The Ricochet Podcast - Prager, Wilson, and Jaws

Episode Date: April 5, 2013

This week on the podcast, a double shot of big guests. First, our old pal Dennis Prager stops by for some cogent views on SSM, religion, and why it’s important to link and fight for both. Then, Ricochet contributor Rick Wilson gives perhaps a more pragmatic view on the issue from the perspective of someone whose job it is to win elections. Who is right? Tell us in the comments. Also... Source

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It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. Well, eventually. I'm James Lylex and our guests today include Salem radio host Dennis Prager and Republican consultant Rick Wilson. Sparks will fly, questions will be asked, and a podcast shall be had. And yes, the podcast we're having is the Ricochet Podcast number 162, brought to you proudly by Hillsdale College and their brand new free, free online courses on the Constitution and Western heritage. We'll be

talking about this a little later in the show. But you know, if you got idle fingers at the moment, type in ricochet.com slash Hillsdale, sign up for it now. It's as close as you can get to being a Hillsdale student without ever leaving your home and And also brought to you by audible.com, the leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment today. Listen to audio books whenever, wherever you want. You can go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet and get a free audio book and a 30-day trial. And as far as ever leaving your home, I did leave my home, Peter.

Peter Robinson, of course, as you know him and love him. I left my home and I went Peter Robinson, of course, as you know him and love him. I left my home and I went to Arizona for spring break. So now I'm back in Minnesota with a little bit of actual hue in my fish belly white skin at this point and sad to be back in a place where there's still snow. Of course, you never have to suffer that, do you? No, no, no. When we want snow, we drive to it. And then when we're done with it, we drive away from it. James, I have to say, for a man who just can hardly restrain himself from praising the limbing, the upper Midwest, South Dakota, the Dakotas where you grew up, Minnesota. I mean, you really are poetic in your praise of that part of the country. You spend as little time there as you possibly can.

I just avail myself of the opportunities to seek out warmth. All right. And they're few and far between. But when spring break comes, it's time to go see the relays down in Arizona, which we did. Actually, could I? I'm wondering about this. I'm wondering whether the availability of inexpensive air travel actually helps sustain the population of the upper Midwest, even as toward the end of the Cold War, the Hungarians were the first

to permit travel outside the country, whereupon people stopped trying to leave. Explain more about this concept of inexpensive air travel of which you speak. I'm not particularly familiar with it. Well, in comparison with a quarter of a century ago, air travel in real terms is much cheaper than it used to be. You didn't drive to Arizona, did you? No, no, no, no, no. We took one of the airlines where you can't reserve a seat, which drives me crazy. You've got to queue like

cattle and then run in, and of course, all the first 50, 60 people take the aisle and the window, leaving the string of middle seats for everybody else. Now, I'm we, shall we say, Munchkin-esque in dimensions, and my wife is small as well. So we can fit in the middle seat without too much trouble. But actually, I'm not crazy about the claustrophobia that I used to get.

But this time, for some reason, all of my air travel anxieties, which I used to have and which were crippling and kept me out of the skies and on Amtrak of which there are tales to tell. Oh, I used to hate it. Oh, God, I was terrified of flying. Absolutely terrifying. But I got over that with a series of white-knuckling experiences and heavy, you know, pre-flight

alcoholic administrations before I went. No more. No more. Now I can sit there and enjoy the whole thing and look out the window and regard this as the miracle that it is. I love to look down and see just see the terrain change from the from the frost spattered countryside below to the to eventually the green creeps in and then the mountains and then at night when the city appears first as a few isolated dots and then the tendrils of light from the highways and then the whole Leviathan spreads out below you and it's glittering panoply. I love it.

I just love it. Which glittering panoply? Are you talking about Minneapolis now or Phoenix? Well, it would be. In this case, it was Denver that we came into. And then after that, Phoenix. But I like it. I love air travel, but I do remember as a young lad those glory days that you spoke of where you got a meal, you got cutlery, you got paper tickets.

There were six rows in the back for non-smoking and everybody else was puffing. The minute that light went off when the plane was taking off, whoosh, all of a sudden 60 people lighting up. It's a miracle. If you ever want to know what old air travel was like, dip your head into one of the smoking bars that they have in some of these restaurants. And the Venusian atmosphere of poison, it just reminds you, this is what everything used to smell like. And I was a smoker. I was a cigarette smoker. I still smoke cigars. But when you walk into these places, this is what bars smell like. This is what restaurants smell like. Now, we can make the argument that it's a diminution of your freedom to ban it in public places,

and I think that we ought to have little carve-outs for people to say, you know what, this is a smoking restaurant. If you don't like it, go to another place. But it's a reminder that, wow, things smelled badly for a long time back then. I do remember those days. I do remember those days. I do remember those days. Well, you know, this is where we would have Rob enter in. Exactly where I was going to go.

We need to let folks know where Rob is. You want to tell the story? Well, as far as I can tell, when we got in the cab coming back from the airport, cabbies around here are not particularly conversant in things like directions, even though they have little GPS machines. You got to tell them. So you get in the cab and you say, we're going to Minneapolis. It's a large, vibrant metropolis to the north and west of this airport. And we'll guide you once we get there. We're just accustomed to cabbies not knowing where to go. And I'm not sure if that leads to arguments with some,

but apparently there was a bit of a fracas, a dust-up, maybe even a mealy with a cab driver and somebody on Rob's show, and apparently the actor is unable to act because his jaw is wired shut. Is that what you've heard? That is exactly what I heard, and it's not some bit player. It's Steve Byrne. It's the star of the show. You just can't shoot a show. You can't even put on heavy makeup when the star's jaw is wired shut. So the show is going into, what is it called? Remission? What do they call it when they- Hiatus. Hiatus. Thank you very much. The show is going into hiatus, and there are details to be negotiated and sorted out, like what happens to all the writers while the star's jaw sets. So Rob Long may join us later, may join us later, but is most likely to be stuck over at Warner Brothers in deepest, darkest Burbank, California, negotiating for his writers. At least that's the way he's portrayed it to me.

He's sticking up. Brave man that he is for all his young writers. Well least that's the way he's portrayed it to me. He's sticking up, brave man that he is for all his young writers. Well, you wonder what the dispute about. Perhaps it could be whether or not North Korea is completely nuts and crazy or whether or not this is just the usual tit for tat verbal escalation that precedes some sort of cave in by the United States. What do you think? When I see a drudge headline that says North Korea gives the okay for a nuclear attack on America, I wonder how seriously are they taking this really? Because those are the kind of words that that that that one doesn't say unless you're really cruising for a bruising. Mm hmm. Well, as I read this material about North Korea and what the North Koreans keep saying, I it so happens that I'm working through Cold War material on Khrushchev and Eisenhower,

and Eisenhower knew, even though John Kennedy accused him of permitting the United States to fall behind the Soviet Union, Eisenhower was receiving intelligence. He knew perfectly well that we retained an overwhelming lead in nuclear weapons of every possible kind over the Soviet Union. And yet, Nikita Khrushchev was so erratic that nobody, including the President of the United States, felt he could rule out some sort of surprise attack, either on Europe or on the United States, surprise nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. And so Dwight Eisenhower, there were at least four different times during his presidency when Eisenhower said pretty unambiguously to the other side, a couple of times to China and a couple of times to Russia, you do anything and I will nuke you. And things were more tense during the Eisenhower years behind the scenes than I had realized.

But this comes out when you read up the material. Something like that seems to be taking place in Washington right now because off go the destroyers in the direction of Korea. The Department of Defense is taking this guy seriously. He strikes me as a crazy man. My suspicion is he strikes them as a crazy man, but he's a crazy man with a handful of nuclear weapons. How does he strike the Chinese? That's the question, too, because they've they've met some troops on the border.

The speculation is, is that China is not going to is not going to ruin everything for themselves by backing this idiot. That there's nothing in it for them to say. Yes, we repudiate our standing in the international community and are prepared to suffer massive trade losses by back of this jerk, you would think that perhaps the troops are there just to keep people from pouring over because I really don't think that China would hesitate to give a whiff of grape shot to encourage the others should people seek to enter China during some sort of breakdown. Right. Well, it's interesting because we've got 28,000 people over there.

And to quote George C. Scott and Dr. Strangelove, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair must. But South Korea itself, Seoul in particular, would look like Yosemite Sam after the bomb he was about to throw exploded and blew his hair in all directions and blackened his face. They would not be in a good position. They're saying that North Korea, even with its old military, still has the potential to level it in a couple of hours or so. Do you think that's true or is that itself a rosy estimation of their vaunted powers?

Oh, I don't see any reason to doubt it. I mean, you look at the map, and one of the first things that strike you is how far north Seoul is. Yes. This capital of South Korea, this bustling modern metropolis, is very close to the North Korean border. So you don't need, as long as you have a lot of cheap, lousy, out-of-date, backward missiles, you don't need to be that accurate because the distance isn't that great. I don't suppose there's any reason to doubt the ability of the North Koreans to do a huge amount of damage in Seoul as long as they're willing to pay the price, which of course would be instant retaliation.

And that's the question. Is this guy crazy enough to try to do something like that? Well, they used to say that about Saddam Hussein as well, that the scuds weren't accurate, but the scuds could sow all kinds of discord. And it just reminds you that the other guys seem to have the worst named weapons. If it's not a scud, it's a dong. If it's not a low dong, it's a no dong. So the idea of having to report the news and saying that North Korea has launched dozens of dongs into South Korea and keep a straight face. Well, it will be interesting because one of the things that the US could do, of course, is with our precision monuments, their precision munitions, is to demolish every single monument to Zhuzh that exists in Pyongyang or elsewhere

in the country as a prelude, of course, to something else. But to tell the people that every single symbol of this regime can be instantaneously wiped off the face of the planet. And I wonder what sort of psychological effect that would have more than, say, bombing their 100-story hotel. of the planet. And I wonder what sort of psychological effect that would have more than, say, bombing their 100-story hotel. My guess is almost none, because the people of North Korea have no effect on what the government of North Korea does. Again, the historical parallel that comes to mind here is we now know in some detail what took place in the Imperial Council in Tokyo after the

bombing of Hiroshima. And the cabinet, it wasn't the cabinet, it was the war council. It was about six men. It was a small group in the presence of the emperor. They were tied. They wanted to fight on. And indeed, they did keep going until we dropped the second. Anyway, you get the picture. When people are really crazy, they can do extremely crazy things.

Well, and extremely crazy would be like talking amongst ourselves when we have Dennis Prager here. How do I introduce this guy? Dennis Prager, author of so many books, radio talk show host where he discusses politics and culture, religion, men and women, the need to stop kvetching and start kvelling. All of which are dealt with with his trademark style of ineffable civility and a love of clarity that borders on the exorius. He's Adam Carolla's partner in palaver. He's the sufferer of Hugh Hewitt's calumnies. He's the oibermensch of the Salem Radio Network, Dennis Prager. Welcome back to the podcast.

That is one of the great introductions of my life. I mean, no, no, it was just remarkable, and I hope this is recorded. It certainly is. Well, welcome back, Dennis. As you know, before we get to the meat and the pith of the gist here, we always like to ask you an either-or question. Before it was Mahler versus Bruckner, it was CDs versus vinyl and the rest of it. This time I'm going to ask you, your preference for cities.

Do you prefer Los Angeles, as they used to say in the movies, or the city that people in Brooklyn call the city? Oh, boy. You see, I have a very strong answer. And my fear is I don't want to hurt the feelings of anybody living in the latter city. I grew up in New York and loved it for its culture, which I used. I had subscriptions to just about everything from plays to ballet to opera to my favorite, and it's orchestral and chamber music. But by the end of graduate school at Columbia,

I decided that life would be better outside of New York City, and it wouldn't have mattered if it were Louisville, Kentucky, Nashville, Tennessee, or L.A. It turned out that I had a job in L.A., and I've stayed here ever since from 1976. But there are a lot of things about New York life that are not for me. They clearly are for all of my family. They all live in the New York, New Jersey area and love it. I don't. Got it. Dennis, Peter Robinson here.

I had lunch the other day with a very conservative, very intelligent young friend. In fact, someone who's going to be graduating from Stanford Law School. And he said, Peter, among my generation, this is a fellow who's 28, as I recall, 26, in any event, in the second half of his 20s. Among my generation, gay marriage, it's not even as if gay marriage is an issue. And there's a majority of my generation that's in favor. It isn't even an issue. My generation can't even begin to understand why anyone would oppose gay marriage. Conservatives and the Republican Party have lost on this. They need to accept the defeat and move on. Dennis Prager refuses to do so. How come? I am curious before answering. Do you know if this this student himself I think it's a he right

yes does this student himself support same-sex marriage no actually no he doesn't he just used it as a lost cause okay I understand well I don't view it as a lost cause. And in any event, I am not going to give up one of the deepest held beliefs of my life because it's politically not popular. What the hell do I stand for if that's my determination? It blows my mind when people say that. He is right, probably, about his generation. His generation has been raised with no religion other than the heart. How you feel about it matters. There is no wisdom that precedes you. The fact that 2,000 years of Christianity and 3,000 years of Judaism have defined marriage as male-female is of no consequence to people

raised by people who enunciated don't trust anyone over 30. Right. Dennis, let me try this one on you. You and I are of a generation to remember, it would have been in our youth, but still we can remember overhearing conversations among parents and relatives and so forth when no-fault divorce began to come in. I can't remember the year it was enacted into law in New York, but I grew up in upstate New York, you grew up in the city. It was enacted during our younger years. And pretty quickly, that is to say within a decade and a half or so, the divorce rate shot up to almost half and has remained there ever since.

And now it's down to 48% or so. of marriage is work anyway, in which, because of the second point, the introduction of contraception, the connection between being married and childbearing has been utterly eliminated. And so what's the point? In other words, the argument would be that gay marriage as a battle was lost almost five decades ago when no-fault divorce came in. That was the moment when the culture said, eh, marriage doesn't matter. If marriage matters, then when there's a divorce, somebody should be named as at fault. Isn't that right? Well, I don't agree with that.

You don't? I've never found a correlation. No, not at all, in fact. Great. A bad conservative argument. It's like saying that X percentage of cars crash, therefore driving has been rendered useless. That is, the X number of marriages crash, therefore marriage is useless, is a non-sequitur. So I just, I've never understood it. And maybe, not maybe, I am convinced we have a Jewish-Christian difference.

There are only two that I know of. This is one of them. Judaism has always accepted, even welcomed divorce, because it thinks a bad marriage is hell, and hell is reserved for evil people in the next world. And Christianity has always had a problem with divorce.

The Catholic Church doesn't accept it at all. And Protestantism, in terms of Sola Scriptura, abides by Jesus' doctrine that outside of adultery, essentially, there's no grounds for divorce. Judaism has never held that, and so I think there's a Jewish-Christian divide on this among conservatives, in other words, who agree on virtually everything else. And I resolutely support the Jewish position that a bad marriage is not good for children. It is not good for the adults and is unfair. Also, people are living far longer than ever before.

When you die at 40, you don't have enough time to get divorced. You're too busy making a living and making a girlfriend. So I have a different view on it. I'd also quibble with the statistic that half of them end in divorces, because as I understand it, when they say there are 100,000 marriages this year and 50,000 divorces, that people think, oh, that means that half of them fail. Actually, the 50,000 is from the whole base of marriages that you have. That's correct. That's correct.

I know Michael Medved has been adamant about this. I think it's more divorce than he thinks, but it doesn't matter. It's not 50%. But even if it were 50%, that's why I didn't quibble with that, even though I don't think it's accurate. In principle, I think it is cruel to ask people who are in a bad marriage to stay in it. If that's God's will, I have a different reading of God. Let me ask you this. Charles Murray has this book where he discusses there's two different social trends in America right now.

The elite, the ones who preached do what you want. Marriage is nothing but a piece of paper, those people actually are marrying at a higher rate and the people who took their advice in lower classes are not and have huge illegitimacy rates. But then somebody else looks and says, all right, you've got the thinking class now is marrying more and obviously honoring marriage by accepting it more as an institution. And at the same time, you have gays now who are going to be practically expected to marry and not live lives of bacchanalian rebels.

Isn't this actually perhaps the start of the pendulum moving backwards towards more old bourgeois concepts that if we lose something societally, and I know you believe that we lose something tremendously society if we redefine marriage, at the same time, could there not be a concomitant strengthening of the notion by all of a sudden saying, you know what, it's not just a piece of paper, it is a worthwhile societal institution. I'm trying to look for some good. You're more optimistic than I am. The basis of my pessimism is Europe, where the elite don't marry. The president of France, if I'm not mistaken, has a girlfriend.

And nobody in France gives a damn. He's just never bothered marrying the woman he's with. I don't see that trend. As societies get more secular, there will not be more marriage, even among the elite, because the truth of the matter is religion breeds the belief that you should get married. That's why I got married.

Now I believe in marriage for other reasons, romantic reasons among others, but I got married. Now I believe in marriage for other reasons, romantic reasons among others. But I got married because my religion demanded that I did. And again, I don't usually refer to my religion in these answers because they're not about them, but there's no way you would know this, but in traditional Orthodox Jewish life, I'm not Orthodox, but I was raised it. A man who is not married does not wear the talit, the prayer shawl, in synagogue. And as you get older, it's humiliating. When you're with a 15-year-old not wearing the prayer shawl. And Jewish life basically humiliated men into getting married. When you're with a 15-year-old not wearing the prayer shawl.

And Jewish life basically humiliated men into getting married. And it was a very good thing that it did, because men are not naturally monogamous. So I don't think that the elite will get married. And especially with the redefinition of marriage, male-female bonding as such is no longer special. Dennis, so you just touched on it. It's Peter here once again. We've been talking for 15 minutes now, and I haven't yet asked you point blank. I know you've said this on your radio show, and you've done it in print, but why not? Here's the, some 25 year old with a good heart says, well, I've got a couple of friends.

They're gay. I don't know. In some way, they seem to love each other. They want to get married. Why not? What's wrong with that? Let them. Why not?

Well, all right. Fine. So I would ask, so I would ask them what I have asked gay spokesmen for the last 30 years on radio, and never once gotten a response other than ridicule of the question. If love is the criterion, what is your argument against polygamy? A man can certainly love two women, which is the way it's usually defined polygamy, not polyandry of two husbands. So why not that? And you know what he will answer?

You're a 25-year-old? Yeah, you're right. Why not? And or for that matter, why not immediate relatives? There can be true love there. Now, I know the answer they'll give me, because I've been doing this for so many decades. The answer I'll get then is, well, if immediate family make children, the children will be more likely to be mentally defective.

In fact, I'm allowed to use the word today. I don't know what word you're allowed to use. And so, by the way, it's not true. It's only true generation after generation after generation. So, in other words, I will simply say, and by the way, some are honest enough to say, you're right, I don't care. If a brother and sister over 21 want to marry, that's none of my damn business. Let them do so. And so, at least they're intellectually honest. So the person has to understand we are ending marriage as we know it,

and we are stating it is only an economic institution. Number two, and this is my bigger and biggest argument, I believe, and this takes a while but i'll be very brief we are demolishing the distinction between male and female that is why it's lbgt the t is very interesting what does t have to do with lesbian and gay? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But it is part of the attempt to undo male-female distinction. When you say that same-sex marriage is as good as, as valid as, as desirable as heterosexual marriage, what you are saying is that gender is irrelevant.

Irrelevant. That is the proclamation of same-sex marriage. Whether you marry a member of your sex or not is irrelevant. Love is all that matters. So then you are saying gender is irrelevant, including in the raising of children. Forgetting procreation, because you can obviously procreate now through artificial insemination and female surrogates. I understand that. But are you really telling me, and that's why I fought the issue on adoption. I thought if you have a married couple and a gay couple, that the married couple should always, unless it's a bad couple,

but then they should never be allowed to adopt to begin with, always get the child. Because it is better for a child, all things being equal, to have a mother and father. But same-sex marriage announces, no, mother and father do not matter. Mother, mother, father, father, father, mother, equal. Those are very major and false pronouncements. Perhaps it's not marriage equality they want.

It's marriage egalitarianism. Same thing for all. Dennis, while we have you here for just a few seconds, I just want to whips, I want to give you whiplash and go to another topic because you had a fascinating interview on your show today, which people I'm sure can get at Prager Topia, where you were, she was a book about the rising tide of intolerance towards Islamic refugees in Europe. And there was a review on Amazon of her book that used a term and stated a situation that I know you're familiar with and probably have some ideas on, and that is the Islamophilia

of the left. Why? Well, the basic reason is the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The Islamist doesn't like Judeo-Christian, Western, conservative values. And the leftist doesn't either. So they are natural allies. They're fighting the same people. And so that's the first and most important reason.

They would hate each other, and they do hate each other in Egypt. But in the Western world, Islam is not the threat that Christianity is. It was a great discussion with that woman. She was very cheerful and very blithe in the way she just sort of dismissed the behavior of Christians in the last 50 to 100 years. I mean Northern Ireland was a big thing for her. Somehow that stuck out. Anders Breivik's killing other Europeans is supposedly the same as having, you know, a cadre of Islamists in London who are advocating for the destruction of the very society that sustains them. I just found that a fascinating interview. Hey, Dennis... God bless you for sending... Yeah, go on.

No, it's Peter Robinson here. I'm sorry. I'm just conscious that we promised your staff that we'd let you go after a certain amount of time, and that time expired a few moments ago. So I just want one last question, which is this. For those of us who believe that marriage is and ought to be what it has always been for several millennia now understood to be, that is to say, a union between one man and one woman. What is the correct way to think about this present moment in American culture? Do we simply acknowledge what my young friend suggested, which is that the larger battle is lost, popular culture has moved against us, and we retreat into our own, I mean, America is a large place. You can still continue to practice your own beliefs. But do we simply acknowledge that we now represent a subculture?

Grant that. Try to provide, produce the most vigorous subculture that we can, but just face the facts. Or do we say, no, this fight is not over. We just put a stake in the ground and we fight it forever, no matter what, just the way pro-life people have for 40 years now been fighting against Roe versus Wade. The country, you can't seem to come to a decision about it, but the pro-life people refuse to give up. What's the correct position, Dennis? That's correct. That is the correct. I mean, what are we going to fight for? I just, I don't understand. If we can't fight for the male-female definition of marriage, what are we going to fight for exactly? Lower taxes? Yes, that's the idea. That's the idea. Yes, but it's soulless libertarianism, which, by the way, is a redundant phrase.

Libertarianism is soulless. And so I am totally – this country was founded to be a Judeo-Christian country with a secular government. I am untrue to the founders and to those who died at Normandy, in my opinion, for what we have. There are crosses at their graves at Normandy. I was there. There isn't a symbol of low taxation. Nobody dies for low taxes. You die for a type of society. This society was founded on liberty and godly trust, and e pluribus unum. And godly trust means nothing to the libertarian right, and they are now having a very big holiday in conservative circles, but I'm sorry. I will fight them as strongly as I fight the left that we were founded to be a God-based society. Dennis, I know we have to let you go. I just have to say, excuse me, I'm looking forward to tomorrow because one of the signs that my work week has come to a close and the weekend begins is the third hour of the show when you play The Beast by Milt Buchner, one of the greatest

swankiest songs organ tunes ever. And even though I knew that song long before you played it, I stop and I listen and my hands imitate an imaginary keyboard because it's just

the riff that says, it's all okay. Here comesiday here we go and i just i want to thank you for that moment yeah well bless you uh it means the world to me that you listen and i will just say that is why music is a gift of god to make us feel that calm in the midst of storm absolutely and handle great as he was would have given his pinky finger to have written that to make us feel that calm in the midst of storm. Absolutely. And Handel, great as he was, would have given his pinky finger to have written that riff. Well, that may be overstated.

All right, Dennis, thank you so much. We'll hear you on the radio and we'll see you at Ricochet and we'll have you on the podcast. Dennis, thank you. I always enjoy it. Thank you so much, guys. Anytime. Take care. Bye-bye. What a pleasure. Always, always, always a pleasure. I do. I listen to

the, you know, when I work at home, these are my imaginary friends that I listen to on the radio and it's always fun when I actually intersect with them in real life. Speaking of real life, however, the realest of life that you can possibly imagine is experienced by those people. Yes, dramatic tone shift once again by those in North Korea who, never mind the people who have to live in Pyongyang and, you know, the outer party members quaking over what the next political decision is going to be.

Never mind the people in the countryside. Imagine the people in the countryside. Imagine the people in the camps. And my wife on the way back was reading on the plane a book called Escape from Camp 14. It's an account of a man who did just that, who escaped from a North Korean prison camp. And I kept looking over at the book and thinking, she's still on page 14? Because Escape from Camp 14 was at the top of the page. But she read the entire thing on the plane because it was engrossing and horrifying. I've read excerpts, I've read accounts of this guy's story, and it's unimaginable what goes on. But if you want to imagine and you want to learn exactly what is going on over there, Escape from Camp 14 is not only a book, it's available as an

audiobook, and you can get that at audible.com, and you can get that for free. Now, if you go there right now, what you can do is have a 3-0, a 30-day free trial, 100,000 titles, every genre you can possibly imagine, and also that whisper sync technology that you've heard about. That's right. It'll sync to your Kindle, to your audio device. You've got to hear it to believe it. Anyway, and there's lots of Dennis Prager on Audible as well.

So if you go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet today, you can get a little North Korean info. Factually, you can get Dennis Prager's essays. You can get all kinds of fiction, including our show, our friend CJ Box as well. So yeah, go there, get it, and thank them for sponsoring this,

the Ricochet Podcast. So Peter. James, could I, I just want to make a special pitch for Dennis's latest book, which is called still the best hope Dennis and I did a, uh, an episode of uncommon knowledge on this book last year. It's a great big book that goes into the underpinnings of the American constitution. American society goes right back to the founding of the country. And it gets at what

Dennis mentioned in his final answer just a few moments ago, which is that he's convinced in the book. It's a wonderful tour de force of history and morality and throughout it, every single page you've got. Well, of course, when you're listening to it, it's not pages, but what you've got is Dennis's combination of lucidity and love of argument. It's a wonderful book. If he was a Roman writer, he would have been lucidious. I agree. He was talking on the show today about the fact that if you want to raise eyebrows, It's a new biography of Marx, which goes day by day through his life and essentially portrays him as an utter loser with poor hygiene. Oh, yes. He was a wretched man.

He was a wretched and rather silly man. Exactly. It's like waking up. Imagine people who knew of him when he was around and then wake up 150 years. It's like finding that Professor Erwin Corey found this sort of intellectual discipline. Yes, actually. It's Erwin Corey with a beard. Marx was a sponge.

He lived off his parents and then he lived off Engels. Engels inherited a factory in the north of England and people were bailing him out all his life. He was incapable. It was a typical case of arrested adolescence with Karl Marx. Right. But I mean, imagine 150 years hence, eavesdropping a conversation where somebody says, how can you defend Coriism after the death of 300 million people? I mean, you'd really start to wonder what exactly had possessed these people.

Exactly. And what it was was, well, it was the, you know, it all goes back to the damned French, if you ask me. And I say that with love. I mean, I have a French brother-in-law, and we just spent some time together. And it was funny. We're driving around arguing about, you know, he's arguing about the too big to fail thing that actually you do have to prop up some of these large institutions. And I'm saying, but you're a socialist for God's sakes. You know, you want the banks actually to get the

money of the little people so they can go on. But it's all about, it's all about this empowering of the smallest peasant who trailed behind the tumbrel, cheering that the big fat cat was going to get his head lopped off. And ever since the terror, which established modern state terror, right? The way that rippled through Europe through the 19th century, the way it cleared out all the institutions and left room for madmen like Marx to go in, and then the way the whole culture had its backbone, its confidence, smashed and crushed in World War I. I mean, if I could roll everything back, I'd go back to the French

Revolution and say, let's try a different approach. Shall we? Hey, James, for your French brother-in-law, this is, let's see, this is AP, Brussels, Belgium, former French budget minister Jérôme Cazouac admitted on April 3rd to maintaining a Swiss bank account for more than 20 years. This is the guy who was responsible for punishing, for cracking down on tax evaders. And for two decades, as he rose through the socialist party, supporting enormous tax rates and supporting punitive measures against people who tried to evade paying French taxes. For two decades, he had an unnumbered account in Switzerland that he was using to evade French taxes. That's what socialism leads to. Right. But that doesn't discredit the notion that these guys should pay higher taxes,

does it? No, of course not. And frankly, I don't want to go that route because, not to quote Dennis again or anything, it's one of those ideas I actually arrived at independently. The fascination and fixation on hypocrisy is an adolescent trait. It brings out your inner Holden Caulfield. You're a phony man, as though somehow failing to live up to the standards that you set for yourself and others invalidates the standards themselves. So while it's fun to crow about these guys and say, ha ha, Nelson style, still,

and my brother-in-law would probably say that hypocrisy and double dealing and self-enrichment is precisely what he expects of all these elites anyway. They're all drawn from the same cadre. They're all drawn from the same little narrow group of people who went to the same schools. I mean, it's like they have one technocratic class and swap out one quasi-socialist for another full socialist. But I have to disagree, I'm sorry to say, because hypocrisy doesn't prove anything in terms of sheer argument, right? You can still argue for socialism. But as a matter of observed fact, I would contend that socialism rigorously observed as it is in France produces hypocrisy because it is the only way to get by. An ambitious, intelligent, well-educated, energetic Frenchman has has two choices hypocrisy or leave the country that's a good point hypocrisy is an argument really when it comes to it it's the the evidence

all of anyway i just i would like to you set me down with your french brother-in-law and i'll go at it james even if even if it's difficult for you to do so. Yeah. Well, we're doing this, of course, as we're zipping down the street in our Mercedes-Benz, you know, with the top down. So, you know, don't give me any of this sympathy with the little folk, my friend. You've got one of these at home, too. Well, anyway, you know, Ricochet has been going back and forth

and having a variety of civil and contentious remarks about the issue of same-sex marriage. And Dennis, we know where he stands. Let's wander over and see where some other viewpoints might lie. We've got Rick Wilson with us. He's one of those people who just gets tons of comments on Ricochet, and for good reason. Republican political consultant. We welcome him to the podcast. Rick, thanks for being with us today.

I am delighted to join you as always hey rick peter robinson here first of all defend your very existence republican republican political consultant why haven't you slunk off into a hole and buried yourself i i'm waiting for the black mariah to come and sweep me away to the real the re-education camp at any moment. No. Serious point. Describe the place that a consultant plays in the political, what do we call it, the political ecosystem. The role we play is not contrary to popular belief that we're just amoral, ideologically unmoored people. It's to try to apply experience and social science

and everything else to actually win elections because elections aren't just a simple ideological or emotional decision. They are a complicated process that involves a lot of moving parts and it requires specialists to understand how to make those moving parts function. And if one side comes to the table with a campaign machine that works and the other side doesn't, it doesn't matter what you believe. They're going to beat you. I mean, this is Mitt Romney and Barack Obama writ large. By which you mean that Barack Obama simply had a better organization. He had an organization driven by data, driven by empirical research, driven by media and

messaging that was carefully targeted, appropriately calibrated, delivered in a way that was financially efficient. And in that regard, it wouldn't have mattered who the nominee on the Republican side was if we couldn't post up against that organizational strength. None of our correctness on matters ideological would have made a bit of difference. Okay. Now, so this brings us to, you're getting beat up lately by, on Ricochet and by Rush Limbaugh. So your view on the way Republican candidates, the Republican Party conservatives, the position they should take

on same sex marriage is? Well, they should take their positions on same sex marriage, but they shouldn't believe that the culture is at any point now, for the foreseeable future, if you look at the map of the demographics of where this is, going to be amenable to a federally driven solution that will be of political value to the conservative movement. You cannot impose this from the top down and say marriage is only between a man and a woman. And as I said in the piece, it makes no difference what my personal beliefs on the matter are. And that's not just, you know, consultant weaseling. That's the fact. It doesn't matter if I believe gravity is real or not. Gravity is real. And the polling is, is, is decisive and definitive. And if we want to change where that polling is,

that's something we can't accomplish just through legislative action. We have to get out there and alter the terrain of the culture and society rather than hope for, as I like to jokingly say, Papa Fed to come down and by legislative magic, try to undo what society has decided its beliefs are right now. Okay, so I'm sorry. Go ahead. Who's this? It's not just legislative magic. It's also verbal sleight of hand.

One of the reasons that so many people on the right are hesitant to oppose the issue is because it's been defined as homophobia and hate unless you stand for this. You can be in favor of any measures of equality when it comes to homosexuals, but if you oppose this for reasons that have nothing to do with your moral view of the issue itself, you're a hater.

And I mean, I keep looking at that brilliant slight of verbal redefinitioning and wondering how many things could the right get traction on if we change the terms in order to make the appeal more effective, just like they've done with same-sex marriage? Look, they engaged not in just a political operation, but in a social marketing operation that, as you said correctly, redefined the terms that were used. They stopped

talking about the phrase gay marriage, and, started saying things like love and relationships and commitment. And they use and, and, and, and calibrated their messaging to a, to a set of decisions that made it sound like they were embracing one of the most fundamentally conservative institutions rather than, um, something that, that, that is, you know, the other and societally different. I mean, I made a sort of flip remark the other day that, you know, the leather pants parades and the Tom of Finland stuff for years and years set the gay rights movement back rather dramatically. And, you know, it's one thing to have the, you know, the San Francisco parade figures

as the symbol of gay marriage. It's another thing to have two frumpy lesbians at Ikea. It's a much different societal picture when you illustrate it that way, and they were very smart to do so. I mean, look, I don't agree with their ends necessarily, but I think that we can't say they didn't build a brilliant messaging operation, execute it, and alter the terrain of the society we live in.

Rick, Peter here one more time. P. Henry, Ricochet member P. Henry put up this comment. Go ahead, abandon the social issues. Now tell me how Republicans win any more elections without their base. If you don't, if principles are for sale, if it means a theoretical majority, it just doesn't work. So go ahead and respond to that. Well, listen, I've done a lot of races in very blue places. And by way of example, I'd like to ask him who he would have preferred on 9-11 to be the mayor of New York? A guy I worked for who happened to be a pro-choice big city mayor who was quite liberal by the definitions of the religious right

and of evangelical conservatives out in the world, or would they have preferred Ruth Messinger, the far-left Marxist city council chairman? I mean, we don't have the luxury of imposing the world as we like it on campaigns everywhere in this country. We don't get the Chinese menu, I'm sorry, and squeeze people down into a set of categories that function everywhere. We have 50 separate states and wildly different regions. So you are not saying that Ted Cruz down in Texas should embrace gay marriage because that's the way the country's going. No. So what you're saying is a kind of sophisticated, I'm trying to sum up, and then if I've got it wrong, adjust this. So what you're trying to say is a very sophisticated

version of Bill Buckley's rule, which is we should always support the rightward most viable candidate. And Rick Wilson, who is a professional in the field, steeped in the data, who knows something about elections on the ground, is saying, look out, folks. Be realistic. What is viable, particularly in certain regions in the country, is not today what it was 10 years ago and certainly not what it was 20 years ago. Is that correct? That is absolutely correct. And again, it's not passing a value judgment on the beliefs of people that oppose same-sex marriage or endorsing the beliefs of the people that do. I'm just looking at what the numbers are telling us. And if we go and decide we're going to only stick with the ideologically pure model

and the only candidates we're going to put up in, let's say, a place like Wisconsin, which is a state that is definitionally purple, if you put a guy in Wisconsin, if you put Ted Cruz up in Wisconsin, he's going to have a hard skate making it to the finish line because he is, by that state standards, too conservative. But would you rather have had Scott Brown or not? I mean I'd sure like to have him today. He wasn't perfect for everything. But the best being the enemy of the good is a problem here.

Wait, hold on a second here. Oh, it's Rob. He's disappeared. Let's have some, some, some, some mock elephant from column a with a sweet and sour rhino sauce on this. Rob Long. Welcome. Finally. Hey Rick, it's Rob Long. How are you? Hey Rob, how are you? Good. Good. I, you know, I, I, I, as I, I have a sort of slight production, TV production disaster this week, so I couldn't be at the

beginning of the call, and I apologize. But I heard most of what you're saying, and I would even go farther than that. I'd actually say that if you look at what our political opponents have managed to do since, and I'm a broken record on this, since 1964 by becoming a majority party with a conservative wing and a crackpot left-wing wing and all sorts of things. And what they managed to do, they managed to steam forward despite eight years of Reagan, despite the two Bush presidencies, they managed to steam forward. And if you had told Ronald Reagan in 1988 that socialized medicine was on the way. He looked at you like you're crazy.

But it's an unbroken, different – I mean obviously there are some years where they put a lot of road behind them. There are some years where they were slow to a crawl, but they always were moving and moving this country leftward by being a majority party. And I kind of feel like even if you believe – if you have a diehard conservative activist bone in your body which i do i am not a social con but i am a a rabid economic conservative i'm not a libertarian but i'm awfully close and if you have that in order to accomplish that we're going to have to be a majority party we're going to have to that's what we have to do but and i'm not saying that that i because i like it that way but that is simply the way history has taught us big things happen in this country. So, I mean –

No, I think you're exactly on target. This is a – look, Bill Clinton was going to poison it and going to destroy his party if he didn't at least tactically make some moves and talk about things like welfare reform and and and and and and peeve some of his natural democratic constituents by saying yeah i favor the death penalty you know the the the triangulation the the famous triangulation of bill clinton was a lesson that we need to take to heart because as i keep telling people or or they would like it to be we have to live in the objective reality of our time. And if we have to adjust tactically to make things work so that we don't disqualify ourselves from an enormous part of the population, it's something we have to really consider as

consultants. It's due diligence to tell your client, yes, you know what? You may favor rounding up liberals and putting them in re-education camps, but probably not going to poll that well. So Rick, Peter here one more time. Dennis Prager was on just before you, and Dennis said his position on same-sex marriage would be the same position as that of the pro-life people on Roe versus Wade. He will not surrender because he cannot, cannot in conscience surrender. So here's what I want to tease out. Is there not, this is a leading question, but I think this represents your thinking, adjust it if it's wrong and bat it away if it's completely wrong. There's a difference on the one hand between what you're saying right now, which is that as a matter of electoral politics, we must be realistic about what candidates, particularly in various

regions, can say and do and still win. That we have to do. But on the other hand, for people within the conservative movement, the Dennis Pragers of the world, who feel strongly about the issue and see their role as different, related to but different from straightforward electoral politics, much more the role that the left played during the Reagan years. That is to say, in a certain sense, you mute your interest in electoral politics and you simply continue the fight as a cultural matter, trying to change the culture, trying to win the argument. There's nothing wrong with social – you're not saying there's anything wrong with social conservatives or Republicans who feel very strongly about the issue continuing the cultural fight. You're just addressing the electoral point.

Is that not correct? That is precisely correct. Look, I definitely value the commitment of social conservatives in the party. And I definitely believe that they have an awful lot of persuasive tools at their disposal should they deploy them more effectively that can change the culture on some of these questions that the left has been very effective at reframing. And I think that it would play to the strengths of the social conservative movement to pursue messaging and to pursue things that alter the public's heart rather than trying by electoral fiat or by legislative fiat, excuse me, to make these things just appear by magic. Tomorrow, Barack Obama could somehow magically jam through a minimum wage bill that's $99 an hour. It won't make it work. It won't make it function because society will reject it.

The economy will reject it. So we have to, you know, if social conservatives want to pursue a thing where the society is shaped and molded to where same-sex marriage meets their desired end state, then I encourage anyone to pursue those ends. The other team did a very, very smart job of it. I mean one of the things that I found kind of funny about Limbaugh attacking me and some of the commenters is this presumption that because I'm a conservative or because I'm a consultant that I'm not a conservative. And, you know, I would frighten most of them with how conservative I am on some, on some issues, but, you know, I'm practical and, and I'm, and I'm, I'm not paid to, you know, tell people that, you know, the barn is on fire.

No, but we just need to paint the front porch. That's not sensible. We will end up with 18 guys in the U.S. Senate if we play that game. Well, the barn may not be on fire, but the door is open. The stallions are out of it, and they are going off to Vegas to get married. So gay marriage, I think, is going to be off the table as far as something anybody can run with. It's just going to be there. I'm not sure how equine gay marriage polls yet, but we'll put that in the field next time. Well, if they're unicorns, they're fabulous. But there are other issues and there are ways that you can approach this that go to the heart of how exactly do you recalibrate the message without

violating your core principles. There was a comment in the chat room here, and I'm quoting Free Wife Fied During Sermon, that's his nick. He says that people talk about how socially conservative Hispanics are. What do you think about specifically targeting them? And when I think of this, I think, how are the Republicans going to go to Hispanics and appeal to them in democratic terms, which is racially identifying them, giving them a racial identity that supersedes an American identity, giving them a credence to a Guatemalan or a Honduras identity that precedes and trumps an American identity. In other words, how do the Republicans play that specifically narrowly targeted, calibrated, almost anti-American style and still remain true to their principles.

That is a non-trivial problem. Now, I mean, there's a sort of rise of evangelical Hispanics is a non-trivial problem for the Democrats as well, because some of the most passionately pro-life folks are first generation migrants slash immigrants to this country who are from Mexico and who have become Baptists in Texas and the southern tier states. And they are profoundly socially conservative. We haven't figured out how to touch them yet, but that is still trumped by the framing the Democrats have successfully put on all of them that those evil Republicans, once they work you to death, want to ship you home. And so that's a really complex multivariate equation. The great potential there, but we still haven't reached a sweet spot on messaging that makes them feel like we're welcoming them as Americans first and that we give them a path where they can not only move toward citizenship but shed the exclusive racial or national identity that the Democrats rely on in what I politically incorrectly refer to as their vote plantation.

Yes, indeed. Well, it is complex, but I'm sure that we can settle it in blog posts limited to 200 words and 15-minute podcasts. But we'll have to have you back again and see you on the site. And we thank you so much for coming by to talk to us here today. I appreciate it, gentlemen. Have a great afternoon. Anytime. Bye-bye.

Thanks, Rick. I do have to mention one thing here, though, is that these terms, we mentioned before how they get redefined for us. You turn around and all of a sudden what was equality means something else. It's important to remember that these words have a specific meaning at the founding of the republic and that those meanings still endure and you ought to know them. You do if you're listening to this, if you're a ricochet guy. But what about bolstering what you know with some facts and figures and some history, even if it's just a refresher course? That's what you can get if you go to Hillsdale College. But what do you say? You don't want to go to college. You don't want to leave your home. Oh, lucky you. The miracles

of the modern era. You can sit in front of your computer. You can type in ricochet.com slash Hillsdale, and you will see that they've created a 10-week online history course. Online, streaming right through your machinery. They're splashing into your face out of your cathode ray tube. It's called American Heritage. It's based on the course that all the students at Hillsdale have to take. You'll learn about the crisis of the Union, the Civil War, the American founding. Of course, none of that order. America's rise to a global power.

The Reagan Revolution. All that stuff. You'll hear Larry Arnn, of course, the Hillsdale president, and other members of the faculty, as close as you can get to be a student, without actually going there, setting up residence, living on ramen noodles and a hot plate for a while while you live your student days. And it's free. Did we mention that?

It's free. You can sign up, take it at your leisure. Sign up now at ricochet.com slash hillsdale. And we thank them, of course, for sponsoring the podcast. And I wonder how many people in Ricochet actually do have cathode ray tubes for monitors, or if everybody's moved on to the flat panel world yet. Something for the member feed, perhaps. Rob, you've got a story of a contretemps in LA, in the entertainment industry.

We'd love to hear some deets here. Well, it wasn't really a contretemps. I think the star of my show was coming out of a restaurant, I think, on the weekend. And there was something going on, and somebody smacked him in the jaw. And he had a tiny little fracture in his jaw, but a tiny fracture in your jaw is not something you can live with. So he had his – Monday morning, they wired his jaw shut. And it's one of those things where a million moving pieces start to creak into play where you've got to get the lawyers on the phone and insurance. And you've got to shut down production for six weeks. So that's going to be very costly.

And someone's going to have to pay for this. And it's probably the insurance. But what if the studio is self-insured? And does the insurance doctor have to call – has got to find – somehow got to get to Steve's doctor and his oral surgeon. I think he agreed. And so at a certain point, everybody's on the phone. We were literally on a conference call. Everybody's on the phone.

And Steve's wife is saying, can they wire his jaw shut now? And we're saying, I was on the phone saying, yeah, go ahead, wire it shut. So what you're telling me with all the brilliant writers that you have, you've got an actor whose jaw is wired shut and you can't work that into the script somehow? You can't make him possessed by the spirit of Frank Gorshun or something like that? Well, you could do it once, you just can't do it twice. So why do it until you have to do it? So we're shutting down.

I don't quite know the ins and outs of it. My guess is that the studio, who are fine people, of course, but they will try to figure out a way. Is there some way we can make money on this deal? And if there is a way for them to make money, they're going to try. So our job is to make sure they don't make any money on this deal, that we still do a great show, but we're just going to do it six weeks later. And I hope make all of our premiere dates and our scheduled dates and do all the things we need to do because you know when it shows in its second season that's when it's the most vulnerable um and uh we want to make sure that we give people 10 great episodes so it's a little bit it's like it's good sorry how big is your writers room rob how many writers

do you have we have about nine um and you know they're all sort of wondering you know i'm supposed to find out in you know a little bit in about an I'm supposed to find out in about an hour what exactly I can tell them about what's going to happen and where they're going to be and who gets paid and what they get paid and how does that work? these are normal people these are normal jobs, no one's driving around

in a Bentley, we're only doing 10 episodes for a lot of people those are the 10 paychecks they're going to get this year so it does matter it It really does matter. Uh, and, um, you know, these things, uh, you can't predict these things, but. Are there, are there precedences for this? Because I mean, there, you can take the John Amos story where, you know, John Amos just left the, uh, the Jeffersons, no, not the Jeffersons, I'm sorry. Um, good times. Right. And gave the show over to, uh, Florida and JJ, which went another six seasons, and Lord knows what he did after that.

Or the Bewitched approach, where you swap one dick in for the other, so to speak. Well, you know, you can do that with a star. You can sometimes do it with a co-star. And often, you know, often with a star, it's the, you know, sometimes, not often, but often, sometimes, right? We've all read the stories, the star enters enters rehab and everything shuts down for a while. And that's a much easier, I think, a much easier call because there's really no question mark about how long you're shutting down or when you're coming back. We're going to get x-rays from the doctor, I think, in about a month, so we'll know. Wow. Wow. Hey, Rob, how does it work with nine writers? Do two people write a script and then everybody punches it up together? I cannot imagine nine people trying to produce a single unified piece of writing together. corral them and corral them as they do it and corral them as they pitch jokes and change lines

and come up with different stories. That's the way it works. I mean, that's the fun. It's everybody in a room trying to make each other laugh. And in the best possible times, it's hilarious. And in the worst possible times, we stare at each other with a secret loathing. And so when you have nine people doing that, you have nine people doing that, and out of that comes an exquisitely polished, hilarious machine that creates entertainment, laughter, mirth, and the rest of it, you do that in politics with nine people, and you have a muddled campaign with no message that can't figure out how to get out the door without tripping over both of its feet. that I know people who are close to the most recent Republican campaign said, which is that for a guy who really knows how to manage, there's a tendency on the part of the candidate, they tend to think of the people doing all this work

as sort of like weird sorcery magician witch doctors, right? I don't really know how they do it, but they seem to need a lot of food and a certain kind of this and a certain kind of that, and so we'll just have to let them do it. And the guy at the top usually says, shrugs and thinks, well, whatever they need, and is loathe to make decisions and management decisions. But none of these things work without a general in charge,

who is often ruthless and sometimes irrational, but is like the undisputed general of the show, or the campaign, or whatever it is. And that's me. That's my job. May I quote you? May I quote that description of yourself? Often ruthless and sometimes irrational. Yeah.

The often ruthless and sometimes irrational Rob Long. Boys, I leave you to yourself. I know. I'm sorry to say, but I've got to run right now. I'm in the middle of a work day. We usually do these things in the morning. So that's one of the reasons why I was not there today. And I'm sorry I missed it.

Well, we'll have another few minutes with you here. Goodbye, Peter. We'll see you down the road. And excellent. Rob, you had some great posts this week while all this stuff was going down. One of your ones, he said with stunning articulateness, had to do with airlines, a Samoan airline. I love that. Charging people by their weight. Now, are you in favor?

I don't know how much flying you do, but in the last flight that we got back, my wife and I were in literally the last seats on the plane. plane and along comes to sit next to her to bookend us for three hours to force us into mobility was a man of such astonishing bunion-esque girth that you could not get over him without a sherpa and you know in a series of uh rings and ropes and he fell asleep instantaneously keeping us there with our bladders compacting for two and a half hours uh so are you in favor of this kind of notion well i mean they you know those people get to fly anyway. I actually think it's a good idea. I guess I mean more that if everybody's worried about obesity and national obesity, which of course there is that epidemic in America, we have to admit that. It's not an epidemic. You don't catch obesity from somebody who coughs. It's a widespread problem, as it were, a very widespread

problem. It's worse in Samoa, because they eat all that, you know, they eat all those starchy vegetables. That's the thing. People forget it's the starchy vegetables. And this is a solution that's better than any solution Michael Bloomberg could ever come up with, and better than any solution that Michelle Obama could ever

come up with, because it's based in the market, and it's based in elemental fairness. It's like there's a logic to what that airline's doing and a marketplace logic. And I just think it's interesting that probably Samoa Air will have a greater effect on people's waistlines, certainly people who are flying's waistlines, than the nanny mayor of New York City or the busybody first lady.

It's entirely possible. Although this guy who was sitting next to us did fit into one seat. He was just huge and he was dense. I mean he was so dense with muscle. It's like the guy was made of neutron star material. We're really thinking of people like those really large people who have to be taken out of their house when they knock down a wall and bring in a crane. When those folks, you think that they should possibly have to pay for two seats.

It breaks down the whole concept of equality, one man, one vote, one seat, right? Well, but there's a market mechanism for that. What I find so strange now, of course, is that when people are saying everything becomes a victim status everybody becomes an oppressed minority because we all know deeply ingrained in us that that's the way you get stuff is you you claim victimhood and so now i think there's probably there's there's organizations now saying uh fat people you know are just uh another oppressed minority and you can't make us pay more for the seat, it's not fair, all that stuff. You know, look, we got to get this, I mean, it all comes down to the same thing, kind of what Rick is saying, what Peter was saying, what I've been saying.

We got to get the culture back, and I don't mean the culture back meaning specific social conservative issues, although whether I agree with it or don't, that's irrelevant. I mean the culture of like what it is to be an American and expect to have to take care of yourself and not to have some kind of mechanism in the state to take care of you. And when you put on a couple pounds, not to look around to find out who to blame. I got to blame the Coca-Cola company or McDonald's. No, you put that stuff in your mouth, and it's a hard thing for us to accept, especially if there's always an institution there ready to sort of come to our rescue. Air Samoa is saying, we don't care how fat you are, but you're going to pay. And look, it means rich people are going to be able to afford to be fat in Samoa and fly anywhere they want.

But that's the incentive either to do one of two things, either to get rich, which is a perfectly legitimate incentive, or to get skinny. Well, as I was saying before, we may be going back to the pendulum may be swinging back to bourgeois mentality as more people are encouraged to marry regardless of their orientation. And it's also going back to the medieval notion that your avoir du poids is an indication of your financial success. So we're going to go right practically. We're going to resemble 16th century Belgium then when people are looking at fat people and saying, oh, man, that guy must be absolutely loaded.

He can fly anywhere. Yeah, the most popular guy at the bar is the three-day, right? I look forward to those days. Listen, that's good for me. I can't say no to the bread, so, you know. And I only mentioned Belgium and Bruges because on the plane, I availed myself of one of the great joys of life taken from YouTube somewhere, and that has to be James Burke's Connection series, which is one of the most brilliant, inventive, wonderful, and pro-human ingenuity.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, go to YouTube and type in James Burke, B-U-R-K-E, connections, and you will find a man in a hideous suit striding all over the globe telling you something. Yeah, horrible 70s leisure suit, right? A leisure suit. It's great. Walking around and describing how this led to that, which led to this, which led to that. And while sometimes at the end of it you don't always feel like there's an exact straight line of what he's talking about, just to accompany him and to listen to his cheery edition is a wonderful thing. Burke was their science guy on BBC television, and I had the pleasure of interviewing him back in the 90s,

and he was just as marvelous off the screen as he was on. Anyway, YouTube will give that to you for free. Audio books for free also can be had at audible.com, and you should go there and get one. We were talking about Escape from Camp 14. That's the NORC story, NORCs in the news. Right. Bring yourself up to speed.

And, of course, also free, so many things here, is the Hillsdale course on American culture and history, and you can get that. So, obviously, in this podcast, which you are listening to, there will be embedded the links. So am I going to say them again now? No, because you're not going to write them down. No, you just click and go and learn and get free stuff. Well, it's been fun. Rob, glad you could make it. Great. Glad I could be here, for sure. Yeah, well, good luck with everything, and I hope that you remain hale,

because, of course, you are the linchpin to that and several other enterprises. Good luck as the week goes on. We'll see every thanks for the people in the chat room who have been peppering away with comments, and we look forward to seeing you in the comment threads. Folks, this has been the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lylix, and we'll see you down the road. Thanks, James. See you next week. Ricochet.

Join the conversation. you're gonna need a bigger boat Thank you.