The Ricochet Podcast - Pirates Of The Caribbean

Episode Date: November 16, 2014

Live from Dazzles Lounge on the MS Allure of the Seas, it’s a live Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long, James Lileks, and Jonah Goldberg (sitting in for a landlocked Peter Robinson). Our guests on this floating version of the show: Col. Allen West, National Review Editor Charles W. Cooke, and Commentary Editor-In-Chief John Podhoretz. Arrrr! Music from this week’s episode: Rock The Boat by The Hues... Source

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which is not so much a ship as it is a floating principality. We're also brought to you by, Well, if you wander around the dock From time to time here Around the ship Around the place where your fellow citizens Are basting the words Well, as you observe the Hirsute dorsal portions of some people

The words hairy and shave Might come to mind So we're brought to you by Harry's Shave And of course the coupon code Ricochet will get you $5 off If you go to harrysshave.com And you will when this is all done And we all have fast, speedy Internet access.

Peter Robinson can't be with us today. He's a lover, so we have, of course, in his stead the two master raconteurs, guys whose quality of their wit is matched only by the perspicacity of their insight, Rob Long and Jonah Goldberg. Thank you. So, Jonah, how are you doing this morning? How are you doing today? Oh, I feel like a million pesos.

I was outrageously over-served last night and heads will roll. Guys, I want to ask you a question. I would just like to say that had I known we were going to be raised on a platform and on high stools, I would not have worn shorts. I apologize.

Although we are attractively backlit, so I think we're just silhouettes. There's a Sharon Stone moment coming up for Robbie. Maybe I just can't leave her this way. You're welcome. You're welcome, America. You know, this ship is probably registered in Liberia. And I was just thinking, if a storm comes and knocks this ship and four or five other of its ilk to the bottom of the seas,

and all records are lost because an EMP destroys all the electronic records, and 3,000 years later archaeologists find these vessels, they will conclude that Liberia was the richest and most powerful nation on the Earth. There will be rumors of the great fabled lost civilization of Liberia. So I have to ask you guys, of course, nobody wants to hear about anybody else's vacations. Studies have proven that. But there is a sociological...

And yet you write about yours often. Often as much as possible, under the illusion that they do. But there is a sociological take on this, and I'd like to hear what both of you think of this enormity, this product of American technology. Dutch. Jonah? You like that?

Thank you, I appreciate that. Look, I think this is I think I said this the other night, I think that when in 10 years, when we're all trying to claw out a meager existence eating cockroaches and living in caves, we will look back on this boat and say, we should have known then that it couldn't last.

And it does have this sort of, you know, it's funny, we were talking about this last night. It would be great if they did a modern day version of the Titanic. Because I would love to know if if the steel drum band would say, no, let's play as we go down with the ship. Near my God to thee, with a calypso beat. Near my God to thee, mon. I think the whole environment here is the dream journal version of communism, right? I mean, everybody's living together in a space.

We have the tragedy of the commons has been averted on Central Park. No one's working, right? No one's working. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. From each according to his buffet and to each according to his little wheelie thing. If you want to live a deluxe or more deluxe kind of life, you can. It's a surcharge. And there's a slight, you know, I think there's a slight judgment there.

Like, oh, this isn't good enough for you. You need to go to Giovanni's table. But it's all, you know, this is what they imagine it's going to be, right? Everybody in leisure wear, listening to people exhort them during the day, and then forced – when they ring the bell at night and they're wherever during the day and they tell you insistently, it's time for bingo now. I feel like that's what they imagine. That's what they imagine. But what capitalism produces is the antithesis

of the Titanic era, where the lowliest person on this boat has food, wealth, comfort available to them that the hottest person on the Titanic did not. And there's no below decks full of colorful Irish immigrants leading authentic lives doing jigs, right? We don't know.

I've been there. No, I have done it too. You didn't buy the package, right? We don't know. I've been there. I've been there. No, I have done it too. You didn't buy the package though, the Irish Jewish package. But no, I think it's an interesting extended metaphor, right? Because at the same time, the fantasy of what communism is like is all of this, right? Forced and scheduled happiness 24 hours a day. And the reality of communism is what the poor bastards who run the boat have to live with. They're sleeping

in these tiny, cramped, steamy, hot quarters where they share some hammock with three other guys. And they get one day off every month. And so it's a study in contrast. That it is. Yes, my steward

last night, it was formalite, of course, as you know, and I walked out wearing my official mufti for the banquet, and he said, even I am formal to clean the toilet. And he laughed. He laughed because he's making good money for him. I think he laughed because he imagined your head dangling from his fist. When the revolution comes and they maraud through here with John, I just want to know publicly to all the people who work on the ship,

I'm with you. Secretly, I'm with you. I'm trying to change the system from within. I have nothing to do with these one percenters. You're going to leave all the right doors unlocked when the time comes. Trust me. We'll have a code in Tagalog, I promise. We should say, before we continue on and get to the seriousness here,

this podcast is brought to you by Ricochet.com. Anybody members of Ricochet here? I see some. All right. That's good. If you are a member, we thank you. We are pleased and honored to have you as members along with us if you are not you can go to ricochet.com

and check us out it's the fastest growing most interesting and civil conversation between and among the center right on the web we believed early on that the only way we're all gonna get along and figure out how to start winning the country back is if we start talking to each other

the only way we can start talking to each other is if we have civil rules of discourse. That's what we did. So it's there. Check it out. We also have this great daily blast, which gives you kind of a preview of the day's news and a preview of the next day's news from our perspective, which is free to sign up for. And it will infest your inbox every morning. And that's the gateway drug. You'll like it, and then you'll think, I better just – we're just going to give them some money. That's the gateway drug.

You'll like it, and then you'll think, we're just going to give them some money. So then you sign up. Moving on. What Rob doesn't mention is that the great thing about Ricochet is that you have to pay to comment. Now get that. Understand that.

What a beautiful, brilliant business model these guys came up with. And since you have, what's the term you use? Skin in the game. Skin in the game. Nobody pays, you know, whatever. Blistered, after this blistered, tanned, peeling skin in the game. Yeah. So that everybody feels invested in this.

And the comments are absolutely wonderful. And they are civil, as you know. Right now, Charlie Cook is seething over there. Why? Because that is the definition of not free speech. Well, Charlie Cook will be brought up to defend that proposition in just a little bit, but first we'd like to bring up our first guest who needs no introduction whatsoever,

Alan West. Ladies and gentlemen. Hot mic. Hot mic. That's never a good thing in the military when you get a hot mic. That's right. I got a question. I had a great conversation yesterday with Bing West, who's here in the audience. That's my older cousin. That's right.

And he said something really interesting to me, and I wonder if you agree or disagree. Sorry? My mic? It's not okay of all of the eligible young people in America for the armed forces really 75 percent of them wouldn't qualify so we're talking about 25 percent of young people of those 25 percent are I think all in only one percent make it should we be worried about the culture? Yeah, you should absolutely be worried about the culture because I remember growing up, and I was from the inner city of Atlanta, Georgia. We would want a bench press. You could not make us come inside. I mean, we wanted to stay out as long as the sun was

out and maybe even after that. We grew up, when I went down south Georgia to visit the grandparents, we'd go out in the woods to hunt and fish and all this type of stuff. But you don't see that nowadays. It was so amazing was that as I got to the level of being a battalion commander, some of the young recruits that were coming in, and they would struggle to run two miles. And we had lowered the standards of basic training. It was a mill to get people out. You've got to run two miles and we had lowered the standards of basic training just it was it was a mill to get people out gonna run two miles what is this well yeah I mean you want to catch the enemy if he's trying to get I

guess I guess well you know me does it count does it count if you just make your character and Call of Duty run two miles no no no no and see that's one of the incredible things about culture now is that kids sit around they have the strongest thumbs but they don't have the strongest bodies. But are they smart enough? Well, and that's the other challenge. Now that you have moved toward a very high-tech military, you find that they don't have that level of education. I know a lot of people are talking about legalizing marijuana, but guess what?

That's a disqualifier because we don't have people in the military. If you come up hot on a urinalysis test, Joe Biden's son, we don't want you. OK. And so when you have this culture that, you know, people say, let's legalize drugs, let's do all these things. You're not going to be able to serve because our profit loss margin is not in dollars. It's in lives. Okay, so the pushback is, well, we don't need more people. We just need better, smarter weapons. No, no, no.

There was a general that I know very well, and maybe Bing West remembers him, General Cavazos, and he borrowed an old phrase that said, quantity has a quality all its own. And when you're going to fight someone, you don't want to have a fair fight. As a matter of fact, there was a Marine First Sergeant, Bing taught me this when I was down at Camp Lejeune. He said, if you ever find yourself in a fair fight, it's all because your tactics suck. So I want to have more than the other guy has. And I think that, you know, when

even Colin Powell, you know, we did Operation Desert Shield, Desert Storm. It was about pummeling the other guy. It was about having an overwhelming force and there is an aspect of technology but the bottom line comes down to a young man or young woman that has to go into close combat with the with the enemy that you have to impose your will on the bad guy and you can't do that from 30,000 feet so do we do we do we end up then like ancient Rome, importing a Hun class that we later give citizenship and land to? No, that is absolutely horrible. As a matter of fact, when the president, I think it was about a month and a half ago,

he said that he was going to do by executive order to allow illegal immigrants to be able to enlist in the Army. I don't want people to enlist in the Army whose basic premise of being in this country was that they disrespected the rule of law of the Constitution and now you're gonna ask them to raise their right hand and say they're gonna support and defend it that's insidious that's hypocrisy well the president raised his hand and said that to it we know how that's worked out I thought he raised his foot all right so if you're worried about the physical requirements but the mental requirements, what about the sheer patriotic requirements? It's interesting, John, you said something to me, and we were walking to the beach and

he said, he's a professor at law school at Cal, UC Berkeley, at Bolt. Bolt Hall is I think one of the top ten law schools, the top five law schools. These are smart kids, right? They've already got a BA. They've already gone to college. His first-year law students, he was astonished at what they don't know about... They haven't read the Articles of Confederation. They haven't read the Federalist Papers. They don't really know what the Constitution says in

and out, the difference between the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They don't know any of that stuff. So he says his first law school class, first-year law school class, is mostly Civics 101. I'm just stuck in the image of you and John, you walking along the beach, the sun setting. Does it help that it's a nude beach? Don't ask, don't tell. Okay. That's a long name. I'm just stunned you were ever away from the craps table that long. It was hard to get him away from that. It was hard to get him away. Well, you know, the interesting thing is that America will always produce the next generation of guardians.

You know, when you look at myself, the reason why I came into the military, and I first started wearing a uniform in 1976 in high school, junior ROTC as a sophomore, because my father served in World War II. My father talked to me about, you know, the greatness of being able to serve this nation, and he was there in combat. My older brother served with Bing West as a Marine at Khe Sanh, and he talked to me about service, sacrifice, and commitment. And I remember, you know, when we went to see him graduate at Parris Island and the amount of pride that I had watching him on that parade field, and then also the sorrow that I felt for him when he came back from Vietnam and the way he was treated when he threw his Marine class alphas

down at the bottom of the closet and I hung him up because that's what he meant to me. And so it was very simple when my mother and father looked at me and said, we want to have the first officer in our family because dad was a corporal, brother was a lance corporal, and that was too easy. That's why I went off to the University of Tennessee, and I knew that the whole purpose of being there, not so much about the bachelor's degree, I had to get that commission. And the bachelor's degree was the means to get that commission so that I could be that first officer. And 31 July 1982, I will never forget when my mother and father on either side of me pinned those gold bars on me and the tears that they had in their eyes.

But now, after my 22 years of service the fourth generation my nephew is following along my footsteps he's a paratrooper he's an artillery officer as a matter of fact his right shoulder combat patch is the exact same unit that i served in as a brigade operations officer that's you know it's not the patriotism is there's there in the legacy and the lineage that we pass down since the time of the minute man asked him to call at Lexington and Concord. We will always have that. And so some, you know, I always tell people in Isaiah 6, 8, it says, whom shall go? Whom shall we send? And Isaiah said, here I am, O Lord, send me. Those two words typify the American fighting man and woman.

They will always say send me. And we just need to have the right policies to protect them. Can I ask a follow-up question? They won't say send Jonah. No, we need Jonah back here with all that philosophy and everything.

There's very little we need Jonah for. By the logic of what you're saying, in terms of, and I think you're absolutely right, patriotism matters. Commitment matters. There's always going to be a select group who want to be the guardians. I agree with all that. But given what you're all saying, where does that make you come down on the issue of the draft? Do you think we should have a draft? Was the draft always a bad idea?

No. This is what I, there should be a national service, but there should be a national service that teaches our young men and women that there's something bigger than themselves, something bigger than their iPad and their iPhone. But when you start talking about the United States military, that's the creme de la creme. And as a former commander, I don't need to spend, you know, 90% of my time with 5 to 10% of the unit that really does not want to be there. You've got men and women that are committed. They want to be there. But all they ask is that we have leadership that gives them clear and concise guidance. We cannot have leaders that tell our young men and women

in a battlefield, and Bing will agree with me. In a firefight, you got two to three seconds before someone starts losing their life. But when we have rules of engagement that says, you know, you cannot fire upon the enemy until he fires upon you. That's insidious. I mean, you look at some of these attack helicopter gun tape where they, I mean, you can see them looking at the enemy.

You can see the enemy digging, you know, on the side of the road in the middle of the night. And, folks, he's not planting corn if he's on the side of the road with a wheelbarrow with something that's cylindrical and has little wires coming out of it. But he's begging for permission to engage that target. And so when we are setting our men and women up in those type of conditions, when we are putting our men and women in prison for killing the enemy, but yet we are releasing the enemy from Guantanamo Bay. And understand this, they are unlawful enemy combatants. The Geneva Convention does not afford them any rights, privileges, or whatever.

Definitely not United States constitutional rights. So we won tactically in Vietnam. We always win at the tactical level. Where we lose since World War always win at the tactical level. Where we lose since World War II is at the strategic level, where we need people that have the right sense to make the right type of policies so that that man and woman on the battlefield can win. Who's the most – I'll ask you for three. Who are the three most impressive leaders you've ever seen operating, served under, or maybe even commanded?

Well, I will tell you that former Chief of Staff, United States Army General Gordon Sullivan was an incredible man and he was the commander that I had at the 1st Infantry Division. What made him incredible? Because he was just straightforward and I will never forget his motto was, hope is not a method. And I remember when some colonel was hope is not a method. And I remember when some colonel was briefing him at a status brief, monthly status brief, and the colonel said, well, General, this is what I hope. And he stopped him right there. He had a real tough New England accent.

He said, let me tell you, I can't do it as well as Bing. He has a real New England accent. Bing comes by it honestly, I guess. He says, hope is not a method. And I learned that. And he always said, if you ever want to pick a fight, come to the 1st Infantry Division. And that's why when he changed over command and he went on to be a three-star, and we were the lead element in Desert Shield, Desert Storm for the 7th Corps,

we smoked the enemy because we had been trained to fight. So without a doubt, him, I mean, you sit and look at George Washington, Abraham Lincoln. I like Truman because Truman made some very hard decisions that most people would not have thought he would have made. And guess what? Truman was the ordinary man that did extraordinary things. I mean, you read about his history and all the failures that he had. And, again, he was a good artillery officer too. One last question. People will march nowadays for an increase in the minimum wage for people who work at McDonald's.

Big cause. Nobody will march for an increase in the wages and the benefits and the aftercare that we give to our military. It's insidious. You know, when you think about the minimum wage equivalent of what we are asking, you know, the young privates to do, you do, it's about maybe a little over $8. But yet we have turned something like that into a political gimmickry issue. Those people that are willing to give, as Lincoln said, the last full measure of devotion so that we can be here on this nice little cruise ship and be free, those should be the ones that we are giving the most respect and regard and compensation to, to include our veterans who, you know, it's horrendous, it's horrific that we have veterans that are dying in VA hospitals because, you know, we're putting them on a wait list.

But while bureaucrats are getting these incredible bonuses. My father was in the military. My uncles were in the military. When I was growing up in Fargo, North Dakota, just about everybody's dad had been in the military. And even though the kids weren't, there was still a connection with the military culture. It was not a foreign and an alien thing. Is there an irreparable break

between American vernacular and military? Yes, absolutely. And we can stitch it together how? We'll leave with this optimistic point. We have to stitch it together. But what I tell folks is on Memorial Day, those of us that are surviving are there to tell the story. That's why we were able to survive. When you look at the American population right now,

I think it is less than 5% that have ever served in the military or are serving in the military. When you talk about people that have served 20 plus years and retired from the military, you're talking about less than 1%. And how dare, with members of Congress say, that we need to fix our budget on the backs of those people who have given 20-plus years of service. That's insane. We've got to tell the stories. We've got to restore that sense of American exceptionalism and pride.

And understand, when you're saying welcome home and you have all these yellow ribbon things, but realize what we're truly doing to our military, those words can rain hollow for a young man or young woman that just got a pink slip over in Afghanistan or got a pink slip here and is being told, you got 30 days to get out of the military. That's not how we treat our men and women. Thank you for your service to the country and the Ricochet Podcast. That is a great and stirring phrase, is it not? I always feel incredibly weak and pale and just out of shape.

Who shall we send? Shall we send Rob? Oh, yeah. Well, you know, we want to win, right? What was the old Woody Allen joke? In the case of war, I'm a hostage. I did travel once. I was telling you this at my

table last night. I went through Africa, northern Africa a few years ago after 9-11 and I was in Algiers. There had just been a terrorist bombing and I didn't care. I still wanted to travel up and down the Casbah. And the head of the Algerian

security guy who was with us said, and what does your, what, and the Casbah at that point was the most dangerous urban landscape in the world, apparently. It's an Al-Qaeda breeding ground, Al-Qaeda kidnapping ground. And he said, what is your, what is your plan if they get that gets you you

know you're so smart and I said I'm just gonna say fellas I got no beef with you and he said yes they will cut off your head on YouTube that's that's where I am I'm fellas I gotta say when you tell me that you were going through northern Africa and Algiers and all the stuff in one of the Indiana Jones movies there's the scene where Indiana Jones is talking about how his boss from the museum, they'll never find him because he knows every back alley, speaks every language, knows how to blend in everywhere. And then they cut to the guy, and he's this British fop,

barely can stay on his camel, losing all of his papers. In a white suit. In a white suit. That's Rob Long. That's no way. It was close. That was close. In Muft In a white suit. That's Rob Long. It was close. In Mufti in Algiers. When I think of the Cosmo, I think of that great movie with Charles Boyer.

Come with me to the Cosmo. Come with me to the Cosmo. A line he never said. It's not in the movie. It's like Play It Again, Sam. But it's so Boyer in that it's so smooth. You know what else is smooth. It's like Blade Again, Sam. But it's so boy-ay in that it's so smooth. You know what else is smooth? Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.

What else is smooth? Wow, oh my god. The feeling of a cheek after a Harry's shave razor. We were talking about the Casbah, and then wait a minute, and then it was smooth. He's going to rewind this one. Well, I was attempting to do it before with the line, whom shall we send? Because the guys at Harry's sit around and say,

to whom shall we send these great blades? Because not only are they the best Yeah, that's not a good one. I think you had a better one before. They're a, as you all may know, Ricochet, is supported by advertising. You've all been on this ship staring at little screens and what's the one thing you've never seen at any point is a real ad. You've been

free of ad culture. We're here to change that so that when you get back to real life tomorrow and you see an ad, you're not stunned. So this is an ad for Harry's. Harry's Shave, if you don't know, and you haven't been listening to the podcast, these are guys who decided, what the heck, let's disrupt the shaving industry

like iTunes disrupted music. They bought a factory that makes blades and have been making them for about 98 years now. They bought the factory. I've tried them. I've scraped them across my tender, aged, withered skin, and they are magnificent. They come to years now. They bought the factory. I've tried them. I've scraped them across my tender aged withered skin, and they are magnificent. They come to your door.

That's the deal. You don't have to go to the store and buy a bunch of, you know, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 bucks of these stupid razors at a good price with wonderful emollients with a light scent that also come to your house. So if you go to Harry's.com and you enter the coupon code RICOCHET, of course, you'll get $5 off your first shipment.

And after you've had one shipment, you will never be the same and you will love those places. That is in your head. Yes. Yes, it is. How many times have I been doing it? I don't know. That's amazing. You must really love the product, ladies and gentlemen.

I love the product. You should not be alive now. You should have been alive in the age of radio. Well, as Podhoretz was saying last night, I think it was John or somebody else who's been in a book tour, maybe it was Jonah, you develop these little patterns, these little chunks of things

that you just plug into whatever show you're doing. And sometimes the commercials are like that. And I think it was John who said that it's unfortunate if you vary from the script because then you're all of a sudden wandering into unknown territory and you don't know exactly what you're going to say. You may kill the sale of your book

if you don't stick to the script. I think somebody, who is our next guest here, has not yet developed his script completely, and if he hasn't, this will be an excellent opportunity for him to put together the boilerplate he will do on his successful book tour for Conservatarian. Ladies and gentlemen, Charles C.W. Cook.

Welcome, Charles. We might add to the listening audience that he is unshaved, which itself is a stern rebuke to the existence of Harry's Blade. In fact, he looks like Scooby-Doo should have come up with him. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's... Can we just get this out of the way first? You are not an American.

I'm not, not yet. What's the timetable here? Three more years. So I... Why three years? What's the... You're not sure yet? No, I'm sure. You have to wait five after you get your green card.

So I should be able to vote in the midterm elections that sends a rebuke to the Elizabeth Warren administration. Okay. But the good news, according to an old, still in the books, American law, we are all allowed to kick him until he becomes an American.

It's like my favorite Russian proverb is if you see a Bulgarian in the street, beat him. He will know why. I was just sitting there, actually, and thinking, as the Englishman, I should congratulate you, James, on the authenticity of your Wimbledon tennis outfit. Thank you very much. It's top-notch. It's like Halloween in West London. It's Andy Murray. It's all that's left in the drawer.

I've gone through absolutely everything. All right, so... Actually, I don't know. When I go home to North Dakota, this is how I'm getting off the plane. We got eight inches of snow. I'm just going to float right through. I do have the urge to order ice cream from you for some reason.

So five years. It takes five years? That's right. You know, there's an easier way. You just come in from, you know, Arizona, and the president writes a thing, and you're in. When do you start? What do you have to do?

Do you have to take a class? Do you already know this stuff? Well, you mostly tell them which countries you've been to and promise seriously not to be either a terrorist or a Nazi I did this five or six times and not because they were unsure just because I went through different visas No, you don't have to take a test I actually Marco Rubio thinks you should and I do as well because you can come in on a green card and stay forever It's permanent resident means permanent resident. I am a permanent resident. It never ever expires

So what we do is we we do the class before voting. But this is slightly off in that okay you don't want people on temporary visas necessarily to have to go through all this but if you're going to get permanent residency you'd expect some sort of civics test and Rubio says you should move it forward a little bit which I think makes sense. They used to have a civics test didn't they? No they do but it's for citizenship. But the reality is a great number of people now just stay forever on green cards, which means they're part of the country,

but they haven't done any of the civics. So there's a test in your future? There is. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's true that until you actually get citizenship, we are allowed to harvest your organs if we need them? Yes. And even if we don't need them?

We want them. The problem is I don't know yet because I haven't done the citizenship test. So. Well, it's in there. Don't don't you have to read too closely. It's a complicated test. Just trust us. It's a living it's a living citizenship test, right? Exactly. Conservatarianism. Why did you have to invent a new word? I didn't because you're English? It's not my word. It's people started saying to me, I'm a conservatarian.

And chapter two is about this. There's a number of people who are angry with the Republican Party but also think libertarians are crazy on some issues. So I wrote about them and then I tried to look at which, where they're right, where they're wrong, or how the two can accommodate one another. But it's not a particularly nice word, if we're honest. Conservatarian is a sort of ugly portmanteau. But it is interesting that they use that and not say liberservative or republicrat. I mean, it's not a party issue. And in my experience,

having talked to some of the people, they're not people who are worried about whether they're going to vote Democratic or Republican. They're worried about whether they're going to vote Democratic or Republican. They're worried about whether they're going to vote Republican or not vote, or possibly vote Libertarian. And so it is an intra... What's the biggest difference between being a conservative and being a conservatarian? Well, I think that's...

I think you'll have to buy the book, Rob, but... No. Where can we find this book? Is this book sold, for instance, on this boat? Well, I think not until March 10th, funnily enough, yes. No, I think one of the things that conservatarians as such are angry about was the Bush administration. Now, not every part of the Bush administration,

but certainly domestically there was more spending than conservatives would have liked. And we talked earlier about if someone hurts, government needs to move. We hear so much now about the Republican Party having moved right. But in a sense, I don't see a great difference between the Republican Party in 2014 and the Republican Party in, say, 1994. And Ted Cruz is always cast as being an extremist because he wants to abolish certain government departments, but that was in the contract with America.

Similarly, Ronald Reagan talked about this stuff as well. So in my view, there was, and this is the result of a combination of 9-11, and this was not Bush's fault, and of an ideology that was not as conservative as many people would have liked, certainly economically, there was a hiatus, I think, certainly in domestic policy between about 2000 and 2008, and Republicans have now moved back to the right on these domestic questions. So, you know, I think that's... But isn't that sort of the pattern for conservatives, is that when there's a national emergency, just forget about...

Sure. And I'm not entirely faulting Bush. I mean, we did have different things to worry about and he signed a lot of bills that he probably wouldn't have signed but it is also worth saying about george bush that pre pre 9-11 there was some domestic spending and it was medicare part d that none none of the modern republican crop at least would profess to sign to to support maybe they would do it who knows um knows? And so he was even before his presidency was moved in a different place.

In 2000, he and Al Gore competed to see who was going to be, who was going to expand Medicare Part D. Prescription drugs for seniors. When it comes to the conservatarian ideal, how does that break down demographic? Is this better? When it comes to the conservatarian notion,

how does this skew in the demographics? Is it mostly a young people thing? Is it limited to them? Or is this something that older voters themselves find themselves looking for a new way of thinking? I tend to think it's probably mostly young, no? Well, I think the Bush criticism that I just leveled is one I've heard from people of all ages. The social questions we talked about earlier do skew younger. There are, I mean, it is just a fact of

demographic change that on the question of marijuana legalization and on the question of gay marriage, younger people and older people disagree. Now, on abortion, they don't. In fact, this generation is the most pro-life generation except for the top one.

I think it's 80 plus. Why is that? Do we know why that is? Well, it's a combination, I think, of an increase in knowledge. I mean, I think 3D ultrasounds do make a difference. And probably the recognition of what abortion is that can only have come after its imposition by Roe v. Wade. You were talking about this earlier a little bit, that the left is always saying, let's go and do this. And then we say, well, maybe we shouldn't do this. And then they say, well, you have to pass it to find out what's in it. And that's true with abortion as well. I think that had to come down so that people could see

what happened to friends they have who've had abortions. So a lot of people regret having abortions. I thought you were saying that about actual babies. You have to give birth to it to see what it is. Well, that's true as well. That is true. It's funny. We've talked about this on Ricochet,

and I've written about this a lot, about abortion. I think there is this weird tendency, though. One of the things that drives me crazy in pop culture is you never see an abortion on a sitcom. You see lots of people get pregnant, and then they will always say, I don't know what I'm going to do. This is a choice I have to make. But they always choose to have the baby in part because you wouldn't have created this storyline if they were going to choose the abortion because abortion is just a downer. It's not a great sitcom topic. Funny thing happened to me at the abortion clinic.

It just doesn't really work, right? And so on the second they decide that they're going to have the baby, it becomes a human being. When they start talking about my baby, I have to eat these things, you know, I'm talking to it, and they put up, they do jokes about putting speakers up to it and teaching it foreign languages and all of the rest, and becomes in utero a human being. And I think, culturally, that sends a really powerful signal that you can't, you know that this obsession with healthy living and healthy eating, it extends for good and reasonable reasons to pregnancy too. And the culture is full of all of this of treating your baby in utero as a human being because this time really matters.

And I think that sort of separates out into the culture. Yeah. And the culture is deeply misleading with the signals that it sends on the question of abortion, in that most pro-lifers think they're in a minority, and most pro-choices think they're in the majority, but they're not. If you look at where abortion law is compared to where abortion public opinion is, there is a massive disconnect in the favor of conservatives. Now, the public does not agree with the pro-life position completely. There is a majority support for abortions in the first trimester. It's about 67%. But in the second trimester, it drops down to about 29%. And in the third, it goes to 17.

But Wendy Davis is a hero because she wants to extend abortions into the sixth and seventh month, eighth month of a pregnancy. And there's nobody, I think, writing these stories who thought, hang on a minute, Americans really think that's disgusting. They do. And so when people hear that young people are, you know, more pro-life than they think they are, they get surprised, but they shouldn't be surprised. The polling's very clear. It's just that the people who write about these issues in the New York Times and in the general media population don't know that. And they've obfuscated the words, right? So at the same time you see articles about immigration

without specifying illegal immigration, you see pro-choice but without specifying the choice of the 9th... Reproductive justice. Someone brilliant said recently that to show how puritanical the progressive left has become, every time they say the word justice you should replace it with righteousness.

I'm in favor of social righteousness, reproductive righteousness. And they add that word to anything they don't want to talk about. Reproductive justice is the latest one. I think the break came in 1986, actually. There's a big cultural moment when Madonna came out against abortion in a song.

It was called Papa Don't Preach. I'm in trouble deep. Papa don't preach, but I've made up my mind. I'm having my baby. So this sexed up libertine minx who had been flouncing around in videos is all of a sudden saying, it's a child. I'm going to have it. Don't tell me

otherwise. Maybe if you sing a few bars, I'd remember it. I think John will if he comes down here later. And she was attacked for it, of course. She was attacked for the idea that a young woman would want to keep her child. And that makes a lot of people

realize exactly where the conversation is going. But let's move away from that for a second because we have limited time and talk about Europe, of which we have a little knowledge. Is Europe lost? Is England lost? Two small questions. Yeah, I'm just going to say very quickly that if you again conflate Europe and Britain, we shall quarrel. I didn't.

To the dueling pistols! In his infinite wisdom, God put a C there for a reason. And I refuse the idea that England, Britain is in Europe. No, it depends what you mean by lost. I mean, certainly for people with my politics, it's lost. Yes, Britain is. Britain is much, much better than most of the rest of Europe. Although Europe's an interesting case, because France and Germany have, they have surrendered to this weak social democracy. Rich Lowry wrote in his book about Lincoln, that's where countries go to die and to just end their days. Whereas in Eastern Europe, there are real liberty-minded people and I

think it's partly because they know what it was like. And they now have a shot. So if Europe is going to be revived, it's actually going to be in the East. You're never going to change the French. Britain has been trying for a long time. We've given up. You know, America saved them twice. They still hate you. But Eastern Europe is promising. Well, just to push back on that a little bit, you know, Irving Kristol used to say that there was nothing wrong with America that a really good recession wouldn't fix, right? And he was sort of wrong

about that, but a friend of mine, he likes to say about certain people, he says, you know, that guy's okay. He's about three ass-kicking shy of being a really decent guy. And isn't it possible that things could go so... I mean, you say in Eastern Europe,

one of the reasons why Eastern Europe is the way it is is because it's learned from its history, right? France, things could go really bad, and then they could learn from their mistakes. Well, and the example of Europe having economic collapse and ethnic tensions has worked out so well in the previous century. No, I'm not sure, because... I mean, the Eastern Europeans went through something pretty extreme. I don't think France is going to get there.

As I say, it's soft, dull malaise. It's not tyranny. The Eastern Europeans, they lived under tyranny. I mean, you see the same fervor in their eyes as you see with Cubans because they know what it was like. France is not that bad. France is a great country. It's a fabulous country to visit. I wouldn't want to live there.

But you wouldn't say that about Ceausescu's regime. Well, it's great to go on holiday, but I wouldn't want to live there. Part of this is that Europe from here seems to suffer what the left suffers here in America, which is this cringe, this ashamedness of their own culture, of their own national identity. And that's the sort of thing that's hard to put, it's hard to reconstruct once you've convinced everybody that the proper moral approach is to be ashamed of yourself because of colonialism, because of slavery, because of everything stretching back to, you know, Cain and Abel. How do you tell people,

again, to be confident in themselves without them saying, no, this is the way to fascism and driving all the immigrants into the sea? My basic view of this is that it is a good thing, a bad thing rather, that Europe has lost confidence in itself and is ashamed of its history, with the one exception of Germany.

No, I'm not being sarcastic. I think it's good that Germany is where it is. It does not have a good history. It doesn't have a history that you want to see people saying, hey, remember how it was 80 years ago? Maybe we should become more muscular. Yeah, once you lose it, you lose it.

That's why we do what we do. Well, that's the funny thing is if you ever meet someone who says, I'm a European, you know they're German. Because they just don't want to admit that they're German. It's either that, Jonah, or they still harbor ambitions of taking over the whole continent. Well, apply this then to... We're all Europeans, yeah.

Apply this to England, then. England, of course, we have great feelings for, ties to, linguistic and cultural. They're not lost, but they're not as far along the road. But do you see them breaking free from the EU? Do you see them establishing more of a national identity and getting their character back? Or are we to believe that the future is nothing but a bunch of drunk Glaswegians staring into a state-bought ale?

Well, Scotland certainly is. That's right. No. Another great country that's been lost, basically invented the modern world. No, you mentioned the role of libertarians in being the guy at the meeting who says, should government do this? We should clarify that right before we came to do this podcast, we did a panel on Charlie's book, and we talked about libertarians and conservatives.

So Charlie keeps ascribing views to me that I do hold, but I haven't actually expressed on this broadcast. So that's what he's getting at. And you will notice if you listen to the radio in Britain that you never reach that first point. So a good example, someone proposed recently that instead of paying road taxes on a flat basis, or at least on the basis of what car you have, you pay per mile. And the way that they were going to track it was to have the government put a chip in your car, work out where you'd been, and then send you a bill. Now, this, to me, screamed out for someone to say, do we really want the government putting a chip in our cars? But that wasn't the conversation.

The conversation was, would it work? And so the first assumption was, well, of course we could do that, but will it work? Is it too expensive? And so forth. And in that regard, Britain has been lost. You don't have these conversations. In every other way, it's still a very decent country, and it's full of decent people. And I have no question in my mind that if something terrible happened as it does from time to time, the British would stand up and

be counted and they stand with America, America would stand with them, Canada, New Zealand, these are all good countries that we should be proud of and so no, I don't think it's completely lost its way but in terms of small government, it has. One last question. When did you become a gun nut? I used to be VMLI anti-gun, and I thought the Second Amendment meant the opposite of what it means. Where was that?

Well, growing up, I absorbed by osmosis the general British opposition to firearms. I thought Americans should ban them flat rate. I thought Bill Clinton should just go around and ban them. I didn't know how it worked. And then, you know, without being rude to our friends on the other side, then I did some reading and grew up. And I studied this at university and I studied the issue when I was here. And then I bought some. And once you've bought some, you're lost. That's a great moment. But it is funny watching my British friends come

over and say, what's in that room? You don't need to know what's in that room. They say, no, really, what's in that room? Oh, it's just a few assault weapons, you know. Well, you understand the Second Amendment, you're a gun nut, and you write about conservatarianism. I think you'll actually pass that test. I hope so, thank you.

Charlie Cook, thank you. I'll be by for your liver later. That's right. You, Pud Horts, get down here. Later today at 2 o'clock in Central Park, Charlie will be leading a fox hunt. I didn't know there was an actual stable of horses on this vessel, but I wouldn't be surprised.

I didn't get the foxhunt package. Is that a problem? Oh, no, no, no. I did. They deliver a smart little red jacket. And speaking of smart little reds, hello, John Baudouris. I am not a smart little red.

I am the first neoconservatarian. Ah! I have some emendations and clarifications of the conservatarian philosophy that I would like to lay out over the course of the next 10 or 11 years but it's not that long of a podcast

it's not that long of a podcast because we've got to give the room back in two minutes we're in a room on the boat that has a balcony, and I just came down the balcony, and for a moment I felt like Donna Reed at the beginning of the Donna Reed show. No one else had that impression of you.

I just want to be very clear about that. It's Donna Reed! That's because you're not wearing the pearls this time. I know I'm not. Speaking of Donna Reed. And only you were. Stop. No one ever begins anything

with speaking of Donna Reed. Although, interestingly, speaking of Donna Reed, she had a jar on her show where you would have to, if you swore, which happens a lot on sound stages, you had to put money in a swear jar.

I don't like to correct Rob, except every minute. But that was Loretta Young. And it was Loretta Young, and the interesting thing about Loretta Young... Wait, was it really? Yes, it was the interesting thing about Loretta Young, who was very Catholic, couldn't swear around her and all of this, is that she had a baby out of wedlock. She had Clark Gable's baby out of wedlock,

went off somewhere to have the baby so that no one would know she was pregnant, gave it to somebody, and then nine months later adopted the baby. And so her own adopted daughter was her daughter and did not she did not tell her daughter about this until her daughter was 35 but you couldn't swear in front of her that's hollywood ladies and gentlemen that sounds like you're're looking pretty good show. I know, I know. That is really one of the great, there is that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, right? You know, in its purest form.

I don't know why you're talking to me. I just think you guys should just sit here and talk to Alan West for about 24 hours. Yeah, I was going to say that. I regretted it immediately when he left the stage, and then again when you came on the stage. Well, as an omnivorous...

I share that regret. As a great cultural critic, though, no one has talked about the art on this ship. I imagine that as you've wandered up and down the gangways, you've seen the extraordinary amount of art that they put on this boat. How would you rate it? You're a New Yorker.

Is this Guggenheim quality we're seeing? I was just this morning reading this endlessly long article in the Detroit News about how Detroit came out of bankruptcy. And if you remember the drama over the last six or eight months, much of it centered on whether or not the Detroit Museum of Art, which is owned by the city of Detroit, should put its art on the market because it was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Detroit's in the hole. And eventually a bunch of foundations essentially bought the art back for the city and therefore the city's bankruptcy could come out.

They adopted art that they had... That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So I would say that... I would say that given that this deal is not going to work and that one-time payments by the Ford Foundation of $100 million to float Detroit's deficit are not going to work.

I think that the sale of the works of the Detroit Museum of Art in the next four or five years should take place on the allure of the seas, is what I was thinking. It's apparently a very remarkable collection. And while I think many people would love a painting of John Elway's jersey, I think some other people might actually like an Impressionist painting. The John Elway jersey, I think, was selling for $7,000. So if you could get a Rodin for $70,000, that would probably, it's a multiple, but it's at least...

You're saying it's stupid for me to buy that John Elway jersey painting? I don't know much about art, but I, you know... Rob did buy electronics on a Caribbean island. I just want to point out, I was with him. He bought a little speaker. Works great. Works great. And the woman in the store kept saying, you know, and today, for special, you get the case for free.

$25 case for free. And Rob was like, I don't really want the case. And she was like, but it's for free! Yeah. We'll wait for a minute while your eardrums re-inflate. People keep complaining

that they can't hear you when you speak. Yeah, they heard that. I'm seeing white spots now. It's not since George Bush stood on the 9-11 wreckage of the World Trade Center did people hear something like that. Why is that? I can only see my grandmother at this point. Jonah, can I ask you a question? How many of these cruises have you done?

What was Phil Graham's answer? More than I need, not as many as I want. No, I've been, I think, at 14. 14 or so? 14. That's a guess, yeah. How is this one different, or are they all the same? Well, the boat is different.

We've been talking about that a lot. This is a James Bond villain headquarters of a boat. It's really, you know, I feel like we're going to go around, we're going to sneak up behind the Holland America boats and just this mall will open and we'll swallow them. What happened to the MS Rotterdam? They'll never know. It's a blinking thing on the radar and it goes,

sir, sir, the Eurodam, it's disappeared. Bingo, bingo. Three minutes and counting. But what about the conversation, the people? The 2008

one, which we should have been really depressed, everyone was kind of weirdly giddy. And the 2012 one, which I was on, it was not a very happy show. And I thought, well, at least everyone will drink a lot. But I think people didn't even have an urge to like, eh, just give me a nice tea. Part of the problem in 2012 was we had a

mole. You remember that? We had a spy in the house of Buckley. The New York Magazine guys who finally uncloaked after three days and revealed that he was writing about everything that we'd been saying and then did so with wonderful aplomb in the New York Magazine guys who finally uncloaked after three days and revealed that he was writing about everything that we'd been saying and then did so with wonderful aplomb in the New York Magazine. What did he say about you exactly? Oh, I don't even remember.

I mean, look, they do this every ten years as if it's a new article idea. To be fair, who wrote the single greatest article about going on an ideological journey? It was P.J. O'Rourke. It was P.J. O'Rourke, which essentially launched his career as a conservative journalist. So we... P.J. went on a nation cruise

and reported back about all those... For Harper's. For Harper's. Reported back about all the Stalinists singing Pete Seeger songs. Because they were going down the Volga. They were actually going down the Volga in the 1980s

before the wall came down. But when I look at that, the official tour guide was always pointing out things that were only interesting to the Soviets. We're passing a giant concrete factory. Why, they put out 200,000 tons of concrete a day. And these sort of bearded

poli-sci professors from the University of Kentucky would say, that's a lot of concrete. That's an amazing number. We can't put out that much concrete. Marx was right. And he wished these people had gone on a cruise later to some of the liberated nations

after the Soviet Union fell a couple of years ago. I was in Estonia, and the tour bus is going around this park, and there's a statue of a bald guy with a little mustache, and it looked a lot like Lenin. And I thought, why is he still here? And the tour guide said, if you think this is Lenin, it looked a lot like Lenin. And I thought, why is he still here? And the tour guide said, if you think this is Lenin, it's not Lenin, no.

All of those statues are in another place we call Garden of Soviet Monster. And at that point, I actually wanted to take a tour of Garden of Soviet Monster. Or write a book with that title. So on the panel that we did before this podcast, I did this long spiel about how conservatives are more normal than liberals

because conservatives live normal lives and they go to normal institutions and they don't think of politics as a religion and all that. And it comes to mind because about ten years ago, the nation had a cruise, and word got out that there was an obscure stevedore strike somewhere in the maritime industry that applied to this cruise ship. And so the cruisers, who had paid thousands of dollars to go on a nation cruise, spent their vacation with signs that they've managed to make in their cabins protesting the cruise that they were on on the Lido deck. And they would just go around and around and around. And the New York Times

wrote about it. And they said it was the best vacation they ever had. And this is what I mean. That is not a normal person's thing to say. Is that the difference? What, the cultural difference between conservatives and liberals? I mean, I live in Hollywood. I have tons of liberal friends. It seems to work okay. But I don't know if it's the same the other way around. I mean, you live in New York City. You've got a bunch of liberal friends, right?

Absolutely. I mean, there is one of the key cultural defining markers between right and left has not been mentioned here, and that is either you think that the 1960s were a problematic, complicated time in which many bad things happened and some very good things happened, or you live in a state of permanent nostalgia or retro nostalgia for having either lived through it and remembering it in this glow haze of wonder, or conversely, that you didn't live through it and all you know is that you will spend your eternity not having experienced the summer of love. And that is actually, if there is a single cultural fault line between the right and the left, it is 60s nostalgia.

And so any demonstration, any possibility of attending a demonstration, I think it's pretty fair to say we are somewhat allergic to those. We're somewhat allergic to them. We're somewhat allergic to them. And they love them more than life. If they can go to a demonstration, any demonstration, if there were a demonstration in front of the Cronut store, they would go have the demonstration and then buy a Cronut. It's not that they wouldn't buy the Cronut, but that is what they love,

and that is a Cronut. It's not that they wouldn't buy the Cronut, but that is what they love, and that is a defining thing. So if you can buy the demonstration package... Yeah, that's right. That is the nation... They sold out that package six months ago. Really? They sold out? I'm demonstrating. No Cronuts, no peace. Well, you have lived through this,

and through this hour of love, and we thank you for doing so. We thank Alan West, no peace. Well, you have lived through this and through this hour of love and we thank you for doing so. We thank Alan West, we thank Charlie Cook, Rob Long, Jonah Goldberg, J-Pod, all of you, Ricochet.com. Go there if you're not a member. Get those Harry's Blades. And thank you for listening to this, the Ricochet Podcast.

Stay tuned. Right after this, Jay Nordlinger and Mona Charon are going to do another podcast called Need to Know. Also, these podcasts, you can go to ricochet.com, subscribe. The podcasts are free. The Daily Blast is free.

Jay and Mona are free, so stick around. Thank you very much. So I'd like to know Thank you very much. Rock the boat I don't tip the boat over Rock the boat I don't rock the boat, baby Rock the boat Ever since our voyage of love began Your touch has thrilled me like the rush of the wind And your heart has held me safe from a rolling sea There's always been a quiet place to harbour you and me. Our love is like a ship on the ocean. We've been sailing with a combo full of love and devotion.

So I'd like to know where you got the notion Said I'd like to know where you got the notion Rock the boat, don't rock the boat, baby Rock the boat, don't tip the boat over Rock the boat, don't rock the boat, baby Rock the boat But tonight we sail through every storm Ricochet. Join the conversation. Don't let me drift away, my dear, when love can see me through.

Our love is like a ship on the ocean. We've been sailing with a cargo full of love and devotion. So I'd like to know where you got the notion. Said I'd like to know where you got the notion. Said I'd like to know where you got the notion. So I'd like to know where you got the notion. Said I'd like to know where you got the notion. Rock the boat. Don't rock the boat, baby.

Rock the boat. Don't tip the boat over. Rock the boat. Don't rock the boat, baby. Rock the boat. Don't tip the boat over. Rock the boat, don't rock the boat, baby. Rock the boat, don't tip the boat over. Rock the boat.