The Ricochet Podcast - The Podcast From Hell

Episode Date: April 23, 2015

This week, we take on one of the most debated topics on the site: gay marriage, religious freedom, and what the issues mean for the future of the Republican Party. We do it with two guests from opposite sides of the issue: Rod Dreher is an author (read his new book How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem) columnist, and one of the brightest thinkers in... Source

Hello, everyone. I'm not going to get I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't have any information on that. They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. And what it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylex, and we have Rod Dreher talking about Dante. And we've got Ricochet member Jonathan Gilbert talking about, well, you'll just have to see. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, welcome to the Ricochet podcast. Number 257 if you're making hash marks on the wall of your cell. And we're brought to you by Casper Premium Mattresses. Really, really good mattresses for a fraction of the price delivered to your door. Now, Casper is revolutionizing the mattress industry by cutting the cost of dealing with the retailers and showrooms and all the rest of it and passing the savings directly on to you.

We'll tell you a little bit more later with a personal testimonial about what it's like to spend REM sleep on the Casper. We're also brought to you by Harry's Shave, of course. Overpaying for drugstore razor blades is a really tired, boring habit, and you've got to break it. So make the smart switch to Harry's, and we'll give you a little coupon code later that tells you how you can get five bucks off. Once you start Harry's, you gotta break it. So make the smart switch to Harry's and we'll give you a little coupon code later that tells you how I can get five bucks off.

Once you start Harry's, you'll be hooked. So, you know, sleeping, shaving, we got you covered. But also when it comes to, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Beseeching, to use another word with S in it. We have the idea of trying to get you to, you know, pony up and part with some shekels. And here's your official shekel parter,

Rob Long, to tell you why Ricochet is the next place for your money. Rob? Morning. James, good morning. How are you? Afternoon, evening, whenever people are listening to this podcast. Whenever you're listening.

We will take you as you come. If you're listening to this podcast and you're a member of Ricochet, we are thrilled to have you. Thank you. If you are listening to this podcast and you are not a member of Ricochet, you probably are saying to yourself, I don't think there's a reason for me to join. What's the point? I'm listening to this free podcast. I don't need to join. OK, there's some logic there. I get it. Let me tell you there are three big reasons.

One reason, I'll just be super honest, is that we need you to join to keep doing it. We're in a period right now where we really do need to grow our membership. And if we don't grow it, we're going to stop and we'll just stop. That'll be that. So if you like it, we would love to have you join. The second reason we'd like to have you join is because the community at Ricochet.com is something really worth checking out. If you haven't done that or if you keep putting it off, please do it right now or today. Go to Ricochet.com.

Look around the place. Sign up for the Daily Shot. It's our daily cool email blast that gets you ready for any conversations you might have with the crackpot left wingers in your life. And we know you have some. So the third reason is this. Members get stuff later on this month. Our Reagan members will gather at a dinner table and they will be at the National Review Institute event in Washington, D.C. And they're going to hear me and John Podortitz and Jonah Goldberg do an evening glob podcast together.

And they're going to sort of hobnob. The event at National Review Institute is going to be a lot of fun. It's the Idea Summit this year. It's terrific. And we've gotten our Reagan members in. The Thatcher members and the Reagan members, any Thatcher members in the area, are invited to sort of an after-party cocktail event where we're all going to gather. Probably a lot of people from the conference will be there and that will be fun too. Why only Thatchers and not everyone?

Because the venue is small. However, we could pack that venue with Thatcher members and Reagan members. So if you are a member or you are thinking about joining, check it out. There are a lot of reasons to join. This is a very exciting time in american politics especially to be on our side in american politics and we want you to front row seat and the best place to have that front row seat is at ricochet.com so end beseeching but beseeching was the right word james because we really do need you to join so anyway that's that's grand and we have to ask

peter robinson of course who's also with us in California. Peter, are you going to this event or are you not a member of the inner party? The Reagan event in Washington? I'm not going to that one. I'm not going to that one. That got booked and I got booked. And by the time my people discovered what their people had – no, by the time – I'm not going to it. Well, you'll be out there in California then where I understand you've got probably, what is it, a quarter to a third cup of water rationed per day.

Isn't this exactly the dire things that they were telling us when Earth Day began in 1970? I remember being in grade school and being handed this Bible, which is what it was. It was this first book for the environmental teach-in, to use that absolutely dreadful term of the times. Right. Because you know what it meant. For the ecology. Remember? I'm really involved.

It was ecology, precisely. A movement that had its own flag with the green and white stripes and this strange sort of squashed oval that looked like a toad's eye. Everything about it gave me the creeps. But still Earth Day persists. And so let's ask you guys, clunker of an answer in a row. I spent Earth Day ignoring it, except in as much as I killed two rats. Rob? But did you eat them? Because if you kill them, you really have to eat them. No. I took a picture of them. Rats got under the hood of my car. My car, Rob knows the story. I did not pay much for my car. It's an old car. I got it secondhand, but it is still a very sweet BMW, much beloved of my heart. And what I discovered is that although I paid a song for it and although it is old, repairing the thing, the rates for repairing it are still as if you bought it new and had the dough to – all right. You get the picture. So the rats cost me several hundred bucks getting under my hood,

nibbling this, nibbling that. And so I spent part of Earth Day online and lo and behold, I went off and bought a couple of rat traps at the hardware store. I believe I have discovered the whole. I didn't know. I can tell you now the difference between roof rats and Norway rats. I can, I can tell you all kinds of things, but if there's anybody in the audience, like my wife, they did already heard more than enough,

but I got two of them more to come. I can't compete with that. Here's what I'll say, James. I will say that I didn't do anything for earth day. I do nothing for earth day. I don't celebrate it. And here's why, not because obviously I'm not a committed environmentalist, anything for Earth Day. I do nothing for Earth Day. I don't celebrate it and here's why.

Not because obviously I'm not a committed environmentalist because as you know I am. But because I've already done my part for Earth Day. I received now almost 20 years ago or maybe less. I can't remember. A Writers Guild of America award. I am an award-winning environmental writer because I contributed to a sketch that was in the very first Time Warner Earth Day special. And we were all writing sketches for it. Yeah, somebody said, hey, will you write a – I was on Cheers and we were all going to write a Cheers sketch for it. And so we did and we of course – because

writers give out the Writers Guild Awards and that award show had 77 listed writers. They all voted for themselves and we all got – you all gave ourselves Writers Guild Awards and that award show had 77 listed writers. They all voted for themselves and we all got, you all gave ourselves Writers Guild of America Awards, which for years in my old office at Paramount, I hung the award right above the urinal in the men's room. It's like I was into the office.

Additional trouble. Well, that's interesting. So, yeah, Ron the Environment, Peter the Rat Killer, Ron the Environmental. Nice. You got a nice group here, that's interesting. So, yeah, Ron the environment, Peter the rat killer, Ron the environmentalist. You got a nice group here. That's good. Well, I didn't do much. I sacrificed a graven idol to Gaia. I just, and I, you know, I don't have any, well, I don't have any graven idols around the house. You run out after a while. So I took a Mrs. Butterworth's and slid her throat and poured it out and gibbered some nonsense about the stars in the sky. But speaking of rats and being found in odd places,

we understand that there are actually some defections from the Clinton machine over to this upstart challenger. You honestly think that anybody out there doesn't think that Hillary's going to get it? Do you honestly think that anybody doubts that her ascension is inevitable? I do. And I don't really know much about the inner workings of the Democratic Party,

but I just – I think I know lots and lots and lots of committed and active Democrats, some of whom were Clinton supporters in 2008. And I had a conversation with one of whom on Tuesday, and a very, very well-connected Democrat as well, somebody who knows people who know people, or who actually knows people who are people. And he's saying there's actual noise. There's actual noise for O'Malley.

O'Malley may not get it, but it's going to be hard if he gets in. And there's noise for another. There's another candidate people are talking about who probably won't won't jump in but is all these names are are bad right they're it's bad when people are talking about possible candidates tim kane is what the name he keeps hearing and um you know it's not good for the presumptive nominee she should pay somebody to get in this race is what you should do because she needs first of all she got the money but also she needs someone. She needs – this is not going to be a good process for her.

Peter, what do you – No, go on there. Do you think that she's destined to happen or that her floundering will continue to sort of push her leftwards before the primaries to make her more palatable to the Warren base? I don't even know if there's enough sort of political cognition in her campaign at this point. It's all about to go to the left or to go to the right or even to think in terms of left or right. As best I can tell, the packagers have taken over. The notion is – and there's something to it – that she's been in public life for a quarter of a century. People know or believe they know Hillary Clinton. There's not much the campaign can say that's going to change people's minds about what they think of Hillary Clinton and where she stands on the issues. What the campaign can do is make her more palatable, make her a friendlier, warmer, more livable with presence.

And hence she's being presented as this kind of slightly with it grandmother. But grandmother, somebody who's going to be nurturing and friendly and sit down with you over a cup of coffee in a diner. There's just no political content to that at all. So what was it? We see two or three people now who were Hillary supporters defecting to O'Malley. And the calculation, I think, I'm no Democrat, Lord knows. But the calculation would run something as follows. Precisely because Hillary Clinton has been in office for 25 or I beg your pardon, has been in the public eye for a quarter of a century. And the Clinton machine is just that a machine. Either you already have a place in it.

Right. Or even if she wins, you're not going to be treated to any of the spoils. The campaign has already the structure. Part of it is formally a campaign now, but the structure – people know who will be in the Clinton operation. And if you're a democrat under the age of I don't know what, 50, you're thinking to yourself, this campaign is looking boring. It looks to me as though she may not win. Even if she does win, I'm going to outlast her. And no matter what happens, it doesn't look to me as though I'm going to get any place by associating myself with this campaign. They've already got their next secretary of state and secretary of the treasury picked out if she does win. I may as well cast my hat with the future of the party.

Maybe it will cost me four years or even eight years. I doubt it, but maybe. But still, I'll be around in that much time. So she is just – she is just yesterday's candidate. Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's really shrewd actually the way you put it. I think there probably are a lot of younger people – younger. I mean everyone is younger.

But younger than that operation who are – who don't necessarily – who don't believe what you – when you're a candidate and you're running, you make a lot of promises to your supporters and there's that initial rush of blind and almost cult-like loyalty to the candidate. And everybody knows that she's not going to follow through. Everybody knows that she – the Clintons are not loyal to their people. That's a hard thing to do. What's weird about the Democratic Party as a whole though is that they are awkwardly and not very efficiently or effectively behaving like Republicans.

That's not something they can do, right? They have a frontrunner. That frontrunner is almost presumptive. That frontrunner will be the nominee probably. This is what happens in the Republican Party forever and always. There's a frontrunner. That frontrunner almost always wins the nomination. And the Democratic now primary voters are faced with this weird, I think, compulsion to behave like Republicans. Meanwhile, the Republicans are behaving like Democrats because they have a – we got a bunch of candidates and they're not crackpots and they're all running. And that's – brace yourself for those – the fractious Republican Party coming apart, all that stuff.

And it probably will be a tough primary. You don't get that many talented people running for the prize and not see some fists flying. So it's strange. It's like the two parties have switched their psychological makeup. You know – You watch for 18 months. I had a chat a couple of weeks ago with an old friend, Sal Russo. Sal Russo is – runs a tea party organization.

He lives up in Sacramento. But what you need to know about Sal Russo is that when he was a young man, he went to work for Ronald Reagan and Ronald Reagan's first gubernatorial campaign. And so he has been around Republican politics since the 1960s. And we were talking about Reagan and candidates since Reagan and Jack Kemp and when Jack Kemp, Sal Russo was very close to Jack Kemp. And we talked a little bit about the Dole campaign where of course Jack Kemp was the vice presidential candidate. And Sal said, you know, what I really disliked most about the Dole campaign is that when that candidate gave his concession speech, I looked around the room and nobody had tears in his eyes, meaning nobody had given his heart to that candidate. Likewise, Hillary Clinton.

You just have – the reason I'm talking about it in terms of the calculations democratic politicians are making is because they're making calculations. Nobody has given his heart to this candidate. Nothing like the way people did mistakenly. It was a misplaced enthusiasm, I think we'd argue, after all these years, but the way they certainly gave their hearts to Barack Obama. Nothing like that. No, and it won't be for Hillary either. I mean, I drove past a car the other day coming out of downtown somewhere.

It had a 2002 Obama sticker and a Ready for Hillary bumper sticker as well. And I passed, and it was a young woman. It's a very young woman probably had voted for the first time for Barack Obama and was still in the first flush of all this. Does she love Hillary? No, but she sees her as a reliable guarantee of as much abortion as possible and social justice. And that's all that she needs to know really. Meanwhile, here we got a party where you're looking at a Rubio Fiorino ticket, which would really be exciting and would enable us to point to look to the other people and say, I'm sorry. You're now the old white person party, not the question authority party. We've got the enthusiasm and the disruption going on over here.

So, yeah, it's looking good for us. So we just wait until we completely split ourselves apart. Interesting about disruption. Yes. I just want apart. Interesting about disruption. Yes. I just want to say interesting about disruption. Go on, Rob. What do you mean exactly?

No, no. I just think it's interesting about disruption. It's interesting. It's an interesting topic. Probably leads to other topics too. Oh, no. Now he's actually trying to do your segues. No, I'm not. James, you cannot permit this.

Stamp on this immediately. Actually, what he just did there was the equivalent of Russia announcing that they're selling an anti-missile technology to Russia. I mean it's just sort of preventing way in advance before anything even gets off the ground before they fuel them up and open up the silos. Well, Rob's absolutely right, of course. What he was attempting to do there was to disrupt an announcement of disruption, which is one of those terms that – Well, it's one of those things you roll your eyes and you say everybody's disrupting everything. You know, let's see, you can get a billion dollars in VC capital these days if you just walk up and say, we're going to disrupt the parakeet cuddle bone industry. Well, you know, sometimes it turns out they actually end up doing that.

And that's why Casper, Rob was right. There was, it's making its way towards you, something of a commercial in the segue. Now, you know, a lot of times people will just talk about these things without using it. But I've been scraping my face with Harry's. And I've been laying down. Lying down. Laying down. Lying down.

Oh, help me with this, guys. Lying down. Lying down if you're sleeping. Laying if there are eggs coming out of you. Okay. Well, that hasn't happened so much yet, though. One takes the direct object. Rob will write a little essay on this afterwards. Go ahead.

Let's just use the word sleeping because, you know, if a mattress isn't good, you're not going to be doing any sleeping on it. And Casper, well, who are they? They're an online retailer of premium mattresses that sell for a fraction of the price, period. The mattress industry, you know, has kind of forced you into paying really high markups. You go to a shop. Who wants to go to those places? They've got to pay for the rent. They've got to pay for the lights places? They got to pay for the rent, they got to pay for the lights, they got to pay for the, you know, the guy to sell it to you.

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but when I got this, I said, all of the rooms in the house now, I've got two bedrooms extra for guests, are getting a Casper. Because, you know, if you want to nap in one of these, I don't want to go back to the other kind. I want to stay with the Casper tech. Now, they understand that buying a mattress is online.

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with his wife, Julie, and his three children. And his latest book is How Dante, Dante, however you wish, Can Save Your Life, the life-changing wisdom of history's greatest poem. And, Rod, you know, in the middle of my journey through college, we read The Inferno and never quite got onto Purgatorio. What am I missing? Well, you know, most people only read Inferno in college,

but it's like trying to understand the Exodus story from the Bible if everything stops in Egypt. You miss the wandering of the desert, and you miss going to the Promised Land. Inferno, I always thought, was going to be the kind of thing that would be just medieval horror story, one after the other. In fact, it's a love story. You don't see that until you read, and unless you read, part two and part three, which I did only a year ago.

Hey, Rod, it's Rob Long in Los Angeles. Welcome. Wait, you only read – you finished it a year ago and then you wrote the book. So all right. I read it in college, all three poems, and in that famous – I think the Sinclair edition where there were half of it was – one page was Italian and one page was English. And we were encouraged to look to the other page, oh, well, this is just like today? Yeah. Well, I'm the last person, Rob, that you would ever imagine would read Dante. I read constantly, but I always read nonfiction and have all my life. But when I moved back to my hometown of Louisiana three years ago after my sister died, I think I was on before talking about my book, The Little Way of Ruthie Lemming, I thought it was going to

be a real homecoming. I had been away for all these years on the East Coast, Prodigal Son returns. It didn't work out that way. As it turned out, my sister had harbored a secret grudge against me for leaving home. It's a very Southern thing, you know, like you turn your back on the land and the family and you can't come back. And so I wasn't welcomed back. I fell into a deep depression and physical illness, stress-related physical illness over this. I found myself one day in a bookstore and there was a divine comedy on the shelf. My rheumatologist had said, you've got to find inner peace somewhere. You're not going to survive this. I pulled the divine comedy off. I said, I've always kind of wondered about that,

but it's not really for me. I read the opening lines. In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself in a dark wood where I had lost the straight path. Instantly, I said, that sounds like me. By the time I finished reading the book five months later, I was so spiritually lightened and healed, and I was physically healed too. And I said, I got to tell people what's in this book. I'm not the guy who would have read this. And it was so accessible, and it was so beautiful and so liberating. So do you think it's wasted, that book is wasted on kids in college? Because I just remember just when you said those words, I thought, of course

it makes complete sense. But of course when I read it, I was 19 or 20. I didn't know what it was like to be in a dark place. I didn't know what it was like to be in the middle of my life and think, oh my God, how did I get here? I was in college, they're having fun. The middle of our lives. Right.

Yeah, so how I mean I was in college. They're having fun. The middle of the middle of our lives. It's right. Yeah. So how, how, I mean, how horrible is it that, that, that when you get to be a certain age, you stop reading the great works because you think that you either read them already read them in college or they're too hard to read. Yeah. Well, I, in my case, I had never read them in college or they're too hard to read. Yeah, well, in my case, I had never read them. I managed to get through college, major in philosophy, political science, and Mardi Gras. And so I never got them. I did go to LSU.

All right, so that's the right. Yeah, well, so you can give me a buy right there. But I always thought, you know, as a conservative and as someone who's very culturally oriented, I'm very big on talking about the great books and the importance of the great books. But I was pretty much a hypocrite. I never read them because I don't like fiction that much. But suffering knocked me flat. That's when I could no longer understand why I tried to do all the right things in my life,

and yet I came to this place complete shipwreck. This is exactly what happened to Dante Alighieri, the author of the poem. He was the leading poet of his era. He was a major politician in Florence, but he got on the wrong side of politics. Suddenly he was exiled. He was beggared. They said, if you come back to town, we'll burn you at the stake. He had to figure out what to do with his life after that. And what he did is it brought him back to God, but he also created beautiful art out of that. His exile was the making of him and the making of this poem. And one of the things he taught me to do was how to embrace suffering and how to live in a world that is unjust,

but it's still good. Rod, Peter Robinson here. Good to talk to you again after a long time. Dante is writing in early Renaissance Italy when he can count on the culture's openness. There's always hypocrisy. The culture always fails to live up to its ideals, but the culture is at least open to straightforward Christian understanding and morals. We now come to the present moment when you have written that the political and in a certain sense, official pop culture, I'm paraphrasing you here, you'd put it better than

this, has become quite markedly hostile to Christian culture. This is a long question because there's a lot in you. You've also written about what you called the Benedict option, not Pope Benedict, but Saint Benedict, where the moment came, preceding Dante, the moment came when the culture is falling apart and Christians retreated to monist—they retreated from the wider society to form communities in which they could keep the faith and learning and Christian culture alive. How do you read the present moment? Is the official culture, has it moved permanently against Christians? Are Christians now going to be a minority? And how should Christians respond, by withdrawing or fighting back?

That is precisely the question. I think that we have been in a post-Christian culture for some time now. We are very rapidly moving to an anti-Christian culture. I believe that we have to fight as much as we can, but we have to be realistic about where the battle lies. The culture's gone. We've lost that culture. But the most important thing for us to do right now is to remind ourselves who we are as Christians, tell our own stories, tell them to our children. I've been on a tour of colleges behind my Dante book, and I've been talking to professors. These have been Christian colleges, Catholic and

Protestant, and professors tell me that it's remarkable what they're seeing among their kids. These are kids who came out of Catholic schools and come out of evangelical homes, but they don't know what the faith means. They've been totally catechized by the culture, and the way they were formed in the Christian faith has been by youth pastors and sort of touchy-feely, kumbaya Christianity. That's not real Christianity. When I say we ought to follow the Benedict option, it is so we can preserve within our families and our communities an understanding of what it means to be a real Christian, historically and authoritatively. This is not head-for-the-hills stuff, Peter. I don't think that we're called

to do that. I'm not called to do that. I'm not going to do that. The early church lived in the middle of the cities. They were persecuted, but they knew who they were, and they knew what they had to bear to be faithful to Christ. I think that's what we're going to have to start doing. St. Benedict himself, he didn't set out to save Western civilization from the fall of the Western Roman Empire. He just went to the woods to pray, so he could have a clear mind and to pray. He gathered men around him, and over the centuries, these men formed the Benedictine Order.

They moved throughout Europe. They were open to people. They helped people learn, but they kept themselves separate enough so they would not forget who they were. They developed the practices and the institutions to train the next generations in what it meant to be a true Christian. Hey, Rod, it's Rob Long again. So now we're talking about the culture and today and the current inferno or purgatorio, certainly not Paradiso that we live in. Indiana, Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Is there a way to reconcile – and I think what I'm happy about speaking to you is that you live in Louisiana.

You don't – you're not in one of the coastal elites as they say. You're an actual – you live in an actual American place. Is there a way to – you know what I mean? Is there a way for you to – for us to reconcile bedrock American beliefs in religious freedom and the importance of free religious expression and also civil liberties because that seems to be the problem. And I think that the bad faith arguments on either side are if you are a young gay person not in the coasts, you see a lot of – there's a lot of danger there. If you are a conservative in a big city or watching television or sort of participating in the culture at large like, well, hey, we're victims in – I don't know about St. Francisville, Louisiana, but there are plenty of small towns where young gay people feel at risk. We had our own drag queen in our town. Louisiana is a different case. We can carve Louisiana out.

That's a special state. But those are legitimate fears, and it's also legitimate to be a traditional Christian and look at the culture and think, good lord, what's going on? So is there a way to reconcile that? And we're going to bring on a Ricochet member who may either agree with you or take issue with you, but that seems to be the question, or am I framing it wrong? No, no, no. You're absolutely right. A Georgetown law professor named Kai Feldblum, raised Orthodox Jewish, is a lesbian and a gay activist, really smart woman. She has said in the past that there are irreconcilable differences between gay civil rights and religious freedom. That doesn't mean that we can't work out some negotiation, but the idea that we can perfectly harmonize these two just isn't true, as long as people, there are traditional religious believers in the country. I think what's so scary about this

current moment is the other side, I mean, I'm a traditional Christian, but the other side has no interest in compromise, because to compromise means compromising with evil, with bigotry. And there's no willingness to listen. I wish my side, we had not been just to LGBT people in the past, no doubt about that. But the opposite thing is being, the opposite tack is being taken, where there can be no quarter for traditional religious belief. I'll say the scariest thing to me is to talk to these professors in Christian colleges and hear them talk about what's happening right there in their own faculties, on their own campuses, and these Christian students.

They're afraid simply to identify as a traditional Christian. When you have a professor on a Catholic campus who is afraid to be identified publicly as a believer in what the Catholic Church teaches about sexuality and homosexuality, you know you're in deep trouble. And I think that one thing Christians and conservatives may forget is that, or may not realize, is the battle lines here are not clean between left and right. They're going right down the middle of institutions and churches and communities and even families. I'm not interested in fighting. I'd like to live in peace. I think that the Utah Compromise is the best we can have right now, which provides serious LGBT civil rights protections, but also serious religious liberty protections. But I think a lot of people, like in my home state of Louisiana, they don't understand how weak the position of religious liberty advocates is nationwide, certainly not in the courts.

And the people who are winning, the pro-LGBT side and other states, they don't see any reason to compromise with evil. Well, civility and compromise is what Ricochet is all about, which is why we're going to bring on Jonathan Gilbert. He's been a member since 2010 and describes himself as, quote, a creative writer, political reader, living in L.A. and doing his best to defy the stereotype that all homosexuals are left-wing whack jobs. He lives in Los Angeles,

California, and we welcome him to the podcast. Jonathan, we know that That all homosexuals are left-wing whack jobs. He lives in Los Angeles, California. And we welcome him to the podcast. Jonathan, we know that for a while there you quit Ricochet. Have you re-upped just for the pleasure of arguing civilly with our guest Rod? I have re-upped mostly to keep the door open to it. I'm a little bit tired of arguing the issue. I am definitely right there with Rod on this. I would love to just live in peace.

But every once in a while, I'll see something that I just sort of have to dive into. And so that's – the door is still open. Well, I'm going to ask you this. Hugh Hewitt on his show has been asking every single candidate the question, would you attend a gay wedding? Do you think this is a fair litmus test for candidates or do you think that Hugh is just sort of getting it out there so that it's asked and answered and we can all move on to issues like how many ships the Navy should have and whether or not Erica survived in 50 years of her life? Right. I certainly – I think there's more important things facing us, but it's a presidential election. We have 15, 16 months to go.

So absolutely, I think it's a fair question. It's a question that is important to go. So absolutely, I think it's a fair question. It's a question that is important to me. Now, I don't think there are gay people who are going to invite Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum to their weddings in the first place, but I do think it's important. I think that we are looking at a situation where there is never going to be an America, again, where a president can hold the extreme view that some on the far right do about same-sex marriage. That's never going to happen again. And so we need to get this out there. We need to talk about it.

We need to find nuanced ways to have different opinions. So Jonathan, let me just break it up. What is – maybe this is the heart of the conflict. And Rod, please jump in. What is the extreme position on gay marriage that no president can have? I think what the younger generation and certainly what a lot of gay voters are looking for is someone who says, you know what? Maybe I don't personally support it, but I believe that under law, everyone has to be treated equally. My religious views say that it is not an acceptable position, but my religious views don't determine the laws of this country. That's an important distinction. Just to be specific, John. So if I'm a candidate and I say, listen, marriage is defined – has been defined for a thousand years as the union between man and woman.

If gay people want to have civil unions, that's fine and the states can define those civil unions as much as they want, however they want. And we also – I also don't believe in any discrimination against homosexuals and I'm in favor of anti-discrimination laws. Is that enough? Rod, that seems to be the position that most people, not most people take, but that most of the people now in trouble by sort of the general culture seem to take. Is that, am I mischaracterizing? Well, yeah, because the question is not, do you support same-sex marriage, but would you personally go to a gay wedding? And I think that is an impossible question to answer. And I think it's an inappropriate question because one can

believe in gay marriage and gay civil rights, but personally feel that he or she could not, as a matter of conscience, witness, go to a gay wedding. But what this does, to frame the question that way, not what do you believe should be the standard, but what would you personally do, that is a form of criminalizing or stigmatizing dissent. And I think that's really wrong. I mean, that's asking too much of people. If you're going to make a decision of a candidate based on what he or she would personally do, Let's say that it was turned around, you know, and a conservative asked a Republican candidate, would you go to a gay wedding?

If that candidate said, yeah, I'd do it, so what does that matter to me? You know, what matters to me is what he or she believes ought to be in the law, not what they personally believe. And I think the fact that the question is framed that way shows how far the left has gone, the debate has gone into criminalizing thought, not just policy but thought. Jonathan, do you buy that? No, I don't. I think that it's not just a random gay wedding you're being invited to here.

I'm putting it in context. I'm saying I think that Marco Rubio's answer – Just a random gift. Just a random one. Hey, just off the street. No, I think that Marco Rubio's answer was the best one because it displayed a level of empathy that I think has been missing in this debate. If someone you know and love invites you to their wedding and you choose not to go because you're opposed to same-sex marriage, if this is someone you know and love, then I'm sorry. You're not someone I want in the White House. You're a loathsome human being if that's who you're going to treat someone you care about.

Jonathan, my answer would be – You're a loathsome human being. So is Pope Francis a loathsome human being? I think Pope Francis would go. I don't believe for a second that he wouldn't go. I think Mitt Romney would go. We know Mark Rubio would go. I think most of our guys would go.

Anyone who wouldn't – I don't see people espousing that view who I think are electable. My view was better – my response was better than any of them. Was it? Yes. No one on the podcast is surprised, James. Because I was brutally honest. When asked if I would attend a gay wedding of somebody, a relative, my question was, well, is my wife making me go? Because there's not a man on earth who really wants to go to a wedding.

I suppose that's valid. So any guy who manufactures enthusiasm for going to a wedding, oh, gosh, yes, I'd go to a wedding. I think they're selling me a bill of goods. The pope is probably the only guy I think would genuinely be pleased. I think the pope would be happy to go to anyone's wedding. Honestly, I think he'd have a great time. Rod and – Can I just drop – just one more question?

Oh, sure. Go ahead. I feel like I want to leave politics for a minute because how you make your – how you decide who to vote for is a very complicated thing and everyone has shifting litmus tests they they apply every week i just want to talk about the personal issue because what it seemed to me uh jonathan rod let me know if this makes if this seems wrong to you is that when i when i talk about this issue with people who are uh in favor of gay marriage and i'm one of those people that's often it comes down to questions of empathy, which is the word you just used, which is that it's not really about – it's slightly disingenuous. It's not really about rights and civil rights and being treated equally.

It's trying to use the law to accomplish something that for a lot of people is never going to be accomplished, which is I want you to like me. I want you to not think I'm a bad person and that I'm going to burn in hell. And, Rod, what do you say to that? I mean obviously we can all agree in sort of this cool, calm, collected podcast that that's never going to happen. You can't legislate people's morality. You can't legislate their beliefs. You can't pass a law to force people to say, oh, OK, that's fine.

Marriage is between two men, two women. It's just – that's fine. But, Rod, so what do you say when you hear – and I hear this all the time. When the issue gets stripped bare and it's really about why can't you just be cool with this? It's who I am. Why do you have to, why do you have to, uh, I don't know what the word would be, but, but not, not only not accepted, but deep down kind of not like me at all. Well, that's,

I think it's a false premise for a question because I have lots of gay friends. Well, not for the first time in the world. Yeah. My oldest friend in the world is gay. I love it. I only like him. I love him. I don't necessarily agree with everything he chooses to do, and he doesn't agree with what I choose to do, but we love each other. That bond of love is stronger than our differences. And I have gay friends who think I'm crazy for being a traditional Christian, but they love me anyway. And look, I live in a small southern town where everybody has to get along. There are people who believe loathsome things, people who think I believe loathsome things. But you know what? We all kind of live together. And as long as we can tolerate each other and respect each other, even if we disagree, that makes society work.

It's when we start anathematizing people, gay and conservative Christians. That's when we lay the groundwork for a real civil strike, and I think that's where we're getting to in this country. Rod and Jonathan Peter are here. Rod, you mentioned, I'm not sure whether Jonathan was on the line at that point, but you mentioned the Utah Compromise. I was. I heard that. Oh, you did? Okay. Rod, can you sum up as briefly as possible what the Utah Compromise is? And we know that you've already said it's acceptable, so you sum it up, and then I'd like to hear Jonathan comment on whether he thinks that would be a workable compromise elsewhere.

Well, very, very briefly, the Utah Compromise was something hammered out in the Utah legislature. They brought the Mormon Church, which is very powerful in Utah, as we know, to the table, and they brought the Human Rights Campaign and other LGBT groups to the table. Nobody got everything they wanted. Everybody got something they could live with. The LGBT groups got serious civil rights protections, housing and employment discrimination for LGBTs, and the religious side got religious liberty protections that are stronger than anywhere else. But they worked together, and they were willing to compromise.

It didn't become an all-or-nothing holy war. It became something practical that lets us live together. And included a right to gay marriage? I don't know. No, I believe Utah is still dealing with the courts on that one. That issue hasn't really been resolved there yet. So the Utah compromise – We're going there.

The Supreme Court is going to declare that state close to post very soon. Hey, Rod, and Jonathan, you grew up in Indiana, right? I did, yeah. And sort of the southern part of the state, I'm guessing? The northern part, but in Indiana that doesn't make much of a difference. Okay. And so is it a small town or a big town? The second largest city in Indiana, which thinks it's a city, but it's still a pretty small town. Rod, do you – and last time I was in Indiana, which was a while ago, it is a religious place.

Yeah. And so is Utah. So Rod, do you think that Utah's experience, all those – it's basically the seat of the LDS church worldwide. Do you think that they're – that because their culture seems to be less secularized that it helped them get to this compromise? I mean in a weird way, is it the fact that we basically tossed religion out as something that we and very powerful there in a way that no other church is in any other state in the Union. And I think that the LGBT groups are very practical about it, and they would rather have piecemeal advancement to provide actual civil rights protections for gays and lesbians in Utah than win the complete ideological battle. And I think that, you know, I would rather see that in my own state of Louisiana. I don't want to see religious conservatives, and I'm a religious conservative, run over completely

the LGBT folks. They deserve more than they have now. And at the same time, I don't think that they're giving us that. That will give us in time the same consideration. The tea in there is interesting. The next political campaign is going to be about making sure that Hillary Clinton is elected so that she can prevent the ascension of ideas like Hillary Clinton herself had a few years ago. In other words, the traditional marriage is the bedrock of society. And a lot of people out there are watching, you know, have seen the cultural landscape change swiftly beneath their feet and are coming around gradually, perhaps maybe accepting the notion that, all right, perhaps they're in those places.

There's going to be gay marriage. We're going to have to live with it. We'll go on. We'll adapt, adopt, improve, et cetera. But there's also something back there. And, Jonathan, I'm going to put you in the position of answering for all homosexuals. There's also the idea there that the T element of this, that the next thing to come is the redefinition of gender because all of a sudden it's no longer about,

I mean, it's no longer about men and men and women and women. There's this apparently inexhaustible profusion of identities put to, and that somehow that the transgender the trans community is is itself as as numerically numerically important as the gay and bisexual and lesbian community and that we now have to get past the idea of actual gender in order for us to be decent people unless we believe that gender is somehow a social construct or a choice and give everybody a third neutral bathroom. We're going to be just as evil as we were when we thought that marriage should be between

a man and a woman. And that's why a lot of people perhaps are saying, wait a minute, halt, stop. Let me catch up. It's moving. It's moving very fast. It's moving faster even than I can fully process. Rod and I have talked about this a lot. I'm process. Rob and I have talked about this a lot. I don't quite know that the T should be quite as comfortably associated with the gay community as

it is. At the end of the day, mostly what I think when I think about all of that is I'm really glad I don't have to deal with that. I'm really grateful that that is not a problem in my life that I have to personally confront. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to feel as if you are in the wrong body. And I support anyone doing anything they can to make themselves comfortable and happy and functional as long as they're not hurting anyone else. The reason I think that it's probably mostly associated with us, with the gay community, is because there's a sense of legitimate harm that I don't think Christians in America, by and large, are facing. I think Christians in Nigeria absolutely are being persecuted. I think Christians in the Middle East are absolutely facing legitimate harm. I lived in Indiana for

20 years. I was fired for being gay in Indiana. I still could be, despite the fix that they just passed. Now, that's legitimate harm. I have gone through my life with the occasional threat of violence for being gay. Christians in America don't have that. There is no legitimate persecution happening to Christians in America on the same scale that there has been to people who are gay, people who are transgender for decades. Christians are not being beaten in the streets.

I heard Rod with a copy with a interjection there. Rod, you want to finish us up here and conclude? I do. Jonathan needs to talk to some of the professors I'm talking to, people in law firms, people who are afraid of what happened to Brenda Knight that's going to happen to them. My newspaper, when I lived in Dallas, had to get off-duty Dallas police officers to stand guard in front of my house for three days after a gay reader began assaulting our house, my house. That, thank God, is rare right now. But I think in this, and it was absolutely wrong when it happened to gays and lesbians. It is wrong. You get no question from me about that. But I think to demonize the other in this country, as it's quickly happening to Christians, is going to start resulting in more and more violence against Christians.

I definitely don't want us to demonize Christians. And I absolutely agree that I do see that happening in certain circles. But I don't think it's the majority. I don't want us to demonize Christians, and I absolutely agree that I do see that happening in certain circles. But I don't think it's the majority. I don't think that – the law in Indiana came about to solve a problem that didn't even exist. I think that the situation in New Mexico with the gay couple suing the photographer, I really think that is the exception. I think that's the extreme. Nobody wants to do those things. I don't want to force a Catholic church to host my wedding.

I have no desire to do that. I think that if there is persecution that Christians are facing, I think it is incredibly rare. And it is nothing compared to what the LGBT community has faced for decades because the law was murky, the law was unclear, and sometimes the law was absolutely against us. One thing I would just like to touch on though briefly, though, is the Utah situation. I completely agree with Rod. I think Utah handled it very well. I think that's exactly what we should aim for. I don't think that religion has an enormous place in crafting law and in crafting policy in the United States of America. I don't think that's a conservative position.

But the Mormon church has approached this with empathy and compassion that I don't think a lot of other Christians have yet, and that's probably why it worked. We're going to come to the table. We will work with you if you give us an opening to do so, but if it's just constant attacks, there's never going to be a discussion. Well, we've settled the issue for good. Well, that was, but Rod said the issue for good, Dan. is burdened and discriminated against and faces true threats, it's going to be hard to get to a Utah compromise. Don't you think, Rod? Well, yeah, because when the whole battle is construed as a battle of good versus evil

and as it was in the deep south with civil rights, and that's the model that we have in our imagination today, it makes compromise impossible because who wants to compromise with Bull Connor? So, Rod, who do you like on the Republican side for 2016? Whoever's nominated, and I'm shocked. Good. No, listen, because I have not voted Republican. I voted third party in the last two elections. I quit my Republican registration. I'm a conservative who's an independent. But Indiana scared the hell out of me, and I'm so afraid. I don't trust the Republicans to do the right thing consistently, but I definitely trust Hillary Clinton to do the wrong thing on religious liberty. And so they got my vote, whether – even through gritted teeth, they're going to get

my vote. Okay, Jonathan? John Kasich at the moment absolutely has my attention. Really? Yeah, I think he has demonstrated a level of appreciation for the discourse, for the nuances of this situation and many others that nobody else is showing. I really think that he could actually win more gay voters than Romney, more than McCain, more than Bush. I think he could get an enormous amount of support from people who don't completely agree with him. And for a swift talker, he has a very unguarded personality too.

He really does. Yeah. And that's, that's, that's, that's one of the things I like about him. He's got a smart and agile mind and it doesn't seem to be a manufactured series of talking points that he's ticking off as he goes through the checklist of what he's supposed to say. He's fun, and it would be nice to have a fun president again. Wouldn't it just, though? Fun, energetic, joie de vivre, American spirit. Somebody you want to talk to. And forward we go.

Well, we enjoyed talking to you both, and it's been a great conversation. Like I said, we've solved the issue now, so the comments and ricochet will simply be, nice job, guys. We needn't address that one again. Or perhaps we will, and when nice job, guys. We need him to dress that one again. Or perhaps we will. And when we do, we know who to talk to. Rod, of course, don't forget, folks, don't betray him because that's the worst thing you can possibly imagine. Buy his book, How Dante Can Save Your Life, the life-changing wisdom of history's greatest poem.

And, of course, Jonathan, we'll see you at Ricochet, I hope. And perhaps at a meetup someday. And we'll raise a glass and clink. And thank you for coming on the show today, gentlemen. Thanks, guys. Bye bye. Thank you. Thank you. You know, the reason that I asked the question, the T quest, the transgendering thing does pop up in the honest places. He was talking about Rod was talking about Bull Connor. You know, you almost wait for the news. We cover. We are all Bull Connor now because at some point your inner Bull Connor comes out.

In the most unlikely places, you find yourself accused of the most unusual things. Imagine, gentlemen, if you'd gone back five, ten years and said, you know what? If you let women in the ROTC and you put them in positions of power over men, they're going to force men to walk around in high heels. That's what women in the military would do. You would be regarded as an utter stooge, an idiot, and a complete throwback. And yet, the news we have this week, we have just that. We have some ROTC guys who were made to walk around in red high heels to support a campus sexual violence awareness initiative. Tottering around in high heels.

And the photographs on the web are just mortifying. And you look at these and you think, yeah, that's how you get recruitment up. That's how you get morale up. We're cutting back on a number of ships. We're letting our submarine fleet go fallow. But we've got these guys knowing how to walk in high heels in full camo. That's a great idea because the next step is to have them do it in the summertime, of course, when they will say, I can't go out there. I mean, look at how hairy my shins are.

And then they're going to have to learn how to shave around the kneecap, which is tough, and behind the knee, which is tough as well. How long did this take? This is brilliant. And I don't know if these guys have talked to any women. And I don't know if any women have talked to the guys, but Mary, maybe Harry's is the way to get that leg hair off get yourself as smooth and silky as possible Nobel Prize for segues for that one well well it's true and you know we really should have some women talk in the comments about whether or not they've stolen their husband's razor and seen how it works in those uh those sensitive areas because it's a great razor. Why wouldn't it be? Why would it not be?

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That's H-A-R-R-Y-S.com and enter the coupon code RICOSHAY at checkout for $5 off and start shaving smarter today. Well, gentlemen, on the way out here, let's see. Before we go on the way out, can we just say that we had a very high level kind of civil conversation between two people who disagree on a big topic but basically don't disagree on a lot of other things. I mean, Rod is a very, very – I mean,at is a really, really smart and accomplished writer. Exactly. Thank you.

It should be said. That guy can sling pros. He can move the letters around the thing and do great stuff. That book, I cannot wait to get that book and I will get it this afternoon. But we also had a member here and I think they had a good conversation. That is sort of the heart of Ricochet right there. They didn't – I don't think they left the podcast agreeing but I don't think they left the podcast feeling they had been unfairly represented or unfairly debated, which I think is a victory. Or am I a Pollyanna?

It was a very interesting conversation with goodwill on both sides and that is not nothing yeah i don't think they agreed trouble to come i'm i i'm my my take is sort of rod's take this is well no actually they both think things are moving and rod thinks christians are in for trouble and my tendency is to agree with him. And let's put it this way. If you made those two a legislature of two, you'd have a deadlocked legislature. I still don't think they'd be able to enact the laws that both of them would agree on. But it was fascinating. The problem is what people who are not – Also – I'm sorry, James. Mr. RCB Long did a beautiful job, a very deft set of questions, warmth, generosity but also with a tricky subject and guests, both of whom needed to be handled just so. Nicely done.

Well, thank you, Peter. Didn't you and I both wake up this morning and think, oh, we've got to do this again? Yeah. I did. I mean, is there a point at which America just says, oh, come on, no more. This is fatigue. Let's just give it all,

put it all on ice for 12 months and come back. Yeah, America is tired of the issue, but like I said, the tea issue is coming next is galloping very quickly i didn't want to break in into our conversation and i know we i know we have to go but i just want to say that i had a conversation with a conservative female about this issue and we started talking about i said you know crazy things like now they're going to legislate that they're all bathrooms now have to be unisex.

And she said, well, I'm in favor of that. I'm like, what? And she said what I think a lot of women think, which is like I am tired of seeing the fast-moving line go into the men's room and the slow-moving line into the ladies' room. And we've all had that experience. We men have the HOV lane. Yeah, exactly. And she's like, nope, I she's like nope i want a law i want a law so we all are in line together which uh i thought was at least honest that she wants a coercive completely unconstitutional law but at least um at least we we drilled down enough to find what the true uh motivation there was that's interesting

uh and good for her to be honest about wanting to use the levers of the power of states to eradicate gender a little bit more so that she can experience the manifest sanitary joys of a men's men's room. There you go. That's a great thing. Especially the airport. Well, that's what it will be eventually because they're not going to say to somebody, you've got to build a separate gender-neutral one because when that happens then, a gas station in the kinderlands of North Dakota would just simply say, well, then we don't have any bathrooms. Sorry. happening, that you can't – it's not a matter of law, state – but it's – the college camp, the college administrations across the country, not everywhere, but I'd be willing to bet that you will be able to go to your – back to your old dorm at Yale, Rob, and discover that there are now transgender restrooms or what is it?

Gender-neutral bathrooms. At the risk of making – of now the re-aging coming it's coming it's already tear well i mean look it's it's at the risk now of of of inspiring the worst possible photoshops for ej hill for this let's just i don't know how quay how to surrender but it does feel a little like the unlearned lessons from the Americans with Disabilities Act where everything had to have a ramp and there was a lot of money being put on things. And even now, even now, I have been known to go into the handicapped stall. If you go to a crowded bathroom, an airport or something, there's always a handicapped stall. And people are kind of – look at it like it's got to be reserved forever you know no one could ever use it and i you know

go in there and use it and then every now and then i come out and say hey that's a handicapped stall i'm like well there were there's nobody in a wheelchair here and i i know i know i'm violating the federal americans with disabilities act i'm sure but i don't know i have no way nowhere to go for this this sentence except it does seem seem like that is an unlearned lesson. I wish we had learned. ADN was signed by George H.W. Bush. Correct. And it's basically a piece of nonsense.

What starts out as a civil and decent accommodation to make sure that people are treated equally ends up diminishing the opportunities and experiences for all because you just simply can't afford to provide it anymore. That's why, excuse me, some news, some, you know, small motels can't afford to have the big device that lowers people in wheelchairs into the water. And so they just, they just, they take out the pool and you have to have that, right? Right. Right. And so nobody gets to swim anymore because they can't afford to do this. And when you argue against that, somebody says, well, don't you believe that the people who are disabled should be able to swim? And you say, yes, I do. But,

but if I was in, you know, if, if I was had a spinal cord injury and was in a wheelchair and somebody put it to me that it was either, I have the option of being able to swim in a pool on the, you know, the one or two times that I actually might do so in the course of a year. If that meant denying that opportunity to X number of people 100 percent of the time, I mean at some point I think I'd say, yeah, don't bother. You know what? I'll just – I'll sit here and watch. Don't splash me. But that's what I say with my legs intact.

Go ahead. Well, no, I just want to say that to me, the most infuriating example that I came across, and of course things have only gotten worse in all the years since. In the year 2000, I interviewed then Mayor Rudy Giuliani in his office in City Hall, and I had some questions about what he intended to do with the city of New York. And Rudy Giuliani got off on the ADA Act, Americans with Disabilities Act. And then he stood up and he walked across the room and picked up a fat report and slapped it down in front of me. And it was the report from federal bureaucrats who had gone through Yankee Stadium and marked up and it actually included a violation because there was no disabled ramp into the dugout. And Rudy Giuliani said, you can do a lot of things from a wheelchair, including, as Franklin

Roosevelt proved, be president of the United States, but you cannot make the lineup of the New York Yankees. He threw that thing down at me. God bless Rudy. I still miss him. And things have only gotten crazier since. Sorry, Rob. Over to you.

Do you remember that? This is years ago. I might be misremembering it, but it was a nightline, Ted Koppel, and there was a blind sailor, a young blind sailor who was sailing across around the world. Right. A young, blind sailor who was sailing across around the world. And they had on – he had on as a guest, Ted Koppel, the sailor, and also the – at the time, most famous yachtsman sailor in the world, William F. Buckley Jr. And Buckley, I think, had maybe come from dinner and had maybe had a glass of wine and was in no mood to sort of weasel word this. So the guy gives you this inspiring story how he's going to sail across the world and Ted Gulley said,

Mr. Buckley, you're a famous yachtsman. What do you think? And Buckley, sail across the world if you work. It's dangerous. And the outrage from the sailor, how people have been saying that to me for years and years and years. And Buckley said essentially what Mayor Giuliani said,

which is you can do many things, but you can't sail solo and be blind it just can't happen um and yeah i mean i think it was you know what was exactly what no one was expecting and um off topic but a bill story well anyway what you're saying the guy the guy went off and did it anyway and then and had to return i mean he had a return i don't think he actually got past the Gulfstream before he had to turn back. I was in the studio the day Bill shot his last episode of Firing Line after 33 years and Ted Koppel, they struck the firing light set and set up a couple of different lights and Ted Koppel joined Bill on the little stage where they shot the show to do an interview.

It was going to go live, not live, it was going to go on fire on Koppel's show that evening that Buckley had just shot his last episode of, and they chatted about this, that, and the other. And then Ted Koppel said, Mr. Buckley, we have 90 seconds left. What would you like to say to sum up? Would you care to say something to sum up your 33 years of firing line? And Bill looked at him and said, uh, no. Over to you, James, as it was over to Ted Koppel at that moment. Well, if Buckley isn't going to sum up 33 years at the request of somebody else, I'm not going to sum up 65 minutes of podcasts at Peter's request. I'm simply going to dump everything and get out of here. I'm going to tell you what you already know, though. We're

brought to you by Harry's Shave. And you had to go there. You use the coupon code Ricochet. We're brought to you by Casper. This is not some guy who was just reading copy. I slept on the bed. The bed is marvelous. I'm getting another. What more do you need? And you'll get 50 bucks off your shipping, too, if you go to Casper.com. Also, you should subscribe to The Daily Shot. You will find all sorts of amusements dropped in your email box every single morning. And you should really visit the Ricochet store. There's all kinds of swag there. And while you're at it, join, subscribe, and see all the wonderful things.

It's not only just talking about the images or the ideas we talked about today, but, you know, Troy Sinek will weigh in and say, hmm, is there an overrated movie anybody would like to talk about? And 200 comments later, I'm arguing with some of your Citizen Kane and Metropolis, which is just great. We're off next week because of the NRA event. I'm not going anywhere. Peter's not

going anywhere, but Rob swatted off to Gotham, so what are we going to do? Actually, not Gotham. No, it's in D.C., and you can be a proud participant if you pony up to the Thatcher level. Is it the Thatcher level or the Coolidge or the Reagan level? Reagan level is to have the dinner for the podcast and Thatcher level to come to the party afterwards. But if you – but we're also like – I think we're also giving a ticket away.

So get into that. Well, folks, if you don't go, rest assured that Rob will tell us all about it, including all the behind-the-scenes stuff that rarely makes it elsewhere. All that little insider gossip that we bring to you live from D.C., the most exciting place in the world. I will see you in the comments, which I believe after this will be the most exciting place in the world on the internet at Ricochet 2.0. See you later, guys. See you – well, not next week. Week after next. Rob. See you in two weeks.

You and I may have dreaded recording this. It's done. You did a beautiful job. Thank you. But I can tell you that I live to see what E.J. Hill does. Oh, I know. It's going to be horrible. My intro for this is going to be,

Welcome to the Ricochet Podcast with Rod, Peter, and Long. It's the gayest ever. All right, folks. All right. Two weeks, fellas, and Long. It's the gayest ever. Alright, two weeks, fellas. Alright, see you later. Things have come to a pretty pass. Our romance is growing flat. For you like this

and the other. While I go for this and that. Goodness knows what the end will be Oh, I don't know where I'm at It looks as if we two will never be one Something must be done You say either I say. You say either. I say either.

You say neither. And I say neither. Either, either, neither, neither. Let's call the whole thing off. Yes, you like potato. And I like potato. You like tomato. I like tomato, and I like tomato. Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let's call the whole thing off. But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part. Oh, we know we need each other, so we better call the calling off. Oh, let's call the whole thing off. You say laughter and I say laughter. You say after and I say after. Laughter, laughter, after, after. Let's call the whole thing off. You like vanilla and I like vanilla.

You sarsaparilla and I sarsaparilla. Vanilla, vanilla, chocolate, strawberry. Let's call the whole thing off. But oh, if we call the whole thing off. But oh, if we call the whole thing off. Join the conversation. And oh, if we have a part, then that might break my heart. So if you go for oysters and I go for oysters, I'll order oysters and cancel the

oysters for we know we need each other so we better call the calling off let's call the whole thing off yes you say either and you say either

you say neither and you say either. You say neither. And you say neither. Either. Either. And either. And neither. Let's call the whole thing off. You like potato.

And you like potato. You like tomato. And you like potato.