The Ricochet Podcast - The Mighty Have Fallen

Episode Date: October 13, 2017

It’s been a bad week for Hollywood’s grasp on moral authority. First, Harvey Weinstein is fired for transgressions going back decades, and then some guy from Amazon gets fired for basically the same thing. To help guide us through the moral minefield, we call up New York Times columns extraordinaire Ross Douthat. We also talk Hefner and that pesky 25th Amendment. Then, Christopher Scalia... 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 stupid. I introduced them to Harvey, and he's bigger and grander than anything they offer me. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. I'm James Lileks and our guests today are Ross Douthat of the New York Times and Christopher Scalia to talk about his father. Let's have Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 373.

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And be keen to have him here today because, you know, there's been some things in Hollywood that seem to indicate that those people who preach to us, what consciences they have and what great moral avatars they have when it comes to adjudicating the horrors and sins of the world, mostly different, right? They themselves, I hate to say it, they might be ethically compromised

in general and in specific. What do you think? It is an astonishing story, isn't it? First of all, it's astonishing. We have to give the New York Times credit where credit is due and this time credit is due it was the new york times the process who were willing to go on the record and as we now know this is this appears to have been known about harvey weinstein for decades literally decades at least two decades perhaps longer and nobody's been willing to go on the record a couple of actresses were willing to go on the record that enabled the times to quote people other people who still were not quite willing.

They had a story. They broke the story. And then we find out that Ronan Farrow also, with ties to Hollywood, at least I suppose, at least a kind of general notion of closeness to Hollywood, since his mother was an actress and his father still produces films. He had a story that we now know he was working on for some time, and that appeared in the New Yorker, what, just a few days after the New York Times story. Okay, so my first impression is, wow. My first impression, frankly, to quote a tweet by our own John Podhoretz, Harvey Weinstein was kind of a pig.

But then the story kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And it's a cliche to talk about it this way, but it's a useful cliche in this case. There is a blast radius. Many other people are being injured by this story. So what is it? A story of hypocrisy, of preening, of vanity? How would you describe this, James? And yet we have to be careful not to sound like Puritans here, right? And also not to gloat, right? Well, no. I mean, I think it's entirely possible to condemn somebody who's been forcing himself on a bevy of starlets for a couple of decades and forcing his gross physicality among them, sweating and rutting. You don't have to be a Puritan to say that behavior like that is beyond the pale of what a civilized man does. And as far as beyond politics, well, Seth Meyers came out, I think, yesterday saying that, you know, we need to talk about this, we need to talk about Harvey Weinstein, but we need to talk about Donald Trump too because it's beyond politics, it's about systemic sexism.

Okay, all right, fine, except that when it was about donald trump it was about something very deep in the soul of a conservative supposedly that there is a internalized and externalized misogyny that is in the heart of being on the right and that trump was a perfect example of that never mind he's never really been on the right so uh so we and furthermore i mean it just seems to me just as a kind of objective matter. If you're stacking up one man's behavior against that of another, by far the closer parallel to Harvey Weinstein is not Donald Trump. It is. I'm not give it don't mean to excuse Donald Trump for his behavior. But as far as I can tell, he's been married and he's had affairs outside

marriage and so forth. And he's bragged about that. I find all of that disgusting. But as far as I can tell, you haven't got lots and lots of women over many, many years coming forward and saying he used his position of power to win sexual favors. The close analog is Bill Clinton. And it is obviously so and they just won't go there even now or ted kennedy and harvey weinstein never put a starlet on a drink cart and pushed her into the tub i mean so there's all levels here but it does come to i mean when you say that no we can't talk about politics about this well you can if somebody has constantly held themselves up as representative of an industry that is our moral better, which

Hollywood did not. Hollywood did not used to lecture us. Hollywood used to be walking alongside the culture and saying, aren't we grand, great for America, et cetera. And then, of course, in the 60s, it started to change when they started to look down on the rest of the culture and exalt the anti-hero and the rest of the people. So, yeah. So, I mean, it's the blast radius you mentioned. Blast radiuses, you know, not only hit the person at the rest of the people so yeah so i mean it's it'll the blast radius you mentioned blast radiuses you know not only hit the person at the center of the circle but they affect the innocent beyond the people who seem to be hitting getting hit by this are not innocent people there are people who now others are coming out and saying uh look what they did and that's that's that's what's extraordinary so what's left at the end of this, Peter? As far as I can tell, this and things that preceded this, and I'm talking now about Bill O'Reilly, for example, is having a professional effect.

It is having an effect in actual companies as they are run, as they are constituted. So at Fox News and at 21st Century Fox, the rules about this kind of thing are now very explicit and very strict, and they are serious about it. Here in Silicon Valley, Travis, whose last name begins with a K, but everybody around here just calls him Travis. He's like Steve, Steve Jobs. Travis, the founder of Uber. There is just a kind of general sense that Travis was out of line, that he damaged his company.

Part of it was the way he talked about women, and there were other aspects of it, the way Uber dealt with drivers and so forth, lots of things. But that is just becoming flatly unacceptable. So the question I have is, can you in a completely secular, almost aggressively modern, postmodern ethical framework where you reject Christianity, you reject the strictures of – that before Hugh Hefner came along. Can you work your way back to traditional views of sexual morality? Can they sustain? I just don't know. I just don't know. No, I don't think you can because there are too many people pushing back. all of my meetings in public with lots of other people around, then they're Mike Pensing a woman and they're showing that they're some sort of sexual deviant because they don't want to be alone.

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that uh you actually are doing what people always assume that New York Times columnists are doing. You're sitting in your own... Their own grocery shopping. No, no, no. We thought you were staring out from the great temple behind the glass wall, observing the vast panoply of teeming humanity and coming up with these oracular pronouncements, but you're buying broccoli. Well, that's good to know.

Brussels sprouts, man. Never broccoli. Okay. Has it always been so, or has your newspaper experiences changed over the years? Well, you know, I mean, the Times columnist job, it used to be a kind of sultan-like position where you would sit on a pile of pillows and ottomans and have various eunuchs and boy slaves fan you and of course write your columns for you but you know times are tough in journalism budgets have been cut sacrifices have to be made um so now i buy my own russell sprout it's a tragic countdown um i passed tom friedman on the street he was getting his own coffee for the first time in 20

years you know these are these are dark, but we all must make sacrifices. Oh, but you know, my first day on the job in Washington, D.C. as a newspaper columnist, I was in our lobby of our office and in walks Art Buchwald. And I'm stunned. I get to meet the legend. And so it's like, has he come here to welcome me to the confraternity of scribes? So Art's talking, and he's talking, and he's great, and how are you doing? And finally, Art tells us the reason that he's there is he wants to use the key to the confraternity of scribes. And so Art's talking and he's talking and he's great. How are you doing? And finally,

Art tells us the reason that he's there is he wants to use the key to the restroom, which apparently we shared. Well, so well, the free, the free restroom is also a key perk, you know,

and, and now it's just porta potties everywhere. All right. All right. Enough of this. Enough of this. This is Peter Ross. Harvey Weinstein. If I'm pronouncing that right, Weinstein, here's what you wrote about it.

This might just show that a certain kind of powerful liberal creep only gets his comeuppance when he's weakened or old or in the grave. Why is that? Because he is no longer useful slash terrifying. I mean, I think that figures like Harvey, I can call him Harvey, right, first name basis, figures like Harvey, figures like Bill Clinton, figures like Ted Kennedy especially, they sort of thrive on a mix of, you know, sort of classic power dynamics and this sort of sense that you can effectively buy a certain amount of immunity from liberal and feminist norms by seeming either particularly talented or particularly essential to the cause. And I'm not sure how the balance quite shakes out, which is more important, ultimately, the sort of classic male power or the newfangled buying of indulgences by funding Planned Parenthood.

But both, I think, are present in this particular kind of male pathology. And specific to the liberal side, correct or not? I think the conservative side has, I would say that male pathology manifests itself differently in different contexts. And, you know, I mean, if you look at sort of among religious traditionalists, you're more likely to get this kind of classic sort of dangerous patriarch figure who's telling people that it's, you know, God's plan for him to sleep with all of them and so on. And under liberalism, it's a little bit different because, you know, the male predator can't tell you that it's God's will

because you don't believe in that stuff anymore. But a new model of exploitation and so on sort of comes into being and flourishes, I think. But it also varies in different times and places, too. You know, if you're 1970,

I mean, Weinstein had this line in one point where he sort of bragged about how he'd never had to do what bill cosby did and you know give women quaaludes and so on and it's wow it's true that you know there was there was a sort of period um in the in this in the late 60s and 70s where you know male predation through the drug culture was sort of normalized so let me and i think denormalized one what one more one more on this um tina brown wrote a piece yesterday or the day before in which she can obviously shocked appalled so on so forth harvey weinstein and uh and then she said and and now we're talking about it the conversation has started

Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes of course from Fox News we're talking about everybody she said except the current occupant of the White House, that's an extremely crude paraphrase, so she ended up the piece by pointing at Donald Trump and not once in the piece

did she name Bill Clinton what do you make of that? Well, in her defense, you could say that, you know, Bill Clinton is no longer president and Donald Trump is. But I think it's an example of this kind of distinctive phenomenon where the you know there's there's a particular kind of there's a particular kind of um progressive political figure who is allowed to get away with it although in clinton's case what's interesting is that there is more criticism of him now from the left yes a potential rapist than there was when he was in office i'm give it another i mean i'm interested in this new movie chapa quiddick that's coming right

tell us about that well it's just a dramatization of chapa quiddick right of ted kennedy um you know leaving a girl to drown in a car and effectively sort of doing political spin in a time when she when her life could have been saved and so on. And it's from what I haven't seen the movie, from what I understand from the reviews, it's it's just a straight ahead takedown for the most part of Teddy. And it's the kind of thing that, you you know i think the big question with something like that is is it a sign that liberalism has changed and is more willing to confront these figures or is it just a sign that ted kennedy is gone and so finally it's safe to admit that actually the

republicans were right and chapaquiddick should have disqualified him from future public service and it's it's a little hard for me to tell which is which, but I'm sure it's a combination. I think a lot of it's because he's gone and because all of their icons in the past can now be swept aside in favor of the antiseptic purity of Barack Obama. Well, there is truth to that. And some of that is, you know, the progressive view of history is such that, you know, they don't, because the past is assumed to be benighted, it sort of makes sense that at a certain point you sort of turn on all of your icons because they don't live up to the standards of today. So Woodrow Wilson is a progressive icon until you reach a point where you can admit, okay, actually he was a terrible

racist and all of these other things. And there's, you know, the question is, does that ever happen with FDR, for instance? And I mean, there are sort of, you know, campus activists who are willing to sort of attack FDR for interning the Japanese and various other sins. But there is certainly something in the progressive mind that's comfortable sort of having all its heroes be provisional and have them all be, you know, rejected at a certain point once enlightenment proceeds to a point where you have to just sort of sweep them into the past. Every single one of them except for Che Guevara,

who they will revere until the end of time because he had a great logo. That's sort of its own thing. That's the intersection of progressivism and T-shirt capitalism, which is part of it. Or perhaps Hugh Hefner. You wrote about it. Talking about Weinstein and Kennedy brings to mind Hugh Hefner as well because you wrote a great piece, a rather zesty takedown of the fellow

and what he left. And Harvey is the bad guy, which he was, and yet there were all of these sort of respectful obituaries when he left, even though at the end he's this gaunt guy in a bathrobe walking around a stinking house with a Pez dispenser of Viagra. And what he brought about, his genius, the first guy to marry pretension and onanism. I just wanted to read Ross's first sentence of his farewell to Hugh Hefner. Ross comes out with this. Just the whole world is saying, well, he was a pioneer.

Too bad about the last 20 years, but he liberated women and men. And Ross comes out with this. I'm just reading one sentence. Hugh Hefner, gone to his reward at the age of 91, was a pornographer and chauvinist who got rich on masturbation, consumerism, and the exploitation of women, aged into a leering grotesque in a captain's hat, and died a pack rat in a decaying manse where porn blared during his pathetic orgies. Now, that was a fun sentence to write. Sometimes being a New York Times columnist is fun. It's not all buying your own broccoli. I think Hefner, part of what Hefner, I think, was that people sort of stopped paying attention to him at a certain point.

People, not people in general, although, you know, Playboy circulation fell, too. But people in the elite sort of they remembered the Hefner of 1955 to 1970 who had, you know, the pipe and the suit and the Playboy philosophy and the jazz and the Nietzsche and all these things. And they sort of assumed, okay, this guy was, you know, a pioneer at this point, and then he wasn't feminist enough. And then we sort of forgot about him or treated Playboy as kind of a joke. But I actually watched The Girls Next Door. I believe it was my wife's fault. I mean, I, of course, never watched such a thing. But the reality TV show about Hef and his girlfriends. And I think that sort of where he ended up

is just something that most of the people sort of writing about, writing sort of respectfully about his life and influence and so on, should have spent more time reckoning with. That, you know, if you want to take the man's ideas seriously, you need to look at not just sort of how they influenced the culture and all these things, but where they led the man himself.

And they led him, I mean, I think that first sentence you read is, you know, it was strong stuff, but I tried to capture what you could see of the last 25 years of his life. I mean, this was not, you know, this was the sexual revolution literally ending with this guy popping Viagra and slathering himself with baby oil and all kinds of things that I can't repeat on a family podcast. And that disgustingness in certain ways is the strongest indictment

of at least his part of the sexual revolution that you would need i think but yet we continue to lionize the people involved in every single aspect of the 60s that took apart the pillars of american society they're the heroes they're the ones who stormed the barricades who went into the long march through the institutions with the idea of getting rid of all of the oppressive, shame-based things that were keeping us from our full potential. But say this. We knew who Hugh Hefner was, right?

We knew what his philosophy was. There's no real doubt there. When you look at other people who have ideas as to how they want to do things, you wrote a piece on Steve Bannon, on the Bannon Revolution. And while most people might be able to summon up a picture of him in their head, maybe, do most people get what his revolution is about? What is it about? And is it going to work? I mean, I don't think Bannon himself is quite sure what his revolution is about. I think the big tension with Steve Bannon is that he is, in certain ways, the first figure

in Republican politics since Karl Rove to have a real big-picture vision of the future of the party. I mean, Rove had, you know, it was compassionate conservatism, and then you add in the war on terror, and you win the Hispanic vote through immigration reform, and you have sort of religious conservatism as a basis for the party and it you know ended badly the bush administration ended badly but it was a sort of plausible vision and for a time and bannon has something like that in his sort of populist nationalist material which is i think a big part of the stuff that helped trump get elected that won all those rust Belt states for him, this idea that the Republican Party would be a workers' party, and that it would be, you know, a party that was sort of going to do big infrastructure projects

and all these kinds of things. So there's that aspect of Bannon. But while he was in the White House, Bannon couldn't operationalize any of that. Like, you don't, there's no big infrastructure bill. You know, there's no big infrastructure bill. He would talk a big game about how the Republican Party would become an antitrust party and go after Silicon Valley and so on. But the party as a whole isn't interested in doing that. So now Bannon has left the White House, and now he's trying to build an insurgency. But there's still this question of, do any of the people involved in this insurgency believe in Bannonism? Doesurgency believe in Bannonism?

Does Roy Moore believe in Bannonism? Do any of the candidates he's recruiting believe in it? And to the extent that they don't, then all you're getting from Bannon is this sort of cycle of purges that we've had in the Republican Party for years now, where, you know, I don't think it's possible for Congress to become more gridlocked, but basically if Bannon could actually find leaders, politicians, who embrace his philosophy in a real way, I think he would have something really potent. But he hasn't yet, and Trump has proven too incompetent to implement it, so it may be that he's just sort of continuing this cycle of purges to no actual ideological end. You have been no fan of Donald Trump. But let me ask you this. If on the conservative side, Trump has caused certain prominent figures, Bill Kristol, George Will, Charles Murray, to become never Trumpers, thoroughgoing, never Trumpers.

They want to see the end of this man. And frankly, when you read some of Bill Kristol's tweets, you get the feeling that if Trump says it, whatever it is, it's wrong. Up is up. And Bill would say, no, no, no, he's wrong about that too. Right. Okay. So you've got that. And then on the other hand, you've got, you've got some people, I think Tom Cotton would fit, fit into this. Tom Cotton, young, extremely bright, comes from Arkansas. The point of that is that much of his base really does admire. They're really on board with Donald Trump. And Tom Cotton is operating as though he actually sees ways to use the current moment to get things done, to

flesh out some kind of conservative platform that fits the populist impulse. So where is Ross in all of this? Are you, let's make it work as best we can. I'm the bridge between the generations. All right. I'm the bridge to the 21st century. No, wait.

I mean, I'm a never-Trumper in the sense that I oppose Trump's election, and I still think he's basically unfit for office and isn't competent to be president. But I'm closer to Bannon and Cotton and other figures who see Trumpism as a potentially plausible, if not a plausible future for the party, at least something that has to be integrated into the Republican Party going forward for the Republican Party to make sense. So I'm not where Bill Kristol and some others are in seeing Trump as sort of this terrible ideological betrayal of all that conservatism should stand for. I think that in an ideal world, you would want Trumpian populism with more policy substance, less

incompetence, and less race baiting, and that should be the future of the party. Now, I'm very skeptical that you can get there. You are? I'm skeptical that Cotton or anyone else, just because I feel like, I mean, you know, there are a lot of structural problems in American politics, and there are also sort of structural problems in the Republican Party, where there are also sort of structural problems in the Republican Party where there isn't sort of... The party is just sort of stuck in an ideological cul-de-sac, and it just seems very hard. Like what I was saying before about Bannon, beyond Cotton and maybe Ivanka Trump and J.D.

Vance, if he ever ran for office, I just don't see a large leadership cohort in the party that is ready to do anything interesting with populism. Instead, I see a lot of people who are cynics and opportunists, a lot of people who are cowards, and a lot of people who are sort of stuck with this, it's always 1980, we should always do the same thing attitude. So I just don't see the cadre there to lead this new populism right now. But were there such a populism, I would support it.

And my objections to Trump are much more on the level of, you know, his... Trump himself. Trump himself, yes. I'm frustrated with Trump supporters from the beginning who couldn't see, or I felt couldn't see that even if they agreed with what he wanted to do, he wasn't going to be able to do it. And that remains my baseline, my baseline take. And that he is, you know, I mean, I think what Bob Corker and others talked about, you know, the fear that he can blunder into a nuclear war and so on. Those those are also also concerns that concerns that I continue to have. But as an ideological thing, I think a healthy Republican Party would learn from Trumpism

and integrate parts of it going forward and not just sort of, you know, this idea that you're going to purge it is sort of, it's kind of a fantasy. When, you know, I mean, the fact that sort of a similar populism is present in every other Western conservative party tells you that this is, that there are issues here that have to be addressed. There's a range of opinions, to be sure. I was reading a great tweet thread from somebody who was really up on military advances and describing all kinds of things that are being done behind the scenes that would not have been done under an Obama or Hillary administration. But at the end of it,

he concluded by saying that Donald Trump is the most intelligent and altruistic president that we've ever had. And I think that reasonable people can debate that one. Now, you wrote a column about the 25th Amendment solution for removing Trump because, as some say, that he's just morally, temperamentally and intellectually unfit for the office. But here's an idea. And tell me what you think, that there's actually an advantage to keeping Donald Trump in the presidency, because no matter who fills that space will be regarded with the left by the same with the same amount of hatred. They're not going to like a Mike Pence. They're going to call him just as many names. So if you leave in Trump, who makes the left act foolish, you get a large number of people who think, well, I don't like this Trump fellow, but I don't think he's as bad as these people say. And I don't want to be one

of those people who's losing his mind every time the president says something that Trump's lightning rod and that may benefit the conservative movement. I think that there is, you know, there are political upsides, yes, to having someone who is so hated by the left. But you want that person to also be able to seize part of the center. I mean, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were also both hated by the left, not to the same extent as Trump. But, I mean, Peter, you remember this much better than I, since I was, you know, a four-year-old at the time.

But, you know, Ronald Reagan was hated. And, I mean, one of the things that Trump defenders will say is, oh, you know, they hate Trump just like they hate Reagan. But Reagan was able to win, you know, whatever, what percentage of the vote did he win in 1984? 1984 was 53. Oh, no, 1984, it was well over 50. Well, it was like 58. It was like, it was in the high 50s. It was in the high 50s. Of course, it was 49 states. to actually pass legislation and all these things. I think there's a version of Trump

who could, taking some of this populist stuff, could be a popular president and could sort of isolate the left in their extremism and so on. But as it stands, even if we get two terms with Trump, even if sort of left-wing extremism enables him to barely get reelected, you're not, there's no constructive foundation for policymaking here. At best, you're saying, we need to do this because otherwise, you know, otherwise liberalism will rule. But you can't have a movement founded on anti-liberalism permanently because eventually you'll start losing some elections.

Trump didn't win the popular vote. And yeah, I mean, I just think you need more of a justification for the Trump presidency than just he's exposing the madness of liberals. Also, because conservatives should want liberalism to not be insane. He's like saying, oh, he's driving the other party insane? I mean, the other party's going to run the country some of the time. It might be nice if they weren't completely around the bend. Well, Ross, we thank you for

hanging around the produce department and coming to us. You can now go back to the failing New York Times and we'll talk to you perhaps, or maybe not, if we open up those libel lawsuits. I just hope there's a place for me at Ricochet when Donald Trump finally revokes our license. When the license of the New York Times is revoked. Thank you for joining us today on the podcast.

We'll continue to read you on paper and tweets and all the rest. See you later. Thanks, Ross. Yep. Take care, guys. And, you know, as much as it would be fun to work for the New York Times, every time I go to New York, I think, I love this city. And after about two days, I just want to get out. It's different than others. Like Chicago, I can just spend all kinds of time downtown.

But New York, you walk out of Penn Station, which is a horrible, horrible place. And you start making your way towards the hotel. I went there with my daughter for the first time last summer, and I was really proud of her because she takes to the streets like a New Yorker. She's walking. She's planning out how she's going to get around this person. She's got speed. And one of the reasons that she was able to do so was the four wheels on her suitcase were so well constructed that no matter how she juked left or right, the suitcase went right with her. And it was a suitcase from Away Travel. You're going to want one of these.

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One more time, that's AwayTravel.com slash Ricochet20. Promo code Ricochet20 for $20 off any suitcase. And we thank them for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we bring to the podcast Christopher Scalia. He's Anton and Maureen Scalia's eighth child and the father of two of their 36 grandchildren his new book is Scalia Speaks Reflections on Law Faith and Life Well Lived we welcome into the podcast hello hello how are you guys going hey go ahead James sorry no go go Peter Hampton no Chris it's Peter Peter. I'm an old friend of your big, big brother, Gene, but you and I have never met because you were too little in the old days back when I lived in Washington. So, Chris, sort of I think the first question that a lot of people are going to have about growing up as the son of Mr. Justice Antonin Scalia is this.

Were you in awe of your dad? Was there space at the dinner room table for you to speak up? I mean, he was such a big figure. And as we know, lots of children of famous people just sort of have trouble finding their own space. Was your dad like that? Well, I think I was in awe of him as I got older. When he was first on the court, I understood it was a big deal, but I guess I was more surprised that other people seemed to be in awe of him. were. There were nine of us total. And not that we were often all in the house at the same time, but it was just kind of the size of the family that I think had most of us in awe. And as far as- Chris, I have to interrupt just very briefly. When my wife met your mom, Maureen, my wife said, Mrs. Scalia, I want you to know that I'm the mother of five. And Mrs. Scalia said, well, here's what I would tell you about five children. That's a good start.

Yes. Yeah. I'm afraid to say she's used that on some of us too. So what was it like at the dinner table with your dad? That was great. And that's what I miss most about him since his death. Just dinner table conversation was a lot of fun. And again, it's one of those things that became more fun as I got older and just kind of appreciated the fun of the conversation and the topics and could contribute more, I guess. I mean, but, you know, even when I was younger, he would ask. We were kind of expected to contribute. It's not like there was pressure to, but there were conversations. It wasn't just him opining the entire time.

And we talked about, of course, we talked about politics, but we didn't always have high-minded conversations. Sometimes we were pretty silly and told jokes and things like that. Now, so back to the book. The book is called Scalia Speaks, Reflections on Law, Faith, and the Life Well Lived. And it's by you and Ed Whelan, or edited, excuse me, by you and Ed Whelan. And all the reviews make this interesting point. Some of them say it outright, and some of them sort of say it between the lines. Most speeches by contemporary figures are boring. Your dads are not.

How seriously did he take the writing and giving of speeches? Oh, he took it very seriously. You know, all of his writing involved a lot of what he called time and sweat. And one of the speeches here is called On Writing Well. And he kind of explains how difficult it is or was for him to write, and that includes the speeches. Some of the, you know, like any good speaker, he would, well, as you know, as Reagan did, he would develop a speech over the course of a year. He actually compared that process a little bit to Reagan's The Speech. So he really refined the speeches,

crafted his arguments, and that comes through really clearly here. They're very well written, Right. I just think really impressive writing. And so, again, the subtitle strikes me as very significant. Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived. The speeches are wonderful reading. But moreover, if you read this book, you understand Justice Scalia's position on the Constitution. That's the law. The Life Well Lived, there are essays or speeches in here. I keep saying essays because most, you know, there's much fun as well written essays he talks about turkey hunting he talks about the opera he he discusses things that he enjoys and then the faith part talk to us a little bit about

the faith part because your dad this is it was often said that justice scalia because he was such an ardent ardent as such a faithful cath Catholic, everybody ought to be suspicious of him on the court. How did he understand the relation between his faith and his job as a justice? You just described a really common misconception and misunderstanding. And I think we saw that misconception appear again in Senate judiciary hearings recently, too. Obviously, he took his religious belief very seriously. He was a devout Catholic. But he knew that as a judge, it wasn't his job to impose those Catholic beliefs onto the law.

So if I may read a passage here from a speech called Faith and Judging, which addresses this issue most directly. He said, just as there is no Catholic way to cook a hamburger, so also there is no Catholic way to interpret a text, analyze a historical tradition, or discern the meaning and legitimacy of prior judicial decisions. Except, of course, to do those things honestly and perfectly. And he also gives the example in these speeches of his belief that Roe v. Wade was bad law. It wasn't because he was Catholic he believed that, he explains. It was because there was no legal foundation for what the court imposed in that decision. So his religious belief had nothing to do with it. It was his approach to the Constitution as an originalist that led to that belief. Go ahead, James. Yes, Chris, James Lalix here in Minneapolis, where it's beautiful. And

I'm trying to think of some clicheé to describe how lovely it is here, but of course he would hate clichés because he abhorred them like the plague. Platitudes and Wisdom, one of his speeches that he gave, he talked about, it was a great commencement speech, deconstruction speech, where he talked about all of these ridiculous, follow your star, follow your heart, find your bliss, and took them apart. So isn't this indicative of the man's mind in as much as he didn't frame what he believed by the words that people usually trot out with something, that he thought of the ideas behind the words themselves? That's exactly right. That's one of the things I admire most about him as a writer

and as a thinker. I think it's in kind of in keeping with his personality as a contrarian. You know, he wasn't different just for the sake of being different. He liked to, he thought it was important to challenge people, get them to think about what they were saying and what they believed. So it's true with cliches, trying to get people to realize that, you know, this common phrase is actually empty and, um, or even dangerous. Um, and, and also in many of these speeches he delivered, he's even when he's delivering to audiences, he agreed with, um, he would focus on the 0.1%. They might disagree with him on and focus on that T tease out those differences and challenge them into, into kind of examining

why they believe what they do. Chris, on that point, the foreword here is written by Justice Ginsburg, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who I think would, by general consensus, she's the most liberal justice on the court right now. general consensus she's the most liberal justice on the court right now and it's not a one-off that she wrote this forward for you and for ed wheel and an edit editors of scalia speaks she and your dad were genuinely close friends how did your dad pull that off he as best i can tell he had a lot of friends who were and with whom he didn't disagree merely on technical aspects of the law, but whose entire approach to the Constitution on his own extensive

argument was doing damage to the country. How did he do that? How did he remain friends with Justice Ginsburg? He focused on what they had in common. And in the case with Justice Ginsburg, it was the opera famously. They both enjoyed that and they both had cameo roles in operas too. And it was good food, wine, and they were both very social people. They were both New Yorkers about the same age. I think that helped too. And then their spouses got along very well too. My mother was a great cook and Justice Ginsburg's husband, Marty, was a great cook. So there was that bond as well. They just, they focused on what they shared. And, you know, I don't know how often political or legal conversation came up in social situations, but they, you know, obviously

they got over that and they really enjoyed each other's company. Well, one of the things of disagreeing with somebody that you're close with is that you could have really good conversations where you share dissent and you go hammer and tongs. Sorry, it's a platitude cliche. At each other. And he writes one of the speeches in the book is about dissents and the joys of it where you really don't have to worry about anything else and you can just speak your mind. It tells us, though, however, that if he showed up today at a college campus, a brilliant man like that, they wouldn't let him speak. You know, I've wondered about that. So he spoke when I was a grad student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001, so shortly after Bush v. Gore. He spoke there, and there were some unhappy people, there were some protests, but he didn't really have trouble arriving or getting to the building or anything like that. He spoke at Juilliard in 2005. One of the speeches in this collection is a fantastic speech he delivered there about law and the arts. And he was invited there by the school's president in part because the president knew that dad would be presenting

ideas they wouldn't hear otherwise. And I think that's a perfect reason for a school president to invite somebody. And I don't know if that would, I don't know if that would work now. Well, we suspect Supreme Court justice. We suspect there are other speeches out there yet to be collected and discussed. And so that'll be your speaks reflections on law, faith and life well lived by Christopher Scalia. I should be available on Amazon at this very second right now. So go get it and you'll thank yourself. And we thank you for joining us on the podcast today. And it's my pleasure. Thanks to you and Ed for putting this book together. It's a wonderful book about a man. It's just fun to spend time in your dad's company in this book. But the book is also

of permanent importance. His way of reading the Constitution is of permanent importance. So I commend the book, not just because it's a good read, but because it belongs on every serious – on a shelf in every serious library. Thanks, Chris. Thank you so much, guys. Yes, when his seat had to be filled, you can imagine people looking around and saying, oh, how do we find a magisterial intellect to put into that place? Again, it's not like we can just go online and fill our jobs. Well, actually, you can, though, when you think about it. If there's ZipRecruiter in your future, I'm here to tell you. Unbelievable! From the Supreme Court to, okay, fine, that's one for

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Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash ricochet. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash ricochet. One more time to burn it into your memory, ZipRecruiter.com slash Ricochet. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Ricochet. One more time to burn it into your memory. ZipRecruiter.com slash Ricochet. And our thanks to ZipRecruiter for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Peter, before we go, you know, you hesitate to say there was that tweet because there will be another or there will be more serious news. But there was something about the license yanking, the fairness doctrine, the NBC thing that got a lot of people peeved, because this was something we hadn't heard for a while.

This is indicative of an impulse, of a viewpoint. Is it not? I mean, we can write a lot of this stuff off as just, oh, he's playing for the base, he's riling it up, he's framing the issue, he's getting on the right side of the flag. But going after networks for content led a whole bunch of people to say, well, you know, he's got a point and here's why. And I don't like the idea that the First Amendment is now something that we modify just because, for example, we have restrictions and modifications on the second. I know what I decline to take this seriously. If I thought the president were engaging in a genuine attack on the First Amendment, in particular, if I thought that anybody at the Federal Communications Commission so much as lifted a finger in the direction of questioning anybody's license because of Donald Trump's tweet, I'd be outraged. This is a guy who pops off and I'm sorry, he was just

popping off once again. That's it. Of course we're in favor of freedom of speech, but I'm sorry. You can't work yourself into a state of righteous indignation every time the left thinks that you should. I didn't think the left did.

Actually, some of our own people did. No, I'm sorry. Life is too short and he's not. Life is too short and he's just not serious. Well, then the idea then is the president is trolling everybody and putting out unserious things that. Yes, yes. But I'm saying this halfway because you're a journalist. I'm expecting you to come to come at me, James.

Well, no, I don't think he's serious either. But, I mean, if he could, I don't know. I don't think he gives it – it's a fleeting thought. It's a squirrel. I don't think that he would be focused long enough to be able to do anything about it. But there is an impulse there that says, you know, we've heard a number of of times how can they be allowed to say that well it's it rankles him and believe me we wouldn't be hearing anything about this if there was nothing but unstinting praise from the organs from which he wants respect that's true that's then then he would be a fierce defender of the

first amendment because they're doing their job right they're brilliant people but um you know the idea that the president is just trolling us and saying these things and not intending them to mean anything other than a sort of exhalation of bile is, again, tells you how much we've got a new normal here. Because one would not expect any previous president to just toss stuff out like this and not mean it. I mean, we're used to discounting things like this that if we took them seriously would be serious problems. But they're not serious problems because we know that the president isn't serious. Correct. And there's something about that underlying thing.

Well, it's Donald Trump. He's not serious. He's not something you necessarily want to attach to the president. Even though you can say he's serious about this and about that and about this and about that, I just wish stop the tweeting, slap the thing out of his hand. Folks, that's it.

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who disagree from time to time discuss it in the civil manner that is a delight and unusual on the Internet, shall we say. And my special message, the thing I've been waiting all the time to say,

it's this. I'm James Lilacs, Peter Robinson, thank you very much, and this is the end of the Ricochet's this. I'm James Lilacs. Peter Robinson, thank you very much. And this is the end of the Ricochet Podcast. Next week, James. Do I stress you out? My sweater is on backwards and inside out

And you say, how appropriate I don't dissect everything today I don't mean to pick you apart, you see But I can't mean to pick you apart, you see, but I can't help it. And there I go jumping before the good shit has gone off. Slap me with the splintered ruler. And it would knock me to the floor if I wasn't there already. If only I could hunt the hunter

And all I really want is some patience A way to calm the angry vice And all I really want is deliverance. Do I wear you out? You must wonder why I'm relentless and all strung out. I'm consumed by the chill of solitary. I'm like a Stella. I like to reel it in and then spit it out I'm frustrated by her apathy

And I am frightened by the corrupted ways of this land It's only I who needs the maker And I am fascinated by the spiritual man I'm humble as I'm only dirt, yeah And what I wouldn't give to find a soul mate Someone else to catch this drift And what I wouldn't give To me, not King's head Enough about me

Let's talk about you for a minute Enough about me Let's talk about you for a minute Enough about you Let's talk about life for a while The complex, the crazy action The sound of pretenses falling All around All around Ricochet!

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