The Ricochet Podcast - Twist and Shout

Episode Date: February 7, 2014

This week, Lileks on sports (really!), moderates on Ricochet, Michael Barone on ObamaCare and Christie, Nathan Harden on Phillip Seymour Hoffman and his book “Sex and God at Yale”. Also, a shout-out to Don and Mendel and to some guys who first appeared on TV 50 years ago today. Read Michael Barone’s WSJ op-ed How ObamaCare Misreads America. And visit The College Fix, edited by Nathan Harden. Source

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Terms and conditions apply. Permanent TSB PLC. Trading as PTSB is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Coming down in 3, 2, 1. Activate program. More than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. Well, I'm not a crook. I'll never tell a lie.

But I am not a bully. I'm the king of the world! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lalex and our guests today are Michael Barone and Nathan Harden. I want you to protect yourself at all times and obey my instructions, right? Let's get ready to podcast! There you go again.

Hey, welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast. If you're numbering it at home and hash marks in the wall, it's number 202. And it's brought to you by foodiedirect.com. They're back. Yes, the curated regional gourmet and artisanal food marketplace featuring America's most iconic foods. Now, you can think the best BBQ from Texas and Memphis, New England seafood, Maine lobster, Philly cheesecake, Buffalo wings, the best granola in America, all this stuff. Yes, that's right. Virginia's Red Truck Bakery Granola.

Michigan Berry Pie, Southern Layer Cakes. Am I going on too long? It's impossible because all you want to do is go to foodiedirect.com and look at what they have and you'll want some. We'll tell you a little bit more about that in a second and tell you what we've sampled and what you might like too. But also we're brought to you by Encounter Books. And this week's pick is Fred Siegel's The Revolt Against the Masses, How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class. Now for 15% off that or any title, use the coupon code RICOSHAY at the checkout.

And we welcome now and bring in to the fracas Peter and Rob. And guys, I was up until 2 o'clock in the morning watching boxing, so you take it from here. Wow, boxing. I would not have picked you as a fan of the sweet science. It's the only sport I actually watch anymore. It's the only one I can stand. It's all sport reduced down to its most basic essence, isn't it?

All sport is about guys hitting each other in the head, essentially, either literally or figuratively. Every boxing fan I know says the opposite. They say, not the opposite of that. They say that's the one sport they can no longer watch because it's just so mismanaged and horribly arranged and terribly refereed. Well, there's that. It's just been horrible.

It's just completely corrupt now. Well, there's that. But I was watching something that was put together by Don King Enterprises, so you know. He knows quality. Absolutely. I forgot. I take it back.

So do you have to subscribe to a special channel on cable to get that? I don't think I've ever even come across boxing inadvertently doing channel surfing on my system. No, as a matter of fact. I'm sure it's there somewhere. I'm sure there's an all-boxing with 24 hour pummeling uh but i we got a little show time thrown in when we upgraded our direct tv and so i'm desperate to find things to actually justify having three months of this i always get the three months of free movies and then i have to remember to get rid of them otherwise it hangs on like an impacted wisdom tooth for years.

That is the business model of premium cable. That's premium cable's big problem. Not that we get to talk about the TV business here, but premium cable now operates on the health club model, which is like, well, I don't want to get rid of it because what if I really want to decide to watch

something there? What premium cable like Showtime and HBO, what they really do is they advertise their shows more than they care if you watch their shows. They want you to talk about it more than that. You think, oh, well, if I get rid of HBO, then I won't watch the show that I'm not watching now anyway. But what if I decide I do want to watch it? So I may as well keep it. I figured life was too short to pay anything for Bill Maher, and so I canceled HBO and told

them so, knowing that all of the quality products that HBO puts out would be available on crisp, clean Blu-ray down the road, and I don't care, and I can wait. I want a la carte pricing, but here's a question. Ricochet member Team America asked whether or not Ricochet should be more welcome to moderates. How about

if you guys figure out an a la carte model where people sign in and they can get the moderate Ricochet stream only or the – We already have. We have, Rob, already. Well, I mean do you think – I mean this is sort of a larger question, right, about the movement as it moves forward. I'm not sure that – I think on any given day … Oh, here we go. People feel like they're not being – their side is not being represented, right? I mean Peter and I every now and then will exchange emails and say – we'll suddenly look at the first three pages or the first three – whatever it was, pages.

Scroll down the first three areas of the site and say, are we missing social conservatives? Are we missing economic conservatives? Are we missing – and it's something are we missing? And you never get everybody, and I think everybody always feels from time to time that they're not being heard or they're not being welcomed or whatever it is. I can say as the moderate that people feel like the moderates need to be – need to shut up and people feel the social conservatives need to shut up and I don't know. I mean look, the reality is that we live in a regional – we live in a gigantic country in which regional elections are going to really define the pattern for what happens to the country and some regions are more moderate than other regions. So that's just the way it's going to really define the pattern for what happens to the country. And some regions are more moderate than other regions. So that's just the way it's going to be.

Well, there you go again. Moderation in defense of moderation is sort of not really kind of a vice. But here – I mean what we have is a political landscape. We'll ask Michael Broner in a few moments about this. That seems to be shifting and changing many of their feet. Every week we get something new where we see more and more of honest, good old fashioned progressivism coming right out and saying what it really is meant all along. And the latest, of course, is this wonderful spin on Obamacare that it's going to free people from the tyranny, the tyranny of work.

Yeah. Well, nobody buys that. Nobody's really buying that. They're not actually – they are scrambling pathetically to try to make that case, and everybody knows it. Even they know that. I mean this is pretty much a good thing, that two and a half million people will be – will no longer be in the workforce in the future. I mean everybody knows that's just the sad, pathetic, dwindling geriatric attempt to make this failed presidency, this failed president, and this pathetic idea of Obamacare seemed like it's working. Most people, even people who aren't total partisans know this is a huge, huge, huge mistake. I mean put it this way.

The analogy here is that Wendy Davis is now running in Texas after her horrendously horrible past two weeks as a pro-gun – as a pro-gun concealed carry Democrat for governor. That's just – that's exactly what's going to have to happen to the Democrats, right? Because they know this Obamacare is such a disaster. People in November will be running against it. And so I mean that's the best possible thing that could happen to us. Unless they say that all abortions shall be committed by using a firearm, that they'll lose the right. Peter, what do you think of this whole you don't have to work anymore spin? It's a wonderful thing.

Just like Europe, you'll be able to go to the garage and write a poem or a novel or paint something. Oh, I'm with Rob. Nobody can read that with a straight face who isn't a member of the editorial page staff of the New York Times. I guess what I'm struck by is does anybody – Paul Krugman who used to be the Nobel Prize winning Paul Krugman. Paul Krugman is now a kind of Rumpelstiltskin character, furious that things aren't working out his way and stamping angrily.

You just wait for him to sort of stamp his way out of sight, right? The New York Times is now deep into – if it weren't so boring, the editorials in the New York Times, they'd be hilarious. The president of the United States delivered a State of the Union address which even his own side said was very – the way they put it was, well, he's looking for modest things that he can do. He's trying. But it's – there's nothing there. It's penny ante. And so the energy – this is a huge moment in my opinion for our side. The other side is just empty, beginning to fracture. Harry

Reid has already defied the president on a fast track for trade. The president of the United States is irrelevant, close to irrelevant. You never want to say that about a chief executive. But in terms of setting direction and policy and energy and vision, he's done. He's on the defensive. Obamacare doesn't work. The only question is how much of it he can protect, how much of a spin he's able to do over the next – between now and November in the midterms. It's just done.

They're done. What's interesting is there were two things happening really. The strange thing about the Obama administration is that they keep forgetting that stuff in They're just done. They're done. What's interesting is there were two things happening really. The strange thing about the Obama administration is that they keep forgetting that stuff in politics never goes away fully. They just decide like children really that because no one is reporting on it now, it's gone away. Whereas every real professional in politics knows that things don't really go away. They're just sleeping for now. So when Obama gives this – what I thought was frankly a very softball interview with Bill O'Reilly before the Super Bowl and says there's not a smidgen of corruption in these IRS scandals, not a smidgen. I mean that is almost a cue for there to be more information about the IRS scandals to suggest that there's a smidgen. That's like a sitcomals that's like a sitcom that's like a sitcom setup even if you were writing the script you'd say uh five more minutes on that transition you know we actually

the phrase we say is i don't know you can smell that coming the audience then turns to the door on stage and says well you know lenny like where you know laverde and shirley you know where are we going to find two idiots to do this and then then Lenny and Squeaky come in. Hello. That's exactly what that is. And of course it happened this morning. It's going to keep happening. He's queuing more evidence to appear. So rather than be smart and say, well, we're looking at it. It's being investigated.

I'm not going to pass any judgment. Instead of that, the moron says not a smidgen. So now he's challenged everybody to find a smidgen. They're going to find it. Of course they're going to find it. The second thing that's happened is we are now in this wonderful moment where the rest of America, the rest of the right in America or the other side, the non-democrats in America are seeing light at the end of the tunnel and are seeing this great issue appear. A big government, government overreach, the collapse of Obamacare. Obamacare equals Putin's Sochi Olympics, the toilets right next to each other, everything upside down, all that. Beautiful. I never thought of that.

And all of our leaders in Washington are obsessed with immigration. Right. That's what they want to talk about. And everybody in America. Speaking of cues, let that linger in the air until we get Michael Barone on. Exactly. Well, it's just remarkable, though, Rob, to hear you say this. The extent to which you will go to ignore the Chris Christie scandal.

It just stuns me. It just stuns me. Peter, before, was mentioning Tom Friedman and his Rumpelstiltskinism, grabbing his ankles and splitting himself in twain. When you look at the recent story, the newsroom people are a little unhappy with the existence of Friedman as well. They're saying that their editorial page is just a

boring, predictable slab of print that everybody knows what's going to happen. And it's dull. And you look at the New York Times and you say, what are people so unhappy about? I know what they're unhappy about. It's because their pizza is horrible. Because pizza in New York is the worst. However, the lox that they have in the bagels, they die for. And if you would like some of those, and you do.

I mean, we're talking paper thin lox here. That's why you go to foodiedirect.com. What is it? You know. It's a curated online marketplace of America's most iconic regional restaurants and artisan food producers. It's an acclaimed destination for foodies. It's been featured on the Today Show, the Wall Street Journal, and has been called, justly, one of the best food sites on the web by The Daily Meal. Not The Daily Mail.

The Daily Meal. All right. So what it is essentially is a mouthwatering, wonderful food that you grew up with, whether it be Texas barbecue or jumbo lump Maryland crab cakes or the aforementioned deluxe or, or it's the stuff you don't know about and you'd like to test. So you can go to the menu and look at various regional cuisines. You've never seen like the best granola in America, the best barbecue in Texas, or you can do what I did. Uh. You can get just cheese. I ordered this package of cheese for grilled cheese sandwiches because I have a 13-year-old daughter. And we made the most extraordinary grilled cheese sandwiches you could imagine. So good, so cheesy, so delicious. It was

a Fontina, by the way, that I usually have an argument with my daughter about whether or not ketchup should be put on it. It's a mark of barbarism to some. To me, it's an essential part of the grilled cheese. It spoke for itself. This cheese did. And everything else I got from foodiedirect.com. Oh, I can't wait for the next order. So let's ask you guys. What did you order briefly and what did you think and what should people get?

Over the holidays, I have three teenage sons. We got Pat LaFreda's burgers and hot dogs. And the boys grilled them. And I am not making this up. Andrew Robinson, 17 years old and the world's foremost hamburger critic, said, Dad, those hot dogs are delicious. And those hamburgers are, I quote him exactly, the best hamburgers I've ever had in my life. Pat Lafreda, we got the burgers and the hot dog combo, and the boys grilled it and loved it.

Rob? I'm with the cioppino, got to say. I'm still with the cioppino. Still with the cioppino. Cioppino is fantastic, fantastic. It comes in a giant pail. It's delicious. It's really, really, really good.

It's just what you want. It's especially – I mean, especially when the temperature gets kind of chilly over here in Los Angeles down to 50. It's great. It's great. And, you know, it's just – and there's new stuff all the time, which I like. They keep adding to it. So you kind of feel like you're – you can kind of surf it and see something new. So we got the seafood.

We got the beef for dessert. Hey, toss in some award-winning salted caramels from Droga Chocolates in L.A. And I expect Rob will give us a report on Droga someday. They've got to be right down the street, right? Everything in L.A. is right down the street. That's right down the street. Just 20 minutes away. And you've got steaks that no less than Robert Parker himself has called the only 100-point steaks.

You'll join him at the – you'll have a goose tutorial overload of the sort we just can't describe. So go there. Just go there. Here's what you do. 20% off your first order with the coupon code Ricochet. That's for you, Ricochet listeners. For us, Ricochet people, go to foodiedirect.com slash Ricochet. Coupon code Ricochet.

20% off. Feast well. You're welcome. And now we have to move to one of the more august voices of the political world, somebody who, well, let's just try him here. 1904, Minot, North Dakota, state representative, three terms, was. Was. Yes, we're going was. Was. Yes.

We're going to let Michael go on. That's when Theodore, the year Theodore Roosevelt got the highest percentage of the vote after for president since the war. Oh, man. Yes, of course, folks. Yes, it's Michael Barone. Welcome back to the podcast, sir. Hey, good to be with you. Hey, Michael.

Peter here. Peter Robinson here. Your piece in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week said – now, you may have to correct my interpretation, but it said fundamentally, whereas Scandinavians are good people and so socialism works, Obama care won't work in this country because Americans aren't good enough. Now, correct me, Michael. That's not what you said at all. I didn't use the word good. this country because Americans aren't good enough. No, correct me, Michael. That's not what you said at all. I didn't use the word good. I was addressing the argument that's been made for many years by many liberal policymakers that if a welfare state policy can work in Scandinavia, it can work here.

And I made the point that Scandinavian countries have populations that are ethnically homogeneous. They have high levels of trust and conscientiousness. You know, they don't walk when the sign says don't walk, even if there's no traffic. We've got a heterogeneous population. We have a population that, as Charles Murray proved in his book, 2012 book, Coming Apart, The State of White America, 1960 to 2010, in which the bottom 30% of whites, bottom in terms of education, income, are increasingly socially disconnected,

disengaged, often heedless of incentives and nudges. They're behaving differently. They tend not to vote and keep up with public policy debates. They tend not to belong to voluntary organizations. They've got high rates of single parenthood and divorce, low rates of marriage, a big change in 50 years. And I think that my argument in the Wall Street Journal piece was that the targeted beneficiary population is behaving in ways that are different than the Obamacare architects, liberal policymakers, and some conservative policymakers expected. Policymakers tend to come from the part of the population that is connected, engaged, conscientious. They've been assuming that other people would behave as they did.

It seems like they're not. And so George Wallace was right when he said those pointy-headed bureaucrats in Washington don't know everything. I'm being provocative by paraphrasing George Wallace. Yeah, I don't know if I would use that cephalic simile there, I'm not aware that they necessarily have pointy heads. But premise number one, I mean it is – so premise – you go through in your Wall Street Journal piece, which everyone should read. In fact, we'll post a link to it on Ricochet. But you go through several basic premises, absolutely fundamental premises which were considered by the Obama administration and let's be slightly partisan here by the democrats who enacted Obamacare, went through congress without a single republican vote. These premises were considered self-evident, axiomatic. And one is that if you make health care affordable, and of course for poor people, they'll sign up for it. Health insurance.

I beg your pardon, health insurance. They'll sign up for it. And the uninsured are not signing up. Everybody wants to be insured. the initial data, and this administration is not too eager to process or publicize adverse data, but initial data suggests that the large majority of people who are signing up for these policies are previously insured, and in some cases, obviously, have had their insurance ruled out of bounds by the Obamacare mandates. And people are not signing up. And I think one feature is that the Obamacare mandates require insurance policies to cover not only the things that insurance of other types,

fire insurance, home insurance, car insurance, tends to cover catastrophic, unlikely events that impose very expensive costs. But it's also, in effect, prepayment for routine medical care expenses. And it would appear that the uninsured population, which, of course, tends to be concentrated in that lower 30% of the population, aren't interested in prepaying for routine medical care. You know, they don't prepay their credit cards. Almost none of us do. But they're not interested in doing that, and that that proposition is simply not attractive to them. Michael, I know Rob wants to ask about immigration in a moment, but last question about health care. and that that proposition is simply not attractive to them.

Michael, I know Rob wants to ask about immigration in a moment, but last question about health care and the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. Between now and Election Day, I don't know quite how to phrase this. Are Republicans going to screw this up is essentially the question I have in mind. Will this issue be powerful enough? Will Republicans be deft enough in using it to win big in November? Or will the Democrats regroup? We should never underestimate the ability of Republican politicians to mess things up for themselves and sometimes for other people. You know, I think if you just tried to grade candidates by candidate quality over the years,

Democrats have tended to have higher candidate quality in terms of political instincts and so forth. And, you know, it makes a certain amount of sense. Smart people that are interested in politics tend to believe in big government and to be Democrats. Smart people that tend to believe in small government, market economics, go into the market sector of the economy and don't run for office very often. And as a result, I think, sure, they can mess this up. But I think we're looking they can, they can mess this up, but I think that, I think we're looking at something very fundamental here.

Uh, you know, health insurance, healthcare, um, this affects almost everybody. Uh, we've got the president now on the defensive, his promise that, uh, repeatedly made that you could keep your health insurance. You could keep your doctor and Obamacare has out to be false, and voters appreciate and understand that. That lessens his credibility and that of his party all up and down the line, and I think it's a very basic and fundamental issue. I noticed some of the liberal political analysts are saying, well, Republicans are going to be very unpopular because their poll numbers tanked.

They didn't tank, but they did drop during that two-week government shutdown. I hear other liberal commentators say, well, we'll make the minimum wage a top issue. Sixty-eight percent of people say that we should raise the minimum age. With all due respect, I don't think the government shutdown, which didn't really affect too many people except those World War II veterans who were prevented from going to the outdoor World War II memorial, or the minimum wage, are not central issues in people's lives. They're not central areas where government impinges on them. I think that Obamacare is. And I think it also cast doubt on the viability of the whole big government enterprise. The promise of Obamacare is we're going to create a complicated big government solution and you'll be better off. The results do not seem to justify that.

And I think that's a big problem for the Democratic Party, and one that even the ability of Republicans to mess up winnable races may not be able to rescue the Democrats. Yes, the discrediting of the large government idea is a wonderful thing to behold. Michael, I love your point about why the Scandinavian analogy doesn't necessarily work here. Well, it's basically, if you look at, you know, Robert Putnam, who wrote Bowling Alone, who has written extensively on social connectedness and has lamented the decline in social connectedness, points out that the states with the highest social connectedness are North Dakota and Minnesota.

Most people in North Dakota and Minnesota are of Scandinavian or German descent. I think that's not an accident. Right. Policies that work in Scandinavia could work in Minnesota. They just have problems in 48 or 49 of the other states. Just the other places. But they don't. That's just it, is that if there's any place this ought to have worked

with the social capital that we have in Minnesota, it would be it. But it hasn't. And MNSURE, our program to mirror the wonderful government experiment of Obamacare, is a technical and logistical failure. So even Minnesotans who ought to be able to have done this correctly, we've fumbled the ball. Rob, you had something else. Hey, Michael, it's Rob Long in LA. How are you? Well, I'm good.

So I've got a question. We all agree that Obamacare and sort of big government, and it's a wonderful sort of perfect analogy, crystalline analogy for the center right to run in the midterms against the Democrats. So why are they talking about immigration in Washington right now? Well, I think they're talking about immigration because many Republicans, including some in the leadership of the House, believe that it's a long-term problem for the Republican Party. We've got an increasing Hispanic population. We've got an 11 million population of illegals, 80% of whom are Hispanics. The total, by the way, is down from the peak of 12 million. Some people have been engaging in what Mitt Romney infelicitously called self-deportation.

And we've had no net migration from Mexico since 2007. And I think they see a political imperative there. There's a policy argument for addressing this issue, which is it's really not a good idea to have 11 million illegal people in this country. And I think there's another policy argument, and I haven't seen the Republicans make this enough. Some of them made it to some extent, which is that we really should switch our immigration policy from a policy that prioritizes low-skilled immigrants through the extended family reunification provisions

to one that prioritizes high-skilled immigrants. Our Anglosphere cousins in Canada and Australia have immigration systems that prioritize immigrants. They have a higher percentage of immigrants in their population and they've got higher PISA scores. Their students do better. I had a Canadian diplomat tell me, please do not adopt our immigration system. We want those high skilled people in Vancouver and Calgary and Toronto. Right. So why – but you know what I'm saying. It always seems like our – the leaders in DC are talking about amnesty at a time – and I agree with you that it is a serious problem, and I'm probably much more squishy on this issue than a lot of people. But we have a very simple, very clean argument to make between now and November

about big government and Obama. Why are we making it so complicated? Bill Kristol, of all humane people, as you know, Michael, just a few days ago came out with a statement saying if anything could mess up the prospects for Republicans

doing well in November, it's a fight over immigration now. Don't bring it to the floor in the House. Is he right? Well, I'm not at all sure Bill is right on that point. I had in the past backed a sort of comprehensive, unquote, immigration approach that was tried and failed in 2006 and 2007 in the Congress. It wasn't, Speaker Hastert wouldn't allow a vote on it in 2006 after it passed the Senate,

and then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid screwed up the bill in the Senate in 2007 when it could have passed the Democratic House. I take a somewhat different view on it at this point because I've been disappointed by upward mobility from low statistics from low-skill immigrants, and I think we really do need more high-skill immigrants. So I am critical of the positions of both those who oppose legalization as if amnesty and the specifics that people who back, for example, the bill passed by

the Senate. I find myself in kind of a contrary crabby position on this. So, you know, I think that it's going to be difficult for Republicans or Democrats to obscure the impact of Obamacare. I can't predict how the rollout is going to continue to proceed. I did not dare predict that it would go as badly as it has gone so far. And I'm inclined to think that it's not going to improve a lot. But I think that that issue has power to overwhelm even an internecine fight over immigration among Republicans. Go ahead, James. I heard Rob taking an important breath there. I don't want to step in. No, no. I think Rob taking an important breath there. I don't want to step in. No, no.

I think we're asking the same question. Maybe I'm going to poach what you said. Michael, in the history of American politics going back, let's say, 200 years, has any politician ever recovered from being booed at the Super Bowl? Chris Christie, of course. Where's he by? Well, you know, my first reform to the Super Bowl would be to prohibit the use of Roman numerals to characterize the Super Bowl. We should save those for monarchs and popes. And movies. And people who name their sons after their fathers.

You know, so I'm against that. Secondly, I would prohibit the televising of the Super Bowl. If you want to see the game, get some tickets. That's un-American. Well, my third thing is that I would prohibit skyboxes at stadiums with severe penalties for anybody who entered them, because my observation has been that people in skyboxes are much more interested in assessing the quality of the canapes and the designer clothes that rich women are wearing than they are in the actual athletic spectacle. So it would strike me down as a curmudgeon on this.

Look, politicians get booed at sports events all the time. That's a common American trait. It's sort of, you know, it's a way for people cloaked in the anonymity of the mass audience to go at figures of occupying high public office. So I don't place a lot of significance in that. I'm afraid I missed it because I never watched the Super Bowl. We've gone from Chris Christie, how will his second presidential term play out, to Chris Christie absolutely dead politically in the water. Do you think that there's life left in his national role,

or should he just retire to New Jersey, be quiet, and lick the wounds for a year, and let it all blow over? Well, he is governor of New Jersey. He's dealing with the Democratic legislature, which he has gotten some considerable cooperation from, in particular from Democrats like Senate President Stephen Sweeney, who have private sector union backgrounds and don't see why their private sector union member taxpayers should have to support a lavish lifestyle for public sector union members and public sector union bosses. So, you know, I mean, you know, it is an issue of national importance. How many lanes are open for the Fort Lee entrance to the, uh, to the, uh, George Washington Bridge?

I've, I've been in GW Bridge traffic jams. Look, I, I know what it's like. Um, but I think that, uh, you know, presidential candidates, especially Republican presidential candidates, can expect a lot of scrutiny, or Republicans in particular can expect critical scrutiny. We're watching that play out now. Thank you so much, as ever, for joining us in the podcast. And come the next time there's anything like an election, we'll be sure to talk to you before and after. There are elections all the time, so I'm always delighted to talk with you.

Thanks, Michael. Thank you, Michael. Absolutely. Okay, take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. James, you're just going to have to figure out a slightly more obscure political trivia question to stump Michael.

I know. It's extraordinary. That one was not good enough even though – No. It was pretty obscure. You had – you were about – it was maybe 85 percent there. You're just going to have to find something more obscure. I do come up with something that is unbelievably, tendentiously tiny and has to do with some small little detail somewhere off in the hinterland decades and decades ago.

I'll go direct to Michael. And speaking of direct foodie, direct.com is where you want to go to get incredible food for, well, how to put this for a meal that maybe you wouldn't have every single day that we'd have when you have your friends over. Isn't that a delightful thing about America is not just taking your rude meals in solitary and private in a cafeteria somewhere but inviting all of your friends. It's such a middle class thing to do.

Nicely done. The problem is, however, is that – I don't think I didn't notice that. The definition of middle class is changing and changing constantly. And there are so many people who find themselves aspiring to it but wondering whether or not they're going to be able to get there in the first place. And the existence of the middle class, the thriving of it is essential to American democracy. Now, who would be against that? Well, as it turns out, liberalism has undermined the middle class. And Fred Siegel has written a book about it. It's called revolt against the masses

and that was a double internal segue rob that you were stepping on there so that wasn't just a single give me a break no it was just a single no it was exactly that it was a head fake oh i but i was fake because i thought you had you had kind of gone into foodie directed and suddenly thought oh great wait we did that one it's encounter now and then you segue to encounter that's what i was trying to do was doing something really bold and dull and blunt by saying we'll go direct to michael and speaking of direct and people would say that was really grinding the gears but then within it subtly internally shift to the encounter spot it was too it was too brilliant for me. I thought – instead, I thought you were in a brilliant kind of old-time broadcasting way kind of turning around after noticing that, oh my god, I'm reading the wrong copy.

No, no. It was a head fake. It was like boxing. When you get the guy in there and you're working on the body, OK, and he doesn't expect what's going to come is the left hand. I don't know. That was me. I don't know.

Go ahead. Sorry. The segues have now reached the level of complexity of those high dives during the Olympics that are so – the one and a half triple gainer backflip that you just have to see them over again in slow motion in order to understand the brilliance. So I'm wondering if we could just carve these out, put them up on Ricochet, and play them very slowly. You know, slow-mo is one of those things that people today have and take for granted and they didn't have back in the teens and the 20s, for example. Exactly right. Somebody went off the board. On review. That was it. There was no review.

So, I mean, life happened then and there was no going back for the replay. And maybe sometimes you get to see a movie of it six months later in the theater. It's a different time. However, the ideas of those era we're still living with today. In other words, when you go back to the teens and the 20s, the conceptions of progressivism exist to this day. We think it's Obama, but no. Unbelievable.

That was breathtaking. Keep going. Keep going. So what we think of as liberalism, the top and bottom coalition that we now contemporarily associate with Obama, began in the wake of World War I in the disillusionment with American society. And I'm reading off the prices, obviously. In the 1920s, the first thinkers to call themselves liberals adopted a hostility to bourgeois life that had long characterized European intellectuals of both the left and the right,

sitting around the Seine in Paris smoking odiferous cigarettes and sneering at everyone. The aim of liberals' founders, Herbert Crowley Randolph, born H.G. Wells, ever heard him speak? High, thin, teeny little voice. Sinclair Lewis, Mankin, the goal was to create an American version of the aristocracy long associated with European statism. Now, Fred Siegel has written this book about the revolt against the masses, how liberalism undermined the middle class,

and it lays out the historical case for it and why we are in the situation we are today and why today's brand of liberalism has displaced the old main street private sector middle class with a new middle class composed of public sector workers allied with crony capitalists and the country's arbiters of elite style and taste. And by elite style and taste, we don't mean people who say, oh, I can't order that artisanal steak. I mean people who insist when they go down to the coffee shop that the barista draw a picture of Che Guevara in their moccaccino froth. use the coupon code RICOSHETE, 15% off the price of this or any other book, and do so because we thank our friends at Encounter Books for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. I'm exhausted. I'm going to go to the corner and have somebody splash a sponge of salt water in my face. I know you did very well, I have to say.

Thank you much. Actually, no. We've got to move along, amble along to our next guest, a Ricochet favorite, a Ricochet contributor, Nathan Hardin. He's a writer and commentator on issues ranging from politics to culture to sexuality in the media. And his latest book is Sex and God at Yale, Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad. It's written for numerous publications, including National Review,

The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, The New York Post, and The Washington Times. Regular contributor to the HuffPo, blogs about higher education for NRO when he graduated with a BA in humanities from Yale in May of 2009. Welcome again, Nathan, to the Ricochet Podcast. Thank you very much. Good to be here.

I think you took – oh, I heard Rob step in and I'm going to just sit here and draw breath. So go. Hey, Nathan. It's Rob in LA. How are you? Hey, Rob. So I have a question.

So I've been – I don't know why I'm at – I mean you're in this horrible position now of like being the young guy who like everybody asks questions, all these old people on this podcast. So what do the young people do? What's the crazy music of the young people? But I was surprised and I guess I shouldn't have been. But I was surprised at the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. I was not surprised I guess I shouldn't have been but I was surprised at the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. I was not surprised that he died. But I was surprised at the – after his death at this sort of outpouring of the news that came afterward that heroin as a drug is back and back. Really like incredibly – I mean I don't know if the word popular isn't I guess the right word.

But I guess it is the right word, right? It's prevalent, hugely prevalent. And that was news to me. Is that your experience as the young person? So you're asking me to confess my history of heroin abuse, Rob? No, just what you – you're closer to the streets than I. Is that your observation? Yeah, exactly.

You're the guy in Hollywood, Rob. Yeah, I'm the guy with the needle in my arm. What's the word on the streets? What's going down? I have heard little bits about this. I guess this stuff is cyclical because I think of heroin as this sort of thing from you know the 80s or early 90s or Kurt Cobain or something you know it's sort of the last martyr of the heroin epidemic but no I guess it's coming back I mean when I was in school you know I wasn't I never saw anyone

doing this stuff but you sure you heard about you know the law students snorting coke and you know on finals week and stuff so you know like i don't know it's it's just uh you always heard about columbia or you know the new school or places in new york being where you'd get more of these hard drugs that was sort of out outside of my my world but yeah it's it's funny how this stuff it's like it you know you get far enough removed from these horror stories far enough removed from the cobain stories and it just becomes cool again and you know you've you got miley cyrus rapping about you know methamphetamines and the next thing you know it's just i don't know it's stupid. Of course Hoffman knew better. He knew what he was risking I think and he just – Well, that's my next question is that I read a piece – someone sent me a piece, a link to a piece in the Yale Daily News and I've been reading.

And since – I don't know. I don't know. Since the 80s I guess, there's been a prevalent sort of cultural acceptance of the idea that addiction is a disease. That's right. People say, well, you know, Philip C. Hoffman is a great actor, wonderful actor,

and he had this disease and that it's a disease you have and you struggle with this disease and we should treat this disease. And it's a disease. And we all kind of nod. Cause that's what polite society, polite society, you do, you nod and you say,

ah, it's really terrible. and i and i wonder is it a disease i mean you write about you write a lot about character and and choices and and uh and values what do you think i don't think it's i think that's a stretch of the term disease. And I think this is a lot of – we hear this a lot. Overeating is a disease. Drug abuse is a disease. Alkoholism is the parallel. Yeah, violent behavior is a disease.

And I think, of course, the answer that scientists tell us is it's – yes, there is some basis in biology for some people who have more of a predilection for addiction. You know, they have more of a tendency for this. There are some people who can go snort cocaine and walk away and be fine. And other people, that's the beginning of the end for them. And so, yes and no. I mean, from what I gather with opiates, which is the category that heroin's in, it's like if you take – if you have that predisposition and you take it once or you take it a few times, it's really something that never quite goes away. So I hesitate to call this a disease because, of course, it's not like leukemia that just sort of shows up in your body one day. Well, it's a disease that you get from a weakness. I mean I have a weakness for sugared carbohydrates. Sure.

And if I indulge in that weakness, which is a really powerful weakness by the way, I will get a disease, and that disease is type 2 diabetes. Right. And lung cancer is a disease, and you can get that from – if you smoke cigarettes for a long enough time. But I guess what I mean, the generational argument is that the one thing I read about this in the Daily News piece, which is the first-person sort of account, and something I've noticed from other young people I've met, is that there's a lot of talk about drugs and drug addiction and prescription drugs. There's a lot of Adderall. There's a lot of Ritalin.

There's a lot of this stuff from young people starting at an early age that does seem like – I mean if you're a kid and you're – I mean Philip C. Harper was not a kid. So at this point, we're sort of off the reservation of him. He's just a point of departure here. But if you're a young person, you've kind of had this sort of pharmaceutical upbringing forever. So what possible anti-drug message could you send? I don't know because we've raised a whole generation of ADHD kids who are on these prescription medications, and they're sold at will on most college campuses today as a kind of study aid. So if you want, whether it's Adderall or whatever these attention-riddling-type drugs are, it's kind of looked at as acceptable.

It's almost like the Tour de France. Everybody's doping a little bit um so i i think possibly too because the there's that when something has a prescription along with it or when it's possible to get it with the prescription it's not really looked at with the same kind of social scorn um but yeah so you have a generation i think that maybe has has come of age in a time where, I don't know, we've come back on a cycle and people are not really looking with the kind of social stigma that you might think for these kind of hardcore drugs. Nathan, Peter Robinson here. Hey, Peter. Here's the question that sort of I find

is forming in my mind as you and Rob talk, to the extent that drugs or alcoholism or the craving that Rob and I experience all the time for sugar-based carbohydrates, to the extent that these things are emphasized, there's a de-emphasis I think on free will, right? And you said at the beginning Philip Seymour Hoffman knew what he was risking. He knew something that implies that he was a moral agent. So I guess what I'm asking is, in your experience at Yale, as your experience us you have your first hit of cocaine and it rewires some piece of your brain. All of this militates against the idea of human beings as moral agents who have consciences and are endowed with a certain responsibility to make their own choices and live with the consequences. Has, in four years at Yale, did you ever hear a serious discussion of free will? Well, I think, you know, that's such a huge question. And what you're getting to there is, you can go all the way back to the issue of sort of the decline of religious faith and what that does to people's views of morality in general. And, you know, the whole movement toward a kind of

more relativistic view of morals. And that really ties into this question of free will, because, of course, if you talk to certain philosophers or even certain physical scientists, they'll tell you, well, you know, everything we look at says that our choices are predetermined. So really, in what sense can you hold anyone, you know, morally accountable for their actions? I don't think your average college student is really thinking that deeply about it. I think for them it's more of, you know, a really a sort of undermining of the whole idea of objective morals, you know, and it's very suspicious now to say, hey, well, this is wrong or, you know, outside of the realm of human consent. And this is where the sort of libertarian angle is such a powerful current for young people today on the drug issue.

Because when you say, well, he's only harming himself, so how can you say that it's wrong for him to do that in any objective sense? Well, it's not that simple. We know there are, of course, social costs. I mean, you look at the guy. The guy left three kids behind. The guy was in AA meetings within the week that he died. So, you know, he he was he was struggling, struggling. Yeah. And you have to feel compassion for somebody in that state of addiction. And at the same time, you have to look

at and say, yeah, he's morally accountable for the decisions he made in his life. And, um, you know, that's the tragedy of it. Well, tragedy, of course, the term that we get from theater and a lot of people have been saying, Nathan, that, uh, the reason that, uh, Mr. Hoffman had these demons was of course, was that he was so adept at plumbing the human soul that he was, he was holding up a mirror as this one Esquire piece put it, the, he was holding up a mirror to all of us to show the ugliness in all of us, which is fatuous. And also elevates the idea, the mythical idea of the artist as some brilliant truth teller, as though Lenny Bruce was done in by the things that he had to confront. It makes you want to just – it makes you yearn for Laurence Olivier to just say it's acting, dear boy. But I mean is this part of the generational,

and I think that every generation does this. They elevate their own bards and buskers into great truth tellers who will stand for the ages when really they're just sort of channeling adolescent rages. Yeah, well, I mean, it's amazing what a little bit of fame and a lot of money will do for you in terms of what it allows you to get away with. And sometimes that's, that's the biggest danger for folks like Hoffman, you know,

your average guy can't afford an ongoing heroin habit, you know, and other people might get fired or they might get, you know, held accountable in other ways. Whereas a guy with that kind of talent and especially in the industry he's in, you know, it's sort of looked at as well, you know, held accountable in other ways, whereas a guy with that kind of talent, and especially in the industry he's in, you know, it's sort of looked at as, well, you know, he's certainly not, he's not unique in having serious drug problem and, you know, as a big time actor. And so it insulates you from criticism. It insulates you from social pressure that you might otherwise feel. And so it's really hard. That's why I think that's why we see these people implode,

these sort of high profile actors, musicians, or what have you, because they're on this island of where they're untouchable. And they've got a lot of people who are willing to help them carry on their habits right so let me ask you so i mean now i'm gonna put you on the spot for another voice of youth don't you love that i love it uh this is this just has just now occurred to me because i've been watching looking poll numbers i've been looking at the way things have been shifting and there is this movement or this sensitivity, newfound vulnerability in a voting block to which you belong of young people who are now – I don't think they're necessarily winnable in the sense of like a traditional voting block.

But they are now persuadable that large government programs and large sort of top-down government structures are doomed to failure. How would you construct a message to those people that might persuade them to vote against the Democrat in November of 2014 or November of 2016? Gosh. I think the whole troubling trend of the government becoming more and more of a caretaker or people, whether you look at the healthcare Obamacare thing, you look at the – it's all really tied into this hesitancy to grow up,

to put it bluntly. I mean, we have this sort of extended adolescence now that goes throughout the 20s and the 30s. Most of my friends, you know, didn't even think about marriage until they were sort of approaching 30. So I think a lot of this, maybe what you saw four years ago, six years ago, when Obama really swept into power, you were really at a time in our culture where people were very comfortable with the idea of sort of the government taking over where mommy and daddy left off. And you even had, you know, they were extending your time that you could stay on mom and dad's health plan. Right, right.

You know, you wanted to float around sort of through grad school and maybe trying out a few careers. And I think, you know, the old cliche is every 18-year-old is a liberal, and if they're not a conservative by the time they're 40, you know, you have no brain. If you're not a liberal as a young person, you have no heart. Well, I think we're shifting that time period up a little bit. So maybe we should start saying if you're not a liberal at 30 and not a conservative by 50 or 60.

There's still time for you, Rob. Yes. Oh, good lord. I have two more years. But I think Matt Iglesias, I think it was, wrote a really interesting column a few months back, and it was how – Stop right there. Just let us bask in the utter uniqueness of the pronouncement that catastrophic rollout of the healthcare.gov website and saying, you know, the worst thing about this is that it just undermines the whole idea that the government can get the job done. That it undermines the whole idea for this, you know, wired in internet savvy generation that the government's even competent to do these great projects of social engineering or economics. And that was really interesting. And so I think what you're looking at in terms of some of these shifting poll numbers

and this sort of skepticism about the government's ability to solve these problems really is a reaction against that. And I think there's an opportunity here. I don't know how long term this opportunity is going to be, but looking at the next midterm election or in 2016, you know, if I were a Republican candidate, I would really be hitting this message of incompetence pretty hard. I mean, because I think that's something that is really hard if you're a Democrat who really got behind the whole Obamacare thing. It's hard to back away from. Now we see all these

figures of how it's costing jobs, how many people have actually lost health care coverage. And there's a sense of disbelief among progressives who really counted on this to really deliver in the way that Pelosi and Obama and the rest said it would in terms of lowering their health care costs. Nathan, Peter here. Last question, I guess. And this is a self-interested question. I ask it as the father of college students, the nervous father of college students. And here's what I've observed. I'll tell you what I've observed,

and then you'll see where the question is going. Colleges these days, first of all, if you take a kid on a college tour, every single college will say the same thing. We are training tomorrow's leaders. Four years at an institution where everything is done for you. There are magnificent facilities.

Gymnasium is just walking distance away. People talk about great subjects. And the constant, both implied and over and over, every time a dean speaks, it's explicit. You're tomorrow's leaders. You're tomorrow's leaders. And for four years, the whole world cusses these kids. Of course they get the idea that they really are tomorrow's leaders. And for four years, the whole world cossets these kids. Of course, they get the idea that they really are tomorrow's leaders. And then they graduate and they discover that they're tomorrow's followers. They need jobs. And I mean, this is, I work at

Stanford. I have seen over and over again that it really does take kids from fancy schools who are lucky enough to get into Stanford, many of them, it really does take a couple of years to get over the idea that the world owes them and not the other way around. You're in your fifth year out of Yale. How are you and your classmates doing? Well, you know, the thing about kids, especially at these elite universities, they get where they are by playing by the rules. I mean, that's how you get into these schools to begin with. You do all your homework. You join all the debate teams. You create this massive resume, you know, by the time you're 18 years old and with a singular purpose in mind, oftentimes

of, you know, graduating from one of these elite schools. So yes, when they do graduate, I think there's a tremendous loss of direction that I see a lot of times for young people like, wow, you know, what next? And secondly, they find that, you find that some of the biggest true leaders out there, they probably didn't go to college. You look at the famous Silicon Valley examples of all these Steve Jobses and Mark Zuckerbergs and Bill Gates that dropped you know, dropped out or never win. And what you really find is that the energy, the daring, the ambition to be a leader is not really what it takes to become successful in the higher ed machine. And so I get these questions all the time from people. You know, should I, what do you think about this school or should I go to this college? And I really think college is such a great – if you could cook up a better scheme for the liberal establishment,

I don't know what it would be that you get to sort of capture all the young minds at this formative age for four years and pound their heads with your doctrinaire liberalism without interruption. You know, there was these hilarious studies that were done like four years ago about the number of, the percentage of political donations during election years that go to Democrats versus Republicans. In the Ivy League, it teeters around 100% for the Democratic side at almost every school. And I think at Princeton or one of the others, it actually was 100% in 2008 or something. And at Yale, it was like 96%, 98%. So the power that they hold is incredible. Whether they're

actually training leaders, I seriously doubt. I think, you know, leadership is something that requires something else, something bolder, you know, the risk-taking that just isn't really compatible with what a lot of these kids anyway are so good at, which is playing by the rules. And talking. I think that actually, I don't care where they go to school and I don't care what they teach them there. If we had a law that said within their four years, after two, they had to go spend a year working in the North Dakota oil fields, I'd be fine with that. I think that would be instructive and formative to their education.

Nathan, we love to read what you say about education and other subjects at Ricochet and elsewhere. We'll see you at the site, and thanks for dropping by the podcast today. Thanks for having me. Good talking to you guys. Thanks, Nathan. You know, we were talking earlier about artists and the truth-tellers that artists can be. It led to one of the more interesting and long threads on Ricochet, which and the truth tellers that artists can be.

It led to one of the more interesting and long threads on Ricochet, which was the most evil movie that you'd ever seen. And I can't remember what I said. I don't know if I had one. I think I was just defending Clockwork Orange for various reasons. Robin, Peter, did you chime in on that one? We need to know. I don't know what an evil movie is. A movie whose sentiment, whose moral underpinnings have a pernicious effect. A lot of people were saying like –

I don't think movies really do that. Well, like American – okay. Like what? Well, like American Beauty, for example, which a lot of people said was evil because it was recycling the same old stories about the nasty, horrible nature of American culture or JFK. And I bought that because JFK was high art in the service of absolute – Of a lie. Of a pernicious lie, right. That's the purest example.

I would say JFK is because it was a lie that people thought, well, I don't know, LBJ. What was he up to? Yeah, that was pretty stupid. And you have to be – I don't know about the evil but just the stupidity of it, the willful stupidity of it. Yeah, anything that makes you dumber I think. Although I usually find that the movies that I don't like are the ones that are just – it's overwhelming constant. I mean I hate to sound this way, but like there's a certain kind of violence that I find just kind of exhausting and deadening. I remember seeing Total Recall, the movie that – Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and just feeling like, oh my god.

This is too much. Just like it was just relentless and loud and people are getting shot in the face. That's a Disney cartoon to compare to. Yeah. Yeah. I'm still bothered. I never really have got my mind around – this is a confession. The two of you will jump on me for this. I'm still bothered. I never really have got my mind around – this is a confession. The two of you will jump on me for this.

I'm almost certain. The Sopranos and now Breaking Bad where these things are magnificent. I mean they are just engrossing. The acting is beautiful. The editing, all superb. And yet you end up rooting for, empathy for really enjoying liking wish you could get to know tony soprano who's a killer and and and mr white who again who's a who's manufacturing drugs that he knows by right at the latest point midway through season three he knows it's he's

participating in an industry in which people are killed all the time and and yet you like these characters i just i i still haven't quite settled down to that i it bothers me that i enjoy them so much well i mean breaking bad is a is a is a is a morality tale um and so it's really a story about the guy's descent morally and it doesn't really lose its way it goes around and around and around it's five years long and

I have to confess I haven't seen the final season yet does he get in some ways does he get a just dessert? No I'm not going to tell you enjoy it I mean it's enjoyable alright and speaking of morality, we have to shout out – give a shout out. Do we now? Do we ever?

To a couple of Ricochet members. Don Tillman and Mendel. I didn't know about this until late last night after it had happened. Yeah. There was a meeting of the conservative caucus of Silicon Valley. I didn't know about this until late last night after it had happened. There was a meeting of the conservative caucus of Silicon Valley. There's a piece of information right there. I just looked at it for 20 years.

I didn't know there was a conservative caucus. I thought you were it. Victor Davis Hanson was speaking. Don Tillman, who lives – who is a faithful Ricochet member engineer writes brilliant posts and don tillman just got the idea and and he called mendel who lives a don tillman lives in palo alto mendel lives in menlo park and they got together and they put together some they set up a table at the back of the room and of their own volition because they so so enjoy Ricochet, they pitched – remember, they pitched the – I guess it was 25 or 30 people who turned up for this monthly meeting and they told every single person about Ricochet. But to think, Rob, that this crazy lunatic idea you and I had three and a half years ago now means so much to such transparently good human beings as Don Tillman and Mendel that they would want to spread the news. So thank you, Don, and thank you, Mendel. Well, that's how it's going to work is people spreading news.

That's kind of how we want it to work. We talked earlier on the member feed. I mentioned our plans for the future and we've always been trying to figure out to people – and of course I have not done a pitch on this podcast yet, which again is one of the problems we have with our little business, Peter, is that we enjoy it too much. It's like where we run an ice cream store and we like to sit around and eat ice cream rather than walk around town and say, hey, there's great ice cream in there. So if you're listening to this podcast and you are a member of Ricochet like Don Tillman, like Mendel, like James, like Peter, like me, like all the people at our 200th, we are thrilled to have you. We welcome you. We're glad that you're part of our community. If you are listening to this podcast and you are not a member of Ricochet.com, you're probably wondering why on earth should I join? I just heard it's a great podcast. I didn't pay a dime for it. I'm a conservative. I know what a dollar is worth and you're giving me something for free. And that is

true. You can listen to this for free. And you can read the site for free. But we would like to you, if you'd like to join, to join the conversation, which means you've got to kick in a little scratch. And the reason we do that is to keep the conversation witty and civil and smart and interesting and important and meaningful

to the people in the country who read it. And that's a lot of people. The second thing is we want to create a community around the world and around the country of center-right people

who meet each other. Our side, what we do mostly on our side is we listen. We sit rather obediently in cars or wherever and we listen to talk radio, which is fine. We sit rather obediently and we watch Fox News and that's fine too. What we don't do is what the other side does and that's get together and work together and reach out and create networks and that's what Ricochet is all about. So that sounds like homework.

But the fun of it is we had a great – a couple of weeks ago, we had a great 200th podcast celebration. We had meetups everywhere. Mostly it's people getting together and having a good time and meeting each other and meeting friends. And it's really worth it and a whole lot of fun. And you get to meet some great people. You get to meet us when we're there and our contributors and our members. And we would really love to have you become a member with us. So go to Ricochet.com and join.

Yes, and you forget. Go on, Peter. No, I just wanted to – I sometimes worry a little bit that somebody listening to this might get the idea that we're asking for money because Rob and I would like to become rich. It is true that Rob and I would like to become rich and we'd like to share our riches with James. But the idea that we'll become rich from Ricochet long ago became laughable. We just want Ricochet to become self-sustaining. In other words, please join because we have to cover expenses.

And still, even at this point, we're not quite doing that. We're spending a little more each month than we bring in. We're close. But here's our vision. But we want it to become self-sustaining. Here's our dream, right? You watch the presidential debates or even Fox News moderating and sponsoring. We would like to sponsor.

I would like to have the Ricochet Republican primary debate. I would like to have those debates sponsored at least by Ricochet. In New Hampshire, I'd like to have one. I'd like to have one in Iowa. I'd like to have one in South Carolina in the early, big platform, big days when all the candidates are there. I'd like to have one sponsored by Ricochet and have Ricochet members there. That's my vision, right? I would love to have that happen. We got to get a little bigger for that to happen. We have to swing a little bit wider for that to happen, but I think that'd be really cool. And it would be true and true to the nature of conservatives and to what our message is in general to the rest of America if we could do that.

Our message to the rest of America is you don't need to – the bosses in DC or New York or LA should not be telling us how to live our lives and who to choose to lead the country or who to choose to be our congressman or senator or governor. That's not how this country is set up. That's not how the country works. That's not how the country works best. So anyway, that's my pitch. The real reason that Rob wants to see that R on the big banner there over the debate is because you could say, you know, that R stands for Rob. And then Peter could say, you know, that R stands for Rob. And then Peter could say, you know, that R stands for Robinson. And, of course, my middle name is R. I think it was just funny when you guys were talking about how you didn't promise any riches to get me on board here. Yes, you did.

Yes, you did. You promised James a lot, actually. My daughter's college education was predicated on this thing working. Sorry. Of course not. Of course not. Of course not, of course not, of course not. It was all, when we joined this,

was the joy of putting together this community and see how it flourished. And Robbie forgot to mention that at the 200th podcast. Afterwards, we all went out and extirpated the unbelievers, right? Drew up the lists of who was going to be stricken from the inner party. No, no, this is, and people may, you know,

what I've noted over the years is that people say, yeah, the last few months it's been going this way. And then people say, yeah, the last few months it's been going this way. And then people say, oh, the last few months I see it's been going this way. That is just how these things go. That's just how arguments develop, how tone changes. And if you want to take it away from where it seems to be going, get in there, make a post, make your point, and change the conversation. It's not enough to have skin in the game. It's enough to be able to grab the ball and say I'm running over here. Follow me, tackle me, do what you like.

Ricochet, for that matter, is useful because you can control and shape. I was just looking at the paper app, which I downloaded, which is Facebook's new attempt to take over the iPhone. And it's a pretty good, pretty, pretty good app. It's very sharp. It's very clean. It declutters Facebook. And it's going to be very influential if it keeps on. But let me tell you something. You have a variety of sections that you can customize. We'll leave you with this. Here are the sections that you can use to customize your Facebook app. There's, there's Facebook, of course, there's headlines, tech, ideas, creators, enterprise, pop life, score, flavor, exposure's photographs, Equalize, which is about gender rights, Planet, of course, All City, which is about urban stuff, Well Lived, which

is about travel, Family Matters, Cute, Lol, Glow, that's fashion, Home, and Pride. What's missing? Anybody? Food. Was food there? Food's there. Okay. Everything's there okay everything's there spiritual spirituality religion they've they've oh man they've taken it they've they've putting it in i'm sure it's there oh drill down in some lifestyle as essence but my lifestyle at some point at some point they said okay obviously we've got to have a separate pain for – Thou shalt put no lifestyle ahead of mine.

And pride, as you know, the word pride itself is now like the word gay. I mean just as – I was listening the other day to a Lucille Ball episode on the radio, My Favorite Husband. It's America's favorite new gay family. I mean that term was used for something else. And now the term pride itself as a standalone word. By the way, they would probably still be together. They would have been sitting in longer had they been gay. So the problem with their marriage was that they weren't gay.

That's probably so. Desi Arnaz could have probably – could have stand to be a little gay. Yeah. So I'm saying Ricochet probably isn't a place where you can go to be reassured that Facebook should remove the pride pain as an option. Ricochet is not about removing options. It's about discussing the options we have and the order they have and all of that stuff, right? Am I right, guys? It's funny because I looked at that.

I downloaded the app and I sort of – I didn't quite understand it. It was too complicated. But I looked all the way through it and I never noticed that and that is really true. That's amazing to miss what is a fundamental part of a huge – a majority is not – 51 percent is the wrong number. That large segment of Americans, of their lives and their life history and their future and their past is just remarkable. Unless that's how they're reading their target audience. The old folks

on Facebook, they don't care about. They want to get the new ones in. They want to get people like my daughter in who's 13 and couldn't care less about Facebook. Anyway, this is the kind of things we argue about at Ricochet and of course you should go there and give money and keep it alive so it's there for years to come and we can go after the 2016 election and say, we won, how soon until we're stabbed in the back by our side? In the meantime, content yourself with excellent, wonderful, mouth-watering food from foodiedirect.com.

They're back for Valentine's Day and they are the nation's finest curated online marketplace of America's most iconic regional restaurants. Go to foodiedirect.com slash ricochet and save 20% off your first order. Not a small thing, that. 20% foodiedirect.com slash ricochet. And while you're shopping online, you can go to encounterbooks.com and get Fred Siegel's The Revolt Against the Masses, How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class. Do we have a coupon code? Why, yes, we do. And it's ricochet, the checkout, 15% off the list price of this or any other book. Thank you, as ever, for joining us, Peter and Rob,

and our guests and everyone else in the chat room and everyone at Ricochet. We will see you in the comments, and then we'll see you next week. We'll see you soon. Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles! And then while I'm away I'll ride home every day And I'll send all my loving to you I'll pretend that I'm kissing

The lips I am missing And hope that my dreams will come true And then while I'm away And hope that my dreams will come true. And then while I'm away, I'll ride home every day. And I'll send all my loving to you. All my loving, I will send to you. All my loving Darling I'll be true

Close your eyes And I'll kiss you Tomorrow I'll kiss you Tomorrow I'll miss you Remember I'll always be true And then while I'm away I'll ride home every day And I'll send all my loving to you All my loving I will send to you

All my loving, darling, I'll be true All my loving, all my loving All I love is you. All I love is you. All I love is you. I will say to you. Ricochet. Join the conversation.