The Ricochet Podcast - Who's The Homer?

Episode Date: January 24, 2013

Inauguration blues, liberalism coming on strong, Roe v. Wade is 40: what to do, what to do? Our guests Fox News contributor and talk radio host Monica Crowley and Ricochet’s own Mollie Hemingway help sort through the low points and show us the way forward. Also, Peter asks a burning question late in the show that we ask you to answer in the comments: What Simpsons character best captures each of... Source

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I'm James Lilacs, and today, post-inauguration, we have a zesty brew of tough talk and titillating trivialities. We're all over the map. We've got Monica Corrales from Fox News and our own Molly Hemingway. Let's have ourselves a podcast, shall we? There you go again. Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast, number 153, inaugural edition, as we celebrate the beginning

of the end. This is over the hump right now, isn't it? It's all downhill from here, if you remember what most second terms look like. As ever, this episode is brought to you by Audible.com, the internet's leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature.

That's fiction, that's nonfiction, that's periodicals. And you can have a free one. Free. We like that. Go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet. Audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet. Well, as ever, joined by Peter Robinson and Rob Long. And guys, you know, as I was watching the inauguration and listening to the bluster

and the hortatory exhortations to go forward into the future collectively. And my, you know, my chin is on my sternum. And then I thought, imagine what the guys watching FDR's fourth inaugural must've felt like. So how did you take it, Peter?

I skipped it. Yeah, pretty much. Rob? I, you skipped it. Literally. I skipped it.

I am telling you, I, I couldn't bring myself. I just thought to myself, I've done a lot of this. I deserve a break. There were requests to appear on this, that, or the other. And I just said, no, I'm not going to watch it. I'm not going to comment on it. I am going to skip it. And I did. And I feel

not a whit of remorse except until now, when I'm forced to accept your view of it because I can't answer back come on how history will judge you harshly for for not weighing in on the deathless rhetoric that was paraded before us so Rob you subjected yourself to it and your takeaway I you know I did I did I mean I didn't I didn't have it on and you know oh like a scribble oh you but I watched parts of it and I caught up to it. I tell you, I have a weird reaction now.

I'm actually mad and I know this is the worst thing to say because we're not ever supposed to say this. But I'm kind of mad at America because they bought into this stuff. And I'm just looking at a Gallup poll. American optimism hits the lowest point since the Carter administration. Yes, I know. 39 percent. Fewer than four in ten Americans rate the US in a positive manner. They did buy into it. Now I will talk about it. What do they want? This is the president you voted for.

He's now taking – he's doing all this awful stuff. What did you expect? Yeah, OK. So here's what I'm talking – I skipped it, but of course I read the darn thing and I read the news this – Your legacy as a speechwriter, let's put it this way, Peter – is not in any danger. So – right. So on the one hand, in a certain sense, I was relieved because finally Barack Obama has told us who he is. He is an unreconstructed, intensely partisan, and very aggressive liberal. Wait, that was –

That is a clarifying moment for us. He now is willing to go before the entire country, not just this group or that group, not just what we read about him in memoirs and Bob Woodward. Now he stands before the entire nation and indeed the world and says I'm a liberal. We know where we stand. But as to the American people having bought into this, he didn't mention gay marriage during the campaign. He didn't talk about global warming as one of the great initiatives that he was going to take up during the campaign. We knew.

We knew. But we're. First of all, he did. I flatter. I didn't mention gay marriage. There's no way. He didn't make a big deal. What I'm trying to say is if you're if you're an ordinary voter going around leading your life and you have this vague choice of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.

Barack Obama did not go to pains to sharpen up the division between himself and Mitt Romney. So I don't believe the American people did really buy into it. Oh, give me a break. They bought into it hook, line, and sinker. Everybody who voted for him voted for that. And look, if he spends the next four years talking about gay marriage and global warming, we will be thrilled. That's like – you and I should be celebrating. Please.

Let's talk about that because at least that keeps him from doing real damage. But here's where our problem with our side is. We worry about what he says. We think about what he says. Now, finally, he's revealed himself. He revealed himself when he says. We think, okay, now finally he's revealed himself. He

revealed himself when he socialized medicine. Good point. Well, of course we knew all of this, but he wasn't saying it. He wasn't clear about it. I don't blame him anymore. I'm not, he's just doing a job. James, don't be mad at America. Be mad at half of America. Half of America voted for this fellow because it didn't, they didn't think it was going to cost them anything. It would cost somebody else something. There would be rich people who would pay for the most important initiatives of our time, namely solar-powered gay wedding chapels, OK? And those people would pay for it. That would be fine.

And what Obama did was that somehow, somehow, somehow he stopped the depression from happening. I'm not quite clear on the particulars, but somehow that was him. Yeah, but according to Gallup, America's depressed. Yeah, I know. Right, but it could be worse. It could be two out of ten. James, you are the witness. You are the witness.

I am the one sticking up for American voters. And they felt better about voting for Barack Obama than Mitt Romney because Mitt Romney was boring and white and uncool. And it felt hip to vote for Barack Obama as it did in 2008. Less so, but still hip. You're a better person for voting for him, and that's what half the country believes. And it isn't going to cost him anything, so why not? And if they wake up a little bit later and say,

uh-oh, you know, it's still not very... Well, it could be worse, because if Mitt Romney was in there, there would be nothing but bank deregulation, and we would have housing prices plummeting to the floor and gasoline would be $5. So there you go. I mean essentially you're dealing with people who don't process information particularly thoroughly. Hold on. Hold on.

James, Rob, let's just clear something else up right now. I ask you both. Democracy is a failure, correct? No. No, no, no, no, no, no. But you just said we're dealing with people who don't process information. At the moment. James, I have to say, from you, this is shocking. Rob has always had a kind of creeping nostalgia for an aristocracy.

I've always felt that, haven't you? Lord Long, Lord Long. But James, the man from Dakota. What? Why? These people will swing the other direction. We've used these people before. Sometimes the people turn against you. I'm serious. I mean, do you think everybody who voted for Ronald Reagan said, you know, now that I've looked at his economic policy specifically, I can see exactly where the tax rates and the amount of revenue that increases to the government is going to maximize. No, a lot of people have the same emotional reaction for voting for Reagan that people today have voting for Obama. Don't say such a thing.

I think you're absolutely right. My fear is that you're right. You think that everybody who voted... Ronald Reagan never hid what he believed. No, no, no. I'm just saying that people make emotions – Actually, the way that Ronald did. Not everybody makes an emotional – it makes a logical intellectual decision. They vote for their gut, and sometimes the gut goes with us.

The people who we call low-information voters are people who don't necessarily process everything as much as we would love them to. Sometimes are on our side. So, I mean, you can't dismiss them all. What you have to do is find a way to convince them intellectually as well as emotionally. That's all I'm saying. I agree. You agree! James is making my argument.

You're the one who started off by writing off – you're saying you're disappointed in American folks? Yeah, but I agree. I think James is absolutely right. I mean – but here's what I fear. I fear that they make an emotional decision and then it doesn't matter because the hard stuff really does require a little bit of conviction because it's hard. And then maybe a million. I don't know the actual number, but I would say the past four years, I'd say he said – used the phrase we have to make hard choices about one million times. How many hard choices has he made? I don't really know the exact number, but I would say it's close to zero. And I think that's probably – that is the essence of the problem.

I mean here's my strategy for our side. My strategy for our side is we divide up into two strike forces, right? Everybody has got a job. You don't ever do the other job. You always do your job. One half of our side is focused relentlessly on every stupid thing that comes out of the Obama administration, every bad regulation, every cylindra, everything that comes out, we're just the attack. And the other side speaks directly to the American people about what needs to change. No one does two jobs.

Everybody has just only one job and I think that might work. You've divided it pretty neatly into members of the House, into Republicans in Washington, above all members of the House. They're the ones whose job it is to stand up to Obama and to attack, attack, attack every bad piece of legislation he proposes, and the 30 Republican governors and recent office holders such as Jeb Bush. In my judgment, talking directly to the American people is going to be a lot easier to do if you're at a distance from Washington. We discussed this earlier. No, I think that's a good point.

But I guess what I would say is my fear for the Republicans in Washington is lead and instead they should be cavilling and pointing fingers and saying here's another dumb thing you're doing and here's another dumb thing you're doing. Right now we have John Boehner trying to be kind of a pseudo-Republican shadow president, and that is just never going to work. Yeah. I'm with you on that. No, it's not going to work because he lacks the stature. He lacks the charisma. He lacks the rhetoric. He lacks everything you want in a president. I think Rob's right. He ain't president. He ain't president. That's the other thing. We got a president. That's why we don't have a prime minister because we have a president and he does everything. What were our great triumphs are always when his side or they do something crazy and stupid and spendthrift and it's all Solyndra or remember the Catholic bishops? That's something we put some points on the board then. It should all be about this is your – you're the president.

This is your government, and look at all the crazy stuff you're doing. That to me seems like a valuable thing to spend the next 18 months doing. Exactly, Exactly. And everybody remembers second terms are usually a disaster, at best. So this should be fun. Rub your hands together. The glee, the happiness. Get some popcorn. The show is just about to begin. And telling you all about it and offering commentary on the facts as they unravel the next four years will be Monica Crowley. She's the host of The Monica Crowley Show on Westwood One Radio and a Fox News contributor as well. She's been a Washington Times columnist,

member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds two master's degrees and a PhD in international affairs from Columbia and worked as a foreign policy assistant to former President Richard Nixon from 1990 until his death in 94. Monica's experience with Nixon prompted her to write two best-selling books,

Nixon Off the Record, his candid commentary on people in politics, and Nixon in Winter. Her current book is What the Bleep Just Happened, and the bleep is in the title. Actually, fill it in as you please. We welcome her to the podcast. Welcome, Monica. Hi, guys. Great to be back.

Hey, Monica, Peter Robinson here. In the first place, just listening to James recite your list of credentials, for a crazed right winger, you have a pretty fancy background. Fancy pants over here with all these degrees and everything, yes. Yes, I think I'm overeducated. But somehow I did come out of the Ivy League a conservative. Actually, I entered the Ivy League a conservative. Actually, I think I entered the world from the womb a conservative.

So what did you make of the events yesterday? What are you referring to specifically? Well, excuse me, the yesterday, the day before yesterday. I'm sorry. Oh, you're talking about the inaugural. Yes, I am. I indulged myself by pretending that Monday didn't exist. And somehow I thought it would do less. I just read about it in the newspapers yesterday.

So I'm a day behind. I am. I am right there with you. I've sort of blacked it out from my memory. You know, it was probably the most predictable inaugural address I think we've seen in recent history. This is a man who is a creature of the hard left. He came out of the hard left. He has governed from the hard left. And so everything he said on Monday is exactly who he is. It is exactly how he has behaved in his first term.

And we can expect more of the same. I mean, it's not a big mystery here with Barack Obama. It drives me crazy. I don't know if it drives you guys crazy, too, but it just drives me up the wall when I hear people say, well, now that he's in his second term, the president is going to be very concerned with his legacy. So he's going to moderate. We can expect him to reach across the aisle, work with Republicans on accomplishing big things for the country. That is a conventional wisdom when you're dealing with a normal president and a normal presidency. The big mistake so many people have made is in treating Barack Obama as if he is a normal president

and as if his presidency has been normal. He is not a garden variety Democrat. He is not Bill Clinton. He's not Jimmy Carter. This is a completely different ball of wax. So when we talk about his legacy and we think, well, he might be like Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan in a second term. He might be like Bill Clinton in a second term, reaching across the aisle, trying to work with the other side. None of that is going to

hold true here. Because remember, you guys, four years ago, this president used a phrase over and over again. He talked about the fundamental transformation of the nation. So in his mind, a legacy is exactly that. It's not, well, working across the aisle and moderating here and there and showing compromise and goodwill. His legacy, in his own mind, and he's well on his way to accomplishing it, is that fundamental transformation of the nation into a European-style socialist state. That's what he has in mind. So there will be no compromise. There will be no negotiation. There will be no reaching across the aisle. And it's only now, it seems, I heard you guys talking about John Boehner and the Republican leadership, it seems like it's only now starting to dawn on them that he has no intention of working with them and that he is single-mindedly

focused on that fundamental transformation of the nation. Monica, tell me why I'm wrong in the following assertions. Four years ago, we could say there was an economic crisis. We could say that for understandable, if mistaken, nevertheless understandable reasons, the country was tired of Republicans and George W. Bush. They represented, that Ronald Reagan represented, that in some ways Bill Clinton represented is gone. And the country has chosen to put it behind it, permit Barack Obama to turn us into a European state. Why am I wrong? I don't think you're wrong. Oh, darn it all. I agree with you.

It is a sad reality, but I think it's true, and I think we have to face this square in the face. Look, when Obama spoke about the fundamental transformation of the nation four years ago, I think a lot of people didn't want to see what he meant by that, or they supplied their own thoughts as to what they thought he meant by it. So you have, you know, Bush fatigue, we'll finally be rid of Bush, or we'll fix this economy, or this is historic, we have the first viable black candidate who could be the first black president, very exciting, very emotional for the country four years ago. So they didn't focus on what he was actually saying, and what he intended to do. And in those first four years, he actually accelerated us to get us to that tipping point, where more people are dependent

on government than not. And he was able to change the equation between government and private sector. So you have, you know, it used to be in America as part of the driving force of innovation and great prosperity and economic strength. It used to be that the balance with private was way up here and the government sector was way down here. He has changed that equation so that government and private are equal on an equal level, or even the government part is elevated over the private sector. And when changing that equation, what you do is create enormous dependency. You're growing government, and therefore you're growing the number of people dependent on government.

You're locking them in, and then, of course, you're locking them into voting Democrat, again, for the rest of their lives. They're not going to vote out the guy giving them the goodies. So what has happened here in the last four years is that he has driven us very quickly to a dependency society or largely a dependency society. That is a very tough thing to throw into reverse. So whereas before I would have always described America as a center-right nation, now I think we're actually center-to-center-left. And as we see all across Western Europe, that requires a lot of money, it requires a lot of spending, and it ends in mountains of debt that ends up imploding these societies and these nations. And we are quickly on that road. I mean, the difference

between us and say Greece or Italy, Portugal, any of these nations going under in Western Europe after decades of this is that we don't have anybody to bail us out. The Greeks have the Germans and the EU. We have no one except maybe the Chinese. So maybe the next inaugural address will be given in Mandarin or Cantonese. I don't know. But the problem is that when the United States goes under, that's it. The whole world goes under. And I would argue that Obama coming out of this socialist tradition and trying to turn us in that direction and having great success in doing that, that that's what he intends to do. I mean, if you destroy American capitalism and the American free market system, you destroy global capitalism and the global free market system. And that's what's going on, especially when you marry that to what you see happening all around the world, which is the international socialist movement on the march.

Well, what does he think? I just want to know what he thinks is going, what order is going to arise from the ashes that will benefit him and his class exactly after there is the collapse that you've just described. What does Obama think comes next? I think he – because he is such a pure ideologue in this way, I'm not sure he actually thinks beyond transforming the nation. I think he thinks – look, I think he genuinely believes that that is the right path for America, to have this social justice state and to have, you know, he's always talking about fair shot or level playing field. Well, that's socialism.

I honestly believe that he believes that that is the right system for humanity, and it's certainly the right system for humanity, and it's certainly the right system for America, and that all of the opposite things, the things that we as conservatives value, free markets, individual liberty, economic freedom, that those are the things that led to all of these grave injustices and extreme inequality, and therefore they have to be fixed. So he sees himself as something of a redeemer for America's past sins, whether it's greedy capitalism or rampaging hegemony around the world. He's here to fix all of that. And I think once he sets America on that path, I don't think he really

thinks beyond it, because I think he believes, and he may be right to believe this, that once you wrap those tentacles of radical wealth redistributionism, socialism, socialized medicine, once you wrap those tentacles around every pillar of our economy, it is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to unwrap them. Just look at Western Europe. So I think he thinks, okay, after two terms, my work here is done. I have fundamentally changed the trajectory of America. Remember, you guys, about four years ago when he was first running, he gave an interview and he referred to in a way that Bill Clinton did not. And everybody kind of focused on, ooh, the Clinton-Obama rivalry, and ooh, he took a shot at Bubba. That wasn't really the point. The point was he was saying, wait a minute, Reagan changed the direction of the country toward a more, you know,

constitutionally-based, limited-government, individual-liberty model, which is, of course, what the founders set out for us, I want to change it with that much impact but in the other direction. And that's what he's done. Hey, Monica, it's Rob in L.A. I got a question. Hi, Rob. Hey, how are you?

Isn't it – You're good. We were just talking before you got on about who watched the speech and who didn't. FYI, Peter did not. I didn't watch it live because I couldn't bring myself to. But one of the things I'm struck by almost always is that the only way that socialism works, I mean the only way that this kind of liberalism works is if everybody does it, right? Because liberals like Obama don't believe that things get better. They think that things get fairer, which is not the same thing.

They think that everybody has kind of – if everybody has sort of D-grade healthcare and everybody has kind of D-grade standard of living, that that's better than somebody – some people sort of pushing the envelope and getting A-plus healthcare and dragging everybody else along. And capitalist free marketers like us believe that actually, no, we unleash all this fantastic entrepreneurial activity and zeal and the American socialists like Obama to sort of stop, to stop all this progress, to stop all these things getting better? I mean isn't that really what Obamacare is, which is sort of the agreement that, OK, the healthcare we have now is pretty much all you're ever going to get. So let's just stop working on it and instead now think about how we're going to give everybody kind of a C-plus version of this. Yeah, you're exactly right. And that's one of the ironies of the word progressivism because the root word of that, of course, is progress. But they seek to arrest everything exactly the way it is, and they redistribute it around. And they look at everything as finite, like, okay, well, this is as far as we'll get

in medical research. So let's tax everything to death now under Obamacare, medical devices, all of that. Let's tax that. Okay. And there's a finite amount of dollars and wealth in the world. So let's redistribute it now. And your station in life is finite. So let's lock you in, bring those who are above you down, bring those who are below you up, let's level everything out. It's a very bizarre philosophy, and it's one that's been discredited over decades, if not centuries, this kind of thing. It just leads to an equal disbursement of poverty and misery and human despair every single time it's been tried. But it doesn't stop the ideologues, because the ideologues are driven by it. it's been tried, but it doesn't stop the ideologues

because the ideologues are driven by it. Here's my question, and I guess this is why I'm sort of confused. I've been sort of confused today, is that it seems to me like that doesn't sound very American, and yet Americans seem to have voted for this. I mean, you travel around, you give speeches, you meet a lot of people. Do you think Americans in general, I mean, you travel around, you give speeches, you meet a lot of people. Do you think Americans in general, I mean, believe that the future is kind of going to be a C-plus version of the present? I agree with you that this is fundamentally anti-American, and you always kind of get in trouble when you say it because some people jump on you and say, are you calling the president anti-American? No, I'm calling his philosophy fundamentally anti-American because it's opposed to everything that's made this country not just great, but good. Limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual freedom, economic freedom, strong national defense.

He's gutting all of that. That's what the far left has been about for decades, but certainly once they grab the brass ring of the presidency through Obama, they're really going to town, and they will continue to do that. To answer your question about where the American people are, you know, we've seen this with Western Europe, that when the government grows so big and becomes a massive nanny state and disincentivizes hard work, disincentivizes achievement. There for you from cradle to grave, yes, with crappy health care and kind of crappy housing and a crappy job. But you know what?

Don't raise your expectations that much because security means more than risk and reward. And everybody else has got the crappy stuff too. Yeah, and everybody else has the crappy stuff. And then people kind of get used to their station in life and think, well, you know, I really don't want to work that hard. And I like my eight weeks paid vacation. And I like that I got crappy medical care, but it's always there and I don't have to pay for it. It is soul crushing. Soul crushing.

We see the great empires of Europe are now just crumbling husks of what they used to be. This country has always been different, but we are going down that road psychologically as well as politically and economically. And it is a very dangerous thing. We have always been exceptional because we've always rejected that, that sort of path of least resistance and laziness. But it is creeping in here. And when you have a charismatic leader like Barack Obama who is pushing it and selling it in very creative and seductive ways, it is a tough thing to fight. Monica, Peter here. Hi, Peter. What would Richard Nixon have made of this moment? In particular, what would he have counseled our side right now? I think that President Nixon would be looking at the last four years with great despair and a lot of anguish. This is a country he loved, body and soul, as you

know, and fought for it, body and soul. And I think he would be particularly distressed, first and foremost, at America's diminishing role in the world, at our retrenchment under this president around the world, the diminishing of our standing in terms of economic freedom in the world and our ability and willingness to actually project power in the world. I think he'd be most horrified by that, our failure to protect our allies, to engage our adversaries, to engage our adversaries, to confront our adversaries. In fact, in Obama's case, he's actually encouraging a lot of our

adversaries, like the Muslim Brotherhood and so on. I think he would be beside himself that for decades, this country has built up superpower status, and under one president, it's all just disappearing deliberately and on purpose. I think he would be counseling our side to stand and fight. I know we only have one third, one half of one third of the government in the House of Representatives, and our side just doesn't seem either willing or able to take this fight to this guy.

I mean, they just, they seem beaten down, they seem burnt out, they seem exhausted, and I understand why. But we've got one thin red line here between us and the total destruction of the country, and it's the House of Republicans. So guys, you might want to stand up and realize that and fight back. I think Nixon would be arguing to them, look, the press is never going to love you, they're always going to be opposed to you, and they're always going to hit you. So understand that and then dismiss it and not care. Go and fight for the great foundational principles. Fight for your constituents who sent you there to fight. Take it on.

Don't be afraid. Be fearless. You know, watching the Hillary Clinton Benghazi hearings, I mean, it was one Republican senator after another, even ones that I respect and like, like Marco Rubio, just kind of falling over themselves over Hillary Clinton and not asking the tough questions about Benghazi. Except, thank God for Rand Paul. Rand Paul was pretty much, man, John McCain a little bit,

but Rand Paul was there very fearlessly saying, wait a minute, y'all lied to us for months about these four dead Americans. We need more people like that. I think Nixon would say, stand and fight. You have nothing to lose. And what we're fighting for here, let's remind everybody. I think Nixon would be reminding everybody, this is not a garden variety Democrat. And we are not just fighting small little battles and putting out small little fires here on,

whether it's gun control or you name it. We are fighting for the life of the country here. And I think he would be telling them not to lose sight of that and to be unafraid in standing up for it. Nixon might also note that a man who uses the phrase peace in our time in his inauguration is so historically illiterate that the comeuppance will be great. I just wish that the rest of us didn't have to pay for it. Monica, we thank you for coming by to the podcast today.

It's been bracing and intellectually stimulating, and we can't wait to see you again on Fox and again, of course, on the podcast here. Thank you. Thanks, Monica. Always my pleasure. Always my pleasure, guys. Thank you so much. Actually, yes, peace in our time. Now, I wonder if the collected works of Neville Chamberlain are out there somewhere in book form where one could read. I'm going through The World

at War, which is that extraordinary documentary series that the British television did a few years back. And there's a point in there where Chamberlain finally loses power to Churchill. It makes me want to go back and read Churchill. If only there's a Churchill audiobook out there where it's done in the Churchillian voice. And if you think that wouldn't be accurate, some of the broadcasts on British radio during the war were not Churchill, but an actor who could do Churchill

better than Churchill himself. It all depends, really, who's reading it. And if you want to hear Monica in book form, then you ought to take yourself down to Ricochet's spot at Audible. Audiblepodcast.com slash Ricochet. Audiblepodcast.com slash Ricochet is where you will get one free, free, F-R-E-E,

copy of anything you want. Practically, they've got in their system. There's 100,000 books, fiction, nonfiction, periodicals, bestsellers, all that stuff. Favorites of the podcast, C.J. Box, Drew Clavin, you will find their work at audible.com. Not mine yet. I'm working on that. And perhaps Rob, too, can get some of his stuff there. And Peter, when his great magnum opus comes out, the Cold War book, which I believe is now slated for 2017, it'll all be there.

But you can get Monica's books. Monica's works, of course, include Nixon Off the Record, his candid commentary on people in politics, and Nixon in Winter, and of course What the Bleep Just Happened. You got a taste of that. Monica's perorations there. And the word bracing, I think,

as I used, does apply. I feel depressed now. Rob, you started to say something. Do you feel depressed? What's your DepressedAudible.com pick? I don I feel depressed now. Rob, you started to say something. Do you feel depressed? What's your depressed audible.com pick? I don't feel depressed. My audible.com pick is Monica's book for sure because I think she's

right. I mean, it was kind of what I needed right then was to sort of talk to her and have her tell me to shut up and get with the program. How to accomplish all that is hard to do obviously. But I don't know. It's kind of nice when you hear somebody who's in the thick of it make coaching arguments.

And she's been around. I mean Monica has been around. She's worked with a lot of people. She has got a lot of political perspective rattling around inside her big brain. So that's good. She's been around, which is what makes the discussion of the slide of American influence into a Western socialist state all the more depressing. Peter? Nixon in Winter. This is one of Monica's books. It's available on Audible. It's my favorite. I think I would say it's my favorite book. Well, certainly one of the small number of

favorite books on Nixon. During the last four years of Richard Nixon's life, Monica worked very closely with him. And this is Richard Nixon table talk in a certain sense. By contrast with Ronald Reagan, who when he left the White House just stopped. He set it all down, played golf, went to the ranch. He just didn't think about it anymore. Richard Nixon never stopped turning foreign policy, politics, American history, his role in all of these, over and over and over in his mind and talking about them to his confidants. And here you have the final reflections of this fascinating figure, Nixon in Winter on Audible.

Excellent. Well, that, uh, I was going to say, I don't know. Yeti, take this out. Make me sound better. We need to get, of course, no, really, I mean, sometimes here, it's just among friends, right? The podcast is just among friends. Those folks who have signed

up for Ricochet because they love us, not because they necessarily expect everything to be professional and sending like an FM puking DJ. Bringing you Molly Hemingway, double shot of female pundits here on Rockin' Wednesday. And so we do actually have Molly. You know Molly. She's on the site. She's got her own podcast. Molly Ziegler Hemingway is the co-host along with Hubby Mark of the wildly popular The Hemingways podcast.

Also columnist for christianity today and contributor to get religion.org her writings on religion economics and baseball have appeared in the wall street journal little la times the guardian federal times radio and records and modern reformation all over the place originally from colorado she lives now in washington with her husband and two children and she enjoys combing flea markets to improve her vintage vinyl record collection. Oh, we have things to talk about in that case. And I really wish we didn't have to do politics, but we do because it's the 40th anniversary of things and the third day after the other thing.

And what the heck, Molly, how you doing? What's on your mind? I'm, I'm doing great. How are you all? Hey, Molly, you are doing great. I know. I've been listening. After the inauguration on Monday, yesterday's 20th, 40th anniversary of Roe versus Wade, and then you've just put up a post on Hillary Clinton's testimony this morning, or testimony today, I should say. Yes, it's still morning back east. So that's three pretty depressing events, isn't it? Okay.

Yes, it is. But the strength of conservatism is in her institutions and I have a great family. I have a great church. I have a great neighborhood. I have a lot to be thankful for. So even though the world is burning, uh, here at the Hemingway house, things are going well. Hey, Molly, it's Rob there, uh, in LA. Did you watch the testimony, the Clinton testimony or most of it? I have been watching it off and on. I work from home with a three-year-old who hates politics and TV, so she keeps shouting at me to turn it off. She was yelling at me, she was yelling at me, who is this?

Who is this at Hillary Clinton? And she wanted some kind of answer. Bill Clinton was hollering the same thing, wasn't he? That is such a complicated question, who this is. I don't know where to begin. But I thought Hillary, everyone who wants to get away with stuff should follow the Clintons for a master's

course in how to get away, how to avoid taking responsibility. And I've really enjoyed watching her avoid, I mean, it's just such a PR win to blame the murder of four Americans on a California YouTube filmmaker. And then when people ask questions about it, say, does it really matter how they died?

Do we really need to worry about these details? You know, what's really important is that they were dead. She is masterful. It is amazing to watch. Yeah. Now, so some people are saying this was the first – this was the first moment of the 2016 campaign and Rand Paul is now the frontrunner. I mean I know that's a silly thing to think but he seemed pretty good. I think Rand Paul is doing an amazing job, and I already like him. But what I particularly like is that he just doesn't seem to care about playing the game the way everybody else plays the game. So everyone else was so effusive in their praise for Hillary Clinton,

and he just comes out and says, you know, I think you're incompetent and I would have fired you. And there's something kind of nice and refreshing about that approach, and I think Americans are sort of hungry for someone just being – it's almost nice to be more straightforward and honest about your feelings than to pretend that you appreciate someone and knife them in the back. Yeah, and also I think that why do the dance? I mean that's why she's there. She's not there because – I mean her point, what does it matter, there's a certain validity to that question because what does it matter? This all happened in last autumn. All these discussions were tabled.

What should have been a political scandal was hushed up by the press. So in a way, she's got – she's like, what does it matter? This is all just score settling now. Exactly. This is what I like. It's not playing on the terms of debate that have been agreed to by the Democrats and the media. So they all decide what really matters is being reelected. They got reelected. So what does it matter now? That's it. It's a totally understandable point she's making. And Rand Paul is saying, I don't really care that you were reelected. I don't care that you were lying so much that I just care about finding out the answers and dealing with the incompetence that we were dealing with.

And I think, you know, a lot of people thought of this as a political issue that was helpful to Republicans. But many more people thought that this was just a tragedy, that an ambassador would be assassinated in a country that, you know, we're involved in for some reason. And I appreciate someone keeping focused on what really matters. Molly, Peter here. Roe versus Wade, 40th anniversary. You put up a post the other day, yesterday I guess it was, on you actually – two questions. The first question is you were quite upbeat in your post and this on a day when the Wall Street Journal put up a poll showing growing support for Roe versus Wade over the years. And yet you – so question number one is why were you fundamentally optimistic in your take on the 40th anniversary of Roe?

Well, first off, I think we should read Ramesh Panuru's analysis of some of these polls. He shows that there's not necessarily an uptick in support for Roe v. Wade. It's not a question that's routinely asked, but in fact, the last time it was asked in 2005, there was a slight downturn in support for it this year. So there's been a lot of misinterpretation of the polls. I'm not necessarily optimistic. I was just trying to focus on what few things have gone well. I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from how the pro-life movement has succeeded insofar as it has succeeded. Obviously, there's a lot of failure that we could look at. But we have built a very large movement comprised of a very diverse people in terms of age, background, religion, whatnot.

And there is a commitment to this movement that has lasted for many decades and has been willing to accept small victories instead of what people normally go for, which is the whole enchilada. There has been this incrementalist approach which has seemed to work well for the movement, and I think there's something to be learned from that by other political movements. You're getting to my hidden agenda, which I now reveal. My friend of many years standing, Robert Long, is often saying to me, you pro-lifers quit talking about the Supreme Court.

You've got to change the culture if you hope. And how do you reply to that, Molly? Well, that's another thing that I think actually has gone well for the movement. You can see it throughout literature, film, commercials. People who end the lives of their unborn children are generally not treated as the most sympathetic characters. Abortion is routinely regarded by the culture as a tragedy, no matter how much the pro-choice movement tries to make it into something noble and virtuous. And in fact, I think it's really true that the culture has been the most successful front for this movement. It remains this way, whether it's

movies like Knocked Up or just commercials celebrating parenthood under extreme duress, or whatever the case might be. I think culturally this is the strong point. Can I jump in there? Yes, of course. Because I hear you, and yet we just celebrated the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Celebrated is the right word. Mother Jones put out a tweet that said, happy birthday, birthday roe v wade which is a really inept

term to use in this circumstance so exactly so we we just celebrated the 40th anniversary there is and as long as i've been complaining not about the the goal of the pro-life movement but about their strategy and their tactics as long as i've been complaining about that and saying look whatever you're doing you should do the opposite because it's not working i've heard people say no no if you look at polls, there's an uptick or there's a downtick or the poll that shows that people are supporting Roe v. Wade. Actually, if you look at the internals, it's always some strangely detailed counterargument or movies or TV or something like that.

And it's never the actual poll that matters we re-elected the most pro-abortion president in american history there is zero indication americans want roe v wade to be overturned there is zero indication that americans want abortion to be legally curtailed zero and we comfort ourselves with these strange little entrails we read every four, three, four years, whatever it is. But the truth is that we are – the pro-life movement is losing, not winning. And until they grasp that and then change their strategy, they will continue to be losers. Let me disagree with you in part and agree with you in part. I actually think the most important data point is also the most discouraging, which is just, you know, thousands of women go get abortions every day.

That's what that's the only poll that really matters is that this is still happening on a on a widespread scale. Having said that, it is not true that people are not receptive to limits on abortion. You see in state legislatures throughout the country every year limitations are placed on abortion on demand. And it happened, you know, a couple dozen times last year alone. And so people are receptive to it. They're just not receptive to it in precisely the way you might want them to be, but people are open to reasonable limitations. There's a lot of consensus, in fact, that abortion on demand is bad and that some limitations are good. Well, let me do a Chris Matthews here and mischaracterize your arguments, shut you down and go to a commercial. I mean, Chris Matthews would say, all right, fine, you want to criminalize

abortions and put women in jail for having one, then why are the Republicans against birth control? I mean, that's how the argument gets put out there in the public sphere, as we just saw with this preposterous argument that we had about birth control, is that if we're really concerned about abortions, then why are we fighting the administration's valiant attempts to make sure that everybody has access to proper contraceptive care? This, by the way, is the number one lesson that people could take from how the media move debate. I just mentioned that there's large consensus on some protection for unborn children. The media only act like you're an extremist on abortion if you are on one side of the equation. They never ask any questions of politicians like, so you really think it's okay to kill a baby just because she's a girl? You really think it's okay to partially deliver a baby and then snip its spine?

They never ask any of the questions that are actually far more extreme. But there's no reason why people who are pro-life can't ask these questions. There are plenty of opportunities to do that with politicians and to move the debate. And it's, in fact, of course, much more fair because supporting legalized abortion on demand is the law of the land and it is something real, unlike this imaginary birth control debate that was invented. Well, yeah, the media wants you're right. They won't ask the hard questions because, according to them, Planned Parenthood consists of Star Trek like transporters that remove the fetus and then disperse it with a wide beam into space. And there's never any harm and no soul is lost, et cetera, et cetera.

But you've got to look at why these are happening in the first place, why people are getting pregnant, why they're getting pregnant outside of marriage, and that goes to a larger cultural issue of the decline of the family, the decline of the social unit, the abandonment of men of their child. I mean, that seems to me to be the thing that we should work on because it's less polarizing and I think in the end has an effect of decreasing the abortion rate if you start talking about family formation and personal behavior. Or am I wrong there too? And by wrong, I mean hopelessly misguided that anybody will care about this.

I don't know. I mean I think that if there's anything to have been learned over the last year, it's that you cannot accept the terms of debate proffered by the supposedly objective media. And I think it's just very important for people to present a beautiful image of what the goal is of a culture that values life and values the family and make sure that we're presenting the whole picture of what that looks like. It's a very difficult battle and it's something that, you know, it's a very difficult fight. It's something that's going to be hard and it's much easier to go down to soundbites and whatnot. But this find that happy little gumdrop that we can all enjoy, something candy-colored and sweet. But I just love that – I mean the four of us know each other well enough and worked together long enough that I think there was a moment where we're like – I think all four of us are like, oh. And then on a lighter note, it was perfect.

It's exactly what I wanted to hear. This is me thanking you, James. Well, I – And also hoping that you're being real, that it is a lighter note. It is a lighter note. Okay, that's good. Go ahead. It is a lighter note.

In the introduction, we mentioned that you like to haunt the flea markets and look for old vinyl. So I have to ask you, I don't miss vinyl at all. I digitized all my records in about 2001, 2002. While I'm fascinated by the art form itself, I am, there were a lot of artists who just said, well, put that bad song, the third track on the second side, because they'll be too stoned to get up and change the record. They'll just let it play through. I mean, it's interesting how it shaped the way we listen to music. It's interesting the way the art form developed and helped rock music become more than just a collection of tunes thrown together for amusement of teens. All that I understand.

I don't miss it at all. I love the instant access. I love the selection. I love having everything digitized and on my computer and portable and in the cloud. It's great, but I miss the art. And the one thing that I would do if I were you, haunting the sites for old albums, is not what they contained, but the lovely, fascinating art on the front and the back of record covers. Or for you, is it all about the vinyl? Well, I actually agree with you about the convenience of digital music. And it's the one thing that I don't love about my vinyl music. But I actually prefer the sound. and there's something for me about the tactile selection of music, discovering something or picking something because you have some memory, and it might be affiliated with the art and with the music. But I just prefer this conservative and resistant to change that I just am of the age that I started listening to music on vinyl and never got around to changing the way I listened to music.

And then it kind of got out of control. I mean, all the romance I remember. I remember the crackle that it would make when you took it out of the sleeve. I remember looking at the vinyl itself and being able to tell by the denseness whether or not it was all loud and where the soft spots were. You could actually visually scan what it looked like before you even put the needle down. And that wonderful moment when the needle finally got purchased in the groove and it began. Yes, all those things

I understand. Remember sometimes you, I mean, now we sound like old people, but remember sometimes you'd get a poster. Right, right. Oh, heavens yeah. I mean, you can always tell when a band was really, really riding high when they would put out something. Hugh with a gatefold and it would expand.

And they gave you a poster. Yeah, a poster. Remember that, Peter? Peter? No, I do not. I do not. My parents' Reader's Digest collection of the big band music did not come with a poster. And that, that, that, the albums of the Monkees and one Beatles album were it in my household.

The Johnny Man Singers stand-up. This explains so much. So very, very much. Yes, yes, it does. Peter, did you never buy a record? Did you never go down there to the store? Did you never slit the plastic in the end with your thumb? I mean, all of those rituals. And in the end with your thumb?

I mean all of those rituals. Remember you get a little cut sometimes. Yeah. Right. I just decided very – yes, the answer is yes, I did. I bought two Monkees albums and one Beatles album and I just listened to those and listened to big band music and I thought – so this is at the age of perhaps 12 or 13. I decided that Western civilization was obviously in decline because Duke Ellington was better than the Monkees. I just have to tell you. That opinion has not changed.

Just because you poorly selected Monkees records and all that. I imagine – James, you have to help me. Who is the Simpsons character? I already don't like where this is going. You know what I mean? That little kid on The Simpsons who's – Milhouse. It's not Milhouse.

It's the other one who's always, hello, chums. That one. He may have come in the last 15 years of The Simpsons. I stopped watching The Simpsons after 17 years. That's how I imagine Peter's childhood with a sort of sweater trying to wrap his neck. That's right. By the way, by the way, your friend, your friend, the devoted, your biggest fan, your number one fan, Pedro Robinson, my son, is now on a Louis Prima kick. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that your son

has better taste. Louis Prima's old timey, for goodness sake. And he's awesome. He's great. He's fantastic. Louis Prima had this wide-spanning career. He started out in 40 swing, and then he became a sort of cartoon figure by the time he went to Vegas to burn

out the rest of his career with his wife, Keely, who was wonderful. He was a good singer. he was this buffoonish guy walking around talking about the pizza pie and making a caricature Italian of himself. Keely was just as cool and drop dead as you could possibly get perched on the piano. You have now ruined the demographics of this podcast. Just so you know. We're talking about Louis Prima and Keely Smith. By the way, the character, Peter, it's Ralph Wiggum.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Ralph Wiggum was the idiot guy who was always picking his notes, who was the son of Chief Wiggum. Yeah, it's not Ralph Wiggum. It's not Ralph Wiggum. I got a bad – I got some bad info there. It's not Ralph Wiggum. All right. Well, then let's bring this into the 21st century.

Last night, just for the fun of it, I fired up a program I have called Snow Tape, which goes out on the internet, scours the internet radio and finds there are more genres of individual sub genres that you can possibly imagine out there. No matter what kind of music you like, there is an internet channel that plays some variant of a 24 hours a day and you push the button, it records and you wake up the next day and you've got a hundred tunes you've never heard before this is marvelous this is a great thing and this is this is why i can't get too sad over the end of the record store right along with the end of everything else i did a piece this week let me change this slightly uh at the bleep i went to best buy because i needed uh i the clerk asked can i help you and i said yes i'd like a cheap

virus magnet loaded with crapware, if you don't mind. Something under $400. And, you know, right this way, sir. Here's our cheap laptops. And I didn't find anything. And he told me to go online. And I walked around the store. This is the best Best Buy store in America because it's next to the corporate flagship.

And I looked at all the things that they're selling and all the media that they used to have that they don't anymore because they dropped CDs, because they dropped games, because they dropped music. And I looked at this and I said, this place is doomed. There's absolutely no way this place is going to survive. Everything they sell can be sold elsewhere online for cheap, but I'm going to miss this. Another thing that goes away, the talking to the clerk, the touching the thing, the looking at it, just the, just being somewhere around the merchandise. That was the great thing about record stores. There was always some nerd behind the counter who was spinning something that you people should listen to but you wouldn't because you're sheeple. Or there was somebody who wanted to introduce you to this.

There was the whole culture of it. Individual subcultures clustered around the bins, the jazz, the pop, the soul, whatever. I mean, it brought people together in a way that I cannot see any other thing doing, anything that replaced it doing now. Molly, would you agree with that? Do you miss record stores as much as vinyl? I actually wrote about this not a week or two ago at Ricochet about how I totally understand that online auction sites and online selling sites have made it so easy to acquire whatever old vinyl record I want and know that I'm paying exactly the right market-driven price. And I understand that this is a good thing for humanity and for the world and for everybody, but I am so

very sad about not being able to find something that's totally undervalued in some record bin in St. Louis. And it was one of the most fun things about having a vinyl record collection, and it's gone. Which is a segue, Molly, into my last serious-ish question for you. Before you go serious, can I just say, just break in? Please, please. Mendel in the chat room has identified. Yes.

It's Martin Prince from The Simpsons. Oh, but of course, of course, of course, of course. Right. Right. If you'd said the pudgy little kid. Right. Now I know. Martin who had the – right.

Martin who in one of the best episodes ever got himself a swimming pool and at the end of it was stripped naked and singing a Sinatra song as the credits rolled. I hereby issue a challenge to Ricochet. If I am Martin, who is James, and who is Rob? Oh, you had to do that. I had to do that. Oh, God. E.J. Hill's head had just exploded. Okay, Molly, so here's the serious issue question.

When we talk, as we have in this podcast, about the country, we're all depressed. When we talk about our personal lives, full of pleasure, anecdotes, stories, things that we're doing, lots of interest, that's where the candy comes in. That's where the upbeat that James and Rob were looking for to get us out of that slough of despond. So here's the question. As you raise your children, excuse me, I'll back up a little bit. I look at England, Britain, the United Kingdom right that once you make healthcare the responsibility of the central government, you're done. It's effectively irreversible. How does life work in the United Kingdom? Well, basically there are two halves.

Half the United Kingdom is dependent on the state and the other half can go ahead and lead pretty interesting lives, start companies, attend concerts, go to good schools. The half that's dependent on the state has out-of-wedlock births. Marriage has effectively collapsed. The abortion rates are high. The upper half, so to speak, or the independent half, the marriage rate is pretty normal. Not what you might like, but it's pretty normal. Abortion rates are lower. The marriage rate is pretty normal, not what you might like, but it's pretty normal. Abortion rates are lower.

And so the way the socialist – irreversible socialist state in Britain works is you get to choose. You can go ahead and become dependent on the state or you can lead a pretty good – with the terms that we would describe it, pretty good life. All you have to do is give 60 percent of your income to the government. And it sort of works. It's able to go along and along and along. However, everybody realizes that about half of the country is hopeless. And they've just accepted it and decided to live that way. There's a kind of withdrawal from any effort to improve national life in any fundamental way.

Look at David Cameron. He's just trying to adjust or tinker around the edges of the socialist state. Is that where we're headed? And as you raise your three-year-old and your other children, do you think you'll effectively begin teaching them, well, stand at one remove from national life here. Pay principal attention to building a good life for yourselves and your families and to a certain extent insulating yourself from national life. You just wanted to bring us down again? Well, I know that James is going to – James will be able to get us back to The Simpsons and pick it back up. No, it's something I've been thinking about a great deal for the last year and a half or so once I realized what was happening with this election and just realizing that most Americans don't share my understanding of what the size and scope of government should be and that we're probably going to experience a dramatic change in the governing system of all Western countries here in some short order. I don't know if it'll be during my lifetime or not. But a lot of the reason why everything you describe about Great Britain, and this could be said for many of the European countries, they were sustained through a strong United States and through a vibrant economy,

global economy. These are things that are not guaranteed for the future. And the fact of the matter is it's entirely probable that there will just be a lack of money to sustain these entitlement programs, again, in very short order. And so we will see something dramatic. We will see something hopefully not nonviolent, but a dramatic change. And I'm trying to raise my children in such a way that they will be helpful to the larger cause of liberty. And it's sobering to realize that that might not be something that we can count on the United States for in the future. I, to me, I, this is very, I won't go on and on because it is a little – it is depressing. But I have to say in my own – when my parents raised me, I got no sense that they thought we ought to be wary of the United States of America, that the federal government was in some basic way predatory. America was wide open.

Go find your life in America. And you know what? I, like you, have begun thinking that perhaps I ought to raise my children to expect that trouble is coming. Get ready. Trouble is coming. Okay, James, Rob, find a high note. Well, after the collapse of Western civilization, we'll be able to pick up their paintings for a song as a memory. We'll have a five or six year window where you can go on a cruise ship. You can walk back with a Vermeer under your arm

and nobody will bat an eye. It'll be great. And on the other hand, I can't wait for the family, the togetherness that I'm going to have with my daughter this summer when we get out the spade and start bearing goods in the backyard. A little salt pork, you know, some little small I'll take those little 1.5 ounce

airport miniature bottles of liquor that they give you on the plane right and say honey these will be currency someday right it's great we're gonna bond we're gonna bond like hell all right thanks so much for coming on and i have a response. I have a response to that. We're always wrong. That's what conservatives are not connecting to. We're always going nuclear when's not that it steals our liberty. It's that we're always wrong. We can never predict the future. The future is completely unwritten. No one would have predicted these tiny little phones. No one – people in 1949 were predicting the end of US oil. We're always wrong and that's what's great about the world and great about America is that we're all – experts are always wrong and some guy somewhere is always right and that's what we should as conservatives be constantly harping on. We have no idea what great things are in store. The goal is simply to set the table so that great things can happen.

But this guy, what our president is doing is stepping on the hose and it seems to me like that's – the optimism is what we're missing. I mean I know I started out being very pessimistic but as you know, I'm a manic depressive when it comes to American politics and the American future. But it feels to me like that's what we should be – Republicans should be cheering, cheerleading innovations and new things and cool stuff and deriding our opponents as the Luddites and the backward thinkers and the ossified geriatric sclerotic status that they are. I mean Mickey Kaus has got a great series of posts on The Daily Caller about this – like the Obama obsession with these digitized medical records. And how they've been in fact incredibly regressive because of course it's just bad technology. People are forced to adopt it and all it does is raise the cost of healthcare. And we should be pointing that out. That should be – instead of fighting about the debt ceiling, which we're going to lose by the way, although I think that Obama has agreed to the short-term debt ceiling.

But instead of like going through the same argument over and over again that most Americans don't even understand really, we should be pointing this stuff out. So I don't know if that's optimistic or not, but that certainly would be my response to making do with less is that no, no, no. More and more and brighter and better is just around the corner if we can only get this old man and his old views out of our way. That's how you phrase it. Progressive my patoot.

It's not. It's a collection of ideas 100 years old which stand in the way of progress, true progress, actual change. Really? Well, that's like a black and white movie. And who would have – I mean who among us would have been saying five or six years ago that the United States is going to be possibly, probably energy independent? Everything was peak oil.

Everything was the end of doom. Everything was – we would never be able to get back to that. And now we're looking at – I love these stories that say, oh my god, you can see the North Dakota oil fields from space at night because of the flames. It's worrying, man. I look at that and I see power and progress and strength. And it gives me hope because there will always be a North Dakota that is remote enough from Washington, D.C. that as much as they try, Barack Obama is not going to challenge or change or reform the culture of Williston, North Dakota, because right now it's a place where they need a

lot of big, burly, sweaty men handling pipes. And you know what those guys want? They want meat, they want liquor, and they want hookers. So you've got the Wild West reborn, and it's a crude version of the American spirit, but there it is. It'll flare up wherever you let it. So yeah, Rob, I agree with you. We've got to go national with that platform.

Liquor, meat, and hookers. Molly, a final word. Where there are hookers, there is hope? You know, I've always kind of felt that way, actually. There's that, isn't it Chesterton who says Anybody who knocks on the door of a brothel is searching for God There is that, there's a truth in that Who knows

Democracy, whiskey, sexy as the man said As the American troops were rolling toward Baghdad They may not have gotten it But I still think it's a banner worth flying We are running out of time here. And anybody else got anything for Molly? Because Lord knows we know where to find her at Ricochet. Yes, we do.

Molly, so how do you think – just if you could give us a thought on the site, the member feed, all that stuff. We're obviously thinking about some changes, some improvements, some new features, kind of a – Are you about to tell me I'm losing my job? No. Because this is very – this is too public of a way. You are not allowed in fact. You're going forever. So how do you think – I mean I just think it's humming along.

I've been sort of swamped. I've either been sort of coughing myself and going straight to bed or I've been just beginning pre-production. So I've been a little bit remiss, although I'm posting in two seconds. But how do you feel – I mean I feel like the site is really interesting because it is a definite EKG of the current state of conservatism. And I noticed some of the member feed posts now. There's the not all politics. We were very heavy in politics before the election. And then there was this kind of free tundra for a while as everybody kind of worked it out. And now it feels to me like there's a lot more culture.

There's a lot more day-to-day stuff and I'm really loving it. I mean what about you there in the front lines? How do you feel? Well, I think the first thing that needs to be said is that the member feed was sort of always great at doing this, balancing the politics with the absolutely ludicrous posts and the cultural posts and whatnot. And so I am not surprised that the member feed continues to be where I am enjoying spending most of my time and just having a lot of fun. But yes, I actually think this is a hopeful thing too. And maybe this is because I'm a libertarian, but I've always

worried that people on the right spend far too much of their time and energy on politics when really that's not where the action is. You know, just even what you're talking about when you think of all the great advancements that have happened in this country and globally, it is in the private sector and it's in our organizations. And so I am actually kind of happy to see people spending much less time on political postings and thinking more about how politics relates to the culture at large. By the way, Paulus, Paulus whom I love, and here's why, he just put up a post on your, put up a comment on your post on Hillary Clinton. Paulus, one sentence, quote, is anybody else wondering why snakes and toads don't leap from Hillary Clinton's mouth every time she opens it? Close quote.

What I'm thinking, he actually types. I love that, man. Okay. This is good, Molly. As long as you're there, it's good. Great, great. James? I'm just – I think I've made three attempts now to end the podcast.

And, you know, so I'm leaving. This one you can really, this is really, I promise, this is really going to happen. You want to drive the bus, take the wheel. No, I just hate to cut off Molly and everybody else, but we do need to wind it up because I need to post to my work blog. And then I have to get this, get this. I've got to start posting on Facebook as part of my job. I have to, I have to enter my things into the Google sphere and Facebook world. No, no, no, no.

If going to Facebook is actually part of my employment, then that gives me another justification for wasting even more time on the Internet while I'm under gainful employment at the paper. So I've got to go. But thanks, Molly, as ever, and we'll see you on the podcast in a ricochet.com. And can't wait to see your contributions to Ricochet 2.0. Talk to you later. Thanks. Bye, Molly. And now we have just the final closing thoughts here, of which there are so few. I want to end this happily, because as much as we've had the doom and gloom, and as much as we do get our knickers in a twist here, Rob's right.

We are wrong. Everybody's wrong. Everybody's wrong about everything. Nobody knows anything, as Mr. Goldman said. Right, Rob, that great Hollywood quote? Yeah, when they asked him what he meant by that quote, he said, I don't know. So everybody predicts rack and ruin,

and when they talk about rack and ruin, they generally mean everything goes to hell. Everything collapses. The grid goes down. Okay. You got to worry about that. But what if it doesn't happen? What if you build everything around telling everybody, Cassandra, like there's going to be an absolute collapse of everything and it doesn't happen? There's just this sort of incremental grinding towards something that's incrementally worse. Rob's right. I mean, we have got to be the party

of cheer, the party of happiness, the party of progress, of everything out there that is great and good about America and remind people, as you put it, what a geriatric ossified bunch of guys they are with ideas put forth by somebody who was essentially a megaphone for 1960s ideology. And once we break through somehow that and Obama is successful because he's cool and people like to feel good about themselves for supporting him. That's the essence of his appeal. Once he is gone, there is nobody. Joe Biden is going to be the inheritor of that mantle. I don't think so. Hillary Clinton is going to be the inheritor of that mantle? I don't think so. Hillary Clinton is going to be the inheritor of that mantle? I don't think so either. What do we got coming up? We got guys like Rubio. I mean, we've got energy if we just stop moping and get our chins off our sternum

and look forward to 2013 as a year of opportunity to experiment. Rob's right, to experiment with a message that we can get out there. And yeah, to be broader, I mean, you know me, I'm a rhino, so I think we should be big tent. But we should be talking about – we should be talking about progress because we're in favor of it. We like progress. Progress is good for us. We make jokes about how conservatives are always sort of backward-leaning, standing athwart history, yelling stop. But we're not standing athwart history.

We're standing athwart the delusions of statists and planners. We're standing athwart the experts and the guiders and the planners. What we're saying is like, no, no, no. I've got no idea what magical stuff is going to happen. But I do know that if you added up all the predictions of the past and the experts of the past, you'd come up with a ludicrously lopsided view of the present. It wouldn't even be accurate. And so part of what we should be saying is all the stuff that you like in your life, the computer, the Facebook, the phone, the medical technology, the auto technology, all

the things in your life that are getting better are getting better because the free market makes them better because a lightly regulated economy makes them better. And we want to bring that to your – to the public sphere as well. We want to add a little competition and a little entrepreneurialism to the public sphere as well. And if we did that, I think we'd be much better off. I mean I remember like Milton Friedman – I always say this to people who are like Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman was in favor of a guaranteed minimum income.

Talk about a handout. But his point was, listen, if you can deregulate the economy and you can run a free market system and you can unleash a nation of sort of industrious entrepreneurs and industrious employees as well, then you can then turn to people who slip down below the thing. You can say, here, here's some money. Now you've been brought up to subsistence level. Go make. Go do something.

That would be a whole lot better than infantilizing them with certain coupons for food and certain coupons for education and certain coupons for health care. I mean, much, much better. And Peter says, right, like a man at a poker table at 3 a.m. looking at three chips. Right. No, Rob, I thought Rob was – you have to be careful with Rob. I thought for a moment there he was trying to make the point that Milton Friedman was in favor of welfare. But then he got it exactly correct. What Milton Friedman was in favor of was making sure that poor people weren't so poor that they would be truly indigent.

But after that, they're on their own. They're human beings. They can take care of themselves. Give them a little cash. Can you imagine? Somebody does this every couple of months. I haven't seen it in a little cash. I mean, can you imagine? Well, somebody does this every couple of months. I haven't seen it in a while though. But whatever the amount is of transfer payments, surely every poor person in America would be better off if the federal government just cut them a check and eliminated the bureaucracy.

Surely that would be the case. By the way, we were talking earlier about Richard Nixon and then I really will shut up because James has to succeed in his fifth, and we must make it his final attempt to end this podcast. But Milton Friedman had Richard Nixon pretty well convinced on the negative income tax as well. That's what they called it at that time. And then the politics of it just made it impossible. Okay, James, finish this darn podcast, will you please? Absolutely. To everybody in the chat room who's been typing away as we talk, we thank you for being there. And I'd just like to echo the sentiments of Drew in Wisconsin who noted in the chat room that conservatives are the new progressives, the new counterculture. Those guys got the culture.

They're the boring old dad. They're the establishment man up against the wall, as they used to say. It's ours to take. Thanks to Rob Long and Peter Robinson, Molly Hemingway, and of course, Monica Crowley and everybody else for listening. I'm James Lalix from chilly, unbelievably bone-crackingly cold Minnesota. Wishing you a happy week

and we'll see you at Ricochet.com. Guys, take it easy. Next week. I'll see you next week. When the weight of the world has got you down And you want to end your life Bills to pay, a dead-end job And problems with a wife But don't throw in the towel

Cause there's a place right down the block Where you can drink your misery away. So go to flaming moat. So go to flaming moat. When the good animals can warm you like a hook. Happiness is just a flaming moat away. Happiness is just a flaming mo away How's the world treating you, Mr. Gumbel?

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