The Ricochet Podcast - Summer's End

Episode Date: August 21, 2013

Direct link to MP3 file It’s our last podcast of the summer and to mark the change of season, we’ve reunited the crew after their far-flung vacations and adventures.This week, we answer the burning questions of the day: Is Rob Long actually a gift from God? What in Pharaoh’s name is going on in Egypt? What’s the deal with Chris Christie? And finally, will California change Paul Rahe or will Paul... Source

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie When it comes to seeking fertility treatment, time can be of the essence. At Beacon Care Fertility, we are proud to offer prompt access to affordable fertility care.

With over 60,000 babies born across our fertility clinic network, we have both the science and the expertise to deliver. We offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with VHI and Leia. Beacon Care Fertility, where science meets life. Oh, you count it. Sorry. Yep. Coming down in three two one activate program let me just reiterate to my wife how sorry i am that i i did these things and how sorry i am to the people that got these messages we are moving forward this is. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long.

Peter has descended from 7,000 feet in the hills. Rob has returned from the decompression in Greece. And what does this have to do with Egypt? Well, you'll find out. We also have as a guest Paul Ray telling us about his experience in California. We're back. Let's have a podcast. There you go again.

Man, I don't know if I can do this. It's been so long. How do we start? Sponsor. Right, right. Audible. That's it. Audible. don't know if I can do this. It's been so long. How do we start? Sponsor. Right, right. Audible. That's it. Audible.com.

They are the sponsor of this, the Ricochet Podcast number 179, and they're the leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment on the Internet, or anywhere else for that matter. Listen to audiobooks wherever, whenever you want, and audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet is where you get your free audio book and your 30 day trial okay so we do that then what next we do oh introductions uh hi folks james lilacs here with the founding eminences of ricochet peter robinson and rob long everybody scattered around the world for vacations now coming back to bring you the podcast how you doing guys yeah well james is doing very well but

i feel like i've just seen you well you practically did we're we were on stage where where rob got off a line so pithy that jay nordlinger had to excerpt it and not only not only say what a great line it was which it was but just say that this is pure rob long so funny my favorite uh funny as well yes exactly well he's a he's a wonderful interviewer it was great fun and then i remember the last night at the crow's nest, it takes some doing for me to actually at the end of the night say, I'm tired. I want to go to bed. But after six or seven nights of being upstairs at the crow's nest, yammering at the top of your lungs to a variety of clever people, you find yourself wanting to go home. But you said – when we asked you what you were doing next, you said, I'm going to Greece without you guys.

I'm getting out of here. So you went to Greece and? I did nothing. I read and I sort of lazed around. I ate Greek salad and that was it. So I had a couple friends there and that was about the gist of it. It was pure vacation. How wonderfully

indolent and syparitic, as opposed to, say, going out in the woods and conjuring fire out of sticks in Flint, which I believe Peter did. peter welcome back where were you in greece rob i was in santorini i was in santorini on an island and how did it look to you did it look like a country in crisis no it you know except that there are more greeks working there usually the greeks weren't wouldn't be working on the islands they would be you – they'd have other – it would be Yugoslavs or kids from – on their gap year or something. And now it's Greeks working there because there's no other work. I mean it's some astronomical unemployment rate.

But still, it's a holiday. So they're making some money. So Greeks were actually doing the job that Greeks weren't doing. Yes, exactly. They were doing the job that even Greeks wouldn't do. Now, can I ask you to talk amongst yourselves for two minutes while I get a paper towel

to wipe up the coffee I just spilled? Oh, certainly. That happens. It's all very real, happening right now. Dob away. Peter and I, you were in the wilds with your sons camping, which is two sons and one daughter up in the Sierra, not camping actually. No,

no, we were in a, we were that. I just cannot, I do not sleep on the ground and I don't care how thick the, the mat is. I do not camp. We were in a nice house.

We did a lot of hiking around, however, and it was fantastically beautiful, just fantastically beautiful up at about 7,000 feet and hiking through sequoias right up close to – you could drive up and then hike up more or less above the tree line. The tree line isn't sharp or distinct in the Sierras, but you could get up above the trees into the views and it was just fabulous. Isn't it just?

Sorry, I'm back. I'm sorry. In Norway, we took to hiking a bit, and by that I mean I was looking for my wife who had disappeared, and I followed this rutted little trail that went up the side of a mountain to a waterfall, with the only markings being a spray-painted T here and there on a tree trunk or a boulder to tell you you were on the right path. And it's wonderful, even though at some, you're just leaning over with your hands on your knees, you're trundling Roseanne, Roseanne, and saying, I think I'm going to die because it's just so much to get up the hill and the rocks.

Was this a good trail? Was this groomed? Was this a nice little easy way up to the mountains or were you actually exerting yourself to get up to the view? Oh, no. We had to – well, I mean the boys, no problem. They were leaping from rock to rock like mountain goats. But for me, the altitude

was really – the trails were not that difficult as trails but the altitude was such that I was huffing and puffing up about 7,000 feet and then we got close to 9,000 feet at one point. That's high enough that you probably had to remove your cufflinks and roll up your sleeves and untie the sweater from your neck. Okay.

Just for that, I'm going to ask, what was the line that was so splendid that Jay Nordlinger had to quote it? By the way, last time I was on a cruise with – I wasn't on this cruise, but the time I was on a cruise, Jay Nordlinger went so far as to call Bob Long in public. Yes, in public. God's gift to humanity. Yes. What was the line? Well, he actually – just before we – I think we should linger on that for a minute. Before we go too far, he not only repeated that line again, he then doubled down and he said – and all of his ricochet friends snickered.

But I maintain that it's true. And I said, well, Jay, so do I. And all the entire audience rose up as one. And James will verify this and shouted so true, so true or something like that. Yes, yes, absolutely. I was looking down at my notes at the time in a bashful Oh no, garlands heaped at your feet the whole day.

And a mystical band played even though there was no band present. That's the kind of miracle that happened. It's being investigated by your Vatican now. Well that is Rob's way of getting around quoting the line lest it seem a disappointment after all this. So people just have

to go to the corner and read Jay to find out. I'll tell you what it was. I said we were having a drink and we were talking about a couple of restaurants we like in New York that were out of the way. There was a great restaurant. An old restaurant he used to go to.

It was called Oriental Food. He said, can you say Oriental anymore? You can't say Oriental. I said, no. Now you can – now you have to say Pan-Asian. And I said, isn't that funny? The PC term is Pan-Asian. So Hirohito's dream has come true.

And Jay thought that was very clever. I thought that was very clever. So there you go. When you're talking about Oriental, the term Orientalism came to mind the other day. And I hate to use it because you guys know what this means, right? It's the West's way of looking at the East with all of our Western biases that demeans what the West truly is. I think Edward Said coined the term or something. No, no. Orientalism?

Yes. Orientalism. Not Oriental, or something. No, no. Orientalism? Yes. Orientalism. Not oriental, but orientalism. Right. Orientalism. And it's come to characterize any sort of examination of another culture through your own lenses without understanding your own biases. And it came up in a flame war, as it was later called, the classiest flame war ever,

between myself and James Fallows at the Atlantic, which I really regret having started. But it's the first time that I've actually sort of engaged somebody at The Atlantic of that stature because Mr. Fallows and his work, of course, goes back an awful long ways. But he's doing this thing that journalists do from time to time. They go around the country to find America,

or as Albert Brooks put it in the movie that was about the same subject, find American, touch Indians. We're the bold ones, right? Right. They go to these places and discover that people do the most fascinating, curious things. They have large, inordinately large lawn tractors, if you can believe that. And then they come back and they write stories about how these small towns are full of optimism

yet have doubts about the future. Or they have doubts about the future but yet optimism about America. I mean, you know that 140-word or 1,400-word picture of a small town that supposedly tells you something about America. Stories like that absolutely drive me crazy because nobody in the Beltway would say, you know, there's a guy from Fargo, North Dakota who just came to Washington, D.C. for four days and he's got a really good grasp on what this town actually is all about. No, they wouldn't buy that, but somehow the guy who goes to Fargo gets it all. So I'm going somewhere with this, which is this.

Oh, no, of course you are. Why, then, do we believe any sort of Western reporter telling us what's going on in Cairo. Well, Oh, Oh, Rob. Well, I mean,

well, we don't have that many choices, but, but we have more choices now. I mean, as we're talking about Cairo, I mean, I,

I, uh, there, there's a, there's a guy I follow on Twitter who is a photographer. I forget his name. Jonathan Rashad, Jonathan Rashad,

I think. And, um, and he just goes around taking pictures. And they're great. What's interesting about what's going on in Cairo right now is that we all act as if all this stuff is new. But one of the things I did when I was sitting, relaxing, doing nothing by the pool in Santorini was I read the Cairo trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz. I read the first one. I hadn't read the next two. It's set in Cairo between the wars.

Naguib Mahfouz, great novelist, won the Nobel Prize. It's a wonderful novel set in Egypt. Egyptian history is really complicated. Speaking of Oriental, Oriens I think is a Roman term that describes Egypt. it really wasn't – like everything Edward Said has said, it's mostly nonsense. The idea that there was a difference between the people who lived in Egypt, the people who lived in Rome or there was a difference between Romans and Greeks or Greeks and Orientals or – they're all mixed up. There's no particular difference between these people. It was just a way to describe the geographic location. So the great thing about Egypt is that it's so complicated that – and Nogid Mahfouz talks about the Muslim Brotherhood.

And he was very against it in the 50s. So these are – and all the various revolutions that have happened in Egypt. He writes about them in the novel and he writes about them in his other writing and I read a couple of the other novels and some of his other non-fiction stuff. And you can get a picture of a place by reading the recent 20th century history of it. And this stuff that's happening

in Egypt right now is of a piece with what's happening in Egypt in the 20th century. It's a little bit more worrisome because all the other terrible things are going on. We have an economic collapse. We have a terrible president because all the other terrible things are going on. We have economic collapse. We have a terrible president, all sorts of terrible ancillary situations. But I think you can get a pretty good picture of what's going on by reading the news. But you can't if that's the only thing you know about a country, which is a very long-winded way of answering your question.

And I apologize for that. It was just my way of introducing Egypt into the conversation. Peter, what do you think? Where are we bound on this and do – Rob mentioned that we don't seem to have a president with a policy. Is that how it appears to you as well? Oh, sure. It appears that way to me as well. The administration is floundering around. What was striking to me yesterday morning when I sat down and looked at the papers was the New York Times front page story on Egypt was about Saudi Arabia. And there was about the story a kind of cast of gloom that Saudi Arabia had decided to

back the military in Egypt. And in the Wall Street Journal, it pointed out that Saudi Arabia had been joined in this enterprise by nearly every other Arab country and now by Israel. And an Israeli who did not want to be quoted had told the reporter for the Wall Street Journal that Israel in supporting the military in Egypt and joining in Saudi Arabia with doing so had joined the axis of reason. So my general inclination is to distrust the New York Times and overall to trust the Israelis to understand what's happening. guy, that democracy was simply being used as a sham, as cover for taking the biggest,

the most, by far the most populous Arab country, Egypt has what, 80, 90 million people into the hard Islamic camp, then I would tend to, or I would tend to defer to the Israelis. I have not read, so to my mind, what you need is the Daily News, the trilogy that Rob just finished and a little bit of some feeling for what the Israelis think is happening. That's opri and you'll get yourself – What's interesting about the Israelis is that they have a very specific point of view, which is entirely based in one thing, which is the security of Israel, which makes total sense, right? So at least you know exactly where they're coming from and exactly how they're making their determination. They really don't care what the internal political situation is or the human rights situation is inside the country, a foreign country. They really only care about one thing legitimately, and that's the security of Israel.

So they prefer – and what's interesting is this does dovetail with what I've been reading about Egypt. Ever since the Six-Day War, the one institution in Egyptian life – and I think this is true about certain other Arab countries that surround Israel with whom Israel has a cordial or at least an understanding relationship – is that the army is run by rational and businesslike individuals. It didn't used to be. It used to be run by lunatics and delusional fanatics. But there was a huge reform movement, especially in Egypt, after the Six-Day War, in which the army actually ended up being one of the most reformed and clean organizations, meaning it

actually understood reality as it existed. And so if you're trying to bet and you're trying to secure your borders and the safety of your citizens, that's who you want to deal with, the most rational person, the person who understands I have two tanks and you have 200 tanks. At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the the roar and the chance to reward you that's why every day of the festival we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to 10 euro if your horse loses on a selected race that's how we celebrate the

biggest week in racing cheltenham with live score bet this is total betting sign up by 2 p.m 14th of march bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie When it comes to seeking fertility treatment, time can be of the essence. At Beacon Care Fertility, we are proud to offer prompt

access to affordable fertility care. With over 60,000 babies born across our fertility clinic network, we have both the science and the expertise to deliver. We offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with VHI and Leia. Beacon Care Fertility, where science meets life. Thanks. So therefore, you and I are going to have a very specific and rational conversation. It's much better than dealing with a lunatic or an irrational person or a fanatic who just wants to whip up the people. Rob, may I amend your premise there or one of your premises?

Sure. I'll see if you'll go for it. You may amend it. Well, I think it's not – I think you don't mean quite to say that the Israelis don't care about civil rights in other countries but that they care about the defense of their own nation first, right? Well, I – yeah, OK. But I – no, I don't – Which by the way ought to be our point of view about this country as well. Human rights elsewhere comes second.

I don't – yeah. But I think for Israel, human rights amongst its neighbors who are traditional enemies is way, way down the list. I mean they are very practical people. They do not believe that in their lifetime, in the next 50, 60, 70, 80 years, they're going to be surrounded by functioning democracies. They just don't believe that. Any Israeli, you sit them down and have a cup of coffee with them. I don't either by the way. They don't think that's true. So they are – they are only focused on one thing and that's the security of Israel

and the peace and the prosperity of its citizens and its longevity. And so they were not concerned with the human rights abuses under Mubarak and there were. And they were not concerned with the human rights abuses in other countries. It's just like that's too much to ask for a country that's 11 miles wide and is surrounded and beset by enemies on all sides and internally. It's like, well, now we want them to do that too? It's like like that's too much to ask for a country that's 11 miles wide and is surrounded and beset by enemies on all sides and internally. It's like, well, now we want them to do that too? It's like, good lord. There's only so much on the to-do list.

So here's what we – here's the direction in which we're drifting and I'll just say it because we have to address it. Here's the problem. The problem has the administration all tied up in knots and immobilized. And the problem is as follows. Morsi was elected in what everybody agrees was a free enough and fair enough election. Now, it's often forgotten that he just squeaked in. He only won the election by – as I recall, it was a little under two percentage points. But he did win a democratic election. So to take the point of view that we seem to be taking right now, which is that it's perfectly reasonable for Saudi Arabia and the

Israelis to back the army against the Muslim Brotherhood and to have overthrown Morsi, to take that position, we are saying democracy is not everywhere and always to be regarded as sacred. Not every election confers genuine legitimacy. Who wants to second the motion? Well, I mean – that's a highly cynical way to put it. But it's true. I mean the security of our allies is paramount. I hate making this argument because I hate – it's so easy, so I'm going to do it. Hitler was elected.

It was a free election. He was elected. So yeah, you end up having demonstrations on the streets a lot like what we had. And that's not new for – it's not unusual for Egypt. It's not – this happened – this is normal for them. This happens a lot. Well, and when you say a country for which democratic elections is not normal, that is the understatement of understatements of course when it comes to Egypt. The way I've been thinking about – I have two men whom I revere, their intellects, their opinions, their goodwill and who might – That's me and James. And then who are the other two?

Two more. Two more. Two more. Fuad Ajami, who really believes democracy can take root in the Arab world within our lifetime and Bernard Lewis, who as you will recall, Rob, was on the cruise what? Nearly a year ago now. All three of us were on the National Review cruise and Bernard Lewis was perfectly straightforward that the Arab world has no experience with elections in all its history of many centuries and that to hold elections promptly in Egypt was to ask for trouble because there was only one political entity that could organize quickly enough and take advantage and it just wasn't democracy as we or anyone in the West understood it. It was trouble and I am sorry to say because Fuad is such a good friend that I find myself inclining toward the Bernard Lewis view. Well, I just think it's in general – it's never a good idea to disagree with Bernard Lewis. It's just like – maybe – certainly on this topic.

He may be wrong about other things like who's going to win the Super Bowl. But I just would never countries with highly unstable political situations that have been – have centuries of very strange, complicated relationships with caliphates that were protectorates of various other countries and great powers and appointed kings and then deposed kings and then reappointed by Britain king. These are very within people's lifetimes and then a bunch of coups and a military coup and what most people want is a certain stability in their government and what they've wanted since 67 has been, in Egypt anyway, has been a certain amount of

border peace with Israel. The pharaohs ran the place with total stability for 2800 years but it's been downhill ever since. Yeah, well, that's always the case with the pharaohs. There's a question as to whether or not the people who are in Egypt now are the same people who were in Egypt 28,000, 3,000 years ago. Well, yeah. What do you mean, ethnically?

Oh, yeah. That's always the argument about Greece. At least there's nobody running around saying all of this trouble is because we've abandoned the old gods. Let's get back to thought. Let's get back to Shekut and the rest of them. Osiris. In the paper today, there was a story about a local couple, a university actually. They worked for the University of Minnesota who decided for their summer vacation to take all the kids to Gaza.

Load up the van and they all went to Gaza, load up the van, and they all went to Gaza. And they're stuck there now. Their youngest is six years old. And I'm looking at this saying, well, I hope they get back to Minnesota. But who in their right mind goes to Gaza with a six-year-old? Because I thought this was absolute hell on earth, right? Isn't Gaza just this cesspool of misery that the Israelis created? The fact that Israel throws its weight behind the military in Egypt is a signifier for an awful lot of people that now they know which side to be on. They need to be on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood or at least the Valiant people

in the streets because if Israel sides with it, it's got to be wrong. All Israel wants to do probably is go in there and get resources. Cotton, that's it. It's Israeli big cotton that's going in. Never ends. When Rob was talking about the Cairo Trilogy, in the back of my head popped up this book that I remember reading back in college called The Levant Trilogy, an examination probably of the same period that Rob's talking about. Although it goes a little bit more to World War II. It's by Olivia Manning, and she wrote three great solid books, which the sort of thing that just captures the smell and the sounds and the feel of an era.

Of course, through the Orientalist prism, mind you, but they're fascinating reads. And every single one of them is at audible.com. And if you went there and you didn't even know what you were doing, you could get it for free. You could either read that or you could take a look for some of the books that Rob was talking about. And it's again, freePodcast.com slash Ricochet. Free 30-day trial. Free audio book. You can give it an examination and see if it's for you. And if you're in your car, if you're jogging, if you're walking, or you're just sitting around the house thinking, you know, I wish I had some sort of fictional audio entertainment to while away that part of my brain while I do meaningless rote work.

Well, this is for you. Whatever you want to do, you can find it there. And thanks to WhisperSync technology, it instantaneously makes all of your various devices pick up where you left off. It's astonishing. Now, it doesn't mean you go down to your television set and turn on the TV version of the book, and all of a sudden it's in the scene that you left behind in the audio version.

No, that's coming in a few years, I'm sure. But for now, just be content that if you want to listen to a story or listen to a nonfiction book or in the future, listen to Peter Robinson read his own forthcoming work or Rob Long perhaps a collection of aphorisms and scripts and the like. You know, Audible is your place. I'm one of God's gifts. Exactly. As a matter of fact, God's gifts. God's gift, the rob long story the rob long tail it will be there so you want to get your account now so you can be there when that when rob

and peter mr speaker a word of personal testimony yes it was a five-hour drive back home from the mountains and so i downloaded the i think it's called the short story collection in any event if you go to audible and type in short story story, a dozen different books will pop up. And I downloaded a short story collection, eight different short stories, Jack London, O. Henry, G.K. Chesterton. It lasted four hours and 37 minutes and it made the time simply melt away. The kids were just wrapped. Jack London, by the way, in one short story, a man freezes to death. In another short story, he's almost eaten by a wolf but manages to pull through.

Jack London is grim but somehow riveting. Audible, works in cars with kids. Also, Jack, that's perfect. It's a perfect place to do it too. I mean that's a perfect place to do it too. I mean that's a perfect location. I mean I would say for me, I would – I mean my recommendation, my Audible pick would be Zorba the Greek because that's – I was – if I finished Cairo Trilogy, I was reading some Nikos Kazantzakis and he wrote Zorba the Greek and that is available on Audible. That's a great book. Well, you can also get the Cairo Trilogy that Rob was talking about before and get this. It's not only – it's an all-Egyptian cast that does the –

Really? I didn't – really? Is that true? Led by Omar Sharif. Seriously? Wow. Yeah. Then I take it back.

I would get that because that's in the news. Fascinating. It's a great story. It's very human. It's beautifully written. The guy is a brilliant writer. And it just – it's a – you just realize – What's the pub date, Rob?

I think he wrote them – I mean to a decade? In the 50s, I think. Got it. His great – his great – it was in the 50s. Well, there you have it. And you can – it's a BBC production too and the BBC audio stuff that they do. It's just spectacularly wonderful. So if you go to audible.com, which I think may be for some people

the first time they're ever hearing about this, we have been mentioning it for a while, but there are still a few who haven't. Go there and do so to thank them for sponsoring this, your favorite podcast. You know, there's so many other things here. It's almost as if we've been away for a month and we haven't even spoken yet of Chris Christie,

the ascension of, and the way it's infuriating people, the internal schisms that seems to talk about Ted Cruz, whether or not he's a citizen, what he's renouncing exactly. And you know that Ted Cruz is a really weird guy, because I think the Washington Post had a story about he was a creepy roommate in college or something like that. Almost as if

they're trying in advance to depress him at the same time the networks are trying to elevate St. Hillary to the inevitable position as our next president. This is all kind of nuts. I mean first of all, the elevation of Hillary Clinton. I mean good lord. She's already lost once. She's not invincible.

All this obsession with her from our side and also from their side is kind of crazy. Well, you know, by the time it rolls around, I think her manifest accomplishments in the last few years since the last time she ran will be so blindingly apparent to all that we'll have no chance but to suspend the election and just have her swept into office on a general voice vote. That's what people said in 2008. Exactly. And somebody came along.

Somebody came along and took it away from her. And boy, did she get mad. And, you know, the Chris Christie business, I've been sort of following that because I – whoever – whatever happens here, I mean who knows? It's impossible to read the tea leaves at this point. Thank god that there's no obvious frontrunner. There's no guy who lost narrowly last time. It looks like the Republicans might actually have an actual fight, which would be good. There is this myth out there among the true believers that the establishment gets behind somebody or the establishment does it, which is just not true.

There's no establishment. It doesn't exist. There's no establishment. Or if it did, we would know about it, I think. You run in the primaries. The Republican primary voters are perfectly capable of nominating a kook and a loser. They do it all the time. They did it in Missouri. They did it in Delaware. They do it all the time. And they're also capable of making idiotic, in retrospect, calculations about electability as they did with McCain and it turns out Mitt Romney.

So it's not a cabal in Washington or New York that decides who the frontrunner is going to be. It's your standard Joe Republican primary voter who by the way is demonstrably more conservative than the general voter, is demonstrably more conservative than general Republican voter. The people who make these decisions are in fact the true believers. That's an undeniable fact. You may not like it. They may make mistakes but it's not like it's being shoved down their throat by some K Street slick guy. Of course it is. Of course. That's absolutely the narrative. I would just like to state for the record and then turn it over to James for a transition here, for a segue.

Yes. It's only James. I want to be obvious about this segue. I've been trying for five minutes to bring him in. I'm here. Rob Long said that nominating Mitt Romney represented an idiotic calculation about electability. And I can only say that Mike Murphy may find it surprising that you put it that way, Rob. James?

Well, in retrospect, yes, because he didn't get elected. Okay. And on that note, we stop clunkily. We grind all the gears. The whole ricochet machine shudders to a stop. No, we don't. Shudders everywhere. stop. No, we don't. Shuddering bolts everywhere. Who else?

Who else? And if you say Rick Santorum, I will climb through the wires of Skype and I will throttle you. What are you talking about? Me? No, I want to get back to that subject. Sorry. I said Peter. Sorry.

What I have to do, Santorum would have lost 50 states. Oh, my God. What I have to say is this. Period. Stop. Welcome to our guest. Our guest being Paul Ray. He's the professor of history at Hillsdale where he holds an endowed chair

and he's a visiting fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution for the next year and is regaling all with his tales of Cali as he explores this strange new golden land. When it comes to seeking fertility treatment, time can be of the essence. At Beacon Care Fertility, we are proud to offer prompt access to affordable fertility care. With over 60,000 babies born across our fertility clinic network, we have both the science and the expertise to deliver. We offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with VHI and Leia. Beacon Care Fertility, where science meets life. So on Ricochet.com, we welcome you to the podcast. Welcome.

How are you? We're just grand. Now, getting to the fray here, Rob was going to go through the wires and I think rip out Peter's carotid artery for suggesting that Rick Santorum would have beat Mitt Romney. I made no such suggestion. Well, let's just pretend you did. Not in this podcast. But you would have beat Mitt Romney. I made no such suggestion. Well, let's just pretend you did. Not in this podcast. But you would have.

You were about to. We've got to speak to Paul now, Rob. Calm down. Paul, welcome to California. Thank you. It's very nice here. It's overcast today, but generally there's nothing but sunshine. Rather different from Michigan.

Yeah, it'll be overcast. You get used to this autumn weather. It'll be overcast as it is now. This is typical. It'll burn off by 11, maybe noon or so. We'll have another spectacular day. Yet another spectacular day. Welcome to the land where you can plan your picnics.

So how do you like it, Paul? It's very pleasant. And strange. I mean, this little corner – and maybe it's true generally of California. This little corner of California has immense ethnic diversity. In the junior high school that I'm hoping my second daughter goes to, 23 different languages are spoken. Wow. In a blog post, I mentioned hearing 12 languages at Walmart. And then I said, I'm not exaggerating.

I'm probably understating. And it's now clear to me, given that 23 languages are spoken at the junior high school in Mountain View, that I was right. It's just – it's quite remarkable and I've never seen such a collection of ethnic restaurants as you'll find in downtown Mountain View. Yes, down on Castro Street. It lets – for Mountain View, for listeners outside Mountain View, is the home of, among other things, Google. So lots of – and actually, as Northern California goes, when we moved here 20 years ago, Mountain View had the feel of a town that had seen better days and in fact really hadn't quite at that point. Mountain View downtown, the Castro was originally basically hardware stores and feed stores and so forth that serviced the orchards and farms in the area

and hadn't 20 years ago quite gotten caught up completely in Silicon Valley, but has it ever now as the home of Google. So tell us about Mass on Sunday and then enrolling your kids in school, if you would. Okay. We've gone to two different churches there's one called saint athanasius which is this huge barn um that doesn't feel much like a church uh has um two masses in spanish and four in english we went to one of the english masses and uh it's clear that english is the lingua franca that the people from Sri Lanka

and the people from India and the people from Africa speak there. So it's a kind of common language, but it's not the first language for the vast majority of members of the church. It's extremely lively and a lot of fun. I don't like the music myself that well, but gosh, the spirit of it is impressive. Then we went to – I think it's called St. Joseph's in downtown Mountain View. Beautiful church. Just a block or two off the Castro as I recall. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Beautiful church. Quite a substantial looking building, right? Yeah, and they have a school and they have much more of an Anglo church. Music is more to my taste. They have a very good choir, but it's kind of cold. They welcomed strangers openly, publicly, asked us to raise our hands and stand up and clapped for us and so forth at St. Athanasius. No such thing at St. Joseph's. At St. Athanasius, no indication of politics at all. At St. Joseph's, we were preached to by a layperson about supporting immigration reform and so forth at the end of

mass, but up from the altar. And I thought, you know, this is not an issue in which Catholic moral theology forces one to come down on one side or the other. They had to stay away from this. Now, schools, gosh. So hold on. I want to tease this out. What you're saying is that at two churches the one that was filled with anglos essentially was that was the the white liberals essentially is what you're saying yes and they

and you pick up no such political liberalism in the church which is actually filled with real immigrants the people the white liberals putatively wish to help. Absolutely. I mean, the individual members of the church may be liberal in their orientation, but it doesn't impinge upon the mass. Got it. Doesn't show up in the sermon, doesn't show up. And actually, you can tell in the petitions. The petitions at St. Joseph's all had a kind or coded politics. The petitions at St. Athanasius were –

For the ability of recent immigrants to get driver's licenses, Lord, hear our prayer, that sort of thing. That's more or less – and for Congress to end the division in Congress, which of course is coded for the Republicans voting with the Democrats. So I found the whole thing hilarious. Can I say something about the schools? Yes, please. Okay. The schools in California are pretty bad, the public schools. They're ranked 30th in the nation, and they have been going downhill for years.

Los Altos High School is in the top 2% in the nation. Right. And what interested me was when we went to sign up our children for schools, they required proof of residence, proof that these were our children, and proof of a rather extreme kind. They weren't sort of looking lightly over this. They were putting us through the process. the materials that we filled out on six different occasions, we had to check and sign that we understood that it was a felony, a fraud and a felony to misrepresent where we lived, which is to say there's not open borders or anything like it. Nobody winks at,

at, at people trying to get their children into the Mountain View Los Altos school system. When was the last time anybody went to the big house for that? More or less in favor of open borders for the United States. Right, right, right. Oh, Paul, welcome to Northern California. That's all I can tell you. Well, welcome to all of California.

That's the way it is everywhere. Yeah. I would guess, yes. Where if you live in a certain kind of community, that school will be excellent. And it is not a joke and they'll do whatever they need to to keep it excellent, including keep the immigrants for whom they – keep the immigrants out, right? Oh, it's on – anyway. That's one part. There's another story I haven't told yet, which is about a war between the Mountain View Los Altos School District and a charter school called Bullis Charter, which is apparently very, very good.

And there's a civil war that's been going on inside the school district with the school district against the charter school. It's apparently gone on for years and years. I need to look further into it before I can write about it. I guess my real question, Paul, is now that you've been in California for a little bit, where are you taking your yoga classes? Are you doing them in Mountain View? Are you going to Palo Alto? You mean the Church of Self-Realization? Yeah, where are you?

Are you going to do Hatha? Are you going to do the Vinyasa flow? I'm afraid that I'm sort of past the possibility of being tempted by yoga classes. I think that I – wait another month. If you are not going to – if you do not take at least one yoga class in Northern California while you are there, then you cannot really truly be said to have been in Northern California. I really – I think you have to do at least one just on a purely kind of journalistic basis. I think that is the basis for a book. Yes. Paul, even I, even I have at moments.

No, no, no. And you know, don't tell me. You do not even want to imagine me in leotards, but there it is. And are you reading Pravda on the Hudson while you're doing this yoga? No, no. Although I will say – It's all breathing practice. Rob thought I was making this up.

Rob thought I was trying for a cheap line and demonstrating yet again why I could never make it as a writer in Hollywood. But I was just telling the truth. For the first two weeks in yoga, I thought the instructor was ending each session by saying, have a nice day. And in fact, of course, it was namaste. Which is very similar to have a nice day. And in fact, of course, it was namaste. Which is very similar to have a nice day. It is. If you stand in back. You speak.

Yeah. If you stand in back as I was in my leotards. All right. James, questions about California? There's a piece in the New Republic today, which dig.com is saying it's the GOP plan to crush Silicon Valley. And as the New Republic says, House Republicans started looking for places to trim the budget.

There's one place they'll likely focus, science and technology. Ergo, of course, the GOP hates science, hates technology, hates prosperity and all the things that flow from it. Looking out there from the perspective of your month and apprehending the layout of the land, do you honestly think that California technology could survive if it wasn't for the lovely infusion of special federal dollars? Or do you think actually places like Apple might be able to go it on their own?

Oh, I can't imagine that Apple or Google or Facebook could go it on their own. I mean, they need the helping hand of the federal government, don't you think? Well, I believe so, because it's a special kind of dollar that self-replicates itself endlessly once it's plugged into the right hand, preferably those of a democratic contributor. But this is how, of course, it's being spun, that the republicans want to destroy science and technology, that they don't care whether or not any decrease in federal funding will lead to – when you look at the landscape out there, do you actually see the sort of incubating influence and ideas that we used to think characterized the American experience but now come to believe are the Silicon Valley experience? Do you still feel as though there's a culture out there that's capable of producing the next interesting thing? Yes, of course. I mean look, these people have invented needs that we never knew we had. I have a typewriter in my attic back in – a portable typewriter in my attic back in Healdsdale that I want to bring downstairs to show to my children who have never seen a typewriter.

When I went off to college, I didn't know I needed a computer. I didn't know I needed a cell phone. Steve Jobs and the other people out here have created items that we find today we can't live without. It's right out of Montesquieu about the multiplication of needs that comes with a dynamic commercial society. And I am sure that there is someone within three square miles of Stanford who is hard at work right now inventing something that I won't be able to live without in 10 years. I'm sure that's true. The problem is, the problem is, is that is it not likely that California eventually becomes so economically untenable for some people that they go to Texas? Why wouldn't they go to Texas?

There's there's well, it's a beautiful beach, isn't it? There's there's lower. There's there's not California culture, but, you know but you can take it with you and make Texas your own. Why does California think it's going to be special forever? They're nuts. I mean nothing is special forever. Let's face it. The places that are in deep trouble now are Illinois with Chicago, New York with New York City and California. And if you look at it from the perspective of their pension obligations, these places are basket cases. They're also among the wealthiest places in the United States. They represent the past. They may have futures but I wonder. Peter Robinson Well, I just – we have to draw distinctions here I think between the government of California.

I know much less of course about Illinois and New York and so forth. The state government has pension obligations that it cannot pay. Now, if in one way or another it tries to suck up the difference from the private sector, then even Silicon Valley will be crushed and killed. But Silicon Valley will pick up and move to Austin before it permits that to happen. That is to say the state government has screwed up. Nobody really expects them to pay these obligations. The political working out of this will be extremely difficult.

There will be a huge amount of whining and whinging. But it's already starting to take place. We've had a couple of municipalities out here declare bankruptcy. San Jose had a vote. San Jose, a longtime democratic city, being run by a democratic mayor. election an initiative – excuse me. It wasn't a measure that would reduce pension payments to city employees including the police and it passed. So I actually – much as I would like to in some way see Jerry Brown and the democrats who have overwhelming majorities in both houses of the state legislature fall off the edge

of a cliff, I just don't think it – I doubt that it's going to happen. I think the state government will muddle along and the private sector out here will remain – well, this is complicated because out in the Central Valley that we drove across to get through to the Sierras last week, there's real trouble. Victor would tell you about that. Environmentalists have cut – but here in coastal California, gee, things are rebounding. I mean Elon – there's even a certain Elon returning with Elon Musk proposing this super tube – what are they calling it? The hyper loop. Yeah. Well, don't hold your breath for that.

No, but on the other hand, The Economist magazine has an article about it which says the problems here are political and legal. As an engineering matter, this looks perfectly sensible and he's got everybody's attention and he's got the state government on the defensive. has built an aerospace company which can now launch satellites for $130 million a pop where the federal government, NASA charges much more than that, has proposed replacing Jerry Brown's proposal for a train between LA and San Francisco with this sort of vacuum-packed tube which will cost one-tenth what the train would cost and get people between San Francisco and LA in 30 minutes. Now, it sounds crazy and futuristic, but he's got – it's just sort of people are saying – the difference is that if he'd said it two years ago, everybody would have said,

oh, that's Silicon Valley. That's over. He says it now and the press is following up on the story and people are saying what an intriguing idea. There's a sense of possibility returning, I think. Huh, interesting. Well, yeah, I think that's not going to leave California at least for a long, long, long time. That's been true for California since 1849 and probably even before that. So that's sort of embedded somehow in the sunshine and the coast and the mountains and all the – and the agricultural valleys and just the huge potential of the place.

The problem with a knowledge business is the problem with the knowledge business everywhere, which is that it can travel. When you have it – when people carry stuff around in their head and you have an entire gigantic industry of brainiacs coming up with things, all sorts of innovations that are by definition portable, it starts to make sense to move. Yes. It's just like finance. I mean the – Montesquieu suggested at one point in The Spirit of Laws that the invention of the letter of exchange was politically transforming because the money could travel. And that meant the moneymen could travel. And that meant the governments that depended upon these moneymen had to suck up to them to keep them where they were so that they could make use of them. And any industry that depends upon – primarily upon design and doesn't have a heavy footprint can just pick up and go. Google could move tomorrow.

But isn't the curious thing that they haven't? If you look at Manhattan, people have been predicting for three decades at least that Manhattan would be hollowed out, that the public – Bloomberg, Giuliani changed things, but still the tax rates are extremely high and what's happened is that about two dozen hedge funds have moved to Greenwich. But Manhattan still remains the center of action. No, I think that's true. And Hollywood, Rob, for the same period of time, everybody has been saying, well, no,

wait a minute. There's going to be a film industry in North Carolina. There's going to be a film industry in Texas and they're tiny. The name of the game is still Hollywood despite the tax rates, despite the pension obligations. How come? Why? But I think in an expanding business, an expanding finance business, just take that Manhattan. You have Wall Street but you also have London and now you have Abu Dhabi or Dubai and you

have Frankfurt and you have other capital centers. The world capital center isn't New York really. It's London. I mean you could make that argument and you'd probably be right. Just in an expanding world economy, then you have more stuff. So that's good and that's fine. And I think in Hollywood, now you have Hollywood. But Hollywood is really secondary to – just in terms of sheer amount of films being made and the dollars they're taking in to Bollywood.

Bollywood makes more money and makes more movies and has more viewers frankly. New York. So you – By the way, is there a Bollywood – meaning is there one town or one region in India? It's Bombay. It's Bombay. It's all headquartered. But what I mean is that the very work product of all those people in Silicon Valley is portability and that can't help but be slightly worrying to the place. Now, it's nice to be in Silicon Valley and you feel like you're in the center of things.

But there are more people coming down here. There are more people in New York. There's areas of innovation and places of innovation everywhere. And hollowing out does take place. I mean New York in my lifetime has – in terms of industry has hollowed out entirely, and I think that's happening in California. This is a hard place for middle-class people to live. Very, yes. to live. The cost of real estate, I'll give you, you know, this is an extreme example because I'm comparing apples with oranges, Hillsdale, Michigan with Silicon Valley. We have a 3,200 square foot,

100-year-old Victorian in Hillsdale. We are paying for a three-bedroom apartment in Mountain View four times what we are receiving for this house in Hillsdale in rent, four times. On an academic salary, the salary that I make at Hillsdale is not a bad salary. I couldn't possibly live here on that salary. Not on and on. Not and raise four children, right? No, no. It's just absolutely impossible. They'd have to double it maybe even more than that to make it viable.

I am told that Stanford University has trouble holding engineering side of Stanford University, which is the core of the place. But it's created a situation where it's very hard for effect of regulation on innovation and the effect of regulation on what happens to an economy is interesting. So if you look at what happened for the past 30, 40, 50 years of the regulation on the environment, the regulation on the engineered environment, so dams and bridges and roads and buildings and all that stuff, what you come up with is that – where did all that engineering talent go? It went to the virtual world, right? There's no regulation in your virtual world. You can engineer anything virtually. And you can engineer anything in financial engineering. So the virtual finances became much, much more – it's complicated.

And if you were an engineer with an engineering brain, you would go into computer engineering or financial engineering, these complicated derivative products that happen because they were not – that's where you didn't have to file an EPA impact report for that. And so that's where the money was. That's where the opportunity was for you to use those skills of building something there. So I suspect what will happen is that if there ever is this kind of regulatory pressure that people are suggesting will happen from the Republicans, which isn't true, that regulatory pressure will create some other kind of weird, unpredictable outgrowth or consequence where someone – they'll do something else. Right, right. What I worry about is when you mentioned the virtual financial engineering and the like, great. If you can make money at that, if you can hire people, if you can start a business, great. But there's a certain sort of professional diversity that comes when you have in your city a large company that makes things, actual makes physical, tangible things.

I mean when I mentioned New York City, yeah, all those great skyscrapers are filled but filled with what exactly? There was the J.C. Penney's building in Midtown and the J.C. Penney's building was the corporate headquarters until they picked up and moved to Plano. And what is it now? It's a financial instruments distribution place. When you've got a building that's filled with people who are working with how to sell hardware to beds to nightgowns to tires to all the rest of it, that has the effect of bringing to that place the diversity of interests, of cultures, of salaries and all the rest of it and makes the city more interesting. Would you rather work in a city that has a JCPenney's and a Sears downtown or just nothing but banks? And so you get a monoculture in New York when the light industry is driven out, when the middle class is driven out.

Diversity is safety. Diversified economic base is safe. When the financial industry collapses, the city collapses along with it because it doesn't do anything. Well, here's the other thing. You get a top-bottom world. That's what I'm saying in Silicon Valley. That's California.

That's the danger here in my opinion. Yes, it will look more like a Latin country with very rich people who are just fine and make you show documentation that those kids are yours and you do live here and then a huge kind of struggling working class right what's what's and the most offensive thing is that those very rich people are convinced that they're progressive and morally superior right oh i know i mean you know there's a kind of um puritan schoolmarm feel right to attitude towards those benighted people who think that if you raise your state income tax to 13.3 percent, you're going to destroy the middle class. Well, because the – because it's OK to hate the middle class. For the progressive elites, the middle class is the worst. And they've always been.

I mean even Marx knew that. It's always been. The war has always been on the middle class because they're the striver. They're the people who believe that the future will get better for them. They're the people who put aside their – whatever their disappointments are today to sort of build a better future for their children and maybe even for themselves. They're the people who act in their enlightened self-interest. They're the people who believe in the system and who don't really want to change it. They want to actually take advantage of it by playing by the rules.

And so they are the enemies of the progressive state and so they have to be sort of squeezed out. So half of those progressives who glide around in their Teslas in Silicon Valley seeing on the one side unspeakable poverty and the rich people can cosset themselves in their sustainable drought-tolerant gardens and feel good about themselves. Paul, before we let you go, may I give you an assignment? Sure. Mull over the following question and keep us updated on Ricochet and keep me updated personally when we get together

for coffee on your evolving answer to the question. It's something that's been in my mind for all 20 years that I've lived out here. And here's the question or the point of departure is that you said Stanford is struggling as a result of its own success because it's hard for faculty to afford $2 million homes. Indeed it is. But that's not quite true. There's a little bit of – that needs to be put through a filter and the filter is this.

Faculty who are part of the engineering and hard sciences complex do just fine. They can afford to live here because they're consulting. They're doing engineering work. They themselves own patents. Stanford has its own patent office. The faculty who gets squeezed are the people who do what we – well, they're the people like us, Paul. They're the ones who say the Western canon matters, who attempt to impart something of philosophy, of the humanities, of the classics. And to me, this – by the way, the upside of this and there is an upside is that Stanford in my experience is politically a much less crazy place than a lot of colleges and universities precisely because the humanities is the locus

of political ideological leftism at Stanford as other places. But here, that faculty doesn't have the influence it would have other places. Nevertheless, you find yourself confronted with, to me, this heartbreaking squeeze again and again and again. How do you keep the humanities relevant in a society in which the kids look around and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I want to be like that. The engineers, the computer scientists, not like that. The English professor or the professor of classics. How do you keep the tradition, the Western canon, really civilization itself in some way, relevant and alive?

How do you say to kids, no, you're wrong. This matters too. Paul, wait 10 seconds. Then we got to go. I don't know the answer to that question at Stanford. What I need to do is talk with faculty and stumble around and stumble

into students and listen to them. And that will no doubt happen, but it won't start happening until mid-September when the students come back. Right. Well, keep us posted. Tell us if anybody goes to the big slammer for actually committing the felony of putting in the wrong address on that school district thing you talked about at the beginning. Pick up your head bag, go down to the store for some organic kale and –

And yoga. I want to see you in yoga. I want to see you in yoga shorts. Uh-oh. Yeah. I'm not – I will not – you're not leaving the state. You and I are going to go to a yoga class in Palo Alto. I'll find one. Oh my god. All right. All right. Namaste, Paul. OK. Take care. you and I are going to go to a yoga class in Palo Alto I'll find one alright namaste Paul namaste I think that Paul our project should be to send Paul back to Hillsdale

a Californian oh yeah well if he becomes a Californian he won't go back no I think he'll go back but we need to send him back. And I think there should be a little bit of suspicion in the faculty lounge at Hillsdale. Like, what happened? And they should just notice, like, Paul's different.

I don't quite know what's different. He's a little different. Deeply tanned. Deeply tanned, you know. A couple of bracelets. He hugged everybody. That's it. Exactly.

We should just make sure he goes back to him. Exactly. Exactly. Good. Okay. And you have to draw – Paul being Paul, of course, he will take his family on a tour of California. But Paul being Paul, Disneyland will not suffice. You're going to have to figure out what he needs to see in Southern California, Rob,

to understand the place. Just seeing the sights will not do for Paul. He must talk to people and get a feel for the deeper culture. So you figure that out. Will you please? Yeah. You know, it's funny because that's what I love about Paul. The first thing he said was when you asked the question, he goes, I guess I got to talk

to people and listen. Yeah. You don't have to hear that from people. Certainly from an academic. He views himself as roughly in the position of Margaret Mead in Papua New Guinea. Yeah, except at least her subject could read. Wait, did we lose James? He must be getting a cup of coffee.

No, I'm here. He's just sitting quietly. It's the anthropological thing you're talking about, right? The Margaret Mead business. The Orientalism we were discussing before. And when he goes back to Michigan, he's going to have to perhaps make a little circuit around Detroit, which is not advisable these days. There's a

story in Bloomberg today that something like 50,000 feral dogs in Detroit that are forming packs and doing what dogs do naturally, of course, which is attack things and eat and stake out their territory. Great news. And at the same time, we hear that Elmore Leonard has died. Elmore Leonard, of course, was regarded as the Dickens of Detroit back when the city was a going concern. An extraordinary writer, a great writer, a simple writer. Everybody was linking to his nine rules for, I think it's nine rules, for writing

in the New York Times he wrote about 10 years ago. They're pretty basic. Don't have anybody say anything except by saying that they said. And don't modify the said. Be very simple. No adverbs. Don't start with weather,

which a lot of novelists looked at and said, oh, come on. Come on. Can't I? No, you can't. Really dark and stormy night. I can't. I have to extirpate every meteorological thing in my first paragraph. Gosh. But he was of an era that produced... These guys

could just churn it out. The number of novels that these writers of this era were capable of is extraordinary as opposed to those who generally eke out one every two or three years if they can. I'm not talking about the people who have other jobs. I'm talking about the people who are professional writers who manage to

produce something every two to three years. So the tweet yesterday that really got me though was somebody who said that Elmore Leonard has gone to that great crime novel in the sky. And this is from a professional writer as well. And I thought, boy, you learned nothing from Elmore Leonard. Yeah, that's right.

Heaven is a crime novel? Exactly. Completely a complete cliche that makes no sense. That makes no sense whatsoever, but was all they could possibly muster. Well, guys, we'll leave you. There was one, I think, I don't know if it was Emma Lunder, but I remember one writing teacher I heard said

that the only other rule is no character may vomit. Which I thought was good. It's a general rule of thumb. It just never works. Really, I had a character vomit in my last novel. It had to work because normal people, when one of two things happen, one, they see something really horrible, they're going to throw up.

Or two, if they're punched very hard in the stomach, that will happen. There you go. So the Jack Reacher. You sold it then. Well, I tried to do it as a nod to reality. There's something about having a literary equivalent of these knockdown, drag out, they live, Roddy, Roddy, Roddy Piper fights that go on for 15 minutes and these guys should have cracked the knuckle on the first blow. But, Peter, when you head off next into the woods with your children and you get yourself something on Audible to listen to, perhaps a Leonard book might entertain you. And Rob, why don't you pick up the Levant trilogy that I talked about before?

I'll get the Cairo trilogy. We'll talk about trilogies. And we'll talk next time about trilogies. In any case, that's audible.com, folks. Audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet is where you go. And, of course, there's a link. Don't write it down. Don't bother.

There's a link in this very post that will let you get your free 30-day trial and your free book. Gentlemen, you're looking forward to the week or is it winding down? For me, it's the last week of summer. The fair starts. It all goes south from here and fall begins very, very quickly. But you there in your bucolic paradise, I'm sure, have 70s and 80s to look for

as far as the eye can see. Hate you both. So I got to go. No, for me, it's back to work. I mean, I've got to pull myself together. I got to do all this other stuff and you go on for a couple of weeks and everything piles up. So it's back to work.

Well, work on that pile. Peter, same with you. No show next week because it's Labor Day and the rest of it. We'll see you all when fall begins in earnest. School's back. Crisp snap in the air and we're thinking apples and oatmeal and caramel and the rest of it until, of course, winter comes, which will be about 47 hours behind here in Minnesota. Thank you for listening, everybody. We'll see you next time for Ricochet Podcast number 180.

We'll see you soon. Next week. Next week. No, week after next week. Week after next. Bye. Like the legend of the phoenix Or ends with beginnings What keeps the planet spinning

Ah, the force from the beginning. Love. We've come too far to give up who we are. So let's raise the bar and our'll coast to the stars She's up all night to the sun I'm up all night to get some She's up all night for good fun I'm up all night to get lucky

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Ricochet. Join the conversation. The present has no rhythm. Your gift keeps on giving. what is this i'm feeling if you wanna leave i'm with it ah To give up who we are So let's raise the bar And our cause to the stars She's up all night to the sun I'm up all night to get sun

She's up all night for good fun I'm up all night to get lucky We're up all night to the sun We're up all night to get sun We're up all night to get lucky. We're up all night to the sun. We're up all night to get sun. We're up all night for good fun. We're up all night to get lucky. We're up all night to get lucky. We're up all night to get lucky.

We're up all night to get lucky. We're up all night to get lucky. She's up all night to the sun. I'm up all night to get sun. She's up all night for good fun. I'm up all night to get some. She's up all night for good fun. I'm up all night to get lucky.