The Ricochet Podcast - Politics and Bourbon

Episode Date: December 4, 2014

“We have returned after a brief gratitude and bird-related holiday hiatus,” says James Lileks, and indeed we are. This week, Ferguson, Staten Island, and the grand jury system. Then, author William Voegeli stops by to discuss his new book The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion. Later, Ricochet member Vicryl Contessa asks the musical question “what’s your favorite... Source

activate program more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism well I'm not a crook I'll never tell a lie but I am NOT a bully Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lalix, and today we're going to excoriate the pity party with William Vigelli. We're also going to look at Ferguson to Fargo and everything in between. It's the Ricochet Podcast. There you go again. Yes, we're back.

After a brief gratitude and bird-related holiday hiatus, we have returned with the Ricochet podcast. And if you're looking back at your Thanksgiving and thinking, oh, my Lord, from the desiccated dry turkey to the oleaginous cranberries, what was I thinking cooking for myself? Well, don't. Next time this comes along, you're going to want to go to foodiedirect.com. Great food makes good people happy

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And we'll do a little bit more about that later in the show. But enough of the commercials that keep us going. Let's go to the guys who got this thing going in the first place. Rob and Peter, hey, how are you all on this fine December day? James, I'm doing very well. I'm in New York City, which was

overcome last night with certain protests for another piece of bad news from the ongoing wars of the police and, uh, citizenry. Um, but it was the city really, was it really overcome?

I was wondering whether it was one of those things where the press went to the two places where there were protesters and took pictures or whether it really did feel that way in Manhattan. It's funny. And, you know, yes, it was over.

I mean, the, the protests were in, you know, they're peaceful, but they were, peaceful but they were in central – midtown, Grand Central and Times Square. So anyone who was trying to get anywhere at rush hour couldn't do it, which was interesting because I was late for dinner and I got to dinner and everybody else was late to dinner. And so I'm standing there and everybody's at the bar waiting to get our table and everyone's talking about the same thing. I mean this is the wrong way to put it. But there is something nice about that, about being in a city where there are still places where you can go where everyone's talking about the same thing like citizens. We don't really get that in Los Angeles. It's too sort of diffused all over the place.

But the New Yorkers still kind of feel like we're all in Los Angeles. It's a little too sort of diffused all over the place, but the New Yorkers still kind of feel like we're all, you know, in this together. Or is it possibly that they just don't care in Los Angeles? There are people who are just not attuned whatsoever. Yes. Very good point. An interesting point that was made, I think, at Ace of Spades yesterday. A lot of conservatives are saying, a lot of people on the right are looking at the New York example and saying they disagree with this. They thought the Ferguson call was a good one. They don't think this one is a good one. And there's some suggestion that they're doing this in order to get one under their belt to show, see, I'm not a reflexive defender of the cops. I don't think it's that. I think this is different. But is it?

I think it is. But is it? I'll ask you guys and I'll give my opinion. Peter, is this different than Ferguson? I really – you baffle me. No, I yield my time to you, James. I want to hear your view. You think it is different. How? Well, I'm cobbling something together quickly in my brain. I think it is different. I think it is different. I'll jump right in. Yeah, it is different. And I don't think – look, I don't like – I'm trying to do this myself and I hope that other people will take this example. Something I learned from Milton Friedman once said this to me and I know it's a name drop but I only met him three times and one time he said this to me. He said he found his life a lot easier and he won more arguments and he had a greater peace of mind and less stress in his life when he just assumed the people making an argument were making it in good faith. So there is something creepy and I think completely idiotic about saying, well, you're only saying that you're against this decision because you want to have one – you want to show the world that this was a really, really undue amount of force for a guy who was resisting arrest but not in any meaningful way for this ridiculous misdemeanor that is – in reality is a tax crime more than anything else. He's selling loose cigarettes on the street and you're not supposed to do that because you've got to buy them by the pack because you've got to pay the taxes, right?

That's what that's all about. And they jumped on him, and when he says, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, they didn't stop, and they used an illegal chokehold on him, and that's not right. I don't think conservatives – I mean good lord, Glenn Reynolds has been really for the past eight years documenting abuses of law enforcement. We already know as conservatives that law enforcement agencies are over militarized. There are these no knock raids where they can just burst into your house and start shooting at you if they want to. You could they could burst into your house at three in the morning and scream at you, wake you up. And if you say if you if you hold your hands out to push them away, they'll say you're resisting arrest. So there are cases where this is a troubling theme.

But of course, what happened in New York and what happened in Ferguson are not related in any way because they're not related. These people are separate incidents. And I just don't know why we as a culture or we as sort of a chattering class can't understand that things happen just because they happen within weeks or months or in our consciousness within months that they're somehow related. is not a story we're not watching a movie this is real life no no absolutely of course of course they're related they have to be related because they prove they prove that certain narrative now if every single one of these

instances over the course of the next let's say there was 12 one a month for the next year and every one of them involved somebody who was engaged in some petty infraction of a petty stupid crime like selling lucys all right in that case the left would not draw from this that the multiplicity and explosion of laws had given the police the right to to assume that anybody is pretty much committing a crime exactly right at any moment they would never assume that it would all be about uh state power and the evil of state power. And by the way, consequently, incidentally, elect more Democrats so we can empower the state even more. Rob pretty much speaks for me what I said.

And it has to do with the amount of force with somebody who was down. I mean, I've watched probably every episode of Cops ever, ever done, ever made. And I've seen enough guys do stupid things to trigger getting, you know, face down on a concrete and having, you know, getting away. I've also seen enough times where you have an officer who is, shall we say, zealous in his pursuit of his duty, flailing at somebody with a baton who's shouting and shouting, stop resisting, which is always funny because resisting in that situation seems to be putting your hands up to avoid the rain of blows, right? Stop resisting, which is always funny because resisting in that situation seems to be putting your hands up to avoid the rain of blows. Right?

Stop resisting. It's almost like stop hitting yourself. Yeah, why are you hitting yourself? Like what the bullies used to do with your hand. Anyway, Peter, you were going to say something before I went on. No, I was just going to ask Rob. What's the counterargument? You're in New York.

You're following the story. If you were making the best argument you could for the decision not to charge the cop in question, what would the argument be? I think the argument would be that if you look at the videotape, he does in fact resist. He is struggling against their – they're pushing him down. That when a cop says you're under arrest, you're under arrest, that there are 200 plus – 330,000, 240,000 misdemeanor arrests in New York City every year, I think, tons of them.

That's not a lot. That's not this is not an unusual thing. They're trying to claim that this is an unusual police action, which it wasn't. And you've got to suck it up. And when the cops say get down and you're under arrest, you're under arrest. That's all there is to it. And had he had this suspect simply not done had simply done what he was told, he would not be dead. By the way, do we know, did he actually suffocate or was it a heart attack or some?

Was it a panic reaction? The coroner ruled it a homicide. He died of constriction to the neck. OK, but we don't know whether it was all right i'm i'm just wondering whether because he seemed to die this is a horrible thing to say but he seemed to die almost too quickly for suffocation what do i know about these things but i was just wondering what the technical cause of death whether it was uh yeah a stroke or heart attack or something like that caused by a constriction of the neck they're saying so um yeah this is not good okay so does this mean that everybody now uh is is going to

believe that that grand juries are just simply in on it that they get the little secret coded messages from the from from from the greater clan assemblage up there in the skies or what well i'm getting you know here's what I mean. This is sort of a larger point, but when things like this happen, it seems like we are, then we have an automatic improvised civics lesson where people are marching around. I mean, whatever you think about what happened at Ferguson or what happened in New York,

and of course, they're conflated because they're conflated. Everyone suddenly becomes an expert on the grand jury process. Or they know nothing about the grand jury process and they're still mad. And that is a problem I would say about American society in general. It's something that John Yoo said to me, which I was astonished by, which is that his first year law students at Bolt Hall – at Bolt, which is one of the top five, top eight law schools in the country. So they're smart. These are smart kids.

They know bupkis, to use the Yiddish term, bupkis about American history. They don't know about the Articles of Confederation. They don't really know that the Bill of Rights is part of the – or amendments to the Constitution. They don't know about the Federalist Papers. There's just this whole range of American jurisprudence and American civics that they just don't know. And so Law School 101 for him is first American history and American civics, which we just don't teach anymore, which is one of the things you run into when you have conversations about what happened in Ferguson or what happened here, which is people just think, well, what is a grand jury anyway?

What's it supposed to do? And then they listen to lawyers on TV scream at each other and it's just not edifying. By the way, may I put in a plug for speaking – listening to lawyers? Ordinarily, I only get a chance to listen to a snippet or two of Law Talk with John Yoo and Richard Epstein. But it happens because of the – what was it that James called it? The gratitude and bird-related holiday that we just experienced that I made a couple of airport runs to pick up and drop off kids. And I listened to a couple of Law Talks in their entirety. And it is just wonderful. Apart from what you'd appreciate, Rob, is the

sense of ensemble that Troy and Richard and I mean, the ease, the friendship, the it's just enjoyable listening to them. But by the time you're half an hour into it, you realize you've just received a serious education on two or three different topics. And by the time you're an hour into it, you've learned all you need to know to, to Trump any cocktail party conversation you may find yourself in over the holidays. It's just great. And listen,

listen to law talk folks. If you want to know about grand juries, I totally agree. That is a great, that's a very, very good piece of advice. I also feel like we all, whenever we hear one,

I think to myself, good Lord, are we paying Troy enough? Because it's not easy. Those are two sort of legal lions. Richard, Richard has his own podcast. True enough. True enough. So, okay, James, so you've had plenty of time now to cobble together whatever you were going to cobble together. No, I, since you, since you produce words and views instantaneously.

I just – I actually – if you want to replay the tape there, Peter, I already said that I agreed with Rob that he mostly spoke for me that it had to do with – That's it? The profusion – I thought you came up with – go ahead. No, my point was the profusion of laws and that just by walking outside of your door and doing something essentially you're violating some statute but robin mentioned that people who aren't aware of american history and haven't studied things and don't know about the articles of confederation etc when something like this comes up they hear the law for people expostulating on television and they are they take whatever they get from the yammering heads i don't think the people who are

that ignorant are are ever watching television period most, they'll get a daily show clip sent around to them where Jon Stewart nails it, right? Yeah, right. That's true. Or they will get a tweet or a long series of bias confirming tweets that just go on and on and on, although they'll be directed to a Tumblr, which has a variety of memes dedicated to social war yeah you're right you're right my daughter lives in this world she gets her this is how she gets her news so they're not going to television and i almost wish we lived in a world in which people did get their news from television because at least in some of these shows you would have somebody who would know what they were talking about as opposed to the endless yammerings i mean if somebody

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don't cook just click ship. And delight. We now would like to welcome our first guest, if we might. His name is William Vogeli. And I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. It's Vigeli. You know, you'd think there'd be a pronouncer here. We had a band in Washington, D.C.

I like it here. The Pronouncers. We called it Scotus and the Pronouncers was the name of our band because ap would run this thing that told you how not to sound stupid like i just did bill's a senior editor of claremont review of books and a visiting scholar at claremont mckinnon college's henry salvatori center if it's not salvatory his new book is the pity party a mean-spirited diatribe against liberal compassion and we welcome him to this, the Ricochet Podcast. Morning. Good morning.

Oh, Bill's there. Bill. We're just grand. I mangled your name. I'm sorry. You now have a dispensation to call me Jim Lillix anytime you want, which is mispronounced. Again, we're going to let Peter take the first question. I would like to take the first question.

Sorry for that little pause there. Usually we have to hang up and then dial in for the get. You were right there. Bill, how old are you and how does it feel? I am 60 and so far so good. Thank you for asking. Bill has an article on turning 60 in the current issue of the Claremont Review of Books. And you're going to have to give us just a little more than I'm feeling all right. Give us a little bit of a

flavor for what it's like to turn 60. Yes. Well, I think it's for baby boomers to have people telling you all these years about the great things that your generation is going to accomplish and then to step back and realize whatever we're going to do is pretty much what we've done. And if it isn't that impressive, and in a lot of ways it isn't, we have to live with that. Then face the log decline. We hope it's a log decline. Okay. So, Bill, you have a new book out called The Pity Party, a mean-spirited diatribe. I find that hard to believe since the author of the book is you.

But we'll grant it. A mean-spirited diatribe against liberal compassion. Now, Bill, let's just take the title on first. The liberals, of course, get everything wrong, but they should be judged differently from conservatives because they mean so well. Isn't that obvious? Their hearts are in the right place. Exactly. But as a fellow, I quote in the book, David Schmitz, a professor of, I think, philosophy

and economics at Arizona says, if you really care about whether your heart is in the right place, your heart is not in the right place. And I think that the argument of the book is that liberals are, because of the politics of compassion, are so caught up with feeling good that they don't particularly care whether or not they do good. And that ought to be the ultimate criterion. Example? Well, um... Obamacare, for example?

Well, let's... They're just not open to the evidence that it doesn't work? That's an evolving story. Let's look at something more durable. Head Start, a great society program, now half a century old. The Department of Education did a careful, what do they call it, longitudinal study that found out that, you look over the years, the kids who enroll in that program,

compared to a control group of kids from a similar socioeconomic status who don't go through the program, after the end of the first grade, they're at the same level on every academic indicator. Go back to the famous formulation of Franklin Roosevelt at the start of the New Deal. We need bold, persistent experimentation. The word experimentation strongly implies that if you do things and they don't work out, you scuttle them and deploy your resources to things that do work. But if you keep doing the same bad things over and over just because they gratify you, they make you feel like, well, at least we're trying, at least we care, then this is a perversion of compassion, not what we want. So you just mentioned Franklin Roosevelt and, of course, your previous great book on the welfare state, which pointed out that even the sainted Ronald Reagan made virtually no progress in cutting the welfare state, which grows and grows and grows and has done now for over seven decades.

Is the problem really that liberals don't want to test whether something does good as long as it feels good? problem a more political science-y problem that each of these programs very quickly develops a political constituency and becomes, even for hard-headed conservatives, very difficult to cut? Yeah, I don't think it's either or. I think both of those are big problems. This idea of bold, persistent experimentation ignores the reality the political science reality is you say that out in the world these experiments acquire constituencies who are the the lab rats get the vote and they uh... the the states that well they like the pellet they're not going to vote to uh...

with somebody says well this pellet program really isn't working we're gonna have to try something else you know so there's that but then i think there's also, apart from that, there is sort of a motivational question. And I think the weird moral logic of compassion leads us to a place where the liberal advocates, liberals who think of themselves as people who get up every morning trying to alleviate suffering, wind up not very interested in whether or not their programs work. And this, I think, goes back, you look at the word compassion in a dictionary, it goes to the Latin root, to suffer together. Now, sometimes we suffer together as equals in a support group for

cancer survivors, for example. But usually that suffering together means that you have a problem. You're hungry, homeless, sick, something. And it makes me feel bad. It distresses me. And now I have, because of that distress, I have sort of a self-regarding reason to care about your problem. So far, so good. Where things get sticky is that because of the self-regarding reason, it's very tempting for me to think, well, I feel better now, problem solved. Right, right. It's like their terms. Government is just a word for the suffering we do together. I'm wondering, Bill, does your argument have any application to what we've seen taking place in Ferguson, Missouri? I think it...

Go ahead. Or to the response to that of the President of the United States and the Attorney General of the United States? I've been looking at that a little bit. I think that one of the strange things about compassion... You know, conservatives can sort of deride it. Conservatives talk about bleeding-heart liberals and say that the problem with those on the left is that they're not tough-minded and it's... strange sort of uh... heartless uh... and even a kind of a deal for uh... for uh...

a cruelty of the uh... it the problem is that uh... could be compassion is an emotion uh... it's a it's sort of instinctive response as far as that goes it's very politically powerful pop politics being about the rectification of grievances. But because compassion is an emotion, it's not very politically reliable. Compassion left to its own devices leaves us sympathizing with whatever sufferer who comes along. We feel bad about Michael Brown one day.

We feel bad about Darren Wilson being forced to flee from his house because the New York Times is helping vigilantes find it the next day, you know. In order to be politically reliable, we have to impose on compassion a sort of a narrative of oppression, a hierarchy of victimhood, and that, very quickly, this compassion leads us to a kind of righteous indignation that makes us not only tolerate, but it sometimes even demand the suffering of those held to be the oppressors. So I think I think compassion can has has dark and bloody potential in it that that also needs to be noted. Hey, Bill, it's Rob Long in New that also needs to be noted. Hey, Bill, it's Rob Long in New York. Nice to talk to you. Thanks for joining us again. I just want to repeat that the book is The Pity Party, a mean-spirited diatribe against liberal compassion. And you start – I mean you start by saying something we've all noticed of course is

that if your policy pronouncement shows compassion, it doesn't then need to be measured for effectiveness. You've essentially taken it out of the realm of whether this works or not just because it makes me feel good and it spreads awareness for a problem. But the second thing you said I really want to ask about because I think it's really interesting because I don't think there was a lot of compassion except on people whose minds had already been made up for Officer Wilson in Ferguson when his address was printed in the New York Times. Because I think they had decided that, as you said it, there's not so much compassion. I mean, I guess compassion is one way to put it, but there's also this kind of bloodletting, this sort of emotional outpouring that's so powerful that the crowd really won't be happy unless there's blood. It's really kind of this weird Greek tragedy thing where everyone's compassion and passions need to be expressed and the fact that complete bystanders and people completely unrelated to this – to either event.

I mean I'm in New York City and there was a protest last night as well for another – there was another grand jury and another police officer and other accusations of undue force. The crowd – it's almost like people are joining this movement because they need to feel this sort of passion for action, right, and for like group marching around screaming. And if you argue what a grand jury is supposed to do or what the process is supposed to be or that in a civil society, there are going to be outcomes that we don't agree with, you sound like you're not connecting to real life. How do you argue – how do you get people back to thinking that real life is civic life? Well, I think it's a tough haul in the heat of the moment.

So I think when people are in any shape to listen, you have to say, to remind people that compassion empathy is in many ways more uh... destructive than a constructive uh... uh... motion uh... there there's tremendous it you don't want to do things that sort of put people to this with you really want to do something that you're going to look back on it and regret

uh... there is the uh... uh... the sort of collateral damage. The store owners in Ferguson who had their business and life work burned to the ground. There's no sort of decently constructed compassion that can simply shrug and say, well, to make omelets, you have to break eggs. That's not what we ought to be aiming for. But that is what we're aiming for. Just to push back on it, that is what we're aiming for. I mean, that is what the people who rioted in Ferguson say. They don't say this morning, I'm assuming, oh, I wish I hadn't done that.

They say, serves them right, whoever them is. I needed to express myself. I needed to do something, and that's what they did. So I don't think that they're waking up with a hangover and saying, oh, yeah, I wish I really had more self-control or more emotional self-control. They're not saying that. Bill, could I ask a related question? So liberal compassion, controlling instinct or emotion or concern, and yet we always know that somehow or other the liberal compassion leads them to choose to be compassionate for one side and not for another. Immigration.

They feel compassion toward people who want to come to this country from Mexico, but you don't hear them say a word about the people here in, for example, the Central Valley of California, whose communities are turned upside down, who find new stress on public services, who really do. I'm conscious of all this because Victor Davis Hanson has a farm over in Selma and he sees this taking place all the time. People who grew up in one community without any democratic act, they never get to vote on it. In fact, when they do vote, they tend to vote against it. And yet the border is not patrolled and their lives are turned upside down. The liberals feel compassion for A but not for B. In Ferguson, they feel compassion for the Brown family, but not for

the store owners whose stores, as you rightly pointed out, were torn, even though many of those store owners are themselves blind. So how does that work? How do they choose whom to feel compassionate for? Partly, I think it is compassion being an emotion. There's no logic to it. That is that I think it lends itself to the greatest concern with the suffering that is right in front of you, and it argues against the thoughtful consideration of second and third order effects. So that, for example, Obama's immigration policy was left in a year

ago in the state of the union that he was saying the defining challenge of our time is economic inequality one would think it it doesn't take uh... uh... uh... uh... long chain of syllogism to say that if you're concerned about economic inequality

the the last thing you want to do is to make the labor market more crowded for native-born american who don't have more than a high school degree they've got plenty of problems already we don't need to make more for them but because compassion tends to focus on what's right in the center of the field of vision it it you know it's compassionate about this guy for that problem and then it's Compassion tends to focus on what's right in the center of the field of vision. It's compassionate about this guy for that problem,

and then it's compassionate for somebody else about another problem the next day. So I think there's that. I think to the extent there's a moral logic, it is sort of, in a way, it's sort of whatever would discomfort kind of the person liberals least imagine themselves spending a nice afternoon with, a normal white Midwestern conservative. If it would make that person uncomfortable, it's probably a good thing. Therefore, this is where we're going to direct our compassion. If they don't like immigrants, we want more immigrants.

Right. Bill, James Lilacs here in Minneapolis. One last question for you. Compassion, if you look at this in the crudest gender-reductive terms, compassion is mom and understanding, but discipline is dad. You could say, perhaps perhaps that the nation right now has the luxury to wallow in momism

because we're not at war domestically. We're not under threats like we were right after 9-11. But people say that when something bad happens as it did at 9-11, then we switch to being – then people look around for the dad party and cast off the mom party. If that's so, hasn't there been a sort of cultural preparation for the last 20, 30 years to what some people say feminize American politics so that compassion and taking care of and not caring about the consequences, et cetera, are seen as the primary virtues and that really the national appetite for a dad has diminished and might not be there the next time we get it. What do you think? Is there still some remnant element in American culture that has some spine as opposed to the heart?

I think there is. I think there's still a sort of don't-tread-on-me spirit in America, unlike, say, in Western Europe, that makes us distinctive. But I am, in general, partial to – in any conversation with other conservatives, I try not to be out-gloomed. So I think you've done a good job here in bringing up the essential problem. The syllogisms, generally speaking, are no match for sensibilities. And the sensibilities, as you say, are moving sort of in a more compassionate, lefty kind of direction. And I think this is for reasons that this is one of what's the old saying, you can't argue people out of positions that no one ever argued them into.

I think that in some ways because, over the past two centuries, the ongoing greater spread of prosperity means that suffering is of the sort known to the human race for thousands of years prior to the Industrial Revolution. Suffering is seen as more of an anomaly now. And as such, we resent it. It's an outrage. It's something we have to deal with rather than something that requires stern bridges or requires, as you say, sort of caring and tenderness. And as long as that's the case, conservatives are going to be fighting

sort of an uphill battle. But I think that may simply be our lot, and we have to do the best that we can. Suffering anomalies is going to replace suffering succotash as my next oath the next time I have to curse in Warner Brothers style. Thank you for being on the podcast today, the author of The Pity Party, a mean-spirited diatribe against liberal compassion. Good luck with the book, and thanks for joining us today. Thank you, gentlemen. Thanks, Bill.

You know, the problem actually is when you go on the radio circuit to do a book that has two plosives like that in its title, a lot of people are going to have to lean back from the mic when they say pity party and swallow their peas, so to speak. But of course, peas can also be seen as a wonderful, nutritious supplement to any meal. And intellectual peas, if you might say so, along with intellectual spinach and dessert and cordials of any – why an entire raft of intellectual food is yours at Ricochet. And actually, Rob, you had a little piece up about – Wow, that's amazing. A segue for a minute. I you had had like a tiny little stroke and forgotten that you'd

already done the foodie direct. No, I was tossing it to you for the member pitch. And also because you had that, you have that post about what your lunch says about you, which is ricochet. Here you got you talking about this. You get Peter talking about this.

You have somebody doing a whiskey debate, a bourbon debate, Rob about lunch. It's just a sponsor. It's crazy. An advanced, an an advanced uh panoply of things so make your member pitch if you if you are listening to this podcast for the first time and you know what we jumped right in normally i do this at the beginning but we were just i mean i think the three of us hadn't really been on a podcast in a couple weeks so we're kind of like we jumped right into

the topic and i kind of forgot that hey listen if you're listening to this podcast for the first time we are thrilled and happy that you have found us if you are a member of ricochet.com we are again honored to have you with us as partners in the ricochet experiment but if you're listening to this and you are not a member of ricochet you need to go to ricochet.com right now and sign up. Sign up. Become a member. There are three levels. There's the salt of the earth, pure American Calvin Coolidge level.

You get access to everything, the member feed. You get to post and comment and join the conversation because we really think that's important. You get all the podcasts. You get even the – every now and then, we do a couple of special podcasts. You get invited to the meetups. It's a really great, great community. I mean I've gotten to know a lot of people who are members of Ricochet and it's always sort of uplifting and depressing at the same time, uplifting because they're so smart and then depressing because when you – and I mean this with great respect to the people who are on TV opining. I've had better and more insightful conversations with Ricochet members than I have seen on television. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's almost as if the people on television are chosen for their appearance and their ability to be witty on cue and mistake the wit for insight.

Yeah, we say what we say is that they're circling the studio in makeup, right? They're ready. They're here. Let's get this guy. So there's two other members. There's, of course, the Mrs. Thatcher member where he has a few more goodies. And, of course, the highest level, there can be no higher level, the Ronald Reagan level. And that's got some even more good stuff.

Please check us out, Ricochet.com. We'd love to have you join even if you're not ready to join right now. Go to Ricochet.com and sign up for The Daily Shot, our daily email blast. You get it in your email inbox every morning. It's funny. It's witty. It's a great digest and a look ahead of the news. It gives you some really good factoids. It will arm you for any liberals you encounter for the following 24 hours.

So Ricochet.com, get the Daily Shot, become a member, and join the conversation. This is also the point at which people usually say, and it makes a great Christmas gift. But you know what? Yes. No, it doesn't. It makes a lousy Christmas gift. Don't say that because I'm about to tell people to do it. Because's incorporeal you can't put it in a box you rip something open and people say you know i've given you access access is just something so mysterious and airy

and foggy uh but that get that get a ricochet gift membership and then also buy a present and put the membership in the present. Well, isn't there something – aren't there togs, for example? Aren't there toggery? Isn't there bags? Aren't there mugs? Is there a Ricochet mug? Good lord, James.

I am such – I cannot believe that. Yes, of course. Why did I think of that? If you go to Ricochet.com, if you want to get somebody a membership, which we hope you do because that's really how we grow our members right word of mouth give somebody a membership and then go to the ricochet store it's right there on the ricochet site and maybe get a ricochet mug or a t-shirt or a tote bag and that's would be the corporeal the irl gift shall we say that's my point at the point yeah thank you well thank you for correcting me and of course that ricochet coffee mug can also be used for whipped cream with With a big mound of whipped cream on it.

Last week, I was in Fargo, North Dakota. And as you have to do in Fargo, we went out to eat. I don't think anybody cooks in Fargo anymore. There's every single restaurant in the world. And they're always packed, day or night, always. Dada wanted to go to IHOP. She'd never been there before. She wanted to have the international pancake experience.

So off to IHOP we go. And she ordered a French vanilla coffee treat, dream, something or other. And when it arrived, it was about the size of a goldfish bowl that I had as a child. And on top of it was a mound of whipped cream that looked like they'd emptied half a can of Ready Whip. It was incredible. Everybody at the table sort of reared back and went, whoa. And the waitress says, that's what everybody says. And so I added to my mental vocabulary the phrase, hold the whipped cream because everything at IHOP came with whipped cream.

So now around the house, we joke about that, that when my daughter makes hot chocolate that I'll take some ready whip and put a huge, cup and you put some other cream in it and it wasn't necessarily the confectionary type, but the type that shaved and lathered up your beard and softened up your beard, you could make a – you could use a Ricochet mug as a shaving mug to prepare the stuff that you slap on your face. Now you say to yourself, I'm not that kind of guy. I'm an electric guy. All right, fine. Deal with your rash. You say, I'm just a – squirt the stuff out of the bottle and slap it on my face. Fine. But do you know how good the stuff that Harry's makes is the shave cream? You do? You don't? Yeah, well, here's the deal. And then we'll be done with the pitches. Harry's shave. You know him, you love him. Or do you? They've got a new product that they would love to you to try this $30. No, no, no, no, they're not all that expensive. But if you really want a gift, this $30 razor is exquisitely balanced. I have one. It just feels right in your hand. And it looks like something that they'd use on the Hindenburg, for heaven's sakes.

Classic styling, but that's Harry's. You're old, and they've already turned the shaving industry upside down by giving better value than the giants like Schick and Gillette. Here's why you should order your shaving kit from Harry's for yourself or from anybody you know for Christmas. They're focused on providing guys a great shaving experience for a fraction of the price of the competitors. And as for women, you know, why don't you try Harry's,

use them on your gams, tell us what you think. It's a clean product design, high-quality blades, engineered in the own German factory for sharpness and strength, and blades, this is the big thing, half the price of competitors, and they come right to your door. Go to Harry's.com and use the coupon code Ricochet and you get five bucks off your first purchase. That would bring the cost of that

good razor down to 25. And believe me, when somebody opens up a Harrys package and sees that in Christmas, from the style to the design to the packaging, they'll know that you cared. And if you don't do it, then you don't care. What kind of person are you for not caring? Sorry. We had on the member feed this week – Hold on, hold on, hold on.

I have to give that a 10 out of 10. Yeah, I agree. With special – an award for special merit, Oak Leaf Cluster for the first totally unselfconscious use of the word GAMS anywhere in the United States of America since about 1952. OK, James, go ahead. All right, next week it will be pins. You know, that was the Fargo IHOP thing, however, was spontaneously generated in my brain because going back to Fargo is always an extraordinary experience because it's such a boom town.

I was going to ask if Fargo – Fargo is a little bit – the real boom is off in the west, isn't it? But Fargo itself is experiencing the boom as well? Fargo never stopped growing. The 2007-2008 crash never hit Fargo. They just get – the apartments kept – and houses kept marching out into the fields. They're building this huge new hospital on the edge of town and it just never stops. Every time I go there, sometimes we'll stay at a hotel because the kid likes it and it's

fun. There'll be some, there'll be an empty field across the street. When we show up two or three months later, there's another hotel across the street. It's extraordinary. And it's partially because of the oil, partially because of education, partially because of agriculture, but also because it's North Dakota and doesn't have a whole bunch of boat anchors draped around its neck, like the state of Minnesota, which oddly enough just got an award for being one of the greatest cities, Minneapolis, I think Minnesota, uh, for business. Wow.

Go to the border and you will see Moorhead, Minnesota on one side, Morabund on the other side, Fargo booming, you go a little North Grand Forks, North Dakota, booming. East Grand Forks, eh. So it's like East and West Berlin in the old days. Yeah. But I feel like that's an important thing. As we try to make our case to the American people about changing the direction, not – I don't really care necessarily the occupant of the White House, but the direction of the country.

It seems like that would be a good place to go. You go to Fargo. I mean a Thanksgiving day in Vienna, the OPEC ministers gathered to freak out about the price of oil. That's really what happened in that conference room is they freaked out because the price of oil is collapsing. That's how they finance their enormous expenditures. That's how really they pay off all of their internal domestic fundamentalist Muslim sects, right? They give them money to shut up and then the money goes to terrorists. We know that. with the fact that American oil and gas production in which one of the – the northern HQ is the Dakotas. The southern HQ is Texas is booming, that we are a net energy exporter in this country and that those are real jobs.

You build a pipeline. Those are real jobs for real people that not only help people get back to work but also increase our energy independence, which I know is sort of an abstract concept that doesn't really mean anything in the global energy marketplace. But it does because it gives you leverage. Energy and energy and control over energy and the flow of energy gives you leverage. And if you don't believe that, just ask Vladimir Putin. Hey, Rob, every president since Richard Nixon in 1972 – I think 1972 is the first year he used the phrase. Every president, including the sainted Ronald Reagan, promised to deliver energy independence for the United States of America and only Barack Obama has achieved it.

Isn't that remarkable? Well, I mean a lot – it is remarkable. Look, the flip side of that is that collapsing energy prices mean that there's not that much incentive for people to harvest new domestic energy, right? So energy prices are quite low for years. And so no one really wanted to invest in it. Why invest in it? It's just cheaper to buy it overseas. And there's no oil cheaper than the oil from the Arabian Sands.

That's the cheapest oil you can get. It actually happens to be the worst quality oil apparently, but it's cheaper, right? So it's all – it makes no sense just to get it there. I think what American business is understanding – and remember, there's trillions of dollars now in America that's sitting on the sidelines waiting to be invested. There's an enormous amount of capital that is looking for things to do. In the long term, a 20, 25 years, 30-year investment, that's a pretty good bet. That's a pretty good thing to invest in uh that there are centimillionaires now there are billionaires now in texas who made a bet 15 20 years ago on natural gas when really there was probably no uh obvious um boom in natural gas coming 20 25 30 years ago but they still made that bet so

um i suspect that i mean i i mean i'm not trying to not give Barack Obama credit because I don't think he's – Oh, I will. I know. But I would just say that I think these are long-term – You're going way too easy on him. Yeah, these are long-term events and long-term patterns. for me anyway, with my Thanksgiving meal last Thursday, a week ago, then the sight of those OPEC ministers in Vienna, um, soiling themselves that made me happy because I'm a bad person, but there you go. Oh, no, no. I think that's, I think good people may take some pleasure in that

because the people who are soiling themselves are bad people. Vladimir Putin, Russia is not a member of OPEC, but Vladimir Putin is not happy about what's going on. Venezuela is a member of OPEC and Chavez's successor, who is as much of a bully boy as Chavez himself was, is now in deep, deep trouble. All kinds of bad guys can't finance bad stuff now that the price of oil is down from $110 a barrel to what? It's about $70 a barrel right now, headed we think maybe even as low as $60. All of this taking place in the last five months.

It is just astonishing. It is astonishing and it is a sign that we can do this as a country. We do not have to be hostage to energy tyrants. And I don't mean energy tyrants like Putin and Venezuela. I mean energy tyrants like the secret tyrants in the Persian Gulf who with their trillions of dollars buy off their internal discord and they buy it off with petrodollars and frankly, let's be honest, American lives. That's what 9-11 was. Right, right, right. That's exactly right.

By the way, I happen to know one of those billionaires in Texas, a buddy of mine. You've had – we've had dinner together. And he made a very good – I said to him, how long is it before China figures out how to frack and how to do horizontal drilling? And he made a very interesting point. China can of course – you need several things. One of the things you need is the technology. China can steal that, copy it. They're very good at copying technology.

And in fact, producing it so often that they can drive the price. We all get that. But that's not all that you need. You need something that China doesn't have and that very few countries outside the United States have. And that is extremely well-defined property rights and an impartial judicial system in which to enforce them. going to invest big money in a farmer's backfield unless they have an ironclad legal understanding with the farmer that will hold up in court that they have purchased or leased the subsurface rights to whatever they find down there. And in China, nobody knows who owns anything. The government is still run by the Communist Party. They can sort of take over land if they want it,

but foreign investment, putting investment, nobody has what we, well, excuse me, not nobody, Europeans, some Europeans have it, but very few countries are in a position to replicate the energy boom that we are producing in this country. Good news. Very good news.

There's a lot of good news about this. One, the idea that, how many years ago was it? It wasn't too long ago. We were hearing about peak oil. We'd found all there was. There were just a few drops of liquefied dinosaur yet left. And once that was over, well, peak oil was good news to the right people because it meant that we would be making the shift to renewables, to clean energy. And some Google scientist, I can't remember exactly the name of the story. It's around here somewhere, recently said, forget about it. It's not going to happen. We don't have the tech yet at all to even come close to replacing what we need to do. And that's the beauty of this thing is that the people who have this huge moral and environmentally

catastrophic case are increasingly irrelevant and becoming more and more shrill. The idea that somehow that there is a moral stain attached to petroleum. The Wall Street Journal yesterday had a review of a book about the actual moral force and goodness of petrochemicals because carbon has made possible a level of power. I mean, it was something like every person in the course of a day has essentially the equivalent of 92 people working for them in terms of the energy that they employ, which makes every one of us practically, as the article said, a superman.

We have the power of 92 men in our hands because of carbon. And it's a grand thing. And to take it away would plunge us back into an absolute pre-industrial society, which a lot of these people figure is fine for everybody. That's better, yeah. We'll be artisanal butter makers. Absolutely. That's better. Yeah. We'll be artisanal butter makers. It's more – the only place where carbon is good is Venezuela because it allows for the wonderful redistribution of wealth. That's a good point. It's a very good point. But I think this goes back to what Bill Vigelli's book is about.

What is compassionate? Is it compassionate to force people to sort of live second world lives because you don't – because the idea of a coal plant makes you kind of sad or you don't believe – no matter what science says, you still believe fracking is bad. So you don't want to be for it. So all the jobs in North Dakota and all the natural gas jobs that could be in California or are in Texas, those people should just go do something else. They should put baggies on their hands and work at the Quiznos. I mean, this is part of the same argument, I think, which makes me – that's sort of interesting,

which makes me feel like that maybe we're in that moment and we always say, well, we need a Ronald Reagan, right? But what – we may not need an – I mean we're never going to get Ronald Reagan back. But there is something that would be – I'd be great to see in the coming political season, which is optimism. With somebody saying – somebody saying, look at this stuff that's terrible, right? And over here, look what's working. Why don't we just do that? More of that. There's good news. Stop doing the – I mean I remember when somebody asked me once.

I was doing a series and they have a big meeting at the end of the season. They come and they say, so what are your plans for next season? And I said, well, I'm going to look at every show we did this season and I'm going to look at the stuff that I thought really worked and I'm going to do more of that stuff. And then I'm going to look at the stuff that I thought didn't and I'm going to do more of that stuff. And then I'm going to look at the stuff that I thought didn't work at all and I'm not going to do that stuff again. And that's really kind of the only thing you can say, right? That's how you just – you wake up in the morning. You say, OK, all the stuff I did yesterday that was good, I'm going to do that.

Try to do that again and all that stuff that I get blew up in my face, I'm not going to do that anymore. And I feel like that's kind of what we need as a – that was sort of what Reagan said and I think that's – policy prescriptions aside, that's kind of what we need as a president. That was sort of what Reagan said. And I think that's, you know, policy prescriptions aside, that's kind of what I'm looking for is somebody to say, okay, in the middle of Detroit, we're not going to do this again. And then you go to Fargo and you say, but here it's working here. Why is it working here? And I think that'd be useful. And it won't be a mystery to a lot of people too. ESPN has come to Fargo twice now for some big Saturday afternoon show that they

do. And ESPN reaches an awful lot of people. And they've come back to Fargo because they say that there's no other place actually they've gone to that provides this. There's a downtown with a big marquee for the movie theater Fargo. There's thousands of people who throng downtown. The buildings look great. The stores are occupied. It's like this America that people say doesn't exist anymore. And here it is, thriving. Let some politician get up on stage and hold up a golden beaker of gasoline and say, this is life. This is power. This is inspiration. This makes all things possible. And then he takes a sip of it and say, oh, I'm sorry, it's scotch. What was I thinking? Which brings us to the member

post of the week, actually, which is looking for suggestions of scotch. Nicely done. It's one of the great things about Ricochet is you'll get the bourbon post, you'll get the scotch post. So you guys, are you – do you fall – where do you fall in the bourbon versus scotch continuum and did you contribute to this particular essay? I will jump in. I will – I did not contribute to this and here's why because i'm a proud american and i believe in america first and i don't like to drink the the socialist uh uh liquors never objected when i offered you some of my scott because i'm polite i'm polite always but i believe in america i'm a i'm a patriot so So if some kind of weird pinko – someone from the academic left like Peter Robinson wants to serve me some pinko whiskey, I'm raised right. I'll drink it. Are you calling Vical Contessa a pinko because that's who wrote the post?

If you're doing that, sir, I shall have to ask you to step outside. I'm just saying that I'm an American and we make the finest whiskey available on planet Earth right here in America. And most of it in Mitch McConnell's Kentucky. So – or Rand Paul's Kentucky. I mean it's up to you, which side ever you want to be on. And that – so I'm a bourbon drinker because I'm an American. Now, maybe you guys aren't American or you're not America firsters or you don't love America like I do. So you'd want you to just tell everybody

what flouncy European drinks they can have. Oh my goodness. It is rare I can do this, by the way. I recognize it's rare I can do this. So I am going to town. This is a six-act play, fellas. It is extremely rare. By the way, what were you wearing at dinner last night?

Was this a black tie dinner? No, it was just a dinner. It was just in a restaurant was I wearing it. Oh, oh, oh. I thought I – I was wearing my purple cloaks. You know, I was just like – I know you attend certain dinners that are far more European in texture and feel than American.

Let's put it that way. That's true. I was hoping I got you on that one. Oh, yeah. You know, any other time you could. Last time I wore black tie, Peter, was for the National Review Institute Buckley Prize dinner. So there. Okay. How conservative is that? All right. All right. Okay. Well, I'm not even going to mention the societies at Yale to which you – oh, sorry. All right. So when it comes to scotch, it seems to me that a man can be – can consider himself to have a pretty full cabinet if he merely has in that cabinet one bottle of the Glenlivet, which I – to my taste is the best all-around scotch you can get.

You want it at least six years old. And one bottle of the Balvini which is very light some have even compared it to a dessert wine but the the balvini has this huge advantage that my wife will drink it and even encourage other ladies to drink it so you get over this this gender divide all the men are drinking whiskey lets us have chardonnay no no the balvini The Balvini seems to work with the ladies and it's just lovely, light, very sophisticated. Okay. All of a sudden, Peter Robinson has turned into – The ladies love Peter's Balvini.

I didn't use the word gams at least. Okay, James. Over to you. Cold 40 gets the job done. Yeah. By the Balvini, do you mean the double oak? Do you mean the single barrel that's aged 15 years? I love the Balvini, but there over to you. Cold 40 gets the job done, yeah. By the Belvini, do you mean the double oak? Do you mean the single barrel that's aged 15 years? I love the Belvini, but there are several varieties.

And I love that a Macallan 12 is a beautiful thing. I'm with Rob. I'm more of a bourbon drinker, but I like to occasionally venture into the fine and unpronounceable whiskeys of Scotland. The Lach Mori, for example. Oh, the Brecht Nugget. Have you had the Brecht Nugget? I have, for example. The Brecht Nugget. Have you had the Brecht Nugget? I have not. The Brecht Nugget.

They could actually lance that out. Do a liquid nitrogen thing on your Brecht Nugget and then it comes right out. Well, you speak it like one who's ordered it properly. Exactly. Both of those are marvelous. Both of those I just made up because I like having conversations with people who are whiskey snobs and you start making up things like that. Oh, the Brook Lumen. Oh, the peatiness of the bourbon brands that you so enjoy because I think you're about to disclose. If you answer that question honestly, I think you're about to disclose that you're a particular kind of American, that you buy these small batch overpriced a feet bourbons, don't you?

Is this true, Mr. Long? There's no such thing. I will unequivocally say to you, Peter Robinson, that you are wrong. Really? I make my bourbon choice depending on the most important factor in my choice of bourbon. And I would say my choice of scotch, too, because I used to be a scotch drinker, too. The most important factor is who is paying. Because if someone else is paying and I want to soak them, I'm going to go for the really good stuff.

But when I just want a bourbon on the rocks, it will be a Maker's Mark. Maker's Mark is a perfectly fine bourbon and very delicious. When I want to upgrade a little bit and I'm like at my parents' house, my dad's got some good bourbon. I have some good bourbon in the house. I'll upgrade and enjoy – I like the old Weller a lot, which actually isn't that much more than Maker's Mark. Bullet bourbon is actually really, really good. And that's right along the same level. Is that an off meaning you like it or off meaning –

I love it. It's good. I love it. And it's not expensive. And they're right. Well, here's an interesting point about expense. And it goes again to our larger ricochet point about government versus private industry. There came into our market a, shall we say, lower-priced purveyor of spirits, which wanted to sell people what they wanted at a decent price. regulated and probably politically well-connected liquor dealers who were

already in the area, including some municipal liquor stores, which were loath to see any of their traffic go elsewhere. So they fought this place, and they trumped up this thing about we have concerns that they're going to be giving it to minors, because of course, that's what liquor stores wake up every morning

and do. How can we make our life easier? Let's sell to kids. That will work. So they held up the permit approval for this place for months and months and months. Finally, they could come up with no compelling reason why this completely legal store shouldn't be allowed to open. And it did. And the moment that it did, it laid bare the extraordinary markup that all the municipal places were charging. What was $24.99 in your Belit in the municipal liquor store is standing there on the shelf with the permanent forever price of $19.99.

Five bucks. Maker's Mark that was $ at the municipal is 1999. And people are looking around at this place, which itself has an extraordinary collection of wines. It's really good. It's got everything you want at prices that make everybody else look like they're doing what they're doing, which is gouging you. Because they're the state intoxicant shops, number 23, and they don't want to come. But even when they're not, James, you're absolutely right. Even when you don't have an ABC, which they have in still a lot of states, the alcohol – you've got to go to a state store to buy your hooch.

The actual distributorships are so corrupt. I mean there have been vast fortunes made by owning beer distributorships or liquor distributorships. I mean this is like this secret graft that happens because no one wants to actually – what's the term? It's like disrupt – what should be disrupted? This is really craziness and a sign – even in states that march around proudly because they're red states, a total graft and this is stuff that happened in the 30s and 40s and 50s and people just sort of bought and sold these things and bought and sold to politicians. It's a very powerful position in certain states to be the person deciding who gets to distribute beer as if that's some kind of weird special amber liquid that needs to be controlled.

It's like Lucy cigarettes. It's the same thing. And you have people in this state, this very, very deep, deep, deep, deep, deep Democrat state angry because the stores can't sell wine and beer in a grocery store or on Sunday. And you look at it and you say that's because the state is regulating whether or not you can actually pick up a Beaujolais at a particular time of the day and a day of the week. Do you like that? Because because that's kind of your guy's whole deal about everything else. Now, there may be some people listening to this who say, why are you talking about booze? I'm opposed to it. It's no good for anybody. And I understand that.

But, you know, when Chris Rock himself says, I can't go to colleges anymore and do stuff because everybody's offended about something. That's what I love about Ricochet. You know, people may be offended by this and that, but we love to pile in and have the conversation. In colleges, they don't want to have that conversation anymore. And was this a ricochet post, actually, or was this just something floating? Oh, it was a Rolling Stone interview, I believe, with Chris Rock, where he just says that kids today are too conservative, not in the Tea Party sense, but in the idea that they want the safe intellectual bubble in which they are not offended, or for that matter, even challenged. Peter, do you see that in the college safe intellectual bubble in which they are not offended or for that matter, even challenged.

Peter, do you see that in the college environs in which you are familiar? Yeah. Yeah. What I'm trying to figure out, of course, I'm too far removed from it now and my children will never describe it in enough detail to sort this out. is whether what has happened is that kids in general really have had their sensitivities sandpapered to a raw – red rawness. Or whether it's a small – whether what I really suspect is that it's a small group that screams, I'm offended, and everybody else has to kind of kowtow. I have the feeling it's sort of like the rioters in Ferguson. It's actually a small proportion but very, very noisy and really quite aggressive. That's my sense.

Well, Rob, you're – I would say that – I would buy that. I would like to know – I mean there's the highly sensitive sort of Victorian lady perspective on college campuses more than ever before. But I bet you there's more eye-rolling. And I think that morally – oh, please. You can kind of see that online. You can sort of see that in some online groups. But I'll say the problem – what's sad about that is that what it encourages in students,

even the eye-rolling kind, is a certain kind of cynicism. Exactly. Okay, what is this – what's the prevailing culture here? How do I get ahead or how do I just get through it? Well, you know what? I'm just going to go along with this nonsense because it's easier. Like I know exactly what my poli-sci professor wants me to say. So I'm going to say it.

It is – so this is what I have observed. I've seen this over and over again, and it enrages me when I think of it, which is why I try not to think of it. What takes place in American campuses today is a direct parallel of what took place in the handful of very important institutions of higher learning in the Soviet Union in the old days, which was that the really bright kids went to the hard sciences because that was incorruptible. That was the place where the ideology could not penetrate. Except for Lysenko. Yeah. Well, can I just share a little – just a little anecdote.

Sure. I know we got to run. I know we're late. I was talking once to the president of a large, prestigious American university. This was a bunch of years ago. And he had really – had done a very good job sort of effectively negotiating all these sort of thickets. And he said one of the things he did was – because the faculty is very, very powerful. They have these faculty meetings. And of course every French literature professor wants to get up and make a speech.

And so the hard science teachers, the faculty, they just never bother to show up. Which meant that sometimes you had to decide stuff and the faculty was there and they voted on nonsense and or hard science-related issues were always discussed and voted on at the same time as some of the more crackpot lefty ones. Because he knew he would guarantee that the science faculty, hard science faculty would show up and of course they would – they're not going to be persuaded by a lot of crap as it were. So that was how he did it, which I think is kind of brilliant. Very shrewd. Very shrewd. What I worry about is actually that they may roll their eyes but at the same time, they perceive a meta-truth, which they know to be so because it's part of being young and

liberal. So don't challenge and don't push back because as we're seeing – oh, boy, this is going to be hard. You've heard the case of the Rolling Stone piece about the UVA fraternity initiation gang rape, right? Right, yes. OK. That this story by some is being questioned for its journalistic truth, right? Right, right, right, right. The problem is that the story illustrates a greater truth.

So itself is helpful and the actual truth or mistruths or untruths that it contains are irrelevant. Because to question the particular is to question the validity in these people's minds is to question the validity of the general, and we can't have that. So I think Chris Rock is right. They may be cynical. They may be rolling their eyes, but they're still living within certain intellectual parameters that narrows what exactly they think about. And that's what I went through in college, and it took me 10, 15 years in the real world to bust out of that. Well, speaking of busting out, we have to do just that. Or actually, it's more like contracting to a hot, infinitely dense point that will explode again next week into an entirely new universe of talk, palaver, and commentary and the like. So off we go. Peter, I understand you have to run.

Rob, you have to run as well. I wanted to ask Rob this, and maybe you'll put it in the questions, whether or not comedy is harder today because of political correctness. It's a question we've been asking for 15, 20 years. And you know Rob's the kind of guy to not exactly be hampered by that, but you're also in the business. You have to tailor what you do. So maybe next week or the comments or never or around a drink like some scotch. What am I talking about?

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the, the, the face paint, the Ricochet face paint. I think we have, it's a kind of makes you look like a Braveheart type character. Great for Halloween. And thanks to all of you for listening and for joining and being part of

this. We'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. Bellows next week. We had a smoke. We laughed for all. It was worth. And I called out your name but You didn't say what you heard We drove home in silence The reception was not to be The Reception It's easy to be a man.

Turn off your heart at the risky table. Ricochet. Join the conversation. I had a terrible vision Of the world outside of this bar. She keeps talking about walking away from where we are. And it's so easy to be a man of pain. Turn off your heart and let the whiskey take the pain. Thank you.