The Ricochet Podcast - Ricochet Podcast #200: Live In Los Angeles

Episode Date: January 11, 2014

Rob Long, Peter Robinson, James Lileks, Mollie Hemingway, Troy Senik, Jon Gabriel, DC McCallister, Dave Carter, Pat Sajak, Andrew Klavan, Jonah Goldberg, and Dennis Prager chat live in Los Angeles... Source

Thank you all for coming. There are literally hundreds of you here. Before we start, I want to ask one question, a very important question. How many of you are Ricochet members? Okay. How many of you are not Ricochet members? He's going to do the pitch.

All right. Those of you who are not Ricochet members, you are welcome here. We're happy to have you. However, this only works if you become a member. Ricochet is the fastest growing, best, most interesting, witty, most civil conversation on the web between and among our contributors and our members on the center right across the country and around the world. What we're trying to do is get everybody together, not just in rooms like this,

but in conversations all around the web in a civil way. You know how swampy and nasty the web is. You know how swampy and nasty the comment sections are. You know how awful it can get. We're different. We're conservatives. Become a member. Join us. We have one of our contributors here who is anonymous for a lot of reasons. His name is Jack Dunphy. He is a member of the LAPD. He writes a lot for NRO, contributes to Ricochet. I will not identify him, but those of you who raised your hands and said that you were not members he saw you become a member tonight thank you what Rob is trying to say

I think I actually said it I think I tried and I succeeded is that the doors are going to be locked and we'll take checks, we'll take cash in order to get you out to your car I'd also like to say to my right you know James Lilacs from Minneapolis, Minnesota locked and we'll take checks. We'll take cash in order to get you out to your car. Exactly. I'd also like to say to my right, you know James Lilacs from Minneapolis, Minnesota. And to my

left, co-founder of Ricochet With Me, Peter Robinson from Palo Alto. Peter has been in Los Angeles about 24 hours. He's already gone insane. Check out the socks. And Peter, would you like to get a little more comfortable? Please.

For those of you listening at home, Peter Robinson is now removing his suit jacket. He's taking a sweater. And he is tying it around his neck. Let's begin. Yes. We have a lot of guests tonight, so I think we should probably just jump right to it.

We got a theme. We can't do the show without a theme. We got a theme. We got to start all that stuff. What is that theme? Don't we have that ricochet theme we've used for years and years? Oh, you mean the musical theme? The musical theme, yes, exactly.

It's got to be a proper podcast. We have to have a proper theme. Do we have it? Can we play it? I can hear you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Hack.

It's the Ricochet Podcast number 200 with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. Our guests are a multitude today with the most amazing compendium of conservative thought with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. Our guests are a multitude today with the most amazing compendium of conservative thought you'll find anywhere in the Western Hemisphere on one stage in one place. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Thank you all for coming. We don't often get to see...

This is very dramatic music. I want to start... Here's the one thing we have to do, we have to start the timer. Because this thing could go forever. And I know, we're such professionals. Pat Sajak, could you just start counting down from 60 minutes? I'm sorry, I'm used to actual broadcast. Oh! Oh! Oh!

Well, that hurt. Usually we start with fluff, right? Yeah. Weather, domestic stuff, and somebody always says, get to the issues. So if there's anybody here who would like to shout out, get to the issues, instead of just yelling it at home, go ahead and do it.

Nah, forget it. We can't hear you. That's all you're doing. This is a good... You're yelling at yourselves. Exactly. Go to the mic. The mic button. Yep, like us.

This is a good opportunity for us all to actually see each other. I met some people. It's very weird. We were meeting people last night and today in the other little room, and they'd introduce themselves, and then they'd say, oh, here's my name. Oh, how are you? Like we're old friends.

Right, right. It's kind of cool. But you probably haven't met, there are three editors of Ricochet here, and we would like to bring them up so you can meet them. Molly, Troy, and John Gabriel, come up here and say hi.

Hi. So... This is Troy Senec in the kind of dramatic black. John Gabriel's at the end. And in between in the dashing lavender is Molly Hemingway. Molly is no longer actually... What would you say?

Were you emeritus? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. You wanted me to leave, but I'm refusing to leave. That's how that works. You're not allowed to leave. All that happens is you still have to work here. We just don't pay you. And Troy, you're here all the time.

Also not paid. That's our business model. And John Gabriel from Phoenix, Arizona. You guys paid me a fortune. Thank you. That's wrong. Look at all the savings. So has it been weird to be out there and meet people that you –

members that you interact with every day? It's been cool? Well, I think the thing that happens is what you were just describing, which is you do a double introduction to everybody. Somebody says, hi, I'm Bill, and then they give you the name. Oh, actually, I'm interested to meet you. Because we've built this sense of community around here. So, yeah, I'm Bill, and then they give you the name. Oh, actually, I'm interested to meet you. We've built this sense of community around here. It's great. There's so many people.

Thanks, by the way, to everybody. I know a lot of people came from a long distance away, and it means a lot that you support the site. Next year, let's print off our avatars and just wear them over our faces. Like a giant mask. I met somebody out there, and I actually didn't think it was... I thought he was lying, because he looked about 12.

You're not referring to me. No. Okay. It looked too young to be the guy who writes so well. Or is that just me being an ageist? Who? Who was it? I'm not going to say.

Okay. I might have creeped out Marina Smith by gushing and telling her what a fan I am of her, so I just want to apologize right now. If I overdid it, you're great. Is it weird? I mean, you guys are professional writers, right? Is it weird when you... I mean, we're all professional writers

here, and then you meet civilians and you think... Who do it better. Like, while they're doing other stuff. It's just extremely annoying. Yeah. And it's depressing a little bit. Do you think? A little bit, but it's also kind of inspiring in a way because we see people all the time

who, you know, we say we're professional writers. We don't do anything else. And you see people who are accomplished in the field. You see people who are engineers. You see people who work in agriculture. I mean, the number of people who could be professional writers if they wanted to be. And I'm just grateful. Whereas we could do nothing else.

Nothing. Yeah, no, I think it's terrific. Done. Okay, you guys are done. So my other question on that vein is, you know, people join Ricochet, and the first thing they say is, I don't really feel comfortable posting. And I heard a good story about somebody who said, it took me a long time, and then I posted one small thing,

and then I felt okay about it. So what would you say to people who are in that spot right now, who are listening, and I'm a member, but I'm not going to post. Maybe I'll comment by saying I agree, but I'm not going to post. What would you say to them right now? I've thought about that a bit, and I think that it is true that you get better at it the more you do it. So the only way to overcome that is to sort of just start doing it and just get over yourself that maybe your first few posts aren't going to, like, change the world or whatnot.

And you sort of learn only by doing, so you just have to get in there. And then people find it deeply satisfying when they do get the thing out there and it resonates with people and advances everybody's thinking. It's amazing what a treasure trove is at Ricochet among the members. No offense to the fine people here, but I far prefer the member posts to the... Sorry, that was a bad one. Just saying no offense, Molly, doesn't mean it is that. I think, too, hearing from people of all walks of life who aren't having the same conversations,

so much of the content on the web is just the same old stuff, people rehashing, internecine battles between political feuds that have been going on forever, and hearing from people at different parts of the country and different, like you said, engineers and truck drivers, and you get such a better perspective for what issues really matter and not the chattering you get so much out of political media. Have you ever been surprised? Often when I'll read something and I'll think, oh, I think I know where most of the comments are going to be on this.

Yes, constantly. Two things surprise me. One is the diversity of opinion on Ricochet and the fact that it's unpredictable. And secondly is the consistent civil tone that we always keep talking about. I mean, the day that I walk into Ricochet and the comment threads and somebody says,

well, it's just what I think that a limp tard who loved Obozo would say, I would think that I had gone into an alternate universe because that's just the sort of thing that Ricochet is not. So yeah, I'm always conscious of it. Well, I'm quoting you. I think the most surprising thing, though, is that there's something about the way it's done

that enables you to sort of gently change your opinion on things. People kind of, by making the argument, and then over time you hear different sides of things. I have not changed my opinion on things in so many years until I joined Ricochet, and I learned. I don't know, there was just like a gentleness to the arguments that made it comfortable for me to think about things in a new way. Like what?

I'm not going to out myself on some of this stuff. I changed my mind on John Gabriel. I didn't think much of him. But then I got to know him and read him. He's impressive. You want? Well, so I never used to care at all about gender issues, for lack of a better way of putting it. And there's some people who write on distinctions between the sexes. And I've come to realize it's like a really important thing. And I never cared about it at all. And that's only because of Ricochet and it's only

because a bunch of people write about it in really thoughtful, challenging ways that made me kind of question some of my assumptions about it not being a big deal. Do you realize this is Molly's subtle barb at my gender reassignment? How's it going? Not well. No, I was going to say.

A little bit more work on that, I think. Just around here, I think. I'm sorry, but which way are it going? Not well. No, I was going to say. Not well. No, it's not. A little bit more work on that, I think. Just around here, I think. I'm sorry, but which way are you going? Peter Robinson. Which way am I going was the question I just got from the man wearing the Bush 41 socks. Which are good, actually. I like them. Is the beard intentional?

Yeah. It was a byproduct of the drugs. Well, all right. It's a long, delayed thing. It's going to happen. We promise. We're still kicking the tires on it. But 2.0 is coming out soon.

This is like saying the worker's paradise is just... It's going to happen. It's going to happen. The five-year plan has been a great success. Our wheat harvest is the best ever. What do you hope for it? What do you hope for the future of Ricochet?

What do you hope for the next two years? It's going to be a really exciting two years for us. Very exciting two years for this community, I think, for ours

and for everybody in general. The country's got a lot of choices to make. What do you think we're going to do as a Ricochet group? Well, you asked about my hope for Ricochet.

My hope for Ricochet is, I mean, look, enough people cared about the site and what we're doing to come out tonight and spend a lot more actually on tickets here than they would for a membership at Ricochet. So my hope is that we're doing this a year from now, two years from now, with double, triple the amount of people in there. Because I do think that the thing that we offer that nobody else really does is a place to have a civil, thoughtful conversation. And like Molly was saying, even when we have arguments, it's not about people trying to beat other people in the comment threads. It is about people sort of coming and trying to reason together,

except for the crap that John writes. I mean, that's just – he's just smacking people down. And it's really – it's in bad taste. But apart from that – I'm learning. I mean, that's just – he's just smacking people down, and it's really – it's in bad taste. But apart from that – I'm learning. I think another thing that will be exciting is watching the next couple election cycles and having a place to vet the candidates without the flame wars, without the – just the craziness of going on. We can look substantively at different people without questioning everybody's motives as you're a rhino squish,

not that anyone on this panel would ever be a rhino squish. Other than Rob, nobody being a rhino squish. But I think that will be really exciting and a great opportunity for everybody to contribute what their thoughts are because people in D.C. are reading the comments and trying to figure out which horse to bet on. Molly? Yeah, I think it's just this wonderful civilized community. I've made several friends just through the site, and I just hope more people can experience it.

And one of the things that's weird about it is that you start and you kind of like it, but then you just get really into it and you become an addict and you have to go to a 12-step program to help deal with your addiction. But no, I just think it's this sanctuary from so much that's awful on the web, and I think that more and more people need to experience it. John Gabriel, Molly Henway, Troy Sinek, thank you very much. Thank you. John Gabriel, Molly Henway, Troy Sinek, thank you very much.

Rob, we talked a lot about you bringing out rhino squish as an actual beverage. Yeah, I'm thinking about that in a can. I'm working on it in the lab. Some of my beverage experts are working on the rhino squish. And all you need is a flavor. No, it's flavorless. Oh, it is? There's a flavor. It's flavorless. It's any flavor you want depending on who's drinking it. You are less alone here this evening than you might suppose.

I met, and we have in the audience, and I'm going to ask him to wave to us all right now, Squishy Blue Rhino. There he is. Squishy and Rob, that makes two of you. Yeah. Maybe we'll get together later, or maybe not,

depending on whether we'll figure it out how to not take a stand on that. As long as it doesn't bother anybody. Because we're just really trying to just get through the day without causing any offense. Our next guest is a ricochet stalwart and regular, and you know him. And I couldn't even come up

with a suitable introduction for him, even if I tried. I'll just say, Pat Sajak. I wasn't sure it was going to be me. It was so generic, it really could have been anybody. So, Pat, how does it feel to be on the dais right here at a Ricochet event and know that your career is over? Well, as long as I have the special chair. Yeah, the green velvet.

No, my career is fine. They put up with me in Hollywood. You know, it's interesting. There are, and I think you'd agree with this, there are more of us than you would think in Hollywood. The problem for our side has always been that we're not especially good at proselytizing. It's not what we do.

We believe in starting our business, running our families' affairs, not telling everyone else how to live, necessarily. So it's hard. In some ways, conservative activists is almost an oxymoron. And it's just something we have to deal with. I mean, they're much better on the other side because they know they're right. And they know how we should all live. And they know what we should all live and they know what we should recycle and what animal species we should work on saving. So they can tell us that on a regular basis. So I'm not sure that, I mean, that's a battle we're always going to have to fight

and we'll probably be on the short end because, you know, again, we tend to shut up and let other people live their lives. Pat, why are you a conservative? It would be so much easier for you, wouldn't it? Just to not. I don't know. It's more fun. I think we're more fun.

And we're not angry. We're not as angry as they are. I don't know. They really get angry. I don't know. And I understand the spirit of what you're asking. A book, a president, a moment. You know, I did.

We talked about this. You were nice enough to invite me on Common Knowledge, and I may have told the story, and forgive me if you hear it, but it's funny how these little incidents in life affect you in a big way. I came from a nominally Democratic family. I grew up in Chicago where I thought Mayor Daley was king. I didn't know you voted for him. I didn't know there were actual elections.

There weren't, and you didn't. That's right, exactly. And I remember, and so we were kind of an apolitical family, but to what extent we were political, it was sort of a democratic family. And I remember when I was getting in my upper teens, I remember the Johnson-Goldwater election, and there was a political cartoonist named Herblock the worst political cartoonist ever because

he labeled everything he would say you draw a picture of a bear and he'd say put Russia on it put a hammer and sickle eight ways to identify it because he was a terrible artist anyway but I digress so I look at a cartoon

and Barry Goldwater made a famous or infamous remark during his campaign. He was accused of being an extremist, of course, and his line was, extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. That was his remark, and there you go. So Herblock had that caption, extremism in defensive liberty is no right. But the cartoon was two gangsters leaving a bank which they had just robbed and they're shooting back at the police

and that's what they're yelling at them. And I looked at that and I thought, that's not what Barry Goldwater meant exactly. And for some reason, I don't know how a cartoon got me thinking about it and got me annoyed that this man, whom I really wasn't supporting in any great way,

was mischaracterized that way. And for some reason, I became more involved with politics and looked at things more critically. And so it's a strange and tiny incident, but that's the one that comes to mind. No, if you look at that cartoon under a magnifying glass, the bullets themselves say things like, hateful rhetoric.

It's just on a molecular level. I have to tell you how things happen. My son, who, again, is not terribly political. He's in his early 20s now. He's on a medical path. He's a huge hockey fan. Last season, there was a lockout.

He was beside himself because there was no hockey to watch during his off time. It was like withdrawal. There was no hockey. And there was nothing on for him to watch because he didn't watch a lot of series stuff. But he missed hockey on television. And he stumbled on the Fox News channel. And he's gotten hooked. Now I go home

and I have this guy screaming about all these events. Who is this kid? Fox has captured my son. Does everybody have that moment where somebody suddenly gets political and they're like, did you know that taxes actually suppress economic progress? Did you know that? Yeah, yeah, I knew that.

I heard something about that a couple of years ago. Yeah, this is a kid who, you kid who two years earlier was just explaining offsides to me in hockey and now he's telling me about all this stuff. Those little things can have a big impact. Withholding tax. Has Patrick had a job where there was some withholding? This is what I got. Dad, what's this? This is how much I make.

This is just a little summer job. This is how much I make. The government takes it before I even get it? Yes, son, that's the way it works. I always thought we could, if you really want to change opinions or really get people involved and angry, get rid of withholding tax.

Send them... If you make $1,000 a week, send them a check for $1,000 and make them sit down once a quarter, once a month, whatever it is, and write a check to the government. Because right now, people tend to look at their take-home pay as their pay. Do you know who agreed with you? Milton Friedman. Oh, really? There may be a Nobel Prize in your future. But I actually did have this conversation with Milton, who felt embarrassed to the end

of his days, because during the Second World War he was part of the team that figured out tax withholding. And he felt that was a terrible mistake. It's insidious. Yes, it is. Because it works on both ends. I think the people who make the money lose sight of the fact that it was theirs.

Right. And it makes those who take your money think it's theirs. So on both ends, it's – It also creates this weird psychology about the money that you make that the government is like your dad and takes the money for the important stuff, your health care, your education, your health and welfare. And the money you get to keep is like, well, that's your allowance. And I love when people get all excited about their refund as if it's some gift from, look what I got. I can go out and I can buy an iPad. Speaking of game shows.

Speaking of game shows. Yes. I mean, we've got Pat Sajak here, so come on. I love your show. I've loved it for years, and I know that I should phrase that in the form of a question. Oh. I'll hold the mic if you want to kick his ass No, no, no

He wouldn't say come on down Here's the problem The way the show is structured now As I understand it, people have a choice Of buying vowels As opposed to going to an exchange Where they can get a vowel that's subsidized We're actually thinking of setting up an exchange

That's what I'm going to ask And if you like your vowel, you can keep your vowel Yes That's subsidized. We're actually thinking of setting up an exchange. That's what I'm going to ask. And if you like your vow, you can keep your vow. Yes. So are you ever tempted then when you see somebody walk away with a particularly big chunk of money to say, say goodbye to half of that, but you can't, I suppose. No, and by the way, not that it matters, but it's obviously all taxable. And if you win a trip to Guatemala, that's earned income. You only get to Mexico.

Yeah, that's right. No, it's taxes. You only get to Dallas. You've gotten funnier since you put on red socks, Rob. Now, do people know that? Do you see it on their face? Are they mentally doing the calculation? No, they're just excited to win.

I mean, they know it. It's certainly, everyone knows that. And we actually make it clear to them before they get on the show that it's their responsibility to report this stuff. And we've had people not take prizes for that reason. I mean, if someone wins a big trip and no cash, they'll say, they can forfeit a prize. They can't substitute, but they can forfeit.

So that's another insidious result of our system. People don't get the trips to beaches and sandals. But actually it is. I mean, you can make the point that taxes, regulations, we never see the things that aren't built because of them. And the trip that isn't taken is a perfect example of something they could avail themselves of. You know, That is really pointless. Sorry.

Well, this is now that the entire podcast has been brought to a complete stop. This is a good opportunity for us to bring up, we wanted to do two more ricochet personalities that I know everyone wants to meet. Am I leaving or am I staying? No, you're staying. It's like old Johnny. Oh yeah, they just moved down the

couch. No, you stay right here. They're going to go to the other side. When Peter and I were kicking off this idea a couple years ago, three years ago, he was in this email correspondence with a guy who was well, we'll tell you his back story,

but they were talking about something he had written in the Wall Street Journal, I believe. I have no idea where you're going with this. And I'm a little alarmed that you've been reading my email. Dave Carter. What's that? Dave Carter. Oh, Dave! Yes, of course, that's right, exactly, yes. And we talked about the people we'd like to get, the kind of community we want to start, and the kind of people we want to start contributing. It was an uncommon knowledge. I interviewed Justice Scalia. And he said, I got this guy. I've never met him, but I've been exchanging emails with him. His name is Dave Carter. And what he does now

is he drives an 18-wheeler around the country. And we thought... And he's asking these probing questions about constitutional law that are just so far over my head. We thought, perfect. That is exactly what we need on Ricochet. And then a very similar thing happened recently. Another person from our community has joined us from North Carolina, D.C. McAllister. And they're both here to say hi and to say a few words.

Dave Carter, D.C. McAllister, come on up. So, Dave, where is the big rig right now? It's in Fontana, about 65 miles east. Well, everything is east of here, isn't it? But it's about 65 miles east. What's in it? Nothing. Air. What do you get for that these days? Quite a bit. The load that brought me out here from Indianapolis area had 10 pounds of weight in the trailer. That's it. The air in the

trailer weighed more than the freight. And it was a temperature measuring device, some experimental deal that they wanted that they could monitor real time back at the warehouse in Indianapolis. So they asked me to drive. So you're an 18-wheeler with 10 pounds of cargo. Yes, yes. What would Al Gore make of that?

I'm sorry? What would Al Gore make of that? Is that a judicious use of greenhouse gas emissions? If we buy enough indulgences from him, yes. Yeah. Now, so DC. use of greenhouse gas emissions? If we buy enough indulgences from them, yes. DC? Yes. Raleigh-Durham?

Charlotte. Oh, Charlotte. Why old Charlotte? Because it's a different city that's not the city I thought it was, so I'm just reacting with surprise. Now, what do you do there? What do you do there that's not Ricochet? I have six children. Yeah, but I mean really, what's your job? Okay, he just asked me if that's not a job. That is a job. I also write for Courthouse News,

which is actually out of California, and I've never mentioned this ever,. I also write for Courthouse News, which is actually out of California. And I've never mentioned this ever, but I also work for the government as a subcontractor, but I never mentioned it. Get her. I can't tell you who and what, but I was affected by the government shutdown, and I did not complain. Because I made the choice to take that job. And that led to child number six. How did you find Ricochet? I had, after the election of our darling president in 2012,

I had an emotional breakdown and I needed other people to help me. But I was particularly disturbed by the women issue and the women's vote and how they were manipulated and allowed themselves to be. Can I say that? Am I going to get huckabies? So I started looking on the internet just for a community actually to write on. I wanted to express some of my views and some of my ideas and explore how to improve our relations to women. And I came across Ricochet and I loved it because you're

able to write and you're able to communicate and interact and actually make a difference and connect with people from all over the country with different ideas and actually learn from them and get more ideas and grow from it. And it's been great. May I ask? This is, DC's a wonderful person, but she irritates me. I think I irritate somebody. She has six children and she's a wonderful writer.

But what really I find just so annoying is that she is the queen of comments. I'll put up something that I think is provocative, irresistible, really, and it'll grind away at 32 comments. I'll go back an hour, 33. And meanwhile, she'll drop something, and within 15 minutes, there will be 148 comments. How do you do that?

Well, I think one of it is I'm in there arguing with everyone. I'm poking them. And they want to come. So as you see, this civility business is just a cover. No, it's nice. I mean, there is something to the interaction. I mean, there is something to actually getting in. And I have the time to do that. I mean, others don't. And I think people need to understand that. Is that due to the government job? It is. I actually am writing for Ricochet while I'm doing my government job. Ah, okay.

Yes. So I have extra time and I just pay for it. The whole thing about civility is interesting to me because, you know, we joke about it and all that. But if you really want to get depressed, to me, when I go through the comments section of articles, I just leave feeling badly about my fellow man. It's incredible to me how quickly it devolves into, it can be a post about a Toll House cookie recipe and it's about four comments before someone's a Nazi. I don't know how that happens. People are angry and

there is a, and everyone has a forum now. And it used to be in our olden days when we began, if someone hated your guts, if you were on television, they had to sit down and they'd write a letter. You found out a couple of weeks later they hate your guts, and then you put the letter away. Now there's this instant access. And the other thing is that we now have more outlets for comments than ever before. More places to talk and yet we're allowed to say fewer things. With the language police out

there. I mean, I made a little joke about Huckabee. I mean, it's incredible how a word, a comment, the wrong subject at the wrong time can get people into hot water so quickly and can anger people so quickly. I'm just worried that we have so many places to say things, but that people are worried about what they say, and they're so concerned about every word and parsing every sentence.

And that would be a terrible result of this communication revolution we have if we're not able to communicate. When comments elsewhere, it's almost political theory. Comments elsewhere make me despair of democracy. At Ricochet, you say, you know, you put these people in charge of something big like

the United States, and it would work just fine. It sort of reaffirms what the founders had in mind in my judgment. In Ricochet, you can go 20 comments about a Toll House cookie before we get around to Nazis. And then when they get around to Nazis, they're quoting Jonah's book, The Liberal Fascism, and it's intellectually great.

I'd like to ask Dave what his friend in Louisiana, Alphonse, makes of Ricochet. Oh, he liked that a lot. Yeah, he likes that. Oh, he read that thing all the time. He had a great time with it. Yeah, he has a great... He got a new job, you know, Alphonse Fontenot. He got himself a new job. He drove a taxi cab down there in Baton Rouge.

A lady came in to take a ride. She wanted to go to the airport. And he made a wrong turn, and she reached up, and she tapped him on the shoulder. He said, hey, don't you ever do that again. Don't you touch me. You're about to give me a nerving smashdown. Don't touch me like that.

She said, I'm so sorry, sir. I didn't mean to upset you. He said, oh, it's not your fault. It's my fault. He said, I'm brand new and it's just my first day on the job driving the taxi cab. I've been driving a hearse for the last 25 years. Alphonse sends his regards regards You know, we don't go around driving trucks Yeah I'm going to come to your job That's where the material comes from It's always the amateurs So, when we first talked on the podcast Maybe 197 podcasts ago

Well, the first one that I watched. Well, the early ones. I said to you, it was 2008 or maybe, probably 2008, 2009, recession. I said, when will it, when it turns around, you'll know.

You'll be the first guy to know because there'll be people moving stuff around the country. So what do you think? I don't think so. But in my line of work, it's oftentimes cyclical. Whenever the number of shoplifting days you have until Christmas begins to shorten, then there's – the way that I can tell is if I have a difficult time finding a parking place at the end of the day at the truck stop, things are going good. There's plenty of freight.

And actually Dave answered the question earlier when he said he was carrying a 10-pound load. That's right. Somebody has to do it. And what will you carry back? I have no idea yet. Go back on the road Tuesday, and the nature of the job is I'll turn on the little computer, and they'll say, hi, this is where you're going now. And you don't know from day to day what state, other than the state of confusion, that you'll be in. All right, now you've got a bunch of people here.

I'll tell you a little story. Conrad Hilton, I think Conrad Hilton, was once on Johnny Carson. And Johnny asked him, he said, look, you're a big, powerful man. You own all these hotels. You're a big tycoon. You're on my TV show. Millions of people watching. Got any advice for people? And Hilton turned to the camera and he said,

please put the shower curtain inside the tub. Which, you know, if you're that guy and you have a lot of tubs, that's the advice you give, right? So, you're out there. A that guy and you have a lot of tubs, that's the advice you'd give, right? So you're out there. A lot of people listen, tens of thousands of people listening. And you're driving around in a big old gigantic piece of machinery.

Any advice? Cutting off an 80,000-pound vehicle ought not be at the top of your list, but if it is, it'll probably be the last item on your list as well. You know, you wrote something once that had an impact on me, and it really changed the way I drive.

Coming off an 80,000-pound vehicle will have an impact on me, I know. Dave, Dave, Dave. You talked about a moment where someone did that, cut you off, and it takes you a little while to stop that thing Dave. You talked about a moment where someone did that, cut you off. It takes you a little while to stop that thing. And you talked about seeing the faces of the family, the kids. Oh, that was in Orlando.

And the family was trying to get to the exit to go to Disney World. And they were driving a little hatchback. And I was in the second lane to the right. They were all the way on the left side of the highway when their exit showed up, and they knew they had to get over right away. They got in front of me, but they couldn't get to the next lane over because of traffic. And so the guy came to a complete stop on the interstate, which prompted me to stand on the brakes.

And tires don't squeal when they're that size. They roar. I put up a wall of smoke because of the tires, which means everybody behind me is now driving into something they can't see. And I was not able to stop in time. I could see the children in that hatchback looking up at me and I can still see that. Fortunately, at the last second, the traffic cleared and genius behind the wheel took the exit. It never occurred to him that he could just go and turn around and come back and try again. But you can't hear that story or read it as I did without thinking about it every time I'm in traffic with trucks.

I understand. It really had an impact on me. Well, it's an image that I still see. The last thing I want to do is hurt anybody. Well, most folks. The last thing I want to do is hurt anybody on the road. I see you think it's got a cow catcher in front of you. I wish. Are betters on the East Coast believe that

they can run the country from the little micro-nation of D.C.? Not the way they drive, they can't. In California, you've got an entertainment industry which believes it speaks for and can reach the rest of the country. Would people from either one of these coasts profit from a trip with you on your rig as they go through America and see something that they might not expect is there? Absolutely. Is the America, the mythical America that we always talk about, the small towns, the great truck stop culture,

that's still there, right? It's still there. Yes. Yes. Not as prevalent as perhaps it once was, right? It's still there. Yes. Yes. Not as prevalent as perhaps it once was, but you can still find places that are like that. And places where the waitresses call you Shug. You know, and my dad was on the road with me, and he ordered some French toast. And she said, the waitress said, would you like any syrup on it?

And he said, I'm diabetic. I can't have that. She said, we have sugar-free syrup. And he said, well, lay it on me, mama. And she said, okay, pumpkin, I'll be right back. It worked out perfectly. You know, the irony to me is that these, the people on the coast who think of the rest of the country as flyover country and who claim to have this great concern for the little guy, I have nothing but disdain for them. This idea that they need to be taken care of, and they're kind of stupid and don't make the right choices.

They're not progressive, and they're deep downside. There's racism rampant. So how they manage to portray themselves as champions of the little guy while, again, holding them in contempt. While believing that the little guy was born with a ring through his nose to be led around. Pat, question. Ronald Reagan, I always felt, felt a particular closeness to the American people because he was working in popular media all his life.

Radio as a young man, film. then when he worked for GE, he was going from factory to factory to factory as their, GE's PR man giving speeches, meeting ordinary people. He didn't care what the New York Times wrote. He wasn't thinking in terms of what any elite in Hollywood thought, aside from box office. Box office, he said more than once, box office, not the critics. All right.

You're in a very similar position in that you have made your career in the homes, through the television, of ordinary Americans. Your contestants are always people from a variety of walks of life, but they always come across as completely ordinary, everyday Americans.

So does this deepen your respect for America as an entity? At the same time, we're worried about these, you look at any comment post and you despair of people who get vicious online. You know, as I've gotten older and I've done the show longer, I have a greater appreciation of that. We do have – I mean, we make a real effort. We go – our contestant people are out all the time all over the country finding folks who represent the country. I mean, if you watch our show in a given week, you know, we're just playing hangman.

I don't want to make too much of this. But, you know, it's – you see every accent and every race and every size and every shape, and it really is representative of the country. I mean, you look at a lot of shows, and everyone looks as if they just stepped off the beaches of Malibu. We certainly don't have that look. But because I've met so many people from so many places, and I'll tell you what, too.

I can think if you forced me, I could probably come up with 10 people I would have liked to deck, frankly. But 99.99% of the people I've met are just really nice people. They're happy to be there. They're happy for the opportunity. They're proud of their families. The fact that they can go on television and mention their kids names is a big deal to them and they're just they're just great folks

and I've come to appreciate that more as I say as I get older there's not a day that goes by that someone doesn't come up to me on the street and thank me because they're you know they used to sit with their grandmother watching the show and and they just lost grandma, and that was her favorite half hour.

And the kids are still watching it. So it has become, this silly little show has become part of the American fabric for a lot of families. And I'm very protective of that and of them. Bill Buckley said he'd rather be ruled. I think this was sometime in the 60s. So let's say this is roughly 50 years ago. Bill Buckley said he would rather be ruled by the first 400 people in the Boston telephone book than by the faculty of Harvard University. That still rings true to you today.

Yeah. You know, people are very smart about these things. And one of the reasons they're smart about it is, you know, those of us in the Ricochet community particularly tend to be politically connected and focus on, you know, most people in this country aren't most of the year. And God bless them. It's worth ignoring most of the year, frankly. You know, we're already placing our bets on the 2016, you know, who's going to run. That's the big topic.

And that's fine. But for most people, they're not going to tune into that for a long time. And I think that's good, and I think that's healthy. And, you know, people have lives and careers and families to attend to, and that's what they do. Casey, what do you miss by writing in Charlotte instead of having the opportunity to write from Georgetown or Manhattan or Beverly Hills?

You poor thing. Well, I love the South and I do love flyover country and one thing that I do, I wouldn't want to be caught in the bubble in those areas and I do like that I'm connected.

You asked me the question, why do my posts connect? I made a joke about poking at people. But I think one of the reasons why it does is I do try to be real in my writing. I try to be me, and I'm not a wonk. I'm just a person, and I'm sharing my personal stories, and I'm able to be myself. And I think that in dealing with real issues that real Americans are dealing with, in a very emotional way sometimes, and people respond to that. And I think politicians

and our next candidate is going to have to be able to do this, is going to have to connect with the American people on an emotional level. And that doesn't mean that they're not rational, but on the level that's personal and that captures their imagination and inspires them. And people want to be inspired. They want to feel alive. They want to feel like they contribute to this country. And one thing that's amazing about Ricochet is that you do have a cross-section. You have the common people.

You have the little people and the big people. And you have a connection. And the one thing that's so special is that... When you say you have the big people, you were waving vaguely. But you mean Rob. I'm talking about you guys. I just wanted to pin that down. But you connect, and there's a respect given to the ideas and the values that people are feeling

and that people are thinking and that people are grappling with every day. And you respect that, and you recognize that there's value there because these are people who are really living their lives. And when you bring your personal values to bear in your political context, people respond. But if you're just going to give them some political answers that they hear everywhere else, they're going to tune you out. You know, like I've read that before. I've read that a billion times. But if you come and talk to them about something that happened to me and bring that same personal,

then they're like, I can connect with that. We all right now would go for the Say Jackak-Carter party in 2016, wouldn't we? Absolutely. We would. Either one of these guys could be president or Veep, and I'd be perfectly happy. Carter Sajak. If drafted, I will evade. The question is, why then doesn't the party kick up real,

interesting, thoughtful, amusing human beings like this? Why do we get the candidates that we seem to get? Carl Reynolds. It was on the movie,

the movie Mitt, it's out. Anybody seen it? Pretty human. Just didn't see it. It didn't come through or it was... It didn't come through.

You've watched the movie. In the campaign. Yeah, in the campaign. He's a pretty cool guy. That's what I felt, but it didn't come through? It didn't come through. You've watched the movie. In the campaign. Yeah, in the campaign. He's a pretty cool guy. That's what I felt, but it didn't come through. Are you saying Bob Dole wasn't cool in the music? Bob Dole knows it.

The American people know it. Yeah, I like Bob Dole. I do love when you read Democratic strategists giving the Republican Party advice. I love that. And it's important that they be middle of the road, that they can't win with a quote extreme candidate and you want to say you mean like Bob Dole

and John McCain go through the list but I'm sure they have our best interests at heart you can't win with a Reagan are you crazy well listen we are we're all thrilled and blessed to have you guys on the site and we look, I mean, we're all thrilled and blessed to have you guys on the site.

And we look forward to seeing what you're writing and look forward to having more conversations with you. So thanks for coming. Thank you very much. Thank you. No, you start. We're not out of gas. We have one more contributor we want to introduce you to who's a mystery novelist, a young adult author, and a good friend of mine.

He writes for young adults. And he writes for young adults. Or he's a young... He's a very old, elderly adult novelist who writes for young, younger adults. And he's a lot of fun. And I know some people out there, they knew his name. They didn't recognize his face. He was saying, I kind of like it that way,

so we're going to ruin it right now. Andrew Klavan. Drew Klavan, come on up here. Speak. You used to be a big socialist liberal Marxist commentator. I was a small socialist. I was. I was. I became a conservative because I'm a liberal.

I became a conservative because I want everybody to be able to do whatever the heck they want to do, be with who they want to be with, live the life they want to live, keep their money, find their own salvation. I thought that was the Democrats. I was out of my mind. And I remember walking with my daughter when she was very little and my wife, and we were a liberal family in New York, and we walked by, I think it was the Polish consulate, and the Iron Curtain was still up, and there were people protesting outside.

There were people protesting the occupation of Poland by the Soviet Union. And my daughter said, what are they doing? And I said, they're protesting. They're angry because some bad people have taken over their country. And my wife went, and I said, they're not bad people? She said, they are? I said, yeah, you know, they're bad people. And so we lived in this kind of bubble. We knew that the things that the liberals were doing were wrong, but we also knew that the conservatives were evil. And this is one thing that people don't understand when they're trying to convince people to come over to the other side. They can be dissatisfied with the Democrats. They can be dissatisfied with the liberals, but they know you're Satan. I mean, my father taught me that you guys were one step away from Nazis. I mean, when Reagan was elected, he said, that's it,

that's it. The next president is Hitler. He was reasonable enough to think he was just Hindenburg. And what happened to me was one day, as you may recall, the Berlin Wall fell down. And I thought that crazy cowboy warmonger movie actor idiot was right about every single thing he said. Everything. And now I know it was really Peter. I thought it was right. They are still trying to rewrite that. They are.

They've not given that up. Could I just point out, Drew has this moving, wonderful story, and you come up with this cockamamie thing about Herb Law? I saw a cartoon. In the future. He walks past the Polish embassy and has this transformation. I'm reading cartoons in the newspaper.

For me, that was a Herb Law cartoon about the fall of the Great embassy and has this transformation. I'm reading cartoons in the newspaper. For me, that was a Herblock cartoon about the fall of the war. Oh, yeah. Does any of that make its way in your books? Yes, because one of the things I do understand... Is that why they don't sell? They don't sell any copies. I was out there outside selling them. You waited until after the Berlin Wall fell?

Because at that point, you were useless, really. Apparently not. So how do your friends, your associates, how have they reacted over the years? Oh, I lost a lot of friends, a lot of, in Hollywood, what happened to me in Hollywood, and I was selling two and three scripts a year. And, you know, that's pretty serious business. And when the war started, when the wars against terror started, I would have kept my mouth shut because it was just business.

You know, you do your job. But they started to make those movies about our soldiers while our soldiers were in the field. And that never happened. In Vietnam, that did not happen. All those films, those Oliver Stone films against Vietnam, the war was long over. These guys are making anti-American war propaganda while our guys are out there getting shot at. And I thought, well, gee,

I've got to say something about that. And my phone went dead. I mean, it was just dead. I was like, gee, something that was strange. So I don't know if any of you saw this thing about Friends of Abe having trouble with the IRS. Well, this is hilarious because in L.A., and Rob knows this, and you know it. I've never heard of Friends of Abe. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you mean.

Abe Fogelman? Aye. But in L.A., you go in to sell your wares. You go in to pitch your stories, sell your scripts. And the guy will say to you, you know, during the Bush years, it was like you'd go, hi, how you doing? I'm all right. But that Bush is what an idiot he is. What a Nazi.

That guy's a Nazi. And you would say, gee, I kind of like him. And he'd say, oh, good. Don't let the door hit you on your way out. Conservatives have these secret meetings where we get together. It's like an AA meeting. You know, you get up and say, my name is Andrew. I'm a conservative. Andrew.

And now the IRS is coming after them. So that's what it's like. I now think that Rahm Emanuel left the White House to become a mayor of Chicago because he wanted to be someplace with less corruption. Now, I mean, I'm trying to figure out how to say the Friends of Abe thing. Because in my experience, it's different. We've talked about this.

I'm sure there have been people who have had a problem with it, but I've never experienced that. But I've been to Friends of Abe events, and you get an earful. Especially, I mean, especially you get it oddly, not oddly, especially you get it from the minority people. The story, I was just telling someone in the audience this story, one of the first Friends of Abe parties that I went to, these secret parties, I was just telling someone in the audience this story. One of the first Friends of Abe parties that I went to, these secret parties, I found myself talking to this guy, and he said, you know, he told me he was gay. And I said, okay. And he said, you know, I held two parties, one on a Friday, one on a Saturday.

The Friday party, I gathered all my conservative friends, and I told them I was gay. And they said, you know, we kind of knew that already. He said, at the Saturday party, I gathered all my gay friends and told them I was gay. And they said, you know, we kind of knew that already. He said at the Saturday party I gathered all my gay friends and told them I was conservative and they never spoke to me again. And that's why it's a secret society. That's exactly right. But you know, what's encouraging about this

organization, which will go unnamed, is... Except in the New York Times. Yeah. But as you all know, there are lots of young people, lots of young writers, producers, who are finding refuge in this. And that's very exciting, because these are the folks who are going to be doing the scripts and making the projects. And so it's been a support system to say, you know, it's okay.

There are more of us here, and we'll help. And if we can help connect you with someone, we'll do it. And I was struck by that and encouraged by that. It's not a bunch of old fogies. I mean, these are young Hollywood types, and their future is ahead of them, and I think that's a good sign. And it's starting to pop up. I mean, some of the pictures I see really surprise me. The movie Prisoners, which was a tough movie to watch. I mean, it was not a movie that a lot of women don't like it, I know,

but I really enjoyed it as a crime writer. I thought it was a great piece of crime writing. A very deep, reflective picture about religious faith, gravity, which the critics completely missed. Huge hit. Another picture about religious faith and very conservative values in there and George Clooney floating around in space

selling conservative values. I guess he probably didn't read the script or something. He has to be in a zero gravity situation to have that. Exactly. It messes with your mind. I was stunned that Frozen wasn't held up as climate change denialism. Let me ask you guys.

You're in the entertainment business. What's the best approach? To infiltrate, penetrate, to change the existing institutions, or to try to set up a parallel one? Because setting a parallel one seems to me to be madness. You have to change the institutions that you have. What would you suggest?

You know, it's funny, I used to have this argument with Andrew Breitbart, and Andrew Breitbart just wanted to infiltrate. He thought people should sneak in. Please. Please. He would love to hear that. The only thing he'd be missing is that you're not taking his picture. Andrew used to tell me, you know, that we have to infiltrate. We have to sneak in, pretend to be other than we are and get in any way we can. And I used to disagree. I think, you know, my phone stopped ringing, but slowly I've worked my way back in, you know,

and suddenly I'm getting things. And then what happens now is I'll sell a piece, I'll go out to lunch with the buyer, halfway through lunch he'll lean over, drop his voice to a whisper and say, I saw you on Glenn Beck. And I always say, why are we whispering? I have a story like that too. At the newspaper where I work, a newspaper, a major metropolitan

daily, I got a new editor who was going to handle my copy. And he walked over and he wanted to know if I wanted my local column, which is very middle of the road. It's intended to be there for everybody. I don't want to polarize people like Garrison Keillor, who came out the way he did and half of his audience realized oh you hate me oh my god and i don't want to do that and he said you know if you wanted to make more political comments in your p in your column you could and he leaned over and he said i think you could illustrate absurdity by being absurd a code word a code phrase like something that rush limbo was known to say just so I knew he was of the body. Wonderful, wonderful.

But, I mean, don't you think now, I mean, the business now is so fractured. I used to talk to Andrew about that, too. Out there, I forgot. I was going to, before we keep going, we should just acknowledge that one of the reasons that we can do Ricochet, one of the reasons that there can do Ricochet, one of the reasons that there's Friends of Abe, one of the reasons that there's any of this conversation happening

is because Andrew Breitbart was a visionary genius. And this crazy, crazy spirit who, one of the funniest people I don't think I've ever laughed harder at weirder stuff than I did with Andrew. crazy spirit who one of the funniest people I don't think I've ever laughed harder at weirder stuff than I did with Andrew and I

miss him all the time and he was just a great warrior for our side but I was going to say the business is so fractured now that there's really nothing to join you want to make a movie make a movie I completely agree and I think that as the people come out as you reach the people the market will work I mean I think that as the people come out, as you reach the people, the market will work.

I mean, I think that what happened with Duck Dynasty, it's just proof that once you are playing for the green after all, you are playing for the money. And so if people, independents, start making money making conservative films, good conservative films would be a kind of new thing for us.

But it can happen. It can definitely be done. And once that happens and the money comes in, absolutely. Typical Hollywood professional. So about the money. Drew, thank you very much. It's a pleasure. See you soon.

Thank you. We have two special guests that we can get sort of heavy now. No introduction necessary. Jonah Goldberg. Jonah Goldberg. Jonah, they're all fans. We'll get you the best doctors. I was promised that we were going to get the sign language translator guy from the Mandela funeral.

So, am I just supposed to just scat now or something? It's already been said. Was it fun out there when you met people that you – I mean, you have a bajillion Twitter followers, as Jon Pedorth mentions every time we do a podcast together. He's not bitter or anything. No, not at all. I'm not a competitive weirdo. Is it weird when you meet them in person and you go, oh, you're that person? Well, yes and no.

I mean, like I've been, you know, in Internet years, I'm like Methuselah. I mean, I've been on the Web for a really long time. And so I've gotten used to this because we used to have the same sort of thing with readers of National Review Online, is you get e-mails from people and I had all these email friends go for years and then you meet them and it turns out that they're not luring

you into a windowless panel van or anything. They're actually like I want to make a Jonah suit out of Jonah. With a tear stained mattress in the back or anything. So it's I'm sort of used to it, but it still always sort of surprises me. And you do have the – as Troy was saying, you have this double-take thing where you're like, hi, it's nice to meet you. And then they say, you know, I'm IQ squared at Netmail.

Like, holy crap, it's great to see you. Because, like, all of a sudden you realize you have this long back story. But, you know, I know you guys think I'm in the bubble in Washington, D.C. and all that, but I just don't get along with people very well. I spend most of my time like Howard Hughes with Kleenex boxes on my feet in my basement. And so I'm always made very uncomfortable when people give me compliments. I was telling somebody earlier tonight that. Does that happen often?

Well, at these things it does. And it's very strange. You know, I come from a very long line of Jews that consider compliments really bad luck. And you start looking over your shoulders like, why are you buttering me up? You know, it's like saying nice doggy until you can find a rock. It just makes me very nervous. It's a nice jacket, by the way. Thank you very much.

I appreciate it. Thank you. One thing I wanted to bring up when you guys were talking about withholding, because there's nothing like good withholding stories. It's apparent, the story that they tell, it's sort of legend at Coors, the business Coors, the right-wing beer.

When the old man, when they first put in withholding, was so furious about it that he set up two pay windows. And he would pay all of his employees in cash the full amount and then make them go down to the next window and pay back the taxes that are supposed to be withheld. And I always thought that would be a great way to do it for everybody. It's like, you know, you still have – it's still withheld, but you just get taken out of it. Anyway, when was the next chance I was going to get a withholding story, you know, segue? Let's not get on withholding stories. We'll be here all night. So, Jonah, at some point you're going to abandon your principles to become more popular, as usually happens.

You mean pull along. Yeah. And your objective will be, of course, to go to those Washington, D.C. cocktail parties that we've heard so much about. Tell us what it's like, actually, socially in D.C., that apparently we're all willing to squander what we believe so we can be accepted. So you can swan around a Georgetown cocktail party. So you can swan around a Georgetown cocktail. Did we just go over this on the podcast? Yeah, but I want to hear it again because I want to see your face when you say it.

There's nothing like being, sort of having a populist finger wagged at you by a guy who uses swan as a verb. I don't know where, I don't go to these cocktail parties. I don't like those cocktail parties. You know, it's amazing. Rich Lowry tells this story.

You know, years ago he was dating Kirsten Powers. I don't know if you people know that. They met at my wedding. Because Kirsten Powers is actually from Fairbanks, Alaska. And my wife used to babysit her. And she is, my wife's baby sister is her best friend from high school so the world is really tiny and anyway when he was dating Kirsten she's you know democratic operative or former democratic operative and you know Rich would say

you know I never met any of these like I've been in journalism for 15 years I've never met anybody from the New York Times anybody from Time Magazine I never see them at bars or cocktail parties. And the second I start dating a Democrat, I see them all of the time because they all date each other and they all marry each other. And it's amazing. You go through like the bylines of the guys at the New York Times and at least the ones who aren't gay marry members of Democratic administrations and vice versa and it is all one cultural cesspool and they all

borrow from each other and they're interchangeable and it's not, it's sort of socially, I just don't have much interaction with that. So what we have really in this country is a breeding problem. That's right. That's the trouble. It's a Brahmin class.

See, now, if the mole from media manners is going to turn that into Pat Sajak advocates eugenics. Probably. But don't you think, in Washington, because men and women get elected from around the country, and I think they go there with good intentions.

I think the best there with good intentions. I think the best thing they could do in D.C. is forbid them from having a home subscription to the Washington Post because it lands at the doorstep, they pick up the style section, and they're not in there because they're these troglodytes, and people want to be liked, and people want to be accepted, and people want to have nice things written about themselves and their wives and their family. I mean, that sounds shallow, but I think that that kind of thing has an impact. I think that that is definitely part of it. I have this longstanding theory, which we can't get too deep in the weeds about, but that you can explain a lot of prominent conservatives' drifts towards moderation by the political influence of their wives.

And I can do chapter and verse on that. I always used to think, why did Paul Krugman become such a psychopath? And I had heard a rumor that it was because his wife is a really hardcore left-wing academic. And I was like, oh, she must be punching up his column.

And people thought, oh, that's a pretty ridiculous thing to say about a Nobel Prize winner or his column and then people thought oh this is a pretty ridiculous thing to say about a Nobel Prize winner or whatever and then the New Yorker did a big profile of Paul Krugman and it said flat out that his wife is constantly punching up his column and making it and turning it up to 11 on all the sort of

nastiness and but you see this with a lot of people and Byron York and I used to talk about how incredibly liberating it is to have a wife who's further to the right than we are. Because it gives you all this maneuvering room. You're like, baby, baby, be cool, be cool. So, I mean, is there a cool social

thing for conservatives? There just aren't any in Washington. Is that what you're saying? No. I mean, you know, National Review parties are a lot of fun. My friends from National Review and the American Enterprise Institute, they're great people. Sounds like fun. You know, I was at a ricochet party at Rob's house last night.

So let's not throw the stones too hard. The George Will Bowling League is nice. That's kind of fun. You can come around and tell the bowling story. When the new Jay-Z album comes out, me and George, we go, and it's great. You don't have to wear those little ties. Yeah, that's right. Most of my best friends in Washington are the guys I made friends with 20 years ago

and have stayed friends with them. There are all sorts of things for whippersnapping. Most of my best friends in Washington are the guys I made friends with 20 years ago and have stayed friends with them. There are all sorts of things for whippersnapping. The other day, during the National Review holiday party, we were in some neighborhood I'd never been, up by the Navy Yards on Capitol Hill. And I was like, you know, I've never been here before. And this girl from a younger writer for National Review said, you've never been here before? Where do you hang? Like on my couch with, you know, a scotch in my hand.

Yeah, I mean, I don't hang anywhere. I don't, you know. And there's a really vibrant scene for younger conservatives. So is it weird to be the old man now I've been a you kids get off my lawn guy for a really long time Rob Long has had you on the defensive since you came up here can't you tell my body language

I'd just like to create a little space for you to ask Rob a few questions about the way he leads his life I am not on trial here. I do want to report before it gets away. My understanding, and I was told that Rob will go ballistic if I bring this up, which is why I'm bringing it up. Last night at his house, first of all, I was wildly and irresponsibly over-served. Victim status, always with a victim status. If I seem a little off my kilter, that's why.

I'm actually, I think I'm literally sweating scotch right now. But anyway, after we left, apparently Roman Ginn, some of you know. After we left? Who was livid about not being invited to Rob's house, who in fact actually just never opened the email. And a vodka-induced stupor that you would never associate with a Russian expat

went to a liquor store, went to a store and bought a couple bottles of vodka and some toilet paper. First of all, you've got to wonder what the clerk was thinking. You're going to have a party tonight. I mean... And then went and TP'd Rob's house.

So, you know... By the way, it wasn't Russian toilet paper because there were no wooden chips in it. He'd still be in line. That did right. Yeah. He'd still be in line. That's right. Yeah. That did happen. How do you feel about it, Rob? It was okay until it started to rain this morning. There's a limit to Roman's charm. And we have reached that limit. I am done talking about this.

Let me ask a follow-up. Oh, wow. I thought it was interesting. Yeah. A little glimpse behind the scenes. Anyway, it was a nice event at Rob's house. We were talking about how Rob lives. And he said that, you know, he commented to me about how he hadn't seen me since his last party.

And I was like, oh, really? You know, his last party that I went to was 14 years ago. So, you know, maybe. Last time you were in town. Yeah, that's right. Something like that. Well, which was for the... 2000 Democratic Convention.

When the DNC was here in L.A., there was a big National Review event, but I think you came for a fundraiser, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was before that. But it is true that, like, there aren't that many opportunities for... I mean, it's the same faces we see all the time in L.A. who are conservative.

And they show up eventually in about every ten years. Mickey Kaus was there, and my favorite – I love Mickey. Mickey's a great guy, but he's always on message. And I was like – and I had seen Mickey in a while. I knew Mickey from Washington, D.C. years ago, and, you know, we stayed in touch. And I said, hey, Mickey, how you doing? And Mickey responds to me, I'm all right, you know.

I'm just a little stressed. I'm really worried that if we put too much pressure on Boehner about comprehensive immigration reform, we'll scare him to work with the Democrats. I was like, that's how you're doing? Yeah. You know, I mean. You're opening with that?

And he kept bringing it back into the conversation no matter what I tried to do. Mickey's one of those people who is sort of like, as Drew said, you sit there and you talk to him and you think, you're a Republican, Mickey. That's what you are. You're a Republican. No, I'm not. I'm just a conservative on immigration and taxes and a lot of other things.

It's like, that's a Republican. That's what that is. That's what you are. But he will never make that move. If he's a cultural, whatever it is, he'll never, ever make that move. I mean, are we doomed with those guys? Should we just, like, you know, push them aside and go for the young crowd? No, I mean, I think we should go for everybody. This is something we've talked about on the GLOP

podcast. I just wanted to see if anybody actually listened to it. One of the things that drives me crazy on the right these days, I go to a lot of right-wing events because I'm so cool. One of the problems we've gotten on the right is a lot of right-wing events because I'm so cool. And one of the problems we've gotten on the right is a lot of conservatives have lost interest. You're a great American. Thank you. A lot of conservatives have lost interest in actually persuading people who disagree with them. And you can actually have a pretty good career as a right-wing agitator type and only talk to audiences that already agree with you. And that's a real problem because politics has to be about persuasion.

Or what's the point? Politics without persuasion, it might as well be a Dungeons and Dragons club or a Civil War reenactment society where you just all wear your costumes and read your lines and then go home and say, you know, without ever actually winning anybody over. So I think you should try to win everybody you can over. And, you know, people ask me, you know, why do you get into an argument with so-and-so? You know you're never going to persuade him.

And part of the point is you're not trying to persuade the person you're actually arguing with on the Internet. You're trying to persuade the people who are reading the argument. And as long as you can try to have the conversation civilly and try to be persuasive, you know, you're never going to convince – I'm never going to convince Juan Williams to be the third conservative on the special report panel because he'd talk himself out of a job. But, you know, but the audience are the people you're trying to reach. Well, this is a perfect opportunity to introduce our last guest. We are incredibly honored to have him because he is one of the most persuasive voices on

our side in America, without a doubt. Civil, smart, funny, witty, but enormously persuasive. And we're really thrilled to have him here. Dennis Prager. Thank you. That was very sweet. May I say something before you ask me? Absolutely.

Talking about persuading people, which I fully agree with, that's the reason, aside from my column that I'm honored the National Review publishes each week, I do a column for the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, whose editorial board and whose readership are nearly all liberal because Jew and liberal is redundant and it's fascinating how often letters

will be published let alone sent asking the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles demanding that they not publish me we are so used to reading them and hearing them that it never occurs to us. But to have infiltrated a liberal organ is anathema.

It is something that has to be... A professor at UCLA wrote in last month that they should not publish me. And this is after five years of writing for the journal. And it was printed. But that's a very big difference on the two sides. Because we live them. If you go to school, if you breathe, you have heard liberalism.

But they don't hear us. And they will do everything they can not to. Could I ask for a show of hands again of people who are not members of Ricochet? All right. The most persuasive man in America is about to tell you why it's time to join. Why what? Well, it's time for them to join Ricochet. Sign up, pay the monthly subscription.

If that was a reference to me, I would like to say a good word about Ricochet. And it was stated earlier by Assisi. The civility of the dialogue and the intelligence is, if not unique, very rare on the Internet. And they're good people. And if you love ideas and you love thought, I strongly recommend it. Dennis, question. Your most recent book starts with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the founding of the United States. You take your faith very seriously. Your faith provides a perspective of century after century, several millennia.

During the 1980s, it seemed to people on the right that we were getting someplace, that the tax argument was settled because Ronald Reagan cut taxes and the economy grew, that the national defense argument was settled because Ronald Reagan built up the national defenses, Israel was safer, the Cold War was won, the Soviet Union collapsed. And today, it is as if Ronald Reagan had never been born. And so how do you remain, why do you keep fighting? And fighting so cheerfully. Isn't it the case that we now know that democracy, that the country somehow is incapable of learning?

I'm asked why do you stay cheerful all the time it's funny that you should ask that but I want to tell you the most honest answer and it comes from the Jewish tradition and I am a religious Jew though I'm not orthodox which drives two types of Jews crazy orthodox and non-orthodox

and it does. It truly does. But there is a statement in the Talmud that is the daily animating statement of my life. I'd love to tell it to you in Hebrew, but it would just be to show off, so I'll just tell it to you in English. It is not up to you to finish the task, but neither are you free to desist from trying. And I

it is, and I'm serious. That phrase alone keeps me going. And I think of it in terms of Moses, because I am very biblically steeped. It is the greatest book ever written.

And Moses did not get into the promised land. And I also think that way. Hey, if Moses, who really did deserve it, didn't get into the promised land, who are you, Dennis, to think you're going to get into your promised land? And so those two factors are absolutely operative in my life. We're not free to desist from trying. And I said to my listeners the day after the election, and I was very down, I wish I didn't have to broadcast that day.

But I said, among other things, I said, I don't know how many of you listening were at the gravestones at Normandy, but many of you here have and many of my listeners and I have. And I think of that too. If they could die for America, I could live for America. So that's what I do. And you keep at it because the other side is unrelenting.

I mean, they didn't look at Reagan as a sea change. They looked at it as a setback. They just keep... I credit them. They just keep plowing ahead. To expand on what Peter said, some would say that we did get to the promised land and promptly ruined it with regulations, and that this is the promised land, California, and ceases to be so because what the culture has made it. And the reason that people acquiesce with that is that the American character itself

has changed. Now, do you see that to be the case? Is there some American character that we can revive and get back the culture that we had before? Or have 40, 50, 60 years of unrelenting progressivism shaped and reformed what we consider to be the American character and what it expects out of the world? I think the latter is the case. You see, again, I'll be biblical. There is a phenomenal paragraph after the Jewish credo, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and you

shall teach these words to your children. When you lie down, when you rise up, when you walk, in other words, if these values are not taught to every generation as if they are brand new, you will lose that value system. My favorite quote from Hannah Arendt, she says, look, every generation of Western civilization is invaded by barbarians.

We call them children. That's great. The fundamental insight of conservatism, small C or big C, is this idea that human nature has no history. You take a baby that was born to Vikings a thousand years ago, you transport them to today, they'll become an orthodontist from New Rochelle.

We are hardwired to be what we are. That means that civilization has to be a verb. It has to be this thing. It's a civilizing process that you take and you inculcate into every generation. And I always talk about, when people ask, why is there poverty? Which I think is an absolutely idiotic question.

Yeah, it's sort of like, you have to be too stupid to be a spell checker at an M&M factory kind of question, right? Because we know why there's poverty, right? We know why there's poverty. We've always known poverty is the factory preset of the human condition. As individuals and as a species, we are born penniless, ignorant, and naked. And the only real question is why is there wealth? And the answer to that is the stuff that we all believe in. This sort of Lockean revolutionary idea that the fruits of our labors belong to us,

that the individual is sovereign, that our rights come from God, not from government. This is what has created wealth. And it's really the only thing that has ever created wealth. And so my reason for being a happy warrior or sticking with it is, T.S. Eliot says there's no such thing as a truly lost cause because there's no such thing as a truly gained cause. The fight is eternal. People will always think incorrectly about

politics and there will always fall to people like us to push back on them. Dennis and Jonah. This is a classy podcast. I'm just going to say, I'm going to be silent. It's classy. You go ahead. 1965, if I have the year correct,

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was then at the Department of Labor, wrote a famous report, National Call to Action. I may get a word or two wrong now, but this is close to the title. The crisis in what was then called the Negro family, right? And the crisis was the breakdown in what was then called the Negro family. And when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote that and wrote in the report that if the family breaks down, values cannot be transmitted. This is a crisis for the country that must be addressed now. The illegitimacy rate among African Americans was, as I recall, about 19%. Today, the rate among white Americans is 37%.

Among Hispanic Americans is over 50%. And the rate among African Americans is, well, as I recall, 71, 72%. So that fact, we can talk about the permanence of human nature, we can talk about our ideals retaining their permanent relevance, but something about the deep structure of America, namely the family, has changed. Dennis, how do we fix that?

First of all, to recognize, and this is really almost the essence of everything, and it's taken me much of my lifetime to realize this, everything is a value. 99% of what we think is normative is actually just a value. 99% of what we think is normative is actually just a value. And if that is no longer valued, it will not happen. Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage is not true. A horse and carriage go together because it's the only way to have moved a carriage. But that's not true about marriage. Marriage is a value.

And Western Europe no longer values that marriage. Look at the president of France. And I don't mean the fact that he's had another lover. I'm just talking about the fact that he was never married. And it doesn't matter to the French. Even if he had been faithful with one woman, my point is not fidelity. That's a sin. It's not a denial of a value. People who sin aren't denying a value. They're sinners. We are denying values, and I'm going to tell you one that I have not yet spoken about, and even here I think will be,

understandably, almost anywhere in America this would be controversial. But I am preparing a very, very long essay, I've already written 20,000 words, on the Torah and homosexuality. And I came to realize something that I never anticipated when I started writing this, because like most people, I have gays in my family, my extended family. I love them. I mean, all the clichés, but it's true. I do love the lesbian niece that I have and her partner and their children.

So I don't have to be taught a lesson on the humanity of a gay human being who's in God's image every bit as much as anyone else. But I came to realize something staggering, and extraordinary, that every single civilization in the ancient world found homosexuality perfectly fine, from China to the ancient Near East to any other one. This has been, by the way, gay writers are the first to point this out, incidentally, ironically. It was the Bible, specifically the first five books, what Jews call the Torah, that invented the notion of homosexuality not being ideal. It was an aberration in human history, which leads to the even more remarkable possible conclusion

that the vast majority of humans are bisexual by nature, and that how society acts in terms of sexuality is not fixed, but rather a value. It doesn't mean that gays choose. That's an absurdity. And when conservatives say it, it just makes conservatives look foolish. Nobody wakes up in the morning in the United States and says, you know, I've been attracted to women till now, but I really find men more appealing now. That doesn't happen. But societies did, in fact, determine how people would behave normatively. And so even that which we are convinced is fixed isn't fixed. Nothing's fixed.

Everything is a value. And we don't teach the values any longer. And so even what we assumed was a given, that people will want to marry, is no longer a value, is no longer operative. So this is the huge conclusion at this time in my life. Pat, take it from there, will you please? Dennis,

Dennis, I find you very attractive society has had a very big impact Jonah I think that's actually very interesting and I'm going to noodle that for a little bit is that a euphemism?

Really? It's going that direction, huh? Okay. I'm very quiet. Charles Murray, my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, has a great summation for what I think is driving a lot of these problems. It's that elites will not

preach what they practice. They are so... Talk about values corrupting things. Non-judgmentalism, right? This fear of telling other people, of criticizing other people's life choices, you know, whatever that means, is so pervasive now

that particularly among Jews Jews but also Asians, all these groups who are doing so much work. There's a great piece in the New York Times today by Amy Chua about why certain groups, sub-ethnic groups, are doing well. And regardless, whether it's WASPs or whoever, if you get married and you have kids and you get a good education, in the right order, you're going to be fine. There's actually a better economic premium to getting married than there is to going to college.

But every academic will tell you how vital it is you go to college because they love talking. It's like the hacks on CNBC always talk up their own portfolios. They all want to talk about how great college is because it just so happens they're college professors. But no one wants to touch marriage because it seems so judgy. The simple fact is that I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We were like Christians in ancient Rome because we were conservatives. I've never lived anywhere where I wasn't outvoted five or seven

to one. And, but those people raise their kids well, you know, they make them, they educate them, they give them good values. And, but they're absolutely terrified by any notion that we should tell other people how to raise their kids. And so that's the biggest problem is that the divorce rate has basically – divorce is not a problem for upper-income people. The divorce rate among the upper quintiles ended like 30 years ago. It's the breakdown of lower-end on the economic scale families that's the problem. And it's because elites in this country refuse to actually promote something that they actually practice in their own lives.

And if you were actually writing it as a novel or a science fiction novel, the only conclusion you would draw is that the elites are actively trying to create an underclass, a permanent underclass. Morlocks and Eloy. Exactly right. That's really the only possible logical conclusion.

This must be some kind of plot to make sure there are always people available to clean our houses. That's the upshot, but I think that a propelling factor is a tremendous hatred of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant ideal that has dominated America. I am a Jew who's a waspophile. And I have no problem in saying that the American wasp was the greatest invention in history. I agree. Take a bow. I agree. Ladies and gentlemen, Rob Long. I agree. And I'll go further. American Christianity was the greatest expression of religiosity in history. And I am a religious Jew saying that. This was

not true for European Christianity. It was not true for any other religion. American Christians created something unique. Christians don't even realize this. I realize this, perhaps because I'm somewhat of an outsider theologically in that sense, but I also realize it because I know how rare it is. And they hate it. They hate what Christianity made here. They hate the idea that you are judged by a god. Talk about not judged, period. The idea that you're judged by a god is particularly repulsive to this crowd. Well, we've been sitting here for a while. I've got one more.

James has got one more question. And after that, I think we should open it up for a few questions from the floor from members from Rickisham members if you're not a member you must in front of all of us pledge to become a member tonight

the appropriate last thing to ask Dennis would be something big, large infinite, ultimate you have the ultimate issues hour every week on your show. And you come up with a different one every week. But let's say you've got to choose one. What, Dennis Prager? I actually have an answer. Did you all hear the question? Oh, I'm sorry. Is my mic not working? It is. Let me speak directly into it then. Dennis has a show, radio show, you may have heard of it. He's got the Ultimate Issues Hour every week.

And if you had to boil it down to just one, just one ultimate issue, what's the ultimate issue? I can boil it down. This is the ultimate issue. The answer to this question determines everything political, moral, and social. Do you

believe people are basically good? That is it. That is the dividing line. If you believe people are basically good, all the nonsense and terrible ideas of the left emanate utterly logically. If you don't believe people are basically good, every conservative idea from small government to the need for a self-discipline, you name it, emanates from that end. That, more than whether you believe in God, is the determining issue of your politics. Well, we would like to remind everybody here before we open it up to questions that you can follow all these guys on Twitter, right, Pat? Yes.

Am I on Twitter? I'm on Twitter, too, yes. Dennis, I follow you on Twitter. I know you're there. Rob's there. Yes, you can follow. Peter's there. I'm there on Twitter.

And, of course, if you ever want to talk about Ricochet and reach other members of Ricochet, just use the hashtag Ricochet. You got that? Hashtag Ricochet. And I would also like to note that this event has been brought to you tonight by hashtag Productions. And that was the one segue for a commercial. You're going to get that response. Hashtag Productions, and I'm sure he's back there somewhere. RJ.

RJ. RJ, are you there? RJ's outside. Let's give him a big hand. He'll hear us. Yes, he deserves a big hand. He'll hear us. Yes, he deserves a big hand. Make sure you thank him on the way out. RJ is out burying the take right now because he was

thrown off by this talk of taxes. That's right. We have time for a few questions. Who's got a question? How about right there? You put your hand up first. There's an obvious inconsistency that the left will tell you how to live in a number of different ways and use guilt and shame

and every technique that you think would apply to something moralistic as opposed to recycling or carbon or this or that. Doesn't there have to be some sort of reckoning that those two ideas, we can't tell you how to live morally, but we can tell you how to live in every other avenue of life, for the left? Did you all hear that?

No. Okay, basically, who's smarter, Jonah or Dennis? What's his question? No, the question was, is there an inconsistency between the left saying, we are going to tell you, you can't tell anybody how to live their life morally, but you can tell them how to live their life materially, and they ascribe moral values to recycling, to carbon footprints, and stuff like that.

How can we exploit that obvious hypocrisy? I'll take a stab at it. First of all, I'll do the classic. I'll do a Gingrich. I reject the premise of your question. Because I think one of the biggest BS formulations that the left wins on all the time is their claim that they don't judge you or tell you how you should live morally, that they are not trying to impose their values on you.

It is wonderful cover to say, look, when liberals talk about how they're really libertarian, they're libertarian on social issues. In what realm? From speech codes on campuses to, Greenpeace came out with a guide to environmentally friendly sex. There is no, I was afraid to read the pamphlet. But do you have a copy of it around? There is no realm of life where they don't have an opinion about how you should live and how you should be. It means you recycle.

But they talk as if they are – everyone take a second for a mental scrub. Yeah. They talk as if they're nonjudgmental as a way to – as a Trojan horse, to be judgmental. And I think that Michael Bloomberg, from wanting to regulate every little nook and cranny of your life, is a perfectly consistent liberal, with liberals who want to judge how you live and what you wear. As a conservative, I hate the politicization of everything. When people talk about politicizing clothes or food, to me it sounds as idiotic as talking about a Presbyterian fastball.

There shouldn't be a left-wing or right-wing way to eat a sandwich or drink a soda. But it's the left that believes that. Thomas Sowell is absolutely right. It's a constrained vision versus the unconstrained vision. The left tries to provide a holistic and complete view of how the people should live and what the world should look like. And then conservatism is only a partial philosophy of life. It only speaks to a few spheres of life and leaves people alone in the other spheres. So that would be my take on it. If you see the word sustainable, that's when you run. Whenever I see sustainable on everything,

I know that I'm going to get bamboo in my sandwich. If you sadly have to scan MSNBC or CNN and you see pundits, politicians, all alike, they'll say the exact same phrase every day. Do they call a phone number or a website? Where do they get this from when they're parroting each other? The question is where do the politicians on talk shows get their talking points? Mr. Washington insider. They get an email. I mean, it's no mystery.

They have messaging meetings, conference calls. They all get on the horn. I mean, Republicans do a lot of this too. Just Republicans, because they're more normal people, are much worse at it. I mean that kind of sincerely, you know, like during the Benghazi hearings, you know, Ron Johnson, who I like a lot, right? Twenty-five years ago, Ron Johnson was trying to figure out how to build a plastics factory in Minnesota. Twenty-five years ago, Hillary Clinton was working on how to

incorporate Alinskyite principles into a total transformation of our healthcare system or whatever. They just live and breathe this stuff more and they can fake sincerity so much better than Republicans can. But yeah, it's not a complicated process. They have these meetings, the word goes

forth, these are the words that you have to use. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Super Bowl predictions. Keeping in mind that there's a strong contingent of Broncos fans here. Could I ask for a show of hands those who hope the Broncos win? And those who

hope the Seahawks win? Oh, I was hoping... Can I ask a short answer? Those of you who are members who hope the Broncos win? Those of you who are members who hope the Seahawks win? It'll be the Seahawks.

I, I'm, I'm gonna, I mean, I gotta go with the Broncos. How many pro football games you've watched from beginning to end this season? Well, what with my wine tasting going on, I watched a lot of them. I watched certainly the playoffs. Oh, really? I was a little depressed after the Patriots game.

I have to be honest. Just being honest. Pat, Richard Sherman, outburst, end of Western civilization, or a refreshingly brash take on public dialogue? The former.

I was under the impression that Richard Sherman was one of the guys who wrote songs for Disney. So when everybody was talking about an obscene, thuggish outbred from Richard Sherman, this non-engineerian getting up from the crypt and yelling about the way the Mary Poppins score wasn't being properly respected these days. Dennis was pointing to a gentleman way in the back. Way in the back. So stand up and yell.

Thank you all for being here tonight. This is an honor for the audience, all of us here. But real quickly, after the last election in 2012, Dennis, I'm sorry, Dennis Prager, you mentioned how disheartened and angry you were. I could not watch cable television, listen to talk radio for six months. And finally starting to come around, listening to it again, starting to feel the passion again. We've got an election coming up this year. Without alienating your friends and your family,

how do you, and this has already been discussed in service, how do you enter that forum again and try to sway people without having that hatred coming out? There are some significant ideas and significant challenges that this government is facing right now. And a lot of people are just, they're not listening. They don't want to hear the emotional arguments by the left win out every day. Because if you don't subscribe to the left, you're hateful, you're racist, you're homophobic. And if you want to have an economic discussion, nobody wants to hear it.

How do you enter that forum again? That's a very, very tough question, especially if the forum is your family. Look, my immediate family, my two sons and my wife, are conservative. But I have one sibling. his whole family vote Democrat. And I love my nieces and nephews, and I think they love Uncle Dennis, and I want to keep it that way. And so my advice to people is that with family, unless you feel that you can actually discuss these things and not have alienation take place,

is probably not to talk politics at Thanksgiving or Christmas or whenever you get together. And the other piece of advice, and it's terrible, it's terrible, because then you're not, obviously you've given up on converting somebody, but I'd rather you still have love in your family, and you probably won't convert them anyway because family members are often the last people who can do that conversion. That's why there's talk radio in the hope that we'll talk to strangers and not just talk radio, all these other things. The other thing that I suggest, which is apparently it is effective. People tell me, and I came up with it because I do think it's effective, is, and by the way, I suggest this for couples on nonpolitical matters. I suggest this to husbands and wives, that when possible, before you argue, clarify where you differ.

That's why a motto of my show is I prefer clarity to agreement. So with the relative, if you're prepared to say, look, I'm not going to convert you and you're probably not going to convert me and since I love you and I hope you love me, I don't want to argue.

But if you'd like, on this or that issue, let's just clarify why we differ or where it is that we differ. Clarity is conservatives' friend. Emotions are their friend. So the more clarity available, the better our chance. But you are right.

It is a terrible burden because they have already established, this is the genius of the left. The only thing that the left, and I studied the left at the Russian Institute of Columbia. This has been my field my whole life. And the only thing the left has ever fully succeeded at is demonizing the right. Since Stalin called Trotsky a fascist, that is the only thing that they have been able to do successfully. And so it's a real battle. And he wrote a great book. You wrote a great book on this. I cite it frequently.

It's one of the few truly significant books. At our family holiday gatherings, we restrict our conversation to health care. Yeah. I was going to say, just drink hot chocolate, wear pajamas, and get talking. That's all you need to do. You've got time for two more. With our family, though, what I found works, because we have the same thing. And you think, my vote, they vote, cancel each other out.

What is the point? So there's a three-step program. One, find out where you agree. That's a good place to start. Good one. Secondly, sort of gently nudge them toward what you are thinking by redefining the term so they're not actually thinking. They think they're doing something progressive by wanting to reform the school system.

And then the third thing, and this is key, let the air out of their tires on Election Day, okay? They just won't be able to go anywhere. Lilacs, you're funny. Wait, I just want to say one thing. There is one other thing I just remembered. You undo a lot of their damage, especially with your younger relatives, the nieces, the nephews, even grandchildren, if that's appropriate. By letting them know you are conservative slash Republican, but still lovable. Yes.

This causes tremendous cognitive dissonance. That is true. That is true. It works in Hollywood, too. More than once, someone's come up to me and said, I just, I don't, I don't hate you. Which is progress. All right, time for two more.

Right over there. First of all, I want to thank you all for coming and hosting this event and having such wonderful guests. It's really a bit overwhelming, actually, to have all of you in the same place at the same time. With that said, I'm a computer scientist. I also studied physics while I was in school. I'm sure I can handle this, whatever it is.

Unplug it. Wait till it cools down, and plug it right back in. Control all AV. Just so everyone can hear you. Thank you. Not at all. Yeah, I had to resist the temptation to go help you out with your AV issues. But, no, seriously.

I used to watch Bill Donahue. So I think it's pretty well known in our community that my people, by which I mean Silicon Valley, is pretty reliably hard left wing. And that baffles me personally. But I come from the same intellectual waters. I swim in there with them. I mean, I work in machine learning and all that kind of stuff. So this tendency to overgeneralize on technocracy is like, you know, we know how to solve all these problems, and we're doing a pretty darn good job of it, if I may say so myself.

But somehow there does seem to be this huge tendency among this community to overgeneralize, too. We can solve anything, so of course government is the answer, and we technocrats can do all this sort of stuff well and all that sort of stuff. It didn't take with me. I don't know why. So I kind of wanted to put it to all of you to ask the question, it's like, what do you think we can do to address, in particular, young, highly technical people in very specialized fields? Obama got Silicon Valley in a lock, right? What do we do about it? Nationalize a few more things and run it through government computers and make them sign up for it. I mean, part of the problem is you have people in Silicon

Valley who have a utopian worldview in which this app, this program, this website is going to change the way things are done. You know, as though human nature is something so malleable and ephemeral that it can be tweaked and it's something new all of a sudden when it isn't. So if you have the view that human nature is immutable and history is long, the appeal of an app that's going to change your life is somewhat less important. So when they grow up and they pay more and they settle down, I'd like to think that they transmute like the rest of an app that's going to change your life is somewhat less important. So when they grow up and they pay more and they settle down, I'd like to think that they transmute like the rest of us. But it is enjoyable to see the Google minds themselves now being cast as the enemy of the people in San Francisco because they have their own buses.

And now the Occupy people hate them and they look down at the rival and say, but we love you. We were doing all these wonderful things for you and they're not appreciative. That's an interesting struggle. Yeah, and make them pay the price for that. I mean, make them pay the price for Obamacare website,

Obamacare software, which is like from 1972. You've mentioned these giant server, you know, with the guys with the punch cards doing it. Make them explain why that's the peak efficiency, why the cauldron of entrepreneurial capitalism and technological innovation that brought us all this great sort of network effect computing produced that.

And I think also nail them on risk capitalism. That's what funded every single thing. That's what funded the iPhone. That's what funded Facebook. All the innovations were funded by risk capitalism. Not by the stock market. Not by going to a bank and getting a business loan, certainly not by a small business administration, but by risk capitalism, by people saying, okay, here's a million dollars, I'm going to lose 95% of that,

but 5% of that's going to pay off. That is classic Republican conservative economics. And that is something they need to pay for that. I actually feel a very sort of class partisan argument. There's something called carry interest, right, which allows these guys to sort of, you know, they get it. It actually is sort of legitimate.

They get a good deal. They're sort of a venture capitalist. But they all vote for Obama. And I say tax, carry interest, and income. And you'll find them suddenly discovering they kind of like those Republican congressmen and Republican senators. And suddenly Silicon Valley will

start having, you know, it'll be like, well, I like him. You know, he's fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. It'll be a lot of rhinos like me, but that's better than what we got now, trust me. The last conversation I had with Steve Jobs, whom I knew, Oh, that's right.

That was a name being dropped. I didn't have to hear that. It's right next to Milton Friedman over here. Hey, Peter. Peter, I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt, but I was having that same conversation with Wink Martindale recently.

Wink Martindale is on our side. Did you know that? He's a great guy. So this would be a year and a half before he died. And he said, here's how you solve the two things. There were a number of things that he said. One, here's how you solve the problem of. There were a number of things that he said. One, here's how you solve the problem of Mexico. You give it to the Disney Corporation.

Because the problems with Mexico are all political. It's a corrupt society. Disney really knows how to run operations. And he meant that, I mean, he knew he was saying something vaguely amusing, but Steve was not always playing for laughs. He sort of really believed the free market is so powerful and people who are expert at it are so good at what they do, they really could solve all the problems in Mexico.

And about three sentences later, he said, by the way, Al Gore really deserved that Nobel Prize. And I have been wondering ever since, how could someone who was in so many ways a genius, as Steve Jobs obviously was, hold two such cockamamie, so completely irreconcilable thoughts and it does happen all the time.

So I've thought about that a long time. That would be like a systems error in a computer, though. A computer would, like, you'd have to unplug. It'd be the blue screen of death. I think part of it was with Steve and with many people in Silicon Valley is that they impute... By the way, it's a rather narrow world.

It's a small place. San Francisco is only a tenth the size of New York. They all know each other. Steve Jobs, all his life, took place within a radius of about five or ten miles at the very most from where he grew up. In some funny way, he actually was quite blinkered. He didn't know that much about the wider world. I think they just haven't had much experience of government. They don't know how perverse the incentives are, how screwed up it is from top to bottom. And among my friends in Silicon Valley,

the best event recently has been the rollout of Obamacare because they're all saying to each other, we wouldn't have screwed that up. How could they have screwed it up? So there's progress. There's hope. Can I jump in? Yeah, please do. You know, I think that's exactly right.

Look, Edmund Burke once said, example is the school of mankind, and he will learn it no other. And what that means is sometimes you have to show people things. You have to see it happen. You can't just tell them, right? Or as Ed Koch said it when he was asked if he was ever going to run for office again after he lost an election, he said, no, the people of New York fired me,

and now they must be punished. And the fact that this administration He said, no, the people of New York fired me, and now they must be punished. And the fact that this administration has essentially contracted out the signature technological tool of their entire term to basically the finest computer programmers the Amish community has to offer is incredibly significant. It's funny. On Special Report on the online show, I made that joke about the Amish thing, and Charles Krauthammer got really... He's dodging up, and Charles said, sort of jokingly,

he says, I interrupted everything. I, for one, want to distance myself from Jonah's incredibly insensitive remarks about the Amish community. And I interrupted him, and I said, why are you bothering? It's not like they're watching. But, you know, I think you tell a movement by its utopias, right, a progressive movement by its utopias, communism, classless society,

you know, Nazism, thousand-year Reich, you know, all that stuff. Today, the left, I wrote a piece about this in a magazine a while back. Today, the utopia of the left is the American college campus. It is a society where your food is paid for, your rent is paid for, the security is provided for you, housing, everything is taken care of.

People clean up after you. And yet you think you're the most independent person in the world. And I think a lot of people, especially on the academic, on the left, high-income, privileged kids, they imbibe and internalize this. And they think this is what

life should be like. This is why Nancy Pelosi could say with a straight face that Obamacare was a jobs bill because it would let you quit your job and become a poet. Because you wouldn't be job locked for your health care anymore. And so I go to a lot of college campuses and you talk to these kids and you try to explain to them that they, first of all, that being a liberal isn't rebellious, right? It's amazing. I'll say almost every speech.

So your professors are liberal, the administration is liberal, Hollywood is liberal, the music industry is liberal, publishing is liberal, the mainstream media is liberal, fashion industry is liberal, and you think you're sticking it to the man by agreeing with them. But these kids...

These kids, they have the most bespoke lifestyle of any human beings in American and world history, right? I mean, entertainment is on their terms. They're an iPhone. They're living iPhone lifestyles, and they're voting for a post office party. Right. And if you can point out the cognitive dissonance that that involves, you can work with that. And I think the Obamacare thing by showing rather than just telling

is the way to do it. Agreed. Agreed. By the way, John, there are physical reasons why Nancy Pelosi says everything with a straight face. That's all.

We will leave it at that. Thank you very much for coming. If you are not a member become a member tonight thank you very much