The Three Whisky Happy Hour, After All - podcast episode cover

The Three Whisky Happy Hour, After All

Sep 22, 20241 hr 19 minEp. 506
--:--
--:--
Download Metacast podcast app
Listen to this episode in Metacast mobile app
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episode description

Well, a forensic miracle recovered the lost or rogue audio file for this week's episode, which feature just John Yoo and Lucretia because Steve was in some kind of second-hand smoke daze over in Amsterdam. John and Lucretia do their usual spirited tour through the second Trump assassination, the stubbornly close polls (you can just imagine what Lucretia thinks of "low information" voters), Kamala's embarrassing appearance on Oprah, the latest news about just what happened with President Trump's request for national guard troops on January 6, additional reflections on "Operation Grim Beeper," and finally a philosophical excursion into Lucretia's first contribution to our new "Political Questions" Substack. Warning—no prudence, but Machiavelli is involved!

Transcript

Speaker 1

Well Whiskey Coming from power Line blog dot com and produced by Ricochet dot com. This is the three Whiskey Happy Hour with your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You and power Lines International Woman of Mystery Lucretia Gotta give in that whiskey floon where you're feeling in loud.

Speaker 2

Down and lod. Welcome everybody to the too Whiskey Happy Hour. Because there's just two whiskey officionados on the podcast. We are against Steve heywardless because Steve has yet to return from his foreign travels abroad it so it's just Lucretia and I getting back to basics. How you doing, Lucretia, I'm doing well?

Speaker 3

Thanks Jo? How about you? And do you think Steve's over there smoking pot or you know, doing some sort of heroin derivative or something. Isn't that what Amsterdam used to be famous for? Yes?

Speaker 2

For those of those not following Steve's travels, Steve is such a millennial. He takes pictures of everywhere he goes, so you know exactly where he is at all times. And right now he's in Amsterdam and posting his Facebook and posting photos of him eating, drinking, falling into the canals. I actually love Amsterdam, but I've not been there in

a while. I love to see. I spent the summer there teaching at the Free University of Amsterdam, which actually will get us into a topic we're going to talk about at the end, because you might ask, why is it called the Free University of Amsterdam. There's also a

University of Amsterdam. There was also a Free University of Berlin, and there's a university but there's This is kind of interesting gets to a topic we're talking about in our philosophy corner at the end, because Lucretia has posted an interesting paper up on substack which raises the question about natural rights and what is freedom, so which you'll get to that at the end.

Speaker 3

Okay, I'm looking forward. What do you got before me for then? What have you got for me before then?

Speaker 2

So we got a number of really interesting topics to talk about this week. I mean, the hits never stopped coming. But I think one thing we might talk about would

be the second assassination attempt on President Trump. We hosted our last episode right before on Saturday of last week, and the second assassination TEP was on Sunday, I recall this is a fellow who was scoping out President Trump at his golf course actually managed to lie and wait for eleven hours with an AK forty seven style assault rifle, a rifle he doesn't get a shut off. Apparently the Secret Service saw him and shot at him. Somehow got into you know, a Nissan, and drove took off on

the highway and wasn't captured till afterwards. So, Lucretia, what are your thoughts about this second assassination attempt of what is going on with the Secret Service? This is Do you think that there I've read a lot of people who are raising doubts about whether the Biden administration is actually providing this, saying the sufficient amount of coverage and protection to their main incumb of their main challenger, who they also accuse of being an existential threat to democracy.

Speaker 3

Yeah, it's I don't even know where to start with that. Since we're not live this time, John, I don't have on my designer Cowboy Tinfolk Cowboy Head America, but I actually do have some I don't even think their conspiracy conspiracy facts. I think that they're just a little bit hard to square with everything that's going on in the first place. Did you know John that both Routh Ruth? However you say his name, I can never remember bad people's names. I remember yours. John that he and Crooks,

Crooks was the first assassin, were both pro Ukrainian. Okay, that's no big deal. There's a lot of people like that. We'll talk in a moment about the second guy's extraordinary relationship with Ukraine. But they were both in blackrock videos.

Speaker 2

Is that true?

Speaker 3

It is true. I've seen the videos, and I know those things can be faked, but I've seen them from multiple sources. So yes, they were both in the first one. The first guy, Crooks, they came to his high school and he was in a couple of different scenes in a promotional video. And then the second one was a pro Ukrainian video, and Ruth featured prominently in that video as well. The other thing is is that people have said, again, you know, it's always a little bit. You got to

take these things with a grain of salt. The fact that the mainstream media is ignoring them makes me think it's true, because otherwise they'd be trying to debunk it.

He's shown up at more than one of Kamalama ding Dong's rallies being busted in by the campaign, which I'm assuming you know that one too, That approximately five thousand cell phones have been traced to both the Arizona kam Lama ding Dong rally and the Georgia one, And so they're buzzing in the same people to her rallies to get enough of a crowd size because you know how Trump is obsessed with crowd size, right, So anyway, so

there's thing one make of that what you will. I do think that the more interesting thing about the second assassination is how this guy, who is a pretty much a nutjob. I mean, there's no doubt about that. He just seems nutty, Nuttia's heck, but one of those smarter

than average nutty guys who has delusions of grandeur. I actually had to get an investigation FBI investigation of a professor, an adjunct professor that someone encouraged me to hire that turned out to be just as nutty as this guy, but with respect to China anyway, so I'm familiar with the type, you know, promises everything, et cetera, et cetera.

The guy, though, traveled to Ukraine on no apparent means, and he builds little houses, cheap little houses, and that went under no apparent means, has something like a fifty page rap sheet in North Carolina before he moved to Hawaii, was among other things, indicted and charged, I think, convicted of having a weapon of mass destruction. They haven't told us what that is, but it's just some serious, serious

kinds of flags. And he's never been stopped flying back fourth from Hawaii, excuse me, or flying into Ukraine, meeting with Ukrainian officials. All of that's really really suspicious to me. I am one of those people who don't who believes that there is no such thing as a coincidence, and so I don't know what to make of all of that. I just thought maybe some of our listeners out there do know. They've had more time to follow it than I have. But yeah, the guy's just fishy as hell.

Back to your The thing about the first assassination. The thing I find the most objectionable about the whole report on the Butler assassination attempt is how what's his name? Roe? Is it Roe? Is he the guy that's ahead.

Speaker 2

Of the Secret Service, Yes, the acting head.

Speaker 3

Yes, acting head, how he's willing to throw his people under the bus and say it's all their fault, which I suppose you have to do, because if you took any kind of while this was I was responsible, I should resign Da da da da da. Then people would

start saying, oh, why were you responsible? Why did this go all the way to the top, and exactly why couldn't you the most prestigious protection federal protection company in the world, what I know, what you call it, three letter agency, whatever you call it, can't protect a guy on a golf course, can't protect a guy in a rally by just sweeping the perimeter within easy line of sight to where he's speaking. All of those things are hard,

hard for me to even swallow. So I'll let you comment, I'll let you undo my conspiracy theories.

Speaker 2

John Well, one thing is you start to wonder about the basic competence of the Secret Service. You know, they say, oh, it's a golf course, hard to cover. They don't have drones, they don't have dogs. I mean, I bet the Ukrainians could have found the guy right like, just using a few cheap drones and cameras. You know, it actually raises a question for me. I think I mentioned in the last episode was why isn't the military in charge of

the Secret Service? You know, why are we using people who are probably you know, they are domestic law enforcement officers when you know, the military obviously has to deal with protecting assets and people all the time, and I think probably are much better at this than the Secret

Service right now. So this is sort of on the ground question when it comes to he says the other and then the other comment I had was way at the other end, which I thought you were going to address, which is, even if there's no artists in bias or partisanship going on in how the administration is allocating resources of the Secret Service, I think it's a fair thing to say they're rhetoric is contributing to the spikes and political violence. I mean, these are President Biden says, you know,

political violence has no place in the United States. But at the same time, he has called Donald Trump an existential threat to democracy. Existential means right ending the existence of democracy in the United States. And if you keep using language like that, just as by the way, we also saw someone arrested for threatening to assassinate Supreme Court justices.

Although it sounds like this was an old guy in Alaska who was posting crazy things on the Supreme Court's website or something, so it was easy to track him down and he didn't actually do But if you also fill the airwaves with attacks after attack on justices and the Supreme Court, you're going to encourage some people, crazy

people to want to carry out assassination attempts. So that's the thing I thought is notable here that you have two assassinations times and you have the administration Democrats claiming there should be no place for pol govins. But they're the ones who are amping up the rhetoric that might be setting the cultural environment for it.

Speaker 3

I never forget actually blaming Trump for it, blaming because Trump supposedly made the comments about our dear little cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, which supposedly led it turns out not to have been true, but supposedly led to bomb threats. And they were called in from overseas Russia, Russia, Russia, who knows.

Speaker 1

But.

Speaker 3

No credibility to them whatsoever. Yet, who is that guy? I can see his face on CBS. I think he is who Lester Holt who came out and said it's Trump's fault for making those unfounded accusations and getting people all riled up about immigrants. So what does he expect is going to happen? It's ye believe it or not. John, I'm a little bit hesitant to jump to that. I get that there are nut jobs out there, and being a leftist automatically means that you are a ideological, rabid hack.

Rabid ideological hack I think makes more sense in order to believe any of that stuff to begin with. And then I do think that they appeal to, you know, the mentally unstable aspect of society because of you know, the resentment that's part of leftist lore and all those other things. So when the left makes comments like, you know, he's a threat to democracy, he's the next Hitler. Of course, why wouldn't you, if you're a little bit crazy, want

to assassinate Trump. You'd certainly want to go back and assassinate Hitler. Right, That's that's the argument I am not. I am not quite of the opinion that we hold either side accountable for the things that they say and the third order effects of those things. I get the argument. I find it a little bit stretched. That guy is responsible for it. That guy's responsible for his stupid ideas about everything that he goes along with, including supporting Kamala Harris.

When they accused Sarah Palin of being responsible for Gabby Gifford's assassination attempt, it had nothing to do with the fact that she had put those target signs on the different congressional races across the country and she tried to sue. It looks like you've heard probably that she's got another opportunity to make her case. She's been allowed again. But you know, she's fighting a fight in the middle of all this that says how much do we hold people

responsible for the things they say? If we concede that point, are we conceding the silence is violence and speaking is violence argument of the left. That's just my thoughts on it. John, I actually agree with you, but I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit here. What do you think, mister free speech guy?

Speaker 2

Oh who? I would never say that they should be in any way legally punished or anything like that for these kinds of over the top statements about Trump and being a threat to democracy. But you know this is from the party that says, it's defending democracy. This is from the party that claimed, you know, claims that they're the ones who are trying to We're not going it's

trying to move us forward and away from chaos. And yet their actions are destabilizing, and you would think that they would they would conduct themselves in a more adult, responsible manner. It actually reminds me in some ways of Kambala Harris's conduct at the debate. I was going to say first debate, but it may just be now the debate the debate, right, She did not conduct herself in a way to answer questions, treat the voters like adults,

give them answers to questions. She engages kind of taunting gay exercise against Trump. So they I just struck by how I'm just struck by how their political methods are at odds with their playing of being.

Speaker 3

And are you really stress?

Speaker 2

I am? I expect better?

Speaker 3

You do well, remember what Steve always says, I'll have to at least quote Steve quoting the same thing over and over again at least once since he's not here. And that is, if the left had no stand or had didn't have double standards, they would have no standards at all. And I you know, here's the problem I think, and this is why you're right and I'm wrong, John,

because I agree with everything you said. The problem is is that we're just so used to accepting the idea that the left is going to gaslight, the left is going to project to accuse the other side of doing what they do, all of those things that we know that the left does. And I don't know what you do about it, I mean, other than bring it up on the three Whisky Happy Hour along with this lovely glass of McCallan I have here and try to get more people to pay attention to the fact that they're

lying to us every day. There was a great article really quickly by your friends, the American Mind publication out of Claremont that listed listed all of the hoaxes that the left has perpetrated and say, I'm going to say since about twenty sixteen, because it started, of course with the the PP dossier. Excuse my language, and just I mean the list is like twenty five things long, and

some of them are pretty serious. You know. They include everything from They'll find people hoax to Russia Russia Russia, to you know, Hillary that Hillary's emails were stolen by the Russians and it was Trump's fin and just it's I should probably ask Steve to post that, because it's amazing how much we have been treated to lies, dissembling, gas lighting, disingenuousness. I don't know any you know, just outright just disgusting, despicable, corrupt lies from the left because

that's how they get what they want. They convince enough of those people in the middle. And by the way, John, if you don't know who you're voting for now, you are by definition a low information voter and probably shouldn't be. But those are the people the left targets with these lies.

Speaker 2

Look, I am sitting right now in Pennsylvania, which is a wonderful experience because it's the only time I get to watch campaign ads. I got to say, I think when I was telling you guys last time, when I was here for the APSA meeting two weeks ago, that Harris had the better as in Trump. But how the ads have completely changed in quality. The Trump ads are really good. And you know whose ads are even better. McCormick is the guy who's running for Senate against Bob Casey.

His ads are even better than Trump's. He is tying Bob Casey, the incumbent Senate Democrats here, to Kamala Harris so tightly, and then it's a great Every ad on the radio I hear is just three quotes from Kamala Harris. The first one is, of course, I would ban fracking. The second one is, we're you know, we're spending too much on police. We should study the structural racist origins

of policing. I mean, it's me. They just they have identified the quotes and then they say, and now here's her position allegedly, and it's just thirty seconds and they play it whit And you know, Harris's ads are have no substance to them. It's really interesting, Really, I think the ads are really turned around. But as you say, the latest polls show forty eight to forty eight here in Pennsylvania. How can you not have it? How can it be so even it's unbelievable. But before you before Lucretia,

let me stop you there. We got to take a break for an ad. And then when we come back, hear what you think about what's going on Pennsylvania. Also, I wanted to throw at you. You just mentioned Russia. Russia RuSHA welcome back everybody to our second post, second post ad installment of the two Whiskey Happy Hour. We

have Lucretia and John minus Steve Hayward. So right before we rite, right before the break, I was telling Lucretia what's like to see campaign ads in Pennsylvania, and following up on her point that how could anyone not have an opinion between these two? By now you should be you're by definition a low information voter. Yet Pennsylvania is forty eight to forty eight percent. It's evenly tied according to the Washington Post.

Speaker 3

No, well, okay, I don't trust the Washington Post, but there are others like, yeah, slightly more respectable polls. It still have it very very close across the board in the battleground state. It's a popular voute. The whole thing. I'll reiterate my point from before that because of shy Trump voters, whatever else, a little bit of an error in picking the sample and so on, that that Trump tends to outperform the polls. Has outperformed the polls in

every single race he's been in. So I do think that if the polls stay the way they are Kamalahamma Kamalama Dingong is loses, right. I think she loses in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2

If the polls. If the polls show them tied, that means Trump probably means.

Speaker 3

Trump's probably going to win. What one of the things that's very frustrating to a lot of us. But you know, I cannot pretend, even for a moment to understand the average voter. I'll just put it that way, don't I don't people who do who are like us, who do I am in awe of because I just don't get it. I understand the rabid leftists a little bit anyway. I'll leave it at that. But last week, as you know.

Speaker 2

The.

Speaker 3

Teamsters came out and refused, for the first time ever. I'm to understand, right, refuse to endorse the Democratic candidate for president. How much they have the fortunes of the Democratic Party changed if that could happen. And I don't think it's just because she's Kamalama ding Dong and she's worthless. I think it's because they couldn't possibly endorse Trump. But even the leaders have to understand to some extent that Trump is better for the working class than Kamalama ding Dong.

I mean they have to. They have, you know, from so many different metrics. I don't know if the leaders themselves have come to that conclusion, but they can't completely ignore the polls they've taken of their own union members. Sixty percent. Sixty percent of union members now support Donald Trump. That has to be a reality in places like Pennsylvania, John doesn't it, Or Wisconsin or Michigan or some of the southern states that aren't right to work states. Right.

Speaker 2

Pennsylvania is a funny state because it is for much of the state is a Midwestern manufacturing state. Obviously, railroads, oil and steel were a big part of the history of the state. But it has this humongous liberal blue spot in it called Philadelphia my hometown, which is more like is a Northeast corridor city, and so it's more

like Washington, Baltimore, New York, and Boston. And it used to always be the joke that, you know, the election officials in Philadelphia would wait to see the returns from the rest of the state before they figured out how many right, how many smokes they needed to produce a listeners.

Speaker 3

Did everybody catch that? It used to be a joke. Now it's reality. That's what he was supposed to finish that sentence with, Oh.

Speaker 2

Man, you're on me like you're on me like a trial lawyer across examination, my hand on a bible and take an oath.

Speaker 3

I had a frustrating experience yesterday, I'll leave it at that, and ended up having to be in a long car ride with nothing to do but look at X and any of my followers, and X probably thought what the heck happened to her? Because I was just live it about everything that came across my feed. So I'm going to try to be a little more calm today, not be quite as hard on you as I might otherwise.

Speaker 2

I'm grateful to X and grateful for long car rides so that I.

Speaker 3

Got out of my system. I'll give you one really quick example before we go back to the top of get hand, and there was a picture of Clarence Thomas, Justice Thomas next to his brand new RV. Looks all you actually see him is in the one of the pianels. He's standing on the ground one of the panels to the side that looks like it might be a mechanical panel. I didn't pay that much attention. But Jen Rubin and all these other slime balls, who paid for this? Oh, he can buy a brand new RV after he went

out and destroyed women. Is killing women and leaving them, leaving their children without a mother because of his decision in Roe versus Wade. It was these people, John, these people, So Jen Rubin says, who paid for this? And I said, the US Constitution right, And then somebody came back and said something stupid about the US Constitution was bent over by Clarence Thomas and giving it good and hard or something along those lines. So I just look you more on.

If you can explain to me where there is a right in the constitution to kill an unborn child, uh, then then tell me where it is, because it's not there, and you should shut up, you ignorant and fanticide moron. Give you some example of.

Speaker 2

Is that what you were typing on? X? Oh my god, I didn't realize we were getting the censored version of Lucretia all these years.

Speaker 3

I think you're just you're getting the calmer version. Back to Kamalama ding.

Speaker 2

Dong, that's not that I was going to let me ask you about that. Kamalama ding Dong was her her appearance on Oprah, Because let me just throw that onto the fire there. Since you're about to talk about her a little bit, what did you think of her?

Speaker 3

I don't want to know what I said about Oprah either, because about oh yeah, anyway, so here she has what has to be the most ideal conditions, you know, a handpicked audience, Oprah, who as we all know, is responsible for giving us a mama now putting her primiture upon Kamala Harris, and even Oprah is just looking at her and disbelieve how that excuse my language? Hell? Can you say something so god awful stupid in response to a simple question asking you about policy. I have none of

the quotes because I refuse to repeat them. Let's just say your aspirations and my dreams, John, they're elusive.

Speaker 1

Now.

Speaker 2

I don't know if she was trying to win your vote though, because she said she has a gun and she would shoot someone who came into her house, I thought, no, join the speech writing.

Speaker 3

To no person who owns a gun would ever say that. Honestly, it would put you in so much trouble. I would never say that. First of all, if somebody comes in my house and I have to use a gun on them, it's because they're doing something bad enough to kill them. You don't point guns up people for no reason. Anyway. You know who is she? Try to pretend she's yeah tough, Kamala Harris. Let's see some Let's see some pictures of you, some video of you at the shooting range with your smithon.

Was in three point fifty seven uh, with a group this big at thirty yards. Let's just see that. Okay, you couldn't see that, folks, but it's like an inch long.

Speaker 2

Guys, I think we've just heard Lucretia challenge Kamala Harris to a shooting range head to head matchup. I don't think it would be close, frankly, but I would want to make sure both contestants had lots of kevlar on when they went.

Speaker 3

I was going to say, but you can't stop me from a headshot. No, you don't want to do range.

Speaker 2

This is this is the thing I mean. I I what struck me was if a conservative candidate said something like that, people would be all over him or her for a sec. Oh wait, you would check first to see if it was a mistake, if they were actually a threat to you, you would to shoot them right away without any provocation. I mean you would. Actually when these kind of cases happened, you see lots of demands on the left for gun control. Yes, they don't want to they want to get rid of the castle doctrine,

which is the yably. Yes, Tama Harris say this, it seems like utter vote pandering because I don't think she believes this, or.

Speaker 3

No, she doesn't. But I also thought that her her follow up comment was rather interesting. It reminded me of Biden. My staff will have to take care of this for me, so I can be a bring that idiot my predecessor was, And I'll just count on the fact that I've got this gas lighting disingenuous. I got to come up with new adjectives to on staff that will cover up and lie about everything I say so that it gets the best possible play in the media, and then the media

will go right along with it. Yeah, you're absolutely right about that.

Speaker 2

I part problem was the thing I thought also about the interview there. Really but I'm just like, put aside the word salads and the circular logic and the never addressing real policies. You know, she's been asked every interview now, even the most friendly interviews. Right, She's asked about inflation, and she still has no answer other than saying, I'm from a middle class family. Although it's weird to have

a middle class family where both parents are PhDs. But anyway, if that's a middle class family, but she says, I'm from a middle class family. Yeah, two PhD parents in Berkeley and then Canada. Uh but yeah, but well, in Berkeley, mowing your lawn you have to move the homeless people off the lawn first. I wonder how they achieve that.

Speaker 3

And my sense of Berkeley is that there's no law bigger than a postage stamp.

Speaker 2

Really, not her neighborhood. I know where she lives. I live but here. But here's the point, is that still she's got this. She has this quandary. Is she's in office for four years while the inflation occurred. She signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which was like pouring gasoline on the burning economy and making inflation worse through fiscal expansion. And yet she's saying she's gonna make things better somehow, although she won't say how, except for stimulating the economy

even more I suppose. So she is a problem because she can't really attack the policies that created the inflation, but she has to distance herself somehow from it, and she doesn't seem to be able to do that.

Speaker 3

No one would think she should do one of two things. She should own it, own her past leftist policy positions, own it, justify them, and so on. We know that we can't that she can't do that. It wouldn't work in Pennsylvania, as you pointed out, if it wasn't fracking, it would be all sorts of the other positions. It's like, is everybody in Pennsylvania, excuse me, going to drive an EV?

I mean, come on, in The only thing worse than driving an EV in the absolute heat of summer in Phoenix is driving an EV in the cold of Philadelphia in the winter. I mean, people aren't going to buy that stupid car.

Speaker 2

I frankly no, thank god, I got a pickup trucks.

Speaker 3

Yes, so every you know, defund the police. Now there might be a small section of Philadelphia, like you say, that's in favor of that. That her record on that is so clear, and this pretend attempt to be a prosecutor. If you dig down even a quarter of an inch deep into her record as a prosecutor, it is at best a mixed bag. It does not make her a tough on crime prosecutor, but it makes her a tough

on all the marginalized communities that she supposedly supports. And then on the other hand, you know, she's the champion of MS thirteen gangs and you know, we could go on and on my point is okay, So she can't own up to her leftist past. How does she get away with just saying yeah, I don't do that anymore, because, as Bernie said, I gotta be pragmatic if I'm gonna win. And everybody knows what she's going to go back to. And how are they so stupid that they like I

can't I can't wrap my head around it. But when you have the media, I suppose it's a little bit easier. I'm told, however, that even the media is getting a little tired of it. That seems some of them, you know, And when when our friends at ABC were so humiliated, and I guess ABC's ratings have completely tanked, which is odd to me because why would you be watching ABC in the first place. If you didn't already realize what a biased, shall we say, a pro democratic party organization

it is. But all of these things are mysteries to me, John, I want.

Speaker 2

To I expect you to clear them. Well, here's one other interesting angle about the again, just going from spending time in Philly.

Speaker 4

Now, is.

Speaker 2

Uh the negative ads against Trump? You don't hear any of this anymore, you know, threat to democracy, business. You never see anything about January sixth. It's all about abortion. Every negative ad I see that the Harris campaign is running. Is he ended Roe versus Wade. He's proud of ending Roe versus Wade. And that's it. Nothing about the economy, nothing about immigration, you know, all those things that he trusted.

That she tried to attack Trump for the debate go unmentions all about And Pennsylvania is a weird state to try to make the election about abortion, because this is a state that used to have very prominent pro life Democrats, Like his father is not pro life. I think he

started out pro life, but he hasn't his father. Yeah, yeah, it's not his father, Bob Casey, the father who he's the defendant of plant parad versus Casey back in ninety two because he signed and supported a very restrictive abortion law in Pennsylvania. I mean, much of the state is her life because it's a very religious Outside of Philadelphia, it's a very religious, agricultural state still in many way very rural and culture.

Speaker 3

I don't like you, but when we come back, I do want to ask you a quick question. And again I don't want to ambush you, because I didn't tell you I wanted to talk about this.

Speaker 2

Guys, being ambushed by Lucretia is a real pleasure. I have no problems with it. Let's take another commercial break, and when we come back, we'll walk right into that ambush. Okay, Well, before Lucretia springs ambush on us, you all probably know the Marine Corps tactic for responding to an ambush, which is to guess, keep going forward and go through the ambush.

Speaker 3

And I imagine you will on this one, however, go ahead. So it came out this week. Then, in fact, Trump did ask for National Guard protection of the Capitol on January sixth. I forget exactly the words I had somewhere

now I can't find it. Said, you know that there could be some disturbance on January sixth and that we should bring in the National Guard, and that it was in fact that slimeball trader Millie, Ryan McCarthy and others who said no and thwarted the effort to bring in the National Guard because they were afraid of the optics of it. But what that means is, I think, you know, there's a lot to be said for all of the side things going on and should merely be tried for treason,

absolutely tried and hung by the neck until dead. That's my pleasure for Milly. But but the fact that Trump would have called in the National Garden was thwarted by his own people, to me, is a pretty clear indication that he certainly never intended anything like an insurrection. And yeah, and the evidence about that was completely suppressed by the

January sixth Committee at the time. And then, of course, as you recall, they destroyed all of their evidence in violation of the law, and we can't go back and look at a bunch of it. But anyway, the story's going on just that alone. If you're the president of the United States, you recognize that you have followers who are very very upset. Maybe you've made them more upset you're somewhat responsible for that, but very upset about what they feel like was and what they think. There is

evidence for stolen election, true or not true. And you call in the National Guard to make sure that everything goes peacefully and so on, and your own people and Nancy Pelosi thwart that order and keep it from happening. And there's this whole timeline with Ryan McCarthy disappearing, and you know that any orders to bring in the National Guard right into the city around the Capitol had to come from him, and then he disappeared and was no

comms for like eight hours or something. You know, there's all this. I don't know what to make of it. But isn't that in and of itself, if not proof of a conspiracy on the Nancy Pelosi Millie Ryan McCarthy side, at least proof that Trump is not complicit in planning an insurrection.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I mean, I've never been persuaded that he committed an insurrection conspired to commit it. You know, I actually supported the second impeachment, although I didn't think he should be convicted because I thought he was derelict in his duty of protecting the Capitol. But that was based on the facts which seemed to be contradicted by this report.

So I'd want to see more. I mean, if Trump actually had called out the National Guard and then people in the military chain of command refused to carry out the order, then you know, they have committed a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the ideal of civilian control over the military. But this is the first I've heard of it, you know, I didn't. For example, when President Trump was putting on a defense to the impeachment,

his lawyers never said that this had happened. You know, they you know, there was a very rushed, i think haphazard investigation in the first place. But trump selawyers never, as far as I remember, made the argument that he had actually factually called out the National Guard and that you know, the military leadership have refused to carry out the order. If that's true, that's a very serious right, that's a very serious I mean that that's unconstitutional, right.

I mean, the president gives But I want to know what. I would want to see more it happened, because that was that would be incredible actually.

Speaker 3

Reporting on it. It's obviously not showing up in the Washington Post, and and I'm going to be frank with you about this after Dan, rather, you know, putting together that fake uh document for George Bush and doing which.

Speaker 2

By the way, put power line, put power line on the map in the mak.

Speaker 3

Yes, but I mean that was before we had AI, that was before we had Adobe Edit. And so the idea that just producing a document in and of itself is proof of something I don't even know where we go with that anymore, but there are there is documentation about that, the transcripts from phone calls and so on, that supposedly prove that. I won't try to prove it to you today because I'm obviously not a position.

Speaker 1

To do so.

Speaker 2

But I think it's really important to know if this is true, because, as you say, it would directly undermine this idea, right that the Trump actually wanted there to be an attack on the Capitol, but would undermine my view that I think he was just derelict, you know, negligent, just sitting apparently for hours in the West Wing but not in the personal residence, but not calling out the National Guard, and then the real fault would lie with

the military. Gosh. I mean, if this is true, Trump should be saying you know, yelling this from the right from the tree tops. But I don't think he was responsible for the insurrection anyway. I mean, I don't think it was an insurrection, and there was a ricket. I mean, the most incompetent insurrection in the history of insurrections. Yeah, all the.

Speaker 3

People with guns couldn't manage to overthrow a few capitol police.

Speaker 2

Right, I mean yeah, I mean they got the January sixth investigation and prosecution. They don't have they I'm still waiting to see any evidence linking him actually to the attack other than that speech on the ellipse, and that's not enough in my mind. I thought they would have more.

Speaker 3

Yeah, you actually handled that ambush pretty darn well. I have to tell you.

Speaker 2

That's not a real accretiate ambush. You were too nice about it and warned me although there's so many things you could attack me about. I wasn't sure which direction.

Speaker 3

And again, I you know, sometimes you're absolutely right. Sometimes these things make a big splash and then they turn out not to have the evidence behind him, or they make a big splash and the evidence is suppressed.

Speaker 2

Or or or you know.

Speaker 3

So I'm always I'm always hesitant to make too much of it. I of course have never thought it was an insurrection, but and I've always thought that the Justice Department was complicit in it. I am not forcing you to concede that point to me today. That's I guess today.

Speaker 2

I noticed she said today, And I think our.

Speaker 3

Listeners will probably be gratified to know that you have somewhat changed your opinion about that based on, if not the evidence non evidence I produced today, the other development since January sixth that have caused you to kind of look back on it and say, maybe this shouldn't have happened the way it did. And so I don't want to put words in your mouth, but my fans will be happier with you today.

Speaker 2

Well, I don't know what I exactly if I've changed positions on it, but I have been disappointed in the Justice Department. They've not lived up to their public rhetoric about the case. I do think there should have been and was an investigation, but I haven't seen anything. I have not seen public facts that would justify charges against

President Trump. That's uh, so the Justice Apartment failed. If so, they should have done the investigation, and then so we're not charging them because we can't make out these charges otherwise. But then the real fault I think then is to

this goes back to the political writer point. Is the real fault then is for the president and the vice president and the Turney General would run around calling Trump excessential through democracy and an insurrectionists when they're not willing to charge them with it in court because they can't prove it. That's really a serious violation of the norms in our country, has been for a long time. Anyway, one more issue before we talk about your interesting paper,

which is I love Lucretia's name for this. She wanted to talk about Operation grim Beeper. Yeah, so you know, while while we're talking about the secret services inability to use even drones to check the perimeter of golf course, Israel pulls off one of the great high tech intelligence operations that we know of in public for a long time.

Although they've in history, although there's a number of them, there's that they've been successful, and we already forget that they stole the Iranian nuclear weapons archive a few years ago, like the whole thing, and have of course assassinated leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas in places like Iranian governments, you know, safe houses or but this is really one of the

greatest ones. This, of course, I'm sure everybody knows, but the Israel allegedly managed to introduce explosive beepers into the Hesbelah supply chain because Hesbela knows that Israel can't intercept their cell phone communications, so that they're using a beeper network. And so hundreds and hundreds of these exploded at the same time and killed a few, but seems have injured hundreds of Hesbola leaders and operatives. Then when Hesbula switched

to walkie talkies, those blew up too. And then just most recently, Israel pinpointed the location of the military leaders of hesbal some of their highest military commanders, and killed them all in a strike just recently. What I mean this is we're seeing no incredible use of technology to combat, to conduct war, while our own government seems incapablehi of using the most basic technology to protect the leaders of our country.

Speaker 3

So mister Lucretia, when he was America's Q actually explained to me early that morning, the first morning when it happened, exactly how the technology worked. And you know, being missus Lucretia, I of course immediately dismissed what he said, and you never believe what your husband says. And it turned out that what he said was absolutely true.

Speaker 2

Tell us what the tell us the insights?

Speaker 3

Oh, you think I can remember, But the technology was actually developed in his lab a long time ago, a long time ago.

Speaker 2

And back when people used peepers, probably.

Speaker 3

Could people use beeper. It's actually a battery technology, which is why it was you know, and the whole idea that you can quite easily in today's world disrupt the supply chain and move things in and out of it without anybody knowing.

Speaker 2

I mean, so I noticed this company that made the beepers, allegedly was in Budapest. And I might add that I noticed that you delivered your paper that we're going to talk about. But that's how you do an ambush, Lucretia.

Speaker 3

I'm also told that the original company that produced them, which means that they would have produced the the the trigger, shall we say, is a is Israeli shell company. And so what you actually have is Hesbela buying these beepers after an incredible psychological operation, just with after the cell phone business and whatever Hesbela leader. They killed that to

get them to buy beepers. I mean, this has to be some amazing planning going on as a safer way of communicating and then buying these beepers and distributing in them. And it was an Israeli company, a shell company that produced and might have been in Budapest. I saw that too. But not only did they get the maime and otherwise harm the terrorists with these exploding beepers, they got the Hesbela to have to pay for them to the Israelis.

Speaker 2

That's right, they had. They were apparently, I mean, to maintain their front. They were making perfectly legitimate beepers too, and selling those two people or the right to become a legitimate seller in the marketplace until they got this contract.

Speaker 3

So what the way you described it was too. The sequence of events was absolutely right. What you didn't highlight, which I think is in some ways the most interesting are the actually the the second and third order effects of this. And so let's talk about the second order effect, and that's the psychological one that's kind of gotten a lot of a lot of play. You know the fact that you're, uh, you're blowing up beepers in guys pockets.

I don't know, do hes blot people wear pockets, but for whatever reason.

Speaker 2

They're probably they probably carry man purses.

Speaker 3

Man purses around their waist. Whatever the explanation for that is, it seemed to have done an extraordinary amount of damage to an extraordinary number of terrorists around the Genitalia. I'll just leave it at that, and that in and of itself, yeah, I know, just kind of makes sure that in and of itself, in Muslim culture, terrorist culture, whatever you want to call it, is more devastating than being killed. You know, it's you can't go visit your seventy two virgins just

if you got your genitalia blown off. You have to be a martyr to do that, right, Well.

Speaker 2

Christians in this point, I hate to say this, but if you study the economics of war, isn't it actually better to inflict casualties by wounding the enemy rather than killing them?

Speaker 4

Yes?

Speaker 2

Outright, well, but more so I.

Speaker 3

Think in that culture, John, more so, because you know, it's very much I hate this word, that macho, kind of manly culture that you know, these guys walking around now maimed for life wherever they were maimed are less able as as you know, warriors whatever you want to call it to be.

Speaker 2

Although they conduct war by you know, trying to kill civilians and women and children. I mean, you're right that culture might be that way, but the way they conduct wars actually I think.

Speaker 3

But actually actually think they kill women and children because they don't consider them valuable, you know, I mean we see that all the time with the Palestinians. They're willing to use their children as human shields. So you have that whole psychological thing, and and the fact that they did it and then they did it again, and then they tried to fix it, and then they did it again.

The Israelis did it to them again, and then you know, they killed off the whole bunch of Hesballa leaders because they got together they didn't want to trust any more communications devices, and then they had a very targeted strike against them. I mean, all that's that's just absolutely wonderful in my opinion. But there's one other thing that happened too as a result of sending out those beepers. Because once they once they were activated, they already could start

putting together a network of known terrorists. And then once the Uh, once the damn was done and they went to hospitals, they could also uh do Lincoln Palate pattern analysis on on their families, on on their associates. So the amount of intel that they were able to garner as a result of the the pagers and the walkie talkies, uh is more invaluable than I'll ever understand. But so you know, you gotta love the Israelis. You got to,

and then you've got to really despise those people. I guess you expect it from Rashida to leave in AOC, but those people on the left who are just so weak, Oh, how could you do this? You know, this is just how could you celebrate this kind of violence? I celebrated it with a lot of drinks. I will just tell you that right now, I was, I was having fun.

Speaker 2

We're not at the Babylon Bee part of the show, but there was one headline that said it was so funny, said Rashida to leave safe and unharmed after big Ber explodes. Yet it was very funny.

Speaker 3

It was funny. Remind just remind that our listeners, what a horrible excuse for human beings and ORGANI human organization has bala is and all of the innocence that they've killed, and I could list it.

Speaker 2

I operate primarily by attacking innocence. That's my the thing they're not. You said, they have a masculine culture, but they're not a civilized warrior culture in the sense that civilizations. The warrior ethos is not to attack innocence to fight other combatants. The one thing I came away with from the Beeverything to carry your point further is what does it mean Israel's up to? And so one thing I'm glad is it shows that they're not listening to the

Biden administration. Yes, the Biden administration wants the fighting in Gaza to end, doesn't want there to be any conflict along the Lebanon border. And it seems see what Israel is doing is what makes sense. They're closing out Gaza, you know, not closing out, but they're finishing the war or drawing down the war against the moss and Gaza where they conducted the war. I think, you know, with all due effectiveness, but they realize the real problem is

Hesbelah to the north. And it seems to me, you attack the leadership of Hesbelah before you're about to do something else, And so I imagine this means that there's going to be some kind of broader offensive against Hesbela, that Israel will take advantage now of the disorder they've sown in their ranks and take the war to them, which makes complete sense to me, I think, and then remove those two great threats on its border.

Speaker 3

And then let's never forget that we don't necessarily have to be sending them foreign aid and arms and those sorts of things. Don't want to get into that debate right now, but even my anti Neocon friends are actually cheering on Israel and all of this in part because the Biden administration did have no part in it.

Speaker 2

But if anything, they've they've given billions of dollars to Iran, which has turned around and right funnel the money to La and Hamas.

Speaker 3

My best tweet of the day was the other day that it was Biden administration gives one billion dollars to Iran, who gives it to Hesbalah, who uses it to buy a beepers, who uses it to Da Da Da Da da. A great day for Jake Sullivan. Jake Sullivan, this was one of those Uh.

Speaker 2

This is a sad thing to say, but I think we will look back on all of these people, Jake Sullivan, Blink and Austin as maybe the most incompetent national security staff we have had since Parl Harbor. I mean this has been an otter design. I mean Carter looks good compared to this, right, I mean this has been a disaster, and all those leaders are I think, are going to go down in history as having done a terrible, terrible job for the United States. So but short and incompetent.

Speaker 3

Only, if only if the globalist perspective doesn't end up writing history. Remember, they're happy about the fact that the United States is waning in international influence. They don't want any hegemone to be on top. They want they want equilibrium, and not just equilibrium amongst the superpowers, but the third world countries third world I won't use the word countries. They want to make sure that prosperous capitalist countries suffer

so that third world countries. I don't know, I guess if our suffering helps that third world countries do better, or at least there's a relative equality if you bring us all down to the bottom. I'm not really sure how their thinking works, but we know that from Obama on. Obama thinks that the United States is not exceptional, and there's nothing about the United States that means it ought

to be a leader of the free world. So when you say in competent, I agree, but they don't see it as incompetence.

Speaker 2

You know what. That is a great segue to our last topic, actually, isn't it. So let's take our last commercial break here, and when we come back, we will talk about Lucretia's recent posting, which I will set up because I was independently asking her about questions I've been coming to during my own reading about these issues. So when we come back, I heard everybody. Our last segment is going to be on a paper that Lucretia posted while she was setting up shell beeper companies in Hungary.

So while she was in Hungary, we don't know why she delivered a paper which Steve has posted on the substack page associated with power line. Is that where we think it's hours Okay, you and Steve have your own substack. Oh okay, but you excluded.

Speaker 3

You are always welcome.

Speaker 2

But in all seriousness though, that's whorrified. But Steve has got to post it to the show notes too, because

I thought it was really interesting. And the background to this, everybody, is that Lucretia, Steve and I are going to be teaching a class at Berkeley and October on constitutional interpretation, and one of the big issues is this resurgence of what's called common good constitutionalism, which rejects the idea of small l liberalism, which is, I think, as I understand as I would describe its small liberalism, I think begins with the idea that the legitimacy of our government begins

with consent. And so it's consent to the Constitution which gives the constitutional government legitimacy. It's also why we enforce the Constitution and not just whatever we feel like.

Speaker 3

Doing today, So which is common law to me John, But.

Speaker 2

Yes, he's not here to exactly. So that's the question I was coming to.

Speaker 1

Was.

Speaker 2

So this critique by one of my really good friends, Adrian Vermuil, a really very thoughtful guy, but a bunch of others too, argues that liberalism has been a failure and that instead of following the pure original understanding of the Constitution, which he claims may be unknowable, we should be enforcing policies and rules that provide for the common good.

So I asked Lucretia, just by chance, you know, I've been doing this reading what is the source of political legitimacy for people who don't we're not liberals, small liberals who don't believe that government comes about because of individual consent. And I guess in fact, I was asking what was the theory of political legitimacy for the governments before the idea of the social contract came along, before Hobbes and Locke came along and built the idea of government based

on consent. Because I couldn't really figure out reading the common good constitutionalism stuff, where where it comes from, where political legitimacy comes from? Well and so, and actually Lucretia then said, I have a paper about this, but it's only.

Speaker 3

Partially an answer to your question, John, because your question also asks, you know, where did it come from prior to social contract theory? And also where does it come from now if you reject social contract theory.

Speaker 2

So the simple as this could be two different answers.

Speaker 3

Yeah, for prior to social contract theory is religion. I mean, it's not the entire explanation of it, but from the you know, that from prior to the b C. I guess you'd call it prior to the birth of Christ, or the take over.

Speaker 2

Under the Roman gods, under the Roman gods.

Speaker 3

The Greek gods, even all of those barbarians out there fighting against the Israelis and in Canaan, and you know, all of those people, the gods of the city were the were the ruling forces of the city, and gave legitimacy to the laws. And so that if you were a citizen, excuse me, in one of those ancient cities, your piety was being a good we might say today a patriot. Better way to put it is you obey the laws, You're being highest because the laws had their

legitimacy and something greater than human beings. When Christianity comes along, it complicates the issue a bit because in the ancient days you had the gods of the cities, gods plural cities, plurals. Each city had its own, each state whatever you want to call it, had its own gods. But if your god was defeated in battle, then you know, the other city took you over and you had to adopt their gods. And so, okay, Christianity comes along, it it's just.

Speaker 2

Kind of like the divine right of kings. Take the right of king's part out, but it's still divine the regency comes from.

Speaker 3

But what you said is very important because post Christianity, what you would the primary source, at least in the Western world is in fact the divine right of kings and the king. That's why you know, uh succession was so important what it still is in those places.

Speaker 2

There the fight between the popes and the kings was a poorb So who's in charge.

Speaker 3

The pope or the king? Because you have divided loyalties now, your piety to your God is to the Christian universal God, that's everybody's God. Everybody can be saved now as opposed to you know, in the Hebrew Bible, the God had his chosen people, and with the advent of Christianity and with the Roman Empire carrying it essentially over the world, you now have divided loyalty between your God and your

eternal salvation. And here, the here and now makes it very difficult to establish any kind of sovereignty for for a leader, a ruler without some kind of divine justification tied to it. Shall we say so? The reason that Hobbes first, and then Locke.

Speaker 2

Oh can I answer before we get to Hobbs and Lock, so before we get to them, because he doesn't come

up with social contract theory. But Machiavelli is very critical of Christianity for right trying to put up set up as an ideal these virtues you can't really achieve and actually produce a kind of weakness that invites other city states to take advantage of you and you so so many who are not good political legitimacy come for him because he's very modern, right people off in the you know Harvey Manster that thinks of him as the first

modern political philosopher, but he's pre social contract theory.

Speaker 3

Machiavelli is an interesting case because he looks around and he sees the weakness, as you say, of political authorities. He sees the strength of the popes. There's a lot of interesting stuff about the popes and Machiavelli, but basically his argument is this, you cannot be a Christian, a Christian or even in some ways an ancient philosophy ruler, because you'll try to do what is good, what is

the right thing to do. You'll try to follow justice, and in the real world those things basically don't exist. And as he puts it, anyone who he who tries to do what is good for the sake of good, comes amongst so many who are evil, comes to ruin. So Machiavelli is the ultimate the ends justify the means. But he provides that sort of an end of the wedge, camel's nose under the tent, whatever lame metaphor you want, or the separation of the church from the authority of

the state. We don't have anything like separation of church and state, as we find in the American regime at this point. But once of Machiavelli unhinges the authority of the pope from the authority of the state in theory, Hobbes comes along and he sees that what Machiavelli was so worried about. He sees these civil wars. He sees these wars on the continent that are destructive, They create

massive instability. And so Hobbes has this, and I make this very quick, has this theory of the social contract, which is based upon this radical humanity, excuse me, radical equality of humanity. We are so absolutely fundamentally equal in the important respects. Because we are all at risk of a violent death, and the most compelling human motivation is fear of violent death. No other motivation, feeling, thinking, anything comes close. So we agree we form this social contract

under Hobbes. Because remember Hobbs says that before or we have a social contract in the state of nature. The state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Why would anybody want to stay there? So, because we all fear violent death, we come together in this social contract. We agree to give up all of those rights that are ours by nature because of our radical equality. No person has any rights over anyone else, any authority over

anyone else. We're all our own rulers. But we give up that exercise in order for peace and security in Hobbes, and we set up over us ourselves a sovereign or a leviathan. And there is no appeal in Hobbes. This is the important part. Without a long lecture on Hobbs, there is no appeal from the sovereign. Everything the sovereign does is by definition just so we've gone from Machiavelli, who said, oh, you can't really do what's try to do what's just when everybody's able to definition of justice

is what the sovereign does. So Locke comes along and he moderates that a bit. I guess you could say one place in. Locke says the state of war is so far from the state of nature that they're not even the same thing, and that the law of nature is written on the hearts of man, so we are not motivated entirely and completely by fear of violent death. According to Locke, we have the law of nature written on our hearts. We know what's right and wrong, we

know what the golden rule is. The problem is that our rationality is often undermined, shall we say, by our feelings, by our passions, And so even though we have the law of nature written in our hearts, we are often faulty in our application of it. And that's why we need a social contract. Not because the state of nature is solitary, poornessy and short, but it's just not the best place for us, so we rationally decide to form

a social contract. The outcome of that that makes it different from Hobbes is that the sovereign is no longer all powerful and completely in charge, shall we say, There is an appeal from the sovereign. The social contract remains the most important part of my ruling myself, and agreeing with you that your ruling yourself will give up some exercise of our rights in order to have better security for all of our rights. Our founding fathers adopted the

Lockeand point of view. Okay, not the absolute sovereign, the leviathan of Hobbes, but.

Speaker 2

The social constitutional government. Yes, exactly, and so what happens when religion disappears as the source. But you also reject social contract theory. That's what this sort of new conservative attack on cost two government. Right, So we're used to the left, you mentioned it earlier. The leftist attack on the constitution is it's a colonialist of pressers sticking it to the weak. Why should we respect the outcomes of the constitution is all done by racist slaveholders, and they're

sympathizers anyway. But now we have this new critique from conservatives who reject social contract theory. You know, the Benthamer Mills individualistic nonsense on stilt social contract. There's never historically any state of nature, there was never any meeting, there was never any entry into a social compact. It's all just an artifice. So there that's the utilitarian criticism. So they adopt some of that, but these people are not utilitarians.

They are right, we reject individualism and the autonomy idea underlying the social contract idea. But I have a hard time wondering where their theory of political legitimacy comes from because they don't make it openly one based in religion either. They don't say, let's go back to the pre social contract way of thinking of where government comes from, the social contracts.

Speaker 3

So what do we have we They do appeal to religion and tradition.

Speaker 2

That's that's a history and tradition, Yes.

Speaker 3

History and tradition that or you could even say common law, that we have seen things that work, and those things that work are things that we should continue to do. That we should develop them into traditions and deep cultural norms, and that that's if we could do that, we could go back from this god awful place we're in where we don't know who what's a woman? We don't you know there, we don't know how many sex excuse me,

genders there are. You can be a furry, you know, all of the abortion on demand assistant suicide, all of the things that the right, the conservative right, quite finally, quite rightly finds objectionable, but there is actually no legitimacy. You go to the deep ages of time and hope that those kinds of traditions and cultural norms are enough

to carry you through. I do want to mention quickly, and I know I've gone long on this already, but I want to contrast that because I actually think that those conservatives we're talking about right now join the left

in this whole enterprise. If you go back to even if you don't all go all the way back to Locke, but you go to Jefferson, the entire Declaration of Independence, and then the country the constitution built on the principles there are dependent upon a very specific view of human nature that it adopts the radical equality of Hobbes that

is carried on by Lock. It adopts the notion that seems, according to Jefferson at least self evident that if you are your own natural ruler, you have the right to life, your own life, your own property, your own liberty. And that's the basis a very low not quite as low as Hobbes, but a very low basis for forming a constitution and a form of government. But the Founding fathers also understood much more about human nature that actually applies here.

They have a capacity for virtue human beings do they have a capacity for evil, They have a capacity for hatred and resentment, good, you know, all of those things that education and culture so on help form human beings one way or the other. But they have a nature, and that nature is the same, let's say in twenty twenty four as it was in seventeen eighty seven. Human beings are not fundamentally different today in any fundamental respect than they were in seventeen eighty seven or in the

time of Locke or Hobbes. What that is contrasted with are the progressives who believe that human beings are infinitely perfectible and that society is infinitely perfectible. And if you believe that society is infinitely perfectible and human beings are, then when you sacrifice individuals or whole groups of people toward that wonderful, lofty goal, it's really not a problem.

There's no dignity in the individual human being. There's only dignity in that final progressive utopia and communism is that way the progressives of the nineteen twenties in the United States believe that that's where eugenics comes from. And so I think, I hate to say it, but our friends on the right are a little bit naive about what they share with the other side. They take, they take, yeah, way, we're way over to pick it up next time.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think we actually should reserve that to next time. Whether the conservative critique of constitutionalism or originalism is the same or different than the liberal critique of originalism or constitutionalism, I think that the there's more to the common good constitutionalism side than there is to the to the progressive side.

I think conservative constitutional common good constitutional people do think that there's a place for rules and norms, but it still leads open the question what is the ultimate source of political legitimacy?

Speaker 3

Of it all?

Speaker 2

Because people should read your paper, because your paper is a critique of the idea of just relying on history and to just in tradition for its own sake. So why don't we stop there? And if you want to close Lucretia with the babylon b headlines, yeah.

Speaker 3

I'll have to just keep it to a couple because I know how we're long, there's a list of the remaining ten celebrities who haven't endorsed Kamala Harris. Fifteen seconds into Kamala Harris interview, Oprah decides to endorse Trump. We can't afford another four years of this, shouts, running made of candidate who has been leading country for four years. I didn't even want to give any of any credence

whatsoever to the Diddy thing. That's just I just want to stop my emails I get from the Post because they seem to be obsessed by Diddy and by our FK Junior's sex texting with some reporter. I couldn't care less but sorry. Governor Abbott declares textuary sanctuary state for memor. I know you've been following your governor who wants to outlaw means that make fun of him and other things. Jill,

we didn't even talk about this really quick. Did everyone see that Biden held his first in the s of my last one, held his first cabinet meeting in eleven months, spoke, rambled for a couple of incoherent seconds, and turned over the cabinet meeting to doctor Jill Biden.

Speaker 2

You know I saw that that was bizarre it was barre.

Speaker 3

Jill Biden becomes first female president, says the Babylon be What a crazy world we live in? John Yes, and then Biden promises next Trump assassin will be a woman of color.

Speaker 2

Okay, So we still are waiting to decide on our new sign off. We might have to wait until after the election and then shape our new sign off based on whoever wins.

Speaker 3

So shape our new sign off unburdened by what is in.

Speaker 2

So goodbye everybody, Goodbye Lucretia, and we'll see you next weekend. It's my understanding that we might even have a Steve Hayward sighting at our next episode.

Speaker 3

Yeah, rumor has it. Have a wonderful week John, you.

Speaker 2

Two, Chrisia, Bye everybody.

Speaker 4

Well have you heard about the painter Vincent van gorm who love Colorado? Let it show and in the museum? What have we here? The most solful pain a Cyncion for me Edy Long he loved that's so bad paint and tad twice in color all the pain and tad go bad. That the world had to know he love Colorado. Let us show in the Ampstead Museum.

Speaker 2

I was feeling bad and looking for away, not to be so sad.

Speaker 4

I felt the feeling from the paintings all the waw and Vincent Vangal.

Speaker 2

Was with me in the hall, and he loved he loved life that way.

Speaker 4

These painting said things pain and seldom saying so bad that the world had to know.

Speaker 1

He loved color.

Speaker 4

Letty shaw

Speaker 2

Ricochet joined the conversation.

Transcript source: Provided by creator in RSS feed: download file
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android