The Ricochet Podcast - Sowell Men

Episode Date: March 9, 2018

This week, we span the human entire life span: first up, 16 year old Marjory Stoneman High School junior and 2nd Amendment advocate Kyle Kushuv. Young Kyle has had a busy week, meeting with Senators, the President, the First Lady and others. We’re grateful he had a few minutes for us (thanks to Bethany Mandel for the help in booking him!). Next up, the éminence grise himself, the legendary... Source

We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are... That the arbitration was won in the president's favor, and I would refer you to the president's outside counsel. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. I'm James Lileks, and today we talk to a Stoneman

High School shooting survivor who's just been to the White House, and we talk to Dr. Sowell. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Bye-bye. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast. It's brought to you by the fine people at Harry's. Harry's, they're so confident you're going to love their shaving blades. They will give you their trial shave set for free when you sign up at harrys.com slash ricochet. Just pay for shipping.

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Peter, we've got to get some meat here, some meat and taters. You mentioned trolls. Trolls on the Internet, trolls under the bridge of international relationships. You could call Rocket Man troll number one, and now it seems that we're going to have some rapprochement between the two, or not. At least chat. Jaw-jaw being better than war-war, et cetera. Everyone was saying Trump was horrible when he was demonizing North Korea. We're going to have war any minute.

Now, shazam, people are demonizing Trump for legitimizing Kim by going there. What do you say? What do I say? Like so much about Donald Trump, I'm torn. This strikes me as a good thing. It strikes me as possibly farther than anybody else, any other president has gotten in the last 25 years. We've been very tough on North Korea with imposing sanctions. We've actually been tough.

I believe this is taking place behind the scenes, but it feels as though we've been tough on the Chinese in a way that no previous administration has been. And now there's action of a way that no previous administration has been. And now there's action of a kind that has never taken place before. What makes me nervous is that the North Koreans have a quarter of a century and more of experience of manipulating the West, seeming to go soft, seeming to talk pretty, and then cutting a deal where we pay them not to continue their nuclear program. And then six months later, we pay them not to continue their nuclear program. And then six months later, we find out they are continuing their nuclear program. So is Donald Trump going to be different?

I don't know. In general, I'm hopeful. But the pitfalls are deep. What about you? I can't imagine giving him anything at this point. I can't imagine anybody saying that there's anything that we can or should give them. So what's the point of this? Maybe the point of this is just simply, first of all, the optics.

If the North Koreans are forced to release a picture of Donald Trump standing next to their little squat guy, it would be an interesting image. I would sort of require that any photographs between the two of them be in a standing position, just to show that 50, 60 years of Zsuzsa has led to an average height of about four feet, nine inches. But secondly, I would just say that what they may get out of this, the North Koreans, at the end of this, is survival. That's the only thing that we're willing to give them, which in itself, you could say, normalizes a horrible regime and leaves all these people to oppression and poverty and starvation.

But all the North Koreans want to do, the leadership, is to eat, live, have sex, drink cognac, watch good movies, then essentially run a criminal enterprise. I mean, they don't want the apple cart to be upset. So maybe that's sufficient for them. But what makes me a little nervous is we don't know whether or not Donald Trump's looking for the best possible deal or the deal that's going to be spun as unique and nobody else could do it.

You know what I mean? It's like he wants to be known as the guy who solved the North Korean situation. And if it comes down that something is done that he can say and others agree solved the situation, that seems different from whether or not it actually would solve the situation. So I don't know.

But it's interesting. And I am willing to entertain anything that can come of this because we've got to do something about them before they've got the ICBM that can hit us because that changes all the games. Unless, of course, they already have them. Well, we know what needs to happen. What needs to happen is that they dismantle all their nukes and open their program, open their country to regular inspections run by us. That seems to me the only outcome that fits the stated American goal of denuclearizing

Korea, the Korean peninsula. Now, I have a feeling that Donald Trump would be more than willing to engage in humanitarian aid. You have a country, many of these people are starving and so if you get that i mean the deal is straightforward if the north koreans give us that and include an inspections regime that's real then money starts to flow and the people who are running the country corrupt as they are are, think to themselves, oh, well, we can get our paws in that money. That's the way life works.

That would be okay. But it just seems to me unlikely that Donald Trump would get them to shut down their nuclear program, apologize, and say, of course, we're open to nuclear inspectors and not give them anything in return. Right. If we get out of this paying them nothing more than humanitarian aid, that's a win. Yeah, except the aid isn't going to go to the people and they're still going to be eating roots in a couple of years if things go bad again. It's again, it's like give them some oil and they'll be nice. Give them some food and they'll be nice. No, you give them anything and go straight into the pockets of the regime and the people continue to suffer.

I think the only thing that you give them is a year of saying we won't take you out. You spread some little pictures on the table and you say, here's how we know where every one of you and your doubles have been for the last six months. How do you like that? At any point, we could have reached out and touched you by a variety of means and you'd be dead and then your relatives would come in or somebody would come in and the it would all be a little bit better for you and then if we prove that the Kim's were not the gods that you tell your people you are we'll give you one year of not dying in exchange for you dismantling 50% of your program or scrapping your ICBMs and we'll help you

do it we'll bring some people over We'll blow them up for you. We know your mountains are already stressed from your nuclear explosions. We'll give them a little kick so that those things are buried forever. You've got a year of not dying. And at the end of that, we'll talk. And then you leave. Then you leave. I mean, otherwise saying, here's some food.

Please turn off your nukes is everything we've seen for 30 years from these people. James, I never figured you for such a hard negotiator, but believe me, I am impressed. And the next time I go to a new car dealership, used car dealership, I'm going to, whatever it costs, I'm flying you in from Minneapolis to be there with me. Well, thank you. I hate negotiating, as a matter of fact. It's one of those things that seems... It's horrible. I do too.

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Kyle, welcome. We understand you were at the White House and you met the president. Yes, sir. How'd that go? I did. I was quite honored. It was amazing.

I was totally surprised. I didn't know what was happening until they sat me down. So why? Why you, for example? I didn't know what was happening until they sat me down. So why? Why you, for example? Could it be that maybe you are a strong supporter of the Second Amendment and aren't exactly getting the crooked finger to appear on CNN and the rest of those shows? No, I don't know. I don't know why specifically me, but I think it stems from the fact that

no matter who your presidents are, whether you view them or not, you give them the proper respect. And that's what it comes down to at the end of the day. If you show someone respect and then you admire what they do and that you don't trash talk them and you truly want to seek a proper solution and they see that, then they'll give you the shot. Hey, Kyle, it's Peter Robinson here. Thanks for joining us. How old are you now? I'm 16.

So you're in 10th grade, is that right? I'm a junior, 11th grade. 11th grade, sorry. I have a 16-year-old myself. And so after the shooting in Parkland, that horrible, tragic event, kids from Parkland and elsewhere, particularly in Florida, have been shown on television arguing that we need new gun laws, that we need to ban all kinds of categories of guns.

And Kyle stands out for saying what? Not so fast? What is your argument about what ought to be done about gun violence? I think we have to make sure we don't go overboard and don't overreact. It was a terrible tragedy, but we have to represent this on a national level and look at all

the pros and all the cons of our actions. And simply being reactionary, for one fact, I understand it's a natural habit, it's a natural emotion, but we have to think logically here, and the Second Amendment is amazing in protecting our natural rights.

And do you, are you a gun hobbyist yourself? Do you have experience with guns? No, I've never shot a gun. However, I do understand the importance of it. I can look at all sides of the argument and realize that guns and not trusting the government, being able to rely on yourself for your own defense is absolutely paramount to an American identity and independence.

So you're making your argument not based on personal experience with guns. It's not because you love guns yourself. You're a hobbyist. That's not your argument. Your argument is purely from principle and purely from the Constitution. All right. And now the president had you in to see you, and I think that was a way of saying congratulations for being so mature about this and level-headed. But I haven't seen you on CNN, for example. Are there certain elements of the press that are, oh, giving you the cold shoulder. Let's put it that way. Well, it was quite interesting because it was quite hilarious. The second they showed my appearance with the White House, instantly every single media organization jumped to contact me, something I hadn't seen previously. They were kind of like neglecting me. But the second that they saw they could get a good story out of it, oh, no, maybe it wasn't just representing all sides of the argument. They didn't care about that. They jumped on it.

Right, right. And, Kyle, as I understand it, you even have a specific piece of legislation that strikes you as reasonable, and that's the Grassley-Cruz bill, the legislation sponsored by Senator Grassley and Senator Cruz. No, no, no. Is that right? No, that's wrong? That's wrong. It's the Stop Prevention Act. Oh, really?

That's what I truly – yes, yes. Well, tell us about that. I'm sorry I made the mistake. Tell us about the act that does strike you as reasonable. The Granite State Cruise is very good in principle, but right now I want to focus on something that's achievable. And although I believe it will be very effective, the Granite State Cruise bill, I don't think it's achievable at this point in time. What I do think is that the Senator Hart, Senator Hatch, and Senator Rubio, though they propose the STOP Act, Prevention Act, will definitely make sure that this won't ever happen again, or definitely minimize the possibility of this happening by proactive measures. And what are those proactive measures? Well, it's making sure that we teach our students and our kids and our officers how to properly handle situations. We also teach our students and our kids and our officers how to properly handle situations.

We also teach our students where to report this information. We support technology that will make it a lot easier with assistance to report this. And we create networking between schools reporting and agencies that will act properly. Because without these connections, without the reporting of information. It's practically useless. I see. So the bill that Senator Rubio and Senator Hatch are promoting at this point, advancing at this point, does not call for restrictions on guns. It calls for training on how to use guns. It calls for training among school and law officials. Is that correct?

It does a lot of proactive training socially. Got it. James, over to you. Kyle, I'm here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Good liberal city. You mentioned something, you tweeted out something that struck a chord with me. You said that one thing I learned from Chris Murphy, Connecticut, while our politics can be different, the drive to do what's right is respected across party lines. Yes, sir.

That's great, but what constitutes, quote, right, end quote, is really fundamentally different across the party lines, is it not? I mean, yes, we all want to do something that leads to a better society, but aren't there fundamentally different preconceptions underlying those party lines? Well, look, I think that definitely there are differences between the right and the left. However, there are ways that we can agree on. And being able to have that civil discussion and reach a middle ground shows that someone is truly willing to negotiate and compromise and do what's good for the American people. And that's what he showed. He truly cared about the situation and was willing to have that civil discussion

about what was right and what was wrong and what we had to do. What does that compromise look like, though, with the left? When the left is convinced that the Second Amendment is an archaic remnant of a different century irrelevant to our own, where exactly is the common ground? Well, I think it's absolutely moronic to have a discussion about the Second Amendment because we know that nothing will happen specifically to it. It won't get removed at all. We have a Republican House, we have a Republican Senate. That will not happen. What we need to do is we need to have the proper discussion, which is what is achievable? What is the immediate action necessary? Because if we sit and we ponder and we debate about the Second Amendment, still our schools are not secure and they're still

vulnerable. Something has to happen. We have to have that immediate change. And without that, we're just squandering over things that cannot happen. Kyle, Peter here again. Now, you're taking time off from school to go up to Washington to see the president. I think that's a pretty good field trip. Pretty cool. I gather you're taking time off from school right now to talk to us, and I'm very grateful for that. But you're going to go back to school next week, I think. What are your fellow 10th graders going to make of all this? I beg your pardon, 11th graders. You won't let me make that mistake. Sorry about that. There's a big difference between 11th and 10th grade. Yes, there is. Yes, there is. Yes, there is. So what are folks, what are the kids at school, back at school, going to make of all this, Kyle? Well, it's clear that for students in my school,

at least, academics isn't a priority anymore. No one can truly focus and that teachers, they see empty seats and they simply cannot focus. What really disturbs me is the college board. We've missed so much time from Hurricane Irma and now from this tragedy, and they refuse to give us even an extra month or extra three weeks, you know, to take the AP exams. I see. Oh, so the whole student body is just in a terrible, suffering from a tragedy and in an academic jam at the same time. We said, well, students simply do not.

The academic vibe that was there previously is no more. It's not a concern. It's not a concern. It's not a priority. I see. Oh, gee, that's horrible. I hadn't thought of it that way, of course. So, well, this is a problem for the school board to sort out. But do you have any idea, will you kids be given an extra year?

Or nobody knows how it will get sorted out just yet? Right now, college board made a firm decision with our school that they will not be giving us extra time, which I think is horrendous. And then I want to put pressure on the College Board. I've been talking to Senator Rubio and maybe getting some pressure put on the College Board because we absolutely need that extra month. Because if tests are in May and are in school in June, then we should have that extra month available. They should make that time after what occurred. Right. Hey, Kyle, you're pretty darn impressive. Are you interested in politics now? First, we're going to solve the school. We'll do what we can in practical politics to make schools safer. I'm summing up your position here. Let's not have a debate about the Second Amendment because that's just going to be noise right now. And listen, College college board my school needs an extra month and i'm going to get in touch with senators

and put pressure on you this you sound to me like a pretty darn effective working politician is that is that in your future is that in your future no no no no i don't think in my near future uh my near future i'd like to go to college for business ah good for you. Did I see a tweet where you mentioned that you'd showed an app to the First Lady? Is there an app that you... She did, and she was really impressed, and I think she really... She loved it.

She loved the idea. Tell us what it is. She was really interested in it. It really showed how much she cares about her youth because this app, it represents that we can solve societal problems without government intrusion. Society can solve its own problems, and we don't always need the federal funding. And sometimes communities can come together to make a change without federal funds.

How does an app do that? I'm keen to know because I'd like to invest as soon as possible if this is – We're not going to be making money off it in the near future at all. That's not the plan. So currently in our school system, what we have is that we have students who need emotional support, and they cannot reach it. At my school, before this happened, we had a psychologist, and she came once every Tuesday, once every other Tuesday, for three hours.

And that was it. You couldn't get in contact with her. There's nowhere for students to go. After the tragedy, we have so many support classes. But for other schools, students who are ostracized have nowhere to go. And if they don't have friends, they have absolutely nowhere to go. So what the app does, it connects students from the same schools, and it allows them to develop a personal connection and talk about their experiences and to assist each other

with hardships. So it's a closed community social app then? And what we've done is that we want to pull the school ID numbers and connect them with the names so when students sign up, only students can sign up. We can't have outsiders signing up. And it also solves the issue of what happens when a student is behaving on the app and causing distraction and disturbance. We can then report it to the school system, and they can do what they want to do with it. Or if the student assisting help reaches a point where their expertise kind of ends and where the student is maybe becoming suicidal or they're coming, they have to be reported.

We have that information where we can do so. I imagine you'd have to keep it mediated so it doesn't turn into Yik Yak where it's just a bunch of anonymous people, you know, kvetching. It requires some human intervention to keep the conversation on track to make sure that everybody's getting what they get and need out of it. Well, no, it's all student run. Like students have the drive to assist each other, and this is simply the platform to do so. At the end of the day, the goal is to have students develop personal connections to make friends on campus.

They wouldn't necessarily be meeting classes. They can connect, and what we do to assist that is that we have categories that you can choose and that it relates to your fellow peers, and if you have similar categories you've chosen, you are connected to them. Well, in other words, meeting people in real life as opposed to simply interacting with them It relates to your fellow peers, and if you have similar categories you've chosen, you are connected to them. Whoa. In other words, meeting people in real life as opposed to simply interacting with them on a little glowing rectangle in your hands. No, we want you to interact on the app, but we want your angle to make a friend. It's a great idea. What's it called?

It's called the Reach Out app. The Reach Out app. Watch for it. Watch for Kyle. He'll be tweeting more. He'll be saying more. It's somebody you're going to want to watch. Thank you for being with us on the podcast today,, watch for it. Watch for Kyle. He'll be tweeting more. He'll be saying more. It's somebody you're going to want to watch. Thank you for being with us in the podcast today,

Kyle. Thank you, Kyle. Good luck with the rest of 11th grade. All right. Bye bye. Have a good day. Thank you so much,

Kyle. Oh man, I can't imagine what it'd be like to be going through those college questions at the same time you're dealing with. Oh, I don't know. Meeting the president, media focus, having your class turned upside down, having your entire life riven by one of the most contentious events of the day. Yeah.

And also, at the age of 16, we have this terrible tragedy, and then the press builds up the many kids who can be found to say on camera, we must have gun laws. We must do this. We must do that. And Kyle, at the age of 16, says, in effect, no, I'm actually not down with that. I don't think we should have gun laws of that kind. And then he states his own position. The strength of character at the age of 16 simply to say to – in the face of a very, very emotional event, to say calmly, no, I'm not down with that. Here are a few things I think we can get done that would be useful.

And it's a piece of legislation that Marco Rubio is moving forward and it's an app that will help kids the moment they start using it. Wow, that's impressive. It is and it requires a great deal of emotional intelligence and it also does it also is is it isn't helpful to the media who wants charismatic young kids who can opine and emote and say the right things and use the absolute moral authority that has been granted to them to advance the agenda as far to the left as possible it's inconvenient for somebody not to say that what we need to do is have more laws and ban fully semi-automatic weapons with gas-enabled bump-stalkery.

I mean, good luck for him. And the very fact that he's going into business as opposed to telling the anchors that he's going to pursue a career in social justice or something is just one more reason for them to roll their eyes and say, well, another little greed head, what do we need? Another Alex Keaton, what do we need those for? We need the people who will make a difference. Well, the people who are out there yelling and emoting and getting sweaty-faced on TV are not the ones making a difference. They're the ones who are simply filling time, spraying, you know, hormones, soddened corpuscles

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for sponsoring this the the Ricochet podcast. And now we're honored to have back to the podcast Dr. Thomas Sowell. Dr. Sowell has taught economics at Cornell, UCLA, Amherst, and other academic institutions. And his basic economics has been translated into six languages. He's currently a scholar in residence at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. Welcome back, sir. In one of the essays, Discrimination and Disparities, you turn the table on those people who say, well, if there's a disparate outcome, that must be because of discrimination. Describe exactly what's going on here.

Well, I would have to summarize the whole book in a sentence. But there are so many factors that are so different, and there's so many different combinations and permutations of those factors, that to expect that different groups are going to end up with the same capabilities in all respects is really defying all odds. How can I put it I guess empirically nowhere in the world do we find this evenness that people take as a norm deviations from which will show us

that something wrong has happened it's virtually impossible I sometimes think that if black and white Americans for example, were really identical, they might well be the only two groups on this planet who are identical. The Irish, the Italians, the Jews are not the same. The Chinese and Japanese are not the same. You can break down groups into internal subgroups. Northern Italians versus Southern Italians, Scottish Highlanders versus Scottish Lowlanders, all kinds of differences

show up. And given all the factors involved, that's not the least bit surprising. So, Tom, it's Peter Robinson here, and you and I will be recording a full episode of Uncommon Knowledge on this marvelous book, Discrimination and Disparities. By the way, you write almost faster than I can read, Tom. You've got a new book coming out. Just when I feel I've absorbed the lessons of your last book, boom, I get a call from your office and there's a new book that you're working on. So let me read to you, if I may, right at the top of the book. The fact that different economic and other outcomes often differ greatly among individuals, groups, institutions, and nations poses questions.

At one end of a spectrum of explanations is the belief that those who have been less fortunate in their outcomes are genetically less capable. That's the racism explanation. At the other end of the spectrum is the belief that those who are less fortunate are victims of other people who are more fortunate. And that's the discrimination against explanation. And Tom Sowell says, well, before you jump to either of those explanations, let's look at the facts, and you proceed to spend a book doing so. Could I ask – we'll talk about – I'm so delighted to have the chance to talk in more points in the book describing the African-American experience is retrogression. With regard to educational attainment, with regard to employment, and with regard to income, in the 50s and 60s, before the Civil Rights Acts, there was progress among African Americans

and then something went wrong. Could you describe that and then tell us how it bears on the argument? Well, among the other things that went wrong was the whole question of violence. In the 1940s, the homicide

victimization rate among black males went down by, I believe, 18%. And then in the 1950s, it went down by another 22%. And then in the 1960s, it reversed and shot up, wiping out all those changes for the better. That wasn't the only thing. Blacks weren't the only people. In the 1950s, both syphilis and gonorrhea

declined. One of them, I keep forgetting which the one was, one of them declined every single year. The other one in 1960 had fallen to where it was half the infection rate that there was in 1950. In come the wonderful ideas of the 1960s. Both reversed and shoot up and I believe doubled over the next 15 years. Moreover, this happened not only in the United States.

You see similar things. I think England is an even more dramatic example because the English were preeminent among the polite, orderly people of the world. And yet, after these wonderful ideas of the 1960s were applied there, Britain had a riot in 2011 that was very much like the riots that later occurred in Ferguson and in Baltimore, where mobs of people rampaged through the streets and so on. education. Over a 30-year period, the proportion of blacks attending the elite Stuyvesant High School declined to one-tenth

of what it had been 30 years earlier. I mean, all these retrogressions, but more, occurred on both sides of the Atlantic. They occurred among the white underclass in England as among the black underclass in the United States. Things that we're afraid to talk about because of racism applied when that was not an issue.

It's the reasons for things began to devolve in the 60s was because there was this new cultural idea that celebrated antisocial behavior as authentic. That to be a truly liberated citizen, you had to shake off these old bourgeois norms. Is that part of it? Absolutely. People were liberated from civilization. And some refer to that as anarchy. So, Tom, Peter here once again. So the argument, the book takes pains to dismiss both explanations, both false explanations for disparate outcomes among groups and peoples in this country. The example, this isn't by no means

the only example in the book, which is one of the things that makes it fascinating. But in this country, the difference in outcomes between African-Americans and the white population, and the book takes pains to say, it's not racism and it's not necessarily discrimination. But then the book takes a step further and says, to the contrary, efforts to remediate or offer reparation for past discrimination tend or have often made matters worse. Is that a correct summation? My only caveat was the word dismiss. I think when you spend a couple of decades studying something and then with an

idea, you have not dismissed the idea. Right. That's correct. This constant quest for some one key explanation for some social phenomenon has been the curse of intellectuals for more than 100 years. I mean, 100 years ago,

the crucial explanation was genetic determinism. And they did dismiss any other ideas. They did not engage in argumentation with them. They simply dismissed any other idea. They did not engage in an argumentation with him. They simply dismissed out any other explanation. Right. Now, Tom, if I may, just a scene is occurring to me that we all watched. Well, actually, probably you didn't watch it because you always have better things to do. You're always either reading a book or writing one. But those of us who watched President Trump's State of the Union address will remember the moment when he announced in the chamber that the black unemployment rate had now

fallen to the lowest point since records for black unemployment had begun to be kept. That is how the economy, quickly the economy had begun to grow again in the recent couple of quarters. Black unemployment lowest since the records began to be kept. And the Democratic side of the chamber sat on its hands. The Republicans applauded, but the Democrats sat on their hands and there were some close-ups on camera. And not only did they sit on their hands, they all looked as though they just sucked on a lemon what on earth is going on what's going on there oh it will take a wise abandon me to but i will say that um people who have people have a vested interest in black victimhood. I mean, without black victimhood, you cannot get the black turnout,

and the Democrats would lose a lot of elections. So they must constantly push this. One of the most painful and, I think, cynical examples was this order issued during the Obama administration that the schools must reduce the disparity in discipline of black males. And the government money would be, you know, withheld if they didn't. Right. And one of the things that has happened is that you've seen an enormous escalation of violence. This recent terrible shooting in Florida

with one of the kids who wasn't black, but he was Hispanic, I believe. And in order to keep their numbers right to please the federal government, all kinds of things are ignored and all kinds of activities, for example, beating up teaching in the classroom. People would not expel for that as they once would have been.

And the net result is that you put in the hands of a small group of thugs the ability to threaten an entire class from getting a decent education. That, too, happens on the other side of the Atlantic, among the white underclass, with very much the same reasoning. People are afraid to study because they'll get beaten up by the ones who don't want education. And the net result is, for the rest of their lives, they are handicapped. And this is done over here, and the idea that you're doing the favor to blind. Go ahead, James. I was going to say, in the UK, they have something called the

anti-social behavior order, which they slap people with. What that holds them back in their later life, I don't know, but it's a term, and it's something the government slaps on them. Maybe we ought to try something here and call it a tariff. No fines, no punishment, but a tariff, because that supposedly is all the vogue these days. I know Peter Brunt may have something else, but we wanted to get you on the wisdom of tariffs and whether or not we're in the mood for another round of smooth holly.

Oh, my goodness. Well, that's a very short question, because I have not been able to discover any great wisdom in tariffs. You're right. I happen to believe that the smooth hauling tariffs had more to do with creating the Great Depression of the 1930s than the stock market crash of 1929, there was not a single month in which unemployment hit double digits. But within six months after Smoot-Hawley, between the Hoover approach to the economic contraction, between Roosevelt arbitrarily setting prices, between the NRA saying you can't sell chickens for what you want, how long would the Great Depression have lasted if the poison had simply been allowed to drain out of the system at its own pace? Oh, good heavens. That's a staggering question.

We do know that when the United States began to prepare for military defense, that's what got the country out of the Depression, not the Roosevelt policies. In fact, Roosevelt abandoned many of the policy including arresting businesses with any trust all kinds of other things because he realized he needed business in order to build up the uh... the military forces that we needed to defend the country and so it's the other it's the fact that the war

put it into the role of our policy all of the fundamentally i believe got the Roosevelt policies that fundamentally, I believe, got the country out of the Depression. Tom, Peter here once again, and I just want to repeat the name of the book, Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell. Here's a last question for you from me, Tom. You've been talking about the retrogressions, the way things among African Americans were pretty good and in many cases improving.

Then along come the 60s and progress is reversed. You'll remember in detail Daniel Patrick Moynihan's report. I believe it was 60, 65, I think it was. I think it was called The Crisis in the Negro Family, A Call for National Action. And Moynihan was talking about the disintegration of the African-American family, particularly in cities. alarming fact on which he hung that whole report was that the illegitimacy rate among African Americans was then 25%. All these years later, it's over 30% among white Americans and among African Americans, it's 70%. How do you undo the damage done to kids who are raised in single homes or passed from one grandparent to an aunt? How do we begin to knit that back together? I'm afraid that there may be not much that we can do for those who already suffer through

it. What we can do is stop the nonsense that creates this. And in particular, the idea that traditional families are just one lifestyle among others. It's a lifestyle that has proven disastrous, again, on both sides of the Atlantic. That when you have this, you have all kinds of bad behavior on the part of the kids. You have all kinds of suffering. I saw some figures a while back about that.

You know, suicide rates among young people went up among the many things that went bad. Supposedly, they were being liberated. But in fact, they were being exposed to anarchy. Well, according to a variety of Salon and Slate slate headlines which were sent to me yesterday the nuclear family is an instrument of white supremacy so there's just a tremendous amount of ideological thickets that have to be cleared away before we can get back to some basics discrimination and disparities this is the name of the book and we can't thank you enough for being with us and we look forward to your conversation with peter robinson later right tom i'll see you on wednesday

right look forward to it all right thank you sir thank you tom take care peter you've interviewed him many times um but i can't help feeling like you know a student who's taking an introductory class and asking a question and feeling like it's the most obvious thing that's ever been asked but that he's going to suffer the fact that some callow youth has asked the obvious thing again. And he'll tell us what's what. James, I feel that every single time I interview him. And when you interview him in person, you can sense this, of course, even having him on the radio. First of all, his voice is just this wonderful, deep, beautiful voice.

And his presence, there's such a warmth about Tom. But there's also in those eyes, he really doesn't like stupid questions he really doesn't like stupid questions did i ask stupid questions no you did not but i have in his presence that's why i'm so aware of this well listen there's there's one more question that i wanted to ask him and i'm going to tell it to you in just a second i'll ask it okay i don't. Okay. But don't go away, folks. However, if you do go away, you're going to want to get the best place to stay. Now, when you go to get an airplane ticket, do you go to the sites that's run by the airline? No. You go to those aggregators. You look at the place that looks everywhere and gets the best deal for you. Don't visit a ton of different sites when

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The one of your dreams at Tripping.com slash Ricochet. That's T-R-I-P-P-I-N-G.com slash Ricochet. Find your perfect vacation rental at Tripping.com slash Ricochet. And our thanks to Tripping.com for sponsoring the ricochet podcast peter the question that i wanted to ask him was this about roosevelt roosevelt's pragmatism if roosevelt took all the chalks off the economy in order to get the thing moving so he could create material and jobs in a war machine doesn't that suggest that he knew that everything that he had been doing had been screwing with the economy for no good use purely for ideological reasons

uh that's a very good question. That is a very good question. I mean, if you think that's going to work, why didn't you do it before, genius? Yeah, yeah. Well, far be it for me to answer on behalf of Tom Sowell, who would have an answer of his own, obviously. But as far as I can tell, the record is pretty clear that the new dealers knew that they hadn't come up with any solution to the economic distress.

They were just improvising madly, and their improvisations tended to drift further and further to the left. That is to say more and more state control. But fundamentally, things didn't work until we got this huge stimulus package program called World War II. The curse, as ever, is the damned french revolution you know we've you're right and you're the one with a french brother-in-law you should know you should know i know why and to tell you the truth when it comes to the eventual end effect of the french revolution sometimes i think i know more than my french brother-in-law but that's ancient history right no it stays with us unto this day the egalitarianism the terror the statism all the rest of it born in paris in the communes thanks guys love it but today uh we

have news uh we got a new marist poll trump's job approval rating at 42% the poll says, highest since he took office. Why is that, Peter? I don't think it's the tariffs. What is it? Oh, it's not the tariffs. It's the economy. Well, in my judgment, it's okay, I'll give you my answer. It's three things. One, people are getting used to him. So I

feel this in myself, actually. The crazy tweets, which even a couple of months ago would still make my heart – my blood pressure and what is he doing? And now it's – oh, there's Trump again. So people are becoming numb to the crazier aspects of our president, Chief Crazy Horse. But the most important bit is – by far the most important bit is the economy. When I was in Washington last week, I did an interview with Senator Portman of Ohio and Senator and he tends to tell me the truth, especially in the green room, because we're old friends. We've known each other since college.

He had just come back from Ohio where the Senate was in recess. So he'd been back home. And he said it was just astonishing because although the president had only signed the tax reform into law a little better than two months before, back home in Ohio, he said everybody knew the big businesses. They'd already received a lot of publicity, huge companies like Walmart giving $1,000 bonuses and so forth. But what struck him was the small business owners were delighted. They were hiring. They were drawing up plans for investment, and Rob Portman said, and I'm going to use his phrase, that the tax reform, quote, has changed everything. That's what's going on. I suspect that if Donald Trump actually gets some

kind of deal with North Korea, then he'll not only have the economy going for him, but he'll start to look as though he can handle foreign affairs and his ratings are likely to go up. So, but at this moment, in my judgment, above all, it's a kind of numbness to Trump, to the crazier things, to the things that bother everybody. We're sort of getting used to that. But above all, it's the economy. I agree. And it's the economy, stupid, as they keep saying. And people become inured to the tweets and the um and it's the economy stupid as they keep saying and people come in your become

inured to the tweets and the rest of it uh all agreed the thing is is that if you look at twitter which is really not an accurate gauge of the world at all uh you will find that everyone is having the usual fizzy face hair on fireon-fire moments about this, that, and the other, convinced that there is a gathering storm via the investigations that's about to pound him down, and also that there's a crazy madness, a loose cannon, a match tossed in a bucket of fireworks, craziness to the White House. I mean, if you're that interested in all of the stuff that goes on inside the bubble, then you are convinced that we are in the end times and that madness grips the capital. James, I couldn't agree more. But outside, it's just not the case.

It just simply isn't. People in – I mean most folks who don't spend all the time staring at their little screen watching the Twitter madness go. The other day – and I do this. I mean, I'm guilty of this too, and I try to follow as many people on different sides so that I get a balance, right? So I'm not just marinating in the craziness of the stuff that validates my worldview. But the other day, I put my phone in my pocket, and apparently I started to play a video of some athletic event which consisted of a lot of people just screaming just like a stadium of 50 000 people screaming right

and i thought this is twitter right here i've got the sound from my pocket of 50 000 people screaming as though they're as though they're on the titanic and it's going down and then i turned it off and i walked around the newsroom and i'm here to tell you if you want to be driven bad by the mad by the news spend all of your time on the newsroom or spend all of your time on the internet in the newsroom there's it's quiet there are the monitors but they're turned off people are working people are talking people are putting together you know the next day's paper i mean yes we're always working on the stuff at the minute and the stuff at the hour, but there's a product to come at the end of the day,

and the pace at a newspaper is probably different than a place that's all entirely blogging. So I thought it's amusing that the calmest place for me to be is the one where I've turned off the news as it comes through my device, and I'm just simply here in the newsroom. There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal, journal i know i'm going on and on that but the new york i'm sure it was the time you're on a roll baby keep going this is fascinating go go go the new york times had a guy who said i didn't get any of my news from social media or from the internet for six months i got it just from newspapers and it was a self-serving article of course because he's reading the post he's reading the new y Times, he's reading the Wall Street Journal.

Print is great, yeah. But what he said was that at the end of this period, he was better informed generally and calmer. Better informed because after a day had passed, the newspaper would come out and what it would have was not just the usual hot takes and first reports that you get when you're on Twitter and Facebook. And that it was written, it was edited, and it was more of a thing to be digested at the end of the day as opposed to a series of endless little peanuts and pistachios you're popping in your mouth and

obsessively chewing. And that his mood was better and that he felt like he was on top of things. And of course, then he went right back to the internet. And I think it's a balance of both is what you need is all I'm saying. But, you know, it's hard for me to diss the Internet when that's exactly what we're doing here. That's the business we're in. I know we have a little bit of a problem there. By the way, I'm sorry.

A gardener just showed up at my neighbor's across the street. And he's using a leaf blower, and there's not a darn thing I can do about it because it's their yard, not mine. But I'm reminded that C.S. Lewis, the great writer, Christian apologist of the middle of the last century, never read the newspapers. There was no internet then, but his view was that the newspapers were unnecessarily upsetting. And his attitude was, no, no, no, I will read books, and if anything important in the world happens, one of my neighbors will surely let me know. And there's a point to that. There's a point to that. Of course there is. In his period, yes. I've spent a lot of time in the last month or so on various projects that require me to look at newspapers from the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, and the 60s.

I mean, I've been really reading a lot of old newspapers. And there's a sameness and a boring institutional quality that sets in after world war ii by 1950 and maintains almost unto this day but before that newspapers were as as as noisy as nasty as panic mongering as fear mongering as they are as the internet can be today so this is not a new moment in human history what's new is the is the amount of time that people engage with this instrument designed to rile them up and anger up the blood. So this is what we're still figuring

out, folks. And somebody out there in the audience will probably figure out what the note of Peter's neighbor's lawn blower was. Somebody with perfect pitch will say, that sounded like a D to me. I don't know. Then again, if I wasn't on Twitter, I would have missed the exchange that happened after John Podhoretz.

People were tweeting out their favorite songs and performances or something in the last 50 years. And Podhoretz, of course, has got to say, my favorite was 433 by John Cage. Or was it 422? Oh, that can't be true. Well, no. Of course, he's's being nobody likes that stuff well no and so everybody then had to top that or work off his tweet with to show that they too had the erudition to understand what john was saying and to make a little joke about it

and that's fun yes yes yes yeah but when it comes to you know know, Scaramouche saying, you know, here's the deal. I'm going to be on Fox and here's Sean Hannity's take on this. I just don't care. You, of course, care about the Internet, the smart parts, the civil parts, which is why you're here. And you really ought to avail yourself of the opportunities presented to you by Tripping.com, Boland Branch, and Harry's, all of whom have great deals for you if you go to their websites and use that promo code RECOCHET. Support them for supporting us. And as I always say, and you always roll your eyes and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, someday go to iTunes if you're so inclined

and give us a nice little review. That helps us get more PR. And one of these days we're going to be on that front page of iTunes. I just know it. And barring that, of course, you know, money wouldn't help throwing us a couple of shekels now and then $2.50 a month is the podcast listener's tier. Doing so helps Ricochet keep going.

We're almost up to 400 podcast episodes. Can't wait for number 1,000. And when we get there, it'll be because of listeners like you. Peter, we'll see you then. But in the meantime, we'll see everybody this week in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week, James. And when you get it, you got some So don't worry, cause I'm coming I'm a soul man I'm a soul man

I'm a soul man I'm a soul man That's what I got I'm a soul man I bet you all Got what I got The hard way And I'll make it better Each and every day So honey

Don't you wait Cause you ain't seen Nothing yet I'm a soul man I'm a soul man. I'm a soul man. I'm a soul man. I'm a soul man. Ricochet.

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