The Ricochet Podcast - Revolt Against the EUniks

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

Steve Hayward, Rob, and James enjoy gazing at political upheaval from a safe distance this week, as Europe wrangles with its own game of Elites vs Peeps. The boys swap anecdotes, a couple of historical tidbits, and toss in a few predictions for the EU's future. Then they bring it back home to parse why the corporate world seems to be toning down on Pride merch and marketing this year.- This week’s sound: Reform Party’s Nigel Farage questions Tory MP Penny Mordaunt on the government’s immigration policy (ITV News) 

Wide over this shoulder is my G.K. Chesterton shelf, and up there is C.S. Lewis. Damn. You're set. Yeah, I'm set. Quick funny story for you. Where are your diverse, where's your Upanishads? Oh, that's out of frame. It's over... Yeah, it's over there in the science fiction fantasy section. Ask not what your country can do

for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Stephen Hayward sitting in for Peter Robinson and Rob Long. No, he's not sitting in for both. Rob's here. Me too. I'm James Lollix. And today we talk about just about everything. So

let's have ourselves a podcast. Your 2017 manifesto said you've reduced net migration to tens of thousands. Your 2019 manifesto said immigration would massively reduce. Why on earth should anybody believe the fifth manifesto that promises cuts to net migration? Because of the record of this prime minister. So we've had... Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast number 696, or if you flip it upside down, 969. I'm James Lylex in Minneapolis, Minnesota Recently voted the Happiest city in the country I know I'm not doing my part

So there has to be somebody who's out there Strewing flowers and trawling throughout the day Rob Long is in New York Stephen Hayward is somewhere We'll get to that in just a second here But I just want to say that when I came into this conversation A few minutes ago I heard Rob Long saying That Joe Biden was conceived when the

Results of the war, when the outcome of the war was not yet certain and i'm wondering what this is some some yes some sort of mythological thing that you were talking about where a child was born and the the tides of battle changed bring people up to speed because you were having a fast we were trying to talk about um well we steve and i by the way welcome steve thank you for sitting in um we were talking about how the the the among the many horrible things about this presidential campaign year the maybe one of the most horrible will be that both of these sides are going to probably spend somewhere between you know half a billion and a billion dollars showing endless footage of the other guy at his most doddering and incoherent and it is not it's just not going to be our best look and i was thinking like so

these guys technically boomers are not well trump is technically a boomer he's 46 right 45 46 and then um and biden was 42 i think so i mean mean, they're three and a half years apart, whatever it is. So they are, I think, either boomers are the greatest generation, which is the most ironic thing. And I was just thinking that maybe Joe Biden was conceived, since you asked, James,

in between Pearl Harbor and Midway, the Battle of Midway, which is a very uncertain time. And I'm not an astrologer, but if I was an astrologer, I would say he was already born during world instability. Yeah. Now, Rob, I'm not as down on Trump as you are, although I have lots of criticisms, but my mind keeps running back to the famous Henry Adams quip that the progression of presidents from George Washington to Ulysses Grant single-handedly disproved the theory of evolution.

What would he say now? Well, I don't see Trump as being daughter. I don't get doddering vibes from Trump. I mean, he may gesticulate and say interesting things whilst on the stump. About batteries and sharks and whatnot. You're right, but he's not standing there with an absolutely vacant look on his face. And the expression of somebody who's just taken a 50 milligrams gummy about 10 minutes ago and is wandering off to talk to a parachuter that he's imagined in his mind. I mean, the difference between the two in vitality seems to be stark.

I think that's absolutely true yeah i mean i just think we're gonna have to decide whether we want crazy drunk uncle who doesn't make any sense but is you know he's in the conversation or um grandpa grandpa you know stay away from the light you know that guy i don't know i just look you make your peace with what you got, right? You know, you dance with the one that brung you. You go with the old guy that makes you the least nervous, which is kind of, I think, a new thing for American voters. Does he really, though? I mean, what people look at that and they see, all right, four years have elapsed. We didn't think that he was actually the sharpest tack in the bin, in a little tin. Who's the, you mean Biden?

Biden, four years ago. And now, I mean, Paul Ryan was talking the other day about the difference between Biden now and the guy that he debated. And if you just conjure that back in your mind, you remember Biden being sharp and being an absolute jerk and being quick and all the rest of it. That isn't who he is right now. And it's interesting that they say, well, you know, in private, in private, he's incredibly engaged and sharp. But for some reason, we've just decided that when he goes out in public, he's going to behave like somebody who's got a brain full of tapioca, who's been piffed.

So, yeah, I mean, dance with the one who brung you. I didn't bring him. He brought us to this point where we have to choose between him with the possibility of Kamala Harris as the president and former years of Donald Trump, which people are retconning into something of a golden age. And, you know, how much retconning is actually involved if you take out the last year in J6,

which, admittedlyly is a lot. I don't know. But, I mean, I, again, am stunned that we're at this place and fully prepared to admit that everything that I said about the impossibility of a second Trump term is wrong. Trust nothing I say going forward. Right, Stephen? I feel the same way well yeah well you know interesting thing about trump that i just noticed the other day that he not only wants to win we know that but it looks like he may actually want to govern uh and so we know that in 2022 he endorsed

a lot of terrible candidates you know oz in pennsylvania herschel walker in georgia well this cycle he has first of, endorsed a number of more moderate non-MAGA candidates against, by the way, people who had endorsed him previously. So he's on the side of candidates who can win in Virginia and a few other states. Second, he has endorsed some people for re-election who were for Ron DeSantis and who'd criticized him. And that's showing me that he's learned something uh uh no maybe not much but i mean i think he's learned from his mistakes and that suggests to me someone that you might have a little bit more optimism about if he wins which i think he will um i i think he could easily

win i'm not sure he i'm not i don't know where i put my money now i think whoever i put my money down is i'd lose um I kind of get your point. I just despair of the phrase. No, I think he's ready to govern after four years of just complete disarray. I think he's ready to make the tough choices, which I think he's not. I mean, full disclosure, I was not a big fan to begin with, but I just find his behavior during COVID to be unforgivable. And then after the election to be unforgivable. It on anybody i mean what okay what do we mean by govern exactly though i mean well yeah i mean that's right do we believe in a in a laser focused sharp donald

trump who will engage with the uh the congress on a on a atomic level in order to push through the planks of the things that he's crafted and written yeah but let me answer two ways the one way is just the slow the the i mean i I agree with Steve that he does seem to be making smarter choices. There's news out today that he may actually endorse for Senator from Maryland, Larry Hogan, who was the former

very, very popular Republican governor, has a really good shot at becoming the first Republican Senator from Maryland in a long, long time, but who did say, listen um we gotta whatever he said something um which we consider anodyne and cliche after uh the new york jury returned a conviction um and then was roundly attacked by uh trump eunuchs and acolytes and the court courtiers in his circle including his own idiotic daughter-in-law and said well no republican should ever stand for this this guy should be

drummed out of the party and a couple weeks later um trump i think if he does this he'll be really smart says why do i care if i could pick up an r in maryland we should be picking up an r maryland and his moronic daughter-in-law should have known that as the leader of the party before she opened her stupid mouth i mean i'll just be super blunt for once um but that but the second thing is is this is like and i know that when he does that his the daughter-in-law now runs the rnc will slavishly and uh in coweringly backtrack everything she has said and so there is a kind of a donald trump sort of circle of people who are courtiers and eunuchs and kind of like even jd vance who like said incredibly mean things about him now bows and scrapes for this man

that's not great it's also not great that on the other hand, we have a president who is probably out of it. And we have a country and a commander in chief who is incapacitated mentally. And so the country's being run by bureaucrats and political appointees. And that is not how it's supposed to go. And especially for me, those particular appointees who are all far, far, far more left wing than your ordinary American or even probably your ordinary Democrat at this point. So not good. Well, if you're saying that we have the choice now between sycophants and prevaricators, this has characterized the American political scene from time to time, I think. Stephen, Rob made an interesting point that the people who are handling Biden and the rest of it are much more progressive, are squad adjacent, if not squadish themselves.

Do you think that that side is an ascendant or are they sort of tamping it down for the sake of seeming moderate during the election? Or what? If we saw another Biden term, I mean, if you remember when Biden got in, it was going to be Green New Deal. It was going to be FDR 3.0 since Obama was 2.0, I guess. And we know what happened to that. The Green New Deal foundered. We got infrastructure spending in the trillion, which has resulted, I think, in one EV charger in Pembina, North Dakota. Do they still have, after four years, a lot of steam in the engine, a lot of gas in the tank to make another run at finally nailing for good this country, locking it into a progressive

future? Oh, look, I think the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has an iron lock on it. And they also live in a bubble. I mean, they really do. Look, if you only read the New York Times, your ideas are never challenged, and they really aren't aware of how deeply unpopular a lot of their ideas are. Let me just pick out two things from the last couple weeks I find significant. One is CBS has a brand new poll out three or four days ago, and it said, gosh, the race is dead even. Well, there's some real breaking news. You had to get way down in the poll in the CBS story to find a really stunning finding, which was that 62% of respondents,

registered voters, favor a federal program to deport illegal aliens. And that number has doubled in the last three or four years. And that's why immigration is either number one or number two. It was never that high until the last three years of complete dereliction at the border. Second one is a little thing that I'm amazed hasn't gotten more attention, and I'm trying to write a little piece about it. About two weeks back, the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, gave a speech where she said, the United States needs to triple its nuclear power capacity over the next 20, 30 years if we're going to meet our climate targets.

And, you know, that's a heresy to, you know, what I call Oldsmobile environmentalism from the 70s. But it's also a recognition of reality, which is you're not going to be able to power all these AI data centers and all the other things an industrial country needs with wind and solar power and batteries. But the next question then is, well, all right, fine. Are you going to do regulatory reform that's going to make it possible to build? Oh, she even said, maybe we need to reopen some of the nuclear plants we've closed down. Well, that could cause riots in New York and the Hudson with the plant, right? And so I was staggered by that announcement. And as I say, the question is, are they going to be serious about it and propose real regulatory

reforms so we can build nuclear plants at a reasonable cost and a reasonable time frame? And I'm very doubtful about that. It is almost more likely that these new plants, you know, these hypothetical new plants make it through the regulatory you know hurdles um uh and it takes longer for that to happen than for us to invent a brand new kind of energy cold fusion or like a solar mass some like or something windmills work i mean uh i mean i i think i've told this before this story a friend of mine tells me a story like he was a kid growing up in uh long island and his family they make they at that time they had a little factory family I think I've told this before, this story. A friend of mine tells me this story. He was a kid growing up in Long Island. And his family, they make, at that time they had a little factory, a family factory.

They make Geiger counters and all sorts of other kind of nuclear stuff. As a nuclear scientist, he now is kind of a nuclear physicist, brainiac. And he remembers as a kid, he's my age, so I guess he was like 15, 16, middle of the night flashing uh lights uh new york state troopers come to his house bang on the door wake up the dad you got to come with us there's been a nuclear disaster at a place called three mile island and we need all and we need your help and so his dad went and they did all the stuff and his dad to this day and and i think his dad has not passed on but he remembers as a kid just growing up and the the the rule in the house was

that this was a perfect example of the stupidity of people in general because nothing happened at three mile island there was no meltdown the system actually totally worked there was no leakage nobody got anything everybody was fine this is a proof that it works. That is not the story that we hear. No, of course not. Because Jane Fonda made a movie in which Michael Douglas as a cameraman went, yes, when somebody said there was a conspiracy to cover up the deficiencies. And because also at that time, we were coming out of a period where we didn't think that America could build anything or do anything. Our Skylabs fell from the sky.

Ergo, it's made sense that our shoddy nuclear powers built on the cheap for profit would kill us all. And the other thing was Chernobyl, of course. Chernobyl was a completely different kind of reactor run by idiots, fools, statists, and collectivists. And naturally, you got what you got. So between the two of those those we couldn't have that and then we had in the entire 80s we had the we had an anti-nuclear movement in which our best and brightest intellect such as woody willie nelson or bruce springsteen would get up and play concerts against nuclear energy and weapons you know anything that really had to do with atoms you know the stuff that's spinning around like that we don't like it um all of which of course was powered by immense coal or you know gas fired stuff which is now of course it has to be stricken

from the planet lest miami be submerged by a yard high wave imminently yeah all of that was wrong and nobody ever took nobody ever took responsibility for it and now we're coming to the fact where when the secret when when a democratic secretary of energy says this, then we must be 10 years behind the inevitability and the necessity of it. So it's very interesting, the two things that you noticed there, Stephen. The first one is what interests me most because this twins with what's going on in Europe. Europe has been having these elections where somebody said it was amusing. You know, Germany gave the vote to young people, to a younger cohort, thinking, well, they're young. going on in europe europe has been having these elections where somebody said it was amusing you

know germany gave the vote to young people to you know to a younger cohort thinking well they're young don't vote left no no they voted uh in in a different fashion and so now you have the government you have the the left wing in france scrambling to put together coalitions from the moderates to the trotskyites in order to defeat the rise of the far right, and you have the far right coalescing around some people that they don't like, in order to do what? Immigration is suddenly, all of a sudden, something people seem to be able to talk about in European politics. I mean, in some of the Scandinavian countries, the guardrails were there where it simply wasn't discussed. But as we know, this doesn't make the issue go away. It breeds a lot of people who are very keen on

talking about it. A lot. So guys, give me your thoughts on what you think Europe is doing. Well, Steve, you just came back. Well, okay. I'll go first. I was going to let you go first, Rob, because you know France better than I do. Well, we'll I'll go first. I was going to let you go first, Rob, because you know France better than I do. Well, we'll get to France. Right, yeah. Yeah, so I was in Hungary for two weeks, right on the eve of the parliamentary elections that took place last Sunday. And I was telling Rob before he went on that I watched some of the Hungarian TV. I don't know the language, but you could actually figure out what the political ads were saying.

And the ones from Viktor Orban's Fidesz party were all saying, you know, vote for us, because if you vote for the other guys, you're going to get the influence of George Soros, you're going to get more Muslim immigrants crammed down our throat by the European Union, which, by the way, a European court just said they must do, just the last two, three days. And, oh, and then we're going to have World War III with Russia. That was also one of the main messages. And yeah, two weeks ago, Saturday, I watched about 300,000 people march through Budapest in a peace march. They're very worried over there that we don't know what we're doing in Ukraine. I think there's good reason for them to think that, and that they're the ones at risk

if nuclear weapons start going off, or if it escalates, or there's a war with NATO. I'll add this little bit. I mean, most Americans don't know that Hungary was the biggest loser of the World War I settlement. They lost two-thirds of their territory, and about half of their population was hived off and given to other countries, and so the country shrank. So they're not terribly impressed with claims that Ukraine's territorial integrity is of utmost importance to the world. I guess I kind of get that. But, you know, most Americans aren't aware of that sentiment they have. More broadly, though, yes, you put your finger on something important, James, that younger voters who used to be probably half the vote for the Green Party in Germany, they've turned sharply away from the Green Party. And it's the Green Party and these stupid coalitions they have in parliamentary governments. Their sole demand

is get rid of nuclear power, and Germany has foolishly done that. The last thing I'll say is I did an energy tour of Germany 15 years ago now as a guest of the government, and spent a week touring all their fancy stuff, and my conclusion at the end was the two most magical words in the english language are german engineering i was actually kind of unimpressed but the important thing was at that time i think merkel had just come to power or was about to and everybody we met said we can't possibly meet our our emissions targets for 2020 or 2030. This was 2008 I was there.

Unless we keep our nuclear power. And they didn't. They freaked out after Fukushima. And now I think Germany is going to have to talk about reopening the plants they've got. Otherwise, right now, you know what they're doing? They're going back to burning lignite coal, which is the dirtiest kind of coal. So there you go rob why do you think it is that the youth of the uh of europe who have been inculcated from cradle to believe in the glorious transnational future in which all

nationalities are washed away into a glorious european soup broth uh why do you think that they are all of a sudden saying wait a minute hold on we have a culture i want it i would like it to be in this particular form uh well they kind of aren't already saying that. They've been saying that for 2,000 years. I mean, these are cultures that have been fighting about bizarre, to Americans, bizarre differences that we don't even, what are you talking about? Alsace-Lorraine, it's like, how can you, they're all the same.

Like, I was a kid, I lived in Southern Holland, and like the Dutch would like make these elaborate distinctions between you know you're you're living you live in brabant now like you're actually belgium and belgium the belgians are just are are a mystery to the dutch even though they speak basically the same language a little bit of french and they eat french fries like everybody else they've actually they perfected french fries we should call french fries belgian fries to be fair um fries. We should call French fries Belgian fries, to be fair. And the French find the Belgians to be absolutely baffling. Who are these people that live one mile there on the other side of this river?

So they've been, better for worse, they've been expressing their own national identity for a long time. And even when they were parts of larger empires they still had this powerful national identity um the the even the roman catholic uh the pope would refer to the the catholic church in uh the british english catholic church as the church in england um because it was like so weird and different so even after the the Protestant Reformation there, it wasn't that weird, because they were already very English, not very Roman.

But I will say, a couple years ago, I was in Budapest, and I will now name drop, I had a small gathering with the once and future, and let's hope not forever, President of Hungary, Victor Orban, who's sort of a charming guy, kind of a big garrulous guy he's like a avuncular character speaks good english makes good jokes uh kind of dragged us all out to the patio way which is in the in the pest part

the castle district i think that's the pest part that's the buddha part and uh right and like and gave us a tour of the horizon we're looking at, pointing out all this stuff. He was a really, really charming guy. Most of the people there were very sympathetic. Some of them were not, but most of them were very sympathetic, and I was struck by two things. One is that his own people, a guy named Orban, I don't know

if I've told you this story already, the guy named Orban, Balazs Orban. Very smart guy. Very smart guy. Very smart guy. And in the meeting, it was like chiming in and correcting Victor and kind of disagreeing with him here or there and amending things and basically being, you know, surprisingly jerky for the guy who works for the, I mean, I was impressed by it, but the guy who works for the strongman.

And I thought, oh, well, of course, he's Balazs Orban. And he's just, it's just dad, daddy Orban or uncle Orban. It's like he's in the family. And someone said, no, no, no, they are not related. Orban is just a common name. So basically, so Viktor Orban has a kind of a large coffee clutch of people, looks like, who, you know, hit the ball back really hard for him. And the second thing he said was was, we were talking about nationalism.

And is that a problem? And people find it to be a problem here. And he said, look, we're a Hungarian culture. We speak Hungarian. We have music and food and language and poetry, our own epic poem. We have been Hungary, the nation of Hungary, free for maybe 12 years,

maybe 25 years all in from the beginning of time to now. And so we really, this is the first time we've actually had an idea that we're going to be Hungary for a long time. We're not going to be part of an Austro-Hungarian empire. We're not going to be part of the Roman empire. We're not going to be part of the Soviet empire. We're not going to be this weird interregnum after some peace process that didn't really work uh we're this this could be it can we just enjoy it for a little bit no he said can we just be hungarians

for like give us 50 years no 50 years from now i don't know let everybody in it's fine but can we just enjoy being hungarian and hungarians in the country of Hungary for just a little bit more. And I found that to be very persuasive and also hard to deny. And his point is, it's one thing for the French and the English and the Dutch and the Germans to have this decadent idea about letting everybody in and what's what's going to be the problem but it's another thing if you're just started you're just this new country and the idea that you're just going to oh well now we're not going to be now we're part of a european bureaucratic empire that does not care about our goulash and our music and our dancing and our architecture um i think that's uh to me that was very persuasive but they don't get to have that they shouldn't have that because if they have that then they'll like it and they'll get used to it.

They'll be exclusionary. And we can't have that. I mean, what you said before about the differences between the French, the Belgians, and this and that. I mean, it's almost, Rob, as if you're saying that 70 years of attempting to get rid of culture and folkways in favor of a unified European identity really doesn't work, that there's actually something there that people cling to. And they will keep quiet about it as it's under assault until the point where it seems as if they are losing national identity. And the curious thing is this. It is odd, sort of, kind of, in a way, for me, as an American, to look at what you're talking about and saying, well, yeah, I mean, I get it.

Because America is different. We are syncretic. We have a culture that is born of a civic identity, right? Anybody can become an American. I like that. And I like that about us. But I don't think that's the case in Europe. I don't think that anybody can go to France and be a Frenchman.

I don't think anybody can go to Denmark and be a Danish. I can't go to Denmark and be a Dane in the sense that the people who are there are. Anybody can come here and be an American. I like that. I love it. But I get why they want a unified culture in the place where they speak and they have the songs and the goulash and the rest of it. And it seems madness for them to have embarked on a project where this is,

the composition is changed and not even just changed in a way that makes it more sort of everybody sloshing around in Europe, but it's changed by the addition of people with values that are antithetical to what they supposedly believe in. And that's the, that's the part that it just jars. It's like, well,

we are, we are coming up with a new european identity which is based on the end of patriarchy the end of gender distinctions and the rest of it oh and by the way here are these people from this culture which believe the absolute opposite of it they're going to live here now and you're going to pay for them so it's the fact that this is happening uh it doesn't surprise me but i think that there's so much sclerotic power still invested in Europe that I don't think that anything is going to change. The fantasies of deportation and the

rest of it aren't going to play out. Yeah, they're not going to happen. No, I don't think they're going to happen. But I do think that's what, it is an interesting sort of canary in a coal mine. When you're a leader of a political movement or part of a political coalition and you are losing the support of people that you really shouldn't be losing you've got two choices one is you double down and you just you cut those people off and you say oh i don't need any more uh you know elderly socialists i'm gonna run a progressive european coalition of 12 um you know like with democrats in 80 you know there's something called reagan democrats so the question was well why are these democrats of 12. You know, like with Democrats in 80, you know,

there was something called Reagan Democrats. So the question was, well, why are these Democrats not voting for us? What's, what are we doing wrong? And for better, for worse, they kind of,

sort of almost figured it out. They had eight years of Clinton kind of in the little bit of the middle. And he kind of got those people back a little bit. To me, it's always astonishing when people are clinging so much to their the most extreme version of their belief right and that that is the story of the eu you make total sense you have a common european common market my god the europeans had immense economic gains after world war ii a lot of it was because we gave them the money but a lot

of it was because they had a common market and And then the EU was an incredibly smart idea to unify certain things that didn't really need to be different. And you just then, guess what? You say, stop. We got it. It's easy to get from one place to another. It's easy to use one currency from another. Our currency is unified. It's fine. But we're still going to be French and snooty, and we're still going to be English and like the chocolate our fine um but we're still going to be french and snooty and we're still gonna be english and like the chocolate our way and we're still going to be italian and like and that created an enormous amount of prosperity in italy that they simply the bureaucrats simply couldn't say well done everyone now let's go home instead they said wait a minute what else can we do and how about we destroy this thing we just created um and i think it's just saying in europe you're just saying this idea that like no one

on the traditional left although you know we keep saying far right it's not like these people are arguing for america you know the these people would find mitt romney to be a fascist, right? Yes. But it's not like they're no longer hearing the insults the same way. It is the same experience you find in socially conservative or even slightly uncomfortable Americans with the progressive movement, when people call them racist or homophobic or bigotry or whatever, hatred, they just don't hear those words anymore. Those words are being used so often.

They no longer have any value, and I think that's what's happening in Europe. Didn't you feel that way, Steve, when you were in Western Europe? I mean, you're not in Hungary. But hold that thought, Stephen. Hold that thought right there, because for a minute here, I have to intercede and ask both of you since we're moving away from hungary now to western europe did either of you have the famous fruit brandy in hungary palinka i think it's called kidding me yes yeah yeah it's like it's like 80 proof or something

like that it's so good it can put you away it can really put you away and they bring it because they have this this gen this uh host culture this generous culture that if you go to, they bring like all of them. And then if you go, oh, that's interesting. Well, this one's this one. This one's that one. This one's summer plum. And then you have to try them all. And so essentially you're blind walking on your knees in about 20 minutes.

And that can mean a bad next day, frankly. It just can't. It's true. Oh, there you go. You can't bounce back like you used to, especially the older that you get. But you know what? If you are faced with a situation in which you are required or nay lucky enough to sample all of the fruit brandies of Hungary, choice. You can either have a great night or a great next day or you can use Z-Biotics.

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Then again, I live in the happiest city on earth. But no, you know what? That was because of the Z-Biotiotics and you can have it too. If you go to zbiotics.com slash ricochet, where you will get 15% off your first order when you use ricochet at the checkout. ZBiotics is backed with a 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they will refund your money. No questions asked. So remember, head to zbiotics.com slash ricochet and use the code ricochet at checkoff for 15% off. And we thank Zbiotics for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast, and our good times this summer. Stephen, we're going to let you talk about Western Europe.

Well, all right. Well, as you move over to Western Europe and the European Union, you can keep going across the Atlantic to compare it to our country, I think, because you see the same thing going on. I mean, James mentioned you mentioned a second ago who's running the Biden White House is that the permanent government or the deep state or whatever you want to say. I think we're now learning or Europe is learning what I think conservatives in America figured out decades ago, although we haven't got a good remedy for it, which is the, it's public choice theory, the incentives for our bureaucrats are just the same as the incentives for any profit-making country, except bureaucrats look for more budgets or larger budgets, more power, more votes if you're a politician, and that's why the same economic analysis can be brought to both. Okay. In the European Union, I was reflecting to the Europeans I was talking to, a peculiar figure of speech they use, which I'll bet you've noticed too, Rob. The European Commission will come out and say, today we are pleased to announce three

new competencies. What that really means, that's a use of this and for power. We now have three more things we're going to regulate or dictate terms to all the members of the European Union. And, you know, what I said was nobody in America would use that word because our government is so manifestly incompetent these days. Right. Right. So I may have mentioned this a week or two ago. I don't remember now. But so beyond just the flashpoints of immigration, the net zero Green New Deal nonsense that both countries are dealing with is the larger question of, well, why are somebody had a picture of the G7 summit going on? And above each of the national leaders was the negative number of how far underwater they are in the polls.

You know, Justin Trudeau was like minus 50 in the polls right right richie actually pretty good he was like the he was i know the most popular unpopular leader actually maloney was the least unpopular but but he was second but you're right biden was second and and uh uh and you know we ought to take a larger lesson here which is modern government has simply become well you know reagan's line was too big, doing too much. And the incompetence is more and more obvious to everybody. And I don't know how you fix that. Well, I mean, I have ideas how you fix it, but I mean, it's a practical matter. It's hard to persuade people, you know, big changes that you want to make. Yeah. I mean, they tried to graft a federal system over only chaotic parliamentary systems.

And I'm always interested in how often American politicians, left and the right, decide or delude themselves and forget and think that we also live in a parliamentary system. So, like, you know, you find the people who are like, well, Joe Biden's president. He should get what he wants. Like, well like well no that's not how it works usually what happens is uh the american voters is way not so fast we're gonna put some you know the opposite party in charge um people like cheering about trump like oh trump's re-elected i mean it's gonna be really like it'd be very thin margin he's gonna be able to do all this stuff it's like well no actually he's not my my the my my great you know the partisans on both sides usually say things like well the thing i like about biden i think i got my trumps i like his enemies he's making the right enemies i like that whereas you know the relative strength and political impact the president has is never based

on his enemies it's always based on his friends. We may not like it, but the presidency is a job of compromise and making friends and twisting arms and wheeling and dealing and kind of sewing your way through the navigation of the shoals and the valleys, right? And the Europeans never had that problem, because if you're the head of the government the prime minister by definition you have cobbled together this coalition you can't do anything you want that's why they have this crazy volatility all the time um and what they're

discovering now is that they have they have lost the thread and lost connection to their voters so even if you look at what's happening in france which is, I mean, I know it's real and I know these are real people, but it's just also hilarious because it's so French. It's just, there was 72 hours there where you couldn't figure out what, who's, who was on what side because they kept switching. You couldn't even figure out, they locked the the head of the you know the head of the one of the conservative coalition parties um uh yeah they tossed him out but then he said you can't toss me out because you didn't do the meeting right and so then they uh so he locked everybody out of the office and then they had a break like it was on the news they had a brit somebody in with a key she had a spare key the secretary general i guess the party and she opened like it's crazy stuff right but um that's because they all want to put together a coalition to win by one

vote in the assembly or two enough and then they want to make radical change in the country and that's just just not going to ever happen you can't get too far ahead of the ordinary normal american sense of normal americanism in the same way you can't get too far ahead of the ordinary, normal American sense of normal Americanism in the same way you can't get too far of the ordinary French person. And the ordinary French person loves France and doesn't love having a little Ankara in France or Damascus in France. They don't like that. Well, did you see, Rob or James, the map of map of there's almost color-coded maps yes just like the red and blue in america and it's it's all brown of course funny they pick that color for the far right but but it's all brown except this little island of paris and maybe slightly pale

in marseille and one or two other places and so it's the country versus the city it's uh it's really quite astounding although not really when you think about it for a moment. life we like don't tell me that it's inefficient for us to have 9 000 different farmers growing 9 000 different kinds of lettuce that's how we do it we want to have a country that has farms and rural and we're going to do that and it's going to cost money and so what uh well don't tell me that where our our education system isn't um inclusive enough because it is not and we're equity equitable enough because it is not but it's rigorous and we're just going to keep that going um and there's a lot of people in this country i think it's not really an american idea but are nervous about the kind of rapid change they're watching in their culture and they don't

like it no they don't and they will i i heard a little verbal there from steven i thought you wanted to leap in go go well i was just uh rob mentioning the farmers in france and it's true of some of the other countries does to to recur to a previous subject i asked a frenchman i know some years ago how is it that you managed to build 80 nuclear reactors when we stopped building them at all? And his answer, you may have heard this story, his answer was, odd as simple, you see, says, in France, we have 300 kinds of cheese and one kind of nuclear reactor, where in America, it's just the opposite. You have one kind of cheese.

And there's a large amount of truth to that. There's a lot of truth to that. And also, I think the French pride themselves culturally. If we're going to emulate them in any way, they pride themselves on their logic. French farmer, a French, you know, it doesn't matter. The bike messenger, the guy running AXA, the the giant insurance company they all consider themselves cartesian you know we're very like we're renee descartes disciples and so if you want to get into a fist fight with a frenchman during a debate about anything just say and you know say um

it's not logical what you're saying and that's like them fighting words also pride themselves in their technology i mean they used to they they used to be good yeah they used to be us i mean at the turn of the century the previous one uh the you know the french military prowess and the french technological innovation was regarded as you know fantastic and they lost that i mean could be said that they got there too early they had an internet before we did uh and they had an internet before we did uh and they have their own homegrown computer industries but it's all fallen they haven't really been innovating in the sense that you know we have for an awful long time but still yes

great pride um but here's the thing rob mentioned changing the culture people don't like when there's a lot of when there's too much cultural change too fast and and they they're they're demonized for pushing back against it or even questioning it in any way. This shifts the subject somewhat, but it still does include Europe and the cultural wars. This is Pride Month, and it seems to me, from a cursory examination

of the changing of the icons of the corporate nature on my Twitter feed, that there is not the same sort of full-throated, here we go, month-long celebration that there was last year. Target, based here in Minneapolis, has been receiving criticism from an unexpected direction because the people who wanted more Pride merch are not getting it. And they feel as if they're being vetted a little bit harder, and they're seeing this as all part of a backlash against a against a lgbtq

right etc well it's not it is very specifically a a disinclination and a turning away from a happy smiley claspy face uh attitude toward the t part of that equation i i i think i agree if I think if you're honest, the LGP portion got what they wanted, which was indifference. In the end, that's what you want. You want nobody to really particularly care because it's like caring whether or not somebody is left-handed or blue-eyed. It doesn't matter. And that's kind of where we were. And as with every organization, it will be occupied and inhabited by people who want to push the agenda further. And that's where the Q and the Q theory came into it. And the next thing you know,

we're being asked to believe a series of things about gender that to most people are manifestly, patently absurd. And Target, for whatever reason, last year went really all in on this. There was a lot of transpride stuff in the stores. There were merchandise online. They didn't really vet the guys well enough, I think, who were doing this because they'd buy a mug from this guy and if you went to his actual shop, there would be little

pins that would have a guillotine for the turfs. There would be little pins that said, Satan respects your pronouns. People just sort of reared away from this, thinking, no, if we are actually talking about preventing the puberty of children, about performing surgery upon them, upon believing this kaleidoscopic notion of gender, and then all... No, I'm not going to believe this. People may, again, ultimately be indifferent as to what somebody calls themselves, as long as you don't have to participate in what they have going on in their head. But the idea that this is to be imposed by HR divisions on down, by television, by media, by the rest of it, has left a lot of people with just, no, they don't want it.

And they're really not comfortable with the party that insists that you have to believe this that you have to believe this yeah i mean i think that's very true i think it's i mean that feels to me like a um not just a specific cultural uh conflict or cultural whatever friction but um it it is it is a general example it exemplifies the problem which is that it isn't just um that oh you know we'll we'll get there we'll get there as a culture that's usually what people say right we'll get there um this is a deep deep rift between two different ways to look at the world and two different ways to look at human biology that i probably are never going to get reconciled that's one thing that the brilliant um when he was brilliant um newt gingrich said in 94 even before 94 and afterwards here's how you you here's how the the center right can win just to remind people

how weird the other side they're so weird he said that should be our watchword not not wrong not this not just weird they're like what these are weird people who believe he was talking about people in the 90s he was talking about which which now is the is the beaver cleaver era oh my god yeah i know but but the idea that that this is going to be a moment where eventually, you know, in 10, 20 years, people are going to have a different idea about, I don't know what gender is. It just doesn't seem real to me. Like, things don't inexorably keep going. They do reach a point where it's like people are like, I don't think we're now at the elemental cellular division of the human organism. And I just don't think you can get much more. You can't progress out of that. Well, I think there's a backlash underway right now,

or the pendulum is swinging. And I actually predicted at the end of last month that you would see much less of the pride celebration from corporate America than you saw in last year's, as James points out. But you're seeing that across the board. Less enthusiasm for Black Lives Matter, a big move on Wall Street away from the ESG, environmental safety and government's rubber stamp investing. One problem here is quite aside from the substance of it, and I'm in heated agreement with both of you about how ridiculous this is, is the demand for absolute conformity on a nationwide basis. And so people have kind of forgotten this or maybe never focused on it, but I think it was within six weeks of the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage

that you suddenly had the transgenderism movement erupt. And it started on the local level in North Carolina. You may remember this as some, the school district in Charlotte, I think it was, said, well, transgender people can use whichever bathroom they want to. And the state legislature erupted and passed a bill saying, no, you can't, this is crazy. A number of Democrats, black Democrats, by the way, voted for it. And then a compromise was struck, like, all right, we're not going to make a statewide law. If you want to have it locally, go ahead. However, what happened at that point was the Obama Education Department, at the behest of the

Human Rights Campaign Fund, said, no, this needs to be a national policy. And they put out a guidance letter. This is the coercive way the Obama administration operated, not a formal regulation. And they said, any school district, any school district, anywhere in the country that does not allow transgender people to pick their bathroom will be denied their federal funds. And Texas was the first state to say, go ahead and make our day. How many Democrats want to get reelected to Congress, right? And so it's sort of, but the point is, I've always been for years now, as early as the 90s, I used to call it a moral federalist.

Let Salt Lake City be Salt Lake City and let San Francisco be San Francisco. And don't try and make this uniform across the country. And we'll sort ourselves out. But no, that is not acceptable to the cultural left we all must believe the same thing and there must be punishment anywhere for anybody who dissents that's i think that's really true and i think that the i mean maybe i'm just a most and my rock-ribbed conservative, because that is the point of the United States Constitution. And the Constitution is, we think of it as like it enumerates our rights, but it really doesn't.

It enumerates our restrictions. Here's what I can't make you do. Here's what the government can't make you do. It holds you back. It maybe ties one arm behind your back and that's okay and the idea was this is going to be sloppy and messy and it was sloppy and messy to get it ratified and even people ratifying knew this is not going to go this is not going to be easy um their worst nightmare was confirmed i don't know 60 70 years later when the country erupted in a civil war that was the bloodiest war in human history up till that point.

But it's still better than trying to fix everything all at once. There's a software... I said this to Peter once. He looked at me like I was speaking Sanskrit, even though he and I...

When we were building Ricochet years and years ago, we talked about this. There are two big ways of looking at software development. One is, I'm sure they're more better now, but this is what I'm talking about 15 years ago. One was called Agile, and one was called Waterfall. In the Waterfall version, you fix the chunk and move to the

next chunk. You fix that, you move to the next chunk. You keep moving forward as you add complete units of code. And then there's the waterfall, where you kind of get going. And you kind of add stuff, and you go back, and you fix, you go back, you fix. Waterfall, the agile always looks chaotic and like a mistake, but it's almost always stronger. Because you just start.

And the United States Constitution, this country, is agile. Meaning, we kind of got started before we had figured out one big thing. is you just start and that the united states constitution this country is agile meaning kind of we kind of got started before we had figured out one big thing and we had to pay the price for that we're still kind of paying the price for that um but it's much better than thinking that we know everything and we could just kind of like the european union like the european federation we're going to sit in a room we're going to come up with all the laws we're going to pass all the laws and then we're done it's like that's not gonna work let me wrap this all up into one thing great no i mean it's possible to do so um one of the reasons that you have the normies as they're called with such

derision um but recoiling a bit perhaps from the excesses of the left is that everything sort of gets wrapped up in these protests that we're seeing on campuses and elsewhere when we're seeing people who are loudly advocating for the success of a terrorist organization. I mean, it started out where it was all about free Gaza, but it kind of morphed without even, gee, gosh, how did that happen

into pro-Hamas flags waving around with the people who will be standing there with ridiculous signs like queers for Palestine, which is, again, just absolutely takes an egg beater to your brain. with the people who will be standing there with ridiculous signs like queers for palestine which is you just again just absolutely takes an egg beater to your brain and you see them occupying the halls as they used to and trashing things and yeah at lafayette square for example showing up and spray painting death to america etc etc on the statuary there and suffering absolutely no consequences for it whatsoever

which is remarkable when you think about it that i mean the protests sort of wrap it all up it wraps up the anti-western element it apt it wraps up the curious um monocultural religious ethnic portion which is apparently it's okay if they're doing it. It wraps up all of the strange, meaningless alphabet ideologies that find a home in this simply because it's anti-Western. I mean, this is like, I hate to make parallels, but we're coming up to another

convention in Chicago, like we did in 68, in the cultural mood of the normies, of the silent America, of the Archie Bunker sitting in his lazy boy in Queens, is looking at these people with the same amount of contempt. So are we where we were in 68, where the silent majority speaks, and there are riots in Chicago, etc.?

You guys tell me before we go, because we have four minutes to settle it all. All right, Steve, you first. Fix everything. No, i'm kind of gloomy i think no matter who wins we're in for some very bad times down the road by the way i think if trump wins you're gonna see riots i think you're gonna see yeah the left is going to erupt much worse than january 6 although it'll be more diffuse across the country um so i hate to be so cheery about things i'll give you one thing to cheer you up. On this last point, I just found this

news story this morning that some playwrights in England have put together a play attacking J.K. Rowling because of her... Her turf bleep. Yeah, you saw that story. And they can't get any actresses to want to play the roles because they're all saying no, we don't want to do that, which I think is a sign

of, again, the pendulum swinging back yeah i mean i feel like i'm a i'm generally an optimist you know i feel like it's uh i i i i go back to ronald reagan right reagan used to say this he said there's not one problem that we face as a country that is not being solved somewhere by somebody right now and um a lot of what we have to do is just uh remember what we already know and pay attention to what other people are doing and see if they're doing a good job and the one they are and some people are and get out of the way i mean mean, obviously, that's a complete cliche, but sometimes these cliches are true. So I actually do have faith in that. I do believe that is true. And in the sense that I even look at the, not my own sort of natural patriotic, you know, condescension, but I can look at Europe and think, ha think ha you know you guys would be much better off

if you were a little bit more american that's if you want to if you want to if you're desperate to import um immigrants why don't you let some of us come for you know five six months walk around your cities eat your food drink your wine and then we'll head home but europe is But Europe is a better, safer, smarter place now because Americans were there for 25, still there, than it was for the 2,000 years before. Yeah, well, they haven't had a hundred years war for some time now. Thank you very much. You're welcome.

Ramstein might help that. You're absolutely right. I, too, am an optimist, but like Stephen, I am, too, a little bit of a pessimist down the road. I think that there are sclerotic, to use that word again for the twice in one podcast, forces at work that keep education from being reformed, that don't address the cultural problems that create busted families, that create kids who have no concept of history or behavior, social media that impumps and inflames and the rest of it. We have problems, and while we know what to do about them, there just seems to be a timorous lack of will to do anything about them.

Here in the Twin Cities, they've started to address the disorder on the light rail system by actually sending in, get this, people to do something about it. People with uniforms who will actually do something. And it's having a little bit of an effect. Somewhat. It's not perfect yet, but people scratch their heads. It's the old Fox Butterworth thing. I don't understand it.

The prisons are full, yet crime is down. Anyway, before we leave, Rob usually tells you what's going on when it comes to and i gotta say also that we uh are in ever debt to our great producer perry uh who's just you know wrote a wonderful rundown of things that we could discuss here and we completely ignored everything that he did but i did i did not want it to go unnoted that had we showed up as as stumble tongued uh guys uh we would have had the whole roadmap in front of us anyway rob you want to tell them about those the meetups before we leave yes uh in addition to this wonderful podcast which you get for free by the way like a european socialist

uh you could be in a real american and join ricochet and ricochet.com become a member and it's not just about the podcast. It's not even just about the conversations we have on there that cover everything and anything in the world, and not just politics. In fact, the ones that are not about politics, I find to be the most interesting. But we also have real meetups,

and you can meet real people who are nice people. And you can meet them coming up. I'll tell you what will happen coming up. Fourth of July weekend, Fargo, North Dakota is going to be a German fest meetup in Milwaukee during the last weekend of July. There's going to be one in St.

Louis in early October too. And there's going to be more. You just have to go. You have to go to a rich.com, go to the member site and the meetups are all there. And if you want to go to one and none of those dates work for you, guess what? Just say you want to have a meetup wherever is close to you on whatever date works for you,

and you will find Ricochet members will show up because that's what they do. They show up. And if you've made it through 696 episodes of the podcast, you're checking out Ricochet. First of all, I don't know what the matter is. I don't know what I can do. But drop by this time because we, I mean, Rob's right. Politics stuff is fun. It's great to go in there and discuss. But we got

two posts this week, one by Gary McVeigh talking about the horrible design of the 50s. Gary's always a pleasure to read. Gary's fantastic. Nose. We should have Gary on. Gary should be a guest. He should be. And then Dr. Bastian, who had a piece about well, it's about doing well and the decision to do well.

And it starts out with a patient who is about to shuffle off the mortal coil, and none of the kids are going to drop by and say goodbye. Why is that? And it's a great piece. And I read that, and I thought, you know, this magazine that I have in front of me here, this newspaper that I have here, this other website, none of these have anything like this, and they still want to charge me money for it, and Ricochet is just giving it to us. But, you know, if you go to the member side where this stuff comes up in advance, that's where you will find friends and community, and I highly advise you to go there. Maybe you'll do it after the 700 podcast and figure, you know what? I think these guys are going to be around for a while. Anyway, it's been a great pleasure.

Thanks as ever. Thank you, Stephen, for sitting in as ever. Thank you, Stephen, for sitting in for Peter. Thank you, Rob, as ever. I will be out for a little while, unless we can do next week. On Thursday, if we can do that, I'll be here. Otherwise, I will be gallivanting.

And you'll be... It'll be one of those situations where I go and nobody replaces me, and it's just the two of you, which is fine. Will you tell us where you're going? Is that a secret? Are you going to tease us? I'll tease you.

Big surprise. Lots of fun, but yeah, big surprise. And don't even think about it because our house is heavily armed, wired, alarmed, and will be occupied. So, you know, there, Because I can't take the dog. Anyway, that's it. It's been fun. We thank ZBiotics for sponsoring us. Give it a try.

Believe me. Fourth of July and a few sessions of quaffing coming up, you might want ZBiotics on your side. And, of course, go to Apple Music, iTunes, iPod. Give us five. iPod. I said iPod like it's 2010. I give us those five stars and that'll be great. And otherwise,

thanks for listening. We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week or not. Next week, fellas. Ricochet. Join the conversation.