's a little anecdote so i was doing a panel at the at berkeley just this week on the supreme court term that was and the one that's coming and the first time in my lifetime from a young law student all the way to so for first time in 30 years all we talked about was what do conservatives think? We did not talk at all, not once, about what liberals thought anymore. This is a radical change since the Warren court. All we ever talk about is liberal theory of this, autonomy that, privacy this, you know, the made-up rights of the Constitution, and judges deciding essentially what's good for us in terms of separation of powers and states.

For the first time, remember, all we talked about was, why does Justice Thomas think this, but Justice Kavanaugh think that? It was all a discussion, even amongst liberal professors, about why are the conservatives agreeing or disagreeing? And nobody cared what Justices Breyer or Kagan or Sotomayor thought anymore. So that's the long-term. Winter's coming. That's going to go on for at least as long as Justice Thomas is on the court, because now we have five, if not six, conservatives. So the argument is going to just be, how do the conservatives build the majority to five? The short term, the thing that's going to get to pull the hair out is abortion rights, even if they're not overturned this term, even if Casey and Roe survive, it's going to be a much, much narrower abortion right.

And it's going to be another effort by conservatives to chip away at Roe, chip away at Roe until there's a point where it can be overturned. And that's, I think, the single dominant issue for liberals. It isn't for conservatives in terms of the Constitution. John, may I ask you to explain stare decisis? And let me give you what's in my head. There was the lead editorial in the New Yorker maybe one or two weeks ago was a defensive row. And I read the whole thing and I thought, oh my goodness, there isn't even an attempt to make a legal argument defending Roe. Zero. And of course, we know that even as legal, as liberal a jurist as the late and sainted to their side, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, put in print that she had doubts about whether

Roe was rightly decided. Cass Sunstein, a leading liberal today. Roe, bad decision. As a legal matter, bad decision. All they seem to have left is it's settled law. It's been half a century. People have lived their lives according to this. And that brings us, I think the central issue will be, or a central issue will be stare decisis, which I don't quite understand. Well, what I'd ask the writers who read the piece you read is, how is anything you say about Roe or Casey different than Plessy versus Ferguson? The case that said segregation was OK. And then why was it OK for the Supreme Court to toss it all out? And basically a few paragraphs in Brown versus Board of Education.

But Peter, yes. Define story decisis. Tell us what you asked. dilemmas of constitutional law in the Supreme Court, which is how, why do you keep faith with past decisions, even when you're convinced they're completely wrong? And we do do that in lots of areas of the law. Now, Justice Thomas, who I clerked for, he, of all the justices, does not really believe in stare decisis. And I think it's really because he's influenced by plessy versus brown you know he's a you know he's a young black kid growing up in the segregated south i can totally understand why he thinks the supreme court should just get it right don't why should you pay any deference to racists on the supreme court who thought it's okay to have a black compartment and a white compartment on a streetcar in New Orleans, which was the facts of Plessy. So, you know, you go in various gradations

beyond that about whether stare decisis is a good idea or not. But in Latin, it just means you stand on what's decided. I should still, you know, James's joke, you know, stare decisis sounds like a Roman hook. Stare decisis is very seductive in the sense that you don't have to re-decide stuff. You can always say, oh, they thought about it. They did it in the past. We don't want to change it. We don't over... Now, here's the central constitutional problem.

The stare decisis is in the world all around us. So, for example, in your everyday lives, most of what you do is decided by state law. That's all controlled by stare decisis, too. The problem is the Constitution doesn't say anything about stare decisis for federal law. And the second thing is it's extremely hard to correct the mistakes of the Supreme Court. So suppose some mistake is made with contract law or an accident here in California. The state legislature can immediately pass a law and fix it. So it's okay for the courts to keep faith with past decisions because it's easy to correct mistakes. If the Supreme Court gets something wrong, you've got to get two-thirds

of the House, two-thirds of the Senate, and three-quarters of the state legislatures to agree to overturn the court. Or you have to have a world where the court can easily overturn its past mistakes. Otherwise, you lock in terrible decisions like segregation forever. So that's, I think, to me, I actually, you know, I tend to agree with Justice Thomas. I think the court should get things right. If the people don't like it, then they can always change the personnel of the court. I don't see why we should let the mistakes of the past govern us today. So on stare decisis, I'm aware, layman that I am, that Justice Scalia held a different view, different in some regard from Justice

Thomas. So what's the, of the six broadly speaking conservative or originalist justices on the court now, I'm including the chief justice, although you may differ with me on that, but of the, let's just put it this way, of the originalist justices on the court right now, if Justice Thomas anchors the skeptical towards stare decisis position, what's the range of opinion towards on stare decisis among the conservatives so i would say gorsuch and elite gorsuch is probably very close to thomas gorsuch is actually quite quite a radical guy and you're going to see that emerge more and more this great believer in natural law for example example, which only Justice Thomas has been and which will call for many things to be overturned.

Then I think Justice Alito, who is very conservative by nature. So he conservatives tend to like stare decisis because it means don't do anything too radical today. You're hemmed in by tradition in the past. And then I would say this is why, you know, Rob was asking about, you know, what's the what's it going to be like for liberals? We don't really know how far the new Trump justices will go. They're all they've all given indications that they are not as respectful of stare decisis as say Justice Scalia was, which means there's going to be more conservative decisions coming out over time across a broad range of issues. The one person who's closest to obeying stare decisis, and again, this gets on to this, what's going to happen, particularly in abortion, is Chief Justice Roberts. I don't think Chief Justice Roberts has any particular sort of love of stare decisis, but it's, I think, the tool he uses to try to lower the stakes and keep the court out of politics. You know, the more you work within the cases of the past, then the more you can say, look, I'm not doing politics. Stop attacking me, Pat Leahy or Barack Obama.

I'm just, you know, I'm just playing within the, you know, the rules, the borders set out by past decisions. Give me a good example how this cut on abortion. So there were these two identical statutes passed by Texas and Louisiana. I think you guys talked about it a few years ago, where the state said, if you're going to do abortions in our state, you have to have admitting privileges to the local hospitals there. The first time this case came up, Chief Justice Roberts voted that the law was okay. It was a reasonable regulation on abortion. He lost. The five justices, Justice Kennedy was still around then.

So the court struck that law down. But Chief Justice Roberts dissented. A few years later, just two years ago, the identical law came back up from a different state, Louisiana. And this time he upheld it, even though he was on record saying he thought the law was fine. This time he struck the law down and he said, I feel like I have to follow the past decisions of the court, even though I'm on record saying I thought it was wrong. If he does that again, you know, I could see him upholding Roe or Casey because of his belief in stare decisis. Plus, he doesn't want the court to be the center of all these political attacks. You know, I'm sure he thinks that if they were to strike down Roe would cause, I mean, it would cause politics to go bonkers and the Supreme Court being the main target in chief. Right. But when you talk about the mistakes of the past, sometimes coming back to haunt us in the present,

a lot of people point to the inevitable resurgence and repetition and reappearance of the McRib sandwich. If they don't like it, people like you who are, of course, big fans of it, you're on the record about that. And, you know, sometimes we wonder how many calories are in that thing. But then there's the sunny optimism of John Yoo that says it's not the calories at all. It's the delicious experience of it. But I got to tell you, calories matter, but there's more to eating and good health than counting your calories. The science is clear. A healthy gut microbiome with a good bacteria that help our bodies process food is key to a healthy lifestyle. But now we're learning that there's a connection between your gut microbiome health and type two diabetes. Our sponsor, Pendulum Glucose Control, is the first and only

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that's some mcgrips he wouldn't be yeah well I do I do I'm a pendulum user and consumer and I do enjoy my pendulum um so because we talked about this right before we went away how openly do the Supreme Court justices talk about those political issues and I guess when we say

a bunch of different ways to say politics right one is to get involved in politics one is like pick a stupid political i mean you know the bush v gore was involved in politics but there really was no way to avoid it it was going to end up there um when you say involved in politics do you mean uh uh deciding something that has a gigantic political ramifications for the country or do you mean as i suspect uh they're going to come for us in the court the court obviously traditionally has a very tenuous uh position in the federal and the government always has it's just it's there we we we obey it because we obey it they don't have a an army um and the last the rob now is like the little angel on the side of bluto budo's head in animal house right and whispering nice things into justice roberts's exactly right but but then

on the other hand john you is the devil saying strike it down but if you are if you are isn't it it's easier for conservatives who are not on the court, just because on a human level, than it is for conservatives who are on the court to do something and to advocate something that might put the court in peril. And we already know what that peril will look like, right? It's going to look like 700 Supreme Court justices by 2027, something like that. Literally packing the court with more justices when you have a chance. And if you're Alito or Thomas or even probably

Supreme Court Justice Roberts, won't you do anything to avoid that? Isn't your institutional loyalty going to be greater than your loyalty to even original intent that's a i mean that that is the so peter asked the first dilemma of the court in terms of the law which is what do you do about stare decisis and you you rob you're asking the central dilemma

all study of constitutional law is going on for the last 60 years. That's my habit. I get right to the point. You get right to the point. Yeah. And that's the fancy phrase we use in the law schools. It's called the counter-majoritarian problem. Of course, because you can't just be normal for five seconds. You have to come up with a thing.

From now on, known as the Rob Long McRib dilemma. Yeah, right. No, but the basic problem is every time the Supreme Court acts, it's essentially blocking the majority. Right. But where does it get the power? Why do five unelected life termed justices get to block 51 or even 100 percent of the country from doing what it wants? It has no democratic root the way the president or Congress do, or the states. So that's the problem, Rob, is how do you, as a court, decide to use that little bit of political capital you have when everyone's going to be against you?

And the only reason they obey you, the people obey you, is because they accept your legitimacy. Alexander Hamilton said the courts do not have the sword, which he said was the executive or will, which the people's will, which is the legislature. All they have is judgment. And all they can ask is that the people voluntarily obey. So this is this is you're right. There's different kinds of politics. There's partisan politics, Republican versus Democrat. I don't think the justices think or talk that way at all. There's ideological politics, conservative versus liberal, which has

gone on at the court from the beginning, because we have different visions of how... What you're talking about is institutional politics, putting aside who's Republican, Democrat, or whoever. How does the court vis-a-vis the other branches preserve its power? And so the way you talk is talked about is the way I think Chief Justice Roberts thinks about it and would probably talk about it, which is and actually, you know, who actually said this in public just a few days ago? I'm sure you didn't read his speech, but he said exactly what you said as Chief Justice Breyer. He gave a speech up at the supreme court and he at harvard law school which is the same thing actually he's one of the Harvard law school and

he said exactly what you said rob he said uh the court just depends on legitimacy our democracy is tenuous we shouldn't don't do anything right okay i'm a i'm a moderate conservative justice you're a very conservative justice. We have this thing. I'm just asking socially how it works in chambers. Do I knock on your door and I say, look, John, you and I know probably Roe is misdecided. And it's a terrible decision, faulty. But you and I both know we can't overturn it because of the other non-legal, non-constitutional, the penumbra, political penumbra, to use a co-opted phrase, around this issue would put the whole thing in jeopardy. What you and I do are robes, the lunch, everything.

And they let the riffraff in this is what the hollywood guy thinks is important about being a justice i also believe they're human i mean is that something that is openly discussed there in chambers privately is that something that they already know each other thinks about and then and they kind of look at each other. Is that how how openly do they as the justices of the Supreme Court say, let's not step in it? Or is it all just kind of glamorized and weasel worded the way you would like to weasel word everything? Can I I would even strengthen I can I can I strengthen Rob's point? It wasn't just as Jackson who said the Constitution is not a suicide pact. And so if you're the moderate conservative, you say we do not have the right to tear the country apart. Justice is safe.

Basically, this in opinions and speeches. Peter mentioned Chief Justice. I mean, Justice Jackson, he made similar comments. They actually say this all the time, but they don't say it specifically that way, right? They'll say the court as an institution depends on legitimacy. We threaten legitimacy when we seem to be political. And if you were a dissenter, if Rob was writing the dissenting opinions here, he would say, you're just taking over an issue that's settled and you're turning it into a political tsunami in the course of center. No one will pay attention to it.

It undermines legitimacy of the court to do other important things like things that are really unpopular, like defending the rights of suspects from the police or standing for free speech where someone wants to say something unpopular. So that's one. The second thing is, yeah, I could totally see exactly Rob's scenario happening. You know, I'm sure Rob's writing the screenplay right now for the very popular miniseries on the Supreme Court. Yeah, really popular. And how it decides cases.

Don't hold your breath, you. So, you know, first of all, the one interesting thing, this goes to your book, the justices, I think of anybody in Washington, do their own work and they're building. They're all in one building. They only have four assistants each and they're all on the same floor. So it's extremely easy for Chief Justice Roberts to tiptoe down to Justice Kavanaugh, who I think is the person he would talk to and make these arguments to go into his office and say, look, Brett, you and I think Roe is wrong. A lot of liberal scholars have said it's wrong. But if we're going to overturn Roe, we have to do it slowly,

gradually, not all at once. And that way we preserve the court's legitimacy because we just chip away at a faulty structure and not trigger some kind of nuclear bomb off. And the court will see it. And if they want to change our direction, then they can put new people into office who can appoint new justices and we'll get the message. And that's actually not an illegitimate way of thinking, I think, for the court. The illegitimate thing would be for Chief Justice Roberts to come in and say, you know, Brett, if we strike down Roe, the Democrats are going to win the House and the Senate and increase their majorities, and then they're going to pack the court. You know, thinking about in terms of Republican versus Democrat,

I don't think they think that way. And I think that would be illegitimate. But, you know, wondering about when to, you know, when to strike down, when to ignore stare decisis is a decision that involves the independence of the courts and the long-term future judicial review so just can i ask you just historically the historical rhyming history and then i'm done right platzi versus ferguson separate but equal um the irony of course is that uh uh the the plaintiff who defended i guess i can't remember who which which was wasn't arguing um that uh uh that segregation was wrong really he was arguing that he should be considered white which is sort of a very louisiana saying it was irrational yes he had he was i'm i think seven

yeah i'm white so it's okay to have it separate it It's okay to be segregated, but I shouldn't be there. And then overturned in 1954, essentially, by Brown v. Board. Is that kind of fair? And Brown v. Board could be overturned because it was sort of – stop me. I'm asserting these things that could be wrong. those were regional issues that if you were a northeastern liberal or a west coast liberal because like you didn't really it wasn't it wasn't urgent for you this was a southern issue not a national issue isn't that i would stop you there as being wrong because the point was wow that's fast all of us as citizens we have an individual right yeah yeah from the government using race yeah yeah, yeah, okay. It's a national issue. All right, I get you. Okay, fine.

But just follow me here for one second. Individual rights, if you want to go there, fine. All right, all right. The Bill of Rights, fine. All right, go ahead. Just Rose overturned tomorrow, say. Yep. Abortion's not going to be illegal in massachusetts or minnesota or virginia probably uh probably not illegal in florida probably not illegal in you know new mexico

and arizona probably um we're just talking about a handful of states where to be illegal everywhere else would be a fight maybe not even texas texas would be a fight um if you're a supreme court justice wouldn't i respond to uh chief justice roberts in my office and sit down there and tell me this is like well what are you talking about we're talking about a few states like it if nothing i mean it wouldn't be this gigantic uh a tsunami which would result actually impacting the court with a bunch of liberals it would actually maybe it would be the way out of this not um and maybe that is what the court should be doing is try finding a way out of this thicket so that everyone feels like the issue is being decided properly i mean is that completely naive no that's that's, in fact, I think you put your finger on how they got into it and then how to get

themselves out of it. They got into it because of Brown, because there was a majority in the country that wanted to have colorblind schooling. They didn't want segregation, but there was a region of the country, the South, which had a lock on the Senate and could filibuster, they filibustered every civil rights law there was. And basically what the Supreme Court did in Brown was nationally popular, was actually what the majority of the people wanted against the region. That, I think, led the court into this trap of becoming more and more energetic, taking over more and more issues, taking over more and more issues where what they were doing was kind of popular, but the, and this goes to your point,

how to get out of it. It created this pathology of taking away from the political process, a lot of the important issues of our lives, abortion. It's not just abortion, religion, the place of religion in public life, race, you know, affirmative action, guns, you know, booze, you go down, free speech, what are we going to do with social media, go down, down, down. Those have all been taken over by the courts, which means that a lot of people who care about those issues because we care about our politics cannot affect our society's decisions other than by pressuring the courts and who serves on them. So the way out of it, I think, Robert, is to return them to politics. Here's a good example. When it comes

to Roe versus Wade versus abortion versus non-abortion as policy, courts can't compromise. They have to decide on principle. Not only do you take these issues away from politics, but you remove the ability for deliberation and negotiation and bargaining, which maybe everybody leaves politics half satisfied and half pissed off. Maybe that's a good bargain. So maybe the answer is if the courts pull out, as you say, a lot of these decisions where the court would reverse past decisions that Peter was suggesting and get rid of them, not false stare decisis. It doesn't mean abortion is banned throughout the country. It doesn't. It just means it goes back to the states, like the death penalty, like euthanasia, like a lot of life and death decisions. And then you and me and Peter and James, we can negotiate and bargain and argue about in politics,

and then we accept the outcome in a way we don't when it's just imposed on us by five unelected lifetime judges it seems to me so that's the way out is the court by getting out of this business will actually i think make its longer term survival more assured john how will i'm sorry to close out the the segment on on um the mississippi case on abortion what's your prediction how will they handle it so i i uh so i have a very liberal dean at the berkeley here and we're doing our panel shocking i i bet him a dollar that the court would not overturn roe because that's from trading places right right one dollar so i bet him a dollar that the court would not overturn Roe. It might

uphold the Mississippi law. She says abortions after 15 weeks are prohibited, or it might cut the law back a little bit. But I don't think they're, this goes to Rupp's point, I don't think they're institutionally ready to unleash the political firestorm that would erupt if they overturn Roe all at once. So I think what they'll do is they'll chip away at it. There'll be more decisions to come where they further narrow the right to abortion until maybe five or six years from now when they will really decide. But when you win those dollars in a bet, don't just waste them on a McRib sandwich. John, you need to invest them. And when people think about investing, they think about charitable giving as well. Yes, you've got money. You want it to do good,

right? Well, I'm happy to tell you that we're sponsored today by Donors Trust, the principled and tax-friendly way to simplify your charitable giving. The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently reported that apart from the pandemic, fewer middle-class Americans are giving to charity. The Economist, moreover, reports charitable giving in America is being dominated by wealthy liberal donors who are driving the agenda in Washington, D.C. Do you feel called upon to help buck that trend and give to the causes that foster freedom, strengthen our communities? If so, Donors Trust can help. If you want to grow your charitable impact, open a donor-advised fund with Donors Trust and promote the organizations that are going to bat for everyday families at the local, state, and federal level. A donor advice fund is like your own charitable investment account. With a fund, you can manage your charitable giving, but in a way that's smart,

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China, Taiwan, it's been a week of provocations, lots of invasions of their technical airspace. We had a sub collide with something in the South China Sea. Gosh, I wonder what that could have been. What's your take on what's shaping up? Is this Xi just attempting to change the subject from domestic problems? Are they exploiting Joe Biden's possible weakness? I don't know how many are going to look at the guy and say that he's not at the top of his game and ready to respond in a second, but, you know, who knows what they see or both. I'm glad you asked me that, James. This is much more fun to me than the Supreme Court, which is one thing I think we make a mistake of in the united states sometimes we don't put ourselves in the shoes of the enemy or our rivals enough so if you're she what are you doing right you want taiwan you don't want to have a war over taiwan you know war could threaten the

stability of your regime kill lots of your own citizens destroy a lot of your military the united states is still far more powerful militarily than China. So what do you do? You're gradually, step by step, pushing farther and farther to see if you can get it without going to war ever. And so it's the same strategy they pursued in the South China Sea. First, they build little islands. We don't do anything about it. Then they put people on the islands. We don't do anything about it. Then they put people on the islands. We don't do anything about it. Then they put, now they have, right, missile installations and airfields on those islands. We still didn't do anything about it. Now they're using ships, their naval ships, to drive other countries' vessels out of the area, unless they get their permission. They'll do the same thing with Taiwan, right? They are, everything they're doing is just testing

whether we're willing to, whether, it's not whether we have the resources to stop them. We do. It's whether we have the will, the political will to do it. This is actually quite, you know, so people, okay, Rob's really going to like this. So, Dr. Strangelove, one of the great movies, actually makes fun of a great strategist named Herman Kahn, who essentially invented the field of nuclear strategy and deterrence. Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack. Everything China is doing is what he would have predicted. When you go to war, it's a combination of whether you have the resources, but whether you have the political will, too.

Nobody really knows what political will on the other side is. So what you do is you test it and you keep testing it. And what Xi has seen in Afghanistan is that the Biden administration doesn't have a lot of political will to use the military to defend its interests. It's seeing it can fly hundreds of these bombers around Taiwan. We don't do anything about it. It can start playing games in the Taiwan Straits and deploying the Navy. We talk a lot, but we're not doing a whole lot about it. So this gives the Chinese the sense that they can take Taiwan without even a shot being fired. We didn't do anything about Hong Kong either. If they fail to sign a meaningless climate accord we will be really cross we just we just handed back the uh chief uh you know the chief executive of huawei uh right in exchange for

hostages if you were the chinese everything you've seen on our part other than the sub deal with the australians everything we've seen everything you would have seen as a Chinese strategist on American part is we're not going to fight over Taiwan. So why not gradually come to take it peacefully? Hong Kong's different than Taiwan though, isn't it? I mean, Hong Kong, they were there. They had infiltrated the institutions. They had everything that they could just simply pump and pump and pump. And all of a sudden, US security state arises. That's not the situation with taiwan they have to go there they have to climb on the beach they have to enter the city now what i would do is what they've been doing which is what they did in hong kong which is i would buy off the elites so if you look at the economy of taiwan a lot of these big technology

companies right they really make the products in mainland china right they just buy off the wealthy companies and families famously foxcon, Foxconn is a Taiwan. Yeah. Right. They're doing exactly the same thing. Again, China, I would think, doesn't want to have a war against Taiwan when it'll just fall into their lap in a few years just by pursuing this gradual strategy. Peter has an interesting point. What if China gave us a few meaningless things that Biden really wants, like a climate change bill or a trade deal, some reduction of tensions, helping with North Korea and Iran in exchange for, yeah, let us make more encroachments into Taiwan. That's what I would do if I were the Chinese.

And then the people who are pursuing the strategy, they've with no no defeats yet the chinese are succeeding that to me the significance of hong kong is it shows by contrast as you rightly pointed out if you're watching the united states and beijing you by now have concluded the biden administration is unwilling to pay any price what does hong kong show they are willing to pay a price. Moving into Hong Kong cost them a lot in their international reputation. It's hard to imagine that this submarine deal with Australia would have come off if they hadn't moved into Hong Kong. And it also, I haven't seen figures on this, but it must have complicated the capital inflows into China. 60% of foreign investment in China ran through Hong Kong institutions. They at least risked reducing that inflow, but they've now shown the world, look, when it comes to a choice

between free markets and democracy on the one hand and control by the Chinese Communist Party on the other, we will take control even if it costs us. Well, all right. That's interesting. That's a sign of their political will. Correct. That's the point I'm trying to make. We've shown that we lack will.

They've demonstrated to the whole world that they're moving. They have will. The hopeful story on the United States part is why don't we try the same thing we did to the Soviets during the Cold War, which is contain them. The hopeful story on the United States part is, why don't we try the same thing we did to the Soviets during the Cold War, which is contain them? We don't aggressively try to reverse what's going on,

but things in China are unstable. Things are turning against them. People say their demographics are going to be a disaster in a few years. Their economy is built on fraudulent loans and state-owned businesses, and it can't keep going on very long. And so rather than trick – this is people who say – so the comparison – I'm sorry, let me rephrase it. The comparison is to World War I. These guys are like the Kaiser's Germany. They want to go to war in this window where they are ascendant and the United States is declining.

Even in the long term, we're going to be fairly stable and China could really go down in the dumps. And so the people designed the Cold War strategy. Learn the lesson, just contain them, let them burn themselves out, let them internally collapse, just defensively prevent them from expanding. And over the long run, freedom and free markets and the American democratic system will win. And we should have more confidence. And that's what pains me when I hear Joe Biden saying, oh, we got to do things like China. That's what really worries me because the thing that the people during the Cold War had, I think, was a confidence that the American system would win out over the long run. I think I offer a different example, a different thing.

The Cold War was about communism in the United States, an ideology that the Russians were going to take, you know, take Eastern Europe and make it all of Europe. And then they were going to we were going to vote for commun here, and it was going to be a giant communist world. I feel like for China today, the argument isn't World War I, it's World War II. I mean, if they had a choice, they would want a greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere. And the mistake the Japanese made wasn't a greater east asia co-prosperity sphere it was pearl harbor so what would happen if the japanese had not attacked pearl harbor um i don't know but i i guarantee you we wouldn't have been landing in the philippines we wouldn't have been landing in iwo jima none of that we would have you know there'd be no battle of midway

but there would be nothing we we weren't fighting and we were perfectly happy to let uh an imperial backward um nation become the area the regional hegemon and aren't we today the same I mean is anybody really saying oh get today the same? I mean, is anybody really saying, oh, get back to bed? Oh, we have to draw. Anybody really worried about the borders of China? I mean, one thing is about China is they have no interest in bombing Pearl Harbor. I'm almost 100% certain they're not going to do that. There's interest.

The latest historical research, it's very interesting, says that actually FDR wanted there to be a war in the Pacific first, because what he really wanted to do is get into a war with Europe. Yeah, they both said that. Stuff about, oh, did they know Pearl Harbor was going to happen or not? That's like, it's beyond the point. FDR did a lot of aggressive things against China to provoke them. I mean, Japan, cutting off oil, steel. If you look at the map, the Philippines aren't all that far from China. We have huge military and army bases there, very far from the United States.

That's one difference. But the other difference, Rob, is that back then, Asia was not the future of the world economy the way it is now. So you're right. We wouldn't have cared back then who was in charge of Korea or the Philippines or Thailand or Indonesia. But now you can see the weight of the economic world is already moving to Asia if it's not already safely moved there. Now, a lot of our economy is going to grow because of our relations with those Asian countries that, you know, 100 years ago weren't all that important now it's western europe that's kind of in the decline and i see why i could go on and length about that you know western europe you know they're important but they're not as economically important for the for our future as you know those populations and resources in asia and it's an area where the united states for the investment of not that much resources, had enormous success during the Cold War.

The way this is going, this is going to turn into the first two-part weekly podcast in Ricochet history. But I have to ask one more question. No, no, why do you have to ask that question? Because we're going on and on and on. But I was like, we're going on and on and on. And I can tell, I'm looking, I have Rob and James up there, little boxes on my screen right now. Neither one of them is remotely bored with you. Any more than usual.

Any more than usual. Excuse me. So here's the question. So what's at stake? We have this conflict. I'm perfectly willing to call it a new Cold War. It differs in many regards from the struggle with the Sovietviet union but they're communist and we're not as rob rightly pointed out the soviets actually they remained i checked on this the other day uh they remained formally committed it was in writing in important soviet

documents they remained formally committed to a worldwide communist revolution until the day the soviet union ceased to exist formally speaking i'm told so so to the chinese so are the chinese but nobody really believes they take it all that seriously whereas the soviets had admirers and friends across america there was a communist party there was a socialist party lord knows they believe their own bull they believe in english bull they in english departments across america there's still soviet sympathizers right and um and history departments the chinese have none of that okay so what's at stake if they don't want a worldwide communist revolution suppose they win the cold war what does that mean for us?

What's really at stake to our way of life? So the Chinese don't have an, I don't think they're Leninists the way, right, as you said, the Soviets are. But they do seem to be acting as if it's almost like, you know, we used to say America wanted a world that was safe for democracy, right? That's sort of the justification for wanting other countries to be democratic. The Chinese seem to have the same idea, but it's, they want the world to be safe for dictators, right? They don't want to have countries all around them that are democracies. They want to seem to have a system, right? They are supporting all around the world, countries that are slipping into authoritarianism, right? They support Iran, they support Venezuela, which is the violation of our Monroe Doctrine, by the way.

And the area they're pushing forward is Central Asia or all these countries where democracy really hasn't taken strong roots. So that's the longer-term problem for us is China, I think, would like to have a world of authoritarian governments. And if you want to do that, then the United States and Europe are problems there, you know, because we have the opposite view, right? We think the world is made safer because of democracy. So I think there is this, it's not really ideological, like there's no fancy Marxist theory behind it.

I think it's just, but there is power. It's a difference. Both countries are not just so we remember there were these they're like kissinger and people like this they like to think nations are just uh billiard balls right they're just balls bouncing around it doesn't matter what's inside the ball that's the classic theory of foreign relations international but actually both united states the united states has always been the rob like the United States has always been the radical country, right? We want to change other people's governments, right? We want to make them. We never accepted that. We always want to change what's in the bill inside the ball, too. We want Western Europe, Japan, anybody we can make, we want them to be a democracy. China, interesting, is the same way. They want other countries to be authoritarian dictatorships with this surveillance state and a command and control economy. I think it's quite swap the boot for the good sneaker.

John, we could go on for another nine hours and I know you'd be game for it, but we got to go. And so we thank you so much. It's been great. And we'll have you back again as soon as possible. Oh, thank you guys.

It's been great. I'm off now to McDonald's get the McRibs coming out in a few weeks. They're bringing it back. Are you going to camp out? Yeah, there's lines. Come on. Don, you handle some Supreme Court China. Next time you're back, let's do some fusion, shall we?

Fusion? Yeah, just let's solve nuclear energy. Oh, I thought you were talking about Asian fusion. No. I was like, oh, spam. Finally, we're going to talk about spam sushi at last. We've never had a show about spam. Spam sushi.

Cut him off. Cut him off cut him off right now blue yeti i am from the state of of spam of course hormel spam it was invented here so i have a little moral standing to be proud about that it was funny if those of you who are not watching this in the zoom cast when john showed up he was not in a suit and tie which is his normal mufti he just had a plain, fine shirt open to the collar. It was almost like John was in incognito mode because we didn't recognize him. Yeah, incognito mode. You ever browsed incognito mode? It's probably not as incognito as you think. Why would it be? Incognito mode, like the Chrome browser itself, is a Google product,

and Google's made its fortune by tracking your movements online. There's even a $5 billion class action lawsuit against the company in California where it's accused of secretly collecting user data. Google's defense, quote, incognito does not mean invisible, end quote. So, yeah, well, how do you actually make yourself as invisible as possible online? You use ExpressVPN like we do. Turns out that even in incognito mode, your online activity still gets tracked and data brokers still get to buy and sell your data. Great. One of these data points is your IP address, right? Data harvesters use your IP to uniquely identify you and your location. But with ExpressVPN, your connection gets rerouted through an

encrypted server and your IP address is masked. Every time you connect to ExpressVPN, your connection gets rerouted through an encrypted server and your IP address is masked. Every time you connect to ExpressVPN, you get a random IP address shared by many other ExpressVPN customers. That makes it harder for third parties to identify you or to harvest your data. Best of all, ExpressVPN is super easy to use. No matter what device you're on, your phone, your laptop, or your smart TV, all you have to do is tap one button and you've got instant protection. So if you really want to go incognito and protect your privacy, secure yourself with a number one rated VPN. Visit expressvpn.com slash ricochet and get three extra months for free. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash ricochet. Go to

expressvpn.com slash ricochet to learn more. Did I mention three extra months free? Yeah. We thank ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Guys, before we go, there's, of course, the whole penumbra of emanations of privacy don't seem to exist when you are a cinema senator and you are heading into the loo. Then, as the president reminded us, that being followed into the bathroom by hectoring protesters happens to everybody and uh and it's just part of the process now is that right is is this the news i mean of course being ridiculous back in the trump administration people were advised to follow them into restaurants

and put it in their face but um what i it's amusing is that they don't think that these increasing definitions of incivility are going to ever come back to haunt them. Somebody was protesting outside of a school board members and David French was wagging his finger because we can't go there. But they've gone there. They've camped up there. They've taken a mortgage on there. And I don't ever see that change in the near term do you well no i mean you you you as i said at the beginning like you if you believe if you take as your you know give it as a given that kristin cinema is single-handedly thwarting the will of the people through some bizarre uh extra constitutional slight of hand rather than simply votes um then yeah you got to follow everywhere and if you take as your as a given that this

three trillion dollar uh package to spending bills um are the difference between life and death that if you vote no for them then people will die and if you vote yes for them then you will be giving life to people then yeah you got to follow something you gotta follow them to the bathroom follow them everywhere my god it's like it's a life-saving bill without it people will die if on the other hand like most americans you think what are you talking about it's like this is government spending it's going to be a lot of it's going to be poor and useless some it's never going to happen some it's going to be thwarted some it's going to be voted out in two years.

This is stupid. It's, you know, we're politicking here. Then that just looks insane. It is insane. It looks insane. And I think it, yeah. And it is insane, by the way. It's an insane thing to do. And the idea that somehow Kyrsten Sinema is going to pay

for it by losing the progressive democrats in arizona is kind of crazy like that's what i sort of said on my little weird streaming msnbc show it's like it you understand some people disagree with you like and those people a lot of them live in arizona like that's i don't know why that's like that's not news like the trick is to persuade not to there you people who disagree with you not pretend they don't exist not wish them in the cornfield somebody was it was actually was it one of you guys was it john fund somebody was ran into kristin cinema at a conference somewhere i can't remember the background but it was a conservative one of somewhere. I can't remember the background, but it was

a conservative, one of my guys, I can't remember now who told me this story and there she was, and they chatted a little bit. And my, the person telling the story had announced that he was conservative on this position, this position and this position. And she replied, Oh, you sound just like my dad. In other words, you're words, you sound like a human being to me. I don't agree with you, but you sound like a member of my own family. I can get along with people like you because I have all my life. And that is not, you must die, you're evil. It's a totally different point of view.

Listen, I think I would disagree with her on a whole list of issues myself but she's a good politician she understands the basic point of politics which is not only all the voters but all the office holders are human beings come on let's let's figure out a way to get to live together also that's the system that's what exactly what you're that that there's no around getting around that. I mean, I was finally like, well, you ought to see how the sausage is made. Like, that is literally the Constitution, is this complicated recipe for sausage. And the bedrock foundational truth of it is you're not going to get what you want.

You're just not. And even if what you want is great and perfect, you're not going to get what you want you're just not and um even if what you want is great and perfect it's not you're not going to do that you're going to get some weird regional adjustments all across the board and you're just going to have to swallow and people have a hard time depending on where they are have a hard time and i think people have the hardest time when they have the worst hand. Like the Democrat, I mean, the idea that progressive Democrats see their position in the Senate as powerful when it's a 50 50 Senate is like, no, no, this is the alarm bell should be like, how do we make a deal? How do we get this done rather than like, how do I hold out for what I really want? But what planet are you living on? That's not the time now.

I'm not saying that won't be the time. I can see a time when the Democrats have a huge majority in the House and a huge majority in the Senate and a liberal Democrat in the White House. God forbid. I can see that. And then they get anything they want. But now it's not the time. And I just find it baffling that that elemental math is so difficult. You want to increase your majority, go out and run, you know?

We won't have a problem if we have a national divorce, because then they'll be over there, we'll be over here, and everybody on either side will agree completely with what they do. There will be no segmentation of either audience, there will just be nothing but great unanimity, and that'll be fantastic. Which is amusing to anybody who's gone to a church that has 17 members, and you find that there's oneay there's 14 on this side and three on this side because they've split over some issue of theology or jello salad or something it's human beings nature to be contentious no matter how homogenous it may look from the outside uh homogeneity aside we're done and we would like to thank everybody listening to the show we'd like to thank quip and pendulum and donors trust and express vp. You can support them.

You get great stuff and you support us as well. And also take a minute or nine to leave that five-star review of an Apple podcast. We were number like 62 on the political podcasts last week or something like that, which is good. Except we need to be up in the 50s. We need to be up in the 40s. You can help us do it. Thanks to everybody. Peter, Rob, we'll see everyone in the comments at Ricochet 4.0.

Next week, boys. Next week. My sweet embraceable you. Embrace me. You irreplaceable you. Just one look at you, my heart grew tipsy in me. You and you alone bring out the many charms about you. Above all, I want my arms around you. Don't be a naughty baby. Come to me, come to me My sweet embrace

Of you Ricochet! Join the conversation. guitar solo I love all Yeah, many charms About you I said, Governor, you don't know who I am, but we're scheduled to be on a podcast next week. And he said, oh, really?

And I said, I'm sure you probably don't. Your staff was scheduled. You'll probably be told about an hour before. He said, no, no, they all have everything on my schedule has to get approved by me. What's the what's the podcast? And I said, Ricochet. And he said, oh, yeah, I know Ricochet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm looking forward to that one. Come to me, come to me My sweet embrace Above you Starry Decisus always sounds like the name of a Roman hooker. Or an exotic dancer, maybe.

No, it's General Maximus' girlfriend.