The Ricochet Podcast - Youth Appeal

Episode Date: February 14, 2014

Direct link to MP3 file This week, a little tech talk to kick off the podcast. Then, the weird strategy of the house leadership on raising the debt ceiling, Rob makes a u-turn on Cruz, Peter proposes a peace treaty, Then, the Instapundit himself, Glenn Reynolds, pulls over to the side of the road to discuss his new book on the future of education (The New School: How the Information Age Will Save... Source

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Activate program. More than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism well i'm not a crook i'll never tell a lie but i am not a bully i'm the king of the world mr gorbache, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilacs and our guest today is Glenn Reynolds. That's right, the instapundent himself. So we'll be talking about education.

And after that, nothing but Olympics. Wall-to-wall Olympics. Just kidding. Absolutely nothing about the Olympics whatsoever. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Hey, welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast. If you're numbering it at home and hash marks on the wall, it's number 203. And if you're thinking great thoughts, great humor, great politics, great discussion to come, you're absolutely right. But if you're also thinking, hmm, great food, well, this is also the right place to be because whether you're thinking Maine lobster, Philly cheesecakes,

oh, buffalo wings, baked goods from New York, you're thinking foodiedirect.com, which brings you this podcast proudly. They're the curated regional gourmet and artisan food marketplace featuring America's most iconic foods shipped fast and fresh to you. We'll be talking a little bit more about them in a second, but we're also brought to you by Encounter Books. This week's pick, Fred Siegel's The Revolt Against the Masses. How liberalism has undermined the middle class. Yeah, the middle class. Remember them? For 15% off this or any other title,

use the coupon code RICOSHET at checkout and enjoy the benefits of an encounter book. Peter, Rob, hello. How are you guys today in sunny California? Well, I'm in sunny southern California and I'm doing very well. It's great. Go ahead.

I was just going to say I'm in foggy overcast gray northern California and after two decades in the golden state i have turned into a totally lost cause three days of this in a row now and i'm i'm thinking of submitting a refund claim to the state government this is just it's not california might almost as well be in minneapolis for goodness sake well we had we had sun the other day and 19 below uh and then yesterday yesterday we actually yesterday we had 31 above and cloudiness.

And so we're going back and forth. But I already in my bones feel that the battle has turned. The tide is on our side. We will win. Spring is inevitable. I can feel winter starting to lose its enthusiasm. But, Rob, I was worried before the show. We were saying that you've got a computer in the shop and you said –

Yeah, I'm on the MacBook Air. You're rethinking everything. Yeah, I travel with this MacBook Air, which I like, and it's a little one. And I have MacBook Pro, which is sort of my main computer, and the screen got all wonky, and I took it in. It turns out it's only a couple hundred bucks to get the screen fixed rather than what I thought was a new computer and all that stuff. Because whenever you say that to somebody who's a devoted Mac partisan, when you say rethink everything they think oh no don't you rethink everything um uh and because i and i'm not not meaning that i mean you know maybe i'll have to reconfigure my my computer stuff because i like my macbook air uh maybe i want one of those that's coming out

with bigger memory but there is i have to say there is a – various little areas in the country. There are little cool corners of it and my little street in Venice, there's one street here called Abbott Kinney that was named by GQ magazine to be the coolest street in the country. Whether that is true or not, I don't know. But they so named it. And then there's on Mott Street right south of Houston in Manhattan. I was walking by there in December and I saw another one. Intel, the computer chip people, have put up these pop-up stores called Intel Stores where they're showing – pop-up stores, they take over a little space, a little cool area, and they kind of put a little store in there just for a little short time.

And they're showcasing the coolest products that use their Intel chips. So these are obviously Windows or Windows-based. No, no, no. Apple uses Intel now. No. I don't think they do. They went back to the other ones, I think. I'm not sure if they did, but these are not Intel machines. They're showcasing.

And it is – I mean I have to say it is remarkable. If you're a Mac in the Mac bubble, it is remarkable how good and cool and well-designed the objects are that other companies are coming up with. Now, maybe the software isn't as good. I don't think the Windows – I saw a guy on a plane a few days ago next to me using his Surface, which looks a really, really cool piece of machinery. But I'm not crazy about the interface. But competition is good. I'm saying, James, I may rethink everything at some point. Well,

go on and wonder into the, the, the wilds, the forests, the feral lands of heresy. I don't care. You are dead to me. Um,

but what I think we should do, however, is open up the comments specifically to a windows versus Mac, a platform debate, because those are always fascinating and enlightening and shed so much truth. And everybody at the end always ends up holding hands and clapping backs and being friends. It'll be better. It'll be more enlightening than Ted Cruz wasting time with his filibuster and whether Sarah Palin should be president. We should have – actually the GOP should have pop-up stores like that where they just all of a sudden appear,

but there's nothing there because they couldn't afford to do it because of the regulations against them that businesses have been burdened with since Obamacare came along. Maybe not. So now what do we have in Washington? We've got a little debt ceiling brouhaha brewing where nobody is happy about this, you guys. Opine on that for a second here while I sip my coffee and watch you. Well, I mean I find myself by natural rhino inclinations. I mean look, we're sort of in two – Peter, you could correct me if – because I know you will. We've backed ourselves into some strange corner where there is no way – it would be strange for the Republican House, which passed a budget, to then claim it needs to make a stand for budget cuts, right? That's an odd kabuki thing for it to do.

On the other hand, it did create this strange timetable for itself where it didn't pass any budget cuts. So I understand both the logic, sort of the grown-up kind of logic of the House leadership on its face, but I think it caused this mess itself and I sympathize and I emotionally prefer the arguments of the renegade house rank and file. Right, right. So here's – by the way, my frame of mind this morning is a little annoyed and here's why. Because last night, one of the last things I did before turning in was read – check Ricochet, see what had been posted since the last time I looked. And Scott Reusser had a brilliantly shrewd piece of analysis. Could the Tea Party accept the role of bad cop? And he argues that we need both the Tea Party and the Mitch McConnell's

and John Boehner's of the world for the same reason that in the old days, Ronald Reagan needed both the speechwriters and the Jim Bakers and Dick Darmans. You need one group to stake out your position, to do so rhetorically, to create some excitement, some sense that there's a cause. And then you go through a long experience because he had been a union president. He was for six terms the president of the Screen Actors Guild, so he understood

how to get things done. You stake out your position and then you cut the best deal you can. What annoyed me about Scott Roycer is I sit in front of a word processor for hours every day trying to string words together and produce insights. Scott is a landscape architect in Ohio. He goes out and does an honest day's work, putting in trees and laying out lawns for kids to play in front yards. He actually makes people's lives better. And then he goes home at night and knocks off the best analysis I've seen in a month. That's what annoys me. But he's absolutely right. And when you said that you find the raising the debt ceiling without condition emotionally unsatisfying, I know exactly what you mean.

But it had to be done. Maybe there could have been more. But there is no condition under which either John Boehner or the Senate would actually cause a default. True. It is only a bluff. True, but it's only a bluff. It can never be more than a bluff. Yeah, but the argument on the other side is, which I think is right, and the Ted Cruz argument, which is correct, is the debt ceiling lever was the most powerful weapon, or cudgel, I should say, was the most powerful weapon used to get budget cuts.

It was one of the great weapons used to get the sequester, which was successful. And while I agree with the idea that you make a lot of noise and you take your stand and then some people go in and you cut a deal because you have to be practical, we cut the deal already. Now we have a situation where we cut a deal and now we're going to make the noise? We shook hands and we made a situation where we cut a deal and now we're going to make the noise? We shook hands and we made a deal. And so I understand the – I understand both the frustration on the House leadership side, which is, no, no, we already cut the deal. So there's no point in – the cudgel – what are we going to use the cudgel for?

And I also understand the House – the rank and file sort of normal Republican stance, which is why are we always doing this? Why is it always this way? When are we actually going to cut something? And every now and every seems like every quarter there comes this vote that reminds the people who put those people into office that once again, they've been told they have to wait and they're going to postpone. Right. And I think that's just irritating.

And it's disrespectful. And one of the things that seems to have flown. And I think that's just irritating and disrespectful. One of the things that seems to have flown under the radar in the media and on Ricochet and other places is what happened with this military COLA cut that many of the people on the right were appalled to find out actually originated from the GOP, that the COLA increases were going to be slashed and the deal, shall we say, had been altered. People had signed up for service with the expectation this is what they got when they were retired and the Congress came back to them and said, you know what? Sorry, no, you're not going to get that.

It was just – the hair stood on your head when you realized if the GOP cannot be counted upon to defend the livelihoods of the military, then that constituency is gone and that core principle is gone. Well, our friend Hugh Hewitt spent a couple of weeks banging pans and pawns about that this week and got it reversed. So a lot of attention and capital appear to have been spent on that, which mostly seems to have flown under the radar of the media. Did you guys hear about it? I did. Yeah.

It was about the fourth paragraph. Yeah, but only because I had time for a long breakfast yesterday. It was about the fourth or fifth paragraph in all the stories on the raising the debt ceiling. It was there. But no, no. I mean, yeah, it takes a hue or people like Ricochet to bang pots and pans. Correct.

I mean, I grant your point. Yes, yes. I grant your point. To call attention to some provision that no one had really thought about. Exactly. But that's always a problem with budgetary and sort of revenue kind of laws is that – ways and means and disbursement is that there's – there are all these weird little obscure laws and provisions that are put in there that people forget about that become either ignored or need someone to sort of shine a spotlight on them because the thing is so damn complicated. And that's why it's so frustrating. I think if you're a Republican who woke up this morning or went to bed last night with this deal because it once again reminded you that we got it all backwards. We had no – we were trying to – we wanted to keep the debt ceiling fight as leverage, but we wanted to keep it for leverage for a budget process that's already begun and finished.

I think the president himself gains politically and personally every time, every second that's spent on the budget process at this moment right now. Because, I mean, in regard, the whole thing is, what to say, a waste of time to focus on this now, really, when you've got Obamacare and keeping Benghazi alive. I mean, as far as it plays out for the rest of everybody else, Obamacare is what you just keep hammering, period. There's a limited attention span that people have. And if they hear once again Republicans dragging their feet on the budget, you know, it's going to plug exactly into what they've been told before and we'll get nowhere.

Whereas Obamacare is maintaining track. I hear you. I kind of agree with you, but I find myself bizarrely – and I know I'm now changing sides I guess from where I've been before. But I find myself bizarrely reading Ted Cruz's comments and thinking you're damn right, like applauding him. You're absolutely right. But on the other hand, I understand the timetable. So I sort of reflect the frustration in general with a rank and file that wanted a smaller government. And again, I say to Republican leadership, what was so bad about the sequester?

I liked it. Right, right. Same. I grant absolutely every word of that. However, look at the fight that we just had over the last three days about this among ourselves. Imagine if Ted Cruz had had his way and the Senate had held it up. The fighting among Republicans, the president's ability to say you're damaging the economy, by the way, and if there's that kind of fight over the debt ceiling, which we know everybody knows in the end, the Republicans would go ahead and raise the debt ceiling. Can you imagine what would have happened to the Republican Party itself if John Boehner had indeed brought immigration reform to the floor of the house as apparently as recently as 10 days ago he intended to do? Madness. Madness. I know. I was actually ago, he intended to do madness, madness. I know I was actually worried they were going to do that.

Like they had taken a poll to decide what what is the what is the most effective kryptonite for Republican chances in the midterms and in the general in 2016? And they had a list of at live score bet. We love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race. That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing. Cheltenham with LiveScoreBet. This is total betting. Sign up by 2pm 14th of March. Bet within 48 hours of race.

Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Things and immigration was number one. Well, let's just do that now. Exactly. It was just unbelievable. I subscribe to the James Lilac's view of American politics between now and election day in November. No

more fights among ourselves. All the ammunition, all the fire directed upon Obamacare. Obamacare, big government, Obamacare regulation, Obamacare. Can we and can we just take a moment while we're here to talk about what happens when we let them take the stage and just enjoy for a second the self-immolation of wendy davis of texas oh it's a beautiful thing it's an absolutely gorgeous thing from the darling of the liberal left from the absolute queen the paragon of liberal virtue to somebody who's saying well yes i support carrying guns in public and and using them to shoot somebody who was trying to abort a baby. I mean it's just beautiful. Not a single principle that the woman possibly has.

But hey, those iconic shoes. But I just – what I love about them is just the idea that now there are these sad sort of leftists who have been trying to – loving her the whole time and trying to protect her the whole time. Now they're this horribly – I mean i almost feel sorry for them this terrible position of having to having to now twist themselves into weird pretzels while they defend what for them has been up till now the indefensible which is that she's she's in favor of a uh of a ban on abortions of you know 20 weeks or more which is essentially the bill that she stood up to fight. I know. It's absolutely delightful. We have a political culture that was attacking the right as a bunch of terrorists

who are holding the health of the American people hostage by attempting to delay parts of Obamacare. And then we have a little while later these lawless made-up little decrees from the palace telling us that that's exactly what we should do. But that's different, of course, because that's done to preserve the program, whereas, of course, the Republicans just wanted to destroy it. It's moments like this. You look in the mirror and you have a look on your face that says, where have I seen that before? All right, that was that confused, manic face of panic that Sid Caesar used to have. And I'm going to miss – we will get to this eventually because we lost a couple of – I hate to use the word iconic, but it actually does fit here.

They are that, Sid Caesar and Shirley Temple. And, of course, when you think of Sid Caesar, you also think of the wonderful stable of writers and actors that he had, including Imogene Coco. And when you think of Imogene Coco, you think perhaps, hmm, you know, I like hot cocoa. I like chocolate cookies. And maybe that would go well with this. No. Or do I want the cheesecake? And that's where you go to Foodie Direct and start clicking right there to figure out what kind of food you want sent directly to your house.

Foodiedirect.com. What is it? Well, first of all, we're going to give you a little insight here. Foodiedirect.com slash ricochet. That's where the bargains come. What do you get? Well, Today Show has called it the destination place for foodies. The Wall Street Journal has called it one of the best food sites on the web.

What it is is all those great regional foods you may have grown up with or come to like later. I mean, and the real stuff from the best places sent to you. The best granola in America. The best barbecue in Texas, the cioppino, which I believe is Rob's fave that supposedly beat every possible competitor in the country. In Michigan, Barry

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Silly me. 20% off. Did I mention that? You did. 20% off with a coupon code ricochet. We should – should I ask you guys what you would like to eat there before we get to our guest who I believe is – I still enjoy the cioppino, I got to say. It's got a little spicy tomato-y fish soup.

It comes in a giant pail. It's very worth getting. I think especially for those of you, I'll say you, who are now suffering under sort of some kind of a weather event, which I think a lot of people are i i saw the weather for new york city yesterday which i like because it was neat it was not rain or hail or snow or sleet or even um you know ice it was um um uh frozen ice pellets that was the actual official weather for new york frozen ice pellets which i thought uh somehow – my first thought because people always say, oh, you right-wingers, all you do is you politicize everything. But the first thing I thought was, well, you people deserve it. You voted for de Blasio.

You're going to get frozen ice pellets. That's a sign. But I thought, well, a little chapino will make you feel better. Probably. Probably not you feel better. Probably. Probably not that much better. But can we get back? I'm going to post this thing later because I do want to talk a little bit about Wendy Davis. But I know we do have a guest.

So maybe we can ask him what he thinks. That we do indeed. And I believe that he's calling us from a car that is upended in a ditch somewhere in the storm that is tasking the south at this very moment. We'll ask him about that. Glenn Harland Reynolds. You know him as Instapundit.com, law professor, writer for such publications, Atlantic, Forbes, Popular Mechanics, The Wall Street Journal, and of course, those USA Today columns.

He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, and he's the author of The New School, How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself. Glenn, welcome back to the podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. Yes, I am four-wheeling it in the frozen wasteland of Knoxville, Tennessee right now. Glenn, I've got a kid. Rob, go ahead.

No, no, you were going to say something weather-related, and I was not going to say that. No, I was not going to say anything. Not, I support his ability. I prize his ability to talk in a pine while in the inclement weather. It's something that comes natural to us up here, but imagine to a southerner, not so much. Glenn, your new book is The New School, about the information age saving American education

from itself. I've got a kid in the public schools. Year by year, I have less and less hair to tear out. It's a frustrating experience, and I wonder if there's any possible way that we can dynamite it from its foundations and create a new system that teaches kids better. Tell us your thesis on the information age and why this is going to happen. Well, the good news is that you don't have to dynamite it. It's happening now, but the metaphor is probably more like acid rain than dynamite. The current system is sort of gradually treading away as people take their kids out for other

alternatives, and the big issue now is there's just a lot more alternatives. Just a few decades ago, your alternative to the public schools was basically either a local religious school, probably Catholic, or maybe some local private school that at least pretended to be Tony, but often just took doctors' kids who'd been kicked out of the public schools for having drugs. But now there's just a wide array of alternatives, from charter schools to online schools, which is how my daughter did nearly all of her high school, to homeschooling, which has become

increasingly popular. And as Buffy the Vampire Slayer says, it's not just for scary religious people anymore. So there's just a whole lot happening now, and all this permit is happening at the expense of the public schools because in many large urban areas, they're actually having to close schools and lay off teachers because they're losing so many people. Well, there's a couple things that come to mind. One, they're going to fight it hard, and they're not just going to fight it because it's jobs. They're going to fight it because it's the culture, supposedly, that we're all inculcated

in, that we all belong to public schools. In Germany, you had a judge say that kids can't be homeschooled because that takes them out of society and they don't get the proper appreciation for diversity. I expect the same thing is going to happen here the dinosaur maybe morphing but it's the the tail is gonna last wildly as it does well there's some truth to that uh... a couple of point that one is that uh... it's not the party our public school model came from germany with imported by horseman

i traveled around the white depression system that but simply because it was designed to indoctrinate kids in nationalism and proper servility. So that's not a surprise. But luckily in the United States, the Supreme Court has consistently upheld the right of parents to educate their kids as they see fit. That goes all the way back to Pierce v. Society of Sisters back in the 20s when it was German language teaching they were trying to stamp out.

But because of that, I think that while there'll be a lot of pushback, and they'll probably use things like accreditation as their tools, I think they're going to find it impossible. Already too many people are doing it and happy with their experience to shut down, I think. Hey, Glenn, it's Rob Long in L.A. How are you? Great, thanks, Rob. Do you miss us? Do you miss us in Santa Monica right around now? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. One of my former students who lived in Santa Monica posted a lovely sunset picture from a pier last night. Yeah, we do it just to hurt you. I hope you know that. It's not nice. We're not trying to be nice. I actually do know that. I actually do know that. It's not nice. We're not trying to be nice. I actually do know that.

So I have a question. You talk about how the pushback is going to come from the regulators and the pushback is going to come from the institutions and the accreditors. Is it ever going to come from or are you ever going to get help from the for-profit institutions? I'm talking about University of Phoenix and DeVry and places that actually provide a pretty good service, and they do a pretty good job preparing post-secondary school students for the workplace. And they're very, very attuned to the marketplace. They know exactly what their customers want and what the marketplace wants. They're right now under fire, probably for some good reasons, but for a lot of it, it's just they're under attack from the big college and

institution. Is there ever going to be any help from that? Do you ever see a business here in education reform? Well, I mean, of course, they have their lobbying presence in D.C., and it's non-trivial. But I think the biggest way they serve reform is honestly just to provide alternatives that siphon people out of the old system. And, you know, as I mentioned in the book, my family is a good example of this. My daughter went to the local Tony Public High School, and in the middle of her first semester there, said, I've been keeping track of how we spend our time,

and out of the eight hours I'm there, I only spend about two and a half on anything that really counts as schoolwork. And the rest is like, you know, DARE lectures and pep rallies and things like that. Right. And so she wanted to go online, and she went with Kaplan's online college prep program, which we thought was excellent. And she graduated high school early at 16, and it offered a lot of AP classes that weren't available at her school.

It offered basically every AP class that you could take, I think. And, you know, it was a pretty good experience for her, not least because, as I say in my book, she had flexibility that let her work during the week. And she had a three-day-a-week job at a local TV production company where she researched stories on serial killers for the Biography Channel and stuff like that. And she got to hang out with real high-functional adults instead of loser teenagers, which is who you find in high school.

Right. Right. So, I mean, are you getting any response? I mean, here's what people say when they talk about education reform. Everybody I know has done it and talks to sort of public school teachers or anybody in the public schools. They say individually, they come up to me and they say, you're so right. But as an organization, they come up, they sort of as organizationally, institutionally, they attack. Has that been your experience?

I have to say I'm surprised how little I've been attacked. You know, I have found a much more receptive audience than I thought. You know, I was kind of like Joe Biden when I got ready to start promoting this stuff. You know, Birger, Lloyd. But honestly, I've been surprised how many people have just admitted there's a problem and talked about what to do about it. I think that's a sign that we've sort of reached a good period in American society to really talk about and do something about this. That's a really good sign.

That's a really good sign. Glenn, Peter Robinson here. This distinction between getting an education online and homeschooling, I'm not sure I follow that. But you said some people homeschool, some people like my daughter got her education online. What's the right way to think about that? Homeschooling means – go ahead. My daughter was fully accredited with teachers and a curriculum, and we't have to do anything, uh, basically except pay the bill. Uh,

whereas when you do homeschooling, you are the teacher for the most part. Although there is now a lot of overlap, but there's a lot of collaborative homeschooling, uh, where people get together and there are a lot of online resources that homeschoolers use. But my daughter actually got a diploma, uh,

you know, so that actually was from the state of California, but that's how, that's how it works. And here's the question. This is the charge that you hear over and over again. Okay, fine. In certain cases, for certain students, it's all right.

But if too many students start doing that, we're going to have a generation of kids who aren't socialized. That's the word, right? That they don't somehow know the social skills of getting along with their peers. What's the answer to that charge? I think being socialized with other teenagers is a horrible thing. If you look at the era before high school became common, teenagers were treated like junior adults, and they worked in the workplace, and they tried to earn the respect of the adults that they were around, which you generally earn by things like doing a good job, showing up on time, you know, things like that.

Then they started warehousing with a bunch of other teenagers, and they started doing things that impressed the people they were with there, and that includes things like having sex, getting drunk, doing drugs, cutting class. It's a dysfunctional environment you're socializing people into. I mean, why is it that Hollywood is still making movies about being traumatized in high school as sort of a regular theme? You know, it's just not a good place.

Well, that's because the people in Hollywood were generally beaten up by the other kids. They were... That's not true. They lived in fear of the good-looking gods and goddesses who strode among them and have dedicated their lives to getting back at those folks.

As somebody who's got a teenage... At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race that's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing cheltenham with live score bet this is total betting sign up by 2 p.m 14th of march bet within 48 hours of race main market excluding specials and place bets terms apply bet responsibly 18 plus gambling care.ee it was just at the cusp of teenhood now and i've never thought of it that way that the worst thing that we could have done was to actuallyarn the things that she's learning about the UN.

Wait, they're mocking the UN? That's fantastic. No, they're not mocking the UN, unfortunately. Oh, I misheard. They do build the word mock into something so easily mockable. But as she said this morning, I said, good luck with the mock UN. What is the subject? She said, well, we're doing eliminating poverty. And she shrugged her shoulders and said, like anybody is going to be arguing against that.

It's just a question of how do we do it. And she rolled her eyes and stamped off to school. So it's an excellent point. And before we let you go, we have to ask you one more thing, because I know you're probably, are you out of the snow bank yet? Have you got out or are you actually on the road? I'm actually in the parking lot of the local, well, one of the local Mormon churches here, so I feel I'm very safe. Well, that's an interesting point. You know that the Mormon church has been sued in England by a disgruntled ex-church member who wants the extradition of the head of the church to come to London and face charges that he's been spreading ridiculous doctrine

and extracting money from people. Is this one of those things that you see is uniquely American or uniquely European, or can you see this sort of cultural influence seeping into America at some point in the future? Suing the church. I don't know if we could sue people for telling us lies and extracting a lot of money. I want Barack Obama in chains. Yeah.

Good point. Beautiful. In chains. Well, you know, as Biden would have pointed out, that's a lie of the year. That's a completely racist statement right there. That's exactly right. Glenn, that's your takeaway from this, everybody. Glenn Reynolds wants Barack Obama to put back in Amistad like chains.

So, Glenn, before you got on, we were talking a little bit about the debt ceiling vote and the complications it has, at least for me. On the one hand, I get the frustration with this sort of feckless, never cutting the budget, never doing anything. On the other hand, I understand that it's sort of the cart before the horse. What's your response to it? I mean are you sympathetic to the Cruzites that think we surrendered or are you – you sort of get the cold, hard reality of moving on? Some of both. I mean I understand what Bo... bainer mcconnell thought they said well the democrats have air superiority uh... in terms of the media

and will be hammered on that plus right now i feel about it here is all your part of the week day by day and that's pretty up on a more than anything we can do the white provide them with a convenient distraction that they can talk about in that like we did last time? Plus, I think they should have been there, done that. They didn't.

I mean, if Obama showed the kind of balls he showed in standing up to the Republicans on the debt limit in dealing with, like, our actual enemies abroad, we'd be in a lot better situation. But they didn't think he'd back down, which, you know, if you don't think somebody's got to back down, you don't go into a confrontation with them. I would rather see the debt ceiling cut. And I frankly, rather enjoyed the government shutdown and would be happy if it continued. But that said, you know, you have to pick your battles. And I understand why they did what they did. Well, Glenn, I know we have to let you go. You have places to go. And besides, you've only put up 47 links this morning, and I know you're probably behind. Hold on, before we let Glenn go, Glenn, we've been talking about high school. I

think that's implicit. But what does your argument imply for college, if I may ask? I say, if I may ask, because if your time is limited, go ahead, just give us your answer and drive on. But I'd really love to hear your thoughts on that. That's the whole other half of the book. But essentially, the same phenomenon is going on for the same reason. I mean, everywhere from kindergarten to graduate school, education is getting too expensive, while, if anything, actually staying stagnant or declining in quality. What's happened with college is that the tuition has increased much more rapidly than family incomes have.

People made up the difference with borrowing for a while, but now they realize they can't borrow enough to pay for it and be able to pay the debt off when they get out. So they too are looking for cheaper alternatives, which include things like online school. They include certification. They include a lot of college credit tests. There's a CLEP test you can take to get college credit. One of my readers just wrote me the other day and said that his daughter has gotten a year's worth of college credit by taking all these tests as a way of keeping the cost down. People do community colleges.

So there's a lot of stuff happening. And the higher education sector is, I can tell you from the inside, beginning to actually feel the squeeze as well. And they're going to have to start looking at ways to cut costs and deliver what people want in ways that I'm sorry to say will probably make the life of tenured professors such as myself less cushy and enjoyable. Yes, well, at least you have tenure. At least there from the balcony, you all can point down at the rest of us in your mask-of red death-like experience

as the plague of the Obama economy roils through the common people. You've got tenure, man. Oh, it might not be so cushy. This soft little cushion on which my bottom sits is a little bit stiffer today. Just kidding you. Glad you have tenure. Glad we've got guys like you in academia,

and glad that you continue to pump out these books and these columns and these links and all the rest of it. The tireless cheer of Glenn Reynolds can be found, of course, at instapundit.com every day. And look forward to you taking a break and going snorkeling somewhere and handing it off to the other capable crew and then you coming back and giving us, again, 174 links per hour. Glenn, always a pleasure. Enjoy the snow and we'll talk to you down the road. Thanks, Glenn. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Glenn. Yep. When he was talking about college not exactly being the great deal that it was, I don't know what you guys paid for college. I know that college tuition when I went to the University of Minnesota was not that onerous. But then, of course, came the loans. Then, of course, came the opportunity. And then, of course, came the decision that the college campuses need to be world class.

Minnesota had to be world class and everything. So they started building these facilities and that cost money and that increased tuition. But then the federal government stepped in, of course, and said, we'll loan you the money. We'll guarantee the loans. And then oddly enough, the more loan guarantees, the more money was offered, the more the cost of the institution itself went up. Until now, it's just this preposterous amount of money to get a degree that essentially equips you for nothing. Here's a perfect example of how a good idea completely undermined what people wanted in the first place, which is a good, solid college education. As a matter of fact, how liberalism undermined the middle class is the subject of the book Revolt Against the Masses by Fred Siegel,

available in a counter. Ah, yeah, see? Just a little fast dart today. Now, Fred's point isn't exactly of unintended consequences. A lot of his book has to do with the absolute intended consequences of liberalism's founders, people such as Herbert Crowley, Randolph Bord, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, Mencken, who wanted to create an American version of an aristocracy that they'd long associated with European statism because we know how well that worked out for them. Ruled by the elites, they know better than us. Well, they were critical of mass democracy and middle class capitalism, he said, reading from the praise he's handed to him.

Liberals despised the businessman's pursuit of profit as well as the conventional individual's pursuit of pleasure. So in the 50s, liberalism expressed itself as the scornful critique of popular culture, which can always take some critiquing. But the idea was to establish this aristocracy that knew better than we did, how liberalism undermined the middle class. It's called Revolt Against the Masses by Fred Siegel. Now, for 15% off this or any other book, go to EncounterBooks.com and use the coupon code RICOCHET at your checkout. And we thank our friends at EncounterBooks for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast, period, full stop.

I have to note this about education and undermining and the rest of it. My daughter came to me the other day. She had a class project and she said, Dad, I need your help on this. The question is, I'm supposed to write, is who is John Galt? And are his ideas still relevant today? At which point, Dad turned around in his chair in his studio

and said, my, my, my, who's asking this? And I think one of her teachers was slipping something in there. I think one of her teachers may not have done that to disabuse kids of the madness of objectivism but to acquaint them with the idea. It's one of those little moments of hope that you get, isn't it? Yeah. What did you discover? Well, apparently it was exactly that. I think that the teacher himself has got a bit of Randianism in his soul

and was acquainting the children with it. Interesting. Well, the thing was when it came to saying why are his ideas so popular, this is where I had to very sort of carefully help her craft. Yeah, right. Because the oppressive male feast of the state is grinding into the flesh of the people every day. You just can't do that because you never – Careful. You got to be careful.

So we came up with the – some people say that there's a reflection of Rand's ideas in the extension of government through things such as Obamacare. And it's – they're relevant to people who disagree with him because they effectively state a position quite succinctly about which we can argue. Right. Don't you think that's happening? I mean I actually feel like there's a – I mean I am not a – one of those Randian libertarians. I'm sort of like a lot of conservatives. There's a lot about libertarianism I really like. And don't you think there's a time – there's a moment now where people are incredibly receptive to that argument, to this collapse of Obamacare?

Obamacare, by the way, is not going to collapse. Ovik Roy has got a very good piece in Forbes today in which he says the really bad news is it's going to do just – it's not going to collapse on its own weight. It's not going to death spiral. It's got enough enrollees. It's going to be the worst government program ever, right? It's not going to fall apart. It's just going to continue to be bad. Well, wait a minute. Enough enrollees how?

How are they measuring this? I know the latest stats they've got this, but are these people who've paid? And how many of these people would have been eligible for Medicare? Ovik's got it all worked out in his numbers brain. I don't know. I mean, I just trust him when he's when Ovik Roy's working

the numbers, I trust his work in the numbers. And his point is that our dreams that it's going to fall in on its own weight and collapse is just, that's – it's not going to happen. That it's actually going to – it's worse, right? It's going to limp along and be just the worst program ever and continue to do damage forever until it's repealed or so radically altered it's no longer Obamacare. It's something else, which is I think probably what's going to happen. But what's interesting about it is that it opens up the debate and I think for the first time, people are being interested in an idea that maybe it's better if you do it yourself.

Maybe not just better if you do it yourself for moral reasons but just better for yourself because if you want to build something, the honeycomb structure is smarter than the top-down structure. And what's remarkable about this is that we knew this all along but a lot of people who are kind of like, well, why don't we just let them in Washington do it? That 11 or 12 or 15 percent that voted for Barack Obama despite the fact that it really was not in their best interests are now receptive to this argument, and it should be cheering to our side. We should be cheered by it. So maybe now that I've had this – however long we've been on, 40-minute therapy session with you guys, I can say after thinking about debt ceiling, maybe it is good. Maybe you are correct, James, and you're saying let's clear the decks. Let's talk about one thing, one big thing for the next 24 months because that's an important thing to talk about, which is that big government programs, big nanny government, nanny statism is bad, bad because it fails. It steals your money. It robs you of your dignity and your liberty. And maybe we'll just keep saying

that over and over again. That's a good thing. Exactly. I want the Republicans to be like Steve Ballmer at that Microsoft convention where he got the sweaty saddlebags under his arm leaping around the stage and shouting developers. Instead of saying developers though, just say Obamacare, Obamacare, Obamacare, Obamacare, Obamacare. Find the video. Put it up. That's what I need. However, the question is now we've got this piece up in Ricochet about the rise of the millennial libertarians. Do you think that the GOP is naturally going to get these people or are they going to look at them as just another enabler of statism, a milder form? I mean, Peter, let me ask you, Rob was saying that maybe we'll repeal Obamacare down the road or do something that in effect repeals it. What would be the thing that the GOP needed to do that would

eliminate the most, that would constitute to you the elimination of the most onerous part of Obamacare? Is it repealing the mandates and just saying you're free to get whatever you want or is it tinkering around the mandates to say that this works and this doesn't? If we win the Senate in November, then between now and the next presidential election, repealing or delaying the individual mandate will pass the House and the Senate and Barack Obama will have a very hard time refusing to sign that, I would think. Ultimately, the GOP needs to win the presidency.

That's the only way to repeal this thing is to win the presidency. And when Rob says, I sense a new argument, openness to the Republican or the libertarian argument, I'm just not sure what to make of that. I, let's put it this way. I am not aware of any surge in the membership of college Republicans on any campus in the country. Well, I mean, that's not a very useful metric. No, no, no. That's the worst metric ever. Why is that the worst metric ever?

Because it makes my point. Republicans are nerds. It makes my point, which is that the Republican Party is simply uncool. And when James begins by opening, do you think that the Republican Party, that they're the natural home for these libertarian millennials? The answer is no. The Republican Party has to fight very hard for their allegiance. I agree with that. But saying you don't have many college Republicans signing up these days is like saying that the conversion rate to orthodox Judaism seems to be rather low at Catholic universities.

I mean you have self-selecting organizations here which themselves are so dominantly culturally liberal that I can't expect anybody to be – You are making my point. You think you're disagreeing with me, but you're making my point. The Republican Party is just uncool. But here's what I mean. I don't think you're – look, right now, if you're a millennial, whatever that means, you're not at all sympathetic to the arguments that the Republican Party is propounding because it's propounding in large measure.

It's drowned – whatever the economic or big government arguments seem to be drowned out maybe by a compliant media or a noncompliant media, depending on what side you're on uh probably by compliant media uh and by the culture at large seem to be drowned out by sort of uh slightly out of step if you're a millennial social messages and so it's easy for you to say because you don't care about big government because you're generally kind of attuned to the values of big government well i'm never going to be a republican because here's what republicans. They want no government, and they hate gays. And then when it turns out that big government doesn't work and doesn't work as efficiently as the smartphone in your pocket and this genius the little reptile brain that still exists because you've been steeped in the brew of civil liberties your whole educational career, it seems unusual the president with a wave of a pen can change the laws that were passed, that he was preening and swanning, to use the term I love to use, around about how this is the law. You know, this, it's the law. Now he gets to change it.

It seems like this guy in D.C. is actually a loser. And then it turns out that, you know, the other issues aren't quite so it isn't quite so black and white, that the Republicans aren't quite so racist or bigoted, that in fact, big government in many ways is racist and bigoted. Well, I'm not saying they're going to just sign up to be a Republican party, but now they're open to an argument. And look, we only have two parties in the country. You got to vote one or it's the A or B, black or white, one or two, plus or minus, doesn't matter. You got to pick one. And I only need 51% agreement because eventually for the top ticket, for the top job, it's one guy or one – it's one vote. And so once you're open to the argument, we are much, much better off. The ball is so much closer to the 50-yard line now than it's ever been, and that's good.

That's good. Question. You've given us a thesis, and I believe it could be tested with polling. I'd love to see the – I'd love to see the following poll. College kids or kids, you could structure different ways in the age group, say 18 to 25, prefer whom? Between Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Because I believe the way I read Rand Paul, positioning himself right now now is Rand Paul agrees with you, Rob, completely. There's an openness to the libertarian side of the argument that does not extend to social issues.

Ted Cruz isn't giving an inch on social issues. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz vote the same way, by the way. Rand Paul is, as far as it goes, opposed to gay marriage. But he himself has said he doesn't intend to make he does not intend to push the social issues as hard. The opening. He said this publicly. He said it when I interviewed him last year that the opening is is on the economic issue. So Rand Paul buys your thesis. And I would that would be an interesting poll to see. That would be an interesting poll to see. Yeah, I think so. And I think Rand Paul, he is more of a sort of states rights attitude towards gay marriage, which I think is also appealing, appealing to some conservatives as well.

That's right. That's right. Yes. Yes. So I mean, so I think it of having a sort of a come-to-Jesus moment. Instead of a come-to-Jesus, I say come-to-James moment in that maybe – that's sort of the benefit of Ricochet, right? Maybe the – it's very expensive therapy. Maybe it would be useful for us to – that's what we need to evangelize on is that, look, this thing, this Obamacare thing doesn't work for very specific reasons. They're not unforeseen. And, and, and, and from the, from the example of Obamacare flows many other smaller

examples that, that enforce and reinforce your thesis. Once you've got people to, once you've got the youth thinking perhaps that maybe large technocratic rule by elites might not be a good idea. You got all kinds of other things to throw at them. Such – I mean every week has got them. Leaving aside for example such examples as whether or not the government has the right to make old withered nuns in Wemples pay for somebody else's birth control, which I mean to me is just – still, the Little Sisters of the Poor notion. That's one of those things that makes you think it's not that they're regretfully with doleful expressions having to extend the law to the Little Sisters of the Poor.

What they are are people who, when the doors are closed, are like Tim Curry in the legend movie where he's the great horned red-faced devil twirling over what he's inflicted on the innocent. They love it. This is the ultimate expression of their power is to force nuns to pay for rubbers. Yes! But besides that, there's something else. There's examples like, well, does the government and the FCC have the right to go into newsrooms and ask them with pens and pads, how are you deciding to report the news?

Mind you, this is something that was floated about last week. And anybody who wants to say what right do they have to do that, well, they're the FCC. They have control over the airwaves. Shouldn't they be enforcing fairness? And I don't know anybody in the country who thinks that that's really a good idea except for maybe Rachel Maddow. The second, second, third, fourth, fifth – I mean everywhere you turn, you find stories. For example, there is a small town. I believe it's in Wyoming that has now been declared to be part of an Indian reservation going back to a reevaluation of a 1905 treaty that Congress signed off on.

But that the EPA without any recourse whatsoever to congressional authority just said, no, we're going to change that. Now, it's kind of a complicated situation because it goes back and forth. There have been rulings about whether or not the town exists. But for the EPA, through a regulation, through the regulatory state's power to say to these people, you're no longer American citizens. It's an example of what happens when you have organizations that themselves rule by decree. And now I don't think that people sit around in Washington and say, how can we ruin people's lives and assert our authority and be the worst possible autocrats ever? I think that they're all guided by what they believe to be the right thing to do. Right. OK, but it doesn't matter because the regulatory state in the hands of even the most well-meaning people will flout the law and will come up with structures that are

anti-democratic. And when you have the president flouting the law, saying we're going to deny, repeal this, when you have the EPA casting laws that put people out of business or deprive them of their citizenship, when you have the FCC going in talking put people out of business or deprive them of their citizenship. When you have the FCC going in talking about a chilling effect, for God's sakes, to newsrooms and saying, tell us how you do your business. When you start with Obamacare, the premise of which is this large leviathan has the right to extend its tendrils into every atom of your life. And once you've made that example clear, the scales fall away and you see all around you exactly how this works. But also notice the amount of personal freedom people have, the amount of personal control they have,

the amount of things they insist, the sheer freedom with which we move around today. Stop right there. I thought the same thing myself today as I was walking up the stairs with a cup of coffee saying, why is one half of my brain all steamed up about all these things? And yet my life itself on a daily elemental level is so – that's – you're right. That's a –

I just meant simple things like I can now take a photograph of a check to make a deposit. I can deposit a check in my bank and I can take a photograph of it. I mean these are –, we've been through this before, these technological advances, they're very good, but there's a level of freedom and convenience that we simply demand now, and that boils, sort of sifts down,

kind of like seeps into our bones, and it's a kind of a freedom and autonomy that never, human beings have never had before, and that the idea that some bozo in Washington is going to tell us something and going to prescribe for us something. I mean the shock with which people who have enrolled or tried to enroll in Obamacare, the shock with which they have reacted to this thing has been so edifying for the country

to see what happens when you no longer have control. Worse, what happens when the thing you're dealing with thinks it's giving you – doing you a favor. That's sort of amazing to me and I think that's why I'm sort of excited about maybe it's better that we don't have any other arguments. We just say one thing over and over and over and over to get to people. I remember the old – a friend of mine used to do advertising and he was – he he did advertising for a big fast food, big fast food company, one of the biggest in the world. And the guys in DC in, in,

in New York, the advertising guys, New York would come up with these great campaigns. And you know, there'd be like, they would do the new rap star, whatever it was, the animated burger and everything.

And it was really cool. And they have all these great, these multimillion dollar campaigns. And that was because the corporate headquarters would demand creative, but the franchise owners, because you had to convince the franchise owners, would come and see it. And the franchise owners were always just dudes all around the country who owned 25 of these burger chains or 50 of these burger chains. And they really had a lot of power. And they came in their $90 suits and their bad shoes and they would troop into New York City and they kind of look around at the fancy people in the advertising agency and they would sit in a conference room with the croissants and the little espresso cups and the guys in the $9,000 eyewear and the pointy shoes.

And they'd look at the stuff and they'd look at – they'd spend half an hour looking at all the creative and these dudes would present it to them. And then there would always be – he said it would happen four times a year, every quarter. And then the guy with the worst suit in the – the most powder blue suit, the most Cleveland. In the full Cleveland, they'd say, would stand up and say, why don't you just show the burger? That's what people want to see, the burger. And all the creatives would go, ridiculous. And then they would go ahead. They put on the fancy campaign and it would kind of fail.

And then finally they would just show a picture of the burger, usually around like 4 o'clock in the afternoon or 11 o'clock in the morning to get you hungry for the meal, the next meal. And it always worked, right? Because people kind of – if you want to communicate with people, just show them – just keep doing the thing that is the thing. And I would say that to Republicans and that maybe even to our side in general. We want to move this rock uphill. We want to say to all the American people, and there are a whole lot of them who voted for a big government progressive liberal, the most liberal president we have had since Lyndon Johnson, maybe more liberal than Lyndon Johnson. And we want to move that rock uphill. Let's just show the burger.

And the burger is big government fails. Well, you're not supposed to have a burger. Burger is very bad for you. Sustainable, grass fed, whatever. One of the most delightful pictures that went around the last couple of days was I think either FLOTUS or the White House itself tweeted a picture of the family dogs sitting in chairs at an elegant table with China in front of them. Yeah. And the usual dog expression of – that was one of those Versailles-like moments that, again, just made you think if in the midst of a sluggish economic recovery, a Republican president – Just imagine if Mitt Romney had put out a picture of his dogs at a formal dinner with expensive china.

Oh, my god. It would be proof that he was so disconnected from the essential reality of the American experience. Oh, it would be like – it would be iconic. It would be on the cover of Time magazine. Yes, a president out of touch. Yes. Millions of Americans are going to bed hungry every night and he's feeding his dogs off of China. Oh, yeah. When he was talking to the president of France, Francois Hollande, and he referred to the great French travel writer and philosopher on America, Alex de Tocqueville.

Right. Now, imagine if George W. Bush had pronounced – had actually pronounced Alexis de Tocqueville, Alex de Tocqueville. He left out the de as well. It was Alex Tocqueville. Alex Tocqueville. Like Joe Green who lives next door. Alex, right. Now, I personally didn't mind it, but I did notice that nobody, nobody cared.

No. No, no, no. A pass he gets because of his general assumed brilliance and his element, his ability to connect with the American people or as he likes to refer to us as the folks well there's lots of other things boys could i ask one question well before we leave the subject of the millennials altogether david brooks and his column a couple of days ago in the new york times had this is not i'm not i'm not launching an argument about for or against david he quoted a couple of statistics that I had not seen before and that came to me like a kick in the stomach. And while I've got you, I would like to hear what you make of them. I'll read it.

It's one paragraph. And the heading is American exceptionalism. I'll quote David. American attitudes now resemble European attitudes. And when you look at young people, American exceptionalism is basically gone. 50% of Americans over 65 believe America stands above all others as the greatest nation on earth. Only 27% of Americans ages 18 to 29 believe that. As late as 2003, Americans were more likely than Italians, Brits, and Germans to say the, quote, free market economy is the best system on which to base the future of the world, close quote.

By 2010, they were slightly less likely than those Europeans to embrace capitalism. Is that not a kick in the stomach? Well, if you want to spend a night in the ruts yes i suppose it is uh but i don't really take the uh the fulminations and opinions of youth as necessarily demonstrative of where they're heading in the future i replied to this on ricochet partially because i just don't want to subject myself to a lifetime of eorism and down-at-the-mouth depression about the shape of things and partly because i remember my own youth and what i thought and what all my peers thought too. We would have answered the question the same way. We would have found Europe to be a much wiser example. And we would have found the idea of

American exceptionalism to be preposterous because we were a corrupt nation with evil leaders who invaded small countries full of brown people to take their resources or just kill them for sport. Everything that I'd learned in college quite quickly on doing everything that I'd learned in college, quite quickly, undoing everything that I'd learned at home over the years, it turned me against the country, fast. And it took a while to undo that. It took actually going out and getting a job to undo that. Yeah, I also, you know, I mean,

I don't know how to say this politely. I also think young people are stupid. So, you know, I'm not like really a capitalist. I mean, I'm not like really a capitalist. I mean I'm totally against capitalism but I want to run a business and I don't want to have a lot of regulation. And you can just hear it. I mean I hear it from people I know in Silicon Valley.

I hear it from people who are starting big businesses in Silicon Valley or just small like the guy running the muffin stores. Can you believe it? They come in here. They regulate everything. So I suspect that it's a little less about institutions that they grew up thinking about are not trustworthy. And I don't mean not trustworthy meaning they're cheating, although I think cheating is a big deal. I think a lot of them think the big banks cheat and they're in many ways correct. A lot of them think that some large corporations cheat and I think sometimes they're correct.

But I think a lot of them think that they're not trustworthy and that they're not going to be here tomorrow. And that way, they are correct. They are – in our lifetime, it's remarkable how many companies don't exist now that existed and were thought of as, well, that company is going to exist and simply doesn't exist anymore. I mean I'm old enough and we're all on this call old enough to remember in the 90s, you'd watch TV and every single ad on TV was for long-distance service. And that doesn't exist anymore. So I have a feeling that the entrepreneurial attitude, if you ask young millennials what they're – if they have an entrepreneurial attitude, it leans towards us. It is directionally correct for us and that's good. We just have to harness it. And they may not think of it as capitalism and they may not think of it as conservative.

They certainly don't think of it as republican. If they want to call it libertarian, they want to call it purple. They want to call it dragonfly. I don't really care. But I do care if as long as they identify that there is one group of people who are generally aligned with freedom and independence and entrepreneurship and living and creating a life for yourself and living kind of your own kind of life. And there is one that wants to control every aspect of your life and swallow you up in a giant socialist state. And we're the other one. That's fine by me.

Well, they might want a job with Google because of all the brands that are going to be around. You think that Google has probably got a little bit more staying power. If we look 15 years in the future, I don't think Google Glass will have been replaced by, you know, I don't know, Yahoo. You never know. Yahoo cod pieces or something. You never know. Look, people thought Apple was dead 15 years ago. That's true.

That's true. That's true actually. I was going somewhere with this and where exactly was it? Oh, yes. Now I remember. They may, as Rob said, they may tire of this and they may also tire of the attitude of the lemon sucking killjoys who just want to make everything about the importance of having the right stance on everything. Like Valentine's Day, there's a piece in the New Republic,

I'm going to do something about this for Ricochet, in which the writer is talking about what an ecological environmental catastrophe Valentine's Day is. The cards that nobody needs. Do you know the amount of resources it takes to produce those cards?

Do you know how preposterous and ridiculous it is that we drive to the post office and they put it in a truck and they fly it across the country? Do you know

the carbon imprint? That's like an Onion article. The headline is guy with no girlfriend complains about Valentine's Day environmental impact. Yeah. Well, he's – apparently from the sound of it as a wife and a child. And at the end of it reveals that, of course, when his daughter called him up as he was writing the piece to ask, Daddy, can you stop at the drugstore and pick up a box of chocolates for me to take to my class tomorrow? He did what any father of a 10-year-old girl would do.

And, of course, he put her needs above that of the ecological situation. But he wrote the piece just so everybody else knew that he had the proper attitude. That while he may himself have bought the card, he knows. And that's what's important for our betters and our thought leaders to understand and instruct the rest of us. They themselves may not follow those particular rules. But as long as they – we all know that they know and we should act as they do. Can we talk about – I agree. Go on. Go on. Go on.

Can we talk for a minute because I know we're wrapping up. A little minute about Shirley Temple Black who died and Sid Caesar who died yesterday. Amazing. And I was in a room. I just want to tell you this. A very short Sid Caesar – not a Sid Caesar story, but a short anecdote yesterday. I was in a writer's room yesterday and a bunch of writers, comedy writers working on story, and I look down at my phone. I have a New York Times thing, and it pops up. It says veteran comedy performer, writer Sid Caesar dies, 91.

And I look up. Hey, everybody, Sid Caesar died. And two-thirds, four-thirds of the room says basically, oh, we have two young writers in the corner. This team of writers, they're very bright, very good, young women writers, and they look up from their MacBook Air Pro, whatever it is, and they're kind of like, oh, yeah. And I look at them, and I'm like, you've got no idea who Sid

Caesar is, do you? And so we talk, but not like I did, really, but it's just remarkable that there are people who don't know that Sid Caesar really invented a whole form of television, put it on TV, the first variety shows on TV. They existed on stage, but he put them on TV and kind of created a form and was the incubator for the sitcom because the sitcom was really just the extended sketch from a variety show and had a writing staff that could never, ever be assembled again. It was Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner and Lee Allen and Danny Brooks and Larry Gelbart.

It's just an extraordinary collection of people who would gather in a room and make jokes for a living. For every single comedy writer I've ever met who wasn't in that room, their one goal has been, you know, I'd just love to have been in that room just for a day. And it's just sad. Sad that it's gone, but what a career. Pretty amazing character. People talk about the Algonquin Hotel and the round table there as being a fountain

of the greatest wits ever. No, I think it was probably a miserable assembly of drugs pathetically trying to one-up each other. The comedy room of Sid Caesar must have been a thing to absolutely behold and delight in. If you've ever read Laughter on the 23rd Floor, I'm not a big fan of the Neil Simon later plays. They're all kind of maudlin. But Laughter on the 23rd Floor is his sort of memoir play

of his being a young writer on the Sid Caesar show and just kind of coming on – I think he was the young staff writer. And it's pretty great. It's pretty great. Go watch My Favorite Year to cite it. Oh, yeah. Another guy who died recently, Peter O'Toole. It's essentially about the Sid Caesar show.

It doesn't surprise me, Rob. I was at a party in Hollywood. I don't get to say that often. I know it wasn't yours a couple of years ago where I was talking with a young woman who was really interested in sitcoms and wanted to bring back the finest of the three camera setups and the rest of it. And I brought up the Mary Tyler Moore show and she'd never seen it. So, yeah, when you can't count on the people in your own industry to have some knowledge of the history of your own industry. Well, that's – I mean I'd have a hard time not hitting her. I mean, Mary Tyler Moore show. I really would. I mean, honestly,

Mary Tyler Moore show is direct descendant of Sid Caesar. Well, you had all these greats on Sid Caesar, including Carl Reiner. Carl Reiner, after the Sid Caesar show, went on to create the Dick Van Dyke show starring Mary Tyler Moore and Carl Reiner. And they, he, the, which really kind of solidified the sitcom format. And Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker then went on to create the Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was only a few years after the Dick Van Dyke Show, really about six, seven years after that. And a lot of the same crew and the same team, the same production team went on to do the Mary Tyler Moore show. Hey, Rob, how many degrees – as a professional, as a writer yourself, how many degrees of separation are you from somebody who wrote for Sid Caesar?

I think maybe two or three. Yeah. Not that many. I mean when I started on Cheers in 1990, the two sort of veteran guys we had were David Lloyd, who was a genius, and Bob Ellison. They were probably the vets and both of them had worked at Mary Tyler Moore. And some of them had worked on some earlier stuff. Mary Tyler Moore and earlier things had worked at Jack Parr.

At Dick Cabot. And in those days, you started in New York and you were brought out to the coast later, like in the 70ss and sometimes you came out in the 60s. And I met this great writer who wrote for Mary Tyler Moore. Her name is Treva Silverman and she was writing sketches and stuff for Carson – jokes for Carson and for Jack Parr and sketches for New York and plays. And some producer said, come out to Hollywood. I'll rent you a house. I'm doing a show.

It's going to be really fun. It's going to be super hip. It's going to be the hippest thing ever on TV. It's called The Monkees. She came out to write The Monkees and did that for a couple seasons, and then The Monkees fell apart, and then before she knew it, she was writing The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Wow.

Extraordinary. Well, that's one career trajectory. The other is to start out as a winsome, beloved child star of millions and end up pretty much reviled on the left and buried on Twitter because once they found out that she actually was on the right, they assumed that she was a slave owner and somebody who wanted to slap condoms out of people's hands, which is not unexpected really. You mean Shirley Temple Black? Yes. If you looked at Twitchy the other day, the amount of venom. I never thought I would say that. If you looked at Twitchy, the amount

of venom being poured over Shirley Temple by the left was extraordinary, but I'm not particularly surprised. Really? Where do you start? Do you start first with the smile that brightened the dark hearts of the Depression? I hate stories like that because it makes it sound like everybody was walking around in bread lines with her and then walked into a Shirley Temple movie and came away with New Faith in America and FDR.

Or do you start with a lighter political career and move to the other? Peter, which comes to mind when you think of Shirley Temple? Well, she was around. I met her a few times. She used to come to Hoover Institution dinners. So I think of Shirley Temple Black as a quite sweet, dignified, rather quiet old lady whom you would meet and chat with. But it would just never even cross your mind to say I loved your tap dancing when you were three years old because she was an accomplished, dignified person. So I, myself, personally, I, by the way, I can't, I only met her a couple of times, but just reading up on her the

other day, you know, she was ambassador to Czechoslovakia at about the time the cold war was ending. That was a very big, complicated, difficult job to be ambassador to a country as the communists were falling and a new democratic order was taking place. And by every account I was able to find, she handled it just beautifully. She was an intelligent, hardworking, patriotic person in that second half of her life. And then I went on YouTube just to have a little fun. I took a momentary break. And, you know, for a child actress, what she was five years old, six years old, seven years old, when she was doing these tap routines with Bilbo Jangles Robinson. Yeah. She was a very gifted little child. How

much credit you want to give a five-year-old? I mean, she wasn't Laurence Olivier, but she had hard work. It's hard work, and she and Bojangles Robinson had a real... I mean, giving Americans, millions of people, during the Depression

just an hour and a half of innocent pleasure is a remarkable accomplishment and she did it she did she was a very impressive person james i know you have to go soon i just want to just two things about her i think you're interesting the first thing is that um we forget that her you see her on that on those clips and she's talented. Forget how rough her life was after that. I mean it was not nice. It was not easy. How much stuff those kid actors see.

A movie set is not filled with nice people being nice to the little girl. It's a place where there are a lot of people shouting and screaming. There's a lot of stuff going on and it's not a sweet little cosseted area. She saw things. She heard things. She grew up fast. And so she – and then she had apparently a disastrous first marriage and she didn't – I mean it wasn't an easy life. And so whatever she accomplished later on in life was part of a remarkable character I think that really is to her credit. credit um and the second thing is if i think matt welsh is gonna has either written that reason or is going to read write a wonderful memoir he has of meeting her in czech in czech republic in

prague when he's a young graduate student or something he's young and then and it's fall falling apart and he and he and some guys are running around near the end and they're just falling down drunk knee-walking drunk and the streets are kind of reeling in prague they run into the ambassador and she apparently is just amazingly cool. She's just amazingly cool. And I think that's just amazing. For the whole trajectory of that life, I think, is pretty spectacular. And I think you see the clips of her, and you think, oh, sweet little girl in the sweet little movie.

And then she kind of – she went from being a sweet little dimple-faced girl to being a powerful ambassador. And you forget that actually it's a very dark period. To be a child actor back then was – and now too. Very, very – it's awful. It's not great. How many people can be in show business, politics, and have a non-alcoholic drink named after them? Rob, you've got two under your belt. Let's come up with that non-alcoholic drink if you want to stoop that low and see if you can go for the trifecta.

Just change my last name to Roy and I can figure it out. Right. And we'll be able to sell it online as a matter of fact too once we get the ingredients all converted into some powder. You just add water too. And that would be the great sort of regional thing we'd like to see pop up someday at foodie direct.com. And we would like to mention them and sponsor and say that they're the sponsor of all this blatheration we've had. And we thank them for it.

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well. Don't hang up the phone. Don't quit the podcast, people. I've got something to say here at the end that will surprise you. And anyway, get Fred Siegel's The Revolt Against the Masses, How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class. And if you use coupon code ricochet at the checkout, you'll get 15% off the list price. All right, the thing I'm going to say that's going to shock everybody is I hereby quit this podcast because I have to go. So, guys, thanks a lot. Peter, Rob, always a pleasure. We'll see everybody in the comments.

And thank you for listening to this, the Ricochet Podcast at ricochet.com. See you next week, fellas. See you next week. In every bowl of soup I see, lions and tigers watching me. I make them jump right through, wahoo, those animal crackers in my soup. When I get hold of the big bad wolf, I just push him under the ground. Then I bite him in a million bits, and I go pull him right down. When they're inside me where it's dark, I walk around like Noah's Ark. I stuff my tummy

like a goop with animal crackers in my soup. Animal crackers in my soup do funny things to me. They make me think my neighborhood is a big, much natural race.

Ricochet. Since there's our janitor his name is Mr. Klein. And when he hollers at us kids, he reminds me of the lion. The grocer is so big and fat he has a big mustache.

He looks just like a walrus just before he takes a splash. Animal crackers in my soup. And then rabbits loot the loot. Gosh, I have a sw and one day.