The Ricochet Podcast - Welcome Back, Blueberries

Episode Date: July 31, 2014

It’s been a while since our amiable hosts have been in the same bowl with each other, so we took this opportunity to do a special three guest show from across the world and around the country. First up, our old friend Judith Levy gives us a chilling report from her home in Israel. Then, newly returned contributor Claire Berlinski checks in from Paris with a first hand look at the reaction in... Source

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lylix. Today's guests, from Israel, Judith Levy. From the dazzling frontiers of post-modernism, David Limbaugh. And from Paris, Claire Berlinski. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Yes, the humanitarian pause is over and the Ricochet podcast is back. Number 224 and it's brought to you by Encounter Books.

For 15% off any of the title, go to EncounterBooks.com and use the coupon code Ricochet and you'll get our featured title, Faithless Execution, Building the Political Class for Obama's Impeachment by Andy McCarthy. You may say, nice in this crazy talk. Andy himself said on the corner the other day that Andy argues against the filing of articles of impeachment in the absence of public support, but urges that our political theme ought to be Obama's lawlessness. And if you want to bring yourself up to speed or if you get an invitation to appear on NSNBC, MSNBC being the only place really where impeachment talk seems to thrive, you'll want this book 15% off.

And of course, Ricochet is brought to you by Ricochet. And here's Rob Long to tell you more about it. Rob? Thank you, James. And hey, welcome back to both of us. We haven't been on a podcast together about a month, right? No, it's been a while. I've been gallivanting about on the continent, and I think you had the Cook's tour somewhere as well.

Yeah, it makes it sound like Henry James Heroes. How was your... Yes, if you are listening to this podcast and you are a member of Ricochet, we thank you and we are pleased and honored to be a member along with you. If you're listening to this

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We would like to take this moment, however, to thank our newest Mrs. Thatcher members, Wintermute, Sven141, Call4552, BuckeyeSam, Sligor, Airhammer, Jill R., and there are a few others who want to remain anonymous, which again, typical conservatives always hiding their letter to a bushel. And special thanks to our newest Reagan member, John Mulder. Thank you, guys. Thanks very much for your support. Thanks very much for your membership. Thanks very much for being a part of this great big project with us. Your various goodies and tote bags and mugs, et cetera, will be on their way soon, including the special podcast they're coming soon too.

So thank you. May I add, Rob? Yes, of course, Peter. Go ahead. May Peter Robinson add that John Mulder, having become our newest Reagan member, will receive a signed copy of my memoir, my speechwriter's memoir of the Reagan White House,

whether John Mulder wants it or not. Yeah, that's right. You just have to take it. You don't even – you can't even send it back. Don't send it back. Wait. Now, so can I ask you this? Which one is that?

Which book is that? Yes. I wrote a book entitled How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life. That's the book that I mean. I'm familiar with – which of your many books? Because the one I enjoy is – You've written two. I've written three.

You and I are just accomplished beyond words, aren't we? The one I enjoy is It's My Party about the Republican Party. Thank you, Rob. Because I'm in it. Anyway. You're an entire chapter. That's right. That's why I didn't sell.

I'm just over here counting up my books. One, two, three, four. That's right. I know. It's sort of sad, isn't it? Yeah. The Lilliputians over here. James, you actually have a whole bookshelf, don't you?

Sort of, yes. And a new version of incorporeal e-books that I'm rolling out. I'm this close, this close. I've got an editor who is just what you want when it comes to the niggling details, demandingly trying to figure out why somebody actually tucked something in their left pocket at one point and then pulls it out of their right 400 pages later. Stuff like that drives me nuts. I don't care.

But for the anal retentive people who take notes about these things apparently i have to so any day now casablanca tango will be hitting the amazon shelves which is great uh yeah i would say to say this james that i remember um being introduced to you two different ways and i think a lot of conservatives feel this way sometimes i remember reading not knowing who you were, and reading The Gallery of Regrettable Food, which still ranks, you still open that up and laugh. It doesn't, it's around the house somewhere. You just pick it up and laugh. And then kind of

vaguely filing away your name in the back of my head, and then starting to read your blog. And only after that, putting together that you were that same guy. And I think a lot of people feel that way when they encounter somebody they like and then they discover, oh my god, that guy is conservative. It's such a moment, right?

Well, it's strange. On Twitter the other day, somebody said, whatever happened to that witty and clever James Lilacs or did he ruin his brand with all that Iraq war boosting? And I thought, yeah, just like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, brands absolutely destroyed. What happened was that I peeled off the people who rage about the American war with 3K's war machine at Metafilter and picked up another side of the audience. Interestingly enough, though, I try to keep a certain neutral amount there because life

is not all politics. Even when the rockets are falling on your head, there's more to life than politics. Of course, I mean, rockets in a metaphorical sense, not in the real sense. And over there is where Judith Levy happens to be a Ricochet editor and somebody just posted right up at the site itself, telling us what it's like to live under the wails of the warnings and the, uh, in the hiss of the missiles. Uh, Judith, welcome back to the podcast. How are you? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm okay.

Yeah. Sorry, I just ran up the stairs. I'm okay. A bit stressed, a little bit, you know, as you can imagine from the tone of my post. I almost feel like I should issue an apology because I, you know, I've always wanted, as I said at the top of the post, I've always wanted to give Ricochet real hardcore analysis. And I just can't. This is so threatening, frightening, painful, and personal.

So it's really gotten hard. Hey, Judith. It's Rob Long here in Los Angeles. Great to talk to you. So Israel is one of the strange places. People I've known in Israel during moments of this have always said, oh, well, you know, in Tel Aviv, we're just at the beach.

That's something that's happening over in Jerusalem. Down here, we're just doing whatever we're doing. This is different this time. Is there a sense in Israel from Israelis, some of whom have been maybe even a little bit more complacent over the past five, six, seven, ten years, that this is a battle for survival? Well, it's interesting. If you ask people up front, I'm talking about native Israelis, everyone is going to be very casual, calm, collected, sober, and acting as if everything is normal. And in fact, we'll say that everything is normal.

And I've spoken with plenty of Israelis during this who've said to me, this is how we grew up. This is our reality. This has always been our reality. So this is just kind of a new chapter in. This is our reality. This has always been our reality. So this is just kind of a new chapter in something that is our normal. But the sign that this is not the same as it's always been before is the incredible unanimity of opinion about what it is that we're doing right now in Gaza. You do not have the fractiousness, lots of public arguing.

You don't have the sniping and the belittling. There is an incredible sense of a united front, which tells you what you need to know. I mean from our perspective here, no matter where you are in the political spectrum, this has got to be dealt with. This is a very, very serious situation. Judith, Peter here. Let me just – Hi, Peter. I don't even want to ask you what it's like to start with.

I'd like you just to count. It's hard I think for us to put ourselves in your position in part because the United States is such a big country. Can you just count how many people in your own personal circle do you know who have kids in the IDF? Okay. My closest female friend in my town, all three of her sons are in the army. Let's see. Another friend of mine, her son is 16, so he's getting ready, starting to think about what he wants to do in the army. Everyone. Let me think. Everyone.

Yeah, everyone, including my own family. Our nephews, our nieces, everyone. All of us. So in this country, we just went through, we in the United States have just been through over a decade of war between Iraq and Afghanistan. And, of course, it's outrageous in many levels, but if you have a particular educational background and a particular level of wealth and you live in a – you can have lived your entire life without ever having come in contact with anyone who actually bore the burden of the fighting. And in Israel, it's the reverse. You cannot avoid knowing, experiencing, talking to people whose own children are bearing the burden of the fighting. That's correct, isn't it?

Absolutely true. Absolutely true. All right. Absolutely true. And then here's the other bit that to me as a parent, you have kids who are school age. And so how, I'm just thinking of my own wife, what she, moms are different. They're just, there's just a kind of different connection to the kids from fathers, not that father do. And yet if I imagine that if fellow, if you talked with your fellow moms all the time about your worries, you'd all drive each other. How do you talk about this? How do you live with it when you have small children? And how do you explain what's happening to the

children themselves? This is one of the hardest things that I've had to deal with and that all of us mothers and fathers have had to deal with here. It's a very, very, very difficult thing because the magnitude of what these kids are facing is so great and has so many levels because they are not only facing an immediate physical daily danger, which they are, and all of us are now here, but they also face a wider threat in the way they are perceived outside this country. And so I need to protect them not only from what is overhead and underground, but I need to protect them from what they will see about them, what they are being called, what they are being accused of all over the internet, all over television. And that is a very, very challenging thing. And the way I've approached this is probably a little bit cowardly.

Since I don't have any brilliant solution to this problem, I wait for them to talk to me. I wait for them to ask. Luckily, my children are very communicative. When they're upset, they talk to me. When they're worried, they talk to me. And I've had a couple of difficult conversations, and I have to be very measured. I don't want them to be terrified, but they have to understand the reality of what we're facing. And it's very, very difficult. I wish I had a clean answer for you, but I haven't figured it out yet. I'm still working on it. And then I have one more. I know Rob and James want to ask questions as well. I have one more that I just can't resist asking. You've touched on it already. So we talked about the unanimity

of opinion within Israel that this just has to be dealt with. And within Israel, unanimity of opinion is very, you know, the old joke, if you want at least three different points of view on Israel, talk to two members of the Knesset, right? So, and yet, as you have unanimity of opinion in Israel, European public opinion has moved against Israel. Public opinion in this country, Israel's only reliable ally is fraying. It's almost as though there's a kind of inversion. World opinion is fracturing, even as public opinion in Israel is solidifying.

And if you think of, I mean, the history of the Jewish state is not that old. From 1948, Harry Truman is the first to recognize Israel. There's a friendship between Israel. But France is the primary supporter of Israel right up through the 1970s. Military, there's a, Israel has a base of international support. And now it's down to the United States. And there are reasons to suppose that opinion within the United States, and there are reasons to suppose that opinion within the United States is wobbly. How do you deal with that? Well, it's incredibly terrifying. I feel that we are possibly losing our only ally.

And the reason we feel, you know, it's a very dramatic thing to say, but the reason I put it in such bald terms is this last business with Kerry, this last visit, all of us, no matter, again, no matter where we are on the political spectrum, had to face what Kerry was trying to do to us. And it is so grave. And what are we supposed to do with this? I mean, you know, Kerry was sent here to instruct us. Hello? Yes. Hello?

I'm sorry. I have a Skype ring. You're still on. You're still on. Okay. I'm sorry. He was sent here in order to demand from us that we accept what essentially would have been a suicidal set of terms for a ceasefire.

And he was so boneheaded about it that he even, he didn't, he made it clear that he was essentially doing the bidding of Turkey and Qatar, which are bankrolling and backing Hamas. And then, as if that were not clear enough, he gave $47 million of American taxpayer money to Hamas, which is, the last time I checked, a State Department-listed terrorist organization. So, you know, we add all of that up and we look at that and we think, oh, we're losing our ally. And we are completely alone. And so, I don't know. It's… I'd say, Judith, you're not losing an ally. You're just seeing the truth about the people who would have thrown you to the wolves at the earliest possible opportunity. Because it befits their view of the world to follow Israel as the castigating scourge of the area. That if they just simply laid down their weapons

and died like good historical Jews are used to be doing, then everything would be fine. Those of us who are still on your side see what's going on, and our bile rises. But at the same time, our hope and our admiration and our prayers for you rise as well, because this is the hope of that place, Israel. And for the world to focus its attention on this when to the north in Syria the slaughter is tenfold reveals truth.

If nothing else, this should be at least clarifying. But let's look back, though. Look back at the last time we had. When did Israel get a break for doing this before? When? I can't find the historical point when Israel was applauded by the world for going after these monsters. Yeah. Hey, it's a question.

This time it's different, though, isn't it? In the region. I mean, this is a different situation. I'm not sure it's better or worse, but it's different. You have a region surrounding Israel now in great turmoil. This is really the first time I think in Israel maybe since – I mean maybe since Nasser. But even during those times, there was relative stability where you're surrounded – Israel is surrounded by unstable region, an unstable region. I mean I'm not – i'm just trying to make lemonade

here there is there is something different categorically different i mean you're right the two the two great supporters of of uh of hamas right now are qatar and turkey and turkey sending a flotilla down it's not syria it's not egypt it's not Iran even. I mean, that is fundamentally different, the situation now. Is there any, I'm just now thinking, you know, the news is so bad and I get the news is bad. Is there anything to this that makes it different, that makes it maybe a little bit more, there's an opportunity here for Israel to put some gains? Well, one silver lining is that Egypt despises

Hamas as much, if not more than we do. The Egyptian administration, Sisi, obviously, you know, what they did to the smuggling tunnels, they destroyed all the smuggling tunnels into Sinai, boxed them in even further. Their problem with Hamas-style militancy is very serious. And so Israel and Egypt have a common strategic objective. And so Hamas cannot run to the Egyptians the way they could in the last crisis when Morsi was running the show. And so that could work to our advantage. Obviously, CC is not rushing to be a friend of ours, but if you kind of put things on the scales, it tips things a little bit more in our favor. What I'm waiting for, though, there are a couple of pennies that I'm waiting to drop that I'm really frightened of. One is kidnapping another soldier, which is the point of these tunnels.

And honestly, when that starts to happen, it's game over. We've lost. Israel, you know, set this precedent many years ago that we will roll over for that. And so that is their top, top objective.

And it's, God, you know, it's incredibly frightening. But I, unfortunately, I think it's only a matter of time. And I'm terrified about this. I can't sleep at night about this. The other thing that I'm worried about is when Hezbollah is going to be activated on our northern front, which seems to me also to be inevitable. And so, you know, once we have to, once we have a two-front war, if you think about the geography of this place, it's going to be very difficult to fight. Hey, Judith, I just have one question, one last question for you. Because for those of us who follow the story, it goes in cycles.

There's every three, four, five years, there's a giant peace process and everybody talks and they get very close. And then five years later, there's an explosion and five years later is a peace process. Well, they get close except for one issue. There's always one issue and that's the right of return that being said why is it so i mean i'm asking you a question you probably can't answer why is it so hard to explain not to um the people on the ground there i mean the palestinians and the palestinian authority and hamas and hezbollah and the egyptians everybody understands that everybody knows what that's about the right to return return. It's about driving Israel out of the – driving Israel away, driving Israel into the sea. They understand the politics of that. Almost every modern leader of Israel has come to the table ready to deal and ready to negotiate almost everything except that one existential point. And it's gone away with nothing because, of course, you can't negotiate away your existence.

Why is that so hard? Is that a PR problem? Is it a message problem? Or is it just what some of us suspect, which is that when you scratch a European progressive, European progressives, and also American liberals, unfortunately, who really would feel the world were a better place if Israel would just go away. And the way that Israel can go away is if its demographics are adjusted in a manner that eases the discomfort with the principle of a Jewish state. There is a terrible reluctance to grant us the tribal notion that we need a Jewish state. And so we are pressed to grow up, to put this behind us, to advance and kind of achieve the sunny uplands of demographic realities, which is that we should all live together in peace and harmony. Frankly, if we could all live together in peace and harmony, I think many of us would even be willing to listen.

But we know the facts. We know what happens when we make territorial concessions of any kind and this is part of you know circling back to gaza part of what drives makes me tear my hair when i when i make the mistake of opening the times or really reading any media now is this knee-jerk statement that it's the occupation. These people are rejecting the occupation. We left in 2005. There are no Israelis there. There are no Jews there. We gave it back. And the whole point was because we were going to make this painful confession and drag our people out so that we could prove to the world, okay, yes, it's true, it's true, we can live together,

and obviously we can't. And the fact that we can do it, actually do what is demanded of us, and still the obvious result is not apparent, is not visible, we can scream it to our heart's content, no one sees it. And you have journalists on television referring to the occupation, referring to the Gotham suffering under the occupation. I mean, what are we supposed to do? It's like the business of Israel going out of its way to avoid civilian casualties. What are we supposed to do? It doesn't matter what we do. Judith, when some people say occupation, the word that they actually have in their heads is existence. Yes, of course. That's the problem.

As long as you exist, that's your problem. When Mashal is talking and when these Hamasniks are interviewed in the Western media, that is what they are. And no one ever presses them on this. No one ever says, now tell us exactly what you mean. What borders do you have in mind? And if they are honest and if they are consistent, which, to their credit, they always are. If you ask them, they will tell you. We want it from the river to the sea.

We want it from Metula to Eilat. That is what we are all about. Look at our charter. It's right there. Right. Well, in the words of the magic bus by the who, you can't have it. And we're going to have to leave it at that. We're going to talk to you later, Judith, and we appreciate you coming on the site and coming on the podcast.

Be safe and we'll talk to you soon again. Judith, stay safe. Judith, thank you. Okay. Thanks, guys. What was the quote? It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.

Haile Selassie. It's just bananas. And highly and highly likely as well. Yeah. It's a little bit bananas. We're talking to Judith Levy, and she's in a war zone. Yeah. And she's got a family, and she's got kids, and they go to school, and they – we got her.

We caught her at 6 o'clock there, and she was going to make dinner to make dinner for – just something sort of bizarre and uncivilized about that. It just – Oh, no. They're the uncivilized ones as I said for existing. There's a story that was on the web the other day about – I think it's Airbnb where you rent out your house to somebody. And in this case, somebody rented their house to somebody who came there for a week. The person came back from vacation and the person to whom they'd rented the house had no intention of leaving ever. And thanks to the liberal laws of California that permit them to stay there forever, this

person found themselves locked out of their home and having to deal with somebody that they regarded as, you know, correctly as an interloper and a thief. Well, the righteous anger that swells in the internet breast about that kind of person who takes advantage of the system is exactly what the left feels about Israel because of the power dynamic, because of the fact that one side is European and the other side happens to be of a – Arab. Well, you said it, yes, but a fascinatingly multicultural – I read a very – Okay, Go on. To add to that, I read a very funny – not funny but trenchant, brilliant tweet yesterday, which you can rarely say.

But I just thought, wow, I have to remember that. In the West, we're experimenting with driverless cars. And in the Arab world, they're experimenting with women driving cars. Yes. Or donkeys running suicide bombs across a border. What I was going with before with the Airbnb thing was how that notion had disrupted people's idea of where to stay. Oh, I see.

I see. Disruption. Disruption is good. Using the internet to change. Wait a minute. Using the internet to change. Are you ready for this? Paradigms.

That's right. Paradigms. You're right. Paradigms. You're disrupting paradigms, James. Well, you're not just disrupting them, but I think shifting them. Shifting, disrupting paradigms. You know, and it's a lot of fancy words for a piece of steel

dragged across your face, but that's what we're talking about here. And it's nothing more than that. I also read a piece on the internet about how maybe shaves that you slap on your face, the creams, really don't do anything.

And you know, after one sniff of Harry's shave cream, you don't care whether or not it's doing anything or not. You just like to have it lathered up on your face, the creams, really don't do anything. And you know, after once in a Harry's shave cream, you don't care whether or not it's doing anything or not. You just like to have it lathered up on your mug, staring at you through the steamy window as you scrape your face, as you gently, efficiently, clearly, and cleanly have the best shave of your life, thanks to Harry's.

Now, a year old someday, pretty soon, I guess, but even under a year, they've already disrupted that shaving industry. Stuck it to the man, man, by offering a better shaving experience at a better value than the big boys like Schicker Gillette. Now, the company makes amazing German-engineered blades, and they loved it so much, they bought the factory. That's right. 93-year-old German factory makes blades just for them. Why should you get your next shaving kit from Harry's? Well, they're focused on giving guys a great shaving experience for a fraction of the cost. It's clean product design. If you

looked at those modern shaver razors today with five blades on them and all the little, it looks like it's engineered to be something you would see in an over-designed 1970s sci-fi movie. No. You want something that looks 30s and clean? You go to Harry's Blade. They're half the price of the competitors in the ease and price and convenience. It comes to your door. What more do you want than that? All right. Go to harrys.com and use the promo code RICOSHET and save five bucks off your first purchase. Five dollars. And another reason to do so is to thank them for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Yeah, the blades will be to your house quickly. They won't take as long as it say, oh, as long as it takes for Claire to return.

But you know what? It doesn't matter how long it took for her to come back. Everybody's glad to see her, glad to read her, and I'm glad to hear her. Claire Berlinski. Thank you. Thank you. I just ran back from the computer guy with my newly installed hard drive and reinstalled all my software in order to be here almost on time. Claire, it's Rob Long in Los Angeles.

Welcome back. Thank you, Rob. I knew it was you. Where are you? So let's catch everybody up. You're in Paris. You live this glamorous life now. You're like Istanbul, Paris.

Can I ask you what arrondissement you're in? I'm in the fourth. I'm in the Marais. Oh, very chic. Right by that really good ice cream place. Berthillon? I have several in my neighborhood. Do you want to hear about all of them?

No, no. I don't think so. All right. So what are you doing in Paris? Why did you leave Istanbul? We need a little bit of personal gossip before we get to politics. Well, you know,

I mean, it's actually really sad. My mother died last year and after she passed away, I had, you know, a good long, deep think about where I wanted to spend the rest of the time that I have left on this planet.

And I thought there's nowhere I want to be more than with near my father. Uh, and he's here in Paris. And, you know, so I, it was also I left during the height of the Gezi Park protests and it was complete chaos there and my life was complete

chaos for quite some time and I really felt it was time to be close to him so that's it's a human story it's not a political story it's not a spy story but well it's very sweet sorry to hear about your mom,

but I'm glad that you and your dad are together in Paris. There's something... I don't know. There's a book there. I hope you're writing a book about that. You know what I mean? It sounds like a book. Well, you know, maybe one day. Maybe one day. I think, you know,

it's not a book yet, and I hope it won't be for a while, if you know what I mean. Claire, Peter here. Welcome back. I hope it won't be for a while, if you know what I mean. Claire, Peter here. Welcome back. I hope it won't be a book for a while either. You're in Paris because your dad's in Paris, which of course raises the question, why is your dad in Paris?

Well, you know, my family has a long history here. My grandfather was in the French Foreign Legion and my grandparents were here for the entire interwar period until the Nazis chased them out. My father grew up hearing French, speaking French, and we have a lot of long family history here, and it's a wonderful city, right? To go into more about why my father's here requires

going to the story of his ex-wives, and I don't think he wants me to do that. Let's just say that one continent wasn't big enough. requires going to the story of his ex-wives, and I don't think he wants me to do that. All right, we can leave that out. Let's just say that one continent wasn't big enough. Okay. From this country, and now you have to give us, so I'm just trying to sort of clear away the cobwebs here, asking the questions that I must ask. How did I get seven cats to Paris?

How did you get seven cats to Paris, Claire? It was more complicated than planning d-day honestly i i really broke down in tears more times than you can know speaking to various officials of various airlines and various eu veterinary authorities about what was required you actually have to get all of you it's harder to emigrate here as a cat than it is as as well actually i shouldn't laugh because the French have just offered asylum to all of the Iraqi Christians. So they, I mean, they've done something very good there, but I was going to say it's harder. It's harder to emigrate as a cat than it is as a refugee.

And you have to start planning this three months in advance. And of course, I didn't plan anything three months in advance because no one knows you're going to be fleeing the country three months in advance. But my heroic friends in Istanbul cared for my cats and waited for them while they were having their blood drawn, sent to the only lab in Europe that titrates for rabies, which is in Dublin. And then you have to wait for three months in case they've been infected afterwards. And then they have to be inspected by a veterinarian. And then they can't all go on the same flight because the maximum is three cats per flight. And I have seven now. Is that a multiple of three? So between the heroism of my friends in Istanbul and the heroism of my brother who

flew from the Ivory Coast to make a special cat ferry for me, they finally all got here, all happy, healthy, and very happy to see me. And I'm very grateful to everyone who made that possible. One more cobweb question. What's life like in Paris? From this remove from Northern California, France looks like a mess. 25% unemployment among youth, riots in the streets, synagogues being attacked, the presidency of France itself and the one institution that's held together, the Fifth Republic, in total collapse, and yet Claire moves to Paris. Well, yeah, there's that.

No, I think there's a lot of hysteria. I mean, the France I'm seeing is in nowhere near as bad shape as you would think from reading the American press. And I'm finding this very puzzling. I'm wondering whether my perspective on things has just changed so much after 10 years in Turkey that I can't recognize something bad when I'm looking at it or whether there really is a certain media hysteria. It's certainly true the economy is not in good shape.

It's certainly true that there was a little unpleasantness last week with those riots, although that is a more complicated story than it's being reported as. It's true that there's a lot of general grumbling, but France is an advanced, developed, first world country. And by comparison with Turkey, it seems like it's in great shape to me. Now, I'm not minimizing that there are economic problems. I'm not minimizing that there are ethnic tensions. But I think France is going to be fine. And I say this as someone who did not think so 10 years ago. So I'm asking myself, well, have I changed or did I get the prediction wrong? And I still don't know for sure. My tentative feeling is that a lot of things that I thought were trends that were bound to get worse have sort of flatlined and are just still as bad as they were 10 years ago but not appreciably worse.

And I'm pretty impressed that the European Union is still hanging together. I didn't think it was going to hold on this long. Does that begin to answer your question? It does. Clara, James Lalex, you're in Minneapolis. How are you doing? I'm doing grand. It's a beautiful day.

You know, the other day in The Economist, I was reading about how Francois Hollande is reasserting French military presence in Africa with regard as the old, right. Which I find fascinating because we were the cowboy nation, but they're the guys who are mucking about in the entire old former colonial state. This is such an unreported story. France has single-handedly saved Mali. But the question is how long can they keep this up? I mean it's one thing as we all know to disperse a group of terrorists. It's another to keep them dispersed.

Right. And the other point is that we're the bad guys who arm all the bad guys like Israel. And here France is selling an amphibious vehicle to this nation. I think it goes by the name of Russia under Putin. How is that playing domestically? Do the and asked, what do you think about this? It's a good question. I should. I think that all of Europe was deeply shocked by Russian separatists shooting a European, a Malaysian aircraft with many Europeans on it right out of the sky. I think that was a dark, cold shock. Now, the arms sales are negotiated years in advance, and backing out of this at the last minute is a very, very difficult thing to do. And it may actually happen. But I think that if they were negotiating it now, they might be looking at it rather differently.

Well, I'm sure that lots of negotiations have gone into this, but to use the old Lenin quote about treaties being like pie crusts made to be broken, the fact that we negotiate these things and those guys play with whatever rules they want seems to be part of the unequal struggle going on here. But again, you're saying that this and maybe also the African situation aren't playing large in the French mind? Or is that just cosmopolitan France we're talking about? Molly certainly is playing large in the French mind because French troops are dying. Which has absolutely no impact large in the French mind because French troops are dying. Which has absolutely no impact here in the States. You never ever read about it, which I just find fascinating.

He didn't read anything about Molly when that first happened, which always really surprised me. It really is one of these stories that's huge but gets absolutely no anglophone media time. And there's something very unfair about this. The French have been fighting this reputation of cowardice for a century now, and they're doing something incredibly brave, and no one pays attention.

Well, it's not the French Foreign Legion working here. Is it the bearded guys with the axes and the shambling walk and the bound-up shins? That would be sort of an old romantic story that we'd like to think that men still have the bolt hole of the French Foreign Legion. But that's for our next conversation. We want you to go out in the street and find out exactly what the French people

actually think about their position as arms mercenaries. I can just open my window and call right out here and find out for you. If you do, but shout loudly over the mewing of the wonderful cast. Messieurs, mesdames. Messieurs, messieurs. Go, mesdames, messieurs. Claireieurs. Go, mes ponses, vous.

Claire, it's great to talk to you again, and we look forward to having you on the site as often as possible and speaking. Well, now that my computer is back in shape, I will be on the site as often as possible. It was a very, very dramatic day, let me tell you. Claire, we've missed you, and we're thrilled you're back. Thrilled.

It's mutual. And tell your dad we said bonjour. Okay, I will. Thanks. Bye. And off she goes. And, you know, at this moment, it would be great to bring in Andy McCarthy because Andy McCarthy, who we've had on the show before, of course, is the guy who wrote the faithless execution building the political case for Obama's impeachment. And you can get that at Encounter Books.

Regardless of your opinion on it, you might want to know the actual legal arguments that work here. So when one of your friends starts saying, you crazy Republicans are talking about – you have to explain what it's all about. You have to lay out what case Andy makes not for impeachment but for the malfeasance of the administration that we should be thinking about anyway. An important book. And it's out now. You can get it for 15% off your list price if you go to EncounterBooks.com and use the coupon code RICOSHET. That'll work for just about any other Encounter book as well. And when you see their catalog, it's a vast panoply of glories.

Go spend that code. Go educate yourself. Now, adding to our list of Ricochet favorites, we're going to bring in David Limbaughugh we've had him on before he's a delight to have he's uh you know one of these guys where you say here's here's the biography who needs that it's like with judith it's like with claire it's like with rob it's like with peter we're all family and friends here here's david hello david how are you guys? We're well. All the better for talking to you, David. Peter here. You know, I'm tempted just to say, what were you thinking about last night on the treadmill? Well, I just read Judith Levy's post on your site, and I tweeted it because it is chilling and eye-opening.

I mean I really was moved by that. Did you guys read that yet? It's really fresh. Yeah, it's great. I think she posted it either early this morning or last night, or I'm not quite sure when. But David, it's Rob Long in L.A., and we just spoke to her from Israel, and it is chilling. It's chilling, and there's something surreal about it. I mean, here's this woman.

She's a mom with kids, and she's in the middle of a war zone, and she's kind of writing from the heart. It was really – I agree with you – really moving. Well, she describes Israel as every bit as first world as the United States, and yet, folded into that, they're layered on top of that, they're living in a war zone. And what I thought was two things. One is she addressed the moral equivalence, which I've been hitting on in my ricochet posts, and she really hits that strong. And the other thing is, I don't know if you guys were moved by this,

but the tunnels, she really made those real. Underneath the very ground ground they're living on, and they were planning on not just being murdered, but tranquilized, dragged down into tunnels while they were still alive. Now, imagine the horror of that, the sadism involved in that by these enemies, which further illustrates their immorality and evil. David, you don't understand. The Palestinians are just responding to the fact that Israel, for no reason at all, shells a Gaza hospital. That's true.

What am I thinking? What are you supposed to do when they shell a hospital but retroactively go back in time and build tunnels? The moral equivalence is just – I mean Israel keeps tweeting out these graphics, these really nice descriptive infographics with all the cement that they got, all the concrete, I'm sorry. They could have built two hospitals, X number of schools, three office towers, two shopping malls. But of course they didn't. So when you – why do we have this – the moral equivalence? equivalents. Why is it? Is it because the journalistic community just simply wants to pretend that they're objective and they're balancing these two differing ideas? Or is it because there's some horrible moral inversion that's gone on in the world that actually finally

has decided that Israel is the evil party? Well, I just finished writing a book on Christian apologetics, and one of the challenges Christian apologists and evangelists have is first addressing the idea that there is even such a thing as truth. Because you can't address people with the notion that Christianity's truth claims are true if people don't accept the notion that there is truth in the first place. So in this era of so-called post-modernism and moral relativism, there are a lot of people who have fallen prey to the university, to the academic and media indoctrination that morality is relative and that traditional values are antiquated. And it's a matter of people who are in power, like the United States, trying to use their power to force their morality onto people. And morality is just really a tool for the power elite. Yeah, one point there, David, and that is the idea that morality and truth are malleable concepts ends when their truths and their moralities become enshrined as the dominant idea.

Then all of a sudden, we're no longer in a process of discovering what is true and what is wrong. Then we've come to the end point of history, and that's where discussion stops. Well, and in addition to that, when their claims are necessarily self-defeating because they say there are no truths and yet they accept, they expect you to accept that as an absolute truth. That's exactly right, actually. That's exactly right. David, so how do we – Obama. Of course we have to talk about Obama for a moment or two. So Zion is one of his principal haters. Yeah.

Well, the latest – well, this is – you're talking about relativism, the insistence that there's no truth but our truth. So the latest instance of this that comes to my mind is this fellow who helped to draft Obamacare. They found a tape of him. I can't remember his name now. He's an advisor, some academic somewhere, saying a couple of years ago. Gruber. I think his name is Jeffrey Gruber. Thank you very much.

You know exactly where I'm going with this. He is on tape, audio, video, tape, saying to an audience that, of course, the reason the Obamacare legislation was written such that states, this is the legal language, it's in the legislation itself, that the states would offer exchanges was because they wanted, the federal government wanted to create incentives that would make it almost impossible for the states to refuse to offer exchanges. He says this. This was their motive. That's why the legislation was written the way it was written. Now we come, these years later, 31 states have refused the incentives and refused to set up exchanges. And now there's a lawsuit alleging that the IRS, in simply reading the legislation in a way in which it was clearly not intended to be read

and making – and suggesting that the state in the legislation is the federal government. Now we have a lawsuit and the Obama administration has trotted out this advisor to say, oh, I can't even remember what I meant but clearly I was just making a mistake when I – Well, it's actually worse than that, Peter. It's just a lie. At first he said there was absolutely no way they could have possibly meant that, that it was a typo, it was a mistake, something that just that they meant to clarify and never got to. A speako. Sorry. But no, but first he said it was a mistake, not what he said, but the actual text of the bill.

And then when someone found – well, wait a minute. Here you are in 2011 saying the opposite. He said, oh, that. So first he lied, and then when caught in his lie, he a minute. Here you are in 2011 saying the opposite. He said, oh, that. So first he lied, and then when caught in his lie, he kind of wiggled out of it. David, what do you do? David, how long is this going to last? I wrote a – Here's my real question for you. Does living like this where we have this level of meretriciousness, this level of dishonesty, does it do some kind of permanent damage to a nation, to a culture where we have to kind of shrug and half of our media sort of agrees with John Gruber that, well, I know I said it, but I didn't really mean it? Well, you know, curiously and coincidentally, this dovetails with the subject we opened up with, i.e. moral relativism and postmodernism, when Bill Clinton said that

it depends what the meaning of is is, it kind of opened the door to the political culture accepting the absence of clear definitions and words. And we've devolved since. Not that that was the first time. But this statute, and I wrote a column on this, I think the last column. It was not a Lylekian column, but it was nevertheless a fairly decent column. And it talked about the statute being, if the statute is clear in its words, that is, there's this plain meaning rule. So if the words are, the intent of the words are clear from the words themselves, you don't need to look beyond that. And they are very clear. But because we live in

an age of moral relativism, and really, what we really are experiencing is liberals who are on the courts and elsewhere, their ideology is that the end justifies the means. And anything they can do to advance their agenda, the rest, there's very rarely adherence to the rule of law. And they will decide, just as we saw that other circuit, appellate circuit, deciding the other way that day. I think it's going to go to the court. And when it does go to the question of intent, though, as you guys say, there is no question what the intent was. They did the same thing with Medicaid. They were trying to bribe the states into or blackmail, whichever way, it's flip side of the same coin, into adopting their exchanges, and 36 of them did not, and so they're caught with their pants down.

Finally, they miscalculated something politically. But this is a very troubling time when one entire party operates completely immorally. Whatever they want to do, the end justifies the means. And now we're faced, you guys, segueing into another topic, if I may, and not to change the subject, but it's relevant, on this impeachment. Republicans and the lawsuit against Obama, we are faced with a situation where he is continually and egregiously violating the rule of law, snubbing his nose at the Constitution, overreaching, usurping legislative power, and doing what he wants with executive orders. And he's planning and stating he's going to do that with immigration. And Republicans are faced with the options of

filing articles of impeachment, which so many people think that would be a dead letter and also a mistake politically, and I agree, and or filing a lawsuit or just doing nothing and letting him continue. I mean, we've got Ben Dominich on his very good publication, The Transom, every morning saying, we've got to just take it, and we've got other people all over the board, Tea Party, are saying we need to impeach, or some saying we need to make our case like Andy McCarthy and then impeach. But really, even Andy would agree we can't make the political case because we have an institutionally corrupt Democratic Party, and we have, I hate to say it, most liberals who follow

the Democratic Party who lead their voters by lying into believing they're doing the right thing, opposing it, so we'll never win the impeachment thing. And we are so close to an election, we really can't afford to because we need to get this done. But my point is, all of this stuff, we're living in an alternative universe. And James, you talked about the Twilight Zone thing in one of your comments to The Post, which I appreciate, on Ricochet. It really is bizarre that we can't deal in good faith with this Democratic Party. And yet, one last segue, and I'm running on, but dovetailing this whole thing, because we live in a land of moral equivalence and moral relativism, so that any time we say the Democrats are doing terrible things, the immediate response, including Democratic members of my own law firm

who are friends of mine, oh, every party does it. We cannot sit still when people say glibly, everybody does this. No, things are not always equivalent. In a divorce, there might be a child abuser and child molester and a spouse abuser. That's not equal parties at fault. We've got to stop accepting this notion that there is moral equivalence in every moral contest. Go back to the words of James T. Kirk, actually, in Star Trek. I keep coming back to this. When Kodos the Executioner had been unmasked and he said to Captain Kirk,

He said to Captain Kirk, you know, you weren't there. Who are you to judge? To which, of course, Shatner replied in his own inimitable way, who do I have to be? I like that. It always stops the conversation dead. Who are you to judge? Well, who do I have to be exactly, other than the person that I am seeing exactly

what's wrong with this? God bless David Limbaugh. He is so comprehensive and so passionate that when he finishes, there is nowhere to go but to Star Trek. We have to go into the realms of science fiction. But can I just get one little point which I find so strange and I actually – it's a pet peeve of mine and I know everyone is going to come down on me because I hate it when people blame the liberal media for everything. But it does bug me that for forever, as long as the federal government has been active and active as federal government, they have bribed the states.

They have coerced the states with stuff. The federal highway bills have gone to make the states raise their drinking age. They've all done it. Every president has done it. And this president very clearly did it with Obamacare. It makes total sense. It's a time-worn strategy. You force the states to do something because you think your program is going to be successful and popular.

You think that people are going to want it and you want to force the governors around the country to adopt it and all that works perfectly as long as the program isn't Obamacare. It isn't a gigantic disaster that people hate and that's really what – well, the problem with it. The problem with Obamacare is people hate it and that's why the governors haven't adopted it and that's why the states have opted out and that's why they're now complaining that this little typo is a typo instead of what it really is which is actually a fairly boilerplate strategy from presidents uh on both sides of the aisle and what bugs me is that it's so obvious and everyone in washington knows it and every political reporter who's of any good must know it you don't have have to even have a physics – a civics lesson to know this is the way the presidents operate, and no one reports it. They are the most credulous in the tank band of acolytes ever, and to me, it just – it's – every day I'm astonished, and I know that I'm naive and

I get yelled at, and David, you feel free to yell at me and tell me that I'm a fool and why am I being astonished all the time, but it's astonishing to me. They won't even – they will not even report this president's actions that are presidential in terms of history. They won't even countenance that. And, you know, even the very – I hate to dovetail – I mean to connect everything we've talked about today in an obscene stream of consciousness act of shame. But your very initial concept that you brought up about the feds bribing the states into doing things, that would never have happened in our historical jurisprudence had there not been liberals on the court and in Congress imposing their way and expanding the Constitution beyond what the framers intended. That was never intended for the federal government to be able to use that kind of money

and force their way on things they don't have any constitutional power to do, but now they have the power because they have, I mean, they've historically acquired the power through the courts and through just doing it and people accepting it, and the states literally don't have much power left anymore. The Tth Amendment, not a dead letter, and it sputters every once in a while and signifies that it has some power. But really, this whole thing is, a lot of this is related to the fact that we just don't adhere to our original principles anymore, for which we are made fun of if we talk about hearkening back to them. And it's a shame to me because a lot of

this stuff is very simple. But now we live in a society where moral relativism and and justifies the means mentality carries the day. And the liberal media, I really think what you just said, the liberal media, if it were not for them, they I don't think these scoff laws would be able to get away with it. But it's not – but they really – do you guys – it's an interesting point. James, Peter, don't you agree that they – even if they are offended a little bit by things Obama does, they immediately say, well, every side does it. Or I don't care. I'm going to close my eyes anyway because we have to get this done. We agree with Obamacare.

We agree with all socialized medicine, single payer eventually. So that's – It's the first – it's a first as a mask for the second. A Gallic shrugging of shoulders of world-weary cynicism that everybody does it as a mask for the fact that they – it's necessary that these guys get their agenda through. By the way, David, nice try but we ask the questions here, OK? But I do have a question for you. Obama and impeachment, impeachment from his point of view. Here's what I'm thinking, and I'm not alone.

Charles Krauthammer thinks a certain version of this. As a matter of fact, I'll be honest. I got the idea from reading Krauthammer. What does he know? What does he know? He's like, so that's why with you on the show, I want to test it out, of course. So the argument runs as follows. Barack Obama can't lose.

If he pushes the Republicans into impeaching him, the polls will flip against the Republicans just the way they did when the Republicans impeached Clinton and Clinton came out on top. As a matter of fact, between now and November, having the Republicans impeach Barack Obama may be one of the few things that could happen that would unify the Democrats and enable them to contain their losses in the midterm elections. So if he pushes them to impeach him, he doesn't lose, he wins. And if they don't impeach him, even though he's pushing, then every time he pushes, he can push farther. He's expanding the envelope for his own lawlessness, for his own, he's expanding his own scope for arbitrary tyrannical in the strict sense of the word tyrannical meaning unhinged from any legal constraints or the constraints of popular will for tyrannical action.

He cannot lose. If Republicans impeach him, he goes up in the polls. If they don't, they're just giving him more and more scope for arbitrary action. David? Yeah, and I agree, and I've been – I've said that throughout, that impeachment would not be wise politically. It's – because it is a political action in the end. I mean we talk about it being legal, quasi-legal. The House files the articles of impeachment.

Then there's a trial in the Senate. When you've got the Democrats controlling the Senate, there's no way you can get him convicted. Of course, that may not be the purpose. The purpose may be to blight his record and to send a message and a deterrent. But still, especially because of the race issue that they always flagrantly play, we will not win the PR battle, although I will dispute the idea that Clinton won that. There's good evidence on the other side that Clinton did not gain on impeachment. Now, since then, of course, he has. History revisionists have made it an article of faith now in the narrative. But at the time, I'm not sure that he actually won. But I do

think Obama would win. So it's irrelevant whether Clinton did or not in my view. But here's the distinction we need to make. We need to distinguish between actually beginning impeachment and conceding the point that he hasn't committed high crimes and misdemeanors. That's where Andy McCarthy took to task Paul Ryan, who said, what Obama has done does not rise to the level of impeachable offenses. That's offensive to me.

I love Paul Ryan, but that is clearly wrong. Obama has so egregiously... So what's the correct argument? What should Paul Ryan... You're a member of Congress. You're a member of this... You're Ted Cruz. You're somebody that people listen to

on the Republican side. Short of impeachment, which you've just ruled out as politically untenable, what should our position be? What should they be saying? Well, I think the lawsuit may well end up being moot too. They may not get standing, although they have some good points and they have a chance, but I think it might be important to do something like that, not because you expect anything to happen, but because you want the base, and this isn't strategic and cynical, you want to let the base know that you're sending a message

that you believe the rule of law needs to be respected, and we have to at least try, even if the chances aren't good. And short of filing the lawsuit, which is going to happen, we need to continue to make the case that he's acted lawlessly for no other reason than to advance our position when he tries this outrageous executive amnesty thing that's coming up on immigration with the border situation. We've got to continue to beat the drums. The only downside in beating the drums is that it takes other scandals off the table. If you've noticed, whatever happened to Benghazi, Fast and Furious, even whatever happened to

the VA scandal, the IRS, if not for new revelations happening in the media every day, we would forget about half of these multitudinous scandals. So we've got to be careful when we talk about Obama has done this lawlessness. We've got to do something. We've got to be careful not to forget the other things he's done. But I think we're headed for a gigantic victory in November, and we don't want to blow it. We're really close, but maybe for different reasons than other people have. See, David, I just don't understand why you hate women so much, because what the president's

trying to do, what the president is working to do, what the president has been wanting to do ever since he got in there was to work and fight and fight and work and work and fight and fightingly work for women. And that's why with a do-nothing Congress who refused to do anything, he went and worked on his own for the American people like he said he would and passed that law that made sure that women get the same pay as men. Period. So you have you got to tell me then why your

gynophobic, old-style, patriarchy phallocratic ideas are trying to keep the first democratically elected black man from doing the work that saves American women. That's why the country's turning against you and your kind.

That's actually really good. James, you can have your own show on MSNBC. As a matter of fact, you could do both sides. It's called the intellectual Turing test. If you can sum up the other side's argument with the same pattern. See, that's what debate taught me.

Debate taught me to be, to lie, but to sound convincingly. You did. But that's the problem. I mean, when they play a speech of the president getting into his folks mode and describing all the things that he's done, he sort of creates

this atmosphere in which people are encouraged to be impatient with democracy as an impediment to the greater good. And that's – I mean that may be one of the more lasting legacies of this. I developed my gynophobia when my first girlfriend, high school sweetheart, broke up with me, if you want to know the real reason that I hate women. But if you want to go into a less facetious mode, back to – I love dovetailing everything. The gynophobia thing, the very word phobia has been a distortion by liberals. Homophobes, I'm not afraid of homosexuals. I don't care what they do.

I just don't want society to sanction same-sex marriage, and that makes me a hater. So see, postmodernism says that language is whatever the power elites say it is, and it doesn't have any objective meaning, and it's a perfect example of how the militant left and the militant homosexual lobby and the entire political left has distorted language. To call this a war on women when Republicans don't want government to subsidize abortifacients, however you pronounce that, to call that opposed to women and a war on women, it blows my mind. But people get away with it because words don't have meaning anymore, and half the party, or half of the, at least half of the Democratic Party, the leaders anyway, subscribe to that notion, and they just say whatever works for them. See how I just, there is some connection with everything.

Yeah, they hate, they hate, they hate, the phobia, the phobia. As Yoda said, phobia leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, suffering leads to Democratic administrations. Well, we'll see what happens when it comes to the next election and we'll have you here to talk about it. We'll look forward to seeing what you say about it. And I commend everyone to go to Ricochet and read David's latest post, which I was banding about my head and responded to late last night because it's one of those things that just gets you thinking. Thanks, Ever. David, may I go on the record here, Peter? Welcome back to Ricochet. Yes.

I really, really love having you back. Thank you. I love being back. Thanks for having me. You guys are great. I will say this. The reason I don't have my own radio show or podcast is because I have no verbal discipline, as you can tell.

When you ask me a question, I will not – I can't help it. I can't answer a simple question. I just go, my dad, answer the question. I'm sorry. My mind is just free-floating. I can't control myself. I apologize. That's good.

No, that's the way we like it. That's perfect. That's what we want from – listen, and we're not – as you can hear from me right now, it's not like we're the most disciplined stalkers either. That's why we love David Limbaugh. I resent you affirming my negative self-assessment. I'm phobic. All right. We had Claire back.

We had David back. Coming up next week, Kenneth returns. Just kidding. All right. Thanks, David. We'll up next week, Kenneth returns. Just kidding. All right. Thanks, David. We'll see you back at the site. Gentlemen, before we go out, and we must at some point because podcasts, you know, after a while, you can only have so many minutes before they degrade into absolute nonsense. And we've never done that yet.

But a couple of things to talk about. One, somebody from Congress has proposed a national soda tax. I think it's time, don't you? We have an epidemic of obesity. I know that I myself have caught excess avoir du poids just simply by walking people who are contagiously obese. Isn't it time that we address this problem of high fructose corn syrup

killing American children and insert those tanks? It's legitimate, isn't it? It's legitimate. I mean if the government and the taxpayers are going to subsidize your healthcare, if we're all in this together, where does it stop? Why is that not logical? Hold on. Hold on.

Here's the fructose problem. I've actually – amazingly enough, I've actually read up on this a little bit. Do you know the problem the fructose problem. I've actually, amazingly enough, I've actually read up on this a little bit. Do you know the problem with fructose? The problem with fructose is the huge subsidies the federal government gives in particular to corn farmers. We overproduce fructose and drive down the price so dramatically and fructose, except in small

quantities, is one of those things that really isn't very good for people. So here's the position we're in now. Item one, the federal government takes money away from us to subsidize the vast overproduction of unhealth food. Item two, the federal government screws up for something like three decades, pushing on school kids across America and attentive parents, a food pyramid, which we now know vastly overstated the importance of carbohydrates, fruits, did all kinds of damage to Americans who were trying to – and three, now, because it's subsidizing the overproduction of bad food, it wants to take even more money away from us by imposing a tax on bad. It is madness.

Actually, three is different. Madness. You're with me on two out of three? I'm even with you on the third. But I would say the problem is the federal government tells farmers what to grow. It tells the citizens what to eat. And now it's telling you where you can go to the doctor. And there's no end to that.

When you start controlling 10% or 12% or 30% of people's lives, you have to control 100% because you simply can't stop at 30. I mean it's not even efficient to stop at 30 because once you start paying for people's health care, you have to tell them they can't smoke and they can't eat and they can't drink Coca-Cola and they can't drink the mocha latte, the frappuccino at Starbucks. That's 800 calories. They can't have the large fries. You should have to show your medical records card to order the Big Mac, right? You shouldn't be able to order

a Big Mac if your cholesterol and your triglycerides are high. I don't want to pay for that. So there's really no reason why the government, the taxpayers or society, however you want to put it, if they're going to pay for a little bit, they're going to pay for all of it. If they're going to control a little bit, they have to control all of it. That's the difference, right? I mean our solution is the federal government shouldn't tell farmers what to grow, shouldn't tell you what to eat, and shouldn't tell you how to go to the doctor. That's much simpler, right? Our simpler solution is we should not even be in that business. But the progressive attitude is it has to do everything.

But there's a logic to it. I mean I understand the logic. It's the logic of progressive socialism. Precisely. And I was interested to hear you fall into the trap there. I mean, yes, it is the job of the state to tell us what to eat because the state is responsible for our health. And health is the paramount concern of modern life, not goodness or virtue or pleasure or anything else, but health. That you should live to be 120, a desiccated little joyless Hulk sitting there watching some television

show. You, James Lylex, at 120 will not be a desiccated, joyless Hulk. I'm telling you, at 120, you're going to have a second wind. There'll be 20 more books coming out. The point is this, is that you have described there, the things that you were describing that the government should keep us from eating are things that should not exist in the first place because they are not sustainable. I have a piece in National Review online

today where somebody is excoriating the American breakfast for its unsustainability. The fact that we have cereal with bananas, orange juice out of season. It's absurd. It's ridiculous that these things are unsustainable either because the economy will collapse due to the falling petrodollar or because the transportation infrastructure will be demolished by peak oil or because global warming will make all these things impossible to have. It is simply wrong. And I love – this paragraph that I found in a – I think nutritional anarchy page or something like that.

I was describing the American breakfast as bananas – Nutritional anarchy. Yes, yes. I know. I know, which sounds like you're eating Skittles and thumbtacks. It sounds like a two-year-old in a high chair. Yeah, precisely. But it says that the American breakfast with its grains and its raisins from elsewhere and its tropical fruit

that shouldn't be there and its oranges out of season, its blueberries in December, this absurdity should not really exist. You know, 50, 60 years ago, this would have been a piece in Life magazine about exactly the boon of modern civilization. Yeah, look at this, yeah. Look what we can do.

Okay, okay. I sort of, I don't agree with the politics behind that, but I have yet to find a blueberry out of season that's not terrible. Well, blueberry – You know what I mean? They tend – because in order to get them – or a strawberry out of season, in California you can get them all year round. They're never out of season here. They're not that good. That's really helpful to the cause, Rob.

Thanks a lot. Sorry, I just didn't know. They do have a good point about blueberries. All right, Blueberry Out of Season is your next book. But, okay. But, James, I know that you're an old movie fan. I know I'm going too long. I know you're an old movie fan, but I've noticed an old movie.

I watch Turner Classic movies all the time. It's pretty much all I watch. And the weird thing is when you see one little domestic scene and they're all sitting around eating breakfast or the person's delivering and this is as late as like the early 60s and the milkman is delivering things in the morning um often it's tomato juice it's not orange what yeah what yeah well i'm not even i don't even know whether it's true or not. I'm willing to take your word for it. But what does it say about you at midlife, Rob Long, that you're noticing that in old movies the delivery man brings in tomato juice? The old man – the delivery man was not bringing in –

You need to move to Manhattan immediately. He was not bringing in tomato juice. He was bringing in milk. What Rob is referencing is what they have at the breakfast table, and it's probably because tomato juice photographed better in black and white. No, no, no. I just think it's because that orange juice – there was a whole period of time orange juice and grapefruits and all that citrus was considered kind of a luxury. Yes, it was. We really used to give it to each other for Christmas.

Yes, it was. We really used to give it to each other for Christmas. Yes, it was. But starting in the late 40s and the early 50s, it started to be ramped up very, very nicely, if you look at the old life ads, as something that came in cans and then came in concentrate and then came in delicious, wonderful pasteurized bottles. Yeah, but it was about the early 50s when it started to be less of a luxury and more of a delight. Yeah, that's right. And tomato juice in cans, apparently, kept the letters more – it was more shelf-st a luxury and more of a delight. Yeah, that's right. And tomato juice in cans apparently kept the letters more –

it was more shelf-stable than the rest of it. But I want Blueberries in December to be your next book title to describe your enjoyment yet disappointment with modern life. And Blue Yeti, if you could, if you could isolate the phrase, here's the problem with fructose from Peter early on, and I want to drop that into some death metal techno piece I second that right before the beats kicked in

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